Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

If there are other search engines out here, I don’t know of them (sorry, Bing.) Everyone uses Google. Your mom is a Googler. And what did people Google most in 2010? Here’s the list*, explained term-by-term:

1. iPad — a GIANT, horribly-named iPhone. You don’t need one.
2. chatroulette — an Internet service that real-time randomly matches you in a video chat to a pervert.
3. iPhone 4 — the world’s best phone paired with the world’s worst phone carrier.
4. World Cup — a sporting event that is evidently a big deal outside of the US. There are people outside the US?
5. Justin Bieber — probably the most annoying kid pop-star ever. 14 year old girls LOVE him. He looks like an ungroomed, disabled Labrador.
6. myxer — a service for downloading ringtones and wallpaper for your cellphone. I’d like to remind everyone that RING TONES DON’T RING. There is no ringing to them. Bells ring. Ringtones are sound clips from bad songs which annoying people use to disrupt otherwise peaceful places.
7. Facebook — a website that in five years will be as important as MySpace is today.
8. grooveshark –  a website that allows you to listen to music. Kind of like Pandora. Or your radio.
9. glee — a television show whose cast lipsyncs popular songs set to cheesy, oversexed dance routines. Also, everyone on the show either plays a homosexual or is a homosexual in real life. The show reminds us that GAY PEOPLE ARE EVERYWHERE! You might be gay yourself.
10. mocospace — a mobile social network. Remember, everything is social nowadays. Or viral. Or 3D. Or flat-screen. Or from Walmart.

* No doubt prudishly censored. D@mn Google bowdlerizers

I once saw a televised debate between an atheist and a Christian. The atheist was convincing, but in the end, the Christian quipped, “this debate is moot. The Christian birthrate is rapidly increasing, whereas atheists are in the decline. In one hundred years, there won’t be any more unbelievers.” I wish the Christian had put more substance into his argument, but his point was taken nonetheless.

The US Census Bureau released the 2010 census results today.  Over the last ten years, states known for their lack of religious devotion (like Vermont and New Hampshire) barely grew at all (2.8 & 6.5% respectively) while Utah, that bedrock of fervent Mormon religiosity, grew by 23.8%. Ready or not, here we come! Oh, and Utah gets another (Republican) seat in the House of Representatives. Sorry, New York.

Here are some new rules as Mormons take over the world:

1. The minivan becomes the national automobile
2. Tithing can be taken directly out of your paycheck
3. No speed limit after church meetings the first Sunday of each month
4. All television reporters must prove they can distinguish real Mormons from polygamists
5. October is National Marie Osmond month
6. All immigrants get a welcome care-package with Noni Juice and Nu Skin cosmetics
7. Gambling legal in Utah when betting on BYU/UoU games
8. Mission Farewell party expenses now tax-deductible
9. The legal drinking age for Coca-cola raised to 21
10. The beating of Conference Protesters allowed, but officially discouraged.

Did you know CDs are made from ham? It’s true. So is bacon. See how CDs are NOT made:

With apologies to Gidget, the Taco Bell chihuahua.

Since we’re on the topic…

src: http://xkcd.com/824/

I follow someone on twitter named bad banana. I’m way too lazy to look them up to see who they are. Suffice it to say, mr. bad banana is funny. Here are a few of his most recent tweets:

Why aren’t you following me on twitter yet?!? I’m @ryanbyrddotnet

Are you a nerd? If you are, you might know the late Dr Seuss made up the word back in the 50′s.  Dr. Seuss’ story, If I Ran the Zoo, stars a boy named Gerald McGrew who makes extravagant claims of how’d he act were he in charge of the zoo. First, he would bring in a Nerd (a creature from Ka-Troo.)  Says Gerald:

And then, just to show them, I’ll sail to Ka-Troo And Bring Back an IT-KUTCH a PREEP and a PROO a NERKLE a NERD and a SEERSUCKER, too!

Just like the odd looking Seussian nerd, the modern nerd is a different breed. I know some of you are half way through an email to me expounding on the differences between nerds and geeks. Send it, if you must, but know I don’t care. When I write nerd, I’m thinking of the movie “Revenge of the Nerds.” The term geek seems an awkward attempt to popularize and socialize nerds. I embrace my nerddom, so should you. So what makes a nerd? Well social obliviousness (or indifference) is a good indicator, but the primary characteristic is passionate curiosity coupled with scientific rigor.

Let’s take as an example a certain Mr. Hans F. A lot of us use the microwave oven (I happen to heat nearly all my meals in mine.) Hans is no different in that regard. But one day, perhaps while waiting for a delicious TV dinner to thaw, he began thinking about magnetrons. The magnetron, you might know, is the device that zaps your food and warms it up by making the water molecules dance. Hans happened to know that the magnetron inside of microwave ovens does not change power– it’s either on or off. So how does the oven adjust the perceived output power? By duty cycle, that is, by switching the magnetron on and off. Says Hans*,

In a bout of curiosity I sat down with my microwave today and figured out exactly what those duty cycles are (you can hear when the magnetron switches on and off). My microwave apparently has a cycle period of 32 seconds. High is power level 100 and the magnetron is on all the time. Power level 50 is on 18 seconds and off 14 seconds. Power level 40 is on 16 and off 16 (which I would have guessed would be the case for power level 50). Power level 10 (the lowest setting) is on for 6 seconds and off for 26 seconds.

That’s a very nerdy thing to do, but Hans didn’t stop there. He GRAPHED his results and then BLOGGED about it. Hans is a nerd. A HUGE nerd.

In sum, nerds apply the scientific method to everyday life and though that generally refers to computers, it’s not exclusively so. And while the accompanying social abrasiveness can be mitigated by a girlfriend or a wife (if ever we manage to find a either…), there seems to always run an undercurrent of social maladroitness.

How much of  a nerd are you?

As much as Carolus Linnaeus and I would like to clearly classify people with simple labels, people are complicated and so few people are 100% nerdy. That’s why we need a system to gauge nerdiness.  Here’s what I’ve got so far:

The Expanded Byrd Nerd Scale (EBNS)

• Socially Challenged (1-25) [form follows function, utilitarian,% un-well-rounded]
• Passionate (1-25) [willing to forgo food & hygiene, overwhelming desire to create things]
• Curious (1-25) [constantly asking why, how & why not]
• Scientific (1-25) [mathematically oriented, scientific method based]

Some quick nerd litmus questions: Can you count in hexadecimal? Do you know what a “reverse polish notation” calculator is? Have you ever used the word “asymptotic”? Can you convert between Celsius and Fahrenheit? Celsius and Kelvin? Do you know how fast light travels, in miles per second?

Nerds, they ain’t just Wonka candy anymore.

src: http://www.eldacur.com/~brons/NerdCorner/nerd.html
src: http://www.armory.com/tests/nerd500.html

* you should know that pressing your ear against a microwave oven to count the magnetron clicks is a good way to give yourself brain cancer…

My brother is something of a high adventure risk seeker and recently while attempting to catch some high air (jumping boat wakes) at Lake Mead*, he crashed and jacked up his leg. He has been limping ever since. Yesterday, he went an got an MRI. Sure enough, the scan revealed that he had broken his leg and torn a bunch of ligaments (subcortical compaction fraction…extensive soft tissue edema, swelling, and abnormal signal with discontinuity, consistent with a lateral ligament tear, type II, etc, etc.)

If there is a funny part to this anecdote, under CLINICAL HISTORY, the MRI should have said “wakeboarding accident.” You’ll have to click the image link to discover what was typed instead. Evidently my brother is a terrorist.

* that the boat was filled with attractive women might have provided additional incentive for his showing off.

Related: NPR and CurrentTV have reported on a new, disturbing exhibit at Coney Island. You might remember we’ve talked about Guantanamo Bay before.