Red versus blue
Do
you know what is the number one best sign that some ideology is utter
garbage? The fact that its members explicitly claim that they don't
need external criticism, since their lively in-group criticism of each
other is sufficient. Every single time that I have read a member of
some group use this argument, the group has turned out to be an enemy
of everything that is good.
The Anglo-Saxon electoral system in which one winner takes the whole district gives rise to the amusing phenomenon of gerrymandering. To illustrate this particular topic, one picture is truly worth a thousand words. I realized that this concept would make a fantastic little timewaster game (try to maximize the number of districts that you win), and started writing one in Java. I will hopefully post the first version tomorrow, but before that, some other links for your enjoyment.
I believe that it was Bruce Schneier from whom I first learned the idea that you shouldn't worry about anything that you see in the news, since something being news means that it is extremely uncommon. You should only start worrying about something when that something becomes so common that it is no longer newsworthy. Partially for this reason, I am not too worried about the bird flu epidemic. The reporting and hysteria about the bird flu feels very similar to SARS few years ago, which I didn't worry about at all here in the Toronto area after I realized that every year some flu epidemic comes from China and kills tens of thousands of old people all around the world, but that year they just happened to give a catchy name to that year's viral breed. Michael Fumento's article "Hysteria, Thy Name is SARS" compared this minor disease to the far deadlier killers that media is relatively silent about.
Speaking of viral stuff, even the most ardent homophobe must acknowledge the marketing genius of the movie "Brokeback Mountain". When this movie was in danger to become an arthouse flick and disappear after a few weeks, somebody had the genius to start a campaign to use the late night comedians and the Internet to sell the movie to wide audiences as a campy joke. The carefully-chosen memes worked enormously well and the producers can now laugh all the way to the bank. (Of course, it doesn't hurt that every leftist male has to swallow his uneasiness and go see the movie to prove his ideological credentials: just don't be the first one to stop applauding, comrade!) Apparently, the makers of "Snakes on a Plane" have taken heed of these lessons of viral marketing in selling their movie: Snakes on a Blog.
Jack Handey is best known for his Deep Thoughts. Since he presumably can't draw or paint himself, he lists some "Ideas for Paintings". In a related note, the site "It's just your mind" shows a bunch of advertising posters whose initial impression is somewhat misleading.
The list "The Real Names of Celebrities" reminds me of a way of making an artificial intelligence fail the Turing test: ask it questions such as "Which one would be a better name for a glamorour female movie star, Demi Moore or Demi Gynes?" that probe the subcognitive association mechanisms of the human mind.
James Kunstler makes a new post each Monday. The latest post, "Jitters", reminds us what a thin ice economy is skating on.
The Anglo-Saxon electoral system in which one winner takes the whole district gives rise to the amusing phenomenon of gerrymandering. To illustrate this particular topic, one picture is truly worth a thousand words. I realized that this concept would make a fantastic little timewaster game (try to maximize the number of districts that you win), and started writing one in Java. I will hopefully post the first version tomorrow, but before that, some other links for your enjoyment.
I believe that it was Bruce Schneier from whom I first learned the idea that you shouldn't worry about anything that you see in the news, since something being news means that it is extremely uncommon. You should only start worrying about something when that something becomes so common that it is no longer newsworthy. Partially for this reason, I am not too worried about the bird flu epidemic. The reporting and hysteria about the bird flu feels very similar to SARS few years ago, which I didn't worry about at all here in the Toronto area after I realized that every year some flu epidemic comes from China and kills tens of thousands of old people all around the world, but that year they just happened to give a catchy name to that year's viral breed. Michael Fumento's article "Hysteria, Thy Name is SARS" compared this minor disease to the far deadlier killers that media is relatively silent about.
Speaking of viral stuff, even the most ardent homophobe must acknowledge the marketing genius of the movie "Brokeback Mountain". When this movie was in danger to become an arthouse flick and disappear after a few weeks, somebody had the genius to start a campaign to use the late night comedians and the Internet to sell the movie to wide audiences as a campy joke. The carefully-chosen memes worked enormously well and the producers can now laugh all the way to the bank. (Of course, it doesn't hurt that every leftist male has to swallow his uneasiness and go see the movie to prove his ideological credentials: just don't be the first one to stop applauding, comrade!) Apparently, the makers of "Snakes on a Plane" have taken heed of these lessons of viral marketing in selling their movie: Snakes on a Blog.
Jack Handey is best known for his Deep Thoughts. Since he presumably can't draw or paint himself, he lists some "Ideas for Paintings". In a related note, the site "It's just your mind" shows a bunch of advertising posters whose initial impression is somewhat misleading.
The list "The Real Names of Celebrities" reminds me of a way of making an artificial intelligence fail the Turing test: ask it questions such as "Which one would be a better name for a glamorour female movie star, Demi Moore or Demi Gynes?" that probe the subcognitive association mechanisms of the human mind.
James Kunstler makes a new post each Monday. The latest post, "Jitters", reminds us what a thin ice economy is skating on.
I am not viral marketing, I am simply a guy.
Posted by Snakes on a Blog | 10:19 PM
According to the paper Answering Subcognitive Turing Test Questions, it's feasible for the Turing Test taking computer to come up with good answers to subcognitive questions using a large collection of human-written texts (like a search engine database) and probabilistic methods.
Posted by Risto Saarelma | 2:05 AM