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…

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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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.