I'm sorry, this is just wrong.

Okay, so this is a flash movie that is made with ASCII art that tells the story of a war in haXor to the music of some hard-core techno group called Rammstein. Its one of those animations that seems really profound to me, but I can't exactly put my finger on why it's such a seminal thing.

Watch it here.

If I ever get a job as a professor I want the following things:

• A tablet PC and a laptop to run Classroom Presenter, a better version of PowerPoint for teaching. It allows you to roam around the classroom and takes notes on a tablet PC that show up on the overhead copy of the slides that you are presenting.
• Somesort of digital whiteboard for recording whiteboard drawings

I read an article today about a system called VEIL. This is a system that transmits information via a side-channel on TV broadcasts so that television can be more interactive. It does this by imperceptible changes in the brightness of the screen that a computer vision system can pick up.

The obvious and spoken critique of this system was that it provides an incentive for people to watch more television. That's great for the corporations, but it's not so good for the kids and adults who need to be living life, not watching a fake one unfold before them. One way this is going to be used is in an attempt to grab viewers back from video games to television by merging the two.

So here's my idea instead. I want to merge video games and real-life. I want a toy that has two components, one which generates an invisible infra-red beam and the other which looks for it. When the beam is broken an alarm goes off on the receiving box. The alarm can have all kinds of sounds and or visual components. This would be a really fun toy to take outside and play capture the flag with or something. You could hide it in a critical spot so that you knew when someone was making a dash for the flag through a particular route. It would add a new dynamic to hide-and-seek or any kind of treasure hunt.

The Blackspot sneakers that I ordered earlier arrived yesterday and I'm trying them out today. The styling and fit is really nice. So far I'm still into them.

I'm a little confused why a sneaker called a "Blackspot" sneaker would have a white spot on them, but <sarcasm>I guess if it makes me feel good who cares if it makes sense.</sarcasm>

The basic idea of these sneakers is to provide an alternative to the Nike version of cool by creating a non-brand. The sneakers were made in an environmentally sound way with skilled well paid labor in Portugal. I think there is hemp involved also - any subversive clothing has to have hemp.

Here's more on the meme.

Here is a link to a video of a Citroen car that makes like a Transformer and does a funky hip-hop-disco dance. I'm amazed at how someone could make a computer model do that.

A brilliant article on the escalating violence that the United States finds itself in. It argues that Bin Laden will attempt to broaden the war on terror to bankrupt the U.S. and the best way to do that is to attack a Mid-west mega-church.

Read it here

Part of McDonald's new "I'm loving it campaign" includes a Tomato McGrand sandwich being debuted in Japan. What is the most freaky of all is this commercial being aired in Japan to promote the sandwich. I think McDonald's actually has done a really good job of hitting the young Japanese market with this promo.

Cross-reference this blog post.

"If a company must constantly deliver new value to its loyal customers just to keep them, those customers aren't loyal at all. Which means, save for a few perennials like Coke, brands have little or no value independent of what a company actually does. " Article

Hurray substance is triumphing over image!

I have some advice for the Democrats next election day

1. Quit believing things like, "The rest of the country is dumb and that's why they chose Bush" and "I'm liberal because I'm smart" Once you quit believing those things, quit saying it. That is entirely alienating to anyone who is trying to figure out the issues and vote responsibly. I heard my liberal friends espousing this and continuing to espouse this position throughout this election. It was so arrogant as to be distracting from the real decision.
2. Quit turning this into a religious culture war and learn your theology. The Republican platform is far from the Platform-that-Jesus-Would-Choose (PJWC). But there are Republicans who know their Bible and know that Evangelical Christian leaders are not swayed by arguments that boil down to "It makes me feel bad." Instead get to know Jesus. Then use Jesus' language (or at least the translator's language) to show a different side of Jesus. Universal health care, worker's rights, less-war-more-outreach, compassion for homosexuals. Democrats could be the moral leaders, but unfortunately they won't give up their hatred of Jesus.
3. Cross-reference this blog as an example of what is dividing the country as much as "religious fundamentalism".
4. For the record, I voted for Nader, not Bush, I love Jesus and I am scared of both Jerry Falwell and Donald Rumsfield.

My opinion on evolution vis-a-vis creationism, or more correctly, the inerrancy of the Bible is complicated. For the most part a creationist would call me an evolutionist and an atheistic evolutionist would call me a "fundamentalist creationist". In point of fact I think it's interesting to note that God could create life through a process like evolution which appears to be completely random. The key fact is that it only "appears" to be random. In the same way that I can write a deterministic computer program which will generate random numbers that will pass any statistical test of randomness you can devise, God could easily create a world through a process which appears random to our mathematical tools. The appearance of randomness isn't sufficient to eliminate the intrusive hand of God from our world. Just because a coin flip comes up heads says nothing about why it should come up heads now, or what the implications of the coin toss might be as a result of it being heads this particular time.

"And they sell things for apartments smaller than mine
As if there were apartments smaller than mine "

Or the praises of the Mandelbrot set. MP3
Some of the lyrics:

"Mandelbrot's in heaven, at least he will be when he's dead
Right now he's still alive and teaching math at Yale "