Listen, I'm not Stephen Hawking or anything, and I'll even admit that until about last week, I thought America was named after Amerigo Vespucci (it was probably named after Richard Amerik. I never really questioned why it wasn't called "Vespuccia," as custom would dictate.) I've met many people who are far more brilliant than I, people who are inventing wonderful things and making vital discoveries while I bitch on the Internet. Though I *did* invent Cheesy Bread, but that was in like 3rd grade. What can I say? I peaked early.
But with that said, I've just about had it with dumb people. It's okay to have a different opinion than me, but, you know...have a good reason. Please. I just read a post from a guy who claims that since there are only 25 confirmed cases of swine flu, but 400 people are struck by lightning every year, then you must have a better chance of getting struck by lightning! Oh God. I hope swine flu comes around to my nose and takes me away from these idiots.
Can you imagine what the world would be like without dumb people?
- Spam would not exist because nobody would be stupid enough to send his or her credit card number to someone who types like PleeZE YOURE WOMAN with supppperzize PENIS ci@lis
- No more e-mail forwards about how plastic bottles give you cancer or IF YOU DON'T EMAIL THIS TO TEN PEOPLE IN THE NEXT TEN MINUTES YOU'LL HAVE BAD LUCK FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE BUT AT LEAST PEOPLE WON'T KNOW HOW YOU LACK A SINGLE INDEPENDENT THOUGHT IN THAT TINY BRAIN OF YOURS.
- I'd never have to drive behind someone texting ever again.
- I'd never have to wait beind someone who repeatedly sticks their farecard backwards into the turnstile and wonders why it's not working EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE A FUCKING PICTURE OF THE CARD SLIDING INTO THE SLOT RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT.
- We could finally make progress as a species by throwing out our illogical, baseless arguments. Emotion and bias will always be a part of us, but knowing when it's not appropriate to rely on and acknowledging that fact moves us closer to true harmony and further away from the logical equivalent of putting our hands over our ears and screaming like petulant children.
SWINE FLU, TAKE ME HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
STEAMY LOVE CONFESSIONS FROM REAL MEN
Anytime you flip through an issue of Cosmopolitan (don't lie, everyone has), the headlines scream shit like "STEAMY LOVE CONFESSIONS FROM GUYS" and "THE CUTE THINGS ABOUT YOU THAT HE'D NEVER ADMIT." But instead of real, honest confessions, like "The first time I fingered my wife I wiped my hand off on the back of her shirt," it's bullshit like "I love the way my wife crinkles her nose when I burn the lasagna on our weekly date night, but I would never tell her, LOL! :-)" Obviously written by a woman. Well Cosmo, here are some really honest male confessions for you to put in your magazine. Ready, women?
1. You look ridiculous when you're overtanned, all I can think about is how in ten years you'll be sitting out on the balcony with a cigarette dangling out of your leathery orange mouth.
2. You look like a giant bug when you wear those huge Mary Kate and Ashley Olson sunglasses.
3. If you can wear high heels and do it gracefully, great. But you might as well wear flats if you're going to be wobbling all over the place like you're drunk and have had too many penises in your ass.
4. An imperfect woman who is confident in herself is much sexier than someone who obsesses about every aspect of her body.
5. We wish you'd stop fucking bitching about the glass ceiling until you've paid for 649 dinners and movies that ended up never going anywhere. And I never hear you whine about your half-price oil changes and no cover charge bars, you hypocritical bitch.
6. You're not hot shit because guys have sex with you. Guys will have sex with anything. Cover the face and fuck the base, the mantra of our generation.
7. If you're allowed to say "I don't date men who are bald," we're allowed to say "I don't date women with small breasts." Yeah, doesn't feel good, does it? (I'm not bald, but I am Asian, which is much worse.)
1. You look ridiculous when you're overtanned, all I can think about is how in ten years you'll be sitting out on the balcony with a cigarette dangling out of your leathery orange mouth.
2. You look like a giant bug when you wear those huge Mary Kate and Ashley Olson sunglasses.
3. If you can wear high heels and do it gracefully, great. But you might as well wear flats if you're going to be wobbling all over the place like you're drunk and have had too many penises in your ass.
4. An imperfect woman who is confident in herself is much sexier than someone who obsesses about every aspect of her body.
5. We wish you'd stop fucking bitching about the glass ceiling until you've paid for 649 dinners and movies that ended up never going anywhere. And I never hear you whine about your half-price oil changes and no cover charge bars, you hypocritical bitch.
6. You're not hot shit because guys have sex with you. Guys will have sex with anything. Cover the face and fuck the base, the mantra of our generation.
7. If you're allowed to say "I don't date men who are bald," we're allowed to say "I don't date women with small breasts." Yeah, doesn't feel good, does it? (I'm not bald, but I am Asian, which is much worse.)
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Stuff That Only Interests Me
I like looking at the batter vs. pitcher statistics because they make me feel like I'm using strategy when most of the time, I'm really not, because the sample sizes are way too small. I'll never forget the day that I sat Jeff Francoeur against Carlos Zambrano based on his 0-8 career record versus Big Z and watched him hit a home run. Still, you find out some crazy shit sometimes. Like A-Rod...the guy is 20 for 53 lifetime against Roger Clemens, but he just can't hit Sidney Ponson, of all people! (Granted, when he does make contact against Sidney, the ball goes a long way, but still.)
A-Rod vs. Sidney Ponson - 13-69, 3 BB, 19 K, 6 HR, 18 RBI
How about Albert Pujols?
Albert Pujols vs. Wandy Rodriguez - 3-20, 6 BB, 1 K, 0 HR, 0 RBI
And finally, the big boy, Barry Bonds, who has trouble hitting a guy the Giants just lit up last week. The Giants! My beer league softball team has more power than that lineup.
Barry Bonds vs. Jeff Suppan - 2-14, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 HR, 3 RBI
A-Rod vs. Sidney Ponson - 13-69, 3 BB, 19 K, 6 HR, 18 RBI
How about Albert Pujols?
Albert Pujols vs. Wandy Rodriguez - 3-20, 6 BB, 1 K, 0 HR, 0 RBI
And finally, the big boy, Barry Bonds, who has trouble hitting a guy the Giants just lit up last week. The Giants! My beer league softball team has more power than that lineup.
Barry Bonds vs. Jeff Suppan - 2-14, 2 BB, 0 K, 1 HR, 3 RBI
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Gotta Resist
Every day I've opened up the daily scoring for my rotisserie fantasy baseball league to watch my progress updating in real-time with each JJ Hardy popout and Brad Lidge gopherball. Needless to say, it hasn't been pretty, but more importantly, we're in what...the third week of the season? Anything that happens today is just a blip compared to the totality of the season.
So tomorrow, for the first time...ever (outside of the times when I didn't have access to the Internet), I have vowed not to look at the scoring. And hopefully not the day after. Or after that...until the All-Star break! It's like detox.
We'll see how long that lasts.
So tomorrow, for the first time...ever (outside of the times when I didn't have access to the Internet), I have vowed not to look at the scoring. And hopefully not the day after. Or after that...until the All-Star break! It's like detox.
We'll see how long that lasts.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
American Idle
By now everyone has seen the clip of Susan Boyle bringing down the house on Britain's Got Talent. Who would have thought that the never-been-kissed old crazy cat lady (not being derogatory, she actually says that she's never been kissed...and has a cat) like the one who works the checkout line at my grocery store would have a voice like that? They also totally make her seem like she's a pig the way they immediately cut to her stuffing a sandwich in her mouth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY (can't embed, sorry)
Now I wish that's what American Idol was like. I know that there's an age limit and the whole goal is to find someone who looks like a rock star as much as they sound like one, but frankly, I'm tired of watching angsty douchebags in tight leather pants every week who once had record deals that didn't pan out because, surprise...they're just not good at making music when they have to write the words themselves. I thought that the appeal of the show was that you'd be surprised by ordinary people who you really didn't expect to have an ounce of talent but actually had a lot. Like crazy cat lady.
So I think that the show is pretty much stagnating. I only used to watch that show for the weirdos anyway, but now they'll kill themselves if you criticize them, apparently, so even that's out of the question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY (can't embed, sorry)
Now I wish that's what American Idol was like. I know that there's an age limit and the whole goal is to find someone who looks like a rock star as much as they sound like one, but frankly, I'm tired of watching angsty douchebags in tight leather pants every week who once had record deals that didn't pan out because, surprise...they're just not good at making music when they have to write the words themselves. I thought that the appeal of the show was that you'd be surprised by ordinary people who you really didn't expect to have an ounce of talent but actually had a lot. Like crazy cat lady.
So I think that the show is pretty much stagnating. I only used to watch that show for the weirdos anyway, but now they'll kill themselves if you criticize them, apparently, so even that's out of the question.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Small Sample Size Alert!
From the title of this post, you're probably guessing that I'm going to spend the entire thing hating on Emilio Bonifacio. Not true. I'm only going to spend half of the post hating on him, if even that much.
This guy has spent the past two years getting passed around the league like a case of herpes at the University of South Carolina and is about equally as physically attractive. He strikes out twice as much as he walks, and prior to this season had stolen all of 7 bases in almost 200 major league at-bats...out of 12 attempts! His career on-base percentage was exactly .300 coming into 2009.
There's a funny phenomenon in psychology called the anchoring heuristic, where your initial information becomes the "anchor" and is subsequently very difficult to change. It's why first impressions are so important. If Bonifacio started out hitting .150 the first couple of weeks and then hit .471 or whatever at the end of the season, nobody would bat an eyelash. He's a .150 hitter who had one fluke week, right? Well when he hits .150 next week, you'll be tempted to think of that as the fluke, when the fluke was really last week. He was just fortunate to have his best week of the season happen to come at the very beginning.
But whatever. I don't look down on anyone who grabbed him. Life is a game of risk and reward, and who knows? But let's not forget the lesson of Chris Shelton in 2006. The odds aren't in your favor.
This guy has spent the past two years getting passed around the league like a case of herpes at the University of South Carolina and is about equally as physically attractive. He strikes out twice as much as he walks, and prior to this season had stolen all of 7 bases in almost 200 major league at-bats...out of 12 attempts! His career on-base percentage was exactly .300 coming into 2009.
There's a funny phenomenon in psychology called the anchoring heuristic, where your initial information becomes the "anchor" and is subsequently very difficult to change. It's why first impressions are so important. If Bonifacio started out hitting .150 the first couple of weeks and then hit .471 or whatever at the end of the season, nobody would bat an eyelash. He's a .150 hitter who had one fluke week, right? Well when he hits .150 next week, you'll be tempted to think of that as the fluke, when the fluke was really last week. He was just fortunate to have his best week of the season happen to come at the very beginning.
But whatever. I don't look down on anyone who grabbed him. Life is a game of risk and reward, and who knows? But let's not forget the lesson of Chris Shelton in 2006. The odds aren't in your favor.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Gambler's Fallacy Revisited
A lot of times when evaluating baseball players, people are tempted to think that if a player struggles mightily in the first half (below their career averages), then in the second half, in order to reach those career averages, the player will naturally perform far above the norm. So for example, if a career .300 hitter bats .200 over the first half of the season, it is very tempting to think that he’ll hit .400 over the second half of the season so that it all averages out to .300 over the whole year.
Unfortunately, as the fantasy baseball articles invariably point out every all-star break, that is not what you should expect. It’s a variation of the Gambler’s Fallacy—if you flip a coin and get ten heads in a row, then a lot of people would expect the eleventh flip to be tails because it’s “due.” But it’s easy to see that no matter what’s happened in the past, that eleventh flip is still 50-50. The twelfth flip is still 50-50. You could get 99 heads in a row and the hundredth flip is still 50-50. The past doesn’t affect the future probability at all. In the same way, if a .300 batter bats .200 in the first half, he’s not going to bat .400 in the second half—he’ll bat .300 in the second half.
Mathematically, the principle is sound, but what the fantasy baseball writers ignore is that unlike a coin flip, baseball performance is NOT random. I think one could speculate that a player may indeed exceed his career averages after a period of struggling because his surroundings adapt to that performance. For example, perhaps if a player struggles for a long time, he gets moved down in the order where pitchers are not as careful with him (such as right in front of the pitcher’s batting slot). Or perhaps pitchers are simply not as careful because due to the subpar half-season, he is not perceived as a threat anymore. I don’t have the time or the wherewithal to do a proper analysis, but my impression is that there are so many factors that it is disingenuous to reduce it to a simple Gambler’s Fallacy.
Unfortunately, as the fantasy baseball articles invariably point out every all-star break, that is not what you should expect. It’s a variation of the Gambler’s Fallacy—if you flip a coin and get ten heads in a row, then a lot of people would expect the eleventh flip to be tails because it’s “due.” But it’s easy to see that no matter what’s happened in the past, that eleventh flip is still 50-50. The twelfth flip is still 50-50. You could get 99 heads in a row and the hundredth flip is still 50-50. The past doesn’t affect the future probability at all. In the same way, if a .300 batter bats .200 in the first half, he’s not going to bat .400 in the second half—he’ll bat .300 in the second half.
Mathematically, the principle is sound, but what the fantasy baseball writers ignore is that unlike a coin flip, baseball performance is NOT random. I think one could speculate that a player may indeed exceed his career averages after a period of struggling because his surroundings adapt to that performance. For example, perhaps if a player struggles for a long time, he gets moved down in the order where pitchers are not as careful with him (such as right in front of the pitcher’s batting slot). Or perhaps pitchers are simply not as careful because due to the subpar half-season, he is not perceived as a threat anymore. I don’t have the time or the wherewithal to do a proper analysis, but my impression is that there are so many factors that it is disingenuous to reduce it to a simple Gambler’s Fallacy.
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Phrases Which Irk Me
Yes, it's no secret that certain phrases just grind my gears. The two offenders I heard today:
- "No offense, but...": Ironically, the way a smug asshole informs you that he's about to offend you is that he prefaces it with the claim that he means no offense. With that said, I have NEVER heard anyone say "no offense" before a statement and actually mean it.
- "I got pregnant": I know that this is the way you express the thought, so whatever. But "got" is just so passive. How did the statement become so passive? It sounds like the woman was sitting at home doing crossword puzzles after her evening prayers and then suddenly a holy gob of semen materialized in her unsuspecting uterus. Instead of "I got pregnant" it would be much more accurate to say, "I opened my legs and let a guy blow his load inside me and one of his little swimmers slipped past my goalie and now I'm throwing up in the morning."
- "No offense, but...": Ironically, the way a smug asshole informs you that he's about to offend you is that he prefaces it with the claim that he means no offense. With that said, I have NEVER heard anyone say "no offense" before a statement and actually mean it.
- "I got pregnant": I know that this is the way you express the thought, so whatever. But "got" is just so passive. How did the statement become so passive? It sounds like the woman was sitting at home doing crossword puzzles after her evening prayers and then suddenly a holy gob of semen materialized in her unsuspecting uterus. Instead of "I got pregnant" it would be much more accurate to say, "I opened my legs and let a guy blow his load inside me and one of his little swimmers slipped past my goalie and now I'm throwing up in the morning."
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