Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock

Just for fun, I jotted down the variant of Rock-Paper-Scissors enunciated on “The Big Bang Theory,” which, by the way, is one of the funniest shows on TV.

As before, Rock is a balled fist, Paper is a flat hand, and Scissors is your first and second fingers split. Lizard is made with four fingers flat with the thumb opposed, like a lizard’s mouth. Spock is the Vulcan hand salute: first and second fingers split from the third and fourth fingers.

In Rock-Paper-Scissors, each selection has one that beats it and one that does not. In Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock, each selection has two that beat it and two that do not. Having four options would result in a uneven 2-1 split, so they went with five.

Rock crushes scissors.
Rock crushes lizard.
Paper covers rock.
Paper disproves Spock.
Scissors cut paper.
Scissors decapitate lizard.
Lizard eats paper.
Lizard poisons Spock.
Spock smashes scissors.
Spock vaporizes rock.

Enjoy!

Fly Low, President Obama

I wish President Obama would fly low and keep under the radar.

The stock market dropped like a rock after he got elected, after he was inaugurated, and after he gave his big speech last night. It needs more time to post gains.

Joke of the Day

I received the following email joke today (yes, it is old, but it makes me laugh).

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in Idaho when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towardshim. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?'

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, why not?'

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'

'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Bud. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?' The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'

'You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government', says Bud.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required.' answered the cowboy. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to aquestion I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows....this is a herd of sheep.

Now give me back my dog.

ASD Repair

Before we are born, we have openings between the left and right sides of our hearts because the lungs are not working yet. These openings are supposed to close after we are born and using our lungs. I had a common birth defect – an Atrial Septum Defect (ASD), The openings did not fully close between the upper chambers. Due to the shunting from the left atrium to the right atrium, the doctors estimate that the right side of my heart (which goes to the lungs) was pumping about a third more blood than the left side (which goes to the rest of the body). The left side of your heart normally is filled with oxygenated blood directly from the lungs, while the right side is normally filled with blood with little oxygen. The shunt meant that the right side of my heart had an unusually high level of oxygen. As part of the body’s oxygen control mechanism, the blood vessels leading from the heart to the lungs constrict when they see high oxygen levels. Normally this status implies that the body is at rest and does not need more oxygen. Therefore, the right side of my heart was always pumping a third more blood than normal and against higher backpressure than normal due to the constricted blood vessels. It was working far too hard and was wearing out rapidly. It is enlarged -- about the same size as the left side of my heart.

As an elementary school student, I was always one of the slowest runners in my class. Perhaps this was why. In my thirties, I ran a number of large group “fun-runs” and group bike rides. I always fell behind on the hills and made it up on the downhills. I was running with a third less lung capacity than those around me.

I learned of my condition about four years ago, and had it repaired last Monday. The right side of my heart should shrink to its normally smaller size over the next few months. And I should be able to see measurable improvements in my heart rate while exercising.

The repair procedure involves inserting an ultrasonic echocardiogram device in the left femoral vein (for visualization) and various catheters in the right femoral vein. A balloon catheter is used to determine the size of the opening (see first image) and a second catheter is used to install the implant (see second image). The ultrasonic catheter (to the left) ends with a knob on it. The third image shows the installed implant disconnected from the catheters (still seen on the left). The procedure went fine, although apparently my ASD opening was in a location that was difficult to access, and the doctor struggled with getting the patch into the hole and properly located. I’ll go back in a month to have a normal (through the chest wall) echocardiogram to see if the implant is still doing its job and blocking the blood flow.One of the common symptoms of ASD is higher than normal susceptibility to lungs diseases such as pneumonia. I have never had pneumonia, but my mother and my daughter have had pneumonia many times. I now wonder if they had/have an ASD as well.

Fish and Pork

"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for life."
Old (Chinese?) proverb

The "stimulus" bill wending its way through Congress will accomplish the former but will fail to accomplish the latter. Giving cash to citizens will feed them for a day. Spending money on construction projects will feed the construction crew for many months. But there is nothing in this “stimulus” bill that will result in permanent economic growth. It is all pork.

Economic growth and prosperity results from establishing a permanent business, such as manufacturing a product that everyone needs, like toilet paper, and from education and training of individuals with useful job skills, such as becoming a hairdresser, an engineer, or a plumber.

Sorry to disappoint all of you Obama fans out there, but this “stimulus” bill will do nothing more than feed a few of us for a few days. It will not result in economic recovery, and in the long term, it will actually harm economic growth with higher national debt, higher tax burdens, bigger government, and other disincentives for each person taking responsibility for his own welfare.

How Much is $789 Billion?

President Obama is about to sign a $789 billion "stimulus bill". Let's do the math. The U.S. population is just over 300 million. The federal government does not have enough revenue to cover its normal expenditures, so every penny to pay for this bill will be borrowed. It will add over $2,600 PER PERSON to our national debt, over $10,000 for a family of four. Ouch!

Vivid Dream

My last dream this morning was very vivid. I was in my office when I heard a commotion out near the front door. When I went out to see what was going on, there was a huge pile of REI products filling the office entryway -- so many that it was hard to get past them. As I recall, this pile included about a dozen external frame backpacks, a pile of new camping stoves in their original boxes, several huge boxes (4 feet tall, 12 feet long, and a foot wide), and more stuff that I glanced at but did not identify. At about that time, a meeting of people who had been meeting with my boss broke up, and they all squeezed past the pile as they left.

One of the three guys who made the delivery presented me with a VISA bill to sign. Oddly, it was not a normal REI slip, but an ordinary small one, like one from a convenience store. The bottom line with tax was $8,599.13. [I might be off by a few pennies, but I remember the 8,599 clearly because I rounded it up to 8,600 in my dream.] Since I was rather shocked, he offered to let me think about it while he and his crew took a break and went to get something to eat. I guess I had the option of refusing delivery. So they left me with all the REI stuff and the bill.

My first thought was that this was a gift from my wife, and that she was going to think this was a hilarious way of delivering it. But I was confused, because it was not Christmas or my birthday. And it was way more stuff than I could us. I wondered if she was expecting me to give it away to a scout troop. And I was confused because it was being delivered COD, as though she had not paid for it when she ordered it. I was also wondering if I would be able to pack all this stuff into my Subaru Forester. It holds a lot with the back seats down, but this was a huge pile. I was trying to call her on my cell phone when I woke up.