Hand Coding

David Cross is a pretty funny guy. If you can't picture him right away, you might recall him as Dr. Tobias Fünke from Arrested Development or from a variety of characters on the HBO series Mr. Show.

My friend Bryan introduced me to Cross’ comedy by way of some of his albums including, I think, Shut Up You Fucking Baby!. And, whether this next bit was from that album or his anothers, I can’t quite remember — either way, though, I think it’s my favorite of Cross’ by far.

The clip above below covers more than one bit — the relevant part, in this case, starts around 2:55. Oh, and it’s safe for work as long as you have headphones on (if you know what I mean).

As it turns out, I went to Super Target after work for some groceries and what did I find? That’s right — Squagels! I don’t even eat bagels that often, but I just couldn’t resist buying these. (Don’t get me wrong, bagels can be rather tasty — especially with smoked salmon and capers — but I don’t often buy them since they’re pretty much all carbs.)

I just can’t bring myself to call these products by their given name, “Thomas’ Mini Squares Bagelbread” (how lame is that?). Having said that, if anyone wants one of these needlessly square breakfast items, just let me know — I’d be happy to bring in a couple Squagels for you.

Since yesterday was “Friday the 13th”, I got to thinking about why there was superstition surrounding the number thirteen. As it turns out, I ran across an article on the CSICOP website which addressed just that. (CSICOP is the “Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal”, is a pro-science group.)

How did thirteen get such a bad reputation? To understand, one needs to know the history of twelve, says CSICOP Senior Research Fellow Joe Nickell. “The number twelve has traditionally represented completeness in mythologies and religions around the world,” says Nickell. “There are twelve months of the year, twelve chief gods of Olympus, twelve signs of the zodiac, and twelve apostles of Jesus. Thirteen exists just one digit beyond twelve, and is symbolic of the first departure from divine completeness or the initial step towards evil.” […]

Now for the chicken-and-the-egg thing, I’m left wondering whether thirteen was thought to be unlucky and then the number of apostles was recorded as twelve, or if it happened the other way around :-/.

Reuters is reporting on a study which concludes that clowns ease anxiety in young patients:

A clown in the operating room may relax anxious children who are about to undergo surgery, but the entertainer has to learn to keep out of the way, Italian researchers said on Monday. […]

I mean, sure, I can understand that clowns would need to stay out of the way, but I can only imagine the extent to which the study covered that issue if the reporter thought it relevant enough to mention it in the opening paragraph.

“You damn clowns!” exclaimed Dr Frederick Petronko as he shoved Honkers out of the way. […]

Well, all right, that’s not actually a real quote. But that’s what I was hoping I’d come across as I read through the article.

The New York Times reports on the UK’s newest superhero: Angle-Grinder Man. In short, Angle Grinder Man is an Englishman who was fed up with the wheel-boots employed by the parking authorities. So, he decided to apply some street justice through missions of removing motorists’ boots by force:

Long-haired and lanky, he is becoming well known in some parts of south London. About a month ago, 25-year-old Petite Tendai arrived home to find a boot on her illegally parked car. (“There were no signs saying ‘no parking,’ ” she declared.) She had barely begun to rail at the injustice of it all when Angle-Grinder Man suddenly appeared.

“Basically, he jumped out of his car in his outfit and said, ‘If anyone can, Angle-Grinder Man can,’ ” Ms. Tendai said in a telephone interview. “Then he just started sawing it off. It was wicked.” He was gone almost as quickly as he came. “It was just a ‘good luck,’ and what-not, and then he was off,” she said. […]

In many ways, he appears to have the complete superhero persona — even including gold lamé underpants and a cape. Still, it would be even cooler if he could convince They Might Be Giants to compose a theme song for him ;).

I was reading this Metafilter thread on tea and I came across this MedALERT synopsis of a patient who ran into problems from drinkng too much Earl Grey:

A man aged 44 years reported muscle cramps to his doctor. He had consumed up to four litres of black tea daily for 25 years and had recently switched to Earl Grey tea, believing it would be less harmful to his stomach. Within a week, he developed muscle cramps and other unusual symptoms, including a feeling of pressure in his eyes. He also had blurred vision, particularly in darkness. After five months, the patient switched from Earl Grey back to pure black tea and his symptoms completely disappeared within a week. […] He also found they did not recur as long as he consumed no more than one litre of Earl Grey tea daily. [emphasis mine]

As an Earl Grey drinker, I’m not terribly worried. After all, it’s not likely that I’d be drinking over a liter a day. Checking the online unit converter, I see that a liter would be about 34 fl oz. Let’s see… At maybe 8 oz per glass, I could have four full glasses of Earl Grey. Hmm, yeah, I should be able to make that ;).

Via MediaBistro’s Daily Media News Feed, Disney ousted Microsoft’s reputation in the media. These second-quarter results were derived by studying 60k news items:

Higher attendance at theme parks and stronger box office receipts from its newest films, “Finding Nemo” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl,” helped catapult The Walt Disney Company to the top of Delahaye’s most recent Media Reputation Index, a quarterly assessment of how news coverage affects corporate reputation. […]

The second quarter results, which are based on an analysis of more than 60,000 news items, also found that technology was the strongest of all sectors, with Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Hewlett Packard, Cisco Systems and Dell claiming six of the top 20 spots. […]

I haven't been able to find the complete list online, but the article includes the top 10:

Second Quarter 2003 Media Reputation Index — Top Ten Companies:

1. The Walt Disney Company
2. Microsoft
3. Intel
4. Wal-Mart
5. General Motors
6. IBM
7. Home Depot
8. Coca-Cola
9. Bank of America
10. AOL Time Warner

Disturbingly enough, it resembles a list of Companies To Avoid. In particular, I wouldn’t touch Disney, Microsoft, nor GM with a ten-foot pole. And Disney, with its let’s-make-copyright-last-forever nonsense, is more evil than most.

In a HHOS?-esque moment, I’m wondering whether the other companies on the list should be avoided as well ;). Granted, I already avoid Intel and AOL, but that’s primarily because their competitors make superior products (not because they’re evil, per se). Likewise, I don’t drink Coke, but that’s just because they don’t have a Splenda-based soda yet (unlike Diet RC & Diet Rite).

Both Wal-Mart and Home Depot are large companies, to be sure, but they seem fairly normal to me. And, I’ve never been a Bank of America customer, so I can’t speak of them one way or another. And on the other hand, IBM actually appears to be one of the Good Guys(TM) these days, with its fight against SCO.

Charles Weinstein has an otherwise-normal signature that he’s been using for more than eight years — except that it’s upside-down. He's used it on checks, credit cards and other official documents, but the Delaware DMV isn’t accepting it:

He said he trained himself to write his name in this unusual way, working right-side up, as a way to make his mark unique. He said he has been signing his name this way for more than eight years on all official papers, checks, credit cards — even his old driver’s license. It was never a major problem until this week, he said, when he went to the DMV office on Airport Road to change his address.

Weinstein said a window clerk told him to “stop fooling around and sign it right.” When he insisted that what he wrote was his valid, legal signature, Weinstein said the clerk accused him of being a troublemaker and threw him out. […]

Writing one’s signature upside-down is an interesting trick, though I can’t imagine how long it took him to learn that technique or what methods he used to wrap his head around it.

Using an acting analogy, I’m curious whether he used “method writing” (where he actually learned to write the characters in his name upside-down and then wrote those in sequence to form his signature) or whether he merely learned how to mimic the look of his upside-down signature.

(Via the Crypto-Gram newsletter.)

I saw this one linked from a Slashdot story on a planned photorealistic CGI TV series. Japanese roboticist Doctor Masahiro Mori discovered what he calls the Uncanny Valley.

In short, a human-like animal or machine becomes more likeable as it becomes more similar to humans (at first). Past a certain point, however, the likability takes a dive before going back up again (hence the “valley&rdquo).

This chasm &mdashj; the uncanny valley of Doctor Mori’s thesis — represents the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting. The first peak, moreover, is where that same individual would see something that is human enough to arouse some empathy, yet at the same time is clearly enough not human to avoid the sense of wrongness. The slope leading up to this first peak is a province of relative emotional detachment — affection, perhaps, but rarely more than that. […]

So, an industrial robot or even an android are generally perceived positively (they’re on the up-slope before the valley), but a moving corpse would garner a negative reaction (this would be deep in the valley, as it’s just-human-enough to be eerie). If this doesn’t make sense yet, check out the graphs on the site — those should clear things up.

And, that’s why talking animals aren’t threatening — they’re far enough from being human yet their slight-humanness raises their likability without falling into the valley.

These literary tricks have become mainstays, for they work exceedingly well. Public-service advertisements of the eighties and nineties featured an animated anthropomorphic hound in a trench-coat, encouraging cooperation with police agencies and the formation of neighborhood watch programs. With this character, the creators avoided using a human of any recognizable ethnic type, which might have impaired the effectiveness of the campaign in some areas. […]

The SS American Star was grounded off the west coast of Fuerteventura in 1994, and has been rotting there since. I wasn’t sure what to expect at the site, but it’s a surreal view of a deteriorating corpse of a ship.

The pictures fascinate me, but I just don’t know why. Perhaps it’s the nature of destruction that wouldn’t normally be seen with a ship that size (somewhat like the curiosity in seeing the Enterprise crash-landed into a planet, I suppose).

(Link from MetaFilter)

David Brake, also known as “the guy that owns blog.org” passes along How Much Inside?, the site that measures how much stuff is inside various things (go figure).

For instance, they answer the burning questions, “How much Oreo Goo is inside a pack of Oreos?” and “How many square inches of Magic Shell are in a bottle?”.

Simply put, magic shell is awesome. It is ACTION FOOD! It forms a hard shell when put on top of ice cream, which protects it from burrowing insects and mites. It is the perfect way to make ice cream more fun & your classmates jealous.

Developed in the 1960s through a collaborative effort between the U.S. Army and Industrial Light and Magic, magic shell was designed to be a bulletproof camouflage coating for armored vehicles. […]