Insulting Will Cain on Twitter

Posted on 07 Oct 2012 by Frank Moraes

I created a Twitter account this last week and I’ve learned quite a lot. Just this morning, I learned that every Twitter address you include in your message gets a copy of your tweet. Last night, after watching Real Time with Bill Maher, I was really annoyed with one of his guests, Will Cain, a conservative from Glenn Beck’s The Blaze.

Right out of the gate, Cain claimed that the counter to charges of racism was that we have a black president. There are so many things wrong with claim, it makes me feel bad just to think about it. On the most basic level, Obama only got roughly half of the vote—that leaves a lot of room for racism. Furthermore, racism takes many forms that are less obvious than the desire to form a lynching party. One of the most compelling arguments for why Obama was so low key at the debate was that he was fighting against the “angry black man” stereotype. I don’t know if that’s true, but this is certainly something that has shaped Obama’s tenure as President.

Anyway, the evening didn’t get better with Mr. Cain. And when the topic changed to global warming, he showed himself to be nothing more than a guy who uses all of his intellect to massage right wing talking points into simulacra of thoughtful arguments. Bill Maher asked him why it was that conservatives in every other country accepted global warming. Cain didn’t even think about it: there is real scientific controversy about global warming. Well, no. In fact, there wasn’t even controversy about it among the public 10 years ago. But the full court press of disinformation from the likes of Will Cain have made vast swaths of Americans think there are major questions or even a conspiracy.

Afterwards, I tweeted:

@billmaher Affirmative action for conservatives: @willcain on Real Time. Stereotypical libertarian nonsense. No surprises. Boring.

I thought this was pretty clear. I’ve been arguing this for a long time. One doesn’t have to be that smart or knowledgeable or creative to be a right wing commentator. My tweet is a specific example of this. If Will Cain were a liberal, he might have risen to the heights of blogger at Daily KOS, but there’s no way that he would be on Real Time. The show wants to book people with different ideas; it would be boring if they all agreed. So the producers have to find conservatives. Unfortunately, the pickings are slim. What are they going to do, invite Pat Robertson? Of course not. Instead, they bring on light weights like Will Cain, who was out debated by Kerry Washington for Christ’s sake!

I did not intend for this tweet to go to Will Cain. I don’t think much of him as a commentator, but I have nothing against him as a person. It isn’t my intent to hurt him—or even appear to. I put in his Twitter address because I’ve seen other people doing this and I’m trying to fit it. (The writing on this site is not that much like my “real” writing, although it is rather a lot like I talk—minus the ums and uhs.) But I don’t think Cain much cared. I’m sure he’s used to be shouted at my liberals. I mean, I’m used to be shouted at by conservatives.

However, Will Cain replied to my tweet:

@CuriousFrankly well which is it?

I have no idea what he’s talking about. He was spouting stereotypical libertarian nonsense. There were no surprises. He was boring. This is a case of affirmative action for conservatives. Everything is consistent. Where’s the problem?

All I can think is that he has a problem with my referring to him as both conservative and libertarian. When I was a libertarian, I hated it when people referred to my beliefs as “conservative.” Then again, I was an unusual libertarian. I came at it from socialist thought. I was aggressively pro-union. I was concerned about government and corporate coercion. But even still, I understood that libertarianism was a form of conservatism. And Cain should too. After all, social conservatives don’t claim they aren’t conservatives.

Anyway, I am sorry for tweeting that message to Will Cain. If people come looking for insults, fine. But sending out unrequested insults is just rude. What’s more, Cain is not boring; he’s just annoying. But then, I’m sure Glenn Beck wouldn’t have it any other way.

Afterword

You might want to follow me on Twitter. The main thing is that new articles here get tweeted out so you will never again miss another brilliant insight into Don Quixote, Lope de Vega, or even stuff that happened this century:

Frankly Curious Twitter

Even more aggravating than Will Cain, the Twitter handle @FranklyCurious is owned by a guy who goes under the name “Surya Sanjiv.” And he could have used @SuryaSanjiv, because it is available. So I used @CuriousFrankly, although in retrospect, I see I should have used @iFranklyCurious. Live and learn.

Update (Immediate)

I just occurred to me that in the fast paced Twitter world, maybe Cain misread “libertarian” as “liberal.” That would make more sense.

Free Will

Posted on 12 Aug 2012 by Frank Moraes

I just read Sam Harris’ Free Will. There was nothing new in it for me. I have already worked all this stuff out for myself. But it was nice to see the argument laid out so well. For those of you who don’t spend all your time fretting about such issues, it goes like this: all of your choices are neurochemical; you can no more not do what you do than hydrogen and oxygen can combine to form helium. As Harris writes (I’m not looking up the exact quote), to say that under different circumstances you would have made some different choice is the same as saying that in a different universe you would be in a different universe.

We are all machines—gloriously complex machines, but machines nonetheless. We already know this in terms of our bodies. Athletes are shockingly predictable machines. At this year’s Olympics, Usain Bolt ran the 100 m dash 0.05 seconds slower than his best time of 9.58 seconds. That’s a difference of 0.5%. Similarly, professional basketball players are remarkably consistent. People (Even the athletes themselves!) believe in streaks, but all that is ever seen are predictable statistical variations on their bases. In other words, a player with a 42% field goal average is a machine that makes field goals 42% of the time.

Free will then is nothing but an illusion—admittedly a fairly useful one. But it is also a dangerous one, and this is Harris’ main argument. For a long time, I’ve felt that I couldn’t come out and say that I felt sorry for pedophiles. They are such a pox on our society—such dangerous creatures with such innocent victims—I felt certain that people would go off on me. Yet I know from my experience that my sex drive—incredibly, depressingly typical though it may be—is in no way under my control. When I was younger, I tried to change my tastes into something more exotic, but it just isn’t in me. I like what most men like, except with glasses.[1]

How could it be any different for a pedophile? I can’t imagine that pedophiles actually think of Marilyn Monroe as a sex goddess and yet go around raping children because it is so fun to be evil. Pedophiles must be (among other things) machines that want to have sex with children. I’m not suggesting that we say, “Hey! They are what they are: let them go on raping!” Harris discusses this exact point. We don’t allow grizzly bears to wander the streets eating people; when they get too close to populations, they are removed. But we don’t moralize about grizzly bears: they are built to kill and eat creatures such as humans.

Clearly, we must keep pedophiles away from children. This will clearly restrict their freedom. But locking them up in prisons so they can be gang raped and otherwise brutalized is not an ethical approach to the problems that pedophiles represent in our society.

Free Will is an excellent little book. I mean this literally. It is excellent in that you could not ask for a better introduction to this subject. And it is little, coming in at perhaps 12,000 words—the length of an average magazine feature. And it is a book, because it is bound that way. Whether it is really worth $9.99 ($3.99 for the eBook), I will leave to you.

[1] There is, of course, the Sarah Vowell effect. How can a nerd such as me not think she is just too adorable for words. Or Kristen Schaal, who’s ditzy persona screams, “I’m smarter than you!” Even if she is a horse:

In the 70s, Schaal and Kurt Braunohler were at best toddlers. Now that’s comedy!

Unexpected Displeasures

Posted on 10 Aug 2012 by Frank Moraes

You can’t have missed the Buick Verano Unexpected Pleasures ad campaign. The idea, I guess, is there is some kind of unexpected pleasure to driving a small luxury car, because it is a shocking revelation that a GPS and seat warmer could be put in a small car. Or something. I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m not a car guy. (Try to contain your shock.)

The most popular of these ads is the one where Peter Frampton shows up to play Vale’s Roadhouse (?) when the house band’s guitarist comes down with a case of the sniffles. Okay: Frampton is a competent guitar player. Such a thing would be moderately cool. The cue chalking lady disturbs me though; she’s just a bit too excited, but hey, whatever floats your boat. But what the ad campaign thinks is a pleasure, is not always so debatable.

Dance Class

In what is by far the weirdest commercial I’ve seen in recent months, Buick claims that a pleasure is for a boy to be assigned a dance partner who is a foot taller than he is. As usual, when I’m interested in something, I have to put it up on the internet. Apparently, I have odd tastes. But not as odd as the author of this commercial:

I am a short guy: 5’7″ if you count the cowlick. Dancing with a girl that is much taller than you is not pleasurable on many levels. In this case, the boy would be thinking: the girl is going to be embarrassed and she should be because I am rat boy; I am going to look like an idiot dancing with giraffe girl here; it’s going to be like a mouse dancing with an elephant. (I have now exhausted my knowledge of animals.)

The Napoleon Complex is not something that affects small men; it is something that affects our culture. The idea is that if a small man is aggressive, there is something special wrong with him; a large man who is aggressive is either a hero or an asshole, depending upon who you ask — there is nothing wrong with him, though; he’s just being a real man. It is indicative of a society in which men are supposed to be tall and women short. And no one is more aware of this expectation than short boys and tall girls.

At a school dance, it is always the short boys and tall girls who are left to stand around. (This is a lie; I’m speculating; I’ve never been to a school dance in my life.) Certainly these outcasts could form an alliance, but they don’t for reasons that will become clear within a few hundred years when society destroys itself. But even if these groups bound together — even if the short boy and the tall girl decided they loved each other — they wouldn’t like being randomly thrown together; there would be no up side to the major downs.

Perhaps the author of this commercial was trying to be politically correct. It works the other way around: tall boy and short girl, even though the dancing is not less ridiculous. Why shouldn’t it work the other way around? Because gender expectations are very strong — especially for kids. In dance class, the short boys worry about being placed with the tall girls, and the tall girls worry about being placed with the short boys. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t fight dumb gender expectations. But the first part of doing so is to admit that they exist. And pretending that the little boy in the commercial is happy is much the same as assuming we live in a colorblind society.

Credit Where It’s Due

Posted on 20 Mar 2012 by Frank Moraes

When I was in graduate school, my thesis adviser was rightly proud of some of his scientific accomplishments. He was fierce in countering people who did not give him his due. Academia is like that. The saying goes that academic politics are so intense because the stakes are so low. When you are a college professor, all you have is your reputation.

Over the course of several years, my adviser proved the methane concentrations in the atmosphere were increasing. This was a big deal because the theory in the field of trace gas studies was that methane could not be increasing because it was created by natural sources: termites, cows, wetlands. While it was true that methane was generated by these natural sources, it was also true that humans were greatly increasing the number of cows and the acreage of rice fields.

But it wasn’t just this work that he was protective of. And while I worked for him, he would often rush things to press in order to establish primacy on a new finding. Often, these things were trivial. I never understood why these things were so important to a guy who had published upwards of 200 scientific papers.

I was doing some research recently, and I came upon the following video of Harry Lorayne doing his version of the “Ambitious Card”:

This is a very good trick. Lorayne has made enormous contributions to the magical arts. But seeing him reminded me of a time many years ago when I wrote to him. I asked if he was still publishing Apocalypse, because I had some effects that I was interested in publishing. It was a straight query letter; I did not send him any work. He wrote me back what I considered a very angry letter. Basically, he said I couldn’t even think of publishing anything without buying all of the collected issues of Apocalypse—which he was glad to sell me for something in excess of $500. He implied that I was necessarily ripping him off for the credit he deserved for all his many contributions to the magical arts.

Other magicians are the same way. In particular, Ed Marlo stands out. He was so consumed with establishing his primacy that he would sometimes publish 20 different variations of a single idea, just so that no one could come afterward and steal even the smallest amount of his glory. And here’s the thing: this meant that he often published horrible—useless—stuff. And it made the reader’s job so much harder, because he had to slog through a bunch of junk in order to find what’s good.

Michael Close is also very caught up in this credit establishment venture. But I have to defend him here. Close only publishes very polished work. In most cases, he deserves a great deal of credit. But not always. “The Pothole Trick”? Fantastic.[1] “Pink Floyd”? Not so much.[2]

I know that I’ve independently created a couple of dozen tricks and moves. In fact, the other night I came up with an excellent addition to an “Ambitious Card” routine. But I have little doubt that someone else has already published it. In the routine that Lorayne does above, there are several things that are his own innovations. And yet, I don’t think his routine is that good and none of the individual moves are particularly innovative. When you get right down to it, most magic moves are created to solve some particular problem; the best solution is often the most direct. I don’t see what the big deal is, especially for Lorayne who has received more than his fair share of acclaim and credit.

It is hard not to appriciate Daryl all the more. Daryl is an innovator, but he doesn’t make a big deal about it. His focus is always on entertaining audiences, which is what all of his prodigious talent and erudition is used to facilitate. See if you don’t think his take on the “Ambitious Card” routine is far superior to Lorayne’s:

But don’t get me wrong. I’m willing to give these men all of their due. But all the insistence on credit hurts them. I no longer think fondly of Marlo at all. I have a grudging respect for Lorayne. I think Close is brilliant, but difficult—no one I would want to see at a performance or lecture. And Daryl? He’s a really nice guy who just happens to be brilliant. After I get my advance on this book I’m finishing, I think I’ll buy something from him.[3]

[1] Here is Johannes (I don’t know, either) doing “The Pothole Trick” in Japan. It is a little hard to follow at first, but stay with it:

[2] Here is some guy doing “Pink Floyd” in from of his computer, in Hebrew. He doesn’t allow embedding: Pink Floyd.

[3] Another apparently nice guy was Larry Jennings. Also brilliant. I saw him when I was a kid. I had never seen someone do such beautiful work with cards and I still haven’t seen anyone better. Here he is doing “Oil and Water”:

Rats Are Great Pets

Posted on 14 Mar 2012 by Frank Moraes

When I was in graduate school, I watched the movie The Abyss with three of my poet friends: Rebecca Davis, Jim Haining, and Gerald Burns. For what are probably obvious reasons, the character Hippy reminded them of me. Hippy is the guy with the rat.

I couldn’t find a really good scene from the movie—one that featured Hippy’s rat in a good way. There are a number. In particular, there is a scene where Hippy saves his rat (who is never given a name) by sealing her in a ziploc bag. Here she is being tortured by Ensign Monk:

As a result of The Abyss, my friends held a bake sale and raised the two dollars necessary to buy me a pet rat. This was not a terribly welcome gift. For one thing, I spent much more on food for my new pet the first week than they had on buying him.

But things turned out well. I had no place to put him, so he lived the first couple of weeks in my jacket sleeve. This included an airplane ride from Portland to San Francisco and back. (They didn’t check you before getting on a plane in those days.) At that time, I was crazy for the Coen Brothers’ film Barton Fink, and so I named my rat Barton.

The thing that surprised me about Barton was how he was nothing like a hamster. When I was young, many of my friends had these vicious rodents. They were not social and as likely to bite you as anything. Barton, on the other hand, was social, curious, and never bit. He was also very clean. And most of all: he ate with his hands; that was just too cute.

What I have since learned is that Barton was in no way unusual. Rats are great pets: much better than birds and certainly as good as cats and dogs. What’s more, they make great first pets.[1]

[1] People who buy rats to feed to reptiles? They are sick. Feeding a fellow mammal to a reptile is like feeding a fellow human to a bear. I know that snakes and bears have to eat, but we shouldn’t directly facilitate them in this way. It is wrong. Really.

Caffeine’s Like Mething Around

Posted on 31 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

Most people are not aware that the United States tried to make caffeine illegal in the 1930s. They found that it was impossible. It was already in so many products and the United States of Commerce has a government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations. But you didn’t need to know that to figure out that a drug’s danger had nothing to do with its legal status. According to the CDC, “Each year, an estimated 443,000 people die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke.” This is far more than the number of people who die from all illegal drugs combined. But who cares? We’re talking profits!

I am not, as they say, a coffee achiever. Why people keep buying me Starbucks cards, I can’t say. But last Sunday, I went over to Starbucks. Normally, when I go there, I get their Earl Grey tea, because they don’t have English Breakfast. But this day, I decided to try their only other black tea: Awake. What a mistake! I had to rush home and hide under my bed while I waited for the effect to subside. After a few hours, I passed out either from the sudden disappearance of the caffeine or an anxiety overload. Thank you so much, Starbucks!

I am used to ingesting 50 mg of caffeine per day—up to 100 mg if I’m feeling cocky. I know what these levels of caffeine feel like and this was not what my Awake experience felt like. I figure there must have been 200 mg of caffeine in that damnable cup. But it’s strange. It is hard to find data. Starbucks proudly displays the number of calories on their pretend bagels. But they don’t provide caffeine content. You would think they would. What is it that they sell, anyway: caffeine.

According to Ask.com, 12 oz. of Awake tea only has 100 mg of caffeine. Of course, they also claim that it has the same amount of caffeine as their Earl Grey tea. Sorry. When it comes to caffeine, I’m like one of those really expensive thermometers: very sensitive.

So all you coffee achievers out there: if you’re looking for a tea, Awake is for you. But you should know: that caffeine is killing you. Stress kills.

Speed kills: don’t meth around!

Society is Imploding

Posted on 29 Jan 2012 by Andrea English

Cute baby contests have been around for decades. They probably began at fairs where contests of all kinds were a staple entertainment. It was good, clean American fun. But then, like most things that start out wholesome, our society twisted and tweaked the idea until they became sordid and disgusting (wet T-shirt contests, any high school popularity bullshit like Best Hair, etc.).

Contests aren’t simply entertainment; they have also been used as an effective marketing ploy since about the beginning of time. For example, the first Gerber baby contest was held in 1928. So began a long, sad tradition of women displaying their infants with the hopes that their bundles really are as adorable as everyone says they are. Do they need to be reassured that their children aren’t actually ugly little trolls? Of course not. These loving mothers are looking for cash.

Over the years, “Cutest Baby” has morphed into “Toddlers & Tiaras”, a show whose tagline could easily be: It’s never too early to teach our daughters to be narcissistic, catty little bitches. Honestly, I’ve never seen the show, but here’s a sampling of the photos that come up if you do a Google image search for “Toddlers & Tiaras”. Very fucked up.

I think beauty pageants in general are stupid and demoralizing, but pageants that involve deranged mothers dressing up their little girls like dolls and then trotting them out for public consumption is repugnant. The mothers disgust me and the children seem like aliens, so when I saw the following CNN headline, the hypocrisy of it compelled me to read the article (quoted here in its entirety).

“Toddlers & Tiaras” mom sues media outlets
for “sexualizing” her daughter

It seems the controversy surrounding TLC’s “Toddlers & Tiaras” and its pint-sized stars is never-ending.

After one contestant dressed as Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman,” another, Isabella Barrett, was filmed singing LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” at an event.

Barrett’s mother, Susanna, has since filed a lawsuit against TMZ, Huffington Post and Daily Mail Online, among other media outlets, for running stories that she alleges “sexualize” her 5-year-old daughter, according to court documents obtained by CNN.

“After this firestorm, I quickly protected my daughter by having cease and desist orders sent to most media outlets that ran the story,” Susanna said in a statement provided to CNN, adding, “I intend to clear my daughter’s name.”

Barrett also detailed her version of the events shown in a video published by TMZ. (In the video, Isabella can be seen singing along to “Sexy and I Know It” at a DJ booth with a microphone in her hand.)

News organizations reported that the Barrett’s were at a nightclub, however, Susanna said in her statement that she and her daughter were actually at “a pet friendly charity event at an American bistro restaurant in New York City at 7:19 p.m. It was a private well-lit event with vendor tables and pets in attendance.”

Little Miss Sunshine, if you’ve never seen it, is a wonderful movie about Olive, a seven-year-old girl who desperately wants to be in a beauty contest. Olive is not a beautiful little girl, something her dad reminds her of, inadvertently but often. Like most parents, he loves his daughter and wants her to be happy so he gives in to help make her dream come true. (There’s much more to the story, but it has nothing to do with the point I will eventually get to.)

Olive’s father (Greg Kinnear) doesn’t know anything about the Little Miss Sunshine pageant other than it means something to her. He’s actually a little irritated by this parental imposition, expecting a typical school-play like production. Then the show starts. Sitting in the audience, he sees little girls dressed like trollops and prancing around the way they might in a pedophile’s daydreams. Then he notices the creepy voyeurs sitting in the audience with him. You can tell by the look on his face when he finally understands what’s going on. His love for his daughter, his need to protect her, has finally broken through his self-absorption. When it’s Olive’s turn in the talent segment, he (along with the movie audience), is suddenly anxiety-stricken. He’s afraid she will be humiliated and hurt and it’s breaking his heart.

Olive comes on stage in her everyday clothes and it’s awkward. Then the music plays and Olive begins to dance. There’s no attempt at childish seduction, no coy winking at the audience, just a little seven-year-old girl dancing her silly happy dance. She was beautiful.

As for Isabella, her mother should be ashamed for corrupting her daughter’s childhood. If she really wants to clear her Isabella’s name, let her be adopted by someone who understand the meaning of responsible parenting.

Woman in Red

Posted on 15 Jan 2012 by Frank Moraes

Why am I in China? I wish I could tell you. This is not one of those, “If you knew, I would have to kill you.” Although, I will admit that after three days in China, I am inclined to kill just about anyone just because. In America, there is a stereotype of the Chinese being bad drivers. The Chinese are not bad drivers. They are, however, very different drivers from Americans. This is most notable in how close cars drive to other cars, pedestrians, and anything else that native-born American drivers would stay well away from. What’s more, they are very patient. The custom here is that if you are going to make a left turn, the oncoming traffic will slow down for you. And then there is the honking; I’ve know this for years: in China, you can drive a car without breaks, but not without a horn. This is especially important for pedestrians, for whom a honk is just shorthand for, “I’m about to run you over.”

Raining Day Taxis

My co-worker, Jim and I found ourselves a few miles from our hotel on a very rainy day. Just as in America, it is very hard to get a taxicab on a rainy day in China. Why? There are two reasons, one of which is obvious: more people want taxis when it’s raining. But this is not the main reason. It turns out that taxi drivers are contractors, and so they just work as long as it takes to make whatever their standard daily pay is. On rainy days, they reach their quota very early. So, at 5:00 pm, there are more people than usual looking for taxis and far fewer taxis.

Taxi Bikes!

I had no problem walking the whole way to our hotel. I lived in Portland, Oregon for a decade, after all. Just like living in California makes you immune from earthquakes below 7.0, a decade in Portland makes you immune to a rainfall rate of less than an inch an hour. But Jim did not share my history and after a few blocks his only pair of shoes were soaked through. We tried to find a taxi, and they were around, but they were all in use. So Jim mentioned that we could take a bike. These are little motorcycles you ride on the back of (and maybe the back off). And they look something like this:

It took us about 20 minutes to get the three miles to our hotel—although we were told it was only “Five stop lights”! And during the trip, I did wonder if we were going to make it back to the hotel alive. There were, after all, three adults on a tiny motorbike. Jim’s shoes got even more wet, as the driver took us so close to the edge of the road that our feet and legs were brushing the plants that line the sidewalks. And we sped through small lakes upwards of a foot deep. Jim complained the whole way back, blaming me, because I had managed to flag down this product of Chinese laissez-faire capitalism. But I was having none of it. First, as I mentioned, it was his idea. And second, everyone knows I’m a sucker for a woman in a red motorcycle helmet!

Jim had to borrow my blow-drier so he could get double the effect. I am drenched through, myself. But there is no doubt: those were the best twenty minutes of my many trips to China. You go, girl!

Update

Andrea wants to know where in China I am. It took me three days to figure out how to use the shower because everything is in Chinese! Oh! Well, let me just look this information up on the letterhead of the hotel! Oh! That doesn’t work! It doesn’t have any English on it! I’m in southern China, about an hour away from Hong Kong in a city that is almost 15 million today but was much less than a half million 20 years ago. I believe it starts with an S. But I managed to do some research and have come to the conclusion I am in Shenzhen. But it really doesn’t matter, because China may be big, but it isn’t really diverse—at least as far as I’m concerned. Consider: like everywhere else in China, you can’t get a decent beer and no one knows how to make a vodka tonic. And I was stupid enough to ask for an Absolute and tonic!

Artists and Sell Outs

Posted on 11 Dec 2011 by Frank Moraes

I was watching some news program online and there was an ad for Hyundai:

I had seen it many time before and I had come to the conclusion that the voice on it couldn’t be Jeff Bridges; it had to be some anonymous voice actor doing Jeff Bridges. How wrong I was.

I found a list of more than ten stars who were hocking for different car companies. It included people who I tend to think of as serious artists: Richard Dreyfus and Robert Downey Jr. What were they doing? Was this just about money? That’s the only conclusion I can come up with, even though these people are already very wealthy.

This act calls all their work into question. I understand that fans always hate it when artists do commercials. Oingo Boingo fans hated it when the band did a Bud commercial:

But they weren’t rich guys piling extra cash into their already bulging bank accounts. Many band members were worse than broke. They were selling themselves so they could continue to be artists.[1] The same can be said about Orson Welles’ infamous Paul Masson commercials, which are still wonderful despite themselves (That voice!):

These commercial “sell outs” can be forgiven or even applauded. But Jeff Bridges?[2]

To my mind, no one stands out as the paragon of an artist like Jane Siberry. At this point in her career, she could live well giving expensive concerts and selling her music catalog. Instead, she travels the world giving micro-concerts and giving away her catalog; she provides all of her albums, except the last two, in MP3 format for free on her website [See no longer does. -FM]. Here she is doing the charming “Marry Me”:[3]

I don’t know Siberry, but I assume that she has made enough money to support the kind of life she has always wanted: an artist’s life. But what are we to make of Richard Dreyfus and Robert Downey Jr. and Jeff Bridges? If they ever were artists, they have gotten extremely off course.[4]

[1] It doesn’t hurt that the commercial is rather good and very Oingo Boingo.

[2] I don’t have any data for Jeff Bridges, but Robert Downey Jr. was paid $12.5 million for the dreadful Iron Man 2.

[3] I can’t help it. Jane Siberry created a song that more than any other piece of art captures what it is like to be dumped. The video, although not worse than other videos of that time, is no better. But the song! The song!

[4] What does it take to become a star? If we are to believe William Goldman, it requires a singular focus on becoming a star. It may involve creating art, but that is not the point. So I probably should not be surprised.

Five Dollar Man

Posted on 03 Jul 2011 by Frank Moraes

There is a test that psychologists can give to a person to determine how much of a gambler he is. It is quite simple. Would you bet a quarter for a quarter on a coin flip?—that is to say, if it comes up heads, I pay you a quarter and if it comes up tails, you pay me a quarter. A man who would take this bet is a gambling man. But if he will not take this bet, the psychologist ups the ante. Would you bet a quarter on two quarters? The plot thickens. If not that, three quarters. Then a dollar. Most people are not really interested until it reaches the dollar for a quarter level. I’m more a five dollar man.

Even though I’m not a betting man, I used to be a professional sports handicapper. Sports betting is interesting to me, because unlike most forms of betting, you can win if you are good at it. The problem is that almost no one is. The reason is that it is highly random. One year, I looked at all the NFL games and found a striking correlation between the team with the fewest turn-overs (lost fumbles and interceptions) and the team that covered the line. Thus, it didn’t matter how well the teams played otherwise (that’s all figured into the line anyway), what really mattered were the random and uncommon events (the turn-overs).

Nonetheless, it is striking that almost all sport bettors lose money, because you don’t have to do much better than random (50%) to win. But you do have to do better. In order to explain this, I first have to explain how the house (casinos and similar institutions) run their sports betting operations.

It should come as no shock that the house is not a charitable institution; they are in the business of making money so they take a percentage off the top of any bet. This percentage is called the vig. This amount is traditionally 5% of the entire bet. So bets are usually placed as “Betting $55 to win $50.” This means that if you win, you get a $50 profit but if you lose, you get a $55 loss.

In order for the house to make sure it doesn’t take a bath on any given game, it moves the line around so that there is roughly the same amount bet on both teams. The house doesn’t care who wins, they just want that 10% of the loser’s money; the rest goes to pay the winner. The house always wins. Always.

To compensate for losing more when you lose than you win when you win, you must win more than 50% of the time just to break even. How much more? Well, not that much. A little algebra will help to explain. Assume that you are making $50 bets. If x is the fraction of wins then the total amount of money you get from wins will be ($50)*x. But the total amount of money you lose would be ($55)*(1-x). For you to break even, these must be equal. So…

$50*x = $55*(1-x)
x = .5238 = 52.38%

You need to win roughly 52.4% of the time to break even. This may not seem like too much to ask for but most bettors lose money year after year after year. So I recommend not betting. But then, I would: I’m a five dollar man.

Thirty Days Hath September Bollocks

Posted on 29 Nov 2010 by Frank Moraes

My mother was very fond of poetry and other “intellectual” pursuits. In fact, she was a good deal smarter than I am, but she did not have the advantages that I have had. In a fair world, she would be Professor Emeritus of Latin at Harvard. Instead, she’s just dead. But being smart doesn’t make you perfect. For example, she could always remember the number of days in the month by using the following rhyme from The Real Mother Goose Treasury (I think):

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November;
February has twenty eight alone
All the rest have thirty-one
Except in Leap Year, that’s the time
When February’s Days are twenty-nine

With all due respect to my mother (which is substantial), this poem really sucks. It has never been of any use to me. In fact, when I started to write this article, I titled it, “Thirty Days Hath November.” So there you are. It could just as easily be:

Thirty days hath November,
April, June and September;

And the last four lines? Are they awkward or what? This is poetry even Shakespeare would be embarrassed by, and regular readers will know what high esteem I hold that bard in.

There have been other important women in my life, one of the most (if not the most) being the Grande Dame of NASA at Sonoma State University (yes, I know, she could have done better), Lynn Cominsky. I worked for Dr. Cominsky for two years, I published a paper with her (the paper I am proudest of except for my primary Master’s Degree paper which is often cited—without attribution!—and generally misunderstood), and she, more than anyone else taught me what it was to be a scientist. She is an amazing woman. If she were evil, she would be Phyllis Schlafly. But so far as I can tell (just lunch, really), she has not turned to the dark side.

At this point in my life when I spend more time talking to Latin scholars than physicists, the most important way that Dr. Cominsky has improved my life is that she taught me how to remember how many days there are in a given month! She didn’t invent it, I assume. But I have shown it to very many people over the last twenty years and no one has known it. And now, I am going to show you.

Make two fists and put them together as in the photograph below:

All you have to do is count from the little-finger knuckle of either hand. The first knuckle is January, the space between the first and second knuckles is February, the second knuckle is March, and so on. This is printed on the photo above. The knuckles (that are higher than the inter-knuckle space) are all the 31-day months. The inter-knuckles are the 30-day months, except for February. February (the month in which I was born) is, of course, totally bizarre. Although I’m sure you know it in general, it is 28 days unless the year is divisible by 4. Except when it is also divisible by 100. Unless it is also divisible by 400. But don’t worry about that! You’ll be alerted by the news. The thing is that the months are up-down-up-down-up-down-up and then they repeat.

If you can’t remember that February is a mess, you probably don’t visit this website! As for Dr. Cominsky, she’s pretty weird herself.