Leave Hitler Alone!

July 6, 2009 by mrpikes

Bernie Ecclestone, billionaire Formula 1 supremo, in a recent interview with the Times (entitled “Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One boss, says despots are underrated”) stepped spectacularly on his own dick.

In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people able to get things done.

This, the week before the German Grand Prix. The fallout was predictable. It seems as if anyone even remotely connected with German politics is boycotting the Grand Prix, and organizations such as the Jewish World Congress are demanding Ecclestone’s resignation.

This, a mere 15 months after Max Mosley, the president of the Fédération Internationale de l’ Automobile (FIA) and the hammer to Bernie’s anvil with respect to controlling Formula 1 for decades, was outed by the News of the World on video engaging in a five hour, Nazi-themed, sadomasochistic orgy with five prostitutes (previously, previously, previously aaaaaaaaaaand previously).

It’s as if they simply cannot help themselves. I am reminded of this brilliant bit from Fawlty Towers, in which John Cleese’s character (suffering the effects of a blow to the head) cannot stop himself from upsetting four German hotel guests by repeatedly mentioning the war:

GET vs. POST

April 21, 2008 by mrpikes 1 Comment

I promise, this gets funnier.

When one develops a web form, like the MrPikes Contact Form, one chooses the means by which the form data will get from the user’s browser to the program on the web server that *does* things with that data – like sends an email, or writes a record to a database. One’s choices are GET or POST.

The GET method encodes the form data into the URL. If the MrPikes Contact Form used the GET method, the resulting URL would look something like this:

https://www.mrpikes.com/contact.php?name=Max%20Mosley
&email=max.mosley%40fia.com&subject=Stop%20Heckling%20Me
&message=You’re%20hurting%20my%20feelings.
&human=20&submit=Send+Form

You tend to see long, ugly URLs like this on sites that dynamically nail their pages together based on database queries.

The POST method passes the form data to the web server in a way that is invisible to the user, i.e., the values are not encoded in the URL.

Each method has its advantages and disadvantages, but the rule that I always follow is that if a user input the data, always use POST.

This is to prevent URL hacking, which amounts to replacing values in the URL manually, with potentially devastating security implications.

It can also be hilarious.

CNN has a beta program which enables visitors to create t-shirts from headlines, available for purchase. The developers went with GET, meaning that users can hack the URL and make t-shirts that say whatever the hell they like. Since the program is still in beta, you cannot actually order the t-shirts, but that hasn’t stopped Gawker, Fark and numerous other sites from having a field day with the program.

My own contribution:

The Doomsday Algorithm

April 17, 2008 by mrpikes

Okay, so this is my new favorite thing. John Horton Conway is a renowned mathematician who came to my attention for his Doomsday Algorithm.

The algorithm allows one, with the memorization of a few rules and some basic arithmetic, to determine the day of the week for any day, month and year specified. Conway himself can consistently provide the answer in under two seconds. Arthur Benjamin can also do it very quickly, as he demonstrates in this performance (starting at 7:54). I’ve been practicing for about an hour and can do the calculation in about half a minute…

The essential concept is that each year has a Doomsday (a day of the week), and that day is always the last day of February. For example, 2008’s Doomsday (February 29th) is Friday. Once you know a given year’s Doomsday, the day of the week for the date specified can be inferred from its offset to Doomsday, with the application of a few simple rules.

For example, let’s say that the date given is December 18th, 2008. 2008’s Doomsday is Friday. Based on the way that the Gregorian calendar works, December 12th (12/12, easy to remember) always falls on the same day of the week as the last day of February (the count of the days between the two is evenly divisible by 7). From there, all you do is calculate the offset from December 12th to the target date December 18th (6 days). So, December 18th is a Thursday.

The rules are different for different months. For example, take March 28th, 2008, the date that Max Mosley engaged in a five hour Nazi-themed orgy with five prostitutes (previously, previously). March 7th is always the same day of the week as Doomsday, so March 28th (offset by 21 days) is a Friday as well.

For me, the time-consuming part is determining a given year’s Doomsday, because of leap year rules (a leap year occurs every four years, except for years that are evenly divisible by 100, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400). The only method that I’ve located involves using a century offset. For example, if I want to know the Doomsday of the year 1967, I calculate it as an offset of 1900’s Doomsday.

1900’s Doomsday is Wednesday (which has to be memorized). To determine 1967’s Doomsday, you do three calculations and sum the results of each:

1) How many times does 12 go into 67 (as in 1967)? The answer is 5.
2) What is the remainder? The answer is 7.
3) How many times does 4 go into the remainder? The answer is 1.

5 + 7 + 1 = 13, which is the number of days that 1967’s Doomsday is offset from 1900’s Doomsday. So, 1967’s Doomsday is Tuesday.

I hope to get a lot faster, because it seems like a fun way to play with someone else’s mind. I’m not overly worried about this post spoiling the trick, because my legion readership is still dwarfed by Famous Jewish Sports Legends.

Discrete vs. Discreet

April 7, 2008 by mrpikes

Shopping for midget porn the other day, I came across an e-commerce site offering “Discrete Shipping”.

A Google search on “Discrete Shipping” (over 63,000 results) suggests the problem is not isolated (but hilarious).

As a committed pedant, I thought I would take this opportunity to explain the difference between “discreet” and “discrete”, and even offer a mnemonic trick for remembering the difference.

Discreet – having or showing discernment or good judgment in conduct and especially in speech (Merriam-Webster Online), as in, “Max Mosley failed to keep his Nazi-themed orgy discreet.”

Discrete – constituting a separate entity; individually distinct (Merriam-Webster Online), as in, “The five prostitutes that Max Mosley engaged for his Nazi-themed orgy were from five discrete agencies.”

So, taken literally, “discrete shipping” would mean that if I ordered three midget porn DVDs, they would arrive in three separate packages.

I’m glad that I didn’t order jelly beans.

The mnemonic trick is simple. Look at the “e”s in each spelling. Notice how the “e”s in “discrete” are separate, or discrete.

Isn’t learning fun?

What Does Schadenfreude Mean? Ask Max Mosley. He Speaks German.

March 31, 2008 by mrpikes 2 Comments

Max Mosley is the President of the Fédération Internationale de l’ Automobile and is, as such, arguably the most powerful person in motor racing worldwide.

The News of the World (a British tabloid) published an investigative piece yesterday (with video) that appears to show Mr. Mosley participating in a Nazi-themed, sadomasochistic orgy with five prostitutes.

Or, as we call it at my house, “Thursday.”

While Mr. Mosley has not made a statement denying the article’s claims, a spokesperson for the FIA stated:

This is a matter between Mr. Mosley and the paper in question. We understand that Mr. Mosley’s lawyers are now in contact with that newspaper and the FIA has no comment.

Predictably, the hue and cry for Mosley’s resignation came immediately from organizations such as Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Centre. I say “predictably” because Max Mosley is a prominent figure in the public eye, whose family has direct Nazi associations. Max’s father Oswald Mosley was the founder of the British Union of Fascists, and he and Max’s mother were married in the drawing room of Joseph Goebbels, with Adolf Hitler in attendance.

The timing is also unfortunate, coming as it does less than a month before the debut of a FIA-sponsored anti-racism initiative at the Barcelona Grand Prix.

Now, I don’t like Max Mosley. He has used his position to carry out personal attacks in the media against Formula 1 legends like Sir Jackie Stewart (“He goes round dressed up as a 1930s music hall man. He’s a certified halfwit.”), and I have a personal grudge over his breathtaking failure of leadership in the debacle that was the 2005 United States Grand Prix.

That said, I don’t want to see Max forced to resign over this. While the whole episode is decidedly unsavory if true, I think it falls firmly in the realm of private life, and it was a victimless crime. While Max may have shown questionable personal judgment (public figures should really make more an effort not to get caught on video engaged in this sort of behavior), I would rather see him lose his position as President of the FIA based solely for his actions in that role.