Movies Seen in 2011

I set a goal of seeing (on average) a movie a day in 2011. I saw 366 feature length films and 30 short films. I'm not doing that again. Lots of times it was fun, sometimes it was a chore. I used the Academy's definition of short, that is under 40 minutes long. Most of those were nominated short films and pixar shorts I caught on TV. For features, I separated out 5 TV movies that were either HBO originals or a PBS documentary.

67% I watched on cable, and 27% were in a theater (this is the first question people usually ask). The rest were online or via netflix or DVD. I watched one movie on my iPad (on a flight).



12% I had seen before, the rest were first times. (This is the second question people ask and yes reruns count. Seeing Casablanca a second or third time is still seeing a movie).



I rated all the films on a scale of 1-5, 5 being the best. I use what's mostly a Netflix scale. 3 is ok, 4 I really liked and 5 is great. 2 I didn't like and 1 I hated. I didn't see many fives this year and I was pretty good about only seeing reruns that I liked.

I did pretty well breaking them up throughout the year but I still needed to make a push in December.


Most of the films I saw were recent films


and most were US films


I tried attaching a genre to each film but this was harder than I thought. The best I came up with was a two tier system. This worked well for things like biography that could be either a drama or a documentary but it didn't work for other things. Lots of dramas I couldn't find a good sub-genre for. So I'll work on that for next year.


And finally here's the whole list with my ratings. I'll do a separate post about 2011 films as I'm still seeing lots of them that came out at the end of the year.

Title	Year	Type	Country	Rating
Go West	1940	Feature	US	4
The King's Speech	2010	Feature	Britain	4
The Devil and Miss Jones	1941	Feature	US	3
The Good Night	2007	Feature	US	2
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I	2010	Feature	US	3
Greenberg	2010	Feature	US	2
Leap Year	2010	Feature	US	2
A Prophet	2009	Feature	France	5
The Book of Eli	2010	Feature	US	2
Fort Apache	1948	Feature	US	3
Twilight: New Moon	2009	Feature	US	2
True Grit	2010	Feature	US	4
Chinatown	1974	Feature	US	3
Clash of the TItans	2010	Feature	US	2
One Way Passage	1932	Feature	US	3
Love and Other Drugs	2010	Feature	US	3
Percy Jackson - The Lightening Thief	2010	Feature	US	2
The Sun Also Rises	1957	Feature	US	1
Swing Time	1936	Feature	US	3
The Fountainhead	1949	Feature	US	1
The Shop Around the Corner	1940	Feature	US	4
Extraordinary Measures	2010	Feature	US	2
Somewhere	2010	Feature	US	2
Le Mans	1971	Feature	US	1
Life During Wartime	2010	Feature	US	1
The Way Back	2010	Feature	US	4
Dogtooth	2010	Feature	Greece	1
My Idiot Brother	2010	Feature	US	4
The Warriors of Qiugang	2010	Short	US	3
The Thomas Beale Cipher	2010	Short	US	3
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra	2001	Feature	US	5
The Madagascar Penguins in a Christmas Caper	2005	Short	US	3
The Mechanic	2011	Feature	US	2
Trouble in Paradise	1932	Feature	US	3
Anne of the Thousand Days	1969	Feature	Britain	4
Becket	1964	Feature	Britain	4
Edward My Son	1949	Feature	Britain	4
Lust for Life	1956	Feature	US	4
William S. Burroughs - A Man Within	2010	Feature	US	2
A Damsel in Distress	1937	Feature	US	3
Madame Curie	1943	Feature	US	4
The Shoes of the Fisherman	1968	Feature	US	2
Biutiful	2010	Feature	Mexico	2
The Illusionist	2010	Feature	Britain	3
In the Shadow of the Moon	2007	Feature	US	5
High Noon	1952	Feature	US	5
The Pride of the Yankees	1942	Feature	US	4
Disraeli	1929	Feature	US	3
Another Year	2010	Feature	Britain	4
Love Affair	1939	Feature	US	3
The Sunset Limited	2011	TV	US	3
National Velvet	1944	Feature	US	3
Poster Girl	2010	Short	US	4
Strangers No More	2010	Short	US	4
Killing in the Name	2010	Short	US	3
Sun Come Up	2010	Short	US	2
Rabbit Hole	2010	Feature	US	3
The Confession	2010	Short	Britain	4
Wish 143	2010	Short	Britain	4
The Crush	2010	Short	Ireland	4
How to Train Your Dragon	2010	Feature	US	3
God of Love	2010	Short	US	3
Na Wewe	2010	Short	Belgium	3
I Am Love	2010	Feature	Italy	2
Day & Night	2010	Short	US	5
Let's Pollute	2010	Short	US	4
The Story of Louis Pasteur	1936	Feature	US	4
The Lost Thing	2010	Short	Australia	4
The Gruffalo	2010	Short	Britain	4
The Cow Who Wanted to be a Hamburger	2010	Short	US	3
Urs	2010	Short	Russia	3
Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage	2010	Short	France	3
Barney's Version	2010	Feature	US	4
Blue Valentine	2010	Feature	US	4
Date Night	2010	Feature	US	2
Whatever Works	2009	Feature	US	4
Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here	1969	Feature	US	2
Star Trek: The Motion Picture	1979	Feature	US	3
Metropolis	1927	Feature	Germany	4
Our Relations	1936	Feature	US	3
Real Genius	1985	Feature	US	3
Secretariat	2010	Feature	US	3
The Adjustment Bureau	2011	Feature	US	3
Tortilla Flat	1942	Feature	US	2
Watch on the Rhine	1943	Feature	US	3
Summertime	1955	Feature	Britain	3
Rio Bravo	1959	Feature	US	3
Tron	1982	Feature	US	3
For Heaven's Sake	1926	Feature	US	4
I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang	1932	Feature	US	3
Robin Hood	2010	Feature	US	2
The Terminator	1984	Feature	US	4
Robocop	1987	Feature	US	2
The Magnificent Yankee	1950	Feature	US	2
The Losers	2010	Feature	US	3
Black Death	2010	Feature	Britain	1
Hot Millions	1968	Feature	Britain	3
Wife vs. Secretary	1936	Feature	US	3
Ivanhoe	1952	Feature	US	3
Red Dust	1932	Feature	US	2
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof	1958	Feature	US	4
Paul	2011	Feature	US	2
Sunshine Cleaning	2008	Feature	US	3
The China Syndrome	1979	Feature	US	4
Creation	2009	Feature	US	2
MacGruber	2010	Feature	US	1
Win Win	2011	Feature	US	4
Henry & June	1990	Feature	US	4
The Other Guys	2010	Feature	US	3
Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf	1966	Feature	US	4
The Beast of the City	1932	Feature	US	2
New York I Love You	2009	Feature	US	2
The More the Merrier	1943	Feature	US	3
Source Code	2011	Feature	US	3
Thurgood	2011	TV	US	4
Inception	2010	Feature	US	5
Dead Again	1991	Feature	US	4
The Conspirator	2011	Feature	US	3
Cinema Verite	2011	TV	US	3
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story	2005	Feature	UK	2
His Way	2011	TV	US	4
Being Elmo	2011	Feature	US	5
Three Faces of Eve	1957	Feature	US	3
On the Ice	2011	Feature	US	3
The Bengali Detective	2011	Feature	UK	2
The Catechism Cataclysm	2011	Feature	US	4
Submarine	2011	Feature	UK	4
The City Dark	2011	Feature	US	4
Last Days Here	2011	Feature	US	5
How to Die in Oregon	2011	Feature	US	4
Stake Land	2011	Feature	US	3
Convento	2011	Feature	France	2
Windfall	2011	Feature	US	2
The Future	2011	Feature	US	2
Make Believe	2011	Feature	US	4
Circumstance	2011	Feature	US	4
Another Earth	2011	Feature	US	4
God Willing	2011	Feature	US	2
El Bulli: Cooking in Progress	2011	Feature	Germany	5
Sons of Perdition	2011	Feature	US	4
The Whistleblower	2011	Feature	US	4
Terri	2011	Feature	US	3
Conan O'Brien Can't Stop	2011	Feature	US	3
Thor	2011	Feature	US	3
13 Assassins	2011	Feature	Japan	3
Rubber	2011	Feature	US	2
Incendies	2010	Feature	Canada	4
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel	2009	Biography	US	4
Catch Me If You Can	2002	Feature	US	4
Heartbreakers	2001	Feature	US	3
Easy A	2010	Feature	US	3
Cave of Forgotten Dreams	2011	Feature	US	3
Too Big To Fail	2011	Feature	US	4
My Sister's Keeper	2009	Feature	US	2
Flash Gordon	1980	Feature	US	4
Midnight in Paris	2011	Feature	US	3
Sin City	2005	Feature	US	3
Wilson	1944	Feature	US	2
Maxed Out	2006	Feature	US	3
Beautiful Boy	2011	Feature	US	2
Reagan	2011	Feature	US	4
Harvard Beats Yale 29-29	2008	Feature	US	2
River of No Return	1954	Feature	US	3
Lebanon	2009	Feature	Israel	2
Tree of Life	2011	Feature	US	4
Agora	2009	Feature	US	3
Bobby Fischer Against the World	2011	Feature	US	3
Dodsworth	1936	Feature	US	3
X-Men: First Class	2011	Feature	US	4
Religulous	2008	Feature	US	2
Super 8	2011	Feature	US	2
An Eastern Westerner	1920	Short	US	4
Mr. Hulot's Holiday	1953	Feature	France	4
A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt	2011	Feature	US	4
Public Enemies	2009	Feature	US	3
My Favorite Wife	1940	Feature	US	4
Kameradschaft	1931	Feature	Germany	3
The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend	1949	Feature	US	2
Green Fire	1954	Feature	US	2
Devil	2010	Feature	US	1
Sex Crimes Unit	2011	Feature	US	3
What a Way to Go	1964	Feature	US	3
Billy Wilder Speaks	2006	Feature	US	4
The Pawnbroker	1965	Feature	US	5
Tamara Drewe	2010	Feature	Britain	4
The African Queen	1951	Feature	US	4
Hot Coffee	2011	Feature	US	4
The Rack	1956	Feature	US	4
The Perfect Host	2011	Feature	US	3
Cluny Brown	1946	Feature	US	4
Citizen U.S.A.	2011	Feature	US	3
The Spiral Staircase	1945	Feature	US	3
Angels in the Outfield	1951	Feature	US	3
Despicable Me	2010	Feature	US	4
Lovely & Amazing	2002	Feature	US	4
Christmas in July	1940	Feature	US	3
The Petrified Forest	1936	Feature	US	3
WUSA	1970	Feature	US	2
Horrible Bosses	2011	Feature	US	4
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps	2010	Feature	US	3
Love Crimes of Kabul	2011	Feature	US	4
Burlesque	2010	Feature	US	2
Twilight: Eclipse	2010	Feature	US	1
Seven Days to Noon	1950	Feature	US	4
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince	2009	Feature	US	4
Project Nim	2011	Feature	US	4
Mann v. Ford	2011	Feature	US	3
Moon	2009	Feature	US	3
Departures	2008	Feature	Japan	4
The Laughing Policeman	1973	Feature	US	3
The Captains	2011	Feature	Canada	3
The Quiller Memorandum	1966	Feature	US	3
GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra	2009	Feature	US	2
Captain America	2011	Feature	US	4
Brute Force	1947	Feature	US	3
Buried	2010	Feature	US	3
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2	2011	Feature	US	4
The Tourist	2010	Feature	US	2
Good Neighbors	2011	Feature	Canada	4
George Washington Slept Here	1942	Feature	US	4
Cowboys & Aliens	2011	Feature	US	2
A Patch of Blue	1965	Feature	US	4
Harper	1966	Feature	US	3
Koran by Heart	2011	Feature	US	4
Oktapodi	2007	Short	France	4
Kiki	1926	Feature	US	3
Rise of the Planet of the Apes	2011	Feature	US	2
Magic Trip: Ken Kasey's Search for a Kool Place	2011	Feature	US	2
How to Steal a Million	1966	Feature	US	4
My Dinner With Andre	1981	Feature	US	4
Jaws	1975	Feature	US	5
Skidoo	1968	Feature	US	2
Superheroes	2011	Feature	US	3
Dinner with Schmucks	2010	Feature	US	2
Beginners	2011	Feature	US	3
The Trip	2011	Feature	Britain	1
The Help	2011	Feature	US	4
Gloria: In Her Own Words	2011	Feature	US	3
Crazy, Stupid, Love	2011	Romance	US	3
London After Midnight	1927	Feature	US	2
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari	1920	Feature	Germany	3
The Children's Hour	1961	Feature	US	4
Ponyo	2008	Feature	Japan	3
The Karate Kid	2010	Feature	US	3
Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon	1970	Feature	US	2
Dark Journey	1937	Feature	US	2
It's Kind of a Funny Story	2010	Feature	US	2
Rembrandt	1936	Feature	US	2
Quintet	1979	Feature	US	1
The Tillman Story	2010	Feature	US	4
Point Blank	2011	Feature	France	4
The Lady is Willing	1942	Feature	US	2
The Color of Money	1986	Feature	US	4
Fast Food Nation	2006	Feature	US	3
Stone	2010	Feature	US	2
Runaway Jury	2003	Feature	US	3
Bomba the Jungle Boy	1949	Feature	US	2
Hear No Evil	1993	Feature	US	2
Better This World	2011	Feature	US	4
Outrage	2009	Feature	US	4
United 93	2006	Feature	US	5
The A-Team	2010	Feature	US	3
Killer of Sheep	1977	Feature	US	3
Jack Goes Boating	2010	Feature	US	2
Contagion	2011	Feature	US	2
After the Sunset	2004	Feature	US	4
The Switch	2010	Feature	US	3
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front	2011	Feature	US	3
The Hot Rock	1972	Feature	US	3
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution	1976	Feature	US	3
Tit for Tat	1935	Short	US	4
Pirana	2010	Feature	US	3
The Interruptors	2011	Feature	US	4
Bloody Sunday	2002	Feature	Britain	3
Main Street	2011	Feature	US	2
The Other Man	2008	Feature	US	2
Drive	2011	Feature	US	3
Moneyball	2011	Feature	US	4
The Green Hornet	2011	Feature	US	2
Tucker and Dale vs Evil	2011	Feature	US	4
The Expendables	2011	Feature	US	2
ﾒ50/50ﾓ	2011	Feature	US	3
Crank: High Voltage	2009	Feature	US	2
Winter's Bone	2010	Feature	US	5
The Next Three Days	2010	Feature	US	2
Killer Elite	2011	Feature	US	4
Brothers	2009	Feature	US	3
Trollhunter	2011	Feature	Norway	3
Brothers at War	2009	Feature	US	4
No Strings Attached	2011	Feature	US	2
Ides of March	2011	Feature	US	4
George Harrison: Living in the Material World	2011	Feature	US	3
Wham! Bam! Islam!	2011	TV	US	3
The Guard	2011	Feature	Ireland	4
The Killing Fields	1984	Feature	US	4
Love Liza	2002	Feature	US	2
Winged Migration	2001	Feature	France	5
Raising Arizona	1987	Feature	US	5
Edison the Man	1940	Feature	US	4
Take Shelter	2011	Feature	US	4
Let Me In	2010	Feature	US	4
Doughboys	1930	Feature	US	1
The Debt	2011	Feature	US	4
Blackthorn	2011	Feature	US	3
What! No Beer?	1936	Feature	US	2
Margin Call	2011	Feature	US	4
Last Train Home	2010	Feature	Canada	4
Kevin Smith: Too Fat for 40!	2010	Feature	US	3
Oceans	2009	Feature	France	4
"Paris, Texas"	1984	Feature	Germany	2
The Emperor's New Clothes	2001	Feature	Britain	2
Let the Right One In	2008	Feature	Sweden	5
From the Sky Down	2011	Feature	US	2
The Unknown	1927	Feature	US	3
The Passionate Plumber	1932	Feature	US	2
Morning Glory	2010	Feature	US	3
Enter the Dragon	1973	Feature	Hong Kong	4
Top Gun	1986	Feature	US	4
Peacock	2010	Feature	US	2
Basic Black	2011	Feature	US	3
Made in Dagenham	2010	Feature	Britain	4
Where Soldiers Come From	2011	Feature	US	3
Star Trek	2009	Feature	US	3
Babbitt	1934	Feature	US	1
A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas	2011	Feature	US	3
Secret Ballot	2001	Feature	Iran	2
Big Business	1929	Short	US	4
Double Whoopie	1929	Short	US	4
Habeas Corpus	1928	Short	US	3
Angora Love	1929	Short	US	3
Megamind	2010	Feature	US	4
Melancholia	2011	Feature	Denmark	2
Pandora's Box	1929	Feature	Germany	3
Solitary Man	2009	Feature	US	3
A Farewell to Arms	1932	Feature	US	2
The Roommate	2011	Feature	US	2
Melinda and Melinda	2004	Feature	US	2
Battle Los Angeles	2011	Feature	US	1
Groundhog Day	1993	Feature	US	5
The Thing	1982	Feature	US	4
Being Elmo	2011	Feature	US	5
The Descendants	2011	Feature	US	3
My Week With Marilyn	2011	Feature	Britain	4
Social Network	2010	Feature	US	4
John Q	2002	Feature	US	3
Unknown	2011	Feature	US	2
Super	2011	Feature	US	3
The Lincoln Lawyer	2011	Feature	US	3
The Way We Were	1973	Feature	US	4
The Two Towers	2002	Feature	US	4
Parlor, Bedroom and Bath	1931	Feature	US	3
Executive Suite	1954	Feature	US	4
Outrage	2011	Feature	Japan	3
The Great Muppet Caper	1981	Feature	US	3
Of Gods and Men	2011	Feature	France	2
Sherlock Holmes	1922	Feature	US	2
Expensive Women	1931	Feature	US	2
Radio Days	1987	Feature	US	4
The Secret of the Kells	2010	Feature	Ireland	4
Trek Nation	2010	Feature	US	3
Bombshell	1933	Feature	US	2
Shrek Forever After	2010	Feature	US	2
Harry Brown	2010	Feature	Britain	3
Libeled Lady	1936	Feature	US	4
The Moon Is Blue	1953	Feature	US	4
Due Date	2010	Feature	US	2
Man on the Moon	1999	Feature	US	2
Jackass 3	2010	Feature	US	2
Super Size Me	2004	Feature	US	5
The Swell Season	2011	Feature	US	4
Silent Running	1971	Feature	US	2
The Disappearance of Alice Creed	2010	Feature	Britain	4
Shame	2011	Feature	US	4
Out of the Past	1947	Feature	US	4
Grand Central Murder	1947	Feature	US	3
J. Edgar	2011	Feature	US	3
The Blue Bird	1918	Feature	US	2
Fear and Desire	1953	Feature	US	2
Best Worst Movie	2010	Feature	US	3
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy	2011	Feature	Britain	3
Blue State	2007	Feature	US	3
Manhattan	1979	Feature	US	4
Tangled	2010	Feature	US	3
Country Strong	2010	Feature	US	3
The Blind Side	2009	Feature	US	4
The Company Men	2010	Feature	US	3
The Artist	2011	Feature	France	4
A Dangerous Method	2011	Feature	Britain	3
Young Adult	2011	Feature	US	2
Hereafter	2010	Feature	US	2
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows	2011	Feature	US	3
Fairyland: A Kingdom of Fairies	1903	Short	France	2
Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory	1903	Short	US	3
The Eclipse: Courtship of the Sun and Moon	1907	Short	France	2
A Trip To The Moon	1902	Short	France	3
Hugo	2011	Feature	US	4

A Citizens United sequel: different result

SCOTUSBlog wrote

A Citizens United sequel: different result. "The Montana majority, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Mike McGrath, said that a closely similar ban could withstand the Citizens United ruling because the Supreme Court had left open the possibility that a “compelling interest” would allow such a measure, and the majority found that interest in Montana’s past history and its present economic and political climate. Corporations are more likely to have corrupting influence with their political spending in Montana, the majority said, because it is a small state, its economy still depends upon outside corporate interests, and its political campaigns are not very expensive so they do not bring out heavy donations by individuals to compete with vast corporate treasuries."

Analyzing the candor of Supreme Court nominees

SCOTUSblog wrote Legal scholarship highlight: Analyzing the candor of Supreme Court nominees. "In our article, ‘No Hints, No Forecasts, No Previews’: An Empirical Analysis of Supreme Court Nominee Candor from Harlan to Kagan, we seek to overcome this gap in our understanding of the Supreme Court confirmation process. To that end, we present the results of a content analysis of every Supreme Court confirmation hearing transcript since 1955, the year that the proceedings became a regular part of the confirmation process. For each hearing, we coded all of the exchanges between a senator and the nominee, recording things such as the type of question asked, the degree to which the answer was forthcoming, and the reasons nominees gave for not answering more fully. Using this original dataset – nearly 11,000 exchanges in total – we then tested a series of hypotheses about nominee responsiveness in the face of Senate questioning.

Our results show that the conventional wisdom about Supreme Court confirmation hearings needs to be rethought. First, we discovered that there has not been a dramatic decline in nominee responsiveness since the 1980s. Recent nominees, such as Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan, were just as forthcoming as many earlier nominees, and even more forthcoming than others. Second, the overall rate of responsiveness for all nominees, including those who came after Bork, is much better than generally assumed. Nominees generally answer between sixty and seventy percent of their questions in a fully forthcoming manner. By contrast, only about twenty percent of the questions get a qualified response, and outright refusal to answer rarely tops ten percent. Therefore, whether we are talking about hearings from the 1960s or the 1990s, the notion that nominees evade more questions than they answer is unfounded. Lastly, we find that there have been subtle but important changes in the types of questions that are being asked, the topics of those questions, and in the ways in which nominees answer them, and that these shifts have helped to fuel the perception that responsiveness has declined where in fact it has not."

Myths around Santorum hard to swallow

And so it begins, Myths around Santorum hard to swallow.

"While it's true that Mr. Santorum has relatively humble roots, he's become a millionaire since losing his Senate re-election bid in 2006. He was compensated generously for a column he wrote for Philly.com, if you can believe that bit of irony. He's also a former consultant for Consol Energy and a recipient of generous director fees from the King of Prussia-based Universal Health Services Inc., the same company the federal government sued in 2010 for Medicaid fraud.

Many folks in southwestern Pennsylvania are still stewing over the notorious 2006 cyber-schooling fight Mr. Santorum had with the Penn Hills School District. That bizarre and pointless scandal was about who would foot the tuition bill for the education of the Santorum children after the family had decamped to Virginia. The family wanted to stick working-class Penn Hills with the bill.

Mr. Santorum, who was in the middle of his failed Senate run at the time, implausibly claimed that his children were still residents of Penn Hills, contrary to reality. These days the Santorum family is way past dissembling about the small house at the center of that dispute. With proceeds from his post-Senate hustling bulging his pockets, Mr. Santorum bought a $2 million home in Great Falls, Va., a neighborhood not likely to be populated by many Reagan Democrats.

Mr. Santorum will figure prominently in this column in the weeks to come. We've only scratched the surface when it comes to his unlikely and ridiculous run for the presidency."

Girl sneaks into russian rocket factory and takes amazing pictures

I saw this tweet "Girl sneaks into russian rocket factory and takes amazing pictures." http://lana-sator.livejournal.com/160176.html#cutid1

Maybe a regular reader could comment on the gist of the text. :) I'm assuming the word "abandoned" should have been in the tweet.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is pretty impressive.



"From Sagittarius to Scorpius, the central Milky Way is a truly beautiful part of planet Earth's night sky. The gorgeous region is captured in this wide field image spanning about 30 degrees. The impressive cosmic vista, taken in 2010, shows off intricate dust lanes, bright nebulae, and star clusters scattered through our galaxy's rich central starfields. Starting on the left, look for the Lagoon and Trifid nebulae, the Cat's Paw, while on the right lies the Pipe dark nebula, and the colorful clouds of Rho Ophiuchi and Antares (right). The actual center of our Galaxy lies about 26,000 light years away and can be found here."

That last link in the description is video:

How the Candidates Roll

The New York Times ran this odd infographic a week ago How the Candidates Roll "While the G.O.P. hopefuls are all making their final tours around early voting states, their modes of travel — and their entourages — vary widely."

Iowa

I'm still finding this race a big snoozefest. I think Santorum is just the next lead in the race. The biggest thing is that so far he hasn't had anyone attacking him yet and once that starts he'll fall too. Remember he was a high ranking Republican in the Senate when Pennsylvania choose not to reelect him. He might do well in NH as he's been spending a lot of time up there. Huntsman has too, and while I think he's more conservative than Romney, he's viewed as more moderate because he believes in science (of evolution and global warming). Should be interesting to see if he's next.

Here's the results of the Iowa Caucus this time and last (data from wikipedia)



Remember Thompson? I'm surprised that Paul increased his votes so much but I think it's a matter of competition. I was also surprised that 3,000 more people voted this time than last. Given the field I would have expected more apathy but I guess that's not the Iowa way (they take their role as first primary seriously). More surprisingly is that with 4 more years of campaigning and lots of money spent (and more voters), Romney lost 6 votes since last time. This is a man who couldn't convince anyone to vote for him in 4 years.

Still I'm pretty convinced Romney will win the nomination. Even if he's second everywhere, there won't be anyone who's first everywhere so he'll collect delegates. (Though a toss up convention could be entertaining.) Then the real question is how he'll do against Obama. I think that will come down to who gets out their vote more effectively. Will conservatives vote against Obama or just not vote given two bad choices? Will Obama be able to get out the first time voters from 2008 and add new ones?

Will Dan Savage Wimp Out?

I wonder if Dan Savage will follow through on his (I assume joke) threat:

"If Rick Santorum runs for President on an anti-gay platform, Dan Savage will have no choice but to redefine his first name now, too."

Dan Savage's New Threat to Rick Santorum from Dan Savage

The Sliver of Perception

I really liked this Abstruse Goose comic:

Single Page Book Posters

Spineless Classics offers cute Single Page Book Posters. "Imagine a whole book on a single sheet. A bold art print on which, up close, you can read the full and complete text of your favourite classic work, right from "It was the best of times" to "a far, far greater thing"."

1923 animated film about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

Boing Boing posted this 1923 animated film about Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. "“The Einstein Theory of Relativity” is a silent animated film made in 1923 that tried to explain Einstein’s work to the general public. It was produced by Fleischer Studios, best known for their delightful Betty Boop cartoons."

The Einstein Theory of Relativity 1923 from ricordidimenticati on Vimeo.

It's not bad, but it's just amazing to me that it was made at all. People would have watched this movie theaters along with newsreels. Twenty minutes on relativity to a general audience almost 90 years ago. I don't see it happening today, and only a few more people understand it anymore than did then.

A Snapshot of the Race for the Senate

Nate Silver offers A Snapshot of the Race for the Senate.

"Our objective technique for forecasting Senate races is not designed to be applied until summer of the election year. (Before then, the polling is a little too rough, and there is too much uncertainty about the identity of nominees, for polling-based forecasts to be of all that much value.) So you will have to wait on those. However, I have traditionally issued subjective estimates of the probability of the parties winning each seat in advance of our objective numbers.

Basically, I’m looking at the same thing that other forecasters do: approval ratings, recent electoral history, candidate quality and so forth — and yes, I do look a little bit at head-to-head polls, especially if both candidates are well known.

I also tend to place more emphasis than most forecasters on the overall partisan makeup of a state. "

It gets more interesting after the table, but I'll continue to wait a while before getting to involved. A lot can happen between now and November.

538's Smartest and Dumbest Columns of 2011

Nate Silver lists Our Smartest and Dumbest Columns of 2011.

"Some of my favorite columnists and bloggers have started something called a prediction audit, which looks back at their year of writing and evaluates which of their articles seem to have been the most and the least prescient."

"So I’ve gone back through a year’s worth of blog posts and identified 10 pieces of analysis or commentary that look pretty smart in retrospect — and another 10 that look completely dumb."

Quadrantid Meteor Shower Late Tonight

ABC reports Quadrantid Meteor Shower 2012: Shooting Stars Wednesday Before Dawn.

"If you're up early Wednesday morning and the weather is promising, bundle up and go outside. The Quadrantid meteor shower, the first of 2012, should be at its best between 3 a.m. and dawn, Eastern time. If you get lucky, you may get a silently satisfying sky show.

The Quadrantids are often the most intense of the year's regular meteor showers, but also one of the shortest. They happen when Earth passes through the narrow trail of debris left by an asteroid called 2003 EH1, so they only last a few hours. (Other showers, such as the Perseids in August, are caused by the more widespread debris from comets, so they may last several nights.) If it's cloudy where you are Wednesday morning, go back to bed and stay warm -- but if it's clear, astronomers say you could see 60-200 streaks across the sky per hour.

The gibbous moon will do you the favor of setting at about 3 a.m. local time, just around the time the meteor shower peaks in the Eastern time zone. From then until dawn, the sky should be very dark, best for watching meteors. If you get up early anyhow for work, you may want to get up a little earlier than usual."

More details here.

Sometimes a cigar galaxy is just a cigar galaxy

Bad Astronomy wrote Sometimes a cigar galaxy is just a cigar galaxy about this new Hubble image.



"One reason this new image from Hubble looks funny to me is that there aren’t as many stars in it as I expect. M82, also called the Cigar Galaxy due to its elongated shape, is pretty close as galaxies go, about 12 million light years away. It’s one of the closest large galaxies in the Universe, and a Hubble image usually shows it littered with stars, so closely packed they form a bluish background glow in most pictures.

And while that background of stars is there, it’s more diminished than usual because in this image astronomers used a series of filters that accentuate the light emitted by gas. While stars put out this kind of light as well, these filters downplay starlight and crank up the volume on, um, gaslight. Specifically, blue and green are from oxygen, red is from sulfur, and teal is hydrogen. The dark material is dust: long-chain molecules that absorb starlight. They also tend to redden light coming from behind them, similar to the way haze in the air makes sunsets look red."

Iran Makes First Nuclear Fuel Rod

Bloomberg reports Iran Makes First Nuclear Fuel Rod "Iran produced its first nuclear fuel rod, state-run news agencies reported, as the country offered to restart international talks over its atomic program."

A Five Year Old's View of L.A. Burdick

I really liked this, Morning chat with my five year old by bijan sabet:

"James: what’s the name of that hot chocolate place I love

Me: do you mean Burdicks?

James: they should change the name

Me: what should they call it?

James: the best place in the world"

Social Media in the 16th Century: How Luther Went Viral

The Economist draws an interesting comparison, Social media in the 16th Century: How Luther went viral "Five centuries before Facebook and the Arab spring, social media helped bring about the Reformation"

"Although they were written in Latin, the “95 Theses” caused an immediate stir, first within academic circles in Wittenberg and then farther afield. In December 1517 printed editions of the theses, in the form of pamphlets and broadsheets, appeared simultaneously in Leipzig, Nuremberg and Basel, paid for by Luther’s friends to whom he had sent copies. German translations, which could be read by a wider public than Latin-speaking academics and clergy, soon followed and quickly spread throughout the German-speaking lands. Luther’s friend Friedrich Myconius later wrote that “hardly 14 days had passed when these propositions were known throughout Germany and within four weeks almost all of Christendom was familiar with them.”

The unintentional but rapid spread of the “95 Theses” alerted Luther to the way in which media passed from one person to another could quickly reach a wide audience. “They are printed and circulated far beyond my expectation,” he wrote in March 1518 to a publisher in Nuremberg who had published a German translation of the theses. But writing in scholarly Latin and then translating it into German was not the best way to address the wider public. Luther wrote that he “should have spoken far differently and more distinctly had I known what was going to happen.” For the publication later that month of his “Sermon on Indulgences and Grace”, he switched to German, avoiding regional vocabulary to ensure that his words were intelligible from the Rhineland to Saxony. The pamphlet, an instant hit, is regarded by many as the true starting point of the Reformation."

This is crony capitalism.

This is crony capitalism. is an infographic showing people who have switched between government and industry in a series of venn diagrams by industry.

Congress Really Is As Bad As You Think, Scholars Say

NPR says Congress Really Is As Bad As You Think, Scholars Say ""I think you'd have to go back to the 1850s to find a period of congressional dysfunction like the one we're in today," says Daniel Feller, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Tennessee.

Feller, who specializes in the Jacksonian, Antebellum and Civil War periods, points specifically to 1849-1860 when Congress sometimes struggled for months to even elect a speaker of the House.

Other periods of governmental deadlock include Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction presidency, Woodrow Wilson's conflict with Congress over the League of Nations and the fights between President Truman and the "do-nothing" 80th Congress in 1947-48.

"None of those involved the level of conflict within Congress itself that we see today," Feller says."

Matt Taibi: A Christmas Message From America's Rich

Matt Taibi provides A Christmas Message From America's Rich.

"People like Dimon, and Schwarzman, and John Paulson, and all of the rest of them who think the "imbeciles" on the streets are simply full of reasonless class anger, they don't get it. Nobody hates them for being successful. And not that this needs repeating, but nobody even minds that they are rich.

What makes people furious is that they have stopped being citizens.

Most of us 99-percenters couldn't even let our dogs leave a dump on the sidewalk without feeling ashamed before our neighbors. It's called having a conscience: even though there are plenty of things most of us could get away with doing, we just don't do them, because, well, we live here. Most of us wouldn't take a million dollars to swindle the local school system, or put our next door neighbors out on the street with a robosigned foreclosure, or steal the life's savings of some old pensioner down the block by selling him a bunch of worthless securities.

But our Too-Big-To-Fail banks unhesitatingly take billions in bailout money and then turn right around and finance the export of jobs to new locations in China and India. They defraud the pension funds of state workers into buying billions of their crap mortgage assets. They take zero-interest loans from the state and then lend that same money back to us at interest. Or, like Chase, they bribe the politicians serving countries and states and cities and even school boards to take on crippling debt deals."

Year End Photos

The Big Picture presents The year in Pictures: Part II "The second collection of images from 2011 once again brought us nature at its full force with floods, drought, wild fires, tornadoes and spectacular images of volcanic eruptions. The death of Osama bin Laden, the attack on an island in Norway by a lone gunman, continued fighting in Libya, and protests around the globe were a few of the news events dominating the headlines. (45 photos total)"

In Focus presents the Winners of the National Geographic Photo Contest 2011. "After receiving more than 20,000 photo submissions from over 130 countries, the National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 concluded last month and the judging began. The winners were announced this week, with the grand prize awarded to Shikhei Goh for his capture of a dragonfly riding out a rainstorm in Indonesia. Goh was awarded $10,000 and a trip to the National Geographic Photography Seminar next year. National Geographic has shared the following winning photos (and honorable mentions) from this year's contest here. All captions and photos are by the individual photographers. [See also this earlier collection of 45 entries from this year's contest.] [15 photos]"

BostInno presents 50 Incredible Photos of Boston in 2011: Year in Review. "As 2011 comes to a close, BostInno takes a look back at the ups, the downs and beautiful moments from the past 12 months. From Hurricane Irene and tornadoes in the west, to the Bruins winning the Stanley Cup and Boston remembering 9/11, to Whitey Bulger’s capture and Occupy Boston, it’s been an incredible year filled with joy, sadness, anger, resilience and even fear for New Englanders. Below are 50 of Boston’s best moments captured in awe-inspiring photos."

In Focus shows Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. "With only three days left until Christmas, Santa Claus appears to be just about everywhere - assisted by armies of Santa's Helpers. Photographers have captured images of people dressed as jolly old Saint Nick in the United Kingdom, Japan, India, Australia, the United States, and other countries throughout the world. People everywhere are observing the season of giving not only by donning red and white apparel but by participating in charitable events, passing out gifts, listening to Christmas wishes, and simply having fun. Collected below are recent images of Santa Claus and his many helpers around the world. (Disclaimer: At least one of them may not be the Real Santa Claus.) [28 photos]"

GOP Fractures Further Over Payroll Tax Mess

TPM writes GOP Fractures Further Over Payroll Tax Mess "House GOP aides basically admitted this to reporters yesterday, but it bears repeating. The reason they fashioned a Rube Goldberg-esque procedural device to kill the Senate payroll tax cut compromise is that they know they’re now in political free fall on the issue. By doing things the way they did, at least vulnerable House Republicans can say that they didn’t vote against a tax cut for the middle class."

"By the same token, seven Republicans — Reps. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Walter Jones (R-NC), Charlie Bass (R-NH), Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA), Chris Gibson (R-NY), Tim Johnson (R-IL), and Frank Wolf (R-VA) — defected from leadership on the payroll vote. Five of those — Bass, Herrera Beutler, Gibson, Johnson, and Wolf — are Democratic targets. One, Flake, is a conservative who has opposed the payroll cut from the beginning but — and this is key — he is running statewide to replace retiring Sen. Jon Kyl in a state Democrats are trying to turn competitive. Jones is the only outlier, and he’s famously contrarian."

The Five Most Bizarre Terror Plots Hatched Under The FBI’s Watch

TPM writes The Five Most Bizarre Terror Plots Hatched Under The FBI’s Watch "Undercover FBI agents have helped and informants have watched as alleged wanna-be terrorists form some pretty bizarre and improbable terror plots in the years since Sept. 11. But the plot 26-year-old Rezwan Ferdaus allegedly hatched to fly model airplanes loaded with C-4 into the Pentagon and the dome of the Capitol might be the most unlikely yet."

"“It fits completely with the pattern that we’ve seen in other cases, where the target of the investigation is first approached by the informant, they talk about some sort of plot, the target — from what evidence shows — has little to no capacity to actually commit the act of terrorism that he aspires to commit, and the FBI in turn provides him with the means to prove the terrorist conspiracy that they need for the indictment,” Aaronson said."