Worry

All you need to know about Samuel Alito, Bush's new pick for the Supreme Court vacancy?

He has been nicknamed "Scalito" for his ideological similarity to United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia.

I wonder what that investigation will entail

Legal fun in Brazil

Ouch

One ESPN columnist's recollection on growing up a White Sox fan:

The White Sox have been a constant in my life during that time. But, here's the scary truth. In that same year, 1975, my Dad took me to my first Northwestern football game (can you believe this guy? The Department of Children and Family Services has made home visits for lesser offenses). And, despite the fact that, at one point, they lost 34 games in a row and won just six in my four years of college there, up until the past month, Northwestern football had brought me far more memorable moments in my life than the White Sox. Being a Sox fan is like having a pet goldfish. It's just kind of uneventful.

I'd just like to point out that the alma mater beat a ranked opponent for the third consecutive week this afternoon, thank you very much.

I also disliked his analogy of a Sox fan being like a Zoroastrian yak herder from Uzbekistan. After all, I have no reason to dislike Zoroastrian yak herders from Uzbekistan.

Go Cats!

Lies, damn lies and misapplications of probability theory

I received some spam this afternoon. It happens frequently in my Gmail account, since I have a fairly common first and last name, and had the mixed blessing of scoring my name soon after Gmail launched. It's nice not having to append numbers or strange punctuation, but it means a lot of people trying to send mail to my namesake end up misdirecting it to me

Now, normally such things aren't of much interest, aside from the mild amusement at having folks ask if I'm coming to their barbecues or what my weekend plans entail.

Today, however, I was forwarded this month's edition of "Gentle Conquest," a newsletter from some evangelical ministry. And this particular newsletter explains -- mathematically, no less! -- why intelligent design is infallible and evolution is a load of anti-Christian bunk (typos in original):

Whether we are theologians or scientists, we can still prove by unwavering mathematical law that our universe--and life in it-- were designed by a transcendent engineering Intelligence. For example, take ten pennies and number each of them one to ten. Put them in your pocket and shuffle them. Mathematically, your chance of drawing out number one on the first draw is one in ten; numbers one and two in succession is one in 100. To draw out one, two, and three, in perfect order, your chance is one in one thousand. By fixed, mathematical law, your chance of drawing out all ten in uninterrupted order is one in ten billion. These are the odds of chance. Simply stated, it can't be done. Yet with such evidence before us, some still persist in arguing defensively for accidental evolution. You could more easily argue that your automobile--everything from cruise control to axles--resulted from a factory explosion in which all the parts coincidentally joined togeth! er in mid-air.

Amazing, isn't it? Simple probability revealed decades of science to be promoting fallacies.

Except that it doesn't.

For one, the numbers here don't add up. The minister (or whoever wrote this) failed to check his math. That is, he failed to grasp the concept of dependent variables. If the pennies are numbered one to 10, the odds that the first one drawn comes up with No. 1 is, of course, one in 10 (1/10). But the odds of drawing No. 2 on the second one are only one in nine (1/9), assuming we didn't put the first penny back, which seems to be the case in this example. And that means calculating the correct probability is thus 1/10 * 1/9 * 1/8, etc., or 1/10!. And that yields odds of 1 in 3,628,800. Not great odds, but almost three times likelier than one our minister-mathematician would have us believe.

Of course, what this problem has to do with evolution is a mystery, though it speaks to the larger issue of this person not grasping fundamental tenets of evolution theory. Or refusing to believe them. I assume this person rejects carbon dating and believes the earth is actually only 6600 years old, or whatever it's supposed to be according to the Bible.

A Velvet reconciliation?

Not so fast. While I've been lecturing people for several years now to cease using the term "Czechoslovakia" with the present tense, Czech Premier Jiri Paroubek seems more willing to bend to the intractability of the name abroad.

Paroubek has proposed that the successor states -- that is, the Czech and Slovak republics -- resurrect the name Czechoslovakia as a marketing tool, apparently since no one outside of the two countries seems capable of differentiating between the Czech Republic (previously branded abroad as the wince-inducing "Czechia") and Croatia or Chechnya. And pity the poor Slovaks. Major daily U.S. newspapers -- I'm looking at you, USA Today -- can't even tell the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia. It's a good thing, then, that the Croatian province of Slavonia isn't its own independent country, simply because that would introduce a further element of confusion.

OK, so really this just reveals that most people are stupid, or else intellectually lazy. (Sadly, I've encountered some highly educated people who lapse into use of Czechoslovakia, whether of ignorance or inertia.) But it seems that Paroubek is just as stupid, or lazy, for even suggesting this idea.

Of course, it is a bit of a conundrum. "Czech Republic" doesn't roll off the tongue any more gracefully than does "Czechia," and my adviser resents it as well for according special status to the Czechs when pretty much every other country, at least in Europe, has as its official name the "So-and-So Republic," e.g. the Slovak Republic, Hungarian Republic, Russian Republic, etc.

And that doesn't even get into the deeper, thornier issue of the term "Czech" being synonymous with both Bohemia and the country as a whole.

Justice American style

Yup, Saddam Hussein's trial pretty much confirms the obvious: that Iraq is a lot worse off in many ways than it was before Hussein was deposed.

"I watched some of the trial and I was upset, because his rule was better than what we have today," Qusay Muhammad, 24, said as he sold tea from a sidewalk booth. "I don't mean to say I love Saddam. I'm just making a comparison between the old regime and the government today."

Conservatives in particular should know that this sort of sentimentality for a bygone era always spells trouble for the current order, which in this case is America and whatever current semblance of an Iraqi government it's trying to prop up.

This anecdote strikes me as particularly telling, too, in that it isn't unflinching praise for Hussein from one Sunni Muslim to another. Without doubt, there were excesses and atrocities on Hussein's watch that no one should want to repeat, and for which a full and proper reckoning should be made.

But, it just goes to show that you need more than bayonets and "smart bombs" to build a democracy, that it can't be imposed by force from without, that forces from within have to do the heavy lifting throughout the entirety of the process.

Then again, we all knew this already. Or at least the sensible among us did.

You build a better brand of justice, I'll go ahead and build a dumber breed of criminal

Now, I've heard of people doing some crazy and not-so-crazy things to show their devotion to a favorite sports team or athlete.

Getting a vanity license plate that says "GOKINGS"? Not so crazy.

Getting your favorite team's logo tattooed on your posterior? A little bit crazy.

Naming your child for a playoff hero? Getting a bit more bonkers (though this psychosis has likely afflicted the greater Boston area in the past year, with an alarming proliferation of infants named Johnny, Manny or Ortiz in New England).

Extending the length of your prison sentence so that the number of years matches the number your favorite player wore on his jersey? Needless to say, this is just lunatic asylum insane.

The lawyers reached a plea agreement Tuesday for a 30-year term for a man accused of shooting with an intent to kill and robbery. But Eric James Torpy wanted his prison term to match Bird's jersey number 33.

"He said if he was going to go down, he was going to go down in Larry Bird's jersey," Oklahoma County District Judge Ray Elliott said Wednesday. "We accommodated his request and he was just as happy as he could be.

At least he chose not to honor hockey's Great One, Wayne Gretzky, who wore No. 99.

Or another memorable figure from Boston sports history, Bill "The Spaceman" Lee, a pitcher for the Red Sox who requested jersey No. 337 so that when he came out to pitch at Fenway Park he could do a handstand and have the back of his jersey read "LEE". Of course, that would be more appropriate in the case of this guy.

New adventures in toadying

An unfortunate byproduct of watching a lot of playoff baseball (and really, at this point I only seem to watch much of any sport -- OK, just hockey and baseball -- during its postseason, largely because it's more accessible) is having to sit through a lot of commercials. And a lot of the same commercial repeated to death.

Few commercials are ever good. Particularly for the non-Super Bowl division (and frankly, at this point the commercials are the only reason to watch the Super Bowl, or any American football for that matter, but that's a topic for another rant).

But some commercials are especially bad. Take a commercial for, well, I'm not sure what. (I do my damnedest not to pick up on the "product" being peddled, since that's what they want, and even if I did recall, it would only further serve the advertisers' purposes if I gave their wares free publicity. So I won't.) The whole message behind this campaign, I think, is that this product makes more things possible for business, which I think really means that corporate managers can use this product to further erode the places where their employees are relatively free of managerial oversight.

That in and of itself is bad enough. But the tag line for this is something to the effect of "Be a yes man," with various actors playing professionals reciting a line about how "I'm a yes man (or yes woman)".

Excuse me. Did they just confess to being a sycophant and take pride in it?

It's really sad that we live in a corporate culture (there's a contradiction in terms if ever one existed) where being a sycophant is something to be publicly proclaimed and boasted. I mean, I know they don't actually use that word, but they should. It'd at least make the spots comical, which would make them only slightly more bearable for me to have to watch.

Sheep go to heaven, Yankees go to hell [New York]

Angels 5, Yankees 3. Angels win ALDS, 3-2, to advance to ALCS vs. Chicago.

Suck it, Yankees fans!

¡Viva el Presidente!

Being a fan of anyone who dares to point out the emperor is naked, I really have to appreciate the candor of the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez.

On the CNN program "Late Edition" on Oct. 9, Mr. Robertson was back on the attack, citing unidentified sources who accused Mr. Chávez of sending "either $1 million or $1.2 million in cash" to Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks and asserting that Venezuela was trying to acquire a nuclear weapons capacity. The Venezuelan vice president, José Vicente Rangel, dismissed Mr. Robertson's remarks, saying, "He's crazy, at the very least."

And you just have to love their sense of humor. For one, they refer to Dubya as "Mr. Danger." For another, Venezuelan state television broadcasts clips of American officials criticizing Chávez, with the Darth Vader theme playing in the background.

Of course, the merriment in all this is sobered by the fact that the level of threat is much more grave. While it would defy logic for the Bush administration to try to depose Chávez, it's certainly not beyond the pale. Even if they claim otherwise.

"The U.S. has not planned, is not planning, will not plan and cannot plan to assassinate Hugo Chávez," the American ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, said in Caracas. "It would be a violation of both U.S. law and policy."

Right, because the administration has so often opted against military action where it would be in violation of U.S. law. That's reassuring.

Why not have some cheese with that $200 million bottle of whine

The New York Yankees -- yeah, those Yankees -- are miffed because Texas Rangers skipper Buck Showalter (a former Yankee manager) pulled three starters in the third inning in the season finale against the Angels, and the Rangers wound up turning a 4-1 lead into a 7-4 loss that gave Anaheim home field advantage in the Division Series against the Yanks.

Showalter said he wanted to pull his three stars to allow them to get a proper, final ovation from the home crowd in recognition of their fine individual seasons. It's commonplace for the final game of the regular season. Stars often sit out that last game, or just make a token appearance solely to please the fans one final time before the offseason starts. Evidently the Yankees don't find that very apropos, though:

Former Ranger Alex Rodriguez, who played for Showalter in Texas, was one of the Yankees who was peeved at the Rangers manager's decision.

"There's a code of honor when so much is on the line," Rodriguez told the New York Daily News. "You hope people do the right thing. But you can't control what people do."

That's right, the $250 million man and self-promotion machine extraordinaire A-Rod is speaking of a "code of honor." God, I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.

Of course, the Yankees, in typical New York fashion, can't possibly look in the mirror to notice that, hey, had they not gotten blown out in their own season finale on Sunday, they would've finished with a better record outright and rendered the game in Texas irrelevant. But then, the earth revolves around the Yankees, who clearly have every right to expect other teams to cater their strategies to suit the Yanks' needs.

And as an aside, let me just note that this sort of arrogance extends to Yankee fans as well. Prior to the 2001 World Series, a Yankee fan remarked to me that she hoped the series would go seven games, just because it would make it a little more exciting for her, since the Yankees hadn't stretched things out at all in winning the World Series the three previous years. Mercifully, karma came back to bite the Yankees in the ass.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: GO HALOS!

Military-industrial complex?

From the introduction to Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski's For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America, the textbook for the American military history I'm TAing for this quarter:

"When gauging America's strength against potential enemies, policy makers realized that the nation could devote its energies and financial resources to internal development rather than to maintaining a large and expensive peacetime military establishment." (xii)

I'd hate to see what the tab would be if we had a "large and expensive" military buildup, since ours is evidently more modest.