Colby Brin

Monday, January 27, 2014

The Passing Glance of the Infinite.

When we compare the present life of men on Earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through a banqueting hall on a winter's day. After a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on Earth for a little while, but of what went before this life or what will follow, we know nothing.

- Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Book II, Chapter 13)

Monday, November 18, 2013

21 Sure Signs That You're a Buzzfeed List

1. You start off with a really solid opening of 4 or 5 resonant items, then devolve into meaningless tripe.

2. Like a "good" OK Cupid date, you manage an improbable balance of feeling formulaic and intimate at the same time - and you end up being forgettable.

3. You get the sense you're a glorified display case for GIFs of NBC sitcoms.

4. You get the sense you're a thin cover for references to 90s pop culture.

5. You get the sense you're a thin cover for references to New York City.

6. Your focus is something patently obvious, like "21 Signs You Enjoy Oxygen."

7. You have 5,000+ shares on Facebook, but no soul.

8. You have been, somehow, written by a corporation.

9. Unlike Seinfeld, you are, quite literally, about nothing.

10. Unlike nothing itself, you are sometimes about less than nothing.

11. You don't simply "target" people under 35; you pro-actively turn away those over 35.

12. You did not take more than a half hour to be compiled, and 29 of those minutes were spent on GIFs.

13. You appear to be designed with a stripped-down(!) MS Paint.

14. Half of you is not even right.

15. You have no discernable taste whatsoever.

16. You contain not a single original thought, let alone piece of content.

17. You view human beings as mindless automatons.

18. You make even the NY Post seem erudite.

19. You can't possibly be a page on an actual website.

20. You're parasitic enough to make head lice blush.

21. You should have been at least five items shorter.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Hillary Clinton I.

Bill Burr says the conventional wisdom about the next big earthquake being in Southern California is wrong.

"Everyone's betting the West Coast," he says. "There's too much money on the West Coast. So it's gonna be the East Coast."

That's how I feel about Hillary Clinton in 2016.

I'll explain exactly why in subsequent posts, but really, it kind of all boils down to "There's too much money on Hillary Clinton."

Passing the Buck

I love it when I print something at work and my PC announces: "This document was sent to the printer."

1. The passive voice.
2. It's practically saying, "I did my job. I can't vouch for that printer, though."

Such a lazy, self-centered computer! C'mon, be a team player. The funniest part is that the printer is HP also.

Friday, August 23, 2013

A Terrible Commercial

Watch that silliness.

I think the entire Harley-Davidson corporation has fallen off a giant Harley and hit its collective head.

1. If you need a bluetooth and touchscreen to listen to music and field phone calls on your HARLEY, then don't get a Harley for chrissakes. Harley-Davidson, you are sh*tting all over your own brand.

2. Who on God's green earth puts their boss in their phone as "BOSS"? Two-year olds? But how would a two-year old ride a motorcycle?

They could have had "OFFICE" call him or something like that. We would have gotten the point, and the "hero" of the commercial wouldn't have to look like an absolute imbecile.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Friday, June 7, 2013

THE HORSE, THE SPRINTER, THE SPORTS GUY AND THE CIDER

Three fine examples of a standard deviation – and some sage advice.

One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you're going to wind up with an ear full of cider.

– Sky Masterson, to Nathan Detroit, in Guys and Dolls

During the roughly month-long period that forms the 40^th anniversary of Secretariat’s historic triple crown run, I find myself thinking about the most memorable spoken line from Guys and Dolls, which translates to: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

We finally “learned” this about Lance Armstrong int January. But many of us already “suspected” (read: knew) that Armstrong was blood-doping, based on that Sky Masterson metric.

Armstrong might not have failed a single drug test, and might have sworn up and down that he was playing with an honest deck, but many of us knew that 7 Tours de France in a row - in a hyper-competitive sport rife with doping - was nothing short of a Super Soaker blast of cider in your ear. It seemed unnatural - and it was.

Which brings me to Usain Bolt. For two Olympics in a row, Bolt has won the 100m and 200m sprints by unnatural margins. (I also find it unnatural that Jamaican sprinters swept the medals in the 200m in London; Jamaica has a population of around 3 million people, which is roughly equivalent to 5 thousandths of a percentage point of the world’s population – but she has the 3 top 200m sprinters on the globe???)

Yet no one, including Bill Simmons in a lengthy no-one-gets-the-benefit-of-the-doubt-on-PEDs column, even questions Bolt.

Uh, why not?

And much as the horse racing gods might strike me down as I write this, the Bolt question begs another: What about Secretariat?

Secretariat won all three triple crown races by margins and times that were unheard of for 1973. I mean, watch this video of that year’s Belmont Stakes:

Here’s where standard deviation comes in.

Is that Belmont win more of a piece with Roger Maris eking out the homerun record in 1961 by one homer - or is it more in line with Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds justdecimating the home run record? Bringing it a full standard deviation higher than it had been.

Like Bolt has done with the 100m and 200m sprints.

Like Secretariat did 40 years ago.

We know what happened in those baseball cases.

And I hope I’m dead wrong about Bolt and Secretariat.

But I find it astounding that no one is even asking the question.