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My friend Dave's band Gozerian played the Midway Cafe last night... Amazing, such a blend of studio-style sound with the energy of live performance, a giant heap of great percussion (biggest kit I've seen) and the light rig they brought in behind really added to it...

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You can have a handful of individual evil people, certainly. But even when committing great acts of evil, most of the people committing those acts don't think they're doing evil. They think they're doing something justified, even good.

And if we lose sight of that, if we lose sight of the fact that people are just people, no matter how evil their actions, we lose sight of the fact that we, too, are capable of evil. I am capable of evil. You are capable of evil. We are all capable of evil. And if we label anyone 'simply evil' without trying to understand how they got there, we risk getting there too.

I always thought it was just because declaring a group of people "non-people" could justify any violence against them, but yeah, there's also that "no human could be so evil, and I KNOW I'm human, so I can't possibly be that evil" aspect that may be more important. A real quote from Donald Trump on the day of the election:

"Well, I think if they win, I should get all the credit. If they lose, I should not be blamed at all."
(via)
ain't that just the most Trumpian way of thinking. The doe comes here, buck stops over there Friends of mine on FB wondering what I'm doing in the background of Stacey Abrams greeting Jimmy Carter...
The website Lost in Mobile has a corresponding WhatsApp chat I great enjoy - admittedly a bunch of blokes, but from all around the world, and we enjoy chatting on techie and sometimes philosophical things... the top bar of the site has a link to start with the chat if you think it's something you might dig... anyway, here is some stuff from yesterday and today... I realized my rambling was more of a blog post, so here it is...

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Kirk:
The USPTO wants to know if artificial intelligence can own the content it creates... What a weird question! My first thought is no - since this is one step away from personhood, and most AIs like this don't seem that autonomous.

But we grant virtual personhood to corporations, and they can hold copyrights, right? Is an AI less of a person than a corporation is?

Also shades of the issue if a monkey can hold a copyright on a photo they clicked the shutter for or if it fairly belongs to the human who set up the situation and owns the equipment...

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Bob:
Doesn't the patent thing depend on the definition of "person"? Is part of that being self-aware? In the case of the simian selfie, my question would be did the simian in question initiate the copyright. Now one could argue that just because the copyright might not belong to the simian, that doesn't mean it belongs to the photographer.

As for corporations, don't they represent either the owners or the shareholders?

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Andrew:
It's just lawyerly bullsh*t. If you created the AI you own the works it creates. An AI is just a machine, albeit a complex one.

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Bob:
What happens if we get to the point where an AI is a separate, self-aware entity? Something that we would consider sentient if it weren't a "machine". Further, let's say it's mobile and has human-like appendages?

And going further, what about an AI that creates an AI? Is the second AI considered a derivative work? At what point is the AI no longer "just a machine". Think Data from Star Trek The Next Generation.

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Andrew:
It's tough luck. Data was still created artificially and he's still a machine.

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Bob
Not to be picky, or too pedantic, but I could argue that we're all machines in a way, but I know what you mean. I'm waiting for the dolphins to tell us that we're ruining their oceans.

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Kirk:
"Si, abbiamo un anima. Ma e fatta di tanti piccoli robot."
--Italian philosopher Giulio Giorello
"Yes, we have a soul. But it is made up of many small robots."

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Andrew:
I do get that we're bio-chemical machines but I do think there's something special about biological machines. Yes, there's a spectrum from us to amoebas, and some animals probably should have more rights than they do, but machines don't feature.

And for all I'm a geek, I think we should strongly resist making machines that are too human-like. I think it's dangerous on many levels.

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Kirk:
The machines we have now don't feature (hadn't heard that phrase before) but I don't think I buy there's anything eternally unique about biology -- and if there was, at some point we'd figure out how to make "wetware" robots.

The book "Minds in Motion" suggests one idea: that much of biologicals' cognition is based on development and moving in space (and as humans so many of our ways of modeling the world are fundamentally physical)

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Andrew:
Maybe we just shouldn't....
We're not ready to be gods.

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Shaun:
I am :-)

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Kirk:
I kind of agree (with Andrew not Shaun) but mostly just because I worry we'd be bad at it- that if we create something that has its own agenda, that agenda might not be well aligned with our own.

Famously folks keep moving the bar on "well if a computer can do THIS it must be intelligent" - playing chess, vision recognition, etc. Computers can do that stuff and still we see that well, it's still mostly a well crafted tool - it "thinks" in the same way birds "know how" to fly, designed into the system so to speak (not designed per se in the case of birds but you know what I mean )

Of course, Alpha Zero changes that scene a little bit- I've always said "chess programs, ho hum, wake me when a chess playing program is also good at playing backgammon" and that's kind of what we have here- Alpha Zero starts with no knowledge and plays against itself in a matter of hours or days becomes a world beater! with a way of playing its games that often seem uncanny and alien to experts in the game's usual progression

But still.... I guess now I want to say "wake me when it's a program that WANTS to start up chess or some other game of its own volition" And we're not there yet - or if we are, that system simultaneously figured out how to keep a low profile since humans might not appreciate the competition :-D

All this gets quickly into "what's humanity all about, anyway" - like is there a secular purpose or universe goal that many people could agree on? There might not be - but one proposal would be "to keep humanity alive for as long as possible" - this could be a means to other ends, or an end unto itself.

(Of course not everyone agrees with that - who think humanity is nature's current primary experiment with memetic intelligence, and it's certainly taking its toll on the biodiversity of the planet... (biodiversity being a pretty good other candidate for what best uinversal goals might be)

So I do think a decent mission for humanity is the creation of new categories of things.... ideas and concepts that wouldn't exist if we weren't here, but not just novelty in the way a list of random numbers is novel: novelty in meaning I guess. Which means, technically, if our robot or virtual children could do that after us, like could be made to explore the cosmos so would survive an asteroid strike or solar fair that made the earth uninhabitable for us... i dunno, I guess I'm for that! But not at the cost or risk of humanity.... but maybe if we had a really nice retirement ....

Of course, say we could make real AI, true virtual people, we'd be in an odd state. Like, it would seem morally wrong to not give the AI rights. Not treat them as intelligent, feeling and thinking slaves. Let them vote. But what happens to democracy when you can make all the clones you want, legions to swamp any popular vote?

(Of course, when you apply too much of that same thinking to humans of the real world rather than this still very hypothetical example, you get into some ugly eugenics and fascist places real quick)

But coming back to the democracy idea - should a virtual person get to vote, why or why not.... the argument against, at least for the clones, would be in part "because they were too easy to make, once we grew the original in a somewhat more organic way, teaching it etc" So that suggests a model that the value of a person is somehow tied into the effort and expense and time and resources that went into making them? Or maybe a better model is, the value of a person is somehow tied into the guesstimated quality and uniqueness of what's likely to come out of them.... like I think many omnivores would feel bad about the death of, say, a black bear in the woods more than a cow or pig thats lived in a controlled farm environment all its life... maybe partially because that bear has had a more unique life?

Or I dunno. This all might morally suspect territory - any line of reasoning that suggest devaluing some group of humans because of some constructed measure of "human value" is deeply suspicious! So maybe it's not worth going there for the sake of still very hypothetical questions about AI and virtual people...

Heh, I remember the Optimus Prime toy from the original Transformers line... every robot had a biographical 'tech spech' with a tagline, and his was "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."
So for me this all brings up the question: "Am I on 'team human', or am I on 'team sentient being'"?

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Just saw Trevor Noah at the Chevalier, a week after seeing Nick Kroll at the same venue. (Part of a birthday triumvirate of comedy for Melissa with Maria Bamford at the Wilbur next week.)

Never sure I will ever get used to fairly big time celebrities going "Helllllloooooo MEDFORD!" I do daydream about making an expanded version of my self-published comic on coping with mortality, something that captures the best of my thinking not just on death but on the best way to get through life.

I continue to look for the best app to do that with, experimenting with various paint programs (over the year I've spent so much money on devices with touch sensitive screens, each time thinking "maybe THIS will be the one that lets my doodle skills blossom") Apple iPad's "Notes" program probably can't be it (if only because it doesn't deal with layers) but it really has some interesting UI decisions: coloring with the marker is more or less two-toned, paint once then start painting on the same spot to get a darker shade. And the eraser tool is kind of wild: it's like using the "Undo" button (that might erase a set of lines squiggles you made without lifting the stylus all at once) but instead of removing the last thing you did, it removes what ever you poke with the eraser tool. It's disconcerting at first, but kind of encourages a "well if you mess up you can do that whole thing over" approach.

I'm appropriately humble about my doodle skills, but looking at the sesame street characters I drew from memory during a meeting, I wonder if some of the lack of depth most of my stuff has comes from my preferences for using flat flood fill to color with... it's interesting to let go of a kind of "coloring perfectionism".

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I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

Random linguistic watch: 3 times in the past day or so I've seen "roasted" used in a casual jovial insult sort of way. Prior to that, I feel like I mostly just saw it in reference to semi-formal "comedy roast" events. Anyone else feel it is having an uptick?

Also, in trying (unsuccessfully) to confirm and quantify that feeling, I stumbled Google Books Ngram viewer (Not helpful because it just up to 2000, and then just books.) Seeing if it was like one of those baby name popularity graphers, I put in Kirk, and found a big uptick around 1840, and then learned about the Disruption of 1843, where the Church of Scotland split after a decade of strife. (Kirk is the name of the official church of Scotland, as well as for the local branch, so to speak.)

Ya learn something new every day! On good days, two things.

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Last night I grabbed "Snipperclips" for the Nintendo Switch, play some of the puzzles with Melissa - cute game!

I feel like I'm out of the loop with Switch, in terms of what might be cool to do with it beyond Mario and Zelda. There is a remake of NES Blaster Master - I tried the free 3DS demo of that but the Switch would be nicer.

Despite having had an Xbox One and a PS3 and a Wii U for a while, I feel like I haven't been into downloadable / indie stuff in any system since the 360 (which still stands as my favorite system for now, at least in terms of having open world sandbox games...)

Any suggestions? For reasons that aren't quite clear to me now, I've had a desktop post-it saying 'Kirk "Sweet Life" Israel from a dream in april 2006'. I'm not sure if I wanted to tell people about that as a nickname, or what, but here is the dream as then transcribed, so I can at least put the post-it to rest:

I had an odd dream last night. Dizzy Gillespie was giving some kind of concert playing multiple pianos at once, big stride piano stuff. (yes I know that wasn't his primary instrument.) Something happened to him and he wasn't able to finish, so they did some kind of operation to me that copied his skillset so I was able to take over the show... finishing up Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor he had started (don't know what happened to the stride piano stuff) in front of an audience on these multiple pianos, but they were specially rigged so that they had some organ keys as well. It was very athletic, moving from piano to piano, and my general memory of the piece helped keep things moving as I read the sheet music, though my ability to play piano like that was new from the operation.

Afterwards there was an audience Q+A though most people were hoping to have asked a Dizzy a question, not me.

Finally some guy was encouraging me to take a middle nickname for myself. He explained that back in the day, talented performers would take a name that implied their ability to put themselves on easy street, though recently the practice had fallen out of vogue because people didn't want to tempt fate that way. So I chose the name Kirk "Sweet Life" Israel.

So, a few weeks late, here's what the costume for me and my tuba looked like on Dunster Rd Halloween night... I'm not sure if my makeup actually looked "skull-like" as was its intention, but overall it kind of added to the effect. Or maybe the affect.

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Even though it was reviled as being inconsistent and unpredictable, I preferred the old OSX "zoom" button behavior, where it (kinda sorta) maximized the window within the context of the current set of windows over the new "take over the whole screen world" pattern it has in Yosemite. I often want a bit more real estate for a given window, and rarely am I thinking "boy I wish I was looking at this window AND NOTHING ELSE MATTERS IN MY COMPUTER'S WORLD".

Besides predictability (especially when resizing browsers; some people found it odd that it didn't always try to be as wide as possible) I suppose Apple is trying to catch an iOS-like sense of "focus on this one thing" monotasking, and so they hide the dock and title bar. Personally, I think this is a UX misthink; a flavor of multitasking (or at least quick task switching) is fundamental to many people's use of a laptop or desktop.

(I like how Windows 7 did it; the window still takes up the full screen, but then you can reposition it)

Anyway, you can hold "option" when you click the green circle, and then gets the old zoom behavior; I just wish there was a way to switch which one was the default.

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http://loveblender.com/

November Blender of Love!

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So, New Orleans changed its basketball team name to "Pelicans"?
They're bitter about Utah hogging the name "Jazz", but somehow passed on the name "Krewe" or "Brass". Too bad!

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Ah, Inbox + Todo List Zero! It has been a while. One of my dad's favorite jokes, one of us would ask and the other answer:

Did you hear the one about the constipated mathematician?

He worked it out with a pencil!

facebook.com/DirtyOldBoston/photos_stream - pre-gentrified Boston and Camrbidge. Like Instagram minus the hipsterism. (via cmg)

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Enjoying the chronological dichotomy of listening to C+C Music Factory's "Things That Make You Go Hmmm" on a newish iPhone. "Things that make you go... Hmmmm" was a good meme before we knew what memes were.
I couldn't embed the main video in this LA Times piece Tubas Become Horns of Plenty but I found this on Youtube.

The intro says:

Fidel Bernabe, a talented trumpeter in Mexico, is among the brass band musicians who are part of Southern California's 'tuba revolution.' They're showing their chops on an instrument whose 'thunk thunk' attracts dance-minded partygoers.

When they said "thunk thunk" I was somehow hoping it was part of a more electronic music style... ah well.

(The dirty secret is, if you have the lungs for it, tuba parts are generally much easier than the other parts, so trumpeteers moving into the turf makes me jealous.)

All that said, I still don't like the sound of tubas outside of a certain New Orleans style... every once in a while I'm still tempted to look for a used one though.

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"Deck the Halls" started out as a drinking song. You were supposed to do a shot every time you heard "La." We nearly all died.

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Looking at a (lets say urban, light polluted) starry sky, is it mostly stars in our galaxy, or other galaxies we see? I always assumed the former but last night a friend said the latter.

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Kind of asshole-ish how the Mem. Drive Shell station puts the expensive gas on the left so suckers are more likely to choose it by mistake...

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New game in an unmoving car: watch Siri try to transcribe the guys on the radio..
--This is undoubtedly the best toast based video you'll see this week! OK GO is just amazing.

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I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path.

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And with the closure of the bank acct of my old life, my Todo due/overdue list is empty, first time in months! Next stop: Inbox Zero.... only 3 or 4 starred items there but 2 are moderately sized projects. --Animated versions of people telling their own stories is such a great medium

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Hint of insomnia, maybe I got too wound up in dumb Pats loss? Nothing like the BBC on WBUR to tell you whispering asleep and reassuring you: The World Doesn't Care About Your Team Man sometimes I wish this was an LJ 'cause then I'd have a little "mood" icon by every post and today I'd be all like
mood:cranky

All these annoyances seem to cluster.

Maybe it's statistical? There's this phenomenon I've read about and even witnessed but couldn't Google a reference for (which is of course, par for the course) how if you mix coarse grained particles of two different colors and shake, the result isn't an even blend, but the clusters stay segregated and gathered. If this scales to events in real life, it might explain "good things come in threes" type thinking.

Also, possibly, astrology. While I think the underlying explanation of astrology is hokum, I've been starting to think that somewhere between this kind of statistical clustering and observations on seasonal variations, as well as a kind of coded arbitrariness of randomness like the I Ching and a bit of insight to human personaligy (even if mostly in a Barnum effect kind of sense) there might be the shadow of something "to it".

But I came here to kvetch, not to sophomorically pontificate!

Last night I decide to just go read at the pub before the glorioustrainwrecks KotMK #17 game jam. To be fair, the burger and beer were good, but the book, by an author I've liked, was just not appealing to me at all. ("Lighthousekeeping" by Jeannette Winterson-- this whiny, mushy kind of cross between "just so" stories and magical realism.) And then even though it was only six there was this drunk or at least extremely raucous crowd there. And of course, I get meta-irritated at how they annoyed me; why should I begrudge people having a fun time? But there it was. And this was all after getting stuck on the dino-planet level of "Star Fox: Assault", a goofy sci-fi game I liked a while back and decided to replay, probably at a moderately more difficult level than I had before.

So then it was the game jam, and it started out ok, though I kept getting distracted by hearing the wind push against the plastic in front of the windows. My bedroom/office has these lovely stained glass pieces, but they're drafty--the one with the permanently installed AC has visible daylight in parts--so much so that I think air gets behind the plastic and pushes against it, ripping off the tape. I've given up keeping the plastic nice and taut like it was at first via the magic of hair dryer (doesn't matter so much visually, they're behind some roman shades) and now it's an ongoing thing of maintenance.

So, of course, the game never did come together quite right. It was very promising and kind of interesting but then I just got stuck with either a bug or misunderstanding of the engine I had written previously and was trying to leverage. (In short, the "player/wall" colliding thing was ok, but the same code just wasn't working for the "ghost/wall" collisions, or "ghost/ghost"). Plus, I didn't have time to research the Sine/Cosine routine I thought of working, that would have made it a more pleasant toy.

So rather than push on at the 2 hour time limit, I just post what I had then and think about coming back to it. I go back to self-medicate with the Star Fox game, get through that dino planet level (where I couldn't find the damn target goals, but thought I knew where to look) and then get stuck on a different boss fight, where according the FAQs, there's no strategy besides "shoot him in the face and try not to get too distracted by his attacks"... and most times I would get the boss's health to just a sliver, and then die.

Meh.

And now this morning, I have my "yourself!fitness" to do, except I know it's a "workout challenge"-- the program wants me to do as many situps, squats, pushups etc to gauge my progress. But that's a terrible way to judge, you're looking to gauge 2 weeks of progress, and who knows what kind of small cheating-on-pure-form for the sake of numbers might slip in there. Plus, for some reason the program is setup to still expect you to do the normal workout that day and nags you if you don't.

It's all a bit worse because of the general climate of fear and uncertainty. Maybe I should remind myself of the good stuff from yesterday; nice breakfast with my Aunt and Uncle, EB was in town and put a new endpiece on the giant honking ethernet cable that runs from the third floor to my room so it won't slip out of the router, I did a fair job straightening up parts of the apartment...

(And through typing all this I saw there were some games I missed last night at the game jam, but I need to upgrade DirectX to see one of them, and that process isn't working. Because, why the hell not. GAH!)

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Applet of the Moment
To view this content, you need to install Java from java.com
swank - source - built with processing
Control the eyes with the mouse... mouse button fires a stream of particles, that can be used to stick to the walls and the ghosts following you. (Dessgeega called this the best firefly spitting simulation ever). Press 'r' to reset. Meant to be a study in a 2D variant of The Unfinished Swan demo.

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DANG IT. the windows are so frickin' drafty I can see the air fill in behind the plastic sheeting in front, hear the tape rip off the sides Quote of the Moment

I wonder what life is all about. It seems to me we have a few tragedies or we win a few prizes and then it is all over.

She's Charles Schultz' adopted daughter (after being injured by her pony) via the Slate slideshow about the new Schultz biography. (Bought it, haven't had time to get to it yet.) So yesterday I went to yoga class, checking my regular physician who is also my yoga instructor that it was ok if I had a cold... (I figured I was after the really contagious bit anyway.) He said it was fine, and even something like "we need to have colds to keep us healthy." He went on to say that there are a limited number of viruses, 130 or so of this one type, 30 of another that mostly cause colds, and that you can't get the same virus twice. Now, I think it's not quite as simple as that, since I know it's the mutation factor that makes it so hard to make a vaccine for this stuff, but still. Because if there are 160-odd types, and that's all you could catch in a lifetime... I could almost see someone taking that on as a Pokémon type challenge, gotta catch 'em all!

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Video of the Moment

--Winsor McCay of Little Nemo fame in a 1911 movie... the live action stuff is pretty forgettable, but seeing the guy at work, and then the resulting animation, is fantastic.

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Quote of the Moment

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?

Funny to compare that with

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

Bad Literary Bit of the Moment
Cleaning out myh office before our relocation, I found this story start in curisive on a "Rational University" sheet of lined paper:

Lydia sat in the diner. Her eggs^^{and coffee} suddenlyno longer looked unappealing. She Usually a good dose of caffeine and grease was just the thing for hangovers, but today she this morning she couldn't stomach it.

She asked Well, the bacon was pretty good, two ^^dark unbending strips. She finished her bacon while catching the waitress' attention for the check.

The sun outside pounded into her head.

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Celebrity Fitness of the Moment

He told me he didn't count reps, instead just doing four sets until exhaustion. "I don't want to get too big. I'm a comedian," he said. Joe Piscopo, he explained, is a warning sign to weightlifting comedians. Piscopo, really, is a warning sign for non-weightlifting comedians too. In fact, you can replace the animal in any of Aesop's Fables with "Joe Piscopo" and it still works.

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Acronym of the Moment

--via The Sexy Name Decoder...you can get your name done and order T-shirts and other schwag. I'm completely stunned by the cleverness of their name generation algorithm.

Quote of the Moment

I believe that fascism is about abandoning your personal responsibility to the group or to society. You say 'In unity there is strength,' which inevitably will become 'In uniformity there is strength.' It's better if those sticks are the same size and length, because then they'll make a tidier bundle, which consequently leads to the kind of fascism that we saw in the '30s and '40s.

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Image of the Moment

--I'm not really into "Extreme Sports" for the most part but this shot of Mike Basich I couldn't resist. There's a Video and more info at arborsports. (via this Big-Boys.com entry)

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Bad Law of the Moment

However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited.

Jeez...do you think this would mean skipping the previews that are at the head of some DVDs and VHS tapes would be illegal? Party Photos of the Moment
Brooke, Mo, and I threw a Masquerade Ball last night. We spent a lot of time setting up the place, trying to get a bit of a decadent feel...like that masquerade ball in "Eyes Wide Shut", but without all the naked women and sex. (Alas.) We set up new shelves with lots of candles, made curtains for the main door out of some plush purple velvet stuff, made covers for the book shelves, tv, tables, etc. (I assisted by cutting cloth and helping Brooke (on the sewing machine) figure out what piece connected to which from Mo's measurements.) Unfortunately, none of photos we took really shows off the room, but the effect with the candles and all was striking.

I was my evil twin Krik (you can tell Krik is evil because of the black clothes, slicked-back hair, and goatee.) Mo was an S/M slave. Brooke was a woodland fairy (and amazed everyone, including herself, by sewing her own outfit...what a short time before was mere bolts of cloth and thread became a terrific costume.) Sawers was a giant Furby...
And Lo, there was dancing: Jane's spitcurl really made her flapper outfit, I thought...(she's here with Jennie--there were some great shots of her dancing.) Brooke even had a dance with Death! You can see 40-odd more photos that we took that night...it was a grand old time. Instead of burning mix-CDs ahead of time, we made some Windows Media Player playlists and hooked up Mo's laptop to the stereo...that worked out pretty well, lots more flexibility to change genres or pop in a new CD and get right to the good songs.

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Funny of the Moment

The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians (INDUCTING A GAY BISHOP) are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church's founder, Henry VIII, and his wife Catherine of Aragon, and his wife Anne Boleyn, and his wife Jane Seymour, and his wife Anne of Cleves, and his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriages.

Game of the Moment
Bubbles. Sinisterly simple gameplay...how many bubbles can you pop, net? I realize it's tough because only the tip of your mouse counts in terms of popping power. The main site, TomAndPhil had some interesting links. I also liked the concept behind Scrollbar Racing.

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Comics of the Moment
Alan Moore, one of the true greats of comicdom, wrote a long proposal for DC (home of Superman, Batman, etc) for a series called Twilight of the Superheroes. A kind of Ragnarok for the godlike superheros, it portrayed an alternate future where the world was divided into clans; the House of Steel for Superman and his brood, the House of Thunder for Captain Marvel's family, the House of Mystery (a grouping of the magic based characters) etc. I found it a terrific read, but I always have liked descriptions of comic story arcs almost as much as the comics themselves (and sometimes more.) Still, given the male gigolo and the BDSM themed event that the plot hinges on, I guess I'm not too surprised it didn't get made. If you're interested but don't want to read the whole thing (it is pretty big), check out this page that contains some background and summary info, although I think the guy was drunk when he came up with his site structure.

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Joke of the Moment

A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician are standing outside a building. They watch one person walk in, and two people walk out.

The physicist says: "The law of conservation of mass holds, after accounting for experimental error."

The biologist says: "Apparently they're breeding."

The mathematician says: "If one more person enters the building, it will be empty!"

Geek humor has its moments. So the mystery of the guestbook thickens. A bit. If I had to guess, assuming it was "an X (girlfriend)" I'd guess Jen. E-mail me and let me know...

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Toy of the Moment
IK Pupppet is a really cool skeleton marionette...too bad it's too late for halloween. (For some reason I kept trying to drag the white crosses, not the red dots.) It reminds of the Mexican Day of the Dead stuff, or this one book from France my dad had. Duo mode is especially spooky, some odd macabre dance. (via memepool)

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Quote of the Moment

The Internet has already become for a fortunate few ('spiritual scuba divers', one is tempted to call them) a limitless ocean without bottoms or shores. In whose depths one can breathe effortlessly--in and out, in and out.
It is the habitat of the newest creatures to evolve in our part of the Milky Way -- as enchanting and nobly bizarre as any giant manta or moray eel, say. They are recorded thoughts and feelings about what it is like to be a living thing.