Muttroxia

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?

… and it looks like my new universal remote control

The number of remote controls on our couch-side table is truly horrifying. There are so many that we have no space left to put down our water glasses or soda cans. We have five remotes:

– TV
– VHS
– DVD
– Receiver
– Cable box

To watch anything, you have to use at least 3 remotes – 1 to turn on the receiver and switch to the correct input, 1 to turn on the TV, and 1 to control the component you wanted to watch (VCR, DVD, or cable). As a techie AV guy, I was completely fine with this setup, but you’ll win the bet if you guess that it drove my girlfriend crazy. Like most women, it took her forever to figure out what remote did what, and she was always worried that she’d hit the wrong button and mess up all my carefully calibrated gear.

Last week this all changed. A friend of mine recommended checking out a Logitech Harmony remote control while I was at Best Buy stocking up on all the other stuff that my new HD TV has required me to upgrade (HDMI cables, an upconverting DVD player, etc). “You will love this remote,” he confidently predicted. “It controls everything with one button, and you can program it on your Mac.”

Program it from my Mac? Control everything with one button? Where do I sign up!!!

This remote control is a miracle. Why didn’t someone think of this ten years ago? We’ve all seen the so-called “universal remotes” – huge things with a thousand buttons that claim to control all your gear, usually with a fancy name like “Remote Commander!” They all worked on the same principle – on the top row of the remote, you click which component you want to control, then click the buttons below to perform a task, then click the component button of the next thing you want to control, etc. Took forever. And who could remember what all the buttons did, since each one had multiple functions?

The genius of Logitech is that they realized that the smartest way is control things is to have a SINGLE BUTTON for each task – so (for example), when you hit the “play movie” button, the remote will:

– turn on the TV
– switch the TV to the correct input & aspect ratio
– turn on the receiver
– switch the receiver to the correct input
– turn on the DVD player
– start playing the DVD!

How great is that? All from hitting one button! The remote does all the work! Can you guess what the other buttons are? That’s right – obvious things you want to do, like “watch TV”, “listen to music”, “play a game”, etc!

Here’s how this Holy Grail works. You load the Harmony software onto your Mac or PC, and then type in the manufacturer and model numbers of all your gear. The software downloads the right codes & info from Logitech’s online database and uses the USB cable that comes included to program your Harmony remote for you. If you want to be geeky (you bet I did!) you can configure your remote down to the tiniest detail, controlling what functions appear on the remote’s screen (and in what order), or even mapping specialized buttons onto your remote. Once your remote is configured, you can test everything and the remote’s Help function can make adjustments if anything is still not working perfectly. It truly, honestly, 100%, does not get any better or easier than this.

I got the 670 model because it was marketed as the best one for controlling a DVR. At Best Buy, it was $150, but on Amazon, it was only $100 plus $5 for shipping. You may cry out in shock, “A hundred dollars? For a hundred dollars, I’ll gladly juggle all those remotes and hit all those buttons myself and save the money.” If that’s what you say… then you, sir, clearly don’t understand what is important or fun in life.

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.

No matter how hard you try, you will never be one hundredth as cool as this. And oh yeah, I was in a little band called Queen.

OK, OK, My readers don’t have Times Select. Brian May is one of the contributing authors to their new cosmology blog. How cool is that?

The New York Times had an entertaining article on why playing the lottery is worth it. It agrees with my point of view. One dollar now and then is a cheap price to play for the fun of dreaming about winning.

But it also included this gaffe:

Large rewards make most people reckless, whether they’re on the winning or losing end. A 2003 University of Vermont study found that lottery players who said they preferred to receive potential winnings in annuity payments — generally thought to be safer than receiving the money all at once, in a lump sum — often changed their minds when they actually won. And the higher the jackpot, the more likely people were to prefer a lump-sum payout, the researchers found. (Mr. Nabors chose a lump sum.)

Yes, people change their mind. They should. Taking the lump sum is a smarter thing to do. It’s not being greedy, it’s being prudent.

Ever wonder how the exact payout amount is determined? It’s pretty straightforward financial calculations, figuring out the present value of those annual payments. As always, the key input is the interest rate. And for this, they use a very conservative number. Why? Because the lottery has to invest in state bonds and other very conservative investments, so from their point of view, that is appropriate. However, you as a private investor, can do better in the market (in most cases). You have investment options available to you that the state does not. Therefore, you can generate a higher rate of return. Which means you get more money by taking the lump sum up front and investing it wisely.

Happy birthday to me — thanks for the wishes all! To celebrate, I officially started wearing glasses today. Gads. Combined with just a tinge of grey hair on the temples, there is no doubt I have been graduated to the next phase of life.

And to cap off the fun, when I came back from lunch I left the keys in the car. Running. *Sigh*

God I love getting older.

From CNN.com:

Only Van Halen’s second lead singer, Sammy Hagar, and ex-bass player Michael Anthony turned up for their induction. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen has just gone into rehab and original lead singer David Lee Roth stayed away in a tiff over what he would perform.

From Billboard.com:

“Velvet Revolver performed in place of Van Halen and without Roth. Frontman Scott Weiland explained the ensuing controversy: “We were asked to perform. Kinda what happened was, he wanted to sing the song ‘Jump.’ We felt from an artistic standpoint, and I’m being totally honest with you, that it wasn’t a song we felt comfortable with. We don’t have keyboards. To bring a keyboard on stage wouldn’t work for us. We said we’d do “Jamie’s Cryin'” or “You Really Got Me,” and he was adamant that wasn’t okay.”

Dear Scott Weiland – you don’t get to tell David Lee Roth what song he sings at his Rock N Roll Hall of Fame induction!!! You haven’t earned it! You are a pathetic junkie – a junkie who should be down on his knees every hour, thanking God that he gets to be in a band with Slash. When Diamond Dave says “Jump”, you say, “How loud?”

We recently bought a new refrigerator. Things have changed in the refrigerator industry, I’ll tell you that. For all the gimmicks, most of the modern refrigerator designs are clearly worse.

Freezers ought to be on the bottom. That’s common sense. Heat rises. Therefore, the cold stuff goes below. Yet, new refrigerators have the freezer area on top or on the side.

Side by side is another bad design choice. Ideally, the interior of the refrigerator is just open space that you can configure to meet your needs. But a side by side design puts a big vertical barrier in the middle. This reduces how you can arrange items in there.

The problem is compounded by building in all kinds of specific compartments for specific kinds of food. Here’s the milk area, and here’s the vegetable area, and here’s the fruits, and the butter, etc. You know what, why don’t you let me put my food where I feel like putting my food. It’s all the same freakin’ temperature, what’s the difference?

The biggest gimmick is the ice and water dispensers. If you look inside the refrigerator, it’s shocking how much room the machinery takes up. On some models, 20% of the total space is taken up getting the water and ice to the outside. And what do you get for that? The water never tastes good. The depression is never big enough to fit a normal glass. Oh, but you save a miniscule amount of energy by not opening the door. Whoopee.

Stainless steel is another one. What is the point of stainless steel? It makes your kitchen looks industrial. It gets dirty instantly, and you can’t even clean it with a normal cleaning solution. Why would anyone get stainless steel? They would get it because now everyone has stainless steel, so that’s how you have a “nice” looking kitchen, where “nice” is what all the other people have.

And the price… the cost of any refrigerator above the basic block model is incredible. When my friend told me how much he paid for his, I practically laughed in his face. Then we went shopping, and I ended up spending even more.

You’re usually right, that’s what happens.

Assuming is usually correct. You save a lot of time and energy and keep yourself from looking like an idiot. If you go more than ten minutes without assuming something, you have severe brain damage. That’s what separates you from an infant, you’ve been in the world long enough to make good assumptions.

Also, there’s no “we” in team. Unless you turn the M upside-down.

(This one’s been sitting around for a while. It’s in response to a November 6, 2006 editorial, so it’s not very timely at all. But what the heck.)

This op-ed demonstrates why sociology is not considered a “hard” science. The errors abound.

1) 99% is not the standard significance threshold in science, 95% is.
2) It’s easy to count penny jars accurately. It’s called being careful. It’s especially not hard to count penny jars when you have million dollar budgets.
3) He spends some time stating how four different counts produce four different numbers, and suggests averaging them. Three paragraphs later, he ignores all this to say that in Washington’s 2004 race, 1,373,361 votes didn’t beat 1,373,232 votes by enough, so it shouldn’t count.
4) While it’s vaguely true that recounting may get you slightly different numbers, that’s not where the issues lie. The issues are not implementing a counting methodology, but having an agreed upon counting methodology. Do hanging chads count or not? Are absentee ballots with insufficient postage valid or not? If someone waited 12 hours to vote and couldn’t because of broken machines, should they get to vote? If someone was incorrectly purged from the voter polls, does their vote count? If they voted in the wrong precint, does it count? If they were confused by a butterfly ballot, can their vote be re-assigned to who they obviously meant to vote for? If a voter doesn’t have the correct ID, even though they are a legal voter, does it count? etc. Those are the questions that lead to recount after recount.
5) The proposed remedy of do-it-again is just plain insane.
6) I’m a statistics person, but statistics are not the way to hold elections. A 99% certainty level (or a p=0.01) means that about 1 in 100 times, you get the wrong answer and are OK with it. 99% is not enough here.

The answer is agreed upon counting methodologies. Execution may not be easy, but it is staightforward and auditable. Given reasonable time and money, the counting will always be accurate.

Fantastic legal correspondence, from somethingawful.com All real.

My lawyer, Leonard “J.” Crabs, has advised me to exercise my 16th Amendment rights on this issue. He said it’s “more than three times better” than the standard fifth Amendment, so my chances of winning the lawsuit instantly tripled. I don’t know what Congress’ power to collect income tax has to do with your email, but I’m not a lawyer like Mr. Crabs is. That’s why I pay him big bucks (plus bus fare).

Not only do we intend on fighting your lawsuit in court, we additionally plan on suing ourselves once your lawsuit is invariably thrown out on the grounds that you people are dangerously incompetent in virtually every aspect of life. We plan on suing ourselves for successfully not being successfully sued by you, therefore creating another grievous case of “defamation of character , libel or slander” since our upcoming legal victory over your company will create the public opinion that your company is completely staffed by subterranean mole people who know nothing about the law. You may consider yourself the “head subterranean mole person” if you so desire, or the CEO of Mole People if you’re into brevity.

Surreal conversation between Bjork and P Diddy

Would you like to get an entire operating system built for $3-6,000? This idiot is trying.

A lottery winner who didn’t blow it all. An interesting contrast to the usual winners.

Massachusetts be so smartest!

No. This isn’t real. It can’t be real. Is it real? I think it’s not real. Bob Dylan does Dr. Seuss.