Big Pickles

Glee vs. Copyright

2010-06-10T10:40:00.003-06:00

Just read an interesting article about how the kids in Glee engage in all kinds of behavior that violates copyright, and how that show is being brought to us by one of the mainstream media networks that tries to curb such behavior.

So, Fox, is it cool to mash-up pop music in violation of copyright or not? Because you're giving us mixed messages here.

Introversion

2010-06-01T13:43:00.002-06:00

Had to post this because in the first paragraphs he admits to two introverted behaviors that I have recently engaged in (plus I think I might still have that issue of the Atlantic):

1) Deleting his Facebook account

2) Playing with his cell phone to avoid social interaction.

I've often wondered at what point introversion crosses over into asocial.

(via Kottke)

Facebook

2010-05-17T13:04:00.002-06:00

I know, it's been a long time.

I quit Facebook recently. I wasn't really using it all that much, and with all the recent privacy concerns I just decided to shut it down.

If you, on the other hand, want to keep using Facebook and you value your privacy, then check out ReclaimPrivacy.org.

You drag that little "Scan for Privacy" link up to your bookmarks, log into Facebook, and then click on it, and it tells you your weaknesses, privacy-wise.

Between The Folds

2009-12-10T19:45:00.001-06:00

I thought of Suzanne when I saw this.

The Noughtie List

2009-12-08T15:23:00.001-06:00

Kottke has assembled a bunch of end-of-decade best-of lists. This will take some time to get through.

The Jobless Rate for People Like You

2009-11-18T08:53:00.003-06:00

My demographic has the second-lowest unemployment rate. Women of my age, race, and education are slightly more employed.

New Blog

2009-11-06T13:47:00.002-06:00

I don't know who Dustin Curtis is, but I'm enjoying his blog. Lots of ideas that I'd considered before but never quite articulated, you know?

Start at the bottom.

What do you call various Lego pieces?

2009-11-05T23:10:00.001-06:00

Every family has their own naming system.

The very last one is totally a headlight piece. Or am I the only one?

Bath time

2009-10-28T07:51:00.002-06:00

Last night I'm giving Timothy a bath right after he watched the Great Pumpkin special on TV.

"Dad, why does Linus keep going to the pumpkin patch when the Great Pumpkin never comes?"

"Because he thinks the Great Pumpkin will come next time."

"But the Great Pumpkin isn't real."

"Lots of people believe in things that aren't real."

"I don't."

"Yes, you do."

Then he looks up at me and his voice gets quiet. "Santa Claus?"

I neither confirmed nor denied, but I have to admit that it's fun to see the wheels turning.

Lies We Tell Our Kids

2009-10-16T14:50:00.004-06:00

I think I've linked to a couple of Paul Graham essays before. He seems to have a way of zeroing in on the heart of complex matters.

In Lies We Tell Our Kids, he doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, but he presents it in a straightforward manner that can sometimes be unnerving. As a parent, it really gets me thinking about the influence I can have in shaping my kids' view of the world.

I especially liked the last footnote. It's amazing how early teenagers begin lying to their parents for the same reasons their parents lied to them just a few years earlier: the truth would freak them out. It's not to avoid getting in trouble, but to spare their parents from knowing things that might devastate them.

Washington politics

2009-09-15T11:12:00.004-06:00

Let me get this straight.

There are two regulatory agencies overseeing stock and futures trading: the Securities and Exchange Commission, created in 1934, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, created in 1974.

Are you with me so far?

A year after the financial crisis, as lawmakers are trying to come up with ways to reform the financial sector, it has been proposed that these two agencies be combined into a single entity.

Republicans think this is a great idea.

Democrats think this is a great idea.

The SEC and CFTC both think this is a great idea.

But it will never happen, because it's politically impossible.

How can that be? Quite simply, it's impossible to get a committee chairman in Congress to give up power. If the two agencies were combined, the CFTC would no longer fall under the purview of the Agriculture committee, and that chairman would lose power in the form of lobbyist attention and special interest donations, among other things. Apparently, this is such a distasteful thing for a committee chairman to have to endure that they are able to marshal incredible forces to keep it from happening.

And so it can never happen. Even though virtually everyone else in the federal government thinks it would be a great idea.

It makes me wonder why we even bother evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments for the various positions on all the pressing issues before Congress, when in the final analysis, whether or not good policy is enacted depends on entirely on something so stupid as one committee chairman's self-interest.

Fort Worth Bike Plan

2009-08-27T13:21:00.007-06:00

Melissa and I recently did a 20-mile bike ride that included parts of downtown Fort Worth. It's a beautiful city in many ways, if you've never had a chance to see it.

We mostly rode along the Trinity River, and took a short break at the Water Gardens.

I thought downtown Fort Worth was a pretty fun place to ride in traffic, but hopefully it's about to get better. The city is proposing several bike-friendly improvements that it hopes will encourage both commuting and recreational biking.

More Health Care

2009-08-14T14:08:00.003-06:00

I wanted to post a link to the article that Dan referred to in his last comment. I read it just yesterday and it's chock full of good ideas. It's an op-ed in the WSJ by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. (Seriously, though, I've got to get off politics and back to baby pictures pretty soon, this stuff just weighs on you after a while...)

I think Mackey highlights the philosophical underpinnings of the health care debate when he says:

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America.

That's the widely-held view of the American right, and I certainly understand it and mostly agree with it. But I also understand why not everyone does. Here's an op-ed by British columnist Ian Dunt that expressed the opposite view:

Besides, basic human decency makes a debate over 'socialised healthcare', as the American right calls it, utterly irrelevant. If healthcare isn't a right - rather than a privilege – then I don't know what is. Healthcare isn't a Turkish delight chocolate bar, or a Jacuzzi. Healthcare is life.

That's an interesting point. Is health care life? Are food and shelter? The Declaration of Independence claims we have a right to life, along with liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Does a right to life imply a right to food, shelter, and health care?

I don't know which side I come down on. But I do agree with something Dunt says later:

We live in a mixed economy. We aim to have enough free market to control the state, and provide the things we want. But we also need enough socialism to ensure we do not live like savages, the weakest amongst us starving to death on the street while a rich woman buys a Gucci handbag. Socialism without capitalism turns to tyranny. Capitalism without socialism turns to barbarism.

There is no getting around this. We are already socialist. We have "socialized safety" in our police, fire, and military protections. Socialism is not a bad thing at all. We just want to come up with the best mix of capitalism and socialism that prevents either big government or big business from gaining too much power and taking away our freedoms.

I don't know whether health care is a privilege or a right, or whether it's best provided by the free market or the government. But I don't trust either implicitly enough to make a decision on ideological grounds. I'm not willing to hold the default position that deregulation is always best, that everything works better in the private sector. The last twelve months have shown that big companies will screw us all over given half the chance.

We know that our politicians lie to us, but we need to remember that private companies do to. They invented advertising, after all. We know that the government can be slow and inefficient, but we need to remember that it wasn't government producing crappy cars in the 70s and 80s, it's not government keeping us waiting on the tarmac for hours at a time, and it's not government denying our legitimate insurance claims based on technicalities. Without the government our paint would be full of lead and out prospectuses empty of material information. We need to be skeptical of both, and figure out a balance between the two that will keep them both in check.

22/7

2009-07-22T13:35:00.000-06:00

Pi Approximation Day.

Health Insurance

2009-07-22T12:12:00.005-06:00

This is a complex and nuanced issue, so I just want to zero in on one talking point that I disagree with. The health care industry is fighting hard against a public option because they complain that the government does not compete on a level playing field. There is some truth to this, but I don't think it's entirely accurate.

First of all, consider one industry where the government offers a "public option" that competes directly alongside private companies: the carrier industry. When you go to ship a package, you can choose between several private companies like UPS or FedEx, along with lots of smaller local carriers, or you can go with the United States Postal Service. Everyone knows the difference in price and quality that this choice offers. The postal service is a little cheaper and sometimes not as fast or convenient, but for most people it's good enough most of the time. When you need more speed or reliability, you look at the private carriers.

Does the USPS compete on a level playing field with the private carriers? Not really. They can operate at a loss--and have several times over the years--without going out of business. But this has never threatened the viability of the private carriers. Rather, it establishes a benchmark of quality and price that the private companies need to exceed in order to maintain a competitive advantage. The government being what it is, this benchmark isn't too tough to beat.

No, the private carriers are usually much more concerned about the competition they receive from each other. UPS isn't trying to get you to switch from USPS, they want you to switch from FedEx.

As the above article indicates, this is the kind of competition that's lacking in the health insurance industry. Because so many health insurance markets are near monopolies, a public option wouldn't be introducing unfair competition--it would be introducing competition, period. The distinction is meaningless to the insurers, of course. However you define it, a public option will subject them to a level of competition they will consider onerous. But I think it makes all the difference in public perception. Most people probably wouldn't have a problem asking health insurers to compete for business in the marketplace the same way UPS and FedEx do. (In fact, most people probably assume they already do.)

Life imitates art

2009-07-21T11:44:00.002-06:00

Amusingly, the toilet on the International Space Station really did break down. It's fixed now.

Twitter ties it all together.

More Statistical Analysis

2009-06-26T13:45:00.005-06:00

Clark pointed out in my last post on the Washington Post's statistical analysis of the Iranian election results that we can't conclude from an event with 4 in 1000 probability of occurrence that there is a 996 in 1000 probability that occurrence of the event was faked. This is true, of course, and I should have been more clear in my remarks.

The information we want is the probability that the Iranian election results were legitimate, given the data we see. What the WaPo has given us, however, is the probability of seeing the data that we see, given a legitimate election. They sound like the same thing, but they're not.

The Wikipedia article on conditional probability gives the classic example of why this is the case. Suppose you have a test for a disease that is 99% accurate--it returns a false result 1% of the time. That sounds pretty good, but if you use it to screen for a disease that affects only 1% of the population, then the probability that a person actually has the disease, given a positive test result, drops to 50%. So the probability of seeing a positive test result, given the presence of the disease (99%) is not the same as the probability of having the disease, given a positive test result (50%).

The Prosecutor's Fallacy describes the application of this logic in the real world. Here, the minuscule probability of certain evidence emerging, given the innocence of the accused, is used to argue that the probability of the accused being innocent must be just as tiny. This is what the WaPo appears to be engaging in with their statistical analysis.

Or is it? The thing to remember here is that this discrepancy exists because of the discrepancies in the prior probabilities that our conditional probabilities are based on. For example, in our disease scenario, the test becomes as accurate as it appears if 50% of the population are affected by the disease. The probability of seeing a positive test result, given the presence of the disease, and the probability of having the disease, given a positive test result are both 99%. It's the fact that the disease is so rare to begin with that makes all the difference.

So with the Iranian election, if we already knew that there was a 50% chance the election results were faked, then the analysis described in the WaPo would be strong evidence indicating shenanigans. I'm not saying we know that, but there does seem to be a lot more evidence of irregularities other than statistical analysis alone.

One more example to illustrate what I mean. Suppose 99 out of every 100 swans are white, and one is black. If you're walking along in the park and you see a black swan, you've just witnessed a rare event, with a probability of 1%. But this does not mean that you can be 99% sure that this swan is fake. That's because the odds of seeing a fake swan are based on something else entirely, and are usually far from 50%.

Suppose, however, that you heard on the news this morning that people have been out spray-painting white swans black. Suppose further that half of them have been spray-painted. Now, when you see a black swan, the odds of it being fake have climbed much closer to 99%, because you know the odds of seeing a fake swan to begin with are 50%.

Regina Spektor

2009-06-25T11:53:00.002-06:00

Regina Spektor has a new album out today. I bought the version with the DVD. Everyone seems to be sticking DVDs in their CDs these days. I guess they feel like they need to give you a reason to buy the CD in the store, what with iTunes and everything.

Speaking of iTunes, I realize I'm in the minority here, but I like albums. Even if I only want one song, I prefer to own the entire album that comes with it. I don't know, it just feels like it belongs to something bigger. Maybe the rest of the album gives context to the song. I can't explain why, but it is incredibly annoying to me whenever I scroll through the songs on someone's iPod and there are all these solitary songs without their full albums. They're like socks without mates or something. Songs belong in albums.

So the whole iTunes business model has never appealed to me. I have never felt ripped off because I bought an album for one song and never listed to the rest of it, I guess. If anything, it's the opposite with me--there might be one song on the disc that I skip. So why pay $13 for an iTunes album when I can buy the same thing at Target for $10 and get the physical media and liner notes and everything?

So yeah, get off my lawn.

Statistical Analysis

2009-06-22T12:38:00.002-06:00

Hello, loyal readers. My apologies for not blogging in over three months.

My excuse is that I got a new job, and this new job eats up my time in several ways. The commute is very long and the work itself gives me little opportunity to surf the Internet. So I have less time for actual blogging, and less time to find interesting things to actually blog about.

But hopefully as I settle in I can find a way to work this blog back into my routine.

To that end, check out this statistical analysis of the election results in Iran. Just by looking at the various vote tallies, it can be shown that there is a 99.5% chance that these tallies were made up by a human rather than generated randomly, as would be the case in a clean election. Fascinating.

XKCD Nails It Again

2009-03-18T22:24:00.002-06:00

Why do we all have this dream?

And he really does nail it, at least for me, almost verbatim. It starts off with the instructor mentioning a big project or a book, something that would be impossible to catch up on at this point in the semester. Then the realization that you haven't even been attending class leads you to accept that you're probably going to fail. So you start thinking about how that will affect your graduation plans, and then suddenly remember some detail about graduating (for me it's always the date: I've written April 2001 on so many resumes, it has to be real, right?) followed by confusion. It uncanny how many of us share this dream, down to the details.

There is a similar dream shared among many returned missionaries I've talked to, about finding yourself back on a mission even though you've been home for years and have already started a family and career. Yet there you are alongside fresh faced 19-year-olds, who themselves are a little bewildered about why you are serving a second mission. Part of what motivates a missionary is dreaming about the life beyond--who will I marry, what will I do for a living, how will what I'm doing now help me later in life? But you already know all of that, and you know how much (or more likely, how little) anything you're doing now affects any of it. So you are extremely unmotivated, but you go through the motions, and serve your time anyway.

It's been several years since I had that dream, but I still have the school dream regularly.

Lego Art

2009-03-15T09:54:00.006-06:00

[Warning: this post is chock full of Nintendo, although I will try to keep discussion of Pokemon to a minimum.]

Owing to the generosity of the Blockburger clan, my kids have been glued to the Wii since Christmas morning. Their favorite game on the Gamecube was Super Smash Brothers Melee, and so it should come as no surprise that they are just as excited about the Wii reboot of the title, Super Smash Brothers Brawl. (It's only a matter of time before Super Smash Brothers Nuclear Annihilation, isn't it? Back in my day we were satisfied with Super Smash Brothers Fisticuffs, and its sequel, Super Smash Brothers Donnybrook.)

Personally, I don't get the appeal of these games, and I'm pretty into video games myself. But that's kids these days. If you aren't familiar, these games feature characters from all over the Nintendo universe fighting one another for trophies, or points, or something. You would have to be a serious Nintendo junkie to actually recognize all these characters, though, so the game serves as a pretty nifty marketing tool for Nintendo to introduce a generation of kids to characters they may have missed while they were busy not being born yet.

So it was with my kids and Starfox. They had grown to like the character on the Gamecube version of the game, but the Wii version actually includes a snippet of the old Starfox gameplay, which is kind of a 3D futuristic dogfighting thing. The kids fell in love with that and wanted more. As luck would have it, the Wii allows you to download games from older consoles, so it wasn't long before the boys were playing Starfox 64 like it was 1997.

That's when I started seeing these Lego formations all over the house.

On the printer:

On the piano:

And more of a minimalist installation:

I assume these are Starfox characters flying around in formation. I like how they chose a basic design that could be reproduced with ease.

Anything to get out of chores

2009-03-02T16:30:00.003-06:00

This is the conversation I had with my daughter a couple of nights ago as I was tucking her into bed. She's four.

DAD: Amy, this room is a mess! Why is it so messy?

AMY: Because I just like to play with all my toys.

DAD: Well, why don't you put your toys away when you're done playing with them?

AMY: Because I just like my room to be messy.

DAD: Well, when your room is this messy you can't even walk from the door to your bed.

AMY: I just don't like walking places anymore.

DAD: You don't like walking? How are you going to get to your bed?

AMY: I'm just going to fly.

DAD: Oh really? And how are you going to do that?

AMY: [deep in thought] ...I'm just going to need a bird costume...

Another day, another meme

2009-02-23T13:40:00.003-06:00

Buzzfeed has a new meme for you. Basically you let Wikipedia, The Quotations Page, and Flickr design an album cover for your band.

Here's mine:

A Day In The Life Of Abbey Road

2009-02-19T12:17:00.003-06:00

Garble Arch, by Blame Ringo

There's also a live webcam.

TED

2009-02-17T10:07:00.003-06:00

If you want to learn something, just go to TED and start watching videos. You can't go wrong.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

Barry Schwartz on wisdom should be required viewing at school and in the workplace.

And I felt vindicated by Steven Leavitt on car seats. It's not that I'm anti-car seat or anything, but something about the way people are so fanatic about them has always made me skeptical.

Facebook Tutorial

2009-02-10T16:12:00.003-06:00

Whenever you write, you should have your audience in mind. Even if you're just updating your status on Facebook. But if you've amassed a substantial number of friends, then that audience can be a pretty diverse group.

Bone up on your Facebook privacy settings and make sure that only your close friends see your goofy side while you maintain your public image for professional contacts (and parents).

One Mile Scroll

2009-02-04T11:52:00.003-06:00

This web page is a mile long. Or tall, I guess I should say. Anyone can add reference points, like the height of the Empire State Building, for instance.

It's scaled 96 pixels per inch, so whether it really adds up to a mile depends on your monitor's size and resolution. I'm looking at a 19" CRT (18" viewable) set at 1024 x 768, so I figure I get about 71.1 pixels per inch, so the inches look larger than life to me. I'm guessing they used a 17" LCD set at 1280 x 1024 to come up with their 96 pixels per inch.

Start at the bottom.

D+Pad Hero

2009-02-02T17:45:00.002-06:00

It's Guitar Hero for the 8-bit Nintendo! Be sure to watch the videos, Sweet Child o' Mine actually works pretty well.

Only way to get through to these people

2009-01-28T13:01:00.005-06:00

Melissa took the boys to get haircuts on Tuesday. When I came home from work, the following conversation ensued:

Dad: (feigning ignorance) Hey, something seems different about you guys...

Michael: Yeah, we got haircuts.

Dad: (continuing with the ruse) I don't know what it is, you guys just seem snappier than usual...

Benjamin: THAT'S BECAUSE WE GOT HAIRCUTS, DAD!

Benjamin: (to Michael) See? You gotta yell it.

Unsolicited Advice

2009-01-07T13:01:00.003-06:00

Over the holidays I had a chance to talk with one of my cousins who just got home from his mission and is back in school, but doesn't know what he wants to major in. (We've all been there, right?) Sure, he'll minor in his foreign language, but he doesn't really have anything in mind other than that.

He didn't ask for my advice and I didn't offer any, but having been in that situation myself, I feel like I have something to offer that could be valuable to someone out there. At least I know what I would do differently if I could go back and do it again.

The short answer is this: Major in accounting.

It's simple really. BYU's accounting program is consistently ranked in the top five in the nation, often taking the top spot. As long as you're at BYU primarily for reasons having nothing to do with academics (value, environment, to get married) why not get the most marketable degree they offer while you're there? It works on it's own or as a foundation for med school, law school, etc. If BYU's electrical engineering program was the best in the nation, I'd recommend it for all the same reasons.

The long answer is from Paul Graham: stay upwind, solve problems, and follow your curiosity.

Jaguar E-Type

2009-01-02T16:20:00.004-06:00

I passed one of these on the way home from work on Christmas Eve. I'd never seen one before. (I guess that's what I get for never watching an Austin Powers movie.) I can't decide if I like them or not. From the back it looked like a VW Bug, from the front it's something more like Speed Racer's Mach V. At the same time something about it was giving me an AMC Pacer vibe as well.

According to Wikipedia, Enzo Ferrari called it the most beautiful car ever made. I will say the convertibles and the later models are quite nice. The one I saw must have been an early sixties model.

All You Base Are Belong To 10

2008-12-12T16:21:00.002-06:00

I never thought of this before, but it's true. Every base is base 10, in that base.

Bleed the World

2008-12-12T13:52:00.002-06:00

This Band Aid parody is a pretty seamless edit of the original.

The parody is good, but I had just as much fun seeing the old footage of George Michael, Boy George, Sting, and Bono back in the day.

Speaking of normal distributions...

2008-12-09T19:51:00.001-06:00

Let's hope this one doesn't become bimodal.

Counter-Intuative Comparison

2008-12-05T14:51:00.004-06:00

This video is awesome.

The subject matter is very interesting, to begin with. The idea that you can compare apples and oranges (or seahorses and English people) to determine the best thing is pretty cool.

But what makes this video so fun to watch is the juxtaposition of irreverent, sometimes profane language an otherwise very refined, academic style.

You might disagree with the value judgments--it seems clearly biased toward a liberal, hipster aesthetic--but I guarantee you will be entertained.

TiVo Guilt

2008-12-02T11:26:00.002-06:00

CNN has an article on TiVo Guilt today. The New York Times had a similar op-ed two years ago. So it's not a new thing.

It's very similar to Netflix Guilt. And isn't this just the modern version of letting your newspapers and magazines and books stack up unread?

The deal with TiVo is that you have limited hard drive space to work with, so you have to manage it. If your TiVo is full when you go to bed, then it will start deleting shows to make room for new stuff, and because you haven't meticulously accounted for every contingency and programmed it accordingly, its algorithms might cause it to prioritize what to get rid of first slightly differently than you might have. In other words: Unmitigated Disaster.

So when you watch two hours of TV and maybe even delete a few shows you're not interested in, you feel like you've had a productive evening. You've freed up plenty of space so that TiVo doesn't have to take matters into its own hands, and you can rest easy until the next day. If, on the other hand, you watch a Netflix movie, you've accomplished nothing. Two hours, utterly wasted. TiVo is still full, and getting fuller. Soon it will start deleting things, and then you run the risk of Missing A Show.

(Of course, by Missing A Show I mean that you will have to download it the next day or watch it on hulu. We're not barbarians, after all.)

Your Netflix movies don't give you the same "use it or lose it" ultimatum. They'll patiently sit there and wait until you're ready to watch them. No late fees, remember? Sure, there's this nagging feeling that you're not getting your money's worth if you don't watch at least four movies per week, but that's nothing when TiVo is holding an episode of Numb3rs hostage.

Peter Schiff Was Right

2008-12-02T09:43:00.008-06:00

(Updates below.)

Peter Schiff was an economic adviser for the Ron Paul campaign and a frequent guest on financial news shows. Over two years ago he predicted that we would be in exactly the mess we're in now, when all those around him were predicting the opposite.

The thing that gets me about this video isn't so much that he was right and Art Laffer, Ben Stein, and all the rest were wrong. It's that they all find his opinion so detestable that they can't resist interrupting him even when they all have equal time to talk in a non-confrontational format. The animosity they have for his prediction seems to betray that deep down they know he might be right.

If that's the case, than he is committing the ultimate betrayal among financial pundits. These guys don't have to be any better than astrologers, and the news shows will keep inviting them back because they can always find an excuse for why they were wrong--especially if they are all wrong together. Usually they just claim that "no one could have predicted this" and they go right on making predictions. (Like Karl Rove, who is somehow still considered credible after his "The Math" blunder on NPR.) But Peter Schiff takes this out away from them by actually doing his job--examining the fundamentals and basing his prediction on his best analysis of reality--and they hate him for it.

UPDATE: Turns out Peter Schiff loves a good analogy.

UPDATE II: NPR picks up the story.

UPDATE III: Hey, no media fad would be complete without a conspiracy theory. In this video, CNN loses the feed right before Schiff is about to say that everything the government is doing is just making things worse (at about the 4:00 mark). Or should I say, "loses the feed," wink wink, nudge nudge.

This Is What I Do.

2008-12-01T16:42:00.005-06:00

At least, I try.

I've read two of Malcolm Gladwell's books, and I loved them. They are fun to read, and they make you think. I was just telling Dan about him this weekend, and yet, I was at a loss to explain what these books are actually about. "He just has some good ideas..." was about all I could muster.

Then I read something like this and it makes me wonder if I've been had. In fact, it brings back memories of another book that was fun to read and made me think.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

My loathing for that book is now the stuff of legend, but in 2002 my exuberance towards it and subsequent disillusionment with it awoke in me a skepticism that I've tried to cultivate ever since. John T. Reed was the one that opened my eyes, as he demonstrated that while Kiyosaki may be fun to read and while he may make you think, in the end you can't really say what his books are about, either.

I still say Gladwell is the better writer--and also, his books don't have the added danger of inspiring you to blow your meager savings on more books, seminars, and shady real estate shemes. But it's good to be reminded that for all my skepticism (some would say cynicism) I'm still not above getting swept away by the occasional siren song.

Oldest LOLCat On Record

2008-12-01T16:33:00.002-06:00

From teh 1905.

Twilight Review

2008-11-21T15:07:00.003-06:00

[WARNING] This post is probably PG-13 or so. Proceed at your own risk.

This is an excerpt from a review of the movie from a man's perspective. I don't know who wrote it or where it's from, but if I ever track it down I will give proper attribution.

Ultimately this film and the books, I suspect, are the work of a person who understands the most narcissistic fantasies of young women. This story isn't about love. It's about a fantasy that every woman has to be so special that she is chosen by the impossibly gorgeous, horrifically powerful yet timid and gentle man of her dreams. In this case, all the aforementioned criteria are fulfilled by his being a "vegetarian vampire."

I'm not picking on girls here--the equivalent of this for guys is two chicks at the same time. Every guy wants to be so strong and handsome and smooth that two gorgeous women that every other guy wants are so attracted to him that they forgo their inhibitions and take him at the same time.

Music Appreciation

2008-11-05T18:20:00.005-06:00

Tonight during dinner I put some Artur Rubinstein on the stereo. Amy thought the first Chopin piano solo sounded like "Hot Cross Buns." At least she recognizes piano music, I guess.

Benjamin was less impressed. "Can't we listen to David Bowie?"

By the way, just in case I haven't linked to AMG before, it's basically the IMDB of music.

Election Day Politics

2008-11-04T10:18:00.006-06:00

Dan asked in the comments a couple of weeks ago how I could like Obama and Ron Paul. I wanted to answer that it's because Liberal and Libertarian kind of sound the same. But I addressed the issue in a post I made back in February. I still feel like Obama is more grounded in real-world, workable solutions, and less driven by ideology than anyone else running. His FISA vote back in June exemplified that, I think. It was a cold bucket of water on the heads of lefties who assumed Obama would always be their anti-Bush.

Also in that post I mentioned how Steven Leavitt, author of Freakonomics, predicted Obama would be president on his blog back in November 2006.

I was reminded of that when I happened upon this electoral map resulting from a survey conducted that month. Obama 28, McCain 510. He's come a long way.

John Williams

2008-11-04T10:06:00.002-06:00

This guy really likes John Williams. So he wrote a song that's kind of a medley of John William's movie scores, except he doesn't use any of the music from Star Wars. Instead, all the lyrics are about Star Wars. And it's an a capella quartet, and he sings all four parts.

Why is everything cool on the Internet so confusing to describe? Just watch it.

Nigella Lawson

2008-10-30T09:13:00.006-06:00

Quick, what's the first thing that pops into your head when someone mentions cooking and NPR? For me, it's a certain dessert--which shall remain nameless because my mother sometimes reads this blog--made famous by Alec Baldwin on SNL's Delicious Dish. If you're familiar with this particular sendup, you know that the humor lies in the fact that cooking segments on NPR can come across as a little, well, bland.

So it's with great surprise that I find myself seduced by an occasional guest on the station, Nigella Lawson. I've heard her talk about her cooking a few times before, and after this morning's segment, I finally decided to find out more about her.

You know that episode of Scrubs where J.D. asks out a girl stuck in an MRI machine without ever seeing what she looks like, and then rejoices when he finally sees that she is smokin' hot? That's sort of how I felt when I saw a picture of Nigella Lawson. I was already smitten by her voice, but I imagined her to be much older and look like Julia Child or something. Maybe because she speaks the Queen's English, I expected something closer to the queen. Anyway, let's just say I was presently surprised.

Synchronized Debating

2008-10-29T10:55:00.002-06:00

If you watched more than one presidential debate this year, then you probably noticed what I noticed. These guys tend to repeat themselves.

This video drives the point home.

Conspiracy Theories

2008-10-21T09:52:00.004-06:00

There is a radio show on NPR on the weekends called Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me which I highly recommend. It's hilarious. (If you're not interested in my political views, stop reading here and pretend this post was just to tell you about that show.)

Anyway, the host of the show, Peter Sagal, writes a blog which I only came across by accident today. And in this particular post, he says basically the same thing I said to one of my co-workers this morning.

Which is this: I wonder if people who believe in conspiracy theories think about everything else that would have to be true in order for their conspiracy theory to be true? In the case of Barack Obama, people are saying all sorts of things about how he is a secret Muslim or a secret supporter of terrorism or whatever other flavor of Manchurian Candidate is in vogue today, without stopping to realize what that would look like in the real world if it were actually true. (Do they?)

My favorite is the theory that 9/11 was an inside job. If it was, it would have been the greatest display of competence the Bush administration had managed to achieve, before or since. It just doesn't make sense that the team who manged to pull off something like that would bungle everything else they attempted so mightily. 9/11 would be their "we can put a man on the moon." Are you kidding me? We can pull off 9/11 but we can't plant a few WMD's in the Iraqi desert?

Peter Sagal put it very well, I think. Conspiracy theories thrive because for many people, the reality is intolerable. It is easier to believe in a conspiracy, no matter how unlikely and convoluted, than accept the facts as they are.

Texas

2008-10-18T21:29:00.004-06:00

What a game for the Texas Longhorns! I know there was some skepticism about whether their win over Oklahoma last week was a fluke, but they sure played like a #1 team tonight.

The highlight for me was when backup quarterback John Chiles threw a touchdown pass in the fourth quarter. Plus he picked up quite a few rushing yards. Chiles played for Mansfield Summit, but the announcers kept saying "Dallas." They were specific about where Missouri's quarterback is from--Southlake Carroll. (Maybe having been the highest ranked high school team in the nation has something to do with it.) Oh well, no love for Mansfield.

McCain, Obama Roast

2008-10-17T13:59:00.001-06:00

If you haven't seen this yet, you won't be disappointed. Both candidates are hilarious.

Stayin' Alive, Keepin' Others Alive

2008-10-17T09:19:00.004-06:00

It's not enough anymore to know basic lifesaving techniques, now they want you do it with a particular song in your head.

U.S. doctors have found the Bee Gees 1977 disco anthem "Stayin' Alive" provides an ideal beat to follow while performing chest compressions as part of CPR on a heart attack victim.

In retrospect, it's surprising a show like Scrubs hasn't put together some kind of montage based on this song. (Have they?)

New York City Cheat Sheets

2008-10-14T11:11:00.003-06:00

I've never been to New York City, but I dream of living there someday. Too much TV, I guess.

Anyway, I love stuff like this. An ex-New Yorker has cataloged some of the tips and tricks he used to get through the day with minimal hassle. Some are really cool, and some are just bizarre (and I take exception with his characterization of Kandinsky as "pointless") but they are all fun to read.

We all have stuff like this in our heads, don't we?

(via Kottke)

Connect the Dots

2008-10-13T07:37:00.000-06:00

Coolest tattoo ever.

The Buffet I Will Never Forget

2008-10-09T12:13:00.008-06:00

There is a Hyatt Regency hotel at the DFW airport that used to be an Amfac. When I was a kid our family went there for an all-you-can-eat buffet. It must have been some kind of event with my dad's work.

I was probably about seven or eight, I just know that I had recently discovered shrimp. My parents used to dump a couple of pounds of shrimp in a big bowl of ice and eat shrimp cocktail while watching TV. They would share with us kids, but I could never get enough.

That buffet was my chance to eat all the shrimp I wanted. And I did. I ate so much shrimp that I spent the car ride home curled up in the fetal position, afraid that each bump would make me barf. I felt so sick. But I'd do it again, because I love shrimp.

This guy knows what I'm talking about.

Housekeeping

2008-10-08T14:34:00.003-06:00

Ok, loyal readers, I need your input here. I like this new template, but I'm worried that maybe the links are too subtle. Linked text is just barely darker than normal text, so it might not be obvious when you can click on something. (The hover color is nice and bright, though.)

So, what say you? Is anyone having any trouble finding links to click on in my posts? Do I need to make them more obvious? If no one has any complaints I will leave things alone, because I like the subtle color scheme. I just want to make sure it's still functional.

Binary Pi is Dangerous

2008-10-08T14:07:00.002-06:00

This is similar to the idea that an infinite number of monkeys at typewriters will eventually type all of Shakespeare's plays.

In theory, the number pi, because it "goes on" forever, contains all possible combinations of digits. So any string of numbers you can conceive of is in the digits of pi somewhere.

All information that can be represented digitally takes the form of ones and zeros, or binary. So if you convert pi to binary, then conceivably you are in the possession of all information. Including a lot of stuff that could get you into trouble.

Best Online Games

2008-10-07T07:17:00.003-06:00

Techcult brings us a pretty comprehensive list of 150 online Flash games. I was familiar with maybe 20% of these, and was reminded of a few I had forgotten. Remember Yeti Sports?

Pick a winner and settle in. But keep this recent xkcd comic in mind as you do.

Sony KD-34XBR960

2008-10-03T11:01:00.007-06:00

There used to be this guy named Richard who worked at our office and liked to talk about TVs. In fact, it got to the point where he wouldn't even bother introducing the topic, because everyone already knew what he was going to talk about. He would just walk into your office and start saying something like, "You know, I've been thinking about it, and I've decided that 32 inches is just too small..."

I'm going to be channeling Richard in this blog post. If TVs aren't your thing, you know what to do.

Simply put, the Sony KD-34XBR960 is the Holy Grail of cathode ray tube (CRT) high definition televisions. I acquired it yesterday.

Sony started manufacturing this television in 2003, and quit about three years later, when the entire industry abandoned CRT technology in favor of flat panel form factors like plasma and LCD. However, most critics agree that the new flat panels still do not measure up to the best CRTs in terms of picture quality. Sure, they're coming closer, and since CRT development has been abandoned, it's probably only a matter of time. But for now, CRT is king. According to CNET:

The bottom line: This is the reference standard for picture quality among direct-view HDTVs and happens to be a great value.

Since 2004, the KD-34XBR960 has been my white whale. I watched it drop in price from its initial list of $2200 to half that when it was finally taken off the market. I watched it go for $1000 on eBay and craigslist over the years. I watched as the official KD-34XBR960 thread at AVS Forums grew to over 6000 posts. And now it's mine. For just $400 from a nice guy on craigslist, including the matching stand.

I hardly know what to do with myself anymore.

100 Manly Skills

2008-10-03T09:39:00.007-06:00

Popular Mechanics has a list of 100 skills that every man should know. A lot of them even have videos, which is handy, because I have no clue how to brew my own beer (#17). (And that wasn't the only skill which immediately reminded me of Clint.)

I was especially interested in #15: Use a Sewing Machine.

One of the most elegant mechanical devices in the home, the sewing machine can be used on camping gear, light tarps, kites and myriad other manly stuff.

I grew up watching my dad sew. You start out sewing on your scout badges, then you're sewing stuff sacks and other camping gear, and before you know it you're making Jedi costumes for your kids.

Speaking of, I think I'm going to be hemming tablecloths for our upcoming client appreciation dinner at work.

More Tower Defense

2008-09-30T15:29:00.002-06:00

If you're like most Americans, you've mastered every board of Desktop Tower Defense and are ready for something new.

Never fear, Whiteboard Tower Defense is here. I hope you weren't planning on being productive today.

The Bailout

2008-09-29T12:47:00.003-06:00

The bailout failed in the House today, but there's still a good chance they'll rehash it until it passes.

What's crazy is that this is one argument that finds liberals and conservatives on the same side. No one wants to bail out Wall Street. I read a piece by Michael Moore this morning where, rhetoric aside, he basically agrees with Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. What is the world coming to?

The only people who really want the bailout are Wall St. itself and the Bush administration.

The big question for me is why Ben Bernanke is so keen on it. If it were just Bush and his crew, a lot of Dems in congress would be more skeptical, I think. But I've heard several of them say that they trust Bernanke to be apolitical, so if he says a bailout is needed, they're inclined to believe him.

Bernanke is supposed to be this economics wonk fresh from academia, but all his colleagues seem to be against the bailout. I'd like to hear a point-by-point rebuttal from Bernanke about why he disagrees with someone like Allan Meltzer, or any one of these guys, for that matter. We need to find a way to tease out Bernanke's true motivations on this whole thing.

Glenn Greenwald lists the following ten principles for how our government functions, and how each one of them applies to the bailout.

1. Incredibly complex and consequential new laws are negotiated in secret and then enacted immediately, with no hearings, no real debate, no transparency.

2. Those who created the crisis, were wrong about everything, drive the process.

3. Public opinion is largely ignored, as always, and public anger is placated through illusory, symbolic and largely meaningless concessions.

4. The Government begins with demands for absolute power so brazen and absurd that anything, by comparison, seems reasonable.

5. Wall Street, large corporations and their lobbyists own the Federal Government and both parties, and therefore they always win.

6. The people who run the Washington Establishment are drowning in conflicts of interest.

7. For all the anger over what Wall St. has done, the Government--as it bails them out--isn't doing anything to rein in their practices.

8. When the Government wants greater and greater power and wants to engage in pure corruption, it need only put the population in extreme fear and it gets its way in every case.

9. On the most consequential and fundamental questions that define the country, the establishment/leadership of both political parties are in full agreement, and insulate themselves from any political ramifications by acting jointly.

10. Whenever you think that the Government has done things so extreme that it can't top itself--torture, theories of presidential lawbreaking, a six-year war justified by blatantly false pretenses--it always tops itself.

Financial Crisis

2008-09-29T09:27:00.002-06:00

Like a lot of people out there, I'm sure, I've spent the past couple of weeks or so trying to wrap my head around this financial crisis we find ourselves in. Here's a convenient link to ten good articles of varying scope and detail about how we got into this mess.

If you aren't going to read any of those, read this one. It's short, easy to understand, and you already know the author.

Schmapp!!

2008-09-12T14:06:00.002-06:00

Schmapp!! is this super useful map program that you can download and use to see all the great tourist destinations and attractions for any city you would care to visit. I use it all the time.

Okay, I'm totally lying. I've never used it and honestly can't see that I ever would. (But you might still like it.) I'm only blogging about it because they used one of Melissa's Flickr photos for their Dallas Arts District page.

So yay, Melissa's a published photographer! Except my name is on the Flickr page, so they gave me the credit. Oh well.

More Cowbell

2008-09-10T08:51:00.007-06:00

For years we've been asking for more cowbell. Have we been getting it? No, we haven't.

Until today. MoreCowbell.dj is finally delivering the cowbell that we've been after all this time. You simply upload an mp3 file from your computer and then select the amount of cowbell and Christopher Walken that you feel is appropriate.

Don't hold back too much though. You're gonna want that cowbell on the track.

Here's an example:


	Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj

Make it a game

2008-09-06T08:13:00.004-06:00

It's amazing how we will do stuff in the context of a game--especially video games--that would just be work in real life.

To wit, How To End Childhood Obesity.

I'm sure it would work, too. My mom has these Crystal Light drinks with "immunity" on the label and my kids go nuts for them. Because it's like something a video game character would drink.

YouTube Moment

2008-09-03T15:56:00.004-06:00

This is one of those political gotchas that's only possible because of the Internet.

You know Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speech writer, current Wall Street Journal columnist and occasional on-air conservative pundit. Here she is today in the WSJ, doing her thing, talking up Sarah Palin, McCain's running mate.

Now here she is on MSNBC, giving her true opinion about Palin in a candid conversation with fellow conservative pundit Mike Murphy and NBC analyst Chuck Todd (none of them realizes their mics are still live).

If you can't make out what she says, there are transcripts out there, and her quotes are already on her Wikipedia page (of course). Let's just say that it would appear that she doesn't believe her own rhetoric.

Hidden Radio

2008-09-03T10:49:00.002-06:00

The Hidden Radio has no visible user controls. Or, you could say that the whole thing is just a big volume/tuning knob. Interesting design.

Mad Men and Money

2008-08-27T10:46:00.002-06:00

Now that the Olympics are over I can get back to Mad Men. This is an awesome show.

Ever since I started watching this show I've been meaning to look up the exchange rate between 1960 dollars and current dollars. I estimated it at about 10 based on clues in the show, but that felt a bit high. Turns out it's more like 7. (That's not counting any adjustment for the difference in buying power of $1 in Manhattan vs. suburban middle America, of course.)

Anyway, they talk about money a lot on this show, so you need to have some feel for how much things cost and how much people are earning. I'm sure someone else has already done this somewhere, and when I find it I'll post a link, but until then:

Don Draper makes $35,000 a year, which would be $245,000 to us. He once got a $2500 ($17,500) bonus and tried to use it to take his beatnik mistress to Paris, but she declined. So he gives her the money, tells her to buy a car, and never speaks to her again. When he makes partner he starts making as much as $45,000, or $315,000 in today's dollars. When his long lost brother tracks him down, Don gives him $5000 to leave town and never contact him again. That's $35,000 to us, and more than Pete Campbell makes in a year.

Pete Campbell starts the show making $75 a week. That's $525 to us or $27,300 a year. Not nearly enough to afford the $32,000 ($224,000) apartment his wife Trudy insists on buying. Oh, but the Realtor says they can get it for $30,000 ($210,000) so that will help. Good thing Trudy's parents can front the down payment. Pete and Trudy got a "chip & dip" for their wedding valued at $22 ($154) which he was able to exchange for a .22 rifle.

Harry Crane makes $200 ($1400) a week, and is dismayed to find out that his coworker Ken Cosgrove makes $300 ($2100). That's $72,800 and $109,200 a year to us. Luckily, Harry finds a way to impress his bosses and earn a $25/week raise ($81,900).

Peggy Olson starts out making $35 a week. That's $12,740 a year to us, and even Don is surprised to hear how little she makes. He makes it sound like she's asking a lot when she requests a $5/week raise for taking on the duties of a junior copywriter, but he probably would have given her more. Even with her raise, she's making the equivalent of $14,560 annually. No wonder she was upset when someone swiped $3 ($21) from her locker.

Don's wife, Betty has to call a tow truck when her car breaks down. He informs her that he has the part she needs in the truck, and he can fix the car on the spot for $9 ($63). That's a little more than the $4 ($28) she has in her wallet, but she manages to get by on her charm, as she always has. Later on, their son Bobby breaks the hi-fi. Betty informs Don that it will cost $18 ($126) to have it repaired, or just $9 ($63) if they want to haul it down to the shop themselves. Don doesn't.

Anyway, if you think you might want to start watching Mad Men, you should probably practice multiplying by 7 in your head. Or have a calculator handy.

Sesame Street

2008-08-20T13:26:00.005-06:00

So I'm watching an episode of Sesame Street yesterday for the first time in years (we just replaced our TiVo, and pickings were slim) and I happened to see Tina Fey and her Bookaneers in a segment that was irresistibly cute. Then Brian Williams did a short where he says "Squid squid squid squid squid squid."

Was Sesame Street always this clever or was I just too young to appreciate it? Anyway, I know YouTube is full of classic Sesame Street clips from the 80s, but they don't have everything. Muppet Wiki to the rescue. They document everything involving Muppets, which includes every episode of Sesame Street.

Check out episode 1575, where Mr. Rogers visits Big Bird but no one believes him, just like with Snuffy. Classic.

Weight Watchers as RPG

2008-08-19T11:33:00.003-06:00

Clive Thompson compares the Weight Watchers diet to Role-Playing Games (games like Dungeons & Dragons, The Legend of Zelda, or World of Warcraft). In those games, and similar games like The Sims, you spend a lot of time doing menial, repetitive tasks in pursuit of a larger goal, and that's kind of like what counting calories is like. Plus you get better at learning strategies to maximize your fullness per points and stuff, just like a game. I can totally see it.

Incidentally, the reason I don't do WW is the same reason I avoid online RPGs like WoW. The games can be addicting, and I find that WW causes me to obsess about food to a degree that seems--I don't know--unhealthy.

Steep stairs

2008-08-13T10:57:00.002-06:00

At what point do we quit calling these "stairs" and just accept that it's a rock climbing wall with really well-defined holds?

Denver Public Art

2008-08-12T11:55:00.003-06:00

Oh, so that thing is supposed to be a stack of french fries?

Melissa and I thought it was a sucker tree.

The War Nerd

2008-08-11T15:36:00.002-06:00

If you're at all interested in the recent Russian invasion of Georgia, what caused it and what it all means, War Nerd Gary Brecher gives a pretty good rundown of it at his blog, Exiled Online.

It's a fun read, but pretty irreverent. You've been warned.

Name the Movie...

2008-08-11T15:04:00.003-06:00

...from just one letter from the movie poster.

Seems impossible, but you'll be surprised how many of these you know. I got 14.

ETA: Here's a hint. If no. 29 were a Jeopardy answer, it would be in the category "Stupid Answers."

Hugh McCutcheon

2008-08-11T07:24:00.002-06:00

You've probably heard about US Men's Volleyball head coach Hugh McCutcheon, who is taking leave from coaching the Olympic team because his wife's parents were attacked in China.

During my freshman year at BYU, McCutcheon was an assistant coach for the BYU Men's volleyball team, and I took a couple of his PE classes. I just wanted to say what an awesome teacher he was. That was some of the most fun I ever had in college, not to mention the best volleyball I ever played.

During a scrimmage late in the semester, this one hot shot on the opposing team spiked the ball hard in my direction. Through a combination of involuntary reflexes and blind luck, I was able to make the dig and keep the ball in play. After the point, McCutcheon walked over to me and told me that it was a great play, but he didn't like my attitude. After a dig like that, he said, I needed to get in the face of the hitter and let him know just how much I enjoyed denying him the satisfaction of a clean kill.

That's probably what I liked best about him. He enjoyed cutting the cocky guys down to size and giving the quieter players the recognition they weren't claiming for themselves.

Repenting Hyperopia

2008-08-05T10:40:00.005-06:00

I first came across this article a couple of years ago, but I was reminded of it again somewhat recently. I don't think I've blogged about it before, but if I have you'll forgive the repetition.

Repenting Hyperopia

This article proposes that supposedly farsighted (hyperopic) choices of virtue over vice evoke increasing regret over time. We demonstrate that greater temporal separation between a choice and its assessment enhances the regret (or anticipated regret) of virtuous decisions (e.g., choosing work over pleasure). We argue that this finding reflects the differential impact of time on the affective determinants of self-control regrets. In particular, we show that greater temporal perspective attenuates emotions of indulgence guilt but accentuates wistful feelings of missing out on the pleasures of life. We examine alternative explanations, including action versus inaction regrets and levels of construal.

(Emphasis mine.)

I think this article is interesting because it touches on something that I've felt and a lot of people I've talked to have felt, but rarely gets any press. Some of the work/life balance stuff out there gets close, I think ("Nobody on their death bed ever wished they spent more time in the office.") but those ideas are usually still expressed in a forward-looking context.

One example where I've seen this play out is by talking to former mission companions. Almost all of them have expressed regret for being so concerned about the rules and less focused on the immediate experience. If they could go back, they say, they would worry less about following the rules exactly and spend more time helping people and even having fun.

(Interestingly, I heard this advise repeatedly before my mission, from returned missionaries, but I largely ignored it. The incessant call for exact obedience from the leadership has much more sway with a new missionary who just wants to do the right thing.)

Obviously, the consequences of short-sighted decision making are real and can be dire, so I'm not advocating "eat, drink and be merry" by any means. I'm just saying that warnings against such may be over-represented, and that it might not hurt to remember that as life goes on, we value the memories of those times when we lived it up maybe a little too much over the memories of when we were careful and prudent.

Running For Office

2008-07-17T15:32:00.001-06:00

...XKCD-style.

This morning when I checked the site he had just over 1400 donors. Now he has over 2300. Not bad for one day's work.

Instructional Videos

2008-07-07T07:44:00.003-06:00

Maybe you've seen this before, but it was new to me. VideoJug is chock full of instructional videos about how to do most anything. I ended up there while looking for instructions on how to operate a Trangia stove.

It appears to be British or European in origin, and professionally done. Some of them are pretty funny.

Urban Prankster

2008-06-11T14:15:00.002-06:00

Just like it sounds, Urban Prankster documents creative pranks carried out in an urban setting. Many of the groups submitting material are satellites of New York's Improv Everywhere, but there are submissions independent groups and individuals from all over the world as well.

Baby Smash

2008-06-10T12:55:00.002-06:00

Baby Smash! is software that you install to protect your computer from smaller people who tend to bang on the keyboard with little rhyme or reason.

As babies smash on the keyboard, colored shapes, letters and numbers appear on the screen. Baby Smash will lock out the Windows Key, as well as Ctrl-Esc and Alt-Tab so your baby can't get out of the application. Pressing ALT-F4 will exit the application and Shift-Ctrl-Alt-O brings up the options dialog.

I like how the program assumes that random banging might possibly result in Ctrl-Esc or Alt-Tab but never Alt-F4.

Read at Work

2008-06-03T12:51:00.004-06:00

You know the trick you used to read comic books in class, where you prop up a textbook and hide the comic behind it?

Yeah, I've never done that either. But I've seen it on TV.

Anyway, this is the work version of that.

Garfield Minus Garfield

2008-06-03T11:37:00.002-06:00

This guy takes Garfield comics and photoshops Garfield out of them. The result is a very mentally disturbed Jon Arbuckle.

The New York Times has an article on the site, where they also get a response from Jim Davis. He seems to like it just fine.

Yo Quiero Modesty

2008-05-29T08:30:00.002-06:00

At first I figured this must be a parody, but I was wrong. It's part of a real ad campaign for modesty at BYU.

Think Inside The Circle.

That might as well be BYU's motto.

The rest of the posters are here.

To be clear, I don't have a problem with the standards at BYU per se, but the heavy-handed enforcement and propaganda like the above is a different story. They know how to take all the fun out of being good, that's for sure.

Guitar Hero DS

2008-05-29T08:06:00.001-06:00

"Guitar Hero on the Nintendo DS? How would that work?"

I'm glad you asked.

Trees

2008-05-06T15:28:00.004-06:00

There are five trees in my yard, and none of them are the same. I've never really known what kind they are. What can I say, Forestry is not one of the Eagle required merit badges. So I've just lived in in ignorance.

Until today.

Thanks to the Texas Tree Planting Guide, I'm fairly confident that I've identified my trees.

Starting in the back yard, going clockwise:

Live Oak. It looks deciduous, but it's really evergreen. Those leaves stay green all winter. This sucker is huge, but we have it trimmed up pretty high. You can hear the branches scraping the second-story rain gutters from inside the house, so it's probably due for another trimming. Drops a lot of acorns, which have to fished out of kids' pockets at laundry time.

Sycamore. This one is nice-sized, too. Very pretty bark. Drops these annoying spiky balls that look like naval mines and wreak havoc on the lawnmower and bare feet, though. At least the kids don't put them in their pockets.

Cedar Elm. I might be reaching with the subspecies, but I'm pretty sure it's some kind of Elm. By far our largest tree. This one seems to rain sticks more than anything else. Until the kids are old enough to mow the lawn, they will have steady employment picking up sticks from around this tree.

Baldcypress. We're in the front yard now. This tree is the opposite of the Live Oak--it looks evergreen, but it's deciduous. Those needles turn brown and fall off in the fall and winter.

Texas Redbud. For about two weeks every spring this tree is the most beautiful thing on our street. Well, except for the other Redbuds, several people seem to have them. For the rest of the year, though, it's kind of a pain. The branches are real twisty and like to grow downward, so I have to trim it almost every year. It gets some love in October, when we hang ghosties from it.

That's it. That's all my trees.

Facebook is Webkinz for Adults

2008-05-06T09:37:00.004-06:00

This blog post got me thinking about Facebook and Webkinz, but mostly about the construction "____ is ____ for adults," which I seem to come across a lot. So I Googled it.

God/religion/evolution/romance is a fairy tale/stuffed animal/imaginary friend/Santa Claus for adults. (By far the most common.)

Golf is marbles for adults.

The Army is Boy Scouts for adults.

BSD is Linux for adults.

Serenity is Star Wars for adults.

Shingles is chicken pox for adults.

Gmail is Hotmail for adults.

Prison is timeout for adults.

NewsTrust is Digg for adults.

NYC/Las Vegas is Disneyland for adults.

The Unseen Guest is Cake for adults.

Ikea is Lego for adults.

Ilva is Ikea for adults.

Grey's Anatomy is Dawson's Creek for adults.

Fettuccine alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults.

Have you heard of any others?

Physicists

2008-04-28T18:29:00.004-06:00

I wonder if Richard Feynman has this picture hanging up somewhere?

Bonus points if you can count all the theories, conjectures, constants, and cats represented here.

Flickr

2008-04-22T15:30:00.002-06:00

New pictures are up on Flickr. There is a link off to the left, but here it is again. For emphasis.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigpickles/

I really should change the account to Melissa's name, since she's the one who posts all the pictures and writes the captions these days.

Newborn Dos and Don'ts

2008-04-11T15:44:00.003-06:00

A little advice for Pants and Shan:

More at Newborn Baby Zone.

Incredible!

2008-04-10T09:30:00.003-06:00

See if you can follow along.

There is a band from England called Utah Saints. They wrote a song in 1992 called "Something Good." They remixed it in 2008 ("Something Good '08"). Kanye West posted the video to the remix on Vimeo. The premise of the video is that MC Hammer got his moves from a pub in Cardiff, Wales.

Just watch the video. It's hilarious.

[EDIT] The Vimeo link is gone, but here it is on YouTube.

Chronological list of fears

2008-04-08T07:18:00.004-06:00

Everything that we're afraid of, from childhood to parenthood.

This would have been interesting to know as a kid. You know how everyone is always telling you "They're just as afraid of you as you are of them" referring to animals, other kids, whatever? Turns out the same goes for parents--their kids scare them to death.

Kids Games

2008-04-02T15:18:00.003-06:00

Melissa asked me on my way out the door this morning if I had any good ideas for Cub Scouts tonight. I suggested "Steal the Bacon."

"I don't know that game."

"Google it."

I Googled it today, just to see what she would find if she took me up on my awesome suggestion, and I found this website with like every kids' game know to man.

Well, boy.

And girl.

Periodic Table Quiz

2008-04-02T14:13:00.004-06:00

You have fifteen minutes to name as many elements as you can.

You don't have to know where they go on the chart, but you do have to spell their names correctly.

Ready... GO!

(I got 40 in seven minutes before I gave up. I'm sure some of you out there can fill in the whole chart.)

P.S. What's with elements 112-118? Are they new? I don't remember ever learning them. And talk about unoriginal names.

New Stake Boundaries

2008-04-01T14:54:00.002-06:00

This past weekend everything got shuffled up at church, so I put together a map to help myself visualize the changes.

The color of the marker indicates what ward that family was in before the shakeup. And I was limited to 100 data points, so I just picked a few families from each ward that appeared on the leadership rosters.

Arlington Texas Stake

Stuffed Animals

2008-03-31T14:08:00.005-06:00

So I'm reading this article about the switch to digital broadcasting that will happen next February. I'm one of the minority that relies on analog broadcast television, but I'm not really worried about the switch. (Like many in my situation, I'll probably use the conversion as an excuse to finally get an HDTV--and possibly an HD TiVo to go with it!)

I can't get over this picture in the article, however:

This man lives in a retirement community and it looks pretty cozy. It's clean and nicely furnished with a deliberate, masculine decor. The guy looks pretty tough, or at least he used to be. But check out the teddy bear.

I wonder what kind of meaning it has for him. Did it belong to one of his kids, or his wife? It looks pretty new. But it got me thinking about what kind of objects would be meaningful to me if I were his age, and in his situation. Maybe by the time my kids are grown and gone it will be nice to have some of their old toys around to remind me of when we were all younger.

I know kids sometimes like to keep things around from their childhood, baby blankets and teddy bears and whatnot. It never occurred to me that a parent would have the same inclination towards their kids' toys. Artwork and baby shoes, sure. But now that I think about it, if I'm ever an old man living alone, I think it would be pretty cool to have one of Benjamin's worn out toy swords hanging up on my wall.

SquarO

2008-03-27T13:03:00.004-06:00

SquarO feels like reverse Minesweeper. They give you all the numbers, and you have to figure out where the mines are supposed to go.

My fastest time so far is :49 on Easy. I expect my times will come down as I learn the shortcuts, same as Minesweeper.

ETA: There you go, I just did one in :26.

My best time on Medium is :36.

Super Realistic Renderings

2008-03-21T10:13:00.002-06:00

These will freak you right out.

Mario

Homer Simpson

The guy that makes these just started his blog a couple of weeks ago, so be sure to check back for more.

Rickrolled

2008-03-19T10:22:00.003-06:00

If you haven't been rickrolled yet, just give it time.

If you don't know what rickrolling is, check out this article in the Guardian. The interview with Rick Astley at the the end is particularly entertaining.

Once you're up to speed, check out how this dude managed to pull off a live rickroll of his boss.

But, as with most things, the prize for best rickroll ever has to go to xkcd.

This is what the Internet is for

2008-03-12T12:19:00.010-06:00

When I was a little kid and my mom would take us to the library each week, I had a system. There were several books, or collections of books that I would look for every time.

It was the same at my school library. There was this huge picture book about astronomy, I think it was called The Universe, and if it was in, you grabbed it and checked it out. No questions asked. Having that book checked out in your name was like a status symbol in elementary school. If it was checked out (and it usually was) then you headed for this book about drilling to the center of the earth, and if it was out then you made your way to the thumb print drawing books, this funny sports cartoon book, and so on.

While this hierarchy of desirable books was dictated by what was cool at school, at the public library I was on my own, and free to indulge in books that would have subjected me to ridicule among my school friends. One of my favorite collections was the Creative Activities Program series. I always loved non-fiction as a kid, especially "how-to" books. It's probably why I learned my knots so well in scouts. These books showed you how to do things like build a submarine out of cardboard boxes, complete with working torpedo launchers.

Each week I would check out a different volume--Making, Creating, Fooling, even Sewing. But I never got to read Volume 2: Playing. I imagined it was the best one, too. I mean come on, Playing. I would dash to the shelf every time, but it was never there. I guess some other kid must have lost it or something.

The other series I would always look for was this collection of spy books. They were illustrated in this awesome 70s style that you only see on Sesame Street anymore and they were chock full of useful information. The red ones were called Spy Guides and included Secret Messages, Disguise & Makeup, and Tracking & Trailing. The blue ones were called Detective Guides and included Catching Crooks, Clues & Suspects, and Fakes & Forgeries. I haven't been able to find these anywhere, but it looks like they might have been republished as single volumes: one for spies and one for detectives.

A customer review at Amazon says it best. These books are like The Art of War for eight year olds.

The Tommy Westphall Multiverse

2008-03-12T08:11:00.004-06:00

What do Fonzie, Captian Jean-Luc Picard, and George Michael Bluth have in common? They are all figments of Tommy Westphall's imagination.

Tommy Westphall was an autistic child in the TV show St. Elsewhere. In the final episode of that series, it was revealed that Tommy had dreamt the entire run of the show. That means that any other shows that had crossovers with St. Elsewhere were also part of Tommy's dream, and so on. When you consider all the connections, it soon becomes clear that almost all of TV must have originated in Tommy's mind.

For example, characters from St. Elsewhere once visited the bar on Cheers. Cheers spun off Frasier. In Fraiser, Niles and Daphne read Caroline in the City's comic strip. CITC's Annie was hit on by Friends' Chandler. In Friends, Phoebe's twin sister Ursula is also a waitress in Mad About You. Paul from that show leased his old apartment to Kramer on Seinfeld. So all these characters exist in the same fictional sphere.

But a few connections really make things blow up. In Mad About You, Paul did a documentary narrated by The Dick Van Dyke Show's Alan Brady. And from there you can get all the way back to I Love Lucy and the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and a ton of other shows in between. It helps that some shows are crossover whores, like The X-Files (15), The Drew Carey Show (8), and Hi Honey, I'm Home, which racked up 17 crossovers in its 13 episodes on the air.

You can totally play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with this, and to me it's even more impressive because they are all fictional connections. Can you connect Peter Petrelli with Larry Appleton? Or The Cosby Show's Heathcliff Huxtable with Cosby's Hilton Lucas? Or the US and UK versions of The Office? I could play with this all day.

ETA: Ok, I just thought of a bunch of problems with this thing. What happens when one show treats another show as a TV show, instead of a reality? For example. Paul Buchman from Mad About You leases his old apartment to Kramer from Seinfeld. But George and Susan from Seinfeld are shown watching Mad About You on television one evening. How can that be? To George Costanza, Paul Buchman is not a character on a TV show, he's the real person who Kramer leased his apartment from.

If you think about it, this kind of continuity error happens anytime anyone in this multiverse treats any of the others as TV shows. There are several other examples on Seinfeld alone. Kramer gets a job on Murphy Brown. George talks to George Wendt (Norm from Cheers) and Corbin Bernsen (Arnie Becker from L.A. Law) backstage at The Tonight Show. None of this should be possible because to the Seinfeld gang, Murphy Brown should be a real reporter, Cheers a real bar, and Becker a real lawyer.

Movie List Meme

2008-03-06T20:48:00.005-06:00

Got this from Suzanne.

The rules are simple:

Bold movies you have watched and liked.

Turn red movies you have watched and loved.

Italicize movies you saw and didn’t like.

Leave as is movies you haven’t seen.

* The Godfather (1972)
* The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
* The Godfather: Part II (1974)
* The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
* Pulp Fiction (1994)
* Schindler’s List (1993)
* Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
* One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
* Casablanca (1942)
* The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
* Star Wars (1977)
* 12 Angry Men (1957)
* Rear Window (1954)
* No Country for Old Men (2007)
* Goodfellas (1990)
* Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
* The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
* City of God (2002)
* Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
* The Usual Suspects (1995)
* Psycho (1960)
* Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
* Citizen Kane (1941)
* The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
* North by Northwest (1959)
* The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
* Fight Club (1999)
* Memento (2000)
* Sunset Blvd. (1950)
* Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
* It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
* The Matrix (1999)
* Taxi Driver (1976)
* Se7en (1995)
* Apocalypse Now (1979)
* American Beauty (1999)
* Vertigo (1958)
* Amélie (2001)
* The Departed (2006)
* Paths of Glory (1957)
* American History X (1998)
* To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
* Chinatown (1974)
* Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
* The Third Man (1949)
* A Clockwork Orange (1971)
* Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
* The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
* Alien (1979)
* The Pianist (2002)
* The Shining (1980)
* Double Indemnity (1944)
* L.A. Confidential (1997)
* Leben der Anderen, Das [The Lives of Others] (2006)
* The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
* Boot, Das (1981)
* The Maltese Falcon (1941)
* Saving Private Ryan (1998)
* Reservoir Dogs (1992)
* Forrest Gump (1994)
* Metropolis (1927)
* Aliens (1986)
* Raging Bull (1980)
* Rashômon (1950)
* Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
* Rebecca (1940)
* Hotel Rwanda (2004)
* Sin City (2005)
* Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
* All About Eve (1950)
* Modern Times (1936)
* Some Like It Hot (1959)
* 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
* The Seventh Seal (1957)
* The Great Escape (1963)
* Amadeus (1984)
* On the Waterfront (1954)
* Touch of Evil (1958)
* The Elephant Man (1980)
* The Prestige (2006)
* Vita è bella, La [Life Is Beautiful] (1997)
* Jaws (1975)
* The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
* The Sting (1973)
* Strangers on a Train (1951)
* Full Metal Jacket (1987)
* The Apartment (1960)
* City Lights (1931)
* Braveheart (1995)
* Cinema Paradiso (1988)
* Batman Begins (2005)
* The Big Sleep (1946)
* Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
* Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
* Blade Runner (1982)
* The Great Dictator (1940)
* The Wizard of Oz (1939)
* Notorious (1946)
* Salaire de la peur, Le [The Wages of Fear](1953)
* High Noon (1952)
* Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
* Fargo (1996)
* The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
* Unforgiven (1992)
* Back to the Future (1985)
* Ran (1985)
* Oldboy (2003)
* Million Dollar Baby (2004)
* Cool Hand Luke (1967)
* Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
* Donnie Darko (2001)
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
* The Green Mile (1999)
* Annie Hall (1977)
* Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
* Gladiator (2000)
* The Sixth Sense (1999)
* Diaboliques, Les [The Devils] (1955)
* Ben-Hur (1959)
* It Happened One Night (1934)
* The Deer Hunter (1978)
* Life of Brian (1979)
* Die Hard (1988)
* The General (1927)
* American Gangster (2007)
* Platoon (1986)
* V for Vendetta (2005)
* Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
* The Graduate (1967)
* The Princess Bride (1987)
* Crash (2004/I)
* The Wild Bunch (1969)
* Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
* Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
* Heat (1995)
* Gandhi (1982)
* Harvey (1950)
* The Night of the Hunter (1955)
* The African Queen (1951)
* Stand by Me (1986)
* Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
* Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
* The Big Lebowski (1998)
* The Conversation (1974)
* Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
* Wo hu cang long [Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ] (2000)
* The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
* Gone with the Wind (1939)
* 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
* Cabinet des Dr. Caligari., Das [The Cabinet of Dr Caligari] (1920)
* The Thing (1982)
* Groundhog Day (1993)
* The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
* Sleuth (1972)
* Patton (1970)
* Toy Story (1995)
* Glory (1989)
* Out of the Past (1947)
* Twelve Monkeys (1995)
* Ed Wood (1994)
* Spartacus (1960)
* The Terminator (1984)
* In the Heat of the Night (1967)
* The Philadelphia Story (1940)
* The Exorcist (1973)
* Frankenstein (1931)
* Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
* The Hustler (1961)
* Toy Story 2 (1999)
* The Lion King (1994)
* Big Fish (2003)
* Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
* Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
* Young Frankenstein (1974)
* Magnolia (1999)
* A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
* In Cold Blood (1967)
* Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
* Dial M for Murder (1954)
* All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
* Roman Holiday (1953)
* A Christmas Story (1983)
* Casino (1995)
* Manhattan (1979)
* Ying xiong [Hero] (2002)
* Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
* Rope (1948)
* Cinderella Man (2005)
* The Searchers (1956)
* Finding Neverland (2004)
* Inherit the Wind (1960)
* His Girl Friday (1940)
* A Man for All Seasons (1966)
* Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
* The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

It looks like I hand reds out like candy. The only thing I've seen that I didn't like was Wizard of Oz. It just seemed so long when I was a kid. Plus I did not appreciate the scary parts.

I'm going to watch Shawshank tonight because I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't seen it yet.

ETA: Okay, I've seen it now.