I recommend that instead, Sarah Palin shuts the fuck up.

See also this post.

I don’t often point people to online game-like interactive thingies, but this one has my endorsement. Give yourself a few minutes to watch the process. It can be gruesome:

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, recently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab (Please contact us if you want to show it next!). It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

Click here to get started.

If it is not gruesome enough for you, enter my name, you’ll be shocked.

Hint: If using a small screen, a) run this in its own firefox window, and b) use F11 to maximize the screen if requested by the application. Then, when it’s done, you’ll have to close the window with brute force because F11 probably won’t work from within the flash display that will have filled the screen. So Alt-F4 or Alt-Tab your way out of there.

Good luck.

Hat Tip: Joe

This was just across the river from me:

It looks like this may have stopped a local crime wave of armed robberies in the area. More inf here.

In contrast, when this couple was burglarized, there was nothing they could have done to stop it:

A 28-year-old man is facing burglary charges after police say he stole items from the home of an elderly couple who had recently passed away.

Jason Williams, of Newport, Minn., is accused of stealing jewelry, a box of photo lockets of WWI-era pictures and two watches with the couple’s initials engraved in them on New Year’s Eve. Police say the estimated value of the jewelry is more than $1,000.

Note: He was caught despite the best efforts of the residents to ignore him!

More posts on Gun Ownership here.

The latest from the National Institute of Aerospace:
Continue reading Astrobiology: “We’re searching for ET but it’s really hard to see…” →

Statistics and various studies show that yes, it might, but they also show that having a gun in the home is also potentially very dangerous, so the net aggregate outcome (and economists have strong armed us into thinking that net aggregate outcomes are the only criteria that are acceptable, bless their pointy heads) of having a gun in the home is that someone in your home is more likely to be shot and possibly killed than that the gun will be used to thwart a home invasion.

But enough about facts, let’s look at two very current anecdotal cases and argue about them for a while:
Continue reading Will your gun help you in the case of a home invasion? →

For purely demographic reasons, more Californians read this blog than people from any other US state (with New York a close second). So I know that it will matter at least a little bit if I endorse my friend, Miles Kurland for member of the California Democratic Party Central Committee.

Continue reading Californians, Vote for Miles Kurland! →

Enjoy this recent post on “How does one prove astrology?”

…The meat of Curtis’ comment appears to be a way to test astrology, or at least one aspect of it. My problem with the suggestion is the same that I’ve had with the concept of astrology as a whole — it depends on a foundation that is simply not there.

Have you ever been to Zzyzx Road, in the Mojave Desert? Carr2d2 has an excellent post on early 20th century woo and politics: Adventures of the Mind.

2010 space odyssey never did happen. But it’s not too late to engage in the conversation. You just have to know how to talk like Hal: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.

This Week’s Skeptically Speaking looks especially interesting: Your Baby’s Brain.

We’ll discuss the science of parenting with Dr. John Medina. His book Brain Rules For Baby examines some of the most basic things that science understands about the developing brain, and provides helpful strategies for encouraging your child’s development. What effect does TV really have on the infant mind? And how does a child’s happiness influence her intelligence? And to start off the episode, Geek Dad contributor Jason Cranford Teague speaks to us about science, technology and parenting.

And finally, Can Hurricanes Trigger Earthquakes? Quite possibly indirectly.

Don’t sleep with feminists. And if you do, have a backup plan.

The Podcast from last Sunday’s show is now on line. Go here and find “download now” and click that.

Should the Skepchicks start reproducing as soon, and as quickly, as possible? I say yes. What do you think?

Thank you Diandra for making the link between the current Republican effort to “democratize” science and Arnie Proxmire and his Golden Fleece award. You are absolutely correct.

My first bird of 2011 was a crow, so I’ll move right along to my second bird which was a hawk, presumably a red tail. That does not count birds I could hear but not see. Register your first bird here at 10⁴Birds.

Is there a sustainable aquaculture? Maybe. It might involve Vietnamese catfish.

Check out these excellent photographs of Angry Birds. Not the video game, the actual birds. Angry.

Holy crap jesus christ on a stick, look at this:

Continue reading Natural History →

Hacktivists have struck a blow against the regime in Zimbabwe by attacking a number of government websites. The cyber-assault appears to have been in support of newspapers who published secret cables in the ongoing WikiLeaks saga, to the annoyance of the-powers-that-be in the country.

Grace Mugabe, wife of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe, was recently reported to be suing a newspaper for $15 million after it published a WikiLeaks cable that claimed she has benefited from illegal diamond trading.

As news spread amongst the loosely-knit group of Anonymous hackers who support WikiLeaks, websites belonging to the Zimbabwe government and Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party were hit by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and, in the case of the Finance Ministry, defacements.

Source, and a picture of the hacked site, here.

Except when it does not work.

A glitch on Apple’s iPhone has stopped its built-in alarm clock going off, leaving many people oversleeping on the first two days of the New Year.

Angry bloggers and tweeters complained that they had been late for work, and were risking missing planes and trains.

Bloggers late for work? LOL.

Apple is not revealing why this happened but claims they will have it fixed by January 3rd. So, tonight, if you use your iPhone as your alarm clock, just go to sleep knowing you’ll be awakened in the morning exactly as you wish. Because, you know, it’s an Apple product, so it will work. It will. I mean, you do trust them, right?

I mean it isn’t like this has ever happened before or will happen again.

A similar problem hit the iPhone alarm when the clocks went back in November, again causing many users to be late for work or for transport arrangements.

Huh? Who said that? Oh, the BBC. OK, so this HA happened again. In fact, it seems to happen at every opportunity.

Well, whatever. You have no business relying on your iPhone to wak you up or tell you the time. It’s a phone, dammit. Use it like one.

I tried to you my iTouch as a timer when cooking something last summer but it shut down during the process (there was plenty of battery juice, it just shuts down). I assumed thereafter that alarm clocks on such a device would not work properly, and have not even considered trying it. Good for me.

Meanwhile, if you use Microsoft Hotmail, you should check to see if your emails were wiped out by accident. Oooops. Oh, you were relying on Microsoft to keep your stuff secure? Not smart.

Adobe is no better.

But don’ worry, Linux is here to save you. Samsung is coming out with a serious iPod competitor based on Linux. Of course, you can’t completely trust Android either, what with their problems with text messages.

Atheists Talk, #98, January 2, 2011

As 2010 rolls out, we all hope the future is bright for 2011. Along with hope, there’s always hype. Bringing us a reality check from their areas of expertise are these savvy thinkers:

Greg Laden, bio anthropologist and bogger for Scienceblogs.com, will give his top ten list of science stories for 2010, with commentary on the new field of paleogenomics

Maggie Koerth-Baker, science journalist and writer for BoingBoing.net, will talk about the Future of Energy in the US

Steve Borsch, media trend expert at Connecting the Dots, has insights for a year of accelerating change

Will Steeger, WillSteeger.com, arctic explorer and eyewitness to the on-going catastrophic consequences of global climate change will tell us the latest observations

Interviewer Lynn Fellman, FellmanStudio.com, is an artist communicating science through art, and a frequent science interviewer on “Atheist Talk”.

Host Brent Michael Davids, FilmComposer.us, is an award winning composer and creator of the music for the “Atheist Talk”.

Listen to AM 950 KTNF on Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to radio@mnatheists.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it during the live show.

This is the radio station info:
http://www.am950ktnf.com/listen and to stream live use a Minnesota zip code.

… is temporarily suspended due to technical difficulties. I am experiencing the equivalent of a denial of service attack from our friends in Turkey.

Commenting has been turned back on, but seems to be broken at least on recent posts. Sorry for the inconvenience. Should the situation persist in the morning, I’ll be here, waiting for SB.com to go back to normal.

Happy New Year!