...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.

Gas Price Bitching

I'm one of those lucky people who work from home and live within walking distance of 90% of the places they regularly go, so I'll just pre-emptively apologize for bitching about the price of my once-or-twice-a-month fill-up.

That said, it should never, ever cost $52 to fill up the tank on a two-door hatchback. That shit's just wrong.

Why are we encouraging a Monkey-Robot Alliance?!

Monkeys: Cute, lovable, mentally-deficient ancient ancestors who we dress up in funny costumes for our entertainment, and who we occasionally find useful as test subjects for the next wonder-drug. But one look in their tiny monkey faces reveals the same warning which is found in their DNA; within their genetic code lies much the same potential that is found in our own, for good and ill.

Robots: Do not be fooled by the innocent prototypes that vacuum your carpet, or the more complex versions that build cars in giant assembly lines in Detroit; these, too, are but idiot cousins to a possible future enemy of all mankind - intelligent, evil machines, bent on destroying their creators and seizing the planet for themselves.

Hollywood has tried to warn us of these twin dangers countless times. Who can forget poor Charlton Heston, and his eventual and much-less-competent successor Marky Mark, in their losing struggles against a planetful of super-evolved apes and their anti-human bigotry? Or Keanu Reeves' valiant fight against a race of machines of our own creation, turned twisted and evil, and with an insidiously annoying penchant for talking way, way too much?

These movies showed us that both of these evil beings would enslave us: Monkeys would use us as beasts of burden; machines see us as an upgrade to the lithium-ion battery. Surely, then, it would be the sheerest folly for humanity to thrust these two potential destroyers of men together, to provide them with an opportunity for communion and conspiracy.

And yet, somehow, science has failed to heed these warnings. I ask you, if we continue down this path, how much longer will it be before someone utters the dreaded words of two combined nightmares: "Take your cold mechanical hands off me, you damn dirty robo-ape!"

It may already be too late to stop such an alliance, which means we have only one possible path to survival. Initially, at least, the strength of robotic apes will be confined to the digital and tropical realms. We must, therefore, strengthen our currently shaky relationship with polar bears, who have no love of the robots themselves, and work in secret to perfect vacuum-tube and other analog-based technologies, so that when the future war comes, we are prepared.

Yeah, work was slow today.

New Barbeque, Part II: The Grrrr Continues

The "No Knobs" problem was resolved amazingly well today; the store said "Oops, our bad" and, since they had no replacement in stock, they just GAVE me a barbeque worth about $100 or so more than the one I bought. It's the same brand and uses the same cart, just nicer barbeque equipment and performance. Sweet!

So I take it home, and begin to assemble the cart. I got 95% of the way through the cart assembly, which took about 2 hours. Last step: put on the front panel. Problem: The holes in the legs for the front panel are on the back legs not the front legs.

Oh man, I thought, I must be an idiot. How did I put the front legs on the back? Looking at the drawings, I found the problem in the first fucking figure in the instructions. The one that shows you how to put on the back legs. The back leg in the picture, labeled "rear leg," is the fucking front leg! Grrrrr! And of course, I didn't catch it when I put on the front legs, because the only difference between the rear and front legs is an extra hole on the in-facing side of the leg, and Figure 2 helpfully shows you only the out-facing side of the front leg. Did I say Grrrr? I meant GRRRRRRR.

Okay, I think, calm down. All this means is your front panel goes on the back. It's just a screen to hide your gas tank, so who cares. Just put the panel on the back so you can mount the shield-thingy to it and you're done.

Nope. Physically impossible. It turns out the front end of the barbeque is a quarter inch wider than the back end. Which means, so is the front panel. Which means you can't mount the front panel in the back, because it's a quarter-inch too wide.

So an hour later, and 3 hours after I started, I got the entire cart disassembled so I could swap the front and back legs. Yeah. Fun night. Tomorrow I get to do it again.

When I finally get this thing assembled, I'm gonna cook me a giant steak, drive it to the barbeque store, walk in, eat it in front of the guy who wanted $50 bucks to assemble the thing for me, and then shout "Ha! I win, motherfucker! I win!" And in honor of Natron, I might even throw in a "Game over, man, Game over!" Maybe. I still hate you, Bill Paxton.

I have no knobs.

I bought a barbeque tonight. Unassembled, cuz you know, my car is tiny, and cuz, you know, I didn't want to pay the store to assemble it. I'm a freaking ninjaneer, I can put together a barbeque.

So I took all the big parts out of the boxes and started going through the instructions. I hit a minor snag on step 5. Actually, my problem had nothing to do with step 5, which looked pretty simple -- attach stuff to the barbeque frame. The problem was that my barbeque frame was missing something that was shown in the picture. Three things, actually. Three very, very important things.

The knobs. You know, how hot do you want the damn thing to get? Turn the knobs. No knobs. I have no knobs.

So I flipped back through the directions, looking for the step where I was supposed to put the knobs on. There is no such step. Oh well, I'll just put them on now, I thought. At this point, most of the stuff was unpacked from most of the boxes. I figured that I must have not unpacked the panel with the knobs on it yet, so I took out the rest of the stuff from the rest of the boxes.

Still no knobs.

So I went down to my car with a flashlight and searched for any boxes I might have forgotten to bring in.

No boxes. No knobs.

So I went back to the instruction manual and looked at that exploded view picture that shows all the parts, and there's the frame in the picture, with the knob-laden control panel already attached.

Everything else in this thing has been exquisitely, painstakingly packed, with detailed and easy instructions. It's not like IKEA. So you're telling me that somehow, the guy in charge of putting the biggest piece of the barbeque into the box didn't noticed the control panel was missing? The knobs? The freaking knobs?!?!?!?

I'm going back there tomorrow, and I'm not leaving without knobs. I've been in the showroom, I know they have knobs. I'll leave that place knobless, if need be. No knob is safe.

No
Knob
Is
Safe.

I will have my knobs.

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.

Bank of America takes over top spot on my Shit List.

They started out doing so well. On Monday, Bank of America fraud services called me to ask about suspicious activity on my credit card account. It turns out someone had my card number and was using it to buy stuff online. I was impressed; the first fraudulent charge was Monday morning, and here was Bank of America calling me a mere 4 hours after that first charge. I closed that credit card account over the phone, and they said they would ship a new one overnight. It would be here by Wednesday.

Did I mention I just moved, and had changed my address with them that morning? Well, I did, so I doublechecked with the woman on the phone, who assured me it would go to my new address.

Here's what apparently happened next. Someone else at Bank of America saw that the address change was made on the same day the new card was being sent, and said "Whoa, that's suspicious, I better put a hold on that until we can verify it's actually the cardholder who requested it." So they slapped a hold on it. THEN NO ONE DID ANYTHING FOR THREE DAYS.

I called them just now. "So where's my new card?"

"Well sir, we placed a hold because of this address change."

"Yes, I confirmed the address at the time I requested the card."

"Yes sir, well, the address change on the same day looked suspicious, so we wanted to make sure you were actually the cardholder before we sent the card."

"That was three days ago."

"Yes sir, we wanted to make sure it was you who ordered it."

"How were you going to make sure?"

"We needed to talk to you."

"Then why haven't you called me in the last three days?"

"I'm sorry sir, I'm not sure."

"You would think that if the cardholder really did request an overnight shipment of a new card, that means he needs it sooner rather than later, right?"

"Yes sir."

"You can see why I'm upset. This is fairly incompetent."

"I'm sorry, sir. I can ship it to you now sir. It will be there on Saturday."

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr....Must....smash....something....

Exercise (Warning: This post contains bad jokes, even for me.)

If you haven’t exercised in a few months, let me give you some tips I have learned for getting back in the habit:

1) Don’t.

Look, if you want to try it, go ahead. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you, it's gonna hurt. What's that? It adds ten or twenty years to your life? Pah. The universe is billions of years old, what’s ten or twenty years compared to that? Over that time period, ten or twenty years is well within the margin of error of your supposed exercise-extends-your-life study.

(Note: Ninjaneers are not required to take statistics. I did, but I rejected it based on my own definitive study of its effectiveness, which had a sample size of two coin flips. Fifty-fifty is a myth.)

Okay, okay, I hear you evangelicals hollering about that “billions” number. Not that I know any evangelicals (…that I know of! Wink, wink) but I can hear you anyway. God gave me psychic powers. And you’re saying “Hey, ten or twenty years looks a lot bigger when you realize the universe is only six thousand years old, not billions!”

Two things.

A) You just used math to compare two numbers. As you know, math is the devil’s tool and it is totally unreliable.

B) To God, time isn’t time. It’s just the fourth dimension in this whole space-time thing he created. Imagine a three dimension coordinate axis. There’s the X-direction, the Y-direction, and the Z-direction. Three arrows. But God, in his infinite hilarity, made this fourth arrow, and it’s invisible to everyone but him, and it points in a direction that no one can imagine. And then he created us, and made it so no matter which way we turn, we’re always walking in the same direction down that freaking time arrow. He think’s its funny as hell.

Still with me? (Seriously? You must be bored.) Here’s my point. Say God exists and is responsible for all the content of the modern Bible. He would have had to convert the age of the Earth from God units to human units. Look, humans can’t even keep human units straight, and we made them up. Remember when NASA lost that Mars probe a few years ago? Units are a bitch. So it is totally reasonable if God got a decimal place in the wrong column when he was editing that book of his. Trust me, he told me so when he gave me the psychic powers. It’s billions.

Anyway, I digress. To recap, if you haven’t exercised in a while and you are thinking about starting up again, follow these steps:

1) Don’t.
2) If you somehow fucked up tip #1, you might be okay. Just don’t ever, ever stop exercising again.
3) If you fucked up tip #2, what can I say. You’re retarded or something. Get a beer and go back to tip #1.

P.S. The reason this post is so long is because I can't freaking walk right now. I fucked up tip #1.

The Fay Buchanan email

Dan suggested I start a blog, and then Dan demanded this be my first post. Sounds like Dan should get a blog. Anyway, originally written as an email on Super Tuesday...

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I've got MSNBC on in the background while I work (not CNN...CNN is dead to me), and I thought you might like to know that the Republicans are cannibalizing themselves to an insane degree that is coming to a head in the physical incarnation of Fay Buchanan, who is currently working for the Romney campaign, and who I predict will be dead by the end of the night from one of the following causes:

1) Her fangs clog and her venom sac ruptures, and she chokes to death on her own venom.
2) In her zeal to explain how life-long Republican McCain isn't conservative enough and 2-year Republican Romney is the heart of the conservative movement, she forgets to inhale and suffocates.
3) A studio aide closes the door to the room she is in, and the accumulation of smoke from her fire-breathing kills her by asphyxiation.
4) The depth and contortion of her scowling frown continue to grow at the same exponential pace as her bitterness until it tears her face in two.
5) Angry evangelicals form a mob, grab their torches and pitchforks and break into the studio to burn the witch who dares call their preacher candidate a self-serving lowlife who is selling out the unborn.
6) Death by pretzel.
7) Lynn Cheney enters the studio to aide the Smear McCain effort in person, but their shared passions draw them inexorably into a horrid bestial lesbian romp, which is cut thankfully short when their husbands arrive to first ogle and then stone them to death as Jesus would demand.
8) Dick Cheney mistakes her shrieking for a captive bird and unloads with his shotgun.
9) Huckabee calls in a favor. Lightning, a falling satellite, or a spontaneous plague of locusts do her in.
10) Someone spills water on her. She leaves behind only her clothes, smoke, and an uncontrollable horde of flying monkeys.

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Now that Romney has done the graceful thing and ended his candidacy to prevent the terrorists from winning, maybe Fay can find something more relaxing to do and escape these fates.