Bad business strategies

"Hey, we've got extra-large!"

I have a friend.

I had a visitor this weekend, the first one not named Cathy Lin:



I'm not the best tour guide, but we scooted around Seattle and that is pretty much fun no matter what.

true multitasking.

When I go for a run, I usually listen to whatever is randomly populated in my ipod shuffle by itunes. I never skip any songs because I have something like 400 GB of music and have probably only listened to half of them, and I am trying to listen to more of it.

Quite accidentally, yesterday as I ran, a track came up that began: "Chapter 9: The Arrow of Time." I thought this was some sci-fi nerdy hiphop track intro, and as the monotone voice spoke, I kept expecting some bass and beats to kick in. In fact, I thought it was the Deltron 3030 album, which by the way is great, and has just such intros and lyrics, including lines like: "Perusing my 21st century classic comics, the fun is astronomic / I figured since I'm here I'll renew my galactic passport / So I'm not persecuted by no galactic assholes." Honestly, the album is really good.

But anyway, the voice kept going and 30 minutes later, I realized it was an electronic book and when I got home, I plugged my ipod in to see that it was Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. (Sadly, it is not read by Dr. Hawking himself.)

And it occurred to me that audio books are the perfect running material, theoretical physics or not. I really felt like I was multitasking. Now I have eliminated the whole, "I have too much to do, no time to run" excuse for not running. Also, in my recent attempt to rein in my myriad of projects, of which there were too many, I crossed off "reading" as something I had time to do. But now I get to put it back, and I should be able to finish A Brief History of Time in no time at all.

beep beep

I got a:



I am busy scooting!

Ohhhh, we're halfway there.

The half-marathon is a good running distance saddled with a really terrible name. I think it is unpopular solely because of its name. No one wants to do a half anything: it sounds like it's for people with half the energy, half the will power, half the talent; it's a race for half the person. They don't call the 5k a half-10k. They don't call an EP a half-album, a B cup a half-D, the WNBA the half-NBA.

So with that in mind, I will fix the ill-named half-marathon. The marathon is supposedly (but not really) the distance the Greek messenger Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to tell the Senate that they'd defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. Consulting a map, it looks like the town of Nea Erythrea is about halfway between Athens and Marathon. And so I declare the half-marathon dead, the 21,097.5-meter race to be henceforth referred to only by its new name, the Nea Erythrea. Catchy!

Speaking of which, I think I'm going to run the Portland Marathon this year. Nea Erythreas are for wimps.

Bill Clinton made me poor!

I had a pretty indistinct upper-middle class upbringing: there was always food on the table, I got most of what I wanted; I never thought about finances, that we had too much money or too little. At Stuyvesant High School, they groom impressionable young kids to become Wall Street lackies, doctors, engineers, and grown-up rich kids. It seemed pretty clear that if you followed a six-point algorithmic agenda, you would enjoy monetary success in the future, and, by being kept busy with an inundation of schoolwork, there was no time to question any of it. So when I went to college during America's economic heyday, I was presented with a few choices. In my senior year, I could take three more classes and finish a computer science major, take four more classes and finish an economics major, or take three classes and finish an English major. I figured I could do either of the first two and make good money when I was done or I could do the latter and still do all right. How that Bill Clinton economy tricked me! Little did I know the economic boom would die and now I sort of muddle along middlingly in the current economic clime. Alas! It occurs to me that had I grown up in a lower/lower-middle class upbringing, I might have kept a more careful eye on the monetary bottom line of my college decisions because of an omnipresent awareness of financial prudence and responsibility. Maybe there is a swap of the lower-middle class and upper-middle class during a time of economic shrinkage directly following a time of economic prosperity.

Well! I blame all the commencement speakers who say "Do what your heart tells you." Bastards! Commencement speakers are that point one percent that defied odds to achieve success. That's why they're commencement speakers. Clearly they are not statisticians or jilted romantics: they don't know that the heart mostly leads you astray.

232 years old tomorrow.

I was planning on updating this blog a lot more, but then the weather got really nice so I got lazy and hung outside instead. But I will try to persevere from now, and take an hour every day while at work to write an entry here. Of course, I've said this before so I am probably lying.

Here, a picture of Chloe Lin:



Chloe isn't really my dog. and her name isn't really Chloe Lin. But I was dogsitting last month and I am a bad dogsitter so I dropped Chloe and took her to the vet to make sure she was fine (she was.) When I got there, I filled out the form as though I were the owner. When I got the bill, it said: Chloe Lin. So now I call her Chloe Lin. (But I say it like Chloe Lynn, as though she were Southern.) Also, I filled out "Andy Lin" for my name, and yet on the bill they'd changed it to Andrew Lin. ?

My name is...

Usually, but not always, I can tell how much someone likes me based on what they call me. If they call me "Andy," then either I have just met them, or they are fond of me and are good friends. If they call me "Andy Lin," then they harbor secret ill-will towards me or are merely an acquaintance or are angry at me. If they call me "Lin" then they are racist. If they call me "Guh," then they are my sister and like me the most.

Global warming and the law of averages

It's been, by all accounts, a spring in Seattle that has been colder and wetter than usual. Last year, I am told, it was unusually warm. The year before that, in Boston, it was an exceptionally hot summer having just followed an unseasonably cold winter.

It is inevitable that I will one day experience weather that is perfectly average. I will greet my neighbor and say, "My, this is exactly the climate I was expecting." And she'll say, "Yes, Andy. Do you have something else to complain about?" "Of course."

Spiritual, but not religious

Turns out someone already wrote a whole book about this, though he doesn't seem quite that critical about it (from the excerpt, anyway). The book is called Spiritual, But Not Religious and it is published by Oxford University Press (Hey Brian, get me a free copy!) It has somewhat middling reviews.

An excerpt is here: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/109/story_10958_1.html

It basically makes the distinction between the public worship of religion and private worship of spirituality. He is able to give demographics (though he does not cite his sources in the excerpt):

"A large number of Americans identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious." It is likely that perhaps one in every five persons (roughly half of all the unchurched) could describe themselves in this way."

"We also know a few things about today's unchurched seekers as a group. They are more likely than other Americans to have a college education, to belong to a white-collar profession, to be liberal in their political views, to have parents who attended church less frequently, and to be more independent in the sense of having weaker social relationships." (Fruity liberals!)

But though Fuller doesn't seem as critical as I, he notices the same contradictions:

The "spiritual, but not religious" group was less likely to evaluate religiousness positively, less likely to engage in traditional forms of worship such as church attendance and prayer, less likely to engage in group experiences related to spiritual growth, more likely to be agnostic, more likely to characterize religiousness and spirituality as different and nonoverlapping concepts, more likely to hold nontraditional beliefs, and more likely to have had mystical experiences.

and:

The confusion stems from the fact that the words "spiritual" and "religious" are really synonyms. Both connote belief in a Higher Power of some kind. Both also imply a desire to connect, or enter into a more intense relationship, with this Higher Power. And, finally, both connote interest in rituals, practices, and daily moral behaviors that foster such a connection or relationship.

My crusade against the spiritual.

I have a lot of distaste for idiotic fruity liberals, by which I usually mean hippies and their ilk. Not all of them, of course, but a vast majority, or at least the ones I seem to come across. People with whom I am ashamed to identify with as a liberal, because they are idiots and say stupid things like I am voting for Obama because in my gut I just feel he is the right person. It almost makes me want to be a conservative, but two weeks ago I spoke to a random girl who wore a utilikilt but was defiantly red, and she was even more aggravating. And I'm sure there are much worse than she.

Anyway, my crusade against the spiritual basically comes down to the fact that being spiritual is just an easy way for people to pretend they aren't religious even though they really are. Now, I hate religion with a passion. I see no difference between Scientology and Catholicism. (Scientology only seems more silly because it is newer. Older religions have the benefit of being spoon fed at an early age. Too bad for Suri Cruise.) There are differences, of course, between the spiritual and religious. They're spelled differently, for one. Religion is organized (outside of Yoga parlors), for two. But really, they're both illogical beliefs, rooted in absolutely no proof, and, if anything, proof to the contrary.

Science can't explain everything, but it attempts to with a rigorous and evidence-based method. Scientific knowledge is continuously accruing, and there is simply no excuse to be religious these days anymore. There probably hasn't been for at least the past century. Perhaps there was a time when religion seemed worthwhile as it provided a means to an end. But as the great Mencken said: "It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities." Mencken also said: "The only way to reconcile science and religion is to set up something which is not science and something that is not religion." And Einstein wrote: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

Idiotic fruity liberals will, of course, as per their presented image, decry such things as creationism. They will be pro-science and get their news from NPR. And yet they will accept astrological bullshit (just for fun, they swear), become "one" with nature, and tell people they're "not religious, but they're spiritual," as though believing in spirits was somehow an enlightened and advantageous state of being, more than the average atheist and certainly more than rudimentary religious folk. They spew faux-intellectual thoughts (which, no doubt, they heard on NPR that same morning or read in some tract or pamphlet) without having considered what they're saying themselves. They read about issues without reading into them. They are bandwagon liberals who want to appear smart but don't really know what they're talking about.

I was talking to my roommate a few days ago about my new crusade. Now I'm not talking about my annoying, crazy, vegan roommate, who of course is exactly one of these idiotic fruity bandwagon liberals, but the one that I like who is generally thoughtful and reasonable. Anyway, she said that she wouldn't loudly announce it, but that she'd consider herself spiritual. So I asked her what she meant by this. Do you believe in God? Do you believe in spirits of trees and animals? And she replied that she simply thought there was a higher being than humans. Like god? No. You know, life is so complex, it's not just randomness. And I said do you know what that is? that is intelligent design. And she denied it. But that is precisely what it is. Spirituality is the belief of something superhuman and supernatural. It is supersilly. I don't know why the spiritual get a free pass. It is as intellectually squalid as religion.

What is strange about all this is that I think the hardest things for people to believe are things they cannot see (hear/feel/smell/etc.) with their own eyes (senses.) People can read and grasp Einstein's theories of relativity, and yet they won't really believe that a moving clock ticks slower than a stationary one. It is natural to be skeptical of things that you can't see and seem illogical, and yet most of this world is willing to blindly follow babbling psychopaths go on about gods and higher authorities and heavens and hells.

To all the spiritual people, I say, stop being so disorganized; arrange neatly and be horrified to discover yourselves no different than the religious.

Spammers know me so well.

I got spam the other day. It wasn't advertising anything but merely making a statement:



In other gossip, Ariel is cheating on Eric:

What more in the name of love?

"We are a proud people."

The Mayans, Japanese, Iraqi, Iranian, Batswana, Latvian, Georgian, Uruguayan, Antarctican, Danish, Chilean, Vulcan, Bolivian, Australian, French, American, and certainly the Monagasque ("We are small but proud!") are all proud people. Is there a nation of the non-proud? Even countries that are officially ashamed are secretly proud. (The hippies and idiot liberals (not all liberals) of the United States are outspokenly ashamed of our country, but damn proud of themselves for being so loudly ashamed. They like to talk about moving to Canada but they will never actually do it.)

(In something of a contradiction, most religions view pride as a sin. But this is generally ignored. Gluttony, in the US at least, is also widely ignored.)

So perhaps all people are a proud people, but not everyone can be equally proud. Usually it is the downtrodden, war-beaten, raped, and indigenous that speak up most about being proud (we're willing to give them that much after we take away their land), but that doesn't make them any more proud than anyone else; it just happens to be all they have left.

What I would like to do is develop a measure of proudness (dealing specifically with National Pride, as opposed to proudness of ethnic, cultural, or familial groups, or of the personal variety.) Voluntary military participation is probably a good starting point; people who are willing to die for their country are probably prouder than people not willing to die for their country:

National Pride (Pn) = Voluntary Military Participation (M) / Population (K)

This is imperfect, however, because a country with a more technologically advanced military doesn't need as many people to keep their country from being taken over by another. So we should control for military might, by multiplying by the amount of military spending per capita:

Pn = (M/K) x (Total Military Spending (S)/K) = MS/K^2

This result is skewed towards countries that are less populous, lack natural borders, and fight a lot. In other words, it is too pro-Israel. To adjust for this, we should adjust based on amount of war activity:

Pn = (MS/K^2) x Wadj = MSWadj/K^2 , where Wadj is the War adjustment factor .

Next, in addition to fighting, there is also a cultural element to National Pride. I think we can reasonably measure this by the amount of flags sold per capita:

Pn= MSWadj/K^2 + Flags Sold (F)/K = MSWadj/K^2+F/K

You might argue that I should adjust for aesthetic quality of the flags, but frankly, if my country had an ugly flag, I'd have less pride as well.

So there you have it. The unit of measure for pride should be Lions. So. By this measure, we can see that the proudest people are the Irish. They have 17,844 Lions of Pride. Plus one Bono.

One year.

Date	Flt	Depart	Arrive	Stops
09 May 07	83	New York, JFK 7:20pm	Seattle, WA 10:51pm	0

I went to Vegas and all you get is this lousy blog post.

I went to Fabulous Las Vegas for the first time and liked it a lot more than I thought I would. Actually I expected to like it: It's a big party, what's not to like? I was armed with a paycheck, and spent all of it.

The Vegas strip is like the most extravagant strip mall there is. They have other towns in miniature there. It feels like a city as an amusement park. Vegas is full of fake boobs. I've never seen so many fake boobs before. (I've never been to LA.) But they weren't all fake, and I tried to chat up the cute hostess without fake boobs at Stripburger and she let me take a (sadly blurry) picture of her.

I went back to Stripburger another day to try to find her but failed.

In Rome, I was amused by a headless angel:

and though I haven't been back to New York in awhile, I did get to New York, New York:


I dislike gambling in theory because it is designed so that you will always lose in the end (how is that legal?!). But in practice I enjoy it. And how brilliant casinos are to change all your money into these colored chips. I'd have a hundred dollars on the craps table at any given time and think nothing of it at all. I'd toss five dollar tips to the dealers, ten dollar throw-away bets here and there, and it felt like nothing until I took stock at the end and realized I was really quite a bit in the hole. After realizing how much I was wasting, I decided to just go ahead and not worry about it. Like spending money on food, or Cirque Du Soleil shows or whatever else. I didn't feel rich, but money seemed really trivial. Those people there are geniuses. At the buffets, I parked myself and ate massive amounts of food. I figured that this was my one chance to beat the house: the odds weren't quite in my small-stomached favor, but if I persevered, I thought I might have control of the outcome and win. I believe I did.

Funnily enough, my favorite hotel/casino was Hooters. It is somehow the most family-friendly place there. I don't know why but it is. Families would roam around. Kids ate at the restaurant. (great wings!) There's something nice and warm about it. And when the scantily clad dealers took all your money, they were somehow warm and apologetic about it. Not cold and clinical like everywhere else. Ah Hooters! I give a hoot...

When I was finished with Vegas with time left before my flight, I walked to the airport to prove that it could be done. It can. I was starting to think there was an airport admission fee because airports all seem blocked by a big maze of highway and appear only accessible by vehicle. But if you follow a very narrow sidewalk, cross some large streets that have no intersections, disregard the fact that there is no one else walking, and have an hour or so to spare, the airport is indeed pedestrian-accessible if not quite pedestrian-friendly. This test should be done at every airport. Maybe I'll give JFK a shot next time.

This weekend I ...

Hiked up a mountain with Kate and Andres:
Made Gnocchi with Ragu Bolognese:


I forgot to take a picture of the finished dish, but please note that I am the only person you know that owns a gnocchi board. That is because I am a True Italian. (As is clearly shown in the photo at top. Also, I am getting fat.)

Platonic solids

Why isn't the food pyramid called the food triangle? Is there a hidden backside of cellulite, transfats, and monosodium glutamate?

Tricks of the mind.

Sometimes you hear about people for whom it was love at first sight, or that they knew right away he/she was "the one." I wonder if anyone has ever said this about someone ugly. This love at first sight thing, I think for me, really just means I saw a pretty girl. It's all a trick. But if I one day think this about an ugly person, then I would be sure it were really true.

My inner hunger.

I have an inner hunger. It speaks to me in a hushed but stern tone: French Fries.

I am mute.

Here is my phone bill from last month:


I averaged six minutes of phone usage a day!