Everything isn't Under Control

Saturday, May 7, 2005

New cat and girl, which is slowly becoming my favorite comic strip. My own comic "Female and Feline" is not a rip-off of cat and girl, its an ummm shameless homage. Nor is my "Dog and Boy" or my "Panther and Pamela."

The East Campus dorm's peculiar reputation and the Time Traveler Convention's far out theme may explain why so many people made the effort to travel in driving rain to a two-hour event.
A fan of the Cat and Girl internet comic strip, which Dorai credits with giving him the idea for the convention, drove a band of jugglers up from the Yale University campus, in New Haven, Connecticut.

@ 02:39 PM CST [Link]

Very good piece on what the heck ever happened to the promises of AI.

See also: Speaking of vaguely sci-fi-ish things, here's a slightly amusing howstuffworks.com piece on lightsabers.

no-means-no (30k image)
With a lightsaber, no truly means no.

@ 08:52 AM CST [Link]

Friday, May 6, 2005

Where are they now pshop gallery. Poor KITT. Maybe if you weren't so smarmy someone would have adopted you.

knight-rider-2005b (40k image)
"Whatcha staring at? I was prime time! Prime time, bitches!"

@ 09:41 PM CST [Link]

Wednesday, May 4, 2005

New condoms to come with 'liquid viagra.' Oh, you will get so much spam about this in about a year. Feel free to add "GTN" to your spam keywords.

The CSD500 condom contains a chemical in its teat, called glyceryl trinitrate (GTN), which is absorbed into the skin and causes blood vessels to dilate.
This in turn increases blood flow into the penis to maintain an erection.
The impotence pill Viagra works in a similar way, but uses a different approach.
Barder said that, unlike Viagra, the condom was meant for men who do not suffer from impotence problems.

See also: According to drugs.com, combining GTN with Viagra can lead to some serious problems, like death. Someone warn Bob Dole! Or don't.

@ 12:28 AM CST [Link]

New cat and girl. I'm sure you can come up with more of these "reverse birthdays." 30 - if you're still listening to the music you listened to in high school then you will listen to that music until your dying day. In fact it will be played at your funeral. 15 - if you haven't developed type I diabetes, you never will, but if you haven't kissed a girl yet you might be gay. 23 - if you haven't had alcohol poisoning yet, you probably never will. 50 - if your parents havent divorced yet, they never will, but they will die soon.

lost-bdays (12k image)

@ 12:17 AM CST [Link]

Loneliness kills. Afterall, humans are social animals by nature. I am curious if someone can be classified as socially active through virtual channels like IM, MMORPGs, online forums, etc. I'm also curious about the obvious cause vs. correlation issue here. These people could be suffering from mental illness like depression which affects the whole body.

Low levels of social connectedness can adversely affect the body - lowering immune response and affecting heart health - highlight two new studies.
One study demonstrates that first-year college students who mixed with fewer people or felt lonely had a lower immune response to influenza vaccination than their more gregarious or socially contented classmates.
A second study suggests that men who are socially isolated have elevated levels of a blood marker for inflammation, which has a role in atherosclerosis. It was known that isolation has detrimental effects on heart health, but the study gives clues as to how this is mediated, says Sarah Pressman, a health psychologist a Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, US.

See also: Genes most favored by natural selection in humans and apes involve immunity and timed cell death. I don't like terms like "arms race" and such for evolution. Natural selection is a simple mechanism with no plan or goal. Those who survive to have children pass on their genes. Those who have a genetic disability and cannot survive childhood infections simply don't pass on their weaker genes.

@ 12:00 AM CST [Link]

Tuesday, May 3, 2005

Halfbakery: Meme Catcher. Everyone loves puns, right? I think I'll stick with my Darwin fish.

@ 11:54 PM CST [Link]

New version of Winamp out. Wha? They're still developing winamp? I like it and think its a great app, but it eats quite a bit of RAM for just a music/media player. Not to mention the new default skin is hideous. I think this new change is going to result in a lot of pissed off people:

New: Deletes in the Media Library now move files to the Recycle Bin

@ 11:47 PM CST [Link]

Monday, May 2, 2005

HHGG capsule review. Its a romantic comedy and oddly enough the funniest bits were not from the books. The movies runs like champ for a while but just completely runs out of steam around the last third. There seems to be a lot of play with exposition and wackiness in the beginning, but tying up the story at the end felt rushed and messy. Its funny (with the exception of Marvin, the paranoid android), but if you're not a big Douglas Adams fan you might want to watch the cheap matinee show or wait for the DVD. My biggest complaint probably has to be that I could barely hear Mos Def's dialogue, a lot of which had to do with the guide and the towel. Half the time he just seemed to be doing unrelated bizzare things with towels in the background.

@ 05:02 AM CST [Link]

Pneumatic elevator for your home. This is fairly, if not extremely gimmicky, but it really makes me wonder why pneumatics never evolved into something like the internet or the interstate. Imagine every business combining their old pneumatic systems for very quick product delivery. Imagine apartment complexes implementing new pneumatic systems for mail delivery and eventually connecting straight to the post office or the fed ex office and then to other apartment buildings. Imagine buying something from Amazon and getting in from your tube ten minutes later. Of course this would require some serious access controls and "white-listing" but if economically feasible would revolutionize delivery like the internet revolutionized information.

@ 04:40 AM CST [Link]

Funniest email I've gotten in a long time. Unintentional, of course. Sincere comedy is so 1980's.

@ 04:33 AM CST [Link]