Archive for 2009
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[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 11, 2009 by admin in Editorial & Opinion
Monday, May 11th, 2009Trivial Pursuit is for sissies. This week’s Monday morning time-killers explore whether or not you can handle a NON trivial pursuit. If you can, maybe you can also tell us what the heck it actually means.
Out of over a trillion pages in Google’s index, you had to end up here. Our apologies. Odds are that with that many web pages in existence, a huge number of them will be a banal waste of your time. And that, in fact, is the objective of our Monday Demotivators. This week we’re going to explore simplicity and triviality, which is what you’re probably engaged in if you’re at work right now anyway. The difference is, we don’t pay you! But we’re wasting time. Let’s get rolling. On wasting more of it. The “Eight Queens Puzzle” is a classic example of a “simple but non-trivial” problem. Try arranging 8 queens on a chessboard in such a way that no two queens would be able to attack each other. There are 4,426,165,368 possible arrangements of eight queens on the board, but only 92 solutions. The image at left gets you 3/8 of the way there. Good luck. 3D Logic, a cube-based color pattern puzzle also appears rather simple at first. Things get a little hairy at level 6. Let us know if you get to the level where it tranforms into a 4-dimensional hypercube. We don’t know that it actually does that, but it sounds cool, doesn’t it? If you like your non-trivial simplicity in the form of word puzzles, try this: “A young woman goes to the funeral of her mother. There she meets a man whom she has never met before. She identifies him as the man of her dreams and immediately falls in love. Two days later she kills her sister. Why?” (We’ll post the answer in the comments if anyone asks.) And lastly, if you prefer trivial simplicity, we have some stick people for you. Sure, they’re simple. But when given the choice of killing them or saving their lives, do they still seem trivial? You decide. Hope you have a simple, non-trivial Monday!
I Need Some Nice Shorts
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on May 10, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Sunday, May 10th, 2009My ongoing search for quality short film and music videos is sated briefly by some Rob Dougan.
I remember clearly when MTV was new. I was in a trendy band comprised of artists who dabbled in visual art, fashion and film, and we were incredibly excited about the possibilities. We of course were quickly disappointed as the medium turned into an endless string of “hair bands with hot chick videos”. To me, the marriage of music and moving images still remains a vastly under-explored territory; although there are many full length films brilliantly married to their music (Betty Blue
Moms Agree: War Sucks
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 10, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Sunday, May 10th, 2009It always takes a little feminine wisdom to put things in perspective.
Considering the fact that May in this part of the world brings the return of flowers and sunny warm days, it’s a little ironic that the major May holidays are devoted to glorifying war. Although Cinco De Mayo has evolved into a sort of “Mexican St. Patrick’s Day” (i.e., celebrating Mexican culture in general while Mexicans themselves barely observe the holiday) it was in fact originally in celebration of kicking the asses of the French out of Mexico. Which, given the general predilection of English-speaking countries toward France-bashing, might explain its continued popularity in the states. Later in the month, we have Armed Forces Day and Memorial Day, which try to make you uncomfortable about protesting murder by making you feel like an unpatriotic twit who hates our sons and daughters who died protecting the politicians who sent them to die in the first place our way of life. Which brings us to an oft-overlooked aspect of Mother’s Day – which these days feels like another Hallmark Holiday – it was originally a proclamation against war. As is so often the case, it takes a woman to have the insight, intelligence and humanity to present things clearly. If you can read the Mother’s Day Proclamation without shedding a tear, I know a couple of guys you might like. Here are a few of the opening lines, if you’ve never read it:
My Mom’s Cooler Than Your Mom
[ Comments Off ]Posted on May 9, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Saturday, May 9th, 2009Here’s to my mom, your mom, and you, if you’re a mom. We’re enjoying the party. Thanks for having us!
 This captures my mom’s sense of humor pretty well. At Thanksgiving a few years ago, I just said “smile”, and this is what I got. |
I feel sorry for anybody whose mom isn’t as cool as my mom, and I’m sorry to say that this would include most of you. My mom was born a couple of years before the crash of ’29. She jokes on occasion that she might have somehow had something to do with it. She married at 17, converted to Catholicism for my dad, and staying true to her faith and husband, started churning out babies on an annual basis, until she reached the magic number ten, in the form of yours truly. This alone, in my opinion, qualifies one for sainthood. On top of the clearly staggering task of rearing ten kids, she’s endured some other difficulties; she lost her eldest son when he was twenty-two, worked part-time way before that was common, and put her cosmopolitan, arty side second to motherhood for about thirty years. I’m glad to say that when she was in her late forties, she started her second life, going to college and enjoying the things she had denied herself for so many years, which mostly involved collecting art, rare books and manuscripts, and catching up on all the music she didn’t have time to kick back and enjoy while being a working mom. She’s now 82, and in spite of being in constant discomfort due to a couple of health issues, remains on a daily basis one of the most positive people I know. I call her every day just ’cause she’s such a hoot. I wish the whole world could sit down for lunch with her, I think everyone would benefit. Here’s to my mom, and moms everywhere! Thanks for your amazing gift of life!
Paralyzed By Indecision? Let The Intranets Decide!
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on May 8, 2009 by admin in Technology
Friday, May 8th, 2009Sites like Let Simon Decide and Hunch help you make the decisions that your tech overload has rendered you unable to make.
 Would you let this man pick a college for you? |
Great. Now that our minds are paralyzed by the wealth of choices presented by the Internet, our mobile devices, and the toothpaste aisle (I’m serious. On a lark I counted 47 toothpaste options at a local CVS the other day), the biggest offender of this group -the Internet – is trying to play nicey-nicey and help us make the decisions that it spent all that time rendering us incapable of making. Let Simon Decide takes your input and uses sophisticated algorithms to help you make decisions like “Where should I live?” and “Should I sell my house?” I wanted to use the site to ask it if I should use it, but it wouldn’t let me, without creating an account. Now I’ll never know if I should try it. My favorite endorsement on the site is from Amy, of Los Angeles, who says “WOWWWW I seriously love it!!! I asked it where I should live and it really helped me realize where the best location is.” I could’ve told her, just based on her spelling of the word “wow”. Along the same lines as Let Simon Decide, we have hunch, created by flickr founder Caterina Fake. Although it’s invite-only as of this writing, Mashable has a good overviewof how it works here. If you’re traveling (or even if you’re not, it’s kind of amusing anyway) Joobili lets you set a date range, and then it tells you where to go. Save some time and add a comment here on Dissociated Press. I’ll tell you were to go.