sweep the leg

I’ve had a ton of discussions about risk aversion and conservative coaching with cohorts. Well, mostly with Probability Boy (now known at ProbBoy). Which leads to this: We were watching some Jeopardy! last night and the players were at (about) $12k, $10k, and $8k as the final answer on the Double Jeopardy board came up (category: U.S. Congressional Committees). Since the $12k player has just answered the last question correctly she was the ‘question’ chooser for the final question, which happened to be the last Daily Double – it’s all hers. There is only one way to play this – bet it all and either end it now or go home. I did not spend 22 minutes of my life to watch you fucking lay up. Bet it all – how many committees do you think there are? We’ve seen judiciary, we’ve seen Oversight. Bet. It. All. Look, you are the only one that gets the question, you won’t have to worry about your opponents getting it right and you missing it in Final Jeopardy. You won’t have to do math to figure out if you need to bet $3,145 to win. You don’t have to worry about a category coming up in Final Jeopardy that you don’t know jack about, like “Tang Dynasty Chinese Poetry”. It’s all you. Bet. Win. Drop the mic. Lock it down. She bets like $2k. My head explodes. 

Might as well watch John Harbaugh coach.

P.S. The question was, "Three word committed that oversees..." Fucking stop. What is Ways and Means. She killed me.

smoke up, johnny

This is a short ramble, but I'm curious. It's been touted many a time that video games have been shown to have no effect on kids' headmeat. I'm going to play along for a bit, because I'm pretty sure that this:

actually had very little mental effect on my brain as I wasted my early-1980s youth playing quarters, Frogger, and chasing high school drawers.

What about now? Based on some minimal research on the Web, the first real first-person shooting (FPS) game that was fully functional was Wolfenstein (1992). From that point until about 2004, FPS games were almost exclusively PC or Apple OS based; in about 2004 (or so) the re-birth of the home gaming console came to pass and Halo (2004) and Call of Duty (2005) began the onslaught of FPS games. Also, remember that  in the 1990s and early 2000s the limitationson on computers in a house that Little Johnny could play shoot 'em up: Either by capability, or the fact that you weren't letting that little bastard on your $4,000 Pentium. Any studies from the past that cite the nil effect of video games on kids can be disguarded - for the simple reason that they don't take into account the FPS genre and ubiquity.

Let's do some math - if I assume that the kids we might be concerned with are those that are now 7 (like the kid so proudly describing his FPS shooter love and skills at the barbershop the other week, while his mother looked on proudly); and generally, those more likely to have been born between 1995 and 2005. All of them range in age from 7 - 18 and it's impossible to even comprehend how FPS games affect them. We can't possibly know, can we? It's all well and good to say that Missile Command, Tetris, and Galaga had no ill mental effects on me (even if they did make me delay my homework or chores), but to move that data forward and say that this current 7 - 18 crowd isn't being mangled at least a bit is crazy. The idea that kids can be the shooter, can see all the blood and gore, can have missions that never end, and the the fact that they never 'die' probably puts an illusionary tilt on their psychology. So, your kid claims they understand the difference? Are you sure? Probably. I suspect that around 2023 we'll see studies that show a massive, violent influence on the kids that grew up playing these games.

I knew the difference between reality and games when I was young. I knew I wasn't a frog. I never came upon a giant monkey rolling barrels at me. Those game weren't actual things that happen in life.

pay you tuesday for a hamburger today

Ah, the endless debate for children.

I'm sure this fits neatly into some game theory or delayed gratification subcategory: the weather:school matrix. The boys are off school for the next few days for the end of their semester; today there was 'weather' in the D.C. area so the government is operating a vaguely 10am or noon workday configuration. Knowing that the government determined a delay was in order it's a well known in these parts that the county would have delayed schools at least two hours, if not all day. (The math of delaying kids only two hours while their parents are delayed four hours doesn't make much sense.) Anyway, back to the game lab. Assuming there would have been a two-hour delay today there is moaning about the place that, "Man, we totally lost out on a delay." The theory in their world (and mine when I was young) is that they would trade a two-hour delay followed by five hours of school if only they didn't already have today off. The missing pieces in this grand theory are these: you have an entire day off (most important), and you off and you can't bank weather. There is no actual choice to be made, nor is there anything lost or gained. It's akin to getting a hamburger for free on free hamburger day, and then finding out that in the paper there was a 20% off coupon for hamburgers at some other place. In a single-day situation free always beats a discount; a day off always tops two hours.

Of course, it doesn't help that L. had Wednesday - Friday off last week at her school (for the semester break) and now gets another free day off today due to weather. That, by the way, is the Royal Flush of days off at the Great School Days Off Hold 'Em Championships. She can just drop her cards on the table and walk away....

tidying up the paperwork

After code was written and truth determined (it was bout 10,000 lines of repetitive numbering), the correct answers to the EHB game, if everyone is maximizing efforts would be this:

1st bidder: 75
2nd bidder: 25
3rd bidder: either 26 or 74

It's been noted by representation that I need to make a public apology to G. for his opening number of 77 that cracked open this can of worms. And so, I apologize with no additional input. The 77 was very close to the best possible option.

If you're wondering about the Price is Right version of the game (closest without going over), the max numbers for each player are:

1st: 67
2nd: 34
3rd: 1

There's no wiggle room in this one for the second bidder, and by default, the last guy in. The first set of rules allows the 3rd bidder to decide which end to attack and therefore give one of the two players (the one not attacked) as the most likely winner.

The 51 is off to see the Caps at Verizon tonight. Seems like it's been forever with the long Olympic break.

t

you cannot be serious! - john mcenroe (1970s/80s)

A few weeks ago we sent off a couple of letters to the great north but they were returned about a week later by the USPS. Both included the standard, yellow sticker that said something about undeliverable as addressed – clearly a mistake since both addressees were correct. Not really understanding what the problem might be, I grabbed a new envelope (both items were cards), addressed it (again), stamped it (again), and fire it out yesterday morning. As expected when one tries to sort out an issue, another card was returned yesterday afternoon but this time it included some very official mathematical directions and chastisement (is that a word?) sticker covering the entire face of the envelope. It appears that unless you are mailing a perfectly standard-sized card you’ll be paying an additional $.20. Just so you don’t think that we were mailing those 2’ by 3’ cards full of pandas and balloons, here’s a picture of the returned card with a reference so you can size it yourself (that's a CD, by the way):

Here’s a zoom on the rules and directions. When you’re done with the math problem, please turn in your papers. I’m guessing that they’ve decided that if they must hand sort anything then you’re paying more. Have they purchased new sorting machines? This is complete bullshit:

I also wanted to update the progress of our snow-clearing equipment around the neighborhood. If you remember how they were stuck by feet of snow last month (see here), then rest assured they’ve finished their work. J.O.B.

We are in the midst of what I’d dubbed the “Extra Hash Brown (EHB)” game theory. It started accidentally when I asked which of the three blockheaded kids were interested in the extra hash brown at breakfast the other morning. (Background: the big pan only fits four hash browns for cooking. Yes, I could have only made three. Yes, I could have cut the last one in thirds, but where’s the fun in that?) I wrote down a number between 1 and 100 and starting with G., followed by H. and L., respectively, (they were all interested in the hash) and told them that whoever was closest to the number would win the gold. G. started with 77 – I now don’t remember the other guesses because I immediately lost interest – and after all the bids were in, H. had won. Why I lost my focus was because I immediately thought that 77, when you know two others are guessing behind you, is a poor opening salvo. What this became over the last two days – and now involves my workmate/probability geek as well as X – is this: what are the best numbers to choose if you are picking first, second, and/or third? I’ve added variants to the game that include closest without going over (the Price is Right version), and writing down a number on a secret ballot where if two pick the same number they are eliminated (the You Can’t Just Write 50 version). I’ll save you our endless discussions and thoughts and just let you play the game on your own. If you have three kids around – or two kids and a crazy wife – have them give a try and see what happens…but don’t give them any background before the first round. One additional input: since humans aren’t actually good at randomly selecting a number, go online and Google-up a random number generator and use that as your source for the final, winning, answer.

quarter up

I'm a day behind on this, and X didn't find the story very interesting, but I'll pass it along, regardless. If you hail from the the Plains, Great Midwest, or varying portions of I-95 and Pennsylvania then you know from Skee Ball. We aren't talking about Chuckie Cheese or little kids-disco-light 'Skee Ball'; this is bowling alley, old-time arcade, and midway Skee Ball. I remember long ago when my brother and his friend (Dave or Dan?) played an entire day of Skee Ball at Peony Park in Omaha so they'd have enough tickets to buy eight, stemmed Budweiser glasses - that was big time, but that's not the point.

On my way home from the Caps game on Thursday night there was a couple sitting in the seat in front of me on the Metro and she pulls out her iPhone and starts to play electronic Skee Ball. (If you've ridden the Metro you know that anything going on in the seat in front of you is perfectly visible, especially when they are drunk and gabbing about their iPhone.) She'd only been playing Skee Ball for a few seconds before I knew she wasn't from any of the areas listed above. She's rolling her balls up the middle of the run...as if that's the professional method. I was tempted to remove my headphones and set her straight: in Skee Ball, if you want to properly impress the crowd, you'll need to bank your shots mid-bumper and then sit back and tally tickets. If you want to hang anything near 350-400 points you'll never get there going straight. It was almost unbearable.

Then again, maybe she didn't care.

t

dork meter

Every year the NYTimes publishes a Year in Review quiz that I find utterly fascinating; it's a Brunswick Stew of everything you might find in the news throughout the year. I did all right this year getting 50 out of 118 - I know that might seem poor but you'd better give it a go before grading my attempt. What this entry is really about is the portion of the review that isn't really numbered as a question but merely titled "Red State/Blue State" that asks you to remember two things about the fifty states and the District of Columbia: did it go Dem or Republican in the election and how many electoral votes does each carry. There are two compartments in my brain that gave me serious hope about my success: the 2008 election that seems as if it were yesterday (to include my endless reading), and the game Landslide that I played in my youth. I vividly remember Landslide and all its election iterations -picture a geeky kid memorizing electoral votes even though I didn't know a wit about the Electoral College. It simply seemed like math and a big old conundrum as I was trying to get elected President of Brookside Dr. in Omaha, Nebraska. Right. I tuck into the table, stick my tongue out to enhance my deep thought, and have at it. I'm quite proud of my results - and I'll pass them along since you asked.

1. I got 50 of 51 states (and the District of Columbia) correct on the Democrat/Republican vote. I misfired on Michigan even though Obama won that baby by 16%. I guess I got a bit crazy staring at the table and still had Michigan as a battleground state in my head. That's a bad miss on my part...just saying.

2. I got 14 of the 51 exactly right on electoral votes and 15 within one. Overall, 40 (of 51) of my number were within three. My average miss - on the 37 that were wrong - was 3.08 votes.

3. My biggest gap was NY which I imagined as 47 electoral votes but is actually only 31. I was also off by 8 votes on Texas and Michigan. It seems like once you get into the big numbers it all gets a bit blurry.

4. Having said that, I nailed California and its 55 electoral votes.

Maybe I'll apply to be a political savant - not a strategist - because I'm apparently only good at memorizing inane facts. I bet if there were somewhere I could be quizzed on Monopoly properties, rents, and hotel fees....

If only.

return fare

We had a great week in the ever-changing northern Vermont weather. Laurel and I ended up spending about five hours on the JFK tarmac yesterday trying to get back to D.C. but we finally made it home about 10:30pm last night and have moved her flight back to Omaha to this evening. If you’re going to be stuck on a plane, on the ground, for five hours then you’ll want to be on jetBlue – 60 channels of satellite TV. That little screen probably saved at least three or four people from certain death raining down from my perch in seat 23B.

Over the week we did a lot of eating; it happens that there’s not much that can be done to eliminate feasting during an entire week where the weather and events are fluid. Quite a bit was actually cooked at the house – primarily the breakfast and lunch bits – with a few nights spent eating out. The best dinner was a treat from the MagDad at Café Shelburne in Shelburne, Vermont.

There was, of course, the annual golf in miniature championship contested last Monday evening. As so often happens with these major events it ended up in a three-way tie with X, Phil, and I all carding -5 totals of 49. There was some complaining at the 16th tee box about a (ferocious) cat either preparing to pounce or laying on the fairway affecting someone’s tee shot. This mild protestation of cause-and-effect was shouted down, and mocked, by both progeny and progeny’s boyfriend.

We managed a few museums, horseback riding, swimming, a waterfall visit, children swimming endlessly, shopping, trips up to Burlington, bookstore visits, more than enough crossword puzzling, and a few games of Pitch Penny™.

Pitch Penny™ revealed a very interesting aspect of L’s personality. It appears that there’s quite a little competitive streak in the quiet reader. The game is a creation that tests one’s ability to scream forth answers that begin with a randomly chosen letter. The topics range from European rivers to fictional characters to Latin American geography. What L quickly sorted is that the eight million pages of books she’s read are suddenly worth something in this mythical world of “Goepps O’ the Woods”. In fact, she ended up being too good and was eventually forced into the adult group that couldn’t answer until the children had an allotted head start to each question. Now that I think about it, this little streak also raised its head when I had the kids at the pool and they played the “tons of loose change on the pool floor” event. The children are sat at the edge of the pool while I throw piles of change all about before they’re finally let loose to gather as much dough as possible. The only rules are no flippers, no goggles, and you can only pick up one coin at a time. That coin has to be returned to your pile on the edge before you can head back out for more. What I noticed was that the boys have a tendency to get a coin, come up for air, loudly declare the type of coin for the other submerged or recently surfaced brother to hear, and then swim back to their pile – sometimes spending a bit of time finding said pile. L. decided to simply dive/swim back and forth as quickly as possible with no talking, declaring, or sorting of her pile’s location. I don’t know what any of the means for her future but I’ve seen a new side.

Our three-inning Wiffle ball game was highlighted by X smashing a first-inning line drive into Maggie’s already wounded left knee and a second-inning heater into H’s left thigh. She also managed at third-inning short fly ball that tempted older folk into a headlong rush that could only end in tears and another out. I wouldn’t say it was new side of her – it simply reinforced the smiling assassin caricature.

I think Canada is working its way onto the books for next summer.

It’s nice to be back at the regular homestead.

t

training

Consider it professional development. Mistakes will kill you...focus, focus. I did 58, 92 (winner!), and then tumbled to 62. Methinks that law school near-graduate will crank out some serious numbers.