How Unlikely Was the Historic 11-10 Score?

The Steelers beat the Chargers Sunday 11-10. It was the first time an NFL game has ended with that score. That and some other numerology from The Numbers Guy including this:

These statistics come courtesy of Doug Drinen, a mathematician at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., who maintains the Web site Pro Football Reference. Of 13,480 games played in the NFL and its predecessors going back to 1920, through Sunday, 218 ended in scores of 20-17, the most-common final score. The runner-up, 17-14, has occurred 177 times. Five times a team has won by the margin of a single safety, 2-0. No team has ever won with four points — two safeties — and just eight times has a team won with eight points, which is a touchdown and a two-point conversion or two field goals and a safety.

Not many winners

Of the 500 stocks that make up the S&P 500 (a better indicator of broad stock market values than the Dow Jones Industrials), only 16 are up for the year to date. They are:

1. Family Dollar, up 40 percent. Cheap goods sell better this year.
2. Rohm & Haas, up 35 percent. All-cash takeover by Dow Chemical is pending. Since the deal was announced in July, Dow is down 40 percent. This may be the worst-timed deal of the year from the buyer’s perspective.
3. Anheuser Busch, up 31 percent. Another cash takeover. That deal was completed today, so Busch won’t be around to help the full-year breadth numbers.
4. Celgene, up 27 percent. A biotechnology stock has been helped by test failure of drug from competitor.
5. UST, up 25 percent. Snuff leader being bought by Altria, the cigarette company, again for cash.
6. Barr Pharmaceutical, up 22 percent. Generic drug maker won patent fight.
7. Amgen, up 21 percent. Drug performs well in tests.
8. Hudson City Bancorp, up 15 percent. A bank is up? This bank, based in New Jersey, kept good underwriting standards and stayed out of the securitization game. It also failed to expand into formerly hot markets like California and Florida. Now it has turned down bailout cash, saying it did not need the money.
9. General Mills, up 15 percent. You have to eat, and Wheaties maker is doing well.
10. Southwestern Energy, up 12 percent. Gas company rode prices up, and has not given up all its gains.

The others that are up are Wal-Mart (9 percent), Campbell Soup (5 percent), Cephalon (3 percent), People’s United (3 percent), Kroger (less than 1 percent), and Baxter International (less than 1 percent).

Some 200 of the 500 stocks have lost half or more of their value since the end of last year.

Source: Floyd Norris Blog – NYTimes.com

Here’s a list of the 500 stocks that make up the index.

They didn’t just ‘get’ those benefits

This doesn’t change the current discussion about what the country should do about G.M., Chrysler or Ford, but it is perhaps useful to have some background on how autoworkers came to have a decent wage.

“Men with queazy stomachs had no place one afternoon last week on the overpass at the No. 4 gate of Henry Ford’s great River Rouge plant.” So began TIME’s account of the Battle of the Overpass, the confrontation that made May 26, 1937, a red-letter day in labor history and brought to national attention a young United Auto Workers official named Walter P. Reuther.

That morning Reuther and his colleagues suspected the day’s events could escalate into something historic as they prepared to hand out organizing leaflets (slogan: “Unionism, Not Fordism”) to the plant’s 9,000 workers. Reuther had put on his Sunday suit, complete with vest, gold watch and chain. He had invited newspapermen, priests and local officials to be witnesses. When Reuther and three other officials arrived at the gate, Ford company police charged at them and delivered a brutal, prolonged beating. Pictures of the battered victims were published across the U.S., a huge P.R. victory that would slowly but surely lead, several years later, to U.A.W. organization at the plant.

TIME 100: Walter Reuther

From The Henry Ford Museum:

Frankensteen’s coat was pulled over his arms. He was then kicked in the head, kidneys, and groin. Witnesses also testified that as he lay on the ground, the attackers ground their heels in his stomach. Reuther was picked up and thrown down repeatedly and was kicked in the face and body. He was then thrown down the steps of the overpass. Merriweather’s back was broken, and Dunham was also severely injured. The women too were attacked.

Standard Time

At exactly noon on this day [in 1883], American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. The bold move was emblematic of the power shared by the railroad companies.

The need for continental time zones stemmed directly from the problems of moving passengers and freight over the thousands of miles of rail line that covered North America by the 1880s. Since human beings had first begun keeping track of time, they set their clocks to the local movement of the sun. Even as late as the 1880s, most towns in the U.S. had their own local time, generally based on “high noon,” or the time when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. As railroads began to shrink the travel time between cities from days or months to mere hours, however, these local times became a scheduling nightmare. Railroad timetables in major cities listed dozens of different arrival and departure times for the same train, each linked to a different local time zone.

Efficient rail transportation demanded a more uniform time-keeping system. Rather than turning to the federal governments of the United States and Canada to create a North American system of time zones, the powerful railroad companies took it upon themselves to create a new time code system. The companies agreed to divide the continent into four time zones; the dividing lines adopted were very close to the ones we still use today.

Most Americans and Canadians quickly embraced their new time zones, since railroads were often their lifeblood and main link with the rest of the world. However, it was not until 1918 that Congress officially adopted the railroad time zones and put them under the supervision of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

This Day in History

Don’t let Arizonans read about this “sun time” thing; surely they’d want to reinstate it.

The first Thanksgiving and the ‘Made Up Americans’

Reposted from 2006:

This is Mack’s first Thanksgiving in school, so of course he’s hearing the public school version of the First Thanksgiving story. Some teachers don’t use the correct name for the indigenous people near Plymouth — Wampanoags — or even the preferred generic term — American Indians. No, they use the presumed politically correct name — Native Americans.

That’s what the teacher says, but what do the children hear?

Mack’s mother Jill reports:

“At school, Mack is learning about the first Thanksgiving. He came home today with a short story about it, which I asked him to read to me. It went well until he got to the first reference to what he called the ‘Made Up’ Americans.”

Overload!

There are more than 70 million blogs and 150 million Web sites today—a number that is expanding at a rate of approximately ten thousand an hour. Two hundred and ten billion e-mails are sent each day. Say goodbye to the gigabyte and hello to the exabyte, five of which are worth 37,000 Libraries of Congress. In 2006 alone, the world produced 161 exabytes of digital data, the equivalent of three million times the information contained in all the books ever written. By 2010, it is estimated that this number will increase to 988. Pick your metaphor: we’re drowning, buried, snowed under.

From a lengthy piece at Columbia Journalism Review, Overload! Journalism’s battle for relevance in an age of too much information.

Cool new feature

The Google search application for iPhone (and iPod Touch) was updated yesterday. Now you touch the icon to open up the application, hold it up to you ear like you were taking a call, and speak your search request.

I just tried it (with a topic du jour) United Auto Workers. In a few seconds (five) up pops the usual Google list of possible sites.

Recognition isn’t perfect, but it’s a start.

The Bits Blog has some info on why speech recognition is an important breakthrough technology for mobile device manufacturers (because the keyboards are so small and difficult to use).

The Facts

“The New York Times told readers that GM’s autoworkers are paid $70 an hour…. This is not true. The base pay is about $28 an hour.”

Beat the Press

$70 may be the amount if all labor costs including legacy costs (retiree pensions and healthcare) are divided by the current number of workers, but that is a decidedly inaccurate picture of the current workforce.

Bark Beetles Kill Millions of Acres of Trees in West

The New York Times reports on something we in the Rocky Mountain states know all too well — the loss of our forests. An excerpt:

From New Mexico to British Columbia, the region’s signature pine forests are succumbing to a huge infestation of mountain pine beetles that are turning a blanket of green forest into a blanket of rust red. Montana has lost a million acres of trees to the beetles, and in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming the situation is worse.

. . .

In Wyoming and Colorado in 2006 there were a million acres of dead trees. Last year it was 1.5 million. This year it is expected to total over two million. In the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, the problem is most severe. It is the largest known insect infestation in the history of North America, officials said. British Columbia has lost 33 million acres of lodgepole pine forest, and a freak wind event last year blew mountain pine beetles, a species of bark beetle, over the Continental Divide to Alberta. Experts fear that the beetles could travel all the way to the Great Lakes.

In the next three to five years, Mr. Kyhl said, virtually all of Colorado’s lodgepole pine trees over five inches in diameter will be lost, about five million acres. “Already in many places, every lodgepole over five inches is dead as far as the eye can see,” he said.

Campgrounds closed, ski resorts deforested, views blighted in every direction by rust colored trees.

There’s a video with the article.

Just in case you think the Government shouldn’t get into business’s business

In 2006, the federal government spent more than sixty billion dollars on aircraft manufacturers. Boeing received $20.8 billion, according to Government Executive magazine. (Lockheed-Martin received $27.3 billion, and Northrup-Grumman $16.7 billion.)

Why does the United States have one of the most sophisticated, innovative electronics industries in the world? Raytheon’s take from the Pentagon in 2006: $10.4 billion; Computer Sciences, $2.7 billion. And so on. General Motors received $806 million dollars that year, mostly from the Army, enough to make it the fortieth largest defense contractor on the list, just ahead, startlingly, of Johns Hopkins University, which received more than seven hundred million dollars, most of it from the U.S. Navy.

Think Tank: Steve Coll

Just the companies listed add up to $80 billion (in one year). That puts some perspective around the bail out numbers.

Personal DNA analysis and research for health, family, ancestry, and genealogy

Time Magazine’s Invention of the Year — and now just $399.

Order the kit, spit in the test tube and have your DNA genotyped.

  • Discover how your genes influence your health and traits. Get your data on over 90 traits and diseases, with more topics added every month.
  • See your personal history through a new lens with high-resolution maternal and paternal lineage, ancestry painting, and similarity to various global populations.

Health and Traits – List of Conditions

Ancestry

100+ miles per gallon

If GM isn’t around to build it, let’s hope someone does.

The Volt, which the company plans to begin selling in November 2010, should easily double the fuel economy rating of today’s mileage hero, the Toyota Prius. The Prius, which carries a 46 m.p.g. rating in combined city and highway driving, is a conventional hybrid that uses modest amounts of electricity to minimize the fuel consumed by its gasoline engine.

The Volt takes the opposite approach, relying mainly on electric power, with its gasoline engine running only when needed to stretch the driving range. The 100 m.p.g. automobile, which once seemed an impossible dream, will become an official E.P.A.-rated reality with the Volt’s arrival.

G.M. calls the car an extended-range electric vehicle, or E-REV. For the first 40 miles after leaving home with a fully charged battery, the Volt will consume no gas at all, according to G.M.; when the gas engine does fire up, it will only drive a generator — the engine is not connected to the wheels. Owners will recharge the battery overnight from a wall socket, which brings the Volt into the category of plug-in hybrids.

Read more about the Volt from The New York Times.

The Motor City

I am a native Detroiter, and though I moved to Arizona at the start of high school, I remained in touch with the Motor City in a personal way well into my twenties.

As a little kid I can remember the thrill of seeing the Cadillac assembly plant on the way to Grandma’s. Or the blast furnaces making the sky glow orange on cloudy nights. Or seeing the latest models in the lobby of the General Motors Building on West Grand Boulevard (and the cool tunnel under the Boulevard to the Fisher Building across the street). Or the introduction of new car models each September, searchlights piercing the sky.

Later, while in graduate school, I had a summer job with a Ford supplier that took me to the executive suites of Ford and to the Lincoln-Mercury Division too, headquartered then in the wood-paneled hallways of Ford’s first Dearborn office building. As I noted here a few days ago, I once even applied for a job on the Dodge assembly line.

People in Detroit didn’t work at Ford, they worked at Ford’s, possessive as if they worked for Mr. Ford (because in many cases their fathers had worked for Mr. Ford). Even the freeways in Detroit told you who the important people were — the Edsel Ford, the Walter P. Chrysler, the Fisher (it was the Fisher Brothers that built GM car bodies), the Walter P. Reuther (the great United Auto Workers leader).

It was the quintessential American industry and it was the “Arsenal of Democracy.” During the last year of World War II, Ford was assembling one B-24 every 63 minutes. The assembly line was over a mile long. Chrysler made Sherman tanks and anti-aircraft guns.

You grow up in Detroit, the automobile industry is in your blood. At least it’s still somewhere in mine.

So what has happened that makes so many Americans willing to let the American auto industry go down the drain? Not only that, but as commenter Eric notes, with a “vindictiveness that pervades” so much of the discussion.

How in fact is stiffing Detroit any different than the way New Orleans has been treated?

Healthiest, Unhealthiest U.S. Cities

Lincoln, Neb. is the healthiest city in the U.S., and Huntington, W.V. is the least healthy, 2007 CDC data reveal.

The CDC’s city-by-city report is based on annual health surveys. Residents were asked to rate their health as excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor.

Topping the list was Lincoln, Neb., where 92.8% of residents say their health is good or better and only 7.2% report fair or poor health.

At the bottom of the list is Huntington, W.V., where only 68.8% of residents say they enjoy good or better health, and a whopping 31.2% report only fair or poor health.

WebMD

Fargo was second, Boulder third.

Albuquerque ranked 95th of 184 cities ranked. Santa Fe 88th.

All 184 cities ranked.

Only in New Mexico

Jim Baca discusses some of the local New Mexico merchants who contributed to the passage of proposition hate in California. If you’re a local who believes in civil rights, you might want to see the places you should boycott.

Update: Some of the information was incorrect. I have deleted the comments which mentioned some of the names.

Another kind of maverick

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday that it had charged Mark Cuban, the billionaire Internet entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, with insider trading for selling 600,000 shares of an Internet search engine company.

The S.E.C. said Mr. Cuban sold the stock in the company, Mamma.com, based on nonpublic information about an impending stock offering. The commission asserted that Mr. Cuban avoided losses in excess of $750,000 by selling his stock prior to the public announcement of the offering.

DealBook – New York Times

Update: Insider Trading, or Political Persecution?

November 17th is the birthday

… of Senator James Inhofe (R-OK). Inhofe is the senator who has said, “man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” He’s 74, his age having finally matched his IQ.

… of Gordon Lightfoot. The singer is 70.

I can see her lyin’ back in her satin dress
In a room where you do what you don’t confess
Sundown, you better take care
If I find you bin creepin’ round my back stairs
Sundown, you better take care
If I find you bin creepin’ round my back stairs

… of Martin Scorsese. The Oscar-winning director is 66.

… of Danny DeVito. The actor/director/producer is 64. Very early in his career DeVito played Martini in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

… of Lorne Michaels. The producer of Saturday Night Live is 64.

So he moved back to Canada, where he formed a comedy duo with Hart Pomerantz, and they had a television variety show on Canadian television, The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour. They contracted their talents to comedic acts in the United States, writing for Phyllis Diller, Lily Tomlin, Joan Rivers, and Woody Allen. They also wrote for the NBC show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, and then NBC asked Michaels to come up with a comedy show to replace the Johnny Carson reruns that aired Saturday nights at 11 p.m.

Michaels recruited talent from all sorts of places. Dan Aykroyd was a fellow Canadian, and Chevy Chase, John Belushi, and Gilda Radner had worked on the National Lampoon show. Muppet creator Jim Henson created sketches for the show, and recent Harvard grad Al Franken was signed on as a writer. And so Michaels put together the first season, 1975–1976, and won an Emmy for it.

The Writer’s Almanac

Tom Seaver Plaque
… of Tom Seaver. Tom Terrific, the baseball hall-of-famer is 64.

… of Elvin Hayes. The basketball hall-of-famer is 63.

… of Howard Dean. The physician politician is 60.

… of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The actress is 50. Mastrantonio was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for “The Color of Money.”

… of Daisy Fuentes, 42. Sophie Marceau is 42, too.

Rock Hudson was born on this date in 1925; he died in 1985. Hudson got a best actor Oscar nomination for “Giant.”

Soichiro Honda was born on this date in 1906; he died in 1991. Honda started as an auto mechanic at age 15.

It was on this day in 1558 that Queen Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne. She reigned for 45 years. She took over after the death of her sister, Queen Mary, and so Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, and William Shakespeare are known as Elizabethan authors, and not Maryan authors.

The Writer’s Almanac

The Visitor

I watched the film The Visitor this evening and recommend it wholeheartedly — a very human story told on a very human level. Moving, entertaining, graceful, bittersweet.

If you need more than that, here’s A.O. Scott’s review from last April.

“The curious thing about ‘The Visitor’ is that even as it goes more or less where you think it will, it still manages to surprise you along the way.”