I know this might sound like a shock, but I will soon be leaving the blogging world and no longer keep this site online.   I feel that this is necessary for personal reasons.  It’s not because of spelling errors or because of the cost of hosting, but because I have other things to focus on in my life.   I need the time and space to make my transition

Recently, I made the difficult decision to begin the process of becoming a woman.  I’ve always felt like a woman trapped inside the body of a man, trapped inside the body of a horse, trapped inside the body of a woman, trapped inside the body of a man.   While there’s nothing I can do to completely untrap myself from all the layers of entrapment, I can at least remove one layer.   As such, I will be having a sex change operation.   Before I can do this, I need to move somewhere that such surgery can be had at bargain basement prices.  Thus, I shall soon be bidding my beloved country goodbye and moving to Guatemala to begin the gender reassignment process.

I have struggled with this decision for many years, but last night, as I lay in bed, Jesus came to me in a dream and told me he would still love me no matter what or where I was.   Thank you, Jesus.  I now know what I must do.

After my transition is complete, I’m not sure what I will do, but tentatively my plans are to return to the United States, to live in the shallow water channels of Florida, where I will become a member of the peaceful community of manatees.  Did I mention that somewhere in those layers of entrapment is a manatee?   I might have forgotten that.   Manatees are also extremely accepting and very peaceful creatures.   Best of all, manatees don’t have nuclear arms.   You can’t hug your children with nuclear arms!   Of course, they also don’t have regular arms either, but they do have flipper-like things that are a bit like arms.

Finally, I just want to wish everyone a blessed April Fools Day.

What can be said about the lottery?   The probability of you winning it is always infinitesimally small.   Exactly how small depends on the number of “numbers” used for the ticket and their range.   If you buy more than one ticket, it increases, but it remains infinitesimally small unless you buy all or nearly all the possible numbers.    Believe it or not, this has been done, and if the jackpot is high enough (as is the case, if it has not been won for several rounds) it is actually possible to get a positive return on it, assuming there are not too many other winners with the same winning number.

However, unless you can manage to buy a significant proportion of all the possible combination, then buying more tickets will just mean you’ve lost more money when you don’t win – which is almost certainly going to be the case.

It really doesn’t matter how you chose the numbers.   And yes, there have been some who looked at which numbers come up the most often – nothing statistically significant, I’m afraid, even when it’s done with the ball machines.

But don’t tell that to the lottery guru:

THE LOTTERY GURU! from Everything Is Terrible! on Vimeo.

I wonder how many times he’s won the jackpot.  I mean he is the “guru,” right?   I’m guessing none, or he wouldn’t be doing this video.

No, he wasn’t a doctor, nor a scientist, but a railroad foreman who inadvertently changed the world while packing explosives on a cut in Vermont.   At 25 years old, Phenaeas Gage was working for the Rutland and Burlington Railway in 1848, tamping black powder into drill holes in rock for a new track route.   The powder exploded and drove the iron rod clear though his skull, from his right cheek, through his eye socket and out his forehead.

Although he lost an eye, Gage remarkably survived the incident.   He also had lost a large portion of his frontal brain lobe.  Exactly what this did to Gage has not been well documented.  Some accounts have said that it resulted in a man who was unable to control his emotions and could not maintain a job, while others seem to indicate he did fairly well.  Whatever the case, a couple of things are clear:  the injury did dramatically change Gage’s personality, but did not incapacitate him beyond the ability to take care of himself and live a relatively normal life.

Although direct documentation and scientific data about Gage’s incident and subsequent condition is scarce, it did spark a great deal of interest in the human brain, the mind and how the two related.    The fact that Gage survived yet was clearly different was stunning.

His case, which was known at the time as “The American Crowbar Case” would become one of the most cited cases in early neurology and began the speculation of brain region and function.   Gage’s case provided direct evidence that different parts of the brain preformed different functions and indicated that the brain could continue to function even with some parts damaged or destroyed.

Gage died only sixteen years later in 1860.  Before his death he had begun to experience severe convulsions.  It’s not entirely clear if these were related to the injury he had sustained years earlier.

Until recently the only known likeness of Gage was his plaster life mask, which, along with his skull, was kept at the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard University Medical School.

This all changed last year, when this previously unknown photograph came to light:

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Go to images.google.com and search for “George Carlo,” no quotes.   Or, if you prefer, just click here.   You can also search for it with quotes or Dr. George Carlo, but in those circumstances, the result of interest will not be number 1.

I now know I have contributed something very real to the world.

Have you ever met someone who just keeps saying things so dumb that you can barely contain your disdain?   Sure, you might try to be polite, but after hearing someone state, with authority enough bullshit about astrology, homeopathy, conspiracy theories and other bullshit, you just can’t bite your tongue anymore.

That’s the story of Tim Michin’s “Storn,” a nine-minute spoken word piece about a dinner party in which a stereotypical empty-headed woman named “storm” spouts out enough bull to set off a storm inside any skeptic.   Michin does a great job of painting a picture of the events with his words, but now there’s one better, because out very good friend Tracy King and a dedicated staff of animators is preparing to release the “Storm Movie,” which, as the name implies, turns the piece into a film – an animated one.

At the moment only the trailer is out, as the finishing touches are being put on the full version.   Here’s a taste of it:

Perhaps it’s a bit early to critique something that’s only being shown as a preview, but if the rest of the film lives up to this then expect greatness.   In addition to being a great story, they’ve managed to achieve a very unique, yet at the same time classic style to the visuals.   It combines smooth motion and text with a kind of planned roughness and an excellent psuedo-3d layering effect.    Most who watch this kind of a thing probably won’t stop to think about how much effort goes into it, because when done properly, it just flows and you don’t even notice how well the text bounces and how the angular momentum transfers when a pill is swallowed.    However, I did, and props to all those involved!

I’m told that this was done primarily in Adobe After Effects and that most of the animation is actually individually edited frames.  Wow!   It must have taken a real lot of tweaking to make it so smooth.    I especially love how the camera shakes with a little elasticity.

But before I pick it apart any further, I’ll just stop and say that the style and flow rocks and I’m looking very forward to seeing the whole thing. After all, the Mona Lisa is best appreciated as a masterpiece and not by analyzing all the chemical components of the paint.

Dr. Phil Plait – Fellow Skeptic, friend of the JREF who previously had served as president and author of “Bad Astronomy” and “Death From The Skies.”   Dr. Plait is known for his efforts in debunking bad science, especially in his field of astronomy.   He runs a website which is now part of the Discover Magazine blogs.

Dr Thaddeus Venture – A supposedly fictional character and one of the main characters of the television show “the Venture Brothers.” Dr Venture inherited Venture Industries from his father, Dr. Jonas Venture.   His lifestyle includes various adventures, although he sometimes seems to have trouble filling his father’s big shoes.   He creates numerous inventions, many of which seem to defy the laws of science.   He is frequently being plotted against by the Guild of Calamitous Intent and especially his arch nemesis, “The Monarch.”

Dr. Venture’s mother is never mentioned, so it’s entirely possible that he could be Dr. Plait’s half-brother (although the one problem with this is that he is an animated character).   It is also possible that his character is based partially or entirely on Dr. Plait.    It is even possible that they are the same person.   (A similar allegation has been made about Dr. Richard Wiseman)

The visual evidence:

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You just can’t make this stuff up!

It seems that the extreme anti-humanist agenda of the “enviornmental” special interest is not nearly as veiled as it used to be.  Witness this card from an “eco-friendly” trivia-based board game.

This image comes from failblog.

Amazing, isn’t it?  The best thing you can do to be as “Green” as possible is to be fat and out of shape, because then you’ll probably die sooner, and the sooner you die, the better!  Presumably this would also mean that other actions you could take that might result in your death would be “green.”   So not wearing your seatbelt, playing smoking and engaging in dangerous activities would be a good thing.   On the other hand, one would have to think that things like coronary bypass surgery or radiation therapy for cancer would be very un-green, as those would likely result in longer life.

But why even bother with this?   Isn’t the obvious answer just to go buy a length of organic, bpa-free rope and hang yourself before you do any more damage?   It would seem that would be the greenest thing you could possibly do!

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Sure, the Apollo missions were about expanding scientific knowledge, pushing the boundaries of exploration and going one past the Soviet Union in human space exploration, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t just a little bit of time for fun involved. Alan Shepperd famously hit a golf ball on the moon during Apollo 14.

I found this video quite funny. Jack Schmitt, an astronaut and geologist (the only formally trained scientist to visit the moon as part of the Apollo program) has finished with the mission objectives and is preparing to end the EVA. He has a geology hammer, which he won’t be needing anymore and he wants to throw it in the 1/6 gravity. This isn’t for any real reason, he just wants to, because it would be fun.

What I find so humorous is how he begs mission control like a kid in a store asking “mom, can I please please have one of these?”

No not really… But I found the last video posted pretty funny and it seemed to go over well, and it inspired me to create my own transliteration video. Admittedly, some of the words are somewhat forced, but a few do really sound a lot like the English misheard lyrics.

There are a couple of parts I might tweak a little still.

These days it seems like everyone is getting ridiculous amounts of money for stupid, unworkable, useless concepts for no other reason than they seem “green.”   The US government has been one of the biggest finances of these concepts, flushing away huge amounts of money on things as dumb as a solar powered road.

Well, I’m tired of not getting some of the gravy train and I want to get some dollars now, before they become completely worthless due to the inflationary spending of the Federal Government.   I have bad ideas all the time, yet I never have run with them.

Now I have a new concept which I hope will get as much financing as the energy-generating revolving door, the solar powered roadway or the pneumatic automobile.

Here is the concept:

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