Jax and his webcomic

Everyone go to my friend Jackson's webcomic, Majestic 7. I fully admit that most of the reason I'm writing this is because I'm hoping it shows up on the first page when I do a Google search for Majestic 7. You know because I'm way too lazy to just remember the address or bookmark it or something.

But yeah, it's fun. It's made with legos! Check it out.

... Majestic 7

NCAA Nicknames on Sporcle

If you liked my last post, you might like this Sporcle game I just made: NCAA Nicknames. I looked at all the answers (because I had to in order to create the quiz) and I still only got about 44.

Mascot/Nickname Bracket

I thought it would be fun to fill out an NCAA tournament bracket where the winning team is the one with the better team nickname and/or mascot. What makes it better? Oh, you know. If there's something funny about the mascot, or I think it's clever, or just more original than the opponent, then I'll put it through to the next round. I may also select the one who I think would actually win in a fight. I'm not going to spend a ton of time researching each mascot (i.e. this is based on whatever I can find on Wikipedia in a couple seconds) but in some cases, I've actually seen the mascot in person at previous tournaments so I may draw on that experience.

Some notable matchups:

• #5 Michigan State Spartans vs. #12 New Mexico State Aggies (Round 1). While I have to admit that Spartans is at least a little more original, I would bet New Mexico State is the only "Aggies" team whose mascot carries a gun. Maybe the only mascot of any kind that has a gun. Also, the Spartan is named Sparty and he looks like Jay Leno. Sparty? Come on. Winner: Aggies
• #8 UNLV Rebels vs. #9 Northern Iowa Panthers (Round 1). Both pretty boring, honestly. But the Panthers mascot is TC Panther. An homage to T.C. Boyle, perhaps? Or a nod to the school's founder whose name was T.C. Something-Or-Other? Nope, it stands for "The Cat". Really. But he's won all kinds of awards at cheer competitions and stuff, so I'll give it to him. Winner: Panthers
  
• #3 Georgetown Hoyas vs. #14 Ohio Bobcats (Round 1). It turns out, no one is quite sure what a Hoya is. It may have come from this weird Greek/Latin mishmash phrase that students used to say, but no one quite knows why they said it. I can't decide if it's kind of cool that they're willing to use a mascot that they don't even know what it is, or if it's really tooly, like having a tattoo of a Chinese character on your ankle without knowing what it means. Luckily, they're up against one of the most boring and generic mascots ever. Winner: Hoyas.
• #2 Ohio State Buckeyes vs. #15 UCSB Gauchos (Round 1). I think you guys know where I'm going with this. It's a nut. Or a... big seed. Or something. Winner: Gauchos.
• #7 Oklahoma State Cowboys vs. #10 Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets (Round 1). Normally I would go with the bees on this, because I think it would be the only chance for an insect to make it to the second round. But it turns out the mascot for the the Cowboys is Pistol Pete, a name I recognized from when I read about New Mexico State a few minutes before. It turns out the same guy is the mascot of two different schools. Technically, I can't let him be eliminated in the first round and make it to the second round at the same time. It might cause a rip in the spacetime continuum or something! Winner, by a spatial-temporal technicality: Cowboys.
• #4 Vanderbilt Commodores vs. Murray State Racers (Round 1). I think this is my favorite first round matchup. "Commodore" reminds me of the stuffy British sailors in Pirates of the Caribbean who are always running around with bayonets asking each other how the hell Jack Sparrow has escaped yet again. Racers, on the other hand, refers to racehorses, which sounds like a team you can bet on. Literally. I have to admit, there aren't too many teams named after people instead of animals, that actually sound cool. Winner: Commodores.
• #2 Kansas State Wildcats vs. #15 North Texas Mean Green (Round 1). Normally, I would eliminate a mascot that's a color, instantly. But unlike the Syracuse Orange or the Stanford Cardinal, at least they thought to add some sort of adjective to it. And they're up against one of the most unoriginal things ever, yet another Wildcats. Winner: Mean Green.
• #5 Temple Owls vs. #12 Cornell Big Red (Round 1). Remember Owl from Winnie the Pooh? He was awesome. Winner: Owls.
• #4 Wisconsin Badgers vs. # 13 Wofford Terriers (Round 1). I was about ready to give this to the Terriers because they're so cute. Until I remembered that, when I was in high school, badgers were the funniest damn thing in the world. If there's a "Fighting Mushrooms" or "Garden Snakes" in the tournament next year, I promise to put them through to at least the Sweet Sixteen. Winner: Badgers.
• #7 Clemson Tigers vs. #10 Missouri Tigers, and #5 Texas A&M Aggies vs. #12 Utah State Aggies (Round 1). What the hell, guys? How did this happen? All four of you lose the first round.
• #11 Old Dominion Monarchs vs. #14 Sam Houston State Bearkats (Round 2). Yes, with a 'k'. What the hell is a bearkat? I can only assume it's a cross between a bear and a kat. I bet that kind of unholy hybrid would be pretty good at basketball. Unfortunately, this bracket is rigged. See below. Winner: Monarchs.
• #11 Old Dominion Monarchs vs. #15 Robert Morris Colonials (Sweet 16). AMERICA! Winner: Colonials.
• #1 Kansas Jayhawks vs. #4 Maryland Terrapins (Sweet 16). I know, I know. How did a turtle make it this far?! But look at him. That looks like a pretty badass turtle. And plus, his name is Testudo. Like a combination of testosterone and Menudo. Obviously pretty badass. And, did you know the Jayhawk is a mythical cross between two birds -- the noisy blue jay and the quiet sparrow hawk? So these are some pretty sweet mascots. But ultimately, the power of flight wins out over the power of... plodding. Winner: Jayhawks.
• #15 Robert Morris Colonials vs. #9 Wake Forest Demon Deacons (Final 4). I hate to see America lose this one, but isn't a "demon deacon" like being a double-agent in the ultimate war? Winner: Demon Deacons.

The complete bracket:


Final thoughts:

1. There are too many Golden Somethings. You can't take a boring mascot like a Bear and make it somehow interesting by calling it a Golden Bear. Come on. I think there were four of these.
2. If your team name is literally a color, I have no respect for you at all. Figure it out, Syracuse.
   
3. I wish there could have been a matchup between the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and the Richmond Spiders.

So what do you think? Which mascot was unfairly eliminated? Who's your favorite mascot that didn't even make the tournament? What would your mascot/nickname bracket look like, and who would be the ultimate champion?

Apparently, yes, they are.

In my last post, I told you about a comment I left on the blog for the anti-same-sex-marriage group NOM. It seemed that NOM had deleted it, but I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. So I posted another comment, which I thought was fair and unoffensive and such. I took a screenshot in case NOM took it down again, and sure enough, when I checked tonight, it was gone.



If NOM doesn't want certain comments on their blog, they certainly have the right to delete or censor any comment they like. But it would be nice if they had a clear set of criteria for what is allowed. Even something as simple as "We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason" would be great, but as far as I can tell, they don't have a policy like that, or any other policy, posted anywhere.

I want to make sure I'm being clear here. It seems like every time something like this catches people's attention, someone mentions the First Amendment, claiming that their Constitutional right to free speech is being violated. This is not a First Amendment issue. I was posting on their blog, which they own, and they have the right to absolutely control the content on it. I just think it would be nice if they explained their rationale. Don't you think?

Is NOM censoring comments on their blog?

Several weeks ago, while the Prop 8 trial was underway, someone posted a comment on the blog of the National Organization for [opposite-sex only] Marriage and it almost immediately disappeared without warning or explanation. He posted another comment expressing disagreement with NOM's position, took a screenshot to prove it, and sure enough, it was gone within a few minutes. (If anyone has the link to that blog post, that would be great. I don't remember whose blog it was but maybe someone can find it.) There was a some outrage on Twitter and a few other blogs, but nothing huge, because everyone was more worried about the trial. At some later point, I posted a comment disagreeing with NOM so I believed they had stopped taking down pro-SSM comments.

Today, they posted an entry about a Catholic charity in Washington, D.C. which has decided not to offer benefits to any of their employee's spouses, after same-sex marriage became legal in that city today. As a charity, they receive a lot of money from the city each year, so the city told them if they're going to offer benefits to opposite-sex married couples, they should do the same for same-sex married couples. Since that goes against the teachings of the Catholic church, they decided not to offer benefits to anyone's spouse. It was a very difficult decision for them, and this is an issue that same-sex marriage supporters should consider. Even if you believe that same-sex marriage should be legal, no matter what, you should realize that it can have unintended consequences like this, and be careful that you're not advocating anything that would force charities into uncomfortable positions like this, if possible.

But NOM picked the following title: "Church Forced by DC Government's SSM Law to Drop Future Spousal Benefits" As another commenter before me pointed out, that's not just misleading, it's an outright lie. In fact, the very first sentence of the blog post itself (from the Washington Post article I linked to above) is: "The church faced two options with the approval of the new law." So, yes they were put into a very difficult position. Yes, they were forced to make a choice. Yes, perhaps the DC City Council should have considered the charity's complaints more carefully before passing this law. But no, sorry, the government didn't force the church to drop future spousal benefits. That is just not true.

I posted a comment saying something to the effect of "Look, there's a real debate to be had here. But if your post title says the church was forced by the government to do something, and the very first line of the text says they had two options, then how are we going to have that debate?" When I looked at the entry again, my comment was gone. I don't want to accuse NOM of censoring comments, especially because there are several other dissenting comments on that entry which have not been deleted. But it does seem suspicious. I went ahead and posted another comment saying more or less the same thing. So far it is still there but I'm excited to see if it gets taken down again. If my first comment was indeed removed, I'm curious how they decide which ones to leave up and which ones to remove.

P.S. I have to give NOM credit for using the term "SSM" instead of "gay marriage" or "homosexual marriage." As you might have seen in a recent poll about DADT, people feel a lot differently about "gays and lesbians" than they do about "homosexuals" so thanks NOM! I appreciate you using a term that is less likely to stir up emotions. That is a big step in the right direction and I very much appreciate it!

Things I like in a website

There are a couple of things that I really like in a website. Neither of them really matters that much but they make me feel like I'm dealing with a nice, simple, easy-to-use website. Like Facebook, c. 2004. Or like Facebook now, except the exact opposite.

1. A favicon. For those unfamiliar, it's the little 16x16 or so image that shows up next to the address bar and on the tab next to the page title. I think everyone picks up on visual cues a lot more than they realize, so it's much easier to find the tab or page you want when there's a colorful, simple, icon by it. Plus, it means my bookmarks bar can look like this:
   
   
   
   Bonus question 1: How many of these favicons do you recognize? Bonus question 2: Many of these favicons are letters. How can I rearrange them to spell something funny? Other than "WTF" which I already have.
2. Simple URLs. The example which inspired me to write this is my friends Casey and DJ's new site for scientists, CoLab. The address for someone's profile is, for example, http://www.thisiscolab.org/researchers/profile/caseystark/, rather than http://www.thisiscolab.org/photo.php?pid=958307&id=1017661724&fbid=1313519230881#profile.php/?pid=238924769803?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_content=Google+Reader&feature=related. I don't know why but why I see lots of extraneous characters that don't mean much to me, in a URL, it gives me the sense that the site is overly complicated, was built without a simple. clear focus, and is going to break at any moment. Also, what with Twitter being all the rage nowadays, it's nice to have a reasonable chance at fitting a URL into a tweet without using a shortener. Even if you do have to shorten a URL, we put an extra strain on the URL shortening services when we try to shorten multiple copies of the same URL which don't look identical but actually are. For example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno&feature=channel are exactly the same video, even though the URL is superficially different. Maybe I'm just being a little obsessive, but it's something I always notice.
   

Old games with a twist

I love casual games. I don't know if there's a strict definition for a "casual game" but I would say it's a small, simple game that you can learn very quickly. The kind of free flash games you find at places like Kongregate or Armor Games or Jay is Games. Lately I've seen a few fun games that are all twists on very familiar games, or combinations of them.

• In Tuper Tario Tros, you're playing Mario and Tetris at the same time, in the same place. The tetris blocks that fall become the terrain that Mario is running and jumping on. If Mario can't make it across a gap, switch to Tetris mode and build him a bridge out of tetrominoes. If you can't find anywhere to put your current block, switch back to Mario mode and move through the landscape until you find a more favorable area.
• First-Person Tetris is more or less what it sounds like. It's tetris but you are the tetris block! Warning: This game will make you dizzy and perhaps naseous if you play it enough.
• gnop (yes, that's "pong" backwards) is a clone of Pong, except that you are the ball. Perhaps it was inspired by First-Person Tetris. While playing this one, I imagine that some kid in the 80s with a bad haircut is playing pong, and is wondering why the ball refuses to follow the laws of physics.
  
• Lastly, I just discovered TetriSnake which is of course a tetris game where instead of blocks, you have little snakes. Which is cool because they can be any shape you want if you can succesfully maneuver them into that shape.
• UPDATE: Found another one: Anti-Pacman, where you control the four ghosts. In fact, this is part of an Anti-Games series, but of all the ones listed, Anti-Pacman sounds like the coolest.
  

Do you know of any other casual games in this "classic(s) with a twist" category? What two games should be mashed up next?

The numbers don't lie. Except when they do.

On The Rachel Maddow Show today, they did a cute little segment where they played a fake game show called Pin the Debt on the Donkey whose purpose was to point out that Republican presidents in recent history have added much more to the national debt than Democratic presidents. To that end, they showed this graph.



I don't want to argue about this from a political standpoint, or imply that Rachel Maddow's staff got the numbers wrong* or anything like that. My issue with this graph is that the way the graph is designed deceives you into thinking Reagan spent way way more than anyone else. It's the kind of simple misunderstanding of math that Good Math, Bad Math is all about. First of all, some of these presidents were in office for 4 years, and others for 8. They put this in the "fine print" so to speak, but this is a graph! The point is to show information visually. They could have used the average increase per year, which is also readily available on PresidentialDebt.org. That graph would look like this:



(Sorry it doesn't look as fancy as Rachel's. Upper Harmonics' graphics department consists of, well, me and OpenOffice.org.) In this graph, things look a little more balanced, and you could argue that if Carter and Bush Sr. had gotten a second term, they would have increased the debt by about as much as they did during their first term, so it's a little more fair.

I don't think this is the biggest issue though. The real problem with this graph is that the numbers are percentages, not absolute numbers. This would be of no consequence if they were percentages of the same thing. But each number is a percentage of the national debt at the start of that president's term. So if you happened to be president after someone who (as Rachel points out) nearly tripled the national debt, you look much better in comparison. Not just because you're being compared to someone who spent a lot of money, but because your spending is being reported as a percentage of a higher number. If we look at each president's debt increase in actual dollars (actually, trillions of dollars), we get this:



Wow! You mean the first President Bush and President Clinton actually increased the national debt by the same amount? Yup. And both of them increased the debt by just a little less than Reagan did? Yes. But that's not really fair, you say. Clinton had two terms, and Bush only had one. Okay, let's look at each term, rather than each president, shall we?



This still illustrates the general point Rachel Maddow was trying to make: The worst four-year presidential terms of national debt increase in recent history were mostly during Republican administrations, and the best were mostly during Democratic ones. But I think the graph they chose to create didn't show the whole story as clearly as it could have.

You don't have to be an economics or math major to understand this. This is very simple math. A given amount of money may be a small percentage of one value, and an enormous percentage of another value. Comparing percentages the way they did on the show distorts the facts.

To be clear, I don't think Rachel Maddow or her staff were intentionally deceiving anyone or trying to distort the truth -- it sounds cliche but I'm really not trying to make this into a politcal thing. I suspect they just took the five easiest-to-spot numbers off of PresidentialDebt.org and quickly threw them onto a graph. So some of the blame should lie with that site, which made those numbers a bit more prominent than they should have been.

* Although, they rounded Bush Sr.'s number from 55.6% (direct from PresidentialDebt.org) to 55%. We could argue about the .5 rule all day, but I think we can all agree that 55.6 rounds to 56, right? Also, during the segment, she says George W. Bush grew the national debt by $4.9 trillion. The number is actually more like $5.04 trillion, which I assume is due to another rounding error. Either that or they got that number from another source that uses the actual inauguration days, instead of the end of the year, as the delineation between presidencies.