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I've long been on the hunt for a good "what's your life about?" question. I've always been a bit (maybe too) shy about "so what do you do?" since it sort of too strongly implies "for work", and I want to leave space for the person not defining themselves that way.

My default has been the joke-y "what do you do for fun or profit?" - I like the mood of it but too often it turns the conversational spotlight to the goofiness of the question itself.

Recently I heard "What keeps you busy?" which I kind of like... on paper it's not that different from "what do you do?" but somehow leans more towards the "for fun" part - like work is hopefully 9-5ish but the busyness might come from family or hobbies which might be cooler to talk about. On the other hand I'm not sure I like the possible suggestion that "busyness" is a goal.

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I co-lead a reading + discussion group on Science and Spirituality - here's a snippet I'm encouraging group members to share on social media about our next meeting:

Come join Belmont's UU Science + Spirituality group on May 23rd (via Zoom) - we have a lively monthly reading and discussion on the world in general and the tensions and synergies of different spiritual and scientific outlooks.

In May will be discussing the book "Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most", with topics including Mary Wollstonecraft (early feminist), Confucianism, Buddhism, Stoicism and Utilitarianism as components to living a good life.

Please email kirkjerk@gmail.com to be placed on the groups announcement list to get the zoom link and a PDF of an excerpt of the reading.

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I've been thinking about a small essay I wrote as a young teen (I think I was going to submit it to The Salvation Army's youth magazine.)

I had read "the blood of the martyrs is seed" coming from a time when Christians were a persecuted minority, but it seemed that now, living easily as the majority in society, we were maybe too comfortable and too self-indulgent. The conclusion of the essay was like "...so maybe we should says 'and the comfort of Christians is weed'"

My loss of faith was partially fueled by seeing fellow young churchmates having a more fun time than I was, doing the normal teen experimenting with booze (a big no-no in The Salvation Army) and parties and sex, in contrast to my own "Sunday School" lifestyle. I mean, I was making out a bit, but at least I had the decency to feel guilty about it.

Admittedly 'other folk expressing more whole-hearted belief while leaning into the verboten stuff' was only the lesser third cause of my straying from the fold, along with A. how my religion with its message of universal Truth for everyone (admittedly better than religions with an elitist 'elect') needed an answer for why God let there be so many other religions in the world and B. my growing awareness of a kind of social engineering aspect of The Salvation Army's Musicamp setup, where the spirit weirdly never seemed to move on the opening Sunday of the week but ALWAYS did on the closing Sunday. Like, looking back maybe my faith was too brittle and puritanical and too naive about the relationship between God and societal constructs, but that's where I was then.

I'm not sure if I ever did a second draft of that essay and I never sent it in. And "the comfort of Christians is weed" sounds a bit too much like a pro-stoner message, now that I think about it.

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I like Yuval Robichek's illustrations Been engaged in some e-correspondence about weighty topics - philosophy and spirituality and whatnot.

In trying to explain how we have something like an absolute moral law without a out-of-the-system lawgiver, I turn to a very UU idea of emergence. I think value and morality are properties that start to appear as connections (with others, and/or taking into potential future connections) are made. The preferences that the group members have there form the basis of "getting ought from is".

Nothing meaningful exists in isolation: a weird pocket universe with a single inhabitant would have no need for morality, the concept wouldn't make sense; "do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" would be about the best you could do.

But as more beings get added, the need for morality emerges, because there is a need to reconcile competing preferences.

Another way to to look at it, borrowed from the UU: economics, say, is based on group psychology, which is based on individual psychology, which is based on neuroscience, which is based on biology, which is based on chemistry, which is based on particle physics. Going the other way, each level adds complexity and rules - or rather, observed approximations of behavior, and in general you can't model and make predictions from the lower levels up (trying to get a workable model of economics from chemistry, say) But there wasn't a supreme economic lawgiver, nothing outside of the system that determined how money must move, just ideas of how it does move.

There are some ideas I'm trying to sneak by here. The implications that morality, the sense of "should", is conflatable to an aggregation of preferences (including preferences that emerged from the groups and didn't exist as individual preferences) is not yet a firm foundation. (Like how much does it depend on people being able to know whats best even for themselves...) And I still have a strong sense of directionality to morality; a hunch that every moral decision has an outcome that is more moral and one that is less moral, i.e. more or less in tune with the ultimate larger group preference. But as always I lean into the uncertainty of knowing which is which; most moral dilemmas don't feel like good vs evil, it is a choice between two competing "goods", and knowing which one of those two goods is ultimately more in tune with the greater group's good is clouded with uncertainty.

Anyway. I realized I can google up some articles with "morality as an emergent property" and find some papers that explore the idea, and while they're not as jargon-laden as other bits of modern philosophy I've seen there are enough words that might have specific meanings that I get a bit lost. (And I'm sure my own rambles might not be that easy to follow either...)

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Gay Marriage is next.

The Alito leak basically implies only things "deeply rooted in the Nation's history and traditions" as what deserves protection under the 9th amendment's unenumerated rights protection, and i guess everything else falls to the states.

So fuck women's rights to their bodies, fuck gay marriage, but hey - owning a person as a slave is A-OK by this standard. Certainly was a lot of history and tradition around that in 1776!

Also: Fuck the idea that we are a nation - one that respects individual liberty, and can make moral corrections as a nation - and really we are just BlueStateLandia and RedStateIstan, and the civil war was for jack shit.

	Into the Mystic Van Morrison	Good ol' Van Morrison, his recent frustrations with quarantine not withstanding. Thought about this song as we moved next to the Mystic River, but listening more closely realize... it's about the sea! And I don't remember noticing the clever foghorn sound before.
	Groove is in the Heart HonkyTonk Party Band	You know, usually I'm a sucker for goofy country covers and ANY cover of Groove, but... I guess because it uses the bassline as an intro and then loses it, it's not so interesting. Someone posted it on the School of Honk FB group. and I do love playing it with them :-D
★ ★ ★ ★	Boomers Got the Vax SNL	SNL has these really polished hiphop videos... "money- stacks. pants- khaks. arm- vaxxed. no- mask" "i m m, u n, i, t y - that's what I got. I got bodies, anti-"
★ ★ ★ ★	Fix A Fault The Sound Down Cellar	The first (and my favorite) of 3 songs me and my tuba appear in this month! (All by some work I did last year w/ The Sound Down Cellar.) I even have a cameo in the music video.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★	Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (feat. Swatkins) Scary Pockets	Five stars! This band is like the best funkifying-cover band ever.
	Cut Your Losses The Sound Down Cellar	More sedate song, again with me and my tuba Scheiny in it.
★ ★ ★ ★	You and I and George Rowlf the Dog	Novelty song, a little shmaltzy. (googling I'm surprised to find it's not a muppet original.) Found in a ranking of the 25 best muppets
	Frankie and Johnny King Oliver	Late 20s (the 1920s), Tuba-heavy cover of the classic. I got to thinking about tubas in jazz and what not, and this was referenced in A Contender for John Coltrane's Favorite Tuba Player
★ ★ ★ ★	Creep (feat. India Carney) Scary Pockets	Another great funkified cover.
	Hungry Eyes The Sound Down Cellar	Final of the 3 I worked on with The Sound Down Cellar. I do like that bump bump badumpabump bassline.
	Reasons I Drink Alanis Morissette	More recent autobiographical stuff! Melissa mentioned this song, was surprised I hadn't heard of it.
	Let It Be JP Cooper	Polished cover, but I'm not sure it brings much new.
	Buy Me a Condo "Weird Al" Yankovic	This song from my childhood came to mind last month, mostly 'cause of the title. I guess it's more making fun of suburbia, but listening now the rasta parody swings a bit near musical blackface, though it's not mean spirited.
	If I Only Played The Tuba Pat Scanlon And Friends	I see Scanlon at Veterans for Peace events, and he gave me or I bought his 2 CD set, finally got to listening to it. This was my favorite, mostly because of the tuba reference. But he's a solid folk protest singer!
★ ★ ★ ★	You Can Do It Ice Cube	I missed this one back in the day, even though Mellisa quotes the refrain a lot. Acoustically it's so interesting - kind of a mix of skipping CDs or Windows 95 sound glitching... Saw it in this INCREDIBLE AMAZING DANCE instagram video that leans into the computer-glitching theme in a totally organic way.

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Pfizer #2 in the arm. Ready to surf any side effects confident it's a hell of a lot less than the COVID :-D

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Pfizer #2 in the arm. Ready to surf any side effects confident it's a hell of a lot less than the COVID :-D

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Daddy's at the food store, Mummy's out of town,
She's working at the hospital since Rhona came to town,
Hide away, hide away, Miss Rhona's come to town,
Hide away, hide away, she's come to take us down.
Miss Rhona's at the doorstep, I'll keep 6 feet away,
But Grandma needs the paper, I'll take her some today,
Hide away, hide away, Miss Rhona's come to stay,
Hide away, hide away, we can't come out to play.
But Grandma needs the paper, I'll take her some today,
And here's a note from Rhona, she wanted me to say,
Hide away, hide away, keep 6 feet away,
Hide away, hide away, she took us down today.

In 1889 Tit-Bits [sic... presumably the 19th Century "tidbits"] magazine ran a contest for the best answers to "Why Am I A Spinster?"

BECAUSE matrimony is like an electric battery, when you once join hands you can't let go, however much it hurts; and, as when embarked on a toboggan slide, you must go to the bitter end, however much it bumps.

BECAUSE I have other professions open to me in which the hours are shorter, the work more agreeable, and the pay possibly better.

BECAUSE (like a piece of rare china) I am breakable, and mendable, but difficult to match.

BECAUSE I do not care to enlarge my menagerie of pets, and I find the animal man less docile than a dog, less affectionate than a cat, and less amusing than a monkey.

--Unearthed via Dr Bob Nicholson - that thread has more interesting stuff. (via)

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Just watched Hitchcock's Vertigo - maybe the first film to use computer graphics, albeit in a mechanical kind of way!
I took the raw parts from my collaborator Katie and made this: That's the Orange Barrel Media billboard almost overlooking Fenway... Since I don't know many official animation tools, I used p5.js, making a primitive timeline in json that the app would then use to push around some layers. You can play around with the p5.js tool I used to generate the frames before using ffmpeg to glue 'em all together as mov.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- 
I took the one less travelled by, 
Tripped over a branch, and broke my nose 
--
I hear America singing, and doggone 
if someone's not flat. One of the tenors, 
I think. 
--
Open here I flung the shutter, 
when with many a flirt and flutter
Traversed that curs'd bird from the week before
I shot it dead, and then it drop upon the floor 
Now, the Raven 'nevermore' 
--
Two roads diverged, 
but the one I wanted to take had a detour sign on it, 
dammit to hell. 
--
A rock sat in the woods, thinking, 
for many years, of many things. 
Realized God and His plan 
How to perfect life for plant and man 
but it was a rock, and rocks can't speak 
so it had to keep it to itself 
--
an ant crossed the sidewalk 
in its busy little industry 
i saw reflected the laws of 
god and man 
'enough of this' I thought 
and crushed its tiny head 

--I had been searching through old scanned school papers for these, when I found them in a one of the PalmPilot journal entries I slapped on my website, in a 1997 memo called "Old Poems", so I think they date back to college or high school.

I'd been thinking of the rock poem a lot. One way of framing arguments I have with my conversation sparring partner is that I tend to focus on the surfaces things, or more specifically the interactions they can have, while to me he seems obsessed with how things really are through and through, in a deep interior way. It's interesting that as far back as 25 years ago the idea that interactions and communications are what give interior lives meaning.

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That sparring partner also trotted out the psychological figure of the puer aeternus, eternal adolescent. The fact he considers the label absolutely damning while I think it's, I dunno, incomplete but descriptive, and with it's pros and cons, speaks to the other parts of the profound differences in our outlooks.

(Also looking at the latin phrase it reminded me of 1997 The New Yorker reviewed the Blender of Love (there really was a lot less going on on the web back then) and I had to look up what "puerile"meant when describing my editorials. I was mildly offended, but hey, it's The New Yorker and they cut it with "somewhat".) An uncommonly good month for music, with me puting the first four listed at 4 stars.

• Kiss (KIDDO KAT feat. Heidi Joubert+Ozzy Lino) Weirdly this subway Prince cover was making the rounds the day before his death...
• Fuck This Shit I'm Out (feat. Youngblaze) (The Theme Song) Admittedly this version adds some verses, but the essence is this video...
• Shadrach (Beastie Boys) Kickin' old school. Nice video! Also, adding it to my "Psyched!" work playlist
• Stare Into the Sun (Graffiti6) My company used this as some filler before the allhands screencast... I'm such a sucker for this kind of drum
• Dying Day (Gin Wigmore) Small sweet song
• Give Me Some Ska / Donne-Moi Du Chien (Environmental Encroachment) Wrong song, right band - I grabbed their CD in Austin
• Two Guys (For Every Girl) (Peaches) Raunchy electro-clash
• Pursuit of Happiness (Lissie) Saw her live at the Royale, this is her closer. She says she's mostly making money to become a beekeeper.
• Rockin' Robin (Bobby Day) Ok, now THIS is old school.
• Kill Da Wabbit (Skit) (Thic Man) I found a random 15 second excerpt of "Kill Da Wabbit"...
• Almost Unreal (Roxette) So, I wasn't sure why some songs from the "Mario Bros" movie soundtrack (pretty good soundtrack actually) didn't make it or got removed from my collection. Anyway, sweet and kind of sensual song.
• Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) (Us3) Another Mario Bros refugee... That year, this song was in like every movie soundtrack.
• Bomb Intro/Pass That Dutch (Missy Elliott) I always dig her stuff so much.
• Orange Sky (Alexi Murdoch) My yoga teacher played this once.
• Tales of Brave Ulysses (Cream) To Gawker said this song is probably more the model of Sarah Palin's "slam poetry" style (over "White Rabbit" or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds")
• Move It On Over (Hank Williams) Great honky tonk.
• Stressed Out (twenty one pilots) Aww, millennials.

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"Not less than three times in his or her life should everyone read Don Quixote, in youth, middle age, and old age." said Aubrey Bell (I thought there was a longer version of this quote that compared it to viewing a lovely building in the morning, afternoon, and twilight but I couldn't find it.)

Anyway. I started reading Don Quixote, again.

Sigh :-D Only a few 4 stars, listed in red. The rest put in descending order of interestingness, either for the song or the video.

• Bounce No. 1 (Dave Leanza & Andy Manista) I ripped from a cassette tape [Cleveland] "Heights Jazz Night 1991". I think it may be an original composition, and catchy as heck.
• Joe and Paul (Barton Brothers / Stutchkoff) A Yiddish comedy bit from 1:00-2:55 - the video has some loose translation on screen.
• Bottom of the River (Tufts sQ!) New single by my college a cappella group, just had their 20th birthday. Freshman singing in the group were born around the same time I started singing with them, senior year. (The version from iTunes has better sound quality)
• Steal My Kisses (Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals) Surprised I missed this one when it came out, but everyone at the sQ reunion knew it.
• Rudy (Fusik) The soundtrack to that aweseme bboy/bgirl video. Man that is some amazing dancing/gymnastics.
• Loyalty Never Leaves (Lance Knight) On a radio station in GTA5, this odd Rasta-ish version of "Royals" - reading the lyrics helps a little.
• Opa Cupa Fly (Brass Menazeri) Romani Brass - I think this is a remix.
• Get Back (Ludacris) Wow... the Popeye Arms he's sporting in this video...
• Monty Python's Galaxy Song (Stephen Hawking) Hawking sings Python. (sad the buy now link only works in the UK; I had to rip it.)
• Leprosy (Eu-Four-Ia) An obscure Dr. Demento cassette-tape rip - I should probably put it on youtube.
• Lose It (In the End) (Mark Ronson & The Business Intl.) Ronson often has great percussion.
• Tables and Chairs (Andrew Bird) I think cmg sent me this. I like the post-apocalypse-with-snacks vision.
• Statistician's Blues (Todd Snider) Comedy bit. Like the tone but wish the numbers were better.
• God Knows (You Gotta Give to Get) (El Perro del Mar) Soft song I heard on "Girls"
• Moonlight In Vermont (Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong) When my superniece's Mama K need to scat some song to operate a lamb puppet, she sang this, a song I hadn't heard.
• Can't Nobody Love You (The Zombies) The romantic 60s.
• Send It Up (Kanye West) James Harvey keeps me interested in Kanye.
• Knock On Wood (Eddie Floyd) Very Sam+Dave sounding.
• Fancy (feat. Charli XCX) (Iggy Azalea) The examplar from a "why we love pop music [that sucks]" article, but I have to admit I like Iggy Azalea's delivery.
• Work Song (Hozier) Not quite as good as "Take Me To Church"

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A few photos by Joni L, from JP Honk at yesterday's "Wake Up The Earth" parade and festival in JP. It was a LONG haul up Centre St but the chance to do a set at Stony Brook, and really walk around and through the audience, was special




Two amazing things happened in my life today, Saturday May the Third 2014. One was I went on that Zero-G "vomit comet" flight. It was exhilarating, exuberant, and viscerally ridiculous. Two is: last summer friends of mine, a lesbian couple, asked if I would help them add a little one to their family, and also inviting me to play an extend-family, "virtual uncle" role if I so choose. Today Cora is born. And I so choose.

Life is amazing and lovely. The music I added to my collection last month -- Needing/Getting was fan-tas-tic. Exclamation points mark worthwhile videos.

Alt with Big Drums

• !!!Needing/Getting (Video Version) (OK Go) I love the lyrical resignation of this song, and this version, with its car-powered percussive instrumentation, is amazing to hear and to see.
• !!!This Too Shall Pass (Marching Band Version) (OK Go) Most songs are better when you add a marching band.
• !!Beast (Nico Vega) Perfect song for the credits of "Bioshock Infinite"
• !Ain't No Rest for the Wicked (Live from The Vic In Chicago) (Cage the Elephant) Kind of a White Stripes vibe to this.
• !10. A.M. Automatic (The Black Keys) Man, I love this kind of drum.

Other Alt

• !We Are Young (Radio Edit) (Fun) I guess this song has gotten a lot of play, but it's pretty good.
• !!Somebody That I Used To Know (Walk Off the Earth) A beautiful post-breakup duet -- the video, with all the performers on one guitar thing, is pretty awesome

Country/Bluegrass/Blended

• !Blowin' Smoke (Kacey Musgraves) NPR had a thing about this singer-songwriter, kind of a Sheryl Crowe vibe.
• !We the Common (For Valerie Bolden) (Thao & The Get Down Stay Down) Gentle bluegrass elements to this. Must be the banjo.
• !Long Hard Times to Come (From "Justified") (Gangstagrass/T.O.N.E-Z) Hiphop over bluegrass.
• !Justified (Cumberland River Band) A little too much Wild Wild West swagger, but good banjo.

Girly Covers:

• Viva Las Vegas (Shawn Colvin) Great soft cover from the credits of Big Liebowski.
• !Don't Dream It's Over (Sixpence None the Richer) I sang this in college, and it's a nice enough version.
• !Eternal Flame (Atomic Kitten) Oy. I like the modern polish, and have nostalgia for this song, as awful as it kind of is.

Retro

• Play Your Part (Pt. 1) [Explicit] (Girl Talk) Kind of gross pimp hiphop over terrific R+B...
• !Into Action (Tim Armstrong) Catchy boogie-woogie like movement.
• !Poisoning Pigeons In the Park (Tom Lehrer) ...I actually sang this goofy, whimsically dark number for my high school Senior talent night. It didn't go over all that well.

Female Hiphop

• !NYC Bitche$ (Awkwafina) From the singer of "My Vag", kind of a novelty number with a lot of authentic details from the buroughs.
• !!We Hate Everyone (K.Flay) Not as good as "So Fast, So Maybe", but the beat is great.

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Slate on LOL Heh. Just like I'll never be really comfortable wearing a backpack with both straps because that was totally uncool in the late 80s, I will never be at ease using "LOL" because that's what the AOL noobs used in the mid-90s...

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Likeness is a most slippery tribe

--Man, I need to get back into doodling more.

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Be lazy.

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Apple is making money selling older models as lowend product, and dropping the model # w/ product names ("the new X") -- recipe for Future confusion?

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Years after it lost me a Trivial Pursuit question "The kilogram is the only SI base unit with an SI prefix as part of its name" still rankles.
So this photo, of the White House staff watching events unfold in the Situation Room, is making the rounds. I really appreciate Obama and Clinton's expressions.

Boingboing pointed out some nuances (in part from here):

• There was some talk on the news wires of CIA director Leon Panetta and the National Security team watching the operation unfold, real-time, via live video. Is that what they're doing here? And how did that work?
• Are they viewing the moment of the kill, or perhaps the body?
• what that mosaic'd document was. Guesses?
• The document beneath it looks like the aerial shot of the compound one can also see on Google Earth.
• Next to Obama on the floor, there's a burn bag.
• Man next to Clinton has a "Secret Service" lanyard around his neck.
• Clinton's holding a binder that says "Top Secret Code Word NOFORN, For use in White House Sit Room only."
• They're using HP laptops.
• Ethernet, no wireless.
• Clinton's expression is particularly intense.
• Seating arrangement.

What's also amazing is how quickly this photo has been turned into an array of pseudo-funny Memes. My favorite was the "All Obama". "Playstation" was also pretty funny.

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Bin Laden is finally dead. It's amazing what Americans can do when the Playstation Network is down.

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http://www.juancole.com/2011/05/obama-and-the-end-of-al-qaeda.html - a level headed look at how Osama came to be

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http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/05/out-of-osamas-death-a-fake-quotation-is-born/238220 - hmm, that MLKjr quote isn't him...

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I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'

--via gifanime.tumblr.com/. Man, I love animated GIFs. Their filesizes are disproportionately huge, but they're such neat little bits of storytelling.

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Wasting time is an important part of living.

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Q: How long does it take to boil 4 gallons of water? A: a long time if you turn on the wrong burner. #imnotgoodinanemergency

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we're glad you stopped by to see how seriously we take humor. http://www.microsoft.com/education/competencies/humor.mspx

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For work I just had to jump into gmail with IE. Man, that just doesn't feel right somehow.

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Kind of amazed that over whole weekend, none of my local Twitter followees made the obvious "Boston, Love that Dirty Water" joke.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2150015 - from 2006, an overview of some of the different translations of the Office, and the cultural differences.

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"Look at that. She's totally flirting with him."
"Hmm you don't know that. Some people can't help oozing sexuality."
"You ever notice you can only ooze two things? Sexuality and pus. Man I tell ya."

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http://www.slate.com/id/2252209/ - nice bit on Eadweard Muybridge (the guy who did the original stop-action photos of a horse running.)

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Amber figured out why Android's homescreen looks less polished to her than iPhone's - icon labels w/ borders, not just written on background

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Yeesh, the lyrics to "Good Golly Miss Molly" really go "Sure like to ball"?? aka "I know why the martingale sings"...

Last night I won $200 playing roulette at Foxwoods. ($225 actually, I decided to try for $25 to cover overtipping the "big win" croupier with a $20.)

I've been interested in the "martingale" system, (where you decide how much to win per go-round, then double up until you win or go broke) for a while, even though it is, of course, a sucker's bet. A friend first mentioned it to me in 1999 or so, and all the way back then I was able to write a simulation to prove that with any kind of house limit or limited bankroll, you are going to eventually lose, and in the long run lose more than you gain. A few months ago for a lark and to exercise a new laptop I had bought I wrote some nerdy simulations to see if there were any parameters of walking away that could change that. Answer: no, of course not.

My Aunt digs the slots, though, and on our way back from visiting Josh (my host in Japan) in Connecticut we decided to stop at Foxwoods.

It's weird how intimidated I was by the casino... there are all these little etiquette things, and I wasn't familiar with the procedures (do you exchange cash at the table? when is it ok to touch chips, etc), and I knew you're always being watched there... but of course everyone's a newbie sometimes, and they're pretty polite with any little goofs that even experience looking people make.) Also, I had no idea what minimum/maximum bets were going to be -- answer: minimum 10-25, maximum 200.

So I found a quiet corner, cranked up my baby laptop, and ripped out a perl script so I could have a better picture of what I was getting myself into. It was educational: I learned that an 80% of losing more money feels better to me than a 74% chance of losing less money, for instance.

Here is a Javscript version of what I made, so you too can find out how quickly or slowly you want to lose money: (it assumes you're always making a bet with an 18/38 chance of winning: e.g. chance of landing on one of 18 black numbers, and not one of the 18 reds or 0 or 00.)

number of runs
walkway goal
cut losses at
base bet
max bet

show me what's happening (warning: reduce # of runs!)

wins/losses		settings					number of spins
win %	lose %	# runs	goal	cut	base bet	max bet	< 5	< 10	>= 10

One thing that was new for this go-round was counting number of spins: everything else being equal, I'd rather win or lose my money in fewer spins than in more, since (as should be blatantly obvious by now) I don't really enjoy the gambling process that much, I get nervous about the risk rather than excited about the potential gain.

I've seeded the fields with what I ended up going with: start betting 200, walk away if I win 200, walk away if I'm down 1000. A bit less than 80% of the time, I win 200, but when I don't win, I lose the whole 1000. You might notice something weird: it's not very martingale at all, since it turns out I got equal or better odds and results a lot faster by going with the house maximum, which was about what I'd want to walk away happy with anyway.

So in driving home with my Aunt, feeling a little smug (All these fratboy types were at my table making smaller bets and fretting more, I caught their attention with my role of nebbish high roller), I thought about a fairly precise metaphor for a life making (very) occasional casino trips like this: it's a probabilistic credit card. I can, around 4/5 of the time, make a withdrawl of $200, but at some point (if I keep doing this) I'm going to pay that back, plus about $200 interest. (And man, will I feel sheepish then, and of course a bit aghast at that seemingly HUGE streak of bad luck I just encountered.)

Some of my recent interest came in part where I mused to JZ, I bet you you could reliably win $200 at a casino, make a weird kind of life that way. (My previous studies were wondering if with an ability to take a giant loss, and accept humble enough wins, if there were some effective parameters) But, duh, you can't. If you could, you could take whatever you were doing and multiply it and win big, and that's just gonna happen at a game like this.

If I was better at math, I could probably come with an equation that explains the relationship of base bet and max bet and amount you want to win and amount you're willing to lose, and see how it never, ever beats the house edge, but for now I'll just depend on these clunky simulations.

BTW, how lame is it that Europe had a single "0" to give the house an edge, and some bright American came up with... "00"? That's some yankee ingenuity (but lack of class) right there, boy howdy. Keeping up the ASCII art theme, I've recently started going back to some of that in my .sigs on some message boards. .Sigs I have used:
the self-portrait: (mid-90s usenet)
_____
-O\O
( = )

the pac-man: (atariage)

(< o o o

the alien bill: (TGQ)

=/ \(<D)_/
==/\/  >_

I don't know if the color counts as cheating.

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Vocabulary of the Moment
A character in GTA4 made me wiki up the vocabulary of the Rastas. It's intriguing how so much of the special vocabulary was deliberately made, a purposeful break from the past that shuns words that even sound like negative things. Sometimes it's a little corny ("Overstanding" or "Innerstanding" to dodge the "under" of "understanding", "livicaton" to avoid the "dead" of "dedication") but often it's kind of cool. I dig "I and I", which (I think) can mean "you and I" as well as "Me, spirit and body" (and overall they use "I" rather than "Me", because of the subject/object preference.)

It might be easy to over-romanticize the outlook. If memory of my parent's descriptions are right, when we were living on St. Thomas we got the feeling that not all of them shared the move-beyond-racism outlook of some of them, and there was a lot of expressed distrust and dislike.

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Quote of the Moment

Then there was this girl, Ava Cleveland, and her brother Larry. Larry had It something terrible, and also had a little way of taking opium. (Oh, please wait a minute. I think I'm going to be able to use "opium" in a sentence. I opium mother is feeling better. No, I guess I'm not, either.) Ava was young and slender and proud. And she had It. It, hell; she had Those.

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"why is a cow?"

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cross your legs, the fight is on

Last night I was watching a movie over at FoSO's and FoSOSO's, "Hollywoodland", the life and death of George Reeves, TV's Superman.

"Huh," I said, "this guy kind of acts like Ben Affleck."

It was, of course, Ben Affleck.

That's how it is with me and movies. I watch a fair number, I appreciate characters, but actors just tend not to stick. (Or, possibly, he changed his hair for the role; hair plays an oddly important role in how I remember people.)

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Market of the Moment
So yesterday was another record close for the Dow. Whenever that happens, I always think back to the Onion's tour de force Our Dumb Century, specifically this pair of headlines.
October 22, 1927: Stock Mark Invincible
'Buy. Buy, Buy!' Experts Advise October 29, 1927: Pencils for Sale Maybe it's just me.

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Metapost of the Moment
I'm not sure if anyone else really likes them that much, but I'd really like to add more doodles to the site. (Kind of like the little incidental cartoons they have in the New Yorker.) In part to practice my doodling, in part to liven up the place a bit.

Early kisrael.com, the first few months of 2001, had a lot of doodles. I also noticed that all my images were small, even the photos tended to be less than 200 pixels across. Either I was excessively bandwidth conscious then, or more likely, I had the idea that the site should be very PDA friendly.

Crossing the Rubicon of the Moment
Wow. So although nothing is definite, Ksenia and I made a fairly significant lifestyle decision last night... (no relax, not that one, or that one either.)

Friends of hers have worked at a senior residence for many years. Their basic deal is a free small apartment, life insurance, and an extraordinarily tiny stipend in exchange for being present half the times the office is closed, from evening 'til morning, and being a contact in case of emergencies and on call for some basic tasks.

A similar opportunity looks like it might be opening up at a different residence, one in Newton. And last night we talked and decided to apply.

I'm acutely aware of the potential upsides and downsides of this... upsides are: of course, the "free rent" aspect. It seems like that could be tremendously freeing, in the sense of providing a "secure base" for the foreseeable future. If there came a time when we decided or were forced to live on savings for a while, it would stretch much further in a situation such as that where the primary requirement is "being there".

Another upside-- and I understand that this could pale in a hurry-- is an almost public service angle to it, becoming a core stalwart for a community of folks in the 7th and 8th innings of their lives. There's risk to that, of course... from just having to be there for residents in emergency situations, being brave and constant even if they're scared and freaked out, to even the possibility of the "we haven't heard from grandpa for a few days, could you check up on him?" call leading to being the "first responder" for tragedy. And surely a group of Seniors is going to be a mixed bag, they won't all be the loveable ol' codgers from the movies. Some will be cranky, some might not like us, some might be... well, a lot of things. There will be dead lightbulbs and clogged toilets to deal with. On the other hand (and this is still in the "might pale mighty quick" category) I think there might be a poetic grace in learning about this part of life, in terms of my own mortality. (Heck, there might even be pointers in how I'd like cope with my own retirement plans.)

One final plus is that it's a chance for Ksenia to gain a measure of independence for herself that she doesn't have now. Right now, we live in "my apartment", and some of the cohabitation has been a product of utility. To be maybe too blunt, there are parts of my experience, ranging from moving around a lot as a child to the death of my father to my divorce to the way I never did "play the field" after the divorce to certain known differences in needed affection and attention levels between Ksenia and me to my general uncertain and wishy-washy nature that leave me unable to be certain about the future I want for myself and for "us". I love Ksenia, I dig her family.... I've made no progress in my Russian, I'm still a giant "let me work on this project" pain in the ass to be around from time to time. Anyway, it seems like this kind of position, with her as the official representative but with an understanding that we would be interchangable there, levels things out in certain ways, and seems like that could be a good base for figuring out what comes next.

The location is kind of interesting, a stone's throw from a T stop at the end of greenline. This would put me further from some of my closest friends, but on the other hand, for the group of friends who rely on public transportation to come see me on gaming night life would be easier. And of course, the T would mean more independence for Ksenia, since a T stop is tremendously more covenient than having to hop a bus to the T. We'd also be nearer her family and my mom, assuming and my mom isn't relocated this summer. (I also have an inkling that Newton might be an easier driving stomping ground for her, which again might help her build more independence.)

So, the downsides:

Rightly or wrongly the first thing that comes to mind is the size of the aprartment, a one BR likely a number of notches down from my current digs. Suddenly, my vague touchy-feeling ideas and work about how nice it would be to have a post-house-owning clutter-free life would be put to the test in stark fashion. I've lived in small places before...this shoebox Mo and I shared in East Arlington comes to mind... and it wasn't too bad but it will definately require a deliberate scaling back.

Secondly is the time commitment. Our friends who have been doing this for a decade have to forego a certain number of social events over the years. Life will have to revolve a preplanned schedule, and you have to hope that the other couple doing the same thing in the same place will be amenable to schedule rearrangement and swapping. Plus, it's the full time the office there is closed, namely 5PM to 8AM, so I might have to be more flexible with the time at my current job.

Third, of course, is the responsibility angle... it's a bit hefty, though like I implied earlier it seems like it has its Pros and Cons.

So, those are my thoughts. I'm welcoming feedback, though I guess (finally!) a feeling of not wanting to hear too many dissenting opinions is able to balance my usual urge to scurry around querying my friends and families "is this a good idea?" (A strategy which has some positive qualities, like being legitimately interested in other people's experience and thoughts, but also some negative traits, like being a way for me to avoid full responsibility for my decision.)

And who knows, this might be an almighty putting the cart before the horse, since we might not even get the position. Still I think it's good to be aware of the implications before things are definitely set.

Random note: I could have sworn there was an arthouse movie called "Crossing The Rubicon" in the early 1990s, where I learned the term, but IMDB only knows one made in 1997.... oh wait, it must be To Cross the Rubicon. Abswers.com talks about the phrase for people who might not be familar with it.

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Link of the Moment
In the things I posted 5 years ago department, Seanbaby's Hostess Page is still one of the funniest things online (or at least the links with the dots that have the commentary) and if you're in a hurry, Batman and the Mummy is still almost pee-your-pants funny.

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Product Search of the Moment
Things I wasn't aware of the market for, via Froogle: explosion proof refrigerators.

Image of the Moment

--Ksenia at her school's graduation... going back to that old flat color photos technique (tutorial here) It's not quite accurate, but not too bad... I like the kind of irritated expressions of of the classmates in the background.

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Exchange of the Moment

"It's this great shoe store, you have to check it out."
"Where is it?"
"You know West Newton? It's just east of West Newton."
"Err, isn't that just...'Newton'?"

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Link of the Moment
I'm sure I'd feel differently if I cared one iota about the show, but VoteForTheWorst.com, where they try to get everyone to vote for Scott Savol, far and away the worst contestant, is clever pranksterism.

Update of the Moment
In yesterday's comments, Max expressed surprise that techies/nerds would look down on plain old text files on the desktop for "to do" tracking....Au Contraire! Check out the notes from "Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geeks" -- text files are the geek bomb-diggity, especially because they're so non-proprietary.

Supposedly some geeks like excel, but I think it's pretty evil. Just unfriendly and clearly designed for office dronefolk, not with an engineering mindset. For that kind of thing, I either use tab delimited text files with Perl to do my dirty work, and I also made this one really fun online database that makes it trivial to make small one-table databases, complete with custom UIs. I keep meaning to get that in release-able shape.

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Proclamation of the Moment

A Proclamation: By the Power invested in us, We, Sofia Lemieux, declare ourselves to be Sofia I, Empress of Cantabrig- ia, (the territory formerly known as Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States of America.) In the interest of maintaining local customs upon meeting us, bowing is not required. Her Royal Highness, Sofia I, Empress of Cantabrigia

This was posted near Harvard Square, and put on the windshield of many cars parked there. Somehow, it increases my desire to live closer to Cambridge once I sell the house. I'm sure Waltham has its own crazies, but they're generally not as productive as this.

Nice eyepatch. I wonder if she traded it for wisdom like Odin, or just lost it in some kind of fight.

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Science of the Moment
Tool Use in Animals (from Dr. Robert Cook at my alma mater Tufts.) Neat stuff.

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Pop Culture of the Moment
Slate's Guide to Gurus. The UI is annoying (I would have preferred one big table) but the content is worth a browse. So, Mo's brother Dan is over with a friend...and the friend is gluten intolerant. Man, that's a tough one, just because it's so subtle relative to some other food allergies, tough to know what foods are bad and which ones are ok. Or at least it would be for me.

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Prayer of the Moment

Lord, take me where you want me to go;
Let me meet who you want me to meet;
Tell me what you want me to say
And keep me out of your way.

Judge was a victim at WTC, who rushed down after the plane hit, and whose death certificate is 00001. Some folks would like to see him canonized as a saint. I don't have much of an opinion on that, but I do like his prayer.

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Quote and News Bite of the Moment

Declare war on the cold front!

I was kind of amused by the story of a Taiwanese company using Hitler to market its German-made heaters. I guess nothing says "German" to a Taiwanese person quite like Adolf...(To be fair, their grasp of European history might be about as weak as my grasp of Asian.)

Exercising my Inner Beavis, it's a kind of funny name for a liquor store. From after a job interview in Salem, MA, April 25 2002.

Link of the Moment

If anyone chopped the top off my car I'd be upset, but car people are a bit strange and seem to like it. Not quite sure why, it never looks the same, lets the rain in and puts you in the middle of a car where the back end is doing different things to the front end. I suppose if you are that type of person, you don't care about having wet carpets or which direction you are heading just as long as you are Easier To Notice (have you noticed how, the more one tries to be noticed, the less worth noticing one is?).

I thought that that last line was a very good point. On the other hand, a kind of studied casualness isn't that great either.

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Quote of the Moment
Slashdot had a set of the worst programming bugs ever. Now I don't feel so bad! (Actually my code tends to pretty ok.) Staying home sick today. I "heart" phlegm.

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Quote of the Moment

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans... ...unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing."

Sigh. The Republicans, party of the rich idiots. Funny to see them come so close to out right saying that.

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Link of the Moment
Seanbaby has about the funniest site ever. I'm very serious about that. He's not always 'on', but when he is, he is laugh-'til-it-hurts funny. His Hostess Page is legendary, both reprinting and mocking those infamous ads where the superhero saves the day by flinging delicous prepackeged snackfood at the rampaging evildoer. If you only have a minute, check out Batman and the Mummy. (On the main page, only the titles with a dot actually have commentary by Sean Baby, Blaxploitation comic book hero Luke Cage, his one time nemesis Fish Man (probably the sanest one of the bunch) and the infamous Dr. Doom.) It's worth clicking through all the ones with commentary.