31 May 08
Batting Average With Delegates In Play
Over this primary season a blogger going by the name of Poblano has been producing some remarkably accurate predictions of the election results based on some sophisticated demographic modelling.
Today Poblano outed himself. It turns out his name is Nate Silver, and he is a whiz baseball statistical analyst by profession. He is a managing partner of the publication Baseball Prospectus, and developed the PECOTA system for projecting players’ future performance based on historical pattern. As a data geek I am delighted to see such overlap between baseball and political analytics.
Closer to home the UC Davis Aggie baseball just won its first NCAA Division I playoff game! They beat Stanford 4-2 on a complete game pitching performance by Eddie Gamboa. A few years back the UC Davis students voted to move the athletic program to the highest NCAA division. The 2007-2008 academic year has been the first year since the move that the UCD sports teams have been eligible for the playoffs, and the baseball team has done very well for itself this year.
27 May 08
New Pens, or Numenius Bicolor
I picked up a couple of fountain pens on Saturday in Berkeley, as well as some brown ink cartidges. I tested them out on Saturday evening: Numenius was looking intently into the laptop screen.
He doesn’t really look like Jerry Garcia…
[Comments disabled because some cretinous spammer obviously really hates Jerry Garcia]
26 May 08
Phoenix Arriving
Yesterday the Phoenix spacecraft successfully landed on Mars to the jubilation of space enthusiasts everywhere. Despite this being on another planet, there was a witness to the event: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took an amazing photograph from a distance of 760 kilometers showing Phoenix parachuting down for the landing which went flawlessly.
25 May 08
The Damn Big Boiler
Sometime in the early 1970s, a girls’ boarding school in the British midlands burned down. The “progressive” independent school of Abbotsholme decided to become co-ed and integrate the hapless St. Vincents’ girls.
We ran about in the nick and had communal baths and did lots of things that we thought were outrageous (some of which really were, others not so much) and experimented wildly and generally lived a Hogwartian lifestyle minus the magic.
Today I met up with a friend from that time and immersed myself in a hot tub in Berkeley with her. It’s been thirty years, pretty much. Our bodies aren’t as lithe, but we have a jump on those kids: a little bit of wisdom. Oh but it goes a long way…
23 May 08
Acorns in the Laundry
For the past few years my officemate Jim has been raising valley oak seedlings from acorns in any place he has been able to find, including his own laundry room. The campus student paper the California Aggie reported today on his considerable efforts at native oak restoration.
22 May 08
Excess
the love of it
the Schumann of it
the oceans of tea of it
the wine and baked brie of it
the overflowing basket of cards of it
the clucking everyone round a table of it
the isn’t chicken a vegetable at Passover of it
the flour up to the elbows making playdough of it
the determination to walk with no pain of it
the teasing of nuance in the fingers of it
the effing the ineffable in Bach of it
the Sunday New York Times of it
the steep steps up or down of it
the antiquated beam look of it
the three damn pianos of it
the love, the love of it
O, the love in it
For S., with love
22 May 08
Board Elections
Tonight was the last meeting of the Yolo Audubon Society for this school year, and we all got drafted onto the YAS board for another year. The YAS board elections are hardly competitive; rather, the task is to hunt far and wide to find somebody who wants to be hospitality chair.
This is quite unlike the elections for the Davis Food Coop board. The annual election is underway, the ballots are to be submitted in a week, and we don’t have a clue who to vote for. The annual member meeting was this evening, but we had the YAS meeting to go to, so we missed that opportunity to learn about the candidates. Heated letters about the candidates have been appearing about the candidates in the local paper for several weeks now. Nine candidates are up for four slots. We only really like one of the candidates, and are not sure how to fill out the ballot.
18 May 08
Heat, Asphalt, an Offer for my Hand
It was 65 degrees at five in the morning when at least 600 riders were already out trying to get the first 100 miles under their pedals before it reached 100 degrees. The brutal hot winds we had this week were mercifully spent, but that meant there was nothing, no breeze, to move the heat off the roads until around twilight.
One guy drove up from San Diego and another down from Oregon the day before, deciding to register for the ride. The registration czarina made them say unequivocally they understood what the predicted temperatures were going to be the following day. Hmm, they said.
Our brief was rest stop 5 (of 11) followed by sagging the course forward to Davis. The rest stop was supposed to close at 2:00 pm; we got out of there at 4:30. But with Numenius taking his turn monitoring the radio in the car, I helped hose down riders — which is when I got the offer of marriage. (Lest this be construed differently, I should say a) this person couldn’t even see me, his head was down and flowing in salty water that was turning unsalty; b) the other hoser-downer got a similar offer twenty minutes earlier. It’s an occupational hazard, getting proposed to on hotter than hell Double Century days.)
Many people needed rides back to Davis or at least over the big mountain. One broke two spokes early and we had to get him up toward the lunch stop; he’d been the captain of a container ship (which doesn’t offer much opportunity for cycling) and since retiring had taken up cycling with a passion. A second had run out of water between rest stops, spaces roughly 25 miles apart, and had ridden in the heat for five miles without water. He just was never able to recover from the dehydration; we picked him up four miles out of Rest Stop 5. He’d only really been riding for two years, but this was his fourth Double. Why? After he recovered from a brain tumor, he figured he needed to do something positive. (!) Finally, we picked up a DC veteran, someone who’d ridden this event 36 — that’s thirty-six — times. He’d never been sagged in before, but was unable to move because of heat cramps. His heart was certainly willing and able to keep going, but his legs just couldn’t function anymore.
No shame at all in calling it quits in this heat, chaps. No shame. I’m just glad you figured it out before someone needed to get you to the ER.
Today, I’m gardening and birding.
14 May 08
Here Comes The Heat
An unseasonably strong high pressure ridge sitting over the Eastern Pacific is resulting in a heat wave here in Northern California. The high temperature for the next three days is expected to reach 102° F. Today it wasn’t that hot; some high cloudiness circulating in from the north moderated it.
This Saturday we will be providing radio support for the Davis Double Century, the 200-mile bicycle event that starts in Davis and circles through five counties. They are not going to have an easy time of it in this heat.
13 May 08
Gray-haired, Gaunt, Giddy
I see it. The reflection in the mirror. The face of my great-aunt, of my grandmother, of my mother’s cousin. We are one, across the years, across the barriers that seem at this point artificial.
Death will unite us. I hope between now and then, for me, I will cause enough mayhem for these hellraisers to be proud of me. And if they forget themselves and sniff instead, a silly nod to their perceived station, I’ll take it up with them on the other side…