Change we can depend on and other phrases

Change we can depend on.

• Why grocery stores have change machines at the end of the checkout stand.
  

The ticket for America

• Because we're speeding too fast into the twentieth century.
  

A leader you can believe in

• Unlike God or the tooth fairy.
  

Life happens

• At least on Earth
• At the moment
  

I may update as I think of some more. Updated 10-01-08

Red Meat and How Obama Needs to Run Against McCain

I've been feeling that Obama's campaign has been missing the red meat of attacks at Bush. Tonight Tuesday at the Democratic convention, we've been getting some well placed licks in, but there needs to be more.

When people complain that they don't know what Obama stands for, I think they really mean, lay out what Bush stands for and why you are different. Not just who you are for, but what you are for, what you will do and most importantly how that is different from who Bush is for, what Bush has done and what Bush wants for the country.

TalkingPointsMemo has an excellent further discussion that they need to really explain that McCain is worse than Bush. Not the same as, but much much worse. As a marketing gimmick, 'the same as' is bland and boring. The Democrats need to explain what Bush is for, what McCain is for and why that will be even worse for the country than Bush. Not just as bad as, but much much worse.

Who Won the Olympics?

I'd like to congratulate the Netherlands Antilles, population 192,000, for the best Olympic medal points per million capita in the 2008 Olympics, followed by Jamaica, Bahamas and Iceland. Netherlands Antilles had a total medal points per capita score of over 10, and is the only country in the world with a score over 1o.

As in my earlier posts, a country's medal score is 3 for each gold medal, 2 for each silver and 1 for each bronze. Divide by the population size (nearest million, or, if under 11 million, then to rounded 2 digits accuracy) as given by Wikipedia's list of countries by population size (dated Aug 24 2008). Rather than saying "medal points per capita" over and over, lets abbreviate that MPC.

Interestingly, three Caribbean island nations top our list followed by Iceland. Perhaps not so surprising, Netherlands Antilles, Iceland and Bahamas are the three smallest countries on our population list.

In total, 88 countries won a total of 302 gold medals, 304 silver medals and a whopping 353 bronze medals for a total of 959 medals and 1867 possible points in a set of countries with 5.4 billion population, which represents about 81% of the world's population. The average result was .343 medal points per million people. If your favorite country is above .343, they are above average.

Australia (pop 89 mill) was the best scoring 'large' country, defined as a country with close to 100 million or more people, ranked 7th with a score of 4.24 MCP. Britain (pop 98 mill) at 1.61 MPC is ranked 23. The US (pop 305 mill), the overall medal count leader (110 medals) comes in above average at .72 MPC and ranked 45th. China, the overall medal points leader (223 medal points, 100 medals) and the overall gold medal leader with a whopping 51 gold medals ranks only 66th with a below average .17 MPC. Last place falls to India with .004 MPC, 3 medals, 1 gold and 2 bronze, but over a billion people.

In a ranking like this, there is something for nearly everyone. One can rank highly on medals, medal counts, population, wealth, as well as lack of wealth and lack of population. Getting any medals is quite an accomplishment for a small country.

Here with is the full table of all 88 countries with medals. Hope it's readable. Tried saving it as jpeg from pdf. Sigh. At the very bottom is a paste directly from excel which is more readable. Apologies all around.



Notes: Medal counts come from Yahoo, after the closing ceremonies. If gymnastics medals are redistributed following the investigation of various underage gymnasts, or any drug investigations, those medal changes are not included here.

Sorry for the small font. Directly pasting from Excel wasn't wonderful, but I'll do it below, it may be easier to read. And I have no idea what "Click Here" is doing in this table. I deleted it 4 or 5 times, but it insists on reappearing.

								points per
		Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Points	Pop	capita
1	Netherlands_Antilles	0	1	0	1	2	0.19	10.53
2	Jamaica	6	3	2	11	26	2.7	9.63
3	Bahamas	0	1	1	2	3	0.33	9.09
4	Iceland	0	1	0	1	2	0.32	6.25
5	Slovenia	1	2	2	5	9	2	4.50
6	Norway	3	5	2	10	21	4.8	4.38
7	Australia	14	15	17	46	89	21	4.24
8	Bahrain	1	0	0	1	3	0.76	3.95
9	Estonia	1	1	0	2	5	1.3	3.85
10	Mongolia	2	2	0	4	10	2.6	3.85
11	New_Zealand	3	1	5	9	16	4.3	3.72
12	Cuba	2	11	11	24	39	11	3.55
13	Belarus	4	5	10	19	32	9.7	3.30
14	Trinidad_&_Tobago	0	2	0	2	4	1.3	3.08
15	Georgia	3	0	3	6	12	4.4	2.73
16	Latvia	1	1	1	3	6	2.3	2.61
17	Slovakia	3	2	1	6	14	5.4	2.59
18	Denmark	2	2	3	7	13	5.5	2.36
19	Netherlands	7	5	4	16	35	16	2.19
20	Hungary	3	5	2	10	21	10	2.10
21	Lithuania	0	2	3	5	7	3.4	2.06
22	Armenia	0	0	6	6	6	3	2.00
23	Britain	19	13	15	47	98	61	1.61
24	Croatia	0	2	3	5	7	4.6	1.52
25	Czech_Republic	3	3	0	6	15	10	1.50
26	Kazakhstan	2	4	7	13	21	15	1.40
27	South_Korea	13	10	8	31	67	48	1.40
28	Finland	1	1	2	4	7	5.3	1.32
29	Switzerland	2	0	4	6	10	7.6	1.32
30	Azerbaijan	1	2	4	7	11	8.5	1.29
31	France	7	16	17	40	70	64	1.09
32	Bulgaria	1	1	3	5	8	7.6	1.05
33	Germany	16	10	15	41	83	82	1.01
34	Canada	3	9	6	18	33	33	1.00
35	Ukraine	7	5	15	27	46	46	1.00
36	Russia	23	21	28	72	139	142	.98
37	Sweden	0	4	1	5	9	9.2	.98
38	Panama	1	0	0	1	3	3.3	.91
39	Ireland	0	1	2	3	4	4.4	.91
40	Italy	8	10	10	28	54	60	.90
41	Spain	5	10	3	18	38	46	.83
42	Romania	4	1	3	8	17	21	.81
43	Mauritius	0	0	1	1	1	1.3	.77
44	Kenya	5	5	4	14	29	38	.76
45	United_States	36	38	36	110	220	305	.72
46	Zimbabwe	1	3	0	4	9	13	.69
47	Poland	3	6	1	10	22	38	.58
48	Kyrgyzstan	0	1	1	2	3	5.3	.57
49	Greece	0	2	2	4	6	11	.55
50	Dominican_Republic	1	1	0	2	5	9.8	.51
51	Austria	0	1	2	3	4	8.3	.48
52	Belgium	1	1	0	2	5	10.6	.47
53	Portugal	1	1	0	2	5	10.6	.47
54	North_Korea	2	1	3	6	11	24	.46
55	Tajikistan	0	1	1	2	3	6.7	.45
56	Singapore	0	1	0	1	2	4.6	.43
57	Serbia	0	1	2	3	4	9.9	.40
58	Japan	9	6	10	25	49	128	.38
59	Uzbekistan	1	2	3	6	10	27	.37
60	Tunisia	1	0	0	1	3	10.3	.29
61	Moldova	0	0	1	1	1	3.8	.26
62	Argentina	2	0	4	6	10	40	.25
63	Ethiopia	4	1	2	7	16	79	.20
64	Turkey	1	4	3	8	14	71	.20
65	Taiwan	0	0	4	4	4	23	.17
66	China	51	21	28	100	223	1320	.17
67	Thailand	2	2	0	4	10	63	.16
68	Cameroon	1	0	0	1	3	19	.16
69	Ecuador	0	1	0	1	2	13	.15
70	Togo	0	0	1	1	1	6.6	.15
71	Israel	0	0	1	1	1	7.3	.14
72	Brazil	3	4	8	15	25	188	.13
73	Chile	0	1	0	1	2	17	.12
74	Morocco	0	1	1	2	3	31	.097
75	Algeria	0	1	1	2	3	34	.088
76	Malaysia	0	1	0	1	2	27	.074
77	Colombia	0	1	1	2	3	45	.067
78	Mexico	2	0	1	3	7	107	.065
79	I.R.Iran	1	0	1	2	4	70	.057
80	Sudan	0	1	0	1	2	39	.051
81	South_Africa	0	1	0	1	2	48	.042
82	Afghanistan	0	0	1	1	1	27	.037
83	Venezuela	0	0	1	1	1	28	.036
84	Indonesia	1	1	3	5	8	232	.034
85	Nigeria	0	1	3	4	5	148	.034
86	Vietnam	0	1	0	1	2	87	.023
87	Egypt	0	0	1	1	1	75	.013
88	India	1	0	2	3	5	1137	.004
	Total	302	304	353	959	1867	5438	.343

Why McCain is dangling Pro-Choice Ridge & Lieberman

Why is McCain dangling pro-choice veep prospects Ridge and Lieberman in front of the hard right anti-choice crowd? Mark Halperin on CNN was saying that he thought McCain was softening up the wing-nuts to more easily accept Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty or former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Romney was pro-choice until he switched to run for president as a Republican.

Whether this is true or not, I propose a second benefit from this major dangle: it speaks to the uncommitted electorate McCain is a `maverick' and `independent' in that he could support a pro-choice running mate. It makes a play for voters for whom being anti-choice is a deal breaker. I believe that McCain's anti-choice position is not widely known. Even during his interview with Warren at the Saddleback church, people could overlook what his beliefs on choice will do to abortion availability in this country.

This is all about politics. It is a play for voters, and not a true tell on his feelings about abortion.

Olympic Update

An update on Olympic medal country rankings by points, with medals ranked as gold=3points, silver=2points, and bronze=1point. This is a list of all countries with at least 10 points. I've also included population rounded to the nearest million, and points per capita (points divided by population). Population was taken from wikipedia's list of countries by population. I rounded population to the nearest million, which, for small countries can introduce a large relative error.

Conspicuous by its absence, India has exactly 3 points, with 1 gold medal.

Winner of the gold in the points per capita category is Jamaica, with Australia and New Zealand as silver and bronze runners up. All three countries are 3.0 or higher. Above 2.0 but below 3.0 we have Denmark and Slovakia. Remember that this is only countries with at least 10 points, which happens to be the top 30 countries at the moment.

Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	Points	Pop	pts per capita
China	43	14	19	76	176	1320	.13
United_States	25	26	26	77	153	305	.50
Russia	10	14	18	42	76	142	.54
Great_Britain	15	9	8	32	71	61	1.16
Australia	11	11	12	34	67	21	3.19
Germany	11	7	8	26	55	82	.67
South_Korea	8	10	6	24	50	48	1.04
France	4	11	14	29	48	64	.75
Japan	8	6	8	22	44	128	.34
Italy	6	6	7	19	37	60	.62
Ukraine	5	4	8	17	31	46	.67
Netherlands	3	5	4	12	23	16	1.44
Canada	2	6	4	12	22	33	.67
Spain	3	4	2	9	19	46	.41
Cuba	1	5	5	11	18	11	1.64
Romania	4	1	3	8	17	21	.81
Belarus	1	3	7	11	16	10	1.60
Poland	3	3	1	7	16	38	.42
Kenya	2	3	2	7	14	37	.38
Kazakhstan	1	3	4	8	13	15	.87
New_Zealand	2	1	4	7	12	4	3.00
Czech_Republic	2	3	0	5	12	10	1.20
Denmark	2	1	3	6	11	5	2.20
North_Korea	2	1	3	6	11	24	.46
Slovakia	3	1	0	4	11	5	2.20
Jamaica	2	2	0	4	10	3	3.33

Note: The table didn't show completely, so I have had to re-edit and repost this.