fate keeps on happening

Nothing to see here. Move along.

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Breaking Bad: A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal

Walt: We have to move our product in bulk. Wholesale. Now, how do we do that?
Jesse: What... do you mean to like... a distributor?
Walt: Yes! Yes, that's what we need. We need a distributor. Now, do you know anyone like that?
Jesse: Yeah. I mean, I used to... until you KILLED him.

Stargate Universe: Subversion

Dr Rush: I just had a very interesting dream.
Colonel Young: Everyone thinks their dreams are interesting. Nobody else cares.

Norm Sherman's rap: Utah Where Da Party Is

I've been listening to Drabblecast. Here's their own description, "Short stories at the far side of weird". Sometimes they highlight weird news. In this podcast, narrator/producer Norm Sherman presents his rap version of the whole Utah teen arrested for rapping his order deal. It's the first item on Drabblecast 164. I love this podcast.

Happy Town: In This Home on Ice

Sheriff Griffin Conroy: I thought that after our talk last week, we had an agreement. What are you still doing in my county?

Merritt Grieves: Oh my goodness. Did you really just utter a version of "this town ain't big enough for the both of us"? How splendid! A man can go his entire life without hearing a sheriff say those words to him.

Jesus, that Sam Neil can play one helluva scary guy.

American Dad: Cops and Roger

Roger: I'm tired of being weak. HELP ME!!

Stan: I've been waiting to hear those words for a long time. I just prayed they'd come from my son and not an alien in a sports bra.

Decisions, decisions, decisions...

Dan Ariely is a behavioral economist, (which sounds like a fascinating job), whose research focuses on decision-making. His experiments demonstrate that emotional states, moral codes and peer pressure affect our ability to make rational decisions. As a result, we don't!

His interest began with a long stay in the hospital, where, as a burn victim, he had to endure the pain of bandage removal. The nurses practiced the quick method of bandage remove (short duration, high intensity) rather than the slow method (long duration, less intensity). Dan wanted to try the slow method, but was unsuccessful in persuading them. The nurses believed they were following the correct model to minimize the patient's pain. Later, when questioning one of his favorite nurses, she speculated that her reluctance to try the slower method was due not only to her feeling that her intuition was correct, but also because the process was painful to her and shortening it minimized her own pain. This irrational decision-making, along with several others at that time resulted in his quest to study what he refers to as our "predictable irrationality".

I've always found default-based decision making to be interesting. One of Mr Ariely's examples: When the DMV's organ donation option is opt-in (check the box if you want to donate), very few become organ donators. When the option is opt-out (check the box if you don't want to donate), most people become organ donators. Why? Because we don't care enough to lift a pencil and check a box? Or perhaps, it's because we do care and when faced with a difficult decision, we allow ourselves to be influenced by external factors... societal norm, recommendation by an expert, expectation of our government, etc...

Now, here's an interesting example of clever advertising and the resultant irrational decisions made by consumers. In an ad for the Economist, the web & print subscription looks like a great deal. Get both for $125, which is the same price as the print subscription alone. But, remove the least popular choice, the print subscription, and present people with the web subscription for $59 or the print & web subscription for $125, and all of a sudden, the $59 web subscription is the most popular choice.

Mr Ariely: "We understand our physical limitations and build around them. If we understood our cognitive limitations as well as we understand our physical limitations, we could design a better world."

Dan Ariely is the author of Predictably Irrational. Check out his website and these fascinating videos:

• TED talk: Dan Ariely asks, Are we in control of our own decisions?
• TED talk: Dan Ariely on our buggy moral code
• Authors@Google: Dan Ariely

Psych: The Head, the Tail, the Whole Damn Episode

Lassiter: I don't want to throw out five crazy theories, just to get one right. I am a police detective and police detectives do not surmise that banks are knocked over by groups of angry cats with laser beams.

 

Sean: I never said they were angry; they were simply following orders.

Strictly Sexual

This movie got some interesting reviews, so I checked it out on Netflix and it was pretty good!

Stanny: I don't know why there's this myth that women get dependent on men. I mean, every day in America, some guy snaps and kills his girlfriend. They gotta get restraining orders taken out against them all the time. Women never do that. Oh, you think you're immune, pal? Well, brother, you just ain't met the girl you wanna fuckin' kill some day!

 

Tuttle Pharmacy in Santa Rosa

Duck undercarriages on the ceiling at this most awesome of pharmacies.

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