Life Imitates Art, Spawning Media Metaphor Wars

Viacom Demands YouTube Pull 400,000 Ex-TV Viewers From Its Site

February 27, 2007 | The Onion - Issue 43•09

NEW YORK—In a cease-and-desist letter sent to Google's attorneys last week, media conglomerate Viacom demanded that YouTube immediately pull 400,000 ex-TV viewers from its industry-leading video-sharing site.

"These viewers clearly belong to Viacom and its related entertainment subsidiaries," stated the letter, which called the co-opted viewership "the result of an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars by our company." "Should YouTube fail to adequately address this blatant infringement, Viacom will not hesitate to assert its ownership rights to its intellectual property."

The letter threatened further legal action if all the 400,000 viewers in question are not removed from their desks and returned to their couches by the end of the week.

(Two Weeks Later)

Viacom lawsuit seeks $1bn in damages from YouTube

By Joshua Chaffin in New York and Richard Waters in San Francisco
Published: March 14 2007 The Financial Times Limited 2007

Viacom has launched the first legal challenge against YouTube, suing the Google-owned internet video site for "massive intentional copyright infringement" and asking a federal court for more than $1bn (£518m) in damages.

In its suit, Viacom claimed that more than 160,000 of its clips, from programmes such as The Daily Show with John Stewart and SpongeBob SquarePants, had been published on YouTube without permission and accused the company of a "brazen disregard" for copyright law.

The legal action represents the sharpest clash between traditional media companies and internet start-ups, which have attracted audiences by allowing users to post music and video clips on their sites.

Viacom, which owns MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other youth-oriented brands, has argued that YouTube, which Google acquired for $1.65bn in October, has used its copyrighted material without permission to build a massive audience.

Last month it demanded You-Tube remove more than 100,000 of its video clips after the companies failed to reach an agreement on licensing. Negotiations foundered over financial terms and questions about who would control advertising relationships.

Some companies, including NBC and News Corp, have held discussions about creating possible alternatives to YouTube.

SXSW Interactive and the 0 to 1 Flip

Bill C is in town for the fest.

Eerie. This is one of those issues that he wrote for me, specifically. I'm sure of it. Doesn't help that Ze Frank's eyes bore a hole in my soul. Watch - you'll see what I mean.

Here's a transcribed portion that hit especially deep:

"I'm in Austin, TX right now, at a festival called SXSW.

...Sometimes I think about confidence - what it takes to get from 0 to 1.

It seems like what you think about creativity can effect that confidence. There's a book edited by Robert Sternberg that deals with psychological research into creativity.

One of the articles says that one of the only reliable indicators for increased creativity (however they measure it) is a person's belief that creativity is something you can work on, and change. Confidence about gaining confidence.

For me, that's the interesting battleground - fighting against things I don't think are possibilities. Not with the goal of suddenly having an inflated sense that you know you can do something.

But instead, just to get that glimmer of hope of possibility. To move from 0 to 1.

Those battles of confidence are what make that word 'creativity' so terrifying for me...just finding the battleground seems to be a step in the right direction.

I'm interested in this flip from 0 to 1, this confidence to start things.

Because I look at creative projects like they were sudoku puzzles: you can stare at them all you like, but you won't suddenly see all the numbers.You have to start. You have to find one box to fill in. And from that, another on reveals itself. You may not be able to solve all of them. But as long as you know it's possible, you'll keep trying.

And no matter how many you solve, each new one begins with a bunch of empty spaces.

0 to 1."


Only two issues left 'til the end of The Show. I don't understand. I need it to go on forever.

Nepalese Journalists: United We Blog

Blogmandu!

Ramro cha, or gundagardi? Still researching this. But what a find.

UWB (For a Democratic Nepal)

PS they're using the same Wordpress "Freshy" CSS theme as the "Tech Writing Geekatudes" (Linky Poo).

"Dariya Dil" - Super Man, Super Lady!

There's some good dishoom in this one, including a slowly spinning badmash gunda.

Kerrville, Baby!

Kerrville Folk Festival announced its lineup.

Spice is playing the first Monday in the slot before John Gorka, followed by Susan Werner.

Other highlights I'm looking forward to:

First Week

• Thurs. May 24 (opening day) - Ian Moore, Austin Lounge Lizards

• Sun. May 27 - Sara Hickman, Vance Gilbert (Sara also plays Threadgill Theatre childrens' concert)

• Mon May 28 - The Spice, followed by John Gorka, then Susan Werner closes

• Tue May 29 - Susan closes the show AGAIN

Second Week

• Sat June 2 - Terri Hendrix, followed by Judy Collins (yes, that Judy Collins - "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes")
• Sun June 3 - Trout Fishing (again, festival darlings)

Third Week:

• Sat June 9 - Tom Russel, Bob Livingston Trio, Ruthie Foster closes
• Sun June 10 - Buddy Mondlock opens.

I intend to interview Susan about her new "Findin' My Religion" (The Gospel Truth) album, and Vance has a new album, so press passes are in order. Hello? Third Coast Travel? Sojourners Mag? Reason Online? Folk Roots? Anyone?

That reminds me.

This one time, in Kerrville, Amilia and I were sitting at an obscure campfire on Chapel Hill, passing a bottle of Early Times around with Townes Van Zandt, Phil Ochs, Blaze Foley, and Elliott Smith. The bottle only made it around once. Everyone started doing covers of each other's songs.

Phil did "Poncho and Lefty," Townes played "Waltz #2," and Elliot couldn't hold the guitar so just whispered "Drunken Angel" a cappella. Blaze punched him in the neck and covered "Draft Dodger Rag," which he dedicated to "them carpet bagger panty waists in the gumament." Then it was my turn in the circle, so I did "Come Over Me," and when I sang the refrain, Elliott thought I was offering him dilaudid - he flew into a rage when he found out it was just a lyric, stepped over Blaze, got punched in the butt, and lolled his way off to the Crow's Nest. Amilia took the guitar from me, weaved Beetoven's Pathetique in C Minor up and down the neck, then passed out MGDs from her cooler while everyone sat stunned.

We drank quietly for awhile, then Phil did a boogie-woogie version of "Ravenous Strings," inspiring Townes to bang out a two-chord emo take on "Radio," crushing his beer can to his forehead as a finish. Blaze did most of a medley of "Little Cowboy," "Falling in," and "Queen for a day," all countrified and slip-sloppy, before passing out in the fire. We dragged him back and slapped coals off him; Townes lit his cigarette on Foley's smoldering straw hat.

It was Eta Aquarids season; meteors started showering until Camp Stupid finally packed it in, and twilight put the fires out. I woke up in the caliche dust as Amilia was pouring ice from the cooler into the ashes, the steam swirling around, and then it was only us two. Good times.

Me So Holy, Me Forgive You Long Time

In case you lose your Clancy, Grisham, and King masterpiece collections.


"She ain't going down in the bad place."

Bush Administration (Growing) List of Shame

When the whole Walter Reed Hospital ghetto dorm scandal broke, and yet another round of senior officials were fired in disgrace (Maj. Gen. George Weightman, followed the next day by the Secretary of the Army, who reports to former A&M pres. Robert Gates, who replaced fired Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld), it got me wondering. Exactly how many of these corrupt, incompetent boobs have paraded in front of us, their Bush/Cheney T-shirts all stained at the armpit?

A Google search yielded two lists (from Wonkette and TPMmuckraker, see Sources below), which I cribbed, but they needed updating. It didn’t take long: as Maverick says in Top Gun, “I’m so gay for you, Iceman.” I mean, “Now, this is what I call a ‘target-rich environment!’”

I weeded out the small-time crooks: everyone on the list is senior management level or higher. Aides and clerks are mentioned only if their bosses took 'em down with 'em.

Also, I’ve found that I needed to reserve the top spot for updates. They are so frequent!

__________________________________________
Update to Walter Reed's Trading Spaces; the Abu Ghraib Edition:
The army's surgeon general, Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, was forced to retire 10 days after he replaced the disgraced Maj. Gen. George Weightman (see above), as head of the veterans' hospital.
__________________________________________
Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Heather Wilson (R-NM), subject of a congressional probe following allegations that they inappropriately contacted the U.S. attorney in their state, David Iglesias, about an ongoing criminal investigations of Democratic politicians. Iglasias and seven other state attorneys were abruptly fired, some by phone, despite positive job reviews. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a formal complaint, alleging that the firings were politically motivated (specifically, Republicans were angry that state attorneys weren’t more aggressive in their attacks against Democrats during the '06 election).
__________________________________________

1. Randy Cunningham (R-CA). Convicted of accepting $1.3 million in bribes. Federal prisoner serving eight years and four months.
   
   
2. Bob Ney (R-OH), pled guilty to accepting bribes from Jack Abramoff, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and to a charge of falsifying financial disclosure forms. Federal prisoner serving thirty months.
   
   
3. David Safavian, General Services Administration Chief of Staff. Found guilty of four felony counts of lying and obstruction of justice. Federal prisoner serving 18 months.
   
   
4. Larry Franklin, Defence Dept. intelligence officer in Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans. Resigned and pled guilty to passing secrets to Israel. Federal prisoner serving 13 years.
   
   
5. Darleen Druyun. Senior contracting official, U.S. Air Force. Admitted to fraud in a deal the US government made with Boeing. Served nine months in Federal prison.
   
   
6. Lester Crawford, Chief of Food and Drug Administration. Convicted on charges of conflict of interest and false reporting (lying about stock owned in companies regulated by his agency). Sentenced to three years' supervised probation, fined $90,000.
   
   
7. John Korsmo, Chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board. Pled guilty to lying to the Senate and an inspector general. This influence-peddling scandal arose from his inviting FHFB-regulated bank presidents to a fundraiser for his friend's congressional campaign. Sentenced to 18 months probation.
   
   
8. Michelle Larson Korsmo, Deputy chief of staff, Department of Labor. Helped her husband with his fundraising scam. Resigned two weeks before news broke that she and her husband were the targets of a criminal probe (see above).
   
   
9. P. Trey Sunderland III, Chief of Geriatric Psychiatry, Nat'l Institute of Mental Health. Pled guilty to a criminal conflict of interest charge, for failing to report $300,000 received from Pfizer. Sentenced to two years probation, ordered to forfeit his drug company bribes “consulting" fees.
   
   
10. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President's Chief-of-Staff. Convicted on four counts of perjury, lying to the FBI, and covering up the illegal exposure of a covert CIA operative. Pending sentencing.
    
    
11. Mark Foley (R-FL). Resigned following a sex scandal involving under-age male Congressional pages. Perversely, this pedophilic rep chaired the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children.
    
    
12. Dennis Hastert (R-IL). Former Speaker of the House, replaced by Dem. Nancy Pelosi. Under investigation for taking over $100,000 in contributions from Jack Abramoff. Also for allegedly trying to cover up inappropriate conduct by Mark Foley (see above).
    
    
13. Frank Figueroa. Senior Dept. of Homeland Security official, former head of anti-sex-crime "Operation Predator." Pled no contest to exposing himself to 16-year-old girl in Florida mall. Sentenced to one year's probation; barred from malls and food courts where children gather; limited contact with minors during his probation.
    
    
14. Brian Doyle, Deputy Press Secretary for Dept. of Homeland Security. Resigned in wake of child sex scandal. Pled no contest to 32 criminal counts. Federal prisoner serving five years, to be followed by ten years of probation in sex-offender program.
    
    
15. Bernard Kerik, Bush nominee for Secretary of Department of Homeland Security. Withdrew his nomination when a laundry list of corruption allegations and NY District Attorney investigations came to light. Later pled guilty to ethics violations (accepting bribes and gifts while a public official), fined $221,000.
    
    
16. Michael Brown, head of Federal Emergency Management Agency. "Brownie," as Bush calls him, had no FEMA-related experience or qualifications. Forced to resign due to incompetent handling of Katrina recovery, and allegations that he had falsified portions of his résumé.
    
    
17. Philip Cooney, Chief of Staff, White House Council on Environmental Quality. A former oil industry lawyer with no scientific expertise, Cooney resigned after it was revealed he had watered down (and expunged parts of) a White House report on global warming.
    
    
18. Claude Allen, Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy (Bush’s top domestic policy adviser). Resigned, pled guilty to theft (shoplifting $5,000 over 5 years from Target stores, while earning a White House salary of $13,300/month). Sentenced to 18 months probation.
    
    
19. Bob Taft, Republican Governor of Ohio. Indicted on charges of accepting $5,800 in bribes. Pleaded "no contest," fined $4,000.
    
    
20. Curt Weldon (R-PA). Voted out of office in Nov. '06. Target of FBI investigation on charges of trading political influence for lobbying contracts for his daughter. In September 2006, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released its second annual report on members of Congress with ethics issues, titled "Beyond DeLay: The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress (and five to watch)". Weldon was one of the 20. "His ethics issues stem from using his position to financially benefit his children and a family friend."
    
    
21. Tom DeLay, Senate Majority Leader(R-TX). Forced to resign under indictment on money laundering charges. Two of his aides were convicted in the resulting Jack Abramoff bribery scandal. Delay posted $10,000 bail; trial pending. While Senate Majority Leader, he received four ethics violation admonishments from the bipartisan House Ethics Committee (by unanimous vote).
    
    
22. Katherine Harris (R-FL). Voted out of office in Nov. ’06. Currently under Justice Department and Defense Department investigations for her relationship with "hookergate" defense company CEO, who pled guilty to criminal bribery offenses in February ‘06. Mitchell Wade made $32,000 in illegal contributions to Harris' House campaign in 2004.
    
    
23. Bill Frist (R-TN), former congressman and Senate Majority Leader. Currently under SEC and NY State Attorney's Office investigations. Named by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as one of the thirteen "Most Corrupt Members of Congress." CREW also filed complaints with the Senate Ethics Committee, calling for investigations into stock holdings outside of his blind trust, an alleged cover-up, and an allegedly mishandled disclosure of a campaign loan.
    
    
24. Dusty Foggo, Executive Director, CIA. Resigned under investigation by the FBI, IRS, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the CIA's inspector general, and the U.S. attorney's office in San Diego. Charged on Februrary 13, 2007 with fraud and other felony offenses related to the bribery case of former congressman Randy Cunningham (see above). Pending trial.

Thank you. Congratulations.

__________________________________________

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington "20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress"

House of Representatives

• Rep. Roy Blunt [4] (R-MO)
• Rep. Ken Calvert [5](R-CA) (new, September 2006)
• Rep. John Doolittle [6](R-CA) (new, September 2006)
• Rep. Tom Feeney [7] (R-FL)
• Rep. Katherine Harris [8] (R-FL) (new, September 2006)
• Rep. William Jefferson [9] (D-LA)
• Rep. Jerry Lewis [10](R-CA) (new, September 2006)
• Rep. Gary Miller [11](R-CA) (new, September 2006)
• Rep. Alan Mollohan [12](D-WV) (new, September 2006)
• Rep. Marilyn Musgrave [13] (R-CO)
• Rep. Richard Pombo [14] (R-CA)
• Rep. Rick Renzi [15] (R-AZ)
• Rep. Pete Sessions [16](R-TX) (new, September 2006)
• Rep. John Sweeney [17](R-NY) (new, September 2006)
• Rep. Charles H. Taylor [18] (R-NC)
• Rep. Maxine Waters [19] (D-CA)
• Rep. Curt Weldon [20] (R-PA) (new, September 2006)

Senate

• Sen. Conrad Burns [21] (R-MT)
• Sen. Bill Frist [22] (R-TN)
• Sen. Rick Santorum [23] (R-PA)

"Five members to watch" (added September 2006)

• Rep. Chris Cannon [24] (R-UT)
• Rep. Dennis Hastert [25] (R-IL)
• Rep. J.D. Hayworth [26] (R-AZ)
• Rep. John Murtha [27] (D-PA)
• Rep. Don Sherwood [28] (R-PA)

__________________________________________

Sources:

• Sourcewatch
  
• Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
  
• Beyond Delay
  
• Wonkette
  
• TPMmuckraker
• Wikipedia

JC's New Tat

Tech writer friend of mine just got this. One 3-hour sitting. You should've seen the fruity banana thingajig it covers up.

Cow Tse Tongue: "Cows Are One"

Human Skateboard Fridays

That's not Typing, That's Key Boarding

I read a lot of the internets. More than is healthy, more than's possible for most. Fortunately I have the attention span of a gnat on a Valium n' Tito's bender, allowing me to cruise great gulping volumes of content, sieving, sifting, tabbing. Et voila, a short list of my faves so far this year:

• If it's not Scottish...
• Crushed by Inertia, on conservative comedy
• Awesome is as Awesome Does (very girly-my house is full of 'em)
• Random Writer I like
• And Another
• And Another
• OK, Last One.
  

Web Head Doofery

I followed a link from Google News to an article in the daily Free New Mexican. The page was so full of garish, chaotic ads it felt like my eyes were running a gauntlet of Rockem Sockem Robots. Because I'm not used to ads on web pages, because I use Firefox with Adblock. When I'm forced to use IE on someone else's computer, I get a headache. How can they stand it?

So this site bewildered me. I immediately went to right click on one of the ads, to open up the menu option and "block ads from www.freenewmexican.com," when this popped up:



I read, then re-read it, paused, collected my thoughts, and within 45 seconds I had:

• JavaScript disabled, eliminating all popups
• All images, frames, and ads blocked
• The source code for the page I was visiting
• A list of all the scripts they were using
• The path to their cache, holding all the site's images (i.e. this)
• The screenshot above
• One of the "protected" images on my hard drive, to illustrate this rant.
  
  
  
  

Obviously this was a complete distracting waste of less-than-a-minute I'll never get back. But I couldn't resist. Some web dork pretending to be a lawyer dressed in a rent-a-cop uniform was standing in the middle of the street, frantically waving traffic away from a building. Wondering what he didn't want me to see, I drove a block, took two rights and pulled into the street, camera whirring. Turned out it was a 30' mural of a cat, so I kept going, splashing a puddle on spazmatron as I passed.

Limiting someone's ability to browse your public page invites your site to be exploited. What the hell are you hiding? What is so valuable that you have to disable your visitors' browsers? It's stupid, and the way we know it's stupid is, it doesn't work.

90% of people using the internets have no idea what the right mouse button does. Mac users don't even have one. So that popup can only be seen by those who can cripple it in 5 seconds (tools > options > content> disable JavaScript).

It's rude and insulting to paint your visitors as thieves and rule violators. Imagine browsing in a clothing store where they shouted their shoplifting policy at you every time you picked something up.

Message to web masters: Your fancy right-click JavaScript doesn't impress anyone. The few who can see it already know about copyrights, and if we want your crappy images they're ours for the taking.

Not that I don't understand; what else are you going to do, alone in your room, with your "Web Design for Dummies" centerfolds?

I'm Proud The Dixie Chicks Are From Texas

(Photo: AFP/Robyn Beck)

Last night, at the Grammys, the Dixie Chicks were nominated in 5 categories:

Record of the Year
Song of the Year
Album of the Year
Best Country Album
Best Country Duo/Group Performance

They won them all. That means they couldn't have earned more Grammys this year if their lives depended on it. Any one of those first three trophys is an artist's Powerball jackpot. Now everyone is going to want to get visited by the RNC's pretty little hate machine.

On the eve of the Iraq invasion, Natalie tossed the following out to her cheering fans at a private concert in London: "Just so you know, we're ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."

As Oges says on his Natalie-dedicated page at VirtuaLubbock.com:

If you've had the opportunity to look about virtualubbock, you'll see that we're all about freedom, creativity, courage, dedication to convictions, love, and happiness. I believe those are the best things we learned growing up in West Texas. I believe they are what America and Texas is all about. Because she lives those values in a true manner, Natalie is one of our great heroes.

Here are 5 interesting facts related to Natalie's remark:

1) George Bush isn't from Texas, he's from Connecticut, and he went to college in Connecticut (Yale) and Massachusetts (Harvard), like the rest of his family. Now, his parents may have bought a house in Midland when he was 2, but all 3 of the Chicks are actually from Texas, born and raised. They're able to tell who is and who isn't.

2) Calls to radio stations ordering a Chicks boycott originated from the offices of the Republican National Committee and the South Carolinan Republican Party.

3) Clear Channel management eagerly allied itself with the RNC attack, at a time when it needed Republicans to relax media ownership limits (circumventing antitrust law). 5 Years before, Clear Channel CEO Tom Hicks bought the Texas Rangers off of George Bush, making him a multi-millionaire.

4) Sales of Toby Kieth's "Boot in the Towel-head's Butt" album (RNC/Clear Channel-promoted), in 2003: 1.8 million
Sales as of today: 4 million

Sales of Dixie Chicks' "Travelin' Soldier Anti-War" album (RNC/Clear Channel-boycotted), in 2003: 2 million
Sales as of today: 6 million

5) During the '03 boycott, not only did the Chicks sell out every city they played (making the Guinness Book of World Records for most successful female act in history, where they remain), they won four Grammys (incl. Best Country Album), two American Music Awards (Favorite Country Album, Favorite Country Band), and became the best-selling country artists ever. While touring under death threats.

If you order a boycott of a band, and then have a hard time finding one of their concert tickets or CDs to toss into a bonfire, because they're sold out, your boycott isn't going very well.

Is it a stretch to say that the Chicks actually were rewarded for speaking out against the Bush administration, and the Iraq invasion? After all, a recent song goes like this:

It's a sad, sad story that a mother will teach her daughter
That she ought to hate a perfect stranger,

And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge,
That they'd write me a letter
Saying that I better
shut up and sing or my life will be over?

Those lyrics won the Grammy for "Song of the Year."

Here's what Dubya had to say about the Chicks and the boycott (spoken with the same firm grasp of the issue as any other he's been forced to ponder as president): "They shouldn't have their feelings hurt just because some people don't want to buy their records when they speak out ... Freedom is a two-way street."

By "some people," he meant "RNC cudgels;"
By "don't want to" he meant "were told not to;"
By "buy" he meant "radio play."
And apparently by the last bon mot, he meant to say that if we act like we're free, we'll get chased down the street.

In the end, what happened was, someone from an old and respected West Texas family publicly remarked about the President. That it's shameful for a raised-right Texan to behave like Bush and his people. While graciously implying, to my awe, that he might even be from here.

I leave us with my favorite Dixie Chicks song that my kids and I will sing at the top of our lungs in the car:

Just look out around us
People fightin' their wars
They think they'll be happy
When they've settled their scores

Let's lay down our weapons
That hold us apart
Be still for just a minute
Try to open our hearts

To more love
I can hear our hearts cryin'
More love
I know that's all we need
More love

To flow in between us
To take us and hold us
And lift us above
If there's ever an answer
It's more love

NOOOO Reservations....really. He has none.

I watch (but have never read, until today) Anthony Bourdain. His visit to the Bushmen of Namibia was the best cooking show in the history of television, bar none.
So I was tickled to accidentally stumble on some guest blogging he did for Ruhlman.com, where he pares with his usual snark, this time about TV Chefs. For instance, on Rachael Ray:

'We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could--if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better--teach us--and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….” '



You can also read about the 3 breezy/cheesy novels he wrote, on his Web Site (hey, what do you want from someone who briefly attended Vassar?).

What I'm Doing Instead of Writing

Where:
Utility = preference for a course of action (the higher the utility, the greater the preference)
E=expectancy
V=value
G=sensitivity to delay
D=delay (how long the wait for payoff)

"On the top of the equation, the numerator, we have two variables: Expectancy (E) and Value (V). Expectancy refers to the odds or chance of an outcome occurring while Value refers to how rewarding that outcome is. Naturally, we would like to choose pursuits that give us a good chance of having a pleasing outcome. On the bottom of the equation, the denominator, we also have two variables. G refers to the subject’s sensitivity to delay. The larger G is, the greater is the sensitivity. Finally, D represents Delay, which indicates how long, on average, one must wait to receive the payout. Since delay is in the denominator of the equation, the longer the delay, the less valued the course of action is perceived."
-University of Calgary's Theories on Procrastination

The time it took me to explore this clocked in at the same amount of time it takes to write a full chapter.