Idle Analytics

Many of the talks I go to are absolutely wretched. Between the crackpots, the over-technical wonks, the english-challenged theoreticians, and the overly-excited interdisciplinarians, it begins to get wearing after awhile. But last week, we had a talk that really got me excited. This speaker has what is, in my mind, the ideal life.

Harry Kroto, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry from 1996 gave a stunning talk for the department. He's the guy who discovered C60, and star-synthesis of unusual organics. The talk was very colloquial, comprising a little about organic chemistry, renewable resources, the future of education and humankind, the importance of humor, and even a small bit about the evils of Scientology. He points out that calculus is basically the single most interesting thing one can know (I'm hard-pressed to argue), and what a shame it is that almost nobody knows it. He laments what he sees as the death of wit and humor in America. He points out that the foci of our attention are vapid nincompoops, rather than the intellectuals who make all of our comfort and long life possible.

He also made a strong effort to direct people to his attempt to stem the tide of anti-intellectualism, pseudoscience, and innumeracy, which takes the form of a website of the Vega Science Trust. On that site you can view amazing lectures and interview footage with some of the best humans ever born, including 4 lectures by Richard Feynman himself. The videos are, unfortunately, in real-media format.

But think of it: his life is going around and giving amazingly intelligent and funny talks to intelligent and receptive people, still maintaining a faculty position at FSU, and knowing some of the greatest minds of our time. He's accomplished, forward-thinking, and, hopefully, effecting a better future for humanity. I hope that I can be even half of what Harry Kroto is before I die.

Eeew eew eew eew. Ok, so Hawaii, where I am right now, has some of the nation's biggest, meanest, scariest cockroaches. In the South they call them Palmetto bugs--the enormous ones that fly, and are almost too big to squish. Shudder.

So there was one of those in my room just now, a giant one, two and half or three inches long at least, with the most loathsome wiggling antennae and legs--with most bugs, you know they have these things, but they aren't distinct when you're hosing them down with the big jug o' poison--but this bug was so very, very large that everything was like a blown-up scale model of a reasonable insect. And he was fast. And thank the lord, he didn't take it into his little cochroach brain to fly, or I would've--I don't know, but though I'm not normally afraid of bugs (because really, what can they do to me? It's the small ones that tend to be harmful, not the big ones--mosquitos, tsetse flies, etc.), but I shrieked when he zipped across the floor, evading my first attempt to squash him (and I never, ever have shoes on when there's a giant bug around).

So my mom comes in, because I'm hollering like an idiot about the giant cockroach, with this little bottle of stuff. "Is that wheel polish?" I ask, since that's what it says it is. I don't know, maybe it's a secret Hawaiian thing that wheel polish kills cockroaches better than anything (just like how putting carpenter's glue on a fresh mosquito bite makes it go away without itching at all). But no, it was poison transferred from the giant jug that lives under the kitchen sink. The little bottle wasn't doing it, however; apparently it just made him run faster. So my mom got the big jug, which also had a squirty thing, and we hosed him down good. The thing is, though, that he kept running to different parts of the room, dashing away whenever he got a good solid stream of poison. Which isn't right at all--he took dozens of direct hits. Any normal mortal insect would have curled up in a ball long before, but this one just kept darting around (in the most alarming fashion).

Finally, he made a mistake--slowed down by the poison, he attempted to make a break for it, running out into the hallway. I picked up a big wad of wrapping paper from the floor and mashed him good, even grinding him into the carpet a little. I opened the paper-wad slightly to survey the damage, and damned if the thing wasn't still wiggling his little whiskers at me. So I wrapped the ball around him and squeezed, then, at my mom's suggestion, threw him outside over the balcony. I really hope the damned chickens (and doubly-damned rooster) make short work of him sometime in the night, and prove themselves at least marginally useful. Because I am still not positive he's dead, even though his insides came out the back of him.

We don't have bugs like that in MoVal.

Conversation overheard at a local retail store:

Salesperson: "Ok, so for today only this necklace is a further 10% off the 50%-off price."
Customer: "So, why don't you guys just say 60%?"
Salesperson: "Oh, well, we just say it like that."

How about "she doesn't say 60% because IT'S NOT FUCKING SIXTY PERCENT!"

Last time I checked, 1-(1-.5)*(1-.1) = 0.55, or 55% off. This problem is fundamental and appears to be rampant.

I asked a similar question on a quiz in a physics section I had to teach. Simple enough for a college student to get: "If light passes through a lens that transmits 30%, then through another lens that transmits 40%, what fraction of the initial intensity is transmitted in total?" How many people do you think said 30% (actually, I got a fair amount that thought 70% was transmitted...)?

The next day I phrased the problem like this: "If a shirt is 50% off to begin with, and then the teller takes off another 50% because she likes your face, how many of you think the shirt is free?"

I didn't get any hands.

These are college students. Not even stupid, uneducated Verizon employees, but actual UC students.

I weep.