Not on the bandwagon, or maybe I am

Jason Lee always seems to play a cantankerous sidekick in the movies, which is why his good-natured simpleton in My Name is Earl is such a pleasant surprise. Funny show.

I'm not one of those Cubs fans who wants the White Sox to lose. It's not a zero sum game fore baseball in Chicago, despite how many fans on both sides behave. I'd love to see Chicago with a national champion in its midst again. That's not to say a White Sox World Series victory will mean a fraction of what a Cubs World Series win would mean to me.

I love the version of the Jarhead trailer that is set to Kanye West's "Jesus Walks". It may be just a case of the music carrying the moving images, but when Jamie Foxx says "I...love...this...job" in cadence to the music, that's a beautiful thing. I've been editing army footage in class, and this trailer is driving me nuts because I'm overwhelmed by an inclination to set the footage to Kanye West.

Lincoln Burrows does escape from prison. I was walking back from class last week and he walked past me on the sidewalk. I couldn't place him except as the guy who had to escape from prison on that television show on Fox. How many degrees from fame are you when people recognize you from commercials for a show they've never seen because Fox blitzes all its programs with in-house promos?

Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3 is rearing its head again in NYC.

To absolutely no one's surprise, some of the first content available for the video iPod is adult.

I'm not even sure exactly what Apple's new software Aperture does, and it costs $499, but already I want it. Apple seems to release something I want every other week now. I surrender, just take my Visa.

Life's so hectic right now, and I'm exhausted, so this is all you get, just a few brief thoughts and rabbit droppings.

On the Marc Jacobs

On the Marc Jacobs homepage, you can click a link to watch the video of his 2006 Collection runway show, which opened with the Penn State Nittany Lions marching band playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Never have so many band dorks shared the stage with so many babes. Fashion shows are inherently ridiculous, so twists like this one or the nude runway show at the end of Altman's Ready to Wear are to be expected. Still, I'd leap at the chance to see a fashion show in person if I could score tickets. Who wouldn't?

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Among the 25 new MacArthur Fellows receiving $500,000 genius grants this year is Edet Belzberg. We will be editing her newest project, which isn't even listed at IMDb yet, in the second half of our class. She's most known for her first feature-length documentary Children Underground, which is now at the top of my Netflix queue. So exciting!

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Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan fielded questions about the Chicago Cubs in the Chicago Tribune Sports page. Being a creative type, he chose to ignore the Shift key.

I can't even talk or think about the Cubs anymore, this season has been such a disappointment. I haven't watched one of their games since I left for China.

***

Stream the new Elizabethtown soundtrack at MySpace. I've never once touched my MySpace page, but it's MySpace has carved out a nice little niche for themselves in the crowded social community software space with their music content.

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As NYC waits to see which of its restaurants will be crowned with three stars in the first Michelin Guide in North America, or even which 500 will merit mention at all (pre-order the Michelin Guide to New York City 2006 from Amazon.com for 32% off; it ships on Nov 4, 2005), it's useful to review what three stars from Michelin mean. According to Michelin, three stars denote "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey, where diners eat extremely well, sometimes superbly. The wine list features generally outstanding vintages, and the surroundings and service are part of this unique experience, which is priced accordingly."

I tried using a Michelin Guide once, but it wasn't nearly as useful as I'd hoped, in part because my French was rusty, but also because the guides don't actually provide much description of each listing. Fortunately, the web community will be sure to blog the 3-star winner(s) to death.

Michelin's inspectors have been paying anonymous visits to 1,200 NYC restaurants since February. During this time, I have been tempted, on more than one occasion, to stroll into some of NYC's finest restaurant with a Moleskine notebook and Mont Blanc pen, wearing some stylish metal frame glasses and sporting a French accent. I'd look all about me like a tourist entering a cathedral in Europe, and after the first bite or two of each dish, I'd jot notes in my notebook.

You laugh, but simply bringing my camera into a restaurant and snapping photos of my dishes before eating them has led to no shortage of free dishes, compliments of the kitchen, and face-to-face meetings with the head chef.

***

Epicurious lists ten restaurant trends they hate. Personally, the most exasperating thing about the NYC dining scene is the impossibility of getting a seat at any half-decent place. If you have to make a reservation weeks in advance, any meal starts to seem like an ordeal, placing undue pressure on the experience. One is bound to be disappointed in some way. It's less the scarcity of reservation slots as it is the dearth of walk-in availability that disappoints me.

I enjoy being able to stroll into a neighborhood joint to enjoy a spontaneous bite, to feel like I can run into a friend on the street and be enjoying an unplanned but delightful meal together just a few moments later.

***

Google WiFi service to launch shortly?

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Which animal kills more people in the U.S. than any other?

Takk

New album by Sigur Ros releases September 13th. Love them. This one's sung in actual Icelandic, instead of the made-up Hopelandic.

Peeved by the attacks by L'Equipe, Lance hints that he might come back and kick some butt in the Tour again next year. If so, he needs to make up his mind soon.

I've watched Felix Hernandez pitch a few times now. Awesome. Wicked stuff, especially that movement on his mid-90's heater. In 51 innings he's struck out 50 batters and walked only 10, giving up only 31 hits. Lefties are batting .129 against him. I hope he stays healthy and drug-free for many years.

Okay, so most of the last season of Six Feet Under left me cold. But the last few episodes, after you-know-who dies, were quite good. The last montage of scenes in the last episode moved me.

What happened to summer?

James and Angela and I ate at Angelica's Kitchen, an organic vegan restaurant, on Monday night, and we sat next to Morgan Spurlock and his girlfriend (wife?), both of Super Size Me fame. I guess he hasn't relapsed since his McDonald's days. In a way, perhaps it's healthy that he just gorged himself for a month on that stuff. He'll probably never have a hankering to eat a burger at McDonald's again. The best dish was Angela's tofu sandwich.

I like Google News, but I thought they were going to weight their news sources with a bias to more reputable, big-name sources. The biggest problem with Google News and Google News Alerts is all the random stories from small town papers, many being repeats of the AP Wire story. That problem still exists.

Oh dear lord do I miss DirecTV. This season they added an optional NFL Ticket SuperFan add-on package that includes over 100 games in HD, a Red Zone channel that switches automatically to any game where a team enters the opponent's red zone, a Game Mix channel where 8 games are broadcast on one screen, and a Short Cuts feature showing commercial-free replays of games in 30 minutes or less. It's like crack for a fantasy football player, and it's not available to me b/c I can't get line of sight to the DirecTV satellite from my apartment in Manhattan. When I was a DirecTV subscriber in Seattle, I didn't mind that DirecTV had basically a monopoly on showing all the NFL games, but now I'm ready to break into the roof of the nearest skyscraper to set up a satellite with a mile long run of cable to run through my front window. Time Warner Cable stinks.

More than 400 million watched the finale of "Super Girl", an American Idol-esque Chinese reality tv show. That's about the same number of people as live in the United States and Britain combined. The winner was Li Yu Chun, a tomboyish Sichuan native (a video clip of her final performance can be found here). The show only allowed female singers, and the official show title was "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest." The show was touted among Chinese youth as a triumph of democratic voting, as anyone could pay 1RMB (about $0.12) to vote via text message.

@&*#!

How much cussing is there in Deadwood? A lot (audio, not for @#$%&*-ing sensitive ears).

Since Michael Lewis published Moneyball, have major league front offices corrected for the undervaluation of on base percentage (OBP)? These professors suggest they have, due in part to the ascent of some members of the Oakland A's front office to General Manager positions elsewhere. Valuation of OBP took a huge jump up in 2004, leaping above the valuation of slugging percentage (SLG) for the first time.

New York Metro profile of Jean-Georges

Upcoming videogames: The Warriors, and The Godfather

Videogames borrow from movies, movies borrow from videogames. Paramount is big on derivative stories: Aeon Flux, War of the Worlds, The Honeymooners, The Manchurian Candidate, The Bad News Bears. Related: an e-comic adaptation of H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds (with art by D'Israeli).

Mini reviews

I consume and accumulate more media (DVR, Netflix, Amazon.com, RSS, e-mail newsletters, movie theatres, concerts, plays, the Sunday NYTimes, magazines) than I can write about, so perhaps a few impressions or mini-reviews will prove a more manageable format to clear the logjam in my head.

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The Interpreter is cool to the touch, much as I imagine Nicole Kidman's porcelain skin feels. She has a unique beauty, but it is a distancing type of beauty. The camera gazes at her in this movie from up close. She hides behind her bangs (so much so that it becomes a distraction), but even without the bangs, no camera can penetrate her statuesque features.

Sean Penn's character is given a needlessly tragic back story. An actor of Penn's skill is quick to expose such plot contrivances; it's like giving a Yo Yo Ma a metronome for a live performance. His furrowed brow makes for a nice visual contrast to Kidman's flawless complexion, and some of the most interesting scenes are those in which the two of them converse.

The trailer ruins the movie's centerpiece, a cat and mouse game that ends on a New York city bus. Anyone who has seen the trailer knows how it ends. It's a serious movie, with righteous indignation, tears, and impassioned speeches about the dream that was the United Nations. What I wanted more of was Catherine Keener's FBI agent. She receives two lines of note in the movie, and both are zingers.

If The Interpreter had been made by Hitchcock with, say, Cary Grant as the FBI agent and Grace Kelly as the interpreter, sparks would have flown by movie's end. It wasn't, and they don't. The most that Kidman grants Penn is a hug, and that's what the movie gives its audience, a polite hug when we want a hot kiss or a slap in the face.

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In the first Fenway Park scene in Fever Pitch, mannequins are clearly visible in the upper right of the screen in the crowd. Not enough extras willing to volunteer to sit at Fenway? Perhaps Red Sox diehards were too appalled at the idea of Jimmy Fallon playing one of them to lend their support. Were my eyes fooling me? Did anyone else see those?

Fallon's line readings, as with his on Saturday Night Live, seem effortless. Not in a good way. He never seems to try all that hard, and it comes across as a rehearsal. Contrast that with Drew Barrymore, who enunciates her thoughts in romantic comedies with the measured deliberation of someone reading a difficult foreign language exercise, as if the precision of her wording is critical to the incantation that will transform one of the many doofuses cast opposite her into an adult. Now that Meg Ryan has been face lifted into oblivion, Drew is America's new movie sweetheart, with her forgiving smile and child-like wonder (see, I've never met her and we're already on a first name basis). Her charm is the opposite of that of a Nicole Kidman. Drew is one of the very few actresses who can be cast opposite a gawky guy like Jimmy Fallon or Adam Sandler and make the audience believe she could actually fall for them. For a while Jennifer Aniston encroached on this territory, but then in real life she married Brad Pitt instead of Tom Green.

The movie has some clever meet-cute banter, and the Red Sox fandom caricatures are tolerable in doses. When the movie makes Fallon's love of the Red Sox the centerpiece of their conflict, though, it's such a reach that I lost all interest. The fans in Fallon's section of Fenway don't feel like real people. They're almost as much mannequins as the actual mannequins I saw on screen, there to recite some expository dialogue for non sports fans who aren't aware of the Red Sox's tragic history.

Of course, the movie would have been far more poetic had the Red Sox actually lost the World Series last year, but me thinks that Red Sox nation will hang on to their memories and kick the movie to the curb.

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Last last last Sunday, Ken took me to the concluding game of the Washington Nationals (formerly the Montreal Expos) opening series at RFK Stadium, against the Diamondbacks. RFK Stadium is not going to win any design or aesthetic awards--it's in the vein of Busch Memorial and other concrete flying saucer stadiums built before HOK came along with its red brick "old is new" aesthetic--but it's perfectly suitable for watching baseball. We sat down the first base line, giving us a good view across the stadium at the seats behind third base. When the Nationals rallied to take the lead, the fans in that section started jumping up and down, and that section of the stadium visibly bounced. Why I don't know (temporary bleachers set up in the conversion from football to baseball stadium?) but it's cool.

One of the downsides of the stadium's construction is that the outfield seats are way up above ground level. Most home run balls will fall into uninhabited space behind the outfield wall instead of into a fans' hands.

The stadium wasn't full. It seats over 56,000, so I suspect that good seats will always be available. I don't have any feel for D.C.'s appetite for baseball, but I can't imagine it will be worse than that of the Montreal faithful (though to be fair, much of the blame should be pinned on the old ownership).

My one game there has me suspecting that home runs will be at a premium. A few balls that looked to be crushed died short of the warning track. That's unfortunate for one of my fantasy baseball teams that counts Vidro and Wilkerson among its starters.

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Since moving into an apartment with paper-thin walls, I've had to keep the volume on my stereo system down. That means most music I listen to now is piped in from my iPod, whether I'm listening at home on my computer or strolling around town. The Apple earbuds that come with their iPods are nothing special, and they don't fit my ears. For all these reasons and others, I felt justified in investing in Shure E3c Sound Isolating Earphones.

No regrets so far. The E3c's sound a whole lot better than the Apple earbuds and my old over-the-head sports headphones. They're not noise canceling, but they do an amazing job of sealing my ears from external noise, of which there is an abundance in NYC. When I saunter down the sidewalk with the E3c's on and music blasting, all of NYC seems like a massive music video playing out just for me (in which the citizens of NYC shoot condescending stares my way for daring to saunter).

Search the web; lots of online stores carry E3c's, and good deals can be found. No need to buy direct from Shure at full retail price.

"Underestimating the Fog"

King Kaufman mentioned this article before, and now so does the NYTimes sports page: "Underestimating the Fog" by Bill James (PDF). James writes that if the Baseball Research Journal were a scientific journal, he would have titled the article "The Problem of Distinguishing Between Transient and Persistent Phenomena When Dealing with Variables from a Statistically Unstable Platform".

James notes that many widely held sabermetric tenets, including the non-existence of clutch hitting, may be based on a faulty statistical method. Until now, sabermetricians have believed that if a player does own a skill, like clutch hitting ability, it should persist from year to year. Fluctuations in a player's hitting performance in clutch situations from year to year has been taken to mean that clutch hitting is a myth. Some other ideas based on this statistical method (all of which should be familiar to any reader of Bill James Baseball Abstracts, Baseball Prospectus, Rob Neyer, or any of their countless web acolytes) include the following:

• Pitchers can't control wins and losses. They can only prevent the other team from scoring runs.


• Team performance in one-run games is largely luck.


• Catchers don't affect their pitchers' ERAs


• Pitchers can't control batting average of balls put in play (recent studies have qualified this to say that pitchers largely cannot control this).


• Batters do not go on hot or cold streaks.

James does not argue that any of these are false, but he is concerned that the proofs are faulty.

"We ran astray because we have been assuming that random data is proof of nothingness, when in reality random data proves nothing...random data proves nothing--and it cannot be used as proof of nothingness.



Why? Because whenever you do a study, if your study completely fails, you will get random data. Therefore, when you get random data, all you may conclude is that your study has failed."

It's a fantastic article. Sabermetric thinking hasn't made any revolutionary leaps relative to itself in a long time. That it is taking hold in more baseball organizations now may make it seem fresh, but many of the ideas have been around for some time (of course, teams may have come upon some strategies that they have kept secret; I'm referring only to publicly available ideas). James's last Baseball Abstract came out in 2001. He doesn't seem to write for the public much anymore now that he works for the Red Sox (though recently he did conduct this interview with Sons of Sam Horn). I miss his contrarian voice--he's a bit of a curmudgeon, and whenever I catch the random episode of House I feel that Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) is a medical version of Bill James.

James still believes that hot streaks do not exist. This is one phenomenon I believe in without any data as proof. But in my own experience playing sports, I've gone through productive runs that I'd term hot streaks, during times when I've felt "in the zone." In baseball, it's the sense that all the pitches are slower and the ball larger than normal, easier to pick up with the eye. In basketball, it's the feeling that every jump shot will go in, that the basket is larger than normal. Personal experience and sensation is notoriously unreliable as a way to explain the world, so my belief in the existence of hot streaks is an article of faith. No one has ever been able to explain the phenomenon physiologically, but players refer to it again and again in different sports. If it is truly a transient (non-persistent) and random occurrence, these hot streaks, then they would indeed be very difficult to detect.

On the other hand, I can muster no amount of faith in the Cubs this season, and that was even before Nomar Garciaparra and Todd Walker went down with injuries. Not enough hitters, injury risks galore in the pitching staff, and a manager with questionable tactical ability. No underestimating that fog; it's hanging over Wrigley, and hanging over my head. 90% chance of showers.

Off his Rocker

Rich passed along this photo from an article in the NYTimes, a shot of ex-Atlanta Brave pitcher John Rocker, notorious for his prejudiced comments against the riders of the No. 7 subway train to Shea Stadium:

I think the editor is still peeved at Rocker's comments and chose this photo as a comment on the state of Rocker's mental health. Otherwise, why choose this photo for an article about his comeback? If you can pry your eyes from his crazed expression or enormous mullet, you'll notice he's about to throw a breaking ball.

Levitt vs. Beane

Steven Levitt is finally posting to his Freakonomics blog, and it didn't take him long to stir up a hornet's nest. Levitt is skeptical of Billy Beane's genius, as described in Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (read here, here, and here). Levitt lays out a simple test to answer this debate:

In the spirit of data, the skeptics amongst you should tell me how many games the A's need to win this year or over the next five years so that they would feel that Moneyball is validated. My own view is that if the A's win 81 games a year for the next five years, it is more likely that Beane was lucky than good. If they win 97 a year, I'll happily concede that Beane is the best. Even an average of 90 games

a year and I will acknowledge he is brilliant.

Beane has a worshipful following among the sabermetric crowd, so they've responded in force with comments to Levitt's posts. I'm not entirely clear what is being debated, and so it's not clear to me that the above test is the right test.

Is the question whether Beane has succeeded because of the skills attributed to him in Moneyball? That would require some clarification of what those were (I loaned my copy of Moneyball out to someone and can't remember who that was). Even then, I'm not sure that all of Billy Beane's tactics were revealed in the book (Beane wouldn't be that smart if he gave away his recipe to a reporter to publish in a book), and now that several other teams are operating with similar tactics (the Red Sox and the teams run by his former assistants, the Dodgers and Blue Jays), it's likely that he's had to adjust his strategy.

If the question is simply whether Beane can maintain a 90 win a season team with a small to mid-market budget, then the test is better, but not perfect. Just a bit of bad luck, a severe injury to one of the team's offensive or pitching stars, can derail a 90 win season. And it's possible the A's will elevate their payroll in the future, introducing a new variable to the test. Incidentally, the A's have won 90 games a season for the last five seasons, and it's not the first time in their history they've done that. To add another five 90 win seasons to that would be a string that I believe has only been done by only one team in history, the 1947-1958 Yankees (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). If Beane can do that, then Levitt is right, Beane is on to something.

Now that the A's have traded away Mulder and Hudson, people can no longer claim that the A's success is purely a result of the Big Three. I'm curious to see what happens, and personally I do think Beane is a very good general manager.

Meanwhile, Levitt lives up to his reputation as an original. I was going to say contrarian, but I'm not sure Beane's philosophy is widespread enough to qualify as conventional wisdom. Economist bloggers, when they aren't discussing interest rates, are among the most interesting voices on the web.

Tough day for Illinois hoops

The Bulls lose Luol Deng for the season, Eddy Curry has been in the hopsital for a few games with irregular heartbeats, and the Illini lost a close one to North Carolina. Tough day for Chicago hoops fans, but the NCAA final was a good game, and the Illini can't complain about not having chances to win it. They had several open 3-pointers to tie or take the lead at the end of the game. They just didn't drop.

Sean May came as advertised. NC did a great job feeding him the ball, and no one on Illinois (Powell, Augustine, or Ingram) could stop him, even when they double-teamed him. The late Head turnover at 65-65, I believe, was a dagger, as was Felton's 3-pointer from deep, with Deron Williams and Dee Brown in his face. If it was any coach that could have beat Illinois, I'm glad it was Roy Williams. He seems like a decent guy.

That's about as good a game as you can see in the NCAA finals nowadays. College's best players either leave early or just skip past Go and it's $200 and head to the pros where $200 is how much they tip the locker room laundry man. Deron Williams, Sean May, Rashad McCants, and probably even Felton are juniors, but they won't be back next year.

But the turning of the calendar always brings new untold stories for sports fans to hang their hopes on. The Cubs are in first place today! Whoo-hoo! And a Pretty in Pink sequel is in the works! When life dumps coal in your socks, it also drops a sugar cube in your breakfast mug.

Six of this or half dozen of that

Entries from a "Write Like Mamet" contest

The contest was a promotion for the new Mamet adaptation The Voysey Inheritance, playing in San Francisco

James Surowiecki in The New Yorker on where Sony went wrong

Summary? In technology, open:good. Closed:bad. It's not news to anyone outside of Sony. Is it news to people inside the company? Business hubris can run deep, can't it? As an aside, It's been a while since the last Surowiecki Financial Page

Lukas Moodysson on A Hole in My Heart from the NYTimes, Nov, 2004

I loved Show Me Love and Lilya 4-ever is a film fest classic. A Hole in My Heart opens in NYC this week. When Moodysson writes that he originally thought about casting Sylvester Stallone and Christina Aguilera in an American version of this latest movie, I'm not sure if he's serious or not

How Broadway Lost Its Voice to 'American Idol'

Week old article, but I never seem to be able to keep up with the NYTimes, even though I'm down to buying only the Sunday copy

Cornell's Law Library posted a copy of what is believed to be the first psychological profile of Adolf Hitler

Alan Schwarz calls out sports announcers on their statistical mumbo jumbo

The last one being most interesting, why hitting for a high average on the first pitch isn't what it seems

Around my brain in 80 seconds

Congrats Dave and Karen!
Whole Foods opens in Union Square this Wednesday, Mar. 16
Whoo-hoo! I've been waiting for the store to open ever since I moved to NYC. In another city, Whole Foods would count as a premium grocery store, but relative to other NYC stores, I think its prices will be reasonably unreasonable. Trader Joe's may invade Union Square this year as well, providing some downward pricing pressure. [news via Gothamist]
Bill Gurley blogifies his "Above the Crowd" newsletter/column
RSS feed for the column here. Always an interesting read, though Gurley's last post up until this week was from Fall 2004. The blog format should encourage more activity
The fantasy baseball league I play in, Mendoza Baseball, implemented an arbitration simulator this spring. Really cool. I don't think I've seen that in any other fantasy baseball simulation anywhere. I went to arbitration with some of my players today, and it was nervewracking waiting for the browser to refresh and display the arbitrator's decision when the player and I differed on salary judgments. Yes, I'm a total geek for caring about this, but some of you out there must play fantasy baseball, and if you're interested in trying to be a fantasy Billy Beane, check it out. The league has all sorts of interesting participants, from professors to students doing their PhDs on fantasy baseball
Kurt Eichenwald's Conspiracy of Fools hit bookstores this week. The book details the Enron scandal. I have a soft spot for white collar criminal non-fiction. Eichenwald's The Informant, about price-fixing at Archer Daniels-Midland, was excellent.
From The Onion: "According to a study released Monday by the Center for Media and Social Research, the reality-TV genre is unfairly biased against black people. The study revealed that reality is unfair to blacks, as well."
And from The Onion frontpage: "Could Hillary Clinton Have What It Takes To Defeat The Democrats In 2008?" and "Thick Sweater No Match For Determined Nipples"
Last Friday, Mike, Joannie, and I caught DJs A-Trak and Diplo at Sonotheque
Amazing stuff by DJ A-Trak, an honorary member of Invisibl Skratch Piklz and the first DJ ever to win all three major titles (DMC, ITF and Vestax) and the first DJ to win five world championships. He was Kanye West's personal DJ on tour last summer. A-Trak's first DVD and soundtrack Sunglasses is a Must comes out this summer on Audio Research Records

Freakonomics

I've been in Chicago visiting Joannie and Mike, and so I haven't been online much the past several days. Since I work on my computer so many hours out of each day (writing, editing, surfing, blogging, and lately, trying to learn linear editing software), vacations often feel like extended departures from the computer as much as they are departures from home. Laptops, an ever-widening net of wi-fi, and the seemingly ubiquitous Internet access in homes around the U.S. mean that I don't have to make such a tradeoff, but I do out of choice. Occasionally broadening the frame of the world beyond the confines of your LCD computer screen is relaxing, a break from information consumption/production compulsion.
I did want to mention and tout one book, though, a book I've mentioned before: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by famed economist Steven Levitt and reporter Stephen Dubner. A representative from Harper Collins was kind enough to send me a galley, and I've been up since three in the morning and have just finished devouring it. It is the logical successor to the Guns, Germs, and Steel --> The Tipping Point --> The Wisdom of Crowds --> Blink daisy chain of thought-provoking page-turners. For fans of Levitt who've always had to read about his work secondhand through articles, the arrival of the book is like finally sitting down in a theater to watch a blockbuster movie for which they've watched tantalizing movie trailers for months on end. The book doesn't disappoint; I found myself pulling out my moleskine notebook to jot down notes and thoughts as I read through it, something I rarely do with a book. His studies of cheating in sports like sumo wrestling are particularly relevant right now in the wake of all the steroids investigations in baseball. I'll post a review once I'm back in NYC from my vacation.
The official Freakonomics website is a work in progress consisting only of a front page for now. By the time the book arrives in April, I'm sure it will be populated with content.
Speaking of reading about interesting ideas secondhand, Salon's sports columnist wrote Thursday about a Bill James article in the Baseball Research Journal No. 33 that concludes: The absence of stats that prove clutch hitting ability exists doesn't mean clutch hitting ability doesn't exist.
On the face of it, not a particularly earth-shattering conclusion. It should raise the eyebrows of devotees of Baseball Prospectus and the sabermetric schools of thought, however, because they've conducted many studies attempting to detect clutch hitting and found no evidence that clutch hitting is a repeatable skill. The usual study tracks a hitter's hitting statistics with runners in scoring position and/or in late-inning high leverage situations (e.g. postseason games) over several years. High variability in such statistics from year to year (or the statistician's inability to accurately forecast those stats from year to year) has often been taken as proof that clutch hitting is a myth, an urban legend.
I don't have a copy of James's article, but the Salon article excerpts the following:

"We ran astray because we have been assuming that random data is proof of nothingness, when in reality random data proves nothing," James writes of his own and others' studies. He cites a famous article about clutch hitting by Dick Cramer. "Cramer argued, 'I did an analysis which should have identified clutch hitters, if clutch hitting exists. I got random data; therefore, clutch hitters don't exist.'"
James pronounces himself guilty of the same thing, many times. But: "Random data proves nothing -- and it cannot be used as proof of nothingness. Why? Because whenever you do a study, if your study completely fails, you will get random data. Therefore, when you get random data, all you may conclude is that your study has failed."

James doesn't go so far as to say clutch hitting exists, only that he's no longer certain it doesn't exist. Drop clutch hitting in that category of phenomena you believe in but can't measure; thus the common comparisons to religion.
One example of this that I subscribe to is the phenomenon of hitters getting hot and cold. Analysts have often described a series of at-bats by a hitter as a series of coin flips. Hot streaks are merely stretches where many hits occur, but each new at-bat is a new coin flip. When I played Little League Baseball, however, I experienced what hitters commonly describe as periods when the baseball appeared to travel slower and to grow in size, when I could center the ball on my bat with unusual frequency. Conversely, I went through phases where I couldn't make good contact or feel comfortable at the plate at all. This was something I could actually physically feel.
Was my feeling of invincibility at the plate a product of a few chance hits strung together or did some physical change occur that allowed me to hit well for a period of time? The former seems more likely, especially since I don't have even the slightest hypothesis as to what physical changes might have caused me to hit better. It's also entirely possible that some other unidentified factor(s) may have been in play. However, ask any athlete who can't miss a jump shot or golfer who shoots a fabled round of 59 because their putter is on fire, and I suspect they'd profess a belief in hot streaks.
If someone discovers a copy of James's article online, do pass along a link!
One last link to some non-conventional thinking: in today's NYTimes Sunday magazine, Roger Lowenstein writes about David Cutler's proposal for health care reform. One line in the article caught my eye:

Cutler wrote a still cited dissertation on how changes in Medicare's compensation scheme caused hospitals to release patients after shorter stays. It proved, Cutler says, that doctors were incredibly and, in some cases, ''horribly,'' responsive to incentives.

It caught my eye because Steven Levitt bases much of his thinking on incentives, and since reading Freakonomics I've been thinking about everything in those terms. Two myths I've been guilty of believing are that doctors are sacrosanct, immune to human foibles, and that all doctors are equal. Something in my childhood education or my cultural environment fostered that belief in me, and it wasn't until I became an adult and experienced some distressingly horrible health care that the mystique around doctors evaporated (that's not a knock on doctors, of which there are many in my family; no one needs the unhealthy expectations that come from mythologizing, and good doctors probably deserve more credit than they receive).
Doctors are humans, health care is not uniform in quality. Not surprising at all. Replace doctors and health care in that sentence with any other profession, and I would have agreed with you all my life, yet doctors got a free pass in my book for years. Very odd. Perhaps movies and books present doctors in an overwhelmingly positive light, and perhaps there's a lack of data (or publicized data) on the variability of the quality of health care.
David Cutler's CV links to many of his papers and articles. Another related article: "The Bell Curve" by Atul Gawande, about measuring the quality of doctors.

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Yahoo buying Flickr?

I mentioned earlier this year that I'd be shocked if Flickr wasn't purchased before year's end, and that Yahoo seemed to be the most likely suitor

Danica McKellar, Winnie from The Wonder Years, offers a math tutoring column at her personal website. An undergrad math major while at UCLA, she co-wrote a paper on percolation and Ashkin-Teller models (PDF). Follow the thread and you'll discover that she has an Erdos-Bacon number of 6 and that Dolph Lundgren has a master's in chemical engineering from U. of Sydney, speaks five languages, has an IQ of 160, and won a Fulbright Scholarship to MIT. [via MeFi]

Hong Kong Int'l Airport won Skytrax Best Airport of 2004

I miss the old HK airport, though. Landing there at night was one of the coolest flying experiences. One felt as if you were going to just land right on some busy HK street, between skyscrapers. No American airport ranked in the top ten

Yankees fan's effort to name FleetCenter in Boston DerekJeterCenter on Mar. 1 vetoed

Exposing your babies to classical music doesn't enhance their intelligence

"I played it because I have a pair"

This Volkswagen ad remix of Singing in the Rain is incredible

Hypnotic black and white short: Muppets Overtime

Bode Miller loses one ski 15 seconds into downhill run, nearly finishes the entire run on one ski at speeds of 70 to 75mph

He might have lost one of his two skis, but he didn't lose the pair that counts. That is freaking crazy

Jeff Bagwell's ex-wife is auctioning off 30 days of ad space on her cleavage

The current bid is $10,700. The T&, err, Q&A, is worth reading. Baseball wives, and now ex-wives, are all the rage this offseason. We need to get Shaune and Anna Benson to do a charity mud wrestling event or something

Cubs trade Sosa

Alan, Sharon, James, and Angela took me out for dinner for my birthday tonight. Afterwards, I stopped by James and Angela's for a nightcap of steak, waffles, french fries, and of course, scotch. Okay, just scotch.

Alan called. At that late hour, it could only be something important. Sammy Sosa had been traded to the Orioles. In return, the Cubs would receive Jerry Hairston Jr. plus two minor leaguers, though they'd have to pick up a large part of Sosa's 2005 salary of $17 million. How far the mighty have fallen. To think that after Sosa's years with the Cubs, especially 1998-2001, he'd be traded for just a slap hitting 2B and two minor leaguers, is shocking.

Or is it? I'm old enough now to have seen enough quick reversals of fortune such that Sosa's rapid demise seems entirely feasible, even normal. David Duval once shot a 59. After three rounds in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, Duval sits at +30, 53 strokes off the lead! The Cubs had clearly had enough of him, and he, with his fragile ego, couldn't bear the thought of sprinting out to RF for the home opener to the derisive boos of forty thousand Cubs fans. Sosa had a difficult contract to move, and the suitors were few. Not ideal conditions for GM Jim Hendry to make a trade.

If you re-arranged his career and put his prima donna 2004 anywhere in his career except last year, he might still be a beloved Cub. Such is life. I enjoyed the Sosa prime, when he was baseballs into orbit to all fields, but it's tough for a town like Chicago to pull for a diva.

Noir

They're filming bits of War of the Worlds (two dudes named Spielberg and Cruise are working on it) in Brooklyn and NJ.
Weblog of a casino cheat
Even if you don't live in NYC, this list of essential American film noir from the Film Forum is really cool. I caught Mildred Pierce there--good good good.
When trends gain enough momentum to go mainstream, that's when Microsoft jumps in
Giambi brothers admit to having used steroids while in the major leagues
The clouds around Barry Bonds darken, but until he's proven guilty, he's innocent. I think that's how it works in this country. Personally, I'm not convinced that steroids actually help a baseball player. In football, yes, but baseball? I read a convincing case from a baseball-crazed physicist who argued that steroids wouldn't aid a hitter. Since only stories about good hitters or successful players using steroids make the news, the public may have an unjustified bias towards thinking steroids are helpful. What of all the lousy players (Jeremy Giambi being one) and minor leaguers who never make it who used steroids? Sosa and Bonds could hit tape-measure home runs even when they were skinny. Perhaps steroids helps to stave off the effects of aging, allowing guys like Bonds to retain their skills later into their careers.
GQ's 100 funniest jokes of all time

Summer road trip pics

During my road trip from Seattle down to Los Angeles to deliver my car to Karen, I snapped a few photos. Many were shot blind as I drove, right hand on the steering wheel, left hand pointing a compact digital camera out the car window. By the way, I don't advise doing that unless you have multiprocessors in the brain. I swerved on to the shoulder a few times.
My last game at Safeco Field. Sang took me to see the Mariners play the Twins. I looked at the lineup and thought two things: "Johan Santana is pitching, and he's filthy, and Justin Morneau is a good young hitter." Santana pitched one run ball for 7 innings, and Morneau hit two homers. Santana went on to win the Cy Young, and he was the best pitcher in baseball this year. I was grateful to see him during his amazing second half run, to see major league hitters flail over the top of his daffy duck changeup. How does he grip it, I wonder, and how crazy is it that he can throw it 75 mph out of his palm when I can't throw a baseball at that velocity holding it normally?

Maelle and Sadie, at my going away BBQ. Maybe babies really do appreciate their awesome complexions.

Eric and Christina bought me this cake. It reads "NYC Ya Later Euge!" The entire outside of the cake was one solid layer of marzipan. Sinfully good.

Frankly, Otto found my imminent departure inconsequential. I pointed out that he had three chins. We reached an uneasy truce.

Taking this photo, I almost drove off the road.

Great weather for my drive down to San Francisco.

I think this is Mt. Shasta, though to be honest I can't remember anymore.

Almost thirteen hours later, I finally crossed the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, my legs having lost all feeling. Another thirteen hours later, I found a parking spot in the city.

Jon took me to catch a game at SBC.

Look where Barry Bonds' bat is relative to the ball. Would you believe he pulled this one foul? That's how ridiculous his swing speed is.

In Los Angeles, Karen took me to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl featuring music from MGM/UA movies (Sept 5). For some of the movies, film clips played on screen while the orchestra played. Maestro John Mauceri would introduce each movie and piece. For some reason, his voice reminded me of Phil Hartman, never more so than when he came out for an encore and then said, "Ladies and gentleman, we are honored to have with us here, Sheena Easton." And then she walked out and sang "For Your Eyes Only." If you had only heard this scene, you'd swear it was from an episode of The Simpsons. Of course, they played bits from Pink Panther, James Bond, Rocky, and West Side Story, but the highlights for me were the clips from Spellbound and City Lights.

Finally, I arrived in NYC, where I stayed with James and Angela. Gorgeous weather blessed us my second weekend there, and I met them in Central Park for a picnic.

Some of that new extended ROTK footage...

...from the forthcoming DVD is here, including a humorous cameo by Peter Jackson himself. Boo yah. Seems like Christopher Lee is still bitter that his last scenes were cut from the theatrical release.
The Boston Red Sox named Sports Illustrated's Sportsmen of the Year

Goodbye, Steve Stone

Longtime Cubs color commentator Steve Stone has resigned. It's a sad moment for Cubs fans like myself who grew up listening to his color commentary on WGN-TV. This year he was involved in some disputes with Cubs players like Moises Alou and Kent Mercker, and even Cubs manager Dusty Baker and general manager Jim Hendry. Stone didn't pull any punches in the booth, and it rubbed some players and coaches the wrong way. Stone was always fair, and those players and managers should've worried about winning on the field instead of acting like millionaire babies.
Harry Caray was a little loopy (I'm being generous, but we forgive our old and increasingly senile baseball personalities, like Peter Gammons) his last few years in the booth. Stone's patience (he never made a big deal about Caray's many mistakes or mispronunciations) and reasoned insight helped to balance out Caray's more partisan, emotionally driven play-by-play. Now WGN's entire commentary booth will turn over next season since Chip Caray left for the Braves.
True, perhaps none of this affects the team's on-field performance. But the Cubs sure are making it difficult for fans to warm up to the team. It feels, as Seinfeld said, like I really am rooting for laundry.

Red Sox/Yankees in semi-realtime

Rich is in town visiting. After a dinner out for sushi, at which we each had a good luck Asahi for the Red Sox, we're settling in for the game. When it comes down to it, only Yankees fans can root for the Yankees. I can't think of anyone on the Yankees I'd root for. Go Sox!
Why did Dale Sveum send Damon in the first inning? I thought the Cubs with Wendell Kim were the only ones who had to lose hair over runners thrown out at home.
Wow, Big Papi tatooed that ball! That home run may have killed some fan in the right field bleachers.
Rich is feeling ill. I hope it wasn't the sushi. Rich has to tap out. I will soldier on.
Man, Brown has nothing. Who knows how he'd have been if he hadn't broken his hand in a childish fit of rage. The Greek tragedy is coming full circle.
Damon with a Grand Slam!! If I were Damon, I couldn't resist the urge to trot back out to my position and subtly flip off the fans in right field behind my back. He's too nice a guy to do so, but they sure give him hell out there. I wouldn't fault him for doing it.
This afternoon, Schilling was on Baseball Tonight and called A-Rod's swipe of Arroyo's arm last night a bush league play. When someone like Schilling, a respected player, calls A-Rod out on a cheap shot...that's just another heated page in the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry. What I thought was uncool was A-Rod claiming it was part of his natural running motion. I mean, c'mon. That was like Lance Berkman pretending he was hit in the head by a pitch earlier this year against the Cubs, lying there like he was unconscious, when replays clearly showed the ball didn't even touch him. Would Roy Hobbs do that? There ya go.
Speaking of Roy Hobbs, was the blood seeping through Curt Schilling's sock last night the most famous blood on a baseball player since Hobbs's bloody bullet wound in The Natural? It was perfect. A Red Sox player with literal red socks. If Schilling has that bloody sock left he could auction it off for millions on eBay. Some bar in Boston would buy it and build a golden shrine to it.
A-Rod chose Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" as the song to play over Yankees Stadium speakers when he comes to bat. Okay, that right there is another problem for A-Rod. I'm sorry, that's just not an intimidating song. If you're Ricky Williams and you've decided to retire from football at the peak of your career to go sit on a tropical beach somewhere and smoke pot from a three foot bong, maybe you can play that song as you're packing up your locker.
I can't believe the Yankees, with their payroll, bat Tony Clark in their lineup. His OBP this season was .297 and he struck out 92 times in 253 at-bats. Brutal. I wondered why Giambi didn't pinch-hit for Clark last night. I thought Giambi was on the post-season roster just for that reason.
Unfrozen Caveman is not just thawed, he's on fire! Upper deck! Maybe he really is Jesus. Next inning we may see him levitate into the sky to take a home run away from the Yankees.
Side note not related to this game: I just saw the box score of the NL game. Lidge pitched another 3 innings today, no hits, 5 Ks! Just ridiculous. He has to be fried for tomorrow's game. Doesn't he? And even Izzy went 3 innings for the Cardinals, so you know Larussa was desperate. Lidge's numbers from this season are sick: 94.7 innings, only 57 hits and 30 walks, 157 K's (!?!), a 1.90 ERA. His slider is just illegal. I still think K-Rod is the most fun relief pitcher in baseball to watch (similar numbers to Lidge: 84 IP, 51 hits, 33 BBs, 123 Ks, and a 1.82 ERA) just because his 89mph slider/curve and then 97mph fastball look like videogame pitches thrown with a whiffle ball they move so much. Plus he has a wild, exaggerated windup, and I miss those. Why don't more pitchers have wild and crazy windups like Juan Marichal in the old days, bringing the arms way back over the head, leg kicking up so that the knee is nearly over one's head? It adds a huge element of deception to the delivery, and it's so much fun to watch. Think Goose Gossage and Pascual Perez. Pitchers today with huge leg kicks and long, looping deliveries: Hideo Nomo, Dontrelle Willis, El Duque, Shigetoshi Hasegawa (sort of; interestingly, lots of Japanese pitchers seem to have huge windups; I wonder why?). There are probably others. There should be more.
Other side note on the NLCS game: I just saw a replay of Edmonds game winning home run. It's amazing that a guy with such a huge uppercut can take high and away fastballs and hit them out of the park. I saw him do that to a 94mph Kerry Wood high and away fastball earlier this year. People say to pitch him high and away because of his uppercut, but I think that needs to be amended to high and inner half. Otherwise he might just hit a 7-iron into the stands.
Ramirez chases Bernie's fly ball, and Buck says, "Ramirez with a late jump on it." Isn't that pretty much standard with every fly ball that goes to left against the Red Sox?
I was over at ESPN's Sportsnation Chat and saw a thread in which Boston fans were wondering when Francona would pull Lowe. Only a Cubs or Red Sox fan could be so paranoid. Lowe's up 8-1 and has given up one hit in 5 innings. I'd cut the man some slack. Sheesh.
What do you call a single Red Sox player? A Red Sock?
If they pull Lowe out and replace him with Pedro, I'll be shocked. That doesn't seem necessary, or wise, when you could have Pedro start in the World Series. There, I said it. World Series. I guess this is the World Series, in many ways, for the Red Sox. The NLCS has been exciting, too, but it's clearly been pushed to second class status this offseason, its games pushed to times when no one can watch to accommodate the ALCS in primetime.
A Felix Heredia sighting. The other day, Ken e-mailed me when Heredia got up in the bullpen, laughing uncontrollably. We remember him from his Cubs days, when he ran up ERAs of 4.85, 4.76, and 6.17.
Hmm, Pedro is coming in. Very bizarre. Maybe he's just treating this as his between-starts throwing session.
Pedro's not throwing very hard, and Matsui and Bernie double back to back. Still a healthy lead, but I still would have left Lowe out there. Sinkerballers are more effective when they're tired, or at least that's what they say. He looked plenty good to me. Pedro can't even break 90 right now, and he just gave up a single to Lofton, who I believe is collecting social security. Pedro still has a 5 run cushion, but seriously, what is he doing out there? Let the man rest.
Leave Pedro in too long last year, bring him in too early and unnecessarily this year. Some might pity the Red Sox managers for having to deal with such stress, but I blame the managers for making such lousy tactical decisions.
95 and 95mph on Pedro's last two pitches. Maybe he's warm now.
And now the Yankees Stadium organist is encouraging the Who's Your Daddy chant between every pitch. Oh, please make it stop.
The other option is that Pedro's reaching back for something extra. And he made it out of the inning giving up just two runs. Now send him to the showers and ice that arm of his. Since Cubs fans and Red Sox fans share similar nightmares, I can only imagine how much Pepto-Bismol is being consumed in Boston. Only a Cubs or Red Sox fan could insecure with such a big lead and just two innings to play. When you've had no empirical evidence in your entire lifetime to justify your faith, that's how it goes.
This may be the first post-season game where some pitcher requires Tommy John surgery during a series. Given how long the Red Sox/Yankees series has gone, Foulke could have had Tommy John after game one and recovered to pitch the ninth in this game.
Fickle is Red Sox Nation, is it not? Bellhorn and Damon have gone from goats to toasts with their recent home runs, while Manny is now a dirty word after his struggles this series.
Bottom of the 8th: Phew! Pedro is gone. Francona has overcome his temporary insanity and brought in Timlin.
Wow, what a dig by Mient...however you spell his name! Maybe this will dispell some of the post-season mythology around Derek Jeter. Has he done anything this ALCS? Maybe Jessica Alba will dump him. Please?
A-Rod....whiffffff! How sweet it must feel for the Red Sox to knock out the guy who almost came to them and instead ended up with their hated rivals. To think, it was the player's association that nullified that trade to the Red Sox and set A-Rod up for his fall. And why was the trade nullified? A-Rod and Scott Boras's greed in setting up his original contract with the Rangers, one that the player's association wouldn't allow the Red Sox to shrink. Yes, another example of hubris. This Greek tragedy is about to conclude. Steinbrenner poisons some drinks, kills Cashman and Torre and then has a heart attack and dies. As bloody an ending as Hamlet.
If I'm a Red Sox fan, especially if I'm in the bleachers, I'm trying like hell to start a "Who's Your Daddy?" chant right now. And then I'd duck and run like hell.
A token playing of "Enter Sandman" for Rivera. It doesn't sound that intimidating when the Yankees are down 7 runs. Has Rivera ever come into a game in which the Yankees trailed by this much? I doubt it.
In the World Series, we'll get to find out what David Ortiz looks like playing 1B. The AL winning the All-Star Game and giving the Red Sox home field advantage in the World Series is huge in that respect.
If I hop the train now, I may be able to get to Boston in time to buy a Red Sox hat and hit the streets. On this night, that would be enough for a guy to get lucky, if he wasn't trampled to death in street riots.
Pitching change to Embree with 2 outs in the ninth. A pause for Red Sox fans to pull the champagne out of the fridge and pop the cork.
Red Sox win!!! Pandemonium!!!
I like the Red Sox against whoever comes out of the NL. Neither the Astros nor the Cardinals has the starting pitching to hold down the Red Sox lineup, even with the pitcher having to hit in NL parks.