Why Romney won the Republican primary in 2012

From Wonkette

Romney won because he was less stupid than Perry and Bachmann and more superstitious than Huntsman. Romney became the nominee the same way Ramen noodles become dinner: There’s nothing else around, and you have to pick something. And the Hot Pockets believe in evolution.

Stroke of genius....

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Cheetah running - in Super Slow Mo.

From National Geographic, comes this amazing video of a Cheetah, in full sprint, in slow-mo.
Because while cats are cool, big cats are even cooler (video below)

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The Science Fiction Movie Supercut

From the Tubes of You

A remix video of over 100 science fiction movies. This took about a month of editing. In regards to the weird aspect ratio, we had to crop it because we were working with so many weird formats. The song is the Glitch Mob remix "Monday," original by Nalepa

Mind you, I'm not too sure that these are all good SF movies, but hey, there are still plenty of iconic ones in there...

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Gay women will marry your boyfriends!

aka: Why women red-state women support gay marriage
(video below)

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Suburban Sprawl - A Red-stater's best friend

Dave Troy has a couple of fascinating charts showing voting patterns vs population density  from this election - and the results should be pretty alarming for Republicans.
First, the election results (click to embiggen. A lot)

Note that below 800 people per square mile, people vote Republican, but above it, people vote Democratic. (Ignore the x-axis scale changing at 190 - otherwise the chart would get huge).
Or, to put this slightly differently, any densely populated area will vote Democratic.  But, we pretty much knew this, i.e., your default election results tend to show that the sparsely populated states are all Red, and the highly populated states are all blue (with the rest somewhere in between)

Looking at this a wee bit deeper though makes things a whole lot more interesting.

I'll let Dave explain this himself

Studying this graph, two important facts are revealed. First, there are very few cities in red states. Second, the few dense cities that do exist in red states voted overwhelmingly democratic.

Atlanta, New Orleans, St. Louis, Dallas, and Indianapolis are all in red states — and they all voted blue. And there are no true “cities” in red states that voted red. The only cities in red states that didn’t vote blue were Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City. And by global standards, they are not really cities — each has population density (about 1,000/sq. mi.) less than suburban Maryland (about 1,500/sq. mi.).

Historically, one can argue that red states have disproportionately affected election results by delivering a material number of electoral votes.

Red states simply run out of population at about 2,000 people per square mile. St. Louis is the only city that exceeds that density in a red state. It voted overwhelmingly Democratic (82.7%). In contrast, blue states contain all of the country’s biggest and densest cities: Washington DC, New York City, San Francisco, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Boston, etc.

So, back to the original point - as  cities grow in size, they seem to become bluer (Democratic).  If these cities are in red (Republican) states, the state will trend to becoming purpler, and then blue.
Or, to put it differently, a Red state will remain red as long as it's cities do not become dense.
Or, to put it even more differently, low density suburban sprawl is a Republican ally...

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The Kushner/Miller Syndrome

From J.L. Wall

Tony Kushner (...) will,at best, be remembered like Arthur Miller for having had genius perch on his shoulder just long enough to write one remarkable play.

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Time to call Bullshit on "Starve The Beast"

via David & Christina Romer, we have this

Region: You recently wrote a very intriguing paper about the interplay between tax changes and government spending. Would you give us a brief description?

David Romer:  [...] In the context of the starve-the-beast theory, my favorite example of the issue of correlation versus causation is the fiscal history of the Korean War. The North invaded the South at the end of June 1950. A month later Truman took a few minutes out from planning the military response and wrote to Congress to say that we needed a massive tax increase because we were going to have to ramp up military spending. A big tax increase was passed and put into effect three months after the invasion. [...]

So if you look just at the data, you see that taxes went up and spending went up afterwards. If you look at correlation, it looks like a great example of tax changes causing spending to change in the same direction. But if you listen to the history I just described, it's clear that, in fact, causation went from the decision to raise spending to the decision to raise taxes.

[...What] we find is no evidence for starve-the-beast. There's no systematic tendency for spending to fall after tax cuts relative to what it otherwise would have been.

Region: But you did find that tax cuts were followed by something else.

CR: Right. Tax cuts led, eventually, to tax increases. Basically, something has to give; there is a government budget constraint. What we thought gave when you cut taxes was spending, but we seem to find that in postwar U.S. history what actually gives is the tax cut itself. A substantial fraction of a tax cut is typically undone in the subsequent five years.

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Ninjas Going Extinct! Oh Noes!

From the BBC, we have the sad tale of Japanese Ninjas (Ninjae?) who are, apparently, going extinct.


Apparently, the leaders of the two remaining clans of Ninjae - the  Masaaki Hatsumi of the Togakure clan Jinichi Kawakami of the Koka clan - have no successors. It looks like soon there can be only None :-(

From the article -->

Both Kawakami and Hatsumi are united on one point. Neither will appoint anyone to take over as the next ninja grandmaster.

"In the age of civil wars or during the Edo period, ninjas' abilities to spy and kill, or mix medicine may have been useful," Kawakami says.

"But we now have guns, the internet and much better medicines, so the art of ninjutsu has no place in the modern age."

As a result, he has decided not to take a protege. He simply teaches ninja history part-time at Mie University.

Despite having so many pupils, Mr Hatsumi, too, has decided not to select an heir.

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"Man Denies Cooking His Wife" - (Great Headlines, No 37)

 From the NY Times, we have this gem "Man Denies Cooking His Wife"

The story, of course, is appropriately gruesome

A 68-year-old man pleaded not guilty Wednesday to murdering his wife after the police found her severed head in a freezer and her body parts cooking on the stove at their Oceanside home. The man, Frederick Hengl, looked frail as he entered his plea, and his lawyer has requested he receive medical attention, according to U-T San Diego. The police said they responded to neighbors’ complaints about a foul odor coming from the couple’s two-bedroom, bungalow-style house Friday morning. The first officer entered the home and saw three pans on the stove that turned out to contain parts of the victim, Anna Faris, 73. The authorities have not yet determined how she died. The district attorney, Katherine Flaherty, said there was no evidence of cannibalism. Mr. Hengl remained jailed in $5 million bail.

Still...

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Worst Diane Keaton Movies Ever

I know, shooting fish in a barrel, but, seriously, who on earth actually goes to see this things? And why?  For gods sakes, why?
Note, the descriptions are straight from IMDB.  Sometimes, no embellishment is necessary.

The story of a woman who loves her dog more than her husband. And then her husband loses the dog.

(In the running for worst movie of 2012)

A swinger on the cusp of being a senior citizen with a taste for young women falls in love with an accomplished woman closer to his age.

 After he's fired from his job, an everyday guy faces pressure from his wife to have a baby and from his mom, who has decided to move in with the young couple.

A meddling mother tries to set her daughter up with the right man so her kid won't follow in her footsteps.

(Special mention as the Worst Movie of 2007)

Three female employees of the Federal Reserve plot to steal money that is about to be destroyed.

(Special mention - 3rd worst movie of 2008)

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Obama Hatred - Conspiracy Theories Edition

Asawin Suebsaeng and Dave Gilson have put together the definitive collection of Obama-related conspiracy theories.  The venn-diagram below encapsulates is a handy-dandy reference, but I'd encourage you to go to the source to get the details behind each one.  Remember kids, if its on the internet, it must be true!

THE CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Disclaimer: It should go without saying that none of these are true. Follow links at your own risk.

Obama is a secret Muslim: This one began right after he took the stage at the 2004 Democratic convention, with chain emails alleging his "true" religious affiliation. The rumor soon found its way onto the popular conservative online forum Free Republic, and took on a whole new life in the years to come. Related: Obama secretly speaks Arabic, attended a madrassa as a kid in Indonesia, referred to "my Muslim faith" in an interview, and was sworn in on a Koran. 

Obama's bringing 100 million Muslims to America: Avi Lipkin and his PR outfit Special Guests claimed to have evidence of a scheme to bring roughly 100 million Muslims from the Middle East into the United States, converting the country into an Islamic nation by the end of Obama's second term and making it easier to obliterate Israel.

Obama once aided the mujahideen: Harlem pastor and professional race-baiter James David Manning contended that in his younger days, Obama went undercover as a CIA agent to facilitate the transfer of cash and weapons to the Afghan mujahideen in the '80s, thereby aiding what would become the Taliban.

Obama is in the pocket of the Muslim Brotherhood: Billy Graham's son Franklin wants you to know that Obama is allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to take over the federal government.

Obama redecorated the Oval Office in Middle Eastern style: Driven by his fierce sense of anti-American interior design, Obama got rid of the red, white, and blue decoration scheme in his White House office. 

Obama married a Pakistani guy: World Net Daily correspondent and conspiracymonger extraordinaire Jerome Corsi posted a video in which he claimed to have "strong" evidence that Obama was once married to his college roommate from Pakistan. The smoking gun: Photos of the chums in which the future president is "sitting about on the [Pakistani roommate's] lap." Related: For years Obama wore a gold ring on his left hand. Was it his gay-wedding ring?

more...

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Argh! Stop with the "Church" thing already!

Ross Douthat seems to have thrown his hat into the ring for the "Clueless Asshat of the Year" award with his latest troll entitled "The Liberal Gloat".  To quote

The liberal image of a non-churchgoing American is probably the “spiritual but not religious” seeker, or the bright young atheist reading Richard Dawkins. But the typical unchurched American is just as often an underemployed working-class man, whose secularism is less an intellectual choice than a symptom of his disconnection from community in general.

Which of course brings to mind those other "unchurched" Americans - you know, the Hindus, Sikhs, Moslems, Buddhists, Jews, etc. who - collectively - happen to, really, not be "underemployed working-class...(with a)... disconnection from community in general".
On the contrary, Hindus and Jews are (by far!) some of the wealthiest religious groups in the US (chart at the bottom), and Buddhists beat out Christians (not by much, but still!).
And seriously, d'you really want to argue that Hindus/Jews/Sikhs/... are, oh, "disconnected from community in general"? Seriously?

So yeah, Ross, when indulging in one of your prolonged fits of Navel gazing, please don't involve us, and if at all possible, STFU...

 

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Petraeus - Bizarro Conspiracy Theories Edition

I spent an hour or so this morning with an acquaintance of mine (who is of the Fox/Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh persuasion) discussing l'affaire Petraeus, and I have to admit the conspiracy theory he spun, while absolutely banoodles, was seriously fascinating. I can't recall most of it, but as far as I can recall, it went something like this

1. Obama, being Muslim, is intent on arming the various splinter factions in the Middle-East
2. Ambassador Stevens was sent to Libya to set up a gun-running operation, funneling arms to Libyan rebels
3. Once Stevens had set up the arms pipeline (somehow involving Russia. I didn't quite get this part), he wanted to come back to the U.S.
4. Obama, however, wanted him to go to Syria to arm Assad (I couldn't figure this part out - I thought Obama was helping the Muslim rebels or some such).
5. Stevens refused on principle, because "Assad is a fascist dictator and is oppressing the people". 
6. At this point, Stevens became expendable.  Since he knew too much, he needed to be eliminated, which is why Susan Rice personally leaked his whereabouts to her contacts with Al Qaeda in Libya, causing him to be assassinated.
7. General Petraeus knew about all this from the beginning.  The assassination was, however, the last straw for him, and he was going to testify before Congress about it.
8. Eric Holder (you knew he was going to show up, didn't you?) has stock-piled secret files on all Bush era people, and tried to blackmail Petraeus - who refused to be blackmailed
9. A courageous FBI agent found out about Eric Holder's blackmail, and went to Eric Cantor with the details
10. When this came out in the papers, Eric Holder forced Petraeus to resign, by threatening to put him on a "Ultimate Sanction List" if he didn't (I think it was "Ultimate Sanction List". I'm not quite sure, because this was about an hour in, and my brain was warping from the tin-foil-ness of the rant. Also, I have no intention of Googling any of this, because, well, I have some pride...)
11. This is why Petraeus resigned.

And now you know the whole truth.  It has nothing to do w/ affairs, emails, etc - it's all about Benghazi and gun-running!
I should also mention that there are - supposedly - "impeccable sources" that can vouch for all of this, and who have no reason to make any of this up.

PostNote:  A much, much better roundup of the whole weird thing is, of all places, on Jezebel here.

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Election Maps - Various types

The standard (Red vs Blue) map that you always see (via Newman)

The US map squished around to make the state sizes proportional to the population (still via Newman)

A pointillist take from Nelson. Click to embiggen (a lot!)
 To quote

"a pointillist look at the 2012 election results, which does a fairer job of illustrating where, how many, and how people voted in the election than the more typical full-color generalization."

And my favorite - the map based on political Ad spending  using dollars per Voter as the metric

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The Internet - Its *Really* Tubes...

Remember Ted Stevens? The Internet as a series of tubes?
Let The Daily Show helpfully remind you

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Now, Business Insider very helpfully shows us that the Internet is, indeed, a series of tubes :-)
(or, at least, Google's part thereof)...

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Why income inequality threatens the Republican Party

Via Andrew Gelman and Avi Feller, we have the following chart showing the election results for four income groups (based on exit polls. Blanks indicate states that were not polled).

I'll let Andrew and Avi explain the results above

Lower-income voters consistently support the Democratic candidate in nearly every state. Upper-income voters, on the other hand, are more mixed in their political views: wealthy voters in Mississippi are strongly Republican while wealthy voters in Massachusetts are strongly Democratic.

And now to the threatening part. Consider the following

• The median income in the US is $50K. Translation? Half the voters in the country are going to - overwhelmingly - support Democrats
• As inequality grows, the percentage of people in the >$100K will decrease. Translation? The number of people who might vote Republican will decrease

 And that is a problem, and a significant one at that.  To quote Danny DeVito in "Other People's Money",  "[Y]ou know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market."
Turns out that inequality isn't just something that the bleeding-heart liberals need to worry about, its something that should keep Republicans up at night too, unless they want to follow the buggy-whip manufacturers into oblivion...

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Gummint Spending - The *ONLY* problem is Health Care

Seriously.
Not Social Security.
Not Defense.
Not the DMV.
Not the EPA.
Not whatever other thing your average Wingnut On the Street is busy raving about.
Health care and only health care.

How do I know this?
Well, the CBO has a new white-paper out called Options for Deficit Reduction, and it has a bunch of cool stuff in it.  But, by far the coolest part is on page 23, on an extremely non-imaginatively titled chart called (I kid you not) "Components of Non-Interest Spending Under the Extended Alternative Fiscal Scenario".
I know, I know, gorgeous bureaucratise,  right? I'll let Ezra Klein translate it for you

These graphs are built atop what’s called “the current policy” baseline. The current policy baseline assumes nothing changes. We don’t pass any new laws. We don’t follow through on the hard parts — like the cost controls in the Affordable Care Act — of any of the laws we’ve already passed. We don’t raise taxes.

And the result?  The charts below

What this basically shows you is that

1. Social Security - Not a problem.  Oh, it ticks up a bit, but not by much (I've already pointed this out here, but it bears repeating).  In fact, a relatively minor tweak - raising the social security tax cap - pretty much deals with the issue.  James Kwak writes about this in a bit more detail here, with the bottom line being that This Is Not A Problem.
2. Other Non-Medical Shit - Not a problem.  What?  You didn't realize that broadly non-medical government spending was actually falling? What kind of wingnutty news sources might you have been paying attention to, that made you think this was expanding?  Hmmmm?  Seriously though, the point above is that Even if we don't do anything else to reduce the size of (non-medical) gummint, This Is Not A Problem
3. Health Care - This is a problem. Actually, i tell a lie, this is the problem.  The only problem.  Nothing else matters.  This Is A Problem!!!!

Regarding Health Care, do note that the above chart does not take into account the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" / "Romneycare"). It does not assume any savings coming from that.
Are there savings there? Theoretically yes.
Will they work? I dunno, but I'd claim that it is a far better bet to try something than do nothing. Nothing leads to the above chart.  Something might actually help.
The bottom line - Its about Health Care stupid....

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Pretty much summarizes how I feel about being married to Nicole...

Doonesbury manages to nail how I feel about being married to Nicole...

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Robust software - really *really* hard to do

You've probably seen or heard of Project ORCA by now - the Romney Campaign's massive/high-tech Get Out The Vote effort that failed spectacularly.  As John Ekdal put it

By 2PM, I had completely given up. I finally got ahold of someone at around 1PM and I never heard back. From what I understand, the entire system crashed at around 4PM.

From all appearances, it was a combination of lack of robustness, lack of scalability, and a pernicious consultant culture that doomed it.

This isn't the first time I've seen problems of this type, and it almost certainly won't be the last.  The underlying issue is pretty standard, viz.,  

"Robust" takes on a whole new meaning when failure is not an option.

What do I mean by that?
Well, most software/IT projects that we are involved in tend to be somewhat bug-tolerant, with it not really having to work perfectly the first time around, the second time around, or heck, ever.  You've probably all  heard statements like

• "We'll fix that in the next release"
• "That feature hasn't been implemented yet"
• "Log that as a bug, and we'll get around to it when we get a chance"
• (and my favourite) "Well, just don't do that!"

There is nothing inherently surprising here - we're accustomed to a world in which everyone understands that requirements are fluid, systems are ill-defined, and humans are fallible.  We just get along with our lives in the face of that mantra - Good Enough is good enough.
* Email bounce? Send it again.
* '503 Service Unavailable'? Wait a few and try again.
* Phone lights go orange? Give it a few minutes, they'll probably go green again.
* Computer all slow and laggy?  Thats just the way computers are...
It is basically eventual functionality, i.e., it'll eventually function the way you want it to, and that is good enough :-)

In opposition to this, we have those systems that Have to work perfectly the first time around.  (Hence, "failure is not an option").  You certainly don't want to hear "Yeah, the control rods didn't work, we'll fix that in the next iteration of the Reactor", or "Hmmm, seems to be a bug, the Mars Rover just turned itself off and we can't turn it on again"
(Note: For a classic writeup on Robust Software, The Mars Rover, and The Erlang Way, read Getting 25 Megalines of Code to Behave by Jesper Andersen...)
Most people do not know, or worse, are not aware of this difference.  Heck, they still think that they can build Robust systems by, well, Testing More and Following The Rules (or some such other idiocy).
Multiple redundant systems, designed and developed by different groups, obsessive levels of fault-tolerance, loose coupling everywhere - these aren't just "nice to haves" or "good ideas", they are impossible to not have.  (Note: A lot of this might seem old hat to Erlang types, and that should only serve to hammer home the point...)

Things just get worse from there - we are all inherently believers in Survivorship Bias, where we look at successful large-scale IT projects and say "Hey! This can be done! I can do it too!".  People don't realize that for every successful IT project, there are a whole bunch that failed, sometimes catastrophically.  (Metrics vary, but pretty much everybody agrees that somewhere from 65% to 80% of IT projects fail. And that doesn't include the ones that don't quite work the way they are supposed to!).
And its not just IT projects - 75% of all startups fail.  So, those massively scalable cloud thingies out there - Pinterest, Instagram, etc. - are just the ones that succeeded, with the iceberg of failure having taken out all the others (for many many reasons, but trust me, "not working the way it should" is up there...)
To recap,

• Most people don't know from Robust Systems
• Most people don't really, really grok scalability.

Put the two together, and you're almost destined to end up with something like Project ORCA.

Just because you worked at Facebook, and/or read High Scalability Dot Com, does not, repeat NOT, mean that you are now capable of building the next massively scalable system, let alone, a system that Must Work Perfectly The First Time Out.

Romney is not the first person to discover the above, and he certainly will not be the last...

BTW, for an excellent analysis of the meltdown, check out Ars Technica's coverage...

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Its time to call Bullshit on "Technical Debt"

Seriously.
You know what "Technical Debt" is, right?
Ok, heres the (official?) Wikipedia definition

 Technical debt (also known as design debt or code debt) is a neologistic metaphor referring to the eventual consequences of poor or evolving software architecture and software development within a codebase. The debt can be thought of as work that needs to be done before a particular job can be considered complete. As a change is started on a codebase, there is often the need to make other coordinated changes at the same time in other parts of the codebase or documentation. The other required, but uncompleted changes, are considered debt that must be paid at some point in the future.

And in this - somewhat purist - sense, "Technical Debt" is absolutely valid.
The problem arises in the way it is almost invariably used, viz., as an excuse to not do something.

Herewith a simple exercise - the next time you hear someone cite "Technical Debt" as a reason to not do something, use the following three-part test

1. Replace "Technical Debt" with "Chewbacca".  
2. Check to see if  the information content of the explanation has decreased.
3. If it has decreased, the explanation is bullshit.

Now, think back of all the times someone in your organization has done this

• We can't implement the new sorting algorithm because we're still dealing with Chewbacca
• We're going to have to wait on the GUI because of Chewbacca
• We'll update the fetzer valve as soon as we've dealt with Chewbacca

 See? Makes just about as much sense now as before, doesn't it?
Oh, as a bonus, the reasons are more humorous - at least you'll have that...

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Star Wars Flash Mob

On the 1st of October the WDR Radio Orchestra mingled with the crowds on Cologne Wallrafplatz and surprised with well-known tones from a galaxy far, far away....
 
Despite everything, the music still sends shivers down my spine - and I totally get the look of joy on the onlookers faces...

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The Popular Vote - Deconstructed by Ethnic Diversity

CNN, strangely, has some gems buried in its exit polling data from the 2012 elections.  I say strangely, because they seem to have gone full "faux wonk" in their attempt to be The Data Company, or whatever the heck their current strategy is.
Anyhow, the particularly interesting bit here is the chart showing Vote By Race, which I've summarized below

Vote by Race	Percentage of Vote	% Split for Obama	% Split for Romney	Other
White	72	39	59	2
African-American	13	93	6	1
Latino	10	71	27	2
Asian	3	73	26	1
Other	2	58	38	4

Parsing the above just a little bit, we get into interesting territory.
59% of the White vote went for Romney.  The White vote was 72% of the total vote. And, we know that 48% of the electorate voted for Romney.  If we put these together, we get

• 72% of the total vote was White
• 59% of this group voted for Romney (or, 72 * 0.59 = 42.48% of the total vote was White and Voted for Romney)
• 48% of the total vote was for Romney
• Therefore, the percentage of Romney's Vote that was White = 42.48/0.48  = 88.5%

Similarly,

• the percentage of Obama's Vote that was White = 72*0.39/0.50  = 56%
• the percentage of Romney's Vote that was Latino = 27*0.10/0.48  = 5.6%
• the percentage of Obama's Vote that was Latino = 71*0.10/0.50  = 14.2%

and so on.
Thankfully, Slate has summarized this quite handily in a single chart

The bottom line is somewhat inescapable, especially as our nation grows more ethnically diverse, any long term electoral success must come from appealing to ethnic groups other than whites...

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XYZZY - explained

Remember "twisty maze of passages, all alike"? 
From Rick Adams we have the origins of XYZZY, i.e., it was a mathematical in-joke.  To quote

But Ron Hunsinger believes there is a more meaningful origin to the 'XYZZY' word:

"[XYZZY is] taught by math teachers the world around as a mnemonic device to remember how to do cross products.

"When I first played Adventure, finding 'xyzzy' in it was like finding an old friend in an unlikely place. Or an inside joke." — Ron Hunsinger

"'Cross products?' you ask.

"Indeed. The cross product of two three-dimensional vectors is the vector whose length is the area of the parallelogram with the two given vectors as adjacent sides, and direction perpendicular to the plane of that parallelogram.

"There is a 'simple' formula for the cross product. If A = B x C, where A, B, and C are the vectors (Ax, Ay, Az), (Bx, By, Bz), and (Cx, Cy, Cz), then:

A_x = B_y C_z - B_z C_y
A_y = B_z C_x - B_x C_z
A_z = B_x C_y - B_y C_x

"Notice that the second and third equations can be obtained from the first by simply rotating the subscripts, x -> y -> z -> x. The problem, of course, is how to remember the first equation.

"You do that by remembering the 'magic word,' consisting of the subscripts, taken in order: xyzzy.

"And that, friends, is the origin of the magic word xyzzy. This use of the word was around long before Adventure (or Colossal Caves or whatever name you knew it by) was ever written.

"When I first played Adventure, finding 'xyzzy' in it was like finding an old friend in an unlikely place. Or an inside joke."

Which is all well and good, but it does bring up the next (obvious?) question - where on earth did PLUGH come from?

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NYC Power Outage - Visualized

The power of Visualization - used for Good (and never for #Evil)
Foursquare

Tweets (via Eric Fischer)

and  New York Magazine (Picture Telling a Thousand Words Edition)

and @puzza007 (view From Williamsburg directly across from 14th street. On the left you can see the W'burg bridge w/ no lights precisely half-way across. Everthing south of (to the left of) the power-plant at 14th street is dark)

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