COMING VERY SOON: The Official GTOG Bachelor(ette) Viewing Guide

By GTOG Staff

As you strap yourselves in for Season 17 of the Bachelor (premiering tonight on ABC at 8/7c), you may be a touch concerned that you won't be able to stomach a lengthy stretch of two hour visits with Sean, maybe the most generic Bachelor since Brad. Wait, that was only two seasons ago. In any event, put your worries aside. There's one thing that's about to become clear: you'll never watch this show in the same way again.

THREE black ladies?

We created an iBook previewing this season, and really every other season, that is finished and loaded into iTunes.  It's just not available yet as of 4:27pm.  Apparently the Apple people are confirming its authenticity or something, which is strange because GTOG is the most trusted name in the blogging business.  Anyway, here's the cover:

It's pretty cool.  This is what our announcement was going to be because we assumed it would be ready by now:

Ladies and Gentleman, we present to you the Official GTOG Bachelor(ette) Viewing Guide, which you can download here on iTunes. From the introductory cocktail party tonight right through to moment Sean breaks up with Brook, the 25-year-old community organizer from Pittsburgh, in June, you will learn to study, rely on, and possibly sleep with this book. We're not asking for thanks, and we're not asking for money. Just be true to your Journey.

We will post/tweet/etc as soon as it's ready.  GTOG Everybody.

That would explain the fantasies

This is a surprising and not-often reported aspect of rape that may, or may not, be related to some basic Game concepts:

This is a topic that has been discussed a great deal in the past with counselors, rape victims and other online forums. It is however still a taboo topic for Survivors to admit.  It is usually thought of as not being PC or polite and people start getting very defensive about it. Well, exploring and trying to find out the truth is not helped by closing one's eyes to things we rather not believe.

I think that the answer to the question as to why do some females orgasm during a sexual assault or rape is that all of the various explanations have some validity, but none of them tell the entire story in the case of every individual victim of the crime. First of all, orgasms in women being raped are not frequent, but they are not uncommon either. In the study you cite, about 5% to 21% of women interviewed in the studies surveyed reported having an orgasm when they were raped.  Researchers have hypothesized that the actual figure is probably a bit higher in reality due to victims being understandably embarrassed both by the rape and by having achieved an orgasm during unwanted, forced sexual relations. Around 20% seems to be a likely, real-word figure.

I think 5 percent would be remarkable.  Around 20 percent seems absolutely astonishing to me, considering that it is estimated that only 30 percent of women climax via intercourse alone.  Now, I very much doubt we'll ever get any reliable scientific data on the phenomenon, although I suppose it is remotely possible, given the current appreciation for EL James's literary adventures combined with the potential for forcibly administered pleasure, that a number of women might agree to be raped in the interest of scientific progress.  It seems even less likely that rapists just happen to regularly target the minority of women who are capable of intercourse-only climax, even though that indicates some women must be more likely to have an orgasm from rape than from consensual sex.

If that is true, this would have some astonishing implications for intersexual relations as well as the apparent reliability of the average woman's capacity for understanding the complicated intricacies of her own sexuality.  It might also explain the otherwise inexplicable popularity of certain SF writers among the female SF/F readership.

The fascinating thing, of course, is the way that those considering the phenomenon are resolutely to avoid the obvious, which is that women respond in a sexually positive manner to male dominance, including violent male dominance.  The idea that some rapists must engage in foreplay only demonstrates the intellectual panic aroused by the statistical observations. That women would respond positively to extreme sexual dominance should be no surprise, as it is very much in line with what Game Theory would logically suggest, and yet it is due to the fact that even the most experienced Game theoretician is steeped in decades of anti-scientific equalitarian propaganda.

Sexual response is a continuum, not a circle.  So, it makes sense that the more extreme the input, the more extreme the output.  Now, for the benefit of the cognitively challenged and the terminally offended, I will trouble to point out that no amount of orgasms can be used to justify rape anymore than an instinctive  mouth-watering response to chocolate justifies force-feeding someone hot fudge sundaes, but it is both gutless and pointless to play ostrich and pretend that the reported phenomenon simply does not happen.

The Lockout is Over: Let's DO THIS

By Artistry

It's almost incomprehensible that it took until January to resolve some very basic issues. Splitting a large revenue pie between two parties and picking a cap number between $60 and $70 million really had you tied up in knots, huh guys?  Ridiculous. Pathetic. There's a bad taste lingering from the useless meetings, cancelled meetings, and mindless Rob Rossi tweets. We can't stand Bettman and Fehr. Nobody puts Ron Burkle in a corner.  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's done. Our long blogging nightmare is over. Let's get to our game.

We're looking at a compressed schedule with a disproportionate amount of games against division rivals, who we think we hate already, but it's possible we don't even know what hate is yet. Jordan Staal has flown south, so we'll need all hands on deck.

Still out of position.

We saw a 48-game season one other time, in 1994-95. Mario Lemieux sat things out, and in that lockout-shortened year, three things proved vital:

1) A strong start. The Pens blew out of the gate with a 12-0-1 record in their first 13 games en route to a 29-16-3 overall mark and a high playoff seeding.

2) Top talent. The Pens had a No. 1 line of Jaromir Jagr, Ronnie Francis, and Luc Robitaille. Jagr won the Hart, Francis led the league in assists, and Lucky Luc buried rebounds.

3) Goaltending depth. Tommy Barrasso started only two games and missed the rest of the season with injuries. Kenny Wregget, the best backup in Pens history (to date), stepped in and led the league with 25 wins.

That's the formula. The bet here is this Pens team is about to check all three of those boxes. Welcome back. LGP. GTOG.

Demography is destiny

Time again to sample Richard Carson's terrific I've Got a Secret channel on YouTube. I didn't pick this 2/5/1958 video for its humor. Though Bill Cullen and Jayne Meadows do stumble through some funny moments, similar to one of the earliest IGAS videos on YouTube.

Instead, the 1958 video shows that the mills of demography grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small. The secret: Mrs. Walker of Syracuse has two sets of triplets, as part of her family of nine kids. Henry Morgan guesses the triple double, or double triple.

Of course, 1958 was the height of America's postwar baby boom, so big families were common. Nowadays a family of eight will get you a show on TLC. And we're just starting to deal with the collapse of the baby boom and the aging of America.

In fact, you can expect a lot of squabbling as politicians try to blame each other for the nasty reality of fewer young workers supporting ever larger numbers of aged retirees. And you thought the fiscal cliff posturing was silly. Anyway, the video shows how I've Got a Secret reflects so much of our history. Right down to those grubby demographics.

Equality vs the female imperative

Dalrock has done some excellent work of late on the female imperative.  On a related note, when monetary push comes to financial shove and the female imperative comes into conflict with the principle of sexual equality, guess which loses:

Women’s very unfair Christmas present: car insurance price hike

Jo Swinson, Minister for Women and Equalities, is outraged at the higher car insurance premiums young women now face, as a result of new European rules.

 As both minister for consumer affairs and equalities I want to see everyone in this country get the fairest treatment possible when they’re parting with hard-earned cash. So you can imagine how disappointed I am by the ruling from Europe that will mean that women will no longer benefit from cheaper insurance premiums – despite all the evidence still pointing to the fact that women are safer on the roads.

Historically, men – particularly young men - cost more to insure than women because industry statistics show that they have more frequent accidents and their claims are more expensive to settle.

I'm not disputing that men are statistically inclined to get in significantly more, and more expensive, car accidents than women.  In a rational world, insurance companies would be permitted to discriminate upon the basis of sex-based probabilities and require men to pay more than women for their car insurance.

However, we also know that women are statistically more likely to work fewer hours, work fewer days, use more sick days, go on maternity leave, quit, and in general, work less, and less effectively, than men.  Does this mean that women like Jo Swinson, Minister for Women and Equalities, therefore believe that EU employers are justified in discriminating upon the basis of sex-based probabilities and paying men more than women for exactly the same job?

It seems highly probable that suggestion would be considered outrageous and sexist.  After all, how can one reasonably judge the job performance of an individual woman by the job performance of all other women?  (Never mind that it is equally silly to judge the driving performance of any one man by the driving performance of all other men.)  So, what we're seeing here is that even in the eyes of an official who is employed in order to assure societal equality, the commitment to the female imperative remains the priority.

Note in particular the way that genuine equality is described as "very unfair" here.  What this means is that for most women, "equality" is merely a useful rhetorical device, and unless it is proven otherwise, should be regarded no more than that by men.

Gulf of Alaska Storms Versus Shell Oil Drilling Platform

The storms win.

Shell Oil made a misguided and poorly informed decision to move a huge drilling platform (the Kulluk) from Dutch Harbor Alaska to Seattle starting December 21st.   As described in the Seattle Times and elsewhere the problems grew from broken tow lines and faulty engines on December 26th, to the eventual grounding the Kulluk on an island just south of Kodiak island on December 31st.

The Kalluk beached south of Kodiak Island

Anyone familiar with the meteorology of the North Pacific and the Gulf of Alaska knows that this region is one of the stormiest on the planet with one major storm after another during midwinter.  Unbelievably, a Shell Oil spokesman said, that forecasts indicated  a favorable two-week weather window.   This is at odds with the facts.  First, as I will show below the forecasts on the day they left clearly suggested the potential for big storms during the 3-4 week voyage to Seattle, including the first week.  Second, forecast skill drops substantially after 4-6 days and thus there was no guarantee of fair weather for this difficult tow.

Lets take a look at the surface charts during a few points in this ill-favored trip.
First, chart of 10am on the 26th, when wind conditions and large seas caused them to have lots of problems with tow lines.  A 960 hPa low is found southeast of Kodiak; keep in mind this is about the same central pressure of the Columbus Day Storm, perhaps the greatest storm to hit Seattle during the past century.  Such storms are a dime a dozen in the Gulf!

 Then 10 AM on the 28th. Two major cyclones..one with 962 hPa and the other around 967 hPa to the southwest.

 And then at 4 PM on December 31st, the coup de grace--a 959 hPa storm the produced very strong easterly winds over Kodiak and large (up to roughly 40 ft) seas.

Folks, a sequence like this is not unusual this time of the year and any experienced Pacific mariner knows it.

Were these storms big surprises as claimed by Shell?  Let me show you some forecast model output and you decide!    The University of Washington forecasts over the Pacific are virtually identical to that of the main U.S. global model, the model used heavily by the National Weather Service to forecast conditions over the Pacific.  I have easy access to the graphics, so lets look at them.  The tow began on 21 December, so lets examine the forecast started at 4 PM Seattle Time (3 PM Kodiak Time) valid at 4 PM on December 26th.  A strong 967 hPa low south of the Aleutians.  Not bad five days ahead of time...and of course the subsequent forecast got even better.  Clear warning that the tow was a bad idea.

So there they were on December 26th and in trouble.  You would think they would check the forecast to see whether they should head to port.  So lets looks review the 5 day forecast for 31 December at 4 AM.  ANOTHER strong storm...even deeper... with Kodiak Island in the area of strong pressure differences and thus strong winds. 

I should note here that forecasts over the oceans have gotten much more accurate during the past decade or so, the key reason being the huge amount of satellite data we get over the oceans these days.  In the old days we used to get a lot of observations in the middle of storms as storms got caught due to the poor forecasts.  Today they avoid the storm!

Ok, that is one forecast.  State-of-the-art forecasters use ensembles (the output of many model runs) that can give us uncertainty information and a measure of the confidence of the forecasts.  One of the most popular ensembles collections used by U.S. forecasters is NAEFS...the North American ensemble system that combines the ensembles of both the U.S. and Canadian ensemble system.    Here is the output from this system for the runs started at 4 PM on 26 December for the town of Kodiak.  Look at the wind speed panel (note the wind speeds are given in km per hour, e.g., 40 km per hour is 25 mph).  The bracket shows the range of speeds from the various ensemble members and the middle bar is the median).  Clearly, some of the solutions are for very wind conditions.

The bottom line is that based on climatology and the forecasts available throughout the period, this was no time to be doing a very difficult tow over the northern Gulf of Alaska.  We should expect more from a major international company that is being trusted to drill for oil in ecologically sensitive regions.

Improv-a-GONE-za

GSN made a truly weird decision when they brought Improv-a-Ganza back from the dead on Friday night. Wiser (or at least more conscious) heads have now prevailed. Drew Carey and company have once again departed, replaced by Baggage. I make some comments on the GSN schedule board...

I didn't think Improv-a-Ganza was an embarrassment or a disaster. It's just that too many stretches of the show were pretty light on laughs. Which is a problem for an alleged comedy show.

Maybe GSN just couldn't afford to tape enough footage to edit the show down to high-quality material. A straight comedy project with no gameplay was always going to be a tough sell on GSN. So the show had to be really funny to succeed. Improv-a-Ganza just wasn't all that funny, and it sank like the boat which hit the iceberg. I don't know why GSN execs thought a second go-round would produce better results.