Paranoid Theory 415: Sex Sells

Embarrassment Can Help Your Career.
Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton were both pretty, but remarkably talentless blonds headed for obscurity. If The Love Boat were still on the air they would have been guests long ago. But then, "leaked", "private" sex tapes rocketed them to super-star status with both their names in the top ten-percent of all-time Internet search terms.

People have long suspected that one or both starlets were secretly in on the release of the tapes in hopes of just this effect. Even if these two weren't involved, it's not hard to suspect this might not be a bad idea for those willing to do anything to promote themselves.

Disney Dollars
Nobody spends more time and effort developing their intellectual properties than the corporate sharks at Walt Disney Inc.

Currently, Disney's current hottest properties are High School Musical and Hanna Montana. Teeny Bopper stardom is short-lived though, so it's not hard to suspect that Disney might be very interested in discovering the next step to protect these cash cows.

Recently, Vanessa Anne Hudgens, one of the stars of High School Musical, had nude photos of herself leaked to the internet, making her name one of Google's hottest new search terms. Soon afterwards, photographs of Hanna Montana star Miley Cyrus' naked back were huge news, even making it as a "hot topic" on ABC's (a Disney Company) The View.

One Plus One Equals....
Cyrus is fifteen, Hudgens is eighteen. Now, I'm not saying that Walt Disney Inc. intentionally leaked scandalous photographs of these young stars to promote their careers, but there are millions of dollars at stake here and corporate slime-balls being what they are, you have to admit it's a possibility, no matter how sleazy.

If you're still not convinced, consider this: Britney Spears was once a Disney product before her hit song, Baby Hit Me One More Time went through the roof on the heels of its sexy MTV video.

All this might just be unfortunate coincidence, but you have to admit; as conspiracy theories go, this is a heck of a lot more likely than Newt Gingrich blowing up the Twin Towers
.

Shakespearean Trivia

I love Shakespeare.

Not the man from Stratford, he's pretty dull, but Shakespeare as a genre has it all. Mystery, Drama, politics, humor, love, beauty, melodrama, you get the idea.

Mental Floss blog published an article on little known facts about the bard's remarkable Scottish Play, Macbeth. Elizabeth Lunday even explains why it's called The Scottish Play.

Read the entire article here.

(image information: Victorian Actor, Sir Henry Irving as Macbeth)

Make your own Soapbox

If you're like me and enjoy sharing your opinions with a world that never asked for them, then you'll love this do-it-yourself soapbox paper model.

All you need is a printer, scissors and white glue to assemble this working model. You actually can stand on it and orate, but you have to be a very small person.

Available at Mike Hungerford's site.

Soapbox models also make great gifts for a know-it-all loved one.

What is Random?

The concept of Random chance is one of the cornerstones of atheism. It presumes that our existence comes as the result of random events impacting other random events rather than some sort of conceptual direction. The only problem is, random doesn't exist.

When we say "random" what we mean is that the outcome of an event is unknowable because it results from processes either unknown or so complex that they are virtually unknowable. That's a far cry from saying "stuff just happens". Stuff doesn't just happen, stuff happens as the result of other stuff.

Computers are really good at complex calculations, and among computers there is no such thing as random. For programs where we wish to introduce a random element, computers use a random number simulator because they cannot calculate random numbers on their own. It is just a simulation though, if you know how the random number generator works, then the outcome is completely predictable.

Now, saying there is no such thing as random is a long way from proving an anthropomorphic, paternalistic "God" who punishes sins and runs our lives like some sort of giant puppeteer, but knowing that nothing is truly random and that all things have a rational cause makes the existence of a higher power of some sort logical.