Olympic Thoughts

Another Olympics in the books. This one had its ups and downs. Got off to a rough start with the death of a luge athlete. Had some weather issues and just never seemed to hit stride. I enjoyed the competition, it was nice to see the good ole U S of A kick some butt. Not to boast but if you add Olympics won during the 2008 Summer games and 2010 Winter games, America took home 147 medals (45 G, 53 S, and 49 B). Next closest was China with 111 and then Russia with 87. China did lead with most golds at 56.


My random thoughts:



1) If there is no snow on the ground in the host City then it's hard to think these are the "Winter" Olympics.

2) The beauty of the Winter Olympics is that it is usually some small unknown city...I mean can you tell me where Sochi, 2014 Olympics site, is (on the Black Sea if you should know)?

3) Why doesn't USA do better in Biathlon? Come on, in our country anything related to guns, we should kick butt...

4) Olympic ice dancers...so are they lovers? Why were all the Americans from Univ of Michigan?

5) Is it a sport if the athletes are listening to their iPods when competing?

6) I am sorry but Vonn's Olympics was just a bad reality show...

7) Does Ohno's mom exist?

8) What did Olympic athletes do before the existence of spandex...yikes everyone wheres spandex!

9) Learn something new...there are two types of cross country skiing...conventional and free. Conventional looks hard!

10) What is it with gymnastics and skating? It seems to be a true super power your country to legitimize itself has to be dominant in these events...

11) Good to see that with the help of a NASCAR guy we have the best bobsleds in the world...about time NASCAR gives us something useful

12) Whatever did skiers do before they started painting the course?

13) Ski and snowboard cross were pretty cool new sports.

14) Olympic ice dancing has been around since 1976 @$&#, really?

15) Is your event an Athletic event when one of your athletes competes pregnant?

16) Kudos to Canada for winning the most Gold...you are a gracious host!

17) Canada is just glad they won gold in hockey and curling!

18) So in 2018 will they be talking about the fifth instead of the quad jump...something to be said about men's ice skating...

19) Ski jumping...snore

20) And last but not least...Collinsworth is a football player...he should stick with football commentary not the Olympics!

Comic Splat (5)

X-Force #24 - Necrosha X just isn't working...


X-men Legacy #233 - Again what does this have to do with Necrosha X? This series just goes to show the second tier X-books just aren't worth the time...heck even the so called first tier stink!


New Avengers #62 - Art kind of stinks, come on this is a top tier book, it deserves awesome art. Love the line when Luke Cage tells Jessica when asked if Steve Rodgers was real, "I went to the living legends store and this is all they had."


Marvelous Land of Oz #4 of 8 - Wonders of Oz part 2...continue to love the art...story just isn't the same without Dorothy!


Daytrippers #1 - OK so the character Bras has died at 32, 28, and 21...he is obituary writer of course

Haiku Wednesday

Oscars

Beware the music
Just thank the Academy
Clutch your Golden Charm

Greg Rucka - Keeper

First in series of books about Atticus Kodiak. Kodiak is a professional bodyguard. Did some time in the military and is hired in this story to protect an abortion doctor and her daughter. The book was surprisingly intense. Not at all what I expected from Rucka. Of course the Rucka I had read previously was all female characters so this is the first male characterization. I thought the character was bit over the top stoic. So emotionless that it makes cardboard have character. I do like the Bridgett Logan character. Overall I am kind of on the fence with this book. I didn't hate it, it kept me involved, but in the end it was kind of dissatisfying. Of course the subject of abortion is kind of difficult to wrap a story around.

On page 156 though, Rucka does put the best thought on the difficult issue that is abortion and that is (told by Bridgett), "Men have been behind this thing from the start. It's always been a women's right to choose. That's obvious, and not the problem. That's not what it's about for the men. It's all about power over women. It's all about the fact that men believe they have the right to give women the choice in the first place." So true and to think Roe vs Wade was 9 old guys sitting on the bench making it a right to choose...

Rox Talk

Two weeks ago I showed that OBP and runs score seemed to have the best correlation. In addition it seemed that preventing runs might be more important (?, debatable). Well what about looking at just the playoff teams. Taking the 80 playoff team's season totals and graphing them gives the graph below.

Data would suggest that to make the playoffs an average of 94 wins will get you there with a standard deviation of 5. Playoff teams score about 823 (SD 70) runs to 709 (SD 59) runs allowed with a ratio of runs score to runs allowed of 1.16. While the graph seems to me that the runs allow is a tighter data set the hi/lo for runs allowed is 565 - 839 (274 run spread) and the hi/lo for runs score is 839 - 565 (294 run spread).

Either way you look at it you have to score to win eventually!

Comic Splat (6)

Spider-Woman #6 - Have to admit the iTunes motion comic thing made me interested but I didn't want to buy the book, now that the motion comic thing is over I buy the book. What lesson is that? New thunderbolts (?)...what happened to the hold ones...and what is Ghost? (aside: he came from the Iron Man world)

Psylocke #4 of 4 - Art was the only worthwhile part of this mini-series. How does a book like this get pitched? And why hasn't Alpha Flight come back?

Black Widow Deadly Origin #4 of 4 - Only reason this book exists is to pave the way for her own series starting this Spring and to gain readership after Iron Man 2 comes out in the movie theater. I think Rucka would write a wonderful series with her in mind...

Captain America #603 - Who knew that Falcon's wings weren't real but a holographic wing system with vibranium! Learn something new everyday...also realized, not in this issue, but Capt's shield is also vibranium not adamantium!

Dark Avengers #14 - Issue obviously occurred before Siege #2 came out...that is the problem with big crossover events...you get plot points out of sequence. It will be sad to see the Dark Avengers go...it was an interesting concept. Still can't stand the Sentry...dumb

Uncanny X-men #521 - Kitty is coming back...John Sublime (?) wow there is an esoteric baddie and I can possibly see where Fraction might be leading this to...Magneto, Sublime, Phoenix...hmmm

Second American Revolution

Is our system of governing broken? Has our Constitution not grown to meet the challenges of the 21st century? Could you fathom an uprising against our current government? What would be the tipping point (if you think this would be impossible did anyone see the fall of the Berlin Wall and communism?).

Politics and public sentiment are a fickle beast. In 2008 the current administration swept into power with a pretty clear majority. But here we sit a year later and what has happened? Political clout is no where to be seen from the majority, Democrats are running for the hills fearful of this year's election cycle, the opposition party is just sitting by doing nothing; offering no alternatives, and the American people sit with their financial futures in doubt while Wall Street takes home billion dollar bonuses. Now how much is enough for the average American to take? Does anybody care anymore or have we become so cynical, so ambivalent that we simply shrug our shoulders and say "meh".

Now you have your splinter groups that grab news headlines, the occasional individual that breaks, and politicians deciding that instead of being part of the solution they simply retire but is this just sensationalism and headline grabbing material or can it be the foundation of a new era? For my kids I hope maybe a new era of problem solving, stick-to-itism, and revitalization but unfortunately I think the power elite in this country, after years of tax breaks and sucking the middle class dry, is ready to take what they can get before the card house collapses.

Why might this be the case? In 2004 "the average after-tax income of the richest one percent of households rose from $722,000 in 2003 to $868,000 in 2004" and yet the average American during the period of 2000 - 2010 saw their income stagnate (lost decade). Enter 2008 when George Bush's ownership society created a perfect storm of banks using fancy derivatives and the middle class hungry for more capital to maintain their standard of living in an ever facing wage stagnation period. Obama sweeps into office only to face the worse economic outlook since the Great Depression. Billions of dollars are spent to bail out the banks and buying up ownership of failing companies and yet one year after this debacle Wall Street has the gall to hand out bonuses? Millions of taxpayers whose net worth has been laid waste by Wall Street's gamble and yet the rich get richer. Is it any wonder that this study (document) basically states that 1 in 4 Americans are employed to guard the wealth of rich. So when does the average American decide to wake up and stop living in financial slavery to the rich?

I love America, I think it is one of the greatest experiments going, but I think a "me" society has grown up and without some changes we are going to implode. There is no law against being rich. I don't hold any grudges against the wealth that has been generated. I am also not a fan of wealth redistribution. What I am not a big fan of is when that wealth is waved in my face and when that wealth is used to make policies in America. I won't even dare bring the health care reform into this argument...

Now in November America will once again vote. Sad part of all of this is that nothing will change. New politicians will say the right things and then once elected play the same scam that the outgoing politician was doing. It will all be packaged nicely but what gets me even more riled up is the what politicians say. You think the Democrats made this economy up? This is a direct result of bad policy decisions made from 2000 - 2008. Last time I checked this was Republican policies. How can Americans give them back the reins after putting us in this situation. I mean this is the greatest gig going, destroy the economy, lose election, let the opposition try to deal with your screw ups, and then use it against them to get reelected. Good God what a freaking mess...throw them all out...so again I ask do you think a second revolution is out of the question?

Admantium?

As a Chemist, I have to give the makers of this shirt (I still bought it ;-) ) a hard time. Element 119 would fall into the Group 1A elements (Hydrogen, Lithium, Sodium, Potassium) and well that just doesn't speak to me. Adamantium shouldn't be an Alkali metal. How about we put it in as a rare earth metal like the one below Uranium (142?). Of course it is all moot, anything beyond 94 is synthetically made and typically don't last all that long so unless elements find some stability adamantium shouldn't exist!

Maximum Ride - Manga Volume 1 & 2

My son read the book, I decided to read the manga! First try of Patterson. Guess this is Patterson's first go at young adult fiction. As I stated earlier in the month the NY Times had an interesting article on Patterson Inc.

Probably should read the real novel and determine how closely the manga version matches. My son said it was pretty close. I thought the manga version was very well done...interesting to note the art was actually by a Korean! Gee they even outsource Japanese art! Overall the story was good although come on who would name the main character "Maximum Ride"? Kind of cheesy. Perhaps I am just a snob but this series has a lot of silly book titles

Haiku Wednesday

Slalom

Snow flies, gates buckle

Fastest around and down wins

Skiers golden dream

Avatar

Wow...wow! To be honest, I went in not expecting much. It has been a long time since I saw a movie that really lived up to expectations. I mean ever since the Star Wars reboots, which I really wanted to be more than they were, Directors have been given the tools to wow us but I am convinced that even with all of the technological wizardry you still have to have a story.

Which brings us to Cameron. Cameron has an incredible ego and he is an arrogant SOB. This attitude can really grate on people and I think it can translate to their view of his movies. Thing is regardless of this opinion going in, his movies tend to work. I mean looking at his resume, Terminator, Aliens, Terminator 2, and Titanic. I mean these four movies were epic. T2 trumped Terminator. He pushed the special effects and advanced effect expectations for years. Liquid metal terminator...awesome. Aliens from the opening to the end was just a roller coaster. I mean Sigourney Weaver got an Oscar node...for a scifi movie! Of course he has had some flops...remember Abyss and True Lies? All the same I think you have to consider Cameron to be truly one of the best American directors of all time. Spielberg is probably the best but I think Cameron comes in second behind Lucas.

Anyway back to Avatar. At over two and half hours I came out of the movie drained. You can look at all the underlying messages, read the criticism (Alien Dance with Wolves), anti-imperialism, Earth Day message, blah blah blah but come on movies are supposed to make you laugh, cry, and take you away to someplace else. Sure you can read it into but I think it is simply easier to sit back and let the movie take you someplace. This movie takes you to a dream. Who wouldn't want to visit Pandora? Sure the story has been told a dozen times...couple weeks ago I listened to Connie Willis and she simply said that all of the great stories are either based on Shakespeare or Dickens. Point is that every story plot is a take off of something but the key is put it a new spin on it. It doesn't matter that Avatar has been written before the point is that his spin along with great special effects makes a hell of a movie. Sure the movie is kind of corny but it is was made for popcorn. It is the essence of what makes a great movie.

Cameron's quote in Wired magazine sums it up pretty well, "If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success." Avatar certainly doesn't fail and any movie studio is shaking in its boots for any movie coming out this summer or due in the next year. The bar has been set so high now that rest of the movie world is going to be playing catch up...

Rox Talk

Just a few links...gearing up for Thursday when the 2010 campaign formally begins with Pitchers and Catchers reporting...Yeah!

The Baseball Oracle speaks...

Always nice to get some love from Gammons. Now if only the Rox could live up to the hype for once...

Seth Smith gets some love...

OK so we kept Hawpe for insurance reasons...but wouldn't our outfield look pretty grand with Smith, CarGo, and Fowler patrolling?

Brent Mayne...the Pitcher?

This one goes back into the memory banks but to refresh a bit it was a 7 - 6 victory over the Braves at Coors with the Rox using 10 pitchers in 12 innings. Mayne faced a couple of Hall of Famers in Glavine (well as a PH), Weiss (an old Rox), Furcal, A. Jones, and got C. Jones to ground out to end the inning!

The 39th Batter? It would seem that if a team pitchers can face less than 38 batters they have a 70% chance of winning...The Rox pitched to more than 38 batters 66 times in 2009. They were 27 - 39 so for 38 or less they were 65 - 31 (68%)...there you have it

Mouse Art

What is this?








This shows my mouse tracking at work...it sure gets a workout! For the program go here.

Haiku Wednesday

Mardi Gras

Tired New Orleans?

Super Saint celebration

Nah, born to party

Neil Gaiman - American Gods

This is the second time I have read this book. A rare event since there are so many great books...who has the time to go back? Well this book left a mark when I went through it the first time. It was my first go with Gaiman and I read it each night while riding the bus home from work. So 6 - 7 years later, after reading more Gaiman, I decided to give the book another shot to see if it held up over time.

This is part of an ongoing attempt to determine a Top 10 book list so I wanted to reread some choice titles to ensure they still meant something (see my post on an old Heinlein's book...). Boy reading a book a second time, paying a little closer attention to it all, made the book a whole lot more enjoyable. I think the first time reading a book with a lot of levels can be a bit overwhelming. Just trying to get a feel of the characters and plot. Kind of like following directions for the first time...really difficult looking for street names and addresses but then that second time is so much easier because you have a general feel. By the way is it weird that I am listening to Amanda Palmer while writing this?

The book follows the hero, Shadow, as he journeys through the Midwest with his boss, Mr Wednesday, who is the God, Odin! Along the way Shadow runs into Gods. This is the fascinating part of the book. Since America is such a melting pot of cultures, each culture brought with it their Gods and as long as that culture still existed these Gods exist in human form. Problem is that modern day Gods like the Internet, are causing the old gods to disappear. So a big storm is brewing. Little things like the Egyptian gods being undertakers and owning a Funeral Home, sacred places like Rock City, and names the Gods adopt. These details make the book so much more. This website lists every god that makes an appearance and also has a map! This book is a definite Top 10!

Rox Talk

Few years back I was wondering with all of these new stats whether one, specifically On Base Percentage, was worthy of runs score. I mean baseball is about scoring runs. If a master stat doesn't relate to runs score what does it really mean? So I started easily and plotted our Rox runs scored versus batting average, on base percentage (OBP), and on base plus slugging (OPS).

Guess you'd figure that on base plus slugging would correlate the best but OBP works pretty good too. Since OPS seemed to correlate the best with scoring runs, what about the rest of the league (see below)? Well there you have it...on the league level it seems that OPS is the big winner. Funny thing to me is the data below it makes the OBP seems a whole lot more correlated than OPS...hmmmm the miracles of excel!

OK so OPS correlates to runs scored. Well another thing that makes me wonder. Runs scored versus runs allowed...which one matters more? I have always been fascinated by the simple concept behind the Pythagorean run theory (read about it here). Thus if you plot runs scored divided by runs allow against wins you get the graph below.

The graph shows data from 2000 - 2009 seasons. Again this is probably an obvious point but when you score more runs than your opponent you tend to win more games ;-). OK so back to my second thought, is there any way to determine which is more important; a runs scored or a run prevented? Think about it...if a team wins 1 - 0 what is more important the one run scored or the nine innings of preventing a run? I have no idea just something to ponder but I went ahead and tried in my own way to see what plotting the data might suggest. Based on ten years of data the average runs scored was 771 runs. I then removed this number of runs from every team's total and then plotted this against number of wins. I also did this for runs allowed. The two graphs produced looked like this:

Pretty much two scatter shotgun pattern of data points. Both suggest a week correlation (0 being no correlation and 1 showing a correlation). The runs scored had a 0.35 and the runs against 0.45. On this basis could you suggest that the higher correlation in runs against might suggest wins are more depended on allowing your opponent less runs? I am not a stat guy, don't pretend to be, and probably the power of excel makes real stat guys cringe when people like me play with numbers looking for patterns that truly don't exist but either way to me it is fun...

Ghost Writers?

The Sunday NY Times Magazine had an article about James Patterson and his book publishing empire. One thing in the article struck me as kind of odd and I quote, "This is partly because Patterson is so prolific: with the help of his stable of co-authors, he published nine original hardcover books in 2009 and will publish at least nine more in 2010." Anything sound weird in that sentence? Last time I checked his book's titles were simply James Patterson, not James Patterson and X. I mean if you push out 9 novels in a year I don't think you are fooling anyone to suggest that you yourself didn't write it all but to suggest that your favorite book might not even be 90% his written word just his plot and characters...well to me this is sacrilegious. When I find an artist and strike up a relationship I have an understanding that it is 100% the authors words and ideas and that he sat down over whatever time period and wrote, typed, dictated, or whatever the story that I am about to invest my time in. To me it is an intimate relationship but to then discover that most of it was written by some "ghost" writer who was working on a plot outline developed by the author seems to be very disingenuous...a lie, the wool being pulled over my eyes, a slight of hand, or whatever you might suggest. It saddens me a little to think that an author has become like a corporation just banging out books. Now not to make Patterson seem like a bad guy as the article would suggest that this is Patterson's doing, that he is pushing the publisher to publish 9 titles a year (or more if possible). Does it cheapen a book if you know it's not written by the author?

Comic Splat (5)

Siege #2 of 4 - I can't believe he tore up Ares...WOW...don't see that everyday in comic books...love the ending as Capt's Shield reflection in Iron Patriot's helmet gets closer...BOOYAH

Iron Man #23 - Stark is such a lady's man...filler issue, move on bring the Iron Man back!

Cinderella #4 - Interesting concept kind of a ho hum ending, problem is when I read this I think Buffy!

Buffy #32 - Well I keep trying to give this up but the last issues of the season were too good to pass up...one word...Twilight?

Wonder Woman Blackest Night #3 -Female artist still draws huge breasted comic heroes!

Haiku Wednesday

Hearts

Sweet, candy sayings
They're mini love messages
Love handle makers

Connie Willis in Person

Went to Mrs Willis' book signing event tonight and boy what a fantastic talk. It has been a while since I went to an author's reading and actually came away with something. Connie was just so refreshing. Really honest and not afraid to express opinions. On tour for her new book, Black Out, which took 8 years to write and developed into two books it certainly sounds like a great read. I have only read one of her books (review here) and I generally liked it. As I stated back then I thought of her not as much as true sci-fi writer. Still think this but that is okay because she must cringe when she goes to sci-fi conventions because her personality is so outstanding. I couldn't imagine her having a conversation with Neal Stephenson or William Gibson although I see her and Neil Gaiman having a good go of it!

Any how loved her talk about Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot, and Who Killed Rodger Ackroyd. She made some interesting points on how Christie wrote and how she used reader's built in bias' to write her stories. Might have to dig out some old Poirot books and reread them as an adult as I read most of them back when I was a teenager. What bias did I have then?

Finally it was interesting to note how she hates to write (a little sarcasm...I think). She was very thankful after 8 years the book was finally finished. She provided an interesting background on how she writes especially her outlining. Also she says that every plot was either developed by Shakespeare or Dickens and that all modern writing just rewrites one of these plot but using a different view point. Rambling outlines and trying to find different viewpoints seems to be a good way to start although I think every writer finds their own methods...

Rox Talk

Odds and ends...

Prediction time...what are the early thoughts? This one says 86 wins finishing behind the Dodgers and one game behind the Braves for the Wild Card. And this one gives us 86 again but finishing behind the Diamondbacks and winning the Wild Card (funny thing about this one was that when I viewed it a week ago the Rox were at 80 wins(?)...does Mora mean that much?). With PECOTA they are projecting 768 runs scored and 717 runs against. The previous projects 831 and 785. This one seems a bit more realistic.

So what was the last decade like for the Rox? Neil Paine published this post on baseball-reference. Using a statistical method called maximum likelihood estimation he created team rankings according to records and strength of schedule. Of the 30 teams the Rox placed 22nd. They had some pretty lean years earlier in the decade...

Ever bet on baseball? I did once on a whim years ago. I took the Rox over the Giants in San Francisco...I won

Rob Neyer jokingly refers to his Royals as returning to national prominence due to them getting a date ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball next year. The bigger question to me is when was the last time the Rox were the Sunday Night game of the week? I have no idea? You would have thought that with them going to the World Series in 2007 they would have gotten a nod in 2008 but I don't think so....

Research suggests that baseball is just luck...

Baseball in Portland?