This entry contained an error, ironic given that it claimed to be pointing out a sportswriter's error. In fact, the Raiders' blackout does result in CBS not showing an early game here. This map confirms it (no LaDainian (or Mewelde) for us), and Wikipedia explains further.
In this link I had misread the phrase "if the game is sold out" as "if the game is blacked out." That same article makes somewhat interesting reference to the NFL rules for secondary markets: Road games must be carried but home games are optional. The Sacramento CBS station drew lots of complaints after being forced to show Oakland at San Diego instead of New England at Dallas.
Do you think affiliates in that position (this notably also includes a CBS in Harrisburg, PA, that gets hosed whenever a Baltimore Ravens road game is on at the same time as a Steelers game) would run afoul of the NFL, or their network, if the ran a scroll explaining that NFL rules mandated which game they carried?
How idiotic are some people if this post even needed to be written?
"Libertarian" isn't quite the right word for it and "capitalism" isn't quite the right word for it. Whatever it is, this essay captures it to a tee. (The essay is in response to this article about the hardships faced by public interest employees.)
Most provocative sentence: "In many ways, Sam Walton was one of the great humanitarians of our time, in bringing our nation's poor closer to a comfortable, middle-class lifestyle, and he seemed to do pretty well by doing good."
Don't infer any specific policy implications from this, unless the chain of logic is pretty obvious. The general idea is that the "invisible hand" is profoundly underrated, while both altruistic intentions and regulatory schemes are profoundly overrated relative to what they actually accomplish.
(The point isn't to want to make the world a better place, the point is actually to accomplish it.)
The official announcement went out today but the site redesign had been deployed since Wednesday. The Music Map has already gotten a BoingBoing link. If you mouse over "Music Search Tools" you can find your way to the Digital Top 10 and Elite 100.
(In a perfect world, the boilerplate text on those last two would explicitly state that the former is a weeks worth of lookups but the latter is several years' worth.)
If you feel like doing my job for me, feel free to comment (or e-mail me) about any problems with the chart data. (Or with the user interface, though in that case I'd cheerfully relay your feedback down the line.)
Drew Carey takes a stand. Good for him!
"And is there any show more inherently free-market-oriented than The Price Is Right, which teaches more about price theory and the subjective theory of value in an hour than most intro econ courses do in a semester."
--Nick Gillespie
Moreover, what do you picture when you think of someone who watches TPIR? Filter out from that caricature the people who will still be alive ten years from now, and what else do you think they're doing with their time while they're sitting at home watching that show?
Have you ever had a Scrabble game end in a dead draw? I don't think I ever had, but there's a first time for everything.
Also, that makes twice in one week where I needed the leftover tile bonus/penalty to avert a loss.
This murder happened very close to where my wife grew up (link fixed). (You can tell by the size of the tennis courts and the infield dirt on the baseball fields. Depending on where in the park this was, the 0.4 mile "drive" is probably more like 0.2 on foot.)
Statistic of the day: "Oakland has had more than a hundred homicides this year. Until Halloween night, Alameda had had none this year."
The assailants were Asian juveniles, slender in build with heights ranging from 5 feet 5 inches to 5 feet 8 inches.
When it comes to Bay Area traffic, black is worse than red -- but pink is worse than either of them!!
I enjoy rooting against the Oakland Raiders. I dislike most of what they stand for, especially the desecration of what used to be a perfectly cromulent baseball venue. For years now Al Davis has been too much of a doddering fool to be remotely evil; as for the fans themselves, the whole Black Hole meme -- that I actually like, if only because it's all a glorious put-on. (Some guys wear costumes to the Coliseum, other guys wear remarkably similar costumes to the Castro, it's all good.)
In other words, I don't actually hate the Raiders with every fiber of my being. but I certainly good.
That is, of teams you've had in the past few seasons, which players have you ended up with most often (by design or otherwise)? A couple of these came up a post below, but "my" roster comes out (in part) something like:
QB Ben Roethlisberger
RB Brian Westbrook
WR Plaxico
K David Akers
(Plaxico Burress is the player with the greatest gap between "how often people ought to refer to him by first name alone" and "how often they actually do.")
Despite their transcendent awesomeness, those are admittedly guys who get hurt a lot. (That big red "Q" is short for "Plaxico." It might even be part of QPlaxico's real name.)
There's no obvious reason for the Pennsylvania theme, though coming full circle with the post below this Pittsburgh has an entirely different archetype for its coaches than Philly.
This is just sad. Even though there's a case that blaming the father just lets adults-who-should-know-better off easier, what kind of father allows this to happen in his own home?
Within the confines of the NFL, I really like Andy Reid*. But stories like this make you wonder what kind of authority figure he is on the job.
*- This isn't "full disclosure" worthy but for no obvious reason my past few years worth of fantasy football teams have had more Eagles than you'd expect, and I've gotten more joy out of rooting for those specific players than you'd expect. (It's easy to see why I might become evangelical about the sheer greatness of Brian Westbrook, but David Akers? Why does he, of all kickers, make me infinitesimally happier when he's on any given roster?)
The last several times I've read "the D-word" (the feminine hygiene one, not the fate of your eternal soul one) have all related to Bostonians, their sports teams, and/or those teams' fans.
I think this breaks that streak. In fact, I think the quasi-curse word I've used to frame this post conveys almost the exact degree to which this is grating: Enough to merit a word like that but harmless in the grand scheme of things.
(And I even like Joe Girardi!)
This Onion article captures exactly why I was seething in rage at Fox Sunday (this is what I get for inexplicably backtracking from my standard practice of muting the TV for Fox baseball).
Meanwhile, the obvious punchline to this post was dutifully made in the very first comment.
(On the other hand, the funniest thing Josh Fruhlinger ever wrote about a comic strip wasn't on his own blog, but in a comment to this post (warning: link contains foul language and may be seen as heresy to some Peanuts fans).)
Likely, but not confirmed yet. The linked article does a good job of explaining why this matters but contains a terrible misunderstanding of NFL TV rules. ("(By the way, if the game is sold out, KPIX also would show the Chargers-Vikings early game - thanks to Byzantine NFL rules.)")
The author doesn't seem to realize that each week either CBS or Fox gets to show two games (more specifically we'll see SD@MIN no matter what), though as often as as a 4:05 (Eastern time) Raider or 49er game has pre-empted the doubleheader I can't blame the author. It's happened at least three times this year. (And at least four other times (four!) there's been a late game of local interest shown instead of the game that a vast majority of the nation got.)
...on my best FFL team. However, I might end up with Derek Anderson throwing to Braylon Edwards (not unlike real life) if a win-win deal can be reached with the guy who has both Anderson and Tom Brady.
(Much better QB situation than having Marc Bulger and Matt Schaub, or on the former's bye week replacing the latter with a Bills QB who's about to face Cincinnati, then replacing that guy with the actual Bills QB about to face Cincinnati. If Jauron hadn't been able to make up his mind, we might have had a Sage Rosenfels sighting.)
"...so fat she went on It's a Small World and it sank!"
I rode the Orlando "It's a Small World" once. It did not end well. (This was right after dining at the Epcot food court.) I was not, however, ordered to drink the water.
(I feel special sympathy for Lisa for her traumatic experience on the analogous ride. One of many (at least 10!) reasons why "Selma's Choice" is my favorite Simpsons episode.)
Aside from cherry-picked "Stat[s] of the Week," two of the biggest howlers in this week's Tuesday Morning Quarterback:
1. Aspects of the cable carriers' position are hard to fathom: NFL Network is a good product; don't the cable carriers want to offer viewers the best possible sports coverage? (When two paragraphs earlier he'd mentioned the relatively high price the NFL wants to charge.)
2. Frank Hawkins, the NFL's chief negotiator for media contracts, told me he already has heard of people who have subscribed to DirecTV "even though they can't receive the satellite signal, then put the antenna in the garage, just so they can qualify for Sunday Ticket on streaming video." Hawkins said that if Sunday Ticket does not go to cable in 2010, more might opt for this strategy. That sounds, fundamentally, ridiculous. If those who can't get the DirecTV satellite signal really are shelling out hundreds of dollars a year just to qualify for Sunday Ticket over the Internet, then consumers are willing to climb huge hurdles, and pay steep prices, to get a product the NFL continues to withhold from universal availability.
On the other hand, Easterbrook does recommend that readers "invest" the $30 price to have unlimited rights to NFL teams' radio broadcasts. He has "no complaint about Field Pass, the NFL's radio service, because it is available to everyone, or at least to everyone with Internet access" -- notwithstanding that a few paragraphs earlier he had mocked the idea of people with Internet access buying DirecTV for the NFL Sunday Ticket.
I hear that if you cherry-pick every team in NFL history that went at least 12-4 over the course of a single season, it all adds up to a staggering combined win-loss record.
(The hot Japanese band right now.)
Google does a pretty good job translating their official web site.
I now believe that "One Word" (Kelly Osbourne) is to "Fade to Grey" (Visage) as "My Sweet Lord" (George Harrison) is to "He's So Fine" (The Chiffons).
I came to believe this while watching (and listening to) a presentation at work, during a section on John McGeoch.
One of the subsequent slides bore the title "Robert Smith: Pop Svengali of Doot" and had a brilliant assembly of clips to make that particular point.
It's not that I love my job so much as that I love the specific department I'm in.
Not nearly enough is made out of the fact that when the Texas Rangers traded Alex Rodriguez to the New York Yankees, the Rangers agreed to pay a large chunk of the salary owed to Rodriguez under his contract -- that is, the contract out of which he just opted.
Any contract extension agreed to before the opt-out would have supplemented the original contract: The Rangers obviously wouldn't have been on the hook for whatever else Rodriguez (actually Scott Boras on Rodriguez's behalf) and the Yankees agreed to, but they would still have owed the Yankees money until the original contract ended. ($21 million in all.)
Once Rodriguez opted out, of course, any new contract he signed would replace the one he terminated. In other words, Tom Hicks no longer owes George Steinbrenner $21 million.
When Brian Cashman claims that the Yankees won't negotiate with Rodriguez after an opt-out, even though the posturing is of some sort of hallowed principle, it really just means that he thinks the $21 million difference makes the window where both sides would be content a whole lot smaller (probably non-existent).
The Yankees had a chance to get Rodriguez for $21 million less (from them) than he'd cost now (all other things being equal). They failed to take advantage of this -- or, more likely, were unwilling to let Rodriguez/Boras keep some insanely high portion of that $21 million.
I imagine it was a lot like an ultimatum game, where Boras's demand simplified to (something like) $19 million of the $21 million, the Yankees called his bluff, and he followed through on his non-bluff.
I will now be the 10th person from whom you've seen this monstrosity.
...steadily increases over short periods time, but with specific moments where it plunges, where she does things that make me think I couldn't possibly vote for her.
This is one of those plunge moments.
Saturday I read at a high school tournament where the buzzers in my room made those high-pitched squeals. I got to hear that same sound about 200 times, but I got used to it.
Today I'm listening to Game 4 on WRKO (via archives on MLB Gameday Audio). The Rockies' PA system has played a particular snippet of "The Sweet Escape" at least twice, which is at least two more times than I can take it.
Today Baseball Prospectus decided to repost its article last spring (one of a series of 30) on how the Boston Red Sox could win the World Series.
Given that the Sox weren't exactly underdogs, I think how the Colorado Rockies could win the World Series is much more interesting for your hindsight reading.
"A good rule of thumb is to read anything that comes from Belknap Press at Harvard, unless of course it is Michael Sandel's question-begging critique of transhumanism and genetic engineering."
--Tyler Cowen
Sandel team-taught a political philosophy class with Harvey Mansfield. He was Alan Colmes before Hannity & Colmes existed.
"I've got BETTER things to DO than DRUGS" (or, BETTER [...] DO [...] DRUGS)
--unfortunate bracelet that won't be distributed in schools after all
That's a whole lot better than using marker to change "The Choice For Me: Drug Free" to "The Choice For Me: None of Your Business."
I laugh, and I cry, about how bad this team is relative to a typical fake team. (It's in a 14-team league but that doesn't excuse these depths.) Just Matt Millen levels of team assembly.
Vince Young: 42 yards passing, 11 yards rushing. ("And what did Drew Brees do?" "Post a 9:1 INT:TD ratio in his first four games, after which I made a foolish decision. Life goes on.")
Marques Colston: 85 yards, 3 TD (the only 3 touchdowns any of these guys got). Woo.
Mike Furrey: 44 yards. Good game by his 2007 standards.
LaDainian: 91 total yards, no TDs in his Steely McLovin debut.
Jason Wright: 26 total yards. Jamal Lewis got most of the touches.
Marcedes Lewis: Goose-egg. But it was Marcus Pollard's bye anyway.
Michael Robinson: 49 total yards. Frank Gore got most of the touches.
Kris Brown: FG and a PAT
NY Giants Defense: Stout as usual (9 fantasy points)
Healthy and on my bench: Selvin Young.
Injured and on my bench: Andre Johnson
On a bye and on my bench: Terrell Owens, Jerious Norwood, Leonard Weaver, Bobby Engram, Kurt Warner
I have five second-string running backs. (Six until dropping Jesse Chatman less than 24 hours before Ronnie Brown blew his knee out.)
A Deadspin commenter chastised New England for going for it on fourth down with a 38-point lead, in field goal range. But if anything, I'd think of the FG attempt as the act of "running up the score."
With a lead that big, 3 more points makes close to zero difference, especially compared to taking another minute or two off the clock. (You don't have to score any more points to win but you do have to eat clock, or at least hang around until the clock hits zero. If you seriously think teams should kneel down at that point, then just put in a Mercy Rule.)
I meant to call my favorite Sox fans but it was well past midnight EDT when I remembered intending to do so.
If I were a better alumnus, I'd have heard long ago that Clark Byse died earlier this month, without needing to read the Orin Kerr's tribute on Volokh.com.
I took contract law from Byse, in the same section as Markos Moulitsas (of DailyKos).
Before this year, when was the last time New England and Indianapolis played a regular-season game on CBS?
On November 5, 2006, they played Sunday night on NBC.
On November 7, 2005, they played Monday night on ABC.
In September 2004 they opened the season Thursday night on ABC.
Was their 2003 game (38-34 Patriots, at Indianapolis, goal-line stand, by coincidence the same final score (reversed) as the 2007 AFC championship game) on CBS?
If you were wondering NBC has Dallas at Philadelphia next week (after nothing this week to avoid counter-scheduling the World Series) and Indianapolis at San Diego the week after. NBC's flex scheduling starts Week 11.
Week 9 late games: Seattle-Cleveland at 4:05; New England-Indianapolis and Houston-Oakland (please be a blackout!) at 4:15. Dallas-Philly on NBC, Baltimore-Pittsburgh Monday on ESPN.
Week 10 late games: Cincinnati-Baltimore at 4:05; Dallas-NY Giants, Chicago Oakland, and Detroit-Arizona at 4:15; Indianapolis-San Diego on NBC, San Francisco-Seattle on ESPN.
Week 11in theory has St. Louis-San Francisco and Washington-Dallas at 4:15 (Pittsburgh-NY Jets 4:05), with Chicago-Seattle late Sunday and Tennesseee-Denver Monday. If NBC hasn't already exercised its flex option yet, my prediction is they grab the NY Giants-Detroit game.
(Week 12's Green Bay at Detroit Thanksgiving tilt could also be incredibly good by Thanksgiving game standards, certainly given that the other two games that day are likely blowouts.)
[winning team nickname] [verb that means "defeat"] [losing team nickname] [preposition] [adjective, preferably weather-related] [home city name].
(Two straight Yahoo! Sports headlines follow that pattern.)
Could change after Monday; Denver is more likely to move up or down than Green Bay.
An after-the-fact (but still Sunday) note that these pass the smell-test:
1. All but one of the top 10 teams are at least three games above .500. The exception is San Diego (4-3), which is on a roll after the tough early schedule (and terrible Week 4 loss to KC).
2. All but one of the 11-24 teams are within a game of .500 (hence within a game of each other). The exception is reigning NFC Champion Chicago at 3-5.
3. All but one of the bottom eight teams are at least three games below .500. The exception is Houston, at 3-5 but in a tailspin (and with an injured QB).
32. St. Louis (0-8) (Last week: 32) Welcome back S. Jackson! Er, just kidding. (Week 9: bye)
31. Miami (0-8) (Last week: 31) A good week for the NFL: the two best teams play each other, the two worst teams play nobody. (Week 9: bye)
30. San Francisco (2-5) (Last week: 30) I'm not entirely convinced that the 49ers could beat either team below them at a neutral site. More likely than not, but still. (Week 9: at Atlanta)
29. NY Jets (1-7) (Last week: 28) Kellen Clemens is no panacea. I get the impression this team is just unwatchable. (Week 9: vs. Washington)
28. Atlanta (1-6) (Last week: 29)Bye. (Week 9: vs. San Francisco)
27. Houston (3-5) (Last week: 26) Remember when they got off to that great start? Good times, especially when Simmons panicked about passing them up as a sleeper. This is the sort of franchise that, for lack of institutional history/memory, I don't think can recover well from such a terrible stretch. (Week 9: at Oakland)
26. Oakland (2-5) (Last week: 27) Points scored before the bye: 21, 20, 26, 35. After the bye: 14, 10, 9. (Week 9: vs. Houston)
25. Cincinnati (2-5) (Last week: 23) Marvin Lewis has never had a losing season as ahead coach. That streak is in big trouble. (Week 9: at Buffalo)
24. Buffalo (3-4) (Last week: 25) Edwards? Losman? Flutie? (Week 9: at Cincinnati)
23. Minnesota (3-4) (Last week: 19) Just when I became willing to not write them off. I suppose they could prove me wrong again, though. League's #1 rushing defense, meet LaDainian Tomlinson. (Week 9: vs. San Diego)
22. Cleveland (4-3) (Last week: 24) Finally a road win, if only against the worst team in the league. This is probably one of the last big gaps between me and any given other poll. A good game a week from now could go a long way towards my believing in their decency, but the next three games are difficult. (Week 9: vs. Seattle)
21. Carolina (4-3) (Last week: 19) Sure, this will look weird given that they beat both teams above them. But some weird quarterbacks were involved one game, and the other was a team that may have righted its ship. (Week 9: at Tennessee)
20. New Orleans (3-4) (Last week: 22) On the one hand the 49ers are putrid. On the other, three wins in a row, something to build on. Only Quinn Gray stands between them and .500. (Week 9: vs. Jacksonville)
19. Arizona (3-4) (Last week: 15) Some teams slip downward on their byes just because. (Week 9: at Tampa Bay)
18. Kansas City (4-3) (Last week: 21) Some teams float upward on their byes just because. It's misleading to claim that the sole criterion is whether I think Team A would beat Team B at a neutral site right now: in theory I could think that a circle of death of match-up exploitation exists. (Good old "Patriots own Indy, Colts own Denver, Broncos own New England.") But in this case it's clear as day to me (the moment I type this) that the Chiefs could beat the Cardinals, and that there's a clean break here. In any case, two straight big home games lie ahead. (Week 9: vs. Green Bay)
17. Chicago (3-5) (Last week: 13) Last four weeks: dramatic road win, home letdown, repeat the process. Must be maddening. (Week 9: bye)
16. Philadelphia (3-4) (Last week: 17) A desperately-needed road win. Would you think of the upcoming Cowboy game as must-win? (Week 9: vs. Dallas)
15. Denver (3-3) (Last week: 16) Could end up in a wide range of slots after tomorrow. Two of the most interesting (i.e. unknown quantity) teams in the league face each other a week from now. (Week 9: at Detroit)
14. Washington (4-3) (Last week: 14) These days, "at New England" = mulligan. Think they'll take some anger out on the Jets? (Week 9: at NY Jets)
13. Tampa Bay (4-4) (Last week: 10) They lost, at home, to a team quarterbacked by Quinn Gray. Now they're at .500 and injuries are catching up. (Week 9: vs. Arizona)
12. Seattle (4-3) (Last week: 12) Bye. (Week 9: at Cleveland)
11. Baltimore (4-3) (Last week: 11) Bye. I having a nagging feeling the Seahawks and Ravens are both overrated on this list. (Week 9: at Pittsburgh)
10. Detroit (5-2) (Last week: 20) Exactly the kind of leap that shouldn't happen in a calm, rational poll. But the arguments for moving any other team to this spot fail badly. In theory this results from a divisional road win against the defending NFC Champion, and not in a close game either. Also, of course, I was late to the party. (Week 9: vs. Denver)
9. Jacksonville (5-2) (Last week: 9) Interesting Week 10 rematch coming up, but first... (Week 9: at New Orleans)
8. Tennessee (5-2) (Last week: 8) The head-to-head comparison is very interesting: The Titans beat the Jaguars at Jacksonville. Both teams lost at home to the Colts (Tennessee kept it much closer). The Titans lost at Tampa Bay, where Jacksonville just won. On balance it's close but unambiguous, mainly because of the head-to-head result. (Week 9: vs. Carolina)
7. NY Giants (6-2) (Last week: 6) No end of amusement that the Brits booed them for running out the clock. (Week 9: bye)
6. San Diego (4-3) (Last week: 7) They didn't suffer a post-fire emotional let-down. (Week 9: at Minnesota)
5. Pittsburgh (5-2) (Last week: 5) Road wins in the division are underrated. (Week 9: vs. Baltimore)
4. Green Bay (5-1) (Last week: 4) Might fall after the Monday night game, very unlikely to rise. (Week 9: at Kansas City)
3. Dallas (6-1) (Last week: 3) Bye. (Week 9: at Philadelphia)
2. Indianapolis (7-0) (Last week: 2) I hear there's a big game coming up. (Week 9: vs. New England)
1. New England (8-0) (Last week: 1) So help me I thought the Redskins would cover. (Week 9: at Indianapolis)