Tie breakers in sports

I am not a football fan but follow the game in a casual manner and so learned that Italy beat England in the European Cup yesterday. The score was 1-1 at the end of regulation time.

I did not watch the game and my opinion on it would be worthless anyway but what I want to discuss is the way that the game was decided, by means of a penalty shootout that Italy won 3-2. Whether a goal is scored or not depends a lot on whether the goal keeper manages to guess correctly the intentions of the penalty kicker as to where in the goal the ball is being targeted.

While I understand the need to find a way to quickly end a game when the scores are tied, this seems to me to be a particularly bad method. Given the difficulty of scoring goals which makes ties likely, this form of the tiebreaker has been used in many high-profile games, even deciding Olympic gold medals.
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The proxy Civil War goes on, now over statues

Charlottesville, Virginia was the scene of the infamous rally in August 2017 in which white supremacists marched in the night bearing tiki torches and chanting that white dominance must be defended and yelling things like “Jews will not replace us”. The next day there were clashes between them and anti-racist protestors that resulted in a young woman Heather Heyer being killed when a car ran over her. It was driven by a white supremacist who was later convicted of murder.

That rally sparked movements to remove monuments honoring the Confederacy and yesterday two massive statues in the city of the leaders of the rebellion Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, which the white supremacists had used as their rallying cry, were removed and put into storage. There was a small crowd present to cheer the removal.


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Beetle walks upside down on underside of a water surface

We know that whether a solid object sinks or floats in a liquid depends on their relative densities. If the object has a higher density than the liquid, it will sink but if it has a lower density, it will float.

But I am sure that all of us have seen a counter-example, how it is possible to carefully place a needle on the surface of water and have it float. This is because of surface tension, in that the surface of a liquid can act like a membrane and as long as the membrane is not broken, it can support light objects. This is how some insects such as water striders seem to be able to ‘walk’ on the surface of water, because their legs have fine projections that prevent the surface from being broken.

I came across this variation of this phenomenon where a beetle was walking along the underside of a water surface.

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Ranked choice voting and approval voting

There are many problems with the most common voting system in the US which is the plurality system where each voters picks just one candidate and the person who gets the most votes wins, even if they do not reach a 50%+1 majority. The problem with this method is obvious, that if there are three or more candidates, it forces a voter to sometimes have to choose between voting for the person they really like or voting for someone they like less because that person has a better chance of beating the third person whom they really dislike. This voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’ means that an ‘evil’ person or party will always win.
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What the Nina Turner candidacy reveals about the Democratic party establishment

In the US, the two major political parties of Democrats and Republicans are not really distinguished by their class structure. Both parties contain the full spectrum of classes from the very wealthy to the working class, the urban and the rural. The main difference is the relative weight that is given to the various constituencies that make up the parties. The primary races, where each party selects its candidates for general elections, reveal the strength of the various factions. Because of gerrymandering, demographics, and geography, most elected offices are safely Republican or Democratic so the primary elections are where the action is and where the fissures are most clearly revealed, because the need to defeat the Republican opponent is not a major factor in the calculus.
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Can aging be stopped?

The dream of some people has been that we can slow down, stop, or even reverse the aging process. Amelia Hill writes about recent research that argues that the aging process is unstoppable.

Backed by governments, business, academics and investors in an industry worth $110bn (£82.5bn) – and estimated to be worth $610bn by 2025 – scientists have spent decades attempting to harness the power of genomics and artificial intelligence to find a way to prevent or even reverse ageing.

But an unprecedented study has now confirmed that we probably cannot slow the rate at which we get older because of biological constraints.

The study, by an international collaboration of scientists from 14 countries and including experts from the University of Oxford, set out to test the “invariant rate of ageing” hypothesis, which says that a species has a relatively fixed rate of ageing from adulthood.
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The enduring appeal of the genteel murder mystery

Long time readers of this blog know of my partiality to the detective story, especially of the British variety made famous by Agatha Christie and a host of other writers. No one would claim that they represent serious literature. They are utterly formulaic and do not aspire to great literary heights. They are the book equivalent of comfort food, where the pleasure comes from the familiarity, where you know what to expect and always get it. We readers know all the faults of the genre and love it anyway.

In a long essay, Breanna Rennix describes the formula.
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Recall madness

The state of Missouri is known as the ‘Show-Me state’ but perhaps it should be renamed as the ‘Don’t bother to show me, my mind is already made up’ state. It has one of the lowest rates of vaccination in the country and some of the counties have extremely low rates. Naturally covid-19 cases are surging there. But the good citizens of the small town of Nixa have more important concerns.

Nixa, which has about 21,000 residents, is located about 10 miles (16.09 kilometers) south of Springfield, where hospitals are overflowing with COVID-19 patients.

Health officials are blaming low vaccination rates and the delta variant, first identified in India, for the surge. Just 44.8% of the state’s residents have received at least the first dose of the vaccine, compared to 54.9% nationally.

And the rate is even lower in southwest Missouri. Christian County, where Nixa is located, has a vaccine rate of 35.2%. Some nearby counties have rates in the teens.

The mayor of Nixa instituted a face mask requirement in October of last year, under a mandate authorizing him to do so issued by the city council. The mandate was lifted in April. Now he is facing a recall because of his action. The recall will cost the small town between $10,000 and $15,000. But it appears that for the good people of Nixa, no price is too high to pay for having the freedom to act stupidly contrary to the evidence.

Oc course, the people of the state of California have no reason to feel that smug. They have been able to get enough signatures for a recall election of the governor because of his actions to curb the pandemic.

A surprisingly early California recall election has Gov. Gavin Newsom looking to capitalize on his momentum and Republicans trying to catch up.

State officials have called the election for Sept. 14, and ballots will hit mailboxes weeks before then. The short timeline, enabled by Democratic allies of the governor, buoys Newsom’s prospects as he looks to convert a rebounding economy and stabilizing poll numbers into a vindicating victory. His conservative foes, on the other hand, have just two weeks to declare their candidacies and a tight window to cut into Newsom’s overwhelming fundraising advantage.
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It has been clear for months that voters would decide Newsom’s fate in 2021 after anger over his Covid-19 restrictions led two million Californians to sign recall petitions.

What a waste of time and money.