Friday, August 16, 2002

President Notes Dissent on Iraq, Vowing to Listen [New York Times: International News] Let's clarify - he's vowing to listen to Republicans. Not Democrats, not the people of the United States, not his fellow heads-of-state, not the very military leaders that he'd be commiting to lead this invasion - just Republicans. ie, Scowcroft, Kissinger, and Daddy - since Scowcroft wouldn't say anything without Bush the Elder's approval. CAPTION CONTEST I snagged this picture from the story - I think I love it. Please, give me captions for this - there must be more quality jokes for this than I can conceivably come up with. Drop them in the comments...

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posted by herc August 16 11:28 AM | 7 comments. The Football Prospectus is up and running. The good folks who work on the Baseball Prospectus have turned their attention to NFL. This is their inaugural effort. Their contrarian thinking and in-depth statistical analysis has (slowly) started to creep its way into MLB coverage. Can their unique take and historical perspective change football's conventional wisdom as well? [MetaFilter] Me, I'm rooting for The Basketball Prospectus...or more accurately, I'm rooting for basketball-reference.com, a la the amazing www.baseball-reference.com. I would absolutely kill for that kind of statistical detail on basketball. I'm afraid that Baseball Prospectus-style statisical analysis, etc... would have far less meaning and relevance in basketball than in baseball or football. Other than proving that Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and Oscar Robertson were all more valuable players than Jordan, how far can you go? In baseball, the challenge is figuring out how valuable a given player actually is. The traditional counting stats - batting average, runs batted in, wins, saves - are relatively meaningless in the context of evaluating one specific player. Batting average, for example, is much less meaningful than on-base percentage, which takes into account all the times a player comes to the plate, and all the times that player reaches base. Sure, you can argue that a walk isn't as good as a single, since runners could advance more than one base on a single, or there could be an error allowing additional bases, etc...but 95% of the time, a walk is just as useful as a single. Runs batted in and wins are both products of two inputs - the performance of the player who gets credit for the stat, and the performance of his teammates. For example, look at the single season leaders for total bases, and then look at the RBI totals for some of those years. In 1948, Stan Musial had 429 total bases, good for the 6th most anyone has ever had in a season. He had a total of 131 RBI that year. Now, let's look at Hank Greenberg, specifically his 1937 season. He had a very impressive 397 total bases that year, tied for the 34th most in a season. However, he also drove in a mammoth 183 runs that year - third most of all time. So why did Greenberg drive in so many more runs? You'd think that total bases would be a good predictor of RBI, and in most cases it is. The difference is that Greenberg's '37 Tigers had a team on-base percentage of .367, while Musial's '48 Cardinals had a team on-base percentage of .338. That means a lot more baserunners on when Greenberg came up than when Musial came up - especially when you see that Musial led his team in OBP by a good amount at .450, while Greenberg's also excellent OBP of .436 was actually second on his team, behind Charlie Gehringer's stellar .458. When it comes to pitching, you can easily find similar examples, comparing ERA and wins. In that case, the determining factor is how well the pitcher's team scores - some of the best pitching seasons of the last forty years came for bad teams...check out Steve Carlton's entire career. Anyway - back to my point. Football is very similar to baseball in this - every touchdown is the product of the whole team. Basketball is NOT like that - while teamwork is important and can sometimes be seen in the statistics (assists, most notably), a player can be great with a horrible team around him and still have great stats - see Jordan, mid-'80s. It's a simpler game than baseball or football. Not that this is a bad thing - I actually prefer basketball in person to any other sport. Ok - shutting up now. Gotta finish up some work. =)

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posted by patrickje to Baseball August 16 12:20 PM. Baseball players union votes to set strike date to August 30Chicago Cubs Sammy Sosa "... We have to do what we've got to do. I think that's the only way we can get something done.'' [SportsFilter] Damn. Hopefully, they'll be able to reach a solution before then - the Sox get an easy schedule in September and I don't want to see them lose that. =)

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Sure sign that work is irritating me today - I'm doing a lot of hacking around with Radio. So my blogroll is stored over at blogrolling.com - the bookmarklet to blogroll a site is great. But I have limited control over the display of the blogroll. I'd like to set a max length for the titles, like I've got with my subscriptions. I can get at my blogroll from blogrolling.com as an opml file, which I can then send to radio.macros.blogroll. If I could just get some macros in the opml file - say, one to shorten text if needed - I'd be set, since the blogroll macro will, if you want, process macros in the supplied opml file. Thing is, blogrolling.com doesn't seem to give me the flexibility I need to pull that off. Ah well - I'll figure something out.

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Bass resumes training, faces late August money deadline. The Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos allowed pop star and would-be space tourist Lance Bass... [spacetoday.net] I'm rooting for him not to get the money...I know, I know, that's mean, but I just don't like the idea of a boy-band 'singer' getting into space before ME. I'm jealous, I admit it. =)
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For some reason, my user-defined macros aren't getting processed properly by Radio. It's handling old macros just fine, but when I change them or add a new one, it blows up - there may be an error message on the left column that shows what happens. The same thing is happening with web services as well...this is beginning to irritate me.
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your muppet of the day: Beaker How can you not love Beaker? I mean, he's cute, pathetic, and takes a beating like nobody's business. And he can pull his head into his shirt like a turtle. as always, image taken from www.kermitage.com
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TVinsite. I SMELL PRESS RELEASE: HBO teams up with Salon By Allison Romano Broadcasting & Cable 8/14/2002 8:00:00 AM Home Box Office's film unit is teaming up with Salon Media Group to develop print and film projects. HBO Films will underwrite select stories for entertainment and news Web site Salon.com with the option of adapting stories for movies. The deal gives HBO first-look at any ideas pitched by Salon's staff and stable of free-lancers. "Salon will provide HBO with a new brain trust for creative programming," HBO Films senior vice president Keri Putnam said in a prepared statement. [Radio Free Blogistan] Ok - that's just strange. Mind you, all power to Salon - whatever it takes to keep giving me my daily Salon fix. But I'm going to be wary of future Salon reviews of HBO shows and movies. =)

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Invoking The Hamdi Rights [Washington Post: Editorial] The Post is arguing here that Hamdi doesn't deserve to be treated with citizen rights. I'll admit, Hamdi's a much more difficult case than, say, Jose Padilla. Hamdi was captured in Afghanistan, with a gun, hanging with the Taliban. He only nominally has American citizenship - an accident of birth in Louisiana to Saudi parents. Padilla, on the other hand, was arrested in Chicago, born and raised in the US...oh, and there's no evidence of him doing ANYTHING except not liking us much. Hamdi's better compared with John Walker Lindh...actually, they fit the exact same criteria, except that we never saw a gun in Lindh's hands. Oh, and Lindh's white. Yeah, yeah. I know. I'll shut up about race now. The point I wanted to make but wandered off from is this: the 4th Circuit of Appeals, in rejecting Hamdi's right to counsel, said "the political branches are best positioned to comprehend this global war in its full context." What I'm wondering is spies - during the Cold War, did we just throw suspected Soviet spies into detention without due process? I didn't think so. Funny point - Charles Krauthammer, the editorial writer here, ends up making an emphatic point that unarmed American citizens picked up in the States should have legal rights and "the burden of proof should be on the military to prove combatant status." Hmmm...Jose Padilla, anyone?

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Dowd scores After criticizing Maureen Dowd for her column on indie film, it's only fair for me to note that her tone of short-attention-span mockery was the perfect fit for Bush's Potemkin-Village-style "economic summit." Choice description:   He managed to last for 20 minutes each in four economic seminars at Baylor University. He dutifully scribbled some notes as participants talked, looking as happy as a high school kid in trig class, and bounded out of his chair when Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill told him he could be excused. "Yes, well," a visibly relieved Mr. Bush said, jumping up after an exhausting 18 minutes in "Economic Recovery and Job Creation," "that's the life of the president. Always has to go." [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] Oh god. Our President is even more ADHD than I am. I suppose I should be proud that someone with the same condition as me has succeeded, has managed to get himself the Presidency - but c'mon - I'm terrified at the idea of anyone with my ability to concentrate and focus with his finger on the button. Get this man some Ritalin - stat.

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Dresden, Battered by Elbe, Fights to Preserve Its Heritage [New York Times: International News] Dresden just can't catch a break. Nearly 60 years ago, it burned like hell on earth - in my opinion, the firebombing of Dresden stands as the single worst atrocity commited by the US/UK during WWII. At least there was a point to the atom bombs - if the US had invaded Japan, far more people would have died than at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But Dresden - the war was for all intents and purposes over by that point, and yet Dresden was destroyed. Over 100,000 dead, damn near every historical building of note...and then they get to suffer through nearly 50 years of Communist rule. Only now are they finally rebuilding the Frauenkirche, the great cathedral by the Elbe, blasted to ruins by the firebombing... And of course, now the city of Dresden is getting flooded like it's Noah Pt. II. I wish all the best for the people of Dresden - good luck.

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