Disks in Rotation:
DVD • Ninja Scroll
CD-ROM • D2X
CD Carousel
• System of a Down - Toxicity
• Exodus - Force of Habit
• Jane's Addiction - Ritual de lo Habitual
• Soil - Scars
• Tool - Undertow

Books Lying Open
• Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Brothers Grim

Soul-Devouring Worry
• Some days, it just comes so easily.  Other days are inevitable.

When I Grow Up:
• The confusion of my younger days will repeat itself, but with less loud music.

Curse of the Day:
• May your hopes and dreams prove inconsequential.

Daily Blog
I commented on "scramjets" yesterday, based on a news item about them on Yahoo.  I had not heard of them before, but Jimmy mailed in, and he had.

The idea of a scramjet engine is to get the plane goin real fast, and then scoop the air passing by, extract oxygen from it, then burn it with hydrogen. It allows you to take advantage of the speed of the aircraft as well as saving on fuel, since you're gathering a large chunk of it as you go along. So, the idea of the experiment was to get the jet going fast enough to test the scramjet technology, which is theoretically applicable to actual horizontal travel.

It's a cool concept, and if you want to see more you can always do a quick Google hunt. There are like 8000 matches.  I'm wondering about the name; could it really be "scram" as in "get out of here quickly", the '50s slang?  I'm thinking it must stand for something.  I'm sure I could find out on Google, but I'm not really in the mood right now.

My other thought about it is the construction of the plane.  I wasn't aware that lack of jet power was the thing holding plane speed back; I thought planes would fall apart at that high of a speed, or would need to be made enormously long and thin for aerodynamics, which would really cut into the passenger space. Modern supersonic fighter jets and scramjet prototypes are between flying wings and needles in shape, while passenger planes are big ungainly things not much different in shape from something you'd make out of popsicle sticks in a 3rd grade art project.  Obviously you could just stick scramjets on a 747 and go 3000 MPH; the wings would rip off.  They'll need totally new plane designs, and probably airports as well, longer runways to land the much higher speed planes?  And none of that will happen until scramjets are perfected and cheap enough for it to be commercially viable.  Look for them around the time commercial flights to Mars are boarding. 

Another comment from Jimmy's mail was about the "natural" shape keyboards.  Since that was the last thing I talked about in my endless free-association essay yesterday, I was just happy to see that someone actually got the the end of it.

As for keyboards, I HATE the "ergonomic" designs. First off, it smacks too much of "environmental" and thus tree-huggin' hippie PC liberals. Second, I never actually bothered to learn to type "correctly". I use a variation of the hunt and peck method, except after years of using a computer I've gotten very, very good at it. I can probably type 30-40 words a minute, which is fine for me, and I don't have to look at the keyboard despite not using the "home-row" keys. Slap me on one of those ergonomic pieces of shit and I look like my arthritic grandpa typing. So, it's people like me that keep those ergonomics pricey. And I hate those fucking internet buttons too.

Thank you, Eric Cartman!  I'm not sure of the connection between keyboards made to fit your hands and hippies, but it's a thought.

I didn't want to like the natural keyboards; when I first saw them I was moved to ridicule and dismissal.  However when I tried them out in the store I could see how well they were angled for actual human hands (normal keyboards force you to press your elbows into your ribs, twist your shoulders, or else type sort of diagonal to the keys) and as I was having constant back and wrist problems at the time from excessive computer time, I thought I'd try one out.

It was immediately more comfortable, though for a few days I sucked at typing.  I touch type, learned in a class in 9th grade, and it's one thing I'm very grateful to myself for taking; by far the most useful skill that was imparted to me in high school.  Initially a natural style keyboard is weird, but it doesn't take long to adjust, and once you are it's much faster and more accurate.  I don't think it would be of much benefit for hunt and peckers though, and in fact would be worse, even if you got used to the new key locations, since the keys are father apart and angled somewhat.  I always rest my palms on the bottom extension thing and don't need to move them side to side at all, since I can easily reach all the keys.  Most straight keyboards don't have that, which I think is a bad thing for your wrists, and if you're hunt and pecking you can't rest them anyway, or you can't reach the keys.

Typing is all psychological anyway; hunt and peck typists know where every key is, and could easily touch type and double or triple their speed.  It's just a matter of knowing the keys with every finger.  I've seen the example before, of muscle memory, or subconscious knowledge, or whatever you want to call it.  Any typist can hit every letter and number easily while typing; but if you are given a blank template of a typewriter, can you say what a given key is?  Probably not so easily, and to do so you'd have to pretend you were typing a word with that letter, and see how you'd reach for it/with which finger.

I remember spending months after I learned to type where I had to look down at the keys.  I couldn't see through my hands, I was typing 8 or 10 hours a day (writing fiction) at probably 80 WPM top speed, so obviously my fingers knew the letters; but I just had to look. If I looked around the room or at the monitor, I'd lose my place and start wondering where U or J or V was.  You test that in other aspects of life also.  If you are climbing a flight of stairs, especially if carrying something so you can't see down, you don't think about how high the steps are, you just walk and it's easy.  If you actually stop to think you'll usually stumble.  I notice that all the time at work, where I'm going up and down thousands of steps a day, usually while looking up or to the sides, never at my feet. I just need to take two or three steps to set the height of them in my mind, and then I can continue at that pace indefinitely.

Anyway, Jimmy's got his opinion, and if he's happy being a hunt and pecker, okie.  I would urge anyone who is doing that to take some time to learn to touch type; a really fast hunt and peck is 30 or 40 WPM; a really fast touch typist is 120 WPM, and you can easily do 80 with few errors even if you aren't super fast.  The whole point in typing is to be fast.  Fast enough to keep up with your thoughts, or at least close to that... Well actually I guess the point in typing is to get the info into a usable form, that can be emailed or transferred to a webpage or business document.  But it's nice to be fast while doing it.

On to some news.

• Article entitled, "Thongs on the rise".  Unwitting of the pun, I think.  Good news anyway, though that of course depends on the ass in the suit.

• An Australian company has put a fat guy on sick leave, now unpaid, until he loses enough weight to return to work.  He claims he could perform all his job duties fine, despite weighing 177 kilos (which is a few double bacon cheese burgers away from 400 lbs).  I'll steal a joke, paraphrasing a comment on Fark about this one, "Suspended him with what?  A crane?"

Imagine if they implemented that sort of policy in the US?  It would close most comic book shoppes, cyber cafes, and WalMarts in a week.  But I suppose there'd be a downside too.

• I was talking to a friend yesterday who is for some reason selling pot.  Reselling it, anyway, just mailing it to people. He doesn't even smoke it himself.  I said he should be sure to point that out to the judge at his narcotics trafficking trial.  He hates junkies too, which is the weirdest part. I suggested that he sprinkle in some drain cleaner, or perhaps PCP.

Ironically, I saw this article today.  Are you wondering what exactly smoking PCP does do to you?

In Compton Superior Court Wednesday, Los Angeles Detective Raymond Jankowski said he found the body of the Tynisha Ysais, 21, Singleton's alleged victim, in her apartment with her chest torn open.  Jankowski also reported that he found a three-inch blade broken off in the victim's shoulder blade and her lungs appeared to be chewed and torn.

"Her chest was open, exposing internal organs," Jankowski told the Los Angeles Times.

A friend of Ysais, Alisa Allen, reported that she saw Singleton naked in the street, covered in blood, staring at the sky. After contacting the police, who arrested Singleton, Allen then discovered Ysais lying dead in her apartment.

According to reports, Ysais' boyfriend admitted that he and Singleton were smoking PCP the night before the murder. 

Another PCP example, of the urban legend type.

• Here's a weird story with international intrigue.  Chinese scientist, fired from Cornell, heading back to China, caught with mysterious petri dishes in his luggage. His wife and four year old daughter had made it through baggage check, and when the airport security found them, the mom tried to duck into the bathroom.  Caught before they could, a search found more vials with unknown substances in the kid's backpack, one of which was leaking.

The story says no more than this, but it will be interesting to see what they were trying to smuggle, eh?

• There were a bunch of these around before the World Cup, but this is the first article about Koreans and their love of dog meat I've seen since.  Sweet and sour Collie to go, please.

• Story of a father pouring a full bottle of vodka into his sick son's IV, in an obvious attempted murder.  The story is from Kentucky, and the white trash mug shot caps things off nicely.  The actual story is sad, with the child having some rare disease, insurance/medicare not paying for the drugs he needs for the pain, the parents unable to afford them (though they can afford plenty of liquor, it seems) and the kid unable to sleep and screaming in pain.

• Wild stage antics in a bar, probably not all that uncommon.  The problem was in this case someone video taped it, and turned the tape over to the cops.  

"Criminal charges will be coming; I can promise you that," Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter said. "People are going to be arrested."

They mention in the article that:

A Terrebonne Sheriff’s Office jailer was also suspended with pay Wednesday afternoon because of his involvement.

So figure the off duty cop was working security at the club, and of course had no problem with events at the time.  So is the chief angry he wasn't invited, or what?

• In other wild party news:

It was a sex scene that had to be seen to be believed, and for three hours undercover Atlanta cops watched. Then they busted the Club Zinc at 582 Piedmont Avenue and put 115 people in jail Saturday night for paying $25 each to see one woman have sex with maybe 10 men.

I expected to see a line at the end about the three off duty officers working club security who were given citations and put on paid leave, but not this time.  For once.

I always wonder just how that's a punishment.  You hear about it all the time with cops and teachers and other government workers when they get into trouble; they're suspended with pay while it's investigated.  So they pay you not to come to work?  Wow, harsh.  Does that come out of your vacation time or is it just a free bonus vacation?  I need a job like that.

heck out this online IQ test I saw linked to from Fark.  I took it since it was quick, 13 minutes is their recommended max time, and it took me just under 10.  I thought 3 or 4 of the questions were iffy in their presentation, and that most of them were absurdly easy.  I mean there are like 10 that are basically "count these letters or numbers", in some cases backwards.  Who could get that wrong?  But then I'm a genius, at least according to that test.

The email they send you with your score doesn't list your right/wrong answers, so there's no debating that aspect of it.  The time does matter, I got 148 on my 10 minutes, and out of curiosity after I got my score, I hit back to it and entered my same answers at 13 minutes and 3 minutes.  I got 150 in 3 and 146 in 13, so the time is weighted, but like a feather, compared to your actual answers.

The iffy questions, in my opinion, are:

9 -- This one is really unclear.

If John looks into a mirror and touches his left ear, the image of John touches its right ear.  True or False?

Are they asking if you see your reflection reversed?  If you have a watch on your right wrist, and you raise it, the reflection raises the hand with a watch on it also, of course.  I don't understand the question, basically.

18 -- It requires you to know how many ounces are in a pound.  That's got zero to do with intelligence, and most of the world uses metric measures.  The terms should be defined in the question, or given in advance of the test.

22 -- There are two sets of numbers that add up to 17.  The question doesn't make clear if that's right or wrong.  I said "true", but if they meant "two and only two of this set of numbers" then I'd be wrong.

24 -- Word opposites are very arguable.

29 -- Well, you can make |-| \/ T out of seven toothpicks.  Does that count?  Do the letters have to be on the same plane?  Can you use one toothpick for the side of two letters, like |-|_| T?  It's unclear, anyway.

36 -- Does one "hello" suffice for two people?  I mean if person A says hello to person B, does that count for both?  Or does person B have to say hello to person A also?  (It's irrelevant anyway, since with 6 people each would say hello to five others, so that's only 30 total.)

37 and 38 -- The rules don't say if you are allowed to use scratch paper to help you visualize things.  Generally in IQ type tests I've seen you can't do that, but they have graphics for you to look at, since 3d spatiality is one major aspect of IQ; the ability to turn something around mentally and see what it would look like backwards.

I'd think (for most people) both of these would be very easy with scratch paper, and very hard with just their mind.  I did them in my head, but then I'm good at spatial relations things.  When I was a kid I could do all of those 3d type puzzles, making a cube from 6 odd shaped geometric figures, making a letter or square from the 7 pieces of a cube, etc, and it used to impress the teachers.  I didn't do them instantly, like some prodigy, but I could move them around a bit and see what almost worked and trial and error it pretty quickly.

And yes, the whole thing is an evil dirty scam to get you on their mailing list.  Being as I currently get about 70 emails a day at the D2 site, and for the last few months probably 75% of them are klez or various other viruses, I don't think one or two more a week from this IQ testing service will be a big deal.

I suspect it's pretty much a load of crap, overall.  The test is way too superficial and one-dimensional to be a real IQ test, it's 90% reading comprehension and ability to follow simple instruction, and seemed very easy.  Go check out the Mensa workout test if you want to see a real IQ style test.  Pretty much any random question from that is far more mental work than the hardest one from this iqtest.com site.

My take is that the IQTest.com people want you to score well, so you'll feel good about yourself and be interested in their other products.  Looking back over it to pick out the iffy examples I listed above, I noted 2 or 3 really dumb ones I missed just due to going fast, which would destroy me on a real IQ test.

I don't have any score to compare my genius 148 with, unfortunately, so I can't check on their claim that their quickie test is very accurate, when compared to other tests.  The last time I had my IQ tested I was in 5th grade.  IIRC I got 130, but IQ from age 10 doesn't mean a whole lot as an adult.  IQ is a lot like driving ability; everyone seems to think they are above average, often regardless of all evidence to the contrary.

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