Oracle Team USA's Amazing Victory

The come-from-behind victory by Oracle Team USA over Emirates Team New Zealand in the picturesque San Francisco Bay is being rightly hailed as one of the greatest in sailing history.

Team USA was down 8-1 on 11^th September. But in the following two weeks, culminating in the spectacular and decisive victory on 25^th September, Team USA had run off 8 straight wins to claim victory in the first-to-nine regatta.

How improbable was 8 straight victories?

A student taking an elementary course on statistics may calculate the probability this way: Probability that either Team USA or Team New Zealand will win in any given race is 1/2, or fifty-fifty, similar to when you toss a coin and ask for the probability of getting a head or a tail.

The probability of getting 8 heads (or tails) in a row, using the law of multiplication for independent events, is (1/2)⁸ = 0.0039, or 0.39%, less than one-half of one percent.

That’s highly improbable. In other words, the likelihood of getting 8 heads in a row, or running off 8 straight victories in a regatta is extremely low.

The student can shrug off the victory by saying, “well, the improbable happens all the time in life, even if statistics says otherwise.”

That’s true, but the logic of (1/2)⁸ is faulty in this case.

The probability of winning was higher than ½ for Team USA. As the Team began to win and gained psychological momentum, meshing technology and sailing skills in ways that eluded members of Team New Zealand, its probability of winning increased dramatically from 0.5.

In addition, the races were not independent events. Each win increased the probability of subsequent wins, so that the probability of running off straight wins was much higher than what one would expect from a series of independent, binary events.

Statistics comes to life not only when its basic laws are proven true in real-life events but also when simplistic applications of these laws reach their limits and one has to consider other factors, some of which are within the reach of statistics and some not.

In the case of the 34^th America’s Cup and the amazing win by Team USA, conditional probability, along with all its associated quirkiness, had to be considered before estimating a probability of running off 8 consecutive victories. That would be an amazing feat by itself!

Voyage Across Infinity

Voyager 1, the little plutonium-powered spacecraft launched thirty-six years ago by NASA and equipped with primitive technology by today’s standards, has left the solar system. It is now traveling in the vast empyrean space between dazzling stars, still radioing back data that can help scientists increase our knowledge of the universe.

A debate has ensued as to whether Voyager 1 has actually gone beyond the heliosphere or is still traveling in its backyard. Details are important in any scientific endeavor but in this case, this particular detail is insignificant (although given the sudden vanishing of sun’s charged particles and the spike in galactic cosmic rays that Voyager 1 started recording a year ago, it appears that the starship has indeed broken through the solar bubble.)

What is significant is the immensity of Voyager 1’s accomplishment, both literally and figuratively.

Consider first the facts. The lonely probe that took off from the earth in 1977, the same year that saw the release of the movie “Star Wars,” is now 11.7 billion miles away from the earth (that’s 122 times the distance between sun and earth, or 122 Astronomical Units) and hurtling away at 38,000 miles per hour. It takes 17 hours and 22 minutes for Voyager’s signals, traveling at the speed of light at 186,000 miles per second, to reach NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. (Its twin, Voyager 2, is now 9.5 billion miles away from the earth and is expected to take 3 more years before slipping the bounds of the solar system.)

But if these facts are impressive, consider that at its current velocity, it will take Voyager 1 another 40,000 years to reach the Alpha Centauri, the closest star to our sun. Long before that, of course, the spacecraft will run out of its nuclear fuel and power down its instruments in about a dozen years from now.

Beyond the data loom the larger questions: What does this mean? In what ways can the Voyagers alter our perspective about, or at least compel us to reconsider, our place in the universe? Is there an associated element of transcendence as this 1,592-pound starship continues its journey across infinity?

On the day NASA announced Voyager 1’s leaving the solar system, another piece of news set California’s Silicon Valley all atwitter: the impending initial public offering (IPO) of Twitter, the “140-character” micro-blogging social media company. It grabbed headlines in all the major online and print publications in the U.S. The financial world, in particular, was abuzz with Twitter’s estimated value, set to about $10 billion.

Voyager 1, in contrast, made no comparable splash. In the days that followed, Twitter’s every step toward IPO was tracked and turned into breathless headlines while Voyager 1 practically vanished from the media.

Our priorities are askew. Companies may soar and fall and forgotten but the first man-made object to enter interstellar space is, by any definition, a historic milestone that time cannot erase. “The Little Nuclear-Powered Engine That Could” is now voyaging across an unimaginable immensity, affirming our transient place on earth under the heavens. We are here for a reason and even if we cannot bathe in the cosmic afterglow of the Big Bang or witness celestial fireworks in regions where time and space are probably more intricately knitted together, what we build with our ingenuity and launch toward the stars, can.

Voyager 1 reminds us that science is not a catalog of facts but an unending quest for the unknown. Every time we unveil one of nature’s mysteries, we find more mysteries nested within, infinity within infinity. Physicist Richard Feynman defined science as an “expanding frontier of ignorance.” There’s lot more we don’t know than we do. Science is more about the former than the latter. We forget this sometimes, absorbed in our mastery of the known and the commercial success of our products, and lose sight of the profound truth that we are surrounded by mysteries, only a few of which we have been able to solve.

Will the Voyagers, or their descendants, register ripples radiating from dark energy, thought to be the source of an expanding universe? Will the next generation of Voyagers navigate the sea of distant quasars and supernovas and galaxies, enriching future generations with wondrous truths about the universe we cannot even begin to imagine today? Will human beings one day travel between stars and galaxies? No one knows. What we do know is that our quest to know the unknown will continue for as long as the fire of curiosity burns within us, the one quality alone that makes us human above all else.

Consequences of Crossing Red Lines

Bashar al-Assad has crossed the red line not once but several times since the Syrian uprising began almost three years ago. Every time it happened, America threatened to take action but did nothing, emboldening Assad to continue his genocide.

Now the “ultimate” moment of truth has arrived for both the United States and Syria. There is unmistakable evidence that Assad's forces used nerve gas in August to kill more than 1,400 Syrians, including at least 426 children, in attacks on the outskirts of Damascus.

President Obama has no choice but to take action because American credibility is at stake. It came as a surprise to many last week when, at the last moment, he delayed the attack on Syria to gain Congressional approval for his order. It was a diplomatic and tactical move but perhaps not a strategic one.

Although he faces considerable opposition in Congress, Obama will get his authorization for the attack. In spite of the setbacks he has suffered as president, at critical moments Obama has proved to be extraordinarily lucky. There is no doubt that he will be "lucky" this time as well.

For Assad, buoyed by the false assurances of Russia, there is also no turning back. He knows it’s a do or die situation for him. Either call America’s bluff or prepare to take up residence in a Russian dacha, unless, of course, the rebels get to him first and he goes the way of Libya’s Gadhafi.

The critical question is: what happens after the tomahawks fall on selected targets in Syria and the playing field between Assad's forces and the rebels is leveled?

Since America will not put boots on the ground and certainly has no stomach for a drawn-out war as in Afghanistan and Iraq, a flurry of diplomatic moves will ensue. 

Russia, as always, will try to save face by “convincing” Assad that he must give up power and leave the country. Once that happens, America and Russia will use the United Nations to call for a truce between the rebels and Assad’s forces. Inevitably, power will flow to the rebels but since there is no unity among rebel factions, chaos, bordering on catastrophe, may follow. The nihilistic Al-Qaida faction will try to sabotage any peaceful negotiations. The Sunni-Alawite clash may degenerate into an all-out and unending civil war.

From any perspective, the possibility of a stable Syria, at least in the near future, is dim. Yet America must act because the price of inaction is incalculable. America alone has the power and the moral obligation to punish a regime that used Sarin nerve gas on its own people. Everyone in the Syrian government involved in the decision to use chemical weapons must face the music before the International Criminal Court in Hague.

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.

Who would like to live in a world like that?

Yes, America has acted on its imperialistic impulses and brought untold sorrow to millions. It has committed atrocities at home and abroad. But in the case of Syria, America cannot afford to wallow in its mistakes and misbegotten wars. No dictator, tinhorn or otherwise, can be allowed to get away with crimes like the ones that Assad has committed. America alone can right this wrong.

Syria will eventually find its way. Syrians will learn to live with one another in spite of their differences. And one day perhaps they will break free of their tortured past when 'hope and history rhyme.'