It's Personal

A girl running through lavender fields. Pic via Jezebel via the Getty.








An illustrated Mario death by John-
ny Yakon, via Offwo-
rld.




































Today's speed run time: 14 minutes until the end of 7-1. I tried out a little bit of "Super Mario: The Lost Levels". Here was my reaction: "I don't see why this was considered too hard for Western au-"/murdered.
I used to suck at the first Mario. I played a single game today, got up to 5-3 and then was killed by Bowser's castle.
My mom used to play the first Mario with us and actually was very good at beating it. In fact, she was considered "the expert" in the family on that game.

Speaking of my mom, she picked up Clingy today, who was so shocked he didn't even struggle. She put him down and he proceeded to hide, then come back and play on the patio. My mom corrected me, as it has been over two weeks since we last saw Gaiylee herself.

Look at the language in this article from the Reuters:
"But Paal cautioned Clinton against hanging her reputation too much on improved relations with China.

"We are not in a position to control them," he said."

There is always the possibility that this man's quote was taken out of context. However, it is very telling of the imprints of foreign policy in this country, even if Obama is trying to change them.

I didn't copy or write down a lot of stuff today.

Wouldn't it be cool if there were bridges that were water and held together by water tension in a theoretical world? It would be so trippy to swim through them and put a hand out into the air.

Physorg.com published an article on friction free computer circuits via quantum mechanics. I'm too lazy to link. Go do it yourself!

So I have over two hundred entries in this journal, which is impressive. I love writing and I love sharing cool stuff with people. Blogs are a perfect balance of the two. I feel strange writing a diary on the computer, especially since I don't want to have one somewhere that is ultimately hackable, but I dislike writing by hand since, well, I'm faster at typing and my handwriting starts to resemble random loops after a while. I just figured it out! A flash drive!

Flash drives, though certainly hackable if you put the wrong things in them or leave them connected to the computer, are the first ultra-easy ways to distribute data that don't require linking computers directly and actually keep the information remote from the rest of the digital world(if you don't keep them connected to the computer, again). They are our first private digitilized miniaturized domains widely available to the public. And don't tell me about external HDs, because those are not miniaturized, at least in comparison to the flash drive.

Of course, unlike a book, you need a computer to make a flash drive work, an extra piece of equipment that must take part in the process. And boot before starting the process. Ah, the booting.

The original Star Trek is an entertaining, theoretical and thoughtful show. What it is not is in any way realistic. Which is now I bring to you this parody; look for upcoming ones about Grecian gods appearing, geniuses going insane, and time travel. This particular one is based on "it's scientifically impossible!"; specifically "Shore Leave" from season one, which I actually enjoyed quite a bit.

1.) The landing party beams down and everything looks perfectly normal on their sensors because their sensors are crappy. Also, everywhere looks like Earth because of Somebody's Law of Planetary BS(or, we reuse the same drawings as alien backdrops several times).

2.)Something impossible is seen and hard proof of its existence is found, usually corresponding with the word "fascinating". Spock's soul dies a little more.

3.)People still think that it's a good idea to split up because that makes for dramatic death scenes which lead to dramatic scenes for Captain Kirk to lament over his crew member. Or Kirk still thinks that crew members can handle themselves even though they keep dying because they have PHASERS*
*Note: phasers usually knocked out or taken away by the end of the episode

4.) Captain Kirk meets THE GIRL. All girls in this galaxy have an inexplicable attraction to at least one member of the crew, usually the one who's name is an anagram for "Tiberius Kirk James". And that specific member tends to "genuinely" fall for this woman in return because they have sexual ADD. McCoy, Spock, and Kirk have at least 5 women each who are waiting for them to settle down with.
In this episode Kirk meets a special lady from his past of which he has 6 million. He must have been dating some of these girls at the same time as each other or be a serial monogamist, because, how many relationships can you have in twenty-something years?
P.S. Kirk's charm has won more battles for the federation than the Enterprise herself. The Federation should just package up an "essence du Kirk" and send it around instead of spaceships.**
**Working parts included.

5.) Their phasers stop working. Suprise! Also, The Enterprise is helpless for one reason or another because the scientists in this time period are too busy focusing on how cool it would be to be able to "blow up half a continent" rather than "shields that work properly", despite the fact that the Enterprise is mainly a defensive ship. Communicators are out, too, and for some reason it never occurs to them to use the injectable trackers besides as a deux ex machina for prying them out of their arm and setting things on fire in a Nazi jail. Yes, this actually happened.

I mean, nothing usually goes wrong, right?
Wait.

6.) So now the crew is being chased and seduced by a wide variety of things that turn up for no reason despite the fact that it's pretty obvious now what's happening. Everyone seems to have lost their critical thinking skills....

7.) Which leads to the Shatner vrs. somebody fight. Badly choreographed and involving lots of rolling, I'm never quite sure what the point of these are.

8.) Spock and Kirk figure out the solution and start acting on it, because the show is running out of time and Shatner's shirt has finally ripped open. Then the solution appears out of nowhere, in this case a peaceful creator who was waiting to intervene until the emotional scarring occurred. The explanation is cool, but sort of leaves you going "wait, but what about...". Also, the skimpily clad girls couldn't not show up, so they decided to include them at the end. Everybody is happy and Kirk decides to spend time with a cellular cast of one of his many long-lost loves.

Huh?

The Dorkiness is With Me

I want a Chapman Stick now. What is a Chapman stick?

An interesting article from Wired about scarcity vrs abundance planning.

"This is the power of waste. When scarce resources become abundant, smart people treat them differently, exploiting them rather than conserving them. It feels wrong, but done right it can change the world."

"The way to get from what the mathematicians call a local maximum to the global maximum is to explore a lot of fruitless minima along the way. It's wasteful, in a sense, but it can pay off in the end."

This feels like the correct way to treat waste vrs. what some American consumers has been doing. Of course, this would also require constantly monitoring trends and identifying the correct variables, though in any marketing projections the ability to model is kind of just a little bit central. What about perhaps literally applying these principals to trash?

Boing Boing columnist Cory Doctorow wrote a column.
I find it interesting that he mentions the fact that conspiracy theories are "pure gold for science fiction writers". Both conspiracy theorists and sci fi authors have the task of taking a fictional premise and making it sound convincingly real. The only true difference is the heading both are sold under. In fact, L. Ron Hubbard blurs this line significantly, though his creation is under the more general heading of religion.
The implication of this column is that ideas are the true genius in the world today. I disagree, as I think the fact that people have created so many DIY inventions is a testament to ingenuity on their parts. It's not necessarily some simple thing to create a fictional invention. Quite simply, it just shows that there are a lot of mechanically gifted people out there, but that is no reason to knock the talent.
This also makes me feel like building something, but I have work to do.

When I was a kid, I loved Star Wars. I didn't talk about the movies to my friends or engage in any fan activity besides imagining myself as a Jedi(don't you dare comment), but the concept of a universal "force" and the notion of peace through control were both extremely appealing to me. My dad and I had frank discussions about Buddhism, which I had only known about marginally before, and the rest is history. A lot of discussion can be had comparing East and West literature/theology and the societies that produced them.

But this is not what I am going to talk about.

During this period I suddenly acquired a taste for tunics. A recent article in io9 which I am too lazy to find discussed how fashion has started borrowing from science fiction. Thanks to recent shifts in fashion it is now becoming easier and easier to dress like a Jedi or Cyber Goth without having everyone around you suddenly converge into a mob of beating-the-passerby.
How long before we start actually looking like a mashup of science fiction characters?

I've always wanted to wear a cloak because I read one too many fantasy novels as a kid. The problem with cloaks is that since the invention of the jacket, they are much less functionally useful. That has never stopped fashion, though. Cloaks are awesome. Imagine one with a ton of useless contemporary buckles. Don't add any fake pockets, though, because those enrage me.

Of course, I'll most likely stick to my "uniform" of khaki pants and wifebeaters/tshirts. But still, you should listen to me fashion industry!

Reporting from the Internet

The NY Times has a column asking whether or not Madoff got more than he deserved. I didn't get through it, but f*** no. Yes, he is a symbol, but he also did a ton of damage and showed a complete lack of ethics on a plethoric scale. One could get into the ethics of jail itself here, but that's irrelevant to the case at hand

Today my parents visited, which was mostly fun.

I also visited a park.

I don't really feel like writing down thoughts today. I'm in a good mood, just not in the mood to write.

I kind of agree with this article.
"To me, it seems social networking takes too much time with too little reward. Time to learn how to use. Time to sit and read. Time to think and interact.

All of this adds up to less time in “real” life."

"The trick is finding an equilibrium between social networking and living. Spending hours text-gossiping about someone’s page seems a little over-the-top. But using social networking sites to connect or reconnect with people to set up real face-to-face get-togethers seems really useful."

Except that I still mock my parents for taking so long to use the internet(Sorry parents, I still love you!). There are ways to use the internet to enhance life, and there are ways to let it take it over.


The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on "Ten Ways Banks Take Your Money".

"Late fees, loan-origination fees, over-the-limit and overdraft charges helped generate 53% of banking-industry income in 2008, according to R.K. Hammer... The average bounced-check fee is $28.95, up about $1 from last year, says Greg McBride, senior analyst at Bankrate.com. And it's a charge that rises every year.

At $19 billion, credit-card penalties for late payments and over-limit charges were up 80% between 2003 and 2008."

The new credit card reforms make me happy. In the mean time, there is apparently a study by Bankrate.com which states that the best card currently available is from USAA Federal Savings. I've never heard of this site before. If you feel like picking through the study/site, let me know what you find.

Also, if you have or will have student loans you must read this article.

Summer reading list for children that adults may wish to check out.

Like Steampunk? Click to be tortured. Who wants to petition an awesome out-of-work artist to do something like this? Via Boing Boing.

More Cracked articles you should read:
9 Devastating Insults from Around the World
7 Innocent Gestures that Can Get You Killed Overseas
7(Stupid) People Who Sued the Scientific Method
6 Great US Presidents and Their Crimes Against Humanity.