Flashes of Panic

I just sent in another column, which will probably run on Friday. I had it mostly written, but was dissatisfied with it. Finally I hit on a hook, and wound up rewriting the whole thing around the hook, which was a comparison based on my high-school pre-calc teacher having us figure the odds on the Megabucks and Cory Doctorow’s toss-off rant in Eastern Standard Tribe:

That’s the crack-cocaine part… If you put a rat in a cage with a lever that doesn’t give food pellets, he’ll push it once or twice and give up. Set the lever to always deliver food pellets and he’ll push it when he gets hungry. Set it to sometimes deliver food pellets and he’ll bang on it until he passes out!

Yeah, that’s me… bringing crack-addled lottery-playing lab rats to a fine running website near you.

Now Playing: Great Southern Land from Primitive Man by Icehouse