Why Sallie Mae would be a terrible girlfriend

Like most college students, I’m finding it hard to make my student loan payments.  After agonizing over my bleak financial prospects, I thought about the name Sallie Mae.  What a terrible name for a business.  I began to try and imagine a girl named Sallie Mae.  She’d be old, Southern, and obnoxious.

Kinda like this.

I then realized that Sallie Mae is probably a great name for that company as getting a loan from them is eerily similar to having a terrible girlfriend.  Here’s how:

1.) The offer looked attractive at the time.  Although, your decision was probably heavily influenced by the atmosphere of alcohol and partying.

2.) She’s been with a lot other guys you know.

3.) She won’t stop calling you and she leaves a message after every call.

4.) She’s the reason you’re broke.

5.) She keeps accruing in size as time goes on.

6.) That trollop still won’t stop calling you.  She just called you from a different number to check if you’re screening your calls.

7.) Your friends all hate her too.

8.) She wants you to get a job and settle down

9.) You only get screwed once a month.

10.) For serious, she just called your parents looking for you. And the phone sex sucks.

March Madness

Those close to me know that despite my hatred for the NBA, I love NCAA basketball.  At college, I made every game I could, sometimes even bringing homework to the women's games (sadly the library was louder than the arena for most of those games).  Regardless of your feelings to the sport, it's impossible to avoid the talk about brackets and pools this time of year.

Currently with the expansion of the tournament to 68 teams (which is ridiculous, biased towards larger schools and makes the regular season less important), there are 67 total games.  So the probability of you picking one game right is 1 out of 2.  You can argue the case that it is not totally even in every case, some teams are clearly more likely to win games.  Yeah, well go pick the top seed every time in your bracket, but remember to plug in your battery pack, you emotionless robot.   

"What is love?  And what conference is Wofford in?"

                                     

 (1/2) to the 67th power means that your chance of filling out the perfect bracket is 1: 6,776,000,000,000,000,000,000.  I think the single greatest indicator that no one in the future hasn't invented a time machine is that no one has traveled back to fill out the perfect bracket.  Hmmm...I wonder if anyone else has ever thought of that.

Now, most of you don't have the lofty goal of filling out the perfect bracket, you'll be content with just winning that pool you're in.  Usually, when talking to your friends about your bracket, you describe your chances of winning in terms of how many of your final four teams are still eligible.  So if you pick the final four correctly, you probably have a good chance of winning your pool.  With the expansion of the field, that probability is one in 68*67*66*65 or roughly 20 million.  (Again this puts as much likely hood of a 16 seed advancing, when not a single one has won a first round game)

So aware of how futile it is to even attempt to fill out a good bracket, I channel George W Bush when I fill out my bracket: "I'm the decider."  I abandon reason and make my selections on other criteria.  Here's how the thought process behind some of my first round games:

High seeds vs. the play-in teams.

On sheer principle those teams shouldn't be there.  Also, my hand writing is far too big to squeeze "First four #2" in that little box.

Wofford vs. BYU

I'm choosing a huge upset here, having Wofford beating BYU.  Not because of the loss of Brandon Davies has distracted the team (Jimmer Fredette has asked him if it really does feel like warm apple pie like 5 times already), but simply because the Wofford basketball players celebrated winning their conference by "Moving like Bernie."  Should translate to some of the best cross overs ever.

UConn v. Bucknell

Many experts are worried about UConn's grueling Big East Tournament schedule, playing 5 games in as many days.  However, I'm still going with UConn.  Jim Calhoun is pure evil and can only be vanquished by driving a wooden stake through his heart, removing his head from his body and filling his mouth with garlic.  

North Carolina v. Long Island

UNC players will obviously have difficulty adjusting to the ball blending in with the skin color of their opponents.  Ultimately, I don't think muscle milk and jagerbombs translate to skill on the basketball court.  Tar heels.

Utah St. v. Kansas St.
I thought I'd try and settle this one a different way.  I tried to imagine which state is more boring as a whole, Kansas or Utah.  The more boring one should win the game as the players have nothing better to do than focus on basketball.  After debating both sides trying to figure out which state I'd least like to live in, I left the slot blank.  There are no winners in that case.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phillies

After watching the Phillies close out the NLDS, I came to a scary epiphany.  And no, its not the Phillies’ dominant starting rotation.  It’s the fact that the Dark Lord has taken over MLB.

While most Muggles would have only noticed Cole Hamel’s brilliant CG shutout, I was horrifically entranced by the Philadelphia Left Fielder, Raul Ibanez.  Or should I say, LORD VOLDEMORT!!!!!  See image below (taken from: totallylookslike.com)

Now I haven’t been the first to notice that Raul is the spitting image of Riddle.  But besides the obvious resemblance, which, on its own, could be easily dismissed as a genetic coincidence (OR COULD IT?), there have been numerous other warning signs.    

1.)    He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has spent the majority of the past decade in relative obscurity.  Rumor has it he was living in the forests of Albania (or playing for the Seattle Mariners, the distinction between the two is unclear, although I hear Albania is a little cheerier)

2.)    After winning the World Series (Tri Wizard Tournament) for the Phillies with a clutch Game 5 hit, the extraordinarily gifted, handsome, and ever popular Pat Burrell (Cedric Diggory) was quickly dispatched in order to allow for the resurrection of the Dark Lord’s career.  Were it not for Chase Utley and Twilight, teenage girls would still be crying.

I always thought he woud've been in Hufflepuff. 

3.)    The strange circumstances around Ibanez’s rise to prominence did not go unnoticed.  Last year bloggers accused Ibanez of cheating.  Raul vehemently denied any peformancing enhancing drug allegations shouting, “YOU DARE QUESTION THE DARK LORD?!”  One of Ibanez’s bats was later X-Rayed to examine if it was corked.  This test came back negative, although a Phoenix feather was found inside.

X-Ray Results

4.)  Being parseltongued, his batting average against the Arizona Diamondbacks is an impressive .360.  Not exactly proof, but the dark lord certainly wouldn't struggle against a serpentine team.

Accio Helmet!

5.)    This spring training, notorious death eater and werewolf, Fenrir Grayback has been recruited to play opposite You-Know-Who in right field, replacing Jayson Werth.  Don’t believe me? The Phillies’ right fielder has been incredibly streaky this year, with home run tears corresponding closely with the cycles of the moon.

Jayson Werth Before...

Jayson "Were"werth. 

6.)    Finally and most convincingly, this year, opposing teams have been “snake bitten” at the plate against the Phillies.  While some attribute this inability to hit to the powerful starting rotation of Halladay, Oswalt and Hamels, Raul has often been seen muttering into his glove during opposing teams’ at bats

Roy Halladay during his no-hitter. Note Raul Ibanez in the background.

I implore you to see reason!  The evidence of the Dark Lord's return is incontrovertible!

While it remains unclear why the Dark Lord has turned his powers towards baseball, one thing is clear.  It’ll take some strong magic to beat the Phillies this post season.

So long summer....

As mentioned in What I’m Doing With My Physics Degree Part 2, I am a beach lifeguard during the summer months.  Being out in the sun and salt air every day, my hair goes from dirty blonde to almost white naturally.  It’s one of my favorite perks of the job.  I wear those bleached locks proudly, as it quickly differentiates me from the tourists (and it helps with picking up girls).  Now after summer, my tan quickly fades but my hair doesn’t.  So every fall, I drag my feet when it comes to getting my haircut.  I dread looking in the mirror and not seeing the lighter shade associated with summer fun.

Well this year was no exception.  However, after being away at school for 4 years, I forgot how caring (READ: ANNOYING) my mom can be.  Now let’s be clear, I am not a metrosexual.  My idea of personal hygiene is very similar to most other guys: just do things to avoid smelling.  I rarely do more than rake my hair with my fingers before going out and my last three haircuts were performed by myself.  Well Mama Sheil took it upon herself to make an appointment and pay for my next hair cut.

So knowing how accepting and tolerant my friends are, I should probably not even admit to this experience, but the reason this haircut is blog worthy is because it was at a salon.  To be precise, the same salon my mom goes to.  Now, this was my “birthday” gift and I really didn’t want to insult my mom by skipping out on the appointment so I decided to acquiesce. 

This was the first time that I’ve ever had an appointment for a haircut, and I don’t know if I ever will get a haircut without one again.  I usually run into the barbershop when I have time, the place is packed and I’m forced to wait in line.  Not only is this time consuming, but it turns the experience into a game of Russian roulette (just instead of dying, my dome’s mangled for a few week).  I don’t have a choice who cuts my hair, I just get whoever is open at the time.  And they usually have trouble understanding how I want to look.  Apparently, most barbers speak a different dialect of English where “just a trim, please” translates to “please god make it so I don’t recognize myself in the mirror for the next few days.” 

Anyways, I was immediately greeted at the salon and Kelly (the girl who was supposed to cut my hair) was phoned from the front desk and notified of my arrival.  It was like I was waiting outside the office of an important business man waiting to get buzzed in.  I initially regretted coming here as I hate to even think that I care about my appearance enough to be at such a legit place to get my hair “styled” instead of merely “cut”.  However, I quickly perked up, and by that I mean I saw some very attractive young stylists walking around.  By the time I dismissed them as eye candy (I am into girls who are more tom-boyish, athletic, outdoorsy and I doubt I’d have much in common with a hair stylist), Kelly was standing before me and invited me back. 

I walked back and she motioned me to a comfortable looking barber-chair to sit down it.  I sat down and she immediately started playing with my hair (BITCH, I DON’T KNOW YOU LIKE THAT).  She asked me what I wanted and still rather uncomfortable with the whole experience I just blurted out, “Yeah I want my hair long, but I don’t want a mullet.  So can you clean up the back and sides?”  She then quickly walked away.  WTF!?  I just told you what I wanted and you walk away like I didn’t say anything??  This is gonna suck.

Turns out I was supposed to get my hair shampooed.  Well I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had just done that 30 minutes ago (I even splurged, pilfered some conditioner from someone else‘s bottle in the shower and went to town on that bad boy).  I figured I’m already trespassing by being here, I shouldn’t disturb things more by throwing off the delicate routine of the salon.  So I sat down in front of the sink, leaned my head back (which is a pretty vulnerable-feeling position) and Kelly disappeared….  WTF IS GOING ON?  WHERE DID SHE GO? WHAT ELSE COULD SHE HAVE TO DO?  Well next thing I know another woman comes out of nowhere and puts a warm towel around my neck (alright, I can get behid this).  She starts washing my hair in the sink.  IT. WAS. GLORIOUS.  Oh my god.  She massaged my scalp, my temples.  She whipped the shower head around quickly and effortlessly without spraying anything unintentionally.  In this blissful state, my mind wandered.  I suddenly realized that she is the salon equivalent of a bus boy.  She must get tipped out at the end of the day, and judging by the number of stylists there, it’s a good amount.  Good for her, she makes bank for washing hair I’m almost jealo….WAIT…I Wonder if she takes pride I her job.  How seriously does she take showering and washing her own hair, there must be shampoos and conditioners that I could only dream of?  Then I thought of her getting done washing a customer’s hair, walking into the back room and being like, “Yeah I just washed the shit out of that hair…”  Anyways, this experience quickly ended and I was escorted back to the original barber chair.

Kelly soon greeted me and went to work.  She followed directions very well, and if anything erred on the side of not cutting enough.  A trait I admire in someone who has scissors near my head.  I was quickly dispatched and went home sans mullet, but blonde hair still partially intact.  The best haircut I've received in recent memory.

So would I do it again?  Probably not, I feel like I’ve lost a man card for going there.  And I had to lift in order to assuage this feeling of male-guilt I had.  But it was a rather pleasant experience all in all.

What I've Done With My Physics Degree Part 3: You're Unique and Special, Just Like Everyone Else

Everyone has those vivid memories of ordinary experiences.  For no reason whatsoever, I can distinctly remember being 4 years old and watching an episode of the Flintstones with my grandma.  It wasn't an unusual experience, or a traumatic one, watching cartoons was part of my routine as a toddler.  Yet, for some reason or another, I remember this episode almost two decades later.  The plot opened up with the narrator commenting about how it is commonly believed that everyone in the world has their own twin
No, not identical twins.  They were talking about two unrelated people from two separate mothers and fathers who happened to look exactly a like.  In the episode, Fred's twin shows up in Bedrock and causes trouble as people think Fred's doppleganger is really Fred.

Now, years later, I am trying to think of the math behind this episode.  Is it really possible that some other person born from different parents has, by sheer probability, the same genetic code??  In principle it's possible.  Once the earth's population is large enough, the probability of someone having the same sequence of DNA will be statistically significant.
Everyone knows that the nucleotides in DNA are made up of four different bases (A, T, C, G)  These bases pair with eachother with in selective ways: A only bonds to T, C only bonds to G and vice versa.  Now again I admit that this is not the entire picture as there is a base U and the base pairings are not always 100% accurate.  However, let's ignore this for the time being...

So there are 3.1 billion nucleotide bases in the human genome.  At first glance, (1/4)^3.1 billion would be the probability of having the same genome as someone else.  Pretty much next to nothing

HOWEVER, all human DNA is pretty much the same in everyone.  In fact, we share over 80% of our genome with a banana.  Scientists have only identified 1.4 million locations where single bases differ (SNPs) in humans.
That means there are only 1.4 million spots that make us unique.  So the new probability is (1/4)^(1.4*10^6).   Which is two hundred orders of magnitude less than a googol.

So basically, the Flintstones was wrong and I just confirmed what I found out in January on facebook during doppleganger week.  I have no twin: celebrity, or otherwise.

What I've Done With My Physics Degree Part 2: The Lifeguard Question...

Since I was 16, I've spent my summers on the Jersey shore as a ocean rescue lifeguard.  Those close enough to me know my fondness for the job.  What's not to like about sitting in the sun, working out, and looking at plenty of girls.  And the people you work with are funny, and happy.  However, much like the Jersey shore, many of the people I know there are consumed with getting laid. 
Well, the way the job works is that you sit on a stand all day with a partner.  Now conversation topics vary from politics, to philosophy, to ridiculous games of would you rather.  One day, the topic of the conversation got to how slutty everyone down there was and how easy it was to score.  At one point my partner goes, "Dude I saw a couple banging in a car at 5PM yesterday.  D'you have any idea how many people are getting laid right now on this island alone?!"

So being the person I am I took this as a challenge.  Except I tried estimating the number of people who are having sex in the world at any given instance.  The basic strategy is based upon something I learned in physics class.  Enrico Fermi is a Italian physicist and a genius and was famously known for being able to ball-park the answers to random questions quickly and accurately.  Basically if you estimate the numbers of the contributing factors, you tend to overestimate as much as you underestimate and they balance out to give a good answer.  So I plan to do the same in this case.

I started with just the following assumption.  There are 6.6 billion people in the world.

Now for the fun stuff.

1.) You are physically able to be sexually active for roughly 2/3's of your life.
That means 4.4 billion people are currently physically capable of sexually activity.

2.) Now I'd say a little more than half of the people in the world are either in a relationship or environment to have sex (like college or the jersey shore).  Remember a huge portion of the population abstains for religious reasons....
So that means roughly 2.5 billion people are in a position to get some.

3.) I once heard that the average married couple has sex once a week (try not to think of your parents as you read that...or grandparents).  Now lets think about the people in the right environments (like college or the jersey shore) who probably are slightly less successful.  A nice round number would be to say when you are in the right situation, you have sex 1 out of every 10 days.

4.) Now every sexual encounter takes about 20 minutes (don't kid yourself, you're no Sting).
That means for 20 mins out of every 10 days you are bumping uglies. 
20 mins out of (10 days*24 hours *60 mins) you have your "O face" on.
So 1/720th of the time you're in the position to get laid, you actually are.

5.) 2.5 billion people are spending 1/720th of their time doing it. 
This translates to roughly 3.5 million people in the world having sex at any instant. 
Any instant.  Like this one.  And you're online reading my stupid blog...

But if you want to feel better about yourself that's only 0.05% of the population, so you're in good company.

What I've Done With My Physics Degree Part 1: Sport Superstitions

Many athletes are superstitious.  Basketball players do the same routine before every free throw. Baseball players refuse to step on the baseline on their trips to and from the dugout and batters readjust every velcro strap on them in between pitches. Mitch Berger, a former Vikings place kicker when I was a huge fan (READ: FRONT RUNNER) in 1998, used to keep a snickers in the bottom of his cleat during games.  Yet athletes are not the only ones with superstitions, fans often have them, myself included.

Recently Roy Halladay pitched a no hitter in the NLDS playoffs.  Those friends of mine who are Yankees fans will quickly point out that some old dude who played for them did better by pitching a perfect game in the post season...yadda yadda yadda.  Well my apologies go out to Doc, as I am the single reason he walked Jay Bruce.  Now I've never personally interacted with Roy Halladay or even attended a Phillies game since he joined the team.  Yet, midway through the 5th inning, I irreverently switched positions from the couch to a chair while watching the game.  The baseball gods did not miss this transgression: Roy missed on a full count ruining the perfect game. 

 

In essence, the principle is simple (atleast it should be considering Ashton Kutcher made a movie about it), one small change in one part of the world can cause a huge change elsewhere.  So I began to think about whether or not simple chair switch could have done anything in respect to what I know about physics (don't get your hopes up, it isn't much).
 
First, I'm going to ignore any possible electromagnetic and gravitational field effects because those any such field I could create would quickly radiate in all directions and the amount of power that would eventually reach the playing field is too small to be calculated much less affect the movement of a baseball.  This is a reasonable assumption because of Lentz's Law.  So instead, I'm going to imagine that "bad luck" exists in the form of an imaginary particle (like an evil electron if you will)

Now imagine this "bad luck particle." My act of changing seats creates this particle and it begins travelling around.

The first major obstacle is that the "bad luck particle" from my location would have to reach the playing field. 
I'm approximately 30 miles or roughly 50,000 meters from Citizens Bank Park.  There is a hyperbole often used to describe fast things: the speed of light.  Well most people know that this is a theoretical "speed limit" of the universe.  Nothing moves faster than the speed of light.  So let's assume that any change that my shift in seats would cause could only travel at this speed: 300 million m/s.  This means that travelling at the speed of light, it would take my "signal" 0.00016 seconds to reach the playing field.  To put that into context, that's about an eigth as long as your camera flash...So it seems very likely that I could have ruined a perfect game.

BUT that assumes that my signal travels directly from my chair to the playing field, taking the shortest possible route.  Well this of course is physically possible, but the probability of such a perfect journey is next to nothing.  So we assume that the trajectory of my particle, like other particles is random.  By this I mean that at any given instant, it has much of a chance travelling East as West, North as South, Up as Down, etc.  The analogy is best described by the walk of a drunk sailor staggering around in a strange town.  He's just as likely to stumble backwards as forward, side step, etc.  (Let's ignore the irony that my bad luck particle is, for all intents and purposes, drunk).  So it turns out in all likelyhood that the total distance my signal will travel will be far far greater than the simple 30 miles. 

So let's try to calculate the number of steps required for my signal to get from my chair to the ball park (a process which I'm not so sure of myself and will make many, many assumptions which simplify matters).  Its important to first describe the distance of each "step."  That is, the length my signal will travel in one direction before being able to switch to another direction.  If we go back to the analogy of the drunken sailor the size of each "step" is simply the length of the sailor's stride (before he pauses, collects himself and attempts to step again).  Let's just say the step size of my "bad luck particle" is 1000m.    (A astronomical size when you consider that most elementry particles are over 100,000,000,000,000 times smaller.  Well shut up, and don't ruin my moment).  This also means that we can only define the position of the particle to 1000 m by 1000m by 1000m grids.  So we're just going to try to go for the 1000 m^3 grid that contains the ball park and not a more precise location, like Roy Halladay himself.

That means in the best case scenario there are (50,000m/1000m) or 50 steps required for the particle to get there.

Now it takes the particle 3 milliseconds to travel one step.

Let's also assume that there are only 6 directions to choose from: Up, Down, Left, Right, Forward, Reverse (not to be confused with Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A).
So that means each step there is a 1/6 chance that the particle goes in the right direction at each step. 

So simple probability means that the chance the particle passes within the 1000m cube of the playing field in the most direct route is one sixth (based on the number of choices for direction) to the 50th power (minimum number of steps).  An incredibly small number.  However, with every "step" (actually every other step to be precise) there is another chance the particle passes our target grid containing the field.

Now what is the probability that the "bad luck particle" could have reached the field within the 5 minutes from my change in seats at the start of the half inning and the walk?  Well there are 90 million steps in 5 minutes.  The chance that in those 5 minutes the particle will at some time pass within the 1000m cube containing the playing field is less than 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

The chance that in my lifetime, I could have done anything at home to affect this game is only negligibly better. 

In fact, if you include even more possible direction for the particle to travel (like diagonally) or a smaller step size (like say 1m), the probability is even more ridiculous.

So basically, Roy Halladay's perfect game was not broken up by my bad luck.  And I'm a huge nerd.