The Quality Without A Name

In the movie Knocked Up, the pregnant woman and her sister try to get into a nightclub and are rejected by the bouncer, who is black.  Eventually the bouncer tells them that he’s only allowed to let in 5% black people, so for every 25 white people he lets in, he can let in one and a quarter black people.  It’s actually very funny.

While trying to remember how to fall asleep last night, I noticed that the bouncer’s math is wrong.  If he lets in 25 whites and 1.25 blacks, then he has let in a total of 26.25 people.  But 1.25/26.25 is actually a little under 4.8%.  He actually needs to let in 25 * (5% / 95%), or just over 1.3, black people to achieve 5%.  Alternatively, if he wants to let in 1.25 blacks (which is 5% of 25), then he needs to let in only 23.75 whites.

We saw The Simpsons Movie on Sunday.  Spider-pig was the funniest bit.  There were some other funny bits, but it didn’t have the humor density of a typical 30-minute episode.

Watching The Simpsons in a theater with strangers of varying ages was interesting.  The twelve-year-olds laugh loudly at all of the tired old jokes I got sick of twenty years ago.  I guess that’s why Hollywood keeps putting them in.  Many of the bits I found funniest didn’t seem to get much of a reaction from the rest of the theater.

Also, strangely, people kept wandering in to the movie for about 30 minutes after it started.  Fortunately the theater was pretty empty so they didn’t have to make a big fuss finding a seat.