Archive - February 2005
Mind control
Sun Feb 13, 2005 14:40 (UTC -5)
Is it possible that deviations in random numbers can detect or even predict major world events? The folks mentioned in this RedNova article, “Can This Black Box See Into the Future?,” say that perhaps they can.
To test their theory, they have computers spitting out zeroes and ones randomly. The researchers claim that the computers produce about equal amounts of each — as expected — most times, but that the difference in the ratio between ones and zeroes shot up during Princess Diana‘s funeral, watched by an estimated one billion people, and other world events including New Year’s Eve celebrations, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and the 2000 U.S. Presidential election. Especially unusual, they say, is that the numbers began to shift on September 11, 2001 — several hours before the terrorist attacks happened. The computers likewise “predicted” December’s tsunami 24 hours before it occurred.
Especially interesting is the mention of a study in which strangers were shown a computer that was churning out ones and zeroes. The researcher asked them to concentrate and try to control which number the machine picked. Allegedly, the people were consistently able to influence the computer’s output. The effect was supposed to be especially strong with groups as well.
If these scientists could perform such a simple experiment, then so can anyone with a computer. All you need to have computer do is pick one of two random numbers. I thought I could write a program that does this, but I realized that my flipacoin.net site does exactly the same thing. When you “flip” a coin, the web server randomly chooses between 0 and 1. If the number is 0, the heads side of the coin is shown, and if it’s 1, then the tails side appears. So if you concentrate on making heads appear more than tails (or vice versa), then you’re effectively “rooting” for one particular number, just as in the aforementioned experiment. Hey, I have some time, so why not try it now?
As a control set of findings, I “flipped” a coin on the site 100 times and came up with 51 heads, 49 tails. Then, while concentrating on making the coin come up tails, I flipped the same coin 100 more times. Result: 59 heads, 41 tails.
Please go to flipacoin.net and try it for yourself. Then post a comment here with your results.
In other news: Jordanian man and woman meet in chat room and fall in love. While planning their wedding, they decide to meet in person, only to find… that they are actually husband and wife that had been separated for several months. (Story)
I’m glad I’m not running for political office
Fri Feb 11, 2005 23:45 (UTC -5)
It’s local election season, and so those seeking to win the favor of their constituents (or those who they want to be their constituents) have begun the traditional ritual of littering every street corner and lawn with campaign garbage. So around this time, signs large and small dominate the landscape.
There are some names that just don’t belong on signs. One I’ve been seeing around quite a bit is that some hopeful by the surname Gonot. This Gonot chose his/her/its campaign colors to be white on red, and the signs use a sans serif font. So when I see these signs on residential corners saying “GONOT,” I can’t help but liken them to a stop sign politely imploring drivers to go not. And then there’s this guy named Noland who’s running for something for other. I see his big “Noland” sign by the road and it looks like it says “No land,” like it should be “No land taxes” or something. But it’s just “No land.” Actually, it’s “Noland.”
People with weird names shouldn’t run for office.
I finally updated the picture on the About Me page. I make a point to update it every six or seven months. The new shot (here) is my desperate attempt to try something a little less boring. On the page I’ve also included a wide shot of my in my room which is a bit too wide to be displayed here.
It’s hard to get a good picture of myself to post here because the flash of my camera brings out the greasiness of my hair, illuminates my nostrils, and turns my lips a bright pink, red, or purple. I hope the two shots I chose are satisfactory.
A Google search query recently that recently provided a hit to this site: If you are 11 years old and you need to write a good paper about the history of writing and your teacher told you to do an outline of it for homework one night, what good website would there be for doing it? Or what could you write about in the paper that . I sure hope that kid managed to find what he was looking for. Good luck, kid.
The shadowy figure comes across a stack of papers on the college campus. Reading them, he finds that they’re quite obviously “busy work” for a freshman class. And what’s this? The professor has already graded them. But something is not right… there are many problems that someone needs to fix. Thus The Masked Grader strikes again!
Plus…
Wed Feb 09, 2005 19:20 (UTC -5)
Yesterday I took FCAT Writing+, the state standardized writing test. It’s only given in fourth, eighth, and tenth grade, so this was the first and last time. It’s called Writing+ (note the plus sign) because it includes not only an essay, but also some painfully easy multiple choice questions to see whether you know basic grammar and how to write an outline and things like that. I didn’t have much of a problem with that.
Hmm… Valentine’s Day (that’s St. Valentine to you!) is fast approaching. It makes me sick. The day (I wouldn’t call it a holiday) means nothing to anyone except almost no one. Little kids are obligated to buy cheap paper things, each with a blank for a person’s name, and give them to everyone. What’s with that, huh? And then there was this massacre or something. I don’t know. Oh, right, I’m a confused teenager. And something about something or other like that.
I’m actually quite content right now. I just don’t like the watering down of love — the very thing for which the human race lives — to perforated sheets of paper with cartoon characters on them.
One of my hobbies, as you may know, is Where’s George?, a site that allows you to track where your money goes after you spend it. Yesterday I posted the following message to the Main Public Forum under the subject “Oh dear…”:
How do you know when you’ve been a bit obsessive about a hobby? Is it when you’ve spent 32.1% of your life at it and you’re not old enough to drive yet?
I remember it well… actually, I don’t. But I do remember it. It was February 8, 2000: I was in the fifth grade, and my teacher told me about a dollar bill she had received with a web site address stamped on it. She told me she found where it had been: “New York and some other places.” The site was www.wheresgeorge.com. I decided to check it out that night.
So, yeah, that means today is my fifth Georgeaversary [anniversary of the date one registered at Where's George]. Yikes. Has it really been that long? It sure does feel like it. And I’ve come a long way. WG was my first (and pretty much my only) online community. Besides having fun tracking my bills, I sort of “came of age” within these green frames [the forum windows are split into a top frame with a list of messages and a bottom frame where you read and post messages]. While others flamed each other and called each other 10-year-olds (some things never change, do they?), I could kind of get away with it because I was 10 years old. I’ve grown up a bit, and I quickly learned to appreciate all the great people who post here. You all are great (well, most of you, anyway).
It’s just now dawning on me: five years! Half a decade! One-twentieth of a century! Has it been five years well spent? Yes, without a doubt. Will I be gone anytime soon? No. I may lurk a bit more, mainly because after five years you often don’t have a whole lot to say. Also, I’m being driven into the ground by schoolwork (I’ve often used this as an excuse for things, but for the first time it’s actually true). But I’ll still be here, just so you all know. I’m not going anywhere, even though this whole production of a post might make it seem that way.
Thank you Hank [creator and webmaster], my fellow Team Aqua [administrative group with forum moderation privileges, etc.] members, and everyone for making Where’s George what it is and making me what I am today. Love, peace, etc. to you all.
Happy Georging,
Jordon (“Slowpoke”) [Slowpoke has been my moniker on the site since shortly after I got hooked five years ago.]
P.S. By the way, on May 22 I will have spent a third of my life as a WG user. [I made an Excel spreadsheet to figure that one out. J-Walk would be proud.]
The idea of cameramail is simple. Send a camera through the mail. Ask everyone who comes across it to take some pictures. In some cases, your recipient may end up with some great pictures of, well, mostly postal workers and stuff. I guess it just goes to prove that they’re not all nuts, and that this might be something fun to try. Only I would use a disposable digital camera rather than a film one (my scanner is not the best in the world). The site includes tips on sending your own cameramail as well.
Does this mean it’s spring?
Sat Feb 05, 2005 10:38 (UTC -5)
Today I’m going to my old school’s Spring Festival (a carnival or fair of sorts). This will be a first among Spring Festivals for one main reason: it’s the first one that my band is not playing at since we really got off the ground. We played there in 2002, 2003 (pictured), and 2004. I already miss doing it. It was a really spectacular thing, being up on that trailer-turned-stage, even though there were also “real” bands there to show us up.
At first (in 2002) we were invited to play there as a selected act from the school talent show, which we pwned that year and the next. But sometimes we weren’t specifically invited and we had to ask to be squeezed in. But no matter. We weren’t really ready to play this year; we hadn’t practiced much in the months leading up to this weekend. On top of that, not everybody wanted to do it. Maybe if we got paid for our gigs, the motivation would be there and we would learn more songs. But we can’t really get paid until we’re good and can play a lot of stuf. It’s a vicious cycle, a catch-22, that must be broken. Please consider booking us for your next event.
Anyway, my friends and I are going to the Festival today for my friend Mark’s birthday (which was actually last month). It’s a surprise, so don’t tell anyone. (And I’m sure he won’t be reading this before he finds out because there’s some sort of diversion to get him out of the house, and I don’t even think he goes here anyway.) It should be a lot of fun.
And yes, I went to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood on Thursday night. What a show! It was basically like Whose Line Is It Anyway?, except the games were longer and there was more audience involvement. A game they used to play on the show was the Alphabet Game (or something like that), in which there’s a particular scenario and when the performers take turns speaking, each person’s line has to start with the next letter of the alphabet. Colin and Brad played this game for their finale… while walking and crawling on 100 mousetraps blindfolded and barefoot. You’d never see that on the show, that’s for sure.
Ask Jordon…
Tommy: What is your opinion about the Canadians?
I think, on the whole, they’re fine people. I can’t really understand why other Americans think they’re so weird, besides that they kind of are. I think they just come across that way because they’re almost exactly like Americans but not quite. But some Canadians have used this to their advanatge, viz. Colin Mochrie.
Ever heard of people getting fired for blogging? Unfortunately, it has happened. Check out The Bloggers’ Rights Blog to see what some bloggers (including the wrongfully fired) are doing about it.
Who’s going to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood? Who’s going to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood??
Tue Feb 01, 2005 19:48 (UTC -5)
That’s right, fools, I am. Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood, Two stars of the improv comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway? are coming to town (well, the general area) on Thursday night, and I’m going to see them. If I were more able to express my emotions, I’d be hyperventilating or something. But you can’t see me anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. I watch Whose Line religiously, so this is pretty cool. Their show is supposed to be in a format similar to the TV show, according to this page on Colin’s site about the tour. I’m expecting it to be a real treat.
I got the singles that I ordered on Friday today. Or, today I got the singles that I ordered on Friday. Whichever is less confusing. They sent all the ones I ordered except one: “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians. I ordered a reissue of that single (and most of the others) because the record store charged less for those than singles on their original label. They sent a note saying that the original-label “96 Tears” would cost $10 (U.S.), so they didn’t send it or charge for it. It turns out that ? and the Mysterians’ catalog in any format is hard to come by, even though they had several hits. Ah well, I won’t bother spending $10 on two songs.
With that, I will go listen to my records rather than write about them, thus giving all of you a much-needed break (ha ha — break — get it?).
867-5309… After that song hit the charts in 1982, people unlucky enough to have the number were flooded with prank calls. Have phone companies responded by “retiring” the number? Some guy decided find out. He called every 867-5309 in North America, and this is what he found.