Some conservative probabilities...

...for the AFC playoffs and Big Game:

85% to beat (probably) Jacksonville, after upgrading a bit in case it's a worse team.
66% to beat (probably) Indianapolis (ditto)
80% to beat Dallas or whomever they somehow fall apart against

.85 * .66 * .8 = .4488

I stress that those are very high probabilities against talented teams, indicating my acceptance that New England is probably the strongest team in league history.  And still, the math bears out that even money against a Pats championship is a good bet.  In any case, the 1 to 5 odds at the first website I checked are completely ridiculous.  That means a 5/6 or 83% probability of them winning all three games.  And look at the kind of numbers you'd need to get that:

97% game 1
90% game 2
95% game 3

Numbers in that range are just batshit crazy for the NFL playoffs, even when none of the teams are as strong as the defending champions now are.

P.S. To put those last numbers in perspective, a team with a 97% advantage would be expected to go undefeated in another 16-game season with a probability of 61%.   That's a whole season of the current likes of Jacksonville, San Diego, and Pittsburgh, with no bottom feeders, 61% to go 16-0.  Similarly, a 90% advantage corresponds to a 19% probability of 16-0.  Patriots beating Colts sixteen straight times, with a probability of almost 1/5.  Is the insanity clear?

At the limits of reason, then, New England is equally as likely to win this year's Super Bowl as not.  Naturally, if they do, it will be deemed inevitable, in retrospect.  Human nature 101.

Better with a little beef...

So, a couple of weeks ago, I was reading "Stone Soup" with one of my classes.  I really like this story, in large part because it remains ambiguous.  In fact, it was only five or six years ago that I realized the moral was widely supposed to be something along the lines of:

Cooperation can work wonders, if you can just get it started.

Well, gee whillikers.  You see, for the fifteen years or so prior, my interpretation (though the fifth-grader wouldn't have put it quite this way) had been more like this.

If you don't learn to distinguish essentials from inessentials, you'll be swindled out of your essentials.

But what a wonderful irony, to hold the two in parallel!  Having just watched Wings of Desire yet again, I especially appreciate how a cynical seducer and a guide to a better existence can be one and the same.   And in election season, it might be worth bearing in mind what ya get by combining the two mottos.

Ah, well, you can have a bit of my garlic, I suppose.

Poetry of the Apple, in Translation

Plan to buy a nice camera today, which should make it easier to get some nice stuff up here.

Wish I had a pic of the Nazi motorcycle we saw last week, parked in downtown.  Sure, it's natural to see swastikas around here, but a) usually not facing that way, b) probably not done up in White Stripes palette, and c) definitely not accompanied by a little Iron Cross.  Serious WTF time.

So, anyway, I was thinking last night about a little poem I wrote in German years ago, when we had to do cinquains for class.  No grammar to be seen, and not (I believe) even following whatever silly rules tradition or at least foreign language pedagogy applies to the rather silly form.  But you know, I consider it a real poem of mine, more satisfying than most.  It goes like this, sans nods either to pyramidal cinquain formatting or ugly German spelling reform.

Apfel
Rinde Kern
Strudel Zider Apfelmuß
Samen Baum Geburt Fäule
Apfel

In literal translation:

Apple
Rind Core
Strudel Cider Applesauce
Seed Tree Childbirth Rot
Apple

Really terrible in English, even with lines 1,2,3, and 5 so similar.  (Changing "childbirth" to "birth" doesn't help.)  What I like so much about the German poem is its alliterative pattern.  Line 2 repeats r-n.  The first two words of line 3 do a kind of s-t-r-d, t-s-d-r.  The last word of line 3 has the right stress pattern to end the line well, but changes consonants with an m-s at the end.  Well, that's what gets picked up in line 4: s-m-b-m before the critical word "Geburt", and then there's a new pattern f-l, which returns to "Apfel".  A cute little dance that the English translation flubs.

I hope today's lecture was as informative as it was entertaining.  :)

Much more to get from brain to blog, plus camera-carrying holidays to come.  Stay tuned.

Happiness is...

never having to get up to an alarm.

Yeah, you've heard it before. But I'll be damned if emergency should be a human being's first experience in each conscious segment of this existence. Hagwon hours rock, even if the 38-ish-hour week is too grueling for some non-Americans.

Scott, I know I've mentioned the video for this recent Dylan song, but I believe you haven't seen it yet. Niiice.

Lates.

Lazy Sunday

I'm currently chilling out at the pad of (I think) 규성, aka Maxwell, aka Mad Max, where I crashed last night. His brother is also here, on a brief visit from Japan. Very cool. Last night I finally got to the Gwangju International Center while it was open, heard a talk on Mongolia, and went out with a group of truly excellent people. After the first bar, where a bunch of us blew 10,000 won each on disgustingly flat Guiness, we got over to this awsome place owned by a German-trained Korean brewmaster.

Max was in Seattle and Boise, and at least he got to be in the latter around the time of that big bowl game upset. I talked with another guy about Nietsche and Dostoyevski and the Christian original sin/redemption concept, and I also learned that silly multilingual puns are well appreciated in this crowd (though not, I hope, the exhausted Seoul=soul). One of the girls is trying to volunteer for the Gwangju film festival coming up in December, and was excited when I brought it up. That should be very nice.

Stay in peace.

New letters

So, one of the cool things about walking around the heavily transliterating Korean world is many new sets of letters to blanagram, anagrams-steal, etc.  A big burger place here is LOTTERIA*, which has a nice # anagram.  
A major street is SANGMURO*, for which I managed to find all four 9s the other night.

Once I get a camera, I'll tell you guys about visiting the 5-18 memorial park, museum, etc, dedicated to the victims of the "Gwangju Massacre".  For now, suffice it to say that CHOLLA: riots.

Peace out, scrabblers and muggles.

Begging your pardons, sirs...

Hi guys.  감사합니다, 제선.  Arthur (bad name for hangulization): 생활이 즐겁어요.  감사합니다!

I've been here in Gwangju just about two weeks now, wired at home for a few days.  Things are very comfortable.  I'm in Sochon-dong (송정), in the far west of the city, where there's an interesting blend of some major streets with big stores and office buildings, and lots of  little family farms (still going strong this late in the year!), produce stands, and little stores in amongst the homes.   Most people in this neighborhood don't try to speak English to me, which will be nice in the long run.  (In downtown, it's quite the opposite.)  I keep building my vocabulary, and can ask for things pretty well at the store, but I usually get back fast speech and pointing that mostly loses me.

Teaching is going pretty smoothly.  I like the kids here a lot.  I also have a private tutorial in the evenings with a kid who's applying to a big private high school in Seoul.  We're practicing conversation about political and social issues; I've had him following Pakistan for several days.

Hey, I'm gonna take off for downtown now, but I'll have time to write later.  (Not three weeks later!)