Why you shouldn't go for 2

The trend in the NFL lately toward analytics--or sabremetrics, or Billy Ball, or whatever we should call this data-driven discipline in football--is out of control, misapplied, and misinterpreted. What makes it even more annoying to me is the dumbness in the name of being smart. Let's break it down a bit.

First, football is not baseball. Football has a much, much smaller sample set of data to draw from relative to baseball, so trying to apply pure analytics to football is already a bit sketchy. A pitcher thows maybe 30 games a year of 80 pitches, giving some 2400 data points, but a football team scores maybe 3 touchdowns a game for 17 games, giving 51 data points to draw from. And for any analytics, sample size matters. This puts football at an analytics disadvantage out of the gate.

However, even if we assume the metrics bear out in football, bad decisions are still being made with the data available.

For example, in today's (12 January 2024) divisional playoff game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Detroit Lions, the Bucs were down 31-17 in the 4th quarter (14 points). The Bucs scored a touchdown and decided to go to the 2-point conversion. Going to 2 in this position is dumb for a couple reasons, even without applying analytics.

• The obvious: 2 TDs and extra points is 14 points, which is enough to tie.
• Even if you want to play for a win, you can kick for the 7 points now and go for 2 if you score again when it really matters.
• If the opponent were to kick a field goal, you can't catch them with 16 points, so going for 2 twice has no benefit even if successful.
• And maybe the worst reason to go for 2 too early: If you don't succeed, your team, which just made a great play to score the TD, feels like they failed. This puts the team at a psychological disadvantage.

I think my philosophy can be boiled down to this: Don't go for 2 points until it really matters.

I've seen a college team go for a 2-point conversion when they were down by 24 points in the first half. To do so, I assume the thinking must be that the other team will not score again and that his team can get 3 TDs and 3 2-point conversions to catch up. That's ridiculous! There are so many combinations of scores that could happen in the game that you don't even know if the 2 points will matter later in the game, but the 1 point that you are giving up if you fail may be the difference later in the game. But you don't know that until later in the game. If you make a decision now about what the situation might be later in the game, you are out-thinking yourself.

Now to the actual analytics: Chris Collinsworth, after the failed Bucs 2-point conversion, attempted to break down why it was smart to go for 2 points. To the best of my recollection, here was his argument (paraphrased):

The rate of successfully converting a 2-point conversion is 55%. The rate of success in kicking extra points is about 95%. So if you add that all up, it's a better chance to go for 2.

On the surface, this sounds right. If a 2-point conversion is successful 55% of the time, the average points per attempt is 2 times 55%, or 1.1 points per attempt. On the other hand, an extra point yields 1 point with a success rate of 95%, so the points per attempt is 1 times 95%, or 0.95 points per attempt. Since 1.1 points is more than 0.95 points per attempt, then going to 2 is on average better than attempting an extra point.

The problem is that the outcome of a game is not about averages; it is about situations. And each situation needs to be analyzed in terms of the desired outcome, or more specifically, the chances of all the possible outcomes that may be applied to a given scenario.

To show what I mean, let's break down 2 separate scenarios, assuming the team can score 2 touchdowns:

1. They attempt a 2-point conversation on both.
2. They attempt an extra point on both.

Scenario 1: Two 2-point conversion attempts

• Make 1st (55%) and make 2nd (55%)
  55% times 55%
  30.25%
  Result: WIN
  
• Make 1st (55%) and miss 2nd (45%)
  55% times 45%
  24.75%
  Result: TIE
  
• Miss 1st (45%) and make 2nd (55%)
  45% times 55%
  24.75%
  Result: TIE
  
• Miss 1st (45%) and miss 2nd (45%)
  45% times 45%
  20.25%
  Result: LOSS
  

Scenario 2: Two extra point attempts

• Make 1st (95%) and make 2nd (95%)
  95% times 95%
  90.25%
  Result: TIE
• Make 1st (95%) and miss 2nd (5%)
  95% times 5%
  4.75%
  Result: LOSS
• Miss 1st (5%) and make 2nd (95%)
  5% times 95%
  4.75%
  Result: LOSS
• Miss 1st (5%) and miss 2nd (5%)
  5% times 5%
  0.25%
  Result: LOSS

Note that the probabilities in both scenarios add up to 100%.

Now let's apply this to the desired outcomes.

Outcome 1: Don't lose the game

In order not to lose the game, the team must score at least 2 points.

For 2-point conversions, that means they must convert one or both of the 2-point conversions. The only scenario in which they lose is failing at both. Thus, there is a 20.25% chance of losing by attempting both 2-point conversions.

For extra points, they must successfully kick both extra points to avoid losing. If they make none or one of them, they lose. Thus, there is a 4.75% plus 4.75% plus 0.25% chance of losing. So attempting extra points gives the team a 9.75% chance of losing.

But wait! Going for 2 has a higher average points per attempt than kicking, but applying the probabilities to the desired outcomes shows that kicking the extra point results in less chance of losing the game!

However, a tie also gives the team a chance to win the game later.

Outcome 2: Win the game

Making both 2-point conversions is the only scenario that outright wins the game. However, we could combine scenarios in winning combinations (that is, kick an extra point and complete a 2-point conversion). Maybe I'll go through these scenarios another time.

However, a tie also gives the team a chance to win the game later.

Conclusion

To me, this is still a no-brainer. I would definitely take the extra point on the first TD to build on the success of the TD and take the free point. If my team scores another TD, in most situations I would take the extra point to tie rather than playing for the win. The tie gives my team a chance to play for the win on the next score (maybe in overtime).

What do you think? Do you agree that analytics is being misapplied to football?

New Florida education standard regarding slave skills

The Florida Department of Eduction under Governor Ron DeSantis recently published a new education standard about the skills that slaves acquired as slaves.

The standard can be found in this PDF document and states:

SS.68.AA.2.3
Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).

Benchmark Clarifications:
Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.

There is no doubt that slaves learned skills that were useful to them during their enslavement. Some examples:

• Don't speak unless spoken to.
• I have no doubt slave children learned a lot of new words from their masters.
• Don't complain if whipped or beat if you don't want more of it.
• Don't become too educated, especially if it makes you look smarter than your masters.
• Don't look at a white woman too closely if you know what's good for you.
• Don't ask for a sick day.
• Don't mention that you are too tired or hot to continue working.
• Don't ask to keep your children for your own when your master tries to sell them.

I'm sure there are a few other useful skills I missed. And I can only assume these are some of the skills that Mr. DeSantis wants to teach in the curriculum.

But seriously: Slaves certainly gained some "useful" skills. I would not deny that. However, the bigger question, to be academically honest, would be who benefited from the skills the slaves learned. The standard states the importance of emphasizing that there could be personal benefit to the slaves from these skills. This leads to several other thoughts about why this standard is worded this way.

• If a slave is trained as a blacksmith, for example, what personal benefit is supposed to be taught? Do they think this person got a 2nd job as a free man to make some pocket money?
• Do they think that after the slave was freed, his skill could be used for income? What percentage of slaves were freed during their lifetimes that this would have benefited?
• Do they think that the slave could use his skill to make the work of slaves more efficient? Do they think if the slaves became more efficient, they could shorten their workday?
• Do they think that the slave blacksmith is seeing such great benefit if he is allowed to make a new hinge for the door to his slave quarters?
• When 99% of the benefit of a slave's skills go to his owner, why is the benefit to the owner not the primary lesson being taught?

Do people not realize that without freedom, no matter what benefit or comfort is provided to a person, none of it has value? Are the people backing this standard not the same people who would cheer the word of the Founding Fathers, such as, "Give me liberty or give me death."?

In the light of these glaring holes in this standard, I can only conclude that the standard is driven by a very specific point of view with a very clear intention of making slavery sound, in some twisted moral sense, good.

This is not about the "leftist" media twisting the standard to their own agenda. This is about the value and intent of the standard itself.

What is bitcoin mining?

 A friend asked the following question on Facebook:

What does it mean to “mine for bitcoin?”
Bitcoin isn’t tangible, is it?

Concise answers only, please.

However, not being one for concise answers and still having a bit of teaching instinct, I tried to explain it all at a little more practical level than most technical explanations.

Apologies for any slight technical errors. This is meant to be a useful analogy, not an exact representation of bitcoin/blockchain.

My answer

 OK, story time.

Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies run on the blockchain. Blockchain is a transaction ledger. Each person is identify in the ledger by unique number (the wallet key) that identifies their account. The ledger just records the transaction that occurred. For example, account 123 transferred 5 brentcoin to account 456. The ledger is public, which means anyone can see the ledger to know what happened to all the transactions between accounts.

How do we know we can trust that the ledger can be trusted? This is where the bitcoin mining comes in. Basically, every transaction must be verified through mining. Basically, there is a mathematical algorithm that mining computers run to verify that the transaction is real. Mining often requires more than one computer to come up with the same answer, and if enough computers agree on the answer, then the transaction is verified. That is, if many sources come up with the same answer, then there is no single computer that can game the system.

Once all the mining computers submit their answer, they are basically put in a lottery for who gets paid for doing the calculation. Only one computer gets paid for it, and they get paid a tiny amount of bitcoin. This is kind of like a transaction fee on the bitcoin transaction.

The lottery part is where it gets crazy. In order to make good money on mining, you need a whole lot of computers verifying a whole lot of transactions so that you can win more of the lotteries to get paid. Most of the transactions you verify are for free.

OK, so let's make a real life analogy for what is happening. Let's say that bitcoin is real estate. The bitcoin ledger on the blockchain is like the public records. If you want to know who bought and sold a house, you can go to the county clerk and look up all the sales of the house to different people and the sale price and such. That's the public ledger.

If a house is sold, there is a records check to make sure the title is clear, which means there are no other claims on the house (no liens, and it wasn't sold to somebody else and not recorded properly). That is, to make sure the seller owns the house he is selling and that he is who he says he is. In bitoin, this verification is the mining process, to make sure after all the transactions on an account, the payer has enough bitcoin for the transaction and such. The miners look at the history of the account, calculate the balance, and so on, to say it is all good to go.

Where this analogy gets weird is the mining part. In real estate, there is one title company/notary public that verifies and records the transaction. Imagine that instead of one title company, there are millions of title companies who all do the same work for the same house sale to verify the transaction, and they are submit their verification. Then there is a lottery to draw one title company out of a hat to pay them the closing costs, and the other title companies walk away with nothing.

If the title company does this work for enough sales, they may win enough money to get ahead. So you end up with huge title companies that try to process all the sales so they can make enough money to survive.

This doesn't sound like a good business model, so why do they do it? Because they still get paid enough to cover their losses. Also, they get paid in bitcoin, which they hope will continue to grow in value. If title companies got paid in owning a fraction of the land that is being sold instead of money, then they could sell all those fractions of the property to make money. And if they think real estate value will go up 1000x this year, there is more incentive to have that real estate to sell for even more money later.

That is bitcoin mining.

Scope of Pennsylvania's Disease Prevention and Control Act

A Facebook friend shared a post about the authority of the PA Secretary of Health to institute a mask mandate as allowed under Pennsylvania's Disease Prevention and Control Act. For convenience and searchability, I will provide the text and well as a screenshot below.

The original tweet from Rep. Seth Grove's twitter account, dated 31 Aug 2021 2:59 pm, says:

Ok people. Here is THE question.

What actual police powers does the Sec of Health have to compel her “universal mask mandate” under the Disease Prevention and Control Act?

(1) that act is not applicable to healthy people.
(2) see point 1.

Problem solved.

 The Facebook post by PA State Representative David Rowe [Facebook] [website] references the above tweet (via screenshot) and says this (dated 31 Aug 2021 4:49 pm):

My good friend and Chairman of the House State Government Committee makes the same great point I did when I asked the Departments of Health and Education how they plan to enforce this new mandate. They have not responded. Your local school boards still wield the power. We are a Commonwealth, not a monarchy. Local governments should be handling local issues.

Being the curious sort who can smell a fish and who thinks the posts were a bit flippant and dismissive coming from representatives (particularly the Grove tweet), I decided to look at what the act actually says. This is my analysis.

As far as I can tell from my reading of the PA Disease Prevention and Control Law of 1955 (PA Section 521) [text of the act], the applicability of this law is quite broad. Let's break it down.
⁠
In Section 521.3, local boards and departments of health are given primary responsibility for disease control in their jurisdictions (521.3(a)), while the state has responsibility in non-governed jurisdictions and explicitly in public and private schools (521.3(b)). However, we see in 521.3(c) that the secretary may override local efforts if he finds the controls inadequate. The finding of inadequacy is left entirely to the secretary ("If the secretary finds....). Note that it also requires the local board to pay the state for these mandated measures. Thus, we have established the authority of the secretary of health in PA.
⁠
Note also in section 521.3 and other sections that the language used if about "prevention and control of communicable and non-communicable disease" or some variation often. There is no indication here that the prevention and control is limited to the person carrying the disease. In fact, we see this wording a bit more specifically in 521.5 ("Control measures"), which states:

Upon the receipt by a local board or department of health or by the department, as the case may be, of a report of a disease which is subject to isolation, quarantine, or any other control measure, the local board or department of health or the department shall carry out the appropriate control measures in such manner and in such place as is provided by rule or regulation.

As we see, the trigger is the "report of a disease", not the report of a person with a disease. That is, the measures are not limited to the carrier of the disease, but rather they apply to anyone in order to control the disease.

And what controls are allowed? Also in 521.5, we see the authorities shall apply "appropriate control measures." Also, these are measures provided by "rule or regulation." Note that rules or regulations are not laws, and thus are the part of law that are left to be established by other government entities (departments or agencies). This is relationship between enacted law and rules/regulations that you find in building codes, traffic laws, and the like, which are also fully enforceable in courts by fines or jail time.

Section 521.7 allows for other restrictions on the carrier of a disease, such as forced isolation, quarantine, or treatment. I won't explore this because it is only discussing additional legal restrictions on a carrier, which is not the scope of the original post. However, it is useful to know there can be additional restrictions on the carrier of a disease.

Section 521.16 ("Rules and regulations") provides the scope of the rules and regulations that may be issued by the Board.

• Note in (a)(3) that the board determines "the communicable diseases which are to be subject to isolation, quarantine, or other control measures", so they decide the "what".
• Also, (a)(5) specifies the board to decide the enforcement of the rules and regulations.
• Immunization and vaccination requirements are also allowed in (a)(6).
  
• School jurisdiction is specifically called out in (a)(7).
• And the real power lies in (a)(12), which it establishes that the rules and regulations can apply to "any other matters it may deem advisable for the prevention and control of disease and for carrying out the provisions and purposes of this act." This gives very broad authority to stop spread of disease.
  
•  Also of note is 521.16(c), which prevents local measures from enacting less strict measures than the state in order to reduce their impact.
  

From the enforcement side, please see 521.20 ("Penalties, prosecutions and disposition of fines"), which clearly provides fines and jail time for violations.

Based on the above, what have we established from Pennsylvania's Disease Prevention and Control Act?

• The law applies to both healthy and unhealthy people.
• It allows the state to override local authority.
• It allows to enforcement via fines and jail.
• It allows for any control measures.
  
• It allows requirements for vaccines.

If I could google this act and find the relevant passages in 5 minutes, how can elected Pennsylvania representatives not to the same and avoid posted whatever made-up garbage they want to justify their own positions regardless of the facts stated in the law?

These people are supposed to be responsible for passing and understanding laws, but they (or even their staff) can't seem to take the time to actually read what is there. How can they ever be trusted to make good new laws if they can't be responsible enough to know what the existing laws are.

You may say that no one, even lawmakers, can know all the laws and remember them. I agree. But they went out of their way to make posts about the law. This was not some random Jeopardy! question that put them on the spot. At best, they claimed to know what they were talking about but didn't take the time to see if their claim was even true. At worst, they flat out lied to deceive anyone who wouldn't check if they were telling the truth. Either way, they are not living up to their responsibilities as representatives.

This is not acceptable.

 

Is overpopulation a myth?

Analysis of a FB post that says the following:

"Hidden Fact: Overpopulation is a myth. In fact, there is so much room on Earth that, if everyone lived as densely as New York City, the entire world population of 7.8 billion people could fit into into the state of Alaska and give them all an acre of land and everyone would fit nicely. Overpopulation is a lie just like everything else. The lie that we are overpopulated is spread to induce fear and scarcity over the masses, and to justify ways to 'lower' the population. It is a statistical fact that 50% of humans live on less than 1% of the land, and if a fraction of lawns were turned into gardens, food scarcity would be non-existent." [sic]

My radar pings hard when I read such broad and unsubstantiated claims, so I did some digging.

The original post by Grace Brown: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10158025981507772&set=a.10150181997392772

Fact checks

Claim: Everyone in the world can get an acre of land in Alaska.

The land area of Alaska is 571,951 square miles. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska] And 1 acre is 0.0015625 square miles. Thus, Alaska is 366,048,640 acres. That is significantly less that 7.8 billion. In fact, that would be 21 people per acre, so we could not "give them all an acre of land" as claimed.

Conclusion: This claim is false by an order of magnitude.

Claim: The world population can live in Alaska if population density matches NYC.

The population density of New York City is 27,013 people per square mile, which is 42.2 people per acre. [https://www.topviewnyc.com/packages/the-population-density-of-new-york-city] Compared to the 21 people per acre required to fit everyone, the 42 people per acre is about twice as dense as needed, leaving half of Alaska unpopulated. Of course, this doesn't consider how much of Alaska is habitable, but since that isn't the point of the post, we'll ignore that.

Conclusion: This claim is true.

Claim: Turning lawns into gardens would eliminate food scarcity.

In the US, which is the most lawn-loving country, there is 128,000 square kilometers of lawn, which is 31,629,489 acres. [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Lawn/lawn2.php] In the US for 2 August 2021, the planted acreage of crops is 644,269,947 acres. [download of zip file from https://www.fsa.usda.gov/news-room/efoia/electronic-reading-room/frequently-requested-information/crop-acreage-data/index] This means that there is about 20 times more acres of crops planted in the US that there is acres of lawns.

Note that this does not even address the land required to raise animals for food.

For convenience, I have converted the data download to a Google Sheet for easy reference here. The total planted acres can be found at the bottom of the county_summary tab (and some other tabs). Note that the first two tabs have lower acreage because they are looking only at the produce listed at the top, not all products.

Conclusion: This claim is false by an order of magnitude.

Claim: 50% of the population lives on 1% of the land.

I did not investigate this claim, and I'm not really sure exactly what point it is trying to make. Without making a claim about the other 50% of the population, this is meaningless. For example (an exaggeration), if the other 50% of the population lives on 99% of the land, who cares about the first 50%? And what is meant by "lives on the land" anyway?

I also am a little skeptical when a claim is made by stating that it is a "statistical fact". Generally, that kind of argument is a power move to reduce the likelihood of a factual challenge. It is used to take ground in the argument. Since the claim is meaningless, it appears to be used just to make a strong-sounding statement with no substance to win a point.

Conclusion: This statement doesn't really make a point (at best) and is nonsense (apparently).

Merits of the framing of the argument

The argument being made takes as an implicit assumption that overpopulation is only defined by land resource usage. The tactic of this post by making only land resource arguments is to frame the issue in an argument that can attempt to be won on this single issue while ignoring other constraints the create overpopulation concerns.

In this case, we see that even the claims above do not support the land-resource argument used to frame it.

The post completely ignores other resource constraints, which I will not explore here. These other constraints include but are not limited to:

• Water supply and drought

• Labor (including immigration limitations on labor)

• Transportation

• Usability of land

• Geopolitical issues (food hoarding, interception, etc.)

• Trade policy

• Income inequity (that limits ability to buy food)

These are just a quick list off the top of my head. There are surely many more constraints that make it clear that this is not and should not be treated as a one-dimensional argument.

Conclusion

Where does this leave us? First, this is a factually misleading post. No, actually, this is a post that intentionally lies about the facts to try to win an argument. The lies and appearance of truth of the post are designed to manipulate the reader into believing the point, when in fact the post presents no credible reason to be believed. It is purely an attempt to flood the reader with opinions that they don't have time to verify (due to sheer volume of these types of factually false posts) in order to plant doubt and shift the viewpoint of the reader in favor of an agenda supported mostly by lies.

Here are my questions and concerns:

• Who is using these lies to support this agenda?

• What is the end game?

• Is the agenda even the point?

• Is the poster just using manipulation to condition us?

• Is the goal to spread uncertainty and doubt about "facts" to leave us confused or apathetic?

• Why are people so willing to spread such lies so easily? Just because it sounds good or fits their opinion or fits the opinion of their political leaders?

Here's the deal for me: If a post, whether I support the position or not, uses lies to try to win an argument, then it is wrong. There can be no middle ground here. Lies to support anything should by themselves invalidate the argument. If you can't use truth to win the argument, then you lose the argument. Period.

 

Left or Liberal Rebuttal

In the video embedded below (also found on PragerU and YouTube), Dennis Prager shares his thoughts on how the political left and liberals have diverged in the US. Something about this struck me as wrong, so I have put together my thoughts on why I think it is wrong.

Caveat: I'm not offering an opinion on what he sees as the political shift; I'm only questioning the idea that left and liberal have become separate concepts.

I disagree with Dennis Prager's view here. When I was in school, I was taught that the right means political conservative and the left means political liberal by definition. I also learned that the definition of conservative (and the right) is the side that leans toward traditional values and views and wants to maintain the status quo. A liberal (the left) tends to be progressive, interested in change, open to new ideas, and discarding tradition. The dictionary definitions tend to align with my memory of what I learned in school.

I also was taught that views on political issues of the political right and left can differ depending on the context. This is analogous to two people facing each other. One person would say the door is on the right, while the other sees the window on his left. In politics, for example, in the US the right (conservative) view is pro-capitalism because capitalism is the established, traditional viewpoint. However, in the USSR (when I learned it in the 1980s) the right (conservative) view was pro-socialist because that was the established system, and the left in the USSR was the pro-capitalists.

I think the confusion comes in a few ways:

1. The word "liberal" has several difference meanings. What I mentioned above is the political definition. However, the other definitions of liberal can refer to generosity, a large quantity, and broad ideas. Sometimes we use different definitions of liberal in the political conversation. For example, as a political conservative (on the right), I am liberal (meaning generous, not political left) on defense.

2. The use of right and left sets the conversation up to assume only 2 points of view, in opposite directions along the line between right and left. However, on some issues, not all opinions lie along that line. At other times we assume the left and right is a binary choice rather than a continuum, a finely distinguished gradient of views.

3. The definition of conservative and liberal (right and left) change over time because the definitions themselves are relative to what is established and traditional. If the established practice or view has changed over time to create a new norm, then the definition of conservative is relative to that new standard. Thus, the liberal view also shifts to be something that is not the norm by definition. In this way, what was liberal yesterday could now be what is conservative in political terms.

4. There is mainly one way (per issue) to be conservative because it is the established way (gross over-simplification, I know). Since liberal (left) means non-traditional, there are many ways to be liberal, some of which could oppose each other. As such, I would expect more varied viewpoints from the liberals than from conservatives.

Having said that, I'm not attempting to challenge the trends that Mr. Prager identified. I just think the redefinition of the left/liberal definition is not really accurate.

Does McDonald's really care about sustainability?

At the drive-thru at McDonald's yesterday, the cashier handing me a small flyer with my receipt. The flyer elaborates on the redesign of packaging away from foam to more sustainable materials. I don't have a problem with that per se (although I am a big fan of the styrofoam cup). What I question is whether the marketing effort in this flyer really aligns with their commitment given that the technical challenges are significant from a usability perspective.

First, look at the URL. You handed this to be in my car where my only internet access is my phone, and you want me to type in this URL: http://corporate.mcdonalds.com/mcd/sustainability/sourcing/priority-products.html. You gotta be kidding me. Can you not take the time to make a vanity URL? Does McDonald's not own a short domain name already? This URL should ideally be something like mcd.com/sustainable (without the http since almost all browsers add it automatically). Even without a short hostname, at least use mcdonalds.com/sustainability (at the worst).

Next, the html extension on the URL. No web page on any modern site ends their pages with the html extension. This just makes the URL look like a GeoCities site.

Then I actually went to the site and found that the ridiculously long URL you made me type is a 301 redirect to another URL that is actually shorter than the URL you made me type. The new URL (http://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/scale-for-good/our-food.html) is 67 characters, compared to the 81 characters in the URL you made me type. That's just stupid. But you still need to lose the html extension. The browser already knows. If the URL you gave me already is just a redirect, why on earth did you not make it a short vanity URL redirect?

Finally, chances are that if I bother to open this, it will be on my phone. For the love of thumbs, put the URL in a QR code so I can scan it. There are apps for this. Your staff can handle it. That way you can type the URL and I can just scan it. Sure, put the shortened vanity URL there too just in case I need to type it in.

There, I did it for you. If you have more that you need to do in the future, just fire me a note. I'd be happy to contract for your QR code generation.

Since this is all about technical flaws with the flyer, you may be wondering why I asked the provocative question, "Does McDonald's really care about sustainability?" Here's why: these technical challenges create usability problems for people ever reading more. This type of usability challenge introduces friction in the interaction that means that you have greatly reduced the audience that will ever read what may be a very important message on that web page. In the traffic funnel, you have just made the spout of the funnel so small that you have destroyed much of the value of ever handing out this flyer in the first place.

Marshall McLuhan proposed that the medium is the message. In this case, the medium is so flawed that the message I received is that McDonald's must not really care if anyone reads about their sustainability efforts or they would have made it easier to do. Therefore, this must just be propaganda. If that's not the message you wanted me to receive, then you should do better next time.

Ice Bucket Drought Propaganda

Image of low water levels at Lake Oroville.

Today (August 24, 2014) I have seen a couple of articles posted to Facebook claiming that the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has been contributing to the California drought. The comments to these articles express outrage that people are blatantly ignoring the damage to California. The images of Lake Oroville and statistics about the dire nature of the drought are dramatic and certainly show the bad situation that California's drought has caused.

As serious as the drought is (and I'm not trying to minimize it), my gut reaction to the insinuation (if not outright statement) that the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is a large contributor to the California drought is that this is a bunch of reactionary propaganda with no real basis in fact. With a little internet data and some back-of-napkin calculations, I verified that it is mostly fear mongering.

I'd like to start with the most extreme estimate to make my point. Let's assume that every single person in California participated in the ice bucket challenge. That is nearly 40 million people. I would be surprised if the total participant count in the entire US reaches that number, so we should be safe that this is a high estimate. Let's assume they all fill a 5-gallon bucket completely with ice/water (although I think the average is probably closer to 2 gallons), and let's assume it takes everyone 2 attempts to get the video right. That is 10 gallons per person. That is a total of 400 million gallons of water. That sounds like a lot at first glance.

The state of California was kind enough to document the capacity and current water levels of their reservoirs, including the Lake Oroville reservoir on their Department of Water Resources page. They measure the water in acre feet, so I used the conversion that 1 acre-foot is 325,853 gallons. That means the challenge used 1228 acre-feet of water. It turns out that Lake Oroville has a capacity of 3,537,577 acre-feet, and a current water storage of 1,123,093 acre-feet. Then the amount of water used by the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is approximately 0.035% of its total capacity and 0.11% of its current capacity.

The total current storage of California's reservoirs, according to the same site, is 7,659,526 acre-feet of a total capacity of 27,254,482 acre-feet, which corresponds to a challenge use of 0.016% and 0.0045%, respectively.

That amount of water does not sound like a huge amount. For comparison, a low-flow toilet flush uses about 1.6 gallons of water, so the ice bucket challenge is about the same as flushing the toilet about 6 times.

Also, many participants are performing the challenge in their yard, so some fraction of the water is going back into the ground.

Conclusion: The impact of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to the California drought is an outrageous overstatement.

I captured the reservoir data from today, August 24, 2014, for reference.

Preventative Mastectomy Madness

As a big fan of boobies, I may be a little bit biased, but I think Angelina Jolie having her breasts and ovaries preemptively removed is just about the dumbest thing I've heard of. She is being praised as a hero, but I think it is stupid and cowardly.

To put it in perspective, try applying the same logic to any other medical procedure. If you found out you had diabetes, would you get your feet amputated to prevent circulation problems in the future? If your family had a history of cholesterol and clogged arteries, would you go ahead and get a heart bypass at age 40 just in case your arteries are starting to clog?

Just because breasts are beautiful and a part of a woman's self-image doesn't make it brave to mutilate them. Take the gender issue out of the argument and all you have left is stupidity.

Ichiro and the Dark Side

They should have known that inviting a Sith Lord to a baseball game would have consequences.

Sunday (July 22, 2012) was Star Wars Day at Tropicana Field for the Rays' third and final game of the series against the Seattle Mariners. There was a great promo video for the day featuring Rays' DH Luke Scott and Darth Vader (watch). There was also an exclusive t-shirt giveaway if you bought your tickets through a special promo link.

And of course, there were Star Wars characters wandering around for some great photo ops.

What we did not know was the this game would be the last game Ichiro played for the Mariners since he was traded to the Yankees (aka "The Dark Side") on Monday. I snapped a couple photos of him from our great seats behind the Mariners' dugout.

Sadly, it wasn't Ichiro's best game.

Despite that, Ichiro was a class act. I hope Ichiro does well, but not at the expense of the Rays.

Michelle was also ecstatic to get John Jaso's autograph on her jersey. He was her favorite player when he was with the Rays last year, so it worked out really well to get his autograph now that he is on the Mariners.

The rules don't apply to me

Apparently, as was reinforced to me today, rules don't really matter. They are just relics from the past when people used to consider other people worthy of respect and when people believed that society was a better place when everyone knew what to expect from each other. However, our society has evidently developed to the point where that is no longer helpful.

Let me admit right up front that this is a bit of a rant. I'm assuming that if you know me, you already picked up the sarcasm. (The sarcasm is a healthy thing at this point because it means I'm past the completely frustrated phase I was in earlier.)

The scene started out as expected at Walmart: too many people and not enough open checkout lanes. Surprisingly, I got in lane 29--which is convenient labeled "Speedy Checkout: 20 items or less"--and was lucky enough to be third in line.

Side note: Do you remember when Walmart used to advertise there fast checkout policy which said that they would open a new lane if there were more than 3 people in any line? Did I dream this? I don't think I've been to Walmart in the past 5 years when there was a line with 3 or less people. I'm guessing that the average line length is at least 5 customers overall.

Back to the story: The first customer in line finished up almost immediately, so I became number 2 in line. Yes! As the 50-something woman and her 20-something daughter began putting their items on the counter, I noticed that they seemed to have a lot of items for a 20-or-less line. I counted 27 items, but there were about 10 items before I began counting, so I'm guessing there were nearly 40 items.

This started me thinking that 20-or-less is a really high threshold for a speedy checkout line. The number 20 is high enough that it's not easy to eyeball the number of items in your cart and be reasonably close. I really couldn't blame someone for thinking they probably had 20 items when they really had 30. In that sense, I can chalk part of the problem up to honest estimation error. What bugs me is that the difference between my 2 items and 20 items is significantly different than the difference between 2 and 10 items. I would argue that for the checkout to be speedy, the threshold really needs to be lowered to 10.

I also noticed as I looked at other non-speedy lanes that the people in the speedy lanes appeared to actually have more items than the people in the non-speedy lanes. Is that because the people in the non-speedy lanes were honest enough to count their items and realize they should not go in the speedy lanes? If I can't visually realize the difference in item count, then the number is too high.

I would think that lowering the number would also increase customer satisfaction with the speedy lanes because they would have a chance to be speedy. However, since the store does not enforce the item limit at 20, there is no reason to believe they would be willing to enforce it at 10. And this is where my title comes from. People have reached a point that they do not believe that the rules apply to them. Having 40 items in a 20-item lane does not matter to people who think they are above the rules. Also, the store is not willing to enforce the rules, which creates a degrading spiral of lack of enforcement and lack of compliance which result in the item limit being completely useless.

Due to another issue (which I won't cover here), I ended up switching lanes, where I got behind a couple who had more than 45 items (a partial count again) in a 20-item lane. Their cart was actually full--not overflowing, but full.

How are we supposed to teach children to follow the rules if everyone around us is not following the rules?

What's the big deal about Halloween?

It's Halloween night. My family is not participating in the events because Michelle and both boys have Swine Flu. As I'm sitting here at 8:00 surfing the 'net, some Facebook friends have made a few comments that got me thinking that the way people think about Halloween is a pervasive attitude in other areas of life.

One commenter wrote that her children, including a 9-year-old boy, do not want to trick-or-treat for the 2nd year in a row. I wonder why that is. Are today's kids so privileged every day of the year to the point that a little candy is not worth the trouble? Or are they just so apathetic that they don't get excited about the event?

Another Facebook commenter mentioned that she has not had any trick-or-treaters yet but has a bunch of candy. Another responded that they had tons of kids in their neighborhood. This made me think that parents target the prime neighborhoods and completely skips their own neighborhoods. This led to two theories:

1. Nobody stays in their own neighborhoods because nobody knows their neighbors.
2. People pick the best trick-or-treat locations the same way they pick the best schools.

It used to be that people actually knew their neighbors, so trick-or-treating was a social event. It was a chance to get out and be cordial with the neighbors, to let everyone see the family. When you don't even know your neighbors, it's just a good to go to another neighborhood where you can get better candy.

This also aligns with the demise of neighborhood schools (at least in Polk County, Florida). So many school assignment zones result in children being transported past half-a-dozen schools to get to their school. The school assignments are so gerrymandered that students who live in the same neighborhood sometimes do not attend the same school. This applies at every school level. And then we wonder why kids have no school spirit! A lack of community identity in a school will result in a lack of a sense of ownership in a school every time.

Just like shopping for the neighborhood with the best candy experience, parents today shop around for the best educational experience. In concept I support the choice of parents to get the best education for their children. However, parents would be much less likely to shop around so freely if the benefits of community-based schools existed in our schools.

Maybe this is just mental rambling, but it seems to me that there must be some similar underlying behavior at work here.

A Magical Day in Richfield

Seeing this article about the new NBA record for points scored by a single team in regulation by the Nuggets made me think about a historic basketball game I saw as a kid.

It was January 29, 1980. I was 8 years old. A bunch of guys--old guys, young guys, dads, and kids--from my church in Shelby, Ohio, crowded into cars to go see the Cleveland Cavaliers face the Los Angeles Lakers at Richfield Colisseum, the home court of the Cavs back in those days.

I don't really remember much about the records of the teams going into the game, or what the playoff implications might have been. I don't think I followed records or stats at that age. But I was a Cavs fan (and a Browns fan and an Indians fan), so going to the game was a big deal.

Ironically, I don't remember too many of the Cavs players. Sure, I recognize some of the names from the roster, but I don't really remember their playing very much. Except for Bingo Smith, who was my favorite at the time. I actually remember more of the Lakers players from that era than Cavs players.

Going to an NBA game is special enough for an 8-year-old kid, but this day was really over the top. First, I got Michael Cooper's autograph before the game. Amazing.

But the magical part was that this game turned into a quadruple overtime win for the Cavs, 154-153. It was like two games in one, and the Cavs came out on top in the end. The game was special enough in Cavs history to appear as #7 on the list of all-time great Cavs moments.

I wish every kid could have a chance for an experience like that.

The Wave Nature of Vehicles, or The Wavicular Duality

I just read an article about new research on wave patterns in traffic flow. This has been a topic of fascination for me since I took my first physics class in high school.

I recently had a discussion with a co-worker about personal-sized vehicles that touched on this topic. The thought was that personal-sized vehicles could be designed to chain together (like a train almost) and allow the driver of the first vehicle to control the entire train.

There are several benefits:

1. For a commuter, this frees all but the first car from any driving concerns. The occupants of trailing cars can use the time for reading or work without needing to drive.
2. It would improve fuel efficiency. Not only are the personal-sized cars more likely to be fuel efficient individually, but the chain of cars would be even more fuel efficient due to a longer aerodynamic profile.
3. The traffic congestion would decrease because the chain of cars would operate as a unit, eliminating the effect of many separate cars.

To make this chain of cars concept fair, the couple between cars should be smart enough to allow equal energy contribution from each car. Also, braking should be applied by each individual car in the chain.

It's interesting to think about. The problem is how to get enough critical mass for an effort like this to make it realistic.

Maybe I'll expand on these thoughts later.

Quotes

I was recently going through some paperwork and stumbled across a few sayings that I had jotted down that I found thought provoking at some point in the recent past. The first set is related to software development.

"What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?" This was the theme of an online article about software development. A great question to ask frequently.

"One characteristic of a user-friendly system is that it does what the user wants." Great definition. Simple but true.

"The upset over a missed deadline goes away much faster than the terrible taste of a bad product."

And here is a quote that I found as a SlashDot signature. It was attributed to Richard Feynman.

"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." This one was particularly interesting to me because I first saw it just after I had read a chapter on math and its relationship to physics in the book "The Soul of Science".

Fair Use and Photographs

The other day my kids came home from pre-school with a portrait package taken by a professional photographer at their school. I notice a warning prominently displayed on the order form: "It is a felony to scan professional photographs without authorization."

I clearly understand that I should not be allowed to scan the photographs and then return them without purchasing them. If I buy them, however, I would expect that my ownership of the photograph would allow me to make copies for myself in the same sense that I can make copies of a CD that I own for my personal use.

In thinking about why this would not be allowed, my first thought was that the photograph is on paper, not digital. But I immediately realized that other media that falls under fair use is not digital either: vinyl albums, cassette tapes, VHS tapes.

I know that many photo printers will not print photos that they suspect of being professionally taken. Is this because the law is on their side or simply to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit?

My question then is this: Is it fair use to scan, print, and otherwise use for my own purposes a photograph taken by a professional photographer?

Obligatory Historical First Post

The first post. Certain to be of historical significance. Prepare to link to me now.

First, let me state up front that this blog will not have a single theme (unless you count my thoughts as a theme). There will be some technical discussion, some personal ramblings, and some religious exploration. I hope that those of you looking for only one of those can tolerate a little of the others.