The Dilettante's Dilemma Has Moved
Again.
I'm over on Tumblr now. cruzich.tumblr.com, to be exact. Please make a note of it.From Baseball Prospectus: Spinning Yarn: The Real Strike Zone
This is some of the most insightful baseball analysis I've seen. The strike zone might be the next great frontier of statistical analysis, and using PITCHf/x data, Mike Fast is making great strides toward understanding it.
If you're interested in this sort of thing but haven't decided whether or not to buy a Baseball Prospectus subscription, an article like this ought to convince you that it's worth the money. -30-
Why would umpires be influenced to change their strike zones in so many different ways? What physical or mental factors influence them, and is there any evidence to support those theories? Are the umpires really as inconsistent as the data presented by the articles to date would suggest?
From the Chicago Reader: Separate, Unequal, and Ignored
An in-depth look at Chicago's segregation problem. On the surface, things look great - overall the city is 34% black, 33% white, and 27% Latino - but a closer look reveals a city as segregated as ever. -30-
Chicago's ghettos in the 1960s were notorious for their shootings, robberies, rapes, fires, joblessness, single-parent families, dreadful schools and high dropout rates, rampant alcoholism and heroin addiction, abandoned buildings and vacant lots.
Lucky we fixed all that.
From Baseball Prospectus | Span and Sain and Pray for Rain
Best. Prospectus. Article. Ever. -30-
What we did discover was a trove of imagined romance and sex between baseball players, on multiple websites. I thought that over the years I’d seen most of the dark corners of sports fandom, but as it turns out, I still was not fully prepared for baseball fan fiction. If you've thought about it at all, you might expect to find quite a few tales of Jeter and A-Rod, and those are certainly there. But I was less braced for just how prominently players like, for example, Doug Mirabelli feature. You just do not ever expect to encounter the phrase, to quote one story, “Doug Mirabelli’s huge, unlubed…”
Well—Doug Mirabelli’s huge, unlubed anything, really. Let’s leave it at that.
From The Guardian: Mubarak resigns - what now?
The Guardian's coverage of the events of the last few weeks in Egypt has been stellar, and I expect it will continue to be so as the people of Egypt get to the hard work of rebuilding their country. Only a leader as universally reviled as Mubarak could make a country so happy about the military taking over.
On that front, Middle East editor Ian Black weighs in with his thoughts on what the Army's take-over might mean...
It seems clear from the events of recent days – especially the confusion and contradictory messages on Thursday — that the army is divided. If it moves solely to protect its own privileged position, and that of the big businessmen who have done so well out of their links with the regime – then the system will not open up, at least not without large-scale repression and bloodshed.
via guardian.co.uk
From Details: The Complete Oral History of Party Down
A fun read about an excellent show...but part of me wonders about the necessity (or utility) of eulogizing a show that lasted a total of 20 half-hour episodes. -30-
via details.com
Actual thing I just wrote and sent in a work email
"Move the clip about it being offensive to Asian people to later in the section - after the kid in the red shirt talks about the ninja."
Must Read: How the Internet Gets Inside Us by Adam Gopnik
The amazing Adam Gopnik on the Internet, Hermione Granger, toasters, and Heidegger, among (many) other topics. BTW, I'm an "Ever-Waser" - how about you? -30-
What we live in is not the age of the extended mind but the age of the inverted self. The things that have usually lived in the darker recesses or mad corners of our mind—sexual obsessions and conspiracy theories, paranoid fixations and fetishes—are now out there: you click once and you can read about the Kennedy autopsy or the Nazi salute or hog-tied Swedish flight attendants. But things that were once external and subject to the social rules of caution and embarrassment—above all, our interactions with other people—are now easily internalized, made to feel like mere workings of the id left on its own.
via newyorker.com
From McSweeney's: Dangerous for Egyptians, Perhaps, But Not for Us -- Until Last Week.
My friend Dan's fascinating and powerful account of leaving Cairo, along with his two children and extremely pregnant wife, in the wake of the recent demonstrations. -30-
Although my American friends considered me brave for living in the dangerous Middle East, in six years in Egypt I'd shown my Caucasian face in all manner of places and never had any trouble.
via mcsweeneys.net
