'These disgruntled women—whether they plan to vote for John McCain, sit out the election, or simply gobble up airtime—are tacitly working toward electing McCain; a candidate who claimed last week at a presidential forum at Saddleback Church that life begins "at the moment of conception" and who voted against legislation ensuring equal pay for women.'
--Dahlia Lithwick
I've mentioned this hundreds of times, and will probably have to mention it hundreds of more times (at least as long as Lithwick, Anna Quindlen, and their ilk continue to write for a living), but:
1. One's opinion about socialist economic polices NEED NOT flow from some bizarre set of gender animus.
2. Ditto one's opinion about prenatal biology. Where you think life actually does begin is... not even a judgment call so much as a wild guess. Where you think it would be CONVENIENT TO STIPULATE that life began may have all sorts of gender-political undertones, but BOTH the death-of-a-person argument AND the bodily-autonomy argument address the world as it is rather than as we might wish it to be.
(Yes, Chad, this was good old XX blog.)
(Or maybe even David Brooks?)
"If [Thomas Frank] really believes, though, in constant sinister calculations by conservatives (who always get exactly the results they wanted in the political realm!), I have a great conspiracy theory for him: I think the Wall Street Journal hired him as the ongoing default left-wing columnist precisely to remind their right-leaning readers what complete idiots there are on the left. (Has it never crossed your mind that this might be why you were cast in the role, Mr. Frank?)"
--Todd Seavey, via the Reason Blog
Not sure if I've ever mentioned this here but the one time at a bookstore I picked up What's the Matter With Kansas and flipped it to a random page, Frank spent just a few too many words explaining how he'd never listen to G. Gordon Liddy on purpose but just happened to be a captive audience in a taxicab. The paragraph in question really didn't serve much purpose.
...but I finally have a plausible solution to it. That I had to slightly modify, and even then apparently it's only half as "efficient" as the usual solution. Blah!
First the problem, then what I hate about it, then (below the fold) what I finally came up with that's good enough for me to set the thing aside. And if I get around to it this weekend, some Monte Carlo simulations addressing both my proposed solution and my objection to the original premise.
Go to this page and search on "100 PRISONERS AND A LIGHT BULB"
100 prisoners are imprisoned in solitary cells. Each cell is windowless and soundproof. There's a central living room with one light bulb; the bulb is initially off. No prisoner can see the light bulb from his or her own cell. Each day, the warden picks a prisoner equally at random, and that prisoner visits the central living room; at the end of the day the prisoner is returned to his cell. While in the living room, the prisoner can toggle the bulb if he or she wishes. Also, the prisoner has the option of asserting the claim that all 100 prisoners have been to the living room. If this assertion is false (that is, some prisoners still haven't been to the living room), all 100 prisoners will be shot for their stupidity. However, if it is indeed true, all prisoners are set free and inducted into MENSA, since the world can always use more smart people. Thus, the assertion should only be made if the prisoner is 100% certain of its validity.
Before this whole procedure begins, the prisoners are allowed to get together in the courtyard to discuss a plan. What is the optimal plan they can agree on, so that eventually, someone will make a correct assertion?
What I hate about this problem is that no matter how far out you go, there's a probability greater than zero (vanishingly small, I'll admit, but still) that at least one prisoner STILL HASN'T BEEN to the living room! Whether it's six months, one year, five years, 50 years... you can't put an upper bound on the solution time.
With that in mind, wouldn't the optimal strategy be to choose a time frame (for example two years) and assert that by that point, it's worth the risk of being shot just to get freedom from that point instead of continuing to languish?
But if you absolutely insist that any false positive whatsoever is unacceptable, yetthat you want to minimize the average time it takes to reach an ironclad-guaranteed correct solution...
Define your "first tangible visit" as follows:
1. Your first visit (if any) in the time between day 1 and 99 when the light is still off.
2. Otherwise, day 100 if that was your first visit (but the light was already on)
3. Otherwise, the first time you came and found the light off
Days 1 - 99: Keep the light in the position it's in, unless:
a) you're a repeat visitor AND
b) the light is (still) off
By Day 100, one of two things will be true:
The day 100 visitor was the 100th unique visitor, and found the light off, and solved the problem (w00t!).
-or-
The day 100 visitor found the light on (or happened to be the first repeat visitor), and turned it off left it on if this was his first tangible visit, off otherwise. At this point must be a unique "first repeat visitor," known from this point onward as the Designated Problem Solver. That person made their first repeat visit on Day N+1. That person knows that N prisoners (counting herself) have been to the room but must assume that the other (100-N) prisoners HAVE NOT. (So even if one or more of those prisoners actually did come between Day N+2 and Day 100, they must act as though they hadn't.)
From Day 101 onward:
IF YOU'RE NOT THE DESIGNATED PROBLEM SOLVER -
if the light is on, leave it on
if the light is off, AND IF this is your first tangible visit (other than between day N+2 and day 100), then turn it on
If you ARE THE DESIGNATED PROBLEM SOLVER -
if the light is on, increment your "how many of us are known to have been in this room yet?" tally by 1, otherwise leave that total unchanged
either way, turn/leave the light off
Boston Sports Media Watch tosses out names, almost at random, for who should become the Boston Herald's new Patriots' beat writer.
I voted for Mr. Couture of course.
"Many of us are stuck in abusive fantasy relationships with Brian Westbrook. That work stoppage at the one yard-line in Week 15 last year was devastatingly cruel.
If we ever meet, I'm going to demand $75 from Westbrook, plus transaction fees. And either a t-shirt or bobblehead, his choice.
Nonetheless, he's fourth in the Yahoo! experts running back ranks, [...]"
--Andy Behrens, Yahoo! Sports
Even before the game-clinching incident in question, Westbrook had been my favorite active NFL player, almost entirely for fantasy football reasons. But my esteem for him actually went way up after he found a really clever way to give up personal glory to make sure his team won (instead of possibly allowing a touchdown-onside-kick-touchdown sequence).
(Disclosure: Yes, I lost a semifinal game where his scoring a touchdown would have caused me to win; no, no money was at stake.)
Our household loves Leonard Cohen. But we learned from the documentary that we can sort of do without Nick Cave, and can definitely do without either of the Wainwrights, especially when Rufus tries to cover songs whose lyrics he doesn't actually know by heart.
Cohen is wonderfully understated, something his homage-givers can't quite capture.
(To be devil's advocate about even Cohen how hard would it be to write a Leonard Cohen song lyric generator? We can even make it an exercise for the reader. You don't have to implement it: Just some pseudocode and a list of your seed strings would suffice.)
Few things in life are as deliciously enjoyable as overhearing aggressive job interview questioning from a conference room on the other side of a not-so-soundproof wall.
(If you get the reference in the title then I pity the number of radio ads you've subjected yourself to. Just try not to get the jingle stuck in your head.)
(This post might be penance for my making a big deal out of planning to ignore the Olympics, yet then watching them after all.)
This Fareed Zakaria piece ("What Bush Got Right" - I read the print edition at an opportune time yesterday) has its moments, but he lost me at Taiwan.
"On the most important issue to Beijing—that of Taiwan—Bush not only sided with the Chinese but has done so in a more direct manner than any previous president. He made clear to the then Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian that were Taiwan to make any moves toward independence, the island would lose the support of the United States."
"make any moves toward"?!?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but who takes care of the garbage in Taiwan? Who hires the police force? And what are those periodic elections all about? The Communist Party of the PRC can fantasize all it wants about fictitious territorial bounds, but for all practical purposes, the only effect the PRC has on life in Taiwan is all those cruise missiles it has aimed there.
(And as we all know, aiming cruise missiles at a piece of land is exactly the right way to indicate that there's still somehow national unity. Just like all those missiles we point at Hawaii, right?)
Presidential TV ads. Are these REALLY catering to what The American People (think they) want?!
Based on what they chose to emphasize in the ads they bought during Olympic coverage, one major-party candidate intends to "create 5 million jobs" by pursuing alternate energy sources, while the other intends to "stand up to Big Tobacco and Big Oil."
Yeah, that's exactly what a president should do: "Create" jobs by force of will (hell, if that were the goal in and of itself, we could hire 10 million people to dig holes, and 10 million more to replace the dirt, and just print an arbitrary amount of currency to pay them all -- what could possibly go wrong?), or better yet pointedly stoke an adversarial relationship with whichever industry happens to be least popular at the time.
(The part about pursuing alternate energy sources is plausibly laudable, but on the other hand is this really something that requires top-of-the-agenda presidential leadership? Are we really to believe that alternate energy has to be a U.S. government thing because somehow nobody else would ever be interested in it?)
The last time I checked our constitution (no, I've never been one of those guys who carried a pocket-sized constitution everywhere, though such people are underrated), the president is in no particular order:
*- Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. armed forces
*- someone who signs some bills into law and vetoes others
...and less officially someone who gives stirring orations. (On that note I actually quite liked Obama's recent Bill Cosby routine.)
In no particular order:
Mayonnaise. Funny because it rings true, sad for the same reason. (I cannot emphasize enough my virulent dislike for mayonnaise.)
Slate women on sports, part one (presented without comment):
A few minutes in, we began to wish we were watching back home. "Where are the up-close-and-personal segments?" my sister asked. Sure, there was a bit of commentary, but none of the polish and packaging that you'd get from the folks at NBC. Not much history or background on the contestants beyond where in China they were born. And certainly no visits to hometowns and no proud, teary-eyed parents. Sure, these stories of sacrifice, injury, and adversity are cheesy, but they serve a necessary function, allowing you to identify with athletes whom you've never heard of before and probably won't hear from again.
Slate women on sports, part two:
The kids on the other team had made up the "you're safe if you fall down" rule midgame. They didn't seem inclined to apply it uniformly—no one on Eli's team tried to invoke it, and he didn't think it would have flown if they had. Still, we were a bit uneasy about urging Eli on in his fight for the rule of law. [...]
The problem is that the point of playing games isn't only to win, most of the time. It's also to hang out with friends, have a good time, while away a sunny or rainy afternoon. Viewed through that lens, it's important to tolerate a little rule bending. Did the dice fly off the board? OK, roll them again. Game playing takes a lot of that kind of compromise and improvisation.
It's important to tolerate a little rule bending, WHEN THE RULE-BENDING SERVES A PLAUSIBLE PURPOSE. The point behind "dice that fell off doesn't count" should be obvious to anyone who's ever played dice games. I'm completely baffled as to how a "if you fall down you're not out rule" would serve any purpose in kickball other than the naked interest of the team that pulled it out of thin air.
Anyone who can't tell the difference between "if you fall down you're not out" and "dice that fall off the table get re-rolled" is someone that I fervently hope isn't the sole philosophical mentor of his or her offspring.
And last but not least: Olympic gymnastics judges who give a zero ("no exercise score") to someone who didn't wait for a red light to turn green are the moral equivalent of quiz companies that rule an answer wrong if the player who rang in "didn't wait to be recognized."
...is the appropriate place for whoever designed those social networking ads that use the names and head shots of your own friends?
("Is [X] is funny as Ed Asner?" "Which of [E], [F], [G], [H] is more likely to listen to the new single by Burl Ives?")
I've never understood the people who think of text-correlated ads within their e-mail as a privacy violation. (The only thing that "knows" what the text was was the automatic process itself; in theory whoever owns the process could infer things about your e-mail, but in theory you could accomplish the same thing by packet sniffing, and about as tediously.) This practice of using one's own friends' names and likenesses, though... I'm not going to claim it's deceptive (anyone with half a brain will realize that these friends aren't actually endorsing those things) so much as violative.
It also inexplicably reminds me of the voice a kindergarten teacher might use. "Does a COW like to eat grass? Does a DUCK like to eat grass?"
Anyway, there is already one movie (plus a handful of music acts whose names fortunately escape me) that I will make it a point of going a lifetime without seeing.
According to an August 2008 post to LiveScience, over the past 25 years, cheerleading accounted for what percent of all catastrophic sports injuries to high school females?