Lather, rinse, repost.
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Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Don't hate me because I'm beautiful:

A man was walking home alone late one foggy night, when behind him he hears:

BUMP...

BUMP...

BUMP...

Walking faster, he looks back and through the fog he makes out the image of an upright casket banging its way down the middle of the street toward him.

BUMP...

BUMP...

BUMP...

Terrified, the man begins to run toward his home, the casket bouncing quickly behind him.

FASTER...

FASTER...

BUMP...

BUMP...

BUMP...

He runs up to his door, fumbles with his keys, opens the door, rushes in, slams and locks the door behind him.

However, the casket crashes through his door, with the lid of the casket clapping

clappity-BUMP...

clappity-BUMP...

clappity-BUMP...

on his heels, the terrified man runs.

Rushing upstairs to the bathroom, the man locks himself in. His heart is pounding; his head is reeling; his breath is coming in sobbing gasps.

With a loud CRASH the casket breaks down the door. Bumping and clapping toward him.

The man screams and reaches for something, anything, but all he can find is a bottle of cough syrup! Desperate, he throws the cough syrup at the casket...

and...
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Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:50 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It's that time of year again...
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Michele posted a recipe for a no-bake pumpkin cheesecake, which looks delightful. I think that it's time to repost my yes-bake recipe:

My recipe is pretty old. It was originally for 4 cheesecakes(I used to work in a commercial kitchen), but the quantities have been scaled back for a single cake. When I cooked for a living, almost no one else made pumpkin cheesecakes. Now, it seems like everyone and their brother makes their own, including the big warehouse stores such as Costco. Whatever. This recipe is the best.

----------------------------------------
Ingredients:

1 7/8 pounds cream cheese(worried about the fat? Use some Neufchatel)
5/8 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup sugar
5 eggs
3/8 cup flour
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
5/8 cup sour cream
1/8 cup rum
1 Tbsp vanilla

Approx. 30-49 ginger snaps
Approx. 1/4 cup butter

1) Grind up ginger snaps and mix with enough melted butter to bind together.

2) Cream together cream cheese, brown sugar and sugar. Beat eggs and add to
cream cheese mixture.

3) Add flour and the rest of the ingredients. Mix well. I suggest using the
beater attachment on your mixer, but it's up to you.

4) Grease a springform pan(10" preferred, but 9" will also work). Press the ginger
snap mixture into the pan to form the crust. Pour mixture into the crust-lined
pan; gently shake to remove air bubbles. Bake in 350 degree oven in a water bath
until the center is set.

***Note: If you have trouble with the cheesecake cracking, lower the temperature of
the oven to 300F and bake for 1 hour. Turn the oven off, open the door for one minute,
close the door and then let the cheesecake sit in it for about 45 minutes. Chill before
serving.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Legend of the Seeker premieres Saturday, November 1. If, however, you can't wait, here's the first 10 minutes of the series to further whet your appetite.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 09:00 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Spoiler video for Lost right here. It's also embedded below the fold.

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Posted by: Physics Geek at 03:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Courtesy of Iowahawk. Excerpt:

"But I promise you, if one of these inevitable nuclear attacks is, God forbid, successful, Barack Obama and I will conduct tough and open negotiations with our new overlords," said Biden. "Ol' Joe Biden learned how to negotiate at his dad's used car lot in Scranton PA, and if these overlords think they can swing some sort of lowball occupation deal, I'll just tell them 'I gotta go get my manager,' and then... boo-yeah! In comes Barack Obama to upsell them undercoating and extra exercise yard privileges for you and me."

After rubbing tapioca into his armpits and singing what appeared to be the Numa-Numa song, Biden mounted a Segway and crashed through a side door.

A spokesman for the Obama-Biden campaign later clarified the Senator's remarks, and urged reporters "not to take Senator Biden's words out of context."

When asked what context that was, the spokesman explained that "the Senator has massive brain damage."

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:13 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Well, I did see X-Files 2: This Movie Really Sucked in the theater. To be fair, I waited until it hit the local second run so I only wasted 2 dollars instead of the normal 10. In any event, this abridged script from the Editing Room is, unfortunately, more entertaining than the actual movie. Excerpt:

INT: EAST EUROPEAN BATH HOUSE

David finds a room full of the people he knows to have been abducting and cutting up women for body parts, armed withÂ…. a wrench. ThatÂ’s right, a wrench. He gets his shit fucked up.

CUT TO:

INT: SUV

GILLIAN ANDERSON

Gee, I sure am glad that you were able to show up out of nowhere to come help me find David.

The camera slowly shows a shiny bald head from behind soon revealing MITCH PILEGGI only to give him some of the dumbest lines in the movie.

FANBOYS

Walter Skinner Zomfg! BBQ! STFU! Internet!

MITCH PILEGGI

(with a shit eating grin)

No problem sweetheart.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 08:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Another from the PG archives because I've got nuthin' today. As for those of you who think that that makes this day no different from any other, well, you have a point.
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Have you ever been caught off guard when someone walks up to you and asks, "What's the square root of X?" Me, too. Usually, I can remember approximations for most square roots up through, uh, maybe I won't finish that statement. Anyway, sometimes the numbers are just too damn big or I need more digits after the decimal place than I can comfortably work out. It's times like that when you really need Newton's formula:

b represents the number for which you're seeking the square root and x is your first guess. Wanna see how it all works? Of course you do! Observe:

Let's say that you need the square root of 13 and we want to be within 0.00001 of the actual value. For simplicity, we'll make x the same as b, the number we're taking the square root of.

Iterations
-----------
x=13, b=13
NewX=7, difference is 6

x=7, b=13
NewX=4.428571, difference is 2.571429

x=4.428571,b=13
NewX=3.682028, difference is 0.746544

x=3.682028, b=13
NewX=3.606345, difference is 0.075682

x=3.606345, b=13
NewX=3.6055514, difference is 0.000794

x=3.6055514,b=13
NewX=3.605551, difference <0.000001

There you have it: the square root of 13 is approximately 3.605551.

I feel better already.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 08:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yeah, it's a repost. Sue me.
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When your give-a-shit factor is in the picofuckit range and dropping like a stone, here is the solution:

Posted by: Physics Geek at 08:32 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via Jonah comes this video of claymation style Battle Chess. I've embedded the video below the fold to prevent your browser from hanging.

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Posted by: Physics Geek at 08:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Via Treacher:

Thursday, January 27, 2005
Get to know Barack Obama

When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the livingroom of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him--introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread. His "bright eyes and easy smile" struck me as contrived and calculated--maybe because I was supporting another candidate. Since then, I've never heard him say anything new or earthshaking, or support anything that would require the courage of his convictions. I only voted for him in this last race--because his opponent was a pinhead. And I've been mostly alone in my views. But maybe that's changing.

Thanks, Barack. By voting to confirm Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State you confirmed my opinion of you as someone who will not come through when it counts. You voted with the entire Republican membership rather than your compadre, Dick Durbin, and the man you supported for president, John Kerry. Your sense of collegiality is ridiculous under the circumstances.

What are all those people who thought you walked on water thinking now? I'm just wondering who's going to whisper in President CandyAss's ear when Condo's busy playing Secretary of State.

And here's a quote from Treacher:

You need to decide, Obama fans: Either this stuff didn't happen, or it happened but I'm not supposed to care. You need to pick one or the other and stick with it.

Check out the archived post.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 12:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Recently, I've been dealing- a lot- with applications freezing on a semi-regular basis. The Task Manager does okay at killing the apps, but sometimes those apps also kill my OS. What to do, what to do... hey, I know! Why don't use Windows Xkill? Excerpt:

An App that your using Freezes, and your first thought it to CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up Task manager, then you have to wade thought the processes to find said frozen app, then kill it... Or you use xKill.

Using a system wide hook in xKill, when it is running, just Press Control+Alt+Backspace, and you will see a Skull and Crossbones follow behind your cursor. When you click on the next item (say, the frozen application), it will kill it. simple.

And just because i know that people will try this out with out having an app to kill, when the skull and crossbones is up, if you choose NOT to kill any thing, press Escape, and you will exit out of xKill mode.

No external references, this app is Portable, you will know when it is running doe to the color changing Skull and Crossbones in your system tray. you can Right click on the glowing icon to either go in to xKill mode, so that you don't have to do Control + Alt + Backspace, or you can exit out of xKill.

Bringing Kill -9 to Windows. ::sniff:: I'm just so happy right now.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Actually, I originally posted this about feeling stressed at work. In any event, it seems awfully appropriate during this heated election cycle.
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How to handle political conflicts.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 09:44 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Well, I resisted political blogging for a few minutes. So that's something. It tells me that I can quit any time I want to. Sure I can.

Anyway. Read this article by Orson Scott Card: Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?. Excerpt:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
...
Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

Assuming that those last 3 questions weren't entirely rhetorical, the answers are No, No and Hell Yes!.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 09:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I left the following as a comment over at Rachel's place:

Some Obama douche (but I repeat myself) was on Fox this afternoon saying that McCain had not vetted Joe the Plumber. Vetted. It was like I had taken the red pill, fallen down the rabbit hole, stepped through the looking glass and fallen into a 1960s era Jefferson Airplane acid-amplified video.

WTF? IÂ’m serious: WTfuckingF?! Do you vet everyone in this entire country who MIGHT have opinions, or ask questions, that make the One look like a fucking jackass?

Vet the plumber? I feel like vetting someone’s head with a nail-studded 2×4.

Oh, and if youÂ’ve checked Ace lately, you know that Team Barry is filing suit against Palin and McCain for trying to prevent fraudulent votes. I donÂ’t know what the next step beyond batshit and bugfuck crazy is, but weÂ’re there now.

Right now, Stalin is crying in his glass coffin because he sees now that he didnÂ’t go as far as he could.

Iowahawk takes a break from his usual uproarious stuff to post something dead serious. Excerpt:

Politicians -- Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al. -- obviously have to put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it's right there in the jobs description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a politician picked him out as a prop for a 30 second newsbite for the cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.

Godwin's Law! you say? if the jackboot fits, wear it.

And here's an image that everyone should stick on their websites. Everyone, that is, who wants to show solidarity with Joe:

Posted by: Physics Geek at 07:36 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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McCain is funny in this speech. Very, very funny.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Check out this essay at Zombietime. Excerpt:

The real-world campaign involves speeches and proposals and facts and scandals and political positions and news events. These details, however, are becoming increasingly irrelevant, and have become subsumed by the meta-campaign, which consists of perceptions, polls, reactions, analyses and summations. Until very recently, elections were decided by real-world facts -- but not anymore. Facts and events in and of themselves are no longer important; what's important is how everyone reacts to them. And how do we find out the public's mood concerning this or that incident? Why, the media tells us, that's how.

Or so we've been led to believe.

We're all part of the campaign now. Every single one of us. Our opinions, our actions, are bundled together as a group and used as weapons in the race for the White House. When the media reports on what people think, either through public-opinion polling or reportage about anecdotal incidents, it becomes an endless feedback loop, in which the media's representation of most people's purported thoughts is supposed to influence everyone else's thoughts. And then they take another poll to determine how effective the first poll was in influencing public opinion, and the cycle starts all over again. Since everyone now knows that any public expression of their political opinions might be reported by the media, even the most innocent activity becomes a calculated campaign action. Saying how you intend to vote is not simply an expression of how you intend to vote, but rather a component of the public barometer of how the majority intends to vote, which is then used by the media and the blogs to influence everyone else. Nothing is done in all innocence anymore.
...
One odd thing about public-opinion polls is that there's no way to know if they're accurate or not. Except for a poll taken on the very last day of the campaign, when it can be later compared to the actual vote totals, a poll is a self-supporting statement of "fact" that can only be confirmed or disproven by taking yet another poll -- which is just as unreliable as the first one. We do not have access to some secret hyper-accurate invasion of privacy enabling us to peer into voters' hearts to see how they actually intend to vote, and to use that information to assess the accuracy of a poll. So, if a poll is taken a month ahead of time showing a candidate with a five-point lead, and then a month later he in fact wins the election by five points, we have no way of knowing whether or not the poll was simply accurate, or whether it was originally inaccurate, but fed a public perception that the candidate was in the lead, causing many voters to switch allegiances to him out of a desire to "be on the winning team." Do polls reflect reality, or do they create reality?

The entire Democratic strategy in 2008 revolves around the unproven theory that polls do create reality. Otherwise, there would be no point in continuously striving to inflate Obama's perceived public support.

The real question at the end of the day is this: Are people telling pollsters they're supporting Obama due to normative conformity (which is what I suspect) or due to informational conformity (which is what the Left is banking on)? We won't know until November 4. You can lie to a pollster. But you cannot lie to a ballot.

I hope that Zombie will forgive my taking such an extended entry, but I wanted to make certain that you clicked over to his site.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 11:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So Tea Leoni and David Duchovny have split, huh? I know what you're thinking: it's because David is a sex addict. Well, no, actually. As it turns out, Tea and Billy Bob Thornton have, apparently, been bumping uglies. In Thornton's case, that's an easy task.

Billy Bob was married to Angelina Jolie and now he's been knocking boots with Tea Leoni. In both cases, he not only dated outside of his weight class, he dated outside of his species. I will assume that he's hung like a rutting Koidak bear, because he's not hitting it with such spectacular women on his suave and debonair good looks. Let's have a look, shall we?

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Posted by: Physics Geek at 09:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Look at the image below the fold:

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Posted by: Physics Geek at 07:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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