Das Boot.
UPDATE: I’ll be working on the boat over the holiday break. Will post a picture of my progress in early January. Taking a break from blogging over that period as well.
Merry Christmas!
Here’s the latest Intro to Mass Media video. The payoff is the student reaction at the end. Classic.
I’ll blog just once more before the New Year.
My semester is winding down which means I’m incredibly busy — papers to write, papers to grade and whatnot. Not sure when I’ll post again…
The lede in the Des Moines Register:
Barack Obama has pulled ahead in the race for Iowa’s Democratic presidential caucuses, while the party’s national frontrunner Hillary Clinton has slipped to second in the leadoff nominating state, according to The Des Moines Register’s new Iowa Poll.
Here’s the actual numbers:
Obama, an Illinois senator, leads for the first time in the Register’s poll as the choice of 28 percent of likely caucusgoers, up from 22 percent in October. Clinton, a New York senator, was the preferred candidate of 25 percent, down from 29 percent in the previous poll.Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who led in the Register’s May poll, held steady with 23 percent, in third place, but part of the three-way battle.
Wow, pretty close race really. Better look at the margin or error:
The telephone survey of 500 likely Democratic caucusgoers was conducted Nov. 25 to 28 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
That’s a huge margin of error. It means that every candidate might really be in a nearly 9-point (8.8) range. Edwards could be as high as 27.4 and Obama could be as low as 23.6. So, the new poll actually shows all three candidates in a statistical dead heat.
Why didn’t the Des Moines Register point this out? Because being honest about polls doesn’t make for good headlines.
All the major news outlets are guilty of similar shenanigans. No wonder media credibility numbers are in the toilet.
Daredevil extraordinaire Evel Knievel has died. He was 69.
Mr. Knievel amazed and horrified onlookers on Dec. 31, 1967, by vaulting his motorcycle 151 feet over the fountains of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, only to land in a spectacularly bone-breaking crash. He then continued to win fame and fortune by getting huge audiences to watch him — typically dressed in star-spangled red, white and blue — roar his motorcycle up a ramp, fly over 10, 15 or 20 cars parked side by side, and come down on another ramp. Perhaps his most spectacular stunt, another disaster, was an attempt to jump an Idaho canyon on a rocket-powered motorcyle in 1974.Mr. Knievel’s showmanship, skill and disdain for death were so admired that he became a folk hero. John Herring’s song “Evel Knievel” was a hit, and both Sam Elliott and George Hamilton have played him in movies. In 1977, Hollywood tried to make him into a movie star in “Viva Knievel!,” a film with Gene Kelly and Red Buttons. In the 1970s and ’80s, Evel Knievel toys had sales in the hundreds of millions for Ideal and other companies.
For a 1994 exhibition titled “America’s Legendary Daredevil,” the Smithsonian Institution acquired Mr. Knievel’s customized Harley-Davidson XR-750 — the museum called it one of the few motorcycles to survive his career — and Mr. Knievel donated a star-spangled leather jumpsuit, cape and boots that he wore during jumps.
