Well that's good. Fantastic. That gives us 20 minutes to save the world and I've got a post office. And it's shut!
Saturday, January 07
Brains, Minds and Consciousness
This is brilliant.
Its a series of videos taken at last year's Skeptics Society conference on, um, brains, minds and consciousness. It's so far covered evolutionary psychology (and why it is wrong), the neural correlates of consciousness (and why idealism is bunk), and where science comes from - and I'm less than a quarter of the way through. It's fascinating stuff and the speakers are wonderful.
It's a three gigabyte download for the "high quality" version (which suffers from some nasty compression artifacts), but that's about eight hours worth of video. Very highly recommended.
While you're waiting for the download, go here and vote for Yuri. This blog is running on Kei, but she's not in the poll.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
07:23 AM
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1
Already voted, thanks to SDB mentioning the poll. I was somewhat upset by the immense lack of Kei in the poll, though.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, January 07 2006 09:12 PM (KnWO3)
2
Kei will get her chance in the next poll.
Posted by: Don at Saturday, January 07 2006 09:38 PM (SfgwP)
3
*does happy duck dance*
Posted by: Wonderduck at Sunday, January 08 2006 01:22 AM (KnWO3)
4
Hey Pixy,
I need some help with my blog. I sent an email but I'm not sure it went to the right address. Email me when you have time. Thanks :-)
Posted by: Gir at Sunday, January 08 2006 11:28 PM (47IiO)
5
You can
vote for Kei now.
Posted by: Don at Thursday, January 19 2006 11:51 PM (9lP3k)
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Friday, January 06
Two Cows
Sydney: You have two cows. Although you booked them into a private preschool before they were born, you nonetheless find yourself on a waiting list. Meanwhile you keep them on an acreage in Dural, where you form a co-op to share the un-pasteurised milk until the entire group is suddenly wiped out by botulism.
Melbourne: You have two cows. Since no-one drinks dairy products any more, you enroll them at Moonash University. One graduates and goes on to become head of the ABC's Drama Division. The other becomes front page news when it is killed by a tram.
Adelaide: You have two cows. Their milk is undrinkable, so you apply for a government subsidy and buy expensive imported milk like everyone else.
Byron Bay: You have two cows. Duuuuude.
Darwin: You have two cows. Neither of them gives any milk between September and May. No-one cares.
Perth: You have two cows. The minute they turn sixteen they drop out of school and move to Sydney.
Cairns: You have two cows. You trade one for three baby crocodiles and a one-legged kangaroo, and open a wildlife park. Contrary to expectations, it is a huge success.
Canberra: You have two cows. Together you start a business selling cow-oriented adult movies over the internet. You become rich, and decide to go into politics, where you find that the work is the same but the pay is worse.
(Two cows page via Chapomatic)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:32 AM
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The fate of Brisbane's two cows can be found
here, under "Queensland Democracy".
Posted by: mitchell porter at Friday, January 06 2006 11:41 PM (mr6sB)
2
Existentialist Australia: You have two giraffes. You sell one and use the money for harmonica lessons.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, January 07 2006 01:44 AM (KnWO3)
3
Oops. I meant to type "surrealist", not "existentialist."
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, January 07 2006 01:45 AM (KnWO3)
4
Singularitarian: You have two cows. You breed
miniature cows and sell the more efficient bovines to smaller farmers and as pets.
Posted by: TallDave at Thursday, January 12 2006 11:18 AM (As+Mr)
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Thursday, January 05
Pixy's Party Hints #1
Instead of inflating your balloons with helium, why not try xenon? Imagine the surprise on the kids' faces when their balloons fall to the ground like rocks! And enjoy the side effects - not only does it make your voice
deeper, it actually
renders you unconscious!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:38 PM
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You have any idea how expensive Xenon is? It isn't at all easy to come by. According to
this site:
The rare gases Xenon (Xe), Krypton (Kr) and Neon (Ne) are sourced from the air we breathe. All three are obtained from air separation plants, such as those built and operated by Linde. Because of their very low natural concentration in air, it is only economically viable to recover these rare gases from very large air separation facilities (greater than 1,000 tons of oxygen per day). After nitrogen, oxygen and argon are pulled off of the distillation column, Ne is then recovered by splitting a crude neon stream from the plant and processing it in a separate purification system. For the Xe and Kr, a stream containing a mixture of crude xenon and krypton is finally extracted from the plant and processed in another separate purification and distillation system.
It
turns out that Xenon makes up .09 ppm of air. If the plant is producing a thousand metric tons of oxygen per day, it will produce less than 430 grams of xenon per day. Yikes!
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, January 06 2006 12:22 AM (CJBEv)
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Questionable content??? ME?!?!?!
Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, January 06 2006 01:52 AM (mAAjO)
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Steven - Yep. I was reading up on it and I found the price of $10 per litre. Took me a while to figure out that meant one litre at STP. It's considered too expensive even to use as an anaesthetic.
This isn't "Pixy's
Practical Party Hints". I'll save those for another day.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, January 06 2006 03:56 AM (LUBRF)
4
That's so random. I love it.
Anyway, who says parties have to be practical? How practical is having a truckload of artifical snow in Texas, in the summer, for a kid's fourth birthday party?
Posted by: owlish at Friday, January 06 2006 09:42 AM (GDqxH)
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Norton Internet Security Must Die
Die die die!
If you have a Netcomm NB3 ADSL modem, and you have Norton Internet Security installed, you will not be able to configure the modem. Neither the automatic configuration program, nor the manual configuration through your browser will work.
I actually had to get the customer to telnet into modem - fortunately, they were reasonably cluey - before Norton revealed its evil presence and I twigged as to what was going on.
This was, of course, after we sent them a replacement modem.
Die die die! Die Norton die!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
09:36 PM
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Was this because Norton was blocking ports ?
I can't imagine why it would block the config page. Obviously a security risk !
Another one of those Twilight Zone bizarro things, huh.
Posted by: Andrew at Friday, January 06 2006 01:31 AM (RWEVY)
2
Actually, it doesn't block the ports, it blocks part of the web pages the modem generates. Which makes it kind of hard to work out what the problem is.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, January 06 2006 03:57 AM (LUBRF)
3
Ugh. I just spent an afternoon rooting the thing out of my parents' new computer. It came pre-installed with a 90-day subscription - but I have free software that I use for all of its functions.
OK, so: Add/Remove Programs? It ain't there. Program Files? No Uninstall or Setup. Right, Google: sure enough, there is an uninstall program that you can download from Symantec. Download, run, reboot, problems, debug: the GUI is gone, but the services and processes are still there! Whisky Tango Foxtrot?
I ended up knee-deep in registry keys, but I finally nailed the nasty thing. The uninstall program is apparently designed to work that way - everyone I know who has tried it had the same issue. Simply evil.
Posted by: Dominic at Saturday, January 07 2006 07:49 AM (uyRJS)
4
I used to work with a guy who came into my office complaining that his MAC kept crashing all day. I went to his office and found that he had every little bit of Norton for the MAC installed. I removed all of it.
Two days later he came to me and said that all of his Norton Utilities were missing. I asked him if he had been crashing. He said he hadn't since I fixed it. I explained that Norton was the source of the problem.
Four days later he came back to complain that the constant crashes had returned. I checked his system and sure enough he had re-installed Norton.
I explained to him that Norton was causing the crashes but he said he liked Norton. So I told him to stop complaining.
I cherish the day he quit.
Posted by: Stephen Macklin at Sunday, January 15 2006 08:19 PM (DdRjH)
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Monday, January 02
Comment Of The Day
Over at
Ace's:
Dude, I think you're a dick and all, but in good faith I feel I should point out that you're arguing with Spurwing Plover, who is either a random text generator or 8 years old. We haven't figured out which yet, and he's never gonna answer.
Sortelli to a nameless left-wing interloper.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Welcome To 2006
Sydney enjoyed a classic New Year's Day today with temperatures hitting 45.2C (113.4F) in parts of Sydney (only 43C/109.4F where I live) ahead of what is euphemistically called a "late southerly change". This means winds of 60 km/h gusting up to 100 km/h, a temperature drop of 15C or more in two hours, lots of branches down and localised power outages. Fortunately, the power outages managed to miss me for once, taking out the northern edge of Hornsby instead.
We don't look likely to get any thunderstorms though. It was so dry today that even the 18° drop we got won't do the trick.
The other side of this is bushfires, of course. There was a nasty-looking glow to the north-east this evening, which may have been the Central Coast fires or may have been something closer.
Elsewhere in the state, temperatures reached as high as 47C (116.6F) at Ivanhoe. Snow? Don't talk to me about snow.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Geez, hope things cool off for a while and become a lot less windy.
Hope your new year is filled with fun, joy, devoid of tech snafus and NO SPAMMERS.
Posted by: michele at Monday, January 02 2006 12:10 PM (8jkEr)
Posted by: Jim at Tuesday, January 03 2006 11:33 AM (oqu5j)
3
Just saw coverage of the fires and it looked as frightening as the fires in Texas and Oklahoma.
I hope they end soon and there's no loss of life. please keep us posted as to their impact on your community.
Posted by: Michele at Tuesday, January 03 2006 07:27 PM (beN4P)
4
Was in Sydney for the New Year and we went on a harbor cruise on the 1st. Absolutely brutal heat. Beautiful city, though! We enjoyed our four days there, and the rest of the stay was nice and cool.
Posted by: Ian at Friday, January 13 2006 07:49 AM (OxEhB)
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