So i played cylindrical chess with Lionel tonite. Yes that's exactly what it sounds like, chess played on a cylinder. So a piece can go out the left or right side and come out on the other. It makes openings bizarre because moving pawn to g3 suddenly pins blacks d pawn with the bishop, while moving the c pawn suddenly pins the f pawn with the queen. Certain affects of this rule change are obvious: bishops are much more powerful than before (in particular more powerful than knights), castling is less obviously good, rooks can connect easily, etc. But all this is relatively tame compared to the end game. Suddenly a rook and a king no longer checkmate. Furthermore getting perpetual check is much easier. Anyway its a fun twist on an good old game.

No matter how many times i hear it, "Link you're the hero of Hyrule" never looses its charm.

Yes I beat the original legend of zelda again. More importantly, I finally found the red ring, and i beat my new roomate lionel through level 9 in a race.

The P.T. Anderson/Adam Sandler film's trailer is up. What do you guys think?

I ran accross this post of Jane Galt's which had the following quote:

It's an odd truth known among grammar school teachers that you can't get little boys to read books about little girls, not even well-brought up little boys with feminist moms. They'll sit still while the teacher reads A Little Princess out loud, but they aren't interested in childhood classics like "Little House on the Prairie" or "Anne of Green Gables", even though those books surpass the inferior, boy-centered ones they choose by almost any measure. And this dichotomy holds throughout life: women read books, watch movies, etc. that are aimed at women, but not the other way around. And it is easily possible to segment one's audience to be comprised of either all women, or mostly men, by the subject matter you choose.

Now i must say that i really enjoyed the "Anne of Green Gables" series quite a bit. I guess i was in 9th grade so I wouldn't count as a little boy, but still, the above observation doesn't seem true to me. I also liked "little house" when i was younger, although not as much. Does this make me really that unusually for a boy? Or is it just that I read Anne old enough to develop a minor crush on her?

So tomorrow is the Florida primary, and I'm looking forward to voting at the Ted Williams museum. In one race, however, I won't have much of a choice -- one of the school board candidates dropped out of the race after reporters learned of an embarrassing past. This candidate, who had just sent out a fundraising letter saying that he needed support so the "God guys" can win and who made headlines for insisting on christian prayers at school board meetings, was arrested in 1994 for indecent exposure. He apparently motioned for a man to approach him in a parking lot, and when the man did approach he found that Bates was masturbating in his car. When questioned, Bates said that the incident occurred during a dark time in his life when he was abusing pain medication and had lost his job, I believe. He also said that he thought the record had been expunged and he wouldn't have run if he knew it hadn't been. Well, it turns out that it should have been expunged, and there was an error in the police station! I guess you really can't escape your past.

There's something really comforting in sitting down to play solataire and winning the first game. Whatever else happens that day, at least you know that something is going your way.

Uh oh, nat... This can't be good for the incumbent...

I'm also going to try my hand at estimating the number of gas stations in the country:

270 million people in the country. 1 car per 3 people, makes about 90m cars. Each filled up about twice a week, makes 180m fillups per week. Each station on average does about 12 fillups per hour for about 12 hours a day. So in a week each station does about 1000 fillups per week. Thus there should be about 180,000 gas stations in the country. This comes out to about 1500 people per gas station. Thus my home town would need about 40,000/1,500 = 28 gas stations serving my home town. This seems a tad on the high end, but still reasonable.

David (Speyer) mentioned the following microsoft interview question a friend mentioned to him. There is a mouse in the middle of a circular lake. There is a cat on the shore. If the mouse reaches the shore and the cat isn't waiting then he escapes safely into the high grass. How fast does the mouse need to be able to swim relative to the walking speed of the cat to be able to reach the shore safely?

David (Speyer) pointed out an interesting wrinkle that first appears when there are 6 pirates. Recall that the 5 pirate game has the solution that the 5th pirate offers (1, 0, 2, 0, 97) or (0,1,2,0,97) (both are equally good, and by the preferences given there is no way for him to decide). Now the 6th pirate needs to buy off 3 other pirates. Clearly he can buy off pirate 4 for just 1 coin. However, since neither pirate 1 nor 2 knows for sure that he'll be getting 1 coin, he can in fact buy off both of those for 1 coin each. Thus the 6th pirate offers (1,1,0,1,0,97).

On the other hand, if, for example, pirates would rather give money to older pirates than younger ones, then the 5th pirate would always offer (1,0,2,0,0,97), forcing the 6th pirate to offer (2,1,0,1,0,96).

This is when things start getting complicated. Suppose that the 6th pirate does offer (1,1,0,1,0,97). Then pirate 5 has a huge incentive to promise pirate 1 that he'll give him a coin in the next round, and no incentive to ever break that promise. Thus if one's word has even completely negligible value 5 can throw a wrench in the system and convince 1 to vote pirate 6 off the island so to speak. Hence, if one's word has negligible value and the pirates are allowed to make offers, pirate 6 can be forced to offer (2,2,0,1,0,96).

Time to leave Stanford for John's friends' pool in Cupertino. Maybe we'll have sushi for dinner. I like being on vacation.

Noah, if I were interviewing you for a job, I'd either toss you out a window, or make you president of the company.

Nice work.

So I've been thinking about the pirates for a minute or two, and although i haven't seen it before, the method of solution is the same as many similar problems. That is to say, the question is only hard because there are 5 of them. So you solve the puzzle by starting with 1 pirate and making it successively harder.

If there's 1 pirate he clearly get's the whole pile. If there are two pirates the second pirate can't give the 1st pirate more than 100 and so no matter what he says he dies. If there are three pirates he thus doesn't need anything to buy off pirate 2 (who just wants to live), and can keep the remaining 100. If there are four pirates, the fourth one can buy off the first pirate's vote for 1 coin and the second pirates vote for 1 coin and keep the remaining 98. Finally the littlest pirate can buy off the first pirate's vote for 2 coins and the third pirate's vote for 1 coin and keep the remaining 97.

However, pirates are clearly NOT rational in this manner. Take the 3 pirate case for example. If the third pirate offered to take all the money himself, I can assure you the second oldest pirate is going to kill the annoying little cheap bastard. The first pirate out of gratitude will thus be willing to take the vast majority of the money instead of all of it, since he'd have gotten nothing if the second pirate hadn't helped him out.

Furthermore, how do you think the oldest two pirates got to live that long? They've clearly been playing this little game with all their new pirate buddies and must have some trick up their sleeve. So the point is, unless they get a great deal from pirate 5, they'll kill him. Since pirate 4 thinks he's about to win he won't be bought off and that leaves 1,2,4, vs 3,5 and 5 dies. But then 1 and 2 have a majority and can kill 3 and 4 and then split the treasure 60-40.

Alright, we're down here in Florida, and it's a weird state. It has giant predatory reptiles, hurricanes, floods, panthers, Miami, and a whole hosts of other threats to humans. However, people around here have a tendency to exaggerate (in line with what one might find in, say, Texas) about things. I got into a surreal argument last week with several of my co-workers who appear reasonable to the untrained eye. It began when one coworker's son asked me what the fastest land animal was. I replied, it was the cheetah. He said no, everyone says that, but the correct answer is the alligator. Since they aren't technically land animals, they are sometimes overlooked, but they can actually outrun cheetahs. Now, this is a twelve year old who's telling me this, so I said no, I think cheetahs are faster. Then it got weird. His mom said, well, they are only faster over a short period of time, maybe 30 seconds. And another coworker of mine said yeah, alligators are faster than cheetahs.

I sat for a second, dumbstruck. What was I to say? That there is no way, biomechanically speaking, that an alligator (an animal that is basically a huge pair of jaws attached to a huge tail) can cover any distance faster than a cheetah, an animal that's basically 4 really powerful legs? Well, I did say that. My coworker insisted that alligators are faster. He said, "have you ever seen one of those things run?" I said no but that I'd be surprised if they went 60 mph. I'd be surprised if they went 30 mph. Finally we dropped it and I said I'd look it up online.

So I did. And who won, the cheetah or the alligator? I'll let you see for yourself. 11 mph seems about right, seeing as they can't really flex their back on the forward/backward axis (it's called dorsal ventral flexion, according to Almea) which is necessary for real galloping.

Incidentally, in the drawing of the galloping croc on the website has its back bending at the neck and the tail, because it has ribs all along its torso.

Concerning the pirate scheme, how did the young one talk the rest of them into this? If I were them I'd just kill him for tricking them, rationality be damned.

So here's the brainteaser I was asked to solve at a recent interview (at a company that shall remain nameless):

Five pirates discover a treasure of 100 gold coins. They decide to divide up the treasure as follows: the youngest pirate will suggest a scheme for dividing the coins, and all five pirates will vote on the proposal. If the youngest pirate gets the approval of the majority, his plan for dividing the coins will be adopted. If his plan is rejected, then the youngest pirate will be killed, and the next-to-youngest pirate will suggest his own scheme, with the same conditions (and possible punishment) as before. And so on down the line. (Note that if a tie vote results, the proposal is considered to have failed.)

The question is, assuming that all the pirates are rational, and that their preferences are 1) to stay alive, 2) to get as much treasure as possible, and 3) to kill other pirates, how will they end up dividing the treasure?

(I got the right answer, but only after several wrong turns and quite a bit of prompting from my interviewer. Got the job, too.)

Dave, John, and I hung out in San Fransisco today, mostly walking around parks (and eating blackberries). It was great fun. Quote of the day:

"We'll be waiting outside in a red BMW convertible"
--Dave Freeman

Sigh, why is it so hard to write about mathematics for a general audience? Here's Salon's attempt at reporting on the Fields medal winners.

I had a "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Harvard anymore" moment this morning. We were playing hangman in german, and people just weren't that good at guessing letters. A few people were, but on the whole the letter guessing was surprisingly bad. It just wasn't like the intense but good natured competition in French A.

Part of what TMQ does in his predictions is cheating by mathematics. By taking predicting one of a large number of unlikely outcomes he manages to make predictions that look unlikely but are actually quite good. On the other hand many of his points do not involve such cheating. For example predicting the way sporstcasters do the superbowl winner is in fact worse than randomly choosing. Similarly, over the past several years, picking the division winner to repeat gives you 1/8 odds, while randomly picking another team gives you better than 1/5 odds (7/32 to be exact).

However, TMQ then proceeds to precisely ignore all the predictions which he has made. In his yearly Haiku predictions he predicts scores. From these scores you can see who he is predicting to win each division: Eagles, Bucs, Packers, Rams, Patriots, Titans, Steelers, Oakland. Notice that he has thus prdicted that 5 of last years 6 division winners will repeat. Although he might be saying he only predicts one of these to actually win but he doesn't know which one, this prediction itself runs against his numbers. As I explained above, he should actually just be picking random non-division winners and he'd do better than his own predictions.

Consistency people, consistency... Is it too much to ask for?

Tuesday Morning Quarterback is back, but now at ESPN. He's back on a typical TMQ topic: "All NFL predictions are wrong." Of course he's right. As you heard right here several months ago you can make money betting on the worst 5 teams in each conference winning the superbowl.

However, TMQ raises an even more damning point:

All told, of the roughly 300 Super Bowl predictions tracked by TMQ through this period, two were right -- a one-in-150 performance. If you simply placed into a hat the names of the 31 NFL teams that existed in those years and drew a name at random, your odds of predicting the Super Bowl winner would be 1-in-31. This mean that in the past three years, professional sportscasters and commentators, possessed with their incredible insider knowledge, have proven themselves five times less likely than random chance to predict the Super Bowl winner.

So anyway, TMQ's predictions are (just as last year, when he proved completely correct): "the team goin' to Disney World next winter will come from among those that did not make the "Monday Night" cut: Arizona, Atlanta, Buffalo, Carolina, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Minnesota, New Orleans and San Diego... of last year's division winners -- New England, Oakland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis -- only one will repeat... "

And such is life in the NFL. On the other hand I would give 2 or 3 to 1 odds on the bet that the Lakers or the Kings will win the NBA finals, and take even money on the Yankees winning the world series.

One of my new roomates plays chess and so we've been playing quite a bit. I just found myself in the following position playing black and played one of the coolest combinations i've played in many a year:
White: Pawns on h4 and f6, knight on e4, king on e6
Black(to move): Pawns on h6, d5, and b4, Bishop on f7, king on b3.

(The king on b3 has just eaten up whites queenside pawns, while white has been counterattacking with the knight attacking f7.)
The obvious attempt to simply queen the b-pawn results in both pawns queening and a likely draw. However, I played:
1. Be8
2.f7 Bxf7
3.Nxf7 Kc6
4.Ne5 b3
5.Nd3 d4+!
6.Ke4 h5!

Now white cannot move anywhere. If the knight moves, then the pawn easily queens (for example, 7. Nc1 b2 8. Nd2+ Kd2 and the pawn will queen). If the king moves then the knight falls. This was the first time I played a zugzwang in a game where pieces are still on the board...

Of course its nothing to compare with the greatest zugzwang ever in Samisch-Nimzowitsch (Copenhagen, 1923).

Coincidence?

The last four places i lived are (not in order) 27 William St. (this summer), Randolph Hall (sophomore and junior years), 1930 Hearst Ave (here in Berkeley), and Senior house (senior year).

Incidentally William Randolph Hearst Sr. also paid for the lampoon building, the inside of which I still have never seen despite living next to it for three years.

The baseball season may continue, but the year's most interesting story is over. Today Curt Schilling walked 4 batters in a 5-0 loss giving him 21 wins and 27 walks and virtually ending his unprecedented bid to have more wins than walks in a season. Prior to this past week he had 21 wins and 21 walks in 27 games started. Suddenly two games later he still has 21 wins but now has 27 walks.

Although the vast majority of our hits still come via Matt Yglesias, it appears we have reappeared on google. So what searches turn up this site?

Mantis Determine Sex
"IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU" POSTER buy "TRUMAN show"
screems de harry potter
cutting down on masterbation
banished erotic euro movies

Best of all: "perfect mix tape for a girl", although we don't still appear on that search.

And believe it or not, someone went through 29 pages of links on "Citrus County" to find a link to our site. What is this person doing with their time??

Furthermore these google hits have come from as far as russia and japan. It really makes one wonder at how many google searches there are in a day.

No strike! No strike! Go Twins!

I moved my sister in to college yesterday. This was a weird experience. Then I went to a bar in Philadelphia with Meyeon and about 30 Penn med students. Also a weird experience.

Alec, does your news by any chance have to do with a letter from -----?

Speaking of punctuation marks in the large stream of money....

On Tuesday I'm starting work on Wall Street. Details to follow.

Quote of the day:

"The people are just punctuation marks in the large stream of money"
--david speyer explaining the answer to a combinatorics problem involving successive people betting moneey

Life here is good. Moving in everything went fine, and we now have a furnished room. Having a bed is great. Internet next week, and i'll start posting again more often. Classes start tommorow so I'll have more stories... If only my intro German teacher turns out to be another Julie... Life here is also very nerdy, we spend much of the day talking about math and have started a tradition where the last person to sleep has to leave a problem on the white board for the first person to wake up.

Is there anybody...out there?

I guess this really is "Life without ethernet connections."

Pixar did it again...Monsters Inc. is really clever and well worth seeing. Though this is probably old news to most readers of this page.

Various reactions to my car:

My aunt: "It's adorable!"
My sister: "It's really ugly."
My dad: "Wow."
My step-sister (who may have to drive it to school): "Oh my god."
My grandfather: "What's this stuff?" (It's called rust.)

I'm at my dad's now, where there is both ethernet and a freshly tuned piano. What more could one want?

Now for some stories about Citrus County...

(Bessie wrote me and asked if my county of residence is actually called Cirtus County. Yes, it is.)

Interesting story number one: I live a few blocks away from the house where Ted Williams spent his last days. The court battle over his remains is happening here, which means we still get daily updates in the paper (not much has happened). My polling precinct (I registered to vote in Florida) is the Ted Williams Museum and Hitter's Hall of Fame. I'm planning to take a walk around the museum for free after voting on Sept. 10. It's unconstitutional to charge a poll tax, right? The funny thing about Ted Williams living here is that the locals have a very different perspective on the matter. It seems, for one, that he wasn't particularly well-liked by his neighbors. The development where I live, Citrus Hills, paid Williams to come live here and be a sponsor, so it wasn't like he was a normal resident. I asked one of my co-workers what everyone thought about the Ted Williams controversy, and she started talking about some post office. When I expressed confusion, she said she thought I was refering to the controversy around renaming a post office after Ted Williams (I guess a lot of people objected so the idea got put on hold). When I said no, I'm actually interested in the controversy that people elsewhere in the country are interested in, she just said, "Oh, the freezing thing? That's sick."

This weekend I got to participate in a charity bowling tournament on a team that my Congresswoman had sponsored. I had never seen a bowling tournament before so I didn't know what to expect. Before the thing started, the announcer came up to our team and told us that a lot of people wanted to meet the congresswoman so we would be introduced to the crowd. We were shepherded into the bar where we waited to be announced. The only other people in there with us were...the five pro bowlers who had come out to participate in the tournament as an outreach thing! We sort of looked at each other, both groups wondering why we had been thrown together, but we started talking and the bowlers were actually very nice. Then we all got announced and we went out and bowled. Our team avoided getting the trophy for worst score and no one got hurt, so it was a successful day.

Tonight, for all you country fans out there, we're having a fundraising concert with the Bellamy Brothers (no, I didn't know who they were either). I hope you bring your dancing boots! I've been put in charge of parking, so I might have some fun with traffic patterns.

I'm also trying to purchase cassettes for my car, which has a tape deck. So far I haven't seen any music stores and Wal-Mart has a great selection if you want George Jones or Lynyrd Skynard (sp??) greatest hits.

Coming soon: the wacky foibles of our school board candidates...

Hey folks, I'm back. I made it from Baltimore to Minneapolis (1200 miles) with little incident other than forgetting my lunch at Noah's house and having my muffler almost fall off. But Noah's dad secured it to the chassis with coat hangers, and it was all ok. I attended Beatlefest in Chicago yesterday, which was quite an event. They had movies, memorabilia, t-shirts, and the Battle of the Beatle Bands (most of them were very bad). My favorite part, though, was sitting under the stairs with three guys with guitars and maybe 30 other fans in various states of drunkenness (I wasn't) all singing along to whatever song people wanted to hear.

I arrived home to find my sister packing up for college...she goes off next week, with me accompanying her. So tomorrow I get to spend hauling boxes to UPS.

My mom just got home, so I should go. More later perhaps.

This is just a random comment, but 2002 is shaping up to be a great year for movies. Admittedly, we've only had a couple of standout films so far this year (Minority Report being the most obvious), but the upcoming release schedule is so rich that even if half of them hit the mark, we're talking about a real bouquet of goodies. I have a theory that a Star Wars film, even if it isn't all that good, has a sort of gravitational pull that draws great movies into its immediate orbit, just like The Phantom Menace did three years ago. Just look at this roster (ranked roughly by my own level of anxious anticipation): Gangs of New York, Punch-Drunk Love, Catch Me If You Can, Adaptation, Solaris, Frida, Red Dragon, 8 Mile, etc., not to mention wild cards like Chicago, Jonathan Demme's Charade remake The Truth About Charlie and George Clooney and Charlie Kaufman's Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, as well as high profile sequels like The Chamber of Secrets and Die Another Day.

Oh yes, and The Two Towers. God, I wish I were still a film critic....

For some reason, the new version of Netscape won't display the text of Deadly Mantis, although I can still read the most recent entries while in editing mode in Blogger. Alas, this meant that I missed Noah's entry on paternal annullment, although judging from the reaction, he seems to make an interesting point. I'll try to figure out why Netscape is being uncooperative, and hopefully get back to you about it later.

Back to paternal nullification...

Someone agrees with me. Best quote:

I will say that this guy is absolutely wrong about not proof-reading his entries or using a spell-checker, but as for substance, I think he's spot on.

Gulity as charged... (where's those irony tags?)

Its a combination of two things, the fact that I could never write without lots of errors anyway, and the fact that I've gotten so used to a spellchecker and blogger non-pro doesn't have one... Anyway, as a math graduate student I feel that not being able to spell or type without numerous typos represents in this medium the necessary absentmindedness needed to play this part. (Speaking of playing the part of a math graduate student, the other evening I was playing Go in a cofee shop...) I guess I don't take my blogging seriously enough to run it through a spellchecker... When we come down to it, I guess its just laziness.

But I'm glad to see someone agrees with the substance. Someone else still doesn't. I'd like to respond to one of the points made in that post:

We don't make sperm donors pay because there was a prior agreement not to. And frankly, there's not much difference between procreative and non-procreative sex. Intentions are difficult to determine, and accidents do happen. Bright line rules work best.

I worry about heading in this direction. Alec, if you ever write a futuristic dystopia screenplay (I think this is probably more of a when than an if), include the following idea. Before sex people a character pulls out a stack of forms saying the following:

I (name of sexual partner) being of right mind, free from the influence of drugs or alcohol, and under no coercion agree to engage in sexual relations including intercourse with (name) on (date) between the hours of (hour) and (hour). I certify that to the best of my knowledge I carry no sexually transmitted diseases and I have been tested within the past (number) months for such diseases. I acknowledge that the purpose of this intercourse is solely for pleasure and in the case of birth control failure I release (name) from any obligation to raise or financially care for any child which results from this intercourse.
(signed)

Possibly with some more clauses: be creative.

I first had this idea when I was thinking about the issue of sex with someone under the influence of alcohol being considered rape by Harvard. This is even true if one plans on having sex anyway without getting drunk, in which case its clearly not coercive. Solution? Simply sign a contract consenting before getting drunk.

Somehow I really hope this isn't a road we go down as a society. However, would such a contract satisfy Win Fitzpatrick?

(Both of these posts via comments on Matt's page.)

And frankly, I'd love to see Noah's top 10 list of conversations he wishes he had on tape, although I presume it'd be too personal to post.

This is a fascinating site, courtesy of Fark: Clear Channel College Entertainment. It lists the availability and price of musical artists for performance at your local college, ranging from about $5,000 for Vanilla Ice to a hefty $200,000 for Creed. The best bargains I saw were definitely Suzanne Vega for $10,000 and Aimee Mann for $15,000. By means of comparison, Carrot Top goes for $30,000. There's something seriously wrong with this world of ours....

Speaking of blank tapes...

Today, with the job search in New York not going quite according to plan, I auditioned to become a teacher with Kaplan. As part of the audition process, I had to come up with a five-minute "how-to" speech on a non-academic subject, prepared beforehand. My topic was "How to make the perfect mix tape." I think it was probably the best talk of the day, and while I didn't have time to go over more than the basics, I think they appreciated my adaptation of the Aristotelian plot pyramid (exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, and falling action) to describe the structure of an ideal mix tape. Or maybe it was just my high test scores that did the trick.

So yeah. I might end up teaching the SAT part-time for Kaplan. Stay tuned for details...

I think I'll have to incorporate Matt Yglesias's "Irony Tags" (see this indy article) into my dream IM program (which currently mostly involves adding a little sheep for when one feels sheepish, and a blushing but smiling face, as well as a few other things I don't remember now).

The only question here is what should the irony tags look like?

I find Sarah Hatter's blog fascinating, just because there's something about her personality, at least in writing, which is exactly what the part of me formed during my highschool years likes in people. So reading her weblog always combines nostalgia and fascination. This entry in particular is one of those ones that makes me desperately want to have known this girl 5 years ago.

Several of my friends were going to this guys birthday party and we weren't sure what to get. It was the day before the party and I wasn't particularly good friends with this guy, he was just in my social group. Anyway, four of us were at border's trying to find something to get, and one of us joked "let's get him these blank tapes." Somehow this resulted in us staying up till the wee hours of the morning in Ben's basement recording our conversations and anything we chose to speak onto the tape which then became a present.

I wish I still had a copy of that tape...

I want to make a top 10 list of conversations I've had in my life which I wish I had on tape... However, no one but me would appreciate it, so I won't post it here...

Today is a very happy day. The King's management finally signed basketball hero, Mike "I got quintuple teamed by the Lakers in OT of game 7" Bibby for 7 years.

Now I just need to track down Chris and figure out the terms of our bet on the Lakers vs. the Kings next year. I'm going to get him to pay for some Kings tickets for me...

Here's a great article on one of the few ways one can actually make money with mathematics.

Since we got our first blogosphere link from a blog which I do not read regularly, I think I owe a response.

Win Fitzpatrick of Homeobox responded (in this post) rather negatively to my post on paternal nullification (as did all of the commenters on Matthew Yglesias, despite Matthew's generally positive response (Matthew? Matt? Yglesias? I'm still not comfortable reading posts which refer to me as "Snyder"). So I figured I'd clarify the argument for paternity annulment, since my original post was rather cursory.

The argument is not that men have exactly as much of a right to annul paternity as women do to an abortion. The argument is that every argument for abortion has a analogue (albeit sometimes weeker) which argues for paternalt annulment. I'm not claiming that a right to control your bank account is equivalent to a right to control your own body, but that doesn't mean we don't have some right to control our bank accounts.

The question at hand here is why is it reasonable to force a man to pay for the rest of his life for a child which he did not want to have. If you argue that by choosing to have sex he has agreed to live with the consequences, then you are on slippery ground because you could make the same argument that a woman agrees to part with certain rights to control her own body when she chooses to have sex. Perhaps the argument for men is weeker, but that doesn't make it incorrect.

We don't make sperm donors pay child support, why should we make a man pay child support when he thought he was engaging in non-procreative sex?

If sex does not commit a woman to bear a child this produces, then why does it commit a man to pay for the child this produces? (Notice I am not saying that bearing a child is the equiavlent of paying for a child, only that the act which produces the commitment is the same.)

I'm not saying that you can't come up with a good answer to that question, only that it is very difficult to come up with a good answer to that question which does not also give a decent argument against abortion.

I wish I could find a link to the article which made this argument originally, it was quite a brilliant article, and I don't want to pass off these arguments as if they were my own.

I think Dave will appreciate this column on Delaware.

I don't think I've ever agreed more completely with a post on any weblog than I agree with this post by Matthew Yglesias.

I'm in berkeley, its august and I'm wearing pants... The blank appartment with no furniture is depressing, as is the knowing almost no one in the city, but i'm sure things will improve at this point...

There's a post by Michelle Boardman of the Volokh Conspiracy about a wonderful example of the funny logic one can go through in concluding what God's will is from your circumstances.

So the only movies on Nat, Alec, and my movie lists were L.A. Confidential and Casablanca. Not a bad pair at all... I was surprised Nat didn't mention God of Gamblers or Being John Malkovich.

That's all for now... More updates when more has happened beyond sleeping on a too thin air mattress which my mom used while missionary slumming in Belize this summer.

Nat gets a 5.

Cambridge decided to give me housing today. This is nice. Unfortunately, they won't tell me when I'm supposed to get there.

Hey y'all, I'm back. And yes, I'm saying things like "y'all" and "yes ma'am" because that's the way they do things down here. Where's down here? Inverness, Florida. We're somewhere between Gainesville and Tampa, about an hour from each and an hour from Orlando to boot. The major cash crop in the area is old people. I've got plenty of great stories but not much time on the internet because my only connection is at work and I'm a busy kid. So, all I'm doing today is my top ten list:

1. Casablanca
2. Saving Private Ryan
3. L.A. Confidential
4. Rocky
5. Silence of the Lambs
6. UHF
7. American Beauty
8. This is Spinal Tap
9. A Day at the Races
10. Hoosiers

I would do a nice honorable mention list but it would go on too long so I'm just going to mention Judgement Night, Commando, and 8 Heads in a Dufflebag as movies I wanted to include.

That's all for now, stay tuned for Nat's wacky adventures, broadcasting out of Citrus County.