Archive for October 2009

31
Oct 2009

Halloween Pumpkin Carving

Sat, 10/31/2009 - 21:52 — Sean Carney


29
Oct 2009

A Review of Dole Mandarin Orange Slices in Water

Thu, 10/29/2009 - 19:35 — Sean Carney

Recently a series of 'healthy' fruit cups came into our house to be packed in lunches. These healthy snacks feature cut fruit packed in water with no sugar added.

The idea of packing fruit in water without sugar sounds great, but the reality is a different matter. During the design and testing of this product those responsible for it clearly forgot an important lesson in high school science.

Diffusion: The transport of molecules from an area of higher concentration to an area of lower concentration by random molecular motion.

This is what sets these fruit cups apart from everything else. While the fruit and water start out normally, during the time spent on the shelf, the sugar molecules randomly make their way out of the fruit into the water. This also happens with the flavour of the fruit.

The net result is some lightly sweetened water with fruit flavours and some nearly tasteless fruit. The fruit manages to maintain its original texture, which is rather remarkable considering the harsh flavour transition it has just undertook.

What we have here is a line of products that will taste nothing like you expect them to, and have caused feelings of nausea and hunger on my walk home. As good as eating healthy is, trust me, this isn't worth it.

26
Oct 2009

60th Anniversary

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 22:07 — Sean Carney

A couple weeks ago Emily and I spent the weekend in Ontario in order to attend my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. I hope Emily and I live long enough to see our 60th anniversary when it comes.

The Carneys (left to right) John, Charles, Jean, Peter, Paul, and Kathy.

26
Oct 2009

Goodbye Geocities

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 19:58 — Sean Carney

Everyone else on the Internet is talking about the death of Geocities so I might as well chip in. I've been a fan of Geocities because it provided free, reputable web hosting. My first personal website was hosted there, and in high school, when our little hacking group wanted a web presence, we opened a Geocities site.

The real shame in losing Geocities is all the information which is going to disappear off of the internet. In all honesty, closing a website like Geocities is like burning the Library of Alexandria. There is a wealth of information which will be lost forever in that website. It is basically the best example of the online culture that existed from 1995 to around 2002, before the advent of blogs and social networking. A chapter of Internet history will disappear tonight.

Luckily all will not be lost. Many pages on Geocities have been archived on the Internet Archive, a project designed exactly for these situations. The only problems are you can't search within the archive, and the archive doesn't store images. The text will still be there though, and hopefully people's stories and this history will not be lost forever.

23
Oct 2009

More Great Humour from McSweeney's

Fri, 10/23/2009 - 16:52 — Sean Carney

Today's post on McSweeney's Internet Tendency is an excellent analysis of why supervillians laugh when no one else in their right mind would. Naturally the article doesn't settle anything, but it is highly humourous.

Now I wish I could play Evil Genius tonight instead of doing my homework. Oh well...

An Interview with Dr. Cruelty Regarding The Supervillian Sense of Humour
By John Moe

INTERVIEWER: It's just that I don't—and I think a lot of people are in this same situation—I don't see what's so funny about the kinds of things you normally laugh at.

DR. CRUELTY: I don't understand. I laugh at, uh, I laugh at things that are funny. Don't we all?

But the things you laugh at are things most people find horrifying.

I'm sorry, I don't want to be difficult, I still don't ....

Okay, like Captain Fabulous being stuck in a pit that was filling up with snakes.

Oh my god! Mbwa-ha-ha-ha! Yes! Yes! That was hilarious! Look, I hate to explain humor because that's the surest way to make it not funny anymore. But sure, fine, let's examine that particular situation.

I had my island fortress, right? And have you ever tried to get an island fortress going? I had to get seed money, dupe an army of henchmen into joining me, drug them into staying loyal, MAINTAIN those dosages, storm an island, kill all the natives, ensure an adequate supply chain to live there full time—way trickier than you might think.

And then—THEN!—I don't want to carve the lair into a skull because so overdone, you know? So I put out a request for proposals from designers and architects, interview a dozen or so, kill the ones I don't like to insure my secrecy, and then finally settle on this octopus design I have now. Then I have to oversee the construction—again, not easy because the henchmen are not skilled contractors. Kill the architect. Construct the death ray, find a way to hack into, like, eight different communications satellites, make sure at least one henchman is a competent videographer, and only make my threat. And here's something you might not know—

We were supposed to be talking about the supervillain sense of humor but you—AUGH!!!

Please don't interrupt. Honestly. Anyhow, so I have this empire, right? And then Captain Fabulous comes in, karate chops my henchmen, doesn't even kill them, I had to kill them later myself, and has me cornered right by the command chair. Then the whole Action Team shows up to help him and they have me surrounded but that's when I hit the switch and they fall into the pit! And then the snakes come out! ... You get it?!

No, I'm sorry, I still don't—

They're stuck in a pit! They can try to get out but they can't! They will surely die down there, poisoned by snakes! They're trapped!

Right, I understand that but—

It's hysterical, come on! They. Can't. Get. Out.

I'm still ... Okay. Well, how about the laugh itself? Why is it that "mbwa-ha-ha-ha-ha" thing?

Right. Yeah, I do recognize that's kind of different. I think that what happens is I get a rush from deep within, it's this sort of soul joy. Comes from a different place than most people's laughs. Because I'm better and more important, I suppose. And I hold my mouth closed for a little longer and THEN let it out and I find it's more intense. That's where the "mbwa" part comes from, that delay.

I must say, it seems almost joyless.

Well, you're stupid. I'm sorry. I'm sorry you're stupid. Because it's a joyfulness that you can't understand. And you'll notice I laugh. A LOT. When I'm telling someone the world will be mine, all mine. When I'm noticing that someone's weapons are useless against me. Or when I'm pointing out that someone had said I was mad, mad I tell you, well who's mad now? Mbwa-ha—ha-ha! Oh, see? That's funny! Wow, that totally put me in a good mood.

But given how often your plots have been foiled, like, every time, you must know your plans will never work, at least on some level. I mean, Captain Fabulous used the snakes as a lasso and arrested you. Doesn't that throw off the humor a little knowing about your eventual comeuppance?

Well, the psychosis helps, I'm not going to lie to you. It's one of those things where I know I could get counseling or medication to get this whole megalomania thing under control but, again, there are so many opportunities for joy. Whenever I have power over someone, it is just hilarious and I'm real hesitant to give that up.

Okay, uh, thanks for your time on this. I still don't understand the supervillain sense of humor, I'm afraid.

Look, here's a homework assignment for you. Find a kitten, steal it from someone or something. Kill the owner. Then dangle the kitten off the edge of a building. Heh-heh. See, now you have power over the kitt—MBWA-HA!—sorry sorry, just try it and see how funny it truly is

But that's just it. I would feel horrible. That's not funny. I think you're crazy and evil and a horrible person.

Sure. Sure. Well, look, I can't disagree with some of that. But I must say that this has all given me a real taste for comedy. Soooooo, I'm going to need you to get in the pit now.

21
Oct 2009

One Year Ago - Iceland Declares Bankruptcy

Wed, 10/21/2009 - 18:19 — Sean Carney

One year ago something a bit strange happened that few could predict. A stable, politically sound, northern European country was reduced to bankruptcy as a result of a financial crisis.

I find this very fascinating. How did a country like that manage to make America look good in the midst of a financial crisis? The other day I read an article (sorry about the source, but its still a good read) that explains a little more about what was behind Iceland's meltdown.

It is partially interesting since everything is so unfathomable. Can you even imagine a country that has debt equivalent to $330,000 per person? How do you manage to amass this much debt in less than ten years? These questions and more are covered in the article and provide a stern warning against deregulation and poet-bankers.

18
Oct 2009

Public Shaming

Sun, 10/18/2009 - 16:22 — Sean Carney

Since I am a curious person I run statistics software on this server so I know how many people visit this site. In addition this software also tells me if they came from a search engine and what they were searching for. Recently I checked the search phrases and was dismayed by what I found:

This offended me greatly and I felt the need to do some investigation.

I did some digging around and found the original entry in the server logs;

193.138.148.215 - - [11/Oct/2009:00:21:53 -0500] "GET /blog/2009/07/ HTTP/1.1" 200 35210 "http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=child+porn &FORM=BIFD" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506)"

I then used the IP address, 193.138.148.215, to find the users location and service provider;

Location: RU, Russian Federation
City: Rostov, 88 -
Organization: JSC Rostov-on-Don Cellular Telephone
ISP: JSC Rostov-on-Don Cellular Telephone
AS Number: AS43092 JSC Rostov-on-Don Cellular Telephone
Latitude: 57°18'83" North
Longitude: 39°41'53" East

Which is a bit of a dead end if you ask me. Never the less, I feel a public shaming is in order.

You, sir, are a bounder, cad, scoundrel, and menace to society. This is here so if anyone searches for your IP address, they will see how truly loathsome and odious you are.

15
Oct 2009

A Response to the Conservative Bible Project

Thu, 10/15/2009 - 18:13 — Sean Carney

After posting about the conservative bible project I feel that some form of response is in order. I don't want to respond myself since that usually ends in incoherent rambling, so here is an article Micheal Moore wrote for the Huffington Post entitled For Those of You on Your Way to Church This Morning...

Friends,

I'd like to have a word with those of you who call yourselves Christians (Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Bill Maherists, etc. can read along, too, as much of what I have to say, I'm sure, can be applied to your own spiritual/ethical values).

In my new film I speak for the first time in one of my movies about my own spiritual beliefs. I have always believed that one's religious leanings are deeply personal and should be kept private. After all, we've heard enough yammerin' in the past three decades about how one should "behave," and I have to say I'm pretty burned out on pieties and platitudes considering we are a violent nation that invades other countries and punishes our own for having the audacity to fall on hard times.

I'm also against any proselytizing; I certainly don't want you to join anything I belong to. Also, as a Catholic, I have much to say about the Church as an institution, but I'll leave that for another day (or movie).

Amidst all the Wall Street bad guys and corrupt members of Congress exposed in Capitalism: A Love Story, I pose a simple question in the movie: "Is capitalism a sin?" I go on to ask, "Would Jesus be a capitalist?" Would he belong to a hedge fund? Would he sell short? Would he approve of a system that has allowed the richest 1 percent to have more financial wealth than the 95 percent under them combined?

I have come to believe that there is no getting around the fact that capitalism is opposite everything that Jesus (and Moses and Mohammed and Buddha) taught. All the great religions are clear about one thing: It is evil to take the majority of the pie and leave what's left for everyone to fight over. Jesus said that the rich man would have a very hard time getting into heaven. He told us that we had to be our brother's and sister's keepers and that the riches that did exist were to be divided fairly. He said that if you failed to house the homeless and feed the hungry, you'd have a hard time finding the pin code to the pearly gates.

I guess that's bad news for us Americans. Here's how we define "Blessed Are the Poor": We now have the highest unemployment rate since 1983. There's a foreclosure filing once every 7.5 seconds. 14,000 people every day lose their health insurance.

At the same time, Wall Street bankers ("Blessed Are the Wealthy"?) are amassing more and more loot -- and they do their best to pay little or no income tax (last year Goldman Sachs' tax rate was a mere 1 percent!). Would Jesus approve of this? If not, why do we let such an evil system continue? It doesn't seem you can call yourself a Capitalist and a Christian -- because you cannot love your money and love your neighbor when you are denying your neighbor the ability to see a doctor just so you can have a better bottom line. That's called "immoral" -- and you are committing a sin when you benefit at the expense of others.

When you are in church this morning, please think about this. I am asking you to allow your "better angels" to come forward. And if you are among the millions of Americans who are struggling to make it from week to week, please know that I promise to do what I can to stop this evil -- and I hope you'll join me in not giving up until everyone has a seat at the table.

Thanks for listening. I'm off to Mass in a few hours. I'll be sure to ask the priest if he thinks J.C. deals in derivatives or credit default swaps. I mean, after all, he must've been good at math. How else did he divide up two loaves of bread and five pieces of fish equally amongst 5,000 people? Either he was the first socialist or his disciples were really bad at packing lunch. Or both.

Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

11
Oct 2009

Street View Destroys my Childhood Memories

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 13:52 — Sean Carney

Recently Google's street view was launched in Canada. Strangely Winnipeg was excluded even though they recently covered the city, but I expect that that will be fixed in the coming months.

I spent a few minutes poking around the places of my childhood on street view to see how things had changed. Overall, it was a rather sad and surreal experience.

- My childhood home is now unspeakably ugly.
- The area in town where I used to ride my bike through forests and corn fields is now cookie cutter houses.
- The field I launched model rockets from is also plagued by housing.
- My favorite toboggan hill at Kaufman's flats is fenced off and forgotten.
- Bridgeport is getting a new bridge but lost the hotel which built its infamous 'sin town' reputation.

I'm worried what things are going to look like for my children.

11
Oct 2009

QI: Bill Bailey on the Word 'Hullo'

Sun, 10/11/2009 - 09:50 — Sean Carney

[flashvideo file=http://www.seancarney.ca/seantv/qi-s02e05-hullo.flv image=http://www.seancarney.ca/gallery/display/22101-2/qi-s05e08-hullo.jpg /]

From QI season 2 episode 5