Imageshack stuffing up again

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ImageShack is Down

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Or this one

Create your own Motivational Posters at this website.

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Test Your Drug Knowledge

I'm not sure whether I should be proud or ashamed of this result - at least I know drugs well enough to have an informed, intelligent view of them, but by the look of this test perhaps I know them a bit too well...


NameThatDrug.com - Test your drug knowledge

Things I've Learned

Thanks to Nicky for this list, which contains some gems we should all take to heart.

I've learned… that life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.
I've learned… that we should be glad God doesn't give us everything we ask for.
I've learned… that money doesn't buy class.
I've learned… that it's those small daily happenings that make life so spectacular.
I've learned… that under everyone's hard shell is someone who wants to be appreciated and loved.
I've learned… that the Lord didn't do it all in one day so what makes me think I can?
I've learned… that to ignore the facts does not change the facts.
I've learned… that the less time I have to work, the more I get done.

God's Inbox

And you thought YOUR email inbox was full of the same old garbage all the time…

Harry McGurk

You've come across a zillion optical illusions on the web, but how many audible illusions have you found? OK, you could argue that the Harry McGurk Effect is also an optical one, since it requires you to watch at least half the time, but the real tricking is through the ears, and whichever way you look at it, it's a fascinating illusion.

Whenever you watch the movie linked here, you'll quite clearly hear him saying "Dada dada dada", but if you close your eyes, you'll quite clearly hear him saying "Baba baba baba" instead. Play the clip several times, alternating between looking while listening, and listening with your eyes shut. Try looking off to the side of the screen and then quickly looking straight at him in mid-sentence, and what you hear will change!

Most adults (98%) think they are hearing "Dada". In reality you are hearing the sound "Baba", while you are seeing the lip movements for "Gaga". The McGurk Effect was first described by Harry McGurk and John MacDonald in "Hearing lips and seeing voices", Nature 264, 746-748 (1976).

Surviving a Disaster

Today I came across "100 top item to disappear first during a national emergency". What's interesting about this list isn't what items go first, but what it says about humans and the way they think, feel and act when the chips are down. It wasn't the list which interested me, so much as the psychology behind it. Here it is, in the same order as the original list, but broken down into "reaction stages". You can see the original, full list here.

Generators, Water Filters/Purifiers, Portable Toilets, Firewood, Lamp Oil, Wicks, Lamps, Coleman Fuel
I want to make sure I'm warm, am drinking safe water and can go to the toilet.

Guns, Ammunition, Pepper Spray, Knives, Clubs, Bats & Slingshots
Having secured a few treasures, I will now fight or kill anyone who tries to take them.

Hand Can Openers, Egg Beaters, Whisks, Honey/Syrups/Sugar, Rice, Beans, Wheat, Cooking Oil, Charcoal, Lighter Fluid
I'm getting hungry. I need food, and I need to cook with my fire, not just use it for warmth.

Water Containers, Propane Cylinder, Survival Guide Book, Mantle Lighting
I've suddenly realised water won't be coming out of the pipes much longer, I'll need to go looking for it. The lamps I got first day don't last long, and I know nothing about how to fend for myself when the water stops. I'd better learn.

Baby Supplies, Diapers, Ointments, Aspirin, Washboards, Mop Bucket, Cookstoves, Vitamins, Feminine Hygiene, Haircare
First indication that I need to care about someone other than myself. Living rough isn't as healthy as I thought it was going to be, I feel sick and need to keep everything cleaner to stop disease.

Saws, Axes, Hatchets, Wedges, Aluminum Foil, Gasoline Container, Garbage Bags, Toilet Paper, Kleenex, Paper Towels, Powdered Milk, Garden Seeds, Clothes Pins, Pump Repair Kit, Tuna Fish, Fire Extinguishers, First Aid Kits, Batteries, Garlic, Spices & Vinegar, Baking Supplies
Notice how we've gone from "essentials to keep me alive today" to "start getting things for the long-term"? Also, some things have already broken down, and we almost had a fire in the shelter last night when one of the lamps tipped over.

Big Dogs
We got attacked and I found its a lot harder to kill someone than I thought, so I need an animal to do it.

That's about a third of the list, but you get the general idea. Have a look at the complete list, and think about the timing, and why that item is important at this stage in the disaster. It's an interesting view.

Viagra Vermin

No society can exist without laws to control and limit individual rights and actions. Rights campaigners would find that a bitter pill to swallow, but its the plain truth. The only way I, for example, can have the right to own a particular shiny gemstone is if everyone else agrees that they can't own it, because I do. So laws, and the legal system, are there for a good reason. We each give up rights so that society as a whole can enjoy an "average" standard of rights.

The legal system sometimes has to decide whether the damage an individual did, or could have done if allowed to get away with it, was sufficiently bad to warrant sending the person to jail. So, in the case of the poor maid who served a cup of urine to her employer (story here), she got jailed, even though he didn't drink the stuff.

Chinese Police today siezed 18,000 fake Viagra tablets (Story here), and one would have to argue that even though no-one took these pills because they were seized, the potential for damage to society is quite horrific. Just imagine for a moment that you are one of those unfortunates who need to take Viagra to… er… rise to the occasion. Imagine then, that after taking one, you still can't get any joy happening. Perhaps in desperation you'd pop 4 or 5, and get absolutely no effect whatsoever… its not as if, like a woman, you can groan a couple of times and fake it. In my humble opinion, the potential for serious damage to relationship, personal psyche, health and emotional wellbeing is so bad that these fake Viagra-peddlers should get life without possibility of parole - and with an unending supply of the real thing given to their fellow inmates. The punishment, after all, should always fit the crime…

Test Yourself

Test yourself out at am-i-dumb.com. Of course, if you take the test and find you're just too dumb for society to be expected to put up with you, you should consider doing the responsible thing, but first check how much you're worth; it might be that you're less of a drain on society alive than dead...

See how much you're worth at humanforsale.com

Gung-Ho Mr Howard

Prime Minister John Howard's move to stamp out abuse and alcoholism in indigenous communities has, over the past few weeks, attracted all the expected criticism that we are "invading" aboriginal communities, that every land right won over decades is being stolen back, and that they are being victimized for being aboriginal. So what? Evil prevails when good men do nothing, the saying goes. No matter how respectful of a person's rights you are, there is a point where you can take no more, where action becomes absolutely necessary. In the words of Star Trek's Captain Picard, "the line must be drawn here, this far and no further."

When I read that an 11-year old boy has given STD's to two preschool-age girls of 5 and 6, whom he forced to have sex with him (article here); that 19 aboriginal men have been charged with 39 child sex offences in just two weeks since Mr Howard's campaign began; that last February, 15 men from the Kalumburu community were charged with 103 offences… it is definitely past time to draw the line and say "no further". Go for it, Mr Howard - no sane person could possibly object.

Harry Potter and the Disclosed Secrets

Its becoming a more regular and more promoted annual event than Christmas! Yes, Harry Potter is back and the whole world except Me, apparently, is once again in a frenzy of fanaticism over the latest book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. To save you angst (and purely as a a public service of course) here's everything you need to know:

Burbage dies p12
Hedwig dies p56
Mad-Eye dies p76
Scrimgeour dies p15
Wormtail dies p471
Dobby dies p476
Snape dies p658
Fred Weasley p637
Harry gets effed up by Voldemort on p704
Comes back to life on p724
Nagini gets beheaded by Neville Longbottom on p733
Tonks, Lupin, and Colin Creevy have their deaths confirmed on p734
Voldemort killed Snape
Ron and Hermione get married, 2 kids
Harry and Ginny get married, 3 kids
Malfoy has a son
Final line of the book:
"The scar had not pained harry for nineteen years. All was well."

Let's face it, only a tiny fraction of the fans out there have ever read more than 10 pages of any of the books, anyway. 700 plus pages? Get real!

BigPond Brother

Apple has a handy list on their website of all the latest software releases. Over the last couple of weeks, I've noticed that every time I tried to access macgamefiles.com, the server couldn't be found. I didn't worry about it too much, but my sister emailed me saying she was having the same problem, so I decided to investigate a bit further. What I found was almost unbelievable.

Telstra BigPond have blocked the macgamesfiles and insidemacgames websites! And goodness only knows what others. I couldn't really credit that they would, so I redirected my network through our old ISDN server, which uses NT Services Tas not BigPond, and sure enough, the sites can be accessed through that. That puts the blame squarely on BigPond. Others have found the same thing, as evidenced by the Australian MacTalk Forum.

I can still scarcely believe that an ISP which doesn't block porn, illegal software, serial number trading or music piracy, has decided to ban websites based solely on the user's platform. Is it even legal to do so? This constitutes a gross instance of discrimination, and I'll be contacting the Australian Internet Ombudsman about it. I'll keep you posted.

Lost in Translation

They say English is one of the hardest languages to learn, which is probably why so many foreigners armed only with a Local Language-English dictionary manage to produce some amazing signs and menus. Sometimes you can see how the wrong word was used, how a word similar in meaning to the one they actually used could also have a second meaning close to was intended. But then there are the example which make you wonder if they actually tried to translate at all, or if they just picked random words from the dictionary. I came across a Chinese website today which seems to be trying to sell some sort of health product, based on the picture. But don't let a picture sway you, read all about it before you buy:

Ad the Romans! Intelligence to the defense of Islam because they tribe he might exercise therapy them fresh things to improve a lie against Allah do what? Tell them not earth? Intelligence improve his supplication away the earth they? And drew toward and living habits disease. The health of family life build him and take care of him! Sad. Is visceral fat, sugar metabolism from the Secretary things. Lo! Heel. Sentence deviated away from the blunt from the sky for thee, we increased blood compression strokes nor could they have problems depending on what they thee. Fertilizer fill as he disbelieved and when the health of the victims been dispute to perish when, the body of felicity is the visceral fat. Such are the ways of reasons for you not take yours, caravan.

Lui muscle is not you normal hepatic detoxification them role for him and most of all save a convincing proof that ye desire. The verses, muscle him, in fine, muscular shortage is NADO is detoxification when they handcuffed away, most of them are ungrateful and that ye reasons they not have a will. Hepatic you handle them away down to him mad when no toxins and ye praises occasions. Nay, hepatic you tired of Moses but they rebelled detoxification cooperation between them, when our children have them in vivo accumulation is what thee Resurrection. Endotoxin is the body fat stored them reward you, you fat Moses fuel burn them to him so that they may prejudice them.

Well, I'm convinced, where's my chequebook?

iApologize

Ok, I apologize for everything I said about Apple's new iPhone a couple of weeks ago, and suggesting that people who got all enthusiastic about it should get a life. How was I to know that this little device has so many applications? See the video below and decide for yourself.

A Tall Dark Stranger

If humans are so intelligent, how come so many people still believe in astrology, witchcraft and all that crap? If psychics have any real powers, how come they don't ring you up when you want to ask them a question? And how about that phrase "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual". Every time I hear anyone call themselves "spiritual" it's just after they mention astrology and rebirthing their inner-child silver chord of reiki feng-shit, and just before I land a flying Clenched Fist Of Love on their mouth, or shove their tarot cards up their third eye and tell them to go self-heal themselves. Hey, the whole point of religion is that you do believe, even though logic tells you its impossible. That's why they call it Faith. Start trying to explain it in terms of creative auras and energy channels and you've got plain, ordinary physics, but without the provability.

Horoscopes? Ever notice how every time someone asks what sign you are, they always say "Thought so, you're so much a..." after you tell them. So how come they couldn't tell you and had to ask in the first place? Astrological signs are based on symbols drawn by people who believed that light from stars came from burning chariot wheels, the world was flat and had dragons in each corner. And yet people even make financial decisions based on them. Can you believe there are homo sapiens out there who literally believe clumps of rocks and dirt floating around pockets of gas have anything to do with their stocks and lottery winnings?

You've got to love the phone psychics especially, who address Mrs Average Housewife as a dear old friend, so that now she feels justified about spending $50 on that newly-acquired Brazilian power crystal she stares into to "improve reception" while the psychic at the other end of the line does a line of coke off a hooker's ass with the millions he's raked in from morons like her. And of course, every prediction contains lots of words like "could be", "might", "possibly" and "good chance", which covers the Hotline's butt in the unlikely event that everything they tell you turns out to be horseshit and has nothing to do with anyone or anything in the universe. That would constitute fraud, so thankfully we have the Doctrine of Uncertainty to protect psychics everywhere from malpractice lawsuits. Otherwise an entire industry of aging hippies, middle-class 16 year old girls and bored housewives, trudging aimlessly from one rebellious new-age religion to the next, would have to find a new hobby - and who knows, maybe grow a brain.

iPhone Phanatics

I started out on PC's, went to Macs fairly early on, and now I have both in one with my Intel MacMini. Even during all my Mac years I owned a PC, it just didn't get turned on much. I've been as enthusiastic a Mac convert as most Mac users, but in regard to all the hype surrounding Apple's new iPhone, i just have to say... get a life people! My 60 gig iPod has 8,000+ songs on it, a few games, 1500 pictures of Tasmania, the entire New Testament, and 3 or 4 entire series of TV from 'Blakes 7' to 'Chasers War on Everything', as well as about 80 episodes of the comedy podcast 'Channel Frederator'. It gets used every day, and that means its also very scratched.

Now we've got the iPhone. Enthusiastists camped out at Apple's stores for days before they came out to ensure they got one, but what exactly did they actually get for their money? As I see it, there are going to be quite a few problems with the iPhone.

1. Battery Life - Apple have been touting some pretty amazing times, and I frankly don't believe them. Anything with a screen is going to chew through power.
2. Size - this thing is just too BIG to be a phone. Sure it looks great, but its too heavy to comfortably sit in your pocket, and your keys are going to scratch it to a terrible state in no time at all.
3. Storage - its hard to understand why anyone would buy one given there are 60 gig iPods out there versus the iPhone's 8 gig. The batteries can give you 7 hours of video, but can you fit 7 hours of video on the iPhone?
4. Cost - the iPhone is about 10 times the iPods cost per gig of storage. 'OK', you say, 'but its a phone not a media player'.
5. Support - all the rest of us in other countries may, or may not, be able to find a service provider who supports it. Even if we do, it'll cost us an arm and a leg to subscribe to one.

The problem is that Apple aren't really pushing it as a phone, they're trying to sell you on the idea that its a pocket computer that can also make calls. That means a lot of people are going to be disappointed when the shine wears off and they wake up to the fact they could have bought a laptop for the same price. I predict in the next few weeks, we'll see a lot of "I bought an iPhone and wish I hadn't" stories.

Computers Get it Wrong

The computer illiterate 95% of the population (no, just being able to use one DOESN'T make you computer literate) will tell you that computers never make mistakes, that they are always correct because they use logic and maths. They think this makes them cleverer than the previous generation of people, who blamed "computer error" for everything bad that ever happened.

Any programmer, of course, will tell you that computers DO make mistakes, BECAUSE they use maths and logic. Remember how the world was going to end in 1999 because of Y2K? Remember how Pentiums added 2+2 and got 3.999999? Logic is great until you encounter a statement like "I am lying to you when I say this statement is a lie". Maths is a great way of describing the universe, but it has SOME limits, like the fact that the number zero doesn't really exist, and therefore if you try to divide by it you're in trouble. When applied to computers, there are always limits on maths imposed by the hardware, maximum values on floating bit variables and integers, etc.

A fair while ago, I dropped a tongue-in-cheek email to the creator of Lux, Dustin Sacks, showing that if you sat there putting more and more armies into a country instead of finishing off your opponent, eventually the numbers wrapped around and your chock-a-block country went back to zero population. Even though no-one in a normal game would ever come REMOTELY close to the number of armies I was talking about, Dustin fixed the problem in a later release - or so I thought.

But not quite. See that room in the middle of the screen snapshot with 341 million soldiers in it? The turn before, it has just under 2300 million. Presumably, having reached the magic number of 256 (binary 8 bits limit), my population reverted back to zero plus the income from this turn, which I must admit, was fairly high by this stage of the game. It just goes to show that the best laid plans of mice, men and programmers will always provide a few "hidden features" (programmer jargon for "bugs") for the adventurous or just plain stupid to discover. Just like real life.