Sim Atheists

So as I mentioned before, I bought Sims 3 this week. Usually I make myself and then a bunch of my friends, and then scatter celebrities (fictional and non) around the neighborhood. There’s just something oddly amusing about playing chess with Johnny Depp and marrying Harry Potter (or whatever).

Well, Sims 3’s editing options are so detailed that you can really make Sims look like the original person. So my odd mind obviously thought, “Why don’t I make a house full of famous atheist Sims?” Enjoy:
Sim Richard Dawkins
Attributes: Genius, Bookworm, Good sense of humor, Charismatic, Ambitious
Life wish: Become leader of the free world (Dawkins being in charge? Yes please.)

Sim Hemant Mehta
Attributes: Friendly (duh), Good, Charismatic, Vegetarian, Family Oriented (Was going to pick Hopeless Romantic or Flirt, but cheated a bit to make his life wish easier…)
Life wish: Have five children and raise them to teens (With all of Hemant’s baby posts, I found this oddly appropriate. Not quite his goal of octuplets, but close! Let’s see if he can restrain from eating them before they reach adulthood.)Sim PZ Myers
Attributes: Genius, Bookworm, Good sense of humor, Charismatic, Computer Whiz
Life wish: Become a creature-robot crossbreeder (Dear lord I nearly peed my pants when this choice came up. How could I NOT choose that for PZ?)

I can’t explain how much entertainment this has provided me over the last couple of days. It’s fun enough with all three of them sharing a house, but there are just so many little things. All of PZ’s outfits (formal wear, pajamas, etc) use the squid themed print I found, which was what initially spawned this terrifying idea of atheist sims. I’m still trying to find Hemant a baby mama, since that’s kind of necessary for his life goal (I promise to find someone cute!). The only real disturbing thing is whenever the Sims need to shower or use the bathroom. I mean, they blur it out so you can’t see any naughtiness going on, but I feel like a creepy voyeur. Of course, I don’t know if it can get much creepier than making Sims of random people you don’t really know and then controlling their lives like some sort of sick puppet master.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go hide in shame from being such a weirdo. Aka, go play more Sims. *runs off*

PS: You can click the images for larger versions, if you wish.

Curse you addictive video games!

Oh good lord, what have I done? Why? Why?!?!

…I bought Sims 3 today.

I played the original Sims back when I was 14 or so, and never got Sims 2 because my computer was too crappy. But now I have a snazzy computer and disposable income, so I thought why not? Now I’m forgetting to eat and sleep because I’m too busy telling a virtual version of myself to eat and sleep. I spent an hour and a half trying to make Sim Jen look as much like me as possible. Hell, there are probably 30 different facial traits and bone structures and crap that you can tweak. Gahhhh.

The ironic part? My current job is “Professional Blogger” and I still can’t get any guys to like me. Damnit, Sims 3. You’re supposed to be an escape from real life, not a brutally honest reflection of it. Oh well, at least I haven’t set fire to my real stove (yet).

I think it’s time to start making Sim versions of celebrities for me to hit on. Suggestions? I kind of want to make a mad scientist PZ as my neighbor. They even have squid themed pajamas!

I’m an equal opportunity nerd offender

And for those of you who think I may have it out for Star Trek, you should know I’m almost as stupid about Star Wars. I still have yet to see the three original films in their entirety. It’s one of those things where I’ve seen all of them through bits and pieces over about a 15 year period, but I have no concept of how they go together and I’ve forgotten the majority of it. To show my ignorance, I will admit the girl in the following video has a MUCH more coherent grasp on the movies than I do. Now that I’ve covered my bases and offended my entire readership (and lost my Geek Card), watch the hilarious video:

I'm an equal opportunity nerd offender

And for those of you who think I may have it out for Star Trek, you should know I’m almost as stupid about Star Wars. I still have yet to see the three original films in their entirety. It’s one of those things where I’ve seen all of them through bits and pieces over about a 15 year period, but I have no concept of how they go together and I’ve forgotten the majority of it. To show my ignorance, I will admit the girl in the following video has a MUCH more coherent grasp on the movies than I do. Now that I’ve covered my bases and offended my entire readership (and lost my Geek Card), watch the hilarious video:

Star Trek & Angels and Demons

I hadn’t seen a movie in theaters in ages, but I actually saw two today! Two different groups of friends wanted to go at different times. Hooray. The first one was Star Trek, so now all my geeky friends can finally stop bugging me to see it. I really liked it, but keep in mind I’ve never seen a second of old Star Trek episodes or movies before seeing this one. The extent of my knowledge was basically:

-Spock is supposed to be logical
-Klingons are angry and have their own language that uber-geeks learn
-The phrase “beam me up Scotty”
-The silly hand salute thing that’s hard to do
-Trekkies like to go around screaming “KHHAAAANNN” for reasons I do not understand

Now that I’ve offended every Trekkie out there… *ahem* I’m sure someone who’s expecting something in particular has their gripes with the film. I know I’m uber nitpicky when it comes to Harry Potter. But, as a Star Trek n00b, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie from an entertainment point of view. Though I have to admit, I was oddly unnerved by how sexy Zachary Quinto’s Spock was. Not quite sure I’m supposed to be having those feelings about Spock, but yum. Oh, and who else thought every time Spock got annoyed he was going to start slicing peoples heads open and stealing their powers?

Noooo, not teh kitteh! Why do you need nine lives when you can never die?!?!

I also saw Angels and Demons, which I thought was pretty good. Definitely better than the DaVinci Code, but that’s not saying much. Now, I know people like to harp on Dan Brown, but I genuinely enjoy his novels. He’s no Shakespeare, but his plots are entertaining page turners so you can stfu if you think I’m dumb for liking them. Anyway, like I said the movie was pretty good – probably helped that I read the book years ago, so I didn’t remember it well enough to be super critical. Tried not to cringe too much at all the antimatter stupidity and told myself to suspend disbelief for a bit. I really liked the idea that God sent an atheist intellectual professor (Langdon) to save all of Catholicism – how ironic.

The one thing that bugged me was that it seemed to have a big “Science and religion are compatible, and when you think they’re not, that’s when you have problems!” message. It’s not that I just disagree with this – but the very premise of the movie seemed to disagree with it. I mean, it was anti-science Catholics versus pro-science Catholics (the Illuminati), not versus atheistic scientists. Heck, the two irreligious characters are the only ones not murdering and blowing things up – they’re actually saving the day. Maybe people will get that message out of the movie instead of the one the film trying to jam down their throat.

I now believe in God, and his name is Wolfram Alpha

Holy shit watch the overview of what this new site can do. It’s like Google and Wikipedia had a baby genius. So…much…data! *nerdgasm*

While every other person is probably spending their weekend drinking or playing videogames or having sex, I will be entering random questions into this website. I mean, I was pretty much sold at its abilities to do integrals, but searching genomes for a certain DNA sequence? Hell yeah.

Wolfram Alpha, I love you.

I love when internet culture sneaks into real life

As I was leaving my programming exam in the computer science building tonight, I noticed they had put up a new kiosk outside. We staple flyers to these things to advertise for events and such. Student groups (including ours) have been whining for a while now that there aren’t enough on campus, so I was pretty excited to see a new one. I was more excited when I read the lone flyer someone had pinned on.Wait a second, what does that say? Let’s zoom in a bit:
I love internet culture so much. I should expect nothing less from computer science students, but I still love it. I feel like I’m in some secret club that only the cool kids know about. Good to know we have silly comment trolls for tangible objects.

(And I apologize for the crappy photos. Only had my camera on me, and I got out of my exam at 9 pm)

So…close to being done… gah…

The finish line to the semester is in sight… Just pooped out my two extra credit papers for Learning, have to sit through two more classes (very sad that Evolution of Behavior is ending…best class EVER), hastily finish my genetics assignment and email it to the prof before 5 pm, type away at my programming assignment and turn it in before 10 pm… though I’m almost done, so it shouldn’t take that long…gahhhh…. must… hold on…. crawl across the finish line on my hands and knees… finals don’t even matter …*sputter* *collapse*

I will do a little celebratory dance when I submit my final python programming assignment. It was a stupid introductory 100 level class, yet it was harder than my 500 level biology classes. Sadness. I just don’t think I have the brain for programming, as I’m really not mathematically oriented. Not to mention computers are like a magical black box to me. I want to be able to random push buttons and have stuff happen, not actually think how to make the computer do that. Sadness. Oh well. I have to admit I did learn a lot, though probably not enough to actually write useful programs.

On a lighter note, my TA for that class that grades our lab assignments is a club member (and now the Society of Non-Theists secretary, woo) and friend, so I left her a little present in our comment section:

As if Wikipedia wasn’t addictive enough…

Micek’s Tumblelog points out the fun and addictive nature of playing 6 degrees of separation using Wikipedia. The object of the game is to pick two random articles and see who can connect them using the fewest links. The game makes sense, since the nature of Wikipedia is to start looking up avacados and ending up reading about the bubonic plague. My friend and I have been playing against each other. For example:

Robert Hawkins > Pennsylvania > Lehigh University > Anthropology > Paleoanthropology > GHR von koenigswald > NG 6

For shits and giggles, let’s see who can get from Avacado to Bubonic Plague in the shortest amount of steps.

EDIT: Holy crap you guys are too good. That’s what happens when I don’t pick truly random articles. Ok, have a challenge:

Battle of Montreal to Barangay Health Volunteers, Phillippines

As if Wikipedia wasn't addictive enough…

Micek’s Tumblelog points out the fun and addictive nature of playing 6 degrees of separation using Wikipedia. The object of the game is to pick two random articles and see who can connect them using the fewest links. The game makes sense, since the nature of Wikipedia is to start looking up avacados and ending up reading about the bubonic plague. My friend and I have been playing against each other. For example:

Robert Hawkins > Pennsylvania > Lehigh University > Anthropology > Paleoanthropology > GHR von koenigswald > NG 6

For shits and giggles, let’s see who can get from Avacado to Bubonic Plague in the shortest amount of steps.

EDIT: Holy crap you guys are too good. That’s what happens when I don’t pick truly random articles. Ok, have a challenge:

Battle of Montreal to Barangay Health Volunteers, Phillippines