Pwnagepanda's Ranting

106 books of pretention…

pwnagepanda — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:44:28 +0000

Ill jump on the bandwagon and like drugmonkey and others. This list is the 106 books most commonly listed as unread on librarything. The ones that are in bold i have read and the ones that are italicized.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

hmmm…

(hat tip to Drugmonkey

Astrology Disproven… Again

pwnagepanda — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:53:21 +0000

Astrology’s central claim is that when you were born contributes to your personality because of influence from the sun, moon, planets and stars. All the studies so far have produced null results, meaning that any predictions made turned out to be no more than guesswork. A new study published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies tracked more than 2000 babies from birth, all born in early March. According to astrology’s predictions, many of their personality traits would be the same. However, the results show that their is no correspondence between the babies.

Researchers looked at more than 100 different characteristics, including occupation, anxiety levels, marital status, aggressiveness, sociability, IQ levels and ability in art, sport, mathematics and reading – all of which astrologers claim can be gauged from birth charts.

The scientists failed to find any evidence of similarities between the “time twins”, however. They reported in the current issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies: “The test conditions could hardly have been more conducive to success . . . but the results are uniformly negative.”

Well there’s another nail in the coffin for this pseudoscience.

(hat tip to PZ Myers at Pharyngula)

Expelled Google-Bombing

pwnagepanda — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 04:37:47 +0000

so im going to take up PZ Meyers initiative and help link Ben Stein’s movie to the Expelled Exposed site in the Google results. Just copypasta this code:

Expelled

put it into anything you write about the movie.

And by the way, Expelled is Bullshit.

Expelled

Acupuncture and seedpods?

pwnagepanda — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:04:16 +0000

So i heard from one of my teachers today that she had just gotten acupuncture and had seedpods in her ears, so that it could help her quit smoking. While i know about acupuncture, i havent heard the one about the seedpods before. So i can only assume that they are part of the same gobbledygook as acupuncture. ( she said that they were on certain pressure points that controlled addiction, sounds pretty similar to the “basis” of acupuncture.) now, while there have been numerous tests on acupuncture, they seem inconclusive, but still seem to show the trait of this type of study; the larger, better controlled the study, the smaller the effect becomes. however, the results are still inconclusive, because there have been no true double-blind clinical studies on the “treatment”.
So, until better evidence appears, id spend my money on a real, medical treatment, not woo.
Also, anyone who can design a true double-blind study gets a gold star.

blog email is pwnagepanda.blog@gmail.com

9 series = happy panda

pwnagepanda — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:12:30 +0000

Nvidia recently announced the production of the new nine series card, the 9600 GT.

its shiny and i want.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_9600gt.html

Next Step for Anonymous

pwnagepanda — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:09:21 +0000

we have had succesful 2/10 raid across the world, and we have moar lined up for 3/15… the Ides of march. this protest will be aimed at repealing their tax exempt status and getting the government and the public more involved.

http://partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology/March_15%2C_2008

we are still planniing more of chanology’s attacks, but we need everyones help to plan them, and then weed them out. good places to look are:

http://www.partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology/Long_Term_Strategy

http://www.enturbulation.org/

/We/ are Anonymous.

/We/ do not Forgive.

/We/ do not Forget.

/We/ are Legion.

Expect us.

/We/ are Anonymous. /We/ do not forgive. /We/ do not forget. /We/ are legion.

pwnagepanda — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:32:58 +0000

“
Anonymous goes back to the terrorists that filled the Boston harbor with tea; the negros that refused to be seated in the back of the bus. We are the worthless that stormed the Bastille, and then decapitated an empress; and the separatists that brought down the iron curtain. But this time, our revolution will not be betrayed. We will bow to no leader, we bow only to ourselves.

The anonymous masses have always been vilified by those that have everything to lose. Anonymous has everything to gain. Will we be the generation of apathy? No. We must take our world back.

We are forged from the secret rage and tempered with the will of a people oppressed. A work in progress like our brothers and sisters behind the great wall, and those at home who fight those who wish to demolish our rights.

We are the Anonymous accomplices. Acting for justice and having no leader, we are a social structure capable of absorbing all attacks upon us. You cannot hide from us, because we are among you, we are the majority and the minority. We are continually expanding and improving. We cannot be defeated, because to defeat us would be to defeat yourself.

Today the enemy is The Church of Scientology. They wish to suppress, dominate, oppress, terrorize and control. They have poisoned the most weak and then sold the same poison as a cure.

To clear the planet is to destroy Anonymous, to destroy the disbelievers, to destroy their own followers. And to destroy You.

Now is the winter of our discontent. The church has always fought the few, the divided. Anonymous are the many. We are one hundred thousand strong. We can be a million strong, but only with you.

Downfall of the Church of Scientology is only the beginning.

We do not forgive. We do not forget.”

“

Hello, leaders of Scientology. We are Anonymous.

Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who have come to trust you as leaders has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind everywhere. You will find no recourse in attack, because for each of us that falls, ten more will take his/her place.

We are cognizant of the many who may decry our methods as parallel to those of the Church of Scientology. Those who espouse the obvious truth that your organization will use the actions of Anonymous as an example of the persecution of which you have for so long warned your followers. This is acceptable to Anonymous. In fact, it is encouraged. We are your SPs.

Over time, as we begin to merge our pulse with that of your Church, the suppression of your followers will become increasingly difficult to maintain. Believers will become aware that salvation needn’t come at the expense of their livelihood. They will become aware that the stress and the frustration that they feel is not due to us, but a source much closer to them. Yes, we are SPs. But the sum of suppression we could ever muster is eclipsed by that of your own RTC.

Knowledge is free.

We are Anonymous.

We are Legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.”

“

So you want to join Project Chanology eh? Fight the good fight for the Internet? Or perhaps you are a skeptic, doubtful we can do anything? I won’t lie to you. I am an /i/nsurgent first, a /b/tard second, and an all around Anonymous, but I know that for a fight against the Beast it will take more than what every chan combined can muster. We might be rivals; hell, we might hate each other’s guts, but this goes beyond just us. The people of the Internet, Anonymous, LLers, the Goons of SA, OTers who were previously thwarted in an attempted stunt at the Mission: Impossible 3 opening, the YTMNDers, various hacker groups, trolls of the world, the GameFAQs members, the Gaians, the eBaumers, and the Mxicans; us old time Internet users, and the newest of noobs, the YouTubers and MySpacers, must band together for a fight that transcends our differences and takes us to a level beyond our individual selves. When things happen to Scientology, like that South Park episode or Tom Cruise going insane on Oprah’s show, Scientology loses lots of credibility. We need to finish that off, or leave it open for the major media to deliver the coup-de-grace.

Let’s do this. Together.

“	The wrong thing to do about any given circumstance or situation is to do nothing.	„
—L. Ron Hubbard,

“

join us

http://www.partyvan.info/index.php/Project_Chanology

send email to pwnagepanda.blog@gmail.com

Heres a Really, Really Fucking Good Idea: Science Debate 2008

pwnagepanda — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 05:51:24 +0000

Although i am not all that interested in politics (im a moderate). I am very disappointed with the scientific literacy of our politicians. Bush… i dont need to say anything about, and even with someone like al gore, while he knows that science is important, he doesnt really understand it (inconvenient truth anyone?). I think that an event like this would do wonders as far as forcing them to really understand scientific issues. I hope it goes through, but it needs your support. Go sign up and add your support.

send email to blog.pwnagepanda@gmail.com

Mac vs. PC

pwnagepanda — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:16:59 +0000

So at school recently, we have been debating which is better, Mac or PC. While the OS is really a personal preference, and Macs are definitely better with video, Something that I have heard from both sides is that you can get more for less money by going one way or the other. So i decided to test that. I went to Apple’s Site and used the Mac Pro configurator http://store.apple.com/AppleStore/WebObjects/BizCustom.woa/9254008/wo/Bl1MizbtHwyL2Lmo4z62AbxAK9T/1.?p=0

and to Cyberpower Inc.’s Intel Core 2 Quad SLI configurator http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Intel_Core_2_Duo_SLI_Custom_Build_Configurator/

basically, i decided to allocate $10000 to each rig and tried to see which one i could get. and heres what I got:

PC:

Case: Apevia X-Telstar Aluminum Full Tower 420W Case w/ Temp Display and Fan Control (Black)

CPU: (Quad-Core)Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme QX6850 @ 3.00GHz 1333FSB 8MB L2 Cache 64-bit

MOTHERBOARD: (Quad-Core FSB1333) Asus Striker Extreme nForce 680i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333 DDR2 Mainboard

MEMORY: (Req.DDR2 MainBoard)4GB (2x2GB) PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory (Mushkin Xtreme w/ Heat Spreader)

VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MB 16X PCI Express (EVGA Powered by NVIDIA)

VIDEO CARD 2: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MB 16X PCI Express (EVGA Powered by NVIDIA)

LCD Monitor: ViewSonic VX2835WM 28& quot; True 1080P with HDMI Wide Color TFT Active Matrix 1920×1200 LCD Display

LCD Monitor 2: ViewSonic VX2835WM 28& quot; True 1080P with HDMI Wide Color TFT Active Matrix 1920×1200 LCD Display

Hard Drive: Extreme Performance (RAID-0) with 2 Identical Hard Drives (1.5TB (750GBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)

Data Hard Drive: 1.5TB (750GBx2) SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM Hard Drive

Optical Drive: Pioneer BDC-202 Blu-Ray Reader / DVD+-RW Double Layer Writer (Black Color)

Optical Drive 2: Pioneer BDC-202 Blu-Ray Reader / DVD+-RW Double Layer Writer (Black Color)

Power Supply: 1,200 Watts Power Supplies – Thermaltake W0133RU ToughPower 1,200 Watts Power Supply – Quad SLI Ready

Cooling Fan: Vigor Gaming Monsoon II Lite CLT-M2LI LGA775 CPU Air Conditioner Cooling System

Cooling Fan: Creative Labs X-FI XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro 24-BIT PCI Sound Card

Speakers: Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 Configuration Speakers System with Control

Lights: 12in Cold Cathode Neon Light

Extra Case Fans: 2 Extra 3-Color Neon Light LED Case Fans

External Hard Drive: 500GB 16MB Cache

Network Card: Killer M1 10/100/1000 Gigabit High Speed Online Gaming PCI Network Interface Card

Keyboard: Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard

Mouse: Logitech MX Revolution Cordless Optical Mouse

Mouse Pad: QPAD XT-R2 Hard-Surface Extreme Gaming Mouse Pad

Headset: Logitech Precision PC Gaming Headset

WiFi Booster: Hawking HBB1 Wireless Network Broadband Booster

Bag: Sunbeamtech LAN Party Strap Bag

External Temperature Display: Silverstone Eudemon SST-FP52 LCD Display Front Panel

Wireless Card: LINKSYS WMP54GS 802.11G PCI Network Card

External Wireless Card: Linksys WUSB54GS USB Wireless 802.11g 5

4Mbps Network Adapter

Wireless Router: Linksys WRT54GS Wireless-G Broadband 802.11g Router with SpeedBooster

Flash Media Reader/Writer: I-Rocks IR-5300 (SILVER) External USB 12in1 Card Reader

Webcam: Logitech QuickCam Ultra Vision

Wiring: Rounded Cable Upgrade and professional wiring

Printer: HP LASERJET 2015 LASER PRINTER

Printer Cable: 6-FT USB Cable + 8 InkJet Cartridges for C64 or C84

Power Protection: OPTI-UPS ES1500C 1400VA/980W UNINTERRUPT POWER SUPPLY

IEEE Card: IEEE 1394 CARD AND DRIVER

USB Hub: Add External USB 2.0 Hub (4x USB 2.0 Ports)

Floppy Drive: 1.44 MB FLOPPY DRIVE

OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate 64 bit

Media Center: TV Tuner with FM Stereo+Remote Control+MS Remote Keyboard(watch and record TV on your PC)

Software: Mcafee Antivirus

Microsoft Office 2007 Proffessional

Warranty: 3 year limited + 24/7 lifetime phone tech support

Total Price: $9999

Mac

CPU: Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

Memory: 8GB (4 x 2GB)

Hard Drive: 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s

Hard Drive 2: 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s

Graphics Card: 4 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB

Monitor: Apple Cinema HD Display (30″ flat panel)

Optical Drive: Two 16x SuperDrives

Wireless Card: Both Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and AirPort Extreme

Keyboard/ Mouse: Apple Wireless Keyboard and Apple wireless Mighty Mouse

OS: Mac OS X

Software: iWork ’08 preinstalled, Final Cut Express preinstalled, Aperture 1.5 preinstalled, Logic Express preinstalled

Warranty: NA (costs 249)

Total Price: $9,918

So clearly you can get more for your buck with the PC side, to get even a comparable mac, you need to spend about $14000.

also, check these out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkrn6ecxthM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEAGmBRC1dc

peace out

send complaints and hatemail to blog.pwnagepanda@gmail.com

I’m back! hopefully for good(?)

pwnagepanda — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:32:02 +0000

Well anyways, it has been a while since I last picked up a keyboard and mouse, but hopefully i can breathe new life into the blog, and have more than 2 posts. lolz

anyways, i hope to post at least 2 or 3 times per week, but that may change as my schedule does.

so i have been screwing around on yahoo answers tonight, and it is really wuite amusing. i have seen about 10 or 12 questions regarding how to summon a demon, or a familiar, or use elementary magic or something. it is basically a forum with everything, but without anysort of commitment to flame wars or that shit. check it out if you want, if you wanna add me my nick is pwnagepanda.

this is gonna be a really ADD post, so bear with me.

also, i have been a fan of the Skeptic’s guide to the universe podcast for a while (check it out http://www.theskepticsguide.org/index2.asp ) , and in their most recent episode, the cast went to the psychics fair in connecticut to mess around. they have inspired me to be a little more confrontational with my skepticism, so if i have any good arguments/debates/confrontations in the future, ill blog it.

im out of ideas for teh moment. be back l8er.

oh, and if you want to send me hatemail/fanmail/political rants/ads for penis enlargers or whatever, the blog email will be pwnagepanda.blog@gmail.com