The Urban Legends and Hoaxes Resource Center at scambusters.org and the Urban Legends Reference Pages at snopes.com can help you avoid that sinking feeling after you post an **URGENT WARNING!!** (e.g., "Don't eat Soylent Green!!") to all of your big distro lists and then receive a reply from a net-savvy friend, saying: "Uh, dude, it's a hoax". Forward this message to everyone you know.

Tired: Big Freeze vs. Big Crunch. Wired: Big Rip vs. Big Bounce. Do bouncing branes lead to Boltzmann brains? If so, can one of them please put me in touch with Wan-To or the Power(s) over in the Sculptor galaxy? Thanks.

From Publishers Weekly > Panel Mania > Postcards:

In early 2006 editor Jason Rodriquez came across a box of antique postcards and the idea for Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened was born: an anthology of stories by different artists based on the messages on found postcards. In the story "Tic-Tac-Bang-Bang," by Stuart Moore and Michael Gaydos, a tic-tac-toe hustler pays the ultimate price. Postcards will be published by Villard in July.

Geek Bars, Giger Bars, Vampire Bars, Mars Bars!

I was a little confused about the difference between melodeath, deathgrind, goregrind and grindcore... until I read this. But I'm still kind of shaky on psychobilly vs. gothabilly vs. emobilly rap.

To: 'lpaden@cambridgema.gov'; 'council@cambridgema.gov'
Subject: Constellation Center

As a member of North Cambridge Family Opera, which could make great use of the planned Constellation Center in East Cambridge, I urge the Planning Board to APPROVE the proposed amendment to the Cambridge Zoning Ordinance, described in http://www.cambridgema.gov/cdd/cp/zng/agenda/pb_060507_theaternotice.pdf, which would change the way gross floor area is calculated for performing arts centers located in the Kendall Square area.

Thank you.

Craig Lee Burket

There are three meetings in the next few weeks that will address this proposal:

• Monday, June 4, 5:30, Sullivan Chamber at Cambridge City Hall: City Council
• Tuesday, June 5, 7:40, 2nd floor of the McCusker Building (City Hall Annex), 344 Broadway: Cambridge Planning Board
• Monday, June 18, 5:30, Sullivan Chamber at Cambridge City Hall: City Council

Letters can be faxed to Liza Paden at the Planning Board at (617) 349-4669 and to the City Council at (617) 349-4287. You can email the Planning Board at lpaden@cambridgema.gov and the City Council at council@cambridgema.gov. Mailing addresses are 344 Broadway, Cambridge 02139, for the Planning Board and City Hall, Cambridge 02139, for the City Council.

Must read: Stanislaw Lem: The Futurological Congress (see my Wish List, hint, hint).
Must get a message to: The Mother of all Machine Elves.
Must buy: those fetchin' camo shoes... shoes... OHMYGOD! shoes...
Must reserve: table for 1,000 at the Top of the Hub.
Must consume: paper-thin slices of fugu, washed down with wasabi martinis.
And for dessert: Transdimensional Reality Worms, eat them up, yum!
Must blow up: the Moon. Not!

Mike Daisey reveals dark Secrets of The MacDowell Colony!

Happy (a) Towel Day, (b) 30 Years of Star Wars Day and (c) POTC:AWE Premiere Day. Time to knock back a few Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters at the Mos Eisley Cantina, then go snort Darth Vader's ashes while watching Zaphod Beeblebrox's Music Video in a back room at The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. Ev'ebuddy sing th' Pirate Song now, arrrrrgh!

Dolphins found speaking Welsh dialect!

The inflammatory tabloid version:

Meet the bottlenose boyo of Cardigan Bay - they all speak Welsh at his school [map]

A more in-depth and reasoned approach:

Language Log > Dolphin dialect science?

Y'know, they're not like those Irish Coast dolphins [map] from the wrong side of the current. I foresee a Cetacean version of "West Side Story" coming soon to a Sea World near you...

From UPI: U.N. barred from Texas detention center:

The ACLU currently represents 12 children from the Hutto facility in lawsuits against Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and several immigration officials. The lawsuits condemn the conditions of the facilities, faulting DHS officials in particular for providing only limited access to medical facilities and inadequate educational opportunities.

ICE spokesman Marc Raimondi said that [U.N. Special Rapporteur Jorge] Bustamante can visit the Hutto facility at the conclusion of the ACLU's case. "While we are under litigation, visits by non-governmental entities will not be granted," Raimondi said.

Yeah, that'll teach 'em to mix it up with Mr. Chertoff! I can't imagine why else ICE wouldn't want the U.N. inspecting the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, owned and operated for them by Corrections Corporation of America.

From Texas cell, Canadian, 9, pleads for help

Detention Center Blues

It's not like they have anything to hide in there, is it? Nothing that Americans would be shocked to see on the evening news.

Contact info:

T. Don Hutto Residential Center
1001 Welch St., P.O. Box 1063
Taylor, Texas 76574


Phone: 512-218-2400
Fax: 512-218-2450
Warden: Mickey Liles, phone: 512-352-3502

Be polite.

Oreng of Reddit calls the iGasm:

Best. Hardware. Mashup. EVAH...

But I have to disagree. That will be when Ann "let him be DJ for the night" Summers and Love Honey [NB: NSFW!] go head-to-head with competing wireless versions of the iGasm and iBuzz for Xbox 360 and PS2 that are driven by the audio output from (wait for it...) Guitar Hero II. Gives "plug-in" a whole new meaning...

And here's an orgy playist to try out, from sinclair-furie.

From Mother Jones: Nader Redux: Should Dems Fear Mike Gravel? by James Ridgeway:

[Gravel] proposes a law commanding the president to bring the troops home. In 60 days. "The Democrats have the votes in the House to pass it. In the Senate, [the Republicans] will filibuster it. Fine. The Majority Leader starts a cloture vote the first day. Fails to get cloture. Fine. The next day—another vote on cloture. And the next day, and the next day, Saturdays and Sundays, no vacation—vote every single day. The dynamic is that now you give people enough time to weigh in and put pressure on those voting against cloture. [...] I would guess in 15 to 20 days you would have cloture and the bill would pass and go to the president. He would veto it. Wonderful. It comes back to the House and Senate. Normal thing is to try to override and fail. No guts. No leadership. So in the House and Senate every day at noon, you have a vote to override the veto. The Democrats are the leaders—they control the calendar. It only takes half an hour to have these votes. The media will jump on it, you know, `This guy changed his vote,' etc. But then peace groups can go out into the hustings and get these guys where they live, at home, and I would say that in 30 to 45 days they will override the veto. But it's got to be on a clean, simple issue, none of this "go out and manage the war, deal with the funds" stuff. We never cut off the funds in Vietnam. I was there. I tried it. I failed. What you have to do is go to their immediate survival. By Labor Day this could be all solved, and the troops be home by Christmas."

He's got my vote!

From anectodage.com > Miraculous Mandarin:

"Bela Bartok's The Miraculous Mandarin was not well received at its debut performance (in Cologne in 1926). Indeed, a small riot ensued during which stink bombs were thrown and the music was drowned out by insults and cat calls. Konrad Adenauer (then the mayor of Cologne) even demanded the resignation of the conductor, Eugen Szenkar. Through the commotion, however, Bartok made his way to Szenkar's dressing room to register a complaint of his own: "Eugen, on page thirty-four, the second clarinet is marked mezzo forte," he declared. "I couldn't hear it - would you please make it forte?"

[Source: Norman Lebrecht, The Book of Musical Anecdotes]"

From zischen.org > Shostakovich Symphony #11:

"It seems that the woodwind parts have been well marked during the loud percussion sections. I was looking at a clarinet part and saw 'earplugs in!' penciled in various places. That may be the most useful marking I've ever seen in any part."

How many more items can you add to the list below?

Examples of the "plot schema" where a young/likeable/good-hearted/optimistic/cute character grows up or otherwise morphs slowly into an old/black-hearted/cynical/bitter/eeeeeevil uber-villain:

• Anakin (disciple of Obi-Wan) -> Lord Vader
• Tom Riddle (disciple of Dumbledore) -> HWMNBN
• young Sauron (disciple of Morgoth in Children of Hurin) -> The Dark Lord
• Lucifer (disciple of Yaweh) -> Satan
• Smeagol -> Gollum
• Erik -> Phantom of the Opera
• Elphaba -> The Wicked Witch of the West
• Leto II -> God Emperor of Dune
• Mischa's big brother -> Dr. Lecter
• ???

From MENAFN News: International oil companies could receive sole control of Iraq's oil:

A representative for Hands Off Iraqi Oil (HOIO) said that an Iraqi oil law could mean that international companies may receive full control of Iraqi oil fields for more than two decades.

At veritaserum.com, you can count down the milliseconds until HP:OotP hits the theaters. Then you'll have to wait another 8 endless, agonizing days until HP:DH hits the shelves.

MoveOn.org: Sign the petition to CBS to re-hire General Batiste. But first, watch the ad that got him fired.

Do conductors really slow down as they get older? This is an awesome analysis by any measure, but wouldn't it be more appropriately applied to, say, Xenakis' Achorripsis?

If you're planning to eat at the Brigham's restaurant at 13A Beale St. in Wollaston, MA 02170 (near Quincy MA; phone: 617-471-9750), you'd best make sure you and your kids arrive with empty bladders before you sit down, because, as manager Deiter Lambauer will tell you with a creepy grin, they have no restrooms for their customers. And be sure not to irritate Messr. Lambauer; once he knows you have to "go", your check will most likely take an excruciatingly long time to arrive.

It's like they knew my size: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Short, fat people may get rights in Massachusetts. But...

"Republican analyst Todd Domke is concerned that lawmakers will scare off businesses if they expand protection to include short and overweight workers. ''We might as well add colorblind, left-handed, allergic-to-cashews, and get it over with,'' Domke said."

Hey, Righty-boy! Yeah, down here, I'm talking to you! I'm left-handed -- you got a problem with that?

reddit: Georgia judge takes adopted child away from her lesbian parents and throws her into the foster care system because "the child will have a long-term exposure to the homosexual parent’s lifestyle"

Contact info for Judge John Lee Parrott is here. Please write, and be polite, since it gets better results. And yeah, I'm sure that sounds hilarious coming from me.

UPDATE, 5/21: Child returned to lesbian adoptive mother. But then:

[Judge] Parrott found Hadaway [the adoptive mother] and her attorney in contempt of court, and sentenced them to jail time and a fine.

Keep those cards and letters coming!

A wonderful photo of Stephen Hawking in zero-g. It's a big file, but worth the download time, IHMO. It's also one for future physics and history textbooks, I predict.

Zero Gravity Corporation has a press release about the flight.

From WGBH Radio > Arts and Ideas > May 6:

Written by Peter Goodchild, The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial was adapted from original transcripts from the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925. This landmark trial challenged the newly passed "Butler Act," which banned the teaching of evolution in the Tennessee public schools. The star-studded cast features Ed Asner as fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan and John de Lancie as attorney Clarence Darrow.

There are audio links on the above page that let you listen to the whole play.

I wonder... in Frank Herbert's "Dune" novels, is the "Butlerian Jihad" a sly/snide reference to the Butler Act? Apparently, I'm not the only one to wonder about this; see footnote #58 in:

Divine Farce: A Scientific/Philosophic Romp Through Intelligent Design, by Sheldon Danielson

Seth Godin's blog has a fascinating post about how a non-geek can use "web 2.0 services" to quickly/cheaply create/maintain a website for their small business. He recommends a Typepad blog, a Squidoo lens and a Flickr (now owned by Yahoo) gallery. But after reading this (seen via reddit), I'd recommend jettisoning Flickr (and Yahoo) in favor of Zooomr.

When your Hawaiian Kona and Jamaican Blue Mountain just don't float the ol' boat the way they used to, it's time to wake up and smell the Indonesian Cat Poo.

These guys are a scream. Look out -- they've got stringed instruments and they're not afraid to use them!

Listening to Tom Ashbrook's interview with Christopher Hitchens on WBUR on Fri 5/11, where Hitchens talks about his new book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything", was enough to convert me from a namby-pamby wishy-washy "skeptical agnostic" to an outraged anti-theist. From The world according to Hitch:

"An atheist can still say he wishes it was true. It would be nice if it was true. I can't see why it would be nice if it was true. I simply can't see that. To have pre-cradle to post-grave round-the-clock supervision and surveillance by someone with a very devious form of morality -- who wants this to be true? I'm delighted that there's no reason to think that it's true. It's humanity's most obvious falsification. [Jesus on the cross] is scapegoating that absolves one of all responsibility in return for the acceptance of the incredible and the undesirable. And then with the other shoe, the other hand, says if you don't believe it, then we have a real program of torture that will go on forever. It's disgusting."

It was almost enough to make me forgive Hitchens for his support for the Iraq war.

How much bigger is a quark (~10^-17 m³) than a quantum string (~10^-33 m³)? (Prerequisite: String Theory in Two Minutes Or Less). And if you think that's tiny, consider the absolute minimum volume of space-time (~10^-99 cm³) proposed by Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG).

And at another extremity of scale...

From "Parallel Universes" by Max Tegmark:

"The simplest and most popular cosmological model today predicts that you have a twin in a galaxy about 10 to the 10²⁸ meters from here. This distance is so large that it is beyond astronomical, but that does not make your doppelgänger any less real."

How much bigger is that than the diameter of our local Hubble volume (~2.6 x 10²⁶ m)? Well, if the local Hubble volume was the size of the LQG minimum volume, then the distance to my doppelgänger would be... uh... don't rush me...

In Sex, Drugs, Einstein and Elves, in Chapter 6 ("From Holiday Inn to the Head of Christ"), in the section on "Quantum Immortality and Parallel Universes" (pp. 153-156), Clifford Pickover connects the dots between Tegmark's infinite universes within a single spacetime continuum and Hugh Everett's "Many Worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics. So... what if they're both right? That would be an infinite number of me's in each continuum, with an infinite number of new continua sprouting at every moment. How many me's in all? Is it:

• a) aleph[0]
• b) aleph[1]
• c) aleph[aleph[aleph[...]]]
• d) None of the above.

What You Know About Math? Uh-HUH! Feel da geek pow-wah! I especially like where they try to high-five and miss.

The saga (or soap opera) continues...

Dear Detective BadCop,

Regarding our conversation this morning where you made some vague noises about libel and inference in connection with my blog posts of 4/14/07 and 5/2/07, my considered response is as follows:

1. Bring it. Put up or shut up.
2. You don't have a case and you know it. Or am I supposed to cower in terror and delete my posts and self-censor out of fear of financial ruin in the form of a SLAPP suit? Really now, you can't intimidate me out of my First Amendment rights that easily.
3. Let me remind you that the Superintendent of Schools, Middle School Principal, Middle School Vice Principal, and police officers are public figures, who are, in this case, IMHO, acting in a thuggish manner that demands a reasoned response. Let me also reassure you that I am committed to non-violence as a means of political change.
4. Exactly which parts of my blog posts do you and/or your masters find actionable?
5. Feel free to reply in the comments to this (or any other) of my blog posts -- you can either sign your comments or hide behind the mask of anonymity, as you prefer.

Until I hear back, I'll assume that you and your threats are completely full of... hot air.

Warm regards,

Craig Lee Burket

Regarding the fracas in the cheap seats at Boston's Symphony Hall (how the fur did fly!)... call me insensitive to the restless physical energy of those 2 passionate men, but... I suspect guerrilla marketing at work. Note to Beantown's Finest: better round up all the local theater directors and grill them about whether any of their companies have an upcoming production featuring a bare-chested brawl.

Nature magazine reports that Genes come alive with the sound of music. But don't take my word for it: Translate Gene Sequences to Music for yourself! For example, take a listen to Ebola Virus (the complete genome) by Intelligent Designer.

Now if I could just convert them to Guitar Hero II tracks, then we'd be Rockin wit' The Blind Watchmaker!

It's all really neat, but not really new: DNA Music and Protein Music have been around for some time now. Some other nucleotide sequences suitable for data sonification can be found at:

• the Viral Bioinformatics Resource Center at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• the ExPASy (Expert Protein Analysis System) proteomics server of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics

Jon Clinch's Finn is to Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as Gregory Maguire's Wicked is to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

[A Gay] Woman Goes Undercover to Experience Life as a [Straight] Man. Sort of the "anti-Tootsie". Methinks she has just a whiff of the sociopath about her; especially the part where, dressed up in man-drag, she tries to pick up straight women in a bar. Notice that she blames her eventual mental breakdown on "messing with identity", rather than on lying to her new "friends" for months on end. But with a bit of toughening up she could have the right stuff for a career in HUMINT and Covert Ops.

Some videos from the performance on 4/21/2007 at Kresge Auditorium at MIT of David Haines' "Lifetime: A Science Oratorio: Songs of Life and Evolution". I'm the short fat bald guy singing at stage left, and that's me brandishing the baton in "Four Billion Years".

In his talk on "Cerebral Circuits for Creativity: Bootstrapping Coherence using a Darwin Machine", neurophysiologist William H. Calvin illustrates the subtle concept in evolutionary theory of "multifunctional uses" (aka "free" vs. "paid" uses) with the Parable of the Curb Cut (slides 21-26). That idea is spectacularly applied in a model of the evolution of the bacterial flagellum by Nicholas Matzke, which has been nicely animated on YouTube by cdk007, who sums it up as follows:

"The system need not have the same function as the ancestral system from which it evolved."

And speaking of Darwin machines, let us not be carbon-centric bigots as we consider CREATURES FROM PRIMORDIAL SILICON:

Let Darwinism loose in an electronics lab and just watch what it creates. A lean, mean machine that nobody understands.
[...]
If evolutionary design fulfils its promise, we could soon be using circuits that work in ways we don't understand. And some see this as a drawback. "I can see engineers in industry who won't trust these devices," says [Adrian] Thomson [at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at the University of Sussex]. "Because they can't explain how these things work, they might be suspicious of them."
[...]
[Pierre] Marchal [at the Swiss Centre for Electronics and Microtechnology] believes there is a "real possibility" that machines will evolve in ways that will be beyond human reasoning. To some, this prospect is frightening. But not to Marchal. "I'm not sure this is a real problem. The risk from a bomb is higher," he says. "Humanity can destroy itself far easier than these alien technologies."
[...]
Further reading: A collection of Adrian Thompson's papers is posted on his Web site at http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/adrianth/ade.html

Perusing the teaser page for Clifford Pickover's new book "The Heaven Virus" set my mind to wandering...

Environmentalist Paul Watson describes humanity as "an invasive virus" that is "killing our host planet Earth", and ignites a firestorm of criticism for his trouble. If I didn't know better, I'd smell a troll.

Did someone say Brain Implants? No, no, no -- think wireless: what you want is Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation... TMS will make them sleeeeeeeeeep... or see God(s) (unless you're Richard Dawkins).

Just beware of the Dark Side of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS):

"Although DBS alleviated depression when directed at Cg25 in that study, the technique can induce depression when directed at other parts of the brain."

Sounds like the Instrument of Obedience to me.

And speaking of old-school cranial implants, my favorite speculative treatment of the subject involves black-market plug-in "moddies" (personality modifiers) and "daddies" (digital add-ons) in: "When Gravity Fails" (novel) by George Alec Effinger.

And finally, speaking of old favorite sci-fi short stories dealing with psychoactive mushrooms... I invite you to read the full text of: "The Purple Pileus", by H. G. Wells.

Watch as L.A.'s Finest fire rubber bullets at unarmed peaceful demonstrators, including children, at the Mayday Immigration Reform Demonstration in Los Angeles:

It was a moment I'll cherish for the rest of my days. There we were, my boy and I, marching shoulder to shoulder with our fellow anarchists from the Boston May Day Coalition down Massachusetts Avenue, on our way from Harvard Square to the rally on Boston Common in support of amnesty for all illegal immigrants. And there I was, proudly carrying the black-and-purple flag of Anarcha-Feminism (as in "This is what a male feminist anarchist looks like!").

But as we crossed the Mass. Ave. bridge over the Charles River, my 51-year-old ankles began to give out. So, with an odd feeling in my chest, I passed the banner to Nate and watched him and the other marchers recede into the distance as I hobbled to a halt.

I did finally make it to the Common in time for the rally, where Nate and I met up with friends from the Industrial Workers of the World (aka "Wobblies"), and helped carry their banner ("An injury to one is an injury to all") from the Common to Copley Square. And no, we didn't throw any bombs, not even at the nationalist counter-demonstrators.

A totally wicked kewl optical illusion, found via (and upmodded on) reddit.com. Remember: "There is no green dot." I wonder (just hypothetically, of course) what this would look like under the influence of DMT? E.g., what percentage of users/test-subjects would see the machine elves turning the crank behind the fabric of spacetime? But really, who needs drugs when you have the web?

To The Honorable Barney Frank,

I am one of your constituents, so don't hit Delete just yet, m'kay?

Please join Reps. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) and Janice Schakowsky (D-IL) in co-sponsoring House Resolution 333, submitted by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), which introduces Articles of Impeachment against Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors. Thank you.

Craig Lee Burket

The solution to "meat angst"? Simple: meat machines ("cultured meat for the cultural elite!"):

"non-profit organisations such as the “New Harvest” are actively engaged in promoting cultured meat. They expect that in a decade’s time it will become a reality, just as we culture curds every day. Dr. Valdimir Mironov, Director, Shared Tissue Engineering Laboratory at the Medical University of South Carolina envisages a counter top device, like a bread machine, which could produce the meat we need in our own kitchens."

Just try to resist the urge toward self-cannibalism.

Another dispatch from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named:

    > With respect to your request that Mr. Burket be allowed to attend
    > Julia’s recorder recital on Wednesday evening, May 2, 2007 at the
    > [REDACTED] school, I must deny this request. This request
    > is contrary to the restrictions of the no trespass letter dated
    > April 13, 2007. At this time, I will not modify the terms set forth in
    > that letter.

M'Lord Voldemort (or is it... Morgoth?),

How's that stiff neck? Feeling any better? ;-)

So... will Officer GoodCop and Detective BadCop be on special detail in the school auditorium tonight to make sure I don't try to sneak in? Better tell them to scrutinize the audience members very carefully: remember, I'm a theater person, with an M.O. involving frequent use of costumes and stage makeup.

Maybe at some point you could explain to Julia and her mom, y'know, to their faces, exactly why Julia's dad can't come to her recorder recital. But face-to-face isn't really your style, is it? You seem more comfortable with several nice thick layers of minions between you and anyone who might stand up and talk back to you.

"Call me!",

Craig "Mad Dog" Burket

From The “Stab in the Back” Trap, by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith:

"The Democrats and the peace movement are walking into a trap.The Republicans are preparing with Rovian cunning to focus the mind of the public on the question: Who lost Iraq? And they are already giving the answer: The Democrats and the peace movement.
[...]
What’s necessary to evade this trap is to define the war itself - rather than just the fact that America is losing it - as wrong. It is wrong because we were lied into it by a rogue executive intent on launching an illegal war and occupation, in violation of national and international law, the U.S. Constitution, and the U.N Charter. And it is wrong because it has imposed an illegal occupation that has systematically violated the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. War Crimes Act."

Of the many excellent and inspiring protest signs pictured at FreewayBlogger.com, my favorite says:

Give Cheney a fair trial.

The Scientist magazine has a positive review of the performance at MIT on 4/21 of David Haines' "Lifetime: Songs of Life and Evolution" by the North Cambridge Family Opera Festival Chorus, in which my family and I sang, and where I conducted the second half. Well, mostly positive, with just a splash of snarkiness ("Vibrato-laden adult harmonies"? "A series of somewhat catchy songs"? "This choral version of Schoolhouse Rock"?). Well, I never!

And don't miss the comments on the review: it seems to have touched a raw nerve for certain creationists. There must be a way to fit "unrepentant god-slandering evOngelist" onto my resume...