This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Final 2003 Email Rankings

The complete email results for 2003 have now been posted. This includes not just the top ten for the year, but as usual, the full counts broken down by month for anybody who sent me at least one personal email any time during the year. Enjoy!

Final 2003 Rankings

* I received 23663 personal emails. (Up 124% from 2002)
* On average that is 1972 messages per month, or 65 messages per day
* That email came from 258 different email addresses. (Up 26% from last year!)
* The top ten accounted for 85% of the email. (Up from 81% in 2002)
* 22 addresses made the monthly top tens this year. (Up from 18 in 2002)
* The lowest ranked monthly top ten winner on the annual list was ivanbou@compuserve.com (Ivan Bou) who came in at #25 for the year
* The highest ranked address that never made the monthly lists in 2003 was renshine@yahoo.com (Rеni Gorman) who came in at #19 for the year.

December 2003’s Top Ten

Those who made the list found out several weeks ago, but now, posted for the public, December 2003’s Top Ten Email list.

December 2003

Meanwhile, Matt decided he really liked keyboard shortcuts. Based on one message as a template that he could reply to, he would hit the shortcut for reply a few dozen times, then the shortcut for send a few dozen times. Shooting off absolutely identical emails very very quickly. I was online when this started, and immediately called him on using automation, which is against the rules of the contest, and is not counted. He explained his little keyboard method, and insisted that it was manual and not automated, and required work for each email. I was not overly impressed, but grudgingly admitted that some manual work had occurred. They were however completely identical emails, sometimes with many coming in a single second. There was no way to distinguish real emails for extra duplicates created by a filing error or various other things. I informed Matt that his actions were borderline, and he needed to be creating like other people who have tried over the years, and like Erica this month.

Goodbye Old Bull

Today in the mail I got the pay stub confirming that the last severance payment from my old employer has been direct deposited in my account. So at this point I am completely done with that part of my life. Goodbye Old Bull! Shall I say good riddance? Nah. They did a lot for me, especially in the first few years. Out of the just under 7 years I was there, I’d say the 3 were really good, 1 was horrible, and 3 were “bleh”. But overall, it was a good experience, and there are certain aspects of it I will miss. But it was definately time to move on.

There is one opportunity that is percolating right now that looks very good, and would involve a move away from Pennsylvania, even though I just got here. I have mentioned it to a few people in person and in email, but I won’t be saying anything more here until it is certain. I give it a good chance right now, but nothing has been finalized yet. So we shall see. With luck, it will come through and I can start there before I run out of available funds and have to start selling kidneys to pay the mortgage. (Not that anyone would want mine. :-)

More news when there is actual news. :-)

Presidental Succession Issues

I’ve always liked looking at the details of things such as the succession laws, electoral college procedures, and things like that. Because often times we think so much about how things NORMALLY work, that we forget that what really happens in extreme situations is not determined the way one might guess if one didn’t know, but instead by all sorts of arcane details that just never normally come into play in a way that makes a difference. The two articles below talk about some of the currently exisiting “holes” in the rules for what happens when there is death or disability in the Presidential or Vice-Presidental slots. Very interesting stuff.

Constitutional Accidents Waiting To Happen – Again
(Akhil Amar and Vikram Amar, FindLaw)

America cannot always prevent tragedy, but America often can, with relative ease, minimize the constitutional damage resulting from political assassins and the like. Yet the country’s current legal framework is notably flawed – a series of constitutional accidents waiting to happen, and in some cases waiting to happen again… we shall briefly catalogue some of the problems that can occur, and some simple nonpartisan solutions that lawmakers should adopt now – before tragedy strikes again. In future columns, we will offer more details; today we paint the big picture of continued constitutional unpreparedness.

(via OxBlog)

And also pointed to by OxBlog, even more in an earlier article by the same folks and some discussion in the New York Times of similar issues for the Congress.

Poor Little Penguins

Penguins Take Precipitous Fall From the Top
(Joe Lapointe, New York Times)

Twice the Stanley Cup champions, in 1991 and 1992, the Penguins are caught in hockey’s perfect storm. They have a low budget, the National Hockey League’s oldest arena, poor attendance and the worst record among the 30 teams. On this night against the Lightning, most of the scattered customers sat quietly, as if frozen. Even the beer stand behind the center-ice seats was closed.

I don’t follow sports. I don’t follow hockey. I don’t follow the Pens. But I do remember with fondness back in 91 and 92, my friends Chad, Al and Ivan, and perhaps others, sitting in my apartment sometimes to watch the Pens playoff games. I would sit behind my computer and pretend not to watch because sports was beneath me and all, but I watched, and watching Mario do his tricks was indeed fun, even if I had no conception of the rules of the game at all. It even prompted me to watch a few more Pens playoff games in later years, and even go to one in person a couple years ago with Rebecca and Chris. It was fun. I enjoyed it. I saw Mario do his thing, although not quite as nice as in 91 and 92, and they lost.

Anyway… shame to see this kind of story about them. Sniff. Oh well! Now I’ll go back to knowing absolutley nothing about this sort of thing for the next year. Just happened to stumble on the article. :-)

Cheney and Scalia Sitting in a Tree

I don’t have too much to say other than this really should be a straightforward issue here. There is obviously a personal relationship of some sort here, what with the hunting and flying around on Air Force 2, and Scalia should remove himself from the case. Even if it isn’t technically required, not doing so does not look good, and he should do it as a simple matter of his own integrity, and that of the court.

Scalia Was Cheney Hunt Trip Guest; Ethics Concern Grows
(David G. Savage and Richard A. Serrano, LA Times on Yahoo)

The revelation cast further doubts about whether Scalia can be an impartial judge in Cheney’s upcoming case before the Supreme Court, legal ethics experts said. The hunting trip took place just weeks after the high court agreed to take up Cheney’s bid to keep secret the details of his energy policy task force.

OK, *Now* Kerry is Ahead

OK, with the results of today’s primaries, Kerry *has* pulled ahead on delegates. In the comments to my last post on the delegate count, Randy posted lots of quotes about how Dean was dead, and asserted such himself. I just want to clarify that I was not disputing that fact.

I was complaining about the meta-talk in the media. All about the horserace. It all gets to be self-furfilling prophesy and all that. Everybody keeps hearing about how such and such is the front runner, or such and such is dropping, and people reevaluate their opinions of the candidates based on that sort of thing rather than on which candidates they actually agree with. Shame really.

Some of this would be alleviated if all the primaries were on the same day. But of course that would be less interesting. It would make brokered conventions much more likely though, which would be a REAL blast. I’m still hoping for one this year, but I guess things will probably consolidate like they usually do. We’ll see.

Anyway, I found another delegate total page. I like this graphical chart from CNN. I’ll probably be dropping it in my blogroll on the left and checking it regularly until things are settled. Check it out.

CNN Delegate Scorecard

The information on this page represents the current delegate count for each candidate by state. As candidates drop out, state parties refine their count or assign additional delegates, and unpledged delegates make their preference public, these numbers will be updated.

Political Book Mapping

This is a great analysis. Wish I’d thought of it!! It is tempting to go out and do a similar types of maps on different groupings of books. In any case, check it out. Fun analysis. And it uses graph theory!

Political Patterns on the WWW

I used the political books on the New York Times Bestseller List as a starting point for ‘snowball sampling’. In the network map above, two books are linked if they were bought together. The network is organized and displayed by an algorithm that looks at the pattern of connections and finds the emergent structure. Nodes with only one or two links, and unrelated clusters that had no bridging role, were removed for clarity.

(via BoingBoing)

I Am A Pennsylvanian

A few hours ago I went and took care of the last thing related to my move from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. I had already moved where I slept. And I moved all my stuff. And I got PA plates on my car. I did address changes on all my bills. Today I got a Pennsylvania drivers licence. They actually looked up the old licence I had in Pittsburgh, and I got the same drivers licence number as before. And so here I am, once again completely a resident of the great state of Pennsylvania.

At least for now.

I do regret that I forgot to take a picture of my NJ licence before I turned it in. Drat! Oh well.

But I am now fully Pennsylvanian! I guess. :-)

Delegate Counts

The way the media has been going talking about Iowa and New Hampshire, and Kerry’s wins there, you’d think he was crushing, and nobody else was even really in the picture, although there is some looking toward how Edwards will do in the round of voting coming up in the next 24 hours. But, one must remember that the vote totals in the primaries and such are not really what matters. What matters is Delegates to the convention. Some of those are allocated by primaries and caucuses. There are also superdelegates who are just prominant members of the party that can vote for whoever they want.

In terms of total numbers of delgates who are already committed, Dean is still ahead. It may not stay that way. But the situation right now is actually much closer than you would gather by looking at the reports.

Cumulative Delegate Totals
(USA Today)

114 – Howard Dean
103 – John Kerry
41 – John Edwards
31 – Wesley Clark
25 – Joseph Lieberman

That’s the current top 5. Of course, we’ll see how that changes after the voting today.