I just got back from a ski trip to Big Bear (with a brief stopover in
Santa Barbara to visit Rachel). Joining me on the trip were Nancy,
Mike,
Eric, Susan, Byron, and Karen. My philosophy is that all
trips are in some way educational. On this particular excursion to
exotic Southern California, I learned the following:

• Rachel is doing fine, but she has become very annoyed with another
  graduate student who is working with her on the same giant project.
  “I’ve decided to use my knowledge from my sociology classes to crush her,”
  Rachel said. No, Rachel, no! You must learn to use your powers only
  for Good, never Evil!

• Rachel’s husband Ben seems to be doing just ducky. He always seems
  to be doing just ducky. I think I’m not very good at reading him.

• It is good to know friends who have friends who have large cabins
  with vaulted ceilings in which you may stay for free.

• Lucky Charms are, cup for cup, healthier than Kellogg’s Raisin Bran.
  Lucky Charms are equal or better in every vitamin/nutrient category,
  and they actually have fewer calories. The one category where Raisin
  Bran wins is fiber: 28% RDA to 7% RDA. But who needs regular BMs
  when you can have purple horseshoes and red balloons?

• Skiing in 50 degree weather is really nice, aside from the occasional
  slushy patch.

• Skiing in rental boots is not so nice, particularly when they give
  you blisters on your calves.

• Proficiency in Boggle does not translate into proficiency in
  Scattergories (vindication for the domain-specific knowledge
  theory of intelligence?)

• The official legal way to refer to
  “insider
  trading” is to call it a “Section 10(b)-5 violation”.

• Contrary to popular myth, in blackjack a “bad” third base player
  does not affect the odds
  of another player winning or losing. Consider the following example:

  Dealer is showing 12, and so will bust if he draws a 10.
  The deck has N cards:  
    G   "good" cards (tens), 
    N-G "bad" cards (non-tens).
  
  If the third base player stays, the dealer's odds of busting are
  simply G/N.
  
  If the third base player hits, there are two cases:
  
    Case 1: a G/N chance he receives a "good" card.  There are then G-1 
    good cards left, so the dealer's odds of busting are now (G-1)/(N-1).
  
    Case 2: a (N-G)/N chance he receives a "bad" card.  The dealer's odds
    of busting are now G/(N-1).
  
  The total odds of the dealer busting are therefore:
  
    (odds of Case 1) x (odds that dealer busts given Case 1)
      + (odds of Case 2) x (odds that dealer busts given Case 2)
  
  Or:
  
    (G/N) x (G-1)/(N-1) + (N-G)/N x G/(N-1)
  
  which is, putting everything under a common denominator:
  
     G x (G-1)   (N-G) x G
     --------- + ---------
     N x (N-1)   N x (N-1) 
  
  which is, expanding and cancelling terms:
  
     G^2 - G + GN - G^2      GN - G       G x (N-1)     G
     ------------------  =  ---------  =  ---------  =  -
          N x (N-1)         N x (N-1)     N x (N-1)     N
  
  Which is the same result as if the third base player had stayed.
  

According to a USGS
report on US gemstone consumption, the numbers for 1999 and 2000 were the following:

Stones (cut but unset)	1999		2000
	Carats	Value (US$)	Carats	Value (US$)
Diamonds	19.2 million	9.16 billion	19.5 million	11.3 billion
Emeralds	5.04 million	183 million	22.1 million	176 million
Rubies & Sapphires	11.2 million	239 million	12.9 million	241 million

So in the U.S. market in 2000, cut-but-unset diamonds were worth (per carat)
72.8x more than emeralds, and 31.0x more than rubies & sapphires. Interesting.

Yesterday Dad cooked rack of lamb for dinner. It was just us guys — Mom was out
of town, and Sarah had an “emergency birthday party” to attend.
We mostly told stories about Grandpa and talked about
IntraOp. Good news — they’ve just
signed a new manufacturing deal with a new company.
Hopefully the new partner, unlike the old one, won’t simply renege on their
contract because they judge that course of action to be more profitable.
So that’s one problem down. Now for more funding…

It’s been so frustrating to watch IntraOp limp along so undercapitalized
for so long… always, there’s never been quite enough money to manufacture
that next machine, hire another sales rep, … you name it, they didn’t have it.
It was particularly painful during the Internet boom, where you had companies burning through
ten million dollars a month with no business model whatsoever — while IntraOp
was spending two orders of magnitude less money, and selling a real product that
cures cancer (and for a actual profit, imagine that!)
I think Dad’s problem is that he’s too honest. “How can I ask someone to invest
in a company without telling them exactly what they’re getting into?”

What’s happening to our family? Grandpa George was a successful businessman. On
the other side of the family, my great-grandfather was even more successful
(because, as my uncle says, “he was a ruthless son of a bitch.”) But we Goers
and Harmans and Kellstedts seem to be losing our edge. My fathers and uncles
have struggled mightly to get their businesses off the ground. and my sisters
and cousins have shown no interest in entrepreneurship at all.

Over the last few years I’ve read maybe over a hundred magazine articles
that have extolled the virtues of The American Entrepreneur: being tough and fast
and smart and blah blah blah. The funny thing is that the real
entrepreneurs that I’ve spoken to all tell me the same thing: at any moment,
your small business could be crushed. A big company will just take over the
market and squash you. Or someone will rip off your patent, or
refuse to pay for inventory, or renege in some other way. The sad part is,
for a small business it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the legal right. As
Mike likes to point out, justice, like medicine, is
expensive. You might win your lawsuit, but it’ll probably be far too little,
too late to save your livelihood.

My impression of the entrepreneurial world? It’s not really about being tough
and fast and smart (although that helps). It mostly has to do with luck. And
it probably has something to do with being a ruthless son of a bitch.

That’s why I like writing. The luck part is clear enough, but the son-of-a-bitch
part is completely optional.

M’ris reminds me why we need engagement
rings. “Silly Evan,” she says, it’s because “paying off med school loans doesn’t
give a physical mark saying, ‘Hands off! This woman is property!'”
Sheesh, I can’t believe I forgot about that.

We then discussed alternative solutions for the problem:

Mris:  >> Maybe a tattoo would work....

Me:    > Now *that's* using the ol' noggin!  The only problem is, 
       > the tattoo idea needs to hit "critical mass" in the public 
       > consciousness, otherwise it won't act as a deterrent to all 
       > those unscrupulous predators out there.  Kind of a 
       > chicken-and-egg problem there.

M'ris: Ahh, but the tattoo just needs to be on the forehead and 
       read "taken."  Subtlety is quite overrated.  Then as the custom 
       evolves, it can become simply a t or something like that.

When I brought up this issue with Mike, he immediately
launched into a discussion of property law. In the 19th century, some whalers
would hunt whales by firing harpoons from shore. However, there were
many whalers, and when you’d shoot a whale, it would dive, swim off for a while,
and then beach itself and die. There was no way to tell who owned
the carcass. So each whaler had to decorate his harpoons in a distinctive manner.
(The decorated harpoons were called, “waifs”.)

I’m not quite sure what this has to do with marriage, and I’m not sure I
want to know.

In Other News: On Poker Night this week, we only had three people (two of our
regulars were out of town). So there weren’t enough for poker. However, our host,
Page, has been trying to get us to play
Mordheim
for a long time now. I admit, I had been cool to the idea of playing Mordheim — I’m not
really into miniature-strategy games. But Page finally wore me down — “You can play
a squad of human mercenaries, undead, rat-men, battle nuns…”

Battle Nuns?! Why didn’t you say so in the first place!

So it turns out that basic rules in Mordheim are easy to learn, set-up is fast,
and the game has a cool 3-D aspect to it. And the best part is that a match takes
less than two hours (even if you choose to fight until one side is
completely wiped out — or as we call it, “To the Pain!”^TM).

Anyway, I am proud to report that my crack warband of Battle Nuns carried the day
against Page’s foul undead legions. Once again the Pants of Evil have been yanked
down by the Mocking Hands of Justice! Page, good sport that he is,
commemorated the battle in a news report.

Finally, last night I saw Monster’s Ball
with Mike, Nancy, and Sam in downtown
San Jose. It was a decent
flick (I loved the nearly wordless ending scene — Halle Berry can act.)
Unfortunately there was a jackass right behind us who had an inappropriate laugh or
comment every minute-and-a-half. Yes, these jerks are in the artsier theaters, too.

Nancy then took us to Picasso’s, where we ordered tapas and a bottle of wine.
M’ris! Wake up, pay attention — they had tapas! I found tapas! And this reminds
me, it’s time for another winelog entry:

Campillo, Spain, 1996 Crianza: ¡Bueno!

I wasn’t going to comment on my grandfather’s funeral in Florida, but I’ve changed
my mind. Just a few words on the rabbi:

• He was over an hour late. This was due to traffic — although one of the
  mourners, coming from the same direction, managed to make it nearly on
  time by taking backstreets.

• He arrived wearing:

  • a white jacket and shirt
  • black pants
  • black shoes with large gold buckles
  • a yellow tie, askew
  • a deep orange tan

  
  

• My aunt had given him some anecdotes about my grandfather the day before.
  She was concerned about whether the rabbi had gotten everything down
  properly, because the conversation happened over a cell phone, while
  he was driving. My aunt took him aside right before the ceremony to make
  sure he had everything straight. It was a good thing she did — he had everything
  completely mangled.

• The non-mangled eulogy wasn’t a big improvement. He managed to get my
  grandfather’s Hebrew name wrong, and he mangled a few of the dates. (Grandpa
  came to the States in 1920, not 1912 — a significant distinction, because he
  spent those eight formative years starving in war-torn Poland.)

On the other hand, he drove off in a Mercedes S500 sedan. I can only surmise that the
whole late-to-the-funeral, wear-tacky-clothes, and offend-the-grieving-aunts-and-cousins
gig is, at some level, working out for him.