Today, I found a flier from my apartment complex stuck in my door. Its inent was to alert me to an upcoming event involving an improv comedy troupe. Improv comedy is all well and good, but that is not why I am telling you about this. What caught my attention was on the very bottom of the flier, and I quote, "Sign up for more email blasts about this and other resident events..."
Email "blasts"? How pathetic. I can't believe I have been calling them email "messages" all this time. I am such a loser. Screw messages! From now on I am only going to send email blasts. It's going to make my everyday conversations so much more edgy and dynamic. For example, "Hey Rob, did you get the email blast I sent you about the party this weekend?" But why confine it to a single part of speech? Nouns are for losers. Verbs are way more proactive. Like, "Let me blast that expense report to you as email attachment, sir." The possibilities are endless.
Like, from now on, I'm not going write blog posts, I am going to write blog blasts. In fact, I hope you really enjoyed this blog blast! Too cool!
Friday, March 14, 2008
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Parsing the Polls
The presidential primaries can be exciting, yet confusing at the same time. The byzantine methods for assigning delegates and determining party nominees are bad enough, but there are also the sometimes incomprehensible analyses by pundits and experts. With the proper guidance, however, understanding election results can be easy and fun.
First, one has to understand exist polls. Exit polling involves interviewing a random sample of voters leaving the polling place. Exit polls do not just involve asking "who did you vote for?". Rather, they consider a wide range of demographic and ideologically based questions that allow experts to parse the polling data to determine why one candidate won and the others lost. This allows pundits to extrapolate and make predictions and candidates to adjust their campaign strategies.
To illustrate just how this works, let us consider Hillary Clinton's recent victories in Texas and Ohio. First, Texas. An analysis of the exit polls reveals that the deciding factor was Hillary Clinton's 4 to 1 margin of support in the turtle lover demographic. Most likely this was due to Clinton's long history of supporting keratin subsidies which turtles need to build strong, healthy shells. Interestingly, the trend totally reversed in Ohio where Obama won the turtle lover vote 3 to 1.
Now you might be confused here, but this too is easily explainable because Ohioans are strongly against NAFTA which has led to a marked rise in the export of US turtles to Mexico (Something Ohioans strongly oppose). So in the case of Ohio, Clinton's support of NAFTA clearly outweighed her support of keratin subsidies. Making more sense now?
Of course, you might wonder, if Obama won the turtle lover vote in Ohio, then why didn't he win the Ohio primary? Well, it turns out that turtle lovers make up a much smaller portion of voters in Ohio than in Texas. It seems that in Ohio, the majority of Democratic voters were uncomfortable with a candidate of mixed ancestry.
Now you might say, why didn't the exit polling in other states reveal these critical trends and make the Texas and Ohio contests a foregone conclusion? I will forgive your ignorance. Your still have a lot to learn!
First, one has to understand exist polls. Exit polling involves interviewing a random sample of voters leaving the polling place. Exit polls do not just involve asking "who did you vote for?". Rather, they consider a wide range of demographic and ideologically based questions that allow experts to parse the polling data to determine why one candidate won and the others lost. This allows pundits to extrapolate and make predictions and candidates to adjust their campaign strategies.
To illustrate just how this works, let us consider Hillary Clinton's recent victories in Texas and Ohio. First, Texas. An analysis of the exit polls reveals that the deciding factor was Hillary Clinton's 4 to 1 margin of support in the turtle lover demographic. Most likely this was due to Clinton's long history of supporting keratin subsidies which turtles need to build strong, healthy shells. Interestingly, the trend totally reversed in Ohio where Obama won the turtle lover vote 3 to 1.
Now you might be confused here, but this too is easily explainable because Ohioans are strongly against NAFTA which has led to a marked rise in the export of US turtles to Mexico (Something Ohioans strongly oppose). So in the case of Ohio, Clinton's support of NAFTA clearly outweighed her support of keratin subsidies. Making more sense now?
Of course, you might wonder, if Obama won the turtle lover vote in Ohio, then why didn't he win the Ohio primary? Well, it turns out that turtle lovers make up a much smaller portion of voters in Ohio than in Texas. It seems that in Ohio, the majority of Democratic voters were uncomfortable with a candidate of mixed ancestry.
Now you might say, why didn't the exit polling in other states reveal these critical trends and make the Texas and Ohio contests a foregone conclusion? I will forgive your ignorance. Your still have a lot to learn!
This Explains So Much
This one is for Rob and Duncan.
FCC Okays Nudity On TV If It's Alyson Hannigan
Though, I can't say that I would mind this type of artistic programing.
FCC Okays Nudity On TV If It's Alyson Hannigan
Though, I can't say that I would mind this type of artistic programing.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
And the Award Goes to...
Given the proliferation of awards shows from movies to music to video games, it seems like anyone can give out an award for just about anything. Thus, it seems only fair that I should be able to make my own movie awards list. My categories are a bit unorthodox, but I think they reveal some under recognized achievements in movie making. Here they are. Enjoy!
- Best Air Guitar - Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, Wayne's World
- Best Haircut - Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
- Best Air Bite - Val Kilmer, Top Gun
- Best Trench Run when it would have made more sense to fly directly to the thermal exhaust port - Star Wars
- Best Tell-Off Line - "Nobody puts Baby in a corner", Patrick Swayze, Dirty Dancing
- Best Care Bear Stare - Care Bears, The Movie
- Best Movie Scene Illustrating an Economic Principle - Nicolas Cage buying oranges, City of Angels
- Most Superfluous and Incomprehensible Oral Sex Scene in the History of Movie Making - Hugh Jackman receiving oral sex with a gun to his head while trying to hack into the Department of Defense, Swordfish
- Filmmaker with the most creepy preoccupation with midgets - George Lucas, pretty much every movie he has made other than American Graffiti
- Dumbest Movie about Genetics - Gattica
- Most Boring Movie Ever Made - Santa Claus versus the Martians
- Steamiest Soil Room Scene - Zoolander
- Best Death Involving a Logging Truck - Meg Ryan, City of Angels
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