Some Such Name
12.04.2004
  Salaam Finland!
After the dazzling arrival of Irish tornado Emmet Cole, I now welcome a blizzard from Finland - Matti Pohjonen, to freeze us with his metaphysical snowballs. I met Matti at a dinner party a few days ago and we get along like a house on fire. So I thought, how about a blog called Some Such Name, that will one day represent every single nation in the world?

Welcome, Matti!
 
12.03.2004
  The Red Shift: An Explanation
I have some thoughts on what is happening with the extensive mathematical and cartographic analyses of the exit poll results in America, and the subsequently seen "red shift".

The Doppler Effect is not an analogy, it is a law of physics. It happens everytime you start analysing information in the frequency space, and either the observer or the observed is moving.American Elections are a way to reduce clusters of numbers to frequency space.

A screeching train zooms past you with a sharp rise in "observed" frequency. When galaxies are said to be moving away, it is primarily because they are seen as undergoing a "red shift", or a perceived shift towards the longer wavelengths of the spectrum. If they were coming towards us, it would be a blue shift.

The Doppler Effect is a purely informational phenomenon in physics, it's greatest mystery perhaps, since it depends on the movement of the observer and observed. Humans are able to experience it because there is a spiral muscle called the cochlea that converts sound by a Fourier-like transform into the frequency space.

If elections are an information processing system, there is no reason why we should not see a Doppler Effect. The only assumption we need to make is that information flows within a society. The society is the observer of this information. The information is moving. So the final meaning of the Red Shift is this:

The information collected from the polls is undergoing a "red shift". This indicates that the information is not really red, but somewhere in the middle of the opinion spectrum, but because the information is moving, it is perceived as red. Hence, the exit poll results are Dopplered.

Yet another mathematical analyses could perhaps force my opinion stronger. There is an anomaly observed in cosmic "red shifts". If someone who understands this cosmic phenomenon called Fingers Of God better, which appears only in Red Shift spaces, could analyse the exit poll results for such a phenomenon, and if by some stroke of luck he sees this happening, I will be quite pleased.

Please tell me I'm not insane.
 
  Waterson, Waterson Everywhere
This one comes via my pal Annie. There has been a major breakthrough in the gossip surrounding the film Fight Club:

In the film Fight Club, the real name of the protagonist (Ed Norton’s character) is never revealed. Many believe the reason behind this anonymity is to give "Jack" more of an everyman quality. Do not be deceived. "Jack" is really Calvin from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. It’s true. Norton portrays the grown-up version of Calvin, while Brad Pitt plays his imaginary pal, Hobbes, reincarnated as Tyler Durden.



I did feel that Brad Pitt was sorta hairy in this film, but look at that!
 
12.02.2004
  Fingers Of God
From my lovely, beautiful, god-like, democratic, my last hope for world peace - the Wikipedia. How many of you tremble when you read this, let me know:

"Fingers of God is an effect in cosmology that causes clusters of galaxies to be elongated in redshift space, with an axis of elongation pointed toward the observer. It is due to an effect where the peculiar velocities of the galaxies in a cluster associated with the gravity of the cluster by means of the virial theorem change the observed redshifts of the galaxies in the clusters as a deviation from the Hubble Law expansion that is nominally expected."
 
12.01.2004
  Textbook Disclaimer Stickers
I wasn't born this way, Blue Fairy! It was in a public school that they told me that the earth was flat and I, the gullible fool, believed them.

You and your children don't have to suffer this travesty. All you need to do is print and stick these nifty disclaimer stickers for science books:

This book contains material about special relativity. Special Relativity is a scientific theory, and very few scientists fully understand it. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.
 
11.30.2004
  Slave To Your Vibes
Many of the charming but jobless folk who read this blog have been requesting more news about the delectable Emmet Cole. Well, if you're already here honey, you know you deserve better. So, guess what?

Emmet Cole is now here. RoGue and EmCol are going to BloGue together. We might change the name of this institution to accomodate his Irish blood, which I'm told, is Guiness. And you will request a nude picture of him sooner or later, so I already give you. Manga, to detaa!



Please give him a huge round of applause and welcome the New Whorled Order. This is an order!
 
11.29.2004
  Virtual Sherpa
Heidi Klum has become a McHottie, and I'm dissapointed with this newzoid. The ointment on my gloom is a fairly slick and funny essay-cum-quiz called "Virtual Sherpa®: Your Guide to the Right Career in the High-Tech Workplace of Tomorrow." -

We live in an era that was compelled to invent the term "dizzying array." Do you think your great-grandparents ever witnessed a dizzying array of anything? Heck, friend, our ancestors were lucky to see an array in their lifetimes. An array, now that was big news. They'd all stop churning the butter or tilling the fields and come gaze at the array. It was like a solar eclipse or a comet. And then, once they had gotten a good look at the array, they trudged back, exhilarated but not at all dizzy, to those jobs they did not choose.

Notice McSweeney's current caption, very cool - "Blind Bastard Child Will Be President Someday".
 
  How We Are Hungry, stories by Dave Eggers
If you guys haven't heard of Dave Eggers, it's time now to get the preggers by reading his speady existentialist thriller - You Shall Know Our Velocity. In the meantime, here is an excerpt from How We Are Hungry:



"If a soldier were killed and mutilated in his own country, the man would not feel this kind of revulsion. He doesn't feel this way when he hears about trains colliding, or a family, in Missouri, drowning in their minivan in a December lake. But this, in another part of the world, this soldier dragged from his car, this soldier alone, this dead unbloody body in the dust under the truck—why does it set the man on edge, why does it feel so personal? The man at home feels this way too often now. He feels tunneled, wrapped, desiccated. His eyes feel the strain of trying for too long to see in the dark. The man is watching the smoke from the factory, and though there are many things he could do that day, he will do none of them."
 
  Anagrammaticalamity
Modern Humorist just took apart my favorite Eliot mush-poem - The Love Song Of J. Allfred Pruffock. It's a hilarious read if you've grown up with the original, and if you've hummed "I should have been a pair of ragged claws, Scuttling across the floors of silent seas." to entranced ladies:



Toilets
by T.S. Eliot

Let us go then, to the john,
Where the toilet seat waits to be sat upon
Like a lover's lap perched upon ceramic;
Let us go, through doors that do not always lock,
Which means you ought to knock
Lest opening one reveal a soul within
Who'll shout, "Stay out! Did you not see my shin,
Framed within the gap twixt floor and stall?"
No, I did not see that at all.
That is not what I saw, at all.

To the stall the people come to go,
Reading an obscene graffito.

We have lingered in the chamber labeled "Men"
Till attendants proffer aftershave and mints
As we lather up our hands with soap, and rinse.
 
  Maggie Cheung, Heh
This you need to see for yourself, boyz ;)

Maggie Cheung, as a well-known Hongkong actress, has enjoyed long-term popularity since her debut. Now being available from a divorce (yay!), Maggie again becomes the focus of single gentlemen. Still elegant, attractive. All you can see from and feel about her is----charming.


 
  "Hobbits" Imprisoned
Homo Florensis, or 'hobbits', the new specie of hominins that was discovered in Indonesia has been put under lock and key by an arrogant scientist (even if one of the best in Indonesia,) thus blocking access to a major discovery for the other explorers who were also involved in the project:

They may be tiny, but the hobbits -- the extinct one-metre-high human species whose discovery rocked the palaeontology world last month - are provoking a giant barney among Australian and Indonesian scientists.

One of Indonesia's leading palaeontologists, Professor Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University in Jakarta, has grabbed the hobbit remains and locked them away in his safe, refusing to let other scientists study them.

In addition, he rejected the widespread view that the hobbits are a separate human species, claiming they are a pygmy form of modern humans who suffered microcephaly, a disorder that produces a small brain.
 
  Dark Side Of The Croon
In engineering college we had three things we couldn't do without - weed, booze and Pink Floyd. So all you engineer freaks might like to know that the chorus Pink Floyd's song Another Brick In The Wall was sung by 23 schoolchildren.

The album made gazillions and sold over 12 million copies. Now the kids are suing Pink Floyd for royalties:

A group of former pupils at a London comprehensive school are poised to win thousands of pounds in unpaid royalties for singing on Pink Floyd's classic Another Brick In The Wall 25 years ago.

The pupils from the 1979 fourthform music class at Islington Green School secretly recorded vocals after their teacher was approached by the band's management.


 
  Cellphone Archer
This amateur Robin Hood should be awarded The medal for understanding the power of a cellphone. what a ball-breaker, dude! -

Authorities in Sweden arrested a man who shot mobile phones into the yard of a high-security prison with a bow and arrows, police said Saturday.

The 25-year-old man is charged with planning to aid a prison escape and could get up to a year in jail, police said.
 
India, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Finland - 5/201 countries represented so far. And counting....

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Interesting Reads

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide by Douglas Adams

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Vintage Contemporaries) by Mark Haddon

What If Our World Is Their Heaven? The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick, Gwen Lee (Editor), Doris Elaine Sauter (Editor), Tim Powers

The Game-Players of Titan by Philip K. Dick

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

A Clockwork Orange (Norton Paperback Fiction) by Anthony Burgess

Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 1) by Frank Herbert

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