Tuesday, July 24. 2007
I recently read an article entitled, " Beijing Guarantees Great '08 Olympic Weather." How are they going to do that? By manipulating the weather. So typical of evil communists, always bent on trying to control the world's weather. It's amazing, they're using their military to destroy rain clouds.
Should it unexpectedly start raining at anytime during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, don't blame the weathercaster -- blame the military.
In an effort to ensure clear skies during Asia's rainy season, Chinese meteorologists are planning to fire rockets into the sky to disperse rain clouds. Once the rockets are launched into the upper atmosphere, silver iodide and dry ice contained inside will detonate, and the resulting explosion could conceivably destroy rain clouds below.
William Brune, head of Penn State University's meteorology department, said the process is technically feasible, but he remains skeptical about its effectiveness.
"What this process is trying to do is distribute the water among the cloud to make it hard for the water molecules to come together to make rain drops," he said. "It is very hard to prove you've actually done anything at all, and there isn't any indisputable evidence that this actually works."
Continue reading "China Promises No Rain For Olympics"
Saturday, July 21. 2007
I found some interesting commentary over at TheStreet.com where stock analyst Jim Cramer talks about Facebook, and how much it may be worth. The line that caught my attention was, "Google should buy Facebook for $8 billion." That is an absolutely stunning amount of money. Could it happen? Maybe.
Lets look at buyouts in the past. Back in 2006, Newscorp bought out Myspace for $580 million. Personally, I really dislike Myspace because user pages are so ugly, and they have random music that plays which really annoys me. Another mega buyout was in 2006, when Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. I think the YouTube buyout was a pretty good strategy because it's a very entertaining website, and it's a world changer because it's a new type of medium that traditional media has to compete against.
Facebook has had other potential buyers. Yahoo offered to buy Facebook for $1 billion, but the Facebook CEO rejected the offer saying that it was too low. Later, Yahoo raised the bid to $1.6 billion, but talks had broken down already.
Continue reading "How Much Is Facebook Worth?"
Wednesday, July 18. 2007
Back in my youth when I had a ton of time to play video games, I used to play Starcraft a lot. It was a sci-fi real-time strategy game developed by Blizzard Entertainment (makers of World of Warcraft). The game featured three distinct races to play; it had a solid single player mode, and an awesome multiplayer mode. The game was very compelling because all of the races were well-balanced, so it took a lot of strategy to win. Ever since the year 2000, gamers have been waiting for a sequel. To this day, it remains a very popular online multiplayer game, especially in South Korea. On May 19, 2007, Blizzard unveiled Starcraft 2 at a conference in South Korea. Behold the cinematic trailer and an in-game demo!
Higher quality video clips are available.
What I'm most amazed about is that the game has been in development since 2003, and they've been able to keep it a secret all this time. In either case, if you are married and your significant other loves video games, I suggest you destroy your computer now, or you won't see your spouse for weeks. Parents beware, it will enslave your already socially awkward teenage gamer.
Coming Soon 2008. Looks like I won't be needing any sunscreen since I won't be seeing the sun much when it comes out  .
Saturday, July 7. 2007
I just finished reading this fascinating article from Psychology Today entitled, " Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature." The ten truths that they cover are as follows:
- Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
- Humans are naturally polygamous
- Most women benefit from polygyny, while most men benefit from monogamy
- Most suicide bombers are Muslim
- Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
- Beautiful people have more daughters
- What Bill Gates and Paul McCartney have in common with criminals
- The midlife crisis is a myth—sort of
- It's natural for politicians to risk everything for an affair (but only if they're male)
- Men sexually harass women because they are not sexist
From the article:
Most suicide bombers are Muslim
Suicide missions are not always religiously motivated, but according to Oxford University sociologist Diego Gambetta, editor of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, when religion is involved, the attackers are always Muslim. Why? The surprising answer is that Muslim suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam or the Quran (except for two lines). It has a lot to do with sex, or, in this case, the absence of sex.
What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.
So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.
However, polygyny itself is not a sufficient cause of suicide bombing. Societies in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean are much more polygynous than the Muslim nations in the Middle East and North Africa. And they do have very high levels of violence. Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a long history of continuous civil wars—but not suicide bombings.
The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser.
It is the combination of polygyny and the promise of a large harem of virgins in heaven that motivates many young Muslim men to commit suicide bombings. Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.
Continue reading "Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature"
Wednesday, July 4. 2007
I've been pondering what life is like at Yahoo, so I've been searching the internet for information. I did find a good article from Time Magazine entitled, " Inside Yahoo."
From the article:
Yahoo! and Google are fierce rivals online but once in a while, the two companies tangle offline too. In November, about 50 tennis players from the two companies faced off at the "Battle over the Net," the companies' first annual face-off at the Stanford Tennis Courts. Google's team included some top-notch players, but Yahoo! squeaked out a victory, 163-157. "I worried it would be like David and Goliath," says Meg Garlinghouse, director of Yahoo! for Good. "But we actually won." Yahoo! also has basketball and softball teams. And on weeknights, poker is a favored pastime for Yahoo! engineers, who also play an array of board games after work in the company's "URL's" cafeteria.
Board game nights? I think I'm going to feel quite at home then
The other thing that caught my eye was the Brickhouse which is a special office in San Francisco where Yahoos go to create new products that they have dreamed up. It's supposed to have an internet start-up feel to the work environment without the scary parts of a start-up (ie going out of business because the idea didn't work out).
Continue reading "Wondering What It's Like At Yahoo"
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