Heliocentrism

Here’s something I’ve pondered occasionally: what fraction of the U.S. population is aware that the Earth orbits the Sun and not the other way around? A recent Washington Post poll has finally provided an answer: yes, a majority of us are on board with Copernicus, but not as many as one might hope. According to the poll, 74% of respondents believe that the Earth goes around the Sun, 4% don’t know which goes around which, and a full 22% believe that the Sun goes around the Earth. These figures do vary with educational achievement, but even so, 9% of college graduates and 18% of those with “some college” still believe in an Earth-centered model. (From these figures we might extrapolate that 50% of colleges offer Astronomy only in the senior year.)

But you know, I think that 22% is on to something. After all, heliocentrism is only a theory--why aren’t we teaching the controversy?

Deal Or No Deal

How much do you love the new American version of the international hit “Deal or No Deal?” Do you watch it as I do, with a calculator in hand, computing the expected value and predicting bank offers on the fly? Do you marvel how the program showcases behavioral economics in action, demonstrating that the statistically “best” choice—rejecting any bank offer that does not meet or exceed the expected value of the player’s case—is not generally the correct choice in light of risk aversion and the diminishing marginal utility of money?

No? Well, you may think that makes me cooler than you, and in a way it does, but neither of us is as cool as the team of Dutch economists who have analyzed the show in depth and published a paper entitled Deal or No Deal? Decision Making Under Risk in a Large-Payoff Game Show.

Here is the abstract of their paper:

The popular television game show “Deal or No Deal” offers a unique opportunity for analyzing decision making under risk: it involves very large and wide-ranging stakes, simple stop-go decisions that require minimal skill, knowledge or strategy and near-certainty about the probability distribution. Based on a panel data set of the choices of contestants in all game rounds of 53 episodes from Australia and the Netherlands, we find an average Arrow-Pratt coefficient of relative risk aversion (RRA) between roughly 1 and 2 for initial wealth levels between €0 and €50,000 and assuming full rationality. Risk aversion is lower if we allow for myopic or hyperopic framing. The RRA differs substantially across the contestants and some even exhibit risk seeking behavior. The cross-sectional differences in RRA can be explained in large part by the previous outcomes experienced by the contestants during the game. Most notably, consistent with the “break-even effect”, the RRA strongly decreases following earlier losses and risk seeking arises after large losses.

Zacharias Moussaoui

Personally, I think Moussaoui is just winding us up. Like, just before he got on the stand, he thought to himself, “here's a good one: I'll tell them I was going to fly a plane into the White House with Richard Reid! These idiots will believe anything... maybe tomorrow I'll tell them that Saddam and I were going to blow up the Superbowl.”

Rusty Yates Remarries

Rusty Yates, ex-husband of the soon-to-be-retried Andrea Yates, remarried today according to the Associated Press. Now, one can see many reasons why Mr. Yates might prefer new bride Laura Arnold over the jilted Andrea. Foremost among them, one presumes, is the fact that Ms. Arnold did not recently drown all of Mr. Yates’s children in a bathtub on the direct orders of Satan. But—and far be it from me to judge people on their looks—comparing recent photographs of the two, one might also observe that Yates “traded up.”

(Photos: AP)

Miss Deaf Texas

There is nothing funny about the following:

The reigning Miss Deaf Texas was hit by a train yesterday. According to CNN, she was walking along the tracks with her back to the train, sending text messages on her cell phone. The train sounded its horn, but, being deaf, she was unable to hear it (nor, presumably, the train itself).

No, seriously, there’s nothing funny about this, and I'm sure her family and friends are devastated. But in a sort of Darwin-Awards-schadenfreude-it’s-funny-because-we-don’t-know-her way, one does want to note the following take-away message:

If you are unable to hear, and if there is a particular environment in which, by virtue of being unable to hear, you stand a reasonable chance of being hit by an eight-thousand-ton object, you might consider staying out of that environment.

Kiddypics & Kiddyvids

According to Reuters, US & Canadian Officials announced yesterday that 27 people from the U.S., Canada, Australia and Britain had been arrested in connection with a worldwide child pornography ring. The suspects are accused of trading pictures and videos in an internet chat room entitled “Kiddypics & Kiddyvids.” Now, I admit that I find it difficult to put myself inside the mind of a pedophile. But it seems to me that, were I to create an internet chat room for the dissemination of child pornography—and were I interested in not going to prison for 15 years—I might choose a name other than “Kiddypics & Kiddyvids.” Just a thought.

March for Life

OK, so I'm sure all of you were too busy to watch or attend the annual March for Life rally this year, so I have taken it upon myself to watch the video on CSPAN's website. Here is my report:

First, this lady who was the head of the right to life people kept talking about "the feminist abortionists," and predicting that one day, there will be Nuremburg-esque trials of such individuals. Then some congressman from Cincinnati got up and started quoting the bible. (On the National Mall, with the Capitol behind him!) Then Bush got on the asshole phone from Kansas and talked about how the Declaration of Independence required us to protect unborn children.

Then this other guy warned that "people want to expropriate your tax dollars to experiment on embryos," and explained that, while he wouldn't predict how Alito and Roberts would vote on abortion, they were "men who respect the original text of the Constitution, and the Constitution respects life." Which is really an amazing assertion -- not the (probably correct) argument that the original understanding of the Constitution would not include a privacy-based right to abortion, but rather that the Constitution affirmatively forbids abortion -- a radical notion indeed.

Then Terri Schaivo's brother busted out with all kinds of bullshit, because, last time I checked, Terri Shaivo didn't have an abortion (or a frontal lobe, but that's another story.) Then these Greek Orthodox dudes turned up and the crowd pretended to cheer but really were like, who the fuck are these guys and what the fuck are they wearing? Also they brought out the token black guy.

And then they brought out the winners of the high school and junior high school pro-life poster and essay contests. And when one of the six fuckwit children announced that she "homeschools" (apparently this verb is now intransitive), a huge cheer rose up from the crowd.

Then this orthodox Jewish guy blew his shofar and started raving about "Pharaoh's legislature," Osama Bin Ladan, and "militant homosexuality," and everyone was cheering and you know that they were thinking, "this dude's right. It's too bad he's going to hell because his ancestors killed Jesus."

Finally, the head lady talked about the feminist abortionists some more, thanked all the bus captains, and gave the order to march.

I hope this has been of value to you.