Monday, November 12, 2007

...but it probably never happened with Minneapolis and St. Paul

I wonder how many identical twins end up with the same name as the one they were assigned at birth. I know that if I had twins, at least some point in that first year I'd be giving the kids a bath and realize: "Aw crap, which one's Timmy again? Is he the one with the little freckle on his chin, or is that Jumaine? I've gotta figure this out before I put on their color-coded jammies. Eanie, meanie, miney, mo... Okay freckle-chin, looks like you're Jumaine. Let's get you into the blue shirt."

It must happen.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Commandement 6, article 13

Introduction
One major part of a person’s political philosophy is their view on murder and how it is defined. The Bible makes it seem pretty simple: Thou shalt not kill. However, throughout the years, this simple maxim has been challenged by one ambiguous example after another. Is abortion murder? Is capital punishment murder? In order to help you think through your feelings on death and responsibility, I encourage you to work your way through the following exercise....


Exercise
Each of the following examples presents one case in which a person dies. Please read each example and apply one of the following three responses:
A. This is immoral, and I am responsible.
B. This is immoral, but I am not personally responsible.
C. This is just the way the world works, and while it is sad, no one is personally responsible.


Example 1: You shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

Example 2: You come home to find your spouse in bed with another person, and, in a fit of rage, grab a gun and kill them both.

Example 3: A person breaks into your house. You grab a gun, and shoot him as he is fleeing out the front door.

Example 4: You are mugged in a back alley, but manage to wrestle the attackers knife from him and kill the man with it.

Example 5: You forget to use contraception, and as a result you/your girlfriend gets pregnant. Raising a child does not fit with your life plan for the moment, and you have an abortion.

Example 6: You are a soldier in the army. You kill a soldier in an enemy army.

Example 7: You are a pilot in the Air Force. You are given a target upon which to drop your bombs. You ask no questions and complete the mission, but later learn that the target was mis-identified and was actually a school.

Example 8: You are a judge in Texas, and you are presiding over the case of a serial murderer. It’s your call whether he is executed or spends his life in jail, and you elect to execute the man.

Example 9: In a prenatal screening within the first trimester of pregnancy, you learn that your child will have Downs syndrome. You elect to have an abortion.

Example 10: You are a doctor. Your emergency room is suddenly flooded with patients, and you ignore several critical patients who will probably die regardless of treatment in order to tend to several other patients who you have a better chance to save.

Example 11: You are the head of a household, and you find yourself in this situation: you have limited resources and money, and can either pay for an expensive treatment that will keep an 85-old relative alive for another year, or for two treatments that will significantly improve the quality of life of two teenage relatives.

Example 12: Your spouse suffers a car accident and loses brain function. After several months on the respirator, you elect to pull the plug.

Example 13: A child dies in Africa from malnutrition. You were aware that this is going on and had the money to donate to the charity that could save this child, but you elected to purchase Netflix instead.



If you feel comfortable posting your results, please do. I a interested to know where other people fall on the spectrum.





Sorry for the recent scarcity of updates. It turns out that school is more time consuming than I’d remembered. To sate your appetite for semi-coherent bloggerel, I recommend: pedagogue-blog.blogspot.com, an account of one young man’s trials and tribulations as a fresh-out-of-college music teacher in a New York City charter school.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Deus Ex Magica

Along with much of the rest of the world, I have found myself captivated by a fictional teenage wizard for much of the last decade. Over the course of reading the Harry Potter series, however, I came to realize that there is a major risk in writing a magical fantasy novel. In creating a magical universe, the author is free to invent all sorts of awesome phenomena: love potions, healing charms, the Force, etc.

The potential problem with this is the use of one of these magical inventions work your way out of a corner. If one of your characters is falling into a pit of acid: no problem, you invent an incredible base charm which neutralizes the acid and saves the day. Heroine trapped by a herd of hungry dragons? No problem, a sudden bout of scale-leprosy appears to set things right.

Why is this a problem? In an ideal story (according to literary theory), the characters succeed or fail because of their own actions. Even the sort of story in which a character repeatedly gets the worst of it despite his/her virtue, it is still the relation between what s/he deserves and what s/he gets that is important. It is a failure of good story-telling when the two are unrelated.

This means that framework of the universe must be laid out in its entirety long before the climax of the story. Exposition is vital, there should be no magical interventions to save writers from there own poor planning. In fact, any magic in the final chapters should be well understood by the reader long before it happens.

I won't ruin any books for you by evaluating whether or not the author stays true to this rule, but keep this in mind the next time you open a fantasy book.

Monday, September 17, 2007

More handicapping

Likelihood to be supporting an expensive gambling/drug addiction by accepting any and every part offered him:

•Christopher Walken 3:2

•Ben Stiller 6:1

•Will Farrell 9:1

•Ben Affleck 12:1

•David Hasselhoff 13:1

•Chuck Norris 21:1

•Dustin Hoffman 34:1

Monday, September 10, 2007

Mix Master P

Probably the single greatest mixed-metaphor I ever heard came during a convocation address by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. The Governor said:

When life throws you curveballs, embrace them.


Ouch. I'm not sure how many baseball players have ever actually tried to hug a curveball, but I think that most of them would agree that it's a bad idea. Not as painful as embracing a fastball, granted, but still a bad idea.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Dad-isms

If you think I have an opinion on everything, you should meet my father. He's got a one-liner for just about every subject imaginable. Here are just a few off the top of my head.
(Note: these opinions are my father's alone)

• Ever notice that you never see Darth Maul and Dennis Rodman at the same time? (also said about Jabba the Hut and our cat, Athena)

• In my opinion, you should be able to drink at 16, drive at 21, and you should have to apply for a license to have kids.

• If I had a button in front of me that would blow up every TV in the world, I'd push it in a second. (That might've been my uncle, but since they're identical twins they count as the same person.)

• Getting a shipment of lumber is a little bit like Christmas, and a little bit like getting [screwed]. (He's a carpenter).

• If something's worth doing, it's worth doing well.

• My feeling about the Second Amendment are the same as my feeling about the death penalty: I'm for it as long as I get to choose who it applies to.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Friday, August 17, 2007

Quotations

Sorry, I know that the updates have been few and far between lately. I'm home in the land of dial-up internet and ongoing farmwork for a few weeks. I'll tend to this patch of page much better starting in September.

For the meanwhile, here are a couple quotes that have struck me of late. I'm often skeptical of rigid quotations, because they frequently simplify a complicated problem, but these are working for me for whatever reason:

With or Without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steve Wienberg


I'm reading thrugh Grapes of Wrath right now, so I might amend "or money" to the end of that quote. But maybe that is a religion.

When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.
Sinclar Lewis


Before anyone takes offense: I sincerely believe that if everyone observed the rules that Christ or Mohammed or Whoever described, the world would be a better place. The problem is that religion in the great justifier of all otherwise unjustifiable acts.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Nothing new under the sun

I'd heard a lot of passing remarks on how bad of an idea it is to keep an army in Afghanistan, but this excerpt from a Kipling's "A Young British Soldier" really drives the point home:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Handicapping Evolution

Explanation
It's interesting to contemplate what animals would eventually rise to control the Earth is humans were to somehow disappear. Actually, it'd be pretty fun to bet on if you had a six pack of beer and a few eons with nothing to do. To that end, here are the odds of any current species (or group of species) on Earth eventually developing the intelligence and means to control the Earth's resources as humans do now.

Chimpanzee 5:1 odds
Chimpanzees share the closest common ancestor with humans of any other animal, and it stands to reason that they have the shortest genetic distance to travel to catch up with humans in terms of intelligence. Chimps already have demonstrated the ability to engage in cognition (figuring out problems in their head instead of through trial and error), can learn sign language, and appear to be aware of themselves (will try to wipe away a mark on their own face if they see themselves in a mirror). Furthermore, their opposable thumbs give them a big advantage over dolphins in the way of manipulating tools. This is pretty important in order to control resources; being able to harvest chemical energy, for example, would be difficult without hands to manipulate tools.

Dolphin 8:1
By some measurements, dolphins may be more intelligent than we are right now. Some scientists have begun gaging intelligence by the number of folds in the brain's frontal lobe, and dolphins have far more than we do. They clearly have a language and more computational brain power for language than we do: what might sound like several seconds of whistling could convey more data than hours of human conversation. They also appear to make art (blowing bubbles into vortexes of water), and thus appear to have creative thought. However, as stated in the chimpanzee section, dolphins are severely handicapped by not having appendages with which to easily manipulate tools. This casts doubt over their ability to control resources. Furthermore, living in an aquatic environment makes developing fire and electricity much more difficult or unlikely than on land.

Octopus 18:1
According to some theories, cephalopods were leading the race to higher intelligence when the took an evolutionary wrong turn: octopus and squid blood uses copper instead of iron to convey oxygen. The hemocyanin in their blood is less efficient than the hemoglobin in our own, and therefore cephalopods blood probably carries too little oxygen to support a big brain. If octopuses could get back n the right track or figure out some way around this problem, they could be well on their way towards supremacy. They are already extremely adept at problem solving and manipulating instruments with their tentacles. Furthermore, some octopuses have evolved to live in progressively shallower water, perhaps presaging a move up onto land.

Raven 40:1
Ravens are thought to be the most intelligent species of bird. Like chimpanzees, ravens have show signs of cognition: a raven that encounters a piece of meat hanging from a string will trap the string with one foot and slowly pull the meat up with the other. Ravens also use sticks as tools for grub-hunting. However, flight requires maximum weight efficiency (birds have only one ovary and kidney, for example). This makes a high brain mass to body mass ratio unlikely.

Termites 150:1
I've heard a scientist suggest that one of the massive colonies of millions of termites in Africa might be as intelligent as a 4-year-old. Could be: they've already invented agriculture through fungus farms, language through chemical messages, sophisticated air conditioning, architecture, and division of labor. It's not that much of a stretch to imagine an ant colony learning to cultivate and use fire, a short step away from mastery of chemical energy. However, one wonders about the inherent limits of the hive consciousness...

Frogs 20,000:1
Though they have appendages with digits capable of grasping, frogs and most other amphibeans have little computational brain power.

Snakes 45,000:1
The disadvantage of having no appendages whatsoever makes snakes a dark horse candidate in this race.

Cockroaches 150,000:1
Not a good chance, and thank God for that (even if I'll never be around to see it).
Update: Maybe I should adjust this one to be a little more probable. In the case of a nuclear holocaust, cockroaches would have very little standing in their way.


Betting on larger groups
Generic primate 3:1
With orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos included, this group merits a healthy third of the probability of coming out on top.

Generic mammal 7:3
Adding dolphins, apes, cats, dogs, and rodents together, there's almost a 50% chance you've got a winner.

Generic bird 35:1
In addition to the raven's brain we include the tool-mastery of finches, and the possibility that a flightless bird will eschew its weight efficiency for a more intelligent brain. Furthermore, it is possible that the sudden boom in human intelligence a few hundred thousand years ago was the result of sexual selection--suddenly it was cool to date nerds. Birds are especially prone to sexual selection as a method of picking mates, so it's possible that they could get going down the same road that humans did.

Generic invertebrate 15:1
For a big-paying yet plausible bet, put your money on the invertebrates and hope the cephalopods develop hemoglobin or the hive consciousnesses keep getting smarter.


No successor 5:1
It took a few billion years of life to get humanity up and running. The sun's still got a few billion years of juice remaining, so the odds that another species won't rise to dominance are slim, but certainly a possibility.



Please place your bets by the next milennia. No wagers will be accepted any later.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Google cooking

I got home today and looked in the refrigerator to discover nothing but condiments, 2 eggs, some broccoli, onions, and a can of corn. I frowned for a second, thinking a trip to the supermarket was required, then inspiration struck.
I opened my computer, went to Google, and typed in "onions,broccoli,corn,egg,recipe". An instant later, a host of dinner possibilities appeared on my screen. After clicking through a couple, I chose "Broccoli Corn Casserole" and went to work. I am happy to report that the results were quite good.

What's more, I learned that Google-cooking is actually a common phenomenon. Every day, many people simply google ingredients and select the most appealing recipe to become the day's dinner. This is yet another way in which google has revolutionized the world: I look back on the me of 10 years ago, sadly making my way to the grocery store. Now I can put that trip off indefinitely.

Tomorrow's search: "salt, droopy carrots, teaspoon strawberry jam, beer."

Ah, to be alive in the google generation.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Appealing conspiracy theories II: UFOs

Okay, okay, hear me out before you roll your eyes. I know that UFO sightings are generally attributed to inbred farmers and tinfoil-helmet wackos, which makes it very easy to write it off. To make sure I'm understood: I don't actually believe that people see alien spacecrafts or are sucked up into ships for experimentation. That said, I find the idea intriguing for a number of reasons.

The evidence in for UFOs
Think about these things: the universe is more than 20 billion years old. There are billions of galaxies like ours, each containing billions of planets with similar conditions to the Earth at the time our oldest ancestor's creation. The odds that ours is the only planet to have produced life is slim (perhaps even in this solar system). Scientifically, it's very, very improbable that we're unique. And if you're still dubious on religious grounds: remember that it was the idea of exceptionalism that fueled the belief that the Earth was the middle of the universe, around which everything else turned. And isn't it just more of a tribute to the idea of a Creator that there are other worlds out there?

So: I don't think there's any way that we are alone in the universe. The question then becomes: where are they? Let's consider just our galaxy for a moment. Say that there are 1,000 other worlds that have life (a pretty conservative guess, based on the previous paragraph). It would be pretty improbable, then, that we would be the fastest-developing world. Perhaps we are one of the faster ones (or slower), but the odds of us being the most developed would be 1 to 1000 against, even in this conservative example.

We now have two premises: 1. There are probably other planets with life in universe, and 2. It is probable that of the planets to have produced life that we are not the most developed of all. If these points are valid, then there are alien societies throughout the universe that have , that reached the stars before us. Now, think about our own species. Once we mastered the use of chemical energy, we have exploded outward, reaching outer space within a century, and to the edge of our solar system within thirty more. Project that exponential expansion forward another several centuries and we'll have reached the nearest stars. A few millennia more, and we'll have spread across the galaxy. The idea at play here is that once a society gets going it can spread very quickly. In a few thousand years, an intelligent race can leap out from their caves and across many light years. In relation to the universe, which as I said before is older than 10 billion years, a few millennia is nothing. It's an inconsequential blink. So the odds are that any society with a head start on us will have reached Earth and beyond, no matter if they're the star system next door, or on the other side of the Milky Way.

An analogy: we've just woken up, explored the bedroom, and found no one there. To assume that we're the only ones in the house or the first ones awake is to jump to conclusions. And if we believe that there are others in the house, the fact that we haven't seen them doesn't mean that they haven't been in while we we sleeping.


Maybe they didn't want to wake us: why I don't actually believe the theory
While I think the evidence is compelling that there is other life in the universe, and even that some of that life is intelligent and star-traveling. But I don't believe in the stories of alien abductions and UFO sightings. Imagine humankind ten thousand years in the future, coming across a planet upon which a species has reached the Industrial Age. Wouldn't you think that we would remain hidden and allow them to develop on their own? I believe that if there are aliens out there, they would keep their distance, and if they chose not to, then they would do it in such a way so that we on Earth would have no clue that they were doing it.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

At least they're not rotary phones...

Isn't it strange that the phones in baseball dugout are never chordless? Why is baseball so behind the times? Even most football coaches have gone to the wireless headset...

Could it be that the image of a manager striding over and picking up the phone to call the bullpen is just to iconic to be replaced? 10 points for anyone who can provide a reasonable answer...

Bear Grylls

Over the course of three minutes on Man vs. Wild last night, Bear Grylls dropped all of these gems:

The most important part of you to keep cool is your head. I need a hat to reduce the risk of overheating. I could use my T-shirt, but I need that to keep the sun off my back. The only thing I have left is my boxer shorts.


(Now wearing boxer shorts as a hat) But my next problem is water. I’m going to need to resort to extreme measures to survive… The only thing I can do, is to drink my own pee.


It may seem disgusting, but your own urine is safe to drink.


(Having urinated into a canteen and drank it, all on camera) But urine alone is not going to be enough in this heat; I need to find a source of water as soon as I can.


Wow. Truly one of the greatest 5 minutes in television ever.



Update: Bear Grylls is obviously entertaining, but it's hard to pin down just how much of his appeal is derived from unintentional comedy. Having given it some thought, I submit that it's about 63% unintentional comedy, 37% sheer awesomeness. Results may vary based on the individual.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Appealing Conspiracy Theories I

As a skeptic and positivist, I am usually dismissive of popular conspiracy theories. However, there are a couple that strike a note of truth. In this occasional series, I will discuss the appeals of some of the few theories I find appealing.


The Moon Landing Was Faked

You may have come into contact with people pushing the idea that Neil Armstrong et al never actually made it to the moon, but instead filmed the whole thing in Nevada somewhere. While it may sound like a wing-nut theory, and I'm sure that adjective describes many of its supporters, some of the arguments for it seem to strike a note of plausibility in my mind.

What it has going for it
The biggest reason why this theory raises my eyebrows is the political situation at the time. The United States and USSR were in the middle of the contest of bravado known as the Cold War. Among the battlefields of this war (aside: doesn't this seem kind of silly in retrospect?) was technological achievement: each side strove to out-invent the other, almost like two brothers competing for their father's approval. President Kennedy launched a major broadside in this battle when, in 1961 he dedicated the country to landing a man on the moon "before this decade is out." This put a lot of pressure on the US, for to fail to accomplish this goal would mean a failure to one-up the Soviets (seriously, doesn't this make it sound like some middle school pissing contest?). Furthermore, in 1969, the year in which the moon landing occurred, the U.S. was desperately

So there was clearly a good deal of incentive, but how about motivation? Was Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, so brazen as to dupe the world in such such a way? Well, yes, and Kennedy, too. JFK was a willing perpetrator of all sorts of shifty shenanigans, ranging from having someone break into a municipal office to ensure his election papers were filed on time, to the secretively planned Bay of Pigs operation. LBJ was certainly not above deception, famously accusing an opponent of bestiality with pigs in order to force the man to spend time in his press conferences having to deny it. And Richard Nixon, whose term had just begun when the landing occurred? I think it's safe to say that he was not above secret conspiracies.

With a strong motivation and the people willing to do it, all the ingredients were in place to fake the moon landing.


Why I don't actually believe
As appealing as the theory is because of the political situation and players involved, I just don't think they could have pulled it off. Faking the moon footage, in particular the low-gravity bouncing, would have been astronomical. Bear in mind that Star Wars was still a decade away. Combine that with the sheer number of people that would have had to be in on it--dozens of government officials from two different political parties, hundreds of NASA scientists, all the astronauts, the film crew, etc. I just don't think that it's possible for that big of a secret to remain a secret for so long.

Friday, July 6, 2007

King for a day

Question
What would you do if you were made head of the country for just long enough to impose one piece of legislation? Would you right a perceived wrong, or attend to your pet cause? Essentially, the question is: what added law would do the country the most good?



My Answer
I would set up a system for the public funding of elections.

I thought for a while about the various other causes I might want to try and devote my 15 minute reign to, but I think this works out best. When you're trying to decide between a number of choices, I'm a big fan of third-way options which use a creative alternative to allow you to have you cake and eat it, too (aside: I used to hate that aphorism, but it's growing on me).

The theory behind my choice: as cynical as I may sound sometimes, I really believe that well-run democracies will eventually come up with the right answers. In our case, however, there is a huge problem created by the process of elections.

In order to be a serious contender, you must have some serious cash backing. In order to get that backing, you must be supported by major corporations. And in order for major corporations to think that you're worth investing in, they must believe that your election will bring them something in return. Obviously, there's a huge incentive there to govern in the interest of your financial patriarchs, rather than in the interest of your constituents.

People have tried to fix this problem through campaign finance reform laws. Unfortunately, there are a few major weaknesses in those laws:
1. It's really hard to plug all the potential loop holes.
2. Without some sort of financing, the super-rich have a huge advantage.
3. There is some concern that it is a violation of free speach to prevent people from giving money to political organizations.

My solution to the problem is publicly-funded elections. Here's how it works: money is accrued through taxes (the cost is an estimated $1 per person). Any candidate getting a requisite minimum number of signatures is eligible to spend this money on an election. If all the candidates in a race opt to run with public money, they are each allowed a fixed ammount. If only one candidate elects to take they public money, enough is given to catch him/her up with his opponent. Since the opponent now has no incentive to try to outspend his/her rival, the total money spent drops significantly.

I like this idea a lot because it frees politicians from their financial obligtions, and allows them to support the legislation based upon whether they think it is sound, rather than whether it will be good for their backers. This would end the patron system we have now, and get real work accomplished on immigration, the environment, education, the economy, and many other areas in which companies havea vested interest.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Published in the LA Times!

I didn't discover it until today, but I was published in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.

Background
Just before beginning this blog, I briefly entertained the hobby of publishing satirical edits on Conservapedia.org, a wacky alternative to the supposed liberal bias of Wikipedia. Most of them were promptly deleted, but on occasion I managed to get some edits to stick.

So:
On Sunday, the LA Times printed an article on Conservapedia. Contained within that article are several quotations from articles on the website. Included amongst them was a quote pulled from the article on George W. Bush:


"And the state of the economy under President Bush? Much better than the "liberal media" would have you think: "For example, during his term Exxon Mobile has posted the largest profit of any company in a single year, and executive salaries have greatly increased as well."

With fewer than 12,000 entries and typos galore (the misspelling of Mobil above; the mayor of L.A. is referred to as "Anthony Varigoso"), Conservapedia isn't about to supplant Wikipedia — which boasts 1.8 million articles in English alone."




These fingers first wrote that sentance about five months ago, and somehow it survived long enough to be discovered by a Times reporter. How you like them apples, world?

Sunday, June 24, 2007

When aliens come to Earth...

...I think they'll find it odd that we present plant genitalia to eachother as part of our courting ritual.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Running off with the nomination

Introduction
If ever there was an argument for run-off balloting, this presidential primary season is it. Both parties find themselves in the awkward position of of having a frontrunner who is viewed negatively by a large portion of the party. Keep reading for a brief explanation of the problem and potential solution.

Republican Primary
Former mayor Rudy Giulliani currently leads the Republican field with a slim majority of the vote. Giulliani appears to have a percentage of voters loyal to him within his party, but much of the rest of conservative America appears reluctant to support a pro-life, pro-gay rights candidate. Despite the fact that many of his party, perhaps even most, would list him at the bottom of their preferred candidates, Giulliani would likely be the Republican nominee if the vote were held today.

Democratic Primary
The Democrats face a similar predicament. Hillary Clinton has a significant lead over her rivals in the polls. However, in a one-on-one election, she would lose to many of her competitors. She is viewed negatively by many in her party, but has a large enough chunk of supporters to lend her the lead. (Aside: Hillary is by far the most-hated Democratic candidate among Republicans--most would prefer any other Democrat to her. And yet, she is the most conservative in the Democratic field by far. Can anyone explain this to me?)

Solution: Run-off voting
Run-off voting solves this stratgy by allowing voters to list the candidates from favorite to least-favorite rather than simply checking their first choice. This way, one candidate cannot win by splitting the vote, for example if Hillary should win the nomination when anti-Hillary voters were unable to choose decisively between Al Gore and Barack Obama. Pay attention to this, I could easily see it playing a big part in this election.


Note
One way the primary system has countered vote-splitting in the past is by the winnowing of the field--candidates drop out as it becomes increasingly clear they will not win. This will be less the case this year, as the primary schedule has been rewritten so that the individual primaries are less spread out, not allowing time for candidates to drop out.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Ethics question: To kill a dolphin

See if you can help me figure this one out.

Question 1: Is it morally acceptable to kill a dolphin for food?

If you answer no:
Should a person then be able to be convicted of homicide for killing a dolphin?
Is it morally acceptable to kill a whale? If you said no again, how about a monkey? a wolf? a cow? Is there an IQ cut-off for what is acceptable to kill and what is not? Is there any other rubric we can use? Skip down to the discussion.

If you answered yes:
Consider the next question....


Question 2: What if it were determined that a dolphin is every bit as intelligent and sentient as a human? Would it be morally OK to kill a dolphin for food then?

If you answered yes:
Is it really OK to kill another sentient animal? If we were visited by an elite race of aliens, wouldn't we want them to consider us as equals and not kill us? Wouldn't we protest if they killed us for food?

If you answered no:
You seem to have decided that the cut-off for ethical killing is sentience: thou shalt not kill another sentient being. But what if we discovered that dolphins were about as smart as a mentally retarded adult? Is it OK then? What if they had the mental capacity of a 12-year old? A 5 year-old? A 2 year-old? Is there a cut-off IQ score below which it is OK to kill something? Is it then acceptable to kill a human being below that mark?


Discussion
My point is that there is a continuum of intelligence in the world. A mouse is somewhat more intelligent than a grasshopper, which is somewhat smarter than an tick, etc. As I said above, were we to encounter another sentient race we would certainly want them to consider killing one of us to be homicide, a crime of equal severity as killing one of their own. Therefore, if a dolphin can be proved by some measure to be sentient, shouldn't we want to extend that same moral maxim to the killing of dolphins?

All of this begs the question: where exactly is the line of sentience? Dolphins probably have a language that is as sophisticated as our own: there are 23 known dialects of dolphin-speak, and a dolphin can convey and understand much more information than a person (Aside: a much bigger portion of a dolphin's brain is devoted to speech, and they can therefore absorb much more information. A short series of clicks and whistles can likely convey as much information to a dolphin as a novel to a human).

Is there some rubric by which we can determine sentience? Can we establish a cut-off point below which killing is ethically acceptable? Should people spend a life in jail for killing a dolphin?

Please share any insight you might have to this question.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Republican debate II: the raw stats

Here's the raw, question-by-question data from the debate. Each group of letters represents one answer. I tried to develop objective methods of scoring (an answer earned an "O" when Wolf interrupted to tell them they were over time, for example). Also, to show the chronology of the debate, I jumped to the next column as soon as one of the candidates had answered that many questions. So: because McCain, for example, answered his second question before Tancredo had been asked his first, Tancredo's first answer appears in the second column. Hopefully, this shows the flow of the debate a little more clearly. Finally: if an N and an A appear in the same answer acronym, it means that moderator Wolf Blitzer pressed them for clarification and they then answered the question. Without further ado:


Candidate
McCain____A________NDOSAX___AXOS_________AO____NZ__ASO___A
Romney__CNNDO_____NPOD____AO______AS___NZPO___A___AO___A
Giuliani___AD_______AD______AS_______XS9___AO____AS___N____
Tancredo___________AO______AZBDO_________________________AB
Hunter_____________AXO_____ACAS_____NSB___________________NCO
Paul_______________AXO______________AX____AXB___AB___N
Brownback_NO_______AO_______________NO___NO______________AD
Thompson___________AO_______________AS___AZCO____________A
Huckabee___________ARP____________________NCO_______N___ABO
Gilmore___A________NO_____________________NO________AO______

A Answered
N Not Answered
R Unprompted Reagan Reference
X Attack on another candidate
P Platitude
O Over time limit
C Caught straying
D Attack on Democrats
B Attack on Bush
Z Shout out to the religious Right
S Tied answer to national security though the initial question did not
9 September 11th Reference

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Republican Debate, Take 2: in which I bite off more than I can chew.

I again missed the Democratic debate and caught the Republican one. Sorry. For this debate, I tried both to keep a running diary and some stats on the debate. Whew. I had to give up on the stat-keeping when we got to the town-hall part. Anyways, here they are:

Live blog
•9: times Huckabee raised his eyebrows in his 10 second introduction.
•Romney: We have to have a broad response against Islam in order to make sure that they are moving forward to modernity--his response to whether nuclear weapons are reasonable. Nuking Islamics will catch them up with the rest of the world? We'll have to revise Cheney's "we'll bomb you back to the stone-age" threat to "We'll nuke you up to the space age."
•"We are becoming a bilingual nation and that is not good." -Tancredo. Seriously?
•What the heck is going on with Tommy Thompson's hair? He has his sideburns shaved all the way back to mid-temple. Must be shooting for the 80's hair band vote…
•Pretty funny that lightening continuously struck while Giuliani was answering questions about being opposite the church.
•Giulliani seems to suffer disproportionately from the lightening strike phenomenon.
•Romney puts Putin, Abinojad, and Chavez all in the same answer: whoa. At your local theater this week: Cold War II, Vlad's revenge.
•Romney's a great staller. You couldn't take that mike from him with a gun.
•Gilmore gets in a dig on Russia, too. I'm terrified that Putin will respond to this debate by nuking NH.
•You'd think the "Live free or die" state would be more into a libertarian like Ron Paul.
•"This is not a time to deal with disruptive issues like this" -Giulliani on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Then cites the fact that Clinton has already dealt with it. Not too many subjects that a Republican would dodge by saying that Bill Clinton already solved it.
•"I would put him out on the lecture cicuit"- Thompson on how he would include George W. Bush in his administration. This is hilarious: if elected, Tommy Thompson will turn President Bush into a motivational speaker. He's got my vote.
•Giulliani takes Romney's stalling crown with a 100+ word answer to a "Yes" or "No" question.
•Romney, irate, responds with 150 words.
•Half-time analysis: All doing their best to avoid the issues of abortion, global warming, evolution, gay rights, pardoning Libby. Trying to bring it all back to security.
•Wow, hard not to feel impressed by the first young woman to ask a question in the town hall portion.
•McCain scores big by realizing that you can get up from the chair in the town hall part. All other candidates follow suit.
•Huckabee seems pissed to be asked questions on "morality".
•Apparently, Communism fell because Ronald Reagan was able to talk them out of it (Giulliani). We're approaching Chuck Norris level reverence.
•CNN uses some weird low and high angle shots to make Ron Paul look crazy. Paul helps them out.
•Romney scores with a reference to the "Kennedy-McCain" bill. Republicans hate JFK's little brother, so any linking to his name is poison.
•This standing up revelation is incredible.
•"Bilingual countries don't work, and we should not encourage it." -Tancredo. Take that, Switzerland.
•John McCain points out that many of our armed forces are Hispanic. Right on.
•I should've included a stat that tracked who got the big bursts of applause. Stupid.
•"The leading cause of fear in America is that you'll get cancer." -Brownback. Wow, I'd like to see the stats on that one. I wish that were true, but I think that if it were you would see the candidates trying to drag the debate back to health care rather than national security.
•"[The] tax system literally steps on [the American people's] head" -Huckabee. Yeah, I don't think that's true. Someone needs to explain the word "literally" to the good governor from Arkansas.
•To be an American means that you cut your ties with your past, according to Tancredo. Well, I guess I'm going to have to throw away my English rugby jersies if I hope to retain my citizenship during the Tancredo administration.
•Mike Huckabee stands for no man.
•Giulliani pulls a fake-out: first half of the answer sitting, second half standing.
•McCain's definition of what it takes to become an American includes a belief in the creator. Sorry Jefferson.
•Duncan Hunter, on whether the Republicans should be trying to work with the Democrats to forge consensus: "No". Unspoken: "F*** them."
•Romney 5, Blitzer 0. Wolf could hold Mitt underwater and it wouldn't stop him from talking.

Check back tomorrow for the raw stats.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Link

I haven't been great about updating this blog recently, and a busy few weeks will mean that I will continue to be less-than prolific in the immediate future. For those of you who are disappointed to be without a blog to read, try out my friend Tommy's site:
http://helgeninchina.blogspot.com/

He's far worse about updating than I am, but a much funnier writer who's doing much more interesting things. He's currently working as an English teacher in China. Check out the archives for his better work.

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Saddam and Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was a seventeenth century philosopher who lives on as a scapegoat in many an Introduction to Philosophy class. Hobbes believed that without authority humans live "short, nasty, and brutish" lives. Therefore, he thought that a powerful central government was necessary for a stable and peaceful state. To most idealistic young students, myself included, this violates the notions that a government should be derived from the will of the population, and that a central authority should have only limited power over the lives of its subjects.

However, if you wanted to make a case to vindicate Hobbes, a terrific example exists in Iraq. Iraq was controlled by an extremely powerful tyrant who ruled with an iron fist and brutally suppressed dissent. This method of government held together three societies that hate each other for over a decade, even in the face of international sanctions and extreme pressure. As soon as Saddam Hussein, the Hobbesian totalitarian ruler, was removed, the society exploded into violence. Democracy and foreign influence have been unable to contain the turmoil, and life in Iraq has indeed become "short, nasty, and brutish."

While I'll probably never count myself a Hobbes disciple, this is certainly one example of a situation in which it would appear that the one solution an otherwise untenable situation was the supreme authority figure that Hobbes envisioned.

Quick Disclaimer: Please don't misread me to be saying that brutal tyranny is an acceptable form of government. My point is that a system in which I vehemently oppose finally and ironically has a case to support it.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Hog Hell

I try to avoid posting anecdotes from my personal life here, but I feel compelled to share a recent adventure.

Background:
My girlfriend, Katie, and I recently spent about 10 days in Costa Rica visiting our friend Ryan, who has been working at Luna Lodge. Luna is a resort in the beautiful and remote Osa peninsula. While there, we decided to hike into Corcavado National forest, supposedly described by National Geographic as "the most biologically intense place in the universe."

The rest of the story comes from an excerpt of a e-mail I sent out describing my trip:

To tell this story properly, let's back up a moment to Wednesday night. We are discussing the upcoming hike with Lana, Luna's owner, who served as a guide in the park for years before she created Luna. Ryan has led a few short day-trips into the park before, but our three-day foray will be far longer than anything he has previously done. Because of this, Lana wants us to talk to one of the Tico (costa Rican) guides to make sure we're prepared. Katie wonders whether there are any animals that we should be nervous about. Oscar, a guide, says that one should always be careful to watch for snakes, but the larger animals will pretty much leave you alone. That is, except for the peccaries. Two species of these wild pigs live in Corcavado, Oscar says, and one is especially pugnacious. It has developed a defense mechanism of swarming anything that might be a predator and goring it to death with their long tusks. So what should we do if we see any? Run? No, says, Oscar, try to pull yourself into a tree. That's the only safe way to escape.

This warning is somewhat unnerving, and throughout the hike down to the park, Katie theorizes about the possible fates that we might meet at the tusks of a pack of peccaries. Ryan and I attempt to convince her of the unlikeliness of this scenario. Peccaries are, after all, pretty rare. Less than a mile into the park, however (you saw this coming a long time back, didn't you?), we hear rustiling in the dark underbrush to our left. Peering though the trees, we soon determine that the source of the noise is, of course, a pack of peccaries. For the moment, they are rooting around in the ground. Thinking quickly, I did what any dumb tourist would do in such a situation: took a picture. The peccaries, however, did not take kindly to having their images forever immortalized on my computer. They stopped foraging, and some began to stalk closer to us, sizing us up.

Though Ryan thought that they were probably the more-docile of the two kinds of peccary, he was unsure of what to do. He coolly attempted to convey this to us in the most reassuring choice of words possible. "Guys," he said, "I have no idea what to do right now."

It was now clear that there were a lot of peccaries in the bushes, well over a dozen. Being on a trail in the thick rain forest, we had only two avenues of escape: down the trail or up the trail. I suggested that unsheathing the machete might be an appropriate course of action. While Ryan did that, I armed myself with a full Nalgene bottle from Katie's bag. It should be noted, by that way, that there was a distinct scarcity of climbable trees on that particular stretch of path. The peccaries continued to work their way closer, and Ryan whacked his machete on the ground in an attempt to scare them off. This didn't work. The peccaries startled, and immediately began pressing closer. Worse yet, one of the larger pigs had manuvered to outflank us, and was now walking down the path towards us.

I decided to upgrade my weapon from Nalgene to large, rotting stick. With Katie in between us, we continue slowly down the path. We can hear that there are peccaries moving up ahead of us, and decide that we must press on so that we do not find ourselves completely surrounded. We move on and on, and finally find that the peccaries, while still following us, are all behind us. The big pig on the path is studying us from about fifteen feet away. I whack my stick against a tree, and he startles again. We begin walking faster, and soon can hear no more movement behind us. Safe at last.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Choosing the Blue Pill

Okay, so you've just betrayed your fellow human freedom-fighters, and the evil artificial intelligence programs that rule the world are about to reward your disloyalty by plugging you back into the blissful ignorance of the Matrix. Before you go in, the machines are also offering to reward you by uploading five abilities of your choice into your mind. Which do you pick?

Basically, the question here is: if there was no cost in time, effort, and money spent attaining a learn-able talent, which ones would you choose? While you think that over, here are my picks:

1. Math
A major building block for other knowledge, with a complete understanding of mathematics, I can fairly easily move on to conquer the worlds of physics, chemistry, economics, etc.

2. The entirety of English literature
With the complete data base of books written in English encoded into my neurons, not only am I incredibly well prepared for any cocktail party or surprise English quiz, but I've also knocked off a good year or so of my life that would otherwise have been spent reading the books. And if I really want to read something new? Well, I can always go for modern literature, or rely on:

3. Fluency in Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese.
In addition to being able to communicate in most of the world, knowing two Romance languages and Chinese would make learning other languages much more readily accessible.

4. Tennis
Being talented at tennis requires a combination of qualities that translate well to most other sports: muscle-memory, speed, stamina, hand-eye coordination, and a good mental game. With tennis mastered, I could branch out to dominate other sports as well.

5. The canon of medical texts committed to memory
Having an enormous body of medical literature at my fingertips would make me the ultimate diagnosing machine. I could go through hundreds of patients a day, reading the case history and sending them to get the appropriate treatment. Each year I could helps tens of thousands of people get the appropriate care and save tons of time and money.


Runners-up:
Ice skating, the ability to play musical instruments, ability to read expressions, poker odds memorized, archive of all high level chess games

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Living on the edge

The best sort of joke is the one where, in the split second after it leaves your mouth, you experience a breathless moment of panic while you wait to see whether the joke's recipient will find it amusing or offensive.

For example, a mother recently wondered aloud in my presence why she was wearing a Cocopeli pin if he was a fertility god and she was over fifty. I helpfully suggested that perhaps it was for her 18 year-old daughter. I then carefully examined her eyes for any preliminary signs that I should commence fleeing across the dining room. Fortunately, she elected to consider my comment funny rather than grounds for a duel.

Sometimes I think that my appreciation for this sort of thrill verges on the dangerous side, like those who sate their taste for adrenaline by throwing themselves down steep hills with scant protective outrer-wear. In fact, those of you who know me personally should probably agree to some threshhold limit of offensiveness, which, once reached, should require you to kindly tie me down and have a humor intervention.


*Eclexia is going to be dormant for a week or so, as I am about to journey to the far off land of Costa Rica.

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

And the winner is...

So, a few days ago I posted a semi-serious statistical analysis of the first Republican debate. At the end of the post, as you can read below, I promised to crown a winner in several days' time. After completing the post, I endeavored to rehabilitate my mind from the hours of sifting through talking points by thinking about anything and everything else. On Sunday, I published one of the filler posts that has been kicking around as a draft for a while to buy some time, but today I realized that I'd have to stop procrastinating and write this post. However, after reading over the numbers again, I decided that I didn't really want to anoint a single victor. Instead, I'll make the case for each of the candidates and let you decide.


Sam Brownback
Brownback's first accomplishment was having a "B" in the beginning of his last name, netting him the lead-off position in this list. Brownback successfully positioned himself as a hardcore conservative. His goal was to pick off some far right votes, and he was thus able to shoot from the hip. He successfully answered 85% of the questions, which one can afford to do if he is unworried about alienating the centrist vote. He also got the opportunity to declare his anti-abortion and anti-evolution stance, scored a Reagan reference, and managed a subtle attack on his more moderate opponents. The final reason Brownback won: he was able to get in on 13 different questions more than any of the other fringe candidates, and even tying him with Giuliani. So without further ado, congratulations Sam Brownback.

Jim Gilmore
Gilmore successfully kept his head down in what turned out to be a gotcha-question free-for-all. Recognizing early on that the tricky questions threatened death-by-Youtube to anyone who stuck his head out too far, Gilmore kept his head down and lived to fight another day. He squirmed his way out of 2/3 of the questions he was asked, more by far than any of the other candidate. This included a crucial obfuscation on his murky stance on abortion. He tied Brownback with 3 platitudes, offering up lofty--but safe--rhetoric. Gilmore also managed a Reagan reference and several subtle attacks. Most importantly, he won by being one of the few candidates to maintain his appeal to both the Right and center by not offering up any material to compromise his hold on either demographic.

Rudy Giuliani (did I really promise to do everyone? whew...)
Rudy notched some serious face time. The front-runner entering into the debate, Giuliani realized that in a fractured Republican field and and bad political climate, conservatives would be forced to lean in the direction of electability, instead of for the socially-conservative candidate that they might prefer. Recognizing this, Giuliani maintained his pro-abortion position, while still throwing the Right a bone ("I hate abortions"). Finally, Giuliani tied Romney for the most unprompted Reagan references, tapping into the cult of celebrity popular with the Republican camp.

Mike Huckabee
Huckabee entered the debate as the dark horse, and managed to maintain this position. Like Brownback, the former governor hopes to capture the Conservative Christian votes that stray from the Big Three. Huckabee staked himself solidly in the Right's camp with anti-evolution and abortion positions. In fact, Huckabee was so confident in his conservative positioning that he was the lone candidate who did not go out of his way to include President Reagan in one of his responses.

Duncan Hunter
Like Gilmore, the Californian also managed to lay low. However, unlike Gilmore, Hunter accomplished this while only dodging a single question. He gave straight answers, and did a good job striking an iron while it was hot: Hunter's pet issue is immigration and border control, which is peaking at the moment. Furthermore, Hunter established himself as a candidate of substance by answering his questions without a single empty platitude. I doing so he strengthened his position as the pet candidate of conservative intelligentsia, including George Will. All in all, the Representative did a good job gaining his exposure without compromising integrity.

John McCain
McCain fired up the old Straight Talk Express, breaking out lines like "I'll follow [bin Laden] to the gates of Hell", and clarifying his belief in evolution with "when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also." McCain attempted to revive the rebellious outsider status that made him the media darling in 2000. Furthermore, McCain made important gains on Giuliani by sticking to his guns on the war, staking out an anti-abortion position, and tying Romney for the most questions asked. McCain also made a point to address the camera directly, distinguishing himself from the other candidates, and preempted the issue of age by pointing out the elephant in the room.

Mitt Romney
For this endorsement, just look to the post-debatee polls. Almost all of them have Romney winning the debate. He demonstrated a knack for filling up his time with sharp answers. He was physically the most appealing candidate. He had a direct, if suspicious, answer on the issue of abortion. He invoked Reagan twice, went attack and platitude-free, tied McCain for the most questions fielded, and managed to answer fully 80% of them. He also squeezed through the issue of his religion, offering up a JFK-esque response. So Romney managed to shed two of his major parachutes, gave substantial answers, and made himself a media darling. Not bad for an hour and a half.

Ron Paul
No one made a more significant leap into the public eye than Ron Paul, vaulting from obscurity to YouTube hero status. Paul was the only man in the race against the war, and pressed his advantage with every opportunity. He racked up 9 total attacks, four more than all the other candidates combined, and managed to do it without sounding (too) shrill. All but one of his responses skewered his opponents on their backing of the war, and this may actually be a great strategy. Consider the numbers: though two-thirds of the American public opposes the war, a majority of the Republican base still supports it, so most of the Republican candidates have felt obliged to support it. However, there is still a significant percentage of Republicans who do oppose the war, and in a race in which the leading candidate has just better than a quarter of the votes, small slices of the pie become significant. The Texan's rhetoric, invoking Eisenhower and Nixon, reminded the conservative audience that they had won elections in the past on anti-war tickets. Perhaps this reminder will loosen some more votes to his side.

Tom Tancredo
The first Tommy T. in the debate demonstrated a knack for ducking a question gracefully. Of the three questions he avoided, he neatly avoided one with a platitude, and a second with a Reagan reference. The Colorado representative also joined Huckabee and Brownback as the lone three men expressing disbelief with the theory of evolution. A solid and safe performance, introducing Tacredo to the nation and putting the pieces in place for a later push.

Tommy Thompson
Nothing endears a person to a Republican audience like lines such as "[I was] the one that started welfare reform, reduced welfare caseload...in the state of Wisconsin, by 93%." and "[I] vetoed more than 1900 items in 14 years in office, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars." (the accuracy of these statements is in question, but that rarely matters in a debate). Thompson kept himself solidly in the majority, with stances against abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, and signaling that he believed in evolution. Thompson's neutral positioning is key for his game-theory strategy, recently cited by George Will:

In the last 24 elections, since 1912, winners of the presidency won a plurality of the states along the Mississippi. Today the Republican presidential candidate with perhaps the most impressive resume says:

Republicans should assume that in 2008 they will lose Ohio (20 electoral votes), where the state party's corruption and incompetence cost it the governorship, a U.S. Senate seat and a House seat in 2006. So the GOP candidate must carry Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota (27 electoral votes). In 2004, George W. Bush narrowly carried Iowa and narrowly lost Wisconsin and Minnesota, the only state that has voted Democratic in eight consecutive elections.

The man with the impressive resume is Tommy Thompson, who says he can carry those three Midwestern states.



So, congratulations to the winner(s). I hope to do one for the next Democratic debate, whenever that is, but that will require enough time having passed to make me forget how much time this took.

Thanks for visiting Eclexia.

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Paint by neurons

I think that I am most awed by a piece of art when I realize that it was created from memory rather than by an artist looking at a subject. Some of Monet's sunset paintings, for example, depict a scene that occurred for a brief moment in the end of the day. Just minutes earlier or later, the light was different, and the composition would have been changed completely. Basically, Monet had just a fleeting chance to take in the competition, which he then reproduced from memory in perfect detail. Picasso is perhaps an even more impressive example. He would commit a composition to memory from a number of angles, then create a painting that was a composite of all these perspectives.

Recently I made the discovery that this phenomenon exists in literature, as well. A major aspect of literature is the accurate exposition of emotion and human thought. While there are some method writers out their who actively work themselves into the mood they are trying to replicate, most authors are writing from memory. You probably can recall a favorite passage in which a character undergoes a moment of emotion that really rang true (for me it's James Joyce's Araby). It was created by an author so in tune with the intricacies of emotion that s/he was able to access it even weeks or years removed from actually feeling it.

I believe that this ability to extrapolate, to know one's subject so innately that it can be reproduced from memory, is what makes a person a master of their craft.

Friday, May 4, 2007

Analyze this: Stats on the first Republican debate

Introduction
Last night was the first Republican primary debate, closely followed by the customary declarations of victory by all involved. Now, you won't see me knocking a person for claiming to have won something that does not have an empirical method for deciding a winner. Much the opposite: I've been known to declare victory in events ranging from formal dinners to flossing. However, as someone with some experience at winning the un-winnable, allow me to give the candidates a tip: you have to quantify something to support your claim. So, in order to help out the White House hopefuls: I have broken down the debate into several quantifiable categories so we can see who the winner truly was.


Key
RR: Unprompted Reagan reference
P: Platitude (idealistic statement unsupported by substantive explanation)
A: Attack on another candidate
QD: Questions dodged
TQ: Total number of questions asked
%: Percentage of questions answered (not dodged)

Note: a series of questions in a row on a single topic are counted as one question, and if the candidate initially avoided the question, then gave a direct answer after being prodded, it is counted as half a dodge. The yes/no questions to the entire field were not counted here, but appear below in the raw data section.

Candidate_________RR___P____A___QD_____TQ____%
Rudy Giuliani_________2____1_____0_____4______13____69%
Jim Gilmore: _________1____3_____2_____6______9_____33%
John McCain:_________1____1_____0_____4______15____73%
Mitt Romney:_________2____0_____0_____3______15____80%
Sam Brownback:_______1____3_____1_____2______13____85%
Mike Huckabee:_______0____1_____1_____2.5_____10____75%
Tommy Thompson:_____1____2_____0_____2.5_____9____72%
Tom Tancedo:_________1____1_____1_____2.5_____9____72%
Duncan Hunter:_______1____0_____0_____1_______9____89%
Ron Paul:____________1____0_____9_____1______10____90%


Where I got my Stats: The Raw Data
Here is a question by question break down of the debate. Each individual question is listed either as A (Answered), or U (Unanswered). If a series of questions were asked, they are contained within parentheses. References to Ronald Reagan (R), platitudes (P), and attacks on other candidates (X) are also listed adjacent to the answer. So: a UP denotes a question dodged with a platitude, an AX shows the answer was accompanied at a barb at one of the other candidates, and the rare URP stands for a response that does not answer the question, contains an unsupported platitude, and cites Ronald Reagan.


Key
A: Answered question
U: Unanswered question
R: Reagan reference
P: Platitude (idealistic statement unsupported by substantive explanation)
X: Attack on another candidate
Y and N: Answer to one of the 4 yes/no questions posed to the entire field. U can still be given if the question is dodged. The number following the letter gives a reference to the yes/no question that was asked.

Candidates' answers in order
Rudy Giuliani: A (PUR) Y1 U (UUN2) (AUUA) A A Y3 A Y4 A (UR) A A A
Jim Gilmore: (PU) (AU) N1 Y2 (AX) (PU) (PU) N3 U Y4 (RAX) A U
John McCain: (UA) (UA) A U1 Y2 (PA) (RA) A A Y3 U A U Y4 A A A A
Mitt Romney: A (RA) A N1 (UR) Y2 (AA) (AAA) (AX) (UN3) A A Y4 A U A A U
Sam Brownback: A (PA) N1 Y2 (RAP) A U N3 A N4 A (AP) (AX) U A A A
Mike Huckabee: A N1 U Y2 (AP) (AX) (UUA) U N3 A N4 A A A
Tommy Thompson: (AP) N1 Y2 A (UA) U (URP) N3 A Y4 A A A
Tom Tancedo: (UA) N1 A Y2 A (UR) (PU) N3 (AX) N4 A A A
Duncan Hunter: A Y1 A Y2 (RA) U A N3 A A Y4 A A
Ron Paul: (AX) N1 (AX) Y2 (AX) (AX) N3 (AX) Y4 U (AX) (AX) (AX) (AX)

1. Should a foreign-born citizen be eligible for the presidency?
2. Should Roe v. Wade be overturned?
3. Embryonic stem cell research: yes or no?
4. Evolution: real or not?

Notes: Whether or not a question was answered was determined by my own subjective analysis. If you feel that I have slighted any candidate, please feel free to contact me and make your case.

And yes, I did give Representative Tancredo a "Platitude" for his declaration, "No more platitudes."




The craziest moment of the debate in my eyes
There was one specific moment on the debate that really dropped my jaw and I would like to discuss. Here's Mayor Giuliani on what an American president should do in terms of Iran:

Giuliani: And [the Iranian PM] has to look at an American president, and he has to see Ronald Reagan. Remember the -- they looked in Ronald Reagan’s eyes, and two minutes they released the hostages.

Wow. Please tell me if my facts are wrong here, but I think that it was the secret shipments of weapons that convinced the Iranians to release the hostages, not President Reagan's eyes. As I recall that was something of a big deal, too. Not only was it giving in to terrorism, but it supplied a fanatic Islamic power with weapons, the same fanatic Islamic power that apparently now has enough weapon that it can loan them to Iraqi insurgents to kill US soldiers!

Did Mayor Giuliani really mean to suggest that he would have done the same thing? Is he saying that he would pay a ransom of weapons to the insurgents in Iraq to release a hostage? Probably not. Was Giulliani yearning to connect himself to Reagan so much that he was willing to invoke even Reagan's biggest blunder as long as he got a chance to speak the man's name? Definitely.




Stay tuned for...
Next time on Eclexia: I analyze the debate and chose a winner.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Darwin lives

Introduction
In most cases, evolution happens far to slowly to be observed in a single lifetime (the exception being single-cellular organisms, which can evolve a resistance to an antibiotic during an 8th period AP Biology class). However, there will likely be a few cases of evolution that will be visible over the next few hundred years. The explosive force of human society has catalyzed some evolutionary changes already: sea otters used to spend time on shore, but now spend their entire lives in the ocean, for example. Anatomical evolution generally happens over spans of time far too big to be observed, but some behavioral change occurs remarkably quickly. So, here are a few examples of evolution that I predict we will see within the millenium.

1. Squirrels: better understanding of roads
Squirrels have it hard-wired into their brain that at the first sign of trouble, the optimal course of action is to run to the nearest tree and climb it. For centuries, this strategy worked out pretty well for them, but recently has become a bit of a problem. For example, if the nearest tree happens to be on the far side of the road that you have just run 3/4 of the way across, you have a much better chance of getting squished. Since you see so many squirrels dead on the road, this is an evolutionary moment waiting to happen. Eventually, some squirrells will happen to have an instinctual preference towards fleeing to the nearest side of the road, and as there comrades are weeded out by speeding semis, these neo-squirrels will come to command a progressively larger chunk of squirrel-dom. Just watch: there will be far fewer squirrel-automobile fatalities is fifty years.

2. Birds/butterflies: greater role in pollination
As it stands, honeybees are responsible for pollinating something like 90% of the America's crops. This is an artificial monoply, created by the rie of farming. Bees were included in that process as the most easily-controllable pollinator out there. However, an artificially created one-species pollination system is unstable, and bees are bound to be challenged in their dominance of different plant species by various other pollinators. With bee colonies around the country collapsing, I bet you'll begin to see the proliferation bird and other insect species that are able to adapt to pollinate these now-unmated flowers.

3. Humans: long-term decision making
We've got short term decision making down to an art: if you're hungry, you eat. If something is thrown at you, you duck. In the moment, we are pretty good at recognizing dangers and needs. In the long term we're reasonably good, but you still see a whole lot more people fail to get around to paying off their mortgage than fail to duck when a bottle is thrown at them. I expect that the percentage of these poor long-term decision makers that are able to reproduce is lower than those who are able to get it together enough to find a house, a job, and otherwise negotiate the long-term challenges of life.



Some other thoughts random on human evolution:

• Taste buds: Eating sweet things is a biologically good decision in the wild, but proves to be a poor idea in modern society. Therefore, our brain's preference for sweet, energy-filled food is a relic of a caveman's life. Perhaps adapted taste buds will re-correct our diets and cut back on obesity in our world.

• Susceptibility to religious extremism: The early 20th century fear that Catholics would breed their way to world domination did not pan out, but the fact remains that the people that contribute the most members to the next generation very often belong to extreme religious sects. This would seem to suggest that fanaticism will be a cultivated phenotype in the future.

• Knees & ankles: If only we had invented agriculture just a few thousand years after after we began walking on two legs, maybe we wouldn't have so many knee and ankle injuries.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Random Prediction

Off the top of my head: As carbon usage gains more and more press, I bet you'll see Major League Baseball restructure its divisions. Instead of having both the American League and the National League spread out all over the country, there will be an Eastern and Western League like the NBA. This would greatly cut down on airline travel, if interleague play continues to be rare. You heard it here first.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Cosmo-politics

Introduction
Once upon a time, political coverage was restricted to policy and issues. Despite the tumultuous marital lives of John Kennedy and Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, newspapers instead focused on the more pressing national issues rather than the preseident's personal lives.

Obviously, these times have passed. Most of us came of age during Clinton's Monica Lewinsky scandal, and since then the political community has been more and more concerned with politician's personal lives instead of actual policy. In the 2000 presidential campaign, people made up their minds about whether they preferred Bush's perceived stupidity to Gore's supposed arogance and dorkiness. In 2004, the debate was initially focused on the war in Iraq, but soon veered back to Bush's verbal ineptness versus the possibility that John Kerry had exaggerated details of his tour in Vietnam. Even when there is not an election imminent, the political airwaves are filled with polemics and invective directed towards the personal lives of the people involved rather than the issues. Furthermore, the issues that we do concern ourselves with are more and more frequently issues of sexual privacy. Basically, we've gotten pretty frickin' nosey.


There are two points I want to make in this discussion:
1. The danger of voting for character rather than substance,
and,
2. The rise of tabloid politics, its implications, and how to beat it.

And here they are:


1. The cult of personality
When asked in 2000, a majority of Americans responded that they would prefer to have a beer with George W. Bush instead of Al Gore. A big deal was made out of this "likability" factor, and would be again in 2004. This phenomenon was not unusual--Reagan and Clinton were also both seen as very "likable" people. You still see political bumper stickers saying things like "Character will out" and other cliches trumpeting the personality of the politician that they celebrate. Americans seem to frequently vote according to their perception of the candidate's character, on their gut feeling about what a (wo)man s/he is. This is dumb for several reasons.

The first reason why you should not pass judgement on politicians based on their personality: you actually have no idea who these people are. It can be impossible to see through the carefully practiced, focus group-tested personalities they put on. Good politicians are skilled actors who practice delivering lines and sincere expressions in private and receive hours on end of coaching. The senator that you think is a honest, plainspoken man of the people is just as likely to simply be the guy who plays the best honest, plainspoken man of the people. Consider Ed Norton. I like Ed Norton. He is a great actor, and takes on roles in movies I usually enjoy. Have I ever seen Ed Norton interviewed? No. Do I have any idea what he is like as a person? No. Is it irrational that I like him? Yes. By this same token, it is irrational for me to like Barack Obama simply because I read his book, shook his hand, and generally admire his personality and back story. I should make up my mind on him based on his policy instead.

"Going with your gut" is a celebrated method of making a political decision in our culture-and a stupid one. It is a poor substitue for actually doing the work to research and understand the issues. Not only does it smack of apathy and intellectual laziness, but it is dangerous. History has proved over and over again that the door to fascism is always opened by a likable, charismatic leader who inspires confidence and trust. The examples are so overused that they've become cliched (Hitler, Castro, Stalin, etc), but they are ignored nonetheless. Perhaps it speaks to a major human flaw of misplacing trust in "likability."

It is not safe to vote for the person you like more; you have to do the research and pick the person whose ideals you most identify with. Even this is not enough: it's just as important to keep track of them after the fact to make sure that they live up to their promises. If even 1% more of the population were to shoulder their civic responsibility in this way, the world would be a better place.


2. Entertainment Tonight: Washington
Personal politics are everywhere. You've heard all about McCain, Giuliani, Kerry, and Gingrich's ex-wives, Edwards' hair, Obama's middle name and elementary school, et cetra ad infinitum. For example, a Google News search reveals that there were 1,340 articles written in the last month with the words "Mitt Romney" and "Mormon", but only 821 on Romney and the economy, 984 on Romney and immigration, 350 on Romney and welfare. Why is it more important that we know about the man's religion than his views on thsee other issues? 1,732 articles on Bill's influence in Hillary's campaign, compared to just 872 on Hillary and the environment?

By now, if your candidate has any shot in the general election, you have to put some money into smearing the other guy. "Opposition researchers" dig around in their history, then take everything unpaid parking ticket they can find and pay clandestine third parties to post that information all over the airwaves. Suddenly, George Bush's DUI or Al Gore's energy bill are on the lips of every 11 o'clock anchor rather than the infinitely less-exciting and more-important medicair that went before the senate that day.

While it's easy to blame the media for their sensationlist political coverage--and I frequently do--the fact of the matter is it's just as much our fault. Media outlets are businesses which must cater to their audience in order to make money, and I guarantee that if no one was interested in the personal foibles of our politicians these new outlets would not cover them. However, in the world of multi-billion dollar industries based on Brad Pitt's marital life, the media rightly recognizes that they can boost their viewership by covering that sort of stuff. Admit it: while you may condemn the personal politics conducted by the bad guys, you get a little schadenfreude every time one of them is involved in a scandal.

Every time you buy one of the trashy magazine in the check-out aisle of the Stop and Shop, every time linger on a celebrity gossip story as you channel surf, you are voting for more tabloid political coverage. Most of the money generated by television and print periodicals comes from advertising, and so the more attention you pay to a particular media, the more ad revenue they generate, and the more that network/periodical will carry the material you were watching.

It's a nice idea that the media should have the scruples to provide us with the information neccesary to make well-informed political decision, but the fact of the matter is that they are money-making endeavours, and must therefore be expected to make deciscions based upon their financial outcome. If everyone in the country got together and secretly decided to watch a lot of bass fishing, you can bet there'll be a whole lot more coverage of bassing (yup, I verbed it) on the daily news. Similarly, if the American public were to become more educated and pay proportionately more attention to political issues instead of the candidate's personal lives, news outlets would quickly revert to pre-Lewinsky news coverage.




Where I stop whining and start doing something: My pledge
I will not provide coverage or commentary on any personal politics on this blog. I will not click on any online news stories that deal with news about a politician's personal life. I will change the channel rather than watching it, I will not buy a magazine or newspaper with such a story on its cover.

So, there my vote: no more assasination politics.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Some lists

5 Living People I would most like to meet
• Bill Watterson
• J. D. Salinger
• His Holiness the Dalai Lama
• Bill Belicek
• Bill Clinton

Runners-Up
Darby Conley
Sacha Baron-Cohen

5 Deceased people I would most like to meet
• Edward Hardy (my grandfather)
• Jesus Christ
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Albert Einstein
• Buddha

Runners-Up
Mohammed
Dwight Eisenhower

Person I would most like to play a game of fooseball against:
Living: Steve Nash
Deceased: Ted Williams
Runners-up: Willie Mays, Teddy Roosevelt, Brad Pitt

Person I'd most like to watch a game with:
Living: Tom Brady
Deceased: Jackie Robinson
Runners-up: Bill Simmons, Matt Damon, Yogi Berra

Person I'd most like to cross-examine:
Living: Jerry Falwell
Deceased: Pope Urban VII
Runners-up: Joe McCarthy, Bill O'Reilly, Joseph Smith

Person I'd most like to buy a beer:
Living: John Cleese
Deceased: Charles Darwin
Runners-up: Douglas Adams, Oscar Wilde, Gary Trudeau

Person I'd most like to ask a single question:
Living: Barack Obama (What are you willing to ask of the country and world to deal with climate change?)
Deceased: William Shakespeare (Did you really write it all?)
Runners-up: Amerlia Earhart (How'd you disappear?), Karl Marx (Knowing what you do now, how would your philosophy have changed?), John McCain (If you really believe that more bombing would have won Vietnam, do you believe that we could have killed enough Viet Cong to stabilize the country and that a military engagement with Russia was a viable strategy?)

Person I'd appoint King of the World:
Living: Nelson Mandela
Deceased: Thomas Jefferson
Runners-up: Mahatma Ghandi, Abe Lincoln, Al Gore

Person whose brain I'd most like to pick:
Living: Richard Dawkins
Deceased: Isaac Newton
Runners-up: Guy Pierce, Jason Varitek, Herman Melville, James Joyce

Person I'd choose as my chief of staff
Living: John Stewart
Deceased: Bobby Kennedy
Runners-up: Theo Epstein, Bill Maher, Catullus

Fictional character I'd most like to meet
Andy Dufrane
Runners-up: Rob Wilco, Yossarian, Tyler Durden

Note: after completing these lists, I realized that there are an inordinate ammount of "William"s on this list:
7 total Williams, not counting Willie Mays. 6 go by "Bill", however...

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Video killed the neo-FDR

It started with the Nixon-Kennedy debate in 1960, the first debate ever to be broadcast on national television. Television was not yet as ubiquitous as it is today, and nearly as many people listened to the debate on the radio as watched it on TV. After the debate was over, polls showed a puzzling result: most people who had listed to the debate thought that Nixon had won, but those that had watched the debated overwhelmingly named John Kennedy the winner! This symbolism of this event was remarkable: Nixon was an adroit political speaker, and Kennedy a famously attractive young man. In the end, JFK's good looks helped him carry the debate and, eventually, a narrow victory in the general election. Perhaps even more significantly, the moment catalyzed a political revolution in America: the era of the photogenic president.

The movement began slowly, with uggo's like Nixon still managing to gain the Oval office into the 1970's. But by the 80's the Republicans, at least, had it figured out: they nominated a literal leading man, and soon former actor Ronald Regan was waving regally to the crowd at his inauguration. The phenomenon was apparent even after election, as Regan's (and later Clinton's) seemingly crippling scandals were shrugged off by an enamored public.

The phenomenon was dealt a setback in 1988 when neither George H. W. Bush nor Michael Dukakis provided the looks to sate Americans desire for a handsome head of state, but this was quickly righted by the appearance of beautiful Bill Clinton in 1992. Since then, Americans have chosen the better-looking candidate in each of the last four elections.

The peak of this obsession came just recently. Republican primary voters were in despair, presented with double-chinned John McCain, squinty Rudy Giuliani, rotund Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney, who looks a little like a charicature of an oily used-car salesman. Suddenly, a whisper ran through the Right: Fred Thompson was considering throwing his hat into the ring. An immediate upswelling of support ensued, instantly vaulting Thompson, who still has yet to announced as this is being written, into second place in the polling. What was the source of this excitement? Was it Mr. Thompson's position on family values? No, his record is fairly middle-of-the-road. A reprieve from the marital scandals characterizing the rest of the Republican field? Nope, Thompson has also been divorced. An distinguished political record? Can't be that either, Thompson spent just a term and a half in the Senate before deciding that the life of a politician was too intense. So what made Thompson so special? He plays District Attorney Arthur Branch on Law and Order.

It's not like the issues don't matter any more. Just like the talent competition can gain you some ground in the Miss America pagent, it pays to have some rhetoric to back up your looks. However, there's no question that having the "presidential look" is a major boon to one's candidacy. So what does this mean for America? Well, for one, you probably won't see too many more wheel chairs in the White House...

Thought of the week

Responding that you are doing "well" rather than "good" is the secret handshake of the educated.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Where I see God

I've never been a very religous person. In high school I briefly flirted with the idea of joining a church. However, as I mulled the descision I could not supress my misgivings at the fact that these organizations were responsible for centuries of war and persecution, for rationalizations of slavery and sexism, and for repressing such dangerous notions as the belief that the world was round. I found myself disgusted that an organization that was founded on a visionary man's novel idea that maybe we should all try being nice to eachother for a change could pervert his message to that extent. These misgivings, combined with a skepticism that makes it hard to trust the literalism of words written millenia ago, effectively turned me off from organized religion.

Despite this cynicism, I cannot deny the phenomenon of spirituality. I believe that there are two sources of spirituality: first, a humbling recognition of the magnitude and capacity of the universe, and second, the awe inspired by the serene example of another person. The first source of spirituality is the reason that religion was initially created: to explain the wonders of the natural world. The second source is the one which I would like to talk about: the inspiration one derives from the sublime action of another. I think of this type as a social spirituality, derived from our ability to empathize. It is responsible for the foundation of most monotheistic religions--while the other sort of spirituality brought about the polytheistic, nature-worshipping religions, this sort of spirituality breeds the worship of certain special persons. While several people have been a source of this sort of spirituality to me, the most profound by far is His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

My admiration for the Dalai Lama is best summed up by this anecdote:
When asked how he would respond if science were to prove some facet of Buddhism impossible, the Dalai Lama responded: "If science were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims."
This man is the leader of church that has been around for thousands of years, and is based a set of beliefs that he has dedicated his life to protecting from repression. Despite this, he has the serenity to change his convictions if it is determined that science does not support them (Aside: for an idea of how another major religion might react to such a challenge, check out the reaction to James Cameron's recent excavation of a tomb that may contain Jesus' family).

Bear in mind that this open-mindedness belongs to a man who was born the fifth of nine children to a family of rural Tibetan farmers, who was named the head of a major religion within a year after saying his first word, who was 23 when his country was invaded and its inhabitants brutally repressed by China, who has spent the rest of his life in exile from the land that his countrymen had made their home for millenia and is considered to be the sacred ground of his religion. By all rights, he should be surly and world-weary, not gentle and wise. What's even more amazing to me is that he became the Dalai Lama by correctly picking the previous Dalai Lama's cane and glasses from an assortment of other items when he was two years old.

As you might guess, I'm not the sort of person to believe in superstitions, but the fact remains that a seemingly random process picked perhaps the one man in a million that could emerge through such turmoil and remain the beacon of wisdom that he is. This is a phenomenon that I cannot explain. This sublime coincidence inspires the the first type of spirituality, but that's not what gets me the most about the Dalai Lama. I am awed by the second type of spirituality, by the ability of this man to remain so righteous, so magnanimous even after a lifetime of persecution and hardship. If I were to point to someplace that I see God in the world, this is it.

I believe that religion is the pursuit of this sort of spirituality. People wish to find a way to connect with that feeling, and create a system of rituals that is designed to help them to access it. I am not trying to disparage religion, just to define it. If it is a ritual that allows you to achieve spirituality--believing that you are consuming your deity's blood and body, or prostrating yourself towards an important city, or covering your head to show humility--then more power to you. Where I get lost, and I think that this describes many other people as well, is when the ritual itself supercedes the spirituality it is meant to access. I think that this is a common misinterpretation, prioritizing the form over the function. It seems to be present in all religions, and results in people attempting to force the way that they find spirituality on others. I believe that it is the misunderstanding that it is the spirituality that is the important part, not the vehicle, that leads to the bastardizations of religions that instigate war or justify tyranny.


Update:
I've decided that the best definition for the quality that inspires spirituality in me is a resistance to situational ethics, or people whose ideals remain uncompromised by adversity.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Hold or fold?

Introduction
"Keeper leagues" are becoming increasingly popular among fantasy sports enthusiasts. In a keeper league, instead of starting over and drafting an entirely new team each year, a manager has the option of retaining some of his players. This poses a problem at the end of every season: should you hold on to a player, or take your chances in the draft? To help answer this problem, here is my attempt at a Bill James-esque formula to determine whether you should hold or fold. Please note that I've never actually taken a class in statistics, so forgive me if my format or method is not kosher...


Variables
A: Rank at begining of the year
B: Rank at the end of the year
C: Player's age
D: Games played
E: Total games in a season
F: Player's value rating
G: Player's rank among other players on the fantasy team
H: Teams in the league
I: Keeper value rating
J: #1 overall draft pick's F value

Formula
If: D/E < .75, then:
F = A + |C - 26|^1.25 + (2xE/D)^3 - J

If D/E > .75, then
F = (4xA + 3xB )/7 + |C - 26|^1.25 + (2xE/D)^2 + [(B - A) x (10/A)] - J

Once F is determined:
(GxH - H/2) - F = I

Make a list of your player's keeper value ratings. Add them up, starting with the first player on your roster. Find the point at which the combined I value is the highest, and keep all the players up until that point.


Explanation
I'm sure that just looks like gibberish, but if you're interested in the formula's derivation, read on.

The goal of the Bill James' theory of statistics is to identify and properly weight different statistical catagories to come up with a numerical representation of value. In my attempt to do this, I first identified several statistical catagories of particular interest in a keeper league. They were:
1. The player's rank the year before.
2. A player's age.
3. Whether that player tended to miss a lot of games from injury.
4. Whether that player tended to exceed expectations or not.

My goal was to make a ranking system that would rank the player in order of their keeper value (Variable F). To find that number, I had to decide how to weight the four catagories I mentioned above. Here's what I decided, in terms of each catagory. (Note: the player's value rating, or F, is designed to be a list from 1 up of the best to worst keeper players, so the lower the number the better).

The categories
1. Last year's ranking: (4xA + 3xB )/7
The player's rank from the year before will be the major determining factor. If a player was injured for more than 3/4 of the year (D/E > .75), then the ranking was left as-is. A player who played all year, however, has his ranking from the beginning of the year and the end of the year averaged. I weighted the original ranking as a third more important as the end of the year ranking, which is a little more fickle. For example, a player who enters the year ranked 67th overall and ends the year ranked 81 has a 73 rating for this variable.

2. Age: |C - 26|^1.25
The player's age was the next statistic considered. In most cases, a player's prime fantasy years occur between his 26th and 30th birthday. I made the optimal age 26 because this puts a player in the begining of his prime, with good years in front of him and enough experience to be productive. I took the absolute value of the age difference, and raised that number to the 1.25th power. This means that a player has a a progressively larger penalty added to his value rating based on how old he is. A player who is 31 adds 7.5 onto his value rating, reflecting that he will be of progressively less value in future years. A 22 year old adds 5.7, a penalty for the years that the owner will have to wait before the player hits his prime.

3. Succeptibility to injury: (2xE/D)^2
To take into account how injury-prone a player is, the total games during a season are divided by the number of games that player has played. This number is doubled and then squared to weight longer absences more than short ones. For example: a baseball player who misses 20 games out of the 162 games in a season adds 5.2 to his value rating. Furthermore, a second eqution is used to ensure that a player who misses most of a season due to injury still retains some of his value.

4. Tendency to exceed expectations: (B - A)x(10/A)
I used the change in rankings over a season to measure whether a player tends to play beyond or below expectations. Their change is measured in the (B - A) part of this term. Because an improvement of a player who is already ranked highly is more difficult to come by than a lower ranked player, the second part of the term weights the player's improvement/regression by where they stood initially. Example: Players 1, 2 and3 have initial rankings of 5, 20, and 100 respectively each improve 3 positions by the end of the year. Player 1 reduces his F value by 6 points, Player 2 by 1.5 points, and Player 3 by just 3/10ths of a point.


Other parts of the formula explained
1. The two different formulas resulting from: If: D/E > .75, then:
A player who misses a significant portion of the previous season will throw off the methods of the longer equation, so a smaller equation was used which still penalizes him somewhat for missing games, but does not also dock him for not improving during the season.

2. - J
Once each of these statistical categories are accounted for, #1 overall player's value rating is subtracted from all the other players total value. After all the other categories are added onto the player's F value, the ranking begins at a number higher than 1. Subtracting the absolute value of the #1's position restores a numerical ranking.

3. (GxH -H/2)
Once the players are ranked in this system, they must be listed in terms of the rounds of the draft. Multiplying the player's ranking on your own team by the number of teams in the league gives you the number of the last pick of that respective round of the draft. Subtracting half the teams in the league then gives you the median pick of that round. For example, the 5th best player on your league in a league of 10 players would be kept in the 5th round, whose median pick it the 45th player chosen in the draft (10 teams x 5 rounds= 50 picks, 50 picks -half the picks in a round= 45).

4. (GxH -H/2) - F = I
Once you have determined the pick you would have to surrender to keep a player, you can compare it to your player's ranking according to the player value rating (F). If that player is ranked higher (thus having a correspondingly smaller F value), their keeper value (I) will be positive. We now have a number that represents whether it would be worth it or not to keep a player in the round that you would take him.

5. Final analysis: Player 1's I + Player 2's I + Player 3's I.....
You may find that your 7th and 8th round picks have a good keeper value rating, while your 6th round pick does not. To help make the decision on when to stop retaining players, I chose to add the player's I values together and keep the players whose combined I total is greatest.


Notes:
1. This formula assumes that the draft order is determined after each manager submits his list of players-to-be-kept.
2. Formula also assumes that the league has a Yahoo! style ranking system.
3. The constants in the equation are somewhat arbitrary, picked by plugging in values to see what might work. A sophisticated version of this system would determine those numbers by looking at a whole field of players together to figure out what constants best described the results.

Additional note: despite the unresonable ammount of time I was willing to put into this, and my equally unreasonable love for keeper leagues, there is almost no chance I will actually ever bring myself to applying this method to one of my own teams.