Adam Smith Was Wrong

I admit I know nothing at all about economic theory, so I'm not going to pretend I know why the Dow Jones is now lower than Kobe Bryant's assist-per-game average. Nor do I have any idea how exactly $780 billion dollars can be used to effectively bail out failed banks and mortgage firms. (And I gather I'm not alone.)

But I am very good at baseless speculation and philosophizing. (Fun!) I hear on the 24-hour news networks about how executives and CEOs haven't really been brought to justice. Instead, many of them are self-rewarded with "golden parachutes" consisting of exorbitant bonuses or pensions or whatever.

I do know that the purest form of capitalism is based upon everyone doing what's best for himself. Greed is good. But laissez-faire capitalism won't work in unideal conditions (like we humans like to create), just like communism only works in theory. All because humans are imperfect.

Which is why the best result, at least in our un-utopian civilization, comes when everyone does what's best for himself and for other people, in sort of an altruistic, we're-in-this-together attitude. I realize that not all big business are so greedy as to give themselves giant monetary pats-on-the-back each year; I'm not that cynical. But imagine if all big business promoted the well-being of everyone else, in addition to their own self-interests. Or at least by avoiding self-promotion at the expense of others.

OK, so I didn't come up with this all by myself. I was thinking about a particular scene from one of the top 10 movies ever, A Beautiful Mind. It explains these ideas in an interesting and easily grasped way:



I'm a dork.

Say It Ain't So, Mark!

So the Mavericks barely eek out an OT win against those kinda-terrible New York Knicks last night, ending a five-game losing streak where they made a habit of just handing opposing teams the game on a silver platter. And now Mark Cuban got caught in an insider trading scheme?

First, we were deprived an NBA crown in '06, then Cuban falls short of a Dancing With The Stars championship in '07. (Er, so I hear...not that I watched...) We tortured Mavs fans just can't catch a break.

"Are they ill-tempered?"

In honor of the new Bond movie released today, how about some love for the best theatrical spoof ever...



Oh, by the way, Austin Powers 4 is rumored (rumoured, if you will) to be in pre-production. This time, the story will be told from Dr. Evil's point of view. I, for one, hope these rumors are true...

The Doppelganger Alert Returns

On the left, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin. On the right, actor Omar Epps, whom you might recognize from the FOX show, House. Uncanny.

Album Review #7: Bruce Springsteen

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006), by Bruce Springsteen

I'm probably what you would call a casual fan of Bruce Springsteen. I was highly exposed to The Boss as a kid because Springsteen songs comprised about 85% of the music my dad and I would listen to when he'd drive me somewhere. As a result, I probably can (and do) recite the lyrics to "Tunnel of Love" and "Secret Garden" in my deepest sleep. But it never really clicked with me for an extended period of time. I like his music and appreciate his legendary influence on rock music for over 30 years, but I never have what we East Texan hillbillies might call a "hankerin'" to put a Springsteen CD in my car like I might other artists.

The premise for We Shall Overcome is an interesting one, and it intrigued me more than his other recent works. Take one look at the album art, and you might pick up on it. It consists entirely of Pete Seeger folk song covers with the country equivalent of a "big band", all recorded in only two days. I'm reminded of Thickfreakness, by The Black Keys, which was recorded in 14 hours. The result is a raw and somewhat disorganized, but very pure, form of music. And that goes very well with country folk rock.

It doesn't take long before you're exposed to the loose and decidedly fun attitude that dominates the album. A finger-pickin' banjo introduces track one, "Old Dan Tucker", followed by the strong (but not too strong) presence of a horn section (tuba, trombone, trumpet), and a raucous chorus. These elements, along with the upright bass, accordion, fiddle, and countrified percussion, are omnipresent throughout the album. I kinda feel like I'm listening to the opening act of the Soggy Bottom Boys in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou?

Most of the tracks are bouncy and almost playful, like "John Henry," "Jacob's Ladder," and "Pay Me My Money Down." "My Oklahoma Home" laments the mistake of settling down right in the middle of the Dust Bowl/Tornado Alley ("It blowed away / It blowed away / My Oklahoma home, it blowed away / It looked so green and fair when I built my shanty thar / But my Oklahoma home, it blowed away") to an ironically happy-go-lucky tune.

Some songs have a more subdued, sometimes even somber mood. "Mrs. McGrath", an old Irish anti-war folk song, is an example, and "Shenandoah" plods along with a gospel choir quietly backing up the vocals. "Erie Canal" is a highlight, with a very N'awlens-y instrumental solo.

In my opinion, it can get a little old after awhile, but then, maybe I don't know how to fully appreciate this genre yet. And I really like it when the time is right. If you're in the right mood, We Shall Overcome is flat out fun to listen to. Especially if you're driving way out in the country (as I occasionally do on those trips home to East Texas). Nice one, Boss.

Afterthought: Oh, by the way, this is the '07 Grammy winner for Best Traditional Folk Album.

Grade: B+

7 Things I Think I Know After The First Week of the NBA Season

Life is good. The election is history (literally), and the 2008-2009 NBA season is one week old. Most of your sports columnists were smart enough to make lots of predictions before the season started. Not me. I'm no Bill Simmons. I needed a week to feel things out because, frankly, I don't get paid enough to give it that much thought. (Zero is not a friendly number in that regard.)

Nevertheless, after semi-fervently following the young NBA season, my keen insights are as follows:

1.) The New Orleans Hornets are for real. As a Mavericks fan, I was able to witness CP3 and company demolish the Big German, the Little General, and Josh "Hey, we're losing a playoff series...come to my birthday party to celebrate" Howard. After 23 straight wins by the Mavs since the 20th century over the Charlotte/New Orleans Hornets, the futility finally caved, and the Hornets got good. Real good. Then adding James Posey, fresh off of a huge injection of Celtic Pride (it does wonders, I hear) from their championship run, only adds to this unbeatable nucleus. Prediction: The 1 seed in the Western Conference is theirs, beating out L.A. by 4 games in the end.

And oh, by the way, their court has a sweet new look:


2.) Pistons GM Joe Dumars is a genius. I hate that the Detroit Pistons lose Chauncey Billups (still one of the most underrated players in the game, along with Danny Granger of Indiana), and I'm lukewarm about their acquisition of Allen Iverson.
But they needed to shake things up, and from what I hear (I don't pretend to understand NBA salary cap law) it will clear up all kinds of cap space for the next, like, 57 seasons. When LeBron James becomes a free agent after the 2009-2010 season, you can bet that Detroit will be an alluring choice to keep him from jumping ship to Europe and a $200 million contract. Because if New Jersey was the only option, you know LBJ would set sail across the Atlantic. Back to the point: Detroit was good, is good, and will be good for a long time.

3.) Team names that don't end in the letter "s" are stupid. The Seattle Supersonics apparently got tired of coffee and rain and relocated to Oklahoma City. Since no airplanes have ever flown into the state of Oklahoma (really, who would want to go to Oklahoma?), it didn't make sense to have an aviation-related mascot. So they're now the Thunder, and have joined the other 3 s-less teams: the Heat, Magic, and Jazz. Lots of WNBA teams have adopted this approach (Shock, Sol, Storm), arena football teams (Rush), and even colleges (Tulane Green Wave). Something about that just doesn't seem right to me. But at least those sound half-good... the Thunder? I don't know about that. Sounds like it was Friday at 4:00 pm and the naming committee just wanted to go home. Probably there was a storm in the area, too.

4.) The Hawks will be for real. Of the four remaining undefeated teams in the NBA (as of tonight), the Atlanta Hawks are surely the biggest surprise. They've got great veteran leadership in Mike Bibby and Joe Johnson, and lots of spectacular talent in J.R. Smith and Marvin Williams. It's been a while since the Hawks first descended to the NBA's basement, but it looks like they're emerging once again. They took the eventual champion Boston Celtics to the brink in a 7-game series as an 8-seed in the first round of the playoffs yesteryear, so they sure don't lack confidence. Take it from me, the start is no fluke; they'll win 50 games this year. But that's about it; maybe after beating the Raptors in the first round, they'll fold to Detroit or Boston.

5.) This season will solidify the changing of the guard in the Western Conference. The Spurs are getting a little too old, the Suns are getting a little too slow, and the Mavericks are just not going to have enough. I think Dallas will be the best of these three teams, but it won't amount to any title runs. (Sorry, Dirk.) The Lakers, Rockets, Blazers, Jazz, and aforementioned Hornets will be there at the end this year.

6.) I can relate to president-elect Barack Obama. What does he do to unwind after voting and awaiting the results of whether he'll be leader of the free world? Nothing to take the edge off like a game of basketball. I'd be real nervous playing him that day. What if you accidentally gave him an elbow to the nose, just hours before his victory speech? Awkward!

7.) a.) The 2009 NBA Finals will be a rematch of the 2008 NBA Finals. b.) The Boston Celtics will repeat as champs.Now how uncreative is that? Maybe so, but it's the most likely scenario. N'awlens is really good, but they can't turn away Kobe and Pau in a 7-game series, especially if Andrew Bynum's knee stays healthy. Cleveland and Toronto will get closer to challenging the Celts, but it just won't be enough, either. Celtic Pride will prevail again, and Kevin Garnett will celebrate with a pair of Red Auerbach cigars. This is one prediction that will make Bostonian Bill Simmons happy...

Pascal's Triangle

I was a computer science major and a math minor. Here I'll pause while all the single ladies frantically scramble away in frightful panic. And now another pause, while all the male computer programmers and mathematicians, angry with my exceedingly unfair stereotype, hit the browser's X button in disgust.

Now that that unpleasantness is behind us...

One of the reasons why I made it all four years with my hopelessly left-brained minor in math was the frequency that one result was magically linked to something else completely different and unrelated. It's like we learned all these seemingly pointless things in middle and high school, but we managed to connect all of these dots in my college courses. I came across something the other day that reminded me of this. If you'll indulge me for about 10 paragraphs...

If you made it through high school algebra, you learned how to multiply what were called binomials by using something called the distributive property. The simplest of these is: (x+1) * (x+1), or (x+1)², which is (x² + 2x + 1). Remember those? Yeah, they sucked. But just because we have nothing better to do, let's try something:

(x+1)⁰ = 1
(x+1)¹ = x + 1
(x+1)² = x² + 2x + 1
(x+1)³ = x³ + 3x² + 3x + 1
(x+1)⁴ = x⁴ + 4x³ + 6x² + 4x + 1

We could do this forever. But that's no fun, and if there's one thing I was taught as a math minor, it's to recognize patterns. Lo and behold, if you arrange the coefficients a certain way...

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Way easier. This is called Pascal's Triangle. And you could keep going and going...


Now just for fun, let's shade in the boxes that contain numbers not divisible by three. (Why not?)


Where did all those triangles come from? Magic. In fact, if you were to keep doing this forever (in mathspeak, as the number of rows in the triangle approaches the infinite limit), you get the Sierpinski triangle.


The Sierpinski triangle is a fractal, which is what you get by splitting geometric shapes apart and duplicating them ("recursively"...there's more math jargon for you) infinitely until you get something purty, like the famous Mandelbrot Set, for example:


Call me whatever you want, but I think that's pretty fascinating. And it's amazing how often things just happen to work out perfectly that way.

See? That wasn't so bad...