November 19, 2008
Obama's Increasing Influence
Ha! I go over to RCP and who's praising one of Obama's most recent policy proposals? ESPN blowhard Michael Wilbon. Turns out that after a solid decade of annual debate over the validity of the BCS, the current college football postseason system, Obama is turning the college football world upside with what amounts to a single sentence, uttered twice. Wow.
Bush, Kennedy, or Other! (Follow-Up)
In an earlier post I asked the following question:
"In which family did a member kill a significant other in a car accident?"
While I was clearly trying to invoke Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick, if you'll give me some wiggle room, the answer is actually Laura Bush. Technically she wasn't a Bush yet and technically it's only a rumor that she and the other guy were dating, but like 23/6, I like to go with the rumor. She ran a stop sign but was not charged.
"In which family did a member kill a significant other in a car accident?"
While I was clearly trying to invoke Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick, if you'll give me some wiggle room, the answer is actually Laura Bush. Technically she wasn't a Bush yet and technically it's only a rumor that she and the other guy were dating, but like 23/6, I like to go with the rumor. She ran a stop sign but was not charged.
(Still) I hate Huckabee
With the inept John McCain having won the Republican nomination, then Huckabee charismatically appearing on the Colbert Report, and even with his own show, it becomes easy to sort of like former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
But let's not forget he's nuts. He suggested of the Bible and the Constitution that we use the perfect text to fix the imperfect one. I could go on, but he was on the View and, well, I'll leave it to you.
But let's not forget he's nuts. He suggested of the Bible and the Constitution that we use the perfect text to fix the imperfect one. I could go on, but he was on the View and, well, I'll leave it to you.
Pirates!
This video answers a question Carly had about the reasons for the high piracy rate around Somalia.
Obama uses sentences
I liked this article because it was funny, but also because it reminded me that Obama actually is the President-elect.
Quantum of Solace unacceptable deviation (Updated)
I don't want to ruin anything for anyone, but I just want to say that I saw Quantum of Solace and was quite disappointed.
Let me say first, it's not a terrible movie. The fact that the plot is darn near impossible to follow is its main problem. The action scenes are awesome, and Daniel Craig delivers as the new James Bond.
The problem is that, even though this is quickly becoming cliché, the new James Bond is entirely too similar to his initial-sake, Jason Bourne. Because that's exactly what this movie felt like (even a lot of the Bourne crew worked on Quantum).
The cheap puns, the light wit, the shoot-at-the-camera opening - all gone. Hardly any stealth involved. No gadgetry. Even to say that there was a love scene in the movie is being more generous than I'm willing to go.
Now, I'm a little biased because I've been going through a bunch of the old Bond movies recently, but this movie abandons nearly all the themes that unite the previous installments. It abandons everything Bond, better or worse, and makes it into just another action movie, albeit a decent one. All I'm saying is, when I go to the movies to see a Bond movie, that's what I want. I could have stayed at home and watched Mission: Impossible or a Bourne movie.
Finally, the one element I will sort of defend them on is the title. The title Quantum of Solace is awful, obviously, but it is the name of an old Bond story, not merely something they pulled out of their butts to sound cool in the 21st century.
Update: trivia note: director Marc Foster also directed Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger than Fiction, and the Kite Runner.
Let me say first, it's not a terrible movie. The fact that the plot is darn near impossible to follow is its main problem. The action scenes are awesome, and Daniel Craig delivers as the new James Bond.
The problem is that, even though this is quickly becoming cliché, the new James Bond is entirely too similar to his initial-sake, Jason Bourne. Because that's exactly what this movie felt like (even a lot of the Bourne crew worked on Quantum).
The cheap puns, the light wit, the shoot-at-the-camera opening - all gone. Hardly any stealth involved. No gadgetry. Even to say that there was a love scene in the movie is being more generous than I'm willing to go.
Now, I'm a little biased because I've been going through a bunch of the old Bond movies recently, but this movie abandons nearly all the themes that unite the previous installments. It abandons everything Bond, better or worse, and makes it into just another action movie, albeit a decent one. All I'm saying is, when I go to the movies to see a Bond movie, that's what I want. I could have stayed at home and watched Mission: Impossible or a Bourne movie.
Finally, the one element I will sort of defend them on is the title. The title Quantum of Solace is awful, obviously, but it is the name of an old Bond story, not merely something they pulled out of their butts to sound cool in the 21st century.
Update: trivia note: director Marc Foster also directed Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger than Fiction, and the Kite Runner.
Cheney, Gonzo indicted in TX
This sounds to me like the sort of thing that will go away quickly; nonetheless, the vice president and former attorney general have nonetheless been indicted in a south Texas county.
The charges against the vice president relate to a conflict of interest stemming from a group of privately owned prisons he is invested in, and allegedly visited for the purpose of assaulting inmates. Gonzoles is essentially charged with using his post at the DoJ to stop investigation into the matter.
The charges against the vice president relate to a conflict of interest stemming from a group of privately owned prisons he is invested in, and allegedly visited for the purpose of assaulting inmates. Gonzoles is essentially charged with using his post at the DoJ to stop investigation into the matter.
Science finally lives up to expectations!
I just read about a team of European doctors who recently completed a successful windpipe transplant surgery. The important part is that the donor windpipe "[...] was stripped of its donor’s cells [...]" and coated in the recipient's stem cells. Since the surgery the patient has had to take no immunosuppressant drugs and her body has had no immune-system reaction to the transplant other than the healing of the surgical wounds.
Is it just me or has anyone else been waiting for this since Dolly was cloned? (I would like to note that at the time of Dolly's birth I still lived in Las Vegas and was ten years old.) When I first heard about Dolly I assumed we would be cloning humans and body parts inside of the decade basing this on a vague assumption along the lines of: the process of cloning a sheep has to overlap at least 99% with the process of cloning a person. Aside from eventually being told of the various ethical reasons for the ban on the cloning of humans I do not today know all that much more about the science of procedures like this. I took the obligatory high-school classes, but did not enjoy them much and didn't really learn too much.
Today I simply do not know enough about the science behind this work to comprehend why progress is so slow, and that leads me to frustration over what I perceive to be the relatively slow pace of development. I suppose that in this way my ignorance usually forces me to underestimate and subsequently ignore the value of achievements like this, so I am posting this as part of an effort to slowly educate myself a bit.
Is it just me or has anyone else been waiting for this since Dolly was cloned? (I would like to note that at the time of Dolly's birth I still lived in Las Vegas and was ten years old.) When I first heard about Dolly I assumed we would be cloning humans and body parts inside of the decade basing this on a vague assumption along the lines of: the process of cloning a sheep has to overlap at least 99% with the process of cloning a person. Aside from eventually being told of the various ethical reasons for the ban on the cloning of humans I do not today know all that much more about the science of procedures like this. I took the obligatory high-school classes, but did not enjoy them much and didn't really learn too much.
Today I simply do not know enough about the science behind this work to comprehend why progress is so slow, and that leads me to frustration over what I perceive to be the relatively slow pace of development. I suppose that in this way my ignorance usually forces me to underestimate and subsequently ignore the value of achievements like this, so I am posting this as part of an effort to slowly educate myself a bit.
November 18, 2008
Guess who said it, Part II
I liked what Katie did, so here's another:
If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?
I'll put the answer in the comments.
If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?
I'll put the answer in the comments.
Guess who said it
...then see if you can make any sense of it. I'm not having much luck.
"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars."
"My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars."
Lieberman retains committee chair
I'll be brief, but let me just say I may be the only left-leaning sorta-pundit in the country who thinks this is a good idea. The basics of my argument (I'm so tired of typing) would be:
(1) why usher in an era of bipartisanship and unity by kicking someone out for insufficient loyalty
(2) it's certainly not beyond possibility (though it is beyond probability) that the Dems can get 60
(3) even if they don't get 60, the Republicans will not be able to keep the team together well so every vote counts
(4) the guy really is not a Republican. He really isn't. Get over it.
(With regard to point 3, I was trying to find an excellent article I read yesterday about Republican infighting in the Senate - not over philosophy, but over committee assignments, especially with powerful Republican Ted Stevens on the outs one way or the other. If the Democrats ended up with 59 seats to the Republicans' 41, any one of those Republicans can say to Majority Leader McConnell "you best give me that committee assignment or I'll make the next two years as tough as possible for you.")
(Also, despite my phrasing, I don't mean to say that I think you're dumb if you disagree so don't be discouraged, but this the way I see it.)
(1) why usher in an era of bipartisanship and unity by kicking someone out for insufficient loyalty
(2) it's certainly not beyond possibility (though it is beyond probability) that the Dems can get 60
(3) even if they don't get 60, the Republicans will not be able to keep the team together well so every vote counts
(4) the guy really is not a Republican. He really isn't. Get over it.
(With regard to point 3, I was trying to find an excellent article I read yesterday about Republican infighting in the Senate - not over philosophy, but over committee assignments, especially with powerful Republican Ted Stevens on the outs one way or the other. If the Democrats ended up with 59 seats to the Republicans' 41, any one of those Republicans can say to Majority Leader McConnell "you best give me that committee assignment or I'll make the next two years as tough as possible for you.")
(Also, despite my phrasing, I don't mean to say that I think you're dumb if you disagree so don't be discouraged, but this the way I see it.)
Serious question: anyone want to go see Star Trek in May?
I never thought I would be at all interested in seeing the new Star Trek movie, but after seeing a trailer and looking at the cast list I changed my opinion. Seriously, check out this trailer. The cast includes Zacary Quinto (Sylar/Gabriel from Heroes) as Spock, Simon Pegg (the skinnier British guy from Hot Fuzz and Shawn of the Dead) as Scotty, Eric Bana (star of Munich) as the villain Nero, and John Cho (Harold of Harold and Kumar) as Sulu. The main drawback of the casting: Tyler Perry makes a cameo appearance.
Warren and Katie may yet get me into Battlestar Gallactica.
Warren and Katie may yet get me into Battlestar Gallactica.
November 17, 2008
Rebuilding the Republican Brand
Oh, what I would do to not hear that phrase anymore!
First, the Republicans lost one election. They're 0-for-1 in the last one, but 2-for-the-last-3, 5-for-8, 7-for-11, and 9-for-15. In a two-team sport, that ain't bad.
Second, they weren't going to win this one no matter what they did. America arbitrarily decided in early 2006 that they were tired of the war, which cost them the 2006 elections. Epic presidential incompetence and an also-epic financial collapse doomed the GOP in 2008.
But liberals beware. When Republicans say that America is still a center-right nation, they're right. The only thing they need to do any differently is make sure they have an intelligent-sounding candidate at the wheel.
In easy times, it's not difficult to turn gay marriage into an end-of-the-world issue, because everything else is going OK. With somebody like Mitt Romney in charge the last four years (to erase the competency problem) and particularly the last four months (for the sake of the economy) Democrats would not have waltzed to the White House. They didn't win because people suddenly demand an end to the death penalty or harsher CAFE standards. They won largely as a referendum on the current government.
So the Republicans' return is a two-step program. (1) Choose somebody smart, like people who aren't named W. or Palin. (2) Dust off the 2004 playbook. John McCain didn't really talk about gay marriage or abortion. He didn't make us believe that electing Barack Obama meant we'd get hit by terrorists again. Those things wouldn't have won him the election, but they would have helped. And if the Republicans want to come back in 2010, or 2012, or 2016, they better have the right game plan.
(And they're not bad strategists, so for God's sake don't count them out.)
First, the Republicans lost one election. They're 0-for-1 in the last one, but 2-for-the-last-3, 5-for-8, 7-for-11, and 9-for-15. In a two-team sport, that ain't bad.
Second, they weren't going to win this one no matter what they did. America arbitrarily decided in early 2006 that they were tired of the war, which cost them the 2006 elections. Epic presidential incompetence and an also-epic financial collapse doomed the GOP in 2008.
But liberals beware. When Republicans say that America is still a center-right nation, they're right. The only thing they need to do any differently is make sure they have an intelligent-sounding candidate at the wheel.
In easy times, it's not difficult to turn gay marriage into an end-of-the-world issue, because everything else is going OK. With somebody like Mitt Romney in charge the last four years (to erase the competency problem) and particularly the last four months (for the sake of the economy) Democrats would not have waltzed to the White House. They didn't win because people suddenly demand an end to the death penalty or harsher CAFE standards. They won largely as a referendum on the current government.
So the Republicans' return is a two-step program. (1) Choose somebody smart, like people who aren't named W. or Palin. (2) Dust off the 2004 playbook. John McCain didn't really talk about gay marriage or abortion. He didn't make us believe that electing Barack Obama meant we'd get hit by terrorists again. Those things wouldn't have won him the election, but they would have helped. And if the Republicans want to come back in 2010, or 2012, or 2016, they better have the right game plan.
(And they're not bad strategists, so for God's sake don't count them out.)
Win Differential and Overtime Losses
Sorry ladies, this probably won't be too interesting. Go read this instead.
I was checking on the NHL standings this morning. Now, the Blues weren't expected to have a great year, so when they started 4-1-0 everyone got excited. Now we're 6-8-2 and only 1 pt ahead of Florida for the worst record in the league.
Anyway, as I was looking at the standings I got curious about overtime losses and how frequently they occur.
Background: in the NHL tied games would go to a five minute overtime. If anyone scored, they instantly won the game. Otherwise, it ended in a tie. Since a win gets you 2 pts, a loss 0 pts, and a tie is worth 1 pt, essentially both teams would hedge their bets and more-or-less run out the clock so as to keep their hard-earned point. Among its many initiatives to make the game more interesting, the NHL now gives 2 pts to a team that wins in OT but 1 pt to a team that loses in OT to facilitate "trying" to win, and has also added a post-OT shootout so that no game can end in a tie.
So I was looking at the standings, wondering if anything made some teams more likely to rack up OTL's than others, and if I could find it without looking very hard for data. I thought it was reasonable that teams with about the same number of wins as losses would simply go to OT more often, and thus lose in OT more often. So I took all the data from the three years this rule has been in effect and regressed OTL against the absolute value of (W-L).
Nothing says it more clearly than this picture. There is no correlation. The p-value is 0.954. R-sq, the measure of how much of the variability in one variable is explained by the other, is 0.00003. So teams around .500 have the same number of OTLs as teams at the bottom or top of the standings.
Now here's where I got perplexed. Just for kicks I ran the same regression, just without the absolute value. So now the question is whether better teams have more OTLs or fewer OTLs.
Clearly, there is a strong relationship here. It turns out that the p-value is 0.04, though the r-sq is still only 0.05. The equation is OTL = 9.65 - 0.04*(W-L). So better teams have fewer OTLs.
Unfortunately, it took me until I was preparing this last graph to realize that of course they do! Because W means wins but L means regulation losses. Or put another way, "OTWs" are included in W.
So say every team played 100 games with 45 wins, 45 losses, and 10 going to OT. Half the teams go 7-3 for the year in OT and half the teams go 3-7. So half the teams have a record of 52-45-3 and half the teams have a record of 48-45-7.
So the two data points are {(7,3) and (3,7)}. In other words, even when I cooked the data to come out even it didn't, so my model can't be used.
So I screwed up and put a confounding variable in my model. Oh well. If I figure out an easy fix I'll update, but at this point I'm not scrapping the whole post.
I was checking on the NHL standings this morning. Now, the Blues weren't expected to have a great year, so when they started 4-1-0 everyone got excited. Now we're 6-8-2 and only 1 pt ahead of Florida for the worst record in the league.
Anyway, as I was looking at the standings I got curious about overtime losses and how frequently they occur.
Background: in the NHL tied games would go to a five minute overtime. If anyone scored, they instantly won the game. Otherwise, it ended in a tie. Since a win gets you 2 pts, a loss 0 pts, and a tie is worth 1 pt, essentially both teams would hedge their bets and more-or-less run out the clock so as to keep their hard-earned point. Among its many initiatives to make the game more interesting, the NHL now gives 2 pts to a team that wins in OT but 1 pt to a team that loses in OT to facilitate "trying" to win, and has also added a post-OT shootout so that no game can end in a tie.
So I was looking at the standings, wondering if anything made some teams more likely to rack up OTL's than others, and if I could find it without looking very hard for data. I thought it was reasonable that teams with about the same number of wins as losses would simply go to OT more often, and thus lose in OT more often. So I took all the data from the three years this rule has been in effect and regressed OTL against the absolute value of (W-L).
Nothing says it more clearly than this picture. There is no correlation. The p-value is 0.954. R-sq, the measure of how much of the variability in one variable is explained by the other, is 0.00003. So teams around .500 have the same number of OTLs as teams at the bottom or top of the standings.
Now here's where I got perplexed. Just for kicks I ran the same regression, just without the absolute value. So now the question is whether better teams have more OTLs or fewer OTLs.
Clearly, there is a strong relationship here. It turns out that the p-value is 0.04, though the r-sq is still only 0.05. The equation is OTL = 9.65 - 0.04*(W-L). So better teams have fewer OTLs.
Unfortunately, it took me until I was preparing this last graph to realize that of course they do! Because W means wins but L means regulation losses. Or put another way, "OTWs" are included in W.
So say every team played 100 games with 45 wins, 45 losses, and 10 going to OT. Half the teams go 7-3 for the year in OT and half the teams go 3-7. So half the teams have a record of 52-45-3 and half the teams have a record of 48-45-7.
So the two data points are {(7,3) and (3,7)}. In other words, even when I cooked the data to come out even it didn't, so my model can't be used.
So I screwed up and put a confounding variable in my model. Oh well. If I figure out an easy fix I'll update, but at this point I'm not scrapping the whole post.
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