Planeattack coincidences

Earlier I said that I came up with a name for the horrible events of 2001. September 11 is not good; it means foreboding for all September 11s thereafter, and it is not kind to those who have September 11 as a birthday. I had come up with Towerfall as an alternative, but that ignores the attack on the Pentagon. I settled on Planeattack, which says that the planes did the attack rather than things from the planes, and further the name of the lead hijacker, Atta, appears in the name.

Regardless of what we call it, people have pointed out a lot of coincidences with it. For example: It occurred on the 11th of the month; the first attacking plane was American 11; the plane that attacked the Pentagon was American 77, which is 7 x 11, and 7 divides 175, which is the number of the United plane that attacked the South Tower. The number of people on American 11 was 92, and 9+2 = 11. The number of people on American 77 was 65, and 6+5 = 11. The World Trade Center looked like a big 11 on the New York skyline. The number of firefighters that were killed was 343, which is 7 x 7 x 7. The total number of New York firefighters that had ever died in duty up to September 11 was 777. 9/11 is the number to call in case of an emergency. An asteroid strike in 2077 killing hundreds of thousands in Italy in Arthur Clarke's novel "Rendezvous with Rama" is said to occur on September 11. One can continue with this for a while.

Is all this a coincidence? It surely looks like some sort of design. But I believe it was a coincidence. One can form patterns out of all sorts of things. Finding patterns like in my second paragraph above is like finding patterns in clouds or on the planet Mars. Humans have a tendency to make patterns to explain things. This is OK, if it is supported by evidence and is replicable. I did not think that all this 11 business is replicable. To prove my point I totaled the number of people who died in the terrorist attack last September. It was 3,056. I factored the number and found it was 16 x 191. That took me aback. 191 is an anagram of 9/11. Further, two previous major airliner crashes were Flight 191. I am still sure that this is all a coincidence, but my attempt to prove so only propagated the pattern. Then I found out last week that the death toll at the World Trade Center was lowered by 4, making the overall total 3,052.

I am vindicated. This may all look interesting, but it is strictly a coincidence.

Satanic Teams

I heard today that the high school of Devil’s Lake, ND, called its teams the Satans for 80 years. That seemed natural: Satan is the Devil. Some would say it was sacrilegious though. But it survived the prissy times of the 1920s and 1930s without any objection. Now in the age of political correctness, the school felt forced to change the schools’ name. How about the Red Leprechauns? It says something when a name of this sort fails to survive now whereas it did in the 1930s. That says what we are up against, now. Next thing they are going to do probably is change the town’s name. One thing that may have contributed to this is the existence of Satanism, a cult associated with extremist groups. I suppose they have a point, but still an 80-year-old name that did not refer to anything real has become victim to today’s weird happenings.

West Nile Virus

I see now that there is a case of this virus in the area where I live. The person had flu-like symptoms and went to the doctor. So that means go to the doctor if you develop such symptoms to check for West Nile. The person is better now. And again I say it is a non-epidemic. Two out of three people infected develop no symptoms. Those that do develop flu symptoms – a visit to the doctor can settle the question and there are drugs to treat the disease. It is a problem, and to some extent it can be prevented – get rid of standing water. But to wear long clothing in 100 degree weather is self-torture. Bug spray can make you feel yucky. I say get rid of standing water and report any fever or flu to the doctor. Flu is serious enough anyway – if West Nile is that bad, then so is influenza, a disease which killed hundreds of thousands including one of my great aunts in 1918 – an E6 epidemic.

Mixed-up Nursery Rhymes

Not much to blog on today. So I will give some mixed up nursery rhymes that I wrote earlier. They are either combinations of existing rhymes or permuted versions of single rhymes:

Hickory Dickory Dock

Hickory Dickory Dock
The mouse climbed up the clock
The mouse struck one,
The clock fell down,
Hickory Dickory Dock.

Little Miss Mubbard

Little Miss Mubbard
Sat on a cupboard
Eating her dogs and bones
Along came a spider
Who sat bare beside her
And so the poor girl had none.

Hey Diddle Warpdrive
The cat and the C:\ drive
The PC bombed clear to the moon.
The floppy drive cranked when it saw the abort,
And Excel ran away with the OS.

That's enough for today.

Analysis Suggests Three-Way Baseball Swap

One of my specialties is Operations Research (OR). This is a term referring to the application of mathematical techniques to real world problems. An example of a problem that OR could apply to is the assignment of Triple-A minor league baseball teams to their major league affiliates. There has been a trend towards the AAA farm team and its parent being close together; e.g., Boston and Pawtucket Red Sox, Seattle Mariners and Tacoma Rainiers, and Toledo Mud Hens and Detroit Tigers. The reason is simple: it cuts travel costs. So why not pair up minor league teams to major league ones so as to minimize the total mileage? An OR technique called the “assignment method” can apply to this.

I tried this a couple of years ago and got some interesting results. Much of the present assignments, including the above three pairs, came out like it actually is. I would think that the Florida Marlins could come up with some team closer than the Calgary Cannons, but my model actually paired them up with the farther Edmonton Trappers. The reason is that there are no teams close to either of these teams, and that it is more important to pair up closer teams than to attempt to force some team to pair with Florida.

The model did show an interesting six-way deal that would cut travel costs. Right now the Richmond Braves are an affiliate of the Atlanta Braves, the Nashville Sounds are an affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Rochester Red Wings are an affilitate of the Baltimore Orioles. Some of these are far apart, especially Richmond and Atlanta. The deal would switch these around to pair Rochester to Pittsburgh, Nashville to Atlanta, and Richmond to Baltimore. All three distances would be shorter, resulting in considerable travel cost savings.

Right now is a good time to do this. I learned that the Red Wings are now a “free agent”, meaning they can find whatever major team they can get as a parent, and so are the Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates. This means the deal is easier than ever to do right now, so I hope they consider it; that is, if the impending August 30 strike does not interfere.

Ambiguous Alert

"Amber alerts" have become popular in this country to warn of missing children and teenagers - alerts posted on highway signs and other places. At least one commentator suggests that this could be overused; e.g., a missing person could turn out to be a runaway or just merely hiding somewhere in the house. But there is another problem as well. Amber is a color. I know it is a girl's name and that it is named after a specific case, but it still is a color. An amber light warns that the traffic light is about to turn red, for instance. That could cause confusion with the national alert system for terrorism, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland It has us wondering what a red alert is. People could say there is an amber alert when all that he means is that the country is under an amber or yellow "elevated" terrorism alert, which it is right now, and not a missing person alert. So amber is ambiguous. Another name is needed, such as "missing person alert".

The Tapes

The Al Qaeda ("the Base") tapes shown today are a big public relations defeat for Al Qaeda. In this age of mediahyperism, the showing of tapes showing that Al Qaeda personnel gas dogs to death is going to turn people against the organization. Many in the US and its allies will solidify even more their feelings of disgust for the organization, and I wouild expect setbacks among fundamentalist Muslims in the Mideast as well. Many angry Muslims who describe America and Israel as the Great Evil will now describe Al Qaeda as just as evil. Al Qaeda will lose members and funds, and the Mideast will turn more to the west. Well, these Base people did it to themselves.

Farm Sanctuary

We visited the Farm Sanctuary today. This place is a farm where mistreated farm animals, including cows, pigs, goats, sheep, turkeys, geese, ducks, chickens, and rabbits were brought back to health and allowed to live their lives in peace. The place had no dogs, cats, or horses. It had a gift store where you can buy T-shirts, vegetarian recipe books, organic products of all kinds, and bumper stickers with such slogans as “use your own skin” and showing cattle on it. Is that a request to refuse the support of cruel treatment of cattle, or a call to go naked?

We can refuse to support the mistreatment of animals but habits are hard to break. We were brought up on hot dogs, hamburgers, eggs, and milk, and it is hard to break the habit, especially with the great quantity of restaurants that offer beef, veal, and so forth in this country. It will be along time before we treat animals humanely, and in the meantime there is a greater need – the mistreatment of humans, in prisons, Iraq, Palestine, and other places.

I-99

On my trip to Rochester, NY, I found something interesting in Pennsylvania: signs saying “Future I-99”. This is the highest number any major cross-country interstate highway can have. An I-100 would be a spur to an I-0, if one were to ever occur. It would connect Corning, NY with Williamsport, PA. Up to now US 15 connects these two places. The route once went through towns, winded around mountains, and was slow to traverse. In the last 20 years I have seen improvements radically change the road. Now interstate-like highways connect Williamsport with Covington. However they have a lot fo work to do before the road can be called I-99. There is a gas station that causes the interstate like highway to lower to 55mph. He would have to be put on a spur to the highway at an exit. There is a two-lane highway built around a dam in the 1970’s. Much of this seems too narrow so another high bridge would have to be built. But so far, they arfe ramming laines into the existing highway, and I heard that a rhubarb was caused in southern New York by the prospect of I-99 coming up through their area.

I-99 sounds sort of final. It reminds me of the year 1999, the last before the Third Millennium. Is I-99 the last of the major highways? Sure, more roads may be built, but will any be finished? I understand oil will run out by the end of the decade and the need for highways would become moot. I-99, the final highway. It sounds so final, like a highway to the end.

Baseball’s Third Strike

I am not interested much in sports. The only American football I like is that by my graduate school, Northwestern. I could give a darn about basketball, hockey, and especially auto racing. But baseball is something that I have been interested in since I was a child. I followed the Rochester Red Wings (St Louis Cardinals, then Baltimore Orioles farm team) regularly. I stopped my interest in professional baseball because my favorite teams did not win, but more importantly, because there were other things that interested me more.

Now I hear that baseball is about to have its third major walkout – when large numbers of games get cancelled. The winner of the 2002 World Series may be the same as the winner of 1994’s World Series. I do think some players and teams get far too much money, and the entire thing has become a game in which the fan is the loser. In any case, baseball has it all wrong – you don’t walk on a called third strike.

West Nile Hype

Terrorism, lying accountants, a lagging stock market. Now we have something else to worry about. West Nile Fever. This disease came to this country in 1999 and has been spreading. The media is bringing about all kinds of dire warnings about West Nile Fever – such as that there will be soon a thousand cases and that it will spread to all the states. But how much of a threat is this disease, really? I have heard from this very same media that 2 out of 3 people who pick up the virus show no symptoms. That means West Nile is a non-disease for the majority of us. The vast majority of the rest will suffer a flu-like illness. Only rarely will the dreaded encephalitis-type symptoms develop. If that’s the case, where are all the dire warnings about ordinary flu? That kills the same percentage of people. How about lightning, vehicle accidents, and falls? How about AIDS? These kill more than West Nile will ever kill, and yet we don’t hear media clangor about them. This whole thing about West Nile is a media creation. Be careful, of course, but don’t make radical changes in your lifestyle simply because of West Nile, for there is a far more serious syndrome going around – Mediahypitis.

Snakeheads

Now they are going to kill all the fish in our pond to get rid of a few evil snakeheads. They are going to drain the pond. Guess what? Ordinary fish will die because they don’t have anything to breathe. But snakeheads will simply walk to the next body of water – perhaps the Potomac. And are we about to destroy the entire world just to catch a few evil snakeheads such as Saddam?