Originally Posted at Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog.

	I love my Roomba. Not only does it clean the floor, but it protects me from snakes.
Scientists must now be on the lookout for fake conferences. Apparently the con artists out there have decided to aim themselves at the most skeptical group they could think of.
	Like museums? Like steampunk? Go to Oxford.
Conservative Christians have been doubting evolution since the day before Darwin came up with it. Now Muslims are starting to do the same thing. Please, people — could the atheists stop claiming that evolution proves religion to be wrong (it doesn’t), and religious folks stop pretending that evolution cannot be true (it is).
	Denizens of Montreal: Be happy for the presence of Concordia University in your city. They are bravely protecting you from novelists. Novelists who are interested in bilingualism. And who take pictures. Or at least have pictures taken of them. Or at least allow others to take pictures of them.
Some breasts are too big for China.
	Book titles, if they were written today. I think this would make a fantastic Twitter meme.
For those of you who do not have Twitter accounts, be warned: The police can arrest you for failure to Tweet.

Originally Posted at Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog.

Look out, Australia! Feral camels are out there, and laying siege to small communities! Will yours be next? Live in fear, dear Australians.

Originally Posted at Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog.

Hey, Smith! Watch where you’re steering that galaxy — you’ve just crashed it into my Milky Way for the second time!

Brain time!

Want a chip in your brain? Intel is working on that.

Want a Mussolini brain? e-Bay is working on that.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Originally Posted at Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog.

Photographer Julian Hibbard has created an alphabet book — like many of us had as a child — but with an adult bent to it. From Abandoned to Zoomorphic, each letter gets a word. And a photo illustrating the word. The book can be viewed online at the photographer’s website or bought at the publisher’s.

My favourite? K is for Kafkaesque:

Originally Posted at Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog.

President Obama is encouraging the development of robotics. But he is also keeping an eye on them, ever-vigilant for the day they turn us.

We are the last to post the following video to the Internet. I have seen it tweeted multiple times, and on every website I visit on a regular basis. It is still sufficiently awesome to include in the morning coffee:

If you’re adopted and looking for your birth father, finding him is not always a good thing.

Norway: Powered by osmosis.

Originally Posted at Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog.

About a year ago I attended a lecture at LSE — part of their free public lecture series that I attend too infrequently. The topic of that lecture was isolation and the Internet. The thrust of the lecture is that all the evidence — all of it — points not towards the Internet making more people more isolated, but towards the improved maintenance of one’s desired level of socialization. In other words, sure — if you want to isolate yourself, the Internet will allow it. But if you are a naturally socially person, the Internet will facilitate it.

In other words, worries that the Internet causes isolation and the degradation of social skills are not just exaggerated, they are unfounded.

This did not come as a surprise, because ten years ago I was studying similar topics as part of my undergraduate degree. At the time the Internet was young and there were no firm numbers to look at. But the worry that this new technology would cause a degradation of social skills already existed and was quite palpable. And all the (admittedly anecdotal) evidence — at least, the portion that had basis in fact — pointed towards a conclusion that the Internet was just another technology that could be used for communicating. Like any such tool, people who use it to communicate enhance their social connections by doing so, rather than degrading them.

At that lecture, a year ago, it was nice to see that the studies (and meta-studies, which combine data from multiple studies to look for patterns that might not be visible in the smaller populations) confirming the conclusions I had drawn ten years earlier. In fact, I am not certain how anybody approaching the subject with an academic mindset could have seen it any other way — but by no means does that mean that the numbers would bear that out.

With all this in the background, I was somewhat surprised to read this news story a few weeks ago (found via Mashable) declaring that this had been discovered by a survey by the Pew group — a “think tank” that conducts random phone surveys. First the Mashable headline does it for me: “MYTH BUSTED”, it declares in all caps.

Further, the introduction to the Pew Survey itself just gets my goat:

This Pew Internet Personal Networks and Community survey is the first ever that examines the role of the internet and cell phones in the way that people interact with those in their core social network. Our key findings challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology

This is blatantly false. The research has been saying the same thing since I first started reading it a decade ago. Academics have been performing surveys and studies on the subject for years, and have already drawn the same conclusions.

The Pew survey breaks no new ground. As a “think tank” and common go-to source for reporters, they clearly generate more buzz than the people who have been slogging this out for the last fifteen years to determine the real impact that these relatively new technologies have on our social interactions.

And it pisses me off to no end to see them open with such blatant intellectual dishonesty (or ignorance) by claiming that their findings fly in the face of previous research. Nobody needs an intellectually dishonest think tank, Pew. Nobody.

————–

As an aside, I have tried and failed to find a podcast, video or transcript of the lecture in question. However, LSE does provide videos, podcasts and transcripts from lectures in their public lecture series. I think they’re fantastic — particularly the podcasts, if there have not been too many visual aids.

Originally Posted at Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog.

I think that this Pikachu ski mask might be the most frightening thing I have ever seen. Which may mean that I need one.

(Photo by Tech. Sergeant Russell E. Cooley IV)

This morning, a new blog has been stumbled upon. Called My Parents Were Awesome, it endeavours to catch your parents, my parents, everyone’s parents back when they were younger and awesomer. It, unfortunately, fails to realise that your parents, my parents, and most parents continue to be awesome today.

To all parents telling their kids it’s bath time: Dirt only makes your children stronger. How do we know this? Science.

Originally Posted at Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog.

We live in a strange world, and as a result there are plenty of strange jobs out there. Over the past couple of weeks, I have seen a couple of these thanks to the blogosphere web-o-net thingy that I read on a daily basis. This has prompted me to search for more.

What started it all? The need for a Grateful Dead archivist. Yep — the University of California, Santa Cruz needs somebody to organise their Grateful Dead record collection. So, if you’re a retired hippie with OCD and would like to live in California, the perfect job has presented itself.

Shortly thereafter, I found out that McDonald’s is hiring. This isn’t strange, except the job is in Cuba. This is a little strange, but not as much as the fact that it’s to manage the Guantanamo Bay restaurant. If you don’t quite feel up to management, I’m sure they also need burger flippers and milkshake makers on a fairly regular basis. This could be the perfect job for you, if you always wanted to see Gitmo, but do not wish to join the military or become a terrorist.

A short search has now also revealed the position of “porn presenter” was recently advertised. However, in a recession it is unlikely that the job is still available nearly six months later. The job, presumably, is to introduce pornographic movies to an audience while being partially clothed.

If these are amusing you and you want more, I can also suggest that you visit businesspundit.com — it seems like they give a weekly listing of the five strangest jobs they can locate on the Internet. This week features an ad for a Best Man at a wedding. Pay is $200. Must look good in a tux.

Our personal favourite from the business pundit archives dates back to August — in which a business plan seeks a Teleportation Scientist. Recession or not, a good Teleportation Scientist is hard to find — particularly in New York. For the many Teleportation Scientists who read the Big Bad Blog: This one may still be open. Dust off that CV and teleport yourself over to New York, pronto.

Originally Posted at Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog.

Richard Dawkins is probably not a reader of the Big Bad Blog. Also unlikely — though less so — is that a loud voice at the British Humanist Association is reading this. But if you are, please read this reaction to the row over your new posters in Belfast. Then, think about who your target audience was, and what might be a good way to reach them.

Dear Denmark: A domestic violence awareness campaign is good in principle. Your Hit the Bitch campaign seems a little out of whack, though.

A cold blooded goat? Yes, a cold blooded goat. Which means that mammals can evolve to be cold blooded. Which means that some day we might really have “cold blooded killers”. Awesome.

Originally Posted at Mr. Topp and the Big Bad Blog.

	Forget things? Perhaps you need a specially formulated nasal spray. Isn’t it fantastic to be living in The Future?
If you like to see Christmas shows over the holiday season during the year, and live in Minnesota, might I suggest A Klingon Christmas Carol?
	Feel uncreative? Here are some eye exercises that can help.
When you receive bad service, do you tip anyways? If you’re one of the everyone-I-know who says “of course not”, be warned: You may find yourself under arrest.
	Child porn users are getting smarter — they now use viruses to store their porn on other people’s computers so they will not get caught with it. This causes a side effect in which those who are the victim of the virus may be arrested as child pornographers.
We often hear of body image problems forcing people into eating disorders, and to become abnormally thin. In Mauritania, they have the opposite problem. Big is beautiful in Mauritania, so parents send kids off to “fat camp” where they are force fed until they are a size considered beautiful.
	A former police officer challenges searches performed at airports — extremely interesting. Part one. And part two.
Having sex can lead to amnesia. Just wait until the abstinence folks get a hold of this.	This final entry in the weekly links is reserved for a photo, but I planned to choose a photo from the set below and put it here. The problem is that the photos are arguably Not Safe For Work. While your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend will likely just say “holy fucking Christ, what are you looking at?”, your boss might not appreciate it. They might. I don’t know your boss.</p> Besides, the photos are much better enjoyed as an entire series — one photo will likely not encourage you to click through. In any case, this is the link. Enjoy. Or avoid. Your choice.