Infrequently Used Units of Measurement.

Millihelen: the amount of beauty required to launch one ship. Superceded in 1983 when ANSI introduced the 10-point "Hot or Not" units of measurement. The conversion from Millihelens to Hot-or-Not is given by the following equation:

Hotness=ln(Mh+h₁) + h₂

Where h₁ and h₂ are the hotness conversions constants,
h₁ ≈ 0.045402 and
h₂ ≈ 3.0922

Under the new standard, one Millihelen is approximately equal to 3.1366 on the Standard Hotness scale.

Kilobreadbox: Unit of volume approximately equivalent to 670 bushels. Used when attempting to deduce an unknown object by its size.

e.g. Is it bigger than a kilobreadbox?

Yea: unit of length. Initially conceived in 1910 as an alternative to the cubit, the yea increases in length by several centiyeas annually and is currently approximately 3.8 feet in length. Most commonly used by fisherman when estimating the size of a catch.

I caught a fish yea long.

Parsec:
1) Unit of distance. 1 Parsec is the distance a hypothetical object would have to be from the earth to create a parallax angle of one arcsecond. Approximately equal to 3.2616 ly.
e.g. Alpha Centauri has a parallax of .77233 arcseconds, meaning it is 1.295 parsecs from Earth.

2) Unit of scientific knowledge of a director/writer. Indicates how much of a grasp on scientific terminology a filmmaker has. Inverse grade in that higher positive numbers indicate less grasp, and lower, negative numbers indicate more understanding.
e.g. George Lucas knows about 12 parsecs worth of science.

3) Unit of fan rationalization. Indicates the willingness of a fan to explain away obvious scientific errors with complex after-the-fact explanations.
e.g. See, the Kessel Run isn't a set course or distance. You actually have to navigate a twisting path through a region of space filled with black holes. The closer you get to the black holes, the straighter your path, and the shorter the distance. So when Han Solo said that he made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs, he meant that he navigated a very short (comparatively) distance, indicating he was a very skilled pilot. See? It all makes perfect sense. Kevin J. Anderson explained it in the Jedi Academy Trilogy.

If your number is 330-416-4288...

...why did you just send me a picture of your dog?



Cute dog, though, and decent quality for a camera phone.

I'm starting to learn the downside to having a "desirable" e-mail address: people forget it's not theirs.

I signed up for Gmail on April 23rd, 2004. This was pretty early, considering Google only announced the service on April 1st of that year, and it was in closed beta for many months afterwords. I got in because Google had just purchased Blogger and gave a free Gmail account to anyone with a blogger account (pretty good marketing, no? Give all the bloggers access to your e-mail service, then let them tell all their moms about it, since those are the only people who read blogs). Since I got in the gates before the barbarian hordes, so to speak, I got the highly desirable "JoeCool" screen name. No longer did I have to deal with a stupid and utterly random "385" after my e-mail account. Life was going to be wonderful.

Or, at least, so I thought.

Apparently, there is a certain, rather large, subsection of society that can't remember its e-mail address. I very, very frequently get confirmation e-mails saying something like "Thank you for creating an account on (insert website here). Click here to finalize the process." No, they are not spam or phishing scams. They are actually legitimate account creation e-mails, sent to me because someone thinks he has my e-mail address. I'm sure some of them are just times when someone, not wanting to give their real e-mail address, just entered a "dummy" address, not caring about the poor person who's address he entered and now has to wade through the mound of spam. It doesn't help him, though, because since he entered a "dummy" e-mail address, he can't finalize the account creation.

But I get e-mails where this is very clearly not the case. For instance, last June, Joseph Roy living at 330 Rosemonte in Thibodaux, LA 70301 purchased golf ball finder glasses, a twelve pack of golf balls, and a golfing glove, and received a free promotional golf towel from The Golf Warehouse, a total purchase of $99.59. How do I know this? Because he had the order confirmation send to me. For a while, I considered printing out the order confirmation and snail-mailing it to him, along with a polite note asking not to use my e-mail address on web sites, and also warning about sending personal details to strangers. You never know where that personal information might end up. I decided not to, but I think this will be my future policy when people send me their addresses.

This is not an isolated incident. There is a woman named Sharon Faber who is convinced I am her son. I have been receiving correspondence (sometimes including pictures) from her for over a year. The first few times, I assumed it was spam, or a typo in the e-mail address and deleted it, but after she kept e-mailing, me I realized she just plain had the wrong e-mail address. The problem was, by that point, it felt a little awkward e-mailing someone who had been sending me e-mail for a few months and telling her she had the wrong e-mail address. "Hi, Sharon. I'm not actually your son, but thanks for the pictures of your grandchildren from last Sunday's barbecue. I hope you had a good time." Now, I just filter out her e-mails, or delete them without reading them.

I have learned from that incident and now I immediately e-mail people who obviously have the wrong address. This happens at least once every couple weeks. It's usually a mother or grandmother or teenage a teenage girl sending a note to her son/grandson/classmate. In one recent incident someone sent me One Of Those e-mails (Terry Pratchett capitalization intentional). You know how they go. "This comes from a New York Times article: 70% of people in Los Angeles are illegal immigrants who caused the sewer to back up on Super Bowl Sunday when they all flushed the toilet at the same time during halftime, which flooded the sewers, startling the alligators, who snapped at the ducks causing them to all quack at the same time, but since their quacks don't echo, it caused all the Oak trees to produce acorns, even though they don't normally do so until they're 50 years old." You know those e-mails, particularly if your name rhymes with Shmristine Shmacosta, since you, as far as I can tell, originate them all. Anyways, back to the woman, not only did I get to tell her that I wasn't her grandson, I pointed her to the relevant Snopes article and recommended she research internet claims before believing them and sending them on (politely, of course).

It has been particularly bad in the past few days. Apparently, someone identifying himself as "Joe Smith" (that's original) is looking for homes in Hillsboro, Oregon, and has signed me up to receive his new home listing notifications. Jason Merritt of RE/MAX equity group, inc.—who can be reached at (503) 250-3536 or homes@jasonmerritt.com (his website is www.jasonmerritt.com)—is very politely sending me the new listings every day. Thank you, Jason, but I'm not interested in moving to Oregon at this time. (Did you know you can get a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom 1655 sq. ft. home in Hillsboro for $289,000? Apparently, Hillsboro must be a fairly affluent area, since that's very comparable to our condo, which is currently valued around $330,000-$350,000.) Also, someone has decided I am interested in a car, and has had quotes for a Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, and Chevrolet Cobalt sent to me from Roseville, CA-area dealerships. So far, I've received about three e-mails from each dealership every day for the last four or five days. Persistent, those car dealers. Again, thanks but no thanks.

Of course, it's not isolated to my Gmail account. It increases the spam on my other e-mail account as well. After Mr. Roy buys his golf clubs, or whoever just signed up for "Strip4U.com" sends his account activation to me, the next thing he does is try to log into my e-mail account to retrieve his e-mail. Fortunately, none of them played a certain 3D shooter from the 90's, and as such don't know my password. Unfortunately, that means they use the "forgot your password?" link to try to retrieve it. And since my Gmail account is tied to my Yahoo account, a message shows up there saying something like "Click the link to reset your Gmail account password." Again, not a phishing attempt: it really does link to gmail.com. I estimate I get about one of these e-mails a week.

So far, I'd like to think I've been patient with these people. Even though I couldn't possibly understand how in a hundred million years you could possibly forget something so simple and basic as your e-mail address, somehow people do, and I'm the one to bear the price for it. This can't go on. I am hereby requesting to the world that you stop using my e-mail address to sign up for your accounts. I am also requesting that you stop sending me e-mails, thinking you know me.

And just for clarification, if you think you have the e-mail address joecool (at) gmail (dot) com, you don't.

If you think you have the e-mail address joe.cool (at) gmail (dot) com, you don't (since Gmail doesn't differentiate between dotted and un-dotted e-mail addresses).

If you think I'm your grandson/son/classmate/ex-boyfriend/coworker/dentist/drug dealer/stripper you met at that bar that one time/fence, I'm not.

If you send me, or in anyway cause your personal information to be sent to me, it will be posted publicly on the Internet for all the world to see. Credit card numbers are appreciated.

Expelled, thoughts concerning.

I saw Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed yesterday. Very good movie, and it comes with high recommendations.

A few thoughts I had while watching that I thought I might share:

1) At first I thought the part of the movie about the Darwinist nature of the Nazis was sort of out of place in a film about the scientific debate between Darwinism and Intelligent Design in America. Typically, I avoid making arguments that can be ignored by invoking Godwin's Law, regardless of how true they are. You don't want to give your opponent the opportunity to dismiss your arguments as inflammatory propaganda (and it seems like this was the case: most of the critics I read dismiss the film as propaganda because it shows the Darwinism->Nazism connection). But upon further reflection, I realized how important it is to make the point. One of the main arguments used by Richard Dawkins et al. is that religion is bad because its so often used as a reason to do bad things, whereas no one ever does anything bad in the name of atheism (a claim silly in itself: atheism was a core tenet of the communist belief of Stalin and Pol Pot, which drove them to commit many atrocities). Indeed, in the movie, a protester is shown holding a sign that says something akin to "Religion causes Terrorism. All Terrorists are Religious." If that were true, though, that religion is what makes people do bad things, the 20th century should have been one of the most peaceful. Instead what we find is that people still do bad things, even without a religious excuse, and find something else with which to justify their actions. In the case of the Nazis, it was Darwinian evolution: the idea that they were doing the race a favor by removing undesirable genes from the pool.

2) Thank God they made the connection between Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood and eugenics. I felt like standing up and cheering when they pointed that out. It's incredible how often people talk about Planned Parenthood as this wonderful organization designed to help a women "make important choices concerning her health and reproductive freedom", without giving a care or thought to its origins as an organization designed to breed undesirable races from existence (a goal that, apparently, they're still interested in).

3) It amazes me that Dr. Peter Atkins can, with a straight face, proclaim that a) God doesn't exist and b) Religion is evil. As William Provine pointed out in the movie, (and he said this in all truthfulness and sincerity, himself an atheist), once you've shown there is no God, you demonstrate that there is no absolute morality and no free will. So how on Earth Dr. Atkins can say, in the same breath, that there is no basis for absolute morality, then make an absolute moral claim, is just incredibly dishonest with himself.

If there is no God, there is no absolute morality. Saying something is bad just means "I don't like it and I'd prefer people didn't do it." The point of ethics is nothing more than to set up a rule system that will make me comfortable until I die. Something can't be evil in that situation. "Evil" implies it goes against an absolute, objective order. What Dr. Atkins should be saying is "I don't like religion and it lowers my chances to be comfortable when other people practice it" (which is in itself an incredibly naive thing to say; I doubt the sick and dying on the streets of Calcutta would have been more comfortable without Blessed Theresa or her religion, or that Franciszek Gajowniczek would have been more comfortable spending three weeks in a starvation cell in Block 13, without Saint Maximilian Kolbe and his religion). In order to proclaim religion as evil, he would need to redefine evil to mean something that goes against the common goals of man, then demonstrate how religion does such (or define the common goals of man as something contrary to religion).

But even then, without free will, how can something be evil? If there is no free will, and all our actions are just the product of the way we are constructed, that itself being a product of random chance, how can we do evil? Can a chemical process be evil? Is it evil that two hydrogen atoms fuses together to become helium? Is it evil that water evaporates into the sky, then comes down again as rain? Is it evil that synapses fire in our brains? Is it evil that those synapses, merely the product of random occurrence, cause a chemical change in our muscles, causing the muscle to contract? And what if that contraction causes an action which destroys the life of another person? At what point did this process go from amoral chemical process to evil action? And how could it, unless it is chosen by one with free will?

4) I have totally lost any ability to take Richard Dawkins seriously. When he's not going over the deep end proclaiming parents who instill their values in their children as "child abusers", he is normally quite rational, witty, and interesting. But towards the end of the movie, during his interview with Ben Stein, he completely loses any semblance of rationality. After a movie's worth of quotes from him about how anyone who subscribes to ID must be stupid, ignorant, or insane, and after writing a book entitled The God Delusion where he describes God as a fairy tale for grown-ups, dismissing anyone who believes in Him as lacking in mental capacity, he goes on to say, in the interview with Ben Stein, that it's an interesting idea that life on earth may have been created by aliens—themselves the byproduct of random chance—and that's why it appears so complex. So in his own strange little world, God as intelligent designer = ludicrous, but space aliens as intelligent designers = "intriguing idea". As Ben Stein said "Richard Dawkins may be willing to accept intelligent design, depending on who the designer is." It just goes to show how caught up he is in his own petty bias and thickheadedness. He will accept the most far fetched and unexplainable of theories except that which makes the most sense and is, most likely, the truth. And the sad part is he lacks the intellectual honesty to admit to himself how closed off he is to what he doesn't want to believe. I actually began laughing at this point in the movie. It reminds me of this XKCD stip (which I link here, noting the irony, because I'm pretty sure Randall Munroe is a hardcore atheist). He has raised confirmation bias to an art form, dismissing any evidence that he doesn't like, then proclaiming that there is no evidence of God. Of course, as a Christian, I have the evidence of a nun who was cured of Parkinson's; the sun dancing in the sky and completely drying the mud-soaked ground; a pile of crutches outside of a spring in southern France; a piece of bread that turned into a piece of a human heart which bore no surgical marks; liquid blood that remains liquid even after hundreds of years; several hundred bodies which, for some reason, aren't decomposing; four detailed, eye-witness accounts about some guy who came back from the dead; and (if intelligent design turns out to be right), the fact that God has signed His name on every cell of every living organism in the universe.

More True Tails from Customer Support.
WARNING: We are not responsible for the loss of IQ upon reading the following quotes.

Rep: "What browser are you using"
Customer: "Uh... Dell"
The rep should have asked what kind of computer he was using next. Maybe the customer would have told him his browser then.

Representative: "I need to verify your account, so I will be asking you to provide me with the answer to your security question: 'What is the name of your first pet?'."
Customer: "I don't have a pet yet. I am only level 9."
Explanation for non-WoW people, the hunter class can train pets, but does not learn to do this until level 10.

Representative: "In order to verify your account, I need to ask you for the answer to your security question: 'What's your mother's maiden name?'."
Customer: "I don't know. I was grown in a lab."

Customer: "i can't play wet my account i dont know why pls tell me pls ok"
Zomg. H₂O or TMI?

Poor translations:
"Respected Blizzard at me have cracked an account!"
"I really do not want the motion was, the lunatic caonima, train hard, your mother said that the forced closure of the letters."

Rep: "Can I have your phone number please?"
Customer: (pauses) "I don't have a phone number."
Rep: "You don't have a phone number?"
Customer: "No."
Rep: "Why not?!"
Customer: "I don't know."
Rep: "Well, what about the phone number you're calling from?"
Customer: "Oh, yeah."
Either: a) the customer is hung over, b) the customer is high, or c) the customer is just plain dumb. Then, of course, there's always option d) all of the above.

Customer: "i don't know what my 17yr old daughter told this guy she met in game, but he is calling the house, is there anyway you can block him from calling"
Yes, BLIZZARD CONTROLS YOUR PHONE!

Customer: "I made a trial account. Now it's telling me I have to download the game to play. Is there any way around that?"
Rep: ....
Download the game, mayhaps?

For my Virginian readers.

I thought you might appreciate this quote from John C. Wright.

"However, I would be hard pressed to come up with a sound Constitutional argument as to why the State governments cannot possess nukes. If the great Commonwealth of Virginia were a nuclear power, we could settle our dispute with the District of Columbia over extending the Metro line to Dulles Airport with considerably more alacrity."

The whole post is quite good.

(P.S. Anyone getting tired of me linking to him yet?)

Hey y'all. Finally got Guitar Hero for our Wii. Party at my place. Drop by anytime. Drinks are on me if you can five-star "One" on expert.

And just when you thought life couldn't get any better

I mean seriously I had Sam & Max Seasons 1 and 2, I have a years subscription to Rush 24/7, I got the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles volumes 1 and 2 and volume 3 pre-ordered. I've got everything I could ever want to occupy those 10 minutes a day I'm not working or playing with Hannah on the beach, and then God throws this at me as if to say "Hey, Mr. Attractive Man over there playing with your little Honey Baked Hannah on the beach, here's something to fill hours 25 and 26 of every day for the next 11 years this decade." It's almost as though God is promising to expand the number of hours in a day.

And you thought the homeschooling situation was bad in California.

Then stay away from Sweden.

I have a new hero.

Space Vulture.

"Determined to recapture the science fiction of their youth, not as it was but as it should have been, Gary K. Wolf, creator of Roger Rabbit, and his best friend, John J. Myers, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Newark, N.J., now transport us to the far reaches of the galaxy. There the mere mention of the pirate known as Space Vulture strikes fear into every heart, and a hardworking colonist's only hope is that the dauntless lawman Marshal Victor Corsaire will rocket to the rescue. Come along for the ride and discover all the adventure, suspense, wonder and fun that Gary and John first found in science fiction 50 years ago and now share with you in this rollicking tale of the spaceways."

That's right, the Archbishop of Newark has co-written a science fiction novel about space pirates. How ultimately cool is that? I want to move to his diocese now.

(Thanks to John C. Wright for the link.)

Perhaps some day, if I can buck up the courage (and if the Murloc ever gets around to finishing it and giving me her opinion), I might post a link to my thoughts about how the adventures of space pirates might go. I say "post a link to" because my thoughts—all 95,000 of them—are too long to post directly to the blog.

Intellectual Exercise of the Day/Week/Month.

This has to do with two girls who happen to be conjoined twins.

Firstly, read this.

Then watch this.

At first, it seems a little weird, then it seems sorta cool. Each girl controls one arm and one leg, so they've got to be highly coordinated. The Wikipedia article mentions they play the piano (not so odd, as I've played piano duets; I'd think it'd actually be easier, because playing only one hand it much, much easier than playing two), and can type on a computer at "normal" speed (at first seems amazing, but then when you think of it in terms of using a keyboard, like a piano, it's all a matter of coordination and timing with your partner).

But close to the end of the article (and video) is this: "They expect to date, get married and have children."

Ummmmmmm....

Setting aside the obvious issue of that being just downright weird for the guy, this raises some very interesting theological, biological, ethical, and legal issues.

Firstly, who is marrying whom? Both the laws of nature and of the state say a marriage is between one man and one woman, and that polygamy is a sin/against the law. So they couldn't both marry the same guy. So either only one of the girls gets married, and the other remains single, or they each marry a different guy. That raises even more questions. For instance, if each one has a different spouse, how do you not cheat on your spouse? Also, if they get pregnant, who is the mother? Who's name goes on the birth certificate? Inquiring minds want to know.

Theologically speaking, marriage is a union between one man and one woman, and as a sacrament places an indelible mark on the soul. There being two distinct and unique consciouses means there are two souls, so if a marriage did take place, it would be between only one of the twins and one man. Assuming only one gets married, what are the moral implications for the unmarried one engaging in intercourse with her sister's spouse? Assuming they each marry a different man, what are the moral implications for adultery, and for one twin cheating on one's own spouse with her sister's spouse? Or for the man to sleep with his sister-in-law? Would they have to "take turns"?

Obviously, both marrying one man is immoral, but I think a good moral theologian might be able to argue that each marrying a different man could be moral on the grounds of double effect (because a good moral theologian can justify anything). Concerning the issues of adultery, this is clearly a situation where one action has two effects, one good and one bad, so in order to be moral, these criteria have to be met:

-The nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral.
In this case, yes:
"'The acts in marriage by which the intimate and chaste union of the spouses takes place are noble and honorable; the truly human performance of these acts fosters the self-giving they signify and enriches the spouses in joy and gratitude.' Sexuality is a source of joy and pleasure: 'The Creator himself . . . established that in the [generative] function, spouses should experience pleasure and enjoyment of body and spirit. Therefore, the spouses do nothing evil in seeking this pleasure and enjoyment. They accept what the Creator has intended for them. At the same time, spouses should know how to keep themselves within the limits of just moderation.'" (CCC 2362)

-The intention is for the good effect and not the bad.
We can assume that the spouses intend to fulfill their marriage vows, and not be disloyal to each other.

-The good effect outweighs the bad effect in a situation sufficiently grave to merit the risk of yielding the bad effect.
"Proportionality". This is probably where the greatest debate could come. Does the conjugal union between spouses outweigh the unchaste union between two unmarried individuals? This is very difficult to say for certain, because you can't quantify morality. However, my understanding of this point is that it applies to things that are of two completely different moral levels, e.g. you can't unintentionally cause a global thermonuclear war in the process of saving a puppy from a burning building. The chaste union between spouses seems to me to be of the same moral plane as an unchaste union, so it is not outweighed by the bad effect. So I'd say this qualification is met, but debatably so.

-The good effect does not go through the bad effect.
The way this was taught to me in Christian Moral Principles was that the good effect could not be the result of the bad effect. They either had to occur independently of each other, or the bad effect was a result of the good effect. In this case, the chaste union is clearly not the product of the unchaste one, but they are both effects of the same action. So this condition seems to be met.

So, by that reasoning, it seems that it could be moral.

But still. That's just wrong.

Expelled.

This was sent to F.U. News by alert reader Mom B. It was interesting/important enough that I thought I should link it here.

Link.

Walking the Great Wall

So I just had this conversation while watching the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles where Indy goes to China and sees the Great Wall.

Ileana: That’s something I’d like to do.

Tom: What?

Ileana: See the Great Wall of China.

*Tom nods in agreement.*

Ileana: And walk it from end to end.

*awkward pause*

Tom: You do know, they just said it was like 3,000 miles long?

Ileana: Yeah.

*awkward pause*

Tom: It’s a thousand miles from [Clearwater] to Chicago.

Ileana: Yeah.

*awkward pause*

Tom: You can’t walk that.

Ileana: Why not?

*awkward pause*

Ileana: People used to-

Tom: We’re fat.

Ileana: We can do it and take breaks.

Tom: We’d need a supply train.

Ileana: I’m sure they have gift shops.

*awkward pause*

Tom: Honey, it’s China. I don’t think they even have “Great Wall of China” off-ramps with gas and lodging.

*several minutes later*

Ileana: I can see how that sounded silly now.

*Tom nods approval. The movie continues*

Can you guess who is going to go on to get a record contract?

I hear Motley Crue may need another drummer since their last, Randy Castillo, died.


Korean Drummer Rocks Out - Watch more free videos