Category Archives: none really

The Oddness of Odd Numbers

Have you ever really thought about odd numbers? Or what it is that makes them odd?

Vsauce's Michael Stevens has, sharing his thoughts in the following 22 minute video, which goes in directions you might not expect to explain why odd numbers mysteriously show up when gravitational acceleration is involved:

We're still on the fence as to whether the rules should prevent dogs from playing high school basketball, but the universe is an odd and mysterious place. Which is to say it's more entertaining when they can, once. We believe any potential sequels or reboots however should be strictly prohibited and are happy to cite the Beethoven franchise as proof.

Improving the Star Wars Holiday Special

The year was 1978. Americans were suffering under the weak leadership of an ineffective president. Inflation was running hot and about to get much worse. And then, as if to put an exclamation point on just how bad things were getting, one of the three broadcast television networks that existed at the time aired The Star Wars Holiday Special.

It's difficult to describe just how crushingly bad this entertainment event was. The year before, the movie Star Wars (as it was popularly known at the time, today it goes by "Star Wars: Epsiode IV - A New Hope") had been a spectacular success, providing a beacon of light in the gathering gloom of the era's popular entertainment. By contrast, The Star Wars Holiday Special has been described as a "cosmic catastrophe" and "infamously terrible". No wonder Star Wars producer George Lucas and the stars of the movies worked hard to bury the memory of the special in the decades since.

But some Star Wars fans, being who they are, couldn't let it go. Not only did they remember it existed, some have worked to improve it in a campaign to bring it back. One fan has even gone so far as to create a two minute 4K video trailer for The Star Wars Holiday Special, employing AI and machine learning to improve a portion of the viewing experience.

The trailer only hints at the badness to which Americans were subjected in 1978. To get the full experience, we need to turn another effort to improve the watchability of The Star Wars Holiday Special, put together by Rifftrax.

If you don't think the jokes in the added soundtrack are an improvement, try watching the special without them. You'll soon see why President Jimmy Carter was sermonizing about malaise to Americans just a matter of months later.

We'll agree with CNet's Gael Fashingbauer Cooper that the best part of the improved viewing experience are the vintage ads.

Previously on Political Calculations

Since we're on the verge of the holiday season, here's a sampling of how we've celebrated the time of year in years past.

And for Star Wars fans, do have a happy Life Day!

Reworking Overworked Christmas Carols

Once again, for the second year in a row, Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You is the top song on the charts this week in the U.S. And just so we're clear, that's Mariah Carey's version of All I Want For Christmas Is You that was originally released in 1994.

We're not quite as tired of it as we are of the dreaded 12 Days of Christmas song, but we're getting there given how overplayed it becomes this time of year. Overplayed enough where we are finding a mashup of it with Radiohead's Creep to be more worthy of a listen, though it takes a while for the lyrics to break through the uptempo introduction.

All in all, it is surprising how well the Radiohead-Mariah Carey mashup works. Now, if someone could deal with the standalone dread that is The Little Drummer Boy, which not even the talents of Bing Crosby and David Bowie or Pentatonix could rescue, we would declare a Christmas miracle!

2020’s Xmas Bill

We got up early this morning to wrap up our Christmas shopping for 2020. We weren't very imaginative this year, in that we decided to go out and get as many things as we could from the dreaded "12 Days of Christmas" song from a local PNC branch, the only place we know that carries all the items listed in the carol.

Or would, if it weren't for the coronavirus pandemic. Some things on the list just aren't available this year, so our gift recipient will get no dancing ladies, no lords-a-leaping, no pipers piping, and no drummers drumming.

Here's the receipt for all the rest....

The good news is that at $16,163.14 before sales tax, the bill this year for the available line items is $22,825.45 cheaper than in 2019. With the state government's lockdown orders, all the ladies, lords, pipers, and drummers are subject to a stay-at-home order and are thus not available in 2020.

Of course, we're really taking the cheap route in only getting one set of each of the items listed in the "12 Days of Christmas" song. If we were to take the cumulative math resulting from all the repetition in the song seriously, the pre-tax bill for 2020 for the items we can buy would be $105,561.80.

Four Minutes of Infinite Patterns

Can you use a break? If so, we can recommend visual artist Cristóbal Vila's Infinite Patterns as a marvelous way to contemplate the beauty of infinite patterns, without taking up an infinite amount of time. In fact, it clocks in at just under four minutes, which is just long enough to get the job done.