These people are just plain creepy. Check out this video about a group that claims the “cure gayness”. Talk about the the cure being worse than the disease! This would be wicked satire if it weren’t real.

We barbarians are doing a bit or redecorating. Over the next few days I hope to complete the modifications to BigheaD‘s ChinaRed theme.

I’ve lived a sheltered life. I always thought that “putting on my dancing shoes” was some kind of metaphor. I now not only know that there really is such a thing as dancing shoes, but I am the proud owner of my very own pair.

The spins in salsa were getting a bit too difficult to do in street shoes, so I decided more appropriate footwear was in order. The main problem here in Japan (other than finding a pair consisting of two lefts) was fitting my size-eleven feet.

I headed to a huge four-story dance emporium in Shibuya that claimed on the phone to stock my size. Two things struck me about the place. First, I was probably the only straight male to have set foot in the store this month. Second, the place was pure “Capitalism at Work.”

While I stood there with the female clerks staring at my feet and the male shoppers staring at my ass, I was amazed at how much money people were spending on dance accessories. Some of these people were dropping hundreds and even thousands of dollars.

Teaching people to dance is one thing, but the real money is made in selling them a whole lifestyle.

I just finished reading Blink, an interesting little book about how we tend to make split second judgments and how those judgments tend to be surprisingly accurate. It seems that we assume tall people are the leaders.

The book cites Malcolm Gladwell’s research on the height of Fortune 500 CEOs. It seems the average male CEO is 6′ tall while the average American is a scant 5’9″. It gets even more interesting as people get taller. A full 58% of the CEOs ore over 6′ and 30% of them are over 6′ 2″. In the general population these numbers are 14.5% and 3.9%, respectively.

Interesting stuff. All together now…

I don’t want no short people ’round … don’t want no short people ’round me.

Long ago in my backpacking days, whenever I entered a new town the stray dogs would tell me how friendly the residents were. Not that they spoke to me directly, son-of-Sam style, but the meaning was just as clear.

If I entered a village and the dogs were well fed and ran up to me with their tails wagging, I knew I would be warmly received by the locals.

If, on the other hand, the strays were all skin and bone and snarled at me from a short distance away, the residents would undoubtedly be of similar disposition. I’d move my wallet to an inside pocket, zip my jacket up a little tighter and move on as soon as I could.

I’ve been reading a lot of evolutionary biology recently. It is intriguing to see how many of our rational behaviors are actually manifestations of deeply ingrained instinctual responses. The emotional responses we have to encroachment on what we perceive to be our territory being one of the primary ones.

I realized the other day that the dog that barks at me from behind a fence every time I walk by is barking at me for precisely the same reason that his master built the fence in the first place.

Both dog and master are telling all those who pass by “This is my territory.”

I’ve been learning salsa recently. I’m still pretty awkward, but I have a lot of fun. The other night I had a blinding flash of the obvious. The man must lead. No, I mean, the man really MUST lead. That’s the whole point of the dance.

A man can be a terrible dancer and cause the couple to trip over each others shoes, and the woman will laugh about it and keep dancing. A woman, however, has little tolerance for any partner who will not confidently lead her.

Any two items from this store prominantly displayed in a man’s living room will ensure that he will never, ever, fricking ever get laid.

Today’s example of fat people in denial is that researches at University of Wisconsin-Madison are saying that not only is obesity caused by a virus, but that it might be contagious. Apparently adenovirus Ad-3, rather than the documented increase in per-capita calorie intake, is responsible for the fattening of America.

Read more here.

My favorite passage…

Whigham says there is still a lot to learn about how these viruses work, as there are people and animals that get infected and don’t get fat and as yet it is not known why. … [T]he virus creates a tendency to obesity that must be triggered by overeating.

So if you are infected by this virus and you overeat you will get fat. Apparently this is completely unrelated to the fact that if you are uninfected and overeat you will get fat.

The Nobel Committee could not be reached for comment.

It makes a great stocking stuffer for those with more money than sense. It’s an iPod holder made of white gold and encrusted with 10.35 carats of diamonds. A bargain at only $12,495.

It’s not often I get called a Nazi and a liberal on the same day.

Although, I have to say it’s tragic that in America today the ideals of Jefferson and Locke are considered to be just as extreme as those of Gobbles and Himmler.

In both cases we were talking about the new gun control measure passed in San Francisco, or more accurately, we weren’t talking about it. I admit I know very little about the details of the measure that was passed. Interestingly, both of my acquaintances interpreted my pressing them for details as opposition to their views.

Then it hit me. Political discourse today is little more than asserting brand preference. Pro-life vs pro-choice, pro-war vs anti-war, development vs environmentalism. I know people think they are thinking, but in general all sides simply parrot the marketing message defined for them.

To me, discussing the implications of a gun-control law I know nothing about is pointless, but I have no brand loyalty on that issue. Interestingly, most discourse actually seems to take place at the abstract brand level, and the details of specific instances are ignored.

Asking someone “Do you support gun control” is nothing more than asking them to state their brand loyalty. A rational answer is “What specific proposal are you talking about? Banning all firearms? Not permitting the clinically insane to own machine guns? What?” But we rarely hear that. We are conditioned to answer such questions with the same mental processes we use to answer the question “Which is better Jack Daniels or Maker’s Mark?”

…but it’s still depressing. Was talking to a girl the other night who was “really into classic rock.”

That’s Cool.

“Yeah, I love Nirvana, The Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine. You know, all those old bands!”

That’s not funny.

A few nights ago, I had drinks with a friend of mine who works for a venture capital firm, and we were talking about risk aversion. He was berating others in the industry — his investors in particular — for being afraid to take risks. Everyone was “too afraid to lose money to make money.”

Then it occurred to me.

“Well what kind of risks do you take?”

“Are you kidding? We’ve funded some of the most risky early-stage ventures out there. That’s what it’s about.”

“Yeah, but that’s not your money. What kind of risks do you take? I mean how do you put your own money (or life) at risk?”

“Well, I put my reputation on the line whenever I recommend an investment.”

“Uh Huh. But you’re paid to makes those calls. You are not fired or fined — or even maimed — if you get it wrong. You have to deploy the money. You are punished if you don’t do so. In your case, taking a real risk would be not investing money when other VCs are because you considered the investment to be too risky. In a sense you are just as risk averse as your investors.”

“It’s your round.”

The site has been down for a few days. We were hacked while I was in Washington DC. I’ve changed the locks, so things are secure, but please be patient while I sweep up the broken glass, repair the furniture, and generally get things back to normal.

My friend Sajjad is reporting on the quake, its after effects, and the relief efforts in Pakistan.

It’s more interesting and important than anything I have to say right now. Take a look at his Blog at http://www.sajjadzaidi.com/

With the exception of Afghanistan, every nation on the planet whose names starts with an A also ends with an A. The rule holds true for the seven continents and all 50 states in the US with the exception of Arkansas. If I had a bit more time on my hands, I could probably wrap a neat little conspiracy theory around this, but I’m not feeling particularly creative or motivated today.

The other evening I was chatting with an extremely sexy young woman involved in what is politely called the “Personal Finance” industry. She was trying to sell me on a fraudulent managed trust that was “certain” to return “at least” 15% a year.

It turned out to be a frustrating evening for both of us.

New varieties of this financial bullshit arise every day, and there are armies of salespeople pushing them. The simple truth, however, is that if any of these schemes actually worked, these salespeople would be investing in them rather then trying to sell them to us.

Most people selling these “investments” know very little about finance, investing or tax laws. And why should they? Their job is to part you from your money not to invest it. They are compensated based on how much money they can convince people to invest. How much money their clients make is completely irrelevant. It’s all perfectly legal, but it’s a scam.

Anyway, the interesting thing is that when most salesmen are called on their bullshit, they shrug it off and occasionally will even admit the deceptions before changing the subject to sports.

Saleswomen, on the other hand, seem to really believe their own bullshit. You can jokingly point out the deceptions, inconsistencies and outright lies in what the firm is saying (never what she is saying, of course), but they just keep at it.

Why is it that men are content to simply rob you, while women need to convince themselves they are actually doing you a favor? The end result is the same in either case, but they must get something out of this self deception.

The reason most computer programs are confusing and hard to use is because they are written by programmers. Generally speaking, programmers are not some of nature’s better adapted creatures. In fact, you can tell a lot about the neuroses of a particular programmer just by using the UI they create.

A few minutes ago I was entering info on a web site. Apparently, I made a mistake on one of the fields because after I submitted the form I was was presented with the following error message

Number format invalid!!!!

That’s right, four exclamation points. It then cleared my info and made me start again. Clearly this guy has some major anger-management issues he needs to work through.

Equally bad are the programmers with decision anxiety. You know the ones. You tell the program to delete an entry and a message pops up asking

This entry will be deleted. Do you want to proceed?

Yes. Click.

Are you sure?

Am I sure?! Yes, damnit! Seriously, what are the odds of me having changed my mind in the last fraction of a second? Delete the damn record.

Is it just me or is the news stranger than usual these days.

From Reuters:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Armed bandits in Brazil robbed a vehicle carrying more than 400 breast implants, officials said Tuesday.

“It happened last week, but we only learned about it recently as our clients started complaining. It is the hottest period of the year in terms of implant sales,”� said Margaret Figueiredo, director of silicone implant manufacturer Silimed.

Police were quoted as saying they expected the case to result in several large busts.

Researchers at Yale managed to teach monkeys the value of money. Monkeys learned to use silver coins to buy food, gamble, and as the New York Times Magazine explains:

Something else happened during that chaotic scene, something that convinced Chen of the monkeys’ true grasp of money. Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of money, after all, is its fungibility, the fact that it can be used to buy not just food but anything. During the chaos in the monkey cage, Chen saw something out of the corner of his eye that he would later try to play down but in his heart of hearts he knew to be true. What he witnessed was probably the first observed exchange of money for sex in the history of monkeykind. (Further proof that the monkeys truly understood money: the monkey who was paid for sex immediately traded the token in for a grape.)