A(nother) geek's interpretation of the "boobquakes"

Over at Ars Technica, they have an analysis of one woman's attempt to test the validity of a Muslim edict about women's modesty - or lack thereof.

Assumption #1: The earthquake arbiter has good aim. What good would an earthquake punishing us for indecency be if it couldn't a) be felt in a populated area, and b) kill someone? Therefore, we only count earthquakes of a magnitude of 5 or more that have a death toll of at least 1 person. If looks can kill, then they should.

Cutting to the chase:

It turned out that there were four earthquakes with a 5.0 or greater magnitude on Monday, which is an average number, and none of them were lethal. That is to say, the Boobquake claimed no lives. And since the pure chance of a deadly earthquake was low anyway, this style of analysis casts the effects of cleavage, exposed ankles, and elaborately coiffed hair on earthquakes as inconclusive at best. By these standards, the Boobquake was a disappointing scientific, as well as geological, failure.

[emphases added]

The National Debt...

Ok Go!

These guys have a lot of fun with their music and videos. This one took a long time to set up.

(ex)SNL Star talks and sings of Obama

Victoria Jackson, who seems to be or have become a Christian, talks and sings at a Tea Party demonstration.

Ultimate hacking...

not easy, but doable... Eh, Bert?

clipped from www.nzherald.co.nz Using off-the-shelf chemicals, Tarnovsky soaked chips in acid to dissolve their hard outer shells. Then he applied rust remover to help take off layers of mesh wiring, to expose the chips' cores. From there, he had to find the right communication channels to tap into using a very small needle.

how-to-use-your-friends-hobbies-to-your-advantage

http://basicinstructions.squarespace.com/storage/2010-01-28-friends-hobbies.gif?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1264645204864

It seems obvious, but...

it's not what you might think.

clipped from news.nationalgeographic.com National Geographic Daily News Flashier Great Tits Produce Stronger Sperm, Bird Study Shows When male great tits have brighter breasts, they also have more resilient sperm, a new study says.

Cartoon from Michael Ramirez

via CFIF

clipped from cfif.org

What you can learn from a slime mold

(And it's not something icky and scary like you'd encounter in Dungeons and Dragons. Also, note that they used the word "design." ;^)

clipped from esciencenews.com Slime design mimics Tokyo's rail system Image courtesy of Science/AAAS "Some organisms grow in the form of an interconnected network as part of their normal foraging strategy to discover and exploit new resources," Tero writes in the report. "Physarum is a large, single-celled amoeboid organism that forages for patchily distributed food sources... [It] can find the shortest path through a maze or connect different arrays of food sources in an efficient manner with low total length yet short average minimum distance between pairs of food sources, with a high degree of fault tolerance to accidental disconnection."

What's your password like?

Apparently most people's aren't very good...

clipped from www.net-security.org Analysis of 32 million breached passwords Top 10: 1. 123456 2. 12345 3. 123456789 4. Password 5. iloveyou 6. princess 7. rockyou 8. 1234567 9. 12345678 10. abc123

Worst TV News "Story" Ever.

What to do with the change that's accumulating on your dresser...

In case you had a bit more than you might need for a rainy day, here's something to ponder.

clipped from www.wired.com $5M Buys the Ride of Your Life

Craig Ferguson

Sometimes when I'm at the gym, I have to take a few moments to listen to Craig Ferguson's monologue. Here's one that demonstrates that he's not the typical thoughtless standup comic:

Avatar Plot Fail or Observation Win?

From failblog.org

see more Epic Fails

Craig Ferguson auditions for the role of James Bond

LM@O! :^)

clipped from www.youtube.com

Evidence...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25546334

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/07/iraq.uranium

To see the video, click on "Leftists vs the facts" below.

TEDTalks: Charles Anderson Discovers Dragonflies that Cross Oceans : Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

16+ minutes of info followed by a little commercial from IBM detailing how they've implemented the eyes of Stockholm's Big Brother traffic taxing system in Stockholm, SWEDEN.