Everybody Loves a Bad Boy

            You love bad boys. You know you do and if you say you don’t you’re lying. I can prove it.

            By definition, bad boys are bad because they make bad decisions.  Bad decisions are responsible for everything that has ever been suspenseful, sexy, or exciting ever. These decisions, by their very nature, create drama, conflicts, and problems. You may recognize these as the elements that make a story, well… a story. It is pretty impossible to make something interesting without one of those components. I defy anyone to write a story longer than five pages that doesn’t involve one bad decision, and then try to get anyone other than their mom to suffer through it (moms will read anything and say it’s good, they are completely delusional).

Here is an illustration of a bad boy making a bad decision

            Now what do I mean when I say bad decisions? They are not the same thing as stupid decisions, because choosing to wash your cat with Pine Sol isn’t interesting. Bad decisions are like deciding to take a Christmas Party hostage so you can rob their vault (or deciding that you are the one man to stop them), falling in love with a member of a rival family, or stealing porridge from bears. They involve taking risking, making people upset, and going against the beaten path. Anything that creates problems, opposition, or causes plans going awry, can be traced back to a bad boy somewhere.

The double thumps-up was pretty edgy in the 1970's

I could make a comprehensive list of all the bad boys in storytelling, but it would just be a list of every interesting character ever, and I don’t have that kind of time. I can give an example of a character that doesn’t make bad decisions though. If you have ever seen the Star Wars prequel movies you may have noticed these characters called Jedi. They don’t make any bad decisions, and it shows. Try to watch one of these characters (wait, a character need feature and traits. How about people… no that implies personality. Um, how about specimen. I think that has the right cold emotionless feel to it. Anyway) specimens for more than 30 seconds without yawning so hard that your soul flees the abyss of boredom that your body has become. Sitting around and talking in a calm fashion is not interesting. You know what is interesting? Flipping tables. Bad boys flip tables.

They are all holding laser swords and yet they still look boring

You may know bad boys by other names, such as loose cannon, rascal, scamp, rogue, or scoundrel. You may recognize these as descriptions of many, many famous characters from books, film, and all other forms or storytelling. Good boy are too busy staying home and working on the family farm while brushing their teeth twice a day to get a story told about them. Good boys do what is expected of them and don’t make trouble. Good boys are incredibly tedious and I’m already tired of talking about them.

Only a mom could find this picture interesting

Now if you still don’t like bad boys then you are missing out. They may cause a lot of problems, but they are also the ones who fix problems. You can’t solve a problem without opposing something. Bad boys can be traced all the way back to (and past) that first proto-human who stepped out of the trees and into the savanna. Some good decision making monkey was probably say “Look out, there are lions and junk out there”, but the bad decision making man just said “Whatever dude, if you need me I’ll be throwing pointy sticks at zebras”. What I’m trying to say is that we wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for bad boys. I would at this point like to make it clear that bad boys includes females, it is just that the term alliterates, and is therefore more entertaining to write with (sorry about that).

Top Ten (Eighteen) Music Videos

1.  Separate Ways by Journey – Without a doubt, my favorite music video of all time. Features include; singing directly into camera, head snaps into camera changes, talented musician doing terrible air instruments (come on Jonathan, you can air keyboard better than that), industrial waterfront setting, badass aloof 80’s chick (with an “80’s wave” hairstyle which is my favorite thing since the ponytail with bangs), slow motion sequence, and an “it was all a dream” ending. 2:30 is the greatest thing I have ever seen in my life.

2.  Beat It by Michael Jackson – It’s like West Side Story meets The Warriors. Michael ends gang violence (and the craziest knife fight ever) while wearing some really dorky t-shirts (sweet red leather jacket though). Just my favorite of many great Michael Jackson videos.

3.  We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister – Dee Snider defending teenage independence and multiple defenestrations, what more do you need (that dude from Animal House doesn’t hurt). Rightfully one of the most revered music videos of the 80’s. Kids morphing into members of Twisted Sister is always excellent.

4.  Don’t Let’s Start by They Might Be Giants – Monochrome, crazy dancing, William Allen White heads, and fast-motion filming (the lip syncing is amazing). There is also an accordion explosion at one point. Another favorite among many great videos.

5.  Radar Love by Golden Earring  - A Reliant Robin is the best vehicle for high speed chases ever. Men seducing female cops to get out of a ticket is also super slick. I have a fondness for videos that tell a story that is completely unrelated to the song.

6.  Telephone by Sheena Easton – Speaking of unrelated to the song. I have no idea why Sheena is in a haunted house full of classic movie monsters, but I like it. Sheena is sexy when she is angry (well, more sexy).

7.  I Believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness – British glam rock for the Naughties. It’s got space ships, space monsters, a wall or amps, and rocking so hard that you shoot lightning. It’s also got a lot of Justin Hawkins skin (a lot).

8.  Diamond Smiles by Boomtown Rats – A negative look at superficial social life. Visually I like both the white set and Bob on a checkered floor in a checkered shirt. Why does Jonnie Fingers always play the piano lying down?

9.  Family Man by Hall and Oates – Hall and Oates are so stupendous that they turn a boring family of six into exciting Hall and Oates clones, the band is attacked by some ravenous children, and the ending is weirdly ominous. I just love Oates’ guitar playing dance.

10.  Chemistry by Semisonic – It is a music video version of one of those romantic comedies with the big ensemble cast full of various personality types. There is also some Rube Goldburg machine stuff going on. Semisonic generally had well filmed music videos.

11.  No Way but the Hard Way by Airbourne – Australian pub rock with modern music videos is a definite win-win. The video premise is that Airboure is so hardcore that they trash the offices of a record label, and then proceed to play music on the roof (probably based on a true story).  I really enjoy the reactions of the office staff.

12.  Wild Boys by Duran Duran – It’s like if Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Barbarella had a baby and it was a musical. It was also a mutant, and it was also great.

13.  One Night in Bangkok by Murray Head – Murray in the seedy chess playing underbelly of Bangkok. Very related to the story of the song without being lame literal storyboards of the lyrics, and since I love the story of this song, that’s excellent.

14.  Sledge Hammer by Peter Gabriel – It starts with an egg being fertilized, which is basically how every video should start. Then Peter gives a display of facial dexterity before a very impressive stop motion animation video.

15.  Rosanna by Toto – Toto is having a jam session in the streets when all of a sudden Cynthia Rhodes shows up and starts Dirty Dancing. Then Patrick Swayze gets into a West Side Story style gang fight (apparently I have a thing for West Side Story style gang fights in videos). Cynthia teasing the guys on the other side of the fence is pretty legendary.

16.  Got My Mind Set on You by George Harrison – This song is so catchy that every object in the room starts dancing along. Just a really simple but charming video. The really bad doubling is also a plus in my book. I definitely like it more that this version (I hesitate to support videos that are carried solely by the sex appeal of someone who is not in the band, and the previous video doesn't count because it was topical with the song, or something).

17.  Sandstorm by Darude – It is like some talented college students made an amateur cyberpunk movie. The plot doesn’t really make any sense, the acting is janky, and the budget shows, but it has style. Really it’s all about the clean, bright, cyberpunky style for me. At least it didn’t go this route (way to keep it classy techno).


18.  All the Things She Said by t.A.T.u. – Wet Russian Schoolgirls Kissing. Yep.

Authors Note: 59 link in one post is probably a new personal record. Most of them seemed useful though (although I shudder to think of someone who doesn't know Animal House), and I learned how to link to a specific time in a YouTube video, so that's neat.

Sweet German Words and the Least Popular Kind of Zombie

            It’s Philosophy:30, we should celebrate. I have two of my favorite ideas with me and there’s enough for everyone, so don’t feel bad if you didn’t bring anything. Let me introduce you to Ubermensch and Philosophical Zombies.

            Ubermensch is an idea from the German philosopher (and mustache enthusiast) Friedrich Nietzsche, and roughly translates to “overman”.  Uber is a very nuanced word in German, but it doesn’t really translate to super as it is commonly used. In fact, Germans already have a word for super, it’s super (pronounced zuper). Anyway, back to the philosophy. The Ubermensch is a goal for the future or humanity, and is Nietzsche’s idea of living up to our full potential. The goal can basically be reduced to the phrase “Thine own will be done”. Pursue your own happiness and goals without being compelled by others or wasting time worrying about what they want. The advancement of humanity is put above any moral systems that would keep us from being the best that we could be.

Behold its bushy glory

            I like this idea. Many people think it is just a justification for selfish and egotistical behavior but that is not how I see it. There is no reason why the pursuit of one’s own goals would be antagonistic toward others. For instance, you might say this justifies the strong taking from the weak, but taking from the weak isn’t in keeping with the advancement of humanity, so it's not in keeping with the Ubermensch. The disregard for morality comes in on cases like the ban on research in human cloning. This stifles the advancement of the human race for what I can only imagine to be religious moral qualms. The Ubermensch has no fear of progress and doesn't get concerned with other peoples issues.

            Philosophical zombies are what I like to think of as the opposite of the Ubermensch. Unlike traditional zombies who are human forms who lack all humanity, philosophical zombies are human forms that lack all consciousness. This was originally just an idea used to refute physicalism, but I like to take it a step further. P-zombies, as they are sometimes called, are just bodies “going through the motions”, without any will of their own.  This is a being that is incapable of originality or creativity, which are traits that I associate with the Ubermensch. The scary part about these zombies is that I suspect that they might exist.

Obligatory Philosophical Zombie Visual Pun

            Anyone who lives only through the eyes of others, and is only concerned with conforming to the group is a p-zombie by my definition. All ideas and opinions would be the ones that were adopted from outside the self. That is not a real person in my opinion. The ability to create is what makes us human. Nietzsche’s antithesis for the Ubermensch was the “Last Man”, who seeks only comfort and has no desire for advancement, for self or race. Between the two of these I definitely detest the p-zombie more, but the Last Man isn’t high up in my book either. See also Ayn Rand's Second Handers.

            Well I hope you enjoyed meeting these ideas, and I would be happy to discuss them in greater depth with anyone. I taught my spell check some new words, so all in all not a bad day.

JOSePHInE: A Tragic Love Story

            I was recently the victim of some computer problems. This doesn’t sound like the makings of a good story, but I think there is something to be learned from how it affected me and how I dealt with it.

            First, I should explain that my computer is named JOSePHInE (Jacob’s Own Self-Produced Home Information Engine, yes it’s lame, but I like it), and she is very special to me. I built her a little over a year ago and we have had many good times since. She has always been healthy and well behaved and this is the first problem we have had.

Sexy

            It all started with a few crashes of my system. At first I thought this was due to the KotOR game that I had recently started replaying, which was a distressing problem on its own. A more problem was made obvious when we had trouble booting up. The true source was in JOSePHInE’s hard drive, which the motherboard was having problems finding. To be specific, it was her solid state drive (SSD), which is the smallest of her three hard drives, but the one with the operating system on it. This was surprising since I figured the SSD would be more reliable that her hard disk drives (HDD), one of which is about ten years old. JOSePHInE was still capable of lucid operations for about an hour at a time, so after much fiddling, and unplugging and replugging wires, and endless blowing on contacts, I determined that a transplant would be necessary. JOSePHInE helped me order up a new SSD and then I let her rest and the waiting started.

I'd say about 99% of the physical side of computer repair is plugging thing in

            A kind of depression soon set in to my life as I realized how attached I had become to my computer. I suddenly had a lot of free time that I didn’t know how to spend. I started cooking elaborate meals more often, watching all of my directors commentaries that I hadn’t seen yet (yes, I like directors commentaries), and playing my X-box more often, but it wasn’t the same. I missed my girl; all the things we used to do together, the things she enabled me to do, and just the sound of her in my apartment. I’m talking about her like she was my girlfriend, and that is actually a strong analogy for our relationship. I spent a large amount of my free time with her, I spent money on her with frequent “gifts”, and she was also my primary source of sexual stimulation (that is a pornography reference, not a sex with an inanimate object reference, just so you know where I draw the line).

            After just over a week of cursing my decision not to pay for fast shipping, the new SSD finally arrived. I began the transplant surgery with JOSePHInE acting as a more than able operating assistant (there’s not a lot she can’t teach me with a Google search). This reminded me of the scene from Star Trek when Spock losing his brain and then ends up assisting McCoy in the re-implantation (it was a pretty terrible episode, but a fun idea). JOSePHInE was amazingly sober during the process and was pulling flawless reboots and other actions which I didn’t think she could still do. After a few stressful hours of work we were able to clone her old hard drive onto the new one and got the whole system running normally again. It has only been two days now, but the crashes have not returned and I am happy to have my baby back to her old self again.

Tallness, A Crime Against Humanity?

            Tallness, let’s talk about it. Height seems to be a very admirable trait in modern society and I have no idea why. I can see no real benefits and a number is disadvantages to being tall. I should probably say that I am 5’ 9” (that’s 69”... ladies), so I am coming at this from the perspective of an average height person.

            I’ll start with the pros of being tall. Um, you can reach higher things without getting a chair or something. You have an advantage when playing basketball. You can see slightly father due to a higher vantage, once again neglecting the ability to stand on a chair, or like a rock or anything. That’s all I can think of. There is also the whole thing were tall people are perceived as more attractive, but I am about to crush that misconception.

            My first con is that there really isn’t anything tall people can do that short people can’t, but the inverse is true. Anyone can wear platform shoes or stilts to gain height, but you can’t do anything to lose it temporarily. Now the only shortness exclusive activity I can think of is fitting into small spaces, but that could be a pretty big deal in the right situation. What if you are getting chased by an angry bear and the only escape is a tight gap in the cave wall or something; I sure hope those extra 6” were worth it. Now you may say that the tall person could reach a high branch and swing into a tree, but bears can climb trees so that argument is invalid.

This is pretty much all you need to cancel out a couple feet of extra height

            Con number two is the loss of body efficiency as height increases. Bone and muscle strength increase proportional to their cross sectional area, not their volume. Since area increase according to the square of the height ratio, and volume increase according to the cube; if you double your height you will quadruple you strength, but octuple your weight. This means that if you take someone who can lift their own weight and then proportionally half their size, they can then lift twice their weight. This is why people brag about ants being able to lift the equivalent of cars to their own weight, but it’s not true because if you scaled the ants up they probably wouldn’t be about to lift anything, because they would be too busy being crushed by their own weight (exoskeletons are only feasible at small sizes).

Don't worry mam, gravity will soon collapse his entire body

            My final and largest problem with tallness is the consumption of resources. Larger people eat more food, need more material for clothing and housing, and basically everything needs to be built on a larger scale to accommodate them. I don’t think food consumption will scale 1:1 with weight, but if we shrink every human on earth by half we could reduce food consumption roughly eightfold. All of our houses and cars could be built at half size, and you would save immensely on all structural components because the masses would decrease so much. It would be like reducing the human population by a factor of eight, and who’s to say that we would have to stop at only half size. At one quarter height, weight is decrease by a factor of 64!

THANKS FOR RUINING THE PLANET

            The only problem I can see with shrinking humanity is a reduction in brain size might reduce intelligence. A correlation between brain size and intelligence hasn’t been proven though, and a reduction in body size should decrease the number of nerves and what not, reducing the amount of brain power that is needed to run the body. We could also just keep most of our head size with tricks like more premature births or exclusively cesarean sections. Anyway, tallness sucks, Cob out.

Top Ten (Sixteen) Words

1.  Stupendous - an adjective that can make anything sound cool, and a great replacement for the overused "awesome". 

2.  Indubitably - can class up any conversations, and I have a sentimental attachment since this was my favorite word when I was about eight years old.

3.  Any word with –ness - the ability to turn any word into a noun is a power that I prefer to weild with reckless abandon.

4.  Milquetoast - it creates such a good mental image, and it's spelt amusingly.

5.  Veritable Cornucopia - technically two words, but best when used together. It can infuse any statement with gravitas (gravitas is also a great word).

6.  Philistine - my favorite insult, especially because the people I use it on generally don't know what it means.

7.  Asinine - just a good way to describe anything I don't like or understand.

8.  Aplomb - sounds kind of bumbling, but means that opposite.

9.  Lithe - pretty much just like this one because it sounds sexy.

10.  Heinous - another good way to describe things I don't like, and it sounds like anus.

11.  Flocculation - a really impressive sounding technical term that I just want to casually drop into conversations.

12.  Tot - adorable. 

13.  Scintillate - it sound very exciting and magical.

14.  Stud - probably the single manliest word ever (erection being a close second).

15.  Chortle - a word that makes me do what it describes.

16. Sternutation - makes sneezing sound important.

G'nite - A Statistical Exploration

Grandma's classy letter banner

            My grandma is great. I realize that almost everyone must feel this way but I have evidence. She has all the essential grandma stuff covered. She is an amazing cook (she makes the best bun in the freakin’ universe), sews like nobody’s business, she is super polite in that classy old people way, and she had 13 kids, so she has established a nice family dynasty (is it wrong to describe your grandparent as fecund?). She’s also a hardcore Catholic, cheats at cards, and can have a sharp tongue when she feels like it. My favorite thing about her though (other than the buns), is the fact that she sends out a nightly email to our family members. The fact that a women in her late 80’s can send out an email at all is impressive but I like her email specifically. It is a nice diary of her day and an excellent source of data on her life and habits. Given such a glut of data I did the only logical thing, and made a spreadsheet. What follows is a breakdown of G’nite emails from March through December of 2012.

            Each email starts out “Nighty Night and Sweet Dreams… The end of another day and all is ok”. I have suspicions that Grandma uses a form letter, but small changes between letters gives me doubts. She is amazingly consistent if she doesn’t. The next thing in the email is a description of how the day was, weather wise. It breaks down like this.

121 Goods to only two Not So Nices

            I think this is a good intro to the quality of the data present in these letters. I took data from 235 days, and only 18 days had unique descriptions. Even better than this is the fact that she lists a high temperature for all the towns where members of my family live. Talk about a statistical goldmine. The towns regularly reported are Rapid City, SD; Dallas, TX; Forney, TX; Denver, CO; Evergreen, CO; Billings, MT; Pierre, SD; Gillette, WY; Moorcroft, WY; Fargo, ND; New Rockford, ND; Ogdensburg, WI; and Henry, NE. Now let me throw some numbers at you (note that January and February are not present, and there are also frequent gaps from Grandma’s vacations, including most of October). The average temperature across all towns was 70.82° (comfortable), the average high was 101.69° (not comfortable), and the average low was 16.15°. In Rankines those are 530.49 R, 561.36 R, and 475.82 R, respectively (I love the Rankine scale). Dallas had the highest average (84.61°), high (109°), and low (36°), so kudos to them. The lowest average was New Rockford (61.35°), lowest high was Evergreen (91°), and the lowest low was New Rockford with the only negative temperature (-1°, on December 31st).

            Pierre didn’t show up in any of those so let’s take a look at my hometown stats. An average of 71.27°, high of 107°, low of 12°. We had eight days over 100°, were the high for the family 21 times, and the low once. How about a scatter plot.

I threw in a trend line for good measure

            After the weather report Grandma gives an account of her day. Her mornings are almost always spent in one of three ways. First is her exercise program (Grandma is fit too). The attendance is also always reported and the in 87 trips, the average was 22.94, the high was 32, and the low was only eight. Robbie the instructor’s mood is also often mentioned, and he seems like a pretty happy guy. Here’s a pie chart to show what I mean.

Exercise Instructor must be a low stress job

Other moods include busy, funny, excited, shook up, snazzy (not really a mood but whatever), upset, cooked (that day was a hotty), nervous, ready for 30 (as in attendance), and concerned. I feel like I know this guy. The second activity is a coffee hour in her apartment building. Coffee hour only has an average attendance of 9.11, with a high of 30, and a low of five. Grandma also brought a baked good 40 time out of 87 events. The last thing Grandma does with her mornings is Sunday mass. She “prayed for all my loved ones and lit candles for all of us” a reported total of 33 times, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

            Evenings are normally spent playing some sort of game. The favorite was Hand and Foot. She played that 146 nights. LET THERE BE GRAPHS.

71-75 record isn't bad

Positive are win streaks, negative are loses

  

            Also popular was pinochle, played 80 times. More pie.

98-115 this time

            She also played Whist twice, Dominos three time (she didn’t like Dominos), and Scrabble 11 times. I estimate her Bingo winnings at $57 (she didn’t always give a dollar amount for her winnings). She played that 29 times, so I hope it didn’t cost her $2 or more per game or she lost money.

            The finish of every letter is a quote. I’m not sure where she got them from or how she picks them, but the same quotes often turned up multiple times. Her favorite, with 43 appearances, was "The most powerful and predictable people-builders are praise and encouragement" paired with "Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment." I’m not sure what she was trying to tell us with that (did she want praise for her commitment?). My favorite was “Three retirees, each with hearing loss, were playing GOLF one fine day.  One remarked to the other, ‘Windy isn't it?’   ‘No’, the second man replied. ‘It's Thursday.’ and the third man chimed in. ‘So am I.  Let’s have a beer.’” We only got that one once, and it isn’t really a quote, but I enjoyed it.

            Other than discussions of sewing and napping that covers most of the info. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t able to find a few extra bits. Grandma has a few sweet catchphrases that I kept track of. She used vashislous a total of 30 times, which isn’t nearly enough. It is “shlurman” as we call it in the family and comes from “was ist das”, which is German for “what is that”. She also used “so gates” 279 times. That is an average of 1.16 times per email, and she used it a maximum of four times in one letter. I have no idea what it means, and she doesn’t use it when she speaks, but I think it is something like “so it goes”. The time she sends the emails is also very interesting. Grandma is a bit of a night owl, because the average time of sending is 12:48 AM (0:48). The earliest time she ever sent it was 10:24 PM (22:24), and the latest was 4:18 AM (still 4:18). Tangentially, trying to do math with times is somewhat difficult in excel (it was also converting all my dates into a number of days since 1/1/1900, which is weird). Grandma stays up later than me almost every night, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Here is a scatter plot of her sent times

            The best stat is that I was mentioned ten times. Mostly for giving her rides (she still drives, but only around town), or for my computer expertise (which is impressive to her). Thanks for being stupendous Grandma (also thanks for your superior DNA).

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Isaac Newton

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” Friedrich Nietzsche