The Cheese Tech Inversion

Price of a cheap DVD player: $24.99

Price of a pound of blue cheese: $36.00

Good thing gadgets aren't made out of cheese!

Quotes

Overheard at New Seasons: "But Whole Foods ice uses instant water."

Me at New Seasons: "Are there any of these cheeses that we should buy for investment purposes?"

Overheard at the L.A. airport men's restroom, some guy talking on a cell phone: "Tucson, this is Monkey Butt. Call me back. Bye."

My new T-Shirt

The Essential
by ironmonkey
Get this custom shirt
at Zazzle

I created this T-Shirt from a photo I took of one of my favorite road signs. The text says:

"The essential is to excite the spectators." - Orson Welles

The Interview

Bob: "So you got new, expensive, fancy shoes. Where are you going to wear them? I mean, I guess you could wear them to an interview for . . . what would you be interviewing for?"

Me: "Galactic Pimp Daddy?"

Quote of the day

[On the way in to the theater to see a play, we pass a sign that says something like, "Warning: tonight's play contains adult themes, sexual situations, and nudity."]

My mom: "Well, as long as there's nudity, I'll see it."

Chair Zoo

"Chair Zoo" is my description for a certain way of decorating a room, where the apparent objective was to fit in as many chairs as possible. Often many different types of chairs are used, adding to the menagerie effect.

It can be awkward to walk through a chair zoo because not enough space remains for comfortable traffic patterns through the room. I like having open space, and I like a room where there is enough space to lie down on the floor and make the "snow angel" motion without hitting anything. My house still has too many chairs, though, and I'm about to get rid of at least one.

Creators of chair zoos often argue that chair zoos are practical because at any moment a huge number of guests could arrive, and they would all need somewhere to sit. But I've found that at parties, most people do not sit anyway. They stand, wander around, and mingle. So the best rooms for parties are ones with a generous amount of unobstructed floor space.

The Cost of Energy

With high oil prices in the news, a certain talking point has gained traction, and it goes something like this: "When conventional energy prices get high enough, it will make alternative energy sources economically viable." This argument astounds me, because it is both literally true and at the same time not very helpful. It is bad news made to sound good. It is much like saying that once the price of a glass of water reaches $100, drinking a glass of Dom Perignon champagne instead will be economically competitive. That's great, except that most of us won't be able to afford either one.

What this talking point really means is, "in the future you might have a choice between expensive alternative energy and expensive conventional energy." That may be good news for the environment (if it results in less pollution and other undesirable side effects), but it is certainly not good economic news.

Sumo with Effects

Sumo, the way it was meant to be seen?

Tiltan's Tale

One misty morning, a clever young bookbinder named Tiltan Stumbledown prowled through the forest hunting for mushrooms, only to encounter the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen, trapped within a dome of shimmering magical energy. She waved at him, or maybe at something behind him. He stepped forward for a closer look.

"At last, someone has come," she said. "I am Aliarru, and you must rescue me!"

Tiltan approached the roiling barrier and sniffed it. Its bright purple color and aroma of fresh-baked bread told him it was Yi-yi Ka'tun, one of the most expensive imported brands of magical energy, worlds apart from the crap produced locally. With cheap local materials, he thought, a magic barrier would disintegrate in the first stiff breeze, or simply collapse from the shame of its inferior workmanship. But this, well, you could really stub your toe on this, couldn't you? Tiltan pictured a large black bear, charging at the barrier in deadly fury and then bouncing back off, and he thought about how hilarious that would look.

A pounding came from within. "Hey! Aren't you going to ask me how I got here, and how to get me out?"

"The first part has something to do with a wizard with a lot of money," Tiltan ventured, "and perhaps some sort of . . . breach of contract? I'm still working on the second part." He glanced around.

"No," she said, "you don't understand! The only weapon that can shatter this barrier, the Three-edged Sword of Meddling, lies far away in Spiral Cave, a place of great peril." Aliarru sighed. "Peril," she said, rubbing her shoulder with one hand. "Peril."

"You keep saying peril," said Tiltan.

"I like the sound of it."

"Oh. I bet you do. Anyway, go on." Tiltan picked up a rounded rock, considered it, then dropped it again.

"You'll have to descend to the bottom of Spiral Cave, where the sword is guarded by a vicious . . ."

"Dragon," said Tiltan, nodding.

"No, what's wrong with you? You believe in dragons?" Aliarru grimaced. "It's a Giant Frog!"

Tiltan chuckled and made frog noises. He picked up a flat, medium-sized rock and looked quite pleased with it.

Aliarru stomped one foot. "Don't take it lightly, it's extremely poisonous! If it even touches you at all, you are completely screwed, alright? First coughing fits, then mild hallucinations and difficulty operating machinery, then headache, then paralysis, coma and death. It is real peril. I mean true, all out, no-limits peril."

"That does sound p- . . . does sound like a nasty beast. This 'Giant Frog' is what, 20 feet tall? 30?"

"You're high right now, aren't you? I knew it. What's the biggest frog you've ever seen?"

Tiltan shrugged and put his hands about a froglength apart.

"Right," said Aliarru patiently. "So it's called a Giant Frog because it's giant for a frog. Like jumbo shrimp, or a giant clam, or an extra large hoodie. It's a frog up to two feet long."

In Tiltan's opinion, a 30-foot frog would have been somewhat more awe-inspiring, and he said so as politely as possible.

"Think about it," she said, "how would a 30-foot frog even get in there? Do you think Spiral Cave is over 30 feet in diameter the whole way? Haven't you ever gone caving?" In fact, Tiltan had indeed gone caving, and part of him suspected that a 30-foot frog could have entered whilst still small and then grown, like those obese people you sometimes hear about who no longer fit through their own front doors. But he chose not to make an issue of it.

Aliarru caught him smiling at the flat rock again, and she made a little snorting sound. She reminded him that no mere rock could shatter the barrier, that only the Three-Edged Sword of Meddling could do so. She explained that though the giant frog was the final guardian, reaching Spiral Cave was no easy task. As she listed out each segment of the journey and its many dangers, Tiltan put down the flat rock and picked up a stick. He walked around and around the barrier and examined it from all angles.

". . . climb up the waterfall and turn left at the twin pillars," she was saying. "Then enter the Swamp of Sorrows to find the amulet in a silver chest."

"Uh huh," said Tiltan. He leaned on the stick for a while.

"Are you paying attention?"

Tiltan nodded.

"What did I just say then? Repeat it back," she said.

Tiltan twirled the stick. "Something something swamp, something something breast."

"Chest!"

"Same thing."

"No it's not! You're not even listening!"

"Look," said Tiltan, "how do you happen to know all this? I mean, what are the odds that you'd know about the one thing that can destroy this barrier, and where to find it, and everything?" Aliarru replied that it was no coincidence, because she had learned these things on good authority from the wizard himself, remember him? The expert on the barrier because he created it?

"So some guy imprisons you, but then he turns around and gives you detailed, step-by-step instructions about what it would take to get out? That seems unlikely. He was just messing with you. Or it's a trap."

"Obviously he was taunting me with the solution, knowing I couldn't use it."

Tiltan looked thoughtful. "That's not a very good taunt, it's more of a clue, or a spoiler. A taunt would be more like: ooooh, look at this delicious cake just outside the barrier, bet ya'd like a taste of that, wouldn' ya?"

"He made a mistake in the heat of the moment," said Aliarru. "It's one of those character flaws. You need to go to Spiral Cave and get the Three-edged Sword of Meddling."

"Does it really have three edges?"

"It really has five, they just didn't want to brag."

"Seriously?"

Aliarru giggled for a long time, and finally said, "no, it's just a mistranslation."

"How many edges does it really have?"

"Zero." She winked at him. "OK, one. I mean it this time, it really has just one edge, and you really have to go and fetch it. Will you?"

"I have a much better idea." He leaned on the stick hard enough to push it into the ground, then laughed and grasped the flat rock again.

Aliarru tensed. "A rock can't shatter the barrier. Say it with me, a rock can't shatter the barrier. It's rated best in its class for rock-proof-ness."

"The barrier only goes down to ground level," said Tiltan. "We dig under, then you crawl out." He began to dig near the barrier using the flat rock.

"What? Dig? That won't . . . you're wasting your time."

After a short while of digging, Tiltan had moved enough dirt to create a roughly Aliarru-sized opening beneath the barrier. She wriggled through it, stood up, and brushed herself off. "Thanks," she said, and started to walk away.

"I imagined you'd be happier to be rescued," said Tiltan. "Happier, more impressed by my cleverness, more grateful, those sorts of things."

Aliarru stopped. "You didn't even try to get the sword. You didn't even make an effort. You just dug a hole."

"If I were on my way to Spiral Cave now," Tiltan said, "you'd still be trapped in that dome. I could be gone for days or weeks, and in the end maybe the frog would poison me after all. This way was quicker and much more reliable."

"Anyone can dig a hole. I could have dug myself out."

"Yes, but you didn't think of it! Most people wouldn't think of it. It's an elegant solution."

"Are you saying I'm not smart?"

"No, no, nothing like that. Just . . . most people wouldn't think of it, that's all."

"It's kind of obvious, actually," she said.

"It's only obvious now because you already know about it."

"I would have thought of it eventually."

"Eventually? You mean after the frog killed me and you had to go to Plan B?"

"No, if you had tried you would have triumphed and gotten the sword, I know it. Probably."

"Wouldn't you rather be free right now than eventually?"

"Of course. I said thanks." She started to walk off again.

"Wait, I just want to ask you one thing. If I had done all that business, and killed the frog, and gotten the sword, and come back and shattered the barrier, then would you have been impressed?"

Aliarru nodded. "In that case, yes, I guess so."

"So even though you got exactly what you wanted you're not impressed, but if only I'd used a worse solution that took much longer and had a high risk of failure, then you would be?"

"I guess so."

"Why?"

"Because anyone can dig a hole."

And so it was that Tiltan learned an important lesson. A valuable act can create a hero, but only if it is also very inconvenient.

Sakura-Con Report

I just posted my full Sakura-Con Report, with even more photos than the ones below, at JLHLS.

The Slants, at Sakuracon 2008

The Slants -- a band from my own home town of Portland, Oregon -- performed at Sakuracon in Seattle. I'll have more to say about the concerts, and the convention in general, later on JLHLS. These are just some photos to tide you over while I get my article organized.



One thing I noticed was that their recorded material sounds like retro-80's synth pop, in fact it reminds me of Duran Duran. But their live show has much more of a hard rock sound.

Update: read my full Sakura-Con Report

Sakuracon 2008 Dance, Part 1

Here are some photos from the rave dance on Saturday night at Sakuracon 2008. I will post more dance images here later.

Also look for my full convention report, coming soon at JLHLS.

I like how the photo above turned out, it looks like a ghost materializing, or someone being teleported in, or maybe like an apparition coming from the mind of the girl sitting on the floor.

This (above) is the guy with the big blue glow bar.

I like the way the same dancer is in this photo twice, on the left and the right side.

I think the other JLHLS photographer got better pictures of this dancer, but I like how the laser beam appears in this one, as if she is holding it.

Update: read my full Sakura-Con Report

Quote of the Day

TV Advertisement: "Some nights, it takes more than a pillow to fall asleep."

My girlfriend: "Yeah, it takes a hammer!"

Sakuracon 2008 Cosplay, Part 1

I went to Sakuracon in Seattle this past weekend, to cover the convention for JLHLS. Here are a few cosplay photos. Look for my full convention report at JLHLS soon. The cosplayers above are dresed as characters from the Soul Calibur video game. They had great costumes and poses.



The costume in the photo above looked amazing. I've seen professional costumes from movies that did not look this good.


I have a lot more photos that I will post later, including concert photos and pictures from the rave.

See also:

• my Sakuracon Xianghua Set at Flickr
• my Sakuracon Cosplay Set at Flickr
• The Slants at Sakuracon
• Dance at Sakuracon

Update: read my full Sakura-Con Report

Get A Grip

Some people seem to be having trouble grasping the credit crisis:

"But the overwhelming majority of homeowners are doing just fine. So how is it that a mess concentrated in one part of the mortgage business — subprime loans — has frozen the credit markets, sent stock markets gyrating, caused the collapse of Bear Stearns, left the economy on the brink of the worst recession in a generation and forced the Federal Reserve to take its boldest action since the Depression?" -- The New York Times

Look at it this way. The overwhelming majority of football players are doing just fine. So how is it that a late score in one football game could ruin so many problem gamblers?

A bad bet on a football game can cost you much more than the price of the ball.

A lot of the money in the economy is riding on bets. They're complicated bets that a lot of people don't understand, but in simple terms, they're just bets.

That shouldn't be so hard to understand.

Pink Unicorn Cocktail

Tonight I invented a new cocktail that I think is one of my best yet: the Pink Unicorn.

Pink Unicorn recipe:

• 1 part coconut juice
• 2 parts Absolut Mandrin vodka
  
• 4 parts watermelon juice
• add a bit of fresh grated Meyer lemon zest
• stir and serve over ice

This drink is delicious, its only possible drawback is that the ingredients and the name are somewhat girly. So I also created a much more masculine, heroic version, called the Pink Unicorn With A Rocket Launcher. The recipe is the same, except add two dashes of bitters.

Oblivion Sigil Stone Mad Dash

I've been playing Oblivion lately, and you have to close Oblivion Gates by getting to the top of these big towers and reaching the Sigil Stone at the top. Up until recently, I had been doing this the obvious way, by fighting my way through each room and level, then healing and repairing my weapons and moving on to the next, until I finally reached the top.

But then I realized something that should have been obvious. All you have to do to close the gate is get that stone at the top, nothing says you actually have to fight anyone! If you're fast enough, you can make a mad dash to the top, dodging and running from all the enemies until you finally tag the stone. They will chase you but they may not catch you. Sometimes you have to jump to get past enemies so they don't block your way, so Acrobatics helps. Athletics and speed enhancements are useful, and some healing potions are also helpful for when an enemy gets in a lucky hit as you swoop past.

You don't get any treasure or skill points on the way if you do this, and it isn't very heroic, but it is super funny, which is reason enough to do it at least once. It's the "Run, Forrest, Run!" strategy for closing a gate.

Bank Invents Time Machine For Losses

The New York Times reports that French bank Société Générale has put their 6.4 billion euro losses behind them, so to speak, by claiming that they occurred in 2007:

In moving the loss from 2008 — when it actually occurred — to 2007, Société Générale has created a furor in accounting circles and raised questions about whether international accounting standards can be consistently applied in the many countries around the world that are converting to the standards. -- The New York Times, March 7, 2008

In related news, though I lost money playing video poker last week, I am revising my statements to show that the events occurred when I was a small boy, and the experience helped
me get through the second grade. Once I perfect the technique, I plan to send my losses even further into the past, so that my distant ancestors can pay them off in goats and stone knives.

Expensive Placebos Are Better

Science Daily reports that expensive placebos work better than cheap ones:

Half the participants were given a brochure describing the pill as a newly-approved pain-killer which cost $2.50 per dose and half were given a brochure describing it as marked down to 10 cents, without saying why.

In the full-price group, 85 percent of subjects experienced a reduction in pain after taking the placebo. In the low-price group, 61 percent said the pain was less.

That settles it. From now on, I'm only using the most expensive, designer brand placebos. None of those cheap ones for me, only the best.

Also, wine tastes better when it costs more, even when it is the exact same wine:

The subjects consistently reported that the more expensive wines tasted better, even when they were actually identical to cheaper wines. [. . .] When subjects were told they were getting a more expensive wine, they observed more activity in a part of the brain known to be involved in our experience of pleasure.

So here's my plan. When I'm at a restaurant, I'll order a bottle of wine, then ask the waiter, "could you please charge me $10 more for it? I want it to taste a little better than normal."

World's Widest Border?

I recently heard about someone's theory that terrorists who "had been in Iraq" then "slipped across the border into Afghanistan." That would have been quite an amazing magic trick, possibly involving that teleportation gun from the video game Portal, since the two countries do not share a border.

A Piece of Rock

I've been pricing kitchen upgrades as part of planning some remodeling. You know what blows my mind? The price of granite countertops. I mean, it's a piece of rock. How can a piece of rock wind up costing more than a plasma TV? More than a computer? More than a pretty nice mountain bike?

It's a piece of frakkin' rock! It's not like it has internet access. It's not like it has complex moving parts. It's not like it has . . . parts. It has a part. It's a rock. A big rock. It's not even carved into something interesting, like the heads at Easter Island, or Michelangelo's David. It's a rectangle. I mean, a really expensive rectangle of rock is just one step above a really expensive dandelion.

Someday, someone will ask me, "Tom, just out of curiosity, what is the most expensive thing in your house?" And I'll have to say, "My bionic appendix, of course!" No, even worse, I'll have to say, "it's that slab of rock in the kitchen." Ugh. No, I won't be able to do it. I'll have to lie. I'll say "it's my genetically-engineered cat, a perfect replica of a cat from 100 million years ago that sat on the beach and ate pterodactyls." And they'll say, "Of course, I thought it had a funny look in its eye."

Explaining

A feature that is very hard to explain can be worse than a bug. At least with a bug, you can fix it and it will go away. But a confusing feature will keep confusing users forever, and you will keep having to explain it over and over again.

Their Purpose

Me: [Talks about seahorses]

Friend: I don't get it. I mean, what do seahorses do? What is their purpose?

Me: Well, what is our purpose?

Friend: To destroy the Earth.

A Message Back In Time

Recently I saw a thread about what you would say if you could send a message back in time to yourself, 20 years in the past. For me, I would say something like this to myself 20 years ago:

• Oddly, many of the bands you hear on the radio now will still have fans and still be touring 20 years from now
• Oddly, many of the video games you are playing now will still have fans and still be played 20 years in the future
  
• If this message cannot change the course of history, you will get in a bad motorcycle accident. But don't worry, you'll recover. In the long run, it won't be that bad.
  
• On the other hand, if this message can change the course of history . . . slow down and veer left :-)
• Computers get much faster and more powerful, as you might expect, but they do not get any less frustrating. In some ways they seem slower.
  
• Nothing truly disastrous happens to you in the next 20 years, so stop worrying.

Qualities

I posed a question to my brother the other night. Why, I asked, do people so readily admire the qualities of confidence, certainty, decisiveness, and charm in others? These could be good qualities, but they could just as easily be the typical traits of a sociopath. A sociopath is confident and certain because he has a delusional sense of his own superiority; he is decisive because he is impulsive and reckless, and doesn't care about the consequences of his actions; and he is charming because he is a natural liar who tells people whatever they want to hear. So these traits actually ought to be red flags that make us suspicious, certainly not things to instantly admire.

Why then, don't people instead prefer the type of person who says, "I'm not 100% certain, but from the information we have now, it seems like A is our best option. We also need a plan B in case it turns out that was wrong. And let's keep an open mind so that as new information comes in and the situation changes, we can take that into account and improve our understanding."

"Because," my brother replied, "that type of thinking gives most people the heebie-jeebies."

I think that says a lot about our world.

Portrait of a Spam Craver

My father hasn't been receiving spam e-mail lately, and he's not happy about it. I've teased him that he is probably the only person in the world who is upset about not getting enough spam. But he believes that this must indicate a problem with his e-mail, and that if spam is getting "lost" then other more important messages are probably being lost as well. He could be right, but I sent him some messages to test this theory, and they got through just fine.

He has even called tech support about this. "What did you say to them," I asked. "Was it something like, 'What happened to my spam? Give me back my precious spam, you bastards!'"

Apparently it wasn't quite like that. But they had no explanation.

"You've won!" I told him. "The spammers have given up on you and admitted defeat. All these years of resisting their ads have paid off. They've taken you off all the lists for good. You are the first man to achieve complete victory over spam!"

He didn't believe this. He said something about how inconvenient it would be to have to get a new e-mail address. He is actually considering getting a new e-mail address because the current one doesn't get spam.

But seriously, I think if spammers had some way to precisely target only those people most likely to respond to their ads, they would probably do it. They would get the same results with fewer complaints and less action taken against them. Could we be seeing the beginning of that strategy? Have spammers developed a vast A.I. that can figure out which people aren't worth bothering with? Or is my father just The Man That Spam Forgot?

Crackpot Inventor Syndrome

Every once in a while I run across another internet essay by a "Nice Guy" complaining about how "women don't like nice guys, they like jerks." Usually the Nice Guy then goes on to demonstrate his niceness by saying hateful things about women, and explaining his deep insights about how shallow and evil they are.

This really reminds me of the writings of crackpot inventors, who complain about how scientists won't accept the genius of their perpetual-motion machines. Typically the crackpot inventors then take up a second project, namely figuring out "what is wrong with scientists?" They quickly discover the answer: scientists are closed-minded, they are snobs, they are jealous of the superior intellects of crackpot inventors. They are unwilling to let an outsider into their club, and even less willing to let their hard-won knowledge be rendered obsolete by the breakthroughs of the inventors. In the end, really, scientists are insufferable jerks! They don't even deserve the perpetual-motion machine! They're too immature to handle the anti-gravity ray!

Nice Guys complain that they've been "just friends" with a woman for quite a while, but -- amazingly! -- it has not lead to anything "more." This is an odd attitude, because it actually defines friendship as a type of rejection. (Try to wrap your head around that one.) To normal people, friendship is a good thing and valuable for its own sake. But to the Nice Guy, friendship with a woman is something else: it is reserving a place "next in line" to be her boyfriend. To the Nice Guy, friendship is stalking from point-blank range. (I imagine I'd find that twice as horrifying if I were female.)

I'd like to explain to the Nice Guys that they have Crackpot Inventor Syndrome, but I don't think it would work. Nice Guys aren't out trying to understand the reasons why they're wrong. They have created inside their own heads a perfect vision of how the world "ought to work." Just like crackpot inventors.

HD Lord of the Rings

Today TNT HD is showing all three Lord of the Rings movies back to back. I'm attempting to watch it all and I'm now about halfway through. It's quite the viewing marathon, but they are pretty spectacular in HD.

Update: I did watch all three movies back-to-back. Wow, with commercials that was really, really, long. I don't really recommend it.

Quote of the Week

"You can make a gamble more attractive by adding a strict loss to it! Isn't psychology fun? This is why no one who truly appreciates the wondrous intricacy of human intelligence wants to design a human-like AI."


-- From Evaluability (And Cheap Holiday Shopping), on Overcoming Bias

Haskell in the Shower

I thought this up while in the shower this morning. I think of the weirdest things in the morning when I'm half-asleep.

   ___         ___ _
  / _ \ /\  /\/ __(_)
 / /_\// /_/ / /  | |      GHC Interactive, version 6.4.1, for Haskell 98.
/ /_\\/ __  / /___| |      http://www.haskell.org/ghc/
\____/\/ /_/\____/|_|      Type :? for help.

Loading package base-1.0 ... linking ... done.
Prelude> :m +List
Prelude List> let primes ns = nubBy d ns where d x y = y `mod` x == 0
Prelude List> primes [2..100]
[2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41,43,47,53,59,61,67,71,73,79,83,89,97]

(Of course, this is not an especially good way of finding primes. It is more like a funny use of nubBy.)

Haskell Substring Function

Somewhere out there a programmer is wondering, "Why doesn't Haskell seem to have a substring function? Why is this brave new world of functional programming so harsh and cruel?" (Well, maybe not the second part.) The isInfixOf function in Data.List does what you want. It isn't called "substring" because it also works with other types besides String. (See also isPrefixOf, isSuffixOf.)

I haven't seen this mentioned in Haskell tutorials so I'm posting it here.

Prelude> :m +Data.List
Prelude Data.List> "bc" `isInfixOf` "abcd"
True
Prelude Data.List> "zz" `isInfixOf` "abcd"
False

Cardboard - The Ultimate Camouflage

680 News reports that thieves concealed themselves inside a cardboard box in order to break into businesses at night and steal from them.

Detective Sergeant Reuben Stroble said anyone driving by would see the box and simply assume it was a delivery for the business.

"The concealment, I mean, no one would ever think of someone being inside a box in front of a storefront window in the middle of the night," said Det. Sgt. Stroble.

Video gamers will recognize the cardboard box camouflage as a signature trick from the Metal Gear Solid series of games. When I played those games, I thought that was a silly gimmick that was very unlikely to actually work in the real world. What's next? Will we discover that random barrels and crates really do contain power-ups?

Tales of Garlic

The other day we went to a local grocery store that specializes in international foods, and I got a jar of "Garlic in Oil with Herbs" from Poland. It turned out to be quite good, and so a few times a week I would open up the jar, take out one or two cloves of garlic, and eat it as a snack.

Then a few days ago, I decided to read the label more carefully, to find out the exact ingredients and the nutritional information. I was shocked to discover that according to the label the jar contains 2 servings! Eating half a jar of garlic at one sitting is considered a serving. I can't even imagine doing that.

I Need To Work On My Lip-Reading

The new Bionic Woman TV show has the worst-mixed soundtrack I have ever heard. The latest episode sounds approximately like this:

"BAD MUSIC, whisper, BAD MUSIC, mumble, SOUND EFFECT, whisper, SOUND EFFECT, mumble."

At least 1/4 of the spoken words were too soft in the mix to be understood. It's like the sound engineers decided, "Hey, let's turn down those lines of dialogue because they're drowning out the dumb BLOOP-BLOOP-BLOOP noise that we worked so hard on."

Planning a What?

When I saw this headline . . .

Christina Aguilera Planning Duet With Aretha Franklin

. . . for a second I thought it said they were planning a duel. Now that would have been exciting! Flintlock pistols at 40 paces, at dawn?

Kumoricon 2007

I covered Kumoricon 2007 for JLHLS again this year. It was my third year at the convention, which was bigger than ever. The costumes were great, and it was a lot of fun.

The Uh-Oh Level

My girlfriend has the habit of saying "uh-oh!" with no further explanation. Often this happens when we are in different rooms, so I can't immediately see what the problem is. So today I told her that from now on after saying "uh-oh" she should say a number between 1 and 10 to indicate the severity of the issue. For example, "uh-oh 1" would mean something like, "uh-oh, I can't decide which pair of shoes to wear." But "uh-oh 10" would mean something like, "uh-oh, the house is on fire, and also some zombies are trying to break down the front door to come in and eat our brains."

We'll see how this works. So far I have gotten an "uh-oh 3" which meant "I can't find my iPhone."

Hollywood Version

Here's a mental game to keep you amused. Next time you're in a boring situation, imagine that instead you're in the Hollywood Version of the same scene. All the people around you are glamorous A-List celebrities. They are exchanging incredibly witty banter that took the screenwriters many drafts to get just right. The surroundings are impeccably designed and perfectly lit. And whatever it is that you are doing is not just some random, boring activity, but it is in fact a "pivotal moment" that fits perfectly into the clever plot and drives it forward.

The more over-the-top you imagine it, the better.

There's something quite funny about doing this exercise. You realize how completely unlike the Hollywood Version the real version is. I'm not sure why that's funny, but it is.

Early Summer Chatter

What To Get

Her: While I'm up, can I get you anything?

Me: Yeah . . . uh . . . a monkey.

Her: Let me rephrase that, can I get you anything that I reasonably could get?

Me: Well . . . um . . you could make us a pot of that "Monkey-Picked Oolong" tea.

Her: Why, because it was touched by a monkey?

Me: It has "monkey" in the name.


Slap Therapy

My brother: Slap me.

Me (suspicious): No.

[Note: if my brother wanted to spar, he would probably say something like "want to do some sparring?" Or if he wanted to try out some particular move, he would say "try to slap me." But just saying "slap me" as if he expected it to succeed made me think he was up to something.]

My brother: Come on, I won't hit you back. Slap me.

Me: No, I don't want to.

My brother, turning to my girlfriend: Slap me.

[She slaps him very lightly, almost a pantomime slap.]

My brother: Not like that, really slap me.

[She really slaps him.]

My brother: See?

Me: I don't understand the point of this.

My girlfriend: Hmm. Slapping him was kind of cathartic!

Me: Hey, you've invented a new type of therapy! You should write a book, and go on Oprah.

An Army

(Photo by Aaron Webb - Creative Commons)

Her: Time to clean the floor.

Me: We really need to have an army of robots for that.

Her: Nah, I'll just use the Swiffer.

Me: An army of robots would be cooler.

Her: Well . . . I guess it would be cooler.

Me: But eventually they'd rebel.

Her: And kill us.

Me: . . .

Her: I'll stick with the Swiffer.

Smart Cars? Why Not Smart Drivers?

From abc.net.au:

'Intelligent' cars fitted with sensors to predict traffic flow can deliver the same fuel efficiency as hybrid vehicles, a new study shows.

[...] 'intelligent' cars are conventional vehicles fitted with sensors and receivers called telematics, which work in a network, swapping information about the traffic ahead.

This traffic information is then relayed to the car to stop the vehicle or slow it down so that the ride is smooth, avoiding the stop-start phenomenon that drains fuel.

[...]

They calculated that a hybrid version of the car would deliver fuel economy of 15-25% over the unconverted vehicle.

But this saving was matched when the benchmark car was fitted with basic telematics that predicted traffic flows as little as seven seconds ahead, as determined by Australian driving conditions. [link]

Wouldn't smarter drivers be just as effective as smarter cars? Wouldn't that be cheaper, too? The only way to get drivers to drive more smoothly is to have a computerized car override their bad decisions? How sad. And if we're going that route, maybe the car should refuse to start at all during peak traffic hours.

It is possible to get better mileage simply by changing driving habits. See Hypermiling.

New WWO blog

I've started a new blog for my WWO posts. Check out MonkeyWithoutOil.

Iron Monkey's Law of the Imagined

We think we enjoy our imagination because it simulates reality, but the truth is that we enjoy reality because it stimulates our imagination.

We May Outlive the Net

[Note: This is a World Without Oil post.]

We may outlive the Internet. To everyone blogging and podcasting about a World Without Oil, I admire your efforts, but I also must ask: what's your Plan B for when the power goes out? This energy crunch will not just be about gasoline and driving. The electrical grid is vulnerable, too.

"In fact, severe power shortages and rolling blackouts will now become a daily occurrence around the country over the next few years, according to NERC, because the antiquated power grid will be continuously stretched beyond its means - mainly a result of electricity deregulation, whereby power is sent hundreds of miles across the grid to consumers by out-of-state power companies instead of being sent directly to consumers by their local utilities, which is what the grid was designed for."(link)

Suppose you have off-grid electricity -- you have solar panels or windpower, or your own backyard wood burning steam engine connected to a generator. Maybe you even have a hand-cranked laptop. Cool! You're still ready to browse the web! But has your ISP made similar preparations? What happens if these disruptions cause them to go out of business? Where will your net access come from then?

So far most people treat the oil shock like it is "the" crisis, but in truth it is only "a" crisis, one of many, and unfortunately it is the one that will multiply all the others. For example, we know consumers feel the shock to their budgets at the gas pump. But some at the same time will face rising mortgage payments from their subprime ARM loans. Maybe they could have handled one of these problems at a time, but not both at the same time.

Here's another one: if the honeybee die-off takes a heavy toll on America's crops, we get the double whammy of reduced supplies of food at the same time as higher costs to transport it. One or the other of those would have been bad enough, but both? The oil shock creates a multiplier effect on other problems.

Finally, what about our aging population? Younger people might be able to use bicycles instead of their cars, and they may well benefit from the extra exercise, but what about senior citizens? Is grandpa, who can barely walk up a flight of stairs, going to suddenly jump on a mountain bike and start pedaling 20 miles a day? I don't think so.

When I say we may outlive the Internet, I realize those are strong words. I do think that in the future there will still be computers -- for those who can afford them, at least -- and some of those computers will still be networked together. I suppose there will still be web pages, too, but there will be far fewer people reading them. The Internet as the powerful social and cultural force that we know today may be dead. Easy, frequent, reliable access to the Internet by huge numbers of people may be a thing of the past.

We will need other tools. And we will need some other form of entertainment, one that does not depend on electricity. Better start building those Thunderdomes.

[Update: July 7, 2008. It appears that there is now some evidence that the food supply is being impacted by the lack of honeybees.]

Sakuracon 2007 article

My Sakuracon 2007 article is up at JLHLS.

Club Sakura 2007

Here are some images from Club Sakura at Sakuracon 2007.



This one (above) was a 15 second time lapse shot.

Sakuracon 2007 Cosplay

Here are a few more preview pictures from my Sakuracon 2007 coverage for JLHLS. Starting with the picture above, I really like it when cosplayers do cool poses like this one. This was not entirely a pose for the camera -- she was already sitting like this before I came over to take the photo.

This handmade samurai-style leather armor was incredible, made from thick leather plates it had a real feeling of substance. It was one of my favorites from the convention. This cosplayer told me he had worked on it for three years, on and off, and he learned how to make it by researching it on the internet.


This costume was made of a cool fluffy material that caught my eye right away. It had a natural look (well, as natural as neon blue can be anyway), like a real animal.

Stay tuned for more, I got a lot of good pictures from the convention, and I am writing an article about it for JLHLS.

Sakuracon 2007

I am in Seattle covering Sakuracon 2007 for JLHLS. I will post some preview images here in advance of my main article. These two cosplayers were having fun, and really getting into character. (They are dressed as Kei and Yuri from Dirty Pair.) I asked them to pose outdoors to get the city lights in the background and they agreed. Moments after I shot this picture it started raining, so our timing worked out well.

The Manliest Purchase

Today I bought a chainsaw to cut up some fallen tree branches in my yard. I did not realize it until today, but apparently a chainsaw is the manliest, most impressive, sexiest thing you can buy. Other customers at the store looked at me in wide-eyed admiration, as if I were buying a jetpack or time machine. One guy told me, "wow, that looks serious!" The girl at the cash register smiled at me and explained that I was welcome to come by her place and help her with her yard.

I swaggered off towards the parking lot, grasping the chainsaw under one arm as if to say, "look, not only do I possess this extremely cool chainsaw, but with my huge muscles I can lift it with one hand as if it were a mere trifle, like a box full of feathers!" People look at you with more respect when you're carrying a chainsaw, even one that is still in the box. I think this must be what buying a Ferrari feels like, only much cheaper.

So I highly recommend buying a chainsaw, it is extremely fun. Buy one even if you don't need it. You can always return it the next day.

I told this story to my brother, and he immediately said I had ruined the effect by not also buying a hockey mask at the same time.

And that brings me to one of my brother's stories about buying things. He once told me that he went to Home Depot to get some caulk, and he couldn't find it, so he wandered around looking for it, getting more and more frustrated. I said, "why didn't you ask someone where it was?"

"Because I didn't want to have to say it," he said.

"Huh?" I thought about this for a bit before I caught his meaning. "Oh, I get it, you didn't want to have to say caulk out loud." I laughed. "That's silly. So what did you do?"

"I thought up another way to ask for it, so I called it that stuff that you use for sealing cracks. And it worked, they knew what I was talking about."

"But don't you think you're being a bit crazy? I mean, caulk is just what it's called. That's what everyone says. You're in a store, so they're not going to think you mean anything else."

"It's just really embarrassing," he said, "to have to tell some stranger that you want the caulk."

Photomanipulations

Lately I've been doing some photomanipulation art using GIMP:

• Geisha Gunslinger
• Wake the Zombies
• Temple Dancer
• The Long Silence
• Guarding the Way

It is fun to find interesting stock photos on deviantART and then think up a way to make them into something more. Wake the Zombies was the trickiest to do, but Geisha Gunslinger is probably my favorite.

Jazz and Abstraction

In a recent post, Dyske Suematsu says that Japanese people like jazz more than Americans do, and this is because Americans are uncomfortable with abstraction, and don't appreciate instrumental music.

Most Americans do not know what to do with abstraction in general. To be able to fully appreciate abstraction, you must be able to turn off your thought, or at least be able to put your thought into the background. This is not as easy as it might seem. In modern art museums, most people’s minds are dominated by thoughts like: “Even I could do this.” Or, “Why is this in a museum?” Or, “This looks like my bed sheet.” Etc.. They are unable to let the abstraction affect their emotions directly; their experience must be filtered through interpretations.

I agree that most Americans are more comfortable with representational art than abstract art, and like pop music with lyrics better than instrumental jazz. But jazz used to be much more popular in America than it is today. What happened? Did Americans have a greater ability to appreciate abstraction in the past? How did they lose it?

Light and Glass

I got the camera out and noticed that the reflection of a ceiling lamp could be lined up with the pattern on the glass of my front door. The camera flash makes the glass sparkle.

Bugs

The Psychology of Security, an article by Bruce Schneier, is worth reading even if you aren't very interested in security, because it lists and explains a lot of mental biases that cause people to think illogically, such as the anchoring effect. (Start at the section called Risk Heuristics if you don't want to read the whole thing.) These biases are kind of like "bugs" in the human "operating system."

To me, the oddest thing about these bugs is that we are usually unaware of them. It is kind of like the tone-deafness that afflicts some of the American Idol contestants, causing them to believe they are good singers even though they are horrible. The problem combines poor performance with inaccurate evaluation of one's own performance. But unlike tone-deafness, the bugs described in Schneier's article seem to affect almost everyone. That is the weird part. Imagine living in a world where 99% of people perceived music the way that the very worst American Idol contestants do. Most people would not notice anything wrong, but a few people would be very annoyed and wear earplugs a lot.

Well, it turns out that we do live in such a world, except musical perception is not the problem. It is the various types of everyday judgements listed in Schneier's article that we all keep getting wrong.

The Day Video Gaming Saved Me

Today I narrowly escaped being in a car accident. I was in the center lane (of three), and there was a car in the left lane beside me and half a car length ahead. We were going about 45 miles per hour. Suddenly, without signaling or looking back, that driver swerved across all three lanes and turned off into a driveway, cutting me off.

I had no choice but to match his crazy maneuver, just six inches to his right, and I wound up being forced to drive up onto the sidewalk to avoid a collision with this madman. I really wish someone had captured the whole thing on video, because I would put it up on YouTube and become famous. It couldn't have been more perfect if it had been a rehearsed stunt for a movie.

Once I stopped and realized I had miraculously avoided any damage to my car, I had a weird suspicion. This guy's force-me-off-the-road technique was so good that . . . could it have been intentional? I waited to see if he would stop and get out of the car. But he kept going. That's when I realized that he was completely unaware of the whole incident. He didn't even know I existed.

I believe that I escaped this day without a scratch because of all the hours I spent playing Test Drive Unlimited on the Xbox 360. Playing that game trained me in spontaneous evasive maneuvers until they have become second nature. I don't normally need to do them in real life, but all the mental pathways are there. Video gaming has finally paid off.

Portland Auto Show 2007

My girlfriend was not that eager to go to the auto show with me, especially since we had to park far away and walk in the wind and cold. Standing in line she said, "this better be good." But once we got inside, she had a good time and wanted to see all the different brands before we left.
With the hatchback open, this Lotus looked like a blue metallic scorpion with its tail in the air.

The Audi concept car had an agressive appearance.


Though I enjoyed looking at the Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Mazeratis, and Lotuses, when it came to the category of "cars I might actually own someday" my favorite was this Mini convertible.

Horizontal Drop

In this Lexus commercial, a Lexus is seemingly dropped from a helicopter, while another Lexus on the ground drives under it before it hits the ground. The voiceover says "Gravity will propel this Lexus IS over 4000 feet in a matter of seconds. This Lexus IS will attempt to cover the same distance even faster. The Lexus IS 350. So much for gravity."

The version online that I linked to does not have any disclaimer text, but the version aired on TV says in small print at the beginning: "Based on horizontal drop. Aerial sequence simulated. Professional driver on closed course. Do not attempt."

I have two issues with this. First, what is a horizontal drop? Horizontal motion wouldn't be a "drop" at all, right? So maybe they mean that the car was dropped in a horizontal orientation. But if that is all it means, why do they need to say it?

Second, "do not attempt?" How would you attempt this even if you wanted to? I guess you'd call up your helicopter pilot friend who has both a Lexus and a huge helicopter and say, "Hey, I have this great idea, could you pick up your Lexus with your helicopter and drop it from 4000 feet while I try to drive under it? It will be awesome, just like in that commercial!" And he would say, "Wow, that sounds great! Let's try it on the street in front of your house. I'll be there in 10 minutes! Make a video so we can put it on YouTube."

And then you wouldn't drive quite fast enough, and the second Lexus would land right on top of you, killing you instantly. Then your family would have to sue Lexus because the commercial promised that the car would be great for that sort of thing.

Then in court the lawyer for Lexus would say, "Please look at Exhibit A here, where it says to use a horizontal drop, and do not attempt. The plaintiff did attempt this, and he didn't even use a horizontal drop, as directed." Then the judge would say, "Mr. McFlimmigidgie, please explain to the court what a horizontal drop is." And the lawyer would smile and say, "Of course, your honor, it is one where the car drops from side to side instead of down from above." There would be murmuring in the courtroom at this point. The neighbor, sitting in the audience would say, "I told him to use a horizontal drop, but he wouldn't listen, the poor bastard."

The trial would of course go on for another two weeks, filled with testimony from experts on dropping things from helicopters, but in the end the jury would come back to that phrase "horizontal drop" and find for the defendant. Case closed.

American Idol

The American Idol auditions prove that there are several different types of bad singers. Some people have pitch problems, but they at least get close enough to the notes that you can recognize the melody. If they were shooting a BB gun, they would shoot at the bullseye but hit one of the outer rings.

Then there are the people who completely miss; they don't even get within a half step of the pitch. If they didn't sing the words, you would never be able to tell what song it was supposed to be. These are the ones who not only miss the bullseye, but put a hole in the neighbor's window at a 90 degree angle to the target.

You can tell a lot about the contestants before they start to sing, just by what they say before the audition starts. Good singers are realistic. They know that they are good, but they have heard a lot of other good singers out there too. They usually talk about preparation and trying to do their best. They have probably auditioned for singing parts many times before. They know that you can be good, but still not be what the judges are looking for.

It's usually the truly bad singers who are convinced they are a sure thing, because they are delusional. And if they are completely confused about one thing, they are usually wrong about everything else, too. So when unattractive people describe themselves as super sexy, they usually aren't good at singing either. It's part of a general pattern of not being realistic about themselves.

It is an especially bad sign when they boast about how "different" or "unique" they are. Hey, if you are nothing like any famous singer, guess what? It is usually because you are an awful singer. It's usually not because you have an incredibly beautiful type of singing that nobody else has ever tried before.

The biggest surprise for me this season is Paula Abdul. I'm really liking Paula so far this season. Last year I thought her odd behavior and speech patterns probably indicated that she was drunk. This year she seems alert, on the ball, and charming. Maybe she was just trying to be funny before.

So Many Eiffel Towers

In this video, average people on the street display their shocking lack of general knowledge. One guy doesn't know how many sides a triangle has. But my favorite has to be this one: "How many Eiffel Towers are there in Paris?" "Uh, about 10."

DNA and MP3

Scott Adams speculated about the "intellectual property of human DNA," and posed this question:

If you were a supermodel who had snorted away all of your money and you were now too old to model, and some billionaire offered you a hundred million dollars for your DNA, would you sell it? Assume you know in advance that the billionaire is a disgusting pig who will be raising your clone to be a brainwashed sex slave.

Assume also that your clone won’t be forced to do anything against her will. She will simply be raised to believe the billionaire is a godlike creature and the rest will happen naturally. No laws will be broken. And she will live like a princess except for the part about being a clone whore to an old, rich fat guy. In other words, the quality of her life will be in the top 10% of the planet if you consider the wretchedness the average human’s life around the world.

Would you sell your DNA for $100,000,000?

This is an entertaining question, but Scott has gotten the economics of the situation backwards. Nobody would pay $100,000,000 for your DNA, when all they have to do is fish one of your used coffee cups out of the trash and extract a DNA sample from there. Instead, it would cost you a large amount of money and inconvenience in order to prevent people from stealing your DNA and doing whatever they wanted with it.

You might be able to sue someone who used your DNA without permission, but that requires you to know about it in the first place, and prove it. I suspect that in the future the "unauthorized" use of DNA will be extremely common, like pirated MP3s today. Both are sequences of information that people can claim ownership of.

Neatthink, Slobthink

When it comes to neatness, my girlfriend is more on the neat-freak end of the spectrum, and I am closer to the border of the People's Republic of Slobistan. And so it puzzles me when she will, for example, look under the couch and say something like, "oh, wow, there is so much dust and cat fur under here!" This is said as if it is something both completely unexpected and deeply disturbing, the way you might say to someone, "dude, what is this dead hobo doing in the trunk of your car?"

To me, of course, under the couch is exactly the sort of place where I would expect to find dust, and the cat fur would be much more shocking and mysterious if we didn't own cats. And neither one especially bothers me, because I don't plan to spend a lot of time under the couch anyway. In fact the whole point of having a couch seems to be to sit on top of it and not beneath it. So to me, it's a bit like saying, "Whoa, what are all these pine needles doing all over this forest?"

But I guess this is the difference between neat-think and slob-think. In neat-think, it is disturbing to realize that an area that hypothetically could be clean is not in fact clean. In slob-think, the default state of things is dirty, so "discovering" that something is dirty is not surprising at all, and the question is whether cleaning it is really necessary.

Oh, Fallen 360

My Xbox 360 went into a nonresponsive, vegetative state. The three red lights of doom blazed in all their glory on the front panel, and I was forced to send it in for repairs. This was on the second day of my 2-week vacation, so just when I thought I'd get some quality video gaming time with the 360, it gave out.

It's funny how when a gadget like the 360 fails, it feels less like a mechanical malfunction and more like having a sick pet or something. And when I called support to explain the problem and ask about getting it repaired, I felt almost like an addict worried about where and when I'd get my next fix. ("Yeah, uh, it seems my crack pipe broke, and I really need to get it fixed so I can smoke some more crack. Is it still under warranty? When do you think you can send me a functioning crack pipe?")

On The Media: Great Holiday Conversations, Volume 1

My Girlfriend: (watching TV) I've finally figured out why on TV, actresses' butts look smaller than they really are.

Me: (my mind boggling that this is what she thinks about while watching TV) OK, so why is that?

Her: They wear these very low-rise jeans, so what you think you see as their butt is actually not the whole thing, but only the lower half.

Me: Oh, so you mean the upper part is covered by their shirt, and you only take notice of the lower half.

Her: Right.

Me: (being a smart aleck) OK, so here's my proposal, in the name of truth. Hot actresses on TV should have to either be naked, or wear bikinis, so that we don't get fooled about the real size of their butts. That would prevent this despicable distortion from rotting our minds and giving us false ideas.

Her: I don't think you get the point of what I'm saying.

Lunch Rules

In this Lunch Rules document, some junior high school girls outline the strict requirements for eating lunch at their table. It cracks me up that even though rule 7 is "no outsiders to table" and rule 9 is "have to be on the list," the last rule is "love your neigbor!"

The rule that surprised me most though, is rule 8: "Have to get 5 hugs from boys by the end of the lunch to be able to sit w/ us the next day." When I think back to my junior high school days, I don't recall much if any hugging going on during lunch. In fact, I don't think anyone in my school could have fulfilled this requirement. What happened, is the American junior high school lunch room now a massive hug-fest?

Code Monkey, the video

There aren't enough songs about programmers.

The Real Life "Slow Donnie"

On the "Slow Donnie" episode of Just Shoot Me, Maya discovered that Elliot's brother Donnie had been pretending to be mentally disabled for years, so that he wouldn't have to do anything and other people would wait on him. He revealed himself when he got a crush on Maya and dropped the act to ask her out. Well, it turns out there is a real "Slow Pete" out there who has been faking for almost 20 years, according to this article at SFGate:

For nearly 20 years — ever since Pete Costello was 8 — his mother has collected disability benefits on his behalf. In meetings with Social Security officials and psychologists, he appeared mentally retarded and unable to communicate. His mother insisted he couldn't read or write, shower, take care of himself or drive a car.

But now prosecutors say it was all a huge fraud, and they have video of Costello contesting a traffic ticket to prove it.

I doubt the TV episode was based on him, but that would be funny.

Ready for a Frac?

After watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica, you might be in the mood for a Frac. One of my friends, a fellow BG fan, got this for me on his recent trip to the Cook Islands. These cookies are made in Chile.

The Blind Side

Reading The Blind Side has changed the way I watch American football -- because the book explains the subtleties of the left tackle position. Now instead of focusing my attention on the quarterback, as the play begins I watch the offensive line while using my peripheral vision to look at the quarterback and running back. Once the play develops to the point where either the ball is in the air or the running back has passed the line of scrimmage, I go back to watching the ball the way I used to. By doing this, I feel like I'm not just seeing a different part of the game, I'm actually seeing more of the game. Watching the quarterback during those first few seconds is rarely useful, because unless he fumbles the snap or something, it is very unlikely that anything interesting will happen there during that time.

Thumb Pianos

My friend Bob, who builds thumb pianos, has posted this incredible series of photos of thumb pianos. I have played some of these, and they sound as cool as they look. He has also created electronic music featuring his instruments. A lot of people make music, but how many make music played on instruments they built themselves? It is really interesting stuff.

Diagnosis

Infectious . . . or environmental. All you have to do is check out parasites, viruses, bacteria, fungi, prions, radiation, toxins, chemicals, or it's internet-porn-related. I'll check the internet, you guys cover the rest of the stuff.

-- Dr. House diagnosing a patient, on House

Autumn Leaves at the Japanese Garden

Today was a perfect time to see autumn foliage at the Portland Japanese Garden, so naturally the place was overrun with photographers. Everywhere I looked, people were carrying tripods, cameras, and lenses. I felt like I had been transported into some weird futuristic world where all other hobbies had died out, leaving behind a society where everyone was a photographer. There was also an ikebana exhibit, and a bonsai exhibit featuring a tree over 500 years old.

Moss Maze

At the Portland Japanese Garden. This reminds me of the story of the moss man.

Tangerine

I was pleased to discover Tangerine, a Mac app that analyzes the songs in your iTunes library and determines their tempo and "intensity." Then it can automatically create random playlists that group your songs by these values, so you can easily make uptempo workout mixes or mellow chill-out mixes. I've been looking for something like this for a long time, and it works great. It exports the playlists you make back into iTunes. It doesn't export the BPM data, which I wish it would do, but even without that feature I'd consider this a must-have application for Mac iTunes users.

Unresolvable Goals

Since I wrote about the mental goal system and the ninja/unicorn experiment, I've been thinking about more implications of this. Peter called it "the most difficult trap I think our civilization lays for us."

There is also a category of "unresolvable" goals, meaning that it is impossible to know whether or not you have really accomplished the goal. For example, as I commute to work in the morning I might have a goal of taking the quickest route to work. The problem is that I can't really know whether I succeeded. Even if I arrive at work in a reasonable amount of time, some other route might have been faster, if only I had taken it. So I will probably never get to enjoy the mental payoff of knowing that I accomplished the goal.

Even worse, though I can't prove I succeeded, it is very easy to suspect that I failed. If there is even a minor delay on my chosen route, I will tend to assume that I made the wrong choice, and a different route would have been better. Again, I can't prove this because I didn't take the other routes, and they may not have been any faster. But because the suspicion of having chosen wrong comes so easily, it is very likely that I will end up starting the day with a feeling of failure, however slight.

The flaw or trap is in the goal itself. Its very structure guarantees that having that goal is much more likely to make me unhappy than happy. Once I have that goal, there is nothing that can happen in the real world that can fix it. It is sort of like the "unicorn" goal but more subtle.

A more useful goal would be something like "travel to work safely and comfortably." It is possible to achieve that, and also possible to know for sure that I did achieve it. Having that goal is also more likely to make me happy than unhappy.

How we set goals makes a difference, especially considering that we can feel bad even about failing at an unconscious goal. I can't prove it, but I suspect that unhappy people probably have too many "unicorn goals" and happy people may have plenty of "ninja goals."

I also think that the Getting Things Done methodology is effective partly because it encourages a focus on next actions, which are straightforward goals that can be accomplished, and whose success state can be known. A next action is definitely not a unicorn goal, and having a large enough list of next action goals may prevent unicorn goals, simply because there isn't enough time left for them.

Anyway, back to my main point: unresolvable goals like the "fastest route to work" goal are harmful, and there is no real-world solution to them. Getting a faster car won't help. The only solution is to avoid having such goals, and to think carefully about the underlying structure of the goals you have.

Fall Colors

This wall is just down the street from my house.