Month: January 2004

Slate presents an interesting article explaining how delegates are assigned in the Iowa Democratic caucuses. I thought I had an idea of how it worked, but the method in which delegates are assigned is much more complicated than I thought, and there are several factors that can weigh heavily against candidates, particularly in a close race like this year. According to the article, the last such close race was in 1988, when Dick Gephardt narrowly won Iowa. This time around, he wasn’t so lucky, and early leaders like Dean didn’t do as well. The article surmises that Dean’s ability to get people who hadn’t voted before mobilized into action is all well and good, but can actually have little effect on the delegate totals, which to me seems contrary to the spirit of the process.

The tag line of the article is “If you liked the Florida recount, you’ll love the Iowa caucuses.” This refers to the fact that the Democratic party never reveals the raw vote count for each candidate, only the amount of delegates awarded to each:

The party won’t compile or even record them, except as a temporary step in most precincts so that the caucus chair can determine how many delegates each candidate gets. The party doesn’t want raw votes compiled and released, because it wants the caucuses to be a collaborative activity, not a tally of individual preferences. That’s all well and good, if you like the party’s communitarian version of democracy. But if you want to know how many voters stood up for John Edwards, you’re out of luck.

That means that, for example, Dick Gephardt will never know whether he lost Iowa because of some of the vagaries of the process rather than a lack of support. It makes me wonder whether something needs to be done to create a more transparent process in a state that has a seemingly disproportionate say in the primary election system.

Play SimCity Classic online! Just don’t try to do so on Netscape Navigator or Mozilla. Bastards. Must… resist… urge… to… open… Internet… Explorer. Too late; I just couldn’t resist such a cool classic game, even though it means (temporarily, I assure you) compromising most of my principles. Wouldn’t be the first time…

Now this is cool, although it has been done before…

If this was around back in college I could’ve stayed 22 forever! Mmmm… beer.

This could be rough. If only I didn’t have this damn job thing…

This is somewhat older news, but I forgot to post it earlier. Bush in 30 Seconds (sponsored by the moveon.org voter fund) urged people to submit 30-second ads that “challenge [W]’s policies and his administration.” The result was hundreds of submissions that were recently narrowed down to 26 finalists. The winning ad, “Child’s Pay,” is available for viewing on their page, as are the other 25 finalists. Currently moveon.org is raising funds to be able to run the winning ad during the Super Bowl. I really hope they get enough donations to do so, as it would obviously be a huge audience for their important message.

Update: Well, so much for reaching the masses during the Super Bowl. The donation page has a message informing prospective donors that “CBS has refused to place ‘Child’s Pay’ nationally during the Super Bowl.” Bastards. I just hope they have a legitimate reason like a deadline, because if W and his administration have gotten to the networks, I will be extremely pissed off. The page goes on to say, “We are considering options. Please stay tuned.” I hope that they can still come up with some sort of highly visible campaign, but losing out on the Super Bowl is a pretty big setback…

Another Update: According to AdAge, CBS decided not to air the commercial because “the spot violated the network’s policy against running issue advocacy advertising.” However, the story also reports that “MoveOn is airing a 60-second version [of] the commercial… in advance of [W]’s State of the Union address Jan. 20” on CNN. I’m going to have to keep an eye out…

I’ve been confused about how the quarterback rating was calculated for some time, but I just now found out how it’s done, thanks to FARK. Checking out the official NFL site for an explanation of the quarterback rating has made things clearer, although I’m still dumbfounded as to why they arbitrarily decided that 158.3 was a perfect rating. Or rather, I’m confused as to why they used a seemingly arbitrary maximum limit (2.375) for each of four categories (percentage of completions, average yards per attempt, percentage of touchdown passes, and percentage of interceptions). The QB rating is calculated by adding calculations for all four of those categories (explained in more detail at the NFL page), dividing by six, and multiplying by 100. Therefore, a perfect QB rating is [(2.375 * 4) / 6] * 100 = 158.3. Peyton Manning managed a perfect rating two weeks ago in his rout of the Broncos in the AFC Wild Card game, which planted the seed in my mind that I need to figure this out. Finally…

Ever try to visualize one trillion? Or one quadrillion? The MegaPenny Project helps you do so through the comparison of stacks of pennies to landmarks such as a football field, the Washington Monument, and the Sears Tower.

It doesn’t get much cooler than this. Visit Maestro Headquarters and “Explore Mars with the program that NASA scientists use to operate Spirit,” the NASA probe that recently made a successful landing on Mars. You can follow the descent of the vehicle firsthand and view some of the first pictures from Mars, panning, zooming, and rotating images from the dataset NASA is using. I can’t do this justice; download the Maestro application (>30MB download) and updated Mars data and try it for yourself.

It’s been some time since I’ve posted any fun games, so here are a few for you to enjoy:

• Robootik – cool once you get used to the controls
  
• Snake – an update of the classic; I still like the original DOS version :-p
  
• Egg Run – reminds me of the egg in that comic U.S. Acres…
  
• Cannon Fodder – a real-time version of the classic cannon game