Lotsa 'Splainin' 2 Do

What a difference millions of dollars can make.

2012-01-27T05:55:00.000-08:00

Quinnipiac polls - this week and last week

Just after Newt Gingrich's huge win in South Carolina, the conventional wisdom was that Mitt Romney's many flaws were become more and more evident and there was nowhere to go but down. It was agreed that Newt Gingrich's many flaws were also evident, but Republican voters had decided to ignore them and give him the nod. The next state was Florida, also in the south, also adjacent to Georgia, Newt's alleged home state - in actuality, he's a Washington insider now and lives in Virginia - and Newt would smack around Romney once again, leaving his once seemingly inevitable nomination in grave doubt.

Then the cash rolled in.

A flip switched early this week, or should I say if flipped for the third time. In early December polling, Gingrich looked great in Florida, then he faded and Romney looked great, then it was Gingrich again, and the last flip was to Romney. All the polls of the past few days have shown Romney around 40% and Gingrich around 30%. The race for who will finish a distant third between Ron Paul and Rick Santorum is not so clear, but noises are being made that Santorum is ready to pack it in. Paul's impossible dream is a Quixotic quest, and those kinds of people don't give up so easily.

You know what I mean by "those kinds of people". The bughouse crazy.

The column charts above show two polls from the folks at Quinnipiac University. The poll on the right is one of the first to show Romney back in the lead after South Carolina, and the one on the left shows how much that lead has been expanded. The pro-Romney super PACs have out-spent the pro-Gingrich super PACs about 4:1, and as people delicately put it, this can make a big difference to "low information voters".

You know what I mean by "low information voters". The rock fucking stupid.

To be fair, I don't consider it stupid to switch from Gingrich to Romney. That said, I expect another big Newt surge when Santorum goes away. Most observers think Mitt is doing better at the debates, and as long as he doesn't do his punching bag impression at these bizarre circuses, he and his supporters - who cannot coordinate with him in any way, as Stephen Colbert explained to us in South Carolina - will spend enough money to force Gingrich to go back to writing books and getting money from companies who need lobbyists who don't call themselves lobbyists.

You know what that means. He's an escort, not a ho.

¡Ay, dios mio!¡La orgia de locura y horror en Florida!

2012-01-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

The polls in Florida are going nuts. Gingrich had a comfortable lead just a couple of days ago, but several recent polls have Romney way ahead. Let us recall that Florida is not South Carolina. The northern half of the state, sometimes called the Redneck Riviera, will love the red meat thrown out by Gingrich, but the southern half is more metropolitan than Dixie-ish, and Mitt is favored down there.

And now throw this into the mix. Univision interviewed Newt, Mitt and Santorum, but not Ron Paul? (I smell a conspiracy.) One of the Univision interviewers "went there" and asked if Mitt could be counted - if elected - as the first Mexican-American president.

Lemme 'splain.

Mitt's granddaddy was in a little trouble concerning the polygamy laws in the good of U.S. of A., so he skedaddled down Mexico way. Daddy George was born on Mexican soil. The heat warmed up south of the border for other reasons, so the Romneys cross the border back to the Land of the Free Gift With Purchase. Mitt was born here, so he is officially an anchor baby.

His name is actually Willardo Miteo Romney Garcia-Lopez. For gringos unfamiliar with the lingo, that is pronounced "WeeJARdo MeeTAYo R-R-R-R-R-R-ROMney GarCEEah LoPETH. The z is pronounced with the Castilian lisp because... well, it's more fun.

P.S. Okay, I'll admit it. I made up the last paragraph. The one just before it is the gospel truth.

P.P.S. The name La Orgia de Locura y Horror is the Spanish for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Its literal translation is "The Orgy of Craziness and Horror". I saw it with subtitles in El Salvador. I was asked to leave for talking back to the screen like a borracho gringo. I wasn't actually drunk.

And then the Republicans lost their damn minds.

2012-01-24T14:02:00.000-08:00

Gallup tracking poll for January 2012

Last month, the opinion polls showed a surge for Newt Gingrich after Herman Cain suspended his campaign. Gingrich celebrated by doing what he does best, spouting half-baked ideas whose flaws are apparent to any sensible person inside of ten seconds or so. The most egregious was his idea about arresting "radical" judges, completely oblivious to the obvious fact that Democrats might consider some conservative decisions like Citizens United "radical" and decide to arrest a few Supreme Court members. Moreover, arresting the people at the top of the judicial system means their fate will be decided by people... in the judicial system.

Seriously, it takes about ten seconds to think of these things.

So, running his mouth, Gingrich fell back. The people of Iowa fell in love with Rick Santorum and anointed him the Not Romney, but New Hampshire put the two Not Romneys at the back of the pack, well behind Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, who both trailed Romney by over 20 percentage points.

Then came South Carolina. Much bigger than Iowa or New Hampshire, but a whole lot redder. A super PAC favoring Gingrich nailed Romney's Bain Capital as a job killer and the Republican echo chamber went mad with cries of class warfare. Gingrich had to walk back the attack, though technically it didn't come from him. Still, it was enough to wound Romney big time and the bleeding hasn't stopped.

As of today, January 24, the polls now put Gingrich back as the front runner. Republican voters are not interested in hearing about his many flaws, though the number of people on the right who hate Gingrich are legion.

Rasmussen asked voters across the spectrum about Obama vs. Romney and Obama vs. Gingrich. Obama leads Romney 46% to 43%, while Obama creams Gingrich 49% to 40%. During January, there have been a couple polls where Romney was ahead of Obama and another where they tied. Gingrich's best showing is losing by 7%.

Republican voters have lost their damn minds. It's not all their fault. Given such a weak field, the questions about electability become academic. They want someone as angry as they are and in this field, Newt Gingrich is the closest they are going to get. They think Gingrich will win the debates against Obama the way he's been beating the Republicans at the debates. Little do they know that when the audience isn't all "mouth breathing paste eaters" as my blog buddy Tengrain puts it, many of the big applause lines Newt has are going to be booed.

I honestly think that if the people of the United States get a steady diet of Newton Leroy Gingrich for a year, there is a significant chance he will lose in Georgia.

I'm sure if any right-winger stumbles upon this, he or she will think I'm just some Communist who's been drinking the Kool-Aid and dismiss my argument.

I can't stop them. There's not much you can do to dissuade crazy people.

Dick Tufeld 1926-2012

2012-01-23T17:40:00.000-08:00

Dick Tufeld, best known as the voice of the Robot on Lost In Space has died at the age of 85. Bill Mumy, the actor who played Will Robinson, posted the sad news on his Facebook page today. Good on Bill Mumy for staying in touch all these years.

Tufeld did many other things to keep a roof over his head, but to have a place in the hearts of people my age, he never had to do anything else besides say "Danger, Will Robinson!" and give serious portions of crap to that creepy Dr. Smith.

Best wishes to the family and friends of Dick Tufeld, from a fan.

Results for Prognostication #3:The South Carolina primary

2012-01-22T06:15:00.000-08:00

A bad week for my way of predicting the future. The loss of Huntsman as a candidate didn't hurt much, but losing Perry so close to the election date made a lot of polls fairly useless. Nate Silver's numbers were closer to the truth of Gingrich's big win over Romney, but both of us had Ron Paul in third place when Rick Santorum was actually five percentage points better. Here are the final numbers.

Gingrich 40.4%(Silver beats me by 1.7%)

Romney 27.8%(Silver beats by by 2.2%)

Santorum 17%(I gain 0.1%)

Paul 13%(I lose 0.4%)

Other 1.8%(I gain 0.4%)

Final score: Silver 90.4%, Matty Boy 86.6%. This is the first time either of us has climbed over the 90% mark.

The next test is Florida, a week from Tuesday. Current polls have Romney ahead by double digits, but that means nothing. Romney had a comfortable lead in South Carolina a week ago before the debates and the Bain Capital attacks.

Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson gets credit for the line "A week is a very long time in politics", and these ten days will certainly be tumultuous. The hatred the Republican establishment has for Newt Gingrich will once again rain down, but I can't tell if it will counterbalance Romney's negatives with the rank and file, who don't like his regal manner, religion or record in office. Bill Clinton's aphorism "Democratic voters fall in love, Republican voters fall in line" doesn't sound quite as clever as it did after New Hampshire.

Prognostication #3:The South Carolina primary - UPDATED

2012-01-21T05:48:00.000-08:00

When it comes to predicting percentages based on recent polls, South Carolina is one of the toughest challenges yet. I base my numbers on five polls taken in the past three days, but only two of them took Rick Perry out of the equation. His numbers were on the rise in Gallup tracking polls nationally, but he was well under 5% in South Carolina polls and faced the unpleasant possibility of being compared to the "Herman Cain" (actually Stephen Colbert) comedy campaign.

So now we are down to four. Almost all the recent polls agree on the order: Gingrich, Romney, Paul, Santorum. (Only PPP switches Santorum over Paul.) Based on a weighting of the median and the average of those five surveys, here's my prediction for South Carolina, rounded to the nearest half a percent. Nate Silver's numbers are given in parentheses.

Gingrich 37%(38.7%)

Romney 31.5%(29.3%)

Paul 16%(15.6%)

Santorum 14%(13.9%)

Other 1.5%(2.5%)

This means Silver is bullish on Gingrich and Other, while I am hoping for strong showings Romney, Paul and Santorum.

Colbert is a wild card, being both a South Carolina favorite son and a TV star, but I am betting the vast majority of conservatives realize his conservative persona is making fun of them. Also, there is the weird public appearance mojo of Friday. Gingrich had to cancel an event for low attendance, while the joint appearance of Colbert and Cain drew about 3,000. Let's assume most of the those at the Colbert rally are not likely primary voters.

Also helping the Other votes is Perry dropping out so late. There could be a fair number of mail-in ballots with his name on them. Still, I'm not going to repeat my late fascination with Buddy Roemer in New Hampshire based on very little hard data.

As dissatisfied as the polls show the likely voters are with this field - the median count in the five polls for NoneOfTheAbove was 8% - I still think when South Carolina voters step inside those booths today, they will cast their votes for one of the four guys who showed up at the last debate. Polls have shown voters are paying close attention to the debates. As a person who believes in democracy, I find that encouraging and discouraging at the same time.

These are my final numbers. I updated Silver's numbers from his noon Eastern time prediction on Saturday. I will report back when 100% of precincts report in, which will likely be Sunday morning.

You smiled... you smiled...And then the spell was cast...

2012-01-20T09:04:00.000-08:00

And here we are in heaven
'Cause you are mine at last.

Ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only, the incomparable...
Miss Etta James.

This doesn't make up for January 3, 1971...

2012-01-14T22:34:00.000-08:00

but it will have to do for now.

January 3, 1971 won't mean much to most folks, but that was a chance for a young Bay Area football fan's dream to come true. The Raiders traveled to Baltimore to face the Colts for the AFC Championship and the 49ers hosted the Cowboys at that old rat trap Kezar Stadium. If everything went perfect, we'd have a Raiders-Niners Super Bowl. Instead, everything went to crap, the Colts beat the Raiders and the Cowboys beat the Niners.

The winners went on to play Super Bowl V, one of the sloppiest championship games in any sport ever, a game whose only charm was that it was close, the Colts winning on a late field goal, 16-13.

(Photo by Paul Sakuma/AP)

Today wasn't championship week, but the 49ers hosted a playoff game in that old rat trap Candlestick Park. The Niner defense is stunning and the Niner offense suspect, so to see them win a game 36-32 in regulation was not what anyone expected. The lead changed three times in the last two minutes and was won on a fantastic Vernon Davis touchdown catch.

(Photo by Elise Amendola/AP)

The Raiders didn't make the playoffs this year, but the hated Denver Broncos did. Tim Tebow, possibly the most over-rated flash in the pan in American professional sport since Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, had another one of his truly crap games against a strong defense and Tom Brady, a local boy made very good for the Pats, tied the playoff record with six touchdown passes. New England won 45-10 and it really wasn't that close.

Maybe, just maybe, some of Tebow's fans will realize that God is not actually betting on the Broncos, but sadly, many Christian zealots can explain away anything. Maybe, just maybe, Tebow will improve to becoming a middle of the pack quarterback with a lot of hard work, but he was the 31st best quarterback in terms of yardage, he threw as many interceptions as touchdowns and was the only starting NFL quarterback who did not complete half his passes.

Goodbye, Broncos. You won more games than you deserved at 8-8 this year, and unless Tebow makes a commitment we have not seen yet, he will never be a premier passer in the NFL. And just to be clear, "making a commitment" does not mean turning his life over to Jesus. He's already done that and it's come up craps.

Has None Of The Above peaked?

2012-01-13T11:39:00.000-08:00

So here's the first twelve days of January in the Gallup tracking polls. Mitt Romney, Mr. 25%, is now about to become Mr. 35% for the first time, as the crooked line in green indicates. Pundits assumed the undecided had ruled Romney out, but this graph doesn't bear that out. A lot of his gain looks to be at the expense of None Of The Above, drawn in black. There was also a fading away of the the two top challengers Gingrich and Santorum, while Paul, Perry and Huntsman are steady in fourth, fifth and sixth respectively, if None Of The Above is removed.

When the month started, None Of The Above was slightly ahead of Romney, but the undecided fell to fourth and has now risen again to second. The Republicans really are trying to figure out who can beat Obama, and while most of them are not the political junkies I am, even a passing observer can start having doubts about the rest of the field, especially Gingrich, mean as a snake, and Santorum, kind of a whiny nebbish. In some ways, I think Huntsman still hasn't been given a fair hearing, but he took a job when Obama offered it, and so to the rabid anti-Obama crowd he's a traitor and cannot be redeemed.

Results for prognostication #2: New Hampshire primary

2012-01-11T19:40:00.000-08:00

There are three things about this week's guess that should be noted.

I got beat by Nate Silver's guess, 88.8% to 88.2%.
I did much better than I did last week.
I got Gingrich over Santorum and Nate Silver went the other way.

Here are the final numbers.

Mitt Romney: 39.3% (Silver beats me by 2.9%)
Ron Paul: 22.9% (I beat Silver by 2.7%)
Jon Huntsman: 16.9% (Silver was at 17.0%, I was at 16.7%, so he was 0.1% closer)
Newt Gingrich: 9.4% (We both overshot, I lose by 1.2%)
Rich Santorum: 9.4% (We both overshot, I win by 1.1%)
Rick Perry 0.7%: (Again, we both went high, I win by 0.1%)
Buddy Roemer: 0.4% (Silver was silent, I went high and lost 0.8%)

I learned several things this week, mainly about thinking like a mathematician instead of thinking like a statistician, which is my serious advantage over Silver in the long run.

Don't chase a single data point. I was impressed by Buddy Roemer's results in one poll and changed my prediction because of it. I should not do that and won't do it again.
There's no point in being precise when you don't know what you are talking about. The data I collect is to the nearest percent. I shouldn't work with numbers to the nearest tenth of a percent. My predictions will be to the nearest percent. It giveth and it taketh away, but for the most part, it will giveth to me. I might decided to round to the nearest half a percent, but no closer. The data doesn't deserve it.
Keep track of the recent, ignore ancient history. Silver tweeted that every winner broke the 40% barrier since 1972. This is because he's a statistician. Completely meaningless number and somebody who isn't fooled by useless hard work could see through it in a fraction of a second.

There is no primary Tuesday. The next test is a week from Saturday in South Carolina. I will wait until I've checked the most recent polls on the day of the election but will post by blog call and my tweet long before the polls close. This is what Silver does, so it puts us on an even footing.

With no false modesty, I'm better than Nate Silver and I really do believe I will beat him at this in the long run. I could use an old cliche and say I've forgotten more mathematics than he will ever know, but once again with no false modesty, I haven't forgotten it.

He's a statistician. I'm a mathematician. I outrank him.

Prognostication #2:The New Hampshire Primary - UPDATE Tuesday morning for Nate Silver's final picks

2012-01-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

It's a Monday before a primary, so it's time for Matty Boy to polish off the crystal ball and make his prediction for the percentages for each of the candidates running for the Republican nomination in the New Hampshire primary. Michele Bachmann dropped out, so it becomes slightly easier, but it is still wild and wooly and no walk in the park.

In previous elections, I would check out the most recent polls and find the median, but that's tricky to do when six people are still in the race. I also have new fun toy, the tracking poll. The main reason most prognostications in Iowa sucked so bad was that no poll showed Santorum way over 20%, but many did show his stock was rising. The Suffolk tracking polls shows Huntsman's stock is rising steadily, while Romney has been losing nearly four percentage points a day. So what I did is average out the trends over the past three days and take that trend poll as one of my data sets and the most recent poll that wasn't a trend poll as the other data sets. I scrubbed out the None of the Above - at least to an extent - and these are my numbers. I also look at the raw data and noted that Buddy Roemer is out-polling Rick Perry in the Granite State and too that into account. Nate Silver's latest picks are in parentheses. Unless he mentions Roemer in a later tweet, I'm going to be a sport and put his None of the Above numbers on Roemer.

First: Mitt Romney 35.6% (38.5%)

Second: Ron Paul 21.3% (18.6%)

Third: Jon Huntsman 16.7% (17.0%)

Fourth: Newt Gingrich 12.8% (11.5%)

Fifth: Rick Santorum 11.2% (12.3%)
Sixth: Buddy Roemer 1.3% (0.9%)

Seventh: Rick Perry 1.1% (1.2%)

Nate numbers are final on Tuesday morning. Currently, he's bullish on Mitt, Santorum, Huntsman and Perry. I expect over-achieving by Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and now Buddy Roemer. I readily admit I can't be sure about the Gingrich-Santorum struggle for fourth and fifth. All my indicators favor Newt, but I'm just a blogger in my living room and Nate Silver works for the New York Times.

Still, if he gives me a call and wants to put money on this, I will take his bet. Eagerly.

Wednesday morning I will give the results. I beat Silver by the narrowest margin in Iowa when rounding to the nearest tenth of a percent, 83.8% to 83.7%. I expect we will be closer to 90% if not over this time.

A crazy poll tracking the crazy Republicans.

2012-01-09T06:01:00.000-08:00

CBS News national poll - mid September 2011 to early January 2012

All polls have to be taken with a grain of salt, but some of them need a whole salt lick. Here is the tracking of the remaining Republican candidates in the CBS News national polls. They have a survey roughly once a month and the numbers show some well documented trends. Rick Perry is in red (for embarrassment) and you can see his steep early slide. Gingrich is in grey (for the color of his hair and the age of his ideas) and you can see his rise in December and fall in January. Santorum is a muddy brown (I'll let you guess why) and we see his big bump in January. Paul in gold (for the gold standard) has gone from 5% to 10% and Huntsman in orange (no reason, it was just a color left over) stays firmly at the bottom of the pack.

And then we have black and blue, which stand for Someone Else and Undecided, respectively. These colors were chosen because they are beating up the field. Undecided is fading as should be expected, but it is still well over 10%, dominating Ron Paul and the second tier candidates. Someone Else, on the other hand, continues to poll strongly.

Here's the thing. The supporters of Cain and Bachmann in earlier polls would now be lumped together as Someone Else, which should inflate those numbers somewhat. (By the first survey in September, Trump and Pawlenty were already just footnotes.) From December to January, Someone Else has lost no strength at all and is tied with Mitt Romney in green (for lots of money) for the lead.

Non news flash: There is no Someone Else! Sorry, Republicans, the ghost of Reagan or the return of Jebus are not on the ballot and the paperwork to get them there is a serious bitch.

As I stated earlier, a grain of salt is not a bad idea in this case. Compared to Gallup's daily tracking, several numbers seem out of date or just plain whack. Even so, if the one-two punch of Someone Else and Undecided are still soaking up a third of Republican voters, that would put Obama's alleged enthusiasm gap to shame.

(p.s. My New Hampshire prediction and the comparison to Nate Silver's numbers will be published later today.)

One last look at December.

2012-01-08T05:54:00.000-08:00

Gallup national tracking polls for December

The month began with Gingrich the Grey proclaiming "I am the nominee" and ended with him making a pact to be Rick Santorum's wingman. Only Romney - shown in green to signify all the cash that's behind him - is currently polling better than None Of The Above. You'd think that would make his nomination nearly inevitable, but it shows a deep dissatisfaction in the Republican electorate that might still become a coalition. As we will see on Tuesday, Romney is inevitable in New Hampshire, but as the primaries move to the South, things could yet turn strange.

Why the press hates New Hampshire.

2012-01-05T06:02:00.000-08:00

The political press had a field day in Iowa because Iowa gave them the things they like. They had something new (the Santorum surge), they had a close race and they had controversy. This GOP field almost guarantees controversy - the 11th Commandment of "Thou shalt attack no other Republican" is as dim a memory as most of the rest of the truth about Reagan has become - and Michele Bachmann quitting will be new for a day or two. But for a close race, New Hampshire ain't it.

Suffolk University is doing a daily tracking poll in the Granite State, the only new polls from anyone in over a week. The numbers are just lying there like some old dead animal. Romney is at 43% as predictably as clockwork and the closest thing to a surge is None Of The Above passing Ron Paul for second place. This poll was taken before Bachmann quit and Perry tweeted something positive about "on to South Carolina", but that will make little difference to the Republicans of New Hampshire, who had been giving both of those candidates 2% each until Perry slipped on Tuesday to 1%.

Here's the thing. Romney is currently supported by over 50% of the voters who have made up their mind, since 43/82 is about 52%. 50% of the vote in a six person race is a good old fashioned ass whuppin'. There's no way to spin "we finished second" into anything like good news.

The strength of None Of The Above this close to the election is startling. I think a lot of those people are going to stay home. Back when I was a lad, Doonesbury would have several weeks of New Hampshire campaigning strips in the December before a presidential election, but being a political junkie now means getting a steady stream of Iowa news before Christmas and barely a week of New Hampshire stories before their little election is over and done. Given that old people vote in larger percentages than the young, None Of The Above looks like a symptom of the New Hampshire voters' depression over no longer being the prettiest girl at the dance.

Let me scrunch together all the enthusiasm I can muster over the race for second place. Okay. Now that I see it in a nice neat pile, that's not a lot of enthusiasm.

Let me state the obvious. Romney will be in first and Perry will be in sixth. I expect the few Bachmann voters in New Hampshire will throw their puny weight to Santorum, as will some of None Of The Above. This was supposed to be the state where Huntsman was going to finally make a showing over 10%, and while that is a possibility, he is going to be hard pressed to beat Paul or Santorum now. That means Gingrich and Huntsman are scrapping for fourth place. Newt might go higher, but the trend line is definitely down for him everywhere, as it has been since early December. That would say the top three finishers in New Hampshire might well be the same as Iowa, but this time with Romney far and away in the lead and the fight between Paul and Santorum being close.

We will see if any of the polls in the next four days put an exciting spin on these numbers, but really, when the guy in first is outpolling the next five guys combined, "exciting" really isn't an option.

You know who I miss? Ugg the Repug.

2012-01-04T08:04:00.000-08:00

Talking Points Memo, the left wing political news website, has shut down comments for the time being on all their stories. The place was hit hard by Ron Paul supporters (known to conservative detractors as Paultards and to progressive detractors as Ronulans) and for a while in December, all Ron Paul threads were comment free. Sadly, they have decided to shut down comments on all threads now, which means I will not get to hear from several clever commenters.

Easily one of my favorites is Ugg the Repug, a fellow who pretends to be a caveman pretending to be a Republican. Ugg has a limited understanding of English grammar but a finely tuned sense of humor. He laughs at his own jokes from time to time (Har har har!), but his jokes are funny with or without the Internet laugh track.

One can only hope the website will bring comments back as soon as possible. In my travels around the web, only the comment section on Princess Sparkle Pony is as much fun.

Results for the first prognostication:Not so good.

2012-01-04T05:35:00.000-08:00

I picked the order Paul, Romney, Santorum at the top of the Iowa Caucuses. It actually came out Romney and Santorum in a near dead heat for first and Paul many percentage points behind. I got the order of the also rans right, but missed their percentages. Let's go through the wreckage candidate by candidate.

1st place: Mitt Romney 24.6%

My prediction of 22% was off by 2.6%.

2nd place: Rick Santorum 24.5%

I predicted 19%, my big screw-up of the evening. I lose 5.5%.

3rd place: Ron Paul 21.4%

I was 1.6% too high with 23%.

4th place: Newt Gingrich 13.3%

Too high at 15%. I lose 1.7%

5th place: Rick Perry 10.3%

Much closer. Off by 0.3%

6th place: Michele Bachmann 5%

Once again, two points too high at 7%.

7th place: Jon Huntsman 0.6%

I thought he'd get about 3%. I overestimated the sanity of the Iowa caucus goer. I lose 2.4%

Others: 0.3%

I said 1%. Take the 3% I over-estimated Huntsman and the low end choices and give it to Romney.

What grade do I deserve? If we accumulate the percentage mistakes I made, I get an 83.9%, which I would call a B. I think that's a grade I can live with.

As for the places, There are eight positions, so if we say the basic adjustment is to switch two adjacent places, like second and third trading places, It would take sixteen such transpositions to go from completely backwards to correct. To make my list right, I need to switch Paul with Romney for the top spot, then switch Paul from second to third with Santorum. 14 right out of 16 would be 87.5%, about on the cusp of B and B+.

Of the two grading systems, I think the accumulated percentage mistakes is the fairest. As people drop out, getting the correct order of finish will get easier, though when it gets down to two candidates, then it becomes pass/fail.

So, unlike many other prognosticators, I will keep track of my grades. Could we lose a couple candidates soon? Signs point to yes. Perry slunk back off to Texas last evening, for example, and reality might even seep through Michele Bachmann's caked on make-up, touching the virgin territory of her brain. Every person who leaves the race makes my job slightly easier.

And just to make myself feel a little better, I took the last seven polls taken in Iowa, adjusted the "None of the Above" down to zero, increased all the other percentages proportionally and took their grades on the caucuses. Here are the names of the companies, the date of the polls and their grades.

Rasmussen(12/28): 82%

NBC News/Marist (12/27-28): 81%

Des Moines Register (12/27-30): 81%

PPP (12/31-1/1): 80%

We Ask America (12/29): 74%

ARG (12/29-1/1): 68%

Insider Advantage (1/1): 62%

As you can see, polling as close to the actual date wasn't much help. Insider Advantage flat out sucked asking people on New Year's Day, while Rasmussen did the best when they packed up their tent on December 28. Everybody underestimated Santorum.

My next prediction will be next Monday before New Hampshire votes on Tuesday.

Prognostication #1 for 2012: The Iowa caucus

2012-01-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

Okay, Matty Boy has been crunching the numbers and is ready to predict the Iowa caucuses being held tomorrow. I will also come back on Wednesday to show how brilliantly I did or how badly I sucked.

1st place: Ron Paul 23%

2nd place: Mitt Romney 22%

3rd place: Rick Santorum 19%

4th place: Newt Gingrich 15%

5th place: Rick Perry 10%

6th place: Michele Bachmann 7%

7th place: Jon Huntsman 3%

Others: 1%

This will officially start the Santorum Surge. It will be another bubble. Gingrich's time in the sun is going to be hard to hold onto if he finishes fourth (or worse) here are gets pounded in New Hampshire, which are the likely outcomes. I thought he peaked at the right time in December, but I did not anticipate just how strong the animus towards him would be from so many quarters and how much money they were willing to spend to neutralize him.

Overall, I think Romney is the nominee. Some polls have shown people's second choice candidates, and Romney is doing better as a second choice than I thought he would. The one power player who still hates Romney is Rush Limbaugh, but he has been known to take 180° turns in the past. I can't predict there will be a third party candidate who can pick up 10% or more of the vote, but if there is, it favors Obama.

Of course, all that is long range crystal ball stuff. Back on Wednesday to crow from the rooftops or to eat crow. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm @ConfidenceOfVic, short for Confidence of Victory, the name I gave my statistical method that can be used in races with two or three main candidates.

Too many numbers? This looks like a job for... a professional mathematician!

2011-12-30T06:26:00.000-08:00

Four opinion polls tracking the Iowa caucus vote came out yesterday. All of them were either taken on December 28 exclusively or ended on December 28. The news reports are saying they are all over the place, which is true. Who should you trust?

Well, you should trust Matty Boy, professional mathematician.

I have put the polls from left to right, ARG, Insider Advantage, NBC News/Marist and Rasmussen. It just so happens that's alphabetical order, but more importantly the order goes from the highest number of "none of the above" to lowest, marked by the black line. My assumption is that less than one week out from a caucus, that number shouldn't be very high anymore. Caucusing in Iowa is a real commitment of time, and there shouldn't be 10% or more of the people planning to attend still on the fence.

So, tip #1: Less undecided equals more reliable.

Notice whose numbers rise as undecided fall, Paul and Santorum. To a lesser extent, Perry and Romney do better as more people make up their minds.

Notice whose numbers tank as the undecided fall, Gingrich and Bachmann. Earlier in the week, a Gingrich spokesman said they would be happy finishing fifth in Iowa. I thought that was a mighty low hurdle, but his internal numbers must have been looking like these.

Huntsman is making no effort at all in Iowa. Does that make sense? The caucuses produce ZERO delegates to the national convention, just delegates to a state convention. Yeah, Huntsman is probably shepherding his limited resources wisely.

I'll wait until Sunday to make a prediction for Tuesday, but my guess right now is Romney and Paul jockeying for first, Santorum alone in third, Perry over Gingrich for fourth and Bachmann trailing badly in sixth. Some jackass is putting out radio ads asking people to caucus for Palin, though her money is not connected to this turkey. I seriously doubt the Palin "grassroots" will even catch Bachmann, and will likely not do as well as Huntsman. The folks in Iowa like being fussed over.

A ukelele and a tiara? Cute overload to be sure.

2011-12-29T14:11:00.001-08:00

Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt sing and play What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?
Pretty darned adorable.

So what did you get for your birthday?

2011-12-29T08:20:00.000-08:00

My ex-roommate Art sent me this evidence that Sauron was a Republican. Always nice to have important information you can share.

And my blog hero Princess Sparkle Pony gave me "All four sparkly hooves AND a combable tail way, way up!"

Technically, this wasn't a birthday present, but instead thanks for finding this 48 year old picture of Sue Storm, the Invisible Girl from the Fantastic Four. Her very early haircut is remarkably similar to that of Callista Gingrich, Princess Sparkle Pony's latest hairdo crush. I just happen to be the exact right age to remember this sort of thing, in grade school when this came out and not yet showing signs of senile dementia.

And just how old am I? That information is given out on a need to know basis and you, gentle reader, do not need to know.

The first three weeks of December for Gallup tracking.

2011-12-28T15:04:00.000-08:00

This is a graph of how the Republican candidates for president have fared for the first three weeks of December, according to Gallup tracking. (Note: Gallup tracking polls run over many days and I have picked the opening day of the poll to be the date where the numbers are marked. You can click for a larger version.) This is a national poll, so it can be argued that it is meaningless, but I think the trends are meaningful.

The blue line at the top, sliding downward, is Newt Gingrich's popularity. The (relatively) steady red line in second is Mitt Romney. The slowly rising black line in third is None of the Above, now over 20% and just one small surge away from overtaking the leaders. Ron Paul in green dominates the also rans, while Perry has overtaken Bachmann and Santorum still leads Huntsman by a few percentage points at the bottom.

The first two races where delegates are chosen will look nothing like this. In the Iowa caucuses, it's assumed to be Paul and Romney in the lead with Gingrich in third. Romney will lap the field in New Hampshire barring a miracle. Gingrich is hoping to hold onto his quickly fading momentum and make a good showing when the race goes south to South Carolina and Florida, but those races are many 24 hour news cycles away.

The interesting twists and turns will come when lesser candidates drop out and their support moves around. You would think that all people not supporting Romney would move their support to another Not Romney, but there have are polls showing second choices indicating he will pick up some support when the time comes. The fascinating thing to me is the strength of None of the Above at this late date and how many candidates are saying they could not possibly support some rival or another, though most of it is anti-Ron Paul sentiment.

Bill Clinton has the quote "Democratic primary voters fall in love and Republican primary voters fall in line." The establishment has been in favor of Romney for awhile, but he's having a hell of a time getting more than one in four Republican voters to join his bandwagon. With all the bitter recrimination, it a distinct possibility we will see a third party candidate from the pool of Republican also rans. Whether that candidate will be the standard third party no-hoper pulling in single digit percentages around the country or someone like Ross Perot or George Wallace who really throws a monkey wrench into the works, only time will tell.

I quit just in time.

2011-12-28T09:23:00.000-08:00

I stopped doing my gossip rag blog earlier this month for a number of reasons, but large among them was the steady stream of nonsense about reality TV. While I truly hated Teen Mom, I was also getting very tired of the Kims and Kendras, the Real Housewives and the countless permutations of Bachelors and Bachelorettes.

Because I quit then, I will not have to be looking for this new eleventh entry into the supermarket gossip rag field. The National Enquirer's parent company American Media Inc. has just launched Reality Weekly, nothing but the dreck from the bottom and the scum from the top of the reality TV cesspool.

I teach for a living, which in some ways is an optimistic profession, hoping to impart the important knowledge of our society to the young people. I have no doubt that math must be included in that category of important information. But under that surface optimism, I have a deep well of pessimism. As one of my favorite professors Victor Manjarrez often said, "We don't deserve to survive as a species."

Is that all they want? Heck, I can do that.

2011-12-27T11:20:00.000-08:00

Do you go to Wikipedia a lot? Yeah, me too. I realize that for information on controversial stuff it can be a little iffy, but if I want to know know something general, it's a great place to start.

They have had the "personal appeals" banner up for several weeks, but today it was a picture of Jimmy Wales saying they needed the people who were reading this post to send in five bucks and they would be in the black.

My finances are in good enough shape, so I sent them $25.

If you use Wiki a lot - and for me it's in the top five sites I use for information, alongside imdb.com, The You Tubes, WolframAlpha, and the gosh darned Google itself - see if you have some spare change for these worthy beggars.

It can't be Boxing Day without...

2011-12-26T16:20:00.000-08:00

I didn't have to write his name, right? You knew when you clicked on the link.

Taking a break from Patrick O'Brian and reading Raymond Chandler.

2011-12-25T14:49:00.000-08:00

As I have mentioned earlier, I've been reading a lot of Patrick O'Brian's novels about the British Navy during the Napoleonic era, featuring Captain Jack Aubrey and the surgeon, naturalist and spy Stephen Maturin. I would have gladly jumped straight into The Truelove after finishing The Nutmeg of Consolation, but my lovely nephew Eli asked what I wanted for Christmas and I told him I'd love the next book in the series. (Fine lad that he is, he got me both The Truelove and The Wine-Dark Sea, both hardbound. Thanks again, Eli.)

This left me with a week without any O'Brian, so I rummaged through my books and found The Big Sleep, the first novel by Raymond Chandler, probably more famous as the source material for the movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I thought I had read it before but I was wrong. Almost all the characters in the book make it to the film, minus a few cops and investigators who work for the D.A., but who kills whom and why are jumbled up quite a bit.

O'Brian is like a pleasant wine enjoyed with friends, while Chandler is a bottle of rye whiskey drunk alone. Chandler is great with surfaces. Many beginnings of scenes feel like they could be set-ups found in screenplays. O'Brian has skill with description as well, but far exceeds Chandler when it comes to the interior lives of the characters. We get inside the heads of Aubrey and Maturin in the O'Brian novels, but only inside Marlowe's head in Chandler's work, and it is a very dark place indeed. While Maturin's character is darker than Aubrey's, compared to Marlowe, Maturin is as cheery as Bertie Wooster. Marlowe has few pleasures and alcohol is the first and foremost, though he often regrets it long before any hangover.

The Big Sleep revolves around two sisters, Carmen and Vivian Sternwood, young, pretty, rich, spoiled and involved in pornography and drugs. In 2011, I couldn't read about them and not think about girls named Hilton and Kardashian, and that makes the book harder to take seriously. At least Chandler did not have their mother pimping them out. That would be too dark even for him.

There were a slew of movies made from Chandler's novels in the 1940s, but the production code made it impossible to tell his stories verbatim. There was a revival of Philip Marlowe in the 1970's, including a somewhat more accurate version of The Big Sleep. I say somewhat because it was set in London instead of Los Angeles - L.A. is a major character in Chandler's work - and Marlowe is played by Robert Mitchum, who is twenty to thirty years too old for the part. It is also written and directed by Michael Winner, the 1970s version of Michael Bay, the king of the hacks.

Would I recommend Chandler? I still would. His reliance on simile and metaphor may feel cliched now, but he's the original source. It's not his fault that so many writers that followed use him as a template, because he and James M. Cain are the most readable of the early writers whose works turn into film noir. It's an important cultural touchstone.

That said, I will have a smile on my face when I re-board Captain Aubrey's ship. Whatever the perils they face, there is honor and duty and friendship, as well as toasted cheese and violin-cello duets.

What Tim Tebow did not say today.

2011-12-24T14:07:00.000-08:00

Hi, my name is Tim Tebow. I play professional sports. I am a Christian and my faith informs all aspects of my life.

My team, the Denver Broncos, won six games in a row, many in exciting comebacks in which my play was key. I praised God and other Christians put me forward as a sign not only of Christ's love but of Christian superiority.

The Broncos have now lost two games in a row. The first loss was to the honestly superior Patriots. I ran for two touchdowns but passed for none, and our defense was unable to stop the Patriots.

This week we played the Bills, a team that on paper should not be our superior. I ran for a touchdown and threw for another, but I also threw four interceptions and was as instrumental in causing this loss as I was in causing several wins.

The reason is simple. God cares little who wins sporting events. God does not root for Notre Dame or Texas Christian or the people who always give him praise. God does not root against those who forget to point skyward or fall on one knee after a touchdown. He has more important things to do than care if a field goal is kicked true or is pulled to the right.

God loves me when I win and when I lose. There are people of faith rooting for any given team playing a sport in America, and God does not plan a win to raise the victorious fans up or plot a loss to cause grief and teach humility to His faithful who root for the loser.

It's just a game and there are more important things in life. Most important is how we treat our fellow man.

======

I'm not Tim Tebow, I'm Matthew Hubbard. Tim Tebow did not write this. He's too rock fucking stupid to realize this.

Here endeth the lesson. Happy holidays.

The Anyone But Mitt Primary.

2011-12-18T03:20:00.000-08:00

It was two weeks ago, back when the Heisman Trophy was topical and Newt Gingrich was the hot new front runner, that J.D. Crowe of the Mobile Register drew this political cartoon and NPR put it up on their website.

For those of you who don't pay attention to college football, Robert Griffin III of Baylor won the Heisman last weekend. For those of you who don't pay attention to politics, Newt Gingrich is doing a Donald Trump impression. When Trump was ahead in the national polls, most state polls had him in second or worse. The same is true for Newt in the early contests. Romney is polling well in Iowa and some polls say Ron Paul will be second and Gingrich third. New Hampshire looks like a landslide for Romney and again, some polls are showing Ron Paul surging and Gingrich fading.

For those of you wondering why Gingrich has pointy ears and curly pointy shoes in this cartoon, I was kind of wondering about that myself.

Can Ron Paul be the next Anyone But Mitt? He is showing the largest surge over the past week or two. Paul's biggest obstacle is that the "no foreign aid" plank in his platform really translates in today's political landscape into "screw Israel", a position that makes more enemies than it does friends all over the political spectrum.

I can't bring myself to say that Mitt is inevitable. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have been beating him up a lot. Let's recall that John McCain was not the number one choice of the social conservatives in 2008, but instead he was the pragmatic choice who the rank and file thought could win. He ran a truly awful campaign and lost in a landslide. Mitt can do better against Obama than McCain did if it's a two man race, but if the social conservatives get their panties in a twist and put up a third party candidate, Obama gets a second term in a walk.

Moved my money.

2011-12-14T14:32:00.000-08:00

You might remember that whole general strike in Oakland last month. I went down to the main protest at midday and listened to some speakers. One guy was very adamant about moving our money out of large banks.

I've been thinking about this for a while, but my general lethargy kept me from doing it. This was a good wake-up call, partly because Chase has been nickel and diming me and more to the point, Chase is one of the companies that put all of us in the mess we now find ourselves in.

I was thinking about a credit union until a colleague at Mills talked up Mechanics Bank. They have been around forever and they are a local bank. They did not get involved in all the craziness of the early part of this century. They invest locally. Their closest branch isn't that far from my house and better still, they promise to pay any ATM fee any other bank charges. My plan is to use their ATM as often as possible and only impose on their generosity in special cases.I took so long to write this because I've been moving my money slowly, but the last check I wrote on the Chase account cleared today, so I got a cashier's check and will be depositing it in my Mechanics account this week, an account I opened about a month ago, so there will no longer be long holds on the checks I deposit. Because I have direct deposit and because I'm a geezer, Mechanics has no monthly fees.I do a lot of stuff to make my life simpler and to have a smaller negative impact on the world, from recycling to not having a car, even not having a cell phone and giving money to those swine. This is a good step in that direction and if you can make it work in your life, I recommend this move to all my readers.

Ending one hobby and starting another.

2011-12-12T18:15:00.000-08:00

Those of you who read the gossip blog know that I pulled the plug on it last Thursday. I learned a lot about the gossip rags in two years, but almost all of it is useless information. Too much reality TV, too many stories with a single source (some of those sources vindictive, others batshit crazy, like the woman who claimed Justin Bieber impregnated her), too many flat out lies, not enough stuff to keep me interested.

As good as Kim Kardashian looks in a bikini - and I honestly think this shot is as iconic as Ursula Andress in Doctor No or Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. - she's just not worth the trouble, as many professional athletes have figured out before I did at a much higher price.

So with a lot of extra time on my hands, I've started a new hobby and a blog to follow it called Geometric Decorations. I bought a bunch of plastic pieces in simple geometric shapes and I am painting them and connecting them, either with two sided tape or with glue. The first set of objects I am either giving to friends and family as gifts or keeping them for my own reference.

This first one is an ornament, taped and then painted.

Here is the opposite side, which I painted with different colors.

The hard plastic pieces I bought don't take well to super glue, so I have to use two sided tape to connect them. I also have soft plastic pieces I used to make my tessellation artwork, and they take to super glue like nobody's business. This piece was painted with acrylic then glued together. It's sturdy enough to be handled and the acrylic and glue are very easy to work with, especially compared to spray paint and two sided tape.

Here is yet another soft plastic piece, yet again with a rainbow motif.

Because the hard plastic was so fussy, I glued them back to back before taping. The soft plastic glues so easily, I did this experiment to see if single thickness gluing would work, and it worked remarkably well. Mathy folks might recognize this as a second iteration Sierpinski's gasket.

I'm going to put all the work up on the Geometric Decorations blog as it becomes ready. I'll likely give it a plug here every once in a while in hopes of starting some traffic over there.

So far, I'm having lots of fun, which I believe is the point of having a hobby in the first place.

Does watching a mean dog get tortured count as wholesome entertainment?

2011-12-11T04:02:00.001-08:00

I don't have my TV hooked up to cable or an antenna, so I only hear about the GOP debates after the fact. From what I understand, they are getting ratings that would do reality TV shows proud. After all, if it's fun to watch stupid young women make bad life choices, it might be fun (if less sexy) to watch middle aged (and older) men do the same thing.

And, oh yeah, they have one woman in the crowd and she's batshit crazy. Every reality show needs its own Nene Leakes or Amber Portwood.

If you have paid even the smallest amount of attention, you know the primaries are boiling down to Mitt Romney vs. PleaseDearGodNotMittRomney. Several people in the second category had their moments in the sun - Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain - but all of them were weighed in the balance and found wanting. Now the top ranked PleaseDearGodNotMittRomney is Newt Gingrich.

Why wasn't he first in line? He has more experience and knowledge than Trump, Bachmann, Perry and Cain combined.

For the truly grumpy wing of the Republican party, that is almost his biggest flaw.

His other big flaw for the ideologically pure is what he has done since he left office. He lobbied for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which for many conservatives replaced the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire. He made a mint lobbying for health care reform. He supported government action to combat climate change.

As George Will has put it, he is the perfect rental politician.

Will is not the only conservative voice speaking against Gingrich. Will is "old establishment", but Gingrich also has an enemy in Glenn Beck, a frothing ideologue who wants purity above all. (Beck loves Rick Santorum, comparing him to George Washington, an analogy that completely escapes me.) Among other conservative voices speaking against him are Ann Coulter and Karl Rove.

Newt has a real talent for making enemies.

He does have two large allies, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Limbaugh has made it clear he doesn't accept Romney as a conservative, so he has to pick someone from the rest of the kennel, and Newt is the one with the least fleas. Fox News is more fickle, and if the tide turns against Newt they might well throw him under the bus, even though he worked for them earlier this year. (Sarah Palin still works for them, but she is mocked by other on-air Fox News personalities with impunity now.)

In many ways, conservative "ideology" is a list of people and things you have to hate. It could be said that conservatives love Israel, but that morphs into hating Palestinians very easily. On this point Gingrich is scoring points. As a new convert to Catholicism, Gingrich hates abortion enough, but it is unclear whether the red meat wing of the party will believe he hates immigrants (both legal and illegal), global warming and Washington deal-making with sufficient fervor.

So far, the four previous PleaseDearGodNotMittRomneys had their rises and falls and the established wisdom is that each lasts about six weeks. If that holds, Gingrich has an advantage. His six weeks coincide with the start of the primary season and actual delegates being distributed. Wins in early primaries and caucuses could give him momentum that will make his front runner status last longer, perhaps even become permanent.

I mentioned two Gingrich allies, Limbaugh and Fox News, but I forgot to mention another non-conservative, Bill Clinton. He has kind words for his former competitor and sometimes collaborator. There is talk that there is bad blood between Clinton and Obama, but I think this is just Clinton going back to his Southern roots, not to support a fellow white Southerner, but instead to invoke a Brer Rabbitt moment, begging the Republicans not to throw his party into the briar patch.

In the general election, Newt Gingrich, mean, petty, condescending, vain, venal with a history of unfaithfulness, both personal and political, will get sliced up worse than John McCain did. Currently, the polls put him slightly ahead right now in Georgia against Obama. If he's nominated, I'm convinced he will be an underdog to win his home state next November and take a hammering that throws his already shattered party into even greater turmoil.

Some favorite phrases from the books of Patrick O'Brian.

2011-12-09T15:37:00.001-08:00

I am deeply enjoying reading the books of Patrick O'Brian, the English author whose series of novels about the British Navy during the Napoleonic era are sometimes called "the Aubrey and Maturin books", named for his two protagonists. My friend Mike Strickland has said that this is the greatest heterosexual bromance in 20th Century literature, and even an irascible mathematician such as myself can find no counter-example.

The stories center around Jack Aubrey, who begins the series as a lieutenant but soon rises to the post of captain, and Stephen Maturin, a man of many talents, surgeon, naturalist and British intelligence operative. Aubrey and Maturin are as different as chalk and cheese, but they are the best of friends through good times and bad, each of them willing and capable of risking life, limb and property to aid the other should he be in distress.

O'Brian is a great stylist as well as a fine writer of good old stirring naval action in the tradition of the Horatio Hornblower series. He has many phrases he repeats often, and I have come to look upon these phrases as old friends. Here are ten off the top of my head.

Popery. The most commonly used word in the books for Catholicism. Usually used by non-Catholics, but Maturin, Irish born and half Catalan by blood, is Catholic and even he uses the phrase when talking to his many non-Catholic friends.

Topgallantmasts. O'Brian is a remarkable researcher, and he loves the details of the rigging of the ship. There are often paragraphs full of the precise sails being used at a given point in a voyage. I've learned these paragraphs can usually be replaced by the phrase "They were sailing very fast", but where's the style in that?

Carronades and nine pounders. Remember what I wrote about O'Brian and his love of the sails? He loves the guns aboard ship, too, and researched them just as carefully.

Coffee and toasted cheese. Food plays a major part in the books, and coffee and toasted cheese is a common breakfast for both Aubrey and Maturin when they are aboard ship.

"Shall we play some music tonight, brother?" Perhaps the most important thing Aubrey and Maturin have in common is a love for music. Aubrey plays the violin and Maturin the cello, and while they may not be the best of musicians, the hours together playing and improvising are among the best times for both of them.

The happy Surprise. Many of the books take place aboard the H.M.S. Surprise, almost always under the command of Aubrey. He is a just captain and not given to lots of flogging. He likes the ship clean but he is not obsessed with it. The one point of naval order he is obsessive about is getting the guns to fire quickly and accurately, so there are many drills with the guns. The men like the smoke and noise and they like sailing with Lucky Jack Aubrey, who wins many battles that he easily could have lost. When the Surprise is commissioned, it's an average sized boat, but both the French and the British start building bigger boats with more guns. The Surprise is considered fit for mothballs for many a book in the series, but Aubrey still commands her and wins battles with her, capturing prizes that increase the pay of the crew, yet another reason the ship is called "the happy Surprise".

Testudo aubreii. Maturin discovers a previously unidentified species of tortoise and names it for his friend Jack Aubrey, Testudo aubreii. A lot of characters in the books are naturalists, and you can tell how keen they are by whether or not the Testudo aubreii is known to them.

"Like smoke and oakum". This is Jack Aubrey's favorite phrase for "we were going really fast".

"Never in life." This is Stephen Maturin's favorite phrase for "No, I would not."

"I give you joy". This is everyone's favorite for congratulations on some good news. If either Aubrey or Maturin is saying it to the other, it is "I give you joy, brother". Their true friendship is one of the great treasures of the books.

If you are already a reader of Aubrey and Maturin books, let me give you joy, brother, or if it is the case, let me give you joy, dear lady. If you are not a reader, I give them my highest recommendation. Many fans say you must start with the first book and read all the way through, but impatient lubber that I am, I wanted to read about Maturin seeing the Galapagos, so I started with The Far Side of the World, one of the later novels, and now have gone through the next four after that, The Reverse of the Medal, The Letter of Marque, The Thirteen Gun Salute and The Nutmeg of Consolation. I will likely read until the end and then start over at the beginning.

The nastiest heartbreak in fantasy football throws me into the popcorn machine.

2011-12-05T20:36:00.001-08:00

Every week in fantasy football, you can rank yourself against the other teams as to how many points you scored. If you score more than anyone, logic dictates you will win. If you are the second highest scorer, the only way you can lose is to be matched up against the highest scorer.

Welcome to my week.

Spyder's Domain, a team that will not make the playoffs, is officially my nemesis now after beating me this evening, 251.20 to 241.16. I had some chances, but Maurice Jones-Drew had a merely excellent game instead of a freaking awesome one, and that was the difference at the end.

I could have remained in second place if my brother Michael, the first seed in our league, had won his last game of the season, but he scored less than anybody else.

Logic dictates that if you score less than everybody else, you are destined to lose.

So unless there are score adjustments tomorrow that overthrow a victory somewhere, the Mutant Mercenaries will finish a respectable third place in the league and get thrown into the popcorn machine, the opening round of the playoffs. My opponent will be Vick's Money Store, the only team to make the playoffs with a losing record. I also started my big winning streak against the same team back in Week 6.

This is going to be fun.

Brave Last Dave update: Still sucking eggs with four weeks left.

2011-12-04T21:16:00.001-08:00

As I most recently mentioned last May, I joined a deadpool this year. The idea is to come up with a list of 40 famous people before the beginning of a calendar year that you think will die before the end of that calendar year. I don't like thinking about that very much, so I let the supermarket rags do most of my thinking for me, if that is the proper verb. The Enquirer, Globe and the low rent Examiner predict someone is going to die quite often, so I trimmed down the list of people they marked for death that hadn't died by last New Year's Eve and submitted the list to the alt.obituaries deadpool.

By early spring, the list of hits I had was this.

Miss Anne Francis
Miss Elizabeth Taylor

The list of hits I have now... is exactly the same. Not a single correct prediction since Liz died. Currently in 61st place out of 70 people who have hits.

In simpler terms, sucking stinky eggs.

I'm going to put in another list for 2012. A lot of the people on my list from 2011 list will be on my 2012 list because they were rude enough to survive. I'll trim off some names I never really thought were in mortal danger and pick some of the people marked for death for the first time this year.

Example: did you know the great country singer Miss Kitty Wells is still alive? Me neither! She's 92 and she's on my list for 2012.

If Miss Wells or a fan of hers stumbles upon this blog, I'd like to remind them just how bad my record is and there are people older than she is who are on my list and still among the living.

Example: Zsa Zsa Gabor. What exactly is keeping that tough old bird on this side of the lawn? Experts can't agree.

So here I am having fun being in a deadpool. To be honest, it's not my weirdest hobby, but it's in the top three for sure.

A suggestion for Netflix.

2011-12-02T17:33:00.001-08:00

Currently, Netflix has a five star system. Notably, three stars means "I liked it" and two stars means "I didn't like it".

I would like to suggest another option in between them, which we will call two and a half stars.

Two and a half stars will mean "My ambivalence about this film causes me to explain the many dichotomies in my feelings in Proustian length and detail, and if I may be immodest, in Proustian literary merit as well."

That's what two and a half stars would mean to me.

New blog: Geometric Decorations

2011-11-27T20:04:00.001-08:00

I have started a new blog titled Geometric Decorations. The idea started with the geometric pieces I have been using for tessellations over the past few months. Now, instead of making a pattern, taking a picture then dismantling it, I am going to create pieces. Another difference is that I am going to paint the pieces myself so I have a choice of colors. To the left is the third piece I've made, sub-titled The Lucky Die Roll and given as a gift to my good friend Jodi Soares. I have a copy of the game Robo Rally with hand painted pieces Jodi made, a prized possession. I can only hope she is half as happy now with this as I am with her work all these years later.

I'm going to add Geometric Decorations to my blog buddy list, so if you like these pieces you can click on the link when it climbs to the top of the list, which it will every time I complete a piece. My idea is that the pieces I make this year will either be gifts for friends or pieces for my personal collection. If I'm happy with the work at the end on the month, I will make more for sale to the general public.

Let me note that the pictures I have on this new blog will be very large so people can click on the bigger size to get a better view. This means it will load slowly, so be warned.

The most popular single thing I've added to the Web.

2011-11-26T03:24:00.001-08:00

Last year, the song Ghost Riders in the Sky was on heavy rotation in my brain, so I went over to iTunes to plunk down 99 cents to get a version. I listened to several choices, including Vaughn Monroe, Johnny Cash and Dick Dale, but the one that really impressed me was an early version by Burl Ives. I did a little research and discovered his recording of the song in February 1949 was the first available to the public, released about a month before Vaughn Monroe's version with his band The Moon Men became a huge hit. (Stan Jones wrote the tune in 1948.)

I went over to the You Tubes and saw that this version wasn't available. I played around with the iMovie software and put the song into a very simplistic video format, the tune as the soundtrack over still pictures being moved like Ken Burns sometimes does in his documentaries.

In 14 months, there have been over 100,000 visits to the song, 91 comments, the overwhelming majority positive, 634 likes and 1 dislike.

To put 100,000 visits in perspective, a new Maru video can get that in a week. Over the past 14 months, this blog has had over 200,000 visits and the silly gossip blog has had over 600,000 hits. Comparing a single YouTube song to a blog is apples and oranges, because I've posted hundreds of things here over the same time period, while there is only one reason to visit the recording.

If you haven't heard it yet, here is the link to YouTube. If you like the song, I think you'll like this version, very simple and sparse and very well done by Burl as a solo artist, just his voice and his acoustic guitar.

Complex football for November, both real and imaginary.

2011-11-21T21:06:00.001-08:00

I promised to get back to my readers, assuming the species still exists, about the prospects for the local football franchises come early December. It's late November and I can confirm what I thought to be the case in early October.

This could be the year.

The 49ers are not mathematically a lock to be in the playoffs yet, but they are statistically a lock. They could still have a massive collapse and one of the teams in their division could catch fire. Because I am a cautious person, I will say the chance of a Niner collapse is remote but possible. I just can't see any team in their division starting to play well enough to catch them. The most likely 49er outcome is breezing to the division title and at least one home playoff game in January. In other words, the brie eating, chardonnay drinking 49er fans get to be as smug as they were in the heyday.

The Raiders are not as clear a lock, but they are on top of their division and playing well. They have real hope of making the playoffs here in late November, instead of their recent pattern of sucking and making their fans miserable.

Doesn't suck to be a Bay Area football fan.

And then there are the Mutant Mercenaries, my fantasy football team. From 1-4 in early October to 7-4 now, in second place due to favorable tiebreakers.

The bad news is the next game is against my brother Michael's team, Cruel Dave, top of the league and on a ten game win streak since I traded Aaron Rodgers to him. (I swear to Lenny, it looked like a good idea at the time.) If I lose, I can wave goodbye to second place with only one week left. On the other hand, the chance to make the playoffs looks solid.

Still, the moral of this story is simple.

Winning football, real or fantasy, feels pretty good.

It's mighty quiet.

2011-11-20T19:10:00.001-08:00

If you haven't seen the protest against the chancellor of UC Davis, click on this video.

Hard to believe they could get a crowd of people that young to hold it together so well. The chancellor has to know her humiliation has circled the globe several times by now.

The politically expedient action at the state level in California is to leave taxes alone and raise fees. This is a slowly boiling pot that is now destroying the chance for the middle class to get a quality education for their kids without going into massive debt. Of all the goals of the Occupy Wall Street crowd, keeping public education a viable and reasonably priced option is nearest and dearest to my heart, in part because I had the chance to get just such an education and in part because I work in public higher education.

There needs to be a massive shake-up in the UC system. I don't know who can force her to quit if anyone, but if it's the regents or the governor, it's time for them to do the right thing if she is unwilling. The upper echelons at UC Berkeley need to be removed as well.

New blog buddy. One I have known for a good long time.

2011-11-20T18:15:00.001-08:00

My dad, the gosh darned pater familias, has started a blog of his own called The Middle American Party. The self-described Lincoln Republican (completely unfair title, he never voted for Lincoln) believes it's time for a third party more to the middle. His first goal is balancing the budget and after that, he wants national health care and free education through college or trade school for all citizens.

If you want to read what he thinks in his own words, you can click on the link above.

Fall Dance Party 2011

2011-11-17T05:48:00.001-08:00

Get This Party Started Pink
Burning Down the House Talking Heads
Secret Agent Man Johnny Rivers
Can't Stop Killing You Kirsty MacColl
Dust My Broom Elmore James
Lady Marmalade Labelle
Ranking Full Stop The English Beat
I Wish Stevie Wonder
Valerie Amy Winehouse
Pata Pata Myriam Makeba
Be Thankful for What You've Got Portrait
1999 Prince

Fall began nearly two months ago and I just get around to the Fall Dance Party. Work has me busier than a pair of jumper cables at a funeral. It's a strong selection this season, music from the 60s through to modern day. There are some slow dances with Amy and Portrait, but also a lot of songs where the Padre Mickey Rule could be invoked, where a list is terminated because it's not going to get any better. I for one wouldn't dream of getting up on stage after Miss Patti or Stevie or Myriam, but the party continues to the end, when Prince gives us a finale.

I wouldn't go on stage after the Purple One either, for that matter.

Get on up and dance if you feel like it. That's kind of the point.

Bun in the Oven Alert™! Wait, which blog is this again?

2011-11-13T05:37:00.001-08:00

Oh, yeah, this is my regular blog, not the silly gossip blog.

But this is not silly gossip! My adorable niece Holly and her handsome husband Cleavon are expecting their first child in the spring, late April or early May. She's doing just dandy so far and reports no particular odd cravings, except that burritos are off the menu for a while.

Best wishes to all concerned. Usually when I write that sentence on the other blog, I am completely not concerned, but this time I definitely count as family and friends, and I couldn't be happier for them.

Gene Simmons is never wrong.

2011-11-09T22:42:00.000-08:00

If you've ever wondered what Gene Simmons looks like without make-up, here it is.

Not a pretty picture.

If you've ever wonder about the deep thoughts of Gene Simmons, you are making a bigger mistake than wondering what he looks like without make-up.

Gene Simmons is a Rick Perry fan.

Yes, the best bass player KISS ever had (and the only bass player KISS ever had) made a proclamation in August that there really wasn't any need for the electoral college or even an election, he liked Rick Perry and whoever he has liked since 1988 has become president. End of story.

Except for the slight problem that when Rick Perry doesn't look bombed out of his mind getting sloppy over syrup (last week), Rick has brain farts so stinky, you can smell them in your living room when watching him on TV (mere hours ago).

Nice try, Gene, and thanks for playing. Leave the deep thinking to someone else.

Nerd joke.

2011-11-09T05:57:00.000-08:00

And who is getting credit for this nerd-infused pun?

Nerd god George Takei.

Good on ya, Mr. Sulu.

Joe Frazier, 1944-2011

2011-11-08T00:57:00.000-08:00

Joe Frazier, who won the undisputed heavyweight crown by beating Muhammad Ali in Madison Square Garden in 1971, has died at the age of 67 of liver cancer.

I will readily admit my money was on Ali that night and for many years I thought Frazier was ungracious towards Ali. In retrospect, it was Ali who treated Frazier unfairly, labeling Joe an Uncle Tom when he was anything but. It wasn't Frazier's fault that the people who hated Ali needed someone to root for and their was no Great White Hope on the horizon, so many bigots had to pin their hopes on Frazier. Frazier had also given Ali financial help earlier in their careers, so Ali's taunts were a very personal betrayal to Joe.

There's a line in the movie Gattaca about a competition between a genetically engineered man and his normal brother. They are swimming out from the shore and the normal brother leads his allegedly superior sibling all the way. When the genetically engineered brother finally gives up and asks how he lost, the normal one answers "I had no plan to swim back to shore." This is a metaphor for Ali-Frazier I. Frazier won a very hard fought battle that night and was never quite the same. Joe beat guys like Jerry Quarry, Ron Stander and Jimmy Ellis after this, but the rest of his career is defined by losing to both George Foreman and Ali twice.

Many boxing fans now consider Ali "The Greatest", his nickname for himself. This is in large part because Ali was lucky enough to be in his prime at a time when there were other great fighters at their peak who could test him. When I was a kid, Rocky Marciano was revered because he retired undefeated. Nowadays, Marciano is usually ranked under Ali even though Ali lost several times, largely because Marciano never had that great fight against another top boxer in his prime.

In the beginning of his career when he was still Cassius Clay, he faced a hard hitting Englishman named Henry Cooper who decked him. He also fought some underrated fighters who were tough as nails like George Chuvalo and Oscar Bonavena. (Frazier beat Chuvalo despite being decked twice in the second round.) But if Ali is The Greatest, it's because he proved it against great fighters in their prime, most notably two other deserving champions, Joe Frazier and George Foreman.

Best wishes to the friends and family of Smokin' Joe Frazier, one of the toughest and hardest hitting heavyweights who ever lived, from a fan.

Tesselations: Squares, hexagons and implied dodecagons.

2011-11-06T15:22:00.000-08:00

The aggrieved party.

2011-11-05T07:38:00.000-07:00

The modern Republican Party is more a list of complaints than an actual ideology. The deepest feelings of the typical Republican voter are his hatreds. Conventional wisdom says the complaints are a rejection of modernity, but I'd like to point out that Charles Darwin's 203th birthday is next year. His views on natural selection and the origin of species, the underlying principles of all biology today, are a little long in the tooth to be called "modern".

Modern Republicans hate a lot of stuff. They hate people who worship differently than they do, from a deep hatred of Muslims to a contempt for atheists to a dislike for Mormons. They hate science and fancy learning of all kinds and they hate being called ignorant. They hate government and taxes and career politicians. They hate abortion and they hate women who need help once their babies arrive. They hate people who look different from them or speak different languages, and they hate being called racists.

Enter Herman Cain. Cain is clever enough to understand that white guilt isn't just for quiche eating liberals anymore and he is currently riding high in the polls, with no major drop-off yet in spite of his current scandal for sexual harassment allegations and the probably more serious problems about his fledgling campaign ignoring some major campaign finance laws.

Herman Cain's skin may be several shades darker than that of the typical Republican voter, but deep down where it counts, they are much the same. Their hearts are as black as onyx. He hates almost all the right people and things. Unlike Rick Perry, he's not soft on illegal immigrants. Having Mexicans die on an electrocuted fence was allegedly a joke, he now says, but he still wants the electric fence. He does not give a shit who the leader of "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan" is, regardless of the fact that Uzbekistan is currently on our side in the not yet completed Global War or Terror. He doesn't care that "9-9-9" is a burden on the poor and won't come close to paying our bills.

That kind of stuff is for eggheads, and Herman is proudly not one of those.

His only weakness so far is that he didn't realize his position on abortion skates very close to being pro-choice. That's a course correction he can easily make.

More importantly for the modern Republican party, Herman Cain is not a career politician. The disdain for politicians runs across the political spectrum, as evidenced by Al Franken, Jesse Ventura and Michael Bloomberg, but the feeling is deeper in the right wing base, as we saw in 2008 when California Republicans nominated the no-hope candidates Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. It used to be a person had to have a serious resume to be a candidate, but that's no longer the case. Bloomberg is certainly a success, but Fiorina left a string of disasters in her wake, and Cain took a fifth rate pizza chain and turned it into a fifth rate pizza chain.

As usual, I am fascinated by the numbers. The early polls tell us very little about what will happen a year from now, but about a month ago, the votes for all the Republican candidates combined in the opinion polls added up to about 70%. A lot of people who weren't in the race made it clear they weren't getting in, the two most publicized being Chris Christie and Sarah Palin. The total percentages for all candidates shot up over the 90% range and Herman Cain replaced Rick Perry as the main challenger to Romney. Cain is still either in first or second place both in national polls and likewise in state polls, but now the total percentages are slipping backwards to about 85%. The malaise returns to the Republican base, though of course they hate the word "malaise", both for sounding too French and its association with Jimmy Carter, who never used the word in his famous speech.

No matter how hard they try, the Republican Party can't seem to find that perfect candidate, both mean enough and stupid enough to truly satisfy their new core voter. Herman Cain is just the best they can do right now. I'm sure stupider and meaner is coming, but probably not in time for the 2012 presidential election.

The sequence of events creates an epiphany.

2011-11-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

I've been writing my silly tabloid blog for 22 months now and this morning a feeling came over me that I really couldn't put into words even yesterday.

I actively detest Kim Kardashian and all she stands for.

Kim tweeted her divorce on Halloween, her marriage which started with a lavish bash televised over two nights ending in just 72 days. Why pick Halloween?

She didn't pick Halloween. She picked a Monday, the last day of the week when you can be sure the supermarket gossip rags can get a story in that will be printed by Wednesday and on the stands around the country on Thursday.

How can I be sure? Because I've seen the front covers this week and she is on seven of them, effectively the maximum possible. (There are a total of ten supermarket gossip rags, but two have a demographic that skews much older than the typical Kardashian fan and the last is only interested in the End of the World.)

Kim Kardashian is the poster girl for the 1%. She is near the money spigot without an ounce of talent, just a pretty smile, a nice set of tits and an enormous ass, which has come into fashion in some circles now. She is not "creating jobs", merely spending money foolishly. The young man with the sign standing in front of the portable toilet at the general strike today is 100% correct, the pointless pastimes of the idle rich are stealing from people who are just trying to make their way in the world.

Many people want to know what the point of Occupy Oakland is. There are certainly a lot of signs pointing in a lot of directions. But the facts are simple. The United States isn't broke, it's just broken. The ideas of community and commonwealth are derided by people who benefit from the many ways the few get rich and the many get screwed.

It's time for the many to ask for their fair share.

General strike in Oakland today.

2011-11-02T04:21:00.000-07:00

The general strike is today.

I'm taking the day off from both my teaching gigs in Oakland and I'll be down at Frank Ogawa Plaza several times today, around 9:00, marching from Laney at noon and back at 5:00 pm.

And in my copious free time I'll be prepping classes.

You know, because that's how teachers roll.

If you're in Oakland, I hope to see you down there.

Tesselations: Dodecagons, squares and implied hexagons

2011-10-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

General strike in Oakland, Wednesday, November 2.

2011-10-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

Re Occupied Oakland. General strike in Oakland on Wednesday.

2011-10-29T17:56:00.000-07:00

Frank Ogawa Plaza, a.k.a. Oscar Grant Plaza, is once again filled with people.

And this time we brought vuvuzelas!

To be fair, I shouldn't use the plural. This was the only visible (and audible) vuvuzela.

The theme last Wednesday included good looking and well behaved dogs.

This theme continues.

On Wednesday night, I noticed no smell of urine or weed.

This afternoon... no smell of urine.

If you get my drift.

At the steps in front of City Hall, speaker after speaker got up and gave call and response, talking about what they did to organize today in different parts of the city. This guy went to Fruitvale near International Boulevard.

What are they organizing, you might ask? A general strike in Oakland for this Wednesday. I have three jobs right now, but I can't say how many I'll have at the beginning of the year. My work situation is very tenuous and the future it doesn't look like it will get better any time soon.

All my work on Wednesday is in Oakland.

I will be on strike and I will be able to tell my students why this Monday.

This is a town where police tear gas peaceful protesters and IT DOESN'T WORK.

This is a town where a cop shoots an unarmed man in custody in the back, the video goes up on YouTube, some idiot L.A. jury gives the cop the least conviction possible and some even stupider L.A. judge gives the bastard the minimum sentence.

If you are down in the plaza on Wednesday, who knows? Maybe I'll see you there.

The done blowed up function hits close to home.

2011-10-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

You're not new here, are you? You know how I feel about numbers.

Okay, just so we are clear.

The other blog is still more popular than this one, but it has been fading recently. I check in on it today just out of idle curiousity and what do I see?The blog traffic today done BLOWED UP!!!!!!

(Click on picture for larger and done blowed uppy-er.)

My sitemeter data only keeps track of the last hundred entries, so I can't tell exactly what accounts for eight times more traffic today than yesterday, but the big excitement right now is this picture of Kate Middleton in a white bikini.

(Click for larger and just about equal hotness. She looks foine, as the young people say.)

A picture that is several years old and can be found in lots of places around the Internet.

But for some reason, people have decided MY nicked copy is the only one of earth and they are flocking to the site like it's a shrine to hot babe-ness.

Go figure.

The police try to Occupy Oakland. The people have other ideas.

2011-10-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

The neighborhood of 12th Street and Broadway is an easy bike ride from my apartment, one BART station north of my home station of Lake Merritt. Tonight, there were blocks of satellite trucks from the local stations, both those that broadcast in English and in Spanish.

The news is interested because yesterday in the wee small hours, the Oakland cops came in with tear gas to close down the campsite of Occupy Oakland, the area behind this fence, behind this handsome and well-behaved dog. As you can see, much of the grass turned brown. That will happen when you cover it for many days. I was there on Monday, the afternoon before the early morning crackdown. The place was clean and peaceful. There was no wafting scent of urine or herb. I hella (Heart) Oakland, but I will admit you can find those smells more often than you might like in many neighborhoods.

Not at the campsite on Monday. People were organizing to protect themselves. They were sharing food. They were playing chess. A peaceful assembly, not unlike that given to us as a right in our Constitution.

There were lots of signs. A woman was just finishing painting this one.

This father and son were nice enough to show both of these for my camera.

Yet another handsome and well-behaved dog, one of the definite themes I saw this evening.

And signs. Signs were a definite theme.

And a third theme. People ready for the fucking Oakland cops to show up again with tear gas.

I'm in this neighborhood at least once a week to pick up the headlines for the silly tabloid blog. I promise to bring my camera to keep track of the goings on.

Penrose patterns #13a and #13b : The clusters

2011-10-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

Cluster #1

Date: 23 October 2011

Type: Pattern

Number of tiles: 230

Color breakdown: 75, purple, 55 yellow, 100 blue

Shape breakdown: 130 darts, 100 kites

Kosher Penrose tiling rules: no

Cluster #2

Date: 23 October 2011

Type: Pattern

Number of tiles: 330

Color breakdown: 125, purple, 105 yellow, 100 blue

Shape breakdown: 175 darts, 155 kites

Kosher Penrose tiling rules: no

They remind me of military medals.

An enemy of the United States is dead. Where are the cheers from the loyal opposition?

2011-10-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

So Qadhafi is dead. At the end of the Reagan administration, a PanAm plane blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland and Libyan intelligence was linked to the act. A lot of people treated him like a buffoon or clown, but as I recall, many people saw Mussolini that way during his lifetime, but no one was confused about him being on the side of the bad guys.

But the Republicans today are the gang who can't shoot straight, and one of the least straight shooters is old Straight Talk Express himself, John McCain, aka Grumpy Grandpa Walnuts, who was sucking up to Mickey Rourke's slightly uglier twin barely more than two years ago. What could have possessed him?

And who showed him how to use Twitter?

I don't see how patriots can support these clowns.

This joke is aimed at maybe five people who read this blog.

2011-10-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

But then again as far as I know, the Penrose tile stuff is aimed at no one who reads this blog.

Ignoring that, here's the joke.

====

"Hey, buddy! We don't allow faster than light neutrinos in this bar!"

A neutrino walks into a bar.

Penrose patterns #12a and #12b : Fifteen stars in yellow and blue

2011-10-17T03:02:00.000-07:00

Fifteen Stars in Yellow & Blue #1

Date: 16 October 2011

Type: Pattern

Number of tiles: 130

Color breakdown: 75 yellow, 55 blue

Shape breakdown: 75 darts, 55 kites

Kosher Penrose tiling rules: no

Fifteen Stars in Yellow & Blue #2

Date: 16 October 2011

Type: Pattern

Number of tiles: 180

Color breakdown: 75 yellow, 105 blue

Shape breakdown: 75 darts, 105 kites

Kosher Penrose tiling rules: no

Stuff I Like: Boycott

2011-10-15T16:57:00.001-07:00

I've been renting movies I've seen before to see how I feel about them now. Boycott, the 2001 HBO film about the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott, is still near the top of my list for favorite films this century. The film stays close to the truth of the matter and is filled with excellent performances, starting at the top of the cast with my original adopted actor Jeffrey Wright as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Terrence Howard as his close friend, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy.

There are many people involved in the production of Boycott who would return to HBO to appear in the fantastic series The Wire. Most notable of these people is Clark Johnson, the director of Boycott and best known in front of the camera as Gus Haynes of the Baltimore Sun. He also has a cameo role here.

Boycott makes clear how important women were to the success of the protest, and best known of these women is Rosa Parks, wonderfully underplayed by Iris Little-Thomas.

The role of Coretta King is played by British actress Carmen Egojo, who like most Brits playing Yank nowadays shows absolutely no trace of an accent. She and Wright have a lovely scene at the beginning of the movie when he is trying to write a sermon and she puts on a record of Nat King Cole singing Walking My Baby Back Home, and the young couple dance very tenderly together.

In real life, Wright and Egojo are married and have a child.

CCH Pounder may be better known than the actresses previously mentioned, but she plays the less known but pivotal character Jo Ann Robinson. The bus boycott started on the day of Rosa Parks' trial and Jo Ann Robinson was the major impetus for this start, before there was any organization called the Montgomery Improvement Association or Dr. King had been drafted to be its leader.

Reg E. Cathey, another actor who would also be in The Wire, plays the role of E.D. Nixon, who was both a labor organizer and a member of the N.A.A.C.P. before getting involved with the boycott.

Brent Jennings, who is so good as Ron Washington ("Wash") in the current movie Moneyball, plays Rufus Lewis. It is remarkable to me with as much star power as this film has at how my eye would always see Jennings in a scene and wonder what he would do next.

But for scene stealing, Boycott's great late addition to the cast is Erik Todd Dellums as the "outside agitator" Bayard Rustin. He comes to Montgomery and is treated by all assembled as something of a pop star, but his main interest is to make sure the boycott remains a non-violent movement. He does not stay long; by this time, Rustin was already an ex-Communist and had been arrested on a morals charge because of his homosexuality, so his association can only be brief and informal. Still, he has a wonderful scene with Coretta, who remembers well a speech Rustin gave at Antioch College. Dellums plays the scene with a very understandable and cosmopolitan flirtatiousness, excited and flattered regardless of his orientation that a lovely young woman pays him a well-deserved compliment.

Dellums also goes on to be in the cast of The Wire as the coroner.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am not an impartial arbiter of a movie like Boycott. Some of my favorite movies are "based on a true story" films. From HBO, I liked Boycott, Conspiracy and Band of Brothers. On the big screen, there's David Fincher's Zodiac and The Social Network and Clint Eastwood's Changeling and of course, Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy. I even have a soft spot for a good "based on a true story" sports movie like Moneyball or Secretariat.

In conclusion, if you haven't seen Boycott, put in on your rental list. If you have seen it, you might enjoy watching it again. I know I did.

True that.

2011-10-14T20:14:00.000-07:00

I like som ee cards. They are free, they are usually funny, and sometimes they hit the ball clean out of the park.

Any plans for next Friday?

2011-10-14T16:44:00.000-07:00

I've been invited to a little cocktail party. It sounds like fun.

Dr. Harold Camping, on the other hand, still thinks it will be the destruction of the universe.

Except, guess what? NO ONE IS LISTENING, DOC!

I have my silly tabloid blog. The supermarket rags did not include any of his predictions. I cheated and put in his earlier failed prediction because I read it in the equally unreliable San Francisco Chronicle. Allegedly serious news organizations paid attention to the May 21 date because he sent out all those silly buses. Even though he came up craps on that nonsense, he thinks the shooting match is over next Friday.

It would be a harsh irony if he died that day. I don't wish this on the worst human being on earth, and that isn't him, but on the other hand, I think even Dr. Camping is starting to realize he has no useful purpose and his stupidity and vanity have only caused others grief.

The world will eventually end. Long before that, everyone who will read these words will die.

I'm going out on a very sturdy and low hanging limb when I say, the world is NOT ending next Friday and anyone still listening to Dr. Camping needs to take a long prayerful fast to ask themselves why.

Here endeth the lesson.

The R. in K. & R. is no more.

2011-10-13T19:12:00.001-07:00

Dennis Ritchie is dead at the age of 70.

Who the hell is Dennis Ritchie, you ask?

He co-developed Unix.

He developed the language C.

With Brian Kernighan, he published the definitive manual on C, known to nerds the world over as K. & R. It was so cleanly written, they could have taught Strunk and White a thing or two.

In computers, Big Damn Deals don't get much bigger.

Click here for the New York Times obit.

Best wishes to the family and friends of Dennis Ritchie, from a fan.

Complex football: Both imaginary and real.

2011-10-11T20:35:00.000-07:00

There's a scene in Moneyball where Brad Pitt as Billy Beane goes to the dugout and says to the then struggling A's, "This is a winning team. Now go out tonight and play like it."

I wish I could assemble the Mutant Mercenaries and tell them the same thing, but so far, no dice.

I won the award for the best draft. I have since made some pick-ups on waivers and trades that I think make my team better. Still, after five games we are 1-4 when we could be 3-2 or even with some luck 4-1. Instead, the luck has been almost all bad and we now have to struggle to get into the playoffs when I had hopes we might be trying to get enough wins to get a bye week.

And then there are the local teams, who have both been bitter disappointments for about ten years now. The Raiders and the 49ers both won their first games of the season, beat the uninspiring Broncos and Seahawks respectively. Then came week two, when the Raiders lost late to the Bills and the Niners lost late to the Cowboys, both those opponents seeming less than prepossessing at the time.

Since then, the Raiders have gone to 3-2, beating the Texans this week in an ugly game but nevertheless a win barely 24 hours after Al Davis' death. The 49ers have won three straight, including impressive drubbings of both the struggling Broncos and the allegedly solid Buccaneers in the past two weeks.

The Raiders are in a tougher division and they may have to hope for a wild card spot unless the Chargers go into a nose dive. This week's game hosting the Browns will go a long way in answering the question about whether they are contenders or pretenders.

The Niners on the other hand are in a Group of Cake rather than a Group of Death, and even if they lose on the road to the newly resurgent Lions this week, if they can go 10-6 in their division, they are pretty much a lock to get int the playoffs with a home game, especially since they still have five games left against the Seahawks, Rams and Cardinals, all of whom are somewhere between sad and laughable.

I really do think the Niners could be a playoff team this year. With a little luck, I think the Mutant Mercenaries and the Raiders might join them.

It's nice to have some hope in early October. I'll check back in early December to see if it all was just a mirage.

Tesselations: Dodecagons, hexagons and implied squares.

2011-10-09T15:45:00.000-07:00

This week's tesselation uses the dodecagon, the forgotten polygon in the tesselation universe, and the hexagon. The empty spaces are squares.

Doing a little color adjustment with a second photo using flash, this is what it might look like at night.

I wish I had enough of these to cover a large wall with them. I like these a lot.

"Don't be the weird one!" Good advice, but hard to follow.

2011-10-09T10:25:00.000-07:00

The Value Voters Summit is this weekend. All the Republican presidential candidates are there, sucking up to the shallow end of the Christian gene pool, who are doomed by evolutionary forces to see their power dry up as the years roll by.

Sarah Palin didn't show up. I think she correctly sensed that the crowd would not be too keen on her right now.

Gil Mertz, who may be the nephew of Fred and Ethel (don't take me for a sap, Fred and Ethel never had sex, that was a beard relationship if ever there was one) told his audience on the first day "Don't be the weird one!", hoping that embarrassing stories would not come out of the conference.

Take a read over at Talking Points Memo here, here, here, here and here.

And, oh yeah, here.

Here's a hint, Gil. You ARE the weird ones. Some Christians delight so much in "not being of this world, but the next", they really don't pay strong attention to this world and what they say comes off as being, well, weird.

Christianity allegedly has huge numbers in this country, but I don't know how many people are truly, deeply committed and when we consider the sub-section that are truly, deeply committed, I don't know how unified a front they can present. In evolutionary terms, genetic advantages this large and even larger have been wiped from the face of the world before, and who knows but it could happen again, especially if this weekend's debacle counts in their fevered brains as "not being the weird ones."

Here endeth the lesson.

Let me repeat: The Rule of Three is crap.

2011-10-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

People love the Rule of Three. If two people the public have heard of die within a few days, someone will invoke the Rule of Three, the idea that important people die in trios.

It's nonsense.

That said, wandering around the Internet I saw three obits on Saturday, Oct. 8, of people whose claims to fame were well known to me.

The first is Raiders' owner Al Davis, who died today. Davis has looked like a walking corpse for most of this century. He was a great leader in his day, but that day is long gone. I called him Kim Jong Al because he was the dictator of a failed organization. Now that he's dead, there is once again a glimmer of hope for the long term prospects of the Raiders.

The second is Roger Williams, a pianist who had hits with Born Free and Autumn Leaves way back in the day. When I learned to play by ear, Born Free is the first song where I figured out the melody and chord progression on my own. Wikipedia says he died today, one week after his 87th birthday.

And the third is Australian actress Diane Cilento, who died on the 6th but her New York Times obit was only published today. Her two main claims to fame outside her native land are the Oscar she won for Tom Jones, seen here with her co-star, the always wonderful Albert Finney, and she was married for a time to Sean Connery.

These people have nothing to do with one another, but their deaths were reported in the same news cycle.

There is no Rule of Three. It's all random.

Please go on with your lives, happy in the new knowledge you gained today.

Stuff I Like: Topsy Turvy

2011-10-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

My favorite two musical films produced in my lifetime are O Brother Where Are Thou and Topsy Turvy. The films could hardly be more different. O Brother was the bigger box office hit, Topsy Turvy got more critical acclaim. The musical styles are in direct contrast, with O Brother celebrating the roots music both black and white of the American South, while Topsy Turvy is Gilbert and Sullivan, about as far away from roots music as you can get. Another important difference in the two movies is that every actor in Topsy Turvy who sang or played an instrument is actually performing. In O Brother, George Clooney wanted to sing his part, but he is lip-synching.

Topsy Turvy has a wonderful cast. I have not put it up to a vote, but I will venture an opinion I expect is wide held that Jim Broadbent, Shirley Henderson and Timothy Spall are always good. Allan Corduner is not quite as well known to American audiences, but he is top notch as Sir Arthur Sullivan. Martin Savage is another actor better known to British audiences than to American, and he does a wonderful job as George Grossmith, the comic actor who played Ko-Ko the Lord High Executioner in the original production of The Mikado back in 1885.

But let me turn my attention to Kevin McKidd for a moment. His first big break was in Trainspotting, the 1996 film about Scottish heroin addicts. But as is true with many a fine British actor, he can completely transform himself from role to role, and is nearly unrecognizable as the romantic tenor Durward Lely, who played Nanki-Poo. Watch this scene with him being prissy about his costume, then see some of his actual performance singing A Wand'ring Minstrel I.

Does that character remind you at all of the stern, upright and efficient Lucius Vorenus from Rome? Me, neither! I didn't realize it was the same actor until I saw Topsy Turvy again after Rome first aired.

I have the utmost respect for McKidd and wish him every success in his career going forward, though my good wishes for him are intermingled with a nearly uncontrollable jealous streak, since in his professional duties he got to snuggle and snog with Indira Varma.

In my obsessed Internet stalker brain, I believe that is my job.

Health insurance. What a good idea.

2011-10-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

The economy is really in the pits right now, but you couldn't tell from my current situation. I'm not living the life of Riley, but right now I have enough work and with a little luck, I will continue to have a non-negative cash flow for a while. Because I don't have a long-term iron clad contract anywhere, that could change. At least until the end of the year and likely for a while longer, I am living the life I can afford, if not the one I wish to grow accustomed to.

This wasn't always the case since I started teaching. Back in early 2008, I didn't have health insurance and a false alarm became a very expensive nightmare. Right now, I definitely budget in health insurance and Kaiser, a system I am used to, is well within my price range. (Note that cable TV, a car and a cell phone are NOT currently within my price range. As I said, not the lifestyle I wish to grow accustomed to.)

About a month ago, a little irritation on my left heel started acting up, and I went to the Kaiser emergency room. They put a bandage on it, gave me some antibiotic cream and told me to take a wait and see attitude.

I waited a month. It didn't get better.

Last Tuesday, I saw my G.P. He said he didn't like the look of it and sent me to surgery. I had the wound removed and they gave me a bandage that was to be left on for five days, a boot/sandal to wear while it was bandaged, antibiotics, both oral and topical, and some pain stuff just in case it hurt a lot after the local wore off, which I used a little the first couple days. And, oh yeah, there was an x-ray before the surgery.

The co-pay for everything last Tuesday was about $50.

As of now, the bandage is off, the wound is healing normally and it doesn't hurt to walk.

Yay, Kaiser!

Granted, Kaiser isn't perfect. I got three different diagnoses (ulcerated wound probably caused by diabetes, infected wound, skin cancer), but they did a biopsy and the best news of the three - infected wound improperly healing - appears to be correct. Also, the G.P. sent me to surgery, but the surgeons saw the trouble was below the ankle, so they sent me to x-ray, then podiatry. The runaround means something that should have taken three hours took more like six.

I can live with that. In more ways than one.

And of course, even though I'm a God forsaken liberal, I do economize so that I can afford health insurance, so the crowds at GOP debates don't have to cheer for my death.

On the other hand, I have reasonably priced health insurance because my union fought for it, yet another reason I will NEVER belong to the Tea Party or the Tequila Party or any of those silly political movements named for beverages I rarely drink in any case.

Here's hoping you are covered when things go wrong. With the human body, it's as close to a 100% likelihood as you can get. Moreover, seeing a doctor regularly means you might be able to detect something before it turns into an expensive trip to the emergency room.

Health insurance. What a good idea.

Wait, didn't I just read that someplace?

Silly math joke.

2011-10-01T14:03:00.001-07:00

Sent to me by my silly sister Karlacita!

By my pronunciation of the math function, the pun is slightly off, but I think many readers will get the idea.

A blast from the past for My People and Our Agenda. The lolz translation of Charles Beaudelaire's The Giantess.

2011-09-27T19:33:00.000-07:00

This is a reprint of a post from March of 2008.

You are forgiven in advance if you do not recall it.

Matty Boy, 'splainer and arbiter of lolz and collector of French filth, has decided to add his expertise to the field of lolz poetry adaptation and translate a poem of Charles Baudelaire into lolz pictures with captions. I have chosen La Géante, which translates into English as The Giantess. It comes from Beaudelaire's most famous collection Les Fleurs du Mal, which translates into lolz as Smutty Thotz. I Gotz Dem.

Matty Boy, how did you come to choose this particular poem to translate?

Oh, please, hypothetical question asker, don't be naive.

La Géante

Du temps que la Nature en sa verve puissante
Concevait chaque jour des enfants monstrueux,

J'eusse aimé vivre auprès d'une jeune géante,
Comme aux pieds d'une reine un chat voluptueux.

J'eusse aimé voir son corps fleurir avec son âme
Et grandir librement dans ses terribles jeux;

Deviner si son coeur couve une sombre flamme
Aux humides brouillards qui nagent dans ses yeux;

Parcourir à loisir ses magnifiques formes;
Ramper sur le versant de ses genoux énormes,

Et parfois en été, quand les soleils malsains,
Lasse, la font s'étendre à travers la campagne,

Dormir nonchalamment à l'ombre de ses seins,
Comme un hameau paisible au pied d'une montagne.

Tesselations: Hexagons, squares and triangles at maximum contrast

2011-09-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

Two quick ideas for this week. I made the patterns on a table that was too busy, so I pumped the contrast to turn it black.

There's more to come with the hexagons squares and triangles.

The plummet not worth mentioning.

2011-09-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

If anything happens to the Dow-Jones Industrial Average, a.k.a The Dow, you'll see on nearly every news website. There was a big drop this week and it was front page on The Huffington Thing, as Princess Sparkle Pony likes to call it.

I looked all over that less than optimal website today, even in the so-called business section, but they don't seem to be noticing that three very important commodities, gold, silver and crude oil, are all plummeting this week. Here's the situation at market close, 2:00 p.m. on Friday.

Gold: $1657.20 an ounce, down from $1812.50 last week, 8.6% drop
Silver: $30.93 an ounce, down from $40.66 last week, 23.9% drop
Crude Oil: $79.98 a barrel, down from $87.92 last week, 9.0% drop

I'm of the opinion that lower crude oil prices are Generally A Good Thing for the world economy. My cause for concern is that all three of these commodities took a dive together just a few months before we found out the whole economy was in the toilet back in 2008.

Maybe this actually deserves the "Sweating the Small Stuff" label. I'm not an economist so I can't be sure. But a big sell-off of all three of these commodities in unison has me worried, and now that you've read it, you can join me in a feeling of unnamed dread.

You're welcome.

Sweating the small stuff: Born to quant.

2011-09-20T18:04:00.000-07:00

I'm about halfway through Moneyball and it's a quick and exciting read. The gift of hindsight shows some of the book's flaws impossible to detect when it was published, most notably how few of the players Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta drafted in 2003 made any splash at all some eight years later. But I am heartened to see Michael Lewis' style of writing catching on. Lewis himself gives props to Bill James, one of the first of the new breed of baseball analysts who call themselves sabermetricians. (SABR stands for the Society of American Baseball Research.) James' annual Baseball Abstracts were the great impetus for the changes in thinking about the game, and besides being a single minded collector of stats, James also knew how to bring the funny when the situation arose. (Example: writing about a heavy hitting and just plain old heavy slugger from last century: "Cecil Fielder acknowledges a weight of 261, leaving unanswered the question of what he might weigh if he put his other foot on the scale.")

And here comes to a question about education. Can you create a Matty Boy or are his kind born that way? The heroes of many of Lewis's books are a breed now known as quantatative analysts or quants. I jumped into programming when I was a lad, but I probably would have been better as a math analyst. Gathering sets of data and analyzing them comes to me completely naturally. Some people love doing that and others don't. Some can only do it on one subject (Bill James admits to no interest in numbers unrelated to baseball) but others do it about most of the things they can think of. Henri Poincaré, sometimes called The Last Universalist of mathematics and easily in any good list of the best ten mathematicians of all time, incessantly collected data sets on everything. Joseph Fourier collected number about his favorite topic, heat, and from it derived the differential equations that explain the phenomenon. Isaac Newton actually spent more time studying the Bible and alchemy than he did studying math or what we call modern physics, and it was clear he was using his stunning number sense in doing so, though he never published any of his findings in either field, instead leaving some of his thoughts in letters to friends we can read now. He probably left the religion alone because some of his ideas were heretical and heresy could still get you in big trouble - like dead - back in his day. I expect he didn't publish anything on alchemy because he didn't make any breakthroughs the way he did in math and physics, largely because it was a dry well and there were no breakthroughs to be had.

I gather numbers all the time. I'd call it "obsessively", but I have other habits that deserve to be called obsessive more than my love of numbers. Even the silly gossip blog is really an excuse to look at the supermarket rags numerically. I also spent a few seasons gathering data on football to see if I could make sense of it better than the current stat systems do. One of my ideas was to split the football team into separate squads and give credit where credit is due when points are scored, which also means blame where blame is due when points are allowed. My system was completely at odds with the modern favorite statistical game of fantasy football, since I was looking at teams rather than individuals, but I was recently heartened to see that Yahoo! has changed how defenses are measured in fantasy football and no longer blames them for points scored from turnovers like fumbles and interceptions run back by the other defense That is a small part of the system I called the Split Point System.

I did this simple quant work on football because I didn't see anyone else doing it. Reading some ideas from how quants work in baseball, (there are a LOT more people doing interesting work in baseball stats compared to football stats) I could see how to turn the Split Point System into a much better and more refined piece of work.

I'm not sure anyone actually creates a mathematician. It's like showing Edmund Hillary a mountain or giving Elvis Presley a guitar. There are things they don't know when they start, but the stage is pretty much set. I certainly still give a lot of credit to my favorite instructors like Ted Tracewell and Stu Smith, but no matter how many twists and turns my life takes, I always come back to math, and I likely always will.

Sweating the small stuff: Measuring students and teachers.

2011-09-19T18:58:00.000-07:00

Reading Moneyball, I've been thinking about how we measure students and teachers and my general feeling is we are going about most of it in a completely wrong-headed method.

At Laney, the big new thing is Standard Learning Outcomes in every math class. I think this is a fairly good system, especially because the amount of material is about half a quiz by my way of doing things. Teachers of a class have some input into what the allegedly important topics are, though in one class I teach regularly, Math For Liberal Arts, a topic I usually don't even cover was the SLO. This class is somewhat amorphously defined, so it's not that surprising that this would occur. In other classes like trigonometry or the algebra sequence, the SLO topics are things I would say are the core of the class.

For me, I almost never teach the same class twice. I'm always trying to learn new ways to present material, and often there are "standard" topics I think have reached their expiration date and new material that makes a strong case for being part of the core curriculum. For example, in statistics, the old school way of doing this was table look-up. Nowadays, a high end calculators and spreadsheet programs make table look-up obsolete. The z-score is now an unneeded middle step between a normally distributed data set and a percentile, which is a shame because z-scores really help define what it is we are trying to do.

I think of both teaching and learning as art forms. Being a person of strong opinions, I have my own ideas about what is good and what is bad, but I haven't come up with standardized tests for what I like. What is it exactly we are supposed to do? Should students become better citizens or better workers or better thinkers? Are we there to instill a love of learning? If so, I can certainly point to successes in my career, but I can honestly point to some failures as well.

It's a thorny problem and I clearly do not have the brilliant solution. I understand the desire to measure teachers and students, but most of the methods we have come up with so far, like the time honored but flawed boxscore in baseball, are doing more harm than good in my opinion.

Sweating the small stuff: A mathematician reads Moneyball.

2011-09-18T16:25:00.000-07:00

A friend has invited me to the opening night of Moneyball this upcoming Friday evening and lent me Michael Lewis' book to read. I'm not as keen on it as I was on his more recent book The Big Short, and this is because I know more about baseball history than I know about Wall Street today. Still, Lewis is an exciting writer and baseball is so interesting, even a book with flaws can be endlessly entertaining.

Let me be immodest for a moment. Lewis can appreciate math and I can actually understand it. If we compare math to its nearest (and superior) rival, he's a music critic who can write well and I'm a musician who can write legibly. It's Frank Rich vs. Salieri. It's more fun to read Rich (and Lewis), but Salieri (and I) have some inside information the other guys don't have.

No brag. Just fact.

With Moneyball, Lewis didn't start out with the intention of canonizing Billy Beane, the general manger of the dirt cheap but competitive Oakland Athletics, but that's how the book reads. In an afterword, Lewis explains that baseball insiders hate Beane for the book, not Lewis. Some of them think Beane wrote the book himself.

No one with a brain ever said baseball insiders had big brains.

And that's the point of Moneyball, much like it is the point of The Big Short and The Blind Side and most of Lewis' best-selling non-fiction. Insiders in the systems he studies don't really understand the system, and the outsiders who make honest scientific attempts to understand are widely despised.

There's the obvious and compelling core of every best-seller Michael Lewis has ever written.

Consider Billy Beane, the hero of this story. It is very common in Hollywood versions of "true stories" that the movie star is way prettier than the person being protrayed. I submit that Brad Pitt might be a little prettier than Billy Beane, but he's way too small. Young Billy Beane was a freaking Winklevoss twin, 6'4" tall, lean and supremely talented. Scouts salivate when they see a high schooler like Billy Beane.

Some may actually do more than salivate in private. I have no proof of this, but it is the strong subtext of the first few chapters of Moneyball.

Billy Beane knew the scouts of baseball didn't know shit. His best evidence was that they fought like bobcats over Billy Beane. When he became available for the baseball draft, it was either him or another Southern Californian, Darryl Strawberry, that HAD to be the first round pick that year. Strawberry became an honest to Pete baseball superstar until drugs brought him down.

Drugs weren't Beane's downfall. It was pride instead.

Beane could have played football or basketball, but he chose baseball. Beane hated to fail and hated even more to be shown up in public, and that is a nearly impossible character trait to overcome.

After they are drafted, Strawberry rises and Beane sinks, and the scouts and the best baseball minds are at a loss to know why. Beane gets violently upset when he fails, and he cannot turn this rage into positive action. Strawberry becomes a star in short order, but Beane bounces around, finally becoming roommates with Lenny Dykstra, a prospect with a tiny percentage of the promise Beane has.

The thing is, Dykstra has the small talent combined with the attitude of Babe Ruth. He ignored his failures like they didn't happen and reveled in his successes. Beane's attitude of hating failure is more like Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio, but not quite at their godlike levels of talent.

Williams and DiMaggio truly hated to strike out, and they changed their way of batting to avoid it. Beane couldn't figure out how to avoid strikeouts and still to be feared at the plate. Had either Teddy Ballgame (good nickname) or Joltin' Joe (very inaccurate nickname) had the same "I don't give a shit" attitude about looking bad at the plate that Babe Ruth had, they might have made a serious run at the career home run record.

Neither did. Joe DiMaggio ended his illustrious career with 361 home runs, barely half of Ruth's 714. Williams, who missed prime seasons due to being a Marine pilot in both WW II and the Korean War, hit a home run in his last at bat, which brought his to a still remarkable 521 for his career.

Back to our main story.

Billy Beane, the failed Adonis, is still a baseball insider, but he listens to the baseball outsiders, the guys who think the statistics have been accurate but useless since the late 1850s.

Not a typo. 1850s. Before the American Civil War when players were not allowed to wear gloves.

I love that Lewis blames Henry Chadwick, a cricket fan from the 1850s, for inventing the "modern" baseball boxscore. There's actually a lot of math of that era that is still considered modern. The difference is that mathematical logic, group theory and quadratic reciprocity are still paying dividends, while the baseball box score is getting in the way of progress.

In Chadwick's original system, a base on balls is an error on the pitcher. Like other errors, it does not count positively towards the batter's numbers, but unlike errors, it now counts as zero instead of negative. It never occurred to him that it might be a skill of the batter to avoid bad pitches and only swing at good ones.

Some people cry in the wilderness that baseball is being mismeasured. It isn't until the 1970s that a guy named Bill James actually has the stick-to-it-iveness to shout this every year, at first to an audience of less than 100 people reading his self-published book.

In Lewis' mind, this is the beginning of baseball's salvation.

More on that tomorrow.

Tesselations: A new pattern of hexagons, squares and triangles

2011-09-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

Hexagons, square and triangles can make another more regular pattern, but this one works as well. The difference between this one and the other can be seen when you look at the hexagons. Yellow hexagons have a green square on each edge, while the green hexagons are surrounded by alternating triangles and squares.

I also made this small example using three colors, but the intricacy of the pattern make adding more colors a little problematic. I will return to this when I find a good color scheme with more than two colors.

Sweating the small stuff: Some thoughts on math education.

2011-09-14T07:45:00.001-07:00

Computers and calculators are changing the education process significantly. Any student who types a paper has a spell checker and probably a grammar checker, but that's no promise they'll get everything right, especially when it comes to homonyms and such, like their, there and they're.

In math, some things that seem very simple to anyone who is even a little proficient can be struggles for students in pre-algebra and beginning algebra classes. A perfect example is writing a fraction problem like

3/5 = ________

and having many students give the answer 1.666666667, which is the correct calculator answer to 5/3. It seem "obvious" to me that small/big must be a number less than 1, but a lot of students try to turn it into a division problem and mix up the divisor and the dividend.

I'm going to be doing some other short posts on gaps in math education many students have. I don't do this to deride the students, it's just that somewhere along the line something relatively simple slipped through the cracks. I don't have the solution for how to fix this, but I do want to acknowledge these problems exist.

Borrowing from other writers. Also known as stealing from the best.

2011-09-11T19:21:00.000-07:00

Mark Hatfield died last month. he was a Republican senator from Oregon. Your typical pro-social services, pro-education, pro-civil rights, anti-defense buildup Republican.

In other words, an extinct kind of Republican.

My friend Amelia wrote his obituary for our deadpool page. It's pretty terrific from top to bottom, but if you don't have the extra minute to read the whole thing, here are the last few lines.

=========

Visko Hatfield sat down with his father a few months ago as his health grew more fragile, he said. At the time, Visko asked what he could do for him.

"You need to save a life," said his father, who lived a life of public service.

"Whose life should I save?" Visko asked.

Hatfield's answer: "The first one you can."

Tesselations: Variations of lineoleum

2011-09-11T09:34:00.001-07:00

Ocatgons and squares are a standard tiling pattern using linoleum. I'm sure everyone has seen these many times.

Often, the octagons are all one color and the squares are another single color.

In this version, there are two colors of octagons and the same two colors of squares.

Now, two colors of octagons and a third color for all the squares.

And finally, three colors of octagons and a fourth color for all the squares.

The Debt briefly meets The Big Ugly Stick.

2011-09-10T16:27:00.000-07:00

The Debt is a recent release that has been doing better at the box office than expected. It stars Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain playing the same woman at different ages. Besides the cast mentioned in the ad above, there's also Ciaran Hinds in a pivotal role and it's directed by John Madden, best known for Shakespeare in Love and Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown, two very charming and funny films from the late 1990s.

This movie is torture porn. It has no charm or humor. If someone you know wants to see it and says something like "I've heard good things and I really like Helen Mirren," you should reply with "You wouldn't like watching Helen Mirren getting tortured. Matty Boy hit this movie with The Big Ugly Stick, a level of bad review he only takes out on special occasions."

For a brief rundown, the previous Big Ugly Stick movies so far are:

Never see one of these movies. Your time is too valuable. The only one that has even a few redeeming qualities is The Ghost Writer. You're welcome.

Build a better box corner and change the world.

2011-09-07T10:59:00.001-07:00

Some people find the obituaries morbid, but I often find out fascinating stuff there. Keith W. Tantlinger died last month at the age of 92. His invention of a box corner that led to containers that could be loaded into stacks on large ships is essential to the globalization of commerce, for good or for ill, often for both. This technological advancement means that shipping costs for ocean voyages covering thousands of miles add only pennies to the cost of goods from China or Australia across the Pacific, or from Europe to the eastern U.S. and those containers can then be put on trucks or trains and moved long distances on land at relatively low costs. Click on the link to read his New York Times obituary.

The credit for the 1958 picture of Mr. Tantlinger is from Pan-Atlantic/Maersk, his former employers.

Mr. Hubbard's Neighborhood: The new road on the south side of Lake Merritt

2011-09-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

There's a lot of construction taking place in my neighborhood. The first project started well over a year ago, the redesign of the road that borders the south side of Lake Merritt, the stretch where 12th Street turns into East 12th Street and 14th Street turns into International Blvd., formerly known as East 14th.

Due to superstitions, there is no 13th Street.

No matter what they call it, East 14th Street or International has had its share of bad luck.

This is a shot from my corner of 2nd Street and East 12th looking toward downtown, the first thing completed in this build, a temporary road that lets drivers get from downtown to the district known as Eastlake, my neighborhood.

This had the effect of widening East 12th and making the corner where I live a traffic nightmare. Until they put up a three way stoplight, no one knew what to do and there were a lot of accidents. Now, a new way to get from Eastlake to Downtown is available, but it's also causing accidents as well. If that red car was going straight, it would lead down to the next picture's location.

Here is the start of the current maze with traffic coming from and heading to downtown, about a half block away from my apartment building. The overpass in the middle of the picture now has both a pedestrian lane and a car lane, but that is just temporary until the road and sidewalk nearest the lake are rebuilt.

Across from the lake is the Kaiser Auditorium, which hasn't been used for several years. Part of the idea of this new road is to have easy pedestrian access from the Auditorium side to the lakeside.

This is not as much of a Road to Nowhere as it may sound. The newly redesigned Oakland Museum is next to the Auditorium, and Laney College is right behind it. Plenty of chickens need to cross this road, and we'd prefer not playing chicken with eight lanes of high speed traffic.

I took this picture by taking an about face from the position from the point of view of the picture above. In about a month, the construction workers have quickly torn up the road and sidewalk nearest the lake.

This sign explains to people coming from the downtown side what they have to do if they want to head toward Eastlake.

The first couple hundred yards of the new pedestrian path is ridiculously thin, especially because it is used by walkers, runners, cyclists and skateboarders.

As a local, I consider easy pedestrian access to the lake from my side of the street A Good Thing. Technically, there always was pedestrian access. Somewhere in that pile of rubble were the entrances to two thin tunnels that went under the eight lanes of busy traffic that used to be the connection from 12th Street to East 12th Street.

I'm not afraid of walking around my neighborhood but I never used those tunnels and I never saw them used. They were dank and stinky and I think even any muggers would have been worried about the rats.

It's all supposed to be done in a half a year or so. I'll report back then.

Penrose patterns #11a, #11b and #11c : Two Stars in two colors

2011-09-04T14:17:00.000-07:00

Two Stars in Purple & Yellow

Two Stars in Blue & Purple

Two Stars in Yellow & Blue

Date: 4 September 2011

Type: Pattern

Number of tiles: 330

Color breakdown: 165 of one color, 165 of another color

Shape breakdown: 210 kites, 120 darts

Kosher Penrose tiling rules: no

Not so random 1: Marvin & Tammi one time.

2011-09-02T16:37:00.000-07:00

From time to time, I practice the ancient Japanese martial art of... karaoke.

I have been known to sing Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On. People have commented favorably, and perhaps more to the point, when I ask people to get up to dance, they get up and dance.

But even if I could find someone to sing Tammi's part, I could never get drunk enough to sing this one, because this version is perfect. Way too many of the people who made it great are gone now. Nickolas Ashford the co-writer, Marvin and Tammi, of course, and the amazing bass player James Jamerson. All it has to do is start with the back-up singers whispering "You're all... I need... to get by.... A-ahh...", and I am transported.

Pop songs don't get better. This is the Word of the Lord.

And since I'm boring you with fantasy football stuff...

2011-08-31T19:01:00.001-07:00

This is my new logo.

Because... it's all falling into place.

Every freaking season!

2011-08-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

I'm playing fantasy football again this season. I don't expect to set the world on fire, but it's an enjoyable pastime and a chance to insult several male relatives.

You know, bonding and stuff.

With my very last pick in the draft, I went on a flyer that someone would sign Terrell Owens, but Yahoo! says he is no longer to be saluted, so I went to pick up another wide receiver to replace his useless ass.

Instead of being clever, I chose "wide receivers" and clicked on "sort by fantasy points 2010" The best free agent at this position using our league's scoring system was... Danny Amendola.

I had Danny Amendola my first season, picked up as a free agent.

I had Danny Amendola my second season, picked up as a free agent.

As Al Pacino says in the only quotable line from that piece of crap Godfather III: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

In correspondence to me, he must be referred to as Danny Fucking Amendola.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Johann.

2011-08-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

My sister Karla recently had some of out childhood photos restored by my friend Alan, and it's great to see them all. I put up the picture of my mom, Karla and me, and then the one of Karla and me on the rocker. The one I have been saving is of Johann, my childhood dog.

A lot of the family will tell you Johann was their dog, but technically, Dad and I brought him home, taking him from his family in Berkeley, and I was the one who chose him. His brothers and sisters were locked behind a short wall in a pantry and all the other pups were making one heck of a racket when we came to see them, but Johann was asleep. I picked him up, he woke up for a moment and licked my nose, then fell back to sleep as I held him in my arms, close against my chest.

As you can guess, my decision was made because I was in love. My dad was worried that he was the runt, and he likely was. But still, I had done what my dad asked of me reading all the books, so he let me choose Johann, soon known to nearly everybody as Yoyo.

It ranks among the best choices of my life.

Johann was a stunningly clever dog. When we walked across the street, he would show his sheepdog instincts and push at the heels of the youngsters, especially my younger sisters. His mom was obviously a Corgi, but dad may have been a hound that climbed over the backyard fence. Besides herding skills, Johann loved to play fetch like a retriever. It was my brother Michael who taught Johann to fetch a tennis ball, bring it back and drop it so it could be thrown again. He loved playing fetch so much, he would play until he was exhausted, and after exhaustion, he would chew the tennis ball until the cover was off. We used to joke that like the Native Americans used all parts of the buffalo, Johann used all parts of the tennis ball. As I recall, as much as he loved to chew stuff, he chewed tennis balls almost exclusively. He wasn't a chewer of shoes or baseball gloves or any of the other stuff we left lying around, as children are likely to do.

He also like playing with a soccer ball, but he was not big enough to get it in his mouth, so instead he pushed it around with his snout and shoulders. Once at the park, some kids had a soccer ball and Johann decided it would be fun to play, so he went and stole it. Well, he didn't really steal it, because once the kids started chasing him, he stayed in the general area, circling back towards them so they could keep up. He even decided to go straight back at the mob, so he nuzzled under the ball, flipped it up in the air, turned 180° caught the ball on his nose like a seal and plowed back through the crowd of screaming kids.

I have seen dogs that do more behaviors than Johann did, but in his defense I must say we didn't know much about training dogs. We never gave him any treat greater than our praise when we taught him something new to do, and trusting, loving soul that he was, he never knew about the whole "do something cool, get a tasty treat" racket.

He learned some amazing games with very strange rules. One was Sand Monster. Karla, Jenny and I would start screaming "Sand Monster! Sand Monster!" while we ran around the front room, and Johann understood he was this previously undescribed Sand Monster. It was a game of Tag and he was not allowed up on furniture for the duration of the game, though we did jump on the furniture, which was behavior we were not usually allowed. As we ran from couch to couch, he would chase us and growl, and if he bit our pant leg, we had to fall down and crawl to the nearest base, dramatically fearing for our lives. (You should be able to tell from the picture that Johann was a little dog, and even if he grabbed a pant leg as hard as he could, he did not have the stopping power to down the smallest of us. It was part of the game.)

When we stopped screaming and we petted him and told him he was a good dog - and he most certainly was - the game was over and his ferocious Sand Monster persona was forgotten as quickly as it was put on.

Now that I think of it, screaming kids were exciting and fun for him.

His worst habit was probably barking, but my dad recalls that once he came home, Johann would stop, since the Alpha of our pack had returned and our safety was in his hands.

I could reminisce about Yoyo for days on end, but let me close here with something I said hundreds of times, and I meant it every time.

Good, dog, Johann. Good dog.

Penrose pattern #10 : The Big Star #3

2011-08-28T18:53:00.001-07:00

Title: The Big Star #3

Date: 28 August 2011

Type: Pattern

Number of tiles: 430

Color breakdown: 215 yellow, 130 blue, 85 purple

Shape breakdown: 270 kites, 160 darts

Kosher Penrose tiling rules: no

This is what it looked like in the room with minimal color fixing.

Is this a natural behavior or a silly cat trick?

2011-08-23T20:49:00.000-07:00

How much do I love Maru?

Are you new here or what?

But I have a question for cat owners about this latest video. Maru walks into a thin gap, a completely natural and obvious cat behavior, and then he does a back flip.

Three times.

I never saw a cat do this move. It's hilarious and his little winks to the camera make it even better. (I have no idea how the person running the camera doesn't crack up on every take.) But I'm wondering if he kind of did it by accident and then mugumogu gave him a treat to make him repeat it.

So, cat owners, have you seen this kind of kitty flop before? I'm sure if you have, your cat was adorable doing it, though probably not as adorable as Maru, the greatest silent comedian stunt artist since Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.

I'd be glad to hear from you.

Agreeing with Republicans. Or at least one.

2011-08-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

Bruce Barlett, a domestic policy and economic adviser to both Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Greater, has called current Texas governor Rick Perry an idiot. Karl Rove, chief toady to George Bush the Lesser, is also not in love with Rick Perry.

Bartlett now considers himself an independent, and his poor opinion of Perry is not that surprising. The minions of Bush the Lesser consider Perry to be a braggart and buffoon and, more importantly to them, the opposite of a compassionate conservative.

Perry is not afraid to run his mouth and in many circles, this is seen as a plus. He's said that if Fed chief Ben Bernanke came down to Texas, "we'd treat him pretty ugly." Some say this is just an example of running against Washington. People whose ears are more attuned to the talk of the South hear a dog whistle of anti-Semitism against a Jewish banker from the Northeast.

I might agree with Bartlett's assessment, but as we saw with both Reagan and Bush the Lesser, being an idiot is no bar to elected office in this country.

But calling names is cheap and easy. I am much more interested in Jon Huntsman, former governor of Utah and current second tier candidate for president. Instead of insults, he has made a call to arms for reason. Last week, he tweeted "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."

Jake Tapper of ABC News asked, "Were you just being cheeky or do you think there's a serious problem with what Governor Perry said?"

Huntsman's response: "I think there's a serious problem. The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party - the anti-science party, we have a huge problem. We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012."

I'm not a Republican because I disagree with many of their beliefs of what the major problems are facing our country and what the solutions should be. But most importantly, it is a damn shame that this country should have a party so ready to overthrow the best ideas science has on important topics, both in terms of human progress and public policy. I understand the push against evolution, since Biblical literalists think this means denying the word of God. But the push against the science of global warming is just the petulance of ill-bred seven year olds who will not give up their toys.

As long as this is the position of one of the two major parties in this land, we have nowhere to go but down.

Penrose patterns #9a and #9b: The Big Star

2011-08-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

Title: The Big Star #1

Date: 21 August 2011

Type: Pattern

Number of tiles: 430

Color breakdown: 130 yellow, 100 blue, 200 purple

Shape breakdown: 270 kites, 160 darts

Kosher Penrose tiling rules: no

Title: The Big Star #2

Date: 21 August 2011

Type: Pattern

Number of tiles: 430

Color breakdown: 145 yellow, 85 blue, 200 purple

Shape breakdown: 270 kites, 160 darts

Kosher Penrose tiling rules: no

I shrink the pictures down so they don't take forever to download, so it's hard to get an idea of the scale of these. You'll notice the tips of the final points of the outside stars are not purple, and this is because I only have 132 kites in each color. Because of all the empty space, this is one of the largest patterns I've created so far, several feet in diameter.

Even chubby guys can jump sharks.

2011-08-20T03:18:00.000-07:00

When Glenn Beck left Fox News - and Roger Ailes said he did not mind the characterization of that departure as a "dumping" - he said he was moving on to bigger things. Now, he is in Israel for his Restoring Courage rally, and a whole bunch of politically connected attendees are suddenly remembering they have to wash their hair that day. Rep. Joe Walsh of Texas told Beck that the Orange Eminence himself, John Boehner, told members of Congress not to attend because he thought the meeting would be too political. Eric Cantor isn't going, even though he will be in Israel on the date.

And just in case you think it's just mean old Boehner spoiling the fun, Droopy Dog himself, Senator Joe Lieberman (Likud-CT) has canceled his appearance.

Apparently, you can get thrown out of the Republican hierarchy for being too crazy, especially if you lose the protection of Fox News. It looks like Beck is heading into Michael Savage country.

Bring warm clothes, Glenn.

Top five six John Cusack movies.

2011-08-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

The results are in on the poll for the top five John Cusack movies, and because there was a tie for fourth through sixth, the list has six instead.

It is very satisfying to see High Fidelity at the top of the list, because I wouldn't even made this poll except for Cusack's character obsessively making Top Five lists throughout the movie.

The second movie on the list is The Grifters. Besides Cusack, the thing this movie has in common with High Fidelity is director Stephen Frears. They work well together.

Grosse Pointe Blank sits in third place by itself. Like High Fidelity, a lot of the charm of this movie comes from a great soundtrack of 1980s music used as nostalgia in the late 1990s.

Then we come to the tie for fourth through sixth. Being John Malkovich is another bold choice for Cusack and the greatest success of eccentric screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and the most successful film of Spike Jonze, who still makes a lot of short films and videos.

Of the three movies tied for the final spot, Eight Men Out is my personal favorite. John Sayles directs this story of the 1918 Black Sox scandal that got eight players thrown out of professional baseball forever. This kind of punishment isn't handed out much these days, though Pete Rose and Barry Bonds have been ostracized well after the barn door has closed for them.

And last is Say Anything..., a movie that isn't my absolute favorite of Cusack's, but I would say it's the best work of director Cameron Crowe and Cusack's romantic interest Ione Skye.

Thanks to everyone who voted.

Happy times with Matty Boy and Karlacita!

2011-08-18T05:23:00.000-07:00

Last week, I published a picture of my mom, my sister Karlacita! and myself, with Mom and the newborn baby sitting in the brown rocking chair and me looking glum. One might think this was jealousy about the baby.

What I wanted was the rocking chair. I loved that rocking chair.

This picture from a few months later shows that family harmony is once again restored. I'm in the rocker - oh, happy day! - and Karla has been put beside me. She liked the rocking chair a lot as well, and she was especially happy when I talked to her, about nearly anything. Every time I finished a sentence, she would say "Ooo!" or "Ahh!". In this picture, I'm reading from a greeting card. Usually, I would have my dinosaur picture book, another prized possession from my youth.

And so, your honor, I would like to present this as Exhibit B to challenge the idea I was just a selfish, mean and jealous older brother. I was more than happy to share, but my idea of sharing meant I got something I wanted and you got something you wanted.

An equitable position to be sure. Even at five years old, it was clear I wasn't going to vote Republican.

(To be fair, when I was five, Dwight Eisenhower was still the nominal head of the Republicans, a much nicer breed than the scum that run the party today.)

p.s. Thanks to my buddy Alan for restoring this picture with his superb PhotoShop skills.

Another Earth, meet Big Ugly Stick. Big Ugly Stick, meet Another Earth.

2011-08-16T09:20:00.000-07:00

Another Earth is a low-budget indie sci-fi flick. That might seem like a bad idea on the face of it, but I've seen some low budget movies about alternate realities or stories told in the near future that had some charm and thinking.

Another Earth is science fiction without the science. It is so depressing, you'd think it was a Communist era cartoon from behind the Iron Curtain. By comparison, Grave of the Fireflies is a light romp in the park. It gets a 61% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which proves that at least 50% of critics cannot be trusted.

This thing is so depressing, people who see it may ask for a change in their medication. It won't help. You'll just have to get it out of your system. I saw it Saturday and I'll still bummed out Tuesday morning.

This is a movie about the decisions we make. Here's a good decision. Save yourself the time and the money. Do NOT see Another Earth. If you never see it, you will never know how much you should thank me for this.

I know in my heart I have done the right thing warning you, and that will have to suffice.

Penrose pattern #8: The Whirlygig

2011-08-14T06:26:00.001-07:00

Title: The Whirlygig

Date: 14 August 2011

Type: Pattern

Number of tiles: 180

Color breakdown: 90 yellow, 90 blue

Shape breakdown: 120 kites, 60 darts

Kosher Penrose tiling rules: no

Lots of people will tell you their mom was beautiful.

2011-08-11T22:48:00.000-07:00

I have photographic proof.

Here's a picture of yours truly, my mom Kara and my sister Karlacita! when she is just home from the hospital.

I look a little grumpy. I really loved that rocking chair and I probably wanted to sit in it.

Karlacita! had this picture as a Polaroid and it had a lot of imperfections in it over the decades. She sent it to my friend Alan to do some restoration work and it looks wonderful.

Thanks to everybody who made it possible for me to share this with y'all, which would include the Gosh Darned Pater Familias who took the picture in the first place. It does bring back some great memories.

Superman and the public welfare.

2011-08-11T07:12:00.000-07:00

Over at Osbourne Ink, someone found this old public service announcement page from a Superman comic in 1952. You can always tell a character is heartless in a comic book if they use the exclamation "Bah!"

Of course, I've heard Superman wasn't even born here, and he's never produced a long form birth certificate.

Click for larger and more readable.

New poll: Top Five John Cusack Movies.

2011-08-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

I haven't had a poll here at Lotsa 'Splainin' 2 Do in a very long time, so I say it's time for a new one.

What are your five favorite films of John Cusack? Back in the 1980s and 1990s, he made some great movies, mostly comedies, and while a lot of the stuff he's done this decade has been big budget cheese, he has still had some interesting choices in more offbeat stuff.

Here are twelve choices, listed in chronological order, with short explanations of each. There are some big movies like Stand By Me and Broadcast News I left off the list because his roles were too minor to be counted as John Cusack movies.

The Sure Thing (1985) An early Rob Reiner romantic comedy with Daphne Zuniga. Also the first time he worked with Tim Robbins, who shows up in several films on this list.

Eight Men Out (1988) Directed by John Sayles. The story of the players from the Black Sox who were thrown out of baseball for fixing games in the World Series. Cusack plays Buck Weaver, who was banned from the game not for taking money but for not ratting on his teammates.

Say Anything… (1989) Directed by Cameron Crowe. The picture of Cusack as Lloyd Dobler holding the boom box over his head is his most iconic image from his career.

The Grifters (1990) Directed by Stephen Frears. Co-starring Angelica Huston and Annette Bening, easily one of the darkest movies of Cusack's early career.

Bullets Over Broadway (1994) One of the first Woody Allen movies where the role Allen would have played years earlier is played by another actor. Unlike other actors including Kenneth Brannagh, Cusack does not try to do a Woody Allen impression in this film.

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) Directed by George Armitrage. A hit man goes to his 10 year high school reunion. Co-starring Minnie Driver at her most adorable. The hit man is seeing a shrink, a plot device used later in Analyze This and The Sopranos.

Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil (1997) Directed by Clint Eastwood. The movie version of this popular book didn't do great business, but I still think it deserves to be included on the list.

Cradle Will Rock (1999) Directed by Tim Robbins. Cusack had a small role in Robbins' Bob Roberts years before, but this time he plays Nelson Rockefeller in this story about the art scene in the mid 1930s, when the public theater projects started by F.D.R. are being accused of un-American activities nearly a generation before Joe McCarthy makes his name with similar accusations after World War II.

Being John Malkovich (1999) Directed by Spike Jonze, written by Charlie Kaufman. Kaufman has written some of the most off-beat screenplays that Hollywood has produced over the past twenty years and Being John Malkovich is his biggest success.

High Fidelity (2000) Directed by Stephen Frears. This movie is why I decided on this poll. Nick Hornby didn't think his novel about a record collector would translate out of its original English setting, but Cusack and a wonderful cast, including Jack Black, the Danish actress Iben Hjejle, Tim Robbins, Todd Louiso and Cusack's sister Joan make this one of my favorite movies about music.

Max (2002) Directed by Menno Meyjes. Cusack plays Max Rothman, a Jewish art dealer in Germany after World War I trying to befriend a difficult artist named Adolf Hitler, played by Noah Taylor. One of the least known movies on this list, but one of my personal favorites.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) Directed by Steve Pink. A silly comedy to be sure, but it made me laugh. I put it on the list to round it out to an even dozen.

The poll will be up until the 19th, a week from Friday. You can vote for more than one film, since it's supposed to be a top five list.

News for My People and Our Agenda from Hamburg, Germany!

2011-08-08T13:57:00.000-07:00

A new art installation by Oliver Voss called The Bather now being shown in Hamburg, Germany, clearly has My People and Our Agenda in mind. The three non-submerged parts, the knees and head of a giant woman, stand 13 feet tall cover 96 feet in length.

Penrose pattern #7: The Ice Flowers.

2011-08-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

Title: The Ice Flowers
Date: 8 August 2011
Type: Pattern
Number of tiles: 120
Color breakdown: 90 yellow, 30 blue
Shape breakdown: 90 kites, 30 darts
Kosher Penrose tiling rules: no