Always Another Windmill

We now interrupt the festivities for a brief holiday message
from the Department of Homeland Security.

I’m sitting here drinking a bottle of Thums Up, a cola beverage from India, developed as an indigenous replacement after the country kicked out the Coca-Cola company back in the 70’s (ironically, it was later purchased by Coca Cola in the 90’s).

Somehow I never noticed just how much it tastes like Indian spices. I can’t quite place it–maybe hints of some curry? coriander? Sometimes I think it tastes a little like sweet paan in a bottle.

Maybe at this point it’s just association from having had it with a lot of dosas. Whatever it is, it beats the hell out of any of the transnational colas.

Fafblog, the entire universe’s only source of Fafblog, is back, and now better than ever, after suddenly vanishing almost 2 years ago. Where has it been? Searching for the fabled Ur-Pie? Locked away in Guantanmo, or a secret undisclosed location? Traveling at the speed of light to distant galaxies? We may never know.

“The triumphant cry of revolution will call out through the streets: Vive Fáfnir! Vive Gibléts!” says Giblets. “Radical Fafbloggists will demand a new era of Fafno-Gibletsian rule over the cosmos, and none will be able to stand in their way!”

Fafblog! back to save the universe.

These look like fun: Bloxes

How can I not like something that brings together the fun of origami and Lego? Zag would probably like them, too.

Too bad they cost ~$3 each ($59.95 for a pack of 20), which probably prices us out of the market. I figure you’d need at least 2 or 3 packs to be able to do much fun. The wall pictured above, for example, looks to contain ~100 of them, or almost $300 worth.

That’s well out of toy range (sigh). Zag and I will do just fine playing with reused shipping boxes.

Photo by Scott Robbin, used under a Creative commons by-nc license.

I, for one, welcome our new Supercompter Overlords:

Blue Brain scientists are confident that, at some point in the next few years, they will be able to start simulating an entire brain. ‘If we build this brain right, it will do everything,’

Fortunately, we’ve got a little time to prepare ourselves for the inevitable machine revolution:

In fact, the model is so successful that its biggest restrictions are now technological. . . . Markram estimates that in order to accurately simulate the trillion synapses in the human brain, you’d need to be able to process about 500 petabytes of data (peta being a million billion, or 10 to the fifteenth power). That’s about 200 times more information than is stored on all of Google’s servers. (Given current technology, a machine capable of such power would be the size of several football fields.) Energy consumption is another huge problem. . . . But if computing speeds continue to develop at their current exponential pace, and energy efficiency improves, Markram believes that he’ll be able to model a complete human brain on a single machine in ten years or less.

(Via kottke.org.)

Ok, I think I had seen before somewhere that you can buy Uranium Ore on Amazon (just $29.95!)

What I find extra alarming is that Amazon is recommending that I buy it together with a book titled “Forbidden Lego: Build the models your parents warned you against.”

Also, see reviews of one gallon of millk. But be warned, if you try drinking milk while reading these reviews, it may leak out of your nose.

(via Scatterplot)

Someone has finally found the answer to a question that has long bothered me: Why is Garfield so widely carried by newspapers when it so horrible and unfunny?

The answer may surprise you: Garfield is actually a great, funny, poignant, and surrealist comic–right up there with Zippy the Pinhead–if you remove Garfield from it.

Now, could someone please explain the Family Circus?

Brilliant: Stuff White People Like

(Via …My heart’s in Accra.)

I signed onto weather.gov to check on the forecast for our weekend trip to New York City, and at the top of the page, I see a link to this: Sunspot is Harbinger of New Solar Cycle. Apparently solar physicists believe that a recent sunspot is the first of a new 11 year cycle of increased solar storms, with negative implications for GPS systems, cell phone networks, radio communications, and power grids.

Now that’s a forecast.  You don’t see 11 year solar weather forecasts on any of the lesser, knockoff weather sites.

Flavored wallpaper. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.