August 31, 2009
Birthday Problem or Birthday Paradox
One of my favorite entertainments is being in a group of 50 people and wagering someone that at least 2 people share the same birthday. My mathematical probability is over 99% surprisingly (at least I think).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem
In probability theory, the birthday problem, or birthday paradox[1] pertains to the probability that in a set of randomly chosen people some pair of them will have the same birthday. In a group of at least 23 randomly chosen people, there is more than 50% probability that some pair of them will both have been born on the same day. For 57 or more people, the probability is more than 99%, and it reaches 100% when the number of people reaches 366 (by the pigeonhole principle, ignoring leap years). The mathematics behind this problem leads to a well-known cryptographic attack called the birthday attack.
A graph showing the approximate probability of at least two people sharing a birthday amongst a certain number of people.
Contents [hide]
1 Understanding the problem
2 Calculating the probability
3 Approximations
3.1 A simple exponentiation
3.2 Poisson approximation
3.3 Approximation of number of people
3.4 Probability table
4 An upper bound
5 Generalizations
5.1 Cast as a collision problem
5.2 Generalization to multiple types
6 Other birthday problems
6.1 Reverse problem
6.1.1 Sample calculations
6.2 First match
6.3 Same birthday as you
6.4 Near matches
6.5 Collision counting
6.6 Average number of people
7 Partition problem
8 Notes
9 References
10 External links
[edit]Understanding the problem
The birthday problem asks whether any of the 23 people has a birthday matching any of the others — not one in particular. (See "Same birthday as you" below for an analysis of this much less surprising alternative problem.)
In a list of 23 people, comparing the birthday of the first person on the list to the others allows 22 chances for a matching birthday, but comparing every person to all of the others allows 253 distinct chances: in a group of 23 people there are 23×22/2 = 253 pairs. The approximate probability that two people chosen from the entire population at random have the same birthday is 1/365 (ignoring Leap Day, February 29), presuming all birthdays are equally probable.[2] Although the pairings in a group of 23 people are not statistically equivalent to 253 pairs chosen independently, the birthday paradox becomes less surprising if a group is thought of in terms of the number of possible pairs, rather than the number of individuals.
[edit]Calculating the probability
To compute the approximate probability that in a room of n people, at least two have the same birthday, we disregard variations in the distribution, such as leap years, twins, seasonal or weekday variations, and assume that the 365 possible birthdays are equally likely. Real-life birthday distributions are not uniform since not all dates are equally likely.[3]
It is easier to first calculate the probability p(n) that all n birthdays are different. If n > 365, by the pigeonhole principle this probability is 0. On the other hand, if n ≤ 365, it is
where "!" is the factorial operator.
The equation expresses the fact that for no persons to share a birthday, a second person cannot have the same birthday as the first (364/365), the third cannot have the same birthday as the first two (363/365), and in general the nth birthday cannot be the same as any of the n-1 preceding birthdays.
The event of at least two of the n persons having the same birthday is complementary to all n birthdays being different. Therefore, its probability p(n) is
The approximate probability that no two people share a birthday in a group of n people.
This probability surpasses 1/2 for n = 23 (with value about 50.7%). The following table shows the probability for some other values of n (This table ignores the existence of leap years, as described above):
n p(n)
10 11.7%
20 41.1%
23 50.7%
30 70.6%
50 97.0%
57 99.0%
100 99.99997%
200 99.9999999999999999999999999998%
300 (100 − (6×10−80))%
350 (100 − (3×10−129))%
366 100%
[edit]Approximations
The Taylor series expansion of the exponential function
A graph showing the accuracy of the approximation
provides a first-order approximation for ex:
The first expression derived for p(n) can be approximated as
Therefore,
An even coarser approximation is given by
which, as the graph illustrates, is still fairly accurate.
[edit]A simple exponentiation
The probability of any two people not having the same birthday is 364/365. In a room of people of size N, there are C(N, 2) pairs of people, i.e. C(N, 2) events. The probability of no two people sharing the same birthday can be approximated by assuming that these events are independent and hence by multiplying their probability together. In short 364/365 can be multiplied by itself C(N, 2) times, which gives us
And if this is the probability of no one having the same birthday, then the probability of someone sharing a birthday is
[edit]Poisson approximation
Using the Poisson approximation for the binomial,
Again, this is over 50%.
[edit]Approximation of number of people
This can also be approximated using the following formula for the number of people necessary to have at least a 50% chance of matching:
This is a result of the good approximation that an event with 1 in k probability will have a 50% chance of occurring at least once if it is repeated k ln 2 times.[4]
[edit]Probability table
Main article: Birthday attack
#bits hash space
size
(2^#bits) Desired probability of at least one hash collision (p)
10−18 10−15 10−12 10−9 10−6 0.1% 1% 25% 50% 75%
32 4.3 × 109 2 2 2 2.9 93 2.9 × 103 9.3 × 103 5.0 × 104 7.7 × 104 1.1 × 105
64 1.8 × 1019 6.1 1.9 × 102 6.1 × 103 1.9 × 105 6.1 × 106 1.9 × 108 6.1 × 108 3.3 × 109 5.1 × 109 7.2 × 109
128 3.4 × 1038 2.6 × 1010 8.2 × 1011 2.6 × 1013 8.2 × 1014 2.6 × 1016 8.3 × 1017 2.6 × 1018 1.4 × 1019 2.2 × 1019 3.1 × 1019
256 1.2 × 1077 4.8 × 1029 1.5 × 1031 4.8 × 1032 1.5 × 1034 4.8 × 1035 1.5 × 1037 4.8 × 1037 2.6 × 1038 4.0 × 1038 5.7 × 1038
384 3.9 × 10115 8.9 × 1048 2.8 × 1050 8.9 × 1051 2.8 × 1053 8.9 × 1054 2.8 × 1056 8.9 × 1056 4.8 × 1057 7.4 × 1057 1.0 × 1058
512 1.3 × 10154 1.6 × 1068 5.2 × 1069 1.6 × 1071 5.2 × 1072 1.6 × 1074 5.2 × 1075 1.6 × 1076 8.8 × 1076 1.4 × 1077 1.9 × 1077
The white squares in this table show the number of hashes needed to achieve the given probability of collision (column) given a hashspace of a certain size in bits (row). (Using the birthday analogy, the hash space would be of size 365 (row); one desired to know the number of people that will give a 50% chance (column) of a collision; the number of people is the white square where the row and column intersect.) For comparison, 10−18 to 10−15 is the uncorrectable bit error rate of a typical hard disk [2]. In theory, MD5, 128 bits, should stay within that range until about 820 billion documents, even if its possible outputs are many more.
[edit]An upper bound
The argument below is adapted from an argument of Paul Halmos.[5]
As stated above, the probability that no two birthdays coincide is
This can be seen by first counting the number of ways 365 birthdays can be distributed among n people in such a way that no two birthdays are the same, then dividing by the total number of ways 365 birthdays can be distributed among n people:
Interest lies in the smallest n such that p(n) > 1/2; or equivalently, the smallest n such that p(n) < 1/2.
Replacing 1 − k/365, as above, with e−k/365, and using the inequality 1 − x < e−x, we have
Therefore, the expression above is not only an approximation, but also an upper bound of p(n). The inequality
implies p(n) < 1/2. Solving for n we find
Now, 730 ln 2 is approximately 505.997, which is barely below 506, the value of n2 − n attained when n = 23. Therefore, 23 people suffice.
This derivation only shows that at most 23 people are needed to ensure a birthday match with even chance; it leaves open the possibility that, say, n = 22 could also work.
[edit]Generalizations
[edit]Cast as a collision problem
The birthday problem can be generalized as follows: given n random integers drawn from a discrete uniform distribution with range [1,d], what is the probability p(n;d) that at least two numbers are the same?
The generic results can be derived using the same arguments given above.
The birthday problem in this more generic sense applies to hash functions: the expected number of N-bit hashes that can be generated before getting a collision is not 2N, but rather only 2N/2. This is exploited by birthday attacks on cryptographic hash functions and is the reason why a small number of collisions in a hash table are, for all practical purposes, inevitable.
The theory behind the birthday problem was used by Zoe Schnabel[6] under the name of capture-recapture statistics to estimate the size of fish population in lakes.
[edit]Generalization to multiple types
The basic problem considers all trials to be of one "type". The birthday problem has been generalized to consider an arbitrary number of types.[7] In the simplest extension there are just two types, say m "men" and n "women", and the problem becomes characterizing the probability of a shared birthday between at least one man and one woman. (Shared birthdays between, say, two women do not count.) The probability of no (i.e. zero) shared birthdays here is
where we set d = 365 and where S2 are Stirling numbers of the second kind. Consequently, the desired probability is 1 − p0.
This variation of the birthday problem is interesting because there is not a unique solution for the total number of people m + n. For example, the usual 0.5 probability value is realized for both a 32-member group of 16 men and 16 women and a 49-member group of 43 women and 6 men.
[edit]Other birthday problems
[edit]Reverse problem
For a fixed probability p:
Find the greatest n for which the probability p(n) is smaller than the given p, or
Find the smallest n for which the probability p(n) is greater than the given p.
An approximation to this can be derived by inverting the 'coarser' approximation above:
[edit]Sample calculations
p n n↓ p(n↓) n↑ p(n↑)
0.01 0.14178√365 = 2.70864 2 0.00274 3 0.00820
0.05 0.32029√365 = 6.11916 6 0.04046 7 0.05624
0.1 0.45904√365 = 8.77002 8 0.07434 9 0.09462
0.2 0.66805√365 = 12.76302 12 0.16702 13 0.19441
0.3 0.84460√365 = 16.13607 16 0.28360 17 0.31501
0.5 1.17741√365 = 22.49439 22 0.47570 23 0.50730
0.7 1.55176√365 = 29.64625 29 0.68097 30 0.70632
0.8 1.79412√365 = 34.27666 34 0.79532 35 0.81438
0.9 2.14597√365 = 40.99862 40 0.89123 41 0.90315
0.95 2.44775√365 = 46.76414 46 0.94825 47 0.95477
0.99 3.03485√365 = 57.98081 57 0.99012 58 0.99166
Note: some values falling outside the bounds have been colored to show that the approximation is not always exact.
[edit]First match
A related question is, as people enter a room one at a time, which one is most likely to be the first to have the same birthday as someone already in the room? That is, for what n is p(n) − p(n − 1) maximum? The answer is 20—if there's a prize for first match, the best position in line is 20th.
[edit]Same birthday as you
Comparing p(n) = probability of a birthday match with q(n) = probability of matching your birthday
Note that in the birthday problem, neither of the two people is chosen in advance. By way of contrast, the probability q(n) that someone in a room of n other people has the same birthday as a particular person (for example, you), is given by
Substituting n = 23 gives about 6.1%, which is less than 1 chance in 16. For a greater than 50% chance that one person in a roomful of n people has the same birthday as you, n would need to be at least 253. Note that this number is significantly higher than 365/2 = 182.5: the reason is that it is likely that there are some birthday matches among the other people in the room.
It is not a coincidence that ; a similar approximate pattern can be found using a number of possibilities different from 365, or a target probability different from 50%.
[edit]Near matches
Another generalization is to ask how many people are needed in order to have a better than 50% chance that two people have a birthday within one day of each other, or within two, three, etc., days of each other. This is a more difficult problem and requires use of the inclusion-exclusion principle. The number of people required so that the probability that some pair will have a birthday separated by fewer than k days will be higher than 50% is:
k # people required
1 23
2 14
3 11
4 9
5 8
6 8
7 7
8 7
Thus in a group of just seven random people, it is more likely than not that two of them will have a birthday within a week of each other.[8]
[edit]Collision counting
The probability that the kth integer randomly chosen from [1, d] will repeat at least one previous choice equals q(k − 1; d) above. The expected total number of times a selection will repeat a previous selection as n such integers are chosen equals
[edit]Average number of people
In an alternative formulation of the birthday problem, one asks the average number of people required to find a pair with the same birthday. The problem is relevant to several hashing algorithms analyzed by Donald Knuth in his book The Art of Computer Programming. It may be shown[9][10] that if one samples uniformly, with replacement, from a population of size M, the number of trials required for the first repeated sampling of some individual has expected value , where
The function
has been studied by Srinivasa Ramanujan and has asymptotic expansion:
With M = 365 days in a year, the average number of people required to find a pair with the same birthday is , slightly more than the number required for a 50% chance. In the best case, two people will suffice; at worst, the maximum possible number of M + 1 = 366 people is needed; but on average, only 25 people are required.
An informal demonstration of the problem can be made from the List of Prime Ministers of Australia, in which Paul Keating, the 24th Prime Minister, is the first to share a birthday with another on the list.
James K. Polk and Warren G. Harding, the 11th and 29th Presidents of the United States, were both born on November 2.
Of the 73 male actors to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, there are six pairs of actors who share the same birthday.[11]
Of the 67 actresses to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, there are three pairs of actresses who share the same birthday.[12]
Of the 61 directors to win the Academy Award for Best Director, there are five pairs of directors who share the same birthday.[13]
Of the 52 people to serve as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, there are two pairs of men who share the same birthday.[14]
[edit]Partition problem
A related problem is the partition problem, a variant of the knapsack problem from operations research. Some weights are put on a balance; each weight is an integer number of grams randomly chosen between one gram and one million grams (one metric ton). The question is whether one can usually (that is, with probability close to 1) transfer the weights between the left and right arms to balance the scale. (In case the sum of all the weights is an odd number of grams, a discrepancy of one gram is allowed.) If there are only two or three weights, the answer is very clearly no; although there are some combinations which work, the majority of randomly selected combinations of three weights do not. If there are very many weights, the answer is clearly yes. The question is, how many are just sufficient? That is, what is the number of weights such that it is equally likely for it to be possible to balance them as it is to be impossible?
Some people's intuition is that the answer is above 100,000. Most people's intuition is that it is in the thousands or tens of thousands, while others feel it should at least be in the hundreds. The correct answer is approximately 23.
The reason is that the correct comparison is to the number of partitions of the weights into left and right. There are 2N−1 different partitions for N weights, and the left sum minus the right sum can be thought of as a new random quantity for each partition. The distribution of the sum of weights is approximately Gaussian, with a peak at 1,000,000 N and width , so that when 2N−1 is approximately equal to the transition occurs. 223−1 is about 4 million, while the width of the distribution is only 5 million.[15]
[edit]Notes
^ This is not a paradox in the sense of leading to a logical contradiction, but is called a paradox because the mathematical truth contradicts naïve intuition: most people estimate that the chance is much lower than 50%.
^ In reality, birthdays are not evenly distributed throughout the year; there are more births per day in some seasons than in others, but for the purposes of this problem the distribution is treated as uniform.
^ In particular, many children are born in the summer, especially the months of August and September (for the northern hemisphere)[citation needed] [1], and in the U.S. it has been noted that many children are conceived around the holidays of Christmas and New Year's Day[citation needed]. Also, because hospitals rarely schedule C-sections and induced labor on the weekend, more Americans are born on Mondays and Tuesdays than on weekends[citation needed]; where many of the people share a birth year (e.g. a class in a school), this creates a tendency toward particular dates. Both of these factors tend to increase the chance of identical birth dates, since a denser subset has more possible pairs (in the extreme case when everyone was born on three days, there would obviously be many identical birthdays). The birthday problem for such non-constant birthday probabilities was tackled by Murray Klamkin in 1967. A formal proof that the probability of two matching birthdays is least for a uniform distribution of birthdays was given by D. Bloom (1973)
^ Mathis, Frank H. (June 1991). "A Generalized Birthday Problem". SIAM Review (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) 33 (2): 265–270. doi:10.1137/1033051. ISSN 00361445. OCLC 37699182. Retrieved 2008-07-08.
^ In his autobiography, Halmos criticized the form in which the birthday paradox is often presented, in terms of numerical computation. He believed that it should be used as an example in the use of more abstract mathematical concepts. He wrote:
The reasoning is based on important tools that all students of mathematics should have ready access to. The birthday problem used to be a splendid illustration of the advantages of pure thought over mechanical manipulation; the inequalities can be obtained in a minute or two, whereas the multiplications would take much longer, and be much more subject to error, whether the instrument is a pencil or an old-fashioned desk computer. What calculators do not yield is understanding, or mathematical facility, or a solid basis for more advanced, generalized theories.
^ Z. E. Schnabel (1938) The Estimation of the Total Fish Population of a Lake, American Mathematical Monthly 45, 348–352.
^ M. C. Wendl (2003) Collision Probability Between Sets of Random Variables, Statistics and Probability Letters 64(3), 249–254.
^ M. Abramson and W. O. J. Moser (1970) More Birthday Surprises, American Mathematical Monthly 77, 856–858
^ D. E. Knuth; The Art of Computer Programming. Vol. 3, Sorting and Searching (Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1973)
^ P. Flajolet, P. J. Grabner, P. Kirschenhofer, H. Prodinger (1995), On Ramanujan's Q-Function, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 58, 103–116
^ They are Spencer Tracy and Gregory Peck (April 5), Rod Steiger and Adrien Brody (April 14), Paul Lukas and John Wayne (May 26), Emil Jannings and Philip Seymour Hoffman (July 23), Robert De Niro and Sean Penn (August 17) and Ben Kingsley and Anthony Hopkins (December 31).
^ They are Jane Wyman and Diane Keaton (January 5), Joanne Woodward and Elizabeth Taylor (February 27) and Barbra Streisand and Shirley MacLaine (April 24).
^ They are Norman Taurog and Victor Fleming (February 23), William Wyler and Sydney Pollack (July 1), Robert Redford and Roman Polanski (August 18), William Friedkin and Richard Attenborough (August 29) and George Stevens and Steven Spielberg (December 18).
^ They are John Major and The Earl of Derby (March 29) and Spencer Perceval and The Viscount Goderich (November 1).
^ C. Borgs, J. Chayes, and B. Pittel (2001) Phase Transition and Finite Size Scaling in the Integer Partition Problem, Random Structures and Algorithms 19(3–4), 247–288.
[edit]References
E. H. McKinney (1966) Generalized Birthday Problem, American Mathematical Monthly 73, 385–387.
M. Klamkin and D. Newman (1967) Extensions of the Birthday Surprise, Journal of Combinatorial Theory 3, 279–282.
M. Abramson and W. O. J. Moser (1970) More Birthday Surprises, American Mathematical Monthly 77, 856–858
D. Bloom (1973) A Birthday Problem, American Mathematical Monthly 80, 1141–1142.
Shirky, Clay Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, (2008.) New York. 25–27.
[edit]External links
Coincidences: the truth is out there Experimental test of the Birthday Paradox and other coincidences
http://www.efgh.com/math/birthday.htm
http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/BirthdayProblem.html
Weisstein, Eric W., "Birthday Problem" from MathWorld.
Maple vs. birthday paradox
A humorous article explaining the paradox
The birthday problem spreadsheet
SOCR EduMaterials activities birthday experiment
Posted by keefner at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2009
The Old Bluff Hole
My brother did a really nice story with pictures of life in Oklahoma. Best I have seen. Here is WMV
Posted by keefner at 08:23 PM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2009
1,474 MegaPixel image of Obama Address
Pretty cool example of new Gigapan technology. Take a look at this 1474 megapixel image and notice the detail afforded.
Posted by keefner at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2008
Singing Big Bend's praises
Nice article on Big Bend and texas songwriter -- Floating the Rio Grande with Texas songwriter Butch Hancock is a lyrical odyssey.
BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, Texas — Butch Hancock probably isn't the first singer-songwriter to wind up, 35 years after his first promising album, sleeping under a tarp down by the river.
But he is the first one I've ever watched wake up.
When I crawled out of my tent that chilly morning, he lay a few yards away, flopped near the water's edge, barefaced under the sky. Soon the two of us were lined up with the others for coffee from the camp stove.
We had covered 13 miles of the Rio Grande in our rafts the previous day, then camped at the mouth of a canyon, 400-foot limestone walls suddenly jutting into the sky. After dinner, we circled the campfire — eight customers, three river guides and Hancock, strumming and singing about "bare footprints on the desert sand" and "blue moonlight on the Rio Grande."
This is a man who has made more than a dozen albums, whose tunes have been sung by Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, who has played the Texas governor's mansion and David Letterman's show, who generally sleeps at home with his wife and kids.
But Hancock, 62, is also a river rat. On and off for 20 years, he has been joining raft trips run by local outfitter Far Flung Expeditions, which runs two or three musical Big Bend trips every year with homegrown artists.
For me, the Texas scenery was a big selling point, but it was the Texas soundtrack that closed the deal. For my money, there isn't another state outside of Louisiana that can match Texas as an incubator of a sovereign musical culture, one that's especially rich when it comes to lyrics. Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Townes Van Zandt, Steven Fromholz, Kinky Friedman, Lyle Lovett, Hancock — and this list could be much longer. They're mostly not names you hear on the radio, but they are voices worth hearing.
Now, as the sun threw a morning blush onto the rock- strewn slopes, the guides rustled up breakfast. The rest of the campers came shambling from their tents. Hancock, laconic and perpetually bemused, shared the small talk and also some not-so-small talk involving architect Buckminster Fuller, mystic G.I. Gurdjieff and the teachings of Buddhism.
When we reached the top of a hike to high ground, he dramatically extended an arm to frame the desert panorama below.
"This," Hancock said, adopting a tone of mock authority, "is actually a perfect example of what can happen."
Who could argue?
It has craggy mountains, cactus-studded slopes, miles of meandering Rio Grande and a couple of born-again ghost towns at its edge, but Big Bend ranks among the National Park Service's least-visited parks, and that won't change anytime soon.
The summers are infernally hot. Except for a handful of days a year, rafters can expect nothing more challenging than a Class III rapid. And if you're from outside Texas, getting here means flying to Midland or El Paso, then driving about five hours while deer, rabbits, coyotes, skunks, armadillos and javelinas scamper and shuffle in and out of your high beams.
On my highway drive from petroleum-scented Midland, I dodged each of those species at least once, along with another, less recognizable furry blur — perhaps the mythical chupacabra. By the time the hills began to undulate and I reached the cheek-by-jowl towns of Terlingua and Study Butte, I had already seen more raw Texas than most outsiders care to.
But there is a payoff.
Remote, gorgeous spots
As the Rio Grande makes it way south and east through the Chisos Mountains — marking the Texas-Mexico border as it goes — the river frequently dwindles to 30 feet wide and as little as a foot deep, but the canyon walls leap up toward heaven. Most days, a child can cross the river in the right spot. But that same river can take a rafter to spots that are remote, rugged and gorgeous enough to satisfy even a well-seasoned desert traveler.
On the day we put in, the water was running 300 cubic feet per second, a flow so scant that the outfitter almost put us into canoes, which are better than rafts in shallow water. But we stuck with rafts and put in at Lajitas, about 10 miles outside Terlingua.
First, we drifted past boulders and tamarisks, a sipping horse here, a sunning turtle there. Then the earth began to ripple and rise on either side of us.
Of three major canyons that cradle the Rio Grande as it passes through Big Bend, the deepest is Santa Elena, an 8-mile passage that's inaccessible by road. And that was the heart of our itinerary, the stretch of water that awaited under those sudden 400-foot cliffs.
After we'd floated awhile, my raftmate Pamela Daggett of Austin got quiet.
"This is making me weep," she whispered.
In wonder and languor, we drifted along, four rafts in a deep declivity in the middle of nowhere. Guides Patrick Harris, Sandi Turvan and Darren Wallace told us about the 22 kinds of bats found in the canyon, the 1,200 kinds of plants, the 450 bird species. Fellow rafter Kelly Schievelbein of Seguin, who had thoughtfully packed premixed Smirnoff cosmopolitans for the river, offered nips.
Hancock rowed alongside us in a raft freighted with supplies, pausing frequently to pull out a camera and shoot close-ups of weird-looking rocks.
Despite the ideal weather, we spotted just one other rafting group. (In spring and fall, the temperatures along the river usually run 70 to 90 degrees by day, 45 to 60 overnight. Our trip was at the low end of that range.)
Everyone aboard was from Texas except me, and Jon and Jodi Houlon, a Philadelphia couple, and most everyone had been hearing for years about the wonders of Big Bend, or listening to Butch, or both.
What, someone asked, inspired the Philadelphians to travel so far? Jon Houlon, lawyer by day and frontman by night for a band called John Train, explained how he had discovered Butch Hancock's music about 25 years ago as a high school student in Maryland. Houlon ordered an album. And because Hancock was then running his own label on a shoestring, he recalled, "I was getting these cassettes in the mail from a trailer park in Austin. My mom was like, 'What is this?' "
Legendary Texas group
Raised on a farm in Lubbock, Hancock wrote some of his first songs while driving tractors. Then in the early 1970s, he and his Lubbock buddies Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore formed a group — a legendary group in Texas music circles — called the Flatlanders.
They never set the charts on fire, but through three decades of musical, financial and spiritual ins, outs, ups and downs, all three Flatlanders have forged careers as songwriters and performers, frequently recording one another's material, often joining for reunion gigs and albums.
Hancock's songs have always been dense with wordplay, their melodies plaintive, the guitar work plain, the whole package peppered with twangy riddles. In "West Texas Waltz," he finds rhymes for both "Renaults" and "arthritis." In "Boxcars," he says that "if you ever seen the cold blue railroad tracks / Shinin' by the light of the moon / If you ever felt the locomotive shake the ground / I know you don't have to be told / Why I'm goin' down to the railroad tracks / And watch them lonesome boxcars roll."
Inevitably, given that Hancock works with an acoustic guitar, plays harmonica and will never be mistaken for an opera singer, he has often been compared to Bob Dylan. But what's so Texan, or Zen, about Dylan?
Anyway, Hancock moved in 1997 to Terlingua, where he lives with his wife, son and two stepdaughters in a sprawling, curvaceous, solar-powered home that he's building, room by room, from concrete, beer cans and recycled materials. They share the property with four Airstream trailers and many, many pets, because his wife, Adrienne, is a serial rescuer.
That first night on the river, Hancock sang 17 songs, including one he introduced as "another true story from West Texas, which is like a triple oxymoron." He wrapped up with the love song "Bluebird" (an old favorite that Emmylou Harris has covered) and a war song from last year called "When the Good and the Bad Get Ugly."
Then he thanked us for our applause, pointed up and invited us to join him spotting meteorites. The headliner, in other words, was deferring to other stars. And in such a brilliant sky, with no competing light source for miles, the gazing was priceless.
The canyon swallowed us the next morning. Floating farther and farther in, we ate lunch in Mexico, which is a fancy way of saying we pulled off the river on the right side instead of the left. We skipped stones by the score, scrambled up a fern canyon for a mile or so, drained a few beers, saw nobody.
By nightfall on our second camp, still miles from the end of the canyon, the looming walls had reduced the starry sky to a thin twinkling strip directly above us. Hancock's lyrics bounced around the canyon like bats on the wing, which were present in great numbers, as well. And when I rose from my folding chair at the campfire to stretch my legs, there stood my shadow on the far wall, 75 feet high and flickering. Bright or dim, a handsome canyon.
"I thought it was going to be pretty, but it's just breathtaking," said fellow rafter Dottie Hall.
Hancock played a little longer that second night — about 25 songs, including a couple by Dylan and at least three by Townes Van Zandt, including the one everybody knows, "Pancho and Lefty."
For a few minutes he handed the guitar to Houlon, who couldn't resist playing Johnny Cash's "Big River." Somebody pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Soon it was 11 o'clock.
"I don't want to go to sleep," Houlon said, "because then it'll be tomorrow."
But in the end he did, and it was. We broke camp, eased back into the slow flow and watched the cliffs stretch up to about 1,400 feet, then dwindle to nothing. We skipped a few hundred more stones into Mexico. (Somebody, check a satellite photo, and I'm sure you'll discover that Texas lost territory between Nov. 29 and Dec. 2.)
Then we turned a corner, and it was all over. The sky, that narrow sliver overhead from the night before, was big again. A telephone pole rose in the distance. You could see trails along the shore. Cars. People.
Damn, I thought. And then I remembered a line that Hancock muttered somewhere along the river, saying he was saving it for the right song: "What a world this mess is in."
The Details
GETTING THERE: From Denver International Airport (DEN), American, Continental, Frontier, Southwest and United offer connecting service (change of planes) to Midland, Texas. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $305. From Midland, it's about a five-hour drive to Terlingua.
HOW TO GET ON THE RIVER: Far Flung Outdoor Center: Terlingua/Study Butte; 800-839-7238, farflungoutdoorcenter.com. Two music trips are scheduled so far this year: Butch Hancock (November dates pending) and singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves (Oct. 24 to 26). Cost is $629 per person, plus tax. The company also offers river trips with stargazing, food and wine themes, and jeep tours.
Other companies that operate in Big Bend include Big Bend River Tours, 800-545-4240, bigbend rivertours.com.; and Desert Sports, 888-989-6900, desertsport stx.com., which also offers hiking and mountain biking.
STAY: Big Bend Motor Inn, 800-848-BEND, bigbendmotor inntx. This is an all-purpose operation, with 49 rooms, a cafe and convenience store, an RV park, a campground, a golf course, an additional 37 rooms at the Mission Lodge across the street, and $2 showers for adventurers emerging from the park. Not much atmosphere but great logistics. Rates $87.15 to $163.45, tax included. (The top price rents a duplex that sleeps six.)
La Posada Milagro, 432-371-3044, laposadamilagro.com. This inn is a reclaimed ghost-town building. Four rooms, of which one has a private bath and shower. It's impractical and overpriced: no TVs or phones, low ceilings. But it's also so atmospheric that you might consider it for a special occasion. Rates $145 to $210.
DINE: The Starlight Theatre, 432-371-2326, starlighttheatre .com. This reclaimed building is the nerve center of reborn Terlingua. The "theatre" serves dinner from 5 to 10 nightly, with frequent live music. Main dishes $10.95 to $29.95 (for a 20-ounce ribeye steak).
MORE INFO: Brewster County Tourism Council, visitbigbend .com.
Posted by keefner at 01:40 PM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2007
Walleye and the FInish
Story about my Dad and walleye.
Walleye
I knowingly drew the paddle back, curled it, and reaching forward dug another pull to bring us closer. My Dad was in the back of the canoe and we were both working hard to get the canoe back up the Kawishiwi river to our cabin and the get-together that was the rest of our large fanily group camping out. The nice comfortable cabin. It was late afternoon and a beautiful day in Northern Minnesota on the Boundary Waters. We hadn't caught a thing or had a bite, and this was my first time in the northwaters about all those stories I had heard before.
I didn't know it then but the surprising periods of sleep/naps my Dad had been uncharacteristically needing and taking were the first indications of an illness he would die very shortly from. His last trip.
His Dad had always brought him up here and this was his last trip and he probably knew it though like Dad he didn't let on to any of us. For all intents it was my last trip as well and I had no idea.
I stared down into the brown clear water and marvelled at the red tint the iron gave the river. Up ahead looked like a likely spot to finally catch one of those walleyes. The sun had been hot all day but it was getting closer to evening and daylight wouldn't be around forever. We were both tired but this was one of the last good spots we had a chance to fish before needing to just head straight back.
It had been 4 days and my Dad still hadn't caught a walleye. It was just about time to head back to the city. Dad was always the huntsman in his early life and I know this shutout bothered him. I had been paddling through the periodic occurring rapids for him while he cast his line hoping for a bite. There wasn't any pretense of going for muskellunge or pike. My dad baited up another leech as I steadied the canoe in the rapids..
We got to the middle of the rapids area and I managed to hold the canoe in position as my Dad cast his line. There weren't any words exchanged and they weren't needed. I looked over my shoulder at my Dad.
"I think I had a bite!"…..
I steadied the canoe as carefully as I could to get it perfectly stationary in the rapids.
"Again! Another bite! We found some!"…
I hoped the bites were from a school of walleye. Then we could catch several maybe if everything went good…
"I got one!", my Dad shouted. His pole bent over and began pulsating back and forth towards the water. His line was tight and I could hear the drag. Thirty seconds later it was all over and the line went limp and he reeled in the empty hook.
Quickly he reached into the bait jar and rigged another leech faster than I had ever seen anyone before. Twenty seconds later he was launching his cast back into the same
I turned the canoe and gave my Dad a good angle into the rapids pool. Ten seconds later,
"Another one! I got another one!"…
We had found a school! How lucky could we get…The pole pulsated and my Dad fought the walleye and a minute later he lifted a large walleye into the canoe.
As the walleye flipped around in the bottom of our little canoe, I can never forget how happy my Dad looked just then. He had gotten all he had ever wanted in one brief instant it seemed. He was a kid. Only one time I'd seen Dad as excited and that was in Oklahoma (he shot a chickenhawk out of the clear blue sky in one shot).
"It's a big one Dad!", I shouted as I watched him wrestle it down.
"Yea, a real nice one!", my Dad said as he excitedly grabbed it while looking for a stringer. He had a smile on his face a mile wide… I can only cry when I think about it now.
Epilogue
The winds had died down and we paddled back to the cabin. The Kawishiwi had turned into Lake One and we were almost back. My Dad would bound out of the canoe with the walleye and the whole family would be there. The next day before leaving we had a fish fry and cooked up the walleye and everybody let Dad take his pick first.
Probably the first time in a long time he had gotten to go first….
Posted by keefner at 03:54 AM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2007
Blast From the Past -- Darts
Going thru my old computer is dangerous, as demonstrated by the following travel article I dug up on it.And the Winner This Year is....
As you may or may not be aware, I go over to the UK on a regular basis. The main reason for these trips is to solidify relationships with our European members, meet new companies, and generally "reculturize" myself so that I remember the importance of returning phonecalls, emails, and most importantly watching and listening before speaking.
Having said that, while I am here for some unknown reason I always end up in some sort of competition. Last year it was a golf tournament which NetShift and Derek Stewart put on (the Kiosks.org Open, as we were the sponsor). My CEO Dick Good came over with his clubs and I brought mine and the anticipation was high among the Brits at the chance to even the score (they had earlier been defeated in Orlando at BayHill). To increase their chances, a "ringer" from Scotland was brought in to augment the team. The final result was a disappointing loss for the Americans. Dick played well but I did not.
This year there is no golf so far (here or back in the States) but as chance would have it, during my visit to Newbury and NetShift I put up at a true English inn in the country and some of the fellows from NetShift came over for dinner and some pints. After the first pint we all noticed there was an area for Darts and little time was wasted moving to that area of the inn, with new pints, for a game.
We choose teams and I find myself paired with Julian Haslam of NetShift. This is my first meeting of Julian and he is totally impressive. Julian directs the Marketing for NetShift and is ex-NCR, having spent his formative business years dealing with financials and ATMs.
Our opponents are Joe from Sales/Marketing. From Scotland, Joe is the one (this trip) I am having to ask the most to please repeat (slowly) what he had just said so that I can understand it. Part of the reculturisation I figure to myself, just a little bit embarassed. He seems to have a sharp throw and I think back to the ringer from Scotland who beat me at golf the year previous. Joe's partner is John Purcell. John is Irish and me and him have always competed at one level or another over the years in the business of selfservice. John is VP of Marketing with NetShift but in my book he is the best authority on the goings and comings of the selfservice industry in Europe. He is a cowboy/gunslinger/good-guy in the Wild Wild West (just like me!). He'll say the same about me and we both take it one step further and try and "play" in each others backyard so to speak.
We play the first game of Darts and Julian and I win handily. John breaks out a new pack of Marlboros and asks for some fresh pints and without hesitating starts the second game, one which John and Joe win barely.
Which brings us to the rubber match. Dinner is ready but we all insist on playing the rubber match. It's a tight game all the way down to the final dart. We are playing 501 and we are both down to double 1s and after a few rounds of trying to score the winner and being unable to, the match is to be decided by one throw from each player with the closest to the bullseye declared the winner. It is a suitable ending for very suitable match.
I throw first.
I take my position at the line and mustering one last throw I toss the dart and miraculously it lands less than a millimeter outside the bullseye ring. It is a masterful (and extremely lucky) throw on my part. Julian is ecstatic and John and Joe are muttering to themselves at their misfortune as there is little chance they can beat that throw.
Next up in Joe and Joe is particularly adept at darts and has been throwing with deadly accuracy. He takes position and throws, but his bird floats to the right and lands outside mine by at least 2 inches. The realisation that they will most probably lose sinks in a little bit more.
Next up is Julian and his throw is academic but he does his best and he lands outside my dart which remains nestled right up against the bullseye.
Next up is John, and here is where I make a major major mistake. Remember my golden rule about not talking but watching/listening? I didn't... Feeling the imminent victory causes my blood to rise and for a little extra cheese to go with it, I begin to taunt him a little... I remind him that it will be prominently displayed on the website how some overweight and travel-weary American kicked some Irish butt at darts, in a pub, drinking bitter. Up to now he has been missing to the right or to the left and his confidence is not at its peak, and here I am telling him he is going to miss. To lose is bad enough, to lose to me the American is two magnitudes worse. Obviously bothering him, he steps aways and regroups, thinking and thinking some more, has a long drink on his Guiness then he steps back up to the line. John is 6 foot 3 and he leans into the target almost halving the distance and then, with slight twist and jab with his clawhammer grip, he delivers his dart.
He throws a perfect bullseye.
He is inside me by the barest of margins. The crowd and the players erupt. Like the little kids who just won their first football game, John and Joe widely celebrate, and like the little kids who just lost a heartbreaker, me and Julian shake our heads in disbelief. As Julian put it, "It is a champagne moment".
And so I lose again (again on English soil). Again to a Scot and now as well to a Irishman. In a sense I did win, as John knows without a doubt now that in order to beat me, he will need to be perfect. If his best had not been required in order to best me, then it would have been a double defeat. And for me, losing doesn't hurt quite so much, as long as I am losing to the best.
Congratulations to the winners John and Joe, from Craig and Julian!
Notes: John Purcell was the VP of Marketing for NetShift which provides Enterprise-class software for a multitude of self-service applications. A very respected speaker and "guru", I have had the pleasure of knowing John for many years. John has also has the position of Chairman of the Developing Markets committee of Kiosks.org Association.
Julian Haslam was the Manager of all Marketing and directs the imaging and marketing efforts that NetShift did. Julian comes from NCR and has the best of understanding when it comes to positioning his company NetShift. Look for new magazine advertisements and for a strong presence at vertical tradeshows in the future. There are many important announcements scheduled over the next few months.
Craig Keefner is a nice enough person but he is unable to win at any games in the UK. Stupidly, he continues to try and try, and he continues to wear that unfortunate suit tailored by a company called "Almost Won...". He wishes he could say he loses on purpose but he doesn't (lose on purpose that is). Next time maybe its time to get serious and bring my 12-string and fingerpick those guys into submission.
:-)
Posted by keefner at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2007
Personality Disorder Discharges
One of those things that really irks me is how dedicated we can seem to making memorials or salutes of all sorts to fallen soldiers, and then end up not paying attention (or respect) to soldiers that come home. The military with each passing war just seems to get more efficient at screwing our soldiers.
It's not unlike chemical/pharm companies or other companies that suddenly launch a "lets all feel good" publicity campaign. 9 times out of 10 the only reason they are doing that is in preparation for some legal lawsuit declaring them only concerned with making profit any way they can.
Using "lets honor our fallen soldiers" events to inoculate/prevent people from looking at what the military is really doing to our soldiers is taking it to the most obscene degree.
http://ptsdcombat.blogspot.com/2007/07/personality-disorder-discharges-under.html
Another soldier tells his story:
Donald Louis Schmidt of Chillicothe, Ill., was being treated for posttraumatic stress disorder after his second combat tour in Iraq. His commanders at Fort Carson later decided he was no longer mentally fit and discharged him with personality disorder. "They just slapped me with that label to get me out quicker," Schmidt said. He said superiors told him "'Everything will be great. Peachy keen.' Well, it's not."
The discharge left Schmidt ineligible for disability pay and benefits. He was also required to return more than $10,000 of his $15,000 reenlistment bonus, but he said no one explained that to him until it was too late. "If I didn't have family, I'd be living on the sidewalk," Schmidt said.
"It's not right that they would do this to him after him going to war for us," Schmidt's mother, Patrice Semtner-Myers, said. "They threw him away. They're done with him. He's no use to them anymore so they say, 'We're done. … Thanks for nothing.'"
Posted by keefner at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)
December 09, 2006
Meteor in Colorado
Almost arriving at work this last Friday an amazing fireball came down directly in front of me at 6:44am just as I was driving into work. The guy I work for was just leaving his house further east and also saw it. The fireball got bigger as it got lower and never did flame out as it passed behind Boulder Mountain (probably 15 degree azimuth). I emailed the local TV station and its funny how they quoted me but for some reason they got confused as to my location. I was driving on Dillion just past 287 (near Louisville) and the TV station published it as me being in Dillion (a city quite some distance to west).
I've been looking for someone in Grand Junction to speak up and say they saw the fireball but in the eastern sky. Someone further west had to see it in the eastern sky and that localize where it hit somewhat (right now its just somewhere west of Louisville.)
UPDATE POSTED Feb 2007
DENVER -- A bright fireball streaked across Colorado early Friday, prompting a number of e-mails to 7News, and calls to authorities and researchers, but no debris was immediately reported.
"It came in from the east, over the plains, and was seen to disappear over the mountains to the west," said Chris Peterson, a meteor researcher with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
The bright light was spotted at abut 6:45 a.m. and was bright enough to be categorized as a fireball, he said.
"Meteors are called fireballs when they are brighter than Venus," said Peterson.
"In general, most of these fireballs burn up quite high in the atmosphere, often 10 to 20 miles above the surface of the Earth," said 7NEWS Chief Meteorologist Mike Nelson. "Few of these objects ever actually reach the ground, even though it often appears that they have hit quite close by."
Meteors are common over Colorado but this one was unusual because it was so bright it could be seen as the sky was getting light, Peterson said.
"Most of these meteors are only about the size of a golf ball to maybe a baseball when they hit our atmosphere, less than 1 to 2 percent of the mass typically survives to the ground - if any at all," explains Nelson.
"This one may have been much brighter (than most), more like the brightness of the moon," he said. "Events like that happen every year or so."
Peterson, who operates a Web site on meteors, said he received several witness reports but did not see the meteor himself.
"It was still burning as passed out of view at the lower horizon," wrote one 7News viewer from Dillon. "Normally they come down and flame out long before they get to the horizon."
Peterson said any debris from the meteor would be hard to find.
"You'd just be looking at a handful of rocks," he said. "The rocks would have probably fallen somewhere where there's a lot of other rocks."
Peterson said if any part of the fireball did make it to the ground it might be in northwest Colorado, in the vicinity of Meeker.
The Colorado Geological Survey had a different location and direction for the fireball, and put its landing site along the Front Range.
"The object apparently broke up near the I-25 and C-470 interchange and continued southward toward Castle Rock," a spokesman said. "Residents in this area and points south should be on the lookout for meteorites."
Researcher Chris Peterson's Web site to report or read about meteors is www.cloudbait.com.
Followup comments on Cloudbait
LINK
This widely observed fireball occurred at approximately 6:45 AM MST on Friday, December 8. Unfortunately, because of its nearness to dawn it wasn't caught on any network cameras. Over 100 witness reports have been submitted to Cloudbait, most from the Denver area. However, it was also seen from Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. Many people saw this meteor during their morning commute, and it was reported on heavily by all the Denver news outlets.
The fireball is proving very difficult to analyze. Although there were many witness reports, the fireball ended far enough west that all of the Front Range observers saw it drop behind the mountains before it ended. Also, the locations of the witnesses is such that it remains impossible to establish with certainty the bearing of the ground path. It may have been traveling mainly east to west, but the witness reports are also consistent with a more north to south path. It probably ended over an area roughly bounded by Grand Junction, Grand Mesa, Delta, and Somerset (all in Colorado). Witnesses in this part of the state reported seeing the meteor break up and cool to orange, suggesting that meteorites may have been produced.
The map below show the approximate area of termination, and some possible ground paths for the meteor. If I receive additional witness reports, it may be possible to refine these estimates. The small black squares represent individual witness reports received so far.
Posted by keefner at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2006
Musings on my Drive Home
Short stuff: taking a few minutes out to stretch what's left of the muscles.
It was driving home today when I glanced at the approaching clouds thru the car window and things resufaced in my brain. My car is very quiet and comfortable. Inside my skewed brain, rolling back and forth between some two mental demarcations another semi-flawed piece of fruit was about to fall to the ground.
Simple phrases mystify the less-used locales of my brain. Whether it's something abstract like obsessive inversions (you can always turn it around...) or a simple "i love you", I cannot stop sifting and re-sifting thru the unconnected fragments.
A reputation for being overly-sensitive to nuance follows me around like some lost and starving dog looking for just a meal. Strange how lost dogs always are willing to presume a new home. Survival makes all possible. As for my nuance reputation -- on one hand it's deserved, on another level I of course prefer to think it isn't so.
At work when I need that one specific and unique answer, it's just a artistic sequence of a skillful reductive dart directed at a google to fish out the answer trail I seek. In one sense I look for something I already know, something I already have at hand, that I already command. I am only looking to epitomize someone else's understanding. Guessing at likely "nuanced" representations and characterizations is a strength of mine.
I pull up to the red light and brake to my stop. For some reason I take notice of someone in my left rearview mirror in an older green Honda Civic turning left. I make a note of the license plate.
Back to the sky I take a mental photo shot and then look back to see what other days and times were exactly like now. Like old kodachrome carusels shuffled back and forth, every once in a while the gears shift, dis-engage and a card gets pulled out and stacked to the side, and then the shuffling resumes. For a brief moment I hear and see the Ace of Spade card flapping bac-a-bac-a-bac-a-bac on the bike I am riding down a concrete street in a houston suburb to my friends house to play football and listen to Herb Alpert on the mediocre stereo he got two xmases ago.
On another plane, I see thru the eyes of someone walking up to the backside of golf clubhouse after a soft rain on a saturday morning a standing pool of reflective water in the black grainy asphalt like silica mirrors back at me. Just like the day in Minnesota off 80-ish I-494 near Bush Lake when it stopped for a few seconds.
It's like this in every place and any place I go. I search to recognize in Colorado for what it was in Kentucky and in Minnesota. Tulsa and Kansas City. Phoenix. And especially baselined in Houston. A wide open ocean in Venezuela, California or pulling up to the dock in Gulfport (again).
Layered like morphic and sedimentary layers all into one segment. A soil sample in the centrifuge.
Ahead -- a trio of reckless young skateborders dash across the road ahead and skirt hastily right into the sidewalk. I'm turning left ahead. I never did ride a skateboard though I remember handling one once.
It's ironic but for someone who always seems to have wheels underneath them, I could never skate, do skateboards, ski, or anything else that put something moving under my feet. No balance. Kryptonite & Superman. And we all have our flaws, imperfections, and at minimum, our defects.
Yet more than anything I have always been moving and maintaining my balance has been my strength.
Throw anything at me and I'll immediately forge an intelligent response and invite a qualifying response from you. I'll learn from your question and invite you to do the same. It can be as simple as shims in a door or frequencies and the coherency of propagation of organic lasers.
Inverted obsessions (I told you I can't forget). Ever been in the situation where someone has tried to tell you what the error of your ways was. And they did it repeatedly and recurring. You begin to think they are obsessed with your perceived weakness. At some point they stop and go away but you continue to think they are obsessed with you. You begin to wonder what they think of you and how they react to you.
Pretty soon without knowing it it is you who is obsessed with something that is only a proposition (and challenging invite) in your own mind.
You become obsessed by a perceived outside obsession that does not exist.
My subdivision is coming up and I move to the right lane. Out of self-defense I try to step back one level and wonder if I am obsessing about something by formulating such a thesis. There is nothing wrong with analyzing things (at least in my mind). I cross it off as healthy and move on.
I was driving home today, and I thought about you whether you know it or like it or don't care...
Posted by keefner at 04:20 AM | Comments (0)