Posts by Josh Addison
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I've seen the entire first season of Fringe, by... let's say magic, and I thouight it was excellent. (In contrast and I can't stand Lost.) John Noble gets better and better -- there's a moment in the second episode where he manages to show about fifteen emotions in the space of two seconds as he realises how tenuous his own grip on reality has become.
While the individual episodes are good "X-Files, but more science-y" fodder, the overall plot arc builds very celeverly, so that by the end of the season, events that would have appeared totally ridiculous at the start of the season (yes, even compared to a plane full of melting passengers) all seem to make perfect sense. Keep watching is my recommendation.
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Re: "how" vs "why", it sounds a little but like you're phrasing the same question in different ways. Sort of like "Where is X?" vs "What is the location of X?" Same question, different W words ("how" starts with a W for the purposes of this analogy).
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Tim Minchin's "Storm" seems apposite.
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Wouldn't work though. It's not the thousands of mini-prizes that everyone buys the tickets for. It's the chance to win the big one.
Who's this "everyone"? I just said I myself would be more motivated by more smaller prizes (where "small" is still in the tens of thousands). In fact, it wasn't the super big jackpot that motivated me to buy a ticket for this one, it was the "must be won" aspect that meant that the big jackpot amount could flow down to the lower divisions (though even that didn't work out...)
However, I'd be willing to believe that I'm not the norm here, and certainly the gigantic jackpot makes for better marketing material, so you may be right.
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Yep, bought a ticket, didn't win jack - big surprise. I'd say I understand statistics pefectly well, and I also get risk/reward cost/benefit balancing as well. I earn more than enough that the (very, very high) risk of wasting $8 on a ticket isn't going to hurt, and makes it worth the (very, very low) chance of winning a shitload of money. Hell, if $8 was the most money I'd ever thrown away on nothing, I'd be more than happy...
What did put me off ever doing it again was looking at the winnings afterwards, though - 1st division $36 mil, 2nd division $700,000, 3rd division... $900? How do they work out the weighting of the prizes? As others have said, if there were a bigger chance of winning a smaller prize, instead of astronomical odds against winning an astroniomical prize, I might be more tempted.
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We don't do Diminished Capacity in New Zealand, do we? I was introduced to the concept and its mutant cousin, Irresistible Impulse, a little while ago. My mind remains boggled to this day.
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Feel free to post your alternatives.
Menstruation.
Nothing to do with what it denotes, just the phonology of the word - four consonant sounds in a row, followed by a vowel and a diphthong. I fear I'm going to dislocate something every time I say it.
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As always, John Rogers talks clever-like (somewhat spoilery).
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Careful Josh, that's my geek button you're pushing.
Curiously, I feel violated by that comment, when it seems it should be the other way around...
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I hear "fascist", I think Rik from The Young Ones - any respect I might have just evapourates in the face of that image...