Diary of a Mad Natural Historian

Vote Robot Overlord

They’ll Know If You Didn’t

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Once again Kung Fu Monkey nails it.

John: Robot overlords. You are “pro-robot overlords”.
Tyrone: They bring world peace, universal health care –
John: At the cost of our freedoms!
Tyrone: MY POINT EXACTLY. We’re already giving up our freedoms — our right to privacy, gone.

And follows up with an embedded video of filthy anti-robot-overlprotector agitprop. I found this great graphic via kfmonkey comments - thanks flynngrrl.

Back in the irrational world, Dear Leader announced steps to reduce airline delays during the holiday travel season by opening some restricted military airspace. When I heard about it, something didn’t ring true - I thought the biggest problems occurred at the endpoints - airport congestion. In fact, I’ve heard a couple stories recently about how competition for good time slots (everyone wants to leave between 7 and 9 AM for example) is driving some of the mess. I waited for the media to shed a little light - nothing. I must have been wrong; certainly, if it were a BS political stunt, someone would say so (some sarcasm there).

Via James Fallows and Get the Flick - maybe it’s BS after all - who woulda thunk it?

If you can’t figure out how adding two “express lanes” into the mall parking lot on the day after Thanksgiving is going to help you find a (nonexistent) parking space…you aren’t the only one. I guess knowing you are in the express lane will somehow make the wait seem better than if you were waiting in the regular lane.

Oh well. I guess I should be used to all this by now. Just so my non-controller readers will know…

The military airspace referred to — according to the controllers that work it — has always been opened to civilian traffic during the holidays. If there is a thunderstorm (not likely in late November) over the land routes the airspace will come in handy. Otherwise, the only thing it will be good for is extra holding patterns. *

Air traffic via Making Light.

A blast from my past in which the cartoonist references his past…

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via: lolauthors

So, I sees a commoiskill on teevee last night for a reissue of Fleischer Studios’ Popeye cartoons - “Blow me down!” I says. Vol. 1 will be on it’s way to me when my next paycheck hits! Then BoingBoing features this suitably bizarre clip, “Popeye vs. the Anime”. ‘Uck, ‘uck, ‘uck, ‘uck, ‘uck.

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I love Achewood. I fell over it quite some time ago - the Google returned a link to the Great Outdoor Fight main page (I have no idea what the search string I used was - NSA folks - could you look it up for me please?); I followed the trail to the world of Ray, Roast Beef, Phillipe and company and never looked back. I’d move to Achewood if I could, but something tells me that’s not gonna happen.

I realized this morning that Chris Onstad is running a big sale on signed strips and that the sale was almost over. There’s been a strip I’ve wanted on my wall since I read it - no time like the present to order same. I think it’ll hang in my office at home, but I may put it up near the server racks at work.

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Lightening bugs? Oops. Probably terrahrist coleoptera doing a dry run. For more lightning bug fun: Sterling’s Luciferase.

Nature vs. nuture, is math invented or discovered, tea vs. coffee - all pale into insignificance…

Too many recent posts have been on tech-weenie topics. That will change over the next month or so - I promise. A tease:

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And a combo tech/funny pointer - the Chile D. mustache Flickr pool!

I’d say that this counted as a memetic aftershock - LOLPilgrims.

LOLManciple, ymaad by Galfridus Chaucer, Justice of the Pees, Clerke of the Kinges Workes

Every so often, the conditions are right and half the world’s population of internet users decide to go ape over the same silly thing simultaneously. As Prof. Harold Hill would say, “Mass-steria!” The shared memetic obsession this time around? Cat macros, also known as LOLCats or image macros (including the saga of the lolrus and the bukkit). The first rumblings were apparent as early as last Saturday - see the caption to the zombie picture on my AM cleanup post. The big seismic event, as far as I’m concerned, was on Wednesday when the LOLbots site went live. rstevens (the prime mover) on the rollout:

LOLBOTS.COM went up last night and promptly rode such a big wave of meme that we overloaded two servers. My admin Don got us back up and running and helped me optimize some code. The dude’s Bat-Man with a command line.

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Originally, I was just goofing on the concept of icanhascheezburger-style kitty macros from the perspective of someone prefers machines to animals. I didn’t really think it would catch on, but 40,000 visitors later we have almost 200 robots posted and a backlog of dozens more. In a word: Insane. *

The quotes above are from a post dated Friday, June 1st - 2 days earlier rstevens had an idea and sat down at the keyboard. The fun continues - it will be interesting to watch the meme-seismograph for aftershocks.

Herewith, my faves from the frenzy…

If you know what the Camel Book is, you have - like me - spent too much time in front of a screen.

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You may have noticed that I like Schrödinger’s cat jokes - I love this one:

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And last, one that ties to another post currently floating around the wide-open spaces of my cranium - it will be a mashup of Google Street View and Charlie Stross (that’s a cat in Mary Kalin-Casey’s window).

Credit where it’s due - the lolcats phenomenon was showing up on my son’s radar even earlier than it did on mine. I think he told me about memecats at about the same time I told him about “I can has brayn?”

Update - didn’t want to leave out creative powerhouse, Mr. Lex10 - he did some LOLPresidents for a fark contest early in the lolnomenon. You should blast over to the Glyphblog to check out the baseball cards; they are (as we say up here) wicked pissah.

Update II - c’est encroyable. The LOLCode version of Hello World:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE