Month: May 2006

  • Motivation!

    Here’s to all those motivational posters we love to hate.

  • Worthwhile Waste of Space

    This video, discovered through the good offices of www.milkandcookies.com, was just a perfect end to the evening.

  • Mahjongg!

    Long ago, in a galaxy far away (Troy, NY), I learned to play Mahjongg on the RPI Unix servers. Now, there is a web app! Awesome.

  • Mission: Unwatchable

    We saw Mission: Impossible III, last night, a serious waste of my precious time. This movie was so disjointed, such a strange mix of action and “feeling” that I still feel a bit whiplashed.

    J.J. Abrams directed and helped to write this movie. It certainly shows. As you may be aware, I’ve expressed my opinion regarding another of Mr. Abrams’ creations, and I believe that the first two seasons of Alias continue to be his only worthwhile accomplishment.*

    Tom Cruise’s scientology-inspired freakiness now permeates everything he does, to the product’s detriment, and was it me, or did his girlfriend in the movie look like Katie Holmes? I liked P.S. Hoffman in his sociopath role, and Laurence Fishburn also did a credible job as the head IMF bossman, although shades of Morpheus snuck through. There were plenty of explosions and lots of death-defying chases and the requisite baseball pitching machine that you see in every credible action flik. I have a list of questions the length of my leg that are similar to, “Why didn’t the sniper just SHOOT Ethan instead of having the drone come by and blow him up with missiles?” I suppose those sorts of questions happen in every action film, but True Lies still sets the bar—in my own very humble opinion—for plausible explosions and crazy shit (other than the flying-a-Harrier-with-one-hand thing).

    Nevermind! I could go on for hours. Suffice to say, I won’t be seeing this movie ever again, and the only reason I would tell someone to see it is so we can complain about it together afterwards.

    *Did you know that J.J. Abrams wrote Armageddon, a movie so bad in its science that I’ve been known to vomit profusely on the TV whenever it’s shown? Well, maybe not that bad, but it’s the worst space movie in a long time. Space Cowboys is a close second.

  • Honest Science

    I’ve seen this before, but it still makes me laugh. Especially:

    This relation between temperature and resistivity can be shown to be exponential in certain temperature regimes by waving your hands and chanting “to first order”.

  • Captain Obvious

    Or as Non Sequitur would have it, “Obviousman!”

    Today, one of the headlines in the Atlanta Journal Constitution reads “1 in 3 U.S. residents belong to minority.”

    Read that a second time if you didn’t get it at first.

  • I'm feeling buff…

    10 Miles today. Wow. I have not run that far since high school. And I did not do it very often then, either. I can confidently say that I’m in pretty good shape for a 32 year-old office worker!

    Two weeks until the Fifth Runway 5K when I get to see how fast I can run on a flat-as-can-be course. I’m really psyched about running on the fifth runway before it opens. How often can you say you’ve walked around on one of the (soon to be) busiest runways in the whole wide world?

    Two months until the Peachtree Road Race. Through an interesting series of events, we have four numbers (for the two of us), so we’ll wait to see which numbers are best and give the other two to some lucky people. We’re hoping to be in the second or third group, but we shall see. Last year we were in the sixth and it took us 37 minutes to cross the start line.

    And lastly, it’s three and two-thirds months until the Peachtree City Triathlon. I need to get back into the pool.

  • I love Phil Plait

    If you don’t read Bad Astronomy, you should.

    For example, this post of his points towards another post which made my day. It’s freaking awesome. Go there. Do it now!

  • Movie Review: RV

    We saw the movie RV last night, starring Robin Williams, Cheryl Hines, Jeff Daniels, and Kristin Chenoweth. It was considerably better than we expected, after seeing the previews and reading some newspaper reviews. It had standard camp-humor involving toilets and animals (not at the same time), but it managed to bring Robin Williams’ funny side to the table without going over the top as he has so many times recently. Jeff Daniels saved this movie from being crappy, though, with his nice-as-all-get-out character. Overall, I give it a 144 out of 169.

  • Geographically Self-Centered America

    National Geographic released a survey of 18-24 year-old Americans, testing their geographic knowledge. The results, as usual, depress me. The summary of results from the website says:

    • Only 37% of young Americans can find Iraq on a map—though U.S. troops have been there since 2003.
    • 6 in 10 young Americans don’t speak a foreign language fluently.
    • 20% of young Americans think Sudan is in Asia. (It’s the largest country in Africa.)
    • 48% of young Americans believe the majority population in India is Muslim. (It’s Hindu—by a landslide.)
    • Half of young Americans can’t find New York on a map

    The website allows you to take the survey questions (or at least a sample of them; it’s not clear) to see how you do compared to a bunch of people aged 18-24 years. I started answering the questions and had a “huh?” moment. To explain, first let me quote from the official report.

    This survey was designed to test the geographic skills and knowledge of young adults. Three kinds of questions are used to gauge geographic know-how. First, there is a series of questions on factual knowledge of important events and issues in the news.

    I question (from my admittedly non-geography expertise) whether or not “current events” qualify as geography. Here are some samples of the questions that I do not think fit into a geographic-knowledge survey.

      “Which of these cities is the setting for the original television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation?” (Las Vegas. I thought it was San Francisco, but I’ve never watched the show.)
      “In 2004, what percentage of population growth in the U.S. was due to immigration?” (33%, I thought 20%.)
      “In which of these countries did a catastrophic earthquake occur in October 2005, killing over 70,000 people?” (Pakistan)

    Do these really qualify as geography? Especially the CSI question. Bleah.

    How about this one:

    Which of the following was not a significant contributing factor in Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the city of New Orleans?

    CHOOSE YOUR ANSWER

    • Much of the city was located below sea level
    • The Mississippi River was at record high flow levels
    • Flood protection walls failed
    • Protective coastal marshes had disappeared

    Again, current events knowledge is required to know that the Mississippi wasn’t in Flood at the time of the storm. Now, given that most people should be able to eliminate answer one and three immediately, I’m still not convinced that to have “geographic knowledge” you’re required to know about the flood stages of the Mississippi.

    Other examples from the Web survey which illustrate some non-geographic knowledge requirements for correct answers:

      “Which language is spoken by the most people in the world as their primary language?” (Mandarin Chinese)

    74% said English. 18% said Mandarin. Crazy Americo-centric people!

      “The most heavily fortified border in the world exists between which two countries?” (North & South Korea)

    30% said the border between the US and Mexico was the most heavily defended. This one I find less excusable. Have all these people ignored the whole illegal immigrant issue? How is it possible to think that the US/Mexico border is well-fortified? I blame this one more on illogical thinking and American chauvinism than a lack of geographic skill.

      “Which of these countries is the world’s largest exporter of goods and services measured in dollar value?” (US)

    Lots of people put in China, which I guess is forgivable given the harping on the trade deficit. This actually makes me wonder, what other countries do we have a huge trade surplus with to make up for the deficit with China?

      “World health officials are very concerned about a particular strain of avian flu. Which continent did that strain of flu come from originally?” (Asia)
      “Which of the following countries is the world’s largest consumer of oil?” (US)

    I’m bitching about some of the questions quoted herein, but the survey also tested map-reading skills and other important knowledge. I recommend skimming the report. It makes for interesting reading. For example, some people, if told to evacuate to the northwest in an emergency situation, would go the opposite direction. Oops.*

    So, am I being a parochial engineer and defining “geography” too narrowly, or do my concerns have merit? I don’t know.

    *As an aside, people should become more familiar with the differences between Global Navigation (north, south, east, west) tendencies and Landmark Navigation (go to the drugstore and take a left). These tend to break down across gender lines with Feminine users preferring Landmark and Masculine users preferring Global. In this particular case, for full coverage of all preferences, evacuation authorites should say, “Evacute to the Northwest, toward Hapsburghvillekilltown.” For more information, I highly recommend a brilliant and engaging professor at Georgia State University for this topic: Dr. Jennifer L. Bowie.