Quiz- Heavy Metal or Super-Hero?

Since Google hasn't yet decided to retire all the blogs on their platform to free up server space, I might as well make use of this forum. I had a fun idea recently that I thought could amuse the perverts and identity thieves of the Internet. It came to me as I was staring at the Marvel Comics trading cards I have posted on my walls. (That's right, baby, I'm living the dream!) I realized that something connects heavy metal and comic books, aside from obsessive fans with questionable social skills. Both bands that play variations on metal and characters from the comic books of my childhood tended to share similar naming conventions. They often incorporated weird portmanteaus, dark or violent imagery, references to mythology, and let's say "creative" spelling. They are so similar I think it might be hard to tell which is which.

With apologies to McSweeney's Internet Tendency I challenge the readers of this blog to take my quiz. From the following list, can you tell which names are of European black metal bands and which are characters immortalized in the 1993 Marvel Universe collection from SkyBox?

Quiz: European Black Metal Band or Marvel Comic Book Character?

(Answers below)

1- Grimfist
2- Black Axe
3- Arcturus
4- Moonblood
5- Motormouth
6- Bloodseed
7- Morg
8- Black Flame
9- Satyricon
10- Stryfe
11- Ragnarok
12- Die-Cut
13- Pantheon I
14- Infernum
15- Morbius
16- Tormentor
17- Venom
18- The Kovenant
19- Behemoth
20- Rage
21- Marduk
22- Slayback
23- Celestia
24- Night Thrasher
25- Drastique
26- Blackheart
27- Hellstorm
28- Demogoblin
29- Graveworm
30- Death's Head II
31- Hellhammer
32- Terror, Inc.
33- Forefather
34- Bloodaxe
35- Deathwatch
36- Nightfall
37- Heart Attack
38- Witchmaster
39- Darkhold Redeemers
40- Basilisk

*******************************************************************





ANSWERS:

Black Metal-1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, 36, 38

Marvel- 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 15, 20, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40

Both- 17  

My Big, Dumb Roommate

Portrait of the "author"

Anyone who has ever lived with an animal has likely spent some amount of time pondering what the animal is thinking. What must be happening in that creature's brain to make it behave the way it does? How does it see the world? Would the thoughts of a member of another species be completely alien to us, or are they more similar to us than we realize? Most importantly, what must animals think of the humans around them? This is my attempt to view myself through my pet cat's eyes. 


Let me tell you about this guy I live with. Frankly I cannot make sense of the way he acts most of the time. I won't name him here partly because it is in a weird language that I can never pronounce and am incapable of spelling. Mostly though, I don't want to share his name because I am about to tell you a bunch of weird stuff about him, and I don't want to embarrass him.

To start at the beginning of each day, my roommate sleeps like a rock. Long after I have woken up and started my routine he'll still be dead to the world. Many mornings I actually get worried about him. I start to think, "Is he sick or dead?" So before I can eat breakfast I'll go to his bedroom and try to wake him. Sometimes I'll just say something to get him out of bed. Other times I have to physically prod him, like poke his face or something, just to wake him up!

For someone who sleeps so late in the morning, he also seems to go to bed surprisingly early. Now I really shouldn't judge. I work from home, so I don't have to go out each day like he does. That also gives me the freedom to structure my sleep schedule more loosely by taking naps during the day and not collapsing as soon as the sun starts to set. There's just so much fun stuff to do after dark, I think it's a waste to spend all those hours in bed.

My roommate has known I like to stay up and do stuff at night since I moved in with him. Still every so often he will get out of bed and come looking for me. He acts as if he can't sleep while I am active in another room. I would apologize that whatever I was busy with was making so much noise it woke him up, but then every morning he's nearly impossible to wrest from slumber. Maybe he has some kind of condition that gives him variable hearing that peaks shortly after he falls asleep, but effectively deafens him after a few hours of sleep. Is that even medically possible?

On the topic of his senses, I do honestly think he has some sort of strange condition. He is way, WAY above average in height and weight, so it's possible he has an undiagnosed pituitary problem. It seems to effect the sensitivity and acuity of all of his senses in some way or another.

His vision can be quite accurate with good lighting. Though as an side, I'd argue he has strange taste in the colors he likes to put together. Whenever it gets dark though he is practically blind. If the apartment isn't lit up at night like it's noon on a summer day, he frequently bumps into things. Including and especially me!

He seems to have a very peculiar palate. Maybe he comes from a culture that favors different kinds of foods than I like, but I cannot fathom what he likes about some of the things he eats. He will often substitute vegetables or grains for meat in his meals. I love meat, can't get enough of it, but different strokes for different folks. However what really confounds me are all the baked goods, creams, confections, and other foods he eats because he claims they satisfy his "sweet tooth". On the rare occasion when I have tried something off his plate, I find it all pretty flavorless. It's as if he has some completely different sensory experience than I do when he eats that stuff.

Fine dining

Also, the condition that seems to affect his hearing, must leave him pretty hard of hearing most of the time. All the time I will hear loud noises that startle me, but he doesn't seem to hear them at all. I will snap to attention or coming running into a room, because I heard something that I fear may signal imminent danger. Then I notice my roommate sitting their as oblivious to the noises of the world as if he had triple-thick ear muffs on.

On the topic of his sense of smell, things can be kind of sensitive, so I don't want to say too much. However I have to note the very pungent personal odor my roommate seems to carefully cultivate.

All standards of beauty and grooming are cultural, so I don't bring this up to shame my roommate. He stinks, but I don't know if he's to blame. It isn't the odor of his body that is so powerful; it's all the stuff he puts on it. I wash myself regularly, as I was raised to do, and I don't drown myself in product when I do.He cleans himself much less often, but uses tons of very fragrant soaps, washes, scrubs and other things like that. I guess the idea is the aromatic nature of his cleansers will cover his BO, but he goes way  overboard.  He even rubs on additional scented lotions and creams all day long. Very often I can detect his approach by smell before he even enters the room.

My roommate is great in that he'll do all the shopping. I do try to contribute as well by bringing in some food for us. I was raised in a family of hunters. I still feel it is important to catch some of what you eat yourself. There are many species that would overwhelm the local environment if their numbers weren't regularly thinned by hunters. So I have no moral problem with killing the occasional wild critter to supplement my diet. My roommate seems repulsed by this though. It's not like he's a vegetarian or anything, so I don't understand why he gets so grossed. I admit I do use common areas to clean my kill which can get pretty messy. Still I think he just doesn't have the stomach to confront what it means to live a carnivorous lifestyle.

There are other perks my roommate offers. He also pays the bills for all the utilities. That makes sense since all of that was in his name already from when he lived in the apartment by himself. Besides we have a system in place by which I reimburse him for everything he does. I may not have much money but I always contribute in kind. The system seems to work well for both of us.

The "author" looking after some toys

I like to help out with some of the household chores. My roommate never asks me to, but I think it demonstrates the value of having me around. Very often I clear things of tables and desks. I put stray items away. However it seems that I don't do this "properly", because my roommate often gets frustrated. Sometimes he seems baffled that he can't find something only to discover that I stored it somewhere he didn't think to look. Somedays I wonder if I should even bother trying to clean up. At least when I make a mess (if I get sick or something), I try to keep it from spreading  and stinking up the place.

My roommate is very particular about where he sits down. He always needs a heavily padded seat and plenty of room to stretch out his gargantuan limbs. He is adamant that he has to have a lot of room to rest his big backside. If he catches me sitting somewhere he wants to flop down on he'll chase me away. I never do that. I am always more than happy to share a seat with him. It's fine though, because I will basically sit anywhere. Obviously I have a preference for warms spots. Also I like a nice, spot where I can tuck in my limbs and watch the world go by from a safe, protected place. Basically if I can fit somewhere I will sit there.

Having a roommate has conditioned me to want company around me at all hours of the day. To be honest I can get pretty lonely hanging out at home without him.  So I do tend to make a big deal of it when he comes home. I will yell and shout and try to display physical affection. Sometimes he acts like he's not in the mood to deal with my display of friendliness. I doubt he understands how much his arrival each day means to me.

There are times when I worry he actually might forget where he lives. As I've mentioned his senses are kind of dull, so it might be hard for him to even identify our home. Also he can be kind of absent-minded -not paying attention to details- and he's a bit of a bumbler. When I see him coming from the window I will start shouting at him. Mostly I'm just excited to see him, but I also don't know if he would know where to go without my hearing voice. He may find it annoying, but I can't help it. I just want to see him get home safely.

"Night gathers, and now my watch begins"

He has some real trouble understanding boundaries. He never seems able to identify the right time to start or stop fooling around. He will try to get me to play a game with him when I am clearly not interested. Then when we are in the middle of something really fun, he'll abruptly stop. Even when I am clearly still hyped up and raring to go, he'll just wander away. When I am feeling revved up and trying to burn off some extra energy after he has decided to observe his ridiculously early bedtime, he acts like I'm the jerk. Why can't he understand the simple body language clues that signal when I am down to clown versus when I want him to get lost? I guess some of it might me cultural, but I do wonder if he might be "on the spectrum".

The real problem is that my roommate really doesn't understand what is and isn't appropriate body contact. If he happens to be working on something around the apartment, and I so much as approach him to say hello he freaks out. Just because I ruffled some papers or sat on his keyboard, he acts like I am a nuisance. Then when I am relaxed and minding my own business, he'll start groping me out of nowhere!

Generally he limits these unsolicited touches to the top of my head or down my spine, but he has a real affinity for touching me in places I do NOT like to be touched. He seems to get a perverse joy our of running his hand along my belly and ribs (and sometimes he definitely makes contact with my nipples!), when it should be obvious to all that I am very protective of those parts of my body. Usually I only let my guard down when I feel very comfortable and safe. When he does this I tend to lash out at him, because it makes me feel like I must be on guard every moment of every day. Then he wonders how I appear to have so little energy.

With all that said, I still am glad to have my big, dumb roommate. For starters having a big body in the house, makes me feel safer. I wouldn't say we live in a bad neighborhood, but I definitely see some suspicious characters out the window. Having him around helps me feel protected. Also I really appreciate sharing my home with someone who seems to care so much about me. When I feel cold, he will even let me climb into bed with him to warm up. He may not be perfect, but I am glad he's mine.

The "author" and roommate sharing a rare moment of mutual understanding

 

A Mathematical Proof 2500 Years Too Late

As a teacher I learned that one of the most important steps in educating someone is understanding how they think through a problem. To best understand how you take in and retain information, you must "unpack" your own thought process. You have to acknowledge every step your mind takes when it studies, analyzes, and solves a problem. It can be difficult to slowly and deliberately review each step of your thinking process like this, but you will be rewarded with improved problem solving skills. It's just like taking apart a machine to understand how it works so you can then make better use of it and take better care of it.

I recently went through this process myself when I got a particular mathematical ant in my pants. I am currently reading a novel that made a mention of the Pythagorean Theorem in passing. The character in the novel had such natural mathematical talents that the Theorem made immediate intuitive sense to her. Reflecting on this savant-like brilliance, I tested my own understanding of the Theorem. Almost everyone who has studied geometry remembers Pythagoras's most famous equation,  "A squared plus B squared equals C squared." If you were a good enough math student, you also remember that this equation describes a natural relationship between the three-sides of any triangle that has one corner at an angle of 90-degrees a.k.a. a right triangle. My problem was I couldn't remember how to prove the Pythagorean Theorem. This seems especially silly to me because Pythagoras originally demonstrated his proof about 2500 years ago.

In mathematics it is never enough to simply trust that an equation or rule works, you must be able to prove it. You can't just demonstrate it inductively either. To prove Pythagoras it would not be acceptable to show that 3^2 + 4^2 = 5^2 (feel free to pause for a second and check that arithmetic if you want) and a triangle with sides measuring 3, 4 and 5 units would have a right angle. Mathematicians don't take a rule that applies to a handful of examples and say, "I assume it works like that all the time."  An effective proof takes established rules and applies them to a generic example so as to create a universally applicable statement.

Lacking the ability to leave questions unanswered, I took my ignorance as an opportunity to test my mathematical thinking. I also decided to write down my process so that I could "unpack" the logical process necessary to prove something in math. Because I have blogged about education topics in the past, I though some segment of my readers might take an interest in unraveling the bundle of thoughts involved. By making my geometric contemplations explicitly clear and simple, I hope to help fellow educators find ways to help their students think through math problems.

An illustrative triangle

To prove the Pythagorean Theorem I needed to use deductive reasoning. So I began by writing down all the facts I could think of that related to triangles. From those points I could begin building my reasons to demonstrate the relationship between the sides of a right triangle.

I began by noting that for any triangle the angles of the corners must add up to exactly 180 degrees. This makes intuitive sense, because you can imagine a triangle as a path that takes three turns to point you in the opposite direction. As we all know, a reversal of direction is 180 degrees -or pi radians if you prefer.

Next I recalled the equation for calculating the area of a triangle, Area= 1/2*base*height. You can see how this works with a simple thought experiment. If you take any triangle and add a conjoined copy like a reflection across one of the sides, you have quadrilateral (i.e. a 4 sided shape) with an area equal to the triangle's base time's the triangle's height. Naturally the area of the original triangle is half the area of this new quadrilateral or 1/2*base*height.

The last fragment of knowledge I drew on was a little more advanced. I knew that there was a relationship between the size of an angle at the corner of a triangle the length of the side opposite to it. This is the basis for those trigonometric functions that probably traumatized most people in geometry class, sine, cosine, and tangent. This makes intuitive sense when dealing with a right triangle. The largest side, called the hypotenuse, is always opposite of the 90 degree angle (which must be, by definition, the largest angle in the triangle).

An example of a 45-45-90 triangle

This is useful because it establishes that in a right triangle with two equal angles of 45 degrees each, a 45-45-90 triangle, the two sides other than the hypotenuse must be equal because they are opposite equal angles.

The reason I focused on the example of the 45-45-90 triangle is because it has some special properties. In the same way we could imagine a quadrilateral made out of two identical triangles, we can create one square out of four identical 45-45-90 triangles. Just picture the hypotenuse as one side of the square with the four 90 degree angles joined in the middles.

One square which contains four 45-45-90 triangles

We can analyze this square to help prove the Pythagorean Theorem (in case you forgot during my babbling about triangles facts, that was the point of this exercise). First, we establish the total area of the square. Since all sides of the square are the length of the hypotenuse,or side C, we can easily calculate its area. The area of a square is the same as any quadrilateral the length multiplied by the height. In a square those lengths are both the same as the length of one of the sides. So area = side * side = side^2. In this square the length of the side is called C so the area is C^2.

We also know that the total area of the square is the same as the combined area of the the four triangles. As discussed above the area of a triangle is given by the equation area = 1/2*base*height. You multiply the area of one of those triangles by 4 and you get this:

4 * area = 4 * (1/2*base*height) = 2*base*height = total area of square

Since the base and the height, which we can call side A and side B, are both the same length we can simplify the above equation for the square's area.

2*base*height = 2*side*side = 2 (side^2) = side^2 + side^2

We can substitute side A or side B in for either side length in this equation. That allows us to rewrite the area of the square as Area = A^2 + B^2 = C^2. This proves the Pythagorean Theorem for all 45-45-90 triangles. 

I started with proving the Theorem for 45-45-90 triangles, because I knew they had special properties that made them easier to work with. Unfortunately you can't create a simple square out of every right triangle. Still, knowing that I had worked the proof for one class of triangles, gave me an insight for working a broader proof. In order to prove Pythagoras correct for all triangles, I had to find a more sophisticated method that I could apply to any type of right triangle. I was able to work from the foundation of my earlier exercise by searching for ways to create squares using the sides of triangles.

My breakthrough came when I realized that any right triangle can be used to define a square area. (This was important because, as I would learn later, earlier generations had used this as the basis for other proofs of Pythagoras.) You can form a square by arranging four identical copies of so that their right angles form the corners of the square.

The square defined by the combines sides of  four copies of a triangle

In order to keep the sides equal length we'll combine all the triangle legs of length A against all the legs of length B. This gives us a square where the length of each side is A+B. Since we get the the area of a square by multiplying the length of a side by itself, we can calculate the are of this square in the following way:

Area = (A+B) * (A+B) = A^2 + 2AB + B^2

When you arrange the triangles in this manner, the hypotenuse of each triangle forms the side of another smaller square with the square discussed above. Since all the sides of this square have the length of the hypotenuse, which we call C, you can define the area of this square as C^2. The area of the square with sides of A+B can be redefined as the area of the hypotenuse square plus the area of the four triangles. Each of the triangles has an area of 1/2*A*B.

Area = C^2 + 4(1/2*A*B) = C^2 + 2AB

We know from our earlier definition of the larger square's area that the area is equal to A^2 + 2AB + B^2. Therefore

Area = A^2 + 2AB + B^2 = C^2 + 2AB

Because the two quantities are already equal, we can perform any mathematical operation to both sides and they will still be equal. In this case we can subtract the quantity 2AB from both sides because in exists in both expression. This leaves us with A^2 + B^2 = C^2. This proves the Pythagorean Theorem for all right triangles.

Just for clarity, I do not recommend any math teacher tries to explain the Pythagorean Theorem using my meandering thought process. Instead I hope teachers of all kinds appreciate that though my method may not seem perfect it achieved the desired result. The purpose of unpacking is often to find the twists and kinks in a person's reasoning, but it can also demonstrate that differing methods of thinking can be acceptable. Students need to know that there is no one right way to go about thinking. Every teacher should encourage students to unpack their thinking, so they can see that -however they go about reasoning- they can always find ways to sharpen their thinking. You can always improver your problem solving  even if it means solving a problem 2500 years too late.

Number Crunching the Oscars

There are many things a person can do in anticipation of the annual Academy Awards telecast. Plenty of people make plans to hold or attend an event filled with fellow cinephiles and much merriment. Some will immerse themselves into the prediction game, reading magazines and blogs about all the behind the scenes politicking and buzz mongering. Hopefully, quite a few people will use the attention the Oscars shine on the nominees as an inspiration to take in some of the talked-about films. Then there is that tiny and bizarre minority -no, minority is too generous, splinter faction is probably more accurate- that decides the best way to celebrate the year in movies is to do a bunch of math.

In my defense, I blame the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for my recent rush of calculations. They recently adopted a few changes in the Best Picture category that have greatly complicated matters. First they decided to double the number of movies nominated for the top prize from five to ten. Okay easy enough, just print bigger ballots. Then they noticed that a movie could garner as little as 10.01% of the vote and win the most coveted award in Hollywood. Put it in other words, given the Academy has about 6,000 members, 5,400 of them could hate one of the ten nominated movies, but if 601 people vote for it it would be recorded as the best film of the year.

Rather than allow a highly fractured vote lead to an embarrassing result, someone proposed a new kind of ballot called "preferential voting" or "instant runoff". This basically means the Academy members rank the ten nominated film from their number one choice down. (On a personal note, I recently participated in an instant runoff election, and I can say from experience it was fun, easy and seemed like it could work in more elections.) Once the ballots are collected, the fine folks at PriceWaterhouse Coopers -a barrel making firm if I understand the definition of cooper correctly- then check to see if any film got a majority of the first place votes. Unless a film is an instant winner (unlikely to happen unless one film has an overwhelming level of support), the tabulators start weeding out the nominees that received few first place votes and redistributing their votes among the remaining films.

Since this is all a little confusing, I think it might be best to walk through a simulation of how the vote might break down among this year's Best Picture nominees. The inimitable Nate Silver -the only other person on Internet I could find nerdy enough to mix math with the Oscars- performed a similar exercise already. However he crunched his numbers before the nominees were announced, though he did accurately predicted nine of the ten. Also he used critics rankings, because he could find reliable data for them, instead of attempting to gauge the opinion of the AMPAS voters, a much trickier proposition. Fortunately for you, I don't have Silver's commitment to accuracy to worry about or his stellar reputation for predictions to preserve, so I can make a foolhardy attempt to predict how members of the Academy might rank the films. I will combine my knowledge of past Oscar races, my understanding of the AMPAS membership, and a watchful eye to the current dynamics of the awards season to estimate the level of support each nominee can expect.

We can begin breaking down the vote distribution by breaking down the membership of the Academy. Between the 6,000 AMPAS members and the 15 branches within the Academy, I can identify 4 major voting blocs, each based on different definitions you can use to determine the Best Picture of the year.

First you have those voters who believe that the Best Picture award should go the grandest film of the year. They like seeing movies you could describe as "epic" winning the top prize, films like Gladiator and The Lord of the Rings. This group probably contains mostly producers and directors, with some cinematographers, writers and a few actors mixed in. I estimate these voters account for about 35% of the total number of Best Picture votes.

Balancing out the first group you have those who believe that "best picture" means "most moving". They want to reward the movies that have the strongest emotional impact. Recently these voters likely supported Best Picture winners like Million Dollar Baby and Slumdog Millionaire. I would say a lot of the actors in the Academy vote with this block along with some of the writers and directors, probably a fair number of the artistic members who do art direction, makeup, and costuming too. These voters seem to represent around 35% of the vote as well.

The third major group comes from the less famous branches of AMPAS, the ones who are nominated in the so called "artistic and technical categories". Since every member can vote in the Best Picture category this undervalued lot can have a powerful impact on the race. They tend to hold that the Oscar brand should fall to those films they deem the most well made or best crafted. The last two Best Pictures, The Hurt Locker and No Country For Old Men, seem to have had strong support from this bloc. All told they likely comprise 25% or so of the Academy.

Finally, you have a small group that can play a big role if there is ever a close race. These are producers, publicists, and studio executives who simply -some might say cynically- contend that the "best" movies are the one's that make the most money. So their rankings of the years films pretty much mirror the final box office earnings. Their support helped put Titanic over the top to earn a record number of Oscars. Last year they probably supported Avatar, but the other factions trumped them. They probably add up to no more than 5% of the votes available for Best Picture.

So if you divide the Academy into these four groups, you likely can guess which groups would vote for which nominees, and therefore how much support each nominee has. It is important to remember that each group will likely vote for more than one film, and many nominees will receive votes from more than one group. Also, I will assume that each group has a selection of movies that they all rank above the others. So you when a movie that had a share of the "most touching" vote is eliminated it's votes will probably go the other emotionally powerful movies before they go anywhere else. With all of that explained, I think we can begin breaking down the actual votes.

Grandest Picture Bloc- 35% of the total 1st place votes
- The King's Speech: 35% of the bloc vote = 12.25% of the total vote
- The Social Network: 30% bloc = 10.5% total
- Inception: 20% bloc = 7% total
- True Grit: 10% bloc = 3.5% total
- Winter's Bone: 5% bloc = 1.75% total
These are all the options from among the nominees which seem to portray a grand vision, or tell an ambitious story. In some cases this is because of the amount of work involved (for period pieces like True Grit or The King's Speech). Sometimes it its because of the level of technical sophistication that the filmmakers employed (such as in manking The Social Network or Inception). Also a film could just have overachieved and accomplished a lot with relatively meager means (as I believe some will argue Winter's Bone managed to do).


Most Powerful Movie Bloc- 35% of the total 1st place votes
- The King's Speech: 40% of the bloc vote = 14% of the total vote
- The Fighter: 20% bloc = 7% total
- Black Swan: 15% bloc = 5.25% total
- The Kids Are All Right: 10% bloc = 3.5% total
- Winter's Bone: 5% bloc = 1.75% total
- Toy Story 3: 5% bloc = 1.75% total
- 127 Hours: 5% bloc = 1.75% total
Among this group you can find the nominees that have been most praised for the emotional power the convey. Here you will notice some overlap with the first group, most notably The King's Speech. While other films from the first group have been left out. I am yet to hear anyone call either Inception or The Social Network "the most touching movie of the year".

Best Made Film Bloc- 25% of the total 1st place votes
- The Social Network: 30% of the bloc vote = 7.5% of the total vote
- The King's Speech: 20% bloc = 5% total
- The Fighter: 15% bloc = 3.75% total
- True Grit: 15% bloc = 3.75% total
- Inception: 10% bloc = 2.5% total
- Winter's Bone: 5% bloc = 1.25% total
- 127 Hours: 5% bloc = 1.25% total
Now all of the nominees have to have been well crafter movies to even be considered for an Oscar. However, I believe this list contains those pictures who derive the biggest chunk of their merit from their technical values. Each of these nominees has impressive filmmaking elements that made it stand out from the other movies released in 2010.

Biggest Hit Bloc- 5% of the total 1st place votes
- Inception: 60% of the bloc vote = 3% of the total vote
- Toy Story 3: 40% bloc = 2% total
Finally this group has only two movies with big box office earnings to vote for. In most years I would imagine the vote might be pretty monolithic -whichever nominee earned the most gets the most votes. However this year I think the voters will split between the highest grossing movie of the year, Toy Story 3, and the biggest money-maker among the live action films. I say this because some members of the Academy still believe that animated films should not be compared to live action films. They involve different kinds of filmmaking and they generally aim to accomplish different goals. Therefore any method of comparison, even total grosses, can't be easily evaluated between animated and live action films. Do you reward Toy Story 3 for selling so many tickets, especially when you earn less off a children's ticket? Do you support Inception for bringing droves of adults to the cinema, something Hollywood has struggled to do for years? There's no easy answer, so I predict a split vote here.

Let's put all that information into one chart, so you can see how much of the vote each nominee received.

Total Vote- Round 1
- The King's Speech: 31.25%
- The Social Network: 18%
- Inception: 12.5%
- The Fighter: 10.75%
- True Grit: 7.25%
- Black Swan: 5.25%
- Winter's Bone: 4.75%
- Toy Story 3: 3.75%
- The Kids Are All Right: 3.5%
- 127 Hours: 3%

None of the nominees have a majority, though The King's Speech has a huge lead over all the others. That means there is no instant winner and the voting no goes to multiple rounds. In each round the film with the lowest share of the 1st place vote is eliminated it's votes are then redistributed to those nominess that remain. The votes are spread out by going down the ballot to the highest ranked film still in contention and giving that film an additional 1st place vote.

The first film to go is 127 Hours. I know it feels like losing an arm to lose one of these nominees (rimshot!), but that is how the process works. We start by identifying where the votes for 127 Hours came from then determine which of the survivors profit from the departure of this film.

Some of the Most Powerful Movie vote, 5%, went to 127 Hours, so we can split that among some of the other touching films in contention. This is how I expect those votes to break down:

1st Place- 127 Hours
- Black Swan: 30%
- The Fighter: 30%
- The King's Speech: 20%
- Winter's Bone: 20%

To clarify what these numbers represent, I am dividing up just 1.75% of the total 1st place votes. When I say The King's Speech gets 20% of the votes from people who judged 127 Hours to be the emotionally touching movie of the year, I am say one-fifth of 1.75% of the Academy's 6,000 members, or about 21 people, would now have their 1st place vote go to The King's Speech instead of their original pick.

Of cour 127 Hours got some votes for being the best made film of the year as well. Here I have a different pool of films among which to divide the 1st place votes. I would predict the votes would spread out like:

1st Place- 127 Hours
- The Social Network: 30%
- The Fighter: 30%
- Winter's Bone: 20%
- The King's Speech: 10%
- Inception: 10%

After I calculate the effect these changes have on the total 1st place vote distribution, I can make an updated chart of the standings.

Total Vote- Round 2
- The King's Speech: 31.725%
- The Social Network: 18.375%
- Inception: 12.625%
- The Fighter: 11.65%
- True Grit: 7.25%
- Black Swan: 5.775%
- Winter's Bone: 5.35%
- Toy Story 3: 3.75%
- The Kids Are All Right: 3.5%
- 127 Hours

Since we still lack any nominee with over 50% of the total vote the process continues. Next on the chopping block we have the critically acclaimed dramedy, The Kids Are All Right. Since this fillm got all of it's support from one bloc of voters, the Most Powerful Movie crowd, it is pretty easy to divvy up the votes appropriately. I imagine that the supports of The Kids Are All Right, a largely comedic film with an indy vibe, will have ranked other films that are humorous or independent highly. Thus:

1st Place- The Kids Are All Right
- The King's Speech: 50%
- Toy Story 3: 30%
- Winter's Bone: 20%

That brings our updated standings to:

Total Vote- Round 3
- The King's Speech: 33.475%
- The Social Network: 18.375%
- Inception: 12.625%
- The Fighter: 11.65%
- True Grit: 7.25%
- Black Swan: 5.775%
- Winter's Bone: 6.05%
- Toy Story 3: 4.8%
- The Kids Are All Right
- 127 Hours

Now we move on to Toy Story 3 and it's supporters. The folks who voted for it because it was the highest earning movie of the year are easy to account for. All of their 1st place votes would just go to the next big money maker, Inception. The people who held it as the most touching of the nominees will require a more involved breakdown. This block no longer represents just the 1.75% of the Academy that gave it a 1st place vote originally. Now we also have to spread out the votes it received as a result of other films getting dropped. That means we now have 2.8% of the vote to work with. (I know that's a staggering amount of change to deal with. You might want to take a second and catch your breath before you move on.) Here is how I would imagine the votes are divided among this group:

1st Place- Toy Story 3
- The King's Speech: 70%
- The Fighter: 10%
- Black Swab: 10%
- Winter's Bone: 10%

Factoring in those adjustments, and the earlier bump to Inception's standings, we have these updated standings:

Total Vote- Round 4
- The King's Speech: 35.435%
- The Social Network: 18.375%
- Inception: 14.625%
- The Fighter: 11.93%
- True Grit: 7.25%
- Black Swan: 6.055%
- Winter's Bone: 6.33%
- Toy Story 3
- The Kids Are All Right
- 127 Hours

In an interesting twist, Black Swan, which started with more of the 1st place vote share than Winter's Bone, is actually the next movie eliminated. Please note that all of this has been my speculation. I cannot actually know if more members of the Academy ranked Winter's Bone high on their ballot than did for Black Swan. I do however believe that this sort of change in the standings is possible, and even likely, once you start eliminating nominees and redistributing the vote. Having said that and remembering that only films still active can receive new 1st place votes, this is how I break down the vote:

1st Place- Black Swan
- The King's Speech: 60%
- The Fighter: 20%
- Winter's Bone: 20%

Those adjustments mean these are the new standings:

Total Vote- Round 5
- The King's Speech: 39.068%
- The Social Network: 18.375%
- Inception: 14.625%
- The Fighter: 13.141%
- True Grit: 7.25%
- Black Swan
- Winter's Bone: 7.541%
- Toy Story 3
- The Kids Are All Right
- 127 Hours

The changing share of the votes bring another intriguing change. Winter's Bone has now lept True Grit as well. This is mostly because True Grit has not gained any new votes from the eliminated movies. Part of this is because a lot of the movies we've dumped drew their support from different sources than True Grit. Another factor is that some films may be widely liked, but not widely loved. This year True Grit seems to be a good example of that. Without many people outside of it's ardent supporters ranking it highly on their ballot, it doesn't stand much of a chance of winning Best Picture.

The voters who considered True Grit the biggest and most ambitious movie of the year probably split their other top votes like this:

1st Place- True Grit
- The King's Speech: 40%
- Inception: 30%
- The Social Network: 20%
- Winter's Bone: 10%

While those who rated True Grit as the best crafted film likely have their support spread like this:

1st Place- True Grit
- The King's Speech: 30%
- Inception: 30%
- The Social Network: 20%
- The Fighter: 10%
- Winter's Bone: 10%

I would like to note that in this round I assumed Inception would benefit strongly from the elimination of the only other film with strong action/adventure content. That means the new standings look like this:

Total Vote- Round 6
- The King's Speech: 41.593%
- The Social Network: 19.825%
- Inception: 16.8%
- The Fighter: 13.516%
- True Grit
- Black Swan
- Winter's Bone: 8.266%
- Toy Story 3
- The Kids Are All Right
- 127 Hours

Now we have to finally cast aside Winter's Bone. Since it is being removed that means we have a few points to consider when spreading out the ballots it had gained. First we can see that the Grandest Picture bloc has begun to shift. Because the people who rated Winter's Bone high likely are comfortable voting with a smaller skill picture that has a big vision, I predict The King's Speech will benefit more than Inception or The Social Network. Also I expect that the voters in the other corner will favor The King's Speech over The Fighter. I say this because I can look to the trends in the earlier vote distributions. Anytime group of voters that gave a boost to Winter's Bone tended to favor The King's Speech pretty strongly. That translates to a big boost The King's Speech compared to modest gains for the others.

The Grandest Picture vote would divide like this:
1st Place- Winter's Bone
- The King's Speech: 60%
- The Social Network: 30%
- Inception: 10%

The Most Powerful Movie vote would divide thusly:

1st Place- Winter's Bone
- The King's Speech: 70%
- The Fighter: 30%

This is what would happen with the Best Made Film vote:

1st Place- Winter's Bone
- The King's Speech: 40%
- The Social Network: 20%
- The Fighter: 20%
- Inception: 20%

Which means our updated standings would now be this:

Total Vote- Round 7
- The King's Speech: 46.6067%
- The Social Network: 20.83%
- Inception: 17.385%
- The Fighter: 15.1783%
- True Grit
- Black Swan
- Winter's Bone
- Toy Story 3
- The Kids Are All Right
- 127 Hours

Finally we have reached a point where a movie is within easy striking distance of the 50% mark. That means this next round should be enough to give The King's Speech the golden man-shaped trophy. This is especially true when you acknowledge that The King's Speech is the only film left that had the support of the Most Powerful Movie Bloc, so it now has 35% of the 1st place votes all to itself.

Breaking down the votes from the people who named The Fighter the best crafter movie of the year, I estimate this is how things would stand:

1st Place- The Fighter
- The King's Speech: 40%
- The Social Network: 40%
- Inception: 20%

Add it all up and you finally have a clear winner.

Total Vote- Round 8
- The King's Speech: 58.86%
- The Social Network: 27.78%
- Inception: 18.36%
- The Fighter
- True Grit
- Black Swan
- Winter's Bone
- Toy Story 3
- The Kids Are All Right
- 127 Hours

What can we learn from any of this? (Other that I am a very odd duck to devote so much arithmetic to such a trivial matter) The first thing that strikes me is that asking one of ten nominees to get a majority of the vote means it is unlikely any movie will ear the Oscar after only a few rounds of voting. Further I find it interesting that the three films left standing, The King's Speech, The Social Network, and Inception, can each point to an area where they had a strong body of support, the Most Powerful vote, the Best Made vote and the Biggest Hit vote respectively. It would seem those campaigning for any of the nominees would be well served by targeting a demographic that can give you a solid block of votes, then hoping that as films get eliminated you will rise up. Also, I like the fact that in this exercise we saw how Winter's Bone was able to climb the standings by being broadly supported if not having the level of high profile support the others did. This suggest to me that any high quality film could wind up winning Best Picture even if it doesn't have the box office numbers or publicity of other movies.

So does any of this mean anything? Not really, it was mostly an exercise I came up with to amuse myself and hopefully my audience. The only way to know if I am correct in my estimations, and that The King's Speech will walk away as the big winner is to tun in and watch the Oscars on February 27th. I know I'll be watching, and I hope you do to.

Tony's/NBA Live Blogging Pt. 4

In a test to see if anyone else besides me cares about both pro-basketball and show tunes, I am live blogging about the Tony Awards and the NBA Finals. We have a close game heading into the 4th and some top awards still to be announced, so it should be an exciting end of an evening here. Let's get back to it . . .

10:00- Another award goes to God of Carnage. This time it's for Marcia Gay Harden's performance. It's nice that she has another award to accompany the Oscar she won and everybody forgot about.

10:03- Kobe makes some free throws to push the Lakers lead to 3. Of course with the way Orlando loves shooting from outside, a 3 point lead is essentially no lead at all.

10:05- Over on Broadway, the cast of Billy Elliot is putting on a dance number so psychedelic it makes me think I have been hitting my gin a little too hard. Either that or this is just some number from Hair that I don't recognize because I repressed the memory of it along with most of my memories of that musical.

10:09- I love that the Magic brought back their injured star point guard, Jameer Nelson, for the Finals after the back up point guard, Rafer Alston, got them this far by performing superbly in the playoffs. Now as Game 2 winds down and they trail L.A., they have neither of those players on the floor. Instead, Stan Van Gundy is playing chronic underperformer J. J. Redick at point. In Broadway terms this would be like if your star had to bow out half way through the show's engagement, then the understudy steps up admirably, then on closing night in the final act you send out some chorus member in the leading role.

10:14- Harvey Fierstein comes out to present an award and creep out Middle America.

10:15- The prize for revival of a play goes to The Norman Conquests, and it looks their producers account for half the people in the audience. I don't think there were that many people on stage for the opening number.

10:19- Sure enough God of Carnage takes the award for Best Play. They promptly ask the writer to say a few words in her humorous foreign accent.

10:20- Oooooh, a tough call goes against the Lakers and Jack Nicholson (The No. 1 celebrity Laker fan) looks like he's going to reenact the last half-hour of The Shining. Maybe the officials were told to make sure this series goes more than 4 games so the NBA can earn back the money they lost by not getting the LeBron v. Kobe match-up they wanted.

10:24- Well the player the Magic were using to defend Kobe Bryant just fouled out with 3 minutes left to play. I think Kobe is about to set a record for most points scored in 180-seconds to end this game. Right now he only has 20 points. How much you want to bet he'll end the game with at least 30?

10:26- Over at the Tonay Award they are presenting a life-time achievement award to Jerry Herman. This is the sort of thing that should come much earlier in the broadcast, but the producers put it off because they didn't what to weird out too many prime time viewers with an effeminate elderly man in an ill-fitting tuxedo.

10:30- As the NBA game hits 2:40 left, Kobe Bryan manage to turn slipping on his own feet into a trip to the free throw line.

10:32- Then the Magic make two good shots to regain the lead with less than 90 second to go. I'm so tense I might have to empty the gin bottle. Not because alcohol clams me down, but because I might need an empty vessel convenient so I don't pee my pants.

10:34 and 40 seconds- I flip back to the Tony's and see that the cast of Hair is putting on their showcase performance.

10:34 and 45 seconds- I flip back to the basketball game, even though I know they're at commercial right now.

10:36- After the Lakers tie the game, the Magic suffer for not having a true point guard on the court as players are forced to create their own shots and one of them winds up forcing up a bad attempt and effectively giving the ball back to the Lakers with the game tied.

10:38- Kobe goes for the game winner. It's blocked from behind! THEN THE MAGIC GRAB THE BALL AND CALL TIME OUT! THE BEST JUMP SHOOTING TEAM IN THE LEAGUE REGAINS POSSESSION WITH 0.6 SECONDS LEFT!!!! Uh, where's that bottle?

10:43- The Magic will try to inbound the ball to make a game winning shot. The ball is in . . . It's up . . . And it just barely rims out. We're going to overtime, but only because the fates have decided this game is too much fun to stop now.

10:45- David Hyde Pierce comes out to give the award for Lead Actress in a Musical and receives some gentle ribbing from Neil Patrick Harris. I imagine things have been tense between them ever since they Pierce stole Harris' whole "I go by my full name" gimmick.

10:46- The award goes to Alice Ripley and she starts bellowing into the mike for no good reason. I really think they should tell the nominees to limit the yelling during acceptance speeches, if only to protect unwary home viewers with powerful sound systems.

10:49- The prize for Actor in a Musical goes to the three kids that play Billy Elliot. Now I'm really confused first one person can get multiple nominations, then three people can share one nomination. This is getting confusing. As you might imagine the acceptance speech involving three boys starts pretty awkwardly then transforms into one of the most touching moments of the evening.

10:52- Now that the NBA game is in overtime, Derek Fisher decides it's about time to start playing like a veteran and makes a steal on a key play. Hey Fish, so nice of you to show up. I though Kobe was the only Laker that cared about winning a championship.

10:53- I check back in with the Tony's and discover that the cast of Jersey Boys is performing for the usual no good reason. I turn back just in time to watch Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol team up for a 3-point play. I'm really not sure why I'm not paying more attention to the basketball game.

10:56- Hedo Turkoglu who took the ball away from the Lakers at the end of regulation pulls another great defensive play. This gives J. J. Redick a chance to make his second field goal of the game. Again this guy is playing in overtime over any of their more experienced better qualified players.

10:59- Great timing! I turn back to the Tony Awards just in time to see Billy Elliot win the award for Best New Musical. It's so nice to see that the American Theater Wing have the courage to give a musical adapted from movie from 9 year ago a prize for being "new". Then again they could have given it to the musical version of Shrek (based on a movie that's 8 years old which was adapted from a kids book from 1990), or the jukebox musical that's pretty much a compilation of rock hits from the 80's. I guess what I'm saying is Next to Normal got robbed

11:00- Great timing part 2! I return to the b-ball in time to see the Magic nail a 3-pointer shot to get the game back to within three, which again for Orlando is pretty much like being tied.

11:03- While the refs endlessly review whether or not that shot was a three pointer I return to the Tony's and watch NPH finally get his chance to sing. He's singing a tribute to the winners to the tune of "Luck Be a Lady Tonight". I figure he demanded a chance to sing, and the producers were so desperate for any host other than Nathan Lane they gave in.

11:05- Free throw shooting down the closing stretch has given the Lakers a lead in the final seconds. The Magic's last second barrage fails to produce any points and the Lakers hold on to win Game 2, and continue their potential sweep. I was pleased to see that the Magic played well enough to at least make a game of it. Let's hope that they can take it up another level in the next couple games, and actually turn this into a competitive series.

11:11- Well the credits have run for the Tony's and the basketball players have given their post-game interviews. I guess that means it's time to go to bed before the local news sucks me in with some human interest story to video of a high-speed chase.

Thank you for reading this. Be you a drama fanatic who harbors a soft-spot for hoops, or a Kobe fan that likes to hum show tunes, I'm glad this blog offers some place where people with diverse passions can come together. If the Super Bowl and the Oscars are ever on the same night, we'll have to do this again.

Tony's/NBA Live Blogging Pt. 3

I am attempting a live blog of both the NBA Finals and the Tony Awards, an unforgiving labor of delusion. Thankfully the Finals are at half-time, unfortunately the Tony's don't have a half-time (unless you count the performances from the revivals). So let's get back to it . . .

9:12- Liza beats out Will Ferrell for yet another award. She then proceeds to give an acceptance speech where she pretends that she wasn't a mortal lock to win any award that she's nominated for. Liza, these are your people they love you way more that Will Ferrell or those crazy kung fu performance artists.

9:16- Wow, the Tony producers do a terrific job of handling some technical problems during a live musical performance. I think the Orlando Magic's coach Stan Van Gundy should learn a thing or two from them, because the Magic aren't doing much to adjust their game plan.

9:21- In fairness to the folks at the NBA, their color commentators do a much better job of faking camaraderie than the people presenting Tony's do when they are forced to banter.

9:30- It looks like it's going to be a big evening for Billy Elliot. I'm pretty sure that if they could they would give a separate award to each of the Billies.

9:32- So far the Tony Awards are loading up on my childhood heroes. We've already had John Stamos (Uncle Jessie) and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia). If they find some way to incorporate that kid that played Data in The Goonies and Short Round in Temple of Doom, they'll have hit my personal icons trifecta.

9:39- I have been a little distracted by a phone conversation with my parents, but that slam by Kobe would make anybody pay attention.

9:43- Back in Radio City Music Hall, I guess NPH just told an inside joke that I didn't get, then followed it up with a joke about being inside Jessica Lange that she didn't like.

9:44- Dammit! Jeff Daniels loses to Geoffrey Rush. I guess the voters had to give it to him, since, according to the reviews, he's about the only thing making that play worth watching. If only they decided who made the NBA Finals using that criteria, then LeBron James would definitely be in, if only just out of pity for having to carry the Cavaliers, and the entire economy of Cleveland.

9:47- Over in the Staples Center, the Magic have actually been guarding a narrow lead for a little while here. I guess the Lakers decided they shouldn't break up their streak of taking prolonged periods off during each playoff game this year.

9:50- The Tony's are trying one of those in memoriam tributes like they do at the Oscars. The problem here is that every year at least a few people in the Oscar tribute will be legitimately famous. I don't think anyone outside of Radio City Music Hall remembers who any of the people these people were. Sorry theater nerds, but it is a pretty insular community.

9:53- I flip back to the b-ball and find the Lakers took the lead back (despite the fact that the last play I saw was Lamar Odom making a stupid foul). Immediately the Magic hit some jump shots and get back in front. I really don't know what you can do to stop the Magic when their shooters are hot. I mean other than spiking their Gatorade.

9:54- Kobe misses a 3-pointer to end the 3rd quarter. Is there any doubt that if this were the end of the 4th he would make that shot.

This seems like a good time to publish this update and get geared up for the 4th quarter/major awards. I just hope my giant bottle of gin will last.

To be continued . . .

Tony's/NBA Live Blogging Pt. 2

Let's keep this crazy experiment to merge the interests of Harlem and Greenwich Village. . .

8:23- Smart decision by the producers to front load the Shrek material before its target demographic's bedtime.

8:27- I get tossing in a jab at Wicked in the Shrek musical number, since Shrek is all about parodying fairy tales. I am just worried that might date the musical a little. It's going to be hard enough to revive the show once America turns on Eddie Murphy after he releases Norbit 2 and they have to completely rewrite all of Donkey's lines.

8:29- I know live bloggers aren't supposed to take sides, but I will go ahead and admit that I am rooting for Jeff Daniels over James Gandolfini tonight.

8:31- WOW! The legend Angela Lansbury wins it! I don't care what Tim Burton says; Ms. Lansbury will always be Mrs. Lovett to me.

8:34- The producers are obviously making an effort to cram as much popular material into the top of the broadcast as possible. I can't think of any other reason to include a performance from Mama Mia!, the musical that just had a hit movie spun out of it, when most of tonight's nominees haven't gotten much screen time yet.

8:38- Wait! I forgot I was also supposed to be watching the finals. Ack! I missed the first quarter already.

8:40- Okay I may not know everything about the Orland Magic's offensive game plan, but I am pretty sure that being tied at 15 after 12 minutes is not how they were hoping things would go, considering they need to seriously score a ton of points in a hurry to outpace the Lakers.

8:41- Checking back in with the Tony Awards, I notice Harris crediting Samantha Mathis as his first on-screen kiss. Does that also imply that mean she was responsible for his first thought of "Hmmm, something about this doesn't seem quite right."?

8:43- I have to say I am seriously disappointed that Will Ferrell didn't come out dressed ad President Bush in a flight suit.

8:45- America Theater Wing, you really want to nominate both Elton John and Dolly Parton for the same award then give it neither of them.

8:46- Since the NBA Finals are at commercia,l I will stick with the theater nerds and join my Mom in cheering the dude from In The Heights.

8:48- Back in the world of hoops, I just saw L.A.'s Andrew Bynum benefit from a foul that apparently was committed by someone on the grassy knoll. I would rate my surprise that the Lakers are getting favorable calls from the officials in L.A. as around a 0.00001 on a scale of 1 to 100.

8:51- Does it really benefit Orlando to try pushing the tempo at this point? It seems to me that just means they miss 3-pointers faster.

8:52- Well the NBA is taking a TV timeout with the score tied at 26. Something makes me think David Stern has sent in the order to keep this game close until at least 7pm Pacific so they can get all the west coast voters expecting a Laker's blowout to actually tune in.

8:55- Over on CBS, Susan Sarandon is giving Bernadette Peters a run as the leading lady in Broadway's "Over 50 and Looking Foxy" rankings.

8:57- Multiple nominations in one category for one person always leaves me confused. It seems to me that it is theoretically possible for one person to wrap up the win just by claiming every nomination. This is why I am going to write 5 brilliant plays then release them all in one year.

9:01- Sorry Tony's, but I am just not ready to put up with hair metal coming immediately after West Side Story. Note that I have no problem with it cleansing my musical palate after a sampling from Hair though. Draw your own conclusions from that.

9:05- Switching over to basketball again, I see the Magic have gone away from rapidly jacking up 3's pushing the temp and are now taking about two minutes to set up their bad shots.

9:08- After Rashard Lewis gets out the d-fib panels and revives Orlando's offense we go to the half Lakers- 40 magic- 35.

9:10- Since both channels are at commercial, I will use this time to publish this update and try calling my Mom (the person responsible for my enjoyment of live theater, so I guess she's partly to blame for this bizarre blogging experience).

To be continued . . .

Bold Live Blogging Event- Tony's/NBA

Well, I finally got my computer out of the shop. I can't think of a better way to celebrate than to try a little live blogging. Since I am always trying to expand the demographic reach of this blog - my current audience is principally white men, ages 18-35, who are blood relatives of me- I decided to make a bold attempt to ensnare as many people as possible. Tonight I will be simultaneously blogging about the Tony Awards and the NBA Finals. Since I may be the only person on Earth highly interested in both events I am hoping this event might bring together people from some pretty diverse backgrounds. At the very least I expect to create one of the most confusing combination of stream of consciousness notes ever created on Internet. So let's make it happen . . .

7:52- My Totino's pizza is in the oven. I have my buffalo wings on the way, and a giant bottle of gin ready to go. I can't think of a better way to watch "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney".

7:54- The proceedings are interrupted by a phone call from my wife, who is out of town for the evening and thus spared the awkward experience of watching me give myself the first blogging related hernia in medical history.

8:00- The Tony telecast opens with what I guess are the three Billy Elliots, on stage together. Soon we're cross-cutting into the various musicals up for awards. And half of the audience that was watching 60 Minutes just felt a little queasy.

8:04- And my stupid digital TV tuner just lost the signal. Does anyone else find the digital "skipping" that comes with DTV much more annoying than plane old static?

8:08- So far we've had Elton John, Stockard Channing, Bret Michaels, Dolly Parton, and Liza Minnelli have all crossed the same stage within the span of a few minutes. Yet somehow I imagine the most excited home audiences got was when the small children who are watching this with their mothers saw Shrek.

8:11- Neil Patrick Harris everybody! You have to give it up to a guy with a generation of girls crushing on him to take the risk of becoming the most prominent openly gay American actor. Doogie, you'll never know how many girls would have let you play doctor with them.

8:15- We have our first award of the night. I like to try guessing which nominees are most likely to win based on the level of applause in the audience when their name is announced. This doesn't work at the BET awards where a large posse can throw you off.

8:17- Someone just thanked their mother. Everybody take a shot!

8:18- First commercial. Seems like a good time to post the first update and snag a little chow.

To be continued . . .

History with the Cap'n- An Eruption of Trivia

For some people if they hear one catchy tune on the radio, they spend the rest of the day annoying people with their repetitious humming. Others find themselves at work getting all the itches and twitches of a rehab patient when they know they have a new gadget to tinker with at home. We all have our tiny obsessions that can dominate our thoughts when the right stimulus triggers them. For the Cap'n, I often find my mind picking up a stray reference to an unusual topic, and suddenly my brain starts craving arcane or trivial knowledge about that subject like a 5 year old craves the taste of paste.

The other day I listened to President Obama address Congress about some silly thing, then tuned in for the response from the Republican representative on behalf of the opposition party. Much to my later vexation, my ears picked up Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana mention something in his best "Kenneth the Page"-voice about "something called volcano monitoring". While others went on to bicker about the comparisons between the two speeches and the two yokels, I started to ponder whether history could provide any interesting stories of when volcanic activity was either monitored too little or too much. Well the historical record did not disappoint in the area of volcano related anecdotes. I share the results of my search below, along with some other intriguing factoids related to volcanoes.

• If the general populace already knows about any volcanic eruption in history, they know that Mount Vesuvius unexpectedly blanketed Pompeii with volcanic ash and debris on August 24th in the year 79 CE (or as the Pompeians would have said LXXIX). Every school child gets to look at pictures of the bodies sealed in place by the volcano's spew and enjoy a macabre thrill. No wonder we all grow up so desensitized to violence and fascinated with the morbid. A few things the general populace may not now include the fact that Vesuvius wiped out two cities, famously Pompeii, which has petrified corpses, and the less well-known Herculaneum, which got slowly buried under fifty feet of mud. Actually, considering that, I can understand why Pompeii gets better publicity.
  

• Pompeii actually stands out as a very strong example of people not paying enough attention to the local neighborhood volcano. Even before Vesuvius gradually built up to its main explosion over the course of a few days -shooting steam, causing tremors, and the like- the city of Pompeii had been evacuated just a few year earlier because of massive earthquake. In fact archaeologists found evidence that many people where still in the process of repairing and redecorating their homes when the volcano finally burst. That just proves that truisms of home ownership were as true during the Ancient Roman empire as they are today. As any homeowner knows, once you finally bring a contractor in to start fixing one problem, some new and completely unrelated thing goes wrong.
  

• Excavation of Pompeii revealed more secrets than just buckets of plaster and stacks of tile. Apparently archaeologist uncovered so much erotic art in the remains of the city that they were able to open a special museum focusing on the pornography of Pompeii. If we included that in the history books half the high schoolers would graduate wanting to become archaeologists. I would take this as fairly convincing evidence that the Pompeians did not expect the eruption to strike so quickly. If I thought I was about to be buried in place by a cloud of super-heated pumice, I would not want to be caught holding a dirty magazine.
  

• Pompeii also provided an excellent opportunity for someone to try investigating an eruption far too closely. Legendary Roman scholar Pliny the Elder heard about the eruption and felt overcome by his own curiosity and compassion. As the first natural historian, Pliny decided to inspect the volcano more closely and lead a rescue mission to go right into the middle of the outburst. Apparently feeling no reason to fear the ongoing flare up, Pliny spent the night with a friend who lived near Vesuvius. He ate, bathed and slept as fire rained from the sky, and the mountain spewed ash, rocks, and lava all around. Pliny seems to have developed a sense for the danger he faced, as history records that he had the members of his rescue crew strap pillows to their heads to protect them from falling rock. Unsurprisingly, Pliny died during his ill-planned mission, seemingly from a combination of the volcano's deadly fumes and his own underlying asthma. History would remember Pliny as one of the great minds of his age, all available evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. (I can safely mock Pliny the Elder without having to worry about appearing insensitive or offending anyone, right? It's not too soon is it?)
  

• Now before you go thinking volcanoes are all bad. I should let you know that we get all our diamonds from volcanoes. I know you think of diamonds coming from mines dug into the Earth's crust. In truth, diamonds form several hundred miles beneath the surface of the Earth. It takes volcanic eruptions to drag them to where we can reach them. This is why most rich diamond mines are usually near sites of volcanic activity. Before you start filling your head with get-rich-quick schemes, go reread the section on Pliny the Elder, then reconsider messing around with anything volcanic.

• You might look down on the case of Pompeii as an example of the ignorant people of the ancient world suffering because they lacked sophisticated scientific knowledge. You should know that humans have shown the same propensity to ignore the warning signs of an imminent eruption in modern times. In 1902, the island of Martinique began experiencing some early symptoms of an impending eruption of the island's Mount Pelee. Unfortunately for the residents of Martinique the local governor was more concerned about politics than safety. With his party facing a major election soon, he didn't want the voters getting all anxious and hung up on some minor thing like an impending eruption. If they overreacted to hearing the news that their lives were in grave danger, they might take it out on their elected officials. So instead of evacuating the island the governor suppressed any warnings of the danger, prevented people from leaving and assured people that the city at the foot of Mt. Pelee, Saint-Pierre, was the safest place to be. This led to thousands of people crowding into St. Pierre in the hopes of protecting themselves. When the eruption came in killed more than 28,000 people, including the governor, in about two minutes. One of the few survivors was a prisoner who lived because he had been sealed in the underground holding cell awaiting execution. The prisoner would be pardoned and later travel with the Barnum & Bailey Circus, because any rube would gladly part with two-bits just to see irony of that magnitude.
  

• The nation of Iceland has actually found a way to turn volcanoes to their benefit in an unusual way. Since this nigh-Arctic island rests on a volcanic hotbed as overactive as Philip the Hyper-Hypo, it has found all sorts of uses for geothermic energy. In surely the most unexpected example of this, Iceland uses the geothermal heat to grow bananas. Botanists build greenhouses around hot springs which when controlled can provide ideal conditions for cultivating the tropical fruit. For a time Iceland produced more bananas than any other European nation and even grew enough to begin exporting them. Iceland made so much money from the banana trade, that even Greenland has tried to get into the act. If proper volcano monitoring can allow two nations known for their frigid conditions to become major producers of tropical fruit, then maybe it does merit more attention.

• In all of this I should note that at times people have gotten carried away when watching volcanoes. Once in 1976 some scientists became very concerned about the signals they observed from the volcano on the island of Guadalupe, La Grande Soufrière. (That's French for "big sulfur outlet". Wait, really? C'mon France I thought you were supposed to be more poetic than that.) While some scientists thought any volcanic eruption would do little damage and didn't warrant alarm others suggested evacuating Guadalupe for fear of a Martinique level disaster. Caution won out and thousands of people had to relocate, except for those few individuals who resigned themselves to whatever fate the volcano dispensed. Famed German filmmaker Werner Herzog became fascinated with the idea of an impending catastrophe and took a crew to document the desolated island and the terrible detonation whenever it occurred. In the end La Grande Soufrière barely erupted at all, the geothermal equivalent of a burp. After all that trouble and worry, the ultimate result was a host of inconvenienced people from Guadalope and a very weird documentary. So it just may be the case that some people do take their volcano monitoring too seriously. Then again, maybe we should all read that passage about Pliny the Elder again.
  

History with the Cap'n- Buffalo!

Happy Buffalo Bill Day everybody!

I'm not entirely clear on when or how William F. Cody a.k.a "Buffalo Bill" climbed high enough up the pantheon of American heroes to merit his own day. Seemingly indifferent to my questions, someone somewhere has declared that Americans should spend February 26th remembering and celebrating the life and works of Buffalo Bill. Since the man headed a traveling frontier themed show -dubbed Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, in a fit of humility- that popularized the romantic idea of the Wild West, and permanently etched a place of Cowboys and Indians into our popular culture, I cannot begrudge the man a little memorialization. So I will use today's blog post as an opportunity to regale you with historical trivia related to Buffalo the man and Buffalo the animal (though not Buffalo the city in New York, because I feel they have enough problems without some snarky blog taking cheap shots at them).

• Buffalo Bill got his start riding for the Pony Express. He answered an ad that read "WANTED young skinny wiry fellows . . .Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred."
  

• Since the Pony Express didn't even last two years as a long distance communication enterprise (and I bet you thought it was a long running institution of the Old West), Cody had to land a new job. He found work hunting food for railroad construction crews. Thus he began hunting American buffaloes, since they were the most plentiful source of good food (re: meat) around. Thus the moniker.

• Actually, I must note for accuracy that Buffalo Bill never had any real contact with buffalo, because there are no wild buffaloes native to North America. Cody hunted and killed bison. You can find buffalo in Africa and Asia, just not the American west. Some might explain this mislabeling of bison as an honest mistake of identification on the part of some early settler. After all they sort of have a similar appearance and some similar attributes. I don't really agree with that -do you even know what a proper buffalo looks like?- and I would equate that kind of error to mistaking an opossum for a koala.
  

• In fairness to Buffalo Bill, he was very successful at hunting and killing bison. Historians estimate that he killed about 4,280 bison in about a year and a half. Hunters had a variety of methods they employed in hunting bison. In fact the hunters has so much success rate that the bison population in North America has fallen from an estimated 60 million when Europeans began settling her to now only 50,000 bison roaming free today. That's actually improvement from the nineteenth century when the bison were down to a few hundred.

• My younger brother once told me that you can make a complete gramatically correct sentence using only the word "buffalo". As in "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." Some have claimed this is the longest English language sentence you can create with just one word. I cannot be certain this is true, but I would love to watch people try to top it. (NOTE: The link does not lead to anything my younger brother wrote, just an article on the same topic.)

• Buffalo Bill would later go into acting alongside another famous Bill of the Old West, Wild Bill Hickok.
  

• The only natural predator of an adult bison, or buffalo if you prefer, is a wolf pack. Just to clarify, I am not talking about a pack of wolves taking on a herd of bison. I mean to say that it takes several wolfs at once to have any shot of killing an adult bison.

• When Buffalo Bill died he was honored by heads of state and then not buried where he had specified in his will. His wife claimed that he had changed his wishes on his death bed. A dispute arose between his proposed burial site (a town he founded) and his actual burial site (a place with a nice view), over who had the more legitimate claim to serve as Cody's eternal resting place. The feud would go on to involve a bounty for grave robbing and it would be settled when the two towns exchanged smoke signals. To give you the proper context for that I should mention that they were proposing grave robbery in 1948, and exchanging smoke signals in 1968.
  

So in case you have any social events planned for today and want to demonstrate your affinity for all things buffalo, I have hopefully left you well prepared to perpetuate the legends of Buffalo Bill and the Wild West.