Infinitive Splitter

Among the enduring traditions af American travel is the breakfast-time persual of USA Today in hotel foyers.

Yesterday’s paper included a story on the Halloween-weekend festivities in Madison, Wis., and the (purportedly) successful management thereof. It contains the following:

In Madison, an annual street party drew 35,000 costumed revelers Saturday night, less than half the 80,000 that showed up last year.

Arrests were down over the Friday-to-Sunday period: about 250 were arrested, compared with 566 last year, police Sgt. Richard Scanlon said. Most of the arrests were for alcohol-related offenses, he said.

Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz called Saturday a success. “We met all …my goals,” he said. “We did not have to use pepper spray or have our police in riot gear. We reduced the amount of over-consumption of alcohol.”

Did they?

In 2005, if 80,000 revelers showed up and 566 were arrested, that means 70.8 people were arrested for every 10,000. In 2006, 250 arrested out of 35,000 works out to 71.4 per 10,000.

Granted, the lack of pepper spray or riot gear eliminates some of the more shocking photography, but it looks like the proportion of bad apples actually rose.

Happy Halloween!

I leave tomorrow for a week and a half of election madness somewhere in this great country of ours; posting will be light, if it happens at all, until November 8.

In the meantime, enjoy the picture above, which was taken on October 26 outside the local Goodwill Industries retailer. That’s me under the light, for all you over-curious readers who have been frustrated by the mystery of my identity.

Please vote. It’s really the least you can do.

Do you enjoy this website but wish I would post more often?

Forget it!

But here’s a compromise: the internet is full of websites that I think are interesting, but I am a lazy writer. I don’t want to talk about every link I see, but I do want lots and lots of people to see things that I find interesting. The classic dilemma.

Starting now — and continuing until I tire of it — you can find such links under the “Quick Hits” label on the right-hand sidebar of this website. It will show the last five links I’ve thought to tag, along with a note about each (usually a quote from the linked page). If you fall behind, you can catch up here:

• http://del.icio.us/infinitivesplitter

And that’s that. If I’ve judged my audience correctly, this should tide everyone over between posts.

For some reason, this feels like it might be a lucky day for me, which means — naturally — that it’s a good day to make my official predictions for the composition of the 110th Congress.

Get your popcorn ready.

We’ll start with the Senate, since handicapping House races is about 13 times harder. (There are 435 House elections on November 7, compared with just 33 Senate elections. Never mind how many of each are actually contested; you can look those numbers up on your own.)

Most of these 33 races are already decided, whether because of a total lack of opposition (Lugar in Indiana); a lack of strong opposition (Clinton in New York, Hatch in Utah, and so on); or a lack of sane opposition (Nelson in Florida should defeat Katherine Harris by a comfortable margin). Here are my picks for those that remain, assuming that the incumbent or the incumbent’s party wins for the races I omit:

The incumbent or candidate from the incumbent’s party is listed in bold, and states with open-seat races are marked with asterisks.

• Connecticut: Lieberman (?) over Lamont (D)
• Maryland*: Cardin (D) over Steele (R)
• Missouri: McCaskill (D) over Talent (R)
  
• Montana: Tester (D) over Burns (R)
• New Jersey: Menendez (D) over Kean (R)
• Ohio: Brown (D) over Dewine (R)
• Pennsylvania: Casey (D) over Santorum (R)
• Rhode Island: Whitehouse (D) over Chafee (R)
• Tennessee*: Corker (R) over Ford (D)
• Virginia: Allen (R) over Webb (D)

If you haven’t been keeping track, that comes to a total of 50 Republicans; 48 Democrats; 1 Independent voting with Democrats (Bernie Sanders will take over for Jim Jeffords, who is retiring); and one Joe Lieberman, who I think will probably vote for Democratic leadership. In a 50-50 Senate, the vice president casts the tiebreaker, so Republicans will maintain control.

Now to the House of Representatives. I was guessing pretty wildly about the Senate; my House picks are based on little more than a cursory look at some old polls and some gut feeling. Also, if you think I’m going to list my specific picks on even a tenth of these, you’re mistaken. (I do have a list, but who wants to read lists?)

Here’s a haphazard collection of thoughts on a random selection of competitive races.

• I’ll take Murphy (D) over Gerlach (R) in Pennsylvania’s 6th, but not Murphy (D) over Fitzpatrick (R) in PA-8 or Murphy (D) over Johnson (R) in Connecticut’s 5th. Murphy (R) is not facing a serious challenge from Kluko (D) in PA-18. Two for four.
• Weldon (R) has got some significant problems. I like Sestak (D) in PA-7.
• Delay (R) and Foley (R), who will appear on ballots in TX-22 and FL-16, respectively, are likely to be defeated.
• I like former NFL quarterback Heath Shuler (D) over African dictator Charles Taylor (R) in NC-11. For the record, this Shuler really is the former quarterback, but the incumbent congressman from western North Carolina is not a Liberian war criminal.
• Barring the disclosure of his own affair involving strangled mistresses, Carney (D) should unseat Sherwood (R) in PA-10.
• “Congressman Hill on Capitol Hill” isn’t as good as “Whitehouse White House,” which is what we’d have if Rhode Island’s Democratic Senate challenger someday won the presidency, but it’s good enough. I’ll take Hill (D) over Sodrel (R) in IN-9, Ellsworth (D) over Hostettler (R) in IN-8, and Donnelly (D) over Chris “Count” Chocola (R) in IN-2.

That’s about enough. None of these races — and indeed none of the races on the list from which I plucked these examples — involve incumbent Democrats. This is very good news for incumbent Democrats.

Final projected House tally: 237 Democrats and 198 Republicans.

Some people read horoscopes and find relevance in them that seems impossible to ascribe to coincidence. (Have I written something like this before? Yes!)

I think I now know why a disproportionate number of outgoing links on this website point to qwantz.com: Ryan North, author of Dinosaur Comics, is my Tyler Durden. He stays up late at night to organize underground boxing clubs and terrorist cells write webcomics that relate to my real life. The evidence has been accumulating for some time.

To wit: I explained to an otherwise-enlightened friend just yesterday that dukes is a fairly standard synonym for fists; today T-Rex and friends discuss other options. Last week, T-Rex asked himself a question that I had a reason to ask myself on the same day: “When you break up with someone, can you still be friends?” (He also answered the way I would have: “Yep! SURE CAN!”)

It goes on and on. A couple of weeks ago I found myself in a discussion of the shortcomings of supposedly meritocratic hiring systems (how can they possibly know?); the next day, T-Rex wondered the same thing. The Monday before that, when I called in sick to work, T-Rex complained about feeling under the weather.

Coincidence is an insufficient explanation.

Tyler Durden and “Jack”; Ryan North and me. The correct answer to a standard SAT question.

The difference is that, in the big revelation scene, my Tyler Durden will not say, “I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not”; he will say, “I write webcomics the way you would if you were more clever… and wrote webcomics.”

Great Idea alert!

A candidate for state superintendent of schools said Thursday he wants thick used textbooks placed under every student’s desk so they can use them for self-defense during school shootings.

“People might think it’s kind of weird, crazy,” said Republican Bill Crozier of Union City, Oklahoma, a teacher and former Air Force security officer. “It is a practical thing; it’s something you can do. It might be a way to deflect those bullets until police go there.”

This is a terrific idea, but used textbooks might not be the best option. Their obsolescence might be owed to the outdated ideas written in them, rendering them full of holes and useless for stopping bullets.

Bibles, with their thousands of pages and hard covers, stand out as the next option. Despite their similar shortcomings vis-a-vis theoretical/physical credibility, their potential usefulness as spiritual guides for beseiged students makes them an attractive choice. Of course, stocking public-school classrooms with Bibles intended to stop bullets would set up a vitally interesting First/Second Amendment clash — which, as any good educator would recognize, would be an important “teachable moment.”

Anyway, I think candidate Crozier — unlike me — has dangerously overthought the issue. Two simpler solutions immediately come to mind:

1. Fortify current textbooks with bullet-proof material. Many schools already require students to cover textbooks to prevent scratches; surely back-to-school stores in the Sooner State could accomodate a heightened demand for Kevlar-coated Hannah Montana wrapping paper.
2. Put guns under the desks.

Or, “Answers to Questions You Did Not Ask About Stock ‘Pump-and-Dump’ Scams”

Checking my spam filter just now, I noticed this email (from “Hermann Snell” at a fake .edu address), which had no images or files attached:

bald eagle aroma portend core
Check A R S S right now, stockjobbers drop the price, it’s time to get in
and get profit!
custom flip side foretold toothbrush

That’s it. As you can see — between the nonsense at the top and bottom, which happens to have the right number of syllables for a classic haiku — Hermann is trying to tell me that I should ask my stock broker about “ARSS.”

This stuff makes me crazy. I understand that regular spammers, whose typical inventory includes penis pills and counterfeit software, probably have enough of an interested market to make a few sales with every million targets. But my gut feeling has always been that people looking for stock tips were a little savvier than people buying C1aL!5 tabs on their coffee breaks.

Or so, for the sake of my wary faith in capitalism and market efficiency, I have hoped.

Another, equally powerful, gut feeling has always told me that nobody would go to the trouble to send these things if they didn’t work. As a New Yorker piece on Nigerian bank scams made clear several months ago, there really is a wealth of suckers out there.

(Related: Campaign managers always seem to think it’s critically important to post volunteers outside polling places on Election Day. I don’t want to believe this works, but why would they do it if it didn’t?)

Anyway!

Hermann’s email is the key ingredient for what’s known as a “pump-and-dump” scam, in which the spammer encourages lots of people to buy a low-traffic, mostly worthless stock in order to temporarily inflate the price and make the seller lots of money.

As you will have guessed, and as should be obvious to anyone even thinking about getting near a securities market, this is a no-win for buyers. But apparently it isn’t so obvious. A study published in April found that these emails reliably produce the very movement that their senders expect, and at least one guy has made a project of tracking just how well it works. This description of his results comes from the April study:

Cyr runs a Spam Stock Tracker since March 2005, where he keeps track of the performance of securities that have been advertised in spam messages. For each unique stock, he adds 1,000 shares to a fictive portfolio. As of March 15th, 2006, he (virtually) suffered a net loss of US$27,827 bar transaction costs.

So keep deleting them, I guess, unless you’re the type of person who takes stock tips from street mumblers or German Dadaist poets — I know you’re out there.

There seems to be some dispute over which “Monday Night Football” commentator — Joe Theismann or Tony Kornheiser — sucks more. I’m no great fan of either, but given the choice I’d kick Kornheiser out first.

As always, we can turn to the internet for an answer. FireTonyKornheiser.com was registered on September 26 but hasn’t been updated for weeks. For that reason, and because its owner suggests replacing Kornheiser with Female Sideline Reporter Suzy Kolber, I can’t endorse it.

Nor can I recommend FireJoeTheismann.com, which was registered more than two weeks earlier, on September 11, but as of this writing remains content-free and unavailable to the public. (FireJoeTheisman.com — with one n — was registered on August 31 and has a wonderfully succinct explanation for its existence. Check it out.)

According to Google, 29 pages include the phrase “Fire Joe Theisman”; 20 say “Fire Tony Kornheiser.” “Kornheiser sucks” appears on 243 pages, while “Theismann sucks” appears on 218.

We’ll call it a draw.

Good afternoon!

• Kevin McClatchy is the Donald Rumsfeld of Major League Baseball.  As the AP reported, he “will remain as the Pittsburgh Pirates’ chief executive officer and managing general partner, even though the franchise hasn’t had a winning season since he took control in 1996.” Prediction for 2007: 74-88.
• The fine folks at Fire Joe Morgan have posted this year’s MLB Team Chemistry Index, and the Cardinals, Phillies, Marlins and Brewers blew everyone else out of the water. Be sure to check out the whole list (and read the explanation of the formula at the bottom or you’ll miss the whole point).
• This email to Bill Simmons was posted with this week’s NFL picks: “The Raiders suck so bad that they are 15-point underdogs to a team that scores 12.2 points a game. This has to be a sports first. The sickest part? The Broncos are a mortal lock to cover.”
• Hockey season is underway! Basketball season is around the corner! Who cares!?

Good night!

Democracy week continues here at InfinitiveSplitter.com!

A nonprofit called Women’s Voices, Women’s Vote is trying to persuade the 20 million unmarried women who didn’t vote in 2004 to get their act together this time around. To that end, they’ve put together a series of TV ads featuring hot celebrity babes talking about their “first time.”

Examples:

• “I did a lot of research on the, um, positions that I liked…”
• “I wasn’t a kid anymore…”
• “I have been disappointed, yes, when I didn’t do it…”

And so on. It’s a pretty cute idea (or was, once upon a time), but here’s how mine would sound:

• “It was in a high-school gymnasium, and an old woman was there to walk me through it…”
• “I had to wait in line, and when it was my turn it only took about 30 seconds…”
• “When I was a kid I used to go with my parents and watch them do it…”
• “I did it with a machine, which didn’t feel quite right, and I’m still not really sure if it counted…”

And so on.