Jason Hong's Confabulations

Skypefast - the act of using Skype to eat breakfast together with your significant other

"You know, it's amazing how many supervillains have advanced degrees . Graduate schools should probably do a better job at screening those people out." -- Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory

I'm not making this up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act This law is notable as the first and only ban on the trading of futures contracts of a specific commodity in United States history, and as a unique modern case with which to study the effects of the existence of an active futures market on commodity prices. I'm sure a more skilled comedian could come up with a good joke about The Onion, or build on the famous Simpson's reference .

I can tell my research is getting more publicity. How? I'm starting to get more and more kook emails addressed to me. So far my favorite is the person that believes DARPA and NSA are monitoring his telepathic abilities (which, by the way, he's measured to have the same bandwidth as OC-192 ).

Here's a new baby naming service that we could all use. Given your last name, what kinds of first names should you avoid so that your child won't be on the TSA no-fly list. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/business/30road.html “The woman at the ticket counter demanded, ‘Who is John Anderson?’ ” Ms. Anderson recalled. She pointed at the baby stroller and said, “He’s right here.” The suspect, then 2 years old, blinked his big blue eyes and happily gummed his pacifier. “That baby’s on the no-fly watch list,” the agent said.

After watching this video of squirrels running thru obstacle courses, I'm not so sure we humans should be so proud of our achievemenets: http://www.maniacworld.com/squirrel-obstacle-course.html

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Finally, a technologically sound answer to the eternal question "where should we go for lunch?". Take Yahoo Local, mix with Wheel of Fortune, and you have Wheel of Lunch. http://www.coverpop.com/wheeloflunch/

I used to think that ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization had the best geek acronym (TACO), but it has now been outclassed by the First Usenix Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT)

Not only has the Pittsburgh area been rated the No. 1 place in the country for Baby Boomers to find love and keep it, but the City of Boomer Love also consumes more Ho Hos than anywhere else. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07108/779032-100.stm

Got this one a while back, it's now on my office door.

Just when you thought you've seen it all, Garmin is selling a GPS for dogs . No, not to help the dogs navigate (that would be scary), but to help owners find their dogs.

If you hang around me long enough, you'll eventually hear my story about how South Americans consider capybara's, the world's largest rodent, as fish. (If you hang around me long enough, you'll also find out that Regis Philbin is my mortal enemy and that I once found myself with a black guy and two Filipinos in the middle of a KKK march, but those are stories for another time). To wit, one of my friends ( James Lin , of Lincoln Highway fame ) has just forwarded me an article from the New York Times about the world's most delicious rodent (I bet Amazon's statistically improbable phrases would have fun with that one). As you can see in the picture below, it's pretty obvious that capybara aren't fish. So here's the Gray Lady on rodent-fish: The annual hunt comes before Easter, when capybara has a status in Venezuela similar to that of turkey during Thanksgiving. While the Roman Catholic Church generally forbids eating meat during certain days of Lent,...

I'm not sure what's scarier, the fact that one of the students in our Usable Privacy and Security class showed the video of the exploding whale today, that there's a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_whale">Wikipedia article on exploding whales , or that there is a series of Wikipedia articles on exploding animals .

Makezine thinks that online games and credit cards will combine, similar to what I wrote about it a few weeks ago . Very soon, credit card companies and game makers will reward their customers who spend money in the real world using private label "rewards" credit cards. They will use gifts of virtual currency such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft gold and Second Life's Linden dollars. Link

I had a whacky idea today, that these MMORPGs like Everquest and World of Warcraft should have special rewards program that are like frequent flier miles. Some examples: Buy products with the Everquest credit card, and get 10 gold pieces per dollar spent For every dollar you donate to charity, Dark Age of Camelot will give you 100 experience points For every captcha you help us break, Ultima Online will give you a lottery ticket to get [insert some powerful item]

Last weekend, I came to my office in Newell Simon Hall and found that a small army of action figures were poised to invade. Reminds me a little of Toy Story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/02/nyregion/02diary.html As a peripatetic city walker and straphanger, I thought I had seen the full range of postings. But last weekend, at the Columbus Circle entrance to Central Park, a large, well-dressed man sat at the base of the imposing Maine monument with a sign saying: "Ninjas killed my family. Need money for kung fu lessons."

http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67349,00.html [James] Auger envisions animals, birds, reptiles and even fish becoming appreciative techno-geeks, using specially engineered gadgets to help them overcome their evolutionary shortcomings, promote their chances of survival or just simply lead easier and more comfortable lives. On tap for the future: Rodents zooming around with night-vision survival goggles, squirrels hoarding nuts using GPS locators and fish armed with metal detectors to avoid the angler's hook. ... Future technologies, though, could yield fruit. For example, some theorists have floated a Matrix-like scenario that would use direct stimulation of the brain to fool livestock about the reality of their living conditions. "To offset the cruelty of factory-farming, routine implants of smart microchips in the pleasure centers may be feasible," says David Pearce, associate editor of the Journal of Evolution and Technology. "Since there is no physiologica...

I guess I spoke too soon about the auto-beer application . I forgot that one of the guys down the hall in Berkeley CS made a Universal Planar Manipulator that could send a beer down a table into your hand. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jfc/nalldrin/beer_demo.html