World RPS Society

Is this for real? Is there really a "World Rock-Paper-Scissors Society"? Is it just an elaborate joke? Would someone really put that much time into such a joke?

Will everyone please stop eating so damn much?

Or at least get some exercise. Or maybe it's the growth hormones in the various food we eat these days. All I know is that I went out with my family to take advantage of some after-Christmas sales, and there were literally zero men's small ski jackets out there. Even mediums were almost impossible to find. But there were an enormous number of XXL and even XXXL about. Did stores over-buy on the large sizes or under-buy the smaller ones? I asked around and, nope, that's not the case. There just are more and more people who need elephantine clothing. At least, in the US (as anyone who has traveled overseas will attest to).

Does this explain that Costco sells relaxed-fit men's jeans with 30-inch waists? I mean, who do you know with a 30-inch waist who needs relaxed fit? How big can your ass be if you have a 30-inch waist? Of course, the real reason is that they just order relaxed fit; they don't believe that there are many people out there who don't need it. This assumption, in my opinion, begins to break down at the smaller waist sizes.

OK, I'm glad I got that off my chest. It just pisses me off that buying clothing has now become an ordeal (I suppose, unless I want to pay the extortionate prices that REI charges). It didn't used to be that way...

ZunePhone

In honor of Apple's newly announced iPod lineup, a very funny fake ad. The blinking "12:00" is a nice touch.

The last syllabus you'll ever need

Over at Halfway There, Zeno has a post about a one-size-fits-all syllabus. It certainly is the case that course syllabi have evolved from a means of clear communication with students to written contracts on the nature of courses. Perhaps we should take a page from software End User License writers, who typically tell us we have no rights and that they can change the contract anytime they want and that a post on some web page we'll never check shall be considered sufficient notice of such change.

Oh, well, I guess I'm not curmudgeonly enough yet to do this. But, if I'm told one more time that my use of the word "should" in a homework assignment can be reasonably interpreted as advice, rather than a requirement...

P.S. If you're a student reading this, I hope you realize it is in jest. I am well-known for my voluminous syllabi. The next best thing to a captive listening audience is a captive group of readers.

David Pogue on Windows Vista

Click on the title above for a humorous video in which New York Times columnist David Pogue explains that Windows Vista isn't a copy of Mac OS X.

Two sites suffice

After a week of my musings on interdisciplinarity producing no Google hits for the term "exodisciplinarity", this post on my blog produced immediate results. "Exodisciplinarity" now produces a single hit on Google. (Of course, I understand that their algorithm is more sophisticated than that.)

I wonder what that implies for monetizing this blog?

A pointless experiment

I got curious about how little "significance" a web page can have and still get indexed by Google. In this case, I merely defining significance as being number of links to that page. So, I wrote a few thoughts about interdisciplinarity in my academic web a week ago, noting that the term "exodisciplinarity" returns no Google hits. The only link to that page is from my home page. A week later, still no hits for "exodisciplinarity". So let's see if the link (and mention of the term) in this blog post, being on another web site, will suffice.

And, in case you think the term is silly, do you really think that "pluridisciplinarity" merits 821 hits?

Ihnatko: the loony Zune

(Yes, it's a snow day here, and I'm working on the tail end of what might be URI #4 of the season.)

The title above links to a Chicago Sun-Times review by Andy Ihnatko of Microsoft's new Zune device. Summary: Zune isn't just not user-friendly; it's user-hostile. Here are some choice quotes:

The Zune is a square wheel, a product that's so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity...
The setup process stands among the very worst experiences I've ever had with digital music players...
And why (for the love of God) doesn't it support podcasts? That's pure insanity...
Oh, and the Zune Marketplace doesn't even take real money, proving that on the Zune Planet there's no operation so simple that it can't be turned into a confusing ordeal...
You'll find that the Zune Planet orbits the music industry's Bizarro World, where users aren't allowed to do anything that isn't in the industry's direct interests.

Update: Here's an almost as scathing review from a Windows-dedicated web site.