Month: April 2005

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What KIND of Polyhedral am I?

Not that it’s any of your business, but…

I am a d100

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Here’s what the comments on my quiz results were:

There’s [sic] two ways to end up with this result. Either you picked the silliest possible answer to each question, or you answered honestly, and happen to be hyperactive, manic, loon. Assuming you answered honestly, your profile is as follows: You are the 100-sided dice, also known as the legendary Zocchihedron. You are the bit of data that registers so far off the chart that the average person doesn’t even know you exist… Your jokes have the lowest laugh ratio, but you go for quantity, not quality. Once you get started on a pointless tangent, it takes a group effort to bring you back to reality and make you shut up… The one secret they aren’t telling you, is how they sometimes actually miss the noise when you’re gone.

[Update: though update isn’t really the word. “Redaction” maybe. The opening comment in the quoted material above, in addition to its glaring grammatical error, makes an error of reasoning, as well.  Of course there’s at least one more option to the two mentioned above.  I could have answered each question honestly AND THEREFORE picked the silliest answer to each question.  It’s not an exclusive proposition, as the atatement above seems to indicate. heh]

No one who’s ever heard me recite P.L. Heath’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on “Nothing” could possibly agree with that, could they?  Could they?

🙂

Oh, and thx for the link to goes Jenna Thomas-McKie , whose blog I found following a link on a comment she made  at Boudicca’s Voice .

Hey! You guys do go visit these links, don’t you?  Well, get on it!!

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B-Movies vs. Junk Fiction Reads

I love B movies, and usually, the cheesier the better
 
 

But when it comes to books, stereotyping characters, predictable plots, implausible settings and circumstances just don’t cut it for me.  I can suspend disbelief easily enough if the characters, circumstances and settings maintain some plausibility and plots are at least interesting even in the most far-out fantasies.  But authors like Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code, Digital Fortress and others) just give me a rash.  Writing such as Digital Fortress, which I just “gutted through,” isn’t even good enough to be “suckitudinous”—it’s just plain bad fiction, in spite of (or even more so) because of the technical proficiency Brown has with verbs, nouns, adjectives (lord, does he ever love to load on the adjectives! *blech*), etc.  He apparently knows how to construct sentences that parse, he just chooses to construct sentences that are largely not worth reading.
 
The neat thing about B movies, on the other hand, is that their very cheesiness can provide entertainment that cheesy books cannot.  Chomping on popcorn, mocking stupid plots, ham-handed acting, poor direction, stupid continuity problems, etc., is just plain fun.  Watching B movies that provide unwitting self-mockery and meta-comments on their purveyors and (if they were box-office successes) their audiences is entertainment that’s worth far more than the $1.00 rental they can usually be had for.
 
But spending even half-price at a used book store for a badly-written piece of junk and wasting a couple of hours slogging through it hoping for something—anything!—better to appear is painful at best.
 
BTW, I didn’t buy the Dan Brown book I just read.  I can understand its appeal on one level to folks who have the intestinal fortitude to look past the stereotypical “characterization” and dumb plot because it has a remotely interesting premise.  But for anyone who has the slightest (and by that I mean what some in this neck of the woods would call “teen-eint-siest”) clue about computer systems, that premise is so fatally flawed to begin with that it sinks under its own weight almost before one can even notice the book’s other HUGE flaws.
 
Better to go rent a cheesy movie like the 1991 (1992?) Captain America (which I watched and thoroughly enjoyed for its flagrant B-movie-ness last week) than to read another Dan Brown—ANY Dan Brown—book.
 
Another one marked off the list of authors to check out for entertainment. YMMV, of course.  🙂

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Something-or-other rice

Another “What’s there to cook?” quasi-recipe
 
OK, cupboard looking lean. Had a can of lobster/tomato pasta sauce  (which Wonder Woman will NOT eat) .  Some decent jalapenos. Rice.  Chips.  Hmmm…
 
That’s it, friends, neighbors and countrymen countrymen-women and all the ships at sea…
 
little lobster/tomato pasta sauce…
 
water (to make up enough liquid for the amount of rice I had: 2X liquid/rice proportion)
 
minced jalapenos (keep the seeds, otherwise you’re wimping out way, way too much) more is better.
 
minced onion (Oh, I hadn’t mentioned I had some onion, had I?)
 
curry powder—you decide how much for yourself.  For me, less if fresh, naturally (and this was old: need to replace)
 
tumeric (was NOT going to use saffron on an experiment… though the way it turned out, maybe I should have!)
 
A little time and…
Somthing-Or-Other Rice n corn chips for a quick (~20 mins) lunch.
 
Next time, I’ll use saffron.  And there will be a next time.
 
🙂
 
Hey, while you’re here, CLICK on one of the other links in my sidebar. One of my other, non-food posts or someone in my blogroll.  (IMAO has a Carnival of Comedy happenin’ right now, you know.)

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Trite? It’s a small world, anyway

Not as much of a shock as it might once have been
 
Kris, over at Anywhere But Here, revealed today that she’s an OBU alum. I had wondered at what her background might have been to produce so many shared memes. Now I know part of it. Different generation, of course, but from all reports (from recent grad who once lived here at home 🙂 and continuing contacts over the years (including an email from a new contact, a prof in the College of Fine Arts, just the other day), much of the atmosphere and outlook remains very similar to the a&o when I attended.
 
But the small world effect?  Well, ever since 1971, when I spent a summer touring darned near all the contiguous 48 and found OBU alum in every single state I visited that summer, the small world effect is more of a “Huh, that’s nice: add another one” than a shock.  For a school that hovers around a 2,000 enrollment and had, at the last graduation I attended (2003) fewer in the graduating class than were in my high school’s graduating class, it’s sometimes surprisingly easy to make contact with previously unknown OBU alums, nearly anywhere… but here, in America’s Third World Countyâ„¢.
 
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Too dumb to pound sand in a rat hole

So, why not let ’em pound rocks instead?
 
Paul Jacobs notes, in a recent “Common Sense” newsletter, that Florida legislators are whining that the job’s just too hard to learn within the eight year term limit passed by the people of Florida.  Legislators are insisting they need 12 years to become competent at the job.
 
I say give ’em their 12 years, but let the last four be on a chain gang. (Gee, does the Raiford “State Prison Farm” still have a tough rep?) Either that, or send them to Dr. Tarr and Mr. Fether for job counseling…
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Cool? Or just really cold?

Even if you don’t need a deep freeze for this kind of forced hibernation, it still could be really cold.  Maybe.
 
This Reuters article scratches the surface of what may become a really big story: forced hibernation. Yeh, it’s just been done in mice, and people aren’t mice (for the most part, although many are sheep, some are wolves and a few are snakes ::heh::), but if it can be safely made to work for humans, it opens a Pandora’s box of possibilities, which, being humans, will be full of good intentions marred by unintended consequences.  Think about it: who gets the hibernation offered to (or forced upon!) them, for what reasons and at what costs, both economic and social?
 
This could be one to watch.
 
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Instapundit poos the scrootch on this one

Class vs Individual: Glenn Reynolds makes an error of composition*
 
Darn.  You’d think a guy as sharp as Glenn Reynolds—and a law prof to boot—would know the difference between an individual part and the whole in an argument.  Read this post and come on back.
 
Yes, I understand he never actually says that all Home Depot stores are like the store he refers to, but he “disses” Home Depot as a whole by implication by including in and framing his remarks around a reference to a site that does “diss” Home Depot Stores in general.
 
Now, if he were to shop at the Home Depot and Lowes stores nearest me, he’d have a flip-flop of the experience he relates on his site.  Does that mean that I should generalize the nature of the local Lowes store and mention a site that regularly “disses” all Lowes stores, as a group, just because I find the nearest Lowes store to be dysfunctional?  Does it mean that I should imply that all Home Depot stores are as well-run as the one nearest me?  No to both, because I do not know the other Lowes and Home Depot stores. (Well, I do know one more of each, and—in my neck of the woods—they are each like the ones nearest me: Lowes, so-so; Home Depot, very good.)
 
Of course, do note that Glenn only implies (by framing his remarks in the context of another site’s “dissing” of Home Depots in general) that his experience at one Home Depot store is normative for the whole. But that’s a sloppiness that really ought not to be in such a widely-read blog… by a law prof.
 
;Error of composition: assuming, implying or stating that what is true of the parts of an entity is true of the whole. “Some whites once owned slaves;  therefore all whites were slave owners,” is one such error of composition.  “I know a man who abused his wife, therefore all men are abusers of women,” is another such error of composition.  “Shopping at my local Home Depot store is a lousy experience and The Corner doesn’t like them, either,  therefore… ” heh. Indeed.
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Did someone say, “Kipling Tuesday”?

Cold Iron
Rudyard Kipling
 
“Gold is for the mistress — silver for the maid —
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.”
“Good!” said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
“But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of them all.”
 
So he made rebellion ‘gainst the King his liege,
Camped before his citadel and summoned it to siege.
“Nay!” said the cannoneer on the castle wall,
“But Iron — Cold Iron — shall be master of you all!”
 
Woe for the Baron and his knights so strong,
When the cruel cannon-balls laid ’em all along;
He was taken prisoner, he was cast in thrall,
And Iron — Cold Iron — was master of it all!
 
Yet his King spake kindly (ah, how kind a Lord!)
“What if I release thee now and give thee back thy sword?”
“Nay!” said the Baron, “mock not at my fall,
For Iron — Cold Iron — is master of men all.”
 
“Tears are for the craven, prayers are for the clown —
Halters for the silly neck that cannot keep a crown.”
“As my loss is grievous, so my hope is small,
For Iron — Cold Iron — must be master of men all!”
 
Yet his King made answer (few such Kings there be!)
“Here is Bread and here is Wine — sit and sup with me.
Eat and drink in Mary’s Name, the whiles I do recall
How Iron — Cold Iron — can be master of men all!”
 
He took the Wine and blessed it. He blessed and brake the Bread.
With His own Hands He served Them, and presently He said:
“See! These Hands they pierced with nails, outside My city wall,
Show Iron — Cold Iron — to be master of men all.”
 
“Wounds are for the desperate, blows are for the strong.
Balm and oil for weary hearts all cut and bruised with wrong.
I forgive thy treason — I redeem thy fall —
For Iron — Cold Iron — must be master of men all!”
 
“Crowns are for the valiant — sceptres for the bold!
Thrones and powers for mighty men who dare to take and hold!”
“Nay!” said the Baron, kneeling in his hall,
“But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of men all!
Iron out of Calvary is master of men all!”
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Reformation theology at a slant…

Credenda Agenda: I’ve enjoyed it for years in both print and online versions
 
Serious, droll, thought-provoking and hilarious.  Here’s a sample from the “Cave of Adullum” column:
 
Believe Bowling [see it here]
Not that we are against faith or anything, but an outfit called Chinaberry is marketing something called a “believe bowl.” The front of the bowl has the raw exhortation to “believe” and the copy drawing our attention to these alluring wares said, “Whether it’s faith in God, faeries, or St. Nick, it sure feels good to believe. This small bowl proclaims a powerfully big statement, especially when used as a reminder to believe in yourself. . . .”

On one of those hard mornings, when you find it hard to get going, just get out your luminous blue bowl, and reflect on the fact that it is just as hollow as you are.
 
The current issue‘s theme is Cheese.  Try a few slices.Â