Movies watched over the holidays

Spoilers for these movies follow.

We finally got to see How to Train Your Dragon 2. It was a good sequel, I liked the character development for hiccup and Astrid and their friends. I liked how they had his mother start shy and unsure around people after all her dealing with only dragons for so long. I did not like having Toothless under mind control kill Hiccups father, it seemed pretty dark and a cheap way to add drama.

The first movie was about freeing Chinese workers (dragons) from their government to be free to work for whatever American corporations they want to work for (Vikings).  The second one seems to be about keeping that freedom by not being controlled by either the good Alpha or the bad Alpha but by the radical anarchist Alpha who still is OK with everyone working for the people of their choice (as long as it is Vikings).

(Continued Spoiler warnings for below)

I had heard about the movie Snowpiercer before I knew that it was based on a graphic novel.  It's name almost had me in mind of one of those unintentionally comedic action sci-fi thrillers.  I was wrong, so wrong.  This movie is dark.  The survivors of a failed experiment to stop global warming survive a newly frozen ice age Earth in a train that moves endlessly around the world.  I felt the timeline of the movie (2030's or so) is far to short for all of the mythology that seems to have accrued around the actions of the characters on the train.  There are pitched battles through the train, and a surprise ending.  At the end the whole thing crashes anyway and I was left with the thought that it was all a waste and the hero's  (or perhaps anti-hero) actions ended up effectively killing everyone anyway.  I fear I am losing my willing suspension of disbelief for some of these movies.

Simulating the winner of the 2015 Superbowl

It's an annual tradition for me to simulate the potential winner of the Superbowl by simulating the NFL playoffs tens of thousands of times.  As always I have used the Sagarin ratings pure points to predict the outcome of each game.  The difference in the ratings yields the predicted spread but we must also remember that over the history of the NFL the standard deviation in the actual results vs. the predicted spread is almost two touchdowns, 13.86.

So on this last day before the wildcard playoff games begin, here are the predictions.  The bar chart below shows outcomes sorted by the most frequent results of 50,000 simulations.

Seattle wins the Superbowl 32% of the time in the simulations, followed by New England at 24%, Denver at 18%, and Green Bay at 13%.  I think that jibes with the expectations of sports analysts.  Those four teams dominate the simulations, every other teams chance is less than 4%.

The pie chart above shows the chance of the teams meeting in the Superbowl.  Blue represents the NFC team winning (on the Y-axis, names of each row), while red represents the AFC team winning (X-axis, names of each column).  Again, SEA, NE, DEN and GB dominate the results, they appear in the final game often, especially playing against leaders in the other conference.  The block diagram below shows the results in a different format colored by the teams who win the Superbowl.  Seattle dominates, and the chart shows Seattle's opponents and the frequency of that matchup out of the 50,000 simulations.

These simulations used to serve the purpose of letting me pick players for a playoff fantasy football game that unfortunately doesn't run anymore.  As part of building those teams I needed to know how many games a player would play based on the progress of their team through the NFL playoffs. 

 The chart above shows the number of games each team plays.  The number 1 and 2 seeds with first playoff week byes can only play a total of three games if they make it to the playoffs, other teams can play four.  You can risk a four game player, perhaps from IND, BAL or DAL, but this year those teams are dominated by the top two in each conference.  Seattle really sticks out as a team that gets to play three games more than 50% of all simulations.

Tomorrow starts the playoffs, I will update the simulations as the teams get knocked out.

Honest Hypocrite snowflake

Make your own snowflake is probably intended to be used for names but I tried the title of the blog and made a pretty one.

Try it yourself.

Recent Bedtime Reading

A good one with rhymes and escalation though an unsatisfying ending that might be the whole point.

Wonderful rhymes though some references may seem a little old-fashioned (read racist!) for today.

Fox in Socks and One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish and If I Ran a Zoo from above have the best rhymes. If you read them a little fast and get the rhythm it's like you are a beat poet riffing in a smokey room during a poetry slam.

I do not do that as smoking is bad for you and I am reading them to Linus, typically at bedtime.

Exo by Steven Gould

Excellent. Once you can teleport to space it removes all kinds of weight limits and obstacles that currently constrain our space program, then write a book about the consequences.



In some ways similar to the series of John Varley novels that starts with Red Thunder. Young protagonists get unlimited impulsive power and start a space program from there.

Hello Kitty fan in Delaware

This HLOKTTY license plate in Delaware even gets a Hello Kitty license frame. This is a true fan going all out.

I found a Finn

Judging by the license plate SUOMI this is a Finn from Finland who speaks Finnish.

Time Life books

These are the original books I grew up reading. They were fascinating to me as a child. I'll admit that when I was young I often just looked at the pictures and read their long explanatory captions.

Another test piece for the control panel

This wiring gobbledygook is a test for the control panel my son and I are building. Lots of cool lighted switches and push buttons that turn off and on other LEDs, fans and buzzers. This on is wired so the column switch and the row switch must be on to light a light.

Now I have to transfer this to a printed circuit board and solder a lot of switches and lights.

Me. Celery at the Blue Rocks

Tree down in neighbor's yard

The whole top of this tree broke off and fell last night around 3am in the neighbors yard. It is pretty much the whole top so the tree is done. The expression goes sick like a sycamore, I guess that is true.

Guardians of the Galaxy

We saw Guardians of the Galaxy the Monday after it opened. It was very entertaining and didn't have many other Marvel characters from other movies. That worked for me.

Gravity Falls Experiments

See http://honesthypocrite.tumblr.com/post/93614751584/how-many-experiments-in-gravity-falls

Focus not on the Rapture but on loving others.

A Roman Catholic priest gives the right answer when asked, "How does the Rapture figure into your faith?"

...Essentially all of this can be a great distraction from what believers should really be concerned about: bringing hope, mercy and compassion to human history, and participating in the struggle to transform the world and its systems toward fairness and equity for all God's children. Matthew 25 says it all: the Final Judgment will be based on how we have cared for the least among us.

When I ask the kids I teach, "How can we be a good people?", "How can we love God, and show we love God?", often they answer by saying they could pray, some suggest some actions but not many.  I tell them that prayer is good and also here are some actions you can perform, the Corporal Works of Mercy, which are from Matthew 25 and the parable of the Sheep and the Goats:  Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the imprisoned, care for the sick, welcome the stranger.  That's why the rapture, besides not being in scripture, also doesn't matter.  We have some great suggestions for what we can do to make the world a better place, you don't even need to be Christian to think they are good ideas. I am trying to get better at them.

(via The Slacktavist)

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Kick Ass 2

Kick Ass 2

Phony Sunken Treasure puts Law Firm in Deep Water

A fortune in emeralds on the Caribbean seafloor was too much temptation for a Delaware law firm likely to be sanctioned for using the courts to attempt to legitimize what has turned out to be a hoax.

Like a bad movie plot - accusations from other treasure hunters that the find was to good to be true and analysis that showed the emeralds to be coated with modern epoxy to enhance their appearance have left questions about how much the law firm knew after the suicide of the original finder.

(via Delaware News Journal)

Really good burger

Did I tell you about the delicious burger I had last week? Zesty pickles and cheddar cheese curds from Milburn Orchards. In fact those two ingredients were why I wanted a burger. It was delicious.

Nothing nefarious in anonymous Norwegian government Wikipedia edits.

There was a post on BoingBoing referencing a list of anonymous Wikipedia edits from Norwegian government IP addresses.  Cory Doctorow wanted the anonymous editors and the Norwegian Givernment to go public and involve the Norwegian wikipedia community in their editing and left a touch of a suspicious tone to the request.  Subsequent commenters tried to figure out whether there was an issue by randomly exploring some of the data.  The original supplier of the data merely plots edits as a function of time, but didn't show more work to describe the data and see if there is a story worth telling.  Plugging that data into Tableau lets us look at many variables vs. time and to look at the articles that were edited as well as the times and IP address from which they were edited.  What follows is my analysis in the BoingBoing comments.

Without the appropriate data set I can only speculate, but this number of edits may even be the average number of edits for an organization of the Norwegian government's size. Also might be interesting to see the total number of edits on these titles vs. the Norwegian government edits. The poster did say that it was only the anonymous edits. The view below suggests that rather than posting at lunchtime, there are peaks at first thing in the morning and 1pm (maybe lunch is at 1?) and that editing seems to occur throughout the workday, though there are variations between years (not shown). 

 As to the topics, the top few that I see that possibly could be more open are the edit for Jan Egeland, and Karin Yrvin, both Labour party politicians. What is the etiquette over editing (or having staff edit) your own wikipedia article again? But then the second highest edit over these years is a template for football club odds. Other non government related edits are a quiz show QuizDan, and some organ enthusiast editing the Vox Humana topic 7 times in 2009. Titles with more than 4 edits are shown below, these 40 titles with 271 edits represent less than 20% of the 1437 total edits for all 919 titles. 

 There are only 35 total IP addresses, 29 from government and 6 from Parliament. On the chart below thin are Parliament and thick are government offices IPs.

I agree there is nothing nefarious going on here, but a few charts more than a plot of total edits can help to show that.

Just a few plots of variables vs. other variables to find relationships and tabulate some quantities shows more than a boring plot of amount vs. time.  One could go further and classify the articles and perhaps include the total edits.  It really depends on the questions you are trying to answer or the hypothesis you are investigating.

Discovery (from a dream)

You cannot shirk your duty. You are a Wright of the Ancient Calling, and because you have discovered or created a new technological threat to Humanity's existence you must undergo Preparation and submit to the Proctors for Examination and Assessment. They will make the final Judgement of your discovery and decide for Integration or Supression.

This is the way it must be and this is what your Heart and Intellect and your Duty to the Oath must be telling you.