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January 31, 2008
Yes, it can happen
Rasmussen Reports shows a glaring problem with daily polls:
In the race for the Democratic Presidential Nomination, it’s now Hillary Clinton 42% and Barack Obama 35%. (see recent daily numbers). Last night was the first night of interviews without John Edwards in the race. For last night’s data alone, Clinton and Obama were essentially even. Samples for individual nights are very small and results should be interpreted with caution.
These tracking polls do not include statistics just from yesterday. It's actually a moving average, weighting in polls from previous days. They do it for the small sample size because there would be a lot of static in the chart, which messes up all sorts of other polling statistics. However, the flipside of this practice is that it's a lagging indicator of momentum.
If you believe Obama is stronger today than yesterday, or even from the day of the South Carolina primary (depending on how many days are averaged in), then you will never get a real day-by-day picture. Even read with a huge grain of salt, who knows. But where does he get support? From rich whites and African Americans. There are plenty of African-Americans in the southern states and Missouri can elect statewide Democrats from two metro areas, so Obama could win there easily. The northeastern states, Minnesota and Illinois have plenty of rich Democrats, with Obama tied in Connecticut. Since primaries aren't all-or-nothing, Obama could lose New York and California and still win more delegates if he keeps it close in those two states while winning by large margins in Illinois and the south.
Next, we have Nebraska, Louisiana, Washington and the Virgin Islands. Obama could win Louisiana and USVI by the African-American vote alone. The other states have caucuses, which seem to favor Obama. He may be done if he barely hangs on through Super Duper Tuesday and loses two of these four.
The following day, Maine has a caucus. Next up are DC, Maryland and Virginia, with Obama a lock in Md. and D.C. and Virginia probably going to Hillary.
The death blow? If Hillary hasn't done him in between next Tuesday and the Beltway Brawl on Feb. 12, I think Barack can end this thing on February 19, when Wisconsin and Hawaii vote. Wisconsin Democrats love firebrands like Russ Feingold and Robert LaFolette and the Madison microbrew crowd likes the "hope thing." Obama was born in Hawaii. Check and mate.
On the other hand, the March 4 primaries are in Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island. If the delegate count is close, Hillary can snap up Ohio's lower lunchpail crowd and Texas's Hispanics and come out looking like a new woman with relatively few big states (I have Pa. and N.C. in mind) left to fight over. That scenario depends on Hillary staying alive at each stage and not faltering significantly during any one week. Right now, it's Obama's to lose.
Posted by rj3 at 3:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 30, 2008
Daniels should get on this
The Baltimore Police website looks like it was designed in 1997 and it's worse than most of the websites were back then. Pop-out PDFs with no warnings as to what they are? Text blocked out by other text? Lame.
Maybe they're too busy fighting criminal masterminds like this guy:
Burglary // Someone broke into McCall's grocery store in the 1400 block of N. Bond St. between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning after knocking a hole in the wall of an adjoining vacant building and stole a carton of cigarettes, 12 toothbrushes and 12 tubes of toothpaste.
Dental health is important!
Posted by rj3 at 2:54 PM | Comments (361) | TrackBack
Rudy can fail
On the one hand, I'm happy that there is no longer a risk that Rudy Giuliani will be our next president. He's a vindictive, secretive and generally loathsome man.
On the other hand, I'm saddened that his loss will be blamed on a bad campaign strategy and not on his aforementioned loathsomeness.
Posted by rj3 at 10:20 AM | Comments (448) | TrackBack
January 29, 2008
The hardest way to get a clock radio
Have you noticed that the "Fact or Fiction" questions on Lexis are a lot harder than they used to be? When I was a 1L and 2L, the questions were always about Lexis's features and the answer always came down to "yes, Lexis can do that." Now the questions require actual research. Why bother to dutifully do this additional work to get 1/1000th of the way closer to some small goodie from the rewards catalog?
Posted by rj3 at 1:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What Sunday talk can learn from ESPN
I've been watching a lot more ESPN lately. I've also been watching the Sunday talk shows more regularly. It isn't often that your favorite team and presidential candidate are pulling upsets left and right at the same time.
All this time watching talking heads has led me to some conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses of both formats. In many ways, they are the same. In both, people get selected for notoriety rather than prognostication ability. Both use uncertain facts of little predictive value to make predictions driven more by personality and institutional biases than by the record. Both read things into quotes and speeches that really aren't there.
But somehow ESPN is far more widely-watched and better put together. I think this is due to speed and comity. Every ESPN news show moves quickly from game to game, but the political talk shows linger on the top issue, even if it's inane. Insiders get to drive the debate by simply sucking the air out of the room and keeping one thing in the headlines and long-brewing messes like the mortgage crisis creep up on us and explode. If George Stephonopolous had a Pardon the Interruption-style clock, he would be forced to cover down-the-list topics like urban issues or energy.
Political talk could also borrow ESPN's sense of comity and sportsmanship. There are plenty of people out there who hate each other based on what they said and did during the Thomas confirmation. No host or guest on a sports show acts coldly to someone based on whether they thought Pete Rose should have been banned from baseball. In sports news, , disagreements are forgotten as soon as the subject changes. Famous grudge-keeper Bob Novak would not have lasted very long yakking on sports.
Perhaps there are exceptions to these generalizations about both political and sports shows, but I think it holds up in general. If Meet the Press were more like SportsCenter, will politics be as popular as sports? The Matthews Meter says no.
Posted by rj3 at 9:11 AM | Comments (386) | TrackBack
January 28, 2008
The Jersey Bounce*
Although WikiAnswers may or may not be a great source, it was the only place I found the answer to a question that had always bugged me:
What happens if the football team of the host city of the Super Bowl makes it to the Super Bowl?Since the game is awarded to a city four years in advance, there is no way of knowing how good that city's team will be. They will play the game as scheduled.
Four years ago, could you picture the Giants, then 6-10 with a bust of a draft pick at quarterback, in the Superbowl? If Giants Stadium had a dome, they could very well have been playing at home for the big game. Which would probably be a bad thing.
Posted by rj3 at 3:53 PM | Comments (358) | TrackBack
Spring has sprung (in relative terms)
Although I'm pretty excited about overcast, damp and 45 after a week of subzero temps, today's weather reminds me of this hilarious exchange from The Wire (and no, you don't need to know the backstory):
Posted by rj3 at 1:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 24, 2008
The stupid! It burns!
Did Mike Huckabee just say that he wanted to add a lane of I-95 from Bangor to Miami during the debate?
Oh yes he did.
The Huckster has a history of good-sounding ideas (abolish the IRS!) with horrible effects easily recognizable with an additional thirty seconds' thought (instant creation of a huge black market, a plummet in revenue). As if I even have to, here are some of the most obvious, thirty seconds' thought reasons this is stupid, coming from someone who has been on every mile of I-95 from York, Maine to Miami.
1. A lot of I-95 a wide-open four-lane rural highway. Between Richmond and Jacksonville, the highway is hardly ever congested because it goes through unpopulated areas. Adding another lane to handle the rush hour in Florence, S.C. is a colossally waste of money.
2. Where more capacity is needed, there simply isn't room. The highway cuts a wide swathe through the Bronx, built at the cost of many once-vital neighborhoods. You just can't cut out more at the wave of a hand to create space for the highway. Also, I-95 goes over the George Washington Bridge in New York, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Washington and any number of other bottlenecks. Do you really think Huck is going to knock down the GWB to build a wider one? How will traffic flow in the interim?
3. Adding lanes don't decrease congestion. The faster new highways are built, the more people move farther away from where they work. Another lane almost always leads to congestion reductions that are eaten up by people who assume that it will stay as uncongested as they day it opened. Now we're stuck with a bunch of extreme commuters spending three or more hours per day.
The real solution to congestion and economic growth through infrastructure is more complex. On the one hand, more money has to be spent on mass transit, including commuter rail. The marginal increase in congestion with each additional car is exponential up to a point: one car on an empty road does nothing, nor do two or three or ten. However, adding one more car to an already clogged road decreases average speed by a surprisingly large amount. Therefore, taking "a little off the top" makes a big difference. If you think traffic in the large northeastern cities is bad, it would be even worse without mass transit.
On the other hand, the car culture is entrenched and people want backyards. We need to increase the gas tax to encourage car-pooling. Slugging in Virginia is an amazing phenomenon caused by a lack of parking and overwhelming congestion outside the HOV lanes. It can happen elsewhere.
Yes, we need to invest in infrastructure to drive economic growth. But adding another lane to I-95 is probably the dumbest way to do it.
Posted by rj3 at 8:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Finally, a pickup line for people like me
Becks at Unfogged overheard this gem:
Boy: I'm in my second year of law school. I'll probably take a firm job for a few years to pay off my loans but then it's my dream to open the first law firm representing needy helpless animals.
The girl ate that shit up.
I'll admit that I've told people that "I'll probably take a firm job for a few years" line, but the ridiculous and selfless second (in my case, third) career is a nice finishing touch. Perhaps I'll start up a law firm representing cuddly babies in Darfur.
Posted by rj3 at 5:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 22, 2008
Rudy Giuliani is a very bad man
In case you didn't read this morning's Times.
Posted by rj3 at 9:58 AM | Comments (390) | TrackBack
January 20, 2008
Non cold-related gripe of the day
All season, a viewer of any pre-game show before a Patriots game could be excused for not knowing who the other team was. No exception today.
Posted by rj3 at 1:02 PM | Comments (383) | TrackBack
January 16, 2008
Don't hate the mayor, hate the game. On second thought, just hate the mayor
Oh happy day!
Rudy Giuliani, in a state filled with the sort of white-ethnic Archie Bunker types that formed the backbone of his support in New York City, got 3 percent of the vote in the Michigan primary yesterday, finishing behind racist blimp captain Ron Paul and edging out "uncommitted" by 6,700 votes.
By now, everyone I spend any amount of time with knows about my deep disdain for Rudy. It's got to the point that friends roll their eyes when he appears on TV in anticipation of the diatribe they're about to hear. Here's a sampler of anti-Rudy content on this blog:
- His animosity toward political enemies as mayor would lead to a disasterous presidency.
- He's an attention-hog who is all-bluster and no substance.
- Remember "taxi terrorists"?
- "Broken windows" was a sham.
Posted by rj3 at 9:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 15, 2008
Special Verizon Unit
A classic law school moment: in a generally-silent workspace for the clinics, a cellphone goes off. The ringer: the theme music for Law and Order. As the phone rings, everyone seeks out eye contact with everyone else, looking for an opportunity to knowingly grin or snicker.
We are all dorks.
Posted by rj3 at 4:34 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 14, 2008
From Fayette Street to Madison Avenue
"Before a busy day of robbing heavily-armed drug dealers, I always have a complete breakfast, including Honey Nut Cheerios."
David Plotz of Slate on The Wire:
One of the weirdest moments of my Wire offseason was when I spotted Clay Davis—I mean Isiah Whitlock Jr.—playing a goofy dad in a Verizon cell phone commercial. Much to my disappointment, his several lines didn't include his trademark "sheee-it."
If The Wire was a cultural phenomenon beyond its core viewership of urban-affairs freaks, current and former Baltimoreans and lit-crit types, most of the cast could really go places, whether in ads or as actual actors.
Lt. Daniels, as Plotz later mentions, is already shilling for Cadillac. I picture Snoop as a pitchwoman for nailguns ("[incomprehensible] ...no kickback... [incomprehensible]"). If Apple really wanted to go negative, they could replace John Hodgman with Bubbles as a jittery "PC" complaining about how, since he was introduced to Windows Vista, he can't think, work or keep his data straight without a steady fix of service packs and software patches.
Perhaps a gritty dystopian crime drama doesn't lend itself to consumer appeal the same way the Sex and the City starlets sold millions of gallons of hair products after the show's run ended.
Posted by rj3 at 1:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 11, 2008
The Oldies Line
A theory: There is an identifiable point in a persons life before which music is considered an "oldie" and after which it is not.
In my case, that line is somewhere in the fall of 1993. It was at that point that I got a Walkman to listen to during the long bus ride to middle school. No longer subject to parental radio dial tyranny (in the car, they were partial to WCBS-FM to the point that I remember all the jingles), I moved on to some more modern fare.
Back then, the station of choice for white teenagers in the New York media market was Z100. They invented the inane "morning zoo" AM drive format and I ate it up, every last prank call, parody song and dumb sidekick. Every now and then they played a song, and it was then and there the non-oldies started for me. It was an odd time in music: grunge was in the process of going mainstream while pop was regaining its perch on the top of the charts. On one top-40 station, you could hear Soundgarden, Ace of Bass, Counting Crows and Naughty by Nature in the course of an hour. The Lilith Fair types were starting to bubble up, with Lisa Loeb's now-unlistenable "Miss You" the forerunner.
Anything older than what I could hear on Z100 in the fall of 1993 is an "oldie" or at least "old school" to me. For example, NWA comes from a different era, but Dr. Dre solo reminds me of where I first heard it (on the Major Deegan Expressway). The Pixies belong to people five years older than me, but I remember being bowled over by the Breeders' "Cannonball" the first time I heard it under the Broadway el tracks.
It's true that what you could hear on Z100 in 1993 didn't represent the pinnacle of musical and cultural achievement, but it was the start of what modern music is to me. What is your "oldies line"?
Posted by rj3 at 1:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 8, 2008
Seating Chart Day
Perhaps the most juvenile ritual in law school is the day each semester in each class during which the professor passes around a seating chart. Students show up early, bum-rush the previous class and scramble (as nonchalantly as possible) to sit with friends not too close and not too far from the front of the room.
As children and adolescents, this is expected. We want to pass notes to friends and avoid sitting next to the kid who spends the whole class playing with his boogers. IM means we can pass notes to people on the other side of the world and the modern law student has fairly decent personal hygiene habits outside of finals period.
Some people say they don't want to sit somewhere they can't see or hear. Let's get real here: our classes are not held at the old Tiger Stadium. The sightlines are fine. There is only one classroom I can think of where hearing can be difficult from the back, but I haven't had a class there since 1L year and the scramble still continues. I can think of one professor who is hard to hear, but the seat scramble doesn't stop with her classes.
They say law school is like middle school. Believe it.
Posted by rj3 at 9:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 6, 2008
Sister can you spare a dime
In last night's debate, Hillary explains how she never has to rip out the couch cushions to find quarters on laundry day:
CLINTON: I want to make change, but I've already made change. I will continue to make change. I'm not just running on a promise of change. I'm running on 35 years of change.
I can't help but be reminded of this SNL classic:
Posted by rj3 at 10:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 5, 2008
The world would be a better place if people abided by my uninformed opinions, Part MXXVIII
I'm starting to face up to the reality that I'm going on a very long flight in March. The first leg takes me to Los Angeles, the second is all the way to Auckland, New Zealand. I don't sleep well on flights, nor do I enjoy sitting in the same place for the better part of a day.
That got me thinking: it is generally true that the farther you go, the more likely it is that your trip will involve a transfer. Constant flight delays causes fliers to book longer transfers. What if there was some sort of low-key exercise room in airports? A place in major international hubs for folks to stretch, do some pushups, yoga, whatever. It would get the blood flowing and would tire out twitchy muscles for the next leg. Sure, some folks might get sweaty if they over-do it, but perhaps it could be sponsored by the maker of some very neutral-smelling body spray.
Posted by rj3 at 3:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 4, 2008
When it rains, it pours
It's been a great week:
- New Years' was great. I mixed the music for the big party and it went over very well. Also, there were lots of awesome baked goods and plenty of Popeye's chicken at the party;
- Obama won the Iowa Caucus;
- My total bookstore bill for the semester was under $80;
- I just got a letter from the Chicago Department of Administrative Hearings informing me that they reversed a parking ticket I got October;
- I got back a book I lent in March, plus another book as a gift;
- Kansas won the Orange Bowl.
Posted by rj3 at 4:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Huckaburned
People just love Mike Huckabee. Even moderate-to-liberal law students.
Switching between the Orange Bowl and caucus coverage with some friends who follow politics but aren't hyper-political, I found that they think Huck is absolutely nuts policy-wise but is by far the most likable and human candidate. They say that even Obama is plastic and political in comparison. It's an open question whether Huckabee can survive the big-state primaries on Super Tuesday, but he's got support from some unlikely corners.
On an extremely related note, I wrote last month that the establishment money-cons of National Review and the big think tanks were going after Mike Huckabee because of his apostasy on some fiscal and foreign policy issues. After all, the Republican coalition has been held together for decades by tossing the occasional symbolic bone to the social cons (Terry Schiavo, the Hyde Amendment) while demanding complete lockstep on tax policy and never ending belligerence on the world stage.
Now the social cons have their own man, one who doesn't feel the necessity to kowtow to the monied elements within the parties. The "outsider" theme has been overdone for decades, but it's clear here that the GOP establishment is against Huckabee and vice versa because Huckabee doesn't know his place in the hierarchy.
Take a look at what the other members of the GOP coalition are saying. Stephen Green, who was one of the more popular hawks when I started reading blogs about five years ago, goes into sputtering rage:
Dear Iowa Republicans,I’ll put this in language even your tiny little Iowa brains can understand: What the f*** is wrong with you people?
[...]
Three decades later, and along comes Mike Huckabee. Same moral pretentiousness, same gullibility on foreign affairs, only-slightly-less toothy idiot’s grin. Then you so-called Republicans took a look at Carter’s clone and said, “That’s our man, too!”
And by a pretty wide margin.
[...]
So I repeat the question: What is wrong with you people?
All my love, you corn-sucking idiots,
Aren't "limousine liberals" the ones who berate Middle America when it votes "wrong"? The comments are even more entertaining - there's nothing more appealing than when folks who strive for seriousness end up ranting about the coming socialist regime like cranks on the street. This apoplexy isn't limited to Green. NR is trying to explain the victory away. This popular hawk hurls the ultimate tired insult: it's good for the terrorists. Richard Viguerie, who basically invented the conservative direct mail machine, sent out a blast email calling Huckabee a socialist.
You can only scare people with the oncoming Swedeification of America for so long. The fact is that the GOP coalition is just that, a coalition. Coalitions are made up of groups with different priorities that subsume some of those priorities for a better chance at victory. When one group is constantly asked to make all of the sacrifices, they may just rebel.
This isn't a GOP disease. Democrats are even more factionalized. Unions are at odds with African-Americans on school vouchers. Jews and peacenicks don't see eye to eye on Israel, even if nearly all American Jews won't go to the lengths neocons will on the issue. Hispanics and African-Americans are fighting over some of the same jobs. It's a mess, but it's been a mess for quite some time and each groups have a long list of intra-party victories and losses. When the DLC tried to abandon Democrats' union, minority and dovish elements, they ended up with 8 years of policy stasis under Clinton followed by a six-year breakdown when many members of the coalition didn't feel represented by the Clintonite DLC. Dean knocked the Clintonistas out of party leadership, engaged the various interest groups and won big in 2006. The Republicans who are whining about rubes and Marxists right now are the equivalent of the DLCers, setting themselves up for a shellacking in the general election.
Will the GOP establishment embrace Huckabee if he looks like a winner? Only if Hillary wins the democratic nomination. Sixteen years of hate, conspiracy-mongering and otherwise insulting Hillary is too strong of a force to be trumped by threats of creeping socialism.
Posted by rj3 at 12:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 3, 2008
Put a sign up
...if you're going to play next season's Wire in your store.
I walked in to Lincoln Park's Soulmates shoe store hoping to find some sweet kicks for the new semester. When I walked in, I heard Meldrick from Homicide. Wait, isn't he on the new season of The Wire? I asked, and yes, they were watching the first episode of the new season on On Demand.
I asked and they paused it for me as I shopped.
Posted by rj3 at 4:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 2, 2008
Formed a band, we formed a band (but can't name it)!
There may well be no good band names left and this situation may reach the level of an international crisis if something isn't done. Although there are some good names left, there are an awful lot of permutations of the same names kicking around, which strikes me as the sign that creativity is in its death throes.
An example: in this years' Pitchfork top singles list, we have Black Lips' "Katrina" and Black Kids' "I’m not Gonna Teach your Boyfriend how to Dance with You." Add that to DFA Records' Black Dice and light-technopop act The Black Neon and you have a whole lot of indie bands with very similar names. Toss in more established acts like the Black Keys, Black Sabbath, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Big Black and Black Flag and it becomes harder and harder to tell one band from another.
Is "black" too common and too generally Rock & Roll of a word to base a naming trend around? Then how do you explain name clusters like Deerhoof/Deerhunter and Panda Bear/Shark vs. Bear/Grizzly Bear/Teddybears?
The English language has an inexhaustible vocabulary with an almost infinite number of word combinations from which to chose, even if you throw out most words for not being sufficiently music-sounding. Place names are another resource - Boston and Beirut are taken, but there's no band called "The New York." It makes one wonder if there have been too many bands to expect no repetition or if there is just a lack of originality on the part of band-namers.
Posted by rj3 at 3:16 PM | Comments (382) | TrackBack