In a Wørd

ego-search: To perform a search for one's own name in Google

(nudge-nudge miss Alexis)

Εκπεδεφτική μεταρίθμηση

Σε τοίχο τύχο της σχολής
(να χαρώ εγώ Μετσόβιο...)

Sold out

(and the blog has no tickets)

My selfless side is bursting with pride and joy, because she's finding the recognition she deserves.

My other side, though, is full of spite and malice for all the effin' pricks (idiots that never heard of her till last week when their Overlords favourite TV presenters told them about her) that got to the tickets before me! :@

Υπουργείον Μπουρνουζοπετσέτας

Στο σημερινό ανασχηματισμό ανέλαβε ΥΠουργός Ε.Π.Θ. το παιδί του ήλιου και της θάλασσας, η φτερούγα του γλάρου, το καμάρι της Ελλάδος:


Η επιλογή του για την καίρια τούτη θέση είναι κατ'εξοχήν επίκαιρη, καθώς η κυβέρνηση ελπίζει πως ο διάλογος για την παιδεία θα κερδηθεί με το απαστράπτον χαμόγελο (όπως και την απαστράπτουσα σωβρακοφανέλα) του Άρη.

Το blog θα κρατήσει το υψηλό του επίπεδο και θα απέχει από σχολιασμό οιασδήποτε μορφής.

Καληνύχτα και καλή τύχη.

A sobering thought for the new year

" Look [again] at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.



The back-story: On February 1990 the space probe Voyager 1, having completed its mission by visiting Jupiter and Saturn, was commanded to turn towards the Sun on order to photograph the planets of the solar system from afar. This resulted to the above picture of our planet, known as the Pale Blue Dot, which is taken from a mind-boggling distance of 6.054 billion kilometers from Earth, earning the distinction of our remotest picture so far. The text underneath is written by the late Carl Sagan, who both had the idea of taking the photo and named it.

I post it here on the eve of the annus mirabilis [/sarcasm] 2009 as it helps put things in perspective, giving us a tiny glimpse of who we really are. I hope I'll be proved wrong, but I'm afraid this little gem will turn out to be more useful this year than it ever was... Plus, I find the phrase "a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam" incredibly poetic.

And with these thoughts I have to leave you, in order to get ready for the New Year, whatever it turns out to be.

Have a happy new year, reader, and may the FSM touch you with His noodly appendage!

The blog wishes you...

...and a rational new year!

[alt. title: how the finch stole Christmas]

Είμαι μπροστά

Ο ΟΤΕ έβγαλε διαφήμηση που καταρρίπτει την ιδέα του "μέσου ανθρώπου" (Ο μέσος άνθρωπος έχει 1.5 παιδιά).

Την είδα σε αφίσα από το αμάξι και δεν πρόλαβα να τράβηξω φωτό. Μόλις έχω θα βάλω.

Public opinion

[via]

A delayed answer

A couple of days ago I posted an incomprehensible text, promising I would reveal what it is. Well, here's the explanation.

I assume that you're all familiar with the Babelfish. No, not *that* Babelfish, but the more mundane translation service provided by Yahoo.
Of course, as translation is done by algorithms, it isn't 100% accurate and sometimes it fails quite spectacularly. So imagine what would happen if you made a piece of text go back and forth through 10 consecutive translations. That, my friends, is babelization!

So, being utterly bored between classes, I decided to fool around with one implementation, and plugged one of my favourite theories in it:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

The babelized text was, predictably, a piece of nonsense bearing no relation to the original:

The space, therefore and the homosexual man, must astonish something inexplicable, because this here, because it goes, those correctly immediately, this replaced ulteriorly if the controls, have the rule of the base of the visualization.

An ode to rationalism

[from the new album (with a fantastic cover) from Chumbawamba, The Boy Bands Have Won]

All of nature in its place
By hand of the designer
Comes our Charlie spins the world
From here to Asia Minor
In between the Platypus
And perfect Aphrodite
Charlie come with opposing thumb
To question the Almighty

Over the river and over the sea
Through holy storm and thunder
Steer a course for a brave new world
Of common sense and wonder

See the dancing President
The congressman and teacher
Jumpin' to the music of
The wealthy Midwest preacher
Charlie come with a brand new dance
Get on the floor and follow
Find yourself a partner and
We'll swing into tomorrow

Over the river and over the sea
Through holy storm and thunder
Steer a course for a brave new world
Of common sense and wonder

Armed with truth we're stepping out
Come join the worldwide party
Charge your glass and face the world
We'll drink a toast to Charlie

Over the river and over the sea
Through holy storm and thunder
Steer a course for a brave new world
Of common sense and wonder.

Babelize!

The space, therefore and the homosexual man, must astonish something inexplicable, because this here, because it goes, those correctly immediately, this replaced ulteriorly if the controls, have the rule of the base of the visualization.


[WTF is that? Answer tomorrow]

Beermathics or "An infinite number of mathematicians...

...walk into a bar.
The first one orders a beer.
The second orders half a beer.
The third, a quarter of a beer.

The bartender says "You're all idiots", and pours two beers."

Now, allow me to be the brilliant mind who will do the math for his moronic readers unfunny/killjoy guy who will explain the joke here:

Let's label the mathematicians with 'n', with n going from 1 (the first guy) to ∞ (the "last" one):



We should also label the amount of beer that each one drinks as beer_n Then we'll have this:


...

From this we can derive the general formula that gives us beer_n, i.e. the amount of beer that the n-th mathematician will drink:





So, all the clever barman had to do was to add all the terms in the series which, predictably gives out...




It just goes to show that brilliant minds nerds can have humour inside jokes that no-one cares about, too.

[via Talk Like a Physicist, who found it here, who in turn found it here, and so on ad nauseum infinitum]

(later addition: The title is -[sarcasm]obviously[/sarcasm]- a quasi-reference to this)

Well yes, *I* certainly do

I am not alone in this world!

[screenshots from The Big Bang Theory, which, by the way, is *teh awesome*]

Του πούτσου blog έχω...

...όπως περίτρανα απέδειξε μία επίσκεψη στο google analytics (σ.τ.σ: μετρητής επισκέψεων για τη σελίδα μου):

ΟΚ, σαφώς τα search engines δεν είναι και η πρώτη πηγή επισκέψεων στο +βλογ+ (εν αντιθέσει με τα referrals από άλλα blogs - mille merci monsieur null). Πλην όμως δεν παύει να με εκπλήσσει το ότι το 33% των αναζητήσεων που οδηγούν εδώ να αναφέρονται στον βίλλο -ήτοι το ανδρικό μόριο, το οποίο είχα απλά αναφέρει σε ένα παλιό, ξεχασμένο ποστ για τις σχέσεις πολιτικών-εκκλησίας στην Τζύμπρο.

Επίσης παρατηρώ πως, στη σχετική αναζήτηση στο Google βγαίνω πρώτη μούρη (μην είμαι βιλλομούτσουνος?)

Και επειδή ψήνομαι να προσελκύσω και ακόμα περισσότερους καυλοπυρέσσοντες Κύπριους, παραθέτω μερικές ακόμα λεξούλες που θα μου ανεβάσουν το site traffic:

Πούττος, βυζοκούπι, αναρκοβυζού, μεσοβυζιά, σίστος, σπαρκώνω et al.

Δηκτικό πολιτικό σχόλιο [/irony]