Game

Monday, September 7, 2009

Celebrity Schadenfreude: Drawing the Line

You know there are times when there is a personality that is so annoying and over exposed that when something bad happens to them, for a second, it makes you feel a little good inside, despite the fact that you find the act reprehensible.

I had one of those moments this weekend.

The catalyst for that brief, sick moment of celebrity-based pleasure? Reading that Tila Tequila got choked a little bit by her boyfriend, Shawne Merriman.

I knew deep down, that was wrong and messed up on my part, but yeah... total schadenfreude for me for a second or so because she is so annoying and overexposed.

It was that same feeling I got when I read that Jon Lovitz beat up Andy Dick. But the fact that it was a man abusing a woman in this case (a much stronger athlete no less) makes that feeling wrong though. But would it have been right if another female celebrity did that to her... like if she was dating a gal or happened to insult a fellow reality star and received physical retribution for it. Or let's say Courtney Love punched Paris Hilton in the face. Is it wrong of me to like the sound of that in the same way I'd like hearing that Samuel L. Jackson punched Uwe Boll in the face.

I mean, I was totally incensed by Chris Brown beating Rihanna, and I know that I shouldn't have gotten any pleasure from hearing another female personality had been beaten by a man. I could probably rationalize it by saying that my reaction was post-sexist, but I don't think that would be fair.

I am just so confused sometimes.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Sunday Video: Baby Got Back

You all know I like the funny/weird covers and well, after looking at a particular entry Becca put up a few days ago, well, somehow this song came to mind.

Of course, I had to go in a different direction though. A lighter direction and one that was a little folkier. And maybe a little funny too.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Up with Pixar

You know when we take the kids to see an animated movie, I'm not expecting to have my emotions manipulated. A few chuckles is a good outcome. A plot that makes sense leaves me satisfied. And avoiding of positions or morals that make me cringe can top it off. I am not looking for anything more.

Well, Up! -- this year's Pixar flick -- finally arrived in Australia this weekend and I can only warn parents out there: don't expect to come out of it with your emotions unscathed. It has sad, dare I say it, tear jerking moments, that make Bambi's mother getting shot a comparatively delightful event. You can't walk out of the theatre and leave this movie behind.

That said, apparently that view of the movie kicks in at around age 9. In our family discussion thereafter as to whether the movie was happy or sad (overall), the 5 and 8 year old saw it as completely happy while the 10, 39 and 41 year old called it anything but an upper. So this is a rare movie that gives adults and adult-response and leaves children thinking that it was just another, albeit very amusing -- let's face it, talking dogs are always going to be a winner -- animated movie. How Pixar did it, I have no idea. But I won't be going into any of their films so unprepared again.

The class matching problem

In Slate, Emily Bazelon talks about the class assignment problem. This is the annual task schools face in allocating students to classes. They need to do it on the basis of getting a good mix on classes and avoiding relationships with problematic external effects; for instance, separating out would-be bullies. The problem is that parental (and indirectly, child) preferences intervene. They have preferences for friends but also, and this is where it gets much stickier, for teachers. And that makes the whole class assignment problem far more complex.

Bazelon examines the moral issues here -- should a parent engage in what is essentially a zero-sum game? If you push to have your child in a class with a particular teacher, that pushes another out.

The school rules evolve as a response to this. One of my favourite games, is to "guess the incentive problem" when I see some sort of rule. For instance, in our school, class assignments for the next year are sent out on December 23rd (this is Australia, so the school year is the calendar year). This makes it impossible for anyone to actually receive them until well into the summer holidays when there is no one to complain to. Why this policy? It is clearly designed to put a lid on parental complaints and also it prevents aggregation of information as to who got into other classes.

But this is not to say that there is no input of parental and child preferences. This occurs earlier where children are invited to list four others they would like to be in a class with next year. They must include at least one child outside of their current class. They are not allowed to place a preference for children they would like to avoid. And then the list is sent home and must be signed off by their parent. This system is fine with us and we have not engaged in 'out of the game' lobbying.

I have long tried to implement a scheme when allocating students to syndicate groups for assignments. It looks pretty much like the one my school uses but on a smaller scale. I hadn't thought of getting parental sign-off for MBAs though. Next time perhaps.

It is interesting to see the diversity of approaches that are put in place across schools. For instance, from Slate,

At Orangewood Elementary, a public school in Phoenix, Ariz., parents are invited to request a class assignment ahead of time, so long as they follow an established set of rules. The principal, Andree Charlson, explained to me that she asks parents first to sit in on the class they think they want, to see whether the teacher's instructional method really appeals to them rather than going on vague hearsay. She honors requests only when they jibe with her own and her teachers' sense of what makes for a good class mix. That includes balancing the number of boys and girls, including a range of ability levels, and not putting too many kids with behavioral problems in the same classroom.

Ha! They impose signaling costs on the parents as to how serious they are. Not a bad approach but it is costly on the school too.

One suspects that there might be an actual solution to the class assignment problem. In economics, Al Roth and others have studied matching problems -- for instance, how interns are allocated to hospitals when the interns and hospitals have their own rankings. And New York schools are trying to work this out with respect to getting siblings into the same school. My guess is that this might be of use in coming up with a mechanism for class assignment.

Forecast Error?

Sometimes forecasts go wrong and sometimes the communication of details is inadequate...and today is a mixture of the two.

Significant showers are mostly over for the western lowlands and bright sun is now features over the San Juans and even a sliver down Puget Sound. (see satellite image). There is almost nothing immediately offshore. And the radar shows the rain mainly over the mountains now.

Forecast failure? Well, not exactly. The computer models yesterday showed a wet frontal system coming in this morning and that it would move through mid-afternoon, resulting in showers and sun breaks late in the day..and in fact the 3:30 AM NWS forecast tells this story:

330 AM PDT SAT SEP 5 2009
TODAY...RAIN AT TIMES THROUGH MID AFTERNOON. THEN MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SHOWERS LATE IN THE AFTERNOON. HIGHS IN THE 60S. SOUTH WIND 5 TO 15 MPH.

However, there was a timing error...and the frontal moved through roughly 3-4 hours earlier than predicted. The result is that we have gotten into the post-frontal situation early...with sun breaks and only a few showers. The southern San Juans are in bright sunshine now and sun is blazing here in Seattle. But not for long. There is often enhanced clearing right behind the front, with some showers/clouds behind that clearing...and you will notice another band to our west. So don't expect a clear day--some of this cloudiness will move in during the next few hours. But the serious rain is over, sunbreaks will occur today, and I am heading outside to pressure wash part of my house in preparation for some painting. The NWS has even modified their forecast:

1030 AM PDT SAT SEP 5 2009

REST OF TODAY...SUN BREAKS AND SCATTERED SHOWERS. HIGHS IN THE 60S. SOUTH WIND 10 TO 15 MPH.

The lesson of all this? Timing errors can occur and you can enhance your ability to do things outside by watching the weather carefully. And my profession needs to communicate timing issues better--I suspect most people didn't realize the near certainty of a break this afternoon.
And I hope the new coastal weather radar will fix this kind of timing failure...providing information upstream that would have allowed a corrected forecast last night. I have a graduate student, Reid Wolcott, working on just this issue--developing approaches for using an upstream radar in numerical weather prediction. If his research pans out and the new radar gets installed, weather predictions may get a lot better around here.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Week 17: Pageant of the Transmundane

A robber was nabbed this week after he left his wallet at the bank he had just held up. There is no news on whether this act was caused by genetic stupidity or a blow to head however.

This week's winning entry comes from, and makes up the entirety of a blog called The Godzilla Mothra Letters, which recounts the correspondence between Mothra and Godzilla, two figures who have a love/hate relationship with Japan. And the back and forth has a good flow to it, and surprisingly, aside from the destruction and superpowers, I am sure we've all been a part of a conversation like this.

And proving once again that you can find a Homer Simpson image for everything, here is Homer Simpson fighting Godzilla in a game. Huzzah!

Congrats go out to William Keckler, who created this blog and wrote the winning entry.

The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Is it just me?

Every time I see ads for Gamer, and they show Michael C. Hall doing the following:

it makes me think that somehow he is recreating a scene from Grease or West Side Story. I mean, it is dangerously close to jazz hands or spirit fingers, and the whole cut seems to start with him snapping his fingers.

I am comfortable with a story about a kid playing a game with a real human being as his proxy. Where Michael C. Hall and his character's fetish for interpretive theatrical dance comes into all that... I can only speculate. But it sort of freaks me out a little bit every time I see it because it makes no sense.

Oh, I know, they are remaking the climactic dance scene from Love is a Battlefield. Yeah, that's the ticket. I mean, that's the only plausible explanation I can come up with. But that leads to further questions. Like why would he do that?