Funny

When I read the headline, Researchers increase probability of U.S. major hurricane landfall, I really have to wonder what magic researchers are working to increase the probability of U.S. major hurricane landfall. It sounds like something Homeland Security should look into; if researchers can increase probability like that then maybe they should turn their superhuman powers elsewhere.

Like decreasing the probability of poorly written headlines.

Of course they didn't increase the probability. They simply noticed an increased probability.

You hear everyone singing the same song about global warming. And when people aren't singing about that, they're singing about war and atrocities.

Bandwagon's full. Please, catch another.

OK. I'll start my own bandwagon out of sheer boredom. I was standing around in the yard wondering what benefits leaking water mains all over San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago had. Then I thought of the SR-71, which leaks fuel all over until it hits a certain speed. Thus, to the tune of This Ain't a Scene, It's An Arms Race, I came up with an odd mix. Listen in. It starts with this:

I am an arms dealer.
Fitting you with weapons in the form of words
And don't really care, which side wins
As long as the room keeps singing
That's just the business I'm in... { Read more }

Via China Goes On Offensive In Its Crackdown On Critics:

Chengdu, China (AHN) - The Chinese government issued a statement on Sunday decrying criticisms of the crackdown in Tibet, calling United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "habitually bad tempered," while accusing the Dalai Lama of causing the pro-independence protests in Tibet...

Hmm. That Dalai Lama guy has great powers indeed if he can make people rise up to China from India. What was it? Telepathy? Astral traveling? How, exactly, did the Dalai Lama do this?

Is there a special insurrection Buddhist dance the world is not aware of?

And what, exactly, is bad about pro-independence protests? And if this is all a big misunderstanding, why is the news being censored? Giggles? Or is it that any recordings of the Dalai Lama astral traveling and inciting pro-independence protests some form of China National Security Issue?

Seriously - they'd be better off accusing Brad Pitt of being the cause of the pro-independence protests in Tibet. At least his superhuman powers have been documented on film. OK. Sorry. that wasn't serious.

I think they must have hired a Western PR agency to actually try this. It reeks of all the insane subterfuge marketers try to get away with (and largely do!).

Xinhua accused China's critics of wanting to smear China's reputation.

No, no, China's critics don't have to smear China's reputation. China is doing it all by itself. And as far as the US and EU supporting the Olympics despite the outcry about this issue... well, what can we expect from the groups that wander around, pay the UN no mind if it is inconvenient and go around invading countries looking for magic carrots? { Read more }

Ever since I could count to 2 in binary, I was interested in artificial intelligence. I read everything. I put Eliza on a Vic-20 and was amazed at stunningly stupid she was. There are Eliza knockoffs sold in Second Life - the modern day Pet Rock I suppose - and that's fine. They aren't actually attempts to do something of worth.

While reading Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind, sometime in the early 1990s, I figured something out: The premise of artificial intelligence is pretty dumb. Why on Earth would people try to create something as smart as people by studying when sex is so much fun? In fact, sex is so much fun that globally speaking, we have more people than we decide to can feed. I'll admit that it is fun trying to figure out how to get something to act human - but that is enough trouble with most humans.

Think about it. Sex is fun - it is so much fun that it has demonstrably increased the global population as far back as anyone can remember. What is the world's oldest profession? I'll give you a hint - it isn't apple picking.

What brings all of this up is the recent creation of a childlike intelligence in Second Life. I won't mock the effort - I'm sure that very smart people are involved - but I will mock the reason for the effort. All I require is a willing female and I have great odds that my carbon replication team can create something smarter than anything you can build in Second Life, with a greater capacity for knowledge and a lower potential for having a large carbon footprint. I could walk into the Amazon rain forest right now, find the first tribe there with children and point at something that beats the snot out of any machine produced: The human child. { Read more }

I've been reading about people putting the Wikipedia, statically, on all sorts of devices. The OLPC, and lately the iPod and iPhone... and I have one question.

Why?

The Wikipedia is never done. Its a dynamic, live, collective project. Why would anyone want an old snapshot on their local system? That's like ordering a 1977 copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Come on... just because you can do something doesn't mean it is smart to actually do it. The strength of collaborative works, even those as flawed as the Wikipedia, is that you can see the latest version of something.

I'm as environmentally conscious as humanly possible, and I try to do things that will mitigate the risk of pollution as best I can. I try to find uses for plastic bottles since Trinidad and Tobago's common idea of recycling is reusing glass rum bottles to sell nuts in. So I buy biodegradable garbage bags. Not having thought much of it, as most people probably haven't, I was a bit surprised when I found an old bag of biodegradable garbage bags. I figured I would use them.

Silly me.

I don't know how long they had been sitting around, but they had already degraded - leaving the tie wraps being the only useful thing left behind.

What I found amusing is that there was no expiration date on the bag - 'use before mm/dd/yy' would probably be useful on biodegradable bags. Condoms come with expiration dates. Oh, you didn't know?

So here's the truth about biodegradable garbage bags - they not only degrade in landfills, they will degrade in your own house.

Now I have to find a bag to put these 'bags' in...

I forget exactly how I got there, but Trini Fake News seems to be an up and coming political commentary blog which may rattle a few cages.

From a spoof of the Trinidad Guardian's front page announcing cell phones are banned to an amusing interview with Larry Achong, this site is one to keep an eye on, especially since the news there seems to be as authentic as what is printed in the press - better, perhaps, because we know that the stuff on Trini Fake News isn't true.

In truth, Trinidad and Tobago politics is a lot like dentistry - the politicians constantly pull on our teeth. At least now we have some laughing gas.

In other news, Patrick Manning, Winston Dookeran and Basdeo Panday are all on Facebook, likely in some sort of strange attempt to do something for the election on November 5th, 2007. Being a nice person who would be willing to drink with any of them, I added them as friends on Facebook.

This only means that I would drink with them. This does not mean that I think any one of them could run a country.