nathanmanley.net

This is Barry Schwartz at the TED talks series explaining the idea behind his book “The Paradox of Choice” A pretty interesting idea, and a good talk. His whole point is that we are in a world that presents us with too many options, and that constantly worrying about what choice we make actually detracts from our overall happiness. I’m not sure I buy it, but it is something interesting to think about. What do you guys think? Is there such thing as too much choice?

If you are interested in the book you can check it out below:

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It seems that the casinos are just not satisfied with winning at blackjack almost all the time. According to a recent LA Times article the casinos have been slowly altering the rules of blackjack over the past few years to skew the game even further in their favor. What’s the big deal? Well, everyone knows (at least I HOPE you know) that all games you find in a casino have a house edge built into them (it’s how casinos make money…well, that and charging $30 for a crappy buffet). Slots has one of the highest house edges (have you ever REALLY won at slots? What if you calculate your total life time slot profit vs how much you have pumped into those machines? Yea, that’s what I thought), while blackjack is has classically been one of the lowest. Using classic rules on a one deck game of blackjack the house edge was is a tiny .18%. What that means is that for every hundred dollars you wager, you should only lose 18 cents. Of course it has been nearly impossible to find a single deck game of blackjack for some time (because card counters figured out how to beat the casino and skew the odds in their favor), but now it seems casinos have been further altering the rules to put the game more squarely in their favor.

Some of the changes include:

• Cutting the payout for hitting blackjack from 3:2 to 6:5
• Requiring the dealer to hit and not stand on a “soft 17″
• Limiting players’ rights to double-down
• Increasing the number of decks in the shoe

If you have no idea what the above things mean that is fine… the moral of the story is *stay away from gambling* It might feel like gambling for you but it is most certainly NOT for the casino. They will always win in the end.

If you want to see a great documentary about some people that actually did beat the Casinos, then check out Making Millions the Easy Way for free on Google Video. This is a documentary about blackjack, card counting , and the team of MIT card counters that took Las Vegas for millions of dollars. For a great book on the subject, I highly recommend “Bringing Down the House” by Ben Mezrich. You can check it out using the link below.

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A couple days ago I posted about setting up my Feedburner account to help you, the loyal reader, keep tabs on my site. It does this by providing the RSS feed to my site, a feed which you can put in various applications to see the content of my site. In trying to explain RSS to people, I am finding that the best way to see how it works is to simply use it… and one of the easiest ways I have yet seen to use it is with the Google Reader. I have been using it for the past week or so, and now I’m not sure how I got by without it!

So what does the Google Reader do and why should you use it? Here is a case study (mine). Lets say there are several sites that I check on a regular basis. I like to read The Consumerist, Lifehacker, and postsecret. I could check each one individually by typing in their domain names in my address bar, or I could bookmark them all and look through my bookmarks, going to each site one by one and seeing what was new. Or (drum roll please), I could use a feed reader like Google Reader. Most sites have some sort of feed that you can subscribe to. On my site, you can see the bright orange icon in the sidebar… that is an RSS Feed subscription icon. When you click on it, your browser should ask you where you want to subscribe to the feed, and Google Reader should be one of the choices on the list. You need a Google account (easy to set up) and you are good to go!

Once you are subscribed to the feed in Google reader you will see any updates to the site on the reader home page. So now instead of going all over the net, I can go to one place and see any updates to the various sites that I read. Again, I could write about this forever and it would still be a tough concept to grasp… just try it out and you will see the magic that is RSS.

Of course that is just the beginning…once I have my feeds in Google Reader there is a lot I can do with them, even share the stories I like with you guys:

http://www.google.com/reader/shared/02776214800859449102

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This is not me. However, if you were looking for me on the internet this is one of the people you would find. Has he stolen my identity? No, but we happen to have the same name.

Have you ever looked yourself up on Google and found your “Google Twins”? In other words, using Google to find people with the same name as you and finding out what they do, what they have accomplished, etc. I had done this a few times a while back before I had this website and I was usually nowhere to be found on the internet. Now I show up, but so do many, many other Nathan Manleys. I thought I would use today to investigate the global phenomenon that is Nathan Manley and see what some of my (evil?) twins are up to.

One of the interesting things that the internet does is that it removes a lot of the location based solutions by which we communicate. There have always been people with the same names (since, lets face it…we are not too creative with naming our kids). For the millions of people with a name like “Dan Smith” or “Robert Jones” you could always tell which one you were talking about by their location. “oh you are talking about the Dan Smith from Springfield! I was thinking of the one in Centersville!” or “No, not Katie Jones on Elm Street, the one who lives on Spring Street” etc, etc

However, as the internet makes physical location less and less important you start to run into new problems. Instead of location based identity I think you will see a switch to action and relationship based identity (”oh, you mean Nathan Manley who is friends with ____ and is really interested in solar power?”). However, what if there is another Nathan Manley who used to play soccer? (there is). How does our new ability to find anyone anywhere affect our identity? I think it will become more and more of an issue the more information we put on the net…so we are only at the beginning. For instance, I wonder how many people will be looking for their friend Nathan Manley and come across this website, only to be disappointed (or pleasantly surprised)?

With that said, lets take a look at some other Nathan Manleys out there on the net:

Here is me (Nathan Manley)…if you are on this site reading this that means you are reading about me with words written by me. Good job! But wait, what about:

Nathan Manley!! Nathan is the head coach of the Rapid Area YMCA Swimmers in Grand Rapids Michigan. He seems moved to Grand Rapids from California in 2003, where he formerly taught English and the boys and girls swim team. Seems like this Nathan is upholding the Nathan Manley name pretty well! Lets see who else we can find.

Uh oh… This Nathan Manley appears to be dead! Born: Jul 15 1896 in Bath Co., KY Died: Aug 5 1978 Buried: Longview Cemetery, Bethel, Bath Co., KY. This could make an interesting road trip. RIP Nathan Manley…hope everything went well! You seem to have lived to the ripe old age of 82. Also of note, this Nathan Manley died a year before I was born…coincidence?

Here are a couple super smart Nathan Manleys. Apparently they made it through AP Physics…I’m glad some of us did!

Here is a soccer playing Welsh Nathan Manley. Actually I have seen pictures of him before in googling myself, I actually used to play soccer back in middle school and high school, but I’m guessing this Nathan Manley is better than I am.

If you are looking for a Nathan Manley to sell you a ceiling or a Nathan Manley who is a pretty good golfer or one who is good at chess or races cars they (we?) are out there.

Rockclimbing? You bet!

Drinking? Of course (oh wait, that’s actually me…how embarrassing!)

So it seems like if there is something to be done out in the world, Nathan Manley has a representative on the job. Although I am sad that another one of us got the Gmail name, I got the domain name! But hey other Nathan Manleys…don’t be afraid! I plan on upholding the great tradition of excellence that we seem to be developing here. If you are one of us feel free to let me know! Post below fellow Nathan Manley!

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This video is the highlight of Al Gore’s testimony before congress on the issue of global warming. He brought with him over half a million signatures from the email that he sent out earlier in the week. Time will tell if our Government (well, US really…you know, We the People) has the moral courage and dedication to do the right thing. This is not an issue that will just go away, and will involve making some really tough choices. Below is one of the highlights of the speech:

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I just got through watching this movie and I am MAD! For those who don’t know, Who Killed the Electric Car is a documentary about why it was that the all electric car was developed and deployed and subsequently destroyed by the major car companies. The short version of the story is that California passed a law mandating a certain percentage of cars sold in California be zero emission at certain dates. The car companies complied and developed these cars, but at the same time they fought the legislation. As soon as they were successful at turning over the ruling, they took back the cars they had produced (and were leasing to customers) and CRUSHED THEM. Watching the callousness in the way the car companies essentially rooted against their own product is astounding. Taking cars off the road that work perfectly and destroying them so that no one would know about them is just about the most heartless, cold thing I have ever seen.

For a better synopsis of the issues than I can give, please check out the Plug in America. I am as big a fan of anyone for developing a hydrogen based economy, but this movie makes the point (and rather well I might add) that electric vehicles can work NOW. A hydrogen based economy needs a massive infrastructure to be built before we can even begin to have one… battery based electric vehicles require NO additional infrastructure and can boost fuel economies to over 100 mpg right now. The movie deals with all this and more and will make you want to go out there and change the world!

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According to the BBC a new “skybridge” is opening up on the edge of the grand canyon. It is essentially a loop that sticks out into the canyon about 20 meters (60 feet) and is made mostly of glass. While the skybridge is built on native american land it is unclear from the article who exactly is behind it (Is it one of those cases where most of the profits actually just go to some corporation?). I can’t really decide if this is interesting or a blight on the landscape of the grand canyon. The design does seem pretty minimalist and respectful of the fact that what you are actually there to see is nature…although I’m sure there is a gift shop. What do you think? Does the grand canyon actually need something more to promote people looking at it?

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Some websites just make sense…while most are a mix of elements that only sort of work together. Postsecret is one of those sites that has one idea and executes it perfectly. Here is how it works (from their website):

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

That’s it.

The site is pretty amazing in the variety of responses people have submitted to that simple request. It is also pretty telling that postsecret is the largest non comercial blog on the web. According to Technorati it is currently the 9th most read blog on the internet…that is huge for a site that is not about technology, politics, or news (although it really is about all those things in a roundabout way).

Check out the site to see what I mean…it is fascinating.

They also have a set of three books that are filled with the postcards that they have received.

You can pick up the books from independent book stores or order them from Amazon. So if you are tired of reading about the latest gadget or what Brittany did today why not give postsecret a shot?

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Ok, here is a sequence from the martial arts movie “The Protector”. I found it over at Freeindie.com. This is essentially a 4 minute long, uncut, unedited fight scene. I have worked on a few film and video sets where it has taken half the day to get a 10 second shot of a laundry basket spinning around. I remember a similar shot in some other movie (can’t think of the name right now) that was set in a hospital, however I think this one takes the cake! Anyone know of any other long clips like this?

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