@Randem

Please update your feed

2007-11-02T16:48:00.001-04:00

This is the last post you will get on your existing RSS feed from my site. Please update your feed to my new feed URL: http://www.randem.net/feed/

I've used Blogger for over two years now, but it's time to go. I've been able to get more out of the Blogger functionality than the average user, because my programming skills have given me the ability to tweak things much farther than they were meant to go. However, the time has come where my needs have outgrown even my ability to squeeze the best out of Blogger.

I suppose I hung on this long because it was familiar. I didn't want to try something new, didn't want to learn a brand new interface, didn't want to lose all the content I'd written already. And when Google bought Blogger, it added some functionality and integrated my google login. All of this just kept me hanging on.

I was so surprised to find just how easy it is to install and configure WordPress on my own site. And I was even more surprised at how much additional functionality it provides — way more than Blogger.

Where are those iphone apps?

2007-11-01T22:14:00.000-04:00

I had to find this the hard way, so I'm posting the info in hopes of making it easier for others.

After you've done the jailbreak app, you're probably looking at the list of apps and thinking "is this it?"

Well, it's not. You have to add sources to the installer. Go to the section called SOURCES and add the available ones. Next time you look at the selection, there will be much more available!

Jailbreak the iPhone

2007-11-01T10:16:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I've had the iPhone for about two weeks now, and I've been a bit lazy about doing the Jailbreak because I had so much trouble getting my iPhone activated. I didn't want to be sitting at work wasting a bunch of the company's time while I attempt to hack it.

Fortunately, both Lifehacker and Make were spreading the word Monday about the new, easy, one-touch Jailbreak you can do right from your iPhone without ever needing to connect to a PC.

I tried it a few times over the course of the day yesterday, with no luck. It appears that the EDGE network is preventing this from going through. However, when I was in range of a WiFi network, I tried it one more time and it worked like a charm!

So far, I've used the installer app to add a GPS locator but that's all. I know there are a lot more things I can do, I just need to figure them out. All the same, thumbs up to the AppSnapp guys for making this so easy!

Woohoo! I have psychic powers!

2007-11-01T09:56:00.000-04:00

A reader wrote in yesterday to point out that I actually predicted the iPhone two years ago.

I bought my first iPod on Thursday, June 9, 2005. The following day, I wrote this:

The real magic is the iPod itself, though. I couldn't understand what was such a big deal about iPod when reading reviews, but after having it in my hand for five minutes everything was clear. This really is one ingeniously designed technological wonder. I wish Apple would make cell phones. And tv sets. And cars.

And apparently I wasn't far off with my next comment, about tv sets, given my positive experience when I first looked at Apple TV.

Game Theory

2007-10-31T16:33:00.001-04:00

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist who is making a big name for himself using game theory, a branch of applied mathematics, to make shockingly accurate predictions.

A Math Trek story in Science News tells the story of one such prediction:

One of his most famous past predictions also concerned Iran. In 1984, the model predicted that when Ayatollah Khomeini died, an ayatollah named Hojatolislam Khameini and a little-known cleric named Hasheimi Rafsanjani would rise to succeed Khomeini as leaders of Iran. At the time, most experts considered that outcome exceedingly unlikely, since Khomeini had designated a different person as his successor. But in fact, when Khomeini died five years later, Rafsanjani and Khameini succeeded him.

GOOD Magazine calls him The New Nostradamus:

The criticism rankles him, because, to his mind, the proof is right there on the page. “I’ve published a lot of forecasting papers over the years,” he says. “Papers that are about things that had not yet happened when the paper was published but would happen within some reasonable amount of time. There’s a track record that I can point to.” And indeed there is. Bueno de Mesquita has made a slew of uncannily accurate predictions—more than 2,000, on subjects ranging from the terrorist threat to America to the peace process in Northern Ireland—that would seem to prove him right.

This kind of thing really excites me. As a computer programmer and a mathematics buff, game theory really stokes my fire. I first learned about game theory while reading the The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins described how game theory could be used to reveal evolutionarily stable strategies — the real-world manifestation of natural selection.

Upon learning about game theory, I immediately recognized its potential predictive power. I was excited again recently, when a colleague emailed me a link to this essay by Rob Brown where he describes how he used a very simple implementation of game theory to create a movie recommendation system that was more accurate than that used by Netflix!

Yeah. Game theory is good stuff.

Quote of the day

2007-10-30T16:42:00.001-04:00

“Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.” -Napoleon Bonaparte

How fast could you blow your wad?

2007-10-30T10:50:00.001-04:00

In the movie Brewster's Millions, Montgomery Brewster (Richard Pryor) learns that he is to be the heir to an enormous fortune, but there's a catch. He has 30 days to spend 30 million dollars. If he succeeds, he inherits 300 million, but if he fails, he has nothing. The hard part is that when the 30 days are over, he must have nothing to show for it. And he can't donate to charity or simply give it away. Likewise, tips must not exceed the standard rate of 20%. In other words, the money must be spent, not thrown away.

I wonder what creative ways my readers can think of to spend a large amount of money in a short period of time, and have nothing to show for it.

Here are some ideas I came up with:

Buy rare coins and use them in parking meters or gum ball machines
Stay in expensive hotels and get room service
Drink lots of fine wine
Smoke expensive cigars
Or fly into outer space

What do you think? Got any great, money-wasting ideas? Let me know!

A major victory for common sense

2007-10-29T15:29:00.000-04:00

The Council of Europe, a non-governmental body whose aim is to protect human rights, has adopted a resolution regarding the dangers of creationism in education.

You know it's gonna be good when it starts like this:

Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are definitely inappropriate for science classes.

Oh, if only my fellow Americans had as much common sense.

Will the human race split?

2007-10-29T10:21:00.000-04:00

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry thinks the human race is going to split into two distinct species — like in The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells — one attractive, intelligent, ruling elite, and the other an underclass of dim-witted, ugly, goblin-like creatures.

But then again, he also thinks that before that happens, we'll all become a single coffee-colored species that mixes all the qualities of all the different races we currently know. I have a hard time with the first 1,000 years of Curry's theory, but if you want to get into that, you can start by having a look at Ben Goldacre's response to Curry, at Bad Science.

Believe it or not, the part in which I'm interested is the two species, H. G. Wells, sci-fi future of humanity. In fact, I think he's right.

Background
First, I should explain that physical evolution has not stopped, but for humans it has taken a back seat. Biological evolution and natural selection require thousands of years for they newly evolved mutations to become prominent in the gene pool.

In contrast, psychological evolution and sexual selection shows it's evidence much faster. Mate choice and sexual selection show immediate results after one generation, and can thus become rather widespread after only a few centuries.

Also, in a world where the environment changes so much from one generation to the next, natural selection is too slow to evolve changes for adaptation. That leaves sexual evolution in the driver's seat, and that means the most attractive people will couple with equally attractive people, and unattractive people will be left to couple with equally unattractive people.

Evidence
The top half of today's children are physically superior not only to others, but to history's children of similar ages. Kids are developing at earlier ages. The beautiful people are getting more beautiful.

They're also getting smarter. Today's teenagers can operate the computers and program the VCRs and work the cell phones that drive their parents crazy. They're better at spelling, better at math, better at music.

But the bottom half of today's children are significantly inferior. Nearly 35 percent of American children ages 6 to 19 are overweight. Half of those—some 11 million children—are so overweight they’re classified as obese. They're getting shorter, and fatter, and more unhealthy.

They're intellectually inferior, too. Mark Morford at SF Gate writes:

But most of all, he simply observes his students, year to year, noting all the obvious evidence of teens' decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that particularly distressed him) being able to define the words "agriculture," or even "democracy." Not a single student could do it.

It gets worse. My friend cites the fact that, of the 6,000 high school students he estimates he's taught over the span of his career, only a small fraction now make it to his grade with a functioning understanding of written English. They do not know how to form a sentence. They cannot write an intelligible paragraph. Recently, after giving an assignment that required drawing lines, he realized that not a single student actually knew how to use a ruler.

So the smart, good-looking, physically fit people are getting smarter, better looking, taller, stronger. Meanwhile the fat, lazy, dumb people are getting fatter, lazier, sicker, shorter, and dumber.

Evolution
So indeed, I can see how the human race could easily be headed for a genetic split. After all, the smart, beautiful people don't want to be with the dumb, fat people, right? Sexual selection will continue to lead the superior genes to mix, while leaving the inferior genes with no better options.

Quote of the day

2007-10-26T16:15:00.000-04:00

“The people to fear are not those who disagree with you, but those who disagree with you and are too cowardly to let you know” -Napoleon Bonaparte

Social Proof

2007-10-26T09:33:00.000-04:00

When in doubt, people look to the collective opinion for how to proceed. If a lot of people are wearing flip-flops and polo shirts, they're in style and we feel more comfortable wearing them ourselves. If a beggar is asking for food on a busy downtown street, it's likely we'll ignore him if that's what everyone else is doing. It's called social proof.

There was a UFO cult here in Chicago in the '60s. They believed the world would be destroyed in another great flood, but that 8 hours before it happened, a UFO would come by and pick up the cult members, taking them to safety. When they believed they were right, they did not accept new members. But after the big day came and went, with no flood and no UFO, they started actively recruiting new members. Why? Because they were looking for social proof.

And that's kinda like what happens in relationships. You know... when you're dating someone, and you have a fight, you turn to your friends and tell them your side — not because you want advice, but because you want their agreement, their social proof. (Social proof is even stronger when it comes from people we know.)

It's even worse when people break up. It's so easy to seek out all your friends and tell them horrible stories about the new ex-, not because it's information they need... but because you want them to support the breakup. You want their social proof.

It's perfectly natural, and largely unavoidable. Evolutionary psychologists will say it's built into our genes. I think they're right. It helps reduce the complexity of the number of decisions we have to make every day.

But in the end, we don't respect groupthink. After all, trends are easy to folllow, but think about the people who start them. Don't the majority of trends get started by the same minority of people? ...a few independent people, who are strong-willed enough to do what they like, or what they want, or what they think is right, regardless of the logic of the crowd?

You can't really blame people for following the groupthink. But you can't exactly respect them, either.

If the whole crowd is walking past a homeless man, deliberately ignoring him, you will think nothing of walking past and ignoring him too. But if the street were completely empty, just you and him, and you had to walk past him, would you still be able to pretend you didn't notice him asking for money? Or would you fish out some coins and try to help?

The problem with social proof is when it prevents us from doing the right thing, simply because nobody else is doing the right thing. And the evidence shows when we're alone and our actions don't match those from when we were in the group.

If you bad talk your ex- all day to your friends, and spend all day insisting you hate him, but then once you're alone and away from your friends you call him and try to apologize, that makes you a hypocrite. It makes you inauthentic.

Don't worry. It's not so bad. You're just like everyone else. Unfortunately, I'm looking for someone who stands out — who's not just like everyone else. I don't want just another hypocritical face in the crowd.

Search terms that lead to me

2007-10-25T14:37:00.000-04:00

This is fun. Here are a sampling of recent search engine searches that have led people to Randem.net:

In some cases, it troubles me what people are searching for online. I have to assume that 50 funniest moment in child pornography is a joke, because it's too disturbing to take seriously. But why would someone be searching for "daughter into slavery"?

Look at this dog!

2007-10-25T11:31:00.000-04:00

This is an awesome flyer for an awesome dog. It even has an awesome web site.

I wouldn't be surprised if this dog had real, ultimate power, and occasionally flipped out and killed people... maybe with a roundhouse kick to the head!

A bizarre trifecta

2007-10-25T10:34:00.000-04:00

No quarterback in NFL history has beaten 31 other teams. Granted that stat is only noteworthy as of the moment that there were 31 teams to beat, which would 1999, when the new Browns took the field.

Nevertheless, the bizarre part is that Brett Favre, Payton Manning, and Tom Brady have all beaten 30... and all three of them are playing their unbeaten opponent this week.

Will the three best quarterbacks in the game today all go into the history books for the same event on the same day?

Worst book titles...

2007-10-24T11:48:00.001-04:00

Today I was inspired to have a look at some of recent history's worst book titles. Here are some samples of what I found:

Fart Proudly (link)

How Green Were The Nazis? (link)

Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium (link)

How To Good-Bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way? (link)

Damn. That last title was so funny we have to take a moment and read the book's description:

I think constricting anus 100 times and denting navel 100 times in succession everyday is effective to good-bye depression and take back youth. You can do so at a boring meeting or in a subway. I have known 70-year-old man who has practiced it for 20 years. As a result, he has good complexion and has grown 20 years younger. His eyes sparkle. He is full of vigor, happiness and joy. He has neither complained nor born a grudge under any circumstance. Furthermore, he can make love three times in succession without drawing out.

The winner, as far as I'm concerned, is the children's book depicted at the right.

Great uses of artist's talent...

2007-10-23T13:23:00.001-04:00

I really love the internet. Where else can the unsung heroes of society really get an opportunity to exploit their talents, and have fun doing it?

Today's unsung hero is the instructional poster artist. You know, like the guy that draws the pictures on that laminated card in the back of the airplane seat. Or, in this case, the web page illustrating how to steal the arm rest from the passenger next to you.

The psychology of persuasion

2007-10-23T11:36:00.001-04:00

Yesterday's 60-Second Science podcast at Scientific American discussed the "six basic rules of persuasion" that Joe Torre used to his advantage. The reason I find this particularly interesting is because this comes from the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, which I am currently in the middle of reading.

In fact, it's all the more fascinating, given that last night I read about marketing research companies sending money with their surveys, and then this morning my coworker mentioned that he just received money in an envelope that he was about to feed to the shredder.

Taming Materialism

2007-10-23T11:16:00.001-04:00

A theme I love to go on about is how the things you own end up owning you. Material possessions can serve a purpose, but more and more they becomes suffocating.

Naturally, I took an interest in this Penelope Trunk's recent entry at the Brazen Careerist, in which she offers five steps to taming materialism, including:

3. Understand the concept of aspirational clutter. Get reality and throw stuff out.
So much of what we hold on to is what we wish we were using — objects that commemorate a life we aspire to but do not have. The six books we bought a year ago and haven’t read, for example. We don’t want to admit that we’re not making time to read, so we save them. The treadmill is another object that is loaded because if you throw it out you’re admitting to yourself that you’re never going to use it. Keeping it, even unused, maintains your dream of getting into shape.

This is something I try to do often in my life. I take an inventory of the things around me and ask myself "am I really using that, or am I just holding on to an idea?" When I'm honest with myself (as I try to be) the reality of the answer is sometimes surprising.

Hil-effin-larious!

2007-10-22T09:39:00.001-04:00

I'm in stitches over here after watching an improv group of over 100 men mocking Abercrombie & Fitch. Just watch.

Live by design, not by default

2007-10-19T11:56:00.001-04:00

I often hear people try to encourage each other, offering the advice that you have to love yourself for who God made you. Mother's tell this to their child who's shorter than everyone else his age. Wives tell this to their balding husbands. Etc.

Well, to be frank, I think it's a bunch of bullshit. We are our parents' offspring. Our traits, our appearances, and even in large part our personalities are products of a genetic coupling process that is well documented and understood. If your mother had a dominant gene for brown eyes and recessive for blue, and your father had brown eyes with recessive for green, then you're going to have a very high probability of having brown eyes, with a slight chance for green, and you will never have a chance at blue eyes.

That's science. It's not some random, magical experience. It's not like you get pregnant, and then God sets up a workshop in your womb, playing games of chance for 9 months until a baby is born. If that were the case, white couples would be able to have black babies, and asian couples could have arabic babies. That doesn't happen.

You are the product of genetics. And as such, there is no divine plan for who you are. Therefore, choosing to just take what life gives you is living by default. It's refusing to take responsibility for yourself.

I say, stop living by default. Start living by design. Live where you live because you choose to live there. Look how you look because you choose to look that way.

You don't like be overweight? or underweight? Stop whining about it. Stop blaming it on your McDonalds, or your wife's excellent cooking, or the price of healthy food. Stop blaming God for making you a miserable fat person, or an insecure skinny person. Take responsibility. Change your diet. Start going to the gym. Design your body how you want it.

You don't like being poor? You don't like living week to week? You hate not having extra money to go out to dinner or spend a night at a hotel? Stop blaming your job, or your education, or your family's expectations. Take responsibility. Look for a better job. Get more education. Change your spending habits. Be more frugal. Stop buying every cute singing fish that you see in the line at Wal-Mart. Design your finances how you want them.

Have you ever known someone who got plastic surgery done? A facelift, or a nose job, or a beast augmentation, or lyposuction? Sometimes the work looks natural, and sometimes you can tell it's not. (Think Cher...) But I have never known someone who got cosmetic surgery and wasn't happier for doing so. In fact, I remember seeing a piece on tv about a real life couple who had sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into cosmetic surgery to make themselves literally look like Ken and Barbie™, but even though their looks were obviously cosmetic, it didn't stop the couple from being truly happy with themselves. Instead of being insecure, they are confident and outgoing.

You have the power to choose your life. Stop complaining about your situation. Stop accepting that you have no control. Stop being a victim and start being a cause. It's very empowering when you choose to take responsibility for yourself. Instead of being miserable with the life you have by default, you can be truly happy with the life you have by design.

I love it when...

2007-10-18T15:16:00.001-04:00

I love it when women talk about having "the balls" to do something. Even though it makes absolutely no sense, the point still gets made. And somewhere in the depths of my imagination, there's a cartoonish moment of humor while I imagine the female who said it looking at herself in the mirror, admiring her ball sack...

Week 6 NFL Results

2007-10-18T11:39:00.000-04:00

Game	Pick	Result
STL@BAL	Ravens	Right
MIN@CHI	Bears	Wrong
MIA@CLE	Browns	Right
WAS@GB	Packers	Right
HOU@JAX	Jaguars	Right
CIN@KC	Chiefs	Right
PHI@NYJ	Jets	Wrong
TEN@TAM	Buccaneers	Right
CAR@ARI	Cardinals	Wrong
NE@DAL	Patriots	Right
OAK@SD	Chargers	Right
NO@SEA	Saints	Right
NYG@ATL	Giants	Right

Okay, this week I went 10 and 3, a serious improvement over the decidedly mediocre results I've been getting the past few weeks. And with Bears loss coming on a 55-yard field goal with 4 seconds left on the clock, I feel like I was within 4 seconds of going 11-2 for the week.

Vinny Testaverde really came to life for the Panthers, practically out of nowhere. I won't be surprised if having him at quarterback marks a big turnaround for their season.

And Testaverde's old team, the Jets, didn't put up as much of a fight against the Eagles as I thought they would... but the fact that the Eagles only won by one field goal seems to be proof that my assessment of them was right.

Otherwise, for the rest of the teams in the rest of the games, it looks like everything shook out pretty much how I thought it would.

The Pareto Principle, on life

2007-10-17T23:08:00.001-04:00

I posted two years ago about the Pareto Principle — also known as the 80/20 rule — pointing to an article by Richard Koch suggesting we can apply this business rule to our daily lives.

The Pareto Principle states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This effect is often noticed in business, where 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients. Or, 80% of a project's gains come from the first 20% of your development efforts.

The logical extension of this thought is that you burn 80% of the effort on the project finishing that last 20%.

So what if we applied this to our lives? What is the value proposition?

It's not hard for me to imagine that 80% of my happiness comes from the things I do 20% of the time. And likewise, it's not hard to imagine that 80% of my positive interactions come from that quality core — those 20% of people in my life who add value.

So the question naturally follows, what is that remaining 80% doing for me? What makes of that 80% of things I do, where I'm burning the majority of my energy to get a minimal positive return?

Are there frustrating, difficult, or unrealistic activities I'm participating in that are burning a lot of time and energy but not paying off? Are there people who are eating up the bulk of my time while returning very little happiness or positive interaction?

It's pretty interesting when you look at your life through the filter of such fundamental economic business principles.

If you burn 80% of your effort on a measly 20% return, it seems theoretically sound that you could cut those activities completely, in favor of taking on four new projects, goals, or activities. If each new activity returned that same 80% benefit from an investment of 20%, your improvement would be an astonishing 320%.

Essentially, by trimming the costly negative activities and replacing them with a light interest in four new activities, your quality of life could be 16 times better!

It's an interesting thought.

Word of the day: soporific

2007-10-16T13:30:00.001-04:00

soporific
adj
1. causing or tending to cause sleep.
2. pertaining to or characterized by sleep or sleepiness; sleepy; drowsy.
3. something that causes sleep, as a medicine or drug

for example:
My coworker's constant, apologetic droning has had a soporific effect on everyone involved in today's meeting.

@Randem

Please update your feed

Where are those iphone apps?

Jailbreak the iPhone

More searches that lead to me

Woohoo! I have psychic powers!

Game Theory

Quote of the day

How fast could you blow your wad?

A major victory for common sense

Will the human race split?

Quote of the day

Social Proof

Search terms that lead to me

Look at this dog!

A bizarre trifecta

Worst book titles...

Great uses of artist's talent...

The psychology of persuasion

Taming Materialism

Hil-effin-larious!

Live by design, not by default

I love it when...

Week 6 NFL Results

The Pareto Principle, on life

Word of the day: soporific