A few minutes ago, I received yet another reminder of just how out of touch I am with the so-called "real Americans" who inhabit some other part of this great nation. It was a very jarring (and potentially embarrassing) wake-up call, but it's so absurd it merits sharing.

It all begins with a present value formula in my textbook for a course on banking and finance, Contemporary Financial Intermediation by Stuart Greenbaum and Anjan Thakor. Precisely the kind of present value formula that doubtlessly served as the basis of many financial derivative products the public now hates for irrational reasons. (Strike one.) Anyway, on page 134 of the second edition of their text, Greenbaum and Thakor present an equation to find the value of a zero-coupon bond at some time t, given a purchase price and years to maturity at time t. In other words, they present a present value formula. But Greenbaum and Thakor never bother to actually say to the reader, "This formula calculates the present value of a bond." At first I thought I had confused the present value formula with something else, but a query on Wolfram Mathworld confirmed my hunch. That the authors never actually mention that they've defined a present value formula struck me as odd, given: (a) people familiar with present value formulas would more easily follow their exposition if that key phrase were mentioned, and (b) people unfamiliar with present value formulas, but who are taking a course in finance, really should know that the formula is a present value formula. (I suppose in the context of my scorekeeping, this deep and highly nerdy thinking might be construed as strike two.)

But enough about economics and mathematics. My hunch confirmed, I zipped over to The New York Times' website to check up on the world. That's when I discovered the Superbowl takes place at some point in the near future. It's key here that I only realized the Superbowl "takes place at some point in the near future." Because it took me — and I'm not embellishing here at all — five minutes to find the date of the upcoming football championship. It's really something that, first of all, I had no idea the Superbowl was happening soon, and, second, I'm so inept at hunting down sports statistics it took me five minutes to find the date a very, very important game takes place. (Strike three.)

It probably doesn't do much for my appeal to the Tea Party crowd that I composed this blog post listening to 17th century opera. (Lully's Thésée for the curious. And, even though I basically speak fluent French, I still can't understand a word of it.) And, given how awful my luck tends to be, this blog post will probably resurface 30 years from now while I'm waiting for some Senate subcommittee to approve me for some government position analyzing economic policy. Oh well. Perhaps it's time I actually learn what a "down" is.