The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their heads.

Maybe it is because I don’t fully grasp mathematics. Or maybe it is that I don’t often play the Texas lottery. But I caught the end of a news story that I don’t fully grasp.

The story reported that there might be a problem with the Texas Lottery game called Mega Millions. In this game, the number 1, 3, or 4 is randomly chosen as the “Megaplier.” If the winner of the lottery game also picked the correct megaplier, then the winnings are multiplied that many times.

The potential problem is that the number 2 has not appeared in the last 52 drawings.

I’m sure there is some statistical reasoning that explains why this should not be and why it worries the mathematical sort of folk. This is beyond me. My understanding is that each number has about a 33% chance of being chosen. I believe I have read that over a period of time, it is expected that there would be a similar distribution for each number. But if over a period of time, only the number 4 appears, isn’t that still random?

An excerpt from the play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” by Tom Stoppard ó

After flipping coins seventy-six times and every one turning up heads, always in Rosencrantz’s favor, the following conversation begins:

Rosencrantz: Seventy-six-love.
Guildenstern: A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of probability. (He slips a coin over his shoulder as he moves up stage.)
Rosencrantz: Heads.
Guildenstern (musing): The law of probability, it has been oddly asserted is something to do with the proposition that if six monkeys (he surprised himself)… if six monkeys were …
Rosencrantz: Game?
Guildenstern: Were they?
Rosencrantz: Are you?
Guildenstern (understanding): Game. (flips a coin.) The law of averages, if I have got this right, means that if six monkeys were thrown up in the air for long enough they would land on their tails about as often as they would land on their ó
Rosencrantz: Heads.

‘There is no twilight in our New Zealand days, but a curious half-hour when everything appears grotesque — it frightens — as though the savage spirit of the country walked abroad and sneered at what it saw.’ — Katherine Mansfield’s “The Woman at the Store”

Tonight I went to Selected Shorts on Tour at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas.

Selected Shorts, usually recorded at Symphony Space in New York City, is a public radio program in which an actor reads a short story in front of a live audience. The program often goes on tour to help support public radio stations in a number of cities across the country. This was the 14th year for Selected Short on Tour to come to Austin.

I very much enjoyed the three stories that were read tonight. The stories were “It Had Wings” by Allan Gurganus read by Barbara Barrie*, “The Kugelmass Episode” by Woody Allen read by Isaiah Sheffer, and “The Woman at the Store” by Katherine Mansfield read by Thomas Gibson.

The first was humorous and a bit inspiring. The second was very humorous as most Woody Allen stories are. The third work was quite disturbing but wonderful. All were incredible short stories.

As I listened to the reading of the three stories tonight, a couple of somewhat sarcastic observations crossed through my mind.

1. “If audiobooks were performed live, this is what it would look like.”

2. “This is what people did before the invention of the iPod and audible.com.”

3. “I zoned out there for a second. There is no rewind button on this thing.”

*As a side note, Barbara Barrie is a graduate of my alma mater, The University of Texas at Austin, as well as a graduate of Southwestern University, the college in my hometown of Georgetown, Texas.

An assortment of links from my personal blog reading today.

Curt loves his wife and explains why.

It’s an interesting distinction to realize that one — the one being me — has four degrees of separation to the current Spam singles commmercial. See my friend Amy’s site for details.

Fred of Fragments from Floyd writes about color and Crayolas.

Susan Adcock aka Pitcherlady provides an assortment of “helpful” Spanish phrases such as “¿Dondé puedo comprar cartuchos?” (Where can I buy ammunition?) and as always, great photographs.

Some Star Wars fans are more fanatical than others as exhibited at Heather Powazek’s site.

Doug McHone of CoffeeSwirls discusses the intricate nature of workplace harassment and how to more efficiently get away with it. :-) And his co-worker cries for “the penguins to stop chasing him.”

Jeff of Peachwater Photography took an awesome photograph of train tracks in the small Texas town of Taylor, Texas. Is it wrong to plug your own photoblog??

This has been stuck in my head for the last thirty minutes…

We like the cars, the cars that go BOOM! / We’re Tiegra and Bunny and we like the BOOM! / We like the cars, the cars that go BOOM! / We’re Tiegra and Bunny and we like the BOOM!

umm… what recess of my brain has that been stuck in?? And why?!

UPDATE: In case you missed the very late 80s/early 90s sensations embodied in L’Trimm and J.J. Fad… there’s a clip of the music at the end of this Youth Radio report. Click on “Listen to this Commentary.” It’s at the very end around 2:08.

Or check out Amazon.com… Cars With The Boom.

Oh, and who can forget J.J. Fad’s Supersonic?? Now where did I put my Kris Kross album…

Jump Jump / The Mac Dad will make you Jump Jump / The Daddy Mac will make you Jump Jump / Kris Kross will make you Jump Jump / uh huh uh huh

I was struck tonight by the words in the poem “Job” by William Baer.

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being likeminded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to deathñeven death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Philippians 2:1-11

My DSL Internet connection has been down for most of the night. I have had to fall back on regular old dial-up. The horror of it all!

When I couldn’t get online earlier this evening, I ran through every combination of things that could possibly be wrong between my modem, wireless router, and computer. No luck. I bypassed the router and tried a direct connection through the modem. No luck. This is one of the many things that I do at work. Troubleshooting the network in my department. I couldn’t get things to work but generally confirmed it wasn’t a problem on my end. So I broke down and called technical support.

At this hour (it was 9 p.m.), I get to speak with a nice Indian technician named “John.” I’m not convinced that was his real name. He started just about every sentence with “And would you now please kindly…” Very helpful guy, but I’m always a little concerned about the accents. He has an accent, and I’m from Texas. So do I.

I could understand his accent well enough. He seemed to be doing perfectly well with mine. But we hit a slight snag in communication as we started.

He asked for my full name. I told him my full name. Check.

Then my phone number. Check.

Then he asked, “How would you like to be called?”

Long pause from my end. I thought “by phone” seemed to be a viable option. But, as I thought about it more, it seemed to be a less than plausible choice since we were already on the phone.

In my confusion, I asked what I thought was a logical question at the time. I asked. “When?”

Long pause on his end.

He said, “While we are talking about your issue. How is it that you would you like to be called?”

Again, I thought “by phone” and again dismissed that as a poor answer.

I said, “I don’t think I understand.”

He spoke slowly in a patient voice as if he were speaking to a customer who did not fully grasp English, “How… would… you… like… me… to… call… you?”

Somehow that actually helped. I don’t know the how or why of it, but it helped. I finally realized that he might be asking “What name should he call me by?”

I ventured an answer: “Jeff?”

He said, “Very good, Jeff” in an approving tone. I know that tone. It is the same tone used by every math teacher I ever had when I finally ventured the correct answer to some horrible word problem.

I would say, “The train from Chicago would be going 40 miles per hour??”

And hear, “Very good, Jeff.”

John and I continued through the troubleshooting process and were able to determine that everything on my end appeared to be in working order. I could have told him that to start with. The line itself was showing an error.

According to his system report, the DSL technicians in my area were currently conducting “System Enhancements” to the network.

I’m going to translate that from DSL-marketing-speak into Texan as “Some dang sumthin’ broke and we’re fixin’ it as dang fast as we dang can. Now stop dang calling us. Dang.”

I’ll be on dang dial-up until they fix this dang DSL. Dang.

As a matter of disclosure, I should let any and all friends know that I’ve had a small, and until now completely secret, recording device implanted into the tip of my left-hand index finger. If you find that I am pointing at you, speak slowly and clearly into the finger. I am recording both for posterity and for any future book sales which I may need to bolster.

Read more about Doug Wead and the Bush Tapes. I think that’s a local band playing in the upcoming SXSW Festival.

Isn’t taping someone without their knowledge generally illegal in most places? And isn’t it generally considered a bit rude to secretly tape people?

From one report, I read that it is legal to tape a phone conversation in Texas as long as one party is aware of it. I live in Texas. I’m not a lawyer. I’ve never heard of this. I grew up here believing that it was illegal. I’ve missed out on taping a lot of phone calls.

Remember, speak slowly into the finger.

MCF, one of Curt’s Geek Friendsô, made an open invitation last week to his Blog Party — the basic idea is that a number of neighboring blogs will write about the same topic on a chosen day. Here’s the original invitation. (Check out MCF’s site on Tuesday for a complete list of everyone who came to the party.)

MCF chose today — Monday — as the day to post about the Blog Party topic of “Your Top Five Villains of All Time, from Comics to Cartoons to Television to Film.”

So since it is Monday and I do love a good party… my Top Five Villians of All Time hail from the hellish depths of children’s television: 1. Tinky-Winky, 2. Dipsy, 3. Laa-Laa, 4. Po, and of course, 5. Barney!

I’m not going to go into the reasons why I loathe the Teletubbies and the hideous giant purple dinosaur so much. Well, OK… I’ll go into a few… I dislike the two programs for completely different reasons. Teletubbies will eat your brain and fill it with sugar. It is waaaayyy too sweet. That pinwheel is some kind of mind control device. And there are too many rabbits running free around whatever land they live in. If they would simply cage a few of the rabbits, there wouldn’t be so many rabbits! And some people are scared of clowns. Well, I’m a bit freaked out by giant costumed characters that talk like 3-year-olds. Big Bird is a 3-year-old, yet he can hold a decent conversation with verbs used in their correct tense and conjugation! Oh, and then there’s Barney… oh look at the time… I digress. Maybe it’s that I’m simply not in the 8-9 month old demographic for Teletubbies and the acid-dropping pill-popping freak demographic for Barney’s show. Dunno.

I grew up watching shows such as Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Mister Rogers. And I have to throw in the always entertaining but maybe not as educational Muppets.

A big thank you to the Children’s Television Workshop, Fred Rogers, and Jim Henson for teaching me a bit about life, numbers, and how to distinguish between near and far… near…. far…. near…. far…. near….

So to sum up: Grover = Good. Super Grover = Awesome! Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, Po, and Barney = Greatest Villianous Children’s Television Characters of All Time according to Jeff.

As a proud owner of a Macintosh computer, I just find this utterly amusing: Douglas Adams on Microsoft.