Generic Names of Soft Drinks by County

From Strange Maps, but the map itself is by Matthew Campbell from the Department of Cartography and Geography at East Central University in Oklahoma. This is also based an unnamed survey (or at least, not sourced in the map - my only criticism of it, actually) of approximately 120,000 respondents who were apparently asked what they called soft drinks: pop, coke, etc.

I think that someone has blogged about this before. Maybe I did, or maybe MoLT? Either way, it's still a pretty and informative map.

Fringe

Solid effort for the Fringe pilot. It's not up there with the Lost pilot. But it was decent. And what about when that dude's freaking jaw melted off his face! Whoa I almost threw up. I did see the plot twist coming - but only by about 30 seconds. Still, I called it mon freur. I'll keep watching it.

Sublime

I read Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful a long time ago and really loved it. One of things I remember from it was that the sublime was a notion which caused something like dread in the person, but which was also a powerful aesthetic experience that simultaneously drew the person to the object itself. These photos of Hurricane Ivan from 230 miles above sea level (taken from the International Space Station) are a good example of "the sublime" I think. Dreadful, terrible and beautiful at the same time.

TV... Mmm, good...

I saw one of my facebook friends put in his profile that he didn't watch much of the "idiot box," but occasionally watched 24. I wanted to write something to put him in his place, and if I had, it would've gone something like this.

Television has come a long way since, let’s say, from the top of my head…“MacGyver.” This particular show was pretty daring and groundbreaking in its own way back in the day, but it only looks like a bit of a joke right now. Nowdays, TV has become more powerful than ever, but also so much more competitive and creative. In the struggle to survive on air and to have good audiences, channels have to come up with the unthinkable, the unimaginable and the unbelievable.

Best. Time. in. TV. History. Period. I'm looking forward to Fringe tonight, JJ Abrams' new show. Check out what this reviewer said.

"Fringe" is much more than that, although I'm going to try and stay away from the comparisons to his previous TV efforts. A lot of critics are going to compare it to "Lost" or "The X-Files," but in reality, the show is the best written action series in past ten years.

I think I read that the pilot cost something like $10-20 million to create. The previously most expensive TV pilot episode was, I think, Abrams' Lost.

New Hampshire

I took the state contracts from inTrade from August 31st and lined then up with the electoral votes for 2008, unemployment rates, foreclosure rates, and the 2000-2004 outcomes. This morning (Sept. 7), I took the latest data. In other words, I have pre- and post-RNC state contracts from InTrade. This morning, I put it all into one spreadsheet so I could see where the change in McCain/Obama's expected chances was coming from. As far as I can see, four of the five swing states became even more swingier after the RNC. Nevada, Colorado, Virginia and Ohio all appear to be, as of the first of this week, to be more or less toss-ups. New Hampshire is still solidly skewed in Obama's favor, and all that Obama has to do is win the other states in his pocket (predicted at 60+ prices - my personal arbitrary cutoff) and New Hampshire to win it all. That New Hampshire has a contract of roughly 55, and the national contract is moving around 55, makes me think that New Hampshire could be deciding this election.

Greenness of Cities

From Ed Glaeser and Matthew Kahn, a new paper on cities' effects on carbon emissions and land use.

Abstract

Carbon dioxide emissions may create significant social harm because of global warming, yet American urban development tends to be in low density areas with very hot summers. In this paper, we attempt to quantify the carbon dioxide emissions associated with new construction in different locations across the country. We look at emissions from driving, public transit, home heating, and household electricity usage. We find that the lowest emissions areas are generally in California and that the highest emissions areas are in Texas and Oklahoma. There is a strong negative association between emissions and land use regulations. By restricting new development, the cleanest areas of the country would seem to be pushing new development towards places with higher emissions. Cities generally have significantly lower emissions than suburban areas, and the city-suburb gap is particularly large in older areas, like New York.

Is this for real?

alt="Price for 2008 Presidential Election Winner (Individual) at intrade.com"
title="Price for 2008 Presidential Election Winner (Individual) at intrade.com" border="0">

When I'm writing this, that Obama contract is at 52.9. MCain, on the other hand, is not 47 - he's 46. Hilary Clinton, bizarrely enough, is at 3.5%. That's money on the table as far as I can tell. Unless someone is saying there's a 3.5% chance that Obama is getting assassinated, then Hilary Clinton has a zero 0% chance of being President.

The Democratic contract, though, is interestingly enough holding at 55%, and the Republican contract is at 46%. So as far as I can see, the party contracts are equal to the individual contracts, with Hilary Clinton adding in as a spoiler? Who is taking the other side of that stupid bet? I wonder if someone is screwing with these markets. If they stay here for a week, I'll believe them. Right now I'm skeptical.

Update: I'm not the only one skeptical and thinking these are weird. The billionare stock manipulator, who I'm going to call Jed Clampett hypothesis, is mentioned over at MR by Zephyrus. I remember people thinking Soros was doing that in 2004 with the Kerry/Bush contracts - massive, huge movements due to high volume trading that showed Bush's contract shaky, creating some noise. I think we just wait and see. If it's real, it'll stick. If it's fake, it'll get arbitraged away.