The Company? They Keep..

Traditionally, Japanese businesses--particularly large corporations--do not lay people off.  Japanese culture prizes loyalty--what I believe in Japanese is called, wasabi--over pure profit.  In practice, though, this means that workers who in a normal economy (America) would be laid off may instead find themselves relegated to "chasing-out" rooms (Japanese: teriyaki),  purgatorial chambers where the unproductive must while away their days reading, doing crosswords--which are really hard, 'cause, y'know, they're in Japanese--or maybe just napping, all while shamefully collecting their full unearned salaries  It all sounds. . . .

Well, frankly, it sounds awesome.  As a teacher who missed out on the opportunity to be relegated to one of New York City's infamous "Rubber Rooms"--a sort of "holding pen" where unfirable teachers facing disciplinary action would while away the days while their cases meandered through the system--I would love to be hired and not laid off by Sony or Toyota.  Do you suppose they need any feckless English teachers?

In all seriousness--well, most seriousness, anyway--this is a problematic situation: Japanese businesses claim that their inability to lay off older or less productive workers makes them unable or unwilling to hire new employees.  Unable because their personnel budgets are stretched to support unnecessary workers; unwilling because they don't want to find themselves stuck years from now with another batch of workers in need of "chasing-out."  The complaints make a certain amount of sense.  Personally, though, I hope that when these companies ultimately settle on a plan of action to address this issue, they retain some of the traditional values--loyalty, concern for the general welfare--that enabled them to thrive in the first place.

Overheard at the Doctor

Doctor: Well, yes, according to these numbers, you are suffering from acute renal failure.

Patient: Oh my God!

Doctor: Oh, it's not that bad.

Patient: Renal failure?!?

Doctor: Yes, but. . .  I mean, it's not good, but it's not like you need surgery or dialysis.

Patient: But "Renal failure"--

Doctor: Acute renal failure.

Patient: EXACTLY!!!

Doctor: Well, all that means is that this number here (pointing at a chart) has gone up a lot and very suddenly.

Patient: Oh my God!

Doctor: Yes, but that could be due to all kinds of things. . . . Most commonly, it just means you're dehydrated, and you just need to retest in three days.  Your number will probably go right back to normal as long as you drink a lot of fluids.

(Pause.)

Patient: You couldn't have opened with that?

Literally an Important Post

Merriam-Webster has officially given up.  The latest edition provides the following as the secondary definition of the word "literally":

"in effect : virtually literally
turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice — Norman Cousins>"

So I guess you could say that Merriam-Webster has literally thrown in the towel.  I mean you could say that, but I won't; I like my words to retain their meanings.  

I know such literal nitpicking is persnickety as heck--and quite honestly, I usually wouldn't call somebody out for such a casual usage of "literally."  I take strong issue, however, with a dictionary literally declaring that an acceptable definition of "literally" is literally "not literally."

I think it's nap time.

Busy

Sorry about the lack of quality posts lately.  Your old pal the Solipsist has been a bit overwhelmed the last few days.  As any teacher can tell you, the beginning of the semester is a hectic time.  Since I returned to Solipsist Central from the old homestead of New York, I've done a two-day training course for new tutors and attended a departmental "retreat." Tomorrow, the series of pre-semester activities continues with another meeting, and then classes begin on Friday.

Yes, Friday.

I don't know why, either.

Actually, that's not true; I do know why, at least in theory.  All college classes have a stipulated number of hours that students are required to complete: A three-unit class, for example, requires a total of 54 hours of classroom instruction.  If that class meets Mondays and Wednesdays for 90 minutes each day, the class must have a total of 36 meetings.  Classes begin on a Friday so that there are a sufficient number of Friday meetings for a class scheduled on Fridays.  Why the class couldn't simply have an extra Friday at the end of the semester is a good question, and one that I think deserves a good answer.

Oh, I don't have a  good answer, but rest assured that you deserve one.

Questionable Results

As anyone who has ever googled knows, when you Google something, the search engine attempts to figure out what you want even before you finish typing in the search bar.  Presumably, the results Google suggests are based on the popularity of search terms; thus, if you type in the letter 'a,' Google promptly suggests "Amazon" (and no doubt receives a comparatively hefty royalty on anything purchased after a subsequent click).

Since Google is the go-to source for the answers to any question one could think of, I was curious to see what popular questions people were asking.  I typed each of the six "reporter's questions"--who, what where, when, how, and why--into the search bar.  Following are the "results," i.e., the first complete "question" that popped up after I typed the question-word and hit the space bar:

Who framed Roger Rabbit?

What is my IP?

Where is Chuck Norris?

When is Mother's Day?  (NOTE: The first result that actually came up was "When I was your man," the title of a Bruno Mars' song.)

How to tie a tie.  (NOTE: The top result was actually "How I Met Your Mother," which I assumed was a reference to the TV show, until I clicked and found a truly disturbing story about Sergey Brin and MOS, which I refuse to share here.)

Why is the sky blue?

So what can we conclude from this list?  Well, a number of people seem concerned about technical issues (What is my IP?).  A number of others are probably 12 years old (the ones who want to know why the sky is blue and how to tie a tie--perhaps to wear when they visit Mom on Mother's Day--which we helpfully learn was May 11th--and why is THAT still the most popular "When" question, eight months after the fact?).

I have no idea why the number-one "Who" question is a reference to a twenty-five-year-old movie, nor why people fret over the whereabouts of Chuck Norris, but the ultimate takeaway from this experiment is that the interwebs remain a strange, strange place, only slightly redeemed by the fact that the second most popular "Why" question is the eminently sensible, "Why do cats purr?"

What's OPS, Doc?

Perhaps because of its comparatively leisurely pace, baseball--more than any other sport I can think of--has been the object of obsessive statistical fascination.  Over the years, baseball fans have continuously devised ever-more complex formulae to measure and compare players' performance.  Even a casual fan is familiar with the traditional statistics: batting average for hitters (number of base hits divided by number of at-bats), earned run average (ERA) for pitchers (average number of earned runs surrendered per nine innings).  Over the years, however, additional statistics of greater or lesser value have been developed.

One of the more newfangled statistics for pitchers is "WHIP," which stands for "walks and hits per innings pitched."  This stat has a nice intuitive value.  I remember once, years ago, listening to Tim McCarver back when he was a Mets announcer. explaining that one way to measure the effectiveness of relief pitchers--who often have misleading earned run averages--was to look at their how many walks and hits they had given up: If the sum of walks and hits was lower than the number of innings pitched, then that suggested an overall effective pitcher.  Basically, WHIP formalizes this observation: The closer a pitcher's WHIP is to 1.00, the more successful that pitcher is likely to be.  (A WHIP below 1.00 is terrific.)  On the offensive side, though, things are less clear.

Two traditional measurements--albeit less familiar to the casual fan than batting average--are on-base percentage and slugging percentage.  The former is similar to batting average, only it includes things like walks and hit-by-pitch, so it will be somewhat higher than batting average.  For example, if a hitter comes to the plate 10 times and gets three hits, he will have a .300 average; if he also walks twice and is hit by a pitch once--thus reaching base a total of six times--he will have an on-base percentage of .600.  Slugging percentage is a power measurement.  To figure it out, you divide total bases by at-bats; thus, if a batter comes to the plate once and hits a home run, his slugging percentage will be 4.000 (four total bases divided by one at-bat).  Slugging percentage, too, will generally be a bit higher than batting average: A hitter who comes up four times and gets one base hit will have an average of .250; if, however, that one hit is a double, his slugging percentage will be .500 (two total bases divided by four at-bats).  Get it?

Now, on-base percentage does give one an idea of a player's ability to get on base--a necessary pre-requisite to scoring.  And slugging percentage does provide a decent snapshot of power.  The latest vogue statistic, though, is on-base-plus-slugging percentage (OPS), which is touted by many sabermetricians (baseball's statistical cognoscenti--yes, they have a name for themselves) as a true measure of a player's offensive skills, just makes no sense to me.  As the name implies, OPS is derived by adding the two percentages--on-base and slugging.  But I have never understood the rational behind adding two averages--unless the idea is just to produce a number that sounds mind-bogglingly impressive to people familiar only with batting averages.  After all, if you know that a lifetime average of .300 his Hall-of-Fame worthy, when you hear an OPS number like .650 bandied about, you will be left slack-jawed with amazement--even though n OPS of .650 is not overly impressive.

When it comes to statistics, too, I've always been under the impression that adding two averages is something of a no-no.  The choice of units to add seems arbitrary--why not add batting average, as well?  Or why not add batting average to slugging percentage?  Why not add a pitcher's ERA and WHIP?  A perfect quarterback passer rating in the NFL is an inexplicable 158.3.  While a perfect OPS is easier to grasp (5.000), the logic behind it escapes me.

Airplane Musings--A Brief Post

You remember when that plane had to make an emergency landing?  And the only thing that prevented a major catastrophe was the heroic action of the passenger in the exit row, who valiantly assisted the flight crew in the performance of their duties?

Yeah, me neither.