Too late for a Christmas hint

Unfortunately the bidding closed on this eBay auction before I could hint that I might like it for Christmas. It's the scoreboard from the University of Iowa's football stadium. There was only one bid, the $10,000 minimum, for the scoreboard from Kinnick Stadium, which is scheduled for demolition after today's final game against Wisconsin. The scoreboard does include the Jumbotron, and it's controller, but it did not include shipping and the winning bidder had to go to Iowa City and remove it from the stadium himself.

REI now offers the Camper's Dream Ice Cream Maker. It's a ball 8 inches in diameter that after you put in the ingredients, you "play with the ball, rolling it around for 20 minutes and, voila, you've made a pint of delicious ice cream!"

Enjoy the week off

The Miami Dolphins have their bye week this week. They could use it because they are breaking in a new interim head Jim Bates, who replaced Dave Wannstedt, who resigned on Monday.

At 1-8, the Dolphins are down, but technically, they are not out. At home today, they must root for Buffalo to beat New England because one more win by New England will eliminate the Dolphins in the AFC East. They would also be eliminated with the combination of a New Enlgand tie and a New York Jets win against Baltimore. A Jets win alone will not elminiate the Dolphins, but it would necesitate a Jets-Patriots tie on Boxing Day for the Dolphins to pull it out.

BC(Mes)S

Wouldn't it be great if these teams Utah (11-0), Boise State (11-0), Auburn (11-1), and Texas (11-1) all get together on New Year's Day and watch Tostito's dream match up for their Fiesta Bowl's BCS match-up of Iowa State (7-5) and Syracuse (6-5)? Let's see if we can make it happen.

Oklahoma (currently 10-0) beat Nebraska today to wrap up the Big XII South Division, thereby clinching a spot in the Dr. Pepper Big XII Championship Game at Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium on December 4. Whom they will play is not known yet, but anyone who has followed the BCS will know that this is the perfect recipe for the Sooners to blow it, screwing up everything. The conference requires that someone win the Big XII North Division, but nobody really seems to want to. Four teams are still in contention--Iowa State(3-3,5-4), Colorado (3-4,6-4), Nebraska (3-4,5-5), and Missouri (2-4,4-5)--with four games to play. On November 20, Iowa State plays at Kansas State and Missouri hosts Kansas. Then on the day after Thanksgiving, Colorado plays at Nebraska, and then Iowa State hosts Missouri to decide it all. Four games without the possibility of a tie gives 2^4=16 possible outcomes--Iowa State controls its own destiny and wins 6 of the scenarios. Nebraska and Colorado each win 4 and then Missouri wins 2. There cannot be a four-way tie. Missouri would win a three way tie at 4-4 with Iowa State and Colorado by virtue of their head-to-head sweep, while Nebraska would win a three way tie with Missouri and Iowa State, having beaten Missouri head-to-head with ISU being elinimated in the third tie-breaker by having the worst record against the fourth place team in the division Colorado.

Now we move to the Big East which still gets a BCS bid despite having dwindled down to seven teams. Boston College, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, and Syracuse are still alive. I think. When it comes down to selecting the BCS team from amongst possible co-champs, the conference's rules are strictly speaking not applicable in certain circumstances. The rules for breaking a three-way tie are written for a season of 7 conference games, but this year each team only plays 6.

These four teams play 4 games. Boston College plays at Temple next week, and then hosts Syracuse the following week. Pitt hosts WVU on Thanksgiving night, and then travels to South Florida on December 4 to make up a September nonconference game postponed by one of the hurricanes. That leaves three conference games giving 8 possible outcomes. Boston College does actually control is own destiny, but there is only one scenario where it wins outright. West Virginia has 3 scenarios where it wins outright. Now the remaining four scenarios all depend on the final BCS poll. One has a two-way tie with Boston College needing to finish no fewer than places lower than WVU thanks to today's victory over the Mountaineers to win. There are two three way ties that would most likely be won by Pittsburgh, and then there is a fascinating four-way tie.

This four-way tie occurs with BC beating Temple but losing to Syracuse and Pittsburgh beating West Virginia. In this case, they would all be 4-2 in the conference, and the four team "mini-conference" as described in section C.A.2. of their tie-breaking procedure would apply, with

Team         Overall Record    Wins in the "mini-conference"

Pittsburgh     8-3 or 7-4*     West Virginia, Boston College

Syracuse          6-5          Pittsburgh, Boston College

West Virginia     8-3          Syracuse

Boston College    8-3          West Virginia

*-Pitt's game at South Florida does not effect this.

Under the conference rules, the two teams with the best records and the two teams that have actually been ranked, albeit low rankings, are eliminated, leaving Pitt and Syracuse to be decided by which team is ranked higher. Neither are currently ranked, but with today's win at Notre Dame and a win against West Virginia, Pitt should probably receive a couple of votes at least although a loss to South Florida could screw that up. If neither team is ranked, then Syracuse would get the BCS berth.

So Iowa State vs. Syracuse? It's possible.

Where's my fish?

I got home this afternoon to find that one of my neon tetras is missing. Three months ago, I pulled the aquarium out of my parents' attic and got it up and running for the first time in years. Initially I got three zebra danios, a big mystery snail came a couple of weeks later, followed by three neon tetras. Near the end of September, one of the danios started acting all funny. It couldn't really move its tail and spent a lot of time sitting on the bottom. The one morning, I found it was skeletonized on the bottom.

Then last week, one of the tetras was acting the same way, limping on the bottom. One night when I went to turn off the light to go to bed, I saw that the snail was eating the gimpy fish alive! The fish was trying to get away, but the snail was wrasping away on its tail. When the snail let it up after a few minutes, the fish had no tailfins and no scales on the back half of its body. When I woke up the next morning, there was a skeleton.

This afternoon though, there was no fish and no skeleton either. Sad times in the aquarium. That one in the dentist's office in Finding Nemo made me think it was more friendly. Of course now that I think about it, they did try to escape. Maybe my tetra is just looking for his dad right now.

More German stuff

I don't exactly know what to say about this site. Examine closely the figure on the right side of the intro photo before clicking on it to get to the main page.

Es gibt keine Mauer!

It's 9/11. (If you use the European date convention, of course.)

Thus it is the anniversary of two important nighttime events in 20th Century German history. One bad, one good.

In 1938, on Kristallnacht, "The Night of Broken Glass" gangs of Germans took to the streets, smashing the windows of Jewish owned stores and burning synogogues. However, this is not what I wanted to talked about.

Also on 9 November, this time in 1989, East German Politboro member Günter Schabowski erred in a press conference when he said shortly before 7:00 pm that the recently past regulations regarding easing restriction on leaving East Germany would take effect “immediately, without delay.” Berliners flocked to Die Mauer and knocked her down. By the next day, 2 million East Germans had gone to West Germany.

I just realized this morning that I have actually lived more of my life with the Berlin Wall down (15 years) than with it up (14 years, 6 days). This seems strange to me. It still seems recent. I remember very clearly watching those guys with their sledge hammers turning a symbol of oppression into souvenirs on TV. It's been over five years since I went to Checkpoint Charlie and the museum there. (Possibly my favorite musuem.) That still seems recent.

The Colorado voters spoke, and while they were fairly evenly split on whom they wanted for president and whom they wanted for senator, but when it came time to vote on Amendment 36, they spoke with relative unaminty that they didn't want to split their electoral vote based on the popular vote, voting down the proposition with 65.42% voting "No."

However, I decided to go ahead and tabulate results if the proposed scheme was implemented in every state. For reference, Bush won the real race 286 electoral votes to 252. Under the new scheme, Bush would have won 280 to 258.

I also decided to apply the dividing proceedure to the nationwide popular vote, in a manner not unlike (in spirit, although not exactly in practice; they use a different rounding method) like the Israeli Knesset, where you vote for parties in a national election. Bush would receive 270 electoral votes to 262 for Kerry, with Ralph Nader getting 3 and Libertarian Michael Badnarick getting 2.

Mississippi River Valley

By my count, the Mississippi River flows through 124 counties, and they were close to evenly split between Kerry and Bush. Kerry won 63 and while Bush took 61. This accounts for 11% of Kerry's counties nationwide. By state I have them as

Minnesota: 17 for Bush, 5 for Kerry
Wisconsin: 0, 8
Iowa: 2, 8
Illinois: 9, 9
Missouri: 14, 3
Kentucky: 4, 0
Tennessee: 3, 2
Arkansas: 0, 6
Mississippi: 2, 9
Louisiana: 10, 8

Islands in the Sea

With the help of the Dave Leip's Altas of US Presidential Elections, I was able to determine that 81 of the 569 counties (14%)that voted for Kerry are completely surrounded by counties that voted for Bush. (This includes Orange and Volusia Counties in Florida which both voted for Kerry, but touch each other at a county quadripoint and so they do not share and edge with a like minded county.) Fifteen of these counties are actually in states that voted did vote for Kerry.

Some these are major cities--Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Nashville, Austin, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Louisville, New Orleans, Orlando, Richmond, Columbus, OH, and Greensboro, NC.

The presence of a university can tip a place that seems like it "should" have voted for Bush to voting for Kerry. Of the 81, 15 contain an NCAA Division I-A football teams (the cities listed above contain 8, plus the Universities of Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Toledo, and Kansas, Indiana, and Ohio Universities.) Non I-A schools in Kerry voting counties surrounded by Bush voting counties include the Universities of Montana and South Dakota, the University of Southern Illinois, and the College of William & Mary. In addition to this, there were two places where two counties that contain I-A schools border each other, but do not border another Kerry voting county--Durham and Orange Counties in North Carolina, and El Paso County Texas, and Dona Ana County New Mexico.

Another trend can account for some of these loners is the presence of an Indian reservation in the county. Of these 81 counties, 10 of them are nearly entirely comprized of Indian reservations. In addition, there is a 4 county block in the Dakotas that went for Kerry but is surrounded by Bush country. The boundaries of these counties coincide exactly with the Cheyenne River Sioux and Standing Rock Indian Reservations.

Nine of these counties are Virginia Independent cities, and five of these--Roanoke, Danville, Martinsville, Lexington, and Covington--voted just slightly for Kerry and are completely surrounded by one county that voted overwhelmingly for Bush, and so if these are ignored, that leaves 76 of which 35 may be accounted for by being a big city, being a state capital, having a university, or having an Indian reservation.

I found only 11 counties that voted for Bush but are entirely surrounded by counties that voted for Kerry.

State Capitals Red vs. Blue

States send their representatives to their state capitals, and so I thought I would look at how those state capitols voted.

States won by Kerry: 19 (38%)
States won by Bush: 31 (62%)

State capitals in counties won by Kerry: 29 (58%)
State capitals in counties won by Bush: 21 (42%)

State capitals in counties won by Kerry in states won by Bush: 15 (48% of Bush's states)--Alabama, Alaska*, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia**
State capitals in counties won by Bush in states won by Kerry: 5 (26% of Kerry's states)--Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania

So in total, 20 state capitals did not vote like their states, and so I would not conclude they are necessarily a good predictor of the states' leanings.

*--Alaska does not have counties. I looked at the presidential returns by state house districts, which Kerry won the one containing Juneau and Bush won the other 39.
**--Richmond is an independent city. It went for Kerry, but the counties surrounding it went for Bush.

Big Time College Football and Red vs. Blue

There are 117 teams that play at the highest level of college football, NCAA Division IA. I decided to see where these campuses are located in our Red vs. Blue landscape and found some interesting results:

States won by Kerry: 19 (38%)
States won by Bush: 31 (62%)

I-A schools in states won by Kerry: 34 (29%)
I-A schools in states won by Bush: 83 (71%)

Counties won by Kerry: 569 (18%)
Counties won by Bush: 2572 (82%)

Counties that contain a I-A school won by Kerry: 53 (47%)
Counties that contain a I-A school won by Bush: 60 (53%)
(Harris County, Texas, (voted for Bush) and Los Angeles and Santa Clara Counties in California, and Washtenaw County, Michigan (voted for Kerry) each contain two I-A schools.)

It appears that the presence of a large university in your county correlates well with whether your county voted for Kerry.

There are of course many important universities that do not play I-A football--the Ivy League is I-AA, for example--and these tend to be in Kerry country. Five Kerry states do not have a I-A team--Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Delaware. Four Bush states do not have a I-A--North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Alaska.

Brain in a dish

Got an old computer circuit board lying around somewhere? Got a problem with rats in the basement? Well then, build your own brain in Petri dish to play your F22 simulator for you.

Finer resolution reveals greater absurdity

The Census Bureau has Congressional district maps with much greater detail. For instance, the Colorado River is in Arizona's Second District as it flows throw the Grand Canyon National Park. However, the rest of the park, on both sides of the river is in the First District.

Topo(il)logical

Here's a nice reference for maps of the several States' Congressional districts. In general, I was pleasantly surprised by how little topologically absurd districts there were, especially with Texas. It has been in the news for Tom Delay's map that it looks like will have three Democrat incumbants lose to the incumbant Republicans who are now in their districts. He was at least able to gerrymander in a way that doesn't look obviously gerrymandered. A few that just seem really screwy to an outsider (or an insider for that matter):

• Arizona District 2 -- It contains the Grand Canyon and the northwest Phoenix suburbs and the Hopi Reservation, but not the Navajo Nation, which happens to surrounds the Hopi Resevation (and has a part inside the Hopi Reservation too).
  
• Illinois District 17 -- It's a little weird.
  
• New York District 8 and District 12 -- Perhaps in an effort to keep people's offices and bedrooms in the same district, District 8 has the West Side of Manhatten and then a part of southwestern Bronx, and then crazy District 12 that has four disjoint regions--2 in Manhatten, 1 entirely in the Bronx and one strattling the Bronx-Queens border.
  
• North Carolina
  
  • District 3 -- Maybe the "Lighthouse District"?
    
  • District 12 -- Charlotte and Winston-Salem and High Point in the same district?
    
  • District 13 -- It contains parts of Raleigh and parts of Greensboro but none of Durham or Orange Counties.
    
  
  
• Tennessee District 7 -- Shelby County suburbs and Davidson County suburbs in the same district? Oh and then throw in Clarksville.
  

Caution--Bad Joke Ahead

Will turning 29 put me into the prime of my life?