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Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

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Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#121

Post by logfromblammo »

orblivion wrote: post #106
exDM69 wrote: post #17

I recall reading that the "no brown M&M's" clause was added after a near-fatal accident on stage where a member of the Van Halen band got electrocuted because of bad wiring on the stage.

Just a friendly FYI: "electrocuted" implies a fatality. (I learned this similarly on an internet forum I posted the word to years ago.)

Lesser severity of unintentional contact with a live conductor could be described as "shocked" (or "electroshocked" if there is potential ambiguity with the emotional state) or "electrotetanized", with the latter reserved for currents strong enough to cause complete muscle seizure (as occurs with a stun gun, for instance).

"Electrocution" is a portmanteau of "electrical execution", which not only implies that the person died, but that it was intentional and sanctioned. Lack of a better word has expanded usage to any death caused by electrical current.

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#122

Post by judk »

bgarbiak wrote: post #11
Nanzikambe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to give an example of the sort of thing you encountered? Purely to satisfy a curious mind :)

Here's the selection of various artists' demands/riders: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstage Sometimes these riders serve a purpose (Van Halen's case), sometimes they are indeed a caprice, or a joke. If I recall correctly it was Pearl Jam, who once demanded their M&M's to be segregated into jars, and each jar could only contain one color of a candy. There were photos floating around the net with the band members l…

That's just obnoxious and undermines Van Halen's meaningfully safety-oriented gesture.

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#123

Post by judk »

dvanduzer wrote: post #107
bjourne wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you are assuming there exists a positive correlation between absence of brown M&M:s and whether the other demands are also filled or not. I don't think you can show that since the M&M demand was singled out. Had they instead randomly inspected once piece of equipment and found an error that would have been totally different.

This is not about rigorous statistics, it's about human nature. In the sixth grade, my math teacher offered a test at the beginning of the year that included quite a lot of complicated instructions. The last instruction told students to ignore all the previous instructions, and just write their name at the top of the paper and turn it in. Guess how well the typical top scorers in the class did on this one.

That prank is horrible because the document is self-contradictory yet assumes a single correct interpretation, unless the document is very carefully written and formatted using an agreed semantics.

A well-written document would be a great illustration of Haskell-style lazy evaluation, though

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#125

Post by peapicker »

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #96
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't eccentric, it's poor communications though. It could basically be summarised as: "Please provide tea making facilities: tea bags, milk, sugar and hot water. If possible a couple of cans of Pepsi (not diet or other brands please) would be appreciated." Really, the person organising the speech doesn't really care how someone takes their tea or why they don't like Pepsi or what the conditions (which are total…

"Hot water and a cup for making tea..." Tea needs to be made with _boiling_ not boiled water. The amount of places that present you with a cup of warm water and expect you to put a tea-bag into it, is upsetting*. For reference, the correct way of making tea: http://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A61345

Tea is best when the water is 140F - 185F. ( why? see, for instance http://www.thefragrantleaf.com/green-tea-brewing-tips )

Oh, you meant that _other_ kind of tea.

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#127

Post by cbr »

orblivion wrote: post #106
exDM69 wrote: post #17

I recall reading that the "no brown M&M's" clause was added after a near-fatal accident on stage where a member of the Van Halen band got electrocuted because of bad wiring on the stage.

Just a friendly FYI: "electrocuted" implies a fatality. (I learned this similarly on an internet forum I posted the word to years ago.)

Really? https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aelectrocute

    injure or kill someone by electric shock

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#128

Post by rasz_pl »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #109
tragic wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't laugh too quickly. Given a slow enough connection and a big enough file, the pigeon (with flash drive strapped to leg) will win. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers#Other_av...

Except that RFC 1149 specifies a single IP datagram per pigeon, which means it will be slower than even the slowest of dial-up connections.

IPv6 jumbograms to the rescue, 4GB per packet

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#129

Post by alain94040 »

herghost wrote: post #75
Nanzikambe wrote: post #2

A contract "poison pill" or litmus test. Pretty ingenious, is that sort of thing common practice in contracts?

That's something that I've done with data processing and security contracts for the last 4 or 5 years. It's an addendum to the main commercial contract and is deliberately long. Almost all of it is non-exceptional "just do it right" kind of stuff, but there are a handful of clauses I've put in that absolutely no company could reasonably agree to. If they agree to it without challenging those clauses, I then know that…

Same thing with software outsourcing contracts to China (for instance). On purpose, send the half-finished specs. You know there are huge gaps in the specs, they can't be implemented without asking clarifying questions. What does the outsourcing vendor say? We read the specs, we understand them very well, no problem, we'll do it. Fire vendor.

Re: Why Van Halen's tour contract had a "no brown M&M's" clause

#130

Post by bcohen5055 »

collint wrote: post #34
bjourne wrote: post #28

Maybe a mathematician can explain whether this "trick" works or not? Intuitively, I can't see that knowing whether the M&M demand was filled makes it more probable that the other demands are filled. Say you have a pile with five black or white marbles. You want them all to be black. So you check that the first marble in the pile is black (ie no brown m&m:s). Is it now more probable that the other four marbles also ar…

Because it's not like marbles. It's not a math thing. It's more like a canary in the coal mine. If the canary dies, you should check on the air quality. If they went through the trouble of removing the brown m&ms you have a fairly strong indicator they actually read the document in the first place. And a strong indicator they have a good attention to detail.

I'm all about data being presented with confidence bounds but if even 1 canary is dead I'm getting the hell out of there!
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