etch a sketch master

man, i loved playing with my etch a sketch (not a euphemism). but i was never as good as this guy.

great story

the 1958 university of buffalo football team received an invite to attend the tangerine bowl. to date, the schools only bowl invite in 102 years. they turned it down. the game was being played in orlando and the orlando high school athletic association would not allow black players to play in the same game as white players (in 1958!!!) so two of the players on the buffalo team would not be allowed to play. so the team told them to go to hell. read the story here

god's facebook status

ever sit around and wonder, "what if god had a facebook page? i wonder what his status updates would be?"

wonder no more.

is graphic design art?

so? what do you think?

al jaffee - master of the fold-in

you've read mad magazine, i know you have. and as you read it while standing at the magazine rack in that crappy little store, you glanced at the back, saw the illustration, so wonderfully hand-drawn, took a quick look around the store and then folded the pages over to see what the hidden image was. then you had a chuckle and put the magazine back on the rack, careful to hide the folded up back page.

well, al jaffee was the guy who drew that image (and every hidden image mad magazine has every printed, since 1964) and the new york times did an article on him.

photos of hiroshima

imagine walking down the street one night and seeing an old suitcase someone has put out for garbage pickup. being a collector of found-objects, you pick up the suitcase, pop it open and find photos of hiroshima one month after the bomb dropped. fascinating story, found here

nanowrimo

once again, i completely missed this. every year, national novel writing month is something i really would like to try, and every year, i either forget, procrastinate or give up on it. hmm, next year i guess?

help tammy help haiti

a girl i went to high school with, haven't seen since but have recently been able to say hi to (thanks facebook and hi tammy) is trying to make a difference in the world. anyone who can help, can read about what she is doing and donate here.

electoral maps and why they are called red and blue states

a couple of american political tidbits for you.

this link takes you to a site where they have mapped out the electoral votes of every us election since george washington dramatically carried 8 of 10 states and john adams (who carried the other 2) became the vp. actually, if you look at it, the loser of the first three elections became the vice president. hmm, that could be interesting if they still carried on that particular tradition.

i also read a note on uniwatch from josh starr who relates a story about how the republicans became the red states and the democrats became the blue states. i will repost the note in its entirety as its in the middle of a lengthly post over there. please, no one get mad.

I was a polling analyst for Mark Penn and Doug Schoen in 1995, when we were brought in by Dick Morris and Bill Clinton to do the polling for Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.

In 1995 and 1996, there were private weekly meetings (Wednesday nights) held in the White House residence on Wendesday nights to plan the campaign. It was a small group (Clinton, Morris, Penn, Schoen, Al Gore, Leon Panetta, Bob Squier, Bill Knapp, George Stephenopolous, maybe a few others). These meetings were later detailed, I believe after the election, by The New York Times.

For each week's meeting, I would develop maps of the status of the electoral college, as well as maps of media buys and visits by the Clinton and Dole campaigns. At the time, mapping software was making it easier to create these kinds of maps. I was known as "the Map Guy."

When you sit down to develop an electoral map, you have to actively decide which colors to use. I did some research at the library (this was before the extensive online resources we have today) and found that the networks were inconsistent in their assignment of colors to the different parties, so that wasn't helpful. And the parties themselves tended to use red, white, and blue - again, no help.

So I decided to assign the Democrats blue and Republicans red. I wavered between green and yellow for "toss-ups."

After a few weeks of meetings using these maps, Mark Penn came back to my office (something he rarely did) and said something like, "Josh, they love the maps, they're a big hit. The President loves it." He then said the President had asked him why we chose these colors for the parties.

As I explained to Mark, there were several reasons. For one, the term "Blue Dog Democrats" was thrown around in the early and mid-'90s, so the association stuck with me. In addition, we were centrist Democrats and I never liked the association of our party with red communism. So I wanted to symbolically throw the red back at the Republicans. I also saw the Republicans as more angry/red in the face/out of control, since this was the era of the Newt Gingrich and the Contact with America. In addition, I associated red with a "red light" and stopping, while blue connotes something more positive and forward-thinking. All of these were reasons that went into my decision.

So that was the genesis of the color selection.

From these meetings, the shorthand vernacular turned to using the terms "red states" and "blue states" and spread from the private meetings to conversations with political professionals and the media. By 2000, these terms had been part of the DC language for years.

The funny thing is, I am a public opinion researcher and we never tested the branding impact of the colors red and blue - yet this is one decision that (unintentionally) has had long-lasting brand implications.

obama

i posted this note in november of 2004.

tricky bastards

a repost from 2004. careful, nasty language. starbucks, tricky bastards.

predictions circa 2004

here is a previous post about the nhl playoffs and my predictions prior to them starting. in brackets is the real life results

so here goes. i needed to do this now before the games start so my pics are recorded officially.

First round islanders over tampa bay 4-2 (depietro with at least one shut out)
tampa beat the islanders 4-1. depietro did not get a shutout.

boston over montreal 4-1
montreal beat boston 4-3

new jersey over philadelphia 4-3
philly beat new jersey 4-1

toronto over ottawa 4-3
toronto did indeed beat ottawa 4-3. I RULE!!

vancouver over calgary 4-1
calgary over vancouver 4-3

san jose over st louis 4-3
san jose beat st louis 4-1

dallas over colorado 4-1
colorado over dallas 4-1

detroit over nashville 4-0
detroit over nashville 4-2

that was a pitiful prediction on the first round. suffice to say, my finals pick of vancouver and the islanders did not come true. and brad richards won the conn smythe, not my stellar pick of markus nasland.

bleh

soul searching and purchasing

i had a feeling this was going to happen. as i go through all my old posts, i find a few gems here and there. so instead of linking to the originals, i will just repost here.

you know that thing you've been dragging around uselessly inside you since birth? no, not your appendix, your soul. well, cash in on that puppy now. you can do it here.

growing pains

i am in the middle of what may seem to be a very long process of porting over everything on this blog to my own site. fear not, the pretty pictures address will still work, but i am editing and deleting posts with outdated links, changing the name and it seems i also have to revert to a classic template, so this may take a awhile. be patient, i'm worth it.