Who gave them the loudspeakers?

Her: “So what? The majority of people don’t even leave comments, they just read. Those are the normal, intelligent people.”

Me: “Wait a minute. This is interesting: You’re saying that the majority of people who visit my site don’t leave any comments at all, which is true. And by not leaving any comments at all, that signals that they are normal?”

Her: “Exactly. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Me: “Yeah, that makes sense. I don’t usually leave comments on people’s sites. And I’m relatively normal. Do you leave comments?”

Her: “Rarely.”

Me: “Wow. Let’s take this a step further. If we apply this model to the greater world, it seems to me that the ramifications are staggering.”

Her: “Go on.”

Me: “Okay, this might sound a little crazy, but, can we conclude, based on this, that maybe, and hear me out on this, but just maybe, most…people, people in the world, are…normal?”

Her: “Wow. I guess we could. My God, I never thought of it that way before. But it actually makes sense.”

Me: “Yeah, wow. But if most people in the world are in fact normal, how have I been left with the distinctly opposite impression for most of my life?”

Her: “I dunno. Maybe because the crazy people are the ones with the loudspeakers and they won’t shut up.”

Me: “I guess. But how did the crazy people get the loudspeakers?”

Her: “Hmm. That doesn’t make sense. How could the normal, intelligent people allow the nutcases to dominate the power of communication that way?”

Me: “I dunno. That’s pretty sad.”

Her: “Yeah, pretty fucking sad.”

— Found on Hipsters are Annoying

Yawn!

It’s 8:30 in the morning, and I’m at work. Ugh.

On the bright side, there aren’t too many other people here, so I’ve been able to snag the stereo, drag it over to my area, and attach my iPod to it, so I’ve got good tunes without having to have my headphones on all day.

Gotta take life’s pleasures where you can, right?

Especially at 8:30am.

By the infinite dick of God

I first found this on the ‘net ages ago, and used to have a copy somewhere on my hard drive. I’d forgotten about it for a long time, then the phrase “by the infinite dick of God” popped into my head tonight, and I decided to search this out and preserve it for posterity. Enjoy.

I am forever astonished by how many mistakes could be avoided if people would just think about what they are saying. This is especially the case in religion. An example of this is the assumption that God is male. Obviously God is a woman, because God doesn’t have a penis. The proof of this is by omission: nowhere in the Bible is there a reference to the “Divine Penis,” and I am sure that if God were a man He would talk about it somewhere. No real man could go on for hundreds of pages about himself without mentioning that thing once or twice.

Upon remarking on the above observation, I was notified by someone that he heard the oath “by the infinite dick of God” around Caltech, though “semi-infinite” would be more precise. Unfortunately, this further muddles the issue. I am thankful that the ancient theologians did not realize this point, otherwise they would have wasted much time in debating this actually nonexistent part of God. I can see it all now…

During the fall of Rome, St. Augustine referred to “God’s mighty male member, wider than the Coliseum, more powerful than Zeus’s tool, able to take Athena in a single bound.” Then in the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas, in an attempt to reconcile St. Augustine’s remark with the rediscovered writings of Zeno, declared that the length of God’s immense organ must be semi-infinite. But then Rene Descartes, after spending a lifetime in philosophical thought, stated that since God is greater than that which can be conceived, God’s measureless masculinity must be truly infinite, because an infinite length is much longer (in fact, infinitely longer) than a semi-infinite length.

However, the followers of Aquinas immediatedly countered with a simple argument: “If God’s tree is infinite, then what holds it up? Certainly one end of God’s tremendous tree must be firmly rooted in his loins.” Also, a minor philosopher (whose name I forget, but who liked perfect islands) argued “If God’s monument to life were infinite then there must be a fig leaf whose extent is also infinite. But then there is something infinite that is not part of God, which contradicts the assumption that God is the greatest. The only solution is that God’s rod must be semi-infinite, so that He can hide it by turning His back to the world and looking over His shoulder.”

Since both sides had such valid points, for a while the discussion reached a stalemate.

Then the great German philosopher Hegel attempted to reconcile the issue with his sword-plowshare theory, where he proposed that the infinite and semi-infinite are actually two manifestations of the same thing. Though it seemed impossible, Hegel claimed that God does occasionally beat His infinite sword into a semi-infinite plowshare. This theory gained great popularity, but it didn’t really solve anything primarily because no one could understand it.

Some time afterwards, the rise of non-Euclidian geometry seemed to favor the Cartesians when it showed that God’s wondrous worm could be infinite in this dimension, yet be attached to Him in a higher dimension. However this solution was not totally satisfactory either, because then there isn’t a preferred direction to God’s protrusion in this dimension.

The answer to the debate had to wait till the beginning of the 20th century, when Georg Cantor, attempting to cope with his strict religious upbringing, proved that a semi-infinite member is just as long as an infinite member; therefore God’s member may be semi-infinite and yet be no shorter than an infinite member. Cantor’s colleagues ridiculed him by showing that his theorems also proved that a finite real dimension is commensurable with an infinite one, suggesting that anyone’s piddling plow is just as long as God’s prodigious pecker.

This paradox was solved only with the advent of quantum theory, which demonstrated that the real world corresponds to the set of integers rather than the set of reals. In that case Cantor’s theory showed that the finite phallus was infact infinitely shorter than the infinite one, though the theory still retained the property of the commensurability between the infinite and the semi-infinite. So today mathematicians agree that Cantor was correct, finally and conclusively demolishing the central argument of the Cartesian theory.

Thus we see that if St. Augustine had thought about the nature of God’s member, only after several centuries of the application of logic and mathematics and physics would a definite answer be reached. And even then the answer would be wrong, because the very basis of the argument is nonexistent. For the reason described at the beginning of this treatise, we the faithful know that by simply examining the Word of God it is obvious that any discussion in this area is meaningless, since God hath no member.

— Robert Mokry

He's got a point

If anyone in [My Fair Lady] was gay, it had to be Higgins and Pickering — you’re telling me two single men in their late fifties who live together and enjoy speaking properly and dressing Audrey Hepburn in fabulous outfits aren’t?

— from ‘Will and Grace’ (Thanks to Prairie for sending this to me!)

Back online

We’re back!

Sorry about the downtime. In the end, I have to admit that it all boils down to one simple thing — money matters aren’t my strong point.

I was facing a bit of a money crunch last month, so made the choice to let my phone bill slide a bit in order to pay rent. So, rent got paid, but the phone bill wasn’t right away. Normally, this isn’t a problem — when your bill goes late, Qwest does a ‘soft disconnect’ where you can receive calls but not place calls, which as a side affect allows a DSL connection to stay active. It’s only after being in the ‘soft disconnect’ state for a week or so that they’ll come out and do a physical disconnect of the wires, which takes all phone service (and DSL service) down.

I actually did get back to Qwest to pay the phone bill in an effort to keep things from going down — unfortunately, I got them paid the same day that the physical disconnect order went in, and everything was cut. Then, since it was a complete physical disconnect, I had to place an entirely new phone order, and wait for Qwest to get around to coming out and reconnecting the lines, which happened at some point before 10am Seattle time today.

On the upside, though, I was able to keep the same phone number, and the DSL connection came back up along with the phone line (which Speakeasy had actually indicated would not happen), so everything is all up, running, and hunky-dory again. Woohoo!

Now I get to try to catch up with the last week’s worth of happenings that I’ve missed. Ooh, that’ll be fun!

Seems simple to me

This is just something that’s been amusing me for a while now, ever since I started working on the Microsoft campus. Here I am, working at the single biggest software company in the world, packed to the brim with some of the brightest people in the tech industry (and no matter what I think of Microsoft’s software or practices, I can’t deny that they’ve got some pretty sharp people working for them) — and yet they need signs posted outlining a four-step process to get a free soda out of the vending machines.

Instructions for free soda

Somehow, this is what I’m reminded of.

Weather wierdness

It looks like Dave Winer and John Teggatz have all the cold weather that Dad is complaining he’s missing in Anchorage.

Dad also mentioned a couple articles from the Anchorage Daily News about the warm weather up there.

But it will be a long time before people on both sides of the Alaska Range forget what for many has been the strangest winter in memory — especially over the first part of February, supposedly one of the coldest months of the year.

Days of rain. Massive overflow on rivers. Fairbanks drivers “playing car hockey” on roads glazed with black ice. People taking 10-minute flights to the next village because ground travel was nearly impossible. Potholes sprouting like pussy willows.

Thanks to a persistent southerly flow of air, Fischer said, Fairbanks experienced its warmest average daily mean temperature on record — 13.6 degrees — for the 133 days from Oct. 1 through Feb. 10.

South of the Alaska Range, the wacky winter has forced the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race to change its restart next month from Wasilla to Fairbanks.

“People are really starving for snow right now,” said John Wilbur, chief ranger for the Alaska State Parks Susitna/Denali ranger district. “In the Willow area, there’s no recreation at all.”

Meanwhile, here in Seattle, it’s cloudy and 41. Pretty average for this time of year, from what I understand. Yeah, I think I’ll be sticking around in the Pacific Northwest for a while.

(And on an entirely unrelated note: I really wish that Dave’s RSS feed had individual posts linked to their permalinks. Some link to the permalink on his page, some link to the first external link in the post, and some don’t have any link associated with them at all. It’s a pain in the butt. Just my opinion.)

Still tempin'

My boss got back to me with Xerox’s employment offer. What did they use to try to entice me into the Xerox family?

A position as a Xerox temp (as opposed to a third-party temp contracted to Xerox) with an \$11/hr pay rate (I’m getting \$11.20 through the temp agency) with no holiday or vacation pay (which I get through the temp agency) and no medical benefits (which I’m eligible for through the temp agency).

Needless to say, I turned them down, and re-started another 18-month cycle as a temp contracting to Xerox. My boss is still optimistic about future possibilities, but he made it clear without actually saying so that he thought it would be in my best interest to do what I did and stick with the temp agency. So, for now, I’m still where I was before, with no real changes for better or for worse. Guess I’ll keep keeping my eyes open.

Anybody know of any Dream Job openings?