Kinsey

I watched Kinsey last night, and was really surprised by what a good movie it is.  While it glosses over the fact that Kinsey had some serious sampling errors in his methodology, which makes some of his statistics invalid, it rightly focuses on his determination to expose the truth about human sexual behavior.  What was important about his research was not whether 50% or 20% of people engaged in an activity, he was exposing the fact that any percentage engaged in them, and that none of the side-effects that the “moral” pseudo-medical information warned of actually took place.

Contrasted with the increasing absurdity of the Abstinence-Only sex education that the “Family Values” crowd wants to instill in our youth these days, it’s easy to see the same forces of denial at work.  I’m not a fan of bullshit in any form, and neither was Kinsey, for as a scientist, he couldn’t rely on hearsay and superstition when attempting to provide real answers about sex. 

Give the movie a rental when it comes out on video, both Liam Neeson and Laura Linney are great in it.

Value of Various TiVo Rewards

I was feeling bored while I installed a server today, so I took the opportunity to calculate the various values of the new TiVo Rewards structure. You get 5,000 points for referring someone to TiVo, but the actual “value” you get from that referral depends greatly on what you spend your points on. Unless noted otherwise, all prices came from Amazon.com:

Item	Points	Price	$/100 Points	$/Referral
20GB iPod	25000	$299.99	$1.20	$60.00
Bose QuietComfort 2 (Crutchfield)	25000	$299.00	$1.20	$59.80
Creative Zen 20GB Portable Media Center	45000	$471.99	$1.05	$52.44
Nikon Coolpix 5200	35000	$349.99	$1.00	$50.00
140 hour tivo - Rebate	25000	$229.99	$0.92	$46.00
Humax DRT800 - Rebate	35000	$319.99	$0.91	$45.71
iPod Mini 4GB	20000	$179.99	$0.90	$45.00
Colored TiVo remote (TiVo.com)	4000	$34.99	$0.87	$43.74
Pro Installation (TiVo.com)	15000	$129.99	$0.87	$43.33
Delphi MyFi	35000	$299.99	$0.86	$42.86
Phonex PX-441	7000	$49.99	$0.71	$35.71
iPod Shuffle 512	15000	$99.99	$0.67	$33.33
DWL-122 (Buy.com)	7500	$41.76	$0.56	$27.84
40 Hour TiVo - Rebate	20000	$79.94	$0.40	$19.99
Linksys USB200M	7500	$24.99	$0.33	$16.66

IACON

My co-worker Aaron and I spoke today at the annual conference of the Iowa Distance Learning Association and the Iowa Association for Communication Technology. We gae a presentation about wireless security, why it's important, and an overview of the various technologies involved in it. Supposedly, we were a hit, but I'll wait until I see the evaluation forms to believe it. I did only see one person sleeping during our talk, but there was another one nodding off...

Panchero's

I ate lunch at the new Panchero’s in Cedar Falls.  It was okay food, though I’m not really sure how different their dishes are from each other.  You choose tacos, burritos, salad, etc. and then what ingredients you want.  All the various tortillas are made from the same dough, on the same grill in front of you, so it’s basically you choosing your shape of food, rather than any actual difference, as far as I can tell.  Also annoying is that the round hole in their trash receptacles is smaller in diameter than the round plastic container that held my steak salad, so I really had to cram it in there to throw it away when I was done eating.

Their tortillas were tasty, but for some reason I prefer hard tortillas to soft generally.  Not bad, all in all, but they won’t be replacing Rudy’s Tacos as my favorite in town.

Chantico

After lunching at Panera today, my co-worker Aaron and I ducked into the new Starbucks nearby. This is the first "real" Starbucks for the Cedar Valley, so we thought we'd check it out. I saw they were advertising a drink called "Chantico" and since I don't like coffee, I opted to try it instead of the usual Vanilla Creme I get when I'm in a Starbucks. The barista told me that it was like hot chocolate, but "different", so I gave it a shot. A shot is about all I got, as the drink is only about 6 ounces, and I felt more than a little effeminate walking about with my dainty coffee cup among the talls, grandes and ventis around me. The drink tastes much like this USA Today article says, like a melted Hershey's bar in a glass. It's REALLY chocolatey, more so than you'd expect. The real shock came when I got back to work and read this article, and realized the nutritional value (or lack thereof) in the drink. Three Hundred and Ninety Calories?!? In 6 Ounces?!? 21 Grams of fat?!??!

If you're a chocolate lover, give it a try, but I think I'll stick to the Vanilla Cremes...