Alright, I was watching the closing ceremonies for the olympics the other day, and I saw the coolest thing of all time. Those bikes that aren’t quite bikes. They’re technically unicycles, but the person is INSIDE the wheel, and the pedals rotate the wheel around him. Think that thing from Star Wars Episode III that General Grievous drove on that pit-like planet, but minus the legs, and with pedals instead of a motor.
Another awesome thing I found the other day is this video on StumbleUpon. Wrestling Robots. From Japan.
They’re so cool, especially that little orange dude. I wish I had him.
These are now added to one of those old people’s walkers and an electric skateboard (see “Thoughts on Serving,…”) to make my wish list. In no particular order:
1) Chinese Bike Thing
2) Electric Skateboared
3) Old person’s walker
4) Wrestling robot (specifically: that orange one)
I found this article while I was going to check my email the other day, and found it incredibly interesting. It’s basically about the fact that we we’re starting to lose our domination on the olympics, and the Chinese are taking our throne. They do this by being strategic about how the allocate their talent, going for maximum gold medals, as opposed to us, where we just let each of our athletes choose where they want to go all by themselves. Also, they have so much MORE talent than we do, simply because of their massive population.
Now, I figure, is this some kind of literary-scale forshadowing for the future state of the world? Even now, the Olympics isn’t the only thing that the Chinese are kicking our asses in. For example, I recall reading in The Economist an article regarding the state of Chinese Infrastructure (http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10697210). I don’t think that the US has done much large scale infrastructure building since the Eisenhower adminstration in the 50’s. I mean, we’ve still been building the interstates as recently as the 90’s, but nothing NEW has really been put into action. In addition, despite the fact that oil is killing most of the world’s economies, especially ours, China’s is still booming.
Really, subtitle of the Economist article says it all: Democracy can be inefficient. In order to get a major bill passed, you need to get people from both sides of aisle to talk and work it out, and that could take years, possibly even longer than most term lengths. Most congressmen don’t even bother.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not an advocate of introducing Maoism to America. I’m just pointing out that, when put up against a smartly organized totalitarian rival, there are some pros and cons. Of course, the fact that China is faced with all sorts of human rights abuses that practically come standard with any sort of centrally-planned-economy-style government, is the ultimate con, which is why I definitely don’t advocate it.
On the bright side, due to the lack of control the government has, and our large (if recessed) economy, we’re free to do pretty much whatever research we want to. This means we’re on the forefront for exploring alternative fuels, which (I hope) will no longer be “alternative,” but the mainstream. Because (I think) we will popularize alternative fuels on a massive scale more quickly, we’ll (hopefully) be ahead of the curve against China economically.
Now, I’m no economist, and I hope my parenthetical statements have expressed the wishful/speculative nature of this entry, but I think that’s our last hope to get on top: Innovation. It’s gotta be, because we’re not going to win in sheer manpower and centrally planned strategy. The Chinese got us beat on that.
Every kid’s dream, right? Guitar Hero, all day, every day, but seriously, even with 5 Guitar Hero games out (plus rock band), doesn’t it all get old after a while? I mean, I’m no lover of school work, but why give up the awesome social networking and potential funness place that is school for playing guitar hero all day? It’s kind of pathetic.
The parents I’m even more disappointed at. I’m not for parents being heavy-handed about stuff like getting a 94% instead of a 90% in the IB program so that one can get more of a cushion in case you mess up later (like mine tend to do), but stuff like THIS is what I think they should intervene on.
I mean seriously, look at some of these quotes:
“”We couldn’t take the complaining anymore,” says Hunter. “He always told me that he thought school was a waste of time.”"
Jesus Christ, are you really going to listen to a 16 year old’s opinion (please no ad hom tu quoque) on a matter like that? How dumb do you have to be!?
“Mike and Hunter do not believe in one-size-fits-all parenting.”
Oh, I see. That dumb. Well, damn, I wish my parents didn’t believe in THAT kind of parenting. I can just imagine…. “Hey mom, I can blow a MEAN spit bubble, and I heard they have a spit bubble blowing competition next week in the mall, can I drop out of school to practice and get better? I mean, there’s ANOTHER competition down in the next town, I think it’s going to be the next BIG THING!!!”
“In one respect, the arrangement is similar to what parents of gifted child athletes and actors have done for years. “
Yes, except for the fact that a) it’s rare that these “gifted child athletes/actors” make it big in the end, and b) Competitive Gaming is not a field in which one can stand a chance at making money. Period. Makes one think, how do these parents fiscally justify this? Lets see:
“Gaming for him is serious business. It’s his job.
Among the prizes he’s won playing “Guitar Hero” tournaments: gift certificates, gaming equipment and chicken sandwiches.” (emphasis added)
For those of you oblivious to the accusations that the Chinese female gymnasts are underage (like me), this might come as some delightful news.
It seems as though some US computer nerd used the cache feature of Baidu (a popular Chinese search engine. Think Chinese Google) to look at some spreadsheets that were taken off of the Chinese government’s website that state that He Kexin, China’s Golden Girl, is only 14, two years younger than the age requisite set by the International Gymnast’s Association.
Faced with this evidence, as opposed to just the accusations that the IOC just ignored due to their wanting to not piss off China, the IOC is now forced to set up an investigation. Expect some golds to switch from China to America and the UK.
The other day, I found a webpage that said that this guy had a conversation with Michael Phelps (the olympic swimmer) on AIM. I decided to sort of investigate. Before we get to that, though, here’s the conversation.
harmless lil boy: rumor has it that this is Michael Phelps?
harmless lil boy: care to set that rumor straight?
miiikeymiiikey: whos this
harmless lil boy: No one you know, obviously.
harmless lil boy: just a curious college kid with more than enough time on his hands
harmless lil boy: so what’s the verdict?
miiikeymiiikey: where did you get this sn
harmless lil boy: An anonymous source gave it to me, claimed that you were Michael Phelps
harmless lil boy: a simple yes or no would suffice.
miiikeymiiikey: who was it
harmless lil boy: All questions Miiikey, no answers.
harmless lil boy: Are in you in fact michael phelps?
harmless lil boy: simple question I think.
miiikeymiiikey: this is gay
harmless lil boy: So Michael Phelps is a gay basher? Why is this gay?
harmless lil boy: Are you or are you not Michael Phelps?
miiikeymiiikey: because, youre allowed to ask me questions and expect me to waste my time answering them, but you wont even do me the courtesy of answering mine
harmless lil boy: Because I have only asked one question, and have gotten no response
harmless lil boy: When you answer mine, I will answer yours.
harmless lil boy: simple.
harmless lil boy: so…
miiikeymiiikey: my name is michael phelps. my friends call me mikey.
miiikeymiiikey: where did you get my screen name
harmless lil boy: Are you michael phelps the olympic swimmer, that was the question
miiikeymiiikey: yes i swim
miiikeymiiikey: where did you get this screen name
harmless lil boy: are you THE olympic swimmer?
miiikeymiiikey: yes, where the hell did you get my screen name
harmless lil boy: Well, congrats on all those medals kind sir.
harmless lil boy: Well, a fan of mine gave me your screen name.
miiikeymiiikey: a fan of yours? who is this
harmless lil boy: I happen to also be famous, although not to the extent of yourself, but in terms of the college world and the internet, I am quite well known.
harmless lil boy: http://modifiedliving.com
harmless lil boy: Like I said, a fan of mine gave me your screen name.
miiikeymiiikey: he emailed it to you or what?
harmless lil boy: no, IMed
miiikeymiiikey: because i have been getting a lot of weird ims today
harmless lil boy: Ha
miiikeymiiikey: im going to have to block everyone thats not on my buddy list
harmless lil boy: well, your screen name was actually posted online for a little…
miiikeymiiikey: give me a fucking break
harmless lil boy: but then I was informed that this screen name was not yours
miiikeymiiikey: your kidding
harmless lil boy: but then you just confirmed that it was in fact you
harmless lil boy: so we are left with a bit of a problem
harmless lil boy: do i respect the wishes of an olympian, or do I go about my selfish ways and post your screen name?
miiikeymiiikey: was this kids name steve? bc my girl just told me she thinks she knows who is behind all this shit
harmless lil boy: Why would your girl be giving out your screen name, thats not very “your girl” of her to be doing.
harmless lil boy: tramp.
miiikeymiiikey: no, shes my best friend from home. she had an away message up with an im id sent her and apparently he figured the shit out on his own.
miiikeymiiikey: but she knows your site
harmless lil boy: Like I said, everyone knows my site, I’m famous.
miiikeymiiikey: shes in a sorority
harmless lil boy: As are most of my fan base.
miiikeymiiikey: she was just telling me about it like 2 days ago
miiikeymiiikey: she thinks its hilarious
harmless lil boy: It is hilarious, she had good taste in humor.
miiikeymiiikey: shes got good taste in a lot of things
harmless lil boy: Does that mean you’ve taken her to pound town?
miiikeymiiikey: i wish
harmless lil boy: Dude, you are an olympian, you should be getting crazy boy band ass.
miiikeymiiikey: she knows the real me
miiikeymiiikey: weve been friends for 12 years you know
harmless lil boy: I mean, you did have that minor DUI bump in the road, but I think that shouldn’t detract from your “Hey I’m michael phelps, suck my cock” game.
harmless lil boy: oh, so she’s one of the girls who was there before the MP bandwagon train rolled into town?
miiikeymiiikey: yeah shes the fuckin love of my life..ha.
miiikeymiiikey: shes turned me down dozens of times
miiikeymiiikey: she keeps getting hotter. i cant stop.
harmless lil boy: why don’t you just show up to her house, completely ass naked, wearing your gold medals? if that doesn’t work, then I don’t know what will.
miiikeymiiikey: shed kick me in the balls and lock me out in the cold
harmless lil boy: does she have a boyfriend?
miiikeymiiikey: uh she did
miiikeymiiikey: he died
miiikeymiiikey: so its weird
harmless lil boy: Because I know people, we can make him disappear
harmless lil boy: ooooh, nevermind then
miiikeymiiikey: ha yeah
harmless lil boy: looks like that was already taken care of.
harmless lil boy: well, sorry to hear that
miiikeymiiikey: it happens
miiikeymiiikey: fucking war..you know
harmless lil boy: yeh, crazy times we live in.
miiikeymiiikey: im not supposed to talk about it
miiikeymiiikey: but i have opinions
harmless lil boy: why aren’t you allowed to talk about the war?
harmless lil boy: is there some list of things that a public figure isn’t allowed to discuss?
miiikeymiiikey: yeah kind of
harmless lil boy: like war, midget gang bangs, what else?
miiikeymiiikey: HA
harmless lil boy: Here’s a question: what was you BAC when you got busted for your DUI?
harmless lil boy: wait, are you even 21?
miiikeymiiikey: im 19
harmless lil boy: jesus, I think your parents fed you steroids
miiikeymiiikey: haha
harmless lil boy: Didn’t they take away your Wheaties sponsorship for that shit?
miiikeymiiikey: they took a few things away
harmless lil boy: If I were your agent/publicist, I would have you marketing Colt 45 or Old English 40 oz’s…
miiikeymiiikey: shit hit the fan
harmless lil boy: You could be making millions! “I’m Michael Phelps, and when I’m not dominating the world wearing my Speedo, I’m drunk off Colt 45, and driving around town looking for sluts.”
miiikeymiiikey: haha
miiikeymiiikey: i was just told to stop iming you
miiikeymiiikey: so i gotta go
miiikeymiiikey: sorry
harmless lil boy: haha, told by who?
harmless lil boy: the girl?
harmless lil boy: haha, what’s her screen name
harmless lil boy: let me chat her up
miiikeymiiikey: ***”CENSORED”****
miiikeymiiikey: oh im a fuckin idiot. shes going to kill me
miiikeymiiikey: but yeah she said youd post this on your site
miiikeymiiikey: so i gotta roll dude
harmless lil boy: hahah
harmless lil boy: well, she is a smart, smart girl
miiikeymiiikey: fuck
miiikeymiiikey: all right bye
Yes, this is a 100% real conversation. See the updates on the site? One is from a time (2005) where Phelps wasn’t particularly popular, and the popularity of the page came about three years later. Also, the site looks very legit. Pictures of the guy, no other reasons to think that this is faked, and lots of quality content.
And yes, this is his real screen name. Alas, he has enabled the option to block everyone not on his friends list. There is AIM email, though…
Psychology – Divination
Physics – Defense Against the Dark Arts
Chemistry – Potions
Bio – Herbology and/or Care of Magical Creatures
English – Muggle Studies
History – History of Magic
TOK – Astronomy
PE (or Weights, etc) – Flying
Driver’s Education – Apparition
Any Math Class – Arithmancy
Any Foreign Language Class- Ancient Runes
Any Art Class – Transfiguration
Any Music Class – Charms
Alright. Here’s the deal. As I’ve become a more educated person, and developed mentally, being able to comprehend more things, I’ve been able to understand how more and more things work, to the point where there are few everyday things where I’m just like “uhh, I have no idea how that happens.” I mean, if I don’t know, I’ll probably be able to give a pretty good guess. Now, I’m not just saying this to act full of myself, here’s the point:
Everything is awesome
Like take the sun for example. For the most part, everyone takes it for granted. “Oh, it’s that big hot glowy bright thing in the sky.” Now, I mean, I know most people know this, but think about it for a second: It’s a giant ball of nuclear explosion, burning with so much brightness, that, 8 light-minutes away, here on earth, we can’t look at it without screwing up our eyes, and with so much heat that it causes our 110-degrees-on-the-blacktop band camp days. And THEN, the only reason it even stays together is because its SO MASSIVE, 1.3 MILLION times bigger than our already-too-big-to-comprehend earth, that the gravity of it all counteracts the giant fusion reaction going on. Maybe I’m *really* weird, but whenever I’m just sitting there, with a bright sun over my head, and I see it, that’s what goes through my head, and I’m just filled with an incredible sense of awe at how amazingly cool it is.
Oh, and then about clouds and sunsets. When they happen, like when the clouds are in between me and the sun, and I can see that part of them lit up, I like, in my head, go fly out and rotate the whole thing in my mind, and how the sun lights up only one side of the clouds, and it gives it all depth, and I just think it looks so cool. Sorry, I just ad libbed that paragraph, it probably doesn’t make any sense.
And then about the sun again, but with all the other stars. Most of them are EVEN BIGGER. Some MILLIONS OF TIMES bigger. And we can see them hundreds of light-years away (don’t take that measure of distance lightly either, think about how HUGE it is) because there is so much energy being outputted.
Okay, now we’re going to move away from huge giant things, and talk about math for a second. There are just so many cool things out there with math. I mean, none of them you learn in math class, normally, but if you look a little yourself, there is just so much awesomeness there. Take Benford’s Law for a second. It states that, in any naturally occurring set of numbers (census data, birth rates, death rates = yes; UPC codes, zip codes = no), the digit “1″ will be first in the any given number around 30% of the time. Number 2 is about 18%, 3 is around 13%, and it goes down logarithmically from there. It’s so cool because it goes against exactly what you’d think, you’d think it’d be like 11% each, or something like that. Even that, though, wouldn’t make it particularly noteworthy. What does is its applications in detecting fraud. Like, in fake withdrawals, 8 and 9 would appear first more often because they want to do it high, without going over a set power of 10, for fear of setting off some kind of fraud-detection mechanism. There’s some youtube video and firefox add-on that you can download to test it out on certain graphs on the internet. I did it a little (census.gov, for instance), and it works so amazingly.
The last thing I’m going to talk about is music. Ever since becoming a half-competent musician, I’ve been able to pick apart popular music (rock, pop, rap even), and it just makes it so much more enjoyable. Like, to just pick out the bass, guitar, drum parts, and kind of analyze generally how they play it (I don’t play any of that, so I don’t know exactly how, but I know enough to approximate). I mean, gahh, it’s just so cool.
There’re also superfluids. When you cool down helium to like 1-2 degrees kelvin, it turns back into a fluid with ZERO VISCOSITY, which allows it to basically defy gravity, climbing the walls of the container.
Anyways, that finishes my rant on how cool stuff is. There’s more, but I’ve lost the will at this point to type them all out.
Here’s a discovery channel commercial that summarizes all of my feelings, in song.
Which reminds me, here’s another relevant piece of media:
Nihilism
WHICH REMINDS ME!!!! GAHH! Understanding how computers work is ALSO AWESOME. I mean, just think about how everything you see is made out of little dots, and how every bit of information, no matter how small, is ones and zeros. Even just letters are no less than EIGHT of those “bits” each! Then, those letters make code like C, Basic, or HTML, or whatever fancy stuff computer people do, and so on and so forth. And then, BELOW THAT, it’s all just electrical impulses that go through the circuits of your computers.
And the same things with your brain! But no circuits, just synapses!
And then to think how quantum computing (on, off, and BOTH) will revolutionize everything… *head explodes*
Here is a note where I list a bunch of thoughts. I wrote them all down while I was working, but I forgot the paper over there. Sad sads.
On the old people: Most of them are really nice, but some of them are really mean. The mean people usually are like some kind animal. There is bird lady, who keeps changing her orders on me, and has a beak-like nose, and there is turkey man, who never talks, but has his wife do it for him, and his neck has lots of extra skin.
They’re really depressing, though, sometimes. They only ever talk about the most mundane of topics, and instead of using walkers for fun (see below), they *need* them. I mean, its so depressing, I once considered suicide at work. No joke. I don’t think I ever want to be an old person.
On walkers: I’ve found that they are super-mega fun. You can use the brakes for steering and sit on them, and scoot around. Endless possibilities.
On gross food: I’m not trying to propagate any unfair old person stereotypes, but they eat the most gross food, on a consistent basis. Gross things include
* Prune juice. I had some, gross stuff.
* Prunes. Also really gross.
* Cottage Cheese.
* Spinach
* There’s more, but I forgot the list. I’ll add more if I remember.
On T-Shirts: It has nothing to do with work, but I thought it up at work. I want to get a bunch of T shirts for the start of school. Here are some of the ideas that I got. Google if you don’t know what they are.
* Stuff from DeviantArt
* xkcd
* explosm
* Modest Mouse
* Say Anything
* Homestar Runner
* GutterPark – Burden of Creation
* Something with Jesus on it.
* Flaming Lips
* The Economist – No Spin
* Beck – Green Car
* Amnesty International (I just love that little candle thing)
On electric skateboards: I want one. If you want to give me a birthday present, that’s a good idea. I will love you forever.
Uhhh. That’s it for now. I might make another one later.
OH!!! IMPORTANT THING!!!! Coldplay is giving out a free new song on their website, www.coldplay.com. GO THERE NOW and get it if you’re sane.
