Less is more is less is more is less

Afterthoughts from a conversation that me and one of my friends in my suite were having from our math class...this all started from one of his friends from home going out and buying hipster clothing. Which we thought was un-hipster, in and of itself. And this seems totally plausible -- you can't make yourself hipster, it just has to happen...right? Here's an even deeper thought-provoking question...how many people does it take for something to become mainstream? Think about it first in terms of clothing or accessories or music choice, but then think about it in terms of what it means to be a hipster as such. How many hipsters does it take before being hipster is mainstream?

And another thing. One fun game to play with your friends is to see who can be the least competitive. The more you try and be not competitive, the more competitive you seem. Anyone who claims that they're winning is immediately losing. Even if you walk away from the situation, you're still playing, because you're trying to be a noncompetitive as possible, thereby making you all the more competitive. HOW FUN IS THAT. Man, irony is awesome.

Welcome to the experiment

One of my favorite places to write down thoughts is the margins of any notebook I'm using. Whether it's philosophical questions in ethics, notes to myself/the professor in my math classes on homework, or thinking up experiments in psychology, something always gets put to good use. This is the latter. A series of empirical questions that could be carried out via experiment. I won't give away all of the details, because 1) I don't know what they are completely, and 2) if I ever actually end up running any of these, the fewer people that know what to expect, the better.

• Do we get freaked out by a run of consecutive answers on a multiple-choice test?
• I thought about this as I was taking a multiple-choice test, and I would test people's comfort level with choosing the same answer repeatedly. The conventional worry is that one of them has to be something different.
• When we don't know the answer, what are we most likely to guess?
• This would be something a little different. It seems as though C is the answer you go for if you have no idea what to choose, since C just seems to be the common answer for what test-makers usually have as the right answer. I have a really cool procedure for this, so no secrets here.
• Do we feel better about a score on an exam if the points are added or subtracted?
• Let's say you get a 76 on an exam. That can come by virtue of earning 76 points, or by having 24 subtracted for you. Same score, but do we feel better about one over the other?
• On what terms do we like or dislike someone?
• Studies (lots of them) show that the more similar someone's appearance, beliefs, attitudes, opinions, blah blah, are with our own, the more we will like that person. The converse seems to be true. But under what circumstances? One thing I thought of is pronunciation of ambiguous names. My psych professor mentioned Kitty Genovese to us this week, except she pronounced it "gen-o-vee-say," as opposed to how I say it ("gen-o-veese"). I already have an opinion/impression formed regarding my professor, but if I didn't, would I dislike her more than someone who said it the same way I do?

Yeah, so if I ever become a psychologist, and have the independence/freedom to do whatever I want, I totally wanna see the answers to these questions. Haven't done any literature review to see if anyone's already gotten to these ideas (Editor's Note: "gotten" sounds like not a word...), but this would be really cool to find out. This is why I am involved with psychology. Cool stuff like this.

2062

Think about the year 2062. Fifty years from now, one hundred years from 1962. I feel as though I can fathom 1962 a lot more than I can imagine 2062, despite the fact that (hopefully) I'll be alive for the latter. Maybe that's because 1962 already happened, and we can look at it as it was, not as what it might be. Just something really interesting that I thought about once I decided upon my post title.

So. 2062. The year in which I will turn 71 years old. Again, if I'm alive. (Editor's Note: For all intents and purposes, let's say that I will be.) What the hell am I going to do with my life? My grandparents are in their eighties now, married for over 50 years. They go on cruises (I think), go on trips to casinos and stuff, and get early bird lunch specials ten times a week. They see their grandchildren, their friends, family, and neighbors. They watch TV, read, and go to sleep at a perfectly reasonable hour. I'm not saying that's the life. That absolutely is. I would love nothing more than to be able to do all of those things. But is that really what our generation will be doing when it's our time to be retired? One thing I'm looking forward to over winter break is playing Pokemon Diamond or Pearl. Seriously. Read a book or two maybe, see my friends, and go to San Diego for SURE stuff. But given the fact that I have no schoolwork to worry about, I'm enjoying winter break to the max. But what will we do when winter break becomes years? Will we be on our laptops? Will we be playing in virtual casinos instead of at Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun? I'm genuinely curious about this...what will we do when we retire? Has anybody thought about this? If you have any sort of answer to this question, please leave a comment. Not only does no one ever comment and I get sad, I actually want to know what people think about this, about what we're going to do with ourselves when we're in the midst of our retirement.

I'd like to buy a 3-letter acronym

I don't really have angry rant blog posts that often, and when I do, it's usually about anything short of a pure and wholehearted love someone has for Stonehill. This time, it's about the AL MVP Award that went to Miguel Cabrera over Mike Trout. I've done some thinking, and some reading, and I've decided that the decision is horseshit. Let's take a look at some common arguments made in favor of Cabrera winning the award:

-One is that Cabrera was on a playoff team. Namely, the AL Pennant winners, the Detroit Tigers. Detroit's record in the regular season? 88-74, one game worse than the Angels. Yep - Detroit would have finished fourth in the AL West, and Los Angeles would have won the AL Central.

-Well surely, a Triple Crown winner has to win the MVP Award, since it's such a rare feat. How about Ted Williams in the 1941 and 1942 seasons? Both times he won the Triple Crown, and finished second in the MVP voting. So the automatic decision to award a Triple Crown winner the MVP Award isn't that legitimate.

-A lot of stat-heads are moving towards the new age, the wave of sabermetrics. Statistics like WAR and WPA have been in many discussions. WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, is more or less how many more wins Player A is worth than a replacement Player B. Trout's WAR in 2012? 10.7. The best WAR in the majors this season, and the 20th-best WAR ever. Like, out of all the players in all the seasons of baseball. Cabrera's WAR? A measly 6.9, which was actually lower than his 2011 WAR of 7.3. Cabrera's 2012 WAR ranks tied for 496th all-time, and was only 5th in the majors this year.

-WPA, or Win Probability Added, is the change in Win Probability for your team after you come up to bat. Your team can have a Win Probability of 99% if you're ahead by more than two runs in the 9th inning, with none on, and two out. The more influence you have on the outcome of a game, the higher your WPA. This article makes a very interesting point about the lack of control hitters have toward their WPA, making it seem like a reasonable counterexample to the use of the statistics. Nonetheless, Trout's was higher than Cabrera's.

-And if you're all about making arguments that seem to come out of thin air, I'd like to play along. The Angels, sans Trout, would be a hell of a lot worse off than Detroit without Cabrera. How about Prince Fielder? How about reigning MVP/Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander? How about the AL Central? Every team (except Detroit) was in the bottom six in the AL in terms of ERA. The White Sox, Royals, Twins, and Indians had a combined 4.47 ERA. The Athletics, Rangers, and Mariners' combined ERA? 3.74. When you play half your schedule against teams with a 4.47 ERA, you're going to be more productive offensively.

Trout makes any team better than Cabrera does, but too many people in and out of the game of baseball are looking only at the numbers, when there's more to that when assessing the value of a player in regards to his/any team. You think Cabrera could steal 49 bases in a season? You think he could save 21 runs, defensively? (He actually cost Detroit four.) You think Cabrera could create runs on the basepaths? He can't do any of these things. Tell me something Cabrera does that Trout can't, on the baseball field. Go ahead, because you'll be looking for a while.

Epic Get Shit Done Week: Tuesday/Wednesday

Note to self. For all future instances in which I suspect a lot of work/studying coming my way, just overhype everything to the point where I realize that everything isn't so bad. Which is exactly what happened this week. After watching Duke beat Kentucky last night, and the Stonehill women's and men's teams win in overtime, I don't feel bad about watching so much college basketball with two tests to prepare for. I found time to study for one test earlier today, I'll study for the other one tonight and tomorrow morning (before I take it), and then study for the other test at lunch, before I take it at 2:30. It's really not that bad of a week. I should probably not even blog about this anymore since it's literally over and done with tomorrow. Sure, I have some work after, due at the beginning of next week, but I'll live.

Epic Get Shit Done Week: Monday

Well. EGSDW has turned out to  be not as horrifically terrible as I initially expected. I guess it's all in how you set it up on the whiteboard. That, and when you think about having things in terms of single units as opposed to one giant clusterfuck of work, it seems much more manageable. This is exactly what I've done. Compartmentalize everything into smaller, discrete units, and then everything seems easier! Having three tests in two days still kinda sucks, but it's nothing that hasn't been done before. Once the tests are over, I can worry about my two others classes' worth of work, due before the break, and then call it quits immediately thereafter. Between now and those tests, it's about immersing myself in the material as much as possible. Not even hardcore studying, but just staying engaged and involved with everything. If this week proves to be just like any other difficult week of class, then I can look back and see that it was just a stepping stone in the learning process, and all that fun, applicable stuff.

Epic Get Shit Done Week: Sunday

No, I didn't forget to blog. EGSDW is just starting to take its toll on me, is all. As much as I wanted to fall into an immediate sleep about half an hour ago, life must go on. Taking care of a couple things here and there, as well as writing my article for The Summit about the men's basketball preview, must be accomplished first. I still have some reading to do, but I also have some blogging to do.

Tomorrow looks promising as far as getting stuff done...it will be the only night between tomorrow and Thursday with no exciting college basketball. (Duke/Kentucky on Tuesday, and Stonehill basketball Wednesday.) What's phenomenally convenient is that I got a paper due Friday pushed back to being due Wednesday, by email. In the grand scheme of things, I lost a little bit of work this week, only to have to do it in the following days, but I'll take it for now. Just one less thing to have to worry about. Maybe I'll give my whiteboard a makeover tomorrow, seeing how it looks like EGSDW could use a little restructuring at this point. Staying on top of everything will be key, and I think I'm ready for the challenge. Knowing that I'll still have work to do after this week will surely be a theme when I'm done with all this...I won't be able to have a true day off until the first day of winter break. Either that, or the world will end the day before. One of the two. Hopefully we all make it out alive. Also hopefully, tomorrow's post will seem more epic, as opposed to the "right, I have to blog tonight in the middle of getting all my work done" feeling. Oops.

Epic Get Shit Done Week: Saturday

Well, it's the second day of Epic Get Shit Done Week, and I haven't really gotten anything done. Today I went to the Stonehill football and men's basketball games. Football lost 13-10 in a close contest, and basketball won 78-59, in a not-so-close contest. Still a lot of fun. I'm really pumped that the basketball season has started, and that a lot of people were at the first game. Hopefully it continues. As for my work...I read eight pages for one class, and that's about it. I'm about to head on the shuttle/red line home (Pats game tomorrow!!) so that'll give me an hour of reading for a different class, plus some time tonight. The whiteboard still looks pretty not white, but there is some progress. Minimally, but some. Tomorrow doesn't look as promising for being epic either...the second half of EGSDW will be a lot more productive, I think. And hope. And need it to be.

Epic Get Shit Done Week: Friday #1

The title of this post carries so much power with it that I'm actually slightly intimidated by my own words to even write this post...I've decided that the next seven days, from approximately now to approximately this time next week, will either be my crowning achievement of the semester, or my ultimate demise. In an effort to ensure the former happens, I've proclaimed this week to be the first ever Epic Get Shit Done Week. For the last two-plus years in college, I've had days where I've just had so much to do that I need to define said day as epic, write said stuff on my whiteboard, and get it done. At the end of the day, there's this nice kickass feeling to completing an Epic Get Shit Done Day. I can only imagine how this time next week will feel.

So, to save myself from tanking and running around with my head cut off, I blog. Consider it a week-long running diary, updated every day. Each day gets its own post, because I'll most likely be needing to be epic for each of the next seven days. Which I can already foresee as difficult. There will be lots of rationalizing, lots of planning, lots of internal prioritizing, and more. Three tests, a paper. One for four separate classes, which will individually count for 22, 14, 21, and 20% of my final grade in each of those classes. Roughly a fifth of my GPA will be determined by seven days. Seven days out of the fifteen weeks of the semester. Heh. This should be fun.

10 songs on shuffle

One idea and one thought before I get into this post:
Idea: I should start tabbing or categorizing my posts. Perhaps initially on just a very broad spectrum. I say this because I'd like to be able to have a place where all of my music posts are, a place where all my sports posts go...but I would be so torn by some more convoluted posts that it seems likely to never come to full fruition. Like many things I've tried here.
Thought: There are some songs (enough to make me think about a post about it, but not enough to actually follow through with it) that come on shuffle and I'm just like YES. "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls is one. "Lost?" by Coldplay is another. On the radio or iTunes or my iPod, some songs just come on and you're so excited that it happened on its own. Now. This post. Ten songs, namely the first ten songs, that come on my iTunes via shuffle. I'm scared, but I think this could be potentially fun. Here we go:
(Editor's Note: Oh, right, I'm also adding a quick sentence about what I think of the song.)

1. 7/4 (Shoreline) - Broken Social Scene. Really fun song. Even more fun is that it's in 7/4. Seems logical.

2. Story of My Life - Social Distortion. One of my favorites by them, a really fun song to sing to.

3. Secret - Maroon 5. Best part is when the first guitar comes in at 49 seconds.

4. Teahouse of the Spirits - The Panic Channel. Awesome song from Madden 07 with sweet-ass chords.

5. Exit - U2. I'm ashamed to say that I don't know all of the songs on The Joshua Tree by heart...this is one of them.

6. Bright Lights - Matchbox Twenty. This would be one of those "YES" songs. In the running for greatest song ever.

7. Jumper - Bedlight for Blue Eyes. Sweet cover of the Third Eye Blind hit. I think the bridge is the best part of the cover, with the piano replacing the guitar in the original.

8. Dust Bowl Dance - Mumford & Sons. Probably the most badass song off Sigh No More. Just mad fun to sing.

9. Far Behind - Candlebox. I get the feeling that this is one of the more underrated/unknown songs of the '90s. Good song.

10. Tripping Billies (Live) - Dave Matthews Band. Sweet live edition of the song, as most of DMB's stuff is.

Well, I think that may have been less fun than I anticipated, because I was kind of expecting something that didn't really seem to fit with the kind of music I listen to...although I suppose that's the reason it's called shuffle. Time to go listen to "Bright Lights" again.

Our house

I forgot that November was good for something....COLLEGE BASKETBALL.

To hell with the snow, wind, rain, coldness, homework, tests, whatever...college basketball is starting, so all of that doesn't matter anymore. Tomorrow, I'll be having my traditional Skype call back home to watch Duke's first game, which is on ESPNU. I don't care if it's against Georgia State. It could be against a high school team and I would still be this excited...not to mention that we're playing Kentucky on Tuesday. Like, the Kentucky. Big games early on = AWESOME. (Editor's Note: Right, so for anyone who's picked up reading my blog since March, I often refer to Duke as though I am a part of the team. Which I am.)

But what's equally as exciting is the start of the Stonehill basketball season. The men open up against Chestnut Hill College on Saturday, and I want it to be just as crazy as Cameron Indoor Stadium. That might be asking for a little too much, but it doesn't mean we can't come close. Remember the New Haven football game? Well we have another one of those on Saturday, too. Playoffs. Stonehill football in the playoffs, Stonehill men's basketball kicking off. Fun stuff. All three games (Duke, football, basketball) are home, too. Which brings the post title in play. Our house. Any time anyone wants to come to Merkert and try and beat us, they're going to have to do it on our home court, in our house. And it's not just the basketball teams' house. It's all of ours. All of Stonehill. Be at the first game to show everyone exactly what we think of our house. Be at the second game to do the same thing. Go to every game for that reason.

This post doesn't nearly encapsulate how excited I am for all of this. Maybe if you see me around campus tomorrow or Saturday you'll be able to tell. Either way....I'm pumped.

Eat your own dog food

This past summer, Vicki and I made a deal. I would register to vote, but I wouldn't actually vote until I could give reasonable explanation as to why I was voting for whoever I'd vote for. Well. It's the day before the election, I lack an absentee ballot, and am planning on going to Watertown tomorrow afternoon to vote. Because if I'm going to vote, well damn it, I'm going all out. I don't want to fill out a piece of paper and mail it in two weeks before Election Day. I want to walk in, wait in line, then fill out a piece of paper. (Which is funny, because we discussed in Ethics a week ago how precisely no one enjoyed doing this. Yet, here I am...) And one other thing before I go into any of this. I've come to observe that it might not be socially appropriate to ask someone who they're voting for. Can someone tell me why it's inappropriate? Maybe I'm just too oblivious to anything important to see this as more than what it's worth, but seriously? How easy a question is that to answer? "Did you do this or that?" And if you don't want to answer because you might be in conflict with the majority, or perhaps what I believe, well then shit, shouldn't you rethink that? If you believe in a candidate, let it be known. Don't go around parading it, but if someone asks you, tell them. Failure to do so, to me, shows a lack of faith in either the strength of your beliefs, or a lack of faith in whose question you're answering. Neither seem good. Just think about it.

That being said. I'm voting for Obama. Why? Well, for a while, I felt as though it seemed like this was something I would just do. Which is a bad reason to vote for a Presidential candidate. Two debates later, I had an answer. For me, my reasoning doesn't come in terms of policies or plans. If I really had that strong a grasp on economic, foreign, domestic, and other policies, then I would probably not be a math major. I lack almost any foresight as to how the economic fate of the country will be in the next four years. A quote that one of my best friends showed me was some politician saying something to the effect of, "You tell me what'll happen in the next four years, and I'll tell you what my four-year plan is." I totally buy into that. I don't know what's going to happen four days from now, let alone preside over a country of hundreds of millions of people for four years. No thanks. So what's left to go from? After watching the second Presidential debate, I just got this vibe that Obama believed in what he was saying a hell of a lot more than Romney was believing in his own words. And yeah, that means something to me. What'll happen if we're faced with some nationwide crisis? Maybe like, an economic crisis? Hell will freeze over before the four years of a President's term will go exactly how he says he plans it will. What I care about is what's going to happen when things start to run amok. And I believe that Obama will have a broader safety net when and if that happens.

Yes, I've thought about the character of the individual running for President. Yes, I've paid attention (albeit meekly) to policies. Yes, I know what some of the ideals are concerning the rights of citizens and humans. That's not as important to me. Nor will anything I say do anything about what you already believe. There's a reason group polarization exists. And I don't mean to imply that I can change anyone's opinions about who should be President. I don't think I can do that at all. This post is more for me than for anyone else (at least this latter half), but it never hurts to throw out a way of thinking that might have been overlooked. It might just change something, even if only in theory.

Time, pt. 6

Something interesting about Daylight Savings Time that I've never noticed. We get to either skip ahead or go back in time. Essentially. If you were awake past 1:00am (the first time) this past Sunday (Editor's Note: Wait, that's today?! Wow, this was a long day...), think about what you were doing at, say, 1:30. An hour later, it was 1:30. Meaning that everyone, according to our calendars, clocks, government, and anyone else who buys into this, had two moments of their life at 1:30am on November 4th, 2012. Consequently, we won't have any moment at 1:30am on whenever DST happens in the spring.

But think about any changes in the grand scheme of things. Time, in this sense, is something we're (quasi-)arbitrarily assigning to live in accordance with. Hell, Arizona doesn't even follow DST. So clearly, there are some caveats with this system. Well, what does that say? From 1:00am-2:00am (the first time) this morning, I was in my 183,347th hour of life, if my math is correct. (And by math, I mean online duration calculator.) The second 1:00am-2:00am I had, I was in hour number 183,348, despite the clocks reading the exact same thing as they had sixty minutes prior.

When I planned to blog about this all day today, I knew what I wanted the body of the post to be (see: above), but didn't really flesh out the conclusion. Now, I'm lacking one. Is this a point for the nonexistence of time? Does everything happen once and only once? How do we define our lives in terms of those hours? The easy solution would be to just be asleep during these times and take it as it comes, but the easy way is rarely the fun one.