Humor4u

When dogs howl at night, it's not the full moon  that sets them off. Dogs are communicating  for all sorts of reasons. We're just not all that good at understanding what they're saying. We make so many mistakes about attributing cause and effect  for so many reasons , that it's almost surprising we get it right as often as we do. But all those mistaken beliefs we realize we have, don't seem to teach us a lesson.  Pretty soon after catching ourselves out, we're at it again, taking mental shortcuts, being cognitive misers . It's so pervasive, you would think we would know this about ourselves, at least, even if we don't understand dogs. Yet we commonly under-estimate how much bias is affecting our beliefs. That's been dubbed the bias blind spot that we (allegedly) tend to live in. Even taking all that into account, "effect" is an astonishingly over-used word, especially in research and science communication where you would hope people would ...

The mission of the 2045 initiative is the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity. Remember when specie, yes even us, would evolve in response to prevailing conditions and the mystical union of genes? Well apparently we are not shaping up as quickly or as sophisticated enough for at least one group of "thinkers." Given their preference... the messy business of being a biological life-form is far from satisfactory and we need to be "developed" away from that unpredictable state apparently. They may be having control issues with us, or anticipate foolish resistance? I don't know anyone off hand personally... who wishes to be developed into something other than a regular human individual This makes me wonder who and what these "developer" folk are? What is there driving motivation and should they really be in charge of steering our next iteration when I see no urgent call to be morphed into techno-critters from the gener...

Like my previous DevBytes episode, Anticipation and Overshoot, Part I ," this episode covers cartoon animation techniques for making UI elements more engaging and playful. The code in this episode shows how to change and animate how a button is drawn to make it seem more alive and organic. This and other cartoon animation techniques were discussed in the talk A Moving Experience at Google I/O 2013. Code: http://developer.android.com/shareables/devbytes/Anticipation.zip YouTube: DevBytes: Anticipation and Overshoot - Part 2

Since we just released Android 4.3 yesterday, I thought I'd wax poetic about one of the features I worked on in the release: Overlays. Android devs Come out to play: Use the new ViewOverlay. There are many ways to get custom graphics (drawables) to appear in a view. You can set a background drawable if that's what you want, or you can use an ImageView, or you can create a custom View subclass and override onDraw(). Or if you want to draw them over the children in a layout, you can override the layout and override dispatchDraw() to draw them after all of the children (after a call to super.dispatchDraw()). But sometimes you just want something simpler: ViewOverlay . Here's how it works: You call View.getOverlay() , which returns a ViewOverlay object. Then you call add(Drawable) on that overlay object... and that's it. You can also call remove(Drawable) to get rid of the drawable or clear() to get rid of everything in the overlay, but that's the entire API. The only o...

If you are a benefactor of larceny this post will be of little interest to you, unless you are curious as to coming fate. For the rest of us, forgive us if we seem cynical, deceived and violated. In more equitable times, you the scofflaw would be subject to prosecution if not persecution. Today however... you... the cheat, thief and liar have gained control of justice and ride high above the reach of the law. You are backstopped by compromised government and corrupt politicians and hide within the skirts of corporate fortresses. That is today... tomorrow may be a different kettle of fish, for the light of right and the weight of might are taking notice and your fun on the sunny side of the street may well soon expire.   You have become brazen and sloppy with your crime spree. At the moment your scurrilous antics are described by corporate owned media as those of naughty children, words such as scandal, rigging, rascally and tainted substitute for...

Some principles of cartoon animation can be used to provide more engaging and more interactive experiences in applications. This episode demonstrates principles of anticipation and overshoot with a simple button click, showing how to animate changes in the button's appearance to make it interact more playfully with the user. This and other cartoon animation techniques were discussed in the talk A Moving Experience at Google I/O 2013 Code: http://developer.android.com/shareables/devbytes/LiveButton.zip YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ7PTe7QMQM

Pizza Politics--Your pie is wrong! Too bad. In days gone by I thought I understood democracy... at least the base principles of it. It seemed simple enough, Guided by wise constitutional laws, citizens elected their representation, the representation implemented and guarded the wishes of the people, and everyone lived happily after. For the past few years I have increasingly had qualms about the integrity of today's pale version of democracy. Day by day as alarming events unfold... I have nagging doubts about the sanctity, purity and intent of the uses for "our" democratic shield and its spear. It seems the new world order version of democracy is 180 degrees counter to the genuine "articles"... and THAT is what I am now subjected to. Over time something sadly and badly has transformed wholesome pie to inedible swill ... an insidious creeping blight of perversion and corruption, the crust is mouldy, the toppings, withered, sparse or wrong! Formally, one had the s...