Humblest Apologies, Faithful Readers, for my prolonged absence. You know how it goes; you go a week without writing, and suddenly there's so much to write about, and so you wait a little longer until you have time to catch up, and then there's more, and more, and more...
And then there's College Nationals, the Ultimate tournament which basically devoured the last week of my life. The good news is that the tournament went quite well, with everything falling into place and the teams, players, and spectators all pretty much universally saying it was a great tournament. I know that I had a great, albeit entirely exhausting, time.
But the good news is that I'm Back!
The bad news is, I'm Moving!
From now on, I will be blogging at a new home, a co-blog with frequent commenter, and target of my snark, Shane. We've already set up tent at
http://damnlefties.wordpress.com
Please click on over and join us! Hope to see you there...
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Google's Done It Again!
Let me be the first to praise Google for their new invention, Google Custom Time. The idea is simple: you can pre-date your e-mails so that it appears that they were sent at the appropriate time (birthdays, anniversaries, before the big presentation was due), and they will appear at that time, in the proper place in the recipient's inbox. It will appear that they simply got 'lost in the ether' during the interim.
Good times! Now that the concept of 'on time' is slowly being eradicated, I look forward to the day when concepts such as 'date' and 'time' lose all meaning altogether, which will allow me to finally live in a nirvana where every meal is breakfast (what? Time for pancakes with whipped cream again?), and every day is both a Saturday and my birthday, simultaneously.
Although, I would like to know a little more about their 'e-flux capacitor' before signing on whole-hog...
Good times! Now that the concept of 'on time' is slowly being eradicated, I look forward to the day when concepts such as 'date' and 'time' lose all meaning altogether, which will allow me to finally live in a nirvana where every meal is breakfast (what? Time for pancakes with whipped cream again?), and every day is both a Saturday and my birthday, simultaneously.
Although, I would like to know a little more about their 'e-flux capacitor' before signing on whole-hog...
Liberal Praises Liberal Paper - Counterintuitive!
Okay, just to prove that I'm not entirely a New York Times-basher, a couple plaudits for its pundits.
In today's op-ed section, the oft-maligned (and deservedly so!) David Brooks writes really well on the subject of behavior and discipline, and how good habits brought on through rote and routine can lead to perfection of execution in the physical sports. He doesn't really go into it in great depth, but I think the point he's getting at, which is something I am really a firm believer in, is how these sorts of habits can help you in your everyday life as well.
For instance, with all these new responsibilities at work, I am finding myself having to be, roughly, a billion times more organized than I've had to be in the past. Which is to say, fairly organized.
Now, strictly speaking, my ability to organize my thoughts and processes have nothing to do with my ability to, say, keep a very clean desk. Indeed, if you listened to Will Wilkinson's diavlog with Richard Florida over the weekend (sorry for the lack of a dinglelink, but I'm too busy!), you'd know that people who score very high on the 'open to new experiences' axis in Five-Factor Personality Analysis tests, like me, tend to have very messy desks.
Nonetheless, I am now aspiring to keep a clean work area, both at my cube and in the lab, the idea being that if I can keep order in my physical surroundings, that will assist my brain in keeping itself neat and tidy as well.
It's really a nice column by Brooks, and a reminder why the hell the Times pays him to write three times a week. I find his political columns to fall in a fairly narrow space between uninformative and uninformed, but when he writes about behavior and sociology, which is the area where he got started, he really can be both interesting and insightful.
On another note altogether, bravo to the Times, via the Freakonomics blog, for giving my brother-in-law's father, the weird-and-wonderful Daniel Hamermesh an outlet for his economic thoughts. Daniel is quite the character, as anyone who has spent a Passover dinner with him can absolutely attest. But he's also, I'm told, quite an insightful economic thinker. I've been to one of his undergrad lectures, and he is definitely an engaging speaker, and his occasional posts to Freakonomics have been fun to read. And he's definitely the most famous blogger that I'm related to by marriage, although since I am very loosely related to David Copperfield by marriage, he's not the most famous person to meet that qualification.
In today's op-ed section, the oft-maligned (and deservedly so!) David Brooks writes really well on the subject of behavior and discipline, and how good habits brought on through rote and routine can lead to perfection of execution in the physical sports. He doesn't really go into it in great depth, but I think the point he's getting at, which is something I am really a firm believer in, is how these sorts of habits can help you in your everyday life as well.
For instance, with all these new responsibilities at work, I am finding myself having to be, roughly, a billion times more organized than I've had to be in the past. Which is to say, fairly organized.
Now, strictly speaking, my ability to organize my thoughts and processes have nothing to do with my ability to, say, keep a very clean desk. Indeed, if you listened to Will Wilkinson's diavlog with Richard Florida over the weekend (sorry for the lack of a dinglelink, but I'm too busy!), you'd know that people who score very high on the 'open to new experiences' axis in Five-Factor Personality Analysis tests, like me, tend to have very messy desks.
Nonetheless, I am now aspiring to keep a clean work area, both at my cube and in the lab, the idea being that if I can keep order in my physical surroundings, that will assist my brain in keeping itself neat and tidy as well.
It's really a nice column by Brooks, and a reminder why the hell the Times pays him to write three times a week. I find his political columns to fall in a fairly narrow space between uninformative and uninformed, but when he writes about behavior and sociology, which is the area where he got started, he really can be both interesting and insightful.
On another note altogether, bravo to the Times, via the Freakonomics blog, for giving my brother-in-law's father, the weird-and-wonderful Daniel Hamermesh an outlet for his economic thoughts. Daniel is quite the character, as anyone who has spent a Passover dinner with him can absolutely attest. But he's also, I'm told, quite an insightful economic thinker. I've been to one of his undergrad lectures, and he is definitely an engaging speaker, and his occasional posts to Freakonomics have been fun to read. And he's definitely the most famous blogger that I'm related to by marriage, although since I am very loosely related to David Copperfield by marriage, he's not the most famous person to meet that qualification.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Welcome Mat
And let me be just the latest, if not the first, to welcome Kathy G to the blogosphere. As someone who called for her to be made a guest-poster at Ezra's back when she would occasionally post these random, incredibly insightful comments to some post-or-other of his, I'm very happy to see her finally have her own outlet for thoughts and comments.
Although, I have to say - if I'm saying that you ought to learn how to write some slightly shorter posts, you probably have a real brevity issue.
Although, I have to say - if I'm saying that you ought to learn how to write some slightly shorter posts, you probably have a real brevity issue.
I Waited A New Week For This Post, And All I Got Were Some Lousy Ellipses?
Best intentional misreads of the day:
World's Hackiest Hack, Bill Kristol:
You gotta love the blatant, unrepentant hackosity of Kristol's rantings. I don't know how long a contract the Times signed him to, but it's already been going on too long, as far as I'm concerned. Senators Clinton and Obama have many faults, but accusing them of holding a "stale liberal orthodoxy" can only be the opinion of a fool or a madman. Unlike Charles Krauthamer, I do not hold a Ph.D. in psychology, and will not speculate as to the mental state of my ideological opponents, so I'm left believing Kristol to be a fool.
Although, I must admit, I do appreciate Kristol's confidence in his own manhood to publicly declare his appreciation for the qualities of John McCain's 71-year-old buttocks:
World's Hackiest Hack, Bill Kristol:
Most Americans want to be told we can leave Iraq sooner rather than later. McCain has chosen instead to tell Americans the hard and unpopular truths that...there’s no...path to defeating our enemies and securing a lasting peace.And the occasionally anti-Bushian Paul Krugman:
[T]he Bush administration actively...tried to protect families against predatory lending.Of course, those aren't the real quotes, but wouldn't it be funny if they were?
You gotta love the blatant, unrepentant hackosity of Kristol's rantings. I don't know how long a contract the Times signed him to, but it's already been going on too long, as far as I'm concerned. Senators Clinton and Obama have many faults, but accusing them of holding a "stale liberal orthodoxy" can only be the opinion of a fool or a madman. Unlike Charles Krauthamer, I do not hold a Ph.D. in psychology, and will not speculate as to the mental state of my ideological opponents, so I'm left believing Kristol to be a fool.
Although, I must admit, I do appreciate Kristol's confidence in his own manhood to publicly declare his appreciation for the qualities of John McCain's 71-year-old buttocks:
The qualities of a young military hero may not be those of a successful president. McCain knows this. As an elected official, he’s never rested on his P.O.W. laurels, remarkable though they are.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
My Favorite Least Favorite Coach
Sorry for the overload on b-ball coverage, but I'm in that kind of mood right now.
I know that I'm contractually obligated to hate Roy Williams, the head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina. For one thing, he's the former long-time coach at Kansas, who was the best team in the Big 12 back when I was a regular attendee of University of Colorado basketball games (there's no real defense for this, except that sometimes it was fun to be one of 300 fans in the arena for early-season games.) Anyhow, he was always so snide and snotty and easy to hate, and the one magical year that CU went undefeated at home in conference, including wins over #13 Oklahoma State, #6ish Texas, and #2-ranked Kansas, he nearly threw an apoplectic fit at the end of the CU-KU game, insisting that star player Kirk 'Frodo' Heinrich had been fouled on their last possession, I thought he was going to have an aneurism.
Very immature.
Anyhow, now he is the coach of UNC, and since Michelle and LJ, official BFFs of The Consistent Fool, are NC State alums, I am still contractually obligated to dislike him.
But, despite myself, I find him occasionally quite charming. The #1 example of this was back when he left Kansas, and told Bonnie Bernstein, standing outside the locker room moments after his team narrowly lost to Carmelo Anthony's Syracuse team, that he didn't "...give a shit about Carolina right now."
And just today, in a post-game interview after his team absolutely dismantled Arkansas, he told the interviewers, regarding star player Ty Lawson playing at full capacity; "when he plays like that, I'm a much better coach."
It doesn't quite count as humility, but it's still pretty funny and fairly charming stuff.
I know that I'm contractually obligated to hate Roy Williams, the head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina. For one thing, he's the former long-time coach at Kansas, who was the best team in the Big 12 back when I was a regular attendee of University of Colorado basketball games (there's no real defense for this, except that sometimes it was fun to be one of 300 fans in the arena for early-season games.) Anyhow, he was always so snide and snotty and easy to hate, and the one magical year that CU went undefeated at home in conference, including wins over #13 Oklahoma State, #6ish Texas, and #2-ranked Kansas, he nearly threw an apoplectic fit at the end of the CU-KU game, insisting that star player Kirk 'Frodo' Heinrich had been fouled on their last possession, I thought he was going to have an aneurism.
Very immature.
Anyhow, now he is the coach of UNC, and since Michelle and LJ, official BFFs of The Consistent Fool, are NC State alums, I am still contractually obligated to dislike him.
But, despite myself, I find him occasionally quite charming. The #1 example of this was back when he left Kansas, and told Bonnie Bernstein, standing outside the locker room moments after his team narrowly lost to Carmelo Anthony's Syracuse team, that he didn't "...give a shit about Carolina right now."
And just today, in a post-game interview after his team absolutely dismantled Arkansas, he told the interviewers, regarding star player Ty Lawson playing at full capacity; "when he plays like that, I'm a much better coach."
It doesn't quite count as humility, but it's still pretty funny and fairly charming stuff.
Further Basketball Thoughts
What Shane said.
Also, it's a testament to how absurdly well Stephen son-of-Dell Curry has been shooting through two rounds that I was surprised to see that he was only an 89% free throw shooter. I figured him for a Reggie Milleresque 93-94%, one of those 'misses a couple a month' sort of guy. Then, he actually missed one which would have sealed the game, putting Davidson up 4 with a few seconds to play. Of course, it was the front end of a 2-fer, and he hit the second, rendering the whole argument moot.
But that kid has a future in The Association. Oh, and, suck it, Hoyas.
Also, it's a testament to how absurdly well Stephen son-of-Dell Curry has been shooting through two rounds that I was surprised to see that he was only an 89% free throw shooter. I figured him for a Reggie Milleresque 93-94%, one of those 'misses a couple a month' sort of guy. Then, he actually missed one which would have sealed the game, putting Davidson up 4 with a few seconds to play. Of course, it was the front end of a 2-fer, and he hit the second, rendering the whole argument moot.
But that kid has a future in The Association. Oh, and, suck it, Hoyas.
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