Have You Ever Wondered?

You know, I’ve always been very appreciative of the miracle which is the human body. There are a million of things that could go wrong with our bodies at any particular moment, but, somehow they don’t. The fact that I am writing this, and you are reading this, is a testament to that. The human body simply is a marvel.

Yet, sometimes, I have to wonder, what was mother nature thinking when she designed us. For example, why do we itch? And, when itchy, why do we instinctively have to scratch? We simply have to - and its not limited to adult humans either, babies do it, and animals do it as well.

So, if its hardwired into our brain to 1) feel itchy and 2) ALWAYS scratch when itchy, surely there must be a reason for it?

Well, if there is, it is totally beyond me. I have never come across an occasion where is it beneficial to scratch. Have you?

And, why do we get itchy at the shittiest of places (sometimes literally!) - i.e., the bum ? Really now, what on earth could be so important that my bum wants my to scratch it? 

Oh, and don’t forget the eyes too. The eyes don’t even need a reason for itch, they just randomly do it to remind you that they are there. Perhaps they are jealous that the rest of your body gets touched more often than they do? But please don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’ll just give them a tiny little scratch, because when you start to scratch your eyes, I can guarantee you that you’ll be doing it for the whole bloody night.

Ooh and God forbid if you ever get something like Eczema - once you start scratching it’ll be so itchy that you’ll pray someone would chop your leg off.

But if there is one good thing about getting itchy, its the fact that it brings back memories of my mom, and her lovely shrieking voice - "Timo, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, DO NOT SCRATCH!"

Ah, thanks mom.

Even though she, and all the other mom’s in the world are right, that there probably is never a good reason  to scratch, in the end, we all still do. Why? Because it feels bloody awesome. I’ve had 2 dozen scratches in the past 15 minutes already, and am warming up for more - how about you, how many have you had?

Now, I’m not much of a gambling man myself. Being a big fan of mathematics and probability, I know what my chances are of winning. And they are NEVER good. Plus, I’ve never had any luck in most games anyway - I can’t remember a single time I’ve won, say, Monopoly (bloody GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL cards always get me!).

In fact, collectively, it is almost guaranteed that the human race will lose money to casinos. Sure, individually, on a particular night, you may get lucky and win a few dollars, but if you play long enough, you are almost guaranteed of losing as well. It’s simply in the odds - the casinos have, within legal limits, rigged all the games so that they win more often than they lose.

The worst games are the games purely based on luck, eg, games like the slot-machine-one-armed-bandit (where you need to get, say, 3 identical shapes in a row). In games like these, there is no skill involved to help you tip the scale. Games like blackjack, on the other hand, has a small element of skill involved, which may help you even out the odds a little bit. Having said that, you’ll still probably lose in the long run, if not on the table, then on the drinks you’ll need to  keep you at the table.

But what if I told you there is a fool-proof, GUARANTEED way to make you beat the casino? You’ll probably dismiss it, but, bring the nice guy that I am, I am still willing to share this secret with you. For FREE. Yes, you read that right ladies and gentlemen. FREE.

Now, all you need to do is find a game that you have a near 50-50 chance of winning. That should be easy, as most games have to be ‘near’ 50-50 by law. You also need to choose a game where you can change the bets at any time. So, with this in mind, I’ll choose Roulette, simply because its easier to visualise.

Now, the traditional Roulette wheel has 37 numbers, numbered 1-36, and 0. Each odd number is say, red in colour, and each even number except 0 is say, black. Let’s make 0 grey, but in fact its ‘colourless’. The casino dude will spin the roulette wheel, throw a ball into the wheel and we as gamblers will bet to see which number the ball will fall on.

Now, let’s say you bet 5 dollars on the ball falling on an odd number. Your chance of winning is 18 (there are 18 odd numbers) out of 37 (there are 37 total numbers), which equals to approximately 48.6%. Slightly less than 50-50. So, if you bet 5 dollars every single round, eventually you are guaranteed to lose money.

But here is the trick - the trick that will GUARANTEE that you will earn your initial bet. The trick is to change your bet everytime you lose - in fact - you should DOUBLE your bet everytime you lose. So, let’s say you choose ‘odd’ every single round. You start off with a bet of 5, and lose. Now you bet 10 dollars, and lose, now you bet 20 dollars, and lose. To recap, so far you have lost 35 dollars, and you’re starting to sweat. That’s ok, hang in there. You continue to double your bet, so you bet 40 dollars, and lose. Damn. You now bet 80 dollars, and finally you win! So you earn 80 dollars from that round, but in total you have lost 75 dollars. So, in the end, you have made 5 dollars!

This is called the Martingale betting strategy.

So, because it is almost impossible to lose EVERY single round the WHOLE night, you are almost guaranteed to win your initial bet. If you want to win more money, then start with a larger initial bet, and keep going the whole night!

Statistically its GUARANTEED!

The catch? There is no catch.

Oh well maybe there is. Otherwise everyone will use it and casinos will go bankrupt.

Perhaps I forgot to mention a teeny weeny miniscule detail. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the math, or the logic, of the above method. There is no trickery involved. But it does have one underlying assumption. Jusy a small one. Tiny in fact. So tiny its not worth mentioning. The assumption is… umm… that…..you …. ummm……have an infinite amount of money to start of with.

But otherwise, it works! I promise!

Ok ok, perhaps I need to clarify that tiny little assumption. The problem occurs because your bets, which grow exponentially if you keep losing, may blow out of proportion very quickly. Let’s say you start with 10 dollars, which is probably the normal minimum bet for most tables nowadays anyway. And let’s say you lose the first say, 6 rounds, which is possible, although not very probable (probability of 3%). Your required bet would now be 640 dollars, and you have so far lost 630 dollars. Now if you lose THIS next one, your next bet will need to be 1280 dollars. And if you win? Well, you earn 10 bucks. So, a possible winning of 10 dollars on one hand, a possible losing of 1280 dollars on the other. Not very enticing now, is it? 

Besides, if you HAD 1280 bucks in your pocket, would you be betting 10 dollars?

Do you know it takes about two minutes for my PC to load up? TWO MINUTES. Let’s say I do it twice a day, once at work, and once at home. That’s 4 minutes a day. That’s 1460 minutes a year. In a typical lifetime of say 80 years, 60 of which we actually access a pc, that’s 87600 minutes. That’s about 61 days.

61 days of our lives are spent staring at the damn screen, while waiting for Windows to startup. We can’t leave and do something else in the meantime either, just incase that damn Scandisk thingy comes up and you have to press spacebar within 10 seconds - if you don’t - well, you’ll be waiting 8 hours then.

DOS used to load in less than 10 seconds. Hell, my TV starts in 1 second. My Hi-Fi starts near instantaneously. The latter two are electronic devices, just like PC’s, but no, freaking-idiot-software people had to screw everything up. A bunch of fornicators if you ask me.

However much I hate software engineers, this time my beef is with the hardware guys. Why can’t you guys make my PC go any faster?

Now, PC speed is usually strongly related to the cpu clock speed, and this is true to a very large extent. The clock speed of a processor is how fast it inputs and outputs the 1’s and 0’s - so, the faster the clock speed, the faster it processes stuff, the less I have to see that damn Windows logo.

So, why don’t they make processor clock speeds faster then?

Well, they do, every year they make some improvement, but this is usually down to manufacturing techniques. You see, processors are small chips made up of many many transistors - the more transistors they can fit in the chip, the faster the clock speed. Now, there is a limit to how many transistors you can fit into a certain finite space, once you get to a certain level, you simply can’t manufacture them. Or if you could, noise and heat become significant issues. So these things limit the speed of the processor. We simply can’t fit that many transistors into a chip sized about 50mm x 50mm.

So here’s an idea for you geniuses at Intel :

MAKE THE FREAKING CHIPS LARGER !

By simply doubling the size of the chip, you quadruple the area, therefore increasing the number of transistors by 4! Assuming clock speed is a linear function with the number of transistors, that would mean 4 times the processor speed! Easy!

Man, I’m so smart its not funny!