What are the Odds?

What are the odds of having your house hit by a meteorite? Obviously it depends on the size of your house and the elevation and probably a whole bunch of other factors, including the length of time we're talking about. Suppose the odds are 1 in a 1000 over your lifetime. Personally I think this is probably too high, but maybe not.

What, then, are the odds that you would be hit six times? that would be 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 in a quintillion. What are the odds of having one person in the world so afflicted by meteorites? With a total world population of 7 billion this turns out to still be approximately 7 in 1,000,000,000. Having something like this happen at random seems very, very unlikely to put things mildly.

Radivoje Lajic, who lives in Bosnia, has just had a sixth meteorite strike on his house. He claims that these are not random occurrences, but rather the work of aliens who are targeting him. Given the odds above, perhaps he is correct. At least it seems unlikely this is random. The aliens bit does not necessarily follow logically, but it is consistent with non-random meteor bombardment.

Lajic has put his money where his mouth is. He "has had a steel girder reinforced roof put on the house to protect it from the alien bombardment - which he funded by selling one of the meteorites to a university in the Netherlands."

For the sake of science, I think Lajic should move into a new house and see what happens. If the new house gets hit, then the aliens are after him. If the old one gets hit, then maybe they are showing displeasure with its architecture or something. If neither gets hit...? Seems unlikely, doesn't it?

What I'm Reading

Recently Finished
Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon ***** - SciFi/Fantasy
The Course of Empire by Eric Flint & K. D. Wentworth **** - SciFi/Fantasy
The Poker Bride by Christopher Corbett *** - History
Escape from Hell by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle *** - SciFi/Fantasy
Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle ***** - SciFi/Fantasy
The Egyptians by Cyril Aldred *** - History
more detailed reviews later if I have the time

Reading Now
Dracula by Bram Stoker - Fantasy/Horror
Ancient Peoples of the Great Basin & Colorado Plateau by Steven R. Simms - History/Anthropology

In the Queue
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly - Horror/Fantasy
Bunch of stuff by H. P. Lovecraft - Horror/Fantasy
Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations by Paul Blustein- Current Events

A Classic of Rock Video

From the German version of the Disney Channel

Compare it to the original version here.

Political Culture is ....

The best description I have heard of partisan politics (broadly defined) today -

"This whole “debate,” if we can charitably call it that, is a mess of straw men, hypocrisy, stupidity, and reflexive defenses of one’s own tribe. It has nothing to do with fairness, journalistic ethics, or the immorality of dragging the reputations of innocents through the mud in an attempt at scoring political points."

From Michael C. Moynihan's article in Reason.


Peggy Noonan had a great op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on the Shirley Sherrod mess that is well worth reading.

The whole episode was ugly and tragic, but if people will listen to Sherrod's message, maybe it wasn't a total loss.

The Marshmallow Test

Sit a child in a room with a marshmallow. Tell the child they can either eat it or wait and get another one. Leave and film them. This is what you get. Very entertaining, in large part because we can all relate to the torment the child is going through.

The New Yorker has an article on these tests discussing how success at delaying gratification as a child is a good predictor of success later in life.

Hat tip to Marginal Revolution via Arbesman.net.

What's Wrong with This Screen Capture?

This page links to an article about a Vietnamese mail order bride who was killed by her Korean husband a week after she arrived in the country.


What is wrong with the page? It's the ads, stupid!

A Weekend Trip to Nanjing

I just got back (to Seoul where I am now) after spending a weekend (Thursday evening through Sunday morning) in Nanjing. I taught and the whole family lived there during the 2000-01 academic year. We arrived there at the end of August 2000, so it's been almost 10 years.

I traveled there with Ed Monsour, one of the two people I went to Mongolia with last summer. Tom Doherty, the other traveler was planning on coming, but his visa didn't work out (More on that below).

Some quick thoughts on Nanjing now versus Nanjing when I was there. First, the city is much more modern and feels a lot bigger. There is an 89-story building on the north side of the Gulou traffic circle, for example (information here). The city has a lot more car traffic and a lot less bicycle traffic; and much of the bike traffic is now motor scooters, which were rare when we were there. The city is also brighter. More storefronts with neon or lighted signs. And a lot more small storefronts than I remember from before. Though, this could be because we were staying in a different part of town.

Neon Canyon in May

BYU lets out in April and I am done teaching for the academic year. My son, Evan, and I are off to the canyons of the Escalante again. The Alpine School District is still in session until the end of May, so this outing will not involve my younger kids.

Rather than head back to lower Coyote Gulch (for the 4th time since last April), we are planning on visiting Neon Canyon and the slot canyons in the upper part of Coyote Gulch.

We will be heading out on a Thursday early in the morning and the plan is to make it to the trailhead at Egypt and hike the 3 to 4 miles down to the Escalante River to camp near Neon Canyon. We'll explore it the next day, along with Ringtail Slot and then hike back to the truck. The hike is detailed nicely here. Details of some possible technical canyoneering (which we will not be doing) are available here and here.

We'll car camp somewhere along the Hole-in-the-Rock road on Friday night and head to the Dry Fork of Coyote Gulch to visit the slot canyons there. There are four to visit, Dry Fork, Peek-a-boo, Spooky Gulch, and Brimstone Gulch. Further downstream from Brimstone there is also some rock art, which we may visit if we have time.

Off to Muddy Creek!

Spring is here, sort of. So I am off hiking and camping for the first time this season (not counting my cold, cold escapade with the scouts last weekend which lasted much less than 24 hours).

The week after Easter is spring break for the Alpine School District, so I am taking my kids (all 4 I believe) to Muddy Creek down in the southern part of the San Rafael Swell. Since BYU does not have a spring break, the plan is to leave on Thursday afternoon once my teaching is done for the week. We'll drive down to the airfield near the Hidden Splendor Mine and camp there on Thursday night. On Friday we will all drive to Tomsich Butte and hike down Muddy Creek through "the Chute" 15 miles or so back to our campsite. There is a nice description of this hike here.

Saturday will entail a hike downstream from the campsite through the San Rafael Reef via Muddy Creek Gorge and then back upstream. This hike is detailed here and here.

So far I have my four children, a colleague from work and his son, one BYU student, a neice, my older daughter's boyfriend, my younger daughter's school friend, and four young men from the ward who have said they're coming along. It should be a fun outing.

Living Standards, Labor, and Productivity

This blog post by Donnald Marron is an interesting read for anyone interested in differences in standards of living.

"The productivity comparisons are striking: China, Indonesia, and India are 90% less productive than the 15 richest OECD countries. That’s an enormous gap."

Living Standards, Labor, and Productivity

Bank worker finds face of Jesus in his frying pan

It's been a long time since I posted anything here. I'm not sure why this is the first thing I post after such a long break.

"Toby, 22, is adamant this image genuinely appeared after he burnt a pancake. He was making dinner on Shrove Tuesday with his flatmate at their Salford apartment, and accidentally left the pan on the hob at bedtime."

"Toby woke in the middle of the night to find the leftovers smoking, and threw the pan into a sink full of cold water."

"When it came to doing the washing up a day later, he said the face of Jesus had been burned on."

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1193271_bank_worker_finds_face_of_jesus_in_his_frying_pan