I Like Obama

I like Barack Obama because he's willing to lose face on the political side in order to do the right thing on the governmental side. He's willing to do things that voters don't hear about or understand in order to do the right thing. He's willing to take a hit in the House and Senate in order to do the right thing. And yeah, you can argue that he lost jobs for the people who supported him, those people never reallys supported him. And while I know it's only a thought experiment, I don't really even want to think about where we'd be if Hillary Clinton were president today.

All of this is summarized in a much better way by Timothy Egan in an op-ed piece from Tuesday.

Please To Explain: Crossword

Can someone explain to me please why there is a huge jump in difficulty between the Wednesday and Thursday crossword puzzles in The New York Times? I understand the concept that the puzzles get more difficult from Monday through Sunday. I like the idea so you can challenge yourself more and more. I'm down with all of that.

The problem is that the difference between Wednesday and Thursday is huge. I can always do Monday and Tuesday no problem. Wednesday I can do always to 90% and usually to 100%. Then on Thursday, like every Thursday, I can't even get a foothold. Usually on Thursdays I'll get 10-12 random clues that are not connected or anything. Rarely I'll get a section done and that will lead to getting more and more of it done, but finding that starting point is nearly impossible. I almost never even try it on Fridays. And the weekend is right out.

Today's theme (a Thursday) was words that were invented by Lewis Carroll in the Jabberwocky poem. They gave you his intended definitions and you had to fill in the made up words. How am I expected to be able to do that?

I get the feeling that you're really supposed to have to Google shit in order to finish the ones from later in the week. Is this not the case? Does anyone know the New York Times crossword philosophy? Am I supposed to be able to finish it on the weekend without having to look shit up? I know at the very least you have to actually put some effort into looking at the answers the next day and going over the clues again to understand how they put clues together and eventually improving at doing it on your own in order to have any hope of getting those weekend puzzles done. That's far more effort than I'm really willing to put in. But assuming I did that would I eventually be able to finish them, or am I expected to do the crossword in front of my computer?

He Fixes The Cable?

There's an article in today's New York Times about a new book of essays inspired by The Big Lebowski. You should read it. It's pretty interesting, as articles about books go.

Anyhow, in order to flesh out this post, what do you think would be on the top of the list for the most obscure Lebowski quotes? And what would be the context in which you'd use them. Like a totally unobscure one would be going "Way to go, Donnie!" whenever something good happens. Or perhaps slightly more obscure, but perhaps not depending on the delivery would be going, "Phone's ringing, Dude," when the phone is ringing (that must be available as a ringtone, no?).

One of the best moments in my life (hyperbole? you decide) was when a whole bunch of you people who are reading this right now were over at my house on what must have been my birthday last year because that's the only time you gies are in my house in the daytime and I was telling everyone about the kids' show, Yo Gabba Gabba, which was created by someone who has a great drug dealer. We happened to have an episode on DVR so I put on the first couple minutes and then said "You can imagine where it goes from here," while hitting the fast forward button. Of course a couple of you immediately said, "He fixes the cable?", which just warmed my heart. And on my birthday, no less.

Incidentally, I think the most underrated character in Lebowski is Maude Lebowski. She's got quite a few quotable lines. And it's really fun to say, "He's a good man. And thorough," whenever the appropriate context boils up.

As the for the most obscure, the one that seems to never get recognized when I do it, almost certainly because of the delivery, is from when Maude is on the phone speaking in Italian and then she goes, "Que ridicolo, ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha". No one ever seems to get that one. It's one of my favorite parts of the movie.

A really good one was the title of Open Bar's former blog, Calmer Than You Are. It's really subtle. You almost have to be watching the movie in order to make the connection.

Any others?

PS - I love how Brand says, "Inner city children of promise, but without the necessary means for a, necessary means for a higher education". Where he repeats the "necessary means" part. I'd love to see a letterhead for the Little Lebowski Urban Achievers in which the phrase is written exactly like that. Someone with Photoshop skills should get on that.

Playing Baseball With the Monte Carlo Method

This article in the New York Times about using computer simulations to model scenarios in baseball games is really interesting. In essence, rather than try to come up with an ubercomplicated statistical model to predict outcomes, some gies just write a computer simulation program and then model like 100 or 1,000 or even 10,000 entire seasons in order to smooth out the stats and so forth. Now obviously all this depends on how good your simulator is, but since they've been around since the 1950s, I'm guessing they've made some headway in the field.

The most interesting part about this is that the guy who created one of the more well respected simulators is now employed by the Red Sox. I've got to say I'm really impressed by the Red Sox approach to the game. They also employ the guy who invented sabermetrics, which tries to accomplish the same thing as these simulators, but looks at the problem from a different perspective. I'm confident that all of this research affects the types of players that are currently on their roster, but I wonder how much of this actually gets onto the field in terms of strategy and lineups and such. Anyway, whoever decided to hire Theo and these other gies at the Red Sox was a foreward thinking dude.


I like math

Read This Fascinating Letter

This is a letter from an executive at AIG to the CEO of the company in which he offers his resignation. It was published in the New York Times op-ed section. I don't really have anything interesting to add, except that I found it pretty fascinating in the sense that it offers an interesting perspective on the whole bonus issue.

What I've Learned From Reading the New York Times

Maureen Dowd hates Hillary Clinton.

Is it just me (and MMG, who I know agrees with me), or is Maureen Dowd not viciously sexy? And her column is annoying recently, but that just kinda adds to it because now she's got that teetering on the edge, manipulative, other woman-hating, might snap at any time kinda thing.

David Brooks Is A Genius

I was reading the New York Times (online) this morning. Over in the op-ed section I was reading the David Brooks column called "The Outsourced Brain". I think he summarizes the age of technology perfectly.

"I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less."

BAAMMM!!! Check Mate. David Brooks wins. This is the secret of life since 1995. Have you memorized a single telephone number since you got a cell phone? Do you even need to look up your own phone number? David Brooks's column is about now he doesn't know how to get anywhere since he got a car with GPS capabilities. And he doesn't need to. I have seen the promised land.

All the News That Fits In a Little Less Print

For the past six years or so, I have been a daily reader of the NY Times.

Every day, I've gone to the corner newspaper guy or local bodega thrown my dollar down, picked up the day's Times and went about my day, invariably becoming just a little more knowledgeable about the world in which I live during my morning and evening commute.

The Times is great because all of their articles go just that much further than any other daily publication. If you read a news story in the USA Today, The NY Post, The Bergen Record or most other papers, you read about what happened. In The NY Times, however, you learn about what happened, who was involved, their backgrounds and why said story took place, usually with some kind of analysis. In one of my first blog entries on my former site, I expressed indignance at the childish stories in the USA Today.

I chided my roommate Dave for reading AM New York, mocked Lavishing Lewd and Nude Rick Mckay's perusing of the NY Post ('only good for Page Six', I laughed, while pointing out Page Six isn't even on page six) and needled my girlfriend, Ioana, for learning about the world from The Metro.

In return, I have been called obnoxious, smug and a newspaper snob - admittedly somewhat deservedly so. It's not that I thought others unworthy of The Gray Lady, but I wondered, 'why read a tabloid when you can read the Paper of Record?'

Today, I am disappointed in The New York Times.

I blog here today a bit less smug. My high horse is no longer a noble steed.

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger has quietly hit his readers with a doubly whammy.

• First, he raised the price for the second time in a relatively short period of time. Two weeks ago it was a dollar and, one day, it was a buck twenty five. Two things are irritating about this. First, it was seventy five cents a few years ago and this is a second increase - on top of that it was twenty five percent! I realize it's only a quarter but what business just increases twice twenty five percent? I mean, cars, houses, bubblegum, Gatorade and postage stamps don't just increase twenty five percent from one day to the next. When asked to comment on the price jump, Ms. Stephanie Tanner of San Francisco California had this to say: Repeating herself seems to be a habit for her, Stephanie 'Two Times', as some call her walked off saying that she was 'going to go read the papers, read the papers''.
  
• Secondly, which is really just an addendum to the first bullet point here is that $1.25 is just less convenient thatn $1. I often just walked in the bodega, walked to the front of the line, placed my dollar bill on the counter and left, not even breaking stride except to turn around to walk out the door. Now, the process is just a little less fluid. You either have to make sure you have a quarter or - gasp - get change made. This means, at best, having to wait for change or, even worse, wait on line to get change made. Perhaps you are puzzled at these seemingly miniscule inconveniences but it disrupts the rhythm of a morning commute.
• Thirdly, and this is the big one, is that the paper shrunk. The Times shaved an inch and a half of their paper today. The content is reportedly the same, but the page is thinner. I bought it today and I didn't like it, the experience has changed. It used to be you got it, snapped it open with a crisp 'thwack', folded it twice, and off you went into whatever story you happened to be reading. Today, I bought the smaller version and the 'thwack' was more of a 'clink'. It just felt different. Holding it, it just felt less important.

Now as I mentioned, I have been a daily reader for the past six years but I haven't been feeling compelled as I once did to buy it every day. Now, I am sure I'll come to terms with the more money and less paper. It will continue, I am sure, to be a great newspaper - probably the best. By Mr. Sulzberger and your times, I must say I am disappointed in you.

Asked about her feelings about the new New York Times, a Florinian woman - who declined to give her name - expressed this blogger's feelings to The Gray Lady herself: