MemeStreams experienced an outage today for eight hours due to a transformer explosion at our primary data-center located next to the landmark Bell-South "bat-building" in Nashville, Tennessee. Pictures taken by Industrial Memetics staff of NES workers responding to the situation can be seen here and here.

August 7, 2005 - MemeStreams Outage

For the foodies out there, check out Noriko Takiguchi's (so far) five part series on 'How to Eat Sushi Properly' (links to earlier parts at bottom of the linked post). Not only does the series deliver on the title, but she also passes along tidbits such as the history of our epicurean debt to Yohei Hanaya, and the names of the best sushiyas in the Bay Area, with a little assist from commenters.

Due Diligence: Theory and Practice of Sushi

bush is a flaming douchebag.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

This whole "we should teach different ideas" is retarded. There are ideas that life spawns from rotten meat. There are ideas that the US forced Japan to attack Pearl Harbor because of an oil embargo. There are ideas that the earth is hollow.

The point is there are ideas for everything, and we don't teach them all. We have some criteria that concepts have to meet to be taught. In science classes, that criteria is the scientific method.

I quote the Intelligent Design article on Wikipedia:

Critics call ID religious dogma repackaged in an effort to return creationism into public school science classrooms and note that ID features notably as part of the campaign known as Teach the Controversy. The National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education assert that ID is not science, but creationism. While the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection has observable and repeatable facts to support it such as the process of mutations, gene flow, genetic drift, adaptation and speciation through natural selection, the "Intelligent Designer" in ID is neither observable nor repeatable. This violates the scientific requirement of falsifiability. ID violates Occam's Razor by postulating an entity or entities to explain something that may have a simpler and scientifically supportable explanation not involving unobservable help.

ID is *not* science. It should not be taught in a *science* class. Doing so undermines the entire point of science. Bush's complete misunderstanding of this is beyond excuse.

CNN.com - Bush: Schools should teach 'intelligent design' - Aug 2, 2005

Website out of Canada

Droogle

Julian Beever is an English artist who is famous for his art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. It's peculiarity? Beever gives his drawings an anamorphosis view, his images are drawn in such a way which gives them three dimensionality when viewing from the correct angle.

COOL!

3D street drawings. Too cool!

n honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing.

Google is funny. Zoom all the way in.

Google Moon - Lunar Landing Sites

This is a regular web broadcast (i.e., large downloadable video files) which is mainly a parody of hardcore gamers.

Well, at least we *hope* it's a parody. I find it entertaining, anyway.

Pure Pwnage

I'm having a lot of fun with this.

Church Sign Generator

COOL!!! I want to hang this in the house!

The Periodic Table like you have NEVER seen

a movie all about quantum physics! i wish oh how i wish they would show this in nashville.

WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW?! is a new type of film. It is part documentary, part story, and part elaborate and inspiring visual effects and animations. The protagonist, Amanda, played by Marlee Matlin, finds herself in a fantastic Alice in Wonderland experience when her daily, uninspired life literally begins to unravel, revealing the uncertain world of the quantum field hidden behind what we consider to be our normal, waking reality.

Quantum Physics Star of the Show