Hello World

Watch this video:

Cross-posted from my other blog.

Incidentally, YouTube's embed code works on LJ now!

First, I scored some tickets to go see Robin Williams do standup on Thursday night (information here). For the sake of me having a good time, I really hope he's back off the wagon.

Second, I discovered my new desktop background. Perfect for widescreens! [kottke, who also linked to this insane video documenting how even the Food Network is evil]

So...

A highly superior being from another part of the galaxy presents you with two boxes, one open and one closed. In the open box there is a thousand-dollar bill. In the closed box there is either one million dollars or there is nothing. You are to choose between taking both boxes or taking the closed box only. But there's a catch.

The being claims that he is able to predict what any human being will decide to do. If he predicted you would take only the closed box, then he placed a million dollars in it. But if he predicted you would take both boxes, he left the closed box empty. Furthermore, he has run this experiment with 999 people before, and has been right every time.

What do you do?

On the one hand, the evidence is fairly obvious that if you choose to take only the closed box you will get one million dollars, whereas if you take both boxes you get only a measly thousand. You'd be stupid to take both boxes.

On the other hand, at the time you make your decision, the closed box already is empty or else contains a million dollars. Either way, if you take both boxes you get a thousand dollars more than if you take the closed box only.

Well, without reading the analysis, I'd go ahead and take the closed box. A thousand bucks is nice and all, but I'd rather just take the inexplicably-strong odds of getting the million the safe way.

Thanks, Boing Boing.

^* I mean thursday, obviously. It's been a long day!

Deadspin interviews John Rocker (and his girlfriend):

And you two met when she was interviewing you? Because I want to make it clear that I'm not hitting on either one of you.

Yeah, all of her questions were, "Do you have a girlfriend?" "Would you like my number?" I just looked down her shirt, saw what I needed to see and moved on. (Laughs.) I took a leap of faith, because she had a long coat on, and she could have had big birthin' hips or something.

...

Alicia, I have to ask: Do you agree with all his political views?

Alicia: Well, there are many things we disagree on, yes, but at least I see where he's coming from. I feel like part of my job with him is to help people get past this whole "He's John Rocker" thing, because anything that comes out of his mouth is going to be misconstrued, no matter what he says. I want to help facilitate that.

Rocker: Well, it's not like it's her job or anything. It's not like I said, "Well, I need to hire a black girlfriend to make me look better."

People have said that.

It's almost hard to believe this guy's career went in the toilet because he made horrifically-offensive statements!

Full interview here. Believe it or not, I haven't even posted the craziest parts.

Another funny video that tails off at the end.

• A fascinating and in-depth look at how to design a book interior.


• A wrong-minded column that purports to describe the problems with Wikipedia. Column summary: in the minutes after Ken Lay's death, some people wrote inaccurate/biased things in his Wikipedia entry. Over the next several hours those inaccurate/biased things were filtered out and by the afternoon of the day he died the entry was accurate. The column says that the fact that people can write things that are wrong in the posts is an enormous weakness. It doesn't mention the fact that the thousands of contributors to Wikipedia ensured that less than a day after Lay's death, his entry was up-to-the-minute accurate; that the very fault the writer finds in Wikipedia--the faceless masses with the ability to make corrections to every entry--is the reason Wikipedia is reliable. And of course the columnist neglects to mention that anyone concerned about the accuracy of an entry can easily browse every single change made to it and the citations to justify them. Just a generally bizarre column, overall, which in my opinion is a better polemic for Wikipedia than against it.

  Some examples of how misguided this column is: Mathew Ingram's perspective, Open Culture, this Boing Boing post, this Boing Boing post, this Boing Boing post, this Boing Boing post.

  It's true, though, that Wikipedia's value as a source of news information is limited. It's neat that this year's World Cup entry already lists Italy as the winner, but the presence of entries for contemporaneous people and events does make more glaring the short-lived but irritating "corrections" that are rightfully maligned in the column.


• I saw Pirates of the Caribbean over the weekend. I enjoyed it but it wasn't particularly good. Certainly not $132,000,000 good. Depp's Captain Jack was just a tired retread of the role in the first one, in my opinion--a caricature of a caricature going through the expected motions--and aside from the truly excellent bad guy and his minions I didn't really have any interest in the other characters. The effects and action stuff were generally fun, though, and if you can manage to see it at a drive-in theater I can assure you of an entertaining evening (if you aren't unlucky enough to park next to a van stuffed to the gills with pre-teens on cellphones).

In other news, if you want to talk to me you should add me to your google talk list--calamityjake at gmail.com.

Watch what happens when an enormous meteor slams into the Earth in this uplifting video.

Check out this site for a translation of what's going on.

The earth’s crust of 10km in thickness where ground in the earth is composed is wholly peeled off. This is called,”Earth’s crust tidal wave”. There is 1km width of the rock, and it flies to the sky it by the impact. The impact surges to the Japanese Islands and,as a result, the Japanese Islands are crushed. The splinter of the crushed rock easily exceeds the height of 1000Km. After exceeding the atmosphere it reaches space. Afterwards, the splinter of the rock falls again in surface of the earth. The edge of Crater completed by the collision of the meteorite is 7000m in height. It looks like a huge mountain range. The diameter of Crater has 4000Km. Crater is big to swallow a part from Guam to a Chinese continent. But,it was only an introductory chapter of the tragedy that would start in the future…..

[BoingBoing]

Incidentally, the fact that I can't embed the video directly on the page (as opposed to my actual blog) is another reason why LiveJournal annoys me.

• Landon Donovan: Wildly overrated. Can barely dribble the ball without falling down or losing it (or both).


• Eddie Pope: Should have known better than to get that red card against Italy. It was a bad call but he shouldn't have given the ref the opportunity to make it.


• Kasey Keller: I dunno. He looked okay to me (although I missed the Czech slaughter, so maybe that's not accurate). Time for him to sign with RED BULL NEW YORK and enjoy a life of leisure.


• Oguchi Onyewu: Out of control, inept, terrible. Deserved or not, the guy:yellow cards::philatelists:stamps. I swear, somebody's gotta explain to the man that he's not supposed to just drag people to the ground with awkward rugby tackles.


• Brian McBride: Gutsy, creaky. If he wants to, he can spend the next year parleying his manly performance into unlimited, um, romance.


• DaMarcus Beasley: Mediocre, invisible most of the time. But he played a terrific ball for the US offense's only goal of the World Cup.


• Claudio Reyna: A disappointing mistake sullies an otherwise decent career. To be honest, though, Reyna has never been any more than a reliable and boring midfielder. The way that he gave Ghana their first goal demonstrates why this should be his final cap.


• Clinton Dempsey: Hey look guys, sombody on the team actually likes shooting balls at the goal. Imagine if somebody else had tried that!

Looking good on paper doesn't get you into the second round of the World Cup, nor should it. The US need not be ashamed of its effort or its results this year, but they should use the disappointing tournament experience as motivation to improve its myriad weaknesses (playing balls to space, defending without fouling, upping game tempo to take advantage of superiority in conditioning, etc.) in 4 years.

And Arena, who advanced the US team's prospects enormously four years ago, should no longer be the head coach next week.

As for the whining about the officiating: The refs screwed the US this year, but maybe if we had tried actually playing decently things would have gone our way. The draw against Italy was inspirational, but today against Ghana we looked as sluggish and unambitious as the final score indicates. (I think the Dallas Mavericks need to learn the same lesson: great teams make their own luck.)

I will say this, however: I love the fact that the American team doesn't spend half of the game writhing on the ground in a craven attempt to garner free kicks and red cards. The fact that such odious antics are effective is FIFA's cross to bear, not ours.

Overall, I think the team got what it deserved, from getting destroyed by the other eventual Group E losers to exposing the Italians as a bunch of smelly cheap shot artists to wilting under Ghana's relatively weak attack. We weren't gonna win it all this year, so maybe we'll be able to use this experience to give us a chance next time.

Meanwhile, I'll be rooting for Switzerland but I expect Argentina to continue steamrolling everyone they play. Brazil is the only team with a reasonable chance of beating Argentina, and that's if they (Brazil) stop screwing around and actually bother to focus.

I can't help it. I want to see the new Fast and the Furious movie.

May God have mercy on my soul.

I have two persistant computer problems that I just can't figure out. FYI: I have Windows XP with all updates, an AGP NVIDIA GeForce 6200 256mb video card, a gig of ram, and an AMD Athlon XP running at 1.29 GHz.

• I installed a new video card (the aforementioned GeForce) when my old one exploded. Everything's super, except that about 30% of the time after I reboot, the bottom of the screen (about two millimeters of it) is cut off and imperfectly reproduced at the top of my screen. When this happens, the "LCD adjust" option on my monitor's on screen menu is greyed-out and there's nothing I can do to fix it except reboot. Rebooting fixes the problem about 70% of the time, but it's not a panacea.
  
  For what it's worth, I tried reinstalling video card drivers as well as reinstalling the video card's control software--to no avail. If you have any insight on either of these problems, please let me know.


• I'm suffering from some strange USB problems. I've had a lot of trouble getting my iPod to connect to my computer--almost every time I plug it in, I get an error message saying, "One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it." I tried reinstalling the iPod software and reinstalling iTunes, but nothing really fixed the problem.
  
  So that's annoying, but here's where it gets really annoying: sometimes, when I plug in OR unplug a USB device (including but definitely not limited to iPods), the computer spontaneously reboots. This doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
  
  Anyway, I tried uninstalling all USB controllers/hubs in Device Manager and having XP detect the hardware and reinstall it, and it didn't do anything (except force yet another sudden reboot--I'm feeling lucky that the USB hardware managed to reinstall itself at all).

What do you think, guys? Am I totally screwed? Do I have a VIRUS??$#@!?$ (VirusScan hasn't found anything naughty.) Is there a logical next step for either of these problems?

Links of the day:
I heard they were using pig lungs in Florida to bait the homicidal alligator that had developed a taste for human flesh, but I think they should have used human flavor tofu instead. More effective and more healthy.

I'm moving in August, and I would very much like this knife set. Thanks. [gizmodo]

Computer tips of the day:
https://mail.google.com is gmail, but encrypted--secure (note the "s" in "https://"). So first of all, the guy across from you at Starbucks won't be reading your email. And the big bonus is that, at least for me, it's a little faster to use (probably because there are fewer people using the encrypted servers). This trick also works with Google Calendar. I don't know why Google doesn't use these links by default but you should update your bookmarks, my friends.

How to reset your iPod: if your ipod is acting up and you want to reset it, you have to press a couple of buttons to do that--click on "hard reset" on that page to see the command for every type of iPod. This post on fixing a frozen iPod has a few more suggestions for a recidivist iPod.

Television thoughts of the day:
West Wing is over. It was a pretty good ending, although I was hoping we'd get to see Bartlet smoke in church and scream at God in Latin again. Maybe in the reunion show in 5 years. At any rate, it was enjoyable and satisfying--especially the promo for the new Sorkin show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (coming to TVs near you this fall!). I know I might be the only person in America who feels this way, but I think Matthew Perry's still got something left in the tank (and no, I don't mean amphetamines).

Etymologically speaking, a dumpling is really just a little dump.

OMG!

Here's a bigger version.

[AWV]

After the first Red Sox-Yankees game of the season at Fenway last week, when he went 0 for 4, Damon joked that he's still helping the Sox win games. This got me thinking... what if JD and Theo Epstein (Sox GM) got together last winter and set up an elaborate, Usual Suspects-esque con? Here's the way it plays out: as a Yankee, Damon shines as the leadoff hitter and does his usual crappy job in the outfield. The Evil Empire makes the playoffs and, with timely hits from Damon and everyone else in that stupid lineup, beats somebody like Cleveland in the first round, and then gets the inevitable matchup with the Sox. Mysteriously, Damon goes cold behind the plate, and starts dropping tough catches in the outfield. He seems to make mistakes or fall short at the worst times, and the Sox dominate the Bronx Bombers and go on to win their second World Series in three years. Asked later about his surprisingly poor play, Damon just looks at the camera and says "I lost the series for the Yankees. Bad luck, I guess..." as he breaks into a helpless grin.

I think this is the only way Damon could ever redeem himself with Boston fans for signing with the Yankees (something he specifically said he'd never, ever do). Plus it sounds like an awesome 80s movie (although if it were an 80s movie, Damon would start out trying to sabotage the good guys and would gradually come around until he betrayed his former team to hit the game-winner for his new teammates).

I've gotten this forwarded to me a few times. It's a pyramid-scheme email aimed at reducing gas prices through a massive boycott of the oil companies that set gas prices. Despite the email's assurances, I'm pretty confident that this harebrained plan is doomed to fail. I guess my point, primarily, is this: please don't forward these emails to friends or family.

Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:13:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: EMAIL ADDRESS REDACTED
Subject: Gas Prices

GAS WAR - an idea that WILL work
This was originally sent by a retired Coca Cola executive It came from one
of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. It's worth your
consideration.
Join the resistance! I hear we are going to hit close to $ 4.00 a gallon by
next summer and it might go higher!

Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united
action.
Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea. This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than
the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign that was going around last
April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we
wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of
an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought
of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read on
and join with us!
By now you're probably thinking gasoline priced at about $1.50 is super
cheap. Me too! It is currently $2.79 for regular unleaded in my town. Now
that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think
that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we need to take
aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace..not
sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers
need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come
down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas!
And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.
How?
Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas. But we CAN
have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.
Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from
the two biggest co (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not
selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they
reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to
have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas
buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out on me at this
point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of
people!!
I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten
more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x
10 = 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of
people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers.
If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each,
then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level
further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
Again, all you have to do is send this message to 10 people. That's all!
(If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do
is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a
mathematician. But I am...so trust me on this one.) :-)
How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten
more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could
conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I'll bet you didn't think
you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a
difference.
If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we
do not buy gas from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30
RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

Apparently there are ongoing talks between free agent and ex-Redskin LaVar Arrington and the New York Giants. LaVar has expressed his desire to stay within the NFC East. Nice work antagonizing a violent game-changing dynamo, Redskins. WAY TO PISS OFF A PSYCHOPATH.

I just read a great New Yorker article--a profile of a tiny Greenwich Village restaurant, Shopsin's, and its owner, who despises publicity and review-chasing customers. The lease is running out this year and the proprietor is moving on to a new location with cheaper rent (Brooklyn!), thus his finally giving the writer permission to publish the piece (after being a customer for decades).

"You're really not allowed to be anonymous here," Kenny has said. "You have to be willing to be who you really are. And that scares a lot of people." One evening, when the place was nearly full, I saw a party of four come in the door; a couple of them may have been wearing neckties, which wouldn't have been a plus in a restaurant whose waitress used to wear a T-shirt that said "Die Yuppie Scum." Kenny took a quick glance from the kitchen and said, "No, we're closed." After a brief try at appealing the decision, the party left, and the waitress pulled the security gate partway down to discourage other latecomers.

"It's only eight o'clock," I said to Kenny.

"They were nothing but strangers," he said.

"I think those are usually called customers," I said. "They come here, you give them food, they give you money. It's known as the restaurant business."

Kenny shrugged. "Fuck 'em," he said.

The restaurant, with 34 seats, has a menu of over 900 items.

To get an idea of Kenny’s methods, I once asked him how he made one of Eve’s favorites, Chicken Tortilla Avocado Soup, which he describes as a simple soup. “When someone orders that, I put a pan up with oil in it,” he said. “Not olive oil; I use, like, a Wesson oil. And I leave it. I’ve drilled out the holes in the burner so . . . it’s really fucking hot. . . . On the back burner, behind where that pan is, I have that grid. I just take a piece of chicken breast and throw it on. The grid is red hot, flames shooting up, and the chicken sears with black marks immediately and starts to cook. If there were grits or barley or something, I would nuke ‘em. . . . At that point in the cook, that’s what would happen if this were Chicken Tortilla Avocado with barley in it. For this dish—this is a fast dish—I shred cabbage with my knife. Green cabbage. . . . I cut off a chunk and I chop it really finely into long, thin shreds. I do the same with a piece of onion. Same with fresh cilantro. At this point, José has turned the chicken while my back is still to the pan. I throw the shit into the oil, and if you rhythm it properly, by the time you have the onions and everything cut, the oil is just below smoke. Smoke for that oil is about three-eighty-five. After three-eighty-five, you might as well throw it out. It won’t fry anymore; it’s dead. But I turn around just before smoke and I throw this shit in. And what happens is the cabbage hits it and almost deep-fries—it browns—and now we get a really nice cabbage, Russian-type flavor. The onions soften immediately, and I now turn back and I take one of any number of ingredients, depending on what they’ve ordered, and in this particular instance, for someone like you, I would add crushed-up marinated jalapeño peppers to about a five, which is about a half a tablespoon. They’re in a little cup in front of me. . . . In front of me, in, like, a desk in-out basket, I have two levels of vegetables that don’t need to be refrigerated and I have plastic cups full of garlic or whatever. So now the soup is cooking. So then I reach under the refrigerator. On the refrigerator floor there’s another thirty or forty ingredients, and I’ll take for this particular soup hominy—canned yellow hominy—and throw in a handful of that. Then I go to the steam table and take from the vegetarian black-bean soup—it has a slotted spoon in it—a half spoon of vegetarian cooked black beans. And then I switch to the right, because the spice rack is there, and I put in a little cumin. Then I take the whole thing and I pour chicken stock in it from the steam table. And at this point José has already taken the chicken off the flame. The chicken now is marked on the outside and the outside is white, but it’s not cooked. It’s pink in the center. He cuts it into strips, we throw it into the soup, a cover goes on the soup, it gets moved over to the left side of the stove on a lower light and in about three minutes José takes a bowl, puts some tortilla chips that I’ve fried the day before in the bowl with some sliced avocado and then pours the soup over it. And that’s Chicken Tortilla Avocado Soup.” There are about two hundred other soups.

The place sounds great, although of course it also seems like it would be antithetical to its essence to try to grab a meal there after reading the piece. I guess I'll just have to keep an eye out for a similar idiosyncratic enterprise and, when I find it, to keep it to myself.

You can read the rest of the article here.

[kottke]

Things I'd rather watch than Mind of Mencia:

• Puppy Strangling Variety Hour
• Fear Factor: Leprosy Edition
• Septuagenarian Erotic Massage
• Road Kill Cooking
• Eastern European Infomercials
• Vomitorium 3: Pukopalypse Now
• The King of Queens

The UC-Berkeley Bears completely and hilariously punked USC a couple of weeks ago. On March 4, the two teams met in a must-win game for Cal, and they, well... just check it out for yourself.

In Victoria's honor, I am picking UCLA to make the NCAA finals.

If you want to compete in my NCAA pool, you've got to put together a bracket here and then join the "calamityjake" group. It's up to well over a dozen hardened competitors now.

And while we're not on the subject, this Waiter Rant post shows exactly how annoying being a waiter can be.