However…

It is a little-known fact that, on any given die roll, the roll is more likely to NOT be a six or eight. It is more likely to be anything BUT.

Here’s the proof:

0. Make a spreadsheet (or just get a lined piece of paper).

1. In the first column, enter 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3 3 and so on to six 6s. (You should have 36 rows populated.)

2. In the second column, type six sets of 1 2 3 4 5 6.

3. In the third column, sum each row. (1+1=2, 1+2=3, and so on.)

4. Sort the sheet by that third column, so that all the sums are in ascending order. (This just makes the next step easier.)

5. Now, off to the side somewhere, count up the frequency of each sum (how often each sum appears). You should end up with this:

sum frequency
2: 1
3: 2
4: 3
5: 4
6: 5
7: 6
8: 5
9: 4
10: 3
11: 2
12: 1

6. Look again at the first three columns. Notice there are 36 possible outcomes:

36 possible unique rolls

7. Look at the frequency of 6 and 8:

5 possible sixes
5 possible eights

8. Which means there are 26 non-six, non-eight possibilities.

26 possible everything elses

9. Do the final math that answers this question: how likely is it that a six or eight will be rolled, instead of anything else?

36 possible unique rolls
5 possible sixes
5 possible eights
26 possible everything elses
=
28% probability of 6 or 8
72% probability of NOT 6 or 8

And that, my friends, is why you should stop being surprised that sixes and eights come up so little. On any given roll, you pretty much have only a 1 in 4 chance of it being a six or an eight.

I hope this blows your mind. Does it? Leave a comment and let me know!

Things that bother me about death: the suddenness of it.  How you don’t get any more chances to make things right after a person dies.  The rotting in the ground aspect.  Things left undone.  The depression that appears to accompany old age – “that won’t be me!  I’m going to volunteer in the community, teach little kids to read, etc etc.”  The thought that maybe my grandmother killed herself, and maybe my grandfather did the same thing two years later.  Wasted opportunities.  Unfulfilled dreams.  The feeling of inevitability, hopelessness, like, I can do great things, but it’s all a veil, a lie, because no matter how you run your life, you’re going to die anyway.

Is that true?  What about Mortality Escape Velocity (MEV)?  The idea that, you only have to live long enough for science to find a way to extend your life by 15 years, and take that treatment, then tough it out for another ten years, when they find another way to extend your life by 15 years.

One of the things that bothers me about death is how little we talk about it.  It’s really the pink elephant in the room, people, how can we not talk about it?  It’s one of the few things we all have in common.

What I don’t like about death is, you never know when it’s your time, well, unless you can see it from a far ways off.  I think most people die old, and not so many die young.  I wonder if that impression is backed up by fact?  We make such a big deal out of young people dying – it’s so unexpected, they had all this potential, I never got the chance to…, what if I’m next, what did s/he do wrong, how can I avoid doing the same thing, my life is so often in other people’s hands, how can I trust strangers driving next to me on the highway to not kill me with their idiot texting and blahblahing on the phone, don’t they realize that they’re following too close, not holding their lane, not going fast enough?  WTF is so goddamned important that you have to risk your life and mine, taking that call?  Texting that friend?  Can’t it wait?

Maybe it can’t wait.  We’re all going to die.  Or, it seems very likely that we’re all going to die.  If we hit MEV, and start having people be 120 years old, or older, well, those will be some strange times.

Maybe those people texting feel like NOW is the only moment over which they have any control, and so they do it NOW NOW NOW, why would I wait to make a call when I can do it NOW?  What if I wait, and the loved one I was going to call dies in the meantime, and I never get that last chance to say “I love you, even though you’re a racist and I’m embarrassed to bring friends to meet you because it’ll only be about 20 minutes before you’re off again about how the Jews control the media, the Japs this, the Spics that…”

What’s up with the need to say that one final “goodbye”, anyway?  I mean, can’t the last time I said “I love you” suffice?  Maybe if it was recently enough, like days ago, and not years ago.

How did you die?  What were your final thoughts?  Were you even awake?  Were you scared?  Did you wonder if anyone was going to come help you, and then no one did, and you died feeling alone and betrayed and scared?

What if I die like that?  Fuck.  That would be terrible.  I hope it wasn’t like that for you.  But it’s hard to imagine an excellent death.  What would that be like?  I think it used to be the case that you could die an excellent death.  Like, riding off into battle – getting a sword in the chest for standing up for what you believe in – that sort of thing.  Now, life is so much more civil, and comfortable, and dull, that you’re really unlikely to have a noble and worthwhile death.  You’re much more likely to get old, lose your mind, break your hip, and sink slowly into decline.

And maybe kill yourself.

I wonder how many old people really die of “old age”, and how many get sick of waiting, in chronic pain, ignored by their children and grandchildren, out of hope, out of energy, out of ideas, just waiting.  And then deciding not to wait.

It’s tough to talk about suicide.  Like the idea might be contagious – like, if I start talking to you about suicide as a concept, you might a) start thinking about killing yourself and b) wonder if I’m thinking about killing myself.  Which I’m not.  Not yet, anyway.

I cam’t say that I’ve ruled out suicide at a later age.  There’s too much “what if”.  What if I’m miserable?  What if I’m a burden to my family?  What if people start to treat me like crap, and I start to doubt my self-worth?  What if I go deaf, blind – both?  It’s too many unknowns.  I can’t say I’d never kill myself.  But I wouldn’t kill myself any time soon.  I have too much to do.

That’s a disturbing thing to say – I’m too busy to kill myself.  Begs the question, what if I weren’t too busy?  What if I ran out of things to do, or, I mistakenly perceived that I had nothing to do, literally no reason to continue living?

What if I got really curious about what might come after death?  Would I jump into it, just to see what happens, knowing that doing nothing while alive, and doing nothing while dead, would amount to pretty much the same thing, except, I already know what doing nothing and being alive is like?

Do other people think about this?

Who?

And how do I avoid feeling all depressed and self-judgy while I talk about it?

Whose death impacted me the most, and why?

My grandmother on my dad’s side died, and I wrote and delivered her eulogy.  I’d never done that before, or since.  I like to think that reading “Speaker for the Dead” years earlier helped prepare me to write a truthful eulogy.

It went well, if you can judge a eulogy that way.  One of my cousins applauded.  Maybe because the speech was good, maybe because I was bawling the whole time and I kept talking anyway.  That was the hardest speech I’ve ever given.  I was regular-nervous, plus being-in-front-of-my-whole-family-all-200-of-them nervous, and more upset by her death than I predicted I would be.  I had some warning the night before, when I hit on the theme of the eulogy, and I got all weepy feeling bad for myself and for not being closer to my grandmother.  But now I think it was for the better – I think I would have ended up with some pretty disabling beliefs, had I hung around her too much.  Like, she told my sister, “All men are the same, just pick one,” and of course my sister ended up married to (now divorced from) an abusive alcoholic.  I can’t understand how my grandmother could advise my sister like that.  I mean, my grandmother divorced her own alcoholic, and remarried a much nicer guy – a genius and a farmer.  So why would she say something stupid like “all men are alike”?  Was it just because she wanted to be a great-grandmother before she died?  I think so.  She was sometimes selfish like that.  She really took it on the chin when her family moved from England to Canada when she was 15.  Never mind that Wigan had no work, and no work = no food.  She was a teen, probably fully invested in her friends and her town, and bloop, off to North America.  She was probably pissed.

Do I believe in an afterlife?

Here’s what I hope: I hope, after all the mistakes I’ve made in this lifetime, that when I die, I can put in another quarter, and try again.

But what I suspect is, this is it.

It.  All there is.  You live, you die, pfft.  That’s it.

At the same time… Well, I might believe in ghosts.  Like on this one writing gig I did, every time I passed my manager’s cubicle, I got the impression that I was going to bump into someone, but there was no one there, and I got the feeling I was passing through someone.  Weeks later, my boss mentioned how her husband had died.  And I thought, well, that explains that feeling – either he’s there, literally watching over her, or, she’s imagining him there, so strongly, that I can feel it.

It’s probably delusional, but, I’ve always felt sensitive – I feel like I take in more information than most people.  More impressions.  Like, more information than a person is intentionally giving out.  I feel like I’m always guessing at what’s really going on, and I’m a pretty good guesser.  Sometimes.  I dunno.  I had some weird precog experiences I couldn’t explain as a kid.

Notes I took at my Uncle Dick’s wake

How about a white coffin and colored Sharpies?  Everyone signs the coffin at the wake.

Is seeing the made-up dead body really necessary to the grieving process?  What's the fascination with seeing the person "one last time"?  Is it just for closure?  So you're certain no prank is being played on you?

What's the point of dressing a person better than they ever dressed in real life?

This musak is odd – sentimental and familiar, and only a little weepy.  I wonder how long the loop is.

What's the etiquette on photographing the body?  Bad form?

If people show up to a wake drunk, how do you handle the conversation to block them from driving home drunk?

Why don't we Americans have a tradition of making handcrafts to place in the coffin and bury with the body?  Wouldn't it be therapeutic, cathartic, to make something, a parting gift, with our own hands, and give it to the dead person?  Physical and symbolic closure?

Why didn't I bring my computer?  Oh yeah, appearances.

(crossposted from meldupont.com)

Listen – if you feel like now is the time to take a break, I recommend this weekend retreat. But act fast – you have only 3 more days to register! See http://www.kathysblack.com/ for details, and register by phone at (401) 286-5259!

 The games that interest me most…

…are those that enable me to practice commutable skills – skills I can use in non-game scenarios. Skills like communication, critical thinking, short- and long-term strategy development, increasing the accuracy of my predictions, and adapting more quickly to new situations, information, and resources.

Shadows over Camelot (SoC) engages me on all these fronts. Much more on that in a minute.

Because I favor playing "practical" games, I often think about how directly in-game situations relate to real-life situations.

So, yesterday: I played two games of Shadows over Camelot with my good friends. In SoC, before you start, each player draws a Loyalty card that determines his/her secret loyalty.

If you're Loyal, you want the whole team to win – and if they do, you share in the win, even if your guy dies.

If you're the Traitor, you want to undermine the team's efforts to win – and when they lose, you win by yourself.

In the second game, Jimmy accused me of being the Traitor. (I was not.)

When I asked him why he had accused me, he and Beth both agreed that I appeared to be playing the second game differently than I had played the first.  And that made me look suspicious.

I thought about it, and yes – I definitely played that second game differently.

The first game, we treated as a training game. Amber and Jamie hadn't played before – so, we took the Traitor card out of the mix.  That way, they could learn the mechanics of the game without the added pressure of 1) recognizing a Traitor, 2) accusing a Traitor, 3) fighting a Traitor, or 4) acting as the Traitor themselves.

The second game was full-on: a Traitor card was available to be pulled, and with six people playing, odds were good that someone at the table was a Traitor.

And knowing that – knowing that it was very likely that someone at the table wanted the team to fail – that knowledge affected the way I played.

In the first game, I played with abandon. I burned through life points like they were candy. I held nothing back. I was willing to sacrifice myself to make sure the team won.

In the second game – knowing that there was, probably, one person at the table trying to undermine us all and make sure we failed – I played much more conservatively.

I conserved my life points, paranoid that I would need them to power extra heroics that would fight off a Traitor's sabotage.

I took longer weighing my decisions about which evil I ought to commit during the mandatory "do evil" phase.

I snuck glances at people to see if I could get a read off of them.

In short, I acted much less heroically.

All this unheroic behavior set off my companions' radar, and in their minds, marked me as the Traitor.

Which fascinates me. Because I wonder how commutable this situation is to non-game social situations.

For example: let's say you work for a great boss.

She has your back. She prevents shit from rolling downhill past her and onto you. She tells you when she has successfully prevented such rollings, and when she is unable to prevent them, she apologizes and explains why. She helps people understand what you do, so they respect and treat you better and they cooperate with you more readily. She leads from the front. She cultivates trust.

She inspires loyalty.

Now – what won't you do for her? What won't you do to make sure she succeeds, the team succeeds? What won't you do to live up to and protect the image of the team that she's built in the clients' minds?

Nothing. You'll do it all. You'll throw yourself on your sword.

You'll work to the point of mental and physical exhaustion, and further. You'll become a better version of yourself – faster, stronger, friendlier, more responsible, cooperative, diligent, communicative, supportive.

You'll willingly suffer if you know it will help the team win.

But what if you know (or suspect) that someone on your team – maybe the boss, maybe a coworker – wants bad things for you? Wants to see you fail, or see the team fail? What if you suspect a teammate is not telling you the truth, is working on some private agenda that will end up hurting you, hurting the team?

What will you do?

You'll hold back. Won't you? You'll keep something in reserve.

You'll mentally rehearse scenarios where you have to respond quickly to defend yourself or the team – from damage to morale, reputation, effectiveness, health – and you will conserve whatever resources you think you will need to mount such a defense.

You'll take longer to weigh your options.

You'll weigh your words more carefully before speaking.

You'll watch and wait for attacks.

You'll get more than a little paranoid about what might happen next.

Which actions, when observed by your teammates, will make them suspect your motives and wonder if you are a traitor that they need to defend against.

The idea I'm putting forth is this:

When one person acts in a disloyal manner, their teammates ready for defense, ultimately causing everyone to underperform.

I'm calling this the Traitor Effect.

Here are my questions to you:

Does the Traitor Effect happen in real life?

Once the Traitor-Effect snowball starts rolling downhill, can you stop it? How?

On an affected team, can any member of that team rise above it and perform at the level of his or her heroic potential?

Dear US Census,

Please stop asking me what color I am. I'm not #FFFFFF and I'm not #000000, and I change color from day to day and month to month, based on physical exertion and prolonged exposure to sunlight.

This is the race I most closely identify with: HUMAN.

Stop encouraging us to divide further.

Thanks much,

+ Mel

Let me tell you a sad tale.

Once upon a time – back, perhaps, before you were born – Superbowl commercials were the crème de la crème of commercials.

They cost million$ to air, so, their creators would pull out all the stops in their quest to forcibly lodge an image of their product in your brain.

And all winter, the People looked forward to those commercials.

And then we would watch them.  And we would laugh for joy, until there were tears in our eyes. They had singing, and dancing – fireworks and blimps – busty babes and racy jokes – and hoopla on a grand scale.  All crammed into 30-second masterpieces.

But gradually, while no one was paying much attention, in crawled…the Slackening. Today we call it "Mediocrity".

Commercial-makers stopped believing in the power of expensive mass-marketing. They took their silly-sized budgets, bought condos and timeshares, and began phoning it in.

Superbowl commercials became blah. Became meh. Became shadows of their former selves.

And yet, the elders of the populace still speak of a time when Superbowl commercials were worth watching…

We remember those days.  We long for those days.

And every year, we hold out hope that this will be the year the Superbowl commercials return to their former glory, when they will rise up, and reclaim their God-given bucks-borne power!

But that hope is fading with each passing year.

How long before we say, "Enough is enough!  I will now TiVo you, you naughty Superbowl, just for spite; and curse you, you Foul Tempters of Crass Commercialism – begone!  Into the bit-bucket whence you came!"?

Will the Superbowl commercials let us down once again this year?  Or will 2010 be the year we have all been waiting for: the Year of the Comeback Vid*?

* Ask me whether I care that I'm mixing sports metaphors.

Update: I got word that this excellent commercial aired during the Superbowl:

What do you think?

Update: Oh, no!  See that cool graphic I created, above?  I used Wordle.net to do it.  Now some unknown douchebag is challenging Wordle.net, legally, over use of the word "Wordle".  THERE'S NO DOUBT IN MY MIND THAT THIS WORD BELONGS TO WORDLE.NET.  They have a clearly-established, public record of using it, since at least as far back as 2008.  Intellectual property lawyers: can you help Wordle.net fight off this attacker?  Pro-bono?  For more information, visit http://bit.ly/helpwordle – and thanks!

Yesterday, the producers of the Your Big Break New Zealand contest announced their five finalists.  Sadly for me, my entry was not chosen.

But happily, I am a learner, and the whole process taught me so much – about writing, about pitching, about storyboarding, about pre-production planning, and about how easy it is to work hard when you're passionate and hungry for experience.

That's what I learned from developing my project.  Now, on to the meat!  What I learned from losing:

"Losing" vs. Not Being Chosen

Just because my entry wasn't chosen doesn't mean I "lost" anything.  Quite the opposite!  I gained a ton of practical, hands-on experience.

You could argue that I lost time – well, any learning takes time.

I lost an opportunity?  Nope – opportunities come and go.  This was one, others are coming.

I lost face?  Nah – most of the people I begged to vote for me were impressed that I had the ballsiness to a) put my fledgling project on display for the whole world to judge, and b) wear my heart on my sleeve, admit I couldn't do it alone, and ask for help.

Which reminds me – I gained a new appreciation for my friends and colleagues.

As individuals, we're amazing; team us up, and we're profoundly powerful.

Ten percent of my address book voted for me.  Not much, you say?  I have almost 900 people in my address book.

A month ago, if you had asked me, I'd have told you I had no idea how to get 90 people I know to do anything.  Sure, I'm trained in public speaking and persuasive writing, but with this project, I had to get my message out quickly.  I learned a lot about leveraging the power of social media – sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were crucial to getting the word out.  Even direct email played a strong part in gaining eyeballs.

So, did I lose?  Heck, no.

I clearly gained experience, process and strategy know-how, and new appreciation for people and technology.

I came out ahead.

Safe/Commercial vs. Funny/Viral

I may have doomed my effort from the start by missing the importance of one sentence in the project brief: "This is not about making a commercial for New Zealand – you can take any angle on this you wish."

Now clearly, if you read my script, you can see I wrote a commercial.  This was a "safe" choice.  I thought that, since the contest was sponsored by Tourism New Zealand, they would ultimately "go for" whatever projects were most likely to drum up tourism for the islands.

Not so.

Of the five finalists, four were comedies set in New Zealand.  Color me surprised!  Until, that is, I go back to the brief, and read: "It might be funny, sad, evocative, exciting, shocking or simply beautiful."

In my zeal to please the judges I'd imagined, I missed out on the significance of this one word.  Is it significant that "funny" is mentioned first?  Were they hoping for funny all along?

I could run this 'round and 'round in my head until I'm blue in the face.  What it comes down to is, had I only thought of this theory, I would have written a very different script:

Judges ultimately want short videos that are entertaining enough to go viral, and when they do go viral, they will get so many people thinking about X, that they will eventually Y.

Viral is the trend, isn't it?  Why?  ROI.  Entertaining videos that spread themselves must have a higher ROI than predictable videos that bribe their way onto the airwaves, only to be shown once and never seen again.

Viral video is word-of-mouth advertising.  And word-of-mouth advertising sells more cost-effectively than TV, print, and online advertising.  And what goes viral better than comedy?

Who doesn't need a laugh?  Check the Most Viewed page on YouTube and it's easy to see.  Comedy gets eyeballs.  Comedy goes viral.

You can be sure I'll be testing out this theory on my next project.  Oh, yes.

(See, this is what I mean by learning.  And it's why I'm in love with failure: failure teaches me so much.  If I'm afraid to fail, I'm afraid to learn.  And I'm not about to stop learning, so – welcome, Failure, do come in, let's chat over tea, let's talk about what just happened, let's figure out what we can do better next time.)

Rules vs. "Squishy" Rules

Logical types obey rules.  Artsy types break rules.

The downloadable brief mentioned that submitters should provide a "60 second video pitch".  Rule?  People pitching over this time limit will be automatically disqualified?

Well… not so.

Four of the five finalists' pitch videos were over 1:30.

Some folks cried foul (you can search for @YourBigBreakNZ on Twitter) – but should a desirable entry be disqualified on a technicality?

No.  But it's worth discussing.

The rules-lawyer in me says "yes" – you ignore a basic rule, you get penalized.

But that only sees things from a contestant's perspective: "I'm a contestant, I played by the rules, I should have an advantage over people who broke the rules."

What about the judges' perspective?  Does it make sense to disqualify an entry that is entertaining and could easily go viral?

No.  No, it really doesn't.

So as much as we planner-types like to play by stated rules, when it comes down to it:

If a judge falls in love with your entry, then it doesn't matter if your pitch video is twice as long as the rules say it can be.

Knowing this, you can bet that my next pitch video will take all the time it needs for me to sell my story.

(Though I'm guessing that blathering on for a full two minutes would be too long.  This is supposed to be an elevator pitch, after all.  I'll be aiming for 1:00 to 1:45.)

Better Luck Next Time?

How about:

Better work next time.

Luck has nothing to do with it.*  If I can learn from my mistakes, I can avoid making them again.  Kaizen.

If this has been helpful to you, why not drop me a clue cookie, and let me know you've been here, and what you think?  Leave a comment.

*Yes, serendipity happens, but that's circumstance, not luck.  That's a discussion for a whole 'nother time.

Update: The five finalists's films are now online at http://your-big-blog.com/2010/02/23/the-films-are-online/ .  Check them out.

I still have so much to learn.