Jinx!

Ooh man... JINX!

Ashley and I were just talking over AIM a few minutes ago and TWICE in the same conversation, in less than 3 minutes, did we say the exact same thing.

Have you ever wondered if in some ways linking your thoughts to someone else is possible? Okay, so I may sound rather strange when mentioning this, but every now and again this happens. Now, of course, this sort of thing can be chalked up as just a random, chance based occurrence, but every now and again it could be your subconscious mind... Hey I think telepathy is possible, and I think everyone is capable of it. It's only a matter of time before we evolve to make better use of the real estate north of your neck.

It is really too bad humans can't utilize more of their brain power. I say human because I am quite OBVIOUSLY not one.

For those of you who said "Pssh"

JINX!

TED Talk: The Intelligence of Crows

Watched this on Sunday, really quite impressive. I never knew crow's have (proportionally) the same size brain as chimpanzee's...

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows.html

Palin & Women's rights

Ashley and I have been saying for weeks that Sarah Palin, if elected with John McCain, will set back women's rights by 50 years. This article goes to prove it...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/21/palin.rape.exams/index.html

• While Sarah Palin was mayor, Wasilla charged victims for their rape exams
  
• Interviews, review of records show no evidence Palin knew victims were charged
  
• Former state representative says it seems unlikely Palin was not aware of issue

Now, one might argue that there is no evidence that she knew about such charges, but lets take a step back. Wasilla was a town of "approximately 7,000" people. A state law was put into legislation in 2000, and every township was cool with it except Wasilla?? They couldn't convince the chief of police to stop charging them??? And to top that off, Alaska has had the worst record in any state in rape and murder of women by men- so... Rape surely would have been a topic worthy of attention by the town's mayor right?

"I find it hard to believe that for six months a small town, a police chief, would lead the fight against a statewide piece of legislation receiving unanimous support and the mayor not know about it," Croft said.

"After it became law, Wasilla's police chief told the local paper, The Frontiersman, that it would cost the city $5,000 to $14,000 a year -- money that he'd have to find."

"Before Palin came to City Hall, the Wasilla Police Department paid for rape kits out of a fund for miscellaneous costs, according to the police chief who preceded Fannon and was fired by Palin. That budget line was cut by more than half during Palin's tenure, but it did not specifically mention rape exams."

She didn't know about it- are you kidding me?

Just one more reason people should really pay more attention to the candidates.

LHC Down for 2 Months

So apparently they borked it already...
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/20/hadron.collider.damage.ap/index.html

Though this little gem makes me laugh:

Frustration

Imagine being trapped in another dimension, unable to cross back to your own even though you can see it millimeters away. Must feel similar to this...

I mean lets think about it for a minute. The hornet must understand its dilemma. It can probably see through the glass to the other side. It knows that it can only move up and down or left and right, for all extents and purposes the hornet is now in a 2-dimensional world (sandwiched in between the other pane of glass not visible in this photograph). I'd be like- what the F gives man!? Here I am flying around enjoying the nice summer breeze when BAM! I take a wrong turn and my world is drastically changed.

So what would I do if my brain were that small (now now its not fair to say that folks). Would I understand that there is a way out somehow? How long would I search for it? How annoyed with the situation could I get? Could I realize that perhaps there is no way out, and if so would I be sad that I couldn't get back to my colony?

I dunno really... He's a bug.

Braxton Hicks

So Ashley and I are in the midst of a bit of a scare.

She's been experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions for the past couple days. We've seen the doctor once and have been talking with the nurses since they started happening.

But today she had about 6 contractions each hour for about 3 hours. They say that you should see a doctor if you experience more than 4 per hour, so needless to say we're concerned. We're a little scared that the baby is going to come too soon, he needs to grow up a bit more before he's ready for the world. Anyways, if you have a spare moment, say a prayer to your chosen deity that the contractions stop (at least for the next two months).

Meanwhile mommy and daddy will be trying to take it easy(er).

The Shock Doctrine

So I heard about this book from a few friends. Apparently it's a real eye opener. Just finished reading Michio Kaku's book: Parallel Worlds, and The Shock Doctrine is next on the list.

Quoted from http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/the-book:

"In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas though our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998."

Looks like this one is a long read- 589 pages. Eeeps! Might take me a couple months to chew through this one. Sounds very interesting...

Reflections: C'mon and getta rhythm...

So I was doing the nightly routine with Isabella last night- going over our animals and singing some songs, just like most nights. I was going through YouTube trying to find new content for Isabella to sing and dance to (cuz quite frankly you can only take so much of Ariel and Jasmine), when I remembered "Walk the Line" the movie based on Johnny Cash's life.

So I was like- hey she might like to dance to these songs.

Okay a few mistakes...

• Don't get a two year old riled up before bedtime
• Make sure you're in shape enough to keep up with your two year old
• Don't get a two year old riled up before bedtime
  

Started with this one.

MAN she got excited. We danced around my office for like 2 minutes before it felt really claustrophobic (its a pretty small room to be running around in- especially for a 2 year old). So we moved it downstairs and popped in the dvd.

Spent the next 25 minutes boogying to the movie tunes. Its quite a contrast, when we compare her energy to mine. There's no way in hell I'll be able to keep up with her as she gets bigger! Maybe I need to practice more...

I have to admit though, if you want to tire a kid out before bedtime- dancing and singing songs is my preferred method. She was out cold in minutes after we were done!

Tina Fey- you are my heroine.

That sounds stranger as I write it than it did in my head. Check this SNL skit out- omg so funny. These ladies really hit it!

Candleabra

Space: Who Knew, #9

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Enceladus

No this isn't a spanish salad. It is Saturn's 6th largest moon.

About the size of the United Kingdom, Enceladus is one of three satellites in the outer solar system where active eruptions have been observed. It is thought to contain a sub-surface ocean of liquid water and because it rotates in a synchronous orbit with Saturn (that is- the same side of the moon is always pointing towards Saturn), it is always under the effects of tidal acceleration.

This generates heat in the moon, and because it is so small, it is not perfectly round. However it is constantly under pressure to maintain its nearly spherical shape, and partly because of this tidal heating large cryovolcanoes have formed on the moon.

These volcanoes (like the ones we see on earth), are under constant pressure and instead of magma; they erupt water, ammonia, or methane. The southern polar region of Enceladus seems to be the most geologically active, and it is thought that much of the water vapor escapes the moon and has generated much of the particle cloud that makes up Saturn's widest and outermost ring (the E-Ring).

Two mechanisms fuel the particles in this ring, the first is the cryovolcanoes that spew the material space-ward. Because Enceladus' escape velocity is .24 km/second or 866 km/hour (compared to Earths escape velocity of 11.1 km/second), many of these particles are able to escape the planet. The second mechanism is meteor impacts which likely launch many of the particles in the same fashion.

Perhaps the single most defining feature of this moon are the four "tiger stripes". These ridges are nearly parallel and on average descend 500 meters into the moons interior. They are likely made of crystalline water ice.

Thanks to the Cassini mission we've been lucky to get some really amazing shots of Enceladus. Next time you enjoy a salad- think a little of this Saturnian moon! Okay- I know how dorky that sounds...

Note that the link above is from 2005, when the processes on the moon were still being puzzled over.

Who knew???

TED Talk: A digital library, free to the world

Its about time that we have the literature in the world published online for all to see.

Its an interesting speech, but I can't wrap my brain around actually printing out these books and getting them back to good ol paper. I understand that reading on monitors can be quite harmful to your eyes, but I'd think that the way technology is leaping forward, we should see a better answer to that problem soon in the future. Though paperback is still perhaps the easiest to distribute...

Also, I recently spoke to my uncle about one of his projects at the University of Madison. He's working closely with Google on their book cataloging system: Google Book Search, still in Beta.

Anyways, here's the TED Talk:

Review: Picasa vs. Flickr

So I've been trying to decide on a way to post our images online for about two weeks.

I looked at both Google's product: Picasa, and Yahoo's product: Flickr. I decided to go with a Flickr pro account ($24.95 per year- unlimited space, unlimited sets/collections), and heres why:

I was looking for several qualities that would help with image management and found Picasa to be somewhat limiting. The largest drawback in my mind is Picasa's organization functions. I like the fact that Flickr gives you the ability to place photos into sets, and sets into collections. Its like using a folder and sub-folder system. Picasa doesn't seem to include this functionality, all you get are albums (just like sets in Flickr). Tags are a huge bonus, but are available on both applications (this is a way for you to label your imagery and quickly recall them later).

I found Picasa's site to be somewhat lacking and not as user friendly to navigate as an end user. In stark contrast Flickr definately seems easier to use and well laid out. The only beef I have with Flickr's site is you are somewhat limited in how it can look (no color changes and minimal layout options). The batch comands in each application seem robust and easy enough to use.

I downloaded Picasa's software to my computer and found it immediately frustrating to use. It found every image on my computer and basically collected them into their own groups. Now it didn't move any of them obviously, but the user interface was horrible to use. I suddenly had over a thousand new "folders" full of images.

It felt cumbersome and lacking in many ways. On the other side of the spectrum, Flickr's uploader tool, while stripped of most functionality that Picasa includes (aka, editing), does its job beautifully to help you upload your images directly to your Flickr account. Sure its like comparing apples with oranges, but it was simple, easy to install and easier still to use.

Besides all of this, Flickr offers a tracking service that helps you keep tally on just how much exposure your photos are getting. Compare the data limit between the two and theres even less contest- unlimited space with Flickr versus an extra 10 GB in Picasa (you begin with 1024 mb available by the way), and this for roughly the same price- its nearly laughable.

The one thing that I did like from Picasa that Flickr doesn't offer, was its wonderful people labeling system. This is perhaps easiest replicated in Flickr by using tags.

So I've decided to stick with Flickr and build our photo albums with it...

Reflections: 9/11

“It was an interesting day.”—President Bush, recalling 9/11

At approximately 8:48 a.m. on the morning of September 11, 2001, the first pictures of the burning World Trade Center were broadcast on live television. The news anchors, reporters, and viewers had little idea what had happened in lower Manhattan, but there were some people who did know. By that time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Secret Service, and Canada’s Strategic Command all knew that three commercial airplanes had been hijacked. They knew that one plane had been flown deliberately into the World Trade Center’s North Tower; a second plane was wildly off course and also heading toward Manhattan; and a third plane had abruptly turned around over Ohio and was flying back toward Washington, DC.

So why, at 9:03 a.m.—fifteen minutes after it was clear the United States was under terrorist attack—did President Bush sit down with a classroom of second-graders and begin a 20-minute pre-planned photo op? No one knows the answer to that question. In fact, no one has even asked Bush about it.

http://www.historycommons.org/essay.jsp?article=essayaninterestingday

I'm not going to use today as an excuse to drum up any anti-government conspiracy theories.

I'm not going to sit and lecture about all the evidence that leads towards our government's involvement of 911. I'm not going to rant about the Bush administration or talk about how the news and media companies have all been bought and paid for.

Not today...

But you'd better believe that I'll continue to talk about this subject with anyone willing to listen the other 364 days of the year.

Take a few moments out of your day to honor the innocent men, women and children who lost their lives that terrible day in our history.

McCain is a Cylon...

Coincidence... I THINK NOT!

(someone posted these images on our Eve forums, it was too funny to pass up...)
Rest of the article found here

Really neat plant

Took this photo over the weekend when I was over at my mom's place. Really cool plant!

Legend of Neil

...For those of us old school Legend of Zelda fans...

http://www.effinfunny.com/legend-of-neil

HDR Photography Experiment

I was talking to a friend of mine today who lives in New York.

He's a fantastic photographer. Here's a link to his portfolio... We talked a little about a process he's begun to use called HDR lighting (that stands for High Dynamic Range). He sent me a link to a tutorial on how to produce HDR images, and so I decided to try it out with one of the photographs I took while at the park. I've seen these tutorials before and never really had the time to sit down and experiment. So today I decided to do just that.

So basically, you take a photograph (use a tripod if possible, and shoot still objects). You'll need to take several photos at different levels of brightness, and though I'm still learning photography terms, I think this refers to changing your aperture value.

So you can also do it if you don't have multiple images, by using just one. The results aren't as good as if you'd used several shots, but hey sometimes you need to experiment right?

Here is the original shot I used:

I then made a darker, and lighter version of the image:


Then created an HDR based image in Photoshop and tweaked from there.
Here's the finished piece:


Not bad for using a single photograph.. It'd probably turn out much better if the image I used was RAW format instead of the JPG that I had available, but an interesting experiment nonetheless.

Space: Who Knew, #8

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Dwarf Planet Ceres

Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, which is located between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter. At first it was designated as a planet, but after much debate it was classified in the same family as Pluto- a dwarf planet (what is a dwarf planet?).

Ceres is the smallest of the dwarf planets, and while all others lie in the Kuiper Belt, Ceres does not. Its mass is nearly a full third of the entire asteroid belt, and is about 950 km in diameter. In contrast our moon is 3476.2 km in diameter.

Quoted from the Wiki article on Ceres:

The surface of Ceres is relatively warm. The maximum temperature with the Sun overhead was estimated from measurements to be 235 K (about −38 °C) on May 5, 1991.^[13] Taking into account also the heliocentric distance at the time, this gives an estimated maximum of about 239 K at perihelion. There are some indications that Ceres may have a tenuous atmosphere and water frost on the surface.^[17] Ultraviolet observations by IUE spacecraft detected statistically significant hydroxide water vapour near the Cererean north pole.^[17]

Peter Thomas of Cornell University has proposed that Ceres has a differentiated interior;^[3] its oblateness appears too small for an undifferentiated body, which indicates that it consists of a rocky core overlain with an icy mantle.^[3] This mantle of thickness from 120 to 60 km could contain 200 million cubic kilometers of water (16–26 percent of Ceres by mass; 30–60 percent by volume), which is more than the amount of fresh water on the Earth.^[43] This result is supported by the observations made by Keck telescope in 2002 and by evolutionary modelling.^[4][44]

*Edit 03-06-09: I just found this link on Ceres today, and thought I'd post it here:

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/03/05/life-on-ceres-could-the-dwarf-planet-be-the-root-of-panspermia/

Who knew???

TED Talk: Dark Matter & Dark Energy

I was doing a little research on Dark Matter today after reading a really interesting paragraph in Michio Kaku's book: Parallel Worlds.

"Our solar system orbits around the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy at 220 kilometers per second. As a result, our planet is passing through a considerable amount of dark matter. Physicists estimate that a billion dark matter particles flow through every square meter of our world every second, including through our bodies."

Here is a TED Talk I ran into on the subject:

Review: Tropic Thunder

Film Review

Tropic Thunder

5-- Cinematography
7-- Script
8-- One-Liners
7-- Acting
5-- CG & Visuals
5-- Originality

Ashley and I saw this the other day, it was SO funny! Sure Tom Cruise is one of the supporting characters- but oh man- I laughed through just about the entire show.

Each of the main characters brings something different to the film, and by far the most entertaining for me at least was Robert Downey Jr. character. His performance was hysterical. One of his lines-

Kirk Lazarus:
I know who I am! I'm the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude

Ramble: Shrubs fall to the Black Widow

So we were trying to get rid of 3 pesky bushes near the foundation of our house recently.

I had trimmed them all down and the next step was to yank them out of the ground. A daunting task for a computer nerd like me! We talked about pulling them out with a friends truck, and then had the opportunity to talk with my sisters b/f. He recently built his own crane and offered to bring it over and yank them out for us.

Meet the Black Widow...

Needless to say, we're SO greatful that he offered to help. I can't tell you just how comical it would have been had I tried pulling them out myself. I'm sure we all can imagine the scenario. Me with a tool of some kind (probably the wrong one), attacking sections of the inanimate bush like I were some crazed monkey.

In fact, I probably would have dislocated my shoulder.