Prescription Drugs…

…they help me through the day.

What’s the deal with every single kid being on prescription meds nowadays? Even if they aren’t diagnosed with ADD/ADHD they’re still force-fed some bizarre cocktail of mood, personality, and fun suppressants.

Certainly some children have real psychological disorders that can be helped with drugs but not every kid does. It’s like parents have adopted the attitude where if somethings wrong, just throw meds at it until the problem fixes itself. Kid got in a fight? Medicate. Kid’s getting bad grades? Medicate. Kid’s crying? Medicate.

What these parents fail to recognize is that kids’ behavior hasn’t really changed in the past two thousand years. “But my two year-old tore up the curtains!” Yeah, he’s two.

Maybe modern parents just don’t want the responsibility of shaping a child’s future… so they let Prozac do it for them.

The (Purported) Porcupine DVD-Shoot Setlists

As any self-respecting Porcupine Tree fan knows, they filmed their shows on October 15th and 16th for the new DVD. A quick Google search shows the setlist for October 15th:

1. Fear of a Blank Planet
2. My Ashes
3. Anesthetize
4. Sentimental
5. Way out of Here
6. Sleep Together
7. Normal
8. Stars Die
9. What Happens Now?
10. Wedding Nails
11. Dark Matter
12. Half-Light
13. Sever
14. Blackest Eyes
15. Sleep of No Dreaming
16. Halo

The setlist for the 16th was a lot harder to find, for some reason, but I think it’s as follows:

1. Normal
2. Drown with Me
3. Stars Die
4. Cheating the Polygraph
5. Anesthetize
6. Prodigal
7. Wedding Nails
8. Strip the Soul
9. .3
10. Half-Light
11. Sever
12. Way out of Here
13. Sleep Together
14. Fear of a Blank Planet
15. Trains
16. Sleep of No Dreaming
17. Halo

It’s generally expected that the entire Fear of a Blank Planet album will appear on the DVD; this is the last tour in which they’ll be playing the entire album all the way through and it seems reasonable that they’d want to have it documented.

Given the setlists, it’s hard to imagine them making a bad DVD no matter what they put on it. I would actually spend the $50 for a 10 minute DVD where all they play is Dark Matter. Love that song.

Besides Dark Matter and FoaBP there aren’t a lot of songs on the sets that meet either of these two conditions:

• Is super-amazing
• Is not already on a live album

My guess is almost all of the songs meeting the latter condition will be on the DVD. That is, all of FoaBP, the songs they played from Nil Recurring (including Normal — the version on We Lost the Skyline doesn’t really count), Stars Die (same as Normal), Strip the Soul (XM barely counts either), Dark Matter, Sever, Prodigal, Half-Light.

I also found some pretty good pictures from one of the shows.

Congratulations!

You’ve been selected to receive a free Nintendo Wii! All you have to do is click on the Nintendo Wii and then easy [sic] register on the next page. So what are you waiting for? Claim your free Nintendo Wii now. And once again, congratulations.

“Nintendo Wii” is easily replaced, of course, by “Walmart Giftcard” or “Apple iPhone.” If you’ve ever heard (yes, I mean heard, not seen) one of these web ads, then you and I probably agree that a marketing executive somewhere has to die.

Seriously, whose idea was it to make an audible web advertisement? What’s more, who decided to have it spoken by some pubescent teenager with a scratchy voice instead of by someone whose voice is actually tolerable?

I can understand the naïve logic that answers my first question: some asshole marketing guy thinks that since people can usually ignore bright, flashy ads, a good way of getting people to pay attention is through sound. This asshole marketing guy is right, of course. He’s wrong, though, if he thinks that I’ll want to fucking click on the fucking ad after hearing it talk to me.

Besides, who in the world hears an ad like that and is like “OMG! I’m gonna get a free iPhone!”?

Really, though, my major problem with these ads is that they make me less likely to visit the sites that have them. And when I do go to those sites, I feel like finding the guy responsible for the ad and killing him in a hideously violent manner.

Raisin Bran

If you were to ask a young child what his favorite cold cereal was, he would probably say, “Lucky Charms,” or “Frosted Flakes.” In part, the predictability of his response derives from the fact that he is young and is thus more vulnerable to the marketing ploys of a psychotic leprechaun and snowboarding tiger. On the other hand, though I’ve found no reliable statistics, it seems likely that asking adults the same question would supply you with as wide a variety of answers as there are cereals. This is because although adults, unlike children, are less interested in how “grrrrrreat” a cereal is than how nutritious and tasty it is. By these two standards, nutrition and taste, I put it to you that Kellog’s Raisin Bran is the best breakfast cereal in existence.

If, in our increasingly unlikely hypothetical scenario, you asked an adult who favors taste over nutrition why the taste of their favorite cereal is superior to that of all others, they would either be at a loss for words, or mutter something vague about sugar and artificial flavoring. And indeed they would be justified in being vague, because eating an unhealthy cereal just because it tastes good is completely absurd. This hypothetical adult would be experiencing mild cognitive dissonance; it would slowly be dawning on them that if you’re going to eat something unhealthy, why not eat something that tastes really good? Like ice cream or chocolate?

So eventually it would be conceded that taste is probably not the most important factor in determining the worth of a cereal. An argument would probably be put forth suggesting that a balance of taste and nutrition is desirable. Such foolish people are either drunk or have never experienced the trip commonly known as Raisin Bran.

Why It’s the Best

Raisin Bran dodges the entire question of “balancing” nutrition and taste. It has both. What its ingenious creators realized is that the taste of a cereal isn’t entirely dependent on its sweetness and sugar content. While sweetness is an important contributor to overall taste, a blend of tastes is essential to an optimal gustatory experience.

And so it is the double-barreled action from the raisins and the bran that makes the taste of Raisin Bran superior. The soaring flavors of the sweet raisins dance in harmony with the more grounded flavors of the starchy bran. This dance brings joyous life to every bite of one’s breakfast.

Indeed, once such a wonderful sensation has been revealed to your taste buds you might wonder if nutrition even matters. Perhaps it doesn’t to you, but it certainly did to the cereal engineers at Kellog’s. Naysayers like those at Calorie Count might give Raisin Bran outrageously low “Nutrition Grades” (B, in this case), but the only grievance they have is that Raisin Bran is “very high in sugar.” Well of course it is. Sugar is fantastic! It’s not even bad for you. Or rather, it’s not bad for you unless you consume so much that you don’t burn off the calories it supplies during the day. And if that’s the case, you’re probably a fatty anyway, so you don’t care.

“Two Scoops” Is Bullshit

A friend of mine did a statistical analysis on the amount of raisins in a box of Raisin Bran and found that if a the average box actually contains “two scoops of raisins,” then a scoop must be about ¼ of a cup. This is, as I see it, the greatest failing of Raisin Bran. Don’t get me wrong; they don’t need to add more raisins, they just need to think of a better marketing strategy. The current ratio of bran to raisins could only be more divine if it were

Mongol

I finally saw this film. I’d been intrigued ever since I saw previews for it, but I never was able to see it in theaters. The story is about, of course, Genghis Khan, and particularly how he rose to power. It may be a story that’s excruciatingly familiar to anyone who’s ever played Age of Empires II, but director Sergei Brodov nevertheless manages to weave it into an exciting, epic tale.

Mongol is the sort of film that 10,000 BC and Apocalypto should have been; it has a similar premise — something is happening in an ancient, distant land — but Mongol somehow manages to be an enjoyable film. It’s got a little something for everyone: romance and otherwise complex character relationships, fighting, adventure, and even the occasional spark of humor.

For me, though, the battles are the reason to watch the movie. They’re shot in a manner very reminiscent of 300: lots of blood and slow-motion. And of course, the battles take place in Mongolia, and Brodov doesn’t hesitate to show gorgeous, wide-angle shots of the Mongolian landscape (though it’s sometimes actually landscape in Germany, Kazakhstan, and Russia).

A peculiar aspect of the film is that it manages to be entirely self-contained while simultaneously allowing the opportunity for a sequel. I personally would very much like a sequel; all we get to see in Mongol is the rise of Genghis Khan. At the end of the movie he hasn’t raped and pillaged his way across Asia and eastern Europe yet. I want to see that.

Prison Break Season 4 – Second Thoughts

I was really excited for the fourth season of Prison Break. When the first two episodes came out, I reveled in the wonderful notion of watching Michael Scofield come up with clever tricks to steal things. I thought season 4 would be intense, exciting, and creative.

What I didn’t know then that I know now is what the Prison Break writers had in mind for this season: a political thriller. That’s basically all the show is now. It’s just complicated, Byzantine factions warring within the federal government. It’s not what I signed up for.

Season 1 was all about the intrigue and occassional insights into life in a prison. We got to watch Scofield’s astoundingly complex plan come together over the course of about twenty of the most exciting episodes of any show ever aired on TV. Seasons 2 and 3 tried to continue in this vein but were only moderately successful.

Now season 4. Season 4 is nothing more than a trite, uninspired so-called “thriller” that completely fails to keep me interested. It’s just like a long, bad movie. My prediction: Michael Scofield dies some heroic death at the end of the season and the show is finished. The producers must know that Prison Break has jumped the shark.

Roulette Math – Part II

Thanks to no one, I’ve finally reached a conclusion to the question I posed at the end of my Roulette Math post. To prove it, proof by induction with two variables will be used. Explicitly,

let be the statement

To prove ,

1. Prove
2. Assume
3. Prove that is true if is true
4. Assume
5. Prove that is true if is true

Phase 1

is true

Phases 2, 3

Induction is not necessary here.

Phases 4,5

Assume (phase 4)

All that remains is to show that is true if the above is true (phase 5):
Since by assumption, then

So

Thus, if is true, must be true. Phase 5 complete. QED.

Further Application To Roulette

Once again, imagine you’re playing roulette, betting only on red, black, even, or odd (the ones with 2:1 payout). Instead of doubling, you decide that you’d rather triple, quadruple, or even -uple your bet each round. You continue multiplying your principle bet, by until you win. After rounds, you have lost

dollars

If you win in round you will win

Your total earnings are what you’ve won minus what you spent:

Which, according to Mathematica, can be simplified to

That means if your initial bet is $100, you quintuple your bet every time, and it takes you 4 rounds to win, you’ll walk away with a bonus $103,700. That is, if you can afford the betting (and if there’s no maximum bet!)

Beggars

I was walking down the street today when I was accosted by a man wearing tattered old clothing and feebly shaking a styrofoam cup with a couple coins in it. As I approached—and eventually left behind—this beggar, I thought about whether or not I should give him money. I quickly reached a mental impasse. Part of me wanted to give him some change, and part of me did not. As I explored my thoughts further, I realized that my mind is divided into four relatively equally-proportioned segments:

• The part that wants to give the man money so that he can eat
• The part that doesn’t want to give him money because
  • He’ll spend it on booze
  • I’m cheap
  • My money is hard to access
• The part of me that wants to shove him into a puddle because
  • He smells
  • He’s annoying
  • He’s in my way and I’m in search of breakfast
• The part of me that wants to come home and blog about what I think about beggars (and to nest unordered lists)

Clearly, one of these compartments of my mind dominated the others. That particular compartment also noted a small child begging her father for a dollar to give to the beggar. My thoughts eventually led me to the following theory of beggars.

A Theory of Beggars

What is it that makes me not want to give money to beggars roughly 75% of the time I see them? Why is it that a child wants to give a beggar money so badly that she pesters her father until the 75% of his brain that operates like mine finally concedes?

The theory is this: children and adults have entirely different reasons for giving money to beggars. As adults, we must deal with the world in a very pragmatic way, just to live out our daily lives. We are thus concerned with the tangible aspects of giving a beggar money, and this is also where most of our objections arise. The common arguments against giving money to beggars are that they’ll spend it on alcohol and that it only encourages them to clutter up the sidewalk in an otherwise pleasant part of the city. Strictly speaking, these arguments are probably correct.

Even the 25% of our brains that tell us to give the man money are caught up in the tangible. We consciously conjure up feelings of empathy; what does it feel like to be hungry and to have no money? When we do give a beggar money, we hope that he goes and spends it on a hamburger.

Children take a simpler and more pure perspective (or so I assert). In the mind of the child, the argument in favor of giving money to a beggar is something like this:

• The beggar desperately wants money
• The beggar will be happy if he is given money
• You will be happy if the beggar is happy
• You should give the beggar money

For the child who has no solid sense of what a dollar is or signifies, money is not mentally linked to anything tangible, and is thus linked to the intangible. Have you ever seen a child exclaim in excitement when they’re given $5? They have no idea what sort of material goods $5 corresponds to. All they know is that having money is good. So when a child sees a beggar in need of money, they apply the above logic and conclude that giving money to a beggar is very important.

An Alternate Hypothesis

Later, an alternate hypothesis occurred to me. I thought of it when I was accosted for the second time that day; it was not by a beggar this time, but by an activist. He approached me and said something to the effect of “Do you want to help end world hunger?”

Well yes, I do want to help end world hunger, and I said as much. He asked me how much I wanted to donate, then stared blankly when I informed him that I didn’t want to donate anything. I hadn’t lied; I really do want to help end world hunger. It wasn’t even a money problem—I’d be glad to donate money to help end world hunger. The problem was him. I didn’t want to give him money because of the way he’d approached me.

It’s the same way with beggars. There’s something in their tone and attitude that isn’t quite belligerent, but a little goading. Something that makes you think that their goal isn’t really to get money to buy a hamburger, but rather to make you feel bad about not giving them anything.

This alternate hypothesis is consistent with my observations about children giving money to beggars.Perhaps the part of the brain that deals with beggars is no different in adults and children; perhaps children, who are never verbally assaulted by guilt-instilling persons, have no qualms about giving away money if they think it’s for a good cause.

Children are never assaulted in this way for a simple reason: children are off limits. Whether it’s common sense or a survival instinct, people do not mess with kids.

Conclusion

I’ve found the best tactic for countering those of beggars and activists is to simply walk on the opposite side of the street. If you can anticipate their position, you can make strategic road crossings and avoid moral dilemmas altogether (unless you have a peculiar conscience that finds avoiding beggars to be immoral or at least morally ambiguous).