Well, duh. You can come in with a three run lead, give up “only” two runs, and still record the save. I won’t go so far as to say that I could hold on to a three run lead pitching against major league batters, but most major league pitchers could, most of the time. Saves are a bad measure of a pitcher’s skill.
New York Yankees unearth jersey to ease fears of baseball curse.
That’s pretty silly. But baseball is full of people who think that wins and saves recorded by pitchers are a good measure of their skill, and that ERA in general is a good measure of a pitcher’s skill [*]. They think that batting average is a pretty complete measure of a batter’s skill qua batter. They even think that “manufacturing runs” is sound tactically [**].
Wanting to unearth (”unconcrete”?) a piece of cloth dyed red or blue isn’t all that unreasonable by comparison.
[*] Its heart is in the right place, so to speak, but it’s of limited utility. Better ways to rate a pitcher’s effectiveness exist.
[**] It sometimes is, but more often is not.
Representative tries to put the fear of God in atheist.
That’s terrible.
I do wish the article at the Tribune had more details, though.
(HT to The Agitator.)
It’s pretty cool that people who probably have never met each other can collaborate on an article about zombies in Latin.
Too bad I can’t really read it.
The Boston Globe finally includes cumulative On Base Percentage and Slugging Average in box scores. This is an example. Although it appears that they’re not the original source of the numbers, it’s quite the improvement.
About time.
If Guns N’ Roses manages to release their album, Chinese Democracy, everyone in America will get a free Dr Pepper.
First a free taco, now a free soda—clearly living as an expat has its disadvantages!
Some time ago I was talking to a friend about an Argentine writer. He said (something like) “pity he was a fascist, though.”
I responded (something like) “but the only real alternative was to be a Peronist.”
“Yeah…”
If we’re lucky, in 40 years time people will talk similarly about, say, Kurt Vonnegut:
“He was a great author, but he voted Democrat!”
“Yeah, but the only realistic alternative was to be a Republican.”
“Oh yeah…”
Of all the plausible next presidents of the USA, I am vaguely pulling for Obama, because I think he is merely wrong on many issues, whereas I think all of the other plausible candidates are Pure Evil ™.
However, I freely acknowledge that he may have me duped on that front.
That’s true, but the alternative is — or the alternatives are — sites with strict editorial control. It works OK when you have good editors, but Slashdot is an exemplar of not having good editing.
Sir Edmund Hillary passes away, and all I can think of is 1996 New Hampshire Primary, when I met presidential candidate and nutjob Michael Milko.
Milko claimed to be Sir Edmund’s godson, Bill Clinton’s worst nightmare (due to the Hillary connection, naturally), and, I read now, Chairman Mao’s son in law. For some reason, I find all of these claims dubious.
Later that day I found myself in slightly more reputable company, when several of my friends and I somehow ended up signing in members of the press who would cover Bob Dole’s speech when the day was over. Dole ended up losing that day to Pat Buchanan. For my part, I hoped Lamar Alexander would win.
I don’t like movies in general, and as such I rarely go to see them, but for The Golden Compass maybe I can make an exception.
Border Patrol Fires Tear Gas Into Mexico.
This sort of thing wouldn’t happen if immigration policy weren’t shaped by racists.
Sorensen: I don’t think anyone would disagree strongly with that.
I disagree, strongly. How could anyone possibly agree?
Believing things that aren’t true — and this applies equally to Romney and to every other serious candidate running for president ( and to Kennedy, too) — works rather strongly against freedom.
When I was in Germany a few months ago, I bought a German-English dictionary. Foolishly, I didn’t look inside it very carefully, and therefore didn’t notice that it has a pretty fatal flaw: it doesn’t include the genders of any nouns, and as such is only useful for fluent German speakers. WTF? If you have any use for it, let me know. Information about it is available at amazon.de.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1029mexico-halloween1029-ON.html
No, wait, I do have comentarios. Here’s one: “the Catholic Church is an evil institution.” And another: “fortunately the Catholic Church is losing influence, albeit slowly, in Mexico.”
As some people say some of the time, sick, mate, sick!
[This was written in the heat of the moment and has been removed pending a rewrite.]
I’ve been thinking about taking some courses by correspondence. Unfortunately, spammers and scammers have given courses over the internet a bad name. (If I really could get a PhD in 2 weeks, I’d take the time off work and just do it.) The same spammers and scammers make searching for reputable sources of information difficult, too.
(Thinking about it doesn’t mean I’m going to do it, but it does mean I’m looking for information.)
So, is there a registry of accredited institutions of higher learning that offer complete degrees (or individual courses) by distance? Preferably one that can be searched and sorted by the requirements a student would need to meet. That is, what software would be required? Also, what sort of academic background is necessary for different courses. Detailed pricing information, as well as information on the language of instruction, would be helpful too.
Borges: A Life, by Edwin Williamson. Viking.
Unsurprisingly, Borges: A Life is a biography of one of my favorite authors, Jorge Luis Borges.
Williamson starts with a background of Argentine history starting with its independence from Spain and the role of Borges’ ancestors in that struggle. Borges continues covering Argentina’s history with respect to Borges himself.
Williamson is at his best when sticking to documented facts. When he takes some liberties and presents his own speculations — unlikely ones, in my opinion — about Borges’ most personal thoughts and attitudes and how they shaped his written works and his public persona he is at his weakest. Also, he repeats himself at times: the same nouns (that is, the same persons, places, and things) are often introduced and reintroduced. Better editing might have helped.
Still, at $verycheap on remainder at the Harvard Book Store, and as a chronicle of an interesting life, it was well worth my time and money.
I have no few books by Borges, and several other favorite authors, sitting on my bookshelves waiting to be read. I like to think of them as reserves — when in doubt, I know I have something good and new (to me) to read.
N.P. by Banana Yoshimoto. Tusquets.
N.P. is the story of a book, aptly named N.P., written by a Japanese expat in English. Its translation into Japanese is stalled because its translators, and, in fact, all of the people who get too involved in the book, find, with tragic results, their life imitating that of its author and some of the stories contained therein.
Yesterday, Alma and I went bike riding along some of Mexico City’s largest streets. We were able to do this because they were closed to regular traffic during much of the day.
The route we took is barely visible at MUÉVETE EN BICI. Unfortunately, the map is very low res, and zooming in won’t help.
We picked up the trail at the junction of División del Norte and Churubusco, went through a stretch of Patriotismo, and then went through parts of Condesa, Roma (where the stopped for a brunch of barbacoa), and the Zona Rosa. From there we picked up the Paseo de la Reforma towards the Centro Histórico, rode along the edge the Zócalo, skirted Merced, and went on to areas where I’ve never been on foot (and much less on a bike) and don’t really know. When time ran out — the streets were only closed from 7am till 2pm — we were close to the Palacio de Deportes. There we got on the Metro and went home under someone else’s power.
Along the route, there were police protecting every major intersection and most if not all of the minor ones too.
It was a great way to spend the day, although I wish we’d started earlier, or, better yet, that it went until later in the day. It was very nice to see Mexico City from a new perspective. It was kind of like being in a car, yet without the traffic and all that the traffic entails. And it was kind of like being on foot, except we were going much faster. I won’t say that Mexico City would become paradise if everyone got out of their cars and started walking or cycling, but it sure would be a lot nicer. Seeing the surrounding mountains clearly would be a daily occurrence instead of a rare treat, and there would be much less noise. For many people, daily commutes would be substantially shorter. I am not joking about this last point.
Biking here is usually a harrowing experience. But not yesterday.
Here’s a picture of me by the Ángel of Independencia.
According to this blog, the government of the DF has started clearing some streets of vendors. It’s difficult to believe that it’s really Eje Central in the first photo.
I have mixed feelings about the operation in general — commerce is good, but so is being able to walk down the street without being harassed (or banging your head on all sorts of lowhanging things) by people hawking things at you.
In the argument between (economic) liberalism and socialism, Mexico City comprises a big data point. What isn’t clear is whose position, if either, it buttresses.
(Earlier.)
I picked up my new glasses yesterday. I hate them. My vision up close is slightly improved; my vision of anything at distance, which seems to be more than 6′, is worse than it was with my old pair. And while things up close are slightly improved, NOTHING is sharp, at any distance. If I squint things are tolerable, sometimes sharp.
Let me repeat:
With a brand new pair of glasses and a brand new prescription, if I squint, my vision is adequate (barely).
Oh, and my peripheral vision is totally hosed now; I only see well through my new glasses when looking straight ahead. With my old pair, I could roll my eyes a bit and still see fine. Not anymore. I don’t know if that can be blamed on my prescription or on Kauffman Ópticas. But, can you even call that peripheral vision? When you’re still looking through lenses? No idea.
What a waste of MXN $5000 (lenses + frames + doctor appt).
I hate the medical profession so much. My vision is not good and getting worse and it’s too much work to figure out what’s wrong. I’m about to put my vision in the same category as my hearing: a lost cause, something that will get worse and worse until it is gone entirely or until I die.
I’ve started a new blog at nachosetcrayons.blogspot.com. It’s mostly about things I do for work, although the only real rule I’m setting myself is not to call people retarded morons like I do here.
I’ll continue to call people idiots here. I might start to crosspost my book reviews, but so far I haven’t been doing that.
A few months ago, I went up to Alma and put on the saddest, most ashamed face I could muster.
“Alma,” I said, “There is something I think I should tell you. I’m ashamed to say this, and I don’t want to, but I feel like I really have to.”
Her face dropped.
“Oh no, what is it? Tell me.”
“Well…” I paused. “It’s that…” I paused again. “It’s that I’m starting to enjoy papaya.”
(I still think it’s pretty gross before being sprinkled with lime juice and salt, though. And it should be ripe.)
A letter to the Boston Globe, in response to the latest case of hysteria:
Re: MIT student arrested at Logan in bomb scare:
In the current climate of overreaction, Star Simpson may gave been unwise to go to the airport with exposed electronics, but she didn’t do anything morally wrong. Most of us avoid such legal entanglements by going with our electronics discreetly out of sight: we call them laptops and iPods.
The best that can be said for the brainwaves who pass laws and who are tasked with enforcing them is that at least Simpson wasn’t tased.
Michael Wolf
Mexico City
+52 55 xxxx yyyy
Well, can you?
I wasn’t consciously thinking of the date when I put up the previous entry. The timing makes it seem somewhat off-kilter, if not downright inappropriate.
(Not inappropriate in the sense of offending someone. Inappropriate, rather, in the sense where someone takes a conversation to where a tangent would lead, without the tangent itself.)
I’ve been wondering for a while whether it makes sense for seats in airplanes to be uniformly spaced. Except for the front row (or front rows of various sections, if the plane is large) and the emergency exit row(s), there’s an equal distance between seats. The result of this is that small people are sitting in seats that are too big, wasting space that could be allocated to larger people.
It seems reasonable to assume that the spacing between seats should be portioned according to the curve of the heights of travelers. This would put the limited space to better use.
Is there some reason that airlines don’t do this? (Or do some airlines do it?) I can think of a few reasons they’d want to avoid it:
Maybe it would somehow adversely impact boarding and deboarding, or would make providing food during the flight more difficult somehow. Maybe planes are designed assuming certain weight per space ratios in certain parts of the plane.
I think it would be worth it, though.
s/evento/acontecimiento/. Por favor.
(En el evento que lo de que hablas sea un evento sigue usando evento.)
Soon, if the Teamsters don’t get their way, some Mexican trucks may be allowed to drive throughout the United States.
On the face of it, it’s easy to write off the Teamsters as being Teamsters — a powerful, self-interested, violent, and corrupt force with nothing constructive to add to society in general.
On the other hand, lots of trucks in Mexico are undermaintained. Many shoot huge clouds of black exhaust (suggesting little to no engine maintenance), have bald tires, etc. And, if the training of drivers of everyday cars is anything to go by — it isn’t mandatory — then there also are probably plenty of untrained truck drivers too. And not all of them would understand English road signs.
So, people not wanting to allow these drivers and vehicles into the US (for reasons other than fear of competition) aren’t being entirely unreasonable.
The best solution seems to be to ignore the Teamsters and the racists and figure out what the real problems or potential problems would be: the problems I outlined above, basically. Then fix those problems: only allow trucks that are properly maintained and driven by properly trained drivers into the country. Which may be the case already: “Participating Mexican carriers must comply with all legal requirements governing operations of domestically owned carriers, and in some cases stricter requirements,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler.”
Assuming anyone with “Attorney General” in his title can be trusted these days, I’d say that’s a good enough. Let the trucks in.
The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin.
As often happens with really good books, this book seemed more like a gift from its author and editor and less like something I paid my own money to get. This book was so good that I was able to finish it while on a plane, something I’m rarely able to do.
The Lord of the Rings was told from the point of view of the smallest character in a given chapter: usually one of the hobbits. Children, by contrast, is told from the perspective of great men, and in a more impersonal, more summarizing style.
The only disappointment is that this story is only a small part of a much longer history, which is summarized in The Silmarillion. I hope there are more books in this vein to come; certainly Tolkien left enough unfinished material to provide for several such books in the future.
Defensa apasionada del idioma español, by Álex Grijelmo. Punto de Lectura.
The book’s title translates to “[A] Passionate Defense of the Spanish Language”. It started on a high note. People write badly, use words unnecessarily borrowed from other languages, and generally disrespect their linguistic heritage. “Right on!”, I said, and kept on saying during a non-contiguous third of the book.
The rest was not so good.
Those non-contiguous two thirds of the book cover the many things Grijelmo knows little about: English (from which modern Spanish borrows many words), computers, international trade, history, and more and how they relate to modern Spanish usage.
Taking English, Grijelmo rails against Anglicisms in large part because he thinks that they fragment the language, with the ultimate effect of causing unintelligibility among speakers: a debatable conclusion.
It’s true that many Spanish speakers today use words borrowed from the English that are strictly unnecessary.
Some do it thinking it makes them sound sophisticated, which I find rather obnoxious, not least because those words are all too often misused (and mispronounced!). “Esto es para tax purposes” is as good bad an example as any.
It’s also true that a number of false cognates have been made true cognates through misuse. The word “evento”, for example, didn’t always mean something planned such as a show, but rather something unplanned. English retains this meaning: “in the event of an emergency…”
And then there are Latinos who live in the US and other English-speaking countries who have adapted English words into Spanish: “parquear el carro a la marqueta”, for example. Here, the unintelligibility argument holds no water, and in fact is rather insulting to Spanish speakers. Does he think that they’re all so stupid that after a short period of exposure they couldn’t understand a dialect where less than 1% (my estimate; I’d be interested in seeing real figures) of the words are different?
I happen to find the first two cases of Anglicisms unnecessary and, indeed, rather tasteless. I try to avoid them. Sometimes my incomplete vocabulary makes this difficult, although I do my best: “Vamos a un … ¿cómo se dice? En inglés la palabra es «show».” I don’t use the Anglicisms used by Latinos in English-speaking countries, but nor do I denigrate them — in fact, I think they enrich the language as a whole.
For the most part, I wrote off Grilejmo as a grumpy old fart. There’s nothing wrong with that, really. But his downright absurd statements about English (and other things, of course, but this book is really too insignificant for it to be worth it to criticize everything) are what really got to me. He calls it a frigid language, less expressive, blah blah.
It ends on a positive, and almost inspiring note. But by then it was too late, and the damage was done. A waste of time and paper. Too bad, considering its potential.
(Oh, occasionally he put in a little parting shot at the ends of chapters in an attempt to be funny, much like The Economist often does, except The Economist’s quips are generally humorous. Grijelmo’s are not.)
Is it really true that people can use word processors without wanting to scream “OH MY GOD YOU PIECE OF FUCK! I WANT YOU TO DIE!”?
I can’t.
I found two interesting sites today. www.etymonline.com has information about the etymology of many English words. A similar site, etimologias.dechile.net is similar in intent, but for Spanish instead.
Citizen exchange seems like an interesting idea. It’s actually an idea I’d vaguely and briefly thought about before, but I’d never thought through the implications, most of which seem to be good ones.
Glottopedia looks pretty interesting, if you’re into that sort of thing.