Detour

When I came home tonight I asked my wife who the worst person she could think of to play the part of Mother Teresa in a movie. “J-Lo”, she responded. Nope. Try again. “Britney Spears”, she followed up with. Nope. She was in disbelief that there could be a person worst then Mama Spears. Paris Hilton, I told her….Her jaw dropped…there is some one worst.

Paris Hilton is on the short-list to play Mother Teresa in an upcoming movie. Can you imagine? I am at a loss of words for this post…

I was able to think of someone worst after our conversation. Courtney Love as Mother Teresa…now that would be a movie!

My personal belief is that this Director is floating Paris’ name because he knows it will garner publicity for his project; a good strategy for a movie that would normally grab much less attention if conventional actors were selected. This is a strong strategy to gain attention, but may be a sub-optimal strategy when it comes to drawing large numbers to the box-office. Given that the Director has a small budget and little backing, what would the optimal strategy be for this Director given the constraints at hand?

I recently read a rant here, that sets forth rules that would make Canada a better place to live. I think number 5 should be adopted as mandatory international law.

5. Placing the lids on the “to-go” cups so that the drink opening lines up with the crease in the cup is a crime against humanity since it has the same effect as gag dribble cups. Plus, exactly how hard is it to miss that crease when placing the lid on anyway? Yet it seems to happen more than 50% of the time.

Penalty: Illegal lid on the crease. Staff guilty of this must floss with barbed wire for a week.

Another thing that bugs me about these paper ‘to-go’ cups is when they are filled to full. The coffee cup begins to soak through on the top constantly dripping the precious black gold all over the drinkers clothes. Although I drink my coffee black, I have taken to asking for the server to save room for cream in order to avoid this spill-over effect.

Ahh, the hassles of life. C’est la vie.

Update: Paul reminds me of something all too familiar to anyone who has taken a calculus class in their life (and paid attention while in it).

If random, the probability that the crease intersects the opening should equal, as the probability of a single point, ie: the crease, is selected at random, is equal to zero.

Paul speculates that coffee bar servers are anti-social and hate whoever this happens to.

Is it possible to love (support) our troops but despise what they do in war/occupation?

If you are religious, in regards to homosexuality; is it possible to love the sinner but hate the sin?

How many people in the world do you think can answer yes (or no) to both questions above, at the same time?

I am facinated by people that consistently answer these questions as opposed to those that see conflict in them, regardless of the answer they give. That is not to say that I do not find people interesting who see conflict in the answers they give, I myself give different answers to the two above questions. I just find people who consistently answer the two questions above are generally absorbing people, on average.....

Google wrote up an excellent summary of their decision making process regarding their roll-out of google.cn in China. It is well written and a powerful response to the numerous cheap shots that Google has had to endure over the last few weeks. It has quite a few points I had not heard before.

Adam over at econhopeful has a bone to pick with Torabisu’s recent post about the date of newspaper reports in the Arab world about the infamous prophet cartoons.

This is a post by Torabisu on Chris Silveys blog about the “Original Publication Date” of the offensive Danish cartoons. Basically Torabisu says that the original date of publication was October 17th but, while reading the arabic in the picture of the newspaper, it clearly (for anyone who knows arabic) says that it was printed in a Danish newspaper during the first week of Ramadan which would have been October 7-10. Toribasu claims that that is “More evidence that this ‘outrage’ was orchestrated by those who want to turn the War on Terror into a war on Islam.”. I don’t think so.

Although I can’t read a bit of Arabic, I am sure what Adam says is true. I believe that there have been some that have been objecting to the cartoon for months. Who cares? I heard Ahmed Abu Laban, the religious director of the Muslim Society in Copenhagen, interviewed on NPR February 8th. He plainly stated that his organization and others devoted to his cause have been publicizing the cartoon in the Middle East for some time in hopes of creating a public outcry in the Muslim world. Listen here.

The issue for me is the magnitude of the reaction. This irrational reaction to marginal cartoon would be laughable if it wasn’t soo serious. People are dying because some guy drew a cartoon. I can only shake my head in amazement. People’s deepest values are attacked all of the time in the western world, but killing people, burning embassies, and threatening artist’s lives is just a ridiculous reaction. Isn’t it? I think Adam would agree…I think?

Why do professions that work with blood, such as doctors and Butches, have a strong correlation with wearing white uniforms? Just curious.

US movie-stars make a majority of their income from the US market …. I think. Someone correct me if I am wrong. I am 99% sure that Gwyneth Paltrow does (I think her husband also makes most of his money in the US). So I am left wondering what celebrities, such as Mrs. Paltrow, are thinking when they make disparaging remarks about their golden-goose. Gwyneth was recently quoted as saying…

I love living in the UK! Brits are far more intelligent and civilised than Americans.

Gwen, maybe it was the people you associated yourself with in Hollywood. Anyone who has lived or spent any sizeable amount of time in LA can vouch for the fact that the city attracts more then its share of self-centered idiots. Not a very-good sample to study. One only needs to look at Jay Leno’s Jay-Walking segment to know this is true. Furthermore, the entertainment industry has an even larger cluster of such people. Grow-up Gwen!

More can be read here, here, and here.

Sandmonkey has images of the October 17th edition of the Egyptian newspaper Al Fagr.

More evidence that this “outrage” was orchestrated by those who want to turn the War on Terror into a war on Islam.

I make it a policy to leave the toilet seat up. I can’t get blamed for peeing on it, and if a women is so scared that she might sit down while the seat is up, then she should look before she sits (obviously I relax this rule on Valentines Day and Anniversaries).

My wife has stopped trying to train me to put the toilet seat down; I can be a bit stubborn. But I hear in many houses with males and females using the same toilet the seat-up/seat-down debate can become quite heated. Leave it to the world of economics to try and solve this debate through the use of economics and game theory.

The toilet seat problem has been the subject of much controversy. In this paper we consider a simplified model of the toilet seat problem. We shall show that for this model there is an inherent conflict of interest which can be resolved by a equity solution.

Consider a bathroom with one omnipurpose toilet (also known as a WC) which is used for two toilet operations which we shall designate as #1 and #2. The toilet has an attachment which we shall refer to as the seat (but see remark 1 below) which may be in either of two positions which we shall designate as up and down.

Toilet operations are performed by members of the human species (see remark 2 below) who fall into two categories, popularly designated as male and female. For convenience we shall use the name John to refer to the typical male and Marsha to refer to the typical female.

The performance of toilet operations by John and Marsha differ in a number of respects. The costs of these operations are peculiar to the respective sexes and are fixed except with respect to the position of the toilet seat. In particular:

Marsha performs toilet operations #1 and #2 with the seat in the down position. John performs toilet operation #1 with the seat in the up position and toilet operation #2 with the seat in the down position. If the seat is in the wrong position before performing the toilet operation the position must be changed at an average cost C. Optionally the position may be changed after performing the toilet operation, also at an average cost C. (Changing the position of the seat during the performance of a toilet operation is beyond the scope of this note and is definitely not recommended.)

The optimal solution is

In the morning John leaves the seat up after performing #1.
In the evening he puts it down.

I still say Marsha should take responsibility for her own safety in this matter.

Are all Republicans racist bigots?

Are all Republicans who happen to be black token Uncle Toms?

Can’t we all just get along? Can we come together to agree on a life well lived and not debate what dead people would think about political debates?