Category: Interesting Reads

Political test

Somewhere in my recent wanderings of the vast web-o-space, I found this political testing site which aims to give you a simplified graphic view of where you sit in the political spectrum. Attempting to expand the traditional political view from a simple left/right setting, the test gives results along an economic as well as social scale.

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Both an economic dimension and a social dimension are important factors for a proper political analysis. By adding the social dimension you can show that Stalin was an authoritarian leftist (ie the state is more important than the individual) and that Gandhi, believing in the supreme value of each individual, is a liberal leftist. While the former involves state-imposed arbitary collectivism in the extreme top left, on the extreme bottom left is voluntary collectivism at regional level, with no state involved. Hundreds of such anarchist communities exisited in Spain during the civil war period.

You can also put Pinochet, who was prepared to sanction mass killing for the sake of the free market, on the far right as well as in a hardcore authoritarian position. On the non-socialist side you can distinguish someone like Milton Friedman, who is anti-state for fiscal rather than social reasons, from Hitler, who wanted to make the state stronger, even if he wiped out half of humanity in the process.

The chart also makes clear that, despite popular perceptions, the opposite of fascism is not communism but anarchism (ie liberal socialism), and that the opposite of communism ( i.e. an entirely state-planned economy) is neo-liberalism (i.e. extreme deregulated economy).

It’s an interesting expansion from what most folks use in considering political leanings, I think, and while the overall test-to-rating process seems a little simplistic, it appears at least well thought out. And even if the results aren’t that accurate, they should help get a conversation going on political evaluations for those interested in such discussions.

So where do I personally sit in this scale? Well, I fell in to the quadrant where I expected I would be, but not quite as far from either axis as I had anticipated. See my standings below the break:

Continue reading “Political test”

High heels are actually good for you

Who knew? Turns out that Science Digest let us all in on the secret 50 years ago – high heels are good for a woman’s posture, leg appearance, and breasts.

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High-heeled shoes are physically and psychologically best for women’s wear, says a British doctor, contrary to the opinions of many authorities.

Careful tests on special scales have shown, said Dr. Owen McDonagh, that high heels throw the weight onto the heel rather than onto the toes, as is frequently charged.

Physically, he said, the added weight on the heel eliminates slouching, produces more healthy breathing, and adds inches to the bust.

“But the greatest effect is the psychological one,” Dr. McDonagh went on. climaxing a debate carried on in the British Medical Journal.

“Long legs are admired, and the high heel gives the impression of greater leg length. They give a sensation of slimness.”

A different opinion came from Dr. Reginald Payne, according to the Chicago Tribune, who said high heels produce bow legs and knock knees, and that if men tried to put animals into such contraptions, every anti-cruelty league would have a fit.


[tags]High heels, Modern Mechanix, b00bies!, Sexy legs[/tags]

Build your own Segway-style scooter

Don’t tlbonscooter have several thousand dollars in the wallet to spare, but really want your own Segway?  Well, you could always try the Do-it-yourself homebuilt Segway-style scooter if you have the skills for that.

Self-balancing scooters, like the Segwayâ„¢ are often thought to be technological miracles, but it is not actually very hard to build one. I built the one described here in about a week using off-the-shelf parts. I spent another week tweaking the high-speed stability, improving the steering control, and writing about it.

Shoot yeah!  I have mad skillz.  So mad they have to be spelled with a ‘z’ instead.  But not quite mad sizzles, which is what I hear Snoop Dogg has.

So just how does the DIY self-balancing scooter compare to a real Segway?

The Segway is made with quite high-quality, high-tech, and expensive components. Overall, the components I used are a lot lower-tech and cheaper than the ones in the Segway. Yet, mine seems to ride just fine. It suggests that there’s room for a Henry Ford of balancing scooters to develop and sell a low-cost everyman’s version. Here’s a quick comparison. Quotes below are from segway.com.

This is followed by the comparison.  And I can tell you from reading it that while the real deal certainly wins for polish, the DIY scooter doesn’t measure up too badly on functionality.  Now to find a few hundred spare hundred lost in the sofa to make my own.

The author of the page has extensive information on the why of building this, some ideas for doing your own, and even updates on his next generation DIY home-built.  Overall, it’s a really cool project.  The write-up and details are long, but if you are into this kind of project work, I assure you it is worth the time to read it.


[tags]Self-balancing scooter, DIY Segway-style scooter, DIY[/tags]

The story of the travelling nukes

I remember reading about the recent slip in which half a dozen missiles with nuclear warheads were flown from North Dakota to Louisiana before being discovered. I didn’t say anything about it back then because there really wasn’t a lot of good information on it, and I figured most visitors would miss it if I just posted as an aside (that mini posting box on the right hand side of the Blahg). Now, the Washington Post has a very nice story up about what happened, and I figure pointing out the article for those that want to read about it now would be reasonable.

Just after 9 a.m. on Aug. 29, a group of U.S. airmen entered a sod-covered bunker on North Dakota‘s Minot Air Force Base with orders to collect a set of unarmed cruise missiles bound for a weapons graveyard. They quickly pulled out a dozen cylinders, all of which appeared identical from a cursory glance, and hauled them along Bomber Boulevard to a waiting B-52 bomber.

The airmen attached the gray missiles to the plane’s wings, six on each side. After eyeballing the missiles on the right side, a flight officer signed a manifest that listed a dozen unarmed AGM-129 missiles. The officer did not notice that the six on the left contained nuclear warheads, each with the destructive power of up to 10 Hiroshima bombs.

. . .

A simple error in a missile storage room led to missteps at every turn, as ground crews failed to notice the warheads, and as security teams and flight crew members failed to provide adequate oversight and check the cargo thoroughly. An elaborate nuclear safeguard system, nurtured during the Cold War and infused with rigorous accounting and command procedures, was utterly debased, the investigation’s early results show.

. . .

A former Air Force senior master sergeant wrote separately that “mistakes were made at the lowest level of supervision and this snowballed into the one of the biggest mistakes in USAF history. I am still scratching my head wondering how this could [have] happened.”

A recounting of the oversights and skipped protocols that let this roll into such a problem are well covered in the story. Having worked in an environment where classified material was handled, and having seen the safeguards in place, it’s always interesting to me to hear about breakdowns in procedures. This particular incident was a little more interesting because the mistakes happened, I think in part, when people who were not expecting to be handling abnormal goods didn’t follow the necessary steps involved when abnormal materials work was occurring.

By skipping the safety protocols because this was viewed as a normal (i.e. non-nuclear) goods transfer, a real problem developed. That was why we were always instructed to always, always, always follow procedures as if we were dealing with classified information. That prevents accidental information leaks and reduces the probability of missing a step in proper handling of classified information.

[tags]Nuclear materials, Broken Arrow?, Bent spear, Mishandling nuclear warheads[/tags]

When gaming cliches go real

As gamers, we often realize how precarious the fate of the universe can be. Often, most people think all is going well and the universe is not mere moments from ceasing to exist. However, there are beings out there, waiting the perfect adventurer to come so that they might hand out a quest which ultimately saves everything we know and care for.

This is the story of such a character. A wizard, seemingly stripped of power but urgently needing to deliver a scroll to a nearby companion. He would deliver it himself, but for reasons unknown, he is held fast to a single spot. Will anyone help him?

About a year and a half ago, the idea struck me that RPGs had a particularly odd phenomenon that required investigation. Now, I don’t pretend to be the first person who thought it strange that in the majority of role-playing games, strangers will march up to you and ask you to do their chores/rescue their daughters. But I do pretend to be the first person to dress up as a wizard, go into the streets of Bath, and find out if it was realistic. Below is the story of my adventure, originally published on The Escapist, and now in its full glory for you, today.

. . .

The plan: To take to the streets, dressed as a wizard, with a quest for the good peoples of Bath, England. Would they really help out a stranger with a strange beard? Would they even stop and listen? Is there any truth to this convention we’ve otherwise entirely accepted?

First of all, I should immediately get this out of the way: No one, at any point, approached me to ask for a quest. Short of suspending a yellow exclamation mark above my head, I’m not sure what more I could have done to attract the attention of any passing adventurers braving the cold thoroughfare through the centre of the town. If anything, people did their very best to avoid me, refusing eye contact, moving far away from my pleading face. It was already concerning.

I should explain the scenario. I, the brave wizard, had transferred through a portal into this dimension, but could not leave the spot on which I stood. It was imperative to the survival of the universe that the magic spell I held (a rolled up scroll of paper, engagingly tied with a purple ribbon) be given to the girl in the red cloak and hood, waiting outside what you humans call “the shoe shop,” 300 yards down the road. Upon completion of this vital task, a bag of gold coins would be given as a reward. In my dimension, chocolate coins are of the very highest worth. Would anyone go out of their way for me, in order to be the savior of all mankind, for the prize of a bag of candy?

Curious as to his success? Wondering if anyone helped this now-powerless wizard? I know I am. Let’s head over and see how things turn out. (via /.)

[tags]Gaming cliches, Virtual conventions go real, Wizards, Real-world gaming, Gaming experiments, Will you please save my child?[/tags]

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New guilty pleasure – Top Secret Recipes

You’ve been out to eat. You had a great meal. You think how wonderful it would be if you could just make it yourself – then you could eat it whenever you wanted. But how could you ever figure out how to make it without just getting the recipe from the restaurant? Discover the recipe cloning that comes from Top Secret Recipes.

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Got a recipe you want to find? You can search for it to see if they’ve broken the secret yet. The search is straight-forward, and results are pretty quick to comb through.

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Some recipes, as you can see above, are free while some cost. The few recipes I’ve looked at were all 79 cents, but I don’t know if that price carries across to all payment-required recipes or not. Unfortunately for me, the queso recipe I was looking for isn’t there. For recipes which are available, Top Secret Recipes has ratings by users along with comments on how closely the prepared food matches the target item.

[tags]Top Secret Recipes, Recipes, Top Secret, Food[/tags]

30 years of very stupid monsters

As I began reading this long eassy on many of the stupid animals in the Dungeons and Dragons universe, I really wanted to hate it. The article begins with a two-paragraph long wall of text. I don’t care much for the font, text-size, nor color combination of the page. The background is too busy. His dismissal of Dungeons and Dragons comes off as snooty. But damn if I didn’t find the write-up quite entertaining.

stench-kow.jpgDespite the clever misspelling, you’re looking at an evil cow that stinks. Even better, read the first sentence there. “Cattle of the Nine Hells.” Smelly cows from hell. Awesome.

. . .

Sometimes, when its your job to be creative, you really don’t want to be. Take Werewolves for instance. Every fantasy game seems to have them. But after a while, an author wants to leave his mark. He wants to add a twist that no one’s thought of. In Dungeons and Dragons, this is often see by simply reversing the word “Werewolf” so that it cleverly appears as “Wolfwere”. Since this was done a long time ago, later writers would have to add their own novelty to the were-act. So in come were-foxes, were-sloths (no kidding), were-bears, and other fun little crossbreeds. And then people thought they’d be original and call a wolf that turns into a man a “Wolfwere”. That only started someone onto the path of doomed…well…check this out:

Continue reading “30 years of very stupid monsters”

Crazy news items

Just a handful of news items (some old but still interesting) that might make you ask WTF?

  • A special kind of stupid – drug dealer style:

    Federal agents thought there was something fishy about Leroy Carr. On four occasions since last December, Carr either crossed the Canadian border or was found near it with thousands of dollars in cash, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court. He also sometimes carried night vision goggles and a GPS device programmed with coordinates for a well-known drug-smuggling trail.

    But Carr refused to speak with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and they let him go – until he called to ask if they had seen his cocaine.

  • A southern-style ass-kicking sans arms:

    Police are investigating the death of a man who collapsed after he was head-butted by an armless man in a fight over a woman.

  • An apparent question of insufficient medical expertise and examination:

    A Venezuelan man who had been declared dead woke up in the morgue in excruciating pain after medical examiners began their autopsy.

  • Cookies design to make your breasts grow:

    Ladies, are you self-conscious about your breasts? Do you think they need to be bigger to get you attention from guys, or at least from guys like Charlie White? Well, you could have expensive and gross breast implant surgery, or you could just grab some F Cup cookies from Japan. These sure-to-be-effective cookies apparently make your breasts bigger when you eat just two a day, while most cookies will just make your ass bigger. See a close-up of the box after the jump.

  • Emotional trauma from not winning the lottery? Try actually buying a ticket, dumb-ass:

    A Dutch woman who claimed she suffered emotional damages due to not winning the lottery missed the jackpot in court too.

    Amsterdam District Court judges Wednesday rejected the claim of Helene de Gier, who said she was traumatized by not winning the country’s National Postcode Lottery, which she didn’t enter, while her neighbors did.

  • One of the worst dog bites you can suffer – at least, if you are extra stupid:

    A naked man was bit in the genitals by a police dog while being arrested for running nude and entering homes in a Minneapolis neighborhood.

    . . .

    While the officer was ordering the suspect out of the house, the suspect began hitting him, police said.

    The dog, which was still leashed, bit the suspect to protect the officer.

And honestly, this is the kind of posting that could be put together every day, and with a greater number of entries, and we’d still only see a handful of the stupids that we suffer through in this country.

[tags]Stupid, WTF, Crazy news[/tags]

New source of fact-checking

I’m not blind to the bias in all sources of news. Such is the nature of people that I would question any claim of an unbiased news source. That said, when a new fact-checking operation comes around (to compliment the FactCheck and PolitiFact sources I currently use), I’m interested in seeing what I can learn from the source. In the case of the Washington Post’s Fact-Checker, I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll be able to use the site when researching my own political rants and spews.

Now why would I think after just a first look that I might be able to use WaPo fact-checker? Well, one of the first news items they cover is contrary to the normal WaPo political stance – they are debunking moveon.org’s criticisms of General Petraeus’ Iraq status report. I haven’t checked the Washington Post home page, but I’m pretty sure if you look around you can find some criticism of Gen. Petraeus from the newspaper, so when the fact-checking section takes steps to defend the General, it at least offers some hope that the writers for the section will do a good job.

General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts.
While some of the facts and statistics cited by General Petraeus can legitimately be questioned and debated, MoveOn.org offers only partial support for such a sweeping accusation. The data they do cite is itself open to challenge.

The fact-checkers continue to break down the MoveOn.org criticisms of Gen. Petraeus, pointing out a number of flaws in their claims. The entire disection of the anti-war status claims is worth reading, no matter what side of the war debate you fall on.

I hope the site can continue to provide worthwhile analysis in the future. I know I’ll be checking back to see how things roll in the future.

[tags]Washington Post, WaPo, Washington Post Fact Checker, Fact checking[/tags]

The angry traveller – a crusade against airline incompetence

As air-carriers-on-time-trend_resize.gifyou probably already know, the airline industry hasn’t been in the best shape since the 9/11 attacks. With delayed or cancelled flights a growing problem in the US again (and a direct view of the data as compiled by the US government) after years of steady or improving tardiness, flyers have more to gripe about than probably any time in the past.

With the extreme delays some flights/airlines/airports have suffered lately – such as JetBlue’s 11 hour JFK delays and American Airlines’ 9 hour Austin delays – some passengers have had just enough of this crap, and one in particular has taken steps to force the airlines to handle these delays better.

Continue reading “The angry traveller – a crusade against airline incompetence”