The Treatment for Jon Stewart Withdrawal

I have a question for those of you who – like me – still miss The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

What have you been watching to fill that void?

The current Daily Show with Trevor Noah has its high points, but it lacks the spark and punch of the John Stewart version. Maybe he needs more time.

The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (which usually airs after initial showing of The Daily Show) is very good, but sometimes its satire degrades to silliness.

This Week Tonight with John Oliver is brilliant, but only on once a week.

I would also like to call your attention to Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Sharp and pointed as a raised scalpel. It is on TBS and the schedule seems to be irregular, so catch it on demand or the Internet.

On to the regular networks, Steven Colbert's show is often right on, but it has to fulfill the rites of the night-time talk show.

All of the above are from Daily Show alumni. The other I would like to nominate is an occasional brilliant monologue from former Saturday Night Live fake new host Seth Myers.

There is still great political satire to be had from your television or other device if it is properly-connected (or maybe improperly-connected, if that’s how you roll) , with great writing and really good points to be made.

But I still miss Jon.

Happy π Day of the Century — Revisited

Happy Pi Day everybody!

When I say Pi Day, I am, of course, referring to the date, which, if written like a decimal (and, ignoring the first two digits of the year) reads like this: 3.1416. This is an approximation of π, pronounced Pi, which is the Greek letter used to stand for the irrational number you get if you divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter – supposing your circle is very round and your instruments are very good.

You may recall that, last year, all the Pi-Geeks made a big deal about March 14 being the Pi Day of the Century.

I disagree. Being as, year year’s date is 3.14.16, and most of us round 3.141592653589793238462643… to 3.1416, I think today is the real Pi Day of the Century! 

Celebrate with me. Eat some Pie. But measure the circumference and diameter of your pie before you cut it, to experience the joy of π. Today is the day, or wait for 100 years to do it again! Or both!

This is What Happens when the Adults Leave the Room — because of Low Poll Numbers, of Course

I have watched the Democratic debates. I have watched the Republican Debates.

Although I fervently hope to see a Democrat elected in 2016, I have to admit that, for sheer entertainment value, the Republican Debates have been the one the watch.

Why? You know why: Donald J. Trump. It seems that the more outlandish his tactics and the more abusive his statements, his poll number go up and up.

Yes, it is true, in this last debate, he has been a little more low-key, maybe even — dare we say? — low energy, but his campaign still shows that it persists on wind and braggadocio.

I am a resident of Florida, and was not fond of Jeb Bush as governor. Well, until Rick Scott took his place. Then I kind of missed old Jeb. Oh, sorry, I meant to say Jeb! And some of us felt a little sorry for old Jeb! when he had to ask his audience "Please clap." 

Jeb Bush and John Kasich have been the adults in the room when it comes to the GOP debates. Now Jeb is gone and some of us can't help but feel a little sorry for the way he was beaten. Kasich will soon be off the stage, unless he does really well on March 15. Then...we shall see.

Not that Trump has not made statements that make sense. If you ignore all the times he has talked about punching protesters in the face, the statements he has made guaranteeing the size of his penis, you will occasionally catch these gems of logic.

            "In my opinion, we've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly, if they were there and if we could've spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems; our airports and all of the other problems we've had, we would've been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now.

            "We have done a tremendous disservice, not only to Middle East, we've done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have wiped away, and for what? It's not like we had victory.

            "It's a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized. A total and complete mess. I wish we had the $4 trillion or $5 trillion. I wish it were spent right here in the United States, on our schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart."

He said those things, and was immediately called out for them by Carly Fiorina. She said that those were the kind of statements she would expect to hear from a Democrat, and, yes, she was right. They were. Well, as my grandfather often said, even a broken clock is right twice a day, but that doesn’t mean that we want to vote one in a president. Yeah, we all thought my grandfather nipped at the sauce a little too often.

But, back to the Donald, who claims he has never even tasted the sauce, these occasional lapses into lucidity do not stop the possibility of a Trump presidency from scaring the hell out of many of us. 

We are now being told by some Republican pundits that a vote for Kasich is a vote for Trump. But would you really want to vote for pandering absentee-senator like Marco Rubio or the Satanic-seeming Ted Cruz? What horrible alternatives. 

I am so very happy that I have two much better possibilities vying to be the frontrunner of  the Democratic ticket. 

Most Democrats and many others have their favorite of the two. I will have more to say about both of them in upcoming posts.

 

Have you had your π Today?

Happy Pi Day everybody!

When I say Pi, I am, of course, referring to the date, which, if written like a decimal and ignoring the first two digits of the year reads like this: 3.1415.

This is an approximation of π, pronounced Pi, which is the Greek letter used to stand for the irrational number you get if you divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter – supposing your circle is very round and your instruments are very good.

This year, Pi-loving geeks are going all-out to celebrate this Pi Day of the Century. Because, at 9:26:53 in the morning – whenever that was or will be where you are – it can be read as 3.141592653, which is Pi to nine decimal places. Yep, you get a whole second to celebrate. Well, I guess two seconds, if you celebrate in the AM and PM. I suppose you can celebrate the PM as well. I certainly won’t tell. After all, it’s a Saturday night!

Here in most of North America and elsewhere, we just lost an hour to Daylight Saving Time. In a sense, we are celebrating the Pi Second an hour early. Does that mean our Pi will be underdone?  Not to mention the whole time zone question.

Pi is a big deal. Books have been written about it. People have memorized it to hundreds or thousands of digits. There is a great Youtube video, available here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r3cEKZiLmg&feature=youtu.be, showing pi printed out to one million digits. The length of the paper is more than a mile long. They unrolled the paper on an airport runway. That video has had more than a million views. Here is a video showing how that video was made, which contains additional facts about Pi. That making-of video is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99Welatppzk.

My good friend Steve Buchanan informs me that there is a movement afoot to take some of the importance off of π, a circle’s circumference divided by its diameter, and celebrating the irrational number beginning 6.28305… which represents the circumfrance of a circle divided by the circle’s radius. See the Youtube videos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hhjsSN-AiU.    

Also, see “Pi is Wrong” at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ.

This movement give that number, equal to 2π, the name of the Greek letter Tau – τ. There are a lot of reasons for putting emphasis on Tau rather than Pi, among them is the fact that many commonly used formulas use the radius of a circle, rather than the diameter.

So, will we celebrate Tau Day on 6/18 (June 18)? Why not?

Have you had your π Today? Maybe τ should wait for a few months and enjoy twice as much.

However, Pi has historical relevance, and I don't think it will be unseated from its place of importance in the minds of mathematicians and nonmathematicians anytime soon. 

For the reason stated above today is Pi day of the century. Or is it?

I would like to point out that next year's Pi day can be read 3.1416. That is as far as most people who use the number in calculations bother to travel right of the decimal point. Next year we can have the Pi day of the century -- not just for a second (or two seconds twelve hours apart) but all day!

Think about it. You have an entire year!

When We Said "Neglected" We Meant It. But, about "The Interview"

Now you know the meaning of "Dan's Neglected Blog."

So, it's not like nothing happened in 2014. But, somehow, I didn't find time to do even one post. 

There is so much I could have commented on: The relative success of Obamacare, the Ice Bucket Challenge, the bloodbath that was the 2014 midterm elections. 

I am sorry that all of these subjects went neglected. Maybe I'll pick one or two and write about them in the future ― as a matter of fact, you can probably bet on it.

But, the one development that came closest to making me beat down the inertia causing me to not post was the hoopla over the comedy The Interview.   

Somebody hacked Sony's computes and stole and distributed gigabytes of secret, confidential, and personal data, as revenge for Sony Pictures' producing and planned distribution of the film ― not a critically-acclaimed documentary, or controversial work of art, or anything of that earthshaking variety ― but a comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. Just a little comedy about the murder of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who seems to lack the capacity to step back and laugh at himself, the way the rest of the world spends so much us its time doing.

Should Sony have been storing so much information about its employees and former employees on its servers? Probably not, but that is beside my present point.

Threats ― threats of the nasty terrorist-style variety ― were made against moviegoers and theater-owners who dared show the movie. Corporations controlling  theater chains and shopping malls  made the decision to forgo, not only the Christmas Day release of what would have certainly been a record-breaking opening, but showing the movie at all. It still was presented at a few independent theaters and has been put up for online streaming. So far, no North Korean missiles  have hit anyone's Netflix streaming device ― unless such streaming device just happened to be floating in the middle of the ocean, perhaps thrown overboard by an angry cruise passenger who didn't realize how much the cruise ship's WiFi costs or how creakingly slow it is ― when North Korea launched one of its less-than-spectacular missile tests. It could have happened at some time.

And to think, all of this ruckus could have been avoided if Sony had quickly called back the film and re-shot parts of it and reedited the finished product to include frequent shots of Dennis Rodman. Had they had the forsight to do that, Kim Jong Un would not have known what to do. Why his little head might have exploded, leaving that fez-like hairdo (or hairdon't) of his to spin wildly into the air ― possibly landing in the middle of the ocean on top of a floating Roku box. 

The one thing that I find most interesting about this controversy is the total lack of controversy among people I know who generally can't agree on anything else.

Nearly everyone I have talked to said they would have at least strongly considered taking some time out of their Christmas day activities to support Free Speech by seeing The Interview. This goes for people who love Seth Rogen and for those who hate his raunchy comedies.

President Obama criticized Sony and the movie chains for backing down to the terrorists and almost nobody criticized him for stepping up and making the statement. This may be the first thing Obama has done that has not caused the red states to call for his impeachment. We were united as a country on the issue of freedom of speech.

is this what we need as a nation? More attacks from annoying little dictators on our basic rights to make us stand together?

Kim Jong Un may have done us a favor of sorts. A very small favor. A very small favor with a funny hairstyle.

11-22-13

Fifty years ago today, I was eight years old and in the second grade. I had been suspended from the school cafeteria for two weeks for "Talking back" to a lunchroom worker following a fight with another kid.

So, I returned after lunch to find a classmate  named Rusty telling everyone how the president had been "shot in the head!" 

Most of us thought Rusty was just making  stuff up. 

When we got into the classroom, a very sober Mrs. Behunnen told us what had happened and what a terrible thing it was for our country. She told us the flags would fly half-staff. 

My parents were sad. My grandmother cried. I was annoyed because some of my favorite TV shows were cancelled. I did see part of the funeral on TV. 

However, even at the time, I was old enough and aware enough to know that something had changed for all of us, and not for the better.

It was not until weeks and months had passed that I learned what an understatement that was.