Bullets and Blunders

Caught up on a bit of telly this evening, including the latest QI and Psych.

On QI, there was the old canard about if you fired a bullet and dropped it simultaneously, which would hit the ground first?  The standard answer is, they would hit at the same time.

Except, that's not strictly true.  They would essentially hit at the same time, but not precisely.  The fired bullet would hit ever so slightly after the dropped bullet.  Stephen even admitted that if the bullet were going FAST enough, it would leave the atmosphere.  So, at one speed does it go from hitting the ground at exactly the same time as a dropped bullet, and NEVER hitting the ground?  It only takes a moment's thought to work out that it must land slightly later.  The greater the speed, the greater the delay, until it reaches a velocity that takes it out of the atmosphere.  BUT, since a bullet's speed is never going to be THAT great, the delay is hardly measurable.  It's like how a spring weighs slightly more compressed than uncompressed; the difference is so small it is hard to quantify.  But it's there.

The bullet blunder on Psych was much more egregious, although technically it was a tree transgression.  In this episode, they found a bullet embedded high in a tree.  It got that high due to the tree's growth over the years.  However, trees do not grow in this manner.  Despite the widely held belief to the contrary, trees actually grow from the top.  All parts of a tree (branches, embedded evidence, etc) will stay pretty much at the same height, no matter how much time passes.

I watched these two shows back-to-back.  I'm beginning to wonder if too much education lessens the enjoyment I would otherwise get from television.

Question: Is 'Slovenly' A =Look=?

Just getting home from job training today. It was long (even though we got out early), but it was a lot of fun. It was mostly women, which was interesting, because they were all swooning over me. One of them even tried to hook me up with her 21-year-old daughter.

However, now that I'm home, I've gotten a glimpse of what I look like in the mirror. See, I overslept this morning, and had to rush to class (and even then, I was late). So I skipped the shower.

So my hair is a mess and I'm unshaven. It's =CLEAR= that I still have bed-head. I look ridiculous, actually, from my perspective.

So what's the deal? Is slovenly a desired look now? Have I been washing up just TOO well? All that wasted effort! And, no wonder that I'm still single!

Radio Lab

"I've got a story to tell you. It's a good one, too. Imagine, 1962, rural village of Kashasha, Tanzania. Girl's boarding school. Girl is sitting in class.

She begins to laugh.

The girl next to her, maybe to her left, hears her laugh and she begins to laugh.

Across the classroom a third girl joins in, the teacher gets upset, but it's too late. Soon four girls, and eight -- the entire class has begun to laugh, and then cry, and then laugh, and then cry..."

"At what?"

"Just 'cause, I don't know. Anyhow, a girl outside at that moment walking down the hall, imagine she hears the laughter from the classroom. She starts to laugh, and as she walks and laughs her laughter goes into other classrooms, and soon the whole school is doing this: laughing, crying, laughing, crying... Teachers cannot control these girls; when they try to, the girls get violent!"

"They get violent?"

"Yup. The principal then has no choice, he's gotta close the school.

They open the school a week later, and it happens again. So they close the school a second time.

Meanwhile, the girls who started all this, they go back to their villages many many miles away, and this ... thing, whatever it is, spreads. Up and down the coast of Lake Victoria..."

"You mean people in the villages start to laugh?"

"Yup. In one village, 217 people start to laugh and cry. A second boarding school has to shut down.

And no one knows why."

Thus begins a Quite Interesting segment from Radio Lab's February 22^nd 2008 episode.

I had never heard Radio Lab before (the only other NPR show I've really gotten into is This American Life, and even then I prefer the video adaptation). But now I suddenly =get= why people listen to NPR.

Because it's fascinating.

Dollhouse

So, the latest Joss Whedon project has come to a close with the recent Dollhouse finale. Most of the loose ends were tied up, but one thing really bothered me: It's 10 years later, right? Wherefore does everyone look pretty much exactly the same as before? I mean, even down to HAIRSTYLE?

People's looks change a lot in ten years. Here's a picture of me just five years ago:


Now, compare that to a picture I took of myself this morning:


And that's after only FIVE years! Throughout the finale I had to keep reminding myself that this was 10 years after the previous episode. Could have been so much better.

Anyway. All's well that ends.

Phoenix is unlucky with games

It's Saturday, so of course I'm spending my morning playing video games.

I was playing on the computer, and experienced a Blue Screen shutdown. :-(

So, taking a break from the computer, I pick up my DS and play Rittai Picross for about an hour, and the battery dies. (The power indicator light supposedly changes color when this is going to happen, but being colorbind renders this warning void).

Good times.

Microsoft Owes Me $50

I got a parking ticket today, my 2nd in recent memory (the other one was Nov. 4th). And of course, I blame Microsoft for this.

See, I had never gotten a parking ticket before November 4th. In fact, I've been parking at meters for YEARS without getting a ticket. What has changed?

My phone.

Previously, I used a Nokia 6800. This was one of the early semi-smart phones (e-mail, limited web access, and a flip-out keyboard), more phone than smart though. But still cutting-edge for its time (2003). And it had a bunch of handy features, one of which was a very simple countdown timer... that was TWO BUTTONS AWAY. That's it. 1st press quick-features, 2nd press timer. I used it when doing laundry, when cooking, and yes, when parking at a meter.

And then the phone died.

Right now, I'm using an ATT Tilt, and it is pretty much the worst phone I've ever used. It runs Windows CE, and tries to be a PDA and a phone. But it's more dumb than phone.

Everything is controlled via the stylus. There are buttons, but they are all context-sensitive. Which means that you don't necessarily know what each one will do in a given situation (and they don't all have display reminders either. It's more, press it and see what it does, and then don't press it again ever).

SO, if I want to run a timer application, I have to get out the stylus, click on the start menu, go to Applications, go to Tools, browse to the timer app, and start it. OH WAIT THERE *IS* NO TIMER APP! That's right, such complicated functionality is too much for this mini-computer. I'd have to find one on the Internet, download it to my computer, install the phone-computer interface software, and install it to the phone that way (in which case, it installs to the Applications folder UNDER APPLICATIONS. Yeah, you have to select Applications TWICE to run it). EVEN though the phone itself can browse the Internet when I'm in a hotspot, I can't install applications that way.

It's like a committee tried to come up with all the ways they could to mess with people. "How can we make our product even MORE DIFFICULT to use?"

I'm not even mad at the ticket writer, even though he clearly waited at my car for the meter to run out (based on the time on the ticket). He was just doing his job.

So I need to buy a new phone. I had been hesitating because of the expense, but at this rate I would be saving money in the long run to buy one now. Maybe the Nexus?


tl;dr
Phoenix had a bad day. :-(

Don't Stop

A small follow-up on my previous post, focusing on a subset.



Why is Fleetwood Mac so underrepresented?

New Years Weight

It's the end of December, the end of the year. Let's talk about how fat I am. :-P

Last year at this time, I weighed 244 pounds. This morning, I weighed 201 pounds.

I have ~17% less mass than I did a year ago.

Yay, me? ^_^

I still have the rest of the day to lose that pesky last pound to get under 200. Anyone know which appendages can safely be removed from the human body? Preferably something I don't use very often.

UPDATE:
Hooray, I made my weight goal! Also, penises grow back, right?

Axial Tilt Is The Reason For The Season

Follow me on this one, it gets twisty.

So, Kris Straub (you know Kris, he makes Starslip) retweeted Brian Denham's "Only 364 shopping days until Christmas." tweet. I don't know Brian, but I glanced at his feed and saw that he had retweeted a Richard Dawkins post about "7 Reasons for Atheists to Celebrate the Holidays".

Now, in that article, in reason #3 was the line "Axial tilt is the reason for the season!" I just love this line! A quick google search found a 2007 post on Bad Astronomy, and that points to a 2006 post by Lore Sjöberg (he who used to write Table of Malcontents for Wired), which is where the image on this page comes from. (Sidenote, I wonder if this product is affiliated, or a rip-off? It's clearly the same artwork.)

It's like... it's like all the people I follow on the Internet all know each other.

Anyway, the OLDEST post I could find for the line was way back in 2005, in the Pagan Prattle. I'm just hearing it now for the first time‽

Merry Christmas!

(via)

You guys! This is my favorite Warehouse comic.

Don't

I saw this image today, but I thought it could be better. It's not ordered by size, there's no correlation between order of the legend and order of the slices (important for those of us that are colorblind). Also, what do the sizes mean? Just random?

So I made my own, basing the sizes off of the number of hits on a Google Video search for each.

December 12th

Today is December 12^th, or as it is known in America, the 12^th of December.

Seriously, it's another non-holiday. And why not? It's the last x^th day of x^th month of the year!

It's also just a couple weeks before Christmas. Last Minute Panic Day? Hmm.

Suggestions?

Mars Needs Moms!

A while back, I found this Berkeley Breathed book at Auntie's.



Disney is making a movie version of the book now, which if you know Berkeley and Disney, is incredible.

You can find a bit more of the story here (along with more history between Berkeley and Disney), but basically it's this:

Milo (the son) doesn't much care for the way his mom treats him (making him do chores and eat his vegetables), but when Martians kidnap her, well he has to do something, right? So he stows away on the alien ship to try and rescue her.

Now, for those of you in the bookstore with me at the time, you might remember my reaction to the book's ending. But if you really don't want it spoiled, I'll hide it. Show/Hide
...although it's not much of a spoiler, considering how much of it is on THE COVER!

Milo (on Mars) trips and falls and breaks the helmet of his spacesuit. The air escapes and he passes out, right as his mom finds him. Seriously, it's ALL ON THE COVER. Anyway, next page is double-spoilered. Show/Hide
Milo wakes up to find he is wearing an unbroken helmet.



Yeah. His mom took off her own helmet to save him. Milo finally understands the depth of his mother's love for him.

Overall, a pretty good book, if a bit abrupt at that one point. I'm curious how they plan to stretch this tiny story over a full-length movie though.

Semi-relatedly, here's an article Berkeley wrote about modern movies.

Swarley

So, I saw this video on The Daily What. It's a mashup of Frosty The Snowman and Barney Stinson. Show/Hide



I love it. I love Barney. I want to change my name to Swarley. Which brings me to the main point of today's post.

I google'd Swarley because I wasn't sure of the spelling (-y/-ey?). One of the results was a wikipedia page that talks about all the tie-ins.

There are websites for Marshall and Lily's wedding (a bit ruined by the show plug in the top right corner), a Pro-Swarley-name site.

And then we get to TedMosbyIsAJerk.com. W...ow.

Yes, that *IS* a 20-minute song about what a jerk Ted Mosby is. It also ends with a reverse easter egg.

Wendy the Waitress is the MOTHER! (of the goat)

(also, random BSG reference at ~13:30 made me laugh)

Good Morning

Dear T-Mobile,

Thanks for texting me at 4 in the morning to let me know the balance on my account. Also, thanks for texting twice, in case I accidentally slept through the first one.

Stay super.

Sincerely,

A very grumpy tired Phoenix

Starslip

I recently ran through the Starslip archives. Totally worth a read. Often funny, but sometimes very touching. I'll show you a taste with bits of the Jovia storyline.

Spoilers ahoy.

Memnon Vanderbeam is in love with Jovia, daughter of the King of Jupiter. He saved them from an assassination attempt.


Later, a critical flaw is discovered in Starslip technology.


Eventually the flaw catches up with them.


Memnon starts the ships computer processing a Starslip path back to a timeline where Jovia lives, a process that will take many years. In the meantime, the storyline moves along. But every once in a great while, you'll get episodes like this:


Much later, the ship's computer tells Memnon that they can use the partially-computed Jovia path to end a war. Jovia would still have died, but the war would be over (or avoided). This would mean starting the calculations over from the beginning. Memnon refuses.

But later, when Deep Time sets a bomb to go off that will eliminate the entire timeline...


Like I said, worth a read.

Veterans Day

Today is November 11^th, or Veterans Day here in America, Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth, and Armistice Day in Belgium, France, and New Zealand.

In Commonwealth countries, it is traditional to wear poppies on this day, in remembrance of the end of World War I. Why poppies? Because of the poem In Flanders Fields:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— Lt.-Col. John McCrae

(McCrae wrote it on May 3^rd, 1915, after he witnessed the death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, the day before.)

The poppies referred to in the poem grew in profusion in Flanders where war casualties had been buried and thus became a symbol of Remembrance Day.

(source)

Han Solo

So Han’s walking down the halls of Bespin with his old friend Lando. Leia’s there, and lookin’ good. Han thinks he’s off to dinner - maybe some wine, a little flirting, and then back to the ol’ guest quarters with Her Hotness.
But the door opens, and there’s Darth Vader.
Han doesn’t look incredulously at Lando; he doesn’t duck or run away.
What does Han do?
He starts shooting at the motherfucker.
He starts shooting.

Be like Han.

(via)

A Mother's Love

Retail | Spokane, WA, USA

(A pimply, overweight 18 year-old boy dumps a satin black flame-job man thong on the counter.)

Boy: “Uh, can I return this? My mom got it for me.”

via

Smoked

Convenience Store | Spokane, WA, USA

Me: “How can I help you, sir?”

Customer: “I want one single cigarette.”

Me: “No problem, can I see your ID?”

Customer: “What? Do I look 14 to you?”

Me: “No, you look 18, but unless I get ID I can’t sell them to you.”

Customer: “Why cant you sell me the beer and a cigarette?”

Me: “I am sorry, sir, but I could lose my job if I sold it to you without ID.”

Customer: “Oh, I am sure your job is sooo great and pays you a lot?!”

Me: “I’m not the one who can’t afford more than one cigarette.”

(via)