You know, I'm thinking of taking a vacation in August or September too. Maybe to the East coast, or perhaps to the Bay area to visit my aunt and uncle. I'm thinking a road trip, as I haven't done that in years. Or else by train....

I was kind of thinking about going someplace where people won't care so much that it's the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Well Chile won't work for you, because September 11 is the anniversary of the coup that replaced democratically elected Salvador Allende with a brutal military dictator.

This year, both PTO and money is rather thin. However, I'm hoping that next year Mom and I can take the road trip we were originally going to take this August (but her foot surgery and my brother's wedding nixed that idea). I'll get to her place near Philly, and then we'll drive up to Maine for several days, and then stop by Boston for a bit on our drive back, where we can see my cousin who lives near there and I can finally see more of the city.

Then, maybe, if I can save up some money between school tuition, I can get to London in 2013!

Emmett's watching Deal or No Deal and I'm having a hard time explaining risk calculation to him.

"But she's still got a one in three chance!"

"No, that's not how you calculate the decision. You calculate all the odd possibilities versus the reward, and at a certain point the odds don't favor what you're risking. It's not a coin flip. There's an actual value you can place on the risk/reward calculation and she blew it when she didn't take the $188,000 offer after the million came off the board. I guarantee you that she will walk away with far less than that amount now."

"But she's still got a chance to get the $500,000!"

"No! You don't get it. She's not making a decision based on actual calculations. She's entered a fallacy of thinking she's lucky or intuitive. She made a bunch of lucky/fortuitous guesses early, which tipped the odds in her favor. The guy in the booth is not pulling his offers out of his ass. He's running a calculation. He's measuring the risk for each choice. She needs to do that too and failed to do that when she said No Deal on the offer at $188,000."

Anyway. She still wound up with $83,000.

Tom - a cruise. Or, I know a lovely group in Ethiopia that you could volunteer with.

I'll be on a cruise ship for 9/11, and I'm sort of hoping it's NOT one with primarily American passengers so it will be as little of a big deal as possible. I feel like every Australian holiday that popped up while I was on my last ship was a MUCH bigger deal because if we didn't go all out, the Aussies freaked out that the American ship wasn't catering to its passengers enough.

no no no DISNEY WORLD!!! or you could go walking the Appalachian Trail.

Hec, The Monty Hall Problem continues to stymie some folks.

Okay, North Carolina-istas: what is up with that wildfire in Pender County?

signed,
It's All About Me And My Upcoming Vacation

t edit I'm really confused reading the news reports -- several say the fire is centered up near Cary, but others talk about it being down near Hampstead.

Can you go "walking the Appalachian Trail" alone?