Why the Democrats are wrong and other meanderings

Name:
Location: Metro Phoenix, Arizona, United States

I'm too lazy to type anything about me. Read my blog and I'm sure you'll eventually learn a few things.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Lots of Random Links

Across the pond, there's news that Muslims will outnumber traditional churchgoers. Nothing new, really, just further evidence.

Also, "England" has become a bad word ... in England.

Fire extinguishers were ruled a fire hazard.

Thankfully, Don Young (RINO-Alaska) has a strong primary challenger for his seat in the House.

In a move that's a bad idea on multiple levels, Maryland is considering granting free college tuition to juvenile offenders.

Some rejected Star Wars merchandise (it's below the blah blah blah of the post and above the comments)

A proposed law in Florida would mandate that restaurant bathrooms have enough toilet paper. Sounds like one of the legislators had an unpleasant experience.

These people should have been much more injured than they were.

Episodes from the original Star Trek series now online.

Historical sites in LEGO form.

A portable room you can hang outside your window.

A man fatally stabbed himself while cooking.

Some research has shown shorter women live longer lives. I'm still waiting to hear about shorter men.

The 10 best sci-fi films that never existed. (language warning)

Various Google stuff.

An 81-year-old man built a robot to fire a gun at him as part of an elaborate suicide plan.

Comcast's exploration of putting camera in its cable box that would recognize the user has really put the tinfoil hat brigade into action. This goes on despite the fact that the images would not be transmitted back to Comcast. Plus, all the nonsensical talk of a police state and 1984 ignores that its a private company doing it, not the government. But, never fear -- nothing stops the tinfoil hat brigade!

How many things have to go wrong before a 13-year-old girl is pimping her peers?

The inventor of the Egg McMuffin has died. He was 89.

Labels:

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

2008 Baseball Season -- Underway

Currently, it's the bottom of the tenth, according to ESPN's website.

I've got to say, I don't care much for the scheduling, as has become an annual spring complaint, though it's slightly different this year. Having two games this week (on Tuesday and Wednesday), then having these teams return to America, play exhibition series, and then have the regular season resume on Sunday (Monday for most teams) makes little sense. Having the vast majority of teams (26, I think) begin play on the same day is a good move, but they still leave some with an off day in the middle of the opening series, and I despise off days in the middle of series. Also, it seems odd to have the Braves and Nationals play Sunday night, and then leave town to play other teams the next day. The Nationals probably won't even have 12 hours between leaving the stadium and reporting to the one in Philadelphia, due to the unusually late start time Sunday (8pm EDT), and an early game on Monday (1pm) (I figure they need to get to the stadium a couple hours before gametime).

I see that Boston has now won. Huston Street blew the save in the ninth, and then gave up a couple more runs in the tenth, and Papelbon tried to blow the save in the tenth, and seems only to have been saved by poor baserunning (Athletics making baserunning blunders ... that sounds strangely familiar ...). Glad I don't own either in fantasy play, based on their performance today. I did pick up Okajima in a league yesterday, though, which worked out quite well, as he got the win.

Jack Cust was his normal amazing self, and struck out four times. He's my early favorite for this season's strikeout king. I've seen people talking about the possibility of Ryan Howard reaching the 200 strikeout mark, based especially on his performance last year, and there's always some Adam Dunn talk, but my money's on Cust, who last season became the first player to strikeout 150 times or more in less than 400 at bats (164 in 395, in 124 games). While Howard did manage to strikeout 199 times in 144 games, his strikeout rate was much higher than normal, and I'd expect it to swing back in the direction of the previous two seasons (once every 3.12 AB in 2005, 3.21 in 2006, compared to 2.66 in 2007). Cust, on the other hand, is a Rob Deer quality strikeout machine, averaging one every 2.41 AB in 2007 after a rate of once every 2.09 AB in his career prior to 2007. The only problem with betting on Cust is that he's the only one of these big three likely to get a serious benching if he goes on a prolonged slump.

In fantasy news, I did my annual plugging of ESPN projected stats into the projected team lineups in the league I care about, and it had me winning the twelve-team league by half a point. My hitting was third-worst (though not really far below average), but my pitching was awesome. The exercise had only two players within fifteen points of my combined pitching total, and they were the two players below me in hitting. In a result I don't expect to play out in real life, the good doctor finished last, mostly due to pitching that was as bad as mine was good. The exercise did not factor in any injuries or post-draft roster moves, and was really just a simple plugging of ESPN's projected stats for the players I projected to be in each teams starting lineup, and for the pitchers, I took each teams relievers and added their top starters until I ran up against the league's innings limit. I freely admit that it's a flawed system, but it does make a decent starting point for evaluating things.

Labels:

Thursday, March 13, 2008

This, That, and the Other

Saturday Night Live had an excellent take on Hillary's 3am phone call ad.

The LA Times reported that a California court of appeals ruled that parents could not homeschool their children if they lacked teaching credentials. Fortunately, according to Ace of Spades, that is not true, that home-schooling parents can classify themselves as a private school. I'm no expert on the matter, but I think I trust AoS over LAT. Still, it might not be a bad idea for the state legislature to clear the matter up.

A Norwegian museum director has claimed to find drawings of Disney characters by Adolf Hitler.

Deep water creatures interest me. Some new ones have been found near Antarctica.

A case of the headline saying more than the results of the actual study, people act like sheep. It says large crowds walking will follow a small minority, but the participants in the study were instructed to remain within arm's length of another person at all times. Remove that requirement, and I imagine the results would collapse.

The story of Jasper Maskelyn, a stage magician who was instrumental in aiding the British in Africa in World War II.

Lincoln portrait made from pennies.

A sixteen-year-old girl from Argentina has given birth to her second set of female triplets. The first came when she was fifteen, and she had a son at fourteen. Having seven kids before turning seventeen is pretty impressive, I must say. It appears that she is not married.

There's talk about moving stars to form shapes -- and not just so that Fry can express his love for Leela.

I've seen four-way chess and 3-D chess, but this was my first look at three-way chess.

LEGO has released a catalogue of every set they've ever produced.

A woman was pried off a toilet seat she'd sat on for two years. One of those things that make you ask why.

A Colorado school district has dropped the grade system -- both in terms of letter grades and grade levels. While I've long maintained that there have been problems in both areas, this does not strike me as a good idea, at least insofar as I doubt it will be well implemented. I could see it working in theory, with students who are motivated.

Local Election Results -- March 11

Local elections were held in Maricopa County on Tuesday, with mixed results.

The Mesa mayoral race will advance to a runoff between Scott Smith and Rex Griswold. I voted for Griswold, but had no strong preference for him over Smith. I'm just glad Claudia Walters was defeated.

For the District 3 Mesa City Council race, Dennis Kavanaugh defeated Mark Yarbrough, unfortunately. Kavanaugh is a proponent of speed humps, light rail, and "public art" in addition to being an underhanded politician -- when Mesa went to a district-based city council instead of the at-large system that serves most of the valley, he tried to argue that his term from an at-large election should not count against term limits and sought reelection illegally. A court stopped him that time, but he was able to run this time after sitting out the last term.

The new zoning next to the airport was approved, as it should have been, and the budget override was approved, as it not so much should have been. It's not so much that I'm against letting the city set its own budget as I was outraged by the deceptive campaign waged by proponents of the override. I took the novel approach of actually reading the state constitution and found that many of their assertions were not true. They said that federal or state funds, along with the money from voter-approved initiatives would not allowed to be spent if the measure failed -- not so, as all three are explicit exceptions mentioned in the state constitution. In short, Mesa wanted to spend $1 billion, the budget formula would have limited them to $500 million, but there were also $400 million in exceptions, so the end result would have been approximately a 10% reduction in the city budget, which I don't think would have been a bad thing.

I was worried when I saw the results of the Tempe City Council race -- not only did Mark Mitchell (son of former mayor and current U.S. congressman Harry Mitchell) win re-election, but the county recorder's website lead me to believe that Hut Hutson had lost re-election to the at-large city council by a mere 37 votes, finishing in fourth place with 5864 votes in the race for three seats on the council. However, Mitchell was the only candidate who received enough votes to avoid a runoff, a Hutson will be one of four candidates in the runoff for the two remaining seats. Here's hoping he does better.

There were also a bunch of other races that I paid little attention to, as I have little need to pay attention to the composition of Buckeye's city council and other such matters.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Other March 4 News

Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich both survived primary challenges to their House seats on Tuesday. Paul won easily, about 70-30 over his challenger, while Kucinich had under 52% at last check, but his opposition was split, so his margin was still nearly twenty points.

I don't recall if I mentioned it last month, but in Maryland's primaries, two incumbents lost (one from each party). This is exceedingly rare in a year that did not involve redistricting. I think three lost in 2006, but I'd have to double-check, and there were extenuating circumstances then (scandal, nutbag Cynthia McKinney). The Republican that lost is a RINO, but he's won enough times before that it's still surprising that he lost (in true RINO fashion, he's considering endorsing the dem in the general).

Speaking of RINO's, and going off on a tangent, the reason I refuse to donate money to the NRSC, Lincoln Chafee, is not only no longer a Republican, but he's endorsed Obama for president. Not only did the Republicans throw boatloads of money behind him in 2006, including against a more loyal primary challenger, after he refused to vote for George W. Bush in 2004 (he claims he wrote in George H. W. Bush), but he stayed a Republican for less than a year following the election, and won't endorse the "great maverick" John McCain for president. If you want to know why the national party is such a mess, it's because the grassroots don't trust it after it does damn fool things like that (not to mention several of the scandal-plagued incumbents it also spent millions defending in 2006).

March 4 Primaries

Caucus results from Texas are not in yet, but we can draw a few conclusions already.

The first, and most important, is that Clinton survives and this thing is almost certainly going to the convention (which will make it an unconventional convention).

Good news for Obama is that Hillary did not win very big. She won Ohio by about ten points, and, based on the numbers I ran last night, looks to pick up 77 of the 141 delegates that were at stake there, for a net gain of 13 (UPDATE: it looks like I had initially reversed the results of one congressional district and Obama made barely enough late gains in another (12 and 19, respectively, I believe) that Hillary only received 75 out of 141 for a net gain of 9). Earlier in the night, people were talking about a gain in the 22-24 range. Hillary won the Texas primary, but not by a huge margin, and the delegate breakdown appears to be 65-61. It looks like Obama will win the caucus, and there's a good chance that his delegate margin will cancel out Hillary's margin from the primary (and possibly the net benefit for Hillary that came from her winning Rhode Island and Obama winning Vermont). So, final breakdown, Hillary gains about those 13 from Ohio, which is not much of a gain at all.

All the news sources will report that Obama still leads the delegate count, and especially the pledged delegate count. However, they neglect to mention that this is only if Michigan and Florida are not counted. When they are counted, Hillary leads in delegates, and she still leads in delegates when all the "uncommitted" delegates from Michigan are added to Obama's column (and it does not strike me as unlikely that at least a few of those will go Hillary's way). True, the current rules bar the entire delegations of Florida and Michigan from the convention, but that would be, shall we say, messy.

The way I see it, the nomination hinges on what happens with Florida and Michigan. If they are seated in full with the results of their respective January primaries, Hillary wins. If they're barred, Obama wins, and wins ugly (and to think of all the talk about Hillary winning ugly). A revote is something of a wild card. I could see Florida shaking out similarly to how it did, but Michigan seems likely to swing Obama's way, or at least move a bit in his direction, unless voters there are disgruntled about him removing his name from the ballot. Moreover, in Michigan, crossover voting is allowed, so a revote could allow people to vote in both the Republican primary (in January) and the Democrat one whenever the do-over is held. I heard about a DNC offer to pay for a new primary or caucus in Florida (I forget which), but the money offered would only cover a fraction of the normal number of precincts.

Once again, the democrats got themselves into this mess by crafting a stupid rule to bar delegations from states that selected delegates before Super Tuesday, except for a few privileged states that were not penalized at all (New Hampshire and South Carolina; I forget if Iowa and Nevada were granted exceptions or if the caucus system allowed them an end-run around the rule). Republicans had a more sensible policy of penalizing every state that selected delegates before Super Tuesday (except that it allowed that caucus loophole) by cutting the size of its delegation in half. Under the Republican rule, states were not denied representation, and were penalized equally (except for that dumb caucus loophole). Under the Democrats' rule, well, to be Orwellian about it, all states are equal, but some are more equal than others. It's part of the rank hypocrisy of the party -- they purport to stand for equality, but they're really the party of privilege.

Labels:

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Starvation is Bad for the Body

After not eating for over 300 hours (~306.6), I decided to finally eat. I went out to Arby's with people from church and was unable to finish two regular roast beef sandwiches before feeling ill from eating too much. Luckily, no puking, which I'm sure the two girls sitting closest to me appreciated, or would if they knew how close I'd felt to it.

On the plus side, I lost some weight and saved money from not buying food. So I've got that going for me.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did take communion twice during that stretch. For those who don't attend my churhc, it is home to the world's smallest communion crackers (smaller than a Tic Tac). I don't count that as eating, but if you want to, I only went about 168 hours without eating.

Labels: