If Congress talked about other things the way they talk about guns

Seat belts:   "Cars don't kill people, drivers kill people.  Legislating seat belts violates Americans' fundamental right of self-determination, and it doesn't address road rage, which is what's really causing car crashes."

Anthrax research:   "I don't want the government poking its noses in Americans' private lives.  What if there's an Iraq veteran who is trying to develop his dream of being a biomedical researcher?  It would be wrong for us to interfere by requiring him to go through onerous regulations and restrictions to get the materials he needs."

Obesity:   "If Big Gulps are outlawed, then only outlaws will have Big Gulps."

Drugs:   "It's a tragedy that these students were selling drugs to each other, but if every teacher in that school was carrying weed, that would solve the problem."

Food:   "It's intolerable to think we should regulate food safety.  If there's a natural disaster in this country and shipping is overwhelmed and there's chemicals in the air and the government breaks down, then people are going to need to take food supply into their own hands and we shouldn't interfere with that."

The Third Amendment:   "It's clear from the punctuation that the government should not be able to house soldiers anywhere."

Two Truths and a Lie

Yesterday, I attended a 'new hire' activity commemorating my continuation as a post-doc at MIT, where I was subjected to the conniving of an over-zealous HR employee.  In the interest of building community between a group of people who would probably never see each other again, this resourceful individual broke out the age-old ice-breaker game:  two truths and a lie.

If you're unfamiliar with the premise, it goes something like this.  Each person makes three statements, two of which are true and the third of which is not.  The other ice-breakees try to guess which is the false statement, and everyone learns something about one another.  Often the lesson is simply "this person has no patience for ice-breaker games."  Fortunately, for me "boredom" and "games" are like oil and water:  games nourish me, and boredom makes me slippery.

Thus, following a great deal of pencil scratching and many wrong turns, I give you my final answer to the game Two Truths and a Lie:

• This is one of the two true statements.
• This is not the false statement.
• Both of the preceding statements are not true.

So, which of the statements is the lie?  Think about it - write your answer down! - and then skip below the fold to check and see if you are right.

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Did you say #2?  You're right!  

Did you say #1?  Guess what?  You're right too!

If you said #3, and you checked the result and showed it worked out - I've got good news for you: your answer is correct as well.

The amazing thing about these three statements is that as long as you know the rules of the game (one is a lie and the other two truths) then any one of the statements can be false, as long as the other two are true.  Another way of saying this is that if we represent the truth values of the three statements as (A, B, C) using 1 for "true" and 0 for "false," then any of the following three configurations is a valid solution:

(1,  1,  0)

(1,  0,  1)

(0,  1,  1)

This is a truly egalitarian solution to the Two Truths and a Lie game: anyone who proposes a valid guess wins!  I wholeheartedly recommend it to you should you ever find yourself in a similar situation.  

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Of course, you may be asked to state two truths and a lie about yourself, in which case you're on your own.  A piece of advice:  don't lie about how well-traveled you are.  This is a very popular lie.  A better winning tactic is to tell the truth about how well traveled you are, in a somewhat unspecific way (I've been to six continents).  For your lie, a few good ideas are to use something very specific and boring but false (my favorite color is cerulean) or something 'too weird and specific to be false' that is false (I recently purchased a used 2011 Kawasaki Concours 14.)  (A good, quick source for the latter is stealing stories from your friends.)  Most people will assume that you wouldn't bother putting in enough mental work to construct an elaborate but non-fantastical lie.  And you probably won't, since it's just an HR exercise.  But make the most of it!  Boredom is a waste of your time - combat it with a daily dose of creativity and surrealism.