I've been watching the first season of Desperate Housewives recently. It's pretty entertaining really, although a little frustrating, simply because no one ever tells the truth. When discussing the show with The Magster's roommate, she said, "That show is full of liars . . . conivers . . . scuba-divers!" I don't know what that means exactly, but it was pretty funny.
| Tags || tv |
The other day my coworkers and I had an interesting conversation: We were discussing what it would be like if computers and robots took over the world, enslaving the human race. Then someone asked what would happen if aliens tried to take over the world from the robots. We debated the pros and cons of each, but there seemed to be the general concensus that either would be ruthless taskmasters.
Someone posited that maybe the two would kill each other off, and humans could once again rule the earth. But then we realized that humans would probably be the first to go, as we would be grunts, expendables in the robots' army.
Then someone mentioned that they thought the aliens would win because, after all, the robots were created by humans and were no match for the advanced technology of the aliens. We all agreed and were saddened to see that the deed of our ownership would only be passed on to new hands. Humans would never be free, and we'd be treated even more cruelly by our alien masters as we toiled away to terraform our planet for them. Lamenting this, one of my coworkers spoke, "And then we'd be like, 'We want the robots back.'"
This is what gets me through the days.
If you're an old reader of Cynical McBastard, and you've just found this, you're probably wondering, "What happened to the UselessFlailings.com domain?" Well, due to a lack of funding, Useless Flailings has gone under. This is hopefully a temporary condition -- hopefully, both my brother (Pancake Wrangler) and I won't be steeped in credit card debt forever. But until then, Blogspot is going to be Cynical McBastard's new home. The same goes for Sticks and Stoned. So, re-bookmark these sites, and be sure to tell anyone you know who I didn't tell about the change. Thanks!
My mother (TunaHell) told me this once and I tend to believe her. She said that unlike men, women have a minimum number of words they need to use every day, (... or else what? My guess is that they have to suffer an extra day of menstruation!) and that is why to men, women seem to babble on incessantly.
Sometimes, when I'm supposed to be listening to The Magster talking, I'm really counting her words. Sorry, kid.
| Tags || women |
I expect all your packages and money-stuffed envelopes are in the mail, right?
| Tags || birthday |
Here's to the first Spring Break that I haven't stayed in this cramped college town working! It was excellent.
| Tags || college |
Stellar is going on a three day walk to help raise money for the fight against breast cancer. I'm giving money, not really because I'm passionate about helping women diagnosed with breast cancer, but because, statistically speaking, the more boobs there are, the better chance I have of squeezing them. Selfish, I know.
Like my brother, I have joined Consumating -- yet another pic whore site (e.g. picrave(RIP), whatthedilly, myspace, facebook). If you want you can give me a "thumbs up" (to help raise my popularity) or you can even join in on the fun yourself!
I'm not vain or that self-conscious really, so I don't know why I'm drawn to this type of website. But I'm definitely addicted. Are there any support groups for this kind of thing?
Please take a few moments to contribute to my Johari Window.
| Tags || psychology |
A mix between Castlevania and Metroid, this little sidescroller adventure game is fun and addictive. It takes me back to the glory days when my video game systems had as many bits as I was years-old. And best of all -- it's free!
P.S. Be sure to download the English language patch, unless you can read Japanese.
| Tags || video games |
I don't know what you think goes on "in the back," but it's not as mystical and magical as you must think. There is not hidden stockpile of whatever you're looking for. There is no portal to an alternate dimension where the currency is the stupid item that you insist this store must have. There is no elven workshop where they manufacture anything any customer desires. You know what's "in the back?" The same shit that's on the shelves!
The item you want is not back there. The reason any clerk goes into "in the back" is to satiate you, and possibly to take a smoke-break. Even if the item is "in the back" -- crammed between a crate of toilet paper and a cardboard display set for a romantic comedy -- they are probably not looking for your item. If, by some miracle, they do bring back whatever you were looking for from "in the back" they most likely found it by accident.
"In the back" there are stacks of boxes. There are forklifts. There are cardboard balers. There are trash compacters. There are old merchandise displays. And there are clerks talking to other clerks about how much they hate customers who sent them to "in the back" to look for a discount piece of shit that the store doesn't carry anymore.
Thank you for shopping at our store, and have a nice day!
In response to a letter to the editor in the Index, the campus weekly newspaper:
I have a dog named Rudy, and he is a boy dog. He goes out and finds a pillow, stuffed animal, or a person's legs, and he falls in love. Then he humps it. Does this make my dog leg-sexual? No, it makes him a dog that likes to hump things.
The argument that homosexuality is “abnormal” or “unnatural” is poorly reasoned. First, “normality” is a construct of society, based on what the majority finds acceptable. There is no set standard for normal, and if there were, no one would fit the mold, because everyone is different in some way.
Furthermore, what is considered normal changes? What is considered abnormal one year might not cause such a fuss the next year. One hundred years ago a woman who was thirty years old, single, and held a job would definitely been considered abnormal (or more likely a prostitute). Today, that same woman could walk down the street without anyone even noticing or caring. In fact, people today balk at how ridiculously and ludicrously oppressed women of that time were. How do think people one hundred years from now will think about the current social oppression of homosexuals?
Second, as far a homosexuality being “unnatural,” there is overwhelming documentation of homosexuality in all types and species of animals, from beloved canines like Buffy and Rudy to gorillas in the wild. One of the most famous cases in the U.S. is that of the two homosexual male penguins, Roy and Silo, in New York's Central Park Zoo. The couple was together for eight years – seven years longer than any of their heterosexual zoomates – and built nests, ate, socialized, and lived relatively normal penguin lives.
In his book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, Bruce Bagemihl examines scientific documentation from the past century that includes the homosexual, bisexual, and transgender behavior of many different species of animal (mostly birds and mammals, considered the most highly evolved). So, are these animals unnatural when they have sex with others f the same sex? Does this make them “gay” geese and “lesbian” orangutans?
The thing that seems most unnatural to me about homosexuality is how it is treated in our society. For hundreds of years homosexuality had been accepted by some cultures, revered by others, or at least ignored by most. But now many in our current culture are trying to eliminate homosexuality for seemingly no reason at all, using the pathetically weak arguments that “it's unnatural” or “God doesn't like it.” When was the last time you heard a penguin refused the right to mate with whomever it chose or a gorilla killed simply because enjoyed having sexual relations with other female gorillas?
Your dog Buffy probably doesn't particularly care who or what other dogs hump. Why should you care who any other human being humps?
| Tags || homosexuality |
But I think Louis Savian might be wrong about time travel.
His basic claim is that time travel is impossible. He proves this by flaunting the equation:
v = dx / dtBasically Velocity equals X miles per hour (or km per second, etc.).
v = velocity
dx = change in distance
dt = change in time
He then "proves" that time travel is impossible with this equation:
v = dt / dtVelocity equals hours per hour. And as we learned in middle school math, a unit of measure in both the numerator and denominator cancel each other out. So, then, Velocity would equal 1 (v = 1 / 1). "This is of course meaningless as far as velocity is concerned," Savian says. I agreed with him up to this point.
He said earlier, "When push comes to shove [proponents of time travel] will insist that physicists mean something different when they speak of motion in spacetime. Never mind that motion has always been defined as a change in position in a coordinate system. This definition of motion has not changed in millennia." I can agree that motion is defined as a "change in position." However, I believe that his assumption that motion is equal to velocity is false. To this humble layman, motion is the act of moving, while velocity is the measure of how speedy one moves. Simply, motion is a change, velocity is the rate of that change. Therefore, his equation does not disprove time travel. It only proves that a change in time cannot be measured relative to a change in time.
Let's say you get paid one dollar for every foot you walk. Your income would be measured in dollars per foot (i = d$ / dft). Now suppose someone says, "I want to measure your income in feet." (Why? Ask Mr. Savian.) So, he comes up with the equation i = dft / dft. Then he says, "It's impossible to measure your income in feet!" Duh! Because for every foot you walk, you've walked one foot. This has nothing to do with your income. Just as time travel has nothing to do with velocity.
What Mr. Savian fails to realize is that velocity is measured in dt (a change in time) because we're already time traveling (at one second per second) for whatever reason (Maybe chronologically is the only way the human mind can comprehend this "time" dimension of spacetime; but that is beyond the scope of this post.) So, in a sense, the conventional sense of time travel is actually accelerating in time (or reverse accelerating for going "back in time").
Now acceleration is probably not the best terminology because (if I remember Mr. Marley's physics class correctly) it is a function of velocity, and I've already said that velocity is not what we're measuring in time travel. However, I lack the proper terminology to deal with this concept, so I'll use "time acceleration unit" (tau) to mean the amount of time (relative to seconds) a time traveler experiences (as compared to the time that a normal, non time traveling person experiences). So, if we wanted to bring velocity back into this (a "temporal velocity" (tv)) we could say that tv = dtau / dt. A time traveler's temporal velocity equals his time acceleration units per second. So, if a time traveler wanted to experience time at five times the rate of a normal human his temporal velocity would be 5tau per second.
Therefore, time travel does not seem impossible, it just seems we lack a mathmatics for it (to my knowledge). Although, I do not agree with Savian when he says that time travel is impossible, I would say that time travel (as it is depicted in science fiction) is very improbable and impractical.
NOTE: With all that being said, am I just full of shit or what? Is there someone out there who knows a lot more about physics and mathematics than I do that could check this out. Because, while I'm confident with my own mad musings, I just kinda spouted all this b.s. out without too much thought or calculation. And I highly doubt that I could have casually thought up something that a real physicist would have over-looked.
| Tags || physics | time travel |
Just a growing pile of trash in the corner of my room.
| Tags || room |
There may be a cure for AIDS on the horizon. Now what are the homophobes going to blame on the gays?
| Tags || AIDS |
A friend let me know of a local band named A Glasswater House. I was reluctant to listen at first because, well, it's a band made up of townies, and I'm a prejudiced sonuvabitch.
But it turns out that they actually sound really good. You can check out a few of their songs on their Myspace account. My favorite is The Grey.
| Tags || music |
I've re-restarted Sticks and Stoned (formerly Nerd's Eye View). I'm going to try to update twice a week. I'm doing this mostly to piss off my brother, Pancake Wrangler, because he always says he wants to start a web comic but never does. So, I'm going to do a half-assed one and show him that it's really not that hard.
So, if you wouldn't mind, could you do me a favor? Go to Sticks and Stoned, leave a comment (even if it's just to say that my pictures are stupid and poorly drawn), and tell a friend (even if it's just to tell them about how stupid and poorly drawn the pictures are). Then, when Pancake Wrangler sees how easy it is to get people to go to a website (even if features stupid and poorly drawn pictures), he will start up his own web comic.
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