A Thought on Attack Ads/Energy

P.S. (PRE-Script): There will be a few more political posts, especially as we get down to Novemeber, but I know my readers don't care a whole lot about my views on politics. This isn't a surprise, everyone has their views and very rarely are they nuanced enough to be worth reading. I'll try to get some more personal stuff up. Maybe "creative writing," if I can get around to it. At any rate...

I have no problem with attack ads. Not in theory at any rate. I don't want to know just why I should vote for a given candidate, I want to know why I should vote for him or her instead of the other candidate. Odds are they both have some pretty good ideas, and I want to see them fight over which ones are actually better.

Of course, the ads Al Franken has been running (at least on the radio) in Minnesota are pretty ridiculous. They go something like, "Norm Coleman is in bed with special interests because he [insert non-substantive routine political action here.]"

McCain's "Biggest Celebrity in the World" ad was no better -- but at least I got to see the entertaining backfire.

What would be really interesting is an attack ad that doesn't boil down to a 3 second soundbite, or is so easily dismissed. Everybody accuses everybody of being in bed with special interests, a term so vaguely defined I'm not sure what it means. Except that it is bad. Instead I would like to hear a 30 second ad that goes something like:

[Person]'s energy policy is going to drive [region and/or country] into further trouble by relying on more drilling. At best, digging into ANWAR and putting in more off-shore drilling rigs will increase the world's oil supply by about 1% -- after 10 years. Not nearly enough to affect gas or energy prices in a way you'll notice at home. Vote for [the other person] who doesn't support ineffective energy policies.

That's gotta be about 30 seconds. The next ad would explain why "alternative energy" (another vague term) is a better deal.

Bonus: Yes, my fake ad does support my own view on energy. Drilling anywhere around the U.S. isn't going to help us anytime soon and OPEC can respond by cutting production whenever it wants to. We even throw out the whole environment ruining thing because idea is almost as bad as E85 (sorry Iowa, Ohio) which may take as much energy to make as it produces -- or more.* McCain and Obama differ mostly in how much drilling we do and how much money we put into alternative energy.

*I'm sure I posted on this at some point in the past. Probably a long time ago. See Time's The Green Energy Scam for more details. But basically, E85 is the worst alternative energy idea anybody has put into practice yet. It's singular strength is that is in essence a subsidy for American farmers.

You Won't Get My Money From This Email

From my inbox:

[madjon]--

In the next 36 hours, the McCain campaign will be pouring millions of dollars -- if not tens of millions -- into negative attack ads against Barack Obama.

This is what political campaigns do.

Before John McCain accepts the Republican nomination on Thursday, his campaign has to spend every last dollar of primary funds they've raked in from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs.

Yours had to do the same thing.

Just yesterday, they aired a new negative ad in 14 swing states. His campaign manager even admitted that all McCain has to rely on is attacks, saying that for them, "This election is not about issues."

Full quote: "'This election is not about issues,' said Davis. 'This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.'"

 Read: This is about McCain vs. Obama, not what they platforms they stand on. And he is more right than wrong (read the article if you want, Davis isn't denying that people care about the issues, just not as much as personalities this time around. On the other hand, that's always been the case...)

He doesn't want Americans to notice that the Republican platform is the most extreme we've ever seen -- opposing stem cell research, denying a woman's right to choose no matter what the circumstance, and continuing to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq.

Generally both sides want at least the party base to know the platform...

With so much at stake, we can't allow another election to be determined by petty and divisive political tactics.

Including this damned email.

Make a donation of $5 or more to fight back against an unprecedented week of negativity from John McCain.

Not from this email.

The McCain campaign is trying to distract voters from the real issues -- so we're going to focus on what they're trying to hide.

They've come out against the life-saving possibilities of stem cell research.

For years now in fact.

They don't even mention protecting equal pay for equal work.

For years now in fact.

They support huge tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans.

For years now in fact.

They've almost completely ignored the $10 billion we're spending every month in Iraq.

For years now in fact.

And they make zero exceptions for a woman's right to choose -- even in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother.

For years now in fact.

If that all sounds like more of the same, that's because it is.

For years now in fact.

John McCain is offering a third term of the disastrous Bush agenda...

Agreed.

...so it's no wonder his campaign would choose to focus on attacks instead of issues.

The next President is the issue of Presidential elections. Thus, an attack ad against Obama does constitute an ad concerning an issue.

Please make your donation of $5 or more today:

Again, not from this email.

https://donate.barackobama.com/fightback

I know we've asked a lot from supporters like you recently, and many of you contributed just last week.

I forgot.

But the stakes are high...

Yes, it's a Presidential election.

...and there are less than 9 weeks before Election Day. It's going to require unprecedented resources to defeat John McCain...

Like a breathing Democrat?

...and bring about the change America so desperately needs.

That's gonna be the hard part.

Thank you for all you do,

Including such a response to your emails?

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Wildcards in Excel

Recently at work we had a situation where we had to remove just under 1,200 vendor part numbers from the names of our products. E.g., we had "Name of product (Vendor Part #123), 10 ounces." The vendor part numbers had gotten into our spreadsheet with said (internal) names accidently. (It's a long story. And it's not our fault.)

So I ended up writing a longer email about replacing these vendor part numbers with nothing (E.g., so pretend product name becomes "Name of product, 10 ounces.") and thought I might as well share it, editted only to make it generic. VP stands for Vendor Part, VP# for Vendor Part Number. (A serif font [a font with "feet"] is used to make some of the quotations, literally, clearer.)

I thought that this would work but decided to check first.

If you search for "(VP*)" and replace it with "" (nothing) all VP#'s should disappear. However, you'll have two problems, the first is that there will be a lot of double spaces, one from each side of the parentheses. So you'll have to do another find and replace, this time for "  " (two spaces) replacing it with " " (one space).

Also, in some cases ", " precedes the VP#, e.g., "Tumbler, (VP123) 10oz" which would yield "Tumbler,  10oz" when you were done. So you might want to search for ", (VP*)" replacing it with a single space, then searching for "(VP*)" replacing it with "", and then finally replacing all the double spaces with a single space. If you want to make sure there aren't double spaces run the same search a couple of times. When I've done this in the past I've left triple or quadruple spaces somewhere in whatever data I was working with. Each find and replace would take out one space, from 4 to 3, from 3 to 2, and finally from 2 to 1.

Obviously, all the searches don't actually have the quotes around them when you stick them into Excel. "*" is a wildcard that matches all characters. So if we are looking at the word "Wildcard", "Wild*" would match it, "*dca*" would match it and so on. "?" is a single wildcard that only matches a single character. Looking at "Wildcard" again, "?ildcard" would match, "Wil?card" would, "W???card" would, but "W?dcard" would not (missing either the "i" or the "l"). You can combine them: "?ildca*" would match. "*car?" would match any string that had "car" in it.

In Excel, prepending a tilde to the wildcards searches for the actual wildcard. So if a question mark is what you are looking for you need to prepend a tilde to it.

"*" and "?" are fairly standard wildcards, the preceding tilde to cancel them as wildcards isn't as much. Probably across MS Office, but I don't know beyond that.

Ok, that was a longer email than I meant to write...

Al, You're Done

Greenspan: Economy 'on the brink' of recession - CNBC TV- msnbc.com

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that the U.S. housing market is “nowhere near the bottom” and that the U.S. economy is “right on the brink” of slipping into a recession...

Calling the current crisis in the financial markets a "once-in-a-century phenomenon," Greenspan said the Treasury had no choice in its recent moves to backstop the two government-sponsored mortgage finance giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But he said the government will probably have to nationalize the two companies, calling them a "major accident waiting to happen."

I really cannot figure out what this guy is up to, he seems to have recently gone on a power trip and will not stop. It is extremely inappropriate for him to be constantly critiquing the U.S. fiscal policies at this point: Al, you already had 20 years as chair of the Fed, step down for real now.

I shouldn't say I can't figure it out, it is rather obvious. He is trying to set policy -- larger policies than he could have set while in office -- in "retirement." He is probably still trying to save his legacy, which has been tarnished by whatever, exactly, we are in (it is still difficult to call it a recession). The low interest rates enjoyed by Americans and the rest of the world in the early part of this millennium were largely set by Greenspan. They also are largely seen as creating the housing bubble which is still having major effects on the economy as banks fail, don't have extra capital, and people seeking capital (debt: mortgages, business loans, etc.) can't get it because of that.

Still, this is a bizarre show to be watching, even for Al.

Watching Bethel

I haven't posted a time lapse for awhile so I thought I would. This was rendered yesterday.

Digital Intimacy

BK is currently posting a book (really most of a journal) that bears out some pretty heavy stuff. At least so far. A question regarding the correct spelling of dialog versus dialogue sparked an interesting discussion of both the correct spelling and whether we are, "if we are not subconsciously abbreviating life, feelings, sharing, intimacy...."

I am republishing that bit here, because I think that it is an interesting question and has some interesting answers.

BK:

Aha, the game is afoot...or would that be a foot?

Good volley on the dialogue/dialog quandary. Here's a comment from a literature lover and someone who loves the art of words and the way they impact the art of our lives: we risk as a culture that has been largely trending towards dehuamization through technology. We want everything quicker, faster, shorter. We are more and more looking for shorter ways to do...everything. We are abbreviating words, thoughts and feelings -- lol, cul8r, etc. Makes me wonder if we are not subconsciously abbreviating life, feelings, sharing, intimacy....

tyhi :)

Me:

Man, I didn't understand half of that. I would suggest that while emotions, intimacy, etc. can be addressed in this digital age -- even with abbr's -- there still is nothing like face to face.

Couple of things that stand in the way of that statement however. First, the ReachTJ blog. That seemed to hit home pretty hard for 10,000-20,000 people. I haven't met most of them (obviously) but as I do I am almost always told they feel like they know me. And they do in a real, if not complete sense. A lot went down during that month, and a lot was beared (sp?). It was undoubtedly one of the most defining moments of my life, my family's life, and thousands of people watched in realtime. Which leads up to my second point...

Why are you publishing this if not to share some pretty deep and intimate stuff? These posts aren't "just" lessons about life/marriage etc. They are posts about BK's heart, his personal relationship with God. By the end there are going to be a lot of people that know you (again, in a real sense, if not complete), even if you don't know them. You and I have only met two or three times, but now I am "meeting" you twice a week, discussing (literally, when it comes to comments) some of the most important, intimate, secret, emotional, deep, dangerous, and exciting part of life.

In such a context, words and abbreviations matter only how well they communicate. And sometimes abbreviations work just as well (better occasionally, especially to express lighter emotions.)

-mj

(Guess I am chatty today!)

Certainly the digital age is allowing us to reach more people faster. And, ironically, the anonymity sometimes leads to deeper discussions than would otherwise be had.

Watching Bethel: A Little More In-Depth

When I started this project I found that there was a pretty was way to differentiate between night and day (pictures), which is important so there isn't five seconds of blackness between each day. Done correctly, it even adds a nice fade in and fade out between days.

The way I did this was by looking at the number of different colors in a given picture. If it was under 4,000 it was nighttime. For sure. Until December 14th. On that day the construction workers started leaving a light on that pushed the number of colors up close to 10,000. Day shots generally have 45,000-60,000 different colors (yes, in one picture). However, upping my "border" value between day and night to 10,000 pretty eliminated any fades, and still included the night shots with the light on.

Hence, a different method has to be chosen. I have two choices, so far as I can tell. First, determine the average lightness of a picture to decide if it ought to be included in the time lapse. Second, figure out when the construction hours are, only include those pictures and write my own script for fades. The former is much easier.

For a visual idea of what "lightness" looks like in a photo I have posted an Excel graph below. The scale on lightness of is out of 255 for technical reasons so I put a couple of percentages in to make it easier to read. Essentially, during the day the lightness is always between 55% and 63%. A lightness of zero is complete blackness, and a lightness of 100% would be pure white, so finding that the average lightness is somewhere in the middle isn't a big surprise.

The vertical axis is the lightness value of a picture (one grabbed every minute) and the horizontal axis is what minute of the say it is. A day has 1,400 minutes, so 7,200 is high noon. You can see how the day widens and narrows from the fall through the spring, although I should note that the values from October and May in the graph are not complete. Hence, I expect that the May curve would widen out a bit. Finally, the horizontal axis doesn't start at 0 or end at 1,400. They are just straight lines before and past those points respectively, so I cut them out.



P.S. I may move back to madjon.net soon. Maybe, designing a website isn't easy... But I'm also not a huge fan of Blogger anymore.