So why do I hate Tom Brady? Well, it doesn’t help that he played football at Michigan. My loathing of Michigan football is even deeper than that for Tom Brady. But it’s more than that. You see, I dislike all “good-looking” quarterbacks. Tom Brady is already a quarterback. He plays the most important position for the most popular sport in America. He makes millions of dollars because he’s actually really good at it. He has probably spent his entire life, since high school, as the center of adulation and attention. He should not get to knock up famous actresses and then marry supermodels. It’s just not right. If you’re going to be a successful quarterback, you should be homely. Otherwise, this is all just unbalanced. Booo, Tom Brady. Yeah, Kyle Orton!

Basically, though, my argument is seeded in jealousy and an inapplicable standard of justice. That’s just petty and irrational. Luckily, science has stepped in an gave me a plausible, legitimate reason for my prejudices! I think this study has been bouncing around for a little while, but I was only made aware of it recently. As this Deadspin post summarizes from this WSJ article and also this much older Times article (don’t know how long all these articles will stay up, so I’ll just link to all of them), NFL starting quarterbacks are unnaturally attractive. A group of researchers (David Berri & Jennifer VanGilder) looked at the faces of NFL quarterbacks and measured how symmetric their faces were. Studies have shown that facial symmetry is a measure of attractiveness that spans all races and cultures. It is by no means the only measure of attractiveness, but it’s one that can be easily figured out by computers and image analysis (as opposed to having babies of different cultures look at pictures of faces, and seeing what faces they spend more time staring at, which is seriously how research into attractiveness has been conducted).

There are two interesting conclusions from their work. For one, the symmetry level for starting NFL quarterbacks (I assume this is the 2007 or 2008 season) was always higher than 96%, while an average person has a symmetry of 90%. Unless it turns out that genes for symmetry are the same as for good quarterbacking, this suggests that good looking youngsters are steered towards the quarterback position, or at least the good-looking kids gets more snaps and attention during practices.

The second conclusion was that the more attractive quarterbacks get paid more than they should based on performance. As the Times article states :

To put this result in perspective, we found that a “good-looking” quarterback like Kerry Collins or Charlie Frye earned approximately $300,000 more per year than his stats and other pay factors would predict. Meanwhile, quarterbacks like Jeff George and Neil O’Donnell, who, sadly, were not found to have very symmetrical faces, suffered an equivalent penalty.

But it’s not the Brett Favres — the guys often referred to as “the face of the franchise” — who receive the greatest return on their handsome faces. It’s the QBs clinging to the bottom of the roster who get the biggest pay bump from good looks

So you see, my hate of “good-looking” quarterbacks is completely justified. They use their good looks to subconsciously curry favor with coaches and GM’s, from childhood all they way through to NFL retirement age. My “irrational” hate is merely compensation for the favorable treatment they’ve received all their life.

I’ve read the newspaper and blog articles. To this point, though, they’ve just been articles in the WSJ and the Times, though, and haven’t mentioned anything like “as published in the Journal of Sports Externalities” or anything. So it sure looks like this work has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet. Still, it supports what I believe already, so I’m inclined to believe it anyway.

Booooo, Tom Brady!

So I’m feeling pretty good right now.

This is perhaps one of my most deep-seated, irrational hates. The slightest mention of Michigan may initiate a torrent of swear words from my mouth. Sometimes I drive by a street by that accursed name and it will illicit a large amount of bad vibage from my person. People who don’t know of my passionate loathing for Michigan are often surprised, sometimes astonished, and mostly amused when they (usually unknowingly) walk right into the path of one of my tirades by mentioning Michigan.

First off, there needs to be a clarification. I don’t really have a problem with the state of Michigan. Sure, it sucks in general but I don’t hold that against it. And it has an upper peninsula. That, I just don’t trust. But really, whatever. It is the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor that is the object of my wrath.

To best describe the origins of my hate, I will use an anecdote. The scene is Memorial Stadium, September 23rd, 2000. It is the Big Ten Season Opener. Both teams, Illinois and Michigan, have swept their non-conference schedules and come into the game with identical 3-0 records. The previous season, Illinois had shocked the nation by beating Michigan and Ohio State on the road and romping over Virginia in their first bowl game in a number of years. They are going for two in a row in a start a successful season. It is the first sold-out game in years, although a large number of those fans are from Michigan. The game is closely fought and the Fighting Illini are holding their own against the perennial powerhouse Michigan. With the score 21-31 in favor of Illinois, Michigan begins a comeback and scores to close to within three.

But Illinois does not just cave in. They start to drive their way towards a touchdown. Actually, it seemed like every play was a broken one. Kittner was scrambling around in the backfield and repeatedly finding running back Rocky Harvey scampering wide open, who would shimmy and shake and spin to good yardage. So although it wasn’t pretty, Illinois was eating up clock and moving the chains. Suddenly on one play, Rocky Harvey is hit hard and upended. He lands on his head, and the hand that is holding the ball hits the ground as well. The ball pops free, which is fine because it was caused by the ground. But Rocky falls on it anyway, taking no chances. But in the ensuing pileup (football players just love to create a pile every chance they get), a Michigan linebacker gets a hold of the ball and proudly shows it to the official. The ruling? Michigan ball. Yeah, that’s right, none of us in the stands understand it, but we bow to the whim of the almighty official.

Michigan has the ball again with great field position. The A-Train, Anthony Thomas, is ripping our defense to shreds, and he is eating up the field in 8 yard chunks. Suddenly, he breaks free and starts to head for the end zone. One of our defensive players hits him hard, and it looks like the ball pops free! A number of Illinois players jump on the ball, celebrating the stop. But wait…the officials are conferring…it appears that Thomas’ knee was down when the ball came loose, so it is still MICHIGAN BALL. At this moment, an ESPN camera comes rolling past our field of vision, blocking the field. The cameraman is on a cherry picker, allowing him a good vantage of the field. But up in the cherry picker basket he also has a TV, pointed at the stands, which is showing the ESPN feed. At that moment, ESPN is showing the slow motion replay of the play. It CLEARLY shows that the ball came out BEFORE his knee touched the ground. All of us in the stands now have PROOF that the call was bad, and express our disapproval. Apparently, our disapproval doesn’t count for much in the officials’ eyes. Play continues.

Perhaps our defense was demoralized, but Michigan was on a roll. They scored another touchdown, putting them up by 3 with only a few minutes left in the game. On the ensuing possession, we fumble again, this time legitimately. Michigan runs out the clock and escapes with the win. Sportscenter calls the quality of officiating “disgusting”. The Big Ten office officially apologizes for the blown calls, as is their custom when serious mistakes are made. Lloyd Carr, Michigan’s coach, says that there was nothing wrong with the calls and the Big Ten shouldn’t have apologized, despite replay evidence to the contrary. Illinois can’t get this game out of their head and loseWeight Exercise the next two, ending the season at 5-6. If they had won the Michigan game, they would have been bowl eligible, and probably the psychological “heartbreak” of the game wouldn’t have happened so their chances at an even better record would have been better.

My hate for Michigan began then, when a game was stolen from us by officials who seem to often be swayed by the majesty of the Michigan legend, winningest college football program in history. Calls tend to roll their way, and they are always the media darlings. Football is their thing, but the arrogance runs over into basketball, where they will probably get away with illegal activity such as the hundreds of thousands of dollars Ed Martin gave to members of the basketball team including Chris Webber.

Some will argue that this is all jealously, and that if I went to Michigan I would feel differently. This may be true. But I don’t. I go to Illinois, and will bleed Orange and Blue. And for all time, I will curse Michigan to have 0-8 conference records and NIT appearances only.

If you have been watching TV at all lately, you will have no doubt seen “The Truth” ads that air quite frequently. As a result of the numerous lawsuits brought against “Big Tobacco”, they are forced to fund anti-youth smoking commercials that will show us the error of our ways. Sure, information is good. And sure, underage smoking is bad. But these commercials serve nothing but to piss me off and I think they will be effectively uneffective in discouraging teen smoking. More disquieting is my suspicion that they will undermine any progress we have made in combating youth smoking.

My basic gripe was with a series of commercials where they attempt to bring relevancy to the chemicals that are within cigarettes/cigarette smoke. One commercial starts with security camera footage of a men’s bathroom (which in itself is rather creepy) and a man relieving himself at a urinal. The man looks down in the urinal and notices that there are words written on the “urinal cake”. The camera does a closeup to focus in on the words.

The connotation, of course, is that you are essentially putting pee in your mouth. Of course, this argument is incredibly ludicrous. Urea is a compound that is commonly found in chemistry and biology. You can buy it from any chemical reagent dealer, and it is not produced from urine. It’s just a chemical. By the same argument, we could say:

“Evian contains water. Water is also in your pee.”

And promote some sort of boycott on dihydrogen oxide, a dangerous industrial solvent that also happens to be a major component of acid rain. It doesn’t take much to see the idiocy of this argument. Subsequent commercials tell us that cigarettes have chemicals in common with dog poop, i.e. another fallacious argument along the same lines. Another offensive commercial is one where two young men enter a department store with some sort of liquid filled backpacks on, trying to give away samples of their produce “Ammonia-Ade”. Their argument is that ammonia is added to cigarettes, and according to the tobacco corporations it is added to “enhance flavor”. So TheTruth takes it to the logical & ludicrous extreme where these two guys are trying to give away what I assume is “pure ammonia” to drink. Well, I deal with “concentrated ammonia” in the lab — which is only about 15 normality — and its enough to knock you out. But a much reduced concentration is used in many household cleaning products and is pretty safe to work with. So TheTruth would have you believe that since something concentrated is quite unappealing, it must also be unappealing in small concentrations. They might as well say something like “Well, the Nazi’s smoked cigarette’s, so if you want to be like a Nazi you should smoke cigarettes.”

One of the big problems that I see is that one does not have to be a master logician to see the stupidity of these arguments and the associated commercials. You just have to be reasonable. These commercials, combined with the irritating hit-me-over-the-head-with-your-stupid-point “All Smoke High” commercials, makes me want to smoke purely out of spite. There are (many) legitimate reasons not to smoke, but these will never get through if teenagers start to realize that anything and everything coming from The Truth is utter bullshit. So I implore The Truth to rethink their attitudes and stop wasting money.

Update (4/08/03): A few months ago, directed me to a statment from the the American Lung Association. Apparently, the ALA thinks the ads are effective, and so does the reader. Well, I suppose they are entitled to their opinion. However, their main argument as to the effectiveness of the ads is that “Big Tobacco” is protesting them. I don’t know about you, but I would rather have some sort of scientific analysis, at least a poll or something that could give me numbers rather than rhetoric.

There is a great bit of tension in the air between science and religion in the subject of evolution. The sad thing is that there doesn’t need to be. The Pope and a number of other religious leaders agree that evolution is compatible with religion. And yet around the United States, school boards are opting for equal time between creationism and evolution. And I think this is horrid.

Generic creationism is the belief that a supernatural being initiated life on Earth, and continues to shape and control its development with eye to some goal or purpose. That in itself is not a problem. It is a theism just like many others, and nothing to which science can prove or disprove. Scientific creationism, however, claims that there is scientific evidence for creationism. In this way, proponents of scientific creationism seek to place their views on par with science, thus allowing it to be placed into a science curriculum. Creationism has taken many forms throughout the years, the descriptions of some of which follows.

New Earth creationists believe in the literal translation of the Bible, usually the King James version. This means that the world was created in six twenty-four days, that there was a great Noachian flood, and that the world is approximately 6000 years old. To many people with even a rudimentary grasp of scientific concepts, this conclusion is absurd. There is so much evidence for the contrary, although firm believers in this form of creationists can manage to dismiss this evidence. I think this version of creationism is pretty much dismissed. One of the main arguments NE creationists have against all the geological and cosmological data that we have – which undermines the basic premise that the Earth is less than 10000 years old – is that God created it to look that way. This could be true, but the hypothesis is completely unscientific in that it is not falsifiable. It also puts across the idea that God is deceptive, which some theologists have problems with.

Old Earth creationists still believe that the Bible is the revelation of God, but they feel that some aspects are figurative. For instance, the six days in which God created the universe are not human days, but rather days in the eyes of the omnipotent creator. In this way the “days” are ages, so to speak, each of which lasted for an indefinite period. This reconciles the accepted age of the universe (although the exact date is a matter of debate among cosmologists and astronomers, it is generally accepted that the correct time scale is billions of years) with the Biblical. However, they find many objections to evolution, and feel that these objections to evolution necessarily mean that their brand of creationism is correct. Although this is in itself is not true (denying evolution does not automatically mean that creationism is correct), their arguments are also false. One is that evolution is against the second law of thermodynamics, which they claim says that things tend to disorder, not the gradual increase in complexity that has marked evolution. First of all, that is a bastardized, simplified form of the law; it is only a generic outcome of the rigorous definition under certain conditions. Secondly, even if their definition was completely correct, it only applies to closed systems, which the Earth is definitely not. The sun bathes us in energy, much more than we use, and entropy still increases no matter how much ordering there is on the Earth’s surface. Also, it is only on the grand scale that evolution gives us complexity; often, evolutionary changes are simplifying. Creationists also say that there is no way that evolution could happen by chance; their statistics show that it is extremely improbable. Genetics has shown that there is an element of chance in this whole evolution business, but there is more than random chance at work here. Through the machinations of natural selection certain genes and traits are selected for, and it is this unrandom process that really guides the path of evolution. Chaos theory has also shown us that there can be order in seemingly random processes. There are other arguments, but there are other rebuttals. Time and time again, in fact, scientists have explained why these arguments are wrong, but creationists still voice them. There is a newer form of creationism that has rapidly risen through the ranks, however, and it seems more insiduous. This is intelligent design creationism.

Intelligent design theorists often concede that there is much about evolution is probably correct, or that it at least makes sense and explains things fairly well. But they say that natural selection is not random, and that rather that there is a supernatural being creating this. Their proof is the complexity of genes and specialized organs such as the eye. They claim that it is much more plausible to think these were designed by some “guiding hand” rather than blind evolution. In fact, they claim that the only thing that keeps this theory from being the accepted one is the dogma of science, which is so “close-minded” that they refuse to consider supernatural causes. This new attack troubles me the most because it does not attack evolution on scientific grounds, but attacks science on philosophical grounds.

Science does not exclude supernatural causes because of dogma, but because that the only way to do science! Once one lets supernatural explanations into the picture, the strength of scientific methodology goes out the window. Intelligent Design Creationists threaten to throw the entire scientific book out of the window, and the only thing it can do is hurt this country. During the witch hunts of medieval times, the proof required to find someone guilty was absurd. If someone’s cattle got strangely sick or a well went dry, fingers could be pointed. If the accused refused to confess, they could be tortured. If they confessed under torture, well that proved it. If they did not confess, it was also proof they were witches; only a supernatural being could withstand such pain. St. Gregory once wrote of a witch, and said that she apparently ate some lettuce that she thought was lettuce, but was in fact a demon, or perhaps a devil invisible inside the lettuce. And it was accepted on authority. No facts needed, because we are dealing with supernatural beings. The other problem is that intelligent design creationists effectively want to squash our curiosity and stop further understanding of the natural world around us. When the initial rumblings of quantum mechanics threatened to pull classical mechanics off of its high horse, Albert Einstein said “God does not play dice.” This reflected his distaste with the theories which began to surface which stated that probability played a key role in quantum mechanics. Today it is well documented and supported by experimental evidence that elements of probability theory are needed to predict and understand quantum mechanics. As it is, when a Nobel Prize winner such as Albert Einstein disagreed with quantum mechanics, scientists did not just believe him and drop the matter, as they would if science really was dogma. They forged ahead, and that’s why we have so much of what we do have today.

What would have happened if people such as Galileo didn’t investigate the sky critically, and just dismissed without a thought the evidence against the Earth-centric view of the Universe? What would happen if physicists decided that when classical mechanics broke down at small distances and small energies, it was just the vagaries of God, and something which they should not pursue further? What material is it that allows us to pass down the traits of one generation into the next? Well, we shouldn’t probe too deep into it, it is some mystery of a higher being. I don’t know about you, but I’m not willing to give up the notion that we can explain things with reference to natural laws until we have hit a wall that we know we cannot get across.

The thing that really gets me is this notion that the scientific creationists are the fair ones and the scientists the stubborn closed-minded ones. I hate the quotes in the paper about how people say “After all, evolution is just a theory, and creation science is another, and both theories are just as good, so its fair to teach them both and let the children decide.” First of all, to say something is a full-fledged theory is a big thing in science; I wish I could have a theory. That means I’ve developed a natural law that is backed by enough empirical evidence that we can be reasonably sure of it. Creation science is not science. It is thinly veiled religious fundamentalism. All theories are not created equally. Creationists have never amassed real, solid proof in favor of creationism. All they can do is poke at evolution, often using the same arguments that scientists use when arguing with each other. This is not to say that scientists disagree about evolution itself. They often argue about certain aspects of evolution, though, which is not the same thing. Certainly, its not as bad as some of canyons which divide creationists. As far as telling both sides of the creation/evolution story and letting students decide, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a creationist backed text that ever presented a fair representation of evolution; letting the children decide after teaching them that scientists are evil and Godless is hardly fair. Creationists have never proved that there is a true dichotomy, either; they claim that it’s either their form of creationism or evolution, since it’s necessary to their strategy of solely attacking evolution. But if creationists were truly believers in their ways, they would not only back the teaching of biblical creationism in the schools, but also the creation “theories” of various Native American tribes, of the Vikings, of Australian Aborigines and African tribes, of Shintoism and at least some of the various religions of the Indian subcontinent. To name a few. While we’re at it, we should teach the Raelian Theory – that exterrestrials created life on Earth and are our “fathers”. These advanced beings started out simple and went to more and more complex animals as their skill grew. This is a form of the intelligent design argument, except instead of the designer being God, they are suitably advanced aliens. The fact that Creationists don’t promote these other creationist theories shows their intentions to force their religious views upon the rest of the country.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this page, many religious leaders state that there is nothing contradictory about faith and evolution in the first place. In fact, creationists are almost committing blasphemy when they push forth their creationist agenda. Is it up to them to decide what an omnipotent being can and cannot do? Are they saying there are limits to how God can affect the creatures on Earth? The only people they help are the atheists of the world, who would support the notion of evolution and creation being exclusive. They would feel (and probably rightly so) that the vast majority of the evidence is in their favor.

In the name of the separation of church and state and freedom from religious indoctrination, I am whole-heartedly against scientific creationism. It is not only a threat to modern biology, but a threat to all of science.

I believe that the designers of these push-faucets meant well. They sleep well at night, believing themselves to be saving the environment and maybe even some baby seals or something. However, this invention has gone horribly wrong.

My main gripe is that they don’t do what they intended to do, which is save water while at the same time convenience me. It is only on rare occasions that I have not been inconvienced by them, due to the fact that there can only be a slim deviation in the amount of time in which the water must stay on before it just makes me angry. Two things invariably happen: the water stays on too long or it stays only a fleeting moment.

In the first case, I’m often done washing my hands, drying them, fixing any deficiencies in my apparel like an undone zipper or improper tuckedness of the shirt, and yet the torrent from the faucet is still coming. There needs to be some sort of switch that I can hit that will just stop the water when I’m done, because in many cases the water is still running when I leave the lavatory and for all I know, may be continuing to flow for some time after I leave. I could probably graduate from the University, get married, have kids, have grandkids, and then invite the little buggers down to Grandpa’s Alma Mater to see the eternal faucet.

The other extreme is when the faucet turns off very quickly. Sometimes I push down on the tap and the water is off before I can get my hands under the water. Coincidentally these are often the faucets that require the most effort to push down, so I feel like a modern age Sisyphus just washing my hands. The only solution is to lather up with the soap, then use one soapy hand to hold down the tap while I rinse the other hand, then switch hands. Of course, when I switch hands, the tap gets all soapy and makes my perfectly rinsed hand soapy, and I have to repeat the process for a while to complete the job. In other words, I often use more water than normal.

Once again, I have to commend stupid people for leaving the water on in enough places in enough times to warrant the evil invention of the push faucet.

P.S. I just got back from Europe, so I thought that I’d add something that I do approve of : push showers. These are showers where you press a button to get 10-20 seconds worth of water at a time. I think these are great. You don’t get to adjust the pressure that much, but you save massive amounts of water because you just use push to wet yourself down, then you can lather up to your hearts desire and use two or three pushes to rinse yourself off. It also helps during those days when you just can’t get your sleepy self out of the shower. — 07/05/01

I admit, I bet I’m a little biased on this one. Wait a second, I’m biased on every one of these. That’s the point. Anyways, my first year here at UIUC I lived on the 9th floor of Oglesby Hall, in which there are 12 floors. Incidentally, the elevators only go up to the 11th floor, so the poor 12th floor residents are fated to climb stairs anyway. But that’s another matter. Most University Residence Halls are a maximum of 4 floors high. Therefore, I feel it is only fair that residents of taller residence halls should only be be allowed to use the elevator to travel more than four floors. This is reasonable to me. However, I often found myself in the elevator, stopping at low floors, therefore delaying my appearance on the 9th. On the good side, whenever a person takes the elevator to a low floor, it unites the rest of the elevator. A definite bond is formed. It’s almost a sense of cameraderie, that hey “That guy was damn lazy!” It’s great. You have to be there.

Another thing that pisses me off is the elevators themselves. They are slow. They are the most irrational pieces of machinery I’ve ever seen. The “close door” button is purely for show. Any elevator system that is programmed so that if there is an elevator on the 1st floor already, and you push the up button from the first floor, the elevator goes down, they get an awesome amount of respect from me. The designers of the software must have been doing this on purpose, because no one could ever be this sadistic while being good-intentioned.

And now I make the startling transition to buildings that don’t have a cafeteria. I go to the Grainger Engineering Library, mostly because it’s just a great place to study. It exudes concentration rays. These rays are much akin to x-rays, and have been found to cause lab studies in rats. But I don’t worry. I’m invincible. But I digress. I am sitting on the second floor, on a really comfortable leather chair, and I stare across the room to see just how many people take the elevator down. I mean COME ON PEOPLE, it’s ONE floor. I could understand if you’re incapacitated, paraplegic, or maybe really really uncoordinated, but these appear to be well-coordinated people that are really, really lazy. Maybe not lazy, maybe just stupid. Maybe unaware that the distance they pace, waiting for the elevator to move them a height that they could be dropped from without serious damage, is quite probably more than the distance that they would walk going to the stairwell and down.

I take comfort in the fact that there could be a fire. Then, while these clueless souls look at the stairs, trying to fanthom its operation, I will speedily run down them and to safety, escaping unsinged. Perhaps, if I am feeling particularly giving, I will grab a cute girl to take to freedom, in hopes she will feel forever indebted to me. Yes, well, we can only hope.