Review of A Rule Against Murder

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another great addition to Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache Series. Unlike most of the books in the series, this one is not set in the village of Three Pines itself (the villagers are spared a murder!, albeit temporarily), but rather at a nearby luxury hotel hidden in the woods. Inspector Gamache and his wife are celebrating their anniversary at the hotel, while the rest of the rooms are taken by Mrs. Finney and her extended family.

 It becomes clear that while her newly married name is Finney, her children from a previous marriage are all Morrows, including Gamache's friend artist Peter Morrow from nearby Three Pines, who is the last of the four children to arrive. His wife Clara, who is essentially the co-protagonist of the series, arrives with him, where they meet the others: oldest brother Thomas and his wife Sandra, older sister Julia, and younger sister Marianna. There's also a grandchild of undetermined gender named Bean, as well as Mrs. Finney's new husband Bert, who was himself a lifelong friend of Mrs. Finney's late husband, Charles Morrow. Several staff of the hotel are prominent, and a couple of the Three Pines regulars make brief appearances, but this story is primarily about the Morrows.

As a study of a dysfunctional, bitter family, A Rule Against Murder is brilliant. It is heart-rending to see all the siblings tear into each other while the matriarch dispenses little love combined with plenty of judgment. Inevitably one of the family is murdered, at which point Gamache takes over.

The murder mystery itself is neither terribly elaborate nor compelling. The method of killing the victim seems rather improbable, a fact that seems to increasingly be a feature of the Gamache series. But the reason to read this series if not for any Agatha Christie-style twists, but rather for the psychological insights of the author, that are primarily viewed and revealed through the eyes of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.


View all my reviews

History of "Centrism" in the Democratic Party

The main thesis of this post is going to be that the "centrists"* of the Democratic party are killing it with a combination of incompetence and an outdated model of voter behavior.  The incompetence relates to the usage of bad voting models.  Clearly, if the Party's intent is to use modeling to win elections, they are doing a horrible job.

*Yes, I use scare quotes around the word "centrists".  I don't think they actually represent the center of American political thought.  Economically they are pretty consistently right-of-center.  But our dumbed-down national media refuses to ever use the word "conservative" to describe a Democrat, so by default they are assigned the label "centrist".

Right now, the Republican Party controls

• the Presidency
• the Senate, with a 52-48 majority
• the House of Representatives, with a 241-194 majority
• Governorships is 33 of 50 states
• control of both houses of the state legislature in 32 of 50 states (Dems have only 13)

The Democratic literally hasn't been this politically weak since the days of Herbert Hoover.  

By way of contrast, consider the situation in 1976:

• Democrats won the White House behind Jimmy Carter
• a filibuster-proof majority of 61-38 in the Senate
• a massive 292-143 majority in the House of Representatives
• 37 Governorships to 12 for Republicans
• a huge advantage in the number of state legislatures controlled 

Yes, by picking the mid-70s as my initial point of comparison I've chosen a peak of anti-Nixon sentiment.  But 1976 wasn't a wave election for Democrats.  From the 1954 election through the Reagan wave in 1980, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, and while the Senate flipped a couple times in the 1980s, Democrats controlled the House until 1994.

So what happened?  Well the simplest explanation is that the Republican Party flipped the South. The Democratic Party was the party of the Confederacy, but as they also became the party of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960, they gradually lost favor in the South.  Southern Democrats became "boll weevils" and "Reagan Democrats" and then eventually just became Republicans.  

Starting in 1982, in response to the "Reagan Revolution" Democrats began to shift away from the more liberal stances of the 1960s and 1970s.  People like Gary Hart, Paul Tsongas, and Bill Bradley argued that the Party had become too anti-business for its own good, and started a movement to pursue business-friendly "centrism" as an alternative.  One name for this thinking is "neo-liberalism" which dates back to the 1930s.  As an example of this thinking, see A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto by Charles Peters.

Said Mr. Peters:

"If neo-conservatives are liberals who took a critical look at liberalism and decided to become conservatives, we are liberals who took the same look and decided to retain our goals but to abandon some of our prejudices. We still believe in liberty and justice and a fair chance for all, in mercy for the afflicted and help for the down and out. But we no longer automatically favor unions and big government or oppose the military and big business. Indeed, in our search for solutions that work, we have come to distrust all automatic responses, liberal or conservative."

Gradually through the 1980s the neo-liberals took over the levers of party power.  In 1984 Walter Mondale won the Democratic nomination for the Presidency and got crushed at a national level by a very popular Ronald Reagan.  Mondale was the last true liberal to get the nomination.  Mike Dukakis in 1988 was a "technocrat" and since then the Democrats have stuck to "centrists": Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.  (Note that not all of these people are equally "centrist".  Indeed, since his defeat in 2000 Al Gore changed his focus to environmental issues and became reliably leftist.  In 2008 Obama ran as a candidate to the left of Hillary Clinton and won the election easily, but his term as President could not accurately be defined as "liberal".

...
I've been sitting on this for a month.  Will post now and do follow-up when convenient.  Really aiming for a consideration of the "bell curve" model of the voting public.

Yes, there is something deeply wrong with the Republican party and we have to stop pretending this is normal

First in a two-part series, with the follow-up to be called "Yes, there is something deeply wrong with the Democratic party."

No, they're not the same thing.

The Republican party has become an entity run by sociopaths and anti-intellectuals.  They feed upon the cultural backlash of the very religious against the non-religious well-educated "coastal elite".  But of course, our networks can never discuss religion, so this entire aspect of our culture is simply ignored.

All the crap about "the Religious Right" was exposed as a sham this year, as the rallied behind the least religious Presidential candidate in the nation's history.

How did we reach a point where a failed casino owner, a racist deadbeat landlord, an internet scammer is supposed to be treated with "the deference due to the office"?  He's a horrible human being.  His appeal is anti-intellectualism, and let's be clear about that.  This is the culture war, front and center.

Wins Above Replacement - Is it taken too seriously?

For some sportswriters, the statistic known as Wins Above Replacement, or WAR for short, is viewed as the end-all, be-all of evaluating baseball players.  The basic idea is this: using the information from a large number of different hitting statistics (or including fielding statistics in the full version), determine the "number of wins" that a player contributes to a team, compared to an average player, over the course of a 162-game season. For a fuller explanation, see, for example, this description at FanGraphs.

The high-level formula is this:

WAR = (Batting Runs + Base Running Runs +Fielding Runs + Positional Adjustment + League Adjustment +Replacement Runs) / (Runs Per Win)

This statistic is very favorable to players like Mike Trout.  Now Trout is an excellent player - let there be no doubt about that.  He's one of the best hitters in the league, is an excellent fielder, and a strong baserunner who can steal bases.  I just wonder if everything is calibrated properly.

Here's a snapshot from ESPN.com, showing the top 10 hitters in the American League, sorted by batting average.  (Aside: batting average has largely been replaced by on-base percentage in the thinking of modern sabremetricians, but it still is used as a default stat for sorting.)

What interests me here is the disparity in WAR between Trout, Betts, and Altuve versus other hitters who seem to also be having good seasons, like Pedroia and Ortiz.  I should make it clear that the WAR listed above is the total over hitting, baserunning, and fielding.   But curiously, very little of Trout's WAR is from fielding.  His OWAR ius 9.36, compared to Betts' 5.96 and Ortiz's 4.89.  Betts gets a lot of WAR from his fielding - 3.1-3.2, depending on what the round-off error is.  Trout has .6-.5, while Ortiz might get as little as .06 defensive WAR - an unsurprising fact since he only plays defense on the rare occasion that the Red Sox are playing on the road in a National League park  (and even then he takes some games off.) 

I simply don't believe that, as an offensive player, Mike Trout is worth twice as much in terms of WAR as David Ortiz.  Trout has a slightly higher OBP, but a lower slugging percentage.  He has 39 more runs scored, but 27 fewer RBIs, and is much lower in most power categories - fewer doubles and home runs.  Many more walks, but also many more strikeouts.  Trout has the advantage with stolen bases, but still, that's only 26 SBs - one per roughly every six games.  I view stolen bases as analogous to walks - just extra bases to be added to the total base sum.  

So - where does the huge number come from?  I don't know.  There are many explantions like the one above that indicate what WAR is supposed to mean, but I cannot find a closed formula for it that letss me plug in numbers.  I  have found a "Simple WAR calculator" at wahoosonfirst.com, but it doesn't produce the numbers I see above.  

The Dreadful primary season

This is really shaping up to be the worst election year in memory.  The Republicans are falling apart as a political organization.  They've been cultivating anti-government sentiment for so long they now are controlled by a majority that both thinks that they have some divine right to rule the country and that they should try to do their best to keep the government from doing anything.  Well, that's a bit oversimplistic, but the point remains that they've adopted a scorched Earth attitude towards the debt ceiling, towards foreign relations, towards keeping the government open, and, most recently, towards the process of keeping SCOTUS nominations going forward.

Last-minute Review of 2015 in Movies

I've actually seen six of the eight Oscar nominees for Best Picture this year, having missed Brooklyn and Room.  The Revenant is the favorite, according to whatever logic works is ruling the day in Hollywood.  IMO, both The Big Short and Spotlight are clearly better, as are The Martian and even Mad Max: Fury Road, a surprising entry into the category.  Other good films have been neglected, because apparently they are not in genres (comedy, horror) that can be considered.

So I've decided to review my movie-watching of the year, sorted according to various categories.

We'll start with Spy Movies, of which there were many:

Spy Movies

Kingsman:the Secret Service - a very enjoyable romp starring Colin Firth as a member of a British Spy Service fighting international terror in the form of Samuel L. Jackon's lisping villain.  Really good action sequences and a clever plot.  The Freebird/church fight is incredibly gruesome/hilarious.

Spy - Melissa McCarthy plays the lead in this spy comedy. Funny movie with decent plot to it - one of her better works.  Plot is actually pretty pretty well constructed.  

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation - hey, Tom Cruise has done another Mission Impossible movie!  The basic plot hasn't changed over the course of the series.  But the action sequences here are pretty good.  

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  - a spy movie set in the 1960s based on the concept of the old Robert Vaughn TV show.  Stars Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer as the American and the Russian, along with Alicia Vikander as a German woman who works with them.  Love the period fashion of 1960s Italy.  Probably the best plot of this bunch.

SPECTRE - the latest Daniel Craig 007 movie.  Acting is really good, but the plot is pretty much non-existent.  It's all about how Christoph Waltz is the new Blofeld, the man behind all of Bond's torments.  I guess the idea is that he just shows up and is the Bad Guy, because, you know, he's Blofeld.  And Christoph Waltz.  A bit of a disappointment.

What gets me most about this category is that the two established franchises pretty much mailed in their screenplays.

Superhero Movies

Avengers: Age of Ultron - a good movie, but a big overstacked with characters by now.  Didn't have the impact of the first Avengers movie.  

AntMan - pretty generic origin story.  Well done but these are formulaic by now.  

Deadpool is better than either.

Space Opera

I don't like the practice of calling movies like Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy "Sci-Fi" even when there's no science in them at all.  They are more properly understood as Space Opera - extended adventure stories that just happen to be set in space.  I'd say we had two this year:

Jupiter Ascending - I enjoyed this movie, though a lot of that is due to Mila Kunis.  Eddie Redmayne plays one of her homicidal family members and is great.  Sean Bean plays a solider who, bizarrely, doesn't die.  Chaning Tatum plays the love interest who has no chemistry with Mila.  Movie kind of bombed.

Star Wars: the Force Awakens - much better than the prequels.  Bringing back Lawrence Kasdan to write the screenplay instead of letting George Lucas do so was a great idea.  Harrison Ford is great.  The newcomes (Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, and Oscar Isaac) are great.  People have complained that the plot was a mirror image of Episode 4, but that's only true if you only watched the last fifteen minutes, and even then it's not true.  Yes, it has common themes and plot devices.  Duh.

True Stories

Spotlight - the story of the investigative reporting of the Boston Globe's Spotlight division on the pederasty scandal of the Catholic Chuch.  A well-crafted and well-written movie.  Acting is very good, esp. Mark Ruffalo.  

The Big Short - a compelling recounting of how a small number of investors decided the real estate market was bubbling in 2007-2008 and decided to sell them short.  Really devastating critique of the industry.  And nothing has changed on Wall Street.  So we've got that to enjoy.

Bridge of Spies - enjoyable period piece with Tom Hanks as the man negotiating the release of captured U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.  Kind of the movie we expect these days from Spielberg and Hanks - enjoyable, doesn't really take any risks.  Mark Rylance is deservedly getting a lot of praise for his portrayal of the Russian spy Rudoph Abel who was traded.  Writing is good, as well as the acting, but as I said, the movie doesn't really take any risks.

Black Mass - Johnny Depp plays Whitey Bolger in this story about how he manipulated his police handlers to help him eliminate his competition in the organized crime business of 1970s Boston.

Between Black Mass and Spotlight I wonder how I ever got through Boston of the 1970s neither molested nor murdered. 

Everest - an IMAX feature (well, it was available on other screens, but really, what's the point?) about the tragic disaster in 1996 when a couple tourist groups got stuck in a storm on Mount Everest.  A gripping and sad story.  

Very strong year for this category.  I would not want to be required to pick between Spotlight and The Big Short.  Either would be a worthy Best Picture winner.

Sci-Fi

The Martian - I hope I don't have to explain why this is science fiction and Jupiter Ascending isn't.  The science of The Martian is exceptionally good, at least in how it treats the problems of how to survive on a foreign planet with no atmosphere and not enough food when the nearest transport is speeding off in the wrong direction.  Not only the best sci-fi of the year, but one of the best sci-fi pictures of many years.

Ex Machina - also a really, really good movie.  I only saw this on video because the marketing did not really capture how good this movie is.  It's another "genesis of a soul in AI" story.  Oscar Isaac is brilliant, again, this time as the high tech software genius, as is Alicia Vikander as the budding AI/robot.  BTW, Vikander is the breakout star of the year, and I only saw two of her three movies, when the third (The Danish Girl) is the one she just won an Oscar for.

Everdeen/Everdenes 

Mockingjay: Part two.  Not really anybody's fault here, but Mockingjay just isn't enough of a story to make a great movie, esp. not when compared to The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.  The story is realistic, but it's just too anti-climactic.  But of course J-Law rocks.  I mean, duh.

Far from the Madding Crowd - Carey Mulligan makes a credible Bathsheba Everdeen in the first major movie version of this story since Julie Christie played the role in a classic performance.  The '60s version had a more bombastic cast compared to last year's understated version.  I think I prefer the newer version.  

Period Stories

The Revenant - this is supposedly based on a "true story" but I think the key there is "story" as my research of the tale of Hugh Glass is that it's a great fronteir story but it's authenticity has been called into doubt.  Those fronteirsmen were known to exaggerate a bit.  Certainly the real Hugh Glass could not have survived everything that happened to him in the movie.  Anyway, the acting here is great, though I find the themes a bit heavy-handed and the plotting a bit silly at points.  Worth watching for the landscapes.

The Hateful Eight - Tarantino's latest film.  And as was said, you can only compare Hitori Hanso swords to other Hitori Hanso swords, and you can really only compare Tarantino films to his other films.  The Hateful Eight is very enjoyable in a closed-room mystery kind of way.  The scope isn't as large as his prior two movies (Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchanged) but it's still a good movie worth seeing.  

Serena - a story about an industrialist woman played by J-Law.  One of her weaker films, though of course not her fault.  She needs to stop doing movies with Bradley Cooper.  I'm going to have to talk to her about this.

Mr. Holmes - Ian McKellan plays a 90-something retired Sherlock Holmes in this enjoyable mini-myestery.  A good story.

Animated Movies

Shaun the Sheep - an animated feature from Aardman studio that gave us Wallace and Gromit as well as Chicken Run.  Really great animated film  as we've come to expect from Aardman.  No dialogue! But the story doesn't suffer from the absence.

Inside Out - Pixar's offering this year, about how each of us is controlled by a quartet of personified emotions inside a bridge-like control room in our brains.  Pixar keeps putting out great movies, and this is as good as we've come to expect.  A movie about growing up and how we have to leave childish things behind.  And how we need not only joy, anger, and disgust, but how even sadness plays an important role.  

Minions - not much to say here, except that it was a great idea to give the Minions of Despicable Me their own movie.  

Saw three animated movies last year and they were all great.

Dystopian

Mad Max: Fury Road - really much better than I had hoped it would be.  Definitely the action movie of the year and it was great to watch on a big screen.  Tom  Hardy got top billing as Max but Charlize Theron really stole the movie as Furiosa.  BTW, it's winning a lot of secondary awards so far tonight.

Horror

It Follows - a low budget movie based on a very simple idea.  The risks of teenage sex include not only disease and emotional turmoil, but real existential danger in a monster that tracks down whoever the latest person on its victim list is.  Apparently its target list works like a computer science "stack" - when the person at the top of the stack has sex with a new person, the new person moves to the front of the line for the stalking monster's target list.  And if that person is killed, the stack moves up.  Great horror movies often have this kind of simple plot device - I was reminded of The Ring and The Grudge here.  When it comes to making horror movies, often having a small budget is a benefit.  With a cast of unknowns, the movie isn't constrained by star-centered plot expectations (you cannot kill off Janet Leigh less than halfway through the movie!  OK, bad example.  Certainly you're not going to kill off Drew Barrymore before the opening credits!  Another bad example.  But Psycho and Scream are the exceptions that prove the rule.)

Police/Action Dramas

Furious 7 - lots of stunts with cars.  RIP Paul Walker

Sicario - a really good police drama starring Emily Blunt as a DEA office, Josh Brolin as an enforcement "cowboy" and Benicio Del Toro as the guy who does "what is necessary" to fight the Drug War.  Really a though-provoking movie.  

With this category division in mind, my Best Film nomineees would be

It Follows

Mad Max - Fury Road

Spotlight

The Big Short

The Martian 

Sicario

maybe The Revenant

Best of Bond, Part VI

The Pierce Brosnan Years

While Timothy Dalton gave the franchise depth and emotional darkness, the returns at the box office were poor.  After two films the franchise went into a hiatus for several years, to return with Pierce Brosnan as the new Bond.  Brosnan had been the first choice to replace Roger Moore, and he was a natural for the part of Bond.  With more charm and elan than Dalton, he helped re-popularize the franchise.

And the Brosnan years started well.  Goldeneye is widely recognized as a great Bond film.  But each of the following films was weak in some way.  By the end of the Brosnan run, the films were sinking into the same trap that ruined the Moore movies: an excess of silly gadgetry, too many recycled plots, and a few really awful casting choices.  But even the otherwise awful Die Another Day features great supporting work by Halle Berry - all of the films have some redeeming qualities.

Let's recall the criteria in this series of evaluations again:

• Bond – who the actor is, how good he is, and what he brings to the role
• the Villain- Mr. Big, Scaramanga, etc.  I judge the films on how compelling the villain is.
• the Bond Women – some films have few, some have many, but I’m pretty sure all have at least one. The quality ranges from Denise Richards’s absurd nuclear physicist to, of course, Mrs. Bond herself, not to mention Pussy Galore
• the Good Guys – M, Q, Moneypenny, Felix Leiter in his many incarnations and other sidekicks
• the Henchmen on the other side like Jaws, Oddjob, and Nick-Nack.
• the gadgets – not just judging how neat the gadgets are, but whether they were unwisely allowed to take over the film (as often happened with the later Roger Moore filims)
• whatever else I happen to think of

Quick hit on the Republicans

• Ted Cruz: vile, arrogant bastard.  Very dangerous person.  Sociopath.
• Bobby Jindal: man without moral center, willing to stoop to any level to pander to stupid
• Scott Walker: Kochs' favorite candidate, dangerous because people underestimate him.  I'm convinced he's a criminal and has been cheating for years in  Wisconsin.
• Jeb Bush: less evil than some of his compatriots, but still stuck in the party he's in.  
• Donald Trump: joke candidate.
• Mike Huckabee: old school Southern huckster.  
• Ben Carson: just awful
• Carly Fiorina: you don't see HP rallying behind her, do you?
• Lindsey Graham: not stupid, but sold out a long time ago
• Rand Paul: lives in fantasy land, but I like that at least one person is anti-state surveillance
• Marco Rubio: in way over his head
• Rick Perry: dumb as a box of rocks
• George Pataki: hopeless candidate
• Chris Christie: just a rotten bully

It's a lineup that will get any Democrat to vote for Hillary Clinton.  

Reading the Wells report - Air Pressures

As I noted in my previous post, I think the disinformation campaign waged by the league implies that they feel that the actual data doesn't support their argument very well.

First, it appears that this analysis is based on the assumption that the Colts' footballs were gauged right after the Patriots' footballs.  I refer to PDF page 162 (p.2 of the Exponent report)

According to information provided by Paul, Weiss, during the halftime period, three events pertaining to the footballs are known to have occurred:
1. The air pressure measurements of 11 Patriots footballs were taken and recorded.
2. The air pressure measurements of four Colts footballs were taken and recorded.
3. The reinflation and regauging of 11 Patriots footballs to a level within the 12.5–13.5 psig range was performed.
According to information provided by Paul, Weiss, it is clear that of the three events listed above, the measuring of the Patriots balls occurred first. Although there remains some uncertainty about the exact order and timing of the other two events, it appears likely the reinflation and regauging occurred last. According to security footage, the footballs were taken back to the field for the second half at approximately 8:42:30 pm, meaning that they were inside the Officials Locker Room for no more than 13 minutes and 30 seconds. Therefore, all three of the above listed events must have taken no longer than 13.5 minutes to complete.

I'm very suspicious of this need to make an assumption.  Here are things we know. 1. The Patriots' balls were tested first.  2. The stated excuse for only testing four Colts' balls is "we ran out of time", 3. Between the two sets of tests, Prioleau and Blakeman switched gauges.

I would argue that it's much more likely that they switched gauges if the reinflation and regauging of the Patriots' footballs took place before the Colts' balls were tested.  In this scenario, the gauges are put down and the pumps are taken out to reinflate the balls that are all arrayed around the room.  The officials have emptied a bag of footballs, it seems more likely that they'd want to fill that bag again before emptying the other bag - for a good number of reasons.  I'm very hard-pressed to imagine the opposite scenario, the one that Exponent claims is more likely: With 11 balls lying around the room, how likely is it that somebody looks at his watch and says "It will take an indeterminate amount of time to reinflate and gauge these balls.  But I'm pretty sure we only have time to gauge four of them.  Let's start that process, abort it 1/3 of the way through, and then return to the Patriots' footballs."  It's a nonsensical scene.

I would also argue that if this point were important, and it were true that the Colts' balls were done in the middle, that it would be easily confirmed.  I am not buying into "there remains some uncertainty about the order of events."  You had a room full of people and none of them can remember if the Colts' balls were tested before or after the Patriots' balls were reinflated?  Given that the excuse for not doing all the Colts' footballs was "We ran out of time," I think we already have solid information that this part of the halftime procedure was last.  But like Walt Anderson's recollection about which gauge was used before the game started, a recollection that supports the Patriots' case is discarded.

So, let's look at what the air pressures actually were. At some point I might address the rest of the Exponent report, but let's just say that they do a whole lot of simulations, apparently with the theory that if you don't have actual data, you should replace it with simulations. Huzzah!

Poisoning the well of public opinion against the Patriots

On January 21, Chris Mortensen published a story at ESPN.com that claimed, among other things, that

The NFL has found that 11 of the New England Patriots' 12 game balls were inflated significantly below the NFL's requirements, league sources involved and familiar with the investigation of Sunday's AFC Championship Game told ESPN.The investigation found the footballs were inflated 2 pounds per square inch below what's required by NFL regulations during the Pats' 45-7 victoryover theIndianapolis Colts, according to sources.

This claim wasn't true.

On January 19, league official David Gardi sent a letter to the Patriots claiming “In fact, one of the game balls was inflated to 10.1 psi, far below the requirement of 12-1/2 to 13-1⁄2 psi. In contrast, each of the Colts’ game balls that was inspected met the requirements set forth above.”

Two more claims, neither of which is true.  First that the Patriots had a ball that was 2.4 psi low.  Also the claim that none of the Colts' were low.

Reading the Ted Wells Report: Exponent report

There are various parts of the report which are used by the NFL to make their case.  They seem to rely more than anything else on the text messages.  This is odd to me, as the text messages are not, in fact, incriminating.  Embarrassing?  Certainly.  Consistent with guilt?  Maybe.  There are more problems with that than people are admitting.  Damning?  Hardly At some point I may go over that, but I think it's a better use of my time to go over the Exponent appendix, which makes the case that the Wells report and the suspensions rely upon.  It should be clear here that without the Exponent report, there is no evidence of any wrongdoing.  Without evidence that the balls were actually deflated, who cares what text messages a couple locker room attendants sent to each other?

The main problem with the Exponent report is that a lot of information is missing.  Where we should be using carefully recorded air pressures, we rely more upon half-rememberances, including on the question of which gauge was actually used to measure the air pressures.

A second issue that I find problematic is that it presumes uniformity to conditions that simply isn't reasonable to assume.  It also fails to consider the possibility that using a football playing a football game in the NFL might tend to lead to loss of air pressure.

Anyway, let's start.

Reading the Ted Wells report - Executive Summary

I am literally baffled that people seem to think that this report offers conclusive proof of anything.  And yet reporters around the country are piling on.  More evidence that the media isn't terribly rigorous with what stories they run.  Anywhere, here it goes...

Executive Summary

p.1 (p.5 of pdf)

"All eleven of the Patriots game balls tested measured below the minimum pressure level of 12.5 pounds per square inch (“psi”) allowed by Rule 2 of the Official Playing Rules of the National Football League (the “Playing Rules”) on both of two air pressure gauges used to test the balls."

Already the report is acting like it's the responsibility of the Patriots to keep balls at a certain pressure level during the game.  But it isn't.  The only thing the Patriots are obliged to do is provide balls pressurized to a level between 12.5 and 13.5 psi to the officials before the game starts.  Even then there is no sanction if a ball is over- or under-inflated.  It's up to the officials to adjust the pressure so the ball falls in the desired range.

Aside: let's remember what Chris Mortensen was told. 

The investigation found the footballs were inflated 2 pounds per square inch below what's required by NFL regulations during the Pats' 45-7 victory over the Indianapolis Colts, according to sources. 

Well, that turned out to be untrue, as we'll see soon.

Nimoy

He's passed, as we all know.  Let's consider the highlights of his career after the jump.

Quickie Saracastic Oscar Preview

Feels like the Academy is going to reward some stinkers again.  The nominations already have several issues, the worst of which is the bizarre decision to not include The Lego Movie in the Best Animated Feature category.

But rather than have an extended diatribe about the process, I'll just do a quickie scatter-gun preview.

The NFL's science-free smear campaign

So apparently the NFL has decided that they cheaty cheater New England Cheatriots have been cheating again, deflating footballs during games in order to gain some sort of advantage.  There are several problems with their campaign of accusation, though:

1. In cold weather, footballs lose air pressure.  (This is a consequence of what is known as Guy-Lassac's law from physics.)
2. Nobody on the team will admit to having done this.
3. Apparently they have no videos showing this happening.
4. It's not clear who had an opportunity to do this.
5. At least nominally, the balls were in the custody of the game officials.

Hosting the Broncos

Why do the Patriots host the Broncos 3 years in a row?

NFL Scheduling

Every once in a while, somebody will notice that a given NFL team will host another non-divisional team from the same conference three years in a row.  Today the Patriots are hosting the Broncos for the third year in a row.  That's so unfair!  Or so it would seem.  But it turns out that there are sound mathematical reasons that it works out this way. 

To explain the reasons, let's consider how the NFL schedule is generated.  The NFL has 32 teams, organized in two conferences, each of which has 4 divisions with 4 teams each.  And the season lasts 16 games long for each team.  This coincidence of numbers makes for a very elegant scheduling algorithm, which will disappear as soon as the NFL expands again.

Each team plays a mix of divisional games, intraconference games, and interconference games.  For starters, each team plays a home game and an away game against each of its three division rivals. 

The next consideration is the desire to have regular games against all the other teams in the league.  That's neatly arranged by having all of the teams in each division play all the other teams in each other division on a rotating basis.  For example, this season all of the teams in the AFC East play all of the teams in the NFC  North.  That rotation is on a four-year schedule, since there are four divisions in each conference.

In contrast, there is a three year rotation for interconference matchups.  This year, the AFC East plays the AFC West, while the AFC North plays the AFC South. Last year the AFC East played the AFC North.  Next year, they'll play the AFC South.  

So each team plays 6 games in the division, 4 games against all the teams of one other division in the same conference, and 4 games against all the teams in one division intra-conference.  The home-and-away matchups for division vs. division play alternates so no city will go too, too long without being able to see every other team.  That means every eighth season for interconference, every sixth season for intraconference.  These account for 14 of the 16 games played every season.

That leaves two slots to fill up the season.  The NFL fills the last two slots by having every team play one team from each of the other two divisions in the same conference, namely, the two teams that finish in the same respective place in the standings.  In recent years, the Patriots have finished in first place, and thus had to play the first place team from the other two divisions.

For many years, this led to the Patriots playing the Colts every season.  One season, when the Patriots finished in second, the Colts did the same thing, so they kept playing each other.  Now that Peyton Manning has moved to Denver, there is focus on that matchup.  And two years ago, back when Tim Tebow was their QB, the Broncos visited Foxboro to play the Pats.  Last year, they did the same thing.  

And a few weeks ago they hosted the Broncos again.

Why is that?  Well, let's look at how this can go.  The three other first place teams last season were the Broncos, the Bengals, and the Colts.  As I mentioned earlier, the Pats play all the teams of the AFC West this season.  That they host the Broncos is part of the divisional schedule.  Three years ago they went to Denver, and they'll go to Denver again three years from now.  And if they'd gone to Denver this year, they would have hosted Denver three years ago, so they still would have hosted Denver three years in a row.

Why does it happen?  It happens because the home-away switch has to interleave with the rotating division vs. division matchup.  Recall the list of the first-place teams: Patriots, Colts, Bengals, and Broncos.  Since the Patriots hosted the Bengals and visit Indy this season, the Broncos have to do the opposite, just to ensure all four teams have exactly 8 home games and exactly 8 road games.  This makes for a "cycle": Pats host Bengals, who host the Broncos, who host the Colts, who host the Pats.  A more compact notation  here would be (Pats, Bengals,  Broncos, Colts), where each team hosts the team after it.  Or, to use the geographic names, (East, North, West, South).  Last year was (East, West, North, South).   And the year before that was (East, West, South, North).  

If I keep East in the first slot, there are six ways to fill the other three slots.  And it turns out the NFL is on a 6-year rotating schedule in this respect.    Now if I keep East in the first slot, the third slot is in a regular rotation:

(East, *, South, *)

(East, *, North, *)

(East, *, West, *)

(East, *, South, *)

(East, *, North, *)

(East, *, West, *)

So, let's start with (East, West, South, North) and see what we're forced to do.  The next year we have (East, *, North, *).  If we want to avoid the (East, West, *, *) option, we have to use (East, South, North, West).  That gives us

(East, West, South, North)

(East, South, North, West)

and, if we want to again avoid a repeat

(East, North, West, South)

So far, so good, yes?  Well, at least as far as the East goes.  But notice that the South hosts the North two years in a row, the West hosts the South both times it is possible, and the North hosts the West two years in a row.

So, it's possible to schedule things so the East team doesn't have any repeat hosting, but doing so would force every other divisional matchup to be constant in terms of who's on the road and who's hosting.  You just cannot alternate a two-year rotation and a three-year rotation for everybody.  So what the league does is use all six possibilities.

(East, West, South, North)

(East, West, North, South)

(East, North, West, South)

and those three reversed

(East, North, South, West)

(East, South, North, West)

(East, South, West, North)

In other words, East@West, East@West, division vs. division, West@East, West@East, division vs. division.  And since the division vs. division matchups themselves alternate, either the third or sixth year is also going to be East@West, leaving us with three years in a row of East@West, followed by three years in a row of West@East.

[cross-posted at Pineapples in Alaska]

surgical aftermath

I've been intending on writing an update for several weeks.  What's been the cause of the delay?  Mainly, I've been exhausted a lot.  Also, since I didn't really have leave to use, I've trying to work in spite of the exhaustion.

To organize my thoughts, I'll break the experience down into time periods

1. Inpatient - Three days in the hospital, increasingly miserable because it was impossible to get a good night's sleep there.  
2. At home, with brother in town for several days.  Finally sleeping and figuring out how to get the body working again.
3. First week trying to work - pretty much impossible to do more than a few hours of work per day.  
4. Second week - energy level still well below 100%.  Tried to do a small amount of running but just didn't have the energy.
5. Third week - exercise time aside, energy levels pretty close to 100%.  

So I'm three and a half weeks out, feeling pretty tired for a Saturday.  Did 30 minutes on the elliptical machine last night, which felt fine.  

Back to the hospital.  Being in a hospital sucks.  More than I thought it would.  For starters, the bed just isn't comfortable.  Hospital beds bend and fold to help patients sit up, but they fold in the wrong place.  And when you're coming off abdominal surgery the last thing you want to be doing is a lot of sit-ups adjusting your body.  Also, the food was dreadful.  Being on a liquid-only diet sucks, but it turns out that their solid food is awful, too.  About the only thing they do well is administer pain-killers, but that's counter-balanced by the endless blood tests.

Going home was great.  Finally got some sleep, though the mobile feline heating unit made it a challenge to find a combination of blankets and comforters that would keep me warm without waking up in a sweat.  I gradually figured out the pain  issue - during the surgery the doctor pumped up my intestine with air to make it easier to see what was going on.  The gas was unpleasant.  Also, it felt like my entire abdominal wall clenched during the surgery and wasn't going to relax any time soon.  Things only started picking up when I switched from Percoset to Alleve.  Alleve is the best at relaxing muscles.  

The resected colon seems to be doing fine.  In retrospect, I'm wondering if this surgery was overkill, if it was disproportionate to the risk of whatever was left of the polyp.  (Which might well have been nothing.)  But I'm fine with the decision-making process, even though I suspect it will be viewed as wasteful in the future.

Losing a friend

Several months back, it may have been more than a year, I noticed that one of my Facebook friends, a guy I had met through playing Diplomacy, didn't seem to be participating in on-line discussions as often as he had.  I asked a friend we had in common what was going on, and I was informed that this person had cancer.

Well I just found out that the Duck has passed.  Really liked the guy, more so than most people.  The Duck was the kind of guy who was easy-going and naturally seemed to get along with everybody.  I didn't know him particularly well, but in another sense I did.  The nature of the Diplomacy-playing hobby is that you see people seldom, but when you do meet, the interactions are fairly intense.  The people involved are often very socially aware and we can make friends that last a long time.

Anyway, my own operation is coming up in less than two weeks.  I delayed it a week so I could go to a gaming convention.  I asked the scheduler if it there was an urgent need to schedule it ASAP and she said no.

In the aftermath of the positive colonoscopy, I've decided to also see a dermatologist to get him to look at all my freckles and moles.  Worried about melanomas now.  Am I becoming a hypochondriac?  I don't think so.  Having decided that I'm missing at least one anti-cancer allele, this puts me in a weird frame of mind.  I'll probably have to have regular colonoscopies for the rest of my life.

Meh.  Will miss Duck at DixieCon.

Best of Bond, Part V

The Timothy Dalton Years

And the series moves forward at its glacial pace.  Today we consider the two contributions by Timothy Dalton.  Personally, I enjoyed both The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, but neither did particularly well at the box office.

The Dalton films moved away from the increasingly comic (and increasingly ludicrous) themes of the later Moore films, and tried to bring back a more serious tone, as had characterized the earlier Connery offerings. They succeeded to some extent, but moviegoers didn't respond to Dalton's darker tone.

Let's recall the criteria in this series of evaluations again:

• Bond – who the actor is, how good he is, and what he brings to the role
• the Villain- Mr. Big, Scaramanga, etc.  I judge the films on how compelling the villain is.
• the Bond Women – some films have few, some have many, but I’m pretty sure all have at least one. The quality ranges from Denise Richards’s absurd nuclear physicist to, of course, Mrs. Bond herself, not to mention Pussy Galore
• the Good Guys – M, Q, Moneypenny, Felix Leiter in his many incarnations and other sidekicks
• the Henchmen on the other side like Jaws, Oddjob, and Nick-Nack.
• the gadgets – not just judging how neat the gadgets are, but whether they were unwisely allowed to take over the film (as often happened with the later Roger Moore filims)
• whatever else I happen to think of

And now we move to

The Living Daylings

bounce in my step

Good News

So the pathology report is back.

Two small polyps: Fragments of tubular adenoma. Negative for high-grade dysplasia or malignancy.

Large polyp ("mass"): Tubular adenoma with small foci of superficial high-grade dysplasia. No high-grade dysplasia is seen t the cauterized margin in the plane of sectioning, but it is not possible to fully evaluate all of the margins.

Translation: