Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Exactly

After seeing this video, the Clarion Content is asking ourselves why we had not heard of Amy Steinberg before, no matter, we are only grateful to have heard of her now. Thanks to one of our local Chapel Hill readers for forwarding this our way.

Enjoy.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Another Reality Genius



Alicia Guastaferro (pictured above) another reality TV rocket scientist is suing ABC after being featured on the network's 'Wife Swap' two years ago. Now to be fair, the show was truly focused on her mother, the wife swapped. However, Alicia blames the show for a variety of problems in her life. One: she has supposedly gone from the honor roll, to being a special education student. Now besides ABC, another factor might be that her mother freely admitted on the program and subsequently demonstrated that she does her daughter's homework. Mrs. Guastaferro said, "She doesn't have time! I feel the way to Alicia's happiness is, give her everything she wants. Don't give her any rules. Why upset her?"

The episode of Wife Swap showed the Guastaferro's home life to be rather different. Alicia is described as the "princess of pageantry" and is given gifts every single day by her parents, who kept a Christmas tree up all year in the house. But it's ABC's fault?

The entertainment blog the Pop Eater reports, "[Her parents] Ralph and Karen Guastaferro plead guilty to felony money laundering charges stemming from a Canadian telemarketing scheme. Karen is also in hot water for not declaring wages at the family's glass-tinting business...she faces up to 16 months in jail, while he could spend up to 57 months behind bars."

So we'd guess that blaming someone else is about the only logical response left open to them.

This Is Only A Test

Is the future now? This is my first post from a handheld device. It's
not entirely ideal for my typical long-winded prose, but we'll take
what we can get. I can't imagine, though, trying to bang out a 10,000
word album review using only my thumbs. Anyways, it should be quite
clear that I have joined the ranks of the iPfam and procured myself an
iPhone. The acquisition of said box of time-suck was an ordeal in and
of itself, but I'll save that for a ten-fingred telling. In the
meantime, things are good in sunny azz, though monstrously busy for
the next few. I will carry on with the spring break account at some
point in the not too distant future. Until then, we'll see ya back on
the Ballad soon. Have a good one wherever you may be. Man, are my
thumbs tired.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Gravity



Every time I’m ready to leave
Always seem to be
Pullin’ in the wrong direction
Divin’ in with no protection
Man, you can’t keep steerin’ me wrong

(Pixie Lott - Gravity)

Friday, March 26, 2010

Smiles!

The Phish Summer Tour is not coming particularly close to my digs (Berkeley, CA, and Telluride, CO, are the two closest locations). In the meantime, though:



Yay!

Yahoo Search



Have you heard the new radio ads for Yahoo search. This is their big plan to save the company? Who are they kidding?

Dear readers, you would not believe what they think the public can't find on line!?! One ad describes a Mom trying to find movie times on-line. Another ridiculously lowbrow ad has a middle aged man searching for directions to deliver weasels, still a third is looking for sports statistics. These basic things people can't find? Really? Are these ads for grandparents using the internet? Brand new immigrants from small rural villages? Seriously, Yahoo, who is it that you think is struggling to find driving directions? And movie times?!?

This is a company that is fading away. The Yahoo brass unwisely refused a $45 billion takeover offer from Microsoft two years ago. Today the company is worth less than half of that amount. Other than email, what is it that Yahoo is recognized for doing? Why would one go to Yahoo? The Sunnyvale, CA company has gone through three CEOs in three years.

Full disclosure some members of the Clarion Content play in a Yahoo managed Fantasy Baseball league.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Eddie Izzard Interlude

Sunday night we watched Definite Article, a mid-'90s Eddie Izzard one hour and forty five minute stand-up bit. If you are unaware, he's a genius. As mentioned, I had to stop the DVD to catch my breath from laughing at one point. Excuse the language, but here was that point - Izzard talking about the audacity of Paul's letters to the Corinthians. Something about "Dear Paul, bracket, saint apparently" slayed me. Enjoy, and the entire concert is highly recommended.


Monday, March 22, 2010

Houseguestapalooza MMX (Part I, it seems)

This may be premature, as Houseguestapalooza MMX is not technically over yet. The iPFam is still in Californ-aye-ay and will be swinging back through Sunny Azz in the next few days. Still, it was a solid couple weeks of much fun, so might as well get the accounting in while the accounting's good.

I'll go backwards because, well, why not. Today did not involve HGaPaMMX, but I didn't have to use my AK. I read three articles and an entire an entire book (granted, it was only 160 pages or so, and I didn't *write* it, as Beck demanded) this morning, hanging around the house so as not to give the S/W/F too long of a day. Took the D-O-Gs for a W-A-L-K, then booked it to school at about 11 for a quick weights workout (and weighed a crisp, little-sweat-loss 171 afterwards - not bad given the guests and dining outs of late). Ran a brief honors discussion section for the undergrad bio course, then finished up the grading for the midterms*. Meeting w/ Jason, meeting with Manfred, a more or less figured out thesis project (for which I still need to write a prospectus, but still, DAMN!), and a semi-interesting class on medical student ethics education, and it was a day. Drove home, warmed up some leftover pizza, and am currently blogging to the erratic spastic blasts of Ornette Coleman and what he claimed will have been the shape of jazz that came. Or something.

* - In case you're not the facebooking type, I had a crushing pile of 90+ essay midterms as part of my spring break joy. They were horrendous (average grade = a generous 73). Painful, though I did learn the invaluable lesson that "disjustice" is a verb.

Sunday was also productive, as I woke up early and got a good deal of reading / writing done that I could not catch up with while the peeps were in town. Decided I was a glutton for punishment and went to do a track workout at Rhodes *before* pickup - I got in a mile, some buildup sprints, some straightaway sprints, and tried to run a 400 before my hamstring said no. Oh, and I timed myself on 40 yard dashes, and could do no better than a five flat. Sadness. I did get myself good and tired, which was the intention, and then played pickup starting off more tired than everyone out there. Good deal - made a silly lay out grab over/around somebody at one point, met a dude named Kyle from Ohio who looks to have club potential, and hit Kaysie for some scores... on her boyfriend. Yikes. Came home to the industriously awesome Beck, who had mowed the yard after a day of work. She is, indeed, awesome. We ate leftover Chinese and watched an Eddie Izzard DVD which was so funny that I had to pause it so I wouldn't asphyxiate from laughter. Good times.

I left very early Saturday AM to head to Sprawl SLUG IV. My parents arrived on their way out of town just in time to catch a layout Nyet goal - WAHOO. We (the light team) won 12-6, 13-11, another free lunch for the good guys. Said adios to my parents - they were headed to Fort Stockton and got there quite late thanks to the two hour time change. I came home and powered through grading while watching NCAA basketball. Beck came home and, after some reading, took a nap. As you may have guessed we picked up Chinese food for the evening and made it all the way to the first skit of SNL, in which Sigourney Weaver looked a whole lot like the PGOAT. Woah!

Friday AM, my dad and I headed to the golf curse to demonstrate how not to hit golf shots. Or rather, my dad demonstrated how not to hit golf shots; I just demonstrated how to not hit golf shots (the distinction is subtle). We came back to the homestead to pick up my mom and head over to SMOCA, where we saw a couple of nice exhibits: Chuck Close prints and Rewind Remix Replay: Design, Music & Everyday Experience. Very cool trip to the museum, and we followed it up with some nachos / a margarita at Los Olivos next door. Good times, only to be outdone by the GREAT times we had at the Biltmore movie that night - we watched Ferris Bueller's Day Off over Slice of Sicily Pizza and followed that up with some off-the-hook MoJo. Very fun day to end my parents' stay in Phoenix.

Alright, I am running out of gas here, and the next days involve some pic posting, so I'll hold off until my energy comes back. Trust that they'll be great. In the meantime, NAP. And yeah, this has had surprisingly little houseguest content given the post title. My bad.

Jodoh, dijodohkan, terjodohkan, menjodohkan

Sepertinya blog saya ini sudah memiliki evolusinya sendiri. Tidak terdefenisikan tapi bisa terlihat. Sempat terlantarkan, sempat terlupakan, tapi tetap bisa menjadi sahabat yang bisa diandalkan untuk berbagi cerita. Seperti hidup yang terus mengalir, kali ini ijinkan saya untuk mengenalkan satu fragmen lagi dalam babak kehidupan saya. Terinsipirasi dari catatan Okke dalam blog lajang dan menikah, sepertinya saya akan mulai memasuki fase hidup ini :D

Memasuki bulan kedua di kantor yang baru, tiba-tiba seorang teman dari bagian keuangan bertanya,

“Qko, sudah punya pacar kah?”

Hah? Dari mana kemana maksud pertanyaan ini? Secara setahu saya bahwa sang penanya merupakan istri orang. Lengkaplah saya dengan muka cengengesan tidak tahu mau menjawab apa dari pertanyaan seajaib itu.

Jawaban saya sederhana. Pacar tidak ada, HTS an banyak. Itu jawaban saya dari dalam hati. Tidak mau menyebutkan secara gamblang. Pasalnya waktu itu saya sedang mempertahankan image sebagai pegawai baru dengan akhlak mulia. I’m young, and I’m single. Status apa lagi yang bisa sekeren itu?

Dikemudian hari barulah saya mengetahui alasan dibalik pertanyaan sporadis itu. Ternyata sang teman punya teman lagi yang ingin dikenalkan kepada saya. Berprofesi sebagai suster di lain wilayah Sulawesi Selatan. Niatan awalnya sih cuma diperkenalkan. Tujuan jangka panjangnya? Dijodohkan!



Hah? Pertama, seumur hidup memang rasanya belum ada yang menanyakan hal seserius itu kepada saya. Pacar? Untuk apa? Palingan itu jawab saya. Karena beberapa tahun yang lalu saya memiliki banyak teman (khususnya wanita) yang bisa diajak jalan dan bersenang-senang selayaknya pacaran. Walaupun minusnya kami berhubungan tidak pake hati dan perasaan. Cukup bersenang-senang saja. Dan dulu saya merasa itu cukup. Sekarang? Saya merasa itu kurang. Huhuhuhuhu.

Kedua, dijodohkan? Emang sekarang masih jaman Siti Nurbaya? Saya teringat lagi dengan nasib seorang teman di kantor. Demi mengikuti keinginan ayah tercinta, dia sudah mengikat janji sehidup semati dan siap dinikahkan dengan wanita pilihan ayahnya. Alasannya? Kasihan ayahnya sudah sakit-sakitan. Maunya harus dituruti. Loh, yang mau menikah kan kamu? Bukan ayah kamu?

Ah, ternyata pernyataan saya masih sangat skeptis dan sarkastis mengenai cinta. Apa mau dikata? Saya masih belum berhenti mempercayai bahwa saya termasuk orang yang sulit jatuh cinta. Walaupun salah sendiri, pernah merasa sakit hati dan kemudian merasa trauma untuk menjalin sebuah hubungan yang lain. Pernah sih, ada beberapa orang yang terang-terangan mengirimkan sinyal tertarik. Bahkan dengan bantuan teman-temannya, sang wanita terus melancarkan serangan cintanya. Sikap saya? Malah mengajak salah satu HTS an untuk jalan berdua di depan wanita tersebut, dengan harapan dia mengerti bahwa saya tidak merespon sinyal yang diberikannya. Jahat yah?

Karena menurut saya jodoh itu sudah diciptakan untuk kita di belahan dunia ini. Entah dia terlempar dimana. Hanya butuh waktu dan tempat yang tepat untuk bisa bertemu dengannya. Itu dulu konsep cinta ideal yang ada di kepala saya. Kalau sampai di jodohkan mah, apa dikiranya saya sudah tidak mampu mencari pacar sendiri? Walaupun ternyata jawabannya iya.

Sampai saat ini saya belum memberi jawaban atas pertanyaan teman kantor tersebut. Apakah saya mau dikenalkan dan dijodohkan dengan temannya. Rasanya geli saja. Harus memerlukan bantuan pihak ketiga untuk bisa merasakan cinta. Lantas apa yang harus saya lakukan dengan semua HTS an saya? Hahahaha.

Mungkin akan tiba saatnya dimana saya juga sudah harus berhenti bertualang. Mulai bersikap serius tentang hidup dan menikah. Toh tidak selamanya kita akan menjalani hidup yang seperti ini terus kan?

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Milgram revisted



State-owned, France 2 channel broadcast a documentary last Wednesday night. This documentary attempted to imitate the famous experiments of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram's experiment, in his view, was a test of the collective culpability, the obedience component of the Shoah, the Holocaust.

The test involved one subject, one examiner and one accomplice. The accomplice played a test subject as well. The actual subject was induced to believe that both they and the accomplice were test subjects. The basic game is that the subject, called "teacher," examines the accomplice called "leaner," on word memorization. After wrong answers the subject/teacher was supposed to shock the accomplice/learner, played by a trained actor. No actual shocks were administered, but subject/teachers were convinced that they were doling out actual electric shocks gradually increasing in voltage for 15 volts to 450 volts, by the end of the "game." Literally convulsing the accomplice/learner. Crucially the subject/teacher was given a 15 volt real demonstration shock just before the start of the "game," so as to understand how it would ostensibly work for the subject/learner. (Wiki does a surprisingly good recap here.)

The French documentary attempted to recreate the scenario. In a non scientific sampling, 82% of participants, in the ludicrously named, fake TV show "The Game of Death" agreed to pull the lever to inflict electric shocks, gradually increasing in voltage, on their "opponents." Again instead of real subjects, they were but actor/opponents/accomplishes, not really being shocked. Interestingly the BBC reports that, "'The Game of Death' has all the trappings of a traditional TV quiz show, with a roaring crowd chanting "punishment" and a glamorous hostess urging the players on." A horrifying self-fulfillingly megalomaniacal set-up.

Ultimately, the Clarion Content, having read Eric Hoffer's True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, fears for our collective humanity. Careful with your demagogues, because who knows what we are capable of, six species epochs have gone before us.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

What will (kills) the radio star?

Saya sedikit tersenyum ketika kemarin membaca beberapa status teman-teman saya di FB. Dari bagaimana kemacetan melanda, hujan, bahkan status terbaru tentang skala percintaan mereka. Satu yang paling menarik perhatianku adalah status dari mantan salah seorang penyiar radio remaja di Makassar. Statusnya seperti ini,

“Sore-sore begini enaknya ngapain yah? Dengarkan saja radio Ma**ma, we have trainee kiddos for you”

Dalam hati saya berkata,

“wah mereka sudah punya anak baru lagi?”.


“Anak baru”. Yah, seperti itulah kami memberikan julukan, nama, atau apalah istilahnya untuk mereka yang mau menjual jiwa mereka menjadi penyiar radio. Saya masih ingat ketika di tahun 2003, saya nekat untuk memasukkan lamaran dan CV saya sebagai penyiar juga. Bersaing dengan hampir 50 orang untuk mengisi satu slot siaran. Hasilnya? Pengalaman yang sangat menyenangkan.



Nah, kembali ke masalah penyiar baru tadi. Saya kemudian berpikir apakah mereka akan sanggup tampil beda dan berjuang sampai memiliki nama? Karena keadaan sekarang berbeda dengan beberapa tahun yang lalu. Apalagi untuk segmentasi yang menyasar anak muda. Kenapa? Segmen ini sangat cair. Mereka sangat mudah disetir seleranya. Apalagi ketika mereka bergabung dalam sebuah geng ataupun sekte. Dimana keseragaman menjadi aturan utamanya.

Seorang penyiar bisa menjadi “local celebrity”. Siapa yang tidak akan menghapal nama kamu ketika kau tidak henti-hentinya berbicara dari pukul 6 pagi sampai pukul 9 pagi? Ataupun dari pukul 7 sampai pukul 10 malam? Seorang penyiar radio bahkan bisa menjadi sahabat yang paling dekat. Memasuki ruang intim pribadimu. Laki-laki mana yang berani memasuki kamar seorang cewek di atas jam 10 malam? Walaupun hanya dalam bentuk suara.

Radio menjadi teman ketika ngobrol bersama teman, menjadi teman belajar, bahkan saya pernah merasakan bagaimana deg-degan nya menunggu request-an saya diputar oleh sang empunya acara. Coba saja menelepon Satu acara di jam prime time (jam pagi, tengah hari ataupun malam hari), entah itu sekedar request ataupun ikut ngobrol, pastilah jarimu akan gemas menekan tombol telepon. Saking banyaknya orang yang ingin menelepon. Apakah hal ini masih berlangsung sama?

Beberapa tahun lalu ketika distraksi perhatian belum sebanyak sekarang, radio bisa menjadi sarana hiburan utama (atau bahkan menjadi media utama) bersanding dengan televisi dan koran. Sekarang? Ada aneka ria jejaring sosial. Dimana ketika beberapa remaja berkumpul, dengan laptop dan koneksi internet, mereka justru lebih nyambung dan nyaman ngobrol dengan fasilitas chat. Aneh. Belum lagi aneka mall yang terus bertambah. Secara tidak langsung ini merubah pola hidup mereka yang lebih banyak bersentuhan dengan dunia luar. Apakah mereka masih memiliki waktu untuk mendengarkan radio?

Ada lagi ada satu juta situs yang tersedia di internet untuk mengunduh lagu secara gratis. Mp3 bajakan di bertebaran dimana-mana.

“untuk apa menunggui sebuah acara di radio hanya untuk mendengarkan sebuah lagu? Toh saya sudah punya lengkap koleksi albumnya.”


Bisa saja pertanyaan itu yang muncul. Ketika era Mp3 bertebaran dimana-mana. Sekarang ketika kita sedang dikuasai pop Indonesia, bahkan televisi pun tidak mau ketinggalan merasakan fenomena ini. Berlomba-lombalah mereka mencari presenter yang cantik, menarik, lucu, yang bahkan tidak jelas mereka melawak ataukah membawakan suatu acara. Semakin terdistraksi lah lagi pendengar radio.

Semakin menariklah bagaimana seorang penyiar (radio) harus bisa terus survive dimasa sekarang. Dimana mereka tidak hanya mengandalkan musik dan lagu terbaru saja sebagai senjata utama. Karena hal tersebut sudah semakin mudah didapat. Mereka harus memilki style dan gaya sendiri. Supaya mereka tetap bisa di notice dan menjadi “local celebrity” berikutnya. Selamat berjuang guys!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Wow

The story here? The imagination runs amok.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

3BK-5 (For Real This Time)

Okay, this is easy - with the iPFam, the NyetFam, and Mike NTPB watching from the sidelines, 3BK got its collective ass handed to it last night, 15-6 from Huck You. Or perhaps half of its ass, as we only managed to field 8 players, one of whom was hobbling around on a sprained ankle. Savage for the guys and only three girls, and we were missing our first, second (sprained ankle), third, and fourth round picks, leaving us with few to no hands and a dire inability to cover pretty much anyone from the other team.

They threw a lot of zone at us, and it became readily apparent very quickly that working it up the field was not really an option (drops, throw-aways, etc.). I ended up consciously taking some rather ridiculous chances in light of this (figuring the 30% chance was more viable than the 5% chance we would work it up), but otherwise did fine; even had a layout D and a nice layout backwards matrix-style catch. Hit some people in the hands with hammers, forehands, missed Stefan just a hair deep a couple of times (he was the one playing on a sprained ankle), the usual. Not a good showing by the team*, but we kept running hard all the way through and seemed to keep spirits up, which was good. I personally was still cutting deep at the very end**, so I was happy that the week plus off from frisbee didn't kill my endurance.

* - Problem one - handling was terrible. Couldn't depend on people not to take the ridiculous shot up the line, or generally throw the disc directly into poaches. Problem two - we definitely had two men (if not four) running free on us on defense. That problem was actually bigger than the first, as we tried hard, but they were essentially able to walk it all over the field every time we turned it over. Ugh. I tried to play centerfield and got some mileage out of it, but it was a pretty impossible situation.

** - Mike (and Tom from the other team) nicely noted that I look skinny, which may or may not have anything to do with the cardiovascular being okay despite the relative lack of sprinting lately. . My mom, on the other hand, said that I look like a priest. We eventually figured out that she meant "monk" or "ascetic," but the initial comment was surreally awesome: "your nose is really skinny; you look like a priest." This, natch, inspired many a heckle from the Beck and iPMM. "Your legs are skinny; you look like a priest. You ears are looking thin; can you administer communion?"

Beck is still hobbling a bit but played well; she got the disc a bunch of times which was sweet. Probably best to stop talking about this; we were just severely outgunned and couldn't get anything done. We had a little run toward the end to close it to 10-5, but that was about it. No good. Pretty embarrassing, too, to have Mike et al see the low level of disc. Ah, well. We're 3-2 with a +10 point differential now and have a tough game against Griesy and the rest of Los Tigres Del Norte next week. We shall see...

Oh, btw, Beck's fam and my fam and Mike are in town. SPRING BREAK!!!!!

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Quarter-life crisis, is it okay?

Beberapa hari yang lalu seorang sahabat mengirimkan sebuah sms. Katanya dia bingung dengan apa yang dia lakukan sekarang. Semuanya terasa sia-sia. Di usia 25 tahun, semuanya terasa membingungkan. Mengenai apa dan bagaimana dia menjalani masa depannya. Posisinya saat ini? Sedang mengambil kuliah S2 di kampus bergengsi di Yogyakarta dengan jalur beasiswa. Sebelum itu dia menolak lamaran untuk bekerja di dalam bank nasional. Itu baru sedikit catatan rekor dalam kehidupannya. Lantas mengapa dia mesti bingung dan takut dengan kehidupannya?



Setahun yang lalu pun saya berada di titik yang sama dengannya. Ketika label “fresh graduate” masih menempel di jidat dengan sangat segarnya. Walaupun saya sudah memiliki posisi dalam sebuah perusahaan sebagai marketing, tetap saja pertanyaan itu terus merongrong saya dari dalam. Mau jadi apa saya setahun kemudian? Bagaimana nasib saya kalau perusahaan ini tiba-tiba colaps? Bagaimana ini, bagaimana itu, sehingga saya merasa tanggung dan tidak nyaman menjalani hari demi hari di posisi tersebut.

Barulah seorang teman yang menyadarkanku tentang apa yang terjadi. Seseorang dengan usia yang dewasa dan pengalaman yang lebih banyak. Apa yang bisa terjadi pada seseorang di umur 24, 25, atau 26 tahun. Quarter life crisis. Sebuah barang dan kosa kata baru dalam kehidupanku.

Kenapa mesti dalam usia seperti itu? Barulah saya mengingat pelajaran dalam konteks psikologi sewaktu mengerjakan sang skripsi tercinta, bahwa usia 16 dan 17 tahun merupakan usia seseorang dalam mencari jati dirinya. Ketika dia memilih dengan siapa dia berteman dan bagaimana dia menjalani hari-harinya.

Nah, lantas di usia 24 inilah seseorang sudah mulai memasuki fase kemapanan. Dimana perbandingan terus terjadi dalam kehidupannya, “kenapa hidup saya tidak seperti miliknya?”, “kenapa kerjaan saya tidak seperti miliknya?”. Ditambah lagi hubungan relasi dengan seseorang, dalam hal ini pacar atau suami, yang mungkin belum dimiliki. Sehingga lengkaplah sudah penderitaan. Dimana dia harus berjuang sendirian untuk mencari kemapanan.

Twenty and thirtysomethings are reluctant (or unable) to save for their futures. Only half are saving for a pension and of those half think they’re not paying enough, according to research by pensions provider Standard Life. (Wikipedia)

Seperti yang dijelaskan oleh nona Wikipedia, sebenarnya masalah yang terjadi sangat sederhana. Ketika kita secara tidak langsung membandingkan hidup kita dengan orang lain. Ketika melihat orang lain sukses, kita langsung merasa bahwa apa yang kita kerjakan tidak ada apa-apanya. Saya mengingat perkataan Mario Teguh, “jangan pernah berjalan dengan menggunakan sepatu orang lain”. Mengapa? Belum tentu sepatu tersebut cocok dengan ukuran kaki kita, belum tentu cocok dengan style kita. Jadi mengapa harus memaksakan diri?

Okelah, rasanya sangat tidak adil saya berkata ini sekarang. Posisi saya sudah berada di titik aman. Memiliki pekerjaan yang bisa menjaminku sampai anak cucu kelak, tapi hey, bukankah sudah saya katakana sebelumnya? Saya juga pernah berada di fase itu dan saya masih cukup kuat untuk melewatinya.

Apakah sang teman tidak sadar ada jutaan orang yang ingin berada di posisinya yang sekarang? Menikmati kuliah di kampus bergengsi? Padahal belum tentu sarjana yang lain memiliki kesempatan yang sama. Bahkan beberapa orang memiliki nasib yang lebih buruk. Sebenarnya sederhana, jangan selalu melihat ke atas, bisa saja lehermu akan pegal dan sakit. Cobalah melihat ke bawah. Melihat kenyataan yang ada dari sudut pandang yang berbeda.

Pada akhirnya bagi mereka yang akan memasuki usia seperti itu, silahkan persiapkan diri. Mau tidak mau dilemma itu pasti terjadi, sehingga ketika saatnya tiba kamu bisa melewatinya. :D

Sometimes silence can seem so loud, There are miracles in life I must achieve, But first I know it starts inside of me (R. kelly - I Believe I Can Fly)

*nb : I know you can handle it sist,

Is it a nightmare for a deaf person?

It’s amazing to think how an ear can recognize so many sounds in this world. Is it a music, a ring bell, people’s talking, or even a foot step. Can you imagine living in this world without hearing any sounds? For some people, it can be so worst, a deaf person can explain it to you. But now there's a Cochlear Implant that can helps the deaf person.



So is it there’s a second chance for them which having the ear problem or deaf? Of course this hope is can be real. You can see it that so many discussion in the university, hospital, or even in the internet that the second chance can be a miracle.

Over 100 years ago, this is an impossible. The human technology is not able to make a scheme or even a medicine which can help the deaf person to hear again. After 1950, Djourno and Eyriès which make the “bionic ears” can be real. They make a clinic that can help the deaf person. And make Cochlear Implant Surgery becoming real.

How this thing is work? Of course you will need this things. A microphone to catch the sound from the environment, a speech processor, a transmitter, a receiver, and a simulator, and an electrode array. It works like a telephone scheme, but the different is, it helps you guide the voice or the sound from the environment to your brain.

You can see that this miracle can be trusted and become the solution for they which have the hearings problem. With Cochlear Implants, from 2002, there’s 49. 000 peoples around the world which have this procedure and help them to hear again. And in 2008, this number is getting bigger and become 150. 000 people around the world. You can see the security of the procedure is getting better to avoid the risk and people are helped using this technology.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

AR: Quality Control


Jurassic 5 - Quality Control (2000)

At some point in roughly 2003 or so (and I may have mentioned this before), I decided it was important that I have half a clue about good hip-hop beyond, say, LL Cool J and Young MC. So I asked the most knowledgeable crew I knew, the three-to-four years younger than I (and therefore infinitely hipper) Tuftsmen. They recommended a lot of classics - Biggie, Nas, Jay-Z, Wu-Tang, Public Enemy, Black Star, A Tribe Called Quest, Common, Roots, etc., but one they came out screamingly excited about was this freshman (actually sophomore if you count their initial EP) effort from Jurassic 5. It's not surprising at all that this album caught fire with the New England college crowd - it's immediate, catchy, highly melodic, and doesn't remotely try to hide its positive vibes. I.e. it stood out quite a bit from the violent/dark/negative mainstream rap from the previous few years (Snoop, Dre, Eminem, etc.) as an alternative option, exactly the thing that an alternative "college music"-seeking crowd would sink its collective teeth into with ease. That's a good thing and a bad thing, though - as relatively "fresh" and standout as this is (even though in style its largely a homage to throwback, old-school party-style hip-hop), it also has a sheen that makes it sound a little simplistic, a little too eager to please exactly that crowd. I am 99% sure that is unfair, in that this is undoubted high quality, thoroughly worked art. But in their utterly prototypical approach and sound - bright, underground , pseudo-cerebral team rap - they occasionally toe the line of cheese.

I suppose I mean to say that while they are undoubtedly good, they stick to an effective formula that nonetheless has always rendered them somewhat less exciting than other slightly more ragged acts in the same genre. Their sound is just a little too "round" for an underground band, if that makes sense. The "formula" is a prominent, very catchy looped sample topped by some snappy drumming and turntable work, a full band (six members, not five, incidentally) chorus shouted in unison, and rotating solos by each of the members. It's incredibly smooth and professional, and the choruses in particular are instant earworms. It gives the impression of jazz-rap with the consistently rumbling bass lines, the full band melodic announcements of melodic themes, and solo turns by the individual members (and now that i write that, it sounds exactly like jazz). But something about it comes across as jazz-by-numbers - too much structure, too much pre-planned vocal trills and excessively "now we sing the hook" sections. As accomplished as the writing and structure are, there's cognitive dissonance induced by music that is striving to sound energetic and spontaneous but is obviously over-planned to the last detail.

So now that I've ripped them like a jerk for two paragraphs, I should back off and point out that it's very good, very booty-shaking canned-planned rap. Expert and professional, and the talent of the individual members is beyond obvious. Just repetitive in structure is all, but if you can get lost in the party of each song, there ain't nothing wrong with that.

Highlights abound; the first three tracks on the album are stellar. "The Influence" rolls over an a capella voiced bassline, "Great Expectations" works the formula perfectly over a sick sax and organ riff, and "Quality Control" lays down a slowed down bass riff chant that would stand out in any hip-hop set. The party atmosphere of the latter in particular is superb; it's the easy highlight of the album. The extend drum break sample-fest in "Monkey bars" is great. And the rest is, as I've tried to indicate, solid, just highly samey.

The 11th track "The Game" may be the key to realizing what is simultaneously great and terrible about this album. It's a rap about basketball over an energetic thumping guitar riff and piano splash that plows ahead unapologetically. It flows well, everything in its right place, and it's got the appropriate amount of trash-talking attitude. But it's a literal rap about basketball! It's not a passing line about "I wear 45 like Jordan," it's a compelte rap about driving the lane and shooting threes and I'm sweet like the Dream and blah blah blah. It's absurd, cheesy, and no matter how expertly pulled off and catchy it is, crushingly unsubtle and lacking the mystique appropriate to an underground band. They may as well have written a song entitled "We Are Quite Good at Speaking Poetry In Rhythm Over Sampled Beats."

That's it. I feel liked I've probably over-explained this; it's a catchy, solid album that wears a little thin. As I sit here, one of the later tracks is insisting that they'll "show [me] how to improvise." But it's a clearly composed full-band chorus. I do not think that word means what they think it means.

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Quality Control"

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Spanish Conjugation

How about this as a way to study Spanish verb conjugation...



Bet he got an "A."

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Pedagogy Prob

Jenny, my labmate and fellow PhD student, is teaching the undergrad bioethics class for which I am a TA. Her basic teaching philosophy is a fair amount of reading, no busy work, few papers and few exams, lots of participation. However, the class is 180 people, and undergrads are happy to take advantage of a professor who simply asks that everyone do the reading and be prepared to discuss. To combat this, she gives quizzes on the class reading in every lecture. They are not hard quizzes - what was the thesis of article X, what is androcentrism and why is it important to ethics, the sort of thing you'd be able to answer easily if you 1, read the article, and 2, read it while not stoned. However, the averages on these quizzes have been terrible - we give them 0 points for a wrong answer, 1 point if they can demonstrate that they did the reading, and 2 points if they read and understood the reading i.e. got the answer correct. The averages have been 0.9, 0.6, and 0.5, etc. Awful.

So Thursday, Jenny asked me to write a quiz question. We wanted to cut them a break, so I tried to make it something that was severely easy if you had read the articles, but completely obscure if you hadn't. The first article was called "Dancing with the Porcupine" and was about the relationship between university-based research and industry (namely the pharmaceutical industry). It certainly seems like it should be obvious from the title alone, but the porcupine is a metaphor for the caution one need to exercise when working closely with people of different values and goals who could, um, prick you. The metaphor framed the short article, and, as you may have noticed, the metaphor was in the title of the paper (not to mention there was a subtitle that said something to the effect of "The Tricky Intermingling of University and Industry Research"). So, I came up with the murky but would-be-obvious-if-you read-it question:

"From the reading: what was the deal with porcupines?"

I'll fully admit that this was at least somewhat motivated by the sadistic desire to read the answers of floundering students who hadn't done the reading, as out of context, being asked about porcupines in a bioethics class conjures all kinds of images of throwing train track switches to kill one porcupine instead of five. So it was a bit of a silly question. But it should have been clear, given the reading, that we would have accepted any sort of answer that included "metaphor" and "for the relationship between universities and industry." Jenny was a little concerned that it was too casual, too obvious from the reading, and maybe not funny enough. Another article that had been assigned for that day recounted the tale of Joe Smith, who died essentially because a clinical trial researcher had a vested (financial) interest in his participation in a pharmaceutical trial, failed to disclose this fact, pushed Joe Smith through the trial when JS perhaps should not have been pushed, and killed Joe Smith via a reaction to the drug under study. The "drug" was an attenuated form of a virus that caused JS to have a overblown immunological reaction such that he died from shock. So Jenny appended our original question:

"From the reading: what was the deal with porcupines? (Extra Credit: Did Joe Smith die from a porcupine-inflicted wound?)"

Ooh. I really liked this question now, as it had some kick and depth to it. If you had read neither article, you would either be utterly confused and surrender with an "I don't know" or offer some ridiculous tale of Joe Smith and a quill puncture. If you had read the first and not the second, you could easily say what the deal was with porcupines, but only able to offer a guess as to how JS had died. Read the second and not the first, and you come out with "I don't know what porcupines are, but no, JS died from anaphylactic shock in a clinical trial." Read both, though, and you get to put two and two together (hopefully) - you could recite the porcupine metaphor, and then say yes, JS did die from a porcupine-inflicted wound, because it is at least arguable that the prickly relationship b/w the researcher and the pharmaceutical industry caused him to push JS through the study and killed him. That, natch, would require the ability to read / understand metaphors and apply them, but what the hell, that application would be in the extra credit portion of the exercise and not vital to the quiz. Right?

Right... so, tragically, it turns out, you can't do anything remotely this complicated when the vagaries of undergrad thought (or, notably, lack thereof) are involved. Note that I didn't say you can't do anything "complicated," as this is not what I would call a complicated question. You just can't even do anything "this complicated," because chaos ensues. What happened?

1. Bold ignorance of the concept "Extra Credit," not to mention parentheticals and italics. The majority of students answered the second question without even addressing the first. I don't know why. Some of them had read at least the second article and answered quite literally, "No, he died of anaphylactic shock in a clinical trial." No breath of porcupines, though. Others had clearly not read and said overtly wrong things - "he died in a car accident" - but again, no mention of the porcupines. Others still took the coin flip chance and answered simply "No," but again, no mention of porcupines. I can't begin to comprehend how one looks at a two part question, the second part of which is labeled as bonus and is in parentheses, and does not address the first art of the question at all.

2. Just hadn't read. The second largest portion of the class had no clue what was going on. These resulted in the anticipated hilarious answers, the best two of which were:

"I don't know what the deal was with porcupines. But no, he did not die from the porcupine wound, but from the infections that resulted from the wound."

"Porcupines are prickly critters not be messed with. Joe Smith did not die from the porcupine wound because they are quite small, but I ask you: when Joe stepped on the porcupine, what became of the quilled beast?"

3. Did the reading, didn't get metaphors. A portion of the class did the reading, accurately described the porcupine metaphor, but then said, no, he died from anaphylcatic shock. We shook our heads in disappointment and gave them full credit anyways.

4. Tried to game the system. More than one student rushed up immediately after the quiz and protested, "I did the reading. I knew the answer. But I thought you were trying to trick us!" They ended up giving answers that just said, "Yes, he died from a porcupine wound." And some, also citing that they had thought we were trying to trick them, said, "no." Again (see category 1), no reference to what the metaphor meant. Baffling. These were some of our better students, too. They protested adamantly, and we ultimately decided that we would give a "yes" answer the benefit of the doubt for the ones who talked to us and score it a 1. But why had they assumed that gaming was going on??!?!

5. Had a clue. Approximately five students described the metaphor and explained precisely how yes, one could describe Joe Smith as having died from a porcupine wound in the sense of X, Y, Z. I gave them full credit, but I may need to go back and give them 3's.*

* - Leading to a Mike TPB Gordon-esque quip, on a scale of 1 to 2, I'd give it a 3.

So that's where we're left - the base assumption that students 1, understand quizzes; 2, do the reading; and 3, can understand and use the simplest of metaphors, are decidedly bogus ones. The worst feeling of all was that I noted the bevy of 0's and 1's and complete misconstruals of the quiz and its purpose, so I couldn't help but feel guilty for having composed an apparently impenetrable quiz. It was so obvious that an entire range of the class never could have "gotten" the joke gave me a flash of an insight:

The quiz was biased. It was biased in favor of smart people.

I mean, even more biased than all quizzes are biased in favor of smart people. Which killed me. I mean, it's not like Jenny and I had composed a stunning poem of untold beauty. We had simply written a little bit of metaphoric play that turned out to be inaccessible to all but a fraction of the class. You had to have a level of linguistic comprehension that is, again, laughingly low, to appropriately engage the question. Which, pedagogically speaking, crushes me. I understand that for testing purposes, things should be clear, straightforward, etc. But this quiz just gives me the idea that we can't even work toward any kind of literary understanding of our everyday. Again, not that the joke was genius, just that it required an ounce of stepped back insight into word meanings. An insight that is obliterated by preoccupation with this notion that education is a game, that the teacher is a binary figure who either 1, gives it to you literally, or 2, is out to trick you. Nothing to be said for a clever turn of concepts that makes you, say, integrate the material.

Okay, end rant. I am sure I am making more of it than is there. The easy move is to say "ASU kids" derisively and move on. I'm not sure that is the case (though I did recently get the comment on a regrade request that a student's grammar was fine because "I can put a semicolon wherever I want." Um, okay). Sure, lots of university kids don't do their readings, don't get it, etc. It's the smart ones who were so distracted by grade-consciousness as to limit their interpretations to fifth grade reading levels that bothers me. How do we speak to others? I only have so many straight-forward, literal ways to convey that "I am in here." Sheesh.

Monday, March 8, 2010

3BK-5 / March Tourism

Make that 3BK-5. Sunday's / this morning's rainfall canceled what would have been a cold and muddy affair against the likes of Griesy and Big Nate. Probably for the better, as Beck and I don't entirely feel up to it, Stefan's still injured, blah blah etc. Besides, I may have wasted all my Dawn-Plus Now With Gries-Fighting Action while finally taking free pizza from his pockets on Saturday. Huzzah*!!! Plus the iPFam has descended upon our abode (!!!), so we have more fun out-hanging to do. It would have stunk to once again make them watch a freezing cold Ultimate game, so hopefully the weather will turn better before next week.

* - Yep, I won my third SLUG scrimmage in a row (3-0 in '10, 7-4 all time) while Griesy lost for the first time in something like 8 or 9 games. Ah, well, all things must pass. Here's an action shot of Griesy in case you don't know to whom I am referring:



Yep, the iPFam is here in full force for their spring vacation - they'll be here for the next few weeks, the Nyetfam is joining us Saturday, Mike NTPB is coming in on Monday - it's the usual March madness here in Sunny Azz. I spent the bulk of the weekend wiping up actual grease, getting the house cleaned and the lawn mowed and all that in anticipation. The study, believe it or not, looks livable, and the various surfaces were dust free at least for a few hours there. Good times.

Beck and I had a great weekend - her last day at work for a week was on Friday, so we time-traveled back to 1950 and hit up the diner around the corner called, appropriately enough, Linda's on Osbourne. Why time-travel, you ask? Well, the 1950s was our best guess as when the decor in the restaurant was established, and there is little doubt that it has gone unchanged since. It's also "the best school lunch you've ever had" fare, with most everything coming straight out of the fat fryer or off the grill with copious butter and or gravy. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It also didn't help that our fellow diners espoused values like "Santa Fe, Mexico, whatever, they're all the same" and, "She ordered San Pellegrino - what a princess!" And reeked of stale cigarettes. After a tasty if bland split meal of fried catfish and country fried steak (when in Rome...), we stepped back into 2010 and grabbed more free Froyo from yours and my favorite place of OMG all time MoJo. Good times! Came home and Beck packed up for her big Saturday trip.

Which was a 12 mile hike in the Superstition Mountains up to Flat-Iron. Beck found a group of fairly die-hard hikers and had been training to made the big trek; she got up at 4:30 (and so did Fred, which means so did I) to leave at 5 to head east out of town. Here's the hike iconic shot:


(Flat Iron is that peak to the far right in the pic). Big, big trip; I spent the morning winning SLUG as referenced, ate lunch, came home and mowed the lawn, and Beck *still* didn't show up for another couple of hours. Intense! She had some quad cramps that hindered her a bit - maybe not a big enough breakfast - and felt like to die at least a couple of times, but required no air rescue and completed the big time hike. Yeah! This resulted in a phone call at 4:45 demanding burgers and / or pizza to replace the lost salt; I decided that my free lunch be damned, we were doing pizza for the potassium benefits, and hit Slice of Sicily for another delicious meal. Beck was fairly conked out during the evening (though she did rally to break our normal rule and hit MoJo for a second time of the weekend. I, incidentally, tried fruit FroYo for the first time - my normal go-tos are chocolate and mint or chocolate and peanut butter concoctions - and I may be a changed human. Seriously, plain yogurt plus Acai (sp?) yogurt plus strawberry shortcake yogurt plus some dark chocolate chips was quite the flavortastic experience), so I spent time cleaning the study - the before / after shots would have been dramatic - until I could watch SNL, which was solid.

I woke up CRAZY early - 4:30 again on Sunday - for unknown though possibly Fred-related reasons, and decided that as long as I was up I would finish the study. So I did, and hung out with Fred / read to start my lazy Sunday. Beck woke up feeling much less sore, so we trekked over to Lola's for our first relaxing Sunday coffee and NYT XWord in a while. Despite the inclusion of "Flow Whistle" as an answer, we did quite well, thanks. Came home to watch an exciting Blackhawks - Red Wings game, do some more reading, and then put the finishing touches on the casa as we waited for the iPFam to arrive. (It poured on and off all day, killing Sunday pickup as well as tonight's game, so I don't really know how I'm going to get my Ultimate fix in the next few days. Ugh). Ate some cheeseburgers / fried potatoes for dinner (Beck still needed to complete the previous day's craving) once they arrived and had a a good time catching up. I was pretty zonked, though, as the consecutive early-risings caught up with me at about 10 and I went into zombie mode. Didn't feel great upon waking up and decided to stay home rather than brave the halls of academia (though I ended up getting a fair amount of work done here anyways).

So far, so good - Fred allegedly did not keep the iPJ and iPMM up, which is a minor miracle, given that she did manage to wake me up at 6 from across the house. It continues to drizzle and be miserable here - very wet and 50 degrees at most today, which is 35 in real degrees according to science. The game cancellation was surprisingly welcome, as referenced. We've been eating some hot food, drinking teas and coffees, and we'll probably grab some dinner out and possibly a movie tonight. I have to get up at 5 tomorrow for some PT and office hours and a full day of the usual - it's not my vacation until next week, when I'll have a pile of midterms to grade, too. Yeehe! In the meantime, fun times, good to see the iPFam, and I'm sure we'll have tales of craziness before the week is out. Though no Ultimate frisbee craziness, a state of affairs I'm not sure I'll be able to handle...

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Not keeping it



The UK's Telegraph reports Austrian millionaire Karl Rabeder is giving away his $4.5 million (estimated) fortune. He is selling all of his possessions and the business that made him his money. His company made interior furnishings and accessories, from vases to artificial flowers. It does not sound like much.

However, Mr. Rabeder has a beautiful old stone farmhouse in Provence with 17 hectares. On sale for the bargain price of 613,000 Euros. He already sold his collection of six gliders valued at 350,000 Euros. He raffled off his Alpine home, a 3,455 sq. ft. villa with lake, sauna and spectacular mountain views over the Alps, by selling 21,999 lottery tickets priced at 87 Euros a piece.

All the money he raises will go into his microfinance charity vehicle, which offers microcredit, very small loans to self-employed people and small, family businesses in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.

Rabeder is only forty-seven and according the Telegraph's story he intends to move into a small wooden hut in the mountains or a simple bedsit (a rental consisting of a single room and shared bathroom) in Innsbruck. It is a curious counterculture tale, here is hoping he does not go Ted Kaczynski.

Friday, March 5, 2010

SLUGgish Math, Kinda

Warning - this is me getting really nerdy about Ultimate and a lecture I heard this week on incorporating uncertainty into wildlife management practices. Read at your peril.

So here's an applied philosophy / math problem for you from the domain of Ultimate, namely our Saturday morning scrimmages. The general situation is this: 20 people show up to play an Ultimate game, and each person is effectively betting five dollars (a pizza lunch) to play. Our goal is to make the games as fair as possible (balance the two teams) and not have any appearance of having picked teams in a biased manner. This is important not just in the spirit of fairness, but because if people show up and lose their five dollars on an unfairly disadvantaged team, they will be disinclined to show up for the following weeks' games. And we can't have that.

To simplify the problem (and this is not to say that Ultimate players are like this, just to demonstrate how difficult this is even with an oversimplified heuristic), let's pretend that you can evaluate Ultimate players on a Madden-esque 1-100 scale, and that the only factor that matters for comparing teams is the aggregate point total of the individual players. I.e., we're not concerned about holistic evaluations of the teams, whether you have a good balance of height, handling and speed, etc., just whether the team point totals match. Let's further pretend that no one is perfect at evaluating a player's point total, but that the best evaluators can get within +/- 1 of a player's true ability.

So there are obvious situations in which fair teams would be impossible. E.g., if there were nineteen 90 point players and one 10 point player, one of the teams will be necessarily outmanned from the get-go. So to make this even simpler, let's say there are 10 pairs of players whom our best evaluator puts at 95, 90, 85, 80, 75, 70, 65, 60, 55, and 50. Again, this is ridiculously over-simplified, but this is a situation that at least looks like it would be amenable to crafting fair teams.

We are trying to dodge all appearances of bias, so we don't want anyone, even the best evaluator, to pick the teams by himself due to the obvious conflict of interest involved. Using the two 95 point players as captains and drafting schoolyard style has drawbacks, too - 1, if the best evaluator is involved, he will have an inherent advantage; 2, if the best evaluator is not involved but there is still a disparity in evaluation ability, one captain will still have an inherent advantage*; 3, if the captains are nowhere near the best evaluator and are picking (relatively) haphazardly, getting the balance correct will be very unlikely.

* - Either 1 or 2 would test the better evaluator's sense of duty to fairness v. his lust for pizza; presumably, if he were a really stand-up individual, he could draft to correct any mistakes the opposing captain made to keep things fair. But I don't know how likely this is, as pizza is really tasty.

All of that was set up to what I find interesting, our solution and its success or failure. We've had the best evaluator (or a sort of communal "best evaluator council" of a few knowledgeable players) name these pairs and then select the teams by coin flips. This randomizes the teams to some extent* and is pretty effective in killing the appearance of bias - unless we're rigging the coin flips, we're pretty clearly not rigging the teams. So one goal is well accomplished. But does this method result in fair teams?

* - It also happens to mandate some sets of never-teammates - e.g., Griesy and Cole have never played together because they are a somewhat natural ability-level pair. So no matter which way the coin flips go, they're still on opposing teams every week.

The answer is "hmmm." Even if we believe the generous assumption that we can get within one of a player's "true ability," and even when people are lined up as I've outlined above with a seemingly balanced pool from which to pick, the coin flips actually work against balanced teams. Look at each pair - it's either going to be a wash (we got both players right, or got them both wrong in the same direction - e.g., 90 v. 90 was right, or they're both 91, or both 89), or +1 (e.g. the second round pick is "actually" 91 v. 90) or +2 (e.g., 81 v. 89). To really crunch the math on this, we'd need to start inventing probabilities of being off by one in each direction, etc. But to make the general point, I'll keep the math a little simple and note that for the errors to balance out, you effectively need the coin to come up heads (the better player of the pair ending up on team A) the same number of times that it comes up tails (the better player of the pair ending up on team B). You're asking, in ten coin flips, for the coin to come up heads or tails 50% of the time.

The problem is, that's not a common event. The chance of five heads in ten flips is (10 combination 5) * (.5)^10 = .246. So the teams will be "fair" or as fair as possible given the constraints only a quarter of the time.

But that's assuming that all ten coin flips mattered. Let's say that all of those probabilities of error in individual player evaluation are equal. In other words, it's equally likely that we get the rating right, overestimate by one, or underestimate by one. If this is the case, then 1/3 of the time a pair will be equal, 2/9 of the time, they'll be off by 2, and 4/9 of the time they'll be off by one*. The important thing is that one third of the coin flips won't matter. Let's be generous and call that four coin flips that don't matter, so now we only need to get 3 out of 6 heads.

* - E.g., there is a 1/3 chance that I overrate player A times a 1/3 chance that I overrate player B, so there is a 1/9th chance that I overrate them both. There's also a 1/9th chance that I get them the same and a 1/9th chance that I underrate them both, so there's a 1/3 total chance that they end up washing. Similar calculations can be made for the other states.

That's more likely - (6 combination 3) * (.5)^6 = .3125, or getting toward a third of the time. But that still leaves two thirds of the time where the teams will be unbalanced*, which is not great.

* - I'm leaving out the complications of those +1's and +2's washing out or not at varying rates in both the 3 out of 6 heads situations and otherwise. That difference is going to complicate both the allegedly balanced and unbalanced situations, so I think it's reasonable for simplicity's sake to collapse those +2's to +1's to make the point that there is a better chance that one team will have an advantage than that they will be even).

But let's step back into something resmebling reality and introduce the notion that maybe a +1 or +2 differential won't *really* make that much of a difference spread over a team. I.e., as long as one team gets at most two "advantages" in the coin-flipping process, things will be effectively even. In other words, if I get 4 heads, 3 heads, or 2 heads out of the 6 coin flips that matter, the teams are "balanced enough." Ah, now we're talking. Because that means that all three of the following situations would be fair:

(6 combo 3) * (.5^6) = .3125
(6 combo 2) * (.5^6) = .2344
(6 combo 4) * (.5^6) = .2344
----------------------------------
Fair teams = .7813

So we can rest easy, knowing that between 3/4ths and 4/5ths of the time, the teams are within a tolerable level of fairness. It's probably worth noting that the remaining "unfair teams" situations here are driven by the uncertainty in our evaluation process, not by the drafting process. In other words, dropping the coin flips and just having the best evaluator split each of the balanced pairs however he will would still result in this ratio of fair and unfair team situations. Again, the "balanced pairs" situation is not real-world likely, so we don't want to let the best evaluator choose the teams that way, lest he appear biased. (Particularly if he wins pizza!).

Right - all of that is qualified by the notion that this is a pretty simplistic model, and the pairs involved are probably more disparate than this. To account for obvious discrepancies, we could probably improve the process (in the event of some wacky coin-flipping that appears to be favoring one team over the other) by stopping the coin-flipping and actively balancing the teams with the last couple of picks. And we could keep the bias out by assigning people involved in the team-crafting process by coin flip at the end. Voila!

Alright, hope that wasn't too painful. But it is interesting to me that coin-flipping is automatically assumed to be fair, and in many situations - where the individual player disparities are large enough to swing a game, and you really do need the coin to come up heads exactly half of the time - the randomness of the process is actually more likely to produce an imbalance. Seems that, especially if some of the player pairs are not ideal, that some conscious adjustments need to be made to keep the people coming back to SLUG it out.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

3BK-4 : Weekend : 7/8ths of a Nyet

What a friggin' waste of time. Tonight we played Nappi's team "I'm With Coco," a team that had previously been undefeated. But when their top three draft picks didn't show up, the rest of their roster couldn't even begin to pick up the slack. We completely played down to their level and still won 15-3. It's not even worth recounting; sloppy play on both sides, dropped passes, missed hammers, idiotic rushed throws... but the other team was so outgunned that it didn't matter. So we're 3-1, +19, and 3-0, +27 by my dad's rules that we only count games in which the Beck and I are present. (Beck sat out tonight's game in an effort to heal up her hamstring so she can go hiking this weekend, so maybe we're just 2-0, +15. I seriously doubt it's worth keeping track of these auxiliary figures).

I felt okay tonight - left knee didn't bother me too much. I did get really tired, though, for unknown reasons - I may be getting a tad out of shape because of all the not-running I've been doing lately to try to get my joints back in gear. And I may not have eaten enough today (see below).

This weekend was great - I got a lot of work done, but in between all the reading and writing, lotsa fun stuff. Beck and I went to movie and a dinner and a Froyo on Friday (Shutter Island, Tuck Shop, and MoJo - free MoJo* - respectively). I won a free pizza lunch at Sprawl SLUG on Saturday, and later Beck and I had breakfast for dinner (matzah brie, pancakes and bacon, YUM). I met Tuftsbuds Josh and Nicole who were swinging through town with a long layover on a flight from Montana to New York (yes, through PHX) and grabbed brunch at Acacia Cafe, and after that PM watched the gold medal hockey game which was thrilling even if it didn't have the best result. So GOOD TIMES, and the grind back at school this week has been all the more tolerable for it.

* - We go to MoJo a lot, so when I ran into a dude offering free MoJo coupons (value - $12) in exchange for donations to a cause ($5), I didn't blink - this was just a sound investment, as we basically go to MoJo once a week like good little crack addicts. The donation aspect was just gravy on a deal that was clearly worth it. Beck questioned whether I had just made a donation to e.g. Hitler Youth, but I looked it up, and the charity donations were made to the Special Olympics which, last time I checked, does not overlap very much with the neo-Nazi ethos. So I think we're in the clear. AND because I made a five dollar donation for two free yogurt coupons plus two buy one get one free coupons, AND I did it again yesterday, we're effectively getting 12 yogurts for the price of four + $10, or $72 worth of yogurt for $34, which is probably still HELLA OVERPRICED. But it is so good.

So, MoJo aside, I have been trying to keep my calories down since about a week before the end of January and have upped my calorie expenditure as much as reasonable. I was ~200 lbs. at some point last August when I was injured and not playing disc, but even in January I was probably around 188 or so. Long story short, I weighed 173 after physical therapy yesterday, and granted that was after a pretty intense workout and some sweating, but it wasn't *that* much sweating. I feel pretty good, look thin (I think), and it seems to be helping my knees to some extent. So yay! The goal is roughly the 165-170 range, which was about my real playing weight in high school football. And don't worry, I am taking vitamins and lifting weights and generally being smart about not starving myself or anything - the general deal is that I limit calories to 600 or so between breakfast and lunch, then eat something substantial for dinner around 1000 calories or so, and skip snacking during the day (or limit it to 100 calorie doses). This keeps me in the 1600-1800 range on a daily basis, and theoretically I burn through somewhere in the 2400-2800 range each day by just breathing (based on my height, weight, age and general fitness). So add in some Ultimate workouts and quite a bit of time on the bike / elliptical, and that was a pretty big deficit over the course of February. So YAY, I suppose, and hopefully this will help out in the wear and tear department. It remains to be seen whether I will be able to keep up the act when the iP and Nyetfams come to town, but I'll do my best.

Anyways, it may have caught up with me today, as I didn't eat a substantial enough dinner and felt very low energy at Ultimate tonight. It clearly did not matter at all, as our opponents did not entirely show up. But mental note - I am well enough on my way on the weight front, I need to eat a damn clif bar or something before playing. Ugh.

Alright, speaking of, I need to go stretch and ice and get to bed so I can go to the gym before school tomorrow*. Wish me luck - I am pretty excited that i have been able to have a definite goal in mind (lose weight for Ultimate purposes) and it's seemed to motivate me enough to get 'er done. Per usual, not slipping into the "just eat whatever" habits will be key. I have been counting calories, hopefully not in an obsessive way, and it definitely keeps me honest.

* - I am really, really tired, and if anyone wants to convince me that playing frisbee til 10 at night and then going to the gym the next morning at 6 may be a bad idea, I am all ears.

A Bad Surprise



The Clarion Content has always wondered how much of the Darwin Awards are made up. Are they apocryphal? Urban legend? Loyal readers know that we recognize that the realm of truth has as much breadth as the tales of fiction. Yet we always struggle with credulity when reading the Darwin Awards. Yesterday, however, we ran across an item in the Detroit Free Press that is probably an early candidate for the 2010 winners.

Here is the story. A 50 year-old Washington state man was apparently not very seriously hurt after his car collided with a power pole Friday. He called a relative to help pull his vehicle from a ditch. As it turned out, unfortunately, while he was waiting he had to pee. When family members arrived they found him dead, electrocuted. He apparently urinated into the roadside ditch, but did not see the live wire from the downed pole. The urine stream probably served as the conductor that allowed the electricity to reach his body. Zap.

Ouch! To say, what a way to go, hardly seems sufficient!