A beach where the sand plays koto with the crashing waves for backup singing, you could be meeting up at the front gate of Kyoto Estación with your icebox, your sun hats, enough ice to build an igloo and bags upon bags of useless 100en beach toys, you could be riding a train small enough to fit in your childhood railway model kit, diving through mountains and popping out along the coast, you could be walking a deserted country trail down to your very own 10 acres of pristine white sand, swimming the warm waters of the Sea of Japan in August, you could be preparing fresh guacamole in the sunset with a piña colada in your hand, you could be barbecuing tandoori chicken in the dark, you could call on to your cro-magnon roots and be the Master of Fire for a night, you could sit around a bonfire, burning your fingers trying to melt marshmallows on chopsticks, you could be laying back on a beach, sand in your hair, skies in your eyes, noticing the Great Starry River for the first time since you started living on an island of neons and streetlights: for every late Summer shooting star you catch out of the corner of your eye, drink your tequila and bite a lemon, if you missed it: drink anyway because it is damn good stuff and made from cactus so it can’t be bad for you, you could start running along the beach, throw your underwear at random and dive headfirst into the sea for midnight skinny dipping, you could light up the sky and wake up the fishes with fireworks until you run out of lighters or energy, whichever comes first, you could be playing poker with a flashlight and a stash of one-yen coin and realise that beachwear makes for very quick rounds of strip poker, you could be falling asleep with the sound of waves crashing at your feet, you could be eating chocolate on bread for breakfast with an aftertaste of salt on your lips, you could be making fresh yakisoba with grilled slices of pumpkin for dessert, you could be spending your day playing in the waves or napping in the shadow, you could be listening to the sand singing under your feet, you could be doing a thousand other things under the sun…

Of course, you could.

Happy birthday to me. Another year of backward aging and waning maturity on the way back to infantile bliss.

Post originally published on: Dave's Blog (please leave your comments over there)

You Could…

Dear fellows at the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Guidelines Committee,

It has recently come to my attention that you have decided to do away with names deemed “inappropriate or offensive” found in the existing international gene nomenclature.

I couldn’t agree more: I always thought that the officially registered name for gene kill-all-the-Jews-and-drink-their-blood was a bit politicised for a scientific setting.

Whatever you do, however, keep your hands off gene SHH, otherwise officially known as sonic hedgehog homolog (Drosophila) gene. We like it the way it is (blue, spiky and running very fast). Beside, what better way to break the news of some potentially fatal gene mutation disease to a kid, than by introducing a beloved computer game mascot!

PS: and for chrissake, drop the Comic Sans font: it makes your world-class gene database website look like it was coded by a 1st year CS student in 1991 (yes, I know: it probably was).

Love,

Post originally published on: Dave's Blog (please leave your comments over there)

Save the fastest running gene in the galaxy!

Is this show written by teenage nerds on ritalin, or did they just post a poll on the back covers of sci-fi mags?

Post originally published on: Dave's Blog (please leave your comments over there)

Exponential Growth of Plot Contrivance

In a rare interview, Rob Wainwright, international director of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca), told the Guardian [...]

Meanwhile, somewhere, there’s an international director of the Funny and Organised Crime Agency (Foca) who feels like nobody takes his job seriously…

Post originally published on: Dave's Blog (please leave your comments over there)

No laughing matter…

For the couple tenacious lost souls still around, here is the perennial pointless “Oops, has it been a month already?” post. Insert usual excuses here.

Unfortunately, I cannot even promise you any improvement for a while (possibly two whiles and a half, depending on how things go). However, more as a way to remind myself than anything, here are a couple things I may (or may not) devote a post to, in the (very) near future (OK, I’m typing some of these as I type this):

• French Politics Part 2 and Ms. Ségolène Royal (I’m nearly done writing it, I swear).
• Bug-ridden Apple Mail program and why I really, really hate its guts, after it annihilated my inbox and those past 4 months of received emails I hadn’t backed up yet.
• Incidentally, why you may want to send again any mail you’ve sent me in the past 5 months (particularly if I haven’t replied to it yet).
• Why Russell Crowe makes a very poor substitute to studying for my Game Theory test.
• The so-called “Turing” Test: why it is meaningless, pointless and not all that interesting in the end.
• Complexity classes and NP-completeness. What is it and can it mow your lawn? With extra special bits on primality testing, combinatorial explosion, and my very own personal position on the great P versus NP debate.
• Cryptology, Encryption algorithms, DES and why they are indeed out to get you.
• Possibly: what I will be up to, come this Summer, if things go according to the plan (they never do).

Alright, now that I’ve made a bunch of loose promises for new content, I will be going back to actually writing it.

Post originally published on: Dave's Blog (please leave your comments over there)

Stay Tuned

2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through

5. The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation

28. My pet monster will be kept in a secure cage from which it cannot escape and into which I could not accidentally stumble.

35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.

[...]

42. When I capture the hero, I will make sure I also get his dog, monkey, ferret, or whatever sickeningly cute little animal capable of untying ropes and filching keys happens to follow him around.

43. I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.

50. My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.

51. If one of my dungeon guards begins expressing concern over the conditions in the beautiful princess’ cell, I will immediately transfer him to a less people-oriented position.

56. My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at 10 meters will be used for target practice.

65. If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.

78. I will not tell my Legions of Terror “And he must be taken alive!” The command will be “And try to take him alive if it is reasonably practical.”

86. I will make sure that my doomsday device is up to code and properly grounded.

87. My vats of hazardous chemicals will be covered when not in use. Also, I will not construct walkways above them.

96. My door mechanisms will be designed so that blasting the control panel on the outside seals the door and blasting the control panel on the inside opens the door, not vice versa.

116. If I capture the hero’s starship, I will keep it in the landing bay with the ramp down, only a few token guards on duty and a ton of explosives set to go off as soon as it clears the blast-range.

136. If I build a bomb, I will simply remember which wire to cut if it has to be deactivated and make every wire red.

147. I will classify my lieutenants in three categories: untrusted, trusted, and completely trusted. Promotion to the third category will be awarded posthumously.

160. Before being accepted into my Legions of Terror, potential recruits will have to pass peripheral vision and hearing tests, and be able to recognize the sound of a pebble thrown to distract them.

176. I will add indelible dye to the moat. It won’t stop anyone from swimming across, but even dim-witted guards should be able to figure out when someone has entered in this fashion.

179. I will not outsource core functions.

181. I will decree that all hay be shipped in tightly-packed bales. Any wagonload of loose hay attempting to pass through a checkpoint will be set on fire.

190. If my mad scientist/wizard tells me he has almost perfected my Superweapon but it still needs more testing, I will wait for him to complete the tests. No one ever conquered the world using a beta version.

205. All repair work will be done by an in-house maintenance staff. Any alleged “repairmen” who show up at the fortress will be escorted to the dungeon.

211. If my chief engineer displeases me, he will be shot, not imprisoned in the dungeon or beyond the traps he helped design.

218. I will not pick up a glowing ancient artifact and shout “Its power is now mine!!!” Instead I will grab some tongs, transfer it to a hazardous materials container, and transport it back to my lab for study.

221. My force-field generators will be located inside the shield they generate.

230. I will not procrastinate regarding any ritual granting immortality.

231. Mythical guardians will be instructed to ask visitors name, purpose of visit, and whether they have an appointment instead of ancient riddles.

Evil Overlord Guide

Yes. As you may have guessed by the sheer laziness of the above post, we aren’t quite past that nasty case of deadlinitis around the house. I promise we will resume actual blogging by next week.

Post originally published on: Dave's Blog (please leave your comments over there)

Evil Overlord List

A real game. With winners, losers, gladiators, wild beasts and blood. Lots of blood!

OK. Perhaps no blood, to start with. But we are hard at work incorporating this element for further installments…

The Rules

Perhaps you noticed there was a strange air of déjà-dit to my last pre-logged post. In fact, one single person noticed it: I’m slightly disappointed in you, dear readers, I thought we were all playing at a higher plane, already… somewhere high above the clouds and the mass of the vulgar and the ignorant. Apparently not.

For the thick and obtuse, let me cut it out clear as crystal meth:

The previous entry (italicized introduction excepted) is entirely composed of lyrics stolen from miscellaneous musical pieces performed at some point during the past 2000 years or so.

Your mission, if you accept it, is to find which musical pieces were used. All fairly popular tracks. By “fairly popular”, I’d say most, if not all, proudly boast at least a Gold Record status…

Now, put back that Google where you found it: it won’t help you none (just try if you don’t believe me). It won’t help, because the pieces of this wonderful little riddle span over six (6) languages (in no particular order: Spanish, Greek, English, Italian, French and German). Translations were furthermore adapted a little, both to fit my fancy and preserve you from the all too tempting Google option.

That’s thirteen (13) fragments (only twelve tracks, as two fragments could be considered part of the same), covering quite a wide array of musical genres.

One last time for those who slept through: the riddle is HERE.

The Prize

Yes, there is a prize. No, I’m not kidding.

To the winner of this Herculean challenge, I will present with a bottle of extremely refined Japanese spirit, drawn from my personal collection, currently sitting in a corner of my Tokyo flat, where my recent experiments in hardcore sobriety have left it feeling dejected for many months now. Of guaranteed Japanese make, it might not necessarily be something as pedestrian as sake, but trust me when I say it will do wonders to impress those of your guests that wouldn’t already be blown away by your seemingly bottomless knowledge of music and languages.

The bottle will be handpicked and handed over, upon announcement of the winner, but no sooner than June the 20th (unable as I’ll be to regain access to my precious padlocked alcohol cabinet until then).

The prize will be hand-delivered to the winner. For winners not residing within a 200 mile radius of the localities I plan on visiting during the civil year 2005, the prize will be handmailed along with a complimentary signed photo of Dr Dave wearing, at your choice: 1) black speedo from the 2005 Summer catalog, 2) traditional Japanese loincloth underwear, or 3) lace undergarment with matching heels (other options possible for a small extra: please inquire within for details).

The winner will be the first person or group to communicate (through public comment or private email) the names of all musical pieces used (in correct order) along with the quoted lyrics in their original version. In case of a draw (unlikely, I say), victory will go to those providing the most approaching break down of the specific interpretations I used when composing this text.
If nobody has figured all of the pieces by July 1st, the prize will go to whoever has given the most advanced answer, the earliest in the game.

All rules subject to arbitration, interpretations, alterations and plain outright cheating, at the sole discretion of myself.

Before You Start

Make no mistake: this is an extraordinarily difficult riddle, only the bravest, most refined, nerdiest, most devoid of any sort of social life, among you dear readers, stand the slightest chance of ever making it past the first two or three lucky finds. In order to greatly improve your chances of success, a few pieces of advice:

• Work in teams: let’s face it, unless you have a secret cheating weapon (in which case, think: karma), you will never even come close to figuring more than a half of these. Your chances will be exponentially higher if you team up with people of different cultures, language skills and musical tastes as your own. Preferably pick someone much smaller than you, so you can beat him up and steal the bottle, were you to eventually win the prize.
• If you are a citizen of the United-States, you start with a serious handicap. Then again, you probably knew it by now. Llife won’t be easy for you, pretending to be Canadian might help, but barely. In an attempt to make things even, we have practically given you your first answer: it’s sitting in the comments of the game’s entry. From there, finding the song’s title and exact lyrics should be within reach of even the fiercest Dick Cheney fans among you.
• Pick your strategy, consider publicly disclosing your findings as you go (and running the risk of helping your competitors) and thus secure your position ahead of the pack when the time to pick a winner will come. Feel free to trade, threaten, collaborate and otherwise brainstorm on all this, whether on this blog or on your own, the comment section of the game’s entry is all yours.
• Being me may help you a lot in gathering the immense knowledge and culture essential to tackle an intellectual task of such prodigious depth. Failing that, you may want to consider bribery in all its forms (especially if you are a young reader with few inhibitions and the will to travel): I am a particularly vain and venal ilk of genius.
• Low blows of all sorts and otherwise nasty behaviours toward your opponents are all highly encouraged. Just always remember to keep a smile on your face, you’re so much prettier like that.

I would wish you a good luck, but it wouldn’t do you much good here. Now go and get started!

Post originally published on: Dave's Blog (please leave your comments over there)

The Riddle to End Them All

FaceAnalyzer is a website that claims to be able to give you, from a mere picture, an automated breakdown of your “race” (which, may I remind you people, in the case of humans, is mostly a social construct, with hardly any ground in biology), along with an estimate of your “Intelligence”, “Ambition”, “Risk” (whatever the hell that may be), “Gay Factor”… complete with, I kid you not: Income bracket…

Now I know what you think: quite a bit of pseudoscience, mixed in with a whole lot of outright quackiness…

Only one way to know, right?

Upon submitting a fairly broad sample of my likeness, in various states of drug-induced haze, hair color and cheekiness, the results were rather mitigated:
While I can certainly accept the possibility that I may have a fair share of East-Indian or Chinese blood in me (please no “ever had some [insert ethnicity] in you?” joke here), I find it a bit harder to accept that I’d be a woman (as the system insisted on pointing out, in every single case)… Although that would explain a certain fascination for lace undergarments and a secret passion for knitting I always attributed to my deviant morals… But in that case, wouldn’t all the lesbian action give me a “Gay Factor” at least somewhat above average?

Obviously not very conclusive. But science makes mistakes… One should not draw hasty conclusions and bluntly discard such breakthrough technology as “money-making snake’s oil scheme” without at least a second chance…

So I bravely submitted a picture of my brother’s cat, and I must say the results are troubling.

• Indeed, the cat is FEMALE! Most definitely has a good deal of middle-eastern ancestry, in fact, her lineage can probably be traced to every other urban slum of the Eurasian continent, with the odd pedigreed tomcat here and there…
• Frankly not sure about that “Low Promiscuity” rate: I mean, before she got spayed, the girl could be quite a little trollop around the neighbourhood.
• It is a bit disappointing that she only displays “Average” ambition, but I guess we will have to find solace in the fact that she is destined to make at least $30,000 a year… not bad for a cat who doesn’t even have her high-school degree.

I’ll be contacting my brother shortly and urge him to stop wasting her talent on stupid things like chasing rats and rummaging around the neighbourhood: that cat has potential (Beta Academic potential!), she needs to be put to work!

By the way, physiognomy is not a new idea. It hasn’t been given the slightest bit of scientific credibility over the past 50 years, though.

As for how the website gets its “uncanny” success rate regarding geographical phenotypes: any first-year computer science student can get the same results with a big-enough sample database and some very low-grade face-matching algorithm. Any rating merely suggest a match with existing pictures of a certain ethnicity, which is well below the crease of scientific procedure, hence the wild margin of error. In fact a properly trained neural network would probably give vastly superior results on some criteria (such as gender, for example).

Needless to say that detection of personality traits such as “Gay Factor”, “Promiscuity” or even “Intelligence”, through face analysis, is complete and utter bullcrap. The last people with an academic background to have given it some sort of scientific credence ended up cracking capsules of cyanide in their mouth, approximately sixty years ago.

Post originally published on: Dave's Blog (please leave your comments over there)

Face Analysis

Why, but we skim our log stats, of course! Digging that endless fodder of cheap entertainment that are search engine referrer keyphrases!

You know what they say about the correlation between the size of a crowd and its collective IQ? Well that should be a good clue as to what to expect from the Web-using community at large.

Let’s have a look, shall we:
[all italicized search strings below taken verbatim from my February server stats]

• a guide to better living through alcohol. Easy: Pour. Drink. Refill. Go back to step 1.
• japanese schoolgirl panties: As we already pointed out, you stand better chances over there.
• padawan definition: isn’t that Klingon for “acneic virgin”?
• posted by xanax: No. sponsored by Xanax
• hunting beavers: just bait them with white birch…

• most luxurious airline: anything we can do to help
• what the fuck is wrong with girls: my friend, when you find out, please come back and let me know. If while you are at it, you can find out what’s wrong with guys too, that’d be much appreciated.
• 18 year old lesbian milfs: I sense some confusion on the milf concept here…
• does drinking too much caffeine make you sweat?: dunno, I only shoot it up.
• jagermeister translation: “Master Hunter” (and there’s an umlaut on Jäger)
• seltzer delivery man: here is an idea that could make millions on a saturday morning
• i hate apple g4 powerbook: me too, but don’t say it too loud, he’s easily irritable.
• the word filibuster used in a sentence: Mmn, wait… “I will filibuster ass”? No, probably not…
• blog on xanax (yea, seems like a recurrent theme): always a good idea, helps taking the edge off the Ritalin and stabilize the shaking long enough to type.
• family fun in taiwan: I’m told it’s best to avoid Taipei’s Historical Heritage Museum of Venereal Diseases. Otherwise, it’s all family fun.
• what is a scientific experiment: it’s a bit like cooking, except you are not supposed to taste the result at the end.
• getting laid in shinjuku: try Kabukicho. Don’t forget to bring your credit card and your left hand.
• major industry sin nunavut: I believe burlesque revues of seals wearing frilly lingerie is about as wild as the sin industry gets, back there in Nunavut.
• weblog nietzsche (two people came searching for that one): I’m told he is on LiveJournal posing as a 16-year teenager girl writing bad goth poetry.
• planes for dummies. That one comes broken down in two volumes. Ask for “Takeoff for Dummies” or “Landing for Dummies”
• how to get fucked up: ever tried bleach?
• how much is too much caffeine: I guess when the xanax won’t stop the shaking anymore, it’s time to cut-down.
• come smells like bleach: probably time to stop drinking bleach
• what to say on a tip jar: “Help us save Ethiopian orphans”?

And we shall leave the last say to one of our most ardent fan out there:

• site unknowngenius.com must die: couldn’t agree more!

Post originally published on: Dave's Blog (please leave your comments over there)

Ask Dr. Dave