Day 140: "Rubbin' is Racin'!"
You're a Tom Cruise fan. So am I. We all are, really. He hasn't made a terrible movie in... well, okay, we're going to look past Eyes Wide Shut, because it was Kubrick's swansong, and he had kind of gone crazy at that point. Also, he tormented Cruise and Kidman mercilessly to get them to share personal details of their sex life, so that he could film that honesty, and this led DIRECTLY to the end of their marriage. So, yes, it's a terrible movie, but it put Miss Nicole Kidman back on the market, so it gets a pass.
Honestly, I'm willing to entertain an open discussion on this topic. The man can't make a terrible movie. He can make mediocre movies, but he lacks Nicolas Cage's knack for making one good movie and then making like ten awful ones (Ghost Rider, I'm looking at you; Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is nearly ten times as bad, but it opens with a fight between everyone's favorite watcher, Mr. Rupert Giles, and the one and only Mr. Russell "Stringer" Bell, so it wins some points. Then it lights those points on fire and smokes them. It's awful.)
But Cruise can make that movie about the pretty boy who is full of himself and eventually learns what is really important in life. Plus, you know, Top Gun. I've always wondered why the military doesn't just open its own movie studio, and pay Tom Cruise a bajillion dollars to star in the Top Gun franchise. There has been talk about a sequel forever...
Okay, I'm drifting here (ha!.... that will be funny later). My point is that Days of Thunder taught me everything that I know about racing, which is "Rubbin' is Racin'!"
So today, when we went to RPM Indoor GoKart Racing, I was very surprised when they said, "Do not, under any circumstances, bump into, rub against, or ram other cars. We'll kill you in the face. Seriously. Don't do it."
They did not actually threaten to kill us, but they were very serious about it.
These cars go FAST. They are not your amusement park go-carts. These things are sportscars. We were averaging about 25 seconds for a 1/4 mile track (with LOTS of hard turns), which is about 36 miles per hour! We were going MUCH faster on the straightaways. In fact, you have to wear a fire-retardant racing suit, a headsock (that I am convinced is only issued to make you look like a ninja) and of course a racing helmet and neck brace. Safety first!
You're a Tom Cruise fan. So am I. We all are, really. He hasn't made a terrible movie in... well, okay, we're going to look past Eyes Wide Shut, because it was Kubrick's swansong, and he had kind of gone crazy at that point. Also, he tormented Cruise and Kidman mercilessly to get them to share personal details of their sex life, so that he could film that honesty, and this led DIRECTLY to the end of their marriage. So, yes, it's a terrible movie, but it put Miss Nicole Kidman back on the market, so it gets a pass.
Honestly, I'm willing to entertain an open discussion on this topic. The man can't make a terrible movie. He can make mediocre movies, but he lacks Nicolas Cage's knack for making one good movie and then making like ten awful ones (Ghost Rider, I'm looking at you; Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is nearly ten times as bad, but it opens with a fight between everyone's favorite watcher, Mr. Rupert Giles, and the one and only Mr. Russell "Stringer" Bell, so it wins some points. Then it lights those points on fire and smokes them. It's awful.)
But Cruise can make that movie about the pretty boy who is full of himself and eventually learns what is really important in life. Plus, you know, Top Gun. I've always wondered why the military doesn't just open its own movie studio, and pay Tom Cruise a bajillion dollars to star in the Top Gun franchise. There has been talk about a sequel forever...
Okay, I'm drifting here (ha!.... that will be funny later). My point is that Days of Thunder taught me everything that I know about racing, which is "Rubbin' is Racin'!"
So today, when we went to RPM Indoor GoKart Racing, I was very surprised when they said, "Do not, under any circumstances, bump into, rub against, or ram other cars. We'll kill you in the face. Seriously. Don't do it."
They did not actually threaten to kill us, but they were very serious about it.
These cars go FAST. They are not your amusement park go-carts. These things are sportscars. We were averaging about 25 seconds for a 1/4 mile track (with LOTS of hard turns), which is about 36 miles per hour! We were going MUCH faster on the straightaways. In fact, you have to wear a fire-retardant racing suit, a headsock (that I am convinced is only issued to make you look like a ninja) and of course a racing helmet and neck brace. Safety first!
**************
I have a pretty fun picture of this, but my bloghost is being dumb, so I have to link it here:
DIG IT
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It was really pretty amazing. We drove fast, and naturally I won every race. Handily.
What's that, R? Oh, well, if you want to tell your side of the story, get your own blog. I can use whatever facts I want! I'm taking a Fox News approach to this thing. BOOM! Didn't see that one coming, did ya? Yeah, I learned all about hairpin turns today!!
Quick Political Discourse:
Seriously, the Fox News network convinced themselves, and their viewers, that a Republican win was inevitable, all evidence to the contrary. This has led to the rise of Nate Silver, who I have long been a fan of, because he uses good crunchy math to interpret what the polls are actually saying.
Let's say a poll states that 54% of likely voters are going to vote for Romney. What Silver did was the research to allow him and his team to be aware that, historically, that particular poll using that particular polling method has, on average, overstated the Republican chance of winning by about 7%. His predictive model, then, weights the value of that poll to compensate for this fact.
He correctly called all 50 states in the presidential election; in 2008 (the first campaign that he had built a predictive model), he called 49 of 50.
What Fox News did was the opposite of this. They actually skewed the polls more in their favor (even their internal polls), convinced that all polls were biased towards Obama, and that this wasn't the "real" picture.
If a news team is willing to deliberately mislead ITSELF, and, as a consequence, its viewers...
I just don't understand why this organization can continue to be seen as a source of factual news. They invent facts to fit their narrative, rather than basing the narrative on the facts. You can't help shape the policy of the country if you refuse to acknowledge the actual, current state of the country.
I keep the ChainsawPenguin largely about my adventures in California. That said, this was a big win for Democrats, and a big blow to the credibility of Fox News in general and Karl Rove in particular.
It's also a pretty big win for the value in acknowledging that math is awesome. Its strength is that it allows us to predict, given what's happened in the past, what might happen in the future.
Nate Silver doesn't have a crystal ball; he just has a solid grasp of statistics.
As a former math teacher, I am delighted down to my bones that this is now part of the national narrative.
I love all of you, my little penguinians, and I love America. They let me drive really fast in a tiny car here today, and that's super neat!!
And, tomorrow: ADVENTURE!! :)
What's that, R? Oh, well, if you want to tell your side of the story, get your own blog. I can use whatever facts I want! I'm taking a Fox News approach to this thing. BOOM! Didn't see that one coming, did ya? Yeah, I learned all about hairpin turns today!!
Quick Political Discourse:
Seriously, the Fox News network convinced themselves, and their viewers, that a Republican win was inevitable, all evidence to the contrary. This has led to the rise of Nate Silver, who I have long been a fan of, because he uses good crunchy math to interpret what the polls are actually saying.
Let's say a poll states that 54% of likely voters are going to vote for Romney. What Silver did was the research to allow him and his team to be aware that, historically, that particular poll using that particular polling method has, on average, overstated the Republican chance of winning by about 7%. His predictive model, then, weights the value of that poll to compensate for this fact.
He correctly called all 50 states in the presidential election; in 2008 (the first campaign that he had built a predictive model), he called 49 of 50.
What Fox News did was the opposite of this. They actually skewed the polls more in their favor (even their internal polls), convinced that all polls were biased towards Obama, and that this wasn't the "real" picture.
If a news team is willing to deliberately mislead ITSELF, and, as a consequence, its viewers...
I just don't understand why this organization can continue to be seen as a source of factual news. They invent facts to fit their narrative, rather than basing the narrative on the facts. You can't help shape the policy of the country if you refuse to acknowledge the actual, current state of the country.
I keep the ChainsawPenguin largely about my adventures in California. That said, this was a big win for Democrats, and a big blow to the credibility of Fox News in general and Karl Rove in particular.
It's also a pretty big win for the value in acknowledging that math is awesome. Its strength is that it allows us to predict, given what's happened in the past, what might happen in the future.
Nate Silver doesn't have a crystal ball; he just has a solid grasp of statistics.
As a former math teacher, I am delighted down to my bones that this is now part of the national narrative.
I love all of you, my little penguinians, and I love America. They let me drive really fast in a tiny car here today, and that's super neat!!
And, tomorrow: ADVENTURE!! :)
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