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I just went to a meeting. I walked in with 1 piece of paper. I walked out with 4.

That, my friends, is what we call losing a meeting.

More books

I hadn't realized how far behind I'd gotten on my books.

Brisingr:  This book follows Eragon and Eldest, which I read recently.  I read those two (which I had read before) to remember what happened, so I could read the third and final book in the series and be done with it all.  But, as it turns out, this wasn't the final book as I had thought.  It was long and entertaining as the others were, and, I was glad to see that it provided some plot twists that I didn't see coming.  I remain curious to see how it all turns out.  Sometimes it is best to discover series' after they've all been written so you don't have to do the annoying part of waiting for the next book.

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman:  In 35 years at Caltech, Feynmann was listed as teacher of record for 34 courses.  25 were graduate courses.  I guess when you're as big a name as Feynman, you can teach what whatever you want (or not teach, as the case may be).  But for two years, he taught a series of introductory physics courses.  The lectures were recorded and eventually edited and published as Feynman's Lectures on Physics.  The finished work is famous, among physicists at least, and anyone out there is welcome to buy it for me.  (It's 3 volumes, and not cheap.)  Until that day, I have 6 Easy Pieces, which are exerpts from the lectures.  They're interesting and are Feynman's attempts to collapse some big topics, like "Basic Physics" into a single lecture.

4 fluids

Julia is having a bit of a rough day.  Which of course means that we all are.  This afternoon she managed to get, more or less simultaneously, 4 different bodily fluids on my shirt: tears, slobber, boogers and poop.

I suppose that is better than if she had done it to four different shirts.

And, as I type this, she just got Shannon's pants.  (hint: not tears, slobber or boogers)

Her Parents Daughter

We've recently discovered a few traits that julia seems to have picked up from her parents.

From Shannon: Julia is a bottomless pit.  She would eat all day long if we would just be so kind as to keep feeding her.  Shannon likewise loves food.  One thing that Shannon loves about pregnancy and breast feeding is the ability to eat so much more.  "It's like a dream come true."  I've heard her say.  And now Julia is always hungry.  She at a full grilled cheese sandwhich today.  She went through two bottles just during church yesterday.  And she ate an hour before church started.  She knows a few signs.  "More" is made by touching all 10 of your fingers together infront of you.  "Eat" or "Food" is made by putting 5 fingers together and touching them to your lips.  Today she combined the two by bringing both hands to her mouth to sign for, what I can only imagine means "MORE FOOD NOW!"

From Clark:  When I got her home from church yesterday, I took off her shoes to find . . . sweaty feet.  I'm sorry Julia.  That's all I can say.  She might just be doomed to sweaty feed.  No matter how hot, no matter how cold, they just sweat.

Updump

Yes, here are some updates that really, are pretty dumpy.

1.  I read "Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident".  Yeah, it's a young-adult book.  The first one was interesting and mindless enough.  The second one made me realize that I didn't really remember much of the first one, even though it had only been a few months, and that neither one was really that good.  I don't plan on reading any more.

2.  I read "Clarks emails to Shannon May-Aug 2001".  Shannon printed out a collection of emails I wrote when we were first dating.  Let me sumarize: my job is boring.  There, I saved you a bunch of reading.  There were, of course, a few humorous nuggets, but man, did I just say the same things over and over again.

3.  Nothing quite so fun as holding your daughter and then realizing she's just peed all over you.  yay.

4.  Our garden isn't faring too well.  Nothing really seems to be growing, though most of the plants look ok.  Some, however, seem to be dead/disappeared, and are dying from North to South.  Perhaps a very, very, very slow moving plague?

5.  I've just about completely lost my voice over the last two days.  Now would not be the time to give me a call.

Boring tournament, Exciting math!

Yesterday, Brett started us down a dangerous path, but you'll be happy to know I saved us all from potential loss of sleep. I'll explain . . . . Brett was wondering, as I'm sure various of you were, what the results would be from a 64 team single elimination tournament in which there were no upsets and the positions of the teams are clearly defined and well known, but matchups are random. The tournament wouldn't be much good for setting contest up; we all know who the best team is, and they are guaranteed to win. However, there is an interesting question of who gets second place. Certainly, the #2 team has the best chance of getting second, but, if they meet the #1 team before the championship game, they are out of luck.

Brett started from a numerical approach, letting his computer set up 10,000 such tournaments, randomly placing the teams into brackets and seeing how it comes out, and intially supposed that team #2 has a 1/2 chance of 2nd place, #3 a 1/4 chance, #4 a 1/8 chance, and so on and so forth. The result isn't surprising. But quickly, we realized that this can't be correct. First off, it implies that all teams have a chance of winning, when they clearly don't. No team lower than the field size/2 + 1 can make the championship game. Also, that result can't be right because the probability of someone finishing in 2nd place only adds up to 1 if we sum forever, and we don't have infinitely many teams.

So, what is the probability? If you want to figure it out for yourself, quit reading now, because I'm about to tell you. Ok . . . I see that none of you have quit reading. (It's impressive that you've read this far.) After various attempts at finding a formula that fits, I present you with the formula for finding the probability of any team taking second place in such a tournament, generalized for any number of teams and any seed:
where f is the field size and s is the seed and a[s] represents the odds of the nth seed taking 2nd place, where 2 <> (f/2 +1). There, can't you rest easier this weekend now that this problem has been put to rest?

The Fix

Chad Orzel has a great idea on how to fix the economic mess we're stuck in: Physicists Can Fix This.

You should read the whole post, it's not that long. But this is the gist presented in Q/A format, with me providing the questions, and Dr. Orzel responding:

Q: What's your plan?
A: "fire them. All of them. Every trader who bought or sold a mortgage-backed security, every manager who signed off on the buying and selling of credit default swaps, every CEO of every company now in need of a federal bailout, everybody who ever shook hands with Bernie Madoff."

Q: And who should we hire to run things?
A: "I've thought of the perfect replacements: physicists."

Q: But won't physicists screw it up because they don't know about business and economics?
A: "the people who are pushing that line the hardest are the people who stand to benefit most from large windfall payments to the current financial industry. Which is to say, the people who have wrecked the economy by failing to understand the most basic facts of the underlying market. They have lots of experience, to be sure, but the bulk of their experience is in being wrong about everything. They lost billions to a Ponzi scheme, for God's sake. And, seriously, do you really think that these transactions are too complicated for physicists to figure out? We're talking about people who have spent the last several years thinking about folding and twisting strings in eleven dimensions."

Eragon and Eldest

The 3rd book in the Eragon series came out a while ago. As it had been a while since I read the first two books (and regrettably saw the movie) I decided to re-read them to refresh my memory before I read the third. Then I would put a nice conclusion to the whole thing and be done with them all.

Unfortunately, it turns out there will be 4 books, not 3. Hopefully he writes #4 quickly, because I am not reading the first 3 over (again) before reading #4.

Anyway, if you haven't read Eragon, here is my fairly spoiler-laden review:

Eragon was written by a kid. He was like 15 when he started the book, perhaps 17 by the time he finished. Google it if you really want to know. It is very impressive that any teenager can write a coherant book. The best way I can describe the book is that I think he watched the original Star Wars trilogy, read Lord of the Rings and then thought: "Hey, I have a fabulous idea for a book!"

We have Eragon, an orphaned child living with his uncle. He doesn't even know who his father is, and his mother dropped him off as a baby and was never heard from again. He ends up coming across a dragon egg which hatches for him, and names the dragon Saphira. Some bad guys who work for the evil king come looking for him, and he ends up leaving his backwater village with kinda crazy old guy who lives nearby, pretending to be a story teller. But, as it turns out!, kinda crazy old guy isn't who he appears to be! He's been hiding that in the past he was a feared warrior with magical powers who happens to be nearby and can now teach Eragon to use his magical powers! The book is largely a travelogue of their adventures as they get captured, escape, kill some bad guys, learn about Eragon's destiny, and eventually make their way to the small alliance of rebels. Sadly, this group isn't known as the Rebel Alliance, but as the Varden. Along their way, we see that their world is made up of humans, elves (who have magical powers and live forever, but like to keep to themselves in their forest), dwarves (who are excellent miners and live in the mountains) and urgals (who are disgusting, horned brutes who work for the bad guy).

Really, the book isn't bad, though I do like to poke fun at it. It is entertaining and goes quickly. It's not great literature, but it is a good distraction from life, and is better for you than watching reruns of 'Friends'.

The second book in the series is Eldest. Begin spoiler fest:

Having defeated the urgal army at the end of the first book, Eragon travels to the elves' forest to train where, lo and behold, a very old dragon rider and his dragon have been hiding for all these years waiting to train the next dragon rider (Eragon). We also discover that Eragon's travelling companion from the first book, Murtagh, who we thought died is really not dead, and has been put into the service of the evil king. Oh, and he's Eragon's brother. Oh, and their father was the evil king's right hand man before Brom (the kinda crazy storyteller who died in book 1) killed him. So, it's all one big happy family.

I'm currently half way through book 3, about 1500 pages into the adventure. While there aren't many surprises, it still sucks me in. (Just ask Shannon.)

Yard Work

I've got a friend who apparently likes yard work.  I guess I need to invite him over more often.

Last night we cranked up the sprinkers for the first time.  We probably could have done that a week ago, but oh well.  Luckily the sprinklers all seem to be working in reasonably good order.  One is somewhat broken, but still puts 90+% of the water out on the lawn where it should go, so it certainly isn't a crisis.

I also repaired the spigot in the backyard.  Look how handy I am!  It was leaking out of the knob when turned on, so I took it apart, applied Teflon tape and cranked it back together good and tight.  No more leaks!  Now I can return the new one that I bought under the assumption that I wouldn't be able to fix the old one.

Also, we've been weeding fiends lately.  Apparently the difference between a plant and a weed is that a plant is what you want to grow, and a weed is what will grow.  I think we should just declare that we are trying to grow the weeds.  Then, we will either succeed, or the weeds will decide to shrivel up and die, which wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Now the top priority is to get the garden planted, and the water all hooked up for it.

Made in America

You might think that I've stopped reading, what with no more book updates lately.  That is far from the truth, which is that I've been wanting to write a summary of this book for so long that I've finished 3 books since.  All in good time.

See, I was waiting until I had the book with me to review Made in America by Bill Bryson.  You may be familiar with Bryson books, which are often humorous traveloguey type books.  But rather than being straight humor, he likes to add in lots of detail about whatever he finds along the way.  This book is no different.  Made in America claims to be "an informal history of the English language in the United States".  I suppose it is, but I would have bolded and italicized the word informal.  (In fact, I just did!)  Bryson heads off where ever his interest takes him on minutae about words that are used or invented in America.  This is a good thing, because otherwise, he would have spent the whole book just listing words and when they first appeared: to scoot (1841), highfalutin (1848), underdog (1887), rip-roaring (1834), sitting pretty (1910), dope fiend (1896), jet lag (1966).

But, it's all worth it, just for Bill to provide us all with this nugget of information in the section about candy: "Equally improbable was the Chicken Dinner candy bar, so called because it was supposed to engender the feeling of well-being provided by a steaming roast chicken dinner.  Though few people were able to make the leap of imagination necessary to equate a 5-cent chocolate peanut roll with a well-balance meal, the Chicken Dinner sold well and survived into th 1960s."