A Week and a Half Break

Ms Duncan has just finished her summer break ... it was disconcertingly short - 1 1/2 weeks. We were quite busy - planning a certain ceremony and visiting friends with whom we bonded over various bouts of intestinal diseases during our Peace Corps service.

First we went to Vermont, stayed at a friend's family cabin in the woods, went swimming everyday in an amazingly beautiful lake with a perfect island right in the middle, toured the Cabot cheese factory, went to the Ben and Jerry's factory (no tour as they weren't actually making anything that day - and no free sample as far as I can tell), played cards and other games, cooked out (yours truly built a glorious cooking fire), played tennis, and generally had a fabulous time reconnecting with the people who were too lame to move to Boston when we left DC. There was much rejoicing.

As a couple friends were departing, we learned that they would be returning to the Northeast next weekend to see family in Maine - they invited us along so we ended up picking them up at the airport and driving through hellacious boston traffic along I-95 (easily the most gridlocked interstate top to bottom in the country) arriving at the family abode after midnight, waking up at 530 to drive another hour and a half north to the river, bundling up in wetsuits as it was 45 degrees outside, rafting down the river for 5 hours (an interlude that was broken up by lunch at the mosquito breeding grounds - seriously the most infested place I have ever seen), getting a busted lip from a bouncing oar (Ms. Duncan) and nearly falling out of the raft during class 5 rapids (yours truly - Ms. Duncan dropped her oar into the river to keep me from falling out), driving back to Bangor to attend a folk music festival, driving out to another cabin on a lake, jumping in said lake at midnight despite 45 degree temperatures, sleeping on tiny beds, jumping in the lake again, and heading back to boston.

When put that way it seems like quite a lot.

Business Ethics

One of the things that always amazes me is that for every movie out there, there's always someone who thinks it's awesome - no matter how horrible the movie was. Take for example, Disaster Movie - on the imdb list of 100 worst movies it's ranked by the user's as the 24th worst movie - the only movie on the list to be ranked by more than 25 thousand people - so it's pretty unanimous - but not entirely. An amazing 6% of people gave it a 10.* Surprisingly, very few of these 10 ratings are jokes - unlike the case with Manos: The Hands of Fate, long regarded as the worst movie ever. With that movie, quite a few 10s are handed because of a thorough enjoyment of the unintentional comedy from a horrid attempt at a serious/scary movie. But Disaster Movie is supposed to be a comedy, thus the unintentional comedy vote is largely removed (unintentional comedy is the realm of horrible dramas - horrible comedies are the worst as no laughs at all can escape) - that is to say, these people really liked the movie.** My favorite positive reviewer talks about how it's one of his favorite movies that he can enjoy with friends or alone. He then goes on to complain about the negative reviewers - "perhaps the users that commented negatively to this movie could make a better movie? hummmmm. doughtful."

What's interesting is contemplating the possibility that there might be some movie or book that you love, that everyone else clearly recognizes as being utter crap. For example, I really like this blog post, but there's a good chance that it's quite horrible. All this is just a long pre-introduction to bring up my own introduction to the blog topic using Adam Sandler's Billy Madison, which I was shocked, shocked I say*, to learn had a splat rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I believe history is largely on my side due to the numerous eminently quotable moments in the movie (a favorite of mine being "You ain't cool unless you pee your pants" to which the old woman responds "If peeing your pants is cool, call me Miles Davis." ... on second thought, maybe I'm wrong).

Billy Madison ends with an academic contest between the heir (Billy) and the scheming corporate hack who wants to take over the company. They have a final set of questions. Billy get's his so so wrong - the judge responds (and I'm writing this off the top of my head so it likely contains errors - indulge me) "at no point in that rambling incoherent answer do you even come close to approximating anything that can be construed as a correct response - everyone in this room is dumber because of you - I award you no points and may god have mercy on your soul." You would think it would be over for Billy.

However, his scheming opponent gets a question on business ethics which he of course is entirely unfamiliar with and at the thought of losing to Billy he proceeds to pull out a gun and take someone hostage (I forget who) before he is jumped on by the overweight elementary school principal who wrestles under the name of The Blob!

I imagine some of the people at business school might respond similarly.

Now, disclaimers first. I am truly impressed by everyone I've met in the program. They are all very intelligent and genuinely nice people and I don't think they're going to take anyone hostage nor do I think they'll bamboozle grandma out of her savings so they can buy their kid the latest diamond encrusted tonka truck.

That being said, I still have some qualms about their ethical training.

Ms. Duncan recently finished her first semester in the LGO program and to celebrate they had a BBQ outside on campus followed by some games. People were split up according to the teams they used in throughout the semester (with SOs included). We played the Tie-A-Balloon-To-Your-Ankle-And-Then-Jump-On-Everyone-Elses-Balloon game, a carry an egg on the spoon while blindfolded game, a water balloon toss, a relay race involving three legs, human wheelbarrows (yours truly) and sacks, and a final pie eating contest. No real prizes were awarded and no scores were kept.

Yet rampant cheating took place. Now one way to look at this is that no one was really hurt by the cheating since there was nothing to win so it was all in good fun. Another way to look at is that they cheated when there were no stakes - imagine when millions of dollars are on the line.

*As an aside, I'm guessing that these movies are made for the young idiot male (of which I'm sure there are plenty) but surprisingly men actually give it a lower rating than women and young women give it the highest rating of all. I have two explanations for this - first, women are nicer in their reviewing (as an eg. I give scathing reviews to bad teachers, but Ms. Duncan is much more resistant) - second, young idiot females have much more peer pressure power over young less idiotic females.

**I haven't actually seen the movie - the closest I've come to seeing anything by the craptastic directors who made this movie is Scary Movie where they served as minor writers - I remember the movie largely being horrible and paling in comparison to the great spoof movies like Airplane or Naked Gun or Hot Shots ... for a good critique of these directors see here.

***Just as I cannot say "So it goes" without thinking of Vonnegut, or "forever" without thinking of Sandlot, I cannot say "Shocked" without thinking of Casablanca.

Speed dating

Everyone in the LGO program does a 6 month internship for a partner company. To decide who goes where, there is internship - fest, which is much like speed dating. Each partner conducts an interview with each interested student and then matching happens. The big difference is that no one goes home empty handed.

While I have never done speed dating myself, one of the funniest emails I ever received was from my cousin the day after she had speed dated. She had to take notes so that she would remember the guys and then try to match with someone at the end. An excerpt from her notes is as follows:

" Kamtrivi - Never got to ask him a question

Robert - Weirdo!

Audi - finance dude
David - doesn't care for women preachers or tongue speaking churches
Bill - army, talks out of side of mouth
John - speaks 4 languages, size of 12 year old"*

After getting this email, I have to admit to a little twinge of disappointment that I (having already found my soulmate) would never be able to experience Speed Dating. My cousin started the email by saying that speed dating was a bust, so she perhaps would not agree. But to me it seems that experiences like that are what make life interesting.

I was teaching English in China when I received this email. It made such an impression, that I actually did an entire class activity around speed dating. This was by far my student's favorite activity.

On an only marginally related note, my cousin recently went on a blind date with someone who it turned out she had already met at a speed dating event**. On a creepy scale of 1 to 10, How creepy was it that the guy knew they had already met but didn't tell her because he thought she wouldn't still want to go out (and proceeded to tell her that during the date)?

*The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

**Her notes were "Bob - boring, talks about investments, shrimpy"

Multi-tasking

I have roughly 3 weeks left of the summer semester and it is getting rough. I am pretty much working nonstop and still not getting it all done.

Tyler however has it all under control. Upon returning from a bike ride today, he turned a soccer game on TV, pulled baseball stats up on the computer, and had the baseball game actually playing on his iPod. He clearly has mastered the art of multi-tasking.

Evidence below.

a prolonged absence

I apologize for the lack of posts this past month. I've been in India. I happened to go there during the hot season so whenever any one mentions India in the future I'm sure that I'll respond somewhat in the following manner: "Ahh, yes, India ... tis a hot place ..."

Anyways, I'm attempting to retrospectively blog the trip - you can read about it here.

Ms. Duncan has filled in admirably for me in my absence and let's hope that she continues with the blogging in the future.

The grass really is greener!

Tyeliah recently finished her first class - probability - or rather the first half of the probability and statistics class (there are 2 different teachers for the two halves, so I call it two classes). To celebrate their last lecture with the probability teacher - Arnie - they all wore orange - Arnie's favorite color. They also all created new name placards.

I just went to grad school. I didn't have name tags. Hmmm...

Anyways, instead of being 'Tye' - Ms. Duncan's business-y name - she went by 'Tray Table Catcher.' I have been informed that Ms. Duncan would have been much more creative had she known that I would be blogging about the experience. Apparently The Tray Tables were a baseball team in a homework problem. And I thought the Banana Slugs was the worst mascot name.

Tyeliah thoroughly enjoyed her time in probability class - the teacher was quite entertaining or so I'm told. I've always been a fan of probability myself, being somewhat mathematically inclined. I also had an excellent probability teacher in my undergraduate days, a swiss man who had an uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus who would come in every class and ask "Does anyone have any questions today" and when inevitably no one would say anything (college is supposed to be a place of flourishing debate but I think anyone can attest to the fact that there are an inordinate amount of uncomfortable silences) he would say "Good - my dog ate all the answers so I wouldn't be much help" or some other ever varying excuse about how he had misplaced the answers. I enjoyed it.

Anyways, a curious probability quandary involving expected values was recently explained by the probability and statistics TA on the way back from a recent plant trek (more on that later). An expected value can be explained as follows - say you get $60 if you roll a 6 and $30 if you roll a 5 and $0 if you roll anything else - you have a 1/6 chance of rolling a 6 and a 1/6 chance of rolling a 5 so the expected value of one roll of the dice is (1/6*60+1/6*30+2/3*0) $15. If you think about it in casino terms, the casino would want to set up a game where you had to bet greater than $15 to roll the dice so they would be assured (in the long run) of making money. I'm sure there's a better way of explaining expected values, but you get the idea.

The TA created a problem as follows. Say you are presented with 2 envelopes - one of the envelopes has twice as much cash as the other - although you don't know the value of the cash in either envelope. You choose envelope A and open it up to find $100. So there's a 50% chance that you chose the higher valued envelope (meaning that envelope B has $50) and there's a 50% chance that you chose the lower valued envelope (meaning that envelope B has $200). Then you're given the option of keeping envelope A or switching to envelope B. What do you do?

The choice rests upon the expected value of envelope B - if the expected value is greater than $100, you should switch. So what's the expected value? 1/2*50+1/2*200=$125. Therefore, you should always switch to the other envelope.

Thus the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and if given the option, you should always jump over the fence.*

Personally, I love the liberal arts and sciences for many reasons but mostly because I like the idea that any triviality can be analyzed and analyzed and analyzed again and connected to deeper truths about our inner psyches or broad all encompassing truths about the nature of our societies. So, in my love of overanalyis, I decided to research the question of whether the grass really is greener on the other side.

Lo and behold (a phrase worthy of its own analysis) I came across this, an academic paper purporting to show that the grass may not actually be greener on the other side but that we are psychologically disposed to think so. It also explains why I always seem to choose the slowest lane in the grocery store or make all the wrong choices as I attempt to navigate a traffic jam.

Ahhh, internet. You never cease to amaze me.

*There are of course problems with this probability paradox - something to do with the lack of an actual upper limit value on the amount of the cash in the envelope which if it were to exist (as it empirically must) would take away from the higher expected value of always switching. But fun nonetheless, wouldn't you agree.**

**Ms. Duncan believes I just made up this problem with the probability paradox and that it is not actually true ... she may be correct ... it's been known to happen in the past

Free time today - sort of

I'm home at 1 in the afternoon. This has not happened in a while.

I have class every day till 12:30, then the afternoons are filled with tutorials, speakers, committee meetings, team projects, and soon plant tours. This means that I usually get home around 5:30, and that's when I do my homework. All this adds up to very little free time. When you add in LGO social events, it is safe to say that this program is all consuming.

Today though, good karma has converged on the near mid-point in the semester to clear my afternoon schedule.

So instead of attempting to cram all of my homework into the hours between 6 and 10, I will be spending my afternoon and evening studying for my mid-term tomorrow, finishing my assignment for lean, and starting my leadership paper. I may even go on a bike ride. The weather is actually beautiful.