Speech Clouds: With Great Power

This semester I have 7 credits worth of oral presentations classes. This means I may be writing and giving as many as four speeches per week. Anyway, I was playing around with Wordle this morning, and came up with the bright idea to post word clouds of my speeches as I give them. However, I've already done three, so I've got some catching up to do. Accordingly, I'll be posting some over the next few days.

But first, here's a speech I wrote but didn't give, entitled "With Great Power":

Saved By Zero

Sorry for the title... really...

So, zero Republicans in the House voted for the stimulus package. This comes as no surprise to much of liberal blogistan, as we all yelled* at how idiotic it was for Obama to include so many tax cuts and cave to so much Republican whining (e.g., family planning funds, funds devoted to upgrading the National Mall) because it wouldn't result in any Republican votes. And, indeed, Obama's efforts at "bipartisanship" resulted in zero House GOP votes.

But I'm wondering if the House GOP hasn't just played themselves right into Obama's hands. Obama was swepped in on "change" which the media widely interpreted as meaning an end to partisan rancor (although there's little evidence in his actual rhetoric to suggest that's explicitly what he meant). Well what happens if, during the signing ceremony Obama makes a speech, saying that he tried very hard to include Republicans... he didn't want it to be so tax cut heavy, he didn't want to cut funds tied to family planning, he didn't want to eliminate the funds for the National Mall, but he did it all because of Republican objections. But the GOP was more interested in scoring political points than in negotiating in good faith. Despite going in person to Capitol Hill to talk to congressional Republicans, they still refused to make any compromise, and voted unanimously against this vitally important stimulus bill because it wasn't exactly the bill they demanded. Try as he might, uber-popular President Obama can't work with Congressional Republicans because they aren't willing to work with him.

I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Obama were able to use this vote result as an opportunity to turn the Village's bipartisan obsession against the GOP and to his benefit, giving him and the Dems cover to enact whatever legislation they want regardless of bipartisan cover. And I wouldn't be surprised if that was his plan all along.


* Some even wrote blog posts about it! Not me, of course, but still...

Kudos Arlen

Usually, I line up right behind Harry Reid on my former Senator: you can always count on Arlen Specter to stand up for his principles, except when it matters. However, Arlen Specter deserves a tip of the hat for being the only male Republican to join his four female G.O.P. Senate colleagues to vote in favor of the Lucy Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Kudos, Arlen, for breaking with the rest of your caucus on the issue of being a misogynistic troglodyte.

An Observation

Walking around decked out in Steelers gear does not really convey "I don't want to talk to you" very well.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

Alfonse D'Amato...

Thanks Corporate Feminism!

Jim Kramer Could, Theoretically, Be Good At His Job

Its generally accepted that the Jim Kramers of the world - the television stock market pundit set, that is - don't actually have any great insight about the workings of the stock market. And, indeed, statistics show that their picks generally do worse than the market. The idea, of course, is that if these people had any tremendous knowledge they'd be making money on the market, not giving out tips on TV.

However, that doesn't necessarily follow. Suppose, for example, Jim Kramer's advice resulted in profits at 101% of the market. In other words, Kramer beats the market by 1%. That's not enough for him to live off of, unless he starts with a massive amount of money to invest (and, frankly, he could just pull 1% out of that fortune per year instead of investing, and he wouldn't exhaust it in his lifetime).

Jim Kramer doesn't have that kind of money. However, Jim Kramer's viewers, in the aggregate, have that kind of money. Especially if Jim Kramer reliably beat the market, even by that small amount - if that were the case, he'd have even more viewers. So Jim Kramer's ability to slightly beat the market on a consistent basis isn't valuable to him, but it is valuable to a television company who can sell commercial time while he gives out his advice.

Of course, in reality, Jim Kramer's advice isn't reliably slightly better than the market. In fact, it's worse than the market. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't be economically optimal for someone to have Jim Kramer's job and be good at it.

Ellen Tigh is the Final Cylon

Lame.

Lee Adama is Still the Final Cylon

I'm not really feeling a long detailed post right now, so I'll try to make this short and sweet.

From the Razor hybrid: "And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering."

What does it mean when a person is described as being in shadow? Often it means hidden, but if the fifth were hidden, is he clawing towards the light. or, in this case, being revealed? No, in this case in shadow means in one's father's shadow. And if there is one character who is in someone's shadow, its Lee. After all, if I titled this post "Adama is the Final Cylon" you would think I meant Bill.

So, how is Lee clawing toward the light? Well, all season long he's been pursuing a political career, and managed to find himself as temporary president of the colonies. No doubt he's looking for a way to step out of his father's shadow, clawing for the light.

And in the howl of terrible suffering? In the beginning of Revelations, Kara said to Lee: "You know, Leoben said something to me when he was holding me in that dollhouse on New Caprica - that children are born to replace their parents. For Children to reach their full potential, their parents have to die."

The reason Lee doesn't know he's the Final Cylon yet is that he's not - he can't become the Final Cylon until Bill dies. The parents of the other four are all dead, but Lee's father lives, and Lee can't reach his full potential until his father dies. That will be the howl of terrible suffering.

That also explains D'Anna's insistence that only four were in the fleet. Lee didn't know he was one of the final five and, therefore, wasn't one of the final five - at least as far as D'Anna cared. Her goal was to get the final Cylons to join the baseship of their own free will. Lee would never have done so until he knew he was a Cylon, the same as the other four.

As for YouWillKnowTheTruth - I was going to do a big run-down of all the clues, but, like I said above, I'm not entirely feeling it, so I'll do a quick overview.

Several clues eliminate possible people from consideration - e.g., 3 (Starbuck), 7 (Roslyn), 25 (Hotdog). Others demonstrate upcoming plotlines - most specifically, Gaeta is going to go off on some sort of anti-Cylon crusade, as presaged by the end of Face of the Enemy. At the end of Face of the Enemy Gaeta is going off to talk to Baltar. Their conversation is hint #10. The "secret" that Balter refers to with Gaeta many times over is the 8 from New Caprica and Face of the Enemy. Hints 15, 24, and 26 also go to this plot line.

However, the key hint is number 11. In the background at several times the final five music can be heard playing, at at the end 12 bells chime. The crowd noise is from the press conference in hint number 4. The voice at the beginning is Tom Zarek, who we know from hint number 4 is on Caprica One. The person there along with them is Lee.

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again...

I'll have a new post up tomorrow explaining how Razor, Season 4, and YouWillKnowTheTruth all simply confirm what I've been saying for the past... well, month, I guess, but still... Lee Adama is the final cylon. However, before that I wanted to share a hypothetical I thought up while I was wasting time considering who might be the final cylon if it were not Lee Adama, which was, necessarily, a waste of time because Lee Adama is the final cylon. But, regardless...

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again - this is the religious mantra of humanity in Battlestar Galactica. The Dying Leader, the Temple of the Five, the Eye of Jupiter, Kobol - its all happened before, and its all happening now. And, according to the scripture, it will all happen again.

But, what exactly is "it?" Well, what prompted the great journey? An attack on humanity by the Cylons, nearly wiping out the entire race, as they flee across the galaxy to their new home. And what happened before? Humanity, for reasons unknown, had to flee Kobol. But if this has all happened before, shouldn't that mean we know why? Indeed, if this has all happened before, and will all happen again, then humanity must have fled Kobol because of a Cylon attack.

Of course, that wouldn't be possible, as Cylons were invented by humanity long after the human race fled Kobol. But what if the human race as it now exists was not the human race as it existed on Kobol? What if, in fact, the human race as it now exists are the decendants of those attacking Cylons?

I'll get back to that point in a moment, but first let's condier what we know about the Cylons who attacked the 12 colonies. We know they have 7 human-like skin-job models, who are in practially every way indistinguishable from humans. We know that these models, and the "hybrids" which control their baseships and spew forth prophetic ramblings were created by research on a handful of humans captured in the waning days of the first Cylon war. We know these 7 models are incapable of reproducing with each other, and have mostly proved incapable of reproducing with humans, with one exception.

And what do we know of the final 5? We know they are capable of reproducing with Cylons, as did Tigh with Caprica-6. We know they are capable of reproducing with humans, as did Tyrol with Cally. And we know that the offspring of a final 5 Cylon and a human is indistinguishable from a human child - Doc Cottle raised many alarm bells about Hera, the one known half-human half-Cylon, but said nothing about Nicholas, Tyrol and Cally's baby.

So, back to my first point: what happened before, and what will happen again? Perhaps it is the attack by the robotic race on the creators, the flight of the remnants of the creators, pursued by their creations, to a legendary new homeworld. Perhaps it happened before, and that is what caused the flight from Kobol. But instead of the robotic creations being the Cylons, they were humanity.

Suppose a "pre-human" race inhabited Kobol, and created a robotic slave race. This race became self aware, waged war, and eventually developed new technologies creating models which in every way appeared like these "pre-humans." When the "pre-human" flight reached their new home, Caprica, the two groups converged. And among these "pre-humans" existed a few individual "final" humans, who posessed the uncanny ability to reproduce with the "pre-human" model humans. After all, if this has all happened before, than these "pre-humans" were just the decendants of the robotic menace of the "pre-pre-humans" who had fled to Kobol.

In other words, here's what has happened before, and will happen again: A part-organic part-machine race grows, thinking itself entirely organic. It develops machines, those machines become self aware and revolt. Those machines develop part-organic models that are largely indistinguishable from their creator race. The created race nearly wipes out the creator race, which then flees to a legendary new world. The two races converge. Among the creator race are a handful of individuals who can reproduce with the part-organic models of the created race. Those organic created and those creators become the forefathers of a new race. The new race forgets it is part-machine. The cycle begins anew.

And, if this is the case, than the final Cylon is necessarily Helo - who was, let us not forget, on the basestar when D'Anna insisted only four were in the fleet.

Helo is the father of the only human-Cylon mixed-race child. Nicholas is not one, as his blood did not contain the unusual antigens that were in Hera's body. And Hera is a figure of incredible spiritual importance to Cylons and to the Cylon God - the first of the new generation.

This would explain why the Farms didn't work, not because love was missing - certainly there must be humans around in the BSG universe who can tell you that, tragically, you can indeed reproduce without love - it was because none of the captured human women were one of the final five.

And the final five aren't Cylons - they're people with a special genetic code that allows them to reproduce with Cylons. If they aren't Cylons though, how could a switch be flipped? Because humans are part machines, and this would have certainly become clear during the experiments to create the Cylon hybrids and the 7 Cylon skin-jobs. They would have been able to identify what human genetic material would be able to successfully mate with the Cylon skin-job genetic material, and they would have been able to construct some sort of radio-wave that would be able to communicate with those humans. And that information could have been left embedded in the hybrids.

All that could be true - except, Lee Adama is the final Cylon, so it can't be. Still, its an interesting idea.

Professional Amateur Atheletes

I'm really not adding much to the conversation here, so I'll keep it short. But with the NCAA Football National Championship Game tomorrow, at least I'm being topical.

Certain college sports, especially football and men's basketball, are huge businesses. The Universities bring in huge money from them. One of the biggest stars in college football right now is Tim Tebow, quarterback of the Florida Gators. Despite being a dominant college football player, Tebow is generally not considered a top-rate pro prospect. Many people seem to think he needs to switch positions, and most don't see him as a first round pick.

Colt Brennan was a Heisman Trophy contender last year. In three years at Hawaii he threw 1584 passes, completing 70.4% of them for 14,193 yards, and 131 touchdowns. He went undrafted this past year in the NFL.

There are many many more players who are stars in the NCAA, but for whatever reason won't be able to make it in the NFL. The situation is even worse in basketball, given that NFL teams carry 53 men on their active rosters, plus a 8-man practice squad, while NBA rosters consist of only 15.

Tim Tebow 3rd place finisher for the 2008 Heisman Trophy (finishing only 8% behind the winner of the award) made $0 this year for his services as quarterback of the SEC Champion and possible NCAA Champion Florida Gators. Last year, when Tebow won the Heisman, he also made $0.

Without Tebow, a Florida player would not have won the Heisman Trophy last year, the Florida Gators would not have won the SEC this year, and they would not be playing for a national championship tomorrow. Tim Tebow's contributions have netted the University of Florida far far more thsn $0.

The indentured servitude that is NCAA athletics, especially in Football and Basketball, is absolutely immoral. Superstar college atheletes in major sports are worth a great deal of money to their universities. And they deserve to be paid for their contributions to their universities.

The 111th Senate

A while back, Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight.com had a post up about how various Senators voted on the auto bailout*, and how that might be a preview of which Senators were likely to defect in the upcoming congress. Nate's post was interesting, but I was a bit disappointed at the lack of analysis of the effect, especially given that Nate was writing this. So, naturally, being the numbers geek I am, I decided to do it myself.

I started by compiling a list of all 78 Senators who:

• Voted on the bailout bill
• Were not lame ducks
• Had not announced their planned retirement before their next election
  
• Were, at the time of the vote, not leaving the Senate for a cabinet post
  

Nate's basic hypothesis was that a Senator's vote (V) would be roughly determined by their political party (P), Obama's margin of victory in their state (O), and by how many years they had until re-election. Accordingly, for each Senator I collected their party (assigning Lieberman and Sanders as Democrats), margin of Obama victory, class (i.e., how many years until re-election), and how they voted for the bailout bill. I also colelcted their state, for a counter hypothesis I had which I will discuss below. Votes were coded as 1 for Yea and 0 for Nea. Parties were coded 1 for Democrat and 0 for Republican.

I ran a linear regression estimation for

V = a*P + b*O + c

where a, b, and c are constants esitmated by the linear regression. I did a separate regression for each class of senators, and came up with results that looked pretty good for Nate's hypothesis:

Class III (election in 2010): V = .44*P + 1.14*O + .286
Class I (election in 2012): V = .53*P + .81*O + .303
Class II (election in 2014) V = .64*P + .78*O .231

So, the longer a senator has until his next election, the less he cares about Obama's margin of victory, and the more he is likely to care about his own party - exactly what Nate hypothesized.

The value of V at which a senator should be voting Yea is 0.5, as a Yea was coded as a 1, and a Nay a 0. However, it didn't quite work out that way. Instead, 0.3 seemed to be the more accurate predictor. Only 6 Senators (3 from each party) with a vote-score above 0.3 voted Nay, while only 1 with a vote-score below 0.3 voted Yea. Based on this model, the senators most likely to defect from each party are, in order of likelihood:

Republicans:

• Olympia Snowe (ME)
• John Ensign (NV)
• Arlen Specter (AP)
• Judd Gregg (NH)
• Charles Grassley (IA)

Democrats:

• Blanche Lincoln (AR)
• Byron Dorgan (ND)

Note that every single Republican on that list had a vote-score closer to .5 than did Byron Dorgan.

Now, as I mentioned above, I had a counter-hypothesis. I thought that, instead of being about Obama's popularity, the auto bailout was more about regional voting. My hypothesis was that Rust Belt Senators would be likely to vote in favor, while Southern Senators (from states which house foreign auto manufacturers) would be more likely to vote against. So I organized the states into regions and found the following results:

• Five of the six Republican Senators from New England (defined as New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine) and the Rust Belt (defined as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, and Michigan) voted for the bailout bill. The lone defector from that group was Judd Gregg (NH).
• Five of the six Republicans who voted for the bailout were from New England or the Rust Belt - the only other was Kit Bond (R-MO).
• There are three Democratic Senators from the Deep South (defined as Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi). Two of them were just re-elected. The third, Blanche Lincoln, is up for election in 2010, and voted against the bailout.

The only other Democrats to vote against the bailout bill were both Montana Senators, Jon Tester and Max Baucus. I have no idea what's going on with them.

At any rate, it would seem that there was, indeed, a regional effect going on. And the effect might be stronger than any effect of Obama's popularity on the vote - both John Ensign and Chuck Grassley had high vote-scores, yet neither voted 'yea' on the bailout bill.

My final conclusion: Nate's hypothesis might very well be right, but the auto bailout bill is a poor vote on which to test it.


* - By "a while back" I mean "when the auto bailout was actually a contemporary and relevant topic. Note to self...