Another dream

Some of y'all might be tired about reading about some of my strange dreams, but for those who are not, here is another one I had last night:

I was on a trip. I am not sure where I started and where my final destination was, but I believe it involved a cross-country trip. I was flying Delta Airlines. My first step was in Cleveland. There I caught a plane to another Ohio city from which I was supposed to fly to Sacramento, then to Fresno, and then to my final destination. I actually woke up as I was scrambling to find my gate in the second Ohio city.

Why this dream? I am not sure. I do have a trip to San Antonio coming up later this week, but I did not have this dream (so far as I can remember) when I last went to San Antonio. The Delta connection may not be co-incidence. Back when I lived in Maryland, Delta used its Atlanta hub to route me from National Airport to Seattle once. The route in this dream, of course, appeared to be even more circuitious.

Possible hypocrisy

Some bozos have littered some of the bulletin board kiosks around campus with advertisements for job openings:


These jobs are supposed to be with an "environmentally responsible" organization. This behavior does not seem consistent with that assertion!

Real Geeks Usually Don't Leave Home Without a Thumb Drive

Well, would you dispute that contention?

In these days of counterfeiting, of course, the qualifier may be important.

Kilgore Trout

Today brought the sad news of the passing of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.. Few people have ever been able to match his dry sense of humor. I was intrigued ever since I first read Player Piano in my 11th grade English class.

In Cat's Cradle, a man is stranded in a very poor country. To detract the poor from their plight, the guro who founded the Bokonon religion persuaded the dictator of the country to ban the faith as a way to increase its intrigue. People who were found to practice faced immediate execution with a giant hook. The Book of Bokonon is passed clandestinely among residents. The main character revels as having read the entire Fourteenth Book of this gospel, entitled "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?” The entire text of that book: "Nothing." (My impression is that, on top of being a bit of a cynic, Kurt Vonnegut was not particularly optimistic.)

A character who recurs in several books is the unfortunate author Kilgore Trout. Mr. Trout has one fan--an eccentric millionaire named Elliott Rosewater--but every time Mr. Rosewater attempts to contact Mr. Trout through his last publisher, it turns out that the publisher has gone out of business. (Perhaps Mr. Trout might have found more of a niche audience today, thanks in part to blogs and other online media). Even with book royalty checks never maerialializing, Mr. Trout does not get paid for his short stories, either. They are printed without payment by publishers of hard core pornography material who need some text to accompany their filthy pictures. In fact, the sleezy publishers don't even send Mr. Trout a "tear sheet" of his article, so Mr. Trout has to hunt for his published articles in used book stores. One day, Mr. Trout catches a ride with a truck driver, and the discussion turns to Mr. Trout's occupation. The trucker complains that he once had to spend a week-end in jail before his arraignment for a traffic violation. The jail was in a town that housed a major recycling plant, and old magazines are used in the place of toilet paper in the jail. The trucker remembers this awful short story he endured reading. As the trucker describes the story, Mr. Trout realizes that it is one he wrote.

Collaborative filtering and marketing sleuths

This week, we are covering electronic commerce--or Internet marketing--in my class.

Collaborative filtering is a process whereby an individual's purchases are compared against those of others. The actual algorithm used by Amazon is quite complex, but it basically compares what one customer bought against what was bought by others who shared one or ore of these specific purchases.

A simpler case involves the simple correlation of the purchase of a specific book with purchases of other books. Here, you will see the phrase "Customers who bought this item also bought:" and then a list of the books most frequently purchased by others who have bought this book.

To illustrate, I used the example of the author Jonathan Kellerman, who writes murder mysteries in which a psychologist applies his insight as a consultant to the police. I then off handedly mentioned that I had been toying about the idea of a rather eccentric and absent minded professor--purely fictional despite any possible resemblance to actual individuals--who solved murder mysteries. I then pursued my point: Fiction books can be difficult to classify, so a lot of people might enjoy Jonathan Kellerman books without ever learning that another psychologist--Stephen White--also writes murder mysteries with the protagonist being a psychologist who uses his gifts in much the same way. Using the correlated list, however, it only takes a small percentage of people who know of both for the knowledge to spread readily.

The same idea can be applied to music. What causes artists to be perceived as "similar," or, more precisely, "enjoyable from the same taste perspective?" This could be driven by lyrics, vocal sound, musical style, or a number of other factors. Without knowing the exact classificatory variables, correlated sales can again pinpoint such complementarities.

My grandfather was a bee keeper

This heading might sound like the title of a country song--or, for that matter, a hip hop or folk song. Opera or jazz might make less sense.

In any event, I actually did not write lyrics this time. However, yesterday morning, I was having breakfast at Denny's. On the table, not surprisingly, were small "pockets" of sugar and cream powder. This reminded me of my grandfather's habit, when dining at restaurants, of pocketing all the left over sugar packs on his table to make sugar water for his bees. Not a very efficient process, but my grandfather loved getting value for his money.

Way back before I was born, my grandparents, my mother, and my uncles were driving across the United States for some reason. (I suspect the reason for the trip was a rational one, but I never pursued that issue). At the time, a price war was going on among the different gas stations. My grandfather would keep tuned to local radio stations and would detour as much as ten miles from the route in order to take advantageof a good deal.

Could this be the theme of a country song? Maybe, but I need a bit more inspiration.

Terribleness

In a recent episode of Gilmore Girls that was re-run tonight, Emily complains about the ills of the world, especially the failures of her club. "The most terrible thing," she protests, is the food--especially the fact that they rarely ever serve fish.

"That's terrible!" Lorelai exclaims in sympathy. "Especially for those who love fish."

Partial list of nightmares

In case some of you have lost track, this is a partial list of nightmares I have had over the years:

1. Receiving null results on a research study.
2. Neglectting to attend an English class for the entire term in college.
3. Having to maximize some likelihood in a multivariate statistics course in the Ph.D. program.
4. Neglecting to turn in my assignments for the whole term in my Ph.D. program course in econometrics.

I will revise this post and add items as they come to memory.

New nightmare--or warning not to do the things I have dreamt I have done!

Recently, I dreamed that I would have to face another set of doctoral qualifying exams.

Last night, I dreamed that I was back in the Ph.D. program and had--for reasons that were not clear--neglected to turn in my assignments throughout the semester in my econometrics class.

These specific dreams are new. Periodically, I have a nightmare that I am back in college and have neglected to attend an English--presumably composition--course for the entire quarter. This may be because I received advanced placement in English and therefore did not have to take the composition courses. The only English course I took was a course in the Bible as literature.

Let this be a warning to my students not to do the things I have dreamt that I have done!

Could this be material for a country song? The audience is probably not quite right. An opera might be more suitable, but I am not sure how commercially rewarding it is to write those.

The Ernst & Young Tax Guide 2007 available for gift wrapping

Every now and then, automated online stores automatically generate content in product descriptions that a human would recognize as potentially unsuitable for the particular product. One book site, for example, encouraged those who had viewed the description of one book to sign up to receive notification when Wiliam Shakespeare comes out with his next book. (Yes, I know that it is widely believed that many of the works attributed to Shakespeare were actually written by other people, but nevertheless...)

Today, I noticed that Amazon proudly reported that The Ernst & Young Tax Guide 2007 was in stock and that "Gift wrap [was] available."

Jiving--or the failure to jive

The guilt of eves dropping on someone else's conversation which was reported below--a sorely tempting avenue for a psychologist--caused me to remember another communication that wasn't intended for me. As a prude, I am glad that I do not have a clear imagination of what may have gone on, but I quite suspect that the background was rather juicy. I only hope that the writer was married and that the implied activity was with his or her spouse. Yes, that's rather naive. As a "fall back" hope, I hope that the person elected not to be in a jiving state.

One day back in college, there was a prominently posted note on the door across from my apartment. I remember the message to this day: "You may call me a loser, but celibacy and I just don't jive."

Her dream revisited

Sometime ago in a post entitled "She Had a Dream," I discussed overhearing two women talking. One had had a dream that apparently had involved a comparison of the respective French fries served at Del Taco and Baskin Robbins. It never even occurred to me that a restaurant with a Spanish would feature fries. Apparently, the chain actually does. I can't imagine that Baskin Robbins will add this fare to its menu, but as this post attests, and as the song goes, "I've been wrong before." Admittedly not very often, but nevertheless.

Use innovation by a naive, eccentric, absent-minded professor

Use innovation involves customers finding a use for a product that was not initially intended by the inventor or manufacturer. It was found, for example, back in the old days before the advent of Campbell's "chunky" soups, that many consumers would, on their own, add "substance"--such as frozen vegetables or more meat--to the old cans of condensed soup.

Today, I was reading a student paper that involved beer pong balls. Supposedly, these would be used in a game--seemingly a very messy one--in which two teams would compete on who could first get a ball into each of the opposing team's cups. Yes, marketing this type of product raises some ethical issues, but before I could even get that far, I had to see what these looked like. I first did a Google image search, but most of the pictures did not show balls actually being thrown. Therefore, I went to Youtube to see some video footage of this game. Interestingly, both the two clips I saw featured hip hop music in the background. I realize that a sample of two is not much, but is it only urban, cool people--and not country bumpkins--who play this? Who ever dreamed of the idea that Youtube could be used for serious academic work?

On the ethical issue, anything that encourages drinking is rather suspect. However, I wonder if the amount of time spent on this game--which appears to confine the beer cups to a table--reduces the time left for drinking. Also, of course, we would have to hope that a lot of beer is splashed from the cups and thus not drunk. Better yet, I would hope that students would use this game with--and drink only--alcohol free beer. ("Yes," I can just hear some people say, "keep dreaming!")

More dreams...

Some dreams that I have had recently:

1. My mother was moving to some other country--the specific one was not clear--but until she could claim her furniture in that country, she had sent the furniture for storage in Japan.

2. I had to take another set of qualifying exams. This is some nine years after I made the final defense of my dissertation!

Salmon

The other day, I had dinner at my sister's. She mentioned that the salmon was Atlantic salmon.

"Have you ever tried Indian Ocean salmon?" I asked her.

"No, I haven't," my sister replied.

"Neither have I," I admitted.