The incredible machine?

Ever played any of the computer game series The Incredible Machine or the old kid's board game Mouse Trap? Both games make a puzzle out of making you solve a simple problem in a really complicated way. That's what I thought of when I read about robot camel jockeys.

Some of the Persian Gulf nations are notorious for their camel racing. Racers frequently have children from places like India and Pakistan kidnapped or purchased and brought to the Gulf, where they are enslaved and horribly mistreated. Between beatings to keep them in line and half starving them to keep their wait down, the kids are forced to race the camels. So in Qatar some robotics engineers are trying to replace the abused children with robotic jockeys. If and when they can perfect it, they hope to eliminate the despicable practice of enslaving these children. A respectable goal...

Couldn't these nations just umm... enforce their own laws against stealing or buying, then mistreating these kids? There's a thought! In practical race changes, here's an easy one. Jockeys have to weigh in. If they are under a certain amount, weights are added to bring the rider up to the legal amount. How hard is that? Duh.

Not that I care about camel racing, but mistreating those kids is awful and it really doesn't seem like a difficult problem to solve.

Touchdown!

Sure there's the famous Touchdown Jesus at Notre Dame, but that's just a mural. What about this Jesus at a church in Monroe, Ohio?

Moderate drinkers are hawt!

This article claims that the benefits of moderate drinking may have been overstated by some recent studies. They point out that in one large telephone survey, it is true that the moderate drinkers were healthier than the non-drinkers, but that may not be a direct effect of the alcohol. Rather, "Moderate drinkers tended to be in better health, better educated, wealthier and more active than their nondrinking counterparts, and that likely influenced their lower risk of heart disease... It appears that moderate drinkers have many social and lifestyle characteristics that favor their survival over nondrinkers"

My inevitable conclusion? We drinkers are much sexier than the teetotalers! We've got health, wealth, education, and activity on our side. You know you want that over a fat, poor, dumb, boring teetotaler!

But seriously, why would that be? Sure alcohol is a bit expensive here in the States, but poor drunks on the streets prove you don't have to be rich to drink. Drinking is usually associated with gaining weight (the beer belly), yet moderate drinkers are healthier than teetotalers. Alcohol is a depressant, yet moderate drinkers are more active than teetotalers. What's going on here? Maybe we all just need a vice and the drinking is less harmful than what we'd do if we didn't drink. I don't know. Any ideas?

And in some old news, this threesome led to death. The two women decided to take out the man. To think that previously the guy's friends probably thought him lucky as hell. Deputy Skip Stone said, "The cause of death has not been determined, but Selby had been drugged, tied up, strangled, bludgeoned and burned." I'm going to go out on a limb here and say he probably didn't die from an allergic reaction to shellfish. Did the women think they were killing Rasputin?

At least the drinks were free

The cruise ship Norwegian Dawn was in the news this weekend after it was struck by a rogue 70 foot wave. A couple of hot tubs were washed overboard, people were cut by broken glass, cabins were flooded, and waves reached as high as the tenth deck as the ship was buffeted by 40 foot swells for hour after hour. On the plus side, the drinks were free! Yes, the captain made everything okay by opening up the bar. I'm sure when you're seasick from 40 foot swells, you want lots of good, stiff drinks. Vomiting is fun, right? Apparently the casino featured flying poker chips, soaked playing cards, etc. No problem. Just grab that whiskey bottle as it floats by. It's free!

Apparently some were able to keep the booze down, such as the ship's piano player who kept playing the Titanic theme song. Great idea! When you have a cruise ship full of terrified people caught in a storm, you should definitely keep playing a song about a famous ship that SANK AND KILLED OVER A THOUSAND PEOPLE!

Need a white paper?

If you need a computer science related white paper for that upcoming conference in [insert tropical locale here], just click here and enter your name. You'll have your shiny new, randomly generated white paper in seconds thanks to some MIT students. They even got one of their papers accepted to a big conference in Florida.

I admire their ability to get paid for that

Want to know how to get paid for three months of drinking beer and watching all nude strippers? Ohio liquor-control officers know how! Here's the how to:

1. Become an Ohio liquor-control officer
2. Pick a strip club, preferably one with full nudity.
3. Come up with a reason to investigate it. I recommend the following as they sound plausible for any stripclub:
a) We suspect them of prostitution
b) They are serving alcohol (if prohibited), or they are serving alcohol to underage people.
c) Drugs, man, we heard they're selling drugs.
4. Launch investigation. For added fun hire a cute college girl as your "undercover agent" so you can watch her get naked at the club every night. College girls are hot, man.
5. Spend 3 months "investigating" the club. By "investigate" I mean drink beer and watch girls get naked.
6. Charge club or employees with a couple misdemeanor offences to justify your 3 month binge of boobies and beer.

Please note, if you can't find a couple misdemeanors after 3 months at ANY stripclub, you suck.

Conclusion: Congrats! You just got paid by the state of Ohio to spend 3 months staring at naked chicks and drinking beer!

So besides paying a college girl to take it all off at the club for months while cops watched at the club and on the internet, they also stole another woman's identity without permission and had the girl use it as an alias. They even claim it's legal.

Your tax dollars are hard at work, Ohio residents!

tongue tied rants

The following is excerpted from the Tongue Tied column at Foxnews.

The San Jose Mercury News says recent allegations about steroid abuse, adultery and tax evasion against baseball player Barry Bonds (search) are ultimately racist in origin.

Race-baiters say the fact that Bonds was closing in on Babe Ruth's home run record was just too threatening for the white establishment to take so it is now grinding him down.

"If you have a black man who's conscious and independent and on the verge of breaking Babe Ruth's record ... that's frightening," Leonard Moore, a Louisiana State University professor, told the paper. "If you speak out, if you don't play to what white America wants, there will be persecution, scrutiny and unfair reporting."

Whaaaa? Maybe it's escaped the LSU dumbass's, I mean professor's notice that Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's homerun record way back in 1974, and Hank was in fact... black! So why on earth would "white America" be frightened of Barry Bonds passing Babe Ruth? It's been done and it was over 30 years ago. Don't be stupid, Dr. Moore.

In the same column under letters from readers, one Casey L. whines about how a film showing evolution as theory should show both theories, evolution and creationism. I'm going to rant a bit about it because this stupid use of the word "theory" is one of my peeves. Casey L. needs to consult any science textbook for a definition of "theory".  Easily the most common error I see from creationists is calling evolution "just a theory" as though that belittles it.  They're thinking of the word theory in its vernacular sense as something akin to a conjecture or a hypothesis with little evidence backing it.  Of course in the scientific sense it is very different, describing a concept that has a great deal of evidence and research behind it.  A scientific theory is one step short of a Law.  It takes loads of evidence, many years of reseach, and considerable consensus in the scientific community to elevate a concept to the level of theory.  A science movie is not likely to present "BOTH views as theory" as Casey L. desires because creationism is NOT a scientific theory.  So please, creationists, consult a science text to understand the process by which a hypothesis may eventually become a theory. Using it incorrectly just advertises to everyone that you have zero knowledge of science.

My Hero

This guy has been a full time undergraduate college student for over a decade. Van Wilder surrenders. Real life sucks, kids. Stay in school! Forever. Added bonus: defying the idea that most women want a guy with career goals who know what they want, the college girls apparently love him.

Repurcussions of The Boobie continue

A congressman wants to criminalize broadcast indecency. That's right, you scumbags! Show Janet Jackson's boobie again and your ass is going to jail! Oh wait, this crime would be white collar. Your ass is going on probation and community service! Don't make me put you under house arrest too, biatch! See if I won't. Come on. Open your mouth and see if I won't!

Umm... yeah, this congressman is a dumbass. It's already stupid how much some people in this country freak about "indecency", even though almost all the complaints come from the PTC website, and the huge fines are bad enough. Making it a criminal matter, then burdening broadcasters with a criminal record and maybe worse (jail time?) for violations is insane. I'm sure everyone's children are terribly scarred by one second of a hard to see breast during a halftime show over a year ago, but try to use at least a little common sense when you're wanting to "fix" our society.

It's still funny how it's damn near impossible to get even an NC-17 rating for violence, but sexual content gets there and beyond easily. We fear the boobies that much? Last week I watched a film that included castrations, beheadings, dismemberment, cannibals, main characters (the good guys) brutally torturing their enemies to death, and other cheerful pastimes (see my "Sin City" entry). The rating? R. Yet I'm sure a little more frontal nudity could have pushed it to NC-17.

Does anyone actually think that the kids will have less sex if only we can stamp out all traces of it on broadcast television? I should hope not. Any thinking individual should know that if the parents have successfully instilled the values they want in their kids, that's the only thing that's going to slow the kids down as far as sex goes. I take that back. Encouraging them to masturbate more might slow them down a little bit, the guys anyway, physical limitations being what they are... But no, we force surgeon generals to resign if they suggest the dreaded M word. Someone might go blind! Needless to say though, saving the kids from Janet Jackson's breast won't stop them. Sorry.

In conclusion, if enough people want to keep broadcast television "clean", then fine, go ahead. But it's stupid to so zealously pursue even the slightest violation of someone's standards, and trying to make it criminal is laughable. We've got bigger things to worry about.

On a more serious note...
RIP John Paul II. I'm not Catholic, but he was a good man who used his powerful position to try to bring people together. While too orthodox in some ways, birth control and women in the clergy for example, I greatly respected his efforts to reach out to people and work for peace, and his opposition to communism. Whoever the Vatican chooses to be Pope next, John Paul II will be a hard act to follow.

Sin City

I caught the opening night of Sin City tonight. The crowd was disappointingly sedated for a near full house. I guess I'll have to wait for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Revenge of the Sith for a more amusing crowd. But on to the movie...

It was really freaking good. Sin City is gritty as hell, brutally hilarious, and visually stunning. Try to imagine what would happen if LA Confidential got crossed with Pulp Fiction and the Punisher and you might have a small clue what you're going to see. It's noir. It's shockingly violent. It's stylish and surreal.

Most of it is shot in black and white with splashes of color artfully placed for emphasis. I was wary of a b&w film, but the directors made the right choice. Somehow it works. Another thing I usually hate in films is when characters self narrate. I want to hear them talk to each other and watch what they do to get to know them, not listen to them speak their own thoughts. Yet somehow for this film it works. The narration frequently put me in mind of a really hard boiled detective. The sets were created digitally with much of the acting filmed in front of a green screen, yet again for this film it works.

Anyway, you can read much of this and more in dozens of reviews. If you don't like violent films or you're planning to take the kids, definitely take a pass on this one. Otherwise, don't miss it.