The semester is finally over and I feel a tremendous pressure lifted. I just finished the last of the discussions in my Protein Purification lab notebook, so I am completely done.

School pwnage

This has been one HELL of a semester, if indicated by nothing else than the fact that I have not been able to write a single blag the entire time.  Seriously. Melissa and I were both enrolled full-time (12 cr.) each. My schedule was noted on my last post, so I don’t need to go into that again. But let’s just say that between working ~40 hrs a week, doing 12 credits, taking care of house work, being a husband, and being a father to a rather ornery 1-year old, I had my arms, legs, and kidneys full.

The good part is that I know two of my grades so far: In Organic Chem II Lab, I got a 93% (A-). YES! And in Organic II Lecture, I got an A+. YES YES!!! I’m not sure of my grades in Biology or Proteins, although I suspect A’s (or at the very least, high B’s) in both.

House awesomeness

We recently discovered IKEA. OMG. I CAN HAS FURNITURE? I am in hot, sweaty, debaucherous love with that store. A couple days ago we spent roughly $800 on various furniture items, including a new computer desk (pictured), a dining room table, four chairs with pads, two shelf units for the kitchen, a bathroom sink/faucet/cabinetry/mirror combo, some plants, and various odds and ends.

I know that $800 seems like a lot, but it’s totally worth it. Those Swedes make damn fine products, and the price is right as well. (The computer desk pictured, or as Mel calls it, my “Geek Oasis”, was $90 and is FAR better quality than ANYTHING at Officemax. The dining room table we got, with four chairs, was $280 altogether.)

What really blows me away about the IKEA people though is how sensible they are; about EVERYTHING. The carts in the store? They have four rotating wheels so you can move laterally instead of only rotationally. The instructions are all clearly mapped out when you get them. They use s-shaped allen wrenches for much of the assembly (the s-shape makes it easier to rotate — most allen wrenches are L-shaped). They give you this little plastic widget for nailing in tiny nails so that you don’t accidentally hammer your fingers.

The table we got (pictured, left) has two leaves for expansion, but get this: the leaves are contained WITHIN THE TABLE! To expand it, you lift up one side of the table top about 2″, slide the leaf out, and then it locks into place. To un-leaf it, you lift up the table top again 2″, push the expansion back under, and there it is! You have to see it in action to appreciate the awesomeness.

In the past, at most furniture stores we go to, there’s generally an inverse relationship between price and quality. I expect that if something is cheap, it’s probably cheaply made. But I swear everything we’ve bought has been both inexpensive and really solidly made. They don’t use any particularly special materials, it’s just engineered very well.

But enough gushing about IKEA. The store is in West Chester, OH (near Cincy), approximately 48 miles from Richmond. You must go there and check it out. (They have a full restaurant, several mocked-up apartments in the showroom (full apartments!) — it’s quite easy to spend hours of time and lots of money there.

Oh! And we got CARPET finally!!!!

Sullivan

Sullivan is growing up so fast. He walks, runs around, wrestles with the dog, has already started signing, just had his first birthday, is downright hilarious at times, and learns things really quickly. Our Birth-to-five representative did some assessments on Sullivan and in all the categories except speech he’s as skilled as a two-year old. (He is 1 year, 1 month right now). Speaking he’s right on par (he says Da-da, but we’re not sure if he knows that he’s saying it yet).

I think part of the reason he is learning so quickly is that we just let him grow on his own. We don’t have any kind of agenda for him to stick with — no time schedule or “milestones” for him to meet. Neither of us are concerned that he’s developed physically before developing his ability to talk. We figure that when he’s ready to learn something, he’ll learn it — and we should be prepared to give him the exposure he needs to figure things out on his own.

We’ve been doing baby sign language. For anyone who has a toddler, or is expecting one, you *must* try this out. It’s awesome. Sullivan knows the signs for “hot” and “more”. It’s the most adorable thing in the world when you’re sitting there, giving him a cup of juice, and he makes the sign for “more.” It’s so neat to see what goes on in his head.

Fermentation

I’ve been brewing Ginger Beer/Ale. The only ingredients I use are ginger root and sugar. No yeast added or artificial flavors or anything. The yeast is airborne and grows in a culture beforehand. Melissa and I are planning on making a website with instructional videos for how to do it yourself — it’s really easy to do and it tastes pretty good once you figure out the formula right.

I’m still experimenting with some flavor options, and I plan on doing Root Beer next as soon as I can get my hands on some sarsparilla root and winter green leaves.

Freethought Society

The Richmond Area FreeThinkers Society website is finally up. RAFTS is a group that a few of us founded to be a collective haven for freethinking folks in this region. We’ve got a little over 20 members so far and our website is finally up. We have monthly meetings and a discussion list. All are welcome to join us any time! Check out the website for more information.

This Summer

• I’m taking a class: Decision Support Structures and Data Analysis (Informatics 430) on the Internet this summer. Should be a lot of fun — we’ll be learning about data mining and how to analyze large datasets.
• We’re getting our bathroom finished (finally!) in a week or two. Pictures up when it’s done.
• We’re planning a couple vacations — small ones. We’re thinking maybe Toledo, maybe Philadelphia area, maybe Dollywood — not sure. I’ve got about a weeks worth of vacation and thought we could really make it stretch if I do a series of 4-day weekends rather than a single week.
• We’re gardening vegetables and herbs. Haven’t planted yet, but planning to plant next weekend.
• Mother’s day and Melukkah are both coming up as well, and I know that Melissa is excited about that.
• We’ll probably be making routine trips to IKEA to buy more things. I’m totally addicted.
• I’ll try to blag some more this summer as well.

Categories: Friends, Family & Pets, Geekery, This New House, Ziggy aka Sullivan
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First week of classes (for me) is over. I’m taking the following courses:

1. Organic Chemistry II with Lab component
2. Introduction to Biology (aka “Biology 107″)
3. Protein Purification / Synthesis

First off this week was Organic II. My professor, Dr. Dhawale (”dah-WAH-leh”) had a medical procedure done at the end of last semester and is still out recovering. So our interim instructor for this class is Prof. Errol Huffman. I had never had Errol before, but he seems like a really neat guy. He’s a taller, skinny fellow, about my height, mostly balding with thin hair around the sides. He wears thin-rimmed glasses and has the kind of smile that  you can see on his mouth and in his eyes and face. He seems very cordial and has an engaging speech pattern.

Our first day of class he passed out an “eye-opener” quiz, designed to remind us of the material we learned in the first semester. Things like SN1/SN2 reactions, stereochemistry, free-radical halogenation, nomenclature etc.  Most of the people in class I recognized from Organic I, although there were one or two new faces. The girl I sat next to, a 20-something brunette with freckles that reminded me of Punky Brewster, was having trouble recalling some of the material from semester 1. She admitted that she’s a “cram-and-forget” student, angling for a Biology major. We compared notes with the two girls sitting in front of us — some of the questions were a bit ambiguous, which could have been caused by Dr. Dhawale’s English-as-second-language idiosyncrasies, or perhaps because of medication he’s on right now, or perhaps some combination of the two.

I chatted with a few other people in class. There was a guy and a girl I recognized from Organic I that talked with me about the Biotechnology program, a major that I’m considering as my next major after I graduate in the fall.

Thursday’s class was a proper class, although we mostly sat in the darkened room gazing at a Powerpoint slideshow reviewing the last chapter we covered in Organic I. The other half was a cursory introduction to Chapter 8, which deals specifically with Alkenes and Alkene synthesis.  Errol peppered the introduction with some interesting side-trivia bits. We learned Markinokov’s Rule, did some practice equations, and then went over to lab.

Organic II Lab is neat, although somewhat intimidating. I partnered up with a woman from my Organic I class; I think her name is Kim, but I don’t know for sure. I hadn’t taken Organic I lab and so I was still quite the greenhorn with respect to the practical material. We chatted for a bit: Kim told me that she was auditing Organic I to refresh on it for Organic II this semester, which she had also already taken. Apparently she and her daughter had a shitstorm of medical problems all hit at once at the end of the semester for Organic II — she withdrew on the last possible day to focus on her other courses, and then retook Organic this semester. So she was very familiar with what we’d be doing, which was reassuring, because I had no farking clue.

The first thing we did was use the “ITFR”, which I think stands for “Infrared-Beam-Shooting-Through-Chemicals-Reader.” Basically it’s a large grey device, probably about 2′ on each side and 1′ tall, connected to a computer. You prep this little metal widget with some crystals and a chemical you wish to read, slide it into a compartment in the front of the ITFR, and it shoots Infrared light through the chemical and reads the diffraction. We did Diethylamine (C2H5)2-NH, I think). The graph prints out a curve that looks sort of like a tremor sensor: lots of squiggles, a few dramatic dips. The dips are apparently what’s important. We’ll use this later on the semester for qualitative analysis of unknowns.

Back in the lab, we posted the Diethylamine (functional group: Amine) on the corkboard, grabbed some lab materials (test tubes, gloves, pipettes, etc.) and started doing some practice qualitative analyses of known chemicals. The lab manual has this binary-tree, kind of a 20-questions for chemicals: “Are you soluble in water? Are you soluble in Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH)? If I  fuse you with sodium, do you produce Nitrogen or Sulfur as a byproduct?” We use known chemicals for practice so we can practice the procedure and see if we get the expected result. It’s pretty tough — checking solubility on two clear chemicals is difficult because the layer isn’t always distinct. (imagine putting clear vegetable oil and water into a testtube, and then trying to locate the layer) I did learn two things though: (1) It’s only insoluble if it’s layered or forms a precipitate. I incorrectly identified 1-Butanol as insoluble in water because it was cloudy for a moment. Errol pointed out that cloudy simply meant it was hydrating, but slowly. Oops! (2) If the concentration is strong enough, a chemical can solvate anything. So using 3M Hydrochloric Acid when it calls for 5% HCl might not accurately reflect solubility.

On Tuesday and Thursday,  I had Biology. This time Errol was the designated Instructor for the class. The classroom is an average sized classroom, with lab benches around the perimeter and several 3 or 4-seater desks facing the front. Diagrams, posters, and a really neat large-scale DNA model adorn the walls. A body shower and eye-wash station are in the back, for those extremely-rare occasions of fire or chemical splash.

The course content seems really cool. It operates in a rather innovative (and apparently experimental) format:

1. We form into groups (4-5 people each)
2. Discuss the chapter we just read as groups
3. Discuss the chapter as a class (still in our groups)
4. Separate and take a quiz individually
5. Re-group and take the quiz as a group
6. Receive graded quizzes and compare with the key, at which point we are allowed to appeal, in writing, any answers where we differ from the key.
7. Still in groups, do lab work

The appeal process is especially interesting. Errol told me on Thursday that occasionally one of the other Prof’s (Sabine) will intentionally mark an answer on the key incorrectly so that it must be appealed. On Tuesday, I successfully recovered a point by identifying that Proteins are predominantly composed of Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, and Nitrogen where they key identified the fourth element as Sulphur. Go me.

Errol counted us off by threes and we all coalesced into our individual groups. Mine was composed of myself with three other people. Gary, an gentleman in his 40’s, is an EMT/First Responder that is taking classes with hopes of getting into the very competitive nursing program. Another fellow, a tall youth whose name escapes me, is dressed in urban garb. He’s as Biology major, is on the basketball team, and missed most of the season so far due to a knee-injury. He said that a good portion of the school’s team has been injured this season. The third person is a young married woman, around my age, although I’m not entirely sure what her major is.

For our first lab, our group had to pick 2 of 6 or 7 listed body traits (height, arm length, etc.) and experimentally determine if they were related. The idea is to get our feet wet with experimental design, procedure, and data collection / presentation. Our group chose height and foot length. Our hypothesis is: Does being tall grant larger feet?

On Thursday evening, we collected our data. When I get it all tabulated and graphed, I’ll post it up here (in case anyone is interested). To be fair, our sample size was 11 people, so the conclusion won’t be terribly conclusive.

The last class I had was Protein Purification, on Thursday midday. The classroom was the same room as my Organic II lab, but was much less populated. Most of the faces were familiar: people from Organic I and II, and there were 1 or 2 others that I didn’t recognize.

This class seemed very intimidating at first. Errol was acting as Dr. Dhawale’s substitute again, and to kind of review over some fundamentals, he did some transparencies and a crash course in protein composition: what proteins are composed of, how they are chemically formed and structured, what elements comprise individual amino acids, etc. It was simultaneously interesting and frightening. The scary aspect was mostly because I had no idea of the context of the course: Is it all independent study? Will we be guided? How much independent research do we need to do? Errol later told me that Dr. Dhawale will be going over the procedures and examples with us, when he returns.

My prognosis of difficulty for the semester:

Organic II > Organic II lab > Protein Synthesis > Biology

We’ll see if I’m correct…

Categories: Geekery
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The current assignment I have for my PHP class is to create a web-version of the children’s game, “Rock Paper Scissors”. As part of the description for the assignment, the instructor mentioned the World RPS website. Yes, “World RPS” as in: “The International Organization for Rock/Paper/Scissors Championships.” I’m totally serious.

At first, I thought it was funny. You know, a bunch of people getting together and having a good time. Probably drinking alcohol, cheering their favorite player on, etc. Then I found their “Gambit Plays” and “Advanced RPS” links. (Not hard to find, they’re on the left-nav of the home page) Gambit Plays illustrates the “8 great gambit plays”. Let me provide you with a choice sample and then explain why this bothers me:

[Picture, illustrating: "Rock, Paper, Paper", entitled "Fistful of Dollars". The caption reads: "This gambit is still arguably one of the great surprise offensive moves"] This move took the 1967 RPS World Championships by surprise and is arguably still one of the great surprise offensive moves. The rapid switch from offensive to defensive play can force an opponent into a vulnerable spot.

There are 8 others of a similar nature. The problem I have with this is that Rock,Paper,Scissors does not inherently HAVE a strategy. There is no implicitly dominant strategy. Picking “Rock” is the same as picking “Paper” is the same as picking “Scissors”. Each choice trumps one other and loses to one other. They are all equal. Furthermore, the page attempts to personify the individual choices with psychological traits:

Use of rock as an opening move is seen by many players to be a sign of aggression. Rock also happens to be the most effortless of the throws and fast reactions are never required to employ it with success. By careful examination of the options and atmosphere of play, a well-placed rock will crush a carelessly thrown pair of scissors every time.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that instead of throwing a “rock”, “paper”, or “scissors”, you’re throwing a letter: “A, B, C”. A beats B, which beats C, which beats A. Same relationship. Dig? Now, in that light, is ANY ONE or ANY SEQUENCE of throws ANY DIFFERENT than another? If I throw “A” is that a more aggressive play than throwing “B”? And if so, how? There’s no more risk involved in throwing “A” than there is in throwing “B” or “C”. I have nothing to gain or lose by choosing one over another. The same goes for RPS. If I throw “Rock,” that’s inherently no different than throwing Paper or Scissors. In fact, the best strategy to have is to have no strategy at all! Seriously! Think of it like this: There are three choices. Any given choice you choose is a 33% chance of losing and a 66% chance of not-losing (either a win or a tie). The only way you can disadvantage yourself is by playing with a system because your opponent might be able to predict your next move. If you play TRULY RANDOMLY (which is harder than it sounds) you will win 1/3 of the time (and lose and tie 1/3 of the time). Rock, Paper, Scissors is no different than if you each picked Heads or Tails and simultaneously flipped coins. Both heads or both tails means victory for one player, a mix of heads and tails or tails and heads means a tie. (Technically speaking, the odds of winning are now reduced to 25%, but the odds of tying are raised to 50%, so its comparable)

Adding a Fourth

RPS is not really a true game of strategy. But how do you make it one? Force the players to make strategic or economical decisions. Take some REAL risk. For example, by simply adding in a fourth symbol. We’ll call it, for the sake of example, “Tofu.” (Please feel free to come up with a better name) The new matrix looks like this (the cell value shows the victor for any given matchup):

The first thing you’ll notice is that Rock now beats paper (as I’ve always thought it should. Ever heard of a paper-weight?). The new contender, tofu, only beats rock, and loses to everything else. See the difference in strategy now? Rock beats 2/3 of the things thrown against it. All the other choices only beat 1/3 of the opposing choices. But the essential difference here is that Rock and Tofu balance each other. Rock may seem like a dominant strategy because it beats 50% of the opposition. But if the other player plays “Tofu” then the Rock player loses. The opponent is also aware of this dynamic. Playing “Rock” is now requires more decision making, and playing “Rock, Rock, Rock” (the “Avalanche” gambit from worldrps) is now most definitely a Gambit! A game would probably go something like this:

While the metagaming here may look like real RPS, the important difference is one of statistics. You cannot just randomly throw one of the four and expect to win the same amount as your opponent. It *forces* you to consider what your opponent is doing instead of just blindly throwing whatever (Blindly throwing random hands will cause you to lose 50% of the time, tie 25% of the time, and win 25% of the time.)

I do want to say that I don’t mean this to be  knocking on the RPS champs at all — I’m sure the championships are a whole lot of fun, exciting, and a good time. I’m merely saying the the game is, in itself, not a strategy game, ergo there are no “gambits”.

Categories: Geekery, Humor
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Back again with more prosetylization, but this time the stakes are higher.

I direct you to an article written in CNN money online. It profiles a man named Kevin Hamm: businessman, self-taught low-level programmer, devout Christian, and the world’s most profitable domainer. His portfolio is currently worth approximately 300M, he makes about 70M per year in click-thru advertising, and runs the site “agoga.com”, which if you’ve ever typed a misspelled or generic url into your url bar, there’s a good chance you’ve seen it.

His latest deal? A bargain with the COUNTRY OF CAMEROON.

Cameroon owns the “.cm” top-level domain (TLD). For example: “www.widgets.cm” would be the Cameroonian equivalent of “www.widgets.us” (the United States TLD). However “www.widgets.cm” is remarkably close, in fact, only a typo away from “www.widgets.com”. Do you see where this is going?

The deal that Hamm struck up with the Cameroonian government is that every time someone goes to an unregistered “.cm” address, their servers automatically redirect the traffic to his agoga.com website. So if you type in “www.alskjlakweranleka.cm”, it should (and I believe, DOES) redirect you to agoga.com. But so would legitimate misspellings, like “www.microsoft.cm” or “www.wordpress.cm.” Cameroon gets a small cut of any profits from redirection, of course, but that’s a small price to pay given that this deal virtually registers a near-infinite amount of domains, BY DEFAULT, with Cameroon.

Hamm is also pursuing similar deals with Colombia (.co — also a .com misspelling), Nigeria and Ethiopia (.ne and .et, respectively; Both misspellings of .net). To continue my analogy from my last post: This situation is like if you had a town (with the people with sandwich signs standing around on sidewalk tiles) and if you went looking for something that no one had heard of or something where you aren’t pronouncing the name correctly, they direct you to Hamm’s sidewalk tile.

This isn’t what the Internet is about. People hoarding domains and controlling traffic in this way is an unfair, unnecessary practice that leeches from the experience. As the number of these domaining-ad-aggregates increases, there will be more junk websites, clogging up search engine results and interjecting themselves into the path to your information destination.

There was a similar recent case with some alleged spyware companies such as Zango.com, Roundads.com, etc. The case I read went like this:

1. You install their third-party software (either in the form of a toolbar, “cool email smileys”, a cute puppy screensaver, etc.) and it runs in the background as you search the web.
2. You go to a website, such as blockbuster.com, and decide you want to register with one of their subscription programs, so you click the link to go to the registration form.
3. The spyware, running in the background, identifies this click and hijacks it — instead of taking you to the normal registration form for blockbuster, it takes you to the same registration form, but with the referral information crediting the spyware’s company with the referral as if you had “found” Blockbuster while looking at Advertisements placed by the Spyware company
4. Blockbuster then sees the referrall information, and must then pay the Spyware company a sum of money, around 10-20 DOLLARS each time. And the company did NOTHING to benefit Blockbuster.

See how this is a problem?

This is the type of capitalizing and profiteering that serves only the self-interest of the person doing it, but affects us all. It’s like a Tragedy of the Commons; Everyone knows that this will eventually die out on its own, so they’re all jumping aboard as fast as possible to get a piece before it croaks.

My clarion call to you, fair reader: Don’t load toolbars, advertisement software (and scan regularly!), and don’t click on Domaineer’ed sites! Only by ceasing to reinforce this business model can we force them to stop polluting our Internet.

Categories: Geekery, Rants
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We’ve all seen the headlines “James Pauley and the attack of the killer mutant cyborg sheep: Part IV sweeps the box office with the biggest opening day of all time!”

Apparently, we, the simple-minded public, are supposed to be wowed and awed (and cajoled, via bandwagon propaganda) into seeing the movie. One thing I’ve noticed though: It seems everytime a new blockbuster movie comes out, it’s always “the biggest opening day of all time!” and only by a little bit. It got me thinking “I wonder what the biggest opening day was, of the top 10 opening days, when you adjust them all for inflation?”

Inflation for those of you that don’t know, is the creeping death of our almighty dollar. Every year, on average, our dollars are worth 3.2% than the year before. (This means, among other things, that the minimum wage which was stuck at $5.25 for several years, is actually only worth about $3 / hr when you adjust for inflation). What inflation also does, however, is skew price comparisons. We’ve all heard our grandparents say “I can’t believe how expensive ____ is! When I was a boy, I only paid a nickel for it!” More often than not, the price has only changed by a penny or two (AFTER ADJUSTMENT), and sometimes, such as in the case of eggs or milk, it’s actually CHEAPER (adjusted) than it was when Grandpa was a wee lad.

Back to movies.

So, here’s the data I’m working with, pulled from BoxOfficeMojo:

Calculating the CPI:

Ok, this is where a VERY SMALL amount of math comes in. It requires consulting a table, setting up a very simple proportion, and doing some multiplication. A calculator helps, but isn’t totally necessary. (Or, and you are going to LOVE me for this, you can use the BLS’s Inflation Calculator!!!)

First, we need to get our CPI numbers. CPI is an acronym for “Consumer Price Index”. It’s calculated, and maintained, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). There’s lots of information on that page, but the real meat-and-bones of it is in the US City Average, All Urban Consumers table. Just trust me on that.

Ok, to use this table: Along the lefthandside, down in a column, is the years, stretching from as far back as 1913 (your grandpa / great-grandpa’s time) to March 07. (April will be up soon, they’re generally a month behind.) The columns to the right of the year column are individual months, all twelve of them, followed by an annual average. Doing individual month comparisons are generally more accurate than annual average. So to find the CPI for a given month, we find the row containing the year we want, and then find the column corresponding to the month we want, and Bingo! There it is. The CPI for that month.

For your own trivia, I’ll walk you through one of the top 10 listed. (Bear in mind, since we don’t have May 07’s CPI, this won’t be QUITE as accurate as it could be, but it should be pretty close!) Let’s do #10: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Return of the King came out in December 2003. The CPI for that month was 184.3. The most recent CPI is March 2007, which is 205.352. So now we create a ratio of those two dates to get their CPI factor. (205.352 / 184.3 = 1.114053). Now, we multiply that factor times the raw (nominal) price from the past. (1.114053 x 34,450,834 = $38,380,060.97). So the Return of the King’s opening day ticket sales, in today’s dollars, is 4 million dollars more! That’s substantial!

Since I don’t expect you to do all the calculations, I’ll do them all here. (Since we don’t have May’s CPI - I’m estimating it at 208.72. The months previous have both increased approximately 1.7 each month. So two more months = +3.4)

Just because I’m a glut for punishment, here’s that table again, sorted:

Only three big differences, rank-wise. But then again, all of those movies are all from the past decade. I’ll leave you with this last comparison, for “all-time highest-grossing-movies”. Movieweb (with their annoying verizon ads) lists the top 1000 grossing movies of all time. At number 1 is “Titanic” (12/1997, $600,788,000), number 2 is “Star Wars IV: A New Hope” (5/1977, $460,988,000), and number 74 is “Gone with the Wind” ($198,655,000, 12/1939).

Doing the same thing again:

I rest my case.

Categories: Geekery, Movies & the IMDB 250
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We’ve all heard the tale. It’s been spread memetically for years: I’ve seen it referenced on television, heard it buzz around the college campus, read it in publications. If you start Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” album at the third roar of the MGM Lion on Wizard of Oz, you will witness amazing synchronicity.

I decided to put this to the test myself.

Melissa kind of rolled her eyes at me when I told her what I wanted to do. We’re both pretty skeptical about things, but I thought it would be fun to try. Besides, in the worst case scenario, I waste 43 minutes of my life by listening to “Dark Side of the Moon” which is HARDLY a waste by my standards. I found “The Wizard of Oz” at the library yesterday while picking up some movies and returning some books.

My expectations at this point were pretty minimal. Rationally, I know that the band has repeatedly denied intending for any synchronicity. I know that this reeks an awful lot like a “cold read” that alleged psychics use (the kind where most of the magic happens because they expect you to draw the necessary conclusions).

At the same time, I secretly hoped to witness some kind of bizarre and totally unlikely scenario where the two perfectly synched up. I envisioned the album becoming as transparent as an actual soundtrack.

Before you read my own reactions, why don’t you watch it yourself on google video. It’s 43 minutes long and is pre-synched for you so all you need to do is watch.

The Reality

Ok, first off, I have to say that I had forgotten how good “Dark Side of the Moon” is. The experience was definitely worth getting to just kick back and listen to Roger Waters, David Gilmour et al jam out.

Was there any synchronicity? Lyrically, there were a few coincidences. “Balancing on a wave” is sung right as Dorothy is balancing on the pig-pen fence. “Black….and Blue…” is sung just as the Wicked Witch of the West appears in munchkin land. “Lunatic is on the grass” is sung just as the Scarecrow starts dancing on the yellowbrick road. I think I heard something about “magic spell” during the scene with “The Marvel” fortuneteller in the beginning scenes.

Musically, there were a lot more surprising synchronicities. Many of the songs began right at transitional moments. By far, these coincidences were a lot more piquing than the lyrical ones. My rational mind immediately dismissed it as simply being a mere coincidence; A product of artistic timing (perhaps mixed with a little golden ratio proportioning). Nevertheless, it was pretty cool. When Dorothy opens the door to munchkin land (in TECHNICOLOR), the song “Money” begins. Some of the overall tones change at dramatic moments. You have to really see it to see what I mean.

The Verdict

There’s no true synchronicity. You would probably have just as much luck playing any other psychadelic album while watching this movie. Try watching this movie while listening to “Shine on You Crazy Diamonds” or “The Wall”. The psychadelic aspect is important because that genre tends to do a lot more blending of the songs. (You could conceivably do it with an electronic album, I suppose. We used to do that with the Fantasia movies).

Bottom line, it’s a cold-reading phenomena. We WANT to see the coincidences and the connections. It’s our natural tendency towards making the world make sense. With this particular music-movie combo, there were far more moments where the movie and music WEREN’T totally synched up (like during guitar solos, for example, and we all know how long those are!) than there were parts that DID synch. The lyrical coincidences are bogus. You could probably play a 2-Pac or The White Stripes album and find similar coincidences.

The Dark side of Oz is said to be far more significant than it really is, which in my experience is pretty typical of stoners.

Even so, you should check it out and see for yourself. Let me know your thoughts. Like I said before, spending 43 minutes of your time to listen to this Pink Floyd album is never a waste of time.

Categories: Geekery, Humor
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