Category: Blogging

Humanity hasn’t physically evolved much since we took our current state, but over the years, we’ve found certain body parts and functions to serve less purpose than they previously had. So, we’ll assume evolution/natural selection will take care of some of these pesky things to bring us one step closer to perfection. And that’s when the aliens will return and deem us worthy to join them in intergalactic dominance.

We are fat these days for a couple of reasons, one of which is that early humans didn’t eat as often as we do today. Fat cells are the body’s emergency storage tank, which come in handy when there isn’t much to hunt along the Bering land bridge. Today, we’re sure to have meals more frequently than early humans (I’m hoping that no one in a drought-infested desert is reading this), meaning we don’t need excessive fat for survival reasons, especially since it’s now more likely to be unhealthy.

Of course, today we also eat fattier, processed foods and use our muscles less than we did thousands of years ago, but it’s clear that excessive fat no longer serves the same purpose that it once did. We should evolve based on how we currently live and will continue to live, so here’s thinking we’ll all develop higher metabolisms to more quickly burn of calories.

This isn’t because I don’t think mine are super cool since they grew in straight and give me that enhanced chew while eating, it’s because so many people get them removed for dental reasons, and about 35% of people don’t get them at all. Wisdom teeth: Gone.

We’re not entirely sure what the appendix was originally meant for, but we do know that we don’t need it, and we often have to remove it when suffering from appendicitis. Over time, it’ll shrivel up until it’s gone completely. Also, we already have something very similar looking elsewhere.

Goosebumps act as the mechanism for controlling the thick hair we no longer have, whether it’s because we’re cold or suddenly frightened. For instance, when a cat gets goosebumps, its hair stands straight up. When we get it, the cat laughs at us cause we’re clearly being pretenders.

Now, the other option here is to regain the thick hair to make the goosebumps useful again. But that’s not what we prefer, so let’s just get rid of them all together.

Testicles are temperature controlled. When they get too cold, the scrotum shrivels up, and vice versa. This was fine for early man, as their balls were more exposed to the elements. But today, under layers of clothing in temperature-controlled rooms, not to mention global warming, they remain loose, shifting as we walk, squooshing as we sit, forcing us to frequently adjust or scratch. The constant abuse will tell the body that its design is no longer practical. Eventually, the sperm will get used to the warmer temperatures and eventually enjoy 98.7 degrees of the body. At that point, the testicles and scrotum will permanently shrivel up into the body. No more scratching.

It’s been obvious over the past millennia or so that humankind no longer has sex for procreation purposes. At least, most of the time. In fact, many feminists believe they owe nothing to the survival of the human species and find the act of sperm fertilizing an egg to be a ‘violation’ of a their body because it’s not a conscious decision, even in circumstances when protection is not used. That is why they claim abortion is ‘self defense’ against an intruder. These are real arguments, folks (and facts, according to them).

So how will the human evolution movement handle this? Obviously, sperm can’t get written consent from the woman to fertilize an egg, and it’s still too soon to phase out the uterus in an attempt to please the feminists who want even more equality with men. So, women will grow some sort of permanent barricade that will flawlessly shoo away sperm. But not a problem for the survival of the species, folks, because we still have In-vitro fertilization. Or something else. I don’t know. Anything but a violation of the body and a self defense claim.

It was established in a Gunaxin poll that the Star Wars AT-AT Imperial Walker would defeat the Mûmakil from Lord of the Rings in a head-to-head fight. But that fight wasn’t completely fair because the AT-AT has guns and isn’t even alive. So in this installment of SW vs. LOTR, we’ll match up Fellowship of the Ring’s Balrog with Return of the Jedi’s Rancor. First, we’ll take a glimpse at each character.

The Rancor

Wookieepedia defines the Rancor as…

Rancors were large carnivorous reptomammals originating from the planet of Dathomir.

That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. If it weren’t for the expanded universe nonsense, we’d know Rancors to be large carnivorous reptomammals originating from the planet of Tatooine. Not even Jabba would pay to move one of those from one planet to the next, if that were even possible. Or maybe he did. I’d ask Stew but it’s really not all that important.

Anywho, here is the Rancor scene in Return of the Jedi, using the music from Jaws.

The Rancor’s Keeper

His name is Malakili, and he takes care of the Rancor in Jabba‘s Palace. He was played by actor Paul Brooke. Apparently, Chris Farley had yet to be discovered.

Analysis of the Rancor

Pros: He’s a big devilish beast from the Star Wars universe.

Cons: He was killed rather quickly by a Jedi Knight who didn’t even use Jedi powers to kill him. It was the ole’ slam-the-door-on-his-head trick. And he died when the door fell on him. Huh? That wouldn’t have killed the Balrog.

Balrog

The One Wiki to Rule Them All talks a whole lot about Balrogs and not just the one that appears in Moria in Fellowship of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about several, and Peter Jackson’s version engulfs the beast in flames. So what is it, exactly? Let’s just say… it’s a demon.

Analysis of the Balrog
Pros: He’s made of flame, and has a flaming whip and sword. He has no keeper. He’s not Jabba’s pet.
Cons: Gandalf killed him pretty easily, right?

Final Analysis

This is no match. The Balrog should easily defeat the Rancor in a fight. However, Star Wars fanboys outnumber Lord of the Rings fanboys, so the Rancor may stand a chance if people stick to voting for which movie they like better, as opposed to the actual damn question.

Have you ever searched for ‘Songs About Suicide’ in Google?

You’d be surprised how many people search for it. That search query, and variations of it, is searched several hundred times a day, maybe even a thousand or more times. A couple hundred a day land on my Gunaxin article that I wrote back in March of 2009. Do the math and it’s easily my most viewed article on Gunaxin. I’m not particularly happy that an article I wrote more than a year and a half ago is my most-viewed of 2010 but it’s not the worst thing in the world.

Anyway, this article is often the second link on Google’s results when people search for this. I would like to take this opportunity to give the middle finger to anyone who thinks they’re an ‘SEO expert’ because other than writing the article and filling out the standard metadata, I did NOTHING to ‘optimize’ this article to make it second in search results. Companies blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on so-called experts to do exactly what I do with very little effort. I wrote content that people are actually looking for, using the keywords they actually use, as opposed to shoving in ‘optimized’ keywords into content that people aren’t necessarily looking for (which is par for the course for SEO ‘professionals’). If SEO folks always had their way, web pages would be filled with nonsensical words, phrases and internal links with little to no emphasis on good, useful content (aka stuff people actually want to find). The article would be first in Google results when people type those words. Then, when the user lands on the page, they’ll wonder ‘What the hell is this?’ then hastily close the page. Believe it or not, this happens, as my old company was notorious for this, and even launched pages with absolutely no quality assurance for anything other than keywords. They’re morons and failures, because ultimately, Google knew better than to allow those pages to reach the upper tiers of search results. But they did a great job purchasing keywords for Google results! Pretty sad, actually.

Moving on. Why did I wrote ‘Top Ten Songs About Suicide?’ For the same reason I wrote ‘Best Rock Songs About Bells’ and ’50 Rock Songs That Defined the 90s.’ People like reading song lists. But why such a subject? Because, there happen to be several really good songs about suicide, many of which are mainstream rock songs. Stick them on a list and read it. People would read the War and Peace if it were written in list form on the Internet.

How did I pick the songs? Some were no-brainers, others I had to research a bit. Wikipedia even keeps track of these songs. I picked, relatively speaking, the most popular.

So anyway, there you have it. My top article of 2010 was one from 2009, one that hundreds of people land on daily, particularly during the holidays.

About ten years ago, while I was working at the washingtonpost.com sports department, a colleague and I were talking and decided to make a page about crime and sports. It is:

A roundup of stories involving athletes, coaches and fans who run afoul of the law, including updates on charges, trials, fines and investigations.

My boss, Bill Grant, approved, and decided to call it the Jurisprudence page. There was only one catch: We couldn’t spend any time updating it because we had better things to do, so I had to automate it using search logic.

When I originally made it, I had to program it so it fetched certain keywords so the article was about sports (which are well-coded) AND crime (which are not well-coded). That was difficult, but I did it. Later, we were given out-of-the-box ‘topics’ so I got to reprogram the page to fetch articles about sports (again, easy) AND about ‘Crime’ (using the out-of-the-box logic, not mine).

In 2005, we upgraded content management systems again, and once again I had the chance to reprogram the logic to fetch these articles.

I’m proud to say that more than five years later, this link, likely with the original logic, is still up and running on the side of washingtonpost.com’s sports section.

Note: In 2011, this page ceased to operate after The Post installed a new CMS. It had a good run!

As I mentioned on my now unused blog on wordpress.com, I’ve started this site, benjaminsumner.com, only because it’s fully hosted and I have complete control over it. That means instead of being limited to free features, I can do what I want. The first thing I did was use the same template I’ve used on my Screaming Squirrels Hockey site, because it’s a great template which has a built-in slideshow on the front page.

So, for now on, I’ll be updating this blog instead of the last one, and I’ll be migrating things from my free lousy Google Sites to this one.