Steve Fischer's Random Blog

Category: Technology

  • Crop Circle are real – Fox News says so

    OK, that’s a misleading headline. Crop circles are definitely real, there are tons of examples. And FoxNews.com reports on one, generally promoting the myth that these things were created by aliens.

    I recall reading about crop circles when I was a kid. At first it sounds so eerie. Geometric shapes made from flattened crops where the shape is only revealed from the sky. To a ten year old, clearly that could only be made by aliens. OK, maybe I wasn’t that smart when I was ten.

    Hmm. Making a circle from flattened corn. That would require the amazing technology of a rope and something heavy enough to flatten corn. What about more complex shapes? Well, think about it. What would you do if you needed to create something more complex? A few sheets of graph paper to diagram it, some different lengths of rope, c’mon how hard is this really?

    What I as a ten year old never considered was that someone might do this just as a prank.

    One good quote in a discussion of crop circles is this:

    Before you start stockpiling shotgun shells and tin-foil helmets, you should know that the vast majority of crop circles appear in English wheat fields. This is significant because, apparently, British people have a lot of free time. Doug Bower and David Chorley admitted in 1991 that they had made over 250 crop circles by hand over the course of a number of years.

    Of course, those who truly believe that aliens made all the crop circles are convince that the confessions were coerced. And you see some of the more complex crop circles and wonder. But then you read about this:

    For Hello Kitty’s 30th anniversary, Sanrio (the company that owns the “cute” little kittens’ likeness) commissioned an enormous crop circle shaped like the cat’s head

    image

    OK, if you can do Hello Kitty with flattened corn, you can probably do anything. It turns out that crop circling is somewhat of a competitive thing. Not unlike hacking. People try to outdo one another. It is apparently most popular in England. There are lots of comments about the Brits having too much free time on their hands:

    Apparently, England has a surplus of rope and young men with too great a knowledge of geometry, too little with which to keep themselves occupied, and a powerful lust for laying intricate plans.

    I’m surprised there was no comment about the large number of pubs…

    And now it’s mainstream. This one was created to promote a Danish Newspaper (apparently that’s Danish for “Big words”). I’m sure someone still thinks it was created by aliens.

    image

    There is a web site devoted to the creation of crop circles. I love the page that highlights top crop circles of the 2007 season. I wasn’t aware there was a season. I have to admit they are very cool designs. But what do the top crop circlers do during the off-season? Try out new designs in Australia?

    My other favorite part of this site is the beginner’s advice:

    After ensuring that you haven’t been followed from the pub, drive to the field and unload the roller and stalk-stomper (the measuring tape can be carried in a pocket or rucksack).

    Really, I’m just amused by the opening phrase, “After ensuring that you haven’t been followed from the pub…”. That really sums it up, doesn’t it?

    I find the whole thing amusing, but can we get over the whole aliens thing? I’m not saying that it’s impossible that aliens have ever come to this planet. I’m just saying they’d probably have better things to do than flatten corn…

  • McCain needs to figure out this RSS thing

    OK, lots of people haven’t figured out RSS. I don’t need a president to understand RSS (though I’d prefer it), but at least the campaign ought to get it.

    I was checking out McCain’s and Obama’s web sites. Both are similar. Ask for money, get people to join the team, promote the big themes, have a blog (that someone else writes). The color scheme is exclusively red, white and blue. They are both, interestingly enough, trying to recruit Hillary supporters right on the home page.

    But all I was looking for was an RSS feed to see what kind of stuff they push out. I thought McCain was actually more advanced because he lists five different RSS feeds, by category. Iraq, Health, Economy, Spending and Campaign. Obama just has one feed.

    But the Obama campaign appears to actually use RSS. I subscribed to the McCain Campaign feed and Obama’s feed. A week later I have one thing from McCain and about 80 from Obama.

    Most folks know my politics. This post wasn’t about politics. I just want leaders to get technology.

    There’s another RSS feed from the “McCain Report” page (though not listed on the RSS feed page). That actually seems more like the real blog. I’ll try that and see if it’s any better. I’ll report back in a week…

  • Webby Awards

    You have to love an awards program that limits winners to acceptance speeches of only five words. Stephen Colbert’s speech was true to form:

    Me, me, me, me, me.

    For Flock The Social Web Browser (social networking award):

    No shit! We beat Facebook?

    For Best Copy/Writing, the winner was HowStuffWorks who said:

    This award smells like butt

    Best Visual Design – Aesthetic, the winner was Orange Unlimited who said:

    Mine is longer than yours

    Retail, the winner was IKEA mattress:

    We enjoy sleeping with you

    You can check them all out here.

  • Evolution in a lab

    If you don’t believe in evolution, don’t read the rest of this blog.

    Otherwise, check out this article. It discusses how an experiment was conducted on the evolution of E. coli bacteria in a tightly controlled lab environment. It helps having a species that reproduces very rapidly, but the experiment has been going on for 20 years (over 30,000 generations for E. coli). Ultimately some of the isolated bacteria evolved into something that can eat a chemical that normal E. coli cannot giving them a huge evolutional advantage.

    Fascinating stuff…

  • Quantum Entanglement

    If you are still reading after seeing the title you hopefully have some interest in quantum physics. I’ve recently discovered the Bad Astronomy blog. I’m not recommending it yet because I’ve only checked it out for a couple of days, but today’s post is good.

    It first explains quantum entanglement in a manner that anyone can understand (or at least in a manner that will make anyone think that quantum physics is strange, which it is). And then it gives a brief look at a way that quantum entanglement could be used to create effectively unbreakable encryption (maybe).

    Plus, for some random reason it has a picture of Dick York from Bewitched…

  • FontStruct

    OK, I just found out about this site. Those that know me, know that I notice fonts. If you mismatch fonts on a screen I will point it out in a millisecond. If you use Comic Sans MS in a business document, I will mock you. In short, I am a font snob.

    So I can’t decide if this site is a good thing or potentially horrible (more and more Comic Sans type fonts, the horror!).

    I’m amused by Ransom Note. What a great description:

    Now kidnappers can save time and type their notes rather than cut letters from newspapers!

    And there’s a font called Old School that seems to be simply a Nintendo Mario Brothers version of Dingbats.

    I guess my real question is, who has so much free time on their hands that they are actually creating these things?…

  • Star Wars type stuff

    Courtesy of Chris Welch, here’s a link to something cool. But first, here’s an image from Star Wars:

    StarWars

    Now check out the real thing.

  • Non-Wikipedia Pedias

    This Wired article cracked me up just for the Dickipedia part. And for the record, it’s www.dickipedia.org, not .com. If you do www.dickipedia.com it redirects you to Chickipedia, which is fine but perhaps something you don’t want to check out at work…

    I also like Dickipedia’s comment policy:

    Please do not be a dick

  • Google Search vs. Microsoft Windows

    Here’s an interesting article about the two most wildly profitable monopolies around…

  • Predictive Markets

    I’m somewhat fascinated by predictive markets. As a bit of a political junkie, I’ve followed InTrade during the primaries.

    If you don’t know what a predictive market is, imagine that instead of trading a stock, you are trading on whether or not something will happen. If the thing actually does happen, then your share ends up being worth $100 and if it doesn’t happen your share ends up being worth $0. So the current stock price represents what people think the likelihood percentage of that event happening. For example, on InTrade you could trade on the likelihood of Elliot Spitzer being indicted on felony charges before June 30th. It is currently trading at 17.5, so the market doesn’t think it’s very likely (17.5% likely). However the contract on Hillary Clinton winning the West Virginia primary is trading at 97.6 so the market considers that a virtual certainty.

    It’s interesting because on the actual day of a primary, often the networks really know who is going to win based on exit polls. But they won’t announce anything until the polls close. Clearly the people who actually trade on InTrade have some level of inside information, because you can watch the movement in real time and get a sense for who will win. It’s day trading for political junkies.

    Predictive markets have been shown to generally be more accurate than polls. They aren’t perfect, but they are currently a very hot topic these days.

    What’s really fascinating is when a company uses predictive markets to forecast internal business objectives. This is done at a small percentage of companies, but with real success. Google and Best Buy have used predictive markets extensively. The logic is that the folks “on the ground” really working probably have better information than one or two “experts”.

    This is something I would love to do some experimenting with…