Rowing is on NBC today. All these medals at stake and I have yet to see a Chinese rower or team. Didn't they spend oodles of money to become competitive in medal-rich events like this?
Fill in the blank. (Don't look it up until you've tried getting it without looking it up.)
1. Joe Mauer
2. Mark Prior
3. [blank]
4. Gavin Floyd
5. Mark Teixeira
Bonus points if you have any idea where he is now (I don't). It's not John VanBenschoten (who's #8 on the list in question behind two names I don't even recognize).
Actually gettable bonus points (that in turn might give away the answer): This guy is to Opening Day 2005 as which two players (actually traded for each other) are to Opening Day 2004 and Opening Day 2006?
Additional (gettable) bonus points: This guy was traded in December 2005, straight up, for whom? (And as a matter of opinion, which of the two players in that deal is a bigger bust?)
I did not know this particular plot twist:
"Not long ago, [Lynn] Johnston, 61, had planned to retire this year and offer mostly reruns of her 29-year-old comic strip. But her life changed when her husband fell in love with another woman and the couple divorced."
--L.A. Times
The potential irony here involves:
A. The name of her comic strip?
B. The content of her comic strip?
C. Who cares? (Actual indifference.)
D. Who cares? (Sadistic glee.)
(found via Comics Curmudgeon of course)
Prior to 2008 I don't think I'd made seven fantasy baseball (or fantasy anything) trades in a 12-month span, much less a two-week span. So that was fun.
Nobody cares [etc.] -- though one of these trades did involve both my new third-favorite Oakland Athletic (behind Jack Cust and Frank Thomas) while other trades involve two my new favorite underrated-in-fantasy-baseball pitchers (neither of whom is the aforementioned A.)
From least recent to most recent...
Masters of Puppets: Acquired Andy Marte (3B-CLE), giving up Jeff Mathis (C-ANA). My AL Scoresheet team (baseball simulation), with a comically inconsequential deal (challenge trade?) involving ex-prospects who spectacularly failed to live up to their hype. I sent my third-string catcher to the team that lost Jorge Posada, picking up a 3B in plenty of time for Scott Rolen's saw-it-coming-a-mile-away breakdown (which was a few week's after Eric Chavez's own equally expected breakdown).
Jungle Patrol: Acquired Chris Davis (1B-TEX) and Yovani Gallardo (P-MIL), giving up Jake Peavy (P-SD). 5x5 "sabermetric" (OBP and total bases instead of batting average and HR) roto keeper league; let the dumping begin! Peavy was my first-round pick this year thus can't be kept; Davis will cost me a 13th round pick (somewhere in the 170-180 range)* next year. The injured ace Gallardo would cost me a 9th rounder if he turned out to be one of my six best keep options.
*- it's possible some of these keeper draft pick #s are inaccurate as I'm too lazy to look up confirmation
Jungle Patrol: Acquired Matt Garza (P-TB) and Roy Oswalt (P-HOU), giving up Jonathan Broxton (P-LAD) and Troy Percival (P-TB). In hindsight I hate this deal, because while it ostensibly helps me for 2009 (Garza will cost me a R15, Oswalt would cost me a R3 if he somehow magically rediscovered his peak self over the next few weeks), it actually gives up a shocking amount of 2009 value depending on whether Percival retires and whether Takashi Saito reclaims his old bullpen role. Tremendous future upside for the other owner AND an obvious save boost in 2008.
Harvesters of Sorrow: Acquired Hiroki Kuroda (P-LAD) and Chris Volstad (P-FLA) for Hunter Pence (OF-HOU). My NL Scoresheet team had a grand strategy fall into its lap. I got an e-mail asking who I might be interested in trading among {four or five Carlos Beltran-caliber players, plus Hunter Pence}. Wrote back that I'd deal Pence but that the others were well nigh untouchable. Got this offer, took it ASAP despite its creation of even further havoc in an outfield that's missing concussed Ryan Church, fragile(?) Justin Upton, and the degree of playing time that the Phillies unjustly withhold from Jayson Werth. (And Matt Diaz for whatever he's worth.) This deal also meant that, at the cost of a lot of defense, I finally realized I could play Jim Thome and James Loney at the same time by making the latter stand in left field. (That feels so unrealistic and degenerate, no? And yet in real life the Diamondbacks did pretty much the same thing with Conor Jackson.) Even after doing that I got a brief heavy dose of Alfredo Amezaga, hideously underqualifed corner outfielder.
Jungle Patrol: Acquired Zack Greinke (P-KC) and Brad Ziegler (P-OAK), giving up C.C. Sabathia (P-MIL). This ended a long sweepstakes. Greinke will cost me a R16, Ziegler would be a R14 if he's still the A's closer into 2009, Sabathia is unkeepable. This deal went down right after Ziegler's two-inning save in Detroit.
Harvesters of Sorrow: Acquired Mike Cameron (OF-MIL) and a 2009 round 35, giving up Brett Myers (P-PHI). Obvious counterbalance to the Pence/Kuroda deal. And, not that this was any factor in the trade, but finally the Harvesters are rid of that wife-beating oaf!
Harvesters of Sorrow: Acquired Jeff Baker (2B/OF-COL) and Chris Coste (C-PHI), giving up Jeff Francis (P-COL) and a 2009 R31. The premise for the respective rival owners is that Myers and Francis will each be among their team's 13 best keepers going into 2009. For me they'd be in line (among pitchers) behind Dan Haren, Matt Cain, Clayton Kershaw, Kuroda, Volstad, possibly Todd Wellemeyer, and maybe even Jamie Moyer! (The '08 post-trade Harvesters rotation shapes up as Haren-Cain-Kuroda-Moyer-Wellemeyer.) Baker basically becomes what Chris Burke was supposed to be (lefty-masher who platoons with Kelly Johnson and pinch-hits a lot), Chris Coste is (playing time permitting) quite an upgrade over the 2008 models of Josh Bard and/or Matt Treanor.
One thing about Scoresheet playoffs is that player performance is a combination of season-long performance with September performance (playoff lineup cards are due at the end of August), so even though the Harvesters are six-games out, there's reason to believe they previously underachieved (mainly that 40% of the April-May rotation was Myers/Francis at their worst, and that Miguel Cabrera finally remembered who he is as opposed to his first half), and it's good to stock up on good 2008 performance and jettison players whose '08 numbers are like Myers or Pence.
Why should I give two shakes of a rat's tail what Jennifer Sey's personal issues are with gymnastics?
More directly who at Salon decided it would be a good idea to pollute King Kaufman's domain with writers who aren't King Kaufman?
Have I mentioned before how ridiculous these are? How irrational it is to devote so much time and energy to willingly place yourself at the mercy of (depending on your competition level) harried volunteers or power-mad incompetents?
(The three obvious examples are gymnastics, figure skating, and debate. Maybe there are others I'm not thinking of.)
So when "judges" (as they're called) flagrantly fail to apply any rhyme or reason to their scoring, I lack the capacity to be surprised (yet apparently I still have the capacity to be angry, who knew?).
UPDATE: ESPN.com seems to be a few minutes ahead of our local NBC affiliate, the upper right corner "LIVE" graphic notwithstanding.
Another outrageous story about what a man can('t) do in his own home.
To be sure this isn't even 100th as outrageous as SWAT teams raiding innocent people's houses and killing their dogs, but it's outrageous for about the same reason.
As Radley Balko points out, "the National Campaign to Stop Red Light Running is funded by three private companies: Affiliated Computer Systems, Gatso USA, and Redflex, Inc. All three are in the automated traffic enforcement business, and all three stand to make millions should the campaign prove successful."
Second day in a row: When and why did the Freakonomics blog fall off a cliff like this?!
When people share space for awhile, they can save some time and energy and thought-process minutiae by adopting a left-right convention? WHO KNEW?!?
(I will strenuously insist -- I must believe -- that the first comment to that post is subtly mocking the post.)
Freakonomics bonus link: Just because of how he set up the post, I had the right answer to this who-said-it by the first sentence of the quote. I haven't even bothered to verify my correctness, but the next-to-last sentence of the post left me dead certain I'm right. What other answer would have been man-bites-dog enough to bet worth a blog post with that particular tone?
I'm simultaneously appalled that a post like this is even necessary, baffled that they consider the proposed solution so novel, and skeptical that they've framed the problem as simply as it ought to be framed.
Consider the case where two lanes simply turn into one lane. In lighter traffic, everyone hits the merge point at whatever time they hit it; no matter which lane they were in before, now they're in the unified lane. In heavier traffic that doesn't quite work because some cars will hit the merge simultaneously -- but if there's nothing to distinguish the lanes, the natural equilibrium is that the incoming lanes take turns: a car from the left, a car from the right, etc.
So naturally when you're coming up on that kind of merge in heavy traffic, it behooves you to notice where your "slot" should be and drive accordingly (with respect to the person who's about to be behind you and the person who's about to be in front of you).
OK, now suppose traffic is enough that you have to think about how to merge but not so dense that everybody's going one at a time out of necessity. You still have to gauge the natural speed of your lane and the natural speed of the other lane and be aware of what your slot will be.
So how on Earth is this situation materially different from the situation where it's a specific lane that gets blocked and a specific other lane that gets merged into (rather than actively merging elsewhere)?
Well, apparently there are drivers who think they have a god-given right to continue in their lane unimpeded: If it isn't happening directly in front of them then they think they have a god-given right not to care about it. This is a terrible, terrible way to drive, as the odds approach 1 that at some point a soccer ball will roll in front of you or a cross street driver will run a red.
If you have any situational awareness, you'll notice when a lane is about to merge into yours and correctly perceive the situation as one where neither lane has a special privilege.
Or better yet, you'll figure best load-balancing practices on the fly. (For example, if there are 5 lanes about to become 4, then ideally the new rightmost lane would have all the previously rightmost drivers and 25% of the drivers from lane 4-of-5; you see why, right?)
1. He isn't John Edwards (I presume a link isn't even necessary)
2. His campaign isn't the Clinton campaign
The most interesting paragraph in that Atlantic piece (so far):
In the days leading up to Ohio and Texas, the campaign kept arguing over whether to air the [3 a.m.] ad. With the deadline looming, Bill Clinton, speaking from a cell phone as his plane sat on a runway, led a conference call on Thursday, February 28, in which he had both sides present their case. As his plane was about to lift off, it was Bill Clinton—not Hillary—who issued the decisive order: "Let's go with it."
While we're here, I haven't been following commentary-about-political ads very closely (mainly because I don't watch much TV thus don't actually see most of the ads first-hand), but am I really to believe that any ad run by John McCain is presumed to have racial overtones on the grounds that the ad depicts white women? Explain in 25 words or less how this is anything other than crazy.
Matt Welch has found some genuine stupidity among a variety of pundits.
The worst of the clunkers aside, I must say McCain's first response was significantly more appropriate than Obama's.
"For three years, students at a rural North Carolina high school have planned for college, encouraged by the promise of scholarships for all. But John Edwards has withdrawn financial support for College for Everyone. [...]
Supporters say it was always meant to be a three-year pilot, an odd time frame for a program aimed at high school students. The kids who started ninth grade taking college-prep courses to earn the scholarship will discover that they’re on their own financially.
If Edwards had won the Democratic nomination, he'd still be talking about College for Everyone - and funding it. But now his backers are spending more than half the cost of a year’s scholarships for every Greene County grad to support Edwards' mistress and baby in a $3 million mansion."
--Joanne Jacobs
"The real issue, it seems to me, is a nation-state taking the official position that a 7-year-old girl is too ugly to represent it, and making no bones about that position. That's pretty disturbing. But it's not among the most disturbing positions staked out by that particular nation-state."
--King Kaufman
(This post would have boardgamegeek links if the site weren't down at the time.)
Five players.
Enemy Chocolatier - surprisingly complicated for a Cheapass game! I was one chocolate shy of completing my recipe first, apparently because I can't count. (Moreso, after my income stream was set I chose poorly between going for the recipe and going for popularity.)
Shadows over Camelot - Sir Kay completed the Lancelot's armor quest and then spent the rest of the game killing siege engines (beyond being Sir Kay my hand was fortuitously heavy on Fight cards) while the other four went on the other missions together. Nobody was a traitor so everyone won easily.
Wits & Wagers - I inadvertently guessed exactly right on the weight of the heaviest sumo wrestler, and knew cold the year in which the Watergate burglars were arrested. (The rest of the table explained how one could plausibly miss that one.) All for naught, as I underestimated Fox's ability to report a huge, huge number of people trying out for Season 2 of American Idol.
Pictelephone (like the old telephone game, but not: odd # of players in a circle, each with a sheet of paper. write a sentence, pass it on. draw a picture of that sentence and fold the sentence over, pass it on. write a sentence of that picture and fold the picture over [...] until the person on the other side of you writes a sentence that may vaguely resemble your original sentence) - Julia and I both got to draw our versions of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. I thought "A tree grows in Brooklyn" would stay more intact than it did.
We went to Monterey this past Saturday to see the penguins. Between where we parked and the aquarium itself were two open houses: 1.5 blocks inland from the water, a 4 bed 4 bath was asking $999,000. On the street that runs past the water, a 2 bed 2 bath was asking $1.9 million.
Meanwhile on Cannery Row, there's a Toll House store where you can custom-order an ice cream cookie sandwich with your choice of cookie flavor and ice cream flavor.
Is it a bit suspicious that two of John McCain's supposed 10 favorite songs are ABBA songs, just when Mama Mia! is big in theaters?
The top-10 list I would release to Blender, were I a presidential candidate:
1. AC/DC - "For Those About to Rock"
2. Rush - "The Camera Eye"
3. Van Halen - "Jump"
4. Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Freebird"
5. Metallica - "For Whom the Bell Tolls"
6. U2 - "Bad"
7. Ozzy Osbourne - "Flying High Again"
8. Bon Jovi - "Lay Your Hands on Me"
9. Guns N' Roses - "Paradise City"
10. Frank Sinatra - "Summer Wind"
Blog content filler: pick your favorite nation from each non-Antarctic continent.
North America: United States. (Quick, how many of the 23 countries in North America can you name?)
South America: Uruguay, avoiding any side of the ABC rivalry.
Europe: Germany (honorable mention: Czech Republic)
Asia: Thailand
Africa: Botswana
Australia: Australia (let's call this Oceania to expand the eligibility: I'd still go with Australia, though I realize there are many New Zealophiles)