Modes and Video Games Music

There's a very useful classification of music which helps explain why pieces sound dramatically more happy or sad: the major and minor scales. The major scale is the staging ground for most of the peaceful or upbeat music you'll hear, whereas the minor is a little darker and used for more music with some conflict or sorrow inherent to it. Darth Vader's theme from Star Wars and Captain Jack Sparrow's theme from Pirates of the Caribbean are both written in a minor key, and the major key dominates the lullaby scene and most tension free music.

The reason music sounds so different depending on which scale it's written in has to do with the different notes that make up the scales, the minor scale has a few lowered notes which give it a less pleasant sound. The root chord, which is what a piece has to end on in order to sound resolved, has a darker sound in the minor scale, and the two different scales work out to different chords and progressions appearing in the music, such as the major scale's classic "A-men" IV-I progression, which appears in a lot of hymns.

The vast majority of music falls into one of those two categories, and our system of musical notation is designed around the properties of those two types of scales. However, those two types of scales are just two examples of a general type of scale called a mode, and including those two, there are seven types of modes that have been historically utilized in music, as far back as the Greek Era.

The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, in pontificating about the way people ought to live took the trouble to recommend certain modes over others, believing some to have properties best suited to laziness or drinking songs, and others more fit for inspiring music in times of warfare. While scholars are not entirely convinced of how their seven modes relate to our modern ones, Greek philosophy being easier to come by than Greek music, popular interpretation suggests that our modern major mode was of a type Aristotle specifically condemned as making people stupid, and both philosophers favored only using the Dorian and Phrygian, two modes which are largely extinct in popular music, for worship and times of war respectively.

A few technical points, three modes have a major root chord: the Ionian(or major), the Lydian, and Mixolydian, and those last two differ from the major only by a single note(all three characterized by Plato as too light, incidentally). Three modes have a minor root chord: the Aeolian(or minor), Dorian, and Phrygian, and those last two differ from the minor by a single note as well. The seventh mode is the Locrian, it differs from the minor by two notes, has a diminished root chord, and is largely theoretical simply because it's so uncomfortable to work with.

Some styles of jazz make use of the atypical modes, and artists like the Beatles have been known to explore the different scales, but for this entry I'd like to give examples of the different modal possibilities from a different branch of popular music, video game music. Well-known for songs that have to stand up to inordinate amounts of repetition and being forced to rely on synthesizers in the days before hardware and budgets allowed for orchestral renditions or licensing out pop artists, video game music happens to be something I'm quite familiar with, am in an easy position to analyze, and possesses a surprising amount of variety.

It has some similarity to TV and movie soundtracks, with pieces being written for specific settings and scenes, and frequently uses leitmotifs as a recurring cue to mark the presence of a character, a device dating back to opera. But while video-games can focus on story and character like other mediums, video-game music is unique in that it is written to accompany an activity rather than a fixed story, and it often times has to be dynamic, randomly choosing which section to play next, or changing in instrumentation/speed/tone depending upon feedback from the player. The following seven pieces represent music designed for six consoles and six series's, and aside from the absence of a good heroic theme, I think it serves as a good representation of some of the medium's musical styles.

i. Ionian(or major) (C D E F G A B C) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ljFaKRTrI Still Alive- Portal(PC). This is the game industry equivalent of a credits song, and the only one of this set that doesn't accompany actual gameplay. It's played upon the successful conclusion to the game, although the melody itself is foreshadowed in the game. It is sung by a major character in the game to represent their last bit of character development, which in context may remind the well-informed of a scene from Kubrick's 2001 A Space Oddysey. It's written in two major keys, and the lyrics provide an interesting contrast to the otherwise happy/peaceful melody.

ii. Dorian (D E F G A B C D) http://youtube.com/watch?v=nRPOX0iO_Zg Temple of Time - Zelda: Ocarina of Time(Nintendo 64). This one is a chantish/worshipful sounding piece. One feature of this particular game which influenced its music: a few songs, including this one, had to be performed by the player on a virtual instrument tuned to the key of C, making relying on alternate modes a natural way to vary the styles of the music.

iii. Phrygian (E F G A B C D E) http://youtube.com/watch?v=yhnBUd6R31k Magus's Theme - Chrono Trigger(Super Nintendo). The major scale has a half step from its seventh note to its root, which makes hearing the seventh note slightly tense because you're expecting it to resolve into the root since it's so close. This mode, with a lowered second, has a similar effect in reverse, with a half step leading down into the root. This piece is an intense/dark theme serving as the motif for a sinister yet not entirely evil character.

iv. Lydian (F G A B C D E F) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHLw8G190a0 Space Junk Galaxy - Super Mario Galaxy(Wii). Back into major-related territory, this is a mellow piece which, like a lot of these songs, uses an atypical mode to create an ethereal or exotic sound. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydian_mode Wikipedia is of the opinion that the Lydian mode is most often used for dreamlike music in soundtracks and video games, and while the game above uses it a few times, I haven't noticed that many other instances.

v. Mixolydian (G A B C D E F G) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5EF5bI-blA Home Termina - Chrono Cross(Playstation). This piece serves as the background music for a city in its game, and is meant for a different style of explorative gameplay than most of the others in this set. I tend to associate the Mixolydian mode with this style of folk music, which has a certain dance-like quality to it. Lowering just one note on the major scale allows a number of interesting chord progressions to appear that you don't otherwise get.

vi. Aeolian(or minor) (A B C D E F G A) The classic minor key. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_MW65XxS7s One Winged Angel - Final Fantasy VII(An orchestrated version of a Playstation piece). While this one is a bit more chromatic than your typical minor piece, the main themes are clearly identifiable as minor. It also happens to be one of the more popular modern video game pieces, apparently serving as the encore for at least two video-game themed concerts. With a few lyrics "borrowed" from the Carmina Burana, this is the theme for the villain of the game.

vii. Locrian (B C D E F G A B) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r08jlBT4ZVU YYZ - Rush - Guitar Hero 2(Playstation 2). The bane of music students everywhere, the Locrian mode is largely considered theoretical just because everything naturally sounds dissonant, and the closest example I could find from the video game world is a rock piece, used in the guitar hero soundtrack, which has a locrian synthesizer part. If you know of any better examples, or feel like writing one, feel free to let me know!

And finally, in researching these examples, I came across a couple video game pieces that don't belong to any of the seven classic/medieval modes:

Phrygish(aka Phrygian Dominant or Spanish Gypsy Scale)(E F G# A B C D E): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=322V5rD6ko4 Forest Temple - Zelda:Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64) This mode differs from all the modes above in that it has three half-steps between its second and third notes, which is a longer interval than is allowed for in any of the classical modes. It bears some similarities to the Phrygian, from which it gets its name, it's essentially a Phrygian mode with a raised third, which puts it in a major root chord again. The lowered second and the long interval give it an unusual sound, and it's apparently used in some Middle-Eastern music, particularly Hungarian music and the works of Franz List.

Mixolydian Flat Sixth (G A B C D Eb F G): http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Chamber/8189/ff3daryl.mid Daryll's Theme -Final Fantasy VI (Super Nintendo)

and http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Chamber/8189/ff3setzer.mid Setzer's Theme - Final Fantasy VI (Super Nintendo)

This mode could be characterized in a few ways, it resembles a major with a lowered sixth and seventh, or a minor a with raised third which would essentially put it in the major, or even a mixolydian with a flat sixth, as the "official" name would suggest. Regardless, its root chord is major, but the sixth and seventh notes which typically distinguish the major from the minor, match the minor key. The first is a bit of a bittersweet melody, and the second is a somewhat triumphant variation which still has a bit of tension, it's an interesting mix.

This article led me to a number of other thoughts about music/modes, and the number of modes that are even possible, but since it gets extremely technical, I chose to place it on my main webpage instead for those interested: http://newheiser.googlepages.com/musicandmodes

Multitasking

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/multitasking

The above is an interesting article very critical of multitasking and trying to do too many things at once in the modern era.

My personal opinion on it is that multi-tasking can simply help use up boring congitive downtime in our lives, filling car trips with music, walking and talking on a cell phone, listening to the news over a meal, etc. A lot of activities by themselves simply don't engage or fully stimulate my brain in the ways it's been trained to crave. The dangers of it can include seeking out a constant shallow attention fix of something new and interesting to focus on without delving too deep into anything in particular, seeking constant interruptions for the sake of distraction, and dividing up one's time between critical tasks that really should just be focused on to their fullest extent one at a time. I'll sometimes poke fun at people for not devoting their full attention to a good movie the way you would in a theater, or envy the leagues of college students taking performing-enhancing perscription drugs to improve their own ability to focus.

That said, there are values to the methodology, in the process of writing a blog entry I may constantly pause to look something up, reference other sources, in the hope that that will save me time in the long run. And there are dangers to obsessively focusing on one thing to the exclusion of everything else, you can miss alternate solutions and ideas or simply get stuck without having a fresh concept to spark your imagination. I sometimes go on spurts of very intense work where I focus on one thing while ignoring all other concerns, physical or mental, which is the basis of my best productive flow, and it's probably a very engineerish trait to have the ability to focus on problems that can take hours to solve. But ultimately some tasks and situations need that kind of obsessive focus, and for others there may be benefits to dividing up your time and attention. As with most things, there's no categorical benefit to one over the other, sometimes you need to shut everything else out and sometimes you need a break.

(in thinking about this, I'd want to draw a distinction between context switching between activities all related to a central task, like possibly looking up references for something while writing or tracking down a problem by different methods, as opposed to absorbing multiple types of information at once or constantly toggling back and forth between two tasks. The former is a neccessary part of tackling some complex problems, whereas the latter is more of a juggling act to presumably save time)

Everything Bad is Good for You

Every Christmas I try to pick up a weighty non-fiction book I've heard good things about and delve into it, for personal self-betterment. Freakanomics, The Wisdom of Crowds, Collapse-How Societies Succeed or Fail, Blink-Split Second Decision Making, and prior to that a lot of the works of Thomas Sowell, an economist. Along with my typical pattern of picking up a huge slew of nerd/pop culture stuff when Comic-Con arrives, it helps round out my year and gives me some interesting ideas to consume for mental fodder.

This year's self-selected title is Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. With a premise like that, I'm on board and ready to accept everything he says before he spits out a single word. His argument is that television, movies, and video games are not "mindless mush" in the sense often described by cultural critics that encourage the brain to disengage and vegetate. The brain craves complexity and challenge, and the level of sophistication in the culture consumed in American society has continually risen over the last 30 years.

A large part of the point to his book is that you have to evaluate the pros and cons of a medium on its own terms. Books and the written word are excellent for discussing abstract concepts, presenting an argument, and dealing with organized information in fashion that the reader is expected to continually check back and reference things. Television is much better suited for relaying events, images and situations, even if its ability to fully develop an argument is limited to what it could portray in a conversation. And games are something different altogether, analyzing a game according to the richness of its plot or aesthetics of its world is often missing the point, since the fundamental structure of a game is a system of rules and interactions which the player is intended to probe, explore, and develop strategies around.

Television and movies have grown more subtle in his estimation by spelling things out less explicitly for the viewer and more naturally, and incorporating an ever-increasing number of relationships and subplots the viewer is expected to keep track of. In addition, the rise of syndication, and dvd box sets of tv shows has changed the market to where it pays to develop a show that stands up well to repeated viewings, and shows can make an entire season based around continuity and developing a single storyline.

The author doesn't get into this as much, but the rise of the internet in particular seems to have encouraging implications for media. A series can flop on TV to be picked up by a hardcore fanbase later and possibly bring it back or develop a buzz for it without going through normal channels. Songs can become chart-toppers without receiving any radio play, and it's easier than ever to filter out the stuff that would be of particular interest to you.

He cites the fact that IQ scores measuring abstract problem solving ability have risen over the last thirty years, even as tests measuring our math/verbal skills have stayed stagnant. It's an interesting take on different mediums and how they've evolved, and it's always encouraging to see some trends that appear to be moving in the right direction.

The next level of 3D

I hate to give anyone else more screen time on this blog than myself, but this video is simply amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

It's a hack using the camera on the Wii Remote to track the position of a user's head, and use that to adjust the screen so you get the experience of actually looking through a window, that zooms out or rotates with your perspective. It's limited to being tied to a single person's perspective, but the potential here is incredible.

Wikipedia is not an Encyclopedia

An Encyclopedia, such as the Britannica, is a resource which summarizes sourced material on a topic to present an overview accessible to the general public. The most recent edition of the Britannica contains 700 articles covered in a great deal of depth with named contributors and identified sources, and 65,000 articles covered less extensively with the vast majority (97%) containing less than 750 words, no listed contributors, and no references.

For contrast, Wikipedia, the "online encylopedia that anyone can edit", has over two million articles as of the writing of this blog. 1,773 have been promoted to "Featured" status: meaning that they been reviewed by the community, and confirmed to be accurate, well-referenced, and readable. An additional 3,234 articles have been identified as "good", meaning that they're reasonably well-referenced, accurate, and readable, but not at the point of an ideal article yet. In total, out of the vast mass of user-generated content Wikipedia has about 5,007 articles that they trust, about 1 in 420. To put this in perspective, the Britannica has around 2,650 articles with any sources at all.

Wikipedia is basically a giant community that edits, summarizes, and compiles information together from other sources. It's not a research community in the purely scientific sense of uncovering new knowledge—the question always arises why you should trust some random person on the internet to to give you good information. The answer is, of course, that you shouldn't. If that person wants their information to stick in the article, they have to provide a trustworthy source for it, so the ideal article is simply an accurate representation of all the information you could find elsewhere. It's not a perfect system, there are topics on which objectivity is hard to establish relating to politics and religion, and sometimes articles are reduced to simply explaining the various viewpoints or having a "Criticism" section to compile dissenting opinions. And while articles are ideally always improving and gaining in useful information and sources there is occasional vandalism, and most articles aren't at the point where all their information can be confirmed elsewhere.

That said, it's a very useful tool due to the extent to which articles are connected—you can click any highlighted word in an article to instantly view an article on that topic, allowing you to investigate all the related information you would need to understand something. And its most impressive feature is its breadth: anything that anyone on the internet finds particularly notable and is easily researched is likely to have an article, and a lot of early articles start out simply as collections of facts and trivia that random people on the web found interesting, and these gradually evolve into a more structured discussion of the topic. It's everything the internet should be, useful information without massive redundancy/inaccuracy, and not written wholly out of bias.

From the sheer volume of information contained in Wikipedia, it's obvious that it's not a typical Encyclopedia. Rather than restricting itself for the sake of space and time to writing articles on the most important scientific and historical topics, it's filled up with information on anything people today realistically care about. There are articles on every episode from the TV show House, every significant video game release, and articles describing in depth the plots and characters from all sorts of fantasy worlds. In addition to the serious stuff, it's the greatest repository for fictional and pop culture trivia that the world has ever seen.

Some people bemoan the signal to noise ratio and the fact that we apparently have a much better understanding of Tolkien's Middle-Earth than of India, but I don't think exhaustively researched non-academic subjects are a serious problem. Hard-drive space is trivially cheap, and limitations of space and the concerns about the percentage of content devoted to a particular topic simply don't apply to an online Encyclopedia. Any topic covered deserves the best treatment it can get, and if a large number of people feel most qualified and interested in developing their areas of interest over the broader fount of human knowledge, it does not harm anyone else.

The reason why I've chosen to write this (thus far generally supportive) rant, is because of a trend in the recent policy of Wikipedia to treat strictly fictional articles as non-notable, attempting to apply stricter "traditional encyclopedia" rules for content. Previously Wikipedia had contained an article on each "Pokemon" from the Nintendo series, with its own article describing it in relation to its fictional universe and the real world. A few of these articles had even been featured and showcased on the front page of Wikipedia as an example of the finest work the editors had produced. A process is currently underway to delete most of these articles and summarize them all in a list, believing that level of detail to be inappropriate for a feature of a fictional universe.

One possible criteria for notability is to say that it has to have crossed over into real-world media sources to deserve an article, so that there's an objective source to gather information from. Obviously, every person creating an article on themselves would simply be ridiculous, but restricting fictional articles to require independent media sources rather than its own primary source material (Tolkein's Lord of the Rings books serving as a source for Middle Earth, for example), puts Wikipedia in the position of constantly playing catch-up to real world media. In one example, a video blog by a youtube user, lonelygirl15, had its article initially deleted on Wikipedia for being non-notable despite having hundreds of thousands of viewers. It was only after the phenomenon began to catch the notice of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, was featured on the cover of Wired Magazine, made an appearance on Jay Leno, and had the actress herself hired by the United Nations to do a commercial that it was re-assessed and undeleted. In my opinion, it should never have been scrapped in the first place: there was enough verifiable information there for a real article, and a necessarily incomplete or even poorly sourced article is generally better than none at all.

Other recent deletion crusades include attempts to clear out articles based upon TV shows, elements of fictional universes, and webcomics. While the point is often made that the information can always be moved somewhere else, to follow these policies all the way through would mean that Wikipedia would have to give up its status as the Encyclopedia where you can look up absolutely anything. Without the breadth of topics that Wikipedia offers and its current status as the single best place to find online information, it'll simply be a Britannica written by laymen. Encyclopedias which try to cover only the most important areas of human knowledge have been useful tools for the last few hundred years. But Wikipedia has the potential to be much more besides.

Engineer, Scientist, and Mathematician Jokes

Engineers, Scientists, and Mathematicians... these three disciplines are responsible for making your life something other than a daily quest to forage enough food to survive while trying to kill off your neighbors. And the lack of respect given to these world shaping intellectual titans by the general public is only matched by the mutual contempt in which they hold each other. They form an awkward three way alliance against the forces of chaos: Mathematicians develop consistent abstract structures and formal languages with precise meaning, Scientists use these formulae to describe reality, and Engineers use this understanding of reality to try and do something useful. Or to put it another way:

• An engineer thinks that equations are an approximation to reality. A physicist thinks reality is an approximation to equations. And a mathematician just doesn't care.

By way of example, what follows is a series of jokes contrasting the professions at each other's expense, along with some others. Hopefully these will still be funny/comprehensible to someone without a stake in this competition for intellectual bragging rights.

• An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are shown a pasture with a herd of sheep, and told to put them inside the smallest possible amount of fence.
  
  The engineer is first. He makes a square fence around the sheep, declaring it to be the simplest to build.
  
  The physicist is next, and he creates a circular fence around the sheep, arguing that it offers the greatest area for the smallest amount of fence.
  
  The mathematician is last. After giving the problem a little thought, he builds a fence around himself and defines himself to be on the outside.
• A mathematician and his best friend, an engineer, attend a public lecture on geometry in thirteen-dimensional space. "How did you like it?" the mathematician wants to know after the talk.
  
  "My head's spinning", the engineer confesses. "How can you develop any intuition for thirteen-dimensional space?"
  
  "Well, it's not even difficult. All I do is visualize the situation in arbitrary N-dimensional space and then set N = 13."
• An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician on a train crossing the border into Canada. As they look out the window of the train, they see a single black sheep standing in a field.
  
  The engineer says "Aha, all sheep in Canada are black!"
  
  The physicist looks pained and replies "No no no, we can only say that some sheep in Canada are black".
  
  The mathematician scoffs at this, and says "No. All we can truly say is that in Canada there is one sheep which is black on one side."
• One day a mathematician decides that he is sick of math. So, he walks down to the fire department and announces that he wants to become a fireman.The fire chief says, "Well, you look like a good guy. I'd be glad to hire you, but first I have to give you a little test."
  
  The firechief takes the mathematician to the alley behind the fire department which contains a dumpster, a spigot, and a hose. The chief then says, "OK, you're walking in the alley and you see the dumpster here is on fire. What do you do?"
  
  The mathematician replies, "Well, I hook up the hose to the spigot, turn the water on, and put out the fire."The chief says, "That's great... perfect. Now I have to ask you just one more question. What do you do if you're walking down the alley and you see the dumpster is not on fire?"
  
  The mathematician puzzles over the question for awhile and he finally says, "I light the dumpster on fire."
  
  The chief yells, "What? That's horrible! Why would you light the dumpster on fire?"
  
  The mathematician replies, "Well, that way I reduce the problem to one I've already solved."
• A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer were all given a red rubber ball and told to find the volume.
  
  The mathematician carefully measured the diameter and evaluated a triple integral.
  
  The physicist filled a beaker with water, put the ball in the water, and measured the total displacement.
  
  The engineer grabbed his reference manual, looked up the model of the ball and checked the serial numbers in his ball manufacturers table, cross-referencing the columns for "red" and "rubber" to look up the answer.
• A math and engineering convention was being held. On the train to the convention, there were both math majors and engineering majors. Each of the math majors had his/her own train ticket. But the Engineers had only ONE ticket for all of them. The math majors started laughing and snickering. The engineers ignored the laughter.
  
  Then, one of the engineers said, "Here comes the conductor". All of the engineers piled into the bathroom. The math majors were puzzled. The conductor came aboard and collected tickets from all the math majors. He went to the bathroom, knocked on the door, and said, "Tickets Please". An engineer stuck their only ticket under the door. The conductor took the ticket and left. A few minutes later, the engineers emerged from the bathroom. The math majors felt really stupid.
  
  On the way back from the convention, the group of math majors had ONE ticket for their group. They started snickering at the engineers, who had NO tickets amongst them.
  
  When the engineer lookout shouted, "Conductor coming!", all the engineers again piled into a bathroom. All of the math majors went into another bathroom. Then, before the conductor came on board, one of the engineers left the bathroom, knocked on the other bathroom, and said, "Ticket please."

And with that, some more general engineering jokes:

• There are three engineers in a car: An electrical engineer, a chemical engineer and a computer engineer. Suddenly the car just stops by the side of the road, and the three engineers look at each other wondering what could be wrong.
  
  The electrical engineer suggests stripping down the electronics of the car and trying to trace where a fault might have occurred.
  
  The chemical engineer suggests that maybe the fuel is becoming emulsified and getting blocked somewhere.
  
  Then, the computer engineer suggests, "Look, why don't we close all the windows, get out, get back in, open the windows again, and maybe it'll work!"
• A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, "What's with these guys? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!" The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!" The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greens keeper. Let's have a word with him."
  
  "Hi George. Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?" The greens keeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime."
  
  The group was silent for a moment. The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." The doctor said, "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist buddy and see if there's anything he can do for them. "The engineer thought for a second and said, "Why can't these guys play at night?"
• A boy was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket.
  
  The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week." The boy took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to his pocket.
  
  The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want." Again the boy took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.
  
  Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The boy said, "Look I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool!"
• Several scientists were all posed the following question: "What is two plus two?"
  
  The mathematician stares blankly at the interviewer for a second, then says "four."
  
  The engineer whips out his slide rule (so it's old) and shuffles it back and forth, and finally announces "3.99".
  
  The physicist consults his technical references, sets up the problem on his computer, and announces "it lies between 3.98 and 4.02".
  
  The philosopher cogitates for a while, then announces: "I don't know what the answer is, but I can tell you, an answer exists!".
  
  The Logician replies: "Please define two plus two more precisely."
  
  The sociologist: "I don't know, but isn't it nice talking about it?"
  
  The Medical Student says "4" All the others look at him astonished and say: "How did you know?" The Medical Student replies: "I memorized it."
  
  The economist looks at the interviewer cautiously, shuts the door, pulls down the shades, and whispers: "What would you like it to be?"
• Two bytes are sitting at a bar, and the first byte says to the second byte "Hey is something wrong with you?" and the second byte says "Yeah I have a parity error!" So the first byte says "Yeah, I thought you looked a bit off!
• An engineer, a physicist, and a computer scientist were discussing what was the oldest profession.
  
  The engineer claimed priority. "Look at all that matter engineered into amazing constructs like galaxies, stars, and planets."
  
  The physicist disagreed. "Before there were planets, the matter had to be made from chaos. Physics is responsible for all the quarks, gluons, photons, and electrons."
  
  The computer scientist coughed modestly. "Ah, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
• A doctor, a lawyer and an engineer were discussing the relative merits of having a wife or a mistress.
  
  The lawyer says: "For sure a mistress is better. If you have a wife and want a divorce, it causes all sorts of legal problems."
  
  The doctor says: "It's better to have a wife because the sense of security lowers your stress and is good for your health."
  
  The engineer says: "You're both wrong. It's best to have both so that the wife thinks you're with the mistress and the mistress thinks you're with your wife --- then you can sneak off to the lab and get some work done."

Updates:

• A mathematician is someone who has a knack for numbers, but just doesn't have the personality to be an accountant.
• The difference between an introvert and extrovert engineer is thus: An introvert engineer looks at his shoes while talking to you. An extrovert engineer looks at your shoes.
• The dean of a college was complaining about the difficulties in funding all the engineering departments. "Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn't you be like the math department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper."

Final Thoughts on Popularity

Having thus far established that popularity is a zero-sum game and a giant hamster wheel of wasted energy that collectively gets us nowhere and individually can take us anywhere, also having considered its staying power relative to different media, it's time to discuss how you actually achieve it.

The key is promotion, which in this mass-media world is commonplace enough to feel like a constant buzzing cry for attention undergirding real life. When people have something to sell they appear on talk shows, buy media time, try to feed off of the success of someone more well known, draw on community support to create buzz, or just try to offend or shock people so their ideas stick around and are talked about. This can take skill, money, connections, or just a willingness to do what no one else has yet. In this case of my brother we've tried working off of the facebook networks and friends we had to begin with, tying into different online communities, and hoping that it catches on with people. Ideally a "viral" meme motivates people to spread it themselves and build up a fanbase for you, for the fun of being in on the joke. There are plenty of forums and portals which try to filter out interesting content like what we're doing, and making it in any one of these communities can spark you off towards being noteworthy.

The final stage of the game comes after you manage to win the rat race, stand out from the crowd and have an audience for yourself... just what you do with it? Do you capitalize on your success, hobnob with people higher on the fame food chain than you, or become increasingly desperate as you try harder and harder to repeat your early successes. You have to deal with standing out from the imitators of your style that are sure to spring up, and make a sophomore effort that's consistent with your style but not overly derivative itself or a rehash.

We haven't experienced that stage of the game yet but I'm sure it'd be just as entertaining as the rest. It's a game not everyone can hope to win, or even should try to play, but it does serve its purpose, and there's no denying the appeal of the "lottery winner" professions.