Simone Biles is out of Control: Or a Proposal for a New Gymnastics Scoring System

Simone Biles is credited with doing so much for the progression of women's gymnastics. She has competed many skills that many gymnasts would never even attempt in practice. But she also really doesn't stick these skills that much. Simone Biles plays it smart (at least in one way). She has realized she can do skills that have a high enough difficulty that it doesn't matter if she sticks it; it doesn't matter if she falls. In fact, as commentators are so fond of pointing out, she often has enough cushion that she could fall several times in a routine and still come out on top. And that does speak to Simone's impressive skills as a gymnast. But it also exposes a big problem.

The truth is, Simone is rarely truly in control of her tricks. She does everything with so much power, she often stumbles, steps, or in extreme cases flies right of the floor backwards. And this is dangerous. What is even more dangerous is that I think Simone might have finally started to realize it, which is possibly what is giving her "the twisties" in the first place. 

There was a lot of controversy surrounding the decision to award a lower than expected difficultly to certain skills that Simone can do that no other woman can, ostensibly because gymnastics officials are trying to keep the scores closer together. And perhaps it is just a conspiracy against Biles to keep things a little more interesting. 

But another possible reason for assigning a lower difficulty is that is reduces the incentive to do the skill. These skills are indeed insane and, more to the point, dangerous. But they are thrilling to watch; Biles has accomplished something by doing them and they are not so dangerous that it really makes sense to ban them outright. But just assigning a lower score does seem to punish excellence, which leads me to my proposal.

Instead of holding back on the difficulty, scale the deductions with the increase in difficultly (and danger). For example, instead of a fall being a .5 deduction, make it a certain amount for every point of difficultly. Or perhaps assign it to each skill individually depending on how likely you would break your neck if you mess up. This will encourage gymnasts to make sure they truly can control the skills they are competing by reducing the incentive to compete tricks you can't always land. Simone Biles and anyone else will be able to get her higher degree of difficultly; they just have to weigh the higher risks of not making it. 

Nothing Simone Biles did at this Olympics was Heroic

Simone Biles is not a villain. I don't wish to heavily criticize anything she did. But Simone is no hero either.

What Simone did at this Olympics was selfish. This isn't something I am going to debate with anyone; she fully admits this herself. She left in the middle of the team event because, she says, “At the end of the day, I have to do what was right for me.” It isn't always wrong to be selfish. I even will go so far as to say it was probably reasonable for Simone specifically in this specific situation. 

But . . .

Being selfish, even when it was reasonable for the specific situation, does not make you a hero. Perhaps standing up for herself was brave. I admit there was tremendous pressure on Simone to preform and it is hard to disappoint people when they are putting so much on you. But by her own admission this was an act of self-preservation more than an act of standing up for something. And by her own admission, she has been struggling with this for a long time; she should have stood up for herself before she took the Olympic dream away from another girl by not being honest about her lack of competition-ready mental state. The truth is if an athlete hid a physical injury from everyone because she was feeling tremendous pressure to preform and then decided after it was too late to put in an alternate that she could not go on without risking more injury, no one would call her a hero. And that is essentially what Simone did. It doesn't make her a villain--but it doesn't make her a hero either.

As for doing the beam in the end: I am glad she had the opportunity to compete one last time and she hurt no one else by doing it. But there wasn't really anything that inspired me in that either. She just did the event that she qualified for and placed lower than she was originally expected to. That is simply an outcome, not a heroic act.

Truly, I wish Simone Biles all the best, though I hope for her sake that best is away from gymnastics. But that is a topic for another post.

When Did Leprechaun Traps Become a Thing?

And Why? I just finished making my first one a couple hours ago. My kindergartner had optional homework this week to make one. He wanted to, so we did. And yes, it was kind of fun. But when I was in elementary school, St. Patrick's day consisted of making sure you wore green so no one pinched you. And that was it. No one dyed everything green or left glitter footprints. Or basically turned the thing into April Fools except that all the pranks needed to include green.  And no one tried to convince me that there were little mischievous creatures coming to our house, and I needed to try to catch one for 3 wishes or a pot of gold.

When he got the assignment, it just said, "practice the flashcards of numbers 1-20 this week and (optional) make a Leprechaun trap by Friday"--like I was supposed to have as much knowledge of Leprechaun traps as I have of numbers 1-20. I guess I have been living under a rock because I had to google and pinterest this insanity.

Now, I am all for fun, and I actually think this is not a bad assignment for older kids if you set certain parameters (number of mechanisms, etc). This is of course assuming we are all acknowledging that Leprechauns do not exist and if they did, they would never be stupid enough to fall into a shoe box because part of the point of them is that they are nasty clever.

I was really glad this morning that I haven't taught my kids Santa is real because I am really not okay with adding to the things I have to lie about to keep up the ruse. As it is, my son wasn't even a little confused about the existence of Leprechauns and instead of questioning it at all, he started speculating what his teacher was going to do to make it look like leprechauns came to his trap.

We had some fun this morning, but I kind of don't want to make one of these for every kid every year of school. And I refuse to believe that makes me a bad Mom. And lets be honest, this is the exact kind of assignment that when given to a kindergartner or even a lot of other older children is without a doubt going to have to involve mom. My son loves to build things out of cardboard, but there is no way he is allowed to use everything he wanted to without direct supervision and I had to help collect everything and drive him to the dollar store. And if you have looked at pinterest, some of these puppies get really elaborate. So when the trap comes home I am probably putting it away at the top of the closet so we can bring it out again next year if he has the assignment again. And I won't feel the least bit bad about recycling homework.

Home Decorating Trends I Just Can't Get Behind

As my husband can tell you, I have lots of home renovation/ decorating ideas. Now that we own our home, I am planning and plotting even more for the day we feel like we have the time and money to tackle some of the big projects we have planned someday. But there are a few things people are currently going gaga over that I cannot get behind.

Penny tile or small hex tile I hate cleaning grout. A lot. And I don't really think I am alone in this. If you like cleaning grout, you should probably start a grout cleaning business because you would probably make a lot of money. So why would you want to add a massive amount of grout to your bathroom/laundry room/ whatever? I can't look at these little tiny tiles and see anything but a lot of work. Honestly, I have a very hard time looking at them and thinking they even look clean. 

Stainless Steel I know the tide is kind of turning on this one already for may of my reasons. Stainless steel shows finger prints. And water spots. And wipe marks. It just almost always looks a little dirty.

Grey I like the color grey. I really do. But it is going to make stuff look so super dated. We are considering changing out the carpet in the basement for some waterproof laminate. One of the big problems is that we don't want to go super dark and everything that is on the lighter side seems to have this greyish tinge to it. I can't bring myself to do that because it is going to make the floor so dated. Paint color, sure, that is easy to change. But I don't want people to be able to tell when I put in a floor based solely off the grey tinge it has.

DIY Painted Kitchen Cabinets I know someone somewhere has probably actually done it right. Someone somewhere has probably done it so well I would never know they were not painted originally. But many people many places have done a very bad job of it and kind of ruined the cabinets in the process. And then the cabinets collect grime in all the brush strokes that are showing and the paint eventually chips. And it is bad I tell you. Bad.

Clawfoot Tubs I know they look so old timey to so many. To me they look like work. Call me lazy, but I have no desire to have to clean under my tub. This also goes for any other freestanding tub that leaves gaps behind it as well as any vanity that results in space under or around it that is hard to clean in, but still necessary to clean in. Close them up!

Eliminating Bathtub/ shower combos in Favor of Huge Showers I like taking baths sometimes. But beyond that, I see no purpose to a giant shower. And yes, someday I might be old and struggle with getting into a shower if it is also a bathtub. But I am not there yet, and I don't plan to live my entire life like I am 90. And I really really think most houses should have at least 1 tub for that time you have to soak something huge, and any house that is likely to attract a family should for sure have at least one.

Eliminating Ceiling Fans I understand these are not super beautiful. But they are super functional, even nearly necessary in some places in the country. Remember, you don't just look at pictures of your home, you have to live there.

Fancy Kitchen Chandeliers If you are guessing this is going to have to do with my not wanting to clean something, you are very correct. So there is this stuff that collects in kitchens. It is a mixture of grease and dust and it likes to coat surfaces, like the top of oven hoods and whatever light fixture you have that is not flush to the ceiling. It is not fun to clean. I have no desire to complicate that cleaning process by adding complicated curves and more surfaces to my light fixtures.

I understand some of these things are pretty much just me being lazy. If you want to clean under your tub, by all means, have at it. But for me personally, I will probably never do any of these things.

Hockey, Tom Wilson, and Concussions

So it is Stanley cup time again. I have fortunately moved away from the neighborhood pub I lived near during last playoff time, so I am a little less aware of what is going on; I don't have to compete with all the pub-goers for parking, and I don't hear everyone cheering when the Penguins score.

However, there is a story this time that has really caught my attention: the suspension of Tom Wilson.

First, let me say I really don't know a lot about hockey. I am not going to get into whether he should have been tossed out for the whole series or not suspended at all according to hockey's current rules. I don't know a lot about precedent or what makes something "unavoidable" from a hockey player perspective. However, I do know a little something about physics and brains, so I am going to comment on those aspects of the situation.

First for the physics. There has been a lot of debate about where Tom Wilson hit Zach Aston-Reese first, shoulder or head, but the fact is according to the hockey rules, it doesn't seem to matter. From my understanding, we are trying to determine the main point of contact, not the first point of contact. I have seen videos from lots of angles and I don't know if I can tell a lot from them about the main point of contact, but I can tell you that according to physics, if someone gets hit hard enough to break their jaw badly enough to require surgery and give them a concussion, but their shoulder is more or less okay, they mainly got hit in the jaw, not their shoulder. I can't figure out how someone thinks a guy's jaw was broken by someone hitting mostly his shoulder; that direction of defense for Tom Wilson is pretty flimsy.

As for the brain; concussions are not something to mess around with. There is really no such thing as a little concussion. Medically, concussions are called TBIs, short for Traumatic Brain Injury; when you hit your head hard enough that your brain has bounced around in your skull, your brain has suffered something traumatic. We don't know everything about what TBIs do to people, but our understanding is growing and from what we do know, it really ain't good. The effects are immediate, but they are also lasting. While people often improve in the short term, each incident increases chances for problems with brain function later in life. Furthermore, concussions are not the only kind of TBIs (in fact, they are considered "minor" traumatic brain injuries, which sounds a bit like an oxymoron to me), and it would be a mistake to assume that all the "concussions" these hockey players are getting are merely a concussion; some of them are certainly more severe TBIs. Furthermore, the more concussions you get, the worse it gets, especially if there has not been sufficient time to heal. It is also completely possible to die almost instantly from hits to the head. All of this together, it is quite possible that if Aston-Reese had been hit just a little differently or had taken a hard hit a few minutes before and suffered an un-diagnosed concussion from that hit, he would have never gotten up or he would have died shortly after in the locker room.

But its hockey, right? That is just the nature of the sport. It is dangerous, but they know that and they get paid a lot to do it. Well, there is something to that argument. I definitely think it is ridiculous how much money we give people to do nothing more productive than play a game and these players have spent enough time playing the game to know they are going to get hurt. But just because someone is willing to do something for money doesn't make it ethical to pay them to do it, nor does the players' willingness erase the responsibility those asking them to play have to try to keep the players safe.

And yes, there are a lot of dangerous jobs out there. However, I would submit that not all other industries with high incidents of accidents are operating in a ethical way either, they just are not the subject of this post. But there is also a key difference between hockey and something like logging (which is the most dangerous job in the country and honestly needs some reform too); one is to entertain people, something societies really only get to dedicate money to when other needs are met, and the other is for the building of shelters and such, a pretty critical need for survival. In other words, the cost-benefit ratios are not even in the same realm of discussion, and there really isn't much point in comparing them. When we pay to go to a hockey game, we are paying someone to do something that, especially with current rules, is likely to result in injuries that will effect the rest of their life because we like to watch people bash each other around for fun. I feel like we may take that a little too lightly.

So, I don't know if Tom Wilson was intentionally trying to hit Aston-Reese in the head and break his jaw (though I have to say laughing on the bench when someone you hit is still laying on the ice doesn't speak well of your character, and, no, it doesn't matter what he was laughing about because even if he was laughing about something else, his attention should have been on the status of the guy he just flattened because that is usual human decency. Honestly, the laughter made me more concerned about Wilson's behavior than the hit itself). I don't know if Wilson could have avoided it. I don't know if suspending him for 3 games is fair given current rules and precedent. What I do know is that it shouldn't really matter what he was trying to do. Something needs to be done to protect people and the way this guy plays hockey seems to hurt people a lot. Thus, the way this guy plays hockey should not be legal.

I have a 5 year old son who is very rambunctious and not very aware of his surroundings sometimes. He has on many occasions hit people in the head and flattened his siblings by running through them, much like Wilson seems to (my son doesn't do it nearly as hard as Wilson and isn't usually trying to make contact with people, but you get the idea). My son isn't a mean kid and I don't think he is doing this stuff on purpose, but his response to these incidents is often "he was standing where I was running!" or "I didn't do it on purpose!" Suffice to say, that is not the end of my discussion with him because it doesn't matter whether you intended to hurt someone, someone did get hurt and behavior should change to avoid it in the future. Maybe I am completely off base, but I feel like most people would feel the need to stress these things to a 5 year old like my son, which is why it kind of baffles me that there is resistance to the same kinds of discussions when it comes to the NHL. Are we seriously holding 5-year-old children to higher standards than grown adults playing a silly game?

And really, the people who are arguing that changing rules to reduce these kinds of injuries it awful don't really have any better logic than my 5 year old. His general thinking is that he wants to do something and his sister getting knocked over was just a natural consequence of the activities that he feels must take place for his enjoyment--which is essentially what hockey people are saying about Aston-Reese's broken jaw when they say changing the rules to avoid the kind of hits that produce these kinds of injuries would be watering down the game too much.

So what do I think should happen? Well, it would be great if society in general would realize that getting entertainment from people getting bashed around in ways that lead to lasting effects is kind of a despicable way to be and if hockey players would just decide they were not going to behave that way anymore, but we all know that isn't likely to happen. So I feel like as a society we need to reevaluate the ethics of entertainment at the expense of others, regardless of how willing a participant those others are. For hockey, I think hits to the head should be illegal, regardless of intent. Certainly there will be instances where someone gets penalized for something they didn't mean to do, but there are consequences for accidents and mistakes in other aspects of our lives as well.  Hockey players should be responsible for playing the game in a way that doesn't seriously injure others, and if they won't play that way, we should refuse to pay them to play. Instead of saying we pay them millions to accept the risk of dying as part of the sport, we should pay them to accept the responsibility of avoiding killing--or seriously injuring--people as part of the sport. I really wouldn't mind saying that if you injure a player, you will be out for as long as they are--if you end a career, you end your own as well. Because yes, accidents do happen, but as human beings, we have a responsibility to do everything in our power to keep others from getting injured as a result of our actions.

Perhaps this will water down hockey too much and it will no longer be enjoyable, but if that is the case, perhaps we should consider if hockey is a rather barbaric form of entertainment and it would be best to put it to rest anyway.

To the Judgmental Posts About Sick Kids

Yes, when your kids are sick, you should try very hard not to take them into public, especially somewhere there are lots of kids. I will give people that. However. . .

I have seen a ton of posts lately telling everyone that they are horrible people for making the poster's kids sick by bringing all their kids out in public sick. Notably, people are getting upset because they seem to always get sick on Monday after church. But here is the thing: it takes several days for a cold to become symptomatic, but not as long for it to be contagious. This means 2 things. First, many of the times your kid has picked up something from someone in public, the terrible, inconsiderate person you are criticizing who you seem to think brought their kid out in public just to give your kid germs may not have had any indication their child was sick. And second, if your kid comes down with a cold on Monday after church, it was you who just gave that cold to the whole ward, not the other way around. Similarly, if your school-age child comes down with something on Wednesday, they have probably been spreading those germs since Monday.

Yes, I have spent what seems like months unable to go anywhere with my sick kids and it is irritating. I just flat out kept my second son home for several months during a period where measles had been in the area and he was still too young to be vaccinated. We have switched which parent is staying home in the middle of church so that we can both fulfill obligations in different parts of church, and that is a pain. And we have also come down with runny noses on Monday and I have felt a bit guilty because we probably just gave that cold to the whole congregation. Actually, I have had my kid come back to me after nursery with a runny nose he definitely didn't have when I dropped him off. But even though I have a cold today that I probably caught on Sunday I am not going to assume that someone knowingly sent their kid with a cold. I won't even assume it about the kid that once coughed in my face. And I won't assume that every kid I see with a runny nose in public has terrible, inconsiderate parents. After all, runny noses happen for a lot of reasons, many of which are not contagious (like crying or allergies, for instance) and they also can start up in the middle of nursery just as well as any other time of the week. Germs happen and in winter they get passed a lot. We can all hope we will do our best, but criticizing everyone else isn't helpful.

Also, you know that sick mom in the grocery store with the sick kids? At some point, she needs to eat as well and you don't know anything about her situation regarding having someone else to watch the kids or grocery shop, so unless you are volunteering to do so, please stop asking why she is there.

And don't even start on getting on planes sick. It is all well and good to say "just fly some other time." Except really think about that for a second. So, your family flies to Hawaii for Christmas break and all of your kids get a cold while there. Apart from the fact that re-booking a flight home after everyone is better is most likely prohibitively expensive, you have to get back to work, your kids have to get back to school (when they are better), you have to pick up your dog from the family that is watching him, the person who is watering your plants is going out of town now, and you don't really have anywhere to stay until everyone gets better except the hotel that you would then have to stay longer at (and pay for). Are you really telling me you are just staying until everyone gets better? Or maybe it is a funeral everyone is flying to. Or maybe they are moving and starting a new job the next day. I guess what I am saying is that is it pretty presumptuous to assume that every person has all the flexibility in the world to just have a sick day.

Here is what I would rather see happen when you see someone with sick kids. Instead of worrying about how they will make your precious angels sick, maybe wonder what you can do to help them. When your kids come down with something maybe worry about helping them feel better instead of cursing that person who got you sick. And maybe just pull yourself out of this fantasy world where you have never ever sent your kids anywhere with cold germs and admit that you have been the person who unintentionally made everyone sick.

I am "Real" Too.

As anyone who knows me can attest, I am skinny. I have always been skinny, and it is completely possible that I will always be skinny. While I have had periods of being heavier and lighter, I have never gone on a diet to lose weight. After having each of my three children, any residual baby weight was gone by my 6 week appointment and I was actually lighter after having my second and third than I was before my first. I wear size 2 pants and, honestly, they are too big for me.

Now a lot of people would read the paragraph above and think I was boasting. After all, I am the type of woman heavier women love to hate. I am the type of woman that everyone says all fashion is designed around and that so many heavier women seem to assume can just walk into a store and buy whatever she wants.

But I was not intending to boast. No, I am trying to nicely say "lay off." You are not the only person with problems with weight and, no, fashion streets are not paved with gold for me. And you know something else? The media and other individuals can be pretty hard on me too.

I understand that I have never experienced the struggle to eat less calories. I have however put myself on a diet: to eat more. I have struggled to gain weight in pregnancy with 2 of my children and have lost it all too fast for some medical personnel's liking (one gave me a pretty hard time about it; I think she thought I was purposely restricting calories to lose weight even though I was breastfeeding). I have also had many other brushes with the underweight side of the curve that have prompted me to have to focus on gaining weight. In fact, I am currently in one of those stages. Just in case you were wondering, no, it isn't pleasant to eat more when you don't want to.

I struggle a lot to find clothes for me. Sure, I don't have all the same problems a heavier woman does, but I have plenty of my own. Did you know there are plenty of clothes that don't come in a size 2 either? Furthermore, the reason I wear pants that are too big for me: because finding a size 0 is even more difficult. I really don't like clothes shopping and a big part of that is how frustrating it is to find things I look good in, just like most women.

And bras. Larger women seem to be under the impression that smaller woman don't need bras, so it doesn't matter what we wear. This is very much not true. I understand that I don't have the same problems larger chested women have. I even can see how it might even be a lot harder for them than me and that their need for a bra is greater than mine. But I wear a 32 band size--because I have never once found a band size of 28 that was more than an A cup (and even that is rare) No, I am not an A cup. I can find 30 band sizes online but a lot of stores do not carry them in store except for those clearly meant for 12-year-olds. And the bras that come in these sizes are not the cheap ones; they are at least $40 per bra. So no, I can't just pick up a $5 bra at Walmart that solves any problems I could have.  And for the people that think I should just cut off the clasp and sew it back on further up the band to shorten it I say this: have you ever tried that? It is kind of a lot of work and the straps end up being in funny places and now you have just cut up a brand new bra. The fact is, bras are often terrible to shop for and are expensive and they might just be that way for everyone.

You want to know something else? All this pro "real women" media seems to often forget something: I am real too. Because the necessary logical conclusion from the assertion that the fashion industry isn't designing for "real women" because they only design for thinner women is that thinner women are not in fact real. Songs about how men don't like size 2s being praised doesn't exactly send an accepting message to anyone who is in fact a size 2. Why is it necessary to put down someone else to make yourself feel good?

And in terms of people in my life being obnoxious about my weight I do deal with the following, especially when I was single and living with roommates or in high school:  I have been told that I am flat chested with varying degrees of venom behind the statement. I have been told that I am "so anorexic-ly skinny" on numerous occasions. Granted, at least one of those situations it was intended to be a compliment (which is a problem of its own), but it isn't a nice feeling to be basically accused of having a mental disorder you don't have. I have been told by several different people that "I hate you; you're so skinny!" Yes, this is usually meant as a joke, but it isn't exactly nice, especially coming from people I don't know well in the locker room. Truth is, it can be pretty awkward and hurtful to comment on a skinny person's weight as well as a larger person.

No, none of that has really caused me to have a terrible body image; in general I like my body. But do you know what does bother me? I am not allowed by society to talk about any problems I do have with my weight or my body shape. I have had a few different people get mad at me for mentioning that I do sometimes struggle with gaining weight. I generally am accused of bragging or intentionally making them feel bad about themselves. It is not okay to mention anything about problems with weight when you are like me because so many people "would love to have that problem."

I am not saying that many things in the world are not a problem for larger women. Yes, there is a push to be skinny and I undoubtedly benefit in some ways from being closer to the "ideal" body type (though I am not supermodel tall or anything). But I am also a real person. I have real feelings and problems and struggles, even when it comes to my weight. I am not trying to assert my problems are bigger than other people's, just that I, like everyone else, have them.

So to all women: can we please stop putting each other down to make ourselves feel better? Can we all encourage each other in our goals to live healthy lives regardless of if they are currently overweight, underweight, or of a healthy weight? Can people stop looking at others and deciding they must have a charmed life because they have x desirable quality? It is getting kind of old.

The Catfish Thing is Not a Good Look, Nashville

So, I have been paying a bit of attention to the Stanley Cup proceedings as I live in Pittsburgh. As is somewhat typical for me, I have found something besides the actual sport to think about. In this case, it is the Predators' fans' tendency to throw catfish on the ice. And my opinion is that it is a pretty pathetic and disgusting tradition. I honestly have no idea why the players haven't told them, "you know, this is stupid and it messes up the ice. Please don't."

So, for those that don't know this history of the catfish thing, it actually starts with another team, the Detroit Redwings, and The Legend of the Octopus. While I do find this tradition pretty stupid as well, at least it has some kind of story and history. The catfish, on the other hand, is--completely admittedly--simply something Predators' fans do because they are wannabe Redwings fans. How do they not realize that that is kind of pathetic?

Furthermore, this stuff leaves residue on the ice. And you can see it from wide angle shots. If covering your ice rink with fish guts is really how you want the world to see your city, well, I guess you are doing it right.

Finally, I just have to say to anyone who has snuck a catfish into an arena: You know the moment when you are saran wrapping a fish into your compression shorts? That is probably a good time to rethink your life a little bit.

Hogwarts Houses Make No Sense

So, last night my husband and I got into taking personality tests. In that we came across an article talking about how the house you identify with is actually a predictor of personality. As it was a little later than it should be, I waxed a bit philosophical. That the house you identify with says something about you does make sense to me as the way you see yourself is a big part of your personality. What doesn't make sense is the entire Hogwarts house system.

First, we have the fact that the whole sorting thing must be extremely scarring for a lot of kids. These are 11 year old children that are being called in front of a huge group of peers, many of whom they don't know, but all of whom they are going to be living with. Then, all their peers are told exactly how they are supposed to classify you. And even if there are supposed to be good qualities associated with each house, they have obviously also been equated with less desirable qualities. So basically, at the beginning of your adolescence, you are being given a label that you won't be able to get away from for the next 7 years. I can't see how that would possibly be problematic.

Then we have the fact that we are separating people into personality types and making people with the same personality spend all their time together. However, it turns out that people tend to work more successfully and get along better with people with different personalities from their own. Thus, from a productivity and peaceful living standpoint, Hogwarts isn't doing so well. Admittedly, I learned this specifically in relation to Myers-briggs personalities, which are divided into 16 instead of  4, so there will undoubtedly be variations in a house, but I still think it is a bit of a flaw.

In addition, when we get to the specific house values and how they really are portrayed in the books, we get to more nonsense. I am just waxing philosophical and I admit I am not putting too much into research in the books here (okay, so I haven't read one since the 7th came out and am working off memory from then), but there are serious problems with the supposed values of Slytherin and the apparent stupidity of most of the Slytherins. Ambitious, cunning, sneaky people are not stupid. Draco Malfoy is held up as a pretty textbook example of a Slytherin, but he exists constantly on the defense. He is acted upon and never really acts.  He is really more the anti-Griffindor (a coward), than much of a Slytherin.

Voldemort I will accept as a pretty cunning and ambitious person, but it doesn't really make sense that his main source of followers were Slytherins. If anything, they should have been Griffindors; the brash, doer personality that should be really easy to manipulate and would move your cause forward rather rapidly. Slytherins on the other hand would move with you as long as you could convince them that it was in their best interest, but that is a tricky thing to keep someone thinking when that person is by nature always reassessing their own best interests. If you ask me, a Slytherin should have been Voldemort's main opposition as soon as one of them realized they could get the majority of 3/4ths of the population on their side by doing so. Dumbledore would be a good example of what a Slytherin should be, actually. Does it ever say what house he was in?

And yes, there was this longstanding rivalry going on between Slytherin and Griffindor that would make a Slytherin using the Griffindors more difficult, but if the majority of Slytherin were in fact as Slytherin as they were supposed to be, they should have fixed that rivalry to further their own ambitions, especially since the fall of Voldemort appears to have left the Griffindors in a good, powerful position.

And then we come to a thought I have expressed before and all pro Slytherin people are quick to point out that not all Slytherins are bad. Yes, I understand they are not all supposed to be on the bad side. But a disproportionate number apparently are supposed to be. Which to me means Hogwarts should have long ago questioned what exactly is happening in Slytherin that is causing this to happen. I mean, it is not like the admittedly crazy parents are actually raising these kids; the school has them the majority of the year from the age of 11 on. There must be something wrong with the system in that house if it is turning out a disproportionate number of evil people.

Well, this is enough time spent on Harry Potter for the day. And yes, I realize that the sorting problems are just the tip of the iceberg of nonsense in these books (I mean, you have a school of magic children with tons of magical adults and your solution to keeping the kids where they are supposed to be at night is having the one person without magic wander around a with a creepy cat to try and catch people out of bed? There has got to be a way to make some kind of magical alarm system).

Comforting Thoughts

Okay, I think we all need to take a deep breath. Yes, crazy, unexpected things have happened. And yes, there are several times in the past election season and since that I have been genuinely scared for the future. But it is going to be okay in the end, especially if we take this election as a lesson.

For the record, I did not vote for Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump. Yes, I live in Pennsylvania, and yes, I know that makes me terrible to some people. But my vote is my vote and I would like to politely ask you to mind your own business. I include this in this article only to point out how I disagree strongly enough on certain things with both of the candidates and have enough issues with both candidates' character that I could not vote for either of them in good conscience.

Immediately after Trump won, I was shocked. Then I got a little depressed. I mean, a large percentage of our population voted for someone I kind of find despicable. And another large portion voted for someone else I find despicable. Then people started protesting and I got more depressed. What are you protesting? That unlike in so many nations in this world, we had an election with relatively little criminal activity (even if it was nastier than usual and the criminal activity of the actual candidates higher than usual) and that the loser of said election is conceding defeat and transfer of power is going from one political party to the other relatively peacefully? Are you trying to make sure it isn't peaceful? And then some of the disgusting variety of people in the county started acting more publicly  and confidently disgusting to minorities. And then the Hitler card started to get thrown around in complete seriousness. And by this point, I was feeling more down about my fellow Americans than just the numbers from a vote could ever make me feel.

I didn't agree with either of the candidates to a point that I couldn't vote for them. But I have friends that voted for both sides. And they are good people. None of them are these crazy people threatening minorities or plotting to kill Trump. And this is what has made me feel a lot better about the whole thing: While the vast majority of the population of this country voted for individuals I found I could not vote for due to moral and ideological objections, it is still quite possible (and dare I hope likely), that the vast majority of people are still good people. 

We need to all calm down enough to understand a few things. These points make me feel a lot better; hopefully they will help someone else too. Since Trump is the one elected, I am going to stop discussing Clinton at this point, but much of the same ideas would apply if the tables were turned.

Not everyone who votes one way is in complete agreement with others who voted the same way or even the candidate they voted for. There is a big difference between people who voted for Trump and the angry, hateful, racist, misogynistic, stereotypical Trump supporter.  While that person does exist (stereotypes do come from somewhere), he or she is not 46.5% of the population. For example, I know people who voted for Trump who also work on a volunteer basis to help refugees, which is bizarre if we believe that the caricature of Trump voters is the rule for all of them.

Not everyone who has a different opinion than I do is wrong. It is fun to be right. And by definition, if I have an opinion, I think I am right. But it is also important to allow for the possibility that I am wrong or even in some cases if I am right that others are right too. Our government (and many other governments) were built based on the assumption that people are wrong sometimes. Everyone will at some point be wrong. So yes, I think deporting all illegal immigrants and building a wall is a ridiculous solution to our illegal immigrant situation, but it is possible I am wrong. We need to listen to the people we disagree with and be open to the possibility that they might actually be right--if not entirely--about some aspect of the issue. Otherwise, we are just being rather full of ourselves and will still eventually have to admit that we were wrong about something when the results of our inevitable mistakes play out.

Not everyone I disagree with is evil. I am none too happy with a lot of what Trump says. His behavior toward women would be one example. But even if this specific behavior is in fact wrong or even evil, it does not make Trump necessarily evil (though believe me, I don't think he is any pillar of the community). But more importantly it certainly doesn't make everyone who voted for Trump evil. We often make the other side out to be pure evil: This Republican is the literal reincarnation of Hitler or that Democrat sold his or her soul to the devil and now carries around this tube of demons like Rasputin in Anastasia. And yes, people can do evil things and there are always evil things happening in the world. But people can also do good things and often some of the bad things people do are just misguided attempts to do good. Furthermore, what is in fact good or bad can be a matter of opinion (giving money to beggars on the street for instance) and, as we already discussed, our opinions can in fact be wrong.

Our government was specifically designed to allow for the people in the government to be flawed. Of course it would be great if our leaders were perfect. If they were, we would hardly need the convoluted checks and balances we have. But as the government is organized no one person has that much power and the most productive people are those that are willing to work with others by listening to those they disagree with and admitting to being wrong sometimes. While the Republican Party had a seeming considerable victory, the Republican party has been far from united recently. Trump may have won, but if he is going to get anything done he is going to have to get people to agree with him, and not the crazy stereotypical Trump supporter, but members of congress of both parties, some of whom who have publicly denounced him. And the greater the refusal to cooperate between these public servants, the slower the progress (or digression) of the government will be. There is only so much Trump can do in 4 years, and that amount will be greatly reduced unless he learns to play nice. Furthermore, if he steps entirely out of line and ticks off enough people, congress can actually remove him from office.

In the end, we are the ones with the power. You can claim #notmypresident all you like, but we as a country elected that president. And we as a country get to decide what happens next. Yes, this is a new era, and I didn't get the hand I would choose if I got to stack the deck, but that doesn't mean it has to be a bad era. Our government was initially set up to be run more on a local than federal level and it can still function that way. So if you don't like what is happening in Washington D.C. and can't move there to change it, change what is happening where you live; ultimately, that will have the greatest impact on your everyday life.

Wasted Votes

I have been working on this post for a few months at this point, but finally got around to finishing it.

I have not decided who I am voting for but it is going to be a third party. Apart from my disagreement with a lot of her policies, Hillary Clinton is either a) extremely stupid or b) a crook and I don't believe for a second she is really as stupid as she acts sometimes; I have noticed her "stupidity" only shows up when it is convenient. Her most recent relevant job experience resulted in an investigation that cost millions of dollars and resulted in the conclusion that she didn't do what she was supposed to do. Furthermore, whether she did what she did because she is a) extremely stupid or b) a crook can be debated, but what cannot be debated is that the behavior is extremely dangerous to our country and after she did it she lied about it. Furthermore, either reason (stupid or crook) does not inspire any kind of confidence that she won't do something like it again. In all the time she has had her eye on the White House, Hillary Clinton has never been less electable.

Not to be outdone, however, the Republicans looked far and wide to find someone equally as repulsive and un-electable and found it (where else?) in reality television. Donald Trump is an all around disgusting individual who spreads hate, cares about no one, and evidently has no idea how life works. I cannot figure out how people would ever want to vote for him. When he first announced his intentions, I thought there was no way he would be nominated. I have decided my view of people in this country was evidently much too optimistic. I strongly disagree with him on foreign policy, and watching him, I just can't shake the feeling that the chances that he would either a) fly off the handle and send nuclear bombs somewhere, or b) fly off the handle and offend someone who would send nuclear bombs at us are quite high. He is a loose cannon and I can't feel confident he will do anything he claims he will do, so not even the things he says that I can agree with make me want to vote for him.

I have heard from several people that the above points of view are just me being unforgiving. But this is an absolutely ludicrous argument. I am not refusing to vote for them because I am just upset by some mostly irrelevant thing that they did that I am holding against them. For instance, while I find adultery reprehensible, I am not refusing to vote for Trump over it. I am refusing to vote for Trump because I disagree with a lot of what he has said and done during his candidacy. Hilary similarly stands for a lot of things I disagree with in policy. And as for "forgiving" the server thing--while I am not going to be bitter and angry about what she did, I am not going to vote to put someone so completely unapologetic about such a serious breach of law and security back into a position of power. That would be like moving back in with an abusive spouse who doesn't even claim to have changed. 

I haven't decided who I am voting for, but there is a large part of our population that would have me believe that the above are my only options--that anything else is "wasting my vote." I respectfully disagree. 

But first I want to respond to people who claim that not voting for A is the same thing as voting for B. No it isn't; voting for B is voting for B and not voting for A does nothing to how many votes B gets. Furthermore, I think people who use this logic are misunderstanding something very important about the current political situation; neither A nor B is preferable. I have no obligation of loyalty to any candidate or party and neither does anyone else. I am not going to be inspired to support a candidate I don't agree with based on peer pressure. If you must know, if you held a gun to my head at the polls and made me vote for one or the other, I would vote for Hilary, but if you are holding a gun to my head at the polls and no one did something about it there isn't much hope that anything I did would actually mean anything anyway.

I view my ability to vote as a responsibility to be taken very seriously. It is my opportunity to give my input. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't see it this way and begin to enter this complicated and truly unpredictable realm of election strategy. We are told our opinion only matters if we have others who agree with us. Our government is admittedly set up in a way that sucks people into this since the electoral college certainly complicates matters. Furthermore, once an individual is elected, he or she often has to engage in this kind of behavior to get what they want done--essentially by trading votes. Trading votes makes sense for public servants with public votes, but there is no way to ensure you will get what you want by agreeing to vote for someone else's candidate because they assure you that you agree on the so called important stuff.

I do understand the idea behind a party; after all the likely reason Trump received the nomination was that too many other individuals were splitting the rest of the vote. It makes sense to find people who agree with you and you can all agree to vote for one candidate. Otherwise, a more organized minority could win. Unfortunately, I don't identify with either party at the moment, and if my understanding of the situation is correct, neither do most of my fellow Americans.

Here is the thing: the reason we have only the two ridiculous candidates that we have is because of the ridiculous mindset that we have to vote for someone who we judge has a chance of winning. That means that before we cast a vote, instead of researching candidates and issues and judging with our own intellect who best represents us, we spend our time figuring out who our neighbors are voting for.  The entire election system is based on peer pressure, not policies. And then when someone of a particular party (or basically clique) wants to do something else from what was once decided (nominations), the rest of the party pressures them back into conformity, just like high school. This is a ludicrous way of deciding who you are going to vote for and is exactly what got us in this position in the first place. The majority of the country doesn't truly want to vote for either Trump or Hillary and could by numbers actually elect someone else if we dared to use our votes, but this ridiculous structure has us holding our noses and handing our votes over to someone else. If you are holding your nose to do what someone else is telling you to do with your vote, don't do it. Otherwise, you are basically Karen and Gretchen from Mean Girls.

When inauguration day comes and Hilary (most likely) begins doing the stuff I disagree with, I want to be able to say I didn't vote for her. If by some strange turn Trump takes office instead, I want to be able to say the same. I want to have put my voice behind something I agree with, not followed the sheep and taken part in electing who I was told I was supposed to like better (or dislike less). The time for trying to agree with a group to get someone I agree with mostly has definitely passed and something needs to be done about these two parties that obviously no longer represent a majority of the population (even together). That can only be done by people striking out on their own. It might not make a difference to the outcome of this election or even any elections in my lifetime, but I will cast my vote for the candidate I judge most worthy; Anything else would be wasting my vote.

Saving Money

I am always seeing articles "25 Easy Ways to Save Money" or "10 Simple Things to Stop Doing to Get Out of Debt." I keep finding a frustrating problem with most of these articles: I am already doing most, if not all, of the things in the article. Of course, that might be the reason we are not in fact in debt, but as we are trying to save money for a house and car, I am searching for good ways to save.

Evidently, I can save a lot of money if I just stop going to Starbucks and make my coffee at home. Of course, when you don't drink coffee in the first place and can't really remember for sure the last time you went to a coffee shop at all, this tip doesn't really get you anywhere.

Turning your heat down 10 degrees at night will really rack up the savings--unless of course your pipes freeze because you already have it down to 60 and it is below zero outside.

Packing your lunch to the office will really save you money as well--except for when your husband already just takes last night's leftovers anyway.

Making a meal plan and shopping list and going to the grocery store only once a week will reduce impulse spending. Does most of the world only get enough food for a day or two and pick up random stuff that looks good in the moment? I guess this really must be so because I see things about this on pretty much every list. I understand that a lot of people (myself probably included) don't meal plan well, hence the number of articles written to help people do it better, but the idea of not doing it at all is a little crazy to me if for no other reason than I just don't want to spend time going to the grocery store every day.

And, my personal favorite: cutting back your haircuts from once a week to every other week will save you half the money you spend on haircuts--unless no one in the family gets a haircut more than once a month, if that, and said haircuts are done in the bathroom. (To be fair, the last one was only in one article. Are there a large number of people who really get their hair cut once a week? Really?) Also, I don't think it is bad to spend money on haircuts, but once a week is more than a little excessive.

I have every so often happened on some good tips I can incorporate and have sometimes found suggestions I am not doing, but am not willing to do either (I keep my house at 68 during the day during the winter. 60 is too cold). But most of the time, I just get a list of things I pretty much consider plain common sense, especially if someone is in debt.

In all fairness, there are a good number of frugality blogs and such that have all sorts of great suggestions, it is mostly the list articles that I find unhelpful, probably because anything that requires little effort--which most of the things on these lists are--I started doing long ago.

Dietary Logic

I have seen a lot of nutrition articles lately along the lines of "10 that are really not as good for you as you think." I am not saying there is no truth to any of them. But there are quite a few of these articles that make some incredible leaps in logic.

The most ridiculous example of this was an article that had a section against tomatoes. The entire section was actually about ketchup and the condiment's high fructose corn syrup content. I still have no idea if tomatoes are really actually bad for me and I learned very little from the article; I was never under the impression that ketchup was a health food.

A more common failing I see in these articles is the argument that some people with disease A get sick when they eat B and, therefore, people should not each B. Really, this argument makes absolutely no sense. If you followed this logic religiously, you would be unable to eat anything.

I knew someone with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) who had a really small number of vegetables that she was able to eat. They gave her special trouble raw, but even cooked vegetables caused gas. I am pretty sure most nutritionist would advise me against following her diet.

I had a roommate with phenylketonuria (PKU) who got approximately half of her calories from a special incomplete-protein shake (it didn't have phenylalanine, the amino acid that would cause brain damage for her), and limited all other protein intake. Phenylalanine deficiency, however, leads to "confusion, lack of energy, depression, decreased alertness, memory problems, and lack of appetite", so I am pretty sure it is better for other people to not follow her diet. We have the enzyme to process phenylalanine, so there is no need to worry about it.

I think there are problems with following each of these diets if you don't have the respective disease that makes it necessary, but think about what would happen if I followed the initial line of logic; I would have to actually follow both of these diets simultaneously (along with a bunch of others, but we will go with this for now.) I have no idea how people with IBS would tolerate the special protein shake of the person with PKU (though a quick google search indicates many protein shakes give people with IBS problems), but we will assume they can eat this one to be as conservative as possible in our criticism. Even so, between these two diseases (based on the admittedly less than perfect sources of the internet and my memory of my friends' diets) we are going to have to cut out raw vegetables, some cooked vegetables, meat, most grains, beans and other legumes, anything fried or spicy, dairy, eggs, nuts, raw melons and citrus fruit (and any other fruit that may give a person with IBS trouble), avocados, many dried fruits, and any other food with over 2 grams of protein per serving. In other words they can eat some fruit and vegetables--more often if they are cooked--and an incomplete-protein shake. Funny that both of these things are "processed." The second certainly does not occur in nature at all. I am also wonder that our chances of developing the above mentioned phenylalanine deficiency is not quite high.

I am not a dietary expert, I am just trying to follow the logic in the argument that lots of people have peanut allergies or some people have celiac disease and therefore no one should eat the offending foods and it ends in a really pitiful dietary place if you apply it across the board. With just 2 diseases we are drinking a processed shake for half our calories and eating soggy fruits and vegetables for the other half.

I am not saying there are no foods that really are bad for people. I am pretty sure eating ketchup for dinner is not a healthy choice and I am certainly willing to believe we shouldn't be frying everything. I am not, however, going to stop eating something because someone somewhere feels sick after eating it when I have personally no ill-effects. If you can show me how it is bad for me or members of my immediate family I am responsible for feeding please let me know. Otherwise there is no harm in us eating it.

My Thoughts on the "Football" vs. "Soccer" Debate

In America, where I happen to live, football refers to a generally over-praised sport in which two teams of large individuals in foam and spandex run at and smash each other with the intention of getting a squashed-looking ball into an area at the end of a 100 yard patch of grass and preventing the other team from getting it to their end. Though the timer only times one hour, the game stops so much  that it takes roughly four hours to play. In pretty much every other country, football refers to a game in which two teams of people in shorts kick a ball back and forth with the intention of getting it to go into a frame with a net attached and to prevent the other team from getting the ball into the other net. There is usually an awful lot of bad acting involved and the patch of grass is so big and the ability of the players to accomplish their objective so limited, the majority of the game is spent sending the ball back and forth without scoring. Americans refer to this same exercise as soccer.

A lot of other countries claim that Americans do not play true football (as the other countries' football is the one actually played with feet) and that the game Americans refer to as football is in every way inferior to rugby, which is basically a rougher version of American football where they wear less padding, supposedly stop less, can't pass the ball forward, and occasionally do a cheerleader formation (in order to block the ball, or something). I say it supposedly stops less because in the rugby I have watched, there is still a considerable amount of time spent setting up and standing around. Americans in turn tend to tell the other countries that they are being silly and should use soccer for the sport played with feet because it is less confusing given American football doesn't have another name by which to call it.

As you might have deduced, I don't have much fondness for any of the sports that are called football. Still, I have to at least partially side with my fellow countrymen. Soccer, as it turns out, is actually a British term used originally as a colloquial name for association football in order to give it a shorter name, but still distinguish it from rugby football, which is the rugby game described above. More on this can be read about here. What I find important about this information is that now the count of sports that are or have been referred to as football is up to three: rugby, soccer, and American football.

My husband loves a game called handball, but this is not the Olympic sport where teams of people hit a ball back and forth at each other with their hands. No, this is handball where you play it like racquetball, except that you replace all rackets with hands. I bring this up because it is another instance of the point I am going to make: naming a game after a body part and following it up with the name of the object that a large number of sports use in some form is a terribly unspecific way to name a game. It gets confusing because any number of sports could be described that way. It is like calling desserts "baked sugar" or "whipped sugar;" I really have no more of an idea of what the dessert is and I can't be sure you don't mean some other dish in which sugar is baked or whipped.

To me, names should distinguish and football really fails to do that; soccer is really only used to refer to one game, thus I consider it preferable. The thing I disagree with other Americans on is that once the net game in shorts is referred to as soccer, football should then be used to refer to the sport with the foam and spandex described above. As I have discussed, it is a really useless name. Thus, I think it would be much better to come up with a new name entirely. So far, my husband and I have come up with merrer (derived from American like soccer is derived from association), but we are not sure that is the best name. Any other suggestions?

Sensationalism Is Not an Acceptable Substitute for Scientific Reasoning

I read this article recently. "Female-named hurricanes kill more than male hurricanes because people don’t respect them, study finds." At first I thought it was an entertaining article. Now it kind of bothers me a bit.

I get that it is popular to find sexism in everything, but that is no excuse for publishing garbage science. Or presenting such a misleading headline. The study just found that female hurricanes kill more than male hurricanes when comparing 2 very unequal sample groups and that when asked about hypothetical hurricanes, people tended to estimate that ones with male names were more devastating. We will discuss the hypothetical storms first.

People consider hypothetical storms with female names less threatening than hypothetical storms with male names. I concede that I may just not be understanding what they did, but from the description in the article, it seems like they just asked people how threatening different storms sounded to them and how likely they would be to evacuate if Hurricane Danny (or Hurricane Debby) was on its way (I borrowed these names from the actual 6 year rotating list you can find here. I don't know if the study used these names, but they probably should have). Apparently people said the female storms were less threatening.

Okay, if this is indeed what they did, all they did was prove that people found female names less threatening (which may be sexist, but it still has nothing to do with hurricanes). They did nothing to show that people actually behaved differently as a result of these names. If you asked me how dangerous I thought an imaginary hurricane was I would have to base my answer on the limited information given me, which seems to be mostly a name; this study found that people perceive male names as more dangerous. If you asked me how dangerous I perceived a real hurricane is I would base my answer on pretty much all the information but the name. In a study room with no real threat, I may be perfectly content to base my assessment of the imaginary off of completely arbitrary things like my dislike of that kid Dean in my 3rd grade class; hey, I decide who I am rooting for in sports that way all the time. In real life, I would never base a decision about evacuating entirely on a name.

Maybe I am alone in this and other people regularly decide whether to risk their lives based on something completely unrelated to the problem at hand. Still, I don't accept that finding that people assess female names that they happen to be told are hurricanes as less threatening than male names they happen to be told are hurricanes as proof that naming a storm after a girl makes it more likely to kill people. There is just a bit too much of a leap there for me. Of course, if you could compare real male and female storms and control for all other variables (besides the name) and you found female storms were significantly more deadly, then you might have something.

So, without further ado, we move on to the study's comparison of male and female storms.

"Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning  1950 and 2012.  Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities."

So let me get this straight: you took a period of 62 years, took only the 47 most devastating hurricanes (which is a bit of a suspiciously random number by the way. I guess the results were less interesting if they used the top 50), and then used it to determine that people are sexist when it comes to hurricanes. Of course, for the first 29 years, they only gave out female names, so any differences could just as easily be credited to advancements in life-saving technology by the time any male storms were christened. It says it discounted Katrina and Audrey as outliers, but it should have discounted everything before 1979.

Bigger samples are usually better in statistics, but this is one instance where it made the entire thing less credible. In my mind, including storms before 1979 is roughly similar to comparing men and women on eating habits when your samples consist of 25 men found in the mall food court and 75 women, 25 of whom were also found in the food court and 50 of whom were found in a women's gym down the street and then declaring women eat healthier than men. You can't get your samples from unequal places and consider your results sound, particularly when there are obvious reasons that the subjects in one place are likely to produce drastically different data than those in another.

In the latter decades, a really bad hurricane had a 50/50 chance at being named a female name because every other hurricane was given a female name. Before 1979, all hurricanes were female, hence the number difference of 75 to 25 in the analogy above; these researchers are drawing from data where female hurricanes outnumber male ones roughly 3 to 1 (depending on how many hurricanes actually occurred each year). Statistics has ways of dealing with differences in sample size in 2 compared groups, but generally it is still better to avoid large discrepancies; the methods don't eliminate the effects of the differences, they just minimize it. Still, I will let that slide for now. What I will not let slide is the differences in where the information is from.

Think about 1950 for a second. TVs were black and white and by no means something everyone had. Cell phones were the stuff of science fiction and telephones were often party lines, which meant you could only use the phone if none of your neighbors were doing so already. Radios were a common method of obtaining news. Meteorology has also gotten much better in the last 60 years. According to Wikipedia (humor me here) besides the naming of hurricanes, 1950 brought the first successful numerical weather prediction experiment; really, we were just getting started. It isn't until the 1970s that radars are really standardized and organized into networks. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA) was also established in 1970. Doppler weather radar didn't become common until after 1980 meaning that before then we didn't really know how fast a storm was traveling; that is kind of a big deal. Now digital satellite, radar, and surface observations are analyzed to predict storm patterns. A lot has changed.

So let's line up this information regarding technological advancements with hurricane naming practices. We have 29 years of female hurricanes and then 33 years of half male and half female hurricanes. We have 20-30 years of very little radar use that aligns with the 29 years of all female hurricanes. Then, 1-10 years after male names begin to be used, we finally started widely using technology that tells us how fast a storm is going. In other words, most male names have been given out after Doppler radar and most female names (that 50 versus the 25) were given out before. Add to that the significant advancements in being able to communicate with the general public, and what we have is roughly 2/3 of the female hurricanes coming from an era where it is quite logical to assume more people would die in a hurricane than now and all of the male names coming from an era where technological advances hopefully minimize deaths.

Not convinced? How about this handy comparison of two hurricanes, Audrey in 1957 (the death toll of which can't be entirely determined but is somewhere between 300 and 700 from the figures I have seen) and Rita in 2005 (note both female hurricanes). "Rita hit the same region of coast with weaker winds (Category 3, 115 mph), but a storm surge even higher (15 feet). Rita destroyed virtually 100% of Cameron, whereas Audrey destroyed 75% of the town. Nearly two years later, Cameron is mostly just concrete slabs and trailers, thanks to Rita. However, Rita caused only one direct death in Southwest Louisiana--a drowning in Lake Charles. The answer is preparedness. Rita was a massive Category 5 hurricane several days before landfall, giving people plenty of time to receive the warnings and evacuate. Warning systems are much better now than in 1957, and Cameron was deserted when Rita hit." To be entirely fair, Audrey formed ridiculously fast, so even today the death toll would likely be higher than Rita, which as the quote points out, gave plenty of warning (though arguably some of that warning was due to better weather tracking). Also, it is important to note that Rita came just after Katrina in 2005; with that devastation fresh in the nation's mind, lack of respect for a hurricane was not really a problem. Still, the difference here was likely the ability to prepare--be it because of more time or more technology--not the lack of respect for a female name versus a male one.

Still not convinced? Okay, we will go about this a different (and simpler) way. This article addresses the falling number of fatalities due to hurricanes in the US. The sharp increase in 2000-2010 is pretty much entirely due to Katrina, by far the deadliest hurricane during these six decades, which even the original study declared an outlier. This table shows the breakdown by year, which showed me two things: first we are generally talking about not really all that many people in the grand scheme of things which means statistical analysis is greatly affected by small variations and second, we are really making progress in dealing with hurricanes.

No, none of this proves that sexism does not play a role in how seriously people take hurricanes, but I would say that it does cast reasonable doubt upon the conclusions made by a poorly designed statistical analysis. As seems to always be the case on this blog, the lesson is one of logic; while statistics are a great tool, it takes logic to use them correctly and logic to determine if another individual has used them correctly. In this case, logic seems to have been entirely missing from the analysis. It does make for an entertaining article though.

Living "Chemical Free": Something that Both Concerns and Baffles Me

I, like many, have a pinterest account. I was on pinterest one day when I came across a pin linking to an article about cleaning your house "without chemicals." I found this intriguing. Given that everything in this world that is a substance of any kind is in fact a chemical, I wanted to know how to clean something without using anything, except maybe willpower and magic.

The article was a bit disappointing. It included a list of different ways to clean stuff without the use of store-bought cleaners. Their favorite substitute was vinegar. I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but vinegar is a chemical. As a mater of fact, it's primary ingredient is acetic acid, also known as CH3COOH. 

In all seriousness, I do get what the article was going for; I understand why it would be desirable to have household cleaners that pose the smallest health risk possible, and something that is perfectly okay to use in recipes is also probably perfectly okay to accidentally eat off of a counter due to residue or inhale (though in the case of vinegar my nostrils may beg to differ). Furthermore, I probably won't have to call poison control if I catch my kid drinking it.

That said, I also won't be making a switch any time soon. For one thing, vinegar stinks. For another, I worked as a custodian on my college campus for 4 years to help pay for school and became well versed in how to clean efficiently. We did in fact use vinegar at work, and as such I know its strengths and limitations well. I am not content to scrub something with vinegar when I know I could get the same thing cleaner in less than half the time using something else. I learned early in my custodial career that the trick to safe cleaning is to make sure you are using (and storing) cleaners properly much more than it is making sure everything you use is edible.

Still, I am perfectly fine with someone using primarily vinegar on their own house. You can clean your house with mud for all I care. But there is still something about this all that does concern me, and it is actually one specific logical fallacy.

Natural is Best

For some reason, there is a prevailing belief in our society that what is natural is what is best and by that reasoning what is not natural is therefore bad. This applies to everything from cleaning supplies to behavior, from medicine to clothing. Unfortunately, this is a logical fallacy known in logicians terms as the "appeal to nature." I see this fallacy almost everywhere and have certainly seen a pretty penny made off of marketing it. The rest of today's post will be dedicated to some of the ways I see this fallacy appear, but this is by no means a complete list. It is merely the ones that come to mind right now. So without further ado (we have already had too many paragraphs of ado) and in no particular order, I give you three common uses of the appeal to nature.

Animals do/don't do it so it must be good/bad. 
For some reason, animal behavior is sometimes used to justify or condemn human behavior, something I cannot for the life of me understand. I am not a dog (or dolphin, chimpanzee, or platypus), so why should I use this animal as a model for my behavior?

I have been told that I shouldn't drink cows milk because we are the only animal that drinks milk after being weaned and it is therefore unnatural. Apart from the fact that this statement is false (a large number of animals--cats come to mind--will drink the milk of other animals if they can get it), animals display a large number of habits I don't wish to take part in. We are also the only animal that cooks chicken before we eat it, but I don't plan on giving that up. My Dad was once told that a certain behavior (I can't remember for the life of me what it was) was desirable because someone's dog did it; my Dad quickly pointed out that dogs also eat their own vomit. It is possible that drinking cows milk is bad for you (though no one has convinced me yet) and that whatever behavior this dog exhibited is desirable, but the fact that animals do or do not do something is not relevant to determining the value of that thing.

It's an herbal remedy so it is safer than medicine.
This one actually concerns me a fair deal because there are so many people who buy into it and there is considerable risk if you take it too far. The basic idea is that anything you buy in a pharmacy is bad for you, so you should instead use teas, oils, salts, etc. to take away your ills.

I am all for not drugging yourself up unnecessarily. I took Percocet after removal of my appendix and had the weirdest, most unsettling dreams of my life. Consequently, I have refused prescriptions for narcotic painkillers both after having my wisdom teeth removed and after giving birth, though I took a few doses before leaving the hospital with the second. I was also on a medication for a period of time that made me extremely irritable and generally unpleasant to be around. I once took this knock-off of a popular cold medicine and felt like I was groggy and floating for about 24 hours. I totally get why people would want to avoid drugs; they can do scary things to you.

So why do I have a problem with "natural" remedies? It is really quite simple: they are still a drug, but so many people don't think of them that way. While it is true that you probably won't have hallucinogenic dreams from most things you can buy in a store food section, there is still a possibility of side effects. When you start to buy these remedies other places, who knows what is really in them. And frankly, I feel much safer taking something that I can look up studies on than something some lady swears by at a farmers market. You are still medicating yourself. I am not totally against using natural remedies, in fact, my favorite cold medicine is actually an herbal remedy. I am, however, against using these remedies as a medicine "alternative." Just because it hasn't gone through the regulation system of the FDA as a drug does not mean that it isn't one. By all means, use your teas to fix what ails you, just make sure you do your research just like you would with any other drug. And if you are using multiple "natural" remedies multiple times a day, consider if you really need to drug yourself that much.

It only includes ingredients found in nature so it must be good for you.
For some reason, many people think that just because something grows or exists on its own it is better for you than something that has to be manufactured.

I really wish I didn't have to point this out because I feel like this should be obvious to anyone who has thought about this idea at all, but here it is: there are actually a lot of really harmful substances that grow naturally. There are a large number of plants that will kill you if you eat them and quite a few that will give you quite the rash if you so much as touch them. Many hallucinogenics grow in nature, but I hardly think that makes them healthy. Furthermore, just because something is manufactured does not inherently make it a hazard to your health. In fact, many things we have been able to manufacture have increased life expectancy which, while not equivalent to health does suggest that a substance won't kill us, which is obviously better than some plants.

Conclusion
I am not against natural things. I have used home remedies and I rarely buy boxed snacks. What I am against is assuming that because you can place the label "natural" on something it is necessarily the best and because something doesn't occur naturally it is necessarily inferior.

Whose Fault is the Government Shutdown?

For some reason in our society, we like to assign fault. I guess it is natural, then, for us to try to assign fault in the government shutdown. A recent poll said that about 70% of those polled believed the shutdown was the fault of the Republicans. I can't say I agree with that sentiment, but I am not going to say it is the fault of the Democrats either.

To assign fault, we first have to decide what process of assigning fault we would like to take. There are many methods of doing this and I will examine several.

Who Broke the Rules?

The first method I will examine is the process much like how we assign fault for a car accident. This is essentially to determine who broke the law. I examine this method because of the number of comments on news articles and such that claim that something is a violation of something or other.

The Congress has many jobs, but we will look at the main outline. In a world with no conflict, the bill starts in one of the two parts of congress. For simplicity, we will just say it starts in the House. Once the House passes the bill, the Senate gets to pass it. Then, it goes to the President for signing. Of course, in a world with no conflict, we would hardly need Congress. So, in reality, the bill can go back and forth numerous times with people arguing about this and that and trying to change all sorts of things. The Senate can refuse to pass what the house has passed and the president can refuse to sign what the Senate and House have both passed. The Congress can overrule the president with 2/3 majority in both houses. Furthermore, the judicial branch can step in and overthrow laws agreed on by the Congress and the President if the Supreme Court finds the law violates the Constitution, and this whole thing can take forever. Democratic republics have some major strengths as a form of government, but speed is not one of them.

The above is the basic concept of checks and balances. The idea, as you probably learned in about 2nd grade, is that the more people you have involved in a decision, the less likely they are to make a mistake. You see, our government was kind of set up by a bunch of  paranoid people; they were also very intelligent and educated, but they were paranoid nonetheless.  They really didn't want anyone to have very much power, and the slower the government as a whole worked, the less it could control people's lives (like they felt King George and Parliament had controlled theirs).

So now we come to the current issue. Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA). President Obama signed it. The Supreme Court did not declare it in violation of the Constitution.  All of that is legal. Then, we got to the start of the shutdown. At the beginning of the shutdown, the House had passed a budget. No, it was not the budget that the Democrats wanted, but Congress is not obligated to give any party what it wants (that would defeat the purpose of having a Congress in the first place). The Senate refused to pass that budget (which they are perfectly allowed to do) and President Obama likely would have not signed it either (which he is perfectly allowed to do). The Senate did send another budget back to the House (which they have not approved). Then the government shut down. The Supreme Court has not weighed in on this instance because no one has asked them to. Of course, one reason no one has asked them (apart from there being no law for them to examine) is because they know the answer would be that no one is violating the Constitution, which is about all you will (and should) get out of a Supreme Court.

Basically, the conclusion of all this is that it is rather ridiculous to try to assign fault this way in this instance. No one has done anything illegal.  Well, at least on the surface. I can't exactly rule out corruption, but I frankly think that affects both parties fairly equally. It is not my experience that any trait--corruption, honesty, intelligence, stupidity, stubbornness, flexibility--is solely that of one party or the other.

Who Caused It?

So now we come to another way of assigning fault. Who did the thing that caused the shutdown? Well, the event that happened directly prior to the shutdown was that the House refused to pass the budget the Senate passed. Also, if the House had passed it, the shutdown would not have happened. So that means it is the House's (Republican's) fault, right?

Well, no. This is a logical fallacy. Two logical fallacies, actually. First we have assumed that whatever happened directly prior to something caused it, that is to say, A precedes B, therefore A causes B. This is a classic case of "post hoc ergo proctor hoc," an extremely common logical fallacy.

Second, we have assumed that because a certain action would have prevented something, not taking that action caused it, that is to say, If A not B, therefore not A then B. This is a false conclusion, because there is logically nothing preventing neither A nor B from happening (not A and not B). For instance, It is true that if the House had agreed to the Senate's budget (A), the shutdown would not have occurred (not B), but it is also true that if the house had not agreed to the budget of the Senate (not A), but the Senate agreed to the House's budget, we would also not have had the shutdown (not B). This logical fallacy is simply a fancy way of Denying the Antecedent (the "not" makes it all confusing, but the basic idea is the same).

Of course, just because that argument was a logical fallacy does not mean that the Republicans didn't cause it. There is still the possibility that the causes were all their fault. Of course, it is also possible that it was all the Democrats' fault.

Assigning cause is hard.  In science, we assign cause by setting up detailed experiments with controlled variables (and even then fail to be completely conclusive much of the time). Since we can't exactly control the variables of history, we like to simply look back at events and argue about it, but unfortunately we have a hard time proving anything. I have written a lot of history essays analyzing causes of something, but the reality of the situation is these analyses (and everyone else's) are no more than an opinion. When we analyze history as recent as the shutdown, emotion colors our views a lot (of course we also have better context than the people 100 years down the road--trade offs). I feel confident that the causes are really shared between the two parties, partially based on my observations of the situation, but partially based on my observations of what is usually true in history (both sides are to blame). If we are all honest with ourselves, either side could have prevented this, both sides acted in ways that led to it, and we are in a standoff because no one is willing to give in.

Perhaps fault can be assigned by determining what caused the shutdown, but I think if you employed this route, you would find that fault falls to both sides. I think this is just fine, but it probably is not very convenient for anyone out for blood.

Who is least representing the majority of the American People?

This is really a very interesting measure of fault.  Is it the minority's duty to give into the majority? Well, on a basic level, yes. I mean, if your side loses in the vote, you shouldn't challenge the other side to a duel (not that they didn't get in physical fights in early congress). However, as we discussed earlier, congress is set up so the majority has to win in two separate houses before they win the overall majority vote. This is where it gets complicated. If the House wants something the Senate does not, who is the majority? In this case, the majority of the house wants something different than the majority of the Senate. Seems a little unfair to say the Senate majority has to give into the house majority, or vice versa.

Some would say the side that wins is whatever the majority of people want, but I disagree on the basis of two aspects of governmental structure and the complicated nature of laws (and the tendency of politicians to tack on clauses that would never pass on their own).

The first aspect of the governmental structure that is important is the fact that we have representatives instead of having everyone vote on everything. This means that if a group of people is roughly divided on something but they only have one representative for them, they only get one collective vote. In several cases, the popular vote can actually be for the opposite of what happens. For instance, if there were five areas of 100 people being represented and two of them were 100% against something, but the other three were 51% for it and the representatives voted strictly with the majority of the people they represented, only 153 of the 500 people would want something, but it would pass 3 votes to 2.

This hardly seems fair, but you have to remember two things. One, our government was set up as the United States of America, but the States aspect was very important. The idea is that the states are their own entities, not just convenient divisions. Of course, the initial strong preference for that has faded and we fought a pretty bloody war about if it should stay that way, but the structure is still there. Second is that the alternative is to have the entire country vote on everything. This would mean we only make decisions once a year or so (and the ballots are extremely long), or else we are constantly having to interrupt out lives to vote. I, personally, love the fact that I get to vote, but the actual process is not really something I would like to do every day or take a whole day doing once a year. Plus, either option would be really expensive. The end result of all this is that even if a congressman is doing exactly what the people want, the majority may not win. The congressman is elected to represent the interests only of his group of people, so he or she should not be looking at the overall popular vote. Furthermore, most measurements of the popular vote are simply polls. These are not necessarily accurate measures. To get a more accurate measure, you would have to have an actual vote, which as before stated, would be a mess (and defeat the purpose of having representatives).

The second aspect of governmental structure we need to examine is the make up of the congress. The House of Representatives is set up to have representatives from each state according to the population of the state as determined by the once-a-decade census. The Senate has an equal number of representatives from each state. If you look back to about second grade, you may remember that this was the result of "the great compromise" between the big states (like Virginia) and little states (like Rhode Island). The idea was to mix the idea of a more population based system with a more state based system to partially satisfy everyone. Logically such a system will not always lead to the same result as a popular vote.

You can argue that these aspects of government should not be this way until you are blue in the face, but short of a constitutional amendment, this is the way it is. I see no reason, given this structure, that anyone in congress should feel the need to give into what a national poll says.

Now we come to the nature of laws. Laws are long and written in a language not everyone understands. There are often a lot of phrases that have a legal meaning that are beyond the average layman. Consequently,  I have a strong suspicion most people in the country have not read the ACA (it is nearly 1000 pages), or very many other laws. I further suspect that several others did not understand much of it. I don't pretend to understand it all, and frankly, I am blessed to have had more education than many people.

Congressman on the other hand, are not your average layman. They have often been to law school in order to learn to read and understand just this kind of thing. Furthermore, they are chosen by their peers (us) to represent us, presumably because we trust their judgement on the topics of laws. I understand I paint an idealized picture here and often our elected officials fail to live up to our expectations, but it is truthfully our duty to try to elect individuals we believe will represent us, and if we are displeased with them we get to vote them out the next election.

There has long been a debate about what the duty of a congressman is: to do what the people he or she represents tells him or her to do to the letter, or to use his or her own intelligence, wisdom, and education to determine what would be the best course of action for the people he or she represents. I honestly think it is a bit of both, because, frankly, they can see things I cannot, but they have to respect my wishes as well. Thus, I don't think it is ever a congressman's duty to adhere to even the popular vote of the area he or she represents regardless of his or her own feelings on the subject, though the opinion of the people should always factor in.

But all the objections to popular vote aside I will now humor the idea to display how complicated even this question is. Despite the most popular the ACA has been in a while, only 38% of those polled actually like it (and 43% dislike it). In other words, no one is representing the majority in that aspect, but the republicans do have a slight edge on the democrats. On the flip side, a lot of people do want the shutdown to end. In fact, I would venture to guess the majority of people do. So in that sense, if congress is to go with the majority, they should all be rushing to end it (which neither side is). But then there is the question of what side should give in (because, lets face it, someone has to). Though I found articles that said 70% of those polled think the shutdown is the republican's fault, I was unable to find anything that indicated how many think each side should give in, and thinking something is someone's fault is not the equivalent to saying that you disagree with them. In fact, at least 13%, it seems, believe that it is the republican's fault, but don't like the ACA. Of course, that 13% (or more) could not like the ACA but want the republican's to give in. Statistics are fun, aren't they? I think they are the only way to completely lie while saying nothing but the truth.

In any case, I would be tempted to say that if asked only which side should give in, more people would say the Republicans (but I don't have any numbers to back it up), so in that sense, it should be the Republicans. Still, from the approval of the ACA, I would guess that several of those same people would say that, ideally, the republicans would win the fight to not fund it, but simply believe it won't happen and that we should just end the misery now. In that sense, perhaps it is the Democrats that should give in. Please note, however, that all of this paragraph are my own guesses and are in no way meant to be taken as anything but that.

Conclusion

Okay, I admit it, this was all just a really long post to say I think this fault finding is ridiculous. I do have an opinion on what I would like to have happen. I have an opinion on the ACA. I have an opinion on all sorts of things in this situation, but the only one I am sharing with you is simply this: To blame one side is short-sided, close-minded, and unproductive.  Sure, I think everyone is being really stubborn here. No one is willing to compromise (though truthfully, there is little room for it in this situation). But on the flip side, I honestly believe that the vast majority of Congress and the President are truly doing what they think will be best for those they represent in the long-run. Perhaps I have too much faith in people, but despite the corruption of politics, I still believe a lot of them really are doing what they do because they think it is what they need to do. Are they all right? Probably not. Have they all gone about it the best way? Probably not. But that doesn't mean it does any good to call each other names and push the blame entirely on someone else's shoulders. Why can't we all view this like grownups?