Archive for 2010
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Adobe & Microsoft – A Marriage Made In Heaven?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 9, 2010 by admin in Technology
Saturday, October 9th, 2010If Microsoft acquired Adobe, you could finally watch your PDF’s and Word documents freeze in the same window! And… is Slate the new Coal?
Wouldn’t it be great if Microsoft, a company notorious for terminally insecure, crash prone, memory hogging software with mind-numbingly illogical menus, and constant new overpriced versions that are backwards-incompatible, were to partner with Adobe, a company known for terminally insecure, crash prone, memory hogging… oh wait. So why is it that so many tech industry and finance blogs are excited about the rumour of a possible merger or acquisition involving the two? It’s ironic that Apple – once the prideful domain of snobbish, intellectual arty types – is now part of the Evil Empire (along with Google) that everyone thinks needs to be taken down. In my opinion, anyone who sees anything positive in a possible Adobe/Microsoft merger is beholden to a business model that we can only hope is in its death throes. Apple and Google have gotten where they are right now with a really crazy idea: give the user what they want or need, and do it exceptionally well. Adobe and Microsoft, on the other hand, have for nearly a decade stuck to a strategy of buying their competitors , rolling exceptional products into their existing lines of outdated and over-developed re-releases of lumbering software suites, usually to the detriment if not total destruction of really great products. In any case, the rumour is already being called “nonsense” by credible sources, so the whole idea may be as vaporous as Microsoft’s “slate”, an attempt to compete with the iPad, which is supposed to be available in time for Christmas. What a great stocking stuffer for the people on your list who’ve been naughty, not nice! Maybe slate is the new coal. Read the rest of this entry »
Who Discovered America?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 8, 2010 by admin in Holidays
Friday, October 8th, 2010We’ve asked all the right questions and answered them for you just in time for Columbus Day. Including Eddie Izzard’s “Do you have a flag?”
 This painting always makes me think of Eddie Izzard’s Do You Have A Flag routine. |
Thanks to the three-day weekend many people will enjoy because of the fact that Monday is Columbus Day, this topic is bound to come up in conversation, so we thought we’d help you out. First, don’t bother Googling it. You’ll get several pages of rambling articles and opinions. This is one of those times that WolframAlpha came in handy. See for yourself (image below). Yup. Asians walked across Beringia way before any Europeans made the trip by boat. How simple was that? So, now that we know that the first humans arrived in North America around 14,000 years ago, we can move on to other interesting questions, like “well, who was second then?” and “why the heck do they call it America, anyway?” and “so why do we keep celebrating Columbus Day, now that the facts are in?” In order, the answers are the Vikings, no-one is sure but we assume it’s because of Amerigo Vespucci, and that last question? Probably because it would take congress years to pass the legislation to abolish Columbus Day even if public sentiment were strong enough. Which it doesn’t appear to be, at least according to this 2009 Rasmussen poll. Personally, I think a poll like that may be skewed by people not wanting to lose a three day weekend, and that we should at least celebrate something different, like “Jesus Christ When Did They Start Advertising Christmas BEFORE Halloween?” day. And although I lightheartedly shared some of my thoughts on this topic last year, I really do believe we should do away with the tradition, partly for simple historical accuracy, but more importantly because 1/8 of me is descended from the people that ended up being called “Indians” and were then nearly annihilated by those who followed in Columbus’ brutal footsteps. If you’re also of a mind that we could do away with Columbus Day, I don’t know what to tell you. The most organized group addressing the topic – Reconsider Columbus Day – didn’t update their site this year. Let us know if you know of anything besides this petition. Last year’s video below. Read the rest of this entry »
Increasingly Impossible Objects Becoming Increasingly Possible
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 7, 2010 by admin in Technology
Thursday, October 7th, 2010These 3D renderings of fractals suggest that just around the corner, there’s something just around the corner.
There’s a place I know, just around the corner of the corner of the corner. It’s inside a house designed by Karl Menger , and the walls, floors, and ceilings are covered with carpets designed by Waclaw Sierpinski. I’ve been going there since I was about five, when a Japanese fellow who rented a room from my family showed me how to make a Möbius strip. You’ve probably seen examples of impossible objects before; people are probably most familiar with MC Escher’s work, but there are many other artists who’ve dabbled in this arena. You can even make your own impossible triangle, or if you’re feeling really ambitious, you can engage in a little fractal origami. I love illusions like this, but I’ve always been even more fascinated with objects that can be partially represented in two or three dimensions, but require a little imagination or mental investment to grasp. We’ve touched on hypercubes and extra-dimensional ideas before, but today I ran across something I’ve longed to see for ages, which is detailed, 3D animations of fractals, and objects like the “Menger Sponge” referenced at the top. I became a little obsessed with these forms when the book Chaos: Making a New Science
Michelle Malkin: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Disingenuousness
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 6, 2010 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010We shouldn’t fear anchor babies, we should pity them. Especially if they grow up to be Michelle Malkin.
  |
I feel sorry for Michelle Malkin. And perhaps even more sorry for the uptight white conservative males who hang on her every word (see graphic, below). This is a recent development by the way; since she’s essentially the heiress to Ann Coulter’s hyperbole-driven partisan “journalism”, I’ve always found her ranting to be pretty predictable. So why do I feel sorry for her? Because I took the time to read her basic biographical information on Wikipedia. If you juxtapose the basic facts of her personal life and her desperate (but profitable) pandering to xenophobic white America, an image of an intelligent and driven individual warped by dashed hopes and consumed by self-denial comes into sharp focus. The fact that she was born in Philadelphia as a child of Philippine citizens that had arrived in the United States earlier that year actually makes her anti-immigration diatribes make sense. As a friend of mine put it, “she’s like the slave who says all the right things to make the master happy”. If it matters, the friend who said this is black and Republican. It’s also enlightening that Malkin attended Oberlin with hopes of being a concert pianist. When – as she puts it – she realized that she “couldn’t cut it with piano”, she switched her major to English, later belittling the school as a “radically left-wing, liberal arts college”. So here we have a classic frustrated artist, whose birth is much like that of the “anchor babies” she rails against, whose parents are from a country that has probably felt the negative effects of American colonialism more than most, rabidly upholding the kind of isolationist nationalism that might make Kim Jong-il proud. It’s sad that someone so bright – who has benefited so much from foreign nationals immigrating to America – is so tortured by personal failure and cultural shame that she can’t discuss immigration in a more positive light. I mean, take a look at these mind-blowing lists of American immigrants. With Columbus Day just around the corner, maybe it’s a good time to remember that EVERYONE on this continent is an immigrant. Read the rest of this entry »
Say Jello To A Jiggly New World Of Possibilities
[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 5, 2010 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010From patching your lawn, to wrestling, to making body parts for ballistics testing, it seems like there’s no end to the uses for Jello.
 Suck it, Aunt Mildred. |
Your aunt Mildred probably thought she was pretty crafty, the way she managed to make not only marshmallows, but actual food suspend itself magically in jello formed in a bundt pan. She had no idea. Personally, I have a basic policy of not eating anything that wiggles, so it’s a good thing there are so many other things to do with Jello. Today someone sent me a link to My Jello Americans, a blog devoted to the creation of amazingly artful jello shots that range from the macabre – like The Jason Voorhees – to the delicately beautiful, like the MJA School of Entomology . This got me wondering what else one could do with jello, and I was surprised by the answer, which is a lot. Like patching your lawn. Or wrestling in it. Or making body parts for ballistics testing on Mythbusters. Or inventing a form of marketing that lasts for decades. The possibilities seem nearly endless. Why, if you’ve grown tired of looking for sanity in modern life and feel like exploring a different sense of futility, you can even try nailing it to a wall. Both literally and metaphorically. Me, I’m gonna wait until it stops wiggling. Read the rest of this entry »