05.27.08
Posted in news, personal, tv at 8:35 pm by danvk
Last we spoke, I swore to not pay attention to the news for a few months. How quickly the world changes when you’re not paying attention! I walked by a TV this afternoon and heard a general saying this:
We want to capture R. Kelly, the world’s most notorious terrorist.
I know R. Kelly is bad, but the world’s most notorious terrorist? It took me a minute to realize what the quote really was:
We want to capture or kill the world’s most notorious terrorist.
What does this say about me!?
Permalink
05.20.08
Posted in news, politics at 11:49 pm by danvk
I came to a realization last weekend while watching Mike Huckabee, Harold Ford, Jr. and various pundits discuss VP candidates on Meet the Press. We’re going to be hearing this exact argument for the next three months. I’ll care then. After the Oregon and Kentucky primaries tonight, I’m going to stop paying attention to the presidential race. There’s just not going to be any news of note until this fall. Why worry?
But before checking out for a few months, I’ve got one last Presidential Primary post left in me.
The question for the last few weeks has been “why is Hillary still in this race?” She can’t win a majority of pledged delegates, overall delegates, states, or votes (unless you use very strange definitions of who “counts”). Could she have something up her sleeve with Michigan and Florida?
According to Daily Kos, here was the delegate count at the end of the night:
| |
Pledged |
Super |
Total |
Needed |
| Obama |
1,656.5 |
304.5 |
1,961 |
64 |
| Clinton |
1,501.5 |
277.5 |
1,779 |
246 |
| Remaining |
86 |
214 |
300 |
Obama passed 1,622 pledged delegates tonight and claimed a majority. But that excludes Florida and Michigan. Florida had 185 delegates and Michigan had 156. To get an absolute majority of pledged delegates including Florida and Michigan, he’d need 1,622 + (185 + 156)/2 = 1792.5 delegates. With only 86 pledged delegates left, there’s no way he can make Florida and Michigan irrelevant.
Or so goes the argument. But what did those excluded Florida and Michigan actually look like?
I don’t know precisely how the “Uncommitted” delegates work, but I imagine they’d be under enormous pressure to vote for Obama at the convention. Add those in and you get:
| |
Pledged |
Fl.+Mi. |
Total Pledged |
Needed |
| Obama |
1,656.5 |
124 |
1780.5 |
12 |
| Clinton |
1,501.5 |
178 |
1679.5 |
113 |
| Remaining |
86 |
0 |
86 |
So if you include the Florida and Michigan delegations, he hasn’t passed that magic mark, but he’s extremely close. And more interestingly, he’s the only one that can pass that mark. Hillary needs 113 pledged delegates for a majority, but there are only 86 left. This is because of the Edwards delegates.
If you don’t give Obama the 55 uncommitted delegates from Michigan though, he’s unlikely to pass the 50% mark, even by June 3. Could that be the trick? It seems a bit far-fetched. We’ll find out in three months when I start paying attention again!
Permalink
02.27.08
Posted in news, reviews, tv at 8:00 pm by danvk
FRONTLINE on PBS, the documentary series that takes on the tough, complicated issues and finds them… tough and complicated.
It’s rare for me to watch a documentary and conclude that it undereditorialized, but that’s exactly the reaction I’ve had to the first few episodes of this season.
First we had The Medicated Child, which looked at the rapid increase in drug prescriptions for ADHD and Bipolar disorder in children. Frontline’s approach was to follow several families that had either put their children on drugs or decided not to. Each family had widely varying reactions. One family felt that the drugs prevented their child from committing suicide. Another felt that the drugs had led directly to their child committing suicide. And so on. I doubt that these cases are typical, but with only a few stories in the show, it’s difficult to get any sense of proportion. The issue of what’s caused the increase in prescriptions, the issue I found most interesting going into the show, was hardly touched.
Then there was Growing Up Online, which purports to look at the increasingly prominent role of the internet in the lives of kids. I was really excited about this one since, unlike with most documentaries I see, I have very direct, personal experience with this issue. I was left with the distinct impression that I knew more about growing up online than the producers did. Once again, they followed a few extreme examples. One girl created an entire online world revolving around erotic, gothic pictures of herself. Another boy was driven to suicide by cyberbullying. These are interesting cases, but again, they are so rare that they throw off all sense of balance in the episode. The show was not without its strengths, however. Some of the kids had interesting perspectives on the role of the internet that I was able to relate to. And most interestingly, it showed me how growing up online has shifted since I did it. We had AIM and email when I was a kid, but most people didn’t have blogs and there was no Facebook. We had dialup. Going online was a decision. Nowadays kids have laptops, cable and wireless connections that are always on. Being online is no longer an experience, it’s just a given.
Finally we have Rules of Engagement, which looks at the incident in Haditha, Iraq. I was inspired to watch this by an interview with the director on On The Media, one of my favorite podcasts. Haditha is an especially thorny issue, even by FRONTLINE standards. The Marines say one thing. The Iraqi’s say something completely different. Several Marines have changed their stories, but only after being offered immunity to testify against one another. There’s essentially no physical evidence. It’s just one man’s word against another’s. I certainly feel as though I understand the Haditha situation better after watching this documentary, but I have no idea who to believe.
I guess this is a problem inherent to the documentary. Is a mere data dump valuable? Is it possible? Is it better to editorialize explicitly and make an argument, or is it better not to take sides and only incidentally present a skewed or unbalanced view.
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I do know that FRONTLINE has left me wanting unqualified statements of fact. Maybe I’ll go read some math books…
Permalink
01.30.08
Posted in news, politics at 11:20 am by danvk
The big news of the day is that John Edwards is dropping out of the Democratic presidential race. It’s not clear to me whether this helps Clinton or Obama. From what I can tell, Edwards’ main constituency was older, white men. In the past, men have tended to favor Obama, whereas older people have tended to favor Clinton. It will be interesting to follow the polls over the next few days.
One thing that’s certain about Edwards’ decision is that it’s a good one for the Democratic party. Because each state awards delegates proportional to its popular vote, he could have grabbed maybe 5-10% of the delegates. This would have almost certainly prevented either Clinton or Obama from getting a majority, and led to a brokered convention. Now, that could only happen if there were an exceptionally close delegate race.
Permalink
12.11.07
Posted in astronomy, news, sports at 11:01 pm by danvk
There have been two space-related stories of note in the news recently.
The first was that the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis was delayed until January. The space shuttle has been NASA’s greatest boondoggle in history: its $145 billion cost to date has passed the Apollo program’s inflation-adjusted $135 billion. The worth of the Apollo program is an issue for another time, but at least it had a clear goal which it accomplished. The Space Shuttle has languished into old age. Seriously, does anyone realize how old this program is? Here’s a video from the launch of the first space shuttle, in 1981:
For some context, the commander of this mission was John Young. John Young walked on the moon… on his fourth space flight! Here’s a plot of space shuttle launches over time:
NASA was accelerating launches through the start of 1986, when Challenger was destroyed. The first period represents the hopes and dreams of the shuttle program. Before Challenger, it really might have made space travel routine. The middle segment, from Challenger to Columbia, is the long working life of the shuttle. Expectations were capped, and so were results. The shuttle program should have ended after Columbia. But instead, it gets a third period to die of old age.
Shuttle missions these days primarily service the International Space Station, which exists primarily to give the Space Shuttle somewhere to go. Seriously, try reading the wiki article about the Columbus module being installed on the next shuttle mission and tell me what exactly it does. Hubble Space Telescope maintenance is often pointed to as something worthwhile that the Shuttle does. Fair enough. But how many Hubble’s could we have had for $145 billion?
The second story is genuinely exciting. It comes from the European Space Agency’s CoRoT mission. At $50 million, it’s a featherweight space mission. This telescope was launched last December and has been observing stars for the past year, looking for transits. This week, they reported that “CoRoT is discovering exo-planets at a rate only set by the available resources to follow up the detections”.
This is completely nuts! There are currently 268 known exoplanets. It’s possible that this number will double in the next month as the CoRoT group begins publishing their findings on December 20. Personally, I’d consider that a more significant achievement than anything the Space Shuttle has done in the last 25 years with its $145 billion.
Permalink
09.06.07
Posted in news, sports, tennis at 11:49 am by danvk
It’s time once again for a token Grand Slam post. The 2007 US Open is winding its way to the final weekend. There have been some surprises, like defending champ Maria Sharapova’s early exit, and some fun matches, like James Blake’s loss to Tommy Haas in a fifth-set tiebreak.
Last night’s match between Andy Roddick and Roger Federer was the most hyped of the tournament. The result was no surprise. Federer won in straights. The messaging on this match has been spectacularly consistent: Roddick played brilliantly, but there’s no shame in losing to the greatest player of all time. I think this is crap. People need to stop going so easy on Roddick. He’s 1-14 against Roger all-time and 0-9 since 2004. He hasn’t taken a set off the guy this year. Maybe if people stopped patting him on the back after every loss and telling him how close he came, then he’d be forced to regroup and find a way to deliver.
One highlight of the match was Andre Agassi’s debut as an announcer. Great players often make great announcers, and John McEnroe is the best in the business. Andre didn’t pipe up too frequently, but everything he said was interesting. Here’s one exchange:
When Roddick stared down Federer and bellowed after a 138 mph ace to get to 4-4 in the first set, Agassi said: “There’s a fine line between getting pumped up and waking a sleeping giant, I assure you.”
Another great moment came when Andre revealed how he used to deal with Boris Becker’s. He picked up on a tell — whenever Boris stuck his tongue out before a serve, he was sure to go down the middle. What an edge that would give you! I wonder if Roger’s picked up on anything like that. Andy’s serve just doesn’t seem to phase him.
My picks — Justine Henin beats Svetlana Kuznetsova in the Women’s final Saturday. On the men’s side, Novak Djokovic beats David Ferrer in the semis before losing a close final to the man himself, Roger Federer.
Permalink
08.28.07
Posted in astronomy, news, personal, science at 3:05 am by danvk
It’s just entered totality, check it out if you’re awake. It’s shocking how many lights my apartment complex still has on at 3 AM. Although this is an unusually long eclipse, it’s going to be a brief one for me. Lunar eclipses are way cooler when they happen at a more reasonable time.
Permalink
08.20.07
Posted in news, politics at 9:42 am by danvk
The Stanley Fish blog on the NY Times has a post looking at Hillary’s potential running mates this morning. This kind of piece does a lot to reinforce the “Hillary is inevitable” meme. I’m tempted to buy into it myself. Hillary’s been running the best campaign so far, and she’s been effective in all the debates. (Except for that quip about lobbyists representing the real America.)
At the same time, I know that the Hillary machine is trying to project a sense of inevitability. It’s all part of their plan, and I don’t want to buy into it.
A couple reactions to the article I linked to: Read the rest of this entry »
Permalink
08.11.07
Posted in news, tennis, tv at 7:47 pm by danvk
Novak Djokovic upset Rafael Nadal in the Rogers Masters semifinals this evening, making up for the Wimbledon semifinals earlier this year. It sets up an interesting final with Roger Federer tomorrow afternoon (noon PST) in Montreal. Fed’s never lost to Djokovic before, (he’s 4-0) but they haven’t played since Djokovic cracked the top ten earlier this year. This is the final I was rooting for at Wimbledon earlier this year, as those elusive “astute readers of danvk.org” will recall. I’m calling Fed two sets. I don’t think Djokovic can beat him.
This week and next also mark one of the more brain-dead stretches of the ATP tour. The top players are required to enter all nine Masters Series events, which are just one notch below the Grand Slams. Tomorrow is the Rogers Masters final, and on Monday the Cincinnati Masters begins. There’s not even a one day break, but the players are all required to enter both. This makes for some really exhausted players and surprising results at the Cincy Masters. Last year Federer won the Rogers Masters, but lost to #21 Andy Murray in early round play the next week. For a sense of what an aberration this was, Fed only lost to two players last year: Nadal and Andy Murray. It’s absurd that the ATP continues to schedule the Masters Series in this way.
Update: Novak made me eat my words, winning 7-6(2), 2-6, 7-6(2). Fed came quite close to winning the first set: he botched five set points before Djokovic sent it to the ‘breaker. Mad props to him, I underestimated him. He’ll be fun to watch at the US Open this fall.
Permalink
07.21.07
Posted in news, sports, tv at 8:35 pm by danvk
I don’t get the wave of excitement about David Beckham coming to America to join the L.A. Galaxy and play in the MLS soccer league. ESPN was advertising this like mad. His wife, a former spice girl, is even getting her own reality show.
First thing I don’t get: How does an MLS team have $250 million to pay this guy? Does the entire league bring in that much money?
Second thing I don’t get: Why does anyone expect this to get American’s excited about soccer? Getting the World Cup in 1996 couldn’t do it, so how could one man? But there’s no arguing with the true believers.
The whole hysteria has made me very cynical today. If you want to get people excited about something, you don’t tell them how great it is or try to explain why they should be excited. No, you just act as though the rest of the country already is excited. I’ve often wondered if ESPN could pull this off with a lesser-known sport like disc golf. If they covered professional disc golf events on SportsCenter and brought in some talking heads for a “Disc Golf Tonight” show to analyze the week’s events, people would start to care about it.
Permalink
« Previous entries