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Montgomery Madness Final Four

2011-03-12T21:04:00.001-08:00

It's Final Four time in my random tournament. Let's head down I-65 to Montgomery, Alabama, and check out the semifinal action.

In the undercard, representing the North Region, all the way from Anchorage, Alaska, in the white trunks, A5! And in this corner, from the South Region in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, in the trunks that are not white, it's D9! Nine seeds are 0-2 against 5 seeds, but 2-0 against 4 seeds, and so I thought a coin toss would be appropriate here. I tossed a 1970 Konrad Adenauer two Deutsch Mark coin, and it came up tail! D9 becomes the lowest seed ever to advance to the championship game!

The night's second game saw an exciting match up of two 1 seeds, B1 representing the West Region from Bellingham, Washington, and C1 from the East Region in Groton, Connecticut. One seeds are 16-16 when playing each other, and so I had to appeal to a coin toss, a James Buchanon one dollar coin. It came down tails, favoring C1, the third overall seed.

The championship game featured D9 versus C1. D9 had previously defeated D1 in the second round. Historically, the 9 seeds are actually 56-48 against the 8 seeds, and so I don't know if it is right to say D9 was lucky in the first round. However, when they play a 1 seed, 9 seeds are only 4-52, and so they really beat the odds in the second round. They followed that by winning three straight games via coin toss, which, believe it or not, is historically more likely than a 9 beating a 1. Surely, two wins over a 1 seed is too much to ask, right? Yes, it is. D9 fought hard, but in the end, C1 just proved too strong for Cinderella.

Congratulations, C1! Now let's all sing "One Shining Moment" and reflect on this past amazing tournament, one sure to go down in history.

Random Walk to Montgomery, Day 5

2011-03-11T19:58:00.000-08:00

First, I must express my thanks to the Sweet 16 teams to agree to play both the regional semifinals and finals on the same day to speed things up.

C1 kicking things off in Groton, CT, with a convincing win over C4. C6 got lucky when they caught C3 in Ramstein without three of their best players for violating the team rules against drinking in spite of its legality in Germany; however, back on this side of the Atlantic, they fell back to earth against C2, who cruised to an easy victory. In a thrilling regional final, there were four lead changes in the final minute. The last team with the ball would win, and that proved to be C1, who got a running layup just before the clock expired. Welcome to Montgomery, C1!

The random selection of hosting the South Regional finals was the best thing to ever happen to Soddy-Daisy, TN. Their region is wide open after D9 and D7 knocked off D1 and D2. This trend continued in the first game when D3's center sent what is believed to be the record for most 3-second calls in an NCAA tournament game as D7 pulled another upset. D9 found themselves in a strange situation--the favorite. They wore their home white uniforms because they faced another upsetter in D12. Since a 9 seed and a 12 seen had never played in the regional semifinals, I decided to decide this game with a coin toss. The 1963 Benjamin Franklin half dollar coin floated through the air and came down heads! That means D9 advances to face D7 in the finals. The 7-9 match up was another seed pairing that had never met, and so I again reached for a coin--a 1989 Swiss five fran(c/ken/co) coin. It came up tails this time sending D9 on to the Final Four.

In Bellingham, WA, the West Regional semifinals played to form with B1 and B2 having no troubles with B5 and B6, respectively. Their match up in the finals was a titanic game, long to be remembered by anyone who saw it. B2 hit an 80-foot three pointer at the end of the first half to take a one-point lead. After a back and forth second half they appeared to hit their second shot from the backcourt to give them a one point lead at the buzzer of the game, but the officials reviewed the tape and tragically, the clock expired just before the senior guard could launch the shot. B1 advances to play C1 in Montgomery.

The North Regional in Anchorage thawed the locals. Upstart A10 caught a tough break with the game falling on the Sabboth, which meant their ace 3-point shooter couldn't play. A6's superior inside game carried them into the Elite 8. The day's most shocking result came in the final game when the overall top seed A1, perhaps weary from having to travel to Ramstein and then to Anchoring didn't score in the first five minutes against A5. They picked up the pace in the second have, but A5 held strong and countered every blow to pull the upset. In the 5-6 pairing had only happened once (the 5 won) and so I opted for a coin toss here. My 2000 Canadian toonie came up heads and gave A5 the final berth in the Final Four, setting up an exciting match up with D9.

Random Walk to Montgomery, Day 4

2011-03-10T18:13:00.000-08:00

Again the fourth day of the tournament began with its biggest story happening off court. About thirty feet off court in the gym at St. Petersburg College. A pipe burt, making the court unplayable. At the last moment, the Church of Scientology, which is headquartered in host city Clearwater, FL. They offered the gym at their new Super Power Building, the second largest building in Clearwater. Top seed D1, whose leading scorer is a senior psychology major, protested vehemently, but but their pleas fell on deaf ears. With their opponent clearly destracted, D9 took advantage and jumped out to an early lead. D1 rallied in the second half, but the underdog held on for giant upset. According to postgame reports, the parents of a sophomore bench player for D9 are practicing Scientologists and may have contacted the church. The NCAA is investigating.

In the second game game in Clearwater, C4's dominant inside game lead them passed C5 to the Sweet 16 in Groton, CT, with no trouble.

They will play C1, who struggled against C8, but not as much as C8 struggled against them. C1 should be happy that the satellite feed from Newark was lost so that no one saw it. Also advancing from Newark was D12 whose crushing full court press was too much for the dominant inside game of favored D4.

B2 did the favorites proud in Butte and sent B7 home disappointed. In the second game, however, it appeared that the cast on the wrist of the A4 coach from their first round game prevent him from drawing up the winning play. Coming out of a time out trailing by 2 with 6.1 seconds remaining, they were unable to get off a shot, sending A5 to Anchorage to face overall top seed A1.

In the final games of the day in Fresno, B9 fought a hard game, but B1 wore them down at the end to advance to the Bellingham Regional. The last team to secure a place in the Sweet 16 was A6 thanks to a thrilling come-from-behind win over A3. Most pundits had counted A6 out after their 8OT opening game, but they proved them wrong. Welcome to Anchorage, A6!

[A note on the random selection process. There is good data on the first round match ups of seeds, since four times a year for the last 26 years, each pair has played. In each successive round, the number of match ups occur less frequently. There is the probability of, say, a 12 seed making it to the Sweet 16, but if they had to play a 4 seed it would be a more difficult task than playing a 13 seed. It treated each first weekend pod leading up to a team in the Sweet 16 as single event, and chose one random number to select both which team made it to the Sweet 16 and also the team that they beat in the second round.

I scrolled through past Sweet 16s and looked for match up of seeds. For example, a 2 seed has played a 6 seed 25 times in the Sweet 16, in which game the 2 is 20-5, and so I assumed that a number from 1 to 25, and if it was 20 or less, the 2 would advance, and 21-25, the 6 advanced.

Whenever possible, I tried to do this, but it is possible to have combinations that have met only once or not at all. Or, there have been two 4-9 pairings (both won by 4) and two 5-9 pairings (both won by 9), and so I combined them to say that when a 9 plays a 4 or a 5, the odds are 50/50. When the odds are 50/50 or in the Final Four, if two of the same seeds met, I decided the game by a coin toss.]

Random Walk to Montgomery, Day 3

2011-03-09T20:29:00.000-08:00

Shocking news from Ramstein Air Base! After their opening victory on Thursday night, two sophomores and a junior for C3, including their second leading scorer and leading rebounder were caught drinking off base in a biergarten with some of their fans who had made the trip and some alumni in the Air Force. The players, ages 19, 20, and 20, broke no laws in Germany, where 16-year-olds may drink beer; however, their coach in consultation with his athletic director decided to suspended the three for today's game. Their replacements gave a valiant effort, but the strong frontcourt of C6 proved to much for them. A1 followed by steamrolling A8, paving their way to Anchorage for the North Regionals.

Also punching their ferry ticket for the Alaska Marine Highway was A10, who pulled a upset in Scottsville, MI. With their leading scorer on the beach in a tie around his neck and a protective boot on his sprained ankle, he could provide no heroic kick start for A2, who struggled as they did when their star went out on Thursday.

The next game saw a seesaw battle between B4 and B5. Tied at halftime, the two teams traded baskets and saw eleven lead changed in the first ten minutes of the second half before a three point followed by steal of the in-bounds pass and dunk gave B5 the momentum they needed to take control.

Across Lake Michigan, through the electric gate in the Chicago River keeping the Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, down the Illinois River and hanging a right on the Hennipen Canal in Moline, D3 started sluggishly but put it together in the second half to end the best season ever for D6. Later, C2 locked up a place in the Sweet 16 in Groton, Connecticut, with an easy victory over C7.

The weather proved more agreeable at the Rockingham Motor Speedway this afternoon, allowing lots of fans to camp out on the infield and see two dramatic upsets. If you watched the first game, you would have never known that D7 was the underdog. They controlled the game virtually from the opening tip against D2 and will play D3 in Soddy-Daisy, TN. In the second game, B6 hit a tying three pointer at the buzzer in regulation, and then B3 countered with a tying three of their own from 30 feet away at the buzzer in the first overtime. B6 took control in the second extra period to earn a trip to Bellingham.

Random Walk to Montgomery, Day 2

2011-03-08T19:32:00.000-08:00

While day 1 went mostly according to seed, day 2 started with a mild upset in Clearwater, FL, when D9 easily handled D8. They will play D1, who appeared sluggish against D16, but held on for the victory. In the second session at St. Petersburgh College, C13 did not provide much of a challenge against C4, but their starting center, also a tight end on the football team, caused not one but two fifteen minute delays by shattering the backboard with his dunks. C12 thought they had the obligatory 12-5 upset for most of the game, until C5's senior reserve guard got a hot hand of the bench with four threes in the span of two minutes late in the second half. C5 eagerly awaits their rematch with C4 who knocked them out of the tournament two years ago.

In Newark, DE, on the campus of the University of Delaware, the 12 seed got it done when D12 knocked off D5. Most pundits considered the rating of D12 as a 12 seed to be the most egregious underrating of a team. It never gets respect in spite of its strong track record in the tournament. D4 took revenge for the favorites by handily beating D13. C8 continued its hot play by beating C9, and C1 sent everyone home early by running up a 35 point halftime lead over lowly C16.

At the Butte Civic Center in Montana, A4 beat A13 despite a losing their head coach midway through the second half when he tripped over the foot of a sophomore reserve center and broke his wrist. There was heartbreak in the afternoon's second game when A5 started the game with two technical free throws after an excited freshman power forward for A12 dunked during warm-ups. A5 won by just one point.

B1 kicked off the action at Frenso State's Save Mart Center with an easy victory over B16. They will play B9, who advanced in a nailbiter when B8's senior forward missed two freethrows with 0.9 seconds remaining. He got his own rebound and put up a shot, but it ticked off the side of the rim as the buzzer sounded. Had he hit the shot, not only would his team have advanced, he would have moved into first place in his schools career field goal percentage. In the second session, A3 beat A14 without too much trouble, but in the last game of the first round, A6 and A11 really drew the ire of the Eastern Time Zone when their game went into eight overtime periods! The longest game ever in college basketball ended when A11's point guard fouled out 30 seconds into the final overtime period, reducing his team to only four active players. Buoyed by this, A6 took their second wind and won by a final score of 171-159.

Random Walk to Montgomery, Day 1

2011-03-07T19:14:00.000-08:00

The exciting action got off to an early start thanks to the decision to play games at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The overall top seed A1 tipped things off at 8:00 AM Eastern with an easy win over A16. The following game in North Region action was quite close all the way, with a freshman guard for A8 sinking a three with 2.1 seconds left to beat A9.

The second Ramstein session, part of the East Region, also played to form with C3 beating C14 and C6 crushed C11. Perhaps it was the jet lag, but C11 struggled to make it up the court in the second half. They played terrible.

The rocky weather at the Rockingham Motor Speedway delayed the first outdoor tournament game for 15 minutes. The court was covered from the rain, but dangerous winds shook the roof for a good hour earlier in the morning, delaying shoot around. D2 had no trouble with D15, though. There was controversy in the second game, however, when D10 was trailing D7 by two with ten seconds remaining. Their point guard drove the ball up the side of the court and slipped and lost the ball out of bounds. He yelled at the referer and pointed to the floor as though there was a puddle, but it was difficult to see one as the ball boy wiped the floor so quickly, and his technical foul sealed the victory for D7.

Also at Rockingham, B3 trailed B14 by one at halftime, but they scored the first 17 points of the second half and never looked back. B6 and B11 proved that a double overtime game can still be terrible as the teams set a record for combined turnovers in an NCAA tournament game. Also, B11 managed only one point in the second overtime as B6 won by eleven.

There was more chalk at the Wharton Field House in Moline, IL, as C2 beat C15, C7 beat C10, D3 beat D14, and D6 beat D11 in essentially forgetable games.

Clearly the luckiest fans of the day were the dozens able to find their way into the rec center at West Lake Community College in Scottsville, MI. In a back-and-forth opening game, D5 edged D12 in a game in which neither team led by more than six points. Then, D4 led comfortably midway through the second half before going as cold as Lake Michigan outside and couldn't score for eight minutes. D13 clawed back and even cut the lead to only one with two minutes left, but D4 held on and avoided the upset.

In the nightcap session, A2's leading scorer sprained his ankle corraling the opening tip. From his seat at the end of the bench, he saw upstart A15 jump out to a 21-4 lead midway through the first half. He limped to his coach and begged to go back in. Clearly in pain, he was left wide open in the corner and sank a three-pointer. It was his only points of the game, but the spark got his team going. A2 remains mum on his status for the next round.

The night's last game proved to be the best. A7 led most of the game, but they could never put A10 away. A10 kicked it into a higher gear in the final five minutes, slowly chipping away until they tied it for the first time since 2-2 with a 25-footer as the buzzer to send the game to overtime. A10 took their first lead of the game with a minute left in overtime and held on for the only upset of the first day of the opening round.

March Randomness: The Site Selection Spectacular!

2011-03-06T21:21:00.003-08:00

This year, I'm picking an NCAA men's basketball tournament randomly based on the past performance of how the various seeds have advanced. Since this has nothing to do with who the actual teams are, there's no reason to wait until after the teams have been invited to the tournament, and so I'll play this game over the course of the week leading up to the tournament. Woohoo!

However, before we get to the games, we have to start with where these games will be played. And how better to choose the locations of a random tournament than to select them randomly! So, I consulted a random number generator and had it give me a sequence of random five digit numbers, and then I plugged these into a ZIP code lookup. If it was not a valid ZIP code in the US, I went to the next number. If it was a valid ZIP code, the city would host a tournement site. With a couple of caveats. I reserved the option to skip a city of fewer than 10,000 people if I wanted to. Also, a few were skipped to spread the locations around the country. And there were a couple of times when the ZIP code was a suburb or small town, and I moved to a neighboring larger city.

And now without further ado, I am pleased to announce the host of my random tournament's Final Four--Montgomery, Alabama! The Dunn-Oliver Acadome (or possibly the Dr. Joe L. Reed Acadome, depending on whether the renaming legislation passes) on the campus of Alabama State University is proud to host the Final Four. (NCAA rules prohibit a team from playing on their home court in the tournament, and so in the event that the ASU Hornets make it to Final Four, it will be moved to the Tyne-Davis Gymnasium at Faulkner University.)

Let the March to Montgomery begin!

The four regional finals were also selected. The West Regional Finals will be in Bellingham, Washington, at the Sam Carver Gymnasium at Western Washington University. The East Regional Finals will be at the gym at Ella T. Grasso Southern Technical High School in Groton, Connecticut. The South Regional Finals will be at Soddy-Daisy High School in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee. And the exciting news is that for the first time, the NCAA Tournament will head north to Sullivan Arena in Anchorage, Alaska! The home of the preseason Great Alaska Shootout now hosts the postseason North Regional Finals!

The four 1 seeds are ranked from 1 to 4 and assigned to regions so that in the Final Four, 1 would play 4, and 2 would play 3 if they all advanced. I will assign the overall 1 seed to the Anchorage region, and denote it as the A1 seed, and I will also give all the other seeds in that region an "A-" prefix. Similarly, the second overall 1 will be B1 and play in the Bellingham region. The third C1 will play in the Groton, Connecticut, region, and the fourth D1 will play in the Soddy-Daisy region.

There is also plenty of excitement in the hosts of the opening round games! They are:

1. Moline, Illinois, at the historic Wharton Field House. Built in 1928, it hosted the NBA's Tri-Cities Blackhawks from 1946-1951. It is currently the home of the Moline High School Maroons.

2. Scottsville, Michigan, at the rec center at West Shore Community College!

3. Rockingham, North Carolina. For the first time, NCAA tournament games will be played outdoors at the Rockingham Motor Speedway! It's games are Friday-Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

4. Newark, Delaware, at the University of Delaware's Bob Carpenter Center

5. Butte, Montana. It will be the most exciting event at the Butte Civic Center since the 2007 funeral of hometown boy Evel Knievel!

6. Clearwater, Florida, (where Evel Knievel died, ah, the insane random connection!) at St. Petersburg College.

7. Fresno, California, at the Save Mart Center at Frenso State University.

8. And not to be outdone, we will honor our troops serving abroad by sending eight teams from the Anchorage region to Ramstein Air Base in Germany! (ZIP codes of the form 09xxx are reserved for military bases in Europe, Canada, Africa, and the Middle East.)

Best of luck to all the teams!

A call for greater precision in game fish records

2009-07-03T09:20:00.002-07:00

Breaking news from Lake Biwi in Shiga Prefecture, Japan--the world's largest bass has been caught. Sort of. On June 2, 1932, George Perry caught a 22 pound, 4 ounce, largemouth bass in Montgomery Lake in Telfair County, GA. Seventy-seven years later, Manabu Kurita caught a 22 pound, 5 ounce, bass, and thus tied Perry for the largest bass caught.

It's officially a tie because according to International Game Fish Association rules, the new record weight must excede the existing record by at least two ounces.

This makes me wonder, what happens if someone caught a 22 pound, 6 ounce, bass? It excedes Perry's record bass by two ounces, but not Kurita's. Would Perry still be tied for the record?

Or, if someone caught another bass weighing 22 pounds, 4 ounces, would it be considered tied for the largest by weighing the same as the smaller of the two tied for the largest?

Some things just don't mix

2009-02-15T11:48:00.002-08:00

At the beginning of Friday night's Battlestar Galactica, Doc Cottle informs us that once the bleeding in an important character's brain is stablized, they can bring "the brain guy" from Inchon Velle to remove the bullet. Later, we hear this brain guy's voice. Oh my god, it can't be. It is! Who plays this brain specialist? John Hodgman. John Frakking Hodgman.

What's so bad about that? John Hodgman is hilarious. Battlestar Galactica is not. If I didn't know who John Hodgman was, maybe I wouldn't think this was so wrong. I think the words he said could have been funny on the page. But he just does not fit in the BSG world. I feel bad for saying.

But, apparently someone did think to ask him if there were any hoboes in the fleet, to which he replied that it was impossible to tell because the hoboes look like us now. This works great. Just not on the show itself.

Crappy New Year, ABC

2008-12-31T20:59:00.002-08:00

It is sad that my first blog post of the new year must be a rant, but I feel ABC's coverage of Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve with Ryan Seacrest needs some comeupance.

First, at about 11:53, there's this look back at Miley Cyrus's 16th birthday party at Disney World and how wonderful it was. And you too may spend your birthday at one of the parks of the Disney. No one will televise it, thank god. Nothing says corporate synergy like New Year's Eve.

Second, there was absolutely no mention of my favorite part of this New Year's--that extra second added at the end of 2008. The ABC clock went straight from 11:59:58 to 11:59:59 to 12:00:00. Where was 11:59:60? I remember the one in 2005 being acknowledged.

And then ESPN celebrates the New Year with a guy jumping a motorcycle onto the top of the Arc de Triomphe replica at the Paris hotel in Las Vegas, and then he jumped off. Oh, he's overcome Tourette's syndrome to do this, too. He gave the post-jump interview as the medical crew bandages his hand which was almost certainly broken and cut to the bone. I think missed the guy who wants to be the first to do a backflip in a pickup truck.

2008-11-24T21:26:00.003-08:00

Yes, WIS-TV, I understand that you must run a weekly test broadcast of the Emergency Broadcast System with its red banner across the top of the screen and the beeping and the blocking out of the sound. But, why do you have to do this during Chuck? And why do you have to do it four times during Chuck?!?! It's not like I can rewind the DVR and hear what they said. Do you really want me to watch it online? I could probably do that if it's what you prefer.

Is it wrong? Part II

2008-11-16T16:22:00.002-08:00

Argh! I was celebrating heartily when Pittsburgh's kicker Jeff Reed kicked a field goal with 15 seconds left to put the Steelers ahead of the Chargers 11-10. It wasn't that I'm a big Steelers fan, but no game in the history of the NFL has a game ended with the final score of 11-10.

However, the Chargers in desperation threw laterals back and forth on the final play, the last of which, after it hit the ground, Steelers safety Troy Polamalu picked it up and ran into the end zone as time expired making the final score 17-10.

Wait--breaking news! As I write, the officials are reviewing this play. Since it occured after the two-minute warning, the booth official can choose to review the play. He did, and they found that the fumble that Polamalu recovered was an illegal forward pass. This mean the play was dead when it hit the ground, and therefore the touchdown comes off the board, and the game is over. That pass was clearly a backward pass, but I think the small one prior to that one did go forward slightly. Thus, the first ever 11-10 final is secured!

Now we just need for the Steelers or Chargers' playoff chances at the end of the season to come down to net points.

Is this wrong?

2008-11-16T14:08:00.002-08:00

Is it wrong that I cheered when CBS just showed me Cincinnati kicker Shayne Graham missing a 47-yard field goal against Philadelphia? It's not because I'm a Philadephia fan because I cheered just as loudly when Philadelphia's hail mary following it fell incomplete on the final play of overtime. Yes, I was cheering for the first NFL tie game in six years. Woo-hoo!

Sign of the times

2008-10-29T00:53:00.002-07:00

I keep forgetting to blog about something I saw back in August in San Francisco. Think back to those halcyon days of yore, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 11,431, I saw what seemed like a great indicator of the economic disaster of the time: high gas prices. As I walked along the Embarcadero, I saw a white stretched limousine version of a Hummer for sale by owner. My god, has it come to this?

Obscure Scrabble words at work

2008-09-04T21:52:00.003-07:00

With the official paperwork filed first with Broward County and then with the Bengals and the NFL, ~~the~~ an irritating Cincinnati wide receiver has official approval to wear "Ocho Cinco" as his name on the back of his jersey. I see this an opportunity to use one of those severely underutilized two letter Scrabble words and will henceforth refer to him as Chad Ocho Cinco né Johnson.

There are a couple of great comments on the ESPN articles hoping that Ocho Cinco né Johnson gets traded (as he demanded in the offseason) to the Rams, who have retired the number 85 for Hall of Famer Jack Youngblood.

I would prefer that one of his teammates, say T.J. Houshmandzadeh, changes his last to Ocho Cinco so that Ocho Cinco né Johnson would have to put "C. Ocho Cinco" on his jersey.

Hm, but if I could get Ocho Cinco né Johnson to sit down for a slice of za on a table made of aa cooled by an oe, no od could stop me from saying "um, uh, er, ay."

The strange thing is that Ocho Cinco ne Johnson has fewer letters than Dutch soccerist Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. Of course Ocho Cinco né Houshmandzadeh would have them both beat.

Bahamas defends per capita medal count

2008-08-24T21:11:00.002-07:00

COLUMBIA, SC--The closing ceremonies have now aired in the Eastern Time Zone, and so the Games of the XXIX Olympiad are officially over in the United States. The United States has successfully defended its overall medal count with 110 total, but host nation China led the way with 51 gold medals. While these results are certainly worthy of praise, and I salute all the winners from every country, the US and China are the third and first most populous nations on earth, accounting for approximately 1 in 4 residents of the world. Together, they took 28.8% of the gold medals, but only 21.9% of the total medals. This leaves plenty of other medals to go around, and I think the best way to examine this is on a per capita basis. Therefore, I have normalized the total medal number count for each nation by its population giving on the description of the country on NBC's Olympic coverage.

Once again, the Bahamas leads the way in the per capita standings. In 2004, they had a gold and a bronze. In 2008, they had two medals, both in Track and Field ( silver in Men's 4x400m Relay and bronze in the Men's Triple Jump), but with only 305,655 people, the Bahamas lapped the field with 6.543 medals per million people (mpmp).

Jamaica more than doubled their 2004 medal total to jump from seventh per capita finish second in 2008. Their 11 medals equates to 3.957 mpmp. All 11 medals were in the sprints, with Usain Bolt setting world records as he won gold in the 100m, 200m, and the 4x100m Relay. The Jamaican women were not to be outdown with Shelly-Ann Fraiser taking the 100m gold, Veronica Campbell-Brown winning the women's 200m, and Melaine Walker winning the 400m hurdles. Plus, in a beautiful photo finish, Sherone Simpson and Kerron Stewart tied for the silver in the Women's 100m.

While third place Slovenia's five medals included a Track and Field gold (Primoz Kozmus was primo in the Men's Hammer Throw), they proved to be a more well rounded nation with silver medals in Sailing's Laser and Swimming's Women's 200m Freestyle, and bronzes in Judo's Woment's +78 kg and Shooting's Men's 50m Rifle 3 Positions. This gives them 2.488 mpmp.

Four other countries had more than 2 mpmp: Australia (2.251), New Zealand (2.187), Norway (2.161), and Cuba (2.106). Australia and Cuba were second and third, respectively, in 2004, but Norway and New Zealand leaped up from 15th and 16th.

Twelve nations returned home with more than 1 mpmp: Belarus, Trinidad and Tobago, Estonia, Bahrain, Lithuania, Mongolia, Latvia, Georgia, Denmark, Croatia, Slovakia, and Hungary.

Other nations of note include 2012 hosts Great Britain at 24th (0.778 mpmp), Canada (33rd), Russia (34th), Germany (35th), Italy (36th), Spain (37th), and Kenya (38th).

The United States was 42nd with 0.3653 mpmp, just behind Austria's 0.3659 mpmp, and just ahead of Romania's 0.359 mpmp. The US was 41st in 2004.

China ranked 68th with 0.0756 mpmp, in between Brazil and Ecuador.

While their total medal count tripled from 1 in 2004 to 3 in 2008, India again trailed the pack at 86th with 0.00266 mpmp, an order of magnitude behind 85th ranked Vietnam.

In terms of gold medals per million people (gpmp), Jamaica's sprinters propelled their nation to 2.158 gpmp and the victory.

Rashid Ramzi's gold in the Men's 1500m run was the first Olympic medal ever for Bahrain. With a population of only 708,573, they are the only other nation with more than 1 gpmp (1.411).

Estonia's Gerd Kanter's gold in the Men's Discus gave his homeland third place at 0.760 gpmp. New Zealand, Australia, Mongolia, Norway, Georgia, Slovakia, and Slovenia round out the top ten.

The US was 33rd with 0.120 gpmp, just between Azerbaijan and France. China was 48th, and India was 55th and last.

The full results are here.

California Adventure, Part 2

2008-08-24T12:55:00.002-07:00

After the rheology done, I took the bus (run by AmTrak) from Monterey to San Jose, and then the train (not run by AmTrak) from San Jose to San Francisco. After checking into the hotel, I walked around a little bit on the Embarcadero, saw the fabulous Pier 39 for five minutes, and then went to bed.

Friday morning, I walked around a little more and checked out Chinatown before it really opened (not particularly exciting at 7:45 AM).

I also saw that the base of the TransAmerica Pyramid is pretty cool. (No good pictures, though.) The top was often shrouded in fog in the morning, as is most of San Francisco, it seems. Snopes.com tells me that Mark Twain did not actually say "The coldest winter of my life was the summer I spent in San Francisco." This makes it no less true.

The walking around was designed to put me at SFMOMA when it opened at 10:00, and it worked as planned. I didn't have time for the special Frida Kahlo exhibit, but I did enjoy the two other special exhibits that I saw. I had never heard of fashion model-turned-fashion-photographer-turned-war-photojournalist Lee Miller before, but I definitely enjoyed the large collection of photos of and by her. There was a nice one of her taking a bath in Hitler's bathtub when she was part of the first group of reporters into the captured Hilter's villa in Munich. The other exhibit was on contemporary Chinese art and was pretty interesting.

Woo-hoo, cable cars.

I do have to admit they won me over. There should be more of them to make them less touristy. The woodwork, ironwork, and glass detailing of the cars make them so much more interesting than a modern bus. I didn't find any Rice-A-Roni, though.

Despite the touristy nature, the cable car was in fact the most direct public transportation option (though certainly not the quickest when you factor in the line) to take me from Market St near SFMOMA across town to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. There are way too many parts to the GGNRA to take in in just one afternoon, and so I concentrated on the most obvious part, the Golden Gate Bridge.

Since I was there on 08/08/08, the date of the start of the Olympics, there were Tibetan freedom protestors on the south side of the bridge. I think I heard that they had walked across the bridge earlier in the day. I walked across the bridge and took way too many photos. Here's a sampling.

The south side of the bridge is at the Presidio, but it is closely surrounded by the city. The Marin Headlands on the norther side, however, are pretty nice and undeveloped.

After hiking around to get good vantage points on the bridge with the city in the background, I hiked some more down to the water for some more shots.

I think in all I walked about ten or twelve miles that day. Thus, I just sat around on Friday night and watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Saturday morning, I got a little more walking in, visiting Lombard St and Telegraph Hill

Then it was to the BART under the bay to the fabulous Oakland and its airport. I can't really say I saw any obvious "there" from the windows of the train once it became elevated, but I must say there is something impressive about the size of the port.

California Adventure, Part 1-A

2008-08-19T17:01:00.003-07:00

I can't believe I left out the best part. On our bus ride back from Big Sur, all the way through the incredibly expensive homes perched on the side of the cliff to the west of the Pacific Coast Highway, through Carmel, through downtown Monterey, for the final thirty minutes, the bus's horn was stuck on. Ever five minutes or so, it would cut off for a second or two, just long enough to give us hope and then dash it by returning. I feel really sorry for the driver. He was clearly stressed out.

California Adventure, Part 1

2008-08-17T11:34:00.003-07:00

After giving my talk in the third time slot on the first day of the International Congress on Rheology was in Monterey, CA, last week, I had plenty of time to kick back and relax. Apparently, back home in Columbia, it got up to 102 degrees on the Wednesday. In Monterey, on the other hand, the high was only 63. I can see why people have conferences here. And also why the swag includes a hooded sweatshirt. Here's the view from the hotel.

Monday night featured a reception at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was pretty cool. They were the first aquarium to keep a living kelp forest. They are the only aquarium that regularly has great white sharks, but apparently they had to release the one they had a couple of weeks ago because it started to eat its tankmates. I also found it very interesting that an aquarium would feature an exhibit about the process of canning fish. The aquarium is in fact housed in a former cannery that was part of Cannery Row back in the sardine fishing boom in the mid-1930s and the bust that followed in the mid-40s.

On Wednesday afternoon, the conference took a break for organized excursions. I chose the Big Sur tour down CA-1.

While the tour was a little more on the "relaxing" side than I expected with stops emphasizing the unique gift shops. There were some good things to see, though, and I have say, I would not mind return trip. One stop was at the Big Sur River Inn, where they keep some relaxing Adirondack chairs in the middle of the river.

About six weeks before my trip, dry lightning started the largest wildfire in California history in the Big Sur area. Some places were evacuated for three weeks, and the parks in the area were just starting to reopen their trails.

But, not everything was burned. Redwood tree bark is thick enough to protect the living inside of the tree from the average fire. Of course, if there is enough undergrowth to fuel the fire to a high enough temperature, the tree trunk explodes. Thus, if the tree is still standing after the fire, it will most likely be fine.

In other Monterey news, it was where California officially became a state. In this building in fact. In the park in front of it is a coastal redwood tree called the "Moon Tree" because it was grown from a seed carried to the moon by Major Stuart Roosa, Command Module Pilot of Apollo 14 in 1971. It grew for 5 years in a lab before being planted here in a 1976 bicentennial celebration.

The Highest Point in Florida has been attained!

2008-07-17T15:40:00.003-07:00

I've just written up a little recap and posted some photos from my recent trip to San Diego, which naturally included a stop at the boll weevil monument in Enterprise, AL, and Britton Hill, the highest point in Florida. Also, on the trip, I clicked over the 1000 county mark on the trip.

The Peacock is green

2008-04-23T19:42:00.003-07:00

Huzzah, this week NBC is showing us they care about the environment with a special week of commercials highlight green things, like how SC Johnson uses methane from a nearby landfill to power the plant that makes Glade air freshener.

To further this effort, tonight's guest on Conan is Seth Green.

But, tonight's episode of Law & Order features the final episode of Jesse L. Martin's character--Detective Ed Green. He gets charged with murder! What is Dick Wolf thinking? Green is good. Green shouldn't leave the show in disgrace. It was however great that they mentioned Lenny.

Argh, and Anthony Anderson's character Detective Bernard just suggested that he and Detective Lupo car pool as they drive to New Jersey because it saves gas. But, you do have to appreciate the economy of using him as the Internal Affairs cop investigating Green who yearns to be in Homicide to set up Anderson's return to the Law & Order universe as a regular next week. At least his name isn't Verde, Gruen, or Zeleny.

Orchid's a-bloomin'

2008-04-07T19:49:00.004-07:00

Three or four years after I got it after watching Adaptation and reading The Orchid Thief, my orchid's finally blooming again. I have no idea what if anything I did to get this to happen. I simply water the thing once every week or two.

But the stem with the blooms on it is so much shorter than the one that was on it when I got it? Anyone out there understand this?

2008-03-24T18:30:00.002-07:00

I think I may have found my candidate for the next vacancy on the Supreme Court. It's Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook. In ProCD v. Zeidenberg, 86 F .3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996), he wrote:

Think, too, about everyday transactions in intellectual property. A customer visits a video store and rents a copy of Night of the Lepus. The customer's contract with the store limits use of the tape to home viewing and requires its return in two days. May the customer keep the tape, on the ground that sec. 301(a) makes the promise unenforceable?

Could you imagine the day when Nina Totenberg reinacts this man's words? We can only hope.

Let's hear it for NIST!

2008-03-04T08:58:00.003-08:00

With last Friday being February 29, NPR's Science Friday decided to have a segment devoted to timekeeping and the leap year phenomenon. The guess was Thomas O'Brian, Division Chief of the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). O'Brian was asked if he knew anyone who was born on leap day. He said that he didn't, but then corrected himself saying that he was not aware that anyone that he knew was born on February 29, but he left open the possibility that since he does not know the birthdays of everyone that he knows this could happen because if we took a random sample of the population, we would expect to find 1 out of every 366 people would have been born on February 29. "Always the scientist, being careful," was guest host Joe Palca's reply. Ooh, Dr. O'Brian, not careful enough. Wouldn't a random sample show that about 1 out of 1461 have a birthday on February 29? Would you want this man in charge of the world's most accurate clock?

Does not compute. Does not compute

2008-02-18T20:35:00.002-08:00

This year I have the joy of filing income tax returns in two different states. Maybe this is karmic retribution for growing up in a state that had no income tax? I'll never get used to this.

The North Carolina form always struck me as being poorly constructed. First, there was the 2004 booklet that was missing half its pages. And now, this year, I have run into a problem--the instructions do not permit me to finish the form.

Line 18 Total tax...............418.00
Line 21 Income tax withheld.....418.00

Line 22a If Line 18 is more than Line 21, subtract and enter the result.
Line 25 If Line 18 is less than Line 21, subtract and enter the result.

Am I supposed to just leave the rest of the form blank?

College Football Championship Belt Starter

2008-02-17T15:09:00.003-08:00

About the same time that I started the College Football Shame Mask, I felt there should be a trophy to reward quality football, too. As great as the Old Oaken Bucket and the Little Brown Jug are, I've always been disappointed that they are restricted to only two teams each. Therefore, I decided to start a College Football Championship Belt, which a team could keep until it lost it. However, I did not know exactly what historic event should launch the championship belt.

As pointed out by Peter Mucha, the belt will eventually come to the same team no matter who had it initially, given sufficient time. While I initially resisted, I realized that he was right although it seemed disappointing that many victories, historic and not, would eventually lead to the same place.

However, I then became interested in how long "sufficient" time was. Therefore, in August, when the 2007 season started, I decided to award every time a trophy which they could keep until they lost a game, at which time they would have to give all trophies in their possession to the team that beat them. The full table of the 2007 season can be found here. After the 15 weeks of the season, the 120 Division I-A teams* have gone down only 16 teams that have at least one trophy. Here they are with the number they have in parentheses.

Georgia (20)
West Virginia (12)
USC (12)
Boston College (11)
Michigan(9)
Pittsburgh (9)
Wake Forest (8)
Missouri (7)
BYU (7)
Penn State (6)
Kansas (6)
Texas (4)
Texas Tech (4)
Tennessee (2)
Ohio (2)
Furman (1)

It should be noted that I-AA Furman did not start with a trophy of its own, but due to Michigan's loss to I-AA Appalachian State to start the season, the Wolverine-shaped trophy bounced around the Southern Conference all season.

*--I refuse to use the NCAA's new Division I Bowl Subdivision label. Also, the 120 includes "reclassifying member" Wester Kentucky.

It sells itself

2008-02-01T19:44:00.000-08:00

Lolita, bed of my life, desk of my lamps. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the toe taking a trip of three steps up the pallet to nap, at three, on the pillow. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing three feet ten in one sheet. She was Lola with my folded slacks. She was Dolly under my school work. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my bedroom she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial bed/desk/chest of drawers combination. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was assembled as my age was that summer. You can always count on a joiner for a fancy prose style.

Woolworth shoppers of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this Midsleeper Combi.

Candidates by Their Signs

2008-01-23T16:34:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it took me so long to into the presidential race to get around to analysis of the candidates by their presidential signs. To recall, here are our previous presidents by their signs, arranged from most with the sign to fewest:

5--Scorpio (John Adams, James K. Polk, James A. Garfield, Theodore Roosevelt, Warren G. Harding)
5--Aquarius (William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan)
4--Taurus (James Monroe, Ulysses S. Grant, Harry S. Truman, James Buchanan)
4--Cancer (John Quincy Adams, Calvin Coolige, Gerald Ford, George W. Bush)
4--Libra (Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter)
4--Capricorn (Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, Richard M. Nixon)
4--Pisces (George Washington, James Madison, Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland)
3--Leo (Benjamin Harrison, Herbert Hoover, Bill Clinton)
3--Sagittarius (Martin Van Buren, Zachery Taylor, Franklin Pierce)
2--Aries (Thomas Jefferson, John Tyler)
2--Gemini (John F. Kennedy, George H.W. Bush)
2--Virgo (William Howard Taft, Lyndon B. Johnson)

As for the current field of candidates, I find the Democrats to be appropriately starred: Barack Obama as a Leo is a noble leader. Hillary Clinton is a jealous and secretive Scorpio. No wonder these candidates have been bickering of late. John Edwards is the perfect Gemini with his Two Americas, the whole rich lawyer/son of a poor mill worker thing, and of course his
hair.

The Republican slate is less telling. Both John McCain and Mike Huckabee are Virgos, which seems wrong because they are not the same. Rudy Giuliani's "all 9/11, all the time" monomessage is not what I would expect from a Gemini. Given the Ron Paul Blimp, I would have expected him to be an air sign, but he's a Leo. Mitt Romney rounds out the field as a Pisces.

2008-01-07T15:20:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, when Christmas shopping in a bookstore, I noticed this book: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Freemasonry. It's author S. Brent Morris is managing editor of the largest-circulation Masonic magazine in the world, The Scottish Rite Journal. If it said that they did not secretly run the world, would this be evidence that they do?

Not for navigational purposes

2007-12-28T13:39:00.000-08:00

When I moved into my new apartment back in August, I needed a new shower curtain. When I saw the world map one, I decided that would work nicely. However, over the next few months, I began to notice a few ways in which this map was of a rather poor quality. Here is Europe:

Now, it would be possible to color the map with only four colors or just five if you want to use light blue for water only, but this map uses ten different colors for countries. One would think that allowing for this many colors could eliminate border confusion, but it is not so. For example, observe that for some reason France and Spain are both colored yellow, and their border (and the country of Andorra) is not specified. Other neighboring countries that are colored the same include Brazil and Venezuela (yellow), Uganda and Tanzania (yellow), India and Nepal (yellow), Germany and Austria (orange), Zaire* and Burundi (orange), Senegal and Guinea (green), and Belize and Honduras (orange). This last one is more disturbing since in reality, Belize and Honduras do not actually share a border. Furthermore, Niger and two of its neighboring countries--Libya and Benin--are all three colored yellow.

Even stranger is that the Czech Republic and the non-landlocked Bosnia and Herzegovina are both colored with the same light blue used for water.

Also, Bhutan is the only country I could find colored with light green, but this is enough to distinguish it from neighboring China, which is dark green. Why Italy is light pink but neighbors Switzerland and Slovenia are dark pink, I do not understand.

Now turn your attention to the British Isles. The United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland are both colored light pink. Northern Ireland, however, is orange. This may make the Protestant residents of Northern Ireland happy, but the territory should really be shaded the same as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

And for some reason, the island of Corsica is pink for Italy instead of the correct yellow for France.

The color light brown is used for only five territories: Luxembourg (unlabeled), Slovakia, Croatia, the Bahamas, and this unlabeled area near the Pakistan-India-China intersection. Given the location of this place, my immediate thought was that it was Kashmir, but given the way China and Pakistan touch, the map makers have given the Indian administered state of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan and used the brown to indicate Aksai Chin, a region administered by China but claimed by India.

Also partially visible in the Europe photo is how Saudi Arabia is simply labeled "Saudi" with the "Arabia" part slightly elevated and positioned over what is actually the United Arab Emirates.

Now, let's turn our attention to North America:

The Island of Newfoundland became part of Canada in 1949, but apparently this information has not yet reached the colorers of this map. But Labrador is colored as part of Canada, and so this makes this interpretation more problematical.

And for some reason, Long Island is shaded pink, and not green like the rest of the United States. The nearest pink colored country is Haiti, although some islands in Alaska are also pink.

In South America, Chile is orange, and Argentina is green, except for the Argentinian part of Tierra del Fuego, which is pink. There is another island off the coast of Argentina that is pink, but it appears to be at the location of the Valdes Peninsula, which as its name implies is not an island. This is not the "Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)(adm. by UK, claimed by Argentina)," which are colored orange.

And in non-coloring related issues, due to the combination of the projection used for this map and the edges of the curtain, only about a third of New Zealand is visable, and Hawai`i is completely omitted.

*--I cannot find a date on this map, and so I do not know if it was made after Zaire became the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

This is why I love Nip/Tuck

2007-12-11T21:23:00.000-08:00

Tonight on Nip/Tuck, in a moment of weekness, an important character whose wife just left him and whose father just threw him out and who is broke sets up a meth lab in his motel room, which promptly catches on fire. And what song plays over this tragic turn of events? Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart." I don't know if the credit for this goes to creator Ryan Murphy or to writer/director Brad Falchuk, or to music supervisor P.J. Bloom, but to whomever, it was truly inspired.

2007-12-01T22:22:00.000-08:00

Congratulations are in order for 13th ranked Arizona State Sun Devils after holding off the late charge of their archrival Arizona Wildcats to win 20-17. Unfortunately for them, USC also won, which meant that due to USC's win over Arizona State on Thanksgiving, USC won their sixth straight Pac-10 title. But, 10-2 is a pretty good record, especially since their only losses were to USC and an Oregon team that was ranked 2 at the time.

But why am I singling out Arizona State for congratulations today? It's because they beat Mike Stoops's Arizona team late in the season.

Mike Stoops became the head coach at Arizona before the start of the 2004 season. Since then, his teams have been 3-8, 3-8, 6-6, and now 5-7, for a total record of 17-29. However, a closer look at his record broken down by calendar months shows something quite remarkable:

September: 6-11. Of course, four of those wins were against Div. I-AA opponents (3 over Northern Arizona, and 1 over Stephen F. Austin). The 2-11 against I-A opponents include a 1-4 Pac-10 record and an 0-6 record against ranked opponents.

October: 3-13. All of these games are Pac-10 conference games, and they lost all 5 games against ranked opponents.

November: 8-4. Yes, that's right. Once the calendar turns to November, Stoops's Wildcats become pretty tough. Even crazier though is their 5-1 record against ranked teams in the month of November. In November, 2004, they lost to #1 USC, but then they beat #20 Arizona State. In November, 2005, they beat #7 UCLA. Last November, they beat #25 Washington State and then #8 California, and then two weeks ago, they upset #2 Oregon.

December: 0-1. We saw with their loss to Arizona State today that Stoops's November magic does not seem to extend into December.

So, lets sum up. Versus ranked teams in November: 5-1. Versus Division I-A teams not in the month of November: 5-25.

It took 'em long enough

2007-11-29T20:11:00.000-08:00

How did it take so long? Just now, tonight, the Law & Order universe finally gets around to ripping from the headlines of the Duke lacrosse case. It's on Criminal Intent. It's not the Hudson University lacrosse team, as I had predicted, but instead it's Newell University's football team. Hm, I'm only twenty minutes in, but it seems perhaps these players, while elitist, didn't rape the victim the Bronx DA said they did.

Summer National Park Photo Dump (Finally)

2007-11-17T15:18:00.000-08:00

When you move to a new state to start a new job a week after you get home from a two week vacation, sometimes it takes a while to update all the websites you maintain. With the county counting , the interstate clinching, the College Football Shame Masking, the complimentary college football trophy collecting that hasn't made it on the web yet, and the relaunching of my homepage at my new garnet Carolina, finding the time to write up a summary of a two-week trip with four state highest points and three national parks has not come easily. The high pointing update is on my USC page, and then my national parking is here. I won't say too much about them, but I certainly enjoyed my time at all three.

Rocky Mountain National Park (photos)

I spent most of my time on Trail Ridge Road, the highest paved road that isn't a dead end in the United States. It tops out at 12,183 feet and allows easy access to miles of alpine tundra above the treeline. It's pretty amazing that things can grow in such an environment, and I looked at these tiny plants that might be more than twenty years old with much more respect than I would have otherwise.

Mesa Verde National Park (photos)

I had seen photos of the ruins of Mesa Verde before, and while I thought they were cool, I had no idea how many such cliff dwellings there were. The park contains over 200 sites with some sort of ruins. Some are on top of the mesa and not on the cliffs, and many of the sites in the cliffs are just storage places, but there are four or five very large clusters of buildings.

Great Sand Dunes National Park (photos)

The Great Sand Dunes National Park was the real find for me on this trip. The way the wind and water shape the sand is really cool, and especially in the low angle crepuscular light quite beautiful. The sand starts out to the west in the flat San Luis Valley, where the strong winds pick it up. The 13,000+ foot Sangre de Cristo Mountains at the eastern edge of the park funnel this wind toward Mt. Herard, but as it rises to go over the mountain, it dumps the sand on its western face. Rain and snowmelt then wash it down to the foot of the mountain where the forces balance out creating a giant pile of sand. High Dune is over 600 feet tall and not far from the visitors center. Out in the dunes, since the wind shifts things around, you can't really have a trail to the top of the dune. Sometimes the sand is very compact and it is easy to get traction. However, often just on the other side of a ridge, the sand is rather loose, making it basically impossible to climb, but this does make the descent quite easy, often allowing you to lean back on your heels and sort of ski down. Unfortunately as I got to the top of High Dune and surveyed Star Dune, the highest in the park at over 700 feet, I found that there was a group of 50 or 60 high school kids from the Charlotte area making a stop on their church youth group's trip to the Grand Canyon. I remember hearing one of them tell his friends "Did you know that Chuck Norris doesn't believe in the periodic table? The only element he believes in is the element of surprise." It seemed so wrong for these kids to be making fun of Chuck Norris. How old are they? Would they have even watched Walker, Texas Ranger? It just seemed so wrong.

Growing the game domestically

2007-10-21T13:50:00.000-07:00

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is concerned about growing the game internationally. Next week, the Giants and Dolphins will play in London, marking the first NFL regular season game outside of North America. This week, Commissioner Goodell floated a trial balloon of holding the Super Bowl in London in a few years, and also, the Buffalo Bills announced that they would like to play a home game in nearby Toronto. Back in the summer, Goodell even toyed with the idea of expanding the regular season from 16 games to 17, with each team playing 8 home games, 8 road games at another NFL team's stadium, and then one game in a foreign country. I have no real problems with any of these ideas, although the 17th game seems a little much. Today, however, my problems are not with the popularity of the game in what was once called Byzantium, but with the Byzantine rules of the league's television contracts that are hurting the game domestically.

Currently, NFL games are broadcast on five networks--ESPN has Monday Night Football, NBC has Sunday Night Football, the NFL Network will have some Thursday night games later in the season, and then the bulk of the NFL games are on Sunday afternoons on Fox and CBS. Fox has the Sunday afternoon games in which the road team is in the NFC, and CBS has the games in which the road team is in the AFC. All Sunday afternoon games start at either 1:00 PM Easter or 4:05 PM Eastern if the game is on CBS or 4:15 PM Eastern if the game is on Fox.

Since there are generally 8 or 9 games starting at 1:00 PM Eastern, each CBS or Fox affiliate is given the game that they are supposed to broadcast. This assignment depends upon location, and so the Nashville affiliates get the Tennessee Titans games, and the Charlotte affiliates get the Carolina Panthers games. This is provided that a home game is a sellout. If a home game is not a sellout, then all NFL games at that time are blacked out for that given television market.

My main quibble with this today is with another rule. Due to the variable nature of the length of a game, one game may end early, or indeed as was the case today, the New England Patriots were beating the Miami Dolphins so badly, that CBS switched us in the Columbia area (we always get AFC East games on CBS) to "bonus coverage" of the Buffalo Bills and the Baltimore Ravens. Once that game was over, they switched us to the Tennessee Titans and the Houston Texans. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Titans fan.

In this game, the Titans were winning 35-22 on the strength of kicker Rob Bironas's record-tying 7 field goals. The Texans however were coming back. Having already scored two fourth quarter touchdowns, shortly after we join the game, they score a third to cut the Titans' lead to 35-29 with only 1:37 remaining. At this point however, we are sent back to the CBS studio because "League rules prevent us from live showing bonus coverage past 4:15 PM Eastern."

However, since this game is so exciting, the CBS studio crew is watching the game. CBS is showing us people watching the game rather than the actual game. When the Texans recover an onside kick, they show us the replay. Then we cut back to the studio to show us people watching the game. Then when Houston scores a touchdown to take the lead, they show us the replay. If this 36-35 lead holds, it would be the third largest comeback in league history. At this point, I call my father, who is watching the game live in Nashville, coverage that was not "bonus." There are however, still 56 seconds left, and the Titans still have all three timeouts.

I continue to see people watching the game followed shortly by replays of every play. The short pass, the two incomplete passes, the 46-yard pass to get into field goal range, the short pass, and then a replay of Houston calling a timeout to ice Bironas. Then we see the replay of Rob Bironas's game winning 29-yard field goal, which was also his NFL record 8th of the game as time expires. And then, just for good measure, they return live to Houston for Bironas's postgame interview.

How on earth is this bonus coverage rule good for the game? Generally, it seems to me that the best thing for the game would be to let people actually see the game, and more specifically, the ends of as many games as possible. On Saturdays, college football games fill the television schedule, and they start at many different times. When the ESPN noon game is over, I can turn to the final minutes of the Lincoln Financial SEC Game of the Week that started at 12:30. After that, I can watch CBS's SEC game that starts at 3:00, and then when it is over, I can catch the second half of the ESPN2 game that started at 5:00 PM. Then I can switch to the end of ABC's game that started at 8:00, and once that is over, to the end of the ESPN game that started at 9:00, and then for good measure to the Hawai`i game on ESPN-U that starts at 12:05 AM if I am up for it. I could probably catch the final 10 minutes of at least 10 games if I wanted to. This helps me to know so much more about the sport, about the Game of college football. The NFL however just wants me to see what it says my favorite team should probably be. Not good for the Game.

Big Ten Network strikes gold?

2007-09-01T16:32:00.000-07:00

The Big Ten Network made its deput on the couple of cable providers that carry it on Thursday night. On Saturday, they struck gold with their first televised conference game with what some are touting as the biggest upset ever in college football. Appalachian State became the first I-AA* ever to beat a I-A team ranked in the AP-poll when they marched into the Big House in Ann Arbor and knocked of the fifth ranked Michigan Wolverines in what appears to have been a very exciting game from the highlights. Appalachian State, being the two-time defending I-AA champions, is of course no ordinary I-AA team.

After Michigan drew first blood, ASU rallied and led 31-20 until late in the third quarter, when Michigan scored a touchdown. They went for two, but failed. Then with five minutes left, Michigan's Mike Hart scampered for a 54-yard touchdown, which combined with another failed two-point conversion gave Michigan a 32-31 lead. Plus, on the very next play from scrimage, ASU through an interception. Nearly three minutes later, Michigan lined up for a field goal to salt away their victory. But it was blocked. ASU's quarterback Armanti Edwards atoned for his interception by rushing for 18 yards, and then completing 4 passes for 55 yards to give the Mountaineers a first-and-goal at the Michigan 5 with only 30 seconds left. ASU chose to kick a field goal immediately, which gave them a 34-31 lead but which also left Michigan with 26 seconds to work with. Michigan QB Chad Henne completed a 46 yard pass to the ASU 20 with 6 seconds remaining, just enough time to set up the game winning field goal. But Appalachian State blocked this field goal to secure the most amazing upset.

Now, under normal circumstances, such an amazing finish is what a television network absolutely wants. The NFL Network will broadcast 8 games in the final 6 weeks of the season, and if they could guarantee that they would have endings like today's ASU-Michigan game, the NFL Network would be declaring success.

However, can the Big Ten Network really use this spectacular game in an example of the great games that a viewer can find on the Big Ten Network? "Tune in next week on the Big Ten Network to see Eastern Illinois upset Purdue and Western Illinois knock off Illinois." It is unfortunate confluence of events for the conference and their network.

*--The NCAA tried to sneak in some sort of new names for I-A (Bowl Subdivision) and I-AA (Championship Subdivision) last year in time for the I-AA playoffs, but I will ignore their effort. Hm, since Grambling and Southern forego the I-AA playoffs every year in order to play the Bayou Classic, are they part of the Championship Subdivision?

Why don't we take the train? (or Why we don't take the train?)

2007-08-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

Since my new commute takes me past the Columbia Amtrak station, today I've had rail travel on the brain. I have always treated Amtrak as something of a joke. I've never been on an Amtrak train, and well, this is where the joke comes in. However, tonight's research into Amtrak services has given me a new perspective. While Amtrak's service pales in comparison to the European train systems that I've used, it is perhaps better than I expected.

First, Amtrak has a presence in 46 states, omitting only Wyoming and South Dakota in the conterminous 48. Furthermore, of the fifty largest cities in US according to Census 2000, Amtrak has a presence in the metropolitan area of 44 of them, with one of the missing six being Honolulu (46th). The others are Columbus (15th), Las Vegas (32nd), Tulsa (43rd), Colorado Springs (48), and my hometown and the reason I overestimate the useless of Amtrak, Nashville (22).

However, just because Amtrak services a large city does not mean these services are convenient. Take Columbia for example. Columbia is on the Silver Star line, and that's it. A passenger train stops at the Columbia Amtrak station only twice each day, when the northbound Silver Star arrives from Miami at 1:12 AM, and when the southbound Silver Star coming from New York's Penn Station at 1:44 AM. That's right, the two trains arrive between 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning. The station is open between 10 and 5 daily. Of course that's 10:00 PM to 5:00 AM.

Columbia is not the only city in such a situation. Fargo, the largest city in North Dakota also has only two passenger train stop. They arrive at 2:28 AM and 3:10 AM. The station is open from midnight to 8:00 AM. Hastings, NE, (near Grand Island) represents the third largest metropolitan area in Nebraska and gets trains at 2:02 AM and 2:57 AM. Its station's hours are 11:30 PM to 7:00 AM.

But I declare the worst served city to be the nation's 50th largest city, Wichita, Kansas. First, the station is actually 30 miles to the north along I-135 in Newton, where the Southwest Chief passes through on its way between Chicago and Los Angeles. The eastward leg stops at 3:01 AM and the westward leg stops at 3:25 AM. How convenient. The station is open from midnight to 8:00 AM Monday-Friday, and 1:30 to 4:00 AM Saturday and Sunday. Wouldn't that be a great shift to work?

Trift + Patience = Success (better late than never)

2007-08-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

With the move and all, it's taken me a while to get around to blog about my trip in July. The first port of call was Cawker City, Kansas, home of the world's largest twine ball. The town of Cawker City knows why it is on the map. While the residents of Darwin, Minnesota, decided not to add to their giant twine ball when its winder died (See Roadside America.), the patriarchs of Cawker City continued the efforts of Frank Stoeber after his death in 1974. The town also decided to add more than just sisal twine. The windows of the shops up and down main street of Cawker City are filled with copies of famous works of art, each with a ball of twine strategically inserted. I captured many of them here.

Blue Representative Democracy a la Turk

2007-07-24T16:07:00.001-07:00

This weekend's parliamentary elections in Turkey provide an interesting example of the problems inherent in a party-list proportional voting method with a large threshold. Compare the votes for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Grand National Assembly elections from 2002 and 2007:

AKP	2002	2007
Popular vote	10,762,131	16,340,534
% of Popular vote	34.28	46.66
Seats in Parliament	363	340
% of Seats	66.0	61.8

Yes, that's right, in the last five years, the AKP increased their plurality in the popular vote by 12.38%, and yet they lost 23 seats in the 550-seat Grand National Assembly.

The runner-up Republican People's Party (CHP) saw something similar. For the CHP, a meager 1% increase in the popular vote meant they lost 12% of the Assembly:

CHP	2002	2007
Popular vote	6,090,883	7,300,234
% of Popular vote	19.4	20.85
Seats in Parliament	178	112
% of Seats	32.4	20.4

How can this be? In Turkey, for a party to receive any seats in the Grand National Assembly, it must receive at least ten percent of the popular vote. In 2002, on the AKP and the CHP received more than the threshold, with third through eighth places getting 9.55%, 8.34%, 7.25%, 6.23%, and 5.13%. Thus, the main player in this year's election proved to be fourth place finisher in 2002, the National Movement Party (MHP). This year, they jumped into third place, and more importantly jumped over the ten percent threshold:

MHP	2002	2007
Popular vote	2,619,450	5,004,003
% of Popular vote	8.34	14.29
Seats in Parliament	0	71
% of Seats	0.0	12.9

(All statistics from Wikipedia.)

Cape Lookout

2007-06-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

I now know why they call it Cape Lookout. When you're driving on the beach, you must lookout of the dunes--they'll come out of nowhere. And when you're walking barefoot on the beach, you must lookout for those bits of rusting metal sticking out of the sand. See my photos of the buried cars in the sand.

Truth and Recon-Cycle-ation Commission

2007-06-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

It seems that the Tour de France no longer recongizes Dutchman Bjarne Riis as the winner of the 1996 Tour after he and six members of his Team Telekom announced that they used the banned blood-doping agent EPO from 1993-1998. I guess that means the 1996 winner is now runner-up Jan Ullrich of Germany.

Wait, but Jan Ullrich was caught up in the Operacion Puerto scandal and prohibited from competing in the 2006 Tour one day before it started. Ullrich denies any connection, but perhaps even more telling is that in 1996, Ullrich was also on Riis's Team Telekom. Hm, perhaps we should look further down the list for the 1996 winner.

Third place in 1996 was France's Richard Vireneque. However, in 1998, the heath assistant for his team Festina Wily Voet was stopped at the French-Belgian border in a Festina car full of all sorts of banned substances. He accused Vireneque of being involved, a charge that Vireneque denies.

So who finished fourth in 1996? Switzerland's Laurant Dufaux. Congratulations, Lauran--oh, wait, Dufaux raced for team Festina with Vireneque? I've not found any mention of him in the Voet scandal, but I only looked for about 5 minutes in the Wikipedia. I'd feel safer skipping him.

Up next? Fifth place finisher Peter Luttenberger of Austria. I can find no obvious reference to any illegal substances taken by Luttenberger or his Carrera team. Congratulations, Peter!

Obviously what cycling needs is a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. If you're a professional cyclist, just come forward by the end of 2007, admit what you took, when you took it, etc., and we'll respect your honesty enough to look the other way on your past successes. The people that you beat shouldn't be too upset either because they probably used something, too. Your only punishment will be an increase in the number of tests you have to take in the future.

The NBA Draft

2007-05-27T22:14:00.000-07:00

ESPN's Steven A. Smith isn't happy with the result of this week's NBA Draft Lottery. It's bad for the game, he says. We'll see. While I do not feel the draft will change my opinion of the league in the slightest, I do take issue with Steven A.'s reasoning.

Instead of having their teams draft in the reverse order of the final records like the NFL does, the NBA has a lottery among the fourteen teams that do not make it to the NBA playoffs to select the first three picks in the draft. The team that finishes with the worst record has a 25% chance of getting, the second worst 19.9%, and it falls off from there until the 14th team has only a 0.5% chance. This year, the lucky combination came up for the Portland Trailblazers for the number one pick. With a regular season record of 32-50, Portland tied with Minnesota for the sixth worst record and thus their chances of winning were only 5.3%. The second pick went to the Seattle Supersonics, whose 31-51 record was fifth worst and gave them an 8.8% chance at the top spot (9.3% at second given that Portland alreaday has the first pick).

So Steven A., what's wrong here? This year, while it may not be exactly certain who will be the first pick, basically everyone predictis that the first two players taken will two powerful big men leaving college after only their freshman seasons. Texas's Kevin Durant and the Ohio State's Greg Oden appear to be on track to be superstars in the NBA, which needs some superstars these days. And now these guys are going to play in Portland and Seattle? I mean, the league is going to get these two new superstars and then hide them in 23rd and 13th largest metropolitan areas in the nation according to the 2000 census. And they'd play out on the west coast? Who'd see them play?

Okay, so what is the appropriate talent level for playing in Portland? If they can't have the best, are they allowed to have an All Star reserve? The league's best sixth man? The only logical conclusion from saying that they should not get the first or second pick is that these cities should just not have teams in the first place.

Doesn't this draft set up something great for the league? The two teams being so close and division rivals helps build the Oden-Durant rivalry into something we do want to watch. Would it be better if one were in Seattle and the other were in Memphis? Or one in Portland and one in Charlotte? What story would that make for the NBA?

Irate music owners in the digital age

2007-05-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

Years ago, when we found that what was our favorite band had recorded backmasked messages from Satan or they made some un-American political statement, it was easy to gather in a public forum and smash their records or CDs.

However, what can we do with a downloaded track from iTunes? Should we all gather in some public place and en masse delete the track from our laptops?

Or should we burn it to a CD, and then smash the CD? Does copyright law recognize a "copying for ceremonial destruction" exemption? This seems like it should be a protected example of free speech. However, does it prevent one person (or some parental organization) from making 1000 copies for distribution to people who are made at the idea of the singer or song but didn't like them before and so don't have anything to destroy?

It's getting harder to get outraged these days

2007-04-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

How many times can I complain about the cancellation of a Fox show? I don't know. They just cancelled Drive after a two hour special and then two episodes at its regular time. Good thing the DVR will catch the final two episodes when they air at some random time (read Friday night) this summer unlike the final four episodes of Arrested Development, which I missed.

Is it that surprising that Drive was cancelled? Not really. While I did like the show on the whole, it had several characters that annoyed me. And they clearly were not racing through southern Georgia. Oh, and did I mention it was scripted.

But in other news, ABC is punting on Friday nights, which is now known as "National Bingo Night"! Woo-hoo! Bingo. On television. It's like all the fun of bingo, but without the ability to actually play yourself.

On the other hand, ESPN will be airing the national Rock Paper Scissors championship, and I'm kind of excited. Should it matter that its on ESPN and not a "network" network like ABC? No, it shouldn't. But I guess it does. I think it's that the RPS championship existed prior to the television coverage.

Oops gotta run, the Sopranos are on.

Area man scared of roommate due to local news

2007-04-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

Carrboro, NC--An area man became momentarily frightened of his roommate this afternoon when he heard the ABC 11 news report of the eBay habits of Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui. Authorities searched Mr. Cho's computer and found that he frequented the online auction site eBay.com and used it to buy the ammunition clips and to sell books including Men, Women, and Chain Saws, a book that the area man's roommate was in the middle of reading.

ABC 11 was not the only source to single out Men, Women, and Chain Saws among the books sold on the account, but they did fail to provide the desensationalizing discussion of Carol J. Clover's 1992 book, which is ensubtitled "Gender in the Modern Horror Film" and was required reading for the Contemporary Horror class taken by Mr. Cho, an English major.

The local roommate is reading Ms. Clover's book after hearing filmmaker Quentin Tarantino refer to it in an interview on the podcast of the NPR show The Treatment, hosted by Elvis Mitchell. Mr. Tarantino said that the book, which examines the identification of adolescent male audence members with the female victim of horror films in the late 1970s and '80s, had influenced Death Proof, his half of the double feature Grindhouse, which too few people are seeing.

Effective Scheduling

2007-04-22T11:17:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the month again, the time we celebrate all that good, all that is pure and wholesome about the sport of baseball. I am of course talking about this weekend's series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. This most heated rivalry is renewed with six three-game series this season (April 20-22 and 27-29, May 21-23, June 1-3, August 28-30, and September 14-16). Of these 18 games, 10 are already scheduled for a national television audience on either ESPN or the Fox Saturday game of the week. I am not opposed to Major League Baseball's emphasis on the Yankees-Red Sox rivarly. These two teams would not play on national television so often if people did not want to watch them play.

However, MLB when they put the schedule together miss a golden opportunity. Lost in this Yankees-Red Sox celebration is a chance to celebrate anything else. The St. Louis Cardinals are in Chicago to take on their big rival, the Cubs this weekend. This rivalry is probably the second greatest rivalry in the sport. Fox knows this because each of the four Saturday meetings between the two clubs is scheduled for their game of the week. However, of the 16 games Cubs-Cardinals games this year, 9 of them are played on a day in which the Yankees play the Red Sox. Thus, three of these Fox Saturday games of the week, the national game is Yankees-Red Sox, and unless there is rain in the Bronx or Boston, the Cubs and Cardinals can only be seen in Chicago and St. Louis.

Why does MLB force these rivalries to compete? The health of the sport is measured by just the Yankees-Red Sox series. Is it not in the best interest of the sport to have something to celebrate every weekend? Sure, let the Yankees-Red Sox be the national focus one weekend, but do it in such a way that the next week, a light equally strong can be shown on the Cubs and the Cardinals the following weekend.

MLB errs in a similar way with the interleague schedule. The Yankees-Mets subway series is always the tentpole of this interleague extravaganza, but why do they have to have the idea of the interleague weekend in the first place? They are better this year by having only one of the two Cubs-White Sox series coincide with one of the Yankees-Mets series.

Public Service Announcement

2007-04-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

This is a reminder to always practice safe religion. Specifically, when practicing mass self-flagellation, always be sure to use sterile blades, and never share whips. A participant in the annual Philippine Good Friday crucifiction reinactments died of rabies shortly after the celebration.

"Conserva"--Hawai`ian for "correct"

2007-03-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

Having had parody on my mind earlier in the evening, I thought I should finally check out the new parody of Wikipedia, the Conservapedia. Created in order to combat the liberal bias of the web-based encyclopedia that anyone can edit, the Conservapedia provides a web-based encyclopedia that anyone can edit with a conservative bias, although to be fair, The Conservapedia Commandments do not require an editor to write from a conservative bias.

In case you do not believe them when they say there is a liberal bias in the Wikipedia, the Conservapedia provides a handy growing list of Examples of bias in Wikipedia. Such things as how "Wikipedia features an entry on 'anti-racist mathematics.'" The Conservapedia's decision that neither this term nor ethnomathematics should have definitions is indeed correct.

Two glaring examples of the liberal bias concern John Seigenthaler's wiki bio, and how it slandered the conservative journalist by saying that he briefly worked as an administrative assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (They go so far as to accuse him of riding with the Freedom Riders and being knocked unconsious by a mob with the police refusing to help.) and then later worked on his presidential campaign and was a pallbearer at his funeral. The Wikipedia also alleges that Seigenthaler worked to defeat corruption in the Teamsters union. All these problems will be corrected when the Conservapedia gets around to writing its article about John Seigenthaler.

In an effort to show the big tent of conservatism, many different definitions of the word conservative can be applied to their articles. For example, in Wikipedia, the gratuitous article on energy conservation scrolls on screen after screen with pictures and links to more information. Conservapedia definitely lives up to the "avoiding excess" definition here by not having an article on energy conservation at all, saving the amount of electricity required to store and display Wikipedia's planet-destroying article.

While I am in favor of the "uniquely American doctrine" of free speech as much as the next man, I do feel that if we do not find the liberal activitists who created this parody encyclopedia to spread the notion that conservatives are closed-minded and shut them down, the terrorists win.

(Sp)amicus curiae

2007-03-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

Carol Burnett and her production company Whacko, Inc., filed suit in the Central District of California against Fox over an episode of Family Guy for copyright infringement. In last April's Family Guy episode "Peterotica," it was alleged that the reason that Pornoslavia, "the best dirty bookstore in town," was so because Carol Burnett was the part-time janitor, and then Burnett's copyrighted character the Charwoman was shown mopping the floor. I suppose one could simply say that parody of a copyrighted item is protected under the "fair use" provision of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 and conclude that this suit will be dismissed in short order. However, this suit draws attention to a glaring flaw in Family Guy--they don't really parody anything. They take a copyrighted cartoon janitor from four decades ago, and they depict her doing janitorial work. Truly cutting edge satire. This technique of copying something directly from another work and juxtiposing it next to Peter Griffin and his family has been used for several years, and from the few episodes that I have seen, it fails to be funny virtually every time. Family Guy routinely dives headlong into the Uncanny Valley, animating scenes that are too close to their antecedents to generate any humor. If you want to make a joke about a scene from Star Wars you have to actually modify it so that it will in fact be different from the scene in Star Wars. The time has finally come for Family Guy to be punished for failing to be funny.

In a manner similar that of the Parents Television Council and their FCC complaints, I encourage you to please email a copy this post the United States District Court, Central District of California.

UPDATE: Wiki-accords

2007-03-02T11:12:00.000-08:00

It seems that since my previous post, the Wikipedia article on the Dayton Accords has overtaken the article on the Khitomer Accords in length.

Parmistan 2007

2007-02-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

Wow, I just watched Gymkata, and all I can say is...well, I can't really say anything. It's that amazing.

I was sorely disappointed at the special features on the DVD though. Just a trailer and the trailer for the straight-to-DVD The Dukes of Hazard: The Beginning?!?!? My main question remains unanswered: What is Parmistan like now 20 years after the Americans came with their missile defense station? Can you drive there now? Does the new generation, the 21s, rebel against their 20s parents who sold out after the revolution? Or have al-Qaeda inspired fundamentalists driven the infidels out of Parmistan? Do they still play The Game? After it was won for the first time in 900 years, did they feel it was getting too easy and make it more difficult? Is it now The Game presented by Pepsi?

It seems to me that with Parmistan's strategic location at the crossroads of our ever-changing world, competing in The Game presented by Pepsi is more important than ever. Sasha Baron Cohen should "re-imagine" Gymkata as a reality show in which the new Khan of Parmistan, in the style of Chairman Kaga, introduces us to his land and also hosts a special edition of The Game presented by Pepsi with Lance Armstrong, David Beckam, Ian Thorpe, Ronaldinho, Zinedine Zidane, Yao Ming, Steve Nash, Ichiro, Anna Kournikova, and German biathlete Kati Wilhelm all competing for their countries to win the right to send an oil pipeline through Parmistan.

Happy Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T08:27:00.000-08:00

This year for Valentine's Day, I suggest checking out Maria Full of Grace to see just where that bouquet of flowers comes from.

And honestly folks, is the symbolism of giving something that's essentially dead already a good thing for a relationship? Sure, it's the prettiest part of the plant--usually the prettiest parts of a few different plants, I suppose--but I guess that's what we want for Valentine's Day. It's not about stems or leaves or roots, who wants anything like that?

Immortal computing

2007-01-23T10:39:00.000-08:00

Microsoft just applied for a patent for "immortal computing," a scheme to make information understandable in perpetuity. An interesting idea, but is this really a good business strategy? I mean, patents expire after 20 years. Can you really build planned obsolescence into something that is "immortal"?

On another note, is the idea of immortal computing really a good thing? Weren't we saved from the Cylon attack by the fact that their modern computer brains couldn't interface with Galactica's outmoded technology?

Border patrol numbers

2007-01-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

I don't really know what if anything to make of this.

From the Office of Detention and Removal: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement "removed* 187,513 illegal aliens from the country in FY06, a record for the agency and a ten percent increase over the number of removals during the prior fiscal year."

*--"Removal" means what "Deportation" used to mean.

From public radio's Marketplace's report on : "Mexico detained and deported more than a quarter-million people last year."

But the US is beating Canada. From the Canadian Border Services Agency, only 11,845 persons were removed from Canada in the 12-month period ending March 31, 2005. That's approximately 3.6 deportations per 10,000 residents of Canada, compared to 6.3 per 10,000 residents of the US, and 24 per 10,000 residents of Mexico.

However, in terms of people denied entry at the border, Canada is beating the US on a per capita basis. CBSA denies entry to 7.8 people per 100,000 residents of Canada per day, whereas the US denies entry to only 1.9 per 100,000 residents of the US per day.

Passer rating flaws

2007-01-19T07:02:00.000-08:00

The NFL has this stat for quarterbacks called the passer rating. It's formulation is nonintuitive, and while the lowest possible rating is 0.0, the highest possible rating is 158.3. The league average rating is usually in the high 70s, with the leader being around 100.

The passer rating has four components, with a quarterback being rewarded for 1) completing a high percentage of passes, 2) throwing for a large number of yards per attempt, and 3) throw a large number of touchdowns per attempt, and being penalized for 4) throwing lots of interceptions.

There are several quirks in the formula. One for example is how one might think that throwing 10 passes and completing none of them should result in the lowest possible score, but no, the passer rating rewards this performance for not throwing it to the other team, and gives it a 39.6. (One interception in ten attempts is however 0.0.) And then there are questions about its relevance because quarterbacks can do very important things to help their teams win by running the ball, which is completely ignored by the stat and contributes in a small way to lowering the rating.

However, the quirk I choose to focus on in this post is how the rating for a season is not the average or sum of the ratings of individual games. This is not completely related to the cutoffs where a quarterback does not get any more points for increasing his completion percentage from 78% to 81%, but this can really be taken advantage of to create some interesting scenarios. For example, please examine the following four games, which are not totally out of the realm of plausibility in the NFL:

Game 1:
7 comp/25 att, 188 yards, 2 touchdowns, 0 interceptions->Rating: 85.1

Game 2:
18/25, 295 yds, 1 TDs, 3 INTs->Rating: 85.0

Game 3:
17/25, 235 yds, 2 TDs, 4 INTs->Rating: 85.0

Game 4:
13/25, 100 yds, 3 TDs, 1 INTs->Rating: 85.0

The total of these four games:
55/100, 818 yds, 8 TDs, 8 INTs->Rating: 75.3

Does this make the passer rating a bad stat? I tend to think not when used for a season. The problem I feel is how the passer rating for a single game is being used more frequently. This should stop. Only Rams QB Marc Bulger had more single games (8) this season with rating over 100 than Chicago QB Rex Grossman's 7, despite the fact that Grossman gets all sorts of flak from how he's terrible because he had games with ratings of 36.8, 23.6, 10.2, 1.3, and a season ending 0.0. But the Bears did win 2 of these 5 games.

Thr3e (The Postcard)

2007-01-03T15:58:00.000-08:00

In the mail today, I received a postcard advertisement for "Thr3e," which is apparently a film that is "In Theaters January 2007." This is a first for me, a postcard mailed directly to me about an upcoming film.

There are a few things about it that I found interesting:

On the front, it's got the poster seen here, plus the tagline "Some sins were never meant to be discovered," "From X-Men producer Ralph Winter," and "Based on the best-selling novel by Ted Dekker," as though I am supposed to know who he is.

On the back it says Quote:
When a young seminary student is targeted by a psychopathic killer, he joins forces with a criminal psychologist whose brother was murdered by the same madman. Together they must unravel the killer's riddles and catch him before he strikes again, but the closer they get, the more twisted the path becomes. This heart-pounding thriller will keep you guessing up until the final shocking scene!

At first, I was quite confused about why I had gotten this postcard, but then I figured it out--I noticed the www.foxfaithmovies.com thing in the small print at the bottom. I've known for a few years that my address has somehow found its way onto the mailing lists of a handfull of Christian things. (I think it's probably from the church that grew up at, but I'm not sure.) There are a couple of charities and orphanages, some of which I've heard of, some of which I haven't. There was the Christian college with 500 students located in Regina, Saskatchewan, a city that I have never been within a 1000 mile radius of. It's pretty clear that this must be it. The closest other thing I can think of would be that the film stars Marc Blucas, and I have purchased Buffy DVDs from Amazon that include him.

This just doesn't seem like an effective ad campaign to me. I guess the idea is that they think I'm looking for a low budget psychological thriller that is also a Christian allegory. (An alle-Gory? It is rated PG-13.) But the only way that I knew it was a "Christian" film, was that the Fox Faith Movies website was on it. Well, that and the fact that it was junk mail targeted at me.

How many of these postcards do they send out? In terms of households per dollar, a postcard (24 cents postage) gets you 4 per dollar whereas a Super Bowl commercial would be a much better "bargain" getting you 22 per dollar.

Now, about the film. From SPOILERS!! on the IMDb page, it's my impression that the twist ending of this film is the same as Donald Kaufman's The Three. If so, is Thr3e, as a Christian allegory, drawing a parallel between the Holy Trinity and the victim-cop-psychopathic killer three-in-one mulitple personality? Oh, wait, its screenplay was crafted by the same hands that wrote Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever? Sign me up.

Selection Order

2007-01-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

With the NFL regular season now over, 20 of league's teams know where they will select in the league's upcoming draft. (The playoffs effect the order of the remaining 12 teams.) The first tie-breaker is strength of schedule, and so if the Detroit Lions had not somehow won at Dallas when Dallas needed to win in order to clinch their division championship, the Lions would have gotten the first pick. However, now they'll draft second after the Oakland Raiders.

However, to decide the third and fourth picks, the Cleveland Browns and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers will need a coin flip. No word yet on when the fateful coin will be flipped.

The Beautiful Game

2006-12-30T22:10:00.000-08:00

A google search of Tagliabue and "competitive balance" yields about 3420 hits. This is a testimony to the importance of promoting the ability of each of the 32 teams in the NFL to field a competitive team during Paul Tagliabue's reign as NFL Commissioner from 1989 to his retirement in September before the 2006 season. As he enjoys his retirement, he should be happy that with the New York Giants' 34-28 win at the Washington Redskins on Saturday night, all 15 of the NFL games on Sunday, December 31, the final day of the regular season, will at the start of the day at least have some impact on the playoffs.

Nine teams have already clinched playoff spots leaving 3 spots remaining. The Giants win eliminated Carolina, St. Louis, and Atlanta, and so either the Giants or Green Bay will be the last wild card in the NFC. (SportsCenter says that in Vegas, a $1 bet that Green Bay wins the wild card pays off at $45,000.) Over in the AFC, the wild cards will be two of the New York Jets, Denver, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Jacksonville, and Tennessee.

The games at 1:00 PM EST:

Oakland (2-13) at New York Jets (-11.5) (9-6)
- Jets clinch wild card with win or tie.
Pittsburgh (7-8) at Cincinnati (-6) (8-7)
- Cincinnati clinches wild card with win AND either a Jets loss OR {Denver loss AND Kansas City win}
Jacksonville (8-7) at Kansas City (-2) (8-7)
- Kansas City clinches wild card with a win AND a Denver loss AND a Tennessee loss or tie AND and a Cincinnati loss or tie
- Jacksonville clinches wild card with a win AND a Jets loss AND a Tennessee loss or tie AND and a Cincinnati loss or tie.
New England (11-4) at Tennessee (-3) (8-7)
- Tennessee clinches wild card with a win AND a Denver loss AND a Kansas City win AND and a Cincinnati loss or tie
- New England has clinched their division title. If they win and Indianapolis loses or ties or tie and Indianapolis loses, then New England will be the 3rd seed in the AFC, otherwise New England will the be 4th seed. The practical differences between 3rd and 4th are not very significant.
Detroit (2-13) at Dallas (-13) (9-6)
- Dallas has clinched at least a wild card, and will clinch the division with a win AND a Philadelphia loss or tie OR a tie and Philadelphia loss.
- Detroit must win for Green Bay to have a better Strength of Victory than the Giants.
Seattle (8-7) at Tampa Bay (-3.5) (4-11)
- Seattle has clinched their division and will be the 4th seed in the NFC.
- Tampa Bay must lose for Green Bay to have a better Strength of Victory than the Giants.*
Carolina (7-8) at New Orleans (+3) (10-5)
- New Orleans has clinched their division and at least a wild card, and will clinch the division with a win AND a Philadelphia loss or tie OR a tie and Philadelphia loss.
- Carolina must win for Green Bay to have a better Strength of Victory than the Giants.*
St. Louis (7-9) at Minnesota (+2.5) (6-9)
- Minnesota must win for Green Bay to have a better Strength of Victory than the Giants.*
Cleveland (4-11) at Houston (-5.5) (5-10)
- Houston must lose for Green Bay to have a better Strength of Victory than the Giants.*

The games at 4:15 PM EST:

Atlanta (7-8) at Philadelphia (-8.5) (9-6)
- Philadelphia has clinched at least a wild card, and can clinch the division with a with win OR a Dallas loss OR Philadelphia and Dallas both tie.
Arizona (5-10) at San Diego (-14) (13-2)
- San Diego has clinched their division and will clinch home field advantage with a win or tie OR a Baltimore loss or tie.
- Arizona must lose for Green Bay to have a better Strength of Victory than the Giants.*
Buffalo (7-8) at Baltimore (-9.5) (12-3)
- Baltimore has clinched their division and will clinch home field advantage with a win AND a San Diego loss.
San Francisco (6-9) at Denver (-10) (9-6)
- Denver clinches a wild card with a win.
- San Francisco must win for Green Bay to have a better Strength of Victory than the Giants.*
Miami (6-9) at Indianapolis (-9) (11-4)
- Indianapolis has clinched their division title and can clinch a first round bye with a win AND a Baltimore loss.
- Miami must win for Green Bay to have a better Strength of Victory than the Giants.*

The game at 8:15 PM EST:

Green Bay (7-8) at Chicago (-3) (13-2)
- Chicago has clinched home field advantage throughout the playoffs.
- Green Bay must win AND beat the Giants in Strength of Victory*

*--It is possible for either one of Arizona, San Francisco, and Miami to tie instead of win OR one of Carolina, Houston, and Tampa Bay to tie instead of lose in order for Green Bay to beat the Giants in Strength of Victory. It is also possible for Green Bay to the Giants in Strength of Victory and beat them in Strength of Schedule if {either one of Arizona, San Francisco, and Miami lose OR one of Carolina, Houston, and Tampa Bay win} AND Jacksonville and Tennessee lose AND St. Louis, Buffalo, and the Jets win.

I'm a winner!

2006-11-30T08:48:00.000-08:00

Hurray! With a full 21 hours to spare, I uploaded my file to the word counting robots at the National Novel Writing Month site, and it approved, saying that I had 50,267 words. Thus, I am now a two-time NaNoWriMo winner. Woo-hoo!

Of course, this year's novel, which I've tentatively called Descent, is nowhere near finished. Now, I just have to see if I can get around to finishing last year's novel Tiebroken first.

NaNoWriMo is definitely something that I would recommend to just about anyone. Sorry you'll have to wait a year, though, for NaNoWriMo 2007, though. Or perhaps, National Solo Album Month is more up your alley. Plus, I hear that June will become National Screenplay Writing Month starting in 2007.

A Long Time Ago, We Used to Like Your Theme Song

2006-11-07T18:15:00.000-08:00

Why on earth did they change the theme song to Veronica Mars for the third season? I keep watching it, hoping that this week someone with the power to change it would restore what was the best theme song on network television these days. But it's not just that they changed, they changed it to a hollowed out shell of its former self, and so every week we're reminded of just how bone-headed the decision to change it was.

2006-10-31T21:02:00.000-08:00

I expected there would be delays in taking off at JFK International Airport, but this is ridiculous.

Really though what I found most amazing was that there were three gates at JFK that from some point in time prior to 10:00 to 12:30 on a Thursday morning without a single flight taking off from them.

2006-10-20T18:06:00.000-07:00

NBC announced layoffs earlier this week, and they also announced that they would no longer air scripted dramas and comedies at the 8:00 PM Eastern hour because game shows and reality shows are cheaper to produce. The example comparison that I saw was an episode of Friday Nights Lights costs $2.6 million, while an episode of Deal or No Deal costs only $1.1 million. What? Deal or No Deal costs $1.1 million per episode? There's nothing to this show.

In other news, FOX is advertising a new game show called The Rich List, which they say is the first game show with no limit to the amount of money that you can win. (Jeopardy got rid of it's five day limit a while ago, and it seems to me that there's no limit to the money one can win on it either.) This is clearly a ploy to entice viewers, but if it is really true, this means that there is no limit to what the budget of the show will be. As the number of reality shows and games show proliferates, they have to try to outdo the last one, which leads me to believe that their budgets are indeed growing.

The deciding factor in whether or not to air a show has to be viewers per dollar to make. (Okay, so it's really ad dollar generated per dollar spent to make the show, but that's essentially a weighted average of who's watching.) Could the next breakthrough category of network show be the low-budget scripted show? When game shows get so lavish that their budgets become comparable to scripted shows, will they be able to stand?

Time Warner Cable and the NFL

2006-10-15T21:42:00.000-07:00

On this page from the Time Warner website, it says:

We know you love football-which is why, as a Time Warner Cable customer, you’ll enjoy a ton of NFL games this season, many available in High Definition. That includes every single one of your home-team games, whether played at home or away, as
well as many other NFL games.

Hm, didn't I hear something about how the FCC had to get involved and force Time Warner to carry the NFL Network for one month on the regions that they acquired in the summer from Adelphia and Comcast? Yes, those regions had the NFL Network, but when TWC took over they dropped the NFL Network immediately, which is a violation of federal law. The law however only required that they give the consumer a one month notification that a network would be dropped, and so TWC gave them the one month and then dropped it. Those of us who have been served by TMC for a while have never had the NFL Network.

When the NFL Network is showing practice scrimages, not having it is not so much of a problem. However, starting Thanksgiving night, the NFL Network will start showing real games. Since TMC started a website entirely devoted to defending their actions in their dispute with the NFL Network and called it www.nflgetreal.com, it seems pretty clear to me that TMC is in the wrong, especially compared to this page which provides the NFL Network's response.

So, do we really need logic, or not?

2006-09-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

New on FOX on Mondays nights this fall is a show called Vanished. It's about a Georgia senator's wife who's been kidnapped. Oddly enough, there may be something deeper going on. I've seen all of it so far, and I'm still on the fence. I'm not really claiming it's good, but there is some überspitzenkeit that I like about it.

the wife of the former mayor of Atlanta who had been missing for 10 years shows up. She's been dead for 10 years, but she was kept frozen all this time. And she was left with a cryptic symbol drawn on her hand. When the former mayor was told, he warned them to leave it alone, and then shot himself. We later find out that the wife was kidnapped in an effort to get the mayor to stop the building of a reservoir.

So far, we've had the ransom demand that the senator vote to confirm a supreme court nominee, who is the senator's "lifelong friend," a nominee who a year ago had an affair with with the senator's underage daughter. The senator does not know about this, but his wife did. Why exactly he would need the threat against the life of his wife to force him to vote to confirm his friend I don't really know.

Then there's the Glouster, MA, fisherman who claims that he knew the wife under a different name 12 years ago, and he has the video to prove it. Or at least he did until it was stolen from his truck at the same time that the copy that a report had made was erased from her computer. Oh, he may have just discovered he has a daughter by her.

The Masons and the Attorney General are pretty clearly involved (the AG, has Masonic stuff on his desk). In an effort to discredit the fisherman's story, the bad guys, hire another fisherman to say that 12 years ago, he found a dead body that was obviously her. She was buried as a Jane Doe in a potter's field, a potter's field that the night before we saw the man who hired the second fisherman burying a coffin in. As though they couldn't tell that the coffin had been buried 12 hours ago, not 12 years ago. Then the second fisherman was murdered. While it's amazing that things like this don't really bother me. In fact I kind of like it.

However, here's the thing that makes me want to stop watching. The FBI found a laptop that was receiving a live video signal of the kidnapped wife until a prisoner being transfered wrote a message in Masonic runes on her palm as a symbol to tell them to stop the broadcast, which means the FBI can no longer triangulate on the signal. However, the main agent gets an idea: "You said the laptop can send as well as receive. If you rig it to broadcast the signal, can't you trace it back to the source?"

"It will take time to isolate the signal, but in theory, yeah."

Okay, if they "follow the signal back to the source" when they are broadcasting it from their own office, isn't it going to lead them to their own office? And if they're broadcasting the same signal that they've been triangulating in on for at least an hour, don't they already have the signal isolated?

Look at Them, They formed a band

2006-09-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

For the second concert in a row, I went to the show for the middle of the night's three bands. The Spinto Band opened, and they were okay, but all the time I kept wondering if any band really needs three electric guitars on every song. We Are Scientists closed the evening, and I did enjoy them a lot although I did think they began to get old after a little while. However, Art Brut is really something special. Really, how can you not like a band that begins their set with a song that starts "Formed a band, We formed a band. Look at us, We formed a band," and then in the second verse claims that "We're gonna be the band that writes the song that makes Israel and Palestine get along." So much fun.

Well, it is math, not English

2006-09-14T16:05:00.000-07:00

The October issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society arrived in my mailbox today, and the cover listed an article called "Tips for the Job Search," which I felt I should read without delay. There is naturally a section about having a webpage that offers the rather obvious advice that "a webpage with outdated information, broken links, or misspelling could work against you."

I soon realized this is a two-way street when I noticed that according to the AMS Employment Information in the Mathematical Sciences, the University of Marylad [sic] is hiring. They had a total of four postings, with two of them misspelling the name of the institution. Do I really want to work there?

Earth Sandwich

2006-09-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

In May, (b/v)logger Ze Frank put forth the wonderful challenge of the Earth Sandwich. You take two pieces of bread, place one of them on the ground, and then place the other at the antipodal point. Given that so much of the earth is water, putting both slices on land is not that easy. (A good map is here.)

Congratulations to brothers Jon and Duncan for completing the world's first Earth Sandwich. They went with the New Zealand-Iberian Peninsula sandwich, but as far as I could tell, both pieces of bread were not laid down simultaneously. Any one up for a trip to {Hawai`i or Botswana} or {Borneo or Brasil} or {Tierra del Fuego or Lake Baikal} or {Greenland or Antarctica}?

2006-09-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

One thing that I remember from my trip to England was that it was well-signed. I never felt concerned that I did not know where the emergency exit was because the green signs were everywhere. However, the picture from this article entitled "335 Road Signs in Eight-Mile Stretch" may be going a little too far.

Tabloiding

2006-09-08T21:30:00.000-07:00

"Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able."
--Brad Pitt in the forthcoming October issue of Esquire.

As an avid NPR listener, I often feel unable to discuss whom a celebrity is dating dating and may or may not be marrying or having a child with or whatever with, and so I don't know which comment to post, and so I'll just do both.

Post A) Brad, burned by past relationships, is clearly commitment-phobic but does not want to admit to it, and so therefore he has chosen a convenient political cause to hide this fear behind.

Post B) Brad clearly supports Warren Jeffs.

Standoff

2006-09-05T18:28:00.000-07:00

New FOX Show: Standoff

The show stars Ron Linvingston as an FBI hostage rescue agent who to win the trust of a man holding his son hostage at gun point tells him and everyone listening on the radio that he's been sleeping with his partner for three months, and so everything will change for the both of them. It costars Gina Torres as his boss.

In the first episode, the Causcasian convert to Islam and son of a US Congressman who is running for the Senate walks into a coffeeshop wearing a vest full of explosives under his jacket and demands to speak to the media or he will blow everyone up. Everyone has to put their cellphones into a big pile. Eventually one of them starts to ring. The ringtone is the theme from M*A*S*H. No matter what happens in the rest of the episode, I think this has earned it a second episode.

Justice

2006-09-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

Woo-hoo, FOX has new shows. On Wednesday night, I took in the series premiere of Justice, an "unflinching, behind-the-scenes look at how high-profile cases are tried in these media-saturated times." It's executive produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and I've heard it advertised as "CSI" from the perspective of the high profile defense attorneys. I will admit there is potential for some interesting stuff here, and there were a few things that the lawyers of the firm of TNT&G did in the pilot that I liked. When I first heard of the show, my initial impression was that they would follow only one case during the season, which I could be interested in. However, thanks to the another note they hit in the commercials, I knew I would hate this show.

"Ultimately," according to the show's website, "each episode will conclude with the series' signature epilogue. In a flashback to the scene of the crime, we see what no lawyer can ever see: what really happened, and whether JUSTICE has been served."

The first "signature epilogue," it went like this. Some rich dude has been charged with bashing in his wife's skull with a golf club though no murder weapon has been found. The defense has presented its experts to show that the injuries were more consistant with a fall. The jury agreed and found him not guilty. There is rejoicing and thanks from the defendant for his lawyers, but instead of going for drinks with them to see how they were effected by the case, did they do the right thing, we are thrust backwards in time to see the defendant tucking his daughter into bed as his wife climbs out of the pool, slips, and falls just like the defense's forensics expert surmised. Hooray, JUSTICE is served.

But is it really? If the show is really about trying a case in the media, why end it with objective truth? A truth that can only take place far away from the media spotlight. But even worse, it is a truth that can never be known by the main characters? Ending an episode of a television series with a character doing something that the other characters don't know about is often a very good device. This is because we know that when the other characters do find out about it, crazy things will happen. But the very nature of the Justice signature epilogue is that the main character can never discover the truth, but it is thrust upon us.

A device like this could possibly work in way like the way the flawed but interesting film Primal Fear systematically destroys its high-profile defense attorney, ending with a shocking revelation. But as evidenced by the final look on Richard Gere's face, it was actually revealed to the attorney! And with Justice, by showing that the lawyers were indeed right, it's not trying to undercut them at all.

Please cancel this show.

Slacker

2006-08-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

Today for lunch, I had some souvlaki at the Pita Pit on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. I noticed that their posted grade from the health inspector was an A with a score of 99.5. Not too shabby, but I had to say I was disappointed. This score was from an inspection last week. When I ate there three weeks ago, I noticed that their health inspection was 101. 101? Did they somehow make the bookstore next door cleaner? I tried to ask the guy at the counter what they had done to get the bonus point, but he just kept saying things like "We try everyday to have the cleanest store possible for you, our customer."

"Thanks, but how did you get more than a perfect score? Do they start from more than 100 and deduct points?"

"We try our best to keep the kitchen as clean as possible."

A search of the Orange County Health Department yielded only the list of scores and not the reasons why 6 scored higher than 100.

Scorpios take note

2006-08-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

For years and years, the ruling planet of Scorpio was thought to be Mars. However, with the relatively recent discovery of Pluto, many modern astrologers have taken this planet to rule Scorpio. Any good theory evolves once there are more facts on the table. However, this week, the International Astronomical Union has their XXVIth General Assembly in Prague (the perfect place for an astronomical assembly if you ask me) and the hot topic for debate is whether or not Pluto should remain a planet. Or should it become a "Pluton"? Should its moon Charon be bumped up to Pluton status as well? What about Ceres and 2003 UB₃₁₃, should they become planets or Plutons or something?

When I first started this post, as a Scorpio, I was all in favor of keeping the status quo ante XXVIth General Assembly. I mean, would you want to be ruled by a Pluton? But then I calmed down and began to reconsider. I mean, if the heavenly bodies do rule our actions, from an applied science perspective, shouldn't we take as many of those heavenly bodies as possible into account? If I am actually ruled by 2003 UB₃₁₃, isn't it better that I know it now rather than continue in darkness? Plus, with all the computing power available today, why aren't we looking to the Kuiper belt for more accurate horoscopes?

UPDATE: The day after I wrote this, there was an interview on All Things Considered with an astrologer about what if any effect the ruling of the IAU would have on astrology. It includes a great part where the astrologer calling out a colleague for committing malpractice.

Furthermore, the vote is official and Pluto is now not a planet. There are only eight planets. Please alert your local school board so that by the year 2012 we can teach our elementary school kids about this.

Any analysis welcome

2006-08-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

In general, when controlled for other factors, I find a woman wearing mittens to be more attractive than one with gloves, yet I prefer a woman wearing toe-socks to one with standard "mitten-socks." (There is insufficient data on tabi socks.) However, I think the versitility of the handwear item with the mitten part that folds back to reveal fingertipless gloves give it the overall edge whereas the sock analog would just be totally wrong.

Cosmic retribution

2006-08-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, my collaborator and I had decided to limit the focus of our paper and delete a section. Two weeks ago, when he sent me the file for me to work on, I noticed that he had indeed deleted the section. However, he had not deleted Appendix C, which was only used by that section. Therefore I quickly struck it before setting to work on another part of the paper. Little did I know how dearly this would cost me, for within the next three days, the appendices struck back. I started to feel the pain on Wednesday, and then late Friday afternoon, I had the CT to prove it, I had appendicitis. There's nothing like your doctors telling you that they've called ahead to the emergency room to let them know you're coming, only to have to wait 12 hours to finally get to the OR. And throughout all this, I'm fully alert and not in any pain unless I move suddenly or poke my abdomen, and really how often do you do poke yourself in the abdomen? As I lay there on the gurney for the three hours before they took me upstairs to a room to wait, all I could think of was the Paddy Chayefski film The Hospital and specifically, the line "The intern took his history, and then he was simply forgotten to death."

Which is worst?

2006-08-16T06:42:00.000-07:00

Which is worst?

a) That this was left on me after surgery.

b) That it took me 30 hours to find it.

c) That it took me 2 more hours to find the one stuck to the other side.

Educational Programming

2006-08-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

During the upcoming month, FOX will begin a broadcast season without any Arrested Development. While the choice to drop a show in which every season was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, it is FOX after all, and the execs evidently get paid per series they premiere. That this is such a funny series has been noted by this author and many others on many occassions. However, in this post I bring up a different aspect of the show.

In all the years of ER, I don't remember learning about the existance of a disease from the show. There have been great episodes of the hospital show dealing with a wide variety of maladies, but all the ones I remember dealt with filling in details of fighting a disease that I already knew about although I'd say it is probable that I learned of a new disease which did not make it out of the short-term memory buffer. Strangely enough, this is not true for Arrested Development. In the episode Prison Break-In, a disease must be found for the annual Bluth Foundation Dinner to raise funds to fight after the donors discovered that TBA was not actually a disease. Thus when Tobias develops Graft-Versus-Host Disease (GVHD) when his transplanted hair plugs start attacking his body, they pick that. I was reminded of this lesson today when I read of the death of four-time Iditarod winner Susan Butcher from GVHD. While it seems that GVHD is a complication of bone marrow transplants, not other transplants like hair, thanks to the educational aspects of Arrested Development, I was at least aware of the disease.

Clean-up

2006-08-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

It is always a good idea to clean out your apartment. My apartment has been continually occupied for at least 10 years, I think, with only the last two by me. However, this week one roommate is moving out and another is moving in. I've been trying to cut down on the things that are owned by the apartment. I've found a few interesting things. A closet contained a toaster oven and a blender that we have no idea whom they belong to. Another closet held a pair of sandals and a couple of backpacks. The worst however were the medicine cabinets full mainly of expired asperine and vitamins, but which also held an asthma inhaler, and then in the cabinet under the sink, there it was, the bottle of anti-lice shampoo. Ahh!

Where's the gravy and cheese?

2006-08-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

The United States has no collective memory. We as a nation forget things. We're not good with history. We don't know which ethnic groups outside of our boarders have hated each other for generations. Generally, this is not a good thing, but nevertheless it does have a good aspect or two. Who was once our bitter enemy can become our friend quite quickly. Would aliens who knew nothing our planet believe that our grandfathers fought bitterly against the Germans or the Japanese? It is in this spirit that somehow, no one knows for sure exactly how, but within the last week, "freedom fries" and "freedom toast" in the House of Respresentatives are now French again. No word on whether the freedom kiss, the 14-freedom needle, or Third Rock from the Sun actor Freedom Stewart have reverted to their former names.

I need just the right word

2006-07-31T18:00:00.000-07:00

Perhaps this has happened to you. You start talking to someone and then all of a sudden you realize that this person just is not able to find any pleasure in Buffy, Angel, or Firefly or Serenity whatsoever. They just don't get them at all. If this has happened to you, you must have then wondered, what is wrong with this person? I have figured it out--he or she has a serious case of anwhedonia.

A Google search for "anwhedonia" yielded only one result, and while its usage there is simply to mean "the lack of things created by Joss Whedon," it seems to me that the above definition is much better.

2006-07-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

Godwin's Law states that

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

The idea is basically that if you continue to insist that your erroneous opinion is correct for long enough, I will eventually complain that you are as evil as Adolf Hitler.

While the following quote about the current Israel-Hizbollah strife from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is actually from an offline discussion (the ceremonial ribbon cutting for a traffic tunnel in Tehran, to be precise), it did cause me to think of Godwin's Law:

The Zionists think that they are victims of Hitler, but they act like Hitler....^[1]

Then I immediately wondered just what exactly a reductio ad Hitlerem argument means when it comes from someone who denies the Holocaust. Another quote from President Ahmadinejad:

There are still questions... maybe in your so-called Holocaust more than six million Jews were massacred (during World War II), so why do you not allow people to undertake new research?^[2]

If the Holocaust did not happen, then Hitler was in fact not evil? Therefore, if Hitler is not evil and if the Zionists are like Hitler, they are therefore not evil, or so says President Ahmadinejad?

The Dawn of a New Age of Traffic Flow in Chapel Hill

2006-07-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

Woohoo, on Monday, construction will begin on turning our local intersection of US-15/501 and Erwin Road/Europa Drive. This bit of construction has its own special page with flashy animated graphics on the NCDOT website, and it will feature a "superstreet."

Oddly, the new superstreet appears to actually increase the number of traffic lights that one would pass through on US-15/501, which I guess does have the advantage of being counterintuitive. Though this intersection and the nearby interchange with Franklin Street together are somewhat nonstandard, I don't think they are especially confusing or difficult to use. The vast majority of my trips through this intersection have been straight through on US-15/501, and to be honest, I've never felt that this interestion is a source of traffic delay. If NCDOT wanted to improve traffic flow, I think simply timing the lights at the I-40/US-15/501 better would be a much simpler and more cost effective. That's where I always feel the delay. While not a great leap forward in roadway design theory, it would speed traffic flow from Chapel Hill to Wal*Mart with the benefit of not actively discouraging driving from Europa Drive to Ewrin Road or turning left onto either of these road or accessing the frontage roads on US-15/501. True, I have never "studied" this intersection, but I'd think that if it were broken, it would be more obvious.

The problem of early voting

2006-07-10T06:27:00.000-07:00

How can Zinedine Zidane win the Golden Ball for the best player in the World Cup? I guess the message for the world's children is if you are going to headbutt someone in the chest, wait until after the votes for best player have been cast.

This was not really what I wanted to blog about though. I learned of the voting when I went to the BBC's website to investigate their coverage of the event. Since the headbutt is banned from movies by the British Board of Film Control, could the BBC show footage of what got Zidane run off in overtime of the World Cup final. Unfortunately the only video link that I could find that I thought would have it was only availible in the UK and so I could not examine it. Thus I am still wondering, can a headbutt of such international importance be banned? Can they say, "Well, this is the final moment of the career of the great Zidane on the pitch, but we can't show it to you because it is obscene"?

Also, thanks be to Matt for pointing me WFMU's World Cup Death Watch, which chronicles the people who have died this year as a direct result of the World Cup. On Friday they began with "With only two days remaining until the final, the World Cup Death Count stands at 63, almost as many people as have died worldwide of Avian Bird Flu."

24: Season 5

2006-07-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

In January, I figured it was finally time to get caught up on 24. There are 5 seasons and so there are 5x24=120 episodes. On Thursday, approximately 180 days later, I got caught up. Thursday also happened to be the day that the Emmy Nominations were announced, and they were kind to 24, giving the show 12 nominations, which was more than any show that isn't a miniseries or a made-for-TV movie. I must say that I whole-heartedly agree. Jumping off to an incredibly fast start, this season never slows down and is among my favorite television seasons of any show. Among the nominations, I was epsecially glad to see nominations for:

1. Gregory Itzin for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. When Itzin shows up as President Charles Logan two-thirds of the way through season 4, the least good season really picks up. For me, it is the strength of the writing of what is happening with the president, whoever may hold the office, is really what makes the show great. The cutting back and forth between the action suspense of Jack Bauer running around and the more static tension of what's happening around with the president and his family always serves both storylines very well. Itzin's Logan is so interesting in season 4 with his incertainty, and then in season 5, he really shines.

2. Jean Smart for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She plays First Lady Martha Logan and is the perfect complement to Itzin's president. What a terrific troupled couple! However, this category is somewhat bittersweet because of the lack of a nomination for Mary Lynn Rajskub, who is wonderful as Chloe.

3. Sean Callery for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore). Callery has been nominated now for every season of 24, but it was not until season 5 that I realized that there is some great music in this show.

Part I: Self Expression in the Rhythm Section (or What I Entended to Write)

2006-07-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

Since I heard Will Hermes today on All Things Considered review a band that I saw two weeks ago, I figured it was probably time to get around to writing what I meant to write as I entered the show.

I first heard about Tilly and the Wall on NPR's All Songs Considered, a month ago, and I have to say I was impressed. After going to their site, I discovered that they were playing here in Carrboro in two weeks, and so I thought I might check them out. When I went to the Cat's Cradle website, I realized I had already decided to go to this show because of the other headliner DeVotchKa. How fortuitous!This was the only night on their respective tours in which their paths crossed, but I saw these as an interesting pairing due to their unorthodox rhythm sections.

First, there was the solo accustic guitar player whose name I can't recall. He has been with Tilly for this whole tour. As a solo accustic guitar player, he started with no rhythm section; however eventually he was joined by first a bass player and then a drummer. For the most part though, these sidemen were just to accompany the guitarist, laying down a grove as it were. However, I'm sure the guitarist would not be pleased to learn that I kept being distracted by the annoying way the bass player rotated back and forth at his waist while he played. This was the only joint in his body that moved, so that the head of his electric bass swept out a perfect 180 degree arc as he played. It was independent of the tempo of the song, which I found somewhat impressive even as it was distracting.

In contrast to this though were the other two bands of the night. For DeVotchKa, it's Jeannie, who splits her time evenly between upright bass and sousaphone, and for Tilly, it's Jamie, whose tap dancing provides the band's percussion.

For a "normal" band, the bassline comes from a plucked string that excites some magnets that pull a paper cone back and forth. But with a sousaphone, it comes from the human voice which circles 'round its player a few times to build up greater momemtum through tubes dented by years of touring before working it's way across the room. It hugs its player. It's round, not a stick. Even the upright bass, without those pesky frets and often bowed, it gives such a fluid sound. What would cause a band fill that register with an electric base played by someone who only knows four notes?

Tap dancing, while perhaps not as versitile as the sousaphone, also provides a much more expressive sound that the average drum kit. The five members of Tilly stand in a row at the front of the stage so that no one is behind a band mate. This is tough to pull off with a drummer. Jamie stands beside her singing friends (The band has three signers.) and even though her voice is not micced, she sings allow with them.

Jeannie helps her band's stage presence too by filling the bell of her sousaphone with Christmas lights. On the night I saw them, they were red, which perfectly matched the flower in her hair and her silky Chinese dress, but I think she uses other colors too.

So, if you're out there planning a band, don't just think you can pick up a drummer or bass player like their a dime a dozen. Seek out someone who does something different and integrate him or her into your sound.

Part II: What I Actually Wrote

2006-07-03T16:15:00.000-07:00

At some point during the night, I don't remember exactly when--well, no, it was a thrid of the way through Tilly and the Wall's set--my blogging plan changed from compare mode to contrast.

I'll start with the opening act. The guitarist is the regular opening act for Tilly. After a mid tempo opening song, he started the intro of his second song with "Do you know the artist Mark Rothko? He made a lot of paintings that are just large black canvases that you are just supposed to stare into the blackness. i felt this perfectly discribed the heart of a girl I once knew." He then described the Rothko Chapel, which is also the title of the song. Argh. I left the TV at the back of the club in the 9th inning of the College Baseball World Series for this? He introduced a later song with something about how he was at a party full of English majors when he said that he was thinking about committing suicide. They stopped him by complaining about how trite suicide was. I think it was after this that some guy near me who was obviously there for DeVotchKa yelled out "Bright Eyes has entered the room." That guy got a couple of angry looks from some Tilly fans--they hail from Omaha and are on Conor Oberst's label.

Now, I'll skip ahead to Tilly. I must preface this review with the fact that I did kinda like the songs that I heard from their website, the more the show went along, the less I enjoyed them. There were some mitigating circumstances at work here. First, two of them were sick. After the first song, a couple of fans gave them two cartons of orange juice because they had heard they were sick. (They had lots of fans who knew all their lyrics. Mostly female college sophomores, it seemed.) To make matters worse, this display of affection came during the ten minute break after the first song. For some reason, the mics on the tap dancer were just not working, and while they tried to fix them, the mic of the singer who was talking to fill time died. It had to be replaced. Then the mic for the other singer died and had to be replaced. I have never seen anything like that. They never really got the problem with the tap dancer mics fixed, and I'm pretty sure this caused them to not do a couple of songs. I have to think I saw what was by far the worst show on their tour.

That said, I started out with the feeling that they were good, but not great. However, as it went a long, I began to like them even less. It wasn't so much their music, it was more their stage presence, especially the singer who occasionally played bass. She did most of the between song banter, and the word "poseur" came to mind every time. If you don't love us with all your heart and soul, there is clearly something wrong with you, they seem to tell me. They had the feeling of the "cool people" on a TV high school drama that centers on the outcasts who are the actual cool ones.

There is of course on more very large mitigating circumstance--For this show only, they had to follow not the solo guitar player but DeVotchKa. I mean, with them on one song, you've got drums, violin, sousaphone, and frontman Nick Urata using the neck of his bouzouki to excite his theremin. Then on the next song the violin player switches to accordion, the sousaphonist to a bowed upright bass, and the drummer pulls out his trumptet. Plus, they play in 3:4 and 2:4 time signatures with dramatic changes in tempo. The sound of Tilly and the Wall is this light pop ephemera with one accoustic rhythm guitar, a guy playing keyboards, three people singing most of the time, and a tap dancer, whereas DeVotchKa feel like the resistance fighters who barely had time to grab their accordion and sousaphone before catching the last boat to Casablanca. They have such a strong connection to the earth, but they ache because it's been taken away. They rock, but they still get upset when you use the word gyspy to discribe their Roma influences in their cover of "Venus in Furs." Tilly and the Wall didn't really stand a chance.

There was another telling contrast. Most of the members of Tilly had a bottle of beer on stage with them, but the keyboardist didn't. At one point he said that was really thirsty and hoped that someone in the audience would buy him a beer. He'd pay them back, of course. In perfect contrast, the lead singer of DeVotchKa came on stage with a bottle of wine. On a couple of occassions, he briefly held it above his bowed head soluting us before taking a swig without saying a word. It was very much cool adults vs. kids who think they're cool.

Chess Boxing

2006-06-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

The future chess boxer will be a grandmaster and a professional boxer. Chess boxing could even solve the problem in the Middle East. I want to hold a chess boxing match between an Israeli and a Palestinian, and the winner will get to decide what happens to Israel.
--Iepe Rubingh

There really aren't enough sports that originate from a Dutch performance artist bringing things from a distopian French-Bosnian comic book to life. This is what Iepe Rubingh did with chess boxing, taken from Enki Bilal's comic book. I heard about this hybrid of chess and boxing from the excellently titled ESPN article "By Hook or by Rook," but information may also be found at the World Chess Boxing Organisation. It starts with four minutes of chess, and after then the chess board is moved out of the way, the competitors box for two minutes. The two disciplines alternate for a total of 6 chess rounds and 5 boxing round. You win by checkmating your opponent, knocking him out, or by referee's decision or having your opponent exceed the 12 minute time limit in chess.

While I do not necessarily agree with Iepe's ideas about the Middle East, which seem more divisive than unitive, it seems to me that chess boxing is the perfect catalyst for change in the suburban American high school (on television). Think of the groups this unites--the jocks, the chess nerds, the art snobs, the comic book guys, and if you add ring girls, the stereotypical dumb but pretty blondes. What else besides the say-no-to-drugs assemblies brings all these diverse elements together?

A Win for Carolina is a Win for You

2006-06-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

I got an interesting email this morning from Southwest Airlines. It said:

After a season of flying pucks and power plays,
Face-offs and checks, passes and breakaways,
Your team ruled the ice with their hockey sticks
And clinched the championship game for 2006!

In recognition of Carolina's big victory, we slipped 2 bonus credits past the goalie and into your Rapid Rewards account. With these bonus credits, you'll be skating toward a Rapid Rewards Award in no time!

Now I only need to take ten round trips plus one one-way flight over the next 22 months instead of eleven round trips plus one one-way flight in order to get a free flight. While I may not end up using this gift, I think this is a pretty cool thing for a company to do.

2006-06-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

Amazon.com is looking for what films we want to be released on DVD for the first time. At first I was surprised by which of the 30 films was leading in the voting so far, but to honest once I looked at the competition, full of lesser films by interesting people, I found no reason to disagree and checked the box to vote for Gymkata. While I seriously doubt I would buy the DVD of Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas kicking Parmistani butt from that pommel horse that just happened to be in the town square, it would be nice to know I could get it from Netflix.

On the Amazon page for Gymkata, I noticed a couple of interesting things. First, while I guess it's on every Amazon page, the "Add to Wedding Registry" link for Gymkata seems really wrong. Also, like on every page, they tell you "what do customers eventually buy after viewing items like this?" There were two items listed for Gymkata. 4% of people eventually bought the posthumous Johnny Cash album American V: A Hundred Highways while the remaining 96% of people who view pages like Gymkata eventually bought Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter.

Which online personality test are you?

2006-06-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

I'm so glad someone took the time to create this.

I'm The James Bond Villain Personality Test!

I live in a fictional world of spies and blonde women with ridiculous names, and I like to give people plenty of options. Although whether they're villainous is not optional.

Click here to find out which test you are!

Kim vs. Lee

2006-06-14T16:11:00.000-07:00

According to the 2000 South Korean census, there were 45,985,289 people residing in South Korea, and 9,925,949 (21.6%) of them had the family name Kim. (From what I can decipher from this Korean page, it appears that the Wiki page is wrong.) 6,796,227 (14.8%) were named Lee. Park was the third most common name with 3,895,121 (8.5%).

It is therefore not surprising that when it comes time to select the rosters for national athletic teams, these three names would be well represented. Of the 30 members of this spring's World Baseball Classic (WBC), there were 8 Kims (23.3%), 5 Lees (16.7%), and 4 Parks (13.3%), and of the 23 men on the Korean side in this month's World Cup, there are 8 Kims (34.8%), 5 Lees (21.7%), and 2 Parks (8.7%). However, I did notice something very surprising when I looked at the starting line ups for these teams.

In the WBC, the most common Korean starting line up had all five Lees in it, and in fact, the clean up hitter, first baseman Hee-Seop Choi, was the only one of the first six batters not named Lee. Only one Kim started. One Park was among the starting 9 hitters, and one of the starting pitcher was Chan Ho Park.

In the World Cup, when South Korea took to the pitch for their opening match against Togo, again just like in the WBC, all five Lees started while only two Kims started. (One Park started.)

This is admittedly a small sample size, but still, it makes me wonder. Are people named Lee more likely to be the elite of the elite Korean athletes? Do Kims do well enough to make the squad, but choke under the presure of the finals? Is there something that can explain this?

Personal growth

2006-06-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

I am becoming more of a citizen of the world: I just watched and enjoyed a very exciting scoreless tie in a soccer match. Trinidad & Tobago, the smallest country ever to qualify for the World Cup, took on the prohibitive favorite Sweden in Group B action. The Trinidadian goalkeeper got injured in pregame warm-ups, and so the 37-year-old back-up Shaka Hislop was forced into action. And he played spectacularly. After a scoreless first half, Avery John got sent off with a red card during the first minute of the second half, and so T&T had to play one man short for the final 44 minutes. But they managed to fend off the many advances of the increasingly frustrated Swedes to preserve the draw. It was truly exciting.

Fight the real power

2006-06-10T09:33:00.000-07:00

It is perhaps not a landmark case of the Supreme Court, but I found Nix v. Hedden to be an interesting one. In this case from 1893, Associate Justice Horace Gray, writing for a unanimous court only twenty days after the arguments of the case, determined that the tomato is a vegetable and not a fruit. In this case, four members of the Nix family sued Edward L. Heddon, tariff collector for the port of New York, over duties collected on the Nixes' tomatoes. They claimed that since the Tariff Act of 1883 levied a tariff on imported vegetables, the tariffs they were forced to pay on their tomatoes--clearly a fruit and not a vegetable--were collected illegally. But who cares about that? We can generate revenue for the government.

To some degree, this case does not really bother me all that much. Sure there is the whole problem of a perfectly good scientific definition of a fruit being ignored by the government, but if the government is going to place a tariff on importing lettuce why not a tomato? This just underscores the importance of getting words right in legislation.

However, there is a governmental tomato regulation that does realy bother me. In 1937, Congress passed legislation allowing farmers to band together to form marketing committees for the promotion of their products. Thus we have the organizations that give us the "Got Milk?" and the California Raisins ad campaigns. One of these committees is the Florida Tomato Committee, which regulates tomatoes grown south of the Georgia border and east of the Suwannee River, with the exception of small ones like cherry tomatoes and tomatoes grown in greenhouses. The FTC wants to get nice, plump, round tomatoes to your kitchen. The problem arises though with their emphasis on roundness.

There is a variety of tomato that goes by the trademarked name UglyRipe. They aren't smooth and round, having creases and lobes. The Florida Tomato Commission does not approve of this, because, y'know, tomatoes are supposed to be smooth and round. Therefore, under the power to regulate interstate commerce given to it by Congress, the Florida Tomato Commission, drunk on its own power, prohibits the exportation from Florida of the UglyRipe tomato. It's legal to grow it in Florida, it's legal to sell it in Florida, but it is illegal to export it to other states.

Something must be done about the Florida Tomato Committee.

This post takes place between 11:00 PM and 12:00 PM

2006-06-09T20:37:00.000-07:00

Starting in January, I decided it was finally time to get caught up on 24. Way back when it started, I was very excited about it, too excited in fact. After I found the first four episodes wanting and then missed the fifth episode, I gave up on it. It soon became apparent that this was when it started to get good.

I just finished season four on DVD. What can I say? It contains this exchange:

Tony: This morning, Jack and Audry were planning a future together, and now he's responsible for her husband's death and he may have to torture her brother.

Michelle: And yet every move he's made has been the right one.

So, yes, I did have to pause the DVD so that I could laugh at this, but I also have come to like this show a lot precisely for its, um, Überspitzenkeit. Well, this isn't the only thing, or really even my favorite part of the show--the more subtle inner workings involving the president are consistently much more interesting, I think, than Jack Bauer running around. However, the show is great at eliciting laughter at just how absurdly awesome it can be.

In January, not only did I start watching season one on DVD, I set my DVR to record season five so that I could catch up to it. Now, I have it all of it ready to watch. Can I do it all in one sitting? Is there any other way? Why do they even bother airing it one episode at a time. They did start by airing the first four hours on back-to-back nights, and then aired two two-hour episodes later in the season, but really, shouldn't they just take two weeks out of the May sweeps and air nothing but 24. Do they still call it "non-stop Fox"?

All Snakes Considered

2006-06-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

From Friday's All Things Considered: [F]or Monte Coles, an amateur pilot in West Virginia, the title became a reality when a four-and-a-half-foot snake hitched a ride in his small plane." Click here to listen to the interview with Coles.

In other SoaP news, I have figured out what will happen. This August, after the rabid internet fans have filed in for the midnight showning, after the cheers for the "And now our feature presentation," the first frames are Ashton Kutcher pointing directly into the camera and yelling "Punk'd!" followed by the bittersweet moment when we realize that we are about to see the supersecret final Merchant-Ivory collaboration. In the film, written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Meryl Streep plays a woman trying to deal with the Zimbabwean government trying to take away the plantation that has belonged to her recently deceased husband's family for generations when a when an scientist played by Colin Firth shows up saying that a very rare species of snake has been found living in the plains of her estate. Soon however, Streep suspects Firth may be hiding something.

"In the voting booth, no one can hear you scream"

2006-05-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

In this particular instance, it may have been televised, but it wasn't really part of the revolution. The revolution I'm talking about here is the Republican Revolution of 1994. In that year, there were 35 races for the US Senate. In eight of them, a seat held by the Democrats was lost to a Republican. In Virginia, however, the Democrats held serve when incumbent Chuck Robb defeated Oliver North. The fascinating documentary A Perfect Candidate chronicles this race.

Co-directed by a producer of The War Room, A Perfect Candidate centers mainly on Mark Goodin, North's campaign manager seeking a return promince after, and also on Don Baker, the disillusioned reporter from Washington Post covering campaign.

Is it that he is facing a man who testified under oath that he did lie to Congress (and now says that he didn't) that Chuch Robb feels that he has the safety to say in the televised debate "I would take food from the mouths of widows and orphans if we had to, to begin to solve this deficit problem"? Or is it that Robb has no clue how to be a candidate? Later on the desk of a North staffer, we see a "Widows and Orphans for North" bumber sticker. And yet Robb won. Robb while he was governor went to parties with lots of coccaine during his affair with a Playboy bunny, cheating on his wife who is the daughter of Lyndon Johnson--their wedding was in the White House. And yet Robb won. He clumsly went out of his way to clarify that he had no stance on issues in a race against a very charasmatic figure on the side that swept the Congressional races all over the country. And yet Robb still won. What does this say? "Who are you going to vote for, the flu or the mumps?" one astute voter says.

The commentary track by co-directors R.J. Cutler and David Van Taylor is very good too about process of making a documentary like this.

Sympathy for the Transit Cops

2006-05-10T19:49:00.000-07:00

For me, it will always be Prague where the transit cops are idiots, kings of their little kingdom of trains, trams, buses, and subways, taking the "fun" out of "funicular." For you, it may be a different eastern European city, Budapest, for example. If so, check out Antal Nimród's 2003 film Kontroll for another side of the story. Filmed entirely in the Budapest Metro (the oldest subway on the European mainland (provided you don't ask the Turks)), it is the story of Bulcsú and his merry band of ragtag transit cops. There's the new kid, the wise old "Professor," the guy with narcolepsy, and the guy who's, well, just weird. They're not the most successful squad (that honor and the new leather jackets that go with it belong to Gonzó's) but it is hard not to root for Bulcsú and the guys as they try to check unruly passengers for valid tickets or passes. Plus, there's the mysterious girl in the bear and the serial killer stalking the Metro to deal with. I found Kontroll to be quite entertaining, and pats on the back must go to Csányi Sándor and the other guy (and probably the stunt coordinator) for that simple--to describe, anyway--but rather cool lengthy shot in the climax.

2006-05-08T22:55:00.000-07:00

Please, David Blaine, for your next endurance trick, try to go 5 years without doing another stunt.

Good Highday Trip

2006-05-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to writing up my highpointing trip from last month. Check out my trip to the highest points in West Virginia and Maryland.

The Left Hand and the Right Hand--Do They Know What The Other is Doing?

2006-05-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

With my appropriately camouflaged thinking hat donned, I can now see how it all ties together.

Item 1. Dateline NBC for the last few months has been teaming up with www.perverted-justice.com to do sting operations posing as 12-year-olds on the internet to lure child molesters to a house where Dateline's cameras are waiting. This has had the side effects of increasing their ratings and creating fear in the hearts of parents over where their children go online.

Item 2. Mariska Hargitay is pregnant, but her character Detective Olivia Benson is not, and the season is not yet over. Therefore, Det. Benson gets a transfer (She can't work with Stabler any more. They're too close. Is it because of unspoken romantic feelings, which will be crushed when Stabler reunites with his wife? We'll see.) to "computer crimes," with its ability to have her sit with a computer monitor in between her and the camera.

Both Law & Order: No Subtitle and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit have upcoming episodes that deal with kids on the internet and the people they meet. So, I put it to you, were the "To Catch a Predator" shows created in order to a) create headlines from which their series could rip stories? And b) create a logical reason to only show Mariska Hargitay from the neck up? If only some black helicopters could show up....