Continue reading People acting stupid with bison. →

Keith Schon of Cataphora discusses how computers can track behavior, and find out all your dirty little secrets.

What are the limits on what your company is allowed to find out about you, and how are they doing it? How do we figure out, after the fact, whether “Yeah, go do that” means “Yes, grab me some lunch” or “Yes, perpetrate that multi-million dollar fraud scheme.” And what do your online behavior patterns say about you?

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The much anticipated Part Three of Jim Hall’s exploration of OpenSource … This is getting really interesting. This collection of posts will be the go-to source for anyone wanting to start an OpenSource project.

Here, on Collective Imagination.

It’s mole day. The mole day site is down (try it later), but you can find out about it on Wikipedia.

Mole Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated among chemists in North America on October 23, between 6:02 AM and 6:02 PM[1], making the date 6:02 10/23 in the American style of writing dates. The time and date are derived from the Avogadro constant, which is approximately 6.02Ã?1023, defining the number of particles (atoms or molecules) in a mole, one of the seven base SI units.

Mole Day originated in an article in The Science Teacher in the early 1980s.[2] Inspired by this article, Maurice Oehler, now a retired high school chemistry teacher from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, founded the National Mole Day Foundation (NMDF) on May 15, 1991.[2]

It is an old story that a vegetarian diet is linked to a more efficient use of resources than a meat-rich diet. One of the reasons cited for this is that meat is taken from a higher level on the food chain, and thus about one tenth of the energy that enters the system is used per culinary unit (calorie, meal, whatever) than for vegetables. However, this argument, while partly true, overlooks a lot of other factors. For instance, the meat is a more efficiently used package for some purposes than the veggies. Think about it this way: A certain percentage of the food you eat is used to build tissues, including tissues used in growth (for growing individuals), for repair of tissues, as well as for immune system products. Meat is essentially the same “stuff” as is produced in these processes, so the balance of amino acids, co-enzymes, etc. in a chunk of meat is very closely matched to the need. Most of the food we eat is used as an energy source, and both meat and veggies have such energy in them, to varying degrees. With respect to energy alone, the most efficient diet may be something like pure sugar produced from prairie grasses or something along those lines.

Continue reading Vegetarian Diets vs. Meat →

… as in folds Fox over her knee and spanks it.
Continue reading Fox News Attacks Rachel Maddow. Maddow Folds. →

I never liked Tucker Carlson.
Continue reading Best worse worst worster in days (Countdown) →

I would double my money instantly!

Hat tip: Counter Minds

The Minnesota Flu Hotline that I had mentioned earlier is a failure. The state is calling it a “hiccup.” Basically, no one can get through because a lot of people are calling in. The local news is reporting that they have yet to get through themselves or to see anyone get through.

Reports are that the state or its contractor were not expecting the volume of calls they are getting. I wonder why it did not occur to anyone that they would get a lot of calls DURING A PANDEMIC!!!!

Anyway, not to throw gasoline on the fire or anything, but if you ARE sick and you REALLY do have the flu, and you ACTUALLY get through to the hotline (click link above to get the number) then maybe they’ll give you a script over the phone for tamiflu. Or so they say. Isn’t that interesting?

Map of newly extended certainty of Eurasian Neanderthal range. From Nature

It has for some time been difficult to assess the eastern limit of classic “Neanderthals.” Some have claimed that Neanderthals were limited to western Asia, others that they extended across much of Asia. The fossil remains themselves have been difficult to interpret. One reason for this is that Neanderthals are not different enough from other contemporary hominids to assert a similarity or difference for a particular fossil, unless you have enough of it, and the fossil record in Central Asia and East Asia for the relevant time period is a bit dicey. Most people agree that fossil material known from Uzbekistan is Neanderthal. That’s not very far east. Beyond that, there is only controversy and mystery.

Until now, perhaps…

Continue reading Go East, Young Neanderthal →

Surprise! That’s the name of a town in Arizona, and that’s where the victims in this particular story live. A young Iraqi-American woman was living a very westernized lifestyle, and that lifestyle would not play in Peoria. And by Peoria, I mean Peoria Arizona, where the young woman’s crazy “traditional” father lived.

Continue reading How to maintain traditional values: Run your daughter over with your car! →

Peter Tu masterfully crosses face recognition technology, the Naturalistic Fallacy, and engineering in Faces, brains and prairies, oh my.