The Marshmallow Experiment

Heard of this experiment?  The original subjects were four-year-olds.  A kid in a room has to sit in his chair. In front of him sits a plate with a marshmallow on top of it.  The experimenter tells the kid that she has to leave.  If the marshmallow is still on the plate when the kid returns, then he will get two marshmallows.

The experiment has been duplicated in the video below (although I doubt all of these kids are four years old).

Enjoy.

Crack Rock Crack Rock

Frank Ocean, one of the few R&B singers whose music I actually like, released an album recently called Channel Orange.  Song #9 is called "Crack Rock."  The chorus contains the lyrics

Crack rock crack rock

Hitting stones in glass homes

You're smoking stones in abandoned homes

You hit them stones and broke your home

Crack rock Crack rock

In the song, he sings the words "Crack rock" almost as if he were a drug dealer calling out to passing cars.  It is very catchy.  In fact, yesterday I found myself wandering around the apartment saying "Crack rock crack rock" apropos of absolutely nothing.

My girlfriend would say, "I have to go in to work tomorrow from one to five."

My reply: "Crack rock crack rock."

You get the idea.

Here's my question.  If those lyrics are such a mindworm for me--who has never smoked crack--I wonder what kind of effect it is having on crackheads.  After all, I imagine that they're walking around all day thinking about crack . . . how to get some and where to smoke it.

As they are walking along the street thinking "Crack crack crack crack crack crack," which perhaps is a reasonable estimate of a crackhead's mental activity, suddenly a car passes the crackhead with the window down, and the car replies, "Crack rock crack rock."

And they have their answer.  They will purchase some more crack rock.

I wonder if Frank Ocean just invented a new two-word language.

Or what about former crackheads who have rehabbed well enough to stay clean?  I can only offer one piece of advice.  Do not buy them this album.

Band Wars 2: The Revenge

Well, it has been four months or so since Band Wars, a deathmatch style game (in my mind) in which bands pitted their new releases against the new releases of other, hopefully inferior, bands until one survivor remained.  Since Band Wars ended, I've been downloading (illegally) an immense amount of music.  The most promising contenders that have released an album recently seem to be:

Beach House, Bloom

Motion Sickness of Time Travel, Motion Sickness of Time Travel

Mount Eerie, Clear Moon

The Walkmen, Heaven

Japandroids, Celebration Rock

Sun Kil Moon, Among the Leaves

Hot Chip, In Our Heads

Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel . . . 

DIIV, Oshin

Twin Shadow, Confess

Dirty Projectors, Swing Lo Magellan

Frank Ocean, Channel Orange

John Maus, A Collection of Rarities

Passion Pit, Gossamer

TNGHT, TNGHT EP

The Antlers, Undersea

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Mature Themes

Divine Fits, A Thing Called Divine Fits

Matthew Dear, Beams

Four Tet, Pink

Wild Nothing, Nocturne

Dan Deacon, America

Animal Collective, Centipede Hz

Bob Mould, Silver Age

Mount Eerie, Ocean Roar

The xx, Coexist

David Byrne and St. Vincent, Love This Giant

Grizzly Bear, Shields

The Sea and Cake, Runner



That's 29 albums.  A couple of issues.  First, Mount Eerie released two albums over that period.  Ought there to be a rule against both albums competing?  I think not.  It could lead to matchup of Mount Eerie against Mount Eerie, which would seem funny, like forcing someone to punch himself.

Second, a single-elimination bracket works best with 16 albums or 32 albums.  29 won't work.  So over the next couple of days, I'll have a couple of decisions to make.  The first Band Wars involved 16 albums.  Should I go for 32 this time around?  And the other big question: Do I even want to bother doing it this time around?

While I think about it, I'll inevitably get to 32 albums by checking the new releases over the coming week.

* * *

I achieved all of my goals yesterday, except for the ants.  I was determined to kill 100 ants.  It's really hot here, ants hate the heat, they'll keep trying to come into my place despite the fact that I have made my apartment a death machine for them.  When I swept and mopped, however, the ants skedaddled.

I finally started writing something.  It is a sluggish process, and it was hard to get started, but once the hour was finished I found that I wanted to go back and continue what I had started.

Back in college, I used to wake up, turn on my computer, and play chess until my head felt hazy from lack of food.  Then I would eat and play chess until, once again, my head felt hazy.  Occasionally, I would do the same thing with short stories I was writing.  It's good to have OCD when I'm doing something productive.  Not so healthy to be OCD when there's beer around, and there's always beer around.

Web Hopping

I was bouncing around the web today when I reached a new website, the Freakonomics one, where I started reading an article on online poker.  The article wasn't particularly revolutionary or informative, but something strange happened while I was reading it.

Along the bottom right of the screen, a tiny pop-up appeared.  It read: "Recommended for You: Cats and Dogs, Donkeys and Elephants."  Inside the pop-up, I saw a tiny picture of a grey cat that was apparently resting its head on a pillow.

Now, I had never been on this website before, so my question is how could they know that I would find this link irresistible?  These freakonomics people are geniuses.

I am clicking on it right now.  The first thing I see is the cat.

In the article, I learned things.

1.  British cat owners are better educated than British dog owners.  Okay, informative.  Useless but informative.  I say useless because this is not the kind of information that will better my chances at winning on Jeopardy! if I should ever get the chance to compete on that show.  

If I did get a chance on Jeopardy!, by the way, I would like to give my occupation as "homeless," even if it happened not to be true.

"Hello Alex Trebek, I'm Yakshi.  My occupation is homeless."

If I were sitting at home watching Jeopardy! and a contestant identified himself as homeless, I would think two things.  (1) That guy rules, and (2) I want that guy to absolutely destroy his homeowner opponents.

2.  In the U.S., there is an insignificant difference in the education level of American cat owners and American dog owners.  As informative as #1 above.

3.  Another study suggests that dog owners are more extroverted, conscientious, and agreeable compared with cat owners, who are neurotic but more open.

Hmm.  I own a cat.  It happens to live with my mother, who likes it more than I do.  I happen to be neurotic as well.  But I am fairly closed.  I'm happy to say that my coworkers know almost nothing about me.

Still, Freakonomics was able to predict what would interest me.  Does a website know me better than I know myself?

* * *

To increase my productivity, I recently bought a white board.  It acts as my conscience.  (Otherwise, I have none.)  On it, I write the things that I have to do.  Then, as I do them, I erase those things.  It is fantastic.  For today, I have four things written.

1.  Sweep and mop

2.  Walk 1 hour

3.  Kill 100 ants -- next to this goal, I have the number 25 written in red, which represents "Daily Dead"

[Edit: Previously, I had written "Kill 100 hands."  I don't know how I could do that.]

4.  Write 1 hour (nonblog)

If I could achieve this last goal, it could be the start of something that would make me feel good.  I haven't written a nonblog word creatively in years.

Leaving UAE

I have decided to leave the UAE at the end of this school year--late June of 2013.

I have one basic feeling about this decision.  It goes something like this:

G'BYE SHITHOLE!

It is such a good feeling.  This place has served its one true purpose--to get me out of debt.  I will have the entirety of my law school loans paid off by this Christmas.  In essence, I will have gotten rid of a $110,000 debt over the span of 2 years and 5 months.  That's the upside of being here, and it is significant.

One of the most common things that I've heard people say but not really mean is "Money is not a strong motivation for me."

Bullshit.  I hear them say it, and I immediately think, Do they really believe themselves?

For me, money is a strong motivator when I am in debt.  I hate debt.  As soon as I owe money, I want to pay it off ASAP.  If I have a lot of debt, I stress the fuck out.  Back in undergrad days, I racked up $10k in debt on a credit card and I kept thinking, 10k!  How in the world am I ever going to pay off ten THOUSAND dollars?

It seemed insurmountable.

Years later, fucktard that I am, I decided, Why not go to law school?  The decision seemed like such a good idea at the time.  So off I went to Colorado, where I proceeded over the span of three years to accumulate eleven times the debt that used to flip my shit.

I became strongly motivated to get rid of it, and teaching in the UAE turned out to be the best way to do that.

So that'll be nice.

Let me clue you in to some of the downsides of living in the UAE:

43 degrees Celsius


People unable to confront the growing evidence that their God may not exist


Lack of useful career experience

Wealthy, mentally retarded students

Insane drivers

Wealthy, insane, mentally retarded students driving past me at 200 kilometers per hour in 43 degree heat



But they're harmless for the most part.  But I have to tell you, dealing with morons all day every day really sets in the brain rot something fierce.

I may have gotten rid of debt here, but this place has also made me stupider.

In conclusion, this essay is over

I took way too many English classes during my undergrad days, writing dozens of essays about novels and poems written by dead white men.  I always wanted to finish at least one of these essays with the following one-sentence paragraph: "In conclusion, the essay is over."

Hopefully, the rest of the essay would be so strong that they would have to give me an A.  It seemed like one of the only ways to trash talk in an essay.

Or perhaps even better: "In conclusion, you gave me an A."

Even today, this idea has a strong appeal to me.  Maybe it means that I have not matured in the intervening years.  I'd like to hope that that is true.

My girlfriend is on Huffington Post.  She likes to read through the political section and then to make comments.  As you might've noticed from earlier posts, she absolutely hates Romney.

Anyhoo, I had just woken up and walked into the living room when I saw her on HuffPost writing out a reply.  She was replying to a comment that said that Romney had "higher cognitive powers."  My girlfriend seemed stumped.  Her fingers were poised on the keyboard.  She said, "What are two things that don't go together?"

My reply, after being conscious for only about 45 seconds: "A monkey in a pink suit with a corncob pipe?"

"What?"

Now I felt more confident about it.  "A monkey in a pink suit with a corncob pipe."

She paused.  She said, "That won't work here.  Got anything else?"

"Nope.  Just a monkey in a pink suit with a corncob pipe.  And I bet that image will be in my head all day long.  Thanks for asking."

In conclusion, this story is over.

The Power of Negative Thinking

Goal:  It is my goal to get through the day without shitting myself.  It is now 7:54 a.m. Abu Dhabi time.  I currently do not have the runs.  I estimate that my chances of success are 98 percent, which is another way of saying that I anticipate that I will shit my pants 1 day out of 50 or, to extrapolate, that I expect to roll a deuce in my shorts one week out of the year.  This estimate seems accurate despite the fact that I currently do not have a history of shitting myself.  Anything, however, is possible.  Will today be the day?  Can the power of negative thinking affect my chances?

Result:  It is now 12:37 p.m. Abu Dhabi time.  I did not shit myself.  I count this result as a qualified success--qualified because I almost shit myself. 

For breakfast, I ate half of a falafel sandwich and drank a large mint mocha.  Then I taught two classes back to back, with little chance for a bathroom break in between.  I finished at 12:15 and had to hurry across campus to meet a student at 12:25.  So I was rushing.  I had to cross 300 yards in the direct sunlight on a fairly hot--40 degrees Celsius--day.  Now for me, the following equation holds true in almost all occasions:

Coffee + Being in the Heat = Shit Myself

And I noticed as I was walking that the equation was doing its best to prove itself true.  I had to--how can I put this?--I had to squeeze.  So I am walking and squeezing and doing the best I could not to make it look like I was squeezing while I was walking. 

Now, people tell me that I appear very mellow most of the time.  I think that this is true because very often I play out disaster scenarios in my head.  If I am crossing a busy street, I will inevitably envision a car appearing out of nowhere and making contact with my person and sending me flying 45 feet in the air like a rag doll so that I land on my head, my skull opens up, and my brains leak out and start frying on the hot pavement like an egg.  I suppose scaring myself like this keeps the stress away.

Today, I imagined the following scenario.  I am hurrying across campus, with my body desperately wanting to shit itself.  I arrive at my destination in a state of extreme anguish, hurry up the stairs to be on time for my appointment, see my student, invite her into my office, present her with the certificate that she came for, thank her for participating in last semester's workshop--for which she earned the certificate that she now held in her hands--and then promptly shit myself.

She, of course, would hurriedly exit the office, tell someone, and I would instantly be fired.

In fact, as I was hurrying across campus, I had the following thought.  I thought: Holy Christ, why in the world did I make that joke post this morning about shitting myself?  I challenged my body, and my body is taking up the challenge in earnest.  I convinced my body to shit itself.

Why couldn't I convince my body to shit itself on a day off work?

Thankfully, it didn't happen.  I handed the student her certificate and told her that I had to run.  Then I ran, literally, to salvation.  And made it just in time.