Undead Astronauts

ah muslims… i know it’s crass to take pleasure in laughing at and denigrating other ppl’s culture or religion b/c i know it can so easily go both ways at the extremes. but sometimes things break through, if this is indeed not a joke. (and no, i’m not jumping on a bandwagon just b/c some muslims want to put a community center/mosque near ground zero. i have no dog in that fight.)

recently, there was a fatwa issued by a sheik in the saudi justice ministry that concerned women breastfeeding grown men. b/c of strict rules governing interaction between men and women, an adopted son was not allowed to be in the same room alone with his mother. he was adopted after growing too old for breastfeeding, which is the only exception by which a grown man can be in private w/ a woman.

other inconveniences would include a grown man who was hired to do some continuing housework in an occupied house. his presence would necessitate all the females vacate the house if no male family member was home.

so in apparent response to these problems, the sheik’s fatwa allowed the women of the household to breastfeed the grown, unrelated man so that he could be in their presence without them fleeing the home.

hmm.

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well this is just dandy. the 9th circuit just ruled that you have no right to privacy in your driveway or on the road. so police can legally put a gps tracker on your car and track you w/o a warrant. this ruling affects anyone that lives in the western US. okay, not everyone. anyone who lives behind a gate, such as a celebrity has an expectation of privacy based on the fact that they live behind a gate. but driveways, they don’t count.

on principle, i think this ruling is abhorrent as i think ppl have a right not to have their property invaded and tracked however police want. but since it’s legal, i think the first thing ppl in the west need to do is to attach gps devices to all the cars of judges and their families on the 9th circuit, and then all the law enforcement and government official vehicles and have the info linked to some service like foursquare. let’s see how you like living life under a microscope motherfuckers.

i don’t pay for many apps, but this… this i’d pay for. perhaps alot. comes out sept.

this week’s episode is the season finale. i didn’t realize it was going to be a seasonal thing, but that makes sense since they’ve only scratched the tip of the iceberg in terms of plot.

finally we see the main team gathered up in to a group… but we don’t get to see them dance! argh!! we also don’t get to see the enemy camp’s composition. it would’ve been nice if they also showed the opposing team gathered. hopefully they’ll have more plot on tap (har har) next season.

a Texas A&M study found 70% of middle grade students didn’t fully understand the equal sign.

“The equal sign is pervasive and fundamentally linked to mathematics from kindergarten through upper-level calculus,” Robert M. Capraro says. “The idea of symbols that convey relative meaning, such as the equal sign and “less than” and “greater than” signs, is complex and they serve as a precursor to ideas of variables, which also require the same level of abstract thinking.”

The problem is students memorize procedures without fully understanding the mathematics, he notes.

“Students who have learned to memorize symbols and who have a limited understanding of the equal sign will tend to solve problems such as 4+3+2=( )+2 by adding the numbers on the left, and placing it in the parentheses, then add those terms and create another equal sign with the new answer,” he explains. “So the work would look like 4+3+2=(9)+2=11.

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i listened to this TED talk today by Sheena Iyengar, a blind sikh-american researcher. her identity perhaps contributed to her insightful work.

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new trailer about gw2. the art is phenomenal, i mean just really fantastic. but i have to wonder about the mechanics. how can they have a persistent world w/o all the issues of kill stealing and what not? how small are these servers that npc’s will actually remember u for an extended length of time, much less have your actions affect the extended world in a persistent manner? i remember how they accomplished this in gw1: u simply progressed to the next instanced zone where everyone knew u. but they’re saying these places are persistent. i’m not sure i believe the hype.

how difficult will it be to switch servers to play w/ friends? and most importantly, will they still have dodgeball?