Don't have much to say, but I updated my subtitle and added a link. Micromoe is a friend of mine, and I recommend checking out some of the music he's got posted.

I'm thinking it's about time to have a party so people can see my place.

Google 'Related Searches' has changed my life. Well, ok maybe only a little bit, but still. (warning, I'm about to do another of my ever-popular 'this is how we should vote' posts.)

Google told me a related search to my blog was tactical voting. It's the practice of voting not for the candidate you sincerely prefer, but because you believe it's the vote most likely to produce a favorable outcome. This lead me to read about Approval Voting where you put a mark next to every candidate you think would be allright. It has some good advantages (see the linked article for good descriptions) but one I had never considered was that it is pretty compatible with existing voting infrastructures.

Tactical voting seems so insincere to me. I'd love to be able to vote for a candidate I actually like without increasing the chances of a candidate I definitely don't like being elected.

Academic Economist Studies Everquest

So this somewhat failed economist got hooked on Everquest (an online fantasy based role-playing game). He suddenly had this brainstorm that because Everquest items were being sold for real currency that he could legitamately apply economic theory to the online world. It's as though Everquest is another country with its own internal economy and industry. He did some calculations and got some interesting results. He averaged some online to real transactions and calculated an exchange rate of about 100 EQ platinum pieces(PP) to 1 USD. That makes EQPP a stronger currency than the Japanese Yen! Average EQ player income about 3.50 USD/hour. Better than minimum wage a lot of places. It turns out that Everquest is about the 77th strongest economy in the world!

It's a very long article but well worth the read if you're interested in online games. Here is the professor's professional page and a list of publications you can download and read.

This was covered on Slashdot today, too so sorry if this is redundant for you slashdorks.

The eye of Sauron is REAL!

Ok, really this is the Nautilus Laser weapon system. Yeah, a laser gun. It successfully shot down some missles and stuff. It's looking like an effective anti-missile system. And we (the US) helped Israel develop it. So now we've not only given Israel nukes, we've also made them missile proof. Here's a recent article about it from MSNBC, from whom the picture also comes.

As some of you may know, I work in a vision science lab. This week is the sweeps of optometry and vision science. There are currently not one but TWO big conferences going on, one on each side of Florida, of all places. One is called Arvo, and the other is called Vss ('cause I know you care).

Anyway, the result is this: Little me in a big empty building. Ok, so it's not really empty, there are at least ten other people, but here's the thing: I don't work for any of them. Everyone that cares even a little bit about me doing my job is on the other side of the frikkin country, which is probably why i'm posting this from work.

So I'm torn between working (pfft), spending all day doing stuff like this, or just going home really early. I predict some mix of options two and three with a little of option one thrown in for guilt-prevention.

Ok folks, just a reminder: rugby this weekend! But, it turns out I was wrong. Or rather, I was right but then erroneously corrected myself. So...

Rugby this Friday and Saturday. I can't make it to the Friday match, so I'll be at the Saturday matches. How incredibly lame is it to have a national sporting even in the middle of the day on a friday? How lame I ask you? VERY! Anyway, the national championship is Saturday at 4pm at Stanford's Steuber Field.

I hope to see you there.

Allright, some of you may remember how I was all excited about Instant Runoff Voting a while back. I have since heard about something called the Condorcet method. For a full rundown, check out the wikipedia article on Condorcet method.

Anyway, IRV still seems like a pretty good idea to me, as it solves some (but not all) of the problems with simple Most-Votes-Wins solutions like ours. However, there is a case where IRV will choose a canditate such that there is another candidate more people prefer. That's confusing and abstract, so if you car, check out the example from the wikipedia article.

I haven't looked at any of the implementations of the Condorcet method suggested in the article, but a major weakness I see, and I emphasize it is major, is how complicated the Condorcet method seems. I don't think the American populace is going to buy any voting system that can't be explained in a few sentences. To whit:
"Everybody votes for one person. The person with the most votes wins." -> "Hyup, sounds good"
"Everybody ranks all the canditates, putting a 1 by their favorite, 2 by their second favorite, and so forth. We tally everyone's first choices, and if no candidate gets a majority, then we eliminate the candidate with the least votes. Then ballots are re-calculated where if the highest ranked candidate is eliminated, we look at the next highest ranked candidate. After that, if there is still no majority, we eliminate the candidate with the fewest votes again and repeat." -> "Hmm... I guess that sounds allright..."

I won't even try with condorcet.... Anyway, our election system needs to change and IRV is still the best thing i've seen so far.

Emergency update! Sorry i'm a dork, a rugby press release announced the finals as being April 30th/May 1st. That's WRONG! The rugby finals are Saturday May 1st and Sunday May 2nd. And Yay for Vicious Kitty!!!

Well it was a great weekend for Cal rugby, with victories on Saturday and Sunday. It was an exciting match against Bowling Green State U (their uniforms are orange and brown. Why not green? That's what I was wondering, too.), with the bears entering the half down by two. Cal roared back in the second half for a big win.

I didn't make it to the game on Sunday of Cal vs. North Carolina Tarheels, but I guess it was a total blowout. So what does that mean? It means I expect to see each and every one of you in Palo Alto on April 30/May 1 for the final four. Give 'em the old growl cheer. Anybody needing a ride down should contact me, I may be heading down Fri. Night, but if not, i'm happy to give rides.

Oh, here's the official recap articles from the Cal Rugby site: Cal Varsity Defeats Bowling Green State, 40-15 and Bears Rout The Tar Heels, 69-11 .

Also, LAYT's "Alice" is opening Friday, the 29th. It should be a lot of fun. I've seen some of the costumes, and they look cool. Here's a link to LAYT and to the show information.

It came up at work today. One of the guys at work who graduated from Stanford was talking some trash about how yeah, Cal rugby is pretty good, but isn't Stanford better? Now, it's no secret that i'm a big Cal Rugby fan, so I informed him that in recent history, Cal has beat Stanford to a bloody pulp every time they met. Stanford-guy was skeptical. Then fellow Cal Enthusiast Allen piped in with "oh, well, except for two years ago when Stanford backed out of the game". Stanford guy was incredulous. "No Way!" he said. Allen: "Hey, you can find it on Google!".

So I did. In no particular order:
Stanford's rugby forfeit is downright cowardly
and
Email correspondence between Cal and Stanford rugby coaches.

Ok so the first one an Oakland Tribune columnist going off on cowardice, and the second is from a Cal supporters website. Let's look for some Stanford perspective (although, really, didn't we get enough of that from the e-mail from Stanfurd's coach, Franck Boivert?)
Ruggers Forfeit Their Big Game

It's brief, but still manages to take a quote out of context and, in my opinion, to mangle the intention. I was going to let it slide, but then I looked up the quote in the actual context. What the stanford article claims Clark said: "We take great umbrage ... How dare you not compete." What Clark said in context: "We do however take great umbrage at the content of your letter of forfeit." ... [skip two full paragraphs] ... "Lastly, I found your closing comment concerning rugby one day being 'again a sport for the students' insulting to the very ethos of sport. How dare you not compete and belittle the accomplishments of those who do."

Anything else from the Stanford side of it? Well, if there is, I can't find it. However, I just found an interview with Stanfurd's current Chairman of Development and Treasurer for their rugby foundation. Yancey does mention the forfeiture but doesn't comment much about it. What I found particularly salient, especially considering Boivert's comments about Cal being better because they have funding etc, was this passage about Stanford rugby's endowment: "It is my understanding that this sum probably places Stanford in second place behind Cal when it comes to US college rugby endowments." Ok, so Cal's is bigger, but second place is no position from which to whine about funding. To be fair, that's the situation now, and I have no real evidence about the situation three years ago.

So here's my conclusion from all this. Stanford's forfeiture was a totally spineless move. They let fail a nearly century-old tradition because they were afraid of being injured. I can't blame them, really, for being afraid. The break in the tradition is unfortunate. The lack of courage is embarrassing, but forgivable. I mean, these Cal guys are really big and strong. The unforgivable thing was Boivert's response. He took cheap shots at Clark and Cal Rugby. Rather than facing the fact that he had failed as a coach to prepare his team to play Cal, he tried to blame Cal. He looked for excuses. Instead, he took his team to Fiji. (Yeah, if you read the Oakland Tribune column, the coach took the team to the Fiji Islands instead of to the Cal rugby match) So he further failed to fight the stereotype of pampered, spoiled Stanford brats.

But really, I guess, that's how you become successfull in the real world. If you can win, kick their teeth in. If you can't, go to Fiji.

Cal Rugby
Stanford Rugby

From the latest Cat and Girl:
Teacher: "Follow your dreams."
Girl: "My dream leads to scurvy."

Ok, it's official. No more reference to Belgian Bluesbands in my subtitle. I have begun a new rotation of subtitles. I have found a pretty good source for subtitles, and as the source changes, I will change my subtitle. Five points to the person that correctly identifies the source.

And, I will mention (because I see some of you in the back becoming a little anxious), this blog will remain forever "Fair and Balanced Blogification", so fear not!

I was taken with a sudden urge to play ATTACK! earlier today. Which got me thinking about Luke. That guy must have a web page. Anybody know what it is? And how his job at Sega is going. and stuff. Anyway, hope some of y'all make it for the rugby match tomorrow!

Ok, it's time for another rugby update.

Sadly, the Bears did not win the rugby world cup this season. The world cup is so-called because it's a contest between the (traditionally) best Canadian team and the (traditionally) best American team. They play two matches (one at each home pitch) and the team with the combined highest total score wins. I don't know why they don't call it the North America's cup, but hey, since we often win, I don't mind it being the world cup. Hey, how about we call it the world cup when the bears win, but north america's cup when the Thunderbir wins. Ok, so to get on with it,

The UBC Thunderbirds won the North America's Rugby Cup last Saturday, defeating the bears 26-17. It must have been a great match. You can read the recap if you're interested.

In more rugby news, the Bears will be demolishing Cal Poly this Saturday. It should actually be a pretty good match, with Cal Poly coming in as the #1 seed for Southern California, and, of course, the Bears as #1 for Northern California. Match details. The game's at 1 o'clock on Witter field, and you can sure expect to see me there.

In other sports news, I guess the baseball season has started. I don't know this because I pay attention to baseball, or because I happened to hear the match on the radio, or because I actually care, no. No, I know because, well, the radio has once again started talking about the scandal with the stupid performance enhancing drugs (and I don't mean the Levitra kind).

Look people, as a culture we worship sports heros. We pay them stupid amounts of money to be good at a game. If you don't want fools to do drugs to be better, stop caring so much about who's the best. Hell, go watch little-league or something, and find out which little kid works the hardest in practice, and cheer for her, or him, or whatever. If you do care about who's the best, go watch TV and see some drugged up dude hit the ball over the fence 44 times. Either way, enjoy, but stop clogging up public airwaves with your whining about moral decline and integrity.

I saw two weird things today as I walked to the grocery store.

1 I live next to an Italian/Pizza restraunt. It's a bit pricey, but very tasty. I recommend the pizza for two. Anyway, I noticed a flyer hanging from the front door of said restraunt (they're closed on Tuesdays). The flyer was for, get this, another pizza place! Anyway, I thought it was kind of funny.

2 In front of the grocery store are a bunch of newspaper vending machines (a new one showed up just a couple days ago, selling Yank!, sorry couldn't find a link), and anyway, I noticed a sticker on one. And on another. And on the garbage can down the street. And on the back of the bus stop bench. Reading:

Free Identity!
name: Chris Gunderson
SSN: some number
DOB: some date in the 60s

Weird. I wonder if it's a real person? and if this is someone with a vendetta, or just some random identity they found? Weird.

YES!!! My old gameboy still works! I was gonna type something about exectly why Microsoft's monopoly is such a BadThing, but instead I think i'll play tetris. At least for now.

So at work I'm helping my boss migrate from Mac to PC. Ironically, I'm using a Linux machine as the middleman for this particular transfer. I know very little about using the Linux command line, so I am looking for good (free) resources online to help me learn. I found this article on using bash and it seems to be directed at people familiar with Windows. Anyway, thought i'd throw that up there, although it's mostly a convenient way for me to remember the link when I go home and want to read more of the article.

It seems like, in general, it would be a lot easier to convince people to use Linux if there were more resources like this out there. All the help i've been able to get comes in the form of: figure out what program you want to use, then read the manual for that program (as an aside, I've found that reading the manual is sometimes pretty hard due to lack of examples). While this advice is very sound, as a Windows user I know my goal (for instance, unzip a file and put its contents into a new directory), but have no clue of what I should use. Does anyone know of a good listing that says, "ok windoze users, if you want to do x, the commonly used Linux equivalents are a, b, c, and sometimes d." Or am I going about this the wrong way?

So i've been reading some people's blogs, and damn, we're all about the organized sports! Specifically Samay and Jennie (and friends) have mentioned sports (baseball, hockey, basketball). Then I realized I recently made 3 posts in a row about Rugby. After some consideration, I have decided that organized sports are as reasonable a hobby as any (including one of my favorites, being a NEEEEEEEERD).

However, I certainly sympathize with Calvin's various complaints about organized sports. So, as an hommage to Calvin's ideology, I would like to present you all with Calvinball.

Thank goodness for friends. I'd been feeling lonely, and out of the blue, three different friends I hadn't talked to in a while contacted me. Yay friends!

Since I got all excited about EoTL in the last post, I wanted to try a link that did this: Telnet!