Nature Walk and Geography Lessons - Brody the Observer

It's that time of year. Spring, when the flowers are blooming, the ice is melting, deer are humping each other and chewing up peoples gardens, city folk are rushing out into the wilderness to camp, bears are waking up and mauling the city folk, morgues are receiving a high inflow of dead campers.

There's nothing like it, and to enjoy this splendid fruitful bounty of awesome weather, I went for a hike by the river. It was a time of rejoice and renewed optimism for life, which can only last for so long. During my hike I saw many interesting things. I saw things like trees and moss:



I also saw rocks, lots of rocks. Here are some that were stack into an inukshuk:



One of the most amazing things I found, was a rock that was shaped disturbingly similar to the United States. I was a little hesitant to take the rock, because of a deep fear I might be forced to pay financially crippling tariffs, but fortunately no government authorities have tried contacting me yet. Here is the rock, let me know if you agree or disagree that it resembles the U.S.




I labeled the U.S. states to better help represent the similarity:




Striking isn't it?

Here's one more photo showing the U.S. in relation to Canada to help give the photo some sense of scale:

The Great Escape! - by Jon

Cool story.
An Orangutan escaped from her confinement in an Adelaide zoo by first short circuiting an electric fence and then using a makeshift latter to climb out of her pen.
The intelligence of this Orangutan goes without saying. However, I think it raises an important ethical question as to whether or not it is aceptable to confine a creature capable of comprehending its own imprisonment?

Probability Cont. - by Jon

I intend to conclude my post from a day ago that displayed three head/tail sequences from randomly flipping a penny. Brody got the answer spot on, but the exact answer wasn't something I was looking for.

HHHHHTTTTT
HTTHHTHTHT
HTHTHTHTHT

This post was more an adventure into human psychology. Unfortunately, many of our readers are preoccupied with "buying bread that day" and "sharpening there gardening tools into more dangerous looking bartering tools" over in the Village of Shouldice (see prior post), so comments were few and far between.

The probability of attaining any of these three H/T sequence upon 10 flips of a penny are equally likely. However, some people happen to trick themselves into thinking that the first and/or third have differing degrees of probability depending on the information inherent in each sequence. By information I am refering to the the ability to recognize patterns - or simply pattern recognition. Because the first and third sequence each have conspicuous patterns to them, the pattern is recognized and believed to carry information. It is a misconception that information is greater in complexity than random noise. It simply depends on how you calibrate your system (brain) and what exactly you are looking for.
Essentially, because we can percieve information within the first and last sequence, we may become fooled into thinking the probability of attaining such a pattern by mere coin-flipping is higher than the random, non-sensical, pattern of the second sequence.
I have a rock at home with lichen on one side in the form of a happy face. It looks quite commical and upon first glance you might think "what the hell are the odds of that?". Well, the odds are the same for any other random orientation of lichen, it just happens that this particular orientation I attribute significance to because i'm calibrated to see such patterns.

Two Time-lines of Earth History - by Jon

Timelines
This only applies to young earth creationists, of course. The beliefs boggle me to no end.

Attack of the zombie crabs! -Ryan

read from damn interesting.com, this article kind of blew me away. I had no idea that parasites could do this! could you imagine one that attaches to humans?

"i hate small towns, and i hate things i cant see!" -Francis

"Francis! look over here!" -Zoe

"Ahh get it off me, get it off me!" - Louis

"Theres a man comin round taken names, and he decides who to fdsfdsaas AHHHH ZOMBIE CRABS" -Bill

Action in Progress- ryan

In study room in library, women annoyed with something big african guy said. she says he will get kicked out if he keeps doing this, he says "im not your whore" (i almost laugh, not because im sexist but because i have never heard a guy say this) she gets the info guy... waiting now (this is happening as im writing this) he comes in, im starting to get excited because some shit might go down.. he says that work has to be done in this room and he leaves... damn. fucking anticlimactic! ok well here is how my version would go.
The small info guy runs into the library swinging, not because he is racist or naturally over aggressive, but because he has had a crush on this tattle tail for ages. The big guy is startled but prepared, he knew with that whore comment that something could happen. The IT guy jumps over a row of computers and attempts to crash into big guy (BG), BG jumps above his chair and puts all of his weight into his elbow which comes crashing down on IT's neck. The result is much more gorier than one would expect. Im two rows away and i get blood and brains (???) all over me as i type this. Im loving it because I have only seen this shit in video games. BG turns to me in agression, and i give him a thumbs up and smile. he smiles and runs off. I am left with a body and that tattle tail chick screaming in hysteria. I want her to shut up.
the end.

time waster

you came here to waste time eh? well i dont think your coming back here for a while because when you go here shits going down.

google this-ryan

I apologize for not posting anything of value...

in google type in "i just shit" and see what google predicts what you will say

Stories - tyler

Some interesting articles for y'all. The first is from 1996 on why sports stadiums make no economic sense to build. fyi...both the NY Yankees and Mets just finished brand new, billion-dollar-plus baseball stadiums, so its pretty relevant. Next we have another article on why B-Rock is so great, etc., etc... but actually it is something from a new angle, from a Pullitzer Prize winner in journalism. And finally, HELLLOOOOOOO MRS OBAMA!!! She so fine. Okay maybe not that fine, but her fashion sense is freaky-styley!


http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/05opclassic.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/opinion/05dowd.html?em
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/04/03/fashion/20090403-michelle-slideshow_index.html

Housing prices - brody

Just read an interesting article written in 2006 about the history of housing prices. It talks about the myth of real estate being a good investment and the current state of the housing boom at the time of writing.

This Very, Very Old Hous

Ah Cheating - Tyler

So I just bribed a girl in my Econ class to do my assignment. I asked her to do the assignment, she said she wanted sexual favours or 20 bucks, so I said, ok here's 20 bucks. Sexual favours would be totally inappropriate, but if she really pushed me, I might have even done that, too. Moral of the story, university is only as hard as you make it.

Barack about town

Thought this was a funny story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/fashion/26washington.html

Interesting

I thought this was interesting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/science/10quant.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=quant&st=cse