Random Thoughts

Machine translation poetry

Nonsensical but oddly beautiful Bing and Google translations from Facebook posts in a variety of languages: 袁嘟嘟第一次以老公的身分參加部門聚會，泡完湯好舒服 ...

Blog Post - Fred Phillips - Jan 3 2015 - 12:22pm

Je Suis Charlie

Cartoon Credit: Dave Brown (Source) Twitter: https://twitter.com/steveschuler20 ...

Blog Post - Steve Schuler - Jan 8 2015 - 11:48am

#JeSuisAhmed, I am a muslim police officer killed defending freedom. UPDATED

Nothing justifies the killing of people for expressing ideas no matter how repugnant one finds them. However, these things don't happen in a vacuum. These things are not simply the fault of the minority other person and their refusal to see how superi ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Jan 15 2015 - 2:20am

Haggis, Neeps And Badness: Enjoy That Dinner But What About The Real Robert Burns?

...

Article - The Conversation - Jan 23 2015 - 5:08pm

Archaic list of "Fields"

This is my first posting, and already I'm in trouble.  The pull-down menu for "Field" belies an excruciatingly conventional taxonomy of human endeavour.  If I want to deliver a critical comment on Economics, it'll have to go under " ...

Blog Post - Jess H. Brewer - Jan 27 2015 - 7:54pm

Can You Be An SS Doctor In A Nazi Concentration Camp And Still Be A Good Guy?

In 1993, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave us "defining deviancy down", a clever bit of alliteration based on the work of sociologist Emile Durkheim from his defining work of 1895. Durkheim wrote that crime is normal, it is going to happen, bu ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Feb 3 2015 - 2:26pm

How Mr. Spock Changed Our Perception Of Science

In 1966, when the "Star Trek" television show debuted, it was revolutionary- not just in the ways that are commonly stated, like that it took a stand against racism and petty geopolitics, we had Sidney Poitier and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. by then, ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Mar 3 2015 - 7:22pm

Music For Cats

More and more animal shelters and zoos have begun playing human music, the kind of fad that people who anthropomorphize animal behavior say works even though there is no evidence. Now a new study by animal behaviorists has gone beyond that and says while t ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 10 2015 - 4:02pm

NSA Transgender Tragedy and Major Media Insensitivity.

R ecently two Transgender women were shot to death because they made a wrong turn and did not listen to or possibly did not understand the commands of the guards at the gate of the NSA.*  That was unfortunate.  The tragedy is in a day and age where the no ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Mar 31 2015 - 4:33pm

What Savants Can Teach Us

When Seattle man, Jason Padgett, walked into a bar for a drink a few years ago, he was an ordinary man with seemingly average intelligence leading an unremarkable life. He worked contentedly in his father's furniture shop and had never done well acad ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 17 2015 - 10:30am