...and nothing ever happened in science again.

Oh my God! Two posts in one day? Are you dreaming? Pinch yourself. Right now, do it. Nope, you're awake. The Ninjaneer must be on a crack high.

I couldn't resist passing this on. One of my favorite rant subjects, CNN.com, just did something so beautifully asinine I'm actually gleeful. Seriously, I'm grinning like an idiot with the potential for ridicule. Where to begin?

As you may have noticed over the course of forever, CNN.com's science reporting has always been the equivalent of a five-year-old watching 30 minutes of Discovery Channel and then explaining what it was about. They catch some key phrases and the general gist, but usually butcher the details or leave them out altogether.

Well -- No more! That's right, CNN.com will never again post another horribly inept science article, because as you can read here, they're SHUTTING DOWN their entire Space, Science and Tech section!

Can you imagine the conversation in the board room? No? Allow me to help:

CNN.com President: How are things in Science and Tech?

CNN.com Sci/Tech Editor: Der, gahhhhhhhhhhhhh-thppt.

President: What?

Features Editor: Sorry, sir, he was, like, totally leaning against the stairwell door this morning trying to clean his ears with, you know, those scissors he's always running around with, and--

President: Yeah, Okay. Anyone know how things are in Science and Tech?

Opinions Editor: Sir, Science and Tech has never received a single complimentary Letter to the Editor, and this chart shows our customer feedback ranks it the worst Science writing since--

President: Is that chart in crayon? What happened to those laser printers we ordered?

Opinions Editor: The...Oh. We thought those were really big, slow laser toasters.

President: Okay, we need to seriously improve Science and Tech. Suggestions?

Features Editor: Could we, like, get a new geek? Who, like, knows about light bulbs and fancy gizmos and stuff?

Opinions Editor: We should get a robot to do it. I bet the Apple Store has something.

Sci/Tech Editor: Blub-blub-blub-blub motorBOAT!

President: Ugh. Never mind, lets just shut it down, fill the Science office up with sand, and get some Tonka Trucks in there or something.

Everyone: Yay! A sandbox!

I'll miss you, CNN Science section.

Lost a Great, but we get one back

At the time of his death, Tim Russert was my favorite journalist on television, to the point that I actually had Meet the Press on my DVR. Yep, I'm a dork. Anyway, with Russert's death, I was pretty much looking at the anchors on the major networks...and not liking any of them.

But hey! It's not all bad. It turns out that Aaron Brown, former anchor at CNN until about two or three years ago, returns to television journalism tonight. For those of you who knew me when CNN fired Brown and replaced him with Anderson Cooper (for the following reasons, in this order: 1) Cooper looked cool standing around pointing at Katrina damage and looking solemn, 2) Cooper makes women and gay men feel happy in their pants, 3) Brown steadfastly refused to take part in the rest of CNN's slide down into pseudo-news and empty-headed journalism, 4) Cooper didn't, and 5) low ratings), I was pretty ridiculously outraged for about two weeks. Once again, I'm a dork.

Anyway, Brown is back as the anchor of PBS's weekly show "Wide Angle," which is not so much a weekly summary of news as it is an in-depth look at one international issue each week. For example, it looks like this week is all about Darfur. Anyway, I like this guy, so I'm donating my modest advertising skills to his cause.

I think Wide Angle is on Tuesdays at 9pm on PBS, but really, your DVR could tell you better than I could.

The Limbaugh Effect

I just posted this in the comments section of someone else's blog, so I figured I ought to post it to my blog as well. For people who doubt the possibility of the Limbaugh Effect being significant in Indiana, here's the math that I did from CNN's election and exit poll data. (Note: I still hate CNN, but I do like their election tracker stuff.)

Total Indiana democratic primary votes (99% reporting): 1,272,471

Given the choice of Clinton or McCain, 16% of democratic primary voters chose McCain, of which 41% voted FOR HILLARY in the primary -- So that's 1,272,471 * .16 * .41 = 83,474 McCain/Republican supporters who voted for Hillary in the primary, even though they won't vote for her in the general.

Given the choice of Obama or McCain, 18% of democratic primary voters chose McCain, of which 12% voted FOR OBAMA in the primary -- So that's 1,272,471 * .18 *.12 = 27,485 McCain/Republican supporters who voted for Obama in the primary, even though they won't vote for him in the general.

Net gain for Hillary: 83,474 - 27,485 = 55,988 votes

Hillary's margin of victory: 14,413 votes

So without the votes of people who will vote McCain over their own democratic choice in the fall, Obama wins by about 40,000 votes. Obviously, the numbers above are estimates because they're based on the exit polls, but when the estimated net gain for Hillary is almost four times the margin of victory, that's a legitimate concern.

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Incidently, this also allows us to put a lower bound on complete assholes in Indiana at 83,474 + 27,485 = 110,959 complete assholes, or 1.76% of the Indiana population. Go Hoosiers!

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Update:

I've seen a few places reporting that Obama's camp is saying that 7% of the Indiana democratic primary turnout is attributable to Limbaugh's Army. That is also supported by the same exit poll numbers, though admittedly it rounds up to the nearest percent, and ignores the 2% of the turnout who did the opposite of Limbaugh's suggestion and voted for Obama even though they won't vote for him as the nominee. The 7% number from Obama's camp is calculated as follows:

Percentage who would vote for McCain over Clinton: 16%
Percentage of that 16% that voted for Clinton: 41%
Percentage of total electorate who voted for Clinton but would vote for McCain over her in the general: 0.16 * 0.41 = 0.0656 = 6.56% (rounds up to 7%).

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Update:

Most of the media articles I saw on this topic today poo-pooed the idea that the Limbaugh thing had much of an effect. Here are the arguments I saw, and why I think they are less compelling than the argument I posted.

Argument #1: Hillary won self-declared Democrats 52-48 by exit poll data. Some sites just stop there, saying "See, she won democrats straight up, so forget Limbaugh's people, democrats got what they wanted." That's a very solid argument…as long as you think independents don't matter. Since I’m registered as Non-Partisan, that idea naturally offends the hell out of me. Obama won independents 54-46.

Argument #2: Hillary also won self-declared Republicans 54-46, and some sites argue that the data shows those Republicans picked her as genuinely the better candidate; better on actual issues like the war and economy, or on qualities such as leadership. There's a major problem with that analysis: The questions about the issues and leadership in the exit polls asked voters to pick from Obama and Clinton only. McCain is nowhere in those questions, so while some of those people certainly were being genuine in their support, that analysis completely fails to detect those who still think McCain is better than either one of them. Just because a group of people likes Candidate A over Candidate B does not mean they like Candidate A over Candidate C. Limbaugh voters are a blind spot in this analysis, so can it really say much about the effect of Rush Limbaugh? Nope.

Argument #3: Some articles I read have argued that it is legitimate for the Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary even if they intend to vote for McCain in the fall, because they are just trying to give themselves the best two options. I can see how that might occur to people, but it's still unethical. If you intend to vote for McCain, but then vote in the Democratic primary as a Second Choice, you're manipulating the nomination process. You're injecting your second choice vote into the count of Democrats' first choice votes, without any real intention of backing the Democratic candidate. If you intend to vote for John McCain in the election, congrats, he's on the ballot. The Republicans had a primary in Indiana too, as meaningless as it was, and if your first choice is McCain, then your place was there. This argument is morally crippled.

This whole thing has interested me more in a Data-versus-Media Perception way than in a political way. I have a friend who pointed out that it is not particularly tactful for Obama to make a big deal out of this, and I would agree with that – his performance last night all but seals the nomination for him, and there is no need for him to irritate people by saying “Oh yeah, by the way, I should have won Indiana too.” Even by my analysis, he only would have won by a percent or two, hardly anything to brag about.

More irritating to me, however, is that for all the dismissals in the media of a significant Limbaugh effect in Indiana, I have yet to find a good counterargument that provides its own compelling data and/or a reason to dismiss the data that I (and the Obama camp) used. If you see one, send it my way. I think the real reason it’s being dismissed is the same reason I was skeptical at first myself – it’s ugly, and we don’t want it to be true, because of what it says about some voters and about the vulnerabilities of our election system. Maybe the exit polls were way off, absurdly off, maybe they were incompetently run, maybe the sample size was too small (1881 respondents, 0.15% of total voters), I don’t know – but based on the data we have, I think Limbaugh voters just might have flipped the Indiana primary election.

CNN.com now offers T-Shirts of their crappiest headlines!

Just when you thought CNN.com's lead headlines couldn't slide any further toward Entertainment / Offbeat News hell...they found a way.

The headlines at the top of CNN.com (to the right of the main story with the picture) previously were called "Top Stories," but recently changed to "Latest News." This was probably because so many people questioned whether stories about Britney Spears could really be called Top Stories, and as we all know, when faced with a decision between improving content or renaming content, CNN always choses renaming.

Anyway, you can now click a T-Shirt icon next to the wackiest CNN headlines and be redirected to a page where you can order a T-Shirt with that same wacky headline! And below the headline, they'll print "I just saw it on CNN.com" along with the date and timestamp!

Act now, you can get the following headlines on a T-Shirt RIGHT NOW for only $15, plus 4.99 shipping:

"Waste food dished up to hungry diners" link
"Prince drops copter in gal pal's yard" link
"Weird fish leave sea, spawn on beach" link

I hate you, CNN. I fucking hate you.