Fox’s Game Ch. 15: They Run Into a Dead End…Maybe an Economist Can Help?

Thompson Station

Kristoff emptied the contents of his beer glass and continued, “We’re looking for evidence of an organization that, at least to some degree, prided itself on being able to memorize absurdly large amounts of information.”

“Right.”

“Well, what if the Book of Shadows is the only text that we can track because the rest of their information would be transmitted orally?”

Robert took a deep breath, trying to follow his friend’s logic. “So you think that they would’ve resorted to simply telling each other what they wanted in person?”

“Yes, when they could. And when they couldn’t, they probably wrote letters in such coded terms, that to extrapolate meaning could take years. We’d have to find their letters, letters that were probably memorized then disposed of or we could search for evidence of their actions.”

A slow smile creeped across Robert’s face as he understood Kristoff’s point. “You’re saying we should see if the events of Harvel’s case is similar to other such cases?”

“Yes. It’s like physics. When you shine light on a subatomic particle, you change its position. This is frustrating because you can’t see without light. So what do you do?” Kristoff asked.

“I don’t know. Study how the particle moves and then use that as a starting point for guessing its structure and composition?” Robert said.

“Close. We study the movement, but we also study the effects of the movement. It works not just at the subatomic level. We look at black holes and see how matter reacts when close to them. That allows us to separate the unknown from the known.”

Robert appreciated his rationale, mostly because it would make looking for evidence easier. So far, all they could find was the information that Kristoff’s friend in Washington had sent them. It was like investigating the mob—the evidence somehow disappeared when examined.

The more Robert thought, the more Kristoff’s subatomic analogy fit because any lead vanished like a quark running from the light. They needed specific shadowy activity if they hoped to trace the organization’s movement.

This need to change tactics excited the two professors, it meant they were making some headway. Even a failed hypothesis brought them a step closer to the truth. But that also meant scrapping much of the work they’d done up until that point, which made them tired. Kristoff often admonished his physics students on the value of failed experiments with a quote from the legendary computer engineer John W. Backus, “You have to generate many ideas and then you have to work very hard only to discover that they don’t work. And you keep doing that over and over until you find one that does work.”

Kristoff kept that quote on the door of his office. But unlike a failed physics experiment, time seemed much more of the essence. Perhaps more lives than André Babineaux’s was at stake.

“What do you think we should do now, Robert?”

“I need a break. We’ve been at this for hours. We need to keep pushing, but I don’t know how effective I’d be.”

Kristoff laughed a laugh of exhaustion and relief, “Well, part of effective work is knowing your limitations. The mind needs breaks just like the body. What do you propose?”

“It’s late now. I’ll call Julian tomorrow to see if he’s made any headway with Dr. Morell. If she can devise some algorithms for us, that would allow us to use our energy more effectively.”

Kristoff agreed. “Yes, talk to Julian. And even if he hasn’t spoken to her, he could provide a different perspective.”

“I’ve worked with Julian on a couple of committees, he has a knack of approaching problems in an unorthodox but effective way.”

“Okay, so do you want to meet back here sometime tomorrow?” Kristoff asked.

“Yes, how does 1:30 sound? Right after lunch.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you come over at noon, and I’ll make lunch. I sometimes do my best thinking while I’m cooking, and it’d be good to have someone there to bounce ideas off of.”

“Sounds good, Kristoff. See you then.”

********************

Tiffany and Julian agreed it best to arrive before Alyssa in order to lessen the chance that she’d catch on to their intentions. Tiffany was shocked when she called her and found that she had a young voice. For some reason, she expected her to sound older. And when she Googled her, Tiffany felt a twinge of envy at seeing her picture and reading her accomplishments. Although Tiffany had an accomplished resumé of her own, she found it hard not to compare herself to another woman in her city and her demographic.

As with most comparisons, she unknowingly downplayed her own strengths and overrated the other person’s. Knowing that she wasn’t doing herself any good, she logged out. In spite of herself, she felt a slight sense of jealousy at knowing she was going to help a guy that she’d just flirted with meet up with a girl who, irrational as it sounded, now seemed like competition, not even competition for Julian, just competition in that vague way in which young women sometimes found themselves.

 

Fake Quote Friday: Western Conference Finals, Eastern Hemisphere Summit Edition

“Who knows with that dude. He changes directions more than Chris Paul in the lane off a high screen and roll after a set play called during a timeout.” –Kim Jong Un

Wisdom Wednesday: Bryan Johnson Edition

“I have a lot of conversations with people who want to start their own thing, and one of my favorite questions to ask is, ‘Is this an itch, or is it burning?’ If it is just an itch, it is not sufficient. It gets to this point of how badly you really want it.”

 

Fox’s Game Ch. 14: Planning and Flirting in the Coffee Shop

Fido’s Coffee Shop
21^st Avenue South

Julian set down his second Simple Syrup and took a moment to inhale the rich aroma of steamed milk and freshly pressed coffee beans. But even as he pampered his senses, his mind worked to produce a solution to a problem that had interrupted his writing all. How could he reproduce the success he had with Alyssa?

He knew he’d gotten lucky; since she was returning from class, he was able to catch her off guard. He also knew that talking to her alone in her office provided nearly perfect conditions to convert an emotional argument into an intellectual one. But changing the mind of someone as smart and strong-willed as Alyssa twice in less than a week would be tough. Any attempt to get her to meet him would seem like he was asking her out and would lead to a no, not just a no but a no that would burn the good will he’d established the day before. He needed something else.

They had no mutual friends. A third party of even someone who was an acquaintance could provide the necessary common ground. He knew that thinking directly about a problem for too long would lead to less productivity, so he decided to relax the conscious part of his mind. He got online and lost himself in sports and current events. He then realized how long it’d been since he decided to visit his own virtual world. He typed “F” into the browser, and the computer did the rest of the work. As quick as the page appeared he saw the Facebook friend request from Tiffany Saunders.

That was the key. As a member of the press, Alyssa would have no problem meeting with her. Also, Tiffany wouldn’t mind doing something that could move the case forward. He and Tiffany needed only a pretense for meeting up with her. Alyssa didn’t even need to know he would be there.

He accepted the request and typed out a message. Since he wanted to get this moving quickly, he decided to also call. He knew that he couldn’t sound too eager to draw in a colleague or else he’d come off as manipulative.

“Hello?”

“Tiffany, Dr. Daniels from Vanderbilt. How are you doing?”

“Good! How are you?” Her voice had a trace of excitement. She closed her eyes in frustration because she knew he noticed.

“I’m good,” he said. “Anything new?”

“Just brainstorming new angles and cross-checking them with any articles I find,” she said.

“There’s always something to do, right?”

“You have no idea,” she said.

“Well, I’ve got a request for you,” he said.

“Oh really?”

“Here’s the situation. We’ve hit a slow patch in our research, and we think another professor could help us. The problem is, the professor said no when Dr. Hoek asked her. But I have a strong feeling if we ask her again, she’ll say yes.”

“Okay, and what do you need me to do?”

“Well, it’s a delicate situation, so I can’t just shoot her an email or walk into her office. But I think if we could get her away from the school, in a more relaxed environment, she’d be more than willing to help out.”

“So you want me to ask if I could meet up with her so that you can ask her?”

“Yes. Now, I know this means, you might have t—”

“I’ll do it. Maybe tell her Channel 4 is doing a piece on local female intellectuals and that I’d like to meet up and ask her a few questions.”

Julian was encouraged at Tiffany’s eagerness. “Yes, that’s basically it. Do you think that lying to her is the best way to go, though? If she got to the meeting and found that it wasn’t about an interview, then it might turn her off, right?” He knew the quickest way to destroy one’s ethos was by lying to his audience.

Tiffany laughed. “I’m a producer. I could come up with a show idea. I don’t have to lie. If this works out, there’s no reason we couldn’t do the story.”

Julian felt a rush of satisfaction you get from discovering that your connections have serious clout. “Okay, so what day works for you?”

“Wanna shoot for tomorrow night? Same time as last time?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Where do you think your colleague would like to meet?”

“So far Fido’s has been our good luck charm. How about keeping it there?” he asked.

“If she doesn’t mind, I won’t mind,” she said.

“Should I show up with you, or would it be better if I just happened to be there?”

Tiffany thought for a moment. “It’d be better if you were there. I’ll just tell her that we’re adjusting the piece and making it about young, up and coming intellectuals in the city.”

Julian sipped his drink. “So, that means I get to be interviewed, too? I’m gonna be on tv, right?”

Tiffany smiled. He’s flirting, she thought. She laughed. Her voice got a little higher, this time intentionally, “I’ll see what I can do Julian.”

 

 

Haiku Thursday: Perception v. Reality Edition

reality bites
different ways for different folks:
yanny or laurel?

 

 

Wisdom Wednesday: Bonus Craig Mack Edition

“With stamina like Bruce Jenner / the winner / tastin’ emcees for dinner / You must be crazy like that glue / to think that you could outdo / my one-two that’s sick like the flu” –Craig Mack, “Flava in Ya Ear”

Wisdom Wednesday: Stephen Hawking Edition

“The universe is not made of atoms, it’s made of stories.” –Stephen Hawking

The Titans’ Best Free Agent Won’t Play a Game (But Can Possibly Help Improve Your Memory)

“A beautiful naked blond jumps up and down” –Chapter 10 of The Memory Book, by Harry Lorayne and (NBA Hall of Famer and Ohio State grad) Jerry Lucas

“Everything with Dick [LeBeau] is mathematical in nature. The proper angles allow leverage on the route […] It was here where LeBeau was especially unpredictable.”

–Ron Jaworski, The Games That Changed the Game

When I taught at MTSU, I remember writing the above sentence on the board as a way of getting my class’ attention before teaching them what’s known as the Major system, a way of memorizing large numbers where 0-9 are converted to consonant sounds so that instead of learning a nonsensical string of digits, one is able to learn a word, phrase, or sentence, which would have a greater context and would thus be more likely to stick in one’s mind. I also remember a woman walking into my classroom because she left a book in their. She paused as she looked at the board, asked what it was about. I explained, she nodded curtly and said, “Very interesting. I’ll let you get back to your class. By the way, I teach Women’s Studies.”

As a college freshman in 1959, Lucas wrote a thank you letter to Harry Lorayne, a writer known for his appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson where he would memorize the names of everyone in the audience. Lucas’ letter thanked Lorayne for his books which had helped him become a stronger student and thinker. Little did the two know that they’d collaborate on a book years later.

Harry Lorayne, Memory Master

Lucas’ freshman year at Ohio State would have coincided with Dick LeBeau’s senior year. It’s almost certain they would’ve crossed paths, even if it were just in passing. In fact, we know Lucas was so good that even Woody Hayes stuck around to watch his freshman games (this, of course, was when freshmen were ineligible to play varsity).

Now, just because they were at the same school at the same time for one year doesn’t mean Lucas shared Harry Lorayne’s memory techniques. If anything, Lucas would’ve shared them with his roommate, future Celtic Hall of Famer John Havlicek before anyone on the basketball team, let alone with any football players. But just as some ideas have a way of spreading through the ether, like how the cartoon Dennis the Menace debuted on the same day in two countries by writers who’d never heard of each other or each other’s work, it’s possible the two developed similar memory methods independent of one another.

Jerry Lucas, OSU

Tony Buzan, the Brit responsible for the World Memory Championships, says that contest is more of a contest of “creativity than memory.” It’s true; to memorize a deck of cards in a minute (actually the American record is less than a minute), you don’t need raw IQ power. You need a storehouse of creative images for each card (for an effective image list for each card check out Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Chef).

How do all these names tie into Dick LeBeau and the Titans? In his book The Games That Changed the Game, Ron Jaworski devotes an entire chapter to the creativity of LeBeau’s blitzes and his credentials as a Renaissance Man: “Sid Gillman asked a college math professor to help him apply geometry to determine where his receivers needed to be in San Diego’s pass offense […] LeBeau is so intelligent that he calculated his defenders’ angles all by himself.” Does this mean that LeBeau, this human Swiss army knife, knows how to memorize a deck of cards or a large group of numbers? Of course not. But Jaworski points out that LeBeau can “repair wristwatches, play guitar, and has a photographic memory” and can “recite verbatim the dialogue from his favorite film.” The depth of his knowledge and the creativity of his thinking suggests that he has independently come up with his own way of storing information. And it wouldn’t be surprising if it bared close resemblance to Lucas’ more formal system.

Dick LeBeau, Hall of Fame Player/Coach,

But here’s the point: we train our minds to be more efficient, to solve problems more easily, to remember more information quickly. Films and the USA Network make it seem as if an agile mind is the result of some quirk of nature more so than perfecting a specific aspect of mental fitness. But most often, it’s a result of rigorous thought exercise, just like the body. Are some people naturally able to retain a great deal of information? Probably so, just like some people naturally have abs in their 30s. But someone who’s trained well is going to have a more fit mind (or body) than someone who just possesses it naturally.

LeBeau is highly intelligent, but I think his intelligence springs from a creative, organized mind honed over years of developing a mental system of categorizing information. He’s devoted that mind to teaching football. He’s had success in Detroit, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. And even though he doesn’t have quite the same quality of players he had in those cities, he brings with him, not just a football mind, but an egoless attitude that’s contagious with both coaches and players. And as we know, scheme and culture can have almost as much to do with a player (or team’s) success than talent. In a game like football where so much is scripted, coaching counts for much.

Now, about the “beautiful naked blond [who] jumps up and down” it’s a way of remembering the number 91852719521639092112. There are other ways to memorize numbers, but the Major System, like a straight line to the quarterback, is most efficient. You assign a consonant sound to every number 0-9. It’s essentially an alphabet for numbers. Here’s how it’s laid out in nearly every reputable memory book:

0 = s or z

1= t or d

2 = n

3 = m

4 = r

5 = l

6 = j or ch or sh

7 = k

8 = f or v

9 = b or p

Remember, this goes by sound. So, for example, the first letter in “century” would begin with “0” because of the “soft c” sound whereas the word “cat” would begin with a “7” because of the “hard c” sound. Also, double letters count as one number, so the word “tummy” would be an acceptable way to memorize the number “13” because you’re counting consonant sounds, not actual consonants.

Now that you know how to memorize numbers, you can use your creativity to remember the contract figures of all the free agents that the Titans didn’t sign.

LeBeau in Action

Bill Belichick and the Art of Speed Reading

“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” –Theodore Roethke

Bill Belichick on his iPad on a treadmill. Even if you didn’t see the NFL Network’s A Football Life where that image was shown, I imagine the awkwardly worded syntax of the previous sentence not only didn’t cause any problems but also helped you conjure the picture of him in his blue hoodie, staring at game film, each step on the treadmill wheel moving in sync with the wheels turning in his head, noticing whatever Bill Belichick notices when watching film.

But plenty of coaches do something similar to or the equivalent of that. It’s not like he’s the only coach who works hard, nor is he the only coach who knew at a young age that he wanted to be a coach. There’s never just one reason for someone’s success, but I have a theory for one of his reasons: he’s simply watched more film than anyone else. I’m not saying he’s spent more time watching film than anyone else (although I’m sure he’s in the top 5). I’m saying he’s seen more plays, schemes, and formations than anyone else.

I’ve recently read several books on speed reading, and it has three Do Not’s: do not regress, do not transfix, and do not subvocalize. Now, the third one is impossible to completely avoid. There may be some outliers who can read completely with their eyes, but they are a miniscule minority. Even those who are up to 1,000 words a minute, say some of the words to themselves. That said, the other two are easy habits to break. To stop transfixing, simply run your finger or a pen under each line, using it as a motor to keep your eyes and mind moving forward. And regressing is simply about having the discipline to not go back, even after saying to yourself, “wait, what did I just read?”

Therefore, you can solve two of the Do Not’s can be solved by constantly moving forward. Always keep going. If you’re trying to just get through a book because you want to find out what happens, keep going. If you’re trying to study for a test, keep going. If you have no idea what you’re reading, keep going. Don’t stop, even if you don’t feel like you’re getting anything out of it.

Here’s the reason why: you can always go back. This next sentence will sound untrue, but it absolutely is. Thrice reading a text at three times your normal rate is better than reading it at your regular comprehension rate once. The only way to increase your speed is to go faster than your normal reading rate. Here’s the thing: your brain will catch up.

I’m aware that there’s an obvious difference between words on a screen and players on a field, and I don’t want to minimalize that. But what I’m discussing focuses less on what happens on the field than what happens in the film room. And I don’t want to sound as if reading books is too similar to watching film. If that were true, Ryan Fitzpatrick would still be a Titan, in fact, he’d still be a Bill. But when you draw parallels from disparate elements, you’re talking more about general principles than you are about specific parts.

Keeping this in mind, I’m moving to a much safer generalization: everyone in the NFL watches film. Most players can draw up plays on the board and discuss football concepts as they relate to their position, and if they can’t, they’re not in the league for long.

So not being able to read a defense is a misnomer; I’m willing to bet that the best football minds have study habits similar to the most efficient readers. Let me draw a parallel: I graduated from college with an English degree, so I can intelligently discuss Shakespeare, Mark Twain and most other major author. All of us English majors read. But some have read more widely and more deeply than others. There’s always some that have read much less but are able to get by. Regardless, all of us have read, read poems, read plays, read novels, read short stories, and read essays about all of those genres. But some, despite the pulls on his and energy that we all have, find a way to read, not just the Sherman Alexie short story that was due for class but a few other Sherman Alexie short stories and an essay or two of literary criticism about Sherman Alexie.[1]

So, to continue this book as game tape metaphor, every coach is well read. But some coaches read and study better than others. They have a more effective method of preparing for games. I think what Belichick does is not just watch film, but watch film and then trace the genesis of a particular defensive (or offensive) scheme. He does the equivalent of speed reading through a text, which gives him more time to not just re-read but to fit in extra reading. He puts in the same amount of work that his colleagues do, but he gets more out of that time because he’s not wasting time regressing but pushing forward and allowing his mind to catch up.

The idea is that even if he missed something, he’s going to go back and review. So get through that initial reading without worrying about ideas you’ve missed here and there (because you still miss ideas with your bad habits). Believe it or not, you can read faster if you preview quickly, read at a more normal rate (but at a rate slightly faster than what you’re comfortable with), and then review quickly. Every version of speed reading, whether it’s the Evelyn Woods Method used by John F. Kennedy or the Photoreading technique used by Jimmie Carter incorporates previewing, “reading,” and reviewing.

These are the principles. And like Emerson said, “learn the principles and you may choose your method.” But most of us don’t. We labor slowly, trudging through a text with inefficient yet determined labor. We tend to think of speed as either a mark of genius or a mark of carelessness. But what if it’s neither? What if it’s just a better way of doing something we thought we were doing right?

[1] I taught a Sports & Lit Honors course and taught Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. It’s a great read. And if you don’t have time for that, read his short story “Do Not Go Gentle”