Sanity

Today Dana and I ventured down to Washington to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear being held in the National Mall by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. There were claims before it happened that it was a completely apolitical rally; rather than to prop up a candidate or party, it was a plea for sanity in the current political atmosphere. I really didn't believe it to start; Stewart is well-known for his attacks on hypocrisy and double-talk of both the parties, but he's clearly liberal-minded.

After the final speech of the day, I think Stewart proved his point. Watch below.

The most important take-away from this speech is that this message is for everyone. As separate as the two sides of the political debate are right now, people are exaggerating a little too much, people are taking rhetoric a little too far. It's important for everyone to take a step back and realize that liberals aren't, in general, trying to destroy America and Tea Party members aren't, in general, horrible racists who hate poor people. Everyone has their unique beliefs, as Stewart echoes in his car analogy.

The point is that debate is healthy. Debate is what takes problems and figures them out, looks at them from every possible angle, and then looks for a solution. Debate is what the conservative does with his liberal friends, where shouting isn't allowed or is even necessary. People disagree and they always will; people who identify on the same side of the political fence will disagree with you. There are millions of issues that make up someone's political opinion, and it's seriously unlikely that someone will agree with each and every one. And Stewart's message? That's okay.

Conservatives and Tea Partiers need to take a step back and realize that President Obama and the collection that we call the Democratic Party isn't out to destroy the country. They are genuinely convinced that they are doing what's right. Liberals and Democrats need to take a step back and realize that the movements on the right are not motivated by racism or sexism or fear of Muslims - they are rooted in the sentiment that money is being wasted and that that needs to stop.

It's easy to believe you're right, and it's necessary for you to have a real punch in your argument. But being so convinced that you're right that you can so utterly dehumanize people who disagree with you is a dangerous trend. After all, nobody knows how this whole thing is to shake out. President Obama might be wrong. John Boehner might be wrong. I might be wrong.

You might be wrong.

Jackass 3D

Tomorrow night I'll be seeing the third installment of this series, and presumably the last if the age of the players is any indication. With Clown College-trained Steve-O cresting 36 and ringmaster Johnny Knoxville turning forty in March, it seems that these fellows are likely to run out of steam quite soon. As actors or reality show stars, the group may have a longer shelf-life, but when it comes to being bucked by bulls or going around loop-the-loops in pocket bikes, their careers may be setting.

One of the interesting things I've noticed in looking through the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes is how split the opinions of the film are. It currently has a 69% fresh rating by the way, fairly good, despite the seemingly niche, cult-like status of the films. To illustrate my point, here are a few of the reviews snippets I scrolled by:

Positive:
"Infantile? You betcha." - Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
"It's gross--and it's fantastic." - Christopher Smith, Bangor Daily News
"It's gleefully immature. It revels in destruction. And it made me laugh a lot, like it always does." - Eric D. Snider, Film.com

Negative:
"It's a disgusting, repellent, sadomasochistic extension of the kind of slapstick that made 'The 3 Stooges' so popular and filled with gross, gruesome pranks that men seem to find hilarious." - Susan Granger
"They're still here, suffering for their art. Now it's our turn." - Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel
"Too many of these sequences are merely disgusting." - Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger

There's obviously a common thread here: all the critics agree that the film, and the series at large, is immature, disgusting, destructive, and occasionally painful to watch. The difference between these two groups is, clearly, whether or not the films are entertaining. I don't think anyone would say that the Jackass films are the highest brow, nor are they truly "film" in the strictest sense of the word. But entertaining, that's the real sticking point.

Now, I have to say that historically I've enjoyed Jackass and its constituent sketches immensely. I don't pretend that they're enriching or dramatic or even all that well-put-together. The fact of the matter is that they're entertaining and make me laugh, and that's a need of mine that needs to be satiated, just as fine art and high drama and fast-paced action have corresponding needs.

Anyway, from listening and reading various reviews on the subject, it's pretty clear that there are two pretty clear camps that people fall into concerning Jackass:

a) It's gross but it's funny. It's definitely not Shakespeare or even James Cameron, but it's entertaining on some level. Perhaps it is indicative of some new American desire for lowest-common-denominator entertainment, but it's a part of the wave and not its progenitor. The bottom line is that it's low-brow entertainment, and it's entertaining.
b) It's disgusting. It's indicative of and the epitome of low-brow gross-out humor and shows that something is truly wrong with American society that a film like this can be so wildly successful. There is a line, and this movie crosses it.

I have a feeling that I'll enjoy it, having enjoyed all the previous content (save for a couple sketches, especially the ones involving paper cuts). Reality programming is largely hit-or-miss for me; if it has a good hook and entertains me on any level, it's usually pretty easy to get me as a regular viewer. I never would have dreamed that I'd enjoy shows like Teen Mom or Jersey Shore, but a few viewings were enough to get me interested enough in the "characters" to continue watching.

Jackass has elements of this. In seeing the sketches, the pain tolerances, the fears, and the breaking points of the cast are on display. Steve-O does the little painful things that have to do with body modification. Johnny does the big painful stuff that could result in bodily harm. Dunn and Bam are the butts of jokes and have pranks pulled on them. Despite being a primarily sketch-based show and series, each one has a pretty unique personality and character. Of course, the other element is the sketches themselves and the "what'll they think of next" quality of Jackass.

We'll see what camp I fall into after seeing it. And, apparently, what camp Dana's in!

Trivia Taken Too Far

Recently, I discovered the wonder of the Slate Daily Podcasts. Although my usual interest in politics was what caused me to find the podcasts initially, but since I've been listening to the various pop culture and sports related programs as well.

The Slate sports podcast is titled "Shut Up and Listen" and it gives a very accessible viewpoint of sports, which I appreciate; sports talk radio can be pretty interesting to listen to, but the problems are various:

1) Homers annoy the hell out of me. If your sports radio show continually assesses that their team is either the stupidest or the best team when neither is clearly true, you're probably going to lose me.
2) Even though I listen regularly to Ron and Fez, whose callers aren't exactly stellar, sports radio callers (outside the occasional gem) are complete idiots.
3) The seeming unwillingness to argue both sides of a point; one-sided arguments tend to get me heated just because they're incomplete and don't tell the whole story.

That said, Shut Up and Listen is a very well-put-together show. It has the cadence of an NPR politics program, though the topic just happens to be sports. And that brings me to the purpose of this post. Every week, Shut Up and Listen presents a trivia question for listeners to ponder. Being the data-obsessed nerd I am, the question this week was of particular interest:

"What countries of the world have stadiums which can hold at least 1.5% of the population of said country?"

And off we go!

First, we need good data on the populations of the 195 countries in the world. Pretty easy, in the advent of a world with Wikipedia. Anyway, I won't list them all here, but that's my source. Countries have a wide range, with the Vatican City coming in at 800 people and Nauru at 10,000 people; on the other side of things are China and India, with 1,340,120,000 and 1,189,070,000 respectively.

I utilized Wikipedia for data on stadium capacities, as well as the World Stadiums website to find the largest capacity in the country. Because of the nature of the data (stadiums found ranged from Vanuatu's 1,500 person capacity Vaiaku Stadium to the North Korean Rungrade May Day Stadium, holding 150,000, literally a hundred-fold larger), some of it can be imprecise. I couldn't find data on a Vatican City stadium, so I threw that data away. If you can find stadiums with capacities larger than those listed, by all means let me know!

Anyway, I matched stadiums up with countries and did the number crunching. Here are some random facts before the presentation of the data.

• Predictably, the largest countries had the smallest percentages in terms of how much of the population could fit in a single stadium. With populations above one billion, India and China run up the rear when it comes to this metric; China can hold 0.006% of its population in the Guangdong Olympic Stadium, and India can hold 0.0101% of its population in its Salt Lake Stadium.
• The top ten percentages, predictably, are nations which are populated by less than 110,000 inhabitants. It's pretty easy to fit 10% of your population in a stadium if you've got 75,000 people; stadiums are expensive, but small ones aren't prohibitively so for small nations.
• The median percentage of the population that could fit in a country's largest stadium is 0.4643%.
• If you took the largest stadium from each country and pooled the space, you could fit approximately 0.1128% of the world's 6,862,077,107 people in them. The largest stadiums from each country could hold 7,740,214 people total.

And now, the top ten countries for the metric:

1. Monaco's Stade Louis II holds 18,500 people in a nation of 33,000. This means that over half of the people in Monaco could pack into the stadium; about 56%. The stadium was built during the 1980s and primarily hosts football and track and field events.
2. Nauru's Meneng Stadium holds 3,500 people, a tiny stadium on international standards. As aforementioned, Nauru is the smallest nation with an actual stadium. Approximately 35% of the country's populace can pack into the stadium, which is mostly just a big empty field. From 2001 to 2007, Australian government officials detained refugees from various countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq, in the stadium after intercepting them from crossing into New Zealand or Australia.
3. San Marino has a population of 31,794, its Stadium Olimpico seating 7,000. It holds about 22% of the population of San Marino and mainly hosts football games. It serves as the national stadium of the country.
4. A second small, island nation in the middle of the South Pacific called Palau is home to 20,000 people. Its National Stadium holds 4,000 people, or 20% of the local population. National Stadium hosts primarily football and track and field events in the city of Koror.
5. The first North American nation on the list is Grenada, a small island nation northeast of Venezuela. Its Queen's Park is the largest stadium yet mentioned in this list, holding 20,000 out of a population of 104,000, or about 19.23%. The People's Republic of China funded its construction in 2007. The stadium is used primarily for the sport of cricket.
6. Dominica's Windsor Park clocks in at 17.91% of the country's 67,000 population. The stadium holds 12,000 and hosts primarily cricket matches. Dominica is another small nation in the Caribbean, where cricket is apparently wildly popular.
7. Liechtenstein, a tiny country sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland has a population of only 35,904. Apart from being blessed with the highest per capita GDP of any nation in the world, it's the only country to be completely within the mountain range known as the Alps. Liechtenstein's Rheinpark Stadion can hold 6,127 people for its football matches, about 17.07% of the populace.
   
8. The largest country in terms of population in the top ten, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a group of islands in the Caribbean. Popular sports played at the 18,000-person capacity Arnos Vale Stadium include cricket and football. The stadium can hold 16.51% of the nation's 109,000 citizens.
9. Tuvalu is another nation in the South Pacific. It has roughly the same population as the aforementioned Nauru at 10,000, and is only slightly larger than Nauru at ten square miles. However, its Vaiaku Stadium is less than half the size of Nauru's with a capacity of 1,500, large enough to hold 15% of the nation's populace.
10. Finally is Seychelles, the smallest African nation in terms of population. It's a small island a bit north of Madagascar off Africa's eastern coast, and is home to about 85,000 people. Its Stade Linite holds 10,000 people, about 11.76% of the population. The Stade Linite is home to the Seychelles National Football Team.

Furthermore, the following countries come in at 1.5% of the population or more being able to fit within the single largest stadium in the respective nation:

Antigua and Barbuda (11.24%); Barbados (10.89%); Tonga (9.62%); Samoa (8.38%); Saint Kitts and Nevis (7.69%); Saint Lucia (7.47%); Brunei (7.37%); Maldives (6.96%); Andorra (4.76%); Bahrain (4.34%); Malta (4.32%); Sao Tome and Principe (3.94%); Fiji (3.51%); Suriname (3.44%); Marshall Islands (3.17%); Iceland (3.14%); Qatar (2.95%); Cyprus (2.85%); Montenegro (2.67%); Gabon (2.66%); Bahamas (2.63%); Kiribati (2.5%); Belize (2.33%); Kuwait (2.13%); Bhutan (2.12%); Trinidad and Tobago (2.01%); Luxembourg (1.99%); Guyana (1.97%); Uruguay (1.93%); Solomon Islands (1.87%); Ireland (1.84%); Micronesia (1.80%); Swaziland (1.66%); Armenia (1.58%); Cape Verde (1.56%).

Just missing the cut is New Zealand, with 1.37% of its population being able to squeeze into the 60,000-person capacity Eden Park. In total, there are 45 countries with a stadium capable of accommodating 1.5% or more of their populations.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the predictable opposite of the countries above. Of the top ten with the largest population to capacity of largest stadium ratio, the smallest is Ethiopia, clocking in at almost 85 million people.

Now, data! I was interested, first, in how the size of the population impacted this little experiment. Obviously, it was much more likely for a small nation to build a stadium which could fit a larger percentage of its populace. This is likely due to the fact that massively large stadiums have an exponentially increasing cost and engineering complexity as they go up in size. The largest stadium I found was North Korea, with a capacity of 150,000 people. The Rungrado May Day Stadium is eight stories tall and hosts athletic events, dance performance, and even the occasional and gruesome public execution. Countries have less of a constraint when it comes to their population; land area is the biggest one, but also the ability of nations to keep themselves entirely sovereign is an important factor.

Below is a graph depicting the populations of each of the 194 included countries (in logarithmic scale) versus the capacity of their largest stadium:


Notable outliers are highlighted on the chart, along with the United States. 105 countries are above the trendline and 89 are below. Using the above equation, it can be determined which countries have particularly small largest stadiums for their size and those which have remarkably large ones. First, the top five undersized stadiums:

1. Comoros; expected capacity = 15,247, actual capacity = 2,000
2. Vanuatu; expected capacity = 10,885, actual capacity = 2,000
3. Micronesia; expected capacity = 8,396, actual capacity = 2,000
4. Equatorial Guinea; expected capacity = 15,262, actual capacity = 4,000
5. East Timor; expected capacity = 18,111, actual capacity = 5,000

And the top five oversized stadiums:

1. Monaco; expected capacity = 5,651, actual capacity = 18,500
2. North Korea; expected capacity = 48,515, actual capacity = 150,000
3. Ireland; expected capacity = 28,041, actual capacity = 82,300
4. Kuwait; expected capacity = 24,754, actual capacity = 65,000
5. Uruguay; expected capacity = 25,575, actual capacity = 65,000

And as food for thought, the average per capita GDP of the undersized stadium countries is $8,451 (median $2,521) and for the oversized stadium countries $32,048 (median $38,984). Pretty telling, actually, and logical. Rich countries have bigger stadiums!

As for population density, the top ten countries with undersized stadium countries have an average population density of 502 people per square mile (median 386.45). The oversized stadium countries have an average density of 4,653 people per square mile (median 473.8). However, if Monaco is thrown out (highest population density in the world at 39,217 per square mile), that average drops to 813. Thus, it doesn't really seem that population density and stadium size correlate.

Finally, another little graph, showing population of countries versus the percentage of that population which will fit in its largest stadium. Are we finally done with this statistical analysis? For now!


Check out my quick and dirty Excel spreadsheet action here.

A Concise Inventory of Upcoming Events

Just to keep things straight, here's a few things I'm planning on doing over the next few weeks.

Monday, October 11, 4:00pm onward - heading up to North Jersey to see the Vikings take on the Jets. Special thanks to Kevin for having friends with season tickets who couldn't go.

Tuesday morning, October 12 - My shift at Wallops Island starts at about four in the afternoon, so I should be leaving pretty early to get to Virginia by 1-2 in the afternoon. Staying from Tuesday until Friday before driving back up.

Saturday, October 23 - New York Record Fair with Dana. It goes from 10am to 7pm on Saturday and Sunday.

Friday, October 29 - Driving down to Silver Spring, Maryland to stay in a hotel outside of DC. The next day is the Colbert/Stewart rally, which will hopefully be amazingly fun. The hotel I booked is about half a mile from a Metro station, so it should make everything easy.

I'll append this as I find more things to put on it. Wheeee.

Better Know a District

So the elections are roughly a month away, and I've been doing research here and there, but I figure I'd better square some stuff away. May as well do it in writing so that no one else can be helped by it, right? I DIGRESS.

Anyway, I'll start with my current home district: New Jersey's Third Congressional. Two years ago, John Adler defeated Chris Myers for the seat, and this time he's up against former NFL player Jon Runyan. Here's a quick list of the platforms of the two.

Republican John Runyan

• Various federal tax cuts, the vast majority being across the board. A deep cut of 15% recommended for all income tax brackets and a lowering of the corporate taxation to 25%, an effective slash of about 29%. Also in favor of lowering capital gains taxation.
  
• Several ideas for balancing the federal budget, including requiring a supermajority to raise taxes. Takes a big dig at career politicians for "being unwilling or unable" to balance the budget without naming any names. Well, he does namedrop Reagan when suggesting a "Red Ink Task Force" which would identify inefficiencies in budgets, then letting Congress vote on each one.
• Congressional term limits. Specifically, Runyan states that he will limit himself to no more than four terms or eight years in Congress.
• Desire to allow cross-state health care plans.
• Promise to protect New Jersey coastline and beaches with money secured from the federal government.
• Stresses the importance of taking care of returning veterans with a few platitudes, but makes no specific promises regarding health care or financial support.
• Pro-civil unions but against marriage equality.
• Seems to be completely pro-Israel, including continuing economic and military aid in order to defend "a tiny beacon of democracy surrounded by authoritarian regimes."
• Against privatization of Medicare/Social Security.

Basically boiler-plate Republican, essentially, right down to the I-don't-like-it-but-it's-popular-and-old-people-vote position of keeping Medicare and Social Security publicly funded and secured and the "we should respect our returning veterans" without really detailing how. Anyway, figure I'll make some responses in no particular order:

• The first two sort of go together; lower taxes means you have to drastically lower spending in order to still balance the budget. Remember, everybody: raising taxes and cutting programs have the same effect on the deficit. I'm entirely for a clause of neutral spending - that the government cannot spend more than it has on hand. Unfortunately, tax cuts make this harder, and we'll find out why:

This is a chart showing the 2010 Congressional Budget. The blue bar on the left is revenue and the red bar is spending. As you can pretty clearly see, "Mandatory" spending (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Interest on the National Debt, welfare, unemployment, etc.) has risen to an estimated cost of $2.184 trillion. That's about 92% of the total revenue for the government. Runyan supports these programs, and thus nothing can be done about this cost.

Although Runyan states no specifics on whether or not military spending should be increased or decreased, the Department of Defense spending is also a point that the Republicans hammer home. As can be seen above, Defense spending for 2010 is pegged at $664 billion, or about 30% of the revenues collected. So, even if you cut funding to absolutely every Department other than Defense:

Mandatory + Defense = $2,184 billion + $664 billion = $2,848 billion, or about 20% higher than the revenue. Obviously, you could cut some Medicare and welfare spending, but there's such a huge deficit now that you could barely dent the national debt at this point without some major reforms.

It's unfortunate that the United States has fallen so behind when it comes to national debt. We were doing so well in the late nineties.

• Term limits, in general, are a good thing. A lot of money and effort go into running re-election campaigns for incumbent politicians, when said politicians should be concentrating on their constituencies and the issues at hand. That said, this is generally simply a talking point for politicians; Runyan for example claims he'll only be serving at most four terms in the House. John Adler kicked off his campaign in roughly March this year, and thus campaign season is roughly 30% of his term. However, I don't think a promise to serve any more than one term would be productive; if Runyan theoretically did serve eight years in the House, and assuming a roughly seven-month campaign season, he'd still be spending 22% of his time campaigning. This isn't to mention that much of the time, these promises are simply not held to.
  
• In terms of protecting the New Jersey shoreline, I agree wholeheartedly. This is precisely the kind of funding that the government is there for - providing money and support to protect, rekindle, and promote resources. As a Representative, Jon Runyan would be entirely correct in bringing home this kind of pork to his state. That's what politicians are there for - to fight for their home constituencies and bring home the bacon.
• Obviously, I'm for marriage equality when it comes to gay and lesbian couples. I honestly think, though, that somewhere between 40 and 60% of Republicans simply tow the party line here because it's convenient and helps them get elected.
• Finally, material support for Israel ended in 2007, but it's hard to see why the United States should remain as the main benefactor for the country. Obviously, Israel has the ability to fend for itself. Palestinians within Israel suffer great injustice, as well, with laws being passed at times specifically making Palestinian life utterly miserable. The main reason that it's so easy to expand Israeli settlements into Palestinian land is that laws are passed by the Israelis that essentially make Palestinians violate the law every second of every day. They broke the rules, so they get evicted.

Since I'm much more likely to agree with Adler, I'll color the positions I agree with or disagree with accordingly:

Democrat John Adler

• Adler is pro-Israel. I think both parties are forced to be such, considering the demographics in New Jersey. Pandering will never die.
• Strongly opposes the privatization of Medicare and Social Security.
• Advocates middle class tax cuts and is for a deficit-neutral requirement on all federal spending.
• Advocates and agrees with the phased troop withdrawal from Iraq and continuation of the war in Afghanistan. I'm not quite sure withdrawal from Afghanistan is really tenable at the moment, so I'm fairly neutral on that.
• Offshore-drilling being opened up on New Jersey shores. This would certainly decrease the dependence on foreign oil, but by a very small amount, and would not decrease dependence on oil period.
• The New GI Bill and better health care to veterans. Veterans of foreign wars deserve nothing but the best health care and opportunities for education for their sacrifices.
• Though not truly part of his platform, Adler is rated as one of the top ten most "centrist" Congresspeople. I think this is a good thing, as I believe that the Third District is a very "in the middle" one and, thus, its constituents deserve a centrist candidate.
  

Anyway, I think I've rambled enough on this post. Hopefully this is helpful; it certainly was for me deciding what I liked or didn't like about both the candidates.

Schedule for Week Ending 10/11

Monday - 09:00 to 21:00 (12 hours)
Tuesday - 10:00 to 18:00 (20 hours)
Wednesday - 04:00 to 16:00 (32 hours)
Thursday into Friday - 20:00 to 04:00 (40 hours)

Four shifts for the week? Yay.