I often wonder why advertisements are designed in specific ways and what their target audiences are. While browsing through the PhysOrg website (a great science news website), I noticed the following textual advertisement from Google.

Two things come to mind. First, Google Ads are supposed to work by scraping the page they will be displayed on for keywords. The main things displayed on this page were about black holes, Large Hadron Colliders, dust devils on Mars, iPhone patches and how early whales potentially used their “hind legs” for swimming. So how would that apply to someone concerned about their looks?

Secondly, why is the word humiliated in quotations? Is the theoretical person who was called fat, not really humiliated? Just “humiliated?” The quotations seem absolutely out of place. Now, instead of worrying about my weight and whether or not a loved one called me fat, I myself (of a scientific mind no less, like many others who read that site) am wondering why the quotations were around the word humiliated, and not “fat” or “fast” or even “husband.”

Who wrote the copy for that ad?

Today, I picked up my 6th iPhone! This is my second iPhone 3G. Here is a brief history of my iPhone ownership and the interesting (and unique) problems I’ve had.

1.) Touch screen stopped working.
2.) Touch screen stopped working.
3.) Some weird short caused constant “device not designed for iPhone. Please use airplane mode” messages to appear, even if nothing was hooked up!
4.) Dock connector completely stopped working.
5.) iPhone 3G #1: Upgraded to iPhone 3G by choice. Hoping for relief. Just kidding! Glass screen began to delaminate from iPhone. Weird defect.
6.) iPhone 3G #2: Hopefully it will be perfect!

Some people have bad luck with iPods. I used to make fun of them. It appears I will have bad luck with iPhones. Stupid karma.

AP interview with Matt Damon on the possibility of Sarah Palin being President of the United States.

“I need to know if she thought dinosaurs were around 4,000 years ago.”

[Via Daily Kos]

Great website:
Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World yet?

I can almost start a new blog dedicated exclusively to iTunes issues. I’d call it “iTunes Errors” or “Fun with iTunes 8” or something similar. In fact, it’s already been done with Adobe products.

Anyway, here are five screens just from today!

Despite my recent rants, I really do love Apple products. Really!

This one was posted awhile ago, but someone brought it to my attention again. XKCD nails it.

A recent post on Twitter after yet another dropped call from my iPhone 3G.

The Large Hadron Collider will officially fire up on Wednesday morning. Contrary to popular belief, we are not all going to die or get sucked into a black hole.

To celebrate this occasion, some of the good humored folks at CERN put together a great and hilarious rap video about the LHC.

Check it out.

Yay for science!

XKCD has an amazing comic today that hits very close to home. Once upon a time, I used to date an astrophysicist and had a similar argument. It went about as well as this comic!

(Click the photo to see the original comic)

This website is nearly as old as the internet, but The Political Compass gauges your political leanings based on a series of questions they ask you and how strongly you feel about them. Afterward, your score is plotted on a grid and you can compare how you rate to other famous folks throughout history.

They argue the traditional model of describing someone’s political beliefs are too lacking (i.e., “left, right or moderate”). Instead, the use a grid system that measures your political views as plotted against an axis that represents economic dimension and a second axis that deals with the social dimension.

If we recognise that this is essentially an economic line it’s fine, as far as it goes. We can show, for example, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung and Pol Pot, with their commitment to a totally controlled economy, on the hard left. Socialists like Mahatma Gandhi and Robert Mugabe would occupy a less extreme leftist position. Margaret Thatcher would be well over to the right, but further right still would be someone like that ultimate free marketeer, General Pinochet.

That deals with economics, but the social dimension is also important in politics. That’s the one that the mere left-right scale doesn’t adequately address. So we’ve added one, ranging in positions from extreme authoritarian to extreme libertarian.

For reference, here are my political leanings after taking the test.

This places me solidly in the “Libertarian Left” category. Who else falls into that category?

The also have a special section detailing the political leanings candidates involved in the 2008 Presidential Election.

If you have a few minutes to kill and are curious to find out more about your political stances, I encourage you to take the test!