Don't Watch Ancient Aliens

The more you watch this show, the more you'll get sucked into the weird ass conspiracy theory that they are pushing. Any idea that someone repeats with no way to argue against it, just starts to seem to make sense after a while. I'm not saying the theory is wrong (I guess), but the show will swallow your spare time very quickly.

Do you know what you should do differently with your life if long dead aliens visited humanity in the past? I'll give you a few seconds to think about it.

If your final answer is 'absolutely nothing' then congratulations. Go play outside or something.

xkcd: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

If you accept the infinite universe theory as I do, you might be interested in seeing this funny list of Famous Duos in a Nearby Parallel Universe.

I've posted xkcd comics before. Creator Randall Munroe has an amazing simple style but a head for science and absurd hypothetical questions. His comic was one of the first web comics I'd ever subscribed to.

I had to share this one here as a tribute back to my recent post about my wife's 40th birthday. This recent comic reminded me of my favorite part about writing that, which was coming up with the list of crazy partnerships to compare our marriage to.

She is…

Han Solo

…to my Chewbacca

Buttercup

…to my Westley

Teller

…to my Penn

Juliett

…to my Romeo

Anyway, do check out xkcd.com. Note that his brand of humor sometimes goes right over people's heads to some degree. Interestingly enough, there is an entire community wiki site devoted to explaining the jokes for those of you us who may not get it right away. And I mentioned it already, but if you love science and absurd hypothetical questions, be sure to subscribe to the what if site. To close, here are a few of my favorites.

• Relativistic Baseball - What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?
• Yoda - How much Force power can Yoda output?
• Raindrop - What if a rainstorm dropped all of its water in a single giant drop?
• Plastic Dinosaurs - As plastic is made from oil and oil is made from dead dinosaurs, how much actual real dinosaur is there in a plastic dinosaur?

For Everyone That Saw... Men In Black

There's a scene I will always remember... The scene where the police officer rolls the gurney with the dead body into the morgue... and the Dr. signs for it...

The deceased had a pet cat with them when they died... and it's still sitting with them. The doctor asked What's up with the cat?

Oh him? Yeah, there's a problem with the cat. Sign here please. Cop hands a clipboard over.

As the doctor signs, she asks What's the problem with the cat?

Taking the clipboard back and exiting quickly the cop answers: He's now your problem.

School Supply Fiasco

Congratulations Internet. You've now become a parody of yourself; a marketing ginmill with very little that is actually useful.

This weekend is the tax-free weekend, specifically set for this time of year to coincide well with back-to-school shopping festivities. Apparently some folks make a big fun event out of this and dress silly in costumes and go to Walmart right at midnight. I'm not sure if that's an isolated thing or if it's becoming a trend like black friday. Not sure I approve, but to each their own. Years ago, I worked at Office Depot during back-to-school days and let me tell you that this is the most important time of year for an office supply store --certainly more than the holidays.

But I tend not to think of shopping as fun in most cases. In our case, we are sensible and download our school supplies list on Friday, print it out and take it to the store with us on Saturday. At least that's what we are trying to do. But it turns out there's a snag. If you go to the school district's web page, you can get all the lists you need for the elementary and middle schools. But they don't have a list for any of the high schools. Go ahead and check. At least as of this very moment, there's no high school list.

Well no big deal. Being intelligent enough to solve our own problems, we do a web search for oldest daughter's high school name and the words "school supplies" and assume that the first result will be the right one. There are several results and though the first one isn't actually on the district's web page, it does look official enough. There's a list and there are even some handy links and ads to buy them immediately online if you are so inclined.

Wait a minute. Wait just a minute...

Upon closer examination, it becomes clear that this site isn't official at all. It's a generic domain like SchoolSuppliesList.com and they have a profile page for the right district and school. They even have the address and phone number along the top header. And there's a download link there in a prominent spot. It seems legit. But it's not. And this business model is a new one for me.

They've taken the freely available yellow pages business listing for the school and probably many thousands of other schools and auto-generated pages for all of them. Then they loaded them up with auto-generated fake lists of grade appropriate school supply ads dressed up in just the right way to appear to be official lists. There's also a big green DOWNLOAD button, but it either downloads spam-ware or other malware of some kind. The final giveaway for me was a small text message directed at teachers or school administrators instructing them to upload their own list. That means they don't have the actual list either. But they've set themselves up in the perfect spot to take advantage of the unaware parents who just search Google for <school name>, <grade> and supply list and then start quickly buying stuff on the first page that comes up.

In review, here is what is likely going down...

1. The school and district administration have not or will not publish a school supply list on their website in time for the right shopping weekend. That's bad, but probably not uncommon across the nation. The disconnect between the decision makers and the IT department is probably wide enough that either this isn't a priority or a deadline got missed.
2. The district doesn't have a page in place for that school's list, so scummy tricksters swoop in and post an easy-to-make page which pretends (within legal parameters) to be the official page. Since nothing else fills that vacuum, these sites make it to the front page of search engine results for the right search.
3. Parents and students will be searching on their favorite engine for their proper supply list for this year and will find a modern, easily accessible site at the top of the results that not only lists out what's necessary but includes the right links to buy them. So they print out the list or buy them right on the site.
4. Unfortunately, not only might they be buying cheap pieces of crap, but the random list they've found has no connection whatsoever to the school or teacher or classroom their student will be in this year.
5. Students will show up on the first day of school with the wrong stuff and all parties will be scratching their heads wondering why. I got the list online, the parents will claim without remembering specifically where. The teachers will stare perplexed.
6. Money has been wasted. Education has been moderately interrupted until the correct supplies can be acquired. A lousy time was had by all... except of course the scammers who pocket the affiliate earnings.

But Jim, you say plaintively, there can't be that many people out there dumb enough to fall for this trick, right? Oh man. I wish that were true. If it was, then these sites wouldn't already exist in abundance waiting to catch the falling fruit. If a business model exists, that means it works or has a likely potential to work. Ergo, my guess is that yes, a lot of people are falling for this. If the axiom is that there is a sucker born every minute, then if there are traps for suckers found in the wild, you know suckers can be found traveling that path.

But not me. And hopefully now that you've read this, not you either. At least do me the favor to post a comment below with your promise of vigilance. And here's hoping that either the district gets wise or the search engines do. Thanks.

I'm listening to Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? by Chicago on Pandora: http://t.co/qVNKrA2Nbn #pandora

— James A. Arconati (@ArcoJedi) August 3, 2013

Taxcathlon - Political Ad Fail

To whom it may concern at American Future Fund,

I'm writing to you regarding your "Taxcathlon" ad on YouTube...

Don't worry, I don't want to attack this ad for it's political content. I just want to get you to look more carefully at your marketing methods. This ad plays a lot. On pretty much every YouTube video that plays, from what I can tell. That sounds expensive to me, but if your message is targeted properly... perhaps it works for you.

Except... the way I first became aware of this ad was when my 13-year-old daughter complained about it. It's the one ad she or I have seen on YouTube that you can't skip after the first few seconds. Furthermore, let me underscore something. It's playing on my daughter's YouTube account, while she is logged in... On almost every single video she tries to watch (VlogBrothers, My Chemical Romance, Panic at the Disco, Dr. Who, etc.)...

If you don't see the problem yet, note that Google / YouTube know how old she is, and I'm guessing they know what she's interested in. Certainly in the account where you are placing the ad and paying for it, you should be able to control something about where and what age group it plays for. I don't have a degree in marketing, but even I know you don't pay to advertise your political message to someone who is not old enough to vote.

But keep on annoying the 13-year-olds if that's what you want to waste your money on.

Maintaining Optimum Temperature During Sleep: A Thought Experiment

The following is a thought experiment that I've been thinking about lately. A thought experiment, if you don't care to follow the link to Wikipedia, is essentially an experiment about something that you perform in your head based on things you know and what you can observe. In this sense, it's usually done because you can't actually perform the experiment in a lab environment although that's not the case here. I attempted to turn this into an actual experiment as it seemed possible at first, but that didn't work out as will be documented here.

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According to observations, some people like to sleep entirely under the sheets and some people like to sleep with some or all of their limbs out from under the covers. While these differences are not usually a problem for people and often go unnoticed, the variance is curious. Differences in body chemistry and metabolism aside and assuming that a somewhat stable room temperature is secured, there should be an optimum sleeping position that everyone could and perhaps should adapt to.

First off, let's describe in summary how the body maintains it's own temperature. What comes to mind first is perspiration, where the body secretes moisture to rapidly cool the skin. What is less well known is the process where blood vessels expand or contract to increase blood flow and transfer heat. The blood carries heat from the torso and internal organs out to the extremities and the heat dissipates. If necessary, sweat glands kick in and take it one step further in the more familiar way.

For the most part, my thought experiment will concentrate on the legs, since this seems to be where the most disparity is in people's choice and preference. Some people like to sleep with their legs covered and some keep their legs uncovered. If we set personal preference aside, it begs the question; which method is most efficient?

• With the legs and the rest of the body covered completely, not only do the blankets greatly insulate the skin but they prevent the sweat from evaporating efficiently. This leaves the body working too hard to be cool. Blood vessels expand too much and the body sweats, sometimes quite a bit.
• With the legs and the rest of the body uncovered, the skin might be more easily cooled by the body's natural processes. But perhaps in standard room temperature this leave the body too cold. The body has to preserve heat and tighten up the blood vessels just to keep warm.

Both options are inefficient as it seems, at least to me. At this point, an idea occurred to me! Perhaps the best way to sleep is a compromise with one leg covered and one leg uncovered. If we assume that the blood vessels in each of our legs can work independently to contract or expand, and if we assume the blood circulates through the entire body and spends an equal time in each leg, then the alternation of hot and cold can work with the body for perfect comfort. The hot leg can expand the blood vessels and dissipate excess heat, and the colder leg can contract the vessels and keep in warmth.

Normally, I sleep with both legs covered and I've never given much effort to trying it any other way. I also can't remember why I started doing it that way, but we can all change our habits. So all I had to do was to give this a try to prove my theory.

So I Gave It A Try…

This was a bad idea. And I don't mean that it was a bad idea for me, but this is such a bad idea I believe strongly that no other human being should try it. Ever!

There's something in all my thought experiments and musings that I'd completely forgotten. A hard truth that is inescapable and should not be ignored no matter how much it might seem inviting to do so. You can't escape from…

The Boogieman Factor

That's right, the Boogieman! I remember now why I keep both my legs covered at night: FOR SAFETY! I don't know how anyone can sleep with their legs unprotected. Of course, I understand this is a fear born from childhood and that some might attempt to insist that it is irrational. Screw that! When it's the dark of the night and your thoughts start to drift in that zone between wakefulness and sleep… Well, I don't care how old and mature and sensible you think you are. You keep those legs covered with your sheet and blanket because it's the only thing that keeps you safe from the evil monster living beneath your bed or in the closet. I … can't explain how or why the sheets repel this beast, but it doesn't matter because they do. Go ahead and make fun of me if you want to, but I'm 34 years old and am not ashamed to take the proper precautions to protect myself! That's all I'm going to say about it.

---

"Tee-hee-hee" came the sound. "Did you hear that?! OH NO!"

---

Disclaimer: I'm just trying to be funny. Or perhaps that's just what I'd like you to believe.

Tattoo

You might agree with me that this would make an excellent tattoo.

Of course, you might not. I'd ask for your opinion, but it is perhaps a little too late.

Wait, what?! you stammer as the idea of me getting a tattoo starts to sink in a little.

Shhhhhhh!! All will be explained in due time.

Updating My Description

It was pointed out to me that I have not updated the little header description on this blog. It currently says:

You are now reading a blog maintained by ArcoJedi; webmaster for Arconati.us, ecstatic husband, proud father of two, Star Wars fanatic; read the thoughts I felt worthwile and wonder why I thought that way.

There is at least one factual and necessary change that I have completely overlooked and I'm making that change right now.

You are now reading a blog maintained by ArcoJedi; webmaster for Arconati.us, ecstatic husband, proud father of two three and Star Wars fanatic. Below you can read the thoughts I felt were worthwile and wonder why I thought that way.

How could I possible miss that? My son Lucas is nearly 12 weeks old at this point. That's one of those interesting aspects of human nature that you look at something every day, but you might not notice glaring mistakes. They have to be pointed out to you by other folks to your embarassment.

Today's Lunch

There are a variety of things written about on any random blog. Just spin the random blog wheel if you don't believe me. The topics vary from the very important to the mundane. I usually write about what's important to me, but that might not be that important to anyone else. The point is that I write for myself and all the clichés about whether anyone else cares apply.

But right now, I'm gonna spend a post talking about something completely mundane, even to me. I want to post pictures of what I had for lunch today at the Chinese buffet.

Photo from Popug.com User Jer86gn^*

Photo from Popug.com User Jer86gn^*

Aren't you impressed with my presentation? The first plate there inspired the need to photograph these morsels. Note the way that the chilled shrimp are arranged so nicely on my plate? Yeah, that was completely random. I grabbed the first shrimp and threw it on my plate and then after grabbing a second one, I noted how completely symmetrical they were right next to each other. It looked like a commercial. So I wondered (aloud, and in earshot of strangers) if I could get the third one to line up the same way and without another thought I put a third one on my plate. My coworker, Jeremy G., was impressed enough (and goofy enough) that he decided to snap a shot with his camera phone at my urging. Minutes later, he did the same thing with my bowl of ice cream. Little did I know that moments after he snapped the pictures that they would automatically be sent to a website and shared with unknown strangers across the internet. These folks could post comments and these would be sent back instantly to Jeremy's phone via text message. Apparently, someone watching the pictures even complained to Jeremy, I'd guess because they were getting hungry. It all happened so smoothly and quickly and seemed almost normal.

And I guess the interesting part of this uninteresting story is the technological angle, weak as it is. I mean, I do find it interesting how the communication on the web is so tightly woven in everyday life. Something so small and so revolutionary and yet stupid at the same time is happening every day. Cameras, phones, ice cream, web sites, online world wide communities and chinese food all consumed in one lunch hour.

Lisa's and my new cell phones that we got each other for Christmas do take digital pictures, but I've not really used it much. Perhaps it's time that I started. I do post the occasional photo on my Flickr page from my digital camera, and I could do that from my cell phone.

Note: I do want to apologize ahead of time because the Popug.com website mentioned above is rife with pop-up ads and other flashy annoyances. Thankfully, I just blocked them all one at a time in Firefox, and it's not a problem.

Ignorance != Stupidity

On Monday of this week, my wife was off-work for Lincoln's birthday. Her and I went together in her van to pick up one of our children from school. It was raining lightly. The parking lot at the school is small and there is a daily line of cars waiting. If you don't arrive early enough, the line sometimes extends out into the street and we ended up in this situation. As we crawled forward into position, the line stopped in such a way that we were halfway in and halfway out of the parking lot.

While sitting there talking and minding our own business, a woman with a large umbrella walked past our car and turned to look at us. She paused and approached my wife's driver side window. She was stopping to say something to us with a frown.

You do know that when you block the cross-walk like that, the teachers don't allow the kids to cross? she asked sardonically.

Embarrassed, my wife immediately began to put the car in reverse gear even though there wasn't any space behind us. Actually, I said, we didn't know that. And I honestly meant it as a "thank-you" and apology to this lady. Our kids don't walk home and usually Heather picks up the kids, so we really had no idea.

Sure you didn't, she said dismissively and turned to walk away.

Whoa! Hold up lady!

I managed to roll down my window and shout a Thank you and an assurance that we really did NOT know that. She didn't even slow down.

How hard is it to believe the possibility that when you see someone doing something wrong and that they are inconveniencing others that they are simply not aware that what they are doing is having this affect? Being rude to someone in response to some imagined wrong will only make them defensive and angry.

As I said, our kids don't walk home nor do they cross that walk so I've never been affected by this. We've only had a kid at this school for the last two years and I've never noted an announcement sent home by the school and as of a few months ago, I was employed by the district. We simply didn't know and had no reason to know.

Oh and in case you are wondering how it all turned out, by the time the bell rang and the kids were released, the line had inched forward enough that we were no longer blocking the cross-walk. I turned around to see if the car behind us would block the way, but apparently they have already been informed.

As you can tell, this encounter made me uncharacteristically upset, but I've vented here now and I feel a lot better. Thanks for listening!

Star Wars Horoscope for Pisces

A typical Pisces, you have your head in the clouds. You're self-sacrificing and a bit too passive to stand up to the dark side. You become fairly pessimistic when put under pressure. You are a chameleon - wanting to change your scenery on occassion.

The Star Wars character you are most like is Lando Calrissian.

What Is Your Star Wars Horoscope?

Can We Talk About Fight Club?

Tyler Durden said:

Listen up maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

But is this true? Scientifically, there is nothing different about the carbon and other molecules that make up my body from the carbon molecules in all the plants and animals that have ever lived.

Yet, Tyler Durden is wrong. Or at least, what he says doesn't match well with Yoda:

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!

That is one of my favorite lines. I quoted this one day a long time ago in my college Biology 101 class at Quincy University. Dr. Natalini was talking about the chemicals that the body and brain were made up of and that they were relatively common and unimportant. Without being quite so shocking, he was basically stating exactly what Tyler would later say in the movie.

But I knew that Natalini was a Star Wars fan. I also knew that the university was a Christian institution and there were devout students in the room who were my friends. So I raised my hand and asked him what that meant in light of what Yoda said. If he'd had a comeback for that, I would have thought up something about the Bible and God, though I wasn't what I consider a Christian at the time.

He looked at me like I was crazy, paused silently for a moment and continued on as if I hadn't said anything. But then again, he did that a lot. Thanks Dr. J.

As a reminder, you have been warned not to talk about FightClub. But you can still buy the DVD.

Musical Debutt

A few weeks ago, the family and I went to McDonalds for some burgers, fries and happy meals. On the way home in the van, Reese was reading away at the box for her happy meal and said something that sounded not quite right. The instructions were to poke out a perforated hole in the side of the cardboard and push your straw through and turn it into a musical instrument. Without a lot of explanation, this is what it says, word-for-word.

Punch out the belly and pull a straw through. Hum a tune into the straw and join iZ in making your musical debut!

Now, it is not every day that a seven-year-old comes upon the word "debut" and shame on McDonalds for putting that on their box. What came out of Reese's mouth was ...join iZ in making your musical de-butt?!

Once we understood and the error was explained, we all could not stop laughing at this. In fact, it's still an inside joke we pass around just to keep the smiles going. Thanks McDonalds!

Your IQ

Your IQ must be this high to view this web site.

Random Blog Blog Blogger Blogs

I think it is entirely possible that the blogosphere is entirely too big already (like the internet itself) and according to the experts at Technorati.com, there is a new blog born every second. But are these blogs worth anything? What are they about really? If you host your blog with Blogspot, as I am doing, then you are probably familiar with the 'blogthis' search bar at the top of the page that is (supposed to be) there as part of your terms of service with Blogger. There is a button that anyone can click that takes them from the blog they are on to a random blog somewhere else. There are template tricks that prevent this bar from appearing, but assuming it is there, a reader can simply 'channel-surf' from one blog to the next if they feel like it, but I don't see a reason at this time to do so. Here are the random results I got just now, and a short description of what I found there.

yu's whimsicals and idiocies

A personal blog from Singapore, talking about love, a trip to Sydney (Australia) complete with pictures of fireworks and collages, a tagboard, and a post-dated post from April 1st, in 2000 (before Blogger was around).
in life, not everything is predictable, just as not everything is unpredictable too. life is full of uncertainties, u'll never know when it'll be taken away from u. live everyday in the present; u won't regret. yesterday is past, tomorrow is too far. time is never too late. it's all 'bout treasuring that counts.
This blog currently appears to be having a problem caused by Blogger's recent changes with posting images causing the body or content to not line up properly with the side navigation. Go to Blogger's Help Page to fix this.

Collard Patch

A heavily Adwords supported site, about recipes, links to other blogs.
The Collard Patch is a friendly place where you are welcome to visit as long as you don't step on the collards. Please share your recollections, recipes, and musings.
The writer has ...a variety of interests, which are reflected in publishing and writing. I love Internet marketing, writing cookbooks and novels, nursing, and caring for a dog. Most of all, I love hearing what other people think.

passing thoughts

Blog by Viji from Bangalore in India, with quotes, pictures, political humor

welcome morning

An incoherent (in english) blog by a poster in Indonesia, with one post with a record 9+ font color changes in one paragraph.

anne beaver thomsen

consumed with the thoughts of a handsome and smart philosopher and the greatness of nutella
Bridal showers, golf lessons and sarcasm: my life is just so exciting i can hardly stand it.

Corrupted Mind

I SPAM U is in the URL, but this guy (Sathya Sankaran) was apparently ruined by Education. I was born Brilliant. Education ruined me...

faforcoding

Though this blogger is from Thailand and I don't know the language, I can tell from the few minimal posts here that this is a developer, with links to MSDN and some example code with Public Function IsRightDigit(ByVal tmpCitizenID As String) As Boolean

From a Room in Roppongi

Another blogger from the far east, this time Tokyo, Japan. A mom's blog, with pictures of her children and family, a flickr board and random links. It would also appear that she took part in the MIT blogger survey -- just like me!

pieces of memories

Here is the first blog with a very custom template, with cutesy icons, Japanese, cartoons, tagboards and stuff in scrollable iframes. I don't think it is in english. Of course, I couldn't go a full ten rolls of the random blog wheel without getting one that had purposely or accidentally removed the blogger navbar at the top -- forcing me to start over again.

Detrás de mi ventana...

And our last entry here is a blog in Spanish, Mi propio espacio para divagar sobre lo que yo quiera...

I'm so very surprised that I didn't land on a SPAM-BLOG. They are getting numerous lately and despite the fact that in order to post entries, Blogger makes you jump through hoops, so many of them appear to be posted by some sort of automated process. Anyway, despite the above descriptions, some of these blogs are junk and some are not, even if none of them are Spam-blogs.

Don't like these blogs that I found? Discover your own golden nuggets in a random BlogSpot Blog.

Renaissance Fair

Lisa and I went to the one here in St. Louis this last spring and that was fun. My favorite moment: two men in Spaniard costumes holding up signs that read "Arguments for $1". They were yelling and hawking their wares. I asked as we passed them if we could haggle over the price, and they said "SURE, but that'll be $1."

DORK TOWER

Ya know, they should put more cartoonists from comic books in charge of the movies that are made from them .. like especially ...that movie from the story by Dark Horse comics.

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

Visit The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster.

What Type of Killer Are You?

You are a protector.

Yes, you don't like to kill people. That goes against everything you believe in. It's not that you are a coward, but your ideals and morals wouldn't allow it. You are the typical hero, do the righteous things, get the bad guys and do it all legally. But just because you don't kill doesn't mean you can't kick ass. And that is what you do. You use your brain and your strength to do honourable deeds and protect people you know and love. If an evil guy is going to take over the world soon, it's you who will get involved. You hate watching innocents suffer, and love seeing bad people getting what they deserve. You are probably also happy and optimistic and work pretty good in groups. And the friends you usually make are true ones.

Main weapon: Anything at all
Quote: You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. - Joe Lewis
Facial expression: Smile

Find out for yourself What Type of Killer Are You? [cool pictures] brought to you by Quizilla.

Can a Lightsaber Cut Through Adamantium?

FARK.com: (1406308) Can a light saber cut through adamantium? Discuss