Unhelpful

While in IRC, our friend Grogan linked a site I’d read a little of in the past, but a video I hadn’t seen or at least hadn’t remembered. God is imaginary is one of a few sites devoted to atheism and rational thought that rejects metaphysics, but also concentrates on talking to Christians rather than at or about them. It spends most of its energy making intelligent, rational arguments about the logical inconsistencies of faith generally, and Christianity specifically.

The technique the site uses is to take some basic precepts and to see where they lead if rationally and logically applied in the form of thought experiments. This reminded me of a thought experiment I’ve thought about for a long time. It’s original to me in the sense that I didn’t read it anywhere, but I have absolute certainty that other people have independently come up with it, and have probably written it down better than I have.

The subject is not religion, but rather, a different area of metaphysics.

I have a friend, whom I will refer to as Steve, who is very “open-minded” to concepts such as ghost hauntings, alien visitations, government coverups of alien crashes, and other issues which can fairly be described as pseudoscience. Read more »

If internet memes are for anything, it’s for dragging them around the block until they’re bloody. While watching boxxybabee with a mixture of fascination and horror, I was reminded of an extremely interesting video technique I first saw applied a year or so ago. I can no longer find the original (which, by the way, used better source material than mine), so I can’t properly credit the person who came up with it. However, I remembered it well enough to re-create it.

A week or so ago, I was thinking about a particularly amusing XKCD strip about Google search results in relation to a rather silly story about the Vatican suggesting that people consider give up text messaging for Lent.  This made me curious as to what the best hit for the phrase “Gave up x for Lent” where x is some traditional Lenten sacrifice, or an ironic statement about Lent, or just some terribly random thing.  I aimed for the funny, but actually ended up surprising myself.  Just a note, I searched for “gave up x for Lent” rather than “give up x for Lent” because I figured out of the two phrasings, the former was more likely to be a real (if funny) circumstance, or at least an honest observation, where as the latter would be slightly more likely to be someone trying to make a funny suggestion.

We’ll skip the lecture on the scientific approach to irony here.

Starting with the classics here, without much surprise.
Read more »

Sabrina, 2008

I’m not terribly fond of tacky, morose pet memorial websites, so I’ll keep this upbeat and relate a few funny moments.

When my (now ex-) wife Cindy and I first saw Sabrina, she was a tiny blur of a kitten living outdoors.  She was pretty skittish, and tended to retreat to a drainage ditch when approached.  One winter, the night the temperature was supposed to get to -10° F, which is very cold for Maryland, where I then lived.  Neither of us, nor the neighbor who had often seen her, thought she had much of a chance if things got that bad, so we increased our efforts to catch her.  We managed to lure her into the apartment entryway, where her escape routes were cut off.  Her ears were already wind burned, and would remain so for a few months, so I’m glad we got her when we did.  Her coloring was a tabby tortoiseshell, cats of which are female 99.67% of the time. Read more »

Everything has been moved to a competent CMS.  I’ve got a large writing project that I’m starting, I’ll want to get a few finished before I begin publishing them.  I’ve been preparing this project since early 2006 and now have a CMS that can handle it without making me furious.  I have to admit that ultimately, the biggest motivations for getting the site in a useful format was the fact that my host did some upgrades which broke my postnuke install (thank god), and that I found that stupidly awesome font I used for the header.

Enjoy the previous placeholder.

I’ve been working on a project to visually represent changes in a band’s lineup over time, as represented (primarily) over their studio albums.

Please check it out: Band Timelines

I’ve currently finished six pages - Black Sabbath, Faust, KMFDM, Metallica, Pink Floyd, and the Rolling Stones, with over 60 candidates for future pages. This isn’t limited to bands I know well, or even bands I remotely like, so some input both on future pages and existing work would be extremely welcome, as well as proof that I’m not talking to the wall.

Enjoy, and if it’s of some entertainment value or use to you, let me know.

Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman’s decision to continue to run for re-election after losing his party’s primary is an excellent barometer to judge his character by. The primary system is also an excellent barometer to judge our political parties by… Read more »

Clerks 2 is due out soon, and it got me to thinking…

When Clerks sees an (inevitable) 25 year special anniversary edition, I think the rooftop hockey scenes should include CGI dewbacks wandering around in the background, and should feature a “Dante shoots first” version of the original deleted ending.

I’m currently reading A. J. Jacob’s book “The Know-It-All : One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World”, which details the author’s quest to read the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica. The project is the main narrative through which other stories are told, as relates to various entries in the encyclopedia itself, and is as one would expect, crammed with non-sequiturs. It’s also a project I’d considered undertaking myself, which is additionally frightening to me since I would be prone to the historical bias and limitations inherent in my own inherited 1968 edition. Read more »

An article I wrote for Corpnews is up. At Corpnews. Go figure.

If you don’t play World of Warcraft, it might not interest you. If you don’t play, or have never played MMOGs, I can pretty much guarantee that it won’t interest you. Act accordingly.

Last week, a story in the Boston Globe, “Young Potter readers need to talk, grieve“, describes the emotional trauma experienced by fans of the Harry Potter series when, in the latest installment, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince“, Professor Dumbledore dies.

Put away your fucking parenting books, people. Read more »

LampreySoft is a collection of my sometimes dry techy geek humor. I’ve always been especially proud of it, so here it is in all its parasitic splendour. Enjoy!

In the first of several retrievals from the now-moribund corners of the internet, I am proud to present (again) my 1999 parody of Jack Chick’s religious tract “Dark Dungeons” entitled, aptly enough, “Dork Dungeons”.

View “Dark Dungeons” and the original Jack Chick tract it’s based on, side by side. Now with freshly-minted annotations. Welcome to the Director’s cut.

This story was originally posted locally on a Detroit club forum I use. Despite its essentially local content, it makes an interesting (?) enough story that I figure some of the rest of you will get something out of it. Read more »

New photographs are on display in the photo sections, normally available in the ‘destinations’ box at the left, and now also available up top via a new button, appropriately labelled ‘photos’.

Due to privacy concerns that have to do with getting over the (outdated?) social norms of the pre-public-internet 8-bit BBS scene and personal modesty issues, it’s only been recently that I’ve felt comfortable having my picture available on the internet, and today’s photo updates include the first time I’ve ever put them on my site for general public viewing. They’re a little out there, but everything’s work-safe.

In other news, I need to update my obscenely out-of-date links section and fill it with current goodness, such as Scott’s (Lum’s) site, brokentoys.org. Thanks for the diaspora links the other day, by the way.