mcgees.org

“Mesmerizing” is how my brother described it.  I wish I knew more adjectives.  That hardly does it justice.

Two YouTube links in one day?  Shenanigans!  OK, just ignore the last one if you have to, and go watch this one.

I just won $500 in a private Australian lottery.  I got an email and everything!

No, really.  It sounds like a joke, but I’m A$500 richer.

It’s nine minutes long, but go watch.  Go on.  Seriously.  Nine minutes, you can spare them.  This whole paragraph is a link.

You didn’t go, did you?  Here it is again.  At least give the guy his day in court.  You spend more time than this masturbating, and you know it.

OK, the easily cowed have watched the video.  Thoughts?  Anyone?

Oh wait! I have some!

Every four-square argument should give you pause.  It’s Pascal’s Wager, and that is a deeply, deeply flawed analysis.  But let’s not talk about Pascal yet.  Let’s talk about Global Warming.

I’m going to summarize, as I still don’t think you’ve watched the video.  He draws four squares, the quadrants of the “Global Warming is Real / Global Warming is Fake” and the “Do Something / Do Nothing” axes, and pretends to court worst-case scenarios in all four squares.  GW is fake and we do nothing?  Sanguine.  GW is true and we do something?  We’ve spent some money, but still sanguine.  GW is false and we do something?  Global Economic Depression.  GW true and we do nothing?  The End of the World.

OK, he didn’t actually say “The End of the World”, but that’s even more worst-case than he said, so we’ll leave it.

See?  Four squares.  Nine minutes.  Problem solved.  Wager yourself into salvation.  Pascal would be proud.

But his argument’s fallacious.  If we stagnate the economy to fix global warming, we’re going to end up with “Global Economic Depression”, whether or not GW is true.  If his four box analogy were an accurate tool, we would be wagering guaranteed Global Economic Depression against the risk that everything is going to be OK.  And … wait for it … Global Economic Depression, in the age of ICBMs, could cause the End of the Fucking World.

But his pretty squares hide problems just by their construction.  McGee’s First Law is “Everything is more complicated than it at first appears to be, even when McGee’s First Law is taken into account.”  Every time you see a dichotomy, a line in the sand, prepare to argue.  “You’re with us or you’re against us.”  “Something is alive or it isn’t.”  “Something is a person or it isn’t.”  “Global Warming is true or it isn’t.”  If, just for the sake of argument, GW is a nonzero but noninfinite threat, and we devote the entirety of our resources to it, we’ve overreacted, and we can actually cause the end of the world by trying to help.

But it gets better!  How fucked will we be if Global Warming is true but is already irreversible?  Then, if we choose “Column A” (the do something [everything] column), we are left with a fucked planet, but with no jobs, no food stockpiles, no medical stockpiles, no nuclear disarmament, no colonization of outer space, no nothing because we’ve spent every cent trying to stop Global Warming.

I’m a registered Green Party member.  And I want to save the Earth.  But I part company with dichotomizers, Earth-Firsters, and their ilk.  The time for debate is not over.  The time for debate is now.  There will not be a time when debate is unreasonable.  And I hate faulty logic.  I’d rather have a root canal.  It makes me want to scream, and drives my blood pressure through the roof.

We do need to try to save the Earth.  But we need to do so by preserving the Earth in the interim.  If we start putting infinite resources towards problems, we are guaranteeing our demise.  And next week, it might not be GW falling on our heads.  It could be AIDS.  Or influenza.  Or meteorites.  Or space monkeys.  Or, as Pascal would have it, God.  Ditch the boxes, ditch the dichotomies.  Plant a tree and bike to work.  Shut down coal plants.  We’ll turn this around.  We’ll just do it without playing four-square.

Ah, torrential autumnal storms and Pizza Hut Quikorder.  A match made in Valhalla.  A $5 tip will just about assuage my guilt, I think.

Want to see me go all flame-on like a newb in a philately forum, then go groveling back with my tail between my legs?  Not only was my netiquette impaired, I’m not even sure my logic was sound.

Check it out, it’s kind of fun.  I’m the one in the penguin suit.

These are my friends and cube mates:

They are good for cheering you up, keeping you company, or being sympathetically down while you’re down.

SwapaDVD is now online, to complement PaperBackSwap, SwapaCD, and SwapaGoat (Maaaa!).

Please use those links to sign up, they’ll help me.

I have a catch-all address for mcgees.org.  Everything not sent to a valid mcgees.org reader is forwarded to my GMail account.  It’s convenient: let’s say Pepsi asks for my email address.  Bingo: pepsi@mcgees.org.  If they get obnoxious, pepsi@mcgees.org gets redirected to /dev/null.

I don’t know who signed a website form as “chrishornton@mcgees.org”, but damn.  You have got to read the following response “he” got:

Thanks for submitting your comments about your child’s school. We appreciate your taking the time to provide your insights but we were unable to post the review because:

The review contains inflammatory remarks and/or hearsay.

We believe the most valuable reviews to share with other parents are those that are concise, relevant to the quality of the whole school and specific.
Here are two samples of reviews we have posted:

“Both my children have gone to ANLC since they were 5 years old. ANLC is a school where the children come first. Each child is encouraged to do their personal best without being labeled as the smart or dumb kids. The teachers are highly skilled and work hard to bring out the best in each child.  The principal is kind and knows each child by name. She is a great example of a leader and I will miss seeing her everyday as my daughter graduates this year. Thank you ANLC for bringing out the best in my children and giving them the encouragement and confidence they need to go out into the world!”

“This school has been a big disappointment. It is probably fine for most kids, but our eighth grader needs accelerated learning opportunities which have not been available. Its outstanding music program dramatically deteriorated while my child was here, so that it is at best mediocre currently. The special advanced algebra class for 8th grade was cancelled just before he reached 8th grade, and the caliber of most of his English teachers has been shockingly poor. It has therefore given none of the advantages of a huge school, with all of the disadvantages. I can recommend it only in contrast to most of the other public schools in the district.”

To see our guidelines for posting reviews, click here:
http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/static/guidelines.html/NY#guidelines

Your review:
The school is full of sexual predators, deranged students who think they are part of the Trench Coat Mafia, and teachers who really seem like they could care less about the students.
http://www.greatschools.net/modperl/parents/NY/XXXXX

We invite you to resubmit your review following our guidelines.

If you have a particular problem with your child’s teacher or principal, or if your child is experiencing difficulties at school, we urge you to bring the matter to the attention of your child’s teacher or principal.

GreatSchools.net Staff

Emphasis added.  But still…  A little crazy-bitter, are we?  I looked up the school he was describing, and it’s a high school outside Albany.  Redacted for the obvious reasons.

Don’t go to GreatSchools.net without a popup-blocker, btw.

That was the subject of an email I received today.  Unfortunately, it was spam (accidentally empty spam, as it contained a malformatted tag to insert body text.)  C’est dommage.  I would have liked to see a story that could be summed up as “Crispin Glover saved my life”.

Anyone want to try?  Just write a paragraph.  The sentence “Crispin Glover saved my life” must appear.  The more absurd, the better.  Someone will decide a winner.  Then I’ll send the winner a snail mail letter or a banana or something.

To make this post not entirely useless, SBC have you seen photos of Elizabethan gloves?  I hadn’t until I read Will in the World.  They are majestic.  I thought William Shakespeare’s dad’s being a glover meant he (Will) had humble beginnings.  I didn’t imagine that his dad was working with gold filigree, the finest fabrics, and jewels.  He was actually rather wealthy.

At my last job, several years ago, we were sitting around at lunch discussing the topic of sampling in music.  I cited a few instances I could think of, including the famous monologue from the film Cool Hand Luke being sampled in rock band Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Civil War.

One of my colleagues scoffed and said, “I don’t expect many Guns ‘n’ Roses fans have seen Cool Hand Luke!”

I was about to indignantly reply, “Hey, I like Guns ‘n’ Roses!”  But I stopped myself.  There’s an obvious comeback: “And have you seen Cool Hand Luke?”  I hadn’t, so I kept my mouth shut.

I still don’t grok why being a GnR fan would negatively correlate with having seen the film.  But my not having seen it is probably inexcusable.  So I’ll repair that deficiency soon, and do a moviemath entry on it.

Insomnia.  Insomnia.  Insomnia.

I needed to borrow a paper drill (hole-punches large amounts of paper.)  So I went over to Craigslist and asked to borrow one.  Someone responded within an hour and told me they had a professional model that was free for the taking.  In the mean time, I had the following delightful email exchange:

> > > On Nov 25, 2007 3:06 PM, why702 < banks2127@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > i  own one but you would have to use it here dont know who would let
> > > you just take it and trust that you would return it.Nonetheless you
> > > can do this over here for 1 million dollars
> > >
> > I could of course have given you my driver’s license or something as
> > collateral … but fortunately there are kinder people in the world than
> > you.  I have an offer from someone who is going to simply give me one.
> >
>  > Regards,
> >
> > Joshua McGee
> >
> On Nov 25, 2007 10:50 PM, why702 wrote:
> ok see if it works out
>

Picked it up tonight.  Have it sitting on my workbench now.  Could go for a little cleaning with some mineral spirits, but it was fucking *free*.  Retails over a grand.  Nice unit.  Nice people.  See how it works?  Welcome to craigslist.  Don’t expect to see you around too much, though.

- Joshua McGee
http://www.mcgees.org

Damn, did I forget to disguise his email address?

Reviewers found 109,263 errors when reviewing Houghton Mifflin’s math textbooks that were submitted to the state of Texas.  Seriously.  That’s with real math, not Houghton Mifflin math.  Texas imposes a $5,000 fine on each mistake.  The state’s letting them off on a technicality, so the textbook publisher will not have to pony up half a billion dollars to pay the education department.

Ah, Texas textbooks.  Ring a bell?  Go read that link if you haven’t.  It tells about Texas’s textbook standards, which, I swear I’m not making this up, must glorify “free enterprise”, “patriotism”, and the “values” of the state’s heritage (of Texas.  Uh-oh.  Then again, not to worry.  “Lying” is clearly one of their values, so when they deceive students, they’re actually teaching them an important lesson about the values of the state.  See?  Neat, huh?)

Go read.  At the time of that post, the chairperson of the Board of Education co-owned a petroleum company, and explained that “The oil and gas industry should be consulted” when it comes to textbooks, because they “always get a raw deal.”

I was on a site — can’t remember which, darnitall — that, for every post, had a row of framed favicons from something like a dozen different bookmarking sites (del.icio.us, Bloglines, Technorati, etc.)  One click would add the post to your favorite flavor.  Anyone know of a Wordpress plugin for this?  Or am I going to have to roll my own?

Bracing yourself for a sip of cheap, over-oaked Chardonnay and getting a mouthful of even cheaper Sauvignon Blanc is a hideously blech-inducing experience.  With the sting of acid and lack of vanillins, your brain goes, “Bad!  This wine has gone BAD!”

Why am I drinking crappy S. Blanc?  Because it’s open on the table, and I needed a sip of something to take my medicine.

Why am I using wine to swallow my medicine?  Good frakking question.

By the way, whoever thought of crossing “crisp” (watch for that one, it’s a euphemism), wild, and grassy Sauvignon Blanc with thin, testy, weedy Cabernet Franc was out of his head, but ended up with noble, thick-skinned, tannic Cabernet Sauvignon for his trouble.  Go figure.

Unregulated foreign currency exchange scares the daylight out of me.  But anyone else in the US tempted to buy a truckload of Euros (FXCM’s software may be malware, I don’t know), even at the buck-and-a-half they’re going for now?  They keep going up, and I’m guessing they’ll top $2 before Bush is out of office.

The right move at this point for Gatherers’ Guild, the M:tG site I’m a partner in, seems to be to slice shipping costs to Europe to the bare minimum and buy Euro-targeted ads to start sending all our cards overseas.  If $60 in cards can cost them only 40 Euros (which was about $39 a few years ago), you bet they’ll be happy.

I’ve placed an order for an e-book reader: the first-generation Amazon Kindle.  I’ve been interested in a good e-book reader for about 8 years, but what I previously thought was going to be the best, the Everybook, failed to bloom.  It was many times as expensive and heavy, and used LCD screens.

I sat down some years ago and put together a checklist of what I wanted in an e-book reader.  They were:

1. Lightweight
2. Electronic paper
3. Long battery live
4. Expandable storage
5. Ability to be annotated
6. Multiple format support
7. Price under $500
8. Fold-open design to see two facing pages
9. Viewable area at least as large as a paperback
10. Hackable!

Only the first seven are guaranteed.  This is only a one-page reader, however, rather than a two-page reader.  The viewing area is only 6 inches diagonally.  And I’m not sure whether it’s going to be hackable, but I’ll try my best.  But Amazon added a whole bunch of extra functionality: MP3 player, free wireless access to buy books or download content while seeing Amazon reviews, free browsing of Wikipedia, an email address for the device.  I think this all adds up to “good enough for now”.

Notice how everything is converging?  My ideal reader today would support full-motion video, color, advanced music playlist management, email, telephony, touch-sensitivity; it would be a replacement for a separate book reader, phone, mp3 player, PDA, calculator, and laptop.

My CD collection — at least those I’ve ripped — is viewable again.  Check out the program that generated it: Tellico.  High marks as collection-management software.  Link at the bottom of the CD Collection page.

OK, I will continue to take it.  But I am bored.

I left early from Hemet, where Jenn and Niall are, to medicate the cat.  I have tons I could be doing, but: the book I’m reading is written on ultra-low-contrast paper that will have to wait, probably, until I get new glasses or the sun supernovas; the TV needs to be smacked about every five minutes to do its job (no comments, please); my Windows XP notebook is dead; my video player is fucking stolen; and I’ve promised myself I won’t start any more projects until I clean up and organize all my existing ones.

So I’m doing the only rational thing: I’m sitting at my computer, poised in case anyone sends me an email.

OK, that’s not “the only rational thing” as much as it’s “an utterly irrational thing”, but hey.

Oh.  Maybe a new CSI tonight?  Maybe it’s recording on the good TV?  Worth checking.  See you later.

Well, I’ve thought myself pretty high-and-mighty for my public transport experiment.  Fantasies about selling my car and all that.  Bus to the light rail, light rail to Metrolink/Amtrak, Metrolink/Amtrak to the bus, then unwind the procedure on the way home.

What have I seen?  Sick people.  Lots and lots and lots of sick people, with active respiratory (and otherwise) infections.  Nurses still in their bodily-fluid-stained scrubs riding next to me.  A crazy lady with a metal bowl on her head who kept attaching and detaching a bandage and screaming at the conductor.  I’ve endured this, in addition to increasing my commute from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours.  I’ve rejoiced that I can now read, or work, or sleep on the way, and savored what it has done to increase my patience.

Today, I slept.  And some motherfucker stole my backpack.

My laptop is busted, so this is the first time I haven’t had it on me, which would increase the loss by about $1500.  Fortunately (fortunately?) my loss was only $920, in electronics and luggage and tools, including my trusty calculator that I actually considered a dear friend.

Let me let this sink in.  He stole my motherfucking backpack.  How empty did the train have to be for this to transpire?  Could I be dead now?  Could he have held me at knifepoint or gunpoint and asked for my wallet, phone, and keys as well?  Absolutely he could have.

Jenn tells me that my bag could just have easily been stolen out of the back of my car.  But my sample size is leading me to an opposite conclusion.  I’ve been driving to work for over a dozen years.  Nothing has ever been stolen.  I’ve been taking public transportation for a week.  And I cannot afford to replace $920 worth of stuff right now.

Yes, I’m privileged.  Yes, I’m wealthy.  Yes, I’m pretty spoiled.  I make a good living in a plush job in a nice office.  I drive a luxury car.  I have options.  I tried to take the train to reduce my environmental impact.  But is it worth it?  What do you think?

Good grief, is anyone else following this thread?  I realize the extended family of the murderer may be in a bad mood these days, but no one understands a thought experiment.  These are the same people who attend PETA marches to fight for the rights of Schrödinger’s cat.

Anyone waiting for my manic swing, as documented here, to end: it has.  Blah.  Vomiting, chills, and depression.

Wow, this is a nice item, but I didn’t think it was $76 worth of nice.  I bid about a third of that.  [archive]

moar funny pictures

In 1908, the amateur mathematician Paul Wolfskehl, who had always been fascinated by Fermat’s last theorem, bequeathed a prize of one hundred thousand marks to whoever could prove the theorem. This generous prize greatly increased public awareness of the problem, with the result that the University of Göttingen, which was to administer the prize, was deluged with attempts at proofs. Eventually, Edmund Landau, the head of the mathematics department, resorted to sending printed cards acknowledging submissions and stating on which page and line the first error occurred, as it unfailingly did.  — Thomson Gale (I don’t know if that entity is a person, business, or other organization.)

I’m triaging philosophical works, and I keep coming back to Landau’s solution.  So, Lewis, Clive Staples.  Miracles, A Preliminary Study.  New York: Macmillan 1947.  Your first error occurs on page 21.

I’ll follow this up in my quest to find a place for agency in a naturalistic worldview.

Challenge-response for posting (the “What is 6 + 6″ thing) should be working again.  It’s been down since the upgrade of versions.  Thanks to Sue D. for the notification.

I beat my Windows Mobile Solitaire for the first time today.  I scored 3696 points and solved the puzzle in 228 seconds.

In other news, my work XP notebook crashed today.  Hard.  It won’t boot in Safe Mode.  It won’t boot in Recovery Mode.  I’ll be playing Alt-F8 debugging games over the weekend so that I can be productive on Monday.

My question is, does Microsoft have a rebate or exchange scheme for these items?  Could I trade in my valuable Solitaire win for a machine that just, say, works?

That’s it, just “Rebate Scams” as the title, to try to draw search engine traffic.

It will be a self-selected sample, granted.

Anyone think many mail-in rebates are effectively scams that just refuse everyone the first time around?  “Lose the paperwork” or email you and tell you that you forgot to send in the UPC?  If this is going on, how widespread is it?  Anyone switch over to sending with Signature Confirmation on all rebates, or all rebates over $10, for instance?  Anyone put a little code in their address (a fake “unit number” for a house, for instance) to see how much the MIR is really costing you, in terms of unsolicited advertisements?

C.S. Lewis, 1947 (?), final stanza:

Hence, if belated drops yet fall
From heaven, on these her plastic power
Still works as once it worked on all
The glad rush of the golden shower

Add http://sgisland.gs/webcam/webcam.jpg to your desktop and watch it refresh throughout the day (every 3 minutes, approximately.)  It’s in the island of South Georgia.