液體蛋 (Liquid Egg Product)

I don’t know whether to become fat or not

My weight runs within a rather narrow 5 lb. weight band, depending on my eating/exercise habits for that particular month. Depending on the source, my weight’s normal (according to BMI), or a tad underweight (according to my doctor).

Now there’s this study that says being overweight (but not obese) may actually be associated with lowest levels of death. And being underweight is actually bad, too.

Bring on the bacon and sausage! [The Mascot says: But not eggs!] Then again, it may be more difficult to move to New Zealand if I gain too much weight. New Zealand bans immigrants who have too high of a BMI. Plus exercise would be more of a pain in the butt.

December 3rd, 2007 22 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology

Unsatisfied with Earth, scientists move on to destroying the universe

“Scientists will always look for answers.”
“Maybe they shouldn’t ask so many questions!”

Maybe Brooklyn from Sakura Killers had it right. (Apologies for the allusion only 3 or 4 of my readers understand.)

A couple of cosmologists are blaming human observation of dark matter for possibly shortening the lifespan of the universe:

“The intriguing question is this,” Prof Krauss told the Telegraph. “If we attempt to apply quantum mechanics to the universe as a whole, and if our present state is unstable, then what sets the clock that governs decay? Once we determine our current state by observations, have we reset the clock? If so, as incredible as it may seem, our detection of dark energy may have reduced the life expectancy of our universe.”

So the problem here is that we’re pretty much guaranteed that instead of maybe having great-great-great-great-great-great-great-(x5 million)-grandkids, we’ll only get great-great-great-great-great-great-great-(x4.5 million)-grandkids?

It’s the kind of thing that keeps people awake at night.

November 24th, 2007 9 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Burning Agony, Science/Technology

Who should control the Internets?

There’s some debate as to the future of the Internet. Since the technology was developed by Al Gore and the infrastructure was created in the United States, the core servers sit on US soil. Other countries have started to say “we don’t like this arrangement”. The commenters responding to this Digg have been rather entertaining, many of them blinded to any other logic besides USA = bad.

November 20th, 2007 8 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology

Men are apes, women are racists

So a couple economists and psychologists did a two-year experiment where they observed the results of “speed-dating”. It’s essentially where a bunch of people have a few minute “dates” with many people in one night, and decide if they’d be interested in continuing seeing each other. The results that stuck in my craw:

1. Beauty was a much more significant factor for men’s decisions.

2. Men don’t care so much for women more intelligent or successful than they are.

3. Women have a strong preference for their own race; men don’t care so much.

The article in question: An Economist Goes to a Bar

November 13th, 2007 3 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology

The Washington Post does not understand the blogosphere

There’s this guy, Dan Zak, who articled for the Post about how to “Be More Than a Blip in the Blogosphere”. He has 10 tips, and I’ll just hit lightly on his insight. And I’ll add an 11th tip that was somehow ignored, but will be the biggest driver of traffic to your blog.

1. TELL STORIES RATHER THAN STICKING SOLELY TO LINKS OR PHOTOS. It’s the first one on his list, and I’m at a loss for a funny or sarcastic response. It’s probably the best advice the article gives.

2. CREATE A VOICE FOR YOURSELF. That’s what the Mascot was supposed to be for, but he’s not doing a very good job.

3. MAKE EVERYTHING EASY TO READ AND ACCESS. Actually, this is good advice too.

4. SIFT THROUGH BLOGROLLS AND CREATE YOUR OWN. Also known as the “I-read-your-site-could-you-please-read-mine” strategy.

5. WIDGET YOUR PAGE. Um, OK.

6. COMMENT EARLY AND OFTEN. Another “I-read-your-site-could-you-please-read-mine” strategy. Wonderful.

7. PRAY FOR A LINK FROM THE BIG BOYS. Yeah, that’s a good plan.

8. NOMINATE YOURSELF FOR AWARDS. I gave myself the Worthless Blogger Award. But I don’t see nobody taking me to Chick-fil-A.

9. POST WITH VERVE AND CONSISTENCY. Sounds like a Silmanism. (One of Silman’s books actually used the word “verve”, which is one of those words people know the definition of, but don’t actually use in real life.)

10. JOIN THE CROWD. Boy, Mr. Zak is really into this beg for traffic stuff.

All these tips are a drop in the bucket compared to my findings:

11. HAVE POSTS SOLELY DEDICATED TO PICTURES OF HOT CHICKS. Remember how I mentioned there was a spike in traffic after Hot and Allegedly Hot Female Day? Well, it’s actually a plateau now. The weird part is that the most popular picture is an older one done a while back of a woman in a bathing suit standing in a snowy forest. [The Mascot says: That means you need to make more images of women wearing bathing suits engaged in illogical environments! Like arguing in front of the Supreme Court or swimming in volcanic lava.]

November 3rd, 2007 7 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Blog News, Science/Technology

Researcher rips off H.G. Wells

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry predicts that man will have split into two races within 100,000 years. Apparently, he has read the Time Machine by H. G. Wells.

Bad Science has more to say about the good doctor.

Speaking of time machines…try this idle thought on for size. A time machine will never be invented (note this is different from saying it’s not possible). If it is going to happen, there would have been some time machine user with a desire to visit various eras of the past and make him/herself known to its inhabitants. So we would already know about it.

(Yeah, I’m waiting for the hole-poking.)

October 27th, 2007 6 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology, Snake Oil

Wisdom, Cubic

Dr. Gene Ray, Cubic continues to enlarge the quotation rotation with more hits:

“ONEism is demonic Death Math. I have so much to teach you, but you ignore me you evil asses.”

“Your opposite eyes were moved to 1 corner to overlay for single perspective, but that corrupts your Opposite Brain. Hey how about making a donation to Gene Ray, 2580 Highland Pointe Dr. Cumming, Georga 30041.”

October 23rd, 2007 2 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Mathematics, Science/Technology

Meet my new girlfriend

[Hot and allegedly hot female day, post 3]

Say hi to Kari, everyone!

Kari 3.1

Kari 3.1’s really great, because I don’t have to worry about stuff like buying flowers, deciding on a restaurant, or being bugged about when we’re getting married. Meeting Kari was easy; it’s not like I had to go out and meet anyone, spend time getting to know her, then have the guts to ask her out. Plus I have full control over her personality, appearance and actions. Er…

(BTW, I’m not really using this program. If anyone wants to give it a whirl, let us know how it is.)

October 22nd, 2007 9 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Babes & Alleged Babes, CG, Science/Technology, Weaksauce Losers

Interviews

Write a function that prints the numbers 1 through 100 in order, with the following exceptions:
If the number’s a multiple of 3, print “foo” instead of the number.

If the number’s a multiple of 5, print “bar” instead of the number.

If the number’s a multiple of 3 and 5, print “foobar” instead of the number.
Can use pseudocode or the language of your choice.

(Note for non-programmers: this is a very easy task.)
(Note 2: Pseudocode is not real code with formal syntax; it’s just jotting down how code’s going to work.)

Interview 1

So this guy interviews today, seems nice and possibly adequate. According to him, his strength is VB.NET, and although 95% of our stuff is C#, I don’t sweat someone learning a new language syntax.

Towards the end of the interview, my colleague gave him the programming question above. After stammering for a few seconds, the guy explained, “Well, you know, pseudocode was one of the first classes I took, and I can’t really remember back that far.” While I tried to prevent myself from bursting, my colleague suggested he write out the code in Visual Basic, since that was supposed to be his strength. The shirking candidate claimed he couldn’t write the function without looking in a reference book.

At that moment, I felt like saying “Interview over, time for our next contestant.” However, my co-worker went on to explain the solution, which would use a loop to print out all the numbers. “A loop. You know, a for loop?” he asked. The candidate muttered, “Oh, a for loop…”, obviously with no knowledge of what it was (who knows, he may have been thinking it was a “4 loop”.)

Interview 2

This guy seems pretty sharp, and I thought he’d easily write the function we asked for. He knew what he wanted to do, but couldn’t remember the math operator to do it. “Mod? Square root?”, he muttered.

After a few minutes he came up with this bloat, where he rolled out his own test for mod equalling 0. He almost got the function right. As a point of comparison, the function can be done in C# in 5 lines, 7 if you count the braces.

We reminded him of what the mod operator does, and had a chuckle over it. I told him that if we hired him, I’d frame his solution above his desk. Er, cubicle.

September 26th, 2007 7 comments
Posted by Donnie Filed under Science/Technology