Blog of Billy

This semester is just ridiculously busy. Too much work. Too much school. Just enough tutoring. Not enough debate, or Denny's, or time for gallivanting. That's why I'm not going to Georgia State's tournament, but I am likely going to Missouri State that next weekend. I feel even worse for my brethren in law school, or on their way such.

When I was but a child, I had a relatively fear-free time of growing up. Bathtub drains were nothing. Heights: tree houses, roofs, etc. were actually inviting. The only things that really registered on the list of things I should be afraid of were wasps (a phobia inherited from my mother that I still hold) and automatic car washes. Yes, every time my folks would start to drive the 1981 Chevy Citation through the gauntlet of boiling chemicals and spinning brushes of doom descending on my tiny form, I would duck down behind the center console, and cover my head and eyes. Little garages behind the Texaco with such inviting names as "Sudsy Fresh" and "Kwik Kleen" were the cause for a double take every time we'd drive through. One would think that after 20 years or so of growing older, and more comfortable with modern technology that the quiver in my pulse would have abated. Sadly not so. Though I've been washing my car by hand pretty much since I've had one, I happened to be in a position where a late-night bird-poop removal was in order. Denise, in her perfectly normal wisdom, decided to take her shiny new car though the local "Blitz Foam" in Norman. I was pretty sure by this point that I had gotten over my child(hood|ish) qualms. Suddenly, though, the composite rubber-nylon-iron-rust brushes spinning at Mach 2.2 started slapping arhythmically against the oh-so-thin windows, and all I could think about was how mere human flesh could not possibly withstand such a whipping. But millimeters farther and I'd be rent to shreds. My blood pressure climbed like a meth-addled Sherpa, and my breathing came low and shakily. For what seemed like hours I stared into the jaws of the beast, and it tasted my fear, and thrived upon it. Only Neisy's frugal sense and disdain for undercarriage wash and extra wax cycle got us out of there before I could lunge from the cabin and go screaming into the night. Suffice it to say that the next time there needs to be a meeting of water and steel, it will come from the end of a nice, safe garden hose. Perhaps I can even make a business of it.

On Tuesday evening, during a tutoring session in the Maths, I came across a bit of a puzzler, in the form of a probability statement. It seems that if you draw a series of one-toothpick-length separated parallel lines down a piece of paper, then throw a bunch of toothpicks in the air above said paper, the number of toothpicks that land touching a line is exactly 2/pi. This little proportion looked strangely exciting to me, and as this was an elementary text, it did not indicate why the number was thus. After two days of occasional figuring in between pretending to listen to my Stat professor lecture, I had the right integral set up. Turns out that the problem was originally posed in 1733, and only solved 44 years later. That upped my ego pretty well.

Also, the Monte Hall problem, explained as a rousing game of "Donkey, Donkey, Treasure" at IHOP on consecutive nights makes me wonder if teaching math might be a plausible fallback career, if this whole "computers" thing ends up being a dead-end industry.

There's a flame, there's a spark,
But she beat my high score.
So say goodbye, there's the door.