A problem with society today is impatience. Cable TV (a generic term that includes satellite and internet TV also) is part of that problem.

No, not the shows on television, although I’m sure they aren’t helping any.

The main problem is the name of their services:

On Demand

You want this show? Demand it!
You want that show? Demand it!
You want anything from your TV? Demand it!

And the problem is that you get what you demand, immediately.

It’s tough enough to teach children to wait their turn and ask politely. We don’t need another influence to teach impatience and rudeness.

If I ever own a TV or video service, I’m instituting an On Request service.

And you would have to say “please”.

In the business world, there’s a quality-control technique called “The Five Whys”. It involves asking “Why?” to solve problems. I am tempted to mock the concept (e.g. “my 3-year-old came up with that on his own”), but that is not the point of this post.

Rather, I’ve adapted the concept for learning how to play a new game. This was inspired by my attempt to play Seven Wonders recently. The guy who brought the game did a valiant effort of trying to explain how to play, but I didn’t really understand it until after we played.

I call my technique “The Five Hows”. Other people may want to learn a game differently, but I have found this is how my mind wants to work. When attempting to learn how to play a game that is new to you, ask “How?” five times:

1. How do you win the game?
2. How do you that?
3. How do you that?
4. How do you that?
5. How do you that?

Just adapt questions 2-5 to refer to the answer given in the previous question, and that’s all there is to it.

I’ll give an example, using the card game Hearts.

How do you win the game?
By scoring the fewest points

How do you score points?
By winning cards of the heart suit (or the queen of spades)

How do you win heart cards?
By playing the highest ranking card of the suit that was lead. You take all the cards that were played that hand and count any points.

How do you play a card?
By laying it face-up on the table, following suit if possible. If you are supposed to lead the hand, you decide the suit.

How do you end the game?
When someone reaches at least 100 points, the game is over. That person is the loser.

More complicated games might require more hows, but you get the idea.

But in case you don’t get the idea: the idea is to start with the big picture and work down. Don’t start with the details of how to play, start with the reason of why to play.

If all else fails, just play a practice round.

The original Mortal Kombat was a video game.

Then in 1995 they made a movie out of it.

Rumor has it that in 2013 they will release a remake of the movie.

Here’s how the Mortal Kombat logo would look if it were re-done out of Australia.

Mortal Wombat could be interesting, if they could get the little fur-balls to look fierce.

On a slightly-related note: anyone else think that the word “marsupial” is best read in a Larry the Cucumber voice?

You’re welcome.

Okay, okay, it is 2012 at this point, but the results are headlines as 2011 because they match with the 2011 predictions made in 2011 for the 2011 season. Also, the results are not all-haiku, just the predictions were. A more accurate title would be “Results for the All-Haiku Predictions made in 2011″.

Before the bowl games commenced for this past college football season, I made some predictions. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is the tally of those predictions. Note that the results are not in haiku form, in contrast to the predictions.

Results

Here is the list (correct predictions in green, incorrect in red):

Wyoming over Temple

Utah St. over Ohio

San Diego St. over Louisiana-Lafayette

Florida International over Marshall

TCU over Louisiana Tech

Boise St. over Arizona St.

Southern Miss. over Nevada

Missouri over North Carolina

Purdue over Western Michigan

NC State over Louisville

Air Force over Toledo

Texas over Cal

Notre Dame over Florida St.

Baylor over Washington

Tulsa over Brigham Young

Rutgers over Iowa St.

Miss. St. over Wake Forest

Oklahoma over Iowa

Northwestern over Texas A&M

Utah over Georgia Tech

Cincinnati over Vanderbilt

UCLA over Illinois

Virginia over Auburn

Houston over Penn St.

Michigan State over Georgia

Nebraska over South Carolina

Florida over Ohio St.

Oregon over Wisconsin

Stanford over Oklahoma St.

Michigan over Virginia Tech.

West Virginia over Clemson

Arkansas over Kansas St.

Pittsburgh over Southern Methodist

Northern Illinois over Arkansas St.

Louisiana St. over Alabama

And here are the results of the various forecasting methodologies (see the first year for description of the methodologies) (also, use the word methodologies if you want to sound important; methods would work just as well and is shorter) :

• Some Blog Site picks were 21-14 (better than last year!)
• CBS120 picks were 22-13
• HTW was 18-17 for the official Home Team Wins (HTW)
• HTW was 20-15 for the Geographical Home Team (GHT)
• Isaacson-Tarbell Postulate (ITP) was 21-14 if using HTW
• ITP was 22-13 if using GHT

I won’t analyze the results as much as I did last year, mainly because I had more time and more sleep last year. But it was a good year all predictors – every method was over 50%. And my predictions keep getting better. At this rate, I’ll be 100% correct by the year 2018.

Thoughts on the season’s results

1. That was a nice playoff round. Now let’s have the championship game between Alabama and OK State.
2. The B1G is going to have another championship game next year. We don’t know who will be in it, but we do know who won’t be in it…
3. You know what? – we should just skip the national championship game and give the title to the winner of the SEC again. I predicted as much last year, so let’s keep the streak going.

Conferences

Since the strength of the conference has something to do with the results, I thought I would tally each conference’s bowl game record for the 2011 (and the first bit of 2012) season.

• ACC: 2-6
• Big 10: 4-6
• Big 12: 6-2
• Big East: 3-2
• Independent: 1-1
• MAC: 4-1
• MW: 2-3
• PAC12: 2-5
• SEC: 6-3
• Sun Belt: 1-2
• USA: 4-1
• WAC: 0-3

So the best conference was the MAC or Conference USA (they won 80% of their bowl games) and the worst was the WAC because they didn’t win any of their bowl games.

The WAC sent the fewest teams to bowl games again this year (tied with Sun Belt). So maybe those two conferences were the worst.

Perhaps you could say that the B1G was the best because they had ten teams go to bowls. Or you could say the B1G was just the most popular conference.

Perhaps you could say that the SEC was the best because they won the championship (again). Or maybe the SEC is tied with the Big 12 for the best conference because they both won the most bowls (at 6).

I don’t know what happened to the MWC. They used to win their bowl games, and Boise St. was supposed to strengthen the conference. They ended below 0.500 in bowls this year though.

Since the conferences are going to change slightly for next football season, who knows which the strong bowl conferences will be? But if I must predict, I’m saying Conf. USA won’t win 80% of its bowl games again. I’ll also throw in the standard prediction that the SEC will win the BCS again.

Or, It Takes Suh to Make a Thing Go Right

Disclaimer: If you don’t follow the NFL, this post won’t make much sense. If you want it to make sense, please read this article about Ndamukong Suh first.

Now that the Lions’ season is over, the players can relax and pursue their hobbies during the off-season. And for Lions #90, that hobby is off-Broadway shows. Not just watching them, but participating as a cast member.

In fact, Some Blog Site was able to procure an advance copy of the promotional literature for Suh’s upcoming show. Here, exclusive to Some Blog Site, are the flyers.
Read the rest of this entry »

Any introduction I give would be useless or worse, so no introduction here.

Transcript:
Young Bananakin Skywalker started his Jedi training without any experience at all – he was quite green.

As he progressed in his training, his skill increased and he matured noticeably.

Unfortunately, he matured too much and went bad.
He went dark side.
And dark front and middle too.

But Bananakin, in his ripe old age, sacrificed himself for others.
Then he split.

The End

It is time once again to update Some Blog Site readers on the results of my Some Fun Site project to create a more accurate football prediction method.

The 2011 NFL season is over, and here are the most accurate methods for predicting regular-season game results:

• MPW: 66%
• ITP: 65%
• DPE: 64%

This year saw the addition of DP and DPE to the prediction methods. “DP” stands for Davis Postulate and contends that the team that will win is the team that has been winning. While they put up a good fight, they are still no match for the combination of MPW and MYW. (For the ideas behind the methods, please visit the Some Fun Site page.)