Sailboat or Security

I found a sailboat for three-thousand dollars on the internet last night. It has a small cabin with two tiny beds and is perfect for heading south. It is both exactly what I want, and the exact opposite of what I want, at the same time.  

I have a good friend who is studying for his PhD in economics. He is a smart man, quick-witted, and infallible in logical arguments. I will relish calling him Dr. ______, mostly because I know it will annoy him. Of his good qualities, I envy only one: his singular passion and devotion to one subject. I envy everyone who has found what they want to do for the rest of their lives.

My brain is a seesaw. The left side gives me the strong urge to pack my wife and myself in a sailboat and toss my ambitions overboard. Sail to Central or South America, work odd-jobs, and have adventures.

The right side tells me to devote myself to the study of something, anything, and use my abilities to make a difference in the world. Money is also a factor.

The left side tells me I'd be happy as a nobody. The right side says I want to be President of the United States.

I'm stable when one idea is higher than the other on my seesaw. It's when they are even, like yesterday, that causes anxiety. I spent the morning searching terms like "Best Behavioral Finance programs" and "Mathematical Finance Master's Degree". Then the nagging question buzzed into my head: is this what you really want? 


So I spent the afternoon reading articles entitled, "How to Overcome Seasickness" and "Buying Your First Sailboat." The night ended with a doomed pitch to my dad to buy twelve acres of wildlife preserve and natural hot springs in Central America.


Google must think I'm schizophrenic. 

Don't Disturb My Circles

I recently read a story in the New York Times about free after-school programs that help high school students from lower income families get the test scores they need to be competitive in college. The subject of the article was a student from Newton High School named Nathaly Lopera. I believe in both the effectiveness and necessity of these programs, but Nathaly's self-reported statistics do not add up.

Nathaly says she has been attending after school programs since she was in second grade, and studies for hours a day, sometimes getting to bed well past midnight. Yet her SAT scores are so bad, she won't discuss them for the article. The article states that "to get a good grade (on the SAT), a student must read and write quickly," which are necessary elements for a successful college applicant. If Nathaly spends three to four hours per night reading just her AP Spanish homework, college will be difficult.

But what caught my eye were her performance in mathematics, which produced the only C grade to blemish an otherwise stellar record. According to the New York Times,

'Her first two semesters in math, Nathaly got an 89 and an 86, but then fell apart on trigonometry, exponents and logarithms. “Fractions, the pi thing, oh my God,” Nathaly said.' 


I spent two years tutoring high school math for BYU Independent Study, where I helped countless Nathalys. And I've noticed the correlation between SAT scores and math grades. I talked to tearful parents who complained their child studies math four hours every day, yet does not score well on the SAT's or the course. They believed the system is unfair.  


Each conversation had the same format:


-        Let me talk to your son/daughter. 
-        ...Hello?
-        Hi. I've just talked with your mother, and she says you are studying hard in geometry, but you are             not doing as well as you'd like. How many hours per day are you studying on the course?
-        Between four and five hours per day. 
-        Wow, that's a lot. And how much of that time is spent with Facebook or Youtube opened on another  tab?
-         (laughter) Most of it. 
-         So you really aren't studying between four and five hours per day. 


It is unfair to judge Nathaly, but the article's title picture is her staring at her laptop as she yawns. I wonder what she's staring at. 


There has been a steady decline in SAT scores since 1986, which is ironically the year Bill Gates took Microsoft public for $21/ share. I think at least a small part of that decline is a result of the ease with which a computer delivers distraction. Here's another conversation, this time on an online whiteboard I was using to show a student how to do a trigonometry problem:


-         So if this angle is 160 degrees, what would this corresponding angle be?...Hello?
-         Yeah, sorry. I got hung up for a minute. Yeah, I don't know. 
-         Are you chatting online with someone else right now?
-         Yes. I'm sorry. 
-         This conversation is over. Email me when you are ready to focus. 


I had these conversations weekly. But the sad part is that these conversations happened with the students who studied four to five hours per day, and whose parents raved they are the best everywhere except math and complained the system is unfair. Many students I tutored aced their other classes, but the common excuse for taking math through BYU Independent Study was "the teacher here is terrible." I've seen students who try to do math homework with their ipods blaring music in their ears; maybe the hated teacher's problem is that he's teaching terrible students. 


This is why I love mathematics. You cannot run from it. I had parents who, on a regular basis, would confront me about their child's test score and tell me there is a glitch in the scoring system because there is no way their child can study for this long and do this poor, because their child is on the honor roll, and blah blah blah blah blah. But when I force the child to do problems in front of me and his parent, the dad blushes in embarrassment.


Mathematics requires the student to make connections between seemingly irrelevant pieces of information. You are given a problem, and asked to solve it without an instruction manual. A mathematicians two greatest weapons are focus and silence: focus to learn the material, and silence to allow the brain to make the necessary subtle connections. Both of these are difficult to find in the instant media and communication age.


I remember a particularly difficult math problem I had to solve for a college class. I had already spent several days thinking about a solution, but there was a gap between two important concepts I still needed to bridge. I was so consumed in thought that I decided to drive home with the radio off, preferring the silence. The answer to three days of contemplation popped into my head in between two stop signs. I am convinced that I would have failed the assignment had I listened to music on that ride home. 


Students like Nathaly who complain about "the pi thing" should take a lesson from Archimedes, the Greek mathematician whose name graces the principles in their textbooks. Of him, Plutarch stated: "He placed his whole affection and ambition in those purer speculations where there can be no reference to the vulgar needs of life." And there is no event more exemplary of his life-philosophy than his death. 


Archimedes was in charge of defending Syracuse from a Roman siege led by General Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who had given the order to spare the famous mathematician. The Romans broke through Archimedes' defenses and stormed the city. 


A Roman soldier entered Archimedes' headquarters and, with chaos surrounding the building, found Archimedes drawing diagrams on the floor. The soldier told Archimedes that Marcellus requested his presence, but Archimedes stood puzzling, deep in thought, over his diagrams. Angry at the disrespect with which Archimedes treated his general's request, the soldier slayed him. 


Archimedes' last words?


Please don't disturb my circles. 

Why Tim Tebow Wins Games

Update: The Broncos just beat the New York Jets by a score of 17-13. Sanchez twice as many pass attempts (40) as Tebow. But, with the vaulted Jets defense worn out at the end of the game, Tebow waltzed into the end-zone for the game-winning touchdown.

***

When he throws, his arm looks like a slow motion windmill. He's terribly inaccurate. In his last outing against Kansas City, he threw eight passes, and completed just two. 

So why are the Denver Broncos 3-1 with him at the helm, a quarterback who barely takes advantage of his arm?

American-style football can be traced back to the 19th century, at which time it was nearly identical to rugby, where the forward pass is illegal. The lack of helmets and minimal padding created a gladiatorial sport, as players ran for both touchdowns and their lives. This insanity continued through the 1905 season, when eighteen players were killed and one-hundred and fifty nine were seriously injured. There was an uproar in America to abolish the game.

Now is the one time I can "tebow" in thanks for politicians. President Roosevelt demanded changes to the rules to make the game safer, and the forward pass was born. The New York Times reported that the main reason for the new rule was to spread the game out and allow speed and skill to "supercede so far as possible mere brute strength and force of weight."

Football did not adopt the forward pass to score more points, but rather to protect the players. Now look at the average amount of passing plays to running plays up to 2009:

Passing far outweighs rushing--as also indicated by a comparison between the earliest NFL drafts and the most recent.

Drafts from 1936-1946 

9 run centered position players (Halfbacks, Fullbacks, Centers)

2 quarterbacks. 

Drafts from 2001-2011

1 run centered position player

9 quarterbacks

The league has flipped upside down from a game of bruising ground campaigns to aerial assaults, which has reduced mobile offensive lineman to static brickwalls. The first three weeks of this season produced the most points scored per game than the first three weeks of the previous ten seasons. Teams score by throwing the ball, which means the Broncos' 3-1 record under Tebow does not make sense, right? It does if you refuse to pigeonhole yourself into the NFL's assumption that you have to pass to win games. Coaches unknowingly collude to make this a reality and, by so doing, create a cult of personality around the quarterback position. Quarterback salary rises with the pressure to win games through the air. 

If every coach believes you must throw to win games, it one-dimensionalizes the game: the best thrower wins. We've seen this over the last ten years: teams use their first draft pick to acquire a franchise quarterback. They go all-in on one offensive piece; an important piece if you want to compete against the Tom Bradys and Aaron Rodgerses. 

The problem boils down to this: if you want to be a franchise quarterback, you need to take a franchise amount of snaps. So every team gives their quarterback a franchise snap count, and the team with the best quarterback wins. This was the Broncos'  problem with Kyle Orton: they played like it was a war against the Philistines, and sent their best guy against the best on the opposing side. Sure, David beat Goliath, but if you take God out of the equation, Goliath beats David 999 times out of 1000 (I'm leaving David some room here in case Goliath has a heart attack or some other internal failure of his giant heart or lungs). 

With Tebow, however, the Broncos are not allowing the opposing side, or the NFL in general, to impose its style on the game. Tebow as quarterback, eight passes in a game, is football's equivalent of a knuckleball: the hitter goes from thinking, "This looks ridiculous," to "Why can't I hit this?".

Denver's statistics say it all: the team rushes the most in the league with just above forty-one attempts per game. Because of this, the Broncos posess the ball on average thirty-two minutes per game with Tebow as quarterback, which is in the top ten for the league. Compare that to last year's average time of posession, and you see that the Broncos hold the ball four minutes more every game. That's a four minute rest-bonus for the defense this year. 

Every weekend, the Broncos tell the other team, "Okay, your Goliath is better than our David, so we're not going to play by your rules. Have fun sitting on the bench, Goliath." Their strategy is to keep the other team's quarterback off the field for as long as possible, which will increase their chances of winning against a more favored opponent. 

The cushiest job in the NFL, aside from kicker, might be Denver's defensive line. If you take Orton's games out of the statistics, Denver's defense is only on the field for 28 minutes, meaning the opposing team's defense is playing for 32 minutes. That means the Broncos' defense gets four minutes of additional rest per game while their counterparts on the other team have to spend those four minutes defending the run, an excruciating defensive postures. Four minutes means the world if you're 6'6'', 260 pounds. 

The offensive line gets more action, because rush-blocking is more fun than pass-blocking. Instead of building a cocoon around a pretty-boy quarterback, the guards get to pull around the center and knock the linebackers' teeth out. The center gets to bulldoze his way forward. The tackles get to lean forward and hit on the snap, as opposed to being on their heels searching for the blitz. They get to do what they've spent countless hours in the gym to do: hit somebody. 

Their excitement shows, because over the last three games, Denver is second in the league in rush yards per attempt, with 6. Run the ball, eat away the clock, keep the opposing quarterback making practice throws and your defense resting on the bench. Let the offensive line bulldoze forward, cause the opposing defense to suck wind, and make the franchise star impatient on the bench. Then tell Eric Decker to go long and get ahead of the run weary defense, and have Tebow toss a 56-yard touchdown pass.  

Espn anaylist Merrill Hodge says Tebow will never fit the mold of an NFL quarterback. He's right--and that's why they're winning. 

Joe Paterno's Tragedy

Disclaimer: First, I admit that a note like this could be, in the words of my internet-savvy wife, "too soon". But, to be honest, I don't know if any time in the future will ever not be too soon. What happened at Penn State over the last ten years is one of the most terrible tragedies I have ever heard of. I pray the adage "time heals all wounds" will apply to the scars of those who suffered (and are still suffering)l. I also pray thhat this adage will apply to the men who, through negligence, allowed this to happen. But I know it will not. God heals the victims of tragedies and even the tragic heros. But He does not heal the writers of tragedies when the victims are His little ones.

This is Joe Paterno's tragedy because he is the writer, not the star. 

***

Long before Shakespeare, Western tragic drama was a sadistic mess of action at which even Rambo would blush. Husband killed wife, brother killed brother, mindless butchery on the road to vengeance was never blurred by what Shakespeare calls the "pale cast of thought." The storyline for every play could be summed up by the Mosaic law "an eye for an eye," and drama was beholden to this idea until a Greek playwrite named Aeschylus changed everything with three lines. 

In the second of Aeschylus' collection of plays entitled Oresteia, Orestes is on the verge of exacting revenge on his mother, when she begs for pity and reminds him of their familial bond. The action that caused a surprised gasp to sound through the theater was an inaction--the first of its kind. Orestes stops to have a conversation: 

Orestes. What shall I do, Pylades? Be shamed to kill my mother?

Pylades. What then becomes thereafter of the oracles

     declared by Loxias at Pytho? What of sworn oaths?

     Count all men hateful to you rather than the gods.

Orestes. I judge that you win. Your advice is good.  

The moment between thought and action was revolutionary. Orestes is right: it is a terrible thing to kill your own mother. The dilemma causes him to pause and reflect on his future action. These three lines of thought in Orestia eventually turned into Shakespeare's twelve-hundred and fifty lines in Hamlet. Many of William Shakespeare's tragedies are case studies of humanity, and Hamlet in particular focuses on a question: What happens to our resolve in the moment when reflection defers action?

***

In 2002, in the locker room at Penn State University, Mike McQueary, at the time a graduate assistant to Joe Paterno, noticed former coach Jerry Sandusky sodomizing a young boy in the shower. McQueary was obviously disturbed by this sight reported what he saw to Paterno. Joe Paterno then reported the crime to Athletic Director Tim Curley and Vice President Gary Schultz. Sandusky was banned from using campus facilities. 

But that's not all. We also know a janitor, several parents, and even two police officers knew about Sandusky's perversions long before the shower scene witnessed by McQueary. 

At least ten people knew about Sandusky's crimes, yet no one called the police. Why?

This question gnaws on me, and I disagree with the easy answer that it was a university cover-up. I think we are so quick to latch on to the cover-up hypothesis because, if we examine this closely, we would see a terrifying breakdown in our own society and, perhaps, in ourselves. Orestes paused for a few seconds; Hamlet for a few months. These men paused for ten years, and would have remained frozen even longer. 

Recently, I watched a video in which a reporter staged a kidnapping on a busy sidewalk. The child was an actress that convincingly screamed "Stop! You're not my dad!" several times as the man held her by the arm and dragged her away. Undercover police were waiting at the corner to intervene every time someone tried to stop him. There was only one problem: The police never needed to intervene. Hardly anyone attempted to stop this alleged kidnapper. The scenario was repeated several times, nearly always with the same result.

The camera provided closeups of the bystanders' faces as they passed, with many actually dodging the victim and her assailant. The bystanders knew they needed to intervene but, as the moment passed with each step, their resolve diminished to the point that a few bystanders looked back in annoyance, rather than concern. These people saw a man taking advantage of a little girl who bleated for help as he dragged her away, and no one intervened. The line between Joe Paterno and ourselves is thinner than we think.  

Hamlet wonders the same thing I did upon watching this video and studying the Penn State tragedy. In Act IV, once again contemplating the revenge his father's ghost entreated of him, Hamlet says in bewilderment:

I do not know

Why yet I live to say, "This thing's to do,"

Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means

To do't.  (IV, iv, 43-46)

He knows what he must do. He has everything he needs. So why is the job still not done? To find the answer, we must examine a scene in the play where Hamlet has the perfect opportunity exact his revenge. He and his uncle, Claudius, are alone, and Claudius is kneeling in prayer. The stage is set for action. Hamlet says so himself:

Now might I do it pat, now 'a is a-praying,

And now I'll do't. And so 'a goes to heaven,

And so I am revenged. That would be scanned. 

A villian kills my father, and for that 

I, his sole son, do this same villain send 

To heaven.  (III, iii, 73-78)

To scan, to survey, scrutinize, examine. The entire play is Hamlet's scanning of the act he must do. And the scan perpetually delays the act because, when he scans, his resolve becomes "Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought...and lose the name of action." To be or not to be  . . . is that really the question, Hamlet? It sounds like the question should be "To act or not to act."

This was probably Paterno's question as well. College football coaches are incredibly focused scanners. They spend weeks, even months, surveying a team's strengths and weaknesses. They scrutinize defensive postures and offensive attacks, they examine playbooks and stat sheets. Is it any wonder, then, that Paterno scanned this situation before action? A distraught young man brings allegations that confirm his deepest fears about a man he once respected.

I believe he knew the police should have been called. But, in the interim, he told the athletic director and school president. Now there are three other officials who know about the incident. Just as there were three or four people on the sidewalk looking at each other, wondering why a child was screaming as a man pulled on her arm. Might it be that each person assumed another would call the police? And, even more terrifying: Does the fear of mistake, of embarrassment, trump the desire to act? And in the face of surmounting evidence? 

And like a man to double business bound

I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect.  (III, iii, 41-43)

After a week, no Pennyslvania State police officer knocked on Paterno's door. No news broke of an investigation against a former Penn State football coach.  Perhaps during practice one morning that week, he stood with his socks soaked through by the dewy grass, examining his quarterback through his trademark glasses, and thought:

What would he do

Had he the motive and the cue for passion 

That I have?   (II, ii, 570-572)

Now, those people on the street are looking back at the whining girl in embarrassment as they turn the corner. If they call the police now, they will have to face the question, "You had the chance to stop this man on the spot. Why didn't you do something besides call the police after the fact?"  

What to ourselves in passion we propose,

The passion ending, doth the purpose lose... (III, ii, 217-220)

This is not an acceptable answer. Nor is:

I do not know

Why yet I live to say, "This thing's to do." (IV, iv, 43-44)

That question must have taken on more weight, became more unanswerable, with each passing week, month, and year of Paterno's life. 

***

There is a remedy to the cowardly scanning that publicly destroyed Paterno, and privately destroys each of us when we handicap ourselves with thought. It comes from Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, the villian of the play. 

That we would do

We should do when we would; for this "would" changes

And hath abatements and delays as many

As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;

And then this "should" is like a spendthrift sigh,

That hurts by easing.  (IV, vii, 118-123) 

In Shakespeare's time, people believed a sigh provided ease because it thinned the blood. Another result of this, they thought, was a shortened lifespan, so people tried to refrain from sighing as much as possible.

Hence, as time passes, telling ourselves we should act might ease our conscience for the moment, but inevitably hurts us, as well as the victims of our negligence. For however many times in the last ten years Paterno thought he should call the police, his "would" had already birthed a bastardly justification that he had done what he was supposed to.  

Now, he is rightfully disgraced. The wrath of the nation, with the exception of a few blind individuals, is upon him. He is no longer a coach and no longer revered as a man of integrity. Recently, the commissioner for the Big Ten Conference erased Paterno's name from the Paterno-Stagg Trophy, a prize to be awarded to the conference champion at every year's end for decades to come.

Nothing is more symbolic of the effect Paterno's inaction had on his life than that word: Erased. The opposite of "to be." It is our actions, and inactions, that define who we are.

Which means that Hamlet had it right all along: To be or not to be really is the question, for all of us.

A Republican Rundown--Hollywood Style

Ron Paul This guy is the Hugh Grant of the Republican Party: he shows up around every four years to feed us the same generic romantic comedy plot we saw last time. He has a loyal fan base that raves about his accent and "comic delivery," which consists almost entirely of mumbling through his script. And he gets less sexy and more mumbly with each four year span, but it doesn't seem to matter because the same people who bankrolled his previous movie will always be there to bankroll future movies.

Now, I admit that I like some of what Ron Paul says, and I admire him for always bringing the field back on topic. But if you are one of the Ron Paul bankrollers, please stop giving your money to him. The man doesn't have a chance to win because most of the time he forgets the nature of his audience. A father with a family to support who just lost his job doesn't want to hear about how the current economic climate is a "correction." Think of the natural response: "I've spent the last ten years working my fingers to the bone, and Ron Paul just said it's correct that I lost my job?" Yeah, I know that's not what Ron Paul means. But average Americans need someone to blame for the fact that they're living paycheck to paycheck and have a hard time paying for the rising cost of living. The "business cycle" is not an adequate villian, even if it's what's truly to blame. But, like Hugh Grant, he gets points for being lovable. 

Rick Santorum In the spirit of Halloween I'm giving Mr. Santorum a hockey mask and an axe, because he is the Jason of the field. The man is nothing but a plot device. He doesn't talk a lot in debates, and nobody asks him questions. He just keeps coming forward, brutally killing all the non-virtuous candidates with wild accusations and false assessments. And the other candidates' reactions to his onslaughts remind me of what every lascivious girl screams before her demise in the previous twenty-seven Friday the 13th movies: they look at him with wild eyes and ask, "Where did you come from?" and "Why are you doing this?"

It makes sense on so many levels. Jason is like the avenging angel in those films because he kills off the characters who have premarital sex and terrible morals. In short, Jason is defending family values. He cares about the moral future of America. How many times have we heard Mr. Santorum stare into the camera with wild, googly eyes and yell things like, "Look at me! I'm the only values-based candidate!" Unfortunately, Jason always gets beat by someone more virtuous in the end. But, on a more optimistic note for Mr. Santorum, they keep making movies about him. And I'm still waiting for him to blurt out, "Newt Gingrich cheated on his wife!" 

Newt Gingrich The unfortunate man who gives proof to the belief that we look like our names. I have to give him the Bruce Willis from Die Hard award. The Newtster just keeps coming back. Just when you thought his career was dead in the water, he writes another book with the same plot as the previous book and titles it with a rearrangement of words from the previous title. Then he does a book tour. He's the only candidate that can still be alive after denying allegations that his heart is not in his campaign from a Mediterranean cruise ship. 

But the real comparison to Bruce Willis is in their wit. My favorite scene is when the hotel hijackers find one of their henchmen dead and dressed Santa hat in the elevator with a shirt that reads, "Now I have a machine gun. HO HO HO." Anyone can kill a henchman, and I'm sure anyone could dress the dead guy up like Santa Claus. But it's that added charm, that final HO HO HO that turns gory murder into vengeful (dare I say it?) art, and makes the audience go from gasps to laughter. No matter which hostage situation the candidates are debating-- the economy, jobs, the national debt, immigration polocy, 999-- Newt Gingrich has a quip that will make us laugh and rescue us from debate doldrums. But he is surprisingly efficient, and you are left astonished and telling yourself, "He's just one man. HE'S JUST ONE MAN!" Of all things he is, he certainly isn't newtered. Yippie ki yay mother f*****. 

Michele Bachmann Not since Hillary Clinton have we seen a woman rise up and lead with grace, intelligence, and determination quite like she does. I'm referring to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. Michele Bachmann is not that woman. But not since Sam I Am from Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham have I heard someone who says "I am" more than Michele Bachmann. And that's saying a lot, since Sam I Am actually holds up a sign that says I Am Sam. 

Michele I Am is a federal tax attorney. Michele I Am is on a thousand committees. Michele I Am is the only person to do this or that and sign such-and-such pledge. Michele I Am is the proud parent is 23 children. Michele I Am is willing to go to great lengths to make us like her. Would you like her in a box? Would you like her with a fox? Would you like her if she promised to defund the Department of Education? At least Sam I Am stops talking about himself and focuses on important issues like green eggs and ham. But that's hard to do when your message is your resume.

Rick Perry I remember the first time I saw Keanu Reeves act. I was twelve, and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was on TBS. The movie features Keanu as Ted, an idiot teenager who stumbles upon a telephone booth time machine but, instead of doing something brilliant like Biff does in Back to the Future and buying a future Sports Almanac to bring back to now and bet on the winning teams, decides he'd rather get an A on his history report. 

But then I saw Keanu in Rush Hour, and I thought to myself, "Wow. He's still kind of Ted." Then I saw him in The Matrix, which could have been titled Ted's Mom Just Died and no one would have batted an eye. After a while, all you see is Ted saving a speeding passenger bus, Ted fighting machines, etc.

Rick Perry has the same problem. In the first debate, I thought to myself, "Wow. He sounds like an idiot." Then I saw him in New Hampshire, and realized that the first might not have been a fluke bad day. It wasn't until after the opening statements in Las Vegas when he said "..a conservative of conviction. Not. A. Conservative. Of Convenience," that I realized he is a legitimate idiot of the worst kind: the kind that doesn't know they're idiots. The man says things no intelligent human would say if he were running for president. In one instance, Anderson Cooper asked him a question which he flat out didn't answer. Here is a paraphrasing of the exchange:

Anderson: But you didn't answer my question.

Perry: Hey, you ask the question how you want, and I'll answer them how I want to.

Translation: My debate prep team told me to evade questions I don't want to answer, and I just spilled the beans. Oops. I guess I shouldn't have done that. 

Another similarity between Rick Perry and Keanu Reeves is the "I hope no one notices I just soiled my britches" face. If I had a dollar for every time Rick Perry looks like he just crapped his pants I would be part of the 1% against which Occupy Wall Street has such a vendetta. Now he's bringing up Obama's birth certificate again. I want Perry to get in Ted's telephone booth and zoom to the future so he can see that he never was, nor ever will be, President of the United States. Then I want to send him back to the Paleolithic era so he can be with animals that speak his language. Then I want to disconnect his telephone line and leave him there.

Herman Cain  When my wife holds a baby, and that baby farts, my wife laughs and talks about how cute the baby fart was. When I fart, she looks over at me with dementor eyes and tells me I'm disgusting. This is the same double standard Herman Cain is wrapped in, only he is on the "baby fart" side. The man is like Winnie the Pooh. If piglet or rabbit had a gluttonous, obsessive-compulsive relationship with honey, it might be cute for a little bit, but after a while Christopher Robin would start to laugh awkwardly and distance himself. If Eeyore went to such dangerous lengths for honey like fighting ravenous bees and climbing trees, we would take him to the doctor for some Ritalin (maybe a Ritalin/Zoloft cocktail?). But Winnie the Pooh gets a pass on all this behavior, because he's so dawg-gone cute and cuddly.  

Now imagine if Winnie the Pooh said he wants to build an electrified fence around the Hundred-Acre Woods to keep foreigners out. For a second, we might picture charred human remains. But then we would see Pooh rub his belly and say something like, "I'm so rumbly in my tumbly!" and we would smile and think that maybe he is someone we could see leading the Hundred-Acre Woods. A nine-percent federal sales tax on acorns, in addition to a state sales tax? That one whistling mole with the miner's headlight would be pissed. But then Pooh would smile and say, "Aww shucks wabbit," and everything would be better and the mole would go back to digging tunnels to smuggle illegal aliens under the electric fence.

Mitt Romney When I was twelve, my mom left with my sister for a week. I don't remember where they went. All I remember is that my dad sat my younger brother and I on the couch and said, "We are going to watch some movies I think it's important for you to see." He dumped the contents of a Blockbuster bag onto the coffee table, and I noticed a cassette sleeve with a cracking, phosphorescent green egg on the front.

"What's this one, dad?"

He explained that it represented the most fear he'd ever felt in a theater. Then he pushed it into the VCR, and for two hours I watched a rather timid alien kill each of the crew on Ripley's mining spaceship. As the credits rolled, I thought I had survived the most terrifying moments of my young life.

Then my dad put Aliens, the sequel, into the VCR.

The first alien, like I said earlier, was timid. He hid in the shadows and thought, "What the hell am I doing on this spaceship, and who are these weird creatures?" The aliens in the second movie are thinking, "Who cares where I am? Let's see how many humans I can kill in the next two hours." They know what they came here to do, and they scare me in their efficiency. 

Mitt Romney part one was a disaster. He never went for the throat, and always seemed awkward on stage. But Mitt Romney part two is attacking with vengeance and purpose. My favorite line of the debates so far was when he said, "You know, it's been a rough couple of debates for Rick," after Perry tried to lob a ridiculous accusation his way. Plus, it seems like his campaign has a much better strategy than last time. 

I must point out that, in an odd coincidence, Romney is going against a field that includes a bunch of white males, a woman, an african american, and an android (Rick Perry). The alien combated against a similar line up: white males, Ripley (woman), an african american guy, and an android. I don't count Private Vasquez, Jenette Goldstein's character, as a woman in this case. Google images will tell you why. 

But I'm afraid this coincidence doesn't count because I just compared the best looking candidate with what has been voted the ugliest villian in movie history. 

Jon Huntsman Most of my friends know I love mathematics. But most of my friends don't know the reason I love mathematics is every character Jeff Goldblum has ever played. If a director is casting for a film, and he needs a character to say a few intelligent lines but be okay with getting killed off early, he calls Jeff. Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park is the archetype of both Jeff Goldblum's career and Jon Huntsman's candidacy for presidency.

Ian is a mathematician that, for no explicable reason, John Hammond needs to inspect his dinosaur park before it opens to visitors. He doesn't say much but, when he does, his words are nuggets of reason, like reminding Dr. Hammond that "life finds a way" even though all the dinosaurs on the island are female. Unfortunately, his reasonableness is mocked by his counterparts--"so you're saying that a group composed entirely of females...will...breed?" So who do you think gets the last laugh when the dinosaurs rip down the fences and Dr. Grant starts to find broken reptilian eggshells?

Not Ian Malcolm. In a remarkable display of courage, he stands by his instinct to save the children from the T-Rex by running into a vacant bathroom even though the party leadership, Dr. Grant, yells "Ian...Freeze!" He doesn't die, but falling banana leaves from the collapsing roof break his leg when the T-Rex destroys the bathroom. His reward for his bravery is to spend the rest of the movie in the command center, doing miniscule tasks like reading schematic maps. 

Huntsman's reasonableness has made him the man under the crazy-heavy banana leaves. He's heroic because he believes in climate change ("Life finds a way...") and other beliefs considered impossible to the rest of the pack. But his reasonableness is what leads him to run into the bathroom to save the country from the T-Rex, even though the American people wonder whyy he's even running at all. Fortunately, Huntsman will survive this bloodbath, and return in four years with his version of The Lost World.

God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates reason. Jon Huntsman uses reason. Man destroys reason. Man doesn't vote for Jon Huntsman for President of the United States.  

Why I Hate Potlucks

I hate potlucks. I hate potlucks so much I call them potyucks. You expect a dinner but end up with a plate full of rice, rolls, and cookies. Someone always brings a bucket of KFC original recipe, but the bucket only has fifteen pieces, and they are gone by the time you get to them. I know some of you are already typing your comments: "My ward has the best potlucks..." or "My mom always makes this amazing dish..." Hold off for a second, because there is a much deeper reason for my communal dining hatred. There are exceptions to general rule of potluck crappiness, and I will get to those eventually. 

A potluck is a game theorist's worst nightmare because there is a logical, gaping flaw in the incentive system that the potlucker relies upon to create a good meal. The flaw is the same one found in the insinuated explanation of the Nash Equilibrium from the movie "A Beautiful Mind." We need a quick review of the movie before we dive headfirst into the three rice dishes, unlimited rolls, and cookie fest that is a typical potluck dinner, about which even John Nash himself would have turned to his imaginary friends and said, "Screw this, guys. I'm going to Taco Bell."

The explanation I refer to is when Nash and his friends are hanging out in a bar. A beautiful blond woman walks in with her less-attractive brunette friends behind her. Nash has his "aha" moment. The friends begin to joke about how they will fight, "shall we say swords, gentlemen, pistols at dawn" to be with her.

Friend:  Have you remembered nothing? Recall the lessons of Adam Smith, the father of modern economics.

All together: In competition, individual ambition serves the common good. 

Friend: Every man for himself, gentlemen. And those who strike out are stuck with her friends. 

Now the scene is set; the blond looks over, and Nash sees her face flash. Here comes the breakthrough. Cue the mystical music.  

Nash: Adam Smith needs revision. 

Friend: What are you talking about?

Nash: If we all go for the blond, we'd block eachother. Not a single one of us is going to get her. So then we go for her friends, but they would all give us the cold shoulder because nobody likes to be second choice. But what if no one goes for the blond? We don't get in eachother's way, and we don't insult the other girls. It's the only way we'd win. That's the only way we'd all get laid. 

And...scene. 

However, there's a problem with this scenario, and this same problem creeps up when you examine a potluck mathematically. Let's assume I am one of Nash's two other friends. Nash is right: I would go for the blond just like all the other guys. 

But let's say we follow Nash's advice, gather around a pool table and hash out a game plan. Here are the strategies I have to choose from:

A. Hit on the blond. 

B. Hit on friend #1.

C. Hit on friend #2.

D. Hit on friend #3. 

We decide to listen to Nash and agree that strategy A is not an option. So I choose strategy B, Nash chooses strategy C, and our other friend chooses strategy D. This is the agreement we make when we put our hands together, yell "break!" and start the execution of our plan to get laid by non-blondes. After we leave the pool table, what do you think will happen?

We will all go for the blond.  Why?

If I, as an individual in the group, know everyone else has chosen a strategy that does not involve the blond, I have a voluptious incentive to deviate from my present strategy and hit on her. However, every other man leaving the table thinks the same thing. So we end up crowding the blond, even after we've created a strategy for exactly the opposite.

A Nash Equilibrium is a list of strategies, one for each person, such that if each player knows the strategies of the rest of the group, he has no incentive to deviate. The payoff for deviating must be less than the payoff for sticking with the plan. That is why all this "What if no one goes for the blond?" business is not a Nash equilibrium, because I am going for the blond if I know nobody else is. So what would be a Nash equilibrium in this scenario? 

Let's say I am stronger than both Nash and our other friend combined. If I said, "Listen, I'm going for the blond. If you guys go for the blond, I will take you out to the alley behind this bar and smash your face in with a crowbar." 

Now I get the blond, and my friends (if I can call them that after this exchange) have no incentive to deviate from their strategies of going for her friends, because they know there's no way they will get laid with a smashed face. We all follow the plan because the plan is the best thing for each individual. 

Now let's transfer this knowledge to the scenario of a potluck dinner. A potluck is an agreement between a group of people to each bring a dish from one of usually four or five categories: Main Dishes, Bread/Rolls, Desserts, Drinks, etc. But let's assume, to start, that we only have one category: Main Dishes. Usually everyone assumes this will be a great meal because everyone will bring their "favorite" dish. I will also assume that a big bowl of rice or pasta does not count as a main dish. What would you say if you asked your mom what she was cooking for dinner and she said "We are having just plain white rice!" or "Cooked pasta!" Exactly. Not a main dish.  

The blond, the holy grail in this scenario, is to make something as cheap and quick as possible. Her brunette friend is the strategy to make something delicious and dinner-worthy. Granted this is an oversimplification, but I'm not going to list every strategy in the potluck strategy set. 

Everyone agrees to the unwritten potluck law: to bring your favorite dish (by the way, this scenario works whether or not there is a sign up sheet).  That is the brunette: we all agree to bring something dinner-worthy. But, with little accountability mechanisms or potluck regulations, as soon as we leave the pool table incentives such as cooking-time and the value of a dollar cause nearly all of us to deviate from our agreed strategy, and for the same reason Nash and his friends would deviate: if everyone assumes everyone else will stick to the agreement to bring something dinner-worthy, I can get a great dinner for ten minutes and fifty cents worth of rice. I'm going for the blond.   

This is even more evident in a multiple-category potluck. Ever wonder why the Breads and Dessert categories fill up quicker than the Main Course on a sign up sheet? It's cheap and easy to make cookies or buy a cake and essentially trade that for a full hot meal. Ever wonder why more desserts and less main courses seem to show up, even though your sign up sheet has them equal? People don't bring what they sign up for, because it's not rational to do so. If I see all the slots for desserts and bread filled up, I'm forced  to bring a main dish. Therefore, I will either make a crappy, cheap main dish, or I will just bring a dessert and not tell anyone. The incentives to deviate are stronger than the incentives to keep my agreement. 

I know some of you think this is not true, because you've been to a few amazing potlucks in the past. Guess what: it is true, and the potlucks you're thinking of inadvertently created a Nash equilibrium to solve it! There are two ways to achieve Nash equilibrium: make the blond uglier, or the brunette prettier. 

This best example of this I can think of is in my ward back in Washington DC. At their monthly potluck, they had thick Middle Eastern meatballs, juicy BBQ chicken, and taco salads. And they always had leftovers. Why does this potluck work, where others fail?

The answer is this: the meatballs were called "Brother Ahmad's Middle Eastern meatballs," the BBQ chicken was referred to as "Sister Johnson's Amazing Chicken," and the taco salad was known as "Elder Wayne's Southwest Taco Salad." Every month, the members of this potluck knew their names would be attached to the dishes they presented. There was a good pride incentive to make the best dish possible, and to make enough so that everyone could try it. The better yoru dish is, the more you want to make. 

If the potluck is a one-time thing, you could require each dish to have the name of the person who made it. The public reason could be because you want everyone to know whom they should thank for this dish. But the private, real reason is to create a barrier to deviation, because nobody wants their name associated with a crappy dish. The blond just got a little more homely, thereby forcing a Nash equilibrium on the potluck. 

Another way is to make the brunette eclipse the blond. This can be done with a positive incentive structure like a main course contest, where each member of the potluck votes for their favorite dish, and the winner receives a prize. Also, if you have a sign up sheet, no one will try to sneak in a dessert instead of a main course, because everyone will know they didn't keep their word. Now there is both a desire to win and a a reason to put your name on your dish; a double Nash whammy! 

Potlucks are like negotiations. Successful ones have incentives and barriers that force each party to perform his part of the agreement, because that is the best course of action. The Middle East peace negotiations suffer from a broken incentive structure. Maybe it's time a mathematician got in on those negotiations and opened up a can of whoopnash. But please don't bring that to the next potluck, unless you're bringing a bucket of KFC to go with it. 

Why I Read Fiction

As most of you already know, I accepted the call to be a traveling husband while my wife finishes her studies in Amman. Upon landing, my first order of business was to find a bookstore. Kristi and I took our guidebook's advice and trekked out to a small bookstore/coffeeshop in downtown Amman. 

I don't really like bookstore/coffeeshops. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because one is a disseminator of knowledge, while the other produces mere mocha and free wifi. Maybe I see the backslash as a futile attempt to reconcile the deep concentration required for reading with the rapid, mindless humor of tweets and status updates. Bookstores are not social networks. They're where I go to escape social networks.

Nevertheless, we browsed the merchandise. Economics, Business, Politics, Humor, Sex, Mystery, and Love. Titles like, Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite and Don't Take the Last Donut: New Rules of Business Ettiquette and Finding Your Love Without Losing Your Life. I passed all these with a frenzy

I found sustenance in a small dark corner with a shy nameplate that said, "Literature." But it was only a mirage. There were a measly fifteen books; all with orange casing; all grossly overpriced despite the authors' expired copyrights.

"Did you find anything?" Kristi  asked.

"No."

"Well, are you sure? Why don't you just get something?"

"No, this is not what I want."

I found my bookstore on top of a staircase with exactly eighteen steps and a sign at the bottom of the staircase that read, in English, "You are 18 steps away from probably the best bookstore in Amman." It reminded me of a Ford advertisement recently that said, "Our quality is now equal with that of Toyota."

Probably the Best Bookstore in Amman hosted a large collection of literature from Hemingway, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald. I bought the unabridged version of Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo--the title because I hadn't read it since high school, and the version because I have eight hours a day to kill. 

I immediately began to devour The Count of Monte Cristo. I read about Fernand and Danglars' betrayal of Edmond Dantes as the United States threatened to veto Palestine's United Nations bid for statehood. As the stock market plummeted due to fears of a Greek default, I was thrown out of the Chateau d'If in a body bag and discovered the treasure behind the twentieth rock on the Island of Monte Cristo. As protestors occupied Wall Street and demanded changes to a currupt system, I took revenge against the corrupt prosecutor Villefort and his self-serving invocations of the law. And, finally, when the seemingly unimportant nation of Slovakia stood tall and made its voice heard against a new Greek bailout, I bouyed up the feeble, yet honest, Morrel family with my treasure. 

When my friends and I visit bookstores, I immediately set sail toward the vast sea of literature only to find myself alone in my skiff. As a friend once said when I tried to convince him to read War and Peace, "Why would I spend so much time reading about an event that didn't occur to characters that didn't exist?"

This is an excellent question. A novel is an investment of time that could be spent building a repretoire of business terminology or solidifying one's knowledge of C++ or the Middle East peace process. In this higly specialized, obscenely competetive society, what value does a piece of literature have if you cannot quote from its pages in a job interview, or use the information to rise in the company's ranks?

The above question reminds me of Villefort's paralyzed father, Noirtier. Confined to a wheelchair without the ability to move or speak, Noirtier's body is lifeless except for his bright, large eyes that burn with anger, droop with compassion, and shine with love. Noirtier cannot work or play; he can only think and feel. But his eyes have more power than the words or actions of the most powerful members of the household. His power comes from the depth of his feelings and his ability to feel them. 

I don't mean to downplay the importance of non-fiction. The knowledge of subjects such as history and economics are vital to our society because they provide lessons that guide us in our actions. But it's feelings like compassion, love, vengfulness, and hate that separate us from our primate ancestors. Non-fiction teaches mankind how to think and do. Fiction teaches us how to feel. 

Fiction is not about made-up characters; fiction is about made-up ideas with characters and plot lines superimposed on top. This requires the reader to dig and reflect on the novel's themes more so than the straight-forward way non-fiction disburses information. We must attack a novel with the weapons the Russian General Kutuzov used to attack Napoleon: patience and time. We must fill the bathtub with the author's words and soak in them.

I learned from my wife that precious jewels of wisdom are not easy to come by or cheap to purchase. As I read novels, sometimes a passage will burrow into my soul and grow until it bursts in a desire to share it. One particular night, near the end of War and Peace, I read these words about Pierre that changed my life:

Pierre's insanity consisted in the fact that he did not wait, as before, for personal reasons, which he called people's merits, in order to love them, but love overflowed his heart, and, loving people without reason, he discovered the unquestionable reasons for which it was worth loving them.

I interrupted my wife's work in my excitement to read her this passage. When I finished, I looked up to see if it touched her heart like it did mine. She just smiled and said, "That's wonderful. Who is Pierre?"

She then kindly explained to me that the passage does not mean to her what it did to me, because she didn't know Pierre. I realized that this quote would mean nothing to me as well if I had not suffered, rejoiced, and matured with Pierre over three months of late nights and bloodshot eyes. I received this revelation only after I proved my devotion. 

Devotion to what? Perhaps devotion to the belief that there is more to life than what the news leads us to believe. I don't read novels to escape life. I read novels to peek at life from the platform of God. Twelve-hundred pages and four months to catch a glimpse of the infinite is worth the price. 

I read fiction because I hope to see life through Noirtier's eyes, full of passion and color that transcends the monotony of my job applications and my bank account. Otherwise, I would be doomed to look through the lifeless, billboard eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg at the charred remains of autoshops and railroad tracks that are covered in ashes and lead to nowhere.