To be the dupe of other people is not very pleasant, but to employ a vast representative apparatus in order to dupe, and double dupe, ourselves — and that, too, in an affair of arithmetic — should surely humble the pride of this age of enlightenment.
Arthur Chu had a problem.
The 30-year-old “Mad Genius” knows a lot about some things, little about others. And he had no time to bone up adequately on likely categories before a scheduled appearance on “Jeopardy,” the TV quiz show.
How then to maximize his chances?
Answer: strategy — an unconventional strategy that annoyed some viewers. For example, instead of starting with the lowest-dollar value in a subject column on the board and working his way down, he went for the $1000 clues first. Not done.
Chu also jumped around the board in search of the Daily Double, a square that lets you bet everything from $1 to everything you’ve won so far. Also not done. He found a Daily Double in Sports and, being ignorant of sports, bet just $5. Again, annoying some people.
Chu doesn’t apologize. “If I get a Daily Double in sports and I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna know it, why would I take an unnecessary risk? I guess people see it as a jerk thing to do, but the benefit in that is that I can take that clue away from someone else who does know about sports.”
After all, the point of the game is to win, and what you win is money, “which is important to me,” he clarified (perhaps unnecessarily). Chu played within the rules, played smart, bet smart, and was willing to be slammed for thinking outside the usual squares.
Result: big winnings. Good for you, Arthur Chu.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
I often seriously ask myself how anything so whimsical could ever have entered into the human brain, as first of all to lay out many millions for the purpose of removing the natural obstacles that lie between France and other countries, and then to lay out many more millions for the purpose of substituting artificial obstacles, which have exactly the same effect; so much so, indeed, that the obstacle created and the obstacle removed neutralize each other, and leave things as they were before, the residue of the operation being a double expense.
On February 7, 1990, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agreed to give up its monopoly on power, thus ushering the way for the dissolution of the putatively communist empire.
“I promise you that we hold everybody up and down the line accountable,” President Barack Obama told Bill O’Reilly of Fox News during last Sunday’s Super Bowl interview.
When studies show one in 20 food stamp transactions to be fraudulent; when the GAO finds $120 million a year spent paying federal workers who are deceased; when, well, “name your own favorite absurdly wasteful program here,” how does the word “accountable” pass through the president’s lips without a respondent clap of thunder followed by the sizzle and pop of a lightning bolt?
Yet, Obama claims — no, promises! — that this omnipresent accountability reaches absolutely “everybody” in the federal government.
President O was responding specifically to O’Reilly’s charge that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the official responsible for the disastrous Obamacare rollout, has faced no consequences.
She’s not alone. Only by replacing the word “everybody” with the phrase “virtually no one” would Mr. Obama’s statement be made accurate.
Yesterday, I detailed several different ways the IRS has violated people’s most important and basic political rights — from blocking citizens trying to form non-profit groups for communicating their ideas to trashing privacy rights by handing personal tax information to one’s political opponents to harassing donors to “the other” candidate with multiple unwarranted audits. No one in any of these scandals has been disciplined, let go or in any meaningful way held accountable.
“Political language is designed,” as George Orwell warned, “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Up and down the line.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On February 6, 1756, Aaron Burr was born. Burr was an American politician who served as third Vice President of the United States, a man with a deeply ambiguous record. His popularity in his home state of New York, combined with the Slave Power vote, allowed for Thomas Jefferson’s victory in 1800 — and yet, another constitutional quirk, in addition to his apparent calculating ambition, precipitated a constitutional crisis in that election. He found a strong opponent in Federalist politician Alexander Hamilton, whom he killed in a duel during his vice presidency. Later, Burr gathered an army west of the Appalachians, ostensibly to conquer Mexico. The army was captured, and Burr was put on trial for treason, with Thomas Jefferson moving heaven and earth to see a conviction. Burr was found not guilty, traveled to Europe, and then returned to America for a long life in the private sector.
[T]o curse machines is to curse the spirit of humanity.
The Socialists say, since the law organizes justice, why should it not organize labor, instruction, and religion?
Why? Because it could not organize labor, instruction, and religion, without disorganizing justice.
On February 5, 1788, Robert Peel was born. He would become one of the most important of the United Kingdom’s prime ministers, ushering in some reforms that led to the liberalization of England in the 19th century.
On February 4, 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected as the first President of the United States, under the new constitution, by the U.S. Electoral College. On the same date five years later, the French legislature abolished slavery throughout all territories of the French Republic.