Here’s the little man, wearing an original, 1980s, Return of the Jedi Wicket costume.
November 1, 2009
NFLers Aren’t the Only Ones Wearing Throwbacks…
Posted by Michael under Uncategorized | Tags: Halloween, holidays |[3] Comments
October 28, 2009
Iowa, USC, and the BCS
Posted by Michael under Uncategorized | Tags: BCS, Big Ten, Colin Cowherd, college football, Iowa Hawkeyes, USC |[2] Comments
Last week the conversation around Iowa City was about whether the Hawkeyes were getting too little respect. Sitting at #6 in the BCS, and just inside the top ten in both human polls.
Now that they’re #4 in the BCS, behind only alleged superpowers Florida, Alabama, and Texas, the talk in the other 49 states is whether Iowa’s getting too much respect. Colin Cowherd has been particularly vocal, for weeks now, insisting that Iowa (along with fellow unbeatens Boise State, Cincy, and TCU) has no business in the BCS Championship Game even if two of the three teams ahead of them lose. “Put USC and Iowa on a neutral field, and USC is favored by 17,” he says. “I don’t care how many losses they have. They’re better than Iowa.”
I generally like Cowherd’s show, but he’s just dead wrong on this. He falls into the typical trap that national sports media fall into: USC is inherently good, they say.
If USC, or any other team wants to be in the Championship, it’s simple: win your games. The rap on Iowa is that they don’t have “style points.” That is, they don’t win their games by enough points. They don’t blow out the other teams. Okay, let’s consider both “style wins” and the quality of opponents in those wins. Let’s compare the games that weren’t close; say, wins by more than a touchdown. Note that in this comparison we are completely ignoring USC’s embarrassing loss to Washington.
USC has six wins. Three of them are by more than a TD. Two of the three were at home. The three teams were San Jose State (1-5), Washington State (1-6), and #24 Cal (5-2). The combined record of those teams is 7-13. Five of those wins belong to Cal. So USC has one quality style win: one win where they blew out a team with a winning record.
Iowa has eight wins. Four of them are by more than a TD. Three of the four were on the road. The four teams were Iowa State (5-3), #20 Arizona (5-2), #12 Penn State (7-1), and Wisconsin (5-2). The combined record of those teams is 22-8. So Iowa has four quality style wins.
Cowherd’s is a classic example of a circular argument. Why isn’t Iowa’s 8-0 record impressive? Because they’re in the Big Ten. How do we know USC is better? Because they’re USC. Nevermind that USC barely snuck by Notre Dame just like Michigan did. Nevermind that Iowa has also, in the last several years, beaten LSU, Florida, and South Carolina in bowl games. And again, all of this is ignoring the fact that USC lost to a 3-5 Washington team. It’s here that I can’t believe Cowherd is dumb enough to believe what he’s saying. Forced to defend his a priori beliefs about USC and the Big Ten, he reaches to other statistics: How many NFL players came out of their program last year? What were their recent recruiting classes ranked? Use any measure, so long as it isn’t wins and losses.
Another note on USC: A couple more years, and I wonder if people will be on to the fact that he’s a brilliant recruiter, and an overrated coach. Nice guy, and I like him, but how many years in a row does USC have to lose against bad teams, even with all those future pros? Can’t keep your teams paying attention week to week? That’s bad coaching, folks.
October 25, 2009
A Public Service Announcement: iPhone, iTalk Troubleshooting
Posted by Michael under Uncategorized | Tags: applications, crashing, data, freezing, iPhone, iTalk, loss, recovery, reset |Leave a Comment
I use iTalk some of the time as a voice recorder. I used it several times during interviews for my doctoral research. But twice now, I’ve had my iPhone freeze in ways that threatened my data. There’s virtually nothing online about this, as far as I could find. But I think I’ve found a way to preserve the data. I’m writing this post in the hopes that others might find it helpful. The short answer: open up the “Applications” app, and install any and all updates. That might make all your applications available again.
First, the problem: Occasionally, the iPhone freezes in such a way that requires you to force-shut-down, by holding both the top button and the button just under the screen. This weekend, in D.C., my touch-screen became unresponsive. It allowed me to see that Jen was calling, for example, but wouldn’t let me answer. I force-shut-down and restarted it, which only resulted in the little Apple icon, nothing more. I happened to be across the street from a two-story AT&T center, so I ran in there, where a woman plugged it in to her computer. That brought the phone back to life. This was much like what had happened to me before at home: if you plug it in you might get certain basic features back. Phone service, texting, Internet… anything that comes built in will work. But any applications that were added won’t; you tap on it, and it acts like it’s opening for a second, but then immediately quits before it can get started.
October 24, 2009
Quite a fall so far
Posted by Michael under Uncategorized | Tags: Denver Broncos, Iowa Hawkeyes, Phillies |Leave a Comment
I wanted to get this post in before today’s Iowa game, which scares me a little. I’ll be on a plane, or in airports, for much of the evening, so I won’t see them play Michigan State. Regardless of how this season ends, right now I’m having a shockingly good season as a fan. And it’s not just how well my teams are performing, but how unlikely these performances are individually, much less simultaneously.
Iowa: 7-0, alone at the top of the Big Ten, which only happens every fifteen or twenty years. Second-longest winning streak at 11 straight wins. The last time the Hawkeyes had a double-digit winning streak? The 1920s.
Denver: 6-0, in control of the AFC West. The surprise of the year. The optimistic predictions out there had them winning six games all year. Others said they’d win three. New coach, new QB, new offensive and defensive schemes.
Philadelphia Phillies: In the World Series for the second consecutive year. That hasn’t happened in the NL since the early 90s.
It’s been a wild run so far.
October 23, 2009
I’m in the Capitol this weekend while Jen attends her Spencer Pre-Doc Fellowship conference. Currently, I’m sitting in a Chinatown Starbucks writing my dissertation. There’s a guy on the corner of 7th and H who’s been spinning/dancing/hopping his way in and out of traffic for the better part of an hour.
October 21, 2009
World Series Phever: Catch It
Posted by Michael under Uncategorized | Tags: baseball, Phillies, World Series |1 Comment
Nick Laham, Getty Images
I admit that I doubted them. How could I foresee that Cliff Lee would become dominant again, Brad Lidge would turn back into Brad Lidge, that the bullpen could flip a switch and shut down a hot Rockies team and a dangerous Dodgers team? As Jason Werth just said on TV, “It’s a crazy game.”
Bring on the Yankees.
October 21, 2009
Today in Insect Copulation News
Posted by Michael under Uncategorized | Tags: bugs, nature, science, sex |[3] Comments
I don’t want to draw any analogies here, but nature.com reports that
Male spiders that saunter onto a female’s web after a rival has spent hours wooing her can quickly copulate without being prematurely eaten by the female. This tactic could lead to small spider suitors seeking out competition with larger rival spiders rather than avoiding it, Canadian researchers say.
Um, thanks (?) to 3QuarksDaily for that link.
October 19, 2009
A Monday Night Sports Post
Posted by Michael under Uncategorized | Tags: baseball, Denver Broncos, football, Iowa Hawkeyes, NFL, Phillies, sports |Leave a Comment
Uh-oh. Non-Iowans are starting to buy into the Hawkeyes.
I can see why. The Hawkeyes are now 7-0, with impressive road wins at Penn State and Wisconsin. The Buckeyes, who were previously assumed to be very capable of dropping Iowa on November 14, lost their second game of the season. The Hawks are now, in sports cliche-speak, “in control of their own destiny.”
It’s easy to be upset about the first BCS rankings that came out, with Iowa sitting at number six behind a team from the WAC (Boise State) one from the Big East (Cincinatti). You look at those two teams’ schedules and it makes you ill. Who have they beaten? But asStewart Mandell points out for SI.com, Boise State’s weak schedule is going to catch up to them in the computer polls.
And while I have a lot of respect for Pete Carroll, I really, really don’t want to hear him complain about not being ranked higher in the polls. Why is there a “huge discrepancy” between the human and computer polls? Because computers don’t understand USC and the other big programs are supposed to get special treatment. You’ve had every benefit of the doubt for nearly a decade, coach. Don’t drop games to teams you should beat and it won’t be a problem.
***
The Broncos have beaten the Chargers at San Diego. It’s not just that Kyle Orton has 9 TDs to 1 INT, or that Elvis Dumervil already has ten sacks. It’s not just that they’re 6-0 heading into their bye week. Try this on: they’re 2-0 in their division, with both games against the Chiefs, and home games against the Raiders and Chargers remaining. Wow.
The Phillies just came back to shock the Dodgers 5-4, with SS Jimmy Rollins hitting a two-out, two-run double. First guy since Kirk Gibson to bring a team back with a walk-off run when they’re only one out away from losing in the playoffs. Meanwhile, Ryan Howard hit a two-run homer in the first inning to tie a record for consecutive games with an RBI. Who else holds the record? Lou Gehrig. When you start throwing the names Kirk Gibson and Lou Gehrig around, you know you’re doing something right. They’re one win away from a second consecutive World Series. Wow.
October 16, 2009
Great mash-up… Have a good weekend.
October 14, 2009
A Non-Sequitur In Search of an Analogy
Posted by Michael under Uncategorized | Tags: concussions, dogfighting, football, Malcolm Gladwell, NFL |Leave a Comment
Malcolm Gladwell’s new article about the NFL and concussions should be interesting. The brain science around concussions has garnered a lot of attention lately. This fall, the NFL Players’ Union formed a committee to address the issue; a week before, the highest-profile college player suffered one. The consequences later in life are serious for those who suffer multiple concussions, and the injury is finally getting recognition as something you don’t mess around with, even if you’re a Tough Guy.
But for me, Gladwell completely undermines all that by using a shock headline and sub head. “Offensive Play,” it reads. “How different are dogfighting and football?”
Um. Really different.
At first, I thought the editors must have come up with it, as happens at Slate and, I’m sure, elsewhere. But Gladwell definitely pushes the comparison, and he does it in a pretty dishonest way.
Vicious hits do not put pro football on par with dogfighting.
On its face, it’s an absurd comparison, and astonishingly insulting to players. The features most closely associated with dogfighting are the cruelty of it, that these are animals in someone’s care, forced into viciousness, nearly always resulting in (at least) one animal’s death. None of these are true of NFL players. NFL players get to decide for themselves whether the reward (over $300K/year minimum starting rookie salary, last I looked) worth the risk (possible life-long physical and/or mental impairments), or not? NFL players are subject to innumerable rules that penalize them for behavior likely to injure another player, sometimes to the point that players, commentators, and fans complain. And despite Carson Palmer’s recent (maybe legit) hand-wringing, NFL players do not die on the clock.
The argument positions NFL players as idiots at best, with no agency (much less agents) of their own. Some might be idiots; but many are millionaires. Malcolm Gladwell may not have been born with the DNA of a potential NFL player, so I’m not sure how he can claim to know how he’d do that cost-benefit analysis if he were twenty years old and was told, “Hey, kid, if you really dedicate yourself to this thing, you could have millions in the bank by the time you’re twenty-five.”
