Pop Music

First things first, I apologize for the unexpected hiatus.  The holidays were a pretty kickin' time on my end.  I skipped posting on Christmas, because Christmas.  I didn't post that Thursday, because I had spent 13 hours at work that day, and I was just too mentally exhausted to write.

I spent my New Year's eve puking, which is pretty common for me.  What was uncommon was the fact that I hadn't had anything to drink beforehand-- I was sick with the stomach flu (or cancer, according to WebMD).  And last Thursday I forgot to post, because I am a moron.  But everyone knows that already.

On to more pressing matters!

Scooter Braun owns the future... of popular music.  And he motherfucking knows it.  He's still consolidating power at the moment, but he has tested the waters and has managed to part the red sea.

And I have no gooddamn clue how.  It makes no sense.  This fact is the exact opposite of his chosen domain (pop music), which makes so much sense it's insultingly boring.

Most of you are probably looking at me like I'm crazy.  But I'm not crazy.  I have charts and numbers and science to back me up, and science would never lie to me.  Most of you don't even know what a Scooter Braun is, but since you're not abjectly retarded, you know it's his stupid redneck face I shared in an image a while back.

I'll repost it to catch the slower members of the audience up:

Scooter Braun.  Know the name.

Like many people in the music industry, Scooter works behind the scenes.  He's in the shadows, pulling various strings to make the aggravatingly catchy, yet bland and repetitive music in the "popular" genre sell millions of copies.  Luckily for nostalgia, time will eventually roll up its sleeves and wash off all the shit so the great music being made right now can shine.

This is why your grandpa makes fun of the music you listen to, and why 'oldies' stations can stay in business, despite the fact that, by definition, they cannot add any new songs to their playlists.  These 'oldie' stations only play the great music that survived the test of time*.

Not counting things like Rebecca Black's Friday, but we'll get to that in a bit.  First, you need to know that Scooter is the man behind Justin Bieber's success.  And you also need to accept that Justin Bieber is pretty damn successful with tweens.  He isn't the most successful, but he's up there when it comes to outright net worth.

I couldn't find inflation adjusted numbers, but I get the feeling that successful tween stars pretty much all follow the same pattern.  Most tweens just buy some artist's shit, and then they move onto another artist.  Tween stars never stay in the spotlight (and make bank) for long, because their audience A) doesn't know shit about dick and B) grows up.  Except for Justin Bieber.  Justin... is still famous.  Don't believe me?  Have a Google search hits chart:



Yeah, he's still beating his peers in the "shitty music" category.  And, he's more or less turned it into positive press-- the worst thing you can say about him is that he makes bad music.  So does Ke$ha (I honestly can't be bothered to care enough to see if I spelled that right), at least Justin doesn't look like he'll give me herpes at 500 yards.  Ok, and he's spoiled and a brat, but he's also 18.  As far as I know, that's sorta average for that age group.

Bieber is still in the spotlight.  And he's been there longer than any of his direct tween competitors, and shows very few signs of imploding.

But, it was Scooter Braun who put him there, and Scooter Braun who knows his shit.  Here, have a link: Read.  Don't look into the exact reporting here (not that it's bad/wrong/falsified, but its not what I want to bring to your attention), but Braun's reaction and comments.  He's smart. He doesn't sound like someone bumbling around with a one hit wonder, he sounds like a man who understands marketability on a level no one has yet to even comprehend.

How do I know this?  I compiled another chart of Google hits, this being the stuff in music that you heard approximately 10 billion times in 2012, against Bieber:



** Notes about this chart at the end of the post.

If you read that New Yorker article, you already know that Scooter signed Carly Rae Jepsen. What you now know is he also signed PSY.

 Only Friday remains... and Friday is the inverse of Scooter Braun.  Is there anyone here who thinks Rebecca Black has a stable superstar career ahead of her?  She is, actually, more or less set for life.  Oh, you didn't think super popular YouTube videos made money?  They make fucktons of money, if you can break into the millions-of-views level.  And Friday did that in spades.

Sure, she got teased, but she has money to spare.  She dropped out of school, but, with some smart investments,  she could do perfectly fine investing her profits and living on the interest.  And that was two years ago.  The difference is that she'll never be taken seriously, on a musical level.  Ever.

I've heard music snobs say that "Call Me Maybe" and "Gangnam Style" are "Brilliant, but horrible songs", despite the fact that, to my admittedly piss-poor ear, the only strong difference between them and Friday is the lyrics and effects used.  This is because Scooter Braun is a goddamn superhero.

(I am aware that Gangnam Style is a parody.  But, it has become the super-mega hit that it's making fun of, so it's valid.  And personally, I'm still sick of hearing it.  Bring it on in the comments if you disagree.)
 
Scooter Braun owns tweens, when it comes to pop music.  The next batch of radio hits?  Gonna be his.  He is a man to watch, if only so you know who to hang in effigy later.

*Not that all old music on the radio is good music.  But the average is skewed in favor of objectively good pieces.

**Terms were picked that were most favorable to the artist.  Nine times out of ten, that meant the song and not the person making the song,  Also, searching Friday on its own led to one weeeiiiirrrrrd trends chart.  I have no idea what the hell is up with November, but the searches for 'Friday' in every November since 2004 skyrocket.  It's absurd.

Quantum Immortality... because you're dead. Probably.

So, two days ago, I talked about some pretty far out shit man.  There was like, atoms, and immortality, and like all these crazy things happening at a level so small, we can't even see it with light based microscopes, and in a very general sense, lots and lots of weed.

Metaphorically, of course.  The last time stoners ended up anywhere near a quantum physics experiment, people started talking about how the LHC was going to create black holes and send us back in time, simultaneously, with the outside possibility of sending the black holes back in time and creating more paradoxes than a season of LOST.

Which, by the way, was bogus.  In order for black holes to be created by the LHC, gravity would have had to take a hike.  And everyone knows if gravity suddenly stopped working, scientists would be way to busy floating around and shouting 'weee!' at the top of their lungs.

XKCD counts as scientific opinion, right?

Actually, we'd all float up into the upper atmosphere, suffocate, and die, while the Earth violently broke apart beneath us.  Planet-wide fissures would erupt as the continents rended themselves apart, causing massive volcanoes, tusmanis, and earthquakes.  Most of what you might hold on to the keep yourself on the ground would be destroyed, as the ground itself started breaking apart and drifting away.  After a little while, even if you were in some shock-proof concrete bunker, you'd be fucked because the atmosphere would fade away as the planet that keeps most of that in check would break apart.

Well, that turned out to be grim.  The lesson here, kids, is that life is meaningless, because at any instant someone could type 'import antigravity' into python and rip the world apart.  Also, you're not special and all love is a lie.  Now go run along and play, also, have a good Friday tomorrow!

*ahem* Back on topic!

We did talk last time about the Many-Worlds approach to quantum physics, which basically says that whenever there is a binary probability where one state must be chosen, instead both states happen.  The most popular example of this is electron spin.  If you were to rig up an experiment where if the electrons spin one way, you die and another way, you live, you'd do both-- because the electron would spin in both directions at the same time.

Got it?  Great.  Obviously, you can't be alive or dead, so the moment someone came to see the results of your quantum experiment, in one universe, you'd die.  In another one, you'd live.  If you ran the experiment N times, N - 1 times you'd die, but there would always be one universe where you're alive.

Now, how often does quantum behavior like this happen?  Well... no one is really sure, due to decoherence. Decoherence is when another atom manages to snap the superimposed atom out of its 'both' state and into a 'one or the other' state, so in practice, we never see two events that should not be happening at the same time, happening at the same time.

I refused to scroll down after seeing that "Impossible Geometry" got 528 hits. The Getty Image Archive will not drive me insane today.   I'm gonna go sacrifice a goat to Cthulhu and the other Elder Gods now.

So, it's very possible that stuff like this is happening pretty much all the time-- considering the billions of atoms that are knocking around in the general space around you, surely some are getting superimposed and decohered at any given moment, right?

So, when you factor that into the whole '100% survival rate' supplied by the Many-Worlds theory... well, you can't die, can you?  Your friends might think of you as dead, but there is always a universe where you survive the car accident/gunshot/ piano dropped from the 10th floor window of an apartment building.  What's even weirder is that from your perspective, nothing would have changed-- its not like you suddenly get transported into the universe where crows are finally sick of our shit and rise up against us (which is only a matter of time).  Everything else would be the same, outside of a few atoms being in a slightly different spot.

Death becomes something that happens to other people-- sometimes you're in the universe where someone else miraculously survives, sometimes you're in the one where that dude dies.  Well, technically, you'd be in both... but we're aware of only one universe at a time.. right?

Maybe.  No one has really done any work here-- as we're well outside the bounds of science at this point, but technically, every time an atom snapped out of a superimposed state, both realities that could have been from that state play out.  Most of these are not lethal, so there should be billions of 'yous' each in their own universe.  Now, there is some debate on how different each universe is.  After all, can subatomic particles make _that_ much a difference?

I don't know.

The psudo-science breaks down after a while-- there must be causes for death that are not involved with subatomic interactions, or then everyone would live forever in some play out of the universe, which doesn't fit.  And then you start realizing that any cause of death that we would contemplate has nothing to do with subatomic interactions, so we'd die in almost any case we could consider anyway.

The other issue is which universe is chosen for "you" when your life isn't on the line.  Assuming all universes aren't unfolding in perfect parallel, when someone else runs the experiment on themselves, do you see them die?  Technically, no, as there will always be a you in some universe that watches them live, but which one are you experiencing?  Who chooses that?  How?

So, yeah.  You might live forever because in some universe you always narrowly avoid death.  So, life isn't actually short at all.  Good luck explaining that tattoo of those Chinese characters that mean 'stupid american' to your grandchildren!

Quantum Improbability

Guess what's back!  November is over, I have another bizarre and objectively bad 50,000 word rough draft to my name that you can totally check out here (because I forgot to actually supply a link here during November): Foxtrot

It's not even technically done-- I skipped parts at the end and never actually finished writing the finale.  I'll get to that soon, I swear.

So, what should I write about to commemorate the blog still existing?  Yeah, I was thinking bizarre pseudo-scientific theories about immortality too, what a coincidence.

I'm not talking about how that life extending drug discovered a year and a half ago, although, holy shit, have you heard about that?  It's like a super-molecule, it takes on more middle age life shortening diseases than Bruce Lee takes on ninjas.  Also, any time your research group is "obese mice" you have to be doing something right, because fat mice look hilarious.

It would totally sound exactly like that fat nerd from high school. 

No, I'm talking about weird philosophical concepts that get their start in some strange phenomena we run into in quantum mechanics, because it turns out if you tack 'quantum' on top of anything, people will flip their shit first and think later, and most people skip the latter step by force of habit.  It's how McDonalds is still in business.

Which means I'm going to have to be careful and not end up like this asshole and get it all goddamn wrong.  Quantum Mechanics doesn't somehow prove the power of positive thinking, or God, and anyone who says that either is referencing the wrong experiment or trying to understand high level concepts without first even beginning to grasp the basics.

The experiment you're looking for about the power of positive thought was started by Masaru Emoto, who claimed that he could get water to form more regular repeating molecular shapes by taping, to beakers of water, the same messages your mom left you in your lunch box in elementary school if she loved you.  His experiments have never managed to work through a double-blind test, so all the other scientists make fun of him.  They also make fun of you when you buy into his bullshit.

So bear with me as we get a little technical for a bit, before dropping out to the wider implications that people actually want to read about.  Because if numbers and physics of very tiny sub atomic particles made you happy about life, you'd all be scientists.

Anyway, the theory is called quantum suicide, which is a little weird for a theory about immortality but again, bear with me.  It took me a while to dig up a real link, but as I understand it from people far smarter than me at Princeton, the basic idea is this-- actually, no wait, back up.  We should probably cover what we're talking about first.

Flip the board, Jensen!  They're not ready!  Also, did your wife kick you out of the house and make you sleep in the office again?

Quantum Mechanics is the attempt by science to understand what the heck his happening at the smallest level of existence-- at atomic and sub-atomic particles.  It turns out, electrons, neutrons, protons and all that jazz do not play by the same rules that you and I do when it comes to concepts like mass, acceleration, force and energy.  They regularly pants classical physics, like a bunch of stuck up brats making fun that old man in the corner who smells vaguely of prunes, talks about how things were 'back in his day', and may or may not just have pissed himself.

So, scientists designed an entire new body of physics, quantum mechanics, to deal with these assholes.  A large part of quantum mechanics is that we, uh, can only really guess at most of it.  Really-- at the smallest level of existence, nature is governed more by probabilities than actual hard numbers.  The problem is that sometimes these probabilities are sort of alive/dead either-or things.  You can't have a probability, it has to be one or the other.

Light is a classic example-- it's either a particle (called a photon) or a wave (called a wave).  It behaves drastically different as a particle or as a wave, and particles and waves themselves are mutually exclusive, you can't be both (one has mass and matter, the other is a transfer of energy).

Except, it could be either thing depending on how its feeling that day.  And sometimes, its both at the same time, until it makes up its mind (which it tends to do the moment a scientist tries to prove its always in one state)-- I'm sure you heard someone ranting about this once.  A lot of things in quantum mechanics are like this, the most popular being electron 'spin'.

Electrons spin either up or down, except when they are in a superimposed state and we have to say that they're both.  At the same time.  Just run with the paradox.

The idea is that if we were somehow to rig up a device that would kill you if electrons were to spin one way, and leave you alive if they spin the other way.  So... are you dead?  You've got a 50% chance of survival... but nothing would happen until someone actually came to check on you, and the electron 'decided' which way to spin, right?

You should recognize this as Schrodinger's Cat, except now you're the cat.  Also, you can thank me for the Internet love later.

Now, its time for some weird shit-- according to the Many-Worlds theory, you must be alive.  But to the experimenters, you could be dead.  Welcome to the mind-fuck, ladies and gents, so sit your ass down and pay attention.  There are coloring books for those of you who just lost higher-order brain function in back.

Yes, the bad man who kept saying things that should not be is gone.  Orange is a nice color.

Ok, so how the hell does that work?  Simple (oh, hai, blatant lie, how are you?).  The reason is that its not that the electron is in some 'undecided' state, its in both states, so by forcing a binary decision on it, you've actually rent the universe in two, one where the electron spins down, the other where the electron spins up.

You see, you've put yourself in a superimposed state-- one where you're dead, and one where you're alive.  And the alive state will persist, no matter how many times the experiment is run.

I'll talk about the bizarre effects of such a theory in another post, but have some other food for thought.  The other prevailing theory of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpetation more or less says that systems forced into such a superimposed setup automatically collapse, and the electron is forced to chose one or the other.  However, because no one really knows what state you're in until someone checks on you (going back to the many-worlds theory here), the mathematical consequences for both are the exact same.

According to Many-Worlds, you will always survive in some universe.  According to Cpenhagen, you can survive, its just very improbable that you do.  The only thing that is different is that you have made your own existence very improbable.

Weight Loss and You

Anyone who knows me in real life knows a few things about me:

1)  The cocaine is hidden in a secret cache, behind the loose brick three places from the top left corner
2)  I am one of the worst people in exsistence to give dieting/weight loss advice.

It's not that I'm in shape.  It's that I'm a thin, waifish thing, more akin to a piece of paper than a fellow human being.  And what makes it better/worse isn't that I have some kind of freak metabolism.  Although, I can eat a box of doughnuts for dinner and gain absolutely no weight, but I make up for it self-loathing.  No, it's better/worse because I also regularly only get one and a half legit meals a day.  I straight up do not eat food.

 The cocaine habit also helps with the whole weight loss thing 

So, not only can I eat a lot and get nothing for the trade, but I often don't eat.  I'm not trying to loose weight, I'd kill for an extra 20 lbs or so.  I just only eat when I'm hungry, and stop the moment I get full.  And due to the fact that I burn about 10 calories a day, my body has adjusted my food intake to pretty much nothing.

So, now that all of you with self-esteem problems hate me, I'm about to dump even more craptastic news on you.  Sometimes, when it rains, it pours and sometimes chocolate rain is just goddamn gross.

 Lock and load, I have some days to ruin

I have a question for you: where do you think fat comes from?  I'll wait for you to shout the answers at your monitors.  Never fear, I will hear you.  I always hear you.  I know what you've been doing late at night.  Yes,  you.  No, not that.  The other thing.  Yeah.  That one.  You really should just burn your rug, it's really not fit to be in a house anymore.  Pro tip.

Where was I.... oh, yeah, fat.  Most of you probably blame extra pounds on fast food, or lack of exercise.  So, by dieting and getting more exercise, you should be able to loose weight.  It can't be that hard.

I'm here to tell you that there is a good chance science says you're royally fucked.  The numbers have been run... and you can loose a small amount of weight.  Something along the lines of 10-15 lbs.  Anymore than that, though, and you'll have to face a very unfortunate truth.

There is no hard, statistical evidence that you can loose weight and not gain it back.  Read that as: statistically, the number of people who have lost weight and kept it off rounds down to 0.  Oh, its easy to loose weight- but so few people manage to actually keep the weight off that you might as well say that they're about as rare as unicorns.

So then, how much weight on average do people need to loose?  Well, a third (more or less) of the over 20 US population is obese.  And there is no goddamn way they will ever get to a healthy weight.  Look at some of the tables there-- if we make a small assumption that people are evenly distributed in each weight category, than over half the people that are only "overweight" will never get back to a healthy weight.

See, it works like this-  you want to get to sexy abs castle (or maybe "take up only one seat on an airplane" castle, whatever).  But the only way to get there is to swim through an inconceivably massive moat, one not measured in months, but in years, because you have to reprogram your body to deal with a lower intake of food and your body sucks at patches.

Oh, and the moat is filled with paranas.  Because you better believe your base survival instincts are thinking that you're constantly starving yourself to death every second you loose a pound.  Your own body resists your attempts to loose weight.  Its like when Harry Potter found out that the last part of Voldemort's soul was part of him, and the only way to get rid of it was to kill himself.

Shit, that metaphor turned dark on me.  Sorry about that.

Aww, way to ruin it, asshole!

Interestingly enough, it would seem some factors that make you end up being the size of whale aren't even really your fault.  Even the Center for Disease Control is aware that part of the reason why you're a fatass is your genetic makeup.  But before you go crying about how you rolled snake eyes in the genetic lottery, science, like always, has your back.

It all comes down to type of genetic molecule called a microRNA.  MicroRNAs were considered more or less scrap DNA that your body just had lying around, like the can of beans in your pantry.  You don't remember ever buying it, but it has always been there.  You'll be damned if you eat it, and yet you can't bring yourself to throw it out.

MicroRNAs are that, but with your genetic makeup.  Or so scientists thought.

It turns out that microRNAs are several kinds of important.  A particular pair of them- which both have long, neigh unspellable names- control how well cells burn through energy.  Which means that if your body has a lot of fat because your genetic makeup makes you store calories as fat like a walrus preparing for winter, by removing these two microRNA molecules from your cells, you'll burn more energy at rest.  And if your burning more energy doing nothing means that, by default, you must loose weight.

So, the future is basically a cross between The Biggest Looser and Gattica.

Scientific Method: You better believe it matters

I once, a few years back, was posed a question: "What do you think the most important scientific discovery ever was?"

Without hesitation, I replied, "The scientific method, of course."

This response got me looks, quiet chuckles, and mutterings of, "Seriously?  Out of all the scientific stuff, that?   Over, like, lasers? nerd."

Years later (because I don't hold grudges, and didn't spend the next few days crying into a bathtub with a bucket of ice cream or anything) this is my reply.  It's long winded and has some required reading before we dig into the subject, but I do stand by the scientific method as the most important scientific discovery to have ever happened, and further- the scientific method is the single most important discovery to happen in the history of humanity, and the only way in which we will be able to solve some of the hardest problems that plague our world (or just the United States of America) today (see: global warming, economic slump, massive wealth gap between the rich and the poor, etc).

First things first, let me get all the obvious schematics out of the way.  I know someone is going to be calling foul on technicalities (because the silly little technical details will be all they can grasp with, mentally).

Obviously, the scientific method (or SM for short) required quite a bit of human progress before it even became able to be considered.  [ed: please don't confuse SM with S&M.  Wait, damnit, I made the correlation easier.  Forget I typed that.  But don't, because don't confuse them.]  You could run a very weak (but sound) argument that any of the technologies or revolutions in understanding that happened before SM are more important than SM because with out them, no SM.  Fine.

The (also unstable) counter argument is that you don't, in fact, know what SM requires to be discovered, so you can't list other discoveries as pre-requisites.  Discoveries in real life don't actually work like a technology tree from the Civilization series.  Its why two men can both independently discover calculus at about the same time, and spend a good chunk of the rest of their lives trying to discredit the other.  Which is why calculus symbols seem to be totally random.

Got that? Great, now that we can safely (sorta) say that you can't judge a discovery based on what was discovered before it, its time to go through part II of stuff we need to do before getting to the good stuff: read this article.    But don't just read it-- you'll need to ponder and at least acknowledge its conclusion.  I didn't say accept-- if it really cuts you to the core that the stories you listen to affect you on a subconsciousness and fundamental level, then you don't have to agree.

But you do have to get behind the idea that the conclusions might be true.  It is on you to disprove them, and if you can't, then you either:

A) need to work harder in your disproof/counter proof
B) deal with the fact that this article may, in fact, be true.

Under no circumstances are you allowed to pick:
C) brush the article off because it conflicts with what I believe about myself and pretend like I didn't read it

And you absolutely are not allowed to even think about picking:
D) get personally offended by the article, decide that is is the villain and start actively crusading against it, proof or no proof be damned.

If you pick D, by the way, the article proves its point.  C may also prove the article's point, but its more roundabout and complicated.  Either way, if you pick C/D, you won't get any more out of this.  You've made up your mind, and no amount of logic I can show you will change that.  Ever.  Go home, brew yourself a nice cup of tea, sit down, and try to piece out why you're so depressed all the time.

I want to draw attention to A/B-- note how both these options are the only correct way to interpret new information that may conflict with your knee-jerk reaction to the article.  Also notice how this is basically mimicking the scientific method, more importantly, how the scientific method deals with conclusions.

I'm going to skip the part of this that tells you what SM is and how it works.  You've all been through grade school science, you know it.  If you don't, go back to working on your homework, buster.  Mother will be in by 8:30pm to put you to bed, so if you want to do anything fun tonight, you better get cracking.

Conclusions from an experiment, according to SM, draw two responses- the experiment confirms your hypothesis, test again or the experiment rejects your hypothesis, test again.  Now replace hypothesis with "preconceived beliefs", experiment with "article" and test again with "find proof" and suddenly, we have a very clear model as to how to go about dealing with new information.

If you're willing to buy into the fact that we have notions about everything before we get information it (and, if you're more than five, you do, so you better), then this boils down to:

get new information --> agree --> find backing material

or

get new information --> disagree --> find backing material

In the event backing material can not be found, then you need to change how you view the new information, or search harder.  I want to stress here- searching harder is always an option.  Enstien hated quantum mechanics and spent his entire life rejecting the idea (as far as I know anyway, I could be wrong.  Enstien is a hotbed of misquotes).

He also spent his entire life trying to prove it wrong.  He ended up being unable to-- the Hesienburg uncertenty principle stands to this day.

But, look at all this takes out of new information.  You're not trying to fit things into a narrative structure, you're not trying to anthropomorphize your data into good guys and bad guys.  There is just information, what you think about it, and backing up your claim.  That's it.

It's neat, clean and simple, and entirely removes all the crazy bullshit where you build a filter between yourself and the world, and you try to get the world to fit.  The world either won't fit (and then you end up with things like a fast food chain having a stance on gay marriage) or you'll have to do all sorts of absurd things to make it fit (like oppose gay marriage based on the fact that we use the word "marriage", but you'd be fine if they used any other word, like "civil-companion-joint-love-venture" or something).

It works for personal problems too-- stop trying to see all of your ventures as uphill struggles of some bold hero going against the odds and more in terms of the SM.  I'll use weight loss as an example:

I'm trying to loose weight, but today I found out despite all my efforts, I've gained a pound.  This is absurd, I disagree with this-- I've been working so hard to loose weight!  But, when I reflect about it, maybe I'm eating more calories than I think I am-- HOLY SHIT, A DOUBLE QUARTER POUNDER HAS WHAT?!?  Ok, lets not do that and try the experiment again-- this time, I won't get a "tiny snack" at McDonalds, no matter what their commercials say.

Sometimes it works against you too-- I wanted to run a post a while about how hacking the power grid was crazy, based on how I disagreed with an article that claimed it possible.  But when I went to get my own research done to counter it, I found that, hey, holy shit, hackers could totally disrupt the power grid on a terrifyingly large scale.  Balls.

Needless to say, that post was never used and I needed to apologize to someone for laughing at them.  It was a humbling moment.

It all boils down to: information, stance, attempt to back that stance.  There is another huge upside (despite the fact that it takes out all the story-telling bias bullshit):
You always have a plan, or a goal.

With an SM-based world view, your intake of information is active, rather than passive.  You challenge what you're told, and actively search for an interpitation of information that fits the way things actually are.  But when you map it back on to your own life, you're no longer searching for meaning in what you do.  You're no longer trying to live up to the monstrous expectation that you're a hero in some great story, and that what you do will change the world.  There is no troublesome quest for purpose, no great crusade to embark upon.

There is just information, your stance, and trying to resolve your stance against that information.  Or, maybe putting it a different way:

Just the current life you are living, how that makes you feel, and what to do about it.

Aristotle wrote that the unexamed life wasn't worth living for a human being.  He also wrote the only way to find happiness was to contemplate life all day and that tall women were always prettier than short women.  As many of the ancient Greek philosophers, he gets personal bias tangled up in objective analyses, but he was, in fact, on to something.  You need to be able to objectively view your own life in order to get the correct reaction from it.

Step away from the ideas of personal obligation when it comes to life goals.  There is no way to win at life- the only obligations you are required to fulfill are the ones you set out for yourself, which you are allowed to change.  If you're honestly happiest living as a bum off of welfare, then shit, why are you still on the Internet?  You've got some food stamps to collect.

And that's the lesson for today, folks.  I'm writing again on a regular basis, after several months of needed downtime, I'm back, bitches.

SOPA and PIPA

I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little scared of this post.

The pair of legislation- SOPA and PIPA in the US House and Senate- is not an easy thing to tackle.  This isn't like finding fun facts about crows or looking at statistics in porn or bitching about the space program or defending the color purple.

This stuff is serious.  This stuff is a legit issue.

I was going to ignore it, or tactfully dance around it while talking about other things, but then the Internet went and blacked the hell out, making it a big issue.  As they rightfully should have.  But I can't just ignore it anymore- and neither, as a blog reader, can you.

Because it's just plain ignorant to do so now.  That's the opposite of what the blog was started to do.  Time to man up.

Just like Jesus would have wanted

In brief summery, the bills are an attempt stop online piracy.  They allow the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of copyright infringement, or accused of spreading copyright infringement.  The court order could include barring online advertising from the website, barring search engines from linking to the website and requiring Internet Service Providers to block the website.

Also, it makes the streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison.  Immunity is given to websites that help in rooting out online piracy, and given to websites that unknowingly host copyright infringing content.  Unknowing websites would still be liable for damages, however.

I tried to untangle the legalese, promise.

Lets get one thing out of the way- copyright infringement is bad news bears.  Period.  On a fundamental level, it's the theft of an idea.  I do not support that- if I found someone copying all my blog posts, I'd be a little pissed off.

I take it back, I'd be amused... unless they had more readers than I did.  Then I'd be calling in fire and brimstone like a vengeful Disney villain.

How I would try to stop copyright infringement.  This is also why I'm not good at politics

That being said, there are a few key points in the summary that leave me feeling like I swallowed cat vomit on purpose.

First, it doesn't sit well with me (much like cat vomit) that copyright holders can seek these court orders.  I'd feel a little better about the whole thing if they needed to go through a more complicated process with the Justice Department that involves some sort of proof of malicious intent/desire to profit.

I'm a big fan of due process and making sure some fictional amoral company isn't out to try and ruin it's competitors with this bill.  Which would be all the companies, as CEOs are generally goddamn psychopaths.

The next two issues are more complicated.  I'll handle the technical one first, then the legal one, and if you're not asleep by then I have some high grade chloroform.

The technical problems all stem from the whole "ISP's blocking websites" part.  Believe it or not, your ISP does not monitor your traffic- in fact, generally, your ISP could care less about what websites you visit.  Actually storing and checking all of that information would be a royal pain in the ass.

Think about the steps required to validate traffic for a second:
First, intercept every packet of data that goes through an ISP's gateway.  The largest size a packet can be is 1.5 Mb.  That's _tiny_ in today's web, a 30 second YouTube video could have up to three thousand of these packets (not all the packets are actual video data- there is a bit of overhead).

Never you mind the amount of data that an online game might generate.

Next, check the IP destination address of every packet.  This is easier than you might think, because IP addresses are always stored in the same place.  After that, compare the IP address to some table of blacklisted websites, and if you get  a match, drop or (even worse) reroute the packet or generate a reply that explains the content you're trying to access is blacklisted.

That's a lot of work.  I'll use numbers to help quantify how much effort just got placed on ISPs.  Let's say there are 10,000 blacklisted websites after SOPA gets passed.  IP addresses do map to a general ordering (numerically), so the number of steps it would take to search the list for a match is log(10,000), or 4.

That doesn't seem like a lot, you say.  But watch.

Every packet has to be checked, so our fictional you tube video would have to go though 12,000 steps, plus the steps required for the request packet (under the best circumstances, 4).  And it would have to undergo all these steps at each new gateway hop.

I did a trace route on my laptop on my university's network accessing part of my university's website.  I had to go through three hops to get there.

This gives us a grand total of something like 36,012 additional steps for a 30 second clip of How I Met Your Mother if you happened to be on the same network the video was hosted on.

I like to think Barney would appreciate the amount of computational complexity required to watch him

And that's not even the part of the bill anyone is complaining about from a technical side.  All the math geeks are more worried about the extra load on DNS servers as they now have to blacklist name queries for copyright infringing content.  That shit is easy (as DNS request packets are singular, leading up to only 24 additional steps).  But you'd need to do the IP based scanning and blocking as well, or else we'd just go back to memorizing the IP addresses and not the URLs of our favorite pirate websites.

And yes, this means DNS packets would have to get IP scanned, so for our example, that's now 288 more steps.  You see how this stuff ramps up very quickly.

The fact is, when you look at the sheer amount of traffic on the Internet, it doesn't make any sense to try and filter all of it.  God forbid you start adding to the load by sending reply packets back saying that a website was blocked, especially if the ISPs end up getting staggered (ISP blacklists get de-standardized, as one ISP starts blocking a website another ISP doesn't know about).

And again, I haven't even started on the first amendment stuff or privacy stuff yet, so lets dig into that, shall we?

First, a picture:

It's a new thing- brass bands and rap.  The guy in the center is gonna lay down some phat rhymes

Now, lets play a fun game- how does this violate SOPA?

If you answered, it doesn't, stop using your brain and really look.  No, not at the subject of the picture, at the background.  That's the Foot Locker logo back there, and as such, is copyrighted.  I assure you, no one took a picture of street performers and then checked with Foot Locker if it was OK to post online.

You see, with the language of the bill at it's current spot, stuff like this (which isn't a bad picture, to be honest) would be taken down along with all the other pirate websites.  This is how SOPA is purposed to work.

And within lies the rub- intellectual property (what SOPA is really trying to protect) is a very hard thing to define.  When are you simply taking pictures in front of a giant fucking sign, and when are you actively trying to steal the idea on the sign?  What it all comes down to, at some point, we- as a culture- lost respect for artists.

That's what this is all about- not corporations trying to get money, not about the US trying to censor things.  It's about art (and the most popular way to consume art, entertainment).  At some point (right around when Napster started) we stopped giving any value to creative efforts.  Why bother paying for them when we could get them for free, after all?

It was a bitch having to go to the store and actually pick out a song we wanted to hear.  But you did it anyway, you got the CD just to find out that all the other tracks sucked ass.

Why do all of that when you could get the song you actually wanted for free?  Why just stop at one song for free, might as well get the whole album too.  Hell, screw that, just get the entire disography, maybe you'll dig the sucky parts later.  Never any thought like, "wait- maybe the person on the other end needs money to survive?  And that if I value something, maybe I should pay for it?"

This isn't a problem with other things (like food.  Or computers).  We seem to have the market concept down when it comes to tangible, actual things.  But after we cheapened music, we cheapened software- video games, primarily.  Then we cheapened images (do Google searches for copying images from devantART).

Something like SOPA or PIPA needs to exist to try and give value back to creative efforts.  There are ways for creative efforts to exist within this new "entertainment is a free right" society we have now- just look at My Little Pony for a great example- but it shouldn't be that way.  I don't know the right answer. I do know the wrong one, however.

SOPA and PIPA are well meaning, but at the end of the day, impractical and silly.  I think that with some more discussion, perhaps some temperance and moderation- we can find a way to make everyone happy.

Or they'll send me back to magic kindergarden...

First things first, sorry about yesterday.  The Internet still doesn't work at my house because I have made abosultly no move to try and fix it.  I blame the fact that my uncle gave me ALL THE BOOKS I EVER WANTED for Christmas, and I'm basically a bookoholic.  There is no middle ground for me, just like there is no "drinking for taste" for the drunk.

One sip/sentence, and we're fucked up beyond all reason.

George R.R. Martin is ruining my life

So, I'm crouching here, in my neighbor's fucking bushes with my netbook and my trusty 8 gb flash drive, hacking his WPA2 protected password to get on his wifi, and because I don't want to get caught in the act (not that he knows how, but one can never be to careful...) I'm also covering my tracks by pretending to be one of his own computers.  It's less tricky than it sounds, to be honest.

Because the Starks would love the current weather, and I don't have time to actually research a cool post, I'm going to go over the much easier task of hacking a WEP password using some cool programs anyone can download.

I give you power tonight.  Tonight you become men.

If reading isn't your thing, check the video version out.

To start, your hardware sucks and needs upgrading.  You'll need a wireless adapter that can inject packets, and the one that comes with your computer can't do that, Dave.  They're super cheap (some dude is selling his favorite brand of air-crack router for $12 on e-bay).  I recommend the Alfa AWUS036H, but There are tons of options out there.

Next, you'll need to boot to backtrack- which is a version of the Linux operating system.  You can create a boot CD, or install it on a flash drive, so you can use it without needing to isntall it on your system.Check here for how to do this, I'm getting really damn cold and don't feel like going into it.  Be warned, backtrack is based in UNIX, so you'll need to put your big boy pants on and handle a real operating system.

Now, after you boot into backtrack, open up the provided comand prompt, Konsole, and start typing in commands.  This is known as the fun part.  It's a 10 step process, so be warned- this shit is a bit advanced.  I have faith in none of you being retarded, however.  All in all, the thing you need most is patence.  And don't suck at typing.
To start, you'll want to type: airmon-ng

This should return a list of network interfaces.  Pick the shiny new you you just bought to break into people's wireless- and keep track of the name.  You'll want to use the name in palce of the (interface) tags for these next few lines:

airmon-ng stop (interface)
ifconfig (interface) down
macchanger --mac 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)
airmon-ng start (interface)

Conrats!  You now look like you are a new computer on the interface with the MAC address of 00:11:22:33:44:55.  MAC addresses are unique addresses given to each computer when they're manufactured.  They're hardware enforced, so you can't change yours after you get your PC, but you can pretend you have a different one (which is what you're doing now).

Time to pick a victim.  The next command is:
airodump-ng (interface)

This will return a list of the wireless networks around you.  Figure out which one you want to hack, then type:

airodump-ng -c (channel) -w (file name) --bssid (bssid) (interface)

(channel) is your network's channel, (file name) is something descriptive you can remember later, (bssid) is the BSSID of the network you want to hack and (interface) is the same as always.

Leave the result you get from that command be.  Open a new window and type:
aireplay-ng -1 0 -a (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 -e (essid) (interface)

The new tag (essid) is the SSID of the network you want to crack.  This also should have been visible when you went hunting for a victim a few steps back.  What you've done, in a nutshell, is let yourself snoop on the network.  Now its time to generate a ton of traffic to create a crack to get you in for real.  Next step, type:
aireplay-ng -3 -b (bssid) -h 00:11:22:33:44:55 (interface)

Still with me? That's fantastic! What we've done here is generate extra router traffic to speed up the crack.  However, even with the extra traffic, this still takes about one forever.  Leave.  Get a sandwitch.  Go read a book.  You'll want to wait until #Data goes over 10k.  After that happens, open a third konsole window and type the last command:
aircrack-ng -b (bssid) (file name-01.cap)

If the coding gods are with you, you'll get a KEY FOUND message (if not, you'll need to collect more data.  Make another sandwitch or play Minecraft or something).   The WEP key will appear next to the KEY FOUND, just enter it in without the colons and congratulate yourself, you just broke into a wireless network.

DISCLAMER: Stealing and breaking and entering are bad.  My neighbor and I are very good friends, I wouldn't be breaking into his wireless if I wasn't sure he wouldn't really mind.   This is a handy trick if you ever forget your WEP key and don't want to have to reset everything to get it (maybe you share a network with other people and bringing the whole thing down would be very bad).

I'm off to bed... happy hacking!

Copyright laws and IPs- finally comming around to haunt the Internet

I do believe it was Shakespeare who first uttered the legendary "This shit writes itself" quote, but it could have been Mark Twain.

Because both writers are so damn similar and everything.  I was worried this was going to be the first day I would miss my posting schedule without a forwarding or at least  an apology.  It's 9:23 right now my time, I've been in a pair of restricted labs all day and I won't lie, writing up something for the blog slipped my mind.

This is one of the labs I work in.  You may now place bets on what I do.

I could have tried to pirate the post.  Steal someone else's idea, hope to the flying spaghetti monster that they actually did decent research and just copy and paste.  It would be a little fitting, to be honest.  Considering how much piracy and file sharing goes on the Internet these days, a stolen blog post would be really funny in a not-funny-at-all hipsterish way.

But I hear hipsters don't like mathematics (the language that describes the universe) because it's too mainstream (the entire universe digs it), so they can go screw themselves as far as I'm concerned.  Also, I hear hipsters find sex to mainstream, so be prepared to have a "physical-love-conjuncture" instead.  Because that's so romantic.

Yeah, a nerd is calling out a hispter for sucking at romance.  It may not get any more ironic... aw, shit.

Anyway, I didn't have to go hipsterfy myself because I got more lucky than the Lucky Charms mascot, who isn't lucky that he still has his cereal- he has magic for that- but is incredibly lucky those kids haven't murdered the hell out of him yet.  Everyone knows a young child will do what it takes for marshmallows.  Whatever. It. Takes.

Now that I look at a box, Lucky's lucky his cocaine high hasn't ended yet

So, away from making fun of cereal box mascots and back to tech.  It turns out that the RIAA pirates the living fuck out of TV shows.  How many many TV shows?  Try something along the lines of nine million dollars worth of TV shows.

Daaaaaamn.  That takes dedication.  Like, wow.  You have to be intentionally creating things just to steal them to steal that much.  Oh wait- it was full seasons of just Dexter?  Just that one show?  That was worth nine million dollars?

Now, this is mildly unfair to RIAA- because to get to nine million, we have to play by their own outrageous rules.  In order for one to that high, you simply use the RIAA guidelines that the shareholders can sue for $150,000 dollars an episode, or maybe more, depending on how you look at the phrase "copyrighted works".  Is each word copyrighted?  Each line?  How about the opening theme, is that an additional one hundred and fifty thousand dollars?  Or any original bit of music from the sound track?

Considering the recent debacle with the Megaupload song and Universal, a lot of old copyright protection techniques just seem retarded in this day and age.

Also, Youtube (and by extension, Google) doesn't have a soul or a lick of backbone, as apparently Universal has a contract with Youtube that lets them use the content management system to take down videos that have nothing to do with copyright infringement.

Meanwhile, people who fight for a traditional implementation of copyright law are often found the biggest perpetrators of file sharing- movie studios are often caught pirating their own movies.

The whole damn thing is sorta ironic- maybe the hipsters and I have more in common than I like.

Google vs Theoretical Quantum Physics, round one...

I made a promise to myself when I stared this blog.  Nothing serious, it wasn't like I hooked my little fingers together and made a pinkie promise with myself.

Also, if there is ever a promise you never, ever back out of, it's a pinkie promise.  That is the most legit kind of promise out there.  You keep them, even if you're dying because a rock from space hit you in the spleen and you're dying from complications due to infection.  You keep that damn pinkie promise to pick up your little sister from soccer practice and you do it with a smile.

Back on subject, I promised I wouldn't do quantum physics- namely, I wouldn't do posts on quantum entanglement, or quantum teleportation.  For a few reasons, the first being that it is not nearly as cool as it sounds, and two, because it's been talked about to death.  Any and all awesome that it once contained has been bled out slow news day reporters (who are probably vampires in secret, have you seen how pale they look?) and people getting confused and thinking that it has anything to do with the LHC, or more commonly known as the black hole machine.

Point: It does sorta look like an entry portal for Cuthulu

But, I break all my (non-pinkie related) promises, so here is a very quick and dirty primer on quantum entanglement, so we can get to the good stuff.  Quantum entanglement is the synching up of electrons across how ever far they damn please.  After scientists have forced a pair of electrons to synch up, whatever they do to one electron is done to the other.  This is commonly tested with electron "spin".

Note: Spin isn't how the electron spins.  See why I didn't want to do a post on this?  Friggin' theoretical physicists can't name things for shit.  It's actually how the plar-- you don't need to know any of this to get it later.  Just remember that when scientists change the "spin" on one electron, the other one changes too.  Instantaneously.  No distance lag, no time lag.

Yeah, it really does make absolutely no goddamn sense.

Here is some artist's picture representation of it.  Note how this also makes no goddamn sense

"Spin" is a handy property because it only has two values.  We'll call those values 0 and 1.  You know what else uses 0's and 1's in everything it does?  Its a marvel of the modern world, ubiquitous on all continents including Antarctica.  Your using it right now, and it isn't an ingredient in jello roofies.

It's your computer- which does all the awesome things it does based on binary, which is a way to count that only uses 0 and 1.  See where I'm going yet?  If we were to build a computer out of quantum entanglement, we could get data to go even faster than it already does.  We're vaguely starting to see the limits of using electricity (which flows at the speed of light).  Quantum entanglement goes even faster than that.

Pictured: Superman being slower than quantum entanglement.  Because we can see him.

Why does any of this matter?  Because some guys recently figured out how to copy Google's search algorithm using quantum entanglement.  As you know, that algorithm was the reason why Google became the all-Father of the Internet, the great god that looms over us all and dispenses us with information and silly search histories if we ask nicely.  So, when (because who are we kidding if.  These are scientists we're talking about, they're damn crazy enough to get it working) the quantum net comes online, we'll already have the greatest search algorithm in place to view it.

And they're also Spanish.  You heard it here first- Spain is totally going to ransom off the new quantum net in a desperate bid to become a relevant country again.

So, you can be any video game character.... (part 2)

Ok, I can't possibly go through all the games I sifted through to answer this question.  I had an easier time picking out my favorite super power for christsakes.

In the overwhelming majority of games, characters come close but don't quite get there.  Either the character in question has to handle things at far earlier an age I'd actually want to handle that shit at, or the world in question has an alarming flaw that's never actually wrapped up at the credits or the character in question looks retarded.

Spoilers be ahead.  So don't read past this point if that's an issue for you.

An example, Sora from Kingdom Hearts is great until you realize his parents got murdered by the heartless at 14, he spends most of his journey with only two friends (one is a bit of a dick and the other one is short bus special) and gets his memories erased and then reconstructed, which kinda screws up the whole system.

At the end of the day, I've got it narrowed down to two.  Both make me feel like I'm gaming the system at some point, which means I don't really like any of these answers, but they fit the best.  First up, a Final Fantasy title.  I know, I said I gave up on the series.  I lied.  Citations are the only things that keep me honest.  I'm a human Wikipedia.
 

I may really like insane outfits.  Nothing Marche is wearing makes any sense, and I want it so bad.

The character in question is Marche from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.  Marche is awesome- he starts out as an average, everyday kid that is magically transported into the world of Ivalice (a common Final Fantasy location), in which you get all your awesome Final Fantasy mainstays.  Plus, with the clan system, you're not stuck hanging out with the same idiots that make up your starting party, which lets you *gasp* actually pick your friends. 

Marche happens to be a human, which means he gets access to almost all the skills in the entire game, letting him mix it up with just about whatever he wants.  He's also magically competent, so no worry about building up a skill set.  Plus, he starts the game in "school", so I'm invoking my right to make him a senior and 18, which isn't that young.

The problems start to form with the plot- although having Marche go through the game as a player is amazingly rewarding (its got an fantastic plot dealing with teen angst, bullying, and dysfunctional families), I wouldn't want to do any of that.  Why?  Because at the conclusion of the game, Marche takes the high road and returns to the normal world, escaping from the fantasy land that was conjured up by his friend, Mewt.  That sorta defeats the purpose of doing all of this in the first place, as hey, I can be me in the real world already.  So, if I can opt to ignore the plot (or follow it to a point and stop, as I'm the one in control of these characters), then Marche wins.

If the background music actually plays while I'm in universe, Baldur's Gate wins hands down.

The next big iffy is the protagonist from the Baldur's Gate games.  Baldur's Gate has everything I'd ever want in a fantasy title- wizards able to cast incredible spells, fantastic monsters, breathtaking locations,and brilliant characters I'd love to meet in real life.  I'ts a rich place I'd kill to spend an afternoon in- and in fact, I've played through the series more than once.  I've spent more than just an afternoon there.

The issues with the Baldur's Gate games and why they don't quite work are two-fold:
1) They're based on a fantasy setting that has been referenced in countless table top games and books, which may disqualify it.  The Forgotten Realms is practically  a watchword amongst nerds these days, and that means its scope and complexity is a lot larger than anything you could conjure up in a video game.
2) The protagonist isn't really a character and more of an extension of they player.  He has no set dialogue, your actions make him who he is.  In essence, I'm not assuming a character, I'm porting myself to a fantasy setting- and I happen to be plot relevant.  It just feels like cheating somehow.

I know, I'm forgetting like 9999 (everyone knows numbers don't go higher than that) games.  I've probably forgotten someone that would totally kick the crap out of these two.  I'm not even that happy with these two choices.

Maybe I'm just an optimist or stupid lucky, but I think I sorta prefer meatspace than actually living in any video game, even for just a little while.  Sure it might be nice to take a trip to the Kokiri forest, but I'd rather go to Yellowstone National Park.  It doesn't have fairies but it does have deer.  And have you ever been close enough to a semi-wild stag to touch it?  I have- it's a far more potent experience than Navi bitching at you.

Doing this has made me realize that there is something fantastic about reality.  Its far deeper, more complex and more wonderful than any tale told or place imagined.  Middle Earth has nothing on the Middle East.

Alright, I'm done being philosophical an' shit.  Blame it on a lack of sleep or something.  Back to robot apocalypse based posts on Thursday!

So, if you could be any videogame character... (part 1)

So, this other blog that I follow did a post about how the author would totally be Link from the Legend of Zelda series if he could be any video game character. Which I would never choose because Hyrule has an unfortunate lack of indoor plumbing.  But, I guess its an important question.

If I could be any video game character, who would I be?  Oh.  Um.  This is going to be hard.

First, lets lay down some ground rules:
1) This is video games ONLY.  Which means as much as I adore Twilight Sparkle, she's is off the list.  Ditto for Locke from Lost, or Commander Sinclair from Babylon 5.  While these are all awesome people I would totally be, they are from TV shows, and there are more than enough of video games to tackle.

2) Gotta be from a video game or video game "first" property.  Which means I can't use Lord Of The Rings, because those were books that were made into movies that were made into games.  However, Resident Evil is fair game because those were games made into shitty movies and even shittier spin off novels.  If I let myself use all the lincenced video games out there, we'd never, ever finish.

3) We're looking at characters, not games.  So, when applicable, I'll reference a series as a whole rather than an individual game.  This is another measure to take to make sure I can actually finish this list.

4)When I say "be a character" I'm referring to assuming that character's skill set at the outset of the game, along with their potential and learning curves.  Essentially, I'm just plastering my mental state onto the character in question, so if they start out as incompetent and get stronger, that's what would happen to me.  The big caveat here is that if a character is younger, I'd use my mental state from when I was the same age.  So, its 14 year old me in Sora's body, and my infant ass in Baby Mario.

I don't think I could possibly have been as annoying as that goddamn scream though

*WARNING*  I'm probably going to spoil things.  Several reasons are plot/character relevant, and I'm gonna delve into them if we're going to figure this out.

So, we might as well start with my favorite series, Final Fantasy.  Just narrowing down the series is hard enough, but from sheer badass potential, I'd probably have to choose between characters from VI, VII, and X. 

The characters are awesome- I'd rock as Terra from VI (The best spellcaster ever and half demi-god, with the ability to go super sayan), Cid from VII (I'm the nerd that will summon dragons and call down a rocket barrage from my kick ass airship) and Auron from X (If you look up badass in the dictionary, its just a picture of Auron with the words "'nuff said").

However, there is also something very wrong about all of these amazing settings that eliminate them: the worlds in which they are really screwed up.  In VI, the world goddamn ends at one point and everyone is left picking up the scraps.  VII's massive plot hole inducing ending hints at the destruction of all humanity and the people in X have all been emotionally scared by growing up living in fear of a giant whale monster that ended civilization at one point, and sticks around to screw with the survivors.  Yeah, I don't think I'd want to live there, kthxbai.

Not even impossible clothes and airships can save you.  I'm sorry.

Well, what about Mario from the plethora of games he's stared in?  He's basically an international celebrity at this point, has a strong love interest with royalty, and seems to go for at least a year or so of peaceful living between Bowser launching incompetent attacks.

I'm going to go the vain route here in elimination: Mario looks sorta retarded.  Also, he's an Italian stereotype.  And I'm not really down with mustaches, overalls, or being pudgy despite the miles of running.

Alright, I guess I'll have to eliminate Link too.  And for a better reason than because that guy did it (although, that is my primary motivation here). Its the simple fact that, as a 12 year old, saving the world is kind of a massive job.  That's a lot of stress and pressure, which if I was a bit older, I'd probably be able to cope with.  But at 12?  I haven't done any of this shit before, and you want me to kill the great big evil pig?  I think I'm just going to cry in a corner, thank you very much.

I was still  trying to figure out how to talk to girls at 12, and you want me to fight that?  With a sword?  I haven't developed enough sarcasm to handle this right now.

After that, most of the Nintendo games loose appeal do to the fact they have installments I didn't enjoy playing though, so why on Earth would I want to actually be any of those people?

Fuck, I'm hardly closer than when I started.  Well, tune in next post to get an answer to this great age old question.

DIY Technology!

A lot can happen in a garage.  Its a very capable space, able to do a lot besides holding a car and the dead bodies. Garages are a combination of a storage space, workbench space and light up a joint space.  What more can you possibly ask from a room?

Great things have happened in garages.  Google was pretty much started up in one.  However, just because you own a garage doesn't mean great things will happen.  Only you hold the keys to putting that wonderous space to good use.  Only you can do awesome things in your garage.

And no, having a terabyte of porn in paper form doesn't count as awesome.  It does mean you probably don't need that double or queen size bed, though

"But," I'm imaging you crying, "how?  How can I do amazing things in my garage?  What do I do?"

Welcome to the dojo, young one.  Come, sit and you shall learn what awesome can done in a garage.  You'll want to loose any and all regard for personal safety and develop some sort of untreated antisocial personality disorder before we continue.  I figure that shouldn't be to hard.  No rush.  I'll wait.

Done?  Sweet.  Lets start with lightning.  Or namely, a tesla coil.

For those of you who don't know, tesla coils are those cool things you see in science fiction movies that shoot lightning bolts.  Except they totally aren't science fiction, but still totally shoot lightning bolts.  By lining up a pair of coils, and wiring one up to a voltage generator and a capacitance, you can shoot sparks between the coils.  Make the frequencies of the resistances on the coils match, and you can get the voltage to skyrocket between the gap.

For everyone whose eyes just glazed over at that last sentence, it looks like this:

Thor just peed his his pants a little bit

As proof that awesomeness can be distributed, Dr. Electric (He calls himself that.  I make it a policy to not antagonize future super villains.) has the circuit diagrams for free on the web.  As you might have guessed, however, the parts required to spew lighting several feet in all directions does cost more than a recent graduate from an arts college can pay for, so here's a version made out of shit someone found dumpster diving.  Its still pretty formidable, getting up to 250,000 volts, which is approximately 100 times more voltage than your household current.

Plus, you liberal arts majors get practice in dumpster diving, an invaluable skill to you post graduation.

But what if lighting isn't quite your element?  I get it, I get it, you're more of a fire person.  Fire is also very, very cool.  Now, these next set of questions are for all you budding young arsonists out there.  What is cooler than fire?  The correct answer is flame throwers.  What are cooler than flame throwers?

Ok, the technically correct answer here is dragons.  But wrist mounted flamethrowers come pretty close.

10 bucks on this kid being behind the California wildfires

In what is a civil lawsuit just waiting to happen, there are several models of DIY wrist mounted flamethrowers out there on the web.  Which is fantastic, because the US department of defense in 1978 basically said, "You know what, screw flamethrowers.  Water boarding is cool, but flamethrowers?  That shit's horrific.  We're not using those anymore."  Which is doubly fantastic as there is no ban on actually owning a flame thrower in the US, with a few states requiring a permit.

This blog would be nothing if I don't become your enabler in doing something even the US military thinks is downright inhumane.  You can thank me someday if we ever meet.

I think you'll melt your own face off first, but don't let that stop you.

Ok, ok, wrist mounted flame throwers and lightning spewing towers are pretty cool, but you want to go bigger.  You've got better plans than these child toys.  You've got a destiny.  You want something that if it goes wrong, it won't just ruin your life, but ruin the lives of everyone in your neighborhood.

You want a nuclear fusion reactor.

The goddamn sun.  In your garage.

Now, mind you, this is sort of a "because I fucking can" type project.  Fusion reactors don't actually generate more power than they require to hit critical mass, but you can say you made something hit critical mass.  What more do you want from your DIY project?

Plus, this one comes with helpful warnings like, "Don't touch any exposed wires because you'll die".  Even better, if you push the reactor enough, the x-rays will give you cancer right through stainless steel, so you'll want some lead protection for this.  Unless, of course, lung cancer sounds like an attractive option at that point.

And what could possibly go wrong?  I mean its not like boy scouts don't try this and end up giving their entire neighborhood a nice healthy dose of radiation or anything.  Yay, cancer for everyone!