In the Land of Looney Tunes

So I've thought about this often, but I don't think I've ever written a post about it, so here it goes: I live in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

OK, not really.

But I have noticed a substantial number of animals (wild or not) in my general area that match up with a large percentage of Looney Tunes characters.  Somehow growing up, I don't think I would have ever really thought of Texas as a locale for most of them, but I guess if Bugs Bunny missed his turn at Albuquerque, then maybe here he is.

So here's a fun rundown of animals that I have seen (live or squashed) within, say, a 3-mile radius of my house, as designated by their Looney Tune character names (and the animal I've actually seen to call it a "win").

• Bugs Bunny (rabbit)
• Beaky Buzzard (could be a buzzard, but I'm going with vulture on this one)
• Cecil Turtle (turtle)
• Daffy Duck (duck)
• Elmer Fudd (yeah, I'm sure there are a couple of them around)
• Foghorn Leghorn (chicken/rooster)
• Speedy Gonzales (desert type kangaroo mouse)
• Granny (I've seen her too, I am certain)
• Henery Hawk (Red Tailed Hawk)
• Hector the Bulldog (Bulldog)
• Pepé Le Pew (skunk)
• Slowpoke Rodriguez (other type of mouse)
• Spike the Bulldog (double counting bulldog because someone in the neighborhood walks a pair of them frequently)
• Chester the Terrier (Spike's friend, a terrier, on the cartoons.  A small terrier in real life)
• The Stork (OK, no way have I seen a stork around.  But I have seen several egrets and cranes)
• Sylvester (black cat)
• Toro the Bull (Bull with intact horns - there's a longhorn just down the street)
• Wile E. Coyote (coyote)
• Road Runner (road runner)
• Yosemite Sam (Yes, that guy lives here)

I'm sure there are more - I just browsed the list of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters from Wikipedia to make my checklist above - would be interested to see if they have canaries at the pet shop around the corner so I could mark Tweety off the list.

How many cartoon characters hang out around your house?

Olympic Fever

OK, so I haven't really been watching the Olympics all that much. There's a reason for that.  I've been doing other things.

However, I have (on three occasions) let myself get sucked into a multi-hour Olympics-watching festival, chanting "USA, USA" every time we qualify for a medal round or win some hardware.  I couldn't really find myself that into sculls when it was on during our anniversary outing, but I have been sucked into Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings' run at women's beach volleyball, and the track and field events sprinkled in between.

What I have found myself annoyed by, primarily, is the commentary and production of the Olympics for U.S. television.  Thanks, NBC.

While I can overlook the delays to prime time to attract more viewers (I mean, I wouldn't be watching in the middle of the day, so I get it), the delay should add flexibility to the production schedule, but apparently it doesn't.

Let's contrast some things:

• Good Production: Consolidating a men's high jump heat into back-to-back jumps, showing the entire heat in under a minute.
• Bad Production: Cutting to commercial in the middle of a volleyball game only to return with the score changed by 5 or more points.
• Good Production: Showing entire races during track and field events
• Bad Production: Showing dead-time in between events when there are other events with action being cut out.
• Bad Production: Pretty much half of what Bob Costas says.
• Bad Production: Comments made during the intro parade that some countries (like the one currently on your screen) are just fodder for the others to beat.
• Bad Production: incessant talking over the entire opening ceremonies (because we are too dumb to figure it out).
• Bad Production: cutting to commercial during the (delayed) opening ceremonies and returning with chunks missing (Sex Pistols anyone?)

Anyway, the opening ceremonies were the worst of it, and someone probably should never be involved in a live event (on delay) again for the way that was handled (go produce reality TV on a B-tier cable network), but the problems have persisted even into the coverage.  It's too bad, really.

The delay I can live with (though the first couple of times I "spoilered" myself by using Wikipedia to look up an athlete only to see what medal they won in the event I was currently watching made me smack my forehead).  I should know Wikipedia and our other internet friends will be far faster than delay reel to US television.  My bad.

The inane talking head business, though?  That I could do without.  And the "good stuff" on the cutting room floor?  That's inexcusable.

Still a few days left, NBC.  Fix it.

Oh, and I'm probably not watching anymore anyway.  Unless I get sucked in again.

Predicting the Future from the Past

OK, so there is no real science to this, or there is, depending how you look at it.  Basically, here's what I've done:  Using my calculations, etc. from my fancy college football numbers algorithms (should I have been a baseball fan if I am interested this much in the stats? I guess if baseball wasn't so boring), I ran through the week 1 schedule of the 2012 football season and predicted the outcomes of the games using the 2011 season as seed data (this makes this completely unreliable, FYI, but this is provided for entertainment purposes only).

So, here's how you read this lovely chart below.  First I have them ranked by my "confidence factor" and I have the Away team and score versus the Home team and score.  In some of these games, it's a neutral site game and I just used whichever one was listed last in my input schedule file as the home team.  Then I've given a "confidence" on how much the model thinks you should trust the result (win/loss) - for my internal notes, that means Extremely High - factor of 2+, High - factor of 1-2, Good - factor of 0.75-1, Medium - factor of 0.6-0.75, and Low (coin flip) 0.5-0.6.  I've also formatted so that the winner is bold, to make it easier to read.

The scores really should just show spread capabilities and are not meant to represent ACTUAL predictions of scores.  Though it would be interesting to see how that plays out (I've run against some actuals from 2011 and it was OK in some instances, not in others.  Will be interesting to see how confidence metric versus score actuals plays out.  Perhaps after Week 1, I'll revisit these predictions to see if it is anywhere close.
edit: Realized this was backwards with Home & Away - and then couldn't really swap the columns, so for now you get it backwards (but now labelled correctly). Will work to fix in future predictions.

Prediction Rank	Home Team	Home Score	Away Team	Away Score	Confidence
1	Utah	30	Northern Colo.	21	Extremely High
2	Oklahoma St.	39	Savannah St.	17	Extremely High
3	Indiana	23	Indiana St.	36	Extremely High
4	Akron	10	UCF	37	Extremely High
5	Tulane	20	Rutgers	31	Extremely High
6	New Mexico	15	Southern U.	34	Extremely High
7	Fla. Atlantic	18	Wagner	31	Extremely High
8	Kansas St.	38	Missouri St.	24	Extremely High
9	Mississippi	21	Central Ark.	33	Extremely High
10	Temple	30	Villanova	15	High
11	Middle Tenn.	22	McNeese St.	30	High
12	Idaho	24	Eastern Wash.	33	High
13	Air Force	36	Idaho St.	27	High
14	Oregon St.	28	Nicholls St.	26	High
15	Kansas	24	South Dakota St.	38	High
16	Maryland	23	William & Mary	31	High
17	Memphis	22	Tenn.-Martin	37	High
18	Duke	21	FIU	31	High
19	BYU	28	Washington St.	27	High
20	LSU	29	North Texas	21	High
21	Arizona	35	Toledo	45	High
22	Stanford	34	San Jose St.	23	High
23	La.-Lafayette	39	Lamar	26	Good
24	Houston	38	Texas St.	26	Good
25	UTEP	23	Oklahoma	35	Good
26	Vanderbilt	15	South Carolina	26	Good
27	Southern California	30	Hawaii	29	Good
28	Kent St.	19	Towson	34	Good
29	Mississippi St.	22	Jackson St.	33	Good
30	UNLV	19	Minnesota	33	Good
31	Boston College	17	Miami (FL)	25	Good
32	Fresno St.	33	Weber St.	34	Medium
33	Navy	23	Notre Dame	30	Medium
34	Wake Forest	24	Liberty	35	Medium
35	Iowa St.	26	Tulsa	34	Medium
36	Florida	23	Bowling Green	23	Medium
37	Louisville	24	Kentucky	21	Medium
38	Rice	22	UCLA	36	Medium
39	Virginia Tech	26	Georgia Tech	25	Medium
40	Nebraska	21	Southern Miss.	31	Medium
41	North Carolina	29	Elon	23	Low (Coin Flip)
42	Pittsburgh	22	Youngstown St.	36	Low (Coin Flip)
43	Michigan St.	20	Boise St.	30	Low (Coin Flip)
44	Auburn	20	Clemson	38	Low (Coin Flip)
45	Washington	27	San Diego St.	36	Low (Coin Flip)
46	Oregon	31	Arkansas St.	30	Low (Coin Flip)
47	Syracuse	23	Northwestern	29	Low (Coin Flip)
48	Alabama	26	Michigan	24	Low (Coin Flip)
49	Connecticut	25	Massachusetts	28	Low (Coin Flip)
50	Central Mich.	25	Southeast Mo. St.	29	Low (Coin Flip)
51	South Fla.	20	Chattanooga	27	Low (Coin Flip)
52	Florida St.	32	Murray St.	30	Low (Coin Flip)
53	Purdue	21	Eastern Ky.	30	Low (Coin Flip)
54	Colorado	25	Colorado St.	30	Low (Coin Flip)
55	Penn St.	17	Ohio	24	Low (Coin Flip)
56	Utah St.	24	Southern Utah	33	Low (Coin Flip)
57	UAB	25	Troy	32	Low (Coin Flip)
58	California	22	Nevada	38	Low (Coin Flip)
59	Texas	26	Wyoming	27	Low (Coin Flip)
60	Ball St.	22	Eastern Mich.	34	Low (Coin Flip)
61	Illinois	19	Western Mich.	34	Low (Coin Flip)

Buttermilk "plays" with her "friends"

THIS.

This is why I like goats.  Go Buttermilk!

Open Letter to Drivers (myself included)

Excerpt from actual police crash report - I am shown as "Unit 2"

So last week I got in a small vehicular accident - Let's start with I am fine, I was decelerating (is that a word?) when it occurred, no real trauma to me or anything, nobody was injured other than vehicle property damage, etc. though it might be a little bit before my car is back to tip-top.

But it made me think about driving a little bit and how horrible most people (myself included) are at driving.  So since then (while cruising in my sweet rental car), I've been observing stupid things that drivers do (every single day) and so I'm asking, for your sake and mine (and our insurance premiums), don't do these things:

• Think you are a good driver -Let's be honest, you aren't.  Or at least the percentages are against you based on the number of people I see doing all these dumb things.
• Use your cell phone for things other than talking - texting, getting maps, or dialing numbers manually to make a call all take your eyes off the road.  And most of you (and occasionally me), think that you are watching the road the whole five miles I drove next to you watching you stare at your phone.
• Follow too closely - This causes all sorts of excessive braking, and at least one rear-impact collision that I pass on my way to work per week
• Drive too fast - OK, I'm not going to say you have to go "grandma-style" under the speed limit, but on the tollways, I occasionally see people (and I'm especially talking to you, guy-doing-handstands-on-your-crotch-rocket-motorcycle) driving close to 100 and doing really dumb weaving in and out of traffic.
• Drive too slowly - particularly in the left lane.
• Ignore where you are going - Changing lanes?  Might want to check the mirrors and blind spot and use your blinker.  Backing up?  How about you look over your shoulder like they taught you in driver's ed?
• Try to avoid traffic - TONS of traffic problems that I see are from jerks that are trying to zip up and around all the slow traffic and then merge in at the last possible second - causing, guess what, slow traffic.
• Think you are more important than other drivers - Let's face it.  This is the crux of it all.  Most of the impatience and crazy driving I see is because you, the bad driver, think that you are more important than the other people on the road, and therefore are entitled to get there faster, with less hassle.  You think that you don't deserve the traffic around you and that you are so important that you must get to your (insert here: job, proctology exam, IRS audit, Kenny Chesney concert) quicker than the rest of us, so you do stupid things to get there faster, and you get irritated when your stupid things (or the stupid things that others do) slow you down.  Say it with me: you are not that important.  And where you are going is most likely not going to be enjoyable anyway.  And if you are that late, perhaps it is your fault, procrastinator.  Leave earlier next time.  Priorities.

Anyway, bad drivers of the world, this is just a starting point.  I am sure there are a hundred other stupid things you (and I) do that are stupid, dangerous, and contribute to the overall bad driving and heavy traffic on the planet.  Just stop it.  Give a little room for the car in front of you.  Leave yourself enough room to stop so the bad driver behind you doesn't slam into you when you have to stop suddenly.  Watch the road, not your ongoing game of Angry Birds or Words with Friends where you finally got to play "quinoa" on a triple letter score against your cousin.

Just be better.  And I hope, as a result, you never get listed in an actual police crash report as "Unit 1" or "Unit 2" or "Unit whatever."  Even if it's the OTHER bad driver's fault.

Cheers!