Saturday, January 10, 2009

Would You Check?

Via Mind Hacks -- Steven Pinker says of the genes that increase the risk for Alzheimer's disease:

Still, I figured that my current burden of existential dread is just about right, so I followed Watson’s lead and asked for a line-item veto of my APOE gene information when the P.G.P. sequencer gets to it.
I would check. One reason is that I'm young enough that there's still hope for various forms of treatment or preventative measures to arise before I reach risk age. But second, if prevention isn't possible I'd just as soon kick off due to heart disease as have my soul slowly destroyed -- Camel unfiltereds here I come! -- at about age 55-60.

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Too Lazy To Type Degrees of Separation




You'll probably need to click on the image to read anything but that's the IMDBPro main page above.

Typing being the awful chore that it is has forced me to invent a game: how few mouse clicks can I use to get from whatever the current main page is to the actor, director, writer, or movie I'm looking for?

No typing into search boxes allowed.

For example, using the sample page how do I get to, let's say, Kuma -- the canine lead in Cop Dog?

We start with the #2 video rental from the left column, Death Race (1 click), from there to lead actor Jason Statham (2), then on to Crank 2: High Voltage (3) -- then to Lil Chev Chelios, Billy Unger (4 -- Billy Unger is the Rosetta Stone of Cop Dog!), then Cop Dog (5) and finally Kuma (6 clicks).

If music videos got IMDb pages it'd actually be slightly faster since Taylor Lautner (middle starmeter at #5 famous in part from Twilight, 1 click) is in the music video Caught Up In You (2):



by Cassi Thomson (3), co-star in Cop Dog (4) then Kuma (5 clicks).

On a side note, apparently tween girls all over the world hate, hate, HATE, Cassi for stealing Mr Lautner from them.