An Aside About Google (and pies)

A side note: people find this site in a number of ways, and sometimes that is through Google. I can see what search terms people use, and some are fairly strange. You may remember this short post about Fahrenheit 451, in which author Ray Bradbury claimed the book had nothing to do with censorship and instead it was all about tv. Yeah, um, whatever. I said that was like writing a book about pie recipes, publicly hailed as a classic text on pies, and then 50 years later after receiving countless pie-related awards claiming it had nothing to do with pies and instead was all about the pumpkins used to make some of those pies. I called the post Fahrenheit 45pie. And now I get visitors from Taiwan searching Google for 45pie. In fact, Exeterra is the number 1 site on Google for 45pie. I have no idea what a real 45pie is, but they think I have one, or at least know something important about 45pies. That feels kind of nice. I also get visits from people trying to look up how to fold a mattress (Who knows, maybe one of them was Leon himself? See item number 81.)

It could be worse. A few blogs I read about the situation in the middle east get a significant amount of traffic from people looking for arab porn.

Also of note, my most frequently Googled page is about a native American gardening technique called the Three Sisters. I get more Google-related visits to that page than all my other pages put together. I hope those people aren't looking for porn too.

Weekend Circular Bubbles

Ok, now underwater bubbles may not seem that interesting, but you've got to see this. What amazes me the most is that he has so much air in his lungs for so long.



If you have suggestions for particularly funny or amazing videos to be posted here, by all means let me know.

Gah!

Have you seen the new logo for the London 2012 Olympics? There it is. Umm... wow. It cost £400,000 in taxpayer money ($800,000.) According to the LOCOG press release: "The new emblem is dynamic, modern and flexible reflecting a brand savvy world where people, especially young people, no longer relate to static logos but respond to a dynamic brand that works with new technology and across traditional and new media networks."

"This is the vision at the very heart of our brand," said London 2012 organising committee chairman Seb Coe. "It will inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world."

Meanwhile, 84% of BBC readers think it is awful. I mean, really, how is that supposed to be "iconic?" It looks like Lisa Simpson going down on a fat guy. It is artistically crude, uses styles last popular in 80s teen magazines, captures no sense of identity for Britain, London, or even the Olympic Games. The one thing it does evoke is massive unpopularity.

Update: Another thing it does, when animated, is cause epileptic seizures.

Update II: Jon Stewart explains it nicely:

"Your Charisma is Abysmally Low..."

For anyone who has every played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons...

And what is particularly sad is that I've played most of the games those graphics were taken from. Good old Chronotrigger...

If you knew that the flash video was a paradoy of another previous video, then you get +5 to your intelligence for the next six rounds.

To be fair, AD&D is generally not that bad, unless everybody is a n00b. The arguments generally come in when half the people are taking it way too seriously and the other half just want to joke around.


Originally from Pharyngula at Science Blogs.

Short Week

Hey, sorry for the low posting this week. I was hoping it would have been a posting-extravaganza, but alas, it was not to be. I've picked up another bunch of papers to mark (I volunteered for, so it's ok), and this week I found out I need to turn in an annual progress report on my work. It was due in April. Gulp. But, hey, neither my officemates nor my supervisor had ever heard of it before this week, so it is ok.

Hopefully I'll be able to do several gardening posts this weekend; there is so much to write about!

Now I leave you with two Friday videos. Firstly, this is a great way to keep your cat clean, unless you have cat allergies, in which case you will die of an anaphylactic reaction.



Hmm, I might have to try that on the rabbits. And, damn, that's a fat cat! (it's probably a capitalist)

Secondly, if you liked the Indian Thriller, then you will love Indian Superman!



Enjoy!

0.99999999999999999999999999999999999999...

I really don't know where the time goes. It seems like I wake up in the morning, do some work, miss a lot of work I should have done, and then it is midnight. And I've had so much blogging I've wanted to do.

Ok, tell you what, how about I grade one report, and then make one blog post, one report, one post, and so on? I really can't grade too many reports in a row or they all blend together and I lose track of what is said in individual papers. So hopefully there will be a flurry of posts (and marking) today.

First off, there is a puzzle I've been thinking about, and I eventually found the answer, but I thought you might want to have a chance to puzzle it out for yourself. Here it is:

What is the mathematical difference between .999 (repeating to infinity) and 1.0?

Here is a hint: what is one third, represented as a decimal? What happens when you multiply this by 3?

The first person to get the correct answer gets a pony.

Helpdesk

I would normally be working on the statistics helpdesk every Monday, but because of the Easter holiday, I've had the time off. This is what it can seem like sometimes:



I realize some of my readers may sympathize more with the monk...

For reference, the show is Øystein Og Jeg, produced by Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) in 2001.

On Beauty

Sorry to go all video-crazy, but I feel these are worth sharing.

Some of you may have heard of Dove's Real Beauty Campaign. It has gathered quite some momentum online, having been viewed on YouTube millions of times, and distributed through the blogosphere. This is the ad:



What do you think? It's generated a huge amount of feedback worldwide.

Now compare it to this advert:


Although I don't speak Hindi, I know exactly what the message is: you only matter if you are beautiful, and you're only beautiful if you are not dark. (As an aside, the "dark" woman in the advert starts off being far lighter than most Indian people.) And although the advert is undeniably sexist, women are not the only target (click link to view.)

So what do you think of those last two? Compared to the first one? What a world of contrast.

Now here is the catch: all three advertisements are made by the same company (Unilever.) Dove and Fair and Lovely are products of the same people. Dove's "Self-Esteem Fund" and "Campaign for Real Beauty" are made by the same company who make "Fair and Lovely" skin lightener, and who explicitly say brown is ugly.


"No wonder our perceptions of beauty are distorted."

Chew on that for a while. I don't know that there is a single take-home message here, but two stick out to me:

1) Always be skeptical of advertisements.
2) It is possible to do good whilst also doing bad, and in fact most of the good done in the world is done by people who are also doing a lot of bad. Purity does not exist.

I would also like to point out that these adverts were uploaded to YouTube by the producers of the adverts themselves, suggesting they feel it is appropriate to reach as wide an audience as possible with the "brown is ugly" message.

Before leaving you, I would like to share this joyful gem, completely unrelated to the rest of the post, but also from India.



Hat tip to Sita for the last video. It has brought tears to my eyes with laughter more than once.

In Egg Shells She Day Ohh

For anyone who ever tried to understand a hymn without a hymnal.



Hat tip to Stacey for this one.

Nostalgia

For anyone who ever played the original Nintendo, watching this stop-motion lego animation will be one minute of your life very well spent.

Mario Bros. Lego
Uploaded by Bibi-de-Bibopof

Question

Do you think it is a sign of a sodium deficiency to crave eating vegetable stock cubes? They're just so tasty...