I sat down to close 2010 with a traditional favorite-music-of-the year list, only to realize that I am rather far behind in my exposure to new tunes. I'll scrap that idea and instead write about a few music-related memories from this year.
1) Mercer Island Half Marathon
On March 22, I participated for the first time in my hometown's signature running race. I missed the race the prior year due to injury and was recovering from a different injury prior to this one, making this an important psychological event as well as a physical one. I did not appreciate how hilly the course was until I drove it the day before, and I became discouraged about the prospects of hitting either of my goal times. However, moving into the final mile, I realized that I was a lot closer to the finish line than I thought I was. Serendipitously, my playlist reached my finish-line song, "Crawling Through Knives" by In Flames, which always gives me a little adrenaline boost. I accelerated and started passing people, quickly finding myself on the straightaway to the end. I found a final extra gear and sprinted the last 200 yards or so, including the small hill immediately before the finish line, crossing over two minutes ahead of my stretch goal :)
2) Canadian traffic jam
On April 30, Dave, Dan M & I headed north to Vancouver, BC so Dan & I could run the Vancouver Half Marathon on May 2. We left Seattle early to avoid Friday traffic but hit a severe backup anyway just ahead of the tunnel leading into the city. There's no interesting story here. It took us an hour to go just a couple miles. Canadian radio had nothing worth admitting into our earholes, so I put on "Never Trust Anything That Bleeds" by American Eyes. Despite the auspicious start to the weekend, Dan & I both ran a good race.
3) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
We are Sex Bob-Omb!
4) Bumbershoot
I went to see Rise Against, but Weezer.put on my favorite show of the day. Rivers Cuomo had ridiculous amounts of energy, climbing all over the set and stage structure, even leaving the stage entirely to sing a song from the corner of Memorial Stadium. As if Weezer's own catalog of hits wasn't enough, they covered the opening drum solo and guitar lick of Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher" and did a full-song version of MGMT's "Kids", inserting a verse of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" in the middle for good measure. Did I mention that I love cover songs?
5) "Electric Blue" by Icehouse
A song I had long since forgotten gained new significance this year, in a very happy way. Nothing more to share on that ;)
6) BoB's "Magic", featuring Rivers Cuomo
Hey, that's two parts of this list with Rivers in them! I'll end the post with this song. I have a couple specific memories associated with it, but it's included here as representation of a pretty positive year overall for me. I gained quite a bit of confidence in some important areas, and I will close out the year feeling like maybe I do have a bit of magic in me.
Happy new year!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Traffic management or just bad luck?
Today I picked up my car after scheduled maintenance at the dealership in Lynnwood, and drove from there back to downtown Seattle. I-5 was a parking lot so I elected for Aurora instead. After hitting red lights at the first few traffic signals I wondered if I would be starting and stopping the whole way home and decided to track the lights. I counted 27 traffic lights from the dealership south to Greenlake, of which 17 of them were red for me. Should I be surprised by that result?
If you assume that each light is independent of each other light, and that each light has a 50% chance of being red and a 50% chance of being green, then the chance that I would hit at least 17 red lights out of 27 is 12.39%. Not a high probability (roughly 1 in 8), but not so unexpected that I need to rush out and blog about it.
So 17 out of 27 isn't terribly interesting, but 8 of the first 9 were red- what about that? The chance I would hit at least 8 out of 9 is 1.95%- pretty uncommon (1 in 50) but not unthinkable. However, when you're out driving, there's nothing good on the radio and you just want to get home, 8 out of 9 seems like the world has it out for you.
As I was writing this, I realized that I had to make quite a few assumptions and simplifications to use the calculations above. If you haven't fallen asleep yet, read on:
1) Some of the lights were actually green when I reached them, but there were cars stopped in front of me so I had to do the same. Thus, I counted as red any light where I had to stop or slow to a near stop, regardless of color. During periods of heavy traffic, this could be an unreasonable assumption due to the long lines at traffic lights, but traffic was moderate today so I think this treatment was reasonable.
2) I assumed each traffic light was independent of each other traffic light. This is likely not true, as transportation departments coordinate lights to keep traffic flowing. However, there are many things that can happen to a driver between two lights: slow drivers could impede you, cars can enter and exit the road, and pedestrians can cross outside the crosswalks, so I think it's a reasonable assumption.
3) To simplify things, I assumed that yellow lights were the same as green lights. Since you can go through yellows, I think this is reasonable. By the way, I didn't stop at or go through any yellow lights on my drive.
4) It's possible that I missed a light or two once I got inside Seattle city limits (south of 145th), but I don't think it changes the story much. I hope you'll forgive me for putting accident avoidance ahead of spontaneous probability experiments.
Did I miss anything?
P.S. Rather than go back to first principles and re-learn my college math, I used this site to calculate the probabilities above: http://stattrek.com/Tables/Binomial.aspx
If you assume that each light is independent of each other light, and that each light has a 50% chance of being red and a 50% chance of being green, then the chance that I would hit at least 17 red lights out of 27 is 12.39%. Not a high probability (roughly 1 in 8), but not so unexpected that I need to rush out and blog about it.
So 17 out of 27 isn't terribly interesting, but 8 of the first 9 were red- what about that? The chance I would hit at least 8 out of 9 is 1.95%- pretty uncommon (1 in 50) but not unthinkable. However, when you're out driving, there's nothing good on the radio and you just want to get home, 8 out of 9 seems like the world has it out for you.
As I was writing this, I realized that I had to make quite a few assumptions and simplifications to use the calculations above. If you haven't fallen asleep yet, read on:
1) Some of the lights were actually green when I reached them, but there were cars stopped in front of me so I had to do the same. Thus, I counted as red any light where I had to stop or slow to a near stop, regardless of color. During periods of heavy traffic, this could be an unreasonable assumption due to the long lines at traffic lights, but traffic was moderate today so I think this treatment was reasonable.
2) I assumed each traffic light was independent of each other traffic light. This is likely not true, as transportation departments coordinate lights to keep traffic flowing. However, there are many things that can happen to a driver between two lights: slow drivers could impede you, cars can enter and exit the road, and pedestrians can cross outside the crosswalks, so I think it's a reasonable assumption.
3) To simplify things, I assumed that yellow lights were the same as green lights. Since you can go through yellows, I think this is reasonable. By the way, I didn't stop at or go through any yellow lights on my drive.
4) It's possible that I missed a light or two once I got inside Seattle city limits (south of 145th), but I don't think it changes the story much. I hope you'll forgive me for putting accident avoidance ahead of spontaneous probability experiments.
Did I miss anything?
P.S. Rather than go back to first principles and re-learn my college math, I used this site to calculate the probabilities above: http://stattrek.com/Tables/Binomial.aspx
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Playing favorites
I haven't followed college football very closely for a few years, but since joining friends to see the Oregon/Stanford game a few weeks back, I have been paying more attention. On Friday night I watched the Boise State Broncos bring the hammer down on Fresno State, 51 - 0. The all-orange uniforms and blue turf might be a little intimidating to a visiting opponent, but from what I've heard, Fresno State is a decent team. In addition to some great stories, like that of Boise State, I have unfortunately found that the reason I stopped caring about college football a while back still persists: no playoffs.
College football is in a different situation than, say, Major League Baseball. MLB has a 162-game season before the playoffs, so you have a pretty good idea of the quality of each team. In college football, you have the opposite: 160+ schools and only an 11 or 12 game season to sort out relative quality before the bowl games begin. To address this, college football ranks its teams by polling coaches, media members and through a computer formula. This is understandable, as they need some way to differentiate teams. However, college football also decided that this hierarchy should be biased in favor of certain teams- those from the largest schools with the largest media markets. And we accept it. Would fans tolerate an NFL game where the referees would only call penalties on the visiting team? What about a MLB game where one team used aluminum bats and the other wood? (Yes, we have the DH rule, but that's for another rant) We've all heard sportscasters say "that's why they play the game"- the idea that, at the start of the game, each team has an equal chance of winning. You don't know what's going to happen on the field. How can fans place any credibility in a sport that slants the rules against certain teams?
A playoff system would not completely solve college football's credibility problem. With so many teams, you would still need a ranking system to figure out which teams participate in the playoff games, and there would always be an argument about who gets in and who's left out. But whether you have a four or eight team playoff, the best clubs in the country would match up on the field, not in a formula- and I think that's all we need. A coach should be able to stand in front of his team at the beginning of the season and tell them "Win all your games and you'll have the chance to play for the title." Chris Petersen, the coach of the Boise State Broncos, can't do that. Until he can, I don't know how I could bring myself to care about college football again*.
* I might make an exception if the Huskies someday field a great team again.
College football is in a different situation than, say, Major League Baseball. MLB has a 162-game season before the playoffs, so you have a pretty good idea of the quality of each team. In college football, you have the opposite: 160+ schools and only an 11 or 12 game season to sort out relative quality before the bowl games begin. To address this, college football ranks its teams by polling coaches, media members and through a computer formula. This is understandable, as they need some way to differentiate teams. However, college football also decided that this hierarchy should be biased in favor of certain teams- those from the largest schools with the largest media markets. And we accept it. Would fans tolerate an NFL game where the referees would only call penalties on the visiting team? What about a MLB game where one team used aluminum bats and the other wood? (Yes, we have the DH rule, but that's for another rant) We've all heard sportscasters say "that's why they play the game"- the idea that, at the start of the game, each team has an equal chance of winning. You don't know what's going to happen on the field. How can fans place any credibility in a sport that slants the rules against certain teams?
A playoff system would not completely solve college football's credibility problem. With so many teams, you would still need a ranking system to figure out which teams participate in the playoff games, and there would always be an argument about who gets in and who's left out. But whether you have a four or eight team playoff, the best clubs in the country would match up on the field, not in a formula- and I think that's all we need. A coach should be able to stand in front of his team at the beginning of the season and tell them "Win all your games and you'll have the chance to play for the title." Chris Petersen, the coach of the Boise State Broncos, can't do that. Until he can, I don't know how I could bring myself to care about college football again*.
* I might make an exception if the Huskies someday field a great team again.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Looking out the window
As you may or may not know, I live in an entirely urban environment. From my condo's living room, I can see a fairly good-sized swath of the area just north of Seattle's downtown core. Tonight, the only traffic on those streets consists of Metro buses and a street sweeper. One solitary, deliberate street sweeper.
I haven't worked very many different jobs in my life, so my experience is limited, but it sure seems like operating a street sweeper would be one of the most frustrating jobs you could land. Every night, you get to drive around mostly empty city streets at speeds only slightly faster than your average Segway. These streets are filled with traffic during the day, but at night, no one's around to impede your progress. Yet there you are, moving at 10 mph, restrained by nothing but your sense of duty.
Maybe you could listen to music the whole time, or recorded books? Oops- probably not. Earplugs are the order of the day with all the brushes and vacuums operating around you. I think I would go nuts.
I would have to overcompensate for all of this exaggerated octegenarian driving during my free time, and that would probably lead to a pile of speeding tickets. Not such a pleasant outcome. And just to twist the knife a little more, my street sweeper salary probably wouldn't cover a car truly worthy of heaps of speeding tickets.
So, I suppose I should be more appreciative of the job I have :)
I haven't worked very many different jobs in my life, so my experience is limited, but it sure seems like operating a street sweeper would be one of the most frustrating jobs you could land. Every night, you get to drive around mostly empty city streets at speeds only slightly faster than your average Segway. These streets are filled with traffic during the day, but at night, no one's around to impede your progress. Yet there you are, moving at 10 mph, restrained by nothing but your sense of duty.
Maybe you could listen to music the whole time, or recorded books? Oops- probably not. Earplugs are the order of the day with all the brushes and vacuums operating around you. I think I would go nuts.
I would have to overcompensate for all of this exaggerated octegenarian driving during my free time, and that would probably lead to a pile of speeding tickets. Not such a pleasant outcome. And just to twist the knife a little more, my street sweeper salary probably wouldn't cover a car truly worthy of heaps of speeding tickets.
So, I suppose I should be more appreciative of the job I have :)
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Election 2010
Watching the national election results roll in on Tuesday night, two things became apparent to me.
1) Republican and Tea Party gains in this election are a result of voter frustration with national politicians, not frustration with Democrats in particular. Republicans are correct that voters indicated a desire for change in Washington DC, but are misguided in claiming that voters think the Republican party, as a group, is the right choice. Americans voted against Democrats, not for Republicans. Tea Party victories are evidence of this.
2) If the Republicans want to regain control of the executive and legislative branches in 2012, perhaps their best strategy is to just use delay tactics for two years and let 2012 hinge on economic developments- in short, to do nothing. Results of the 2012 elections will depend heavily on what happens to America's economic situation over the next two years. If the economy recovers, Republicans can point to their election in 2010 as the catalyst for this improvement, even if they didn't successfully pass any significant legislation. If the economy does not recover, Republicans can blame it on Democratic policies established in Obama's first two years. Either way, the Republican party would look good compared to Democrats in 2012.
Combining these two ideas, the real winners of the 2010 election are the Tea Party candidates. They were elected due to voter frustration with the current set of available politicians. I expect those politicians will continue to spend their time placing party priorities above public good and above their own principles. This should be particularly easy with the House and Senate controlled by different parties. If the elected Tea Party members and potential future candidates continue to vocally place principle above party, and refuse to align with Republicans in some areas, voters will notice, and we'll see the Tea Party representation grow going forward.
1) Republican and Tea Party gains in this election are a result of voter frustration with national politicians, not frustration with Democrats in particular. Republicans are correct that voters indicated a desire for change in Washington DC, but are misguided in claiming that voters think the Republican party, as a group, is the right choice. Americans voted against Democrats, not for Republicans. Tea Party victories are evidence of this.
2) If the Republicans want to regain control of the executive and legislative branches in 2012, perhaps their best strategy is to just use delay tactics for two years and let 2012 hinge on economic developments- in short, to do nothing. Results of the 2012 elections will depend heavily on what happens to America's economic situation over the next two years. If the economy recovers, Republicans can point to their election in 2010 as the catalyst for this improvement, even if they didn't successfully pass any significant legislation. If the economy does not recover, Republicans can blame it on Democratic policies established in Obama's first two years. Either way, the Republican party would look good compared to Democrats in 2012.
Combining these two ideas, the real winners of the 2010 election are the Tea Party candidates. They were elected due to voter frustration with the current set of available politicians. I expect those politicians will continue to spend their time placing party priorities above public good and above their own principles. This should be particularly easy with the House and Senate controlled by different parties. If the elected Tea Party members and potential future candidates continue to vocally place principle above party, and refuse to align with Republicans in some areas, voters will notice, and we'll see the Tea Party representation grow going forward.
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