Pomegranate Justice
This morning, my son Alex skillfully and patiently extracted all the seeds from a pomegranate and put them in a bowl to eat; he then offered me some and as I took the bowl from him I wondered just what sort of crime it would be if I ate the entire bowl . . . I would obviously owe him more than just the price of the pomegranate (and I would never have the patience to extract all the seeds at once the way he did so-- to me-- the bowl of pomegranate seeds with no white gunk was essentially priceless).
Pomegranate Justice
This morning, my son Alex skillfully and patiently extracted all the seeds from a pomegranate and put them in a bowl to eat; he then offered me some and as I took the bowl from him I wondered just what sort of crime it would be if I ate the entire bowl . . . I would obviously owe him more than just the price of the pomegranate (and I would never have the patience to extract all the seeds at once the way he did so-- to me-- the bowl of pomegranate seeds with no white gunk was essentially priceless).
What's in the Box?
I've been out hiking with the dog and I get home and open the fridge and I spy a box . . . a box in a bag . . . a styrofoam container-- and what's inside? what could be inside? what sort of leftovers? Thai food? I can't remember . . . yes! . . . leftover al pastor tacos and rice from La Catrina in New Brunswick . . . and so my breakfast plan transformed from the usual greek yogurt and peanut butter to a plate of pork, pineapple, rice, fried eggs and a tortilla . . . and it was delicious.
What's in the Box?
I've been out hiking with the dog and I get home and open the fridge and I spy a box . . . a box in a bag . . . a styrofoam container-- and what's inside? what could be inside? what sort of leftovers? Thai food? I can't remember . . . yes! . . . leftover al pastor tacos and rice from La Catrina in New Brunswick . . . and so my breakfast plan transformed from the usual greek yogurt and peanut butter to a plate of pork, pineapple, rice, fried eggs and a tortilla . . . and it was delicious.
Slick Roads and Broccoli
I'm about to head to happy hour, so I don't have the time to capture the absolute madness of yesterday's snowstorm in New Jersey but the accidents, commute-times, and the road conditions were absolutely epic . . . I got home before the worst of it, but I couldn't get my van back up the hill on the south-side of Highland Park to pick up my kids from school (apparently this was a common problem on hills all over the state) and my wife didn't get home from her school until nearly 7 PM-- she volunteered to stay with the stranded students . . . buses and cars just couldn't make their way to the school-- and this was really stressful for me and the boys, because Catherine had planned on making beef and broccoli stir-fry and we were trying to prep everything so she could finish cooking when she got home but we were out of soy sauce and she kept getting delayed more and more and when we called her about the soy sauce and suggested perhaps she could stop on her way home and pick some up, she didn't take kindly to that suggestion . . . but she finally made it home, improvised with the prepped ingredients and whipped up a delicious dish (though the meat was a little chewy . . . I pounded it some with one of those tenderizing hammers but I guess Catherine packs more of pounding punch than me).
Slick Roads and Broccoli
I'm about to head to happy hour, so I don't have the time to capture the absolute madness of yesterday's snowstorm in New Jersey but the accidents, commute-times, and the road conditions were absolutely epic . . . I got home before the worst of it, but I couldn't get my van back up the hill on the south-side of Highland Park to pick up my kids from school (apparently this was a common problem on hills all over the state) and my wife didn't get home from her school until nearly 7 PM-- she volunteered to stay with the stranded students . . . buses and cars just couldn't make their way to the school-- and this was really stressful for me and the boys, because Catherine had planned on making beef and broccoli stir-fry and we were trying to prep everything so she could finish cooking when she got home but we were out of soy sauce and she kept getting delayed more and more and when we called her about the soy sauce and suggested perhaps she could stop on her way home and pick some up, she didn't take kindly to that suggestion . . . but she finally made it home, improvised with the prepped ingredients and whipped up a delicious dish (though the meat was a little chewy . . . I pounded it some with one of those tenderizing hammers but I guess Catherine packs more of pounding punch than me).
Snow!
I tried dropping some hints with the secretaries in the main office but there were obviously no administrators in earshot-- and I also tried to foment rumors amongst the students and teachers in the hopes of a bottom-up emergent decision-- but despite my efforts, we didn't get an early dismissal . . . and it's still snowing buckets outside so maybe we'll have a delay tomorrow (and I'm not sure if "snowing buckets" is an expression but I'm not going to google it, you know what I mean).
Snow!
I tried dropping some hints with the secretaries in the main office but there were obviously no administrators in earshot-- and I also tried to foment rumors amongst the students and teachers in the hopes of a bottom-up emergent decision-- but despite my efforts, we didn't get an early dismissal . . . and it's still snowing buckets outside so maybe we'll have a delay tomorrow (and I'm not sure if "snowing buckets" is an expression but I'm not going to google it, you know what I mean).
When Do I Get to Buy a Dune-Buggy?
This has been the year of spending money on expensive, sober-minded stuff: a sick dog, braces and a palate expander, a washer/dryer, and now a dishwasher (although we did buy a ping-pong table somewhere amidst the pragmatic purchases).
When Do I Get to Buy a Dune-Buggy?
This has been the year of spending money on expensive, sober-minded stuff: a sick dog, braces and a palate expander, a washer/dryer, and now a dishwasher (although we did buy a ping-pong table somewhere amidst the pragmatic purchases).
Fantasy Football Explained (Using Status and Contract)
I love arming my students with the terms "status" and "contract" and then encouraging them apply these terms to whatever we are reading; there are status/contract motifs in The Merchant of Venice, Death of a Salesman, and The Great Gatsby and I also think the terms apply to the weird relationship between playing fantasy football and having a rooting interest in a professional football team; so allow me to take a page from one of lesson plans and explain: when you root for a particular team, because of where you were born or familial influence or whatever, then you possess the status of being a a fan of this team . . . you really can't change this-- perhaps you could be an ex-Giants fan, just as you can be an ex-wife-- but that status remains forever part of your past; on the other hand, fantasy football is all about temporary contracts that you make with your "team" and its montage of constituent players (and these players don't even have the knowledge that you've made a contract with them . . . nor do they know they are playing for your team) and these theoretical contracts are negotiated and broken from week to week and season to season, with little emotion to bind you to your team and your players; this is in no way similar to how you are bound to your status as a particular fan . . . the brilliance of fantasy football from a marketing standpoint is that it enlarges the purview of the once-casual fan well beyond their limited rooting status, and makes them more of a broker of contracts, a more focused consumer of football, without the emotional ups and downs of the old-time subjective supporter . . . a contract conveys professionalism, a contract is monetized and contains all due diligence, a contract assures rule of law and logic, and this is what fantasy football promises and delivers, you no longer have to suffer the caprices of your fate, you can strategize, formalize, capitalize and fetishize, while the fan is a dilettante, a simpleton, a rube, an amateur, limited who tunes in for the love of the game and the love of his or her team (and also often tunes out for the same reasons).
Fantasy Football Explained (Using Status and Contract)
I love arming my students with the terms "status" and "contract" and then encouraging them apply these terms to whatever we are reading; there are status/contract motifs in The Merchant of Venice, Death of a Salesman, and The Great Gatsby and I also think the terms apply to the weird relationship between playing fantasy football and having a rooting interest in a professional football team; so allow me to take a page from one of lesson plans and explain: when you root for a particular team, because of where you were born or familial influence or whatever, then you possess the status of being a a fan of this team . . . you really can't change this-- perhaps you could be an ex-Giants fan, just as you can be an ex-wife-- but that status remains forever part of your past; on the other hand, fantasy football is all about temporary contracts that you make with your "team" and its montage of constituent players (and these players don't even have the knowledge that you've made a contract with them . . . nor do they know they are playing for your team) and these theoretical contracts are negotiated and broken from week to week and season to season, with little emotion to bind you to your team and your players; this is in no way similar to how you are bound to your status as a particular fan . . . the brilliance of fantasy football from a marketing standpoint is that it enlarges the purview of the once-casual fan well beyond their limited rooting status, and makes them more of a broker of contracts, a more focused consumer of football, without the emotional ups and downs of the old-time subjective supporter . . . a contract conveys professionalism, a contract is monetized and contains all due diligence, a contract assures rule of law and logic, and this is what fantasy football promises and delivers, you no longer have to suffer the caprices of your fate, you can strategize, formalize, capitalize and fetishize, while the fan is a dilettante, a simpleton, a rube, an amateur, limited who tunes in for the love of the game and the love of his or her team (and also often tunes out for the same reasons).
Let's Get Naked (Statistically Speaking)
Charles Wheeler likes to get naked . . . he's the author of Naked Economics, which I highly recommend, and I also enjoyed Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data, which is full of fun facts and lots of number sense (and it will make you think about all the times you are offered either percent of increase or a number, when you really need both to make an assertion) and here a some random moments I enjoyed:
1) texting while driving causes crashes and laws banning texting while driving may also cause crashes because people can't stop texting while driving, but if there's a law against it, then people will hide their phones down by their crotch and take their eyes off the road;
2) people who buy carbon-monoxide monitors and little felt pads for the bottom of their furniture almost never miss credit card payments;
3) the top 100 grossing films only makes sense when it's adjusted for inflation . . . Hollywood likes to tell the story that each new blockbuster movie is so good it has blown away all the older films, but they like to list the gross (nominal) ticket receipts, not the real, adjusted receipts: here is the real list . . . The Exorcist makes the top ten and Jurassic World makes the top 25 so this list isn't any more cultivated than the gross profit list (though it's less homogenous);
4) our data sets are getting more and more predictive . . . people who buy birdseed are far less likely to default on their loans, but if we can identify drug smugglers 80 times out of 100, is it okay to harass those other twenty people over and over? so statistics generally leads to ethical dilemmas . . .
5) the most dangerous job stress seems to be jobs that have "low control" over their work situations . . . which makes me happy, because teaching and coaching feels highly stressful at times, but I always have control over what's happening . . . but this is only true if we trust the regression analysis, which is the most powerful statistical tool in existence, but very difficult to do well;
6) because you can screw up regression analysis in a number of ways: you can use regression to analyze a nonlinear relationship, you can screw up correlation and causation-- buying birdseed does not cause you to have good credit, those two things are simply correlated-- you can complete reverse the causality, you can omit variables, you can have variables that are so highly correlated that you can't extricate them from each other, you can extrapolate beyond the data, and you can have problems with too many variables;
7) Wheeler concludes with a quick overview of some real-world problems that are going to need clear statistical analysis: the future of NFL football, the rise in autism, the difficulty in assessing good teachers and schools, the best tools for fighting global poverty, and personal data privacy . . . if you're looking for a fairly in depth take on statistics, with more formulas and math than a Freakonomics or Malcolm Gladwell book, this is the one for you.
1) texting while driving causes crashes and laws banning texting while driving may also cause crashes because people can't stop texting while driving, but if there's a law against it, then people will hide their phones down by their crotch and take their eyes off the road;
2) people who buy carbon-monoxide monitors and little felt pads for the bottom of their furniture almost never miss credit card payments;
3) the top 100 grossing films only makes sense when it's adjusted for inflation . . . Hollywood likes to tell the story that each new blockbuster movie is so good it has blown away all the older films, but they like to list the gross (nominal) ticket receipts, not the real, adjusted receipts: here is the real list . . . The Exorcist makes the top ten and Jurassic World makes the top 25 so this list isn't any more cultivated than the gross profit list (though it's less homogenous);
4) our data sets are getting more and more predictive . . . people who buy birdseed are far less likely to default on their loans, but if we can identify drug smugglers 80 times out of 100, is it okay to harass those other twenty people over and over? so statistics generally leads to ethical dilemmas . . .
5) the most dangerous job stress seems to be jobs that have "low control" over their work situations . . . which makes me happy, because teaching and coaching feels highly stressful at times, but I always have control over what's happening . . . but this is only true if we trust the regression analysis, which is the most powerful statistical tool in existence, but very difficult to do well;
6) because you can screw up regression analysis in a number of ways: you can use regression to analyze a nonlinear relationship, you can screw up correlation and causation-- buying birdseed does not cause you to have good credit, those two things are simply correlated-- you can complete reverse the causality, you can omit variables, you can have variables that are so highly correlated that you can't extricate them from each other, you can extrapolate beyond the data, and you can have problems with too many variables;
7) Wheeler concludes with a quick overview of some real-world problems that are going to need clear statistical analysis: the future of NFL football, the rise in autism, the difficulty in assessing good teachers and schools, the best tools for fighting global poverty, and personal data privacy . . . if you're looking for a fairly in depth take on statistics, with more formulas and math than a Freakonomics or Malcolm Gladwell book, this is the one for you.
Let's Get Naked (Statistically Speaking)
Charles Wheeler likes to get naked . . . he's the author of Naked Economics, which I highly recommend, and I also enjoyed Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data, which is full of fun facts and lots of number sense (and it will make you think about all the times you are offered either percent of increase or a number, when you really need both to make an assertion) and here a some random moments I enjoyed:
1) texting while driving causes crashes and laws banning texting while driving may also cause crashes because people can't stop texting while driving, but if there's a law against it, then people will hide their phones down by their crotch and take their eyes off the road;
2) people who buy carbon-monoxide monitors and little felt pads for the bottom of their furniture almost never miss credit card payments;
3) the top 100 grossing films only makes sense when it's adjusted for inflation . . . Hollywood likes to tell the story that each new blockbuster movie is so good it has blown away all the older films, but they like to list the gross (nominal) ticket receipts, not the real, adjusted receipts: here is the real list . . . The Exorcist makes the top ten and Jurassic World makes the top 25 so this list isn't any more cultivated than the gross profit list (though it's less homogenous);
4) our data sets are getting more and more predictive . . . people who buy birdseed are far less likely to default on their loans, but if we can identify drug smugglers 80 times out of 100, is it okay to harass those other twenty people over and over? so statistics generally leads to ethical dilemmas . . .
5) the most dangerous job stress seems to be jobs that have "low control" over their work situations . . . which makes me happy, because teaching and coaching feels highly stressful at times, but I always have control over what's happening . . . but this is only true if we trust the regression analysis, which is the most powerful statistical tool in existence, but very difficult to do well;
6) because you can screw up regression analysis in a number of ways: you can use regression to analyze a nonlinear relationship, you can screw up correlation and causation-- buying birdseed does not cause you to have good credit, those two things are simply correlated-- you can complete reverse the causality, you can omit variables, you can have variables that are so highly correlated that you can't extricate them from each other, you can extrapolate beyond the data, and you can have problems with too many variables;
7) Wheeler concludes with a quick overview of some real-world problems that are going to need clear statistical analysis: the future of NFL football, the rise in autism, the difficulty in assessing good teachers and schools, the best tools for fighting global poverty, and personal data privacy . . . if you're looking for a fairly in depth take on statistics, with more formulas and math than a Freakonomics or Malcolm Gladwell book, this is the one for you.
1) texting while driving causes crashes and laws banning texting while driving may also cause crashes because people can't stop texting while driving, but if there's a law against it, then people will hide their phones down by their crotch and take their eyes off the road;
2) people who buy carbon-monoxide monitors and little felt pads for the bottom of their furniture almost never miss credit card payments;
3) the top 100 grossing films only makes sense when it's adjusted for inflation . . . Hollywood likes to tell the story that each new blockbuster movie is so good it has blown away all the older films, but they like to list the gross (nominal) ticket receipts, not the real, adjusted receipts: here is the real list . . . The Exorcist makes the top ten and Jurassic World makes the top 25 so this list isn't any more cultivated than the gross profit list (though it's less homogenous);
4) our data sets are getting more and more predictive . . . people who buy birdseed are far less likely to default on their loans, but if we can identify drug smugglers 80 times out of 100, is it okay to harass those other twenty people over and over? so statistics generally leads to ethical dilemmas . . .
5) the most dangerous job stress seems to be jobs that have "low control" over their work situations . . . which makes me happy, because teaching and coaching feels highly stressful at times, but I always have control over what's happening . . . but this is only true if we trust the regression analysis, which is the most powerful statistical tool in existence, but very difficult to do well;
6) because you can screw up regression analysis in a number of ways: you can use regression to analyze a nonlinear relationship, you can screw up correlation and causation-- buying birdseed does not cause you to have good credit, those two things are simply correlated-- you can complete reverse the causality, you can omit variables, you can have variables that are so highly correlated that you can't extricate them from each other, you can extrapolate beyond the data, and you can have problems with too many variables;
7) Wheeler concludes with a quick overview of some real-world problems that are going to need clear statistical analysis: the future of NFL football, the rise in autism, the difficulty in assessing good teachers and schools, the best tools for fighting global poverty, and personal data privacy . . . if you're looking for a fairly in depth take on statistics, with more formulas and math than a Freakonomics or Malcolm Gladwell book, this is the one for you.
I Rate This Film 0.0
Friday night, my family sat down together and watched Animal House . . . first time for my kids (they are 13 and 14 years old) and I haven't seen John Belushi imitate a zit since 1991, when I watched the film in it's entirety several dozen times in one summer (we were living in a shithole in Nags Head, I disconnected the cable, and the only movies we had on VHS were Animal House and Spinal Tap . . . so most nights we alternated, although we occasionally watched both in the same evening) and I'm happy to say the comedy really holds up (my son Alex had a three word review: "That was awesome!") but there are more gratuitous boobs than I remembered . . . I guess there was no internet porn back then so people had to get their gratuitous boobs in R rated movies.
I Rate This Film 0.0
Friday night, my family sat down together and watched Animal House . . . first time for my kids (they are 13 and 14 years old) and I haven't seen John Belushi imitate a zit since 1991, when I watched the film in it's entirety several dozen times in one summer (we were living in a shithole in Nags Head, I disconnected the cable, and the only movies we had on VHS were Animal House and Spinal Tap . . . so most nights we alternated, although we occasionally watched both in the same evening) and I'm happy to say the comedy really holds up (my son Alex had a three word review: "That was awesome!") but there are more gratuitous boobs than I remembered . . . I guess there was no internet porn back then so people had to get their gratuitous boobs in R rated movies.
Living on the Meniscus
The final ingredient in my wife's cup of coffee is a healthy dollop of danger . . . while I like to keep my hot beverages well below the rim, she fills her mug right up to the top, a meniscus of hot liquid quivering in the air above the cup . . . and this is before 8 AM.
Living on the Meniscus
The final ingredient in my wife's cup of coffee is a healthy dollop of danger . . . while I like to keep my hot beverages well below the rim, she fills her mug right up to the top, a meniscus of hot liquid quivering in the air above the cup . . . and this is before 8 AM.
Just When You Thought it Was Safe
I'm pleased to say-- though many of the ladies in the English department might not agree-- that the incessant high school soccer discussions will continue in my general vicinity, as both the school at which I teach (East Brunswick High School) and the town in which I live and coach (Highland Park) are Sectional State Champs in Central Jersey (in Group IV and Group I respectively) and while nearly all the other high school teams are done, East Brunswick and Highland Park are now headed to neutral fields to try to win it all: congratulations to all the players and Coach McKibbin and Coach Roig, great job extending the season and the concomitant soccer-related discussions.
Just When You Thought it Was Safe
I'm pleased to say-- though many of the ladies in the English department might not agree-- that the incessant high school soccer discussions will continue in my general vicinity, as both the school at which I teach (East Brunswick High School) and the town in which I live and coach (Highland Park) are Sectional State Champs in Central Jersey (in Group IV and Group I respectively) and while nearly all the other high school teams are done, East Brunswick and Highland Park are now headed to neutral fields to try to win it all: congratulations to all the players and Coach McKibbin and Coach Roig, great job extending the season and the concomitant soccer-related discussions.
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