Voodoo Baseball

I awoke this morning to a radio report of the story of the Boston Red Sox jersey buried in the construction of the new Yankee Stadium. It seems that Gino Castignoli, a New York-dwelling, Red Sox-cheering construction worker, placed a David Ortiz jersey beneath five feet of concrete in the new stadium several months ago. After bragging about it to friends, he allowed the story to get out. The Yankees then, figuring out where Castignoli might have had access, took a jack hammer to the suspect floor and found the shirt last week.
So who is dumber? Is it Castignoli who spent good money on the Ortiz jersey and buried it, only to face possible legal action for his troubles? Or is it the Yankees who took this nonsense seriously and spent time, money, and mess jack-hammering their new ballpark searching for a jersey that might never have existed?
Does somebody in the Yankee organization really believe that a buried piece of cloth will somehow put a hex on the Bronx Bombers? If that's so, perhaps they ought to sift through the rubble of the House that Ruth Built when they demolish it next year looking for an explanation of the jillion-dollar team's woes in recent years.

How to Think

Is that a practical title, or what? This little bit of wisdom is written by somebody a lot more science-oriented than I am, but his ten methods for thinking will translate nicely to just about any discipline.

Post Hoc Ergo Coffee Hoc

One of my favorite logical fallacies is the one called "post hoc ergo prompter hoc." Translated from the Latin, it means, "after this therefore because of this." The fallacy involves assuming that because something happens after another thing it was caused by it. For a ridiculous example, I might note that the phone rang just now, immediately after I launched FreeCell on my computer. Did FreeCell make my phone ring? If I'm committing that fallacy, then yes it did.
But let's be a bit more reasonable. Today in Kansas City, it's snowing. If my daughter calls me to say she's had a car wreck, I'll probably assume that the weather contributed to the wreck. In reality, though, just because she had the wreck after the snow started doesn't mean that the snow caused the wreck. She might have been hit by someone who ran a stoplight.
So along comes this brilliant person who seems to suggest that the philosophical upheaval we call the Enlightenment came about because of coffee. You introduce coffee into European society in the 17th century. The Enlightenment kicks in during the late 17th and 18th centuries. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the connection.
But what this theorist neglected to see was the great potato connection. Potatoes--which come originally from South America and not from either Idaho or Ireland--arrived in Europe around the same time as coffee, around 1700. And many historians and philosophers date the beginning of the Enlightenment to the same time. Coincidence? I think not!
Perhaps what both coffee- and potato-Enlightenment theorists neglect is the much larger current that these two agricultural products were a part of. When the New World opened up to Europe, an incredible amount of wealth began flowing from the Americas to the Old World. That wealth provided for education, leisure time, and a period of great philosophizing.
Nah, it must have been the coffee.

The Door Game

This is kind of interesting. This game involves choosing from three doors. Unlike the Simpsons, there's not a hungry animal behind any of the doors. I'll let the host site explain the rules of the game. Make sure you stick around for the evaluation at the end.

Consider the Source?

What a strange morning. I awoke this wintery morning and, before getting completely dressed, performed the sensible task of looking to see if JCCC had cancelled due to the weather. According to KC's channel 5, we were open.
After spending a half hour in my office and speaking to several colleagues, I received a peculiar phone call from Penny, my wife.
"Are you at school?" she asked.
"Yeah, why?"
"You're closed," she continued.
"No we're not."
"Channel 9 says you're closed."
If Channel 9 says we're closed, then I guess we must be closed. After all, they're on TV and we're not. Never mind that classes are in session, the parking lot is filling up, and the Writing Center is buzzing. Channel 9 says we're closed.
When I notified our public information czar about this tidbit, expressing my outrage at her for withholding this information from us, she registered surprise. "I knew that KFKF said we were closed, but this is news to me."
News. Yeah, that's what Channel 9 is all about. They're so late-breaking in their news coverage that they announce us as closed before we close. I'm impressed.
The czar explained that the last time she had called a TV station directly to register a closing, they had simply accepted the news without asking who she was or whether she had the authority to make such a pronouncement. Interesting.
There's a point to this little rant. My point is that you should always check all available sources for school closings so that you get out as often as possible! Also, it is important to be skeptical of sources. Channel 9 either wasn't skeptical about whoever called in with the news on JCCC's closing or they simply made a mistake, perhaps confusing Johnson County Country Club for Johnson County Community College. Either way, a smart student will recognize that these things happen.
Had a person gone directly to the JCCC website, they'd have seen--straight from the horse's mouth--that the school is open.
Taking this idea a bit further, maybe I should be more skeptical. I didn't see Channel 9's error myself. It's not on their web listing now (although it might have been removed in the last few minutes), so maybe Penny made a mistake and I shouldn't trust her. I'm so confused!