Author: Muttrox

I have your garden variety thermostat, the basic model from Home Depot or Lowe’s — it’s pretty much the same one everyone has. It’s my third one, they all work the same way. The same wrong way.

It divides the week into days, and the days into 4 timezones. You then program any of these time-sections to a certain temperature, and voila, it takes care of it. Why they even come with suggestions, for instance you can easily select either Winter or Summer for their pre-defined programs.

And if you want to go manual? Even better, you just push the up or down button until you hit the right temperature and walk away. Sounds pretty good, no?

No.

You walk away and everything is fine, until you hit the next time-section. Then it goes back to the programmed temperature. In effect, it overrides your override. Suppose I go on vacation for 5 days. Or I’m sick and need a little more heat than usual. There’s no way to simply tell it, “stay at 72,” because a couple hours later it will decide that 68 would really be better all things considered.

This is my third thermostat as a homeowner, and all three have had this “feature”. The weird part is that it can’t take any more effort to make it work the right way. How hard it is to build a manual override that actually, you know, overrides the other programming?

It’s a small thing, I know. But when I order something from a menu, I expect to get what is described. If I order a sandwich and it unexpectedly shows up with mayonaise all over it, that’s going right back to the kitchen. If I had wanted mayonaise, I would have ordered mayonaise.

This is surprisingly common with desserts. For some odd reason, any establishment that wants to look upscale can’t resist serving anything chocolate without a criss-cross pattern of rasberry sauce all over the plate. Look, your menu said “Layers and Layers of Fudge Cake with Chocolate Truffle Cream and Chocolate Mousse”, it didn’t say anything about putting red sauce all over everything. If I had wanted red sauce, I’d have ordered it. Don’t make me feel weird for sending back dessert.

Start with a map of the world thousands of years ago. In 90 seconds of animation, watch the spread of the major religions sweep over the world. Very neat, and educational to boot.

Great video on China, Youth, MySpace, Information, Technology and other trends, all of which seem to be moving a lot faster than you would think. Some sketchy extrapolations, but well worth it.

The Worst April Fools Day pranks ever. Number one and two are just sickening. (The best ones are here.)

You may have heard about the FBI’s abuse of NSL (National Security Letters). Here’s a fascinating first hand account from a recipient. The Washington Post doesn’t usually post anonymous op-eds, but in this case, they had no choice thanks to the crazy laws.

Postmodernism Generator. Everytime you go here, you get a brand new paper on postmodernism. The catch is that it is all total gibberish, but indistinguishable from actual postmodern gibberish. (If you doubt they are indistinguishable, read more.)

“I was turned on the other day to the fact that Time Magazine’s Tony Karon has a blog about foreign affairs, Rootless Cosmopolitan. It’s really good. Good enough that a ten day old post on the subject “What’s Iraq Actually About Now?” is very much worth your time. It’s an excellent question to ponder when you hear debate about whether or not the surge is “working” — working to do what? And why?”

Was it Ally McBeal that started this awful trend? Was it CSI? I can’t remember anymore. I just know that every drama show on TV features prosperous people working at rich prosperous jobs, and none of them can afford decent lighting! Scene after scene takes place in dimly-lit ambience.

The upscale law firm in Boston Legal doesn’t choose to save money by not putting every employee in their own private office, or renting space below the penthouse, or even buying flourescent lighting. They save money by turning down the expensive lights that are there. That same pecuniary concern doesn’t seem to affect the floundering firm of Dunder Mifflin, who may be losing money but can always afford to see. Roseanne Conner had her lights turned off when she couldn’t afford the bill, but never turned them down.

The worst offender? The West Wing. I can believe a lot, but I cannot believe that the Office of the President of the United States of America, the most powerful man in the world, cannot figure out a way to keep staff working in good lighting.

C’mon!!

One of Bush’s attacks on Congressional efforts to end the Iraq war is that giving any specific timeline emboldens enemy attacks, and harms the troops. He is wrong.

Let’s say the bill passes with a clear deadline. Imagine it is Iraq, two weeks before that date. Question One. You are an American commander. Do you act:
(a) more aggressively
(b) about the same as ever
(c) less aggresively?

The answer is c. There is no point in risking your mens lives to achieve any short term goal when you’re just going to be packing up in two weeks. In fact, you probably wouldn’t take any offensive action at all. The only engagements you would be involved in would be defensive. Why look for trouble when there’s nothing to gain?

Question Two. You are an Iraqi fighter. Do you act:
(a) more aggressively
(b) about the same as ever
(c) less aggresively?

The answer is c, and for the same basic reason. There is no point in risking your life to achieve any short term goal when you would achieve the same goal by just waiting two more weeks. In fact, you probably wouldn’t take any offensive action at all. You’d continue the civil war of course, but not bother with the Americans. What’s the point, they’re leaving anyhow.

The mere declaration of a specific withdrawal date ought to produce a natural ceasefire before that date. I chose two weeks, but maybe the effect is longer. Maybe it’s a month. Maybe it’s two. Maybe more. Any way you slice it, the declaration of a withdrawal date ends up saving the lives of American soldiers.

This is the cover of the “users manual” for my new mouse:

It’s a mouse! Not a pointing device, a mouse!

How does this sell? You can buy chocolate, or vanilla, or strawberry, in any proportions. But instead, you choose to get exactly equal portions of each, all shoved in the same container, why? Why would you limit yourself like that? You can’t even eat your favorite flavor in isolation. You eat vanilla, some strawberry’s gonna get in. That’s just how it is.

And strawberry. Strawberry? What the heck is strawberry doing there? Who, at any time, would rather eat strawberry than chocolate or vanilla!? This was meant to be rhetorical. But informal polling has convinced me that there’s an awful lot of strawberry weirdos out there. To all of them I say, you are seriously weird. Seriously.

Growing up, my father would occasionally purchase neapolitan, just for kicks. And our family would destroy the chocolate and vanilla in about, oh, 35 seconds. The strawberry would just sit there. And sit. A few months later, my father would get a strange urge to buy another carton of neapolitan, and it would repeat. Eventually there would be three or four boxes of ice cream left, each with one carefully sculpted strawberry third remaining. Once in a while, my father would see these and begin to lecture us about waste and how much things cost.

How did strawberry even get in there? Rumor has it those were the most popular flavors when neapolitan ice cream was invented. I think there was just a really good strawberry salesman somewhere! (That’s a ripoff of Brian Regan’s cranapple bit by the way.)

It’s hard to believe they are still the most popular flavors. And indeed, they are not. Per the International Ice Cream Association, here are the top 10 flavors.

1. Vanilla, 29%
2. Chocolate, 8.9%
3. Butter pecan, 5.3%
4. Strawberry, 5.3%
5. Neapolitan, 4.2%
6. Chocolate chip, 3.9%
7. French vanilla, 3.8%
8. Cookies and cream, 3.6%
9. Vanilla fudge ripple, 2.6%
10. Praline pecan, 1.7%

(Isn’t it funny that neapolitan is counted as it’s own flavor?) So it seems that the strawberry should be replaced with butter pecan. Which just sounds sickening, honestly.

That site has other gems. We all know the “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” song, right? Well, they have the complete lyrics!

…Iceberg, Lindberg, Sol Berg and Ginzberg,
Ice cream Cohen.
I scream, you scream, everybody wants ice cream.
Rah, rah, raaazberry!

No, they really don’t write ’em like that anymore. They’d get picketed.

Update: This is from 2019. Neapolitan is now at number 10. This is a good trend. Cookies n’ Cream is the best flavor ever invented, and has moved all the way up to number 3.

1. Vanilla
2. Chocolate
3. Cookies N’ Cream
4. Mint Chocolate Chip
5. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
6. Buttered Pecan
7. Cookie Dough
8. Strawberry
9. Moose Tracks
10. Neapolitan

Weightlifting has many benefits. The obvious one is increase of muscle mass. Most people don’t realize the real work of the body is not during the workout, but after. In a really good workout with weights, you work the muscles to failure. That means actually killing off many off the fibers and tissue. Over the course of the next few days, the body works to repair the muscle, and make it better. This is why you alternate body sections — the idea is to give any given muscle a few days to recuperate before killing it off again. (Note that many people don’t work out this way, you still get plenty of benefit even if you don’t work all the way to muscle failure.) The re-creation of the muscle is what burns the calories, it takes a lot of work and energy.

Likewise, when you suffer any kind of injury, your body needs energy to recuperate and rebuild it’s systems. Many of us have lost those few key pounds when we have a virus. When you run a fever, your body is literally cooking itself. Fighting disease takes energy, and recuperating afterwards does also.

Blood loss is one such injury. When you give blood, your body needs time to recuperate. That’s why you’re supposed to take it easy for a few days afterwards, your body needs time to rebuild. This logically leads to an obvious weight-loss strategy.

Donating blood five times a year not only is the right thing to do (go here for more info, or just get in touch with me directly), you can lose weight while doing it! Now that’s a win-win! And if you can’t give blood, at least get sick every so often.

(P.S. No, I’m not serious about this as a real weight-loss strategy. You really should give blood though.)

This is a piece of marketing material I got recently from some stupid company. It abounds with poor reasoning.

Does your [system metric] surpass a 70% succes rate (outperforming the industry average of just 30%)? Does your [other system metric] exceed 25% (putting the industry’s 5-7% average to shame)?

Why, no it doesn’t. You have me interested. Pray, continue.

These are the results our top-performing clients are getting

You have lost my interest. I have not bothered to work out the statistics, but if the average is 30%, out of the 5,700 clients you quote later, the fact that some of them might get very high metrics, simply by chance alone, seems rather… obvious. Furthermore, all clients are different, there are always those that by the nature of what they do get higher scores at any given metric.

yes, even ones who [do a lot of this].

No, really? You think there might be a little cause and effect confusion? Maybe they do more because it works? Or maybe they do more, so they spend time making sure it works?

And [our company] is one of the reason why.

One of the reasons? Boy, you’re really going out on a limb there.

It bugs me when people say statistics is just lies. It isn’t, it’s a technique that can be used or misused. Jackholes like this companies’ “Sales Manager, Strategic Marketing” don’t help.

I was just listening to a cool song, “Jack gets up” by Leo Kottke. It has a line in it,

If you look in the mirror,
it’s your fathers face,
and the thin grin, and the thin grin…

I’m at the age where I’m starting to see my fathers face in the mirror. But this made me think, why my father? Why not my mother? Do I just have stronger memories of my father from this age? Do boys instinctively compare themselves to their father, and girls to their mother?

What about you? Whose face do you see?

Brothers and Sisters: The Dad dies to start it off.
Six Feet Under: The Dad dies to start it off. And then someone new dies at the beginning of every episode.
Desperate Housewives: The neighbor dies to start it off, and then becomes the narrator.
The Shield: An undercover Internal Affairs investigator is murdered in cold blood by the protagonist in the first episode, setting up the (a)moral context for the show.
Party of Five (?): I know the premise is the dead parents, but do they actually die to start the show?

Any others?

NYT’s Ethicist column last week talked about blogging. Not surprsingly, he got it completely wrong.

Here’s the question:

I interview high-school seniors who apply to my alma mater. I routinely Google these students and discovered that one posted information on his blog that reflects poorly on him. May I ask him about the blog? May I mention it to the university? Should it affect the score I give him?

The answer features a couple of doozies, “You would not read someone’s old-fashioned pen-and-paper diary without consent; you should regard a blog similarly.” Um, sure. Except a diary is usually kept locked away somewhere, not published for everyone in the world to see. And the answer presumes that a blog is a diary. I humbly submit Muttroxia as a counter-example — I sincerely hope no one thinks these ridiculous posts are my deepest darkest secrets and feelings.

What did the university think? “[He] checked with the university and was told not to ask the student about the blog but to include its URL with his report.” Sure, that’s ethical. It’s not OK for an interviewer to get a full picture of the student, but it is for the university? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, as Aristotle opined.

For what it’s worth, I think it is not only fair for the interviewer to look at the blog, but admirable. The interviewer is not a formal official of the college. Their job is to get a fuller picture and a subjective portrait that overworked officials might not be able to. Examing the public record is fulfilling that duty. (Mrs. Muttrox, who actually does this, disagrees.)

P.S. Although his column is good Sunday morning entertainment, you should know that Randy Cohen is not a real ethicist in any way. He’s a bright guy who found a good niche in the newspaper advice field. If you disagree with him, you have just as much formal training as he does, which is to say, none.