hotstuff with a hatpin: google suggests makes me giggle, no exit makes me cackle, self-awareness makes me uncomfortable

Something to do: I don't know why, but "Google suggests" faux-pas's always make me giggle. The Huff Post has a list of them today: Most Inappropriate Google Suggests of All Time. Here's another list from a couple weeks ago: 11 Things Google Should Atone for on its 11th Anniversary. Try them out and giggle for yourself!

Something to read: The New Republic's latest article on Betsy McCaughey, No Exit. I was not aware of the whole sordid history of her political career during the '90's. She sounds like the most unpleasant kind of loon, and a lot like Sarah Palin, but perhaps smarter. The article starts out a bit insulting, describing the way this 60-year-old woman dressed as like an "on-the-prowl cougar" because she wears "short, high-slit skirts, revealing blouses, and spike heels". I have trouble believing that she was actually wearing truly revealing clothing. Come on, she's 60! Anyways, after that, the article was informative to me, and fun to read. I was aware of her TNR article during the 90's, and her more recent health care reform misinformation, and I saw her performance on The Daily Show. But the stories of her stint as lieutenant governor of New York and her campaign for governor were quite interesting and entertaining. I recommend it.

Something to let fester in your mind: I read a long time ago about how people distance themselves from people they are talking about by saying things like "Your friend Tiberius called" rather than saying "Tiberius called". The example I read about was how Bill Clinton used "this woman" instead of Monica Lewinsky back in the day. I do this distancing all the time cuz I am shy and feel the need to distance myself from everyone but my closest friends and family. And now that I am aware of it, I notice it and cringe at my own cowardice. I told Kyle about this earlier today, and have succeeded in making him self-conscious as well. I hate being aware of stuff.

[Image from Huffington Post]

hotstuff with a hatpin links of the day

If you haven't read the New Yorker piece "Trial by Fire" about the execution of Todd Willingham, you should. It is terribly disturbing, and everyone should be able to put a human face on the permanency of wrongful execution. Today, Ta-Nehisi Coates posted some videos from Nightline and CNN, with interviews with the prosecutor (now a judge (!)) and the fire investigator, who are both still adamant in their self-delusional fantasies.

On a lighter note, Virginia has the greatest state flag I've ever seen:

This is one point in favor of moving to Virginia. More good flags are listed on BuzzFeed. I am also partial to the Benin Empire's flag.

Other stuff to look at: Einstein's letter, in which he writes:

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ... For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstition.

Okay, that's it for today! Back to work for me!

photosketch

Composition results, Chen et al., Siggraph Asia, 2009

Today's link: PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage, published in SIGGRAPH Asia, 2009, appeared on a number of mainstream blogs today. Looks like a cool interface! There is no demo available, so it is hard to say how well it works. The basic idea is summarized in this video:

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.

The user specifies a background type, then sketches and names a few foreground objects. The background image is chosen based on flickr, google, or yahoo tags, consistency clustering, and an "uncluttered region" heuristic. The foreground images and segments were chosen using flickr etc. tags, a saliency heuristic, grab-cut, and, importantly, the sketched outline. They seem to put a lot of effort into the stitching & blending step. In any case, implementation aside, it is a pretty impressive end-to-end system, even with a limited set of object types. They tested it with novice users, which is impressive. Maybe that's the standard for SIGGRAPH -- certainly not for vision conferences. I'm guessing the system is still far from being deployable to the masses at this point, so "nutbastard" will have to wait to get his Death Star-zombie-Monty Python-nerd epic rendered. But, I look forward to it when it is ready for the mainstream!