I don't know your Amazon.com

Okay, so whenever you buy stuff from Amazon.com they keep track of it and recomend things to you. That is a smart gimick, and it might even work -- provided they can piece something together from your previous purchases.

So, they recommended a vid-yah game called Splinter Cell. I selected a link that said "Why was this recommended?" and it told me because I bought a CD from that Windy City band DISTURBED. Uh, okay, but I don't even own a computer. The only vid-yah games I like are tetris, bubble bobble, and Ms. Pacman.

Another selection that I was recomended to purchase was a DVD of the Lord of the Rings. Okay, I did rent that DVD once, but what purchase made them think I would like it. This is the eclectic list of what I have bought through amazon that makes them think I want a DVD of hobbits and stuff.
1. A book about the history of Salt. (Yes, Mark, I finally got it and it is EXCELLENT.)
2. A book on flute care (for my wife)
3. Robert's Rules of Order (needed this for a thing I did)
4. a Star chart. yes, that's right, a chart for observing and identifying stars (30-40 deg N)
5. A Dread Zeppelin CD. Wait, I am starting to see the pattern.
6. A book about life makeovers.... only I swear I did not ever buy such a book.
and finally 7. My favorite, a CD by the pop-exotica TIPSY

--gh

State of the Union

The State of the Union address is coming up, and I can hardly wait. The last one sparked a full-scale invasion toppling a feckless murderer. However, several key pieces of evidence presented in that address have been proven to be false, misleading, or in the case of African uranium, a fabrication of yet unknown sources. Bill "Everyone makes mistakes" Clinton is convinced that Bush did not know about this untruth, so I guess I should too. (I still suspect that Presidents learn things about Lee Oswald, aliens, and the truth behind "American Idol" and "Joe Millionaire" when they become president, so this explains their somewhat exotic behavior at times.) The year before that was the infamous "Axis of Evil," SOTU address, and I am still waiting on my record deal with that band name.

So, here are my predictions for this year's state of the union address:
1. The CIA, MI-5, and KBG provided independent data that proves that the DISCO started in Iran. Expect an invasion by Spring.
2. Bush, confused by Gore's early backing of Dean, will state the he endorses John Edwards. He will clearly think he got the upper hand on Al.
3. Moving on the momentum he gained from his new alien worker legal status plan, Bush will move to make all Iraqis U.S. citizens, just in time to vote in 2004.
4. Bush will outline the data showing that Canada is attacking us with mad cow disease, Talk Sex with Sue Johanson, and Alex Trebek. He will show that the next attack will be Canadian SARS, unless we act first. Again, expect an attack by Spring.
5. He will admit that one of his daughters, Rush Limbaugh, and Al Gore's son, are ALL being held at the Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

--gh

Silly NASA, and may the DARK force be with you

Oh great, we're going back to the moon again. In about 20-30 years we will learn that Mars is lame. I am surprised that I have not heard anyone say that we need to explore our own oceans more than space. That is the quaint statement that NASA detractors always say, really without thinking. We are already junking up near space (4 million pounds?!!!). I am sure that we will leave junk all over the moon before we ever get to Mars. (Have you ever seen a clean work site, and there is no landfill on the Moon yet...) So I say, "Stay out of the oceans!"

Last year we had to deal with the cosmology community making stuff up about "dark energy." Dark Energy? Come on! Isn't this just a ploy to say that their math and data are not lining up, so now we have to create ether to satisfy their equations. People will argue with me because they don't want to believe that astrophysicists would collude to fabricate quintessence, or the fifth element, just to save face. I don't think they are doing it deliberately, and I am convinced that they are smarter than me. These guys really don't think they are lying, they just know that they are smart, so whatever they say or think MUST be true. Don't believe me? Remember when the science community got excited about the color of the universe last year? Yeah, they said the universe was green, or turquoise. ...now, they say it is beige.... BEIGE!!! B*E*I*G*E*!*!*! (http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2002/jan/aas/020110.aas.html)

So, go back to the moon, go to Mars, tell me that the universe is only appropriately colored between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and let's go on a Dinosaur Expedition...

--gh

Jacko's house...

While watching the news, my kids were surprised to learn that Michael Jackson's southern California estate is practically a petting zoo and mini-theme park with rides. They both said that they would love to visit Michael Jackson's house. The weird thing is, so would I. Does that make me a bad parent?

I have doubts about the charges against Mr. Jackson. I have no doubts about his lawyer, Mark Geragos is a genius! (Scott Peterson will be acquitted before May.)

--gh

Video Urine Games!

FINALLY!!!


--gh


(I don't care what MCHawking thinks, "those punk a$$ b*tches from MIT" know what COOL is.)

Science, Optics and You - Powers Of 10

Uh, like if you have the time and stuff, check out this interactive Java script that shows the universe and the carbon atoms of an oak tree with just a few steps in between. It seems that quarks look like carpet from the 1970s. Also, I was hoping that the ending slide would look exactly like the first. Kind of a "Horton Hears a Hoo" sort of twist...

--gh

Email Listservs

I only belong to two email lists. One is for department chairs in my discipline, which has only 5 messages per week. Another is list for university professors in my state. Everytime the sysop sends a message, people reply with questions to him, and it gets sent to the whole list. This guy is an idiot because he does not know how to set up the "reply-to" field for his messages. But the people reading and responding are even worse.

I got this today, meant to just one guy, but sent to thousands:

David, 

Do you know of any academics who are Republicans, or Conservative?  

--[name withheld because I feel sorry for this fool], Rockhurst.

It amazes me that everyone, including most academics themselves, think that you have to be liberal or a Democrat to be in academia. It always strikes me as close-minded.

Hey, this is funny. I was appointed by the Governor's office to a state commission, and I had to "disclose" my party affiliation. It said choose "Democrat" or "Republican" and that "Independent" was not acceptable. Not acceptable?

I chose "R" because I participated in the 2000 Republican primary. I wonder what they would do if I participate in the Democratic primary on SUPERTUESDAY. At least that will be after my state senate "confirmation" hearings. I am thinking of joining the Log House Republicans!

Two of my students think it is humorous that I had to fill out a disclosure statement and they are convinced that I will perjure myself before the state senate.

--gh
(getting all political again)

"recommend"

Hawaii was nice.

I am very concerned that I have been neglecting to spell the word "recommend" correctly. I let my word processor auto-correct my mistakes, and email spell-checker catches it as well. In fact, I wrote the word in another program, spell-checked it, and am copying "recommend" here right now.

Another problem may be that I have written the word "recommend" about fifty times in the past two days. I need to stop "recommending" and stuff...

(and no, I haven't written one letter of recommendation....)
--gh

Wasting time on a Saturday again

Not sure if I can retrace how I ended up with a "Sexy Dancer" on my task bar... but here goes:

I keep thinking that I would like to get a cell phone. I also am ready to update my PDA. (Yeah, I know, machines control my life, read below...) I was also checking for my name in a search engine, because I am vain, or I enjoy seeing my name in obituaries... Getting back to a PDA and/or cell phone, I checked out http://froogle.com, then decided that that was too silly. Then I checked out the Google Answers because Google amuses me as a word, and it appears that they are taking over. (Don't they own this blog?) One of the questions led me to a L_O_N_G debate over who recorded the haunting version of "Song to a Siren" that was used in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie trailor. Somehow that lead me to a site with a small Tim Buckley RAM file of this song...

On that website was a link to the MP3Dancer. I downloaded a demo version, and now "Allison" is dancing on my toolbar to some Village Stompers! She will dance to anything, and right now seems to like the rhythm of my typing.

The Village Stompers, my favorite dixieland octet/slash/folk revival group of the 1960s....

Next I picked up my guitar and played the chords to "Sweet Child of Mine," of course I was whistling the tune because I could not remember the words (stop Laughing at me!). I busted out laughing when she changed to a slow dance to match the rhythm. I must admit that she was confused by the biography of Tesla morse code mp3.

She rocked out to this tune, recorded during my sophomore year in college. (Name that tune.)


--gh
(Now I need to find those "MC Hawking" mp3s...)

Declare war on machinery

I have always said that I will give up my computer as long as everyone else does as well. I am not a ludd-ite, but I do fear that machines will take over. No, not in the way that science fiction authors loved to write about in the 1950s and 1960s. (They don't write books about that stuff anymore, do they?)

I can't stand the way people have conditioned themselves to leap to their phones whenever it rings. It bothers me that people think 8-year-olds can program a VCR better than adults. (I can kick ANY 8-year-old's butt in a VCR programming match!) I am annoyed that some days I "interface" more with a machine, than with real people. (And my job is education...)

When making a selection at the Pepsi machine, I learned how much machines mock us. You see, if you put your money in, and make your selection, sometimes the machine starts to churn, make noise, and even mimic the sound of the plastic bottle falling down. I used to bend over and wait as soon as I made my selection. That is until I saw someone else do it and became very conscious of this little area of control that this machine is trying to wrest away from my life.

Now, each time I visit the machine I make a selection and then act like I don't care. I will not even look at the machine while it is trying to get my attention with false starts, whirring noises, etc. I now refuse to feed a dollar to the machine more than a few times. If I have to put the same dollar into a drink machine 5 times to get it to do what I want, then I really don't need a Wild Cherry Pepsi. The loss of my autonomy is not worth it.

Man, now I'm thirsty.
--gh