When playing the lottery appears to makes sense

Sophisticates commonly claim that playing the lottery is foolish.  “A tax on people who don’t understand math” is one way I’ve heard it put.

Usually this is true.  However, consider the upcoming Mega Millions game.  The odds of winning are 1 in 176 million.  However, the payout if you win is estimated at $325 million.  This means that the expected value (naively calculated) is 325/176 = 1.85.  In other words, the average investment in a lottery ticket will return 85% in merely days.  You are unlikely to find a surer bet anywhere in the financial world.

So I encourage all my readers to rush out and buy lottery tickets.  In fact, following my own advice, I’ve bought 10 tickets and can therefore expect to win $18.50 on Friday!

The odds are that this dude didn't win the mega millions.

Now, my more astute readers may have noticed that I parenthetically mentioned that my expected value calculation was naive.  Unfortunately, a more careful analysis reveals that the expected value of a $1 ticket must take into account that the $325 million is paid out over 26 years.

To be comparable, then, the cost of the ticket should be calculated as the time value of $1 over 26 years — which would be… well, depending on the interest rate it could be anything.  Very likely it will be a lot more than $1, though.

The easier alternative is to compare the $1 ticket to the amount of money that could be accepted in a lump sum immediately, which is roughly $206 million.  It still appears that the ticket has a positive expected value, but, alas, we must also account for the fact that as the jackpot grows in size, more people play the game and therefore the odds of multiple winning tickets goes up — which means a split jackpot.

I won’t be able to come up with exact numbers without going through boring calculations, but if you are interested, check out this paper by John Corbett and Charles Geyer.  The long and the short of it is that you are unlikely to come out ahead.

And then, of course, there’s the tax bill to consider…

That specific spot in my brain…

For the last 18 months I have had a locker at the New York Sports club at Grand Central.  I have gone to the gym 2-3 times a week and always unlocked the combination lock on my locker.  It is a master lock, like the one pictured.  Not once during that entire 18 months did I forget the combination to that lock, or even have to think for a moment to recall it.  The last time I opened that lock was on Saturday, August 15th.

On Monday, August 17th, I signed up for a new gym at Columbia and I got a new locker.  This locker also has a master lock combination lock guarding it.  I memorized the combination, then went about my day.

I’m sure you can guess what happened, but I’ll tell you anyway.

Today I went to my old gym to cancel my account and retrieve all the stuff from my locker.  Lo and behold, I could not remember the combination to the lock.  All I could bring to mind when I tried to remember it was the combination to my new locker at the new gym.  I finally had to get the manager to open the lock for me.  Even now, hours later, no amount of concentration will bring to mind that old combination, but the new combination is at the tip of my tongue.

My conclusion is that I have space in my brain for exactly one combination to a gym locker.

A Haiku for Summer

Sometimes winter gets me down.  In those moments I think of summer, and am inspired to poetry…

Fiery and bright,
Like a mesmerizing girl,
Summer beckons me

Bigger, Stronger, Faster

I can stream the movie to my TV from Netflix using my new Roku player.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster is a documentary by Chris Bell about steroid use in America.  It came out in 2008, but I didn’t know about it until I happened to see it on the list of trailers in my iMac’s FrontRow application.  I guess that means they didn’t have a large marketing budget, which is too bad, because the movie is a terrific piece of filmmaking.  Two things set this documentary apart from run of the mill fare:

1. The filmmaker, Chris Bell, rapes and pillages his own family for juicy material.
2. The subject, steroid use, turns out to be fascinating.  It is a far more complex than high school health class would have you believe.  The negative side effects, for instance, appear to be mild in many cases.  In addition, the movie does an excellent job of linking steroid use to that quintessential American ideal: being a winner.

I’ll start with the first point.  Bell’s two brother’s are both heavy steroid users and they both talk freely to Chris about what drove them to steroids and what keeps them on steroids.  The older brother, Mike Bell, wrestled for a short time for the WWE.  The younger brother, known as Smelly, is a high school football coach.

Mike is characterized in the documentary as a wannabe.  During his short stint in the WWE he was a jobber, which is the industry term for a guy who routinely plays the role of the loser. During the course of the documentary Mike moves from Poughkeepsie, where he has a decent life working as an accountant, to Los Angeles, where he fantasizes that he will make his comeback as a professional wrestler.  The scene in which he talks about his dreams is poignant.  His very pretty wife has a tear in her eye and you wonder whether Mike will be able to come to terms with who he is.  Later Chris talks to their father who gives a blunt assessment of Mike — he’s still on steroids but is too embarrassed to tell anyone, he is probably taking other drugs as well, he incorrectly believes that moving to California will solve his problems, he’s “a screwup”, and he’s going to take his young wife down with him.  In fact, his father says that the only solution who sees for Mike is “a miracle,” and it is obvious that he literally hopes for a divine intervention in his son’s life.  But then he immediately goes on to say “you know, I think they’re going to find him dead some day.”

A woman who uses steroids, or perhaps a man who uses steroids in drag.

The obvious question in the viewer’s mind is how Mike Bell will react to seeing the film.  The answer is that in December of 2008, a year after the movie was filmed, Mike Bell was found dead.

Chris’s other brother, Smelly, seems to be in more control of his life.  His main problem is that he lies to his mother about his steroid use, he lies to the guys on the high school football team he is coaching about his steroid use, and he lies to his wife.  His wife is aware that he is a user, but she wants to have a second child, which will require Smelly to stop taking steroids, and she also just wants Smelly to stop using steroids on general principles.  Smelly finally promises his wife that he will stop, but then confesses to Chris, on camera, that he has lied to his wife and fully expects to resume his steroid use.  He shrugs it off with the casual remark that “well, a lot of people have to lie to get ahead — that’s just the way things work.”  The result is a sad picture of man who cannot live an open and honest life.

On the up side, Smelly is able to bench press 705 pounds.

Director Chris Bell wears a baseball cap throughout the movie.

Aside from the raw family drama, however, Bigger, Stronger, Faster get’s right to the heart of the role of steroids in American athletic dominance.  For instance, there is an eye-opening series of interviews with Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis, and the Dr. Wade Exum, who is the former director of drug control for the United States Olympic Committee.  Johnson was famously stripped of his gold medal for the 100 meter dash after testing positive for a banned stimulant at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.  The gold was given to Lewis instead.  Johnson freely admits to taking performance enhancing drugs, but claims it was okay because everyone else was doing it too.  Sure enough, it turns out that Carl Lewis also failed a drug during the summer before the games (along with 2,000 other American athletes), and Dr. Exum happily delves into the “boxes of proof” that he has, instantly producing the damning reports.  To make a long story short, the United States Olympic Committe made up the category of “inadvertent use” specifically to let athletes off the hook, and Lewis was allowed to compete in the 1988 games after claiming that his positive drug test was the result of using a herbal cold remedy.  Seeing Dr. Exum smirk at that explanation is all one needs to know about its legitimacy.

So who does the gold medal really belong to?  Probably the guy who came in last.

Henry Waxman on a t-shirt. He crusades for justice, but sometimes you wonder if he knows which way is up.

A particularly painful interview is conducted with Henry Waxman, the US congressman who called the hearings on steroid use in baseball.  It becomes clear that while Waxman thinks steroids should be banned, he has practically no understanding of them.  He constantly turns to his aides for answers to questions that he should know instantly, such as whether steroids are in fact currently illegal and what the legal drinking age is.  At the end of the interview Chris Bell asks this anti-steroid crusader how the $15 million that has been allotted for anti-steroid education is being spent and all Waxman can say is “I don’t know.”  It is a particularly pathetic portrait of a lawmaker.

I could go on about this movie — there are great interviews with a wide range of people, from experts on drug use and psychology, to a guy in his fifties who lives in a van behind Gold’s Gym and still hopes to pump up enough to get noticed by someone.  What makes this movie really work, however, is the fact that it holds your interest, keeps testing your assumptions, and leaves you feeling like you want more.  The editing and pacing are perfect (not something I usually comment on, but it really stood out to me) and the overall feeling your are left with is one of educated satisfaction.  The focus on the Bell family personalizes the issue and helps to anchor the movie, while lending a kind of reality-show voyeuristic intrigue.

Highly recommended.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is curious, but, unfortunately, not interesting.  The gimmick is that a child is born as an old man and then gets younger as his life progresses.  One would think that this premise would lead to all sorts of fascinating explorations about youth, wisdom, and our expectations of how people should behave at various stages in life, but this movie is not concerned with those conundrums.  Instead, it tells a straightforward love story — one that wouldn’t be much different were the backwards aging issue not raised at all.

Benjamin and Daisy cross ages in mid life.

A movie with a main character who ages in reverse is going to raise a lot of questions about chronology.  One of my major problems with this movie is that the ages of the characters are never properly anchored and they also don’t make sense.  For instance, Benjamin is about age 88 when he is born.  He meets Daisy, who is about age 9, when he is about 80.  They become childhood friends.  He then goes off to explore the world.  When he returns Daisy is 23.  This means that Benjamin should be 66.  He looks more like 50, however. It would help tremendously if the movie would mark the passage of time for us in an obvious way so that we could keep track — instead, we are left scratching our heads and constantly wondering how old the various characters are.  In a normal movie, of course, one would not be so concerned with how old people are, but when the whole point of the movie is that one character is aging backwards, well, it does cross your mind.

Another problem with the movie is that we never see Benjamin growing up.  Early in his life he would presumably have the body of man about 80 and the maturity of an 8-year-old.  Instead, he seems merely be an 80-year-old man who gets along normally with people and is able to befriend a 10-year-old girl.  There is one scene where he is shown enjoying a story being read, but that is the only nod to his immaturity as an old man in the entire movie.

The biggest copout in the movie, however, occurs toward the end of Benjamin’s life.  At this point he has the body of a teenager, but has been alive for over 70 years — so the old adage that youth is wasted on the young will not apply here!  Unfortunately, rather than ponder the possibilities of a teenager with the wisdom of a 70-year-old, the movie decides to give him dementia.  All he is able to do as a ruddy 16-year-old is stare blankly at people whose names he has forgotten.  Later Benjamin is depicted as a 5-year-old throwing a temper tantrum (presumably due to his dementia) and knocking over some dishes — much as a real 5-year-old might do.  So the entire conceit of the movie is avoided.

The book is probably better than the movie.

The bulk of the movie is occupied by the love story between Daisy and Benjamin.  At some point after the age of 23 Daisy decides to fall in love with Benjamin and they spend a few years in blissful happiness living in an apartment.  Then Daisy has a child and Benjamin, who is about 40 at this point, claims that it will be too difficult for Daisy to raise two children (since he will become a child in due course) and uses this excuse to leave her.  Chronologically, of course, Benjamin will be an adult for another 20+ years, which is more than enough time to raise a child, so this explanation makes no sense.

On the whole, the movie explores no questions about aging, wisdom, the passage of time, youth, or any other issue that you think might be raised by a character aging backwards.  The result is a big disappointment.

My problems with Benjamin Button

1. What does hurricane Katrina have to do with anything? Bringing Katrina in at the end only serves to break our suspension of disbelief and bring us back to the real world of current events.
2. Benjamin is not depicted with any immaturity when he is an old man.  He is shown once enjoying a story being read to him, but that is practically the only indication we have that he is not a completely normal 80-year-old.
3. Does Benjamin inherit the button company or not? Where does he get the means to sail around the world for several years? If he does inherit the company and then sell it, they sure skim over that part quickly.  Also, it is a major cop out.  The film makers would like to Have Benjamin Button raised by a poor black housekeeper, because that is more PC than being the child of a white tycoon (of course, they couldn’t actually make Benjamin Button a black man…), but they also want Benjamin to be rich so he can sail around the world without a care in the world and then ride around on a motorcycle looking exactly like Brad Pitt.  How do they resolve this tension between being poor and having the means to live the carefree life of a rich playboy?  Well, they have him win the lottery — i.e., he inherits a fortune.  The fortune has nothing to do with his life and nothing to do with the story — it is just tossed in there so there is an excuse to film Brad Pitt on a sail boat looking like he stepped out of a trendy clothing catalog.
   

   A gargoyle scowling at Benjamin Button and its problems.

4. The whole long convoluted scene in the middle of the movie in which any one of 10 different things could have happened differently.  This scene lasts at least five minutes and is narrated with an ever-building sense of drama.  If only the taxi driver hadn’t stopped for coffee! If only the man hadn’t been crossing the road just then!  If only the woman hadn’t delayed herself by answering the telephone!  And so on.  With this much build up, the payoff has to be absolutely huge.  Instead, we get the minor payoff that Daisy breaks her leg, which has no effect on the story at all.  Sure it ends her career as a professional ballet dancer, but she is over 30 at that point anyway and in any case her career has nothing to do with the whole business about Benjamin aging backwards and falling in love with her.
5. Benjamin gets dementia when he finally becomes a teenager at age 70.  Ummm…. what the hell?  Isn’t the whole point of this movie that his body is getting younger and more vigorous?  Does that not apply to his brain?  This ruins the whole point of the movie.  The possibilities of getting physically younger as you gain more experience seem like they would be endless — imagine the success you would have picking up girls!  Imagine the surprise on people’s faces when as a 16-year old in the 1990s you are able to speak with authority about seeing combat in world war two!  And so on.  Instead, we get one scene in which a young man stares around blankly with dementia.
6. The make-up artists were evidently unable to make Brad Pitt look like a 20-year-old, so they had him wear baggy jeans and sneakers in order to make him look young — this is a guy who has been wearing dapper outfits for the last 68 years.
7. You never have any idea how old Daisy and Benjamin are, but it is always on your mind and never seems to add up.
8. We are evidently supposed to view Benjamin’s decision to abandon his wife and daughter sympathetically.  But why?  He walks out on them like a deadbeat.

Word in context: chiaroscuro

Well, I’ve decided to blog about interesting or unusual words that I come across in my reading.  This is partly a way to solidify them in my own vocabulary and partly as a service to you, my reader.

Today’s word is chiaroscuro and here is the context in which I read it:

Place names attract attitudes too, both negative and positive, usually on the basis of how they sound.  Mrs Elton, in Jane Austen’s Emma (1816), is under no illusions: ‘One has no great hopes for Birmingham, I always say there is something direful in the sound.’  By contrast, Somerset Maugham’s travelogue The Gentleman in the Parlour (1930) waxes lyrical about Mandalay: ‘the falling cadence of the lovely word has gathered about itself the chiaroscuro of romance’. – David Crystal, Words, Words, Words, (Oxford University Press, 2006) 76.

L'autre moi by mkorchia. Demonstration of chiaroscuro.

Chiaroscuro began as a technical term in the art world and refers to the contrast between light and dark (or shade) in a picture.  Evidently lighting and shading techniques can be used to give a more three-dimensional impression.  The term is also used in relation to photography and film. The etymology is Italian. Chiaro means bright and is related to the English word “clear”. Oscuro means dark, and is related to our word ”obscure.”

Note that the word is pronounced beginning with a kee-a sound.

Incidentally, none of the definitions of this term suggest that it is used in a non-artistic context.  Somerset Maugham seems to mean something like “the complex and pleasing shadings.” I’m not sure that he was particularly successful in this little piece of wordsmithery, because even with a dictionary definition of chiaroscuro directly in front of me, I am still not sure what “the chiaroscuro of romance” means.

Obama and The Fruit of the Spirit

Tsevis Visual Design

I have been planning for some time to officially endorse Barack Obama on this blog. When trying to put my thoughts into words over this past weekend, however, I felt oddly stymied.  In my first draft of this endorsement I began by listing all the issues on which I believe Obama has a better plan for the United States than McCain does — issues like taxes and health care and foreign policy, and so forth.  While I believe Obama is superior on many of the issues, I also know that in my core I am not voting on the issues.  There is something else going on.

In 2000 many people voted for George Bush because he was a person of faith.  He listed Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher and the story of his faith helping him overcome alcoholism was widely cited.  But something has always bothered me about Bush’s Christianity.  It is not that I don’t think he is sincere – it has more to do with the fact that it was cited as a reason to vote for him.

Now here’s a rule of thumb: Whenever a person or group’s Christianity is cited as a reason to do something or buy something, beware.  Be very ware.

Let me give you a recent example from my own life.  This past Saturday I was encouraged to go to a documentary on Bob Dylan’s gospel period.  The movie was sold to me as something I should support because it was created by Christians.  I fell for it and… it was atrocious.  It was unprofessional, boring, included no Dylan music, and was all-around terrible.  I felt duped.  This is not the first time this has happened, incidentally.  I have been encouraged to see terrible bands because they are Christian. I have been encouraged to read terrible books because they are Christian. I have had dubious lawyers recommended to me because they are Christian. And so on. Invariably it is bad news.

dylan tattoo by Mez Love

A movie should succeed on its own merits.  A band should make engaging music.  A politician should have brilliant ideas and posses leadership qualities.  These are the reasons they should succeed.  Being a Christian does not make you a good musician, a good writer, a good businessman, a good politician, or, to be frank, a good anything at all.  It has to do with your personal salvation.  The fact that you are a Christian does not mean that I should patronize your business, listen to your music, or vote for you.  Moreover, those who resort to touting the Christianity in order to find patrons often seem to do so because they would not be able to find patrons on the merits.

But what of Obama’s Christianity?  It is true that Obama is a Christian and he would like people to know this.  Obama is not using Christianity as a reason to vote for him, however.  Rather, he is emphasizing his Christianity to make it clear that he is not a Muslim, which many people still seem to think he is.  In fact it is Sarah Palin who was put on the Republican ticket in order to excite evangelicals.  David Brody at the Christian Broadcasting Network ran a story on August 29th, the day of her selection, headlined “Palin Pick Causes ‘Elation’ among Evangelical Leaders”.  Here is a telling passage from that article:

What John McCain has now done is reinvigorate the Evangelical base. It appears from those I am talking to that Palin is a great choice because she is a woman of faith who believes deeply in the life issue.

Notice the line “Palin is a great choice because she is a woman of faith.”  That should set off alarm bells.  Being a person of faith does not imply any special abilities or talents in a person.  It does not magically transform you into a person who is capable of being president.

When thinking about why I am so impressed with Barack Obama it never occurred to me that his Christian faith had anything to do with it.  On further reflection, however, I realized that while Obama does not trumpet his Christianity as a reason to vote for him, he does posses the Fruit of the Spirit.  In case you aren’t up on the New Testament, the Fruit of the Spirit are described in Galations chapter five and are the attributes that a mature Christian is supposed to display.  They are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

SK Photography

This is what I see in Obama.  His patience and self-control are becoming legendary.  He simply never loses his cool.  His faithfulness is nicely contrasted with McCain, who left his wife for a much younger woman after she became disfigured in a car accident.  His peace is evident in his self-assurance — I believe you simply cannot be as relaxed and self-assured as Obama always seems to be unless you are fundamentally at peace with your life.

I’m not sure, frankly, that I can make a strong case for Obama’s possession of every last one of the Fruit of the Spirit.  One would have to know someone personally for quite some time to ascertain their level of kindness and gentleness, for instance.  What I do know, however, is that Obama is a remarkably mature man.  He has balance and he is happy.  So in terms of his personal character Obama strikes me as further along the path toward maturity that McCain, Bush, Clinton (either one), Palin, or, really, any political figure I can think of.

Aside from his character and disposition, which are pure gold, Obama also possesses the actual talents that one would want in a president.  He is profoundly intelligent, he is a fantastic communicator, he is widely read and has a top-notch and highly relevant education, and he inspires people.

What remains are the issues.  I won’t concern myself here with most of the issues.  Rather, I will just focus on the one issue that is of prime concern for people in the Evangelical community: Abortion.   Yes, it is true that Obama is pro-choice. He has made no secret of this.  Many Christians would like to see the next president appoint justices to the supreme court who will over turn Roe vs. Wade.  What those in the pro-life community often don’t understand, however, is that overturning Roe vs. Wade will not result in abortion becoming illegal.  This fact is so poorly understood that I will repeat it, this time in a paragraph of its own:

Overturning Roe vs. Wade will not result in abortion becoming illegal.

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The reason for this is that the decision in Roe vs. Wade struck down a Texas law that made abortion illegal.  Basically, it made it illegal to make abortion illegal.  If Roe vs. Wade is overturned, it will again become legal for a state to pass a law making abortion illegal.  But most states will not pass laws making abortion illegal. Perhaps Utah, Idaho, and Texas will pass laws against abortion, but California and New York will not. Florida won’t.  The net result is that women who want abortions will be able to get them.  The only difference is that some women will now have to drive a few hours first.   Let’s say you live in Salt Lake City, Utah and you want an abortion but a law has been passed making abortion illegal in Utah. What are you going to do?  Well, you’ll just drive three hours to Elko, Nevada.

So if you think that voting for John McCain may result in abortion becoming illegal, you are mistaken.  If that is the major issue holding you back from voting for Barack Obama, then it is important that you realize that abortion will remain legal in the United States even if John McCain is elected and appoints several justices to the supreme court.

So let me sum up the reasons to vote for Obama: In his character he displays the Fruit of the Spirit; In his abilities he displays the qualities we need in a president; On the issue of abortion it will make no difference whether Obama or McCain is elected because overturning Roe vs. Wade will not make abortion illegal.

There you have it.  Know Hope!

What does Bin Laden think of Obama?

With less than a week before the election on November 4^th, it looks increasingly likely that we will have managed to avoid an “October surprise” from Osama Bin Laden. The concern among some people, of course, was that Bin Laden would launch an attack on the US in order to influence the election.

Osama Bin Laden on a t-shirt in Brazil.

The problem Bin Laden faces, of course, is that any kind of scare tactic he employs in the runup to the election would almost certainly be interpreted as an attempt to influence the election in favor of McCain – in other words, it could be viewed as a perverse endorsment of McCain by Bin Laden, and that could easily backfire (to say the least). There was an icident recently, however, in which some Islamic radicals posted a message on an Al Quaeda website in which they speculated that a McCain victory would advance the cause of Al Quaeda. Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed in the New York times calling it The Endorsment From Hell.

There has been some speculation, however, that this endorsment is actually reverse psychology. Surely Al Quaeda knows that their websites are monitored by US intelligence agencies, and surely Al Quaeda knows that explicitly rooting for a particular candidate is not likely to do that candidate any good.

Is it possible, then, that Al Quaeda actually doesn’t care for a McCain presidency. The question here is whether we truly understand our enemy. If Bin Laden is a nihilist who wants nothing but chaos to reign forever more, then perhaps he would like to continue his conflict with the US. Is it possible, however, that even Bin Laden is inspired by the possibility of an Obama presidency? Not inspired to hate, but inspired to hope? Could this election be causing him to question every assumption he had about the United States? A dark skinned man with the name Barack Hussein Obama is about to become the President of the United States? I’ll bet you that Bin Laden himself doesn’t know what to make of it but finds himself oddly hopeful.

Synecdoche, New York

I wanted to like Synecdoche, New York. I think highly of Charlie Kaufman and I was looking forward to being told a recursive, mind-bending, crazy-fascinating story. What I got instead was a boring, boring, boring movie in which my confusion eventually turned into frustration and then anger.

Creative Commons license

In order to write an honest review I decided not to walk out, but about a dozen people did walk out of the showing I attended.

Here’s a summary: A man named Caden is a theater director.  He has a wife and daughter.  For the first fifteen minutes of the movie they discuss the color of his daughter’s poop.  This theme is never revisited. Caden directs a play and then his wife leaves him.  A younger woman decides she wants to sleep with Caden for no discernible reason.  Caden goes to see a magic therapist who gives him a book which contains predictions.  The predictions are not explained and are not relevant.  Caden discovers that he is unable to salivate or swallow, but this does not relate to anything.  He remarries and has another daughter.  The woman who wants to sleep with him decides to buy a house that is literally on fire. His first daughter gets tattoos.  He starts crying.  People age at different rates.  Someone has a funeral.  There is a shot of a blimp.  A man tells him that he has been stalking him for twenty years, but doesn’t mention why and no one seems to care.  Later the man commits suicide, but it is not clear why.  The woman who bought the burning house marries a man who has been living in the basement all along, but he is not an important character.  Caden is told that his mother has died.  This is the first and last time we hear about his mother. He sees his therapist on an airplane and she shows him her leg for no reason.  Caden tells some fellow to build something inside a warehouse.  Some woman you’ve never seen before asks him to sleep with her and he cries.  There is a death scene with a woman who is covered in tattoos and accuses him of being a homosexual.  She may or may not be his daughter and homosexuality never comes up again.  Caden sits on a couch and talks meaninglessly to a woman who may have appeared earlier in the movie and then he dies.

All of the above takes two hours to relate, but it feels like twenty.

I didn’t actually give up on the movie until about 45 minutes in.  I believed in it — I kept looking for clues and paying close attention so that I wouldn’t miss a twist.  Is he an actor playing himself?  Does the book of predictions relate to the warehouse in some way?  Is there some reason why that girl is flirting with him?  And so on.  Eventually, however, I realized that there are no clues and there is nothing to gain from paying attention.  It’s just a boring, meaningless sequence of events delivered in a self-important style.

A noteworthy aspect of this movie is that Caden is an annoying loser.

Synecdoche, New York is boring.

You don’t for a minute believe that any of those women want to sleep with him. He’s a pudgy middle-aged guy with an atrocious haircut who cries a lot and has a dour attitude toward life. He’s a bit socially awkward and he has a skin condition that causes pustules to grow on his face.  In fact, he is beset by physical ailments.  And did I mention that he cries a lot?  Why do we want to watch this fellow?  For a movie this highly anticipated it is incredible that it is never even able to pass the “why do we care?” test.  You’re supposed to feel sorry for Caden when his wife leaves him, but you understand. In fact, you want to walk out yourself.

Here’s the “trick” of the movie.  Caden is trying to re-create New York City inside a warehouse in New York City.  But to do this faithfully he has to re-create the warehouse itself inside the city he is creating inside the warehouse, and then recreate another city inside… well, you get the idea. I found this idea amusing when I was 12.  And also note this: 75% of the movie seems to have nothing to do with the whole warehouse convolution.

So that’s it.  If you want to be confused and frustrated and witness a lot of overwrought emotional talks that you can’t place in context, go for it.  And if you really want to figure it out I recommend watching it three or four times.  I doubt, however, that you’ll be able to bear it.

It’s just boring.

The Stock Market: How Long is the Long Run?

The stock market goes up over the long run, right? That’s what we’ve always been told. But how long is the long run? If the market goes up over the course of 110 years, but suffers a 15-year-long decline during the course of that run, that could be enough to devastate your finances. Those unlucky enough to be 30 years old, say, at the beginning of a 15-year-long decline will find that the money they have saved during their prime youthful earning years will actually shrink if invested in the stock market.

Image by forexfolks

Let’s say you are 30 years old in June of 1964 and you have a baby. Your parents give you $1,000 for your child’s college education, and you invest it in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is at 831. You plan to take it out exactly 18 years later when the kid goes to college. Well, June 1986 eventually rolls around and the kid is about to head off to college. You check the Dow and find that it is now at 811. Your $1,000 investment is now worth $975.

Isn’t 18 years the long run? Evidently not.

In 1929 the Dow peaked at 381 before tumbling. It did not pass 381 again until 1954 – a period of 25 years. Could we be in for an extended period of negative growth in the stock market? Who knows? The Dow hit 14,164 in October, 2007 – and it may not reach that level again for 15 years. It has happened before.

Meta Attractiveness

In the dating and mating aspect of life, most people put a great deal of weight on a person’s physical attractiveness.  It is my contention that what people should do instead is consider a person’s meta-attractiveness.  The point of being physically attractive is largely to lure mates with whom to have children and thus propagate your genes.  But humankind has now evolved to such a rarefied level of intelligence that we have realized that this is the point of physical attractiveness, and we can now think one step ahead.  If your desire is to propagate your genes, then wouldn’t you be even more successful in the evolutionary game if you were to propagate your children’s genes? Ha!

Here is how it works. Let’s say you’re a man and you find physically attractive women sexually arousing. But you have rarefied intelligence, so you are aware that your genes have programmed you to find physically attractive women sexually arousing so that you will propagate your genes.

Each woman is a composite of about 30 faces. By Pierre Tourigny. Creative Commons license.

  You think a step ahead and realize that your genes would be even better off if you had physically attractive children, so you determine to mate not with the most physically attractive woman, but the woman with whom you would have the most physically attractive children.

For example, let’s say you have a big nose and you know that medium-sized noses are the most attractive.  You should choose to make with a woman who has a small nose in order to have children who will have medium-sized noses.  If you just blindly go for the more attractive medium-sized-nose woman, you will end up with children who have less attractive medium-large noses, which will reduce their mating prospects.

The real trick is to find a mate with whom you are equally likely to have highly attractive children of either sex.  Of course those with even more rarefied intelligence will select mates with an eye toward children with meta- rather than physical attractiveness…

My Prediction: 400+ Electoral Votes for Obama

Barack Obama will win 400+ electoral votes.  You heard it hear first.

I suspect that the polling this year is predicting a much closer race than it will turn out to be.  I expect that the models that the polling companies are using are based on voting patterns and turnout in past elections, and I think this election is different.  I think that this time the youth vote really will turn out, and African American turnout will be higher than even the high levels that are predicted.

The latest revelation — that Palin spent $150,000 of RNC campaign money on a shopping spree at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue– is the final nail in the coffin.   It undermines her whole “Joe Sixpack” and “Joe the Plumber” image.  She has spent more on outfits in a month than Joe the Plumber’s salary for over three years.  The interviews she gave to Charles Gibson and Katie Couric raised serious questions about whether she was prepared to be President, but at least she retained some appeal amongst a certain kind of working class conservative voter.  But the shopping spree scandal will damage even that appeal.  It certainly won’t play well in Appalachia.

(Incidentally, I don’t think they planned to donate those clothes to charity until after the scandal broke.)

Electoral Vote Map

So the net effect is that every swing state will swing Obama’s way.  To begin, Obama will win every state Kerry won in 2004.  That gives him 252 electoral votes.  Give him Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, and Nevada, and he is at 338.  This much seems absolutely certain.  Next, toss in North Carolina, West Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, and Georgia, and he is 395.  These are the states that the pundits aren’t yet predicting he will win, but I am.  Now, to get to 400 we need either Kentucky or Tennessee, or some combination of North Dakota, Alaska, and Montana.

One more misstep by the McCain campaign and he could find himself left with only Utah.

Know hope!

P.S. Thanks to http://www.elizabethperry.com/woolgathering/ for the map.

Oliver Stone’s W.

Oliver Stone’s new movie, W., is a re-telling of the Bush presidency with an immense dose of creative license applied.  Josh Brolin is remarkably convincing as George W. Bush.  He not only looks like Bush, but he has his smirks, his gestures, and his manner of walking and talking down perfectly.  His performance goes well beyond the caricatures put out by outfits like Saturday Night Live and strays into the territory of seriously convincing method acting.  Richard Dreyfus plays Dick Cheney equally convincingly — at first you think that Cheney himself is playing the role.

The letter "W"

Part of the success of this movie is the pure entertainment generated by watching Bush and Cheney captured so well.  Unfortunately, not every character is portrayed convincingly.  Thandie Newton plays Condoleeza Rice atrociously (as a sneering syncophant) and Jeffrey Wright does a pathetic impersonation of Colin Powell (he plays him as a slightly dull fellow who speaks very slowly).  Were it not for these two performances I would consider the movie almost perfect.

It is clear throughout the movie that it is not meant to be a sympathetic portrait of George W. Bush.  Bush is always doing things like emerging from a room without his pants pulled all the way up, or thinking deep thoughts while sitting on the toilet, and so forth.  Remarkably, however, I found myself feeling more positively toward George Bush after watching the movie than I had before.  The movie is clearly tyring to boil him down to a buffoon who starts a major war because he is trying to live up to his father’s expectations, but he comes across as a good-natured sincere fellow with remarkably strong people skills who is trying to do right with his life and who happens to fumble his speech a bit.

Bush’s conversion to Christianity is initially portrayed in an overly dramatic style — he is running down a path, sees a light in the sky, and falls to the ground — but the subsequent exposition of that stage of his life shows him to be a man with some courage who is able to humble himself and ask for help.  Frankly, seeing a man struggle in life and then reach out for help and get back on his feet is difficult to portray unsympathetically. You find yourself rooting for George Bush to find his bearings.

And boy does he ever.  He announces to his parents that he plans to run for governor of Texas and they discourage him. He runs anyway and wins.  Next up is the presidency of the United States.  His father makes it clear that the presidency is something that Jeb Bush is better suited to, but Dubya wins again.  I think that Oliver Stone meant for the audience to accept Bush senior’s analysis of his son as the true analysis — that George Bush really shouldn’t have become Governor of Texas or President of the United States — but it is difficult, as a viewer, to keep yourself from seeing a man whom people don’t believe in but who makes good anyway.  When people tell the protagonist that he can’t do it, that makes the audience root for him.

(As for the actual elections, they are completely left out of the movie.  One day Bush wants to run for Governor of Texas, and the next day he is wearing cowboy boots with his feet up on the desk in the Governor’s office.  Same with the Presidency.)

Oliver Stone

It is hard to buy into Bush as a buffoon when his personal life transformation seems sincere, when you find yourself rooting for him to show his father that he can make something of himself, and when he keeps moving up in the world so dramatically.  One gets the sense that the picture of George Bush that you are supposed to take away from the movie is not the one that is emerging.

Even the Iraq War comes off better than expected.  Cheney is portrayed as a fellow who is pushing for the war in a conspiracy theory sort of way, but Powell, who is supposed to be the voice of reason, is played as such a boring dullard that one finds oneself practically agreeing with the decision to go to war.  In addition, Bush is not portrayed as lying about the weapons of mass destruction.  He is portrayed as sincerely believing Saddam posed a serious threat because of his WMDs.  From the events in the movie it is not obvious that the decision to go to war is a terrible one.  I suppose Stone is relying here on the audience’s outside knowledge of how that decision turned out.

For those who follow politics and current affairs, this movie is well worth seeing.  The players and events are recent enough in memory that seeing them recounted here feels familiar and relevant.  After emerging from the theater I found myself wandering the sidewalks of New York puzzling over who this man, Bush, is.  I still don’t know.  He doesn’t seem to fit the normal categories. On the one hand he is supposedly unintelligent, incurious, and barely able to hold a job or complete a sentence.  On the other hand he went to Yale, then Harvard, and then became President of the United States.  I have no doubt that ivy-league connections and the old boy network are important, but the movie makes it seem like that is all you need to become the most powerful man in the world and then invade the Middle East.  There seems to be a lot of complexity there that has been skipped over.

In a nutshell, this is a thought-povoking and often humourous portrayal of the Bush presidency and will be enjoyed mainly by adults who have an interest in world affairs.  I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

For a very different take on the movie, check out Mark Ambinder’s review.  He dislikes the Cheney portrayal, thinks Brolin caricatures Bush, complains about the notable decisions and lines being out of context, but thinks, as I do, that the conversion experience is done well.

A Cruel Picture

John McCain and Barack Obama.  This picture is similar to taking a quote out of context, I suppose.

Live-Blogging the US Presidential Debate

10:45 PM — I’ll end by noting that I have always liked McCain. For this point in our history, however, I think Obama is the better choice for president. I do think that we have two good choices this year, though. I wish McCain had run a more positive campaign and I wish he had not chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate, but I still think he would make a decent president. What I really wish, of course, is that he had defeated Bush in the 2000 primary. Obama succeeding president McCain would be a much better world than the one we have.

10:39 PM — I would call this debate a draw in debating terms. In terms of how the American people will respond, I think it is a clear win for Obama because he escaped unscathed and is well ahead in the polls. I think Obama responded very well to the Ayers and ACORN accusations and he sounded like a moderate on abortion. He kept his composure, he seemed to know a lot of policy details, he was courteous, prepared, eloquent, presidential. McCain didn’t embarrass himself, but I didn’t quite buy his claim of hurt feelings over John Lewis’s remarks, so he didn’t always come off as sincere to me. McCain sometimes seemed like the smaller man, although I may be influenced here by my strong support for Obama.

10:30 PM — McCain says “good job, good job” to Obama as they shake hands at the end. The candidates and their wives look good up on stage. American democracy in action! What we saw tonight was two heavy-weights slugging it out, and I am proud to be an American right now.

10:27 PM — Did McCain just forget Obama’s name at the beginning of his closing statement?

10:25 PM — Does McCain think that Palin’s child has autism? Trig Palin has Down Syndrome…

10:23 PM — Obama is taller and better looking. It just struck me anew.

10:17 PM — McCain points out that “the health of the mother” has been stretched to include anything at all. Nice catch. I missed that in Obama’s answer that I admired so much (originally I had “life of the mother” — I guess I heard what I wanted to hear). Seems like I may have been bamboozled a bit by Obama’s smooth talk there.

10:15 PM — Obama: “Here are the facts…. There was already a law on the books that required providing life-saving treatment… I am completely supportive of a ban on late term abortions as long as there is an exception for the health of the mother.” He really answered that one well, I think. A really good answer.

10:13 PM — Definitely a better debate than the last one, at least in terms of entertainment. Still boring, though.

10:08 PM — Schieffer brings up Roe v. Wade and the Supreme Court. Obama says he believes Roe was rightly decided. Obama says it is an issue that good people can disagree on. McCain says he has no litmus test for supreme court justices, but states that supporting Roe is obviously disqualifying.

10:05 PM — A long back and forth on the mind-numbing details of the alternative health care plans. McCain says the average cost of health insurance is $5,800 a year. Obama just said the average cost of health insurance is $12,000 a year. Who is right? Who knows.

10:03 PM — Obama is explaining McCain’s health care plan, and it sounds like he understands it.

10:00 PM — McCain brings up Joe the plumber. sigh

9:58 PM — Obama claims he will allow the average person to buy the same health insurance that US Senators get and no one will be excluded based on pre-existing conditions. Wow. Too good to be true.

9:53 PM — Obama distinguishes between the Colombian and the Peruvian free trade agreements. Policy wonkery at its best.

9:51 PM — Obama is talking about energy, the auto industry, and trade. I’m bored, which is probably good. I don’t want to be not bored during this final debate.

9:48 PM — McCain wants to build 45 new nuclear power plants right away. This is a great idea and I’m all for it. This is the one area where I clearly like McCain more than Obama. I think Obama is too scared of the anti-nuclear wing of his party.

Joe The Plumber

9:45 PM — Obama says he thinks that Palin’s work with special needs children is commendable. What work? I am not sure what she has done other than have a special needs baby recently.

9:43 PM — McCain: “Sarah Palin is a role model to women.” He calls her a reformer. I roll my eyes.

9:40 PM — McCain is still pushing Ayers and ACORN and claims his campaign is about getting the economy back on tracks. Obama chuckles in disbelief. Obama flatly denies that he launched his political career in Ayers’ living room, but doesn’t get a chance to elaborate. Just as well. Better for Obama to get back to talking about issues.

9:37 PM — Obama is responding to the Ayers and ACORN accusations. It is clear that he has no substantive association with Ayers and ACORN. He has done a decent job in defending himself against McCain, I think.

9:35 PM — Wow. McCain just brought up Ayers and ACORN. Said ACORN is pulling off the biggest voter fraud in history.

9:33 PM — This debate seems a little livelier than the last one. I like the back and forth a bit. Obama needs to watch out, though. He shouldn’t get dragged into this bickering about who has been running the more negative campaign and who has the weirder fringe supporters at rallies. He is better off focusing on more presidential issues.

9:32 PM — I don’t know who Joe the plumber is and I don’t understand his economic situation well enough for these comments about him to make any sense to me. I don’t want to hear anything more about Joe the plumber.

9:30 PM — McCain attacks Obama for not repudiating the remarks made by John Lewis. Lewis is a prominent black congressman who has compared McCain to segregationist George Wallace. Obama to McCain: “100% of your ads have been negative.” I think I was falling for McCain’s spin for a minute there. There is absolutely no doubt that McCain has been running the more negative campaign. I didn’t know what to think when I heard him attack Obama for running negative attack ads.

9:26 PM — Schieffer: “Will you say it to each other’s face?” — in regard to attack ads.

9:25 PM — Obama: “Even Fox News disputes it” — in regard to the accusation that he wants to raise taxes on people who make $42,000 a year. He gets a chuckle from the audience. I tend to believe Obama on this. I expect that it is only through ridiculous contortions that McCain can support that claim.

9:21 PM — McCain: “I am not president Bush. If you wanted to run against president Bush, you should have run four years ago.” A nice jab!

9:20 PM — Schieffer wants specifics on how they are going to cut back spending in the face of record budget deficits. Obama wants to eliminate $15 billion in subsidies to health insurance companies. Sounds good to me, but who knows what the real detailed truth is. McCain wants to get rid of subsidies for ethanol. Also mentions getting rid of corruption and mentions that stupid planetarium projector again that Obama supposedly voted for.

9:17 PM — Obama is attempting to be a super-boring policy wonk, I think. Not a bad strategy when you are way ahead in the polls and the country is in a financial crisis.

9:12 PM — McCain brings up a plumber, Joe, who is “trying to realize the American dream” but can’t because of Obama’s proposed tax increases. Obama agrees that he and McCain differ on tax policy — they disagree on who will get tax cuts. Obama says Joe the plumber needed a middle-class tax cut five years ago (?). My take: basically they are each making claims and I don’t know who to believe.

9:00 PM — I’m here at my desk, iMac in front of me, beer at hand, the debate streaming live on the CNN website. Go Obama!

The benefits of Amtrak

I needed to travel from New York to Pittsburgh and back recently and I decided to take Amtrak instead of flying.  An Amtrak ticket costs $126 round trip.  Flying would have cost me about $250.  I made the decision to use Amtrak in order to save money, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed my trip.

Here are some of the reasons I would choose to travel by train again:

1. It is much easier to get to the train station than to the airport.  This is true not only in New York, where Penn station is right in the middle of Manhattan, but also in Pittsburgh and many other cities such as Philadelphia and Washington DC.  I saved about 30 minutes of travel time by not having to go to the airport.  Also, the subway in New York goes directly to Penn Station, so there are no extra costs involving taxis or the AirTran.
2. I arrived at the train station 10 minutes before my train was to depart.  No security.  No check in.  Just get on the train and get out your book.
3. You can put your tray table down immediately.
4. There are plugs for your laptop, cell phone charger, etc.
5. Massive amounts of leg room.
6. A dining car with a cafe and also tables where you can spread out a bit and do some work if you want to.
7. Half the cost of flying.
8. You can go to the restroom whenever you want to and you don’t have to wait for the fasten seat belt sign to turn off.  Also, the restrooms are three times as large as airplane restrooms.
9. The environment on the train is conducive to thinking, reading, and writing.  I felt like I used my time on the train very well in terms of getting things done.  I hardly ever feel that way when I fly.
10. The whole experience feels vastly less stressful than flying. It is almost relaxing to take a train ride.

The down side, of course, is that the trip takes longer than flying.  The flight from New York to Pittsburgh is 90 minutes, while the train ride is 9 hours.  The true time required for flying, however, must include the time spent getting to the airport, the time at the airport (you are supposed to arrive an hour or more before your flight) and the greater likelihood that inclement weather will delay the flight. In my estimation, flying from New York to Pittsburgh would take about 4 hours in total. In addition, only 90 minutes, at most, will be useful work time.

The insight for me was that time spent travelling does not have to be wasted time.  Comparing 4 hours flying vs. 9 hours by train makes it seems like travelling by train wastes 5 hours.  In reality you should compare 4 hours flying vs. 9 hours confined to a comfortable space with your laptop, books, papers, and no distractions.

I caught a dragonfly

I was in West Virginia last week and I happened to come upon a field with some dragonflies buzzing around. After over an hour of painstaking dragonfly-stalking, I finally caught one. They are practically impossible to catch while they are flying, incidentally. Your only hope is to swoop the net down from above while they are resting on a leaf or reed.

We decided that the one I caught is a either a female or a juvenile male green darner.

If you click on the pictures they will enlarge quite a bit.

Jonti springs into action.

The green darner is caught.

A top view of the dragonfly.

The Daily Log

I’ve just begun a daily log and I’m so excited about the idea that I have decided to share it with my blog reader.  Basically, it involves starting a spreadsheet and writing one sentence about what happened each day.  You do this every day in the evening, never writing down more than one line, and never straying from a simple record of what you did that day.  Later you can look back over your life and remember things easily.  It takes hardly any time at all each day, but the payoff later is immense.  So far I only have one line in my daily log, but I have entered dates in column A for the next ten thousand days, which will take me up to Saturday, February 23rd, 2036 (I will be 61 years old).

Kudos to Albert Song for giving me this idea.

Who is Bill Ayers? Who cares?

The McCain campaign has spent a lot of time during this last week trying to associate Obama with Bill Ayers.  Here is the problem with this tactic: no one under the age of 50 has ever heard of this guy.  The very few who have heard of him aren’t that concerned.

So who is Bill Ayers? Basically, back in 1969, when he was 25 years old, Ayers co-founded a radical anti-war group called the Weather Underground.  The group set off some bombs which killed some people and came to be known as a domestic terrorist organization.  Ayers went underground for a while and finally turned himself into authorities in 1980.  He is now a distinguished professor of education theory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." The Weathermen took their name from this line in Bob Dylan's song Subterranean Homesick Blues.

It turns out that Obama and Ayers live in the same neighborhood and are acquaintances.  Palin has claimed that because of this association, Obama “pals around with terrorists.”  This claim is just ridiculous enough that it makes Palin look like the scary person rather than Obama.  Sure, it may play well with the 20% of the electorate who hate all Democrats and will vote Republican no matter what, but it does nothing at all to widen the appeal of the McCain-Palin brand.

Here are the problems for McCain:

1. Ayers is ancient news.  His activities occurred roughly 35 years ago.
2. Hardly anyone knows who Bill Ayers is. He did not have a high profile through the 80s, 90s, or 00s.  I somehow managed to get through college and grad school without ever having heard of him.  Maybe that is a terrible indictment of my education, but my sense is that I am not unusual in this respect.
3. No one seriously believes that Obama shares Ayers’ views.
4. The whole story is just too complicated to explain in under 10 minutes, so it is not suited to an American presidential campaign.
5. Ayers somehow just doesn’t seem like such a scary figure anymore.  People are likely to wonder how terrible a person he can be if our government is content to let him pursue a career as a distinguished professor at a major university.
6. Bringing up associations from the 60s just makes McCain look like a man who is in touch with the past and allows Obama to say things like “I was eight years old” when Ayers was active.

The McCain campaign is trying to make something out of nothing and the American people can sense it.  The net result is that McCain loses credibility.