Space: The Final Frontier…
The first episode of Star Trek, “The Man Trap” is aired on NBC in the 8:30-9:30 time slot. This was the third episode actually filmed, but the first to be aired.
08 September, 2011
September 8, 1974
GRANTING PARDON TO RICHARD NIXON
------
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
Richard Nixon became the thirty-seventh President of the United States on January 20, 1969 and was reelected in 1972 for a second term by the electors of forty-nine of the fifty states. His term in office continued until his resignation on August 9, 1974.
Pursuant to resolutions of the House of Representatives, its Committee on the Judiciary conducted an inquiry and investigation on the impeachment of the President extending over more than eight months. The hearings of the Committee and its deliberations, which received wide national publicity over television, radio, and in printed media, resulted in votes adverse to Richard Nixon on recommended Articles of Impeachment.
As a result of certain acts or omissions occurring before his resignation from the Office of President, Richard Nixon has become liable to possible indictment and trial for offenses against the United States. Whether or not he shall be so prosecuted depends on findings of the appropriate grand jury and on the discretion of the authorized prosecutor. Should an indictment ensue, the accused shall then be entitled to a fair trial by an impartial jury, as guaranteed to every individual by the Constitution.
It is believed that a trial of Richard Nixon, if it became necessary, could not fairly begin until a year or more has elapsed. In the meantime, the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-ninth.
Where’ve You Been, Chris?
Some of you have noticed that I’ve virtually disappeared from blogging and Twitter over the last few weeks. In fact, I’ve been asked about it more than once.
So, here’s an explanation.
Other than my family and my work, there are 5 passions in my life. In no particular order, they are: 1) sports (especially basketball and football), computers, mathematics, politics, and reading. Despite my vacation in July, I am still quite a bit behind in my reading, so I’ve been doing a bit more of that lately. That’s the first and simplest reason for my silence.
However, that’s not the biggest reason. I’ve been moderately interested in sports ratings, such as the Sagarin ratings for years. In fact, I wrote a very simple one myself for NFL football back when I was about 16. Research into these things has been an on again off again hobby of mine since then. About 4 years ago, I actually got serious about it. I wrote my own rating system for college football, men’s college basketball and the NFL. It’s actually a pretty good system and I use it to identify which teams are better or worse than their records make them appear to be. I can use it to project winners and losers as well. And this combines three of my passions: sports, computers, and mathematics.
It’s a pretty sophisticated system, and I’ve added to it every year. Unfortunately, the foundations for it are not strong. My first attempt used an Excel spreadsheet. That version quickly morphed into a little Windows app with an Access database. Sadly, I had to use a different Access database for every sport, and adding additional sports (other than probably women’s college basketball) would have been difficult. The Access database still shows its Excel roots, and has problems because of it. The app requires constant babysitting, especially during basketball season, just to make sure that it’s not missing games or including the same games twice, or has the wrong home teams, etc.
In other words, the app’s shaky foundations made future enhancements increasingly more difficult. Also, from the very beginning I’ve wanted a better way to get these ratings and projections published, and the web seemed the best way to do that. But turning this into a web based application, with it’s shaky foundation and all, would have likely made for an unpleasant and unreliable user experience.
Therefore, it’s been a dream of mine for the last couple of years to rewrite the app from the ground up. And that’s what has consumed quite a bit of my time over the last few weeks (actually, over the last few months, but much more since mid-August). I needed to create a much more robust database (using SQL Server this time) that could handle multiple sports, and even sporting events with more than two opponents. I also had it in the back of my mind that I could make it do some political projections. In fact, that’s how Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com got his start. He did baseball ratings and expanded into politics. This would add one more passion to the list as well.
Well, the good news is all of that work for sports is essentially done. There’s still work that needs to go into the website, but the app itself is working and I ran it on college football this week. Most of the calculations require two games of data to produce any results, and really need five or six weeks of data to produce reliable ones, so I have a little time left to finish up the website. It’ll be called www.cjbratings.com. Don’t go there now. I own the domain, but there’s no site yet (I have one on my local PC to play with, but it isn’t ready for prime time).
The better news is that yesterday I had an epiphany on the political side and I now believe I can produce political ratings as well. There will be another website devoted just to that. I haven’t decided on a name yet. But I’ll be able to produce projections on House and Senate control, Governors, and electoral college projections. In time I’ll even be able to do some local stuff, state legislatures and what not. The first things that will appear will likely be the GOP primaries next year. I should have it online with at least the minimal functionality necessary for that by around the turn of the year.
I’ll reference all of that on this blog, but the calculated data will be on its own website. One of the things that Nate Silver does that has always ticked me off is that he combines political commentary with numerical analysis. Yes, I do plenty of political commentary myself, but I go to his site for the numerical analysis, not the commentary (he’s done less of this since he joined the New York Times). It has always irked me having to wade through all of that to get to the numbers. I’d like people to feel comfortable looking at my numbers whether or not they subscribe to similar political beliefs to mine.
There’s a little more effort involved here to get the websites up and running, but almost all of the heavy lifting is done. I’ll be more vocal again in the near future. Probably starting next week. I have my annual 9/11 blogging coming up on Sunday. It’s still not finished, so I need to do some more work on that tonight and tomorrow night.
September 8, 2001
American Airlines Flight 11 hijacker Abdulaziz Alomari reports that his ticket is lost and asks for a replacement.
07 September, 2011
September 7, 1979
The Entertainment & Sports Programming Network is launched with these words by Lee Leonard.
September 7, 2001
Ahmed Alnami, Saeed Alghhamdi, Ziad Jrrah, and Ahmed Alghamdi, the four hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93, arrive in Newark, NJ.
06 September, 2011
September 6, 2001
A student in an English class for Pakistani immigrants…
points towards the WTC, and says, “Do you see those two buildings? They won’t be standing there next week.”
04 September, 2011
01 September, 2011
September 1, 1939
Following several German-staged incidents (like the Gleiwitz incident, a part of Operation Himmler), which German propaganda used as an excuse to claim that German forces were acting in self-defence, the first regular act of war took place on 1 September 1939, at 04:40, when the Luftwaffe attacked the Polish town of Wieluń, destroying 75% of the city and killing close to 1,200 people, most of them civilians. This invasion subsequently began World War II. Five minutes later, the old German pre-dreadnought battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish military transit depot at Westerplatte in the Free City of Danzig on the Baltic Sea. At 08:00, German troops—still without a formal declaration of war issued—attacked near the Polish town of Mokra. The Battle of the Border had begun. Later that day, the Germans attacked on Poland's western, southern and northern borders, while German aircraft began raids on Polish cities. The main axis of attack led eastwards from Germany proper through the western Polish border. Supporting attacks came from East Prussia in the north, and a co-operative German-Slovak tertiary attack by units (Field Army "Bernolák") from German-allied Slovakia in the south. All three assaults converged on the Polish capital of Warsaw.
The Soviet Union will soon ally with Germany (yes, you read that right), and also invade Poland from the east. Germany and the U.S.S.R. will divide Poland among themselves on October 6.
September, 2001
Lots of short selling of airline and related stocks begins. American and United Airlines in particular are affected. On September 10, 2001, United Airlines is trading at 25 times its normal volume on the Pacific Exchange.
These two stocks will drop about 40% when the market reopens in late September after the attack.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)