Unicorn Sighting

In three days, the album that Axl Rose has been talking about making for 15 years is finally set to be released. Chinese Democracy is due out on the 23rd, and this actually does have to qualify as a pretty big event in rock history. Chuck Klosterman wrote a review of the album for the AV Club, and you should check it out, whether you like Gn'R or not. It's funny and insightful, because it's Klosterman. Also, go watch the video for November Rain, which is "Stairway to Heaven" for my generation. Watching that, I might have to say that one of my lifelong dreams is to play a guitar solo while a wind machine blows dust towards me and a helicopter flies overhead multiple times for tracking shots.

It Is Written: NL MVP

Well, the Baseball Writers of America have proven many people wrong (including me) in actually making a very intelligent choice for the NL MVP. In a narrow vote, Albert Pujols beat out Ryan Howard. I don't have time to do a lot of analysis with this now, but Pujols often gets overlooked because he's just so good that he has to be incredible to even get noticed. But in a race without a clear favorite, the fact that he is (by a fairly large margin) the best hitter in baseball was able to make him a deserving winner of the MVP award.

Their biggest mistake? Chase Utley 15th!! He probably deserved to be about 2nd.

Comparing Turkeys to Watermelons

Paul Wells advocates for increased high speed rail in Canada. In principle, I totally agree with him (provided it's primarily privately-funded), and think rail might need to be extremely important in the medium- to long-term transportation mix for North America. However, Wells has a map of Europe's expected high-speed rail lines for 2020 and compares it to Canada's likely forays by that year, which is absurd when you consider it has a population about 20 times that of Canada and a population density of over 70 people per square km, vs. Canada's...3. It's unrealistic to think that the same type of mass transit would be used in both situations. Rail might well be a good option, but just because Europe's got a good system doesn't in and of itself mean Canada needs to follow suit, anymore than the Kootenays needs a subway system on par with London's. The Windsor-Toronto-Montreal corridor might have the population density to support such a system, but it just doesn't make sense for the rest of the country. Maybe Calgary-Edmonton at some point in the future. What is kinda disturbing (without being at all surprising) reading the comments on the article are the number of people who think it's totally fine to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on something just because it's cool, and then we can say we've got high-speed rail. I'm not saying it CAN'T be a smart investment, but I think we need to set a higher bar for determining the appropriate use of public funds. (Not a very Canadian idea, I know). Have people not heard of a cost-benefit analysis?

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

The End of an Era: The guys at FJM are calling it quits. Kudos to them, though, for providing one of the smartest, funniest blogs on the internet for the past 3 and a half years.

Thanks for Nothing, NFL

Not only do you put the biggest game of the week on a network nobody actually has (and then the game turns out to be an instant classic), but your idiotic overtime rules mean I will be subjected to ever-more slobbering over that prick Brett Favre.

AL Cy Young

Cliff Lee (hey, another guy on my fantasy team!) easily won the AL Cy Young award today, as expected. I agree with the pick, although you can make a pretty strong case (and many have) that Roy Halladay was just as, if not more, deserving. Again, the voters did a decent job, with these two getting all of the available first place votes. However, I don't quite get the guys who had Matsuzaka ranked second...that means they had to have him over at least ONE of Halladay and Lee.

Which is clearly ridiculous!

(7 people also had Rodriguez 2nd, which is also wrong.)

Life Imitates The Simpsons

Prepare to be outraged. If you're a criminal in Canada, you don't have to serve time if you're morbidly obese.* A guy in prison in Quebec was given early parole because, basically, prison was too hard for him and his 400-plus pound body. He's also filed a complaint with Canada's Thought Police, the Quebec Human Rights Commission. I've been awake for 20 minutes, and this is definitely the stupidest thing I've heard today.

* The obvious caveat applies that he was in jail for drug trafficking so I don't actually think he did anything illegal, anyway. But this is still a dangerous and silly precedent.

Miss Ing The Point

Ireland's RyanAir makes a calender (with the proceeds going to charity!) featuring female members of their cabin crew in bikinis. The reaction?

The Institute for Women in Spain is considering legal action and intends to complain to Irish and EU authorities that the publication is sexist as it only features female models.

I can understand women not really appreciating the calender. You know, objectifying women and all that. But you can honestly get SUED for making a calender featuring sexy women?! I think this is taking the feminist thing a bit too far. And the litigation thing. The funniest thing about it is the Daily Mail's reporting of this story...with every picture in the calender there in the article. Hey, they know what sells. And it's Miss Runway, Miss Fuel Pump, and Miss Control Tower.

This Is the End. The Only End, My Friend

A lengthy, but very interesting article by Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Blind Side, Liar's Poker) on the end of the glory days on Wall Street.

"HEY MOM!! THE MEATLOAF!! WE WANT IT NOW!!"

Even the intellectually-deficient (yet still somehow likeable) former Vice Presidental nominee has gotten in on the tired, tired cliche of referring to bloggers as living in their parent's basements, wearing pajamas. Pretty sweet, we're really getting famous!!

The Worry Meter is Creeping Higher

Maybe it's too early to be passing judgements, but thus far my impression of Obama's new Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is not at all good. Here he is responding to former AG Anthony Gonzalez discussing the differences between the war on terror and the drug war (who incidentally, basically admits that the drug war is unwinnable!):

From the United States' most senior law enforcement official, the man who should be leading the war on drugs, this white flag of surrender will not be reassuring to the millions of parents trying to protect their kids.

The thought of putting someone in the West Wing with a worse approach to the unjustified, destructive, and idiotic "war on drugs" than the current administration is bad enough. But his ability to brush aside concerns about civil liberties is even more troubling, as I think we've all had quite enough excess in that regard from the occupants of the White House.

First Set of MLB Awards; Voters Actually Do OK!

...except for the three people who voted for Edinson Volquez for NL Rookie of the Year. Who is not a rookie. But he was on my fantasy team. Just like the (deserving) winner, Geovany Soto of the Cubs. And since I didn't win the league, I'll use this opportunity to credit myself for also having the AL Rookie of the Year, the Rays' Evan Longoria. These votes were pretty predictable, and I think the voters called them correctly.

Tim Lincecum took home the NL Cy Young. I would have voted for him, too. He was definitely more deserving than Brandon Webb, despite Webb's gaudy win totals - so perhaps the voters are getting smarter. There is definitely a case to be made for Johan Santana, who if the Mets bullpen was even halfways decent would have had about 5 more wins and probably taken home the award easily. I guess I side with Lincecum because Santana is suffering from Albert Pujols Syndrome for Awards Voting: he's so damn good on a regular basis that he has to be absolutely spectacular to get noticed (see also: Rodriguez, Alex). Lincecum has that funky delivery that is just awesome to watch (not that that should be a criteria), and also played for a terrible team - so who knows how many wins he could have had with an adequate offense. By most advanced metrics, there's not much to choose between Santana and Lincecum: almost equal in VORP and almost equal in WPA/LI (although Lincecum has aabout a 0.5 win edge when just looking at WPA and not correcting for leverage). Their ERA's are very similar as well, but when you take out defense and only look at their controllable stats, Lincecum takes a big lead: his FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) was 2.59, vs. 3.51 for Santana, primarly due to Lincecum's high strikeout totals (10.51 per 9) and the fact that he allowed homers at half the rate of Santana (0.44 HR/9 vs. 0.88 HR/9). With this in mind, I think you can make a strong case that Tim Lincecum was the best pitcher in the NL this season. Oh, and of course, he's a tiny little guy, which makes him an underdog. Which is the best reason of all.

Kidding.

The Something Doctrine

Apparently it's not only us bastardly free-marketeers who try to take advantage of a crisis:

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” [Obama's Chief of Staff] Mr. Emanuel said in an interview on Sunday. “They are opportunities to do big things.”

Maybe Naomi Klein will add a chapter to the next edition of her book. But I doubt it.

Funny How That Works

Hey, look: it appears the Democrats aren't that concerned with limits on executive power anymore! And let me guess, the Republicans will all of a sudden remember the small-government principles they've been ignoring the past 8 years!

One of Eddie Van Halen's Greatest Guitar Solos

Cool photo: A volcanic eruption in Alaska, viewed from space. I think one of the coolest things about this photo is the way the shock wave from the eruption appears to be pushing to clouds away from the volcano in the upper part of the photo (I have no idea if that's actually what is causing that effect, but it makes sense to me).

Buyer's Remorse in 3,2,1...

Well, that didn't take long. Lowlights of President-elect Obama's first 3 days as heir to the White House:

1. The suggestion from Obama/his potential Chief of Staff that perhaps enforced slavery of high-schoolers or 18-25 year olds isn't such a bad idea. (i.e. the creation of a universal voluntary service for young people. If it's "universal", how can it be "voluntary? It would sure be ironic if first black president is the one who brings back slavery).
2. Taking money from profitable industries and giving it to unprofitable ones. (i.e. more, more and more money going to bailout the Big 3 car companies).
3. Discovering that the 5 million "green collar jobs" spouted during the campaign is "just meant to inspire people", and not a "real estimate". (And it continues to be annoying that need for lots of jobs (in other words, inefficiency) to transition to a greener economy is treated as a feature, not a bug, of such plans).
4. Apparent consideration of a Hugo Chavez-loving, scientfically-ignorant NIMBY hypocrite to head the EPA (i.e. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who refuses to believe evidence denying a link between vaccines and autism, and fought to keep wind power generators from an off-shore site near Cape Cod, where they would be in view of the Kennedy compound).

Sure, I'm kind of excited, too, but let's start being realistic. The expectations that people are putting on an Obama presidency are dancing along the fine line between comical and insane. How are these people going to feel when the most they get out of the deal is a $500 child tax credit and military actions in Pakistan? People are so optimistic that they seem to feel that within weeks of Jan. 20, 2009, their budget problems will be solved, the nation's economy will be back on track, gas prices will be down, home prices up, and everyone will have a new puppy. (He promised us one in his speech, didn't he?!)

And finishing the weeek with some wise words from Roderick Long: "it’s great to see a black person at last in the nation’s highest-profile and most influential job – I just wish the nation’s highest-profile and most influential job weren’t the goddamn presidency".

"I Want to Hear 3,000 People Snapping Their Fingers in Unison for Change"

I went to see literary-folk-rock-indie-celtic band The Decemberists in NYC last night, and both the band and the crowd were full of vigah over Obama's victory. "A new dawn", singer Colin Meloy proclaimed early in the show. Other politically-charged highlights were leading a call and response of "Yes We Can/Yes We Did", having everyone snap their fingers for change/hope/president-elect Barack Obama, and a cardboard cutout of Obama doing a crowd-surfing tour of the venue.

Like the separation of church and state, I usually prefer to have music and politics operate in different spheres. However, again indicating the uniqueness of this situation (or my own willingness to drink the Hope & Change Kool-Aid), it felt kinda special to be in a place with that kind of positive energy and meaning.

Silver's Gold

Time to check in on Nate Silver, the sabermetrician who created Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA forecasting system and predicted the Rays winning 90 games this year way back in February. It seems that he's made a relatively smooth transition to electoral predictions:

Shortly before Tuesday's vote, Chief Numba-Cruncher posted his final prediction for the 2008 Presidential Election: Barack Obama would win the election with 52.3% of the popular vote, while John McCain would collect 46.2%. The final vote tally as of this morning? Obama 52.4%. McCain 46.2%. One-hundred-and-twenty million votes were cast and the dude was off by one-tenth of one percent. (He also called 49 of the 50 stats correctly.) Holy. Crap. [Emphasis added.]

His lone mistake: he incorrectly called Indiana for McCain. His model predicted an average number in the electoral college of 348.6 for Obama and 189.4 for McCain (there are decimals because it is the average result of multiple simulations of the model), and the final tally looks like it will be 364 to 174, with the flip of Indiana basically accounting for the difference. Not too shabby. Vindication for the stat nerds. What's also interesting is that he was off by just a tenth of a percent in the election, but his average error for his baseball predictions was significantly greater, in the range of 9 wins per 162 game season (although PECOTA was still the best this year). Conclusion? Baseball is less predictable, and therefore more interesting, than politics. QED.

I Guess If Someone Has to Be Given All This Power, It Might As Well Mean Something

Will Wilkinson does a great job of summarizing my own conflicted feelings over the election of Barack Obama. He too was moved, and has gotten caught up in the transformative cultural importance of a black president. However, also like me, he has deep misgivings about the excessive role the government plays in our lives and how it captures our counciousness, making it difficult for people to see how they can do anything to positively change the world outside the halls of state.

In essence, here is the way I (and Will) feel: it's a shame that politics in general (and presidental power in particular) means what it means to so many people. But given the fact that it does mean that much to many people, Obama's election represents important progress, and is a powerful, symbolic event in history of the country (and the world).

Worth reading.

We are the Diamonds. We come from Glasgow.

Well, there was just way too much emotion and sincerity in that last post. So now it is time for the greatest, best, and most awesome sports team promotional song and video of all time. Because laughter is what really unites us all. This video is perhaps singularly responsible for the failure of American football to catch on in the UK. Be warned: you will have this song in your head the rest of the day.

Reflections

There is a buzz going around today. It seems, for perhaps the first time in my lifetime, that many people (at least Democrats) are genuinely excited about the election of a president, and feel that they can believe in government in way that is very rare these days. There was a certain "I was there" feeling about watching Obama make his victory speech. I am pretty sure the difficult realities of governance will bring down the euphoria soon enough, but even I can say that it feels kind of good to be seeing democracy at work and thinking, "yeah, this is pretty cool." The reactions of people like Colin Powell and Jesse Jackson to Obama's victory make the symbolic importance of his election hit home. It's a pretty amazing event, considering where this country was 50 years ago.

The way the world outside of the US has reacted has been fascinating and somewhat awe-inspiring. Although it certainly makes one think that people worldwide could do less in attaching their perceptions of people from a certain country to whomever their elected officals happen to be - this is still the same country that elected George Bush 4 years ago, and now because 52% of eligible voters preferred Barack Obama, all of a sudden the world is in love with America? The various newspaper headlines from around the world are neat, though: "One Giant Leap for Mankind" (The Sun, UK), "The New World (The Times, UK). The Globe & Mail has a gallery of front pages here. It adds to the feeling of this being Something Big.

Finally, like McCain, Obama made a nice speech last night. There were parts of it that even moved a cold-hearted anarchist like myself, and made you believe in the founding ideas of this country and what the United States can be. Some excerpts I particularly liked:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
...
It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.
...
And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. To those who would tear this world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope. For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

And after making a pretty powerful point about the amount of change a 106-year-old black woman has seen in her lifetime:

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made? This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes We Can.

It's worth reading the whole thing, or watching it if you missed it. Pretty good stuff.

However, Voters Don't Much Like Homosexuals

While it seems that most people don't mind the idea of a black president it appears that the majority of voters are uncomfortable with the idea of basic human rights and equality for gay people. Voters in Florida and Arizona easily passed constitutional amendments defining marriage as between a man a woman, and the much-discussed Proposition 8 in California (even California!) looks like it is going to pass, although the vote is close.

Voters Like to Get High

Nicely done by the voters of a couple of states: Massachusetts decriminalized small amounts of pot (not that the feds will honor this) and Michigan approved medicinal marijuana. We are more free than we were 24 hours ago!

That Dude With the Weird Name is the Next President

I'll be the first to admit that I'm extremely cynical about politics, but even I can't help feeling emotional seeing all the African-Americans (and others, too) cheering and in tears as the networks declare Obama the winner of the presidential election. And the interviews with black leaders about how far they have come since the days of MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech (which really is an incredible, tingling speech) are pretty amazing. I don't know if anything much will change in a practical sense over the next 4 years, but you have to admit that the symbolism of electing a young black man as president is pretty powerful, and pretty cool.

Now the interesting question for me is how close Nate Silver (of Baseball Prospectus, and he's the guy who created PECOTA) is with his projections! If he's close, will the stat nerds will be vindicated, and freed from the opression of our mother's basements? Stay tuned!

UPDATE, 11:20pm - Pretty nice concession speech by McCain, I thought.

UPDATE, 11:38pm - Just to be clear, I don't really see eye-to-eye with Obama on a lot of issues & philosophies. But I feel relatively positive about him (since I will probably never see eye-to-eye with any "electable" candidate) because he seems like an intellectually curious person who is going to use logic and evidence when designing policy. It's a relatively low bar, yes, but given what you can end up with in these things, not altogether bad.

The Way He Didn't Get to That Ground Ball Was Rather Jeterian

Because nothing in the world is more fun than bringing up Derek Jeter's lack of fielding prowess, I bring you the 2008 Fielding Bible Awards, in which Jeter ranks as the 22nd best shortstop in the Majors. The real enjoyment, however, comes from reading the responses from Yankee fans to such statistics.

The story is getting old, but never stops being fun: according to most advanced fielding measures, Jeter is a below average shortstop (and before anyone yells too loudly, I agree 100% that he is a fantastic hitter, and deserves to be in the Hall of Fame someday). Presented with such evidence, Yankee fans point to one or more of the following, irrelevant things: 1) JETER IS TEH CLUTCH!!@!&. 2) His Gold Glove awards (given out by the same idiots who thought Bartolo Colon was the best pitcher in the AL in 2005). 3) The 2 plays (2001 "flip" and 2004 running catch into the stands) which must "prove" what a great fielder he is. Good plays, both, but indicate about as much as that one half-court shot I made one time shows how good a long-range shooter I was. (For the record, I was not). 4) Bill James works for the RED SOX and this is clearly a conspiracy to tarnish Jeter's legend and/or create a "name" for the company doing the statistics (in this case, Baseball Info Solutions, who I think already have a pretty decent "name" amongst students of the game). 5) Jeter has slept with a lot of hot women. Why some Yankee fans like to brag about this, I have no idea. 6) Statheads like me don't understand the game and should stick to sitting in our mother's basements playing with spreadsheets.

Jeter himself has defended himself by saying that these models don't account for things like the pitchers, the runners on, etc... but as Tom Tango's "With or Without You" study showed, even when you DO correct for these things, Jeter just doesn't seem to be a great fielder. Maybe there are things he does on the field that are important in helping his team win games. But it appears that for the things we are able to actually measure in term of fielding ability, at this stage (and I will grant you that fielding statistics are imperfect science with many advancements that need to be made) Jeter appears to be behind many of his peers.

Really, Jeter seems like a pretty decent guy: good teammate, hard worker, and a fine hitter (although perhaps a really great teammate would have been the one to volunteer to move positions when the best shortstop in baseball gets traded to your team). But the mythologizing over him and his accomplishments creates a cult of personality that is incredibly common these days. Of course, when the fans of a baseball player think he can do no wrong it's not a big deal, and is makes for fun arguments. But when fans of the president think he's beyond criticism, that's not healthy for society. Another reason why baseball is better than politics.

Avert Your Eyes

If at all possible today, try and spend at least a few minutes paying attention to (and appreciating) the part of life not directly connected to the system of coordinated violence and threats designed to force other people to do what you want them to. The weather appears to be quite pleasant in most areas of the country. There are kids playing in the park. There is a lot of great music out there. And just look at those fall colours out my window this morning!

Three Depressing Days to Go

This election just can't be over soon enough, as far as I'm concerned. The two main options get less palatable by the day, and while I can see why some may feel good about an Obama victory, is there really any reason to put this much meaning in the outcome of a popularity contest?:

The Obama/Biden Inaugural -- the exact moment when the world goes from gray to colorful.

I mean, wow. Really? That's a commenter's byline at Daily Kos. It is certainly gives credence to the uncomfortable notion that Obama is receiving a messiah-like charge from some of his supporters. I'm sure there are a bunch of similar people on the right, too, seeing as we now have what amouts to what Gene Healy calls the "cult of the presidency". Reading the comments at dKos is downright depressing, seeing the stock that so many have put in the power of an elected official to Totally Change Everything and return all good to the world. And especially the people practically bragging about the time and money they have spent working for an Obama victory, wiping out their bank account to donate to his campaign. I just have to think there are better ways to make the world a better place, no matter what you believe in politically.

On the other hand, I understand that under and Obama presidency we won't have to worry about putting gas in our cars or paying our mortgages. Pretty sweet deal.