The SoapBoxers

Gerrymandering

There will be gubernatorial elections in 38 states in 2009 and 2010. This is causing great happiness or sorrow among hard core party members, depending on the situation.

Why the big fuss?

In 2010, states will redraw district lines as a result of the census. Some states will lose members of the US House of Representatives, other will gain members, and some will simply redraw lines to balance the number of residents in each district.

Sounds incredibly straightforward and boring, huh?

Unfortunately, there is a lot of politics inside the art of redrawing the lines. If the governor is from the same party as the party that controls the state legislature, they can basically redraw the lines in any manner they see fit, and there’s not much the minority party can do.

The key is to consolidate the constituents of your opponent into as few districts as possibly. Let’s take an example state that has 100 voters and 10 congressional districts. 60 are party A, 40 are party B. If the voters are equally dispersed among the districts, party A would win 6-4 in every district and thus all of the states representatives in the US House would be from party A.

Let’s mix those voters up bit.

District 1: 10 A, 0 B
District 2: 10 A, 0 B
District 3: 10 A, 0 B
District 4: 6 A, 4 B
District 5: 4 A, 6 B
District 6: 4 A, 6 B
District 7: 4 A, 6 B
District 8: 4 A, 6 B
District 9: 4 A, 6 B
District 10: 4 A, 6 B

By pushing half of the party A voters into districts 1-3, party B created a situation where they hold an advantage in 6 of the 10 districts!

Obviously, in the real word, it isn’t quite that blatant. But politicians do draw some funny looking districts in an attempt to minimize the impact of the opponents.  The name Gerrymander is in “honor” of Elbridge Gerry who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1810-1812.  Some of the districts drawn during his tenure resembled a salamander.  Gerry + salamander = gerrymander.

I loathe this practice nearly as much as I hate filibusters. I don’t know if there is a perfect solution, but I would propose creating a bipartisan commission to draw the boundaries – half of the members would be from each party. They would be forced to agree on a compromise (which, in theory, should be a map that is fair to both parties).

And if they refuse to agree? They would not be allowed to hold the next scheduled house race until the situation was resolved. A situation could be created where a state did not have representation for a period of time. Can you imagine the impact if a state like Texas or California was unable to seat representatives? My hope would be that the fear of backlash from voters would be enough to force a compromise.

Note: this is the second post of Monday.  Scroll down to see the sports update post.

Some of you may be wonder about the identity of the benevolent soul who is allowing me to use some of his server space.  It is none other than Lazy Man of LazyManAndMoney.com.  If you haven’t been to his site, check it out.  He blogs about personal finance (and his beloved Red Sox and Patriots) from his own unique perspective.  There’s a good bit of humor, which is always a good thing.

Lazy Man also helped with several technical issues related to the setup.  Meaning that he did the setup and then troubleshot anything weird that happened.  Lazy has also provided a lot of useful information over the past few months.  To be honest, I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog if it wasn’t for him.  I had pretty much abandoned my writing for a decade.  It was his encouragement – and his own success – that caused me to launch the blog.

There is some news stuff on the blog:

In order to leave comments, you will need to put in a name and email address.  No, I am not collecting the addresses for anything (ugh, I would NEVER do that), and they will not be displayed along with your comments.  If you want a cool picture displayed with your comments, register at Gravatar.com.  You register your email address and then choose a picture to use as your avatar.  Then, any time you leave comments at a Gravatar-enabled site (and there are plenty) your image will be displayed.  (Note – the avatar is tied to your email address, not your name).

One more new thing.  You will start seeing “related websites” at the bottom of each article.  This is the result of a “plug-in” I am using that searches other blogs for related content.  I don’t have any control over the sites that are displayed, but I hope you enjoy the sites that are displayed.  Some of them might provide further evidence of a point I am making; others might completely contradict me.  For those of you who are WordPress bloggers, the plug-in is “Blog Traffic Exchange” and can be downloaded from http://www.blogtrafficexchange.com/related-websites/

Today is the official start of the baseball season (although most teams begin games tomorrow). I have been waiting for this day since October. While most of you are watching the NCAA championship game tonight, I’ll be watching baseball.

First, let me provide a link to my earlier post of some of the best baseball web sites, in case you missed it. If you didn’t see this when it was initially posted, do yourself a favor and take a look at it now.

My Colorado Rockies have decided to keep top prospect CF Dexter Fowler with the big club to begin the year. I’m a big fan of Dex. He will be a reserve outfielder to begin the year, but hopefully he can play his way into the lineup and stay there. Fowler was a 14th round draft pick in 2004. He would have gone much higher, but he had basketball scholarship offers, and teams were not sue if he would sign a contract if he was drafted (many baseball players are drafted out of high school, and a lot f them decide to attend college rather than sign a pro contract.) The Rockies gambled, drafted him in the 14th round, and offered a signing bonus of $925,000 – much more than the typically bonus for a 14th rounder. So far, this appears to be money well spent.

It appears that Rockies prospect Ian Stewart will not take over the third base job, as Garrett Atkins has not yet been traded. Look for Clint Hurdle to get Stewie’s bat into the lineup often, playing him at 3B, 2B, and OF.

Another guy to watch is catcher Chris Iannetta. If you look at he stat, Iannetta actually had a breakout year in 2008, but a limited number of at bats kept his numbers down. If he can avoid having Yorvit Torrealba vulture some starts, Iannetta could emerge as an elite offensive catcher.

One of my fantasy leagues dried up. This was a bit disappointing, as it was a keeper league, and I had drafted for the long term when the league was created in 2007. My team was looking like it would be a very strong contender for a decade. I suspect that some other GMs came to this realization, and that this is a reason why the league folded.

Other stories from around baseball:

Potential Hall of Famer Gary Sheffield was released by the Tigers with 14M and 1 year left on his contract. Baseball contracts are guaranteed, so Sheffield will make 14M even if he does not play this year. If another teams signs him, they would only have to pay him the league minimum, with the Tigers picking up the bulk of the contract.

Andruw Jones is going to stick with the Texas Rangers. I guess he and hitting coach Rudy Jaramillio have a good thing going. I’m hoping Andruw bounces back after a horrible 2008.

North Carolina will face Michigan State tonight in the NCAA title game. Many people expected UNC to be in the title game; few expected MSU to be. Tyler Hansbrough will try to cap off a tremendous career with a national title, while Michigan State will attempt to get revenge for a savage beating suffered earlier in the year against UNC

Baylor, the subject of an earlier article, fell just one victory short of a championship, falling to Penn State in the NIT title game. Sure, it’s just the NIT, but after everything Baylor has been through, they should be extremely proud of their post-season accomplishments. The coach of the year awards aren’t typically given to the NIT runner-up, but maybe we make an exception this year? Great job, Scott Drew.

The Jay Cutler fiasco is coming to a head. The Broncos were involved in trade discussions for Matt Cassell (Cassell ended up going to the Chiefs) and Cutler has been very upset ever since. The Broncos have now said that they are looking to trade Cutler.

The police officer who detained Texans player Ryan Moats while Moats’ mother-in-law was dying in a hospital has resigned. Yes, Moats ran a red light, but this could have been handled much better. The cop could have taken Moat’s information, told him to report to the police station in he morning, and let him go. Instead, he kept him away from hospital room, despite the pleading of nurses and another cop. During this time, Moat’s mother-in-law died.

Donte Stallworth was charged with vehicular manslaughter after he hit a man with his car. Stallworth says he flashed his lights to warn the man, who was allegedly outside of the crosswalk. Working against Stallworth is a blood alcohol level in excess of the legal limit.

NFL prospect BJ Raji, though to be a top 5-10 pick, will likely slide down the draft board after a positive drug test. This could potentially cost Raji tens of millions of dollars.

A friend offered to host my blog on his server space. That means that I will be jumping ship from blogger and landing on my own domain at www.ObservingCasually.com Note: I have posted the same article in the old and new locations. If you are currently reading this, you are in the NEW location.

Please update your bookmarks/favorites accordingly. If you are currently subscribing via RSS (and very few of you are), you will have to resubscribe from the new site.

I have also decided on a schedule for the blog:

Monday: Sports
Tuesday: News
Wednesday: Wildcard (anything goes)
Thursday: People, places, historical events
Friday: Fiction Friday
Weekend: Wildcard

I will certainly miss a few days along the way, but this should give you a better idea of what to expect.

I do appreciate Blogger getting me off the ground with this blog. Blogger has a pretty easy learning curve, and it is definitely a good tool for beginners.

This is a 2-fer Thursday – 2 posts for the price of one. We won’t have these every week, but every now and then, I’ll do one. After you read this article, scroll down to read the Sporting News post.

I was startled the other night when I realized that my box of corn dogs contained only five dogs. In the past, it had always contained six. Since I am in the habit of eating three corn dogs at once, this was a traumatic turn of events.

All across the consumer landscape, changes are afoot. The manufacturers are in a difficult position. On one hand, many of them are seeing steep increases in costs. On the other hand, they are hesitant to raise prices in this economy and lose customers to competitors who don’t change prices.

Caught in this bind, the companies have gotten creative. Many companies are retaining the same physical dimensions of the package, but reducing the quantity of the product. It’s not just corn dogs, either. Grab your jar of peanut better and flip it upside down. See that – the bottom is concave! Fun size candy bars? They have gotten even smaller – many of them are narrower than they have been in the past.

Even the Girl Scouts have are going this – you’re getting one less ounce in your box of cookies. Pay attention to the food you’re buying and you’ll see other examples of content downsizing.

Some people might shrug this off and see it as an effective involuntary weight loss program. Not me – I’m a thin person and I need my food to make sure I don’t blow away in the wind.

Companies – if you need to raise the price, raise the price. An extra fifty cents in the grocery store will be a lot less annoying to me that noticing one fewer corn dog when I open the box.

I started subscribing to the Sporting News a few months ago. The subscription rate was cheap, so I figured I would give it a shot.

I have been pretty disappointed. It doesn’t seem to stack up very well against other sports publications and web sites. In particular, its analysis of statistics can be rather poor at times.

The March 30th edition is a case in point. There is an article related to the shortness of a running back’s career. An inset box titled “built for the short run” shows the average years of service for the starters at various positions in week 1 of the NFL season.

I assume that we were to take these numbers and draw a conclusion about the average length of an NFL career for those positions – but I would be really hesitant to do that, since that would be a poor use of the data. It completely ignores bench players and the stage of a player’s career – maybe this year’s draft class just had a great crop of running backs.

Take this example: let’s say that every NFL team had a 10 year veteran at running back in week 1. Then, in week 2, they yanked the veterans and plugged in rookies.

If we run the Sporting News stat, the average years of service would be 10 years for the starters in week 1 and would then slide dramatically to an average of 1 year of service for the starters in week 2. Yet, the cast of players didn’t change, nor did the expected career length.

The model is simply a poor fit – it does not measure what the Sporting News is trying to make it measure. It would be like taking the three members of my family, calculating the average age, and declaring this to be the average life span.

(Note: this article was originally truncated. I apologize for the confusion)

My daughter is 19 months old. She has a quite a few toys, some of which are pretty cool – such as a rocking eelphant and a stuffed dog that can sing a bunch of songs (incredibly, the dog is still on it original battery, in spite of the fact that it is constantly turning itself on). Most of the time, however, she will eschew these toys in favor of her favorite non-toy items.

Whenever I am lying of the floor, she loves to crawl across my legs repeatedly. Sometimes she will just lay with her torso across my legs. She’s perfectly content to stay in that position until daddy’s legs fall asleep – or even longer.

She also likes paper. I don’t just mean wrapping paper or other colored papers. She also loves plain white printer paper. We can’t even leave paper loaded in the printer, because she’ll take it out and try to play with it.

My daughter eats these little Gerber dinners in a box. They are essentially a miniaturized TV dinner. She absolutely loves playing with the little box the meals come in.

We have coasters on the end tables. Well, we try to have coasters on the end tables. We have little fabric coasters and the thirstystone coasters – she loves all of them.

We try to keep the remote control out of her reach, but if it gets left too far toward the front of the end table, she’ll notice within seconds and grab it in an effort to change the channel to something better.

She’ll leave the cordless phone alone for long stretches, and then suddenly will be grabbing at it constantly until we put it out of her reach. She had attempted to dial a few times, but has not yet successfully completed a call.

She also loves to get into the phones books – particular the big yellow pages. The handful of takeout menus near the phone books are even greater prize.

Hey, you can see through them, and they make cool noises when you hit stuff with them. What’s not to like?

It’s a cliché, but I sometimes wonder why we even bother to buy the toys. She would definitely be happier with the boxes.

The Rocky Mountain News recently won an award for overall excellence from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) in the category of large circulation newspapers. Unfortunately, the award will ring a bit hollow for the Rocky Mountain News, as the newspaper ceased operations permanently on February 27, just a bit short of its 150th anniversary.

This is an award winning newspaper with a lot of fans and a long history, unable to find a buyer. The writers of the Rocky are trying to get enough financial support from the public to continue operations, launching the site www.indenvertimes.com. The baseball writers who cover the Colorado Rockies (my favorite team) have launched their own site, www.insidetherockies.com. I like what is being done on these sites – lots of good ideas.

The plight of the Rocky is hardly unique. A number of large newspapers are in bad financial shape. Is this merely a temporary down turn due to the poor economy, or is the printed newspaper becoming the buggy whip of the 21st century?

I hate to say it, but it may be the latter.

When newspapers first became popular, they were the only way that most people could receive the news. They had a virtual monopoly on news.

The radio came along, and then the television. They provided breaking news in a timelier manner than the newspapers, but the newspapers still had a very distinct advantage. The consumer could decide when they wanted to read the news in a newspaper, whereas the radio and TV stations dictated the time of their news.

The advent of the internet was concerning to the print media, but for a while, there was relatively limited information on the internet and there were large portions of the population who did not have access.

Today, the internet has incredible coverage of almost every topics, and nearly everyone has access, often 24 X 7 access, and sometimes on their cell phone. With the popularity of WiFi, people can surf news websites while eating in a restaurant. I have not yet done this – I actually grab a physical newspaper if I am going to ready while I eat – but I have seen numerous examples of “surf and turf”.

Advertisers have been following consumers and have also flocked to the internet. In the early days, only the big sites had advertisers. Even sites with a decent following (such as my Alabama site) didn’t have advertisers because the operators were unable to navigate the hoops necessary to procure advertising.

Times have changed. Today, people will jump through the hoops for you. This little blog has advertisers (most notably, Tyson Chicken seems to pop up a lot). What did I do to see this up? Not much. I clicked a few buttons. Google (which owns blogger.com) finds advertisers via their AdSense network (they take a portion of the revenue, of course). The advertisers can bid on certain key words, and in the future they will be able to target people based on their browsing histories (see the “privacy” box on the right side of the screen if you have concerns about this).

Today’s internet advertisers can even target their ads for particular times of the day. I see the Tyson ads – on my blog and other places around the internet – very often during prime eating hours. This makes a lot of sense. Advertising a food product at 5 PM makes a lot more sense than advertising it at 10 PM. Also, most of the ads are on a “pay per click” basis, meaning that advertisers don’t pay a penny unless someone actually clicks on the ad and goes to the advertiser’s web site.

Given these factors, how can newspapers succeed? First of all, keep the customers you have. Until recently, my wife and I subscribed to a local newspaper. However, the carrier was horrible with his aim, only rarely delivering the newspaper to the doorstep. We made repeated calls to the newspaper, but the problem never went away. Finally, we got annoyed with constantly digging through the bushes to find the newspaper and canceled it. We felt that the newspaper was completely ignoring our complaints; thus we felt that it was only fair that we completely ignore the existence of their product.

Beyond avoiding alienating customers, what can the newspapers do? I’m not an expert on the industry, but this is what I see from the point of The Soap Boxers:

First and foremost, you must have an online presence of some sort. If people can’t find news stories on your web site, you’ll be perceived as a dinosaur.

You should focus a large amount of effort on the coverage of local stories. People aren’t going to grab your paper to see your version of the latest national story. There are hundreds of place where they can find this information online. Coverage of local news and local sports is different, though – people have a limited number of sources for this information.

Finally, use teasers. Perhaps you could have a three part biography of a local hero. The first part would be available online, but the rest would only be available in the print edition.

I really started getting serious about my writing about six weeks ago. At the time, I set goals for my word counts in future months (I’m somewhat obsessive about that). At the time, I expected to start with 8500 combined words in February for the blog and a few other writing projects. By August, I hoped to build up to 17,000 combined words per month for all of the projects.

Well, it’s March, and the other projects have been shelved for now – but I have managed to hit the 17,000 word mark, well ahead of schedule. Considering how little free time I seem to have most of the time, I’m pretty happy with that. I hadn’t written consistently in about a decade and was worried that I would quickly run out of things to say – but my head still seems to be full of words (probably because of all the games of Wordscraper I play on Facebook). Overall, I’m happy with the writing aspect of the blog.

I have a handful of loyal visitors and a bunch of other folks who drop in from time to time. I’m not quite where I hoped to be in terms of numbers of readers, but I’m not overly disappointed. Quality over quantity, right? ☺

February’s posts skewed toward sports a bit more than I would have liked. To be certain, there will always be a large chunk of the blog devoted to sports, simply because I am a sports nut. However, I will try to mix in a few more topics on a regular basis.

During the next month of two, the blog will be gaining a bit more structure. I will try to set aside certain days of the week of month for specific topics. I have already begun this with Fiction Fridays. I will attempt to write a new short story to be published on the blog every Friday. This might be overly aggressive, but I’ll give it a shot. Sports will probably take up residence on Mondays (and probably one other day a week) because this is a topic where freshness is important, and weekends tend to be a bit better for writing. I’m sure you are stunned to find out that some of the content (the fiction, for example) is written several days in advance! It is also quite possible that I might need to scale back to 5-6 articles per week. I have a full time job and family obligations, and can’t always set aside time to write.

I will also try to add a few more fun things for the readers. In April, three well known personal finance bloggers will swing by TCO to participate in a contest. I’ll keep the details minimal, just to keep you curious.

As the future direction becomes clearer, I’ll provide more information. There will not be drastic changes – for the most part, I’ll simply be realigning the schedule. If you have any suggestions, feel free to drop me a line at Kosmo@ObservingCasually.com

The sky is falling!

My projected national champion Memphis and runner-up Duke lost within minutes of each other. My bracket is ruins … once again, I’ve have to wait until next year.

I’m glad that baseball season is almost here.