School Yearbook Photo

I recently found an old yearbook photo of mine. How things have changed.

Ah, the good old days when I used to look like something out of an Aphex Twin video. I had model written all over me.

Not even... bring a photo of yourself and visit Yearbook Yourself

Megawoosh

I'm a model, you know what I mean

Those of my readers who have not met me "in the flesh" so to speak, may be unaware of the fact that I am incredibly good-looking, as is testified to by the following "modeling" photo-shoot fashion magazine photos.



You might have thought that this was the work of a veteran model-slash-actor, but in fact this was my first photo-shoot since I joined the Red Eleven models and talent agency over two years ago. During this time I had worked on my poses, eventually perfecting "Blue-Squeal". I think it was worth the wait, the world is ready now, apparently they weren't in the last 12 auditions.



Brynn, the considerably less attractive model at the shoot, had been fortunate enough to fall into numerous international advertising campaigns, underwear posters and television ads for aftershave and watches and such. I tried to give him some pointers on pouting, but as you can see he didn't really listen. Models...



The one where it looks as though I'm masturbating with a small microphone was a special favorite of mine, a proverbial up-yours to the pretense of the fashion industry. This had nothing to do with the fact that I wasn't paid for my work, I was happy to share the love.

If you'd like to have these pictures in hard-copy... you'd better get down to your local magazine store and pick up a copy of Real Groove magazine, before they run out.

Good odds for Big Wednesday?

This morning when Michael Laws (on Radio Live) informed me that one third of lotto winners "knew they were going to win", it reminded me just how bad the masses and their mouth-pieces are at judging probabilities. Laws seemed to be suggesting that if one believed they were going win the lotto they had more chance of winning. Not only is this probabilistically wrong, but it is at its most basic wrong, after all, presumably TWO thirds of lotto winners didn't believe they would win the lotto - suggesting generally that one had more chance of winning if one did NOT believe they were going to win.

But even this wouldn't be correct, as it is not important what proportion of winners believed they would win or not, but how that proportion relates to what the ticket buying population believes in general about whether they will win or not. I would hazard a guess that a third of people who buy tickets believe they will win, or would say so if they did.

But you read this blog to see if the chances of winning tonight are good:

The chances against winning 1st or 2nd division are astronomical, and as we have seen for the last few weeks there is a good chance it will not go. If it does go, it won't be you, get used to the idea.

The chances of winning 3rd division (which is what we're hoping for here) are 1 in 35000. Which are fabulous odds to begin with, but lets whittle them down.

Last week 2.9 million tickets were sold, and this week an estimated 4 million will be. Last week 460 people won 3rd division, so if you increase that proportionately there should be about 634 3rd division winners, if we do it based on probability we should get 686 3rd division winners

So, lets take the 35 million prize and divvy it up between the roughly 650 3rd division winners. This gives us $53846.

These are good odds (if the prize gets past the first and second division posts)

So, what are the chances of it getting past these posts? Well, the chances of winning 1st and 2nd division with one line is 1 in 16 million each, which makes your chances of getting one or the other about 1 in 8million. With four million 6 line tickets being sold this makes 24 million lines. So when I entered this into Wolfram Alpha as (7999999/8000000) to the power 24000000 it gave me a 49.8% chance of the prize not being won in 1st or 2nd division (which shows just how difficult it is to win 1st or 2nd division!).

So taking into account this 50% chance that the prize won't make it to 3rd division we can take our 1 in 35000 chance of winning a share of the big prize and halve it...

Giving us a 1 in 70000 chance of winning $53846. Which, I'm sorry to say, are not so good odds, but are the best odds you will ever have playing lotto.

This is how I feel watching John Lennox debating Richard Dawkins

Thou shalt not misrepresent thy opponent's position

Having the name James Brown has made me a master in the art of the "never heard that one before", "good one", "it is, really?" response, complete with polite chuckle. But I really felt for Richard Dawkins this weekend, my having the privilege of seeing him speak (albeit via satelite video link) at the New Zealand Readers' and Writers' Festival.


"Richard Dawkins, one of the world's most out-spoken atheists, some might say, the High Priest of Atheism!"

"hmm, ha ha, good one... never heard that one before."

This was how our bumbling host introduced Dawkins, then going on to pronounce that he was the was "Oxford Professor for the Understanding of Science"... a position Dawkins relinquished 6 months ago. How embarrassing.

The "High Priest of Atheism" meme was perpetuated further by former Bishop (now agnostic) Richard Holloway, who was also speaking at the festival, this time in the flesh. As a volunteer, I had the job of escorting him to the signing table. I bit my tongue all the way in order to restrain myself from rebuffing his misrepresentation of Dawkins.


Holloway had gone on to talk about how he had "got Dawkins to say that he was, to some extent, agnostic". Dawkins explains the extent to which he is agnostic in the God Delusion, but as with most of Dawkins' opponents we shouldn't expect that Holloway has read past the front cover, and so with veiled conceit Holloway laid claim to this admission.

He seemed to, however, forget this immediately when it came to putting Dawkins firmly in the dogmatist camp in his following comments.

Holloway then said that Dawkins had expressed to him that he found it difficult to find an evolutionary source for pity. This, to me, smacked of the type of quote-mining undertaken by creationists who never grow tired of quoting Darwin's professed difficulty in understanding how the eye could have evolved, a quote that is followed by an extensive explanation of exactly how it could. No doubt Dawkins' comment regarding pity was also a preface to an explanation of how empathy arises through evolution, an area of much interest to himself, and many others in the field of evolutionary psychology at present.

He also leveled that Dawkin's "hates" Freud, which did sound as much a silly emotive appeal as it does here and that he "doesn't understand metaphor". This is, no doubt, because Holloway sees the bible as allegorical - but that's because Holloway is an agnostic! Richard Dawkins did not write "The Agnostic Delusion", so I fail to see his point here. Again Dawkins' numerous concessions to the beauty of biblical imagery, music, to the majesty of the natural world, to his appreciation for metaphor, art and the numinous, do require his opponents to read his books, or listen to what he actually says before they respond.

But never have I heard people so certain as those that say we cannot know, but I won't go so far as to call Richard Holloway the "High Priest of Agnosticism"

The festival in general was very stimulating. Dawkins, was as usual, on his game managing to make the sterile medium of the video-link very entertaining and at times quite funny. Other highlights were "The Wisdom of Crowds" author James Surowiecki, and futurist George Friedman.

1973 Design for the Catholic Church's Archdiocesan's Youth Commission

Catholic priests were apparently a lot more open about their indiscretions in the 70s.



Thanks to Goat Boy for this little gem.