10 thoughts for December 30, 2013

1. The war hawk response to the NYT report on the Benghazi attack is predictable, but noticeably, they're placing less emphasis on everything else but the ties to Al Qaeda, which are now being asserted less as direct Al Qaeda involvement and more as affiliation of people who participated in the attacks.  Many war hawks are calling the report wrong, but not actually refuting it.
2. No other division is stronger than the NFC West, with more combined wins than any other division.  So, even as Seattle was the first team in the NFL to qualify for the playoffs, they hadn't won their division until Sunday, after beating the Rams.
3. Sticking with the NFC West: Unfortunately for Arizona, even if they had beaten SF and tied them with an overall record of 11-5, they'd still be left out of the playoffs by virtue of division records.  Had the NFL used a top-6 conference method to qualify teams for the playoffs however, Arizona would have made it 3 teams from the NFC West to make the playoffs.
4. The title of a recent blog entry by the conservative "American Thinker" -- "Obama parties hearty in Hawaii" -- gets three things wrong.  Firstly, hearty is an adjective, but the American Thinker uses it to describe a verb, which means that they should have used an adverb; if they were real thinkers, they would have known to use "heartily".  Secondly, "hearty" refers to genuineness or heartfeltness, whereas "hardy" implies boldness; whereas one might party genuinely, one should party boldly -- or at least that's the intention of the blog post's subject.  Thirdly, while the subject of the Thinker's post -- Obama attending a friend's barbecue -- does imply a hearty party (note that "party" here is being used as a noun), in fact, the intention of the Thinker's post was to imply that Obama attended a hardy party that shut down certain businesses out of security reasons.  So, do you concern yourself with superficial Thinkers, or serial analysts?
5. This CNN Poll's commentary feels wrong.  Or at least, the logic seems lacking in how people think about the intentions to pursue the Afghanistan and Vietnam wars and their resulting outcomes.  50,000 dead American military personnel is much greater than 2,300 dead American military personnel.  One war involved the introduction of a compulsory draft, whereas the other was made up of 100% volunteers.  One war involved the fear of a spreading ideology -- Communism -- whereas the other was meant to strike back at those who attacked us on our soil.  It seems to me, that Americans want to pull out now that we've gotten Osama Bin Laden, and see no other point to staying in Afghanistan -- and that's fine with me.  But to not go to war in Afghanistan?  That's crazy.  I don't like wars, but I'm no pacifist.  I'm willing to go to war, but only for the right reasons.
6. Two Volgograd attacks killing a couple dozen innocent people and injuring many more.  Definitely bad for Russia and for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi, but let's not go overboard, because Sochi is 600 miles away, which is almost the same distance as that between San Francisco and Portland.  It may be that the FSB has already stepped up presence and tracking in Sochi, as to make it an impossible target for terrorists and therefore they chose Volgograd.
7. Speaking of the Olympics, Russia is spending in excess of $50B USD.  That exceeds even China's $43B 2008 Summer Olympics, which, if you look at this graphic, it's hard to imagine how the US could ever host another Olympics.
8. This question over whether the ACA will exacerbate shortages of medical personnel has been around for years, but the USA Today incorrectly conflates Medicaid's lower reimbursement rates (leading to many doctors declining participation in Medicaid) with the personnel shortage.
9. FTR, I have never purchased or otherwise used a case for any of my three smartphones over the past 5 years.  According to this NPD survey, 1/3rd of Android owners do not use a case.  But just 13% of iPhone users go without a case.  And of course you'd expect that, because those glass faces are fragile.  The only time I'd sought any sort of protection, was those screen protectors in my G1, and that was because it came with one already on it, which made me believe that it needed one.  Since then, I've been perfectly fine without it.
10. Republicans have changed their minds quite dramatically in their belief of evolution, going from 54% in 2009 to 43% in 2013, which means that a very significant 20+ percentage point gap exists between Republicans and everyone else (Democrats, Independents).  That pretty much goes along the same lines of how Republicans reject science in general, though.  It's also interesting that education (college grad vs. =< high school grad) also separates the general US public in opinions over evolution by a 20+ pp gap.  I can understand why conservatives want to get rid of the federal DOE, as the more educated one becomes, the less likely one will turn into a strict adherent to conservative dogma.  Alternative (re: home) educational standards means that people are able to live completely within their bubbles.