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Penguin Plane Spotters Intrigue Scientists
Apparently penguins watching planes fall over backwards.

Dr Richard Stone of the British Antarctic Survey told Reuters that scientists were concerned that low-flying aircraft could cause stress among penguins and affect their breeding performance.

``There may be an increase in heart rate as helicopters fly over,'' Stone said.

``The worst possible effect is that there would be a reduction in their breeding performance. If they were incubating eggs this could be quite devastating for them.''

Also,

I have a friend with a car who is white.
I have a friend with a car that is white.
Thursday, November 2, 2000

Columbia is a war zone

Since January 1998, 34 elected mayors have been killed.

Since December 1998, 18 mayors have been pushed to quit, 50 have been informed that they are "military targets" of different factions, 26 are administering their municipalities from a distance (providing orders by telephone from the safety of a big city), and more than 100 mayors have been kidnapped.

Dreaming about Tetris

Tuesday, October 31, 2000

Erdös was a strange strange man
Erdös was a speed freak. That explains quite a lot of his strangeness.

"I remember clearly," he said. "I had just gone to England to study. It was teatime and bread was served. I was too embarrassed to admit that I had never buttered it. I tried. It wasn't so hard."

"Another time, in Newark airport, Erdös asked me how hard it was to go up a down escalator. I told him it could be done and I demonstrated. 'That was harder than I thought,' I said. 'That looks easy,' he said. 'I'm, sure you couldn't do it,' I said. 'That's ridiculous,' he said. 'Of course I can.'

"Erdös took about four steps up the escalator and then fell over on his stomach and slid down to the bottom. People were staring at him. He was wearing this ratty coat and looked like he was a wino from the Bowery. He was indignant afterward. 'I got dizzy,' he said."

School Principal has children jailed for leaving class where Channel 1 TV is being shown
In addition to being about indoctrination of high school students, this page also features an interesting quote:

The tube fills your mind with anything and everything BUT the will of God. I don't want my mind to be filled with evil thoughts and I know that will happen if I watch bad things. I want to think on things that are pure, not impure.

This quote illustrates the basic insanity of christianity. It believes that inside of everyone is a ravenous monster that will come out uncontrollably if given the right kind of stimuli.

So you must avoid all sorts of thoughts in order to keep yourself in control. The little bit of the mind that christians accept as themselves is afraid that it will be overwhelmed if it gives any support to the feelings of lust, anger, pleasure, satisfaction, or pride. The reason they think this is because many of them grew up in places where people were out of control. So they see this monster in everyone.

That's why christians are more scared of hedonists than of anyone else.
link viamemepool
Saturday, October 23, 2000

Noam Chomsky on Columbia

Why then should there be a correlation between U.S. aid and torture? That becomes clear when we ask how the climate for business operations is improved. The answer is straightforward and well known: by torturing union leaders and human rights activists, murdering priests who are trying to organize peasants, and so on. Putting all this together, we find a derivative correlation between U.S. aid and torture. The proper conclusion then, is not that U.S. leaders enjoy torture; rather, it is a matter of indifference. What they care about is profits for U.S. investors, which just happen to be correlated with torture. Hence torture is rewarded, indirectly. The phenomenon is global, and understandable.

Women with older partners more likely to have male children!

women whose partners are 5 to 15 years their senior are nearly twice as likely to have a boy as their first child as they are a girl.

American presidents have had 50 per cent more sons than daughters

Abolishing Kanji?

It should be noted that before the war, it was more common to write Japanese from right to left, and train station signs and other public displays tended to be a chaotic mix of left-to-right and right-to-left writing.

the writer Shiga Naoya mused in a magazine article, "Lately, I've been thinking that Japan might do well to take the plunge, pick the best and most beautiful language in the world, and adopt it, unaltered, as our national language."

Is the opposite of 1 0 or infinity?

I think it'd be more fun to worship an infinite number of gods than to worship none.

I initially became an atheist because I wanted to get as far away as possible from Christianity, but now I think it'd be more fun to worship lots of gods.
The problem is that once you quit believing it's so obvious that there's no such thing as god. I wish I'd been raised to believe in a mother-goddess instead of an angry ascetic god.
Saturday, October 16, 2000

Names of the fingers

English	thumb	pointer	index finger	ring finger	pinkie
		Towcher (The finger that touches)	middle finger		little finger
		Foreman
				believed to be a direct link to the heart, so you should put your marraige ring there.
old anglo-saxon		Scite-finger	long-man	lech-man	little-man	ref
		the shooting finger	long finger	"medical finger"
Japanese	oya-yubi	hitosashi-yubi	naka-yubi	kusuri-yubi	ko-yubi	ref
	"parent finger" because it's big	"pointing at people finger"	"middle finger"	"medicine finger" because long ago doctors applied medicine with this finger	"small finger", and it means "girlfriend" if you signal it at someone.
ancient?		jupiter	saturn	apollo	mercury	here
Hindi	Angutha	Tarjani	Madhyama	Anamika	Karanguli	how to play the tabla!

also from here:Fingers. Ben Jonson says—

“The thumb, in chiromancy, we give to Venus;
The fore-finger to Jove; the midst to Saturn;
The ring to Sol; the least to Mercury”

Alchemist, i. 2.

naming fingers as the basis of math?

Having learned to give their fingers different names (i.e. the names of numbers), children will first try to work out questions such as 1+2=? and 2+3=? by using their fingers. The problem is that, in such equations, the name three (that first belonged only to one specific finger, i.e. the middle finger) is suddenly applied to a group of (three) units. Few people seem willing to imagine that children have problems with this. They see this as the basics (thus easiest part) of maths. Yet, some children regard counting and grouping as two entirely different things. The equation 1+1+1=3 appears confusing to them. The problem that such children have with the equation 1+1+1=3, is that three different fingers are apparently each given the same name (i.e. number one, as they each count for one unit).

a lesson plan about this problem.
it includes a wonderfully gratiutious reference to martians that use base 8.
Monday, October 4, 1999

I heard that the british used to train people to walk all day and be able to measure their steps so they'd know exactly how far they'd gone. They used it to let spies make maps without having to carry instruments.

anyway, this gave me an idea for a new olympic event. Walking an Exact Distance. make it really big, like 10k or something.

Also, human clocks:. you have to click a stopwatch exactly one hour after somebody says go. There could be different classes; in the hardest one you'd be tied down in a dark quiet room. In an easier one you'd be able to walk around and time your physical actions, or use paper.
Sunday, October 3, 1999

Some ideas for future olympics:
Olympic Tag
Olympic dodgeball
Rock skipping

I've noticed that certain activities are never part of the olympics. I'd like to see:

Accuracy throwing contests: whenever I go to the beach I always set up rocks and then try to knock them over with other rocks. I always wonder just how good someone could get at this. If we offered a gold medal for it it would be some cheap research into how accurate throwing can get.

Chase races: two people start on opposite sides of a track and race until one of them catches the other. I wonder if a sprinter could make up 200 meters on a marathon runner. This will never be on tv though because people would just end up killing themselves. And figuring out the schedule would mess up networks time schedules.

Japan school stuff
While students clean the school they play a jazz version of "Eye of the Tiger" over the loudspeakers.

Myths
I am starting a map of the earth with each place classified by which way the toilet water spins there. Please go to the bathroom and do a test and send me the results and where you are. Also please send me the make of your toilet if possible.
Sunday, September 26, 1999

This log may get more boring as I spend my days focusing on intonation and stress in english.

Kids rarely cry in public in Japan. I went to a 3 hour festival with kids running all over it yesterday and didn't see one of them crying.

interesting errors

Half a year is covered with snow
She broke her dress
I have a headache a little.
Hot days are continuing lately.
He is not strong at drinking.
You should avoid to smoke so many cigarettes.
My room is very narrow.
This is a good book, isn't this?
In another words, it's impossible.
Were you boring at that movie?
I feel like something sad when I hear that song.

I smashed the bottle against the wall.
I smashed the pencil against the wall.
I smashed the dress against the wall.
I smashed the balloon against the wall.
I smashed the water against the wall.
Friday, August 18, 2000

Pictures from japan!
I made it! here's a bunch of pictures i've taken. hope you like them.

there's quite a lot to say about japan, but it's all the kind of stuff that maybe it's better to let people figure out on their own. i'm trying to get internet access soon, so i'll try to get back into the swing of things with this weblog. although i think there's a lot to be said for riding your bike up mountains, playing go, learning japanese, and going to the beach rather than trying to find amusing web pages. but i'm sure i'll be back again soon...
Ernie
Thursday, August 10, 2000