1. Peanut Butter Man
2. Banana Man
3. Evolution vs Creation (1 of 10)

“It is impossible to distinguish creationist argument from creationist parody.”

In 1948, psychologist Bertram R. Forer gave a personality test to his students, and then gave them a personality analysis supposedly based on the test’s results. He invited each of them to rate the analysis on a scale of 0 (very poor) to 5 (excellent) as it applied to themselves: the average was 4.26. He then revealed that each student had been given the same analysis:

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.

Lifted shamelessly from Wikipedia.

Ever tried to blog about one of those articles where you want to quote so much of it that it’s easier to just send you readers straight there?

NO ONE seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won’t involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium.

The odds of this happening in the next few decades are better than the odds that a disgruntled Saudi will sneak onto an airplane and detonate a shoe bomb. And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year to prevent global terrorism and … well, essentially nothing to prevent global warming.

Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster? Because the human brain evolved to respond to threats that have four features — features that terrorism has and that global warming lacks.

First, global warming lacks a mustache. No, really.

Here’s one. Some random bits that I couldn’t resist quoting:

Our ability to duck that which is not yet coming is one of the brain’s most stunning innovations, and we wouldn’t have dental floss or 401(k) plans without it. But this innovation is in the early stages of development. The application that allows us to respond to visible baseballs is ancient and reliable, but the add-on utility that allows us to respond to threats that loom in an unseen future is still in beta testing.

and

If global warming took out an eye every now and then, OSHA would regulate it into nonexistence.

and

Our ability to duck that which is not yet coming is one of the brain’s most stunning innovations, and we wouldn’t have dental floss or 401(k) plans without it.

Just go read it.

Imagine, if you were a sonographer taking pictures of people’s kidneys day after day after day and each one of those people had drunk 32oz of water 90 minutes before the appointment, how many pee jokes you would hear in the average week.

I  was extremely thoughtful and didn’t make a single unprovoked pee joke.

The company across the street from us, Slim Devices, had an open house yesterday and Rob and I walked over to check them out.

Slim Devices sells a product called the Squeezebox that connects – via wireless networking – to Internet Radio stations and plays them through your stereo. I had had my eye on one for a while and almost bought one last week but there was one thing that was putting me off – and I wanted to go ask them about it.

Regular readers of my blog know that, in the 21st century, people will no longer buy music – they will rent it. I rent mine from Rhapsody. The Squeezebox connects to Rhapsody – so I bought one.

When I got home there were three people waiting for me. One of them just gets very, very excited by Things In Boxes. That person was delighted. Another person said:

“What’s that you have there? A thing that plays music? Don’t we already have a thing that plays music?”

And the third said

“You mean…you just type in ‘Black Eyed Peas’ and it’ll play all their stuff? Coooool!”

The device itself is marvellous – everything you could possibly want in a device. It reminded me of Julio’s Mac adventures. How can anything possibly work so well?

Steps to reproduce:

1. Turn it on
2. Wireless or ethernet?
3. Go to squeezenet.com
4. Type in this number
5. Choose Rhapsody
6. Play my personal playlists

I almost cheered! Well done Slim Devices!

The black exterior to my silver cloud? Squeezbox only support 802.11g. My router is 802.11b. Need to go shopping…

I just watched John Bolton on The Daily Show and he was outstanding. A very impressive man. It was refreshing to hear someone speak so eloquently on so many topics on which I hold a different opinion.

I contrast John Bolton with Tom Delay whose performance on Meet the Press on Sunday was utterly contemptible. He spouted nothing but an endless stream of

• we fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here
• don’t forget they attacked us first on 9/11
• the surge is working – and if it’s not it’s because it’s too early to tell
• anyone who says otherwise is aiding and abbetting the enemy
• we need to support our commander in chief

It was disgusting. He made Richard Perle seem like a decent fellow in comparison.

Best line:

Tom, with all due respect, I think I’d be much more comfortable taking the military strategy advice of Admiral Sestak than, than Tom DeLay.

Ugliest:

MR. REP. DeLAY: Well, I–it, it is my opinion that when you go to war, we ought to all come together. You can debate going to war, that’s a legitimate debate. But once you have our soldiers and our, our young people dying on the battlefield, we should come together, and we shouldn’t have what we had yesterday on the Mall of, of, of–in Washington, D.C. When the–those are not, in my mind–my opinion, patriots that are talking about impeaching the commander in chief, that are–that are–work as, as Tom’s group works….

MR. RUSSERT: But setting a date for–is setting a date for withdrawal…

FMR. REP. DeLAY: …every step of the day, undermine–I think it’s aiding and abetting the enemy. When you tell the enemy what your strategy is, that’s aiding and abetting the enemy because they can use that strategy to come back and harm your soldiers.

Best comeback:

REP. SESTAK: I remember when working for President Clinton as director of defense policy, when I didn’t agree with you, Tom, but that there was the Buyer Amendment to stop in a year any more funding for our troops in Bosnia. And then there was, in 1999, the effort not to place any more troops not–in Kosovo. While I may have disagreed with you, I respected your office, that that is the constitutional duty of Congress, to take pride for the common defense.

And the saddest part of all:

REP. JOE SESTAK (D-PA): Tim, I was on the ground in Afghanistan two months after the war began, over Christmastime, for a very short period of time. I saw what had to be done. I then brought my aircraft carrier battle group back for the retaliatory strikes in that country. I went back to Afghanistan on the ground 18 months later and saw what hadn’t been done. As the general said to me, “Joe, we’ve got our finger in the dike,” because we had diverted our resources and our attention to Iraq, a tragic misadventure. Civil affairs forces, Special Ops forces went to Iraq. This war was never a clear nor present danger. And Afghanistan is a poster child for how our security is hurting around the world as it becomes prey to terrorists and Taliban take over the southern province.Second, how we went about this war. In that carrier battle group, I had–I had 30 ships. Only 10 were United States ships. We were on the Indian Ocean doing our retaliatory strikes when we were told to go into the Persian Gulf to begin potentially the running start to the war. Most of those ships, I had Japanese admirals, I had Australian ships, I had British ships, Italian-Greek ships. Except for the British and the Australians, they were the only ones who went with us. We went into that war having left behind that coalition of the willing that helped us in Afghanistan.

Gary Trudeau has a quotation – under the heading “Say What?” – under his comic every day. Today’s one is

“America has been conducting an experiment for the past six years, trying to validate the proposition that it really doesn’t make any difference who you elect president. Now we know the result of that experiment.”

– Gen. Tony McPeak (retired), member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War

I have been going to the weekly presentations at Xerox Parc on and off for several years. This one – next Thursday – looks like the best one yet.

Brewing is the original biotechnology. For 6-8,000 years it has been a delight in the diet, resulting from a tremendously consistent process founded on intricate understanding of the underpinning science. It is an industry that informed all modern day fermentation processes. Beer looks good, it tastes good – and it does you good. This talk will explain all this and much more besides.

Charlie Bamforth, Ph.D., D.Sc. Professor of Malting & Brewing Sciences at the University of California

How come my Careers Advisor never told me that I could have been a Professor of Beer?

My comment about ‘real’ or ‘fantasy’ reminds me of our sit down conversation with Dylan when it was time to tell him about the fantasies that parents make up for their young children’s amusement [Are you sure it's for the child's amusement? - ed].

The conversation went something like this:

Parents: You know, Dylan, there are somethings that parents make up to amuse their children. Can you guess what they are?

Child: God?

Parents: Er. OK. That’s one, but that’s not the one we had in mind! Any more?

Child: Tooth Fairy?

Parents: yep.

Child: That was you? Dammit! Will I still get money when I lose a tooth?

Parents: Sure. Any more?

Child: Santa?

Parents: yep. But don’t tell any other kids in case their parents want to amuse themselves for a little longer…and don’t tell Jazz. You have to help her enjoy the fantasy now.

Child: I knew it! I knew there was no such thing as Santa!

He was pleased with himself for a long time about that last one.

“Mythology is where all gods go to die……[usual ranting snipped]…….Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.”

Sam Harris in the LA Times 

No need to read the article – you’ve read it before. Just enjoy those two classic lines.