For picky eaters

This is the sign-up sheet for the 2008 summer camp of the varsity Christian fellowship at my first younger sister's uni:

I'm kind of curious as to what campers actually get if they pick the "chocolates" option.

Robot lover

One of the old PhYW members (okaylah, old Phases Young Writers member is not oxymoronic any more since we're all in our mid to late 20s) posted a link to this story. Then Jerng got all excited and started putting together a personnel list for a firm to make them. Then Buswrecker, another old acquaintance who's a short Chinese guy who likes big bikes*, wrote:

"don't waste your time. buy a motorbike. quick before all the gas runs out."

Wahahaha!

*Nickname has nothing to do with his chosen mode of transport...it's a much longer story than that.

---

Man, I need to write BADLY. It's been a long time since the last good blog post. I've had an essay on the cultural impact of Nipah virus on the back burner for ages, and I've got an idea for a funny story for the Futures page in Nature. Nature is awesome, it's the only real scientific journal (plus one of the other Nature Something family journals) I know that's got a page devoted to science fiction.

Axis of email

My uni has a fairly random method of assigning email addresses. The typical email address is [first initial][middle initial][surname]@wisc.edu. However, sometimes it will simply assign [surname]@wisc.edu, which is the case for me since I have a fairly rare surname - not so much for some other Chinese students who have names of the lao bai xing, or "Old Hundred" common surnames. For some reason, instead of assigning an initial plus surname, the system gives some poor suckers things like "lee22@wisc.edu".

But the really weird part is that, one would expect that the first person of a given surname to enter the system would get their surname, and subsequent accounts would have initials tacked on, right? Not so. Steve's email address is his initials plus surname, but his second younger sister's is just their surname (the first younger sister went to UW-Milwaukee).

What's worse is that a professor has the bizarre ID of [initials][truncated surname which was short to begin with][2 - yes, the number 2]@wisc.edu. An UNDERGRADUATE who has a similar first name and surname didn't get her name truncated, nor the numeral.

One of my coworkers has been bombarding the poor girl with questions about flu viruses, molecular cloning, lab mice, etc. because he's a bit of a careless typist. One time he sent an email to her, then fired off some follow-up thoughts to the "real" Stacey Schultz-Cherry. The next time he checked, he had two emails from two different women beginning with, "I have no idea what you're talking about..."

My hypothesis is that in some period before a few years ago, there must have been some requirement for all IDs to be 8 characters, but still, it's very weird...

Air superiority

Someone made this picture with I Can Has Cheezburger's LOLbuilder:
see more crazy cat pics

but my first thought is WTF How the toot is a red-winged blackbird riding on a red-tailed hawk IN THE AIR????

Turns out the photo is originally from this guy (I had to Google it since the captioner didn't attribute the photo). He says the blackbirds were attacking the hawk and it's happened more than once around his house. Please click through to his page, there are a couple more cool photos.

It's quite credible - they're pretty territorial little buggers when they're nesting. Seeing small birds mob a bigger one is always exciting. I saw a bunch of crows hassling an owl in broad daylight near the UW hospital once.

A thousand words

There are some LOLcats that are just funny, and some that have a whole story behind them:

more cat pictures

Without the caption, it's just a cat grooming itself. With that caption, suddenly it's no longer a cat, but a human transmogrified into a strange body but in a familiar setting, with the first few moments of stunned confusion setting in.

Who is this person? How on earth did they become a cat without realizing it? WHO did it to them? Are they in someone else's bedroom or their own house? What on earth will they do now? Etc.

Oddest titles

Mary Schneider's column - reporting on the Diagram Prize for Oddest Title.

The sad thing is that "Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice" makes perfect sense to me.

Recursive blooper

I thought the BBspot website was malfunctioning when it coughed up a BBlooper that I'd submitted months ago. No...it's a blooper within a blooper (see the sidebar ad in the picture).

So why's HE still...?

Reading news from home is like having a face full of pimples. You can't help wanting to pick at it:

NEP is no more ... it's the NDP lah!

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Progressive Party president Datuk Yong Teck Lee is puzzled why there is so much fuss over the New Economic Policy when it has already been superseded by the National Development Policy.

He questioned why politicians on both sides of the political divide, in Penang particularly, were still harping in the issue of the NEP that had expired in the 1990s and replaced with the NDP.
...
“The successor to the NEP was the NDP,” he said, adding that overtime Vision 2020, 10-year Outline Perspective Plan (OPP), five-year Malaysia Plans and other policies overshadowed the NDP.

“We are now busy with other new concepts like development corridors, Agenda Baru (New Agenda) and Islam Hadhari (Civilisational Islam). It is no wonder that some politicians both from ruling and opposition have lost focus on which policy to talk about,” he added.

He said the DAP-led Penang government “so-called cancellation of the NEP” was completely redundant because it no longer existed and it was disappointing that Penang Umno was still harping on the NEP like it was a valid document.

Well, maybe they're still harping on it because from what we've seen over the last decade, "NDP" is an abbreviation for "more of the same old crap". Even many Malays, who are supposed to benefit from it, weren't happy this time around.

Besides, we have leadership from the top!

Pak Lah: Most policies are federal policies

PETALING JAYA: Almost all of Malaysia's policies, including the New Economic Policy (NEP), are federal policies, said the Prime Minister.

AAB must have been sleeping when the NEP was abolished.

From Bumiputera Malaysia.
From Kickdefella ("kick the fellow"), more great movie parody posters here. I think my favourite is the "Dah Benci Kot".

Iki Piki's splanch

EDIT: Just realized that if I'd read all the way to the bottom, my scenario (b) is the same as described by the last bullet-point list on the page. One splanch, travelling back in time twice, resulting in a period of time where the same splanch exists in three different locations.

David Morgan-Mar is an Australian physicist who does a comic called Irregular Webcomic, with good reason. The graphics are mostly done by taking photos of Lego minifigs or tabletop game miniatures. It's updated more or less daily, which makes it one of the most regular webcomics in terms of timing. The "irregular" bits are his truly loopy sense of humour and the several totally unrelated storylines alternating with one another at will.

One of the storylines involves a couple of incompetents called Iki Piki and Serron, gambling on sports, and illegal organ trafficking. At this point it's so mixed up that the transmigrations of their organs have become a talking point on the IW forums. Click here and scroll down for the discussion.

The issue that's being discussed goes sort of like this:

1. Iki Piki and Serron end up in jail and have their organs forcibly removed.
2. While in jail, they meet their future selves who have travelled back in time, and these future selves also have their organs removed.
3. The "first" IP & S are dumped in an alleyway to die, but they find a set of organs that conveniently match their species and blood types in a suitcase.
4. Later Iki Piki steals a second set of organs, so now they have extras.
5. They travel back in time...goto 2.
6. They now have one set since they acquired the extras at step 4.

The discussion center around how you get THREE sets of organs in the jail cell at step 2, while there are only two sets of Iki Pikis and Serrons. Several people assumed that organs were going around in an infinite loop.

I think I've got it. You either have
a) one splanch that was "born" with Iki Piki and travels back in time ONCE, and another splanch that exists in a closed loop which probably wouldn't work since the organs would become infinitely old; or
b) one splanch that travels back in time TWICE.

You get b) if the set of organs that's removed from the future Iki Piki and Serron are the ones that were originally removed from the earlier Iki Piki and Serron. The future-IP&S-who-traveled-back retain a set of organs that has traveled back twice, removing these from further loops.

If the set of organs that they RETAIN are the original set, the other set which is retrieved and removed must be floating around forever.

Order of organ retrieval (i.e. which one is the set they find in the alley which saves them from death, or the "extras" IP steals later) does not matter.

And why am I analysing webcomics past 1 am...

Potato boy

From bash.org:

#151227 +(8019)- [X]

IronChef Foicite: well, there's a lot of reasons
IronChef Foicite: i mean, roses only last like a couple weeks
IronChef Foicite: and that's if you leave them in water
IronChef Foicite: and they really only exist to be pretty
IronChef Foicite: so that's like saying
IronChef Foicite: "my love for you is transitory and based solely on your appearance"
IronChef Foicite: but a potato!
IronChef Foicite: potatos last for fucking ever, man
IronChef Foicite: in fact, not only will they not rot, they actually grow shit even if you just leave them in the sack
IronChef Foicite: that part alone makes it a good symbol
IronChef Foicite: but there's more!
IronChef Foicite: there are so many ways to enjoy a potato! you can even make a battery with it!
IronChef Foicite: and that's like saying "i have many ways in which I show my love for you"
IronChef Foicite: and potatos may be ugly, but they're still awesome
IronChef Foicite: so that's like saying "it doesn't matter at all what you look like, I'll still love you"

Steven is my potato.

I bet it's going to be a week before he reads this.

Missing child

>PLEASE READ AND FORWARD TO ALL YOUR
>FRIENDS..MISSING CHILD
>
>Dear reader, I am a single parent who
>is looking for my only son. Some time
>ago he was kidnaped while on a school
>trip. Eye witnesses say they were
>attacked by two men, we believe they were
>traffickers who sell children because
>this part of the world where we live
>is not a save place. My son is disabled
>and could not escape like the other
>school childrens.
>
>He is the only family I have because my
>wife was brutally murdered shortly before
>our son was born. I am hoping that the
>kindness of strangers and the power of the
>internets will bring him back.
>
>If you see him please contact the
>authorities immediately. Here is a picture
>of my son:
>

Maybe I should have waited for April Fools' to send this to people but I'd had this idea for a long time and felt bored last night.

People who forward "missing child" emails (and now Facebook wall posts) willy-nilly drive me nuts. I don't think they use their brains to consider whether it actually helps anybody or not...like folks back home who send out fliers about kids who [purportedly] disappeared in the USA or UK...when the senders and 95% of their friends live in Malaysia.

In a lot of cases the kids have either been returned home by cops, found safely, or confirmed dead LONG ago. Some others probably don't even exist. My favourite stupid missing child alert is the "Evan Trembley" one that's been making the rounds of Facebook Super Walls. It was started by Evan himself as a prank. Little bugger's probably regretting it now.

War on Christmas

Let this be a lesson about the dangers of poor sentence construction.

In case you still don't get it, I'm pretty sure the OP means "fighting the war on[during] Christmas [Day]."

Stocking your marine aquarium

Going to post this pic of Lina sitting on Steve's parents' Christmas present (of course I have to preview books to be given friends!) to The Cheeseburger Factory and anyone else can make a LOLcat of it if they please. I'm laughing too hard to come up with a good caption.

---

EDIT: see here for my attempt at cheezburgering it.

Nice person

Brock: Would you believe me if I told you my name was short for Brocktholomew?
me: No.
Brock: Well, I told that to Sarah and she believed me. So she's going to spend the rest of her life thinking Brock is short for Brocktholomew.
me: Well, she's blonde.
Angela: Shi-Hsia!
me: What?
Angela: I thought you were a nice person. Saying nice things, buying boots for children...
me: I was just ki-
Angela: That's the kind of thing I would say.

Jef Mallet reviewing Pavlov

Quote of the day

Splitter: But there's no lab animal model for it.
Talaat: In the vet school, cows are considered lab animals.

(This was in the middle of a discussion about how to determine whether or not Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis is the aetiologic agent of Crohn's disease in humans. If you click on the first link, the September 1 news article is the review paper that was under discussion. We kinda came to the conclusion that the only definitive way to determine this would be to kidnap a bunch of preschoolers and force-feed them MAP-tainted milk.)

All we wanna do is eat your brains

I'm not a huge fan of zombie culture (like the "protest lurch" that was held in Madison last year), but this article from MSNBC was too good to pass up (click heading for link to full story)

6 Die From Brain-Eating Amoeba in Lakes

PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

And if you haven't seen the machinima music video of Jonathan Coulton's Re: Your Brains that this brings to mind, it's worth wasting a few minutes of your life on.

Straight from the fishie's mouth

Conversation with my sister on the CTA train:

"You know, if somebody wanted to really terrorize Singapore, they should bomb the junior colleges during assembly time."
"Oh really?"
"Hit RJ, take out the leaders; hit Hwa Chong, take out the thinkers; hit AC, take out the philanthropists. I've been telling my friends about this for years."
"Well, given the amount of pressure in Singapore, it's gonna happen...some brilliant but psychotic kid is going to snap."
"Singapore should be glad I'm not psychotic."
"Wah, shiok sendiri eh?"
"Er...I didn't meant I was calling myself the other adjective."
"Yeah right."

Writing on the Wall

Facebook has a function called "The Wall" which appears on users' profile pages, interest group pages, and event pages. It functions similarly to a tag board in that you post short messages, although it's a little more sophisticated and allows you to delete your own messages and messages that others have left on your personal Wall. One of my "friends" (okay, kid about the same age as my little brother whom we used to play with about a decade ago and haven't seen since) had this:

Personals II

This is more funny stuff from the personals section in the local weekly paper. Actually what's really funny is the juxtaposition of these two, they were next to each other:

TAKE A CHANCE...WM, 27, seeks good hearted, open minded Asian F, 18-35, for all the fun Madtown has to offer.

Actually that's the first yellow fever ad I've seen, which is a bit odd given the virtual epidemic of Asian girl/white guy couples around town, including me and Steven. But in the next column was this one:

SENSITIVE SLOW HANDS SWM, 53, fit, active skinhead...

The funniest possible scenario would be if the yellow fever twenty-something turned out to be the skinhead's son, going over to the dark side. Dark side! Geddit? Geddit? *runs away*

Personals

I like reading the personals section in the Isthmus - it's a local Madison newspaper which is free and supported by advertising, like theSun in Malaysia, so they have more weird stuff than a normal paper. Sometimes it's to fantasize, sometimes it's to go "awwww" over the stories people post in the "I Saw You" section, and sometimes it's just to scratch my head and go "Whaaaaaaat?" :

Common Interests
I BELIEVE IN TRADITIONAL gender roles. I oppose modern immigration to the US, mainly because it threatens America's identity. I believe in preserving the traditional distinction between town & country, oppose automobile-related development, would like to see the return of passenger trains, & feel all retail should be in the center of a town. I am a vegetarian, mainly because I think animals have feelings, like people. If you share all these beliefs, feel free to contact me.

Wait...so you're a stick-in-the-mud conservative AND a hippy vegetarian? And you only want to meet people who share ALL these beliefs? Good luck, fusspot.

Here's another really strange one, although I have more sympathy for this fellow. Italics mine:

Men Seek Women
GOOD GUY NEARING RETIREMENT Seeks companion, possible LTR. Illiterate, enjoys country music, TV, movies. Lives in Fort Atkinson. Letters Only.

Perfectly sensible explanations emerge if you think about it for a minute, but it's pretty funny at first blush.

I Saw You
SAW U BARTENDING at THE OLD FASHIONED Mon 1/21. sat at end of bar, w/friend, ordered fat squirrels. Have seen u before, u seem interested.

This one I thought was completely disgusting until I remembered that "Fat Squirrel" is a beer from the New Glarus Brewing Company. Capitalise, people!

Really, if I somehow managed to abandon all morals and sanity, this is the one I'd reply to:

Multiple Partners
ATTR LATE 30'S PROF COUPLE Seeks attr SF for spoiling, 5 star travel, fine dining & hot erotic play. Prefer NS, height/weight prop.

Oh wait...I'm probably not "attr" enough to please them anyway.

Snail Painting Instructable

This is friggin' hilarious as a variation on the good old mark-release-recapture method of estimating wildlife populations.

Bailey's Irish Oooooh yeaaaaahhh

Steve's random thought of the day

This is the kind of thing that happens when you date a gamer:

[21:50] Steve: you there kitty?
[21:53] me: sorry, was in the toilet.
[21:53] me: what?
[21:53] Steve: just had an interesting thought
[21:53] Steve: all christians are necromancers
[21:53] Steve: we all follow an undead guy
[21:53] me: LOL
[21:54] me: you've been playing too much rpgs

Facebook error message

Well, it's an improvement over "404: Not Found"...

Which early church father are you?

I'm not even sure who Origen is or what his positions were and since I have homework tonight I'm definitely not going to start reading the wiki about him.

You’re Origen! You do nothing by half-measures. If you’re going to read the Bible, you want to read it in the original languages. If you’re going to teach, you’re going to reach as many souls as possible, through a proliferation of lectures and books. If you’re a guy and you’re going to fight for purity … well, you’d better hide the kitchen shears. Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!

I'm not sure what this has to do with it either, but under the question "Your guilty pleasure:" I picked "Self-mutilation". =D

Spam spam spam spam

It took me a while to realize this was a promotional website (clearly I'm not very observant) but it's a pretty funny game. I'm just sad that we're probably not going to get the collector's edition Spam cans (with Stinky French Garlic) in the US.

International time

The BBC World Service had an American Muslim comedian on the other day:

"When the Oklahoma City bombing happened, there was one reporter who said 'This bombing has Middle Eastern characteristics'. What's a Middle Eastern characteristic? Bellydance music in the background? The bombing was supposed to start at 3:30 but it started at 6? That's a Middle Eastern characteristic."

However, I've also heard this variously referred to as "Malaysian time", "Jamaican time", or in the broadest sense (LI meetings) as "international time". So maybe it's just Westerners who're all fussy about punctuality?

I really don't mind meetings starting late. It's when they finish late then we've got problems. I've done some of my best freehand drawings in meetings...

Silly Icons

Those of you who are on my contact lists may have noticed my Patrick Stewart icon:

The image is from the movie The Lion in Winter, which has him playing King Henry II opposite Glenn Close. I like it also because it has Jonathan Rhys Meyers doing a gay kiss. (Given my predilection for skinny guys, you can see why I like the near-skeletal JRM.)

Here's another one featuring Amanda Tapping as Major Samantha Carter from Stargate SG-1:

I love Carter because SG-1 is one of the few shows where it's the woman spouting technobabble oblivious to the confusion of the people around her.

Feel free to use my icons if you like, please just don't re-post them anywhere else.