Getting scientific on Deflategate!

The Patriots have been accused of intentionally under-inflating footballs in the AFC Championship game. Turns out there's a whole process of each team providing 12 game balls, 2 hours and 15 minutes before game time, which have to be between 12.5 and 13.5psi, and 14 and 15oz. Bla bla bla.

In the course of the game, an interception lead to the Colts sideline becoming suspicious of a ball and reporting that it didn't feel right. The ball was apparently measured at 2psi under the legal limit. Upon further investigation, 11 of the 12 Patriots' balls measured under the limit. The Patriots cheat! ... or do they?

While it's entirely possible that this was deliberate, there are many pieces of data missing that could completely alter the landscape. As background, the balls are inflated pre-game at room temperature. Tom Brady prefers the lower end of the legal limit so the Patriots' balls start 12.5psi. The game was played around freezing conditions. Pressure drops in enclosed volumes as temperature drops. So:

1. Does anyone ever audit ball pressure after a game?
Referees handle the balls every play, yet none of them found the balls suspicious. Maybe a drop of 1-2psi feels normal enough to them. Maybe this happens all the time, but no one has ever bothered calling for a verification.

2. Did anyone check the Colts' balls, and what was the change in their pressures?
Without this data point, we can't establish what the expected change is over the course of the game, for example due to "typical air loss" that may occur or as a result of the particular temperature changes that day. I have no idea how hard it is to make a football leak, but it can't be impossible. There are some pretty impressive collisions out there, and the ball gets in the middle of some of them.

3. Did any air escape as a result of measuring pressure?
Not sure what devices they're using, but every time I measure the pressure of something I cause some air to escape. In other words, measuring the pressure affects measurement. Downwards.

4. Were the reported measurements taken under the original inflation conditions?
If not, the pressure should be different. We'll get into some math later, but dropping from room temp to freezing is just about enough to cause a 2psi drop. If the measurements were taken right after game while the balls were still cold, they'd be invalid for comparison.

5. If the pressures were measured in freezing conditions, what should they be?
This is also interesting because it asks if the ball would be in an underinflated state and therefore someone might reasonably notice it. To answer this we'll turn to some gas laws and assumptions.
1. PV=nRT (we'll assume ideal gas and that footballs don't lose appreciable volume)
2. Initial pressure = 12.5psi
3. Atmospheric pressure = 14.7psi
4. Temperature at inflation ~= 20C...

To say that a ball is at 12.5psi means that it's at 12.5psi above atmospheric pressure (when completely "flat" or "0 psi", there's the same density/pressure of air inside as outside - we're measuring the net pressure). Thus, the actual pressure inside is about 27.2psi. Once outside for many hours in approximately 0C temperatures, we'd expect that the temperature of the ball and its contained gas has also fallen to 0C. Per ideal gas law [1] and the assumption that the volume of the football doesn't really change, the resulting pressure should be about 27.2psi * 273K / 293K = 25.3psi, which is a drop of about 1.9psi. Since the atmospheric pressure wouldn't change nearly as much, the measured loss of pressure of the football would be "approximately 2psi", which is exactly what sources are reporting.

While the last point is starting make its rounds on the internet, it's just one data point that needs to be collected. I've heard almost no mention of the other 4 points thus far (outside of the occasional forum comment); I'm curious what the details of the investigation will show. Of course if science is involved, everyone will ignore it and scream conspiracy or whatever.

Does the NFL need a science advisor?

White, now black, ... who's next?

It took the United States 224 years to elect a president who isn't white. On top of that, every president has also been a man, and every president has (at least claimed to have) been of some Christian denomination. So now that we've broken through one of these barriers, which of the remaining two is next?

I don't think there's a debate here that we'll see a woman before a non-Christian president. We've seen serious female challengers near the presidency (Hillary Clinton was almost the Democratic nominee in 2008), but I don't think we've seen a remotely serious non-Christian challenger yet. For these purposes, I'm including Mormonism as Christian (they do self-identify as such, even if mainstream Christians don't always agree with the classification). So let's take it as a base assumption that the next barrier to fall will be woman president.

That would make non-Christian the obvious last barrier. However, that's not very interesting. What other groups should we attempt to sort? I propose the following:
1. Latino descent
2. Asian descent
3. Gay
4. Jewish
5. Non-Jewish non-Christian religious
6. Non-religious
I'm breaking out Jewish as a special case of non-Christian because I think general society is far more accepting of them than of other religions. This can be somewhat evidenced by Jewish being the largest non-Christian segment of the Senate (9 of 100). We can, with slightly fuzzy boundaries, classify every other Senator but one as Christian (even the 2 "non-affiliated" have Christian associations). Oh, and there's a Buddhist.

So how do we evaluate what order the above will happen in? Since these are elected officials, we can lean on current demographics in Congress for "acceptability" trends. The more a particular demographic is able to win a given state, the more they have a chance to carry the nation. The only two groups with meaningful minority representation are Jewish and Latino, so they're likely the next two. Since the Latin vote is so much larger (and growing faster) than the Jewish, I suspect Latino would edge out here. Since the representation of the other 4 groups can be described as 'trace' at best, we can't use this same approach to predict the future.

I think Asian is the likely next group simply because Americans don't find them foreign or threatening; they can accept that they have similar goals and motivations.

Of the remaining groups, we have to project when the general population will become comfortable with them as "just like the rest of us". What are the major impediments and trends:

Gay - many states (typically blue ones) are already largely comfortable here. Conversely, many are probably deeply not, most likely on the traditional family values agenda. Hollywood and social media have certainly been championing the cause, Supreme Court rulings have been in their favor and even Christian institutions have started to shift their viewpoints.

Other religion - I don't have a good sense of how Christians relate to other religions. However, my gut feeling is that they prefer others "of faith". Unless they are Muslim.

Non-religious - The loudest complaint I hear from the religious far right is our secular attack against them, how we're losing our morals and killing babies and whatever. Atheists don't believe in anything, it seems? I don't really know.

After waving my hands, I think gay will be the next of the 3. I also think atheist is the most foreign and most challenging to Christians, and thus would be last. It's also interesting to ponder when, realistically, each category might have a chance. I think in another 1-2 generations, being gay will be a non-issue for the vast majority of voters, thus around 2050 there will be a solid chance.

Waving my hands some more, I think it's 50/50 we'll see an openly non-religious president this century.

Gravity

This article, claiming that gravity will essentially be removed for 5 minutes, has been making its rounds on the internet. Masquerading as a NASA tweet, it claims that due to the alignment of Pluto and Jupiter with respect to the Earth, you will be left "weightless", in other words, there will be no net gravity. The article goes on to describe that all the planets will be on the same side of the sun in approximately a quarter of the solar system pie and then explains that jumping in this time window will leave you in the air for 3 seconds instead of the usual 0.2.

Of course, it's all a hoax. But you don't know anything about planets and gravity, how could you have known?

Using the basics of core physics, we can debunk this without even doing math. Gravitational pull is proportional to the mass of the object doing the pulling, and inversely proportional to distance squared, or just distance is good enough here. In other words: bigger = more gravity. Farther = less gravity. This is intuitively understood by many** people, I think. Also, gravitational pull is always towards the object in question. So we should be able to conclude at least the following:

1. Jupiter is bigger than Pluto.
2. Jupiter is larger than Pluto.
   Therefore Jupiter's gravity on us is bigger than Pluto's.
3. The Sun in bigger than all of the above.
4. The Sun is closer than Jupiter.
    Therefore the Sun's gravity is even bigger on us than Jupiter's.
5. We don't notice any difference in our weight at night (away from the Sun, when both the Earth and Sun pull us in the same direction)
    Therefore the Sun's gravity on us is much smaller than Earth's.
6. Jupiter-Sun-Earth are aligned at least once a year (assuming Jupiter's orbit isn't ~1 year), and we still don't notice any difference between day and night.
    Therefore the Sun+Jupiter's gravity is also inconsequential compared to the Earth's.

Put it all together and there's just no way Pluto can make a difference. It's like wondering if a flea might help the slaves move the granite blocks of the pyramids: technically, yes. But not really.

** - or not.


If reasoning through inequalities isn't your thing, you could also wonder "why 5 minutes"? Understanding that Earth-Jupiter-Pluto come into alignment gradually and then gradually fall out should imply that the effect will increase slowly, peak, then decrease. Considering just how far Jupiter and Pluto are, the alignment would, in practical terms, last much more than 5 minutes.

Speaking of alignment, there's no comment about who would feel weightless. If in fact the claim were true, it'd be true for those lucky people on the side of the Earth towards Jupiter and Pluto. The unlucky people on the other side would feel double gravity since instead of canceling, the Earth's would add to the aligned gravity. Ouch!

Speaking of news coverage, imagine if for 5 minutes people in one area would basically float, and in another area would double in weight (and not just people, all structures too). This would be an amazing hazard to the world, and we'd be talking about nothing but prepping for it.

On the weightless side, cars hitting a bump would go flying. Or even simpler: they wouldn't be able to accelerate much. Or stop. That entire side of the world would become a wreck. But forget cars. The lack of gravity would cause pressure to cause rapid decompression of the atmosphere and we'd probably all suffocate or at least be swept into high altitudes by the resultant updrafts. Meanwhile on the other side, buildings would collapse, people would barely be able to crawl out of them as it's happening and exhaling would become quite difficult due to the double-weight of the atmosphere. And then 5 minutes later it would all revert and the weightless side would return to normal, including all the untethered people (and items) crashing back to the surface.

In other words, there are multiple ways to conclude this sounds fishy and more investigation is needed. A search for NASA's tweet would show no results because it never existed. A basic search would lead to debunking articles. Even with incomplete information and understanding, we know enough about the world around us to do a little evaluation.

Just a dude on the internet

Guy's been annoyed with bugs on his Android phone.
Guy notices phone is burning through battery with no clear explanation why.
Guy writes about it on his personal blog.
Story gets picked up by bgr.com.
Story shows up on the front page of yahoo.com.
Brilliant commenters like Daren say:
What an extremely smart guy Jason Kallelis must be. I mean look at his resume, even working for "Writing About Tech". You would think that somebody this smart would realize that it may actually be a hardware issue rather than a software issue? Like battery drain has NEVER happened on iOS or an iPhone?

... and so on it goes.

And all this time, Jason is just a random dude on the internet with an opinion. He's not claiming to be an expert. He's not claiming he hasn't missed something. He's just frustrated and enjoys sharing on the internet.

The meta story here is:
1. Just how unvetted this content made it to the front page of yahoo. For all we know the content is completely made up
2. Just how little commenters like Daren look at what they're reading before they pick any excuse to poke and make fun
3. Just how powerful media outlets can be by legitimizing a random person's opinion, and therefore how irresponsible they are for providing no context about what they are sharing

We really need good journalism to come back, and for people to recognize the clear distinction between credible, researched stories versus a stream of opinions by random people in the world.

We also need people to somehow hold their emotions in check when a random person chooses a different phone for a different reason.

The American People

Today's copy of TMQ tangent-rants about politicians using phrases like "frankly", "quite frankly" and "the American people" to superfluously emphasize their points. I'd like to pile on.

Easterbrook points out the obvious issue: no politician could possibly know that every American person agrees with their point. I'd like to go one more:

There is nothing that 300+ million people can agree on. Nothing. Consider that in our country there are pacifists and gun nuts, religious and atheist, pro-life, suicidal, racist, insane, ... literally anything you offer would be rejected by someone. Even food or air or shelter. This reveals a critical truth: any legislation we approach will NOT work for some people and we just need to accept this as fact. Thus, the question needs to shift to the much more appropriate question: what legislation does the most good for the most people?

Learning to phrase it this way would help us cut through the inevitable noise of those who are negatively affected and allow us to keep the perspective that the goal is to do net good. Granted there are many ways to define "good" and assess the benefit of a particular change, but at least we can start talking like adults instead of 9-year-olds.

A picture is worth a thousand words ... and vice versa??

While discussing art with my mom and Ben today, she asked about the notion that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, she argued, there were words that could not be well expressed in pictures, or would certainly take a detailed picture.

After an initial reaction that this is right, I came upon the example of "addition". How do you draw addition? You kinda can't. You can draw a specific case of addition (ex: 2 + 3 = 5), but can you really express this concept with only images? You may be smarter than me and come up with something, but I suspect it'll at least meet the requirement that it's more complex than explaining the concept of addition using words. So what's the deal here?

Addition is an abstraction. I posit that abstractions are hard to draw. Why? Because drawings are concrete. They, by their nature, have details: a particular color, or arc, or shading, or specific item(s), etc. Instantly, there are many attributes to describe if we want to convey the picture accurately. Hence, a thousand words (you know, plus or minus) are needed. But, their concreteness also means they express only an instance of an abstraction, thereby reducing the generalization of the abstraction. Thus, an abstraction is worth a thousand pictures (you know, plus or minus, to give people a pattern from which to construct the abstraction, perhaps).

So a picture is worth a thousand concrete words.
And non-concrete words are worth a thousand pictures.

Since it's a disjoint set of words in the two statements, the pair of equations doesn't explode or spiral into some black hole.

No break for the socialist

What does it really mean to be a socialist country, and are we plummeting face-first into that state as some might claim? We've certainly made the beginnings of universal-ish health care (though in a markedly different way than other countries do it), we have some social security (which may or may not be adequate), but we're a long ways from providing universally copay-free health services, an adequate federal pension for workers, etc. We can argue back and forth about the weights of these, but I mostly want to focus on one slice of the socialist pie: vacation time.

Is vacation time really a "social benefit"? I think so, though employers foot the bill rather than it being paid from a federal tax. However, it's still lost productivity that is mandated. If employers have to foot the bill, they have to raise prices and therefore the consumer, in the aggregate, pays for my vacation time. This is not too much unlike taxes, or a benefit derived from taxes. In a totally different sense, it's a federal stance that the population needs time off to function effectively.

Lucky for us, Wikipedia has this handy chart of minimum leave by country. Scanning through it yields a single point that is not like the other ones**: the USA is the only country with no federally mandated vacation time for workers. Even our voluntarily given average 1st year vacation grant (about 10 days) is less than just about every country.
Even Colombia gives its drug mules more time off.
Even ordinary Russians can escape the iron fist of Putin for more days a year.
Even super-productive Germany can get by fine with its citizens doubling that time off.
** - a handful of countries are left blank, and probably some countries are in so much turmoil that these laws are moot or unenforced. However, none of those are countries we should cherish comparisons with.

If socialism is a measure of the baseline care a country takes of every one of its citizens, time off work is one of those. And we fail at it.