Sunday, October 28, 2007

The Next Test


This is the coolest political test I have ever taken. I have a difficult time describing myself as conservative or liberal or in Democrat and Republican terms. I love and hate things about both. But after taking this test, I could really see where I was in the political landscape.

http://www.politopia.com/introduction1.htm


Check this out. You won't be disappointed.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Who's Your Candidate

First of all, let me just say congratulations to the Rockies. They played an unbelievable NLCS. Their team and their fans are totally classy. I hope they can take it all the way. I also promise to take down my Helton voodoo picture before the World Series gets started. It seems to have worked pretty well. He had a terrible series, at least at the plate. I am sure I was responsible.

Secondly, I just wanted to pass this along. My sister sent me this cool quiz. It lets you see which Presidential candidate matches your beliefs. Pretty cool. Try it out. I would like to hear your comments. Is this accurate? I will share my results later.

http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Dbacks versus Rockies

As we left the stadium around midnight last night, I didn’t have that terrible sense of loss I normally would in such a situation. Don’t get me wrong, being down 0-2 sucks. I have to admit, though, losing to the Rockies just isn’t as painful as losing to, say, the Yankees (or any other team I can’t stand). They are, after all, much like us, a young franchise who’s current success is built on the backs of young players.

Although the Dbacks don’t have an MVP or Rookie-of the-Year candidate to turn to, and they have a losing record this season to the Rockies, and they have a forty point disadvantage in team batting average, and they haven’t had any long winning streaks to give them momentum, and their season slugging percentage and fielding percentage trail the Rockies, all hope is not lost. In fact, now that the Diamondbacks have lost the only real advantage they had, the home field, any arguments about who the underdog is in this series can be put to rest.

It would be an unbelievable feat to come back and win this series, but defying the odds is what makes baseball so fun. In the spirit of the ‘87 and ‘91 Twins and the ‘01 Dbacks (all down 3-2 at one point in their final series’ runs), it is time to call on the underdog gods to work their magic once again. Besides, a miraculous comeback is a hundred times more fun than a sweep anyway.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The Black Swan

This may be a little deeper than I should get for just a second post, but since it’s on my mind, I figure I better roll with it. I will chat about more intellectual stuff like the Diamondbacks, The Hold Steady, and the virtues of ales over pilsners later. For today, I would rather discuss the meaning of everything.

We tend to rationalize everything. Everything must have meaning. That is just the way our brains work.

After catching an interview of Nassim Nicholas Taleb on CSPAN last week, I decided to pick up his latest book The Black Swan. I am generally not all that smart. In fact, I have a box full of old report cards to prove it. But something about the interview struck my intellectual funny bone, so I headed out to the bookstore. I quickly realized this book had way too many pages and an intimidating amount of big words, so I made a bee line for the audio book section. This Black Swan thing is over my head, but I was fascinated enough to buy it, none-the-less.

In The Black Swan and Taleb’s earlier book, Fooled By Randomness, he asserts that most of what we believe is wrong, or more precisely, what our beliefs are premised on are often incorrect. This is because we are wired to assign rational causes to the world around us, when really, the causes are more random than our minds can handle. When I first heard him talk about this concept, I thought about the traders on Wall Street. They use technical analysis--the reading of historical performance charts--to explain which direction a stock is headed. They discover patterns and assign meaning to them, but this is all done after the fact. The charts really mean nothing, the traders just assign meaning as a way of rationalizing why the stock has arrived to it’s price. Worse yet, then they try to use these chart patterns to explain what is happening with other stocks!

I remember Mr. Gust teaching this cause and effect concept in my high school English class, explaining how the Romans and Greeks used gods to explain the world around them. In other words, events happen in the world, then these things must be explained. So if the Romans kicked some butt on the battlefield, it was because their god Jupiter was in a good mood that day. This was essentially their “science”, their way of explaining the world. We do the same thing today, arrogantly believing that because we have “real” science to explain things, we understand the world better than the Romans. I would guess Taleb would say we probably miss the point. We, like the Romans, rationalize meaning into things that have little or no correlation to the event we may be trying to explain.

Taleb uses some headlines to illustrate this: “Bond Prices Up On Saddam’s Capture”. Four hours later another one exclaims “Bond Prices Down On Saddam’s Capture.” In reality, the two events had nothing to do with each other, but we needed meaning so we connect them.

I just started this audio book, so if its good, I may elaborate more on it later. But in the next post, I promise to write about something more relevant, like Lindsay versus Paris or something...

If you have an hour to kill, here is where you can find Taleb’s CSPAN interview:

http://download.rbn.com/cspan/cspan/download/podaudio/arc_btv092207_4.mp3


BTW- I am pretty sure the Diamondbacks will win the Series this year. After all, I have my lucky underwear on...

Monday, October 8, 2007

Getting Started

I am going to make this quick. I have really wanted to find an easy way to communicate with friends, share ideas, and get feedback on what is going on in the world. So today, I am officially starting my blog.

I originally was going to steal the title for my blog from my dad's old weekly newspaper column, Through The Window. Since my writing skills will never live up to his, I thought it might be better to resurrect it from an old newsletter I used to send to friends twenty years ago. After all, I am national and I love parties. It seems pretty logical.

I have to admit, since I haven't had much contact with many of you lately, the next few blogs will be a bit disjointed. As the weeks go by I will be chatting about things going on in my life. Then, over time, I see this turning into more of a social commentary site. I may chat about baseball, music, technology, politics, religion, food or anything else that may be on my mind that day.

Feel free to hit the "comment" section below each blog to add to the conversation. Let me know if I am interesting, boring, or just plain wrong. I am tough. I can take it.

I will try to post at least once a week, so bookmark me and stay tuned for more.

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