This is one of the best high school pranks EVER!Read about it here.
This kid needs a scholarship!
Showing posts with label wankosphere. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wankosphere. Show all posts
31 August 2007
16 August 2007
Freaky Happenings - Today's Dilbert Blog
Yesterday I referenced sending Scott Adams a link to an article. He blogged about that today, posted below as he archives regularly - link to post here.
Freaky Happenings, from Scott Adams' The Dilbert Blog
I’ve said before in this blog that it feels to me as if all of my ideas already exist, and I’m nothing but some sort of antennae. Every time I have an idea, no matter how strange, that idea inevitably finds its way to my door from some other source. It’s freaky.
The first time I saw this phenomenon was in 1990 when I had been cartooning for about a year. One day, I sat down at about 4:30 AM and wrote a comic about opera singer Placido Domingo. My gag involved the fact that there was a fake version of him called, naturally, Placebo Domingo.
I was quite proud of my pun. Later THAT SAME DAY, I opened up the San Francisco Chronicle and started reading the comics. A syndicated comic called Farley had a joke about an opera singer named Placebo Domingo.
I just checked, and there are 460,000 hits on Google for that pun. I guess it is somewhat obvious. Still, what are the odds of drawing it in a newspaper comic in the morning and reading it in a newspaper comic within hours?
Skeptics will point out, rightly, that it would be more amazing if coincidences didn’t happen. You don’t notice all the things that could have been coincidences but weren’t, so when they happen they seem special in our minds.
I mention the Placebo Domingo story because a similar freaky thing happened the other day. But this one takes it too a new level. Let me see if I can give you chills. I promise I’m not making this up.
On August 14th, a fascinating article ran in the NY Times. A number of people recognized it as the sort of thing I would like, and forwarded it to me. The gist of the article is that an Oxford philosopher has a serious hypothesis that our lives are nothing but a computer program developed by someone else. Perhaps humans of the past created us as a hobby. The idea is that we have no physical bodies, we only think we do. This notion is standard science fiction stuff, but now it has risen to philosophic consideration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?ex=1344830400&en=2300cf446929c707&ei=5124&partner=permalink
That article was published on August 14th. One day earlier, I had an idea for a movie plot that felt as if it came out of nowhere. I quickly typed it out in the Word document that happened to be open – the same one I am using now for my blog posts. I’m going to paste my notes below, without editing, so you see it exactly as I wrote it.
--- begin ---
Movie plot.
It's about people trying to download themselves to computers when humanity is at an end.
They discover they are already the downloads, in a loop of history
You can tell it's a program because of reused code in the form of memes.
Deja vu is memory leak
Clues you are in a program
No free will
You keep forgetting where you put things. Everyone does.
The program is crashing.
Some humans are like self correcting code. They spring to action trying to fix the program. They try to debug humanity.
Whole movie is program code analogy
--- end ---
Now you might say, rightly, this is a little bit like the Matrix, and a little bit like The Sixth Sense, and a little bit like my own book, God’s Debris, and a little bit like lots of other things. That’s all true.
The freaky part (chill alert) is that the main idea in my movie plot is that the characters discover their true nature as program code by noticing coincidences in their lives. For example, they see people who look exactly like other people they know, but aren’t.
The reason for all the coincidences in their so-called lives is that the program in which they live was written hastily. It reuses a lot of code. There are only a few hundred types of people, with minor variations. It was easier for the programmers to prevent duplicate people from ever becoming friends than to create 6 billion unique avatars.
So as I’m thinking about being nothing but code in a program, and thinking that the way you discover your true self is by realizing the coincidences in life are clues, a dozen people forward me an article about…being…code…in…a…program.
End
Hundreds of comments will likely ensue, but by favorite so far are:
"Hi, you don't know me but our interfaces were programmed to fit. If you take off your clothes, I can show you how my algorithm can blow your recursion loop." (posted by Manual)
and
...
Female chick;
procedure Intercourse() {
if (chick.isSatisfied().equals('no')) milkey.penisSize += 10;
if (chick.isInjured().equals('yes')) milkey.penisSize -= 1;
else milkey.penisSize +=1; }
(posted by milkey, which makes the "milkey" bit make sense. I'd have written it generically for the better joke.
Freaky Happenings, from Scott Adams' The Dilbert Blog
I’ve said before in this blog that it feels to me as if all of my ideas already exist, and I’m nothing but some sort of antennae. Every time I have an idea, no matter how strange, that idea inevitably finds its way to my door from some other source. It’s freaky.
The first time I saw this phenomenon was in 1990 when I had been cartooning for about a year. One day, I sat down at about 4:30 AM and wrote a comic about opera singer Placido Domingo. My gag involved the fact that there was a fake version of him called, naturally, Placebo Domingo.
I was quite proud of my pun. Later THAT SAME DAY, I opened up the San Francisco Chronicle and started reading the comics. A syndicated comic called Farley had a joke about an opera singer named Placebo Domingo.
I just checked, and there are 460,000 hits on Google for that pun. I guess it is somewhat obvious. Still, what are the odds of drawing it in a newspaper comic in the morning and reading it in a newspaper comic within hours?
Skeptics will point out, rightly, that it would be more amazing if coincidences didn’t happen. You don’t notice all the things that could have been coincidences but weren’t, so when they happen they seem special in our minds.
I mention the Placebo Domingo story because a similar freaky thing happened the other day. But this one takes it too a new level. Let me see if I can give you chills. I promise I’m not making this up.
On August 14th, a fascinating article ran in the NY Times. A number of people recognized it as the sort of thing I would like, and forwarded it to me. The gist of the article is that an Oxford philosopher has a serious hypothesis that our lives are nothing but a computer program developed by someone else. Perhaps humans of the past created us as a hobby. The idea is that we have no physical bodies, we only think we do. This notion is standard science fiction stuff, but now it has risen to philosophic consideration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html?ex=1344830400&en=2300cf446929c707&ei=5124&partner=permalink
That article was published on August 14th. One day earlier, I had an idea for a movie plot that felt as if it came out of nowhere. I quickly typed it out in the Word document that happened to be open – the same one I am using now for my blog posts. I’m going to paste my notes below, without editing, so you see it exactly as I wrote it.
--- begin ---
Movie plot.
It's about people trying to download themselves to computers when humanity is at an end.
They discover they are already the downloads, in a loop of history
You can tell it's a program because of reused code in the form of memes.
Deja vu is memory leak
Clues you are in a program
No free will
You keep forgetting where you put things. Everyone does.
The program is crashing.
Some humans are like self correcting code. They spring to action trying to fix the program. They try to debug humanity.
Whole movie is program code analogy
--- end ---
Now you might say, rightly, this is a little bit like the Matrix, and a little bit like The Sixth Sense, and a little bit like my own book, God’s Debris, and a little bit like lots of other things. That’s all true.
The freaky part (chill alert) is that the main idea in my movie plot is that the characters discover their true nature as program code by noticing coincidences in their lives. For example, they see people who look exactly like other people they know, but aren’t.
The reason for all the coincidences in their so-called lives is that the program in which they live was written hastily. It reuses a lot of code. There are only a few hundred types of people, with minor variations. It was easier for the programmers to prevent duplicate people from ever becoming friends than to create 6 billion unique avatars.
So as I’m thinking about being nothing but code in a program, and thinking that the way you discover your true self is by realizing the coincidences in life are clues, a dozen people forward me an article about…being…code…in…a…program.
End
Hundreds of comments will likely ensue, but by favorite so far are:
"Hi, you don't know me but our interfaces were programmed to fit. If you take off your clothes, I can show you how my algorithm can blow your recursion loop." (posted by Manual)
and
...
Female chick;
procedure Intercourse() {
if (chick.isSatisfied().equals('no')) milkey.penisSize += 10;
if (chick.isInjured().equals('yes')) milkey.penisSize -= 1;
else milkey.penisSize +=1; }
(posted by milkey, which makes the "milkey" bit make sense. I'd have written it generically for the better joke.
Holy Sh*t! You MUST see this.
15 August 2007
You're Not Real (but Scott Adams is)
A peep forwarded me a fark.com noted piece from from the NY Times, "Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy's Couch."
How timely. I finally finished God's Debris by Scott Adams this week. The NY Times piece echoed many of the suppositions made in Adams' work and his blog.
I forwarded a link to the article on to Scott via e-mail, and dang if he didn't reply back:
From: ScottAdams@aol.com
To: (me)
Subject: Re: NY Times Article - Validation of God's Debris?
Date: Aug 15, 2007 11:19 AM
Holy shit. This topic is literally on the top of my "to do" list to blog about, and I never saw the article until now.
Scott
Cool.
How timely. I finally finished God's Debris by Scott Adams this week. The NY Times piece echoed many of the suppositions made in Adams' work and his blog.
I forwarded a link to the article on to Scott via e-mail, and dang if he didn't reply back:
From: ScottAdams@aol.com
To: (me)
Subject: Re: NY Times Article - Validation of God's Debris?
Date: Aug 15, 2007 11:19 AM
Holy shit. This topic is literally on the top of my "to do" list to blog about, and I never saw the article until now.
Scott
Cool.
14 August 2007
Blogging vs. Web 2.0
Hugh MacLeod's latest post on Why We're All Blogging Less finds me agreeing and disagreeing. Are things really all that bad in the Blogipelago and the Mountains of Web 1.0? Are the Straits of Web 2.0 the only place to be? (What about the Gays of Web 2.0?)
I'm a blag young'un, granted. But since starting my blog last year, I've had to fend off disses from MySpacer blogless peeps. MySpace is grand for creative types and businesses - our band has a MySpace page, albeit young as well.
But the personal pages have always struck me as, um ... kinda lame? I mean, I get it. All the nifty apps 'n' stuff to let people know factoids about you. Peeps can comment. Ok. But rarely do I find anyone who uses the blog function. People seem to stick with the templated, "let us help you put yourself out there" widgets.
My druther is to put myself out there in the form of words. Some snaps are occasionally illustrative, but even the comics are word-based. It's the words, stoopid. It's the communication I groove on, not the advertisements. Cuz that's MySpace, right? Your own personal brand ad space?
I wanted to use a picture that I knew was lurking on a friend's MySpace page, but you can't view pics unless you're a MySpacer. Urgh. So I signed up. Dammit. And color my holier-than-MySpace-self vindicated when the following screen came up during account confirmation:
Aack! Pet peevishness!
Twitter's growing on me - for the blurbs on what you like, what you're doing, etc. I've particularly enjoyed Twittering during concerts. But a 140 character limit makes it tough to convey meaningful schtuff.
And I must concur with Hugh - FaceBook kicks MySpace's arse, for personal networking. Can't attest to the professional kickassedness over LinkedIn yet, but will give it time.
Personally, I'm hoping the blogs that I like and read regularly don't waste away into Twitter burps and social networking sites. What people think, what people feel, what people know, what people want ... these aren't well represented in Web 2.0. Yet?
I'm a blag young'un, granted. But since starting my blog last year, I've had to fend off disses from MySpacer blogless peeps. MySpace is grand for creative types and businesses - our band has a MySpace page, albeit young as well.
But the personal pages have always struck me as, um ... kinda lame? I mean, I get it. All the nifty apps 'n' stuff to let people know factoids about you. Peeps can comment. Ok. But rarely do I find anyone who uses the blog function. People seem to stick with the templated, "let us help you put yourself out there" widgets.
My druther is to put myself out there in the form of words. Some snaps are occasionally illustrative, but even the comics are word-based. It's the words, stoopid. It's the communication I groove on, not the advertisements. Cuz that's MySpace, right? Your own personal brand ad space?
I wanted to use a picture that I knew was lurking on a friend's MySpace page, but you can't view pics unless you're a MySpacer. Urgh. So I signed up. Dammit. And color my holier-than-MySpace-self vindicated when the following screen came up during account confirmation:
Aack! Pet peevishness!
Twitter's growing on me - for the blurbs on what you like, what you're doing, etc. I've particularly enjoyed Twittering during concerts. But a 140 character limit makes it tough to convey meaningful schtuff.
And I must concur with Hugh - FaceBook kicks MySpace's arse, for personal networking. Can't attest to the professional kickassedness over LinkedIn yet, but will give it time.
Personally, I'm hoping the blogs that I like and read regularly don't waste away into Twitter burps and social networking sites. What people think, what people feel, what people know, what people want ... these aren't well represented in Web 2.0. Yet?
26 June 2007
My blag is a horse's ass. Or, Best Stories.
(Apologies to savvy blagger types, as this post is a wee bit “Wankosphere 101”-like to ‘splain our bent to non-blaggers.)
People seem to have a black and white reaction to Scott Adams' blag. They love him or hate him. Haters seem to fail to see that he's a contrarion, witty shit stirrer with a wicked sense of humor. They take him literally. They suck.
His posts of late have been about unfunny things, wittily written. He's recently returned to funny posts peppered with the occasional personal one. This personal, Best Story post last week was awesome.
Hmmm. Best stories. Haven't "made it" yet with my passions (singing and writing). Joining the band could lead to good storytelling, but it’s nascent and simmering n’ stuff. I bidness wrote an article for an industry "white paper" a while back. A trade rag where vendors pay to place 2000 words of (typically) thinly disguised marketing dreck as "vendor neutral, educational" points of view on a topic. After its publication, a college professor in the midwest reached out, saying he'd read the piece and presented it in his bidness class for IT majors as good stuff on customer needs and business reasons for technology use.
That was the bee's effing knees. A lapsed English major with former dreams of teaching, I’d let writing go in the rush to career and paycheck advancement in the tech sector. Segueing from a tech role to a marketing one in ’99, my writing kung fu was slowly reawakened.
I am continually, gut-wrenchingly, knickers-in-a-twist disgusted at the inability of the below average person in bidness today to fail so utterly at writing a complete sentence. That such folk call my bidness writing superlative is not exactly a compliment, based on the source.
But that professor? Saying it was all relevant n’ stuff? That rocked. And it rocked for Sheena, too, as part of my piece included work she’d done. Both of us would happily languish in university obscurity if it didn’t pay so effing poorly.
But still. Bidness writing doesn’t satisfy the creative urge. Any clever wordplay or Cheek-isms were usually beaten out (sorry, Sheena, “edited”) before publication. But Sheena offered another path, and became my blagmother just over a year ago.
From Hugh MacLeod's Gaping Void
I’m still in Hugh’s 2005 stage of blag herstory. Posts slacked the last couple of weeks before vacation and catch up ensued last week. Typical Cheek light fare - things observed, things that resonate. Such was the "What Women Want - What Is Sexy" post, with a Gaping Void cartoon for eye candy.
Blaggers vary widely on the eNarcissicist-O-Meter. We use tools to track how often folks look at our blags, how they land there, how much time they spent, what they click to, etc. My "traffic" kung fu is weak - I'm not writing for a popularity contest. But I'm a vigilant sourcer, and Hugh has a creative commons license.
Happened to check traffic last night at the end of the work day, and the hits were high. Curiously strong high. From far off lands. The referrals were coming in from Twitter. Specifically, Hugh's Gaping Void Twitter page. For those of you un-Web 2.0 types, Twitter is MySpace on crack, the ultimate forum for minutiae addicts anonymous to let the wankosphere know what they're doing at every second. Hugh, fortunately, is not a card-carrying MAA member, but instead uses Twitter for the *interesting* tidbits and "random links" that aren't the stuff of "substantive posts".
Hugh must have done a Technorati-like search to feel the love and fell upon my last post with his cartoon. Hugh “random link” mentioned the post on his Twitter page as a “nice article on what is sexy from a woman’s POV”. Day-um if I didn’t have a Sally Field moment.
Hugh, that was indeed good for me. I’m not a religious type, but “Oh My God!” burst from my mouth a dozen times before I stopped squealing, realizing anyone walking by would think I was having one hell of an orgasm. The blogasm buzz is still in me today. That was the best happy blog anniversary present I could have never imagined receiving. Spanks. And it’s one of my best stories.
People seem to have a black and white reaction to Scott Adams' blag. They love him or hate him. Haters seem to fail to see that he's a contrarion, witty shit stirrer with a wicked sense of humor. They take him literally. They suck.
His posts of late have been about unfunny things, wittily written. He's recently returned to funny posts peppered with the occasional personal one. This personal, Best Story post last week was awesome.
Hmmm. Best stories. Haven't "made it" yet with my passions (singing and writing). Joining the band could lead to good storytelling, but it’s nascent and simmering n’ stuff. I bidness wrote an article for an industry "white paper" a while back. A trade rag where vendors pay to place 2000 words of (typically) thinly disguised marketing dreck as "vendor neutral, educational" points of view on a topic. After its publication, a college professor in the midwest reached out, saying he'd read the piece and presented it in his bidness class for IT majors as good stuff on customer needs and business reasons for technology use.
That was the bee's effing knees. A lapsed English major with former dreams of teaching, I’d let writing go in the rush to career and paycheck advancement in the tech sector. Segueing from a tech role to a marketing one in ’99, my writing kung fu was slowly reawakened.
I am continually, gut-wrenchingly, knickers-in-a-twist disgusted at the inability of the below average person in bidness today to fail so utterly at writing a complete sentence. That such folk call my bidness writing superlative is not exactly a compliment, based on the source.
But that professor? Saying it was all relevant n’ stuff? That rocked. And it rocked for Sheena, too, as part of my piece included work she’d done. Both of us would happily languish in university obscurity if it didn’t pay so effing poorly.
But still. Bidness writing doesn’t satisfy the creative urge. Any clever wordplay or Cheek-isms were usually beaten out (sorry, Sheena, “edited”) before publication. But Sheena offered another path, and became my blagmother just over a year ago.
From Hugh MacLeod's Gaping VoidI’m still in Hugh’s 2005 stage of blag herstory. Posts slacked the last couple of weeks before vacation and catch up ensued last week. Typical Cheek light fare - things observed, things that resonate. Such was the "What Women Want - What Is Sexy" post, with a Gaping Void cartoon for eye candy.
Blaggers vary widely on the eNarcissicist-O-Meter. We use tools to track how often folks look at our blags, how they land there, how much time they spent, what they click to, etc. My "traffic" kung fu is weak - I'm not writing for a popularity contest. But I'm a vigilant sourcer, and Hugh has a creative commons license.
Happened to check traffic last night at the end of the work day, and the hits were high. Curiously strong high. From far off lands. The referrals were coming in from Twitter. Specifically, Hugh's Gaping Void Twitter page. For those of you un-Web 2.0 types, Twitter is MySpace on crack, the ultimate forum for minutiae addicts anonymous to let the wankosphere know what they're doing at every second. Hugh, fortunately, is not a card-carrying MAA member, but instead uses Twitter for the *interesting* tidbits and "random links" that aren't the stuff of "substantive posts".
Hugh must have done a Technorati-like search to feel the love and fell upon my last post with his cartoon. Hugh “random link” mentioned the post on his Twitter page as a “nice article on what is sexy from a woman’s POV”. Day-um if I didn’t have a Sally Field moment.
Hugh, that was indeed good for me. I’m not a religious type, but “Oh My God!” burst from my mouth a dozen times before I stopped squealing, realizing anyone walking by would think I was having one hell of an orgasm. The blogasm buzz is still in me today. That was the best happy blog anniversary present I could have never imagined receiving. Spanks. And it’s one of my best stories.
08 June 2007
B.Y.S.K.A.: "Frequently Disappointed by Mice"
I've shouted out about the Dilbert Blog before, I've even linked to it. Seeing as Scott Adams stopped having his archives permanently available, I'm going to include this post in its entirely so that it's not lost in the wankosphere.
Adams pisses a lot of people off. He's a contrarion, positing impossible situations and inviting debate, then stepping back to watch the fray. People get their knickers in *such* a twist over him, and typically fail to see that he's just inviting thought, conjecture, and yes, disagreement. He shuns extremist opinions not based in fact, smelling them for the shite that they are. I respect that.
But.
Today, he's the bee's effing knees. Because he went back to his roots as a humorist and gave us a jewel that does. not. suck. It's posts like these that make me *lurve* him. Enjoy.
******************************************
Frequently Disappointed by Mice, from the Dilbert Blog
Mice keep yanking my chain. Today was a perfect example. The headline said scientists produced mouse stem cells from mouse skin cells. This could be a huge breakthrough, both ethically and medically. The only problem is that the method used on the mice would cause cancer in humans. Fuck you, mice. Give me something I can use!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19067616/
My disappointment could have been worse. It’s not clear I’ll ever need that particular medical breakthrough anyway. The stories that really chafe my nuggets are the ones that sound like this:
“Researchers announced a breakthrough in gene therapy. This new technique gave mice an IQ of 700, grew hair in bald patches, doubled the size of their peckers, and made them immortal. The mice also showed signs of telekinesis, unlimited male orgasms, and x-ray vision. In lab tests, the mice beat leopards in paw-to-paw combat.”
This makes me all excited because I think “I could use a few of those things.” Then I read the rest of the story and it says something like “The researchers cautioned that this sort of gene therapy in humans would make their eyes turn into vaginas.”
It’s bad enough that I live in a country that ranks 37th in health care. The thing that really pisses me off is that I have worse health care than mice. If I were a mouse, I would start smoking, drinking, overeating and having unsafe sex, because those tiny bastards can be cured of anything with a goddamned aspirin and a shot of their own skin cells.
It makes me wonder if mice are easily cured because of the placebo effect. Mice don’t know anything about science, so they think whatever the scientist is doing must be helping. For example, if a lab mouse sees the janitor beating off in a test tube, the mouse thinks “Hey, my tumor is shrinking!” And then it does. You can’t underestimate the power of positive mouse thinking.
Just once I would like to see a headline that said, “SCIENTISTS DISCOVER A CURE FOR HUMAN DIABETES,” followed by details that say, “Scientists caution that this treatment in mice would give them inverted erections and make them hump themselves to death.”
Well, I can dream.
******************************************
Sigh. I laughed so hard, I cried. I'm replete. I'm giddy. And yes, the obvious connection to Douglas Adams and that mice are in fact effing with us is galactically relevant. Which is why there are 42 asterisks, not one more, not one less.
02 May 2007
Map of the Innerdnet
Randall Munroe posted this on today's xkcd. Cheek's frequent haunts are listed - are yours?
(The hover over text doesn't appear here, but does on the linked site above.)
(The hover over text doesn't appear here, but does on the linked site above.)
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