Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Love by the numbers

One of the guys in my lab had his heart broken last summer and, in spite of our best efforts to cheer him up, has been fairly depressed ever since.  Last week, in an effort to socialize him more with people outside of the department, I took him to a few local bars, were he continued to mope.  He eventually asked me if I thought that there was one person for everyone.  Out of hand I dismissed that sort of thinking as naive and childish, but didn't really give it any more thought than 'there is no physical basis for there to be one ideal person for everyone.'   What I failed to consider was the rational basis for why there wouldn't be and why that sort of thinking is down right counterproductive.  
First of all, there is the simple sex ratio.  Although it is close, there are not the same number of men as women.  For the purpose of this discussion, I'll just look at the 20-44 years age range since I consider older or younger than this unlikely to be when people meet the love of their life.  There has been a steady decrease in the proportion of men in the general population, but this is accounted for by much lower proportions of men in the 45-64 and 65 and above age ranges.  In the 2000 and 2005 censuses, there were more men than women in this age range, which has been part of a trend of an increasing number of men relative to women since 1940.  As of the 2005 census, for every thousand women, there were 1029 men.  1.51 percent of Americans describe themselves as bisexual or homosexual.  Of the general population, 0.7% are gay men, 0.32 are lesbians and 0.49% are bisexual.  I'll just assume that the bisexuals are evenly distributed between males and females.  This only changes the ratio of heterosexuals by 0.21% in favor of a more equal distribution.  Therefore, for every 1000 women, there are 27 lonely guys that will never have any of them as their one love.
If one were looking just for sex, the numbers are a bit less publisized.  Six percent of the 638 men and 1.2% of the 843 women indicated that at least one of their sex partners in the past 12 months was a "casual date or pick-up."  This means that there is a relatively small proportion of women, having allot of casual sex.  I expect that the distribution of the number of sexual partners one has follows a Zipf or Pareto distribution, whereby 80 percent of changing sexual partners is done by 20 percent of the people.  It just means that it is a random process that reinforces itself.  What does this mean in terms of finding the one love?  It means, don't start dating a slut expecting her to suddenly start being loyal to you.
Suppose for a second that there was one person for everyone.  What would your odds of finding that person be?  The answer depends on how many people you know, but in any case, the odds are against.  For example, suppose that you are really, unbelievably popular and know 2000 people of the opposite sex and that the one person for you just happens to live in your home state.  I'll use Tennessee as an example since that is where I am.  Assuming that of the 6,038,803, people in Tennessee, 1,752,751 are women between 18 and 64 years of age, your probability of meeting your one true love is 0.114% or 998.859 to 1 against.  Not exactly betting odds.  
The moral here is that there can't possibly be one person for everyone, otherwise we'd never find them.  If you can't have the one love, love the one you're with. 

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

The Sloth of Doubt


I was reading Douglas Adams'  "The Salmon of Doubt" and came across and interesting statement : "My absolute favorite piece of information is that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees."  This seems like a very poor thing for sloths to be doing.  Evolutionarily, that sort of thing should have been weeded out long ago.  However, when I looked up is bit of information online, all I found was references back to Douglas Adams.  This is the sort of anecdotal information that could only be gathered by direct observation, I decided to write someone who works with sloths all the time.  I wrote the Sloth Rescue Center in Costa Rica.  The following was their reply:

Oh boy, this will be a difficult myth to break, given the author from which it is quoted!
 
From what I know of Douglas Adam's writings, he sort of has fun when he writes about people, animals, events, etc., so you must take the quote from that angle. .
 
No, it isn't true. In fact to see is sloth in its habitat, moving about the rain forest canopy is like watching an exquisite ballet. They are as sure footed in the trees as are himalayan mountain goats scampering about the pinnacles of the uneven terrain of their mountains! To see a sloth move is to apprecieate the finely-tuned mastery of his environment.
 
In fact, the sloth is subject to more myths and misinformation, I think, than most mammals, and much more than he deserves!  I think it all started when early 'explorers' to the Americas named him...sloth.  One of the seven deadly sins!
 
I hope I have piqued your interest to learn more about the extraordinary sloth!
 
Slowthfully yours,
 
Judy
Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica
http://www.slothrescue.org

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

God and Parsimony

Toward the end of last August, I encountered a point of view that at the time struck me as bizarre and possibly revolutionary in terms of looking at God and faith.  I simply haven't written about it till now because my time has been taken up by my formal education.  The idea is that God probably isn't parsimonious.  That is, God doesn't need to do things by the simplest, most strait forward way possible.  It's God!  He does whatever he wants.
When I usually get into a discussion with a devotee, the argument eventually breaks down to one of God of the Gaps.  They contend that there are simple things that god set down as universal laws, like gravity, that time moves only forward everywhere, that force = mass x acceleration, energy travels from a point of high potential to low, and that the rest of the actually complex stuff like life, is specially created.  My argument in tern is that the complex stuff is really just an extension of simple laws building on each other with lots of very little parts, and that the laws themselves are the extension of some more encompassing law.  I make the argument that it is simpler that God (if there even needs to be one at all, and I don't think there does) just put down a very small set of laws, and that the rest just flows from there.
The man that I met in late August believed that simplicity just didn't enter into it.  
-Why are we having a nice breeze right now?  
-God wills it and is favoring us, his children.  
-Isn't it true that our having a nice breeze is the result of large scale weather patterns that also breed destructive typhoons that kill thousands and ruin lives?  
-No, they are completely independent, as is absolutely everything in the universe.  Any cohesiveness is the result of God's decision to have cohesiveness.  That could change.
-But having a miracle in one spot would create a chain reaction of consequences that would ripple out in increasing complexity through the universe.  Answering someone's specific prayer in one spot could cause harm to someone else.  For example, if someone prays to recover from an accident, someone else won't get a kidney as a result.  Also, someone would eventually notice that there are things happening that can only be explained scientifically by the sudden creation or destruction of energy or matter somewhere.
-Not really.  God could just do a second miracle to cancel out any affects of the first one.  He really doesn't have to conserve miracles.  It's not like he's going to run out.
-Well, I guess when you take out parsimony, you can believe in anything!  Including a very, very personal God.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Unicorns


For some reason, I've noticed unicorns getting allot of mention lately.  A friend of mine was pissed because he forgot a hypothetical example that involved unicorns in one of his law exams.  They've been cropping up in other places too.  Boing-Boing is gaga for unicorns.  And so I present a photo that I found in my archives, it is one that I took during an ungulate lab in my comparative zoology lab at the University of Alberta.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Back Story

If you know me in person, I've probably mentioned that I've met Irony and that she's actually very nice.  If you know that, then you also know that I have a handle bar mustache.  The two are linked and I shall tell you why.
When I was in Alberta, in my freshman year, I was at a bar and in walked 7 of the most beautiful women that I'd ever seen.  I later learned that they were Faith, Liberty, Melody, Justice, Harmony, Irony and Rachel.  These were seven daughters of Poseidon, muses.  The Seven Sisters made their way about the bar and plied their charms to the effect that only Justice paid for her own drinks that night.  She could have gotten them paid for by any of the men fawning over her, but she paid for it out of principal.
I'm naturally shy, and so it was quite appropriate when Irony came up to me and we fell to chatting.  We talked about everything.  She had stories, I had stories and we were both deeply interested in the other's.  I haven't clicked like that with a girl before or since.  We fell to just looking comfortably into each others eyes and I realized that I was completely, totally and forever, not in love with this girl, and that she was completely, totally and forever, in head over heels for me.  It's not that she wasn't attractive.  She's an immortal deity, cousin to wood nymphs and Aphrodite, daughter and niece of gods.  In short, she was radiant.  That's just the way it works with her. Cursed that no man that loved her (and there were many) would ever receive her love in return, and that no man she loved could ever love her in return.  Irony isn't bitter about it, a bit wistful, but not bitter.
The problem here arises that immortals have a tremendous sense of entitlement.  For them, love need not be reciprocal (which is perhaps why irony never became bitter) or eternal either.  The lifetime of a man is such a small thing to the immortals that although Irony loves me intensely, and will continue to do so until I die, it is but a passing infatuation to her.  Consequently, over the centuries, a muse may love many men, and at the very moment that I was simultaneously realizing her infatuation with me and my perplexing lack of it for her, and still at the peak of susceptibility to her suggestion, she said "have you ever considered growing a mustache?  I think you would look so good with a handle bar mustache."  Apparently she was thinking of how similar I was to a young man that she fell in love with in 1875, and how she had adored his mustache.  The suggestion of a muse, even a passing one, is not subject to rational inspection.  A man who has had Justice or Liberty whisper thoughts in his ear is throughout his life a good man, even when it is to his detriment, so long as those whispers are with him.  Those muses love a good man, and their whispers stay with him so long as they love him.  Irony hadn't meant to suggest that I grow a handle-bar mustache.  She didn't even think about it really, but there it was, the whisper that would stay with me.  Perhaps because Irony is fickle, my like for the mustache is too.  I realize that it looks ridiculous in the 21st century, but as I said, it is not subject to rational thought.
At the end of the night, she understood what her role was.  Her sisters were complaining lightly and trying to drag her away, that is except for Faith who wasn't worried and Liberty, who didn't care.  Irony said goodbye and tried to kiss me.  I dodged the kiss artfully and had no idea what my role in all of this was other than that I should grow a stupid looking mustache and that it would look good on me.  The Seven Sisters exited the bar and disappeared into omnipresence.  Irony loves me, I know it still.  Here jealousy and constant interference with my life is a daily reminder of that, and so is the mustache.

Drama Department

Of all the ways that superheroes and villains kill each other, one in particular that people might actually relate to has yet to be invented, which is why I'm laying claim to the invention of the drama radiating villain.  The villain, male or female, it doesn't matter, simply radiates an energy that causes the lives of those around it to spiral into mind numbing drama.  Parts of the brain that control forethought and rational thinking are just shut down, hormones are cranked up to 11.  As a consequence, people's lives fall apart, politician are caught up in scandals faster than new ones can be elected to replace them, government falls apart, the economy is brought to its knees because nobody can interact reasonably with their co-workers without things being awkward!  Mass histeria, cats and dogs living together!  Everyone cowers in fear that the secrets that they are keeping or have created will get out and all of modern civilization comes to a crashing end around this one being that just has to walk around and radiate its power.  I guess that it would be allot like the Scarlet Witch, but instead of altering probability in general, it would just be directed to create drama.