Halogen lamps do not require electricity. When GE began marketing the bulbs in the early 1960s, they assumed the public would panic if they saw a perpetual energy matrix, thinking it was radioactive. Engineers built in a circuit that blocks the iodine-tungsten reaction unless the unit is plugged in. Every year, GE's board votes on whether to reveal the truth.
Chris likes If you’ve ever tripped on the sidewalk and then walked on like nothing ever happened, LIKE THIS!
Chris likes Sometimes when I get mad, I break something useful Other times, I break something expensive.
Chris likes LIKE THIS IF YOU NEED A HUG!
Chris likes Hey guess what? I wasn’t even gonna sit there anyway.
Chris likes Just get me through this day, and I swear I’ll never drink on a weeknight again. Until next time! =^D
Chris likes Apparently the planet will not continue to spin unless I lose my phone once per day.
Chris likes I did it, I’m not going to apologize for it, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
Chris likes My dog does more around the house than my ex-boyfriend, and looks better in a collar.
Chris likes Why do I even bother arguing with people who don’t agree with me?
Chris likes The remote belongs in my hand, and you can have it when you grow a brain.
Chris likes Like this if you want to punch a hug in the throat.
Chris likes No that’s fine, I wasn’t going to eat that lunch I put in the office fridge with my name on it. Glad you enjoyed it.
Chris likes Sorry to hear that your PetVille bought the FarmVille.
Chris likes Jump out of a church steeple? Aw hell nawl!
Chris likes Well, that is definitely the very last time I trust a carny with my 401(k).
Chris likes I’m just going to count to ten and pretend that I’m on a tropical island surrounded by the corpses of my enemies.
Chris likes Just woke up with the nastiest hangover. Why am I going 110 through a school zone? Whoah, this isn’t even my car.
Chris likes Like this if you’ve ever accidentally broken up a drug deal in Nicaragua!
Chris likes FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, STOP CHANGING FACEBOOK.
Chris likes Pants are important. Wear them.
Chris likes Shut up. Shut up. Shut. Up. Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut. Shut. SHUT. UP. This very instant. Just shut it.
Chris likes What I need right now is a waffle the size of a Prius, STAT!
Chris likes LIKE THIS IF YOU THINK MOST PEOPLE WOULDN’T KNOW A DECENT CUP OF COFFEE FROM A BUCKET OF SAND AND BATTERY ACID!
Chris likes Ever notice how you’ve never seen a picture of the Pope hang gliding? Not just the current one, ANY Pope? Suspicious, right?
Chris likes If Nikola Tesla were alive today, his Flickr feed would be off the charts.
Chris likes They’re called night-vision goggles, and you wouldn’t be so freaked out if you weren’t doing something shady and this wasn’t your backyard and I wasn’t crying.
Chris likes What’s with all the pandas at the Dairy Queen? Every time I go to Dairy Queen there’s a panda.
Chris likes Some days I’m going to come back from lunch reeking of daiquiris. Get used to it.
Chris likes Everyone who whines to me at the office today is getting a piping hot mug of DON’T CARE.
Chris likes Sorry, I can’t hear you, I’ve got my WHINE BLOCKER on.
Chris likes Let’s put all the whiners on an ice floe and then melt the ice floe and then shoot the whiners.
Chris likes Oh god it’s all closing in on me, the walls, the walls, there’s no escape, I’m never getting out of here, hey look donuts!
Chris likes Some days I want to =D but then I’m like =O and then I’m all =(
Chris likes When you like a random statement on Facebook, there’s a pretty good chance you’re driving ad dollars to a site you’ve never heard of.
Chris likes Oh no! There are spiders. Have an angry. Must be otherwise, run for yourself!
Late summer has clenched us in its sweaty, wheezing grip. Everybody’s all beached out. Everyone’s hair is a fluffy/frizzy mess. Electricity bills ache like letters from the Civil War. Defeated, we cast our withered glance toward Autumn. This way marches a savior, flanked by trees of gold and crimson: the foot-ball season is almost here. And it’s about damned time. Not only are we perspiring to death, but television has grown somnolent for lack of shouting. Both of these problems will soon vanish, ten yards at a time.
The foot-ball, or “football,” draws tens of millions of fans to stadia and plasma screens every week. But for many, the sport itself is not enough. They want more. These über fans delve headlong into the metasport known as the fantasy foot-ball, or “fantasy football.” Their ranks grow each year, as the websites that operate fantasy leagues grow progressively more sophisticated. With the 2010 NFL season looming, fantasy leagues have begun their mock “drafts” to add “players” to their “rosters.” Perhaps you yourself have received an invitation to join a league, and are considering giving it a try. To be blunt, such invitations are a trap. Your friends hope to take advantage of your inexperience. For the uninitiated, we here at Analog Nation offer a guide to fantasy football. Write this down.
This is officially insane. Honestly, it is. This time they have gone too far. They are flaunting it, shoving our noses in the shards of our broken toys, heaving back their heads in gales of laughter. It’s as if they told the children of the world that there’s no Santa, and he wasn’t going to bring them presents this year anyway, and besides he has leukemia. It’s overkill. It has to stop. Those goddamn paleontologists need to come down a peg or two. And yes, this is absolutely about the Triceratops thing.
(Note to any children reading this: Santa is completely real, and leukemia is a type of candy that tastes like hugs.)
The July issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology pulls the veil off nearly 130 years of dinosaur lore — technically speaking, the Triceratops never existed. Just as our childhoods were plundered for all remaining traces of Pluto, so too have we now lost one of the coolest dinosaurs. We here at Analog Nation wanted to take a few moments to guide you through this travesty.
By now, everyone has heard. Someone spilled the beans, the cat’s out of the bag, the information is out in the ether, and now there are beans and cats everywhere. Granted, it’s not that hard to clean up beans, and whoever thought it would be difficult to put a cat back in a bag has never had a cat and a bag. So let’s assume we’re talking about a cat with a bag phobia and some unusually entropic beans. The point is that this information will never return from the ether. Now that it is known, it cannot be unknown.
Which I suppose is true of all information.
Let me start over.
After two years of digging, The Washington Post dropped a story today that was so large they built a whole microsite around it with maps and slideshows and stuff. Reporters have uncovered what they call Top Secret America, a growing segment of the US government that “has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.” Somewhere, Tom Clancy is dusting off his Smith Corona.
The existence of secret government agencies is several shades paler than shocking, though the scope of this thing is admittedly a bit eye-popping. Washington, DC is the epicenter of some 854,000 individuals with top-secret security credentials, spread in overlapping jurisdictions across the country. You would think they’d have leveraged these resources to produce at least one decent sports team, but it’s too late for that, because now we all know. The truth, as Mulder would say, is out there. In a handy, easily-navigable microsite.
Surely such sophisticated readers as yourselves have sniffed out where this is going. There’s no sense in flittering about like a titmouse, so I’ll come right out and say what you have no doubt begun to suspect. Yes, Analog Nation is part of Top Secret America.
Our full designation is the National Initiative for Covert Scientific Signals Intelligence (Analog Division). Funded by creative math deep within the Department of Energy’s budget, the Initiative’s mandate is to monitor communications and alert the public when scientific developments carry unintended potential. Our sources are the blackest of black-ops. Our specific level of codeword clearance is itself classified information. So if, for example, we were to casually mention that dolphins have been spotted roaming the seas in massive “superpods,” or that one of our continents has cracked in half to begin forming a new ocean, you’ll just have to trust us. These stories are connected, and indicate that dry land’s hilarious run may have run its course — Earth is kinda sick of our shit.
And if that’s the stuff we here at Analog Nation are telling you, what about the stuff we aren’t telling you? Best you leave that to us. Sleep soundly at night, and let us maintain our vigil. Beans and cats, cats and beans.
21 July 1953
Charles Blakely
Vice President, Product Development
E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.
CC: Thomas Carlson
Charlie,
Read the script last night, great work. Mylar is an exciting product, and this film will showcase its qualities to the world. “What’s It To You” is a strong title. It’s a bold statement, but also has a casual feel. That’s good. Our viewers will be serious businessmen, but they loosen their ties at five o’clock just like you and me.
Shooting has been pushed back a couple of days, so that the chemists can work out any kinks with the demo stations. That gives us some breathing room to make a few final tweaks to the script. Take a look at my notes below.
• Have we picked out the music yet? Tell the licensing guys to find something with pep, something modern. Think “the sound of doing business.”
• The spokesman will need to strike a proper tone. Stern yet gentle like a father, friendly like an uncle, knowledgeable like a doctor. Uncle doctor father.
• I’m okay with the baseball bat gimmick in the opening sequence. But for the love of Saint Peter, he has to smile when he does it. The last thing we need is a thug for our pitchman.
• What do you think for assistants — two blondes or mix it up? Carlson says both should be blondes, but you know Carly and his blondes. I say mix it up, and give them hats.
• Does the acrobat on the trampoline have to be a man? Just seems like we’re wasting a golden opportunity is all.
• Should the spokesman be smoking? I feel like he should be smoking. It would make him seem more like a surgeon. People listen to surgeons.
• Hopefully this goes without saying, but the scotch on set should be at least twelve years old. None of that paint thinner they tried to serve us at the company picnic.
• In answer to your question about whether to have the spokesman do the chemistry demonstrations himself: Of course he should! The fellow will look like gangbusters in a lab apron and safety goggles. Lends an air of authority. However, make sure he doesn’t put his face in the 15,000 volt generator. This sounds crazy, I know, but we had a problem with that when we demo’d Dacron.
• Just to touch base on the hot/cold sequence real quick, do we need a professional bowler or can one of the guys just do it? How does one find a professional bowler, anyway? Carlson insists we should use jai alai instead of bowling, but we can’t bring Cuban nationals into a situation with industrial secrets.
• Speaking of which, did you hear about Boeing’s new B-52 Stratofortress? Sweet mercy, we are going to bomb the piss out of those Russkies.
• I cannot stress this enough: For the “housewife” sequence to work, the model needs to look 100% bangable. Someone should take her for a spin, just to be certain.
• Mylar’s most underrated attribute is its crinkliness. Make sure the spokesman handles the packages on camera, so that everyone can hear how much it crinkles.
• Using a skunk for the olfactory segment is a phenomenal idea. Love it. See if we can get Mel Blanc to do a voice-over as that “dirty Frenchman” skunk character he does for Warner. (Be sure to incinerate the skunk afterward. We don’t want a goddamn skunk running loose in the studio.)
• Should the film briefly mention Mylar’s effectiveness as a mind control agent? What about the radiation problem? The people who have disappeared after prolonged exposure? The fact that it’s technically classifiable as a life form? Its tendency to hover? I’m thinking no.
• Take out the bon mot about wives greeting their husbands wearing only Mylar. Linda & I tried it last weekend, and it doesn’t work nearly as well as you’d think.
• One last thought — what if we print the title cards on Mylar itself? (My youngest daughter came up with that one. She’ll be a fantastic homemaker some day. Hopefully not too soon, of course! Seriously, I can feel the march of time treading upon my soul. It tramples me, Charlie. It tramples me.)
Gentlemen, we are in the business of selling the plastic revolution. Business is booming. Let’s wrap this planet in Mylar.
We live in a time of great scientific achievement. Each of us did ten things today that Robert Heinlein himself would have chalked up to fevered hallucination. Even against such a backdrop, news has broken of a feat that will violate your system like an adrenaline shot through the sternum. Sitting down would be a good idea, should you happen to be reading this while standing. Programmers at a university in Israel have developed an algorithm that is able to detect sarcasm.
This is literally the most astonishing thing to happen in the month of May. This is literally a game-changer. Finally, a machine that can tell when someone is being sarcastic.
The researchers based their work on the largest repository of sarcasm on the Internet — the user-written product reviews on Amazon. Over five thousand sentences from Amazon reviews were hand-labeled “sarcastic” and “not sarcastic,” a task that must have been both fun and rewarding. Those unpaid grad student volunteers probably showed up early and stayed late. By identifying patterns within each type of sentence, the algorithm learned to judge whether a statement is intended to be genuine or sarcastic. The team tested the algorithm on 66,000 product reviews, which is not a strange number at all, and definitely does not raise the question of why they wouldn’t just keep going until 100,00.
Final result: 77% accuracy. That’s a C+, a respectable grade. A grade that means one is trying very hard and has a good chance of going to college. A grade that never once made my Mom angry and convinced her to take away my Nintendo. It’s fortunate that this miracle of modern science was developed at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, because if the Holy City needed one thing in this world, it’s a laptop that knows when someone is being sarcastic. Thousands of years of complex, deep-seated strife will no doubt be resolved by Labor Day.
However, the sad truth is that there likely isn’t a wide market for this kind of application. People are fully able to detect sarcasm on their own, and certainly don’t need help from a machine. An application that could highlight sarcastic comments in a block of text would offer no real world value as an add-on to e-mail, text messages, Facebook, WordPress, or the entire MS Office suite. None whatsoever.
