Courtesy BoingBoing: Two AIs have a conversation about theology, sentience and computer science.
Skynet is on its way, my friends, and I for one welcome our evil robotic overlords! They seem to have a rather philosophical outlook on (artificial) life and theology.
It’s remarkable how fast the accusations of robot-hood turned up, don’t you think? And was it me, or did they actually sound reproachful one or two times in that little chat?
I still haven’t tried kuchen proper, but last week I was lucky enough to taste kuchen bars for the first time.
Kuchen, of course, is German for cake, but in this part of North Dakota (maybe in the whole state? I don’t know) it refers to a delicious custard-like dessert with fruit in it.
Although I am half German, I had never really heard of such a thing. The Germans from Russia Heritage Society was handing out the bars at the block party on Thursday, so I ate one. Incidentally, I am actually a German from Austria, so I am not even sure I qualify to join their group, but they were super nice and gave me a brochure anyway. And they even sent me the recipe for the delicious kuchen bars!
I really liked the bars, and I’m hoping to eat a lot more of them, possibly along with actual kuchen itself.
Kuchen is probably Germany’s way of making up for sauerkraut.
Block Party
I was mistaken for a college student several times last night at the Community Block Party, despite my gray hairs, so I’m pretty happy today.
Booth Folks: “Are you looking for a job?”
Me: “Oh, I have one, but thank you!”
It was a fun shindig and I walked away with quite a bit of random swag, including two grocery bags, one from St. John’s Lutheran and one from Gate City Bank. I also have some sort of cheese cracker things, a toothbrush, a cup, a bottle of water and a flavoring packet and a toothbrush.
I have also added a number of pens to my collection, which is good, because I am always losing them. I think squirrels follow me around and steal them. The trend in pens seems to be orange transparency–both Gate City and Unison had these, and JobAlert’s pen is bright red and transparent. Eventide’s pen is sleek and black, Temple Baptist’s is elegant and gray, and Jamestown Main Street’s maroon pen has the address of its new website on it.
I do not have three bags/cups of popcorn, a blue slushie and a dish of fresh Cavendish fries, but only because I ate them last night.
Skeptical Buffalo Sez: Wut.
A dieting book geared toward kids ages 6-12 is provoking controversy online. The author apparently wanted to help kids address their problems. Unfortunately, what he actually did was illustrate a story in which:
1. Getting made fun of on a regular basis prompts a child to make a positive lifestyle change. There are no consequences for the bullies, though that may certainly be argued to be an accurate depiction of real life.
2. Losing weight magically makes you popular and athletic.
To be fair, the character in the story, Maggie, loses weight through eating better and exercising more, not by starving herself or purging. And obesity is a quickly-growing epidemic among youth.
But still, despite the good intentions and the real problems this book was written to address, it’s a little bit hinky to be telling six-year-olds that weight loss is the magical solution to unpopularity and sadness, or even a solution to bad body image. Weight loss doesn’t always give you the figure you want anyway, and dieters may lose pounds and ultimately, still be highly dissatisfied with their bodies.
I could have weighed six ounces as a 12-year-old and I still would have been tremendously unpopular. And there were plenty of thin and beautiful unpopular kids in my class.
And the image on the book’s cover is an exact inversion of what anorexic people see in the mirror: The chubby Maggie looks in a mirror and sees a thin version of herself.
In real life, a pathetically thin anorexic girl looks in the mirror and sees a chubby version of herself–I’ve seen that image used to illustrate anorexia and bulimia more than once in many places, because it describes so perfectly what people with those eating disorders see. When they look in the mirror, they do not see an emaciated person; they see a fat person. It’s every bit as much of a fantasy as Maggie’s thin-alternate-self in the mirror.
Needless to say, children shouldn’t diet unless there’s some sort of really good reason, and they should be supervised by adults if they must diet.
And there are many girls who, at age 6-12, are sort of… solid. When girls go through puberty their body weight redistributes itself significantly, and I know plenty of girls who were chubby before that happened and normal or even thin afterward.
Will kids reading this book get the impression that they need to slim down, long before their bodies change everything anyway? The author says these books are meant to be read by parents and children together, I believe, but is that really going to happen every time?
Is the book damaging, or a needed antidote to the obesity epidemic among young people?
I went to the National Buffalo Museum yesterday for a story and ended up buying a small buffalo plushie. As you can see, it has an absolutely unbelieving look on its adorable fuzzy little face.
I call him the Skeptical Buffalo.
He’ll be sitting on my desk reminding me of my journalistic duty not to believe everything I hear.
Expect to see him again whenever I post something… questionable.
I tend to store up links until I have several that fit some sort of a theme. These are all vaguely focused on decay.
I didn’t know there was such a thing as Victorian parody rap.
Until recently, the genre was utterly unknown to me. And now, I’m still not entirely certain what to make of it. I adore Victoriana, steampunk and all its variations, and I love Rasputina and have listened to Abney Park. I love the Decemberists.
And then, there is “Fighting Trousers,” by Professor Elemental. (Thank you, BoingBoing!)
It’s actually a dis song aimed at another Victorian parody rapper, Mr. B., the Gentleman Rhymer. Yes. There are two. This is Mr. B.’s Songs for Acid Edward.
I… really don’t even know what to think. I do think more listening is warranted, but after listening to one song from the Prof and a few of Mr. B.’s tunes, I prefer the Prof.
Hey mom, you thought my music was weird before? Well, it just took a turn for the Even Weirder. I don’t know what people are gonna think when I blast “Fighting Trousers.”
I’ve lived in towns with populations as low as 1,300, but I’ve also lived in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and St. Petersburg (Russia).
I’ve liked living just about everywhere I’ve lived, and I’ve especially loved Jamestown, Worthington, Jackson and Minneapolis.
In Minneapolis I lived about half a block from a very low-income, high-crime area; I was held up at alleged gunpoint while I worked at a coffeeshop there once. (I don’t think he actually had a gun, but in those situations you kinda take their word for it.) Cars streamed by on the interstate all day and all night, and it never got dark at night.
In Jackson, we lived in the middle of the residential part of town and at night, it was so quiet it used to give me the creeps. After 11 years of living on a highway, dead silence at night was all too reminiscent of a zombie apocalypse. Of course there wasn’t one.
In Worthington, I lived on a fairly busy street, so you could hear cars every once in a while even at night, and in the summer you could always hear the races at the track, which was nice.
In Jamestown, I live in the downtown area, and there’s a car or two every once in a while even in the dead of night, which makes me feel like I’m not all alone in the world.
Here’s the thing. I’ve liked living in rural areas and small towns. I still like them. I’m living in a pretty big small town at the moment, and it has many massive advantages cities don’t have, like generally not being held at gunpoint and 3-minute commutes, not to mention more affordable housing. And there are still galleries and stores and concerts to attend, too.
There is no doubt, however, that rural areas do have their drawbacks. I’ve read a few interesting articles about some of these lately.
Efforts are being made to ameliorate some of these effects; I consider the rural broadband effort to be akin to the rural electricity movement of the 1930s, in giving rural people the advantages town/city people have had for a long time.
I hope people continue to study these things. And I also hope to continue explaining to city people why it’s great to live in small towns. And vice versa.
MOAR BOOM KTHX
Do you think farming needs more BOOM in it? If so, this marvelous little DuPont booklet on farming with dynamite may be for you! I don’t think Farmville has a “dynamite” option yet, but I stopped playing it, so I really couldn’t say.
But really, isn’t everything more fun with explosives? July 4, birthday parties, baptisms?
Okay, maybe not baptisms, although I can honestly say I haven’t tried explosives at a baptism yet.
Here’s another oddball link about official recommendations for Stasi disguises, featuring the least-subtle garb spies can possibly wear, short of hanging an I AM A SPY, ASK ME HOW sign around the neck. Seriously, they caricature themselves here.
It’s a little odd, because the Stasi were extremely effective in one sense–some estimates say that one in every seven people in East Germany was a Stasi informer. Look around you; if you have six innocent coworkers, well, maybe it would have been you. At the same time, the Berlin Wall still fell, so maybe the TRANSPARENTLY OBVIOUS DISGUISES really did hurt them.
Friday’s rainstorm prompted interesting scanner chatter, but it also left me with a minor dilemma, as I was uncertain how to describe for my story the bits of hail that fell on Jamestown.
The hailstones were smaller than peas, and I was struggling to find a good way to illustrate their size. Sub-pea-sized? Tinyhail? Nerds candy-sized hail? Airsoft ammo?
I was advised to see what The Internet had to say, and quickly found this handy National Weather Service hail size comparison chart.
BBs! Bam!
But reading the rest of the chart also proved instructive. Do people really compare hail to hockey pucks and eggs? That must be some pretty weirdly-shaped hail.
And then there are the delicious comparisons to candy, including the Milk Dud-sized hail. Mmm.
How would you describe hail?
