I love the Olympics. I really do. I’ll watch just about all of it, from figure-skating to snowboarding to luge to curling. Women’s curling, even, although in my defense, American skip Debbie McCormick is strangely intoxicating.
I even watched, and thoroughly enjoyed, biathlon. Of course, what beginning skiier, when waiting in a 45-minute line for a bunny-slope lift, hasn’t thought “I wish I had a gun?”
So far, however, the XXI Olympic Winter Games brings to mind 4 specific memories that’ll stick with us:
The authorities built a luge track that’s so fast it killed a man.
The Opening Ceremonies, already saddened by death, were screwed up by a malfunction of the torch cauldron. To add to the classiness (a word I just made up), to light the big outdoor torch, they drove Wayne Gretzky there in the back of a big pickup while he held on to a rollbar in the back and held the torch with one hand. He looked like he should have been wearing a tuque and drinking from a can of Elsinore.
The Olympia ice-preparation machines they bought for the speed-skating track (a cheaper product than the standard Zambonis) apparently produce an ice with all the smoothness and sheen of driveway gravel.
Finally, NBC’s coverage of the various sporting events has been…disappointing. They’ve tape-delayed a lot of important events, something that was done in the past (particularly when Olympic Games were held on the other side of the world, like, say, China, and it’s difficult to get a lot of viewership for swimming at 2am Eastern time), but unfortunately in this modern connected world it’s nearly impossible to avoid finding out results before the taped airing. It takes away from a viewing of the women’s downhill when it doesn’t get shown until 7pm despite everyone in the world knowing Lindsey Vonn won gold earlier in the day. On the other hand, maybe a little tape delay is a good idea.
Hey organizers and NBC! I am your key demographic! I’m young, have disposable income, and purchasing impulses that I can’t control! It would be nice if you’d stop screwing up your product so I didn’t lose interest.
Don’t worry, not dead. I honestly haven’t posted anything because I wanted to keep the previous post, in which I make myself cold and got to be on the evening news in Philadelphia, atop the page for as long as possible and make sure everyone can see it. Anybody not watched it yet? We’re good? Okay. Now I want to show you this:
In case it’s unclear, a woman attempts to get a marriage license for herself and her (female) fiancee, so that they can legally marry after many years of cohabitation, and having multiple children and grandchildren. Her request is denied. So she grabs a young man whose name she does not know, and requests a marriage license, which is duly processed. What a country.
UPDATE, 2/9/10: I was on NBC 10 News! I looked fat.
I was supposed to do the Lewes Polar Bear Plunge today, but unfortunately it snowed 2 feet all over the state so they had to postpone it. Sadly, I can’t make the new date. Obviously I can’t refund the donations (and wouldn’t if I could, since they go to the Special Olympics), but I felt I owed something to the donors. (If you’d like to add to the donation list, you can do so here). So instead, I did this. (I apologize for the horrible video quality; we’re the last family in America without a video camera, so HW’s holding my Blackberry. It’s hard to even see my face, but trust me: it’s me.)
I’ve been reading up on the whole missionaries to Haiti drama. If you’ve missed it, here’s the short version: a group of “well-meaning” missionaries went to to Haiti after the earthquake and collected up a bunch of orphans with the intent of bringing them back to America for a better life. They just didn’t bother with any of the actual paperwork. So the Haitian government accused them of kidnapping and conspiracy, and has jailed them pending trial. Supporters say the missionaries were doing a good thing, rescuing these poor kids from hunger and deprivation.
the leader of New Life Children’s rescue, Laura Silsby, has had serious legal problems in the past, most recently losing the house she bought for the ministry to foreclosure at the end of 2009. The fact that neither of the churches involved with the missions group vetted her thoroughly before leading a missions trip will open them to lawsuits, above and beyond the legal fees and costs incurred from the current incarceration.
Oops.
Silby’s motives are also suspect in part because she seemed to realize what she was doing, stating in an interview on Monday that the group did not intend to offer the children for adoption. “We intended to raise those children and be with them their entire lives, if necessary,” she said.
Eeek…that’s kinda culty.
It also seems that a plan was in place for an orphanage long before the earthquake occurred.
Eeeeeenteresting. My feelings on the subject are remarkably simple: I wonder how Americans would have responded had a gaggle of, say, well-meaning Swedes showed up and “rescued” a few dozen white orphans from New Orleans in September 2005. I suspect phrases like “doing God’s work” and “This is how you thank us for helping you?” wouldn’t be thrown around.
Lots of interesting happenings in gay rights over the last few weeks. The Prop 8 trial concluded testimony in California last week, with closing arguments and judgments to come later. Yesterday, a major hearing was held on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, pressing for a repeal of the policy. Conservatives, of course, are opposed. Bill Kristol had this to say:
There is no basic right to serve in the military. That’s why forms of discrimination we would ban in civilian life are permitted: Women have less opportunity to fight than men. The disabled are discriminated against, as are the short, the near-sighted, and the old.
Advocates of repeal will say sexual orientation is irrelevant to military performance in a way these attributes are not. But this is not clearly true given the peculiar characteristics of military service.
He doesn’t actually spell out what those peculiar characteristics are. He also quotes John McCain, who said:
This successful policy has been in effect for over 15 years, and it is well understood and predominantly supported by our military at all levels. We have the best trained, best equipped, and most professional force in the history of our country, and the men and women in uniform are performing heroically in two wars. At a time when our Armed Forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy.
We have the most qualified, the bravest and most capable military we‘ve ever had in our history, and so I think that the policy is working. And I understand the opposition to it, and I‘ve had these debates and discussions, but the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, Senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.
Huh.
Responding to Kristol, Glenn Greenwald had this to say, which is spot on:
In American culture, there has long been a group of men (typified by Kristol and [Michael] O’Hanlon) who equate toughness and masculinity with fighting wars, yet who also know that they lack the courage of their own convictions, and thus confine themselves to cheerleading for wars from afar and sending others off to fight but never fighting those wars themselves. It seems that individuals plagued by that affliction are eager to avoid having it rubbed in their faces that there are large numbers of homosexual warriors who possess the courage (the “testosterone-laden tough-guyness”) which the O’Hanlons and Kristols, deep down, know they lack.
Chris Matthews had a fellow named Peter Sprigg of the “Family Research Council” on his show to discuss DADT, and he said:
As Sprigg mounted an increasingly illogical defense of the policy based on discrimination, Matthews pressed him on the question: “Do you think we should outlaw gay behavior?”
“I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided,” said Sprigg. “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.”
“So we should outlaw gay behavior?” asked Matthews again.
Hey you. You there in the Glenn Beck T-shirt headed off to the Tea Party Patriot rally.
Stop shouting for a moment, please, I want to explain to you why you’re so very angry. You should be angry. You’re getting screwed…Look, you can go back to yelling at me in a minute, but just read this first.
1. Get out your pay stub…
2. Notice that your net pay is lower than your gross pay. This is because some of your wages are withheld every pay period.
3. Notice that only some of this money that was withheld went to pay taxes. (I know, I know — yeearrrgh! me hates taxes! — but just try to stick with me for just a second here.)
4. Notice that some of the money that was withheld didn’t go to taxes, but to your health insurance company.
5. Now go get a pay stub from last year around this time, from January of 2009.
6. Notice that the amount of your pay withheld for taxes in your current paycheck is less than the amount that was withheld a year ago. That’s because of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan, which included more than $200 billion in tax cuts, including the one you’re holding right there in your hand, the tax cut that’s now staring you in the face. Republicans all voted against that tax cut…But taxes aren’t the really important thing here. The really important thing starts with the next point.
7. Notice that the amount of your pay withheld to pay for your health insurance is more than it was last year.
8. Notice that the amount of your pay withheld to pay for your health insurance is a lot more than it was last year.
I won’t ask you to dig up old paychecks from 2008 and 2007, but this has been going on for a long time. Every year, the amount of your paycheck withheld to pay for your health insurance goes up. A lot…That’s what I meant when I said you really should be angry. That’s what I meant when I said you’re getting screwed.
I’d add more, but I’ve nothing to add. Go read the whole thing.
To celebrate my birthday (I’m old! Again!), I’ve decided to spend Superbowl Sunday sending my body into shock and possibly dying on a beach. It’s for charity, though, so it’s all good. That’s right: I’m participating in the Lewes Polar Bear Plunge, which takes place not in Lewes, but Rehoboth. (Makes sense.) If you would like to sponsor my insanity, which supports the Special Olympics, greatly appreciated donations can be made here. Thanks!
Do you have an iPhone? Did you feel that a plastic case was unnecessary? Did you then drop it face first onto concrete and shatter the glass? Did you then take it back to Apple? Did they tell you it would cost $199 to replace even if you paid for an AppleCare plan? Did you then weep openly and gnash your teeth? All is not lost!
This here’s the story of how I voided my warranty and fixed an iPhone 3G…
First, if you’re planning to do this yourself, there’s a few important things to consider: 1. these instructions are for the iPhone 3G only (the other ones are similar but slightly different), 2. I replaced both the glass digitizer (touchscreen) and the LCD screen, 3. this takes about an hour or two of your time, and 4. this totally voids your warranty.
A nice football weekend for me, I went 3-4, picking all the spread winners and only missing my money-line selection on Dallas, although in my defense even a spread pick on them would have failed since Brett Favre made them his prison girlfriend. Thoughts that occurred to me:
I picked Dallas to win outright because they were getting 2.5 points; since Vegas usually allocates 3 points to the home team, that meant they considered the Vikes and Cowgirls to be roughly equal on neutral turf. Since Dallas mopped the floor with the Eagles (theoretically also a pretty good team) twice in a row, they should be able to keep up with the Vikings, right? Uh…no. This train of thought naturally leads to “I guess the Eagles weren’t even remotely good,” which shouldn’t really surprise me, but still depresses the hell out of me considering I don’t see them adding anything of value for 2010.
I love, repeat love, close money-line games. Which makes sense: if you think Dallas is going to cover 2.5 points, they almost certainly are going to win, right? What are the odds they lose by 2 points? Well, so far there have been 264 games this year, and 16 of them (roughly 6%) have been closer than 3 points. So historically, the odds of the Cowboys covering a 2.5 point spread and not winning the game are no more than 6% (since that value would also include situations where the Cowboys win by less than 3). A spread wager was the usual -110 (you would have to wager $110 to win $100, or if you wager $100 you win about $91), but the money line on the Cowboys was +120 (wagering a hundo nets you $120).
Okay. Bear with me, it’s about to get Mathy up in this piece. Say the Cowboys and Vikings were to play the same game 100 times with the same players in the same conditions each time (say in a Many Worlds theory kinda thing). And assume that Vegas sets the spread at 2.5 because they know there’s a 50% chance of Dallas covering (they don’t, but from a consumer point of view it might as well be true). One guy bets a hundred bucks on each of the games, on Dallas to cover. He stands to get $91 from each game he wins, which happens 50% of the time, or 50 times. He wins, therefore, 91*50, or $4550. (Technically he also gets back his original outlay on those 50 wins, or another 5 grand, so his total is $9550, a pretty crappy investment of 10 thousand buckeroos.) So for one game, his expected return is $95.50.
But: in 2009, 6% of games ended with a score closer than 3 (including the aforementioned underdog winners) If that’s true, then in at least 94% of the 100 games against Minnesota in which Dallas covered, they won. That’s 47 wins out of 50 covers (since we’re assuming they cover in half the games). So there’s another guy, a smarter guy, who wagered $100 that Dallas wins each of the hundred games outright, he wins $120 times 47 or $5640. Added to the original $4700 outlay for the wins (he’d obviously lose $5300 on the losses), he would total $10,340. Divided over a hundred games, he’d expect to earn at least $103.40 per game!
I’m sure I’ve broken your brain. Mine is spinning. Just know that, in 2009 (plus the playoffs), if you wagered on 2.5 (or less) point underdogs to win outright, you probably won money, even though this particular Dallas pick was not good. Unfortunately, next week’s lines are -8 (Colts over Jets) and -4.5 (Saints over Vikes), so I’m not seeing money-line bargains, although if you don’t think the Colts can outscore the Jets by 8 points you are probably high.
