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Halloween

Oct 30, 2012

Halloween or Hallowe'en (a contraction of "All Hallows' Evening"), also known as All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly celebration observed in a number of countries on October 31, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows (or All Saints). According to many scholars, it was originally influenced by western European harvest festivals and festivals of the dead with possible pagan roots, particularly the Celtic Samhain. Others maintain that it originated independently of Samhain and has Christian roots.

Typical festive Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (also known as "guising"), attending costume parties, carving pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films.

Etymology


The word Halloween was first used in the 16th century and represents a Scottish variant of the fuller All Hallows' Even ('evening'), that is, the night before All Hallows' Day. Although the phrase All Hallows' is found in Old English (ealra hālgena mæssedæg, mass-day of all saints), All Hallows' Even is itself not seen until 1556.

History

Celtic influences


Though the origin of the word Halloween is Christian, the holiday is commonly thought to have pagan roots. Historian Nicholas Rogers, exploring the origins of Halloween, notes that while "some folklorists have detected its origins in Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain", which comes from the Old Irish for "summer's end". Samhain (pronounced SAH-win or SOW-in) was the first and most important of the four quarter days in the medieval Gaelic (Irish, Scottish and Manx) calendar. It was held on or about October 31 – November 1 and kindred festivals were held at the same time of year in other Celtic lands; for example the Brythonic Calan Gaeaf (in Wales), Kalan Gwav (in Cornwall) and Kalan Goañv (in Brittany). Samhain is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature and many important events in Irish mythology happen or begin on Samhain. It marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the 'darker half' of the year. This was a time for stock-taking and preparing for the cold winter ahead; cattle were brought back down from the summer pastures and livestock were slaughtered. In much of the Gaelic world, bonfires were lit and there were rituals involving them. Some of these rituals hint that they may once have involved human sacrifice. Divination games or rituals were also done at Samhain.

Samhain (like Beltane) was seen as a time when the 'door' to the Otherworld opened enough for the souls of the dead, and other beings such as fairies, to come into our world. The souls of the dead were said to revisit their homes on Samhain. Feasts were had, at which the souls of dead kin were beckoned to attend and a place set at the table for them. Lewis Spence described it as a "feast of the dead" and "festival of the fairies". However, harmful spirits and fairies were also thought to be active at Samhain. People took steps to allay or ward-off these harmful spirits/fairies, which is thought to have influenced today's Halloween customs. Before the 20th century, wearing costumes at Samhain was done in parts of Ireland, Mann, the Scottish Highlands and islands, and Wales. Wearing costumes may have originated as a means of disguising oneself from these harmful spirits/fairies, although some suggest that the custom comes from a Christian or Christianized belief (see below). In Ireland, people went about before nightfall collecting for Samhain feasts and sometimes wore costumes while doing so. In the 19th century on Ireland's southern coast, a man dressed as a white mare would lead youths door-to-door collecting food; by giving them food, the household could expect good fortune from the 'Muck Olla'. In Moray during the 18th century, boys called at each house in their village asking for fuel for the Samhain bonfire. The modern custom of trick-or-treating may have come from these practices. Alternatively, it may come from the Christian custom of souling (see below).

Making jack-o'-lanterns at Halloween may also have sprung from Samhain and Celtic beliefs. Turnip lanterns, sometimes with faces carved into them, were made on Samhain in the 19th century in parts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. As well as being used to light one's way while outside on Samhain night, they may also have been used to represent the spirits/fairies and/or to protect oneself and one's home from them. However, a Christian origin has also been proposed.

Christian influences


Halloween is also thought to have been influenced by the Christian holy days of All Saints' Day (also known as All Hallows, Hallowmas or Hallowtide) on November 1 and All Souls' Day on November 2. They were a time for honoring the saints and praying for the recently departed who had yet to reach Heaven. All Saints was introduced in the year 609, but was originally celebrated on May 13. In 835, it was switched to November 1 (the same date as Samhain) at the behest of Pope Gregory IV. Some have suggested this was due to Celtic influence, while others suggest it was a Germanic idea.

By the end of the 12th century they had become holy days of obligation across Europe and involved such traditions as ringing bells for the souls in purgatory. "Souling", the custom of baking and sharing soul cakes for "all crysten christened souls", has been suggested as the origin of trick-or-treating. Groups of poor people, often children, would go door-to-door on All Saints/All Souls collecting soul cakes, originally as a means of praying for souls in purgatory. Similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy. Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering or whining] like a beggar at Hallowmas." The custom of wearing costumes has been linked to All Saints/All Souls by Prince Sorie Conteh, who wrote: "It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world. In order to avoid being recognised by any soul that might be seeking such vengeance, people would don masks or costumes to disguise their identities". In Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, Nicholas Rogers explained Halloween jack-o'-lanterns as originally being representations of souls in purgatory. In Brittany children would set candles in skulls in graveyards.

In Britain, these customs came under attack during the Reformation as Protestants berated purgatory as a "popish" doctrine incompatible with the notion of predestination. This, coupled with the rising popularity of Guy Fawkes Night (5 November) from 1605 onward, led to Halloween's popularity waning in Britain, with the noteworthy exception of Scotland. There and in Ireland, they had been celebrating Samhain and Halloween since at least the early Middle Ages, and the Scottish kirk took a more pragmatic approach to Halloween, seeing it as important to the life cycle and rites of passage of communities and thus ensuring its survival in the country.

Spread to North America


North American almanacs of the late 18th and early 19th century give no indication that Halloween was celebrated there. The Puritans of New England, for example, maintained strong opposition to Halloween and it was not until the mass Irish and Scottish immigration during the 19th century that it was brought to North America in earnest. Confined to the immigrant communities during the mid-19th century, it was gradually assimilated into mainstream society and by the first decade of the 20th century it was being celebrated coast to coast by people of all social, racial and religious backgrounds.

Symbols


Development of artifacts and symbols associated with Halloween formed over time. The turnip has traditionally been used in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which is both much softer and much larger – making it easier to carve than a turnip. Subsequently, the mass marketing of various size pumpkins in autumn, in both the corporate and local markets, has made pumpkins universally available for this purpose. The American tradition of carving pumpkins is recorded in 1837 and was originally associated with harvest time in general, not becoming specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 19th century.

The modern imagery of Halloween comes from many sources, including national customs, works of Gothic and horror literature (such as the novels Frankenstein and Dracula) and classic horror films (such as Frankenstein and The Mummy). One of the earliest works on the subject of Halloween is from Scottish poet John Mayne, who, in 1780, made note of pranks at Halloween; "What fearfu' pranks ensue!", as well as the supernatural associated with the night, "Bogies" (ghosts), influencing Robert Burns' Halloween 1785. Elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins, corn husks and scarecrows, are also prevalent. Homes are often decorated with these types of symbols around Halloween.

Halloween imagery includes themes of death, evil, the occult, and mythical monsters. Black and orange are Halloween's traditional colors.

Trick-or-treating and guising


Trick-or-treating is a customary celebration for children on Halloween. Children go in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy (sweets) or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?" The word "trick" refers to a (mostly idle) "threat" to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property if no treat is given.

In Scotland and Ireland, guising – children disguised in costume going from door to door for food or coins – is a traditional Halloween custom, and is recorded in Scotland at Halloween in 1895 where masqueraders in disguise carrying lanterns made out of scooped out turnips, visit homes to be rewarded with cakes, fruit and money. The practice of Guising at Halloween in North America is first recorded in 1911, where a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario reported children going "guising" around the neighborhood.

American historian and author Ruth Edna Kelley of Massachusetts wrote the first book length history of Halloween in the US; The Book of Hallowe'en (1919), and references souling in the chapter "Hallowe'en in America";

The taste in Hallowe'en festivities now is to study old traditions, and hold a Scotch party, using Burn's poem Hallowe'en as a guide; or to go a-souling as the English used. In short, no custom that was once honored at Hallowe'en is out of fashion now.

In her book, Kelley touches on customs that arrived from across the Atlantic; "Americans have fostered them, and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Halloween customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries". While the first reference to "guising" in North America occurs in 1911, another reference to ritual begging on Halloween appears, place unknown, in 1915, with a third reference in Chicago in 1920.

The earliest known use in print of the term "trick or treat" appears in 1927, from Blackie, Alberta, Canada:

Hallowe'en provided an opportunity for real strenuous fun. No real damage was done except to the temper of some who had to hunt for wagon wheels, gates, wagons, barrels, etc., much of which decorated the front street. The youthful tormentors were at back door and front demanding edible plunder by the word “trick or treat” to which the inmates gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing.

The thousands of Halloween postcards produced between the turn of the 20th century and the 1920s commonly show children but not trick-or-treating. The editor of a collection of over 3,000 vintage Halloween postcards writes, "There are cards which mention the custom [of trick-or-treating] or show children in costumes at the doors, but as far as we can tell they were printed later than the 1920s and more than likely even the 1930s. Tricksters of various sorts are shown on the early postcards, but not the means of appeasing them". Trick-or-treating does not seem to have become a widespread practice until the 1930s, with the first U.S. appearances of the term in 1934, and the first use in a national publication occurring in 1939.

Costumes


Halloween costumes are traditionally modeled after supernatural figures such as monsters, ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils. Over time, the costume selection extended to include popular characters from fiction, celebrities, and generic archetypes such as ninjas and princesses.

Dressing up in costumes and going "guising" was prevalent in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween by the late 19th century. Costuming became popular for Halloween parties in the US in the early 20th century, as often for adults as for children. The first mass-produced Halloween costumes appeared in stores in the 1930s when trick-or-treating was becoming popular in the United States.

Halloween costume parties generally fall on or around October 31, often on the Friday or Saturday before Halloween.

Spongebob 3D

Oct 29, 2012

Bob: I got a new spat.. prepare your anus Patrick.
Pat: My Body, is always ready for you, Spongebob.

Pagliacci - The only Accespable Clown

Oct 28, 2012

Unacceptable



Pagliacci is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It is the only Leoncavallo opera that is still widely staged.

Pagliacci premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, with Adelina Stehle as Nedda, Fiorello Giraud as Canio, Victor Maurel as Tonio, and Mario Ancona as Silvio. Nellie Melba played Nedda in London in 1892, soon after its Italian premiere, and in New York in 1893.



5 Ghost Dogs Trick-o-Treating

Five Dog's Ghost Costumes trick-o-treating for Halloween.
How do they get them to do that?

Asexuality

Oct 27, 2012

The Asexual Pride Flag
Asexuality (sometimes referred to as nonsexuality), in its broadest sense, is the lack of sexual attraction to others or the lack of interest in sex. It may also be considered a lack of a sexual orientation. One commonly cited study published in 2004 placed the prevalence of asexuality at 1%.

Asexuality is distinct from abstention from sexual activity and from celibacy, which are behavioral and generally motivated by factors such as an individual's personal or religious beliefs; sexual orientation, unlike sexual behavior, is believed to be "enduring". Some asexual people do engage in sexual activity despite lacking a desire for sex or sexual attraction, due to a variety of reasons, such as a desire to please romantic partners or a desire to have children.

Only recently has asexuality started to become accepted as a sexual orientation and a field of scientific research, and a growing body of research from both sociological and psychological perspectives has begun to coalesce. While some researchers assert that asexuality is a sexual orientation, others disagree, and various asexual communities have started to form since the advent of the Internet and social media. The most prolific and well-known of these communities has been the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), which was founded in 2001.



Definitions

Romantic relationships and identity


Asexuals, while lacking in sexual desire for any gender, may engage in purely emotional romantic relationships. Terms concerning this are:

  • aromantic: lack of romantic attraction towards anyone
  • biromantic: romantic attraction that is both heteroromantic and homoromantic (but not necessarily at the same time) – the romantic aspect of bisexuality
  • heteroromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) of a different gender – the romantic aspect of heterosexuality
  • homoromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) of the same gender – the romantic aspect of homosexuality
  • panromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) of every gender – the romantic aspect of pansexuality
  • transromantic: romantic attraction towards person(s) of intersex or transgender – the romantic aspect of transsexuality

The Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) defines an asexual as "someone who does not experience sexual attraction" and stated, "[a]nother small minority will think of themselves as asexual for a brief period of time while exploring and questioning their own sexuality" and that "[t]here is no litmus test to determine if someone is asexual. Asexuality is like any other identity – at its core, it’s just a word that people use to help figure themselves out. If at any point someone finds the word asexual useful to describe themselves, we encourage them to use it for as long as it makes sense to do so".

Researchers have varied in their attempts to define asexuality, but the term is usually defined to mean the lack or absence of sexual attraction or sexual interest. This may be defined as having little sexual attraction or desire, no sexual attraction or desire, or a combination thereof with or without the characteristic of behavior, as researchers have used the term "to refer to individuals with low or absent sexual desire or attractions, low or absent sexual behaviors, exclusively romantic non-sexual partnerships, or a combination of both absent sexual desires and behaviors".

As an emerging identity with a broad definition, there is an enormous amount of variation among people who identify as asexual; for example, asexual-identified individuals who report that they feel sexual attraction but not the inclination to act on it because they have no true desire or need to engage in sexual or even non-sexual activity (cuddling, hand-holding, etc.). Some asexuals participate in sexual activity out of curiosity. Some may masturbate as a solitary form of release, while others do not feel a need to do so. The need or desire for masturbation is commonly referred to as a "sex drive" and is disassociated from sexual attraction and being sexual; asexuals who masturbate generally consider it to be a normal product of the human body and not a sign of latent sexuality, and may not even find it pleasurable. Some asexual men are completely unable to get an erection and sexual activity is completely impossible for them. Asexuals also differ in their feelings towards performing sex acts: some are indifferent and may even have sex for the benefit of a romantic partner, while others are more strongly averse to the idea even though they do not necessarily dislike other people for having sex as long as it does not involve them.

Sexual orientation and etiology


There is significant debate over whether asexuality is a sexual orientation or not. It is most comparable to hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD), in the sense that both imply a general lack of sexual attraction to anyone, but asexuality is generally not considered a disorder (such as anorgasmia, anhedonia, etc.) or a sexual dysfunction because asexuality does not necessarily define someone as having a medical problem or problems relating to others socially. It also does not necessarily imply that lacking sexual attraction causes anxiety; it is considered the lack or absence of sexual attraction as a life-enduring characteristic. Some scholars, however, opine that asexuality is not a meaningful category to add to the continuum of sexual orientations, and say that it is instead the lack of a sexual orientation or sexuality. Others state that it is the denial of one's natural sexuality, and that it is a disorder caused by shame of sexuality or anxiety, sometimes basing this belief on asexuals who masturbate or occasionally engage in sexual activity simply to please a romantic partner.

Various other scholars assert that asexuality is a sexual orientation, as some asexuals are unable to masturbate even though they reportedly have a "normal" sex drive, and that there are variations of sexual preferences, arguing that asexuality ought to be included as well. They stress that asexuals do not choose to have no sexual desire, and generally start to find out their "differences" in sexual behaviors around adolescence. Because of these facts coming to light, it is argued that asexuality is much more than a behavioral choice, and is not something that can be "cured" like a disorder.

Etiology in this context is without implication of disease, disorder, or abnormality. Research on the etiology of sexual orientation when applied to asexuality has the definitional problem that sexual orientation is not consistently defined by all researchers as including asexuality. Asexuality may be considered a sexual orientation, which is defined as "enduring" and resistant to change, proving to be generally impervious to interventions intended to change it. However, while heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality are usually but not always determined during the early years of preadolescent life, it is not known when asexuality is determined. "It is unclear whether these characteristics [viz., "lacking interest in or desire for sex"] are thought to be lifelong, or if they may be acquired."

Non-measurement in some areas of sexual orientation is accepted by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Association of Social Workers: "[S]imply to document that a phenomenon occurs, case studies and non-probability samples are often adequate. . . . Some groups are sufficiently few in number – relative to the entire population – that locating them with probability sampling is extremely expensive or practically impossible. In the latter cases, the use of non-probability samples is often appropriate." In determining etiologies, when asexuals are a small percentage of a large society, asexuals with a given etiology will compose an even smaller percentage, so that etiological information is available only from some individuals, generally not randomly selected.



A community of self-identified asexuals coalesced in the early 21st century, aided by the popularity of online communities. Dr. Elizabeth Abbot, author of A History of Celibacy, acknowledges a difference between asexuality and celibacy and posits that there has always been an asexual element in the population but that asexual people kept a low profile. While failure to consummate marriage was seen as "an insult to the sacrament of marriage" in medieval Europe, asexuality, unlike homosexuality, has never been illegal, and asexual people have been able to "fly under the radar". However, in the 21st century, the anonymity of online communication and general popularity of social networking online has facilitated the formation of a community built around a common asexual identity.

The 25 Most Popular Passwords of 2012

Oct 25, 2012

Though I had hoped that we, as people, would have improved our passwords by now, it turns out that we, as people, are still unimaginative and so very lazy. Just take a look at the most popular (read: the worst) passwords of 2012. They're terribly predictable.

The rankings were created by SplashData who gathered the data from the millions of stolen passwords posted online by hackers in 2012 and ranked them in order of popularity. It's all similar to year's past but we've got some new additions at the end of the list in Jesus and password1. Nice for religion and online services demanding you add a number to your password! I just want to see the day where password is unseated. Here's the full list:
1. password (Unchanged)
2, 123456 (Unchanged)
3. 12345678 (Unchanged)
4. abc123 (Up 1)
5. qwerty (Down 1)
6. monkey (Unchanged)
7. letmein (Up 1)
8. dragon (Up 2)
9. 111111 (Up 3)
10. baseball (Up 1)
11. iloveyou (Up 2)
12. trustno1 (Down 3)
13. 1234567 (Down 6)
14. sunshine (Up 1)
15. master (Down 1)
16. 123123 (Up 4)
17. welcome (New)
18. shadow (Up 1)
19. ashley (Down 3)
20. football (Up 5)
21. jesus (New)
22. michael (Up 2)
23. ninja (New)
24. mustang (New)
25. password1 (New)

40 Belief-Shaking Remarks

If there’s one thing Friedrich Nietzsche did well, it’s obliterate feel-good beliefs people have about themselves. He has been criticized for being a misanthrope, a subvert, a cynic and a pessimist, but I think these assessments are off the mark. I believe he only wanted human beings to be more honest with themselves.

He did have a remarkable gift for aphorism — he once declared, “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.” A hundred years after his death, Nietzsche retains his disturbing talent for turning a person’s worldview upside-down with one jarring remark.

Even today his words remain controversial. They hit nerves. Most of his views are completely at odds with the status quo.

Here are 40 unsympathetic statements from the man himself. Many you’ll agree with. Others you will resist, but these are the ones to pay the most attention to — your beliefs are being challenged. It’s either an opportunity to grow, or to insist that you already know better. If any of them hit a nerve in you, ask yourself why.

***

1. People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

2. He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

3. The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

4. There are no facts, only interpretations.

5. Morality is but the herd-instinct in the individual.

6. No one talks more passionately about his rights than he who in the depths of his soul doubts whether he has any.

7. Without music, life would be a mistake.

8. Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t.

9. In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

10. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

11. A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

12. We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the way in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

13. No victor believes in chance.

14. Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

15. Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

16. It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

17. The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

18. The future influences the present just as much as the past.

19. The most common lie is that which one tells himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

20. I counsel you, my friends: Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.

21. Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, is what makes someone a friend.

22. God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

23. Success has always been a great liar.

24. Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

25. What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

26. Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

27. When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

28. When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

29. Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

30. All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

31. What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.

32. Fear is the mother of morality.

33. A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.

34. Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.

35. There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

36. The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.

37. The Kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart — not something that comes upon the earth or after death.

38. What is the mark of liberation? No longer being ashamed in front of oneself.

39. Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

40. We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.

Kenneth Parcell - Man or Super-Man

While Kenneth Parcell of 30 Rock appears to be in his mid to late twenties (McBrayer is actually in his late thirties), since the third season, it has been implied numerous times that he is actually much older. Suggestions to Kenneth not being what he seems continues to increase...

  • "The One with the Cast of Night Court", when Kenneth states, "I've worn this old jacket since 19-hubeduh", intentionally mumbling the year. 
  • In the episode "Cutbacks", Kenneth states that he has owned his pet bird, named Sonny Crockett, for almost 60 years. 
  • In a deleted scene from "Mamma Mia", it is implied that he is a veteran of World War II, as he is recognized by an elderly man as one of his fellow troops that served in Normandy. In the episode "Into the Crevasse", Kenneth appears in a 1950s-era flashback, dancing to the song "Doin' the Microwave".
  • In "Subway Hero", to Jack's puzzlement, Kenneth recognizes Bucky Bright, a celebrity who was described as being active in the "40s and 50s". 
  • Similarly, in the episode "Verna", Kenneth states that The Today Show has not been as good since chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs was featured on the show, implying that he watched the program when the primate served as the show's mascot, which was from 1953 to 1957. 
  • In "The Problem Solvers", when Tracy asks him if he "want[s] to be a page forever", Kenneth nervously asks "Who said I've been alive forever?". 
  • In "Future Husband", Kenneth states that he remembers Jenna's first acting role in a commercial that aired in the 1970s, commenting that she was "a fat little baby". 
  • In "Don Geiss, America and Hope", when NBC is bought out by Kabletown, Kenneth becomes worried and asks Jack if they will be implementing new rules for pages, such as "age limits and age verification". 
  • In "Black Light Attack!", Frank's cellphone has a low frequency tone that only people who are over the age of 40 can hear, something which Kenneth is heavily affected by. 
  • In "When it Rains, it Pours", Kenneth is seen packing away an autographed photo of Fred Allen from 1947, that is dedicated: "Kenneth, you're the TOPS!", into a box marked "NBC Memories 1945-1967".
  • In "¡Qué Sorpresa!", when he comes up with the idea of BlaBar, a black bar that would cover the lower half of a television screen as to censor material considered inappropriate, he mentions how elderly viewers are offended by certain things that are on TV, subtly gesturing to himself while saying so. 
  • In the episode "TGS Hates Women", Kenneth comments that, when he first started working as a page at NBC, Shirley Temple taught him to roll cigarettes when she was eight years old, in 1936. 
  • In "Queen of Jordan", Kenneth's chyron reads "Kenneth Parcell: Elderly Page". 
  • During a flash-forward, in the episode "100", Kenneth, Tracy, and Jenna speculate where they will be in five years. The scene then shows three tombstones, with Kenneth's year of birth appearing to be listed as 1781 (although the second digit is partially obscured by a leaf in multiple shots). If this birth date is accurate, it would mean that Kenneth is over 200 years old (it is also worth noting that, while he is buried, the closing scene reveals that Kenneth is not actually dead, further supporting the theory that he is immortal). 
  • In "Today You Are a Man", when Suze Orman asks him his age, he simply replies "Don't worry about it". 
  • In "Leap Day", when Jack tells him to take off his bald cap (as he is impersonating Leap Day Williams), Kenneth awkwardly replies "Yes, take off my bald cap, not put on my wig", implying that he is actually bald. 
  • In "Nothing Left to Lose", he implies that he is an angel, which could possibly be the secret behind his immortality.
  • In "Meet the Woggels!", Kenneth reveals that the only Rock and Roll song he has ever listened to is Mr. Sandman, which was released in 1954, and, during the time it debuted, was considered to be of the Rock and Roll genre. 
  • In "Live from Studio 6H", he is shown as a page during a flashback to an old NBC News Report.
  • In "Governor Dunston", his mother recalls how, on the day he was born, Kenneth informed her that his body was just a "flesh vessel" for an immortal being.

Clark Kent to quit Daily Planet in another blow to newspaper industry


The latest “Superman” comic will be released Wednesday, and the big news is that mild mannered Clark Kent has a bit of a career crisis. The “Superman” alter-ego is quitting his job at the “Daily Planet” because of disillusionment with the state of the newspaper business. Clark Kent feels the pressures of working for a newspaper in today’s modern age of new media and instant reporting. The constant trade off between pure journalism versus entertainment and tabloid reporting are finally sending our "Superman" over the edge. Clark Kent is said to be more likely to end up starting his own blog rather than taking just another job in today’s corporate world, according to yesterday’s report in USA Today.

“Superman” will probably start a blog along the lines of “The Huffington Post” or the “Drudge Report”. And with the upcoming many surprises for Clark Kent as the “H’el on Earth” storyline unfolds, writer Scott Lobdell says, “we're going to really see Clark come into his own in the next few years as far as being a guy who takes to the Internet and to the airwaves and starts speaking an unvarnished truth”.

“This is really what happens when a 27-year-old guy is behind a desk and he has to take instruction from a larger conglomerate with concerns that aren't really his own”, said Lobdell. “Superman is arguably the most powerful person on the planet, but how long can he sit at his desk with someone breathing down his neck and treating him like the least important person in the world”?, he added.

“DC comics” has had the superhero stepping out of his comfort zone a lot lately, such as his dalliance with “Wonder Woman” in the “Justice League” comic. Also it looks like fans will be getting an updated “origin story” by the looks of the movie trailer for “Man of Steel”, the “Superman” reboot, directed by Zack Snyder, that’s due out next summer

The Hidden Tiger Illusion Answer

The hidden tiger can be found in the tiger's stripes.  Read his stripes - they spell - 
"THE HIDDEN TIGER".


 Check here for more Optical Illusions.

The Hidden Tiger Illusion

For today I prepared an interesting spot the object painting, created by American wildlife artist Rusty Rust, that shows a huge Bengal Tiger standing in a bamboo forest. If you are asking yourself why Rusty named this picture “The Hidden Tiger“, your assignment is to figure out why! When you find it – comment, just don’t reveal the secret, so other users can have fun spotting it to.

Check here for the Hidden Tiger Illusion Solution.



Barreleye Fish

Oct 24, 2012

Barreleyes, also known as spook fish (a name also applied to several species of chimaera), are small deep-sea argentiniform fish comprising the family Opisthoproctidae. Found in tropical-to-temperate waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

These fish are named for their barrel-shaped, tubular eyes which are generally directed upwards to detect the silhouettes of available prey; however, according to Robison and Reisenbichler these fish are capable of directing their eyes forward as well. The family name Opisthoproctidae is derived from the Greek words opisthe ("behind") and proktos ("anus").

Barreleye Fish
Although this fish’s existence has been known for quite some time, it was only this year that scientists fully understood how bizarre it is. These fish have a mostly black body with a transparent head (which was unheard of until recently, since it always shattered while the fish was being brought up to the surface). Although it has two indentions in the front of its head, those are NOT its eyes: its eyes are the green spheres in its transparent head. These eyes can be used to look above for food or look forward when it is stalking its prey.

Physical description


The morphology of the Opisthoproctidae varies between three main forms: the stout, deep-bodied barreleyes of the genera Opisthoproctus and Macropinna; the extremely slender and elongate spookfishes of the genera Dolichopteryx and Bathylychnops; and the intermediate fusiform spookfishes of the genera Rhynchohyalus and Winteria.
Barreleye Fish

All species have large, telescoping eyes which dominate and protrude from the skull, but are enclosed within a large transparent dome of soft tissue. These eyes generally gaze upwards, but can also be directed forwards. The opisthoproctid eye has a large lens and a retina with an exceptionally high complement of rod cells and a high density of rhodopsin (the "visual purple" pigment); there are no cone cells. To better serve their vision, barreleyes have large, dome-shaped transparent heads; this presumably allows the eyes to collect even more incident light and likely protects the sensitive eyes from the nematocyst (stinging cells) of the siphonophores from which it is believed the Barreleye steals food. It may also serve as an accessory lens (modulated by intrinsic or peripheral muscles), or refracts light with an index very close to seawater. A recent study disclosed that Dolichopteryx longipes is the only vertebrate known to use a mirror (as well as a lens) in its eyes for focusing images.

The toothless mouth is small and terminal, ending in a pointed snout. As in related families (e.g. Argentinidae), there is an epibranchial or crumenal organ present behind the fourth gill arch. This organ—analogous to the gizzard—consists of a small diverticulum (pouch) wherein the gill rakers insert and interdigitate for the purpose of grinding up ingested material. The living body of most species is a dark brown covered in large, silvery imbricate scales; but these are absent in Dolichopteryx, leaving the body itself a transparent white. In all species a variable number of dark melanophores colour the muzzle, ventral surface, and midline.

Also present in Dolichopteryx, Opisthoproctus, and Winteria species are a number of luminous organs; in Dolichopteryx there are several along the length of the belly, and in Opisthoproctus there is a single organ in the form of a rectal pouch. These organs glow with a weak light due to the presence of symbiotic bioluminescent bacteria; specifically, Photobacterium phosphoreum (family Vibrionaceae). The ventral surface of Opisthoproctus species is characterised by a flattened and projecting sole; in the mirrorbelly (Opisthoproctus grimaldii) and Opisthoproctus soleatus this sole may act as a reflector, by directing the emitted light downwards. The strains of P. phosphoreum present in the two Opisthoproctus species have been isolated and cultured in the lab. Through restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, the two strains have been shown to differ only slightly.

In all species the fins are spineless and fairly small; in Dolichopteryx however, the pectoral fins are greatly elongated and wing-like, extending about half the body's length, and are apparently used for stationkeeping in the water column. In all species the pectoral fins are inserted low on the body, and in some the pelvic fins are inserted ventrolaterally rather than strictly ventrally. Several species also possess either a ventral or dorsal adipose fin, and the caudal fin is forked to emarginate. The anal fin is either present or greatly reduced, and may not be externally visible; it is strongly retrorse in Opisthoproctus. There is a single dorsal fin originating slightly before or directly over the anal fin. There is a perceptible hump in the back, beginning just behind the head. The gas bladder is absent in most species, and the lateral line is uninterrupted. The branchiostegal rays number 2–4. The javelin spookfish (Bathylychnops exilis) is by far the largest species at 50 centimetres standard length (SL; a measurement excluding the caudal fin); most other species are under 20 centimetres SL.

Life cycle


Barreleyes inhabit moderate depths, from the mesopelagic to bathypelagic zone, ca. 400–2,500 metres down. They are presumably solitary and do not undergo diel vertical migrations; instead, barreleyes remain just below the limit of light penetration and use their sensitive, upward-pointing tubular eyes—adapted for enhanced binocular vision at the expense of lateral vision—to survey the waters above. The high number of rods in their eyes' retinae allows barreleyes to resolve the silhouettes of objects overhead in the faintest of ambient light (and to accurately distinguish bioluminescent light from ambient light), and their binocular vision allows the fish to accurately track and hone in on small zooplankton such as hydroids, copepods, and other pelagic crustaceans. The distribution of some species coincides with the isohaline and isotherm layers of the ocean; for example, in Opisthoproctus soleatus upper distribution limits coincide with the 400-metre isotherm for 8°C.

What little is known of barreleye reproduction indicates they are pelagic spawners; that is, eggs and sperm are released en masse directly into the water. The fertilized eggs are buoyant and planktonic; the larvae and juveniles drift with the currents—likely at much shallower depths than the adults—and upon metamorphosis into adult form they descend to deeper waters. Dolichopteryx species are noted for their paedomorphic features, the result of neoteny (the retention of larval characteristics).

The bioluminescent organs of Dolichopteryx and Opisthoproctus, together with the reflective soles of the latter, may serve as camouflage in the form of counterillumination. This predator avoidance strategy involves the use of ventral light to break up the fishes' silhouettes, so that (when viewed from below) they blend in with the ambient light from above. Counterillumination is also seen in several other unrelated deep-sea families, which include the marine hatchetfish (Sternoptychidae). Also found in marine hatchetfish and other unrelated families are tubular eyes; cf. telescopefish, tube-eye.

Scientists make embryos with two women, one man

View of a donated human embryo under a microscope at the La Jolla IVF Clinic in La Jolla, California

Scientists in the U.S. have created embryos with genes from one man and two women, using a provocative technique that someday could be used to prevent babies from inheriting certain rare incurable diseases.

The researchers at Oregon Health & Sciences University said they are not using the embryos to produce children, and it is not clear when or even if the technique will be put to use. But it has already stirred a debate over its risks and ethics in Britain, where scientists did similar work a few years ago.

The British experiments, reported in 2008, led to headlines about the possibility someday of babies with three parents. But that’s an overstatement. The DNA from the second woman amounts to less than 1 per cent of the embryo’s genes, and it isn’t the sort that makes a child look like Mom or Dad. The procedure is simply a way of replacing some defective genes that sabotage the normal workings of cells.

The British government is asking for public comment on the technology before it decides whether to allow its use. One concern it cites is whether such DNA alteration could be an early step down a slippery slope toward “designer babies” — ordering, say, a petite, blue-eyed girl or tall, dark-haired boy.

Questions have also arisen about the safety of the technique, not only for the baby who results from the egg, but also for the child’s descendants.

In June, an influential British bioethics group concluded that the technology would be ethical to use if proven safe and effective. An expert panel in Britain said in 2011 that there was no evidence the technology was unsafe but urged further study.

Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at Northwestern University in the U.S., said in an interview that safety problems might not show up for several generations. She said she hopes the United States will follow Britain’s lead in having a wide-ranging discussion of the technology.

While the kind of diseases it seeks to fight can be terrible, “this might not be the best way to address it,” Zoloth said.

Over the past few years, scientists have reported that such experiments produced healthy monkeys and that tests in human eggs showed encouraging results. The U.S. scientists reported Wednesday that they have produced about a dozen early human embryos and found the technique is highly effective in replacing DNA.

The genes they want to replace aren’t the kind most people think of, which are found in the nucleus of cells and influence traits such as eye colour and height. Rather, these genes reside outside the nucleus in energy-producing structures called mitochondria. These genes are passed along only by mothers, not fathers.

About 1 in every 5,000 children inherits a disease caused by defective mitochondrial genes. The defects can cause many rare diseases with a host of symptoms, including strokes, epilepsy, dementia, blindness, deafness, kidney failure and heart disease.

The new technique, if approved someday for routine use, would allow a woman to give birth to a baby who inherits her nucleus DNA but not her mitochondrial DNA. Here’s how it would work:

Doctors would need unfertilized eggs from the patient and a healthy donor. They would remove the nucleus DNA from the donor eggs and replace it with nucleus DNA from the patient’s eggs. So, they would end up with eggs that have the prospective mother’s nucleus DNA, but the donor’s healthy mitochondrial DNA.

In a report published online Wednesday by the journal Nature, Shoukhrat Mitalipov and others at OHSU report transplanting nucleus DNA into 64 unfertilized eggs from healthy donors. After fertilization, 13 eggs showed normal development and went on to form early embryos.

The researchers also reported that four monkeys born in 2009 from eggs that had DNA transplants remain healthy.

Mitalipov said in an interview that the researchers hope to get federal approval to test the procedure in women, but that current restrictions on using federal money on human embryo research stand in the way of such studies.

The research was funded by the university and the Leducq Foundation in Paris.

Dr. Douglass Turnbull of Newcastle University in Britain, whose team has transplanted DNA between eggs using a different technique, called the new research “very important and encouraging” in showing that such transplants could work.

But “clearly, safety is an issue” with either technique if it is applied to humans, he said.

The Illusion of Free Choice

Left or Right, Both lead to Slaughter House.

Terrible Family Costume

Nudist Family Costume

Troll Face work Achievement

* le work

None knows his name...
None says "hello" to him...
None will search his if disappears...
BUT...
his name still on payroll!!!
The ultimate achievement unlocked
Get paid without even go to work!!!

Troll Face Cat Walk

"Hey, cat!"

"Yeah?"

"Can you walk like me?"

"Ahahahahaha.. Hell yes!"

*Cat walks*

"Not bad"

Santa Troll Face

"HOHOHO! Heres an X Box Kids"

"YAYAYAYAAA!!!!!!!11!!!"

America's Undecided Voters Need Answers On 'Saturday Night Live' (VIDEO)



With election season upon us, most people are buckling down and trying to choose between voting for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. But some people march to the beat of a different drummer -- some people are still undecided.

And those people don't want to be left out of the campaign ad circuit just because they're not committed to a candidate yet. They have concerns too, man!

So "Saturday Night Live" took the initiative to give America's undecided voters a commercial of their own this week, and it came out pretty well.

Lilac Chaser Illusion

The lilac chaser is a visual illusion, also known as the Pac-Man illusion. It consists of 12 lilac (or pink, rose or magenta), blurred discs arranged in a circle (like the numbers on a clock), around a small black, central cross on a grey background. One of the discs disappears briefly (for about 0.1 seconds), then the next (about 0.125 seconds later), and the next, and so on, in a clockwise direction. When one stares at the cross for about 20 seconds or so, one sees three different things:
  1. A gap running around the circle of lilac discs;
  2. A green disc running around the circle of lilac discs in place of the gap;
  3. The green disc running around on the grey background, with the lilac discs having disappeared in sequence.
The chaser effect results from the beta movement illusion, combined with an afterimage effect in which an opposite, complementary, colour—green—appears when each lilac spot disappears (if the discs were blue, one would see yellow), and Troxler's fading of the lilac discs.


Explanation 

The lilac chaser illusion combines three simple, well-known effects:
  1. When a visual event occurs briefly at one place in the visual field, and then a similar event occurs at an adjacent place in the same visual field, we perceive movement from the first place to the second. This is called apparent movement or beta movement, because no actual movement has occurred. Beta movement is the basis of moving neon signs, film, and video. We see movement because such displays stimulate receptors (called Reichardt detectors) in our brains that encode movement. The visual events in the lilac chaser initially are the disappearances of the lilac discs. The visual events then become the appearances of green afterimages.
  2. When a lilac stimulus that is presented to a particular region of the visual field for a long time (say 10 seconds or so) disappears, a green afterimage will appear. The afterimage lasts only a short time, and in this case is effaced by the reappearance of the lilac stimulus. The afterimage is a simple consequence of adaptation of the rods and cones of the retina. Colour and brightness are encoded by the ratios of activities in three types of cones (and also the rods under mesopic conditions). The cones stimulated by lilac get "tired". When the stimulus disappears, the tiredness of some of the cones means that the ratios evoked by the grey background are the same as if a green stimulus had been presented to these cones when they are fresh. Adaptation of rods and cones begins immediately when they are stimulated, so afterimages also start to grow. We normally do not notice them because we move our eyes about three times a second, so the image of a stimulus constantly falls on new, fresh, unadapted rods and cones. In the lilac chaser, we keep our eyes still, so the afterimages grow and are revealed when the stimulus disappears.
  3. When a blurry stimulus is presented to a region of the visual field away from where we are fixating, and we keep our eyes still, that stimulus will disappear even though it is still physically presented. This is called Troxler's fading. It occurs because although our eyes move a little when we are fixating a point, away from that point (in peripheral vision) the movements are not large enough to shift the lilac discs to new neurons of the visual system. Their afterimages essentially cancel the original images, so that all one sees of the lilac discs is grey, except for the gap where the green afterimage appears.
These effects combine to yield the remarkable sight of a green spot running around in a circle on a grey background when only stationary, flashing lilac spots have been presented. Occasionally it seems as though the green afterimage has eaten up the lilac discs, this resembles Pac-Man accounting for the illusion's alternative name.

Gradient Optical Illusion

Simultaneous Contrast Illusion. The background is a color gradient and progresses from dark grey to light grey. The horizontal bar appears to progress from light grey to dark grey, but is in fact just one color.


Dunning-Kruger effect

Oct 23, 2012

According to the almighty Wikipedia, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a “cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the meta cognitive ability to realize their mistakes”. I have been interested in this psychological effect for awhile and its implications are rather profound. The DK effect basically contributes to the ignorant and unskilled being confident in their abilities and the talented to be unsure of themselves.

I know from my experiences that the more I learn, the less I feel I know. Venturing into any topic really gives you an impression of how much is involved and how little you know about it. However, the effect can be useful in some circumstances, especially when attempting to learn something new. Would anyone honestly venture into some facets of computing if they knew from the start how long and winding the road to understanding was? In this way, the DK effect offers an unfounded confidence to take on difficult tasks and seek knowledge on elusive topics.

What does this have to do with hacking? Well for one, you get a lot of arrogant humans on sites like this. I’m not saying that I’m an expert, because there’s a ton of stuff I don’t know. But at least I realize this and attempt to further educate myself rather than keep myself under the impression that I’m so much more of a 1337xor (Elites) than everyone else. You also get people who falsely assume they know what they are doing, and because they are too ignorant to realize that they really don’t, said people are confident in their unreal abilities. As a whole, the less skill a hacker has, the more skill they perceive themselves having.

On the flip side, there are really talented hackers that realize how much there is that they don’t know and so have less confidence in how skilled they actually are. I don’t see this so much across the internet, but I’m sure it exists. Someone who might have a perfect answer to a question, or the solution for a thread, fails to post it due to their self-doubt. Maybe this isn’t so prevalent in the hacking community due to the superiority complex of the average hacker.

The implications of the DK effect are widespread. Given a task, people are downright bad at predicting its difficulty and how they will perform at it. Those ignorant in the task area will underestimate its difficulty and overestimate their performance of the task. Those experienced in the task area will overestimate its difficulty and underestimate their performance of it. script kiddies will view virus writing as relatively easy, while programmers realize how complex a ‘good’ virus is to write. When performing social engineering, picking someone with the least ability may yield the most fruitful results. In programming, the experience programmer may take longer to write code than the amateur. The experienced programmer will often scrutinize his code much longer before becoming satisfied. So much can depend on confidence.

And so I leave you with a quote, thanks for reading…

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
- Charles Darwin

50 Ways to Confuse, Worry, or Just Scare The People in The Computer Lab

1. Log on, wait a sec, then get a frightened look on your face and scream "Oh my God! They've found me!" and bolt.

2. Laugh uncontrollably for about 3 minutes & then suddenly stop and look suspiciously at everyone who looks at you.

3. When your computer is turned off, complain to the monitor on duty that you can't get the darn thing to work. After he/she's turned it on, wait 5 minutes, turn it off again, & repeat the process for a good half hour.

4. Type frantically, often stopping to look at the person next to you evilly.

5. Before anyone else is in the lab, connect each computer to different screen than the one it's set up with.

6. Write a program that plays the "Smurfs" theme song and play it at the highest volume possible over & over again.

7. Work normally for a while. Suddenly look amazingly startled by something on the screen and crawl underneath the desk.

8. Ask the person next to you if they know how to tap into top-secret Pentagon files.

9. Use Interactive Send to make passes at people you don't know.

10. Make a small ritual sacrifice to the computer before you turn it on.

11. Bring a chainsaw, but don't use it. If anyone asks why you have it, say "Just in case..." mysteriously.

12. Type on VAX for a while. Suddenly start cursing for 3 minutes at everything bad about your life. Then stop and continue typing.

13. Enter the lab, undress, and start staring at other people as if they're crazy while typing.

14. Light candles around your terminal before starting.

15. Ask around for a spare disk. Offer $2. Keep asking until someone agrees. Then, pull a disk out of your fly and say, "Oops, I forgot."

16. Every time you press Return and there is processing time required, pray "Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease," and scream "YES!" when it finishes.

17. "DISK FIGHT!!!"

18. Start making out with the person at the terminal next to you (It helps if you know them, but this is also a great way to make new friends).

19. Put a straw in your mouth and put your hands in your pockets. Type by hitting the keys with the straw.

20. If you're sitting in a swivel chair, spin around singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" whenever there is processing time required.

21. Draw a picture of a woman (or man) on a piece of paper, tape it to your monitor. Try to seduce it. Act like it hates you and then complain loudly that women (men) are worthless.

22. Try to stick a Nintendo cartridge into the 3 1/2" disc drive, when it doesn't work, get the supervisor.

23. When you are on an IBM, and when you turn it on, ask loudly where the smiling Apple face is when you turn on one of those.

24. Print out the complete works of Shakespeare, then when it's all done (two days later) say that all you wanted was one line.

25. Sit and stare at the screen, biting your nails noisely. After doing this for a while, spit them out at the feet of the person next to you.

26. Stare at the screen, grind your teeth, stop, look at the person next to you. Grind some more. Repeat procedure, making sure you never provoke the person enough to let them blow up, as this releases tension, and it is far more effective to let them linger.

27. If you have long hair, take a typing break, look for split ends, cut them and deposit them on your neighbor's keyboard as you leave.

28. Put a large, gold-framed portrait of the British Royal Family on your desk and loudly proclaim that it inspires you.

29. Come to the lab wearing several layers of socks. Remove shoes and place them on top of the monitor. Remove socks layer by layer and drape them around the monitor. Exclaim sudden haiku about the aesthetic beauty of cotton on plastic.

30. Take the keyboard and sit under the computer. Type up your paper like this. Then go to the lab supervisor and complain about the bad working conditions.

31. Laugh hysterically, shout "You will all perish in flames!!!" and continue working.

32. Bring some dry ice & make it look like your computer is smoking.

33. Assign a musical note to every key (ie. the Delete key is A Flat, the B key is F sharp, etc.). Whenever you hit a key, hum its note loudly. Write an entire paper this way.

34. Attempt to eat your computer's mouse.

35. Borrow someone else's keyboard by reaching over, saying "Excuse me, mind if I borrow this for a sec?", unplugging the keyboard & taking it.

36. Bring in a bunch of magnets and have fun.

37. When doing calculations, pull out an abacus and say that sometimes the old ways are best.

38. Play Pong for hours on the most powerful computer in the lab.

39. Make a loud noise of hitting the same key over and over again until you see that your neighbor is noticing (You can hit the space bar so your fill isn't affected). Then look at your neighbor's keyboard. Hit his/her delete key several times, erasing an entire word. While you do this, ask: "Does *your* delete key work?" Shake your head, and resume hitting the space bar on your keyboard. Keep doing this until you've deleted about a page of your neighbor's document. Then, suddenly excl.. "Well, whaddya know? I've been hitting the space bar this whole time. No wonder it wasn't deleting! Ha!" Print out your document and leave.

40. Remove your disk from the drive and hide it. Go to the lab monitor and complain that your computer ate your disk. (For special effects, put some Elmer's Glue on or around the disk drive. Claim that the computer is drooling.)

41. Stare at the screen of the person next to you, look really puzzled, burst out laughing, and say "You did that?" loudly. Keep laughing, grab your stuff and leave, howling as you go.

42. Point at the screen. Chant in a made up language while making elaborate hand gestures for a minute or two. Press return or the mouse, then leap back and yell "COVEEEEERRRRRR!" peek up from under the table, walk back to the computer and say. "Oh, good. It worked this time," and calmly start to type again.

43. Keep looking at invisible bugs and trying to swat them.

44. See who's online. Send a total stranger a talk request. Talk to them like you've known them all your lives. Hangup before they get a chance to figure out you're a total stranger.

45. Bring a small tape player with a tape of really absurd sound effects. Pretend it's the computer and look really lost.

46. Pull out a pencil. Start writing on the screen. Complain that the lead doesn't work.

47. Come into the computer lab wearing several endangered species of flowers in your hair. Smile incessantly. Type a sentence, then laugh happily, exclaim "You're such a marvel!!", and kiss the screen. Repeat this after every sentence. As your ecstasy mounts, also hug the keyboard. Finally, hug your neighbor, then the computer assistant, and walk out.

48. Run into the computer lab, shout "Armageddon is here!!!!!", then calmly sit down and begin to type.

49. Quietly walk into the computer lab with a Black and Decker chainsaw, rev that baby up, and then walk up to the nearest person and say, "Give me that computer or you'll be feeding my pet crocodile for the next week".

50. Two words: Tesla Coil.

Camera Hacking With Google

This is a list of strings that you could type into google and find a unprotected network camera.Enjoy!
 Hopefully this list of things you can type into google will give you a slightly more thorough understanding of google and network cams. It's also great if you want to infringe other peoples privacy you can just copy and past it!Enjoy and keep hacking;)


/view/index.shtml
inurl:/view/index.shtml
inurl:viewerframe?mode=
inurl:/view:shtml
inurl:view/indexframe.shtml

inurl:lvappl
live webcams
inurl:"viewerframe?mode=motion"
intitle:"snc-rz30 home"
intitle:"WJ-NT104 Main"
inurl:LvAppl
intitle:liveapplet
intitle:"Live View / - AXIS"
inurl:indexFrame.shtml
"Axis Video Server"
inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode=
intitle:Axis 2400 video server
inurl:/view.shtml intitle:"Live View / - AXIS" | inurl:view/view.shtml^ inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode= inurl:ViewerFrame?Mode=Refresh
inurl:axis-cgi/jpg

inurl:view/indexFrame.shtml
inurl:view/index.shtml
inurl:view/view.shtml
liveapplet
intitle:"live view" intitle:axis
intitle:liveapplet
allintitle:"Network Camera NetworkCamera"
intitle:axis intitle:"video server"
intitle:liveapplet
inurl:LvAppl
intitle:"EvoCam" inurl:"webcam.html"
intitle:"Live NetSnap Cam-Server feed"
intitle:"Live View / - AXIS"
intitle:"Live View / - AXIS 206M"
intitle:"Live View / - AXIS 206W"
intitle:"Live View / - AXIS 210?
inurl:indexFrame.shtml Axis
inurl:"MultiCameraFrame?Mode=Motion"
intitle:start
inurl:cgistart
intitle:"WJ-NT104 Main Page"
intext:"MOBOTIX M1? intext:"Open Menu"
intext:"MOBOTIX M10? intext:"Open Menu"
intext:"MOBOTIX D10? intext:"Open Menu"
intitle:snc-z20 inurl:home/
intitle:snc-cs3inurl:home/
intitle:snc-rz30 inurl:home/
intitle:"sony network camera snc-p1?
intitle:"sony network camera snc-m1? site:.viewnetcam.com -www.viewnetcam.com
intitle:"Toshiba Network Camera" user login
intitle:"netcam live image"
intitle:"i-Catcher Console - Web Monitor"

Change Raising

Change raising is a way to turn your twenty dollars, into a whole thirty dollars. The way this works is that you keep on putting money on your victims hand. That way he or she will always try to get track of the money. To make this more easier to understand, here is an example.

Peter has 20 dollars.

Sarah has her cash register full of money.

So heres how it goes.

Peter: Hey Sarah whats up?

Sarah: Hey Peter.

Peter: Can I have a 10 dollar bill, for ten 1 dollar bills.

*Exchanges money with each other*

*Peter secretly sneaks the 10 dollar bill into his pocket, while Sarah is counting the money.*

Sarah: Hey Peter theirs only 9 dollars, and one 10.

Peter: Oh that was my 10 you gave me, sorry let me add one more dollar, and you know what, turn those 10, 1 dollar bills, into a another 10 dollar bill, and I think I might get a bagel so heres the 10 you gave me, and change that into 10 1 dollar bills.

*Pay attention, Peter has already put the 10 in his pocket, so the 10 he just gave her must be his.*

Sarah: Sure Peter whatever you say.

*Sarah is now stressed, in other words, she just wants to be done with Peter.*

Sarah: Here you go.

Peter: Thank you Sarah.

_______________________________________________

What just happened?

Sarah thought she had gone through a friendly change transaction with Peter. But nope. Instead of Peter getting 20 dollars, he got 30. How did that happened? Well we all know that people want to keep track of money, but we are greedy to. So we will surely count the money.But while we count, you think safely that the transaction money is in the other person's hand. Or sometimes they don't even think about it. Thats what I mean about keep on throwing in money. Its going to confuse them, and make them pay less attention to the main money or what you started out with.

Now that we know about "Change Raising" and will better at spotting it in our day-to-day lives.

The Tetris Effect

As I have let on in previous posts, I am very very very interested in psychology, and as I was browsing different psychology material I came across something interesting.

There is an actual psychological condition known as "The Tetris Effect." It is a condition where prolonged repetition of advanced brainwork causes you to repeat the behavior in real life. This first showed up when the popular game Tetris was released. Tetris required you fit falling blocks of different shapes into each other as they fall to create a line, which then disappears. This requires a large amount of spacial thinking and forces the player to think ahead to what will happen next. People soon became mentally addicted (different from physical addiction) to the game, and kept playing for extended periods of time repetitively. But after such prolonged mental activity, people wouldn't stop at just the game. People would walk down the street and see a bunch of boxes and line them up in there head, and try to stack trees so they fit each other.

Similar cases that have nothing to do with Tetris have appeared ever since. After intense continuous play of Dance Dance Revolution, it has been reported that people see arrows flying downward when they close there eyes, and they move in only the four direction allowed in DDR. People have reported reaching for a non-existent button in their car to fire a missile at a person in front of them. Panic attacks have surfaced when FPS people notice that there isn't a crosshair in the middle of their vision and they are unarmed.

Video games aren't nessicarily the cause, people have reported that they frequently reach for Ctrl+Z when they do something wrong, or Ctrl+S when they do something right and want to save it. Ever since people were looking for happenings like this, they seemed to just pop up in everyday life. One person involuntarily moves to click the rewind button on an imaginary remote, another slinks along corners to avoid being shot at by an imaginary assassin, while yet another avoids video cameras at banks after a Splinter Cell binge.

While it isn't nessicarily a 'problem' common among people as a whole, it has gripped many people whether they are aware of it or not.

Visual, kinesthetic, and mental repetition are not the only forms that this shows up. A similar ailment are subjects of dreams. Have you ever stopped coding after a 4 hour coding spree, then go to bed exhausted and dream of code? Even common harmless things such as having a song stuck in your head are caused by the same process. This process is most likely linked to "Procedural Memory" which is what you use when you react without thinking, as if you were trained to do what ever it was after the memory receives conformation on the stimuli, this is the root of muscle memory.

18th and 19th Century Philosophers on Misogyny

Oct 22, 2012


"Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies."
Arthur Schopenhauer



"Women are capable of education, but they are not made for activities which demand a universal faculty such as the more advanced sciences, philosophy and certain forms of artistic production... Women regulate their actions not by the demands of universality, but by arbitrary inclinations and opinions." 
G.W.F Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, quoted in Alanen, Lilli and Witt, Charlotte, Feminist reflections on the history of philosophy'



Otto Weininger has been accused of misogyny in his book Sex and Character, in which he characterizes the "woman" part of each individual as being essentially "nothing," and having no real existence, having no effective consciousness or rationality.



Friedrich Nietzsche stated that every higher form of civilization implied stricter controls on women (Beyond Good and Evil, 7:238). He is known to have said "Women are less than shallow," and "Are you going to women? Do not forget the whip!" Whether or not this amounts to misogyny, whether his polemic against women is meant to be taken literally, and the exact nature of his opinions of women, are controversial.



Charlotte Witt wrote that Kant's and Aristotle's writings contained overt statements of sexism and racism. She found derogatory remarks about women in Kant's Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime.

Theres No I in Team - Busted


To all those people who ever told you "Theres no I in Team". There is an "M" & "E" which spells ME. And there is in fact an "I" in team. It's right there. TEAM. So it would seem there is an "I" in team and even a "ME" to boot.

Potential Facebook Update

Current (Old) Format:

Possible (New) Format:


Where will it end?

The Simpsons Next Gen

Oct 4, 2012

I really like this, looks great.

Ultimate Self-Reliance Mega-Manual

Let's talk about the Ultimate Self Reliance Mega-Manual: 151 Practical Strategies for Thriving in a Shattered Economy by Lee Bellinger - Independent Living. If you don't know what it is about, you haven't missed out on anything of importance, in fact if you never heard of it until now, you are probably better off than the people who have been subjected to the infomercial, countless ads and endless supply of empty promises that only possible impact on it's participants would be to become victims of a fear monger's desperate hoax during a time of recession.

That's right, this so called Mega-Manual is absolutely nothing but the aid of a fear-monger. Roughly 47 minutes of demonizing the American government, economy and citizens. Making wild claims about the end of the world as we know it, how western civilization is on the brink of collapse and the only hope of salvation rests in the pages of this "151 practical strategies" tip book.

At one point the video pauses and at this time the narrator asks you to check to make sure theres no one in ear shot, listening in on this confidential presentation. It's ridiculous, it's available to everyone in the world and largely advertised by GoogleAds.


An infomercial is all this presentation offers. Prompting viewers to buy a subscription to Independent Living, and as an added bonus they are eligible to receive;
The Ultimate Self-Reliance Mega-Manual,
BONUS GIFT #1: Establishing Your Personal Prescription Drug Back-Up Supply,
BONUS GIFT #2: Smart Hoarding 101:
BONUS GIFT #3: 21 Cutting-Edge Strategies for Reclaiming Your Privacy from Snoops, Corporations,
BONUS GIFT #4: Life Saving Basics,
BONUS GIFT #5: The Emergency Dollar Collapse Barter Kit: 14 Essential Items You Should Have Now.,
BONUS GIFT #6: Cut Your Grocery Bills in Half!,


Bonus gift one is about how to stock up on prescription drugs. If there's a shortage of drugs, then it would only hurt the economy if 1% of people bought up 5 years worth of medication. Thus creating the very problem the publishers claimed was coming.

Bonus gift two, Smart Hoarding 101: Do it right and save big money by stocking up on Food, Water and Yes Fuel. Again this self claimed 'solution' is nothing but a cause of problems, if even a fraction of the population starts stock piling resources for themselves the prices will inevitably go up. And what about in the eventuality that these social chaos scenarios come to pass and citizens begin to fight for resources, when the stores run out of stock where are the bandits going to strike? The greedy fools who have been hoarding supplies since the beginning the very people that are part of the problem.



Advocates buying bulk bullets for the future.

Wild accusations about government designating citizens trained on childbirth or edible plants to be classified as terrorists, claims to posses top secret government reports and shows a cartoon envelop.

Makes promises such as; make your own drugs and anti-biotic, how to get out of traffic tickets, info public wont know about for years.

In addition to selling magazine subscriptions one of the key arguments the presentation makes is how they think the American dollar will become worthless. So their solution is for people to stock up and spend all their hard earned money on gold and silver and great news, the same people who bring us the presentation also offers to sell us gold and silver coins and other scraps. They grantee once the economy tanks, the value of gold and silver will sky rocket and make you super rich. But only a stupid person would fall for something like that, if the end of the world was upon us, would the public really be clamoring over shiny coins? No, the value of gold and silver would plummet, you wont even be able to get a sandwich for all of King Tuts gold.



The economy went bad because of poor structure and even worse decisions. It will continue to go down because people stop spending, the program gives the idea the world is about to end, and tells viewers they need to hoard food, supplies and run away. If everyone has at least one job and spends within their means, the United States economy would be in pristine condition, but everyone wants something for nothing and that's what they'll get. Looking for easy solution or get rich quick schemes is only going to be poorly disappointed. And that's what you'll get with the Ultimate Self-Reliance Mega-Manual, plain and simple.


 

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