So, Lone Star, Now You See That Evil Will Always Triumph

By Evan — — Personal

So Pub Quiz is pretty simple. The announcer asks ten trivia questions, and if your team answers the most questions correctly, you win a free round of beer. Generally, each round has a few easy questions, a few moderately difficult questions, and 2-3 challenging questions. Winning even one round is pretty good — the bar is packed with teams of four, so your odds are pretty bad to start with. To make matters worse, the perennial champion teams The Usual Suspects and Four Fat Indians usually win 2-3 rounds a piece, leaving the middling teams to fight over the scraps. Basically, it’s pretty hard work. TANSTAAFB and all that.

Anyway, last week we noticed a huge group of maybe 12-15 sitting next to us. A couple of them were wearing Google T-shirts, and a Google water bottle was sitting on the table. Hmmmm, we wondered… could they possibly be our good friends from Mountain View? Our suspicions were confirmed shortly thereafter when the announcer asked a question that went something like, “What is the technique by which bad guys steal your personal information by setting up fake websites?” The answer was “phishing”, but Team Google decided to be cheeky and call out, “Yahoo Mail!”

Outraged, we shouted out, “Gmail!” Team Google swiveled to look at us, blinking in surprise.

“Oooooooo,” said the rest of the bar.

Fortunately, our teammate Chris piped up with his soothing British accent, “People, people! Let’s just agree it’s AOL Mail and move on, shall we?” Crisis averted.[1]

And thus the evening progressed. Now, a better man than I would just leave it there. It’s unsportsmanlike to gloat.

But I haven’t signed any sort of “Do No Evil” agreement, so what the hell: at the end of the night, Team Yahoo! had won three rounds; Team Google, zero.

When we won the seventh and final round, we were clinking our glasses in triumph, and Team Google was busy getting their coats. We even heard the sweet sound of, “mumble Yahoo! mumble mumble…” At this point we had far too much free beer to drink (discounting Chris), and the gentlemanly thing to do would have been to give our largess to our worthy competitors to the northwest. So… we gave it to the nice young couple with the piercings sitting behind us. Yeah, that’s right. This is our house, baby! Well, okay, actually it’s the house of The Usual Suspects and Four Fat Indians, but Team Google doesn’t need to know that.

1. Look, they outnumbered us 3-1. Even at Eleanor’s best, she could never defeat so many.

The Decline and Fall of Chanukah

By Evan — — Culture

Chanukah just ain’t what it used to be, and this year was worse than usual. First, in response to the putative War on Christmas, our president quickly ordered a retaliatory strike on Chanukah. Not a good start.

Next, an innocent discussion at the lunch table led to a crisis of faith. I mentioned that I had always been fuzzy who the Maccabees were rebelling against. The Syrians? The Greeks? The Syrian Greeks? No, my boss said: the conflict actually was about the Maccabees (right-wing, hard-ass, traditionalist, rural priests) versus Hellenized Jews (liberal, effete, assimilated, urban professionals).

Guess who won?

So for a while I was having serious thoughts about not celebrating Chanukah, ever. Oh, maybe the Hellenized Jews had it coming, what with the sacrificing pigs in the Temple and all. But still.

Fortunately, a little more research revealed that there was more to the story. A couple hundred years later, the rabbis took the reins. And apparently, the early rabbis hated, hated Chanukah, because it was this huge celebration of the military victory of the priests. So the rabbis fixed up the holiday by inventing the miracle of oil and shifting the emphasis to be on the spiritual victory. This is why, if you ask little kids about Chanukah today, they can tell you all about the miracle of the oil and the lights, but they’re usually kind of fuzzy on the assassinations-and-bloody-reprisals part. I think this is the true lesson of Chanukah: the eventual triumph of wussy, lefty, scholarly types, using our evil powers of Postmodernism and Relativism and whatnot to rewrite history. Woo-hoo! Go team!

When I pointed this out to my boss, he responded by saying that this is the way Americans celebrate Chanukah, while in Israel they emphasize the old school interpretation — tiny force triumphing over overwhelming numbers, et cetera. I decided I preferred my blue state interpretation, and we left it at that.

Of course, my boss was wrong about one key point: real Americans don’t focus on the spiritual aspect of Chaunkah. We celebrate Chanukah in a uniquely American way, which is to say, by focusing on the commercial aspect. And that brings me to my third issue with Chanukah this year: the loot.

Don’t get me wrong… now that all the kids are grown up, it’s good to scale back the presents. And it’s nice to chill out a bit, not have to rush around getting everyone presents. Still, the nicest present I got this year was a large set of matching dinner glasses. Which would have been a fine gift, except I already have glasses. It turns out that my impeccable upbringing did not prevent me from bringing this up right away with the gift-giver. And so Mom and I had a conversation that went something like this:

“Look, you need a set of new glasses.”

“Why? I have a perfectly usable set of glasses.”

“Because none of them match. When we come over for summer barbecues, I end up drinking out of a glass shaped like a boot.”

“Oh, the Big Texan glass. But that one is… fun and kitschy.”

“You’re over thirty now, you should have matching glasses. Which reminds me, you also need new plates.”

“Why on earth — those are perfectly usable too, and they actually do match!”

“They’re all chipped!”

“Yes, but they were your plates, that’s why you handed them down.”

“Nevertheless.”

Fortunately my little sister broke the impasse by pointing out that next year, she would be out of school and in desperate need of glasses, plates, and silverware. And thus balance was restored to the Force, peace descended once again on the Goer household, and the all-important Lifecycle of Motley-but-Usable Kitchenware was permitted to continue.

So I’ve come around to liking the dinner glasses, although I am baffled why the manufacturers give you twelve regular glasses and twelve useless short glasses. At best, the short glasses only provide adequate fluid intake for persons under thirty pounds, and those persons have sippy cups. As far as I can tell, there is only one true market for short glasses: restaurants that choose to serve totally inadequate portions of orange juice at breakfast.

Come to think of it, if Chanukah wants to get back in my good graces for next year, a Miracle of the Restaurant Orange Juice would be an excellent start.

The Pitch

By Evan — — Writing

Thanks for seeing me. No, don’t get up. Oh, thanks, I’ve been good. How’s Linda doing? Awesome.

Heh, that’s what I like about you, man. Always down to business. Okay, here goes:

There’s this guy, see, and he plays in this tiny little club in Podunkville that nobody’s ever heard of. You can’t find it on any map, it’s totally underground. Now sure, there are a lot of bands that play this place, but they’re all just retreading old shit. You know, dinosaurs. But this guy? He’s different. He’s a beast. He’s the fucking King. Anyway, even though it’s a small place that no one’s ever heard of, the natives, like, worship him. It’s all, like, his own private little island. Know what I’m saying?

Now, what happens is, this sleazy producer hears about this place one day, you know the type — heh, right back atcha, man! — anyway, this really extra-sleazy producer type finds the place and brings his crew to check out the local talent. And this guy just blows ’em away. They can’t believe what they’re seeing. They’ve got to have him. So they bring him to the city…

How do they get him to the city? Oh, you know, the usual. Drugs, of course. And a hot chick. I’m thinking a Rachel McAdams type… well, anyway. That’s not so important.

The point is, they bring him to the city. And the sleazy producer was dead-on, the dude is a mega-star. No one’s ever seen anything this big before. But it’s not all wine and roses, you know what I’m saying? First off, the contract — well, you know how these things work. The guy is basically a slave. And he’s feeling trapped, you know, like he’s in a cage. He’s not the same artist he was before. He’s not the fucking King anymore. So what does he do?

He escapes his handlers! Breaks out! Goes on a fuckin’ rampage. Wrecks half the city!

What happens next? Well you know the rest. He takes on the city, the city destroys him. Fin. Tale as old as time.

Aha. Yeah. Well, okay, I hear that. No, I realize you’ve got a bunch of biopics coming up, but this isn’t really a — no, I understand. No, that’s cool, makes sense. I mean, I think it’s got some appeal in the tween market, but if you don’t think — yeah, okay. Hey, I just appreciate you hearing me out, you know what I’m saying? Thanks, you too. Let’s get lunch sometime soon. Excellent. Talk to you later. Give my best to Linda…

Wait, what’s that? Sorry, I didn’t catch that, say again?

Do I think there’s some way… to work in a monkey?

Back When Ballot Propositions were REAL Ballot Propositions

By Evan — — News

I miss the good old days of ballot propositions. Who could forget the rabbit punch of Proposition 187 coupled with the haymaker of electricity “deregulation”?1 Distract the electorate and chattering classes with a red meat issue, while sneaking in a hopelessly complex piece of legislation that nobody bothers to pay attention to. Ah, good times, good times.

Back in the good old days, we were ruled by Machiavellian masters, and we liked it! But now? Feh. After scanning today’s ballot propositions, it is clear that today’s political manipulators are mere shadows of the masters of old. This year’s batch of propositions is so… transparent. To paraphrase one of the great observers of the American political scene, “Scruffy. So morbid. A sentimental replica of a politics long since vanished. No style at all.”

Actually, a couple of the propositions might be good ideas if they weren’t so hopelessly, so laughably, so obviously crafted by one organization based in Washington to cripple the political power base of the other. It sounds fair for union workers to get to vote on where their unions distribute campaign donations — until you realize that A) unions already do this, and B) I don’t get to say fuck-all about the lobbying practices of my company. “Pardon me, Mr. Semel, those ten dollars of my salary you’re spending this year on Lobbyist #833251? I’d like it back please. Thanks.” The same goes for fairer redistricting. Taking redistricting out of the hands of the party in power sounds like a very fair idea in principle. That is, until you realize that for some strange reason, this “fairer redistricting” only applies to California and not say, every other state in the Union. Or at least Texas. Weird oversight by the sponsors, isn’t it? I’ve heard of taking a knife to a gunfight, but throwing away your knife on the way to the gunfight, that’s something else entirely.2

The only ray of sunshine this year was that we do see the old trick of, 1) consumer advocates throw in one bill, 2) industry throws in a couple of very similarly worded ones and, 3) wooo, now we got ourselves a proposition par-tay! Still, I remember years past when the one consumer insurance proposition was surrounded by — what, three industry-sponsored ones? Seven? I forget. Anyway, this year the ratio is a pathetic 1:1. It’s like they’re not even trying. I am Officially Depressed.

1. I have to use quotes around “deregulation” so as not to offend the tender sensibilities of those people who like to scream, “But that wasn’t electricity deregulation!!!111!one! You Californians just fucked it up with your… California-ness!” Much like unreconstructed Communists (just sub in “communism” and “Russians”), you have to throw these people a bone and back sllloooowly away.

2. Anyway, fairer redistricting has nothing to do with “retired judges” — go back to playing canasta and bocce ball, retired judges! No, it’s really just a simple math problem. Set ((perimeter squared) / (area)) to some pretty low number. And allow lines to be drawn into U.S.-owned waters in order to eliminate problems with jagged coastlines. Poof. Gerrymandering disappears. I would consider it my duty as a citizen to spearhead this proposition myself… except, well, duh.

Tips for Office Life

By Evan — — Culture

Rules for the promotion of greater office harmony:

  1. If you decide to listen to iTunes at the office, make sure that you plug your headphones into the correct jack on your Powerbook.

  2. If Rule 1 is not in effect, make sure that it takes less than thirty seconds for the thought to cross your mind, “Hmmmm, the sound is weaker and tinnier than I expected. I wonder if it’s coming from the built-in speakers?”

  3. If neither Rule 1 or Rule 2 are in effect, make sure that you are playing something relatively hip or inoffensive. Which is to say not the high-pitched screeching of “Owner of a Lonely Heart“.

On the plus side, many of my coworkers who share their iTunes libraries have the same execrable taste that I do. Which means I can listen to Erasure or Alphaville or whatnot without actually having to buy those tracks and pollute my own hard drive. Excellent!

Scary Stories

By Evan — — Personal

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a short camping trip with my sisters and my brother-in-law in Limekiln State Park. I really need to go camping more often, if only to be reminded of how absolutely gorgeous California is in all terrain and all seasons. We walked along a trail in nearby Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, and were treated to: the sight of great redwoods rising out of the mist fifty feet below us to soar above our heads; rocky barren islands emerging from the mist, like a pirate’s cove; a pristine waterfall pouring into Caribbean-blue waters; and a pair of extremely hot hikers from the Netherlands. One might argue that the Dutch hikers don’t count as natural California splendors… but in California’s defense, we do tend to attract more than our fair share of attractive, impossibly healthy visitors.

My middle sister took care of making reservations, borrowing equipment, buying food, and all other logistical issues. My middle sister is one of those Organized Persons. From her email: “Wednesday dinner is burritos and smores. Thursay breakfast is French toast, OJ and tea. Thursday lunch is PB&J, baby carrots, fruit, potato chips and trail mix…”

The only thing I was in charge of was Entertainment. Obviously no camping trip is complete without Scary Stories, so the first night I read a couple stories from a kid’s book of ghost stories. You know, the kind with, “And she turned around — and the hand she had been holding was completely severed!” Eeeeek! Not scary, not even with a flashlight under the chin. Next we tried Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Again, not even remotely scary. The guy spends 40% of the story staring at the old man and creeping slowly towards him, which I found vaguely creepy in a homoerotic way, but not really scary.

The next night I ditched the scary story idea and instead read an excerpt of “The Rage of Achilles” from the Robert Fagles translation of the Iliad. That went better. I read up to the point where Achilles storms off, and Agamemmnon orders two of his men to go down to Achilles’ camp and retrieve Briseis. And if Achilles resists, “… I’ll seize her myself, with an army at my back — and all the worse for him!” Then I closed the book for the evening. My Gen-Y littlest sister shrieked, “What! What happened next!?” Advantage: Homer!

The only major downside to the trip was that I managed to lose my glasses. They were in their case in my pocket, and I managed to lose them while running through the surf. I noticed they were gone two minutes later, and ran back frantically to paw through two feet of water and sand. Incredibly, I actually found the glasses case! I raised the case triumphantly — and then realized that it was empty. Cue another “Wah-Wah!” from the Great Sound Effects Engineer in the Sky.

So for the next week I used my prescription sunglasses at work, which had the side effect of making me look like I was some sort of l33t hacker from the Matrix. I thought about temporarily switching my shell windows to to green text on black background, but that probably would have been pushing it. Oh, and as luck would have it, my group (Platform Engineering) is the one group I know of in all of Yahoo! that keeps all the overhead lights permanently turned off in their section. It’s actually kind of spooky in our corner. Which is only appropriate, given the universal truth of the computer industry: if you really want to hear scary stories, forget about Edgar Allan Poe, just talk to engineers who are responsible for maintaining billions of dollars worth of production data. No flashlights-under-the-chin necessary.

High Pressure Tomb Accessory Salesmen

By Evan — — Personal

Worse than car salesmen, I tell ya.

slamfu: You having a BBQ this Sunday correct?

evangoer: Yes indeed!

evangoer: Will you be gracing it with your presence?

slamfu: Yes, and a favor to ask.

evangoer: If you’re asking me to change my mojito recipe, the answer is “no”.

slamfu: I need to be in the area the following morning, mind if I crash at your place? And your mojito’s go to your grave with you Im sure

evangoer: … along with all my other possessions.

evangoer: construction of the tomb is proceeding nicely

slamfu: We’re going to bury you in a giant(hopefully) warehouse

evangoer: will there be poison dart traps? I love poison dart traps

slamfu: altho the ashes of everything you own is much more portable

evangoer: !!

slamfu: We dont’ have poison darts, but we did get one of those giant rolling balls of death thingies

slamfu: There was a special.

evangoer: Sweet! Just make sure there are no nooks and crannies for those pesky tomb plunderers to roll into.

evangoer: Did you get the flaming model, or the regular?

slamfu: Regular, with an option to upgrade, and a warranty.

evangoer: Well done!

slamfu: I felt silly buying the warranty afterwards tho.

evangoer: First 10 miles or 1,000 years, standard?

slamfu: Those high pressure tomb accessory salesmen get me every time.

The more I think about it, the more I think Jessica Mitford had the right idea. No, scratch that — the more I think Yoda had the right idea.

Dumb and Dumber

By Evan — — Tech

My college buddy Brad dropped by this weekend. He had asked to see World of Warcraft right before he took off. Unfortunately, my speakers mysteriously stopped working. Everything was connected properly, the speakers were powered on, the light was green… but there was no signal whatsoever on the line out. Whatever was wrong with my speakers, there wasn’t time to fix it, so that was the end of that.

The next day, I conducted a rigorous analysis of the malfunctioning equipment and determined that… the volume was turned all the way off. Good thing I went to Engineering School.

I’ve noticed that my brain is getting less and less trustworthy when it comes to mathematical issues. I thought the decay would stop at, oh, solving simple PDEs, but no. Just today, Mom asked me a straightforward math question for the next edition of her book: “What are the odds of getting seven heads in nine coin flips?” The answer leaped to mind: “(9 choose 7) / (2^9)“. But the scary thing was, I didn’t know why. My brain is cluttered with mathematical machinery that can occasionally lurch to life and spit out answers, but it’s become disconnected from the rest of my thought processes. I might as well have determined the odds through Divine Revelation.

Since this was going into my Mom’s book, I went through an exercise to convince myself that (9 choose 7) really is the right way to count the possible combinations of heads. I then confirmed that by searching on the web. Whew. Which brings us to an even sadder tale: the first search result I got was not the legitimate Drexel University Math Forum site… but an impostor, Bonus.com.

The impostor’s home page is a cheesy blinky flashy games portal, so it’s not obvious at first glance why they would want to errr, mirror the Drexel Math Forums. You would expect to see a blinky banner ad over the borrowed content, but none appears. Actually, if you view source, there is a banner ad at the top… but the link to the image is broken! As Columbo would say, “Dis is a puzzler.”

A little more poking around uncovers the reason for our confusion — we were looking at the wrong page. Unfortunately, the site has been designed to defeat deep links, so I can’t provide a direct link. To get to the page we were supposed to see in all its blinky flashy glory, you need to search the site for “math”, scroll down to the bottom and click on “Ask Dr. Math”. Below that is a mirror of the entire Dr. Math site, framed and lookin’ fabulous.

Drexel’s Terms of Use are reasonably liberal, but Bonus.com still chooses to violate Drexel’s “Credit and copyright notice” and “Links and Framing” policies. Note that Drexel conveniently links to their Terms of Use on each Math Forum page, but Bonus.com has responded by cleverly removing the underlying URL (while leaving the link text itself intact). Just for chuckles, here’s the cache of the unframed mirrored page, courtesy of MSN Search[1]. The banner ad isn’t visible because of the aforementioned broken image link, but if you view source, you can see the detritus left by Bonus.com (and MSN Search) at the top of the page. I wonder what Drexel University thinks about this?

Let’s find out.

1. You can’t help but wonder how Bonus.com fundamentally differs from the MSN Search cache. I think the answer is that the MSN Search cache A) provides the URL to the cached site, and B) makes it clear that the content doesn’t belong to MSN, but came up in the context of a search. If Dr. Math had chosen a design that did not display “Drexel” on every page, we would have no way of knowing that the pages belonged to Drexel U., not Bonus.com.

Commercials We’d Like To See

By Evan — — SF

Ever wonder how carnivorous aliens can devour humans without getting sick, even though they have totally different biochemistries? Well, Steve Eley has the answer:

“Dessert?”

“Oh, no, thank you. I’m chordate intolerant.”

“So am I. Have you tried Terranex?”

“Terranex? What’s that?”

“It’s the new supplement for Earth invaders with sensitive thoracic cavities like ours. It breaks down those complex protein chains so your body doesn’t have to!”

“I had no idea!”

“For best results, Terranex should be taken every solar cycle. Side effects may include headaches, nausea, or the sudden transformation into a half-human hybrid consumed by inexplicable angst and intent on the destruction of your own race. If irritation persists, please see your geneticist. Now…how about an entertainment lawyer?”

“I’ll take two!” [laughter] “THANKS, TERRANEX!”