Is Condescension Ever Funny?

Check out this excerpt from Paul Carr at TechCrunch…

Rule One: The next time one of you asks the rhetorical question “why is this news?” I swear to God I will come round to your basement, gather up all of your Wil Wheaton action figures and melt them down into a giant plastic phallus. If you’ve ever seen the Miriam Karlin scene in A Clockwork Orange, you know what happens next. Save us both a trip and next time you find yourself asking “why is this news?”, instead ask yourself “why do I still live with my parents?”. It’s news because people better than you said so.

Fortunately for me, I am smart enough to decide what’s news and what’s not.

Some dipshit at TechCrunch sure as hell isn’t.

December 12, 2010 by Common Sense Filter

A Note for a Friend

I need to write this post for myself more than for anyone else.

This has been an emotional roller coaster of a weekend for me and those of you who know me, you know that’s saying something.

A young friend of mine was hospitalized in the middle of the week. In addition to being a friend of mine he also hosts two shows on my network.

I didn’t know much more beyond the fact that he had been hospitalized. I didn’t know what was wrong with him although I am aware he has had some serious issues in the past.

I got a call yesterday from an old friend of mine who informed me that his condition was worse than I originally imagined. In fact, whether or not he would live through the day came into question.

When I hung up the phone, my heart dropped. He is too young for this to be happening to him.

My heart goes out to his family and his friends.

We’ll all be praying that he makes it out of this.

December 12, 2010 by Serious Business

Cool. Not.

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This won’t work for the very reason that you see in the photo. Extending your arm to touch a screen has been proven not to work very well. It’s an un-natural motion that causes physical pain over time. Hell, try it for 20 minutes!

That’s why the iPad and other touch devices do so well. It’s easier to look down and touch a pad then it is to extend your arm and touch your computer monitor.

This is a horrible idea that obviously didn’t take real world application into consideration before designing.

December 11, 2010 by General Musings

Time Machine Rocks!

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As I was going through my recent recordings of network shows we have recorded in the last few days, the unthinkable happened; I deleted a show segment.

At first, I panicked. There was just simply no way to get this show back. Getting hosts to gather round for a podcast can be very tricky at the best of times.

Then, it hit me. I have a Time Machine backup.

I went back a few days and lo and behold was able to recover the file I had deleted.

For you Mac users who use Leopard and above there just isn’t a good excuse to not use Time Machine. Buy a drive, plug it in, and that’s all there is to it.

Time Machine for the win!

December 5, 2010 by Mike is an idiot

Scientists Know Everything

Ok, maybe not.

A bacterium found in the arsenic-filled waters of a Californian lake is poised to overturn scientists’ understanding of the biochemistry of living organisms. The microbe seems to be able to replace phosphorus with arsenic in some of its basic cellular processes — suggesting the possibility of a biochemistry very different from the one we know, which could be used by organisms in past or present extreme environments on Earth, or even on other planets.

The article also says, “Oddball bacterium can survive without one of biology’s essential building blocks.”

Apparently, your essential building blocks thing is flawed.

I guess they don’t know everything.

Makes you wonder about global warming as well…

…doesn’t it?

Additional Rant Added 12.04 – The moral of the story is that scientists, more than anyone else, should not be dealing in “absolutes.” Time and time again they are either proven wrong or we find that what they believed to be an “absolute” truth is nothing more than a misguided idea predicated on erroneous data which leads to false conclusions. They then present these false conclusions as fact. Too much coffee is bad for you, red meat is bad for you, and “absolutes” of this nature are often repealed after later research shows a different result. Science is always evolving and we don’t have all of the answers. I believe that anyone who leans on the “absolutes” of science will soon find themselves flat on their ass.

December 3, 2010 by Junk Science

Reverse Aging?

This is interesting.

A technique to keep the tips of your chromosomes healthy could reverse tissue ageing. The work, which was done in mice, is yet more evidence of a causal link between chromosome length and age-related disease.

Telomeres, the caps of DNA which protect the ends of chromosomes, shorten every time cells divide. But cells stop dividing and die when telomeres drop below a certain length – a normal part of ageing. The enzyme telomerase slows this degradation by adding new DNA to the ends of telomeres.

November 30, 2010 by General Musings

Currently Reading

Infinitude

Infinitude

Series:Dimension Space Book Six

Author: Dean M. Cole