You have to be rich to be poor

This is one of those articles where, if they're even only accurate on about half of what they claim/suggest, things look pretty bleak indeed.

Things cost more in poor neighborhoods.

I have no idea what can really be done about that. One of those cogs in the perpetual cycles.

Komodo Dragons are still cool, just less so

I remember how giddy I was when I first learned about Komodo Dragons. (yes, I was probably a geeky teenager) They were these prehistorically scary lizards that could kill and eat even humans, those who were silly enough to decide to live on the island upon which Komodo Dragons existed.

The coolest thing about the Komodo Dragons was that they killed their pray, not with poison, or sheer strength of their jaws. No, what they did was something totally crazy: They cultivated killer strains of bacteria in their mouths and, upon biting pray, would transfer that killer bacteria to the poor animal, killing it in a relatively short time. At which point, the komodo dragon would simply have to track the dying animal and feast. It sounded pretty crazy, but totally cool. Symbiosis on a killer-cool level (much cooler than the human-ecoli crap we get).

Well, it turns out all that is bullshit. Komodo Dragons use venom. I hate it when herpetologists get their shit wrong.

I guess it'll be up to me to prove that you can kill prey with a bio-bite .

English is English, except when it's not

Susan Boyle. If you don't know who she is, you can google her to find out. The minimum you need to know is that she's from an area in Scotland near Edinburgh

She appeared on Oprah, with subtitles. I don't really know what to think about that. The linguist part of me says that this is acceptable as the phonological differences can be very difficult to parse and would make comprehension difficult even though the syntax might be familiar. But there's a part of me that wishes that Americans had more experience TRYING to understand (learn to listen to) the myriad of world Englishes that exist out there.

I wonder what it's going to be like, communicating with Edinbrughers.

Seriously: Jonathan Coulton

Jonathan Coulton

I don't remember when it was that I first heard of him, but I'm pretty sure the first song I heard was this one:

	Jonathan Coulton - First of May
	Found at skreemr.com

It was love at first sound. This guy, JoCo, was a computer programmer who stopped being a computer programmer to try his hand at writing music:

	Jonathan Coulton - Code Monkey
	Found at skreemr.com

His lyrics are witty and absolutely relateable to a 28 year old geek. His music, though 'campy' in style, displays a knack for writing some pretty amazing melodies. Case in point is "RE: your brains" a song about an office worker turned zombie trying to debate with an ex-colleague about whether the zombie hoard (of which he is a part) should be let into his mall fortress.

	Jonathan Coulton - Re Your Brains
	Found at skreemr.com

JoCo is best known for his "thing a week" project, where he attempted to write. produce, and record one song per week throughout a 52 week period (sept '05 to '06 for a total of 52 songs)--quite an amazing feat, if you ask me. You can read about that here.

	Jonathan Coulton - Tom Cruise Crazy
	Found at skreemr.com

The best part was that he released all of the songs, for free, on the internet. And he still ended up making more money than he had working as a programmer (at least by 2007, he did). Oh, and Valve paid him some money for writing the ending song to their hit game "Portal"

	Jonathan Coulton - Still Alive (J.C. Mix)
	Found at skreemr.com

JoCo is playing a show at a local watering hole this Thursday. I can't wait:

Zombies and the absurd

If you know me well, you also know that I'm a big fan of zombies. In addition to my zombie fandom, I'm a fan of absurdist comedy. What do you get when you put them together. Well, the answer was not clear until Andy put the following bit together:

Scientists, they can be right, then wrong, then right again, finally ending up on being wrong

We all need to constantly re-evaluate our beliefs.

Art

If there is one piece of art that I would like to own in my future home it is the time fountain.

Gender stereotypes are funny

There's Luke not tipping on account of poor service!

Judge Antonin Scalia needs to pay attention to that modern-fangled technology

I do have respect for justice Scalia, even though I probably disagree with most of his views about interpreting the constitution and about government in general. I don't know him personally, but I've read and seen enough interviews of him to know that I respect his intelligence and his tenacity.

But it's always great to read stories like this. (Scalia [possibly?] has previously stated in a public forum that he doesn't think the government should be making more laws to protect privacy)

More on this interesting character known as Scalia.

euler and the pitfalls of foreign surname pronunciation

When I first came across the name Euler, I pronounced it as it would be pronounced in English from its spelling: /ˈjuːlər/ or EW-lər. I was quickly corrected and told that it was actually pronounced /ˈɔɪlər/ or OY-lər. This led me to crack stupid nerd jokes about how the mathematical value known as 'e' which I believe is named after the mathematician/physicist L. Euler, shouldn't be pronounced /ii/ as the alphabetic letter is pronounced, but instead should be pronounced /ɔɔ/ (the vowel sound in 'fought or cough' which is the sound Euler's name begins with). To this day, when I have to use 'e' in some equation I think of it as /ɔɔ/. HYUDG NURD ALLURT!

Use headphones to get the fullest effect

Audio illusions are awesome.