Tonight on Melanoma Irony Theatre

Overheard while in line at MoonBean's Coffee on the Stanford campus:

Girl: I spent all morning tanning instead of doing my work. Now I need too much caffeine.
Boy: That's bad for your heart.

If It's So Pointless, Why Can't I Stop?

I recently got bitten by the Sudoku bug - you know, those strange 9x9 number grids showing up in the newspaper next to the crossword and the jumble. But after doing them for a while, and getting somewhat adept at them, I have to wonder what's the point? What do you have when you're done but a 9x9 grid of numbers?

I've loved doing the NY Times crossword for years, but I gave it up a few years ago when I let my Times subscription lapse. (I know I can do it on-line, but it's not the same.) To complete a Times crossword takes a modicum of factual and vocabulary knowledge. The end result isn't anything to hang on one's wall, but it shows that one has some ability for abstract thought. Likewise, jigsaw puzzles take some manual dexterity and spatial skills, and you end up with a pretty picture at the end.

Sudoku requires the ability to think logically in order to identify patterns and place the numbers in their correct place. This is nothing to sneeze at, but I can pretty easily write a computer program to solve a Sudoku puzzle. I think most programmers would be hard pressed to do the same for crosswords and jigsaws.

And yet, I still find myself doing the daily Sudoku. Why? Part of the appeal, I think, is that the puzzles stroke the pattern-matching engine that lives at the core of the human brain. Those of us in engineering fields may also take obsessive-compulsive delight at putting rows and columns of numbers in the right order. But still, it there any less productive way to spend my time? In the time it takes to do a puzzle I could read a magazine article, or write a blog entry, or, god-forbid, do my job.

I could go on, but there's a puzzle with my name on it.

Profile of Majority Report's Sam Seder

The Boston Globe has a nice article about Sam Seder and Air America Radio's "The Majority Report".

Now, somehow, I'm going to have to find copies of his movies: Who's the Caboose and Pilot Season.

"And This Guy Worked for Reagan!" Redux

I'm ksharp and I'll be your waiter tonight...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=27414&mode=nested&order=0

"War Mongering Corporate Whore" Redux

Robert Parry explains why Thomas Friedman should lose his post as a NY Times op-ed columnist. I wholeheartedly agree, with one caveat. Parry would like Friedman to resign. I'd like to see him "downsized" and outsourced by a foreign affairs columnist from Asia or the Middle East. That would be sweet ironic justice, indeed.

Friedman is taking well-deserved flack for his pro-war stance. Now if only someone would also take him to task for his blatherings on economic policies... Ah, this looks promising: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031235522X

Harold et Kumar Chassent Le Burger

We finally saw "Harold & Kumar go to White Castle" this weekend on cable. As I recall, this was the big buzz "Snakes on a Plane" movie of 2004, but the reviews were mixed and it came and went pretty quickly.

'Tis a very silly movie -- two stoners struggle to satisfy a craving for White Castle burgers -- but good for a laugh. In fact, Kumar's "love story" montage in the second half of the movie is worth the price of admission all by itself.

Anyway, Lorin was wondering how European releases dealt with the fact that White Castle is virtually unknown outside the United States. In answer, I found the following translated titles:

UK: "Harold & Kumar Get the Munchies"
France: "Harold et Kumar Chassent le Burger" (Harold & Kumar Chase the Burger)

I think a little something gets lost in translation.

My Latest Screed

Last week a bunch of former execs at a well-known Silicon Valley company were cited in criminal and civil complaints for stock-options fraud. This makes me happy. For the record, I have friends who are former employees there, and I wish them nothing but good fortune and success. My friends worked far enough down the food chain in that area where real work is done, and not in the sort of rarified arena where criminal conspiracies are born.

Also for the record, I once interviewed for a job at the company in question, and the interview was an unmitigated disaster. It was my own fault - I wasn't properly prepared, and they were right not to hire me. Call this sour grapes if you will, but I think I would feel the same even if these complaints were filed against another company I had never heard of.

What makes me happy is that these actions by prosecutors and the SEC validate an opinion I've long had: that Silicon Valley's fetish for stock options is a symptom of a sick culture. I wrote a letter to the Mercury News giving my reasons why stock options should be abolished from publicly-traded companies. The paper printed it here.

The Human Behavior Experiments

"The Human Behavior Experiments", a new documentary by Alex Gibney, director of "Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room" is a sobering look at some famous behavioral studies that show how easy it is to get moral, up-standing people to engage in unethical behavior and how it relates to our conduct in Iraq. As Professor Zimbardo (of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment) says in the film, it's not that there are a few bad apples, it's that the whole barrel is rotten.

Showing this month on The Sundance Channel.

On a related note, I think it's time for somebody to make an American version of "Das Experiment", the movie which asks "can anyone who speaks German possibly be evil?"

And while we're on the subject, I'm reminded of a 1970's TV movie starring William Shatner called "The Tenth Level", which was based on the "Milgram" experiment profiled in the Sundance film. Whatever you might think of Shatner, it had a heckuva cast: Lindsay Crouse, Ossie Davis, and John Travolta among them.