May 29th, 2009
My left foot has been tingling…
My left foot has been tingling like it’s asleep for three days now, and my left calf muscle keeps cramping. Is that bad?
May 29th, 2009
What is Apple Building?
So, Apple is planning on building a data center on the East Coast, and NC legislators are falling over themselves to enact tax cuts to bring them here. There’s something interesting, though.
The size of the project raises interesting questions about Apple’s ambitions for its online operations. The $1 billion price tag is nearly twice the $500 to $600 million that Microsoft and Google typically invest in the enormous data centers that power their cloud computing platforms.
What could Apple be planning that means they’d need to store more data than Google. Google, a company that processes about 20 petabytes per day. That’s petabyte. With a “p.” That’s 20 thousand terrabytes or 20 million gigabytes per day! They must have some big plans to host a ton of data. Google caches and indexes nearly the enitre web. And you’ve probably heard of a little thing called gmail? And google maps? And YouTube?
Apple, on the other hand, has iTunes and, uh, I guess the iPhone app store. Now, I’m not saying they don’t push a ton of data with iTunes, but it’s nothing like Google. If I were to guess, it would be plans for streaming HD video content through iTunes. But really, I have no clue. And Apple has a history of secrecy around new products, so I doubt anyone else outside of Cupertino does either.
December 8th, 2008
We Don’t Need Another Kennedy
I can’t recommend this post enough. We don’t need Caroline Kennedy in the Senate.
Now that the Democrats are in power, she’d like to come in at the top. We have absolutely no idea if she’s qualified, or whether she can take the heat of being a Kennedy in public life. She’s certainly shown no appetite for it in the past. She’ll have a target on her back and if she can’t take it, if she crumbles, she will become a rallying point that the right will easily organize around.
This is ridiculous. This is not 14th century England. We do not have royalty, and the idea of “American Nobility” is completely anthema to what this country was founded on. The Republican Party elected W. based on the Bush name, and look where that got them.
There are people out there, real progressives who have done real legwork to bring the Democrats out of the political wilderness, and Caroline Kennedy isn’t one of them.
November 26th, 2008
You’re Supposed to Stone Them to Death
I was standing in the break room this morning getting my coffee, and the news reporter was talking about the anti-Prop 8 protests. A gay man being interview was saying something about how the Declaration of Independence says men were created equal, and if we want to be a truly equal society, we should allow marriage to everyone.
I'm not entirely against stoning Richard Simmons.
A woman gettng some coffee herself said aloud, “But what does the Bible have to say about being gay?” in a smug tone that indicated she thought that was some kind of trump card that ended the debate.
So I answered honestly. “It says we’re supposed to stone them to death.” A couple other people in the room laughed. In a small way, I did my part to fight intolerance today.
In general, though, I don’t really understand people that think they can use Leviticus and Deutoronmy as justification for any kind of moral stance. I’m sorry, but those books condone absolutely horrible stuff. Slavery, rape, ritual community murder of children, and general intolerance to name a few. Plus, it features a God who’s kind of an asshole. If you’re going to decide that what those books say must be done because God said so, you open the door to a lot of acts that pretty much everyone in modern society would recoil from in horror. And that’s good. Society marches on, and we’re a lot more enlightened than an ancient tribe wandering around Asia Minor five thousand years ago.
But you don’t get to pick out one or two passages out of a book and say those are the ironclad law of God while ignoring the rest because he didn’t really mean it when he said a raped virgin must marry her rapist. Sorry, the word of God doesn’t work that way. Either the Bible is infallible or it’s not.
November 25th, 2008
The Big Picture, and I mean Big
If you don’t follow The Big Picture, you should. It’s a part of the Boston Globe’s website, where they post collections of gorgeous high-res photos with a theme. Today they’ve got a collection up in celebration of the ISS turning 10.
Check out a sample…
November 24th, 2008
Somali Pirates Are Making it Cold
Adherents of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism long ago proved the link between pirates and global warming. Never was it more elegantly expressed than in the graph below:
Ironclad Proof!
What’s been in the news lately, though?
A Greek-owned oil-tanker hijacked by Somali pirates in September has been released this weekend with its cargo and crew intact. Its owners confirmed that a ransom had been paid.
Cold snap continues — Unseasonably chilly weather will be the main weather story across the eastern and southern USA this weekend. Highs on Saturday will only be the 20s and 30s in the Northeast and in the 40s and 50s in the Southeast.
The WSJ:
The Copenhagen-based company called on the international community to act on the growing piracy problem in the region as other shipping companies indicated they are considering a similar step.
It’s going to be so cold this weekend, Midlands residents might want to hunker down inside by a fire … or hustle up to North Carolina and take advantage of a rare early opening for the snow ski season.
TEHRAN, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Iran could use force against pirates hijacking ships if necessary, a government official said in comments published on Monday, after an Iranian-chartered vessel was seized off the coast of Yemen last week.
Temperatures that are more than 15 degrees below normal for this time of year, combined with strong northwest winds, are making today uncomfortably chilly in the Charlotte metro region.
Coincidence? No. As we all know from watching the news, correlation is always the same as causation. For instance, there are more violent video games on the market, and there has been a rise in violent crime among teens. Ipso facto, video games cause violence. It couldn’t be that both independently reflect our culture’s growing glorification of violence or the that already-violent teens might tend to buy more violent video games, or anything like that.
No, correlation is always causation. I learned that from Good Morning America. Therefore, we must explain this statistical anomaly. You see, when a pirate seizes a ship, that ship no longer runs, emitting less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And if they seize an oil tanker, less oil is available to burn!
So, since I have proved that pirates fight global warming (also, the British), you may be asking yourself, “is there a downside to having more pirates? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. You see, due to the fact that pirates bury all the treasure they get from robbing ships, it can cause wealth to be taken out of circulation, causing financial instability. A secondary downside is that Johnny Depp seems to become less entertaining the more pirates are around (see the difference in Pirates of the Caribbean 1, and Pirates 3, where everyone became a pirate, and the movie sucked).
These are the facts. I have a graph and anecdotal evidence, thus making my case iron clad. The only other possible explanation is that I have it backwards, and the cold snap is causing a rise in piratery.
But that’s just silly.
November 23rd, 2008
America, where anyone can be elected… even idiots
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.
Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).
No. You’re not reading that wrong. Ordinary citizens did better than elected officials. We should be afraid. We should be very afraid.
You can take the test here. I scored a 90%, missing questions 7, 29, and 33.
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November 23rd, 2008
Jesus Is Not In Your Goddam Cat
I don’t know what to say…
Even in the interview, the girl says she didn’t see it at first. Here’s a hint. If, to see Jesus in your cat, you have to tilt your head to the side, squint your eyes, and take a high-contrast photo to get something that even vaguely looks like a generic human face, JESUS IS NOT IN YOUR GODDAM CAT.
I think I’m far more impressed by the miracles of Jesuscat.
November 23rd, 2008
Wow. We have 0 total yards wi…
Wow. We have 0 total yards with a minute left in the first quarter.