dr_phil_physics | Entries tagged with npr

Who, What, Why, Where, How -- the journalist's questions.

I've long been in a battle with newspapers for not putting the damned day of the week next to dates, particularly announcements of events, concerts, etc. Truthfully, our ability to go to such things is very much dependent on weekends and free evenings.

But sometimes they do less than full diligence.

Coming home from K-zoo Wednesday, All Things Considered on the Ann Arbor NPR station repeater ran a piece around 5:50pm on the Hugos.

Now I've kept fairly low key about the squabbles about the 2015 Hugo Awards -- the science fiction honors handed out at WorldCon each year. More than one news outlet has had sloppy reporting and research. I think they get seduced by the word "puppies" in combination with controversy, and either figure it's a joke or doesn't require much heavy duty research effort.

Alas, I have to call out National Public Radio on the carpet a little bit.

To their credit, they presented it as a case of two sides and had clips from Brad Torgersen for the Sad Puppies and Kameron Hurley for the... Un Puppies? *** But it was a pretty short piece.

I'm sure there'll be megabytes killed and slaughtered on many sides for what was and was not said. For example, not bringing up the two puppy camps -- the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies -- is a vast oversimplification and tends to tar people with too broad a brush. Or the record setting number of memberships and Hugo votes.

But here's the worst part:

MAYER: The Hugos will be given out this Saturday at the World Science Fiction Convention, where organizers will also meet to discuss changing the nomination process. Petra Mayer, NPR News.

An innocuous concluding statement, right?

Except for the glaring omission of "Sasquan", "Spokane" and "73rd WorldCon". WorldCons are individual efforts done by a particular hardworking community cohort each year, and as far as NPR's coverage, it might as well be a secret cabal meeting in an undisclosed location. I mean, Wikipedia got the reporting right: "The 2015 Hugos will be presented at the 73rd Worldcon, Sasquan, in Spokane, Washington on August 22, 2015."

Except maybe for missing the word "Saturday." (grin) Way to go, NPR, you got that right.

Dr. Phil

*** Please note that "Puppies" is what the two puppy groups called themselves. I do not use it as a pejorative.

75th WorldCon NOTE: Hugo voting is long over, but if you are AT Sasquan, you can still vote for the 75th WorldCon site selection. Me? I voted for Helsinki, as you could guess from my LJ icon.

Posted on Dreamwidth
Crossposted on LiveJournal

Current Music: Love Is Just Another Word / Harry Chapin [Live]

I don't spend a lot of time following the stock market.

Though I suspect that between NPR news and Marketplace, plus some newspaper columns by the Motley Fool and our NPR station's Saturday line up of news humor shows, I do better than most.

So I was amused to discover that Wall Street just pooped a nice Christmas present on itself, with the Dow closing above 18,000 for the first time.

18,024.17 to be exact.

Googling "dow jones" provided the following screenshot:

Wikipedia has updated its entry on the DJIA:

On May 3, 2013, the Dow surpassed the 15,000 mark for the first time, while later on November 18, it closed above the 16,000 level.[28] Following a strong jobs report on July 3, 2014, the Dow traded above the 17,000 mark for the first time.[29] On 23 December 2014 the Dow Jones industrial average traded above 18,000 for the first time after data showed the U.S. economy posted its strongest growth in more than a decade.

Okay, reality check. Yes, I know that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is NOT the stock market, it isn't very industrial any more, it's an indexed average of a changing basket of stocks and it isn't the only index on Wall Street.

But it's famous. People quote it. It's important in that sense.

Okay, this is where it gets weird. Because just last Thursday we were talking to our financial guy, and I asked, was the Dow still over 16,000? And back on the Fourth of July I wrote:

Huh.

Just yesterday morning we were talking to our financial guy, and he made a comment about the Dow. And I pointed out I haven't been following it in a while -- was it still over 16,000?

Well, NPR just reported that yesterday's pre-holiday session had the Dow Jones Industrial Average exceed 17,000 for the first time.

I told you I didn't follow the stock market closely.

Following that pre-holiday theme, we had the week before Thanksgiving 2013:

So on Thursday I posted the following observation on Facebook:

4pm news lead stories: CNBC -- DJIA closes above 16,000 for first time. MSNBC -- the nuclear option in the Senate. FOX News -- McDonald's drops McRib from nation menu, many protest, is Michelle Obama to blame?
Well, you can't say all the news is the same... Dr. Phil

A little over four years ago I noted when "the stock market", i.e. the Dow Jones Industrial Average, broke 10,000+ (DW) for the first time in the recession. At the time I wrote:

Wednesday (14 October 2009) the NYSE surged above 10,000 again and stayed there. Happy days are here again. The Recession's back has been broken. We are on the path to recovery. Well, aren't we?

To some extent, I think the same sarcasm is due.

I missed the May 2013 breaking the 15,000 barrier, probably because I was in the hospital, having just got out of the ICU.

Yay. We're above 18,000. The Dow has jumped 3000 points just since I've been dealing with my heel.

But, as the Dow grows, a 1000 point gain ain't what it used to be. I was in junior high in White Plains NY, just north of New York City when it first topped 1000 points total. It's a matter of diminishing percentages, those thousand point records.

One of the reasons that I am not greatly excited about this, even as I note the historical value, is that it's a game. Sure, business needs investment money. And the value of a stock gives a gauge as to the health and wealth of a company. But past that... Most of the money made on Wall Street is a masturbatory fantasy game that Wall Street does to make Wall Street money. And an avenue for outsiders to come in and "invest" in a company by buying it up and changing that which had given it value in the first place. Chasing the tail of stock prices has fueled most of this raging drive towards short term gain at the expense of long term legacy and long term employment.

It has changed America in so many ways, and not all of them positive. For good or ill, many of our pensions are still tied into this game. And in the long term, it's a money maker. Mostly. But we don't retire in the long term, we're each on different countdown clocks. A lot of people were hurt when Wall Street screwed up the last time. And they're in the process of trying to get some of the controls enacted after that meltdown removed. Because these practices worked so well the last time.

So whoopee, here I am twirling a finger in the air.

It's just another big deal in a string of big deals.

And yet... I'm sure happier having a surging Wall Street than another market crash. If only some of this optimism and profits would actually trickle down far enough to do some good.

Dr. Phil

WorldCon Adds An NPR SF Geek To It's Guestlist

Funny, we were listening to Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me when I saw this press release on Facebook. Yeah, we're multi-tasking multi-media moguls around here. (grin)

Chicon 7, the 70th World Science Fiction Convention ("Worldcon"), is delighted to announce Peter Sagal, the host of National Public Radio's irreverent weekly news quiz "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me," as a Special Guest. Sagal, who has often identified himself on the radio as a science fiction fan, will impart an additional dose of Chicago into Chicon 7 with his knowledge, humor, and skills.

Peter Sagal attended Noreascon 3 (the 1989 Worldcon), where he got to meet some of his literary heroes, including Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl. In January 1998, he made his debut on "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me" as a panelist before becoming host of the show in May of that year. Sagal published his first book, The Book of Vice: Naughty Things and How to Do Them in 2007. He also recorded the narration for a self-guided walking tour of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.

Speaking of Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me

They mentioned that you are supposed to be able to order off-menu items at McDonald's, including the Land-Sea-Air Burger -- which has a beef patty, fish patty and piece of chicken on one bun. Oddly, Mrs. Dr. Phil and I would try that once... Anyone want to try ordering this and let me know?

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: pleased

3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 8...

For some peoples around the world, March 14th is "Pi Day", as they display the month-day as 3/14, or I suppose to be more mathematically correct, 3.14 . (grin) For much of the world, 14 March is 14.3.2011, so it doesn't make a lot of sense. However, no one has ever accused Americans of not being biased about the way they do things.

Above is pi given to 31 decimal places -- 31 3.1 get it? -- which was featured on NPR's Morning Edition with a musical composition based on assigning these digits to both notes and chords. The result is oddly musical:

The link to the story on NPR this morning is here.

By the way, this is not to be confused with "The Pi Song", which is a variation on the song "American Pie" which itself had nothing to do with non-terminating non-repeating irrational numbers. I shan't put a link to that song, because after I viewed one version on YouTube, my system slowed to a crawl and Task Manager report that setup.exe was busy doing something, and I clearly hadn't intended to install anything, so killed it and got my computer back. Stupid bastards.

Anyway, have some numbers.

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: amused

First Stanza

Between Northwestern undergrad and Michigan Tech grad school, I worked for 2½ years in the Pre-Order Search Section between Order and the Cataloging Dept. at the Northwestern University Library. All three units were in Technical Services and all three were somewhat obsessed with accuracy. All of us had occasion to input data records and we worked hard at not making mistakes. One day someone was at one of the big IBM mainframe terminals and said, "Oops." A person at the next terminal said, "No 'Oops' at the terminal."

Refrain

Oops, I Did It Again,
(Oh No You Didn't)

Second Stanza

In grad school, I was sitting in the office debugging a FORTRAN program on Monday 19 October 1987 when one of the other grad students came in and said the stock market was crashing. At the time it was down nearly 300 points. It went on to drop over 500. I remember thinking that it was my generation's Great Depression being born and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. I mean, I was in the middle of graduate school, busy working on my doctorate. I'd defended my MS thesis, but hadn't gotten around to finishing the revisions, so officially I didn't have any graduate degree. If the economy collapsed and the university started laying people off -- there really wasn't any place to go. It would be two years or so before I could take wing and try to go somewhere, assuming there was an economy left at the end of the day. So I shrugged and went back to debugging my program.

Turns out my reaction was common. Unlike 1929, there wasn't the same kind of people dabbling in the stock market in 1987. If the stock market was crashing, most people didn't care. Indeed, the U.S. economy didn't tank and within a year things were back to normal. Or at least normal for 1988.

Refrain

I don't care,
(I swear)
I don't care,
At all.

Third Stanza

Thursday the New York Stock Exchange took a nosedive. For a brief amount of time the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down nearly a 1000 points, but that big drop only lasted like 90 seconds. Rumor has it that someone typed a sell order for 16 billion, instead of 16 million -- Citi denies this, but who asked them, hmm? Then automatic sell programs triggered on the big sell order and for a brief moment some stocks hit zero. Some want to blame the initial drop on concern about the Greek Debt. Some figure that some sort of correction was overdue.

The thing that killed me about Thursday was how much this was Not News. Yeah, I heard a bit in passing on NPR's All Things Considered, but if this was The End Of The U.S. Economy, you sure couldn't tell by the news. Indeed, the local TV news was dominated by coverage of the death of legendary Detroit Tiger's announcer Ernie Harwell. Thursday night NBC's Brian Williams was on The Late Show with David Letterman. I was not really paying attention, but they spent most of the time talking about last Saturday's incompetent Times Square car bomber and the unfolding ecological disaster off the coast of Louisiana. But a major stock dive? Just a few minutes right at the end. I expect tomorrow's Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me to be all over the (b)illion versus (m)illion issue, if it makes the show taping in time.

But the stock market wasn't much for news. Americans are weary of the economy -- and if some Wall Street fat cats got skinned on Thursday, then no doubt the sentiment is "good for them." Because the rest of all already had our retirement investments fleeced in 2008. What can they possibly take from us in 2010?

Meanwhile, neither Big Oil or Wall Street seems to get it, regarding why they need to be regulated for the good of everyone.

Refrain

And I'm free, I'm free fallin',
Everything is less than zero...

Chorus

Thank God for those financial institutions,
Too big to fail and,
Paying millions in big bonuses,
So they have the best and brightest,
Forever on the payroll.

Oops, I did it again.
(Oh no you didn't.)

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: pissed off

And Away We Go

Wednesday the NYSE surged above 10,000 again and stayed there. Happy days are here again. The Recession's back has been broken. We are on the path to recovery.

Well, aren't we?

Banking -- Ur Not Doing It Rite

Meanwhile on Wednesday I was listening to NPR's Talk of the Nation and they were talking about the problems with the programs and efforts to get mortgages redone to prevent foreclosures. In many cases, the few mortgages that are being rewritten end up with $50/month savings -- rather than the $500-$1000/month needed for relief. Then in some cases the penalties built up from before the rewriting get folded back into the mortgage, resulting in a monthly payment more than it was before. Some re-fi, eh?

Worse, a lot of banks seemed to have hired the paperwork gurus from the health insurance industry, since besides saying "NO" right off the bat, they seem to be unable to hold onto any paperwork. People are reporting having to resend the same information an obscene number of times -- and even the successful rewritten mortgages seem to take up to two-and-a-half years to process. One real estate person in Florida said that in his area the banks were more willing to lose $400,000 of a house's value in a short sale, than lose $200,000 in a rewritten mortgage. It's all part and parcel of the short-term gain mentality which has been steadily ruining this country since the 1980s or so. Worse, it's not all stemming from people with no income getting outrageous homes or people buying McMansions -- there's quite a pool of people who would've qualified for a perfectly ordinary and reasonable mortgage they could've afforded but were steered into or sold with some other mortgage product which came equipped with land mines and balloon payments. Caveat emptor on one hand? Or malfeasance and greed on the other?

If the Fed's interest rate to banks is essentially zero, why are there mortgages charging rates like bad credit cards? None of this financial mess would pass muster in any freshmen Economics class!

In Ohio it was mentioned that this one reporter couldn't confirm that National City (now part of PNC out of Pittsburgh) had been able to rewrite any mortgages. One caller to the program said that a judge had ruled against Wells Fargo and Deutchebank for what sounded like hiding behind a shell game of who owns and who controls the mortgage. So much for Federal programs to provide relief -- as it was six months ago, the people most likely to get help are those who contact either someone in government or a reporter, and get a response from a bank that doesn't want to look bad? Yikes.

Thursday, Goldman Sachs was flying high on massive profit reports -- and the news that they wanted to pay millions in bonuses. Other good financial news? Citi lost less than expected. O happy day.

Uh, Never Mind

Today's stock market? Well, let's say that Bank of America and GE had "disappointing" earning reports -- and the Dow-Jones dropped quickly back below 10,000. There was some sort of nonsense of Bank of America wanting to pay bonuses as they cheerfully lost $2,200,000,000.00. Um, that was decided to be a dumb idea.

We're Still Number One!

In Michigan the unemployment rate rose from 15.2% to 15.3%. We still don't have a budget, even though the state's fiscal year began October 1st -- we're operating on a one month extension. The House and Governor are Democratic, the Senate is Republican. Something like eight of the spending bills have been passed by both houses and reconciled, but the State Senate is holding on to them until the last minute to try to prevent the governor from using her constitutional line item veto.

Yeah, I'm not very happy about some of this stuff. Really.

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: disappointed

Ar-rrrrh!

It be International Talk Like A Pirate Day, me mateys. Damn the souless heathen scurvy seven seas fer puttin' it on a Sat'rday, sose a pirate prof'sor cain't Talk Like A Pirate in class.

Ter Squealin' Pig o' a Lyin' Parrot

Jest finished givin' a lissen to ter ole N-P-Arrrrrh's Dis Amarican Lifey an' the scurvy dogs were re-runnin' a blather from nigh onto nine long sorry years ago about Ter Informant. A-D-M, Pirates To The World!™ But plunderin' people at ter rancid supermarrrrrhkets? Tis a sad day fer pirates e'erwhere when there be no high seas hijinks involved in piracy.

So cast off the lines, me hearteys! Pull up ter archor chains an' seize 'em fast. Let loose ter mainsails an' look lively there, ya scurvy dogs! Or it'll be the keel haul fer the lot o' you, fer sure.

Tap a cask o' rum fer me an' all those pirates who don't drink. An' don't be makin' no parley with anyone you don' trust -- lest it be another pirate. 'Cause there be no use tryin' to decide if you can trust ano'er pirate, savvy, 'cause we be pirates!

Dr. "Black Flag" Phil aka Black Davy Read

Current Mood: predatory

Surprised I Didn't Write About This Last Year

I meant to. But back on Thursday 1 May 2008, we went to Celebration North Theatre #2 not to see a movie, but a live HD feed from NYU where Ira Glass was doing a theatre broadcast of This American Life. Actually, it was really for the SHOWTIME TV version, which since we don't get SHOWTIME, we were pretty clueless about. It was great fun and well...

See Ira Glass is one of the most dangerous men in America. Every Saturday morning we put on the local NPR station and doze, wakeup, eat, play with kitties, etc. to Weekend Edition Saturday, Car Talk, Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know? and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me: The NPR News Quiz. From 8am to 2pm. But then it's a rush to get the radio turned off, before Ira Glass can speak at 2 o'clock. Because we have been sucked in too many times to count. (grin) And because of the nature of the stories, you really can't do anything else for an hour -- and then Saturday is truly shot to hell and beyond. We once sat in a grocery store parking lot for half an hour waiting for an episode of This American Life to end.

I suspect Ira Glass is amused by his strange powers over people.

This Year

The other week I heard a blurb on Michigan Public Radio on the long drive home about this year's event for Thursday 23 April 2009 (last night) and we were off to the web site and then ordered tickets.

Ira Glass will host an actual episode of the radio program, performed onstage by some of our favorite contributors. Dan Savage, Starlee Kine, and Mike Birbiglia will tell stories. David Rakoff and Dave Hill will conduct a ‘special investigation.’ Plus a new cartoon by Chris Ware, additional visuals by Arthur Jones, and a very special appearance by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! The performance will last around two hours. We’re going to capture the whole thing with a bunch of HD cameras, and send it live* to movie theatres all over the country.

It’s gonna be a fun night. We hope you’ll come.

So in reality it was about 90 minutes, which they'll edit down to under sixty. They showed some video segments which would clearly make zero sense on a radio show and then some comments about editing the show, etc., which also would be cut. But Ira is an artist. And once again the Grand Rapids Celebration Cinema North Theatre #2 was sold out and packed. Yay Public Radio people.

The theme of this episode of the radio show, to air locally on WGVU-FM at 2pm Saturday 2 May 2009 -- while I am at Penguicon -- is "Return to the Scene of the Crime." As is typical in This American Life, scene and crime and return are interpreted in many different ways.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Uh, so what does the 2008 Internet phenomenon have to do with all this? Well, Joss Whedon -- Dr. Horrible's creator and the force behind Buffy, Angel, Firefly and now this odd Dollhouse thing -- was invited to sing on the radio show. Apparently doing a musical Internet movie wasn't sufficiently weird, there is a commentary track on the DVD which is also written as a musical. Very meta.

I love the concept of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and am convinced that Neil Patrick Harris is the only person who could've been Dr. Horrible (grin), but this was the first time I saw any part of one of the episodes, which they played. See, I don't web with the sound turned on and I dislike jumping onto huge bandwidth sinks with everyone else, so I figured I'd see it later. Like when the DVD came out. Now I'll probably have to buy the DVD. Thanks, Ira. (evil grin)

There is definitely something surreal about watching them make a radio show over a 430-theatre live HD video feed which includes stuff from the commentary track of an Internet movie musical... This American Life indeed.

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: geeky

The Darling of Hollywood

At the Oscars the other week the surprise hit Slumdog Millionaire took a whole lot of honors, outside of the acting awards. Mrs. Dr. Phil had seen the movie in Holland MI when I was off to ConFusion in Troy MI back in January. Now this weekend Mrs. Dr. Phil is the one off at a conference/workshop and so on the way back from the airport, I swung by Celebration Cinema South at the M-6 freeway and Kalamazoo Avenue -- the one local Jack Loeks theatre we've never been to yet -- and caught up.

Actually, I hadn't made up my mind until the drive out to the airport. It was such a beautiful blue sky day, that spending a couple of hours inside a dark movie theatre seemed the perfect thing to do. (grin) Unfortunately, I'd misremembered the times at the various theatres, and so I was there at 1:30, but the movie wouldn't start for at least 45 minutes. Fortunately, I could just wander back to the Bravada and listen to the rest of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR news quiz show.

Slumdog Millionaire [R]

Celebration South #13, 2:15pm, $6.50

The mini review in the GRPress started off by describing this movie as "gritty." Oh yes, and more. And yet, it manages to be both a charming love story and triumphant, while honestly earning its R-rating, for all those things which are neither charming nor triumphant.

This is not a picture that could've been made in the U.S. While I'm sure that most Americans don't realize that Who Wants To Be A Millionaire had it origins "somewhere else", i.e. Britain, the real shock is not that this is the Indian version of the game show, or that the top prize is 20,000,000 rupees. It's that our characters come out of a childhood that can only, from my priviledged background, be described as a Third World nightmare. And coupled with an adult world of corruption and brutality which is also, I hope, not part of the American experience. And yet...

The story is told in flashbacks leading up to the top question of the game show, the comforting four-answer multiple choice interrogation of WWTBAM and the unexpected police interrogation. The performances of the children is outstanding and the diversity of locations and conditions, with many physical dangers, along with numerous plot twists, makes it a complicated woven tapestry. And since we want our main character to win, it is easy to buy into both the gritty realism and the fairy tale.

What makes the movie endearing is that two of the three children we're following manage to grow up relatively intact, educated -- and stay nice, despite all that happens to them. Mrs. Dr. Phil describes this as the fairy tale aspect of the movie. Sure, but I think it's important to the movie and its success that this is so. Because I could imagine a darker version where Jamal was raised as a con man, in which his sincere look and professed innocence is fake -- and the ending would be much like the ending to The Usual Suspects, where you cannot believe anything which has happened earlier.

In any event, Slumdog Millionaire isn't quite what you might've thought it would be. And that is a very good thing.

Do stay for the credits, because they do a lovely Bollywood production number on the train platforms.
Highly Recommended

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: pleased

Anniversaries in Internet Time

Thursday I got a notice that LiveJournal is 10 years old. So, was this news on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday? Nope, they noted that Facebook had turned 5 years old. Well isn't that special?

Actually, that LJ started in 1999 and Facebook in 2004 is kind of interesting. I'm not sure when I started running into LiveJournal entries while running web searches. But it was

slithytove's reporting from the 2004 Clarion workshop -- I learned a lot about what was going on at Clarion and I was there and my room was across the hall from John's! -- that got me reading blogs and then in 2005 I started this LJ.

I avoided Facebook for the longest time, especially because you had to sign up to use it -- no, try it before you buy it. But then Mrs. Dr. Phil got involved and I decided to set up a Facebook group for my Physics classes. Though I've only had about 3 questions so far, I feel better for having an easily accessible place to interact -- the class webpage is terribly important to the class, but it pumps info only one-way.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Ol' LJ and newcomer Facebook.

Dr. Phil

Current Mood: contemplative

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A Semi NPR Fail
18,000
Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me The Name Of This Guest
Happy Pi Day
No Oops At The Terminal
10,000+ !
It Be A Purty Day, Mateys
This American Life Live Part 2
Well Deserved Oscars
Community Organizing

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Those Who Lie In Wait, Dream Deep

Entries tagged with npr

A Semi NPR Fail

18,000

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me The Name Of This Guest

Happy Pi Day

No Oops At The Terminal

10,000+ !

It Be A Purty Day, Mateys

This American Life Live Part 2

Well Deserved Oscars

Community Organizing