I'm doing a little experiment. Have you heard of TimeCube? It's a pretty funny page with large all-caps text talking about an academic conspiracy to make us not realize that everything is based on rules of four (which is odd since cubes should be associated with the numbers 8, 6, and 3—I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why I chose these three numbers). The whole deal, and how it is actually developing a cult following is discussed on wikipedia.

I made a site for picking lottery numbers to see how many hits it gets. In the text for the site I included TimeCube references along with some creative writing, i.e. bull crap.

Here's the link, specially worded to maximize Google PageRank:

Get free, best, winning, lucky lotto, lottery, numbers, using our Time Cube astrology software.

In the process, I discovered Gail Howard's lottery guide, which is hilarious. Here are some sections:

• Tell if a number is about to start a long losing streak before it loses 15 or 20 games or more.
• Know when to play -- or when not to play -- a specific number for a specific drawing.
• See how often you can expect to trap the six, five, four or three winning numbers in your wheeled group
• Tell which "cold" number is best to play. (No, it is not the number out the longest!)
• Detect at a glance which numbers are hot and which are not.
• Avoid playing Lotto numbers that are sure to lose.
• Cash in on the luck of others.
• Eliminate one quarter to one fifth of the Lotto numbers in your state's game and turn a 49-number game into a 39-number game.
• Know how many cold, lukewarm, and hot numbers to include on your tickets.
• Spot a Hot Number before it gets hot -- so you can be on it when it starts its winning streak.

If my life was governed rigidly by mathematics, I would be as equally willing to bet 1-2-3-4-5 as I would something like 2-22-24-31-38-61. Although you shouldn't bet in the first place.

Just curious to anybody that reads this site, as to what content you want to see here. Anything you want me to research, summarize, opine on? Send me an email. I'm curious as to what's on your mind when you come to philosophistry.

TRUMAN (real) AUGUST 6th, 1945

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam" which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production and even more powerful forms are in development.

It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and the V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.

The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles.

Read the rest

NIXON (undelivered) JULY 20th, 1969

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man. In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

see reference

it's 2pm, i'm still sleeping because I'm a caveman. working man. no, caveman. no vampire. we're both vampires. my roomate is a vampire. he's from germany, listens to icelandic death metal and eats children for breakfast.

yesterday he placed in my hand a bloody reddish thing. he said it was called taco. Tako. ta-ko. only 2 letters.　たこ　鮹 that's japanese for dead babies. it was pretty good.

his name is lukas. or lookas. or lucas. two letters as well: ルカス which is japanese for "ru-ka-su" the u is silent, and it's actually an "l" not an "r", but after douglas macarthur beat up japan, all japanese ... nevermind.

Just go. goooo! just FIVE. ご　or "goh" (the h is silent, non-existent, okay I made it up), "goh" is "japanese" for "five" which is the same as V in Roman counting systems.

loookas sez it's just another daily dragging:

boom. dong. dong.

(click pix for full size (in japanese you say, lar-gee si-zee) )

ppl think I'm dead because I haven't blogged about my japan trip.

I am not dead. I'm rigorous.

vigor is the key word here. Vigorous.

justronomy.com is where you will find latest pictures, taken by my cousin.

I finished reading Bernard Goldberg's book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America and I have summarized the contents here.

This is already covered on slashdot, but check out this demo of fold n' drop, an innovative way to drag objects between windows.

The wow-factor sets in when you view the video (right-click and "save"). Note, you will need DivX installed to play it. If you don't know or care what DivX is, get VLC Media Player, a video player that "just works."

My photo gallery from my July trip to Japan (ongoing)

my frequency of updating posts on philosophistry may decline this month due to me being in Japan. My interest in Japan began last year and I posted a few times about it. I'm here for tourism, to stake out a potential place to live, and to visit my cousin Justin.

Here is a demonstration that occurred on the 7th of July, 2005. War veterans are protesting the prime minister to keep up annual visits to the Yasakuni Shrine, a Shinto memorial for Japanese soldiers, including some war criminals. Koreans and Chinese are against the visits as they view Japan as being complicit in war crimes tantamount to Nazi war crimes. About 300 people there, on the north-south avenue that runs through Tokyo Station.

The gas stations remind me of computer games I played around 1995, mainly ones with flying cars. These gas stations seem Y3K ready, as the flying cars will take advantage of the hanging pumps.

UPDATE: I sent Kottke, my favorite blogger, an email and he put up a link. Thanks for the help.

Burtynsky at Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University

We need to get this on the search engines. It's a site I created for an amazing photographer, Edward Burtynsky. His current exhibit in the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford shows his landscape photography. The themes are loosely "man's effect on the world."

Burtynsky won a $100,000 TED Award.

Check out the site. We used some wiki and flash-based zooming kung fu to make it happen.