Da Vinci Code Revisited

This is a follow-up to my previous Da Vinci Code post. Thanks to Wayne and Maureen for their comment. I wish more people would leave comments.


The biggest complaint people make about religious (and I don't just mean Christian) people is that they're far too concerned with everyone ELSE's beliefs.
My response is this: People will believe what they're going to believe. Some people believe in God. Some people believe there is no god. Some people believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. And Some people believe what's in the Da Vinci Code. What's the big deal?

Christianity--all religion in fact--is a matter of faith. Sometimes even faith in the face of contradictory evidence. And that's ok. If there were proof, after all, it wouldn't be religion; it would be science. The fact that the Da Vinci Code presents some arguments that happen to contradict part of mainstream Christian thought shouldn't be bothersome, particularly since the Bible manages to contradict itself on plenty of occasions!

Let's assume it's true that 17% of Canadians and 13% of Americans do believe the contens of the Da Vinci Code. (I have no idea whether those stats are true or not) Is that a reason to write books "debunking" a novel? There are 1.3 BILLION Muslims in the world. 900 MILLION Hindus. And 1.1 BILLION who don't consider themselves religious in the first place. Aren't those better groups to target with books than readers of popular fiction? Especially considering the fact that you can believe the Da Vinci Code crap and still be a Christian. Doesn't "Debunking Islam" make more sense, from a Christian point of view at least?

"Half of this country voted for a man for President who is doing is best to flush our planet down the toilet. Most Americans actually believe that terrorism is a bigger threat to our society than global warming. Last year alone, 3 million people died from AIDS and there were nearly 5 million people newly-infected. There were 3 million homeless men, women, and children in America last year. How can I make a difference in the world? I know! I'll debunk a best-selling novel!"

What are the Christians who write these books afraid of, exactly? I assume that, as Christians, they already believe 1) that they're going to heaven, 2) that the Messiah will return, and 3) that God will win the final war against evil. What does it say about a religion if its strongest believers feel the need to waste their time letting everyone know that, "hey, you know that work of fiction you read? Well, it's not true." What's going through their minds, exactly? "Yeah, I know that I'm saved, and that Jesus Christ is the ultimate power in the universe, but what if this Dan Brown guy and his novel ruin all of that?"

Reinforcing the Da Vinci Code

I was at the bookstore today, and they have a whole table full of books about the DaVinci code. I'm sure you've seen them; they're not new: "Debunking the DaVinci Code," "Don't Believe the Da Vinci Code," and stuff like that. The thing that strikes me as funny is that The Da Vinci Code is a work of FICTION. It has never been billed as anything other than a plain old novel. And yet all these people--mostly conservative Christian types--have written books refuting its "claims"! Don't they realize that by doing so, they're essentially legitimizing it? People suddenly have a reason to check it out. "Hey, maybe there's something to this Da Vinci code thing after all! After all, nobody ever wrote a book called 'Debunking To Kill A Mockingbird'."

Imagine you're walking down a street--maybe it's a street you walk down every day. And on your walk, you pass an alley. It's just a plain old alley, and you walk right by it every day, so you think nothing of it, and you just walk on by. Now imagine it's another day, and you're walking by again. But this time there's a guy standing at the opening to the alley holding a "Don't Go Down This Alley" sign and shouting, "Keep moving people! There's nothing important in this alley! Just keep walking!" Suddenly that plain old alley that never meant anything before becomes very interesting.

So apparently there's something to this Da Vinci code after all. Quick! Everybody run to your local bookstore and read about what the Christian right doesn't want you to know.


 

Fishy Quote #15

"You're lucky you take away more stress than you add."

Fishy Quote #14

"You know what I love about you? You're my exact opposite."

Philadelphia Water Revenue Bureau Website

I went to pay my water bill today by calling up the Philly Water Revenue Bureau. I was on hold for a while, and when I finally talk to a person, she tells me that they don't take payments over the phone. I mean, every freaking other company and utility on the planet does, but not Philly water. She tells me I can pay online. So I go to their website (www.Phila.gov -- don't forget the "www" because their dumbass webmaster has the domain set up so you NEED the www. Otherwise you get an unfriendly error message. Dumbass webmaster.) I type in my account info, and it tells me I owe twice as much as my paper bill says I owe ($120 instead of $60). I find this very confusing and worrying, so i call the water company back and ask them how much I owe. The woman tells me--in her emotionally dead, monotone voice--that I owe $60. Good news for me. So I tell her about my confusion with the website, that it say I owe twice that much. She tells me that a payment was received 3 weeks ago, and that the website billing info is only updated ONCE A MONTH. WTF?! I nearly sent them all my food money for the month because I thought I owed them $120!! Isn't the whole freaking purpose of paying your bill over the web is that you have access to up-to-the-minute (or lord, at least up-to-the-DAY) information?! I politely tell her I know it's not her fault, but maybe she could pass on to her manager a suggestion that they update the site more frequently. She says, "ok," in that tone of voice that means, "yeah, right. fuck you. Like I don't have better ways to spend my time than pass your stupid-ass suggestions onto my mangager." I repeated my request, explaining that I nearly sent a lot of extra money which would have seriously hurt my ability to buy food for the rest of the month if I'd actually paid what the website said I owed, so it would be really nice she passed that along to her supervisor. Again came the same, "Ok." You know, I was in a good mood until I called them...

1960s Italian Lambretta Commercial

I don't know what they heck they're saying, but DAMN i want to go out and buy a scooter! Now if I can only get the frigging song out of my head... I'm never going to be able to fall asleep now.



p.s. The lyrics! The Lyrics! My kingdom for the lyrics!


 

Barbie Girl on YouTube

Ok, for some reason I like this video. (And no, not just because "Barbie Girl" is currently the ring tone on my cell phone). Also, the guy lip syncing the barbie part is cute. (Fishy is reading this and going, "Ew! He needs a haircut!") But there's something sexy about him. In part, I think I just like that he's not willing to make a fool of himself. That's an attractive quality if u ask me.



Update: Ooh! and he's shirtless in this one. Such a cutie...

Shirtless Twink Spanish Flea Dance

Oh my god. This is just beaufully random. What the hell are they doing???? I love it! The fact that two cute shirtless twinks are actually the ones doing the dance only adds to the enjoyment.

When Spiders Attack (bumble bees.)

I'm watching this amazing thing right now in my server room. I came up here when I got home from work to check on a file I'd been downloading. I was just sitting at the computer when all of a sudden I hear this scary buzzing sound coming from next to me. I jumped up and looked down and saw this big scary bumblebee crawling on one of my external hard drives. I've heard rumors that bumblebees don't sting, but it was big and scary and only 2 feet away, so I backed away and quickly found a container I could use to trap it and take it outside. Then I called Fishy to see if he had any ideas about how such a beast got into the house, let alone the server room.

Then, just as I was explaining things to Fishy, I realized that the bee was moving strangely. And then I saw the spider. A small little spider crawling on top of the bee. And next thing I knew, the spider had essentially swung the bee over its back and was dragging it away. The bee was trying to crawl in the opposite direction, but without luck. The interesting thing was that other than that initial buzzing that got my attention, it didn't really flap its wings again, or even seem to try all that hard to get away, which led me to think that perhaps the spider had poisoned it to paralyze it. They struggled back and forth for a while. At one point the spider grabbed hold of a nearby Hershey's kiss wrapper, as if to prevent itself from being dragged away, but of course the wrapper just got dragged along with it, and now I think they've been webbed together. I wasn't sure at first who would win, but its clear at this point that the spider is the victor. This all started over an hour ago, and although the bee can still move a little of its own free will, it's not going anywhere. Still, I've been all but mesmerized by it for the last 60 minutes. I told Fishy all we need now is James Earl Jones doing a voiceover for the PBS "When Spiders Attack" special.

My intial reaction to scoop up the bee and take him outside suddenly became more complicated. Should I help the bee escape the spider? The bee is clearly the victim here. But the spider is probably hungry too, and what if this spider needs this bee to survive so that it can go on and kill the other bees in my house (I still don't know how Mr. Bumbles got in here, after all!) In the end, I decided to do nothing. I mean, if this had been a little kid who was trying to kill bees, I would have helped the bees. But this was a spider who depends on this sort of thing for its survival. And the bee had invaded my house, after all! Any other animal whose home had been invaded would have fought off or killed such an intruder. I felt a little like a nature photographer must feel watching a cheetah take down a gazelle. Do I help the poor gazelle? Or let nature take its course?

So now I'm nervous about this spider. Fishy suggested that I take pictures (mostly because he wanted to see), and I'll post it as soon as I get a chance to upload the photo, but the spider looks rather striking. (I wish I still had the macro lens I rented for the Philly flower show this year!) I'm a little scared to be living around a tiny little spider that can take down a big bumblebee. I already checked the web (no pun intended. haha) and it's not a brown recluse (I'm pretty sure), but I don't know whether it's dangerous to humans or not, so I'm hoping someone will recognize the sucker (again, no pun intended. hahaha) and tell me what it is, and whether I should move out of my house until it's gone.

UPDATE: looks like it's a cobweb spider. See here for comparison.

Hypoglycemic Asians

So many of the Asian people I've known have had hypoglycemia. What this boils down to is the fact that they get grumpy and bitchy when they get hungry. Fishy--himself of Chinese descent, and certainly grumpy and bitchy when he's hungry--recently pointed out that Asians eat a lot of rice--one of the foods they always tell you to avoid because of it's hypoglycemic index (meaning it gives you an energy rush, and then you crash hard afterward). He asked the very interesting question: are Asians hypoglycemic because they eat so much rice, or do they eat so much rice because they're hypoglycemic. I asked the followup question: Maybe they're not hypoglycemic at all. Maybe they're just crashing after eating a lot of high-glycemic foods like rice. Thoughts?

Overheard

Overheard on Penn's campus:

Boy#1: Do you know Eric Schwartz?

Boy#2: Can you be more specific?

Iron Sudoku Rankings Analysis

The rankings were finally posted today at Iron Sudoku!! I've decided to analyze the formula they use, because I have, as Fishy tells me, "too much free time."

The individual puzzles at Iron Sudoku are scored this way:

Easy: 1pt
Medium: 2pts
Hard: 3pts
Expert: 5pts

And there is one new puzzle every day.

Iron Sudoku has a ranking which it calls "Cream O' The Crop," which is computed with the following formula:
(total points earned ÷ total puzzles completed x 100) + (total puzzles completed)

Some have pointed out, therefore, that completing easy and medium level puzzles actually hurts your ranking, and so it makes more sense to do only the hard and expert level puzzles. (More interestingly, I don't believe this formula was posted previously, so nobody realized that they were actually hurting their ranking by returning to the site every day and doing the puzzle!)

The following chart shows the value of every puzzle to date. The blue (left) part shows a running score for someone who successfully completes every day's puzzle. The purple (right) part shows the running score for someone who completes only the hard and expert-level puzzles.

		All Puzzles			Hard & Expert Only
Date	Puzzle#	Points Earned	Total Points	Ranking Score	Points Earned	Total Points	Ranking Score
Mar-11	1	1	1	101.0	0	0	0
Mar-12	2	3	4	202.0	3	3	301.0
Mar-13	3	1	5	169.7	0	3	301.0
Mar-14	4	5	10	254.0	5	8	402.0
Mar-15	5	2	12	245.0	0	8	402.0
Mar-16	6	2	14	239.3	0	8	402.0
Mar-17	7	2	16	235.6	0	8	402.0
Mar-18	8	3	19	245.5	3	11	369.7
Mar-19	9	2	21	242.3	0	11	369.7
Mar-20	10	3	24	250.0	3	14	354.0
Mar-21	11	2	26	247.4	0	14	354.0
Mar-22	12	1	27	237.0	0	14	354.0
Mar-23	13	2	29	236.1	0	14	354.0
Mar-24	14	1	30	228.3	0	14	354.0
Mar-25	15	3	33	235.0	3	17	345.0
Mar-26	16	2	35	234.8	0	17	345.0
Mar-27	17	3	38	240.5	3	20	339.3
Mar-28	18	5	43	256.9	5	25	364.1
Mar-29	19	2	45	255.8	0	25	364.1
Mar-30	20	1	46	250.0	0	25	364.1
Mar-31	21	1	47	244.8	0	25	364.1
Apr-01	22	1	48	240.2	0	25	364.1

What should be obvious is that not only should you avoid doing the easy and medium puzzles, but you should also avoid the hard ones! You can see that every time the purple player finished a hard (3-point) puzzle, his score actually went DOWN. If a player had only completed the expert level puzzles above, his score as of today would be 502.

The most ironic part about this is that the site says that the rankings system is there "For the players with a bit of a competitive spirit," but this ranking system actually discourages players from participating! Indeed, a player trying to maximize his/her score would have only played twice in the last 22 days!

Fortunately, Iron Sudoku does have a second ranking, which it calls "Village Elders," which is simply a straight tally of the number of points a player has accumulated so far. In that system, it makes sense to do the puzzle every day, since your score can only go up. The advantage of the "Cream O' The Crop" ranking is that anyone can start at any time and still have a chance at a good ranking, whereas the highest ranking Village Elders are almost guaranteed to be the people who have been playing the longest. (If you look at the chart again, you'll see that the purple player has a Village Elder ranking of only 25 points, whereas the blue player has a ranking of 48.)

It's been suggested that they create a ranking determined by how quickly you solve the puzzle. Personally, I oppose such a ranking. Sometimes I sit down and work on the puzzle straight through til I'm done, but more often I print it out and do it on the bus, entering the solution on the web later in the day. Or I work on it in bits and pieces while I'm at work. Also, IronSudoku.com is my homepage, so that I don't forget to do it every day. That means as soon as I open my browser, the timer would start, even if I'm not ready to start looking at the puzzle itself yet.

So none of these rankings is an accurate gauge of how good a player is. Cream O' The Crop rewards people who DON'T play. Village Elders punishes people who might be better players, but haven't been on the site as long. And a time-based ranking punishes people who don't have time to complete the puzzle all in one sitting. And of course it's all fairly meaningless anyway in a world where sudoku-solving software like Simple Sudoku et al make it easy to cheat. (Simple Sudoku is a fantastic program, btw, which is good for far more than just cheating!)

None of this will stop me from doing the Iron Sudoku puzzle every day; I just like to do Sudoku, and I like their chat room feature, and the interface for actually doing the puzzle is the best I've seen on a website.

So that's my analysis for now.

UPDATE: I've been fooling around a little more with the Excel spreadsheet I set up to examine the "Cream O' The Crop" formula because something hit me: the formula includes a term for "# of puzzles completed," and at some point, that becomes the dominant term and the other part of the ranking becomes negligible. Assuming that the exact same pattern of puzzle difficulty from these first 22 days repeats itself over and over again, and assuming that the purple and blue players continue their same pattern of playing, then on day 205, purple and blue are tied with a score of 423.5. Then, on day 206, blue finally surpasses purple with a score of 424.9 to 423.6. If purple instead pursues a strategy of playing only expert-level puzzles, then blue doesn't surpass purple until day #310, with a score of 528.1 to 528. This means that the strategy of playing only harder puzzles is only a good one for the first 204 (or 309) days, at which point purple should switch to blue's strategy of finishing every day's puzzle.

Update #2: Wait! Stop the presses! I was wrong again! More in a minute after I figure out the details!

Update #3: Of course, it was a silly mistake. Assuming that the blue player plays every day, then if the purple player misses even a single day, there is no strategy that is guaranteed to keep him ahead of blue forever. So the expert-only strategy works fine for those first 309 days, but after that, purple will never have a higher score than blue ever again. (The logic is sound, even though it's possible that my actual numbers might be a little off if I typed something wrong into Excel at some point, or because Excel is rounding to the nearest tenth of a point.) Hopefully there will be no more updates, if only because it's almost my bed time. G'nite!