Al Gore – Didn’t You Notice The Zig Zags?

On his global warming lecture, Al Gore is displaying CO2 levels spanning 650 000 years. On the graph behind him, CO2 levels go up and down and backward and forward in time. In other words, there are occasionally two or more CO2 levels at the same time.

Al Gore, how is it possible? Didn’t you pay any attention to the massive screen behind you?

You can see the full video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxi-OlkmxZ4 [the graph is at 7:30]

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Some background for this post. I watched An Inconvenient Truth movie two years ago, and believed every word of it. After studying the issue more carefully, I was surprised: the movie has been proved to contain material which is misleading, incorrect and false. All in all, it is full of scaremongering without any science to back it up. Almost every segment of it.

Yet, governments are making large decisions based on false theories promoted by non-scientists who can not even produce a simple graph correctly. Yet, even Barack Obama – whom we all regard highly and is currently the man with the most power on this planet - is being misinformed and misled.

Al Gore says the science on man-made global warming is settled; there’s a consensus, scientists stand behind it. That’s an easy argument to validate. Just search the web to see whether it’s true. You will see how the whole house of cards begins to crumble.

Onion Joke That’s Not

Uncannily good prediction from The Onion archives, dated January, 2001.

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far from The Tree

Funny thing happened. My 11-year-old daughter just came to me and said: “I want the new Banjo game for Christmas. I want all the games made by Rare, because they make Viva Piñata and it’s so good.”

The funny part is this: when I was a young boy in the mid-eighties and playing with my friend’s Sinclair Spectrum, all the Ultimate games were must-haves. Ultimate was a company created by Stamper brothers – later they started Rare.

The Guy Working At The Top of The Tallest Building

Have you heard about the guy working at the top of the tallest building?

On his office wall, he has a map of the world. There’s a knob on top of each country. On the spur of the moment, he turns knobs left and right. Rain pushes into the windows. Lights of the city low around him flicker as he slowly moves his gaze to another knob.

His telephone doesn’t ring.

As he turns the knobs, commands are sent down to the stories below for an army of his minions to execute. This country goes in the red, this into black. Rates of the currencies change. He releases a knob, goes to sit on his chair. Looks outside.

His companies have many names, his products are made from iron and binary digits. You wouldn’t recognize him on the street. An inverse Domino effect gathering all the money from the world, from your pockets, ends to where he stands.

He doesn’t play golf, he plays the world. After the deeds of the day are done, he enters the elevator, goes down, crosses the street, grabs the evening paper and silently goes into a taxi. Arrives to his home where his two kids and wife are already sleeping deep. In the night, his dreams are like the dreams of any other person.

The Book of W: A Book or a Blog or a Blog Book?

As you have probably noticed, I’ve partially moved my act to thebookofw.com.

On that site, I’ll create an experience which takes all the good parts of books and blogging. Furthermore, the site should be readable with mobile devices also.

One of the simple, minor, mundane things that bug me is how the pages are numbered. In blogs, the most recent page is the page number 1, by default. In books, page number 1 is the beginning. In my view, the best solution would be to number the oldest (i.e. first) blog post with the page number 1, and increase from there on. I haven’t yet found a way to accomplish this feature with Tumblr technology without relatively heavy scripting, or manual tagging (using tags like “page1″, “page2″). Yeah, I could code it using Tumblr API, but we’ll see.

Anyway, The Book of W is an interesting experiment. You wouldn’t believe how much, how long, how dearly I kept the contents and the subject hidden. Only my wife knew something about the unpublished, unprinted, unagented book. My face blushed and hands started to shake on those rare moments when the discussion reared it. And now, I’m on the other extreme as I publish the chapters to the web for you all to read.

When I was younger, I hided all my creative works (music, writings, …) from others. The rationale – if you can call it that – was that the works felt too personal, they gave out too much of me and made me vulnerable. Now I’ve learned that life’s too short for that. So, if you have something to present, just pour it out. Thanks for the web, it’s easy, fast, inexpensive and leads to an uncharted territory…

Cybertecture Apartment in Dubai

It’s always interesting to follow what they are up to in Dubai. The developments there are just amazing. According to some info, one fifth of world’s cranes are there in gigantic 100 billion dollar construction project.   

One particular building caught my eye: The PAD, also known as iPad. The tower is…

…targeted at switched-on, creative and hip business executives to whom we refer to as “the digital generation” or apple brand lovers who are constantly mobile and connected.

Every apartment will be intelligent and have its own cybertecture to provide a unique experience. Everything from communications, entertainment, health and shopping is covered by the cybertecture of the apartment.

Among the usual household stuff like colour changing tiles are the iFeatures. The iFeatures list contains: iReality (a virtual reality projection wall), iHealth (monitors residents health), iRotation Rooms (rotate your lounge), iArt (project a painting from a server to a wall), etc.

In Dubai, science fiction really becomes a reality. I commend their bold adventures in architectural design and pushing the edge of technology in living spaces. Oil money well spent.

Something Wet Is Out! Really Wet…

It’s quite natural for a guy nicknamed raindropper to create a book covering all aspects of water, don’t you think?

So, point your browser to The Book of W and start exploring. There will chapters and postings about science, business, arts, cultures and religions – all of course water-related.

It looks like a mish-mash of blog postings and book chapters. But there’s a simple, common theme underlining all of those – and it’s clear as water.

Radiohead – …

… Learnings from The “On How The Brain Functions” Experiment.

You, the web wanderer, are perhaps aware that a bit over one year ago I posted my research paper about theory of how the brain functions. I also built a blog around it so that you, the brain researcher, can comment it with witty references to tin-foil hats.

The current gain is zero remarks to tin-foil hats.

Seriously, though, I still stand behind the theory and see several strenghts in it. The question is: why I’m not building a working prototype as it only takes a few diodes, capacitors and coils to make it. Maybe it’s because I do not want to disturb the local neighbourhood with electromagnetic noise.  

And: I’d like to thank Joni Tuoreniemi and Paul Tudsbury for commenting it and creating conversation. Thank you!

Ridley Scott’s A Good Year – A Film of Sunshine, About Timing

After renting and watching scary Ils (Them) and uneasy Blood Diamond I decided to choose something more relaxing and better suited for my wife’s taste. So, Ridley Scott’s film A Good Year was perfect for getting into that sunny summer mood. (Raining outside, again). It was also interesting to see how versatile Ridley Scott is; light romantic comedy is a long step from Blade Runner and Alien. Of course, there are over 25 years between those sci-fi films and A Good Year.

In the film, the old snippet of wisdom was mentioned a couple of times. It roughly goes like this:

“What’s the most important thing in comedy?”

“Timing.”

And… 

“What’s the most important thing in buying and selling stocks?”

“Timing.”

Let’s expand that further. With perfect timing, can one achieve everything – be a master in all tasks? Do these work:

“What’s the most important thing in ice hockey?”

“Timing.”

“What’s the most important thing in dancing?”

“Timing.”

“What’s the most important thing in playing a piano?”

“Timing.”

“What’s the most important thing in playing poker?”

“Timing.” 

“What’s the most important thing in writing code?”

“Timing.”

“What’s the most important thing in marketing?”

“Timing.”

“What’s the most important thing in scientific research?”

“Timing.”

And finally the grand question: 

“What’s the most important thing in making love?”

“Timing.”

Et cetera. Some of the above do sound reasonable.

On a Traditional Finnish Holiday

 

Live in a cottage by a lake… Swim in a water of 17 Celsius degrees, dig worms and go fishing, row a boat, have a sauna, play card games and Mölkky, drink some beer, burn some wood to cook some food, run around with the dog, gather romantic time in a forest with your wife/girlfriend and a bottle of sparkling strawberry wine as the night is light and mosquitos are for an unknown reason hiding somewhere.    

We all had fun.

And one of the funniest was Minttu the chihuahua - picture links to an AVI. Watch her play with a hay…