MemeMachineGo!

Another sign of the 21st century

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that’s part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Some industrious researchers found that running cheap vodka through a Brita filter four times resulted in something that tasted better than expensive vodka.

In a series on online vermin, Amy Gahran describes:

Online Porcupines: People who seem unable to write a sentence that lacks a barb. There’s a rude, condescending, dismissive, or insulting edge to nearly everything they say. Often these barbs are thinly disguised as humor, or as hyper-rationality.

Believe it or not, most porcupines are not aware of how irritating or hurtful they can be. They believe it’s “just their personality,” or they transfer the problem to you. (“Can’t you take a joke?”) They believe they are concealing their vulnerabilities, when in fact barbs only make underlying insecurities more obvious.

She provides this example:

Initial statement: “In order to do this, we need to hypothesize how we can recognize sentience, then test out this hypothesis with humans (and others which we accept as sentient).”

Porcupine response: “You’ve got the cart before the horse. You might as well say we are trying to determine how to recognize pain in computers. It doesn’t help to redefine pain to be something that might be operationally observable outside biological systems, because at that point you aren’t talking about “pain” any more. Or, rather, you can’t be sure you are.”

Now, this particular porcupine was probably only trying to voice disagreement with the premise of the original statement, and maybe even show a sense of humor. Unfortunately, the result was condescending. The underlying but overpowering message was, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re stupid.”

I think I must be a porcupine, as, try as I might, I can’t find condescension in the “porcupine response” (or an attempt at humor.)

Cocoon for Men:

It’s a big scary world out there, full of responsibilities, difficult situations and death. But you simply don’t want to face it.

If you’d rather have kids toys delivered direct to your door and spend your weekends playing with remote controlled AV technology, you’ve come to the right place!

Sometimes, Rabbit Blog gives advice. And sometimes that results in a wonderful line like:

Who would deny that conditions in the real world are cruel and tricky? Don’t fucking talk to me about cruel and tricky, unless you want to hear about multiple failed experiments in cohabitation, starring a line-up of the wishy-washiest, flinchiest stoners ever to walk the planet in search of a big bag of salty snacks and a “Law & Order” marathon.

There are lots of neat things on this collection of word links, like this study of phonetic alphabet variants used by Pittsburgh police:

Alpha Apple Adam Albert
Bravo Boy
Charlie Charles
Delta David
Echo Edward
Foxtrot Fox Frank Ford
Golf Gary George
Hotel Harry Henry
India Indigo Ida
Juliet John James
Kilo Kevin King
Lima Lincoln Larry
Mike Mary
November Nancy Nora
Oscar Ocean October
Papa Paul
Quebec Queen
Romeo Robert
Sierra Sam
Tango Tom
Uniform Union
Victor
Whiskey William
X-ray
Yankee Yellow Young
Zulu Zebra

This sobering survey shows that the median advance for a first novel in science fiction and fantasy is $5000, ranging all the way up to a median of $12,500 for experienced authors.

I often read in Locus about book deals in the “mid-six-figures.” PNH explains:

The reason for all that cloudy “mid-six-figures” language is so that authors and (in particular) agents can imply that they got much better deals than they did.

How to turn $33,000 per book into a “mid-six-figure advance”? Easy. Start by selling six books, which gets you to $200,000. Add on escalator clauses—hefty chunks of further advance payable for each week on the New York Times bestseller list, or if one of the books is adapted into a motion picture that opens on at least X number of simultaneous screens—and pretty soon the total amount theoretically payable on this contract is up to $400,000, the generally-accepted lower boundary of Mid-Six-Figures territory.

And of course, even the basic $200,000 is unlikely to be payable all at once. More likely, a fraction of it will be paid on signing, and the rest split into increments to be paid at certain miletones, such acceptance of each finished manuscript, and also first publication of same. So unless the writer cranks out at least two books a year, they’re probably still making less than a legal secretary. However: Mid! Six! Figures!

Google Maps raises the bar for rich browser applications. Again. Here’s a description of how it works, Since it’s sending its info as XML, there’s immense room for hacking… if Google is willing to let the info be used.

Here’s hoping they’re as reasonable as they are with their current API.

Everyone knows that when individuals declare bankruptcy, it’s because of their out-of-control credit card spending, right?

Half of all U.S. bankruptcies are caused by soaring medical bills and most people sent into debt by illness are middle-class workers with health insurance, researchers said Wednesday. […] “Among those whose illnesses led to bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs averaged $11,854 since the start of illness; 75.7 percent had insurance at the onset of illness.” […]

Fewer than 1 percent of all bankruptcy filings were due to credit card debt.

So remember to exercise self-control and don’t get sick.

Updated 2/23/2005: The Volokh Conspiracy asserts that the study does not support that conclusion.

Here’s a revolting article about conditions in and around a California women’s prison.

Many inmate privileges, and basic human rights, have been taken away since Dee went in. In late 2003, Valley State Prison began allowing male guards to do pat-down searches of clothed female inmates that include touching their breasts and crotches, a practice that had been banned at the facility since 1998 after documentation surfaced of complaints about groping and outright sexual abuse by guards during intrusive “cross-gender pat searches” (as they’re called in a state prison training video). […]

The women at Valley State Prison have virtually no privacy. Male and female guards can observe them at all times — as they’re dressing, going to the bathroom — and sometimes male guards walk in on inmates being strip searched in the reception area. Searches are frequent, from post-meal pat downs to strip and full-body searches after leaving the visit room. Male officers are allowed to assist in cell extractions, where women are forcibly removed from their rooms, and these often involve strip searches conducted or witnessed by the men. In researching this article, I discovered that Rule 53 of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners states, “Women prisoners shall be attended and supervised only by women officers.”

Fortunately, it’s not like anyone could ever expect a prison guard might be abusive.

(Via Metafilter)

A hacker writes about not being evil enough:

I should probably clarify that I mean evil in the technical sense of the word, not the moral sense. To the hacker, that which does not support the highest potential of a thing is called evil. […] The hacker in me wants to tell people about the problems and the issues I see, as well as the solutions I already know and understand. […] But the politician in me knows that, with few exceptions, telling the truth doesn’t actually work. […]

Douglas Englebart, who led the development of the first word processor in the 1960’s, tried to explain what word processing would be like to people who had never used a word processor. “Imagine a pencil,” he would say. (I’m paraphrasing liberally here, by the way.) “Now imagine tying that pencil to a brick, so that to write you have to move not just the pencil, but the brick as well. That’s actually what using your current tools is like. Now, imagine that you untie the brick. That’s what using a word processor is like.”

In essence, an astonishingly large number of developers are coding with bricks tied to their pencils. This is not, as I previously thought, because the developers in question lack smarts or an ability to get things done. Instead, I realized today, through conversations with some very bright, skilled developers, that the real issue is very simply that they never thought to look for a way to untie the brick, because to them, the unbelievable amounts of tedious, backbreaking labor they are doing is normal. […]

The real dilemna is that I would be more likely to be able to help them, if I first lied to them! That is, if I first won their trust, and then gradually taught, politicked, and manipulated them over time to accomplish the results that would make things easier for them.

The Turing Train Terminal.

How cool is that?

Contest of Champions has the answers to the age-old comics geek question: if X and Y got in a fight, who’d win? For instance, Dr. Strange vs. John Constantine:

DS: By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth, none such as you shall—-
JC: The hairy hoardes of what? And look —- not to be rude or anything, mate, but what have you got on?
DS: (Looks down at his attire: the cape with the upswept collar, the black leg tights, the flared gloves, etc.) What?
JC: Jesus, it’s wanks like you that give this profession a bad name. You look like a frigging ringmaster for a particularly poncey sort of carnival, don’t you?

(via Neilalien)

Wise words from JimFormation:

I recently heard that people who talk to themselves are marginally smarter than those who don’t.

I keep telling myself that.

Now those wacky scientists have genetically engineered HIV into a cancer therapy.

The UCLA AIDS Institute scientists genetically altered HIV and folded it into an envelope made of another virus called sindbis, which typically infects insects and birds. That turned the altered HIV into a missile that hunted down metastasized melanoma cells in the lungs of living mice.

And if you ever saw it, you would even say it glowed.

The scientists also inserted a glowing firefly protein into the virus

Hanzi Smatter is a sort of reverse Engrish: it documents bad and non-sensical written Chinese and Japanese in tattoos and elsewhere.

The first character is correct and means “mother”.

The second one, I am not sure if it was suppose be a Christian cross, means “ten” with four sparkling flares, or [another character which] means “rice” which also phonetically translated as America in Japanese.

The third one is a mistake. The character is vertically mirrored. When written correctly, [it] means “thing, substance, creature”.

The last character means “expensive, costly, valuable”.

Even if all the characters are correctly tattooed, the translation would still be:

“The Mother Ten Things Are Expensive”

This satire may not be far off the mark.

(Entry title is from Committed — that’s the only bit I’ve seen, on a commercial.)

Is there information in quantum noise?

DEEP in the basement of a dusty university library in Edinburgh lies a small black box, roughly the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream. […]

According to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the ‘eye’ of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events.

The machine apparently sensed the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre four hours before they happened - but in the fevered mood of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked back by sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the epic tragedy.

It sounds like the worst sort of pseudo-scientific hoohah, and I wouldn’t even begin to pay it attention if it weren’t actually being examined by real universities, including Princeton, which hosts the Global Consciousness Project website.

For a less sensational version, see the EGG story and the FAQ, which explicitly denies any predictive value.

The best guess is we cannot use the EGG data for such practical applications. One major reason is the statistical nature of our measures. Nobody has yet come up with anything more direct, and this means that there will be, by definition, both false positives and negatives. Moreover, the effect size is so tiny that we almost always require repeated measures, or measures over a long time to detect any anomalies. To see precursors we have to look back across that time from a post facto perspective. Unique point events have little chance of being seen, at least by our current methods.

But don’t take anyone’s word for it. You can check out the data yourself, either historically or in real time.

Monowi, Nebraska’s library system has a 5000 book to 1 resident ratio. Which is to say, 5000 books. This article focuses on the library, but bibliophilic as I am, I found more interesting the ramifications of being the only resident in town.

Monowi remains an incorporated town because there’s no reason to dissolve it. Elsie grants herself her own liquor license, collects taxes from herself — “it’s a matter of cents, really” — and keeps the books.

Every year, Elsie has to approve a municipal road plan to receive Monowi’s share of state transportation funds, which she sends to the county to maintain the two-lane highway that runs past her tavern.

A Notice of Public Hearing is duly posted in the tavern, announcing an upcoming meeting on the road plan for all citizens of Monowi to voice “support, opposition and/or suggestions.” The meeting is to be held “at the usual place.” Elsie figures it won’t last long.

When the state sends her paperwork, “I just sign wherever it needs to be signed: mayor, secretary, treasurer,” Elsie says. “They know I’m the only one up here.”

At last, economists have put a price on love.

An ever-growing body of research shows that most of us adapt quickly to improvements in our finances; we simply learn to covet a higher class of goods. But the happiness-inducing qualities of a solid marriage last and last. […] How much money would it take to make you as happy as a married couple in love? No one can offer a precise number, of course, but that hasn’t stopped economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald from trying.

They figure a happy marriage is worth $100,000 a year.

The Name Voyager is a cool java app that lets you see graphically the change in name popularity over time.

See also the Baby Name Wizard blog, which’ll tell you things like:

The odd part is, Adolph does not show a precipitous drop in the 1940s. Our intuition tells us it should, but in fact the name was already disappearing before then. The use of Adolph in America dropped 80% from 1900 to 1930, then slowly trickled off into oblivion by the late ’60s. This is not to say that war with Germany played no part in the name’s demise…but rather that we’re looking at the wrong war.

In the 1890s and 1900s, German names were wildly popular with American parents. (Irish names play the same role today, so think of Gertrude as the Caitlin of her day.) With the dawn of the First World War, that generation of German hit names melted away. Try loading up the NameVoyager and typing Adolph. Then try Gertrude and Otto, and see how remarkably similar the patterns look. By and large, the more distinctly German the name, the faster it plummeted. The spelling Adolf disappeared completely during WWI along with names like Ernst and Ludwig.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that Adolph took so long to vanish from our shores. It’s hard to imagine an American family circa 1950 naming a son Adolph, yet a good number did. The name was still close enough to its popularity peak that many parents still had Grandpa Adolphs, or other positive personal associations with the name. Half a century later, Adolph is virtually taboo and will doubtless remain that way…even as Otto prepares for a comeback.

(via Jerry Kindall)

For the first time ever, I watched the Oscars ceremony. I found that the only award whose outcome I cared about was that Charlie Kaufman got it for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I recently read that his movies have bombed at the box office (see for yourself) and I worried that we might not be seeing more.

I hope this win contributes to our seeing lots more Kaufman screenplays get produced.

A couple of bloggers representing themselves as Hollywood producers or agents or something are blogging query letters they’ve received, purportedly. (Given how rampant accusations of intellectual theft are in Hollywood, and how much litigation has resulted, I have my doubts anyone would want to expose themselves to this much liability.)

Many sound unpromising in the extreme.

A strange event has just occurred on the level of the planet ground, this event is of a width such as the human spirit cannot support it. A violent one seism of an incredible intensity has just struck our planet ground and caused the division of the planet ground in two planets. America planet = all the American continent. Planet ground = the rest of the world. And veiled the people of two planets are called has to live in spite of them another destiny a dubious future.

But, y’know, the occasional one sounds like it could be better than most of what does get made… if it were done just right (yes, a rather large ‘if.’)

An unscrupulous divorce lawyer sends out fake love letters to drum up business inadvertently saving many shocked recipients’ marriages.

(Via Making Light)

Language Hat called this article a brilliant analysis of the origins of, and problems with, [grammatical] prescriptivism. I call it the article with the flimsiest straw man I’ve ever seen propped up.

[Prescriptivism] grotesquely exaggerates the importance of grammar. Although competence in grammar is sometimes proof of other writing skills, it stresses presentation over content. Even worse, it stresses correctness over precision, conciseness, or clarity.

Go ahead. Name three grammarians who would assert that grammatical correctness is, specifically, more important than precision, conciseness, clarity, and content. Heck, name two.

I’ll wait.