The Half Baked Lunatic

Here is one of my favorite math puzzles – commonly known as the “Monty Hall Goat Trick”.  It’s a wonderfully delicious problem that plays with your head. It has a psychological component that makes even the brightest of people swear that the obvious answer is the correct one, but it’s not!

The game was a regular feature on “Let’s Make A Deal” – a strangely popular show back in the 70’s with legendary game show host Monty Hall. Pop culture at its finest (well, along with “The Gong Show”, of course).  During the show, some very lucky (and usually crazily dressed) person was selected from the studio audience to play the game, and had the chance to win A BRAND NEW CAR! (this became Monty Hall’s catchphrase).

The puzzle has been discussed on hundreds of website, so it’s nothing new, but it's still one of my favorites. Stay with me if you haven’t run across this problem before …

Let’s say you are the lucky participant that gets selected to play the game out of the studio audience. The rules of the game are simple:

• There are three doors.  Behind two doors is a goat and behind one of the three doors is A BRAND NEW CAR! You get to take home either a goat or More...

GM has been in trouble a long time, no doubt about it. It's easy to blame management for their slow change to smaller cars, corporate inefficiency, etc.  But face it: it's the unions that are mostly to blame for GM's downfall.  Or, if you prefer, it's managements fault that they didn't have a backbone - and they let the unions walk all over them.

I have many issues with the whole philosophy of unions. Yes, there have been times when they've been helpful - when working conditions were abysmal, unsafe, the pay was equivalent to slave labor, and there weren't any other options for workers. But for the most part those times are long past.

Let's look at unions from a couple of different angles.

I have absolutely no compassion for any company that mistreats employees, but I don't consider providing only a basic health plan as "mistreating" anyone.  Many of the benefits More...

I've done a lot of media licensing in my life.  A lot .... hit songs, video clips, still images (including a picture of Elvis Presley once, that was fun). I'm fairly up to date on licensing laws and procedures, and I have a high regard for artists rights. And I certainly wouldn't dream of using someone's copyrighted material in a national advertisement without their permission. 

So why is John McCain trying to sue Jackson Browne after he used "Running on Empty" without permission?  This is just plain stupid:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27820970

Basically, McCain's campaign used Jackson Browne's hit song "Running on Empty" in an ad that targeted Obama's energy plan.  Jackson Browne sued, rightfully so, stating that More...

Americans are spoiled.

We want to have a semi-socialist government that provides entitlements and health care, but no one wants higher taxes to pay for it. We want high wages, but then we complain when everyone buys cheap foreign made goods. We're straddled with trillions of dollars of debt, and no one wants to raise taxes to pay for it. We want it all, and we don't want to pay for it.  Spoiled.

Something has to give!

Believe me, I think our taxes are too high as it is and I don't want to pay any more - especially when the money is being spent on an idiotic war that has no end in sight, on a bailout which has very little chance of saving our debt driven economy, and social programs that give freebies to people that really don't contribute much in return. But let's be realistic.

For 150 years, we've gone More...

There was a report a few weeks ago talking about the inflation in Zimbabwe.  The "Official" rate of inflation is 230 MILLION PERCENT, while some analysts put the number in the billions. The full story is here:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/11/03/zimbabwe.money/index.html

They can't seem to print money fast enough to keep up.  Previously, the largest bill was 50,000 Zimbabwe dollars, and now the new bill is Z$1,000,000, and they're still expecting currency shortages!

I remember when South American countries were all in an economic free-fall back in the 90's.  If you ate at a restaurant in Argentina, you needed to pay for your meal when you ordered, because if you waited until after you finished, the price will have doubled.  And that's with an inflation rate of "only" a few thousand percent.

How in the heck do you keep things "synchronized" from store to store with a 230 million percent inflation rate?  It's ludicrous!

Of course, this leads to the question of More...

Here is the second of my two talks that I gave at the Seattle chapter of the Ethical Culture Society, this one is from November 4, 2004. (See yesterday's post for the first ...)

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What do you believe?
David M. H. Workman

People can be very fervent in their beliefs. 

I’m talking about the good old fashioned argument of science versus religion.  By religion, I mean the organizations whose purpose it is to evangelize a monotheistic God.

What do you believe in?  Is there a god?  Is there a controlling “force” in the universe?  Is our existence and our future pre-determined for us?

Our beliefs are based on our own experiences, what our parents and teachers teach us, what we read, whomever we decide is telling us the truth. And what about our sometimes irrational interpretations More...

Back in 2004, I was invited to be a guest speaker at the Seattle chapter of The Ethical Culture Society, a non-religeous group that lives their lives by a strict code of ethics rather than religious principals.  Although I was never an official member of the society, my family attended quite a few meetings that year, and I actually gave two different talks - the following is the first one I did on February first, 2004.  I'll post the second one tomorrow.

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The Words and Intentions of a Politically Correct society
David M. H. Workman  

When I was growing up, we had two cardinal rules in our house that were mandated by my mother.  The first was no gossiping.  We were not allowed to say anything negative about someone behind their back.  If there was something we didn’t like about someone, we spoke to them about it personally, and in private.

The second wasn’t as much of a rule as a philosophy.  It was my mother’s goal to see the elimination of all prejudices worldwide.  I was raised with the fundamental principle that it doesn’t matter what someone’s social or financial status is, or what their education, race, heritage, sexual orientation, or gender is – every person on this planet deserves to be treated with courtesy and respect at the very least.

My mother was very serious about More...

For the last two days, I've seen numerous reports calling for job seekers to submit their resume's on Obama's website www.Change.gov

I'm a seasoned manager with great credentials.  I have very few skeletons in my closet, and as an added bonus I am currently living in Washington D.C.  So I've decided to give it a try.  I filled out the "expression of interest" form last night. 

Lest you think I'm doing this as a joke - I'm not.  Although I don't really NEED a job at this point, I would seriously consider the opportunity if I manage to get through the vetting process. I'm curious if they'll even respond to my "expression of interest" (that's such a politically correct way of stating it.  Hmmph.)  An MSNBC news report published today says that administration applicants will go through the most "extensive and invasive" application process ever.  They will review all blogs, More...

My posting yesterday on global population made me think of one of the best social commentaries to hit the theaters since Muffin Man. 

Idiocracy is a scathing remark on one of the worst trends of modern times: educated and intelligent people are having less kids and uneducated and lower intelligent people are having more. The movie projects this out 500 years to a society that is .... well, akin to 500 generations of Homer Simpson inbreeding with his second cousin.

Nothing is sacred in this movie - they take on pop culture, pollution, corporate marketing, government incompetancy, and the religious right (which is primarily responsible for humanities lowered IQ in the first place.)  I love it!

I am a very staunch "pro-life" advocate, but the biggest threat to life on this planet is the over population of the human species. I just can't buy the argument that humans have some innate right to survival at the expense of all other species.  Yes, our growth rate is slowing, but it's not enough.

There's an old example used to illustrate where humans are on our population trajectory.  You've probably heard this before, but to review: you have a jar with two microbes, and the net growth rate of the microbes is such that the total number of microbes doubles every minute (factoring in both birth and death rates), and the jar is just big enough so that it will fill to the brim with microbes in one day.  So you put the two microbes in the jar at midnight, and the jar is full at midnight the next day. The crux of the example is that at one minute before midnight, the jar is half full.  Two minutes before midnight the jar is a quarter full, and three minutes before midnight the jar is only an eighth full.

Ok, it's not a perfect explanation - humans can not completely "fill up" the world and there are numerous other factors More...