When you rely on too much on algorithms...

Take a look at the text of the first sentence of the Reuters article on Intel.

Star Trek videos

Commenter Sebastiaan van M. has a site with a bunch of Star Trek music videos... Check it out.

I don't know if this one is in that batch, but it sure made me laugh out loud:


Star Trek Rhapsody (Ditto) - The best bloopers are a click away

ST:TAS / Pulp's Common People mashup

Mr. Shatner did a cover version of the band Pulp's song Common People. Throw in some of The Animated Series and a little bit of slash, and you get something like this:

Excellent Web Cartoons

Everyone has got to check out The Rut. Sister sites: Pencils at Dawn, See Mike Draw.

Redshirts Bite the Dust

I think this has been around for a while, but it's great. (Redshirts on Wikipedia.)

Various Items

Here's the story: Work is busy, life is busy (we finally cleaned out the garage loft today) and despite my best wishes to blog effusively, I get to what I get to. That's my new motto.

• Documentary being worked on about Wikipedia and wikis in general. You can contribute ideas to the film's own wiki site.
• Chris Anderson says the music biz is UP UP UP, except for CD sales.
• Map of the Star Wars Universe. Also, comparison of Star Trek and Star Wars spacecraft.
• The other night, The ♥G♥ and I watched F**k: The Documentary. Highly fucking recommended! Comments on profanity, free speech vs. censorship, the fluid nature of language, and just how silly we Americans can be about certain syllables, from Drew Carey, Alanis Morissette, Ben Bradlee, Ron Jeremy, Ice-T, Tera Patrick, Sam Donaldson, Janeane Garofolo, Kevin Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, et al. Not just them, but the no-fucking-fun crowd: Alan Fucking Keyes, Pat Fucking Boone, Dennis Fucking Prager, Michael Fucking Medved, and Miss Fucking Manners!
• Also watched 28 Weeks Later. Spoliers! I think this was even better than Days. Interesting things to note: The central family essentially doomed half the world or so by their own inability to realize that almost all of their countrymen had perished from the Infection. The whole U.S. Army involvement was very Iraq-ish, but here's the thing: They (Army) had the wrong idea about putting everyone into a confined space, but they had the right idea about trying to get rid of everyone afterwards. Very Planet-of-the-Apesesque ending.
• Django Reinhardt/Paul Simon mashup. Awesome!
• The math of vampires, ghosts, and zombies. Excerpt: Let us assume that a vampire need feed only once a month. This is certainly a highly conservative assumption, given any Hollywood vampire film. Now, two things happen when a vampire feeds. The human population decreases by one and the vampire population increases by one. Let us suppose that the first vampire appeared in 1600 c.e. It doesn’t really matter what date we choose for the first vampire to appear; it has little bearing on our argument. We list a government Web site in the references (U.S. Census) that provides an estimate of the world population for any given date. For January 1, 1600, we will accept that the global population was 536,870,911.2 In our argument, we had at the same time one vampire.

Analysis of Redshirt Phenomenon

Via Fark: Analytics According to Captain Kirk. This is a statistical representation of the Redshirt Phenomenon (click above to enlarge) which has to do with the death rate of crimson-clad, anonymous Enterprise crewmen. Excerpt:

Q: What factors could increase/decrease the survival rate of red-shirted crewmen? Besides not getting involved in fights, which usually proved fatal, the crewmen could avoid beaming down to the planet's surface, which is inherent to their end. However, that could result in a court-martial for failure to obey orders. Besides not beaming down, another factor that showed to increase the survival rate of the red-shirts was the nature of the relationship between the alien life and captain Kirk. When Captain Kirk meets an alien woman and "makes contact" the survival rate of the red-shirted crewmen increases by 84%. In fact, out of Captain Kirks' 24 "relationships" there were only three instances of red-shirt vaporization. The caveat to this is when Captain Kirk not only meets the local alien women, but also starts a fight among alien locals. The combination of these events has led to the elimination of 4 crewmembers (3 red-shirts).

More Items

Items:

• Ever wonder how the Klingon language was created? Wonder no more. Also, if you ever need to Google something in Klingon...
• Cool blog on new wave/alternative rock of the 80s.
• Interesting, hard-to-categorize blog: Ectoplasmosis.
• Spiffed up my Wiki user page a bit.
• Bootie Top 10. (No, not this; maybe some other time.) Via Mashuptown. Make sure to check out Gorillaz + Styx and Eurythmics + White Stripes.

Star Trek in the Silent Era

Via Cinerati, Steam Trek: The Moving Picture --

Items

Things from around the Web:

• A very good article by Andrew Ferguson on the passing of amateur Lincoln researcher James O. Hall. Excerpt: Uncorrupted by graduate degrees, with no thought of professional advancement, Mr. Hall exemplified a tradition in the study of American history, particularly in the Lincoln field, where the most interesting writing and research is often done by hobbyists. It's been this way from the beginning. Until the middle of the last century, all the great Lincoln biographers made their livings outside the university--journalists like Ida Tarbell and free-lance enthusiasts like Benjamin Thomas produced biographies that were beautifully written and filled with news. Even now, dozens of Lincoln or Civil War roundtables flourish, and many of them publish quirky newsletters in which members let drop bits of recondite research or boldly advance new theories. While other areas of academic research have shriveled into hyperspecialization, the amateur tradition has kept the Lincoln field blessedly free of the guild mentality that can make academic history seem the dreary province of pedants and bullies.
• I've been pimpin' out my Wikipedia User page. More to follow.
• Mashuptown: KISS + Tone-Loc + 20 Fingers.
• Via The Website at the End of the Universe, an insanely intricate map of the Star Trek Universe.

What I've Been Watching Lately

Several movies in the last couple weeks:

McCabe and Mrs. Miller -- I saw this first about 12-13 years ago, and I was prompted to watch it again as part of my campaign to watch or re-watch all of Robert Altman's films -- a campaign upon which I embarked after his death. It's kind of like an anti-Western -- the hero spends a bunch of time avoiding the showdown and sneaking around in the snow. I watched Altman's Popeye a little while ago, and they both had elaborate, quirky sets that almost acted as characters themselves. On McC&MM, Altman points out in the commentary that the because the story was about people building a town in the old West, that he got the carpenters who were building the actual set to dress in period clothing and do their work, and just incorporated that work into the background of the film itself.

Boxcar Bertha -- This was an early Martin Scorcese film. Now I am a huge Scorcese fan, and I certainly will not say that I am dissatisfied with having viewed this film -- It was pretty good. I just don't think it was all that great. Like McC&MM, the railroad was the bad guy.

Smokin' Aces -- Kicked fuckin' ass! Kind of Pulp-Fictionish, but not exactly, and this movie just gets started and does not stop! Here are some samples of the Smokin' Aces comic books. Here's the director's blog, and he says there might be some prequels in the works. Can't wait!

Superman Returns -- I loved the overall feel of this movie; It was very loyal to the first two films in the Superman franchise of the late 70s and early 80s. I didn't see it until just now, and I kind of wish I had caught it on the big screen. I loved the way they incorporated the original John Williams score so thoroughly, and how they did the retro-futuristic effects on the opening credits. The plot... well, you know -- the villainous Lex Luthor is out to rule the world, kill Superman, etc. But that's what the plot is supposed to be. This is definitely a situation where the form of the film is at least as important as the plot, if not more so, and I think SR realizes that.

LBNL, (I haven't watched them all yet) -- We went to Wal-Mart yesterday for kitty litter, and I saw that they were selling all four of the first Star Trek movies for $7.50 each! And I don't mean some bare bones garbage, I mean double-disc, director's version, collectors' editons of each! Boo-yah! I watched ST:TMP late last night (for the first time in many years) and I was struck by how 70s it was. I saw it in the theater when I was about 11, and I remember being like "Huh? When are they going to do something?" Much more abstract than the following installments. (Update, 11:07 PM, Monday 5/28/07 -- I have now watched them all, and over the next couple weeks will go back and catch the extras and commentaries. Keep an eye out for ex-Go-Go Jane Wiedlin in IV!)

More Star Trek Music Videos

I posted some Star Trek mashups a while ago. (The Rammstein one didn't play the whole clip...)

Here's the Spock-centric Rammstein video in its entirety (I guess they're all pretty Spock-centric):

Here's Seasons in the Sun:

Here's Nine Inch Nails:

Jungle Book:

And, STTNG, The Sitcom:

Weekend Items

Several things:

• The ♥G♥ and I also watched the film The Prestige this morning, and I was fascinated by it. (I kept pausing the DVD every few minutes to share my theories on the story with her.) Mild spoiler warning: If you've ever read Spock Must Die, there are some similar concepts. I want to see about reading the novel by Christopher Priest. They gist of the story was about magicians being psychotically obsessive about hiding their secrets. I was reminded of the contrasting approach that Penn & Teller have used to much success, in which they tell the audience they are flim-flamming them, and then explain how they did it.
• Does the Internet need an overhaul? Some people at Stanford University (and elsewhere) think so. Excerpt: We believe that the current Internet has significant deficiencies that need to be solved before it can become a unified global communication infrastructure. Further, we believe the Internet's shortcomings will not be resolved by the conventional incremental and 'backward-compatible' style of academic and industrial networking research. The proposed program will focus on unconventional, bold, and long-term research that tries to break the network's ossification. To this end, the research program can be characterized by two research questions: "With what we know today, if we were to start again with a clean slate, how would we design a global communications infrastructure?", and "How should the Internet look in 15 years?" We will measure our success in the long-term: We intend to look back in 15 years time and see significant impact from our program.
• Happy belated birthday to the institution of the blog.
• Lots of stuff on the late great Kurt Vonnegut. Where do you begin on his writings? I haven't read all of it, but I've read a lot of it. Maybe start with Slaughterhouse Five, if you have not yet initiated yourself into the Cult of Vonnegut. Or is that my bias because that was my first book of his? Maybe God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater for a more optimistic characterization?
• I came across some copies of Juxtapoz Magazine this weekend. (I swear, it was before I saw this Boing Boing link -- Some friends of ours have some copies in a basket next to the bidet in their bathroom.) Check 'em out. I like the magazine's overall vibe, and I will be looking at more of their articles in the next few weeks.

Enterprise vs. Death Star

Ever wonder what would happen if Capt. Picard was flying along in the Enterprise and ran into Darth Vader? Wonder no more:

Terrific mashup! Except... They spelled most of the characters' names wrong in the end credits! (Riker, Vader, Sidious) Still, an excellent contribution to the Blogosphere from Kocevski.

Star Trek / Jefferson Airplane Mashup

Via Cinerati:

Also: The more-intense Star Trek/Rammstein. (Hey! Quits 1/2way through. Anyone know where I can find an intact copy?) (Also: SpongeBob/Rammstein!)