Jon and I were debating the following pet theory of mine during Monday Night Football: if you've just scored a touchdown to go up 7 very near the end of a football game, you should go for two and not one. Jon told me I was wrong, and after some probability calculations we decided that I probably am wrong. But I decided to check it out with slightly more rigour now.

So here's the math. I've made several simplifying assumptions, e.g. that the chance of making an simple extra pt is 1.0, that the opposing coach will play for the tie if he scores a touchdown and he's down 1, and that the probability of winning in regulation if you convert the two is 1.0. Of course, we're assuming that the other team will score a touchdown because that's the only relevant case. Without further ado:

x = 2pt conversion success rate for both teams
p = your team's chance of winning in overtime

prob. of winning going for 2 > prob. of winning going for one

(explanation: the addends on both sides of the first inequality are the probability of winning in regulation and the probability of winning in overtime, respectively)

x + (1-x)p > (1-x) + xp
x + p-xp > 1-x + xp
2x - 2xp + p -1 > 0
2x(1-p)-(1-p) > 0
2x - 1 > 0 [since p < 1, 1-p > O]
2x > 1
x > .5

So it turns out my strategy is a good one if the 2pt conversion rate is greater than .5 (which it is not) and a bad one otherwise, regardless of one's chances of winning in overtime, which is perhaps counterintuitive. Though I haven't done ol' al-jabr in quite a while, so it wouldn't surprise me if I've made a mistake.

Of course, if the 2pt conversion rate were greater than .5, my assumption that the other coach will go for the tie if down 1 would be wrongish.

Just to be clear dear friends: I don't really care about this, but the alternative would for me to blog about Rawls, feminist philosophy, introductory ethics or Anselm (i.e. my current slate of school stuff).  ¶ 11:21 PM 0 comments

  I spent the last week in NYC. My parents are moving out of their house and into an apartment, so I came across some of my old journals the other day during my salvage operation. I steeled myself for the searing pain and dived in. Here's my favorite entry:

"Tuesday, August 26 1997

Much to write. First Day at Swarthmore, but I'm too exhausted to write at this moment. All I expected. Too bad."

Many of my entries from those days could be paraphrased to fit that mold, e.g., "Went to party. All I expected. Too bad." I report with some sadness that I can no longer summon quite the same cynicism.

I also found a quasi-absurdist short story I wrote in 9th grade. The sentences read exactly like my sentences do now, which is perhaps a compliment to my 14-year old self, but doesn't say much for my progress as a writer. A sample:

"My previous embarassment at misjudging the utility of the scissor was nothing compared to my disapointment at not honoring the peculiarly famous parcel of wisdom, 'Don't run with scissors in your hands.'"

I spied another article about torture in The Atlantic at the airport newsstand. I forget the author - the piece last year was by Bruce Hoffman. Both pieces take a rather ambivalent attitude towards the abuse of prisoners. It's a hard issue - but philosophers do have some helpful stuff to say about it and I don't think any philosophers are quoted in either piece. It's rather annoying to see that philosophy is so far removed from mainstream political discourse that relatively thoughtful authors do not think to consult philosophers where their input would be most relevant. I'll pick up a copy of The Atlantic and write some stuff on the piece on Friday.

I also decided to keep a food diary for my trip to NYC (aka New York on 4000 calories a day). Someday I'll write something about my theory of taste. Taste might be one place where relativism is correct (though not subjectivism or some such thing - 'de gustibus non disputandum est' is false, darnit)... anyhow, for the record:


Sunday-
Charlotte Int'l Airport:
(Manchu Wok) Beef w. broccoli, sweet & sour pork, fried rice (I have the strange urge to pummel my tummy with inferior
cuisine in anticipation of good food).
(Krispy Kreme) Chocolate iced donut
NYC: (Parents' restaurant) Whole lobster w/ ginger and scallions, Singapore chow mei fun (when I say "whole lobster" I mean I ate an entire lobster. Same goes for 1/2 Peking Duck below.)

Monday-

Flushing: (East Dim Sum) - beef roll, tripe, mexico buns, fish balls, spare ribs w/ garlic & black bean sauce, black sesame soup, deep fried rice balls with sesame filling, chicken feet

Chinatown: (a Malaysian place) - roti w/ chicken curry, deep fried red snapper with chili sauce, chinese broccoli w/ salted fish, iced coffee

Little Italy: (a stand in Little Italy) six zeppole


Tuesday-

Upper East Side: (Corner Bagels) Sesame seed bagel w/ cream cheese
Upper West Side: (Chirpin' Chicken) 1/4 chicken and ribs w/ potato salad
My sister complains that I rely too much on other people's
advice in picking places to eat. Chirpin' Chicken was the only
place I ate at during my stay in NYC without any previous
information, and it was also the worst.
(Lexington Candy Shop) Egg Cream
Midtown: (Joey Thai) Chicken w/ peppers and basil, fish cakes.
Joey Thai is a Chowhound darling, probably because it is located
inside a Blimpie's. The food's not bad, and it's cheap, but you're
really going for the the truly unique ambience
(24 hr. Korean joint) kim chee pancake, orange sac-sac, chocolate-covered sesame seeds


Wednesday-

Home: (unknown origin) scallion bun, pork & vegetable bun, pork & veg sweet rice dumpling
(Utopia Bagels) everything bagel
(some place in flushing) 1/2 peking duck, fish heads, snow pea shoots. That was a fatty little bird. The scallions and cucumber that
accompanied it did work pretty well to take the greasy edge off,
though.

Thursday:

Home: Italian bread w/ almond butter, corn on the cob, salt-poached chicken, 6 oz beef loin steak

Little Italy: (Feast of San Gennaro Festival) sweet italian sausage sandwich
(Eileen's Cheescake) mini strawberry cheescake
(Rice to Riches) Coconut Rice Pudding

Forest Hills: (Wilson's Dad's Restaurant) pork chow mein.

Friday:

Home: loaf of raisin challah, soy milk soup, salt-poached chicken, macaroni. The forecasted torrential thunderstorms were my excuse to stay home, but they never came.

Saturday:

Home: (from East dim sum) deep fried taro w/ pork filling, sticky rice w/ chinese sausage, coconut pudding

6 oz. rib eye

(Ben's Best) "The Sears" - Pastrami & Corned beef on Rye.
(Aphrodite's Sweets?) Cheescake, Tiramisu, Chocolate cake.

Sunday:

Flushing: (Sweet 'n Tart Cafe) Wonton noodle soup with pork & watercress dumplings, gai lan w/ oyster sauce, roast pork buns, tapioca in taro soup, peanut-covered glutinous rice balls.

Home: mini-bagel and onion roll from Utopia Bagels.


  ¶ 10:18 PM 0 comments

  Workin' on a computer at the Flushing Library - two minutes left till I get kicked off. I was carded as I entered - I had to show that I was not a high school student. A bit ironic that the guards are enjoined with the duty of preventing students from playing hookie at a library...   ¶ 9:03 AM 0 comments

  I have nothing of what it takes to do genuine history of philosophy, which makes completing a year-old paper on Anselm difficult when I've just discovered Friendster. My paper's on Anselm's doctrine of freedom, which is couched in the language of medieval theology, so I'm finding myself writing about good and bad angels. To wit:

"If he didn't sin, it would either be because of the knowledge of punishment or because he willed rectitude for its own sake -> but we know the bastard won't keep rectitude for its own sake, so he'd be keeping justice from fear, which would not be just. There's something illicit going on here. VIZ- Why can't we apply the same fucking logic to the good angels? We know they'll keep justice for its own sake, so why not give the bastards the knowledge, too?"

This was my 2:00am breakthrough, but I suspect it will undergo some revisions before I'm through. Hopefully I won't offend any theologians googling for Anselm's doctrine of freedom.

The maddening thing about philosophy for me is that any juicy tidbit I can come up with is so f-ing simple that a. I'm convinced someone has thought of it before and it's thus best to refrain from reading any more of the literature till the paper is in, or b. I'm convinced it's gotta be wrong, but it's best not to think on it too much right now lest we lose this brief moment of glistening juicy tidbit. And those juicy tidbits are good parts. Long periods of frustration punctuated with maddening juicy tidbits. Now I'm ready for some more...  ¶ 1:56 AM 0 comments

  Learned from Peter Gammons that there's no definition of what constitutes a swing versus a check swing in either the major league baseball rule book or the umpires' manual. One would think that one of the announcers would have seen fit to mention this during the thousands of hours of baseball telecasts I've watched in my life...

The definition of a swinging strike is:

"is a legal pitch when so called by the umpire, which
(a) Is struck at by the batter and is missed;"

and "struck at" is not further defined... From an ordinary language perspective, I'd have to say that the vast majority check swings are strikes, i.e. the batter strikes at the ball even when he holds up...

While this leaves the call up to the ump's interpretation, the NFL rule book appears to be worse - the question came up of whether one could call a replay challenge after a pre-snap penalty has been called, e.g. there's a fumble, the other team recovers, rushes to the line, and false starts - can you challenge the fumble at this point? The rules governing replay are not in the official rule book (they are provisionally in place till 2003), but they don't even mention anything about the challenge having to take place before the next snap! So it's not even clear from the rules, despite announcers saying it all the time, that getting that next snap off precludes a challenge.

  ¶ 4:16 PM 0 comments

  The Futile Pursuit of Happiness in the New York Times Magazine this weekend is an interesting intro into the hedonic studies done by economists like Kahneman over the past decade or so. The happiness studies are fun and interesting, though not terribly surprising. Any semi-reflective person over the age of 14 realizes that he is prone to gross errors in estimating the pleasure to be gotten from the things he covets. But it's always fun to read that parapelegics are happier than lottery winners.

Skimmed through the piece - the biggest problem with it is that it seems to buy into some common assumptions about happiness that are, I would guess, largely responsible for why people's pursuit of it is futile. The most problematic assumption is that happiness is an affective state or mood, something like pleasure. People who take hedonism seriously (e.g. Stoics, Epicureans, et al.) have known since ancient times that the pursuit of pleasure is highly problematic, and therefore so is the pursuit of happiness if one equates happiness with pleasure (that possessing cars, money and fancy houses is supposed to put you in).

Daniel Gilbert seems to allude to Aristotle in the article (''People ask why I study happiness,'' Gilbert says, ''and I say, 'Why study anything else?' It's the holy grail. We're studying the thing that all human action is directed toward.''). (Aristotle famously notes that eudaimonia/happiness is the end of all human action). But Aristotle's most basic result, that happiness is not a feeling, is not mentioned. So perhaps Gilbert wasn't actually alluding to Aristotle. Whatever.

Happiness as affective state is certainly not what all human action is directed toward (think Brave New World), so if Gilbert assumes that happiness is just an affective state (I doubt that he does), then he's certainly not studying the thing that all human action is directed toward.

Economists are sorta in an odd position on this one, though... What do they have if they can't take people's preferences or estimates of their own well-being seriously? I'll have to query the economisttobe on this.


  ¶ 5:57 PM 0 comments

  I've been meaning to scribble down some notes for stuff that came up at CTY this summer. Elaboration is for later. Anyhow, figured I should include some philosophy-ish content on a blog bearing a philosophy-ish name.

1. Answering "The Singer Solution to World Poverty" et al. on Peter Singer's terms. The responses I've read to Singer's thought experiments (haven't read many) concerning world poverty do not really address the datum of the thought experiment itself. Bob's situation is presented as a one time deal, whereas our ability to give to charity is not - this seems like a candidate for a morally relevant distinction between Bob's situation and our own. At the very least, it can change our intuitions about the case. Credit Jeremy.

Assuming an imperfect duty to help others, there are some interesting consequences that result from isolating a decision in a series of relevantly similar decisions: (imagine God smites people unless they say a prayer once per calendar day - doesn't matter when - just have to do it once per calendar day. Now try to figure out whether it is prudent for you to pray at 2:00pm if you haven't prayed yet, ceteris paribus. 2:01? 2:02?...)

2. Seabiscuit in the Alaskan wilderness. Don't quite remember what this is about - but it has something to do with Aristotle, excellence and flourishing being independent of Pimlico. Just look at that Seabiscuit run!

3. My TA claimed that it was dissonant (inconsistent?) to feel guilt over an action that one takes to be justified. This seems to me to be pretty clearly wrong, but might lead to something about rationality and emotions.

4. Some stuff on Nagel's "The Absurd", which is hinted at below. The crazy Scythians come up, too.

  ¶ 12:48 AM 0 comments

  I was disappointed that Britney and Aretha didn't kiss during the NFL's Kick-Off special tonight.

I've come to the conclusion that the standard camera angle in football is awful - it usually cuts off the entire defensive backfield and receivers from sight during a passing play, so the viewer has no idea what's going on downfield until the ball travels there. As a result, the typical viewer (like me) has no clue about the tactics defenses use in coverage or how receivers run routes.

So we never really get a sense of Jerry Rice's excellence in route-running or Darrell Green's excellence in coverage- we know that Rice must be a great receiver because he's caught so many damn balls in his life, and we know Green was a great cover guy because he was always there to break up the pass, but the television viewer never really sees the great receiver or great defensive back in action. So even diehard football fans don't have a representative mental image of Jerry Rice's greatness -- I can't really picture what is distinctive about him while he's running a route, and that's surely the bulk of what made him arguably the best football player of all time.

And the television commentators aren't very good, either. It's comforting to hear a guy in the booth reminisce about the ball-grabbing and biting that goes on whenever there's a pile-up for a fumble, but I'd like to hear more about the tactical aspects of the game. And offensive players are disproportionately represented in the booth too, so most of the insights we do get are about the quarterback making reads and such - you almost never hear about what kinds of reads the defensive backs or linebackers have to make. More ex-coaches in the booth!

As a result, I don't really know much about how football is played. Nevertheless, I got some tempting spam this morning from sportsbetting.com. No salacious subject heading - it simply read, "NFL Football." And despite not knowing anything about football, I was tempted to try to make some easy money. So I checked it out and saw that the Jets were 3 point underdogs to the Redskins in tonight's game. I figured the Redskins were a good bet. $50 on the Redskins.

Fortunately, I don't have high-speed internet access, for at some point during the 30 seconds it took to load up the "cashier" page, I realized that this was a pursuit of dubious rationality. If I won this bet, I'd bet again and lose in the long-run. If I lost, I'd lose. A losing proposition, it seemed.

The final score was 16-13, so my bet would have tied, an outcome I hadn't considered.   ¶ 12:27 AM 0 comments

  My subscription to Harper's has lapsed, so I've been busy entertaining myself with correspondence of the sort they might include in their "Readings" section.
I sent the following message to Safeway (which operates Vons in California) via their website on Friday afternoon:

"Comments: I enjoy your Safeway Select sodas. However, I was wondering about the prominent "Kid Approved!" emblem that they bear and what exactly that meant. Do you actually employ a panel of children to taste test each of
your sodas? If so, how many of the children have to approve your soda
before it can bear the "Kid Approved!" label? Or is it advertising
hyperbole? If it is mere hyperbole, I'd like to know also - I promise I
won't sue. If you have the time, a reply would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
A faithful Safeway Select consumer."

I received their response today:

"Dear Mr. Chan:

Thank you for your recent correspondence regarding "Kid Approved!" emblem on
our Safeway Select Grape soda.

Your comments have sent to our Marketing Department for review.

If you would like to discuss this further, please reply to this email or call
our toll free number at 1-877-723-3929...
One of our associates will be happy to assist you.

We appreciate your business and look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you
for shopping at Safeway.

Sincerely,

Brenda S.
Customer Service Representative"

I am now anxiously awaiting word from their Marketing Department.  ¶ 3:03 PM 0 comments