I never smoked, didn't play the guitar in college, didn't wear sandals, and certainly didn't eat dining hall ice cream (rather, I ate several helpings of those seasoned curly fries). But that's just nitpicking.
Brian Westbrook is listed as questionable (again). Again I'll wait and see, and he'll end up playing and having a big game.
More important to the post title, Duce Staley officially retired as an Eagle, several years after he was last relevant (Steelers, splitting time with Jerome Bettis, pre-Willie Parker days).
Laws that punish parents who serve their kids alcohol correlate with increased drinking by those kids when the parents are gone.
I don't have kids yet but I can tell you right now I plan to serve them alcohol when, in our judgment, they're old enough to drink responsibly. Despite Liz Dole's bizarre notions, that point is well shy of 21.
(Do I just mean "smarm" instead of hubris?)
"What, you want to argue with 5,000 fact-based season simulations?"
--image caption on ESPN's front page
Five thousand is a tiny bit smaller (in fact it's smaller by a factor of 20) than the one simulations run by Baseball Prospectus for baseball's playoff odds.
Ironically, one million was itself the figure that brought derision down on Dr. Evil.
I agree with commenter Becky_MI: Isiah Thomas vs. Marques Slocum (he of the fornication feline) is an unfair first-round match because they both belong in the top four.
Should the NFL adopt the college overtime system?
(Warning: Very not-safe-for-work mental image before he reaches that point.)
I've been turning this over in my head for a while, as remarks on Mike Huckabee's charm and likability have become de rigueur: Am I the only one who finds Huckabee viscerally unappealing? There's nothing endearing to me about a cross between a diet guru and a televangelist selling condominiums in Heaven, which is how Huckabee strikes me. The guy's so full of crap I can smell it wafting out his ears. He's running on a quirky-at-best tax plan that has no chance of passing, and gets a free pass from some of the same people who harp endlessly on the alleged phoniness of Mitt Romney (whose left pinky is better qualified for the presidency than Huckabee). I don't get it.
--John Tabin of The American Spectator, requoted by David Weigel at Reason
Romney is at best my third choice among the GOP field (behind the guy who was a U.S. attorney and the guy who played a DA on TV, maybe also behind the guy who spent years in Hanoi whose utter wrongness about campaign finance reform might be moot now) but as the pairwise comparison goes I'll heartily agree.
Huckabee threatens to bring together an interesting post-Reagan coalition of evangelicals, blue collars, and bleeding hearts. The biggest loser there is the free market. (Ironically, some of Huckabee's biggest flaws track closely to issues where Bill Clinton was most underrated.)
How is he stopped (and when)? That probably requires a lot of effort and cooperation between economic conservatives and social liberals, two groups that do notoriously badly in the polls.
(Has it really been 11 years since the Weld-Kerry senate race? Bill Weld was a flawed politician who wouldn't have stood a chance on the national stage but he easily won those debates, something that perhaps says as much about Kerry as about him.)
(Internal monologue in the car this morning: "Is it too soon to care about Week 15 fantasy football?" "Yes, because even aside from injuries you don't know who you're facing." "But why would that matter. Regardless of the opponent I'm just maximizing expected scoring.")
You probably already knew this but in a two-player game where margin of victory is unimportant, comparing the "expected" payouts tells you a lot less than you might think.
For example, consider three nonstandard six-sided dice. One has two 6's and four 2's on its faces; one has 3's on every face; one has four 4's and two 0's.
The first die has an expected roll of 3.3, the second 3 (obviously), the third 2.7. But if your opponent had the second die (the all 3's), and you wanted a higher number, for a quick ten points which one of the remaining dice would you choose?
You saw what happened there, right? Once you've convinced yourself that {4, 4, 0, 0, 0, 0} < {3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3} < {6, 6, 2, 2, 2, 2} in the long run, add another die to the mix, this one with three 5's and three 1's. How do you expect that one to do against the others?
Paul gets comment of the month. That was quite the typo (and of course his main point is dead-on)
An otherwise lackluster Rams-Bengals match-up (maybe compelling for particular fantasy football people) gets the annual Pat Summerall sighting. Pat even gets Brian Baldinger (Dick Stockton's usual 2007 partner) so that there's no true 7th-string Fox booth team.
Meanwhile at 49ers Park, Matt Vasgersian yet again. Julia if you see this, we get two Sunday afternoon games this weekend, both involving the local teams, and I couldn't care less about either of them.
(Unless you have Raider or 49er rooting interest, I think your options are to be productive on Sunday, or go to a sports bar that carries that Steelers-Patriots game. There's really no middle ground.)
Incidentally the funniest thing about this map (if the color scheme is consistent with previous maps) is that the New York TV market + the state of Ohio (minus Cincinnati) exceeds the population of several Plains and Mountain states combined.
Oh, speaking of local interest, a post a couple weeks ago about NBC's games contained a very silly misapprehension that resulted from forgetting an important bit of NFL history. I realized the mistake when I thought of this weekend's game as "Colts at Baltimore."
(A reminder if you don't feel like scrolling: These are all artists I'd have never heard of if it weren't for where I work. The links below all go to YouTube.)
Sweden: Kent
Lithuania: Andrius Mamontovas (warning: louder than most YouTube clips, and borderline NSFW)
Slovakia: Horkyze Slize
Winner: Slovakia. SHANGHAI COLA!
Venezuela: Guaco
Argentina: Soda Stereo
Italy: Eros Ramazzotti (singing with Anastacia in this clip)
Spain: Heroes del Silencio (found via Guatemala - got a nice hair metal sound going)
Mexico: Cafe Tacuba
Some singers/groups I know about specifically because of where I work (many of whom you can find here):
(By the way, I've meant forever to tell a story about Shockwave files, and True Type fonts that choke on the empty string -- except that I just told the whole thing (it's not much of a story).)
Japan - Mr. Children
China - Eason Chan
Pakistan - Atif Aslam
Those should get you started.
Three teams out of four made the playoffs. One of them has the #1 seed, another gets a first-round bye.
Sit Ubu Sit, Good Dog: 9-4, best of 10 teams in an ESPN public "plus" league. (It's unclear how much the "plus" part outweighs the public part, especially since I (and at least two other owners in that league) got the team as a free apology for ESPN's fantasy baseball screw-up.) As is standard for public ESPN leagues, top four teams reach the playoffs and each match is actually the sum of two weeks of action (semis Weeks 14-15, Weeks 16-17).
Core players: Roethlisberger, Westbrook, Portis, Jamal Lewis, Plaxico, Galloway, A. Gates
Big lineup decisions: Favre instead of Roethlisberger? L. Coles instead of whoever?
Whom to root against: Matt Hasselbeck, Gore, Edge. Larry Fitzgerald if healthy.
Alaska Ulu: 8-5, #2 seed in a 12-team league of erstwhile baseball statisticians (despite ending the regular season on a three-game skid). The week off gives one particular player more time to heal.
Core players: Bulger(!), Westbrook, Jones-Drew, M. Lynch(?), B. Edwards, Plaxico
Big lineup decisions: Garrard (off the free agent wire!) over Bulger? Fred Taylor over Jones-Drew? Both Jaguar backs if Lynch never comes back? Wouldn't a Jacksonville backfield trifecta be a hoot?
Whom to root against: TBA
^@^ ^@^: 6-6-1, #4 seed in a 10-team Coen et al league
Core players: TBA, W. Parker, S. Jackson, S. Smith, H. Ward, K. Curtis
Big lineup decisions: OK, Donovan or Kurt Warner? Finally pull the plug on Steve Smith (understudy would be Dwayne Bowe or Roddy White)?
Whom to root against: Peyton Manning, the good Adrian Peterson, and Terrell Owens. That's the nucleus of a team that started out 1-7(!) (and has since won five in a row).
(And why I decline to think too hard about issues of who's in/out.)
Bowie Kuhn somehow made it in; Marvin Miller still hasn't. That's outrageous, yet is it even surprising?
"A few weeks ago, Bud Selig proudly announced that MLB’s revenues exceeded $6 billion in 2007. This is a watershed moment, a sign that the game, no matter its problems on a micro level, is as healthy and successful as it has ever been. (My extensive disagreements with his decisions and his approach aside, Selig’s reign has to be considered successful for this reason.)"
--Joe Sheehan (parentheses in original)
How much of an understatement is "has to be considered successful"?
Just think, though: all MLB had to do to get there was cozy up to some supremely corrupt politicians (for the new stadiums) and sign over the TV rights to a network that makes the game unwatchable.
By the way, have I mentioned my ambivalence about how, just when my wife had become a passionate A's fan, we've all but clinched that there will never again be a championship caliber baseball team whose home park is in Oakland?
I'm really looking forward to this book.
Local radio station has got some Doobie Brothers coming up for you.
If you've never listened to a station whose DJs sound like this, the effect is probably lost. But I suspect most readers have. The humor here is the pitch-perfect capturing of something so banal.
On the other hand (or, "as non sequiturs," I can't decide): Some of those "You Know You're From [X]" lists are pretty lame despite the supposed comedy verite. My friend Corwyn mocks them (or just thinks of them as self-parody) with line that goes something like "You know you live in the Tri-State area if you frequently attend concerts at The Meadowlands."
They've branched out to football: Count me firmly in the "like" category, especially the conceit of Manning brothers as Flanders brothers.
I will readily admit that bowls are logistically easier than a true championship. But none of the first few paragraphs of this piece explain why college football couldn't adopt something similar to college basketball. (His whole point about bowl locations being known years in advance is bogus because teams won't know which bowl they go to until early December. Seriously, are there people who make a specific bowl their tourist destination without even knowing who'll play there? Aside from a specific year's BCS championship game I just don't see it. And at that, there's no reason a playoff system is incompatible with "Championship Game: Pasadena, January 3.")
BONUS Easterbrook fallacy: "Ravens cornerback Samari Rolle said after the game that head linesman Phil McKinnely repeatedly called him "boy" in the game's closing minutes, a racial insult when spoken by a white person to an African-American."
Gregg, does this man look white to you?
I had simply been e-mailing this, but the more I think about it the more annoyed I am that someone so wrong could be so smug about being wrong. (The context is Aaron Schatz's observation that Nobody knows what the rules are, and they seem to be applied willy-nilly.)
I don't even know where to begin.
"Here’s a thought: before complaining again, spend a season officiating any relatively fast moving sport."
Or, for that matter, trying to hit a 90 MPH fastball or trying to stop a blitzing Ray Lewis.
"Fans who cannot seem to comprehend the difference between a rule (don't go more than 55 MPH) and a standard (don’t drive recklessly). Life and sports are both chock o' block full of standards, so just get over it. What is 'Holding'? What is 'Pass Interference'? They’re standards. Get over it."
Remind me: How frequently does a cop needs to distinguish reckless driving from non-reckless? Compared to that, how many times a game must a ref distinguish pass interference from a legal play?
NFL looking into Rolle comment that official called him 'boy'. We learn in the body of the article that "Both Rolle and the official, identified in the NFL official guide as head linesman Phil McKinnely, are black."
There are probably three possibilities: Either boy is inherently offensive for any adult man to call any other adult man (but what about "girl"?), or it isn't offensive at all, or (my opinion) it's offensive only when the speaker is white and the addressee is black.
(By the way, I still remember the day Harry Caray was interviewing Shawon Dunston for a WGN pre-game feature and closed the segment with "You take care of yourself, boy." Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that the word "boy" could be offensive, yet at that moment the unfortunate connotations were crystal clear, regardless of whether that's what Harry had intended.)
...so help me I'm glad New England won tonight.
The 1972 Dolphins alone may be enough for me to hope the Patriots do finish undefeated.
Dmitri Young, Lastings Milledge, and Elijah Dukes are now teammates.
Nothing in The Dugout yet, but you know it's coming.
(Thank you again Fark)
Nice table here, though I agree with the first commenter that the submitter headline utterly misinterpreted the data.
(Thank you Fark)
Weird pull-quote from this story: "We have a right to political expression. That's what honking is."
The hell? So when I accidentally cut someone off, the ensuing honk is their way of saying "watch the road you stupid Libertarian?"
Barring specific evidence that the locale in question introduced a honking ban for some content non-neutral reason, I think honking a car horn is pretty directly comparable to exclaiming "Fire!"
(How closely the intersection in question approximates a crowded theater is one step more.)
The result mentioned here should ring true to anyone who's had a lot of early-morning (or late-night) conference calls, or been involved in discussion threads where the ping-pong amounts to one volley per day.
Let's see whether the Excel cut-and-paste thing still works. For what it's worth I put the Colts back ahead of Green Bay among the teams most likely to lose conference championship games.
There are also some interesting down-ballot comparisons, both what I punted and what I sorted out (or tried to).
After Monday night's game, Patriots will still be #1 no matter what. Ravens could plausibly move up if the game goes down to the wire. Oh my.
32. Miami (0-12) (Last week: 32) Best chance to win. Didn't even come close. (Remaining games: at Buffalo, vs. Baltimore, at New England, vs. Cincinnati)
31. Atlanta (3-9) (Last week: 31) Chris Redman was born in Louisville and played at Louisville. Apparently the 2002 Ravens used him six games. (Remaining games: vs. New Orleans, at Tampa Bay, at Arizona, vs. Seattle)
30. San Francisco (3-9) (Last week: 30) About to play three straight home games. Oh, joy. (Remaining games: vs. Minnesota, vs. Cincinnati, vs. Tampa Bay, at Cleveland)
29. St. Louis (3-9) (Last week: 29) Made it look easy (but against Atlanta it was). (Remaining games: at Cincinnati, vs. Green Bay, vs. Pittsburgh, at Arizona)
28. NY Jets (3-9) (Last week: 28) I still don't understand how that became a 40-13 game. (Remaining games: vs. Cleveland, at New England, at Tennessee, vs. Kansas City)
27. Carolina (5-7) (Last week: 27) That's one way to end a home losing streak. (Remaining games: at Jacksonville, vs. Seattle, vs. Dallas, at Tampa Bay)
26. Cincinnati (4-8) (Last week: 24) Weren't going to win (1 of 2) (Remaining games: vs. St. Louis, at San Francisco, vs. Cleveland, at Miami)
25. Kansas City (4-8) (Last week: 22) Weren't going to win (2 of 2) (Remaining games: at Denver, vs. Tennessee, at Detroit, at NY Jets)
24. Oakland (4-8) (Last week: 26) Hey, two straight wins against bitter conference rivals. (Remaining games: at Green Bay, vs. Indianapolis, at Jacksonville, vs. San Diego)
23. Houston (5-7) (Last week: 16) Sage Rosenfels won't guide you to a playoff berth. (To be fair, he wasn't that bad when they previously lost Schaub.) (Remaining games: vs. Tampa Bay, vs. Denver, at Indianapolis, vs. Jacksonville)
22. Denver (5-7) (Last week: 17) Just lost to the Raiders. Shanahan might be a bit angry about that. (Remaining games: vs. Kansas City, at Houston, at San Diego, vs. Minnesota)
21. Baltimore (4-8) (Last week: 25) So close. (Remaining games: vs. Indianapolis, at Miami, at Seattle, vs. Pittsburgh)
20. New Orleans (5-7) (Last week: 19) Hangover season but still a bit better than their record. Had a great chance today, but somehow lose games like that? (1 of 2) (Remaining games: at Atlanta, vs. Arizona, vs. Philadelphia, at Chicago)
19. Chicago (5-7) (Last week: 20) Hangover season but still a bit better than their record. Had a great chance today, but somehow lose games like that? (2 of 2) (Remaining games: at Washington, at Minnesota, vs. Green Bay, vs. New Orleans)
17. Arizona (6-6) (Last week: 23) What is it about the desert that terrible 49er teams win there, no sweat, but good teams don't? (Remaining games: at Seattle, at New Orleans, vs. Atlanta, vs. St. Louis)
18. Detroit (6-6) (Last week: 13) I keep mentioning this, but if you told a Lions fan in August that they'd go 7-9, wouldn't that be cause for celebration? (To be sure, they're not there yet.) (Remaining games: vs. Dallas, at San Diego, vs. Kansas City, at Green Bay)
16. Washington (5-7) (Last week: 15) RIP. Move on as best you can. (Remaining games: vs. Chicago, at NY Giants, at Minnesota, vs. Dallas)
15. Philadelphia (5-7) (Last week: 12) Second straight game that good-for-nothing backup quarterback choked away with a late INT. Why, the fans out to be outraged. (Wait, what?) (Remaining games: vs. NY Giants, at Dallas, at New Orleans, vs. Buffalo)
14. Minnesota (6-6) (Last week: 21) In a way, that game was a baton passing. (Remaining games: at San Francisco, vs. Chicago, vs. Washington, at Denver)
13. Buffalo (6-6) (Last week: 18) For the first time since Week 1 they faced a team that was neither excellent nor terrible. It happened to be a team distracted by death, in a road game where the storybook ending was for that team to win (and that opponent led a fugly game, 9-2 at the half). But guys named Trent Edwards and Fred Jackson pulled it out. Incidentally, I could not disagree more with Bill Simmons: Playing New England, then at Jacksonville, both without your star halfback, is not "free fall." (Remaining games: vs. Miami, at Cleveland, vs. NY Giants, at Philadelphia)
12. Tennessee (7-5) (Last week: 14) Welcome back Albert (or "Alfred," as a ludicrous SportsTicker wire report inaccurately named you) (Remaining games: vs. San Diego, at Kansas City, vs. NY Jets, at Indianapolis)
11. Cleveland (7-5) (Last week: 9) Not an irresistable force after all, but (if I'm not mistaken) still an If The Season Ended Today playoff team (5-4 conference record versus Tennessee's 4-4). (Remaining games: at NY Jets, vs. Buffalo, at Cincinnati, vs. San Francisco)
10. Seattle (8-4) (Last week: 11) Playoff caliber (but not championship caliber) NFC team that just pulled out a fluky road win against a middling team with interesting flaws. (1 of 3) (Remaining games: vs. Arizona, at Carolina, vs. Baltimore, at Atlanta)
9. Tampa Bay (8-4) (Last week: 8) Playoff caliber (but not championship caliber) NFC team that just pulled out a fluky road win against a middling team with interesting flaws. (2 of 3) (Remaining games: at Houston, vs. Atlanta, at San Francisco, vs. Carolina)
8. NY Giants (8-4) (Last week: 10) Playoff caliber (but not championship caliber) NFC team that just pulled out a fluky road win against a middling team with interesting flaws. (3 of 3) (Remaining games: at Philadelphia, vs. Washington, at Buffalo, vs. New England)
7. San Diego (7-5) (Last week: 7) This whole time they'd had (and will have) a ranking that makes it look like they should have one more win than they do. It almost reminds me of an odd-team-out powermatching anomaly. (Remaining games: at Tennessee, vs. Detroit, vs. Denver, at Oakland)
6. Jacksonville (8-4) (Last week: 6) Losing by three points on the road to a fantastic team is at least a moral tie. (Remaining games: vs. Carolina, at Pittsburgh, vs. Oakland, at Houston)
5. Pittsburgh (9-3) (Last week: 5) Everything squared away with the field now? (Remaining games: at New England, vs. Jacksonville, at St. Louis, at Baltimore)
4. Green Bay (10-2) (Last week: 3) Losing Favre wasn't the end of the world but there's a big difference between Favre at his best and not. Also, on Yahoo! the right abbreviation is GNB: Anything else takes you to a team with nothing but byes, whose next game is at 7 p.m. December 31, 1969. (Remaining games: vs. Oakland, at St. Louis, at Chicago, vs. Detroit)
3. Indianapolis (10-2) (Last week: 4) They're gonna be okay. Only losses this year were a blown lead to the Patriot juggernaut and that weird game at San Diego. (Remaining games: at Baltimore, at Oakland, vs. Houston, vs. Tennessee)
2. Dallas (11-1) (Last week: 2) That turned out a lot closer that I thought it would as of the 27-10 second quarter margin. (Remaining games: at Detroit, vs. Philadelphia, at Carolina, at Washington)
1. New England (12-0) (Last week: 1) Clearly #1 even if they lose Monday. Like the 49ers, inexplicably about to play three straight home games. (Remaining games: vs. Pittsburgh, vs. NY Jets, vs. Miami, at NY Giants)
Hey, remember back in August when the Wolverines lost to Appalachian State and there was much hand wringing and gnashing of teeth about how their season was "already over," how after just one game there was no chance Michigan would win a national championship?
Think what would have happened if they'd run the table after Appalachian State -- or even after Oregon.
If you watch Scrubs, have you ever noticed that the greater the degree of Carla's assumed moral authority, and the more indignant she is, the more wrong she is? (This is especially true when it comes to her marriage.)
As the Buffalo Bills got ready to run their first play midway through the first quarter, the man who replaced Taylor in the starting lineup, Reed Doughty, stood near coaches on the sideline with his arms crossed. After watching while Bills running back Fred Jackson gained 22 yards, [...]
To: Marc Bulger
Cc: Matt Schaub
Really? Both of you? Is this your way of telling me I should have traded Marshawn Lynch for Derek Anderson instead of laughing at what seemed like a ridiculous sell-high offer?
Why does Franklin Foer need 14 pages to tell us whether "Shock Troops" (by "Scott Thomas," i.e. Scott Thomas Beauchamp) was fabricated?
Page 12: "The more we dug into Beauchamp's writings, the more clear it became that we might have been in the realm of war stories, a genre notoriously rife with embellishment."
Page 13 (referring to the only witness to the story of a guy intentionally hitting dogs with a tank): "He is one of Beauchamp's friends, and, over the course of a number of e-mail exchanges with him, our faith in him has diminished." (They spend 14 pages on all this yet they won't elaborate on this?)
Still page 13: Several weeks after the monitored call in September, we finally had the opportunity to ask Beauchamp, without any of his supervisors on the line, about how he could mistake a dining hall in Kuwait for one in Iraq. He told us he considered the detail to be "mundane" given the far more horrific events he had witnessed. That's not a convincing explanation. If the event was so mundane, why did he write about it--and with such vivid detail? In accounting for the inaccuracy of a central fact, he sounded defensive and evasive.
FINAL SENTENCE OF PAGE 14: Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.
Pages 1 and 2 are useful only if you know nothing about the story (or enjoy seeing wall-to-wall butt-covering).
Page 3: "[T]here was one avoidable problem with our Beauchamp fact-check. His wife, Reeve, was assigned a large role in checking his third piece. While we believe she acted with good faith and integrity--not just in this instance, but throughout this whole ordeal--there was a clear conflict of interest"
The bottom of Page 4 apparently serves to tease pages 5-10 (in magazines that don't suck their thumbs as much, that function is often served by page 1):
"I hadn't worked with Stephen Glass, who made up stories out of whole cloth, but I knew the lessons derived from that scandal. Fabulists are often nabbed by the little lies, the asides they assume that no one will check. As we began our re-reporting of Beauchamp's pieces, we searched for the easily verifiable bits of information that would serve as crucial benchmarks. And, on the first full day of our investigation, it didn't look good for Beauchamp."
Page 5: Beauchamp had written a dialog that referred to an Iraqi driver's license. "It said he was an organ donor." Iraqi driver's licenses have no such things; however, he later told TNR that he'd said it as a joke.
Page 6: Beauchamp solicited lots of corroborating accounts, given by phone to TNR from his comrades.
Page 7: Crtiicisms from The Weekly Standard led TNR to convince Beauchamp to reveal his real name. Discrepancy whether the "disfigured woman" (one of three central anecdotes to his piece) had been seen in an Iraqi dining hall, or in Kuwait.
Did the long IM exchange really need to be printed in full?
Page 10: "[W]e also found some reason to doubt Beauchamp's reliability: In 2006, he had written a personal blog"
Page 12: TNR gets scooped but frames it as "we were never told." "The following Monday, September 10, the conservative blogger Confederate Yankee posted an interview with Major John Cross, the executive officer of Beauchamp's battalion who led the official Army investigation. This surprised us: We had repeatedly requested to speak to someone with substantive information on the investigation and were never told of Cross's availability."
Thanks to Facebook, I know who won 2007 TrashMasters, who came in second, and (most importantly) who successfully defended her dissertation and became a Ph.D.
