Aphorism Of The Day Pt.15

If you go to meet someone, it's an appointment. But if you deliberately avoid someone, is that called dis-appointment?

Sounds Unbelievable? - It Is!

I read today in Finnish evening magazine that one Professor and one Psychologist got scammed in Finland. The good ol' Nigerian e-mail scam.

I've been writing about common sense before, and how we only believe what experts say. What do we do now when even experts, who are the sole source of our common sense, are incapable of using it? Like after one school incident in Finland one psychologist told us that 'childhood is very important for the development of a person'. Really? If I would say 'if it snows, the roads might be slippery' is completely useless if I do not have a decree in meteorology and/or physics...

I give you a free tip, which not only works in 99.999% of all deals in the internet, also applies to many many life situations. (You know, the so-called "real life".)

If something sounds too good to be true, it most likely is!

But I'm afraid no-one's gonna believe me, since I do not have a decree in this area.

The Professor lost €20 000 and the psychologist €10 000. Very good. I'm happy for the scammers this time. If you claim to be highly educated and still fall for this kind of obvious tricks, you deserve to be scammed. It is a sin to let fools keep their money. Both of them should be stripped from their titles for 'being stupid beyond any reason'.

For more info about this kind of scams, visit the Ebola Monkey Man.

(The original news follows, in Finnish, though.)

HUIJAUSKIRJEITÄ

Professori menetti noin 20 000 euroa tavoitellessaan yli
20 miljoonan dollarin perintöä. Rahat hävisivät, mutta miljoonaperintö jäi
saamatta.

Tapauksen juuret juontuvat viime vuoden kevääseen, kun
professoriin otettiin yhteyttä sähköpostilla. Kirjoittaja väitti olevansa
afrikkalaisvaltion entisen presidentin poika, joka joutui poliittisista syistä
piileskelemään.

Hän halusi kuitenkin paeta maasta ja oli valmis lähettämään
professorille perintönsä 27 miljoonaa USA:n dollaria. Siihen liittyvien asioiden
hoitamista varten piti kuitenkin lähettää rahaa.

"Ei tosiuskottavaa"

Tilanteet etenivät niin, että professorin piti mennä Sveitsiin
Zürichiin hakemaan pankista rahat tietyn henkilön nimissä olevalta tililtä.
Hänelle selvisi, ettei annetussa osoitteessa ollut kyseistä pankkia, mutta sen
sijaan toinen pankki.

Professori ei Sveitsiin mennyt, mutta lähetti vielä kolme eri
kertaa rahaa. Professori teki elokuussa ilmoituksen Helsingin
poliisille.

Poliisi katsoi, ettei petosrikoksen tunnusmerkistö jutussa
täyty ja lopetti tutkinnan. Se katsoi myös, ettei yleisen elämänkokemuksen
mukaan ole tosiuskottavaa, että täysin tuntematon ulkomaan kansalainen
lähettäisi nimellistä kulukorvausta vastaan toiseen maahan tuntemattomalle 27
miljoonaa dollaria.
Psykologi haksahti

Helsingin poliisille tehtiin toinenkin ilmoitus
vastaavantapaisesta tapauksesta, kun psykologi menetti 10 000 euroa
havitellessaan suurta lottovoittoa.

Hän sai kesäkuussa 2007 kirjeen, jonka mukaan hän oli
voittanut Espanjassa 615 000 euron lottovoiton. Lottovoiton lunastamiseksi
hän lähetti kolmena kertana rahaa Espanjaan yhteensä noin 5 600 euroa. Osa
rahoista ohjautui Etelä-Koreaan.

Psykologi sai muutaman viikon kuluttua puhelun, jossa
kerrottiin, että häntä oli huijattu, sillä hänen voittamansa lottopotti olikin
786 000 euroa.

Tämän lunastamiseksi psykologi lähetti vielä neljä kertaa
rahaa Espanjaan, yhteensä noin 4 000 euroa. Luvattuja voittorahoja ei
tullut, mutta sen sijaan hän sai väärennetyn 400 000 euron shekin. Poliisi
päätti tässäkin jutussa esitutkinnan.

JARMO LUUPPALA

20 Years Ago: Max Headroom Pirates

Today's been a busy blogging day for me...

No, no, remember, remember the 22nd of November. Gunpowder, treason and plot.

Exactly 20 years ago WGN-TV's News at Nine was hijacked by still unknown pirates.

Read more about Max Headroom Pirating Incident in:
Wikipedia - Damn Interesting

The Nightmare On Elm Street

Today is the 44th anniversary of The Nightmare On Elm Street, where the 35th U.S. President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot dead by Lee Harvey Oswald. I feel for Jacqueline, but I have a personal demand, too. I believe the official story is the correct one. Lee Harvey did it alone, no doubt about it.

What I would like to know is when do we get enchantments? The "magic bullet" that killed Kennedy and seriously wounded Connally had to be enchanted, or it was shot from an enchanted rifle. And since the U.S. government got hold of the weapon, they must have figured out what kind of magic or enchantment was casted on that rifle by now. Please release the information / spell / enchantment / technology for the good of mankind!


Imagine what this kind of technology could do?


- Heart patients. When one of the veins that feed the heart gets blocked, we send a tiny probe injected in blood and it finds its way to the blockage and clears it out!
- Airplane safety. No more collisions with another planes nor with buildings when airplanes can stop mid-air, linger there for a second or two, take dramatic, more than 90 decree turns and fly away from danger!
- Car safety & bullet proof vests & other protection. When the bullet that had broken collar bones, bones in wrist, ribs, etc. and it still was in pristine condition, it must have an armour we have never seen before. They have the bullet, just check what kind of material it was and how it was made virtually indestructible. We need that for our safety.
- Baseball, basketball, soccer, football. Imagine how interesting ballgames would get if we have course changing, levitating balls.
- Flying cars and interstellar space travel. When objects don't need to obey gravity nor inertia and are virtually indestructible regardless of the impacts it endures, we could easily use the same technology first to flying cars and maybe later for interstellar space travel. If not interstellar, at least interplanetary.
The list can go on and on!

Of course this technology could be used for bullets as well, to make super-snipers that can with average skills shoot several bullets faster than normally possible towards moving targets with little or no aiming hitting several targets with one bullet, but I don't think we need that kind of technology.

Another thing, in order to be able to run home, run to kill Tippit, change direction, run to the theatre faster than humanly possible without losing breath must indicate Oswald was using very efficient performance enhancers. U.S. government had the body, too. By now they must have figured out which chemicals was in the body and how to reproduce them in order to improve human performance.

Release the new technology already!

No Hope For Mankind (Continued)

My colleague has even worse lighter than I do. Same brand, simpler model, yet it has instructions. If I can interpret correctly, the instructions are as follows:

Step 1: Press the button.

I don't know how I can manage this complicated set of instructions. My head is exploding!

This reminds me of a quote by Jack Handy:

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: 'Mankind'. Basically, it's made up of two separate words: 'mank' and 'ind'. What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.

How To Make Another Optical Illusion

I wrote yesterday about another optical illusion. (Saw it in Digg.) I guess it's time to explain how to do it. When I saw the image, big gears started to turn in my head, and it took me about 4,58863462564562 seconds to figure out how to do it in Photoshop. The lines makes the faded image on the background to lose contrast when you're close and to gain contrast when you are far away... Similar mechanics behind this illusion as in the first illusion, but not quite the same. I tested it and it worked. (Somehow.)

Oh, and a tip: You can look at the image from the side to see the effect from a closer range.

Preparations - Making A Texture

1. Make a new image, about 6px x 6px. Transparent.
2. Take black pen and draw vertical line from the top left to bottom left. 3px wide.
3. Save as PSD.

Making Of The Illusion

1. Take an image. Any image you like.
2. Desaturate. (Make it Black and White.)
3. Take out all the parts you don't like from the sides. Ie, the background.
4. Use Burn and Dodge tools and Brightness/Contrast to make the image as low in contrast as possible. (Don't mind about the brightness yet. Just make it gray(ish) and very low in contrast.)
5. Create a new layer and fill it with white.
6. Filter/Texture/Texturizer and load the PSD file. Light direction left, scaling 100% and relief 50 or as high as it goes. (From this point on your zoom needs to be 100%.)
7. Select/Color range/Pure white.
8. Press Delete.
9. Switch back to the bottom layer, with the image you want to vanish when you're close and appear when you go further away. Using Brightness/Contrast you can lower the contrast and make the brightness higher. Go far and close while having the Brightness/Contrast dialog open so you see from the preview when it's nice.

A vot. Horosho!

Another Optical Illusion

I saw another optical illusion today. I made a rough draft of it when I got home. It actually kinda works.

I like it when you see an image and pieces start immediately falling to their places.

Click to enlarge.

No Hope For Mankind

I got a new lighter. Didn't even look at it. Was having a ciggie, and noticed that this one has some sort of "child resistant" mark on it. And - get this - instructions how to use the lighter!

Child resistant mark, and a little holder on top of the scrolling bit to "protect" something. No it doesn't. You just have to apply like 0,5 Newtons more pressure when using the lighter. I think even a 3-year old child can apply that much pressure. Kids get picture-books before they learn to read. It's counter-productive to put instructions how to by-pass the child protection in images.

Besides, if an adult is too dumb to use a lighter, do we really want to give him fire?

This whole idea of child protection in a lighter is a dumb idea. It changes the responsibility of protecting the child away from parents to the cigarette lighter manufacturer. A parent who is too dumb to learn how to use a lighter on their own, and who has a 4-year old child should not have lighters in the house and especially should not have a child.

Anchovies And Banana Like Each Other

Yesterday I made some pizza. Anchovies, banana, green olives with basil and parsley. Yummy. Anchovies and banana are a killer combination.

Aphorism Of The Day Pt.14

My housemate, Jussi Niemi a.k.a. Ronsu had an idea. We were writing An Universal Peace Treaty between us, and this is the second clause in the peace treaty.

"All humans have the right to be super-heroes, as long as they don't hurt any innocent people."

I think this can be a tagline for the Watchmen movie...

Instant Karma!

Finland's Prime Minister was admitted to hospital last night for kidney stones. This must be karma. Just in time for the strike and mass-resignation you, Katainen and others caused! Have fun without proper health care.

Helsingin Sanomat (Fin) - Iltalehti (Fin)
Y Net (En) - YLE (En)

For those who don't know what's going on in Finnish health-care, here's an article.

Why Do We Only Belive Experts?

I've been writing about common sense before. Why is common sense a privilege of only higher educates? We do not believe anything, unless the person who says it is an expert in this area. You see it in every possible news article where any professor or any other "expert" is stating the obvious.

For example a psychologist descended from her pedestal among us mortals and stated that the 7/11 Jokela-School Shooting survived victims, families and the pupils of the school may need their privacy to recover from the tragedy. Really? We couldn't believe the pupil who said he doesn't want to give a statement, but needs his privacy instead? He's only a kid. What does he know? We actually needed a professional psychologist to give her professional opinion that in great tragedy it might not be helpful to have a media gore-galore running the lives of the involved...

Experts say that in very low temperatures it is recommended to dress warm. Really? My mom said that when I was a kid, I figured it out myself, too, when I was out in winter without enough clothes on, but still I didn't believe it until I heard it from a medical expert.

Can we please try to use our brains every now and then? Yes, I do know hitting your thumb with a hammer hurts. I don't need an expert telling me this, and I do not need hammer-usage regulations either.

Frogs In The Throath In Finnish

I opened a new blog, as I needed to write some things in Finnish. There are some things that cannot be translated, and some cultural issues that only native Finnish would understand. This will still remain my main blog, but every now and then there's going to be a post in the Finnish side as well. Perhaps.

http://sammakoitasuussa.blogspot.com/

Health-Care Collapsing In Finland

The Finnish salaries in health-care are a joke. For years our nurses have moved to Sweden or Norway, even to United Kingdom, after graduating, since the salaries in health-care are so ridiculously low it's better to move away from Finland.

3rd of June Bilderberg-meeting finished, which also our Minister of Finance, Jyrki Katainen attended. Prior to that meeting Katainen had been quite silent in the media. First thing he started to advocate after the meeting was to ease the heritage taxes for huge heritages. The second thing he started to push through was when 31st of July he announced that health-care won't be getting the salary increase he promised them during his campaign before the elections. He is the chairman of the Finnish National Coalition Party. (Conservative middle-right-wing party.)

The health-care professionals were promised a salary increase prior to the elections, which they were denied after the elections. (Big surprise there.) The negotiations went so sour they are threatening with a strike and mass-resignations. In spite of all of this, they still performed better than expected in the Jokela School Massacre or 7/11 Shootings. Within one hour from the info there's been shooting in the school the local hospitals had 18 operation rooms ready and dozens of ambulances there. They performed without a glitch.

They still won't be getting any salary increases. I really would like to know how Jyrki Katainen is feeling right now. What went through his mind when all went bad in Jokela, and still the underpaid, demotivated health-care specialists performed class-A treatment.

Government is planning a force-law to prevent nurses leaving the hospitals. Nurses are planning that if the law is passed, they leave health-care and won't be coming back. Nice going.

Tell me, Jyrki, what went through your mind when you saw from the news an ambulance, after an ambulance arriving to the school and altruistically helping the shocked children? How are you feeling today? Are you planning to give credit to our heroic health-care personnel?

Words are not enough at this point. I want to see some action.

And fast. They started to close down hospitals already!

Aphorism Of The Day Pt.13

I was reading Violent Acres fan-forum today and there was a lot of praise for her writings. Plenty of people said they love her, etc... Somehow this thing about her just popped in to my head today... I thought it was funny. (If indeed this is my idea... maybe I got it from somewhere and my subconscious just tells me it's my idea.)

She's my wet dream. Too bad the liquid is piss and vinegar.