Yeah, so There’s this Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Guy…

…and he’s the president of this place called Iran. As I’m sure you know, he was recently invited to give a speech at Columbia University. Lots of people protested because he doesn’t like Israel, is a conspiracy theorist, and is accused of funding terrorism. When he went up to the podium, he was asked some very pointed questions about these things. Eloquently, and with technique exceeding many of our own politicians, he completely dodged every question posed.

And he said that gay people don’t exist in Iran.

Guffaw.

In the end, he came, he spoke about nothing, left, and now I’m going to have to list to the damned news reports over and over again about how controversial this all was. <_<

Astrology Versus Evolution?

I was doing some research for an upcoming post when I stumbled on an, erm, “interesting” banner ad at some creationist website.

All I have to say is “…WTF?” o_0

Some Fractals I Generated

Ever since I first heard of them, when Ian Malcom mentioned them in the Jurassic Park novel, I have been fascinated by Fractals. A while back I had managed to find a program that allowed me to generate my own nifty looking fractal images. Unfortunately I had lost it a long time ago.

Well, about a week ago, I had been browsing through some old back-up data CDs when, much to my delight, I found that program again. The program is called Fractal Explorer, and I would definitely reccommend that you give it a download if you think fractals are cool. Below are about a dozen 768 x 1024 wallpaper sized images that I created using Fractal Explorer. Feedback is welcome.

Oh, and if you want to put these up on your site, or distribute them or whatever, then I’d be absolutely flattered. Just give me, Abyssal, credit. No stealing my glory!

“Anneres”

Soulstorm Legacy Avatars

Instead of actually working on my RPG Maker game, Soulstorm Legacy, I used to enjoy wasting my time making stupid promotional things like forum avatars and signatures, not to mention some horrendous looking wallpaper. The other day I found two old forum avatars that I made but never honestly intended to use, and since they looked decent (or at least didn’t make me want to gag), I figured I post them here. After all, if I just leave them on my hard drive, they’d just have gone to waste, now wouldn’t they?

This one is of the main character, Choler Baigonne (may end being changed to Bygonne). Not too exciting, and I think that I laterally compressed the faceset a little to make it fit in the frame. But, eh, not horrible, I guess. The main reason I posted this was because I liked the frame.

This guy is Ramic Ordellus, another hero from SsL. His faceset is probably one of the best I ever made (well, actually edited from some of Roco’s stuff). It’s got a bunch of modifications and color swaps and a new bandana and all kinds of fun stuff like that. And like the Choler one, the main reason I even kept it is because that translucency effect in the frame is kind of nifty.

I Visited CARM Yesterday…

Yesterday I made a mistake. I visited the CARM forums. If you’re not familiar with these guys (consider yourself lucky), CARM is the “Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry” site. They’re a conservative-leaning apologetics site with some humorously stupid defenses of Young Earth Creationism. And a message board.

I Caught a Snake on 9-04-07

I really like reptiles. I think they are absolutely beautiful, which is unfortunate considering that the only common reptile in my home state of Michigan is the garter snake. And they were rare. I could probably count the number of wild snakes I had seen during my entire life there on my hands. Maybe even just one hand. And honestly garter snakes aren’t all that exciting as far as reptiles go. Luckily, in West Virginia we have a lot more in the native reptile species department. We have skinks… and snakes, plenty of snakes. Some of which are venomous.

The Baraminology of Negroes

While doing some research for another post, I stopped by CreationWiki’s page on Baraminology. Much to my surprise I found the rather amusing quote which has been included below:

Monobaramin (mono, from the Greek for single or one). The term monobaramin is defined by Walter ReMine (1993, p. 444) as: a group containing only organisms related by common descent, but not necessarily all of them. (A group comprising one entire holobaramin or a portion thereof). It is an ad hoc group of organisms who share common descent. Caucasians and Negros are a monobaramin, as are any group of a holobaramin such as wolves, poodles, and terriers. Holobaramins contain monobaramins; for instance, wolves are a monobaramin of the Dog holobaramin.

XD I thought the word “Negro” fell out of casual use like fifty years ago! Forgive me for stereotyping and all that stuff, but I have the feeling that the guy that penned that line is a white far-rightwing closet racist from Georgia. Seriously, nobody except that kind of person talks like that any more, let alone write something like that in a fundie Christian encyclopedia. The quote’s not actually racist or anything, but that was a weird way for the author to make his point. And it certainly brought a smile to my face.

“As Spammy as my Namesake” -Abyssal_leviathin

When I was about thirteen, I really got into dinosaurs again (the Pokemon fad temporarily supplanted my interest in paleontology), and since my friends had no interest whatsoever in that kind of thing, I had to go online to be able to talk to my fellow paleogeeks. In the history of the internet there seem to have been very few successful dinosaur-themed message boards.

However, Yahoo! Groups were an interesting exception to the rule. There were a lot of active sites where people like me *shudder* could congregate and chew the fat about trends in dromaeosaurid evolution and the implications of particular paleopathological specimens and their implications for dinosaur diets. Y’know, the normal things adolescents like to talk about.