I noticed an interesting link today on my weblog referers list from panoramas.dk so I went to see who was linking to me and what it was all about. It turned out to be the same site that hosts the panoramic view of Everest that I posted a while back [May 24]. Anyway, they have an interesting little article on the linking history for the Everest panorama. It tells how the site went from having only two backward links to having more than "800 and 200.000 visitors in 24 days" [The power of the Weblogs - Blogging Mt Everest]. Weblogs certainly have that power.

The weblogging community talks a lot about memes because weblogs are an effective vector for the transmission of ideas.

Meme (pron. meem): A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to propagate the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic [What is a meme?].

The means by which a virus is transferred from host to host is called a vector. One of the primary vectors for transmitting many viruses is the mosquito. A meme is like a virus in that it is reproduced and undergoes mutation. It is also like a virus in other ways: it can't reproduce itself, it can be expressed as a digital sequence (letters or RNA/DNA) and it can be harmful to its host. The weblogging community is very effective at transmitting memes. Once a meme enters the weblogging cloud, it can work its way around, sometimes being faithfully reproduced and other times being altered during replication. In this way, a weblog is analogous to a mosquito and the readers/writers of weblogs are the hosts.

(Of course, if you think of the weblogger as both the host and the vector, then meme transmission becomes more analogous to Night of the Living Dead or Blade)

The Everest panorama is a meme; a simple meme but a meme none the less. There are many more of them out there and, in a way, all ideas can be thought of in this way. They cannot and do not exist without the medium of human communication and thought, yet they are external to any given human being and cannot easily be controlled. I would imagine that the transmission of memes could be effectively modeled in much the same way as organic viruses or computer viruses are.

Another interesting type of virulent meme is the urban legend/chain letter. I got one of those in my inbox today [THIS IS TOO SERIOUS]. People fall for urban legends because they have precisely the right elements which cause humans to reproduce them, just as a virus has the right elements to cause a cell to reproduce it. 10:18:28 PM    comment []  

Some kid gets caught smoking in the boy's room by his principal, in the heat of the moment he throws out some of his favorite explitives, which turns into a disorderly conduct charge, to which his lawyer argues that it was protected free speech, then Ars decides to take a break from talking about computers and technology to fill us all in on the socially grounded origins of "bad words" [ArsTechnica]. 1:25:28 PM    comment []  

Andrea and I spent the weekend in Victoria, B.C. It's a nice little town with a number of attractions to recommend it. Here are some of the highlights of our trip:

• I heard about HeliJet from a Canuck friend of mine and thought it would be a fun thing to try. So, we took a helicopter out of Boeing Field on our way to Victoria. Its about twice as expensive as the Victoria Clipper, but gets there four times as fast (30 minutes). Neither of us had ever ridden in a helicopter, so it was a fun experience and, at least for me, worth the expense.
• There were many artisans stationed in the open areas around town. They were selling all types of items, many the same as those you might find at a fair in Seattle, but also quite a few items that I found unique.
• We visited Craigdarroch Castle (or as I prefer to call it "Craig-the-rock"),  which isn't quite a castle, but is a very large and imposing house. Inside, nearly every surface is covered in wood paneling. This, combined with the period state-of-the-art electric lighting makes for a dark, uninviting and closed-in space. However, despite all of that, it is quite beautiful. Worth the visit to see a little how wealthy people lived 100 years ago.
• Butchart Gardens is one of the most visited attractions in Victoria and with good reason. Nestled at the site of an old quarry, It's a garden in the English style (though they have a nice Japanese garden on the site as well) with perfectly coiffed grass and millions of flowers. The rose garden was particularly nice with hundreds of varieties on display and some fantastic scents.
• We stayed at a simple little Bed & Breakfast called the Cottage Pirouette. It was a nice enough place and the breakfast was good. The hostess was a lovely person, but it was a bit far from downtown Victoria, so you need transportation. We used cabs most of the time, but the city bus is available and quite convenient.
• For our return, we took the Victoria Clipper IV. At theDial, we used to have an office right on Elliott Bay and we would see the Clipper go past a few times a day. It is a rather impressive boat. It's not as big as the State Ferries, but it is still big and really fast. Standing on the aft deck was also an experience. The jets of water that fly out the back of that boat have more in common with a hydroelectric power plant than any boat I've ever seen before. Also the sound coming out of the stacks on its twin gas turbine engines is so loud you need to cover your ears.

  Victoria Clipper IV can reach speeds in excess of 50 miles per hour. Victoria Clipper IV is the fastest passenger vessel in North American waters today [Visit-Seattle.com].

Victoria is a nice town and I would definitely like to go back. Among the things that we didn't visit were the Royal British Columbia Museum and the B.C. Legislature Building. I hear both are really nice. Someone told me that it takes nine hours to drive the length of the island. There also numerous parks and tons of beautiful land on that drive. 8:34:02 PM    comment []  

On Albert Einstein and the atom bomb: "Einstein himself had little role in the atomic bomb project. The bomb was ultimately developed at the insistence of the president and military of the United States (a Christian nation). It is true that Jews are a sinful lot who have caused all sorts of maladies over the centuries due to their refusal to convert to Christianity (even when tortured!). But in this particular case the Jew was somehow not to blame" [Corpse Divine]. 8:03:18 PM    comment []  

According to Microsoft, 5% of all Windows boxes crash two or more times every day [Slashdot]. This isn't really news, per se, but it is interesting that the statistic is coming out of Redmond. 7:07:08 PM    comment []  

Haven't you always wanted a ruby matrimony thong? Go get yours today! [cafepress]. 6:54:37 PM    comment []  

Last weekend, a bunch of the guys from my soccer team went to Riggins, Idaho to do some whitewater rafting. One of our team members, Peter, has been working for the Snake River Experience (SRE) [InIdaho.com] outfitters for six or seven years. It was great to have an experienced guide and even better because we were all friends. The water has cool, the weather was hot and the ride was great. I can't think of a better place to go and relax with a bunch of friends. 10:51:51 AM    comment []  

About six years ago, I sold my car, bought a mountain bike and started biking as my primary form of transportation. I stopped biking after sustaining a knee injury from running and I have not done it again on a regular basis since. A couple of weeks ago, I took my bike to the shop and had it put back in working order and this week, I started biking to/from work. I am going to continue commuting on my bike through the summer and we'll see how it goes after that. So far, I am loving it. The route between my house and the office is fairly scenic as it looks over Lake Washington. 10:25:38 AM    comment []  

In response to my recent post on the Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair (FBCSF) [July 10], one reader pointed at that the whole site might be a hoax.

[the FBCSF] site is a joke, and it took me a while to prove it. but if you dig deep, you'll find that it's all fictional and extremely funny. example? look at the site "contributors" and try your ass off to find any of their credentials or employers on the internet. i almost feel stupid for getting mad... [ethan].

I went ahead and checked out the contributors, as Ethan had suggested. The entries are very funny/scary, depending on if you view the site as real or a spoof. However, the OBJECTIVE site (where the original FBCSF article resides), if it is a spoof, falls so close to the line that some extremists walk that it is hard to validate simply by reading the site.

After doing some Google searches, I found an article on The Register that mentions Dr. Paley and OBJECTIVE, but it didn't really clear things up. It's conclusion:

But what about Fellowship University? or Piggly-Wiggly? or Marian County? Or Dr. Paley? Is it the creation of Landover Baptist itself. A tribute site, even? [The Register]

Not a lot of help. Thanks Register.

Digging further, I found a discussion on the topic, but it too left me still wondering [ARN]. There are a number of posts in the thread that link to sites claiming that FBCSF and OBJECTIVE are hoaxes, but none of them seemed to offer conclusive evidence. One poster pointed out that some of the "Christian gear" that is offered on the OBJECTIVE site proves that the whole thing is a hoax:

Ruby Matrimony Thong

This uncomfortable undergarment will be a daily reminder to unmarried women to find a husband and a emergency moral reminder to her would-be-suitor. (For use under traditional underwear only.)

What a site. It has so thoroughly disguised itself that you can never be quite sure if it is a spoof or not. I now think it is a spoof and this is the second time that I have been had on a post to my weblog. The last time was with the whole Andrew Carlssin thing [April 17]. I guess this is a valuable lesson that I should do a better job at verifying some of these outrageous stories before I post them... 9:41:40 AM    comment []  

MapQuest and MSN Maps are great resources for finding the best path from here to there... if you are going by car. If you are on a bike, then you are going to have to figure it out yourself. One of the best resources from finding bike routes is going to be other bikers. Trial and error will be the next best thing, but to get started, King County provides some maps that list recommended roads and trails for bikers [King County Bicycling Guide Map]. 9:26:38 AM    comment []  

Valve, the company that brought us Half-Life, has recently released a P2P file-system package that they will be using to distribute updates to their software titles, such as Half-Life itself as well as Counter-Strike [Steam]. The product, called Steam, may have what it takes to get P2P really going on the Internet in a way that integrates properly with the web.

At its core, Steam is a distributed file system and shared set of technology components that can be implemented into any software application.

With Steam, developers are given integrated tools for direct-content publishing, flexible billing, ensured-version control, anti-cheating, anti-piracy, and more.

I've been arguing for a while that the key to P2P's future success is seamless integration into the web. Several other tools, such as BitTorrent, have moved in the right direction, but they aren't yet user-friendly enough to be used by the average Joe. Steam, by targeting gamers, has a built in audience that will be eager to install their client. The big question is will this provide the critical mass to get the product on everyone else's desktop and to get software writers to use the network to distribute their own titles. 7:30:45 PM    comment []  

This has got to be one of the coolest services I've seen online. The MSN Autos site has a feature where you specify your zip code and it will give you a listing of gas stations in your area with a map and detailed comparisons of their gas prices [MSN Gas Prices]. So, instead of driving around to find the best price, you can quickly look it up and drive straight to the gas station with the best price. Sweet! 3:54:41 PM    comment []  

EJB 2.0 introduces the local bean framework which is a nice way to model a relational database in objects. Local CMP (Container Managed Persistence) is even nicer for most applications. However, though this layer makes it easy to manipulate data in a database, it doesn't do a good job of making that data available to remote clients. Surprisingly, this is one of the problems that EJB was originally designed to deal with. There are a number of solutions to this remote interface problem, but one of the most common and the one I use in all of my development is the Session Facade pattern [Rules and Patterns for Session Facades].

Session Facade offers a number of nice features. For one, it is generally implemented as a stateless interface which greatly reduces the complexity of the server. Secondly, it allows business logic and other constraints to be maintained in the facade layer, insulating the data from unauthorized or undesirable access. Third, Session Facade provides the developer with fine grained control over the precise interface that is made available to the client. 9:35:12 AM    comment []  

This is old news by now, but I wanted to post it and haven't had a chance to do so since I first heard about it the other day... 1) Go to Google 2) Type "weapons of mass destruction" in the search field 3) Hit the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button 4) Or just click here. The result is a nice little parody that pokes fun at the inability of the U.N. or Dubbya to find any WMD in Iraq. 9:46:15 AM    comment []  

A new study shows that P2P users buy music after listening to the track online [ArsTechnica]. Being able to sample music before you buy can greatly increase your confidence in a purchase. At nearly $20 a pop, a little insurance is very important.

This same concept is behind the QuickClips product that was announced yesterday by Loudeye [Puget Sound Business Journal]. I am part of the QuickClips development team, so I may be a bit biased, but I think the QuickClips concept should take the industry by storm. QuickClips offers an environment for finding and sampling music that far exceeds anything that has been available before. Unfortunately, the full product has not been released and the beta is not publically available. However, I will post a link here as soon as a version of it goes public. 9:30:45 AM    comment []  

The Followship Baptist Creation Science Fair, like its secular counterparts, offers kids the opportunity to get involved in science, but with a creationist focus. The 2001 winners included entries with the following titles:

• My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)
• Women Were Designed For Homemaking
• Dinosaur & Man Walked Together
• Rocks Can't Evolve, Where Did They Come From Mr. Darwin?
• Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria
• Maximal Packing Of Rodentia Kinds: A Feasibility Study
• Young Earth, Old Lies
• Thermodynamics Of Hell Fire

Better titles couldn't have come from a Saturday Night Live parody. It would almost be funny if it weren't true. Even if the fair wasn't intended to be funny, it clearly has a funny idea of what science is all about.

This is also the first year that Muslim students from the Al-Jannah Islamic school have been invited to participate; two of their students presented a project on human anatomy entitled "Allah (SWT) Created Me" which, while it was found ineligible for a prize due to a number of Biblical inconsistencies, did win a special Interfaith Outreach ribbon.

It's good to know that they are impartial judges of truth. Using the Bible to validate "scientific" research is so ridiculous that it doesn't even deserve an explaination.

The scientific process is about creating a hypothesis and then trying to validate or disprove that hypothesis using experimention. If you believe that the Bible can be used as an accurate model of the universe, then fine; you can use it to guide your hypotheses. But for an inquiry to be "scientific", it must still include experimental validation/refutation of the hypothesis. The Standard Model of particle physics provides a model for how the subatomic world works, but a hypothesis can not be rejected a priori from the model. A good model will have good predictive power, but it is only after experimentation that you can know for sure if your hypothesis is an accurate description of the real world or simply a whimsical construct of the mind.

The Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair may be a good place to train kids in religious dogma, but it has very little to do with science. 9:04:31 AM    comment []  

This person took ASCII graphics to the extreme by actually implementing X11 using only ASCII [Slashdot]. Why did he do it? "It just seemed like a cool thing to do." 9:26:31 PM    comment []  

"Filesharing Up 10% After RIAA Threatens Users" [Slashdot]. 9:23:57 PM    comment []