Which is Safer, a Gun or a Pool?

by   •   Daily Post, What I'm Reading
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

What I’m Reading

Because it was recommended to me for the past few years as the world’s best economics book, I read and finished Freakonomics yesterday.

Freakonomics takes an unconventional approach at economics and is heavily focused on the fact that one of (if not the) most important components of economics is incentive. You need to have an incentive to do something, and that essentially drives anything related to our economy.

Levitt and Dubner answer some interesting questions by bringing in information from original research. For example, how can a computer find out which teachers are cheating when submitting their students’ national standardized exams? How did a bunch of kids humiliate and damage the Ku Klux Klan? Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers if drug selling yields such great profits? How did the legalization of abortion lower the crime rate? Which is safer for your child, sending him to a house with a concealed gun or a house with a swimming pool? And will naming your child “Winner” really make him a winner?

Although portions of this book went into extremely specific detail that progressed relatively slowly, I was interested in all of the general topics and learned a lot of things that most people would not have expected to be true. Although there is no obvious way the content of this book can be applied to everyday life, I would still recommend this book just for the knowledge it provides.

Click here to purchase Freakonomics on Amazon.com.

 

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Topic #164: What war is worth fighting?

The answer to this seems like common sense, but I think a war over a valued belief or possession in which we have a proportionately high chance of victory is worth fighting.

More specifically, the amount we value this belief or possession has to be far greater than the lives of the equipment and individuals we will lose during the process of the war. As for the chances of victory, if we know that we are going to lose (or we know that the chances of losing are drastically greater than the chances of winning), then it’s probably better not to attempt to fight, lose equipment and soldiers, and end up losing the war overall as well.

This seems like a blatantly obvious answer that shouldn’t even be a prompt to a blog post. I can’t even begin to imagine what these blog prompts are going to look like in December after they’ve done this for 11 months.

 

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Everlasting Pickle Juice

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

Tip of the Day

After you finish a burger at McDonalds, make sure that no part of the burger is stuck in your throat after you finish. Or else you might notice later while you’re in class that the bump in your throat is a tiny chunk of pickle that you can’t manage to get rid of, and you’ll taste pickle juice until your class is over and you can go find some water to gulp down.

 

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Topic #165: When was the last time you changed your mind?

The last time I changed my mind was a few seconds ago when I was thinking about if I wanted to answer this topic or not. It was so lame that I initially decided not to answer it, but then I realized that my blog post would be too short and that I should probably add in another section. So I changed my mind and decided to put this section into today’s blog post.

 

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Who Used All the Gasoline?

by   •   Academics
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

You may remember that a while back, I put stuff I wrote for homework into my blog posts. Those generally got a good response and people suggested that I continue doing so. Unfortunately, I don’t have any exciting topics to write about for homework anymore like I used to, and a lot of things I write wouldn’t make much sense outside of the context of my classroom.

I wrote a short paper answering a handful of questions for a homework assignment for my Shakespeare class today, and I decided that it was stand-alone enough to make enough sense even after being dropped into my blog without context. If you’re not very interested in Shakespeare, you would probably want to skip this section.

A Shakespeare play should be read twice because each iteration has a distinct purpose. The first reading should be done quickly to get a general idea of what the play is about. The second reading should be done slowly, closely, and carefully, paying attention to the details of the plot, characters, and dialogue. The play should be dramatized while read the second time, and the reader should make notations as (s)he reads.

A play should be read as a drama and not as a novel or essay because not all of the visual com­ponents of the play are contained in the text. The reader must use his/her imagination to visualize the setting based off of clues found as implications in the dialogue. Dramatization also makes the story more realistic and the conflicts more applicable to humans, as it was intended to be.

While reading a Shakespeare play, a reader should notate clues that may hint at what type of play it is. Shakespeare does not hide anything from his audience (meaning, they are always “in” on the secrets), so picking up on genre clues may help the reader predict and better expect the outcome of the play. A reader should also notate the extra plots and how they tie in to the main plot to better understand the development of the main plot. Finally, a reader should notate details and descriptions of the characters to better understand their actions. This can be done by paying attention to their dialogue, which will help identify their style of speech and social status (higher-class characters will use more sophisticated language). Characters can also be analyzed based off of how other characters describe them.

It is a mistake to modernize the setting of a Shakespearean play because these plays were written with elements of realism found during the time the plays were written. As a result, an attempt to modernize the setting will result in a contradiction with the realistic elements woven into the play.

 

Tip of the Day

When mowing the lawn, remember to check to make sure you have enough gasoline to finish mowing the entire lawn.

Or else you’ll run out of gas and have to go buy more gas while your lawn sits half-mown.

 

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Pizza Hut National HQ Fail

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

If you ever plan on calling the Pizza Hut national headquarters for any reason, don’t.

I tried calling the local Pizza Hut to place an order today for pick-up. Instead of an employee answering like normal, I was forwarded to an automatic answering system that told me to press 1 to place an order. Then a woman with a heavy ebonic accent answered the phone and asked me for my phone number.

After I gave her my phone number, she asked me for my last name, my first name, my city, and my street address. When I asked her why she needed my street address (because I was picking up and not getting delivery), she said “never mind” and continued on.

She asked me if I was going to pick up my pizza from my local Pizza Hut and gave me the address. I said “yes, of course, where else would I pick it up from?” Then she told me that I was actually talking to the national headquarters and not the local Pizza Hut.

If you don’t know already, Pizza Hut has a deal where you can get any pizza at any size with any toppings for $10. I said that I wanted a large pan supreme pizza, but the woman said that supreme pizzas don’t qualify for the ANY PIZZA and ANY TOPPING deal and I had to pay $2 extra. I said I would like to change my order to a large pan pepperoni and sausage pizza, and she said she had to look it up to make sure that qualified under the ANY PIZZA deal. After a while, she came back on the line and said it was fine.

Then she attempted to contact the local Pizza Hut to place my order for me, but said that she was unable to do so and offered to place my order for me at a different location. She said she would look up other Pizza Huts in my area that were accepting orders at the moment.

About five minutes had passed at this point. I have never had to wait more than one minute to finish placing a pizza order over the phone, let alone five. I told her to forget the order and hung up.

Moral of the story: if for any reason your local Pizza Hut decides to transfer you to the Pizza Hut national headquarters, hang up and try calling your local Pizza Hut again.

 

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Tae Kwon Do Promotion Ceremony

by   •   General
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

If you’re following me on Twitter, you probably already know that earlier today, I went to a tae kwon do testing and promotion ceremony for the first time in several years. I used to do tae kwon do (which is a form of martial arts, for those who don’t know already) when I was very young, but I stopped after getting my first-degree black belt.

For those of you who have been keeping up with my blog posts lately, you know that I’ve been doing martial arts again over the summer as exercise and to refresh and improve my martial arts skill and ability.

The place where I currently do tae kwon do had a promotion ceremony today where colored belts tested to rank up to the next belt level. There was a large group of white, yellow, orange, and green belts; one blue belt; two brown belts; and one mixed red-and-black belt (which I don’t remember if it’s called a high-red belt or deputy-black belt). I helped with the red-and-black belt’s test by holding one of the boards they had to break.

The students who were testing weren’t very good, and the only person I thought was achieving and deserving of her promotion was a small brown-belt girl, but it seems like the master at this institution is extremely nice and promoted everyone who tested. This was a color-belt promotion exam, though, so I’m pretty sure that he’ll be a bit more stricter when it comes to black-belt promotion exams.

 

Quote of the Day

“I need to find different ways to save more money. I cut so many coupons that I had to buy more scis­sors, which ended up defeating the purpose of cutting coupons in the first place.”

I heard that on a radio commercial for auto insurance and couldn’t stop laughing.

 

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The Water-Float Test

by   •   Daily Post
 

This post is over 15 years old and may contain information that is incorrect, outdated, or no longer relevant.
My views and opinions can change, and those that are expressed in this post may not necessarily reflect the ones I hold today.
 

 

Picture of the Day

The Water-Float Test

The Water-Float Test

Women in the 15th century suspected of witchcraft were put to the water-float test.

If you float, you’re a witch and you’re executed. If you sink, you’re not a witch … but you drown and die anyway.

#aLittleFlawed

(Taken with an Apple iPod Touch 4th Generation)

 

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Topic #160: What would cause you to protest or riot for something?

Background: Last night riots broke out in Vancouver, after their hockey team lost in the NHL finals. Many people have criticized the people and the city for being so destructive over a sport. But people are very passionate about sports. What are you passionate enough to participate in a protest? Or a riot? Or is there nothing at all?

I think that anyone who riots as a result of a sport is stupid, especially those who riot in happiness because their local team won. It’s not like all these people are a part of the sport team anyway, and it’s not like they’re getting much out of their local team winning. If anything, they have to pay to purchase tickets to watch the game, and if the team were to win, the fans don’t get their money back or anything. The most anyone could get out of a victory is saying “my city’s team won” – which isn’t much of a big deal anyway.

I definitely would never riot because of a sport, but I’m sure that there are some things that would prompt me to riot (but I haven’t come across them yet). Most of the time I try to resolve issues in a non-destructive manner, but if the agent I was rioting against was being destructive to me or those allied with me, I would probably retaliate destructively (but only in their territory – I’m not stupid enough to riot in my own home town and set fire to anything I see, like the residents of Vancouver).

 

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