Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

It’s local election time here in Salt Lake City and candidates vying for votes have littered every spare square foot of public land with their signage:

Jinkins for Sheriff
Smith for Auditor
Robbins for District Attorney
Potter for some other boring position no one cares about

Everyone wants to get elected, or reelected. So bad, that the politicians have had to re-invent the language rules to emphasize that they’ve already been elected once. As a part-time, amateur English language bigot, I’d like to re-spond to their blatant dis-respect of our tongue. In sum, they need to re-view their signs, re-align themselves to the rules, re-write the copy, or re-move the Re-Election signs altogether!

A quick Google search reveals The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation, which states ( Rule 8 ):

Use the hyphen with the prefix re only when:

the re means again
AND
omitting the hyphen would cause confusion with another word.
Examples Will she recover from her illness?
Re does not mean again.

I have re-covered the sofa twice.
Re does mean again
AND
omitting the hyphen would have caused confusion with another word.

The stamps have been reissued.
Re means again but would not cause confusion with another word.

I must re-press the shirt.
Re means again
AND
omitting the hyphen would have caused confusion with another word.

Yes, I know that the hyphen-less faction loses in the Google reelection fighting, then again, a lot of people go to Vegas and gamble, watch NASCAR and smoke cigarettes. Plenty of company does not intelligence make.

It is our (my) position that reelect is the correct writing and that re-elect is a deviant variant form.

Speaking of deviating, you probably know that the words “language” and “tongue” are related. Bilingual, the ability to speak in two languages, is quite literally “two tongues”. Here are some lingual (meaning tongue, not language) dexterity tests* for you:

• cherry stem tying
• starburst unwrapping
• sunflower seed cracking

* I feel confident to comment on this matter because I’m often told I am a particularly good kisser. It’s mostly perfected technique gained from years of experience.

Thanks go to Beau Scott for the hyphen research.

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Unless you live under a rock, you probably use Google at least a few times a day and you probably also know that Google changes their logos to reflect various holidays. Today’s logo reminds us that google is 8 years old. Can you believe it? My how time flies.

Do you remember when searching the Internet was a pain? There were several competing search engines (altavista.com, yahoo.com, etc.), but they all very much sucked. A large part of that suckiness came from the commingling of paid search results with natural search results. Also, each of the popular search engines had messy pages with tons of links crowding the page. They took a while to load. As well, the search engines encouraged the use of boolean-esque search modifiers like “AND”, “OR” etc. It was not user friendly. It was hard to find anything.

Then along came Google with a clean, fast interface that clearly delineated paid from natural. It was accurate. So very accurate. It was and is amazing. Now Internet searching is even called “Googling”. They’ve been verbed.
Then Google took over the earth. But that’s another story.

Today we’re talking about my laptop. Laptops don’t live forever, you know. I have (or rather had) a Dell Latitude D600. Yesterday it died. At first my mail client threw an error. Then I scandisk’d my hard drive and it threw up a ton of errors. Then I tried to backup my files onto an external drive. Then the CRC errors. Then it blue screened. Now it comes up with a BIOS error saying it doesn’t see a hard drive.

Backups

Making backups is like cleaning out the refrigerator. You know it’s important and that by doing so your life would be better, but you never get around to it. So your kitchen stinks and you lose data.

There are lots of ways to mitigate your data loss. One is to email stuff to yourself and hope hotmail/yahoo/google don’t go out of business. Another way is to purchase an external USB/firewire connected drive. Prices are falling. They used to be about a dollar a GB, but co-worker William just sent me a link to a 750 GB drive for $350 dollars. Finally, you could always print out short important documents and keep hard copies laying around. Let’s not forget that there are a number of programs that attempt to recover data from crashed hard drives. And then there was the time that my friend Grady hired a local company to recover the data on a hard drive that had crashed. Not only did the company NOT recover the data, they went to great lengths in their efforts to extort nearly 1,500 dollars from Grady. Way to add insult to injury.

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I know, it sounds like the start of a lame joke. Actually, I’m talking about the classic Monty Hall Problem^*, aka, Marilyn and the Goats. In my quest to catalog for you everything in the world that is interesting, I noticed I’ve not yet spoken about that car, let alone those goats!

I’ll set the stage for you. There’s this old game show called “Let’s Make a Deal”. On this show are three closed doors which face a contestant. Behind one of these doors is a car; behind the other two are plain ol’ goats. The contestant does not know which door leads to the shiny new car, but the game show host does.

And we begin. The contestant designates a door. But wait! Before that door is opened, the host surprises us by opening one of the other two doors to reveal… a goat. The contestant is now given a strange choice: he could stay with the original door, or switch to the other unopened door.

What should the contestant do?

If you’ve not heard of the Monty Hall Problem before, this might sound like a very silly question. As we all know, the contestant had a 1/3 chance of selecting the car. How does opening a door after the selection change the odds? Either by staying with the original choice or by switching to the new door, the odds should logically be the same. Right?

The self-proclaimed “genius”, Marilyn vos Savant, began one of her weekly columns back in September of 1990 describing the goat and car problem to readers all across America. She claimed in her response that the odds of choosing the car DOUBLE if the contestant switches to the other unopened door. She was inundated with letters from around the country declaring that, at last, the guru had messed up.

The thing is, she didn’t mess up. She is quite right.

If you’re a statistics student, you’ll likely see this as a classic case of Conditional Probability, where P[A|B] = P[A and B]/P[B]. In fact, this professor shows how conditional probability can be used to solve the Monty Hall problem.

But I’ll show you in a less mathy sort of way.

Let’s say you pick door one. This game has only three outcomes. Here they are:

Now let’s play out the contestant’s two options: to switch or not to switch. Clearly, if the contestant does not switch, he will win only once (in Outcome 1), which is 1/3 of the time. Now watch what happens if he switches. In outcome 1, the contestant had picked the door with the CAR. He switches to a door with a goat and LOSES! However, In Outcome 2, he’ll be shown door three, because it’s the only one of two and three that has a goat. The contestant switches to door two and HUZZAH! he wins a CAR. Likewise in Outcome 3, he’ll be shown door two, he’ll switch from door one to door three and WHAMMO! he wins a CAR. That means that with the strategy of switching, the contestant did in fact DOUBLE his odds of winning. He’ll win 2/3’s of the time. Interesting, eh?

Here’s another wacky problem for you. It’s called The Missing Dollar

Three men go to stay at a motel, and the man at the desk charges them $30.00 for a room. They split the cost ten dollars each. Later the manager tells the desk man that he overcharged the men, that the actual cost should have been $25.00. The manager gives the bellboy $5.00 and tells him to give it to the men.

The bellboy, however, decides to cheat the men and pockets $2.00, giving each of the men only one dollar.

Now each man has paid $9.00 to stay in the room and 3 x $9.00 = $27.00. The bellboy has pocketed $2.00. $27.00 + $2.00 = $29.00 - so where is the missing $1.00?

And, just for fun, here are three more classic puzzles:

Q. A prisoner is told “If you tell a lie we will hang you; if you tell the truth we will shoot you.” What can he say to save himself?
Q. Looking at a picture a man says, “Brothers and sisters I have none, but that man’s father is my father’s son.” Whose picture is it?
Q. What is the eleven letter word that all Yale graduates spell incorrectly?

Enjoy!

* Mark Haddon’s novel, the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, talks about this problem from the eyes of a young mathematical savant. It’s a good read.

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Yesterday as I was shooting assault rifles at a Springville firing range with a spirited Kazakh Mongolian friend of mine, I got to thinking about rhetoric. No, not “the undue use of exaggeration or display” or “the study of the effective use of language” but the “art of influence and persuasion”. Specifically, as I squeezed the trigger on the fully automatic Colt M16 and let out a maelstrom of fiery lead towards the paper target, I wondered about the naysayers of artificial intelligence.

They use the now famous sentence, “Time flies like an arrow^*“, which can be interpreted in a half dozen ways, in their argument that computers will never be able to understand people because of complex ambiguity in language. That sentence, they rightly state, can only be understood in context, you see. As an atomic entity, it doesn’t convey any information.

Likewise, the opponents of traditional marriage argue that you cannot define marriage as a union between a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation because, after all, some couples are unable (or unwilling) to have children! Point, set, match.

Except not quite. Both of these claims are flawed because they attempt to wholly invalidate a subject through the use of outlier cases. That type of argument may sound convincing, but it is unsound.

There’s a name for this faulty generalization — “material fallacy” (also dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, the converse fallacy of accident, a reverse accident, and destroying the exception).

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* also, “Fruit flies like a banana“

I got so excited with preparations for International Talk Like a Pirate Day, that I forgot to shave. It makes sense, of course, because pirates don’t shave. Now, days later, when I walk into work this morning a coworker said, “Ryan, your facial hair is ugly.” I responded, “William, when I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it.”

That was fun to say, and everyone got a good laugh.

Then I thought, “maybe I should shave again?” It’s been a week and a half so far. And then I thought, “I’ll see what the interested readers in the blogosphere think”. That’s you people, BTW. Here’s a poll:

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Google Analytics tells me that I’m popular. Tens of thousands of people have visited ryanbyrd.net since the beginning of the year.

My blog software, Wordpress, tells me that as of today, there are currently 175 posts and 82 comments, contained within 27 categories. Eleven of those comments were in the last two days! This blog has been running for quite a while now; I’ve been blogging nearly daily for several months, and I plan on continuing this trend for the foreseeable future. From the feedback I receive, you all enjoy the site. Do you know what would make it better? If there was even more participation from YOU. Even if it was anonymous participation. That could be comments on the blog entries. That could be sending ideas and stories and jokes to me via the feedback form. That could be recommending the site to a friend by sending a link. That could be posting a link on your MySpace account (everybody’s got ‘em) to ryanbyrd.net.

For all those who’ve participated thus far, and all those who will do so in the future– thank you!

- Ryan

Latest Ryan Byrd dot net features:

• Insulting French Phrases
• Body Mass Index Calculator

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Today, Tuesday September 19th 2006, is International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Yeah, I know, it’s awesome. Here’s the official Talk Like Pirate Day Website.

There’s something magical about a deep guttural arrrggghhhh that transports us back to the carefree days of plundering and pillaging. Alas! But maybe, in your dreamy musings, you find yourself at loss for the right pirate words? Don’t be alarmed. Now there is an instructional video designed precisely for you!

• How to talk like a pirate video clip (watch)
• How to talk like a pirate video clip (download)

Oh, and you’ll need a pirate name. Find out what it is with this Pirate Name Generator. The name “Ryan Byrd” produces “Snifflin’ Herb Sparrow”. Who am I to argue?

Podcast (Today’s podcast available solely in Pirate English).

It’s no secret that, as a soccer team, the Critical Defects do not bend it like Beckham. In fact, none of us know who David Beckham is.

We’ve been playing for a couple of seasons now and in the beginning we really sucked. Now we’re better, but so far none of our players have been recruited for the Salt Lake City Real soccer team. Until today, we played in Mens2 which is the intermediate level bracket for our indoor soccer league. We had never won a game. In fact, most of our losses were so pitiful as to be best described as “massacres.”

All that changed tonight. We decided to enroll in Mens3, the beginner’s bracket. I’m proud to say that in today’s game, the first of the new season, THE CRITICAL DEFECTS WON 7-6!!!!! As well, only company employees played tonight, no ringers from the outside to buttress our weaknesses.

A valuable lesson was learned by all. If you keep failing at a goal, start lowering your standards until you achieve it!

However you spin it, today’s victory was hard fought and well deserved. In fact, right before we played, the scorekeeper said he would wager ten dollars that we would lose. I’m sad to say I didn’t take him up on it. Next time I will.

Thanks to Beau Scott for the camera and Ashley Maly for taking the photo. Don’t forget to click to enlarge.

pictured (left to right)
top row: Beau Scott, Kip Nelson, Mike Nelson, Josh Stroup, Ryan Byrd, Burdette Pixton
bottom row: Troy Larson, Jeremy Wilde, Matt MacKay, Josh Feller

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There are some things in life that become even more exciting talking about them after the fact. Paintball is one such sport.

Paintball is a man’s game. It’s just you and your buddies hunkered down behind makeshift barriers, the air ablaze with rounds. Matt, Ben, Cory and I joined up with twenty others below the archery range just off the Squaw Peak Road, up Provo Canyon yesterday. The mountain terrain is thickly forested and slopes sharply upwards. A dry ravine cuts its way into the hillside. The ground foliage is a mix of muddy patches and short, wild grasses. It’s early in the morning and a cold, slight breeze is blowing. Above the pop-pop sound of automatic weaponry peppering the air, someone screams a directive and the group surges forward. As the possessor of a Tippmann A5 with a flat-liner barrel (translation: a rather good paintball gun), I rise up to lay down suppressive fire to cover the others’ advancement. To the left, a man tries to sprint to a small group of trees, but is cut down with a barrage of paint, his body smarting as the balls of paint impact. “I’m hit”, he cries, “I’m hit”.

The war-game continues rapid pace, slowing only slightly when a player is “killed” and leaves the course. Eventually, one side is completely eliminated and the victors join the others in the staging area to refill with air, stock up with more paint and to wipe the off the splattered goggles. The mood is one of camaraderie and laughter and conversations are abuzz with excited storytelling. “Were you the one on the ridge?”, someone questions. “Did you see that shot he made?”, another exclaims, “simply amazing!” Five minutes later, after changing the teams up, the game begins anew.

Everyone there had a favorite story to tell. I told mine as I was wiping off the paint from a shirt I had laid over my neck for protection. I’m glad that shirt was there or I would have been in a world of pain. My story takes place several years ago, when I was living in Roman Gardens Apartments in Provo, Utah. A group of us were headed down to the Manti pageant and decided to go a day early and do some paintballing. One of the girls we went with lived in Manti and her parents were very accommodating of this plan.

We arose early and the ten of us loaded our guns and walked a short distance from the house to the wooded area where we were to play. After dividing into teams we hurried to the opposing ends of the course and, with a shout, the game was on. I took off in a dead sprint, attempting to flank the other team on their right. John^*, from the other team, anticipated my move and began to canvass the area with a massive volley of paintballs. Just ahead were some thick bushes and so with some exertion, I sprang from my feet into a dive. In the air, I turned my gun towards John and squeezed off a shot or two in his direction. I landed with a thud and lay still behind the shrubbery, expecting the intensity of the paintballs to increase. Instead, the firing had stopped. “I’m hit”, John swore, “you hit me!” And hit him I did. From over a hundred feet away my lobbed paintball had smashed into his exposed neck, broken the skin and put him into considerable pain. A strange mixture of paint and blood was streaming down his neck. John sat out the next game or two recovering from the wound. After about an hour the bleeding had stopped and an impressive welt had formed in its place.

As you might imagine, John was unhappy with me at this point. His unhappiness was only to increase, as we shall soon see. So, John was dating Melissa, and she convinced him to come back and play the last game with us. Reluctantly (retrospectively regrettably), he agreed. The game was going smoothly and after a short while there were only two people left on each team. John and Melissa versus Mike and me. I pursued Melissa until she finally took refuge by crouching down behind a couple of small trees. Knowing she was pinned down, I unleashed a torrent of paint, suspecting that eventually one of the balls would hit her. I was right. Unfortunately, my paintball gun is loud, and I was firing so fast I didn’t hear her say “I’m hit”. Because of that, when she stepped out from behind the tree, I was still shooting and so she took another ball or two in the leg. I wasn’t that far away, so I’m sure they really hurt. “Sorry!”, I screamed, “I didn’t know I had hit you.” She replied, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying through the swearing and screaming.

The incident catapulted her protective boyfriend, John, into a fiery rage. “Why did you keep shooting”, he hissed, and then, jumping from behind a bush, with a yell, he charged me. John was furious. I’m not sure what he thought he was going to do to me, or why he left his gun behind, but he was closing in quickly so after warning him that he should stop (he didn’t), I opened fire. To his credit, John didn’t react much as the first couple of shots exploded on his legs so I unloaded a rapid-fire burst right at his chest. After the tenth shot slammed into him, John, with a groan of a crushed man, fell to the ground twenty feet from my position. “I didn’t want to have to do that”, I explained, standing up, before yelling, “game over” and walking off the field. “I think John might be a little upset with me; I was forced to mow him down at short range”, I told the others who had not seen the firefight.

John wasn’t so much mad as disheartened. I suppose he envisioned beating me up to avenge the honor of his girlfriend. Fortunately, like most things in life, hard times become funnier with time. I saw John just the other day and we had a good laugh about the experience. He and Melissa are happily married now. I think I’m partly responsible. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I’m confident those two grew closer as they nursed each other’s wounds the subsequent days. John, Melissa– you’re welcome!

*Names have been changed

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Hi there!

Two partners and I are building a new product for families to connect over the Internet. We want to solicit input from families on what types of information they would like to share with their extended family. The idea is that the only people to see your information are those that you invite and to whom you provide access.

We need information, and you can help us! Could you please take 2 minutes and complete our short, anonymous survey to help us build our product to meet your needs. Here’s the link: Genvue Survey.

Ok, I actually need one more favor. Would you mind passing the survey link to a friend?

Thank you, I owe you one!

Ryan

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