Topics

16

Aneristic Illusions / Please help me - I'm starting to like the Tea Party crowd

« on: December 30, 2009, 08:18:20 pm »

Tempest in the Tea Party

Would a true Tea Party patriot drop nearly $1,600 in donor money for a small meal at a fancy steakhouse? Robin Stublen says no, and he's mad as hell about the profligate expenditures of a GOP political organization that has glommed on to his grassroots movement.

...

"Six people averaged $266, that's not grassroots. I kill bugs and cut grass for a living. I'm splurging when I spend $19 at Chili's. Outback Steakhouse is reserved for Mother's Day," Stublen says.

Or rather - I'm having trouble finding something to hate in that.

17

Apple Zone / Sketchy Santas

« on: December 09, 2009, 11:53:09 pm »

http://www.sketchysantas.com/



How can you hate xmas, when it consistently delivers, like this?!

18

Techmology and Scientism / Biocentrism

« on: December 09, 2009, 05:24:42 pm »

One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the "many-worlds" interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the 'multiverse'). A new scientific theory - called biocentrism - refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling - the 'Who am I?'- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesn't go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?

And from wikipedia:

Lanza's theory of biocentrism has seven principles:

• What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An "external" reality, if it existed, would by definition have to exist in space. But this is meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind.
• Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.
• The behavior of subatomic particles, indeed all particles and objects, is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.
  
• Without consciousness, "matter" dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.
• The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The "universe" is simply the complete spatio-temporal logic of the self.
• Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.
• Space, like time, is not an object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.

The problem I have is that although my bullshit detector is going off like crazy, parts of it make sense to me. So I'm posting this in the hope that someone can pick it apart and rid me of my delusions.

19

Apple Zone / Good UK TV comedy?

« on: December 07, 2009, 05:48:30 pm »

I need my fix and I've been away so long I have no clue about what is worth watching any more. Any suggestions most welcome.

20

Aneristic Illusions / Cash prizes for catching CCTV criminals

« on: December 05, 2009, 06:40:27 am »

"Internet Eyes is a very worrying development - we are already the most watched country in the world. Now we have a private company asking private individuals to spy on each other."

Although, how far would you have to push this technology before you didn't need a police force and would that be a good or a bad thing?

21

Apple Zone / Attribution

« on: November 30, 2009, 07:59:59 pm »

In the pre-internet era, attribution to works as a license condition was a career and livelihood requirement. This persisted through the early period of the world wide web when it was extremely difficult to pinpoint original sources of data. In addition, the one-many communication model before things like blogs, youtube, forums and comments became both technically feasible and popular, meant that unless you owned or had access to a broadcast platform like a popular website or old media, then your voice would never be heard.

So where are we now? We're in a many-to-many communication environment where anything which is a good story will quickly bubble up. Example - the Obama "HOPE" poster - remember the kerfuffle about whether it was taken from an actual photograph or not and who owned the copyright? The story broke on blogspot! This means that we're in a situation where someone else can profit from your work without attribution for a short period of time before it's discovered and becomes news, generating greater publicity for the original author. Even it it's just a fight between two internet forums, it's a simple matter to prove and document plagiarism and influence.

I bring this up because quite often I see people ask to reuse content, and are given the go-ahead with the restriction of attribution or non-modification. I'd like to argue the case that this is unnecessary and may even be detrimental to the spread of good ideas.

In a general case, is it better to have one person creating a derivative of your work with full attribution - or a dozen people working without attribution, but with the ability to gain the limelight should they strike gold? It's also a question of practicality - the effectiveness of a leaflet or poster may be diminished with attribution taking up valuable space.

Another upside - if someone creates a total piece of crap, without attributing you, then you can just sweep that under the rug and let it quietly die in obscurity.

22

Literate Chaotic / Discordian Parables

« on: November 30, 2009, 07:02:46 pm »

The idea behind this thread is to list or come up with some new parables, and then extract or inject meaning into it. The point being that while there may be no wrong or right answers, you still may be asked to defend your shitfuckcrazy thoughts. If anything comes of this I'll have a go at making a leaflet or something.

Roger and the Tooth Fairy
The part where Roger decides, after running out in horror after discovering the jar of teeth, to dive back in after becoming convinced that weird is the new normal.


No longer constrained by small towns and villages, our gene pool has likely never been more turbulent than it is now. In ways unimaginable 100 years ago, it's increasingly common to pick partners from across a country and even the world. What does this mean for human evolution? Shouldn't we be expecting to see more and more freaks, mutants and leaders? Because the view from my window matches this expectation.

Does this have any impact on memes and how evolution applies to the spread and dissemination of ideas? Does mixing up different flavours of weird produce greater quantities/qualities of weird or, through the necessary process of identifying common denominators, ground it so that it can provide unique solutions and value to a wider audience?

I think, inevitably over time, the latter.

If so, then we should all be diving headfirst into weird, not just for the fun of it, but to spur onward our social evolution since most of our current solutions suck, and we need to start applying some new answers.

23

Techmology and Scientism / How many bytes?

« on: November 28, 2009, 05:19:46 am »

"Overall view of large file room at FBI headquarters. 1944"





From what I can gather, the large sheets of paper are fingerprints and a small amount of descriptive text for an individual. Compressed, I'm pretty sure the data in that room could fit under one terrabyte. Most of the space in that hall seems to be sacrificed for the ease of filing, rather than storing the data itself.

But any guesses? I arrive at the terrabyte figure by assuming an upper limit of one megabyte to store all information on an individual, and that I expect there may be several hundred thousand individuals listed, but less than one million.

24

Apple Zone / ATTN: Payne

« on: November 13, 2009, 09:48:36 pm »

If that's the only way it can be, then you have a deal.

Bah. I can do better than that. I'm sorry for fighting dirty/below the belt. And by extension, I'm sorry to Pixie too.

As it turns out, this place is a noticeably less fantastic without you around - I don't think I'm the only one who thinks so. You mentioned a few weeks ago that you were posting here less because a couple of spags had pissed you off - but I don't recall you having run-ins with anyone else.

So I do hope you can accept this apology, and maybe we can put the past behind us?

25

Apple Zone / A giant cock mongler unlimited fail thread

« on: November 03, 2009, 03:12:49 am »

I should have a fail thread by now. What is wrong with you people?

Your dedication to fail is half-hearted at best.

Your appraisal of the situation is flawed, spag. I am so dedicated to fail that I have accomplished the feat of failing at my own failure.

Failing at failure is by definition success, one is as unremarkable as the other.

Yes, but I have then failed at being remarkable, haven't I?

No. But don't worry - a scant few decades after your death and no-one will remember that you even existed.

26

Apple Zone / Swedes divided over bunny biofuel

« on: October 16, 2009, 08:02:32 pm »

Residents in Stockholm are divided over reports that rabbits are being used to make biofuel.

The bodies of thousands of rabbits are fuelling a heating plant in central Sweden, local newspapers say.

It's shit like this which makes me miss Europe.

27

Apple Zone / Large Erection

« on: October 14, 2009, 06:30:36 pm »

Looked out the window this morning and saw this:


So big I had to stitch together three shots.

28

Apple Zone / Catnip fetus toy in pink

« on: October 06, 2009, 06:27:41 pm »

And more Etsy-fail here:
http://www.regretsy.com/

My favourite has to be the vulva-portrait pendants - probably NSFW.

29

Techmology and Scientism / Grow a pair, Mr Wales.

« on: August 25, 2009, 02:21:18 am »

The most beautiful thing about Slashdot, is that if you get in early, you can insult influential people in the technology world and have a pretty good chance that they'll actually read it. I don't know why this amuses me as much as it does.

Anyway, if anyone has mod-points and a dislike of Jimmy Wales:
  hxxp://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/24/224259

30

Propaganda Depository / BIP: Page 1

« on: August 21, 2009, 08:54:57 pm »

Just a quick experiment, apologies if I've misused any assets - and I'll take it down, if so.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF7Kcm1Zd40