Category Archives: Articles

“Ants that Count” or Not

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Ants, they’re amazing. I read recently about how ants that don’t lay chemical trails get back to their nest by “counting” their steps. Though they don’t really count, they do know the relative size of their bodies and can determine how far they have gone and can return on a straight course. Then I read a Blog about how they don’t count, and how we are applying a non-human trait to them when they have the very human, or rather “higher”, animal trait of being aware of their size. This Blog post (which you can read on WordPress: it was freshly-pressed a while ago) said that by saying they “counted” we were making ourselves seem higher than the ants and that we should just recognize that ants have surprisingly higher abilities than we think they do.

However I would say the opposite is true. To me it seems like a fairly logical thing to assume that all animals are aware of their body size to some degree, otherwise they would do all sorts of stupid things, like run into walls. I believe that the majority of humans are afraid of ants. They organize, they specialize, they have a hierarchical system, and operate much like a single organism. I also believe that the average person is afraid of math. I personally like it and many of my friends are good or competent at it. But I know many more people who are bad at it and/or hate it. Many people are just mediocre at math, and that makes them not like it or be afraid of its existence.

Can you see where this is going yet? I think that the people who said that the ants were “counting” their steps were actually making them better than humans. A human couldn’t multi-task well enough to keep the number of steps they’d taken in their mind while doing other tasks. Thus the very notion that such a small creature as an ant can do it is terrifying, especially since ants act colonially as one big mass. If one ant can count better than a human, imagine what a whole colony could do! “Gasp!”

Anyway, I personally believe that them saying that ants count is a way to make people read their articles because it is a trait that humans seem to lack. Humans could never count that well without training and that fact that ants could do it from birth would be one other thing to add to the pile of why to fear our eventual ant overlords. The many things that ants do are alien and scary to us, which is why ant-like systems are employed by so many science fiction bad guys, the arachnids from the Starship Troopers novel, or the Buggers from Ender’s Game. Ants are scary, and awesome, and cool, but creepy, and the list could go on. In my humble opinion the truth is much more tame and obvious than the fiction in this case.

 

The Hurricane No One Prepared For

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Well, the hurricane known as Sandy has been raising hell on the east coast recently. It broke a lot of records and hurt a lot of people and places. But unfortunately it has also highlighted the many flaws in our thinking and preparation for such a disaster.

For instance in both New York and New Jersey (the two hardest-hit areas) the people were warned about the event more than a week in advance, and increasingly warned the closer the day came. Many of areas with some of the largest populations in the U.S. were evacuated. This is not a decision that is taken lightly. You don’t just evacuate several thousands of people every Tuesday. It’s hard work. And even then people stayed. PEOPLE STAYED IN THE AREAS THAT WERE ABOUT TO BE HIT BY A RECORD BREAKING STORM! It was forecast as such, it even absorbed several other storms just to make sure that it had enough power to blow everyone’s expectations away. I can’t imagine what was going through there minds! Did they think it was an elaborate hoax and that everyone was lying to them? And it wasn’t like it was just the news media warning them. Police and civilian emergency response organizations went door to door and asked people to leave. And still people disobeyed the law and stayed. They disobeyed the law and stayed in the path of the storm. Why? I just can’t fathom. If a hurricane was about to hit me I’d beat it. I do admit I am in the middle of the desert but the same instinct applies to tornadoes, earthquakes, and fires which we do have around here. Why not just leave?

But that is not the real problem. The problem is everyone went back. Why would you go back to a place that just got hit by the largest storm in the history of the area the day after it hit? You know the electricity is guaranteed to be out. You know there will be no heat for your house, or lights, or anything. And you know there will be no gas because it’s not like gas stations are magically immune to hurricanes. The people in New York and New Jersey in the areas that got hit shouldn’t be there. They shouldn’t be anywhere near there. They should be staying with the family members or friends that live the closest. And if the don’t have any family or friends they should make some friends. Who wouldn’t let a hurricane victim stay in their house for a few days? They should be doing that and not being back and causing more harm than good. And if they are there they sure as hell shouldn’t be complaining or demanding help. It was their choice to go there or stay, and it is their fault they are in such a bad position. Being there is just making it worse for them and everyone else, especially the people who are trying to help them.

But that might have been less of a problem if people had prepared. Wall Street was, it opened the next day and is running just fine. Everyone else was adequately warned. They should have been prepared. They should have moved their belongings. They should have left town, they should have done everything in their power to help themselves. Instead they did nothing. And now they’re paying for it.

However they were not the only ones ignorantly not preparing. President Obama, when confronted with the news that the biggest storm in recorded history was about to hit the east coast promptly said (paraphrased) “I have to get reelected now, tell me when it hits”. I can understand perhaps why he had no plan for when a hurricane hits, but he could have easily made one in the time he had running up to the storm. I guess he didn’t have time to make it eighty-thousand words and a billion dollars over budget.

Even organizations meant to help people in times of disaster spent none of their time preparing. Most government or non-government aid organizations were not preparing in the week before the hurricane. And afterward they even dared to seem startled by the damage. As if hurricanes just don’t do things like this. FEMA didn’t prepare and now everyone wants its help. It’s understandable that some non-governmental organization like the Red Cross might not be ready, but FEMA, FEMA has to be ready, and now everyone wants something from it. Perhaps they should have asked us down here when we were having the largest fires in the area’s recorded history and all the “help” we got from FEMA was a few words.

Really people shouldn’t be in the New York/Jersey area and people should listen when a record breaking storm is approaching. When we were having these fires I knew exactly what I was going to save, and how I was going to get out. Certainly I didn’t expect to have a house left when I got back, let alone POWER. They should feel lucky they have anything, especially those whose homes didn’t get washed away (those whose did should feel lucky to be alive). All I’m saying is, that when it hits the fan, know to step out of the way, get in a sealed suit, and don’t expect to not get hit.

A Youtube Problem

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I’m going to quickly take you through a scenario I went through last night. I watch a lot of videos, right, and I post a lot of videos on the internet. Youtube is one of the places I visit most. I was going to watch some videos from the people I subscribed to. I loaded up the homepage and clicked on the first video I saw that was interesting in my feed. At which point I was greeted with this:

So after that I did the perfectly logical thing of panicking. I immediately thought about all the places I could have visited that would have given me a virus. All of the ads I may have clicked on, all the pop-ups I would have gotten from clicking on said ads. Then I shut down my computer and restarted it. I booted Safari back up and was treated with the ability to watch videos… for five minutes. After that I was given the same screen as last time (though it does change everytime you reload). At this point I was near hyperventilation. I shut the system down again and even installed all the updates I have been neglecting. Do you know what that takes for me?

I went crazy, like I need Youtube or something? I then went to sleep because for some reason I was watching videos at midnight. The next morning I still couldn’t watch videos. so I frantically searched around the internet, even going so far as to copy paste some of the gibberish into Google (which found nothing). Until I eventually found a post on a forum that was about the same problem as mine. It turns out that it kind of worked itself out for some people and it appeared to be a problem with Youtube and not my computer. I could also watch videos right after looking at this post, almost as if by magic.

My reason for writing this really is to warn you about the internet. Think about a site that you would panic if it went down (it didn’t help that Tumblr was down at the same time). See if you could go a day without it. And then begin coordinating your panic procedure, because you can’t, you know you can’t, I know you can’t, and no one else has to get hurt because of your panicking.

The Speech to Save the Itsy Bitsy

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What do you know about spiders? Spiders are traditionally itsy bitsy right? No? As it turns out there are at least 8 types of spider in the waterspout climbing family. Incy Wincy, Eency Weency, Inky Binky, Inky Dinky, Ipsy Wispy, or Ipsy Dipsy are the various species. Terrifyingly enough, these are just the kiddy ones, and I’m gonna leave out more than just the Blooming Bloody spider to spare your sanity.

The real point here is that we need to protect these innocent spiders from the evil rain. What did these poor spiders do to deserve such abuse again and again? Nothing, and I propose we act now. I’m tired of children having to sing about this horrible issue and nothing being done about it.

I propose that we build a network of false water spouts. These will be in place all around the country to provide a safe haven for the spiders of this rare genus. The plan I have laid out sets aside $13 billion a year of our funds for construction and upkeep of this network. These spiders will no longer have to die for such frivolous reasons. Please help us, we need you support, please, for the children.

What Makes a Post Freshly Press-able: WordPress is Self-centered (Occupy wall street, election, cats, babies, space, etc…)

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Every day nineteen or so people appear on the front page of wordpress.com. This is the freshly pressed section that is the first thing seen by all who enter wordpress. Regardless or whether or not the posts are freshly pressed they are there, and many people wonder why those who end up there do. It seems like it has something to do with the ideas expressed in the post or the relevance of said post to current events. But lately there has been one or two freshly pressed posts about wordpress itself and mainly how to get freshly pressed.

I can understand how one or two can be relevant, even in sequence, but for over a month having a post about yourself on the front page is pushing it. I would understand if wordpress was mainly about itself, but it isn’t. My impression was that the freshly-pressed section was to highlight some of the better blogs out there (or at least the better posts). WordPress is about the community, and when the site keeps highlighting itself it just comes off as self centered.

I mean really wordpress, what about all those other bloggers out there, like me? Why can’t we (I) be on the front page? I mean I do great stuff, and none of it is ever appreciated. Just because you created and maintain the best blogging service and software on the web doesn’t mean you can be selfish about it. Just because you facilitate my ability (read: addiction) to Blog you think you can just promote yourself over me.

And what about what info I can consume? I could be reading about the “occupy …” protesters I don’t like, or the upcoming presidential election I hate everybody in, or someone’s post about their cat, or babies, or about wasting resources looking at and landing in space, but no, I can only read about wordpress. WordPress, wordpress, wordpress. Shame on you wordpress!  Didn’t your mother teach you about humility?