Carlbot and Lisa

Casinos and Religion

This past week I had the "pleasure" to get to spend an hour at a local casino. I don't like casinos. They are sad and depressing and I don't understand the "thrill" of gambling. I was with someone who loves to play "the machines", ie the "slot machines".

What I found fascinating is the link between religion and gambling on a slot machine. Slot machines, if you are like me and didn't know what they are like today --apart from tv shows--, are essentially random pattern generators that allow for a vast array of "betting options" and a vast array of potential "winning patterns". The pitiful part is that there's no need for the complexity. It's just there as window dressing. You are still down to pushing a button and random things pop up on the screen. If you bet 1 point you will get a specific payout for the randomly generated pattern, if you bet 2 points a different pay out, but the whole thing is the result of single button push. You are really only making a meaningful choice in choosing how much to bet at any one time.

I suspect the "complexity" introduced by the manufacturer is to give you a sense that you are actually doing something more "exciting" than giving a machine money and pushing a button.

But what is even more fascinating is that there' s a couple different ways to "push the button". You can either push the "Place Bet Button followed by the Spin Button" or you can push the "Bet Max Button" or you can, on some machines, also pull a lever on the side.

Now I don't know much about the "mechanical machines", but recall that the fully electronic machines are programmed to be about as truly "random" as is possible and will never hit a "Hot streak" or be "primed to pay out". But I think people develop a certain sense that if they push the buttons in a specific order or "switch it around" it will help them to get a win. Or they feel there's some "pattern" they can follow to get a payout. I found myself falling into this as well...just naturally! And within 5 to 10 pushes of the button. It was a sense that I had to find something that would "work" to get my payout or keep myself form merely quickly losing $5 in a glorified "broken change machine".

People are looking for a pattern. Even when the odds are patently and clearly against them, as they are in a casino, the pattern is still sought to make good sense out of a random set of events. To ensure a good response, or at least ensure a lack of bad response.

I see religion as that as well. We are in a statistical machine and tasked with attempting to survive it against odds we have no, or limited, control over. In some cases we don't know what it is that is working against or for us by chance. And we seek those patterns, be they "lucky actions" or talismans or prayers to an unknowable force that will ensure our success.

LOLXEKS

Corporate Executives are much like cats. They take up a disproportionate amount of resources and are only seen occasionally. As such, I have come up with lolxeks (pronounced "LOL-ZEKS")

Carlbot & Lisa

Posts from the Edge

I am from a small town in Central Illinois. It is a town of about 11,000 people. We have about 3 churches for every resident, we have 2 Christian Bookstores and one used book store. The closest thing to a new bookstore is the WalMart on the edge of town which has single-handedly destroyed the downtown area. And while you are likely to see a sign for which girls softball team has won the latest state high school series, or you will be able to read all about Lincoln and his work as a circuit lawyer who stopped often in our town, you will have a damn hard time finding out that we are the hometown of a NOBEL LAUREATE.

I'm here visiting for the week visiting the parents and getting things done for them. I have no other real connection other than that with my hometown anymore. So I meander around the town trying to re-connect to the town. But it is a sad state of things to know I grew up in this town, spent the first 15 years of my life here and I never knew we were the home of Ed Purcell who won the Physics Nobel in 1952. He was a pioneer in nuclear magnetic resonance and radar at MIT. But I didn't know that until I was living in Boston reading a history of radar. I find out my dad knew Purcell's family.

You can come to this charming farm town and learn all about Lincoln and his "writ of quietus" he requested for the noisy pigs that lived under the courthouse while he was a lawyer. But you would think having a Nobel Laureate son was some sort of dirty secret.

The Fabled Writ of Quietus apparently also applied to talking about my hometown's addition to the world of science. Funny, sad, and it makes me wonder about America's priorities in relation to science.

Conference Presentation Schema

I just returned from a scientific conference. It was one for the chemists in the company I work for but I noted it was similar to other conferences I’ve been to. I’ve been fascinated over the years as I sit through more presentations. I’ve began to notice, as we all do, that presentations given at conferences appear to break down into certain categories. I suspect similar categorizations are available somewhere else on the internet already. But that won’t stop me from posting my own

Classification Scheme for Science Conference Presentations

Slogsentation: A presentation delivered relatively slowly, without any discernible inflection, near monotone, few breaks, very little in the way of organization, and almost always delivered just at the edge of the microphone’s ability to pick up the sound

Umsentation: A presentation with a density of “um” of >5 ums/20 actual words

Hypersentation: A presentation delivered at maximum speed. Accompanied by 1millisecond/slide

Hyposentation: A promise of actual information which immediately goes very deep into the topic without providing anything like background. Thereby rendering it to be of interest to only 3 people on the entire planet, only one of which is in the room at the time, that being the presenter.

Neutron Presentation: Maximum words on a slide coupled with Hypersentation

Recursive Presentation: Three slides forward, one slide back. Repeat.

Acrosentation: A presentation dominated by acronyms which are never spelled out.

Masturbsentation: Given near the end of the conference showing pictures of a small clique having fun or being “silly” earlier at the conference as if everyone knows the people in the pictures and that these are really fun and wacky people. This is the way to recognize the “really important and interesting people”, as opposed to the people you hung out with.

Bait & Switch: Title indicates technological information will be presented but this is dispensed with in about 2 slides followed by 40+ slides of marketing analysis.