Isaac Newton vs. Li Wenwen; Sendak advances
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science 2023-03-08
Today’s contestants are powerhouses! Isaac “creator of laws or rules” Newton has already defeated the #2 hitter of all time and a co-creator of the more-relevant-than-ever Three Laws of Robotics. Meanwhile Li “duplicate name” Wenwen powerlifted her way past two of the greatest musicians of our time.
What happens when the smartest man who’s ever lived meets the strongest woman ever? It’s up to you to tell us!
It would be great to invite both of them to speak, but that’s not an option. We only have the budget for one speaker in this seminar, and Newton was the director of the Royal Mint or something like that, so he’s not gonna let us get away with paying in IOUs.
Past matchup
Dzhaughn writes:
Doesn’t “Goodnight Moon” need a comma or three? What does it *mean* when she leave out those commas? With “Brown, Margaret Wise” vs. “Brown Margaret Wise” we have a paternalistic emphasis on the patronymic in the former against a strong suggestion of cannibalism in the latter. And, reallly, where do we stand on cannibalism? Soylent Green is People or the Authentic Paleo Diet? I’ll pass on both.
There also was the time I boughtlots of peanut butter cups for Halloween and there weren’t many trick-or-treaters. Maurices, Mo’ Probems. But over all a sweet memory.
This doesn’t answer who we should pick, but, wow, so much happening in such a small space! Actually, I can make it even smaller:
This kind of free association is what blog commenting is all about. Really this one comment makes the whole seminar competition worth it.
But we still need to decide who advances, and for that we turn to the concise summary from Anonymous Pigeon:
“Where the wild things are” is great but a bit of a boo hoo ending. The ending of it never happened or it did in dream or whatnot makes everything that happened so worthless. If Maurice Sendak has a poor ending to offer us, I would go with Margaret Wise Brown because her book “Goodnight moon”, ends in sleep, just as we should after a long seminar.
A seminar ending in sleep . . . all too accurate! But that’s not what we want. We want to stay awake, so the Wild Thing it is.