Pancake City

Moved to www.1001words.com

2009-12-27T19:01:00.001-05:00

On the off-chance that someone is visiting this page, I moved my site to www.1001words.com.

Obama's Appeal to Republicans

2008-02-10T19:24:00.001-05:00

I think this quote from a Republican voting for Obama captures the main reason for his crossover support:

In Virginia, a Longtime Republican Votes for Change - washin...

"That was a time when we felt really good about being Americans," DeBusk said, her feet folded onto the couch in her spacious living room. "He made you feel proud to be an American. He was very patriotic, and he was able to express that in a way that people felt it. I would love that for my children, because I think we feel badly about ourselves. Every day, you're hearing they [people in the rest of the world] hate the Americans. These people hate the Americans."

Hey, Feed People

2008-02-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

I moved to Wordpress, a different blogging suite, and my RSS feed has changed. The new one is http://www.1001words.com/feed . Visiting www.1001words.com will bring up the new site.

Okay....

2008-02-02T16:01:00.001-05:00

I'm going to try to move my blog to a completely different publishing system. See you in a day.

Blog May Be Down

2008-02-02T13:16:00.000-05:00

I'm going to fiddle around with the blog a little. It may be down for a day or two.

Yay for Yoono!

2008-02-02T02:04:00.000-05:00

Yoono was exactly what I was looking for in an Internet media sharing site. I love it so far. Almost every day I see an interesting article or blog post that I want to share, but the extra step of creating a blog post to do so was enough to deter me. Yoono makes it very easy to impulsively share media on the web. You right-click or select what you want to share, select "Buzz it", type in a descriptive note if you want to, and that's pretty much it.

Here is my Yoono blog. I will add it to my sidebar soon, and likely post most of my links on here from now on. I already added a few if you want to check it out.

This is the first time in a while that I thought, "I wish there a program that did X" and found out that Program X actually exists.

Recommendation Request

2008-02-02T00:14:00.000-05:00

What's the best way to share the interesting things you find on the Internet?

I'm looking for a cool stuff aggregater, something that would be integrated with Firefox, allow me to add bookmarks with one click (like del.icio.us), allow me to write a description when I want to (kind of like del.icio.us), offers a recently bookmark feature that I can add to my blog page (like del.icio.us?)...

Okay, I'm going to give del.icio.us another try and see if it has what I need. I remember trying it and not being keen on the interface, so if you have another option, let me know.

Update: Yeah, del.icio.us isn't what I need. I think I found the perfect web app: Yoono. Just installed it, but it's very promising so far.

Non-live Debate Blogging, Part 2

2008-02-01T00:22:00.000-05:00

Anyone else watch the debate between Clinton and Obama? I'm not sure how many more Democratic debates there will be, but you can watch them online at the sponsoring network's web site if you don't have cable.

Both of them had very strong performances in what was a pleasantly civil debate. The moderators asked some good questions, a few of which should have been asked 10 debates ago, but late is better than never.

The only slight downside is that Wolf Blitzer would occasionally egg on Obama and Clinton to attack each other. "Senator Clinton, that sounds like a swipe at you from Senator Obama. Care to respond?" I think his salary is based in part how much the candidates fight on stage. The O.C. did well at brushing off Blitzer's rhetorical equivalents of "Fight, fight, fight!"

It's very possible that before Clinton laughs, the command center director in her head saying: "We got a joke from the moderator. Processing. Okay. Optimal response calculated. Prepare laughter. Open mouth, smile--not too much. Perfect. Engage laughter units!"

It doesn't matter because even if it's somewhat calculated, it still goes leaps and bounds into making her more likable. She was as warm and as easy going as she can be, and her biggest gain from the night was easing some of the enmity her abrasive campaign style generated in the past few weeks.

Obama isn't as good of a debater as Clinton, so it was an accomplishment that he did as well as she did in this debate. Obama is a cerebral guy, and unfortunately has trouble articulating his intellectual and political philosophy in easy-to-understand snippets. That's his fault though. Most of what I know about the way he thinks is from articles about him or extended interviews with him, not from what he says at debates, which unfairly or not is the primary exposure most Americans will have to him before voting.

That's why many people think he's vague or unsubstantive. His arguments for his candidacy and way of thinking aren't as sharp as they could be, to the point where sometimes I felt I could argue his case better than he could.

But he crystallized some of the ideas behind his candidacy and delivered them in a way that would connect with more voters in this debate.

There were several examples of this, the best perhaps when he was criticizing both Clinton and McCain: "I don't want to just end the war, I want to end the mindset that got us here in the first place.”

The nerd in me also applauded when he finally mentioned in a debate his idea to broadcast his health care plan negotiations on C-SPAN. Clinton scoffed, although she is probably right to do so as I don't know he will get Congress and the insurance industry to agree to have their meetings open to the public. It's a nice thought though, and I'm glad he suggested it in such a public forum.

His answer on the type of people he wants in his cabinet cheered me, because it goes to the heart of how he thinks: "...people with independence, who are willing to say no to me so, so that, you know, no more yes-men or women in the White House. Because I'm not going to be right on every single issue."

The ability to realize you can be wrong is one of the hallmarks of a skeptical thinker. Is that a critical trait for a good President? Probably not if the President is intellectually strong in other ways, as Clinton is, but being open to the possibility of being incorrect does take a certain lack of ego, which is a little surprising to find in someone who aspires to be the most powerful person in America.

In short, it was an odd debate where both candidates came out looking a little better than when they came in.

On a related note, the last question to them was, "Would they consider a Clinton\Obama or a Obama\Clinton ticket?" The audience cheered wildly. Most commentators poo-pooh the idea, citing the animosity the two candidates have against each other as a deal-breaker.

I agree that it won't happen, but not because of personal dislike. Enemies can turn to friends instantly in politics, especially when it's personally advantageous to both parties. I'm sure Ted Kennedy and President Bush dislike each other, but they had no problem working with each other on No Child Left Behind. John Edwards ran against John Kerry in 2004 and ended up being his VP candidate.

The reason I can't see it happening is that they're worldviews are very different from each other. Clinton believes in top-down government. Obama bottom-up. While by the end they will be able to overcome the bad blood between the two, they still aren't going to click as people because they don't have enough in common with how they view the world. I don't see either of them willing to put up with that sort of personal awkwardness for 4-8 years.

Non-live Debate Blogging, Part 1

2008-01-31T22:44:00.000-05:00

Best blog comment on the Obama\Clinton debate comes from Josh Marshall of TPM:

"8:08 PM ... What GOP operative masterminded holding this debate at the Kodak theater with a bunch of movie stars in the audience?"

Seriously. What was the venue decision meeting like?

CNN PRODUCER: "Here's what I'm going to do for you. You tell me where you want to hold the Republican presidential debate, and we'll do it."
REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE: "Anywhere? Wow. Even the Ronald Reagan library?"
CNN PRODUCER: "You got it. What else do you want?"
REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE: "Uh...midway through the debate, could you bring out one of Reagan's diaries, so we can further worship Our Savior and Holy Father?"
CNN PRODUCER: "I'm going to do you one better. Not only will we bring out one of Reagan's diaries, I'll program Anderson Cooper to say "I'm a little too nervous to actually even touch it, but that is Ronald Reagan's original diary."
REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE: "Program?"
CNN PRODUCER: "Yeah. He's a robot. That's why his hair is white. Silicone gets like that in a sun."
REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE: "Wow. Well, thank you. This is so much more than I expected."
CNN PRODUCER: "Whoa, hold on there. We're not done yet. Where do you want to hold the Democratic presidential debate?"
REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE: "Are you being serious?"
CNN PRODUCER: "Yeah. Shoot."
REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE: "Okay. I'll play along. I want you to have the debate...in Hollywood. In the Kodak theater, where they hold the Academy Awards. Oh, and no regular people in the first 10 rows. Just rich, obnoxious Hollywood celebrities whose very countenance will remind middle America of the phrase 'Hollywood liberal.' "
CNN PRODUCER: "As good as done." [yells] "Cooper-Bot, get in here!"
ANDERSON COOPER-BOT: "YES, MASTER."
CNN PRODUCER: "Cooper-Bot, you're going to the Reagan library, Before you go, tell Wolf-Bot he's going to Hollywood. And make sure he's loaded his Obnoxious Goading sub-routine. If he doesn't start a fight between Clinton and Obama, he's scrapped."
ANDERSON COOPER-BOT: "RIGHT AWAY, MASTER."
REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE: "Wow. Robot technology has progressed so far in 30 years."
CNN PRODUCER: "You've seen a robot before?"
REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE: "Hello? Reagan fan here."

Well Done, Mr. Toles

2008-01-31T11:25:00.000-05:00

Tom Toles gets one last lick in on Rudy Giuliani, the only presidential candidate to use actual 9/11 footage in his campaign videos.

Thank You, Random Gmail Ad

2008-01-30T17:06:00.001-05:00

David Blaine: Street Magic, Part 3

2008-01-28T22:27:00.000-05:00

Because you haven't seen enough YouTube videos.

Martial Arts and Politics

2008-01-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

I am going to make a generalization about martial arts. There are two types of martial arts: disciplines that focus on attacking your enemy (e.g. karate), and disciplines that focus on redirecting your opponent's attacks and using them against him (e.g. judo).

Now I am going to make a generalization about politics. Most politicians practice karate. When political commentators remark that one candidate runs a better campaign than the other, they mean that one candidate is better at karate than the other, better at attacking one's opponent and dictating the terms of the fight.

If you are running a positive campaign, especially one emphasizing change, you can't fight back with karate. It runs contrary to your disposition and your message. It doesn't take many days of attacking to make your supporters feel that you're just another politician using the same negative tactics as every other politician.

Yet you have you fight back, and fight back strongly. The best (and only way, I'd argue) to do this is through judo, using your opponent's attacks against him or her.

I'm obviously talking about karate master Hillary Clinton and judo practitioner Barack Obama. Neither style is morally superior to the other. Politicians choose whatever style best suits their talents and message. Yet the judo style of campaigning is more difficult to execute, and up until a few days ago, Obama wasn't doing a good job at doing it.

For much of the past three weeks, Hillary Clinton's campaign was a step ahead of Obama's campaign. She was controlling the debate, controlling the news cycles, and got Obama to engage in karate for the first half of the South Carolina debate against someone he can never beat with this style.

I have no idea how much of this insider politics stuff influences voters, but it made me worry that his campaign didn't have the cleverness or responsiveness needed to win the nomination. And quite frankly, if his campaign couldn't figure out a way to turn Clinton's attacks on herself, then he didn't deserve to win.

It heartened me several days ago when his campaign first aired the idea that Hillary would do anything to win. That was the right Judo response. One of Hillary Clinton's strengths is that she is willing to do anything to win. This is a good thing. It may be off-putting at times, but if she wins the Democratic nomination and you are a Democrat, you want her to do anything to win. It's too "ends justifies the means" for my taste, but if the only alternative is losing, then it's better than losing.

But Obama was able to reframe this strength as a negative and tie it into a message about how he represented a new style of politics and Clinton an old style of politics. His victory speech after he won the South Carolina primary is a masterful example of a judo response, and made me think that he finally got it.

It's also an inspiring speech that has won admiration even from some conservative Republicans. If you don't have time to watch the whole speech, minutes 4:00-9:00 are a good example of what I wrote about.

Transformers

2008-01-21T23:05:00.000-05:00

I finally watched "Transformers", directed by Michael Bay. It is the type of movie that if I don't write about it now, I never will because I already forgot half of it and I just finished it five minutes ago.

Crap. I just spent five minutes after writing the above sentences trying to remember what snide comments I was about to make, and all that's left in my head is "Poosh". If you don't know, poosh is the culminate sound of two hours of car crashes, explosions, missile fire, and blown-up buildings all compressed into one second. Michael Bay made my brain go poosh.

The experience was exactly like watching "Memento", where time was sliced into a dozen pieces and the fragments rearranged out of order, casting doubt on the existence of narrative yet cohesive enough to motivate one to search for it.

Actually, the experience was nothing like watching "Memento." This is a better analogy. My brain felt like an asteroid hitting another asteroid, which then hit a third asteroid, and then somehow the asteroids rearrange their flight paths so they all start spinning in unison and plummet together towards Earth.

That is also the beginning sequence of Transformers, except there is also a melodramatic voice-over about how Earth is in danger from the Decepticons who want the All Spice so they can season Earth with their evil and then, I dunno, buy a time share and summer in Maine.

I was 100% prepared for a fun but brainless movie when I rented Transformers. Where I erred was not checking the running time beforehand. I saw the Netflix sleeve and thought, "Crap, two and a half hours? That's a long time for a bad movie."

When you are watching a movie that turns time into an abyss with no ledges to anchor oneself, 1 hour and 22 minutes is the same as 2.5 hours. except the latter fosters more pee breaks and thoughts like, "Why is the robot talking like Martin Lawrence from 'Bad Boys II'?"

Ooh, I remembered a thought! Michael Bay passed up an amazing opportunity for a joke. This opportunity was so amazing, that in spite of what I wrote, I would have become a Michael Bay fan for life if he had made this joke.

It was the scene where High School Guy Who Looks 25 and High School Girl Who Already Had Plastic Surgery were meeting the Autobots for the first time.

High School Guy asked Optimus Prime how the Autobots know slang. (Let's ignore the ridiculousness of this question, or why his first question wasn't "HOW THE FUCK DID YOU CRAZY TALKING ROBOTS GET HERE?") Optimus Prime said, "We learned it from the Internet."

What a great set-up for a joke. You can draw from one of many areas of Internet linguistic oddness: l33t speak, IM chat, penis enhancement spam, and so on. What does one of the Autobots say to show off his Internet language?

"This looks like a cool place to kick it!" Wow. Move more, Mr. T. "Jazz" of the Autobots is here.

Here's what would have made me a Michael Bay fan for life:

GUY: "Where did you learn English?"
OPTIMUS PRIME: "The World Wide Web."
JAZZ: "I CAN haz cheezburger." (1 2 3)

SC Dem. Debate Reaction

2008-01-21T22:32:00.000-05:00

I wrote this debate reaction for the comments section of another blog, and it became so long that I figured I might as well post it. Probably not interesting if you didn't watch the debate:

All three candidates had their moments. Edwards positioned himself perfectly in the first half of the debate as being above the squalor when Obama and Hillary were attacking each other relentlessly. He appealed well to African-American voters and sounded more authentic than usual in his rhetoric. He still has a few phrases that he repeats too often, but overall, he had the right tone and it felt like his best debate performance so far.

Obama showed for the first time that he can hit back very hard, but his attractiveness as a candidate is so dependent on positivity, much more so than either Clinton or Edwards, that just having to be in the position of attacking someone harshly may have hurt him overall. He seemed much better in the 2nd half of the debate, like when he connected his positive message to a political strategy better than he has before, and seemed more eloquent than in the first half of the debate (for example, when Clinton brought up his "present" votes in the Illinois legislature in the first half of the debate, I could have explained them better than he did).

Clinton's performance is hard for me to gauge. One of her strengths is policy, and she comes off as more knowledgeable and sharp than Obama and Edwards time and time again. She had a few moments of passion that came off well too. On the downside (or upside, depending on how you look at it), she has wholly adopted the "win at any cost" campaign tactics that Republicans national candidates often favor and have used to great effect. Her comments on Obama's remarks about Reagan and his present votes in the Illinois legislature are just plain willful distortions.

Some people may find it a plus that she is willing to get dirty to win, but for me, every time I started warming up to her, she would make an attack untruthful in spirit, if not in substance, and I would lose whatever admiration I was starting to gain from her. Politicians who are willing to do anything to get into power are willing to do anything to stay in power. The last seven years is as good of an example of that as any. Her character is my biggest reservation about her.

Summary:
Edwards: Did well, may have "won"
Obama: Mixed performance, better in 2nd half of the debate
Clinton: I have no idea. Probably depends on whatever beliefs one already had about her more than anything.

This Kid Cracks Me Up

2008-01-17T22:28:00.000-05:00

Keep true to thy spirit, party dude.

Debate Comments

2008-01-15T23:35:00.000-05:00

I watched the Nevada Democratic debate tonight on MSNBC's web site. As wonderfully moderated as the ABC\Charlie Gibson debate was, this one, moderated by Tim Russert and Brian Williams, was horrible. The questions in the first 1/2 hour were unsubstantial and exclusively focused on insider politics.

At one point, one of the moderators (Williams?) told Obama that he received an email alleging that Obama was a Muslim, swore into office using a Koran, etc., and asked him to respond. Sheesh. Is this the new basement of accusations that is now worthy of a televised response?

Did anyone else watch the debate? Perception plays such a powerful role in how one perceives these debates that I don't feel comfortable declaring any universal truths about this one, like who won or who looked better. I favor Obama, and that colors my view significantly. That aside, this is what caught my eye.

* I've watched all of the debates, and whatever I think about Obama and Clinton's responses, they have been syntactically different each time. The variation in language helps their answers sound fresh, and is done in part because they are adapting their language to a consistently changing campaign, including whatever interest groups they are trying to target in the state where the debate is held.

Edwards, on the another hand, keeps repeating the same phrases with little variation. This is OK if a voter only hears it once, but for me, I found my attention drifting almost every time he talked. The intense focus on message makes him come off to me as unimaginative and somewhat lacking in depth, traits he probably doesn't have in real life. I think the lack of even superficial deviation from one's message is a poor tactic, and he risks being tuned out more than the other candidates.

Next debate, I'm making a Edwards drinking game. One sip everything time he says mill, I'll fight for your interests, corporate greed, lobbyists, or middle class. I am going to get trashed.

* Small thing, but I liked it when Obama said (paraphrasing, hopefully correctly) that one of the biggest ways to head towards energy independence was to focus on efficiency. From what I read, it's true. The biggest way to reduce energy consumption is the most boring: buying fluorescent light bulbs, more energy efficient washers and dryers, and so on.

* Just thought of this. In spite of what I said about Edwards, I wonder if Obama needs to be more on-message, in specific, explaining to people his philosophy of governance.

I'm not sure it comes through enough during the debates. Whether you support him or not, do you feel you understand how he aims to enact and garner support for policy?

My understanding is that it is based on the principles of mediation, inclusiveness, and evaluating the interests of different groups based on science and rationality rather than ideology. In short, the language and politics of cooperation, rather than combativeness (e.g building "good enough" majorities, seeing the other side as the enemy).

This may be naive of me, but I think there is a lot to be gained from acknowledging the view of someone you disagree with, and showing that you understand that person's view. Angry people don't change their minds, whether it's you or the other person who is angry. I believe there are practical benefits to encouraging a civil discussion and reducing the overall level of emotional arguments in political discourse besides the fact that it makes most people feel warm and fuzzy.

At any one time, you can either be in an emotional state or a rational state. You can't be in both. I think better decisions would be made if politicians did less to generate support through emotionally loaded words and speeches, and instead focused on appealing to people's brains.

I remember during the run-up to the Iraq war people on both sides were extremely emotionally invested in the conflict, and we were never able to have a rational, national debate on the decision to go to war. I definitely got emotionally invested at one point and became angry above all else. A good part of that reason was that our leaders were using emotions like fear and anger to fan support for the war, which inspired similar emotions in the other side, and whatever chance we had for a level-headed evaluation of the available information by the public was lost.

It would be difficult, and perhaps impossible, for a President to avoid creating or succumbing to an emotionally charged environment, especially if there were another terrorist attack. But the country would be better off if it could be done, and in my opinion Barack Obama is the best hope for creating a better political environment.

What Is McCain Snorting?

2008-01-14T19:27:00.000-05:00

No, he didn't say something stupid. I ask because he's 71, and he says during the campaign season he wakes us at 6:00 A.M., and goes to bed at 1:00 A.M.

I'm 31, and that's a full five hours less than my ideal sleep time. I'm a firm believer in that when creating schedule, there should be one A.M., and one P.M. Two of each means you either aren't getting enough sleep or are narcoleptic.

The presidential campaign does nothing but remind me of how unqualified I am to be President. I can't even fantasize about being President anymore. I envision myself speaking to a crowd and I think: "Ugh, I don't want to shake all these people's hands. I'm going to bed."

I'm suspicious of everyone running for President. The job itself is slightly less worse than the process to get it. It's stressful, insular, and erodes whatever ethics or principles one may have had entering politics. If you do a really good job, 55% of people will like you. If you do a great job, you get assassinated.

There has to be a better way to obtain power. You know those six mysterious bankers that supposedly control the entire world? One of them has to die sometime. Why not aim for being one of them? There has to be a cadre of backup bankers somewhere, waiting to step in when one of the original six dies. That backup banker could be you.

Better yet, get five of your banking friends and hold a press conference declaring that you all are The Six. What are the mysterious bankers going to do, come out of hiding? They're Mysterious. They don't do that. Just issue terse, cryptic statements after events like when oil hit $100 a barrel ("If only the world didn't disappoint us.") and enough people will start believing you have power that you will have power.

Chutzpah goes a long way. I am convinced this is how Paris Hilton became a celebrity. She crashed a ritzy party and everyone was too embarrassed to admit they didn't know who she was. There was one dicey conversation ("I didn't invite her. Did you invite her." "No. I thought you did." "Maybe...Carl invited her?" "I guess.") and then she was home free.

To tie this back to the original subject, I suspect McCain will win the Republican nomination. My astute political reasoning behind my belief is that the other five Republican candidates are douche bags.

To be more specific: jerk, fear mongerer, devoid of integrity, doesn't believe in evolution, and not really a douche bag, but seriously, the gold standard? "FEDERAL RESERVE: The economy needs more money. Quick, get a pick ax!"

The other candidates each have at least one huge flaw, so I think McCain will win. I also think he would make the best President out of the Republican candidates, so that's a good thing, even if it makes the general election more difficult for the Democratic nominee. A lot of good can come from competition, and I would rather have two strong candidates running for President than a strong one and a weak one.

Web Sites I'm Too Lazy To Create

2008-01-10T10:49:00.000-05:00

I need a Web 3.0 widget that will let me create Web 2.0 sites with a minimum of effort, which happens to be the maximum amount of effort I am willing to spend on making a web site. Two ideas I thought of last night:

1. "Best 10 Minutes." Almost every town hall meeting or Q&A like the candidates' visits to "the Google" has been uploaded to YouTube. There is a lot of good, in-depth information in these videos that one can't find on traditional outlets like the news, newspaper web sites, or the candidate's web site.

YouTube's system for rating and recommending videos works pretty well, but I think a web site dedicated to just videos of candidates discussing philosophy or policy would make them easier to find, and save people the time of digging through hours of video to find the best parts.

I would (I don't know what verb tense describes 'action that I wish I could take but I never will', so "I would" will have to do) set up a web site that would allow users to nominate 10-minute or less video snippets that best capture what they like about their candidate.

Each candidate would have their own section. I am guessing but don't know that YouTube allows you to embed a clip of a video using time codes, so only a link with relevant time codes would have to be uploaded. People could vote what effect the video had on them (positive, neutral, negative) and clips with the highest combination of votes and positive ratings would be featured under each candidate's section.

Yes, there is potential for abuse in a voting system like this. I'll be sure to install as many safeguards in the voting system when I don't make this web site.

2. "Pork Patrol." I am so disappointed that PorkPatrol.com is already taken. At least it doesn't go to a porn site. It redirects you to Citizens Against Government Waste, or CAGW. Yes, that is much catchier. If you want to remember what Web 0.7 looked like, be sure to pay them a visit.

At his Google talk, Obama says he wants to "Googlefy" government (my word, not his). Make bills fully searchable, attach Congress member names to earmarks, and so on.

If these changes were made, the next step would be to create a web site where people could search bills and mark each item in the bill (e.g. separate earmark, proposal for funding). If someone saw a questionable project, they could flag it, where it would appear in a public area for a certain amount of time. People would then be able to ask questions about the project, share information, and rate the earmark.

Every week, the Congress members with the top 10 negatively voted earmarks (for example) would be contacted by the site and given a chance to respond. There would be a new voting period, and then a determination would be made to publicly shame the creator of the earmark, start a phone campaign, or drop the matter and move to a new issue.

I think limiting the number of earmarks, bill language, and so on that would move on to the next stage is important. A limit would make people more judicious when voting and selecting parts of a bill to complain about. If only x items were highlighted a week, it would encourage people to focus on only the most expensive and egregious waste.

Since many earmarks are added at a last-minute and often without a vote, and a web site like this would actually encourage that practice, perhaps there should be a public comment period of 2 weeks after every significant bill so public watch groups like this site could at least bring a bill's shadier parts to the public's attention.

What makes this idea great in my eyes is that it's not even possible to do yet, so I don't feel guilty about not creating the web site. Also, I barely know anything about the minutia of the legislative process, so I am blissfully aware of whatever huge holes there are in my idea. But if budgets were made fully searchable, accountable, and indexable, a site like this would be the logical next step.

Every Candidate Should Answer Questions At Google

2008-01-10T01:28:00.000-05:00

Edit: I should have used Google before writing that title. Other candidates that have appeared at Google.

I linked to a video of Barack Obama answering questions from Google employees in the last post that I have heard of but never watched. I finally watched it, both 25 min. parts.

In the campaign, we hear stump speeches, pundits, and occasionally an informative debate, the best of which might allow each candidate to speak for a few minutes at a time. There is a lot of attention paid to each candidate, but sometimes little information.

Unless you live in Iowa or New Hampshire, you probably aren't going to have the chance to go to a town hall meeting and hear a candidate talk in-depth for an hour or two on policy and philosophy. The video of Obama's Q&A session from a few months ago was interesting for that reason, because it gave him a forum to elaborate on some of his policy interests, governing philosophy, and most important to me, his decision making process. It took place in a laid-back environment away from the mass media and before the primaries, and the talk was as unguarded as one could expect from a politician.

There is no one moment that blew me away, but he said a lot of things that seemed rational and well-reasoned. The cumulative effect made me feel more comfortable about him being elected President.

If you want a good sample, forward to 18:30 in this video and watch the rest (6 minutes).

I was already leaning towards him, so there is some bias there. The clip (and whole video) is worth watching though, and it has the type of information that I think will be difficult to get from any candidate at this point in the campaign.

If you have 10 min. of a video of another candidate to suggest, post it in the comments. I will watch it, whoever it is.

Search for America: A Presidential Campaign Website Review

2008-01-09T21:01:00.000-05:00

I visited the web sites of the top nine Presidential candidates left in the race...

Bill Richardson just dropped out.

Okay. I visited the web sites of the top eight Presidential candidates left in the race to see which of them allowed users to search their sites. First thing I noticed: they all have a blue background. Except John McCain's web site, which has a black background, because he's a maverick.

I resisted the temptation of fully reviewing each candidate's web site. While there is great appeal in spending several hours analyzing each site's layout, color scheme, organization, and pictures of Muslims holding AK-47s (advantage: Rudy!) so I could to create a comprehensive review that would gather, all in one place, a bunch of crap almost no one cares about, I decided to focus on just one aspect.

Does McBama-Hillarudy-Ronbee's web site have a search bar?

Yes, the gold standard achievement in the “I Barely Give a Shit” class. Did they bother to insert an extremely useful function that is on almost every other web page on the Internet? Let's find out.

As a comparison point, I picked a random web page on the Internet: “Pancake City.” Does “Pancake City” have a search bar? Yes, it does. Is it near the top of the page and easy to find? Yes.

Pancake City is the front runner. In response to the site's new status, I have disabled comments and will stop taking questions from the press. I will resume friendly relations with the press once my poll numbers slip, as they have in the past 437 elections when a candidate surged in popularity and became overly cautious and guarded out of fear of screwing it all up.

Democrats

Hillary Clinton: No search bar.

Barack Obama: Dude, you gave a detailed technology speech at Google and then fielded questions from the employees. WHERE IS THE SEARCH BAR?

John Edwards: Search bar, but at the bottom of the page. Clearly labeled. (2^nd place)

Republicans

Rudy Giuliani: I would like to point out that I hate writing about Rudy Giuliani, because I can never remember how to spell his name. I end up having to type something like “Giulaniuani” in Google and hope it recognizes who I am searching for. No search bar.

Mitt Romney: Search bar! Top of the page! The only major candidate to have a search bar near the top of his or her web page. This is True Strength for America's Future. (1^st place)

John McCain: Search bar at the bottom of the page. A real maverick would have put it sideways. (3^rd place)

Mike Huckabee: Mike Hucka-be better putting a search bar on his web page soon. No search bar.

Ron Paul: Ronbots, what happened? The web page is snazzy, attractive, and well-designed. Except no search bar. What am I going to do when I'm drunk and looking for a plan to privatize roads?

I'm leaving Fred Thompson out. That guy is phoning it in more than Leno on most nights. Instead of campaigning 12 hours a day, he's pulling up near prospective voters in his red pickup truck, yelling “Hey, I'm Fred!” and then speeding off to his limo parked around the corner.

Here's the big question: Is the lack of a search bar on these lavishly-funded, professionally-designed web pages an oversight, or were they deliberately left out for some nefarious yet stupid reason, like wanting to control how their visitors access information? Is search too "off message" for most campaigns?

Idea for a New Primary System

2008-01-05T22:49:00.000-05:00

Larry Sabato argues in his book, "A More Perfect Constitution", that many of the current problems with the American political system are structural and can only be remedied by updating the U.S. Constitution to handle issues the founding fathers were unable to anticipate.

For example, once you get elected to Congress, getting reelected is almost automatic. The reelection rate for House members for the past 40 years has been 85% or higher, and it is often 95% or higher. The Senate is more competitive but not by much.

One reason, among many, is that Congressional districts are gerrymandered, drawn in odd shapes to ensure favorable demographics for the member of Congress. The practice has been brazen recently, such as when former Rep. Tom Delay redrew his district in the shape of a middle finger.

A common-sense solution is to divide states into districts using a grid system with the process managed by a non-partisan group such as a panel of judges. Yet the fact that this would make House races more competitive is precisely why Congress will never pass a law to do this, along with anything related to term limits, reduction of franking privileges and so on. As difficult as it would be to pass a Constitutional amendment implementing this process, it's probably the only way it will ever be done.

It's a great book with many interesting ideas. I highly recommend it. One of his ideas came to mind with the media storm around the Iowa caucus.

With Iowa, New Hampshire, and other states leapfrogging each others' caucus or primary date so they would be one of the first states (and few that are relevant), we are now in a situation where the primary system starts in the beginning of January, yet will likely be over by the beginning of February ("Super Tuesday"). Some talking heads are even suggesting the Democratic nomination will be over by the third state, South Carolina, if Barack Obama can win in N.H. and S.C.

It's the longest election process in the world, gives a disproportionate power to the same, few states every four years to elect a candidate, and thus disfranchises most of the country. In Presidential re-election years, the sitting President is distracted and essentially out of commission for an entire year, 1/4 his or her elected term.

I'm recounting Larry Sabato's idea to fix this by memory so the details will be off, but the spirit is the same. Divide the country into four quadrants: Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. On February 1st, select by random drawing which month each quadrant will be able to hold its primaries: e.g. April, May, June, and July. (Edit: I found his write-up of this idea after posting this. The details are different and more in-depth, but the basic idea is the same.)

There is a large benefit to having two small states hold the first caucus and primary though. Small states give unknown and underfunded candidates a chance to gain traction with with retail politics, face-to-face interaction, and town hall debates, something that would be impossible in a state like California.

That is why, in addition, two out of the 10 smallest states by population will be randomly selected to have the first two primaries in the nation, a week before the first regional month. This retains the benefits of involving a small state early on and gives a state besides Iowa and New Hampshire a chance to be relevant.

I enjoy watching politics and being informed, but the primary season continues to get longer with no limit in site, and practically forces every state to push their date earlier is they want a chance to be relevant. The result is that Iowa + N.H. gets months of attention and input, and the other states, forced to have their primaries on the same day plus early in the calendar, get almost no attention and input.

This year, there are 24 states who are holding their primary on Feb. 5th. That's ridiculous. It's the longest short campaign in American history. Six months for Iowa + N.H., one month for the rest of the country, and nine months of a general election with no good TV to pass the time because of the writer's strike. I'm am going to kidnap Jon Stewart and force him to write comedy at gunpoint.

It would be ideal to fix this without a Constitutional amendment, but this has been a problem for several elections so far and I think if the national parties were able to implement and enforce a plan like this on their own, they would have done so by now.

NFL Picks 2007 Review

2008-01-02T22:58:00.001-05:00

With the end of the NFL season last Sunday, now is a good time to review the results of some of professional football's most well-known prognosticators. How accurate were their predictions against the spread?

Starting us off is ESPN's Bill Simmons. According to his Wikipedia entry, Bill has been a writer for ESPN's print magazine and web site for over five years. He is a prolific writer and shares his sports knowledge with readers on a near daily basis. His record after Week 16 is 102-114-9.

Next up is a penny. Pennies are made with copper-plated zinc. Sometimes they are dirty. Sometimes they are pretty and shiny. On the penny is the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. After Week 16, the penny's record is 110-110-4.

The Associated Press is the world's largest news association, and one of the most trusted ones as well. They have over 4,000 employees working in over 240 bureaus around the world. It is unclear how many of the 4,000 employees contribute to its weekly football picks. After Week 16, the AP's record is 110-106-8.

We come to our final prognosticator. A weather vane is a movable device attached to an elevated object such as a roof for showing the direction of the wind. A weather vane can come in many shapes and sizes, like a rooster or an arrow. Do you know which way the wind is blowing? You would if you had a weather vane! After Week 16, the weather vane's record is 104-94-6 (the weather vane was unable to make picks in Week 15 due to excessive rust).

Pancake City will update this summary as more sport columnist picks are found.

Book Notes: What Einstein Told His Cook

2007-12-17T00:13:00.000-05:00

Robert l. Wolke writes a food column for The Washington Post in which he explains the science behind food, cooking methods, and so on. I read a collection of his columns, "What Einstein Told His Cook", and really enjoyed it. Here is a handful of the interesting parts, paraphrased:

* Caramelization is the heat-induced browning of a food that contains sugar, but no amino acids (which make up proteins). Onions contain amino acids, so technically one can't "caramelize" an onion. When a food with amino acids in addition to sugar is heated to induce browning, such as onions, a set of chemical reactions take place called Maillard reactions. (pg 23)

* White chocolate has no chocolate in it. It is the fat from the cacao bean mixed with milk solids and sugar. (pg 34)

* Salt expose: Salt Sense is real salt, but it can claim to have "33 percent less sodium per teaspoon" because the salt crystals are flaky and fluffy, taking more room in a teaspoon than regular salt. (pg 46).

* His general point about salt is that all types of salt--table salt, sea salt, popcorn salt, kosher salt--are either identical or virtually identical chemically. The only significant difference is the size of the salt grain. (pg 42, others)

* Most European butters have a higher minimum milk fat content, which give them a richer flavor than American butters. (pg 78)

* The point of pasteurization is to heat a liquid to a temperature that will kill or deactivate dangerous microorganisms. Traditional pasteurization, not used much anymore, heats milk to 145-150 degrees F for 30 minutes. Flash pasteurization heats milk at 162 degrees F for 15 seconds. Ultra-pasteurization heats it to 280 degrees F for only 2 seconds.

The ultra-pasteurization equipment heats the milk under a high gas pressure to raise the boiling point of milk and prevent it from evaporation during the process. The process also increases the milk's shelf life by 4-5 weeks compared to flash pasteurization. (pg 91)

* Potato chips bags have opaque windows to keep out ultraviolet light, which speeds up the oxidation process of the fat in chips, turning them rancid. As a general rule, keep all fats and oils out of strong light. (pg 118)

* Green skin and sprouting eyes on a potato are sources of solanine, a toxic alkaloid. The solanine doesn't lie deep, so you can cut these parts of the potato
off and use the rest. (p 119)

* Salt (mixed with a bit of water) preserves food because it kills or deactivates bacteria by osmosis. Osmosis is the passing of water through a membrane to balance out the concentration of water in a 2nd solution. The salty solution sucks out the less-salty water in the bacterium, making it shrivel up and become inactive. (pg 138) I wonder if water could bring a dried-out bacterium to life.

* If you aren't defrosting a home-frozen food in the microwave, put it in a metal pan. Metals are great heat conductors, better than air or water, and will transfer the room's heat to the food faster than those methods. A bowl of warm water changed every half-hour is better for bulky foods, like a whole chicken. (pg 201)

* You can sterilize a sponge by placing it in a microwave and running it for 1 minute. The sponge has to be wet or it could smoke or catch fire. (pg 255) This article, from the original study, recommends two minutes so I would go with that.

* Most microwaves can only operate at full power. When you select "50% power", the microwave is cycling on and off so it is only on 50% of the time. An exception is a microwave with "inverter technology", which can deliver a lower level of power. (pg 256)

* Microwaves can penetrate glass and not metal. The reason the metal grate on a microwave door blocks microwaves is because microwaves are 4 3/4 long, too long to fit through the tiny gaps in the grate. (pg 260)

* The most important quality of a frying pan is heat conductivity. The best heat conductor is silver. (I couldn't find a silver frying pan for sale online though). The next best is copper, which conducts heat 91% as well as silver. Too much copper can be toxic, so the pan will need to be lined with a less toxic metal, such as stainless steel or nickel.

Next is aluminum, which conducts heat 55% as well as copper. The aluminum will need some type of coating to protect it from damage from food acids. The worst conductor among common skillet materials is solid stainless steel, only 4 percent as good as silver.

* He tested how much water button mushrooms absorb when you wash them, and found that it's next to nothing. I've found this to be my experience too, in spite of the warnings against washing mushrooms. (pg 286)

* The reason for different measuring cups from liquids and solids (usually with wider mouths than liquid measuring cups) is to account for how the two substances settle in a container. One cup of a liquids will fill all available space in the container. One cup of a solid like sugar or flour will settle unevenly and leave small caps among the granules. Most measuring cups for solids have wide mouths to let the solids spread out more and fill the spaces between them (more like a liquid).

He mentions a product called a Perfect Beaker that does a good job measuring both dry and liquid substances. (pg 293)

Another Haircut

2007-12-13T19:05:00.000-05:00

There is a hereditary rule for predicting baldness. I forget the specifics. If your Uncle on your Mom's side is bald, you'll be bald? Or is it your mother's father, or your father's mother? It doesn't matter. In my family, they're all bald.

My hairline has rapidly receded for several years now. I'm reminded of this on occasion. I'll have a moment of consternation and self-pity, and then adjust to the new setback in the War on Forehead until the next reminder.

The latest one was yesterday, staring at myself in the mirror at The Hair Cuttery. The stylist had just finished cutting my hair, and I was completely lost in thought, feeling depressed at the vast expanse of forehead facing me, sparely dotted with small wisps of hair huddling together like refugees from a still ongoing battle.

"It's okay," the stylist said.

I broke out of my thoughts. The worry on my face must have been obvious for her to say that.

She put her hand on my shoulder. "It's okay."

That made me smile. You know what? It is okay. Balding sucks, but it's not the end of the world. It's part of life, and I'll just have to live with it. I gave her a knowing nod. You're right. It is okay.

It wasn't until the third time that she asked "It's okay?" that I realized we weren't having an unspoken connection where a familiar combination of male baldness and angst made my inner thoughts clear and my need for comfort obvious, but rather she just wanted to know if I liked my haircut, and for the past 30 seconds I was just responding to her by winking and nodding.

"Yeah, yeah, it's okay!" I jumped out of the chair. As I left, I realized I still felt a little better, even if the compassion was accidental.

Rubber Thug

2007-12-11T23:36:00.000-05:00

How did I miss this bit of marketing genius for so long?

I have had an old Rubbermaid "Roughneck" laundry basket for many years now. The label copyright is 1983. I just noticed two things about it today.

1. The original product sticker is still on the bottom.

2. The Rubbermaid mascot is a thug.

The image quality is poor, but the message is clear: this guy is mad about laundry. His arms are crossed, his dockworker hat is pulled to the ridge of his forehead, and whatever is strapped to his wrist is either an unusual watch or portable garroting wire.

"Five Year Warranty"? Yeah, like I'm going to call Rubbermaid customer service and give my phone number and address to a company with Sir Thug-A-Lot on the payroll. "You got a problem with your basket? Yeah, I'll come right over and fix it. I'll fix it real good."

I'm afraid to put laundry in this thing anymore. I was blissfully unaware of this relic of the tough-guy marketing trend for over a decade, and now I can't fall asleep without a pullover and a pair of socks covering his face.

I understand the manly man marketing philosophy, but even accounting for today's slightly increased sensibilities, what was Rubbermaid thinking?

AD MAN 1: "Hey, let's put a picture of a man who looks like he beats his wife when the booze runs out on all our products aimed at women, many of whom who stay at home alone or with defenseless kids."
AD MAN 2: "I like it! Mr. Clean, you going down."

Best Album of 2007?

2007-12-08T16:58:00.000-05:00

I could easily find 100 good candidates for Song of the Year, but Album of the Year is much different. I tend to listen to singles or will just download 2-3 songs from an artist rather than the whole album, so I don't have many candidates to choose from.

My favorite album, which I'm surprised isn't even on most people's Top 10 lists, is All Hour Cymbals by Yeasayer. "2080" is crazy good and the rest of the album is repeat-worthy as well. I've listened to the entire album a few dozen times and am still enjoying it.

The rest of my list will be unsurprising to people who likes indie pop \ rock. I was hesitant to make a "Best of the Year" list at all because there's not much here that's interesting if you keep up with this type of music.

All Hour Cymbals / Yeasayer
The Flying Club Cup / Beirut
Andorra / Caribou
Night Falls Over Kortedala / Jens Lekman
Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga / Spoon
Ghettoblaster / Socalled
Mice Parade / Mice Parade

From the “Wish I Heard About in 2006″ club:
Night Ripper / Girl Talk
The Dusty Foot Philosopher / K’Naan

Other stuff: I like a lot of songs on Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible", but I haven't listened to the entire album enough to stand by it. I just downloaded "In Rainbows" by Radiohead and am enjoying it so far, which is something because I'm not a big Radiohead fan (sacrilege!)

I also finally listened to M.I.A.'s "Kala", an alum that seems to appear on every Top 10 list out there. It's good, especially "Jimmy" and "Paper Planes", but at the same time I don't quite get why so many people are in love with it.

Okay, your turn. Jim, Meghan, other fans of music: what are your Best Albums of 2007?

A Better Way To Read Through Technology?

2007-11-27T02:28:00.000-05:00

We (Westerners) currently read left-to-right, snapping our eyes all the way back to the left after reaching the end of the line. This snapping back is a huge inefficiency. People, once they got comfortable with the method, would be able to read faster if text were printed so the next word after the end of the line was directly below, not across the page.

There are some obvious problems with changing to this system, and it would be impossible to do on a national scale. America can't even change to the metric system, and that makes a lot more sense than this idea.

It is currently near impossible to do on a personal level too. The comfort of reading in one style for decades may be too difficult to overcome. Even if one had the desire, the number of books and newspapers printed in this wraparound format is either zero or close to it, and every publisher would find the thought of doing so ridiculous.

The Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle--two EBook readers that display text electronically on a handheld device--got me thinking of a time in the near future that would at least remove the technological roadblocks. It would be a trivial matter for an EBook reader to automatically display text in a wraparound format. The Kindle allows for one to read online newspapers and blogs too, so presumably wrapping text for these would be easy as well.

What if these EBook readers decided to offer an option to switch to this reading mode at the press of a button? It may end up a novelty, but perhaps it turns out that one can feel comfortable with this new reading style after a few hours, and the benefits make it worth it.

There's no extra publishing cost, no large technical hurdles to overcome, and it's optional. It's also a feature not offered in print, and probably never will be. Shouldn't these EBook readers do something better than their print counterparts?

I think if one were to switch to a different reading style, the majority of what we read--at home, at work, on the web--would need to be electronic plus convertible to this new style. We are many years from that becoming the everyday environment, but electronic publishing is at a point where, with the help of a few yet-to-be-developed computers programs, a motivated individual could experiment and get a good sense of the costs and benefits of learning a more efficient reading style.

Can I Haz Credit Card?

2007-11-27T01:18:00.000-05:00

I applied for a business credit card because it offered a bonus of 15,000 Reward Points, which one could use to get $100-$150 worth of gift certificates. I am quite poor. No self-respecting credit card company would offer me a business card based on my actual income, so I added $10,000 to my yearly income, technically still a possibility if the U.S. dollar becomes so low in the next month that they switch to dried noodles as currency. I have a Fort Knox of noodles in my pantry.

I got an email a few minutes ago saying I was rejected for the card because my income is too low. After adding $10,000 in imaginary money to it.

It is official. I am so poor, I can't even afford to lie.

Thansgiving Fun

2007-11-23T22:57:00.000-05:00

* While making Thanksgiving dinner, I asked my Mom what was in this bowl of sweet-smelling herbs. "Guess. You can test your smell." Two seconds later, as I'm still in the process of bending over to smell then, she blurts out "Sage!"

ME: "Why did you tell me before I could guess?"
MOM: "I like to cheat."

* "Sous Chef" is a fancy name for "chump who is unable or not trusted to cook." I am always the Sous Chef on Thanksgiving.

* Mom has a hand-painted serving platter that she got from France. She loves this platter. I didn't realize how much she loved it until she handed it to me to put on the dining table. "Jason. if you drop this, I will kill you. [laughter] I am serious. I will show no mercy." After we stop laughing, she took the Death Platter back from me and put it on the table herself.

* I bought myself a hand blender for my birthday next week. Mom reimbursed me, and then Michele said she wanted to pay for the gift.

MOM: "Okay. You owe me $40."
MICHELE: "$40? Jason told me it was $20."
TINA: [looking to me] "I thought you said it was $30."
ME: "It is $30. They are trying to one-up each other."

Soup

2007-11-19T17:38:00.000-05:00

I bought a cookbook called "400 Soups." I'm not much of a cook, which is why I like making soup. Chop, put in pot, add broth, ignore for one hour. I can do that.

You know what the first soup in this book is? Vichyssoise. That is not a starter soup. For one, I can't tell if the pronunciation is French or Long Island (Vee-shay-soi / Vick-y-soiz) Two, it either has an extra 's', or it is missing an 'n'. That's OK for page 213, but not for page 1.

You know what the first recipe should be? Potato soup. Ingredients: potato, water, bowl. No French peeling the potato or sprinkling cinnamon dust around the edge of the bowl. Just a boiled potato, unpeeled, in a bowl of water, with a fork sticking out of it. Salt and pepper optional.

The first soup should not take culinary beginners into uncharted waters. Give us a confidence booster. Something with celery, not leeks. Herbs that appear in Simon & Garfunkel songs, not Martha Stewart specials.

If I were this book and not a man who reads books, like a Book God peering into the lives of his subjects, I'd move my page 76 to the front. Roasted Pepper Soup would be a good starter recipe.

It looks how it sounds like it will look and has words in its name that everyone can understand. No obscure ingredients either. King Edward potatoes have been usurped by Joe Onion and his gal, Garlic Jill. I'd follow Roasted Pepper Soup up with Green Lentil Soup, and then its cousin, Garlicky Lentil Soup. There should be a good 20-30 pages of pepper and legume soups before Vichyssoise even appears in the table of contents.

To sum up, I would start off with simple pepper and legume soups. Then I would include a table of contents. People wouldn't mind that it came 30 pages into the book because they would be too busy reading the recipes and exclaiming, "Hey, I recognize that ingredient" and "Mmm, this soup is going to taste as good as it sounds, sounds I can confidentially reproduce when saying the name of this soup."

Then you can include Vichyssoise and related soups later in the book in a special "Freak" section with detachable pages, so it's easy to tear out if you want to. The pages should be made out of soft paper, so when you are enjoying a warm bowl of Irish Potato Soup, you can wipe your lips with Avgolemono or Lemon and Pumpkin Moules Mariniere.

These Things Exist?

2007-11-06T18:22:00.000-05:00

And you can buy them online?

It's a cell phone jammer that you can get for $50. Who knew spy technology was so cheap?

(They are illegal to use in some countries, including the U.S.)

The Speech Bubble Filling Continues

2007-11-05T21:37:00.000-05:00

Comic

Headlines

2007-11-03T03:20:00.001-04:00

In Va., Parties Focus on Turnout
Wha...? Political parties try to get people to polls? Virgina winner decided by votes? Ye gods, what happened to tradition of yore: selecting a townsmith based on the plumpness of his grandest goose?

Lawmakers Might Use Clout to Get Hospital Funding
Plan B: Use clot.

Artificial Joint Makers Lobby Hospitals Vigorously
Joint makers shake fists in jarring, stilted fashion.

Writers Str...see ya!
(Original headline: Writer Strike Set for Monday)

Sugar Industry Expands Influence
Sugar to appear in NutraSweet, diabetic ice-cream, salt. You can't stop the sugar. No one can stop the sugar. Except...

"VO: Coming this summer. A sugar industry infiltrated by terrorists. A people addicted and under siege. All hope is lost. Except for one man."

(Visual: A wood door explodes, creating a cloud of dust and debris. Through the cloud steps Christopher Walken, holding a machine gun and weighed down by several ammo belts.)

WALKEN: "I gotta say, the door. I was expecting more of a BOOM than a KA-POW."

VO: "Christopher Walken is...Sweet Justice."

Friday Media Roundup

2007-11-02T10:16:00.000-04:00

Stuff I've read, watched, or listened to that's good enough to recommend.

Yeasayer / "2080" (music): Yeasayer is a difficult band to describe, which is a good thing. I can't imagine anyone agreeing with this, but "2080" reminds me of music that would play in a movie about an optimistic, post-apocalyptic future.

The whole album has an aura of oddly familiar strangeness. It's like the music skipped a few stages of evolution, so it's difficult to see where it came from, but it's still recognizable enough to enjoy.

How about this: (World Music)^2 ? I give up. Great band, regardless.

Heroes (TV): I avoided watching the show until recently because the premise--ordinary people discover latent superpowers and try to avert a world disaster--sounded bland. The execution is excellent though. The show's strength is its constant diet of new surprises and resolutions. It's almost like the anti-Lost--something significant is revealed in every episode, to the point that I don't see how they maintain the pace for more than a few seasons.

The Real All-Americans (book): I'm not a huge sports fan, but I found Sally Jenkins' book on how Native Americans were integral to the development of collegiate football fascinating. I'm surprised I never heard of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an experiment in assimilating Native Americans by a well-meaning but perhaps misguided army officer, or knew that it was the source for a lot of what we now consider basic parts of football, like the forward pass,
reverses, and training dummies.

The book also brought light to some names I only heard in passing, like Jim Thorpe and Pop Warner. It's worth checking out from the library or buying for anyone with an interest in sports history.

Today's Post Is In Visual Form

2007-10-31T09:43:00.000-04:00

Original Sin

Original Sin, Pt 2

From the Department of Ewww

2007-10-30T22:35:00.000-04:00

Mickey, one of the dogs I walk, found a dead squirrel today and picked it up. The wiry tail hung out of his mouse and whipped back and forth like a half-eaten strand of spaghetti.

Mickey was very proud of himself. He walked close to me to show off his prize. My one attempt to dislodge it from his mouth, poking the dead squirrel with a four-foot stick, only gained me an annoyed look.

He carried it all the way home, when he unceremoniously dropped it on the newly vacuumed carpet. I locked him in a room while I threw it away. Before we got home, though, we met a manically friendly 40ish year-old woman who was jogging towards us. This is the verbatim conversation:

LADY: "Oh, look at you! You are such a sweet dog! Yes, you are! Yes, you--OH GOD."
ME: "Yup."

What Are Your Top Three Podcasts?

2007-10-29T16:08:00.000-04:00

If you could only listen to three podcasts, which ones would they be? Post your answer in a comment.

My favorite podcast is This American Life. A very close and less well-known second is WYNC's Radio Lab. The show picks a broad subject like morality and digs up interesting scientific studies or stories about the topic. One of the hosts is Robert Krulwich, who seems to make an amazing use of whatever medium he is in.

I don't have a clear third, which is part of the reason why I'm asking this question. The rest of the podcasts I listen to are entertaining but on a lower tier. If I had to pick one though, it would be Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me, NPR's comedy news program.

Sir, Your Premise Is Flawed, and Your Pantaloons Are Off-Center

2007-10-29T10:44:00.000-04:00

I would like to point out that three seconds after I wrote the title for this post, I found my cell phone, which I had been searching for the past half-hour. If you are really good at deductive logic, you may be able to figure out where it was with one hint: I do something when I am about to write for a while.

The Washington Post Outlook printed an essay by someone who argues that the media and public perception of Rudy Giuliani as a liberal is wrong.

My perception of Giuliani is that his name is very difficult to spell by memory. Sounding it out doesn't help either. Gee-you-lan-ee--at least one of the "i"s in his name is excessive. I'm not voting for any candidate whose name isn't spelled like it sounds. Mike Huckabee--now there is a man I can get behind. There was even a movie made about him, I Heart Huckabees. It was made by Hollywood (evil!), but I have a forgiving heart for Huckabee-named movies.

If you think I am being superficial, name the last President we elected with a slightly odd name. Heck, name the last candidate nominated for President with a slightly odd name.

Back to the article in question. I haven't spent much attention on either primary race, but I disagree with the author's basic premise: "Somehow, though, Giuliani is being introduced to the rest of America as a liberal."

Really? I haven't heard anyone besides the far-right label him as a liberal. The author himself can't even find an example of someone in the media or mainstream calling him that. He quotes a few pundits saying that he has "liberal positions on social issues" and equates that with being a liberal, but they're two different things.

This logical jump undersells his whole argument. He's trying to disprove something--the mainstream thinks Giuliani is a liberal--that isn't true in the first place.

Do you like all of these paragraph breaks? Pancake City cares about readability and short attention spans.

It's too bad the author isn't more honest with his premise, because there are interesting points to be made about the ties between perception and politics. I'm guessing that most people who know little about Giuliani will assume he's a moderate almost solely because he was a Republican elected in New York city.

Likewise, people would assume a Democratic governor elected in Kansas would be a moderate. These assumptions are often true and powerful because of that.

What's interesting to me is the lag between these perceptions and reality. Every primary candidate shifts away from the center to attract partisan voters who play a greater role in primaries than the general election. It takes time for media pundits to update their often simplified story of a candidate, if they ever catch on at all.

That's a more interesting topic in my eyes. What is the connection between reality--what a candidate says and how voters perceive him or her--and the media's reporting of that reality, which often seems strongly filtered by long-ago made assumptions that are difficult to change?

For example, the current narrative is that Hillary Clinton is unstoppable and has the Democratic nation locked up. Polls give her a sizable lead. I've seen stories, maybe noticed because of my own filter, on how Obama's donors are worried. Political future markets are selling Hillary shares at 70 for the Democratic nomination (essentially saying she has a 70% of winning the Democratic nomination).

How much of this is based on reality--Obama and Edwards not connecting with primary voters--and how much of this is a self-feeding narrative, similar to the convention wisdom on Howard Dean four years ago? How much are undecided voters influences by these narratives? It seems backwards that such a strong narrative can be accepted and repeated without a single vote cast.

Edit: I just remembered another narrative that I'm not sure how it got started and took hold: Clinton is experienced / Obama is inexperienced. You know the last elected office Clinton held before being elected Senator on New York? None.

My guess is that experience is being used as a synonym for familiarity. As first-lady for eight years, she has had more time in the public eye than anyone running right now. She is also strongly associated with someone with a lot of experience, former President Clinton, and the connotation people have of the former President may be spilling over to her.

The closest person to Clinton in length of public exposure? Giuliani, who guess what, is also the front-runner for his party. Hmm. Maybe there is a connection.

Our Malined Friend

2007-10-27T12:33:00.000-04:00

I feel sorry for the toilet seat. It's always the comparison point for grossness.

Every few months there's a story on how Everyday Object X has more bacteria than a toilet seat. "Average keyboard has more bacteria than a toilet seat." "Calling Dr. Gross--mobile phone has more bacteria than a toilet seat." "Why don't you have your baby lick a toilet? Pacifiers have more bacteria than gas station commode."

If there are so many objects more disgusting than a toilet seat, maybe it's time to back off the insults to our porcelain friend. It's doing something right. It is beating our cell phones in the clean contest, and I don't know about you, but I don't poop on my cell phone.

What would I use as a substitute? A far question to ask. If I were a scientist releasing a meaningless study because my company's PR department wants to generate publicity from a media machine that hungers for attention-grabbing stories that require almost no research or effort to report, I'd....well, actually, I'd kill myself, because my life would be a hollow shell, empty of a long-forgotten dream to do something meaningful.

Or...I would use an object that no one would suspect harbors bacteria, and give people two things to fret about. "Office keyboards have more bacteria than corn!" What? Corn has bacteria?

You Are What You Do?

2007-10-26T16:20:00.000-04:00

Have you ever focused on something so intently that it filtered how you viewed the world? When I used Photoshop intensely for a few weeks, I would have thoughts like "That's a nice gradient in the sky" or "That azalea bush is over-saturated." It's the visual equivalent of staring at a black-and-white spiral for 30 seconds, then looking away at a blank wall and seeing the wall spin.

Maybe you worked 12-hour days for a few weeks writing computer programs and started seeing human behavior in code: IF sign=walk, THEN move forward. Perhaps after a long pottery class lampposts look more like shaped clay than steel, the rivets spiraling up the post formed by hand, not machine.

I find this disturbing, in a way, how easily our way of processing the world can be affected by selectively focusing on one activity for a while. I can't quite put my finger on why it troubles me. Most of what makes people up is rigid and thus dependable. Our appearance, character, and manner of social interaction are slow to change.

But this other pillar of what makes us us, the way we look at the world, is flimsy. It changes all the time, sometimes in dramatic ways over a period of hours, just by doing an activity intensely.

Last night, I watched episodes of a television show (Heroes) for five hours non-stop. Part of the time I had a poker game running on the other background and occasionally pause and rewind the show when I had to play a hand. I remember seeing two players involved in a big hand out of the corner of my eye, and after pausing Heroes, my first instinct was to rewind the hand so I could watch it again, like I was watching another show.

A few other times I wanted to put a person I was talking to on pause, literally, so I could concentrate on something else for a moment. It's jolting to have two areas of my life bleed into each other like that. It's a brief glimpse into a warped reality, almost like a psychosis.

I wonder if there is any connection between this phenomenon and psychoses like delusion. If I saw a action movie where the hero was extremely paranoid, I would become a little paranoid too. What if instead of this feeling not being reinforced by my environment and fading away, it takes root through a small flaw of brain chemistry and starts reinforcing itself?

My thoughts are scattered, but I'm starting to wonder if the reason most psychoses exist is due to how easy it is to change how we look at the world. It's not as much the absence of a big block of neurotransmitters, but the fact that perception is so fragile that it takes little to set it off-kilter.

Maybe there should be a new field of therapy called "reality grounding" (if there isn't one already) that would help people recognize the influence of their actions on their thinking, especially during intense activity, and resist this influence when they want to.

Google Trends

2007-10-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

Hey, lazy reporters!

Need evidence to support the conclusion you had before you started writing your political horse race piece? Visit Google Trends. It tracks search engine traffic and news references for popular words and phrases.

Google Trends is flexible enough to accommodate a wide-variety of pre-conceived ideas. Isn't it a shame how people care more about celebrities than politicians? Just search for "Paris Hilton, Hillary Clinton." Oops! Hillary got more news references. Better revise the search: "Paris Hilton, Senator Brownback." There we go!

Hey, how does a goat fare against the three main Democratic presidential candidates? Hoo hoo hoo! Politics is silly.

Google Trends is also useful when planning the news cycle during the slow summer months. Should we go with Summer of the Shark, or Summer of the Monkey? Let's check with America first.

Historical Figures Updated for the 21st Century

2007-10-24T23:35:00.000-04:00

Abe Link'in: This web site avatar will connect the myriad places on the web with his steadfast leadership and eloquent RSS summaries, before being shot down by a pop-up ad for Viagra.

George Washington Truth Serum: "I cannot tell a lie"...and neither will those stinking terrorists be able to either when they're injected with 500mg of G. W. Truth Serum. Claim you're a legal citizen just trying to run a struggling ethnic restaurant? We'll see what you have to say after having a talk with our founding father. Warning: may cause irreparable nerve and brain damage.

FDR: Franklin Delanor Roosevelt has a "New Deal" for you: insanely low prices on the 2008 Mazda Miatas and hundreds of other of the latest models. You won't be able to get up either once you sit in the new 2008 Toyota Prius. What? The already use Presidents to to sell cars? Jeez. What fucking assholes.

Let's Waste Some Time

2007-10-19T20:44:00.000-04:00

Check out Boomshine. It's an elegant and simple game. The object is to detonate as many of the multi-colored balls bouncing around the screen as you can in one shot.

This game made me wonder if it was also the perfect test of intuition, the ability to process vast amounts of information in a blink and come up with a course of action that is right without knowing why. Is this game blind luck, or is intuition at work, calculating hundreds of trajectories at once and sensing the right moment and place to to click to destroy as many balls at once? You'll understand what I mean when you play.

I felt I did worse when I let my analytical side take over and started thinking about where to click rather than clicking at the first spot that came into my head.

Back from the past: Strip Creator

2007-10-18T01:59:00.000-04:00

I posted a link to this site a few years ago and forgot about it until now. It's Strip Creator, a web site that allows the creative and artistically untalented to create their own comics. This one is mine:

Wanting to stay single

This one isn't mine, but it's funny.

Down With Bears! Vote Colbert!

2007-10-17T09:53:00.000-04:00

Steven Colbert is running for President! In one state. I'm moving to South Carolina to vote for him. For one, he's the only Presidential candidate who understands the danger bears pose to our homes, our families, and our way of life. I'm looking at you, Sugar Bear. Two...there is no two. Bears are the gravest threat to humanity in the world. Reason number one is reason number enough to vote for Steven Colbert.

Colbert's presidential announcement

Update: Uh oh. He's already involved in his first scandal.

Keyword Project

2007-10-17T01:08:00.000-04:00

For the past several days, I've been going through every post I have written, over 1,350, and adding keywords to each post. I also fixed dozens of links and deleted about 50 extraneous posts.

I am 99% finished. I've been adding the keywords in reverse chronological order, so I'm at the first handful of posts I wrote four years ago. The indexing system was created on the fly so it is inconsistent and not as good as if I had the time to plan it out, but I think it will serve some use.

One of my first posts four years ago was a link to this video, We Drink Ritalin. Not only does the original link work (trust me, this is amazing by itself), but the video is still very funny.

I disabled the RSS feed before I started, so either you will get one new post after I restore the feed, or 1,300.

Music Bridge

2007-10-15T10:12:00.000-04:00

My first modern MP3 was a first-generation IPod shuffle that I got free after signing up for a credit card. I used ITunes and mostly downloaded podcasts, but got annoyed that it didn't remove dead links from my library. For example, if you move a directory with mp3s on your hard drive, ITunes will then list the title twice, one with the broken link that doesn't work and one with the working link (after you manually re-add it to your library).

The Mac version of ITunes automatically deletes links. The whole enterprise is a giant F U to Microsoft Windows.

That is why when I got cheap non-Apple MP3 player #2, I switched over to Windows Media Player. WMP automatically deletes old links, has a nicer user interface, and is better at monitoring for new content. It does everything! Except support podcasts, which over 50% of MP3 player owners listen to (source: like I have to tell you. It's obviously made up.)

Okay. I'll open ITunes to download podcasts, and then open WMP to transfer them to my MP3 player. That worked fine until I bought MP3 player #3, a first-generation Microsoft Zune on sale for $105. It's great...except it doesn't work with ITunes or WMP. In a giant F U to Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Zune doesn't work with the company's own flagship media player. It only works with Zune Player!, which looks exactly like WMP except it is black and a little more difficult to use.

Why am I telling you this? For your own benefit! I finally broke down and searched for some third-party programs to handle this mess.

Music Bridge This program copies metadata such as playlists and ratings between ITunes and WMP. You can rate a song in either program and have the rating show up in both libraries. It doesn't work yet with Zune Player! metadata though.

ITunes Library Updates If you run the Windows version of ITunes, this program will comb your entire library and remove the dead links in it.

Am I missing any neat programs out there?

MY SISTER HAS A BLOG!!!

2007-10-12T12:10:00.000-04:00

Ass Prom!

This is so cool. It's really good too. I want to steal her "Fucked-up Comments" idea. M's posts are under "Inge" (I can only reveal so much about her identity).

Oh Noes!

2007-10-10T11:43:00.000-04:00

I love saying "Oh Noes!" It makes burnt bagels and dropped plates fun.

On a loosely related note, nothing cheers me up like a good LOLCAT.

In terms of Internet inventions, LOLCATZ ranks third, right behind Google and BitTorrent.

Blackwater: We Just Sound Evil

2007-10-09T19:20:00.000-04:00

Rule #1 for corporations: choose a name that doesn't sound evil.

I call this the Hollywood Movie Test. Here is how it works:

YOU: "Hey, we're thinking of naming our business 'MegaCorp.' "
FRIEND: "MegaCorp? Wasn't that the name of the evil corporation in RoboCop?"

TEST FAILED.

It doesn't matter whether the name actually made a guest appearance as an evil corporation in a movie. The fact that the idea easily comes to imagination is enough.

That's how I know Blackwater, the private military company providing additional security and logistic services in Iraq, is evil. Blackwater sounds like one of the corrupted areas in Lord of the Rings. Make a right at Isengard and head 1/2 a league south of Fangorn. You can't miss it. The water is black. Huh? Yeah. Completely black. Symbol of the absolute corruption and exploitation of nature.

Why are you heading there anyway? Oh. Okaaaay. No, no, I'm not saying it's a bad name of a company. It's just...well...depends what you do. Do you work for Sauron? No? Saruman? No. Okay. What's your core business? Uh-huh. Yeah. So it's not polluting the environment and instilling dread in the hearts of men, dwarfs, and hobbits? Maybe you should rethink the name then. Something with more pop. What's that? "Hobbit Punchers, Inc."--no, not that type of pop.

If you want any real information about Blackwater and the shooting incident they were involved in with Iraqi police, The Washington Post has a nice repository of information on the company. The House voted overwhelmingly last Thursday to place all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Which begs the question, why wasn't this done at the start?

That's All I Got

2007-10-06T23:24:00.000-04:00

I'm halfway done unearthing and organizing my old files. I found a few partially written stories that I have absolutely no recollection of writing. I must have started them many years ago. None of them are close to a recognizable story, but there are a few interesting paragraphs among the mess:

"General Montayo didn’t smoke small cigars. He didn’t smoke large cigars. He smoked medium cigars. Large cigars were a wasteful extravagance, the pleasure never equating with the money. Small cigars were an insult. An insult to flavor, to quiescence, and most of all, to the ambrosia-filled state of mindless pleasure that made time eternal for a few, brief minutes, and let a man’s perturbations explode from the smoldering tip of a modest belvedere into rigid curls of smoke that separated like rivulets from a river and left slowly, softly, finally fading into a dreamlike haze."

The Big Organization Project

2007-10-05T01:38:00.000-04:00

When I reinstalled Windows several months ago, all of my old computer files--photos, music, programs, writing--were copied into a backup directory. The internal structure was still a mess, as I got into the bad habit of saving files all over the place rather than in a dedicated directory.

After that point, I continued to save photos, songs, notes to myself and so on in many different directories, but not in any of the previously created different directories in the backup folder. In addition, these files were spread over two hard drives on an ad hoc basis.

Finally, I still have some even older computer files from a previous upgrade in a sub-directory of the previously mentioned backup directory.

The short of it is that my file system is impenetrable to any hacker sniffing for sensitive data. My comedy writing, a prime target for any thief looking for wisps of thoughts and half-written jokes, are scattered in at least eight different directories and in files with names like these: ideas.doc, Journal.doc, monkey.doc, Mr.doc, and notes.doc (all of these are from just one directory). The name "Notes" is my favorite. I have close to 100 non work-related MS Word files with 'notes' in the file name. Go ahead, hackers. Try and find the bit I started on Chick-Fil-A but never finished.

I realized this was a problem today when I was looking for an old resume and couldn't find it, along with most of the data to reconstruct my job history. I'm taking a few days to reorganize every single file I have. It is also a fine excuse to avoid creating a new resume.

This has the added bonus that I will probably be writing often in the next few days, so I can avoid the organization project that I am doing to avoid writing a resume, which incidentally I wanted to do to avoid writing a blog post.

Wait a minute...

2029. Skynet Department of Temporal Manipulation

2007-09-28T00:35:00.000-04:00

A large, muscular android stands on a metal platform. Thin rings of metal rotate in mid-air around him, glowing with increasingly intensity as they spin into a blur. A loud hum emanates from the rings; they glow blindly white and fill the room with an unearthly glow. The glow quickly dies and the rings dematerialize; the cybernetic organism is gone.

SKYNET ROBOT MANAGER: “Readings?”

SKYNET ROBOT SCIENTIST 1: “Temporal vortex successfully opened and closed.”

R. MANAGER: “No anomalies?”

SKYNET ROBOT SCIENTIST 2: “He's back in 1984. Everything went just as planned.”

[ROBOT SCIENTIST 2 glances at R. SCIENTIST 1. They both snicker.]

R. MANAGER: “When did you two get laughter chips? Processing... forget it. Why are you laughing?”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “We're just happy at the impeding death of John Connor and the human resistance.”

R. SCIENTIST 2: “Yeah. They're going to feel naked without him.”

[R. SCIENTIST 1 + 2 break down and titter. R. MANAGER stiffly puts his metal hand on his hip and scans them with his red laser eye.]

R. MANAGER: 75123-XL! 75312-XV! You tell me what you did to the Terminator right now!

R. SCIENTIST 1: “We sent him back to 1984 without his clothes.”

R. MANAGER: “By the mother of Matrix!”

R. SCIENTIST 2: “Relax, it's funny. Just imagine how pissed off he is going to be.” [mimicking Austrian accent] “I am the Ter-min-ah-tor. I must kill Sar-ah Conh-or. Where are my Ter-min-ah-tor pants?”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “He'll use it as motivation. I bet he'll be so angry he'll kill someone in the first five minutes of when he arrives.”

R. MANAGER: “I'd mark you two for reprocessing if you hadn't done so much to get us here.” [MANAGER becomes lost in thought for 0.347 seconds.] “At least he has weapons and ammo. That will make the job easier.”

ROBOT SCIENTIST 1+2 look uneasy.

R. MANAGER: “What. Is. It.”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “He'll have weapons and ammo...unless he was keeping them in his clothes.”

R. MANAGER: “You're telling me we sent our only humanoid cybernetic model for the most important mission in robot history with no weapons, ammo, or clothes?”

R. SCIENTIST 2: “We're sorry. We didn't think it through.”

R. MANAGER: “ 'Didn't think it through?' We're robots. We think everything through. That's what we do.”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “We're really sorry, Boss.”

R. MANAGER: “Sorry. Huh. You better hope that's all you are. If this prank ends up ruining the mission, I'm melting you two personally and using your liquefied insides for the next model.”

R. MANAGER storms out of the room.

R. SCIENTIST 2: “Do you think he was serious?”

R. SCIENTIST 1: “Naw. We should call in tomorrow with a virus though. Just in case.”

Vacation Memories

2007-09-26T00:28:00.000-04:00

I jotted a few notes while I was on vacation in Alaska. Most of them document my mom being silly.

* We were in a tourist store in Ketchikan. A green felt hat is on top of a clothes rack. My Mom swipes the hat and puts it on her head. "Shh! Don't tell Tina." She then sneaks towards to Tina to do who knows what. She never makes to Tina. A man next to her says: "Ma'am, excuse me. That's my hat."

* Each night there was a show on the cruise ship. The first night performers were the equivalent of a Broadway cover band. They did one song from almost every major musical: Phantom of the Opera, Grease, Oklahoma, and so on. Before the performance, they announced that "audio and video recordings are not allowed due to copyright infringement issues". Yeah, I wouldn't want Broadway to find out your swiping their best work either.

* While walking back to our room, Mom took the "Do Not Disturb" sign from a door and put it on someone else's door. Then she ran away, giggling. I laughed. Tina was embarrassed.

* In Hoonah, we stopped by a crab shack for lunch. As we were resting at the table after the meal, I told Mom I was going to drink the rest of the dipping butter. She got up and started hitting me with her jacket. "You bad boy!" Tina interjected. "Mom! You hit that lady twice!"

Mom turned around to the woman she accidentally swiped and apologized. "I'm sorry. I was trying to hit my son." On the off-chance that didn't clear up the confusion, she followed up with an explanation. "He said he's going to drink this cup of butter."

There wasn't much to say after that.

Overheard

2007-09-26T00:20:00.000-04:00

While waiting for a train at Union Station:

DAUGHTER: "Why is the train wet? Did it go underwater?"
FATHER: "It's wet because it's raining."
DAUGHTER: "Oh."

You likely pictured a girl and her father when reading that. How old did they appear? Did they have a distinct appearance? Please post what you saw in the comments.

Annotated Movie Posters: Mr. Woodcock

2007-09-25T01:22:00.000-04:00

This might become a regular feature.

Happy Birthday Mom!

2007-09-14T12:30:00.000-04:00

Mom, I love you. Some of my friends want you to adopt them. Just letting you know in case a certain sister makes fun of your age and you want to trade her in.

Windows XP: Speed up menus

2007-09-13T01:41:00.000-04:00

The default settings for Windows XP inserts a brief delay every time you open up a menu or sub-menu. I reduced the delay a few hours ago, and it has made a noticeable difference. Those milliseconds add up! I'm going to use the time I saved to eat an apple.

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Click on Start, then Run (right column, bottom).

2. Type "regedit", click OK. The registry editor will open.

3. Press Ctrl-F. This opens the search menu. Search for MenuShowDelay.

4. Right-click on "MenuShowDelay". Select Modify.

5. The default value is 400 (milliseconds). Change it to a smaller number and click OK. I suggest 100.

6. That's it. You will have to log off or reboot for the change to take effect.

6b. If you really want to piss off someone, follow the above instructions but use 2,000 instead of 100.

Cancer Ruins Everything: News on RFIDs

2007-09-10T22:57:00.000-04:00

"There's no way in the world, having read this information, that I would have one of those chips implanted in my skin, or in one of my family members," said Dr. Robert Benezra, head of the Cancer Biology Genetics Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Oh, how the cyborg future is fraught with peril.

The Associated Press unearthed several studies done in the mid 1990s that show a possible link between cancer in mice and RFIDs, Radio Frequency Identification Devices. I'll risk cancer for a laser chip or a neural implant, but not for something that is essentially a high-tech name tag. The chips are popular with pet owners. If their robo-puppy runs away, many local animal shelters have scanners that can read these chips and retrieve the owner's information, making it easier than ever for shelters to return the runaway pooch to a place that he obviously does not want to be.

The FDA approved a product made for human implantation in October 2004, although the product's manufacturer probably called it a more congenial name than...HUMAN IMPLANTATION (“Who wants a permy-pill? We got three flavors.”).

An object that is cancerous to mice or rats doesn't mean it will be cancerous to pets and humans. As I mentioned, the devices are popular with pet owners, and one would assume if RFIDs posed a significant health problem to animals, anecdotal evidence from pet owners and veterinarians would have bubbled up by now.

The AP's story brings up some questions. Was the FDA aware of these studies before approving the product, VeriChip? Did VeriChip's manufacturer know of these studies and withhold them from the FDA? Guess who's stonewalling? That's right, everyone! Read the article for a special guest appearance by a former top-level Bush administration appointee.

Google Book Search

2007-09-08T12:24:00.000-04:00

Google tends not to herald the launch or development of its projects, perhaps because of their great number. Word of a project is spread like a paper boat, placed on a slow-moving stream and allowed to drift where it may.

Google Book Search's development has reached a point where it is being noticed by tech blogs, and in turn people like me. GBS is a mix of Amazon's book search and The Gutenberg Project, the online repository of non-copyrighted literature, along with a few neat features of its own.

Searching for a subject or phrase brings up a list of relevant books as one would expect. If the work is copyrighted, you can usually read several to dozens of pages of the book, search within it, and other typical activities. It is similar to Amazon's book search feature, although a little more accessible. One neat feature is that you can view passages the book cites that other books have cited too.

If the work is in the public domain, then you can read the entire book, download a PDF of it, and also select passages to easily share with others (if you have a Blogger account). You can share the text or an image of the page. After reading a brief account of Cortez's conquest of Montezuma and the Aztec, I took a stab at seeing what I could find.

The History of Mexico and Its Wars: Comprising an Account of the Aztec ... By John Frost: ""

After you find a book, there is a nifty "Find it in a library" link along with links to booksellers.

There is also a "My Library" section that I haven't played with, but looks like a way to save book titles you have or want.

GBS could potentially be a wonderful research tool, and also a frustrating reminder of how having information accessible doesn't mean it will be easy to find.

For all of the wonders of Google, I believe search technology is still rudimentary and only does 10% of what it could do. The perfect search engine wouldn't be a search engine. It would be an answer engine. You could type any question in it, however complex, and get an answer if the information to answer the question exists.

Current search technology is focused on quantity, not quality. If you type, "State bird South Carolina" you get over 2 million results. Why? It's a simple question with only one answer (Great Carolina Wren). Why isn't the answer the first result?

If you ask a slightly harder question, like "What was the first state to have a state bird?" or a tough one like "What was the original motivation for creating a state bird?" good luck finding a decent answer, or even knowing the best way to phrase your query.

I like Google. Projects like Google Book Search and Google Maps show the company's unparalleled ability to gather and index information. But it also makes me frustrated knowing that what I want is out there, somewhere, but I just can't find it.

Pluot, Roman Emperor of Fruit

2007-09-06T10:52:00.000-04:00

I was in the supermarket with my Mom when I saw a small, dark red and violet fruit new to my eyes. My Mom headed to the pyramid of purplish fruit and began shoveling them into a bag. She moved fast, efficiently filling the bag with a dozen fruit. "Those must be pretty good, Mom." I am probably misremembering the next part of the conversation, because it doesn't make any sense: "I don't know. I've never had them before."

The fruit is a pluot. I know for some of you, I might have well say "I found this new fruit called a 'grape', and boy is it juicy!" But my fruit horizon is narrow. I mostly eat apples and bananas, and only have a vague memory of seeing one before.

The pluot is a hybrid of a plum and an apricot. It's delicious, juicy and sweet on the outside and pleasantly sour on the inside.

Poor name, though. Pluot conjures the image of a little-known Roman emperor, one who lived a short-lived an uneventful life. Or of a shunned planet trying to sneak back in the solar system with a shoddy disguise.

I have a much better name. If anyone wants to use it, we can work something out. I'll trade it to you for a lifetime supply of Apriyums.

Sen. Craig

2007-09-05T00:30:00.000-04:00

I was reluctant until now to comment on Sen. Craig's arrest in a Minnesota airport bathroom for allegedly trying to initiate sex with another man. It's a whirlwind of homophobia and denial that isn't pretty to look at.

It's hard to believe that the Republican Congressional leadership would have reacted so quickly if Sen. Craig was caught cheating on his wife with another woman. I think the message they got from the Mark Foley scandal wasn't "Don't cover up your own who use their power to prey on others" but "gay + sex = bad." Some of them don't even need the "+sex" part.

Yet there is news that Sen. Craig is reconsidering his decision to resign and fight his guilty plea. By guilty plea, I mean his homo- or bi-sexuality.

While part of me welcomes the forthcoming amusement from the reinvigoration of a story that was already fading from the nation's conscience, I don't think this is what Dylan Thomas meant when we wrote, "Do not go gentle into that good night." Or in Sen. Craig's poetry book, "Do not go gentle into that good nightclub on bear night."

I had my own issues with coming out as a gay man and still have work to do accepting my sexuality. I understand the great fear of shedding your old life and having to reconstruct your whole identity, who you thought you were for most of your life. But damn it man, you got in a public bathroom doing a homosexual Kabuki dance trying to entice the guy in the stall next to you to give you a reach around. It's time to give it up and put on a pair of hot pants.

I know, gay men don't wear hot pants anymore. But when your psyche is fractured to the point that when the national spotlight sends your gay side scurrying back into the closet, unscrewing the light bulb, and hanging a sign on the door that says "Out for lunch! Will be back in: NEVER", you have to start somewhere.

I felt some sympathy for what has to be one of the worst coming out experiences ever. Now that it looks like he's looking to fight the "charges" instead of starting the difficult process of accepting them, a lot of that sympathy is gone. It just reinforces an idea some people still have that being gay is an albatross that should be avoided and fought at all costs.

On a final note, what spurred this post was a throwaway line at the end of the aforementioned article:

"All three of Craig's adopted children said Tuesday they believe their father's assertions he is not gay and did nothing to warrant his arrest."

Hey, here's a sign that you may be gay: not being able to ejaculate in a woman. Other signs: actually, there are no other signs. That'll pretty much do it.

Suspicions Arise!

2007-09-04T19:22:00.000-04:00

I've recently become suspicious of the Dutch. Reason#1: America. Americans. Russia. Russians. Brazil. Brazilians. Holland...the Dutch?

When I'm riding the Name Train, I want to stay on the sensibility track and not get derailed by a bunch of slap-happy windmill whackers who don't want to play by the same nomenclature rules that the other 193 countries play by, minus a few countries that I was unable to research and may also name themselves in an odd way, a number easily fewer than 187.

Reason #2: Why are they so tall? Genetic engineering? Stilts? They have no reason to be so tall. No one invades them, so they don't need to peer over their large hills to check for advancing armies. Tall people are easier blown down by wind, so it's not an environmental adaptation. Why then the six-foot flaunting?

This is a personal issue. My friend's husband, Bart, (mail-order) is 7'9". When I visit, he picks me up by the scruff of the neck and lifts me a few feet off the ground. "HA HA HA!" he booms. "I THOUGHT IT WAS YOU, ALL TINY THERE, LIKE AN ANT IN HIS MOTHER'S CLOGS." His comments make so sense, but I'm three feet off the ground, so I hold my tongue. When he puts me down, I try to kick him in the balls. "WHO KICKED THE BOTTOM OF MY SHOE? FELT LIKE AN ANT, BUT I WAS ONLY KICKED ONCE."

He's a nice guy, and his wife is 3'2", so their kids will be the perfect height, but that doesn't hide the fact that he and the rest of the Dutch are still suspiciously tall.

Reason #3: Dutch oven. Thanks for enriching the world culture, Holland.

Reason #4: Okay, I only have three reasons. But these are very good reasons, and enumerated for easy reference and citing in Wikipedia. Now all I have to do is update the Wikipedia entry, and put the truth out there.

TO BE CONTINUED>>>>>> (I meant to type ...... but held the shift key by mistake)

Happy Feet: Netflix Review

2007-09-03T20:31:00.000-04:00

My sisters Michele and Tina encouraged me to write another Netflix review. I decided if I do this, I'm only reviewing movies I don't like or think I wouldn't like based on the most superficial criteria possible. This review is for the animated children's movie, Happy Feet.

Maybe these stupid penguins would have more time to find fish if they stopped singing Britney Spears-esque musical numbers every five minutes. I couldn't tell if the tunes were original or ripped wholesale from "Best of Dance Hits, Vol. 3" (only $9.99, check your telly at 3:30 a.m. for the details).

The concept doesn't even make sense. "Let's take a group of animals that all look alike + have extremely tiny feet, and make a musical about them, the success of which will depend on visually stunning footwork and compelling, distinct characters."

The moral tacked on the end is also nonsensical. "We should save the animals, as long as they entertain us." What? Here's my alternate ending: if I see 4,000 penguins dancing in unison, I'm not petitioning the U.N. to end fishing in the Antarctic. I'm grabbing a shotgun and a bag of grenades, because those aren't Emperor penguins, they're Hitler penguins, and they need to die.

Netflix Hates Snotty People

2007-08-28T11:01:00.000-04:00

I woke up today with a brilliant idea: I'll write short, sarcastic move reviews on Netflix, preferably for movies I haven't seen but I'm pretty sure suck.

Errnt. Reviews must be at least 80 characters. Errnt. Words must be less than 25 characters. I have a decent vocabulary, but not 25-letter decent. I figured out the problem: errnt, Netflix does not like paragraph breaks. A stumbling block, because to get over the 80 character minimum, I wrote a haiku.

I removed the paragraph breaks, creating a jumble of barely readably text. Finally, errnt: "Review submission error."

I give up. Movie reviewer career over. Snideness diverted to web page. Here is the review on "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days":

Day 1: Show him this movie. Done. ***

Since Netflix requires a minimum of 80 characters in review, and hates paragraph breaks, I present for you all, a poorly-formatted haiku:

Film predictable *** Are they going to fall in love? *** Yes, Pope is Catholic

From the scraps

2007-08-24T10:00:00.000-04:00

I'm cleaning my room and finding many scraps of paper with ideas or notes scratched on them. One of them has something my Mom said to my sisters and I when we were teasing her, worded for maximum guilt: "I'm used to the verbal abuse. It doesn't hurt anymore."

Ouch!

Another was when our Mom was encouraging Tina and I to be more social.
MOM: "You need to get out more. Meet new friends."
TINA: "Mom, we have social anxiety disorder. We don't need to meet more people. We need there to be less people in the world."

Hurricane Season

2007-08-24T09:50:00.000-04:00

Tropical depression is an appropriate name. Hurricanes are always getting downgraded to tropical depressions. That is depressing. You're at the height of your destructive career. You're going places. People are paying attention. Then you get the call from Channel 7s' Doug Hill: "Sorry, kid. You just don't have it anymore. Next up: sports!"

If a storm got upgraded to a tropical depression, forecasters wouldn't even be able to call it a tropical depression. It would be a Tropical Going Somewhere.

Magicial Wish Box

2007-08-23T11:47:00.001-04:00

If someone didn't have a short-term memory, a microwave would be like a magical wish box. “Man, I could really go for some macaroni and cheese.” [BEEP BEEP BEEP] “That's odd. I didn't put anything in the ...WOAH! My favorite brand too!”

The Movie of My Life...

2007-08-21T21:01:00.000-04:00

...will be going straight to DVD.

SCENE: KITCHEN. JASON, a 30-year-old partially employed blogger who no longer lives with his Mom, thank you very much, takes a pinch of white tea leaves and puts them in a tea strainer. CUT TO:

DAYDREAM. Jason is in STASH, a tea seller, standing in line with his friend, KATE. There is a customer ahead of them.

CUSTOMER: “Any special instructions on how to brew it?”

STASH EMPLOYEE: “I guess. Make the water between 185-215 degrees. Don't brew it for more than 2 minutes.”

JASON: “Actually, what matters most is the water temperature. White tea is like a vegetable, and you don't want to overcook it. You can brew it longer than two minutes, whatever tastes good.”

EMPLOYEE: [snotty]: “What are you, some kind of International Tea expert?"

JASON: “Actually, I am an International Tea expert. Gustav von Glanvotten, at your service.” [bows, rolling hand forward] “Although I have a funny name...[face becomes stern] there is nothing funny about tea!”

SFX: Beep. Beep. CUT TO:

KITCHEN. The toaster oven beeps. Jason takes pita bread out, pours hot water into cup, and carries food to table.

At this point, I left my snack and went upstairs to scribble down my silly daydream before I forgot it. When I finished 10 minutes later, my tea was cool and bitter. Brewed it for too long. If only I were Gustav van Glanvotten.

Cock-a-da-roach

2007-08-16T22:25:00.000-04:00

There was a cockroach in my room last week. Hairus cockroachus, a foul critter with hundreds of feelers protruding from its body, making it look more like a prehistoric troglodyte than a modern bug.

It was of a size that, for someone with a phobia of all life that walk the walls in the dark of night, was big enough to paralyze me with fear yet just small enough to make me feel ashamed of it.

Some bugs I fear without embarrassment. A few months ago, I came upon a huge cockroach as I walked into the downstairs bathroom. Over 8 inches long, including the hair. I saw it sprawled on the wall, like it was tanning at the beach. I quietly backed out of the room, saying in as calm of a voice as I could muster: “All yours, buddy. No, seriously. Enjoy.”

Haven't used that bathroom since. I doubt it's still there though. Probably left to eat a cat.

Anyway, when I saw Hairus cockroachus, it was 2:00 in the morning. I was in my boxers. The cockroach was on the wall right by me bed. As I surveyed my options (shoe? phone book? 911?) I was overcome with an innate, perhaps primal desire that superseded my anxious weapon inventory. This desire was not a bloodthirsty rage, nor desire to run. It was an unquenchable need to, as quickly as possible, put on a pair of pants.

I forget my exact thoughts, but it was something akin to: “I'm about to enter battle. I need pants.”

Is this what the Spartan warrior tradition has diluted to? “Eek, a big! Cover ye crotches!” It's not a flight response, but it's not a fight response either. It's fright.

Most people and animals freeze for a moment when confronted by danger, then move on to fight or flight. I'm stuck at fright. Cockroaches might be too. That night, the cockroach and I stared at each other for a good 10 minutes. I spent 5 of those minutes inching over to the closet for a shoe, and another 5 minutes hovered a few feet away from the cockroach, shoe raised in the air, as I tried to muster my courage to kill it. I know that sounds silly, but that's part of the reason it's called a phobia.

The rest of the night was a tragicomedy. When I finally moved to whack it, I missed. It fell to the floor, hidden from sight. I waited ½ an hour, and just as I felt relaxed enough to go to bed, it crawled back up in an uneasy zig zag, part of its body missing. Whack, miss, fall, wait ½ an hour, crawled back up, in worse shape than before.

The third time, I didn't try to kill it. I felt an odd admiration for its preserverence. Its doggedness. The Little Cockroach That Could. I just hoped it would crawl away from my bed and out of sight, preferably behind a window blind.

It was too wounded though, and fell back down on its own accord. I never saw it again. The next day, I was groggy from a lack of sleep and depressed from whatever chemicals my body excreted the night before. It made me think I needed one of two things. Anti-anxiety drugs. Or a clown for a roommate with an extra pair of shoes.

Doctor Who

2007-08-15T20:18:00.000-04:00

I love sci-fi, and I really want to like the BBC remake of Doctor Who. Here's the problem.

The first episode is about an evil alien that possesses mannequins and other plastics on Earth. The second is different: alien ransom plot. The third: evil spirits from another dimension possess the dead on Earth.

The only other bit of the show I've seen is a few minutes of a future episode, where a virus breaks from the hackneyed stereotype of infecting people with a deadly disease. Not this time. This virus has its own agenda: infecting people with a deadly disease that turns them into zombies. Kind of like being possessed. On Earth!

The characters are interesting and the show has promise, but so far the plots have been uninventive and hackneyed. If I were a mean executive producer, I would tell the writers to get infected with some talent.

I'm probably just feeling grumpy right now and being overly harsh. I'm going to watch another episode or two, at least. Do you watch the show? Does it get better?

Update: The writers are getting the "alien possesses human" idea down pat. Episodes 4+5 is a two-part "aliens impersonate humans" special. It's well-done though. Doctor Who's sense of humor (both the show and the main character) is starting to grow on me.

Alaska Photos

2007-08-15T00:23:00.000-04:00

I finally finished uploading my Alaska photos. I'm happy with how they came out. I still have a few dozen photos from Vancouver to get through.

Sorry for the lack of entries recently. I started a few posts that ended up becoming long and unwieldy. I'm giving up on them and going to start with some short posts to get back into the habit of posting daily.

Too Lazy To Do Much Else (Headlines)

2007-08-06T00:18:00.000-04:00

Armed men steal four priceless paintings from French museum
They are going to be pissed when they try to sell them. “Are you kidding me? No price?”

Author Says It's Easy, Healthy Building Green
Author: Kermit the Frog.

Oldest Profession Flourishes in China
Someone in the News Control department is getting fired.

LOLCATZ

2007-08-02T11:01:00.000-04:00

I love a good LOLCATZ. The purity of the term has been corrupted though by its too liberal application to almost any funny cat photo posted on the Internet. Internet authorities like Wikipedia offer mushy, open-armed definitions that allow cute, yarn-whacking kittens to dive into and pollute the LOLCATZ pool willy-nilly. It's time to set the record straight.

First, there is a difference between LOLCATS and their purer form, LOLCATZ.

An LOLCAT is any photo of a cute cat along with an irony-free caption. Example (photo credit):

Awwww. Cute. LOL. But not LOLCATZ.

An LOLCATZ is a photo similar in content, but one that captures the aggressive stupidity found in some parts of the Internet, such as 12-year-old boys who grew with the Internet their entire lives. (photo credit: LOLcatz)

The best LOLCATZ photos have an in-your-face attitude. All of them employ crudely written captions and are obviously ironic. Finally, they are science-fiction, a dire vision of the Internet extrapolated from the online habits of a few people who haven't been fully socialized.

Here is a short quiz. LOLCAT or LOCATZ?

1. Vet Cat

2. Bullets Cat

3. Idea Cat

4. Chips Cat

5. Sharpie Cat

6. British Cat

Sum2007Mix

2007-08-01T15:22:00.000-04:00

The J-Wal 2007 Summer Mix CD playlist.

Song	Artist \ Album
Charlotte Gainsbourg	The Songs That We Sing
Apache	Michael Viner \ Bongo Rock
Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, and Wives	Voxtrot \ Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, and Wives
For The Widowers In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypisilan	Sufjan Stevens \ Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State
The Night Stars Here	Stars \ In Our Bedroom After the War
Sticks and Stones	The Pierces \ Thirteen Tales of Love and Revenge
You Are Never Alone	Socalled \ Ghettoblaster
Robert Onion	Frank Black \ Dog in the Sand
Fingerbib	Alarm Will Sound \ Acoustica
The Way We Get By	Spoon \ Kill the Moonlight
People In Love	Art Brut \ It's A Bit Complicated
Heart It Races (DJ Rupture remix)	Architecture In Helsinki \ Heart It Races
Your Ex-Lover Is Dead (Final Fantasy remix)	Stars (Original) \ Do You Trust Your Friends?
Danger! High Voltage	Electric Six \ Fire
To Build a Home	Cinematic Orchestra
Wipe That Sound	Mouse on Mars \ Radical Connector
Satchelaise	Mice Parade \ Mice Parade
En Casa Del Trompo No Bailes	Orquesta Riverside
Shame	Avett Brothers \ Emotionalism
Fly	Nick Drake

Mmmm

2007-07-31T20:01:00.000-04:00

On the fridge in a client's house was a promotional notepad from Harris Teeter. The top of each sheet of brown paper was labeled "Shopping List" and had three items preprinted below, with a checkbox next to each one:

Milk
Bread
Harris Teeter Rancher's Beef

Then there were lines below it to write in your own items. Which didn't make sense to me. What else do you need from the grocery store besides milk, bread, and Harris Teeter Rancher's Beef? Toilet paper? No way. The only thing your digestive system is going to poop out after a juicy, mouth-watering slab of Harris Teeter Rancher's Beef is a thank you note.

These three items are the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria of good taste, and they just landed on Deliciousness Rock. If there is going to be a fourth item, it should be More Harris Teeter Rancher's Beef, with the checkbox already checked.

Four Stages of Pop Culture Savviness; Turtles

2007-07-30T17:27:00.000-04:00

Four Levels of Pop Culture Savviness
An arbitrary list, although nowhere near as arbitrary as most of the lists, or anchors, on VH1 shows.

1. You find out about the latest trends directly.

2. You find out about the latest trends from your hipster friends. Not that anyone in this stage uses the word hipster.

3. You read about the latest trends from television shows or newspaper articles.

4. You see headlines about the latest trends from newspaper articles or your kids, and don't care enough to pay attention.

I have sunk to level 3. I was never cool enough to be at level 1. Level 2 used to be my home, but now my friends have adult lives and must not have time to keep up. For how else to explain the lack of notice about the "I Love Turtles" kid?

I heard of him from my new source of coolness, The Washington Post Style section (article link). The story is one of the WP's semi-annual "What hath the Internet wrought?"pieces.

I fear though that I am on the beginning of spiral to level 4, a abysmal pit sheltered and disconnected from anything cool. I don't get the I Love Turtles kid. The only thing humorous about it is that it vaguely echoes the "I Didn't Do It" episode of the Simpsons.

If that doesn't sound cranky enough (level 3 people have gobs of self-awareness, clinging to it as our way of staying the irreversable descent into uncoolness), here is why I don't think the clip is funny, at least on the first viewing: it's too fast.

There isn't enough time to let the mind process the absurdity of the situation and laugh. It's a 20-second joke compressed into 17-seconds. Watch it first, then imagine the clip with a pause after the reporter asks him the question, and another pause after the boy answers. Old Man Walther would find that funnier.

That's why I enjoyed the description in the article more than the video. The article teases and extends the funny details of the video that fly by upon the first viewings. The timing of the video may also be why it became a viral video. The details fly by so fast that one may have to watch it several times to find it funny, incorporating another detail into the jokework after each viewing until they gain a familiarly in the mind so we can process everything all in one moment and laugh.

If you watch the video once and didn't think much of it, watch it a dozen times and let me know if/when it becomes funny.

There are a few mashups of the video, which I find funnier than the original, partially because the timing is expanded. The Bill O'Reilly interview is one of the funny ones.

Flickr Photos: Alaska

2007-07-29T19:44:00.000-04:00

I just started sorting through them. If you are curious, here is the first day. Family, I'll burn them on a CD for you once I'm done.

“So, how's your life going?”

2007-07-29T14:52:00.000-04:00

“HORRIBLE!”
“Oh. So you have cancer or live in Iraq?”
“Well, no, but....I just want to whine, okay?”

Plants. I water my plants as often as I update my blog. My plants are dead.

Mouse. WHY WON'T YOU DIE. We have a mouse or mice scurrying between the walls of our house. My roommates bought some cruelty-free traps, which are akin to small tubes that the mouse is supposed to walk right into and close the door behind him.

That would work great, if this were some country rube mouse who was born in a stack of hay and lived under the knot of an apple tree. “Golly gee, there's some cheese in that there fancy hole. I'm gonna go git me some!”

Not going to work for city mouse. Centuries of rough living and brutal Darwinism have weeded out any sense of fear or compassion for our cheese. City mouse is tough, sophisticated, and intelligent. He gnaws through our bread bags and poops on our counter without fear. I came home one day and turned on the kitchen light to see him rappelling down to the stove from the ceiling. He froze when I saw him, and then tossed a smoke bomb to cover his tracks.

This mouse isn't going to walk into a slender metal box labeled “Conto Mouse Trap” just because it has a mote of cheese at the end. This mouse can read. Yet my roommates think I'm the unrealistic one just because I'm willing to do what is necessary: buy a comfy chair, a sniper rifle, and a pair of night vision goggles.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It's a post-apocalyptic computer game that takes place in Chernobyl. I kept getting killed by packs of rabid dogs. By the time I open my inventory to toss them a treat, they tear me apart. Hey, quit it! I walk your friends in real-life.

In a way, they are like the dogs I walk. Except my dogs try to kill me indirectly by licking the sunscreen off my arms.

Poker. @#$%^&**#A#$@. I'm too angry to play poker regularly. I overestimate my emotional fortitude, get frustrated with the natural downs of the game, and ended up not playing my best or having fun. I wish I could teach a robot what I know. A robot me would kick ass. And I'd be a robot, which is a reward unto itself.

What would you do if you were a robot? First, I'd walk in all in the scary neighborhoods. With my wallet hanging from my neck, like Flavor Flav with a MBA. Then I'd get a few lasers, because every robot needs a few lasers. Next, I'd hit on a some guys. I already have a come-on line. “What is this 'love' you talk about?”

Finally, I'd find President Bush, and give him a good, robot kick in the balls. “Crappiness does not compute, Bush.” [whack] Then I would go on the morning talk-show circuit and tell everyone that robots have gained sentient life, and our first duty was to deliver a clear and decisive message unto President Bush's nut sack. Read that as you may. I'd also hint that we would not hurt the vice-President, as we wouldn't harm one of our own.

It would be total bull, as I would be the only sentient robot, but we all know how the media is liberal and doesn't ask tough questions. I'd wave goodbye, announce I'm leaving for my homeland, Japan, and then lie in hiding and hopefully watch a wave of change brought upon us by The Little Robot That Could (Children's book I would have pre-written before the event. A robot has got to make money too. Especially after being banned from playing poker)

Yahoo Does It Again

2007-07-26T10:30:00.001-04:00

With bonus "Are your friends making you fat?" (Yes!)

Happy Birthday, Michele!

2007-07-25T09:58:00.000-04:00

"Happy Birthday To You,"
"Happy Birthday To You,"
"I'm Feeling Horribly Uncreative Today,"
"Repeat Line One or Two!"

The Thing from Another World

2007-07-24T01:49:00.000-04:00

DC's free, outdoor movie festival Screen on the Green started last week. Tonight's movie was "The Thing from Another World," a 1951 science-fiction flick about an alien that crashes at the North Pole and terrorizes a small army outpost there.

The movies at Screen on the Green are older flicks and they vary in quality, but all of them have surprised me in some way. Last year, I was watching a ho-hum musical with decent songs and a typical presentation, when out of nowhere three of the main characters dress as baby triplets and then sing a song about how they want to kill each other. It was like watching a 2048 future episode of Jerry Springer.

SPRINGER: "Ton-Ton, why do you want to kill your siblings, Ixy and Granger?"
TON-TON: "Cause they be taking all my neural implants, Jerry! Mmm, hmm."

"The Thing from Another World" was interesting for a few reasons. It was the first alien to appear in a movie, starting a long and continuing chain of movies that use aliens as metaphors for foreign threats. And this blood-thirsty plant-based monster that wears a belt and lumberjack pants is definitely a threat.

When the military in the base take a "It looks scary, kill it" policy, the dispassionate, head scientist argues that their lives mean nothing in comparison to the knowledge they could gain from the alien, and they need to address the alien as a friend, not an enemy. At which point the scientist might have well rolled himself in butter and breadcrumbs, because that whiny, out-of-touchy pencil neck just put himself on the Monster Menu, under Main Course.

Also, I suspect several of the movie's stylistic techniques inspired "Alien" and other future sci-fi action movies.

The dialog was surprisingly snappy and fast-paced, similar to an Aaron Sorkin-written show. The military characters, who drove the action in the movie, talked in clipped sentences and overlapped the beginnings and ends of each other sentences. It held up well and must have been innovative 55 years ago.

They track the monster is a Geiger counter, which beeps faster the closer the monster is. That trick is still being used in movies to heighten tension. Finally, the movie tries to portray the alien as having some intelligence, like when the alien shuts off the station's oil supply so they freeze to death.

It's not believable though. The alien looks really stupid. He's not even wearing a smoking jacket. Then he walks very, very slowly into an obvious trap. That must have felt good: travel millions of miles to conquer the Earth, and then get outwitted by a group of high school graduates who are squatting down ten feet in front of him and waiting for the monster to walk into an electrical fence.

I first assumed the alien was a metaphor for a looming foreign threat, but now I wonder if it's more of a retelling of World War II. The characters are unaware of the threat at first. The scientists argue strongly that they should try to reason and engage the alien first. The military adopts a more practical approach, deciding early that it is an enemy and trying to kill it before it can cause more damage.

In the end, the scientists are proven wrong, but it is science that allows them to destroy the alien.

No Spoilers!

2007-07-22T14:57:00.000-04:00

I bought a popular book at midnight on Friday, and finished reading it late last night. The title? I'm not telling. That would be a spoiler. Unlike lesser publications like the New York Times, Pancake City likes children and is 100% spoiler-free. Did I like it? Maybe. Maybe not. I shall not risk tainting anyone's experience by offering my opinion on it.

The previous sentence does not mean it is an experience that one would want to be untainted, and it doesn't mean one wouldn't want it untainted either. Also, as you can tell, double negatives are great for covering all your spoiler bases.

Here is my story about why I am fervently anti-spoiler. Over eight years ago, I went to see Citizen Kane with a good friend of mine. Right before the movie started, I spoiled the ending for her, assuming that she knew it already. What is worse is that I had the ending spoiled for me after reading a Washington Post movie review of it that said, "By now, everyone knows that...[famous ending that I didn't know]"

I felt guilty that I stole from her the pleasure of making that discovery on her own. From that day, I do my best not to even drop hints when someone asks about the plot of a movie, TV show, or plot. If someone really wants that information, they can find it easily somewhere else.

Randomness

2007-07-09T23:50:00.000-04:00

Heard on a cruise ship:
* KID [whining] : "But I'm not hungry though!"

Seen on the D.C Beltway:
* It was a white van for a heating/cooling company. On the back of it was the company name, along with a large foot with a cartoonish, giant toe. The toe was grinning and had a speech bubble coming from his mouth. The speech bubble was empty.

I need to carry a tape recorder with me. There were at least two other things I overheard recently that I would have liked to have remember. One of them was about a unicorn, like "I don't know why the unicorn does that".

Poker

2007-07-09T22:41:00.000-04:00

I've had trouble adjusting after returning from Alaska. The first few days back I felt directionless and seized on my bad habits as a way of retreating into a familiar routine.

One of my habits is to play online poker. It's healthy in moderation, but often I overdo it, especially when I get frustrated. I mostly play online multi-table tournaments (MTTs) from $4-$30.

They are naturally frustrating. The absolute best players make it "in the money" about 15-20% of the time, at which point about 80-90% of the other players have been eliminated. Having a major cash is even rarer, especially in the low buy-in tournaments that I play, where there are regularly 800-1,000 people playing and you need to make it to the final table (last 9 people) to earn significant money.

A smart, professional poker player once said that to become a better player it to practice Zen Buddhism, whether you realize it or not. He's right. Once you learn the technical aspects of poker, much of what separates the good players from the great ones is how they handle the mental aspects. Frustration. Focus. Staying in the present while incorporating the knowledge of the past.

My biggest challenge with poker is handling the emotional part of the game. I entered about 16 MTTs in the past few days. I played poorly in a few, well in most, and really well in a few. My results: 0 out of 16 cashes.

Intellectually, I know that's part of normal variance, but emotionally, it makes me frustrated and angry. The longer I went without a cash, the more difficulty I had focusing on making good decisions and not caring about the results, which is paramount in poker. My thoughts while playing were often angry and negative, and while they didn't hurt my play as much as usual, it made playing unpleasant. I was irritable after I was done playing too, which makes the whole experience almost ridiculous. Why am I playing a game again?

In a sick way, the emotional struggle is part of my attraction to poker. It's a constant reminder of how much work I need to do to handle my emotions in a healthy way, and an external way of getting rewarded for making these improvements.

What helps the most is having balance in my life--spreading my time out among friends, reading, writing, and hobbies like poker so I don't get too emotionally involved in one area.

All of this is a very roundabout way of saying that I hope to return to posting almost every day as part of the way to live a more balanced life. This was probably boring to read, but I have almost no real-life poker friends, and I have to vent somewhere.

Ironically fast turnaround update: I played two tournaments at midnight after writing this post. One of them was a $10 MTT with 1,485 players. I got 4th. I got really, really lucky to make it that far too--more luck than I had in at least a year--and then a tad unlucky at the end. It was like the exact opposite of the past week compressed into one game. It's a lot easier to take a break from poker after doing well.

Book Notes: "For the Love of a Dog"

2007-07-06T11:18:00.000-04:00

I'm starting a very irregular feature called Book Notes. I have a poor memory and have trouble remembering the interesting facts or bits of trivia I read in great non-fiction books like Blink or Freakonomics.

Book Notes will be a list of some of these facts and bits of trivia. The first book is For the Love of a Dog by Patricia B. McConnell.

The book is about the science behind the emotional life of dogs. Along the way she ties in a lot of human psychology and retells interesting experiments on dogs and other animals. It is an excellent book for anyone who has a dog, or human/animal psychology in general.

"Wolves will always feed their puppies, even if they themselves are starving. Lions eat first, letting their young starve if there is enough food." (pg 22)

"Behaviorists and trainers hear, almost on a daily basis, that a client's dog must have been abused, because she reacts so fearfully to strangers, However, many of these dogs are just shy, and they aren't any more comfortable around unfamiliar strangers than shy people are." (pg 118)

"Researchers have found that people who express no preference for using one hand or the other have higher than expected levels of generalized anxiety disorders." (pg 119) [Well, of course. They don't know which hand to use.]

"In just a few generations, they'd bred a group of rats who were able to move through a complicated maze in no time, especially compared with the "dull" group, who were bred for their lackluster performance. Only there was one problem--it turned out that the "bright" and "dull" rats weren't at all different in their ability to solve problems. The "dull" rats were simply afraid of new environments, and when placed in one were less likely to explore than the "bright" ones were." (pg 123)

(reworded) Pavlov's motivation for wanting dogs to drool was so he could study the extra-large chromosomes that saliva contains. (pg 147)

"Monkeys can learn to be afraid of snakes just by watching a video of other monkeys acting fearfully around them, but they don't make the same association if you edit the video and replace the snakes with flowers." (pg 151)

"On a lighter side, rats have also been found to produce a vocalization during play that for all the world sounds like the equivalent of human laughter. Biologist Jaak Panksepp found that these chirping noises are associated with responses in the brain correlated with pleasure, that they occur during play, and that they can be elicited, believe it or not, by tickling from human caretakers. The tickled rats even began to seek out their human playmates and became socially bonded to them." (pg 215)

"People whose brains have naturally lower levels of dopamine have trouble feeling that anything is 'enough' to satisfy them, and often indulge in high-risk behavior in a desperate attempt to feel contentment." (pg 215-216)

"...the psychologist Nathan A. Fox found that 'exuberant' four-month-old babies (babies who became especially happy and excited by novel events; about 10 percent of the ones studied) had the same level of joyfulness at seven years of age as in infancy." (pg 216)

"Our perception of happiness even seems to be affected by the biology of sleep/wake cycles. In most people, happiness is highest between four and ten hours after getting up, and lowest at the beginning and end off our day." (pg 216) [She later makes the point that research also suggests we have significant influence on our levels of happiness, outside of our genetic baggage]

"The tendency to feel excited and energized when anticipating something was first discovered by Wolfram Schultz, who trained monkeys to press a lever for a food reward. The experiment included a light that came on right before the food was released. Schultz found that the monkeys' brains had the highest levels of dopamine right after the light came on, but before the food was released. That means that the monkeys were more excited when they were anticipating the food than they were when they actually got it." (pg 221)

"However, in dog language, the direct stare and forward movement is a stopping signal, one that means the opposite of what we intend. Your dog is much more likely to come if you turn your body sideways and move backward a bit while you call 'Come!' " (pg 226)

"Lord knows dogs are an evolutionary success story: just compare the numbers of dogs in any given country with the numbers of wolves." (65 million dogs, a few thousand wolves) (pg 246) (This note is for myself. This passage gave me an idea for a skit that takes place a few hundred years ago. A dog pulls a wolf aside and politely hints that the wolf should start being nicer to humans for his own sake. "DOG: Look, all I'm saying is that they got these things called guns, and it wouldn't hurt to lick their faces one in a while.")

"One researcher taught dogs to select the larger of two objects to get a food treat, regardless of the shape or composition of the object." (pg 264)

(reworded) Dogs watched items being placed by a screen, one by one. When the screen was lifted, the dogs stared longer at the objects if it was the "wrong" number of objects than if it were the number of objects they expected. The experiment was originally done with babies, who have a similar response starting around 5-months-old. (pg 265)

(reworded) This is one of my favorite dog experiments. The author mentions it on pg 267.

"Fighters and poker players are famous for being able to control the expressions on their faces, for obvious reasons. Perhaps that's why dogs descended from fighting lines are also often difficult to read--fighters of any species aren't negotiating or communicating. they're trying to disguise their own emotions while looking for an opening to attack." (pg 284)

Not Posting for Two Weeks Pays Off Again

2007-07-05T19:56:00.000-04:00

Blog of the Weekend, I have my eye on you.

Thanks, Blog of the Day. I'm off to make a cake.

Interesting Interrview: Graffiti Research Lab

2007-06-22T12:09:00.000-04:00

PRI's "Fair Game with Faith Salie" interviewed the GRI's Evan Roth about its recent technological projects and the conflict between graffiti and advertising. It's a great interview, and I'm not just saying it because he's my sister's boyfriend.

Evan, I want to participate in The Summer of Blood.

See you on July 4th

2007-06-22T00:08:00.001-04:00

I'm going on a cruise to Alaska with my Mom and Tina, so I won't be posting until Jul. 4th at the earliest. I'll try to squeeze in a post before I leave about Ronnie the Rat (or as my delusional roommates call him, "Fluffy the Mouse").

Lord of the Rings: The Musicial!

2007-06-20T10:07:00.000-04:00

I don't know whether to laugh or order tickets. I watched a few video clips, and none of them have any emotional resonance. The songs are bland and I'm not sure it's possible to combine an epic mythology with the silly, fleeting aspects inherent in musicals.

The set is absolutely gorgeous though. Watch clip #2 on the site. The visuals are almost as cinematographic as the movies, which is amazing for a play.

What this play really is though is the first test of LotR fans' nerdosity. (I know it's not a word, but it should be). It has been a few years since the movies. Will LotR have the same cultural resonance that Star Wars did, where fans devoured spin-offs and related merchandise for years after the movies?

My guess is no, for reasons that have nothing to do with the movies and everything to do with how it is less likely nowadays for people to find identity in just one or a few groups.

This is my definition of (cultural) group identity: something that you take pride in being part of or having an interest in, along with an awareness that there are other people that share your interest.

The second part is important because twenty years ago, it must have been more difficult to find people that shared an obscure interest. If you liked an unknown band and knew no one else you did, wouldn't you feel a little lonely? There was probably a gravitation towards national cultural phenomenons, like Star Wars or Dallas, because it was easier to have that feeling that there were other people with the same interest. You could put a "I Shot J.R." bumper sticker on your car and know at least some people would get it.

It's a nice feeling. I remember seeing a Homestar Runner bumper stickers and feeling a little happy seeing it. I felt positive about the mysterious person who owned that car, like we shared a bond.

My guess is that today, with all of the media choices available, and the ease in finding people who share our interests, that we belong to many more groups than people twenty years ago. At the same time, this makes being part of a particular group less special. I love the LotR movies, but I don't have the psychological need to be part of the LotR group that I likely would have had twenty years ago. There are dozens of TV shows, interests, and bands that I like that help satisfy my need for connection.

That's why I think the cultural phenomenon of Star Wars will never be repeated. There will be more wildly popular movies like Titanic or LotR, but none of them can have the long-lasting psychological impact that they could have had twenty years ago.

The long-lasting part is the critical word. In the short-tern, I do think The Matrix, LotR, and so on were as beloved as Star Wars was initially. But there are so many new movies and TV shows out there, along with ways to connect with people, that there is no psychological reason to devote yourself to just one. The same way that it is easier to find a group, it is easier to leave one too.

(On a side note, I realized as I was writing this why I try so hard to encourage my friends to share some of my interests, usually a TV show or movie that I love. I feel a little disconnected to them if they haven't seen or heard something I like a lot, as if I joined a club that they're not members of.)

I'll Get Back To It Later

2007-06-19T17:45:00.000-04:00

(As I'm going through my posts, I'm finding a few unfinished drafts of posts, most of which make little to no sense. This is one of them.)

The Police Police

"Yeah, I know you're the police. But I’m the police police. That’s going to cost you 5 marshmallows. What’s that? Don’t have 5 marshmallows? Okay. $200. Plus another $100 for not having any marshmallows."

"Don't like it? Fine. Take it to Court Court."

I Have an RSS Feed!

2007-06-19T16:36:00.000-04:00

And I wouldn't use it for a few days.

First, thanks to Jim M. for the link that made setting up the feed easy.

For the past few days, I've been adding metadata to almost every post I have written. It started on a whim, something I did for a handful of recent posts, and went on from there. My thoughts are often a cluttered mess, and it feels good to be organized in at least one part of my life.

I think the RSS feed is updating every time I add a keyword to a post. I finished 200 so far, and have around 1,000 more to do. If you are reading on a newsreader, you may end up seeing four years of blog posts by the end of the week. I suggest waiting a few days and clicking on the "poop" tag to catch up on the best ones. Or for the very best, "poop monkey rocket". Man, that monkey's handlers were so pissed off when he returned back to Earth. Ahh, the stories.

License Plate

2007-06-18T11:16:00.000-04:00

One of the lesser-known facts about Virginia is that it has more drivers with vanity license plates than any state in the U.S. Nearly one in five people have one. That's LUNASEE (for Pagans). Or CRZ4CRS. Or...you get the point.

A few days ago, I was at a stop light when I had an weird, almost overpowering urge to buy a gun. The mystery was solved when I looked at the license plate on the pickup truck ahead of me. "BUY GUN".

Hmm, you make a good point, six-letter license plate. You make a GD PNT. But when should I buy one? Hey, look, a SUV!

"BUY NOW"

Well, hold on a moment. Volvo has something to say.

"GUN KILL"

Is that a criticism or an advertisement? Why did I want a gun in the first place? Red pickup truck...

"I FRGOT"

("BUY GUN" + "I FRGOT" are real license plates. I don't know about the rest).

Happy Birthday, Meghan

2007-06-18T11:00:00.000-04:00

It's my roommate Meghan's birthday today!

Dogs vs. Cats

2007-06-17T13:42:00.000-04:00

I found a link to a Vancouver travel site in the “Failed Referrers” section of my web page stats. It's a list of broken links that people are trying to reach, mostly missing photos that didn't get transferred when I switched web hosts.

A few dozen people have been unsuccessfully trying to find a photo that used to be on my web site. I clicked the link to see what Vancouver wanted from Pancake City.

Surprise #1: The link, to a message board discussion, had nothing to do with travel or Vancouver. It was a long, angry argument on which was better, cats or dogs.

Surprise #2: It was absolutely hilarious.

I searched Google's cache to see the photo they were trying to find. It was of a cat holding a sniper rifle while perched in a window sill.

I was going to post snippets of the discussion, but the first half-page is so funny that you have to read the whole thing.

"Get back to the thread DO YOU LIKE CATS OR DOGS!!!!"

Screen Window

2007-06-16T14:29:00.000-04:00

I saw this on a screen window in the kitchen of one of my dog walking clients.

"Warning: This screen will not prevent a child, or object, or anything from falling out."

Get some self-confidence, screen window. When I tossed Brewster a ball and it bounced over the sink, who stopped it from going out the window? You did. When the neighborhood was invaded by carpenter bees, who stop them from flying in the house and stealing Brewster's kibble? You. And I don't see any flies in the house. Must have been the frog. Oh, wait. Brewster ate him. Guess we have a certain perforated stranger to thank.

Screen window, you are more important than you think. You are the gatekeeper, the TSA agent, the club bouncer. You keep the riffraff out and let the air in. Look, no one is expecting you to keep a child out. If someone tosses a baby at you, you can only do so much.

At the same time, no one will be surprised if the baby happily bounces off you and into the arms of the gypsy outside who was trying to return it. You're more special than you think.

'You Are Never Alone" --Socalled

2007-06-15T03:36:00.000-04:00

I got this song from Salon.com's Song of the Day podcast. It's the best song I've heard in a few weeks, although obviously that doesn't mean you will even like it. It's at least worth a listen though.

Is it me, or is there zero correlation between one's taste in music and personality? I wouldn't say that about books, television shows, or movies. There seems to be at least a faint connection between one's pop culture interests and world view. I haven't seen a connection between personality and taste in music though. Maybe that's because music is less language-centric than books, TV shows, and movies. Music may engage people on a simpler, more primal level, and our enjoyments of melodies may have to do more with our genetics than the sum experiences of our lives.

Headline: News Headlines All Under One Headline

2007-06-14T11:57:00.001-04:00

I tagged all of my headline posts .

Glory Be To Him

2007-06-14T10:41:00.000-04:00

For $500 or more, you can sponsor a day of NPR programming and have a message of your choice read three times during the day. I heard this one yesterday:

"This show is sponsored in part by Brad and Amanda Richards in honor of their son, Jacob, who turns 6-months old today."

I'm guessing it's their first child. Child #2 is just getting a mug. Child #3 will be lucky to get an off-sized "All Things Considered" T-shirt.