Planet Utah

Tiger got the deal

My sister and her husband have a phrase they use to describe relationships. It's called "the deal," as in, "he got the deal" or "she got the deal."

In this context, "getting the deal" refers to snagging a partner who is more desirable than you are. So, in situations in which you look at a couple and say "what is he doing with her?" or (more frequently) "what is she doing with him?", you could also just say, "He/she got the deal in that relationship."

I thought of that when I heard this morning that Elin Woods was going to divorce Tiger. In particular, I thought of some comments from Mia Parnevik, who set up Tiger and Elin. Paraphrasing, she said something along these lines, right around the time they got engaged: "People consider this a fairy tale for Elin. But really, Tiger's the one who made out well here."

Looking at the way everything has played out, it's hard to disagree.

Footnote: All of this Tiger stuff had me thinking about the nature of sin. It's not uncommon to find people who reject the idea of sin--particularly as it relates to sex. They will say things along these lines: "Oh, all of that stuff was just invented by a bunch of uptight old men who were trying to control everybody's sexuality."

Uh, okay, maybe. But sometimes I think that the concept of sin really was divinely inspired. Think about it this way: Most sin is stuff that is enjoyable in the short run but makes you unhappy in the long run. It's "sinful," i.e., bad, not because it's enjoyable, but because that enjoyment is transitory...and because it interferes with lasting enjoyment, happiness, and contentment. So, defining certain behaviors as sinful is God's way of saying, "If you engage in these behaviors, you won't end up happy."

Case in point: Tiger Woods. If Tiger could rewind the clock, give up all of the sex with random cocktail waitresses, and get back his marriage, his privacy, his endorsements, the personal relationships he's ruined or jeopardized, and his unsullied reputation, don't you think he would?  

Anklenote: I doubt this line was original with the guy who said it, but a married friend of mine said this about Tiger, in all seriousness: "I can barely deal with one woman. How do you manage 15 of them?"

Evolutionary psychology and the double standard on age

Does that sound like the title of a journal article? Well, I've been reading evolutionary psychology again lately. Among other things, it's the study of how contemporary behaviors may have resulted from evolutionary adaptations during the hunter-gatherer phase of human development. The way we chose our partners then, and the way we learned to present ourselves to potential mates, may still govern our behavior today.

Consider, for example, the issue of age. In general (everything here is a generality; there are always exceptions), women are considered more sensitive about their age than men, and it is considered rude to ask a woman her age. Not so regarding men.

Why would this be? If getting older is bad or undesirable, then it should be equally so for men and women. But that's clearly not the way things work in our culture.

So, what's the deal? Evolutionary psychologists would say something along these lines: With women, age is strongly correlated with reproductive capacity. After a certain point, women simply become incapable of bearing children. At the same point, though, men are still capable of fathering children...and will be for three or four decades after that, too.

From an evolutionary perspective, our primary drive is to pass on our genes. From an evolutionary perspective, then, as women pass into their late-30s, age becomes a sensitive issue for them. If you choose a woman in this age range as a mate, she may not be able to bear children. That makes her a less attractive mate...if, that is, you know her age. So, she and her single sistren in their 30s (or older) begin to withhold that information. Over time, a norm develops under which it is considered rude to ask a woman about her age.

And now you know the origins of that norm...at least from the evolutionary psychology perspective.

Footnote: I wonder if the norm against asking how much money someone makes is the flip side of the age question. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, how much money a man makes--or, back in the day, how much mammoth blubber he brought home--represents his capacity to care for any offspring that might arise out of a union. Men with less money make less attractive mates: not because women are "gold diggers," but because they want to pass on their genes. Other things being equal, a man with more money will be better able to provide for the needs of his mate and their children. This raises the odds of having healthy offspring that go on to have children of their own.

Now, if you're a guy who doesn't have any money--or at least has less than your competition in the mate selection process--this works against you. So, when the question of money comes up, you either have to lie or insist that it's not an appropriate question. Over time, this may be how we developed the norm against asking about someone's income.

Anklenote: Yes, you say, but it's also considered rude to ask women about their income. In evolutionary terms, their resources shouldn't have mattered for mate selection (because men were expected to be the providers). So why would the norm apply to women, too?

My guess is that the norm was probably in place for tens of thousands of years before it was possible for women to be the primary resource providers for their family. For tens of thousands of years, then, there was no need for men to say, "It's impolite to ask a man about his earnings (or mammoth blubber haul)." Men were the only ones who had earnings, so there was no need to distinguish men from women. You could just say, "It's impolite to ask about earnings/mammoth blubber haul."

Could be, anyway.

What a black belt doesn't mean

I'm still studying Krav Maga. In May it will be a year. I still enjoy it, but my learning process has slowed a lot. When you know nothing, you learn a lot quickly. I had to learn a ton in order to pass my yellow belt test last September. The next belt, though, the orange belt, requires technical modifications to and expansions of everything I learned at the yellow belt level. So, it's more demanding. It's also harder to learn, which means that class is less enjoyable because it makes me feel like an ass. So, I don't go to the intermediate classes nearly as often as I went to the beginning classes. Long story short, it's going to take me much longer to earn my orange belt than it took me to earn my yellow belt.

Anyway, one thing I've learned in the course of my training thus far is that black belt does not mean what I thought it meant. Here's what I thought it meant: "You are a bad ass."

Not necessarily so, for a whole bunch of reasons.

First, while Krav Maga is organized around the concept of street fighting, many other disciplines are organized as sports. Learning to excel at a sport won't necessarily help you in a fight. Sports have rules designed to keep things safe and fair. Street fights do not. In a street fight, for example, a guy would be stupid not to take a free shot at your groin if he had one. In some karate dojos, on the other hand, a groin shot is considered dishonorable. So, you don't learn how to deliver one, and you don't learn how to defend against one. If you get in a street fight, that could be very problematic.

Second, even the disciplines (like Krav Maga) that are oriented toward training for a real fight can never simulate the conditions of an actual fight without people getting hurt. In a martial arts studio, things are very structured. There's no real surprise, no adrenaline pumping, plenty of "do-overs," and an endless supply of cooperative training partners who: a) don't want to hurt you; and b) want to help you practice whatever technique you're working on. In a street fight, though, you may catch a surprise fist to the nose before you even realize you're in a fight. Your adrenaline and crazy heart rate may keep you from performing techniques properly that you've done a thousand times in the studio. You may land a kick that always causes your cooperative training partner to double over, but that barely seems to faze your tough guy opponent. Your street opponent may try something on you that you've never seen in the dojo, and that you therefore have little idea how to defend.

All of this adds up to the following: if you pit a guy with no formal martial arts training but plenty of street scraps against a guy with a black belt but no actual altercations under his belt, the latter may very well get his butt kicked.

Third, no two black belts are exactly the same. Some disciplines grant them after almost no time at all, while others grant them only after a decade of study. Some black belt practitioners are highly skilled in their discipline, while others are not. (Think about a college grad from Harvard vs. one from a party school.) Knowing that someone has a black belt won't tell you much until/unless you know: a) what discipline he studied, and b) what he had to do to get his belt.

Fourth, some guys who fight in the street are good at things that martial arts may not be good at. Krav Maga, for example, is largely a stand-up, offensive discipline. But what if the guy who starts trouble with me manages to get me to the ground? Then I'm in trouble, particularly if he's on the large side.

Fifth, anybody can get knocked out. A good shot to the chin or the jaw or the temple can rattle your brain so much that it just shuts down. Even a guy who's never been in a fight before can throw a haymaker with a lot of force, and even a trained martial artist can have trouble blocking it. If that haymaker lands in the right spot, down goes the black belt.

Poor Grandma

This is the biggest baby I've ever seen! His nana looks like she's falling over backwards from the weight:

She might want to consider shaving those legs, too.

Yes, I'm still an award-winning blogger

Okay, maybe not award-winning, but I'm still a blogger. It's just that sometimes I get very busy with work, and sometimes after those busy periods I take a little vacation. Before you know it, a whole week has gone by without any posts.

Many things crossed my mind during the week of no posting.

First of all, John McCain is going to get slaughtered next month, but there are plenty of journalists and pundits writing some version of this story: "How McCain Can Still Win." From the perspective of a political scientist, this is silliness. We think that elections tend to be decided by the large tides of history (or at least the large tides of an election year): the state of the economy, partisan identification levels, approval ratings of the incumbent president's party, etc. Journalists and pundits tend to think that a particularly effective slogan, or ad, or debate performance, or persona ("McCain the fighter"), or a gaffe, or a bad interview, or a flat speech can swing the election one way or other.

This can get ridiculous. I once heard Mark Shields say that some politician or other lost a national election because, "People like to be asked for their vote, and he never asked for it." Yeah, that's why that guy lost... Anyway, the fundamentals that will decide this election were in place months ago, and those fundamentals always dictated that it would be a very tough year for John McCain.

(Of course, if McCain ends up winning, I'll point to his reference to Barack Obama as "that one" during debate number two as the moment that swung the whole thing in his favor.)

I've been reflecting further, too, on the whole mortgage debacle. It makes me wonder if there's a dissertation to be written about situations that our political system simply is not designed to handle. And I've been wondering if perhaps those situations only get "handled," therefore, through some kind of serious crisis or rupture.

In the case of the subprime mess, all of the political incentives pointed in the same direction: low interest rates, easy money, relaxed underwriting standards. Anybody who tried to swim against this current was a Scrooge, a party pooper, a Chicken Little, even a racist (because they wanted to deny home ownership to poor minorities). So, the political system let the crisis boil over, and it didn't get "solved" until the outside world intruded on politics and forced a solution. One can imagine the same thing happening with our budget deficit (e.g., people stop buying our debt), or with entitlement program solvency (e.g., tens of thousands of employers threaten to relocate abroad if the government raises payroll taxes in an amount sufficient to make up the Social Security/Medicare shortfall). Thinking historically, perhaps one can apply this model (if it is that) to the Civil War and the civil rights movement and urban riots as well. There are times when politicians simply can't or won't solve a problem that the country needs to have solved. So, the country enforces a solution in its own way.

Lehigh, you out there? This could be your dissertation...

Now, let's talk stocks. I did a little research and found that the current market correction is about as large as your standard correction gets. If it gets much worse, we're looking at a whole new economic world...one in which all bets are off. What does this mean for you? It means you should be buying a mutual fund indexed to the Dow or to the S&P 500. (Or both! Have fun with it!) Unless our economic future turns out to be very much different from our economic past, you'll make a fair amount of money in a fairly short amount of time. (This, by the way, is one significant respect in which "playing the market" is different from gambling in Vegas. In Vegas, you know that over the long run, the house always wins. When you play the market, however--and when I say "play the market," I really mean buying broad-based mutual funds and holding them for a while--you know that over the long run, you always win.)

Now, I'm sure you're asking why you should take my advice. I mean, if it's good advice, why aren't the really super-smart people giving it and following it, and why, then, isn't the market going through the roof? Because times like these are when people tend to be most afraid to invest--who wants to put money in an investment that's lost a third of its value in recent months?--even though the same factors that make you afraid to invest are the factors that make it likely you'll be getting a bargain. It's kind of like buying a house...NOW is the smart time to buy, but everyone seems to want to buy when prices are headed toward a new record.

And finally, back to the presidential election, I really like John McCain's health care plan...much to my surprise. (Didn't think I'd find any of his ideas interesting or innovative.) In fact, I think some version of it is probably the wave of the future. But I worry that if Barack Obama becomes president, some version of his system will be established, and then we'll never get to the McCain system. Then again, health care could be one of those issues of the sort I was describing above...the political system simply proves incapable of addressing it, so the issue finds a way to insist on its own solution (e.g., some massive, hugely expensive public health crisis that could have been avoided with simple, cheap preventive care for the currently uninsured).

When will California have a governor of color (and other random thoughts)?

1. Was just reading this George Will article on a possible Jerry Brown candidacy for governor of California. So, my brain started free-associating: Brown, brown, white... Some day in the not-too-distant future, the country's largest state is going to have an Hispanic, or Asian, or black governor. I think that will be a good thing, just as I think Barack Obama's candidacy is a good thing. An Obama presidency, on the other hand...not such a good thing. But a conservative black president? A VERY good thing. Too bad there are so few conservative black politicians. (Intra-post footnote: the reference to "governor of color" in the headline is something of an inside joke. In graduate school one of the student groups called itself Political Scientists of Color, or PSOC. I have always found "of color" to be a terribly infelicitous phrase.)
   
2. You are no doubt rejoicing over the news that Clay Aiken has become a father. (And yet, I can't even get a date. Who set up this crazy system?) Somehow, though, I don't think Dr. Laura would approve of the parenting arrangements. The biological mother is Aiken's 50-ish producer. They're not dating or anything...she just donated her uterus. And here's another heart-warming detail: "Although theirs is not a romantic relationship, the duo plan to raise the baby together." 
3. Just wondering if Kwame Kilpatrick, Detroit's mayor--who is facing perjury and obstruction of justice charges, PLUS brand new felony charges for assaulting a cop trying to deliver a subpoena in the perjury/obstruction case, and who is in jail for violating the terms of his pre-trial release in that same case, and who, if released from jail will have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet--might consider resigning for the good of the city. Probably not.
4. Austin bucket list update: motorcycle class this weekend (classroom session tonight, riding sessions on Saturday and Sunday); learning the Dvorak typing method during the remainder of August and early September; more handgun classes (and possible handgun purchase) in mid-September; testing for first Krav Maga belt (yellow) in late September. Time permitting, I will also make and drink my first-ever Bombay Sapphire martini tonight after class. Not a big deal, really, but I'm strangely excited about it after hearing Jim Rome go on and on about the drink on his radio show today.
   

Ever wonder what goes on inside a conservative think tank?

Me either. But this guy pulls back the curtain anyway.

Footnote: I don't know anything about his jib, but I have a feeling I'd like the cut of it.

I've found my next laptop

Unfortunately, it's not going to be ready until 2020. But it's going to be COOL.

Injectable medications on a plane

No, it's not a sequel to "Snakes on a Plane." If only! Can you imagine? "I have had it with these m*********ing injectable medications on this m*********ing plane!"

Actually, it's another puzzling observation on airport security. Yesterday, I went through security with four syringes filled with injectable meds. The syringes were in a quart-sized bag with a cold gel pack. The gel pack itself held much, much more than three ounces of gel. The syringes could have been filled with some ingredient that could incapacitate or kill the flight crew and pilots.

So, what did the TSA folks say as my meds passed through the scanner? Not a word.

What the hell is going on with Phoenix weather?

Yahoo weather says that the high tomorrow is going to be 107. Then on Wednesday, it's going to be 95. Then on Thursday it's going to be 75. At this rate you'll be entering a new ice age some time late Sunday.