Divorce Rate

I have heard this statistic so many times (over the last 5-8 years) that, "50% of all marriages end in divorce."

I want to know who is calculating this and how they are calculating it. I know it CAN be calculated, but it seems very difficult to do properly and if done properly, may not be as bad as it sounds. Does anyone have any information on the formula or method used to make this claim? I think many people interpret this statistic to mean "if I get married there is a 50% chance that it will end in divorce" and I don't think it means that (depending of course on how it is actually calculated - or if it is actually true!)

A few thoughts about why it is difficult to calculate:
1. Do annulments count as divorces?
2. Assuming they do, are there any other ways to end a marriage other than divorce or death?
3. Does that mean 50% of marriages end by one or both parties dying? (That doesn't sound all that bad that way)
4. Marriage is a contract survival model, so if you take a slice of the population at a given time you will not be counting all the marriages that have yet to end in divorce
5. It would seem that it may be more likely to say, 50% of marriages get a divorce in the first x years or something like that, otherwise how could you compare a marriage in 2012 to a marriage in 1987?

A few thoughts about why it may not be AS bad as it sounds:
1. Consider 10 people. They all marry to create 5 marriages. 3 remain married until death. 2 end in divorce leaving 4 people single. They swap partners and create 2 new marriages. 1 ends in divorce, the other ends in death. The yield is 7 marriages created, 3 end in divorce and 4 end in death. 4 people of the 10 (40%) got a divorce while 3 marriages of the 7 ended in divorce (42%). When you start modeling people like Newt Gingrich who have had 4 divorces (?) you can see why the statistic may be misleading. Some people are much more inclined to get divorces than others and if they have multiple divorces it affects the overall metric.

A more extreme example: Consider 4 people. 2 marry and remain until death. 2 get married and divorced 5 times. There are 6 total marriages, 5 of which end in divorce. 83% of the marriages ended in divorce. Only 50% of the population experienced one or more divorces.

Alternatives:
It would seem a much more meaningful metric would be the % of people to experience one or more divorces within the first 10 years of marriage, 20 years of marriage, 30 years, 40, 50, etc. It would be a growing percentage for each timeframe and you could compare different marriage entry years at each time threshold to compare the trend.

Another method would be considering % of first marriages as a separate metric from second marriages, third and so on.

Flower power

I just learned vanilla is a product of an orchid flower. I have a new favorite flower. (Not sure what the old one was.)

The Cure for Road Rage

It has almost been a year since my last blog post. I think that may e related to the fact that the Subway near my office is now closed. No more meditation sessions over a foot long.

I have tried different approaches to convincing myself to not to get worked up when other drivers make aggressive or seemingly inconsiderate moves.

In retrospect, the cure seems perfectly suited for me.

I read an article about x number of driving habits to improve fuel economy from some auto publication online. Unfortunately I cannot remember the links. They claimed to have experimented with a large sample size of different vehicles but did not actually include any information from the tests. Most of the points they made were fairly logical but others were counter-intuitive.

For one, it said if you need to cool down, roll your windows down if you are off the freeway, but turn on the A/C if you are on the freeway. Simple enough.

The habits that I applied that really cured the rage were:
1) Try to avoid using brakes. If you have to use your brakes, you used too much fuel to get there too quickly. It kills kinetic energy.
2) 55 is most cars optimal cruising speed for fuel efficiency. Unless you are driving really far, if you drive 55 or 65 you will get there at almost the same time on average. Maybe 30 seconds later. The article did include that it is unwise to go slower than the flow of traffic, but hey, if your lane is going 55, don't sweat it.

Now the reason these habits or mindsets cured my rage is because it gave me a reason to not drive aggressively and it helped me realize the cost of driving aggressively. When someone accelerates and cuts me off and hits the brakes, I used to think, "Oh that jerk, I have to teach him a lesson and create a social cost for him so he won't do it next time." It is my desire for justice as well as applied economic reasoning. Now I think, "Poor sap is going to pay for that at the tank. Oh well, his choice. If he wants to make costly choices, its his money." I mean, there are still externalities there, but at least it is some existing cost that I can fall back on. I no longer feel the anger and need to enforce driving etiquette.

The best part is I also gained a MPG or two by using the new habits.

Toilet Seat Covers

Its time seat covers are changed!

Why is the poke-out tab attached at all? It just rips! There is no quick/easy way to detach the middle portion from the sides and front. If it comes predetached, no problem at all.

That was my beef and solution until I read this: The Oatmeal, Public Toilets. So true.

Sorry for the language.

Wipeout Here We Come!

Heather and went to an open casting call for wipeout today in Burbank. I thought it started at nine and we were going to be late. Fortunately I was wrong and it started at 11 am, so we had a pretty good spot in line. Only about a block down from the front. Considering the first in line got there at 4:30 am, I am glad that we did not get there until 9:30 am.

They may have a few episodes as couples, father/daughters, mother/sons, coworkers, etc. as indicated by the website, so we registered as an engaged couple and wore matching shirts. On the back Heather hand sewed "The Future MRS" on hers and "Hixon" on mine. As we waited in line, Heather finished her shirt like mad. She gained the respect of anyone who had hand-sewn in line and even a few gals said they would by a shirt like it.

The line moved surprisingly fast. I bought a dozen doughnuts to share with people in line and with the Wipeout crew. There were a lot of Halloween costumes including a tennis player, mario, "Bobman" (who had fliers with his in-costume picture on it that he would sign and hand out), a Leprechaun and many more.

The process was to move us through in groups. They told us to have a lot of energy and show our personality. So they asked us a few simple questions and we were supposed to answer. I answered in Chinese first and when the crew member spoke back to me in English with the correct conversational dialogue, I realized that she too spoke Chinese (and looked Chinese). She said, "Did you just guess I was Chinese?" and I told her that no, I was planning on it no matter who it was. What do I plan to do with $50,000? I told her, "I am engaged, so whatever she wants." To introduce humor and Heather simultaneously.

Heather was charming as usual and we showed off our shirts and our crew member liked that she was a future opera singer. Our group of 9 was selected to go inside and upstairs to make an appointment with a casting director. Our appointment is for Thursday Oct. 28th. I do not know what the other possible results were because not everyone went inside and upstairs. I do not know if some people got to audition today or not or if people were sent home, but we think we did pretty good. So our on camera audition will be in 2 weeks! Wish us luck in your hearts! If I get on the show, I will dominate the course. I have my secret strategy planned!

Countercyclical Products

Are movies/tv shows/entertainment creations about economic downturns counter-cyclical?

Is a good way to make money in a recession to make a movie about the recession?

Space

I was typing a SQL statement and considered how SQL might be different if it was in Chinese. The computer just matches up the text prompt with the call name for the data column. In our database the columns titles are often multiple words with no spaces. I thought, "Well, that wouldn't even be a problem in Mandarin."

Then it struck me for the first time (somewhat depressingly, since I started learning Mandarin 7 years ago) that there are no spaces between characters in written Chinese.

I knew Chinese had very limited grammar rules, and nothing was lost by not having conjugations for verbs based on time, subject or object, as usually this is made redundant by context. I never realized that the language is also without spacing.

Each character is written in the same size square area, and the more simple characters have a lot of room around them, but since each character represents an idea, space is not required to distinguish words.

Sometimes multiple characters are used together to form a larger or more complete idea and sometimes it is confusing if you run into character combinations you do not know, or an idiom you do not know. But for characters that you already know, spaces are not needed. Each character has its own "built in" spaces.