Happy President's Day/ Valentine's Day/ Mardi Gras/ NBA All-Star Game/ Winter Olympics/ Kalends of February!
Robyn and I spent this last weekend on a sort of min-vacation in Long Beach, seeing both friends and family. It was quite lovely, especially the part that was by the seaside and seventy-five degrees and sunny. Of course, I spent most of the weekend sitting on the back porch reading Stalingrad. And after a splendid 48 hours in Southern California, when we finally arrived back in Champaign, Illinois in a blizzard in ten-degree weather, I was able to say to myself, "Well, hell, at least I'm not in Stalingrad."
On a related note, Roger Ebert apparently does not like the new movieSaint John of Las Vegas starring Steve Buscemi and Sarah Silverman. I guess that's too bad, but what caught my eye was that the script was "based on the epic poem by Dante Alighieri." That's peculiar. Especially considering that we just had the release of the video game adaptation of Inferno. What does it all mean? Is it another manifestation of our chronic societal melancholy? Our we all convinced the country is literally going to Hell in a handbasket? Or is Dante merely this year's bacon? Only time will tell.
I think this is funny:
"I don't know what phallocentric means, but NO GIRLS!" I also think this is funny:
Phew... that was exciting. I just have a few things to say:
- Can we get a ballot initiative started to bar Bill Sizemore from ever putting up another ballot initiative ever again? Seriously. That guy has wasted more of my time than YouTube.
- As an absentee voter, I didn't get one of those big pamphlets to tell me about each ballot measure. But I did find this website, ballotpedia.org, which provided me with lots of information and links. If anyone else is in the same boat as me, or just wants a paper-free voter guide, I recommend it.
It seems that no one can get enough of the baseball-as-politics-as-baseball metaphor these days. And why should they? These are perhaps two of the greatest of American traditions, and they give citizens of all class and creed a chance to come together, wear silly hats, shout slogans, and vilify one another for more-or-less arbitrary reasons.
But the similarities don't end at mere bigotry, demagoguery, and name-calling. Both baseball and politics involve an obsessively complex system of numbers and statistics that people can - and do - spend their entire lives dissecting and analyzing. Nate Silver has taken this affinity to a new level with his website fivethirtyeight.com. Silver, an alum of the University of Chicago, created a highly effective way for predicting baseball outcomes based on very specific statistics. This year, he has applied this same system to the political process, and the results are both fascinating and good (for Obama - Silver's latest data shows/ says... shows.... no... pre-dicts... sorry, where was I? Oh, gives Obama a 94.7% chance of winning the Election. This means that Silver's software has simulated the election 10,000 times and, based on data collected from hundreds of different polls, Obama has won in 9,470 of those simulations. Of course, I look at this stat and all my monkey brain thinks is, "So McCain can still win?")
"Baseball and politics are data-driven," ... "But a lot of the time, that data might be used badly. In baseball, that may mean looking at a statistic like batting average when things like on-base percentage and slugging percentage are far more correlated with winning ballgames. In politics, that might mean cherry-picking a certain polling result." In other words, different sport—same skill set.
Henry James once said,"Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there." So when your monkey brain looks at Silver's data and starts to get all hurty and angry and just wants to get back to the social grooming, it's probably time for your cat brain to take over and demand that the numbers give you something. Preferably something edible. Or something that can be exchanged for goods and services. That are edible.
Enter intrade.com, a website where you can bet on which candidate will win invest in a candidate. Right now, Obama is "trading" at 83.9, meaning that you can "invest" $83.90 in Obama right now, and if he wins the election, you get $100. John McCain is trading at 16.8. But that's not all! You can also put down money on whether or not the U.S. will go into a recession (the "market" says yes) or whether or not another hurricane will make landfall this year! (Probably not - better luck next time, all you venture capitalists.)
So, yes, betting on the fortunes of others. As American as mom, apple pie, and union busting.
But aren't I being a bit callous here? I mean, Major League Baseball may be a $4 Billion a year business, but it's a chance to identify with the trials and triumphs of your fellow human being first, dammit! And you know who else loves identifying with your fellow human beings? Politicians. And it's not just by talking baseball either; pretty much anything involving competition and gambling will do:
Wrong!
But it can be a dangerous game, this "identifying" with people, for a politician not versed in the fine points of pandering. Because even if being a baseball fan means that you identify yourself with and emotionally (and financially) invest yourself in the fortunes of a group of nine strangers who happen to all be employed by the same company that is near your geographical location, it is still an identity not to be taken lightly. And just as this identity can be politically exploited to make you seem more "human", it can also burn you if you get your signals crossed and end up coming across as, shall we say, a little less than authentic.
I know that I've been slacking lately on the whole blogging thing, but here's something that caught my eye a while ago and I've been wanting very badly to share: Monkeys Control a Mechanical Arm with Their Thoughts If nothing else, this article ought to win a prize for best headline ever.
