[
good
humor
people
]
2002-02-07
Jim Loy's pages are cool! I first linked to
Jim Loy in July of 2000, which now seems like ages ago. Anyway, I wrote
this entry about his rather funny bit about
four-way stops.
Due to some recent revamping here (each log entry now has an integer as a unique ID instead of a timestamp - thanks to my codemonkey, Daniel!), I happened across that entry and realized that the old link was broken, so I found Mr. Loy's new site and updated the link.
Now I'm exploring at his site some more, enjoying the new stuff he's written since I last visited. Here are a couple of some of the particularly spiffy things I'm enjoying right now:
- Ptolemy's Epicycles (with spiffy animations!)
- Life - a nice introduction to the game thereof (also with spiffy animations!)
There's lots of great stuff there - dig in!
[
mammalog
people
]
2000-10-12
Seeing people I know...
Two odd occurrences recently (or not so odd, I just feel like remarking upon them): The other night, I was watching Trauma: Life in the E.R., and I recognized one of the doctors. It freaked me out! I yelled out loud, "Hey!!!! I KNOW HER!!!". I think I scared Elena a little bit. Anyway, I dug out my yearbook, and sure enough, the chief resident at the ER they were showing (in Denver, I dunno which one) is Lisa Hardin, who was on my volleyball team when I was a Sophomore in high school. Wow, she's a doctor now. It boggles my mind. Good for her!
And then I was roaming through Salon just now, and I happened to look at the letters to the editor, and I noticed
this letter from my Bradley childbirth instructor, Chan McDermott. Heh! What's funny is that I have run into her at various places in town over and over and over again. It's cosmic! Let me see if I can remember: at Elena's old daycare, at Body Business, at the breastfeeding conference, at the Mother's Milk Bank concert. And now in a letter to Salon. Go figure!
[
people
]
2000-09-13
I like it so much, I'm logging it twice!
Just exploring more of
Tom Erickson's pages, noting that his
key story was quite entertaining, his
remote meetings piece is excellent, and he's got a lot of interesting stuff about computer-mediated communication, "persistent conversations", and whatnot. Wow. I'll have to delve deeper here.
[
later
people
]
2000-08-25
More on Really Smart (and sometimes quite contentious) people:
This
History of High IQ Societies was pretty interesting. Some of these seem worth checking into, but of course many don't. I think it might be worth it to find some way to make more friends who are more like me than the average person, but I dunno. Looks like there are a lot of political battles and infighting and power struggles. Yeesh. Not my cup of tea, but I suppose I can probably ignore a lot of that crap.
[
cognition
people
]
2000-08-25
What Sucks About Being Really Smart:
I read this before but didn't have the link - an
interesting article about maladjustment of high-IQ people. There's a lot more to it, but I remember there was a lot I identified with in this piece.
And for the record, my IQ has never been measured. I've taken online tests for fun, and according to my SAT scores, I could join Mensa, but I've never had an actual IQ test. I'm not sure if I ever want to. In a way, I'm curious, but I only want to know if it's really really high. :) I would hate to take one and get a score like 107.
[
people
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2000-08-24
Big Brother:
An
interesting Salon story discusses the distortions created by the editing of the show Big Brother. Apparently there's a web feed where people can see what's really happening, live, and compare it to what CBS eventually airs.
Heh! And of course they've done a lot of editing to Survivor, too, slanting the story to be more like whatever they think people will watch. Which makes me think, gee, did they make Rich out to be much worse than he is, considering that they knew he won already and it would be compelling for people to watch a big Villain? Nah. I think he's really an asshole.
[
people
]
2000-08-24
My thoughts on Survivor:
Last night I was sooo excited to watch the end of Survivor. I really got sucked in to the whole series. I thought the whole concept at first was hackneyed and artificial and goofy, but I watched it out of curiosity and found that the people and the unfolding story were much more compelling than I had anticipated.
I started my vcr and settled in to watch the finale with Elena. We danced around the room in glee as Kelly won challenge after challenge (she had won 5 in a row - absolutely incredible!), and jeered at Rich as we were sure the evil bastard was going to lose.
Oops! Totally wrong. Kelly lost, Rich, the conniving scheming jerk, won. I couldn't believe it - I yelled "NOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooOOOOOOOOooooO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" when the final vote was revealed.
And then I started thinking about what this all meant, and examining the whole thing. Some of my ruminations:
1. I realized I had been wayyy too emotionally invested in the outcome - it's just a game. But then my attitude improved tremendously. I did still feel a bit as I did when OJ was declared "not guilty", but it wasn't so bad. I felt a lot of release of tension that it was all over. I take satisfaction in the fact that Rich has a very good chance of being thrashed by the relentless media machine, and every mistake he ever makes from now on will be splattered all over the media, misconstrued and twisted to his disadvantage. (It's already started, with the stuff about his son claiming abuse).
2. I live in a country where OJ walked, and Rich won Survivor. This must be one of the signs of the fall of Western civilization.
3. They created a game where the point was for people to symbolically destroy each other, so of course the most pompous arrogant conniving manipulating jerkface won.
4. He may have a million bucks, but he's still an asshole, and still a lousy father. I hope his kid benefits quite a bit from the money - he deserves to, having to put up with Rich for a dad. (I'm basing my opinion on the quality of his fatherhood on what he ADMITTED to doing in a TV interview I saw, not on the specific allegations that the kid made which are unsubstantiated.)
5. I just read that Rich was once a car salesman. He's now a corporate trainer. Think about that - think about how well he has learned to manipulate people, to gain their trust while he is getting something from them, at their expense (and as a corporate trainer, teaching other people to work the system too). How could people who actually do something worthwhile for a living compete with someone whose livelihood has depended on bending others' opinions to his gain? He was also a bartender, so he has probably spent quite a lot of time dealing with people in an emotionally vulnerable state, and learned how to use that to his advantage as well.
6. Another aspect is a strong personality that presents a credible appearance of authority actually succeeds pretty well at causing people to go along with it. Think about his attitude - "I will win, I will do whatever it takes", his successes in eliminating rivals showing that he was a force to be reckoned with (you might perceive him correctly as the petty, manipulative jerk he is and find you're the next one voted off the island). And think about the emotional state of many of the others - hungry, tired, bored, missing loved ones, worried about being voted off, missing their usual lives and the satisfactions thereof. People in such situations tend to cling to any kind of structure, to things that help them make sense of their situation. And someone who has a very clear message "I will win, I am powerful" is quite compelling in such a situation.
7. More on Rich's ability to get people to accept his view of things - the people who voted for him, in my view, seemed to buy whole hog that he played the game the best. As in, he didn't let anything get in the way of winning. That he was more devoted to winning, to using people than to befriending them, to stepping on anyone in his path no matter what it took, than anyone else. And they bought that this behavior should be rewarded. Because "that's how the game is supposed to be played". Is it just me, or does this seem... a bit mindless? No one questioned this or thought, "Fuck the producers of the show, I'm going to vote for the person who acted more like a decent human being, because I think that's who deserves the money?". I wonder if any of them regret their vote. What they essentially said with their votes was that it's okay with them for a bully to win. Personally, I think it's more fun to get the last laugh on such an artificial situation, and let the bully see how close he got, but that his character wasn't up to the task, didn't have the basic decency to deserve to win. But that's just me.
8. In usual contests (sports and the like), absolute ruthlessness is not the name of the game, as it were. The struggle to exceed is, and one is expected to behave well while doing one's best. But in Survivor, it was assumed by many of the participants and observers that ruthlessness was the whole point, was required in order to win. But was it?
I maintain that it wasn't required at all.
People (including me in my comments above) have treated this as though it were inevitable that Rich would win, somehow. But it's TOTALLY ARBITRARY. You don't even have to take into account any of the goofy challenges to realize this, or the fact that none of the participants had control over who was placed in which tribe at the beginning. Greg, the goofball, based his game-deciding vote ENTIRELY on a "pick a number between 1 and 10" game. Rich chose 7, Kelly chose 2 (or maybe 3, I can't remember, though since she went second, 6 would have been the most logical choice).
The number was 9. If Kelly had chosen 8, 9, or 10, she would have won, and everyone would be talking about how obvious it was ahead of time that Rich couldn't win, that Kelly's winning of five challenges showed her superiority, etc. Greg is a wily fellow who is a LOT smarter than how they edited him to appear (though of course he did talk into a coconut as though it were a cell phone...). By doing a "pick the number" game, he showed how arbitrary this whole process is. It's not a true contest of skills, or will, or personality type, or morals, or anything. It's luck and happenstance. That's all.
And that, in large part, is what determines who wins in the larger game we call "real life", too.
[
books
cognition
people
school
]
2000-07-21
On rewards & motivation:
This guy seems to be well-endowed in the clue department. He talks about how competition and reward systems simply don't work, and actually make things (morale & performance) worse. This holds true for the classroom, parenting, and management. Very fascinating, I think I may get one of his books.
