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Camera Men

hissen_camera_smBy: Billy BeerSlugger

I’m an avid watcher of shows on the Discovery Channel, The History Channel, National Geographic and other knowledge dropping shows.  I’m a fan of Animal Planet and other shows that put you in the middle of a Jungle or Desert and show you what happens when confronted with the dangerous creatures that inhabit them, as evidenced by a previous post on Austin Stevens Snake Master.

What a friend and I were discussing the other day while enjoying a few adult beverages was how little credit the camera man gets for their efforts.

You have these guys like Austin Stevens and Steve Irwin (previously), trotting across the globe and journeying into jungles etc. looking for the most dangerous animals on the planet and getting close enough to them to piss these animals off.  All the while you see the main guy on the TV but you never really take into account what’s going on with the camera man.  His life is in obvious danger too and he’s got a 50 plus pound Camera to account for as well.  From a Cobra spitting venom to a charging Komodo Dragon to wading in a river filled with Piranha to just plain being in an Ocean infested with sharks, these guys are a classic case of All Guts and No Glory.

I’m wondering if there’s some sort of award that goes out to these guys for risking their lives.  If there is, I’ve never heard of it and if it was recognized by a major awards show like The Oscars or The Emmy’s, it probably is given out earlier and not televised.

So here’s to you Crazy Camera Men, this Miller High Life can was schwilled in your honor.

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Lightning

lightning

By: Luan Zuccarello

I was down the shore last weekend and watched one hell of a storm over the ocean. The lightning strikes on the water looked like something out of a Michael Bay movie. OK, maybe I had a couple beers in me and I am over exaggerating a little – but it was still cool. So I started to try and think back to 7th grade science class and to what causes lightning. However I was too interested in little Molly’s short skirt then protons and electrons (although I did get an A on “her”anus). Thank God for Google.

Lightning is a discharge of atmospheric electricity which is triggered when differing charges meet in the cloud. Typically, the bottom of a cloud is negatively charged, and it sends out what is known as a “leader” which seeks a positive charge at the top of the cloud. When these two charges meet a bolt of lightning is born. After the lightning travels to the ground or another cloud, it may strike again several times within a fraction of a second. These re-strikes are so fast that people cannot register them with the naked eye; instead, they appear as a single strike. The air near a lightning strike is hotter than the surface of the sun! The rapid heating and cooling of the air near the lightning channel causes a shock wave that results in thunder.

Here is a fun fact if you catch yourself in a storm with a baby girl. Watch for a strike of lightning then count the seconds until you hear a clap of thunder. Take this number and divide by 5. This will leave you with the number of miles the storm is away. This can provide very useful if you find yourself with a Butterface (everything looks good but her face). Now you can calculate how much longer you have to stare at her before the lights go out. Much easier and better for the girl’s self esteem then the paper bag.


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Lebron James: Duke until proven otherwise.

Sports with Bob McFlurry

24 year old Lebron James, King James, just lost the Eastern Conference Finals to the Orlando Magic.  Now I don’t despise Lebron James but I’ve got a real problem with people crowning Lebron James the Michael Jordan of his era without winning anything.

I’ll agree that he is an ambasador of Basketball, I’ll agree that he is a top 5 player in the league, I’ll agree from sitting behind the visitors bench at a Sixers/Cavs game that Lebron James is a pretty cool individual.

What I can’t do is root for the man.  Not when he’s got a Billion other people rooting for him, not when he’s shaking hands with Jay-Z and not when he’s about to bolt from Cleveland for a Big Market after the coming season.

The guy who is supposed to be the epitome of class and sportsmanship walked off the court tonight without shaking the other teams hands, without congratulating Olympic teammate Dwight Howard on his advance to the Finals and without doing any of the postgame press conferences he so enjoys after a win.

I think lost in this is the win of Patrick Ewing, frontcourt coach for the Magic.  This man delivered on a gaurantee to win the series against defending champion Boston Celtics and now helped coach his most apt pupil to a finals birth over this generations version of Michael Jordan, a feat he could never achieve as a player.

What Lebron James proved to me today is that he could take the Orlando Magic exactly as far as the Sixers took them in the playoffs, 6 games.  He proved to me that he could not get to the NBA Finals with the wealth of talent that was given to him this year.  He proved to me that he may end up to be no better than Allen Iverson given the fact that Iverson took the likes of Tyrone Hill, George Lynch, Aaron McKie and Jumaine Jones to The NBA Final and actually won a game.  To liken each others situation, both had a 4 time Defensive Player of the year on the team and Eric Snow running point. and in both instances Lebron either failed to win a finals game or failed to reach the finals.

Basically until Lebron James is paired with his Scottie Pippen, he is at the mercy of defensive schemes that attack him and only him.  As good as he is and as good as he will be, a team game like Basketball can and will never be won by one person.  The sooner Lebron realizes what Jordan embraced and what Iverson ignored, the closer he will be to the hardware he desires from the NBA.

That may be after this coming season when Lebron is eligible for free-agency.  Or it may seemingly be never, doomed to a career of personal accolades and highlight reels but never the ultimate prize of NBA Champion just like Allen Iverson.

Only time will tell, and at 24, Lebron James (or David Stern) still has time to write his legacy.

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Twitter? What’s that?

twitterBy: Billy BeerSlugger

So a lot of my friends have asked me what Twitter is.  That’s all you ever hear about nowadays, Twitter, Tweet’s, Twats. “You’re a computer guy, you should know this stuff”, they say.

From what I’ve read, it’s a mico-blogging tool.  Where BeerSlugger.com is a blog and has no real limit on the amount of text, Twitter has a post limit on characters that is about the same as a text message (SMS).  You can actually Twitter (effectively post text to your account and have it show up on the website) from your phone using Text messages so that I’m guessing comes in handy on the go.  Though if I wanted to I could post something to BeerSlugger.com from my Blackberry (I’m a one upper).  I’m not sure what is so important that you couldn’t wait to go home and post on a regular blog or website but I guess if everyone else is jumping off a bridge I should too.

Anyway, I’m hip, I’m cool, I know who the Jonas Brothers are and I use Twitter.

Check me out at http://twitter.com/beerslugger

Eventually I’ll try and incorporate the Twitter into the BeerSlugger.com once i figure out what I can use it for besides sending messages while in the bathroom.  Preliminary ideas include segments called “Toilet Talk” and “Droppin’ Knowledge While Dropping A Deuce”.

Let me know what you guys think.

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Magic Mushrooms – Public Service Announcement

magicmushrooms_article
They Grown on Cow Shit? Really?

By: Billy BeerSlugger

I am by no means a druggie.  I have been to known to smoke weed from time to time but most of my inebriation occurs from drinking.  That doesn’t mean that I didn’t dabble in the occasional recreational chemical back in the day.  I just got a call from my buddy Teddy Toronto and he mentioned doing some mushies sometime this summer, possibly in a beach scenario.  “Just when I thought I was out… They pull me back in.”.

While I’ll never seriously consider putting a powdery substance up my nose, mushrooms hold a special place in my dead brain cells heart.  As a freshman in (community) college I had a friend who worked as a freelance street pharmacist.  While his main product was colored green, once in a while he would come across a large bag of mushrooms to distribute.  Being such a close friend with the lad I was given a steep discount off of street value, $15-$20 an 1/8.

Having just gone through a breakup with my high school girlfriend I was looking to express myself and my newly found college independence (even though I still lived at home).  What a better way to test my mettle then by taking mushrooms once or twice a week for a little more than a month.  Does a month qualify as a binge?

Anyway, I can remember going to the movies and eating mushrooms in the parking lot.  My friends and I went in and saw The Sixth Sense, a movie at the time, while on mushrooms, I thought was utterly terrible.  I was too messed up to follow it and amused myself by throwing popcorn at people and laughing at parts of the movie that weren’t supposed to be funny.  After the movie will mark the only time I have ever driven a motor vehicle on mushrooms.  Going 60mph in a 25 like I was in some sort of video game and all I had to do was push the reset button if I crashed.  Turfing up a local sports field until my friend had convinced me to drive back to his house and put the car in park.  Laughing the whole time, shit eating grin from ear to ear.

There was a night when a group of my friends took them and hung out in one of our bedrooms with a blacklight and strobe light on at the same time.  What an amazing and moving trip that was, especially when the strobe light was shut off and the black light was still on.  “Whoaaaaa!!!” was articulated by everyone in the room in unison.  It was on this trip that I just couldn’t fathom why the Notorious BIG had to die.

Another time I took what amounted to one and a half eighth’s (sorry I didn’t feel like converting the metrics on that).  The most I have ever taken and this was the only time I really felt like I was seeing things.  We walked to a local pizza shop and a graveyard on the way seemed cartoonish, but only out of the corner of my eye.  If I looked at it straight on it was a regular graveyard. It was as if this whole other world was hiding from me yet inviting me to join it at the same time.  Coming down from this trip, sitting alone in a chair on an enclosed porch, I still to this day am convinced I had figured out at least 84.37541% of the worlds problems.  I only wish I had a tape recorder to capture the ideas racing through my head for those two or so hours.  The world may be a better place.

I guess the last time I took any sort of mushroom product was while living at my fraternity house.  A gentleman was passing out mushrooms during hell weekend and soon after a talking dolphin disguised as mailbox began shouting at the pledges… RABBLE, RABBLE, RABBLE RABBLE.  I never laughed so hard in my life.

Those were the days.

Some things I’ve noticed while on them is yawning on the onset of tripping (these things aren’t working).  A heightened sense of awareness and want to go out and “do stuff” while on them.  Mushrooms are definitely an outdoor activity.  If I couldn’t speed walk somewhere while on mushrooms I’d probably eat my own head off.  You can drink a ton on Mushrooms.  I guess since you are tripping you really don’t notice you’re drunk or something.  There is a sense of kinship with the other people you took them with while tripping.  They may be the only people on the planet who get what you are going through at that point and there’s an unspoken understanding of that.

I am in no way condoning the use of Magic Mushrooms, just telling you some of the hijinks and experiences I got into while I was on them.

Stay off drugs kids…

Sincerely,

W.J. BeerSlugger

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It’s Boner Time…

By: Billy BeerSlugger

You’ve seen them from time to time on a late night infomercial.  Extagen, Enzyte, Alzare, Extenze, Longitude, Size Max, VigRX, MagnaRX and Androenlarge.  All promise to make your member larger, usually dealing with girth as opposed to length.

I’ll focus on Extenze because I feel like that’s the one I’ve seen for the last couple of years.  One late night I got home from a drunken adventure and was flipping through channels.  I flipped by and saw Porn Legend Ron Jeremy hocking this boner pill.  Yea I watched just like you did chief.

Here’s what Extenze claims:

What will ExtenZe® Do For Me?*

  • Enlarge your penis and erection.
  • Give you harder, more frequent erections.
  • Give you more intense orgasms.
  • Make your erections last longer.
  • Makes getting an erection easier and more reliable.
  • Enhance desire, power, pleasure and performance.
  • Improve your overall sex life and penile sensitivity.

Several things I found funny were that in the infomercial they had a guy in a lab coat swishing around colored liquids in a beaker and pills rolling off an assembly line like this was somehow going to convince me that it’s credible and actually going to make my bird grow.  It’s clearly science.

Two, they have a real medical doctor endorsing it.  Dr. Daniel Stein, founder of the Stein Medical institute finds it thoroughly effective after extensive research.  I don’t know of anyone that has ever heard of the Stein Medical Institute. Do these doctors that go on TV and endorse these bullsh!t products get sanctioned at all?  Like the MD who endorsed Hydroxycut and then a couple months later Hydroxycut is taken off store shelves.

Three, as stated in the commercial, men all over the world have taken Extenze and over a quarter of a billion pills have been sent out.  Wow that makes me really reassured.  Small dicked bastards all over the world have been duped by this company into buying a bunch of supplements that are available at your local drug store, for 4 times the price.

Four, you can get a free week’s supply of Extenze for just the cost of a postage stamp.  “If Extenze didn’t work could we afford to do that?”.  Well, apparently they can.  Sign me up for my free sample!

Most of these pills are made up of Yohimbe, Ginsen, Horny Goat Weed etc.  These are all things available at most places they sell vitamins.  They all are said to promote healthy circulation which in turn can mean better boners.

So does it work?  Yes it works!  I got my free week supply in the mail and I took 3 times the recommended dosage for 3 days and now my “certain area” is at least 8 inches in girth in addition to my generous 3.25 inches in length.  I can barely fit in Bob McFlurry’s mom anymore, she loves it.

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Throwback Pepsi, Mountain Dew?

pepsi-throwbackBy: Billy BeerSlugger

Ok so apparently Pepsi is rolling out a version called Throwback, which will replace High Fructose Corn Syrup with actual real sugar.  Both Pepsi and Pepsi owned Mountain Dew have introduced a throwback version.

While I have not yet tried either of these throwback versions I can already surmise that I will like it 10 to 15 times better than than their counterparts.

Going back to one of my earlier posts when i ripped into artificial sweeteners I guess I failed to realize that Coke, Pepsi and probably 99 percent of other main stream soda pop’s are made with High Fructose Corn Syrup.  While High Fructose Corn Syrup is obviously not sugar as I had seemed to convey in the article, I going to stick with my guns and tell you that High Fructose Corn Syrup is still better for you than these other artificial sweeteners in diet soda.  Yes I am a doctor and a scientist so I know about these things.

I have heard it’s kind of hard to find these Throwback sodas, i don’t think they are available in your works soda machine.  A friend tells me that Philadelphia Based Mitchell & Ness (of throwback sports jersey fame) does carry the designer soda in the store to go along with the Throwback motif.

One cool thing I have seen is that Snapple Iced Teas and Juices are moving to all sugar.  They are ditching the high Fructose Corn Syrup entirely.  That’s very different from what Pepsi Co. is offering as a limited release and sticking with the HFCS. I think you really have to commend Snapple on what they’re doing.

I have read that switching to real sugar as opposed to using High Fructose can be slightly more costly to produce and therefore a higher cost to the consumer.  While most things are going up these days i think that raising the price of soda and making it healthier (i.e. real sugar) is a win-win for the consumer.  People drink less soda and the soda they do drink is better for them.  Though in contrast, less soda sold is bad for Coke and Pepsi Co and jobs may be lost.  As always action and reaction.

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Wolfram Alpha – The Answer Engine? Google Killer?

By: Billy Beerslugger

So what is the Wolfram|Alpha?  It is a computational knowledge engine.  Well what the fuck is that, you’re asking?  It’s complicated.  However, from what I gather it’s not unlike a  search engine such as Google.  Where it differs though is it’s use of natural language (in terms of a search query from you the user) to determine answers/results as opposed to keywords like Google.

Wolfram also will try to display a visualization if possible from what you are searching for.  From an article I read, “A better way to think of it is a DWIMM (“do what I might mean”), so if you type in something like “gdp France / Germany”, it calculates and returns a graph of the relative fraction of France’s annual GDP to Germany’s GDP, over the last 30 years or so.  If you just type in “gdp”, it looks up your local host and (in my case) displays the GDP of the USA over the last 30 years, plus various pieces of information about what gross domestic product is, from a mathematical formula perspective but not from a semantic one.  It does not have an ontology, so what it knows about, say, GDP, or population, or stock price, is no more nor less than the equations that involve that term.  One vulnerability that this engenders in Alpha is that errors in the data may go unnoticed for a long time; a positive way of saying this is that one could align Alpha’s terms to an ontology and knowledge base, and use it to catch some fraction of errors as outright implausible violations of basic knowledge (e.g., Miami’s population dropping by exactly a factor a ten during the month of October, 2006.)”

Now how does this effect the search engine landscape? I don’t know if it does.  Google seems to be able to handle a wider range of searches more accurately and Wolfram seems to handle a more finite amount of selected datum a lot better.  Google is not going anywhere any time soon.

I’m not going to pretend I know any more about Wolfram then the people who’s articles I’ve read on it and a Wikipedia post, but there’s a lot of Buzz about this coming from nerdery’s all over the world.

I signed up to be have early release access but I think they are looking for somone with a little more credentials then running a blog.  We’ll see though.

Could Wolfram Alpha be your default search engine in 5 years?  Could it have an IPO ala Google and fetch millions upon millions? Only time will tell.

Note:  Wolfram Alpha will launch sometime this month!

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Pirate Bay, The Pirate Party & The Court Case you don’t know about.

the_pirate_bay_logoBy: Billy Beerslugger

Bit Torrent is a peer to peer file sharing protocol.  Think of it as a way more accurate, efficient, and reliable Napster or LimeWire.  Bit Torrent traffic, by some estimates, makes up about 35% of all internet traffic.  It is by far the most popular protocol for large file sharing.

A Bit Torrent Client is essentially a program which manages downloads and uploads. There are many Bit Torrent Clients out there and apparently LimeWire supports to a limited extent Bit Torrents.  One of the more popular Bit Torrent Clients is uTorrent, very lightweight.

A Torrent (of the Genus and Species Bit) is really whatever you want it to be.  It can hold Mp3’s, movies, datasets, computer programs, Tv Shows… if it’s in a digital form you can probably put it in a Torrent.

A Bit Torrent Tracker is a web based interface which provides search functionality (much like Google) for Bit Torrents.

The Pirate Bay is a bit torrent tracker.  It is the most popular bit torrent tracker, ranked as the 106th most popular website by Alexa Internet and is the defendant (or at least the operaters are) of a major laswsuit.

On April 17, 2009 Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were found guilty of assistance to copyright infringement and sentenced to one year in prison and payment of a fine of app. 3,620,000 USD after a 9 day trial.  The defendants are appealing the verdict, seeking a re-trial and recent news has come out that the judge presiding over the case was a member of Pro-Copyright groups.  The Website is still in operation.

In a scenario similar to others regarding prosecuting file sharing sites/companies, membership to The Pirate Bay surged following the verdict.  The more media coverage of the site and what it does, the more it’s members continue to grow.

In Sweden, which is the headquarters of The Pirate Bay, supporters of the site have formed their own political party.  It is currently the 4th largest political party in terms of members in Sweden.  It’s ranks grew by about 20% in the hours following the verdict and increases by the minute.  The number of young members in the party put it at number one in that demographic.

The Pirate Bay and Bit Torrent in general have been the subject of much debate in the United States and Internationally.  Not only for the issue of copyright infringement but from throttling bit torrent traffic, packet sniffing and other ways Internet Service Providers have tried to limit access to Bit Torrents.

Whether or not you personally support the prosecution of The Pirate Bay, file sharing is not going away.  Movie Studios and Record Labels need to find a way to a way to distribute their content and sustain profit off of it.   Old ways of doing this like Cd’s and Dvd’s are not going to cut it in our computer/gadget centric society.  Optimally the solution they come up with does not impede upon how you use the Internet or Net Neutrality.

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Internet Service Providers Raising Prices?

By: Billy Beerslugger

So I’ve been waiting for this to happen for a while now.  I believe this is the beginning of the end of “Unlimited Bandwidth” through Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) in the United States.

Like a lot of my generation, I get a good portion of my news online.  Actually, I get pretty much all my news online.  It’s much more convenient, I can read it when I want to and I can read what I want to as opposed to Network TV news who are at the mercy of Advertisers and their own networks shows (i really don’t need to know who got kicked off of American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, Survivor, Amazing Race or Big Brother).  I recently read an extremely interesting article from the NY Times.  It makes some really good points including the issue over Bandwidth Consumption, Internet Prices and Government regulation.

First, the article states that most ISP’s in the U.S. want to end the unlimited bandwidth option from their subscription services.  As long as I’ve been using Cable internet it has been browse as much as you want, download as much as you want.  Now they want to measure usage and bill accordingly just like the electric or water company.  On the surface this may seem fair to you, especially if you don’t watch movies and television online or don’t do a lot of downloading or youtube viewing.  If someone else is using the Internet more than you maybe they should pay more and you should pay less.

However, just because a person uses more bandwidth than someone else doesn’t effect the ISP’s profits or the availability/speed of the internet.  The ISP makes just as much money when no one uses the internet as when everyone is glued to the internet checking out the latest Brittany Spears upskirt shot.  Think of Internet use the same way you would think of Cable TV usage (Both use the same technology and have about the same costs).  Does the person who is at work all day and not watching TV pay the same as the person who is at home watching TV all day? Yes, they do.  Each pay for a service and can use as much or as little as they want for a flat fee.

The main costs in running the ISP are investment in network equipment and expanding the networks but just like everything else computer related, costs continue to fall as technology advances.  Most if not all of the Major ISP’s profit margins are stable.  So why change to a consumption based business model?  I’d say to make more money.  ISP’s like Comcast, Time Warner etc pretty much have a monopoly on providing Internet service.  Much like before the phone companies prices were regulated by the U.S. government, ISP’s can charge pretty much whatever they want because there’s not that much else out there.

As some ISP’s are beginning to offer higher Megabits per second than are currently offered, they are also raising prices disproportionately than countries like Japan who offer this higher MBit/s for about $5 more than their regular plan.  In the U.S. prices for this service would increase your bill sometimes twofold and more.  There is a lot more competition in Japan in terms of ISP’s.

There’s other theories out there that suggest Cable Company’s that also supply Internet want to increase prices to Internet Service because online video etc is eating a hole in their Cable TV revenue.  This could also be a reason.

Overall, I would say don’t let an ISP, government or whomever else limit your access to the Internet.  It is essential to free speech and will continue to play a more integral part in our daily lives as the years progress.  As computers, cell phones and Televisions seemingly stay on a path to converge continue to look for ways of how the Corporations that control access to these services may try to screw you and speak out and fight against it.