Surreal

The Major League Baseball game in Baltimore today was surreal.

It feels almost like a scene out of an apocalyptic movie (except that the stadium was in excellent condition).

Update: Here are some images from the game.

Caltech Sanctioned for Athletic Violation!

Yes, really. Caltech has been sanctioned by the NCAA for athletic violations.

This is like the start of a comic routine.

(Tip of the cap to Michael Woods and Yan Zhang.)

Update: This article from The Washington Post starts off the article rather snarkily, and rightfully so. We are so going to be the butt of jokes for this. (Thanks to Rachel Gray for posting this article.)

Update (7/15/12): Deb Eason has posted a link to an LA Times opinion piece by Bill Plaschke. In fact, this whole slew of stories has actually been really good for Caltech's publicity. Caltech turned itself in, which was absolutely the right thing to do. In so doing, Caltech is showing other schools how things should be done.

Can I at least get to choose my accent?

Apparently, brain damage can make one sound foreign. That's just bizarre.

Don't sing "My Way" at Karaoke Bars in the Philippines

It might not be as dangerous as playing "Tarzan Boy" at Caltech, or as dangerous as playing "The Ride" at Caltech, or even as dangerous as playing "Hotel California" in the Caltech Coffeehouse (well, at least with certain people behind the counter), but apparently singing Frank Sinatra's "My Way" can lead to life-threatening situations at karaoke bars in the Philippines.

(This link is courtesy of the new mini-AIR mailing.)

Fungal Necromancy

OK, this is just weird. Apparently, there's a type of fungus that infects ants so that they act like 'zombies' and die in convenient spots. Didn't I read about such strategies in the D & D Monster Manual? Bizarre.

(Tip of the cap to Kevin Macon, who will reasonably shortly be my coauthor on a network science paper. I am going to have so much fun when I give certain seminars...)

Life Imitates Weird Science (and Buffy)

Every so often there's a news story that reminds us how life sometimes imitates the things we see in movies and television.

Well, this time around life seems to be imitating Weird Science (and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if you prefer), as a Japanese inventor has built his own girlfriend.

Money quote: She has all senses except for smell.

Money quote #2: Aiko actually means "love child" in Japanese but the software engineer denies he has created the robot for sex.


As some of you will no doubt recall, this didn't exactly work out well for the character in Buffy. We'll see what happens in this case.

My (brand new) namesakes

I was doing a quick google search for myself to see if anything interesting would come up, and I just saw this doozy.

Apparently, Friday was the 8-month anniversary of the birth of twins boys named "Mason" and "Porter". There is something seriously wrong here.

I have a bit of an urge to post a comment on that blog entry, but these people are completely random and I'm leaning towards the fact that they wouldn't appreciate it, so I won't do it. Still, this is weird. It would have been even cooler if that family had triplets and the third kid was named "Alexander". Nevertheless, I am clearly going to have to add their birthday as a day that I celebrate regularly.

By the way, there's no word on what these twins think of American television.

Let's party like it's 1999...

Somerville College recently agreed on a 999-year lease of a property. This will expire when Oxford turns 1999. (For those across the pond, this year is the city's 1000th anniversary. This goes right with our previous conversations about length contraction and time dilation in the UK versus the US...) And when the lease expires, we're going to party like it's 1999!

Clockwise or Counterclockwise?

I saw this on Rob Neyer's blog.

Here is an interesting web page. Does it look to you like the dancer is going clockwise or counterclockwise?

I can only see the dancer going clockwise (which isn't what one would expect, if the premise behind the page were correct), though I am curious to try concentrating hard enough to make it go counterclockwise.

I was having a brief conversation with a sensory psychologist at lunch today; I want to show this web page to him and see what he thinks.

Interesting article on Barry Bonds's former trainer

Here is an interesting article on Greg Anderson, the former personal trainer of Barry Bonds.

The beginning of the article discusses one person who spent some time as Anderson's cellmate in prison. His crime spree, resulting from junk food addiction, was quite a strange one. Describing his arrest, this guy commented, "The fucking pie filling went everywhere."

Oh, and the elk semen thing is just gross.