carpe diem

Google "French Military Victories" and try "I'm Feeling Lucky" :)

Why are the Blue States blue and the Red States red? Such was the question that suddenly started to bug me during my solitary lunch hour today. People tend to attribute it to the cultural or ideological differences between the states' residents: hence the Bible Belt, the Rust Belt, the Coastal Liberals, blah blah. But I wondered: to what extent can we explain the election results purely by looking at simple demographic and socioeconomic factors?

Curiosity offers rewards but also charges a price, as I've learned from experience. This time I wasted 2 perfectly good hours on this pet research project, first pulling some data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and then developing a statistical model to explain what variables could have predicted whether a state would go to Obama or McCain.

The model I used is a pretty straightforward binary logistic regression model. To those statistics geeks among you, the table below shows the estimates. But here is the gist of my findings. In plain terms, the factors that significantly predict a Blue State (vs. a Red State) include, in the order of importance:

• Higher median household income;
• Smaller mean household size;
• Higher percentage of population over 65;
• Higher percentage of people who regularly speak a language other than English;
• Higher percentage of African Americans.

Factors that were found to have no bearing on the Blue vs. State difference include: education, poverty level, and the percentage of whites.

What really surprised me, however, is the predictive power of the model, which is an astounding 92%. In other words, the model would have correctly predicted the election results of 46 out of 50 states (I left out Missouri since the votes are still being counted as of now). Among the 29 states that went to Obama, 27 are correctly predicted by the model. The two anomalies are Indiana and North Carolina, both of which had narrow margins below 1% of the total votes (Indiana 49.9% vs. 49%, and North Carolina 49.9% vs. 49.5%). Among the 21 states carried by McCain, 19 are correctly predicted  - the two exceptions are Arizona, McCain's home state, and North Dakota. (I cannot find an explanation for North Dakota. But it only has 3 electoral votes, so who cares?) Geez. Don't you just love the benefit of hindsight?

By the way, my model predicts that Missouri would go to McCain. Let's see whether it pans out.

In case someone hasn't noticed or pretends not to, let me say it aloud that the election is practically over. And the senior Senator from Arizona will soon retreat to the arms and riches of his multimillionaire wife, and spare the rest of us more insidious attacks, vacuous rhetorics, and sheer embarrassment.

The McCain campaign will soon go down in history not only as a political failure but also as a disgracefully run campaign where misguided strategies and poor judgment conspired to send the Republican candidate on a downward-sloping trajectory in the final weeks before the election.

The moral caliber of the McCain campaign began to manifest itself when they unleashed the ludicrous batch of attack ads on Barack Obama's character.  The McCain campaign took great pains in linking Obama to William Ayers, a former member of Weather Underground, a domestic radical group in the 70s, when it was clear that Obama was just a little kid when the group was active, and when the two men came to meet each other, Ayers was already a well-respected academic and educational reformer in Chicago. Then there was the even more ridiculous ad that claims that Obama advocates sex education for kindergartners, while the truth is that the piece of legislation Obama endorsed was intended to teach kids to recognize inappropriate advances from potential sexual predators.

Through the deluge of outright lies and rootless attacks, Obama has the decency to respect his opponent throughout, and the cool-headedness to focus on the important policy issues. John "McNasty" McCain, the self-claimed "maverick" politician, has proven himself to be nothing but another Karl-Rovian hypocrite. 

Lesson # 2 from John McCain: don't pretend to be an expert on things you have no clue about. At the beginning of the financial perfect storm, McCain labeled himself an economic-policy bigwig and concluded that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong"; and when it became crystal clear that the economy was in a tailspin, he attempted to single-handedly engineer a legislative solution, "suspending" his campaign and (almost) canceling the first presidential debate so he could "focus on the economy." Just posing to be an economics pundit doesn't help, especially when you've confessed that all you know about economics is from Greenspan's book, which looks even more unfortunate when Alan Greenspan himself has confessed that his laissez-faire economic philosophy suffers serious flaws. `

Lesson number 3: don't choose a partner who's both incompetent and totally out of control. Despite her immediate effect to revitalize McCain's eviscerated campaign for a nano-second (especially among extreme right-wing conservatives), she has been a complete bomb. Not only does she sorely lack the knowledge and expertise required for the presidency or vice presidency, she also demonstrates a shocking level of moral absolutism, and self-assertiveness that shuns prudence and basks in one's bliss of ignorance. When you put the two things together, you know you've got a female version of W.. John McCain must have thought that the average voter had a peanut-size brain when he put Palin on the ticket; luckily for America, that presumption is untrue: now one third of the voters consider the choice of Palin a poor reflection on McCain's judgment. To put it plainly, Palin is pain now. 

So, class -- uh, excuse me, my friends -- these are the lessons we can draw from this election. I wish you all a good weekend, and Senator McCain a peaceful retirement.

Amidst the recent financial market crisis and the looming economic recession, I've jolted reading fiction and taken to reading the business news with a passion even unknown to myself. Not that I'm particularly worried about my own financial situation (my retirement account has shrunk by 40%, but that's beside the point), but the news coverage of the financial crisis has given rise to some of the most interesting journalistic writings of our time.

Here is an example taken from today's Wall Street Journal, on the historic meeting where Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson virtually coerced the nation's top bankers into accepting the government's $250 billion capital injection plan. An excerpt:

"The meeting took place in the Treasury secretary's conference room, which faces a courtyard and is outfitted with mahogany chairs, antique wall sconces and chandeliers.

" It struck some of those in the room as fortunate that Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo are so far apart in the alphabet. ... at least the heads of the two rivals, Mr. Kovacevich and Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit, wouldn't have to sit next to each other.

"After Mr. Kovacevich voiced his concerns [about the necessity of the partial nationalization of banks], Mr. Paulson described the deal starkly. He told the Wells Fargo chairman he could accept the government's money or risk going without the infusion. If the company found it needed capital later and Mr. Kovacevich couldn't raise money privately, Mr. Paulson promised the government wouldn't be so generous the second time around.

"Mr. Bernanke said the situation was the worst the country had endured since the Great Depression. He said action was for the collective good, an understated appeal. The room was silent as he described the economy's fragile condition.

"Mr. Geithner, whose job as New York Fed chief makes him the central bank's main man on Wall Street, delivered the most sobering news. He described how much preferred stock the government was going to buy from each firm. The government would take $25 billion in Citigroup, $10 billion in Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and so on. ...

"The meeting ended at about 4 p.m. By 6:30 p.m., all of the sheets had been turned in and signed by the CEOs. No second meeting was held."

What narratives! The article possesses more tension than five John Grisham novels combined, a style as stoically understated as Hemingway, some comic relief, many colorful characters, and a sparing ending that secretly begs sober questions.  And all in a short few paragraphs. How could you possibly beat that?

I guess reading the newspapers will suffice to entertain me in the next few months -- who can afford to buy books these days anyway?

Air travelers are in deep woes these days, with ubiquitous cancellations and delays, ever more cramped legroom, and overpriced, over-refrigerated sandwiches. The only escape, it seems, is to bring a couple of great books on board with you. However, choosing a good airplane companion book is not as simple as you think. Here are several principles of choosing a felicitous air-travel book based on my personal experience and observations.

1. The Rule of Engagement

Air travel is not a good time to push the boundaries of your literary tastes. Only bring books that are interesting and engaging. No matter how enchanting is the fantasy of relishing, say, James Joyce's "Ulysses", or Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment", at an altitude of 20,000 feet, if you did pack such books in your carry-on bag, you would quickly find yourself either snoring away, ordering from SkyMall, or chatting with the old lady next seat about each of her grandchildren.

So leave your literary ambitions at home, together with the IRS Guide to Tax Preparation.

2. The Power of the Lightness

Thick books are a no-go. The cash-strapped airlines have long been charging for (lousy) food, (barely stereo) earphones, (ancient) pay-per-view movies; several have recently added a fee for all checked-in baggage, and it's widely rumored that they will soon charge for carry-on luggage as well as pillows and blankets, or even set fares according to each passenger's body weight, or charge a landing fee to let you off the plane.

Under such circumstances, thou shalt not bring the 1296-page "War and Peace" when traveling. Besides, in the case that you decide to read Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" in the air, the TSA officers may not let you go through the security point, since the seven-volume monster can potentially be used as lethal weapons.

3. The Middle-Seat Factor

The third principle, according to my own experience, is most often neglected. With its unusual physical and mental confinement, air travel strips from its passengers both their right to and their respect for privacy. After sitting next to a fellow passenger for six hours and recycling each other's breathing air, you are often wondering whether you know him better than his best friend: what he does for a living, what he typed away on his laptop, what type of onion and garlic he had for lunch, and, of course, what book he read on the flight.

So I believe we all have a social obligation not to offend our next-seat passengers with the books we read. Sure it could be embarrassing that the book you read may subjugate you to sneer and snicker (e.g., the cover says "Now a Major Motion Picture"), but it's far worse if your book sends others into embarrassment, fear, or even panic. For instance, in the post-9/11 world, it can be more than a little disturbing to others if you are seen reading a book in Arabic. Especially if you also have a habit of talking to yourself with eyes closed.

Since you often cannot predict who you'll be sitting next to, it is an advisable habit to eliminate certain usual suspects. If you're sitting next to a mother with a ten-year-old girl, you'll regret having brought "Lolita". Or, if your fellow passenger's mid-section unfortunately hangs over the armrest, I bet you don't dare to take "The Obesity Epidemic" out of your suitcase.  

Once I was on a coast-to-coast flight, and sitting next to me was a nice-looking young guy who seemed rather bored. For a moment I thought he looked my way and wanted to say something, but then he didn't. For the rest of the flight, he devoted himself to reading the safety instructions. It wasn't until the plane touched down that I realized what actually happened: for the whole time I was reading Maureen Dowd's feminist tirade "Are Men Necessary?" 

Poor guy. He must be thinking that a woman reading such a book is quickly metamorphosizing into a dangerous feline, complete with claws and fangs. I hope he was not seriously preparing himself for the emergency exit.

All right. I know what I just said may be hugely unpopular: The average viewer rating of the movie on IMDB has surpassed Casablanca (1942) and Star Wars (1977). Even all the usually blockbuster-busting critics including Roger Elbert of the Chicago Sun-Times and Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal are chanting unanimous eulogies. It seems like animations, especially the ones made by Pixar, have the power, by evoking the little child deeply hidden in all of us, to win our hearts while secretly insulting our intelligence.

The story happens 700 years in the future, when the humans have deserted the trash-covered earth, leaving (perhaps inadvertently) a forlorn garbage-collecting robot, WALL-E (acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class), roaming the planet and piling up garbage cubes into skyscrapers. No doubt that's a lonely life. Until one day he watches another robot, Eve, sleek and all-powerful, descending from the sky. Too bad our robotic protagonist can neither speak nor read Shakespeare; otherwise, he would know the perfect thing to say to her, "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty until tonight." Apparently, the filmmakers did not think android romance alone would do justice to their world-class creativity. So the next thing you see: the robot lovers are on a journey to salvage the fate of the humankind.

I found the movie incredibly annoying. Tactically, it's awkward to watch robots fall in love (not the ones that look like humans or animals but the chunky-clunky kind of robot).Maybe it's just me. If you can happily imagine yourself watching your Roomba vacuum cleaner and your iPod spending hours trying to figure out how to hold hands and actually holding hands, you will probably find the movie intensely gratifying. Because that's basically what the movie is. (The sleek and minimalist Eve looks eerily like an iPod. I somehow got the feeling that the movie is a homage to Mr. Steve Jobs of Apple Inc., who also founded Pixar.)

But the movie is even more flawed on a fundamental level. Should children even be watching animations about robots (as apposed to animals and fairies?) In the past Pixar has produced deeply human tales such as Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and Ratatouille. In WALL-E, the robots are intelligent, sensitive, and courageous; the humans are obese and imbecile at their best, manipulative and evil at their worst. The concept of a social satire disguised as a children's animation is as disgusting as a vanilla ice cream with a topping of foie gras gone sour. 

I have to admit that Pixar's visuals, as always, are a tour de force. So if you can leave the kids at home and your own brain half dead when you enter the movie theater, maybe you'll have a great time with it.