Random Thoughts

Tangential Science: It isn't necessarily science, but it's still funny. 1. Want a business card made out of meat and lasers? You're in luck! Meat Cards is having a contest to win one. All you have to do is recreate a classic Frank Frazetta poster and you can win, you guessed it, a meat card, which is basically beef jerky with laser writing on it.   I kind of wish I had thought of this first. So "what's the catch?" you are thinking, "I will just photoshop in my old Molly Hatchett album covers and win big".   Not so.   The Frazetta recreations have to be done using real people…

LOS ANGELES, California, July 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Platinum Equity today announced it has completed the acquisition of The Geesink Norba Group from Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK). The company, which has recently been rebranded GEESINKNORBA, is based in Emmeloord, The Netherlands, and is a leading European manufacturer of refuse collection vehicles (RCVs). (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090701/352401 ) "GEESINKNORBA is an established business with talented employees and long-standing relationships with valued customers," said Tom Gores, Platinum Equity Chairman and…

Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius. - William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Proverbs of Hell #66

Q. Who said this? "I have only two passions - space exploration and hip-hop." A. Buzz Aldrin, space exploration pioneer, on Apollo 11, second person to walk on the moon, 79-year-old white dude. I thought this was a joke when I first saw the posting on Wired, but it's real - Buzz recorded a rap song, "The Rocket Experience," with help from Snoop Dogg, Quincy Jones, Soulja Boy and Talib Kweli (who I didn't know but according to Wikipedia is "one of the best-known and critically, if not commercially, successful rappers in alternative hip-hop). Snoop had the picture taken so he…

The world doesn't always make sense. Witness Mike's blog post on some convoluted language in a news story. I understand that people make mistakes - I do all the time. My personal philosophy is honesty is always the best policy, and if you're upfront people tend to be more forgiving and understanding. One of my biggest pet peeves in the world is hypocrisy - and when your hypocrisy harms others, that's even worse. Many Republicans have opposed granting federal rights to GBLT couples. A marriage is defined as between a man and woman, they say. (And of course some Democrats believe this too, but…

By honest I don't mean that you only tell what's true. But you make clear the entire situation. You make clear all the information that is required for somebody else who is intelligent to make up their mind.      - Richard Feynman "Cargo Cult Science", Caltech Commencement 1974

The Evocative Power Of LanguageMost philosophical studies of how language functions have focused on semantics - how language conveys meaning.  In ordinary speech, language is not confined to the transmission of information.  It can be used to evoke strong emotions. As an interlude to my series of articles A Science Of Human Language  I present this example of evocative use of language.  For further examples of evocative use of language I refer my reader to any political speech.  Similarly, for examples of the command aspect of language, I refer my reader to any book…

When you turn the resources of modern science to the problem of killing people, you realize how vulnerable they really are. - Physicist I.I. Rabi, quoted in Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, p. 779

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it. - Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book IV, Ch. 20, sec. 17

The Bookworm And The Encyclopedias - The Solution Last Monday I posed a simple math puzzle: A set of 10 encyclopedias is sitting on a bookshelf in left-to-right numerical order. Each single volume contains 1,000 pages.     A bookworm eats its way directly and linearly through them in a straight line. It starts on page 1 of volume 1. It ends on page 1,000  of volume 10. Question:    Not counting any covers, flysheets, etc., how many pages does the bookworm eat ? The first step to the solution, which many of you realised, is to notice the way books are placed…