Incidentally, if you missed it, Armisen is done with SNL.
Fred Armisen releases EP of 70s punk parody outfit, Ian Rubbish and the Bizzarros
Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live and Portlandia has posted free downloads of the music from his SNL parody of 70s/80s British punk with Ian Rubbish and the Bizzarros. The “band” starred in a faux documentary in the now famous style of films about 70s and 80s-era British punk.
This is one of the most interesting little projects I’ve done recently. I got to apply some of my interest in randomly generated content to a real marketing purpose. The Scoop Away brand is whimsical, which offered a great opportunity to build a complex engine for recommending cat names. The stakes were low as far as making recommendations. After all, it’s hard to argue definitively about the right name for a cat. Regardless, I built a system that allowed non-technical folks work their creative magic and mixed in some rules to make it seem like a very scientific name generate that produces consistent results. That is, if you answer the questions the same way, you will get the same results.
Configuration for the generator is done through two CSV files, one that outlines all questions and answers and one that contains all the recommended names. The first file has one row per question. After the text of the question, pairs of columns contain the answer text and an answer image filename. For example, the first question is as follows.
| gender | What gender cat are you naming? | Male | male.png | Female | female.png |
The second file lists one name per row with the text answers in following columns. A truncated example row follows.
| Ace | Female | Other | Chocolate | Pretty high |
We have the name “Ace” as suggested for female cats with primarily brown fur (among ten other dimensions). This second CSV file is a big matrix that allows me to match an input set of answers to sort all the names based on how many answers match. All questions are treated with equal weight. This does produce some times. The tie-breaker is a pseudo-random number seeded by the current month number. This produces the same results for the same answers for a span of a month. Next month, the answers will be in a different order. A year later, the order will be same again.
One key piece that made this possible was a jQuery plugin for reading CSV files. I found Evan Plaice’s jquery-csv on google code. The docs are great and it was easy to get it going.
I implemented the generator as a jquery plugin itself. You can check out the code here: http://www.scoopaway.com/js/pages/cat-name-generator.js. Next, I hope to adapt this technique for a more serious product selector. Hopefully that exercises the code in way that shakes out any bugs in the logic.
Math is fun.
Moore’s Law and the Origin of Life | MIT Technology Review
Sharov and Gordon say that the evidence by this measure is clear. “Linear regression of genetic complexity (on a log scale) extrapolated back to just one base pair suggests the time of the origin of life = 9.7 ± 2.5 billion years ago,” they say.
And since the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, that raises a whole series of other questions. Not least of these is how and where did life begin.
Amit Ghate compares Obama’s use of the IRS to the Nazi SS. Boom! Godwin’s Law detonated!
THE IRS SCANDAL IS MUCH WORSE THAN ANYONE REALIZES
This IRS scandal was aimed at Jewish Pro Israel groups, beloved Christian ministers and men of God (Billy Graham, Franklin Graham, James Dobson), groups that believe in the U.S. Constitution, and even groups that help wounded veterans. Why is no one calling out this pure blatant religious profiling?After my commentaries were published a month ago about this IRS scandal, I was contacted by a Mormon who told me that everyone in his circle of friends and neighbors had received audit notices since Obama’s re-election. He believed Mormons were being targeted to punish Mitt Romney’s biggest supporters.But how could the IRS identify Mormons? He educated me that all Mormons tithe 10% of their income to the Church of Latter Day Saints. That charitable donation is clearly visible on every Mormon’s tax return. It’s actually easy for the IRS to target and persecute Mormons.
John McCain, a victim of war who promotes war, was photographed with a kidnapper in Syria.
Worth A Thousand Words « The Dish
How fucking marvelous that in a classically impulsive and dumb trip into Syria, McCain may have unwittingly been photographed next to a known multiple kidnapper of Shia pilgrims. Hey, he’s our multiple kidnapper. Soon, we may have our own Sunni Jihadists too!
Is kidnapper Mohammad Nour a terrorist? If so, did McCain just provide “material support” for said terrorist? Even if he did, don’t count on the DoJ to pursue it. Check out the analysis from Cato and decided for yourself.
Did John McCain Provide Material Support for Syrian Terrorists?
Unfortunately, the Washington authorities have routinely misused the concept. In separate context, the federal government denied refugee status to a teen deemed as providing “material support” for Colombian communist insurgents who murdered his parents because he was forced at gunpoint to bury some of their victims. A Liberian woman was deemed to have provided “material support” for guerrillas who had raped her because she was forced at gunpoint to cook for them.
If the rest of us are vulnerable to extreme interpretations of the law, then lawmakers who approved the law should be subject to the same legal risks. Consider Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has been campaigning for war in Syria, just as he previously promoted war most everywhere else around the globe.