DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Vanished is a sort of supernatural thriller. It opens with a compelling science-fiction-esque scene — a woman vanishes in front of her husband’s eyes — and then widens into a larger tale by threading together a number of disparate stories.

The tale involves dolphin intelligence, interspecies communication, teleportation, the Philadelphia experiment (!), and ties them all up with believable science. It’s a great, compelling read.

In my opinion the story disintegrates toward the end. I don’t fault MacGregor for this — the ending is viable, but not very satisfying. I still recommend the book for anyone with an interest in wildlife (especially dolphins) or the paranormal.

Patronize these links, man:

• Amazon (paperback)

A friend pointed out this fascinating article (second link, below) on Claude Shannon, whose research in the 1930s and 1940s on “information theory” set out a blueprint for digital media and communications: encoding, compression, transmission, etc. He sketched the first digital circuits in 1937.

Here’s his “groundbreaking” 1948 paper, A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Warning: it’s not called the “most important master’s thesis of the 20th century” because it’s easy to read!

If you’re interested in media, communications, or cryptography, check out this article: Claude Shannon: Reluctant Father of the Digital Age

My favorite part of the article is the description of a device Shannon built called the “Ultimate Machine”:

…a box with a large switch on the side. Turn the switch on, and the lid would slowly rise, revealing a mechanical hand that would reach down, turn the switch off, and withdraw — leaving the box just as it was.

Ha!

If you run a website, you might have been upset to learn that Microsoft’s “Smart Tags” would alter your content to show Microsoft’s advertising as links within your pages. Microsoft postponed this plan, but apparently another company has launched a similar technology.

The technology is called TopText. The marketroids who vomited this onto the Internet work for eZula.com.

First, read the original report from the Chron: Mystery Links

Next, read the Slashdot analysis: Don’t Eat the Yellow Links.

Then, opt out by emailing support@ezula.com.

Kudos to miester for the warning!

Update: you can sign a petition to shut down ezula.com!

So I’m driving through town on a quiet road when I see a car pull out behind me, a few car lengths back. It’s night, but this guy has no lights on. I keep looking at him in my rear-view. Still no lights. Seconds pass…. my car straddles two lanes because I’m focused on the car behind me, which still has no lights on. “What an idiot,” I think; “He’s driving with no lights on!” I swerve back into one lane.

More seconds pass. Suddenly, as I’m watching in the mirror, his lights come on — including the high-beams! “What an idiot,” I think as I’m staring into his reflected headlights; “He’s driving with his brights on!” My car eases back across the lane divider.

I keep staring. Will he turn off his brights? More seconds pass. I’m still staring in the mirror, burning the image of his 4 headlights into my retina like the login prompt on a monochrome terminal in 1985. I glance forward when I sense I’m no longer successfully following the road, but I can barely see the lane markers through the afterimage of the headlights of the car behind me.

Finally, the car turns onto a side street. I look away from the mirror. I still can’t see anything. “What an idiot!” I think again.

There was a curious-looking guy at the gym today. He wore an Adidas cap, an Adidas logo T-shirt, and Adidas-branded shorts. His shoes, ironically, were Converse.

So, clearly, the guy is a big fan of Adidas — except for their shoes. Which sort of makes me wonder… why does he advertise the brand if he doesn’t like the product? Adidas doesn’t spend a dime figuring out how to increase their market share for T-shirts, shorts, or baseball hats. That is, it’s unlikely this guy was wearing Adidas shorts and shirt and hat because they’re more comfortable or better than competing products. I guess it’s most likely that he was wearing these by coincidence, meaning these three articles happened to cycle to the top of the workout-clothes pile on the same day. Still, I can’t imagine what would possess a guy to acquire an entire outfit of branded apparel, short of a corporate sponsorship.

On a related note, I went shopping for a new belt a few weekends ago. I searched through 200 belts for something suitable: a matte-black leather belt with a silver buckle. The unforseen problem is that belt buckles are a territory long-ago conquered by the marketing schmucks in the fashion world: I couldn’t find a belt that didn’t show some idiot’s name on it. The worst example was a Cardin belt that was beautifully made except for the “pierre cardin” logo on the buckle. Then I noticed that the logo was embossed on a reversible metal widget. “This is great,” I thought; “They’ve made it so I can hide the brand name.” So I flip the little widget around, to find a different Cardin logo on the back. This was just unbelievable — as if their customers are going to get up in the morning and ask themselves, Should I display the ‘PC’ logo or the ‘pierrecardin’ logo today? Hmm, which goes better with my tie?