Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

After reading a couple of recent Presidential Debate transcripts lately, I decided I would propose a new format: Kick the candidates out after they say something that is indisputably false. Then, the winner can be the last one standing. I estimate we’ll have a winner in about 10 minutes.

Even with Hanlon’s razor (”Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”), I can’t figure out if these politicians are really stupid, or lying because they think we’re really stupid. Unfortunately, it is probably the case that we’re all really stupid; but that’s too depressing of a thought for a sunny Friday afternoon. :-)

Despite your political views, I think you’ll find these examples to just be incredible. First, from the Democratic debate, responding to a question about the legal drinking age, Senator Biden said,

The cost of alcoholism in America, the cost of accidents that flow from drunkenness, are astronomical. There are 300,000 babies born deformed every year in this country because of women who are alcoholics while they’re carrying those children to term.

That number just doesn’t pass the sniff test: 300,000 deformed babies a year due to alcoholism? Let’s check it out, the US birth rate is 14.14 births per 1000 people per year. This means with a population of just about 300 million, there are 4.2 million births a year. This means according to Biden’s number, 7% of all babies are born with deformities due to alcoholism.

Seems pretty unlikely. In fact, the Center for Disease Control says that between 1,000 and 6,000 babies are born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. So Biden only inflated his number by about a factor of 100.

And from the Republican debate, Senator Brownback says, “We declared war [on Iraq].” This most certainly isn’t the case, the US hasn’t declared a war since WWII. Granted, Congress did authorize the conflict, but it never formally made a declaration. While you could argue it’s a minor distinction, it is a distinction that US Senator should be able to make.

So under my proposed format, both of these Senators would be kicked out for lying. But, it may be more fun if let the audience throw tomatoes at the politicians when they lie. Then at the end, the cleanest one would be the winner. :-)

This headline from the Register-Guard paper in Oregon has been making rounds on the internet as a humorous example of government waste. And if you know me, you know that I found it quite funny. :-)

But if you know me, you know that I had to look into it some more. First (using my favorite search engine) I found the actual article. After reading the first sentence, it’s obvious that the headline is misleading. The county government actually just approved spending “up to $250,000″.

Also, according to the article, $200,000 of the total would be “contributed” from the budgets of other departments at the discretion of the department’s supervisor. What government bureaucrat would actually give money to another department?

Lane County has a population of just under 340,000 people, which means the advertising allocation is roughly 75 cents a person. That doesn’t cover all that much.

The Lane County annual budget is slightly more than $500 million. This makes the advertising allocation just 0.05% of the budget. To put that in perspective, a small business should generally spend 5% of the previous year’s gross on marketing.

Despite this, it’s still pretty wasteful. At a basic level, if the county can’t convince people it needs more money without marketing, it probably doesn’t need it.

Keep in mind, marketing is the art of making someone want something they don’t need. So if your government is advertising… well you can figure the rest out. :-)

When someone finds out that I play hockey, they are likely to ask, “Why don’t you just have a fat guy play goalie?” It’s a really funny idea, but there’s a good reason it won’t work.

Hockey goals are too big; they are 6 feet wide and 4 feet tall. Even if you had a tall, fat guy lay down in front of the net, there would still be large gaps in the corners. And to cover the 4 foot height, the person’s waist would need to be about 150 inches around (assuming a circular waist). One of the world’s largest people, only has a waist of 110.

Instead you need a smaller, quick and nimble person that can move to cover the correct parts of the net. Also, there’s a big advantage in having a goalie that can skate around a bit to play the puck. That, and the game is more fun when you actually have a chance to score goals. :-)

Back on the topic of framing… I was talking to a college professor about students and the state of education. I mentioned that I feel we don’t teach people to look at the larger picture and think through problems from the full end to end. For example, take corn-based ethanol, it seems like a smart idea to make gas out of corn. After all, corn is cheap and gas is expensive; may as well turn something cheap into something expensive. :-)

Now though, the price of tortillas in Mexico has almost quadrupled. And the price of meat is on the rise. It seems obvious now; if you drive up demand of something really fast, you’re going to raise the price and that will be reflected in the price of other things made out of corn. But, why didn’t we think of that at the start? Probably because we didn’t think through the problem and instead went for a myopic analysis.

The professor said that this is part of larger problem of not asking the right questions. Or more precisely, defining questions with a artificially limited scope. For the issue of ethanol, the question was, “Which crops should we make ethanol out of?” The question should have been more along the lines of, “Should we make ethanol out of crops?”

I was watching the Today Show yesterday morning and one of the stories was, “Is the government doing enough to protect our kids?” This framing was interesting because it assumes that it is the government’s job to protect our kids. A more valid question is, “Who’s job is it to protect our kids?”

A better example is the “surge” in the Iraq War. For weeks all the analysts were debating, “Should the surge be 20,000 or 50,000?” or “Should the surge last 2 months or 6 months?” These questions are limited in scope; they are tactical questions about a strategy. In other words, they assume the strategy (the “surge”) is the correct course of action and limit the scope of the conversation.

A better question would be, “What are our goals in Iraq?” and then ask, “How do we best accomplish them?” Once you have a good answer for this, then you start tackling the tactical concerns like troop size and deployment schedule.

To put this in terms that geeks can understand, if you start a project debating, “C# or C++”, your project is doomed. First figure out what your project is trying to accomplish, then figure out which language is best for it. Next time someone asks you whether you prefer C# or C++, ask them what you’re using the language for. Without the right context, that’s like asking, “Do you prefer a spoon or a hammer?” :-)

We were at Panera the other day for dinner and noticed something new. Normally if you don’t get a drink, they will ask, “Would you like a drink?” This is pretty standard everywhere, since people like drinks and they are very profitable for the restaurant. This time though, after asking about a drink, they asked, “Do you want to add a cookie for 99 cents more?”

Apparently they just started this strategy to move the rest of the their baked goods at the end of the day. And for now, they are only asking some people.

This is a great use of upsell (the art of getting the customer to buy more than they originally intended). The usual examples of upsell is, “Do you want to get an extended warranty?” or “Do you want clear coat on your new car?” For both of these , people generally know that the correct answer is “NO!”.

But a really, really good cookie for 99 cents? How could you say no? Crissy and I specifically don’t buy any of the cookies or pastries from Panera because we’re trying to eat healthy. But we gave in to the wonderful chocolatey goodness. We’re bad, we know.

Just how bad were we? I checked the Panera nutritional info. And I found out that the Chocolate Duet cookies has 400 calories and 22 grams of fat. The pizza I had, as a comparison, has 340 calories and 15 grams of fat.

If you remember from last time we talked about restaurant nutritional info, a McDonald’s double cheeseburger has 440 calories and 23 grams of fat.

So next time you’re at Panera and they ask, “Do you want to add a cookie for 99 cents more?”, ask yourself, “Do I want a double cheeseburger in additional to the rest of the food I ordered?” :-)

The title basically sums up my trip to Zurich. My last day of work started with a long meandering walk through the city taking lots of pictures. Halfway through the walk, I discovered a street with lots of banks that look like the Swiss banks you see in the movies. I learned that taking pictures of these banks is a great way to get suspicious looks from the security guards. :-P

I also discovered lots of hidden courtyards with gardens and fountains. It was so much fun exploring these, that I managed to get to work 10 minutes late. Fortunately, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but people were a little worried that I may have gotten lost or something.

We had another long day at work. The only notable part that I can share is that the weather was great so we ate on the roof top patio. Roof top patios are awesome! After work, I walked back to the hotel, dropped my stuff off and headed to the shops.

I needed to buy lots of souvenirs, so I found a souvenir shop. It was pretty expensive, but had a good selection. I spent around an hour picking out things that I knew people would like and would somehow also fit in my limited carry-on bag space. Unfortunately, somewhere in the chaos of packing all the gifts, the saleswomen forgot to add one of the things to the bag. And it turned out to be the one thing I bought for myself. D’oh!

Since everyone hasn’t received their gift yet, I won’t mention what I bought, but I really like the gift I bought for Crissy’s dad. It’s really cool. :-)

And no, I didn’t buy any chocolate. And before you freak out, the good chocolate brands are available here in specialty shops, so I didn’t want to add to my already nearly 35 pounds of carry-on bags.

After the shopping trip, I dropped my bags off at the hotel and set up to explore “Old Town”. Old town is the part of town I was staying in; it’s on the lake and has a lot of the historic buildings and cobblestone streets that are only open for foot traffic. And there were some really good street musicians.

For dinner, I found a nice Ristorante Pizzeria and had a wonderful outdoor dinner overlooking the lake. Though, I was dining alone, I did have a nice conversation with some German tourists one table over who were very interested in American politics and were surprised how much I knew about world events. I hopefully changed their initial impression of “stupid American tourist”. :-)

One thing that stood out about the pizza is that it isn’t sliced. In fact, you’re not supposed to eat it with your hands. The proper way is to eat the pizza use a knife and fork on the whole thing. Since the pizza was so incredibly tasty, it was frustrating to have to eat it so slowly. I just wanted to pick it up and take gigantic bites.

After dinner, I explored the town again, a lot of the old town is lit up by nights and it was quite nice.

Finally, I packed and went to bed. My trip back started the next morning and was mostly uneventful. Business class was not full on the flight back, so I was expecting to be bumped up (given my “Elite” status). But apparently they only bump when business class is not full and coach is overbooked. So instead of letting some of their best customers sit in a nicer, empty seats, they had us stay in our coach seats.

They could have gotten some great goodwill for no cost, but their policy dictates otherwise. That makes little business sense.