2012 Predictions

Using the same predictive model as for 2008. It only predicts states trends regardless of national swing, so it just gives a rough outline of what to expect. Also, I'm also predicting what the electoral college votes might be as they will be changing as a result of the 2010 census.
-
No Change, Obama gets the same national vote in 2012 as in 2008.
Obama - 52.8% - 301 EV
Republican - 45.7% - 159 EV
Toss-Up - 78 EV

Note: Compared to the 2008 result, considering <5% a toss-up, North and South Dakota move from Republican to toss-up, Montana and Indiana move from toss-up to Democrat. However, due to changes after the census, Republicans would probably pick a handful of electoral votes despite no favorable shift in state trends.
-
Obama does as well as Bush Jr. and Clinton, gains 3%.
Obama - 54.3% - 334 EV
Republican - 44.2% - 144 EV
Toss-Up - 60 EV

-
Obama does as well as Reagan, gains 8.5%
Obama - 57.1% - 376 EV
Republican - 41.5% - 83 EV
Toss-Up - 79 EV

Note: There are two reasons why this map doesn't look like Reagan's 49-state sweep map. First, Reagan won by a larger overall margin. Second, there was less variance among the states, consider in 1980, 50.8% got 489 EV, but in 2008, 52.8% got 365 EV. Basically, the two parties are much more entrenched in a number of states than in the past.
-
Obama does as well as Carter and Bush Sr., loses 12.5%
Obama - 46.6% - 204 EV
Republican - 52.0% - 251 EV
Toss-Up - 83 EV

-
Obama and Republican candidate have an equal chance of winning, Obama loses 9%
Obama - 48.3% - 219 EV
Republican - 50.2% - 219 EV
Toss-Up - 100 EV

Note: In order for Republicans to have an equal chance at winning the electoral college, they have to win the popular by over 1.9%.

Without Roe v. Wade

After a discussion with my mom about conservatives' seeming obsession with abortion, it got me thinking about what would happen if the pro-life supporters got their way and were able to overturn Roe v. Wade. Overturning Roe v. Wade, of course, just allows states to then decide for themselves whether to support or ban abortion. While this might lead to a few states banning abortion, nationally the majority of Americans consider themselves pro-choice. The most recent numbers I could find that gave state-by-state opinions on abortion was a 2005 survey by Survey USA. This is what they found, blue states are plurality pro-choice and red states are plurality pro-life.



If we just considered these numbers, it would seem that the majority of states would maintain abortion rights. However, there is also another consideration, South Dakota. In the survey, South Dakota showed a slight pro-life lean, but since this poll was taken there have been two ballot measures to restrict abortion rights in South Dakota, and both lost by over 10%. So that would seem to mean that even states with pro-life majorities may be reluctant to restrict abortion rights.

My 2008 Election Predictor

I mentioned about a month ago that a long time ago, I had made a model that used state voting trends to predict the outcome of the 2008 election. The model only gave a result at a given swing, the amount of change between the two parties, nationally, so its most predictive feature was simply finding how much of swing between 2004 and 2008 would be required to for the Democrats to win. The answer, according to the model, surprisingly little. Due to trends that saw a lot of swing states leaning more Democratic, a swing as small as 0.7% produced a Democratic victory. The thing to keep in mind though, is that Bush won the last election by a margin of 2.5%, meaning that for a swing between 0.7% and 2.5%, the Democratic candidate would win the electoral college, but could lose the popular vote by as much as 1.8%. This meant that the Democrats had a huge advantage going into the 2008 election, regardless everything else that happened. In the end though, there was a 9.3% swing in Obama's favor.

So how accurate was the model? Looking at the actual results, it turns out that Obama could have won outright with just a 0.7% swing, so that, amazingly, was correct. More surprisingly, a swing of just 0.1% would have produced a tie, something my model did not find. Overall, the model produced an average error of 5%, so taking that into account, this is what my model predicted a 9.3% swing towards the Democrats would have produced.



I was quite surprised myself to see that my model predicted that North Carolina and Virginia would be swing states. My model also did well in predicting the inevitability of Nevada and New Mexico becoming blue states. In fact, to keep both of these states red would have required a 5.6% swing towards McCain.

Of course the most obvious mistake was Indiana. As Indiana trended more Republican than the rest of the country in the last two elections, the model predicted it would continue to do so, and Obama would lose Indiana by over 13%. Instead, Indiana showed the second largest shift towards the Democrats this election. The largest shift, and ultimately my models largest error, was Hawaii. Clinton and Gore had won Hawaii by quite wide margins, but Kerry did really poorly, so the model incorrectly predicted that Hawaii was becoming more Republican when in fact it appears that Hawaiians just didn't like Kerry. The model did have Obama winning Hawaii by a decent 15%, but he actually won by 45%.

Additionally, the model got Missouri and North Carolina wrong, but they were within the 5% margin of error that I used on the map. The model was fairly accurate for both, they were just so close that even small errors created wrong results. Most of the big errors involved states that were so heavily in favor of one particular candidate, that it still produced the correct end result, such as in the example of Hawaii.

The 2008 election according to...

The 2008 election according to Male voters.
Obama - 49% - 325 EV
McCain - 48% - 209 EV
Toss-up - 4 EV


The 2008 election according to Female voters.
Obama - 56% - 393 EV
McCain - 43% - 145 EV


The 2008 election according to White voters.
Obama - 43% - 222 EV
McCain - 55% - 316 EV


The 2008 election according to Black voters.
Obama - 95% - 408 EV
McCain - 4% - 0 EV
N/A - 130 EV

Another PetaFLOPS Computer

Top 500

Six months after the first PetaFLOPS computer debuted on the on the Top 500 supercomputer's list, another appears, Jaguar, although slightly slower, so Roadrunner remains the fastest computer in the world. With an overall increase of total FLOPS of nearly 45%, nearly half of the computers on the list are new. Generally there's a slow down immediately after a new computer takes the top spot, but the introduction of Jaguar seems to have kept the pace moving.

One random tidbit, the slowest computer currently on the list, would have been in the top 10 as late as November 2004 and is more powerful than all 500 supercomputers from November 1996 combined.

Surrendering the Big States

A long time ago, I made the observation that someone could win the presidency by just winning the 11 largest states. This, of course, required a candidate to win states as divergent as Texas and New York. I left it as a unlikely hypothetical theory.

Thinking about the most recent election I realized that McCain didn't win many heavily populated states. So I looked it up and found that of the 11 most populated states, McCain only won two, Texas and Georgia. This left Obama with the other 9, a grand total of 222 electoral votes. That's not to say he won them easily, North Carolina and Ohio were neck-and-neck during the month leading to the election.

The Electoral College system has been criticized for over-representing small states, the chances of winning off of this advantage is close to nil. Republicans are generally thought to be favored in this over-representation due to the western states, however, the New England states, which favor the Democrats, are just as over-represented. In fact, the combined vote of the 15 most over-represented states is completely canceled out by California, and of those 15, Obama won 7 and McCain won 8, coincidentally, the same as in 2004. Certainly, the combined population of all those states is less than half of California, so fewer voters would need to be won over, but strategically, it's probably better to focus on winning one state than 15.

The Democrats winning in the big states give them a huge advantage, whereas just a fifty percent win in California would guarantee 55 votes, an average fifty percent win among the most over-represented states would not even guarantee half those electoral votes. In fact, Obama won an average of around 52% among the most over-represented states, but won less than half of their electoral votes.

While it's unlikely that the Democrats could maintain their wins among the big states, the advantage they have with the big states means that they have to be competitive in fewer states. By continuing to focus on rural voters, "Real America", the Republicans have basically conceded any state with a major population center. This could present a real problem for Republicans in future elections.

Random Election Update

So I was wrong about it getting worse for the third parties. They managed a collective 1.34% according to preliminary numbers. So not exactly a good year for third parties, but all of the consistent third parties managed to increase their votes this time around except for the socialist parties.

One thing I started thinking about while driving back to Maggie Valley today, Perdue will be the first female governor of North Carolina. I'm surprised that I hadn't heard anything about this before. Also, Elizabeth Dole was the first female senator from North Carolina and has now lost to another female candidate in what is probably the first major election between two female candidates in North Carolina. This plus the fact that North Carolina narrowly elected Obama really shows that North Carolina is becoming more progressive.

While checking to see if in fact Dole was the first female senator, I've discovered that no senator has been able to hold the Class 3 Senate seat for more than one term since Senator Ervin retired in 1974. He held the office for 20 years. This does not bode well for Richard Burr, whom I have not heard a word about since he won back in 2004.

The Non-Religious Vote

I've been going through exit polls past and present and among other patterns, I've noticed that the number of voters that give "none" as their religion has been increasing every election, albeit slowly. Not only that, but these non-religious voters appear to be getting more Democratic every year.

1996 - 7% None - 56% for Clinton
2000 - 9% None - 61% for Gore
2004 - 10% None - 67% for Kerry
2008 - 12% None - 75% for Obama

These non-religious voters seem to be coming from formerly Jewish and other minority religious voters as the percentage of Christian voters has remained steady since 2000 at about 81% after falling 5% between 1996 and 2000. Since Jews and other religious minorities tend to vote for Democrats, then it kind of makes sense that the non-religious voters would vote for Democrats.

In other news, Jewish voters apparently didn't hear that Obama was a Muslim that will destroy Israel as 78% voted for him. Either that, or people who called Obama a Muslim were racist who felt more comfortable saying they didn't want to vote for a "Muslim" than a black man.

Bad year for third parties?

As is stated every election, voting for a third party is pointless, steals votes from more viable candidates, etc. Certainly, after the 2000 election, people are skittish about voting for third parties if not out right opposed. However, even after the 2000 debacle, 2004 wasn't the worst year for third parties, although it was pretty bad. Every year since 1992, the number of third party votes has declined. Of course, 1992 was an exceptional year, it certainly seems to set a pretty strong trend.

Year - Total Third Party Vote
1992 - 19.55%
1996 - 10.05%
2000 - 3.74%
2004 - 1.00%

According to a regression model I made, this would mean that in 2008, third parties would only get 0.44%. Of course, the third parties do have a few things going for them. For one, the Libertarian Party and Green Party are running former congress members as their candidates. So for once, the third parties are running experienced candidates. Unfortunately, most Libertarians seem disappointed with Bob Barr who is more or less just a Republican and the Green Party candidate is a nutjob whose ability to maintain her seat for 12 years completely shocks me. For those interested, Nader is running again, but I think he'll do worse than he did last time.

Best Political Blunder

Republican Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, appeared on MSNBC to drum up support for McCain by criticizing Obama and his connections to Bill Ayers. In the course of the interview she insinuated that people with liberal views were anti-American and that members of congress should be investigated for holding anti-American views. This set off an interesting chain of events:

-Instead of energizing the Republican base, it energized the Democratic base, angry about being called anti-American.
-By the next morning Bachmann's opponent, Tinklenberg, had raised roughly half a million dollars.
-The DCCC (which helps funds Democratic candidates) gave Tinklenberg's campaign $1 million having previously ignored the campaign.
-The RNCC (which helps funds Republican candidates) dropped funding for two TV ads it was running for Bachmann.
-A former Republican governor of Minnesota endorsed Obama citing Bachmann's comments as a turning point for him.
-Polling from before the interview had Bachmann ahead by 3%, afterwards Tinklenberg was ahead by 4%
-40% of voters in her district said that they were less likely to vote for her because of her comments. Only 8% said they were more likely to vote for her.

It's a good day for democracy when people realize that criticizing traditional political beliefs isn't treasonous.

2008 Election Trends

A long time ago, I made some charts using data from the 1996, 2000, and 2004 elections to predict possible trends in how states vote. I did this by removing the overall swing from each state's results and looked out how votes in each individual state changed independent of national trends. I then extrapolated these numbers to find what the results might be in 2008. One of the things I found was that many of the states that were very close in the 2004 election were trending towards becoming more Democratic, but nearly all of the states that were trending towards Republican were already Republican. Based on these trends I found that if the final popular vote in 2008 was exactly the same as in 2004, the Democrats would gain 10 electoral votes, from Nevada and New Mexico. Not enough to win, but give the Democrats just a 1% swing, they would win Iowa, Ohio, and Colorado and thus the presidency. To win, Republicans would have to keep the national swing towards the Democrats to less than 1%.

I had forgotten about all this for several months, but I became interested again after North Carolina became a swing state. I didn't remember anything in my model saying that North Carolina could go Democrat even in the best scenario. I used the current numbers (as of Oct. 12) on Fivethirtyeight.com to find the predicted swing for the 2008 election, 7.9%. Putting this number into my model gives McCain just a 3% lead in North Carolina. While this is still a comfortable lead for McCain, it's much closer than Bush's 12.4% margin of victory in 2004. I found a lot of other random things in my model when comparing it to the current polls, like Obama is doing incredibly well in Alaska despite Sarah Palin, but I'll leave all that until after the election.

Now I have to eat kangaroos

BBC News

Whenever I go to a restaurant that serves buffalo, I have to get a buffalo burger. My reason for this is that in the regions were buffalo live, they are better for the environment than cattle. So by choosing buffalo over beef, I'm, hopefully, creating demand to shift ranches from cattle to buffalo production.

Now it seems that I should add kangaroos as a food I should always get if a restaurant serves it. Kangaroos produce much less methane than cattle so they're better for environment in terms of climate change. I would also imagine that they're better also for the local environment just like buffalo are. One problem though, I've never been to a restaurant that had kangaroo meat on the menu.

The Jury Verdict

BBC News

After criticism that Eurovision voting is biased in favor of Eastern Europe countries, they have decided to reintroduce juries. Next year's Eurovision winner will be decided by a mixture of televoting of juries how exactly it will work though has not be decided.

Actually, they used a jury during the 2008 Eurovision semi-finals. Nine finalists were selected by televoting and the tenth was picked from the remaining contestants by a jury.

I know way too much about Eurovision.

Republican Failure Week

Coming off the high of the announcement of McCain's VP pick, it seems that Republicans have a tough week ahead of them. Most important is Hurricane Gustav, which has thankfully been handled very well. Unfortunately, it took the near destruction of New Orleans three years ago to get this kind of response. Gustav is also causing problems for the Republican Convention. Most first day activities were canceled and speeches by Bush, Cheney, and Schwarzenegger have been canceled. There's also some speculation that McCain will give his acceptance speech in New Orleans instead of Minneapolis. This seems to be a huge blow to loyal party members that have already made plans to be in Minneapolis.

Also, a rumor that I never expected to gain traction has led to an interesting conclusion. Basically there was a rumor that Palin's most recent son was actually the son of her teenage daughter due to the fact that seven months into the pregnancy, Palin did not appear pregnant. Well it turns out that it couldn't be her daughter's child because her daughter is currently pregnant.

A big deal has been made that this shouldn't be an issue, but I think it's important because it highlights both the hypocrisy and failure of Republican policies. Palin is an advocate of abstinence-only education, but the fact that her own daughter couldn't even hold to that gives little hope of it working as a national policy. It was also brought up on fivethirtyeight.com that it took a rather absurd rumor to bring this to light. Now the Republican Party is trying to spin this as showing what a supportive mother Palin is, but if the rumor had never surfaced, were they just hoping that no one would find out?

In another bit of irony, Focus on the Family had asked its members to pray for torrential rain to begin during Obama's acceptance speech as a sign that God doesn't want him to be president. Looks like God decided to rain on someone else's parade. Of course, Focus on the Family will say this isn't a sign that God doesn't want McCain to be president, God is just testing him. Isn't great when you can have your cake and eat it too?

Radiosynthesis

Cosmos Magazine

Using a robot to explore the inside of the reactor at Chernobyl, scientist came across a black fungus that was able to live inside the abandoned facility where the radiation level is 500 times the background level. Many fungi are pretty resistant to radiation, so that's not the extraordinary part. Scientist think that the fungus is actually converting radioactive energy into biological energy it can use to grow. The reason the fungus is black is due to a large amount of melanin which scientists believe is being used in a similar way as chlorophyll is used in plants to convert solar energy into biological energy.

Terrible Terrible Ideas

BBC

With the 2010 World Cup coming to South Africa, politicians are trying to come up with ways to encourage soccer fans to come and enjoy themselves. Most of the issues are pretty evident, reduce the horrendous crime rate, clean up the cities, improve the infrastructure, etc. However, this idea seems a bit out there. After seeing the "success" of the German sex industry during the 2006 World Cup, some politicians think it's a good idea to legalize prostitution during the 2010 World Cup.

Some people might balk at this idea because actually the German brothels did relatively poorly during the 2006 World Cup. Most articles I can find on the subject from during and after the 2006 World Cup, show only lukewarm business. Most people going to World Cup games aren't going for the prostitutes or come in a group and can't just go to a brothel when they please.

Of course, what I hope most people think about is HIV. It is believed that nearly 11% of South Africans have HIV. I imagine that for people looking to engage in sexual activities, Sub-Saharan Africa is pretty low on their places to go. Assuming that South Africa puts in safeguards to make sure that the prostitutes don't have HIV, where are they going to find them? I'm guessing prostitutes could be brought down from other countries, but hopefully not from the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa. This then begs the question, which prostitutes, assuming they have choice, are willing to risk working in a country with such a high prevalence of HIV?

It really just seems like a bad deal all around. Soccer fans are not going to flood brothels. Most potential customers will likely be scared off by the high HIV prevalence. Most potential prostitutes would also be scared off for the same reason. So in the end no one would win with legalized prostitution in South Africa.

Metropolis Extended

The Local

Several years ago, I was back home from NCSSM. Flipping through the channels I found out that the film "Metropolis" would be showing on TCM late at night. I had heard much about film and it was something I really wanted to see, so here was my chance. I was completely enthralled by the movie. One of the most memorable things about the movie was the blank spots. Much of the film had been lost and all that was left was a description of what had taken place in the lost scenes. This air of mystery has kept me interested in the film ever since.

Recently a museum in Argentina has discovered that the copy of "Metropolis" in its archives was longer than the current version available. It's highly likely that this is an original copy, maintaining all the unedited scenes. I can't wait for it to be fully restored.

Spore: Creature Creator

Spore
Spore is an upcoming game from the creator of SimCity and the Sims. It's basically an evolution game where you take some little creature and "evolve" it until it controls a galactic empire. This is a terrible way of describing the game, but I don't feel like writing a lot.

The thing I want to talk about is the Creature Creator which they've released a demo of. Although the parts are limited, people can make an absurd number of different creatures quite easily and they are well animated. I wanted to share some of my favorite creations.


This is my first creature, Fibber. He once caught a fish that was THIS BIG!


This is Lightfoot dancing with one of its offspring. The creator automatically generates baby versions of the creatures.


Slouchy, the laziest creature I created.


Sneaky, the most devious animal ever. I bet you thought it was just a harmless little bird.


Spindly has some issues with his legs.


This is what happened when I told Spindly to sit.


I have no idea what happened here.

First PetaFLOPS

Top 500

The first PetaFLOPS computer has made it onto the Top 500 list, ending the 3 year reign of BlueGene as the fasting computer. In fact, the average speed of the top 10 increased by 116%, the second fastest increase since the list started in 1993. What's even more impressive is that the total FLOPS computed by the top 500 increased by nearly 68%, the highest increase ever. Three hundred of the computers that were on the list last November are no longer on the list, unless they were upgraded.

The new top computer, Roadrunner, can compute more FLOPS (floating-point integers per second) than the the entire Top 500 list from June 2004.

Who Cares?

Barack Obama
I was reading the SA forums today, and some guy posted pictures of Obama helping out with flood relief. This immediately reminded me of the recent South Korean presidential election. About a week before the vote, there was an oil spill off the coast of Korea. The candidates were falling over each other to be the first to help the clean-up. So I decided to see was McCain was doing in response to the recent floods.

John McCain
Apparently McCain felt the flood was only worth a two-sentence statement. I'm starting to think Republicans hate flood victims.

Sure, Obama could just be doing this as a publicity stunt, but there still a big difference between helping out with dubious motives and doing, literally, the least you could do.

Great things are happening in Sweden

I think I obsess about Sweden a bit too much, but I've noticed something recently, all the musicians I've become interested in the past month are all Swedish. There's just something about the kind of music coming out of Sweden right now to be fantastic.

Firefox AK vs. LAID
I actually saw Firefox AK perform when I was in Uppsala. It was great concert and I wanted to buy her CD then, but no one could tell me where or if they were selling it there. On a different note, I don't understand the whole "vs." thing when electronica groups collaborate.

I ARE DROID
These guys kind of remind me of Muse.

Maia Hirasawa
This singer's voice is just like Regina Spektor, but the music is a bit different. The video is kind of cute too. Also, her last name isn't Swedish, in case anyone was confused.

Koop
A bit old-fashioned, but very enjoyable music. The singer in the video I linked isn't a member of Koop, in fact it's just two guys using sound samples to make the instrumental parts.

Oh hey, what's this?

Another month, another update

This update comes a bit early since May 31st is a weekend, so there's no update in the exchange today. Not much changed this month except for the Korean Won. In fact, it passed the 1000 mark this month, but my regression model has it not happening until July. I'll leave it on here to see what happens. Also, although the model predicts the Yen benchmark being met next month, the Yen has actually fallen in value the last two months, so it seems unlikely to happen.

In other news, the Mexican Peso has started to rise in value, so it now has its own benchmark.

Jun. 2008: 100 Japanese Yen > $1 US (unchanged)
Jul. 2008: 1 Swiss Franc > $1 US (unchanged)
Jul. 2008: $1 US > 1000 Korean Won (5 months sooner) already achieved
Dec. 2008: $1 Aussie > $1 US (1 month sooner)
Feb. 2009: 1 Euro > $1.75 US (unchanged)
May. 2009: 5 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (1 month sooner)
Sep. 2009: 6 Chinese Yuan > $1 US (1 month sooner)

New Benchmarks:
Jul. 2009: $1 US > 1100 Korean Won
0ct. 2009: 10 Mexican Peso > $1 US

My second quarterly report

This is the first month where I had a big scare as at the end of calculations, I had over 20,000 won missing. It took some time, but I eventually came to realize that I somehow managed to take 35,000 won worth of bus trips on a card with only 20,000 won on it. Basically meaning, I had put 20,000 on the card and forgot to record it (I alway put 20,000 won on my card when I recharge it).

Anyway, my numbers for this report have been greatly damaged by the change in exchange rate. Whereas in February, I recorded a savings of $5112.31, that is now worth only $4656.26. So I've lost $456.05 in three months. Bloomberg calls the Korean won "the world's worst-performing major currency this year".

Anyway, for my second quarter, my revenue was down slightly, $6093.65 (over 99% from my paycheck), and costs went way up to $2245.19. The reasons for this rise in costs is the fact I had to buy a new computer, which by itself cost more that what I usually spend in a month. So my savings for this quarter were only $3848.46, giving me a savings rate of about 63.16%.

My expenses break down for this quarter:
Food: 35%
Computer: 31.5%
Utilities: 15.2%
Transportation: 9.4%
Entertainment: 2.5%
Other: 6.4%

I take great pride in the fact that over the past 6 months, only 0.1% of the money I've had is unaccounted for.

Two Benchmarks Reached!

This month I was surprised by the Chinese Yuan and the Swedish Krona as they both exceeded my expectations. For the Yuan it was a photo finish, it's average exchange rate this month was 6.99969 Yuan for $1 US. Another Canadian benchmark has been removed. The exchange has been pretty level the last few months. The Korean Won continues to sadden me as it declines in value. The Korean government has been purposely lowering the value of the Won to boost exports. According to other calculations I've done, the equilibrium exchange rate should be 820 Won to $1 US.

Apr. 2008: 7 Chinese Yuan > $1 US (2 months sooner) Achieved!
Apr. 2008: 6 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (2 months sooner) Achieved!
Jun. 2008: 100 Japanese Yen > $1 US (unchanged)
Jul. 2008: 1 Swiss Franc > $1 US (1 month sooner)
Dec. 2008: $1 US > 1000 Korean Won (9 months sooner)
Jan. 2009: $1 Aussie > $1 US (1 month sooner)
Feb. 2009: 1 Euro > $1.75 US (3 months sooner)
Jun. 2009: 5 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (3 months sooner)

New Benchmarks:
Oct. 2009: 6 Chinese Yuan > $1 US

Removed Benchmark:
$1 Canadian > $1.25 US

Chat Logs IV

It seems that every time I post about chat logs, there is some change. My first update was followed by my purchase of a new computer, my second update was followed by me switching from using DeadAIM to Trillian, and this update comes before my purchase of yet another new computer.

So what's the ranking? This year's ranking is the sum total of the last two years so they partially reflect last year's list.

#1 - Mai-Anh, up from 2nd
#2 - Celeste, up from 3rd and the only person to make the ranking all four times
#3 - Joseph, up from 5th
#4 - Veronica, down from 1st after having little contact with her this year
#5 - Kimberly, down from 4th
#6 - Kate, re-entering the top six
Honorable mention, Bonnie, whom I've met in the Korea, just missed being in the top 6.

This marks the first year that not a single NCSSMer is on the list as Carl dropped in ranking and none gained, which strikes me as a worrisome sign. This also leaves Joseph as the only guy in the top six. Yet again, the top 6 has increased their share of my total conversations, going from 33%, 42%, 50%, and now 60%.

I think they're onto us

BBC

Celeste isn't the only person who noticed that the French Eurovision entry is in English. Apparently the French people have caught on. I didn't notice when I first listened, I was distracted by Sebastien Tellier's bountiful facial hair.

In any case, it is much better than the Belgium entry which is sung in an imaginary language. The scary part is, this isn't the first time. Belgium's 2003 entry also used an imaginary language, as did the Netherlands' 2006 entry. What's going on in those lowland countries?

2008 is a "good" year for Eurovision

I've fallen in love with Eurovision ever since I first watched it, stuck in a hostel in Grundarfjörður, Iceland due to freezing rain. The 2006 Eurovision gave us great acts from Lithuania and Finland. The song contest, a bastion of Eurotrash pop, was turned on its head after Finland ended up winning. This left people asking, what's next? Many countries tried following Finland's lead and going with more rocking entries, all of which failed. The most memorable entry was Ukraine, which, sadly, lost to a completely unremarkable Serbian entry (perhaps the worst result of the dissolution of Yugoslavia is their voting power in Eurovision). The saddest moment for me, though, was that my favorite entry, Belgium, didn't even make it out of the Semi-Finals.

Since the Lordi method proved to be impossible to duplicate, it seems that everyone went a different direction this year, which has produced some amazing results. So many in fact I can actually produce a top ten list of all the songs I would love to see win.

10. Estonia - I don't actually want this entry to win, but it is kind of catchy
9. Bulgaria - The song itself is just insipid, but at least it's different than the usual Eurovision fare. Plus the video is fun
8. Finland - Nowhere near as good as Lordi, but I want to encourage Finland in this direction
7. Spain - Really? This is Spain's entry?
6. Belgium - I came for the folksy music, I stayed for the neck dancing
5. Ireland - This song has gotten a lot of press because it's sung by a turkey puppet. However, even if it weren't being song by a turkey, it would still be on this list
4. Latvia - This gimmick is absolutely brilliant, steal the show indeed
3. Israel - This song is actually really good. No gimmick or anything
2. France - This song is actually kind of fun and rather subdued, by Eurovision standards
1. Bosnia and Herzegovina - Wait, is... is that a live chicken? What is that girl doing on stage? Why does that guy have a scythe?


I would like to post one last entry. After watching the video for every country this year, I can say, without question, that Lithuania's entry is by far the worst. This songs drops the ball in basically every category imaginable. The guy can't sing, the lyrics are atrocious (even by Eurovision standards), and it doesn't even have a gimmick.

Some new music to chew

Basia Bulat

Check out her songs, she has an amazing voice. I especially like "In the Night" and "Snakes and Ladders". She's also playing in Asheville, Richmond, and DC on May 14, 15, and 16, respectively, as the opening act for DeVotchKa. DeVotchKa is an interesting band that did most of the soundtrack for "Little Miss Sunshine", which I don't remember any songs from that movie other than "Superfreak".

Yael Naim

She's a French singer, and switches between French and English songs. I love her video for "New Soul"


Romantica

Some really good Americana Folk stuff happening here. I love "Queen of Hearts".

Justice - DANCE
Justice - DVNO

I'm not a big fan of electronica, but these two videos are amazing.

First Benchmark Reached

The Euro finally reached $1.50 making it the first currency I've been measuring to reach one of my benchmarks. When I first started estimating, the Euro wasn't supposed to reach $1.50 until July. After a few months of predicting April to be the key month, the Euro made some strong gains in February that lead to a higher than expected average in March.

Other big gainers this past month were the Swedish Krona, Japanese Yen, and the Swiss Franc. The notable loser is Canada, although its trendline is still steeper than Australia's. The Korean Won also lost out this past month. So much so, that the trendline flipped so that it's actually losing value against US Dollar. It's now the only benchmark I have that's going the opposite direction.

Mar. 2008: 1 Euro > $1.50 US (1 month sooner) Achieved!
Jun. 2008: 7 Chinese Yuan > $1 US (1 month sooner)
Jun. 2008: 6 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (2 months sooner)
Jun. 2008: 100 Japanese Yen > $1 US (4 months sooner)
Aug. 2008: 1 Swiss Franc > $1 US (5 months sooner)
Feb. 2009: $1 Aussie > $1 US (1 month later)
Sep. 2009: 5 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (4 months sooner)
Jan. 2010: $1 Canadian > $1.25 US (7 months later)

New Benchmarks:
May. 2009: 1 Euro > $1.75 US
Sep. 2009: $1 US > 1000 Korean Won

Scarily prophetic

The Onion

This article was written back in January 2001 as satire, but as far as I can see, it largely became true.

Why am I doing this?

Another month, another update. No big changes this month except for the loss of the Indian Rupee benchmark. This month saw little change in exchange rates up until this last week wherein it seemed virtually ever major currency hit an all time high against the US dollar. The Euro finally rose above $1.50. If the changes at the end of February aren't reversed, there could be some big changes in March.

Apr. 2008: 1 Euro > $1.50 US (no change)
Jul. 2008: 7 Chinese Yuan > $1 US (2 months sooner)
Aug. 2008: 6 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (1 month later)
Oct. 2008: 100 Japanese Yen > $1 US (3 months sooner)
Jan. 2009: $1 Aussie > $1 US (no change)
Jan. 2009: 1 Swiss Franc > $1 US (2 months sooner)
Jun. 2009: $1 Canadian > $1.25 US (3 months later)
Jan. 2010: 5 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (1 month later)

Removed (Benchmark in unforeseeable future):
30 Indian Rupees > $1 US

And the tallest skyscraper is...

So it's been about a year since I visited Shanghai. I was reminded today of the Shanghai World Financial Center which I saw under construction while I was there. At the time of my visit, it was near completion and it was said it would be the tallest skyscraper in the world. So I decided to see how plans were going. It's supposed to be completed in March, but the top has been completed and it falls about 17 meters short of Taipei 101. It is just as well as its status as the world's tallest skyscraper would have been short-lived. As of July 2007, the incomplete Burj Dubai in Dubai, UAE surpassed Taipei 101 in height. In September, it surpassed the CN Tower, being the tallest freestanding structure in the world. More recently, it surpassed 2,000 feet in height. At completion, it should be around half a mile tall. This is higher than if you stacked two Empire State Buildings on top of one another. The Burj Dubai should be complete by 2009.

My first quarterly report

I've been keeping incredibly detailed notes of all my expenses since I received my first paycheck back in November. Well, I just received my fourth paycheck, meaning it's time to look back at the previous three months.

In this quarter, I received $6881.02, 92% of which can be attributed to my paychecks. Presumably, the remaining 8% was made from prostitution. My total costs over this quarter were $1768.71. Just under 26% of my revenue went to cover to costs, netting $5112.31 as pure profit.

As for my expenses, they break down as thus:

Food: 47%
Utilities: 16%
Transportation: 14.7%
Helping Dan: 9.9%
Entertainment: 8%
Other: 4.4%

For some clarification, the helping Dan expense is a bit of an oddity. Dan needed to buy some medicine, but he doesn't have a credit card, so I bought it for him and he then repaid me in cash, so this transaction is also listed as an income. Normally, I wouldn't bother entering this kind of transaction, the problem though is that I paid in US Dollars and received Korean Won. In order to account for changes in the exchange rate, I had to list the use of US Dollars as an expense and the receiving of Korean Won as an income. As it stands, I paid $175 and received 165500 Won, which at the current exchange rate means I actually gained $1.05.

Animal Research Takes a Step in the Right Direction

BBC News

In one of my classes back in high school, every week I had to find some science article and write a summary. Every week it seemed, I stumbled across an article about scientist making poison-resistant, cancer-immune, and/or super-strong mice. This led me to wondering when would we reach the tipping point where scientist would create mice so powerful that they could overtake humanity. Well, thankfully scientists have seen their errors and the dark path they were leading us and have succeeded in making mice weaker. Now they are susceptible to the common cold. Take that rodents!

I need to find something to do with my time

Latest updates on the currency market. There were some surprisingly large shifts this month. The Japanese Yen and the Swiss Franc made massive gains this past month, although their benchmarks are still a year or more away. Poor performance by the Canadian Dollar and Korean Won, have pushed their benchmarks beyond what I feel comfortable predicting. I'm rather disappointed with the Korean Won as for one thing, I'm being paid in Korean Won, and also because briefly 900 Won had been worth more than a US Dollar back in October. It's sad to see it back at 940 Won per US Dollar. Remember, these benchmarks are for monthly averages. The best monthly average the Korean Won achieved was 915 Won per US Dollar.

Apr. 2008: 1 Euro > $1.50 US (no change)
Jul. 2008: 6 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (1 month sooner)
Sep. 2008: 7 Chinese Yuan > $1 US (2 months sooner)
Jan. 2009: $1 Aussie > $1 US (2 months later)
Jan. 2009: 100 Japanese Yen > $1 US (6 months sooner)
Mar. 2009: 1 Swiss Franc > $1 US (5 months sooner)
Oct. 2009: 30 Indian Rupees > $1 US (3 months later)
Dec. 2009: 5 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (1 month sooner)

Removed (Benchmark in unforeseeable future):
$1 Canadian > $1.50 US
900 Korean Won > $1 US

New:
Mar. 2009: $1 Canadian > $1.25 US

Perhaps I spoke too soon

During December, there seemed to be a "correction" on the currency market, wherein the US Dollar made a substantial one time rise against all major currencies, except the Chinese Yuan. This seems however only to be a delaying effort to keep prices from changing too quickly. In any case, it pushes the date back for many of my benchmarks.

Apr. 2008: 1 Euro > $1.50 US (no change, miscalculated last month)
Aug. 2008: 6 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (1 month later)
Nov. 2008: $1 Aussie > $1 US (2 months later)
Nov. 2008: 7 Chinese Yuan > $1 US (1 month sooner)
Mar. 2009: 900 Korean Won > $1 US (6 months later)
Jul. 2009: 30 Indian Rupees > $1 US (3 months later)
Jul. 2009: 100 Japanese Yen > $1 US (2 months sooner)
Aug. 2009: 1 Swiss Franc > $1 US (1 month sooner)
Jan. 2010: 5 Swedish Kronor > $1 US (1 month later)
Mar. 2010: $1 Canadian > $1.50 US (3 months later)

Where should you vote?

Playing with election numbers again, I decided to see how much each voters vote was worth in the US. There are 538 electoral college votes, which if they were distributed fairly, would be one vote for every 560,000 US citizens (with US population at nearly 302 million). However, they are not, leading to some votes being worth more or less than others. Below I have a list of states and how many "votes" a vote in each state is worth compared to the average.

Best states to vote in:
Wyoming - 3.2
DC - 2.9
Vermont - 2.7
North Dakota - 2.6
Alaska - 2.5

Worst states to vote in:
Texas - 0.80
Florida - 0.83
California - 0.84
Georgia - 0.88
Arizona -0.88

So if you want your vote to count more, get out of Texas and head to Wyoming. However, this inequality seems to have little influence on results, votes in all states that voted Republican in 2004 are worth 1.01 votes while those in Democratic states are worth 0.98. This equates to a difference of 4 electoral votes.