It’s all about the marketing

So, it would appear that there are so many people taking Prozac in Great Britain that it’s actually ending up in the water supply, as sewer treatment facilities aren’t set up to remove pharmaceuticals from wastewater.

Now, other people may see a problem there, but I see it as an opportunity. Rather than spending lots of money changing all the wastewater treatment facilities, what’s needed is just a different attitude–a different outlook on the situation. All they really need to do is convince the public that psychoactive drugs in the water supply are a feature, not a bug!

A good way to start, I think, would be with some creative pro-psychoactive slogans. Something like “I’m Xany for Xanax,” perhaps. With enough positive spin, people might start expecting–hell, demanding–antidepressants in their water.

And why stop at water? Just think of the marketing possibilities here! “Hey kids, are you bummed out because Mom is pressuring you to clean your room? Stressed over homework? Disappointed about the prom? Try new Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts Plus. The “Plus” is Prozac!”

Anyway, just thinkin’.

American culture and the N-word

There is a word a simple two-syllable word starting with the letter “N,” thatcarries with it literally hundreds of years of associations and ideas about the role of a particular subset of people in society. the word carries connotations of race, class, and even social status, and at one time was applied only to a highly specific group of people.

The N-word word carries cultural connotations in modern American society that are increasingly divorced from its original meaning. The racial and cultural assumptions behind the word are becoming increasingly blurred; nowadays, in some subcultures, people may refer to one another by the N-word even when it’s clear that the word in its most basic meaning does not apply.

That word, of course, is Ninja.


I bring this up because New year’s Eve was the birthday celebration of cyber_wolf_2020 and datan0de, and the theme for the party was–you guessed it–ninjas.

When ninjas go wild, it is a frightening thing. Continue reading

Toward a Unified Understanding of the Human Condition

For thousands of years, scholars, philosophers, artists, and religious teachers have struggled to understand the human condition. Elaborate theories, both moral and pragmatic, have been propounded to explain the bredth and diversiy of the human condition; everything from battling angels and demons to the hidden workings of the id and the superego have been believed to be responsible for the things we feel and the way we understand and interact with the world around us.

All of those ideas are wrong, as I realized while showering this morning. The human condition is varied but bounded, and it took Hollywood to give us a model that explains the diversity of the human experience while also showing us how it’s bounded.

All of life, you see, exists somewhere within the space delineated by the movies Reservoir Dogs, Being John Malcovich, and The Princess Bride.

Each of these three movies represents the extreme outer limit of one aspect of the human condition. All of humanity–all religion, all philosophy, all creation, all expression, all experience–falls somewhere within the space marked off by these three movies.

The human condition is not represented as a three-dimensional spece with each of these movies along one axis, because no part of the human condition can fall at the origin of such a space; that is, nothing within the human experience contains no relevance to any of these three movies. Instead, if some part of the human condition has very little, say, Reservoir Dogs in it, then it follows logically that it must therefore contain a great deal of Being John Malcovich, The Princess Bride, or both, as illustrated below:

Continue reading

Merry Christmas, everyone!

On the first day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 2nd day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 3rd day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 4th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 5th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 6th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 7th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 8th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Eight Windriders ridin’
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 9th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Nine trolls a dancin’
Eight Windriders ridin’
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 10th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Ten Voidwalkers walkin’
Nine trolls a dancin’
Eight Windriders ridin’
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 11th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Eleven harpies screeching
Ten Voidwalkers walkin’
Nine trolls a dancin’
Eight Windriders ridin’
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 12th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Twelve caverns wailing
Eleven harpies screeching
Ten Voidwalkers walkin’
Nine trolls a dancin’
Eight Windriders ridin’
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

…yes, I have problems.

Fun Link o’ the Day

Punctuation Substitution — or, how to say to clients and co-workers what you REALLY feel.

Flash, with sound, maybe not work-safe.

Addiction and stuff

For quite some time now, Shelly has rather like playing MMORPGs…massively multiplayer online role-playing games, such as Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot. The idea, for the two or three people who haven’t heard of those games yet, is you create a character, then introduce that character into an online world where there are tens or hundreds of thousands of other players, all playing other characters simultaneously. You can interact with the other characters, buy and sell weapons and equipment, team up to fight monsters, even fight with other characters. It’s all kind of silly, and given the server stress involved in hosting 100,000 simultaneous users, there are inevitable server glitches and whatnot.

I’ve never played MMORPGs, and I sometimes tease Shelly about them. Well, there’s this new MMORPG, see, and it’s called World of Warcraft, see, and Shelly convinced me to try it, see, and…

…my name is Franklin, and I’m an MMORPG addict.

In case anyone cares, I’m on the Midevh server, and my character is a troll fighter named Ragnarokkr. Those of you who play can usually find me at Crossroads or Orgrimmar, the rest of you can take pity, snicker, or both, depending on your inclinations.


I’m not a complete junkie, however. We’ve been spending time with S and her boyfriend lately, and it’s been a lot of fun. We wen to Tampa Fetish Party with them last Friday; it was their first exposure to a BDSM play party, and it’s always fun to break in play party virgins. Sunday after PolyTampa the four of us went to the beach on a kinda-sorta date-type thing, and we looked upon the Kinda-Sorta Date Type Thing, and It Was Good. Shelly and S‘s boyfriend seem to be getting close, which is also Good.


And now for something completely different:

And while I’m in a posting frenzy…

…the Fun Link o’ the Day: Cartoons inspired by spam subject lines. Funny, more or less work-safe, ganked from foxmagic.

For those of you who are Windows XP admins…

…I’ve hust put up a complete FAQ on Windows XP security. I hope Microsoft doesn’t get too offended…

From another forum: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN

Joe gets up at 6 am and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised. All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance — now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body an d how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It’s noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

A peek into the future

I’ve been looking for a new programming project, since I haven’t really felt like doing any more TCP/IP programming for a while, and I finally decided to make a program that could predict the future.

It’s a simple matter, really. If you know the basic laws of motion, and you see a ball rolling across a table, you can use the laws of motion to predict that the ball will fall off the edge of the table if it’s going fast enough. Applying the same basic idea to a larger system, if you know all the laws of physics, and you can create a model of the entire world, you can use the model to predict the future, right?

So that’s exactly what I did. I wrote a program that would simulate every subatomic particle in the solar system (I decided not to model the entire universe, because I’m running the simulation on a 600MHz iMac), and set it up to show me what will happen in the future. Among the more surprising discoveries:

In the future, cows and other barnyard animals will be converted to run on natural gas, a clean, renewable energy source.

In the future, supplies of gravity, once thought to be a limitless natural resource, will diminish until the government has to start rationing gravity. People with an even numbered street address get to use gravity on even numbered days of the month, people with odd-numbered street addresses can only use gravity on odd numbered days of the month. $500 fine for using gravity on the wrong day.

In the future, a balloon animal will be elected mayor of Washington, DC, and surprisingly, its ideas on economic reform will prove to be very popular.

In the future, mimes will be driven to the brink of extinction by unlicensed poachers, and nobody will really care.

In the future, money will be printed on aluminum foil, because it’s much shinier than paper.