I was browsing the interwebs when I saw an ad that said "Ann Coulter Free". thought - that's good - this must be an idiot free zone! Then I saw it was an ad for her blog, which is free! They should pay you to read it - the resultant therapy bills must be quite high. Although I'm certain that reading Ann Coulter would free your mind - more than few paragraphs and I'm certain mine would be running for the hills.
I recently volunteered to serve the data mining company, FaceBook. That is, I have joined this social networking site, fed them my stats, and regularly post information that FaceBook incorporates into its marketing database. Anything you write or post, they claim as their personal property so they can resell it.And there is the reputed link between FaceBook and the CIA. But I figure that since the FBI launched Carnivore in the 1990's, we're all scrod, anyway. But the real point of this post is to show you this funny version of Biblical Creation, as it might have manifested in FaceBook. They even have Sarah Palin, you betcha! And it isn't actually on FaceBook. No worries. Excerpt:
I was reading about a couple of meteors (bolides) spotted in the last couple of days. One point made by BadAstronomy is that misinformation spread much faster than fact. We discuss this sort of issue regularly, using terms like "counterknowledge" and "agnotology". In this case, last week's news about two satellites colliding gently about halfway out to geostationary orbit got muddled in with these meteor reports. Note: Gently in astronomical terms means a collision as if only one ton of TNT had been detonated in them. There may be pieces large enough to see if they eventually drift low enough to burn up at night. But not like the fireballs seen in the last couple of days. The entire satellites were not fast or large enough to glow like the recent events. But Twitter was apparently abuzz with discussion of the (non-happened) satellite re-entry. BA clearly explains why this is silly. But the rumor is still propagating. Unfortunately, several news outlets initially reported it as fact. It's like the virus warnings (hoaxes) that well-meaning acquaintances send me about once a month. Most of their dire "this is real!" warnings were documented at Snopes between 3 and 10 years ago! I usually politely respond with the link to the particular case at Snopes, and suggest they add Snopes to their Bookmarks/Favorites.
We're still tweaking things at Dangerous Intersection, adding new features, looking at them, and sometimes removing them. It reminds me of the quote by Oscar Wilde:
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Instead of commas, though, I'm dealing with WordPress plugins. It's an adventure experimenting with these open-source tweaks. Sometimes they work brilliantly. Sometimes, they don't work at all. Sometimes they cause a "fatal error." The good news is that I have successfully installed WordPress 2.71, which allows lots of new features. I've also updated the design template I'm using (to WP-Vybe 1.1). This combination allows for nested comments. If you want to reply to a comment rather than to the post itself, you now have that option. Just look for "reply" attached to each comment. One of the newer features is "popular posts" (on the left sidebar). I did want to disclose that this list is computer generated based upon relatively recent page-views. I don't tweak that list at all. Regarding the comments sidebar (right site), I realize that it's looking a bit raggedy these days. I'm still working on that. One cool new feature, however, is that I have downloaded a plug-in that groups the recent comments by post. If you find one of the posts to be interesting, you can find all of the recent comments regarding that post grouped together (well, up to five of the most recent posts--I wanted to make sure that I left room for the recent comments of multiple posts, even if one of the posts draws an inordinate number of comments. I've heard quite a few comments that this site is often running slowly. I agree. We're going to make some technical adjustments to address that. I hope to see an improvement over the next couple of weeks.Movies are a staple of American culture. Videogames are another staple. And yes, movies that feature videogames constitute ultra-special moments for those who are fans of both. What are some of the top movies that have utilized videogames as part of their story lines? Nick Smith of pwnordie.com has taken away much of the guesswork by compiling video-gaming excerpts from National Lampoon's Vacation, Back to the Future II, Superbad, 40 Year Old Virgin, National Lampoon's Vacation and many other popular movies. If you follow this link to Nick's site