. . . in the TTLB Eco-System, that is.
Just noticed this morning that my auto-code snippet in the lower left margin (scroll down) had rolled over and was now announcing “I’m a adorable little rodent.”
(I suppose the childlike quality of omitting intervocalic nunnation in the “a adorable” is part of the adorability factor.)
LARGE MAMMAL OR BUST!
A new study reports that blonds perform intelligence tests more slowly than those with other hair colors if you force them to read “dumb blond” jokes before taking the test. According to a Reuters story:
“No blonde woman believes she is stupid,” said Jens Foerster a social psychologist from the International University Bremen in northern Germany on Wednesday.
“But after exposure to negative social-stereotypes about them, the fair-haired participants performed significantly more slowly in the tests.”
Foerster explained the result by saying that when people are told they can’t perform a task well, they work more slowly but more cautiously, to try to make fewer mistakes.
DUH! DUR-HEY!Who wouldn’t take an IQ test more carefully if you insulted their intelligence just before you gave it to them!
This obvious fact hasn’t stopped Reuters from using misleadingly anti-Blond headlines like:
* Do Dumb Blonde Jokes Slow Mental Activity??
And worse:
A new study reports that blonds perform intelligence tests more slowly than those with other hair colors if you force them to read “dumb blond” jokes before taking the test. According to a Reuters story:
“No blonde woman believes she is stupid,” said Jens Foerster a social psychologist from the International University Bremen in northern Germany on Wednesday.
“But after exposure to negative social-stereotypes about them, the fair-haired participants performed significantly more slowly in the tests.”
Foerster explained the result by saying that when people are told they can’t perform a task well, they work more slowly but more cautiously, to try to make fewer mistakes.
DUH! DUR-HEY!Who wouldn’t take an IQ test more carefully if you insulted their intelligence just before you gave it to them!
This obvious fact hasn’t stopped Reuters from using misleadingly anti-Blond headlines like:
* Do Dumb Blonde Jokes Slow Mental Activity??
And worse:
There’s a scene in Babylon 5 where Captain Sheridan confronts a mysterious man named Justin, who is part of the Shadows’ conspiracy. When Sheridan first meets Jusin, he quizzes him on his identity (quoting from memory, so this won’t be exact):
“Who are you?”
“Now that’s really not important.”
“Who are you?”
“Who decides that the workday will be from 9 to 5 instead of 10 to 4? That the hemlines will be shorter this year, longer the next? Who defines the borders? The political boundaries? Who makes the thousands of decisions that happen invisibly all around us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah. I’m . . . with them. Same group. Different department. Think of me as a sort of ‘middle man.'”
Well, it seems that Mr. Justin is with the Color Marketing Group, a group that remains totally hidden to most of us. It was founded in 1962 (NOTE: The year before the Kennedy Assassination!), and now there are allegations that it is the center of a sinister conspiracy to . . . Dum! Dum! Dum! . . . CONTROL THE COLORS OF THE OBJECTS IN OUR LIVES, EVEN THE VERY CLOTHES WE PUT ON OUR BODIES!!!
Dragging this conspiracy into the light is this blog, which reveals the following shocking details:
I’ve known people who think official color reassignments are a conspiracy theory. The short answer is that they are a conspiracy, but they aren’t theoretical. I submit as evidence the assigned colors for 2004, 2003 and 2002. And here are some recent specimens of the new range, to give you a better idea of what they look like when in use.
Who does this to us? An outfit, founded in 1962, called the Color Marketing Group. These are the people who wished avocado green and harvest gold kitchen appliances on America, and put the 1980s into those mauve-pink shades that looked so peculiarly horrible on so many of us.
Basically, the CMG is a trade organization, with 1,500 members drawn from a bunch of different industries. Twice a year they get together in Alexandria, VA, to come up with long-term and short-term color predictions. The long-term prediction is a set of sixteen colors that will be profitably marketable two years hence. That is, the 2003 palette was distributed to manufacturers in 2001. The short-term prediction is a palette of colors declared to be currently the thing.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody’s obliged to follow CMG’s lead; but a manufacturer who ignores them is likely to find that all his competitors’ products are in fashionably compatible colors, while his own clash.
READ MORE AND LEARN WHAT SINISTER PLANS THE CONSIRACY HAS IN STORE FOR US!
FIGHT THE FUTURE!
There’s a scene in Babylon 5 where Captain Sheridan confronts a mysterious man named Justin, who is part of the Shadows’ conspiracy. When Sheridan first meets Jusin, he quizzes him on his identity (quoting from memory, so this won’t be exact):
“Who are you?”
“Now that’s really not important.”
“Who are you?”
“Who decides that the workday will be from 9 to 5 instead of 10 to 4? That the hemlines will be shorter this year, longer the next? Who defines the borders? The political boundaries? Who makes the thousands of decisions that happen invisibly all around us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah. I’m . . . with them. Same group. Different department. Think of me as a sort of ‘middle man.'”
Well, it seems that Mr. Justin is with the Color Marketing Group, a group that remains totally hidden to most of us. It was founded in 1962 (NOTE: The year before the Kennedy Assassination!), and now there are allegations that it is the center of a sinister conspiracy to . . . Dum! Dum! Dum! . . . CONTROL THE COLORS OF THE OBJECTS IN OUR LIVES, EVEN THE VERY CLOTHES WE PUT ON OUR BODIES!!!
Dragging this conspiracy into the light is this blog, which reveals the following shocking details:
I’ve known people who think official color reassignments are a conspiracy theory. The short answer is that they are a conspiracy, but they aren’t theoretical. I submit as evidence the assigned colors for 2004, 2003 and 2002. And here are some recent specimens of the new range, to give you a better idea of what they look like when in use.
Who does this to us? An outfit, founded in 1962, called the Color Marketing Group. These are the people who wished avocado green and harvest gold kitchen appliances on America, and put the 1980s into those mauve-pink shades that looked so peculiarly horrible on so many of us.
Basically, the CMG is a trade organization, with 1,500 members drawn from a bunch of different industries. Twice a year they get together in Alexandria, VA, to come up with long-term and short-term color predictions. The long-term prediction is a set of sixteen colors that will be profitably marketable two years hence. That is, the 2003 palette was distributed to manufacturers in 2001. The short-term prediction is a palette of colors declared to be currently the thing.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nobody’s obliged to follow CMG’s lead; but a manufacturer who ignores them is likely to find that all his competitors’ products are in fashionably compatible colors, while his own clash.
READ MORE AND LEARN WHAT SINISTER PLANS THE CONSIRACY HAS IN STORE FOR US!
FIGHT THE FUTURE!
For some time Hollywood has been abuzz about a mysterious blogger known only as “Rance,” who claims to be a well-known male actor blogging under a pen name–to keep his reputation from being destroyed by all the juicy gossip he dishes up on his blog (WARNING: Rance lives on a different moral planet than most readers of this blog; in particular: He lives on planet Hollywood.) Speculations include that Rance is George Clooney, Jim Carrey, Owen Wilson, Ben Affleck, and others.
Now Rance has some competition, from the star of one of last year’s summer blockbusters, and he doesn’t care in the slightest if his reputation gets destroyed. In fact, he’s rather fond of destruction. Yes, that’s right, the Incredible Hulk has a blog! (Or, “diary,” as he insists on calling it.)
It’s a real hoot to read. Here are a few entries:
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Why Hulk Likes The Food Court, By Hulk:
1. Hulk can get any kind of food Hulk wants! It is like travelling whole world when only making a few steps!
2. FREE SAMPLES. Sometimes puny humans at Chinese Panda place say “ONLY ONE!” but then Hulk says he could smash whole place up and they hand Hulk tray. Hulk not like threatening nice Chinese Panda people but they need to make free samples bigger!
C. ORANGE JULIUS. OH, HULK LOVES ORANGE JULIUS. THEY HAVE HOT DOGS AND ORANGE DRINK. OH IT IS GOOD HAVE YOU HAD IT??!?!?!?
4. ARCADE is right next to it! Hulk can play games like SMASH A MOLE. They always have new machines every time Hulk comes by, though. Hulk wonder why.
————————————–
Thursday, June 24, 2004
HULK AT LIBRARY USING COMPUTER.
SHHHH.
————————————–
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Hulk saw movie about bug-man and it was good but needed more smashing.
AND HULK DID NOT GET SNIFFLY DURING ROMANTIC SCENES SO IF YOU HEAR IRON MAN OR THOR TALKING ABOUT IT THEY ARE LIARS.
————————————–
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Hulk not allowed at library anymore.
Hulk just wanted to help library woman keep place quiet!
Now if the Infraggable Krunk would just get a blog.
Last Halloween the sun let loose with a huge, hellacious (literally!) sunstorm that has sent shockwaves throughout the solar system. It was a real Halloween scare. According to one story:
On Earth, aircraft were rerouted and astronauts took cover in the international space station to avoid the effects, and the aurora borealis surged southward to the Mediterranean Sea.
The wave triggered magnetic storms on Jupiter and Saturn and peeled away parts of Mars’s upper atmosphere. Scientists suggested that such storms, spread over billions of years, could explain how Mars lost the seas that might have once covered its surface.
The significance of the event is particularly brought out by the fact that astronauts on the International Space Station hunkered down in in shielded areas (no miles of protective atmosphere with its ozone, remember?) to ride out the storm like a hurricane.
Note also that storms like this may have been what stripped Mars of its oceans. Mars may be dry because it was sun-blasted into being an endless, red beach. That’s cosmic, man!
As noted, the shockwaves from the Halloween storms were sent throughout the solar system. The problem is, the solar system is a big place. So big, in fact, that the shock waves have not yet reached the end of it.
“Where does it end?” you ask.
Well, we don’t quite know. But the shockwaves from the storm may help us figure it out. You see, the solar system is often defined as ending at a place known as . . . . Dum! Dum! Dum! . . . THE HELIOPAUSE.
“What is the heliopause?” you ask.
Here we can give a more informative answer. As you may know, interstellar space is not quite empty, despite what folks say. It contains a very, very, very x 10^something thin volume of gas and dust. Some dust, but mostly gas. And–as I said–very, very, incredibly thin. This is known among astronomers as the interstellar medium.
The interstellar medium ain’t static. It has currents that flow within it, known as interstellar winds, chiefly caused by the rotation of the galaxy. Our sun, as you know, also kicks out a wind–the solar wind–which streams out at supersonic speeds from the sun.
As it streams out, the solar wind pushes against the interstellar medium, and at some point the push against the interstellar medium is strong enough that it slows the solar wind to subsonic levels. That point is known as . . . Dum! Dum! Dum! . . . “THE TERMINATION SHOCK.” (Fooled ya, huh?)
Where the termination shock is depends on how strong the solar wind is, and that varies (with solar storms, for example). But it’s about 100 AU (Astronomical Units = the distance between the Earth and the Sun), and Voger I passed it in February 2003.
As the solar wind meets continuing resistance from the interstellar medium, even after the termination shock, it continues to slow down. When it is no longer able to resist the pressure caused by the interstellar medium, we have reached the point known as THE HELIOPAUSE. (Dum! Dum! Dum!)
The heliopause is, effectively, the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space. Thing is, it’s lopsided with respect to the sun. That’s caused by the fact that the interstellar medium is pressing against the solar systemmore strongly on one side than ‘tuther (because of galactic rotation, remember?). As a result, the sun is closer to the heliopause in the direction of rotation. Nevertheless, the heliopause is a good, logical barrier for where the solar system begins and ends. We just don’t know quite where it is.
But we may be about to find out.
Y’see, as solar winds press against it, it causes observable effects. Right now the mission of the Voyager I and Voyager II space probes is to explore this area, and the Halloween storms are likely to give them the clues they need to figure out where the heliopause is.
When the shockwave sent out by the Halloween storms smacks into the interstellar medium, it is likely to cause electrical effects (low-level radio waves) that Voyager I can detect and then tell Earth about. If so, we’ll have a good clue as to where the heliopause is (distorted as the readings may be by the strenth of the shockwave).
————————–
Now, when Voyager 6 returns from the machine world on the other side of the galaxy, we’ll have some real data to crow about!
Last Halloween the sun let loose with a huge, hellacious (literally!) sunstorm that has sent shockwaves throughout the solar system. It was a real Halloween scare. According to one story:
On Earth, aircraft were rerouted and astronauts took cover in the international space station to avoid the effects, and the aurora borealis surged southward to the Mediterranean Sea.
The wave triggered magnetic storms on Jupiter and Saturn and peeled away parts of Mars’s upper atmosphere. Scientists suggested that such storms, spread over billions of years, could explain how Mars lost the seas that might have once covered its surface.
The significance of the event is particularly brought out by the fact that astronauts on the International Space Station hunkered down in in shielded areas (no miles of protective atmosphere with its ozone, remember?) to ride out the storm like a hurricane.
Note also that storms like this may have been what stripped Mars of its oceans. Mars may be dry because it was sun-blasted into being an endless, red beach. That’s cosmic, man!
As noted, the shockwaves from the Halloween storms were sent throughout the solar system. The problem is, the solar system is a big place. So big, in fact, that the shock waves have not yet reached the end of it.
“Where does it end?” you ask.
Well, we don’t quite know. But the shockwaves from the storm may help us figure it out. You see, the solar system is often defined as ending at a place known as . . . . Dum! Dum! Dum! . . . THE HELIOPAUSE.
“What is the heliopause?” you ask.
Here we can give a more informative answer. As you may know, interstellar space is not quite empty, despite what folks say. It contains a very, very, very x 10^something thin volume of gas and dust. Some dust, but mostly gas. And–as I said–very, very, incredibly thin. This is known among astronomers as the interstellar medium.
The interstellar medium ain’t static. It has currents that flow within it, known as interstellar winds, chiefly caused by the rotation of the galaxy. Our sun, as you know, also kicks out a wind–the solar wind–which streams out at supersonic speeds from the sun.
As it streams out, the solar wind pushes against the interstellar medium, and at some point the push against the interstellar medium is strong enough that it slows the solar wind to subsonic levels. That point is known as . . . Dum! Dum! Dum! . . . “THE TERMINATION SHOCK.” (Fooled ya, huh?)
Where the termination shock is depends on how strong the solar wind is, and that varies (with solar storms, for example). But it’s about 100 AU (Astronomical Units = the distance between the Earth and the Sun), and Voger I passed it in February 2003.
As the solar wind meets continuing resistance from the interstellar medium, even after the termination shock, it continues to slow down. When it is no longer able to resist the pressure caused by the interstellar medium, we have reached the point known as THE HELIOPAUSE. (Dum! Dum! Dum!)
The heliopause is, effectively, the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space. Thing is, it’s lopsided with respect to the sun. That’s caused by the fact that the interstellar medium is pressing against the solar systemmore strongly on one side than ‘tuther (because of galactic rotation, remember?). As a result, the sun is closer to the heliopause in the direction of rotation. Nevertheless, the heliopause is a good, logical barrier for where the solar system begins and ends. We just don’t know quite where it is.
But we may be about to find out.
Y’see, as solar winds press against it, it causes observable effects. Right now the mission of the Voyager I and Voyager II space probes is to explore this area, and the Halloween storms are likely to give them the clues they need to figure out where the heliopause is.
When the shockwave sent out by the Halloween storms smacks into the interstellar medium, it is likely to cause electrical effects (low-level radio waves) that Voyager I can detect and then tell Earth about. If so, we’ll have a good clue as to where the heliopause is (distorted as the readings may be by the strenth of the shockwave).
————————–
Now, when Voyager 6 returns from the machine world on the other side of the galaxy, we’ll have some real data to crow about!
All the more reason we need to vote pro-family this election.
Today’s vote is by no means the end of a constitutional amendment (which is really what is needed in this case). If the Senate does not address matters successfully there is also recourse to the state legislatures to get the matter addressed.
It’s likely to be a long, hard slog either way, though.
All the more reason we need to vote pro-family this election.
Today’s vote is by no means the end of a constitutional amendment (which is really what is needed in this case). If the Senate does not address matters successfully there is also recourse to the state legislatures to get the matter addressed.
It’s likely to be a long, hard slog either way, though.