Monday Augmentation

Despite the fact that our current home phone number has either been unlisted and unpublished or serviced by a company that does not publish a directory people can, apparently, find the number on the Internet. One such person recently called with what I suspect are innocent motives. Anyway, here is part of an email I sent to him (yes, I gave him my email address—I am reminded of Shakespeare’s line, “He who steals my purse steals trash.”)…

I am not really mad at you, but mad at the world that allows an allegedly unlisted, unpublished number to be found on the Internet. However, I realize that privacy is basically an invention of modern times as for most of history humans have lived in small bands/small villages where privacy didn’t and couldn’t exist.

As you have mentioned, the fact that the 1969-71 Orioles only won one World Series is the reason they are only remembered today, if at all, as the final victim in the 1969 “Miracle Mets” season. Too many people fail to realize that the events that happen are not the only ones that could have happened. I’m a little rusty on my binomial probability distribution math, but if we knew for certain that Team A would defeat Team B 55% of the time if they played a million games against each other, Team B still has a 40%+ chance of winning a best-of-7 series. Sports, just like life, are really just Monte Carlo simulations.

Athletes propagate the myth that their success, especially in important situations, is a matter of character and will as opposed to a matter of luck and skill.

Any thoughts?