Data Scientists Complain that No One Has Made them Obsolete Yet

In this corner, the New York Times:

"For Big-Data Scientists, ‘Janitor Work’ Is Key Hurdle to Insights"

"We really need better tools so we can spend less time on data wrangling and get to the sexy stuff,” said Michael Cavaretta, a data scientist at Ford Motor, which has used big data analysis to trim inventory levels and guide changes in car design.

And in this corner, Tyler Cowen:

"What are humans still good for? The turning point in Freestyle chess may be approaching" 

...even the most talented humans move from being very real contributors to being strictly zero marginal product.  Or negative marginal product, as the case may be.

And of course this has implications for more traditional labor markets as well.  You might train to help a computer program read medical scans, and for thirteen years add real value with your intuition and your ability to revise the computer’s mistakes or at least to get the doctor to take a closer look.  But it takes more and more time for you to improve on the computer each year.  And then one day…poof!  ZMP for you.

The data wrangling (or "janitor work") is the sexy stuff. Complaining that no one has automated 50%-80% of your job is an interesting perspective — why do you think they would stop anywhere short of 100%?

A Tale of Two Countries

Sure, America is pretty awesome.

But did you know just how awesome?

Here's the U.K. version of Cher Lloyd's "Want U Back"

It's a song about girl who is upset that her ex-boyfriend has found someone new. Designed for a U.K. audience, she spends the video moping around her apartment (flat?), remembering how things used to be.

Now, what does that video look like when they release it in the U.S.?

Same song; same girl. But this time, she starts the video by assembling her crew, they confront the new girl at work, and it wraps up at the police station where she's facing criminal charges — but it was totally worth it.

U-S-A!
U-S-A!
U-S-A!

I read all 10 books of the Mission: Earth series

That’s not meant to be boastful. I wouldn’t tell anyone else to try it, and in fact I am making this post as a cautionary statement intended to help others.^*

I found nothing objectionable with the premise. A superadvanced alien civilization has established a timetable for the conquest of the universe. A routine scouting mission has realized that Earth civilization is so insane and backwards that by the time the aliens arrive to conquer it, humans will have consumed, misused, and/or destroyed anything worth claiming (I think that this was a problem for the aliens because they needed the planet in good shape to use it as a refueling base, or something). Without alerting Earth to their presence, the aliens have to keep us alive long enough to enslave us. Oh, it also won’t be too tough for them to walk among us since we’re visually identical, thanks to some throwaway sideplot about how life on earth was actually started by rebels fleeing the alien empire.

At first, the narrative device seemed innovative. The books start off as the transcription of a confession, and the primary narrator^** is revealed to be a selfish, greedy, depraved wretch who worked for the “Coordinated Information Apparatus,” a government organization that covertly employs bribery, torture, and assassination nominally to protect the government, but actually to consolidate its own power (and its initials are CIA. Get it?). The CIA wants to maintain the status quo for their own nefarious ends, so the books are a first-person account their efforts to stop the hero who has been appointed to fix things.

From the point of view of the narrator, the graft, extortion, imprisonment, fraud, psychosis, and widespread corruption encountered in the alien society are unremarkable; it is then supposed to be funny when he is shocked to encounter extreme versions of the same on earth, as if we have let things get so bad that even an amoral psychopath thinks we’ve gone too far. Larded throughout are also grade-school crudities and efforts at toilet humor, like the two nymphomaniac circus performers named “Cun” and “Twa,” or the cross-dressing homosexual Russian “Colonel Gaylov.”

Observing the hero through the eyes of someone on the villain’s side is an interesting idea, and has been done before with positive results (see also: Black Company). The problem with the Mission Earth books is that both its narrators are completely devoid of any sympathetic characteristics, and both of them believe in relating the action by way of the “tell, don’t show” school of writing^***. Conflicts and plot points are rushed and one-sided. The work’s flaws turn out to be an inadvertent blessing as readers are forced to endure:

-A rogue alien geneticist, who is sadistic and depraved (and we know this because we are point-blank told it by the narrator) is regarded as a leading light in earth psychiatry because he preaches that sex is evil, electroshock and lobotomies should be routine medical procedures, and pregnant women are so morally corrupt that they can only be redeemed by death.

-The narrator rapes two lesbians straight (only after being driven to it because they withheld his salary, and they bound him and tortured him extensively). These ex-lesbians love straight sex so much that they keep the narrator hostage in their home, insisting that he rape all their friends.

-One of the ex-lesbians “recruits” an underage girl who propels herself headlong into full depravity, eventually traveling from earth to the alien homeworld to turn all the children of the alien nobles and government officials into bisexual catamite thralls.

-The narrator is dazzled by a mysterious concubine who remains sexually distant and insists on making love with the lights off, and who is later revealed to be a man.

Every one of these sequences was a chore to read^****. There are aliens, necrophilia, spaceships, bestiality, faster-than-light travel, sodomy, and erotic mutilation, all relayed in the most tedious fashion possible by a contrived narrator whose unconscious attempts to be funny are all too clearly conscious efforts on the author’s behalf.

While I am unable to discern the fine nuances differentiating satire and parody, I know that neither term apply to these books. I would instead describe them as a gross burlesque that thinks itself a madcap send-up of everything it perceives to be wrong with contemporary society. Big oil has a stranglehold on the planet. The wealthy have more power than governments. The public is gullible and willing to follow anyone with a slick message. When you include the book’s depiction of psychiatry as subverting the natural order of things to pursue a secret agenda, it begins to look less like a work of fiction and more like an extended soapbox rant.

Avoid this series, especially if you’re someone who can’t quit reading something until it’s finished.




<sub>*Specifically, others who need written warnings to keep them from doing things like giving the finger to a gang of bikers, selling drugs to grade schoolers, or licking electrical sockets.

**He changes to a secondary narrator for the last few books, for reasons that aren’t worth bothering to explain.

***My argument would be strengthened by actual quotes from the books, but I just can’t do it. I wouldn’t turn back through those pages for all the tea in China, black-market snack cakes in fat camp, booze at an Elks club meeting, etc.

****While it is fair to note that I have only chosen to highlight the most deviant sexual practices contained within the series, my counterpoint would be that there is little else in them that is memorable. All of the physical problems on Earth are solved by superadvanced alien techno-magic, leaving the hero and the narrator to grapple with Earth’s backwards cultural attitudes for the majority of the books.</sub>

Worst Book Misconception Ever: MAMista

PROTIP FOR PEOPLE WHO DO NOT SPEAK SPANISH: "Mamacita" and "Mamista" are two completely different terms, even though moderately filtered Google Image Search will deliver cheesecake photo results on the first page of the search results for both of them. The first is Spanish for "little mama," and the second is a shitty thriller by Len Deighton set in South America.

After misreading the title, I dug myself into a deeper hole by barely skimming the jacket copy, which mentioned Graham Greene. I always get Graham Green confused with Evelyn Waugh (don't ask), so I expected something like Scoop crossed with Our Man in Havana. The garish cover didn't help. It made me think of South American hijinks on par with a novelization of Club Paradise, where a plucky band of misfits topple a corrupt government and free a country from the yoke of big business, with wacky adventures and possible comedic subplots involving fake pregnancies, subverted gender roles, and mistaken identity.

I was very, very wrong. By the time I figured it out, it was easier just to finish the book. SPOILER ALERT Here's what happened:

The male lead? Dead.

The love interest? Dead.

The guerillas? Ultimately losing a war of attrition on two fronts against the government and the untreated afflictions of the pestilential rainforest, presumed dead.

The two Americans abducted in a guerilla raid? The civilian grinds up his eyeglasses and swallows the shards, dying a slow, agonizing death from internal bleeding. The other one, an undercover CIA agent, also ends up dead.

The idealistic college student who traveled to the country with dreams of helping the marxist revolution? Dead.

The enterprising South American who uses the student's ID to return to the states? Tracked down and killed in the hospital by mobsters because the student skipped town while owing huge debts to a loan shark.

I think the only people who don't die are the President of the United States and his aide, who are spliced into the end of the story to make some point about politics ignoring human suffering and developed nations exploiting the life-and-death struggles of the third world for their own gain.

This was, hands down, the worst comedy about sassy latinas turning society upside down in a tinpot South American dictatorship that I have ever read.

LJ: A Crystal Healer Hit Me in the Groin

Energy healers are not all tie-dye and hemp stink; some of them have elegant, professional operations rivaling high-end psychiatrists' offices. I visited one in Germany. It figures that the analytical, mechanically-adept minds behind Krupp, Braun, and the Luftwaffe would come up with a way to engineer new age mysticism for wire-rimmed glasses and expensive leather.

A friend took me to see the healer because I had a substance¹ abuse problem. Everyone should visit an energy healer at least once, especially if the consultation is in a language you don't speak. It's a lot easier to keep from giggling in the face of the more... exotic claims when you can tell yourself it's just a bad translation. This healer owned a spa shop (think "Teutonic Bath and Body Works³") and ran her practice from a private office decorated in earth tones and stainless steel.

I didn't pay attention during the boring parts and just focused on the pretty colors. Did you know that you can buy a bottle of oil and water⁴ that will attune itself to your energy field? Not only will it help you bring your elemental vibrations into balance, but once it synchs up with you it will display any health problems you're experiencing as impurities within its liquid. It's presumably cleaner and more accurate than filling a lava lamp with your own pee. As an added bonus, the crystal liquid can be drank, or rubbed into the skin, I think. (The translation wasn't too clear on those points, and I didn't press the issue.)

Another valuable diagnostic tool, I learned, is the Polaroid photograph. The visual image of you remains frozen in time, but your photographic aura keeps pace with your real-world aura, showing any changes in your condition. Why shouldn't it? It did steal a piece of your soul, after all. (Don't worry, It'll grow back.) This means that a skilled healer can diagnose your ailments (and take your money) without having you visit their office. The diagnostic accuracy of a disposable photo combined with the fees of a CAT scan means that everyone wins.

I knew that smiling during all of this would lead to uncontrollable giggling, so I just tightened up my jaw from time to time in an effort to keep a straight face. Occasionally I would add a thoughtful stroke of the chin, to take a moment to grapple with the profound universal truth that had just been revealed to me. Then we got to the diagnostic wand.

The wand is sensitive to the most minute disturbances, moving in response to aura disruptions/vital energy imbalances/gewurztraminertrinkeneffekts. Just like dowsing for gout⁵ or tapeworms instead of water or gold. Rather than a forked stick, we were going to be using a small knot of crystal girdled by a steel band the diameter of a Pepsi can, wobbling at the end of a long, narrow stalk.

Looking at the wand, I tried to appear calm, relaxed, and serious all at the same time. I sat in the diagnostic chair⁶ and braced myself for awesome.

None of us were surprised by the initial wobbling. I assumed that it was because my degenerate lifestyle had already done its damage to my energy field. As the scan progressed up my legs, the healer and I noticed a consistent pattern of disturbance, and probably both began to expect that the general level of disruption would remain constant across my entire person. That's when the business end of the wand, which packs a surprising amount of mass, whipped upwards and slammed down on my inner thigh, about half an inch shy of pulverizing my junk. I curled into the fetal position while a flurry of discussion broke out between the healer and my translator.

In a conversation between two Germans, I can't tell which one is apologizing and which one is issuing orders to invade Belgium, but I'm pretty sure that the strike was accidental. How can your clients balance their auras and tune their vibrations if you strap them into a chair and pound on their nutsack, right?

Things wrapped up pretty quickly after that. I left with a fistful of prescriptions and instructions to get the monkey off my back. I didn't really have the money to keep up with the full course of treatment over the long term, but I have gotten better at moderation⁷.



_{1. Sugar}²

<sub>2. No, seriously, I was told I drank too much soda, so we were Doing Something about it.

3. BrodelnundQuälen GmbH.

4. With crystals mixed in.

5. Caused by urine crystals in the bloodstream, I might add.

6. Not unlike a dentist's chair, but I'm sure crystals were involved somewhere.

7. I'd love to shoehorn in some kind of punchline here about a single-payer healthcare system and how socialized medicine still lets the rich buy the treatments they deserve, but frankly, I'm just too lazy.</sub>

Tamquest Softcorp Games Reviews

You really should go and read this post at its original home at The Imaginary Review, but it has since stopped posting new material, and Bad Things can happen on the Internet. I'm re-posting it here in case anything happens to the original.

Tamquest Softcorp’s latest string of releases has hit the market, and I tore into their video games with a wild abandon not seen since Lindsay Lohan gave up drugs (wink, wink). Here are my first impressions of the new titles:

Grand Theft Ovary
In this sandbox-style game, players use their controller as a versatile suite of medical tools to perform surprise appendectomies, involuntary liposuction, and stealth bowel removal. Technically, it's well-executed. The sound effects have a certain squishy realism to them, while the graphics are well-rendered (I found myself liverjacking over and over just to see the animation one more time). Unfortunately, the gameplay is a little unbalanced--no matter how many malpractice alerts are outstanding against your character, abducting a single street urchin and selling his organs on the black market will earn more than enough money to bribe the medical board to return your doctor's license back to "untarnished" status. Some people might also see the game's freeform, sandbox style of play as lacking in plot.

Gordon Crampton's Chefwar 2KBwelve
For a fighting game that requires fast reflexes, the controls are disappointingly laggy. It took me several tries to get the timing down for the combo attack to julienne string beans, I can only mince chives about half the time, and I swear that you can only peel onions properly if you're double jointed. However, Chefwar 2KBwelve has a surprisingly detailed plot for a fighter, and the game has a certain flair that makes it unexpectedly enjoyable to clothesline the snooty maitre d' and bodyslam the overzealous health inspector. You should probably rent this game to see if your enjoyment of its varied arenas and fighting styles can overcome your frustration with its execution.

Barge Commander: Bonded Owner/Operator
In the tradition of Sid Meier’s Pirates and Port Royale, Tamquest has created a seaborne trading game that thrillingly combines bargain hunting at the dollar store on payday with a ten-hour drive across Nevada in a car with no air conditioning. As a Norwegian Sea Captain in 1932, Barge Commander has you choose the cargo, select the port of call, plan the crew roster, and stand watch in the most accurate, real-time depiction of steam-powered sea travel on the market. While it doesn’t have the same attention to detail as the EuropeanSimulators line of computer programs from Chipfat, it still shows a lot of attention to detail. Unfortunately, a graphics bug present in my copy made everything the color of creamed spinach until I could download a patch that restored the game’s full color palette--composed of nuanced shades of steel gray, overcast gray, slate gray, and slate grey that really made 20th century shipping lanes come alive.

VirtualSweatshop
In VirtualSweatshop, you run an American clothing factory in the legal grey zone of a U.S. protectorate. Players can choose whether to give their indentured "employees" a decent living wage and exert control over other factors in their lives including the frequency and duration of breaks during their 14-hour workday. It turns out that you actually can put a price on human misery, along with a "Made in the USA" label. This game has a pretty steep learning curve; although I quickly earned a production bonus by placing the machines for maximum efficiency, I kept killing my workers by subjecting them to heat stroke and not ventilating the building properly. The number of variables that have to be tracked in this game are staggering, including a separate exposure bar each one of over 30 different types of diseases and parasites, not counting workplace-induced health afflictions like "fluff lung" and "stitcher's finger." I found the game to be a little too complicated for my tastes, but this may appeal to more detail-oriented gamers, sim enthusiasts, and actuaries.

Grandma Dream Day
I’ll admit that at first I was skeptical about this response to the growing number of dating simulators out there. After all, it’s kind of a creepy premise, showering your grandchildren with gifts and taking them out to places like the zoo in a desperate attempt to gain their affection, but it won me over in spite of itself. The cute graphics did a lot to offset the weirdness factor of playing as an old person taking an almost unhealthy interest in children, and the end goal is to have them keep their parents (your children) from sending you to the "bad" nursing home, so it's for a good cause. There's a variety of trip destinations including movies, malls, and the circus (including an unlockable bonus trip to the World Extreme Competitive Still-Life Painting Finals), and all of the items you can buy have unique effects and influences. The game's special "randomizer" feature changes your grandchildrens' preferences so that it's never the same game twice (which proves to be just as well, since I had to play through to the ending 3 times before I ended up somewhere other than the home where orderlies duct tape you into bed and spray you with a garden hose).

Wall Street Wizard
Not much documentation came with Wall Street Wizard. After the installation completed and I opened the program, my boss called to tell me I was fired, the bank foreclosed on my house, and all my money burst into flames. I give this game points for realism, but question its play value.

The Hungriest Games Journalist

You really should go and read this post at its original home at Eegra.com, but Bad Things can happen on the Internet, and I'm re-posting it here in case anything happens to the original.

Kevin VanOrd is an editor at Gamespot and syndicated videogame journalist, but he’s also a pretty hungry guy. That’s got to be the case, right? Because I can’t think of any other reason why someone would describe a game as "chewy." And yet he chews through three different games, telling readers about Opoona (a tale that "is a sweet, chewy morsel"), Eternal Sonata (describing the "soft, chewy center of the story"), and NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (lauding the game's "warm, chewy center that's tough to resist").

VanOrd has been writing game reviews for several years now, and even Noah Webster is allowed a little repetition from time to time. As a journalist, VanOrd should also be given some artistic license to work a few metaphors into his columns when developing an overarching theme. That’s why he should be commended in his ability to turn a phrase and a stomach with this opening paragraph for his review of The Sims Carnival: SnapCity:

Sometimes, two unique flavors belong together, like peanut butter and bananas, or bacon and anything. Other flavors, like pickles and chocolate, are best left separated. And so we have The Sims Carnival: SnapCity, a little title that combines Tetris and SimCity into a weird casserole of boring, half-baked gameplay mechanics that will disappoint fans of either of those classics. Like a horseradish milkshake or herring cream pie, it's a curiosity you should leave others to experience.

What’s unique is the way that he can work food into even the most inedible concepts, like his discussion of Too Human, a cybernetic re-imagining of Norse myths. "The game does offer a few meaty moments," although it "drops a juicy plot development at the most inopportune time." It’s a shame that the designers didn’t realize that "a good narrative doesn't need to spoon-feed plot points to you," but fortunately "you'll still sometimes find morsels of that smooth groove so important to action RPGs."

He also finds NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams to be "deliciously vibrant" even if "some of the dialogue is simply cheesy." While he enjoys the game’s previously mentioned warm, chewy center, it appears to have been a little draining. All that chewing left him little energy to cope with some particularly bothersome level mechanics, although if they "were the exception rather than the rule, they would be easier to swallow."

VanOrd is no glutton. When it comes to Opoona, his appetite is quite limited. "The candy coating goes only so far, and tedious side missions and other frustrating elements sprinkle too much salt onto the sweetness. The first few bites of Opoona are scrumptious, but you'll be full in no time." And it’s snackably awful that "the in-game map (called a GPS here, which is as accurate as calling a fast-food burger patty a filet mignon) is no help at all." Fortunately for anyone interested in playing Opoona, "like that spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down, the game's adorable presentation makes it easier to stomach the bitter shortcomings."

His skill at merging the electronic and the edible may be most visible in his discussion of Eternal Sonata, where he discusses the "French Impressionist color palate and gorgeous lighting." His intentional misspelling of palette reminds us that the French are noted for both their painting and their cuisine, showing that Eternal Sonata is a feast for the eyes, even if the color saturation is "sometimes a little too Candy Land for its own good" and some of the voice actors "get too syrupy after a while."

VanOrd’s willful "palate swap" also occurs in his review of The Maw, where he notes that "like most sweet morsels, the pleasant feeling dissipates when the sugar leaves your system, and you’ll find your palette struggling to remembering [sic] the taste." Here we are taken in the other direction to see how a game that does not seize our imagination with arresting visuals can be as bland and flavorless as gum that has been chewed for a little too long. And with a game like The Maw, about a giant alien mouth with a voracious appetite, who could resist noting that "the gameplay doesn't have much bite"?

Unfortunately, I sometimes feel like VanOrd's writing is just a little too sophisticated for me, and his jokes go over my head. For example, when he discusses the function of a bon-bon in Opoona, he notes that "it's a floating ball that each sibling possesses (though in an ironic twist, sister Poleena has two of them)." Is the irony to be found in the stererotypical image of a fat housewife sitting on the couch eating bon-bons, suggesting that this game both employs and subverts that stereotype by showing a strong, confident woman using her bon-bons as tools of empowerment? Or is he talking about breasts?

Wait, I get it! It's a dick joke! The girl is the only character in the game with two balls! Well played, Mr. VanOrd, well played.

And with all this discussion of the many mouth-watering images that VanOrd brings to bear, I haven’t even touched on his repeated use of the phrase “half-baked,” a term that is practically industry shorthand. Which brings us back to chewy. VanOrd’s repeated use of the term from September 2007 to April 2008 suggests that it was part of a personal crusade to make it a new journalistic standard, but it never seemed to catch on. Perhaps describing games as chewy was kind of like The Sims Carnival: SnapCity. In VanOrd’s own words, "like an anchovy enchilada, it's an interesting idea that just didn't work out."

Luckily, VanOrd appears to be far from running out of other food-based metaphors to draw on. If they want this quality of work to continue into the foreseeable future, all Gamespot management needs to do is to keep him hungry.


For the record, Kevin responded quite graciously to this article, and I'm grateful for his ability to take a joke.

Hey, look! Jenny McCarthy's on Sesame Street!

It's nice to see she's doing something besides that Autism activism.

What's this? She has a whole series of books about being a mother. I wonder what they're like.

Jenny, what do you have to say about marital relations during pregnancy in your book, Belly Laughs: The Naked Truth about Pregnancy and Childbirth?

PIG IN THE PASTURE (SEX IN THE NINTH MONTH)

I don't think pigs graze in pastures, but I just figured it sounded better than "pig in the mud." Any way you phrase it, this is exactly how I felt the one and only time my husband and I had sex in the ninth month. All the books tell you about "comfortable positions," and the one they really zero in on is the "doggy-style" position. Sure, it's great at an ideal weight, but when you're close to two hundred pounds, you aren't thinking dog...you're thinking pig. And I'm sure I sounded like one because my cries (of joy and desire, of course) sounded more like squeals than oohs and ahs. It was clear to me that my poor husband was concentrating hard on his Rolodex of fantasies because I sure as hell wasn't one for him anymore. I just wanted that piggy sex to end, but I hung in there like a good wife because I wanted to take care of my man. (Full disclosure: I was really "bad" the whole pregnancy. I never really "took care of him." I should have offered a couple of blow jobs here and there, but the way I felt every day, you couldn't have paid me enough.) [pp.147-148]

Um, okay. But what about-

Now, let me give you a better visual. My husband is very lean. Sexy as hell. But very lean. Most women would kill for his metabolism. As I propped myself into position and we began to get down, I could feel that his entire lean body was half the size of my ass. No joke. I couldn't stop thinking that his skinny frame was going to get stuck between my ass cheeks. So every time I felt him pump, I would clench my cheeks to keep from swallowing him up. All the while, I couldn't stop thinking how just plain wrong this was. This was not a high-self-esteem moment for a pregnant woman in desperate need of some. My advice: If you're not feeling it, don't try this one. Leave it to some lonely farmer. [p.148]

I... I see.

Hey, look! Ice-T is on Sesame Street!

Sound Parenting Decisions

Sending our daughter to daycare was an unavoidable necessity, so we spent a lot of time considering our options and carefully evaluating the places in town:

• Sister Knucklecracker's Purgatorial Childcare
• Typhoid Mary's Germ Nursery (Free Blankets!)
• Li'l' Axefighters Infant Dojo
• That Van Lurking by the Playground Fun Time Center
• Bob's Alligator Pit

In the end, we chose one for its friendly staff, clean facilities, and convenient location:



That's right. After a rigorous examination of childcare centers in our area, we went and chose the one by the porn store.

Decay of our society's moral fiber: 1
Responsible parenting: 0

I'm still not sure how it happened.

Well, I have an idea. We were so worried about the kind of people that our daughter would be exposed to inside of the daycare that we didn't pay enough attention to the kind of people that would be outside of it.

Why didn't I notice this earlier? The porn store is screened by the fried chicken restaurant, so by the time your brain is done saying "mmm, fried chicken," you've pulled into the daycare's driveway, handed over your check, dropped of your daughter, and are ready for something to eat.

I'm thinking I should get a coffee mug or something emblazoned with my new motto, "I routinely make poor decisions."

Guest Posted

Yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that the Imaginary Reviewer was kind enough to let me do a guest post over at his blog.

The post is about video games, a subject near and dear to my heart.

The Most Least Caring Dog

So, our daughter turns one year old this month, and I thought I'd share some of these pictures that show how well our dog has taken to her.


Oh, you look cold. Here, let me bring you this blanket.



There you go, all nice and warm. Just let me tuck it in for you.



All better? Sweet dreams!


Touching, isn't it?

Well, it would be until you learn that I posted these pictures in reverse chronological order. That's right, the dog is stealing the blanket from the baby.

Go back and look at picture one again. Yes, he's backing away carefully so that he doesn't accidentally wake her.

Backing into your dreams

The most effective goal setting happens in reverse, when you pick what you want and work backwards to see how you can get there. It's easiest to tackle your biggest goals in baby steps, and working back from the finish line helps you step in the right direction. I map things out in writing.

For example, it has been a lifelong dream of mine to meet Bruce Campbell, so I can start by writing that down ("MEET BRUCE CAMPBELL"). I can meet him by luring him out of his palatial Hollywood mansion with the smell of a delicious, fresh-baked pie, so I would write "BAKE A PIE" under "MEET BRUCE CAMPBELL." The logically preceding step would be "LEARN HOW TO BAKE," although I shouldn't forget to include "LEARN BRUCE CAMPBELL'S FAVORITE TYPE OF PIE," and "FIND OUT WHERE BRUCE CAMPBELL LIVES," which should all be listed as steps towards our eventual meeting. I'm done once I have worked my way back to the point I'm at now, which is ignorant of Bruce's address (and pie preferences) and unable to bake (but full of ambition). Then I have a roadmap that I can follow upwards to realize my dreams.

This method also works to encourage parallel thinking and to recognize more than one way to reach a goal. For example, I don't need to bake a pie, as long as I have something that looks like a pie ("BUILD FAKE PIE") along with a way to simulate that new-pie smell ("GENERATE EXCITING SMELLS"). This is great because once I have laid out all of my options I can choose which ones will take the least amount of work for maximum efficiency. I can also work on multiple strategies so that I have backup plans if something doesn't turn out the way it's supposed to ("RENT PIE COSTUME").

However, problems arise at the two extremes of the creativity spectrum: the unimaginative and the insane. Unimaginative people may scoff at my goal of bringing the dead back to life, calling it a crime against God and nature. However, neither of these obstacles are insurmountable. A figurative definition of “dead” allows me to work miracles (CONVINCE NETWORK TO RESUME “ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY JR” SERIES) or facsimiles thereof (BUY “ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY JR” DVDS). A little imagination makes it easy to publish that memoir by your cat, as long as you're flexible on the definitions of "memoir," "cat," and "publish."

Far more challenging are the goals that can not (or should not) be attempted. People could waste their entire lives trying to eat braised leprechaun calves, and that's not even a goal that wastes the lives of others. All it takes is one person going about the courtship of Jodie Foster the wrong way to ruin things for everyone.

That's why there is something to be said for having your plans reviewed by a third party. The internet, the yellow pages, or even the line at the unemployment office are all excellent places to find one of the hundreds of thousands of professional coaches out there who will help you develop a plan of action in exchange for money (or in some cases, a hot meal). A coach can align your goals with more realistic and achievable expectations, like helping you realize that turning milk into yogurt can be as personally rewarding as converting mass into energy.

Whether you are working backwards on your own or with assistance, the method helps not only to reach your goal, but for seeing if your goal is worth reaching. Why spend 12 years teaching a cat to play the banjo when it won't even put you on the cover of Cat Fancy magazine? After a thorough examination of your objectives and priorities, you may find that you can set the bar for your goals so low that you accomplish something by doing almost nothing at all ("MEET SOMEONE NAMED BRUCE").

What couldn't go wrong?

My high school English teacher once told me that nothing is ever as bad as we expect it to be, because there is no force on earth as powerful as the human imagination. That was a load of shit. However, I wanted to give my imagination a break from worrying about everything in my life that is on the brink of catastrophe (read: everything), so I thought I'd start wondering what couldn't go wrong.

No matter how horrifying things get, at least I can be relieved that:

• I will not be humiliated on national television by losing a breakdance competition to George Takei.


• The CEO of my company is not going to get drunk, "borrow" my car, and wrap it around a tree.


• I will not be entrusted with a sacred relic that has been passed down through generations, putting me in terrible danger as it is hunted by the powerful, relentless forces that would do anything to possess it.


• Henry Paulson is not going to ask me to oversee the distribution of a massive economic relief package (read: pile of cash) designed to shore up America's ailing strip club industry, forcing me to choose between my family's respect and the welfare of hundreds of thousands of exotic dancers across the country.


• I will not be sucked into an alternate dimension run by talking cats where I have to amuse them by running in a hamster wheel for hours at a time.


• My old company from Boston is not going to keep me awake and annoy my neighbors by sending their head of HR to my house at 3:00 AM, by alternately screaming and crying about how they can't live without me and how they'll give me double what I'm earning now just for sitting at a desk and surfing the internet all day in a futile effort to try and win me back.


• I will not have two Hollywood producers/literary agents/talent scouts/philanthropic trillionaires simultaneously discover my writing online and get into a bidding war with each other in an attempt to win my affection that leaves me paralyzed with indecision.


• An outer space virus will not infect me with an insatiable hunger for cardboard and old gym shoes, contaminating the entire state and requiring the mobilization of the national guard to control.


• I will not bring about the end of civilization all by myself, even if I DO go and vote next week.
  

So I guess I've got all that going for me, even if I can't look forward to developing some sort of mutant superpower.

Don't Drink That, You Fool!

I follow a strict set of rules in bathrooms both public and private. For example, I don't use the public urinal for short people and young boys that is set closer to the floor, because I have a moral objection to getting pee on my ankles. Similarly, I don't talk to other people while I'm using the toilet, washing my hands, or entering or exiting the bathroom because I'm attending to a biological necessity, not mingling at a social event.

I recognize that some of my ideas may seem a little extreme, but for the love of god, NO ONE should EVER bring a beverage into the bathroom. That's not just some crazy tinfoil hattery I'm spouting, but an honest-to-god safety issue. When you bring your morning coffee into the bathroom with you at work, you're inviting your coworkers to go to the bathroom in your mouth.

I'm serious. Dr. Charles Gerba studied the effects of flushing toilets and found that not only is a germ-and-virus aerosol spray ejected from the toilet every time you flush, but that water droplets from the toilet can remain suspended in the air for up to two hours after the flush. That means that your steaming cup of coffee is sitting there collecting aerosolized water droplets from the leavings of everyone who has gone through that bathroom before you. How well do you know your coworkers? Do you really want to get to know them that much more intimately?

You'd have to some kind of lunatic to drink morning coffee that you've carried into the office toilet, and yet some of my coworkers regularly carry drinks of all kinds into the bathroom with wild abandon. It just makes my skin crawl.

I Resolve to Be Awesome

Okay. 2008 has less than three months left in it, and I don't have a prayer of completing any of my New Year's resolutions in time. So, it's time to achieve excellence by lowering the bar, scrapping the old resolutions and establishing this new set of goals to achieve before 2009:

Don't wear white pants after labor day. Tricky, but not impossible. I expect this to be helped by the fact that I don't own any white pants.

Don't sell national secrets to foreign powers. Luckily, I don't actually have any security clearance, even if those guys from Burkina Faso have been trying to get pretty chummy with me lately.

Don't get addicted to crack. Winners don't use drugs. Losers don't have to use drugs, either, so I've got my bases covered either way.

Don't drink alcohol before sundown. Woah, back up. We're trying to list goals that we actually have a chance of accomplishing here. At the rate things are going, I'll have broken this one by the end of the week.

Don't get humiliated on national television. It's a gamble, but one I'm willing to make. I'm not going to be at the American Idol tryouts, but you never know when you'll be the star attraction on an episode of Cops. Let's keep our fingers crossed on this one.

Don't make any Nobel-prize-winning breakthroughs in science, health, peacemaking, etc. Because I shouldn't be hogging all the credit for myself. It's time for someone else to be in the spotlight.

Don't get stabbed in a bar fight with Charles S. Dutton. Because only a fool gets into a bar fight with Charles S. Dutton.

If this goes well, I might actually make up some more goals and retroactively apply them to 2007. Self-improvement isn't so hard after all.

An Open Letter to My Grocery Store

Hey there,

I hate you. I hate how you never stock the items I'm looking for and reorganize your shelves every three months. And I can tell that you feel the same way, based on how you have huge numbers of registers near the entrance and only one employee manning them. Let's just recognize that we need each other to survive, and focus on getting our business done as quickly as possible.

That's why we need a grocery store GPS. Handheld units, available to shoppers, that will lead people to the items they need. People could upload their whole grocery list and have the system give them the fastest route through the store. You could even have people e-mail the list ahead of time so their route was already planned for them by the time they got there (yes, you can currently order groceries online at some stores to have people actually shop for you, but that costs more and I'm cheap).

Back to this route planning thing. They do it for cars. UPS programmed their guidance systems to completely eliminate left turns from their truck routes in order to save gas, so I'm sure you can make something that tells me to pick up the eggs right near me before I have to walk across the entire store and look up at the top shelf before I can figure out where you're hiding the bacon.

It's brilliant, right? Well, I'm sure that someone else thought of it first, or is working on it at Microsoft, or whatever. Still, I want it implemented immediately, so that we don't spend any more time together than we have to. But here's how you, terrible example of mismanagement and customer abuse that you are, will manage to fuck it up:

You'll order 15 units. 10 of them will break immediately and never be replaced. 2 will get stolen by punks and disgruntled stockboys. The remaining three units will all have their own signature defects (like sticking keys, unreadable displays, etc.).

Despite advances in RFID technology, you won't keep up to date with your inventory, leading customers to the wrong areas of the store, or shelves that are bare because no one brought the last shipment out from the back room.

The wireless signal will interfere with cell phones, blackberrys, and pagers, displaying text messages on the grocery readouts and making all incoming or outgoing phone calls impossible (wait, that last bit doesn't sound so bad). It will also have an effect on pacemakers.

The increased amount of radio waves bouncing around the store (or whatever) will give us all cancer, like how cell phones are supposed to do only a million times more dangerous.

In conclusion, shopping for groceries has been awful, is currently awful, and will forever continue to be awful. If I weren't so lazy, I'd grow my own damn food and avoid them altogether.

At Least It's Not Barney

There's a song that will entrance our daughter like a chicken immobilized in the hypnotically unwavering gaze of Al Gore. (What? You didn't see him hypnotize a chicken on Letterman? Get out.)

It's not completely bizarre. My wife and I knew that she would recognize music she heard in the womb, it's just unusual that she chose this particular song:


crappy version from youtube because I'm too lazy to find a good one

She heard it once. During the season finale of Dr. Who (don't judge), and yet the opening baseline will completely freeze her mid-tantrum. She has been in the middle of some of her loudest, angriest screaming binges, completely ignoring the rocking, patting, shushing, and cuddling, but voodoo child will stop her in her tracks. And half the time it puts her to sleep.

If only I had known earlier that subwoofers would be an essential nursery component...

The Internet Is So Confusing

You can't swing a keyboard without accidentally typing the URL of someone's personal blog, and half of them claim to be advice from experts. The blog is the new business card, and everyone is setting up shop in the hopes that it will show potential customers how knowledgeable they are, sometimes with disastrous results.
No proof of skill is required to start handing out advice freely, but it reminds me of the phrase about stock market tips:

"Those who say, don't know, and those who know, don't say."

Anyway, it's time for me to hop on board this expertise train to pull in some of that sweet, sweet consulting money. The trick is to find a niche that's not already been done to death. So, from this day forward, I am an expert on (and will be answering questions about) the following subjects:

Pencil Sharpening: "Almost as important as having the proper sharpener is using the proper grip with your pencil. Softer lead pencils require a firmer hold, while the following illustration shows the best way to..."

Toenail manufacturing: "Common developments are the Irish hook, the Great Plains runway, and the west side split. These will all have a negative effect on your resale value, which is why it's important to..."

Eggplant wrestling: "Try borrowing some strategies from Sun Tzu. Study your opponent carefully in the days leading up to the match. Does he prefer to use his upper-body strength, or does he specialize in holds that leverage his superior leg work? You can adapt your method by..."

Armadillo repair: "It's normal for daily use to inflict signs of wear and tear on your armadillo, but you can fix some of the more common damage with this basic remedy of..."

Moustache fitting: "As you can see in this chart, your ideal style of moustache can vary greatly depending on your facial structure. It's easier to fit the moustache to your face than it is to use prosthetics to accomodate your moustache, but if you absolutely need to, you can..."

Coathanger maintenance: "While usage will soon run them down, your coathangers can be kept in their prime if you are sure to..."

Spitwad design: "Texture is as important as--if not more so--than size, but the true professional focuses on a consistent..."

Alternative energy sources (e.g., orgone, water-fuel technology, perpetual motion, zero-point/free energy): "What distinguishes this from some of the scams out there is my personal guarantee that..."

Sumerian courtship rituals: "The suitor would then stuff the body of the goat with a mixture of wheat and cloves, while using the head to..."

Beet farming: "Your one-stop source for all beet-farming-related content! If your North Atlantic Spotted Beets keep wandering off, they could be responding to their natural migratory instinct that kicks in each spring. If you make sure that your beet pens are surrounded by fences at least eight feet high (they can--and will--jump over anything lower), you shouldn't have any more problems."

While I would also like to claim expertise in the field of applied stupidity, I have to put in a few more semesters before I earn my master's degree. However, from there I am assured that I'll be fast-tracked for the Advanced Stupidity Application PhD program. I'll provide more information on that as it develops.

Why Daddy Blogs Are Awful

I am fed up with these parenting blogs not offering any material details about their children. Sure, there are photos galore, but can their four-month-old bench press a cinderblock? Does their baby's fastball clock in at 75mph? What about their aptitude for knife throwing?

It's a sad state of affairs when people think that just a few pictures are all you need to really get to know a baby. If they're going to share their children with the world, they need to do it right.

These infants need to be measured and profiled by a baby metricologist--that is, a highly trained expert with a fictitious degree in the pretend science of the metricology of babies, as opposed to a baby who is a practicing metricologist--so that all of the relevant facts are presented. Fortunately, I have obtained the services of the preeminent baby metricologist in North America, and am able to present information that actually MEANS something.

-BEGIN METRICOLOGY REPORT-

Initial observations:
Examination of the subject revealed that structural integrity, tensile strength, and resonant frequency are all within normal parameters.

Does subject possess x-ray vision?
No. The subject becomes agitated when her parents disappear from view.

Does the subject exhibit signs of telepathy?
Yes. The subject can sense when she is no longer the center of attention, and takes immediate corrective action.

Has the subject demonstrated mastery over animals?
While the subject is able to direct the household canine to perform routine cleaning of her hands and feet, she has not been successful at directing animals (domesticated or otherwise) to assume feeding and changing duties currently performed by the parents.

Is the subject a shapeshifter?
Possibly. The subject's current abilities apply mostly to the face, which is able to express both giddy delight and intense discomfort, but the subject has not manifested any radical physical changes elsewhere (e.g., sixth finger, third nipple, tail).

What is the subject's top speed?
The subject's top speed was recorded as significantly less than 25mph.

Does the subject appear to be either an indigo child or a crystal child?
No, the subject appears to be pinkish.

Other noteworthy observations:
The subject is able to eject fluids in open defiance of all known laws of physics.
It should further be noted that the subject's overall cuteness coefficient was measured at 5.8 Geddes Standard Units (GSUs), which is trending towards the higher end of recorded measurements for specimens who have not undergone genetic manipulation, but not so extreme as to damage the very fabric of the universe.

-END METRICOLOGY REPORT

As you can see from this informative and highly scientific assessment, our daughter has a promising future as a mind reader, or possibly a part-time beastmaster or weekend shapeshifter. It's a shame about the x-ray vision, but I'd imagine that it leads to headaches around Christmas.

Ill-Considered Remarks

I firmly believe that there are faces out there that could benefit from a good punching. That being said, I may have been a little hasty in earlier remarks made here about Alton Brown. I misjudged him based on insufficient information, and I regret that now.

Specifically, after reading an interview about Iron Chef America and its (completely unnecessary) spinoff The Next Iron Chef, I realize that most of our opinions are pretty similar, including the one about a certain judge who is in desperate need of a haircut.

Mr. Brown, if you have let the peevish grumblings of an anonymous internet hack disturb you in any way as you lay down to sleep at night on the pile of crisp, large-denomination bills that were so hard-won through your televised efforts for the food network, you should know now that I am sorry, and that I offer a full retraction.

P.S. Suck it, Andrew Knowlton.