Prisoner of Time

Ian Cook at Truck & Barter pointed out a great post at The Idea Shop. Andrew Chamberlain investigated tardiness as a prisoner's dilemma game.

Andrew proposes that one consciously or subconsiously shows up late because being late is a dominant strategy and a Nash equilibrium in the game. No other option will consistently provide the best payoff.

Since showing up late is a trait common in my family, this is a very interesting idea.

Rain, sleet, snow or privatization

Privatization of the Postal Service? Read my article at Truck and Barter.

Silly Blog Game

I know this is a silly game. Bloggers sometimes track the keyword searches that prominently display their entries.

So my posting about the Artic National Wildlife Refuge has made the first page of Google. Search for "arctic refuge redford no" and find me at #4. Search for "Arctic Refuge Auction" and see my posting at Truck and Barter at #1! Woo hoo, Number One!

Its silly, but it keeps you blogging. It is almost as exciting as a new comment. :)

Attention Ohio Readers

An important piece of legislation has been introduced in the Ohio House or Representatives, 126th General Assembly. House Bill 9 revises Ohio's Public Records laws to clarify the requirements of each public employee to be trained on their responsiblity with regards to the public records law and penalize any public office failing to comply with the law.

I have personally experienced innapropriate denial of public records requests and this bill will fix many of the problems. It is important that your representative knows that we support the passage of this bill.

What can you do?
1. Please lookup the contact information for your representative here.
2. Write a letter or e-mail to communicate your support
3. Be sure to reference 126th House Bill 9 (i.e. 126 HB 9)
4. Be sure to address your representative as "Honorable Mr. John Doe"
5. Please tell your friends.

Thank you for your support!

A black eye for the fat man

Today Michael Moore was dissed by the Oscar voters. Fahrenheit 911 did receive a single nomination. Passion of the Christ received 3. Professor Bainbridge hopes that Hollywood has heard the message that liberal propaganda is not entertainment. You can see the list of nominations at Oscar.com.

I agree that the absence of Michael Moore at the Oscars is a great day. Maybe one of these days I will watch his movie anyway, but only when it is broadcast for free on CBS.

Let me out!

Please help me! I'm trapped and I can't get out. Kevin feels the same way.

Inauguration, part deux

I have not yet watched the address. I tried to watch C-SPAN from class, but I could not sneak an earpiece and I missed the entire ceremony to take some notes. However, reading the transcript I am sure this was a powerful speech with many world changing points. Here are a few that stood out for me.

There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred... and that is the force of human freedom.

• As if he were channeling Thomas Jefferson!

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

• World shattering! Ronald Regan asked the soviets to, "tear down this wall!" President Bush is asking the world to open its hearts and minds to the possibilities of freedom.

May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America.

• I love it! I do not attend church every week and I am willing to support basically ANY religion as valid and honorable worship. Surely God, a loving god, has lit many paths to righteousness. Without that light or enlightment or illumination or path, depending on your particular choice of faith, these travels we call life are dark, treacherous and lonely. President Bush has offered to help any freedom seeking people in the world with the same open arms that will greet us all in Heaven.

No thanks Robert Redford.

I received the following e-mail from Robert Redford, by way of my democrat sister (I love her anyway.) My response is posted at Truck and Barter. Mr. Redford has ignored the larger issue. Typical of an activist he has offered complaints without solutions.

From: Robert Redford
To: [removed]
Subject: A message from Robert Redford about the Arctic Refuge
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 17:33:49 -0500 (EST)

Dear NRDC Action Fund Supporter,

No one voted on Election Day to destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But President Bush is now claiming a mandate to do exactly that.

Congressional leaders are pushing for a quick vote that would turn America's greatest sanctuary for Arctic wildlife into a vast, polluted oil field.

Even worse, they are planning to avoid public debate on this devastating measure by hiding it in a must-pass budget bill.

Please go to http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/arctic0501c.asp right now and send a message telling your U.S. senators and representative to reject this sneak attack on the Arctic Refuge. And please forward my message to your friends, family and colleagues. We must mobilize millions of Americans in opposition as quickly as possible.

Don't believe for a second that the president is targeting the Arctic Refuge for the sake of America's energy security or to lower gas prices at the pump.

President Bush knows full well that oil drilled in the Arctic Refuge would take ten years to get to market and would never equal more than a paltry one or two percent of our nation's daily consumption. Simply put, sacrificing the crown jewel of our wildlife heritage would do nothing to reduce gas prices or
break our addiction to Persian Gulf oil.

But if the raid on the Arctic Refuge isn't really about gas prices or energy security, then what is it about?

It's the symbolism.

The Arctic Refuge represents everything spectacular and everything endangered about America's natural heritage. It embodies a million years of ecological serenity . . . a vast stretch of pristine wilderness . . . an irreplaceable birthing ground for polar bears, caribou and white wolves.

It is the greatest living reminder that conserving nature in its wild state is a core American value. It stands for every remnant of wilderness that we, as a people, have wisely chosen to protect from the relentless march of bulldozers, chain saws and oil rigs.

And that's why the Bush administration is dead set on destroying it.

By unlocking the Arctic Refuge, they hope to open the door for oil, gas and coal giants to invade our last and best wild places: our western canyonlands, our ancient forests, our coastal waters, even our national monuments.

This is the real agenda behind the raid on the Arctic Refuge and the entire Bush-Cheney energy plan: to transfer our public estate into corporate hands so it can be liquidated for a quick buck.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) admitted as much when he said this battle over the Arctic Refuge is really a fight over whether energy exploration will be allowed in similarly sensitive areas in the future. "It's about precedent," Rep. DeLay said.

I take him at his word. If we let the president and Congress plunder the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for the sake of oil company profits, then no piece of our natural heritage will be safe from wholesale destruction.

Please go to http://www.nrdcactionfund.org/arctic0501c.asp and tell your senators and representative they have no mandate to destroy the Arctic Refuge. Then please be sure to forward this message to as many people as you can.

And thank you for speaking out at this critical time.

Sincerely,

Robert Redford
NRDC Action Fund

I'm going to Walt Disney World!

Bryan, you just started a new quarter at Ohio State and the assignments, papers and presentations are piling up. What are you going to do next?

Bryan: I am going to Disney World!

Remote blogging with Mickey Mouse. Maybe a picture or two if you're lucky.

Geek Love

This post is for FashionHound, or her alter-ego Cereal Dater (not that I think she is a geek, but this is about dating).

I do not usually watch trashy television and I have not enjoyed a dating show since the Newlywed Game. However, I could not sleep last night. So, I clicked on the TV and found a funny little dating show on UPN called Blind Date.

I captured the clips and you should watch them choose the slow (150 Kbps) or the broadband (340 Kbps) Windows Media stream. The special f/x people display genius with their CGI cone heads. :)

Being a geek named Bryan, I can identify with the hero in this story. I wish them the best of luck.

Socratic Method

As a pre-law student I know that I will get more than my share of the socratic method of teaching in the near future. However, I was quite surprised when Dr. Fleisher announced that today's Comparative Economic Systems (Econ 508) would be a class discussion in the Socratic Method.

I know the key to any good class discussion, particularly a socratic discussion, is preparation. Even though I had been warned and given a list of readings, I failed to do more than collect them in one place for the last two days. I am still waiting for one of the books to arrive by mail. Over lunch I burned through the readings and bought the missing book for $30 more than my mail order copy.

I am pleased to report that I enjoyed the lecture very much. The socratic method seems to be a superior form of discussion and very effective for these topics.

I certainly will make an effort to be better prepared next time. I feared that I would be embarrased in lecture and would be caught without an answer when adressed by Dr. Fleisher. Fortunately, I understood the material, particularly the Hayek reading, well. Also, the undergraduate students set such a low bar and have really brought down the professor's expectations.

I am looking forward to more socratic discussions.

Reference
Good descriptions on the socratic method:
http://www.greatbooksacademy.org/html/what_is_the_socratic_method_.html
http://lonestar.texas.net/~mseifert/crit3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates#Socratic_method

The Princeton Review has posted this scathing review of the Socratic Method. What do they have against people thinking for themselves?

Stolen script

I will write about class in a moment. It was a great day.

Remember this post about the new NBC midseason replacement, "Committed?" I noticed the show had a certain rhythm to it that made me think about the BBC show Coupling. Tonight the script was STOLEN straight from Coupling.

A woman in a new relationship shows up naked to her new beau's apartment without warning. Being male and not having been in a relationship in a while, his apartment needed some cleaning, to say the least.

Coupling focused more on the piles of pornography. Committed focused more on the mass quantity of stuff.

Whatever happened to original television?

Committed
THE APARTMENT EPISODE
2005-01-11

LOST IN LOVE--After several months of dating, Marni (Jennifer Finnigan) realizes she has never set foot in Nate's (Josh Cooke) apartment. Marni invites herself over to his place and Nate, in a state of panic over his crazy, pack-rat apartment, decides to turn off all the lights so she can't see the mess. Marni's curiosity over what Nate is hiding gets the best of her, so she breaks in the next day with Tess (Tammy Lynn Michaels). Elsewhere, Bowie (Darius McCrary) discovers the true meaning of the Chinese symbol that he had tattooed on his arm. Tom Poston also stars.

Coupling
The Naked Living Room
2004.07.06

Is it possible that life-time loser in love Oliver might just get somewhere with life-time loser in love Jane? Trouble is, how can you win the heart of a good woman, when your flat is a little 'un-edited', and your living room has lost the battle with magazine nudity?

Working without a translator

Ikea appears to have failed to run this latest product by their U.S. translator. Would you buy a FARTFULL?

New money pit

I am a gadget freak! I have to try out everything. I have TiVo, XM, PalmPilot, MP3 players lots of other pieces of tech, some useful, some not so useful. Combined with a healthy respect for a sale, I am excited to watch a new website: Woot!. I can't remember where I read about this today, less than an hour ago, but it looks exciting. So I will try to stay up until midnight so I can see what the new offer is. I guess it is like an online Tuesday Morning. Except five days a week. Every morning at midnight they list one single product 30% off or more. They only have one lot and when it sells out, sales stop. After the sale ends they publish the number sold, the last sale time and the "Woot Wage." These products sell out FAST! Like QVC fast. Frequently in less than 12 hours an entire lot of about 1000 items is already sold.

Today's watch sale resulted in 500 watches, 80% off, sold in 13 hours, 24 minutes, an average of one sale every 3 seconds, and $24,214 per hour.

That's some business. I don't know how they come about these products but they are definitely moving some cash.

Juice!

I was sitting at Panera reading Slashdot, when I read this article by CowboyNeal pointing to a wonderful NY Times article called you can read here.

Ironic because at the time I was waiting for another table to open so that I could plug in my laptop that had just announced a low battery.

I can certainly relate to the issue of finding places to plug in. At only $0.01 to $0.02 per hour to operate or charge a laptop (even my behemoth Dell 9100) I don't exactly feel that I owe the business anything for the privelege. I figure I gave them more than $0.02 back when I declined the tomato on my sandwich.

I have also begun to collect a database, if only in my head, of electrical outlet locations at businesses around the country. Maybe I should start a website to help road warriors.

Socially Irresponsible Television

I have heard lots of great things about Fox's "House, M.D." Unfortunately my Tuesday TiVo schedule is full and I have not been able to record it. This evening I had 30 minutes to spare before TiVo recorded NBC's "Committed" which seems like a really bad version of Coupling where all of the characters are Jeff.

Anyway, the point of this post is that "House, M.D." is a medical investigatory drama. At first it seems like a wonderful combination of CSI & E.R. with a well developed lead character, Dr. House (Hugh Laurie.)

Just when I am thinking about cancelling my recording of "Committed," which I should have done anyway, Dr. House chimes in with some advice for a protective mother of an asthmatic child.

"If you don't trust steroids you shouldn't trust doctors."

What a stupid remark! Stupid, Stupid, Stupid! In these days of Balco Labs, holistic medicine and the rise of the educated health consumer this sort of uneducated script is irresponsible.

I would rephrase, "If your doctor trusts steroids don't trust your doctor."

It's just Hollywood you say, well unfortunately people these days will believe anything they see on T.V.

Medium - The most unusual law drama ever

Medium (IMDB)
I still have my doubts about this new NBC mid-season replacement. But 10 minutes into the first episode, which aired Monday evening, the main character, Allison, has doubts about becoming an attorney. Her husband reassures he by saying, "You should go to law school. You should study hard. You should become a heartless scum sucking attorney and buy your husband expensive foreign cars. It just seems like the right thing to do."

Allison (Patricia Arquette) is a mother of three, a 3rd year law student and an intern in the prosecutor's office. However, the title of the show, "Medium", is about her ability to communicate with and see the dead who are constantly following her.

This show might be okay. I will keep watching.

Jeremy

Jeremy Blachman is one of the enjoyable law student blogs. This week two good posts. Yesterday he related his experience with wi-fi in class. I am usually the only undergraduate student with a laptop in class at Ohio State. However, I have seen the solitare phenomenon sitting in at the Moritz College of Law.

Sunday Jeremy wrote a funny article about when to refill things. Read it here. I have intimate knowledge of the toner cartridge dilemma so I offer Jeremy this advice:

Once I have removed the toner cartridge for 5 shakings it is time to just replace it. I figure spreading out the toner by shaking gives me enough time to go buy a new one. I usually get 50 pages of good print with a good left-right-left twist. Sometimes I do it to music and Chuck Berry is always a good choice.

Good luck Jeremy!

Gone in 60 seconds.

In the past week I have read two articles featuring car theft. I thought winter was the slow season for theft, but maybe car boosting is not a seasonal business.

Mike Harden wrote in the Dispatch an article about a stolen car sitting in an impound lot for three years. Read about it here.

Then in Forbes Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff defend LoJack in their article "Stop Thief!" by saying this about users of The Club:

People who would never think of putting a sign in their car window saying, "My neighbor leaves her keys in the ignition" feel fine putting on a steering-wheel bar that has basically the same effect.

I never thought about theft prevention from this angle, but I have heard it before. When I was in the security industry, some installers and professionals stated goal for security is to make one building just hard enough to gain entrance that criminals try the next door. Perhaps this is why security is most frequently purchased only after a burglary in response to a crime instead of to prevent a crime.

Their theory about a Lo-er Jack, inexpensive vehicle locator is great and will catch joy riders, but professional boosters will know to just stash the car in a metal crate and defeat any transmission of the vehicle location. Any such device must report the vehicle location constantly.

I am sure these devices will become more common. New cellular and wi-fi technologies will make this sort of device very inexpensive.

Cafe etiquette

I am at Panera trying to get some things done for the next hour or two until I have to return to campus.

The guy at the next table is playing a game or movie or something, it sounds like Grand Theft Auto or some sort of driving game.

That's right I said, "sounds like!" This guy has the nerve to leave his laptop speakers on I can barely even think clearly enough to type with all of the honking and screeching tires going on next to me.

I realize this is not the library and the classical music on the speakers combined with the conversations throughout the cafe can rise above a dull roar at times.

Why can't I just get up and say something to him? I should. But I won't. I am just going to hope that he leaves before too long.

UPDATE (13:27) - Ten minutes later my prayers have been answered. The rude computer user got up and left! Woo-hoo!

Sleds Welcome!

Yellowstone is finally open to snowmobiles! You can read more about it here. You can see pictures here and here.

If you have been to Yellowstone in the summer you should make a trip in the winter it is beautiful and quiet.

Year of the Blog

It's official, 2004 was the Year of the Blog. The Pew Institute on the the state of blogging.

More after class, the TA just showed up to Art 300 - Photography.