Almost Done!

So Movember is almost over. My moustache is lovely, and I'll post more pictures of it soon, but really I'm happier about the attention that this process has brought to the cause - and, of course, the fundraising it managed as well. To all of you who gave donations, thanks! I love you all! To those of you who haven't, it's okay, I love you anyway, and I just hope you remember the cause.

There's still a little time left! Donate $5, donate $1, anything just to show you support cancer cure research! Even if you can't, pass it on to your friends and family! Let everyone know!

http://mobro.co/robintoll/

Thanks for a great Movember!

The state of the... I dunno, whatever.

The move is going well. The movers came Monday, and moved all the big stuff - the beds, the mattresses, the desk, the headboard, the TV, the entertainment center, the shelves, the 20-odd boxes and containers we had packed... They took almost exactly four hours, even gave us a break on the timing (since technically they count depot-to-depot, but actually charged us for the time they spent moving instead). Two really nice guys - John and Gary. It was mildly depressing to see just how little of the truck our stuff used, though... And this is *our* stuff, Nina's and mine and Aidan's.

We've made a number of trips since then also, and there's still a fair amount at the apartment to transfer. It's not like we're on a hard clock or anything - our lease doesn't expire until the 30th, and we're paid on rent. Jon, of course, told his new roommate she could start moving in tomorrow. It's very hard not to be grumpy about that. If she's moving in already, I can't help but feel she should be paying a portion of Nina and my's rent. But whatever... We still have a cupboard full of dry food, a couple of random things in the fridge/freezer, a number of Kitchen items (blender, collander somewhere, etcetera). Nina's computer, a whole crap-ton of pictures and artwork (in frames), several board games, at two or three computer monitor/small TVs. Technically, two air conditions and a wardrobe, though I kindof want to just leave them, since they're not useful to us. A bunch of garbage. Ugggggh. Definitely not going to be done tomorrow.

The whole thing is very stressful. I'm tired, frustrated, in pain, and sick of dealing with it. Moving sucks, but I suppose everyone knows that already. Or most of you.

I wonder how Jon's doing? He managed to get the utilities turned off today. I told him last week (Thursday or Friday?) I'd arranged to have the meter read to take it out of my name today, and that it'd be turned off if he didn't arrange to have it put into his. I told him again Saturday, and again yesterday. Today, I get there at like 10:30? And the power's off. He swears he called; but when he talked to them today, they told him they have no record of it.

He then says "Yeah, someone needs to be there tomorrow between 8 and 4 so they can come and turn it back on." And then he waits, expectantly. Eventually I realize he wants me to do it; which I refuse, immediately. I've got way the hell too much stuff going on to wait around for hours and fix the fuck-up that's either his or the utility's company.

And of course when all is said and done there's a crap-ton to do at the new place, also. Most of the stuff is moved over, but only a small percentage of it is put away yet. I mean, it's fine, we'll get it dealt with. Just... Imposing.

I finally got in to see the orthopedist, today. Official verdict? Possible mild strain, fallen arch, and early-onset arthritis. FML. Prescription for $400 orthotic inserts, cortisone shot, and a strong recommendation to wear my ankle brace more often.

All right. It's just about time to get in the car and get home, so good night.

YellowJaw

I'm typing this on Nina's bluetooth keyboard. It took waaaaay too much effort to sync (something about it having paired successfully in the past on a different device, but not this one, but the pairing config being copied over and not working?...), but now it's working. So I'm just testing it out.

Yes, typing on this - even though it's too small for my hands - is infinitely easier than typing on the iPad itself. At least there's feedback on this... I may have to steal it!

Game theory suggests current climate negotiations won’t avert catastrophe

Kinda interesting article (copied from http://www.sciencenews.org/index/generic/activity/view/id/346418/description/Math_Trek_Game_theory_suggests_current_climate_negotiations_won&%238364;(TM)t_avert_catastrophe, all rights to the author, no credit to me, etcetera etcetera):

Game theory suggests current climate negotiations won’t avert catastrophe
     
By Julie Rehmeyer
Web edition: November 13, 2012
So far, negotiators’ promises to reduce greenhouse gas production have been paltry and results paltrier, as both emissions and global temperatures have risen. A new game theoretic analysis published in the Oct. 23 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences both pinpoints why negotiations have accomplished so little and suggests how the parties might achieve better results.
Since 2009, climate treaty negotiations have focused on one value: 2 degrees Celsius. If the planet warms more than this, scientists have warned, catastrophic changes may result. So negotiators have agreed to the goal of staying under this threshold.
Some countries have pledged greenhouse gas emissions reductions of varying amounts by 2020, but the sum of all these pledges falls woefully short of what’s been projected as needed to meet this goal.
Scott Barrett and Astrid Dannenberg, both of Columbia University, wondered whether negotiators were wise to focus on a threshold like 2 degrees Celsius. So the researchers designed a game to analyze and experimentally test how a threshold affects negotiators’ behavior.
The scientists gave members of a 10-member group their country’s “treasure”: a 20-euro national savings account, plus a fund for spending on emissions reductions that consisted of 10 black chips worth 10 cents apiece and 10 red chips worth one euro apiece. Each person could then contribute any number of these chips to a common pool. The contributed chips represented greenhouse gas reduction strategies that were relatively inexpensive (black) or expensive (red). Players could communicate freely about their plans for how many chips they intended to contribute.
At the end, the participants cashed out their remaining chips and kept the proceeds, and each also received an extra payoff of five cents for every chip in the common pool. But if the pool didn’t contain at least 150 chips, catastrophe resulted: Each player lost 15 euros from the national savings account. (Only in game theory is the loss of 15 euros equivalent to the destabilization of the world’s climate.)
So imagine yourself in the game, and suppose that everyone else says that they’re contributing nothing to the common pool. Meeting the 150-chip threshold is hopeless then, so you’re best off contributing nothing yourself. At least the full value of your unspent chips will help offset the 15-euro penalty.
But now suppose everyone else promises to contribute 15 chips. Then you’ll be highly motivated to follow suit, because then the threshold will be met and you’ll avoid the 15-euro penalty.
Theoretical analysis showed that these two strategies were the only ones in which no one would want to change their own contribution if they knew exactly how much everyone else was contributing (such strategies are called “Nash equilibria”).
When the scientists tested the game out on real people, they found that the groups almost always managed to cooperate and meet the threshold. Hooray! Catastrophe averted, planet saved!
But then Barrett and Dannenberg changed the game to make it more like the real world. Scientists can’t certify that the climate will be destabilized the moment the world warms by more than 2 degrees. They just know that the chances are higher at that point. So the researchers made the exact location of the threshold in the game uncertain. Rather than catastrophe certainly occurring if the pool had fewer than 150 chips, the threshold was randomly chosen after the chips were in and varied between 100 and 200.
Now, Barrett and Dannenberg found, the planet was in big trouble. The problem was that players were motivated to cheat a bit. Suppose everyone else pledges 20 chips. You might easily be tempted to toss in only, say, 19 chips. Then the common pool would be 199 instead of 200, which gives only a 1-in-100 chance of catastrophe?—?but it ups your chances of walking away with an extra euro by 100 percent. As a result, the Nash equilibrium from the previous version in which everyone contributes 15 euros disappears, and the only strategy in which no one would change their contribution is the one in which no one contributes anything.
Tests with real people confirmed an inability to resist temptation: The players proposed that everyone pay enough to make catastrophe unlikely, but then they pledged a bit less than that. And when it came time to pony up, they contributed far less still. Every time, the planet broiled.
Unfortunately, this version of the game is much closer to the one the world is trapped in. “We’re playing an experiment with the entire planet, and we can’t be sure how it’s going to come out,” Barrett says. “It’s because of that that the negotiations are having so much difficulty.”
He argues that a more promising approach is to negotiate smaller agreements including only some countries or some greenhouse gases, and to use the threat of trade sanctions to enforce the agreements.

Finally!

So they finally added proper iPad support to the blogging app I like. That, I suppose, means there's actually an outside chance I'll * use* it. Not that I blog on my computer much... But then, hey, I never hear from people, so I assume "what's the point?"

Whatever. Maybe I'll post more drawings soon.

"In Flanders fields", by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
      Between the crosses, row on row,
   That mark our place; and in the sky
   The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie
         In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
   The torch; be yours to hold it high.
   If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
         In Flanders fields.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0iilLWi24sI

(http://mobro.co/robintoll)

"I didn't vote for either.. I'm part of the roughly 5% who voted Libertarian... Full run.. every race that had a libertarian, that's who I voted for.. I have very little aside from disdain for the current (R) and (D) candidates... I don't think either one of them would do anything but strip more personal freedoms and civil liberties in either rubber stamping almost everything that seems to come from congress, or via executive order that simply ignores the law."

This... The ridiculous nature of this comment upsets me so much. The sheer ignorance of this astounds me. "every race that had a libertarian, that's who I voted for"? Did it matter who they were, what they believed in, or whether their platform even made sense?

Screw you. If you're going to vote, be smart enough to do it as a person and not a pre-paid number.

So one of the podcasts I subscribe to is "The Best of YouTube", and one of the most recent ones was a video with a voice-over of a lecture by Alan Watts. My attempt at a transcription is below, and the video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siu6JYqOZ0g

What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like? Let's suppose - I do this often in vocational guidance of students - they come to me and say well, ummm... We're getting out of college and we haven't the faintest idea what we want to do. So I always ask the question, "What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life? Well, it's so amazing, as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say, "Well, we'd like to be painters, we'd like to be poets, we'd like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can't earn any money that way." Another person says, "Well I'd like to live an out-of-doors life and ride horses." I say "Do you want to teach in a riding school? Uhhh, let's go through with it. What do you want to do?" When we've finally got down to something which the individual says that he really wants to do, I will say to him "You do that. And, umm, forget the money." Because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living - that is to go on doing things you don't like doing. Which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way. And after all, if you do really like what you're doing - it doesn't matter what it is - you can eventually turn it, errr, you can eventually become a master of it. It's the only way to become a master of something. And then you'll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. So I don't, don't worry too much, that's, everybody's, somebody's interested in everything. And anything you can be interested in, you'll find others. But it's absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like in order to go on spending things you don't like, doing things you don't like, and to teach your children to follow in the same track. See what we're doing is we're bringing up children and educating them to live the same sort of lives we're living. In order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing, so it's all retch and no vomit - it never gets there. And so, therefore it's so important to consider this question: "What do I desire?"

He's someone I really wasn't familiar with until just the last couple of days, but I looked him up because he seemed so eminently sensible. I guess I react strongly, on an emotional level, to the above, while being highly uncertain how I feel on an intellectual level. I guess I need to sit down and consider it for a while. I dunno.