Weirdness: April 2005 Archive Page

OTBs, or "Outside The Boxers," as they call themselves, are unconventional thinkers who believe "there are no stupid ideas," Lessjo says. "We really just wanted to know what would happen if Civil War soldiers fought the crew from 'Star Trek.' You never see that in the movies or TV reruns." --Tim Chitwood --A battle outside the box (Leger-Enquirer)

What happened? The unspoken hierarchy of obsessive-compulsive subcultures was laid bare for all to see.

First the Confederates said they wouldn't associate with "Trekkies," and the Star Trek fans said they preferred "Trekkers." The Confederates all laughed, and "that right there got things off on the wrong foot," Lessjo says.

(Make sure you read the fine print at the end of the article.)

Sorry, we were unable to locate document(s) pertaining to your request.

Did you mean: zirconium instead of kirschenbaum? --This Morning's Lesson in Machine Learning (Or, So Said the Search Engine Unto Me) (MGK)

This is tremendous news... search technology has advanced to the point where a search engine has become aware of Matt Kirschenbaum's strong, metallic character, his tendency to spark and ignite when exposed to the open air, his usefulness as an anti-corrosive in alloys, his whitish-grey lustre, the fact that his atomic number is 40, and the fact that he was discovered by Martin Heinrich Klaproth in 1789.

Sign Your Child Up Today!

Make extra money - or start your son's college fund!
We are currently looking for children in your area! Rent your son out on weekends. You have complete control over your child's schedule. All of our clients are fully screened, and you may screen prospective clients before any transaction takes place. --Rent My Son

The idea is, parents rent their kids out to single guys who want to attract women in the park, or to parents of a socially disadvantaged daughter who needs a date to the prom.

Not really worth one "har," let alone a "har har."

The logo doesn't have anything to do with the supposed business plan, and the pages don't feature a link to the home page in the upper left corner -- that's a very strong online convention, and it shows whoever put together this site was not a pro.

The address given on the "Company Info" page matches the address of several federal and local government groups in San Diego. All the suites or room numbers I've seen for that office building have four numbers, but this company is supposed to be in "Suite 100."

When you click on "Make Reservation/Get Quote," the page reloads, and nothing else happens. Tell me that an online business would let that happen. For fun, I signed up under the name "Amusing Hoax," and predictably got an error message.

One kid's profile reads, "This website lets me practice for acting." That pretty much lets the cat out of the bag -- the person doing the writing is thinking of the website, and the website only. And that's all there is to it.

Of course, the whole idea is ridiculous. It's not really good enough to last in the memepool for very long -- not when there are far more bizarre things happening in the world. The design for "Black People Love Us" is cheesier, but the content is far better. The same goes for "Rent a Negro."

Via Metafilter, where nobody's falling for it.

Okay, can you tell I'm bored? I think I have laundry or something to do now...

The implications of scalable theory have been far-reaching and pervasive. In fact, few end-users would disagree with the deployment of expert systems, which embodies the private principles of artificial intelligence. We explore new introspective configurations, which we call KindlerDop.--Shatner, Elmo, Jerz and Nye --An Improvement of XML (SciGen)

Read the backstory behind this random CS paper generator. From Metafilter.

Note the citations to articles by "Elmo, T. M." in the bibliography. Brilliant!

It is important that you understand that the concept of Toothing - beaming a sexual text message to a random phone on a commuter-packed tube train - is a bit like going into a crowded nightclub, throwing a brick at the dancefloor with a love letter attached, and hoping that the person it hits will agree to sleep with you. It'stechnically possible, and it'snot going to happen. That made it even better when the whole world fell for it.

The whole world. --Toothing (The Triforce)

Wired confesses it was hoaxed.

A thorough analysis of the Koran reveals that the US will cease to exist in the year 2007, according to research published by Palestinian scholar Ziad Silwadi.

The study, which has caught the attention of millions of Muslims worldwide, is based on in-depth interpretations of various verses in the Koran. It predicts that the US will be hit by a tsunami larger than that which recently struck southeast Asia.

[...]

Silwadi said that by combing a number of suras hinting at US sins he reached the numbers 1776 (the year the US achieved independence) and 231. He added the two numbers and the result was 2007, the year when the US is expected to disappear. --Koran scholar: US will cease to exist in 2007 (Jerusalem Post)

Well, I guess we don't need to worry about fixing Social Security, then, do we?