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What's really going to happen when gas is priced out of the consumer market? The Omnibus!With gas prices revving up to ride off in to the sunset of consumer intangibility, automotive engineers have unfortunately proven that economic forces are insufficient to produce the necessary product change on time. Despite the existence of hybrid and natural gas cars, as well as a handful of other alt-fuel models, and despite mileage-hoarding "hypermiler" techniques, we have failed to plan in time for this to affect us before we (or, those of us who haven't already) cross the threshold of "I can't buy gas anymore". City bus systems even in moderate-sized cities (I'm extrapolating this from my experience with (sub)urban Utah's UTA system) have been steadily growing.
You know where I'm going now, and I bet you're all so excited. We all get to ride the bus! Bus tickets will go up in price, sure, but I bet that after a short period of time, most major cities will privatize their fleets, creating competition, and bringing our little part of North America more in line with our Southern neighbors. This exciting transitional phase in American economic history will doubtless bring hearty tales of the everyman to otherwise calloused and naive suburbians, like the one I heard the other day: "All I do all day is smoke pot and watch TV with my dog." It'll be awesome.
Also, there are still bicycles.
I'm going to contribute to those alt-fuel groups, if I have anything left over after gas station tomorrow.
Further proof that John McCain is the second coming of George W. Bush.
Criticism of John McCain has been varied, to say the least. Ultraconservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh have publicly announced that McCain is not conservative enough, stating that they would even vote for Hillary Clinton over him. Critics from the left - especially his likely November opponent, Barack Obama - have denounced him for being too conservative, saying that a McCain presidency only amounts to a third Bush term. Both sides have a legitimate beef, but accusations of McCain as Bush, Jr. are starting to look more accurate. Even more than his policy, McCain's speech is starting to sound downright Bushian of late.
Consider this. McCain, whose major strength is his understanding of the military, said the following at a press conference: "[I]t's common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and is receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran." Senator Joe Lieberman, who was standing at his side, quickly whispered into his ear, after which McCain said that he misspoke, and that Iran was not training al-Qaeda in Iraq forces. A simple mistake, right? Perhaps, except that he made the same misspeech a day earlier. The error is a small one - Iranians are 
training Iraqi extremists, not al-Qaeda forces - but one that hearkens back to the road to war in 2002. Bush was adamant that there were connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, which ultimately proved to be false. It's far from clear that McCain is as gung-ho about war as Bush has been, but this sort of mistake from a professed military expert does raise some eyebrows.
Couple that with another recent statement, and things seem even more sketchy. When asked about the situation in Iraq now that the death toll for U.S. soldiers had risen above 4,000, McCain answered, "We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground." That's a statement that sounds eerily like Bush. The war in Iraq, along with many other hallmarks of the Bush administration, were perpetuated due to the government's insistence on ignoring reality. That has been the most glaring criticism of George W. Bush. It's unnerving to think that the likely Republican nominee could already have the same thing going against him.
Parsing the Jeremiah Wright sermons.
I know I went on record a few weeks ago as saying that nothing between March 4 and April 22 would matter in the primary season, but since the craziness about Rev. Jeremiah Wright refuses to go away, I'll weigh in on the matter. I stand by my opinion that it doesn't matter in the slightest. More than anything else, I'm irritated by how distorted and skewed these sermons have become by major news outlets in an attempt not to discredit and smear Barack Obama, but to simply sell a story.
The phrase "God damn America" is ubiquitous now. A simple Google search on the phrase yields over a million hits. Pretty impressive stuff for a sermon delivered over five years ago on the south side of Chicago. Yet if you ask nearly any American what the speech was about, I doubt very much that any of them could tell you anything beyond "he hates America." That's troubling to me. My frustrations about the us versus them mentality of post-9/11 patriotism aside, I want to point out that Rev. Wright is not attacking America here. He's mourning. You can see that in the text of the speech. Amazingly, considering all of the YouTube videos in circulation containing sound clips from the speech, I wasn't able to find a complete text of the sermon. (If you can, mention it in a comment and I'll get it posted up here.) The title of the sermon is "Confusing God and Government." He spends his 40 minutes arguing that citizens look to their government for the things that only God can provide. 
Specifically, he makes the distinction between an good, benevolent, and merciful God and a petty, human, and flawed government. The comparison should surprise no one. No government, nor any other man-made institution, can claim to be perfect. He made several references to the American government, especially the war in Iraq, but didn't limit himself, also referencing the Egyptian, British, German, Russian, and Japanese governments.
The sound bite about America was what drew the most attention, though. Yet listen to the quote - the whole quote - and tell me if this is a sentiment you really disagree with:
"When it came to putting the citizens of African descent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them on slave quarters. Put them on auction blocks. Put them in cotton fields. Put them in inferior schools. Put them in substandard housing. Put them in scientific experiments. Put them in the lower paying jobs. Put them outside the equal protection of the law. Kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education, and locked them into positions of hopelessness and helplessness.
"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing God Bless America. Naw, naw, naw. Not God Bless America. God Damn America! That's in the Bible. For killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating us citizens as less than human. God Damn America as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme."
Admittedly, the quote has an air of conspiracy theory to it. But if you think of the government as the common man, then there's little disputing what he says. Blacks have been repressed for years. There's still a very real element of racism in America today. That's undeniable. Wright is denouncing the sin of pride in America for her sense of superiority, and that's something that's hard to argue with.
The other thing causing all of this flap is his argument that America is reaping the rewards of imperialism abroad with terrorism at home. Here's an excerpt from that speech, delivered days after the September 11 attacks:
"We took this country, by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism. We took Africans from their country to build our way ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians - babies, nonmilitary personnel. We bombed the black community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers, and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hardworking fathers. We bombed Khadafi, his home and killed his child. Blessed be they who bash your children's heads against the rocks.
"We bombed Iraq, we killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed the plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy - killed hundreds of hardworking people - mothers and fathers, who left home to go that day, not knowing they'd never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school - civilians, not soldiers. People just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and South Africa and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas is brought back into our own front yard.
"America's chickens are coming home, to roost. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism."
Again, you can disagree with the idea that the American government has a secret agenda to systematically remove undesirables from within its borders or overseas. But there's little disputing America's foreign policy has created a powerfully anti-American feeling abroad. And it's in that sense that Rev. Wright said "God damn America." He's not angry. He's mournful, wishing that history could have led us to a different place. He's preaching accountability for transgression, saying that we need to be responsible for our actions and take our lumps. Above all, he's preaching repentance, coming back to the suffering of Jesus Christ as a way to redemption at the end of both of these sermons.
You can disagree with his choice of examples for his sermons. I don't think that politics has a place in religion. They'd do well to stay apart. But his points are completely valid, I think. They just need to be read in context. They also need to be read in a state of mind free of hyperpatriotism, remembering that America isn't the center of the world and that criticizing the government and the country isn't the grievous sin it's made out to be.
An exciting weekend, but not for this writer.
Weekends like this one are exciting to watch. Underdogs come up with big upsets, powerhouses are shocked, and endless buzz is created. It's a lot of fun. It's a little less fun, however, when you've trumpeted up your foolproof prediction method and get to watch it all fall to pieces. Let's review:
West Virginia 73, Duke 67. Duke was rated a full two and a half points higher in the SPI - high enough to earn them a spot in the finals in my bracket. West Virginia ruined my life again this year, knocking Duke out in the second round. They knocked off UConn a few years back in the second round as a 7 seed. I'm not too keen on those Mountaineers.
Stanford 82, Marquette 81. One point the other way and we aren't having this discussion. I went out of my way to talk about how overrated Stanford is and how underrated Marquette is. So much for that.
Realistically, those are the only two big upsets I had. I have 12 of the 16 remaining teams correct so far (only wrong on Washington State, Villanova, Stanford, and West Virginia), but the teams that I lost had a big impact. It's rough. It just goes to show you that there isn't a foolproof way to predict something as inherently chaotic as the NCAA basketball tournament. I'm still doing better than the wife (35-13 to her 33-15), but I'd be surprised if she doesn't end up outperforming me. Next year, when you see my article come up about my failsafe predictions for March Madness, cut straight to the chase and ask who my wife has winning it all. (She picked Tennessee, incidentally.)
AP Photo - Chuck Burton
Lots of upsets, and big ones, too.
This is the downside of going public with a bracket you think is really good - when it takes a nose dive, everyone finds out. There were four big upsets today, and my metric only got two of them right. And even that's debatable. Let's look at the numbers.
Western Kentucky 101, Drake 99. The SPI had #14 Western Kentucky (112.4489) narrowly beating #16 Drake (112.0300). It wasn't an easy choice. Still, it's hard to argue with a scoring differential of 14.8 over your last ten games, even if they come against Sun Belt competition. I had complete faith in the SPI for this one. (That means I spent the entire overtime glued to my computer, watching the score update every few seconds and screaming when Drake pulled ahead with seconds to play.)
San Diego 70, Connecticut 69. This one floored me. San Diego is one of the worst teams to make the field (104.4046, #59 SPI) and UConn is, while not top-tier, pretty solid (110.1566, #24 SPI). I thought this one was a no-brainer. And somehow, San Diego kept it close the whole time and pulled out a squeaker in overtime. Just goes to show you that no statistics-driven metric is perfect.
Siena 83, Vanderbilt 62. I liked Siena in this matchup and was so confident I didn't expect anything other than a Siena blowout. I got it, but a quick look at the SPI chart surprised me. Vanderbilt was ranked considerably higher than Siena in pretty much every category. Look at the numbers:
SPI Vanderbilt 108.0898 Siena 106.6667
SOS Vanderbilt .5644 Siena .5143
Scoring differential Vanderbilt 7.2 Siena 5.9
Not really sure why I was so confident there, but I picked the upset and got it. Weird.
Villanova 75, Clemson 69. Here's one where I was just dead wrong. Seriously. How could I have seen #25 Clemson (109.8635) losing to #58 Villanova (104.6078)? The mind boggles. I just don't get this one.
Overall, the SPI performed significantly worse today, only going 9-7 for a total of 24-8. Not a good day. For comparison, my wife's bracket is 25-9. Also, she wishes to inform the loyal readers of the Worb that her bracket was not solely determined by name recognition, but by an elaborate process consisting of looking at both the team's seed and their win-loss record. I thought you should know out of duty to accuracy (which means I had to tell you on penalty of no sex until I'm 75).
Only one significant upset on the first day of the tournament.
There were some nail-biters, but my bracket is nearly perfect after day one of play. Here's a rundown of the three misfires I had:
UNLV 71, Kent State 58. The SPI had this one right, actually. #41 UNLV rates 107.2224 compared to #43 Kent State's 106.7044. When the scores are that close, though, I look to the last ten games, and Kent State had a much higher scoring differential. I yielded, and I picked the upset. I paid for it, too.
Pittsburgh 82, Oral Roberts 63. Same problem here. #37 Pittsburgh rates 107.7219 to #39 Oral Roberts' 107.3852. That's even closer than the first matchup. Oral Roberts had nearly eight points higher in the scoring differential category, though, so I went with the big upset. Now I just have to hope Pitt doesn't go on a huge run. They shouldn't, though, since Michigan State (their next opponent) has an SPI of over 109.
Texas A&M 67, BYU 62. Anyone watching this game knows that it was close. #17 BYU had a much better SPI (111.7292 compared to 109.0498), but I forgot to apply the smell test here. BYU plays in the Mountain West Conference. Their biggest win was over Louisville, yes, but it was a team riddled with injuries. I should have known better. It's just hard to pick against your alma mater.
So through the first day, the SPI is 15-1. My bracket is 13-3, but that's just because I'm an idiot and ignored my own system. For the record, my wife, who more of less filled out her bracket on name recognition (I love you, honey), is standing at 14-2, only missing BYU-Texas A&M and USC-Kansas State. That's a little humbling.
Mount St. Mary's 69, Coppin State 60.
I promised regular updates, and I'm here to provide the first. The play-in game was tonight, and on Monday I said that I expected Mount St. Mary's to win over Coppin State. The score is in, and the Mountaineers won by nine points. It was pretty close for most of the contest, but Mount St. Mary's pulled away in the clutch. Aficionados of the SPI will remember that the Mountaineers have a significantly higher rating than the Eagles. Mount St. Mary's boasts an SPI rating of 103.8015 compared to Coppin State's 97.3570. A difference of six and a half points is not to be ignored. Thus far, things are looking good.
For the record, Mount St. Mary's next opponent, North Carolina, has an SPI rating of 117.2178. If a six and a half point difference is huge, then a thirteen and a half point difference is even more so. Stay tuned.
Shockingly, an actual development on the campaign trail.
While I was adamant that nothing significant would happen with respect to the election until the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, I may be forced to eat my words a mere two weeks later. Something major is afoot, and it's not what you think it is. Barack Obama's speech on race today was stirring. It was impressive, and critics hailed it as a turning 
point in his candidacy. Some people said this was the moment that put him past the presidential threshold. It was impressive. It sounded fantastic, and certainly did a lot to improve his image, which is what this campaign is centered around. But it wasn't the most significant piece of election news today. The most significant news, actually, was something that came without a lot of fanfare, which is surprising, considering its implications. Florida Democratic Party chair Karen Thurman announced today that Florida will not hold a re-vote for the Democratic primary. The results are to stand as is.
This leaves three possibilities for the Florida Democratic delegates, none of which are particularly appealing to Hillary Clinton, who won there with 50% of the vote.
Situation 1: The delegates from Florida aren't seated at the Democratic National Convention in August, and Clinton's 17-point victory counts for nothing. The Florida delegates don't matter. Ouch.
Situation 2: Barack Obama, who will control who can and cannot be seated at the delegation since he has the most delegates, allows the Florida delegates to be seated, but only if he has enough of a lead that seating extra Clinton delegates isn't a threat to him. They don't matter in this situation, either. Ouch.
Situation 3: The Florida delegates are split 50-50 in a reallocation. Neither candidate earns a net gain from Florida. The delegates still don't matter. Ouch.
No matter how you slice it, Clinton stands to lose a lot from this decision. Florida could have offered up to 186 delegates. Even if she only won by ten points (which is a somewhat modest projection), she would have gained twenty delegates on Obama. That's a lot when you consider the gap between them is just over 140. Her chances of winning the popular vote shrink up without Florida, too. A re-vote in Florida would likely have been even more in her favor, pushing her closer to the popular vote and the claim to have the voice of the people. That doesn't look likely now. Superdelegates are trickling away from her, too. She's losing, and even a major victory in Pennsylvania probably won't be enough to stop the bleeding.
So that's the real news from the campaign trail. The news outlets will rave and swoon over Obama's big speech, but you'd better believe the announcement out of Florida has the Clinton campaign sweating a lot more.
Retooling the ratings metric of the future.
Since I last wrote, I've done a substantial retooling of the Sam Power Index (SPI). The previous metric was essentially a product of the team's RPI rating, their strength of schedule, and their scoring differential. 
I realized, however, that this isn't the best way to go about it. For one thing, the RPI is a metric determined by a team's strength of schedule. Including that factor twice doesn't make much sense. Second, I realized that I was unfairly punishing teams that did poorly earlier in the season, but came alive down the stretch. A team being outscored by an average of seven points throughout the season but winning their last ten games by an average of fifteen points will be a lot more dangerous than their original record might indicate.
So I overhauled the metric, and my Excel spreadsheet now has close to four times as much data on it. I weighted in each team's strength of schedule and scoring differential for the last ten games, and I found some remarkable differences in the rankings. Even better, now that the official seedings have been released, I can compare what the NCAA selection committee and the SPI came up with. Here are the major differences:
Davidson. The Wildcats went 26-6 this year, winning their last 22 games. They're outscoring their opponents by over fifteen points a game, and outscored their last ten opponents by nearly twenty points a game. Yet the NCAA dropped them to a 10 seed for playing in the fairly soft Southern Conference and for not finishing ambitious nonconference opponents like Duke. The SPI has them listed at #4. This is one of the teams that is going to surprise a lot of people.
Georgetown. They rolled through the incredibly deep Big East conference this year, only losing to Pittsburgh in the conference final. They have a scoring differential of 11.5 points and a record of 25-4, earning them the 2 seed in the Midwest region. The SPI puts them at #20 overall, however, since they slowed down in the stretch. Their scoring differential fell to 5.6 points during their last ten games against a schedule that was only marginally more difficult than the rest of their season. The Hoyas aren't a bad team, but they aren't the dominant force everyone thinks they are. They aren't even the top-rated team from the Big East - Marquette (10), Louisville (11), and West Virginia (15) all finished higher.
Western Kentucky. Remember how I said this was the team to watch last time? Their SPI actually rose when I retooled it. They're rated at #14, which, for comparison, is only just below Texas. This is a team that beat their (admittedly weak) last ten opponents by nearly 15 points a game. That's pretty impressive, even for the Sun Belt Conference. Their first two opponents are lower in the SPI (#16 Drake and #24 Connecticut), so don't be surprised if you see the 12th-seeded Hilltoppers in the Sweet Sixteen.
Marquette. Here's a team that hasn't generated much attention this year. The Golden Eagles play in the insanely talented Big East, so they've been overshadowed by teams like Georgetown, Notre Dame, and Louisville all year. Yet they have close to the top scoring differential in the conference at 12.7 on the season. That fell to 11.5 in their last ten games, but that was higher than anyone else in the conference came up with. Even though the NCAA stuck them with a 6 seed, they have the advantage of playing in a soft region. They draw #60 Kentucky (an 11 seed) in the first round and overrated Stanford in the second (3 seed, #27 SPI). They have the guns to get past #13 Texas and even #3 Memphis, I think. Marquette's SPI is nearly three and a half points lower than Memphis', but the benefits of playing in the Big East will have them ready for such a big game. Marquette will be the surprise of the tournament.
I'm ready to predict the play-in game, for those of you looking for proof that this metric will work. The opening round game pits 16a Mount Saint Mary's against 16b Coppin State. These games are usually a toss-up when filling out brackets, but I feel pretty comfortable going to Mount Saint Mary's. Coppin State has had an amazing comeback from a 4-19 start (they finished the season on a 15-1 run) and had a 9.2 scoring differential in their last ten games, but their SPI is only 97.3570 compared to Mount Saint Mary's 103.8015. The fact is that Mount Saint Mary's has been playing all season at the level Coppin State has over the last ten games, and against similar competition. Go ahead and fill that in your bracket in pen.
I'll be posting regular updates as the tournament progresses. Feel free be amazed when I correctly pick all 64 games or mock me mercilessly when I get them all wrong.
Write 'em down, let 'em go.
There's a lot of Wikistuff about language death. Go wiki it. (Someone put me in a stockade for my awful use of that word.) Attached are terms like "killer language", "language murder" and the laughably linguistics-scholarly "linguicide". I don't buy it. Hold on before we go any further: I am vehemently opposed to "English only" and like laws, but I do think that if we are going to make any judgments on the big E then we must also do the same to its colonial imperialist-dog killer language friends, which according to Wikipedia are Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, French, Hindi, Swedish, and Hausa. So, if you hate on English, you hate on Hausa. How could anyone hate on Hausa? It's like kicking a puppy.
People learn language mostly out of a) necessity or b) expectations or social norms or c) difficult to identify internal motivations. Note that a) is so much more important than any other possible reason. This is from personal experience, but I'm sure if you Google Scholared "motivation language acquisition", you'd find some real evidence. Languages die when people are no longer motivated to speak them. In those situations, it's usually best to do the same as when any other organism is dead: plan a funeral.
In this case, the undertakers of languages are usually dressed in tweed rather than black--they're the professors of strange ilk to be found in campuses across the world, and they wield the tape recorder to the great effect of saving what can be remembered of the formerly living form of communication. Let them do their thing. Artificially resuscitating linguistic patterns is likely to be more effective than doing the same to organisms, but is far less fulfilling, as what you usually get is less a living language and more an "undead" one, unfaithful to the original and inaccessible to whichever native populations still exist.
The Rosetta Project is the largest time capsule for the dead and dying. Check out their space-aged language recording project here.
In the meantime, don't freak out that Washo is done for.
Sneaky tricks as the primary season continues to unfold.
Remember how I told you the next few weeks would be a lot of coverage about nothing? It's already underway. The insanity surrounding Eliot Spitzer aside, a "major" event has arisen on the campaign trail. Since her wins in Texas and Ohio rejuvenated her campaign, Hillary Clinton has been subtly floating the idea that Barack Obama could be her running mate in November. Crowds flew into a frenzy as she remarked, "A lot of people wish they didn't have to [choose between Clinton and Obama]. A lot of people say 'I wish I could vote for both of you.' Well, that might be possible someday."
The Obama response was predictable. He was quick to point out that he is "not running for vice president," and that the Clinton camp can't say both that he is too inexperienced to be president but suitably experienced to be vice president. And he's right, of course, but the real problem this poses for Obama is the one that lies under the surface. By suggesting that Obama could be her vice president, Clinton places herself as the front-runner. It's almost a condescending remark, as though it were something a mother might say to her well-intentioned but ultimately misguided child. She's implying that even though Obama is running in front right now, she will be the party nominee in the end, and that this is a good way to get his feet wet.
The genius of the whole thing is that the whole argument is implied. If she were to say all of this out loud, Obama could argue against it without too much difficulty. However, you can't argue against something that isn't said. Obama is trying to make the nonverbal argument into a verbal one by saying that Hillary isn't in a position to start choosing a vice president just yet since she's still behind. He's going to have to crack down a little harder. Clinton is getting into the voters' heads. There's no reason to think that she won't continue tactics like this one.
Dissecting America's most involved sporting event.
On Sunday, March 16, the NCAA will announce the field of 65 for the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament. You and I know it as March Madness. More worktime productivity is lost to this event than any other in the world of sports. Brackets are filled out, office pools formed, and millions of dollars are won and lost in bets. Teams like the George Mason Patriots pull off improbable upsets, delighting some fans and infuriating others. An incredible 32 games are played in the first two days of the tournament. It's insanity. It's chaotic. It's as close to perfection as we can get in sports.
In preparing to fill out my own bracket, I've been analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of teams likely to make it into the tournament. There are a number of statistics one can look at to get a sense of the strength of a team. The most readily available one is the Associated Press poll. Sportswriters across the nation rank the top 25 teams, and the final point totals are posted in the official poll. The rankings are used when publicizing a game (a recent game between #1 Memphis and #2 Tennessee comes to mind), but are in essence subjective. There aren't any solid statistics or data that go into the rankings. For a more precise measurement, some turn to the Ratings Percentage Index, which is calculated based on wins and strength of schedule. The RPI is used by the NCAA selection committee in determining which teams should be given at-large berths in the tournament. This gives us a better look at which teams are more likely to do well during March.
Yet this still fails to take into account a statistic I think is a better indicator of future performance than wins and losses - scoring differential. Simply put, this is a statistic that shows, on average, how much a given team is winning its games by. A team winning games by an average of ten points should be better than a team winning by only five points. However, you can't stake everything on scoring differential. There's a big difference between beating Duke by twenty points and beating 0-29 New Jersey Institute of Technology by that same margin. To account for that, I added both the team's RPI and their strength of schedule into the mix to arrive at a statistic I called (for lack of a better name) the Sam Power Index (SPI).
The SPI holds up pretty well with the projected seeding I got from ESPN's Joe Lunardi. Take a sample matchup between West Virginia and Baylor. Lunardi has the Mountaineers taking the higher seed, even though they've only won one more game than Baylor. A look at the SPI shows why: West Virginia has a scoring differential of 13.1, compared to Baylor's 7.4. This gives them an SPI of 4.279, nearly two points above Baylor. The seedings bear this out, putting West Virginia on top. (The Mountaineers actually have the 12th highest SPI, which would likely put them in Elite Eight territory, were it not for third-ranked North Carolina looming in the second round.)
I'm not going to claim that the SPI is perfect. Far from it, actually. According to the SPI, Ohio State should have won last year's finals. Comfortably. Ohio State had an SPI of 7.801, which is significantly higher than any teams's SPI this year. Florida had a paltry 6.406. A gap of over a point is cause for alarm. Yet Florida won by nine points. That's why I include a smell test. Occasionally, there will be predictions of one team beating another that don't seem quite right. An example is a projected third round matchup of 26-5 Xavier and 25-4 Georgetown. Xavier has the higher SPI at 5.119, nearly a full point above Georgetown. Seems like an easy win for the Musketeers. Yet Xavier has faltered down the stretch, while Georgetown has remained constant and won the Big East, the country's deepest conference. Even though the math has Xavier winning, I'm going to trust my gut and pick Georgetown. (And I'm still picking them to lose to North Carolina.)
Of course, anyone reading this column will be wondering who I've picked to win it all. I'm not going to spoil my advantage by giving that away, but I will give you my Final Four: Kansas, North Carolina, Duke, and UCLA. And lest you worry that I'm trying to dodge accountability by not posting my predictions publicly, rest assured that I'll provide updates throughout the tournament. I will say this, though: if you're looking for an upset pick, look no further than Western Kentucky. They're projected to land a 13 seed, but they have an SPI of 3.410. That's better than one of the 3 seeds. Look for them to do some damage this year.
Photo from Associated Press
French über-vloggers force us to romanticize the indie we've come to take for granted.Through Sam's personal blog I found a video of Beirut performing "Nantes" in a new and interesting way--Zach Condon, frontman, descending the stair singing the lyrics as strategically placed bandmembers meet him on landings, some following, some not. At first, I thought this was a homemade music video à la OK Go's dance classic. Turns out, however, that it is instead one of a treasure trove of indie vids, the brainchild of Vincent Moon and someone named "Chryde". Most of these "Take Away Shows" («Concerts à emporter») are shot somewhere in Paris--Montmartre seems to be a popular locale for the more prominent ones--and mostly by the same crew. There are some major exceptions, including everyone's favorite Argentine-Swede José González singing "Hints" in the back of a pickup in a Texas pitstop town, and Sufjan Stevens (and friends, including My Brightest Diamond) in a Civil War era concert hall in Cincinnati.
The videos are brilliant. The whole thing has the air of an art project, a collection of mostly indie performers doing their thing acoustically while the camera pulls in the surroundings. Some are brilliantly layed out, like the Beirut "Nantes" performance or the Shins' "Australia" in a Montmartre apartment, some are spontaneous and amazing, like Jason Mraz playing with a Bulgarian busker or Final Fantasy aka Owen Pallet taking off at an awkward gallop while playing "Your Light Is Spent". Some are just normal, some are a little disappointing. That's what makes it awesome. Also, everything's written up in French, so be warned. My French 202 skills paid off, but not quite enough.
There isn't an actual explanation of the reasons behind the project, and given the amount of time they've had to put one up, I wouldn't be expecting anything other than "lorem ipsum" anytime soon. Great indie videos are reason in themselves, says I.
And why you can expect a whole lot more of it until the Pennsylvania primary.
Now that the much-ballyhooed Texas and Ohio primaries have officially settled nothing other than the fact that the Democratic primary race will continue, the American public gets to wait seven more weeks until another major primary. True, there is a caucus in Wyoming tomorrow and a primary in Mississippi on Tuesday (both of which should be easy Obama victories), but the Pennsylvania primary on April 22 has 158 delegates at stake, nearly three times the amount of Wyoming and Mississippi combined. So we should look forward to a month and a half of silence, right?
Wrong. The candidates want to keep themselves fresh in your mind (predictably), so they're going to do all they can to keep themselves in media coverage, and especially to make sure that their opponent looks as bad as possible. So we should look forward to engaging and intellectual debates about the various issues facing our country, right?
Wrong again. With a few exceptions, party primaries aren't really about issues. (The 2006 Senatorial primary in Connecticut between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont, which was widely seen as a referendum on the Iraq War for the Democratic party, is a good example of this.) Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have differences when it comes to the issues, but for all intents and purposes, they're very minor issues. Both of them agree that we need a universal health care program. Both of them believe we should get our troops out of Iraq. Both of them believe we need to turn around the economy. Their only major policy difference is Obama's claim that he'll meet with leaders of countries such as Cuba, Iran, and North Korea without setting preconditions, but the fact that this hasn't received much attention in the media goes to show you that these elections aren't about issues.
I've argued before that this election is about image. If you want proof of that, you need look no further than the slogans for each candidate. Obama's is "change we can believe in," and Clinton's is "solutions for America." Could we have two less substantive themes? Obama has been famously vague about what sort of change he will enact as president, earning criticism from the Clinton camp, but she has been equally vague on what "solutions" she would provide. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, though. We already know what issues and policies the Democratic candidate will pursue in office, whichever of them is ultimately nominated. What we're voting for is an image. Do we want the candidate who has an image of hope and staying above the fray, or do we want the candidate promising experience and an ability to fight?
Once you accept the idea that the election has nothing to do with issues, the fact that stories such as Obama's traditional Somalian outfit or Clinton's dallying to release tax information are dominating news cycles comes as no surprise. They aren't trying to show that the other is weaker on the issues. They're working to destroy image, because ultimately, that's what voters are deciding this primary season. An interesting side note: for all the noise generated about McCain being a phony conservative, can you think of anyone who looks more like a Republican than him? He looked and acted the most like a conservative of any of the candidates, with the possible exception of Ron Paul. He's old, and he's cranky. Mitt Romney was his strongest competitor, but the image he gives off seems like he would have been more at home in the Democratic party. (Is it any surprise that he was elected as the governor of Massachusetts?)
So prepare for a lot of stories about nothing over the next seven weeks. They may sound important and critical to the election, but you'll find that even if it sounds like there are issues on the surface, it boils down to image, and that's what counts in the end.
Your guide to understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict.
On Thursday in Jerusalem, a Palestinian gunman entered a seminary and started shooting, leaving eight students dead and many more wounded. Hamas leaders claimed responsibility for the attack the next day, although Mahmoud Abbas was quick to condemn the attacks. Ehud Olmert was under pressure from his countrymen to respond quickly, although such a response was discouraged by President Bush and the United Nations. Peace talks between the two remain suspended.
Did you have any trouble following that? If you did, don't worry. You aren't alone in having trouble following the insanity in the Middle East. While no article could take on the daunting task of explaining the convoluted history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a simple glossary might be enough to help keep things in check. This list will help you sound more informed on the situation and impress your friends at the same time. In fact, armed with this knowledge, you might be able to successfully debate Barack Obama on the subject. (Ha! Only kidding!)
Mahmoud Abbas - Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority and chairman of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). As head of the PNA, Abbas is effectively the face of Palestine and seen as a moderate. He is a member of the Fatah party.
Fatah - a reverse acronym from Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini (Arabic, "Palestinian National Liberation Movement"). Fatah is the largest faction of the PLO and was the ruling party in the Palestinian National Authority until 2006. They are seen as more moderate than Hamas, though their militant wing is recognized as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.
Gaza Strip - a small strip of land in the southwest of Israel (bordered by the Mediterranean Sea and Egypt) named for its principal city of Gaza. The Gaza Strip was administered by Israel until 2005, when the Palestinian National Authority assumed control. Hamas currently oversees the territory, which is home to about 1.4 million Palestinians. A major battle was fought for the territory in 2007.
Hamas - an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Arabic, "Islamic Resistance Movement"). Hamas is a militant movement dedicated to the destruction of Israel and replacing it with a Palestinian state. It is recognized as a terrorist organization by many major world powers. Hamas was elected as the government of the Palestinian Authority following elections in 2006. Like the PLO, Hamas is seen as the extremist wing of the Palestinian movement.
Ehud Olmert - Prime Minister of Israel. He had been Acting Prime Minister since his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, suffered a stroke. He has been involved in peace negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas, though those talks are currently suspended.
PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) - an organization dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel. Yasser Arafat headed this group from 1974 until his death in 2004, when Abbas succeeded him. The PLO has been designated as a terrorist organization and is often associated with the extremist image of Palestine.
Palestinian National Authority - Palestine does not currently exist as a country, but it does have an interim government administering parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Mahmoud Abbas is the Prime Minister of the Authority, though Hamas is the ruling party.
West Bank - an area currently occupied by Israel containing Jericho, Bethlehem, and East Jerusalem. Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967, though Jordan did not relinquish its claim to the area until 1988. Most of the West Bank's residents are Palestinian, though there are many Israeli settlements as well.
YouTube, which has given so much, continues to give with an MS-Paint induced phonetic craze.
Ever wonder what the lyrics of "Yellow Ledbetter" actually are? Well, you won't get any answers from the internet, but you might just get a couple exceptionally cheap laughs. Turns out a bunch of people with MS Paint and Movie Maker have decided that misinterpreting the classics is the wave of the future, unleashing a number of rebus-and-bad-pun laden vids online, interpreting the lyrics to everyone's pop favorites in strange, new and inappropriate ways.
My favorite? This one of Fall Out Boy's "Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner".
In which Ben identifies the Awesome trend and derives the Equations of Radness.
Turns out you have to have a dictionary of 80's cartoon shows to communicate in our society. Totally ok with me--I watched Voltron 5 like any good American. It's just the tip of the iceberg in what I'm calling "Awesome Culture": the state of the art in social obfuscation in which the cheesy, obscure, and overblown are deified for the lack of truly inspiring messages. Or perhaps in spite of them. Allow me to digress (in this case, that request is like an H2 towering over your Camry with the blinker on being interpreted "Please let me into this lane."):
Iain Banks posited the eventual existence (well, actually, the current existence) of The Culture, an amalgam of minds, artificial and human, that exist in an anarchic and essentially hedonistic society where having fun is infinitely more important than being useful. Think of a cross between Star Trek's Federation and a frat party, and you've pretty much got it. Also think the Internet and you've still pretty much got it. Though we are definitely in state of economic scarcity, informationally we have a massive glut. Results? No, really, the results of having everything from Avogadro's number to DuckTales at our fingertips? DuckTales. And lots of it. It seems that the more we are allowed to look into the abyss, the more the abyss looks back into us and says, "By the power of Grayskull, I have the power!"
Note the following: Mystery Science Theater. Here's a precursor--Crow and Servo taking truly awesomely bad movies to task with verbal barbs. The beginnings of our Awesomeness, the show introduced a rising generation to rubbery monsters and bad dialogue. Awesome. All kinds of abominations are covered by this umbrella: Snakes on a Plane, a rekindled love for monster movies, and the general retro-desire we've come to accept as all-pervasive. And so, because I love you so much, Equations for these Radnesses:
Equation 1: Is this movie crap or adorable crap?
R = Monsters x Bad Dialogue x Kitsch x Oldness*
Note that Oldness is a value between 0 and 1. Anything 1969 and older is a 1.
Equation 2: How obscure is the right obscure?
R = Robots x Anthropomorphic Animals x Quotable Battlecries
Note that Voltron 5 is the highest possible score.
Equation 3: Can I use this word?
R = Have the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles used it?
Making sense of last night's primaries.
Hillary Clinton put a stop to the Obama freight train with victories in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island last night. Her campaign had made a big point of Texas and Ohio especially - Bill Clinton even suggested that if his wife did not win those two states, she would not be able to secure the nomination - and with last night's results, she publicly declared that her campaign has "turned a corner," even going so far as to hint at a Clinton-Obama ticket.
Should we go ahead and coronate Clinton, then? Or is Barack Obama's claim that Clinton's wins last night, though impressive, still aren't enough to make a dent in his delegate lead? And if you're a Democratic superdelegate, who should you vote for now? Which candidate is more likely to be successful in a general election?
Each side is quick to point out their electoral strengths and their opponent's weaknesses. Clinton reminds voters that she is consistently winning large states that serve as Democratic strongholds, and that nearly half of Obama's wins are in caucus states, where a much smaller percentage of the population is represented. Obama argues that he is winning smaller - but more - states, and many that traditionally fall into the Republican column, which gives him an advantage over John McCain in the general election. Both of them make a strong case for the nomination. Let's look at each in turn.
Clinton. She's right when she says that she's consistently winning the most populous - and traditionally Democratic - states. Of the ten most populous states in the Union, Clinton has won six (California, Texas, New York, Florida, Ohio, and Georgia) to Obama's two (Pennsylvania and North Carolina have yet to hold primaries). Those make a bigger difference in the electoral college than they do in the primary season. She's won eight fewer states than Obama has, but she's far ahead when it comes to electors. If the two candidates were fighting in a general election, Clinton would be ahead 263-189. 54 electors is a big deal when there are only 538 total. (That's a ten percent margin of victory. Nothing to sneer at.) Clinton's victories have also consistently come in primary states, which have the same election format as will be seen in November. All but one of her wins (Nevada) have come in primary states. Her margin of victory isn't great - she averages 54% of the vote in her wins - but in a general election, each state is winner-take-all. Proportional allocation of delegates has hurt her in this race, and that's something she wouldn't have to worry about if she were the party nominee.
Obama. While Obama hasn't won many large, delegate-rich states (his two biggest states have been his home state of Illinois and Georgia), he's done very well in smaller, traditionally red states. Over half of his primary wins have come in states that went for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004. There's reason to think that he could siphon some of those away from McCain this year. Clinton's claims that his caucus wins are tainted don't quite hold up, either. It's true that his wins in those states (11 of 24) have represented a much smaller percentage of the population, he's done just fine in primaries, too. He's won nearly as many primaries as Clinton has (13 to her 15), and has done so with a higher average of four percent more of the vote.
So who should superdelegates side with? If you're looking to stick with the time-honored "two coasts" strategy of focusing on the Pacific west and the Northeast, Clinton might be your best bet. She's shown that she can easily win those states and probably be competitive in battleground states like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. If you're looking to adopt the new "50 states" approach that Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean is pushing, though, Obama might be a more attractive option. Obama has made significant inroads into the mountain west and the South. He would probably be unable to win all of those states for the Democrats (do you really think Idaho and Utah are going to be blue states this year?), but if he could pick up Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, and Georgia, that would result in a 41-elector difference, and none of those states are out of the realm of possibility. Obama's command of the black vote could prove to be decisive in this election. Yet Clinton holds an equal sway over blue-collar workers in financial straits, and there are more and more of those every day with the current recession. Each candidate has powerful strengths. Superdelegates will have their hands full making their decision in the coming months.
What elections end up boiling down to.
I mentioned in an article last week that issues have taken a back seat to image in recent elections. Now, I'm aware of the folly of citing a webcomic as a definitive source in matters political, but today's Toothpaste for Dinner seemed to reinforce that point. Here it is:
If this is true (and remember, the artist lives in Columbus, Ohio) we have every reason to expect a resounding victory for Barack Obama. I don't think any reputable source on earth would tell you that Hillary Clinton was the cute candidate. (Case in point: a Google search for the phrase "hillary clinton cute" returns the message, "Did you mean "hillary clinton cut?") Searching for "barack obama cute" yields about the same amount of hits (465,000 to Clinton's 461,000), but most of Clinton's are about Obama's cuteness and her own lack thereof.
Today's primaries essentially amount to be a referendum on issues vs. image. Texas and Ohio look to be Clinton's Alamo. If she goes down, the issues candidacy goes down with her.
The situation in Iraq just got a whole lot worse.
A story that should have dominated the news on Wednesday was relegated to the back burner amidst growing talk of a recession. U.S.-backed Sunni Iraqi forces, sometimes referred to as Sunni Awakening forces, threatened to renege on their deal to fight alongside American troops against al-Qaeda in Iraq. These local militias are unhappy with the Shi'ite police chief in Diyala province and are trying to pressure the government to replace him. The news seems innocuous enough amongst repeated claims from the White House that "the surge is working," but the loss of a key ally like the Sunni Awakening squads could not only undo everything that has been achieved in the last year, but possibly even make things worse.
These Awakening squads are a large reason for the success of the surge in the first place. Having an extra 30,000 troops in the area is significant, certainly, but having fewer enemy combatants is perhaps more significant when it comes to explaining why fatalities have dropped so dramatically. Before the surge, Sunni Iraqis were actively fighting against U.S. troops, but in the beginning of 2007, they formed a temporary alliance in order to combat the growing influence of al-Qaeda in Iraq in Anbar Province. These soldiers, called "concerned local citizens" (CLCs) by the American military, are paid $10 a day to police combat areas. The military likes the idea because it allows the security of Iraq to be placed in the hands of Iraqis, which is the entire point of the war in Iraq. The sooner Iraq can stabilize itself, the sooner U.S. troops can come home.
That's all good and well, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is worried that these troops aren't loyal to Iraq. He has every reason to be. The CLCs are fighting against al-Qaeda in Iraq. They're being paid by the U.S. military. At no point does the
Iraqi government enter the picture. Maliki is worried that once the threat of al-Qaeda in Iraq disappears, they will resume fighting against the government, and after Wednesday's announcement, those fears are starting to be realized.
Which makes one wonder: is the surge really working? Increased troop levels provide an image of security at home, but on the battlefield, the CLCs seem to have actually been making the difference. With the threat of their disappearance, not only does the U.S. military lose a valuable ally, but it also potentially gains more enemy combatants. That mitigates the claims coming from the White House about the success of the surge. Most of these claims are centered around the argument that conditions in Iraq are better than they were before the surge. That sounds wonderful, but when you stop and think about it, the argument falls apart. Of course conditions are better now than they were in 2006. In 2006, the country was in the grip of a civil war. Now that Sunnis across the country have resolved to fight alongside U.S. troops instead of against them, the civil war has largely ended. It's no great stretch to say that conditions after a war are better than they were during it. It is a stretch, however, to connect that improvement to an increase of troop levels.
The end of the alliance between U.S. troops and CLCs makes things in Iraq worse. However, the prospect of armed and U.S.-trained CLCs potentially fighting against the government is far more dire. The Bush administration was livid when they suspected Iran and Syria of arming and funding Iraqi insurgents. If conditions continue as they are right now, they won't have anyone to blame for an increasingly deadly insurgency than themselves. While the situation in Iraq is grim for George W. Bush, it looks to be even more so for his successor.
