Yeah, that’s about it

Of course, they forgot about all the hot chicks we constantly score with.

see more Funny Graphs

The Migratory Patterns of Flying Elephants

Let’s face it: Africa can be hot and resources such as water scarce.  Animals are going to utilize any advantage they have to stay alive.  Flying elephants possess an advantage over lions and tigers and other African wildlife in that they can span great distances over relatively short periods of time, taking them to new sources of food and water with less competition than they would receive further south.  Which of course begs the question: what type of migratory patterns can we be expected to see?

Current research has yielded some very interesting results, namely that flying elephants, or Loxodonta Africana volatilis, is quite the traveller.  Originating in the great plains of Africa, L.A. volatilis has been spotted by locals as far north as Turkey and as far west as the east coast of South America, where it is said to be found enjoying local flora and fauna and found bathing in local lakes and rivers.  However, what we don’t quite understand is what drives L.A. volatilis west or north.  Is it based on pack affiliation, possibly driven by local predators, or is it purely instinctive?

In order to answer questions surrounding migration patterns, it has been suggested that individual animals be tracked by way of GPS devices or other types of technology, but the concern is that the elephants would somehow interfere with the devices, rendering them useless.  Locals could also be asked to identify various members, but to date there has not been a consistent description which would allow researchers to accurately identify specific members of the groups.  Since these elephants fly, footprints are not possible, so traditional tracking methods will also fail.  To date, any attempt to actually observe migratory patterns of L.A. volatilis have failed, resulting in long debates as to how these magnificent creatures actually live and behave, and more often than not resulting in massive disagreements over their migratory patterns, some arguing for northern migration and others for westward movements, while some arguing for both and others for none.  Perhaps this elusive creature will simply remain elusive?

So, if you’re actually still reading this, it means one of a few things.  Either you’re really, really interested in knowing what I have to say, or you’re really interested in knowing whether or not we have a resolution to this scientific endeavor, or you’re insane.  In any case, thanks for sticking with it.

In the above little craziness, one thing never really came up: how do we know that flying elephants exist, let alone what their migratory patterns may be.  The point being, of course, that we’ve made an ontological assumption without supporting evidence: we’ve claimed, albeit somewhat implicitly, that flying elephants exist; further, based upon this ontological assumption, we’ve opted to discuss ways to examine the migratory patterns of a flying elephant.  Ontology argues what exists and what does not exist, and further argues how we can categorize these extant entities.  Ontological arguments, in some vain, can argue that if a noun exists, what it describes also exists.  Beware those pixies!

Epistemology, or how we know what we know, has not been established; how do we know there are flying elephants?  How is this knowledge obtained, how do we know it is true?  We’ve not handled the very basic question as to the existence of flying elephants, so why would we be discussing how they migrate?

This is one of those times when we’ve made false assumptions; religion does this constantly with Yahweh or Allah or Vishnu as their flying elephant.  Why discuss how your god of choice helps you, saves you, wants you to live, etc, without first establishing that the deity even exists?  It’s pointless, it’s arguing on unproven assumptions; your ontological position is flawed.

I recently had a similar issue at work whereby we were discussing ways to improve our program; the problem is that we’ve assumed that we know our users, which hasn’t been demonstrated…at all.  So why should we work on improving the program for the users when we haven’t demonstrated that we understand them?  Our flying elephant is our understanding of our users; we’ve not demonstrated either one of them, so why discuss?

The scientific method relies on empiricism, or the gathering and measuring of evidence; this is the epistemology, or rather this is how we know what we know: because we have evidence.  We only make one real assumption, that we CAN obtain/measure evidence.  It works pretty well actually.

So for us at work, the solution is simply to ask our users some questions so that we can better understand them.  Surveys done properly can yield a lot of information, from which one could infer ways to improve our program.

But instead, we’d rather fight about whether are elephents fly west or north and simply assume that they actually exist.

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

“A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage”

Suppose (I’m following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you.  Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself.  There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

“Show me,” you say.  I lead you to my garage.  You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle — but no dragon.

“Where’s the dragon?” you ask.

“Oh, she’s right here,” I reply, waving vaguely.  “I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.”

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.

“Good idea,” I say, “but this dragon floats in the air.”

Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

“Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.”

You’ll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

“Good idea, but she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.”  And so on.  I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.

Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?  If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?  Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true.  Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.  What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.  The only thing you’ve really learned from my insistence that there’s a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head.  You’d wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me.  The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind.  But then, why am I taking it so seriously?  Maybe I need help.  At the least, maybe I’ve seriously underestimated human fallibility.  Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded.  So you don’t outright reject the notion that there’s a fire-breathing dragon in my garage.  You merely put it on hold.  Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you’re prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you.  Surely it’s unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative — merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of “not proved.”

Imagine that things had gone otherwise.  The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch.  Your infrared detector reads off-scale.  The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you.  No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons — to say nothing about invisible ones — you must now acknowledge that there’s something here, and that in a preliminary way it’s consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

Now another scenario: Suppose it’s not just me.  Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you’re pretty sure don’t know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages — but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive.  All of us admit we’re disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence.  None of us is a lunatic.  We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on.  I’d rather it not be true, I tell you.  But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren’t myths at all.

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported.  But they’re never made when a skeptic is looking.  An alternative explanation presents itself.  On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked.  Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon’s fiery breath.  But again, other possibilities exist.  We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons.  Such “evidence” — no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it — is far from compelling.  Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

Attack of the WATBs!

Well, first I get a book whore on my site trying to peddle her bullshit, then I get another wanker telling me all about how diet cured his symptoms!

*Yawn*

Seriously, these idiots come to my blog and cite anecdotes over evidence, then get all pissy when I just, you know, ask for the evidence. AHAHAHAHAHA!!! I CAN HAZ EVUDENSE NAO? KTHXBAI!

One of the great things of having the education to understand research is knowing when I’m being bullshitted. This whole diet-fixes-AS fad is absolute bullshit; the only “study” ever produced has been refuted by way of subsequent studies (with proper controls) not reproducing the original results. This is very simple logic; argumentum ad nauseam, or the concept has been discussed over and over and over and over again. Until there is a study showing even a correlation between diet and the alleviation of AS symptoms, I’m not buying.

Oh, and if a study DOES show correlation, it’s still not proof; cum hoc ergo propter hoc, or correlation does not equal causation. The causes of AS are still not understood; there is a strong CORRELATION between autoimmune conditions and the presence of the HLA-B27 antigen, but there is no CAUSATION. Of all of the people on the planet with HLA-B27, 1.8% of them will develop AS. Google Venn Diagram if you still don’t get it.

So all you whiny little babies, kindly fuck off. Come back with evidence or go the fuck away. I don’t want testimonials; what I would like to see is a nice little study with proper controls so that we can see who followed the diet and DIDN’T feel better. Oh, and I’d like to see the definitions of “feeling better”.

If I just wanted to base a cure on feeling better, morphine would be the universal prescription.

HD Advance – an update

I’ve been having a blast lately with the HD Advance software for PS2; it’s pretty easy to use, just loaded up a 160GB Maxtor drive in the PS2 and booted the HD Advance disc into server mode.  From there, I used the HD_DUMB program to send ISO files over to the PS2 via the network.  Now one problem: the network speed is always less than 1Mbps.  Anyone out there have any idea why this would be the case?  The LAN is 1Gbps, the cable/switch test just fine, and all other devices are unaffected.  I can’t seem to find too much information on the intertoobs about this.  Oh, and does anyone know how to change the IP used by HD Advance?  I don’t use a 192.168.1.0/24 scheme but rather I use multiple subnets of the 10.0.0.0/8 kind.

Oh, and Guitar Hero Metallica rocks, even better when run from the hard disk.

Christians are funny people

A while back, the Institute of Creation Research (ICR) petitioned Texas to obtain a certificate of authority; basically, they want Texas to okay the ICR to issue Master of Science degrees. That’s right folks, science degrees from people who believe the earth is about 6K years old and that all animals at one time were within walking distance of Noah’s house. Yeah…those guys.

Suffice to say, Texas shot this down unanimously; you can’t get a science degree if you’re not doing science. Seriously, pick up a copy of the Christian Science Monitor and enjoy the lulz. You won’t find methods or data, just a bunch of utter tripe. So it makes sense that if you don’t do science, you can’t give out science degrees.

But not so fast! These are the poor persecuted (76% majority) Christians! Why, it’s that evil, dogmatic institution of scientists keeping them down! So the only logical response is to SUE! Yeah, they’re going to sue to get their little pretty sticker on their “degrees” in science.

But fucking A, it gets better! The complaint was apparently written by an ICR member by the name of James Johnson, who apparently is not a lawyer (at least not a good one).

Andrew, a Harvard graduate attorney, has performed an epic take down of their nonsensical complaint. It’s beautiful beyond words.

http://evaluatingchristianity.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/you-dont-trust-creationists-with-your-science-education-heres-why-you-shouldnt-trust-their-lawyers-either/

Epicurean Paradox

I haven’t posted in a while, so I thought I’d drop something in for the hell of it. This is the Epicurean Paradox, which is a form of modus tollens logic. The fact that you can simply state the question shows that the premise is false.

If God is willing to prevent evil but not able to, he’s not omnipotent. If he’s able but not willing, then he’s malevolent. If he is both able and willing, whence cometh evil? If he is neither able nor willing, then why call him God?

HD Advance has arrived!

Well, it got here like last week, but I’ve been neglecting my blog duties   So, I slapped in a Seagate 160GB hard drive into my PS2 and booted up HD Advance; you can hold down any button on the PS2 controller while the disc is booting to place it into server mode, which is the mode you need to be in to transfer ISO files from your PC to the PS2.  So, I started up my copy of hl_dumb and began the process of sending files on over.

Now, the first little annoyance with HD Advance is that you cannot change the default IP address (at least not that I’ve seen).  My home network does not use the 192.168.x.x scheme, so I had to assign a second IP to my PC’s NIC.  Second irritation is that the transfer rate is SLOW; I get about 1Mbps on a 1Gbps network.  WTF?  Even better, the hl_dumb program doesn’t recognize my PS2 hard drive when I connect it directly to the PC, so I’m stuck sending the ISO files over the network, taking an hour to an hour and a half (nearly three hours for Rock Band!) to send files over the line.

But last night, I played several games directly from the hard drive; and the speed was AWESOME!  (See, I even used all caps there!).  The wait times are practically non-existant, which improves gameplay ten fold.  Unfortunately the PS2 doesn’t have a way to reset the device with the remote, so I still have to hit the reset button to restart HD Advance and choose another game, but not having to swap discs is well worth that little bit of effort.

Unfortunately you can’t save your games to the hard drive, which makes sense considering how HD Advance works.  It’s also not hard to fill a hard drive up; I’ve only got about 50GB left and I’ve only copied a few of my many games.  The good thing is that you can simply put in a new hard drive and then swap your hard drives as needed.  For example, put your RPGs on one hard drive and your action games on another, then swap them when you want to switch genres.

I think I’m still going to buy a mod chip, even if it is just for shits and giggles.

Canadian Post Office Sucks

Canada may have awesome ballet, but their post office is horrendous.  I ordered a PS2 boot disc from a company in Canada; the disc is called HD Advance and it allows you to boot up your PS2 and copy your game discs to an internal hard drive for faster play and no more disc swapping.  Of course Sony is all pissy about it, but screw them; my RE4 disc looks pretty bad, so I had to back the thing up or buy a new copy.  So anyway, the post office in Canada gets the city wrong on the package, but the zip code is correct.  My local post office, full of geniuses, hold the package for a week and then ship it back to Canada.

Ok, I’ll be fair, the USPS sucks shit as well.

So I call the Canadian Post Office and what do they tell me?  Well, nothing, since I wasn’t the sender.  So now my package is apparently back in Manitoba and the company wants to bill me $20 for return service.

Actually, everybody sucks right now.  I may just bite the bullet and buy a damn mod chip and create copies of my games from ISO files.  I haven’t soldered in like 20 years.  There are a few that don’t need soldering, and my requirements are actually pretty lax (only need to play backup discs), so maybe one of those will work.

Canada.  Somebody started a country and no one showed up.

This is hysterical

The sad part is that I think this graph is very accurate.

http://graphjam.com/2009/03/05/song-chart-memes-outrageous-statement/