being on call sucks

yes it's 2:30 in the morning. yes, i'm working. meh.

dear garmin mapupdater

you suck. you may well be the shittiest piece of software i've had to use in a long, long time. here are a few tips:

1. if i select "download to computer only", then you should continue to function after i've unplugged the fucking GPS from the USB cable. one would think the entire purpose of this option is to allow the download to proceed without the device attached. otherwise, why offer it?
2. did you implement the windows file copy status bar for your download progress? newsflash, IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO GO BACKWARDS
3. is your server actually a decrepit laptop running a pentium 2 chip in some admin's basement in taiwan? seriously, i just ran a network speed test and my current download speed is 21 Mbps. why is my download speed from your server ranging from 24 Kbps to a max of 2 Mbps?
4. related, are you just not telling me the file size because you know i'll be wondering why it is taking more than a few minutes to download?

really, this is awful. i left the fucking thing running all night, and of course it errored out. this is painful and makes me hate those who created it. i had no idea it was possible to complicate a fucking file download this much.

EDIT: okay, so maybe it's not all your fault, map updater. a big fuck you to vista as well. and possibly my network adapters. at least at work i get paid to try and figure this shit out.

why i love america

what other nation could, would or even thought they should produce...Bacon Salt? i'll tell you: none. you'll only find that sort ingenuity, and desire for all foods to taste like bacon, right here in the good ol' u.s. of a..

there is even a bacon salt blog. and t-shirts! i think i need to own one.

curious searches

hmmm...apparently someone got a hit on my blog when searching for "how to mastrubate on vacation".

first, thanks go to andres carl sena, for allowing this to be.

second, why would going on vacation make mastrubation any more challenging? is there something i don't know?

semi-informational message

this is for those of you who've wandered over here from somewhere other than WikiFray (ie: people who didn't know me before i started this page). first, if i've not personally welcomed you, i do so now. second, you may have noticed the option to comment in a forum, instead of traditional blogger-style comments. if you haven't read any comments in the forum, i invite you to do so. not only do you get threaded comments (far easier to navigate), but there are some interesting people to talk to. some assholes and lunatics too, but that's normal as well.

anyway, you have the option, should you choose it. if you like it, you can add the same capability to your page. if you don't, well, then you don't.

thank god for common sense

the chungs, though recent immigrants from korea, may be unique amongst americans. why? because common sense reigned in the end when they got sued. seriously, did this man think he could get $54 million because the dry cleaners lost his pants? i mean, i suppose the odds are better than, say, powerball. but not much. at least they shouldn't be. this bit is particularly pleasing:

In a 23-page finding of fact, Bartnoff wrote: "A reasonable consumer would not interpret 'Satisfaction Guaranteed' to mean that a merchant is required to satisfy a customer's unreasonable demands or accede to demands that the merchant has reasonable grounds to dispute."

it's nice to know there is still some small measure of justice in the world.

the argument against immortality

i caught part of a show on the discovery channel last night, about time (in general). during the segement i watched, the host (a physicist, i think) was discussing the possibility of discovering a biological means to circumvent death. the premumption was this is a possibility, provided we figure out how to either shut off the cell aging process, or kept cell replication turned on. either way, the implication is there is no biological need to die, so let's figure out how to prevent death.

this is a very bad idea.

why? everyone supposedly wants eternal life (although, to be precise, everyone actually wants eternal youth, as swift so kindly points out to us). what's wrong with living forever? well a couple of things.

first and foremost, to the best of our knowledge matter is finite. if one does not die, one never returns to the system. on it's own, this is not particually much of a problem. where it becomes one is when one reproduces. consider this: there are currently a bit over 6 billion humans alive. imagine if suddenly, no one would ever die of old age again. now imagine birth rates don't change. how quickly would we run out of, well, everything? just because one doesn't die of old age, doesn't mean one cannot starve to death.

so, do we allow only childless persons to live forever, on the condition they be sterilized? or, even grandfather in all living persons, on the condition the human race cease reproduction? who would agree to that? what other options are there? exoplanetary colonization? still a long way to go towards achieving that.

ah, but if no one dies, then time is no longer important, right? we could hold off on reproduction untill we find a solution to potential over population, right? perhaps. but consider how one's thinking grows more conservative with age. would this be stopped by halting cell aging? or would people grow ever more stubborn with the passage of centuries? innovation is, typically, driven by youth because of the lack of experience.

often, our philosophies deal with dualism. without darkness, the can be no light. without conflict, no peace. without sorrow, no joy. is the same true of life and death? will we still be truly living, in more than a biological sense, without knowledge of our mortality? this same show, wondering about how we can excise death, also claims knowledge of death as foundation for human culture and belief systems. we believe we are the only animals on the planet attuned to our own mortality (well, the show's writers do; i don't necessarily agree). one could then argue, if one still felt the need to make humans special, that self-awarness is not sentience; knowledge of mortality is. would then, immortality remove our sentience? a semantic point, perhaps. but it would change humanity, and not necessarily for the better.

the prospect of a cessation of one's existance is certainly frightening. i'm in no hurry to experience it myself. however, it also seems necessary. we know that upsetting the balance of systems creates chaos until they can regain equilibrium. immortalizing all humans would certainly unbalance nearly every ecological system we know. what would the cost of regaining it be? i don't think it's worth it; not even for myself or my loved ones. too much else would be lost.

expect hit & runs to increase in austin

accidents happen. rather often, actually. generally, it is taken as a good thing to actually stay at the scene of an accident and make sure everyone is okay. it seems, however, that is not the case in austin, tx.

now, i'm of the mind that, upon hitting a child with your car, getting out to check on him and make sure you didn't kill or seriously hurt him is laudable. no one wants to run over a kid (well, usually). so, upon seeing a driver get out and check on said injured child, what is the reaction of bystanders? to try and beat the fuck out of the driver. and to then beat his passenger to death, for the sin of trying to prevent them from beating the fuck out of the driver. nice going folks. way to insure no one will ever stop again, if they think they hit someone.

meanwhile, the kid is hurt, but not too badly.

why i hate call in shows

during last night's rain delay, they switched over to a sports talk show. i made it through 2 callers before deciding i'd rather risk missing the end of the game (since it did continue) than listen to these people. at least the host was sensible.

first, we had some guy wondering if it made sense to trade lugo to the O's for tejada, straight up. to which the host replied along the lines of: "are you fucking crazy? why would the O's accept that?" this guy then suggested scheduling fewer series against the "lesser" teams, which again got a reply along the lines of "are you fucking crazy? you think MLB is going to offically designate certain teams as sucking, before the season starts?"

then we had the next dumbass, wondering why lugo wasn't sitting in place of cora all the time. uh, perhaps it's because, despite his hot start (now cooled), cora can't hit. seriously his career EQA is .238, OBP is .311 and SLG is .348 (.659 OPS, that is). and no, it's not because he's not playing every day. in 2003, he had 477 AB, and an OPS of .625. this is why cora is a utility player. lugo, meanwhile, is .259/.335/.395 (.730 OPS). certainly not great, but also certainly better than cora.

that's all i could take. does anyone actually listen to these regularly? if so, why?

lessons from sitemeter

silly quizes drive up traffic. photos of pottery, links to tobacco pipes and baseball...not so much.

good to know. not that i'll make any use of it.

it's mine, all mine!

and i'm smoking it right now. ah...so very nice.

i've got the bestest girlfriend ever. [grin]

my muse is...

swiped from keifus

You scored as Clio, You are Clio, the muse of history. You love academic pursuits, but still know to have fun. You're a bit of a tease and a prankster. Erato 63% Thalia 63% Euterpe 63% Clio 63% Calliope 56% Terpischore 44% Melpomene 44% Urania 38% Polyhymnia 19% Which of the Greek Muses are you? created with QuizFarm.com

apparently i'm actually 4 muses. so i suppose it means it's a mood thing. or their domains overlap. perhaps both.

not at bad at math as i thought

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 9/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

don't i feel accomplished? i still remember basic algebra! ah well, it was geometry that i tended to screw up on. and mid-to-high level calculus.

oh yeah, i'm big time!

My blog is worth $564.54.
How much is your blog worth?

heh. well, maybe not.

tonight's dinner menu

since i'm waiting for the potatoes to cook some, before i begin on the rest of the meal, i've decided to share what i'm making for dinner:

• roasted baby yukon gold potatoes
• fiddleheads, morels and chanterelles sauteed in butter w/shallots and sage
• ny strip w/welsh oak smoked sea salt

perse is in charge of dessert, which is fresh berries, shortcake and marscapone whipped cream.

stop the abuse!

a new entry has been made into my personal lexicon of brutally abused words: organic. yes, organic. the entry was made official after reading another potter's quote (in the 500 Bowls book), who seemed to think that stone was "organic". newsflash to the world! organic is not a synonym for "natural". rock, for instance, cannot be organic. why? because it's not fucking carbon-based life, that's why. this word abuse irritates me, nearly as much as modification of "unique" does.

i blame organic farming for this. hippy bastards.

richard schickel firmly believes you are stupid

this opinion piece is, i believe, a reaction to the current battle being waged (somewhere, out there) between professional book reviewers and blogging book reviewers. personally, i don't care about it. i don't generally review books on my page, though i read a fair amount. mostly, i haven't the time to bother. additionally, i know most people who read this blog. there is an understanding that, if i say such and such book is worth reading, then that is enough to warrant picking it up. but i wouldn't consider that a review. it's a recommendation. however, i digress.

what i take issue to is not even the statement that elitism is a good thing. i agree, to an exent. no, what i take issue with is this statement, tossed out there after listing orwell, edmund wilson and some 19th century frenchman as the pinacles of literary criticsm:

[...]all three wrote for intelligent readers who emerged from their reviews grateful to know more than they did when they started to read, grateful for their encounter with a serious and, indeed, superior, mind. We do not — maybe I ought to make that "should not" — read to confirm our own prejudices and stupidity.

I don't think it's impossible for bloggers to write intelligent reviews. I do think, however, that a simple "love" of reading (or movie-going or whatever) is an insufficient qualification for the job. That way often leads to cultishness (see the currently inflated reputations of Philip K. Dick or Cornell Woolrich, both easy reads for lazy, word-addicted minds).

yes folks, you have an inferior mind. even you "intelligent readers". mr. schickel thinks you cannot possibly read and understand and criticize literary works on your own. regardless of your intelligence. why? i'm guessing it's because you are not a writer. and even if you are, you're still alive. to be a proper critic you must first and foremost be dead. otherwise, you cannot possibly be taken seriously.

as for being "word-addicted", i'm sorry richard, but that is part of the craft of writing. if we are to take the words of writers more seriously, then philip k. dick's reputation is still under inflated. but, you know, he wrote sci-fi and took drugs. i've no idea who cornell woolrich is. so i'm guessing his reputation is not as overinflated as mr. schickel thinks. doesn't matter. schickel strikes me as the sort of pretentious git who equates inpenetrability with intelligence, and "serious" works as being all that is worthy of reading. but, mind you, you must be told what is worthy of your time by a "superior mind". such as, i'm guessing, mr. schickel. who writes for "time".

you'll all forgive me if i stick to trusting my own abilities and the recommendations of those whom i find trustworthy (such as keifus). being a pleb, i'd likely not even be able to understand cricism anyway

EDIT 5/24: in the interest of fairness, i do agree that not everyone's opinion or criticism is of equal value. what i dislike is the idea that being paid to do something instantly means one is better at it than others. for a prime example, read firejoemorgan.com. it's also a prime example of why those who have done some thing (such as played pro baseball) does not mean they are more capable of analysing or criticising that same thing. also, i think mr. schickel does not quite understand how sites that, say review books, come about. they are not written by people who set out to get a job as a reviewer and failed. they are written by people who started reviewing books for friends and acquaintences and then attracted a wider readership. it is not true that if someone is good enough to review a book, they'd have a job. for they may never have sought one. mostly, though, the suggestion that people who write online, as a hobby or diversion, are somehow less intelligent or capable simply because they are writing for free, is extraordinarily insulting. yes, there are a great many morons babbling away online (some may consider me to be one of them). however, there are also a great many highly intelligent people out there, sharing their thoughts as well.

mathematicians are idiots

i haven't read through this whole article yet. i probably won't, because i find the premise ridiculous and, frankly, irritating. however, it is useful (in the opening paragraphs) as an illustration of how brilliant people can be remarkably stupid. particularly game theorists.

here's the setup:

Lucy and Pete, returning from a remote Pacific island, find that the airline has damaged the identical antiques that each had purchased. An airline manager says that he is happy to compensate them but is handicapped by being clueless about the value of these strange objects. Simply asking the travelers for the price is hopeless, he figures, for they will inflate it.

Instead he devises a more complicated scheme. He asks each of them to write down the price of the antique as any dollar integer between 2 and 100 without conferring together. If both write the same number, he will take that to be the true price, and he will pay each of them that amount. But if they write different numbers, he will assume that the lower one is the actual price and that the person writing the higher number is cheating. In that case, he will pay both of them the lower number along with a bonus and a penalty--the person who wrote the lower number will get $2 more as a reward for honesty and the one who wrote the higher number will get $2 less as a punishment. For instance, if Lucy writes 46 and Pete writes 100, Lucy will get $48 and Pete will get $44.

What numbers will Lucy and Pete write? What number would you write?

if you've any sense, you're choosing $100. in know i am.

now, the startling conclusion!

Scenarios of this kind, in which one or more individuals have choices to make and will be rewarded according to those choices, are known as games by the people who study them (game theorists). I crafted this game, "Traveler's Dilemma, in 1994 with several objectives in mind: to contest the narrow view of rational behavior and cognitive processes taken by economists and many political scientists, to challenge the libertarian presumptions of traditional economics and to highlight a logical paradox of rationality.

Traveler's Dilemma (TD) achieves those goals because the game's logic dictates that 2 is the best option, yet most people pick 100 or a number close to 100--both those who have not thought through the logic and those who fully understand that they are deviating markedly from the "rational choice. Furthermore, players reap a greater reward by not adhering to reason in this way. Thus, there is something rational about choosing not to be rational when playing Traveler's Dilemma.

amazing! irrationality wins! er, not really. see, what these guys don't realize is they are basing their logic on the assumption that people are machines. they aren't. sure, mathematically, it may be logical to pick 2, because then you can't lose. but the most you are going to get is $4. yippie fuckin' skippy. a formula, or super math geek, might think in these terms, but generally, humans don't. hell, i don't even think vulcans would. it is far more rational to assume the other person is going to try to maximize their reward, not their odds of winning. sure, if you pick 100, instead of 2, you get nothing. but the other person only gets 4 bucks. you aren't out a hundred dollars. you're out four. in terms of risk, that's pretty damn low. so why bother to low ball it? i'd venture to guess that no statistically significant portion of people choose less than 50. why? it's in the premise for choosing this reward/punishment scenerio: people are going to inflate the value. if you are setting up a problem because you think the subjects are going to try to reap a higher monetary reward, what possible reason would you have to believe someone would choose 2 as an answer to the problem? well, that's covered:

To see why 2 is the logical choice, consider a plausible line of thought that Lucy might pursue: her first idea is that she should write the largest possible number, 100, which will earn her $100 if Pete is similarly greedy. (If the antique actually cost her much less than $100, she would now be happily thinking about the foolishness of the airline manager's scheme.)

Soon, however, it strikes her that if she wrote 99 instead, she would make a little more money, because in that case she would get $101. But surely this insight will also occur to Pete, and if both wrote 99, Lucy would get $99. If Pete wrote 99, then she could do better by writing 98, in which case she would get $100. Yet the same logic would lead Pete to choose 98 as well. In that case, she could deviate to 97 and earn $99. And so on. Continuing with this line of reasoning would take the travelers spiraling down to the smallest permissible number, namely, 2. It may seem highly implausible that Lucy would really go all the way down to 2 in this fashion. That does not matter (and is, in fact, the whole point)--this is where the logic leads us.

Game theorists commonly use this style of analysis, called backward induction. Backward induction predicts that each player will write 2 and that they will end up getting $2 each (a result that might explain why the airline manager has done so well in his corporate career). Virtually all models used by game theorists predict this outcome for TD--the two players earn $98 less than they would if they each naively chose 100 without thinking through the advantages of picking a smaller number.

read that last sentence again. now, think about what this man is saying. the logical conclusion leads to you netting $2, $98 less than naively choosing $100. this is most decidedly not an advantage. and yes, it seems highly implausible that someone would choose 2 because it is highly implausible. the disadvantages of low reward more than outweigh any advantage of choosing low.

anyway, i couldn't really read past that point. the model is flawed, because it is based upon the least important variable in the equation. you don't need a game like this to realize that human decision making is not guided by strict logic. what this says to me is not that it is irrational to defy strict logic, but that it is irrational to stick to it.

falling victim to guilt week

well, they got me. the folks at WETA are in the midst of their spring pledge drive and, after listening to them beg for days, they got me. mind you, i don't mind donating money to public radio. let alone a station that i listen to for approximately 9-10 hours a day. also, they picked up the slack when WGMS switched formats from all classical to yet-another-classic-rock-station; themselves changing from talk radio to all classical. i greatly appreciate that and respect the risk. plus, i'm getting a nifty bag out of it (for whatever reason, i am constantly in search of the perfect bag. or backpack. luggage too.).

still, i feel manipulated and used. okay, not so much. mostly, i feel like complaining about it. especially because they'll get me again, next pledge drive.

bastards.

UPDATE: i quote, i say i quote, the guy on the radio. just now. "we're not trying to make you feel guilty. although that would help." caught!

note to self

this is a reminder: refrain from taking new books to bed. stick with the old, famaliar friends. at least if you want to actually sleep.

p.s: also, that cappuchino probably didn't help matters.