Friday
A Sharper Image
I haven't been following news out of Cannes in general this year because Mike D'angelo didn't go and his usually extremely useful reports therefore weren't available. So I hadn't heard about either the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie mocking the absurdity of Van Damme, which is apparently awesome, or the new Woody Allen which at least one critic gives astonishingly high praise to. Then again, someone thinks every new Woody Allen movie is his return to form after all these years, and it never ends up actually being true. And with features together released in three of the last four years, it's now officially past time to start speculating about the exact nature of Woody Allen and Scarlett Johansson's relationship, as well as whether they both have the same idea of what that relationship is.
While I'm talking about film, let's post another spreadsheet.
Earlier this week I was looking at the Top 1000 Films of All Time at They Shoot Pictures Don't They. The methodology for how list was formed is mostly explained at the the third bullet point of the second link, but basically they just aggregated a large number of other critics polls and best of lists which they considered to be respectable. I took that list, put it into a spreadsheet and created a scrupulously honest (I've been known to have claimed to see a film of which I've seen five minutes, read a review, or just come to understand via pop-culture zeitgeist in the past) listing of which of those 1000 films I've seen, and then categorized them in various way. Most importantly, I've seen a semi-respectable 40% of the Top 100, one more than 33% of the top 200, one more than 25% of the top 500, and a shameful 19.4% of the top 1,000 overall. If anyone wants a copy of this spreadsheet to determine their own stats, let me know, it'd be easy enough.
Update: Due to very minor demand, a copy of the spreadsheet before I filled in what I'd seen. If you want to figure out your own stats, either download this to excel or hit file, copy spreadsheet, and put it in your googledocs in order to avoid altering the original. Then just type "1" in column G next to anything you've seen.
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While I'm talking about film, let's post another spreadsheet.
Earlier this week I was looking at the Top 1000 Films of All Time at They Shoot Pictures Don't They. The methodology for how list was formed is mostly explained at the the third bullet point of the second link, but basically they just aggregated a large number of other critics polls and best of lists which they considered to be respectable. I took that list, put it into a spreadsheet and created a scrupulously honest (I've been known to have claimed to see a film of which I've seen five minutes, read a review, or just come to understand via pop-culture zeitgeist in the past) listing of which of those 1000 films I've seen, and then categorized them in various way. Most importantly, I've seen a semi-respectable 40% of the Top 100, one more than 33% of the top 200, one more than 25% of the top 500, and a shameful 19.4% of the top 1,000 overall. If anyone wants a copy of this spreadsheet to determine their own stats, let me know, it'd be easy enough.
Update: Due to very minor demand, a copy of the spreadsheet before I filled in what I'd seen. If you want to figure out your own stats, either download this to excel or hit file, copy spreadsheet, and put it in your googledocs in order to avoid altering the original. Then just type "1" in column G next to anything you've seen.
Labels: Film, ScarJo, Time-wasting spreadsheets
Thursday
The first appearance on this blog of the so-called word "bleg"
Does anyone know anything about using an alternative electricity supplier, especially in New York? I'm moving very soon, need to sign up with some provider or other, and I'm wondering if there are significant advantages to not going with default ConEd option. This site suggests that there might well be.
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Wednesday
–Slinger
It's apparently Jim Webb day at Provisionally Titled. In chronological order of posting: Margaret Carlson on why Vice-President Webb would be a great match for President Obama, along with a short discussion of the qualities of Webb's book; more from Kathy G. on some of what she likes about Webb and why she nevertheless doesn't want him as V.P.; and Ezra Klein on why the aspects of Webb's book which make it fascinating also mean he probably shouldn't be Vice-President. If you're going to read one and only one of the linked posts, read Klein's.
One quibble with Carlson's piece: She writes that "[Webb] won by 7,000 votes and gave Democrats control of the Senate." In the November 2006 elections 49 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats won seats in the Senate. This means that if any of them had lost the Democrats wouldn't control the Senate, and so each and every one of them "gave Democrats control of the Senate." So it's true that Webb did so, but pretty misleading.
Bonus: Webb's 2007 State of the Union response (transcript), which is when serious consideration of his Vice-Presidency started.
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One quibble with Carlson's piece: She writes that "[Webb] won by 7,000 votes and gave Democrats control of the Senate." In the November 2006 elections 49 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats won seats in the Senate. This means that if any of them had lost the Democrats wouldn't control the Senate, and so each and every one of them "gave Democrats control of the Senate." So it's true that Webb did so, but pretty misleading.
Bonus: Webb's 2007 State of the Union response (transcript), which is when serious consideration of his Vice-Presidency started.
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
Post of the day, 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary Division: Other than long term trend "what does this all mean?" analysis and Vice-Presidential speculation, there is nothing interesting left to say about the contest between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. As an example of "nothing interesting left to say," yesterday Poblano wrote a blistering, well-written, and obviously correct take-down of a Lanny Davis piece making pro-Clinton arguments about the seating of the Michigan and Florida delegates. I recommend not reading it because first, Sen. Obama is going to win the nomination under any arrangement for seating Michigan and Florida which the Rules and Bylaws Committee might actually decide upon and second, this primary has already taught anyone who cares that Lanny Davis will say any damn thing.
I don't have any idea what this all means, so let's go with baseless Vice-Presidential speculation and a short discussion of Intrade. Intrade facilitates a market in which (in most cases) contracts are sold which pay $10.00 if a particular event happens and $0.00 if it does not. They're selling contracts on who the Democratic Party will nominate for Vice-President, I haven't bought any because I'm too lazy to setup an account, but here are my thoughts: Hillary Clinton is unlikely to be the Vice-Presidential nominee, but I don't think the odds against her getting it are 6:1, so she's a weak buy at $1.69. Webb is priced at $2.18, that's a fair take on his odds (but see Kathy G. yesterday on why Webb's conversion to the Democratic cause being only recent, his troubles with actually campaigning, and most importantly his record on issues clustered around gender equality mean he should not be V.P.), so don't buy. Richardson's a buy at ¢64, Nunn is a strong buy at ¢57, and the field is probably a buy at $3.59 since the listed field doesn't include any women except Hillary Clinton, and there's a good chance Obama will be looking for one. These prices might change by the time you read this, or indeed by the time I post it.
From this post onwards, this blog is returning to standard blogging format in which unrelated topics are not generally crammed into one post but are instead spread across many, but see this letters page for a discussion of the sourcing of various versions of this post's titular quote.
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I don't have any idea what this all means, so let's go with baseless Vice-Presidential speculation and a short discussion of Intrade. Intrade facilitates a market in which (in most cases) contracts are sold which pay $10.00 if a particular event happens and $0.00 if it does not. They're selling contracts on who the Democratic Party will nominate for Vice-President, I haven't bought any because I'm too lazy to setup an account, but here are my thoughts: Hillary Clinton is unlikely to be the Vice-Presidential nominee, but I don't think the odds against her getting it are 6:1, so she's a weak buy at $1.69. Webb is priced at $2.18, that's a fair take on his odds (but see Kathy G. yesterday on why Webb's conversion to the Democratic cause being only recent, his troubles with actually campaigning, and most importantly his record on issues clustered around gender equality mean he should not be V.P.), so don't buy. Richardson's a buy at ¢64, Nunn is a strong buy at ¢57, and the field is probably a buy at $3.59 since the listed field doesn't include any women except Hillary Clinton, and there's a good chance Obama will be looking for one. These prices might change by the time you read this, or indeed by the time I post it.
From this post onwards, this blog is returning to standard blogging format in which unrelated topics are not generally crammed into one post but are instead spread across many, but see this letters page for a discussion of the sourcing of various versions of this post's titular quote.
Thursday
Diagnostics
Posts of the day, U.S. 2008 Democratic Primary Division: A reader of Josh Marshall's provides the best explanation of why Hillary Clinton has not dropped out of the race and instead proceeded to behave in a fashion which I find bizarre. The explanation is heavily speculative and puts a lot of weight on one circa 2000 quote, but I find it reasonably persuasive. I had started writing this post at 5:00 today, but didn't get around to posting it until nearly midnight. In that time, Eric at Edge of the American West (author of the excellent Murdering McKinley and other books which I'm sure are good purchases but have either read only part or none of) posted his disagreements with Josh's reader, and then the reader defends himself in Eric's comments. I'm in the comments too, but the appearance of the reader makes me redundant.
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Wednesday
Of the days of the day
Post of the day, U.S. 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary division: Alex Massie, on the hypothetical universe wherein Sen. Clinton skipped campaigning for the Iowa caucuses. He provides exactly no reason to believe the central speculation of his post, namely that John Edwards might have won Iowa if Sen. Clinton wasn't running there, but the parts after that, where he explains why an Edwards win in Iowa would have redounded to Sen. Clinton's benefit are very interesting, and an argument could certainly be made that Clinton cut more into the Edwards' vote than she did into the Obama vote.
Note of the day, U.S. 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary division: I think everyone knows this, but just in case: if you check out the spreadsheet attached to the Wednesday 5/14 post you'll see that the numbers for Barack Obama's # and % of not yet pledged delegates needed to win a majority of contested delegates have both become negative because he has in fact won a majority of contested delegates. This is somewhat anti-climactic because anyone who wanted to count knew as of, at the latest, the Indiana and North Carolina results on May 6th that Obama would lock in the pledged delegate majority last night. Congratulations to Hillary Clinton on her victory in Kentucky last night and a phenomenally strong campaign in general.
Thought of the day, U.S. governmental structure in general division: Among the many structural reforms the U.S. government, and correspondingly in this case the American people, could benefit from, raising the number of representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives from its present, scandalously low number doesn't get enough attention. The spreadsheet below displays the population of a country, the number of members in the branch of its legislature with the most members, and the population per member. Of the countries listed, only India has a higher ratio than the United States. It also shows what number of Representatives the U.S. would have if we matched the ratio of each of those countries. I'd advocate for somewhere above the Japanese ratio and slightly below the German one, but that's just based on glancing at the numbers.
The comparative point isn't that strong however, as the bare fact that other countries do things a different way doesn't tell you how the U.S., which is different in so many ways, should do things. So, the positive case: More finely grained districts might mean that districts actually cohere with existing communities and aren't just random lines on maps. Personal relationships between an individual and their Rep. become more feasible (how much more depends on how much we change the ratio by). House elections become much, much cheaper to run. Partially because of this cheapness factor, fund-raising becomes less important and therefore Representatives have to pay more attention to their lower socioeconomic status constituents in order to hold office.
The main counterargument to this is that too large an assembly of people just can't accomplish anything, but I don't know of any evidence that we're approaching that number.
I discussed this topic on the blog previously, where I mention that at the outer limit (far, far beyond anything I'd advocate), the Constitution places a cap on the number of Representatives at 1 per 30,000 people, or 10,037 at the current population. The Constitutional framers expected this ratio to be reached in the first congress after a census was taken.
This post would probably be easier to read if it were two or three separate posts. Oh well.
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Note of the day, U.S. 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary division: I think everyone knows this, but just in case: if you check out the spreadsheet attached to the Wednesday 5/14 post you'll see that the numbers for Barack Obama's # and % of not yet pledged delegates needed to win a majority of contested delegates have both become negative because he has in fact won a majority of contested delegates. This is somewhat anti-climactic because anyone who wanted to count knew as of, at the latest, the Indiana and North Carolina results on May 6th that Obama would lock in the pledged delegate majority last night. Congratulations to Hillary Clinton on her victory in Kentucky last night and a phenomenally strong campaign in general.
Thought of the day, U.S. governmental structure in general division: Among the many structural reforms the U.S. government, and correspondingly in this case the American people, could benefit from, raising the number of representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives from its present, scandalously low number doesn't get enough attention. The spreadsheet below displays the population of a country, the number of members in the branch of its legislature with the most members, and the population per member. Of the countries listed, only India has a higher ratio than the United States. It also shows what number of Representatives the U.S. would have if we matched the ratio of each of those countries. I'd advocate for somewhere above the Japanese ratio and slightly below the German one, but that's just based on glancing at the numbers.
The comparative point isn't that strong however, as the bare fact that other countries do things a different way doesn't tell you how the U.S., which is different in so many ways, should do things. So, the positive case: More finely grained districts might mean that districts actually cohere with existing communities and aren't just random lines on maps. Personal relationships between an individual and their Rep. become more feasible (how much more depends on how much we change the ratio by). House elections become much, much cheaper to run. Partially because of this cheapness factor, fund-raising becomes less important and therefore Representatives have to pay more attention to their lower socioeconomic status constituents in order to hold office.
The main counterargument to this is that too large an assembly of people just can't accomplish anything, but I don't know of any evidence that we're approaching that number.
I discussed this topic on the blog previously, where I mention that at the outer limit (far, far beyond anything I'd advocate), the Constitution places a cap on the number of Representatives at 1 per 30,000 people, or 10,037 at the current population. The Constitutional framers expected this ratio to be reached in the first congress after a census was taken.
This post would probably be easier to read if it were two or three separate posts. Oh well.
Tuesday
A lot of those people are not looking at the stage
Photo of the day, 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary division:
That's some of the 75,000 person strong crowd at the Obama rally on Sunday in Oregon. To the best of my knowledge, no exit polling was done on what percentage of the crowd was actually there to see The Decemberists. I'm willing to wager it wasn't zero.
Post of the day, 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary division: Dana Goldstein on Hillary Clinton on sexism, both in the course of the campaign and in the world. Everything Dana says is right, except one might quibble about whether there is a core of the "ideology of terrorism" (which I take to mean the ideology of al Qaeda and other religiously motivated Islamic terrorist groups in Dana's usage) for sexism to be at, or if rather terrorism is inspired by a number of not particularly related ideas which don't cohere into one core. Also, primary campaign coverage seems to me to be lessening and shifting to coverage of the general, so it's not clear how many more posts of the day I'll have on this topic.
Post of the day, 1980 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary division: Edward Kennedy's speech to the Democratic Convention after he'd lost the nomination battle. I was hoping to post some interesting anecdotes from his history, but it turns out I don't really know enough about him to do so, and internet research didn't produce anything worth passing on besides that speech and a story in his Wikipedia entry about how when JFK took the presidency and left his Senate seat vacant the Kennedy family basically arranged for a placeholder to take it until Teddy was 30 and constitutionally eligible for it, at which point a special election was held. The 1962 Time article on Teddy which Wikipedia cites for that anecdote is interesting in its own right but doesn't actually support the claim, and in the Wikipeida article on the so-called seat-warmer Senator, Benjamin A. Smith, the idea that he was merely holding the spot for Teddy is described as a charge by critics rather than a known fact. I like the story, so I'm going to tentatively believe it for now.
[This post was updated at 4:00 on 5/21, if you happened to read it in its previous form.]
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That's some of the 75,000 person strong crowd at the Obama rally on Sunday in Oregon. To the best of my knowledge, no exit polling was done on what percentage of the crowd was actually there to see The Decemberists. I'm willing to wager it wasn't zero.
Post of the day, 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary division: Dana Goldstein on Hillary Clinton on sexism, both in the course of the campaign and in the world. Everything Dana says is right, except one might quibble about whether there is a core of the "ideology of terrorism" (which I take to mean the ideology of al Qaeda and other religiously motivated Islamic terrorist groups in Dana's usage) for sexism to be at, or if rather terrorism is inspired by a number of not particularly related ideas which don't cohere into one core. Also, primary campaign coverage seems to me to be lessening and shifting to coverage of the general, so it's not clear how many more posts of the day I'll have on this topic.
Post of the day, 1980 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary division: Edward Kennedy's speech to the Democratic Convention after he'd lost the nomination battle. I was hoping to post some interesting anecdotes from his history, but it turns out I don't really know enough about him to do so, and internet research didn't produce anything worth passing on besides that speech and a story in his Wikipedia entry about how when JFK took the presidency and left his Senate seat vacant the Kennedy family basically arranged for a placeholder to take it until Teddy was 30 and constitutionally eligible for it, at which point a special election was held. The 1962 Time article on Teddy which Wikipedia cites for that anecdote is interesting in its own right but doesn't actually support the claim, and in the Wikipeida article on the so-called seat-warmer Senator, Benjamin A. Smith, the idea that he was merely holding the spot for Teddy is described as a charge by critics rather than a known fact. I like the story, so I'm going to tentatively believe it for now.
[This post was updated at 4:00 on 5/21, if you happened to read it in its previous form.]
Labels: 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary
Friday
Bad things come in threes
Post of the day, 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary division: nothing that I feel like linking to. I'll ramble a bit, though. As you may have heard, on Tuesday Sen. Hillary Clinton won the West Virginia Democratic primary with an impressive 239,187 votes or 66.99% of the total vote. Only 91,663 people, or 25.67%, voted for Sen. Barack Obama. Because of this, Sen. Clinton picked up twenty pledged delegates, to Sen. Obama's 8, a gain of twelve for her. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week a total of thirteen super-delegates endorsed Barack Obama, plus two people who would be Michigan super-delegates but aren't being included right now because Michigan's delegates are not at this time being seated. One superdelegate endorsed Hillary Clinton. This means they each gained thirteen delegates over the time period Tuesday-Thursday, or in other words Obama pulled further into the lead since the difference between them remained the same while the delegates available to make up that difference lessened. And now you know the rest of the story.
Post of the day, 2008 U.S. Presidential General Election division. Hendrik Hertzbeg explains why, contra Noam Scheiber, McCain's unmoderated debate proposal is good for Obama. Neither of them mention that it will also do some damage to the curent pernicious grip on power by the Commission on Presidential Debates, and maybe, to get insanely idealistic for a minute, set a precedent in favor of substantive debates between candidates.
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Post of the day, 2008 U.S. Presidential General Election division. Hendrik Hertzbeg explains why, contra Noam Scheiber, McCain's unmoderated debate proposal is good for Obama. Neither of them mention that it will also do some damage to the curent pernicious grip on power by the Commission on Presidential Debates, and maybe, to get insanely idealistic for a minute, set a precedent in favor of substantive debates between candidates.
Labels: 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary, 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
Thursday
Reading this blog will make you healthy
Friday is National Bike to Work day, this page lists New York City events for the day, the best of which is a Bridges by Night tour which I'd absolutely go on if I wasn't leaving town for the weekend. Many of my readers may be thinking, "But I already take mass transit to work, and the marginal public transit rider doesn't cause impose additional environmental costs!"
But readers who are thinking this are sadly mistaken. Off the top of my head, there are at least two environmental benefits (to say nothing of personal health) to switching from taking mass transit to work to biking to work. First of all, one reason not many people bike to work is that there aren't many other cyclists using the streets, and cycling is safer when more people are doing it and automotive traffic is therefore expecting cyclists. So by increasing the number of cyclists, you move the dynamic closer to a situation where more people besides you are cycling. Second of all, one reason not as many people as could be take mass transit to work is because they don't like crowds. By cycling to work, you're reducing how crowded mass transit is and this will, on the margin, cause some people to switch from driving to work to taking mass transit. People who actually know about urban planning and transit could probably provide reasons which aren't totally made up. Also, cycling strengthens your legs and improves your aerobic capacity.
I, of course, won't be participating in Bike to Work day because I'm going straight from the office to the airport.
A manageable pace
Post of the day, 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary division. I wouldn't go so far as to describe it as fair to Senator Clinton, but if it doesn't make you laugh seek medical, or more properly spiritual, care because you have no soul.
Posts of the day, let's learn about modern art division. I can't recall having ever seen a piece by Rauschenberg, though I think I once confused him with Rosenquist, whose work I have seen exhibited and really enjoyed.
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Posts of the day, let's learn about modern art division. I can't recall having ever seen a piece by Rauschenberg, though I think I once confused him with Rosenquist, whose work I have seen exhibited and really enjoyed.
Labels: 2008 U.S. Democratic Presidential Primary, Legitimate Theatre
Wednesday
Reading this blog will make you rich
Tomorrow is free ice coffee day at Dunkin' Donuts. Getting rich is a long term process, results may vary, past performance does not guarantee future results.
Update (5/15): Having just returned from the Dunkin' Donuts on 55th St. btw. 6th and 5th Avenues, I'd like to note that if you value your time at even fairly low dollar amounts this coffee costs more than it would on a normal day. But if you can stand on the line and do work or otherwise accomplish some task which you'd otherwise be doing in another location then the coffee goes back to being free.
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Update (5/15): Having just returned from the Dunkin' Donuts on 55th St. btw. 6th and 5th Avenues, I'd like to note that if you value your time at even fairly low dollar amounts this coffee costs more than it would on a normal day. But if you can stand on the line and do work or otherwise accomplish some task which you'd otherwise be doing in another location then the coffee goes back to being free.
Eternal Recurrence
I'm easing back into this, we'll see how it goes.
Post of the day, U.S. Democratic Presidential Primaries division. I'm wary about attributing voting patterns so strongly to ethnic roots, but Josh looks like he has the evidence.
Post of the day, having nothing to do with the U.S. election, but interesting, somewhat crazy, and long division. No, not that kind of long division. If you read the linked post, one question to consider because I'm uncertain whether the author knows the answer to it: who in particular should be, as he suggests, suing ExxonMobil and other companies doing business with dictatorial regimes that expropriate natural resources? I can broadly think of three possibilities, all of which seem to have serious problems. First, it could be the citizens of those countries, but there's quite a bit standing in the way of their access to U.S. courts. Second, it could United States citizens, but I have no idea what they're supposed to be suing for, since they haven't been wronged by the behavior he describes. Finally, it could be the U.S. government, but there are both standing and incentive problems there as well.
My obsessively updated delegate tracking spreadsheet is below. Surprisingly, Sen. Clinton's win by over forty percent in a state with a total of twenty-eight delegates has not transformed the underlying dynamics of a months-long race with 4,050 total delegates at stake.
My sidebar is extraordinarily out of date, if this post isn't a one-time thing I'll start updating it.
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Post of the day, U.S. Democratic Presidential Primaries division. I'm wary about attributing voting patterns so strongly to ethnic roots, but Josh looks like he has the evidence.
Post of the day, having nothing to do with the U.S. election, but interesting, somewhat crazy, and long division. No, not that kind of long division. If you read the linked post, one question to consider because I'm uncertain whether the author knows the answer to it: who in particular should be, as he suggests, suing ExxonMobil and other companies doing business with dictatorial regimes that expropriate natural resources? I can broadly think of three possibilities, all of which seem to have serious problems. First, it could be the citizens of those countries, but there's quite a bit standing in the way of their access to U.S. courts. Second, it could United States citizens, but I have no idea what they're supposed to be suing for, since they haven't been wronged by the behavior he describes. Finally, it could be the U.S. government, but there are both standing and incentive problems there as well.
My obsessively updated delegate tracking spreadsheet is below. Surprisingly, Sen. Clinton's win by over forty percent in a state with a total of twenty-eight delegates has not transformed the underlying dynamics of a months-long race with 4,050 total delegates at stake.
My sidebar is extraordinarily out of date, if this post isn't a one-time thing I'll start updating it.
Labels: Are labels helpful?
