Internet starved
So I’ve been totally without internet for some time now. It sucks.
I’ll be getting a G1(HOPEFULLY) within the next 30 days, and then I will be able to keep up with this place on a more than daily basis.
The answer to the proposed rules set is “ANY SERIES OF INCREASING VALUES”. It is used to display what is called “Confirmation Bias”, the tendency of people to look for validation of preconceptions before thinking intuitively. It’s the idea that if you perceive an some kind of trend, you will only search to validate it. It is rooted in what is known as “Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy”, which is one of my new favorite things.
I’ve become something of a “logic-nazi”.
Gambler’s Fallacy is the false belief that the odds of something particular happening in a randomized environment increase as the process is carried out. So if I roll a 6-sided die 800 times and never roll a single 5, it is often assumed that the chances of rolling a 5 are extremely high, but they are no higher than 1 in 6. INVERSE Gambler’s Fallacy is much more common in everyday life. It is the idea that if I rolled a 4 6-sided die(4d6, for those of you who don’t suck as much), and got 4 sixes as a result, the dice must have been rolled before. If someone is told that a person played a game of baseball and hit 5 home runs and threw 9 perfect innings, the assumption is that they have played baseball before, which isn’t necessarily true.
Critical thinking. It’s a new hobby of mine.
Eamon
Chemicals, Drugs, and a game.
First day of work today, and I feel pretty good. I got soaked hands in chemicals because our hose was broken(as we got the crappy truck), but mostly just spread fertilizer, killed some weeds, etc. It is a good balance between hard work and smart work. And most of the lawns we treat are looking pretty good.
I have a fun game to play! I’m going to give you a numerical series. It was made to abide by a single rule. You simply tell me what that rule is!
2 4 6
Eamon
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Are those experimental drug tests they pay people to do a bad idea?
Betsy
Yes! In short. You are being paid not for your time, but in truth, you are being paid to take an unforeseeable risk. You could die, you could get a disease, you could ruin a relationship, or just become emotionally scarred by altered behavior. They have no idea at all what putting their new creation into a living human being will do, so they pay people a small enough sum to ensure they are simply hard-up-for-cash people who’ll do near anything to make some money with no labor involved.
The real trick is that you said TESTS. Many people illegally and wrongfully take many of these tests simultaneously, in order to make a reasonable income by doing absolutely nothing. The problem is not only that the drugs are not tested at all, let alone for drug interactions, but it makes the already sadistic testing method completely invalid scientifically, and the results can’t really be trusted. So you try out a birth-control pill, and also a heart pill. The birth-control causes lethal blockage, pressure, or swelling in days, and the heart medication works wonders and saves your life outright. The birth-control is approved as completely harmless, and the heart medication is canned for causing sterility.
Don’t sell your health. OSHA, Child Labor Laws, and Worker’s Rights campaigns are just a few institutions that exist to enforce this value, and no consenting adult should give away their second most valuable personal possession for some stupid money.
Sunday
I got out and recycled our trash, which we had a lot of, and got several books on Lawn Care from the Library(where the recycling dumpsters are).
I’m gonna watch the Golden Globes tonight, because I’ve never seen them. I hope they don’t bore me to death.
Ok this post is an excuse for a question I’m pumped to share about.
Eamon
What does the Girl Scout organization do with the ridiculous money they make off selling all those cookies at $3.50 a box?
Chris
Actually, you’re lucky they are only $3.50, because the troops set the price locally! They only get 12-17% of the revenue and 50% goes to corporate, and the rest to the manufacturer. I personally was EXTREMELY disappointed by the warped and watered-down, PC version of Boy Scouts I was offered as a boy, several times at various stages. I don’t really support scouting because I don’t think it offers children anything other than another chance to become institutionalized.
So make the cookies yourself! If you live in Arlington, let me know, because I plan to make some of those Thin Mints, about 5 dozen of them. BECAUSE FROZEN THIN MINTS ARE THE BOMB!
I don’t remember how I found this video, but it is amazing. I love Mike Rowe.
So I popped in Super Castlevania IV, and decided to give one of the most acclaimed SNES games a go. Honestly, I get that it was a step up, with the whip going any direction, and Mode 7 flaunting, but it was one of the most unrewarding games I’ve ever played. I played through the first 3 levels, and every time I die, I’d be thinking to myself “Just give the game a chance”. BY LEVEL 3 I SHOULD BE INTERESTED IN PLAYING AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT!! My biggest problem isn’t the washed-out, hard to see graphics, it’s not the stiff, redundant enemies, and it’s not the music(which is nice until you think about the soundtrack to Donkey Kong Country in minor key, and you get the same thing). It’s the lack of story, and the lack of reward. You invest in good sound effects and graphics, taunting boss speeches, a strangely provocative pixelated princess, subscreens with icons, and IDENTIFIABLE SPRITES!!! I understand it takes away from the memory for gameplay, but you can’t just make a colorized NES game, warp the walls and spin the rooms and say it’s a hit.
I’d also like to add that I grew up on NO video games, and then played one at a friend’s house at late-N64 era, and I didn’t get to really play them until HALO came out on the freaking Xbox. And I still prefer classic games. So it’s not all nostalgia, they used to make games with more care and daring, and now they just rehash old crap and vamp up graphics to unreasonable, and(when paired with neglected story and theme) pointless extremes.
Eamon
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why doesnt moonlight hurt vampires, since it is just reflected sunlight. And just saying its not as much sunlight isnt cutting it for me. I dont buy how in those new blade movies vampires wear sunscreen.
Betsy
Well, the reason Blade movies are so different is because they focus on how cool Wesley Snipes can look wearing sunglasses, fangs, and a Katana. Honestly, I like the first one. Little known fact: It was the first Marvel Movie, and it’s modest success led to funding for X-Men, which single-handedly saved Marvel Comics from outright Bankruptcy.
In it’s origins, Vampires are, like all mythical creatures, rooted in the human consciousness. A Vampire is a sexual predator, a lifeless, overpowering being, with supernatural charisma, which comes to violate your body’s sanctity, rob you of what you hold most biologically dear, and leave you empty and drained. But as time went on, in superstitious-catholic Europe, the tale of the Vampire became wrapped around Vlad the Impaler, a callous and bloody ruler long dead, and was told to have made a pact with Satan, and rises from the grave! After growing to be a religious monster, a Vampire became the embodiment of Damned. An unfeeling, self-loathing, sexual, egocentric beast that has given up but just can’t seem to die already. They can’t show up in mirrors, a symbol of their hollowness and unrepentance. They can only be killed a certain way(which everyone knows), a symbol of a known fate, the knowledge of which will haunt them.
Sunlight, however, is the energy source for our planet. It is under the sun that humans thrive. We find it hard to see at night, and sunlight comes after long nights of feeling inferior and unsafe to make the world once again our territory. The Sun, being huge, important, revered and central has long been a symbol of God’s Love for us. Vampires cannot stand the sun because they are running from that which will consume them, facing God Almighty for what and who they are. The moon is alternately used in ancient cultures to represent a kind of vigilant, or serenely present safety and beauty, as well as a mockery of the Sun. It can be likened to a comfort where the Sun is seen as an oppressor, but it can also be seen as kind of analogy for Satan. Remember, these myths were created by story-tellers, parents, and writers, not astronomers and physicists.
I can rattle off a list of things I need to learn, but not things I need to do.
First off, I GOT A JOB!!
Finally!!
I really am going to focus and use my recent skills at keeping even a completely suckface job to remember to look for why God has me in my situation at my new job and keep my head above the water.
Also, they put my parent’s house(the one I grew up in) on STREET VIEW FOR GOOGLE MAPS!!! HOLY CRAPOLY. ROCKPORT?!?!? Check it out.
There is an interview on Lostpedia with Micheal Emerson that proves that either they were talking on the phone at 4:30 AM following a 30-hour bender in Amsterdam, or Micheal Emerson is pretty much a douche.
Eamon
*edit* On a related note, want to see the Google Camera Car cut across a median in a construction zone? Click the forward arrow a couple times. I guess, when in Rome, do as Romans do. And when in Corpus, drive like a dumbass.
Open
So I heard that Apple finally made their overpriced music DRM-free. Of course, it took financial pressure, considering my wife was going to download Viva La Vida by Coldplay and I stopped her and told her to get it on Amazon, so she can move it off her laptop someday, and we found out it was half the price as well. One customer LOST.
There’s something too easy about iTunes. That sounds silly to say, but let me preface by saying that I spent YEARS using iTunes to sort, organize, rip, burn, and play all 110gb of music on my computer. But there is another phenomenon that has recently occurred to me. I used to go to cd stores(you know, the ones I’ll tell my kids about and they’ll laugh, like Disc-Go-Round and FYE) and look for albums in the “Rock/Pop” section, sorting Britney Spears from Borknagar and Aaron Carter from Amon Amarth; all in the hopes of finding some album I heard about from a friend. But in the process I’d hear songs on the radio, spot albums in the store, and bump into other bands. Now, I use(d) iTunes for all my music, and haven’t found a decent new band in about 2 years. Something about the Apple experience grows increasingly insular with the realization of Jobs’ vision of a smooth, buttonless, inoffensive universe.
That brings us to the movie I watched las night on PBS, Helvetica. In case you were wondering what Helvetica is, you are staring right at it. It’s a font, ubiquitous in modern culture, from subway signs to lolcat blogs to income tax forms. It used to put off an air of efficiency and a sleek modern new world, and it caught on like Malaria in a Mosquito farm. Now, however, it is so used, so overdone, that it essentially implies nothing along with the words. While I think it runs the “i”s into everything next to them, I admit it speaks to me of neutrality and complacency. I think I hate it.
Which brings me to the show I watched last night, What Would You Do?, in which people are challenged with being put NEAR, not IN unjust, socially unacceptable, or offensive situations. One moment, they argued idiotically that because some migrant worker walks to work, you are socially and ethically required to sell him your product(I suppose ABC wouldn’t know about conscience though, seeing as views=money), and then acting like French people are supposed to come say racist and derogatory things to stupid tourists just like the set-up waiter was doing in the last skit. Nobody made the French people cry and say they are sorry for telling them they are “ruining everything” or gesturing like an ashamed sibling at their very outfits. They say “You should treat everyone equally, regardless of appearance” and then switch to “This is Paris, you can’t wear running shoes or cargo shorts, you plebian asshat”. Ok I added that last part.
And finally, Google announced that the G1 can officially start allowing developers to charge for applications, which seems like a setback, but actually just provides incentive and opportunity for people to put some REAL TIME into programming an application. Sucks that it takes money to get someone to do it, but hey–brotha’s gotta eat.
This all adds up to one thing in my opinion. It’s some kind of ethos I have been chasing, something progressive and benevolent, that requires everyone do their part, that everything be asked “Why?” before doing or saying. Respecting differences isn’t something that I do out of courtesy anymore, differences are not really there for me. I think it would be rude to tell someone they look like terrorists, and wrong to deny a hungry man food(though it is NOT illegal). I think it is, however, wrong for them to keep begging for food–everyone has a right to refuse service because nobody wants to be the favorite restaurant of a local gang of 17-22 year old rapist thieves from the hood with matching tattoos, and you can’t make laws against people as a group, because that IS prejudice. So you put the responsibility in the hands of the user, the individual, and say “allow whom you will to eat and work at your business”.
It is about the need for culture, the need for work, the need for thought and consideration, and creation on an individual scale. It’s about feeling like a person, expressing honestly, and leaving cowardice chalked up to a learning experience. You may say “But I’m buying a band’s music, I like them and they are good guys, so I support them.” Great. But who made the jewel case? Who does their cover art? Who is running the store your in? How is the product promoted? What is the effect of the music?
Don’t let people tell you how to live your life, not because they will tell you what to do, but because they will tell you what you can’t do. This is why Christianity is not an effective weapon for the sublimation of the masses, because Christ taught that ALL things are possible in Him, to have life ABUNDANTLY, and call no thing unclean which the Lord has wrought.
So open up.
Eamon
Police Brutality
Not brutality, just murder. At least Brutus was friends with Caesar, and had something to gain.
I detest everything the world has made these people into, everything that causes this kind of senseless violence to run rampant, from Oakland to Gaza to Georgia, everything that makes anyone in their comfortable house or office feel that somehow, it is justifiable, on any scale.
How come when you dig a hole and then once your finished you put the same dirt back in the hole, you end up short?
-Jones
The dirt isn’t as compact when you get there as it will be when you disturb it and put it back in. Also, some is carried off by wind, some is lost to wherever you put the dirt pile(admittedly, this could be avoided by loading dirt onto a board). But those in construction usually have MORE dirt after digging a hole than they started with, due to what is called “the fluff factor”.
This question is somewhat urgent.
My car squeeks… a lot, I feel like whenever I drive and make even the most gradual turns a mouse is squeeling under the hood of my car, being tortured. whats the problem with my car eamon?
-garrett
Your brake pads are worn out. The pads are in constant contact with the rotors(the metal disks that they squeeze to slow down your car), and about 1/4 inch up the side of the pad, there is a small, flat piece of metal, called an “Indicator”. The indicator is there to, well, indicate when your brakes are wearing out. If you let it make that noise for too long, it will cut a groove in your rotors, which isn’t life-ending, but certainly not good.
If you have a jack, jackstands and a Haynes Manual(or similar manual), you can change your own brakes and it’s really simple. If you can change a tire, you can swap your brake pads. Or just go to Brake Check or whatever it is people go to and get them to replace them for you.
Insomnia
Last night, I felt what can only be described as a strange kind of energy in my legs, and I could not calm down. I felt like a car that was idling too high. At 3:30, I got out of bed and read everything I usually attempt to keep up with online and watched Legend by Ridley Scott on Netflix Instant. Afterwards, Mae got up and tried not to puke up what little the pre-sleep puke had graciously left her, and I made her some Cream of Wheat. She took off to work, I was self-reminded that Youtube is a giant wasteland of suck, and now I’m just sitting here, with a 2 item to-do list for today and bored out of my mind.
These are times when WoW would come in handy.
Eamon
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