Wisdumb: Smart and Not-So-Smart

[please read as if singing the opening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band]

It was 30 years ago yesterday
that Sony gave portable music a play
Maybe the technology’s gone out of style
But it was guaranteed to raise a smile

Ok, nevermind the singing. Anyway, just this morning I was complaining that I didn’t have enough room on my 30 gig iPod to load up some music I wanted. Currently, my iPod contains nearly 5000 songs and over 14 days worth of continuous music. Just imagine what we might be carrying around or have access to technology wise 30 years from now?

Article.

While reading a news story from the online Chicago Tribune (a column written by a local Chicago radio personality Steve Dahl about the recent celebrity deaths), I saw the following histerical comment - written by Ruth from Kenosha, WI:

“Celebrity deaths do come in 3’s - Ed Mcmahon,Farrah Fawcett,then Michael Jackson. Leave it up to Billy Mays to throw in the fourth one ABSOLUTELY FREE. “

Good job, Ruth. �

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Back in my youth when I used to share an apartment, I remember overhearing a fight between my room mate and his girlfriend of the time who often spent the weekend. She was complaining about the grocery bill, and in particular about how much money he spent on toilet paper. She asked him, “Why do you go through so much toilet paper every week?” His loud and angry answer was,  “Because I don’t want my hand to smell like shit!”

Well, technology and genius of invention have finally come together to solve his problem (albeit, 15 years too late). This video and blog post are dedicated to him, who I shall only refer to by his initials: M.S.

The line between science and science fiction is getting blurrier and blurrier everyday… but this real science story is perhaps a leap ahead of most SF: Programmable Matter Research Solidifies.

Wow.

Skeptic.com has a great article entitled Vaccines & Autism A Deadly Manufactroversy that completely explains away all the BS that Jenny McCarthy has spouting about Autism and vaccines. I used to like Jenny and I thought her tv show was extremely good and very overlooked. I even read one of her baby books (Belly Laughs: The Naked Truth About Pregnancy and Childbirth) because my wife liked it so much - and I thought it was decent. It was funny and well written. It was a little lacking in hard details and solid information - but it wasn’t billed as a medical book. It was just her story about her pregnancy.

Anyway, I don’t like her giving medical advice on TV, radio, magazines, etc. Really, look at her and ask yourself if you should listen to clear medical science or her. These people don’t like her as well: Jenny McCarthy Body Count. I don’t know if the numbers they portray are correct or not - but I agree with their point that Jenny is part of the problem.

I feel the same way about Suzanne Somers too. How much unfounded exercise equipment can be created, sold and hawked on TV? Why do people keep buying it? I don’t know, but I blame Suzanne for starting the craze. Actually, I think Jane Fonda probably started the craze, but her product was a legitimate excercise and I don’t remember branching out into all sorts of other silly products.

Newsweek has a nice article demonstrating what a nutbag she is and discounts all her BS medical claims as well - and slams Oprah a little too, which is nice. Once again… I believe the picture of her endorsing the Thighmaster should be all you need not to take medical advice from her.

Lastly, just so I don’t come off as a woman hater - I pretty much hate Tony Little and Kevin Trudeau as well - I just haven’t come across anything recently about either of them.

This was presented to me as a take on the client relationship within the advertising industry, but I feel it applies equally well to any industry that negoiates pricing contracts:

Robert Furchgott, the nobel-prize winning scientist, died at age 92 on 5/19/2009.

[WARNING: JOKE ALERTS] 

A closed casket ceremony was planned for his funeral. Unfortunately, this was not possible for obvious reasons.

   OR

Instead of flying the US flag at half-mast in his honor…

The holy grail of the search engine technology is to basically create what people can do on Star Trek. Just speak out loud something like “Computer, to reach Rigel V in less than 12 minutes, what warp speed must the Enterprise travel” and have the computer respond “4.7″.

Well, two major players are well on their way to [pun alert] making it so. The one I just learned about is called Wolfram Alpha. It doesn’t have a public version yet - but I have requested to become a beta tester. I’ll let you know if they grant my request. BBC Story.

The other tool has been live for a long time. Check it out: START, the world’s first Web-based question answering system.�

Hilarious.

Nod: Big Fat Whale