Linus Torvalds on ideology

This quote from a longer interview is about software design, but I believe it applies to Everything.

Any time you have "one overriding idea", and push your idea as a superior ideology, you're going to be wrong. Microkernels had one such ideology, there have been others. It's all BS. The fact is, reality is complicated, and not amenable to the "one large idea" model of problem solving. The only way that problems get solved in real life is with a lot of hard work on getting the details right. Not by some over-arching ideology that somehow magically makes things work.

Domination Associate

No, he's not my minion. He's my domination associate.

Tau, an improvement on Pi

I have loved Pi for a long time.  But Vi Hart has convinced me that Tau (2 Pi) is a better way to do circle math and trigonometry.  It has all the things that make Pi wonderful, but is even simpler and easier to understand.

Happy Tau Day!

Ready Player One - awesome book

I stumbled upon the book Ready Player One at my library, and I LOVED it.  It's a veritable nerdgasm of pop culture references.  (Badass scifi author John Scalzi nailed that description.)  It's a tale of a kid in the future trying to find easter eggs in a virtual world to inherit Steve Jobs' fortune.  I mean, not Steve Jobs, "James Halliday".

At one point, there's a party where R2D2 DJ's, and a Klingon bartender serves Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters.

It's a really fun ride, with very clever nerd culture references.

Happy Picard Day!

June 16th is Captain Picard Day.  It's the day when all the children on the Enterprise create a likeness of the captain to celebrate him.  Lots of nerds of the world did the same.  This one is my favorite.

Edible zoetropes

Someone has made zoetropes that are cakes.  Wow.

Fiscal Phonies

Paul Krugman calls out the Republicans for lying about their alleged deficit concerns.  I said this ages ago, (and so did Krugman) but the current details are worth noting - Romney and Ryan, who claim to want to reduce the deficit, won't.  Republicans had no problem with deficits when a Republican was president, under Reagan or Bush.  (And they increased the debt ceiling dozens of times without controversy.)  And Romney's alleged plans to fix the problem would not fix it, but in fact make it much, much worse.

I can deal with disagreeing with someone about an issue, but they don't agree with themselves.

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah

One of my favorite moments from 30 Rock.  I hadn't heard the entire song before.  I guess George from Being Human was already a man before he became a werewolf.

Last in a series of funny videos

This is the last of my nano videos.  As this is posted, I'm shooting Spanish versions of them.

Pants

I made this video about pants.  Pants.

Microsoft killed Britannica

With all the old media mourning the death of Encyclopedia Britannica, (because it reminds newspapers that they're going to die soon as well), it's worth noting that Wikipedia didn't kill the encyclopedia.  Microsoft did.

The encyclopedia wasn't something people read, it's something they bought so their children could be educated and do better, and "technology supplanted its role as a purchasable ‘edge’ for over-anxious parents. They bought junior a new PC instead of a Britannica.”  Encarta killed Britannica.

Hipster Ipsum

Lorem Ipsum has totally sold out.  If you need dummy text for layout and graphic design, cool kids use Hipster Ipsum.

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Another game for science

There's a game called Phylo you can play where you try to match colored blocks.  These blocks are actually DNA proteins, and you're sorting DNA sequences.

"Why should I do that?" you think to yourself.  Because humans are way better at doing this job than computers.

Damn. Republicans are sexist.

I guess I knew Santorum and Limbaugh hated women, but it's still shocking that Rush Limbaugh would call a woman a slut and whore for using birth control.  And shocking that Rick Santorum wants to overturn the Supreme Court case legalizing birth control, so that states could ban it.

BAN it.  Make birth control pills illegal.  Because somehow that would be better for society.  I'm pretty sure that would result in way more abortions, but he wouldn't admit that.

Wow.  Do they really think ideas like that are supported by a majority of Americans?  I guess if Santorum actually got elected president, I'd have to seriously consider finding work in Canada.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/opinion/contraception-war-goes-on.html
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/boehner-condemns-limbaughs-comments/?hp

Regular Everyday Normal Guy

This guy is hard core normal.  Mothafucka!

Another funny video!

Getting ice cream to fall off a cone is not as easy as I make it look.  Prop masters beware trying to do this shot.  (Getting ice cream to levitate is surprisingly easy, on the other hand.)

More funny videos

This one has special effects!

Video 2

This is the least funny video of the series I made.  So I show it second to get it out of the way.

I'm funny!

I made several videos last year.  I'm doing these again in Spanish next month.

Santorum wants to ban birth control

I'm not just talking about the nuanced religious-liberty argument he's making about how Catholic hospitals should be allowed to refuse to offer family planning services.  Rick Santorum "favors allowing states to decide whether to ban birth control. "


It's only the most outrageous part of the Republican claims that national healthcare regulations are religious discrimination.


I respect people who are opposed to abortion.  I support doctors declining to perform abortions.  But a pill that prevents ovulation isn't an abortion.  And if I have to pay taxes that support wars in Iraq and other places I don't support, resulting in hundreds of thousands of murders, religious conservatives should have to have some of their taxes pay for free birth control pills for women who can't afford it.  Which doesn't cause a single abortion, and actually probably prevents thousands.

Farmville is a casino

Well, Farmville is like a casino in that they make most of their money off a very small number of customers.  The difference is that in Farmville you can never win.

2% of Farmville players pay real cash money for virtual crap.  And of that 2%, 1 in 5 pay over $1000 a year to Zynga.  For virtual cows and barns and stuff.

Damn.