Maxi-min your love life

What was it we were supposed to learn from "A Beautiful Mind"? That there's nothing wrong with being crazy if you're brilliant? I did pretty well on my JP, but no one is willing to casually dismiss my talk of an imaginary girlfriend from Oklahoma (she was going to fly out for Valentine's Day, but she couldn't 'cause she's doing some modeling right now). I feel pretty certain they wouldn't give me a permanent professorship, even though they gave one to Gary Bass, and he speaks of international law!

I think everyone remembers two things from that movie. First, Nash in the library shouting "I have respect for beer!" Lord knows how many times I've heard this in Firestone. Actually, to be honest, I've never heard it, probably because I've never been there, but I suppose people do work there and occasionally go crazy. Second, everyone remembers Nash at the bar using his economic theories to figure out how to score with a spicy quintet that strolls into the room in slow-motion.

We learned that economics was designed to help us with our love lives. To the horror of the economics department, which has threatened to rescind my Certificate in Finance and blackball me at Goldman Sachs (too late, suckers, they already hosed me!), I have chosen to pervert a principle of economics for the purpose of a sophistic column. Today, class, we will learn why maxi-min logic leads you to reject Valentine's Day.

Now, get out your paper and pencils (this part of the lecture will not be available on Blackboard). Draw a 2x2 Nash grid. The rows will represent whether or not you are single. The columns will represent whether or not you celebrate Valentine's Day. We will number these like the quadrants on a Cartesian plane.

Scenario #1: You are in a relationship, and you are pro-V-Day. You'll have an opportunity to spend some quality time with your significant other, and you'll probably spend some significant money to get that quality time. You enjoy the love and tenderness that a relationship is supposed to reward — because this holiday compels it. You have a good time on Feb. 14.

Scenario #2: You are in a relationship, but there is no Valentine's Day. You treat the night like any other, which is probably just as well, because it's a Monday, and you've got Politics and Finance on Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. Maybe you get some anyway.

Scenario #3: You are single, and there is no Valentine's Day. Just like Scenario #2, nothing happens. You actually do the reading for once. OK, maybe that's a stretch.

Scenario #4: You are single, and Valentine's Day is all around you (and so the feeling grows). You watch "Love Actually" by yourself (not that you own it or anything) and scoff at people necking all day, with the exception of couples in Cottage, where the guys don't have necks.

So now we've finished our Nash grid, despite Prof. Krugman getting his slides out of order. To make your decision, the next step is to "maximize your minimum" — that is, pick the choice that gives you the best possible rock-bottom. If you choose to allow Valentine's Day to continue to exist, you get to sulk while surrounded by the rapturous delight of the enamored. If, on the other hand, you choose to rise up and crush the infamous thing, you could have a guys' night, or a girls' night, or you could even work on upgrading to a more-significant other. That's not a bad minimum at all.

I urge you all to hearken to my theory and reject Valentine's Day en masse. As rational beings, you are required by the laws of nature to succumb to my dubious logic. Granted, I can read women about as well as I can read North Korean cursive, but who are you to argue with economics? A skeptical friend remarked, "Powell, if this is some scheme for you to steal all the girls when they get mad at us, you can go to hell." Then he went off to buy chocolates or roses or something, to make sure he didn't wind up in Scenario #4. Powell Fraser is a politics major from Atlanta, Ga. He can be reached at pfraser@princeton.edu.