Remember To Teen-Proof Your Home This Winter

December 10, 2007 by mrpikes

I found this column from the St. Charles Journal amusing. The author republishes an advertisement for a squirrel removal service, replacing the word “squirrel” with “teen”.

It took me back to Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful novel Scoop. In it, a provincial writer named William Boot writes a nature column called Lush Places for the Beast (a London newspaper). William writes “a lyrical, but wholly accurate account of the habits of the badger…” Subsequently, his sister Priscilla:

…in a playful mood had found the manuscript and altered it, substituting for “badger” throughout “the great crested grebe.” It was not until Saturday morning when, in this form, it appeared in the Beast that William was aware of the outrage.

His mail had been prodigious; some correspondents were sceptical, others derisive; one lady wrote to ask whether she read him aright in thinking he condoned the practice of baiting these rare and beautiful birds with terriers and deliberately destroying their earthly homes; how could this be tolerated in the so-called twentieth century? A major in Wales challenged him categorically to produce a single authenticated case of a great crested grebe attacking young rabbits.

Support This

September 10, 2007 by mrpikes 1 Comment

Ah, meta humor…

Seriously, someone help me to understand what compels people to put ribbons, bumper stickers, etc. on their vehicles. I get the whole “raising awareness” thing, e.g., breast cancer, but the whole thing just seems so clubbish.

Here in Virginia, the number of vehicles sporting Virginia Tech paraphernalia has skyrocketed since the massacre in April. I’m sure that some people are genuinely expressing grief for the senseless loss of life. Some may be personally affected, others may know someone who is. The rest are simply aping Bud and Mitzy two McMansions down, like with those fucking Lance Armstrong bracelets.

Regardless, please, WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME WITH YOUR CAR?

The best that I can come up with is that a bumper sticker represents the last, pithy word in an argument that I didn’t ask to have. I guess every time the owner looks at hus own bumper, hu says, “I sure told that guy.” That would certainly explain the escalation between the Jesus Fish People and the Darwin Fish People.

Is This Because of the Al Qaeda?

August 19, 2007 by mrpikes 2 Comments

I take an interest in security, from the perspective of “What is the threat, how effective is a given security measure at dealing with that threat, and is the trade off of convenience, liberty or whatever worth it to those who have to interact with the security measure day to day?”

From the previous question posed, what requirement is not met?

When confronted with a particularly egregious, invasive or pointless security measure, I have taken to asking the “person in charge” (be that a receptionist, security staff member, police officer, etc.) with wide-eyed, straight-faced concern, “Is this because of the Al Qaeda?” Sometimes they catch on immediately to the fact that they have a smartass on their hands *, other times they respond with genuine reassurance. Regardless, the reactions are always fun. It’s not unlike a Buddhist koan, in that it may arrest the person from hus preconceptions regarding the basis or efficacy of the security measure at hand. Or not.

I’m sick and tired of hearing “In these troubled times in which we live…” or “In this post-9/11 world…” Those overworked talking points only serve to delay us from returning to some sort of baseline of common sense. It is impossible simultaneously to live in a free society and be 100% secure. I do not mean to say that we should do nothing, but we need to swing the pendulum away from reactionary, intrusive, high-visibility/low-effectiveness, fear mongering security measures that are stomping all over what makes this country great. I sincerely believe that Americans simply have not reached the tipping point where fear turns to anger, beyond which they will fight these intrusions – with their votes and their dollars.

Sooner would be better. Maybe we would have been better off if Richard Reid had been the “underwear bomber“.

* A couple of years ago I was in line at a security checkpoint in O’Hare when a TSA employee saw the “Selectee” code on my boarding pass and informed me, “Sir, you have been selected for special screening.” I let a big smile grow across my face and with enthusiasm said, “Really? I never win anything!” I watched his mind work for a few seconds, “Idiot or smartass? Idiot or smartass? Yep. Smartass.”

Playing Tricks

May 24, 2007 by mrpikes

Recently I was running an errand when a sign caught my eye. As I drove closer, the sign persisted in saying what it said. I actually wondered, “Is there a big market for that sort of thing? Do people come in on their lunch hour, or what?”

Last night I was watching the Lost season finale (pretty much the only broadcast television I’ve watched in a month) when I saw a commercial for Breyers ice cream. I swore the package said “Double Chum“. Again with the thinking, “Is there a big market for that sort of thing?”

After I finished being amused, I remembered when I was 18 and spent a summer teaching magic at a performing arts camp outside of Hancock, New York. The only entertainment after the campers went to bed (aside from fucking other staff) was the only bar within walking distance, whose sole reason for existing was us. It was named, simply, SALOON, spelled out on the face of the structure in a Western, wanted-poster-style font:

At any sort of distance, it read SHLOON, which was what everyone called it and inevitably pronounced it after we had had a few anyway.

Heh.

THE ALGORITHM IS WHY IT BURNS WHEN I PEE

April 20, 2007 by mrpikes

THE ALGORITHM CONSTANTLY FINDS JESUS
THE ALGORITHM KILLED JEEVES
THE ALGORITHM IS BANNED IN CHINA
THE ALGORITHM IS FROM JERSEY

It Tolls for Thee

April 4, 2007 by mrpikes 1 Comment

The Smoking Gun posts mug shots, confidential documents, transcripts, legal filings, rock band riders – all kinds of lurid material. One of my favorite mug shots – actually, one of my favorite images ever – is of Patrick Tribett, arrested for huffing paint. The image has such gravity I can only look at it for short periods.

Amazingly, the Smoking Gun recently located another mug shot of a fellow arrested under similar circumstances to our Mr. Tribett. The image is not iconic in the way that Mr. Tribett’s is, but nevertheless captures its subject poignantly.

Some would say that while publishing celebrity mug shots is fair game, posting images of regular people is cruel. Someone makes a dumb mistake (NSFW) and it lives on the Internet forever (well, 17 years and counting). People change, forgive, forget, and move on, but the Internet never forgets.

I do not disagree, but the genie is out of the bottle. The reality is that our actions now have searchable memories, so it’s best on general principles to keep your footprint small, and try not to become a meme.

The Monty Hall Problem Revisited

March 27, 2007 by mrpikes

My last post dealt with the probability curiosity referred to as The Monty Hall Problem. I though it would be useful to call out two ways of conceptualizing its highly counterintuitive solution. Neither of these concepts are mine. I simply offer them to enhance appreciation of the problem’s solution.

Concept 1

Step throught the scenarios:

Behind one door is the car, behind the other two are goats (Nanny and Fanny).

Scenario 1: The contestant initially selects the door with the car. The host then reveals Nanny. If the contestant switches doors, hu will select Fanny (lose).

Scenario 2: The contestant initially selects the door with Nanny. The host then reveals Fanny. If the contestant switches doors, hu will select the car (win).

Scenario 3: The contestant initially selects the door with Fanny. The host then reveals Nanny. If the contestant switches doors, hu will select the car (win).

Hence, switching results in a winning outcome in two out the three possible scenarios.

Concept 2

Increase the number of doors to 100. The player picks a door, then the host opens 98 of the other doors, revealing goats (they have names, but not as good as Nanny and Fanny). The host offers the contestant the opportunity to switch doors. The original odds that the contestant had of picking the door with the car behind it remain 1 in 100. Only one other door remains unopened. The odds of the car being behind that door are therefore 99 in 100.

The Monty Hall Problem

March 25, 2007 by mrpikes

A friend of mine recently explained the Monty Hall Problem to me in a bar (what do you talk about in bars?) and while it is utterly counterintuitive, the math totally works.

Marilyn vos Savant, the person with the highest IQ ever recorded, was posed the following question in her 1990 Parade Magazine column:

Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what’s behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you: ‘Do you want to pick door #2?’ Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?

—Craig F. Whitaker, Columbia, Maryland

She responded that the contestant should switch, owing to the fact that hu had a 2/3 chance of winning by switching doors, and only a 1/3 chance of winning by staying fast.

Her response generated thousands of letters, many of them from Ph.Ds in mathematics, telling her that she was wrong.

She is not wrong.

More for fun than proof, you might enjoy playing with Steven R. Costenoble’s simulation (bottom of page, requires Java). The problem with real time simulations like these is that probability seldom bears out using small samples. For instance, everyone knows that with a fair coin and a fair toss, the probability of the coin landing heads is 50%. Toss a coin ten times and see if you get five heads and five tails. Do it a million times, however, and the results will converge on 50%.

Curious, I wrote a simulation of my own, setting it to step through the scenario a million times. The contestant switching doors resulted in winning the car 678,042 times out of a million (67.8% of the time).

Neat.

Monopoly Guy Rich

March 9, 2007 by mrpikes 1 Comment

After years of referring to lotteries as “a tax on people who are bad at math,” earlier this year I set up an annual subscription to one of the multi-state lotteries (Mega Millions). For the price of $104 a year ($8.67/mo) I have a ticket registered in every drawing (two a week).

The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 175,711,536. The odds of winning the second prize ($250,000) are a mere 1 in 3,904,701. By comparison, my lifetime odds of dying from the ignition or melting of nightwear are 1 in 1,249,356. For the same reason that I’m playing the lottery, I’m sleeping naked:

No matter what the odds, the probability goes to zero if you don’t play (or wear nightwear).

One of my favorite blonde jokes goes like this:

A single mother, who is blonde, is also a devout Christian. Every night she prays to God, “I’m doing the best I can. Please help me give my children the security and opportunities they deserve – let me win the lottery.”

For six months, every night, she fervently prays this way. One night, overwhelmed and frustrated, she prays, “God, I go to church, I live by your teachings, I give to the collection plate even when I can’t afford it, I deserve this. If you don’t make it happen, we’re quits.”

That night The Almighty appears to her in a dream. He says, “Lady. Meet me half way. Buy a ticket.”

Given what I am willing or, rather, not willing to do to obtain obscene wealth, the only way I can hope to arrive at this outcome is by winning the lottery. And I would do a fabulous job at being an obscenely wealthy person. Setting aside what I would give back via worthwhile foundations and grants, I would do all the eccentric, crazy crap that we associate with the mindbogglingly well off. I would:

Wear a monocle.
Own a geisha-cooled computer.
Pick a fun item for my wife to collect, then surprise her on random occasions by presenting her with another one. Perhaps zoos.
Anonymously give a million dollars to a deserving stranger.
Employ an assistant of Indian heritage (who learned English at Oxford) to pop up in the aforementioned stranger’s life at opportune moments to deliver meaningful but cryptic advice.

The entertainment value that I get from fantasizing about my behavior were I to become breathtakingly flush is more than worth the $8.67 a month on lottery tickets.

Brave New Ballot

February 26, 2007 by mrpikes

Hon. John Suchandso
Secretary of State
123 Fake Street
Anytown, AA 12345

February 26, 2007

Dear Mr. Secretary Suchandso,

My name is [REDACTED], and I write to you as a United States citizen deeply concerned about the integrity of our voting system. I am not affiliated with any organization.

Enclosed with this letter is a copy of Brave New Ballot, by Dr. Aviel Rubin. Dr. Rubin is a Professor of Computer Science and Technical Director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University. I have provided his book to you and to each of your counterpart Secretaries of State because I found it to be a thorough, accessible resource detailing the issues surrounding electronic voting systems. I hope that you find it useful.

I served as an election officer in Henrico County, Virginia for the 2006 midterm election. It was a highly worthwhile experience that I look forward to repeating. My fellow volunteers were experienced and dedicated, and procedurally the day ran flawlessly. I was prepared for the unfortunate reality that without a paper audit trail we could not objectively prove that our precinct’s results were valid. What I was unprepared for was the meaningful percentage of voters who had serious difficulties navigating the touch screen ballots. Those who assume that familiarity with the graphical user interface is ubiquitous do a huge disservice to these voters.

I believe that we need to take a big step back and restate the problems that we were we trying to solve, then assess how well electronic voting machines actually solve them.

Our voting system should be a point of national pride, trusted and understood by all citizens, and used as the gold standard worldwide. It is far too precious a thing to entrust to proprietary black boxes produced by the private sector, whose interest in secure and accurate elections is at best secondary.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Respectfully yours,

[REDACTED]

NOO-klee-ur

February 15, 2007 by mrpikes 4 Comments

With the clown car of contenders for the 2008 presidential election emptying into the center ring, I’m keeping an ear out for how well each candidate pronounces “nuclear.” While its correct pronunciation will not be enough to secure my vote (there is still hair to consider, after all), I would be willing to turn a blind eye to a great deal from a candidate who plants that word on the mat ten times out of ten.

Candidate: My baby mulching program will break the cycle of poverty while simultaneously bolstering agriculture and our transition to biofuels, reducing our dependence on environmentally irresponsible energy sources such as fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Me: W00t! He said “nuclear!”

Am I setting the bar too goddamn high?

Visa Can Bite My Priceless Bag

December 31, 2006 by mrpikes 7 Comments

You may have seen the Visa commercial “Lunch” featuring a highly efficient delicatessen, food literally flying off the grill, and everyone checking out at the register with a Visa check card without even breaking stride – all to the tune Powerhouse.

The whole operation breaks down, the commercial shows us, when some inconsiderate prick uses cash. The music comes to a calamitous halt, food crashes to the floor, people run into one another, and everyone stares at the man like he’s a herpe while the register clerk makes his change.

This is the first ad I’ve seen where cash is made out to be the bad guy, and I yell at the television every time it comes on. See, I love cash. I use it whenever possible and, despite Visa’s depiction to the contrary, my experience is that cash is still superior to electronic debit for retail transactions.

A few properties of cash that I enjoy are:

It is accepted nearly everywhere.
It spends even when the power is out and communications are down.
My experience is that I get through most retail transactions faster than my debit card-wielding counterparts.
The benefits of anonymity extend beyond privacy. Because cash transactions do not couple any of my accounts with my purchases, fewer records exist that are prone to compromise via dumpster diving, dishonest clerks or hacking.
Cash is easily transferable. I can hand my wife a hundred dollars in cash without any intermediary.
Cash can get things done that electronic debit cannot, e.g., slipping the maitre’d a Jackson for better/faster seating. If this is not an issue for you, I suggest that you aren’t living life to its fullest.
Cash is a better deal both for retailers and customers. Retailers pay no fee (typically a flat 7.5 to 10 cents for debit, and up to a usurious 2% for credit), and customers are not at risk of discovering increasingly common point-of-sale fees on their monthly bank statements.

Cash isn’t ideal for everything. I pay all of my bills online, for example, because the benefits of eliminating all that paper (invoices, envelopes, checks) outweigh the costs (persistent records, transaction fees). Privacy doesn’t enter into it because my identity is already coupled to the accounts that I settle electronically.

In addition, cash does not scale well – paying for a car or house in cash is inconvenient and likely to invite scrutiny by our dedicated public servants at the Internal Revenue Service, Drug Enforcement Agency and Department of Homeland Security. And earlier this year, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that “..possession of a large amount of cash…is strong evidence that the cash is connected with the drug trade,” and the cash can legally be seized.

With their irritating commercial, Visa is attempting to create a perception that simply doesn’t live up to its claims. I will continue using cash whenever I can, for as long as it’s around, and I recommend anyone consider doing the same. The world will be a slightly cooler place for it.