Movies that take place in the mall are possibly the most underrated genre ever (Mallrats, Dawn of the Dead, Fast Times). Considering how much time we all spent in malls growing up, I can’t believe how few mall movies there are.
No doubt mall movies are a mostly 20th century artifact, and Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie is the perfect swan song to this genre. I wasn’t as into this movie as I expected while watching it, but my god, I can’t stop quoting it!
Megan McArdle imagines a post-campus America. Pretty interesting and well thought out. As someone who “slipped through the cracks” (ACT: 35 at age 15, unranked local college) and didn’t attend a top-tier residential college, a lot of this already rings true to me – especially #8-#10.
What would the end of football look like? I think that this is a pretty good prediction of what may play out over the coming years / decades. If Steven Pinker is right about us becoming less violent (and I think he is), then I doubt we’re going to abide young men getting head injuries for much longer. I personally grew up as a football fan, but the way I feel about football has certainly evolved in light of recent medical findings.
I think that Cowen and Grier are right on the money when they predict that football will first be rejected by the upper classes – in particular Ivy League schools. In fact, I’m pretty surprised that top tier private schools even have football programs. I assume they are one gruesome incident away from shutting down. I also agree that Texas would certainly be a holdout region. The unabashed love of violent sports down here shows me how unprogressive all of Texas is, including Austin. (I invite you to go to a hockey game in Cedar Park if you don’t agree.) Even some of the most socially liberal Texans I encounter think these objections to football are crazy.
Robot crashing out on my office day bed
When our dog Robot came into our house around eight years ago, we were told he was a pit bull / German Shepherd mix. As a puppy, this seemed about right, but as he grew up, he ended up fluffier and smaller than we expected. We assumed he was probably a pit / Shiba Inu or pit / Chow Chow mix based on how his tail was shaped. I recently was able to give Robot a home doggie dna test (what’s up, Amazon Prime?), and it yielded some pretty interesting results.
According to the DNA test, Robo is a hardcore mutt with his biggest DNA groups being Doberman Pinscher (~9%) and Jindo (~%6). After doing a lot of Google image searching, these do seem to be breeds that share facial traits with Robot, especially when at rest and play. I’m not sure if I buy the test 100% (miniature poodle shows up as a great-grandparent, and that’s just embarrassing for poor Robo), and I am potentially interested in testing with another company to see if the results are replicated.
Anyway, if you have a mutt, I do think this test is fairly close, if not right on the money. An added benefit for us is that we’re in the clear for breed restriction stuff now, which I was never sure about. Although I oppose breed restrictions completely, it is quite difficult to live in some areas with a dog that you believe is part pit bull.
Why History Needs Software Piracy … or I’d say piracy / DRM breaking of all kinds. Be a good citizen. Break the DRM on your electronic purchases, and back them up. Even people not comfortable with piracy should at least be doing this.
Imagine if a publisher of 500,000 different printed book titles suddenly ceased operation and magically rendered all sold copies of its books unreadable. Poof. The information contained in them simply vanished. It would represent a cultural catastrophe on the order of the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria in 48 B.C. In that fire, a majority of the Western world’s cultural history up to that point turned to ash.
Now take a look at the iTunes App Store, a 500,000 app repository of digital culture. It’s controlled by a single company, and when it closes some day (or it stops supporting older apps, like Apple already did with the classic iPod), legal access to those apps will vanish. Purchased apps locked on iDevices will meet their doom when those gadgets stop working, as they are prone to do. Even before then, older apps will fade away as developers decline to pay the $100 a year required to keep their wares listed in the store.
From a historical perspective, we can only hope that hackers and pirates have been quietly making archives of as much as they can grab from download services like the iTunes App Store, the PlayStation Store, the Wii Shop Channel, Xbox Live Arcade, and other online app stores.
Whoa. Dude. This n+1 pro-prison abolitionist article shook me to my core. Even as a hardcore left-libertarian / anarchist / radical, I turn a blind eye to a lot of the prison-industrial complex because it’s dreadfully depressing to examine. This article has so many hard truths to reconcile about prison rape (I never thought about it – but probably MORE men are raped in the US than women), the costs of urban gentrification, and even a reexamining of the death penalty as the lesser of two evils given the insanity of what a prison term means. Every libertarian who glibly says, “Just free all the nonviolent drug offenders. Problem solved!” should read this fucking ASAP.
I’ve been busy enjoying programming (especially Javascript) now that I’ve quit my day job as a quiz writer. The great thing about originally giving yourself a job is that you can always take it away when you’re sick of it. I’m taking an indefinite break from all things entrepreneurial, and it has been amazing to work my mind in a completely different way through coding. Speaking of which, I uploaded this C++ Sudoku program to github a couple months ago, and I have been meaning to post it on this blog as well.
I originally planned on having my program generate a Sudoku board through brute force, but it turns out that is an extremely consuming task. Instead, I took a tip from the internet and generated my board by drastically modifying an existing solved Sudoku board. All it takes is swapping some rows and columns, as well as taking away numbers to make the board playable. This was my first experience in writing a really bad algorithm and then figuring out a unique work around (instead of just giving up).
Anyway, if anyone in the universe feels like looking at my code and giving me feedback, I’d love to hear it. I’m still a very novice programmer, so any input at all would be welcome. I have heard it has a few bugs, but it tested out okay for me. If you can break it, more power to you!
