Yet another artifact from a rejected question:
They hail from Hong Kong, but their relatives from China, "Country Cousins" and "Shortgrains," are "ready for new adventures in distant lands if sponsors can be found." They are similar to Cabbage Patch Kids but originate in a habitat more commonly found in Asia. For 10 points--name these infants that share their land with a type of grain.
<NOTE>
http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/rice.jpg as linked from the main ~wanthro page. I look for Anthropology and find this?! -[me]
Excuse me? --[Dwight]
I'm doing my best Krusty the Clown impression following his viewing of "Worker and Parasite".... "What THE HELL WAS THAT!?!?"--[Dwight]
</NOTE>
"Sorry, just not material I want to ask at the ICT" --R.
NAQT's loss (from, what 4.5 years ago?) is your gain. Comment if you know 'em.
Guinness Records decided in September 2000 to split its "Most Downloaded Woman" distinction between free web sites and pay sites. For 15 points each--name:
A. The longtime holder of the free title, whose images in lingerie and bikini wear were seen by 53 million between April 1999 and April 2000.
B. The web entrepreneur whose nude images attracted 240 million downloads in 1999, most of them for a small fee.
I'm glad after watching that game just now that I'm not a fan of either team. Which fan base do you think lost more years-of-life-per-fan?
Doug Brien (K-NYJ) might need a new job.
I think this is slightly hard and really bland. People will know immediately that the answer is one of those missing people, but won't know who at the end. (I also suspect that this case hasn't gotten too much attention outside of San Francisco.) I also tend to dislike "missing person of the week" questions.
Editor shall remain nameless; the answer to the question (written almost two years ago) should be obvious. (The question actually was pretty weak, but it was rejected for entirely the wrong reasons.)
You know how this works. This time we have five old and 20 new. Titles and artists in the comments. Don't post anything you needed to look up to get right.
New UI: Borrowing from the Masons, already-guessed lyrics will be marked in blue.
Covers: 18 is definitely a cover; the rest are originals as far as I know.
Remainders with Hints
Yeah, some of you've probably disqualified yourself from some of these by looking them up. (That's what I did on the hard ones on other quizzes.) Fingers crossed that they're still unspoiled enough...
X10. "Stuttering, cold and damp, steal the warm and tired friend. Times are gone for honest men and sometimes far too long for snakes." (Post-Cobain grunge. You've probably seen the music video. Note the accented syllables.) (Sarah)
X16. "There seems no justice when you fall in love. It gives you blindness when you are the one, the one that's hurting cause they've got the gun." (Hair metal from a band on the original Monsters of Rock tour. Bonus lyrics from the same song: "Take my feelings, leave me in pain, I will forget you one of these days.")
X17. "A constant wave of tension on top of broken trust. The lessons that you taught me, I learned were never true." (21st century angst. By sheer coincidence, same band as #1 below.)
X22. "When we sleep, would you shelter me in your warm and dark embrace?" (A power-ballad duet; I've argued before that this is the best duet ever.) (Joshua)
X25. "When I was five I took a dive. When I was ten I walked again. When I was 15 I kept my motor clean." (Most obscure song on the last quiz. Final track on a mid-1990s grrl album; the name of the album is also an AC/DC lyric.)
New Stuff
1. "I've put my trust in you, pushed as far as I can go. For all this there's only one thing you should know." (Maribeth)
2. "Hold me now. I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking, maybe six feet ain't so far down."
3. "Listen to the girl as she takes on half the world, moving up and so alive." (Victoria)
4. "Girl we were meant for this since we were born. No problems now, the coast is clear, it's just the calm before the storm." (song by Joshua; iTunes lists this as a solo hit rather than a band, but it might be wrong, if it were a band then it'd be the band Joshua gave)
5. "[...] the place where where would kiss, and the room where I held you tight. Tonight I must [...]" (Paul)
6. "Found my locker and I found my classes. Lost my lunch and I broke my glasses." (Richard)
7. "Caroline talks to you softly sometimes. She says 'I love you' and 'too much.' She doesn't have anything you want to steal - well, nothing you can touch." (Greg)
8. "Morning came and I was on my way when you reminded me. I had too soon forgotten it was you who set me free. Yeah, you were here when I came, and you'll be here when I'm gone." (Dave)
9. "I try to stand up but I can't find my feet. I try to speak up but only in you I'm complete."
10. "She stepped off the bus out into the city streets, just a small-town girl with her whole life packed in a suitcase by her feet." (Maribeth)
11. "If you're ready, I'm willing and able. Let me lay my cards out on the table. You're mine, and I'm yours for the taking. And the rules, they were meant for breaking." (Sarah)
12. "Who knows what tomorrow brings in a world few hearts survive? All I know is the way I feel, when it's real, I keep my prayer alive." (Joshua, assist Maribeth)
13. "On a dry and dusty road, the nights we spent apart alone, I need to get back home, to cool cool rain. I can't sleep and I lay and I think, the night is hot and black as ink, hoo God I need a drink."
14. "Best believe somebody's paying the pied piper, all the pain inside amplified by the fact that I can't get by on my 9 to 5 and I can't provide the right type of life for my family cause these goddamn food stamps don't buy diapers." (Maribeth)
15. "Coming over the airwaves, the man says I'm overdue. Sing along, save some money, join the chosen few. Mister I'm not in a hurry, and I don't wanna be like you." (band by Maribeth, title by Joshua)
16. "I'm worst at what I do best and for this gift I feel blessed. Our little group has always been and always will be to the end." (David)
17. "Are you locked up in a world that's been planned out for you? Are you feeling like a social tool without a use? Scream at me until my ears bleed." (Paul)
18. "The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting. Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything. What I have become, my sweetest friend?" (John)
19. "Been saved again by the garbage truck. I got something to say you know but nothing comes. Yes I know what you think of me; you never shut up." (Maribeth)
20. "Something quite peculiar, something that's shimmering and white, leads you here despite your destination."
Hmm, it made Slashdot, therefore it must be important. (Mild sarcasm.)
The comments by M.S. and Craig below are both apt as to how you assess the payors; buying publicity with taxpayer funds should be indictable.
As for the payees, though, I see two simultaneous trends that amount to one side being accused of what the other side is actually doing:
1. Innuendo to the effect that Armstrong Williams wasn't the only one on the Right to be bankrolled (see Keith Olbermann's quote below), even as
2. Most of the Lefty sites that anyone cares about are already bought and paid for, if not by the Dean campaign (Kos) then by Media Matters.
Just got an e-mail from HR including the sentence:
"Yes, for this year only Gracenote will be closed on Monday, January 17 in honor of MLK day."
I bet this isn't the only year, though; I bet we get MLK off again in 2011.
Read my mind and tell me why I think that (for that matter why (I infer) we got MLK in 2005). Be as specific as seems appropriate.
Didn't see the original story until Dwight's weblog (but did see the backlash via Obscure Store).
Sometimes I hate my alma mater.
If they were really serious about accomplishing what the "Fun Czar" supposedly means to accomplish, rather than achieving some sort of committee/bureaucracy zen, then the true Harvard Fun Czar would be:
21 years old (give or take a year)
A junior (give or take a year) at BU
Drop dead strike-men-speechless-and-bring-them-tears hot
Utterly unattainable by any of the suitors she ran across, yet with an extroverted enough vibe that everyone who crossed her path felt a connection to her and didn't mind being beneath her league
Probably very secretly addicted to coke or meth (just to be that energetic all hours of the night, not to mention productive, logistically sound, etc.), yet with an amazing ability completely to hide it. Think of when Kelly Ripa hosted SNL and did that fake ad for the crystal meth shampoo.
10th of 13, my first time on the Stanford campus in awhile.
AT vs. 66 all-in, with her 66 very shortstacked: 10 did come up on the river, but only after 7, 8, and 9 had already hit the board.
AJ vs. 99 all-in, with the AJ barely covering (margin less than the big blind, which left me blinded all in a hand later), a third 9 came on the flop and nothing else of note.
Coincidentally, a couple hands before the real AJ vs. 99 showdown, I'd had AJ when someone went all in with what turned out to be 99. Sadly for me, I had him read for queens or AK. When I showed my AJ on the fold, he sportingly showed the nines.
(On that hand he was in late position, with several limpers and me raising the minimum. Also of note, right after we merged rooms he did the worst job of dealing I'd seen in awhile: Burning an ace early enough to redeal, then dropping the other deck on the floor. Maybe this was affected behavior, but I couldn't see someone that nervous going all in with nines against so many limpers. He had me covered by a surprising amount.)
Several people there were people I didn't know or didn't recognize. When we drew to divide into two rooms, all the people I didn't know ended up staying at Joon's while I knew all the people who went to the other room.
(At least in places other than Vermont.)
POOL #3 RANKING:
1. Homer the Heretic
2. Stark Raving Dad
3. Bart's Comet
4. The Regina Monologues
5. The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace
6. Blame it On Lisa
(explanation/commentary in the extended entry)
As usual, pseudorandom numbers pick the episodes; I rank 'em on the spot, you critique my rankings (and/or give yours) and a week later I post the revised list. No voting per se in this benevolent dictatorship but I do use your opinions for awesome.
Coming this spring: All six tiers listed, plus your chance to nominate episodes from each list for promotion or relegation. After that... if we're still interested, then ranking within the tiers will be 100 times as tricky as the prelims were.
Stay tuned for #7 by Monday morning (along with the #4 results), and be sure to weigh in on #5 and #4 if you haven't already, or even if you have. You can also browse the category archive though you'll need to click on each individual post's timestamp to see comments.
Numbers, please...
237: BABF06 (SI-1106 / S11E11) Faith Off
Bart becomes hooked on the art of faith healing after witnessing the spin of a traveling revivalist. Meanwhile, Homer prepares for the homecoming game of his old college-days chums. Guest starring Joe Mantegna as Fat Tony and Don Cheadle as Brother Faith.
46: 8F09 (SI-309 / S03E11) Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk
Homer finds that his job as `safety inspector' is in danger when Mr. Burns sells the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant to German businessmen for $100,000,000.
107: 2F01 (SI-601 / S06E04) Itchy & Scratchy Land
The family's trip to Itchy & Scratchy Land, the violentest place on earth, proves heavenly until the Itchy & Scratchy robots want to put the family there for real.
175: 4F18 (SI-818 / S08E22) In Marge We Trust
Marge becomes the "Listen Lady" when the people of Springfield turn to her after Reverend Lovejoy loses interest in helping people. Meanwhile, Homer sets out to discover why his face is on a box of dish soap. Sab Shimono, Gedde Watanaabe and Frank Welker guest star.
82: 9F21 (SI-421 / S05E01) Homer's Barbershop Quartet
We flashback to 1985, where Homer, Apu, Principal Skinner, and Chief Wiggum (replaced with Barney) were the hit barbershop quartet known as the 'B Sharp'. George Harrison guest stars.
My Quick Impressions:
Cue the Dan Dierdorf blatant 15-yard penalty guffaw, we have our first-ever Bracket Of Death. Excel has chosen to indulge me in Can you top this? If you ever wondered whether these were truly random picks (or at least pseudorandom), well, yes. This is why we'll have our big relegation/promotion fest.
Lucky for me, there is one thing... exactly one thing... on which I had some prerogative. Astute observers will have noticed that 335 does not divide evenly into 6, indeed that 6 times 56 is 336. I'd planned to save the "bye" (hypothetical Worst Episode Ever) for a bracket this stacked; didn't think I'd feel the need so soon, though.
(Note: You can rank the "bye" higher than sixth if you want, if you utterly detest one or more of these episodes. But...)
For all my hand-wringing about the bye, what's funny is that relative to each other, I think the pecking order here is obvious enough to require little thought or comment. Your mileage may vary but from where I stand it's obviously:
Preliminary Rankings
1. In Marge We Trust ("I am disrespectful to dirt! Can't you see that I am serious? Join me or die trying, can you do any less?")
2. Itchy & Scratchy Land (The BORT license plates; Disgruntled Goat...)
3. Homer's Barbershop Quartet ("With my bay-bee... on board!!!")
4. Kraftwerk
5. Faith Off (which actually doesn't suck near as much as you'd think, but in this bracket...)
POOL 3 explanation:
This ordering is actually 100% faithful to the aggregrate of commenter rankings. As much as I wanted to stick with the Dinan ranking (agreed to 100% by Bogg), no commenter put Homer the Heretic lower than second.
(Apparently we're setting a precedent where the episode I name #1 to begin with never stays in that spot. That's okay: We've only had two major sentimental favorites of mine so far, and I've ranked them both #2 at the outset, in one case seriously overadjusting for own sentiment.)
Bart's Comet is deeply overrated but I can live with it at #3, singlehandedly for Ned's rendition of Que Sera Sera.
Paul, I had the same experience as you with being deeply disappointed by the Wizard recap. That made it easier to throw Regina Monologues a bone; I'm torn, agreeing with Bogg about the highlights but also agreeing with the Coen's rhetorical question. When does Bart get sent to Antarctica?
Final thought on Heretic: For more than half the show, this has serious best episode ever potential (I use that phrase with zero exaggeration), and then with apologies to any Backdraft fans, the poor thing falls off a cliff. That's exactly what hapens with Boy-Scoutz N The Hood (aka the squishy episode, the "money can be exchanged for goods and services" episode, the "stay above the equator," the Ernest Borgnine, the My Dinner With Andre video game, etc. etc.), only Boy-Scoutz is even more extreme in both the good and the crap.
Been ruminating on this all week. I'm 250 pages into Order of the Phoenix (hardcover), or about a week into the Hogwarts term. Apologies to anyone who isn't so far (assume that the main entry is spoiler-free but that the Extended Entry and comments might contain spoilers, though NOT for anything in Phoenix past what I've already read). Obviously only JKR herself knows what happens in Half-Breed Prince onward.
Anyhow, consider these young ladies:
Cho Chang
Hermione Granger
Luna Lovegood
Ginny Weasley
Which one do you think is the best mate for Harry? If you're hard-wired to be attracted to females, then which one do you think would make the best mate for you?
POSSIBLE SPOILERS...
First things first: Does the identity of the Half-Breed Prince have anything to do with Hagrid's dual heritage or his absence from the first part of Phoenix?
From Goblin of Fire and the intro to Phoenix, Harry clearly has a crush on Cho, though Rowling doesn't do a very good job demonstrating what it is about Cho that he'd find attractive.
All four of the gals I mentioned might very well have crushes on Harry. In descending order of likelihood or obviousness, I suppose it's Ginny, then Cho, then Hermione, then Luna (since we don't know much about her yet, those of us who've only read as far as I have).
I actually think Ginny is the best mate for Harry (and Hermione for Ron, though that's another story). Harry seems to disagree with me, though. As for myself, I'm at least very intrigued by Luna; need to read more about her. Previously I'd wavered between Hermione and Ginny.
David's opinion will vary of course.
Neat think about the title of this post: It can describe either jokes about lawyers or jokes by lawyers. Two consecutive Volokh posts touch on both those meanings:
Lawyer jokes and the First Amendment here; the facts are imprecise but from as little as we know it sounds as though the gentlemen who were arrested have the much better case.
And then a joke for lawyers.
The latter reminds me: An English-language DVD release of this movie just came out. I'd already encountered a DVD import of it; that release came out a couple years ago and crossed paths with me last spring. Unless I'm mistaking it for something else, the cover had a plot summary in hilarious broken English.
Until the Armstrong Williams story broke, I’d never even considered this possibility — paying pundits or journalists to policy-shill — under any American government at any time other than during global war. But the Williams revelations do remind me that I’ve always wondered how some of the monolithic, elaborate websites, especially conservative ones with a million links, have managed to stay afloat financially, and if somebody in government wasn’t supplying them with more than just hot news flashes.
--Keith Olbermann
In this past election, at least a few prominent bloggers were paid as consultants by candidates and groups they regularly blogged about. . . .
On Dean’s campaign, we paid Markos [Moulitsas-Zuniga] and Jerome Armstrong as consultants, largely in order to ensure that they said positive things about Dean. We paid them over twice as much as we paid two staffers of similar backgrounds, and they had several other clients.
While they ended up also providing useful advice, the initial reason for our outreach was explicitly to buy their airtime. To be very clear, they never committed to supporting Dean for the payment -- but it was very clearly, internally, our goal.
--Glenn Reynolds (in turn quoting another source, follow the link)
Which of these claims is more precise (and which is more accurate) is an exercise for the reader.
Moxie seems to share a birthday with Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern.
David Letterman and my mom are both exactly three months away from a birthday today.
Barring any inaccuracy on Wikipedia (source for what follows; everything before this was personal knowledge), I share a birthday with:
Lawrence Welk (one of only two on this list that I already knew)
Rupert Murdoch
Sam Donaldson
Antonin Scalia
Bobby McFerrin
Douglas Adams (wow!)
Bobby Abreu (the other one I knew; glad some Wiki contributor found him worth including)
The Madden twins from Good Charlotte
Thora Birch
Who on my list should honor me most? (Who on your list honors you most?)
If you're a Boston Red Sox fan, the big games from year to year are against the hated New York Yankees, and (until 2004) generally ended in heartbreak, exacerbated by the asshole behavior of many Yankee fans.
If you're a New England Patriot fan, at least in the 21st century, the big games from year to year are against the hated... Indianapolis Colts?!? They generally ended in heartbreak for the other team, exacerbated by the asshole behavior of, well, (some of) you.
Seriously, while the teams themselves are quite different, it's uncanny how similarly New England Patriot fans and New York Yankee fans behave. The only difference I see is that the Yankees have a century worth of tradition rather than three years' worth, and I don't even see which direction that cuts.
My favorite part: Last year's Colts-Patriots conference championship game was essentially decided on the game officials' steadfast refusal to call defensive penalties on plays where New England defensive backs all but mugged Indy receivers. Near uanimous consensus was that what the New England defense did was against the rules but well within the limits of how officials customarily interpreted the rules. (Like those high pitches in baseball that by the rulebook would be clearly strikes but in practice are known not to be called strikes.)
So in the off-season, the NFL made a novel decision: Why not enforce the rules for once? And of course everyone got bent out of shape, with scads of columnists who should know better mischaracterizing it as a "rule change."
No outcome in either of Sundays' playoff games would really satisfy me. (The other game, of course, is the team with barely-healthy-enough-to-play hot dog Randy Moss vs. the team with apparently-too-boobooed-to-play hot dog Terrell Owens.)
By contrast, from Saturday's playoff teams I'm really good friends with Steeler fans, Jet fans, Ram fans, and even a guy who's been madly in love (figuratively) with Michael Vick ever since Vick's freshman year of college.
(Yes, many of you reading this have rooted for the Pats all your lives, back when they were a sad sack franchise. Tough break for you that some of your fellow townies made the team impossible to root for. Why don't they just go whole hog and make Peyton Manning-themed "Who's your daddy?" t-shirts.)
Odd consequence of being in Raider Country: I think there's too much bad blood from the "Tuck Rule" play three years ago for anyone here to become a bandwagon Patriot fan. The only time I ever see Pats gear is when the Red Sox visit the A's, and even then I imagine it's those wacky Boston transplants. Anyone not from the New England states who roots for the Patriots is presumptively a complete sellout.
Slashdot roundup:
GMail may be insecure.
Yahoo! Mail may be too secure.
Do you think the ambiguity in this thread's headline ("Malicious Software Removal Tool") was on purpose? I assumed at first it was a malicious tool that removed software, rather than a tool that removed malicious software.
This call may be monitored... I can't imagine a form of voyeurism more banal. I could see someone getting hooked on this but hating himself for it.
Students asked to watch five seconds of soundless videotape of a teacher in the classroom came up with evaluations of the teacher's effectiveness that matched those given by his own students after a full semester of classes.
--link here (via Marginal Revolution)
This says what needs to be said.
The CBS report did about as much as it could do under the circumstances. As happy as I was that people in this medium (weblogging) were able to debunk and discredit a forgery so quickly, they really took the edge off with months worth of triumphalism and back-patting.
As Winston Wolf put it, "Let's not start s'ing each other's d's just yet."
POOL #2 RANKING:
1. Treehouse V
2. The Front
3. Trilogy of Error
4. E-I-E-I...
5. Team Homer
6. Bart Star
(explanation/commentary in the extended entry)
As usual, pseudorandom numbers pick the episodes; I rank 'em on the spot, you critique my rankings (and/or give yours) and a week later I post the revised list. No voting per se in this benevolent dictatorship but I do use your opinions for awesome.
Coming this spring: All six tiers listed, plus your chance to nominate episodes from each list for promotion or relegation. After that... if we're still interested, then ranking within the tiers will be 100 times as tricky as the prelims were.
Stay tuned for #6 by Friday morning (along with the #3 results), and be sure to weigh in on #3 and #4 if you haven't already, or even if you have. You can also browse the category archive though you'll need to click on each individual post's timestamp to see comments.
Numbers, please...
75: 9F14 (SI-414 / S04E16) Duffless
After Homer gets caught drunk driving, he promises Marge to stay off the Duff for one month. Meanwhile, when Bart ruins Lisa's science project, Lisa vows to take revenge by determining which is smarter: a hamster or Bart.
297: EABF01 (SI-1401 / S14E06) The Great Louse Detective
Somebody from Homer's past tries to murder him, and it's up to Sideshow Bob to help Homer find out who that person is. Kelsey Grammer returns as Sideshow Bob.
235: BABF07 (SI-1107 / S11E09) Grift of the Magi
A sinister toy company unveils Funzo, the next "Tickle Me Elmo"-style fad to Springfield's Christmas shoppers. The toy is a huge success, in part because it is programmed to destroy other toys. Guest stars Gary Coleman as himself, Tim Robbins as Jim Hope, Joe Mantegna as Fat Tony, and Clarence Clemons as the narrator.
330: FABF12 (SI-1512 / S15E17) My Big Fat Geek Wedding
Principal Skinner and Edna Krabappel plan their wedding, but Seymour finds himself getting cold feet during a bachelor party thrown for him at Moe's. Edna herself decides she can't go through with it, and runs away from the altar. Homer and Marge go after Seymour and Edna and try to bring the pair back together. When Edna then falls for the Comic Book Guy, Homer devises an ill-advised plan to sabotage their affair and bring her back to Seymour, but when Edna decides neither man is right for her, Homer then finds himself answering to Marge. Matt Groening appears in this episode, playing the creator of Futurama.
153: 3F22 (SI-722 / S07E25) Summer of 4 Ft. 2
In the hopes of making friends on the latest family vacation trip, Lisa packs an empty suitcase, determined to leave her 'nerdy' self behind. Christina Ricci guest stars.
176: 4F19 (SI-819 / S08E23) Homer's Enemy
Frank Grimes, the new employee at the power plant, isn't impress with Homer's bad habits and lack of professional work ethic, becomes disgruntled when he learns Homer is more of a success than he is. Frank Welker guest stars.
My first impressions:
Wow, here's a first: Not one, but two, episodes on this that I've never seen and couldn't tell you a thing about aside from what's in the blurb above. On "Geek Wedding" and "Louse Detective," I'm totally at your mercy.
UPDATE: Hey, I saw "Louse Detective" after all. Just realized this after publishing the entry (drafted over lunch actually). It's ironic that this got included with one of the other episodes in the bracket; it's demonstrably strictly inferior to that other episode, though.
I wrote the Pool #2 explanation before discovering the Pool #5 picks. If the two episodes I don't know about are any good then this bracket might rival that one, hard to tell.
My sentimental favorite of the other four would be "Summer of 4 ft. 2" (honorable mention for top 10 in my highly-unscientific ranking from a few years ago), and yet the sibling rivalry subplot of "Duffless" holds its own against the entirety of "Summer" to the point that the Homer-stops-drinking main plot makes that twosome a mismatch.
I'm really not a Frank Grimes guy. I suspect my opinion of that episode is lower than most people's; I don't hate it, but I know people who rate it way higher than I do. Maybe that includes you all; if so, speak up.
Finally, can we all agree that Grift of the Magi is the Worst Simpsons' Christmas Show Ever?
Preliminary Rankings:
1-2. Duffless
2-3. 4 ft. 2
3-4. Homer's Enemy (Frank Grimes)
4-5. Louse Detective
5-6. Grift
N/A. Geek Wedding (probably not 6th)
Pool #2 Explanation:
It may be awhile before we see another bracket as tough as this one. Commenters were unanimous in putting Treehouse V on top, though I also think that two other episodes in the top 3 would be #1 in many brackets.
The Front over Trilogy of Error for #2, trusting Paul that Trilogy doesn't survive repeated viewings well, and also in fond memory of the many derogatory Harvard references (not least of which, "I did my senior thesis on life experience!").
For the bottom three I actually averaged how y'all ranked those three relative to each other. Then added my own "on second thought" ranking, which actually moved Bart up a notch based on the closing credits Greg mentioned. Strictly by the numbers that deadlocked E-I-E-I... with Team Homer, but Mark ranked E-I-E-I... as high as third and nobody ranked Homer so high. Hope this makes up for my ignoring Mark's low ranking for The Front.
First, welcome Joe to the random-shuffle music lyrics quiz genre. (And Greg!)
Be sure to take a look (or a second look, or an nth look) at Joe's songs, David's songs, Mark's songs, Richard and Maribeth's songs, and of course Craig's done it twice. And my own songs (just scroll down, or hit the music category archive).
Everyone in the preceding paragraph stole that bit from Craig, but then Craig stole it from Steve Allen.
Now, the interesting follow-up question specifically for quiz players: Many of you reading this have played Charlie Steinhice's "K-TEL Hell" rounds at TrashMasters. Those of us on the West Coast have done post-tournament music recognition quickies courtesy of Jon Pennington and/or Matt Levine, who might have borrowed the concept from Charlie. (Having never done K-TEL, I don't know how the Berkeley ones differ in format from K-TEL, if at all.)
Of everyone who's posted a lyrics quiz, literally any of us could easily do a post-tournament recognition round, so long as we're willing to bring our computer to the tournament in question and so long as we have decent speakers.
I'm now seriously jonesing to run one myself, tempered by the drawbacks to any particular tournament where I offered my services:
NAQT ICT or HSNCT: I'm going to have so much to do getting these off the ground that organizing a music round will be the last thing I want to add on to the mess -- not to mention making sure with NAQT membership that this was kosher, securing the roomspace, etc.
NAQT SCT: There's a chance I can get away with flying down to LA Saturday morning and flying back Saturday night (need to doublecheck the schedule with USC).
[Random West Coast invitational.] I have no idea what's coming up this semester but will keep eyes and ears open. Hmm, will Berkeley host ACF Regionals again? Ooh, I just remembered a mildly amusing piece of West Coast gossip that'd mean nothing to most of you but edify the people to whom I'm about to e-mail it...
Anyhow, if you were reading at or playing at one of the above, and an ad hoc music recognition thing were offered up right as the tournament proper ended, would you be in on it?
How long has it been since Vanna White was famous? I suppose she's still turning letters on Wheel of Fortune, since her being replaced would probably be big news for her successor.
Got there from an Instapundit post about whether Abe Lincoln was gay. His take: "The guy saved the nation, and I'm supposed to care about where he put his wing-wang?"
I swear I saw the gay-Lincoln meme somewhere months ago and wondered whether it would hit the mainstream. Damned if I know where I saw it, though.
"Don't cheerleaders all over America form pyramids six to eight times a year. Is that torture?" Guy Womack, Graner's attorney, said in opening arguments to the 10-member U.S. military jury at the reservist's court-martial."
--via A Small Victory
If anywhere in America the cheerleaders are actually naked, then I've gone to the wrong schools.
So of all the web sites that have devoted countless attention since November to presidential election analysis, recounts (Ohio), fraud rumors (Ohio/Florida), and so on, how many of them have even bothered to comment on the State of Washington governors' race?
Quoting from an e-mail from a conservative friend (who sometimes comments here pseudonymously):
"Each count, King County kept finding new ballots that they didn't know they had before. The simple fact that this happened so frequently means that somebody should either be fired (if it was accidental) or thrown in jail (if it was intentional fraud). Problems that we know and either the Rossi campaign or soundpolitics.com can prove:
Dead people voting
Felons voting
Illegal immigrants voting
People voting twice
Several hundred ballots left unsecured for two weeks
Five thousand (I think) unaccounted ballots in King County. That is, 5,000 more ballots than voters.
Two thousand unaccounted voters. That is, 2000 people recorded as having voted, but for which there is no ballot (this is found at the precinct level, where you might have a precinct reporting 200 voters but only 195 ballots)
Even if the unaccounted ballots belong to the unaccounted voters, there are still far more unaccounted ballots than the margin.
Military ballots were sent out later than law allows and there is some evidence that King County tried to cover it up."
All this seems to me to be significantly more newsworthy than anything that came out of Ohio. But then I guess We had to wait eight hours in the rain! is more compelling as a human interest story than the wonkish minor details of actually getting the victor right.
(The same sites that got so deep into Ohio/Florida minutaue didn't spend much time or space on the North Carolina snafu either, and given that this was a computer glitch so bad that it resulted in a necessary revote, that probably blows Ohio and Washington both out of the water. But since you can cast it in "Republicans cheated!" "No, Democrats cheated!" terms...)
Here's what's left of this quiz. I'm reposting the ungotten lyrics because you guys have a shot at running the table. Comment here or on the original post. As always, don't comment on anything that you had to do a web search to get.
The only truly obscure one is "25." Think late '80s for 8 and 16, and 22. 17 is the most recent (but still a couple years old).
(ZD got #8)
10. "Stuttering, cold and damp, steal the warm and tired friend. Times are gone for honest men and sometimes far too long for snakes."
(Corwyn got #15)
16. "There seems no justice when you fall in love. It gives you blindness when you are the one, the one that's hurting cause they've got the gun."
17. "A constant wave of tension on top of broken trust. The lessons that you taught me, I learned were never true."
(ZD got #21)
22. "When we sleep, would you shelter me in your warm and dark embrace?"
25. "When I was five I took a dive. When I was ten I walked again. When I was 15 I kept my motor clean."
Quoth Salpi:
im proud to say that ive been taken OFF the guys' "omg i wouldnt hit that if the continuation of the human species depended on it" list. so now i feel like if im friendly or funny or any of that, a guy might misinterpret it....
Am I wrong to think that this is a problem only in situations where some guy likes the heroine but she does not like him?
Wait... it's a bit more complex than that, but not really. It seems to depend on how positive (or negative) the prospect is that she would like him. If he's indifferent to her liking him, then he'd be extremely unlikely to misinterpret something because he wouldn't think of it. If her liking him would be a big positive (i.e. wishful thinking), then he'll look for any excuse to misinterpret. If her liking him would be a big negative, then maybe he'd also misinterpret, but only if he's paranoid and maybe also mean.
I'd think that become more physically attractive makes it easier to interact with superficially attractive (but potentially mean) guys whom you might have feared in the past, though maybe things become awkward [or "more awkward"] around guys who you find unattractive but who you previously assumed also found you unattractive.
There's also the situation where you really do like a guy (and, more importantly, don't fear the consequences of his believing you like him, though you might fear the consequences of some particular way of finding out), except that independent of your liking him, you'd also want to say something friendly or funny, and you don't want to be mistaken for someone who's affecting friendliness or funniness just to flirt. The best way around that seems to be to behave brutally unpretentiously, but then what do I know?
Who among you remembers the character Sparkle from the Divorce Isn't Everything episode of "Mary Tyler Moore"? (Blatantly ripping off a shared experience with Julia, both the DVD viewing and a later conversation over a long walk -- but at least in this case that means I shared something with her before sharing it with the world.) She went around telling guys she'd had dreams involving them, to gauge their potential interest in her. Why I mention this: Salpi seems like plausibly the sort of person who would truthfully mention random dreams about other people, for the sake of discussing them at face value.
(Random side note: Is there irony in writing what im most interested in is language use in grammar-indifferent IM prose style? Is it intentional? Would this entry (my own post-in-progress) be more insightful or less insightful if I gave in to the temptation to talk about myself other than meta?)
BONUS IRONY: berkeley kids care about the football team, working out, hipster music, and family guy. i care about such things as phenomenology, semantics, spirituality, environmental awareness.
I did have a Harvard classmate (well, '94 to my '96) who once complained without irony about how disappointed he was when he got to Harvard and realized his classmates weren't very intelligent (in his opinion). Had a personality that exuded darkness... not pessimism, just darkness. He was grim and serious in a way that reminded some people of an evil Dark Lord, except not in a creepy way (not even remotely).
Anyhow, as stereotypes go, complaining about Berkeley students' lack of spirituality or environmental awareness seems akin to complaining that Harvard kids are stupid. Even if it turns out to be true, it's still hilarious to contemplate, mainly because of what it superlative things it implies about the speaker.
A parallel universe where I knew Salpi (her current age) in the mid to late 1990s (my age as of then) would be an interesting test case for whether I really handled various social situations that poorly then, or whether it was other people handling them that poorly, or both.
Do you think a computer will ever be good enough to beat human players at Scrabble?
For some reason Matt L's latest travelogue (wherein he plays in a Scrabble tournament) reminded me of this, something I'd thought about over Christmas break.
Of course, I assume computers can very easily beat humans at Scrabble already, if only because a computer could very easily find the best possible single play for any board layout and rack. (Also a computer would be 100% accurate, if so programmed, with its decision whether to challenge a word. I assume it wouldn't even need ever to make illegal plays, since it could demolish a human on legal plays alone.)
This is assuming that the Greedy Algorithm is the best way to play Scrabble, though based on player comments in WordFreak (especially the experts who like a wide-open board), I expect that the point-maximizing play is the best play for a given rack/board situation 99 times out of 100.
The reason I ask this: Assuming such a Scrabble program exists, nobody seems to be concerned about it. Computers have long since been able to beat humans at checkers. And yet, the idea that a computer could consistently beat humans at chess makes a few people really paranoid and leads to all sorts of unwarranted apocalyptic jumping to conclusions about artificial intelligence.
Why is this? Is chess that exalted a game?
(On the flip side, I presume even the most probabilistically flawless computer would get destroyed by even intermediate level Hold Em poker players, and that this will continue to be true until, say, we can analyze an image or air sample with enough sophistication to detect "tells" among human players.)
The Mets have had the best offseason of any team, not just this year, but in recent memory. By ignoring the middle class and focusing on getting the best players they could, they've improved by 10 to 15 wins, vaulting to the top of the NL East mix.
If New York is a Mets town again in 2007, it will be the decisions made this winter by the two teams that made it that way. The Yankees' mistakes directly benefited the Mets, and that they took advantage is a credit to Fred Wilpon and Omar Minaya. For the first time in a long time, the best front office in New York may be located in Queens.
--Joe Sheehan, Baseball Prospectus (article is subscriber-only)
I strongly agree with this assessment, although it's worth noting that Pedro himself is a risk (but not nearly as risky as paying $19M/year over three years to a 41-year-old going on 43; if I were Dwight, I'd have "Randy Johnson as a Yankee" on Fraught Watch, probably Medium).
"Ignore the middle class" is a great rule of thumb in both real baseball and salary-cap baseball. The pretty-good-but-not-best players are all wildly overpriced compared to the absolute best and the guys making the minimum.
(But for somone with such strong opinions, you'd think my salary cap league history would be a better track record than it is. Not to make excuses but I don't play matchups enough and don't micromanage the pitching staff enough - you can be great at salary cap baseball, like top-10-in-the-nation great, if you spend way more time on it than it deserves.)
Anyhow, like Sheehan, I'm stunned that Beltran ended up a Met. The Mets signed the best free agent player and best expected-value pitcher this winter. The Yankees had no business not signing both Beltran and the best 2B they can find. Well, even here Sheehan put it better:
The Yankees needed a center fielder and a second baseman. They got three of the riskiest pitching contracts in the game. I don't care if you're making more money than Oprah; that's bad baseball, and they will pay for it.
(By the way, Simpsons Rankings #4 of 56 is still less than a day old, though about to be pushed off my "Last N posts" link list; go rank 'em...)
Didn't we already see this monstrosity in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
(Without even looking I assume the Farkers have already beaten me to the reference.)
By the way, one thing I don't like about either of the Canyonero episodes is that the concept is strictly inferior (as comedy goes) to Homer's own grand designs.
I have to agree with Jesse Walker about the Passion and Fahrenheit:
"I strongly suspect the overlap between the two films' audiences is much larger than those noxious Red and Blue stereotypes would suggest."
Both are, among other things, base emotional appeals masquerading as factual accounts. Both clearly succeeded as agitprop (no, Bush didn't lose, if you think that was one of Michael Moore's goals, but there are contextual reasons why, competence and Bushiness aside, he should have won a landslide). I feel very smug in my blind dismissal of them both as unworthy of viewing, yet I'd probably enjoy either of them much more than my pose suggests.
(By the way, cows like beer. Just thought you should know.)
The most frightening food products I've seen on gas station and mini-mart shelves in 2005:
Doritos now comes in a $1.29 "MegaGrab" portion. If you're scoring at home, that's four servings per bag (instead of three from the mere "Big Grab") and 560 calories per bag (instead of presumably 420; hmm, there's cosmic harmony in an allotment of Doritos with exactly "420" calories).
Snyder's of Hanover now offers jalapeno-flavored pretzel bites. Julia and I have already covered their honey mustard flavor and my intense antipathy for the taste. Why I dislike honey mustard so, when I like so many other strong flavors (c.f. the Garden Herb Triscuits), is unclear.
Have any of you tried the TGIF Mozzarella snacks? Apparently it's a dried/preserved version of thier mozzarella sticks, textured Cheetoh-style.
For the gourmet snackers, you can now get Kettle Crisps in roasted pepper and goat cheese flavor.
Of all things to flavor with onion and garlic: Shelled pistachios?!?
Inauspicious start for the Big Unit in the Big Apple.
Some very good players mentioned here, most of them unsung.
I'm amused that they quarantined a special thread for irrational Peyton Manning versus Tom Brady arguments. "Please put all your ridiculous, irrational Brady-Manning debate here and let the rest of us debate the other 88 players from the Colts and Patriots in the other threads."
Finally issued that one report. Lots of good stuff linked-to from that post.
This parody says everything that needs to be said.
If you react with outrage, you just encourage the idiocy. If instead you pointedly ignore it (and if/when viewers complain, correctly point out your lack of any need to dignify an act by even acknowledging it), then the idiocy becomes a non-issue.
I'd be in favor of ritual flogging of every sportswriter who wasted any column inches on taking any of this remotely seriously. (But they'll have to take a number, and wait for the flogging of every sportswriter who took Mietnkiewicz's comments about possessing the ball from the last play of the World Series remotely seriously.)
UPDATE: The text of my link above turned out to be wrong, since Joe said something really worthwhile about this. (As it happens, I think Joe is buddies with the guy who runs Athletic Reporter.) For the record, I didn't see the celebration in question; the Westwood One radio broadcast made no mention of it. On the phone with Kubi afterwards, I rolled my eyes about the celebration itself but bust a gut over Joe Buck's overreaction to it.
Tom Ridge, who won't be missed.
Quotes in the link are gruesome; this is Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence material.
For all the grief people have given John Ashcroft or Donald Rumsfeld, how did Tom Ridge escape recognition as one of Bush's most problematic underlings? Part of me wants to go with the "We weren't attacked again, now were we?" defense, aside from its obvious flaws (what's the old joke about the elephant exterminator?), yet even beyond that so much of Homeland Security is just basic public relations, and if there's anything Homeland Security (including TSA) has failed miserably at it's PR.
Can we set up something like a prisoner exchange program for the worst publicity on both sides of the aisle? And if so, who'd be your Democratic match for DeLay? Barbara Lee ("speaks for me")? Maxine Waters?
Read this post first, then this update.
First off, who on Earth would be remotely surprised that Mark Cuban voted for Bush? My conceit is that of self-made bazillionaire businessmen, a vast majority will vote for the Republican in a vast majority of national races, for lots of obvious and non-obvious reasons.
(You'll naturally have thought of economic self-interest, plus the idea that successful people might underestimate the need for social safety nets in that if they made so much of themselves, how come - they'd ask - everyone else can't be similarly successful? But there's also the idea that having succeeded in business, they have a good idea of what made them successful, and will tend to believe that policies espoused by Republicans more closely match their own management style than policies espoused by Democrats.)
Even aside from that, though, I think Cuban took a very good general idea and ruined it by framing it with a singularly poorly-thought-out specific proposal. (Cancel inaugural festivities? I forget which ESPN commentator it was, probably Tim Keown - who I intuit to be left-of-center though YouNeverKnow - who suggested that by the similar logic, why not cancel the NBA season?)
For what it's worth I strongly oppose the use of taxpayer money for anything inauguration-related, though if Republican donors want to pony up absurd amounts of money for dinners and dances, they can knock themselves out. Moreover, raking those donors over the coals for spending their money that way rather than donating it to the Red Cross, strikes me as completely fair game.
Look, I disapprove of corporal punishment just as much as anyone else in our circle of people who think we're more civilized than the rest, but still: Do we really need a federal ban on spanking implements?
"She also asked the federal government to deem The Rod hazardous to children, and ban the sale of all products designed for spanking."
Take it to the states, lady. (Of course she won't, because she lives in Massachusetts and has the conceit of saving the butts of those poor kids in Mississippi and Alabama and so on.)
At least the article wasn't a hatchet job on homeschoolers themselves - what the link from Obscure Store led me to fear.
I have no idea who the Republicans will run in 2008, but I can tell you that on principle I will not vote for:
1. Anybody named Bush (at some point even the appearance of dynasty is problematic; I'd put the kibosh on Kennedy kin for that reason among many others).
But the New York Times wants to charge web users for the privilege of reading it on-line.
There are a few good reasons to charge money for information (some of these overlap):
1. You have information that's available literally nowhere else. (Or available only other places that happen also to charge, though eventually someone will give it away if they have, or think they have, a workable ad-revenue-based model.)
2. Your collection of information is so superior to the alternatives (in accuracy, completeness, or both) that people will find the marginal quality gain worth paying for.
3. The transaction costs of gathering or delivering this information are so high that nobody's going to offer it for free any time soon. (Think of the overhead for newspapers' print editions compared to on-line.)
For the New York Times (on-line edition), I don't think any of these apply, unless your esteem for R.W. Apple, Maureen Dowd, et al, is really that high.
Come to think of it, in my life I've worked for at least two companies that, in essence, charge money for information. If you wanted minor league baseball statistics, time was you'd have to pay Howe Sportsdata (later part of SportsTicker) for the privilege. This was mainly a transaction costs issue; now, of course, you can get at least the current season's stats by player or team at Baseball America. Most companies that get a profit margin from charging for information-with-transaction costs will probably be hurt as competitors find ways to lower the transaction costs.
That leaves the situation where your justification to charge is your relative accuracy and completeness. This one's probably sustainable (if it's content providers licensing your data rather than end users), but only to the extent that your data is not only uniquely good but also perceived to be uniquely good by the people who pay for it.
Been meaning to write about this for days, time-permitting. A whole lot of Belmont Club posts called for links (scroll to "The Grand Inquisitor"), and there was also this this Abu Ghraib quiz.
If you're busy, skip all that and just read (or even skim, as I did) this Heather MacDonald piece (or even just Mickey Kaus's link to it) about the vast gulf between the byzantine regulations that apply in theory and what needs to happen in practice to extract any useful information.
Even outside any political context, when it comes to procedures and workflow, there's often a stunning gap between theory and practice. The more divorced the theorists are from any practical consideration, the more widely ignored their dicta will be -- and whenever the theorists are theoretically correct (pardon the redundant phrasing), it's all the sadder for their work to go ignored, when all it would take is a bit more understanding and appreciation of context and parameters. This applies to everything from OO programming to pedagogy.
We have our first set of results!
POOL #1 RANKING:
1. Lisa on Ice
2. Treehouse of Horror I
3. Last Tap Dance in Springfield
4. Weekend at Burnsie's
5. The Old Man and the C Student
6. When You Dish Upon A Star
(explanation/commentary in the extended entry)
As usual, pseudorandom numbers pick the episodes; I rank 'em on the spot, you critique my rankings (and/or give yours) and a week later I post the revised list. No voting per se in this benevolent dictatorship but I do use your opinions for awesome.
Coming this spring: All six tiers listed, plus your chance to nominate episodes from each list for promotion or relegation. After that... if we're still interested, then ranking within the tiers will be 100 times as tricky as the prelims were.
Stay tuned for #5 by Wednesday morning (along with the #2 results), and be sure to weigh in on #3 and #2 if you haven't already, or even if you have. You can also browse the category archive though you'll need to click on each individual post's timestamp to see comments.
Numbers, please...
87: 1F03 (SI-503 / S05E06) Marge on the Lam
When Homer fails to show up, Marge decides to go to the ballet with Ruth Powers, the next door neighbor. Ruth returns the favour and takes Marge out the next night. Unbeknown to Marge, Ruth is driving a stolen car.
218: 218. AABF10 (SI-1010 / S10E15) Marge Simpson in: "Screaming Yellow Honkers"
Homer offers Marge a new Canyonero SUV after embarrassingly discovering that he bought the female's model. But once in the driver's seat, Marge becomes increasingly intoxicated by the vehicle's dynamism, leading to a case of aggravated road rage. Featuring Hank Williams, Jr.
187: 5F06 (SI-906 / S09E09) Realty Bites
When Marge becomes a real estate agent, her firm loses lucrative sales due to her total honesty. Meanwhile, Homer buys a 1960s hot-rod convertible at the local police auction. Unfortunately, the rod's former owner and convicted felon, Snake, wants his property returned post haste, and will do anything to get it back. Guest starring Phil Hartman.
233: BABF03 (SI-1103 / S11E07) Eight Misbehavin'
Apu's wife Manjula gives birth to octuplets. Everyone in Springfield soon pitches in to help, until a couple in Shelbyville gives birth to nine, causing everyone to forget about Apu and Manjula. Guest starring Jan Hooks as Manjula, Butch Patrick as himself, and Garry Marshall as Larry Kidkill.
159: 4F04 (SI-804 / S08E06) A Milhouse Divided
Homer questions his own marriage bless when, at the latest Simpsons party, Kirk and Luann Van Houten (Milhouse's parents) announce their divorce.
215: AABF08 (SI-1008 / S10E12) Sunday, Cruddy Sunday
Super Bowl fever takes control of Homer's psyche after a travel agent offers him and a bus-load of friends free passage to the game. But when the tickets turn out to be counterfeit, Homer must consult his cunning in finding a way into the stadium. Guest starring Fred Willard as Wally, Troy Aikman, Rosie Grier, John Madden, Dan Marino, Pat Summerall, Dolly Parton and Rupert Murdoch.
My Quick Impressions:
Let us never speak again of Sunday, Cruddy Sunday again, no disrespect intended to Vincent Price. This is apparently my comeuppance for falsely accusing Pool #3 of being gruesomely weak. I'm also surprised at how many Marge-centric episodes have sucked. It's unclear whether "Marge on the Lam" is one of those.
UPDATE: Monday night's DVD viewing reminded me, "Marge on the Lam" very clearly does NOT suck, although if what you remember is predominantly the chase I can see why you'd think unfavorably. Until the last five minutes (last 10?) this has "Best Episode Ever" potential, everything from the faux Garrison Keillor to the ballerina shattering the backboard to Lionel Hutz's new identity to "Homer, were you just holding onto the can the whole time?" "Yeah, so what's your point?" This is at least at #2 in my book. If I'd gotten to it in DVD viewing before this pool came up, I'd have probably given it a preliminary #1, but also probably knocked it down a notch after seeing the comments.
You know what? Aside from my dead conviction that Cruddy Sunday is one of the all-time bottom 5, I can't even fairly rank these yet. Sleep on it, read through the summaries (maybe even watch Marge on the Lam tonight), figure out why Clippy is cruelly mocking me (how many Season 10 have we had so far, and yet no Season 1?), and see what y'all have to think. Especially about the Milhouse Divided episode, which I really like but which isn't, strictly speaking, even remotely comedic.
If that made #1, would it be the worst #1 of any of the 56 prelim pools?
This pool #1 result exactly matches Paul's suggestion, but that wasn't on purpose.
Very strong consensus for Lisa on Ice at #1 and Treehouse at #2. In hindsight I was nuts to put anything other than Lisa at #1 (since I did also mention ranking it in my top 10 episodes in an unscientific collation a few years ago). I'm not as hot on the first Treehouse but there it is at #2 - apparently this means we have a quasi-democratic process after all (you're welcome). Also John's second comment put "The Raven" in the right perspective.
At the bottom, both Coen and Cooch put "When You Dish" above "Old Man" (and both savaged Burnsie's even more than Paul). Meanwhile, though, John put "Old Man" ahead of "Last Tap Dance."
You'd think this chain would weigh down "Last Tap Dance", and yet, did I mention just how uniform the savaging of "Burnsie's" was among those of you who've seen it? So Once again I must sugar my own churro winds up ahead of They call them fingers but I'm not seeing them fing... oh, there they go (and Otto spelled backwards is...). I can live with that.
And so "Burnsie's" sinks all the way from #1 to #4. I already know it won't be the last episode to make such a precipitous drop from my first impression onward.
Future "results" probably won't have this verbose an explanation, but for the very first one, you know...
