I've always wanted to play beer pong alone and without beer

Now I can, apparently. JV Games (never heard of it) has come out with a Wii version of everyone's favorite vomit-inducing weekend leisure activity.

Beer is now offensive to the general public, so the substance virtually consumed is water. Party time!

The story's author says drinking games have been banned at Yale; this is not true, if I'm thinking of the same Yale she is. She might be referring to the usual one-day bans at Harvard-Yale tailgates. And speaking of Yale, shame on you, Richard Blumenthal (LAW '74), for coming out against a time-honored pastime of your beloved alma mater!

(As a side note, Dartmouth might want to consider passing this game out to incoming freshmen so they can indulge their unquenchable Beirut lust without descending into the rampant alcoholism AND water intoxication that plague the school.)

Ludacris Raps for Obama

Ludacris' new rap is a lot like his Yale Spring Fling '06 show: good times, but too offensive for some. His pro-Obama song "Politics (Obama is Here)" calls out Hillary, McCain, Bush, and Jesse Jackson. Obama has distanced himself though calling the rap "offensive to all of us who are trying to raise our children with the values we hold dear." Read the lyrics and watch the video.

Cato: not a fan of energy independence?

This morning I took the car to work because of the miserable weather in Lexington, and that gave me the welcome opportunity to catch up on NPR for 10 minutes or so. It happened that this 10 minutes was occupied by the brief morning edition of Marketplace, which I usually enjoy because of its digestible approach to covering business and economics news and trends.

But today I was a little concerned by its commentary. Featured was Will Wilkinson, a fellow at the Cato Institute who discussed oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens' plan to push energy independence through expansion of domestic wind power and natural gas. Since I can't turn on, say, MSNBC these days without seeing his commercial, I was curious to hear an economics expert's take on the subject. [Edit: link now available.]

The Cato guy argued that we should reject Pickens' ideas for two reasons: First, the plan benefits Pickens and his wind-power and natural-gas companies. Second, the plan calls for the government to "pick a winner" in the energy market rather than allowing the market itself to reward whichever company/technology is the most efficient.

The first reason is not a reason at all. Why should an energy plan proposed by a businessman be disqualified just because it benefits the businessman? If I invent an engine that runs on human waste and emits only pixie dust and happiness, must I forswear all potential profits if I want to market it, or even lobby the government to require it as a standard in the same way that it mandates a fuel-efficiency standard? I think not. I don't care—and I don't think Americans should care—that Pickens will become even richer as we shift to wind energy and start running cars on natural gas. Power to him (so to speak) for pushing a solution that might benefit us all, and the market should reward him.

But Cato Guy doubts that wind power and natural gas will benefit America. Why? Well, if they were really more efficient than coal and oil, he says, we'd be using them already. Never mind that most of our energy infrastructure, if I had to guess, was put in place long ago based on what seemed most efficient at that time. Now we have a host of new technologies and the ability to take advantage of more materials in more ways, and, more important, the knowledge that the old infrastructure is taking a huge toll on our economy, our environment and our future as a nation. Sure, we'll have to choke down a heavy cost to change all our petrol stations to natural-gas stations, and it'll be expensive to replace natural-gas power plants with wind farms and redirect all the natural gas to the roadside stations. That will surely appear inefficient on Cato Guy's short-term Excel-generated bar graphs. But though I am no energy expert, I believe anything gets America to stop smoking the delicious crack of foreign oil will be better for the efficiency of the whole economy in the long run.

The real reason an outfit like the Cato Institute would try to scuttle this plan is that it isn't marketed to the consumer, which is true. Its ultimate target is the government, via the people who elect it. This does not sit well with libertarians, who seem willing to sacrifice all the benefits of energy independence for the sake of a questionable principle. I tend to agree with the smaller-is-better theory of government, except when it comes to national defense, health care and energy policy. I have no allegiance to any particular energy commodity, but I firmly believe that once the market finds something good enough to replace the unstable and expensive status quo, it's the government's responsibility to aid the market in making it a standard, whether that be a fuel for cars or power for homes and businesses.

I am not yet familiar enough with the Pickens plan to evaluate it, but these radical libertarian arguments shouldn't be a consideration in our country's future energy policy.

Anyone know enough to shed some more light on the plan itself?

Will It Blend?™

There are a lot of hard questions in life. Fortunately, there's a website that tackles the age old question: Will It Blend™? We all know food can blend, but where's the fun in that? This site shows the result of blending more interesting things like an iPhone3G, a camcorder, glowsticks, an iPod, golf balls and marbles. There's something incredibly satisfying about watching expensive gadgets go up in a flurry of metal and plastic. It's like rubber necking at a car accident inside a small plastic container.

DoD Funding Fish Armor Research

Behold the future of war fighting combat armor. Turns out good old fashioned scale mail may be making a comeback. At least, it worked for fish, having defended against constant attacks by, and I quote, "giant arthropods that possessed biting mouth parts, grasping jaws, claws, spines and a spiked tail."

Police Hunt Stolen Shark

Because going after cash, jewelry and things that are man-portable is just boring. Real men steal sharks.

At least it's a chance to put that wasp knife to use.

Things to Buy Your Kids

Well, in the future, maybe. Anyway, racist toys are racist. Guess who this is supposed to be?

E-Peen Enlargement (Fun w/ Hardware)

Because I have nothing better to do and no one can really stop me, I figured I might as well share my latest experience in throwing together pieces of silicon and plastic into something that can convey information through flashing patterns of light into one's visual cortex.

This will probably take more than one post, so I'll start with the basics. I'm still receiving the final shipments of parts, so most of this will be first impressions on the hardware itself. While I ran a quick test to see if the thing at least POST's, that's all I've done with the parts connected to one another and the power turned on. Anyway...

1. Mobo: ASUS P5Q
An interesting, even sub-optimal choice for a gaming rig. For two reasons: first, it uses the 8-pin ATX plug for the CPU. Definitely something to watch out for when picking a PSU; while theoretically you can get away with just sticking a 4-pin(which I have done in the past) in there, it will NOT POST with this particular mobo. Asus has done a good job hiding this fact; all the screenshots that are detailed enough to even show the plug depict it with a 4-pin cap over half the plug, but don't be fooled, you WILL need an 8-pin or 2 4's in that spot.

The second "flaw" in this board is that it was not built for SLI. Don't even bother, there's not even a second slot for another card to go. I consider SLI to be a pain in the ass and not worth it, esp. with ridiculous size of video cards nowadays, so it's not a downside for me. This seems like a pretty solid board if you aren't looking to build a complete monstrosity.

2. Proc: Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield
I won't comment on the performance because I haven't booted in OS yet with this thing. One thing I will comment is THANK ZAKARUM they fixed the stock fans that come with the chips. One thing I don't want to hear when pushing those pegs into the mobo is the cracking sound of silicon screaming that their old heat sinks packed standard as part of the intel experience. Also, the fan was damn silent on POST; to the point where I didn't even notice the damn thing had booted until that pleasant Asus logo showed up on the monitor. Yeah, that doesn't say much, but compared to the ridiculous full-blast my old Pentium-D fan was getting, it's a big jump.

3. GPU: Zotac 9800gtx 512mb DDR3
I will not comment personally on the performance because I haven't tested that yet (though I have commented profusely on the size already). I will say that if nobody on this side of the globe heard of Zotac, they have now. Spec-wise, it's the best card you can get in the ~200 price range, and one of the best 9800 GTX's period, and will likely surpass many of the first wave GTX+'s.

It's factory overclocked, and also, this monster eats two 6 pin pci-e jacks from the PSU. No surprise, but if you're looking to SLI, you should consider that when looking at the PSU, because the pci-e plug adapters that come with this thing don't seem to work--my dry run w/ just the proc, PSU, and GPU didn't even try to POST until I removed the adapted plug and actually put in the two legit pci-e's from the PSU. Fan is also surprisingly civilized for its size, though I imagine that things will not be so quiet while gaming.

Also, while I have made less rational comments about the size, people upgrading from much lesser cards will be somewhat shocked at the bulk when they see this thing for the first time. Zotac needs leibensraum. It takes up two slots worth of space and also runs the length of the mobo, completely occluding at least one of the lesser pci-e ports and potentially blocking access to drive bays. Still, an investment in a piece of hardware like this would justify also getting a case that will accomodate its needs.

4. PSU: OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI 700W
To date, I've found that, interestingly enough, the stickiest issue when combining hardware is the power supply--there's just so many variables that go into whether a PSU is compatible with whatnot, and it's not nearly as standardized as the other stuff. This one seems to fit my needs quite nicely. Plenty of power in all the right places, the right plugs (2 4-pin ATX's fix the mobo issue), and is very cleanly packaged and runs quiet enough. There is a good sized fan in there, and plenty of breathing room. 'nuff said. The PSU is one of those things that wins little praise if it does the job correctly, but invites endless wrath if it doesn't. In my case, the former is true.

I might do a followup when everything gets in and the box is completely finished.

A few thoughts on the latest KDE

As any self-respecting fan of the best Linux/Unix desktop environment in existence, KDE, knows, the latest major release (4.1) was unleashed on the general public Tuesday. This comes after a good deal of controversy surrounding the 4.0 release, which despite its nice round release number was essentially a beta not intended for day-to-day use. (See, for example, this blog.)

I tried KDE 4.0 as a frontend for several distributions, including openSUSE and (K)Ubuntu, and found it nearly unusable. For a bit of background, the big innovation (besides the shift to the QT4 toolkit as a base) in functionality seemed to be a blurring of the distinction between panel and desktop. Interchangeable widgets took the place of the traditional desktop icons and panel addons such as launch menus and clocks. In KDE 4.0 the problem was that there were too few such widgets ("plasmoids" in KDE parlance), it was too difficult to find replacements for KDE 3.5 functionality, and many old configuration options—a hallmark of the KDE philosophy—were nonexistent. To top it off, many popular KDE applications, such as Amarok, looked and felt out of place, and you could forget about GTK apps like Firefox looking anything but straight-up ugly. The whole graphical system in KDE 4.0 was unstable, and I wisely decided to ignore the forum flamewars and just wait for the promised stable 4.1 release.

Now it's here, and after reading a positive review, I allowed it to become my graphical representation of Ubuntu 8.04.1. To my surprise, it has not crashed once, and I have been able to configure the desktop in a manner that suits me. The whole system looks fantastic, from login to shutdown, and the built-in compositing window manager functions well and easily rivals Vista and OS X in eye candy. It doesn't have the same massive list of configuration options available in Compiz Fusion (a more complete compositing windowing backend), but that's probably a good thing for newbies. All the old KDE programs look fine, and it's easy to integrate Firefox and its GTK cousins with the package gtk-qt4-engine-kde4 and the "Use my KDE style in GTK apps" configuration option set in the oddly Mac-like kcontrol replacement, systemsettings.

Furthermore, the somewhat clumsy file manager, Dolphin, now has tabbed browsing, the lack of which would have been a deal-breaker and is the worst part of GNOME's otherwise capable Nautilus. (Its quick ctrl+S selection filter and ctrl+H hidden-file viewer are things I've always wished Konqueror had included.) I still think there was no reason to replace Konqueror as the file manager, but I'll give Dolphin a chance. And speaking of file managers, the accessibility of files has improved greatly with the addition by default of a file-management widget on the desktop (taking the place of the usual set of desktop icons). The cool thing is, you can now set your home directory (or any directory) as your "desktop" and have multiple "desktop" directories, as I do in the screenshot (which, by the way, shows off four virtual desktops). You can even use a remote directory for this purpose.

This fundamental shift in the way we view file management and accessibility calls to mind other possibilities as to how KDE could take this a step further. For example, what about an expandable folder widget with simple navigation buttons that can spawn appendage-like extensions for subfolders without launching Dolphin and allows drag-and-drop operations among them? And maybe you could a launch little a terminal with a middle-click in that directory to perform quicker and/or more complex file-management tasks (e.g., cp script.sh script.bak && mv *.sh subdir/ && chmod +x subdir/*.sh)? The set of possibilities for making basic computing more efficient and slicker is huge in KDE 4.1. I look forward to the community's efforts to build lots of cool little apps like this for the Plasma framework.

One test that KDE 4.1 has yet to pass is the test of time. It's going to be tough to stop using GNOME in Ubuntu (Kubuntu's KDE 3.5 sucks) and KDE 3.5 on Debian and Arch (it's so configurable!), but after an evening of putting 4.1 through its paces, I'm ready to let it take that test.

(By the way, here is the XKCD comic from the plasmoid in the screenshot, which Olga so thoughtfully sent me.)

While We're on the Subject of Onion Articles

This one is hilarious, too.

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet

The Onion, America's Finest News Source.

The Last Lecture

Last week on July 25 Randy Pausch passed away. I'm sure most of you heard about The Last Lecture given by Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon. CMU was presenting a lecture series from beloved professors chosen to speak about basically whatever they wanted including life lessons, advice and personal philosophies. Pausch had diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and knew he had only a few months to live. He gave a lecture about "really achieving your childhood dreams" that was inspirational to say the least and became known as The Last Lecture. He surpassed the predictions for his survival and ended up speaking at the CMU graduation a few months ago.

If you have a free hour or so you can watch the full lecture or read the transcript.

HOWTO: Call someone a wuss in German

My roommate this summer is an automotive engineering student from Germany. He's a big fan of cars, beer, and Starcraft, so naturally we get along like a pair of Hefeweizens in a summer Biergarter. Sometime over the course of the past couple of weeks, he used the word "Warmduscher" to call me a wuss. The word translates as "someone who takes warm showers." Lol. Because all real men shower in water no warmer than 20 degrees C.

Apparently there is more than one way to insult a person's manhood in Germany.

My favorites:

1) Frauenversteher, literally a "woman-understander"
2) Kondombedienungsanleitungsleser; a "condom-manual reader"
3) Originalspielkäufer; someone who doesn't pirate their video games
4) (for Jay) Linuxsauberrunterfahrer; someone who closes Linux with the shut down button and doesn't just unplug the power supply.

((Thanks to my other German friend Ute (yeah Lifton lab!!!) for the wonderful link.))

For the Fatherboard

My Zotax 9800 GTX came in today. When they said 14 inches long and an inch and a half thick, they were not kidding. It is by far the biggest single piece of computer hardware I have ever seen. The photo to the right includes an iron and an ipod for scale reference, but I fear that it is still insufficient to capture the magnitude of this thing. The card is the one on the bottom, sporting a gigantic fan like a piece of magnificant plummage (and no, the fan is not the reason for its majesty, for beneath it lies a full four inches of throbbing, glistening silicon), baring its golden pci-express fangs at the lesser appliances it has deemed offensive to its presence. The upside-down image you see is that of a cross between a Utah raptor and a hydralisk-a manifestation of the bestial nature of the gargantuan brick that it adorns. Mobo and case are due by the end of the week. I pray to Muad'dib that both will have the space and fortitude to accomodate this monster.

Srly, it's feckin' huge; can probably crush a newborn alive.

Oliver Stone does Dubya

Not sure if y'all have heard about this, but there's some quality hard-hitting non-partisan filmmaking going on. Looks like interesting stuff, though I'm not sure I can support yet another inevitable smearing of our beloved alma mater in Hollywood. Due out Oct. 17, according to the NY Daily News.

Scrabulous, Once Only for Losers, Now for No One

Facebook has shut down Scrabulous, the facebook scrabble app for those disturbed individuals who enjoyed playing the game with other players over the internet.

The fact that 500,000 per day played that really disturbs me. That is a ton of losers.

Bennigan's Out of Business

Much to Butters's dismay, Bennigan's is filing for chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. I liked the place, but the one by my house was perpetually dark and dirty and so I stopped going there, and it appears I wasn't alone.

The company has not yet released official comment, but workers are coming in to find closed restaurants.

Guinea Pigs in People Clothes

This one goes out to Lance.

Hockey Time

OK, so there is probably a very small percentage of the world thinking about hockey today (although with only baseball to watch, how can you not??). There have been a lot of off-season moves in the NHL, notably the Chicago Blackhawks landed Brian Campbell, the all star defense man they sorely needed. They also got some more solid goaltending in the way of Cristobal Huet. Both acquisitions seemed over priced, but you have to pay free agents a little something extra to get them to come to loser teams. Combined with the decline of perennial Western Conference playoff teams (Minnesota and Colorado), the Hawks have a real shot at making the playoffs with their two budding all-star forwards, Kane and Toews. I just hope they realize they can become legends in a big town and don't skip out in a couple years.

Amazing what progress can be once the stingy old coot owner dies. Same thing happened to the Toronto Maple Leafs a couple decades ago.

Dining in the Dark

All across the world a new trend in dining has emerged -- blind dining. Patrons dine in a pitch black room while waiters use military-grade night vision goggles to navigate the dining room. At some restaurants the waiters are even blind themselves. Supposedly the sensory deprivation heightens your sense of taste while dining and removes your social inhibitions improving conversation and the overall dining experience. Sounds pretty scary to me.

McCain Gaining

I left my faith the the American electorate back in Bush '04. I held the sliver of hope that the people might redeem themselves this time around, but it looks like the other 98% of me that remains cynical has some more support. McCain's been taking all these ridiculous potshots during Obamapalooza '08 Europe, and the last hit at the hospital visit (among others) seems to have hit home. Well, I suppose if McCain loves visiting troops in the hospital, he's gonna have a great time as prez, because there'll definitely be plenty more troops in the hospital to hang out with. I take some comfort in the fact that no matter who America chooses in the end, we'll get the president we deserve.

Tree Shrews Thrive on Flower Beer

New research has uncovered a particular species of tree shrew in Malaysia whose diet composes of substantial quantities of alcohol fermented by species of flower in its habitat. The shrew drinks what would be the human equivalent of nine glasses of wine a day, yet displays no obvious effects of intoxication due to its superior ability to detoxify the alc.

I want to drink some flower beer.

Just in time for NVIDIA's stock to plummet further

It seems that everybody who bought a Macbook Pro within the last year or anybody running a desktop or mobile Geforce 8-series below the 8800's might be running on faulty hardware. According to the Inquirer, a British technology news website, "all the G84 and G86 parts are bad. Period. No exceptions." The failure seems to involve heat cycles and the frequency with which the computer is turned on and off over long periods of time. I hope this is all paranoia for everybody's sake, but NVIDIA is already budgeting $200 million for repairs and predicts a 25% loss of share value.

God Proves Existance via Motor Vehicles

It's going to be a great week.

Shia LaBeouf was arrested for drunk driving and Lindsay Lohan was hit by a motorcycle.

News Jay Doesn't Want to Hear

Microsoft is increasingly opening its heart and wallet to open source endeavors. Whether this trend will end like the fall of the USSR, or when South Park's parents give in and decide to embrace chinpokemon is yet to be seen. I'd lol if the latter happens.

A Search Engine 3x more robust than Google?

Former Google employee Anna Patterson is trying to upstage her former employer's claim to having the internet's premier search engine. Patterson claims to have developed a search engine that is three times as robust as Google called Cuil (pronounced "cool"). Read more about it here!

Getting a Broadcom BCM4310 wireless card up and running in Linux

I recently purchased a Dell XPS M1530 laptop, and it is by all accounts a great computer, with a lightning-fast processor and a hefty graphics card. Awed by the sheer power of the machine when I was choosing the specs, I completely forgot to check whether each piece of hardware included would be fully supported under the GNU/Linux operating system, which I prefer to the included Vista.

As it happens, the computer shipped with a Broadcom wireless chipset, which is not well supported because the company does not provide enough information to the open-source community to write drivers. The firmware is proprietary, so it would not be included in any Linux distribution. I chide myself for accidentally supporting a company hostile to the free-software movement, but the upside is that bad hardware means a chance to delve deeper in my favorite OS and learn things I wouldn't have had to with my plain ol' Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG.

So I found these instructions on the openSUSE forums about ndiswrapper, which acts as a wrapper for native Windows drivers and allows Linux to use them, and have modified them to be applicable to more distributions. So in case anyone needs to get that Broadcom BCM4310 wireless card working, here goes. (For commands preceded by #, run as root or preface with sudo. Thanks to the openSUSE forums for providing the meat of these instructions.)

1. I assume you have already confirmed the existence of a Broadcom card on your system with $ lspci | grep -i broadcom and plugged in the laptop to a wired network.


2. Install the package b43-fwcutter, which will automatically download and install the firmware for the wireless card. On Ubuntu/Debian: # apt-get install b43-fwcutter.


3. Install ndiswrapper and, if necessary, the related kernel module, such as ndiswrapper-kmp-default on openSUSE. On Ubuntu, the kernel module is included, but install ndiswrapper-common and ndiswrapper-utils: # apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils.


4. Remove conflicting modules/drivers from /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. Use your favorite text editor (e.g. # vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist) and add to the bottom:
   
   
   
   • blacklist bcm43xx
   
   
   • blacklist ieee80211
   
   
   • blacklist ieee80211softmac
   
   
   • blacklist ieee80211_crypt
   
   
   • blacklist b43 (yes, this is correct—you need to remove the native driver because you're going to replace it)
   
   
   
   
5. In your terminal, download the Windows drivers (or, if you have a Windows partition, just copy the .inf and .sys files from C:\Drivers or wherever they are): $ wget http://www.wikilinux.netsons.org/Broadcom%20drivers.tar.bz2.


6. Unzip the archive and enter the directory: $ tar xvjf *.tar.bz2 && cd Broadcom...


7. Run the ndiswrapper driver installer: # ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf.


8. Run # ndiswrapper -l (lowercase "L") to confirm that the "driver installed" message appears.


9. To tell the ndiswrapper module to load automatically on boot, run # ndiswrapper -mi.


10. To make sure the module is running in the current session, run # modprobe ndiswrapper (not sure whether this is necessary on Ubuntu).


11. Now, when you run $ ifconfig -a, the wlan0 network interface should appear. And you're done! Configure the wireless connection using your favorite method (such as NetworkManager).

My Other Car is a Man-Dalorian

So as if Episodes 1-3 weren't enough to boil the blood of Star Wars fanboys everywhere, George Lucas has created a fully animated 30-minute mini-movie called Clone Wars coming to theaters August 15. Realistically it couldn't be worse than midichlorians, Jar Jar, General Grievous, a terrible romance, terrible acting, terrible dialogue, a completely irrational turn to the dark side, the world's worst child actor, a giant lizard beast, R2D2's new powers, the stupid clone army concept, various technological anachronisms and any other problems you can recall from the new episodes. Still, I'm not getting my hopes up...

John McCain = More Creepy than Anthony Hopkins

My friend Tomek reminded me of this video:



Yes, that really is Sen. John McCain asking "shall I loofah your back?" This was from his SNL appearance in 2002. Very presidential.

Things I Want

Nerf's newest creation: the N-Strike Vulcan EB-25. It's a fully automatic, belt fed, battery powered fire support platform of pure pwnage. With variable firing modes and a fully functional tripod (cuz those darts blow back like your mom), this thing will be escalating many an office arms race.

Available late August 2008.

Internet history revisited via Weezer

The new video from Weezer for their song, Pork and Beans, features a plethora of the popular videos and crazes that have swept the internet over the past few years. Those featured include classics such as: All your Base, Afro Ninja, Chocolate Rain, Dramatic Gopher, Star Wars Kid, Numa Numa Guy, PBJ Time, Miss Teen SC "the Iraq" response, GI Joe spoofs and many many others. It reminded me of that South Park episode with all the internet characters in one room. Enjoy reliving all of those glorious interweb memories.

Guitar Hero 4 Track List Leaked

The new Guitar Hero 4: World Tour coming out this Winter looks like it's going to have a pretty awesome song collection including tracks from some of my personal favorites: Dragonforce, Muse, Buckethead and Iron Maiden. If this list is accurate, the song variety should keep most people pretty happy. Of course you can always pick up Frets on Fire, the open source Guitar Hero clone, program your own songs and share tracks at Keyboards On Fire, the FoF community forum.

Things Bunnies Do

I wish I could open letters that well.

Is the plane supposed to make that air rushing out sound?

Ever worry that your bags won't make it with you to their final destination even though you are paying additional fees for their existence these days?

You have good reason. The baggage compartment on a recent Qantas flight just plain opened up a giant hole.

At least everyone was OK.

HOWTO: report science in a lay publication

Say you are a journalist and you get a breathless call from a university PR office or a researcher touting a world-shattering scientific breakthrough. For instance, the discovery of a new "genetic link" to violence and delinquency. Hot damn! Well, you had better be the first to break this exciting story, lest you miss the prime opportunity of your career. The nature/nurture debate has been settled once and for all, right?

Not even close. The study I referenced above is an egregious example of what my former boss (an HHMI investigator at Yale who found the first gene and 20 subsequent others for hypertension) would call "genetics amateur hour." For one thing, the article was published in the "American Sociological Review," a SOCIOLOGY journal with a pathetic impact factor of 2.38. Anyone with even a modicum of genetics training would see that the study in question was a prime "fishing expedition" where the researchers looked at several of their favorite "candidate genes" hoping to find any relationship at all. Perhaps the most telling aspect of the study: one of their so called delinquency-causing genetic variants, "seemed to set off a young man if he did not have regular meals with his family."

It's called the Bonferroni correction, people. If you test a large number of hypotheses, it is certain that many tests will be statistically significant merely by chance. The fact that the study's authors broke down their cohort into "eats regular meals with family vs. does not eat regular meals with family" tells me that this is truly JV work. How many other tests did they try and not report?

In the spirit of giving constructive criticism, here are my guidelines for how to report science in the media:

1) If the work in question is not going to be published in a major journal, such as Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS, PLoS, or top speciality journals (e.g., "baby" Nature or Cell journals like Nature Genetics or Nature Medicine), don't bother reporting on it.

* A caveat to this point is if the work is not yet published and is being presented at a major scientific meeting, such as the American Society of Nephrology, FASEB Experimental Biology, etc.

2) Ask experts in the field. If you don't know who an expert is, find out. Call departmental chairs at other universities. Get a second, third, and fourth opinion on the work.

3) For God's sake, learn the difference between a gene, a mutation, and a phenotype. I will probably post on this again when a good example comes up.

Stuff you'd rather not know about Slippy.

Excerpted from Wikipedia:

Beltino Toad (ベルツィーノ・トード, Berutsīno Tōdo^?) is Slippy Toad's father, who works as the Research Director for the Cornerian Defense Forces. Beltino originally works for Space Dynamics Co. Ltd. as an engineer. He and Slippy invent and construct many inventions for the team, including the Blue Marine and the Land Master. Beltino is first mentioned in the Star Fox 64 Player's Guide, but does not make an in-game appearance until Star Fox: Assault, released eight years later. Beltino discovers the way to defeat the Aparoids, and eventually allows Star Fox to destroy them using a program he developed. In the Japanese version of Assault, Beltino Toad is voiced by Hirohiko Kakegawa, and his English voice actor is Scott Burns.

Amanda (アマンダ, Amanda^?) is Slippy's fiancée, who first appears in Star Fox Command. They meet two years prior to the events of Star Fox Command, and instantly fall in love. Amanda occasionally helps the team out in various missions, and pilots the Tadpole (タッドポール, Taddopōru^?), a ship armed with a multi-lock. She considers herself more of the leader in her relationship with Slippy, and always wants to be on his side during a fight. In two endings, she and Slippy settle down with children, one of whom joins Fox & Krystal's son, Marcus McCloud, as well as Lucy Hare's daughter and Falco Lombardi himself in forming a new Star Fox team. In another ending, she herself joins the Star Fox team to be close to Slippy.

Don't ask me, I was looking for stuff on Smash.

Office Pranks

For those of us bleeding to oil the infernal capitalist machine: funny stuff that's actually been instigated by people who sit disturbingly close to me.

-Spray non-drying aerosol adhesive all over someone's desk.
-Sending a company wide e-mail asking everyone to leave something inside someone's cube while they are on vacation.
-Fill someone's drawers and cabinets with peanuts, unsalted.
-Get into the company newsletter and announce that someone's been promoted to "Junior Senior Vice President."
-Moving all of the senior VP in charge of the department's stuff from his corner office to a cube in the basement.
-Send an e-mail to someone stating that they have "failed to sign the Clean Cube initiative," prompting them to drive to the office in the snow on Sunday to make the deadline.
-Write "basuras" on a box with someone's stuff in it, so the cleaning staff ends up chucking it at the end of the day.

What's scary is that the "someone" in all of these instances is the other Yale guy who I'm effectively replacing.

David Brooks, get over yourself

You know Obama's Berlin speech was solid when this is all the NY Times' resident sourpuss, David Brooks, has to say about it.

"[Obama said America] must 'lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good.' In Berlin on Thursday, it was more of the same."

Really, Mr. Brooks? Are you seriously going to criticize the senator for sticking with his positive and effective campaign theme?

"But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more."

So now we're going to judge Obama's effectiveness as president a mere six months after he won his first primary? Yeah, that makes sense.

"When John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, their rhetoric soared, but their optimism was grounded in the reality of politics, conflict and hard choices. ... Kennedy didn’t dream of the universal brotherhood of man. ... Reagan didn’t call for a kumbaya moment."

I guess John McCain isn't the only one who needs a history lesson from time to time. Kennedy and Reagan were already president when they gave their Berlin speeches. Are we to judge Obama by the same standards? Sure, he's being a bit presumptuous, but that's not an invitation to criticize him as if he were already the man in charge. The job of a presidential candidate is to stake out policy positions and defend them with "soaring rhetoric." Obama has defined his positions well (FISA bill excepted) and his oratory is second to none. But he wasn't in Berlin to give a policy speech. He was there to start the process of getting America back into Europe's good graces, and to lay out his goal of generally bringing people together. The mere fact that 200,000 people turned out in a foreign capital to hear the message is proof that he can do it.

"The odd thing is that Obama doesn’t really think this way. When he gets down to specific cases, he can be hard-headed."

Duh. Of course he can do what he is pledging to do. His skills at working the system and getting what he wants are unsurpassed. The beauty of his candidacy is that he's great both at whipping crowds into a frenzy over the wholesome, all-American ideals that we've been missing for a long time and at getting down to business.

So, Mr. Brooks, if you're going to criticize him, save it for some legitimate policy debate (there are plenty to be had), and don't insult us with this tripe.

O XKCD, how cruel thou art

The comic is not a very big fan of people who devote their lives to furthering the understanding of literature and culture. I take a small amount of comfort in assuming that my major, classical literature, would be more difficult than generic literary criticism to fake one's way through, simply given the number of languages one must know just to become a grad student. Hmph. Scientists aren't the only legit academics—it's just a few fields that give the rest of us a bad name.

Nas on Wednesday's Colbert Report

I should probably start watching these things earlier than 24 hours after they air, but in case you missed it, Colbert had Nas stop by to talk (and rap) about his crusade against Fox News. ("Nothing says 'thug life' more than a clearly worded argument submitted in writing and supported by the signatures of concerned citizens.") I'm looking forward to the great Nas-O'Reilly debate of '08.

Things People Do

Pencil carvings.

News Jay doesn't want to hear

Windows 7 is looking at a release in 2010. Microsoft is also going back on the offensive with Vista with its latest marketing campaign, where hostile users were blind tested with an existing copy of Vista, and a new OS offering codenamed "Mojave." Users reportedly described the new offering as pleasant; MS then proceeded to shatter their innocence by revealing that Mojave was none other than Vista repainted with a different theme. Moar here.

DNS Cache Poisoning Exploit Made Public

If there ever was a h@x0r equivalent of a WMD, this is it. Means of exploiting a weakness that is present in every standard implementation of DNS was discovered a while back, and now they have been made public. More details on the specifics behind the vulnerability here. This thing's got all the white hats scrambling. I haven't seen this sort of seriousness coming from security researchers in, well, ever. If you haven't heard about this yet, well here it is; better get patching before all your passwords get jacked and google redirects to equestrian imagery of an explicit nature.

Edit: Shit. This was like two days ago. Better late than, never, I suppose.

McCain gains; heads spin

This week has been nothing but net, so to speak, for Barack Obama. Yet the AP is reporting today that McCain's poll numbers in several crucial states are on the rise. And on Tuesday, Obama's chances of winning the election, as calculated by fivethirtyeight, dropped below 60 percent for the first time in a good long while (though it is back to 62 percent now).

How can this be? Not only has Obama had a great week, but McCain has also had a lousy one. He has shown no signs of improving his vastly overstated understanding of foreign policy, and his latest ad—the one that totally seriously tries to blame Obama for high gas prices—reeks of desperation. (Has no one on his staff bothered to explain to him why more drilling wouldn't help prices and why eliminating the federal gas tax is just a terrible idea?)

So why have Americans (I'm looking at you, Ohio) been registering more and more of a preference for the doddering McCain? I can understand that some people are such hard-core Republicans that they'd vote for their nominee even if he were a dead retarded goat fetus, but who, when Q-pac comes a-calling, would say, "You know, I've been undecided before now, but after this week, I think John McCain really speaks to me in a way that Obama never could." Somebody please explain this to me.

Newegg Diversifies

I don't know how long this has been going on, but everyone's favorite e-peen dealer, Newegg, is now selling cookware. The selection is actually quite good.

Being in the market for this type of offering, I've decided to give the new T-FAL A855S264 modular culinary platform a whirl. According to the reviews, it also performs admirably as a dual wielded melee weapon.

Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii No More

So... we now add Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii to the list of names NOT to name your child. It's not legal in New Zeeland, along with the names: Yeah Detroit, Stallion, Twisty Poi, Keenan Got Lucy, Sex Fruit, Fat Boy, Cinderella Beauty Blossom, and the twins Fish and Chips.

However, those intent on ruining their children's lives with more than bad parenting may chose from the following names that have been ruled to be legal: Violence, Number 16 Bus Shelter, Midnight Chardonnay, and the twins Benson and Hedges. Don't forget Pilot Inspector, another good Christian name.

I really hope Number 16 Bus Shelter doesn't refer to where that unfortunate child was conceived.

Confections

Gummi Lighthouses

Sometimes you just have to wonder.

Btw, is this sfw? Kthxbbq.

Random video of the day

In case you haven't seen it yet, this video of Christian the Lion is apparently one of the latest random internet videos spreading around even though the footage is over 30 years old. I saw it on the local news the other morning. The video is kind of corny with the music, but it's a pretty good story, and it's verified by Snopes. How the hell did a department store get a lion cub in the first place? According to the wikipedia entry, the shirtless guy at the end, who apparently arranged reintroducing the animal into the wild, was killed by poachers in the late '80s. That's kind of scary.

Speaking of Batman

Credit goes to whoever I jacked this from.
May I remember you sometime in the future. ^^;

McCain targets crucial leering pedophile swing vote

with his new ad titled "love." Below is a screen shot (sorry, there's no video attached) from his website (h/t to openleft.com).




It's worth noting that he may have had better luck achieving creepiness by presenting the left side of his face.

Stuff People Do

Those are eggs. Meticulously stacked and balanced atop one another, forming a metropolis.

Birdo unavailable for comment.

Nothing says "unity" like a dirtbike in church!

It seems like Jeff Harlow was trying to practice some XTREME faith by doing some kick-ass motocross tricks during part of a church sermon. Somehow this act was supposed to demonstrate the idea of unity. Call me old-fashioned, but maybe Jesus wasn't as much of a sk8r b0i as Jeff might like us to believe.

Offline Wiki

A German company is publishing a hard copy of their version of Wikipedia. It'll be abridged, and rigorously edited (spoilsports), so somehow I doubt there will be much in a way of sale beyond the novelty value. In other news, Germans are apparently as mature as we are in terms of browsing habits, at least according to this niftily stolen chart from the NY Times. My question is whether these search queries are verbatim, or if some of them have been translated.

Also, in relation to the previous post on the Wasp Knife, a followup by Wired magazine reveals that the internal-organ-burst-freezing melee weapon second only to the chainsword in awesomeness was originally designed for the vast and untapped market of undersea divers who regularly fight sharks and the occasional octopus. Not only does the knife kill said shark by freezing its innards and shattering them, but the injected air bubble is designed to float the magnificent beast to the surface before it explodes so as to prevent the blood from said gaping explosion wound from attracting more sharks. Metal.

Your computer might be murdered just by visiting this site

Apparently Blogger hosts 2 percent of the world's malware. Who knew?

All the more reason to use Firefox, NoScript and, just be on the safe side, GNU/Linux.

Paul Morse, Leading Researcher

As has long been hypothesized by preeminent researcher Paul Morse of Yale University, the European Heart Journal has reported a connection between birth weight and health later in life.

"Eight-year-olds who were smaller at birth were more likely to have 'vascular resistance.'" But only for males. I don't really understand or particularly care, but shout out to Paul.

Inventing New Ways to Kill

Ever stab someone but they just didn't die? The WASP hunting knife will be providing certainty in an uncertain world from now on.

Just stab your victim and watch as their insides are filled with a basketball sized shot of compressed gas released by the stabbing.

Knife crime has been on the rise in Britain of late, and with such awesome knives I don't see why the US hasn't switched over this more gruesome killing tool. 100% endorsed by The Joker.

McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for

The LA Times reported Wednesday morning that McCain is going "on the offensive" against a perceived TV media bias toward Obama. Given that CBS, for example, is already destroying its own credibility by editing out McCain's serious mistakes(!), I say let him have all the TV coverage he wants. Put a camera on him 24/7. Then maybe the American people will start paying attention to this supposed foreign-policy expert's multiple references to countries that don't exist, mangling of history, concern about the "Iraq-Pakistan border," confusion of Sunnis and Shiites, and other incontesibly unpresidential mistakes. It would be charitable to say that the media has been giving McCain a free pass—imagine what would have happened if Obama had missed that fortuitous three-pointer in Kuwait!

Wow, Wall Street Journal

For a newspaper whose mugshots (the newsroom term for head shots) are hand-engraved, this was a shock to see on the WSJ's serious law blog—this particular post being about the Third Circuit's ruling Tuesday on the so-called Child Online Protection Act. (Fellow Bob Dunne fans will remember well the infamous COPA.)

A sign of things to come?

I love the Olympics. Watching my countrymen invade other nations and valiantly kick ass—awash in unbiased media coverage that supports our troops, for once—brings joy to my patriotic heart. (And hearing everything narrated by that one guy from "Pootie Tang" to the tune of "Summon the Heroes"? I could cry right now just thinking about it.)

But that's not all I'm anticipating this year: I eagerly await the added diversion of good old fashioned cultural and linguistic humor in Beijing this summer. I'm talking about the sort of fun to be had reading chopsticks labels ("experience glonius Chinese histoy and cultual!") and WTF-style signage (e.g., right). My hope is that Bob Costas and his distinguished NBC colleagues have the stones to replace at least one of those traditional sob stories (you know, "this brave athlete grew up with a hamster for a father and lost six limbs and a tooth to constant heroin use before turning her life around by training for the triathlon") with a wacky montage set to "Yackety Sax" featuring all the hilarious ways those inept Chinese (God bless 'em!) try and fail to welcome foreigners in English (Engrish?).

The least this would do is make the members of the International Olympic Committee—who, as The New York Times pointed out in a Tuesday editorial, have much more important reasons to be ashamed—feel foolish for allowing such a ridiculous country to play host to the venerable games.

Ringo, Unappreciated For So Long...

Turns out rock drummers really get a workout during a 90 minute set.

They work out as hard as professional athletes with heart rates spiking to 190 BPM. And unlike those pansies, they perform every night while traveling from city to city fighting off roaming packs of roadies and having to use cocaine just to fit in as rock stars.

Speaking of Christian Bale...

Check it out! It seems that the folks making those Terminator movies are hopping on the Bale-wagon and hoping that he'll breathe some new life into the franchise. The trailer kind of reminds me of that time I tried to film a bunch of nuclear bomb footage while having a grand mal seizure. It would be pretty entertaining to see a sixty year scrap-metal Ahnold running around and to see how "cleverly" the writers manage to add in lines like "I'll be back" while having the Terminators derp around in various awkward situations (e.g. Gay Bar, Breast Expansion in T3). I have to say that Claire Danes and that ugly kid playing John Connor really didn't cut it, so maybe a fresh face will help out.

Holy Assault Batman!

Speaking of Batman, Christian Bale is being held in London on charges that he assaulted his mother and sister.

Yikes!

Pope Benedict's Views on Materialism

The Onion is always good for a laugh. This is their reaction to recent comments by Benedict.