Some Blog Site

Here are some entries for the Hindsight is 20/20 Department:

• Maybe a college team that didn’t win its conference shouldn’t be in the playoffs ahead of the team that beat it and did win the conference.
• Maybe the Heisman should be awarded after the bowl games.
• Maybe we shouldn’t doubt the Packers, especially if Aaron Rogers makes a declaration as such.

Regarding the second point: maybe Lamar Jackson had a lackluster bowl performance because he’s not that good. Or maybe it was because LSU was looking to shutdown the Heisman winner. Or maybe it was because Jackson already won the Heisman so he wasn’t very motivated. There may be other reasons too, but all of them reinforce the idea that the Heisman should come later.

It is time once again to update Some Blog Site readers on the results of my Some Fun Site project to create a more accurate football prediction method.

The 2016 NFL season is over, and here are the most accurate methods for predicting regular-season game results:

• ITP: 62%
• MPWLS: 61%
• MPW: 60%

This is the first year that neither MPW nor MPWHFA have been the best predictors of wins. Since I didn’t change anything, I will chalk that up to a statistical anomaly. Or maybe I can blame the Rams for moving to LA.

(For the ideas behind the methods, please visit the Some Fun Site page.)

I realized recently that you can use animated GIFs for favicons. And if that sentence meant nothing to you, come back another day for a different topic.

In general, I’m a fan of animated GIFs. And I don’t care what anyone else says, I’m pronouncing it with a hard G. But animated GIFs don’t belong everywhere. And a favicon is one of those places because it looks like the page is always loading.

At first, it seemed like a good idea. It would set your webpage apart from the crowd. But people are so conditioned to having a repetitive movement near the tab bar mean that something is loading, so they would be annoyed with your page for not loading. If they paid close attention, they would see a difference between the loading icon and the moving favicon, but not many people are going to notice that detail.

In summary, don’t animate your favicons.

So long, 2016.

Mini movie review here. Went and saw Rogue One, or – as I like to call it – Star Wars episode 3.5.

Not a full review, because it’s Christmas break and I don’t feel like spending much time writing here.

Summary: It’s Star Wars-y. It has a lot of lasers shooting things and people. A bunch of people (and other beings) die, but without gore (as in true Star Wars fashion).

It is a better story than some other Star Wars movies, and it is told better than some other Star Wars movies. I liked it better than the recent Episode 7, as that had nothing really original whereas Episode 3.5 has an actual plot and good characters to go with it.

Of course, there were some parts that were hard to believe, even within the Star Wars universe. And that one near the end was particularly grating on one’s brain. But overall, it was much better to watch than Episode 7 and Episode 3 and Episode 2. Plus, it explains a number of things in Episode 4, which I won’t list here so as not to spoil anything.

I’ve noticed a number of news items or recent articles highlighting the belief that our lives as humans here on planet Earth are merely part of a giant computer simulation.

While many have wondered how we got here and what is the purpose of life, this particular answer does not really fulfill any of life’s great questions.

There are a number of ways one could go about analyzing the meaning of all that, but the main point that I see is that it is pointless. If life is a simulation, then someone is running (or has setup) the simulation. To say that our life is a giant computer simulation gets us nowhere. There is still a reality outside the simulation.

So one cannot cause reality not to exist by claiming that we are just part of a simulation. And if one is inside a simulation, there is no way to break out of it. Again, it’s pointless to believe this. It does make for an interesting diversion, and some entertaining movies have been made on that or a similar premise, but I think that belief is bad for us. Morally, socially, physically, spiritually – the negative implications of that belief outweigh the positive outcomes. Especially for those of us who live in reality.

There was a discussion in a nearby cubicle at work. They were discussing the start of winter. What drew me over there was that one guy was claiming winter didn’t start until Dec. 21st. This was about a week before Dec. 21st, and we had snow and temperatures below freezing for weeks already. In fact, he was arguing that it was not winter yet, and the temperature was about 10 degrees F with snow and ice all around.

I made my case that winter is a weather season, and it runs December and January and February around here. He said I was wrong because winter is defined as starting on December 21st. Who defines winter?

If you ask Google to define winter, you’ll get my definition. Another dictionary lists time from the winter solstice to the vernal equinox as the first definition, but also lists other definitions.

I stand by my assertion that winter is defined by the weather where you are. For example, I would argue that what makes winter in Michigan is different from what makes winter in Florida.

This guy was dead set on the astronomical definition of the winter solstice. I agree that the winter solstice is Dec 21st, but if anything that should be the middle of winter, since it is the lowest daylight. Consider it as the peak of winter. He argued that this would not be the case, because the coldest weather comes after Dec 21. That was amusing, because he was using weather as an argument against me, when he wouldn’t accept it as an argument against his case. I recognize there is a lag, but that’s due to thermal mass mostly; winter has started blowing in long before winter solstice.

To me, arguing that winter doesn’t start until the solstice is like arguing you’re not climbing a mountain until you’ve reached the peak.

FYI – this is related to the post about the summer season from a few months ago.