First Examiner.com article of 2015: 2014 election stories in review

Of the five most popular Washtenaw County election articles on Facebook last year, three were about underdogs.  Number one among them was a report about Chris Wahmhoff, Green Party nominee for U.S. Senate.

Top elections stories of 2014 about underdogs, endorsements, millages

With 2015 already into its second month, it is well past time to look at the top Washtenaw County election stories of 2014 before moving on to this year's election news.  Based on the number of Facebook shares and likes, five stories stood out, the top three of which shared a common theme, underdogs in last year's general election.

The other two were about favorites.  One was about the candidates endorsed by Detroit's major daily newspapers, while the other was about a millage proposal.  Both the endorsees and the millage proposal went on to crushing wins.
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If there is a take-home message from last year's top stories, it is that popularity on Facebook does not necessarily translate to success at the ballot box. That's a good lesson to take into 2015.

More on each of the top stories, plus a slideshow and a photo of Jill Stein announcing for 2016, at the link.

I was days away from losing my ability to publish on Examiner.com.  I feel relieved that I managed to publish an article and retain my position.

'Selva Verde': Video and blog link

I've had two requests from my students this semester.  First, do I blog about "Selva Verde: The Green Jungle" here the way I blog about "The End of Suburbia," "Food, Inc.," and "An Inconvenient Truth?"  Second, do I know of any uploads of the video to YouTube?  Until recently, the answer to both was no.  Now, it's yes.

I have one entry about "Selva Verde," This week's topics: models and species interactions from a year ago today, which shows videos related to the sloth-algae-moth symbiosis and to jaguar predation.  I haven't even posted the worksheet, although I'm working on it (not today, but stay tuned).

As for the YouTube upload, my students and I have looked.   Only last October did the PBS show Nature upload a copy of the show to its own YouTube channel: Selva Verde: The Green Jungle (1985).

Selva Verde: The Green Jungle | Season 4 | Episode 5 | November 17, 1985 | Narrated by George Page

Wildlife in the massive Central American rain forest stretching across parts of Belize, Costa Rica and Panama. Observed: three-toed sloths, army ants and a jaguar.

Most of the film is just a nature documentary, but the last few minutes is appropriately doomy enough for this blog.  Fortunately, things have not turned out as badly as people thought 30 years ago--so far.

Conversations on the 2013 Super Bowl Blackout with Chad of the Hipcrime Vocab

For Throwback Thursday, I'm going to post something I should have posted two years ago, a conversation in comments between me and Chad/escapefromwisconsin of The Hipcrime Vocab.  It began when I left the following comment at his entry Are you ready for no football?

I hope my post Hipcrime Vocab on the Super Bowl brings you traffic!

Also, if you were watching the game, I bet you found the power outage during the third quarter symbolic.

Chad didn't respond to me at his blog.  He responded at mine.  Follow over the jump for it and my reply and reaction, along with his comment on Predictions vs. reality for Katy Perry at the Super Bowl.

Apocalypse When?

Full-sized infographic at the BBC.  Hat/tip to Chad at The Hipcrime Vocab.

Gas and oil accelerate their price rise

I made the following prediction to close the opening paragraph of Gas begins its seasonal rise as predicted.

Sure enough, when I drove through my old neighborhood yesterday,* the corner station was holding its position at $1.99.  No ignominious retreat there.  Meanwhile the three stations down the street were all selling regular for $1.89.  That's actually higher than I expected.  In fact, when I checked GasBuddy yesterday, the Detroit average was $1.94, where it stands today.  It's actually a few cents too high; the $1.85 I predicted would have been more in line with the local price environment.  Just the same, I don't expect those three stations to lower their price, although the old corner station will probably match them by the end of the week.

I didn't return to my old neighborhood until yesterday, so I don't know if the corner station ever matched the rest at $1.89.  Based on what I saw, I doubt it.  The corner station was selling regular for $2.35, while two of the stations down the street were still at $1.89 and one had raised its price to $2.29.  I saw the price at the corner station and immediately turned around and filled up the car at one of the stations selling regular for the same price as last week.

Based on what I saw on GasBuddy and Oil-Price.Net, that was probably a smart thing to do.   The average price for regular in Detroit is $2.12, 18 cents higher than it was last week.  That means that the four stations in my old neighborhood should be $2.02.  Furthermore, RBOB is now trading at $1.60, 15 cents higher than last week.  That $1.89 I bought gas at will not last the week.

As for oil, both major futures are trading up.  WTI closed yesterday at $53.05, while Brent climbed even higher to $57.91.  The pressure is on for gasoline to keep rising.  Also, it looks like King Abdullah's death finally got oil to move, too.

I'm not the only one watching oil and gas prices.  New Deal Democrat posted US gas prices have (probably) bottomed on Monday.  Not only has he called last week's lows in oil and gas the bottom for this cycle, he pointed out that U.S. demand for gasoline is up 8% year over year right now.  Supply and demand at work!

Monthly meta 2: top ten entries for January 2015

I wasn't done reporting the monthly meta when I wrote about the blog passing 400,000 page views.  Every month during the past year, I've posted the ten most viewed entries of the month at this blog's Facebook page.  That's a habit I've decided to transfer over to the blog.  It's also a modified revival of the weekly summaries I did during the first year of the blog, a habit worth resuming.

Follow over the jump for a countdown of this month's top ten.

Monthly meta: 400,000 page views

Today, this blog passed 400,000 total page views.   I missed posting when the blog passed 300,000 page views on May 25th, eight months and one week ago.  I did document the previous milestone of passing 200,000 page views in Hottest month so far on Crazy Eddie's Motie News on August 31, 2013, eight months and three weeks before that.  At least my blog is still increasing its rate of earning page views, although not as quickly as it did between November 2012 and August 2013, when it took nine months and three weeks to go from 100,000 page views to 200,000.  At this pace, this blog should pass 500,000 page views within a few days of Halloween this year.  As long as every month has more page views than the same month a year earlier, that should be no problem.  So far, that's always been the case.

Speaking of which, January 2015 had 11,721 page views, 621 more than the 11,050 during January of last year.  For February 2015, I have to get at least 10,169 page views to be up month over month from last February.  I'm shooting for 10,192, an average of 364 per day.  Stay tuned and wish me luck.

Snowfall of the century for Detroit on Groundhog Day

I concluded Winter Storm Linus set to blanket Detroit by observing about the storm "if it lasts as long, snows as much, and gets as cold as the current forecast predicts, I doubt I'll be going to work on Monday."  Sure enough, I'm home from work today.  As for Winter Storm Linus, it was even worse than forecast, as the Detroit Free Press reported an hour ago in Metro Detroit digs out from area's 3rd-biggest snowstorm.

The third-biggest snowstorm in metro Detroit's recorded history has plows humming among tall snow piles on roadways across southeastern Michigan this morning.

Most metro-area schools and colleges are closed, including Wayne State University, University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University.

By 9 a.m., the storm had cleared, leaving blue skies with bitter cold. Temperatures have already peaked at about 18 degrees and are to stick in the mid-teens this morning, said meteorologist Cory Behnke with the National Weather Service.

With 16.7 inches of snow since the storm arrived early Sunday, it's the most to fall since Dec. 1 and 2 in 1974, when 19.3 inches fell, as recorded at Detroit Metro Airport. The snowiest was April 6, 1886, when 24.5 inches were reported, Behnke said. The records date to 1880.

Detroit was not alone, as NBC News reported.

O'Hare reported 19.3 inches of snow from the storm, making it the fifth-heaviest on record there. Detroit reported 16.7 inches, the third-highest on record and the most since 1974. Detroit and Milwaukee both set single-day snowfall records on Sunday.
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New York is expecting 3 to 5 inches of snow by the end of Monday, while Boston should see 8 to 12, Roth said - but that was harder to predict.

That's quite some blanket, Linus!

Predictions vs. reality for Katy Perry at the Super Bowl

I concluded NABLOPOMO for February: MAKE by telling my readers to "stay tuned for the Sunday entertainment entry, which will most likely be about the Super Bowl."  I was planning on posting it earlier, but my wife and I were having too good a time watching "Gone Girl," which has an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in a leading role, for me to post before the game.*  I then was having too good a time watching the game itself to post during it.  Good thing, as I would have made a fool of myself trying to guess Katy Perry's set list, which I decided would be my topic for tonight.  That written, it didn't stop a bunch of people from trying.  First, WXYZ actually included her songs among the Super bowl prop bets on the 7 Sports Cave.


The guy who said she'd open with "Roar" and end with "Firework" was right on.  "Dark Horse" also made the set list as the second song.  That placed them even or ahead of the people at Bleacher Report, who called those three songs but got the rest wrong.  Fansided didn't do much better, listing seven songs but only getting one more, "Teenage Dream," for their troubles.  I think the problem was that no one was thinking about what the other artists would perform, concentrating only on Perry.  The result was this set list from Sports Illustrated.

"Roar"
"Dark Horse"
"I Kissed a Girl" featuring Lenny Kravitz
"Teenage Dream"
"California Gurls"
"Get Ur Freak On" by Missy Elliott
"Work It" by Missy Elliott
"Lose Control" by Missy Elliott
"Firework"

No wonder the prognositicators were off.

For what it's worth, I enjoyed the halftime show, even if it was empty commercial spectacle.  Hey, I can't be all DOOM all the time.

*That movie fits the theme of crime among the nominees.  I'll have more on that and the other nominees on a Sunday later this month.

NABLOPOMO for February: MAKE

From the website only this month.*

So what is the NaBloPoMo theme of the month?

MAKE
The BlogHer community is a creative bunch. I've made your recipes, tried your craft tutorials, and even bookmarked a DIY post on renovating your bathroom. I'm going to get to that project one day.

This month we want to celebrate you and your creativity. Hopefully by writing about projects gone right (or even... er... wrong) you'll be inspired to roll up your sleeves and try something new. Support a food blogger by trying out her recipe and leaving a comment about your experience. Buy something handmade on Etsy. Or think about something that you know how to do well and whip up a tutorial that other people can follow.

The point is to get your hands dirty, try something new, and write about the experience. So take a deep breath, plug in the glue gun, and let's make something.

I'm ambivalent about this theme.  On the one hand, this blog is about how to survive or delay collapse, which means it should be about practical things as much as ideas.  That's been difficult for me, as I'm about ideas, so I've been working mostly on awareness and knowledge instead of skills and action.  On the other, the prompts for this month work better for me than I expected, as they explore whether the blogger is a DIY person (not for anything big) or someone who hires others (generally yes), ask if the blogger has seen stuff being made (Maker Faires and 3D Printing, for example), and ask if the blogger cooks (yes).  I certainly do cook and have posted recipes here, so I think I'm OK.  Besides, there's always this out.

NaBloPoMo is what you make of it. At its core, all you need to do is post daily on your blog. The point of NaBloPoMo is not to be restricted by the theme, but instead to either take it or leave it. If you'll do better blogging every day based on what's happening in your world, throw aside the daily prompts.

This means that if I don't feel like posting about building chicken coops, planting home gardens, installing solar power, or influencing local government to allow a homeowner to do such things, I don't have to.  It also means I can get away with posting recipes from Tipsy Bartender.  That's a relief.

Sign up for February's NaBloPoMo and make something.

I already did and at least plan on making some noise.  Speaking of noise, stay tuned for the Sunday entertainment entry, which will most likely be about the Super Bowl.

*I lost access to the email where Nablopomo sends its notices.  I might explain later.