Champagne-Bottle Sizes and Acronym

I was recently skeptical when a friend used the term  Jeroboam in a game of eye-spy recently. I had never considered the size of champagne and bottles and to use a bit of foreshadowing the word really sounded like a splendid belching noise. Anyway a bottle of champagne is 75cl and is the standard measuring unit we will use. 2 bottle is a magnum and I would imagine most people, like me, would have hear about this far.

Next at 4 bottles we have Jeroboam and at 6 bottles the similar sounding Rehoboam. The latter was a son of Solomon and thus a grandson of David. For some reason the 10 northern tribes were not happy with Rehoboam's ascension and invited Jeroboam to become King of a new state and is thus the first King of Isreal. Rehoboam is the first King of Judah and the last King of the United Kingdom of Isreal.

At 8 bottles we have Methusaleh, who may have been the oldest person to live at 969 years* - his Grandson Noah also lived to 950 years. Methusaleh died 7 days before the great flood. Apparently he is a direct descendant of Adam but then isn't everyone - interestingly it was Adam's third son Seth who got the whole populating the world ball rolling.

* although the Guinness Book of World Record does not recognise him.

Of All The Ads In All The World

This reminds me of the first time I used the Twitter API to search for most retweeted tweets on the day the Giants went to the White House.

Basketball Facts

Went to a table quiz last night and missed out by one point. We were outdone by the following question: What is 12 in London, 10 in New York, and 40 in Rome? Our first thought was clothing but one of our team members was adamant that a 10 in London would be a 6 in New York. She was right and wrong: dresses and suits have a difference of four but clothing only has a difference of two. We went with shoe size after my suggestion of bishops received no love.

Anyway, since the event was for a basketball team, I did some prep work* on basketball and learned a few interesting facts.

* My favourite prep work story is from a volleyball quiz where a friend had found out that USA was both Olympic and World Champions. When the quiz master announced that the next question was a volleyball question, he presumptuously wrote down the answer. The question? Who are the European Volleyball Champions.

My Brain Used To Hurt

This screenshot is taken from a match in the European Championships. When I started reading the names, starting with South and going anti-clockwise around the table, the flags distracted me a few times. I was wondering if this was due to* the similarity of the flags making my brain assume that they were the same but then being jarred when it realised that this was not quite true. However, when I look at this image now it does not have the same effect on me as I now look directly at each flag first - and thus do not allow my brain to fill in the gaps.

*  Sorry Morse

In some ways this reminds me of the chart below. I think it is difficult for people to do because we have been trained to read words and ignore colour (except possibly for added information such as red for danger). Firstly, I think this would be an easy game for someone who could not read but knew the colours. Secondly, I have done it three times and done better each time. It can take a while to undo the habits of a lifetime (I spread my three goes over 20 minutes), but it can be done.

Heat-Thunder and Knuckleballs

The art of the knuckleball, explained more fully in this Washington Post article, is to throw the ball so that it has at most one revolution before arriving at the batter. The lack of spin on the ball enables it to take advantage of turbulence. Because the turbulence will take the ball in a random direction, it makes the knuckleball a very effective pitch when executed successfully. What makes the knuckleball so difficult is that if you get more than one revolution then you are throwing a very easy pitch to hit - a slow, straight fastball (like cricket, movement is king).

To have a good expected value for the knuckleball then one must have a high expected frequency of throwing a knuckleball.

Back in 2010 Red-Sox flame thrower Daniel Bard, who was top five in average fast ball velocity, performed far better when following Knucleballer Tim Wakefield. This is because Wakefield threw a very slow knuckleball. The change in speed, going from the slowest pitch in MLB to one of the fastest, improved the efficacy of Bard's repertoire. Proof of how effective the change of speed is: the most valuable fastball in 2009 belonged to Tim Wakefield.

Just something to think of before game one of the NBA finals.

I Am Not Impressed With This Slime Mold

In the following video you can see a single-cell slime mold create a network between lumps of food. A large lump is used to represent Tokyo and then smaller lumps are then placed around it to represent the cities around Tokyo. The slime mold creates a network for passing the food around that according to the documentary's presenter is both 'absolutely identical' to the Tokyo rail system and more efficient*.  We also later see the slime mold 'do' the motorways in Britain, the best routes around Spain, some alternates to Route 66, and 'control' a robot..

* I would think that anyone praising Tokyo's efficiency is more to deal with the number of passengers it serves. What is the point of this comparison.


So why am I not impressed?

You Never Get A Second Chance To Make A First Impression

For me, the above is a truism for two reasons:

1. You never get a second chance to make a second impression or third impression or fourth impression ..
2. You can change someone's perception of that first impression

It is all moot as what happens last is more important than what happens first. My first English teacher thought me this with an example from a debate. A student he had coached finished with,

"Agreeing with this would be like a turkey voting for Christmas. If you were a turkey, would you vote for Christmas?"

A powerful argument. I was reminded of this when I came across a clip of Gordon Banks's save from Edison Arantes do Nascimento, a poor peasant boy from Brazil*. The clip, which is after the jump, contains what may be the greatest pass in football history but it is largely forgotten because of the play that follows it. Careful, it is right at the beginning of the clip.


*  A hint as to the providence of the version of the clip I watched.

Externalities

An externality is a transaction that has an effect, not valued in money, on a third party, who has not agreed to the transaction. Externalities can be positive, negative, or positional. A negative externality is one that causes a cost to a third party. If your neighbour has a party but is not kind enough to invite you, it may cost you some sleep but it will not cost you money. A positive externality creates a benefit for a third party. Educated people are less likely to commit violent crimes. A program that keeps more children in school* until they are eighteen helps to create a safer society. A positional externality, also called keeping up with the Joneses, is the cost of maintaining your status. Externalities are important for forecasting in business because companies need to be aware of changes in their environment that could affect them.

In the 2009 book SuperFreakEnomics the authors discussed an invention that would help reduce hurricanes. Hurricanes are caused by overheated surface water. In the book they discuss the waters off the SE coast of America that cause hurricanes resulting in an average of $10bn worth of damage annually. The machine would get cold water from over a 100ft down and bring it to the surface to cool the water there – a reverse convection pattern. The items would cost $1bn to deploy. $1bn to $10bn seems like a bargain –and this is before human costs are taken into account - but are there any third parties who should be concerned.

Ireland has a 25^th-75^th percentile December temperature of 6°C - 11°C. The Kamchatka Peninsula* in Russia is on the same latitude and also on a coast. It has a 25^th-75^th percentile December temperature of -4°C - -9°C. This is because the Gulf Stream, originating in the warm waters off of the SE coast of America. Climate scientists fear a drop of at least 10°C for Ireland if the Gulf Stream were to somehow be (or should that read 'were sowehow to be'?) switched off by global warming. It would be tough to disinsentivise Mother Nature but could you disinsentivise another country?

* Important things to control for here are latitude and distance from the ocean. The latter because bodies of water heat up and cool down more quickly than the land surrounding it causing more median temperatures. I was delighted when I looked at the map to find such an excellent control.

If this was another person – think Mr. Burns blocking out the sun in the Simpsons – the act could be criminalized, or people could bring civil law suits, there might even be a way to tax it. These are the most common ways to prevent a negative externality. Here the situation is more like missiles have been placed on a country’s border: one country claims the right to defend itself; one claims the right to peace of mind.

Externalities are important for business because they represent hidden opportunities and threats in their operating environment. Every government budget brings with it new rules that can have profound effects on businesses that need to be thought of beforehand. Speaking of budgets, perhaps an agreed drop of several degrees in temperature might be used to leverage several billion dollars from American pockets – No Taxation Without Frozen Precipitation!

You Never Know

I intend for the following clips to be demonstrations that assuming someone is behaving like a rational actor often amounts to the same as making no assumption at all.

The first video is from the New York Times and concerns the Umbrella Man, a man seen holding an umbrella -on what was a clear, sunny day - beside JFK's car as the shots were fired. Surely there could only be a sinister explanation?

The second video is from the American version of Family Fortunes. The topic is "Words or Phrases Beginning with 'pot;".

OED Conspiracy

On a night out, in the not too distant past, I told a friend what I believed to be the origin for the use of the word 'love' in tennis to represent a no-score. I did point out that I had not verified and, thankfully, he looked it up in the OED. The OED, apparently, points out that 'love' is used not because of an Anglicization of 'l'ouef', which was the common shape of a zero on a scoreboard. Instead, apparently, it is short for 'love of the game'. This sounded ridiculous to me and, based on this, I posited the theory that the OED was attempting to minimize the credit foreigners were given in the development.