Category: Wasting your time

The 2007 Austin City Limits Festival starts later this week. There’s a pretty amazing lineup of bands to hear for $80/day, including some of my favorites, Blonde Redhead, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and the Arcade Fire. My schedule of annoying indie bands is posted here.

This is an accurate depiction of what is happening in my head when I see this commercial.

And you know, this idea that applying an analgesic to your forehead is just about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Your forehead and your brain are separated by a thing called your skull, and they’re even on different branches of the carotid artery. Headaches do not occur on your forehead, even if that’s where you feel the pain referred.

I’ve been trying to get some work done this week, hence the slow week.

In the meantime, please consider a visit to to the Unicorn Museum, soon to open up near another museum for other imaginary beliefs.

As any scienceblog reader now knows, we all met up in NYC this weekend. I met many of my sciblings for the first time, including Orac, Tara, PZ, Chris Mooney and the lovely Sheril, Grrl, Zuska (we hatched an evil plot muahaha), Mo, Kemibe, Bora, Janet, Shelley, Rob Knop, RPM, Jake and Kara, Jason, Mike Dunford (his goatee is bigger in real life), our seed overlords and many many more. I learned I don’t know how to pronounce allochthonous, not even close. Also, Steve Higgins is identifiable from a picture of half his head, and Razib is kind of evil. I wish we had a few more days since I still didn’t manage to meet everybody. Maybe next time we should go to a nice inexpensive island paradise. Beer in NYC isn’t cheap.

We also had a fun round table discussion on Saturday morning on science and society. It has inspired me to start a revolution, you’ll here about it soon. Once the video is up we’ll be sure to let you know. I might even have some pictures to post as well.

In the meantime, I have to actually get some work done, and I’ll probably resume covering the usual denialism and psuedoscientific claptrap tomorrow.

The Telegraph reports on surnames which may indicate a pirate heritage.

With all that pillaging and looting, it could be one of the bloodiest reunions in history when descendants of six of Britain’s famous pirates are invited to a get-together.

People with the surnames Morgan, Rackham, Bonny, Read, Kidd or Teach, are being invited to discover possible connections with the likes of Blackbeard and Calico Jack, in a series of events by English Heritage. Dressing as a sea dog is optional.

Proving your lineage with a real-life buccaneer, however, may prove difficult. Abigail Baker, of the genealogy research organisation Achievements Ltd, said: “What could be more exhilarating than finding you are related to one of Britain’s most colourful characters?”

However, said Miss Baker, due to their nefarious backgrounds, pirates rarely kept records of their activities. So proving a link can be tricky.

I’m sad that “Myers” is not included among the likely names, and since it’s British, I’m sadly out of luck. Any Dutch pirates of note?

Today’s WSJ has a profoundly sad article about the real life of some Second Lifers. It’s worth a read, especially the end of the article, where you find gems like this:

Back in the world of Second Life, Mr. Hoogestraat’s avatar and Tenaj have gotten bored at the beach, so they teleport to his office, a second-floor room with a large, tinted window overlooking the stage of the strip club he owns. Tenaj plays with her pug, Jolly Roger, commanding the dog to sit and fetch its toy. Dutch drinks a Corona, Mr. Hoogestraat’s beer of choice in real life, and sits at his desk. For a while, Mr. Hoogestraat, sitting at his computer, stares at an image of his avatar sitting at his computer.

[…]

Sue Hoogestraat thinks her husband Ric spends too much with his Second Life wife.

From the kitchen, Mrs. Hoogestraat asks if he wants breakfast. He doesn’t answer. She sets a plate of breakfast pockets on the computer console and goes into the living room to watch a dog competition on television. For two hours, he focuses intently on building a coffee shop for the mall. Two other avatars gather to watch as he builds stairs and a counter, using his cursor to resize wooden planks.

At 12:05, he’s ready for a break. He changes his avatar into jeans, leather motorcycle chaps and motorcycle gloves, and teleports to a place with a curvy, mountain road. It’s one of his favorite places for riding his Harley look-alike. The road is empty. He weaves his motorcycle across the lanes. Sunlight glints off the ocean in the distance.

Mrs. Hoogestraat pauses on her way to the kitchen and glances at the screen.

“You didn’t eat your breakfast,” she says.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see it there,” he responds.

“They probably won’t taste any good now,” she says, taking the plate.

Over the next five hours, Mr. Hoogestraat stares at the computer screen, barely aware of his physical surroundings. He adds a coffee maker and potted palms to the cafe, goes swimming through a sunken castle off his waterfront property, chats with friends at a biker clubhouse, meets a new store owner at the mall, counsels an avatar friend who had recently split up with her avatar boyfriend, and shows his wife Tenaj the coffee shop he’s built.

By 4 p.m., he’s been in Second Life for 10 hours, pausing only to go to the bathroom. His wrists and fingers ache from manipulating the mouse to draw logos for his virtual coffee cups. His back hurts. He feels it’s worth the effort. “If I work a little harder and make it a little nicer, it’s more rewarding,” he says.

Sitting alone in the living room in front of the television, Mrs. Hoogestraat says she worries it will be years before her husband realizes that he’s traded his real life for a pixilated fantasy existence, one that doesn’t include her.

“Basically, the other person is widowed,” she says. “This other life is so wonderful; it’s better than real life. Nobody gets fat, nobody gets gray. The person that’s left can’t compete with that.”

Today’s post is one of the best ever. Woodwinds are the instruments of Satan.

I can’t quite come up with a good reason to see it, considering seeing movies in C-ville is usually a desultory experience. Our local chains, Regal and Carmike, typically play 10-20 minutes of advertisements before the trailers. Being a Tivo fan, my tolerance for commercials has decreased dramatically over the years, and the insipidity of the movie commercials is horrific.

So I find I really have to want to see a movie in order to justify suppressing the rage at being forced to watch bad commercials for 20 minutes for a movie that I’ve already paid 10 bucks for. With the Simpsons, the best I can come up with is that I owe them for 20 years of free television, but at the same time, since I can get it for free why would I want to spend 10 bucks? Is a sense of guilt enough reason to go?

Now that all of you have burned through the 7th Harry Potter book like GWB with an 8-ball of coke in the 70s, what is left for you to do? How to combat that remorseful feeling of being out of such perfectly fluffy literature?

Well here’s an open thread to discuss those other series which may provide a HP-like fix for those who are starting to suffer. I have a suggestion that is no mere methadone substitute.
(more…)

The laptop is fixed..er…or rather was never really broken. Somehow the kitten managed to kill the cord, and the loose ac power inlet was an incidental finding.

One new power cord later (for the life of me I can’t figure out how she did it) I’ve got my precious back.

Some key denialism links though I’ve been enjoying

Orac on bad anti-science comedy

Just about everybody talking about the former Surgeon General’s muzzling by the Bush administration. Should we be surprised that the administration’s new nominee is a homobigot endorsed by the fake family values groups? I must admit, I’m getting sick of these guys putting up with this crap for years, then only doing something about it after they’re out of the job. Are they deluded into thinking they can change the anti-science politics of this administration?

Finally, I’d like to thank the people who gave me good computer advice and offered help, especially Batz, Terry, and Ray. My machine is getting a bit old and when it does die, it sounds like I’ll likely make the switch to a mac that dual-boots or runs parallels. Seems like the best of both worlds.