Mu Cow

Tall Buildings 2011

2012-01-10T18:12:00.000-05:00

Last April I made a post about the tallest buildings in the world. I was interested in seeing how much they changed from year to year. Now that 2012, I figure I should add in the numbers for buildings completed in 2011. The full list is at Emporis.

There were three new buildings in the top 30 this year, pushing up the average height from 405 to 410 meters. This is slightly higher than the annual average change of 3.7 meters.

If you want a bit more information, you can read the original post from last year.

Movie Sequels II

2012-01-02T13:36:00.000-05:00

For years, I've heard people complain about how all new movies are either sequels or remakes and that there's no original movies, or that Hollywood has run out of ideas. The problem I have with this logic is that this same complaint comes up every single year. If people are making the same complaint every year, it would seem that nothing has actually changed.

In order to test this, I looked at the top 10 grossing films of each year and categorized them as originals, sequels, series, and remakes. This is a surprisingly difficult task because there are many movies that defy any kind of categorization. Would Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" be an original, sequel, or remake? It reusing established characters, but the story is original. It takes place after the the events in the books and the animated movie, but it's not a direct sequel. Then there's "Thor" which is the first movie about the comic book character, but the character has actually been around for a long time. So is it an original since it's the first movie or a remake because it's using an established story? Then there's the problem that there are a lot of movies that are remakes, but it's not widely known that they are. I just happened to know that "Gladiator" was a remake, but when I started looking the top 10 movies prior to 1990, I had no idea what some of their histories were because I had never heard of them.

I finally decided to use a fairly narrow definition of "original". An original movie was one wherein the story was either created by the writers, or was based on source material that had not been widely-adapted to any visual media such as film, television, or theater.

Much to my surprise, it appears people are right, movies are becoming less original. In fact, not a single original movie made the top 10 in 2011 by my standards. I should add the caveat that even though it appears more original movies made the top 10 in the 80's and 90's, I'm less familiar with those films, so some of them might be remakes, but I wouldn't know.

Breaking the Ice

2011-12-31T15:42:00.002-05:00

A couple of days ago, I read a post on Futility Closet about the Nenana Ice Classic. At the beginning of every year, the people of Nenana, Alaska, set a tripod on the frozen Tanana River. They hold a contest to see who can guess the correct date and time that the tripod starts to fall due to the melting ice.

Upon hearing about this, I decided to see if there was a way to statistically predict when the tripod might fall. I found the break up log and started to look at the data.

Since 1917, the ice break has happened sometime between April 20th and May 20th. The average date is May 4th. However, as is pointed out in the Futility Closet post, the National Snow and Ice Data Center record the event to measure climate change, indicating that the date is changing over time.

The graph shows a negative trend, indicating that the date of the ice break has generally been happening earlier in recent years compared to the past. According to the trend line, the estimate for when the ice break should occur has moved forward by a week, from May 9th to May 2nd since 1917. Of course, the R-Squared is rather small, 0.12, meaning that year-to-year changes only account for 12% of the variation in ice break dates.

Of course, one doesn't just win by guessing the right date, they also have to guess the time. I included the time in the previous estimates to get the average dates, so I could just use the time they produce as the estimate. However, I noticed another pattern when looking at just the times.

The ice break rarely happens late at night or early in the morning. It's not even a normal distribution. No ice breaks have ever occurred between 7 and 9 am, but then there have been a lot just after 9. The best explanation is that the ice is most likely to break when the sun is there to warm it up. If the ice doesn't break by sunset, it is unlikely to break that night.

So my prediction for the most statistically probable date and time of the ice break is May 2nd at 2:11pm. Let's see how I do.

Presidential Election Statistics

2011-12-26T19:56:00.000-05:00

I've played around with different ways for predicting presidential elections in the past, but recently I started thinking in a different way. One reason for is that I found that when I applied my methods for predicting elections, it produced no more accurate results than just assuming the following election was exactly the same as the previous.

With that in mind, I decided to look at past elections and based on historic swings in the vote, come up with a prediction for the chances a particular state will vote for a particular party. On average, the swing between Republican and Democrat is 8.6%, with a standard deviation of 6.6%. To put it another way, 95% of the time, the vote swing in any individual state is between 0 percentage points and 21.5 percentage points. What this means is that, if one party won a state by more than 21.5% last election, the chances that it will vote for a different party next election is less than 5%.

Based on the 2008 results, I created a map. It's a bit messy, but should be easy enough to figure out. The colors represent the party most likely to win that particular state and darkness of the colors corresponds to the chances that party will win that state assuming the 2012 result is totally random.

Looking at just the darkest states, those at a 99% confidence level, one should notice something. Some of the darkest blue states are really big, but the darkest red states are all rather small (in population at least). Democrats have done very well recently in the most populous states. An election could be won with just the 11 largest states. Of those, Obama won 9 in the last election. Basically, no matter what happens in 2012, Democrats are virtually guaranteed to win 149 electoral votes (out of 270 needed to win) and 3 of the 11 largest states. On the other hand, Republicans are only guaranteed 20 electoral votes. From the states that the Republicans have more than a 90% chance of winning, they only get 76 electoral votes, which is less than California and New York combined. Of the big states, Republicans only have an 84% chance of keeping Texas and a 65% chance of keeping Georgia. Basically, Democrats are going into the 2012 election with a huge built in lead. Also, since Democrats have such a commanding lead in the large states, they need to defend and win fewer states.

Of course, 2008 was a massive victory for the Democrats, so it seems unlikely that they will maintain the same level of support. Therefore the 2012 result won't be completely random, there will most likely be a swing to the right. So let's assume that there is an average 8.6% swing to the right.

Suddenly, a lot of states become solidly Republican, however, they reveal a weakness. Democrats still win 3 big states with 99% confidence while Republicans only win 1 big state. Even though Republicans win 19 states with 99% confidence compared to Democrats' 9 plus DC those 19 states only represent 155 electoral votes compared to 142 for the Democrats. Basically, even assuming that every state swings to the right, Republicans aren't guaranteed a win as the Democrats have too much solid support from California, Illinois, and New York.

In order for Republicans to have a solid lead over the Democrats in the electoral college, there would have to be a uniform swing to the right in excess of 9%. What's intriguing about that, is that with a 9% national swing, the Republican candidate would win 55% of the popular vote. This potentially means that in 2012, if the Republican candidate wins between 50% and 55% of the popular vote, they risk losing the electoral college.

Republican Flavor of the Month

2011-12-20T22:10:00.000-05:00

Much has already been said about Republicans' brief love affairs with various candidates. First there was Romney, then anybody but Romney, which led to Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and now perhaps the greatest dark horse of all, Paul.

What gets me is the timeliness in the surge and sudden fall in support for each of the candidates in the polls.

Nationally, Romney led every national poll from the beginning of the year to August 9th.
Perry led from August 15th to September 25th.
Cain and Romney fought from September 25th to November 11th.
Gingrich has led since November 11th.

Broken down, that is 42 days for Perry, 48 days for Cain, and so far 39 days for Gingrich and things aren't looking good for him.

Iowa is even more interesting.
Similarly, Romney led early, but only until June 22nd.
Bachmann led from June 26th to August 4th.
Perry led from August 19th to August 31st.
There were no polls in September.
Cain led from October 7th to November 13th.
Gingrich led from November 15th to December 12th.
Paul has lead since December 18th.

That's 40 days for Bachmann, 13 days for Perry (followed by a 37 day gap in polling), 38 days for Cain, and 28 days for Gingrich.

The turnover rate for candidates appears to be just over 40 days nationally, while Iowa voters appear to be a bit more fickle. They managed to put Bachmann and Paul on top, which hasn't happened nationally, at least not yet. From December 18th to January 3rd, the date of the Iowa Caucus, is only 17 days. If the trend holds, this will be right around the apex of Paul's support.

What is interesting to note is that according the RCP average (the average of recent polls according to RealClearPolitics), Romney has stayed in first or second position nationally and only rarely fallen to third in Iowa. He often shows up as first in the polls during the transition from one fad candidate to the next. Relative to all the other candidates, his support has remained remarkably stable. This could be good or bad. He has been able to maintain steady support unlike other candidates, which will likely carry him through the primary. However, it appears he has very little soft support. Given how things have been going, it seems that Romney will second place his way to the Republican nomination.

Why I Support OWS

2011-11-28T08:32:00.001-05:00

As a kid, I was told to do well in school so that I could get into a good college. In high school, I took all the honors and AP classes I could and was a contender for valedictorian at my first high school. For my junior and senior years of high school, I was accepted into the North Carolina School of Science and Math, which I firmly believe is the best high school in the country. It was challenging, but I loved it.

I got into a good college, the University of Richmond. Now I was told to pick a major that would provide for a good career. I picked economics as I found it fascinating and I was told that economic majors were some of the top income earners. I finished with a respectable 3.1 GPA.

My first job out of college was teaching English in South Korea. It had nothing to do with my major, but I wanted to learn about Asia and the job paid well. Always being a frugal person, I saved nearly two-thirds of my income. I hated the job, but I did everything that was asked of me and worked there until my contract expired.

I returned to the US September 20th 2008, five days after Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Still, I was optimistic. I was a dedicated worker, I had gone to a good university, earned a useful degree, and had $20,000 in savings. With this attitude, I spent over $1,000 on suits for interviews and for my future job. For the next few months I filled out dozens of job applications with almost no responses. I attended job fairs where no one was hiring unless you were willing to work for free or on commission.

Eventually, I was offered a temporary job with the Census Bureau. I worked hard, I was even told to slow down at one point because I was completing work at twice the required rate. When that came to an end, I spent several more months searching for a full-time job, but ended up working with the Census Bureau again. This time, I was promoted to crew leader assistant. It didn’t pay more, but it meant I would be working more hours and had more responsibility. One week I worked 60 hours. Twice I voluntarily worked until 5 AM.

With no job prospects, I applied to graduate school and was accepted into the School of International Studies at the University of Denver. I started in the summer, taking four graduate-level classes in just four weeks. I lost around five pounds during that month due to stress and not eating properly, but I was determined, and completed all my work on time. By the end of the spring semester, I had completed all my coursework. Still, I was no more hopeful of finding a job than I was before and now I had $40,000 in student loans to repay. With no improvements in the job market, it seemed that my best option was to join the Peace Corps and delay starting a career another two years.

In three years I’ve gone from living on my own with $20,000 in the bank to being $40,000 in debt. With no job security, I was stuck living at my mom’s house. I didn’t want to be dependent on anyone else, but my circumstances left me with no better alternative. I was left wondering what had I done wrong? Why couldn’t I find a good job?

Then I looked at my friends, the same dedicated and ambitious students I went to high school and college with. Some of them had found good full-time jobs. However, many were underemployed. Several people were working at temp agencies, at fast food restaurants, as substitute teachers. Many, like me, had gone on to graduate school when they were unable to find fulfilling employment. Now I was wondering what we all had done wrong?

Then I heard about the protest on Wall Street and how it spread across the country. I heard about the people who were getting involved. They had gone to college. They had taken on student loans. Then, when they were ready to enter the job market, they were met with silence and indifference.

That’s when I realized, I had done nothing wrong. I studied and worked hard with the promise that one day I could get a full-time job and I would be independent. I took on student loans with the promise that my future income would cover my payments. I was part of a whole generation that had been made this promise. For most of us though, this promise never came to fruition. We worked hard only to achieve underemployment and debt.

Finally, after three years of underemployment, we’ve started to realized that all the things we were promised are never coming. We did everything we were told to do and received nothing in return. We feel cheated and lied to. We don’t work temporary, part-time, and other low-paying jobs because they’re easy; we do those jobs because they’re the only ones available to us. Many of us are working at unpaid internships in hope that maybe we will get a paying job out of it. We don’t live in our parents’ houses because we’re lazy; we live there because we have no job security.

The most infuriating part is that the money to provide us with jobs is there. We’ve constantly been told that businesses need tax cuts in order to create jobs. We’ve been waiting for three years for these jobs, but despite corporations reporting record profits, despite wealth becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of “job creators”, these jobs have never materialized. Unemployment has been hovering around nine percent since January, with no sign of improvement. Wages for the majority of Americans have been stagnant since at least the early 1980’s while income for the top one percent has skyrocketed. If anything, tax cuts have destroyed jobs by reducing government spending. We need more teachers, more people maintaining infrastructure. There are plenty of government departments that are chronically understaffed where we could create more jobs right now, increasing incomes and increasing consumer demand. Yet, instead, we’ve become sold on this myth that lower taxes equal more jobs that has so far failed to live up to its promises.

OWS is criticized for having no message, no demands. But why does it need to make demands? Shouldn’t the fact that thousands of young people, those who should right now be the most productive members of society, are living in tent cities around the country be enough of a sign that there’s something seriously wrong with the current system? OWS is the result of a multitude of failures in the current political, economic, and social system. Politicians have failed us by allowing themselves to be bought. Corporations have failed us by suppressing wages while giving billions to executives. Government has failed us through ineffectual and costly actions. Financial institutions have failed us by putting short-term profits before long-term sustainability.

We’ve reach a point where more and more people are realizing that they will not be better off than their parents. Despite all my academic accomplishments, despite all my hard work, I don’t see a future for myself or for many of my friends. At this point in my life, I can’t imagine ever owning a house as large as the one I grew up in. I can’t imagine ever being financially secure and independent as much as I want to be.

This is why I find OWS so exciting. Finally, something is happening in America that I can participate in, where I can contribute and help improve society. I can finally put all that I have learned, all that I have been raised to be to use and make a difference instead of wasting it on menial jobs that give me nothing but another bullet point on my oft ignored resume.

The people that are actively participating in OWS, who are putting together the general assemblies, setting up kitchens to feed people, organizing demonstrations, aren’t lazy. These people are ambitious, dedicated to their work, and highly educated, just as they were told to be. Like me, they’re not looking for hand-outs, they’re looking for jobs. They want that opportunity to contribute to society. They want to rectify the growing inequalities in our society. They want to end corporate influence over politics and media. They want to give a voice to the poor and disenfranchised. These are not divisive ideas; these are goals that I would hope all Americans could agree with. Even if we don’t agree with every idea being expunged by protesters, we should at least recognize that they want to make life better for everyone and could probably do a better job at it than the current establishment because they at least care about the people. The established system has failed me, it has failed my family, it has failed my friends, and it has failed the millions of other Americans who are unemployed, underemployed, without health insurance, living in poverty, in debt, have lost their homes, and been continuously marginalized and disenfranchised. I’ve given up on the status quo and want to support something new.

Odd Top 500

2011-11-15T06:45:00.001-05:00

Top 500

This November's Top 500 Supercomputers is a little lackluster. K Computer, currently number one, got an upgrade and broke the 10 PetaFLOPS mark. However, not a single other computer in top ten change. This is the least amount of change seen in the top ten since June 2006. Overall total FLOPS calculated by all 500 supercomputers increased by 26% in the last six-months, which isn't bad but far below the 36% average. In fact, the last six updates have been below average.

Even Income Growth

2011-11-11T09:12:00.001-05:00

Congressional Budget Office

The CBO released a study recently on the change of income distribution in the US between 1979 and 2007. Average incomes have risen by 62%. However, only the top 20% of income earners have seen that kind of income increase. Incomes for the bottom 20% have only gone up by 18%.

Income is becoming increasingly concentrated at the top, with top 1% doubling their share of overall income. It should be noted that the chart shows income after taxes and after welfare transfers.

What I wanted to see is what would incomes look like if instead all incomes rose by the average 62%. The CBO breaks income groups into quintiles. If we define those in the first and second quintile as poor, the third and fourth quintile as middle-class, and the fifth quintile as rich, we find this:

Situation as of 2007
Poor: less than $30,000
Middle: between $30,000 and $61,000
Rich: more than $61,000

Hypothetical 2007
Poor: less than $37,000
Middle: between $37,000 and $67,000
Rich: more than $67,000

If the level of income concentration had remained the same since 1979, roughly 80% of income earners would be making around $7,000 more each year.

A Survey of TV News Websites

2011-11-03T11:51:00.001-04:00

A survey of TV News websites around 17:30 Estonian Time (11:30 EST), November 3rd, 2011.

MSNBC:

Note: Image is from Occupy Oakland

CBS:

CNN:

Note: A few minutes prior to capturing this image, the main story was Occupy Oakland.

Fox:

BBC, US & Canada:

Al-Jazeera, America:

ABC:

This image doesn't truly convey how pointless the ABC news site is, so here's the rest:

I thought Fox would be the odd man out, but ABC really out did itself. At least Fox is breaking a major story.

Occupy "City"

2011-10-30T11:27:00.000-04:00

I've been watching the Occupy Movement from a distance as it hasn't caught on in Estonia. News has slowly been trickling to me about protests spreading around the country, and not just major cities. With a list of the largest US cities, I did a Google search for "occupy 'city'" and found references to a protest in every city I looked up excluding those cities which are basically suburbs of larger cities.

In the midst of all this, I was reminded of a very strange theory I heard years ago known as the Strauss-Howe generational theory. What Strauss and Howe proposed was that throughout US history there is this pattern of generational cycles. Each cycle consists of four archetypal generations, prophets (idealistic, Baby Boomer hippies), nomads (alienated, Generation X), heroes (confident, WWII soldiers), artists (inclusive, Silent Generation). The prophet generation sets the tone of each cycle, and it's through their actions that a crisis eventually occurs, which the hero generation eventually resolves.

The whole idea seems like a lot of pseudoscience, but still intriguing enough to be considered. I don't remember how I first came across the theory, but it was at least a couple of years after 9/11. At the time, everyone saw this as a watershed moment, but after a couple years it became clear that 9/11 didn't really change anything, it just amplified tendencies that were already there. It was in this context that I first heard about the theory as the authors argued that the major crisis that would define the current hero generation had not yet occurred.

I thought about this theory off-and-on for years, largely thinking it would never amount to anything. Then there was the 2008 financial crisis, and it echoes of the Great Depression reminded me of the theory as Strauss and Howe argued that the crisis the previous hero generation initially faced was not WWII, but the Great Depression. Obama was elected president with massive support from the Millennial generation. It was a sign of something Strauss and Howe attributed to hero generations, they are politically engaged. However, things went quiet again. For the most part, Millennials were dissatisfied, but there was no signs of further actions. But now that the economy has stagnated, what could have been small, short-lived NYC protest, as turned into a national phenomenon. And now I'll left wondering, were Strauss and Howe right?

Unfortunately, Strauss died several years ago, but Howe is still around. He hasn't said anything about the protests yet, at least nothing I can find, but it would be interesting to hear his opinion.

Long Time, No Music

2011-10-18T18:19:00.000-04:00

I've been putting off making a music post as I felt like I haven't heard much no music lately. However, I realized I haven't done a post in over a year, and during that time I have heard quite a lot of new music. I also have a few things that I knew about earlier that I thought I had shared, but apparently not.

Trampled by Turtles
Bluegrass band that I first heard on WNCW. Give them a listen even if you think you don't like bluegrass. It's a fun song.

Buke and Gass
Utterly bizarre and unique. I first heard about them on RadioLab as one of the hosts liked them so much he decided to interview them on what is generally a science program. The video is from NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts which is why it's 16 minutes long. No need to listen to the whole thing. They start with one of my favorite songs.

Juana Molina
Same with Buke and Gass, I first heard her on RadioLab. Not quite as strange though, except for the video which I don't much care for, but it's my favorite song. Also, she's singing Spanish in case you didn't get that.

Ramona Falls
This video was posted in a "Favorite Music Videos" thread on Something Awful. Both the video and the song are pretty amazing. The video for Russia is also pretty great.

The Civil Wars
Some blues/folk music. I don't remember how I first heard of them, but I like them.

Janelle Monae
For a change of pace, some R&B. I saw her open for Of Montreal. It was a great show. As a sidenote, I really like her shoes in this video.

Maximum Balloon
Side project from one of the members of TV on the Radio. You can definitely hear the similarities, but this has a more electronic sound.

Are All My Friends Women?

2011-10-17T17:02:00.002-04:00

My friends according to Facebook.

Real vs. Financial Economy

2011-10-14T20:30:00.002-04:00

I've been taking a class with Dr. Erik Reinert and one of the theories he brought up to explain the recent financial crisis. Marx wrote that ideally capitalist take money, use it to create a product, then sell the product for more money. However, over time capitalist will try to find ways to take money and make more money without actually making a product. This is where the recent financial crisis comes in. Financial institutions were making money, but no one was actually producing anything.

Financial institutions aren't necessarily bad, manufacturing needs financial support. The problem comes when the financial institutions stop serving a supporting role and become the primary target of investment. NPR actually had an interesting interview a couple of weeks ago with a financial expert who gave a great example of this, I recommend listening to the podcast. He worked for an airline, wherein, after awhile, the only profitable department was the accounting department. But instead of investing those profits into becoming a better and more competitive airline, they essentially became a bank.

Reinert brought this up as the Real Economy versus the Financial Economy, which made me curious to see if there was a way to measure when the tipping point is reached. It's actually relatively easy to find the breakdown of contributions to the US GDP, but there's the problem of definitions. Does the Real Economy include only manufacturing or should it also include agriculture, mining, and services? Does it also include the government? Instead of looking for a definition, I'm just going to compare various different qualities I found when looking at the figures.

The data I have goes back to 1947, so it is interesting to see how things have changed over time. From 1947 until 1968, manufacturing made up over 25% of the GDP. During that same period, finance went from 10.5% to 14%. Finance surpassed manufacturing in 1986. By 2009, finance was nearly double manufacturing at 21.5% and 11.2% respectively. The numbers are a little better in 2010 and there's been some hopeful signs of an increase in manufacturing, but it's hard to call a one year improvement a trend. So overall, by 2009, finance was nearly double manufacturing, made up 25% of the private economy, and 21.5% of the total economy. It would be interesting to see if there was a similar run up in the 1920's, unfortunately there is not much information available that far back. I could look at other countries that have undergone recent financial crises, but their crises were rooted in other problems, so they might not be comparable (also Japan breaks down contributions to GDP differently than the US).

While looking at the data, I found some other interesting trends. Construction is strongly cyclical. It is currently at its lowest level ever at 3.4%, after falling from 4.9% back in 2006. Mining (includes oil) is also cyclical, but over a longer time period. The early 1980's are especially interesting as there's a sudden rise and decline in oil production. Up until 2008, all manufacturing sectors were in relative decline except for electronics, electrical equipment, and petroleum products. Transportation has been in continuous decline, but this is largely a good thing as it means that transportation costs are lower as the demand for transportation certainly isn't lower than it was in 1947. In the financial sector, the only contribution to show a relative decline over the past decade is securities, commodities, and investments, which is probably a good indication of what the financial sector wasn't doing during the 2000's. Health care has greatly increased since 1947, going from 1.5% to 7.6%.

One part I found of particular interest was government spending. Overall government spending makes up 13.4% of the GDP. A lot has been made lately of government spending, and it is going up as a portion of GDP, it is still lower than it was at any point between 1961 and 1995. Government spending peaked in 1971, during the Vietnam War, at 15.3% and was in decline up until 2001. Of course that's overall spending. State and local government spending has actually been steady around 9% since 1990 meaning most of the relative decline in government spending has come from the the federal government which has been declining from 7.8% in 1952 to 4.3% in 2010.

End of the German Year of Elections

2011-09-21T08:27:00.001-04:00

2011 has become known as Germany's Year of Elections due to the number of state elections that took place. The last election took place in Berlin on Sunday, and the somewhat odd results there prompted me to make a post about them. Having studied a bit about Green politics, I've come to view Germany as a kind of barometer for future politics. There are five major parties in Germany, each representing a major political ideology, which in some ways makes interpreting German election results a bit cleaner. It's not like Sweden's eight party parliament wherein the four "Alliance" parties are hardly distinguishable.

The recent run of elections paints a very different picture of the political landscape than the 2009 federal election offered. As expected, SPD recovered from its abyssal 2009 results (23%) thanks to being part of the opposition to an unpopular government. However, its recovery has been nothing like what one would expect. In polls, SPD only gets 29%, which is historically very low.

Of course, the other consideration from the 2009 election was that the three smaller parties, FDP, Greens, and Linke, all showed their best results ever, and it seemed at the time that this trend would continue if the SPD didn't gain momentum. However, their fortunes have drastically changed in just two years. Die Linke's results are probably the most understandable as many of the SPD voters who switched to Die Linke as a protest vote are again supporting SPD. Die Linke was also hurt by the resignation of Lafontaine, who helped popularize Die Linke in the western states. Recent controversies such as several Die Linke members refusing to stand up in honor of those that died trying to escape over the Berlin Wall have also shown Die Linke to be a relic of the past. While the incident appears to not have had much affect on the results of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin state elections, it probably solidified distaste for Die Linke in western states.

FDP saw probably the largest reversal in fortunes. It went its best result ever to polling below the 5% threshold. FDP lost representation in several states this year. Truthfully, I don't have much of an idea of why this happened. The party leader, Westerwelle, certainly became unpopular, but that alone doesn't explain the total collapse of the party in just two years. Between the 2005 and 2009 election, FDP went from 10% to 15% of the vote. It now regularly polls below 5% nationwide. FDP didn't just lose the soft support in gained in 2009 due to protest votes, it has lost a large chuck of its core voters. However, FDP seems to fit into a larger pattern. FDP is a classical liberal party, supporting both economic and social liberalism. Other liberal parties, such as the Lib-Dems in the UK and the Liberal Party in Canada have taken massive hits in recent years.

The big winners this year are the Greens who have greatly increased their support throughout Germany. Support has dropped off a bit since its highs earlier this year, but it still polling at 20%, which is nearly twice what they received in 2009 and is a higher level of support than any party outside of the CDU and SPD has received since 1949. While the Greens are not immune to an FDP style collapse, they do not seem as likely to face one. The trend throughout the world is one of green parties continuously gaining in popularity.

What Germany seems to present is a generational shift in political ideology. A lot of questions have been raised about the failure of social democratic parties to regain the dominance they once had in northern Europe. One theory is that social democracy is no longer relevant in modern welfare states. The working-class union members that made up their traditional base have greatly diminished in numbers as manufacturing declines. It's also at odds with post-materialist culture, wherein a whole generation of people that grew up with all the material wealth they could ever want are now approaching majority and are no longer swayed by an ideology that at its core is materialist, seeking to provide more for the state and its citizenry. Certainly the SPD has recovered since 2009, but it hasn't return to its historical levels of support.

One interesting story from the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern election is the Rügen I election which highlights some of the characteristics of contemporary party relations in Germany. The election in this district had to be delayed for two weeks when the CDU candidate died. A new candidate was selected, but it was discovered that he was a former NPD (far-right) member. The election went ahead, but CDU officially dropped their support for their own candidate. Since the election was delayed, the results from the rest of the state were already known and it was found that if the Greens got over 18.5% of the vote, they could cause the NPD to lose one of their predicted seats. This information was advertised throughout the district, so as to encourage people to vote for the Greens in a district where they somewhat limited support. The campaign worked, but too well. The Greens ended up receiving 25%, which depressed the vote for the SPD so much that SPD ended up losing a seat instead of NPD. The vote shows not only how much the majority of Germans dislike the far-right, but also how willing people are to vote for the Greens even if it's not their first choice.

A more shocking result is the 9% the Pirate Party received in Berlin. It is hard to dismiss this as a protest vote due to just how high the support was and how well spread the support was throughout the city. The district with the least support still gave them 4.7%. While there is a lot of overlap between Pirate Party and Green Party supporters (poll on shift in party support in German), there are some difference. Most Pirate Party supporters had either voted for a minor party or not voted at all in the previous election as well as gaining a lot of former Die Linke and SPD voters. Pirate Party support appears to be coming more from East Berlin as well, particularly in areas with large immigrant populations.

At the moment, it's hard to say if the Pirate Party is part of the same generational shift in political ideology as the Greens. While they both certainly appeal to the younger generation, they may overlap too much to truly distinguish themselves. The Greens could easily incorporate the Pirate Party platform into their own, but the same may not be said of the Pirate Party. It will be interesting to watch their results in the future.

Why Texting is Annoying

2011-09-14T15:33:00.003-04:00

The phone I currently have is Estonian, and as such, it doesn't have predictive text for English. While sending a recent text, it seemed to me that the letter that I wanted was always the third letter on the key. So I decided to test if it's true that the most used letters are in a poor position or if it was just a selection bias (i.e. I only notice when the letter is poorly placed).

I found a list of letter frequencies on Wikipedia and decided to compare it to the lay out of letters on a phone number pad. It turns out my assumption was true, the most used letters are in English are in the third position.

All things being equal, with 26 letters distributed across eight buttons, letters in the first, second, and third position should each be used 31% of the time, with those in the fourth position (S and Z) should be used 8% of the time. Instead, letters in first position are used 30% of the time, second position 31%, third position 32%, and fourth position 6%.

So not a huge difference, but it would seem that the speed and ease of texting could be greatly improved by placing the most frequently used letters in the first position. If the letters were arranged in this pattern, instead of alphabetically, first position would be used 64% of the time, second 27%, third 9%, and fourth 0.2%.

I wanted to see how other languages compared, which are the best and worst for texting. However, most have additional characters and I'm not sure how they are used in texting or if replacements are used, such as "ue" replacing "ü" in German texting.

What is Poor?

2011-08-29T19:09:00.003-04:00

I been thinking lately about the fact that Estonia doesn't really seem poor, even though by every measure it's the poorest country I've ever lived in. Of course, in many ways it's obviously not a wealthy country, with aged infrastructure and abandoned buildings here and there, but there's little evidence of poverty that I remember seeing in places like China and Russia or even in the US for that matter.

Using GDP per capita as an approximation of wealth, it is estimated that GDP per capita in the US is about 2.5 times that in Estonia. But what does that really look like? Part of the problem of visualizing it is that wealth varies so much within a country. I've spent most of my time in Tallinn, the wealthiest city in Estonia. So I found statistics on the GDP contribution of various metropolitan areas in the US and Europe and compared them and found some interesting numbers.

As a whole, Estonia's GDP per capita is similar to that of cities along the Texas-Mexico border. So it's poor, but not something that would be unfamiliar to Americans. By itself, Tallinn is comparable in wealth to Yuba City. Once again poor, but something Americans are accustomed to. I think that's why I don't really see it. I've been to cities in the US that are of comparable wealth, so it doesn't seem that much different.

Another difference in Estonia is that wealth is more evenly distributed, so there's fewer people that are super wealthy, but there are also fewer people that are a lot poorer than the general population. In fact, I've not seen a single beggar since coming to Tallinn. That said, I've also seen very little expressions of great wealth with the exceptions of tourists in the old town.

Anyway, after finding these numbers, I became fascinated by how much wealth is actually in a lot of Eastern European cities, so what follows is a list of major Eastern European cities and a US metro area to which they are comparable.

Prague, Czechia - Sacramento, CA
Warsaw, Poland - Rochester, NY
Bratislava, Slovakia - Charleston, SC
Ljubljana, Slovenia - Fort Collins, CO
Berlin, Germany - Winchester, VA
Zagreb, Croatia - Riverside, CA
Budapest, Hungary - Eugene, OR
Tallinn, Estonia - Yuba City, CA
Riga, Latvia - Pueblo, CO
Bucharest, Romania - Ocala, FL
Vilnius, Lithuania - Prescott, AZ

While these comparisons might seem surprising, it's important to remember, these are the wealthiest cities within their respective countries (except Berlin). In most cases, the rest of the country was so poor they could not be compared to any US metro area. In case you were curious, Asheville sits between Budapest and Tallinn.

So few terrorists

2011-08-24T09:43:00.002-04:00

Foreign Policy

A friend of mine recently shared this on Facebook. I thought it was a fascinating article, so I wanted to share it here. The writer, Charles Kurzman, a professor at UNC, puts forward the premise that if there are over one billion Muslims in the world who supposedly hate America and the West, why are there so few terrorist attacks? It would seem that there would be attacks all the time with such numbers. He uses the example of a "terrorist attack" in Chapel Hill back in 2006 to make his point.

While the attacker was a Muslim and he professed to be part of a jihad against America, the details of the case reveal that he was really just some sadly deranged man who used the language of jihad to justify his attempts to kill. He was incredibly incompetent in executing the attack, failing to even purchase a gun, and was sorrowfully lacking in knowledge about Islam, the very religion he claimed to be fighting for.

In looking at other recent attacks in the US, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception. They typically work alone, are mentally unstable, and generally incompetent. Where are the well-organized attacks that we all came to fear after 9/11? These attackers fit the profile of school shooters and Eric Rudolf types more than Islamic terrorists.

One of the goals of the 9/11 attacks was to actually get the US to fight, which is what happened. The US even went so far as to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and in fact was an enemy of Al-Qaeda. By getting the US to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, Al-Qaeda hoped that the Muslim world would become enraged and fight back. However, that hasn't happened, in fact, since 9/11 recruitment of militants has dropped. The vast majority of Muslim simply don't share Al-Qaeda's views or vision.

Kurzman lists a number of reasons for this, but the biggest one to me is that the victims of most Islamic terrorists attacks are other Muslims. Al-Qaeda isn't just fighting a war against the West, but also against other factions within Islam that are opposed to their goals. While the US invasions may have hurt the US's reputation among Muslims, these Muslims didn't turn to Al-Qaeda and other such groups because they were also killing fellow Muslims.

While I doubt I'll find it now, years ago I read an article that compared the Islamic terrorists of today to Anarchist terrorists of the early-20th Century. Anarchists were a major bogeyman of that time period, assassinating President McKinley as well as playing a role in setting off WWI. However, by the time WWII came around, Anarchists were largely forgotten. The author proposed the same would happen to Radical Islam. By attacking civilians, Anarchists damaged their image which hurt recruitment. Also, the conditions in which the Anarchist movement was created were changing. Anarchy was no longer a relevant ideology.

Radical Islam appears to be going the same route. As they continue to kill other Muslims, their support and recruitment numbers will drop. Also conditions in the Muslim world are changing. Most Islamic countries are former colonies, so they harbor resentment to their former colonizers as well as elements of neo-colonialism. However, as colonization becomes a more distant memory and the Western countries slowly decline in relative power, Muslims have gone from blaming the former colonizers to blaming their own governments for their relatively poor condition. The ideology of Al-Qaeda is no longer relevant to the average Muslim, if it ever was.

Economic Patterns

2011-08-18T05:46:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I did a comparison of economic growth in various countries. I was curious to see how much of the world's economy is being gabbled up by China each year. I have a listing of the GDP (PPP) of 123 countries, representing pretty much the entire global economy (the 70-odd countries left out are all very small or poor). Looking at this, I found that China gained around 8% of the global economy during the past decade, a little less than 1% a year. India, another massive and rapidly growing economy, has gained less than 2% of the global economy. China isn't the fastest growing economy, but it is large and therefore its growth has a lot of consequence.

Looking at the numbers of the other countries, I decided to see which countries were growing relative to the global mean and which were declining. I should note, declining in this sense is just relative. Nearly all countries have seen economic growth, but some more slowly than others. I started at 1989 because it's starting from that date that I have the most information but also because it's historically interesting. I went through each country and labelled their peak in relative economic size and their nadir. However, I found much more than just some countries decline and some incline, but nearly all countries fit into some category just by looking at when their peaks and nadirs were.

General growth (continuous growth since 1989): Dark Green

General decline (continuous decline since 1989): Purple

Momentum gained (decline followed by growth): Green

Momentum lost (growth followed by decline): Pink

Post-Soviet recovery (Peaks in 1989 followed by nadirs and gradual growth): Red

Virtually no change: Blue

Senegal is the only blue country. I don't know if it's just lack of information, but its position barely changed from 1989 to 2010.

I found it interesting that so much can be interpreted by just looking at relative economic figures. Post-Soviet states definitely stood out in the data. It also brings up questions such as why does virtually all of South American fall into the "momentum gained" category? What prevented their collective growth in the 1990's and why are they growing now? You might also notice that not all the former communist states are in the "Post-Soviet recovery" category. This is because while they did recover slightly at first, they have since lost relative economic position. They may in fact be wealthier now than in the 1990's, but their growth has been relatively slow.

Another pattern I found in the data was what I called the Post-Soviet Bump. While the economies of the former Communist Bloc collapsed, several countries that fall into the "general decline" category saw a temporary rise in their relative economic position.

Alternate East Germany

2011-08-14T14:45:00.002-04:00

The Local

It recently came up in German news that the chancellor of West Germany from 1949-1963 proposed a deal to swap West Berlin for the state of Thuringia and a few other border territories with East Germany. This brings up an interesting alternate history scenario.

Symbolically, the biggest difference would have been the lack of the Berlin Wall. Depending on the timing of the proposal, the Berlin Wall would have either never existed, or been unceremoniously removed soon after its construction.

The integration of Thuringia into West Germany would have gone much more smoothly than full reunification as the population being integrated would have been much smaller relative to the overall size of West Germany. While already by the 1960's East Germany was much poorer than West Germany, it probably wouldn't have been as economically painful for Thuringia as it industries wouldn't have been as out-dated as they were during the 1990's. Also, During the 1960's West Germany was at the height of its economic recovery and the integration of Thuringia would have brought in much welcomed additional labor, land for industrial expansion, and a new consumer market.

More in the dark though are the events of 1989. The disintegration of the Communist Bloc didn't start in East Germany. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germans were already escaping through the open border in Hungary, so that may have still happened. It was these events in Hungary that eventually led to East Germany opening its borders, but the process would have gone much slower had it not been for a misunderstanding as to when this would take place and the immediate flood of people at East and West Berlin border crossings. People would instead have to go out to the largely unpopulated East-West German border to cross. While many thousands probably would, it wouldn't have had the same psychological effect that the collapse of the Berlin Wall brought.

Reunification would probably be inevitability with the collapse of the Communist Bloc. It is difficult to say if it would have gone more smoothly though. In terms of population, not much would have been different, the population of West Berlin was not much different than Thuringia. The main difference probably would have been that West Germany would have already had experience with integrating new states.

In the end, the major difference it would make today would be that Thuringia would be much better off, but Berlin would be in a much worse position. Even now, Berlin is a surprisingly poor city, but was at least an oasis of development within East Germany during the 1990's. Instead, Berlin would have been much like all other East German cities in the 1990's and its population would have dropped significantly.

Historical Memory

2011-08-07T09:05:00.000-04:00

Rough estimate of the percentage of the current US population alive during:
2001 - WTC attack - 86%
1989 - Fall of the Berlin Wall - 73%
1969 - Moon landing - 46%
1945 - End of WWII - 24%
1929 - Start of the Great Depression - 4%
1918 - End of WWI - 0.6%

Top 500 (What the hell Japan?)

2011-06-22T02:24:00.002-04:00

Top 500

After a few slow updates, Japan absolutely crushes the competition with the release of K Computer. Six months again the Chinese introduced their first number one computer, Tianhe-1A, which could perform 2.6 PetaFLOPS. K Computer can do over 8 PetaFLOPS. This is the biggest change in the top computer since Japan introduced the Earth Simulator back in June 2002. Ironically, the current list is the first one on which the Earth Simulator would not appear for being too slow.

This is particularly odd list though because despite the introduction of such a fast computer, the overall speed of all 500 computers increased by about average. It's not that the list didn't move much, nearly half the computers are new, but that other than K Computer, the other new computers entered the list towards the bottom. K Computer accounted for over half the overall change in computing speed of the top 500. Much like its Japanese predecessor, the Earth Simulator, such a large lead over the other top computers means that K Computer will likely remain the fastest computer for a while. Which in the world of supercomputers is about two years.

Unemployment Update

2011-05-27T20:34:00.005-04:00

Back in March, I posted some maps about unemployment in the US. While for the most part it looked good, several states showed a worrying "double-dip" trend. It appears that these concerns were unfounded as March and April turned out to be very good months for employment figures.

Now 37 states are showing improvement, while only 4 show unemployment getting worse. While there are 3 states double-dipping, they are totally different from the ones that appeared to double-dip earlier indicating that it's probably just a temporary set back.

I decided to do another type of map for this update. I was curious to see how much better states have gotten since the peak in unemployment to see if some are doing better than others. However, to give it more context, I had to see how bad they got in the first place. So for each state I compared their lowest unemployment rate prior to the recession to their highest unemployment during the recession.

The scale is done by multiples, so Florida, Idaho, and Nevada had an unemployment more than 3.5 times higher than prior to the recession while Alaska's unemployment increased by less than 1.5 times or 50%. Florida saw the most dramatic increase, going from 3.3% unemployment in 2006 to 12% in 2010.

Since then though, conditions have improved in every state but Louisiana, so comparing their pre-recession best to their current, the map looks like this:

So none of the states are doing better than they were prior to the recession, but Alaska, New Hampshire, and North Dakota are getting closer. Nevada and Illinois have shown a lot of improvement, having changed two ranks.

Peace Corps

2011-05-25T02:34:00.003-04:00

Since I don't know where I'm going yet I decided to do some speculating. Based on my qualifications, out of the 70 "countries" Peace Corps sends volunteers to, there are 32 that I'm likely to end up. I say "countries" because they list Eastern Caribbean as one entity as well as Micronesia and Palau. The count also includes 3 countries where there are currently no volunteers.

Many countries only have education and health programs, which I am not qualified for. Also much of the Americas is off limits as I don't speak Spanish.

Dark Gray-Countries I'm not qualified for
Light Blue-Countries I'm likely to go to
Dark Blue-The 10 countries with the most volunteers that I'm likely to go to

Based on the current level of volunteers, my estimate for where I'll end up:
Ukraine (the country with the most volunteers) 11%
Africa 53%
Vanuatu 2%
Any Pacific island 4%
Any island nation 10%

How Azerbaijan Won

2011-05-18T01:48:00.002-04:00

There has been a lot of discussion lately about how Azerbaijan won the recent Eurovision Song Contest. It seems that the general opinion was that it was a bland, forgettable song. So who voted for it? Actually, not all that many people.

Eurovision voting rules are a perfect example of one of the problems of first-pass-the-post voting. It makes it possible that a minority choice ends up winning. In the Eurovision Final there are 25 choices. This theoretically makes it possible that an entry could win the coveted 12 points with just over 4% of the overall vote.

Eurovision's scoring system also distorts the results. The winning song in a country could receive 20% of the vote while the second place song got 10%. Even though the second place song got half as many votes, it will receive 10 points while the winning song got 12. This makes the contest more competitive by handicapping the best performers. Now consider that Azerbaijan averaged 6th place and its easy to see that they could have received a lot of points while not actually receiving all that many votes.

Statistics on ESC Chat reveal more. Azerbaijan won with smallest amount of possible votes of any winning act under the current voting system, which has been in place since 1975. Overall, Azerbaijan won only 9% of the points assigned while back in 2009 Norway won with a landslide of 16%. That might not seem like a big difference, but the thing to consider is that Norway won first place in 16 countries while Azerbaijan only won in 3. Since the scoring system effectively handicaps entries that do really well by limiting the number of points it can get to a maximum of 12, Norway likely did much better its 16% would imply while Azerbaijan did worse than its 9% implies.

What does this all mean? When there isn't a clear favorite like in 2009 and 2010, the winner of Eurovision is really just a matter of chance. A relatively small number of votes can drastically change the outcome. It will be interesting to see the separated jury and televote scores once they become available as it's completely possible that Azerbaijan could have won the combined scores without actually winning the jury vote or the televote.

More Demographics

2011-05-11T01:37:00.002-04:00

Interactive Map of Census Data from the New York Times

I was browsing Census data, as I'm wont to do, and notice something kind of interesting. I've made some earlier posts about how non-Hispanic Whites (for brevity, simply referred to as "White" from here on out) will not longer be the majority in the not so distant future, so I expect the population growth of minorities to outpace the growth of the White population. What I didn't expect though was to find that the white population is actually declining in a number states.

States with a declining White population:
California
Connecticut
Illinois
Iowa
Kansas
Louisiana
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Mississippi
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island

This got me wondering, with so many states seeing a declining white population, where is population growth coming from?

Population change 2000-2010
Total: 27.3 million
Hispanic: 15.2 million
Asian: 4.3 million
Black: 3.7 million
White: 2.3 million
Multiple: 1.4 million
Others: 0.4 million

Hispanics made up 55.5% of population change while representing only 16.3% of the total population. Whites only made up 8.3% of population change despite representing 63.7% of the total population. Even the Black and Asian populations saw a greater absolute increase in population.

Overall, the population of the US increased by 9.7%. The Hispanic population increased by 43%, followed closely by the Asian population which grew by 42.9%. The White population only grew by 1.2%. It seems that without migration, US population trends would more closely match those of most European states.

Address Bar Guesses

2011-05-06T03:20:00.003-04:00

Like so many things these days, the Firefox address bar attempts to guess what sites I want to visit based on what I start typing. I decided to see what sites are the ones that come up first with each letter of the alphabet.

A - APDC Interpreters Bank I'm currently working on a project with them

B - Blackboard School stuff

C - CBC Canadian election news

D - Dominosa Puzzle game I no longer play

E - Etymonline.com Etymology dictionary

F - Facebook

G - Gmail

H - Hack Slash Crawl Flash game I no longer play

I - Institutional Research Board School stuff

J - Jay is Games Causal gaming site

K - Kayak Flight finder

L - Slither Link Puzzle game

M - Mu Cow Self-referential!

N - Nurikabe Puzzle game

O - Orisinal Flash games

P - Penrose Library Campus library

Q - Quest Diagnostics From when I was being medically cleared for the Peace Corps

R - RTE Irish election news

S - Sporcle Quiz games

T - The Cinema Snob Videos of reviews of bad movies

U - US Election Atlas Information on past US elections

V - Valmyndigheten Information on past Swedish elections

W - Wachovia

X - Google Reader The Local's RSS feed

Y - YouTube

Z - Google Account Logout Warning, this link will cause you to log out of your Google account.

I'm personally entertained that four of these deal with elections.

Mu Cow vs. IMDb

2011-04-30T22:17:00.003-04:00

It turns out that IMDb has a Criticker account. It's just movie rankings from IMDb put into a Criticker account. What makes it interesting though is that it allows me to compare my movie opinions to the general public and not just my peers. That said, It appears I agree with the general public a lot as IMDb is ranked as the 22nd account that I agree with the most. However there are a few exceptions.

Movies IMDb likes but I don't:
2001: A Space Odyssey - Yes, it's a groundbreaking film, but it's also painfully boring.

Sin City - I felt the graphic nature of the film distracted too much from the stories, or in some cases, was the story.

Frankenstein - Once again, it's really not that good of a movie even by 1930's standards.

Planet of the Apes - Sure it's a classic, but it's still kind of silly.

Crash - Too heavy-handed.

The Ten Commandments - This is a movie I should probably rewatch, but won't because it's incredibly long.

The Last of the Mohicans - I must have really missed something in this movie because I don't understand what makes it so special.

Star Wars Episode III - Really? People like this movie?

Watership Down - It's kind of a downer.

Forbidden Planet - Was probably good for the 1950's, but I don't think it has aged well.

Gattaca - Another movie I should rewatch, I thought it was boring the first time I saw it.

Dancer in the Dark - No amount of arguing will convince me this is a good movie.

Sweeney Todd - Boring, forgettable songs which is unforgivable for a movie touted as a musical.

Bambi - It still has no plot!

Movies I like that IMDb doesn't:
Batman (1966) - The makers of this movie knew exactly what they were making and it was campy brilliance.

Death to Smoochy - I'm still surprised to know so many people dislike this movie.

Young Einstein - It's such a fun movie, how can people not like it?

Eurovision 2011

2011-04-27T03:07:00.002-04:00

Eurovision

Eurovision starts in two weeks! You can watch it live online. You just have to install Octoshape, which we discovered last year might not work with Apple computers.

The dates are:
1st semi-final: May 10th
2nd semi-final: May 12th
Final: May 14th

They start at 21:00 CET or 3pm EST and 1pm MST.

This year, I don't have any stand-out favorites, but I'm much more pleased with this year's entries than last year. Even the UK managed to put together a decent act after finally dispensing with a national competition and going with an internal selection. I firmly hold that the reason the UK has done so poorly lately is because they let Brits choose their entry, so it's nice to see that the BBC has caught on.

Other big news for this year, Italy and Austria are back in the game! While Austria last competed in 2007, Italy hasn't competed in 14 years. Because of Italy's contributions to the EBU, which organizes Eurovision, it gets automatic entry to the final alongside France, Germany, Spain, and the UK.

It was really difficult for me to narrow down my list of the most interesting songs to only 10, so instead here are 11.

11. Portugal Something sorely missing from last year, poorly sung protest songs.
10. Belgium Walloon's turn to pick an entry. Guess what their gimmick is this time.
9. Finland The preachiest Eurovision song ever.
8. Belarus It will be interesting to see if anyone outside Belarus agrees with this singer's sentiments.
7. Romania Starts out strong, but doesn't keep it up.
6. Italy Returns with a great entry.
5. GermanyShe looks familiar...
4. Moldova That's... unique.
3. France Stay classy, France.
2. Ireland Ireland, I love you.
1. Bosnia This song has really grown on me after repeat listenings.

If you want to see more, all entries are on this YouTube playlist.

There are two last things I want to share. First, my favorite song to come out of this year's national competition, sadly, didn't make it to Eurovision, it came in 3rd in Sweden's competition, but here it is for your enjoyment, Oh My God. Second, in case Ireland's entry wasn't ridiculous enough for you, one of the singers hurt his ankle and has been performing in a wheelchair. No word if he'll be better in 2 weeks, but here's a video.

Are they really good? (Eh)

2011-04-20T02:32:00.002-04:00

So similar to my last post, only this time, it's movies that I think are good, but my peers seem to disagree.

In parenthesis is the score I gave the movie and how much higher it is than the predicted score.

-Young Einstein (75, +40) There is nothing so terrible about this movie to justify why people gave it such a low score.

-Napoleon Dynamite (93, +34) There are few other films that I laugh as hard at. All the characters in this movie are great.

Hudson Hawk (70, +32) Whatever this movie hoped to be it utterly failed at. What it ended up being is so absurdly silly that it's hard not to like.

Aeon Flux (53, +32) It's not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but I found it interesting and entertaining.

-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (81, +31) Yes, this movie is dumb, but that's why I love it.

-Michael (71, +31) Celeste appears to be the only person that agrees with me that this is a decent movie.

-Death to Smoochy (86, +27) I was really surprised to find out that there's a lot of people that don't like this movie. I thought it was hilarious.

-Reckless Kelly (74, +26) I loved this movie as a kid. I should probably watch again now that I would get all the jokes.

-The Fountain (97, +26) The movie was really divisive when it came out. I agree it's pretentious at times, but it really grabbed me.

-Chicago (90, +25) I'm a sucker for a good musical.

-A Knight's Tale (80, +24) I found this movie really fun and entertaining. The campiness of all the modern music and themes just added to it.

-Moulin Rouge (98, +24) This movie is such a spectacle I can't help but love it.

Are they really bad? (Yes)

2011-04-18T03:48:00.002-04:00

I watch a lot of videos on That Guy with the Glasses as I enjoy watching him and some of the other commentators make fun on bad movies. One day I came across a video he did where he talked about movies where his opinion seemed very different from the general opinion. Basically, movies that he thought were good or bad, but everyone else seemed to have a different opinion.

This got me thinking, I've been using Criticker for a long time, and while it's usually really good at predicting what score I'll give a movie, sometimes it's wildly off. The predicted score is calculated based on the scores people who tend to agree with me on movies. Therefore, when a predicted score is way off, it means that I'm not in agreement with people who have similar taste as me. So I decided to take a look at the movies that I thought were bad, but almost everyone who share my tastes disagree.

In parenthesis is the score I gave the movie and how much lower it is than the predicted score.

-Dancer in the Dark (0, -67) I hate it when movies move the plot forward by having characters act like idiots. In this case, the entire movie was carried on the back of characters with a collective IQ of 12.

-Quills (14, -55) I don't understand at all what people found enjoyable about this movie. The entire last act is people being tortured or dying in horrible ways. It's an incredibly uncomfortable movie to sit through.

-Face/Off (11, -46) Nothing in this movie makes any kind of sense. I don't remember any of the actions scenes that supposedly make this a decent movie.

-The Dreamers (20, -46) Many of the scenes come across as laughable instead of artistic. It's a great example of the plot being progressed through idiocy.

-There's Something about Mary (17, -44) I think I may have been too young to really get this movie when I first saw it. All I remember is it being really gross, which I don't really care for.

-The Passion of the Christ (21, -43) Personally, I don't see the appeal that many Christians saw. Virtually every non-Christian I know was horrified by this movie and I'm inclined to agree with them.

-Bambi (29, -40) it has no plot!

-Frankenstein (39, -40) I felt bad giving it such a low score, but it's really not a good movie. It's filled with plot holes and illogical actions. It might be a classic, but it's hard to overlook its flaws.

-The Last of the Mohicans (33, -36) This may have just been a result of not being able to hear the audio very well, but I had no idea what was happening.

-Hercules (23, -35) I'm generally not too hard on movies that don't stick to the source material, but this movie was just insulting.

-Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (37, -31) I don't remember much about it, I just remember not finding it engaging at all.

-Sweeney Todd (36, -31) I told someone that the reason I didn't like this movie was because the music was bad and forgettable. They said it still had an interesting story. My response was, if it had such a good story, why did they make it a musical?

-Crash (40, -30) Did you know this movie was about racism? Subtle isn't it?

Tall Buildings

2011-04-15T17:05:00.003-04:00

After reading about some monstrosity they want to build in Saudi Arabia, I got curious as to how quickly the world's tallest buildings rise in height, similar to how the Top 500 keeps track of how much faster computers are getting. I got data from Emporis about the current tallest buildings in the world and then figured out what would have been the tallest buildings in previous years by removing newer buildings. The WTC Towers were the only ones I had to look up to add to the data for years prior to 2001 as demolishing skyscrapers is kind of rare.

I took the top 30 from each year and averaged their heights. I picked 30 somewhat arbitrarily as it was a small enough number that most likely 30 of them were from long enough ago to give me plenty of years to work with. I was able to go back to 1984 before the list dropped below 30, meaning of the current top 200, less than 30 were built before 1984. It is also a large enough number that I hoped the annual change in heights would be steady.

The data shows that the average height increases by 3.5 meters, or 11.5 feet, annually. This is a rather steady increase with only 2010 being an outlier due to the completion of the Burj Khalifa. Currently the average height is 405 meters (1328 ft), 24 meters taller than the Empire State Building, and slightly shorter than Trumps new building in Chicago.

Projections (year, average height, current building closest to that height)
2015 - 423 meters - Jin Mao Tower
2020 - 441 meters - Sears Tower
2025 - 458 meters - Petronas Towers
2035 - 494 meters - Shanghai World Financial Center
2040 - 511 meters - Taipei 101
...
2130 - 830 meters - Burj Khalifa
2178 - 1 kilometer - none

Who won in 2008?

2011-04-10T00:19:00.004-04:00

I recently came upon a new idea for counting votes in an election. Instead of only counting votes cast and ignoring those who abstain, abstentions would be counted in their own category. For example, in a district one candidate might get 55% of the vote and the other 45%. However, if over half of the population didn't vote at all, then abstaining votes would win and no candidate would be selected. While this might seem bad, it gives political parties a stronger incentive to see that everyone votes. Currently, those incentives don't really exist, all a candidate has to do is get more voters than the other candidate, regardless of how many people vote. It would also limit voter disenfranchisement as they would then count as abstaining votes and cause neither candidate to win.

I decided to see what would have happened if this rule was applied to the 2008 election. In 2008, 58% of everyone over the age of 18 voted, the highest voter turnout since 1968. However, this means that 42% of potential voters abstained. If these abstentions were counted, the break down of the vote would be:
Abstain: 42%
Obama: 31%
McCain: 27%
Other: 1%

Abstentions end up winning by a wide margin. Broken down to the state level, the results are very ugly:

Obama and McCain only win a handful of states, the majority, and the winner of the Electoral College with 428 votes. Clearly, a huge portion of the US population isn't having their voice heard.

In order to produce a situation where Obama beats abstentions, voter turnout would have to be over 69%.

Majority-Minority 2010

2011-03-26T19:36:00.002-04:00

Last year I made a post about majority-minority states. These are states where non-Hispanic Whites are not the majority. Currently only four states, CA, HI, NM, and TX, plus DC are considered majority-minority. However, the population of certain minority groups, mainly Hispanics and Asians, is growing rapidly. I made some predictions about when other states would become majority-minority states, which showed that by 2041, non-Hispanic Whites will be a minority in the US. These predictions used data from 2005-2008, so with the recent Census data, I updated the data with 2009-2010 figures.

What the 2010 Census revealed was that previous population estimates greatly underestimated the size of the Hispanic population. The predicted date for when a state would become a majority-minority state moved forward in all but 10 states. Only in three states, AZ, ME, and, MT, did the estimated minority population decline as a result of the new data. On average, the predicted date for when a state would become a majority-minority state moved forward ten years.

Next 10 majority-minority states:
Nevada - 2015
Maryland - 2017
Florida - 2020
Georgia - 2021
Arizona - 2024
New Jersey - 2024
Mississippi - 2029
Louisiana* - 2030
Delaware - 2033
New York - 2034
*The Louisiana estimate leaves out 2005 as there was massive, but temporary, decline in the Black population that skews the data.

The new data moves forward the date for when non-Hispanic Whites become an minority in the US from 2041 to 2034. Previous data showed only 12 majority-states by 2041, but new data shows 14 by just 2034 and 20 by 2041.

Only DC is showing a reversal as the non-Hispanic White population is increasing and could become the majority by 2026. Previous data showed Hawaii reversing, but the 2010 Census data disputes this, showing the non-Hispanic White population declining as a proportion.

What a difference a day makes

2011-03-12T20:41:00.003-05:00

BLS.gov

Just a couple of days after I made that map about unemployment, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released their numbers for January. With new numbers, I decided to reassess my previous method of categorizing states by looking more at the number of people employed rather than the unemployment rate. The reason for this is a decline in the unemployment doesn't necessary mean that more people have jobs, people may given up looking for jobs for various unrelated reasons. So here's the new map:

The map still shows 26 states plus DC recovering. Some of the most important changes are that California, Florida, and Texas do not appear to be getting worse. I'm reluctant to say that they are fully recovering though until February numbers are available.

Kentucky is an oddity as it's employment numbers are improving, but the number of unemployed is growing at a faster rate.

Wyoming is the opposite situation, its employment numbers are declining, but the number of unemployed is declining at a faster rate.

Nevada is also problem in that it's unemployment rate greatly improved in January, but the number of people employed declined.

Employment numbers in Colorado are getting worse, but I couldn't really call it a double-dip recession because the employment numbers never really showed much improvement in the first place.

In any case, the Midwest and the Northwest are still doing incredibly well, but the recovery appears to be losing steam in the Rockies and the Southeast.

Unemployment in the US

2011-03-09T17:40:00.003-05:00

I've been wanting to put something up here for awhile, but finals take time as do some of the things I want to work on for this blog. However, last night I started working on something that didn't take too much time.

I was looking at unemployment figures and seeing how different states were doing. I wasn't planning to do anything with it until I looked at Georgia's numbers. Like most states, Georgia's unemployment peaked around the end of 2009 and recovered slightly, but then started back up again at the end of 2010. It left me wondering if this was the sign of a double-dip recession, that we would see another peak in unemployment in the near future. So I made the following map:

Bright green - States that have shown continuous recovery since their peak in unemployment.
Dark green - States where unemployment is down from its peak, but there was little change in the last 6 months of 2010.
Gold - Unemployment peaked and has remained near that level.
Red - Unemployment continuously getting worse.
Dark Red - States that initially recovered, but unemployment has since gotten worse again.

Only two states, Georgia and Delaware, seem to show signs of a double-dip recession. As it stands, 26 states plus DC have shown continuous improvement since 2009. The Midwest is doing especially well, with unemployment rates falling much more rapidly in places like Illinois and Michigan than the national average. Michigan's unemployment rate was at 14%, but has fallen to 11%, lower than Nevada, California, Florida, and Rhode Island.

What's interesting with the dark green states in the Southeast is that they all show a similar pattern. They all peaked at around 11% unemployment, which quickly fell to about 10% and has stayed there ever since.

People have said that Colorado did well during the recession as when the nation as a whole was at 10%, Colorado was at 9%. However, the number show that while the nation is doing better, Colorado is still stuck at 9%.

The most worrisome sign is that three of the largest economies, California, Texas, and Florida, were worse off at the end of 2010 than they were in 2009. I'm also curious about Idaho and Montana given that all the surrounding states are doing fairly well.

2011 Elections

2011-02-14T14:49:00.002-05:00

World Elections

I really enjoy following elections around the world partially because I'm fascinated by the eccentricities of different electoral systems and the political dynamics within different countries. The link above is to one of my favorite sites as the guy who runs it goes into great detail about recent elections, explaining how their system works, history of the political parties, and the issues at hand. He made his own list of elections that he's interested in at the end of last year and I figure I should make my own list of the elections I'm most interested in following this year in mostly chronological order. I say mostly because the dates for some elections haven't been set.

2/25 - Ireland - This one would be interesting to me even without the debt crisis hanging over everyone's heads. Ireland has one of the most fascinating and complex electoral methods in the world. A short explanation is that voters rank parties, and if their first ranked party fails to win a seat, their vote goes to their second choice, and so on. It appears that Fianna Fail (the dominant party since 1932) is going to get crushed this election due to their mismanagement, going from 41.5% of the vote in 2007 to hovering around 15% in current polls.

3/6 - Estonia - This is probably only interesting to me as I plan to do research there next fall. Most polls don't show much change. Estonia is politically interesting though as it's one of the few countries that's dominated by a classical liberal party.

4/17 - Finland - This is not likely to be an earth-shattering election, as the ruling coalition is unlikely to change. What is concerning is the rise of the nationalist True Finn party which has gone from having just 4% of the vote in 2007 to now polling at 16.6% and still rising.

5/5 - Various UK elections - Along with local elections, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are holding elections for their respective legislative branches. Labour looks set to make massive gains in Scotland and Wales with both the Conservatives and Lib Dems looking to lose many seats and the respective nationalist parties doing about the same. With Northern Ireland it will be interesting to see if the nationalist continue to make their slow gains. Also, there will be nationwide referendum on adopting a new electoral method to replace the first-past-the-post system. It appears it may pass, but polls are close.

Jun - Thailand - Politics in Thailand have been rather tumultuous lately. It will be interesting to see if this election will bring about renewed stability or reawaken old grievances.

6/12 - Turkey - Turkish elections are interesting to me more in relation to their hopes of joining the EU. In 2010, the AK Party passed a constitutional referendum to help bring Turkey more inline with EU law. Since then, support for the AK Party has remained high and they are likely to maintain majority.

Sept - Egypt - Elections will probably end up being sooner, but for right now they are schedule to happen in September. There's really no telling what will happen.

Nov - Denmark - Denmark is required to hold an election before 11/12. Left-wing parties are currently leading in the polls, so there's likely going to be a change of government. The current government also has a long standing promise of holding a referendum on the four EU opt-outs Denmark currently has. It appears that the government may have dragged their feet on this too long as support for removing them, as the government would like to do, is dropping.

11/26 - New Zealand - Current polls show that the government won't change much after this election, what is a bit more interesting is that New Zealand is holding a voting method referendum that is a bit more complex than the UK. New Zealand currently uses a two-vote system, wherein voters vote for a local representative and for a party which will determine the distribution of seats. The vote is to whether or not to maintain the system, and if not, which of four systems would be preferred. The current system is favored to win.

Sometime - Tunisia - Elections weren't due to be held until 2014, but the removal of the president has changed quite a few things. According to the Tunisian Constitution, when the presidency is vacant, a new election needs to be held within 60 days, putting the election in mid-March. However, many are calling for an interim period to form a new constitution and government and hold the election at a later date.

Throughout the year - Germany - Several German states are holding local elections this year. As the current conservative government is unpopular, this elections could be a huge victory for the left, particularly the Greens which have been polling incredibly well since the 2009 elections.

Split Votes in Eurovision 2010 (or why I hate juries)

2011-02-01T15:29:00.002-05:00

With Eurovision back on my radar as Germany is currently choosing which song Lena with sing this year, I decided to see if the the split votes for 2010 were available. Last year, the score a song received was a combination of both the televote and a jury vote. During the show, they only show the combined vote, but they release the televote and jury vote separately later. You can find the results on the Eurovision 2010 Wikipedia Article.

Germany won both the televote and jury vote, so the final result didn't change, but what annoys me is the songs that failed to reach the finals due to the jury vote. If it weren't for the jury vote two of my favorite entries, Lithuania and Finland, would have made it to to the finals. Sweden also missed out. Instead, Bosnia, Ireland, and Israel made it in thanks to the jury vote.

On the other side of the coin, had the contest been decided only by the jury vote, Estonia, Macedonia, and Malta would have made it into the finals. Instead we got Belarus, Moldova, and Russia. While Estonia was initially one of my favorites, the live performance was lackluster and I wasn't surprised when it didn't make it to the finals. So on the balance, I'm siding with the televoters on these songs.

Below I have the songs ranked by the differential in position they received from the televote and the jury vote. I decided not to look at it by points as Germany dominated the televote and such a ranking would make it look like the juries hated Germany's song (when it in fact it won the jury, but just barely) and loved all the other songs.

Positive score means the song did better with the televote, negative score means the song did better with the jury vote.

First Semi-Final
Russia: 10
Finland: 9
Belarus: 4
Iceland: 4
Moldova: 3
Serbia: 3
Greece: 2
Slovakia: 2
Latvia: 0
Belgium: -2
Poland: -2
Albania: -3
Macedonia: -5
Malta: -5
Bosnia: -6
Estonia: -7
Portugal: -7

The first semi-final was pretty decisive. I can understand that Russia probably did well in the televote thanks to bloc voting, but I don't know why Finland did so well with the televote but terribly with the jury vote. The only thing the televoters and juries agreed on was that Latvia was terrible.

Second Semi-Final
Lithuania: 5
Romania: 5
Denmark: 3
Netherlands: 3
Ukraine: 3
Azerbaijan: 2
Sweden: 2
Slovenia: 1
Turkey: 0
Bulgaria: 0
Armenia: -1
Cyprus: -1
Switzerland: -1
Croatia: -2
Georgia: -4
Ireland: -7
Israel: -8

The second semi-final was much less decisive, with only Ireland and Israel seeing really different results.

Final
France: 14
Serbia: 11
Spain: 8
Armenia: 6
Turkey: 6
Moldova: 5
Azerbaijan: 4
Denmark: 4
Greece: 4
Iceland: 4
Russia: 4
Belarus: 2
Germany: 0
United Kingdom: 0
Bosnia: -2
Romania: -3
Norway: -4
Albania: -5
Cyprus: -5
Georgia: -5
Portugal: -7
Ukraine: -7
Ireland: -8
Belgium: -12
Israel: -14

Apparently the only thing the televoters and the juries could agree on was that Germany won and the UK lost. It is interesting to see how fortunes change from the semi-finals to the final. For one, Belgium did pretty well with the televote during the semi-final, but then lost support in the final. Support for Romania totally flipped. Generally, with more entries and stiffer competition, most entries decline in position when they go from the semi-finals to the final, but Romania actually gained position as the jury vote ranked it 8th in the semi-final, but gave it 3rd place in the final.

Surprisingly, France and Spain (and Germany in terms of sheer points) did much better with the televoters as the addition of the jury vote was devised to help out the big four. Nothing could have saved the UK.

Also, in the jury vote, Belgium came just 2 points behind Germany, despite being a really boring song, or maybe because it was really boring. Overall, I think 2010 would have been better without the juries.

Population Concentration

2011-01-18T01:54:00.002-05:00

I haven't been able to post anything on here for awhile. I've had several little projects I've been working on, but they require a greater time commitment than I have. Once the full Census data comes out in the next month or two, I'm interested in looking at demographic trends between urban-rural areas.

Basically, something I noticed in trends related to population decline is that often depopulation is localized, while other areas continue to see population growth. For example, although Germany's population is declining over all, almost all of this decline is taking place in eastern Germany, most of western Germany is still experiencing an increase in population.

Although it's not always the case, urban areas in the developed world are continuing to an increase in population, while rural areas are losing population. A notable exception is Detroit. When looking at this trend before, I noticed an interesting pattern in Kansas. Nearly every county that had a population above 50,000 in 2000 increased in population during the past decade, but nearly every county that had a population below 50,000 decreased in population. This meant that the population of Kansas, and many other states, was becoming more concentrated in a few urban areas. I plan to do a comparison of population concentration in each state in 2000 and 2010, but that data is not available yet. So today I did a quick test run on the US as a whole, to see how population concentration has changed with each Census.

To measure concentration I used a measure called the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI). The highest possible score on this index is 10,000. In this case, a score of 10,000 would imply that everyone in the US lived in one state. The lowest score is 0. This would imply an infinite number of states of equal population. A more realistic benchmark here is 200, this is the score I would receive if all 50 states had the same population.

Year - HHI
1790 905
1800 815
1810 735
1820 687
1830 665
1840 616
1850 563
1860 502
1870 480
1880 432
1890 394
1900 399
1910 393
1920 393
1930 404
1940 400
1950 402
1960 414
1970 421
1980 411
1990 435
2000 436
2010 440

Unsurprisingly, the earliest dates have the highest scores as there were fewer states. In 1790, around 20% of Americans lived in Virginia. As the nation expands, the score declines until it reaches its nadir in 1910-20. Since then there has been a gradual rise in the concentration of the US population, but it still remains low. This frankly isn't very surprising. Most states have large urban centers that help draw in population, and thus there's not a tread of people leaving one state in favor of another (except Michigan), so population concentration has remained fairly constant. Most of the change in population concentration is taking place within each state, as mentioned in the Kansas example.

Just to give an idea of how insignificant this increase in concentration is, since 1950, the 9 nine largest states have made up more than 50% of the US population. Despite the raising score, their share of the population is actually declining, albeit very slowing, from 52% in 1970 to 51% in 2010.

Jury Nullification

2010-12-20T00:00:00.002-05:00

Missoulan

Jury nullification is a situation in which a jury purposely reaches a verdict that is contrary to law and evidence. This is generally done when a law or it's application is considered to be unjust, so the jury acquits a defendant that is clearly guilty, effectively rendering the law null and void. There is an estimate that 60% of trials dealing with alcohol control during prohibition ended with nullification.

The case in the linked article is a situation wherein, if the case had gone to trial, jury nullification would have taken place. However, it ended up not going to trial because despite the other charges the defendant faced, only five people during jury selection were willing to convict a man of the charge of possessing 1/6 of an ounce of marijuana.

Joining the Euro

2010-12-14T20:51:00.002-05:00

Currently 11 of the 27 EU countries have not yet adopted the Euro. Estonia will be joining the Eurozone in January. Of the the remaining 10 countries two (UK and Denmark) have opt-outs that allow them to never join and one (Sweden) just found a loophole that allowed it to delay joining indefinitely. The remaining 7 countries presumably all want to adopt the Euro, however they're being held back by requirements set by the EU. Other than the necessity of being a member of the ERM II for at least two years (this is the loophole Sweden found, they never joined), the countries have to maintain low inflation, low interest rates, a low deficit, and a low debt. Estonia currently meets all those measures, which is why it's joining now.

I decided to take a look to see how far off target the other non-Eurozone EU countries currently are by coming up a formula to measure the difference between the ideal and the current situation using the numbers available on Wikipedia. Ever value at or below target, got a 0, while those above target got a score that was the current value divided by the ideal minus one. So a country with 3% inflation instead of the ideal 1% or lower would receive 2 points. In case you haven't figured it out, a higher score is bad.

Scores
Estonia 0.0
Bulgaria 0.9
Czechia 0.9
Denmark 1.1
Sweden 1.1
Latvia 3.0
UK 3.5
Lithuania 3.8
Poland 4.4
Hungary 4.9
Romania 6.2

Surprisingly, Bulgaria, which joined the EU relatively recently, got the second best score due to having surprising little debt. It got points for having a slightly higher than ideal inflation and interest rate.

Romania, which joined at the same time as Bulgaria, is fairing much more poorly. This is mostly due to the country having a high inflation rate, but the current deficit and high interest rates aren't helping.

This isn't to say that Bulgaria will be the next country to join the Eurozone, these conditions can change very rapidly. Lithuania came very close to adopting the Euro back in 2008, but is now falling behind in meeting the criteria.

Even though Czechia got a good score, the current government is opposed to adopting the Euro and will likely take advantage of the loophole Sweden uses.

As for Denmark, Sweden, and the UK, it seems unlikely that they will adopt the Euro anytime soon. Since 2010, support for the Euro has dropped a lot in these three countries, although, it was always low in the UK (33% at it's peak in 2003 and rarely above 25% since). Support for the Euro in Sweden had a plurality in polls for the first time back in 2009, but has dropped precipitously since. Most polls in Denmark since 2007 have shown the Euro as being supported by a majority or at least a plurality. However, nearly all these polls are by the same company. Every poll done by a different company shows those opposed to the Euro having a majority or plurality.

Just for fun, I decided to see if the US would meet the criteria. The US got a score of 1.8, all due to the current budget deficit. The US meets all the other requirements except the obvious one of being a member of the EU.

Faulty Separation

2010-12-06T05:12:00.003-05:00

Etymology Dictionary

Faulty separation is a concept I was introduced to a few years ago thanks to a Something Awful linguistics thread. In the context it was introduced, it was in reference to how certain words have changed due to how English uses two different indefinite articles depending what the first sound of the following word is.

The example used was the word "apron". This word used to be "napron", but over time there was a shift as "a napron" was misheard as "an apron".

I was curious as to how often this has happened in English. I found six cases, including "apron" through the Etymology Dictionary, although one word is no longer in use.

Apron from Napron
Auger from Nauger
Adder from Nedder
Umpire from Noumpere
Umble from Numble (umble is the edible part of animals that isn't meat)
Nickname from Ekename (went the opposite direction)

Other than the Etymology Dictionary, I can't find any other reference to faulty separation. I wonder if these are actually all the cases or if there are similar faulty separations caused by other word combinations.

Free Music

2010-12-03T00:07:00.002-05:00

Grooveshark

Since I haven't posted anything in a while, I figured I would share this. Grooveshark is a music website that lets you create your own playlists from any music in it's collection, which is quite extensive. It's not perfect, for instance, many albums listed have tracks missing and sometimes the site can be slow, but I've found it very useful when I'm at work. Since it's all online, I can hop on any computer in the office and access my music while I work.

NASCAR Chase: The Cup

2010-11-21T01:27:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow is the last race of the season. The points for the top three drivers are rather close so there's a chance any of them could win. I wanted to use a different method of determining who had the best chances of winning since it's down to just the last race. While Johnson has a good record during the Chase, his record at just the Homestead race is not as strong, and Hamlin and Harvick have very good averages there. Unfortunately, the method I chose was very labor intensive, so I never completed it, but based on the general trend I was seeing, this are the averages I'm giving for who has the best shot at winning the cup.

Hamlin 62%
Johnson 27%
Harvick 11%

Hamlin's chances are probably lower and Harvick's chances are probably higher as Hamlin has a wider variance of scores, but I didn't get that far in my analysis. However, it wouldn't mean much. Hamlin is by far the favorite and Harvick is the underdog.

China Takes Top in Top 500

2010-11-15T16:24:00.002-05:00

Top 500

The November Top 500 Supercomputers list came out a few days ago. It looks like the supercomputer industry is finally out of the doldrums, with China introducing what is now the fastest computer in the world, Tianhe 1A, calculating 2.57 PetaFLOPS, leaving the 1.76 PetaFLOPS Jaguar in the dust. It is faster than all 500 supercomputers from November 2005 combined. Back in June, a Chinese computer, Nebulae, debuted as the second fastest computer, so now the first and third fastest computers are both Chinese.

The overall FLOPS calculated by all the Top 500 Supercomputers increased by 35% in six months, just below the 36% average. There are just under 200 new computers on the list. If the epically named Earth Simulator (top computer from 2002 to 2004) were still around, it would only be 348th on the list.

NASCAR Chase: Texas

2010-11-08T19:28:00.002-05:00

Johnson 61%
Hamlin 37%
Harvick 2%

Yesterday's race was fascinating. Kyle Busch got in trouble for flipping off a NASCAR official, Burton and Gordon got into a fight after Burton wrecked Gordon during a caution lap. Knaus, Johnson's crew chief, got so fed up with the pit crew that he replaced them with Gordon's pit crew. I don't think that has ever happened before.

In terms of the Chase, Hamlin won the race and is now the points leader. I still have him as the underdog as Johnson has a better record. However, if Johnson isn't able to close the points gap after the next race, Hamlin will have the advantage. Harvick is still hanging in there, but he's going to have to pull off a major upset next week if he's going to have a chance for the Championship.

Why Racist Parties Can't Have Nice Things

2010-11-05T14:05:00.002-04:00

The Local.se

The press secretary for the Sweden Democrats was kicked out of a bar in Iceland after yelling racial slurs and throwing a glass at a Palestinian bartender. The Sweden Democrats are an anti-immigration party and like any good anti-immigration party they claim to not be racist, but things like this keep undermining them. There is a certain irony in his first insult, "fucking foreigner", giving that he was a Swede visiting Iceland at the time.

Kind of reminds me of when a racist Italian party brought down their far-right coalition in the EU Parliament after their leader made some insulting comments about Romanians. Unfortunately, one of the largest parties in the coalition was Romanian, so when they left, the coalition was not longer large enough to continue by EU rules.

NASCAR Chase: Talladega

2010-11-01T18:59:00.002-04:00

(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson 79%
Hamlin 20%
Harvick 2%

Johnson increased his points lead over Hamlin by finishing two places ahead of him at Talladega. However, Harvick managed to narrow the gap with a second place finish. Johnson is still the favorite, but Hamlin and Harvick are hanging in there.

NASCAR Chase: Martinsville

2010-10-24T18:24:00.002-04:00

(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson 77%
Hamlin 23%
Harvick 0.3%

Both Hamlin and Harvick were able to makes gains on Johnson at Martinsville. Hamlin is only 6 points behind Johnson, but Johnson still has a much better chance of winning as he has a better record. Harvick is still just hanging in, but next week's race is at Talladega. While Talladega is pretty much a crapshoot, Harvick has a better average at superspeedways than Hamlin and Johnson.

NASCAR Chase: Charlotte

2010-10-17T15:05:00.002-04:00

(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson 79%
Hamlin 14%
Gordon 7%
Harvick 0.3%

Poor finishes by Kurt Busch and Stewart take them out of contention, leaving only four drivers left with a chance for the championship. Johnson came in third, but first place went to a non-Chase driver, McMurray, and second place was Kyle Busch, which only succeeded in giving him enough points to be currently tied with Stewart. So Johnson was able to increase his points lead slightly. The next race is at Martinsville, which is a good track for both Johnson and Hamlin, so they may very well be the only contenders left after next week. In order for Harvick to stay in contention, he will have to beat Johnson by nearly 60 points at Martinsville, whereas Gordon has a chance of staying on as long as Johnson doesn't gain more than 20 points than him.

NASCAR Chase: Fontana

2010-10-14T01:24:00.003-04:00

(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson 65%
Gordon 15%
Hamlin 9%
Kurt Busch 6%
Stewart 2%
Harvick 2%

Fontana was apparently a rough track for many drivers as four dropped out of consideration: Edwards, Biffle, Kyle Busch, and Burton. Johnson managed to improve his points lead and thus his chances of winning. Johnson is likely to improve his position again this weekend as the next race is at one of his best tracks, Charlotte. Stewart and Harvick are going to have to do well if they're going to stay in contention.

NASCAR Chase: Kansas

2010-10-03T16:39:00.002-04:00

Johnson took the points lead today, but only by 8 points. Based on current points, anyone could win, but accounting for last year's results, Johnson is picking a massive lead.

(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson 55%
Gordon 14%
Kurt Busch 11%
Hamlin 9%
Biffle 3%
Kyle Busch2%
Harvick 2%
Burton 2%
Stewart 1%
Edwards 0.3%

Even though Biffle won the race, he didn't make any gains in terms of the chances of winning the Cup. Johnson came in second, but received the same number of points as Harvick and Stewart as he didn't lead any laps but they both did, with Stewart leading the most laps today. Despite this, they also didn't make gains in their chances of winning. Bowyer and Kenseth are now out of contention.

Local Swedish Elections

2010-10-02T01:16:00.002-04:00

At the same time as the national election, Sweden holds its more local level elections. I wasn't planning on making a post about them, but something about them intrigued me. While the Social Democrats did poorly during the national election, they seemed to hold up pretty well in local elections, even gaining seats in many cases. So I decided to look more closely.

Sweden is divided into 21 län (plus Gotland which doesn't count as a län because its population is too small). Each län has its own government called a landsting. Looking at the results for the landsting elections, I found that on average the Social Democrats lost 1.1% of the vote, which isn't great, but is far better than the 4.3% they lost in national elections.

The Moderates gained the most in the landsting elections, averaging a 3% gain in each län, but their victory is tempered by the fact that their partners in the Alliance lost a huge share of the vote. Notably, the Center Party and the Christian Democrats lost voters in every single län while the People's Party only made modest gains in 3, losing voters in the other 18. As a whole, the Alliance only managed to make gains in 4 län despite the Moderates' success.

On the other hand, while the Social Democrats and the Left didn't do well, the Greens made gains greater than both of their loses, so the Red-Greens made gains in 11 län. Like the Moderates, the Greens increased their share of the vote in every single län.

Change in share of the votes:

Län	Alliance	Red-Green
Blekinge	-2.09%	-2.74%
Dalarnas	-2.55%	0.44%
Gävleborgs	-2.31%	0.16%
Hallands	0.05%	-1.29%
Jämtlands	-3.29%	0.80%
Jönköpings	-1.86%	-0.44%
Kalmar	-2.57%	0.93%
Kronobergs	-1.56%	-0.84%
Norrbottens	-1.92%	1.34%
Skåne	-0.24%	-1.92%
Stockholms	-1.26%	0.95%
Södermanlands	-0.99%	-2.35%
Uppsala	-3.26%	2.35%
Värmlands	0.43%	-0.17%
Västerbottens	-3.07%	2.44%
Västernorrlands	0.90%	-2.69%
Västmanlands	-3.39%	2.72%
Västra Götalands	-1.44%	-1.13%
Örebro	-2.21%	1.20%
Östergötlands	0.01%	2.79%

You may notice that in many of the län, both coalitions lost votes, this is largely because of the Sweden Democrats, which doesn't belong to either coalition, gaining a greater share of the votes. Also, many of the län have local Health Care Parties. health care in Sweden is handled at the local level, so these parties do not operate at the national level. Most of them did poorly this election, but some did make gains.

Relative to each other, the Red-Greens made gains over the Alliance in 14 of the 21 län. So at a local level, the election was a victory for the Red-Greens.

NASCAR Chase: Dover

2010-09-27T01:43:00.002-04:00

While last week's race gave some hope that the Chase would be competitive when Johnson finished 25th while Bowyer made a surprise win, recent events have worked out in Johnson's favor. First, Bowyer had 150 points deducted for cheating. This plus a bad result at Dover have come close to ending his chances of winning the cup. Johnson won at Dover plus led the most laps, taking him from 7th to 2nd in points.

(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson 48%
Kurt Busch 12%
Gordon 12%
Hamlin 10%
Kyle Busch 5%
Burton 4%
Biffle 3%
Harvick 2%
Stewart 2%
Edwards 1%
Kenseth 1%
Bowyer 0.4%

Sweden Gets an 8th Party

2010-09-25T20:48:00.006-04:00

Val.se Swedish Election results in Swedish

World Elections Analysis of the election in English

Swedish elections were last week. I waited a bit to post about it until official results were in. Given my interest in the nation, I seem almost required to post about it. During the elections in Germany, I made a pretty detailed post about all the parties in Germany, however, I can't really do the same for Sweden as despite my interest, I'm not terribly well aware of the political situation and the divisions between the parties. The 4 right-wing parties, known collectively as the Alliance all seem basically the same to me.

The Social Democrats managed to stay the largest party, but just barely, winning only 30.66% of the vote compared to the Moderates 30.06%. While they are the largest party, this is actually their worst result since 1914. It is also the best result by the Moderates since 1914. The World Elections site points to the fact that because the Moderates have largely embraced the welfare state, they have undermined the Social Democrats by giving them less to attack them on. To me, it's kind of sad to see the Social Democrats in such a weakened position as I really came to admire what they achieved while I was studying there.

Up until recently, it really seemed like the Social Democrats were going to win the election. They had largely lost the 2006 election due to an unpopular leader, however, once he resigned they retook a strong lead in the polls. As the election neared, support began to drop off as the new leader, Sahlin, has been rather ineffectual and conditions under the Moderates has been pretty good. Sweden is one of the few western nations with a solidly growing economy.

Prior to the 2010, it seemed likely that one of the minor parties would drop below the 4% threshold needed to get a seat in the Riksdag. As I mentioned before, the 4 parties that make up the Alliance have little to distinguish themselves from each other, so the more dominant Moderates were starting to take votes from the three smaller parties. Also, the Sweden Democrats, a far-right party not yet in the Riksdag, were gaining in the polls, reducing available votes to the established seven parties. Polling prior to the election showed the Christian Democrats dropping below 4% on a few occasion, but they managed to hold on to 5.6% of the vote in the end, even with the Sweden Democrats entering the Riksdag with 5.7%.

Even though there are now 8 parties in the Riksdag, it seems that the there is some concentration of votes happening. Of the the 8 parties, only 3 increased their share of the vote. The People's Party and the Left gained votes, but due to high turnout, they lost in relative terms. Of the 4 right-wing parties, only the Moderates increased their number of seats. Similarly, of the 3 left-wing parties, only the Greens gained seats (as predicted in my post about green parties, they are now the 3rd largest party).

The big controversy this election was the Sweden Democrats entering the Riksdag on a rather xenophobic platform. None of the other parties are willing to work with them, which creates kind of a problem in that the Alliance is two seats short of a majority. However, unlike most countries that require a government to have a majority, governments in Sweden can have a minority as long as a majority doesn't vote against them. Given that the alternatives are to have the Sweden Democrats be in government, have the Greens leave the Social Democrats coalition, or hold new elections, it seems unlikely that the Social Democrats will block the continuation of the Alliance government. Minority governments are actually the norm in Sweden. The Social Democrats rarely received more than 50% of the vote, but were able to form governments on their own as the Communists, now the Left, would not vote against them.

Here's a map of the largest party in Sweden by län back in 2006. Red is Social Democrat and Blue is Moderate.

Compare to 2010.

Even though the Social Democrats only have a 0.6% edge over the Moderates, the Moderates' votes are concentrated in the population centers of Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, and Uppsala. The Social Democrats managed to get 51.86% in the northernmost, but sparsely populated, län of Norrbottens.

Another map of interest is how the coalitions as a whole did in each län. This back in 2006, Red is the Red-Green coalition led by the Social Democrats, blue is the Alliance led by the Moderates.

Even though the Moderates were only the largest party in Stockholm, together with the rest of the Alliance, they managed to get over 50% in much of southern Sweden.

The 2010 map is a bit different. Gray is where neither Red-Green nor Alliance hold majority due to the presence of the Sweden Democrats.

As the the Red-Green and Alliance received similar shares of the vote in the gray areas, the map basically show what by Swedish standards are swing län.

In case people are wondering, the Pirate Party increased their share of the vote, but only from 0.63% to 0.65%. In 2006, the district where the Pirates received the largest share of the vote (3.63%) was the district where my dormitory was located when I attended Uppsala. This year, the Pirates best district was one near Lund University that gave them 4.72%.

NASCAR Chase: Loudon

2010-09-20T01:54:00.002-04:00

Johnson actually did poorly this week, giving everyone else a better chance of winning the Sprint Cup. He's still the favorite, but right now he's seventh in points, so he'll have to do well these next few races to take the top spot.

(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson 37%
Gordon 14%
Kurt Busch 11%
Hamlin 9%
Bowyer 7%
Kyle Busch 5%
Biffle 4%
Burton 4%
Stewart 3%
Harvick 3%
Kenseth 2%
Edwards 1%

The biggest loser was of course Johnson who had the most to lose to begin with (47% to 37%). The biggest gainers were Bowyer and Hamlin, who finished 1st and 2nd and both increased their chances by 3 percentage points. The fact that Johnson has falling behind in points means this could be a competitive Chase for the Sprint Cup.

Green Politics' Day in the Sun

2010-09-17T14:43:00.004-04:00

I was reading an article on TheLocal.de about a recent poll showing that Germans think that the CDU is too conservative. However, also mentioned in the article is that recent polls show the Greens with 18% of the vote. This isn't just a notable high, this massive. In the last election, the 2nd largest party, the SPD, only managed to get 23%. During the last election, the Greens were 5th with just under 11% (their best result ever), now they are 3rd, by a wide margin.

This reminded me of the upcoming election Sweden, with polls showing record support for the Green Party (Miljöpartiet). While they have fallen from their record 10% over the summer, they are still on track to become the 3rd largest party, up from 7th, as support for the other minor parties have waned in recent years.

This further reminded me of the recent election in Australia where the Green Party won its first seat in the House of Representatives and made large gains in the Senate.

It seems that Green Politics are starting to catch on. It appears to be connected to flagging support for traditional labor parties. While many green parties nominally maintain a centrist stance, their support largely comes from leftists. With 3 examples of green parties gaining support, I decided to see if the trend holds true for other countries. The table below shows support for the greens during a past election compared to support during the most recent election or a recent poll. I only included green parties that received more than 1% of the vote.

Country	Past Election	Recent Election/Poll
Iceland	14.3%	21.7%
Germany	10.7%	18%
Denmark	13%	17.5%
Australia	9%	13.1%
Luxembourg	11.6%	11.7%
Latvia	16.7%	11.3%
Austria	11.1%	10.4%
Canada	6.8%	10%
Switzerland	7.4%	9.6%
Belgium	9.1%	9.2%
Finland	8%	8.5%
Sweden	5.2%	8%
Hungary	N/A	7.5%
Estonia	N/A	7.1%
New Zealand	5.1%	6.7%
Netherlands	4.6%	6.7%
Brazil	1.4%	3.6%
Vanuatu	N/A	3.4%
France	4.5%	3.3%
Andorra	3.5%	3.2%
Colombia	N/A	3%
Greece	1.1%	2.5%
Czechia	6.3%	2.4%
Cyprus	2%	2%
Malta	0.7%	1.3%
Israel	1.5%	1.2%

Somes notes on the numbers above. The "green parties" in Denmark and Hungary are not traditional green parties, they are respectively socialist and liberal parties with strong environmental platforms. While the French green party lost support in the last parliamentary election, they did really well during the more recent European Election (16%). Unfortunately, I couldn't find any polls of current support. The Irish green party was left off the table because current polls are highly inconsistent, with support ranging from 2% to 6%. The numbers for Belgium and Israel are of its two green parties combined. For Estonia, Hungary, and Colombia, "N/A" means that the party had not run in a prior election and there are no available polls from after the most recent election. For Vanuatu, "N/A" it means the information isn't available, however, the green party lost a seat, so presumably their support was down.

It appears that green parties are largely gaining support. The only major exception is the green party of Czechia (I like this name better than Czech Republic, so I'm using it). I'm curious as to what happened there, but not really sure where I would find that information in English. One other thing of note, all the countries with a high-level support for Green parties are either in Northern Europe or are countries where the majority of the population are of Northern European ancestry.

NASCAR Chase Begins

2010-09-12T17:23:00.002-04:00

No real surprises from the Richmond race. We now have our 12 Chase drivers, so let's take a look at who are the top contenders for winning the Sprint Cup. Their chances are based on their current points and their record from last year's Chase.

Johnson 47%
Gordon 12%
Kurt Busch 11%
Hamlin 7%
Biffle 4%
Bowyer 4%
Kyle Busch 4%
Stewart 3%
Burton 3%
Kenseth 2%
Harvick 2%
Edwards 1%

Johnson averaged 162 points a race last year, compared to everyone else that averaged between 146 and 112. This makes him far and away the most likely to win the Sprint Cup. There's still a 53% chance that someone else could win, it's just very uncertain as to who can really challenge Johnson. At the beginning of the Chase, everyone's points are reset to 5000, with an extra 10 points for each race won earlier in the season. The extra points are known as the "Kenseth rule" as they were created in order to stop a repeat of the time Kenseth managed to win the Cup with only one win all season. This makes Hamlin the current points leader, having won 6 races so far. These extra points have little effect in terms of their chances of winning right now, but could prove essential towards the end of the season.

Given some the drivers tenuous chances, it's very likely that if Johnson does well Loudon, drivers like Edwards and Harvick will see their chances evaporate. However, if Johnson does poorly, it could throw everything wide open.

Looking back at the pre-Chase races, I wanted to point out some notable events.

Best Season
Harvick, started the season with only a 21% chance of making the Chase, lower than Casey Mears, only to become the points leader for the majority of the season. He's chances of making the Chase increased every single week.

Worst Season
Martin, started the season with a 55% chance of making the Chase, the highest for someone that eventually didn't make it. By the Charlotte race, he had a 69% chance, but he fortunes quickly reversed, leaving him 15th in points.

Best Reversal
Bowyer, after Watkins Glen he had only a 30% chance, but only two races later, he had an 82% chance.

Most Tenacious
Earnhardt, never had a more than 28% chance, but managed to hold some hope of making the Chase for almost the entire season.

Most Secure
Stewart, his chances never fell below 85%.

NASCAR week 24

2010-09-06T00:04:00.002-04:00

Another strong finish for Bowyer has pretty much guaranteed him a spot in the Chase. My model currently gives Bowyer a 100% chance of making the Chase. However, it's still technically possible for Bowyer to not make it. If he finishes worse than 27th next week, there's a chance that Newman and McMurray could take the final spot, but they'd have to finish in the top 5 to do that. Martin still has a chance, but he would have to win the race and have Bowyer finish 39th or worse.

Starting next week, we'll see who has the best chance at winning the Chase (hint, it's Johnson).

Have you seen this centenarian?

2010-08-22T00:37:00.002-04:00

BBC News

Several weeks ago, the city of Tokyo decided to honor the oldest-living man in the city on his birthday only to discover that he had been dead for 30-years. They then decided to look for the oldest-living woman in Tokyo, only to find she had gone missing years earlier.

This has led to a massive investigation throughout Japan to to determine the whereabouts of the over 40,000 centenarians in the country. As of August 20th (after the article above was written) 281 turned out to be dead or missing. In many cases it appears that their families do not report the deaths in order to continue collecting pension payments.

I happened to come across the first article about the missing old man three weeks ago, so it's fascinating to me to see how this whole situation has unfolded.

NASCAR week 23

2010-08-21T22:48:00.002-04:00

12th place contenders.
Bowyer 82%
Martin 13%
Newman 5%
Kahne 0.2%

Despite strong finishes by McMurray, Reutimann, and Montoya, they were unable to stay in contention. In fact, of the top 7 drivers at Bristol, 6 were still contenders for the 12th spot as of last week. Unfortunately, only one get it and Bowyer has opened up a 100-point lead over his nearest rival. Looks like we know who's making the Chase this year.

Gendered Papers

2010-08-19T03:17:00.002-04:00

The Gender Genie

I think I may have posted about this years ago, but I was thinking about it again recently as I was writing a bunch of papers. The Gender Genie tries to guess the gender of a person based on a sample of their writing. Men and women have words that they tend use more often than the other gender. So the Gender Genie looks for these words and gives points for each one. Which ever group of words ends up with more points is likely to correspond to the gender of the writer.

So I decided to run all the papers I had to write for classes this summer and see what their scores were. What I'll be giving is a "masculinity rating", which is, the percentage of points that went to manly words out of the total.

Small States in Contemporary World Markets - 68%
Inequality and Democracy in America - 67%
Another Chance for Kyrgyzstan - 64%
International Political Economy Mid-Term - 63%
Untitled Paper About Bulgaria - 63%
International Political Theory Final - 61%

The gender of my papers is surprisingly consistent. Or more likely, my writing style is really consistent regardless of what I'm writing about. Looking over the list of words, I noticed that the female word list contains words like "we, you, me, etc." I try to avoid using first and second-person when doing formal writing, which would explain a bit.

NASCAR week 22

2010-08-15T19:36:00.002-04:00

Top 19 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Harvick 100%
Gordon 100%
Stewart 100%
Johnson 100%
Hamlin 100%
Kurt Busch 100%
Kyle Busch 100%
Edwards 100%
Burton 100%
Kenseth 100%
Biffle 100%
Bowyer 38%
Martin 33%
Newman 14%
Kahne 10%
Montoya 3%
McMurray 1%
Reutimann 1%
Earnhardt 0.1%

The gap in points between Biffle and Bowyer is quite substantial now. The chance that Bowyer or anyone else with fewer points could pass Biffle before the Chase starts is less than 1%. This means that the top 11 drivers are locked in for the Chase. The battle for 12th is still largely between Bowyer and Martin, but they haven't been able to shake-off the other remaining drivers.

Music Needs to be Shared

2010-08-10T00:05:00.003-04:00

The Arcade Fire
This post was prompted by the fact that the Arcade Fire has a new album out. Apparently their next music video will be directed by Terry Gillian. They did a free online concert, so there's quite a few really good live recordings of their new songs available on YouTube.

Cadillac Sky
Their song "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is pretty well-known, but I like this song better.

Nneka
Nigerian-German R&B artist. Very retro. Very cool.

Miike Snow
This song got played a bit on WNCW. Took this particular song awhile to grow on me, but now I really enjoy it.

Friendly Fires
This came out awhile ago, but I only recently heard it, so I figured I should share.

Kele
Solo project from one of the guys from Bloc Party.

And... oh no! No Swedish bands!

NASCAR week 22

2010-08-08T20:28:00.002-04:00

Top 19 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Harvick 100%
Gordon 100%
Stewart 100%
Johnson 100%
Hamlin 100%
Kurt Busch 100%
Kyle Busch 100%
Edwards 100%
Burton 100%
Kenseth 100%
Biffle 89%
Martin 49%
Bowyer 30%
Newman 19%
Kahne 8%
Reutimann 2%
McMurray 2%
Montoya 1%
Earnhardt 1%

Montoya's win today managed to keep in the running, albeit his chances remain slim. Ten drivers are now guaranteed to make the Chase, with Biffle very likely to be the 11th driver, and Martin increasingly likely to get the 12th spot.

The biggest gainer this week was Burton, who has now secured a spot in the Chase. The biggest loser was Bowyer (46% to 30%). So even though Martin didn't do that well this week, his position improved as his biggest competitor is falling behind.

NASCAR week 21

2010-08-06T01:01:00.002-04:00

Top 19 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Gordon 100%
Harvick 100%
Hamlin 100%
Johnson 100%
Stewart 100%
Kurt Busch 100%
Kyle Busch 100%
Edwards 95%
Kenseth 92%
Burton 90%
Biffle 88%
Martin 50%
Bowyer 46%
Newman 19%
Kahne 13%
Reutimann 3%
Earnhardt 3%
McMurray 1%
Montoya 0.1%

The top 20 has become the top 19 as Logano now has no chance of making the Chase at this point, but Montoya is still hanging in there. This race just served to reaffirm what I noticed last week. The top 11 spots are pretty well secure and it's going to be a fight between Bowyer and Martin to get that 12th spot.

For once, the biggest gainer was the race winner, Biffle (67% to 88%). He's been running well all season, so it's good to see him win. The biggest loser was Kahne (26% to 13%). I don't think he finished all that poorly, it's just that his rather lackluster season is finally catching up with him.

NASCAR week 20

2010-07-30T00:26:00.002-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Gordon 100%
Harvick 100%
Johnson 100%
Hamlin 100%
Kurt Busch 100%
Stewart 100%
Kyle Busch 100%
Kenseth 93%
Edwards 79%
Burton 77%
Biffle 67%
Bowyer 51%
Martin 48%
Newman 28%
Kahne 26%
Reutimann 13%
Earnhardt 11%
McMurray 3%
Montoya 2%
Logano 2%

As we get down to the final few races, the divide between whose got a chance and who doesn't has really widen. Seven spots in the Chase look pretty well solidified, and another five appear very likely to make. It's really just down to who's getting the 12th spot, with Bowyer and Martin having an even chance. However, Newman and the rest of them aren't out of the game yet. Earnhardt is only a few points behind martin, he's chances are just low because of his record last year.

McMurray won, but as you can probably tell, it didn't help him a lot, it basically just kept him in the game. If he had finished 21st or worse, he would no longer have a chance. The biggest gainer was Burton (65% to 77%) although he only finished 6th. He actually has more points than Kenseth, he just has a poor record from last year keeping him down. The biggest loser was Reutimann (25% to 13%), erasing the gains he made when he won at Chicago.

McDonald's and Condoms

2010-07-14T13:29:00.002-04:00

I keep seeing this story pop up on various blogs and forums. The reason I wanted to comment on this is because this is the original source of the story: CAP News. Notice anything about the site? It's a satirical site like the Onion. This fact is pretty obvious once you visit the site, but few people are.

The post on Failblog is where most people have seen the story now, but it provides no information on the source, plus the story has a less tongue-and-cheek tone so it's obviously not from the original website. Instead that image is taken from Opposing Views which in turn uses Terra as it's source (or more correctly, just copies it), which doesn't provide any source information at all.

This brings up something about blogs that I've really grown to dislike, it seems nobody is capable of sourcing where information originally came from. If they cite at all they just cite the blog they read it from until you just end up with a chain of blogs posts about an article that none of them of actually read.

NASCAR week 19

2010-07-12T21:47:00.002-04:00

Top 21 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Gordon 100%
Johnson 100%
Hamlin 100%
Harvick 100%
Kurt Busch 100%
Stewart 100%
Kyle Busch 99%
Kenseth 88%
Edwards 71%
Burton 65%
Biffle 56%
Martin 49%
Bowyer 43%
Newman 34%
Kahne 31%
Reutimann 25%
Earnhardt 20%
Montoya 13%
Logano 5%
McMurray 2%
Truex 0.2%

Saturday's race was kind of insane and led to lots of weird results, the most notable being Reutimann winning. Despite winning though, he was not the biggest gainer as his chances of making the Chase still remain low (19% to 25%). The biggest gainer was second place finisher Edwards (59% to 71%) who has been shaky ground for a long time, but now looks very likely to make the Chase. The biggest loser was Biffle, who used be pretty safe, but is now on shaky ground (71% to 56%).

NASCAR week 18

2010-07-04T19:20:00.002-04:00

Top 21 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Gordon 100%
Johnson 100%
Harvick 100%
Hamlin 100%
Kurt Busch 100%
Stewart 100%
Kyle Busch 97%
Kenseth 84%
Biffle 71%
Edwards 59%
Burton 56%
Martin 52%
Newman 42%
Bowyer 36%
Kahne 30%
Earnhardt 25%
Reutimann 19%
Montoya 17%
Logano 8%
McMurray 2%
Truex 1%

Switched to the top 21 drivers as there are only 21 drivers left that can make it. Harvick hit the 100% mark, so despite winning the race, he was not the largest gainer. Instead it was Burton, who finished 5th, who was the biggest gainer (44% to 56%). The biggest loser was Newman (49% to 42%), who like many of the drivers, got involved in one of the many wrecks this race.

NASCAR week 17

2010-06-27T21:06:00.002-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson 100%
Gordon 100%
Hamlin 100%
Stewart 100%
Kurt Busch 100%
Kyle Busch 100%
Harvick 97%
Kenseth 79%
Biffle 70%
Martin 58%
Edwards 53%
Newman 49%
Burton 44%
Bowyer 37%
Kahne 25%
Montoya 23%
Earnhardt 19%
Reutimann 19%
Logano 13%
McMurray 7%

Half of the Chase drivers are now more or less decided and Harvick will likely join them soon. Harvick was once again the biggest gainer (84% to 97%) as he points lead continues. The biggest loser was Kahne (35% to 25%) which is especially tragic as he led much of the race, but his engine blew.

Only 22 drivers have any chance of making the Chase now. Allmendinger, the 22nd driver, has a 3% chance.

NASCAR week 16

2010-06-21T12:50:00.002-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson 100%
Gordon 100%
Hamlin 100%
Stewart 100%
Kyle Busch 98%
Kurt Busch 93%
Harvick 84%
Kenseth 79%
Biffle 71%
Martin 63%
Edwards 59%
Newman 45%
Burton 41%
Kahne 35%
Bowyer 34%
Montoya 32%
Reutimann 22%
Earnhardt 18%
Logano 12%
McMurray 8%

Harvick only finished third at Sonoma, but he picked up a commanding points lead, leading to the largest gains I've seen so far. Harvick's chances of making the Chase jumped 15 percentage points, from 69% to 84%. Because of Harvick hogging most of the potential gains, few other drivers made gains this week. Four drivers dropped 5 percentage points, Edwards, Bowyer, Logano, and Truex. Now only 23 drivers have a chance of making the Chase. Ambrose managed to maintain a 0.4% chance, but he should have done match better if he hadn't made a stupid mistake right at the end of the race.

NASCAR week 15

2010-06-16T23:06:00.002-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Hamlin 100%
Gordon 100%
Kyle Busch 100%
Johnson 100%
Kurt Busch 96%
Stewart 95%
Kenseth 81%
Harvick 69%
Edwards 64%
Biffle 63%
Martin 60%
Newman 45%
Burton 43%
Bowyer 39%
Montoya 31%
Kahne 31%
Reutimann 24%
Logano 17%
Earnhardt 16%
Truex 11%

With race winner Denny Hamlin already at 100%, the top gainer this week was Kurt Busch who finished third (88% to 96%). While Kahne finished second, he is very much an underdog now and it's going to take a lot of good finishes to get him into the Chase. The biggest loser was Newman (55% to 45%), who has been teetering on the edge of making the Chase since the beginning. He cannot afford bad finishes.

Currently only 25 drivers have a chance of making the Chase. Menard is last with a 0.3% chance. Vickers still has a 0.4% chance if he's ever able to return.

I just noticed that Edwards' and Logano's chances haven't change in four races. I wonder why.

NASCAR week 14

2010-06-06T21:29:00.003-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Hamlin 100%
Kyle Busch 100%
Gordon 100%
Johnson 97%
Stewart 91%
Kurt Busch 88%
Kenseth 79%
Harvick 68%
Edwards 64%
Martin 62%
Biffle 62%
Newman 55%
Bowyer 44%
Burton 40%
Montoya 34%
Kahne 28%
Reutimann 27%
Logano 17%
Earnhardt 15%
Truex 11%

Two more drivers join Gordon with a 100% chance of making the Chase. For the first time, the biggest gainer wasn't the race winner. Harvick went from a 59% to a 68% chance thanks to being the current points leader. The only reason Hamlin's chances didn't increase more was because he can't go over 100%. The biggest loser was Vickers once again. Of people actually racing, Martin was the biggest loser (68% to 62%) due to a crash at the end of the race. Truex managed to overtake McMurray, but just barely, and his chances still remain very low.

Only one driver outside the top 15 saw their chances of making the Chase improve and only 26 drivers have any chance of making the Chase, with Ragan having a 0.1% chance.

An Eary Top 500

2010-05-31T23:59:00.002-04:00

Top 500

The June Top 500 list usually comes out in, well, June, so I was surprised to find out that they actually released the list a few days ago. This is probably the most disappointing update so far. The number of FLOPS calculated by all 500 top computers in the world only increased by 16% these past six months. This is the slowest increase ever and well below the 36% biannual average. There are only about 140 new computers listed, in the past there were usually 200 to 300 new computers on each list.

The top computer remains Jaguar, although Nebulae, a Chinese made computer, debuted at number two. The current slowest computer would have been a top 10 computer back in 2005 and is faster than all 500 computers from June of 1998 combined.

NASCAR week 13

2010-05-31T16:14:00.002-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Gordon 100%
Hamlin 94%
Kyle Busch 93%
Johnson 92%
Stewart 87%
Kurt Busch 82%
Kenseth 79%
Martin 69%
Biffle 68%
Edwards 64%
Harvick 59%
Newman 56%
Bowyer 42%
Burton 37%
Kahne 34%
Montoya 33%
Reutimann 29%
Logano 17%
Earnhardt 16%
McMurray 16%

The last few weeks have been really good for the Busch brothers. Kyle won at Dover as well as the last two Nationwide races, while Kurt won this week and at the All-Star Race. They also happen to be the two biggest gainers this, Kurt increased his chances of making the Chase from 72% to 82% while Kyle went from 84% to 93%.

The biggest loser is once again Vickers (25% to 13%), who will likely remain out until much later in the season. He has dropped out of the top 20 drivers, making this the first change since Martinsville. McMurray, who came in 2nd, managed to get back in the top 20 after a long absence. The biggest loser who was actually in the race was Montoya whose car was damaged after getting a flat early in the race. Apparently the Charlotte track doesn't like foreigners, as soon after Ambrose also wrecked.

Currently, only 26 drivers have a chance of making the Chase, with Menard having a 0.5% chance.

Eurovision Week

2010-05-18T21:19:00.002-04:00

Eurovision.tv
Mu Cow's YouTube Channel

Next week is Eurovision, woohoo! There's not been much noise leading up to this year's Eurovision as there aren't any controversial or flat out insane acts. It seems that the new judging system, half televote half jury, has lead to much safer entries, still there are plenty of stunning entries that deserve some attention.

Last year 42 countries competed, but due to bad financial situations in a number of countries, the number is down to 39. Liechtenstein was hoping to make its debut this year, but did not make the deadline, but there's still a chance they will participate next year. If it does so, the only European countries left that have never competed will be Kosovo and the Vatican City. Qatar is also considering competing next year, which should be fun.

For your enjoyment, here are my top ten picks for this year's competition:
10. Latvia - Winner of the "English song written by non-English speakers for non-English speakers" category.
9. Netherlands - Judging by the song and the audience, I think the Dutch are catering to an older crowd. This will not work in their favor.
8. Finland - The fact they're in Eurovision doesn't surprise me, the fact that they won the Finnish national competition does given their history.
7. Moldova - Apparently they decided to keep the sax solo.
6. Romania - Hit the high note and FIRE TO THE FACE!
5. Germany - Odd accent, catchy song.
4. Serbia - I think he got his haircut backwards.
3. Russia - "What are you doing, man?"
2. Estonia - Radiohead meets Giantpapiermachehead. I actually really like the song.
1. Lithuania - By far the best entry. Watch for a cameo appearence by a "bald maniac".

You may be wondering why I linked to my YouTube channel at the top of my post. That's because on Monday I will be starting Eurovision week where I will do a cover of a past Eurovision song every day until the Final. For the day of the Final, I will learn the winning song. I just have to hope that it's in English.

The Eurovision final will be broadcast live over the internet at ESCTV on Saturday, May 29th at 9pm CET (that's 3pm for us on the east coast). You can also watch the semi-finals live on May 25th and 27th, also at 9pm CET on ESCTV.

Nationalist Ireland

2010-05-16T22:20:00.002-04:00

World Elections

World Elections is one of my favorite websites. The writer does great analysis of recent elections and providing interesting information. The post I'm linking to is the results and his analysis of the recent UK election.

I had made an earlier post about the prospects of a hung parliament and the inconsistencies of "first-past-the-post" elections. This election certainly exhibited a number of the problems with FPTP. Despite gaining more votes, the LibDems lost five seats, while Plaid Cymru lost votes but gained a seat. However, an element I found intriguing that "World Elections" pointed out was that this was the first year that the majority of Northern Ireland's representatives weren't Unionist.

Politics in Northern Ireland are much different than in the rest of the UK, where parties are defined by their stance on Northern Ireland's status, so instead of a battle between Conservatives, Labour, and Liberal-Democrats, it's between Unionists and Nationalists. Northern Ireland has long been dominated by Unionists, but the last few years have garnered victories for Nationalists. Over the last few Westminster elections, there has been a steady trend:
2010 - 9 Unionists, 8 Nationalists, 1 Other (18 Seats)
2005 - 10 Unionists, 8 Nationalists (18 Seats)
2001 - 11 Unionists, 7 Nationalists (18 Seats)
1997 - 13 Unionists, 5 Nationalists (18 Seats)
1992 - 13 Unionists, 4 Nationalists (17 Seats)
1987 - 13 Unionists, 4 Nationalists (17 Seats)
1983 - 15 Unionists, 2 Nationalists (17 Seats)

For comparison, here is how people actually voted.
2010 - 44% Unionists, 42% Nationalists, 14% Other (18 Seats)
2005 - 51% Unionists, 42% Nationalists, 7% Other
2001 - 51% Unionists, 43% Nationalists, 6% Other
1997 - 49% Unionists, 40% Nationalists, 11% Other
1992 - 56% Unionists, 34% Nationalists, 10% Other
1987 - 54% Unionists, 35% Nationalists, 11% Other
1983 - 57% Unionists, 33% Nationalists, 10% Other

Despite a steady change in seats, there have only been two major shifts in voting patterns in the last 7 elections. There was a big shift from Unionists to Nationalists in 1997, and a big shift from Unionists to Other (namely, Alliance, a non-sectarian party) in 2010. Until 2001, FPTP had kept the Nationalist minority from gaining proper representation, leading to Unionist domination in politics. In such an environment, it is not all that surprising that many Nationalists turned to violence as they were shut-out of the political process. I find it somewhat fitting that now that the Nationalists have overcome the electoral obstacles placed against them, that Alliance, the main non-sectarian party, gains its first Westminster seat.

NASCAR week 12

2010-05-16T21:43:00.003-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Gordon 100%
Johnson 98%
Hamlin 93%
Stewart 87%
Kyle Busch 84%
Kenseth 75%
Biffle 73%
Kurt Busch 72%
Edwards 64%
Martin 63%
Harvick 55%
Newman 53%
Montoya 42%
Burton 39%
Bowyer 39%
Kahne 35%
Reutimann 26%
Vickers 25%
Earnhardt 19%
Logano 17%

A late race speeding penalty put Johnson a lap down, so while he finished a respectable 16th, it is Gordon that breaks 100% this time. The biggest gainer was race winner Kyle Busch (74% to 84%). The biggest loser was Vickers who sat out this race due to a medical condition. This combined with a rather lackluster season has dropped his chances of making the Chase from 37% to 25%.

Almost halfway through the pre-Chase races, I've noticed that current points are starting to matter more than individual race results. Despite a 10th place finish, Logano saw his chances of making the Chase decline as he went into the race fairly low in the points. On the opposite end, Harvick is finally seeing his chances improve as he's been sitting in the top of the points most of the season and any poor results at this point probably won't greatly alter his chances.

At the moment only 27 drivers have any chance of making the Chase, with Sadler having a 0.2% chance.

NASCAR week 11

2010-05-11T00:57:00.002-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Gordon 98%
Johnson 96%
Hamlin 87%
Stewart 85%
Kyle Busch 74%
Kurt Busch 72%
Biffle 69%
Kenseth 68%
Martin 63%
Edwards 61%
Newman 53%
Montoya 50%
Harvick 49%
Bowyer 40%
Kahne 38%
Vickers 37%
Burton 34%
Reutimann 25%
Earnhardt 23%
Logano 18%

I keep thinking Johnson will hit 100% and stay there, but a poor finish at Darlington puts him behind Gordon. The biggest gainer was race winner Hamlin (79% to 87%). The biggest loser was Bowyer (46% to 40%). Bowyer seemed to be well on his way to making the Chase, but this week will be hard to overcome. Overall, it was a good race for the top 17 drivers, only one driver below 17th actually improved their position, McMurray, who is 21st and came close to passing Logano. There are currently only 27 drivers with any chance of making the Chase. Hornish brings up the rear with only a 1% chance.

NASCAR week 10

2010-05-03T00:50:00.002-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson - 100%
Gordon - 92%
Stewart - 88%
Hamlin - 79%
Biffle - 71%
Kyle Busch - 70%
Kurt Busch - 67%
Kenseth - 67%
Martin - 64%
Edwards - 61%
Newman - 52%
Montoya - 47%
Bowyer - 46%
Harvick - 44%
Kahne - 41%
Vickers - 37%
Burton - 32%
Reutimann - 26%
Earnhardt - 25%
Logano - 22%

Johnson is back to 100% with Gordon likely to join him soon. The biggest gainer this week was race winner Kyle Busch, 62% to 70%. He pretty much dominated the race yesterday, leading over half the laps and came close to putting the entire field a lap down if it weren't for a mysterious, and rather timely, caution. I felt like the caution was just a big "screw you" to Busch, so I was glad he still won the race.

The biggest loser was Mark Martin, 67% to 64%. He isn't doing too badly though. He finished 25th and is tenth in points. He's basically the biggest loser only because every one that did worse than him don't have 4 percentage points to lose.

Only 30 drivers have any chance of making the Chase. Speed is the 30th driver, with a 0.02% chance.

Hanging Parliament

2010-04-26T16:18:00.002-04:00

BBC

The BBC website has this neat little seat calculator that predicts which parties will win which seats in the coming election. While there are numerous fails with predicting elections this way, it's fun to play with. Also, it's a great example of how unrepresentative the British system and first-past-the-post voting are. When all parties are the same percentage of votes, the Lib-Dems' share of seats is much smaller than both Labour's and Conservatives' share. The following are some numbers I found interesting:

(Assuming 8% Other)
Fewest votes needed for majority:
Labour: 31%
Tories: 38%
Lib-Dems: 41%

Fewest votes needed to be largest party:
Labour: 25%
Tories: 31%
Lib-Dems: 38%

Labour has a huge advantage going into this election. There are a large number of Labour strongholds that the other parties have very little support in, so it takes an inordinately large swing to change Labour seats. Technically, with 8% going to "other", the largest party should be whichever one gets 31%. However, Labour can gain the most seats with far fewer votes while the Lib-Dems require much more.

This has become a major issue this election as Labour is polling behind the other main parties, but is likely to remain the largest party in Parliament, while a few polls have shown the Lib-Dems in the lead, but still receiving fewer seats than the other main parties. It is unlikely that any party will receive a majority this election, which in a way makes the Lib-Dems the most powerful party as they could potentially form a coalition with either the Tories or Labour. Whoever they end up working with, they will very likely force them to agree to electoral reform, as the current system hurts them the most.

NASCAR week 9

2010-04-25T23:49:00.002-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson - 99%
Stewart - 91%
Gordon - 86%
Hamlin - 78%
Biffle - 73%
Kurt Busch - 68%
Martin - 67%
Kenseth - 66%
Kyle Busch - 62%
Edwards - 58%
Newman - 50%
Bowyer - 46%
Montoya - 45%
Kahne - 44%
Vickers - 39%
Harvick - 39%
Burton - 29%
Earnhardt - 28%
Reutimann - 27%
Logano - 22%

Finishing 31st was just enough to bring Johnson down from 100%, any higher position would have left him at 100%. The biggest gainer was race winner Kevin Harvick, going from 32% t 39%. He is now second in overall points, so it is likely his chances will continue to climb. The biggest loser was Ambrose. He did well last season, but a bunch of poor finishes this season are starting to take its toll. He went from 22% to 15%. There are still 31 drivers with a chance of making the Chase. Robby Gordon brings up the rear again this time with only a 0.02% chance.

The Jury Effect

2010-04-20T22:50:00.005-04:00

Eurovision

Over two months after the 2009 competition, the EBU revealed both the jury and televote results separately. I wasn't paying attention at the time, but with the next Eurovision a month away I became curious as to how differently the jury and the viewers voted. The following is a list of the difference in points each country got.

Country	Televote	Jury	Difference
Azerbaijan	253	112	141
Turkey	203	114	89
Norway	378	312	66
Greece	151	93	58
Albania	81	26	55
Russia	118	67	51
Armenia	111	71	40
Bosnia	124	90	34
Romania	64	31	33
Sweden	59	27	32
Spain	38	9	29
Finland	30	12	18
Lithuania	38	31	7
Estonia	129	124	5
Ukraine	70	68	2
Croatia	55	58	-3
Portugal	45	64	-19
Moldova	66	93	-27
Germany	18	73	-55
Malta	18	87	-69
Denmark	40	120	-80
Iceland	173	260	-87
Israel	15	107	-92
France	54	164	-110
United Kingdom	105	223	-118

Despite the relatively wide gap in the number of points, Norway did incredibly well with both the viewers and the jury. Oddly enough, Norway's final score was higher than both it's televote and jury vote score, 387. This happened because it was one of the few entries that both the viewers and juries agreed on, so its average score was higher than the average score of most other entries, and it was whatever country that had the highest average that got the coveted 12 points.

While the biggest gap is over Azerbaijan's entry, the difference over Israel's entry is probably the starkest. It got a respectable 9th place finish among the juries, but the viewers totally dismissed it, leaving it in last place.

As the only finish that really matters in Eurovision is who comes in first, it appears that jury voting had little impact other than making the UK, France, and Germany feel better about themselves and ensuring that the entries for this year will be bland and boring.

NASCAR week 8

2010-04-19T18:07:00.003-04:00

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Johnson - 100%
Stewart - 91%
Gordon - 87%
Hamlin - 74%
Biffle - 72%
Kenseth - 68%
Kurt Busch - 65%
Martin - 64%
Kyle Busch - 59%
Edwards - 57%
Newman - 56%
Kahne - 46%
Bowyer - 43%
Vickers - 42%
Montoya - 41%
Harvick - 32%
Burton - 31%
Reutimann - 27%
Earnhardt - 27%
Logano - 26%

Johnson hits the 100% mark with a second place finish. It will take some pretty bad finishes to bring him down. The biggest gainer was race winner Hamlin, going from 66% to 74%. The biggest loser was Vickers who had some trouble early in the race, going from 48% to 42%. There are now only 31 drivers that have any chance of making the Chase. Robby Gordon still has a 0.1% chance.

Next week is Talladega, which should provide some interesting results.

NASCAR week 7

2010-04-11T00:53:00.002-04:00

I changed the model again, this time to one that's a bit less conservative in its predictions. Now it shows Johnson, Stewart, and Gordon as almost certain to make the Chase, which I think is a good guess.

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
Johnson - 95%
Stewart - 94%
Gordon - 90%
Biffle - 68%
Kenseth - 68%
Hamlin - 66%
Edwards - 61%
Kurt Busch - 60%
Martin - 59%
Newman - 54%
Kyle Busch - 54%
Vickers - 48%
Bowyer - 48%
Montoya - 46%
Kahne - 43%
Reutimann - 32%
Burton - 30%
Harvick - 30%
Logano - 28%
Earnhardt - 25%

The biggest gainer this week was the winner of the race, Newman. He had fallen below the 50% mark, but is now back on top. The biggest loser was Kahne. An accident early in the race left him over 100 laps down, and he dropped below the 50% mark. One thing that the new model allows me to do is figure out how many drivers have any chance of making the Chase. At the beginning of the season, 36 drivers had at least a greater than 0% chance, it has now dropped to 32. The 32nd driver is Mears, with only a 0.04% chance.

Who loves Eurovision?

2010-04-08T16:06:00.002-04:00

YouTube

Apparently I'm not the only one who thought the 1965 Eurovision winning song was brilliant. Here is the Arcade Fire doing a cover.

NASCAR week 6

2010-03-29T17:22:00.002-04:00

That was a pretty brutal race today. Usually Martinsville is pretty predictable, but tire problems kept things interesting.

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Stewart - 72%
Biffle - 67%
Johnson - 67%
Kenseth - 63%
Gordon - 62%
Martin - 61%
Hamlin - 60%
Vickers - 59%
Newman - 57%
Kurt Busch - 57%
Edwards - 55%
Kahne - 50%
Montoya - 49%
Kyle Busch - 46%
Bowyer - 42%
Reutimann - 41%
Logano - 40%
Burton - 36%
Harvick - 35%
Ambrose - 35%

It seems like it was a good week for all the top drivers, however it's a bit misleading. As we get through more races, the gap between the top and bottom will begin to grow, so the top drivers' chances of making the Chase will go up even when they have a mediocre week. Also, there was a larger than normal rounding error this week, so everyone's score is inflated by about 1 percentage point. The biggest gainer this week was Vickers, jumping 7 percentage points. The biggest loser was Allmendinger, dropping 3 percentage points. He started out this year stronger than usual, but a poor result this week really hurt him.

Start and Park

2010-03-28T19:35:00.002-04:00

Front Stretch

Found this article through a Something Awful thread about NASCAR. Start and Parkers are drivers that set-up their car for qualifying and once they qualify, they run a few laps and then park their car once they need fuel or new tires. I became aware of this practice when I became interested in Morgan Shepherd, as he was sponsored by Jesus and formerly Cheerwine. He didn't have the money to run a full race, so he would run what he could and then park.

The article touches on just how profitable this practice is and the declining incentives to run a full race when Start and Parkers are making just as much money and not having to spend it on a crew or extra fuel and tires.

While it does go against the competitive nature of the sport, unless a driver is capable of finishing in the top 10, they might as well not even bother as they're not going to get any attention anyway. In fact, there are so many Start and Parkers now, that it's basically become its own competition to see who can and can't qualify. For example, Morgan Shepherd eventually moved to Nationwide as he continuously failed to qualify for the Sprint Cup races.

One solution to this, if one even considers it a problem, would be to reduce the financial incentives. Simply reducing the payout for poor finishes though would equally hurt Start and Parkers and teams with few resources and would just lead to fewer cars in the race. A better method would be to increase the difference in pay based on final position to encourage drivers to stay on the track. As it stands now, there's little financial difference in finishing 43rd or 23rd. Another idea would be instead of giving the teams just cash, give them extra fuel and tires that they have to use at that race. This would be incredibly beneficial for teams that want to to run full races, but find themselves parking in order to save money. If the tires and fuel are already provided for them, they don't have to worry about it.

Majority-Minority

2010-03-24T16:42:00.002-04:00

Similar to my interest in population decline, another demographic trend that fascinates me is the growing diversity of the US. So far four states (CA, HI, NM, and TX) and DC are what are called "majority-minority" states, wherein non-Hispanic whites make up less than 50% of the population. I keep hearing that more states will soon join them, but I never hear of estimates of how soon that could possibly be. So armed with Census population data from 2005 to 2008, I made rough estimates of which states will be next.

What I found somewhat surprised me. Although my estimates say that non-Hispanic whites will no longer be the majority in the whole US by 2041, only eight more states will be considered majority-minority states by that time. So how could it happen that non-Hispanic whites will no longer be the majority across the country, but still be majority in 38 states?

You may have noticed that the two most populous states, California and Texas, are already majority-minority. By 2041, less than a third of their populations will be white. Many of the other 10 are either already very large or very quickly growing, while many of the states that will retain a white majority are small or have slow or negative growth.

Majority-Minority States by 2041:
Nevada - 2016
Arizona - 2020
Georgia - 2021
Maryland - 2022
Florida - 2024
Mississippi - 2026
New Jersey - 2030
New York - 2038

Only one state, Hawaii, and DC are going against the trend. Hawaii currently has the lowest proportion of whites in the US at less than a quarter of the population. However, all of the reversal trend is related to a massive jump in the white population between 2005 and 2006, after which there are no farther increases. DC, on the other hand, is becoming whiter, and at a very rapid pace. The white population gains one percentage point every year. By 2025, DC should have a white majority.

Fastest changing states (percentage points annually):
Nevada - 0.9
Wyoming - 0.7
Arizona - 0.7
Utah - 0.6
Idaho - 0.6

Slowest changing states (percentage points annually):
South Carolina - 0.2
Rhode Island - 0.2
Michigan - 0.2
Ohio - 0.3
Minnesota - 0.3

For comparison, the US is changing at a rate of 0.5 percentage points annually. So as of 2008, 65.4% of Americans were white, but in 2009, 64.9% should have been white.

NASCAR week 5

2010-03-21T22:30:00.002-04:00

Finally got a statistical model that I've stuck with. The top twenty contenders haven't changed, but the order has changed a little.

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Stewart - 72%
Johnson - 67%
Biffle - 62%
Martin - 61%
Gordon - 61%
Hamlin - 59%
Kenseth - 59%
Kurt Busch - 55%
Newman - 53%
Vickers - 52%
Montoya - 51%
Edwards - 50%
Kahne - 48%
Kyle Busch - 44%
Bowyer - 41%
Reutimann - 40%
Logano - 36%
Harvick - 36%
Burton - 35%
Ambrose - 34%

The biggest gainer this week was Biffle. With a fourth place finish, his chances jumped 6 percentage points. The biggest loser was Sorenson, but given that he no longer races in the Sprint Cup, it's not really surprising. Of guys actually in the Sprint Cup, Kahne saw a loss of 4 percentage points and is now behind Edwards. Despite still being the points leader, Harvick's chances barely changed.

And They're Ready

2010-03-20T21:06:00.003-04:00

Wikipedia

All entries for Eurovision 2010 are set with Ukraine making its final selection earlier today. Ukraine had actually held a final back on March 6th, but due to some controversy surrounding the selection, an emergency second final was held, wherein another candidate was selected. Ukraine technically broke Eurovision rules by holding the second final, but I think they'll be lenient since they managed to get it finished before the deadline.

Since the contest isn't until the end of May, I'm going to try to keep myself from listening to any of the entries before May to keep from spoiling it. I did listen to the Albanian entry already, but that was back in January and I've already forgotten it.

Uppsala Gets an Airport

2010-03-19T23:24:00.002-04:00

The Local

An environmental review has determined that the military airport, Ärna, in Uppsala is suitable for commercial use. This means that low-cost carriers may begin offering flights from there. It would have been amazing if this airport had been open when I was there. It's less than 10 km from the dorm I stayed in. I could have biked to the airport.

The plan may not come to fruition as the Social Democrats and Greens, who are currently in opposition in the regional government, are saying they will reject the plans if they win this year's election. Uppsala is "conservative" (as much as any region in Sweden can be considered such), so it's unlikely they'll win, but they are polling well, so we'll see what happens.

NASCAR Re-cap

2010-03-14T15:16:00.003-04:00

Since there's no race this week, I decided to do an update on how much the drivers' chances have changed as a result of the last four races. I never posted what their chances were prior to the beginning of the season, so they didn't have to go through tons of changes to make them comparable as I've changed my model 5 times.

The top 12 originally were the guys that made it to the chance last year, unsurprisingly. After four races, Kenseth has moved into the top 12, replacing Edwards.

Stewart remains the guy most likely to make the chase, going from a 67% to 70% chance. He is currently 8th in points.

Martin has seen the biggest improvement in his chances, jumping 12 percentage points (53% to 65%). He had a poor start last year and was only 34th in points by this time last year, compared to 7th this year.

The biggest improvement for a guy that didn't make the chase last year is 5 points (48% to 53%) for Kenseth.

There are a number of drivers whose chances have dropped dramatically. However, most of them are people that raced near full schedules last year, but aren't racing this year for various reasons, such as Waltrip, Stremme, and Sorenson.

Of people actually trying to make Sprint Cup races, Mears has seen the biggest drop. He had a 28% chance at the start of the season, but due to moving to a new team, he has failed to qualify for a single race and his chances have dropped to 13%.

Among those that have made all four races, Robby Gordon chances have dropped the most, from 18% to 11%. Mears has a better chance of making the Chase.

The largest drop for someone that made the Chase last year was for Edwards, who has dropped 5 percentage points to the 13th position. He will likely drop farther as I've heard that he has be suspended for several weeks.

Despite being the current points leader, Harvick's chances have barely changed, going from 34% to 35%. The main reason for this is that he did really well early in the season last year (was 8th in points), but dropped off later on.

NASCAR week 4

2010-03-07T23:04:00.006-05:00

You'd think by now I'd be happy with the statistical model I'm using, but no, I decided to change it again. When I updated the numbers for this week, Kvapil's numbers shot up, giving him a 44% chance of making the chance because the only race I was basing his average on was the Bristol race where he did fairly well. So the model no longer assumes everyone is driving a full season.

(Update 3/9/10: fixed a mistake I made)

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Stewart - 73%
Johnson - 69%
Martin - 67%
Gordon - 64%
Hamlin - 63%
Newman - 60%
Biffle - 59%
Montoya - 58%
Kenseth - 57%
Kurt Busch - 56%
Kahne - 55%
Vickers - 53%
Edwards - 52%
Kyle Busch - 51%
Bowyer - 45%
Reutimann - 44%
Logano - 40%
Ambrose - 37%
Burton - 39%
Harvick - 35%

The biggest loser is Keselowski because including all the races he didn't run in last year dropped him to 1%. The biggest gainer was Newman, going up 10 percentage points, as I finally fixed a problem I was having with his numbers.

NASCAR week 3

2010-03-01T01:10:00.002-05:00

So I decided to change my model again to make it more consistent. This change affected all the drivers, generally increasing the odds of drivers that previously had better than even odds of making the chase and decreasing the odds for everyone else. I think this one makes more sense as previously the model showed Casey Mears with a 30% chance of making the chase despite not being in a single race so far. Now he only has an 8% chance.

NASCAR week 3
Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Stewart - 73%
Johnson - 69%
Martin - 67%
Gordon - 66%
Hamlin - 63%
Biffle - 57%
Edwards - 56%
Kurt Busch - 55%
Kahne - 54%
Vickers - 54%
Kyle Busch - 51%
Kenseth - 51%
Montoya - 50%
Newman - 50%
Bowyer - 46%
Reutimann - 44%
Logano - 33%
Keselowski - 33%
Burton - 32%
Harvick - 30%

Despite being the points leader, Harvick is still ranked really low due to his poor results from last year. Only 3 out of 26 races have been completed so far, meaning that 88% of his score is still based on last year's results. The biggest gainer this week was Kenseth, moving up 6 percentage points. The biggest loser was the aforementioned Mears.

NASCAR week 2

2010-02-21T22:32:00.002-05:00

Last week I put up a list of the drivers most likely to make the Chase. Well here's an update following the results at Fontana. I made a slight adjustment to the model, it only affected a few drivers, but it's why Newman's chances went up despite a poor finish this week and Kenseth's chances went down despite a decent finish.

Top 20 Chase Contenders:
(red means they're down from last week, green means they're up)
Stewart - 68%
Johnson - 64%
Gordon - 63%
Hamlin - 61%
Martin - 61%
Kurt Busch - 57%
Biffle - 55%
Kyle Busch - 54%
Newman - 54%
Edwards - 53%
Vickers - 53%
Kahne - 51%
Montoya - 50%
Bowyer - 48%
Reutimann - 47%
Kenseth - 45%
Burton - 43%
Logano - 43%
McMurray - 38%
Earnhardt Jr - 37%

Ambrose dropped out of the top 20, letting Earnhardt Jr gain a spot, just barely edging out Harvick. The biggest gainer was Mark Martin, increasing his chances by 5%. The biggest loser was Waltrip, dropping 8%. Of course, he didn't even race at Fontana as he's not running a few schedule this year.

New Music for 2010

2010-02-18T23:20:00.004-05:00

Thought I would share some music with you that I've discovered since returning from Germany. But first I want to say Lala is a great site that will let you preview a whole album, has cheap music downloads, and an impressive music library.

Lost in the Trees
A local NC band that I got to see perform in Asheville. Last month they performed with the orchestra at NCSSM.

The Heavy
You've probably heard this song before if you've been watching TV lately. It's being used in a Kia commercial. I first heard of them thanks to David Letterman. He liked them so much he had them play the song twice.

Adiam Dymott
You can never escape Swedish music.

Rain Machine
I was so happy the first time I heard this song. I thought it was a new TV on the Radio song, but it's actually for a side project one of the members.

Brandi Carlile
Paste Magazine said her last album was one of the best of 2009. I had never heard of her before, but I agreed with their assessment after hearing this song.

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes
First heard this song on WNCW and thought it was brilliant. I know how to play it, but I don't have anyone to sing it with.

Yeasayer
They've been playing this song a lot on the World Cafe. An appropriately odd video for an odd song.

Chances in the Chase

2010-02-15T13:54:00.002-05:00

Similar to what I did last year, I'm doing predictions on how NASCAR drivers will perform this year, only this time I'm starting before the Chase. I've set up a model for predicting who will make it into the Chase. The numbers I use are based on last years results, but I'll update them after each race this year.

Top 20 Drivers:
Stewart - 68%
Gordon - 65%
Hamlin - 63%
Johnson - 63%
Biffle - 57%
Kurt Busch - 57%
Kyle Busch - 57%
Martin - 56%
Edwards - 55%
Kahne - 54%
Vickers - 54%
Kenseth - 51%
Montoya - 51%
Newman - 50%
Bowyer - 47%
Reutimann - 47%
Logano - 41%
Burton - 40%
Ambrose - 38%
McMurray - 38%

McMurray just barely makes the top 20 cut-off despite winning the Daytona 500. In fact he's ranked only slightly higher than Casey Mears who didn't even run in the Daytona 500.

One oddity of the prediction model is that it assumes that all drivers will run a full season, so Bill Elliott has a 29% chance of making the Chase.

Facebook Divisions

2010-02-09T12:17:00.002-05:00

PeteSearch

This guy did an analysis of Facebook users and created a map based mostly on where users' friends lived. For example, in the Northeast users' friends tend to live in whatever cities are closest, whereas in the Southeast there are more connections to nearby large cities, like Atlanta. The West is probably the one that is most different as it seems they have friends all over the place.

Latvian ghost town sold

2010-02-07T09:55:00.002-05:00

BBC News

Celeste shared an article about a ghost town in Latvia that was up for sell in Google Reader last night. Apparently she was a bit too late in telling me as it has already sold at auction for $3 million. I never even got a chance to bid. One thing that surprised me though, I figured they would only sell to someone who had an idea of what to do with the property, but the company that bought it did not say.

I tried looking up the company, Aleksejevskoje-Serviss, but the first 100 results are just re-postings of this article in various languages.