Author Archive
Who You Gonna Call? Master Replicas
Master Replicas recently announced that it obtained a license to create Ghostbusters-based replicas.
Master Replicas is pleased to announce its forthcoming line of prop replicas based on Columbia Pictures’ hugely popular film franchise, Ghostbusters.
“We are extremely excited to be able to enter the Ghostbusters paranormal world”, explains CEO Michael Cookson “If you’ve always dreamed owning an officially licensed “unlicensed nuclear accelerator” or are just looking for innovative collectibles that will remind you of the legendary antics of Ray, Egon, Peter and Winston, the Master Replicas range will offer a wealth of choices.”
Working closely with Sony Pictures Consumer Products, Master Replicas will work its magic to ensure authenticity and accuracy. Master Replicas initial Ghostbusters product range will include authentic limited edition prop replicas as well as a few “surprises” just in time for the 25th anniversary of this pop-culture property.
First up for the line are a limited edition 1:1 replica of the proton pack and ghost trap from the films.
Tags: Ghostbusters, Replicas, Toys
Creationist Psychiatrists Want to Return to Dualism (Seriously)
New Scientist ran a story in October about a bizarre movement among creationist psychiatrists(!) who want to return to Cartesian dualism in order to preserve their religious beliefs — the mind and the brain, they argue, are separate entities. Ugh.
One of the leaders of this movement, psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, perfectly captures the idiocy of this idea,
I’m asking us as a world community to go out there and tell the scientific establishment, enough is enough! Materialism needs to start fading away and non-materialist causation needs to be understood as part of natural reality.
Non-materialist causation? WTF. David Hume would have had a field day with that! But what exactly does non-materialist causation mean? How would you ever measure non-material causation? According to New Scientist,
To properly support dualism, however, non-materialist neuroscientists must show the mind is something other than just a material brain. To do so, they look to some of their favourite experiments, such as research by Schwartz in the 1990s on people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. Schwartz used scanning technology to look at the neural patterns thought to be responsible for OCD. Then he had patients use “mindful attention” to actively change their thought processes, and this showed up in the brain scans: patients could alter their patterns of neural firing at will.
From such experiments, Schwartz and others argue that since the mind can change the brain, the mind must be something other than the brain, something non-material. In fact, these experiments are entirely consistent with mainstream neurology - the material brain is changing the material brain.
I can’t imagine how or why anyone would conclude that since the mind can alter the brain that the mind is non-material. In fact, it is only when we posit a non-material mind that this really becomes a problem (how exactly would this non-material entity exert influence of the material world).
Tags: Creationism, Dualism, Neuroscience, Psychiatry, Rene Descartes, The Brain
Akismet Letting A Lot of Spam Through
Apparently I am not the only one who noticed that Akismet — the anti-spam system used by WordPress and other CMSes to reduce the amount of comment spam — seems to be letting a lot of obvious spam comments through.
Still, overall, Akismet is a godsend. When I log in and see “Akismet has caught 22,747 spam for you since you first installed it” I can’t help but smile.
Tags: Akismet, Comment Spam
OpenGoo
OpenGoo is an open source web office package that is designed to be an alernative to something like Google apps. Currently it has modules for text documents, presentations, task lists, e-mail (though that’s still in beta), calendars, web links and contact management.
Last month I downloaded about 8 different similar packages and tried them on my server, but OpenGoo is far and away the best open source office-style package I’ve tested. The interface is actually usable by normal human beings.
There’s a demo of the software in action here.
Tags: Open Source, OpenGoo
Response to Mashable’s Nonsensical Comparison of the Lori Drew Case to Kevin Rose’s Fake Twitter Account
Mashable doesn’t seem to be letting me post a comment at the moment. Anyway, regarding @kevinscold is Funny…Is It Legal?
The fact that so many potential jurors will already be familiar with the story is exactly the problem with the judge deciding to let stand the case, despite the strong reasons for dismissal. This means that even though said jurors will likely be instructed not to take the mitigating circumstances of Megan’s death into consideration, they will.
This seems to be rather specious reasoning — Mashable seem to be arguing that if there is a) a potential crime committed by someone and b) that alleged crime occurs in conjunction with activities that are widely publicized and considered extremely inflammatory to the defendant that a judge is acting improper in letting a case go forward.
The problem with this case going forward is that it is an absurd reading of the statute. Whether or not the defendant is likable and/or people are likely to already know more about the case than is presented in the courtroom really shouldn’t affect such decisions.
This will set an unfortunate precedent for the future. It’s important to note that Lori isn’t being prosecuted for what she did with the fake MySpace profile, only that she set one up.
Again, I think this case is absurd but clearly it is not going to be used to go after Kevin Rose. Prosecutors do have something called prosecutorial discretion and clearly this (idiot) prosecutor is using that discretion to attempt to turn a heinous act into a criminal one. Leaping from there to prosecuting Kevin Rose for his cold’s Twitter account seems like the worst sort of slippery slope argument.
The real tragedy here is that latter part — that prosecutorial discretion is frequently used and abused in precisely this manner to transform merely reprehensible behavior into a prosecutable crime.
Tags: Kevin Rose, Lori Drew, Mashable
Aspidistra — World War II Disinformation at Its Finest
Bruce Schneier recently wrote a bit about the Aspidistra transmitter which the Allies used during World War II to spread disinformation in Nazi Germany.
During air raids, the Germans would turn off their radio transmitters so the Allies wouldn’t be able to use them for direction finding. As soon as the genuine German transmitters went off the air, the Allied deception would kick in. According to Wikipedia,
When a targeted transmitter switched off, Aspidistra began transmitting on their original frequency, initially retransmitting the German network broadcast as received from a still-active station. As a deception, false content and pro-Allied propaganda would be inserted into the broadcast. The first such “intrusion” was carried out on March 25, 1945, as shown in the operations order at the right.
On March 30, 1945, “Aspidistra” intruded into the Berlin and Hamburg frequencies warning that the Allies were trying to spread confusion by sending false telephone messages from occupied towns to unoccupied towns. On April 8, 1945, “Aspidistra” intruded into the Hamburg and Leipzig channels to warn of forged banknotes in circulation. On April 9, 1945, there were announcements encouraging people to evacuate to seven bomb-free zones in central and southern Germany. All these announcements were false.
The German radio network tried announcing “The enemy is broadcasting counterfeit instructions on our frequencies. Do not be misled by them. Here is an official announcement of the Reich authority.” The Aspidistra station made similar announcements, to cause confusion and make the official messages ineffective.
You have to love the sheer stupidity of the Nazis telling the German people the airwaves have been compromised by the enemy, but adding you can trust this broadcast. Maybe Hogan’s Heroes wasn’t all farce after all.
Tags: History, World War II
Yoko 3D Mouse Pad
I’m not sure which is more amusing. This mouse pad featuring Yoko from Gurren Lagann . . .
. . . or the accompanying text on why you’d want to buy this,
Here’s a mousepad that will keep your wrist ergonomically supported and get your blood pumping nicely too — made by Toy’s Planning (”TOYPLA”), this 3D Oppai (breast) Mouse Pad is an item for those looking for something wacky to support their wrists while pointing and clicking away. This version features the ultra popular Yoko from the popular anime Gurren Lagann. This is an exciting computer accessory for those who like to…’keep it real’.
Oh yeah, gotta keep it real.
Booty Bay Done in Legos
WoWInsider.com has an interview with a couple who re-created Booty Bay with Legos.Nice.
Tags: Legos, World of Warcraft
Topps Shuts Down WizKids
In a press release on Nov. 10, Topps announced it was shutting down collectible miniature game company WizKids immediately. Topps bought WizKids for $29.5 million back in 2003.
The Topps Company announced today that WizKids will immediately cease operations and discontinue its product lines.
Scott Silverstein, CEO of Topps, said “This was an extremely difficult decision. While the company will still actively pursue gaming initiatives, we feel it is necessary to align our efforts more closely with Topps current sports and entertainment offerings which are being developed within our New York office.”
Upon notifying our partners, Topps will immediately pursue strategic alternatives so that viable brands and properties, including HeroClix, can continue without noticeable disruption. To that end, WizKids will continue supporting Buy it By the Brick redemptions for Arkham Asylum, and the December Organized Play events for HeroClix.
That’s odd given how WizKids was always touting how it had sold out this or that new HeroClix release at retail. Maybe they got hit by the oil price spike, or concerns that spending for thinks like collectible miniatures is about to crater (of course Upper Deck, meanwhile, is launching its World of Warcraft collectible miniatures game this week).
Tags: HeroClix, Topps, WizKids
CeltX — An Open Source Script Writing/Media Pre-Production Suite
CeltX is a high quality, cross platform and open source media pre-production tool that includes nice scriptwriting and scriptwriting modules (and much more).
Tags: Open Source, Scriptwriting, Storyboarding