daily shriek

It just goes to show you the mindlessness that pervades the american marketing machine — follow this link to see all 15 Unfortunately Placed Ads,

this one is my favorite

this is even cooler than the seti screen saver!

these ubergeeks have generated loads of new deep space images unveiling a brazillion new galaxies upon which human eyes have never gazed, and they need your help to categorize them:

so you can be astro-boy or interplanet janet (she’s a galaxy girl) and explore strange new worlds…
link via good morning silicon valley

so we all know that the people opposed to the idea that human activity is to blame for climate change are only opposed to the idea because they don’t want to be inconvenienced by the changes in human behavior that would be necessary to avert calamity should that idea be definitively proven.

as proof of this, simply listen long enough to any person opposed to carbon reduction, and eventually they will say that they don’t want to have quit driving an suv.

well, a case for this can surely be made in that massive upheavals in the fuel supply will unfairly negatively on the poor, who can scarcely afford cars as it is, and will be mostly affected by job losses, etc.

and the fact that the kyoto protocol exempts china who will soon far surpass america as the number one polluter is a fact that should dampen the party quickly

but to deny the mountain of evidence that global warming exists and is most likely caused by human activity is counter-productive.

to wit, if it turns out that global warming is not caused by carbon-based fuels, and we have successfully converted over to other, cleaner sources of energy, then we will have a cleaner earth, darn. alternately, if global warming is indeed caused by the use of carbon-based fuels, and we have done nothing, we will have face the consequences in the full knowledge that we did nothing to prevent it, and that feeling of shame will probably include the guilt for all sort of ills.

so can we please just quit kidding ourselves and start working toward a cleaner safer world, one in which our entire economy is enslaved to the finite supply of underground petroleum?

just a thought.

the beeb’s web site is reporting on a device created at the university of southhampton, uk that generates electricity from environmental vibrations.

and while the amount of electricity is small, there are plenty of industrial sensor applications that can be powered by this little gem

as a species throughout history and pre-history have culled energy from our environment, from burning logs to keep warm, to splitting atoms to generate electricity.

look ma! no wires! this little gizmo allows for zero-emission devices that don’t use batteries filled with caustic chemicals or require stringing wires to them.

how cool is that? well, for me it means that hopefully i won’t be needing to compete with my car for my nation’s agricultural output.

and as gizmodo’s so keenly observed:

The generator may also one day be used to power a pacemaker, which would indeed be a funny twist: It would derive its power from the beating of the heart that its job is to keep on track. How’s that for existentialism?

link via gizmodo

The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

as boring as it sounds, a democracy thrives when all possible ideas are evaluated, tyranny thrives when openness is quashed.

freedom of speech and free-thinking are at the very core of the American dream and is the defining ideal behind the American can-do attitude and is precisely what makes it possible for ordinary people to do extraordinary things and become successful

the free market is underpinned by the notion of parimutuel betting that dictates that the best ideas will succeed — closing the door to new ideas will eventually choke and kill the free market.

how ironic that conservatives want to do exactly that.

link via dvorak uncensored

so apparently best buy geek squad technicians are developing a reputation for swiping porn, music files, etc from off of the customer computers that they are assigned to fix.

As part of the operation to catch a technician stealing files from a customer’s computer, consumer-advocate blogger Ben Popken loaded a PC with porn and screen capture software before taking it along to several Geek Squad stores. He then videoed the entire incident

i don’t know how it could possibly come as any surprise that geeks are going snag your tunes and your pr0n when they have your pc in their hands.

link from el reg

oregon town keizer put up these barriers to protect pedestrians from cars, but some are complaining that they look like penises.

similing bob would be proud of these bad boys!

seriously though, someone needs to plaster these things with ads for Trojans, Cyallis, and Viagra, right quick!

i think it’s a hard and fast rule the people who see phallic symbols in ordinary objects are creepy perverts who need to be taken off the streets before their views become set in the public consciousness, and they’re complaints become set in stone.

(sry)

link via dvorak uncensored 

Researchers at the University of California-Santa Barbara said getting “miffed or irked” can sharpen a person’s ability to analyze data carefully and make the right decisions, ABC News said Wednesday.

i’ve always known that i’ve shot better pool, typed much faster, drove more sanely when a little pissed off — now i know it’s not just me

i wonder what being bitter does for ya…

anyway, here’s the link to the article i found on science daily

and here’s a link to the journal they cite, only the july issue, which presumably contains the article, isn’t up as of this writing

• For a 9×9 puzzle to have precisely one solution, the initial entries need to include at least eight of the nine digits
• the smallest number of starter clues on a sudoku puzzle is 17
• Sudoku puzzles are an example of a type of graph known as a Latin square, which mathematicians have studied for centuries
• there are 3,546,146,300,288 (about 3.5 x 10^12) meaningfully different 9-by-9 sudoku puzzles
• no one knows how many sudoku puzzles exist for any grid size exceeding 9-by-9
• For a randomly chosen n-by-n Latin square, the bigger n is, the smaller the probability that it is also a sudoku. In fact, the probability approaches zero as n gets larger
• A mathematical solution to sudoku could have practical applications when viewed as a graph theory problem. For example, scheduling committee meetings for various groups in different time slots can pose a similar mathematical challenge.

and my favorite:

• graph theory shows that a mathematically simple formula exists for the number of possible solutions to a given sudoku puzzle. Unfortunately, there’s a glitch: although the mathematicians proved that the formula exists, they weren’t able to figure out what it is.

hahahahahahhaha

link

classified for your edification, i present to you the bristol stool chart, via wikipedia

link

thanks josh!