A page for randomness

The series “Robocars” will be premiering tonight at 9pm (Central time) on the Discovery Science Channel.  The show follows ten teams of top engineers from around the U.S. compete for a $2 million grand prize, struggling to build the first vehicle to drive itself through an urban environment and features Team CajunBot.

Here is the schedule and episode descriptions:

July 14th 9-10pm - Episode 1 - follows Stanford Racing, Tartan Racing, Team Jefferson, Team Gray and The Golem Group as they prepare for the Urban Challenge and pass through the DARPA site visits.

July 21st 9-10pm - Episode 2 - follows Highlander Racing, Team Oshkosh, Team Cajunbot, Team MIT, and Team Case as they prepare for the Urban Challenge and pass through the DARPA site visits.  The show ends with DARPA announcing the teams who made it to the semi-finals.

July 28th 9-10pm - Episode 3 - covers the semi-finals.  Stanford Racing, Tartan Racing, Team Jefferson, Team Gray, The Golem Group, Team Oshkosh, Team Cajunbot, Team MIT and Team Case are all included.  The show ends with DARPA announcing the teams who made it to the finals.

August 4th 9-10pm - Epiosde 4 - covers the finals.  Stanford Racing, Tartan Racing, Team MIT, and Team Oshkosh are all included.

August 11th  8-10pm - Episodes 5 and 6 - The first hour is a summary of the last four episodes and the second hour focuses on futuristic car technology and contains excerpt from the DARPA Urban Challenge.

Read more: Welcome to the CajunBot Lab website.

Fox Attacks! - Obama (part II)

Fox Attacks! - Obama

Use ffmpeg to convert flv to mpg:

ffmpeg -i old-file.flv new-file.mpg

Use mplayer to copy mp3 from flv

mplayer -dumpaudio old-file.flv -dumpfile new-file.mp3

Script to speed things up:

(more…)

It doesn’t.

Video by Pat Condell:

Video by Pat Condell:

Religion or cult? (Like there’s a difference)

Pat Condell talks about Scientology.

Favorite song #2 of the week:

www.dj-project.ro

Favorite song #1 of the week:

US ‘doomed’ if creationist president elected: scientists

A day after ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee finished first in the opening round to choose a Republican candidate for the White House, scientists warned Americans against electing a leader who doubts evolution.

“The logic that convinces us that evolution is a fact is the same logic we use to say smoking is hazardous to your health or we have serious energy policy issues because of global warming,” University of Michigan professor Gilbert Omenn told reporters at the launch of a book on evolution by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

“I would worry that a president who didn’t believe in the evolution arguments wouldn’t believe in those other arguments either. This is a way of leading our country to ruin,” added Omenn, who was part of a panel of experts at the launch of “Science, Evolution and Creationism.”

Former Arkansas governor Huckabee said in a debate in May that he did not believe in evolution.

A poll conducted last year showed that two-thirds of Americans believe in creationism, or the theory that God created humans at a single point in time, while 53 percent believe that humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life — the theory of evolution.

Around a quarter of Americans said they believe in both.

The evolution versus creationism debate has crept into school classrooms and politics, where it is mainly conservative Republicans who espouse the non-scientific belief.

“If our country starts to behave irrationally whereas all the other countries coming up and chasing us (to take over as the world leaders in science and technology) behaving rationally, we are doomed,” Omenn said.

The book targets teachers and the general public, and presents in simple terms the current scientific understanding of evolution and the importance of teaching it in the science classroom.

A day after his win in Iowa, Huckabee, toned down his anti-evolution stance, saying in a television interview that the question of whether to teach creationism in schools was “not an issue for our president.”

Omenn and the other scientists and teachers on the panel at the book launch were more categorical, saying creationism has no place in science classrooms.

“Scientific inquiry is not about accepting on faith a statement or scriptural passage. It’s about exploring nature, so there really is not any place in the science classroom for creationism or intelligent design creationism,” said Omenn.

“We don’t teach astrology as an alternative to astronomy, or witchcraft as an alternative to medicine,” said Francisco Ayala, a professor of biological sciences at the University of California, Irvine.

“We must understand the difference between what is and is not science. We must not teach creationism as an alternative to evolution,” he said.

YouTube - Star Trek Cribs - The Directors Cut

YouTube - The Number 24

Computer desktop of the future?