Category Archives: Funny

Strange Spam

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Not that I look at all the spam I get, but I do like to occasionally look to see if the amount is abating or to see the email addresses that are receiving the spam. Just recently I started to get some really strange ones. In order to try and bypass spam filters, spammers are attempting to mask the spam with pictures, crazy spellings, “hidden” poetry or meaningless phrases, etc. It seems the more they try to obscure the fact that it is spam, the harder it gets to actually attempt to understand what they are selling. The latest spam was sent to one of my email aliases. Why anyone would buy the stock this guy is pumping, I have no idea.

R’umor N.e.w’s+:

Onco-*logy M,e+d+. I.n.c_. (OT C: ON CO) a Can cer Tr.,eatment Solutio+n’s Gro_up is s a.i.d to h a+v-e
ex-per’ienced o*v,e-r a 1*000% in crea.se in re,ven.ues f,o+r t*h_e fi.scal 3_r+d quar’ter end.ing J’u*l-y-,

2.0+0.7 comp are*d w_i+t.h t.h*e p,rior y e_a r w+hile fisc*al fou*rth quart*er r*esults f+o*r 2 0*0-7 a r,e on
t*rack to e’xceed t_h+i’s yea+r’s t_hird q’uarter result’s.

O-N+C,O a_ddi’tionally plan s to incre-‘ase serv.ice offe.ring_s whi’ch a-r’e cur*.rently underway +.
Do*n’t w a i,t f.o’r t+h’e n_e-w’s to c+o-m-e o.u-t a+n_d l_o_s_e t*h-e opport_un,ity to g*e,t in fr_ont of the

g eneral inve_s.ting publ’ic. On’colog-y M e’d is in a mu-ltibilli+on do*llar in.du’stry w_h_e_r+e

t-h+e y a r*e g aining mar-ket sha+re rapidly*.

C,a l’l y+o,u r brok,er n’o w f_o-r O+N.C O*.

I’ve received this email multiple times with these subjects: nglawyer; avedevir (Google search brings up some strange sites full of random text); ergytihw; and tsetuats.

If you work really hard you can just barely read about the stock.

Diluting medicine: Homeopathy

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Homeopathy is a controversial form of alternative medicine that aims to treat “like with like”. Substances that cause symptoms similar to the disease in large quantities are heavily diluted, with shaking at each stage of the dilution. Homeopaths contend that the shaking causes some imprint (or memory) of the diluted substance, despite the fact that at many common homeopathic dilutions, no molecules of the original substance are likely to remain. Homeopathy is based on a vitalist world view, which sees the underlying causes of sickness as imbalances in a hypothetical vital force and claims that homeopathic treatment can harmonize and re-balance the vital force in the body, so restoring health, which is unsupported by modern biology or medicine.

Source: Wikipedia

Disclaimer: I am a student of allopathic medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. (The allopathic doctor is an MD, while a similar legally-recognized medical doctor of osteopathy receives a DO.) Since allopathic medicine is a term for scientific, research-based orthodox medicine, I am inherently biased against “medicine” that does not have a scientific basis.

Article that got me started reading about homeopathy: Diluting the scientific method: Ars looks at homeopathy

Homeopathy “works” in the sense that it won’t hurt you (unless it limits access to necessary medicine or treatment) since you are drinking pure water as a cure and its “official” recognition in the past (and surprisingly even today) offers a strong placebo effect. When homeopathy became popular, the other main medical treatment was bloodletting. It makes sense that drinking pure water would be more beneficial than bloodletting in most cases. Homeopaths believe that “like cures like.” Therefore, they find a chemical that is felt to cause the illness and then dilute it in water. They feel that the greater the dilution, the greater the benefit of the chemical. So, substances in strong concentrations are bad, while the more highly diluted a substance is, the better it is for you. (Arndt-Schulz rule) The funny part is that the dilutions are so great that it is impossible (with today’s technology) to detect any trace of the substance in the water. Homeopaths claim that the shaking after each dilution imparts the substance’s properties into the water. The water supposedly retains a memory of the substance and this is how the medication works. “Water memory” is shown in the second video below to be false. You’ll also see in the video that the “weaker” dilutions are so great that it is equivalent to adding one drop of the substance to all the oceans of the world. The “Homeopathy Explained” video explains it with an even more incredible analogy. How anyone can believe this I don’t know…
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distractionLab blog

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Since I haven’t written in awhile, I thought that I’d advertise my brother’s blog. He’s really creative so much of his blog posts involve art or music. His description of the blog sums up what you’ll find:

This blog has no real purpose and it is doubtful that a real purpose will ever be stumbled upon. Un-arguably the greatest achievement of this blog is existing— and its second greatest achievement is containing a post detailing its purpose (none, as stated previously). Further, in the case that a purpose is ever found, it is likely to be a poor one characterized by a focus on celebrity gossip, cute purse-sized dogs, and an almost suspicious obsession with the price of crude oil.

I’m disappointed about his blogging effort in that I have yet to see a reference or at least an allusion to the Britney Spears VMA fiasco (celebrity gossip), a review of the GiGi Olivia Purse Style Small Dog Carrier (thanks Google!) (cute purse-sized dogs), or any commentary about how oil has peaked over $80 a barrel (obsession with the price of crude oil). And since he doesn’t own any oil-related stocks I don’t see what is holding him back…it’s not as if he is scared to disclose any financial ties.

A positive thing is that he does link to my frequently updated blog at the top of his links section. For those of you wondering why entries mysteriously appeared overnight from throughout the summer, are you sure you have been reading my blog carefully? Granted, it does appear as if I added entries retrospectively via clever post timestamp changing. However, I have a feeling that if you go to my blog in that tab you always have open and click “refresh,” the old posts that you missed will load right up. They must have been there all the time!

Only in Wisconsin…

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This is funny, but I absolutely do not condone drinking and driving!
(Oh yeah, I stole this from Jennifer’s Facebook note. It is not original.)

Only a person in WISCONSIN could think of this!
From the county where drunk driving used to be considered a sport,
Comes this story.

Recently a routine police patrol parked outside a bar in GREENBAY WISCONSIN. After last call the officer noticed a man leaving the bar so intoxicated that he could barely walk. The man stumbled around the parking lot for a few minutes, with the officer quietly observing. After what seemed an eternity in which he tried his keys on five different vehicles, the man managed to find his car and fall into it. He sat there for a few minutes as a number of other patrons left the bar and drove off.

Finally, he started the car, switched the wipers on and off–it was a fine, dry summer night–, flicked the blinkers on and off a couple of times, honked
the horn and then switched on the lights. He moved the vehicle forward a few
inches, reversed a little and then remained still for a few more minutes as some more of the other patrons’ vehicles left. At last, when his was the only car left in the parking lot, he pulled out and drove slowly down the road.

The police officer, having waited patiently all this time, now started up his patrol car, put on the flashing lights, promptly pulled the man over and
administered a Breathalyzer test. To his amazement, the Breathalyzer
indicated no evidence that the man had consumed any alcohol at all!
Dumbfounded, the officer said, “I’ll have to ask you to accompany me to the
Police station. This Breathalyzer equipment must be broken.”

“I doubt it,” said the truly proud WISCONSINITE.

“Tonight I’m the designated decoy.”

Wisconsin Beats Texas A&M-CC

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I’m a big Badger fan. I’ve lived in Wisconsin my entire life and graduated from Wisconsin in 2006. I was extremely relieved to see the Badgers finally start playing at the end of the first half and part way into the second half. If we had shot as poorly as we did in the first half against ANY Big Ten team, we would not be walking away with a victory. Overall, I feel that we played remarkably well to hold Texas A&M-CC to significantly under its season average. Fortunately, we shot very well the second half. If the real Badgers had showed up in the first half, this game would have been a blow out.

Here’s a funny comment that I found on espn.com:

tstote (3/16/2007 at 6:15 PM)
In case you missed the game, here’s what happened. The hotel the Badgers stayed at last night hadn’t gotten the memo about daylights savings and their clocks were all an hour behind and therefore the team got to the arena an hour late. However instead of forfieting the game some quick thinking Badger fans in Badger attire, some of whom bore a passing resemblance to actual players on the team, took to the floor and took on the Corpus Christie Islanders. Unfortunately since none of these Badger fans had any actual basketball experience they quickly fell behind, eventually by the score of 25-7. Fortunately with about 5 minutes left in the half the real Badgers straggled in. They quickly assessed the situation, took over and started climbing back into the game. Kamron Taylor was running real late having missed the team bus and didn’t get to the arena until about 10 minutes left in the 2nd half; however once he got into the game he calmly scored 24 points in 10 minutes, leading the Badgers past the Islanders 76-63. Bring on UNLV!

5 Hours to Install Windows XP!!

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Yesterday it took me about 5 hours to install Windows XP! The basis of the story is that I have an old (but still pretty fast) Toshiba laptop (5105-S607 for those interested). I had been running Linux on it until the hard drive crashed about a year and a half ago. I upgraded to a Powerbook G4, which I still have and love. Though the hard drive did not work, I had a roommate that used it via a Linux LiveCD. He just had to remember to email himself his documents often because if it crashed he lost all his documents.

Anyway, I’ll tell more of the details later, but there is an organization that I’m donating the laptop to. I found a pretty cheap hard drive on Ebay, put it in the computer, and began reinstalling Windows. The actual installation only took about 40 minutes and required minimal human input and only restarted twice I believe (once to copy the install files and a second time upon completing the install). The other 4+ hours were spent running Windows Update. The version of Windows XP Pro that I was installing was dated to August of 2002. I had over four years of security updates to install!
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My brother’s comic/drawing blog

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My brother is an incredibly creative person. For the past half-dozen years or more he has drawn quite a collection of single panel comics. Fortunately, he’s starting to post them on his new website, Distract Comic. Many of the newer comics are in color and draw directly on the computer via his Wacom tablet. The older ones were drawn on paper, scanned in, and then touched up in Photoshop. I hope that eventually he’ll get all his comics up.

There is also a section called “the great drawing experiment” where you can request him to draw things…you should see him work; he’s really fast at sketching even the craziest of things! One time during a car trip he asked me to tell him something to draw. I thought of the strangest thing that I could: “Ross, draw a giraffe in the circus with a monkey juggling bananas and riding it like a horse as it is getting chased by a two-headed fire-breathing flying snail.” Sure enough he sketched something that fit the description perfectly. And now you too, my few readers (maybe one…or two…of you? hello? anyone reading??) can ask him to draw crazy things for you: the great drawing experiment

One thing that I hope he allows on the page is a way to distinguish random things that he draws as part of “the great drawing experiment” and his real comics. Maybe he could implement a category system distinguish the comics from the random drawings…

Hikers’ less than helpful suggestions to the U.S. Forest Service

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The suggestions below were taken from the article, December pittle-paddling, in SilentSports.

“Instead of a permit system for hikers, the Forest Service needs to reduce worldwide population growth to limit the number of visitors to wilderness.”

“Trails need to be wider so people can walk holding hands.”

“Too many bugs and leeches and spider webs. Please spray the wilderness to rid the area of these pests.”

“Please pave the trails so they can be plowed of snow in the winter.”

“The coyotes made too much noise last night and kept me awake. Please medicate these annoying animals.”

“Trails need to be reconstructed. Please avoid building trails that go uphill.”

“Chairlifts need to be in some places so that we can get to wonderful views without having to hike to them.”

“Need more signs to keep the area pristine.”

“A deer came into my camp and stole my bag of pickles. Is there any way I can get reimbursed? Please call.”

“A McDonald’s would be nice at the trailhead.”

“The places where trails do not exist are not well marked.”

“Too many rocks in the mountains.”