Idealogian

Don't Walk In Front Of Me I May Not Lead

Me: Where are we going?

CM: I don't know - I'm just following you.

Me: But... umm... you're in front of me.

Incidentally, the quote alluded to by the title of this post has an original source that many people don't realize. The original, by Albert Camus, lacks the final verse of course. Ironically, here are some other quotes from Albert Camus:

"It's true that I don't believe in God, but that doesn't mean I'm an atheist."

"I have Christian concerns, but my nature is pagan."

Can anyone make any sense of them?

Smoking Helmet

Nicosphere 3000 - the perfect gift for the ostracized smoker in your life

In Passing

Just found a great blog called In Passing. It's composed almost entirely of overheard statements and conversations, from the funny:

"Your bag is oversized. Our limit is fifty pounds."

"I can't really get rid of any of it now. Can I pay a fine?"

"We prefer not to refer to it as a fine, per se..."

"A convenience fee, then? That sounds better than a bribe."

- A woman and a ticket agent at SFO

To the wise:

"Everything that's produced and sold is to fill a need. Even pet rocks. They... fufill the basic human need... to... spend money on something trendy that they could just as easily find on the ground."

- A woman, recovering quite nicely in justifying the example she'd chosen

To the strangely touching:

"Mommy? When I'm little again, will you carry me around?"

"Sweetie, you're not going to be little again."

"But when you get old you get littlier. Right?"

- A mom and her two kids, the toddler obviously jealous that the baby got most of the attention

Check it out.

Or Else...

Anyone else find this poster slightly disturbing?

Has sort of a threatening tone to it - "Donate blood now or else we'll hit this innocent kid with a car and let him bleed to death." (Reminds me of the infamous "If you don't buy this magazine, we'll kill this dog" cover.)

However, it is for a good cause, and if anything this is a sign of desperation. So call your local blood center and make an appointment to donate! (You even get free cookies and apple juice when you're done!)

Eating Nemo

"Mommy, can we have clownfish for dinner?"

- A friend's 3-year-old niece, after watching Finding Nemo

Crash Into Me

Crash Bonsai - tragic photos of miniature cars meeting miniature trees

Ambiguous Advice For John Kerry

Disclosure by the Kerrys

We hope the senator realizes that there cannot be too much disclosure by a candidate seeking the trust of the public for the nation's highest office.

He should also be made aware that you can't put too much water in a nuclear reactor.

Thanks for the link, Dad!

For Man Is As A Tree Of the Field

S: It's not just me - all guys gain a little weight when they get married.

E: How much did you gain?

S: About fifteen pounds. And I've been married for three years, so that's only five pounds a year. Not too bad.

B [pointing at S's belly, and leaning in as if to examine it]: See, you can tell by the growth rings around his stomach that he's been married for around three years.

Let Your Fingers Do The Stalking

Warning: If you're a fan of 24 but haven't yet seen the two episodes broadcast this week, this post contains some spoilers you may not yet want to know about; otherwise, use your mouse to highlight the grayed-out text and read the post in its entirety.

For the past few weeks on 24, Jack Bauer and his team at the Counter-Terrorism Unit have been furiously searching for a man named Stephen Saunders, a Los Angeles-based terrorist who has hijacked the presidency by threatening to release a highly contagious and deadly virus throughout the United States. So far they've traced his encrypted bank transfers, sent a strike team to the apartment that led to, and, when that turned out to be a decoy, they went so far as to kidnap his daughter to extract information from her. No luck yet.

One has to wonder if they've tried some of the more traditional sources of information.

The Bachelor?

As I've mentioned previously, the co-worker of mine who will soon be getting married for the fourth time to the same woman is having a bachelor party tonight. I told some friends about this over lunch:

M: Are you going?

Me: No - not quite my thing. The last one they had, they ended up at a, well, a place that I would never go to.

R: If he wants to keep it tame, he could just bring his wife along.

Me: I'm not sure he wants to keep it tame.

M: And besides, you can't have a bachelor party with your wife there.

Me: Umm... You can't have a bachelor party if you have a wife!

The Cool, Cool River

It's not often that you see a front page New York Times article that reads more like Siddhartha than a news story:

On the Congo River, Congo - The river is the life and memory of this country.

On the muddy banks of Kisangani, the river releases a man who risked cholera and crocodiles and spent three months on a decrepit barge - all for a chance to travel a thousand miles to sell, at long last, a sack of plastic ladies shoes.

Outside Mbandaka, where the river trips over the Equator, it glances up at the shell of a dictator's unfinished palace, now home to a pair of cows.

In a hidden creek in the hard-knocks capital, Kinshasa, the river hears the screams of an unwanted girl. Her father banished her to the water, believing that she was a witch.

Strange.

Tiger Treats

Internet Technology Vulnerable to Hackers

Researchers uncovered a serious flaw in the underlying technology for nearly all Internet traffic, a discovery that led to an urgent and secretive international effort to prevent global disruptions of Web surfing, e-mails and instant messages.

. . .

The risk was similar to Internet users "running naked through the jungle, which didn't matter until somebody released some tigers,'' said Paul Vixie of the Internet Systems Consortium Inc.

"It's a significant risk,'' Vixie said. "The larger Internet providers are jumping on this big time. It's really important this just gets fixed before the bad guys start exploiting it for fun and recognition.''

Is there something about naked people that makes them particularly vulnerable to tiger attacks? Or is the New York Times publishing gratuitous references to nudity?

Paper Trail

To Do:

1. Rob Bank
2. Destroy the evidence!

Drunken Debauchery

A co-worker of mine is getting married (for the fourth time) in a week and a half. The rest of my co-workers are throwing him a bachelor party Wednesday night. One of them is facing heavy peer pressure over his decision to not go.

M: He's just scared because he remembers what happened at his bachelor party [a few months ago].

Me: Actually, from what I've heard, he's probably more scared because he doesn't remember what happened at his bachelor party.

On The Bright Side, We'd Never Be Hungry

A friend observed over the weekend:

"See, if people were born with peanuts as fingertips, we never would have been able to evolve."

Go On Kids, Try This At Home!

It seems all you need in order to "levitate magnetically [any] material [or any] living creature on the earth" is a Bitter solenoid. (Check out the cool videos and simple explanation.)

Anyone have a spare, preferably large enough to fit a 6-foot-tall human being?

Update: Apparently, it would take around 19 gigawatts to create the magnetic force necessary to levitate a person. Doesn't quite seem worth it. Why, I could travel through time for only 1.21 gigawatts! Anyone have a spare flux capacitor?

If You Are Wise You'll Listen To Me

Click on the picture of the cake on this web page (nothing will happen yet) and then type "oompaloompa" (without the quotes).

Placebo Effect

Strong Placebo, Strong Parkinson's Effect

[An] unusual clinical trial, first reported in 2001, looked at whether transplants of embryonic brain cells could help people with Parkinson's disease. All 39 people in the study had four holes drilled in their skulls under local anesthesia. Half of them actually got the transplants. The other half received sham surgery -- meaning patients received no treatment other than having holes drilled.

Thirty of the patients agreed to participate in a quality-of-life study after the surgery. As part of the study, they were asked whether they thought they got the transplant or placebo.

"Those who thought they received the transplant at 12 months reported better quality of life than those who thought they received the sham surgery, regardless of which surgery they actually received," researcher Cynthia McRae, PhD, of the University of Denver, says in a news release.

Moreover, doctors -- who did not know which surgery the patients got -- also rated these patients as doing better. The findings appear in the April issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.

. . .

"Research indicates that the more extreme the placebo treatment is in a clinical trial, the more susceptible participants are to the placebo effect, or believing that they are being helped by the sham medication or treatment," McRae and colleagues note. "This study involved brain surgery -- arguably an extreme placebo treatment. ... The results are consistent with a strong placebo effect."

Thanks for the link, Uncle Harry!

Newdow Sues T.G.I. Friday's^®

WASHINGTON (Idealogian) -- Self-proclaimed atheist Michael Newdow, already famous for his Supreme Court lawsuit opposing the inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, has filed a suit against self-described "authentic American restaurant and bar," T.G.I. Friday's®, alleging violation of his First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

"There is nothing 'authentic American' about religious coercion," Newdow argued in a press release accompanying the suit. "I should be able to take my daughter out for a decent dinner without expressing my gratitude to some non-existent deity. Despite the suggestions of some of my co-anti-religionists, it is unconscionable that in order to enjoy Friday's® delectable Philly cheesesteak sandwich, I should have to acknowledge and pay respect to a 'God' in whom I do not believe."

Newdow's reference to the restaurant's anagrammatic name itself stirred some controversy, as many maintain that "T.G.I.F." stands for "Thank Goodness It's Friday." Newdow contends, however, that reliable sources clearly indicate the true origins of the phrase to be "Thank God It's Friday."

When it was pointed out to Newdow that "Friday" itself is named after Frigga, the Norse goddess of love and fertility, he responded, "Oh, yeah. Well then that's gotta go too."

Filmwise

Those who know me will appreciate the irony in the fact that I can get 7 out of 8 in Filmwise's baseball edition of Invisibles: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6 and #8. (That last one, by the way, is an excellent movie.)

Can anyone get #7?

Must... Not... Gloat...!

In the elevator with a co-worker:

Me: How's it going?

K: <sigh> OK, but, y'know, it's Monday. What about you?

Me: Doing well, thanks. And I'm actually taking off for a week, starting tomorrow. So for me, it's Friday. :-)

Speaking of which, I'll take this opportunity to wish a chag kasheir v'samei'ach to all my readers.

David and Goliath

An interesting observation in the New York Times:

Coit Blacker, a longtime friend and colleague of [Condoleezza] Rice at Stanford who is now director of that university's Institute for International Studies, said any blind spots she had upon taking office in January 2001 might have been rooted in the fact that she emerged from a generation of scholars trained to focus on great-power politics, with terrorism seen as a troubling but subordinate element.

"It wasn't until after Sept. 11 that most of us realized that for the first time in human history," Mr. Blacker said, "a nonstate actor, a group of religious extremists at the very bottom of the international system, had the capability to inflict devastating damage on the very pinnacle of the international system."

A good point. It may also explain why, according to some, the Bush administration felt the need to link the attacks of 9/11 to Iraq. If terrorists are simply "subordinate element"s, then there must have been a "great-power politic"al entity that was truly behind the attacks.

Information Security

A recent discussion with my father regarding how to wipe clean the hard drive of a soon-to-be-disposed-of old PC reminded me of a hilarious piece in the now-defunct SatireWire. (I'm copying the whole thing because it's just that good.)

HACKERS BEG BORING PEOPLE TO STOP ENCRYPTING EMAIL
Security Experts Concur Most of You Have Nothing Worth Encrypting Anyway

San Jose, Calif. (SatireWire.com) - In an unusual worldwide appeal, the International Brotherhood of Computer Hackers today asked particularly boring people to please stop encrypting their emails.

According to IBCH President Björn Haxor, hackers spend thousands of hours intercepting and cracking open encrypted emails - believing it to be "the good stuff" - only to find most contain little more than "Two priests walk into a bar," or "Hi Bob, here's my new email address."

"Maybe you think hacking coded messages is simple, but it's not - well, except for the Microsoft Outlook ones," said Haxor. "The rest of it is a pain in the backdoor. So here's a tip: if you encrypt just because you want to keep your personal information 'secret,' but all you're encrypting is blather about your stupid promotion or a recipe for fruit salad, guess what? Your secret's already out. You're dull."

"Please, keep it to yourself and stop wasting our time," he added.

Instead, Haxor said, people should only encrypt if they are going to send information such as passwords, credit card numbers, blueprints for an unreleased product, or confidential sales figures. Barring that, he advised, "at least give us something revealing, like you slept with your boss's wife, or his Airedale."

In fact, some frustrated hackers have begun to fight back against what they call "rampant, reckless encryption."

"I had one guy at Oracle who encrypted everything, and 80 percent of his emails were gripes about his department head," said IBCH member BlackDogg77. "I got so fed up, I bounced all the emails back to the guy's boss and got him fired. I mean, why should I put up with that [stuff]?"

"Or Al Gore," Haxor added. "The other day I'm monitoring some government servers, and I see all these encrypted emails from Gore. Hey Al, news alert: You're Al Gore. No one cares anymore. Give it up."

Surprisingly, computer security experts agree. "I get this all the time: 'Should I encrypt? I don't want anyone to steal my identity,'" said LockUpOnline President Bing D'aahl. "The textbook answer has been 'Yes,' but now we are advising people to first ask themselves, 'Do I have an identity that anyone would really want to steal?'"

If you answer truthfully, D'aahl said, chances are you'll forego the digital ID and save everyone a lot of trouble.

"Remember, the Internet wasn't built just for you," Haxor added.

Cooking Tips of the Day

Tip #1: Steamed green beans with sesame teriyaki sauce make a simple, elegant and tasty side dish.

Tip #2: Make sure to transfer the green beans from the steamer to the boiler (i.e., the top pot, with holes in the bottom, to the bottom pot, without) before you pour the teriyaki sauce over them. Especially if you've already removed the steamer and placed it on your counter.

IQ Test

Not to toot my own horn, but I scored the highest score possible on an online Intelligence Test:

Yes you are intelligent.

Suitable jobs for you include:
astronaut, brain surgeon and rocket scientist.

I also got a score of "Yes you are suitable to look after a puppy" on the Puppy Test, so I'm feeling pretty good about myself today.