From Jonathan Franzen’s recent commencement address at Kenyon College, as summarized in a New York Times op-ed: Technology Provides an Alternative to Love.

A COUPLE of weeks ago, I replaced my three-year-old BlackBerry Pearl with a much more powerful BlackBerry Bold. Needless to say, I was impressed with how far the technology had advanced in three years. Even when I didn’t have anybody to call or text or e-mail, I wanted to keep fondling my new Bold and experiencing the marvelous clarity of its screen, the silky action of its track pad, the shocking speed of its responses, the beguiling elegance of its graphics.

I was, in short, infatuated with my new device.

The bird part comes later.

Julia Galef, writing at the Measure of Doubt blog, in Math education: you’re doing it wrong, tells a story about her friend J:

On the entrance exam for his honors math class, several of the problems asked you to fill in the next number in the sequence, such as: 2, 4, 8, 16, _?_. Obviously, whoever wrote the exam wanted you to complete that sequence with “32,” because the pattern they’re thinking of is powers of 2. For n = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the formula 2n = 2, 4, 8, 16, 32. But J didn’t write “32.” He wrote “π.”

Hilarity ensues. As a former smartass math geek, I enjoyed the story.

From the Galactic Empire Times: Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says.

CORUSCANT – Obi-Wan Kenobi, the mastermind of some of the most devastating attacks on the Galactic Empire and the most hunted man in the galaxy, was killed in a firefight with Imperial forces near Alderaan, Darth Vader announced on Sunday.

The comments are pretty cool, too.

I saw this cool item in WebUrbanist today, about photographer Jamie Beck and her videographer partner Kevin Burg’s weird art pieces that consist of still images with just a hint of video. The effect really is quite interesting; you owe it to yourself to click through to see more examples: Moving Pictures: Stunning Photographs Brought to Life.

High-school science teacher Greg Craven had way too much fun making this video:

Now that Obama has released his real, official, long-form birth certificate, how will birthers handle the resulting cognitive dissonance? Based on previous experience, I’m betting that it actually strengthens their belief in their rightness. Things I expect high-profile birthers to be saying in the next few days:

• “It was our insistence that Obama come clean that led to this desirable outcome. We have been instrumental in defending a fundamental principal of democracy: that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. The people are the ultimate source of authority, and no government official is above them. By forcing Obama to release his birth certificate, we have saved the Republic.”
• “We have always known that there was something in the long-form birth certificate that Obama did not want the public to see. Now that he has revealed it, we can clearly see that X [not sure what X will turn out to be; I’m not crazy enough in that particular way, but there will be some actually-benign aspect of the certificate that will be seized upon] was the thing he has been trying to hide.”
• “How do we know this is the actual birth certificate? Why are the media so trusting? Wake up, sheeple!”

Things I do not expect any high-profile birthers to be saying in the next few days:

• “Huh. You know what? I was — we all were — completely wrong about this. Obama actually is a natural-born US citizen, and there’s nothing damning in his long-form birth certificate. He wasn’t trying to conceal it for some nefarious reason. Apparently he resisted releasing it so long only because realistically, he had already complied with the requirement that he demonstrate his eligibility for the office to which he was duly and legally elected, and the insistence by a minority that he must do more than that to satisfy their delusional (and probably racist, in many cases) paranoia was ridiculous on the face of it. I will have to think carefully about what this new evidence reveals about my own reasoning, and take a hard look at other views I hold that have been challenged by the same people who challenged my birtherism.”

Stefanie Cohen at the New York Post has an article in today’s paper about starlets in New York taking advantage of their court appearances to get photographed wearing trend-setting outfits: Haute court-ture! It includes this obscure quote from the operator of an obscure blog, discussing his obsessive interest in an earlier courtroom fashionista, Winona Ryder:

John Callender, a Web developer for eBay and longtime political blogger on his site Lies.com, found himself obsessed with Ryder’s clothing choices, and couldn’t help but comment on them.

“I was kidding at first, but then I realized her clothing choices were more interesting than the trial,” he says.

“The lawyers are creating a story for the jury and the judge and the press, so it’s sort of legitimate for celebrities to present themselves in a certain way.”

It was fun, if kind of weird, being interviewed about fashion. For a trip down memory lane, see: WinonaRyderOnTrial.

I missed commenting on this when it happend a couple of weeks ago. Clearly I’ve been behind in my Colbert consumption:

Not impressed with Horsey Puppet? Okay. I give you Dino Puppet! Raawwwwrrrrr!!

Courtesy of Phil Plait.

I meant to watch the TED Talk video that Boing Boing linked to a while ago, about the amazingly lifelike horse puppet, because it sounded intriguing, but I got caught up in other things and forgot. Then the LA Times (yay, dead-tree media!) had a cool review today (‘War Horse’ has a star of a steed), and that reminded me, so I went back and found it. I’m glad I did:

If you’re looking for a shorter version, this trailer for the play is pretty compelling, too:

Steven Novella makes an extraordinary claim: I can fly.

That’s right – I can fly, just like Superman (although not as fast – let’s be realistic). I can take off from a standing start and simply defy gravity by lifting off into the air. I can then soar through the air with perfect control and land gently on the ground at will.

He can’t do it in others’ presence (they make him nervous), so there’s no photographic evidence of him doing it. But he offers several photographs of other people flying to demonstrate the plausibility of the claim. For example, this one:

I pointed out in the comments that photographer Daniel Gordon also has this ability, and has documented it extensively as part of his flying pictures project:

I’ve become a big fan of Dan Savage’s Savage Lovecast. It (along with the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe) has become my main sanity-retention device for the ultra-commute. So I really liked this article, which is both a very good explanation of what Dan Savage does, and an insightful critique of the Savage worldview, from the perspective of Lutheran pastor Benjamin J. Dueholm: Rules of Misbehavior.

If Savage’s ethical guidelines — disclosure, autonomy, mutual exchange, and minimum standards of performance — seem familiar or intuitive, it’s probably because they also govern expectations in the markets for goods and services. No false advertising, no lemons, nothing omitted from the fine print: in the deregulated marketplace of modern intimacy, Dan Savage has become a kind of Better Business Bureau, laying out the rules by which individuals, as rationally optimizing firms, negotiate their wildly diverse transactions.

Also, I have to say: Who knew that Lutheran pastors were so cool as to offer insightful, no-holds-barred commentary on America’s favorite foul-mouthed sex-advice columnist?

Verily, the pinnacle of the Internet: IAmA 74-time Jeopardy! champion, Ken Jennings. I will not be answering in the form of a question.

WatsonsBitch [S] 1714 points 5 days ago[-]

Wait, I got it.

There once was a host named Trebek, Whose mustache was sexy as heck. It would have been weird If he’d grown a big beard, Like Conan, or Riker on Trek.

Here’s an interesting commentary by Steven Novella on the release, nearly 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, of new police helicopter footage of the burning towers, and in particular on the reaction of 9/11 Truthers in the videos’ online comments: New 9/11 footage.

In addition to faulty logic, the comments give insight into the emotions of the typical conspiracy theorist. In a word – they are smug. Everyone who does not accept their raving paranoia is naive or idiotic, part of the “sheeple.” Anything short of the maximally cynical interpretation of every piece of evidence, in their view, is naive. Conspiracy thinking is pattern recognition and hyperactive agency detection gone wild, sometimes unhinged by impaired reality testing. At the milder end of the spectrum there are those who simply employ flawed logic – who have fallen down the rabbit hole of conspiracy thinking.

I’m not looking to wind up Knarly or anything. Nobody here but us sheeple, right?

I’ve posted previously about Westboro Baptist Church, but in the past I’ve never quite known what to make of them. As documented on that five-year-old item, I did a mental double-take when I first encountered them, trying to figure out if they were real or a parody, and eventually concluded that they must be real. But it still felt vaguely off to me. Well, not just vaguely, way off. That one person would be pathological enough to twist Christianity in that particular way and to that particular extent was depressing, but not that surprising. But that his whole extended family would enthusiastically participate? And that they’d stick with it to the degree that they have, doggedly getting their protest signs in front of news cameras at event after event, year after year? It was just… weird. Something didn’t add up.

Fast forward to last week, when someone from Westboro Baptist (presumably) posted a faux threat against the church on AnonNews. Lots of media outlets apparently took the bait, reporting on how Anonymous was going after Westboro, and I confess that I found the notion intriguing: What would happen if the unstoppable force of Anonymous’ droll abusive dickliness met the immovable object of Westboro Baptist’s twisted religious bigotry? Which would win?

Alas, we won’t get to find out (at least not yet). As subsequently mocked at AnonNews: Message to the Westboro Baptist Church, the Media, and Anonymous as a whole. This was blogged about by Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, which led me to this item: Fred Phelps is a con man.

Fred Phelps does not believe what he is doing. This is a scam.

It’s a business. They travel the country, set up websites telling you exactly when they’ll be there, and using the most inflammatory statements all over the place, just to get someone to violate their rights for profit. Then they sue the military, the police force that was to protect them, and everyone that is around them for money. This is a sham, and it is a trap to get people sued. Every member of his family is an attorney. Phelps does not break the law. What he does is try to make you break the law by trying to punch your sensibilities about everything you hold dear, and then sue you and everyone municipality around him to the max.

This is a scam.

Finally, it all makes sense.

I took Boing Boing out of my newsreader last month when they were running lots of breathless (boring) product coverage from some completely un-wonderful tradeshow. Then I forgot to add them back until yesterday.

But now they’re back, so I can go back to reposting fun stuff you’ve already seen there. Like this: Evolution Control Committee’s new album, All Rights Reserved:

Way fun! Long live IP theft as art! (I actually mean that seriously. But it gets me in hot water whenever I discuss it with the formerly-music-industry-employed love of my life, so let’s just keep it between ourselves, mkay? Thanks.)

Reading this made me think of J.A.Y.S.O.N., whom I believe has a dad who consumes a fair amount of Fox News: Standing Up To Glenn Beck.

I know this is whistling into the wind, but it’s long past time for the adults in the Republican Party to speak up about this. Glenn Beck is the Father Coughlin and the Robert Welch of his generation rolled into one, and his brand of noxious conspiracy theorizing isn’t something to be tolerated just because it produces a few useful idiots. It’s time for this to end.

Back on February 7 lies.com passed a smallish milestone: Its 15th birthday. The first post ever on lies.com was this one, posted on February 7, 1996: So it begins.

I don’t want to do another big “reader” post summarizing the last 5 years (I’ll save that for the 20th anniversary in 2016, assuming we’re all still here). But maybe we could do this instead: Any user of the site who wants to is encouraged to comment on this item with links to one or both of the following things: Your top 5 favorite posted items from the past 5 years, and/or your top 5 favorite comments. Basically, we’re talking any post from this one until today: Iraq war dead for January 2006.

In the meantime, happy birthday, lies.com!

Update: NorthernLite nominates the following as his favorite post (stolen from Randall Munroe): Someone is WRONG on the Internet. And his favorite comment (from shcb): Just for grins I melted some aluminum and poured it out in a pan…

Phil Plait tells a very fun story about Zach Weiner, Destroyer of Homophobes.

Ooh, look: It’s a video showing a UFO hovering over Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock Temple Mount:

Except it’s not, as Steven Novella (*swoon*) patiently explains in Jerusalem UFO:

UFO-blogger has uncovered this photograph, which looks suspiciously like the background of the video. It now seems like this photo was used to generate the CG, and the voices were just added over. Once I saw this I went back over the video to see if this fits, and it does. You’ll notice that in the video no lights in the city sparkle, twinkle, or shift at all. Their flares are all absolutely static – because it’s not a video, its a still picture. I’ll have to keep this effect one in mind for the future. Also, I think I notice some pixelization when the camera “zooms” – because it’s not a real zoom, it’s a digital zoom into the photo. I suppose it’s possible that a video camera has a digital zoom, but in my experience most video cameras these days have a pretty high optical zoom function.

So this video is totally busted as a fake.

Ayup.