January 2015 Archives
This may sound crazy if you haven't been paying attention, but since Tom Brady and the Patriots won their last Super Bowl, the Celtics have won the NBA Finals, the Bruins have won the Stanley Cup, and the Red Sox have won the World Series twice. 
Bruins goalie Malcolm Subban, brother of PK, showing love for the Patriots during tonight's game against LA. #DoYourJob
I am modifying my app that blares a loud train whistle across my house when my team scores. Patriots score, train whistle blares, everyone celebrates.
I am adding the Seahawks to the app, but instead of the train whistle, it's the sound of Pac-Man dying.
BOOM.
+WEEI We just had our fifth kid, north of Seattle. She was due Feb. 1. My wife and I agree: Super Bowl vs. birth? If I'm watching, birth. Playing? Game.
Go Pats!
Driving to work in Seattle, listening to +WEEI ...
Ten days ago, we had stories about depressed Super Bowl ticket prices: "The New England Patriots have been to the Super Bowl five times in the past 14 years. So, some fans may not see the novelty any more."
But since "deflategate," we now have record high prices.
Some people have been pejoratively likening "deflategate" to "Watergate." If that comparison is apt ... follow the money, people.
Fans who hoped to get a cheap Super Bowl ticket are running out of time, as Super Bowl XLIX might go down as the most expensive ticket in the game's history.
Worse for their team in Super Bowl XLIX: Tom Brady's cold or Richard Sherman's elbow?
Playing #SuperBowlXLIX. The Patriots destroyed the Seahawks 35-0. Marshawn Lynch ineffective. Passing game not enough. Lots of pressure on Wilson, including a couple of sacks, though he did break a few tackles, and had a scramble for a first down. Brady and the short passing game completely dominated.
Watching #SuperBowlXLVIII. Reminiscent of #SuperBowlXX. The Broncos destroyed the Pats in the AFC Championship -- where New England could not stop Manning -- but the Seahawks defense was too much.
Watching #SuperBowlXLVI. Another disappointment. The Patriots had defeated every team that season that had previously beat them in the playoffs, except for Indianapolis, where the game was held, and the NY Giants. The beloved wife of their beloved owner had recently died, they were settling all scores, and they were a team on a mission.
But redemption was not to be. Another close game with squandered opportunities.
Watching #SuperBowlXLII. Most disappointing Super Bowl ever. But I knew despite the undefeated season, the Patriots could be beaten. The Giants had almost done it a month earlier, and I knew it would be close, even if most other people bought into the destiny nonsense.
The Pats were one ridiculous play away from winning, but the best team won, as they always do.
Watching #SuperBowlXL. You know, the one where the better team lost, for the first time in the history of sports. ;) Not that I was rooting for the Steelers, but my goodness, the whining ...
Watching #SuperBowlXXXIX. Patriots beat the Eagles in Jacksonville. The game does not end on a field goal.
Watching #SuperBowlXXXVIII. First Patriots Super Bowl not in New Orleans (it was just down the coast in Houston). Not even Ricky Proehl could stop us winning our second Super Bowl title.
Watching #SuperBowlXXVI. Third time's a charm for the Patriots in New Orleans. The first of three wins in four years, each by three points.
Watching #SuperBowlXXI. The Pats could've won that game if not for Desmond Howard. The Pats' second straight Super Bowl loss in New Orleans.
The Patriots stopped Walter Payton in #SuperBowlXX. Stopping Marshawn Lynch on Sunday won't be enough.
Watching #SuperBowlXX. Still painful. Bears much more obnoxious than Seahawks.
The press should ask Marshawn Lynch the same question as long as he gives the same answer. Something insulting. Maybe, "Are you stupid?" or "Did your mama dress you today?"
I love Tom Petty. I love "I Won't Back Down." I've listened to the song hundreds, maybe thousands, of times, I know every chord in it, and I've even performed it (on guitar and vocals) on multiple occasions (not including playing it several times in Rock Band). And I've written dozens of songs myself, each with varying levels of originality.
I've heard this Sam Smith song a few times previously, and it did not invoke in me any thoughts of the Petty tune, even as a big fan of the song and a songwriter myself. Yes, upon listening to it after the claim of copying, I hear obvious similarities in the chord progressions and melodies. But when Smith's people say it was coincidental, I find that to be perfectly believable.
It's a very simple and fairly obvious chord progression. The verse in Petty's goes vi/V/I four or five times, with the third time using IV instead of I. Sam's does it four times, with no variation on the third measure. And Sam's chorus is basically just the verse, whereas Tom's chorus uses a very different progression until the end, where it goes back to vi/V/I. The melody of the chorus is very similar, but not nearly similar enough for me to think it was copied.
I've heard so many songs in my life that sound similar -- I mean, come on, we're talking about Western pop music that uses four measures with three major chords and three matching minor chords, you can only vary it so much -- that this sounds just like a normal song.
So I find the claim of coincidence to be believable. What is not believable to me is their claim that Smith was not familiar with "I Won't Back Down." How is that even possible? Hasn't everyone in the English-speaking world heard this song many times in their life?
High-voiced British crooner Sam Smith has agreed to pay royalties to Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne for Smith’s hit single “Stay With Me.” First released back in April, the third single off of Smith’s album In The Lonely Hour reached No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. However, the song does bear m
Watching replay of Pats/Hawks from 2012. Just saw the murderer score a TD.
Just a quick update for those not following along: the Patriots report that their normal, legal, pregame prep of the football can temporarily modify the ball (probably due to increased heat) enough that when the balls are tested afterward, they can be up to 1.5 PSI higher than they will be later.
That number fits perfectly with the anonymous reports that the balls were 2 PSI under regulation (13 PSI). They allow +/- 0.5 PSI, down to 12.5 PSI, and a ball that loses 1.5 PSI after measurement would be down to 11 PSI, which is 2 PSI under 13 PSI.
Them's the facts. In fact, if what Belichick says about this is true, you would expect the balls to later be at 11 PSI, without any illegal manipulation.
It's the league's turn to rebut this, or agree with it, or ignore it. But at this point, there's no evidence of wrongdoing, because the only "evidence" (both actual, and anonymously sourced) has been explained away.
Whatever happens with the Super Bowl, I just want to see a joint Belichick-Lynch press conference.
I wrote this song this week.
night's silence was broken
the levee was breached
they said you were coming
but you fell asleep
and i was just waiting
while you turned my world sideways and upside down
i started looking
i headed downtown
i told myself
you don't wanna be found
and i was just searching
looking all over and upside down
tired as ever
caught off guard
body is aching
working so hard
and i was just sleeping
but just for a minute, and upside down
one more night
one more place
one more push
one new face
and you were just leaving
you came round the corner and upside down
I wrote this song this week. night's silence was broken the levee was breached they said you were coming but you fell asleep and i was just waiting while you...
Shannon Watts is the face of a Bloomberg funded anti-gun group Moms Demand Action.
https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/557749462140194816
Man arrested for tackling man with gun at Walmart. Because America. http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/story/27896784/man-spots-gun-then-tackles-concealed-carry-license-holder … #gunsense
(incase she becomes embarrassed at her ignorance and deletes it, the above is copy and pasted from her tweet.
Shannon supports assaulting gun owners because they happen to exercise their second amendment right. Seems to me that one side of the debate is off the rails. Perhaps they are projecting their inability to control themselves on safe and legal gun owners.
Deputies arrested a man who spotted someone with a gun, followed him into a Walmart, and tackled him. The problem? The man with the gun had a concealed weapons permit and was carrying legally.
This.
Everyone knows you can't be that good without cheating. Except for the Yankees. And MJ. And the Spurs....and Kobe...and Joe Montana....and the Montreal Canadiens. And Michael Phelps.
These teenaged humans are so dumb in so many ways. They think a court has the lawful power to override an executive's lawful decisions or a legislature's lawful acts; they think that even if the court could do this, that they would have the facts to back it up; they think that there's only one side to the story; they think that their voice is worth more than the voices of those that disagree with them, especially when the policies they want the court to enforce would cause massive harm to many other people; and so on.
Worst of all, they simply do not understand the role of science in government. Even if we knew that the climate was continuing to warm (and we certainly do not) or knew what the effects would be (and we know that even less), policymaking in a republican-democratic society must be done according to the will of the people, as long as the rights of individuals are not harmed.
Science can only inform decisions, not make them for us. This is a lesson all humans who wish to engage in public discourse, even the young ones, need to understand: you can't simply say "I believe I am right, and I believe the facts prove I am right, so therefore everyone has to do what I say." That's not how this works.
For politicians who fail to act on climate change, Kelsey Juliana has a few words. "I want to remind them that we are their employer," said Juliana, 18, a native of Eugene, Oregon, and freshman at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina...
I remember the last time the Patriots were accused of violating the rules, based on anonymous sources, on the eve of a Super Bowl. It turned out that the story -- that the Patriots recorded video of a Rams practice -- was totally false (though lots of people still seem to believe it).
Forgive me for not believing in, or caring about, a similar unsubstantiated story now. We do know there's an allegation that a ball was deflated to some extent, and the NFL is investigating it. That's basically all we know. We do not know if it is true, and we do not know how it happened if it is true. And until we do know, I have no reason to care.
In case I wasn't clear in my last post: since the Great Depression, no President except for Ronald Reagan was followed by a President of his own party (except by death or resignation: FDR, JFK, and Nixon).
The reasons are obvious: people get tired of the party in power. That's why Presidents, if they stay in office long enough -- Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama -- have a Congress run by the opposing party. And when it comes time to replace the President, it's hard to get the people to pick a President of the same party.
Reagan was popular enough (above 50% through 1988) that Bush was able to pull it off. But Obama is significantly more unpopular.
The safe bet really is that the Republicans will win the presidential election, regardless of who the candidates are. Of course, exceptionally good or bad candidates could throw this off, as could a drastic increase in Obama's popularity 18 months from now, so I'm not making a prediction here. I'm just saying what's most likely.
No Democratic President has been followed by an elected Democratic President since almost before there was a Republican Party, when Franklin Pierce handed off the reins to James Buchanan in 1857. The only other Democrats to follow Democrats since then (Truman and Johnson) did so as Vice President when the President (Roosevelt and Kennedy) died in office.
I see much of what President Obama is doing, such as pretend that he is trying to institute a tax on big financial institutions, which he knows will never pass, as trying to be the first modern Democratic President to help hold the office for his party. He is going to continue to demonize the GOP in preparation for the 2016 elections. It'll be ugly, unfortunately.
(For reference, before Pierce, it happened once, from Jackson to Van Buren. For Republicans, it's been Grant to Hayes, Hayes to Garfield, Roosevelt to Taft, Coolidge to Hoover, and Reagan to Bush. There was also a string of three Democratic-Republican handoffs: Jefferson to Madison to Monroe to Adams.)
"My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren't heroes. And invaders r worse. But if you're on the roof of your home defending it from invaders who've come 7K miles, you are not a sniper, u are brave, u are a neighbor." -- Michael Moore
So ... it's not easy, but I am trying to make sense of this. Michael Moore is saying his uncle was worse than a coward because he invaded another country in World War II, where he was killed by a sniper. Moore apparently knows that this was a sniper, not someone defending his home, even though he killed Moore's worse-than-cowardly uncle, who was invading the sniper's home.
And somehow Kyle, who put himself in harm's way for his country, repeatedly, oftentimes being on the ground and being shot twice and involved in six IED blasts (that is, he wasn't always sniping), even after he left the service (helping other vets), even to his own death ... was a coward, according to Moore.
I am going to admit failure in my attempt to make sense of Michael Moore.
Filmmaker Michael Moore took to Twitter with his views on snipers as "American Sniper" hit theaters nationwide.
Perl v5.18 allows you to define named subroutines that exist only in the current lexical scope. These act (almost) just like the regular named subroutines that you already know about from Learning Perl, but also like the lexical variables that have limited effect. The problem is that the feature ...
My response:
Now think about that teacher being told repeatedly that it was their choice to be paid so pitifully low. They did it to themselves. If they don't like the wage they should quit.
It is their choice to take a job with that pay. It is not their choice to be paid a certain amount, per se -- if it were all their choice, they'd be paid more, usually -- but they choose to accept that level of pay. They did, absolutely, "do it to themselves." And if the pay is not worth it to them, then yes, absolutely, they should quit. There is no question about that.
The very fact that they do not quit means one, simple, necessarily true, thing: that the combined benefits of the job -- the wages, health benefits, whatever good will, etc. they get for doing the job -- is enough compensation to get them to do the job. If it was not, then they would quit.
I wouldn't tell them that "repeatedly," but if the subject came up, I would be honest with them and tell them these true facts.
Now imagine they heeded that advice prior to you taking their course. Imagine you instead received instruction from someone who cared so little about the students, and did the bare minimum to receive a paycheck and keep from being fired.
If that happened -- all good teachers held out for higher pay, so the only teachers left were the terrible ones -- then teacher pay would increase. The biggest reason teacher pay does not increase is because we believe we don't need to increase pay to keep good teachers.
So in a very real and necessarily true sense, yes, teachers keep their own wages low by not holding out for better wages.
Wouldn't you do anything you could to keep the inspiring teacher in the classroom?
Absolutely not. Would I pay them a million dollars? Ten million? One billion? Of course not.
But the fact is that, for now, we don't need to do more to keep that teacher in the classroom. They are in the classroom now, and as best I can tell, they aren't leaving.
Maybe Mitt Romney announced he might be running not because he wants to run, but because he wants to hurt Jeb Bush's fundraising.
Rather than shunning Cosby, as Peggy Drexler says -- despite the fact that he might be completely innocent -- we should shun people like Drexler, who demand that we punish people for merely being accused of a crime. I have literally zero evidence before me that Cosby did anything wrong, and therefore I have literally zero reason to shun him.
She says we should hold him accountable. She doesn't say for what. She is assuming he is guilty ... or simply wanting to hold him "accountable" regardless of whether he's guilty. If Cosby is innocent, isn't that ... well, blaming the victim?
And her assertion that if we don't shun Cosby we will enable future rape ... she goes from being a jerk to a dishonest and terrible person.
When is the time to for a women to defend an alleged serial rapist? Never.
"Joe Flacco is on a roll. He's won his last five playoff games!" A roll? Joe Flacco has only one playoff win in about 700 days.
In honor of the assassinated cartoonists in France, please RESHARE their cartoons all over the internet. Civilized society will not bow to Muslims.
#JeSuisCharlie #CharlieHebdo #FreeSpeech #France #Terrorists #Muslim #Islam #Massacre
In 2008, when the Canadian Islamic Congress attempted to criminalize my writing, we heard a lot of the usual hooey (courtesy of that eugenicist crackpot Oliver Wendell Holmes) that there was no right to shout fire in a crowded theatre. On the very last
Mark Steyn makes an excellent point on The Kelly File tonight ... Charlie Hebdo was one of only a handful of publications to print the Danish Mohammed cartoons a decade ago, so it's odd that now everyone is claiming "Je Suis Charlie."
That is, maybe if all these people actually were Charlie, then Charlie's staff wouldn't have been singled out for assassination.
When opinion content sparks death threats, every news publication that cares about freedom should publish that content. If you don't stand up to terrorists and yell "Non!," then vous n'êtes pas Charlie.
If the cops in Paris had heavier weaponry, they might've saved some lives, or captured/killed some terrorists.
I am not saying the Paris police should've done things differently. I don't know what the answer is, and maybe the answer is "no automatic weapons for cops." I do not know. I am saying only that this event should factor into discussions about "militarization of police."
Dear Internet:
Stop saying "misnomer" to mean "misunderstanding." "Misnomer" means "misnamed." I've heard this repeatedly in recent days, including from prominent (and supposedly well-educated) politicians and journalists, saying things like "the biggest misnomer about North Korea is that it has no technological capabilities. ..."
That isn't a misnomer! A misnomer would if North Korea were south of South Korea.
You can say the Affordable Care Act is a misnomer, because it is not affordable, and does not do anything about health care. But you can't say that a "misnomer about the ACA is that it has death panels." That's a "misunderstanding," not a "misnomer."
You're hurting my brain. Stop it.
This is necessary for me to be able to use "foo.bar" in Mac OS X, and have it resolve to "foo.bar.example.com".
Add "--AlwaysAppendSearchDomains" to the ProgramArgments to discoveryd in the file "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist". Then "sudo launchctl unload" that file, and "sudo launchctl load" that file. Bob's you're uncle!
This is a direct follow-on to this question. Before Yosemite, I'd add the "-AlwaysAppendSearchDomains" argument to the mDNSResponder plist file so that all local resolver lookups added the search
It is a new year. I can tell, because I can do math.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
