The play set for the children of the corn

 

I saw this at Academy. Check out the creepy children. What were they thinking?

Hogwarts

I wonder how long it will be after the final movie in the Harry Potter that we'll see "Hogwarts," the weekly half-hour sitcom. It will take place in, of course, Hogwarts, with an all-new cast of fresh young faces, with the occasional cameo by one of the key characters from one of the movies, and perhaps the prize of, say, Hermione Granger as the headmistress. Naturally, it will appear on the CW. I'll take bets.

Aren't I speaking English?

No, you am not. "I" and "are" never go together. This has been a Public Service Announcement.

On heroism

The word hero is one that is overused and misused to the point of no longer having any meaning in popular parlance, like terrorist or producer. An act can be heroic if and only if:

1. It comes at some substantial personal cost. Whether it's the risk of physical injury in breaking up a fight, or the risk of losing your job by refusing to certify an unsafe product, it cannot be heroic if it comes too cheaply. An inflammatory blog post, for instance, costs nothing at all.


2. The benefits flow to others. If you gain from your act, it's not heroism.


3. Nobody would fault you for doing less or even nothing. I wouldn't think less of you if you didn't run into a burning building. This is in some ways the reverse of (1); you should not face substantial personal cost from failing to act, or choosing a less heroic alternative.

One thing you may note is that this definition basically invalidates every sports "hero" ever (especially due to (2)). That is no accident, because they're not really heroes.

An example that clearly fits the definition is the passengers aboard United 93 who stormed the cockpit on September 11. The personal cost? The highest price of all: death. The benefit to others? Everyone on the ground who would have been killed by the kamikaze run. And doing nothing was exactly what they were supposed to do in these situations.

A somewhat more uncomfortable one is that this definition disqualifies certain acts that are nonetheless highly admirable. Take for instance the pilot who managed to (relatively) safely land his crippled aircraft in the Hudson. There was no personal risk or cost to him, and he gained from his actions. If he hadn't done what he did, he would have been just as dead as everyone else. It was still an extraordinary accomplishment, but that landing wasn't heroic. However, that he stayed aboard to make sure everyone else got to safety first at least brushes the heroic. Maybe that is trying to have it both ways, but he could easily have rushed out in the general panic to save himself.

Sleeping in

Even after all these years, I feel a creeping dread when a baby sleeps later than usual.

NOM NOM NOM NOM

 

 

 

In front of our neighbor's house this morning. The snake is alive and twitching. I don't know what kind it is.

Birdwatch update

 

 

 

Note the down side of having such a nest at your house. The piles of brown I think are the indigestible remnants of crawfish.

I like it when clouds do this

 

Heron chick sighting

 

Nobody does it deader

 

Quite possibly the most disgusting thing that has ever happened in that bathroom. I sure showed that roach.

An oblique joke?

 

Saw this at Whole Foods. The Murray River forms the main watershed of southeastern Australia, where much of the country's food is grown. The area has had severe drought over the last few years, enough, apparently, to turn the river to salt.

MacGyver Meal

MacGyver Meal, noun: to make a dinner out of whatever random ingredients you have in your house. Credit for this one goes to the wife.

Connecting 1 1/4 inch drain tail piece to 1 1/2 inch waste line

I've replaced all the faucets and sinks in our house. The new standard for tailpieces (i.e. the drain pipe) appears to be a 1 ¼ inch diameter, but all the waste lines in my house are 1½ inches in diameter. They tell you you can use an adapter ring, but I found they didn't work so well. You can see the ring pushed up the pipe below:

 

It's not just the size difference that's a problem, as you can see above. It's also that the pipes just barely meet. That and the less than perfect hold of the adapter meant that the pipes weren't well connected; a good bump could separate them, which meant that under-sink storage would be a problem.

The solution was pretty simple. I got a 1½ extension. I pushed that over the 1¼ tail piece so they were doubled for a good 4 or 5 inches (I had to cut it to fit). I connected them with the same adapter and screwed on the compression ring as before. Then I connected the extension to the waste line. Since the differently-sized pipes overlapped for 4-5 inches, there was no chance of them separating, and having a 1½ to 1½ connection at the elbow meant that was a lot more secure than before. This is what it looked like after I put on the extension, but before I connected them:

 

Compare that to the first picture to get an idea of how much overlap there was. Below is what it looked like after, i.e., perfectly ordinary.

 

Brilliant perspective on investing

If you invest in a risky asset class like stocks, your portfolio will nearly always be worth less than it was at some point in the past.

(emphasis his)

Also:

He doesn’t seem remotely interested in the amount he has accumulated over the course of his 20 years at the WSJ: instead, he’s only interested in the difference between that amount and its mark-to-market value on a certain date chosen to make him feel as miserable as possible.

The whole thing.

Focus on the edges and the middle will take care of itself

I wonder if that applies to more things than just buttering toast.

Rooster

 

Making the NFL draft more exciting

Continuing my interest in just about everything about football except actually watching games, I was paying attention to the NFL Draft today. It's a pretty exciting big event in its own right these days, but it suffers from one big flaw: number 1 comes first. Far more exciting would be a long build-up, with the top pick coming last. The mechanics of that would be tricky, but I'll take a stab at it. I'll admit that I only know the basics of the draft, but I'm never going to play armchair quarterback, so I'll play armchair whatever this is.

I figure two changes would get most of the way there. The big change is giving prospective players the right to refuse being picked. If Bobo the Back thinks he's second (to last) round material, but gets called in the fourth (to last) round, he can tell them to talk to the palm. The team that got refused doesn't lose their pick completely, but they go to the end of the queue (unless they have other picks in queue). The player is gambling on someone else wanting him more. Just like today, teams get allocated their position in the draft according to how they do, and they can deal and trade those picks in advance to their hearts' content.

What's to keep the system from reverting in practice to the status quo? The other change: putting a collar, especially a ceiling, on pay. Suppose someone picked in the eighth-to-last round has a contract of between $210,000/year and $240,000/year. Matthew Stafford (this year's #1) is going to laugh at that and walk away. But what if he gets called as the 10th-to-last pick in the final round? Does he take the $3.5 million/year - $4.5 million/year range guaranteed to the tenth-to-last pick? Or does he take the chance on someone wanting him more (the contract he actually got has a variable payout of between $6 million/year and $13 million/year)? That makes it more dramatic, and pushes the high value players to the end.

When would it stop? I've been saying second-to-last round and tenth-to-last pick, but there's no reason it actually has to be that way. Maybe it would be better to have no predetermined end. Instead, the teams would keep getting picks. BUT, the minimum salary would keep going up. If a team thought the price too high for the remaining pool of players, they could pass, and the next team in line gets their shot at the pool of players (who can refuse) at the same price. When every team passes at the same price, the draft ends, and everyone goes home. That sounds pretty exciting to me.

imgoingthereanyway.com

If you're planning a trip from, say, Austin to Houston, would you take $25 to drop a box of books off in Tomball (it's along the way)? I would. Would you take, say, $50 to bring an extra person? I might. And I figure I'm not the only one. The rest almost writes itself.

If you've got a thing that needs to get from point A to point B, you tell the site. If you're taking a trip, you tell the site where you're going. It tells you who or what needs to take the same trip.

Obviously, it's more complicated than that. How do you confirm delivery? How do you make sure your passenger isn't an axe murderer? How do you deal with paths that are inexact matches; i.e., Georgetown to Humble? What if you could get $200 by stopping in Giddings, but that means you have to go from Austin to Houston on 290 instead of 71/I-10 so you can stop in Giddings and collect $200. There are lots of details to iron out, and opportunities for extension. That's what makes it potentially valuable. I'm not going to build it, but maybe you can.

A flock of not exactly seagulls

 

 

If you've visited here before, you have to be aware that I'm quite pleased by the presence in my front yard's trees of nesting pairs of Yellow-crowned Night Herons. Well, it looks like I'm not the host with the most. I discovered yesterday that a single tree in the yard of a house down the street has at least 4 active nests. It's a healthier tree, so maybe that's why. And no dogs, perhaps. I also found a pair of nearly intact egg shells directly under one of the nests, with just enough shell removed from one end to allow a chick to emerge. I'm a little bit jealous. I hope for their sake they don't park outside, though. Those are big birds.

Whoa

"The Matrix" was released 10 years ago today.