Oh, hey. Long time, no see. As usual, I've got a few posts that I'm thinking about/working on, but for now, in the spirit of graduation season and clever commencement speeches that sometimes go viral, I'd like to share with you this excerpt from the late author David Foster Wallace, delivered at Kenyon College in 2005. I've seen this video a few places lately, and I think that it's ten minutes very well spent. Enjoy.
Showing posts with label Random. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Random. Show all posts
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Photo of the Year candidate
This is from last night's Brewers-Giants game (a walkoff win for the Brewers), and it is absolutely awesome. Great work by the cameraman, AP's Morry Gash; not such great work by number 8, Ryan Braun. Thanks to Deadspin for the heads up.
You'll get him next time, Brauny.
You'll get him next time, Brauny.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The cupcake bubble bursts
Courtesy of my main man The Red Cowboy comes this gem from the Wall Street Journal. Sadly for all you folks out there with a sweet tooth, it seems that the great cupcake bubble of 2011 is in the midst of bursting.
Either way, this article had some absolutely amazing gems in it. This passage here, for example, was fabulous.
And a shell company? Really? You people set up a shell company just so that you could buy a cupcake shop and take it public? Seems a little over-the-top, don't you think? But hey, what do I know, right? These people are all way richer than I am by now, and all on the back of a nice little cupcake bubble.
Man, I can't wait for the scone bubble. It's gonna be EPIC.
[Wall Street Journal]
The icing is coming off America's cupcake craze.
The dessert became a cultural and economic phenomenon over the last decade, with gourmet cupcake shops proliferating across the country, selling increasingly elaborate and expensive concoctions.
The craze hit a high mark in June 2011, when Crumbs Bake Shop Inc., a New York-based chain, debuted on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol CRMB. Its creations—4" tall, with fillings such as vanilla custard, caps of butter cream cheese, and decorative flourishes like a whole cookie—can cost $4.50 each.
After trading at more than $13 a share in mid-2011, Crumbs has sunk to $1.70. It dropped 34% last Friday, in the wake of Crumbs saying that sales for the full year would be down by 22% from earlier projections, and the stock slipped further this week.
Crumbs in part blamed store closures from Hurricane Sandy, but others say the chain is suffering from a larger problem: gourmet-cupcake burnout.
"The novelty has worn off," says Kevin Burke, managing partner of Trinity Capital LLC, a Los Angeles investment banking firm that often works in the restaurant industry.Yeah, that'll happen. In part, it's something I discussed in this post about "Brie Syndrome" back when Harry & David filed for bankruptcy. Once something becomes ubiquitous and commoditized, its days as a viable business tend to become numbered, unless the original purveyor adapts quickly and capably.
Either way, this article had some absolutely amazing gems in it. This passage here, for example, was fabulous.
Husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Jason and Mia Bauer opened the first Crumbs bakery in 2003 on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Today, the company, which also sells $42 "colossal" cupcakes that serve six to eight, is one of the largest players in the gourmet-cupcake industry, with locations in at least 10 states and the District of Columbia.
Crumbs went public in June 2011 after a shell company bought it. The buyer, 57th Street General Acquisition Corp., had raised money the previous year for its Crumbs purchase. 57th Street changed its name to Crumbs Bake Shop shortly after the merger.A "cupcake" that serves six to eight?? IT'S CALLED A CAKE, YOU IDIOTS! A CUPCAKE THAT FEEDS SIX TO EIGHT IS CALLED A CAKE!! I mean, honestly people, what are we doing here?
And a shell company? Really? You people set up a shell company just so that you could buy a cupcake shop and take it public? Seems a little over-the-top, don't you think? But hey, what do I know, right? These people are all way richer than I am by now, and all on the back of a nice little cupcake bubble.
Man, I can't wait for the scone bubble. It's gonna be EPIC.
[Wall Street Journal]
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
My first cooking post (Lamb Pasanda)
Back when I started this blog, I planned to use it as a place to share some of my passions and skills with all of you. I've done a good job with some of those things (sports, current events, economic analysis), a reasonable job on some others (running, music, The Simpsons), and a terrible job on the rest—most notably, cooking. I love to cook, and I do it all the time, but besides a few posts here and there about food and our food supply, I haven't talked about it here at all. That changes today.
Every week or so—or whenever I cook up a meal that I'm particularly proud of—I'll share a recipe up here with all of you, along with some helpful hints as to how you can cook it yourself. No, I'm not going to turn this into some sort of amateur food blog—the world has plenty of those already. But I do feel as though there's a side of me that isn't being reflected here, and I think I should rectify that starting today.
This weekend was Easter weekend, and the weather is just starting to improve around here, so I took the opportunity to fire up the grill and cook one of my all-time favorites, a recipe first discovered by my father, the original grill master in my family. That recipe is for Lamb Pasanda, and it's a true classic—the recipe is a little different from what's described as "traditional pasanda" here on Wikipedia, but believe me, it's awesome. It's also insanely easy to make, especially if you've got a good blender like I was lucky enough to be given for Christmas last year.
If you've never used yogurt in a meat marinade, you are most definitely missing out. The yogurt tenderizes the meat while giving it an awesomely funky flavor, and the charring from the grill takes it all to the next level. Throw in some Indian-inspired spices and the terrific natural flavor of lamb, and this dish is as delicious as it is unique. But enough rambling; let's get to the recipe.
LAMB PASANDA
Serves: 6 or more, depending on the size of lamb leg you buy
Time: about 30 minutes of active prep, 12-24 hours of inactive prep, and 10-20 minutes of cook time
Serve immediately, along with some sort of vegetable (a simple grilled or broiled asparagus is fine) and a grain (like, say, couscous—for this meal I whipped up a quinoa salad with toasted pine nuts, dried cranberries, and a citrus-mint vinaigrette... but that was for a holiday. You don't need to go crazy here...). If you're into wine, the beauty of this dish is that it can pair well with any number of wines. I served it with a Côtes du Rhône this weekend, and that seemed to work well, but I'd think that the meal would've stood up nicely against a Syrah or even a Malbec as well.
I don't know, I'm not a sommelier, I just like to drink wine with my dinner, okay? Maybe next time I'll get around to telling you about my dessert, which was in this case a nice, fresh, Key Lime Pie. Awesome stuff. Happy cooking, all. (And next time, I promise more pictures... I didn't think to take any this time around, so that one standard picture up there of my grill loaded up with meat will have to suffice, but I will take more in the future).
Every week or so—or whenever I cook up a meal that I'm particularly proud of—I'll share a recipe up here with all of you, along with some helpful hints as to how you can cook it yourself. No, I'm not going to turn this into some sort of amateur food blog—the world has plenty of those already. But I do feel as though there's a side of me that isn't being reflected here, and I think I should rectify that starting today.
This weekend was Easter weekend, and the weather is just starting to improve around here, so I took the opportunity to fire up the grill and cook one of my all-time favorites, a recipe first discovered by my father, the original grill master in my family. That recipe is for Lamb Pasanda, and it's a true classic—the recipe is a little different from what's described as "traditional pasanda" here on Wikipedia, but believe me, it's awesome. It's also insanely easy to make, especially if you've got a good blender like I was lucky enough to be given for Christmas last year.
If you've never used yogurt in a meat marinade, you are most definitely missing out. The yogurt tenderizes the meat while giving it an awesomely funky flavor, and the charring from the grill takes it all to the next level. Throw in some Indian-inspired spices and the terrific natural flavor of lamb, and this dish is as delicious as it is unique. But enough rambling; let's get to the recipe.
LAMB PASANDA
Serves: 6 or more, depending on the size of lamb leg you buy
Time: about 30 minutes of active prep, 12-24 hours of inactive prep, and 10-20 minutes of cook time
Ingredients
One 3-pound leg of lamb (boneless), butterflied and trimmed of excess
fat
3 cups plain yogurt, well drained
1 large onion, peeled and quartered
10 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, chopped
One 1-inch piece grated fresh ginger
1-1/2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons black peppercorns
1 stick cinnamon, 1 tablespoon whole cloves, and 4
cardamoms (powdered equivalents can vary... call it 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1.5 or 2 teaspoons of cloves, and 1/2 teaspoon or so of cardamom... rough estimates, of course, and you can switch it up to suit your tastes)
Instructions
Cut the butterflied lamb leg into individual pieces—two-inch cubes is a good target size. Set aside.
To make the marinade, combine all ingredients except the lamb in the container of a food processor or blender, and process until smooth.
Place the lamb and the marinade in a gallon-size Ziploc bag, tossing the pieces a bit so that they are well coated. Refrigerate for a
few hours or overnight (really, aim for overnight), turning occasionally to keep the coating well
distributed.
One hour before cooking time, remove the lamb from the
refrigerator (and maybe remove the individual lamb pieces from the marinade) so that it can come to room temperature. Place the lamb pieces directly onto a hot grill (charcoal is much better than gas for this recipe, especially because this one can get a little messy underneath the grill grates... also, I highly recommend a chimney starter as opposed to lighter fluid, but now I'm just veering off topic. Nevertheless, if you've never used a chimney, start now. It's easy, it's cheap, and it gets your coals very hot, very quickly. Bobby Flay would be proud).
Cooking time will vary
depending on the thickness of each piece, how hot (and how big) your grill is, and where on the grill your pieces are sitting, but it should be roughly 4-6 minutes per side. Resist the temptation to cover your grill. It will cook the meat through more quickly, but you'll sacrifice some of the charring that makes this meal so great.
When the lamb is done, you should have a nice char on each side of the meat, and when you press each piece with your finger, it should be firm but still have some "bounce" to it. Rare meat is much better than dry meat, so err on the side of "too rare", unless you're pregnant, afraid of blood, or both.
I don't know, I'm not a sommelier, I just like to drink wine with my dinner, okay? Maybe next time I'll get around to telling you about my dessert, which was in this case a nice, fresh, Key Lime Pie. Awesome stuff. Happy cooking, all. (And next time, I promise more pictures... I didn't think to take any this time around, so that one standard picture up there of my grill loaded up with meat will have to suffice, but I will take more in the future).
Fun with Opening Day rosters
April has always been one of my favorite months, mostly because it means the end of winter and the beginning of baseball season. Opening Day is something of a personal holiday for me, and so I don't totally mind that we've now stretched it out to last a full three days.
As a Red Sox fan, this year has a bit of a different feel for me, as the Sox purged half their roster last August and have now fully embraced a youth movement for the first time in years. As I mentioned on Twitter on Monday, the Sox' Opening Day lineup this year was their youngest on average since 1998, when Pedro Martinez made his Boston debut, Nomar Garciaparra was a 24-year-old MVP-caliber shortstop, and Manny Ramirez was a young slugger for the defending AL champion Cleveland Indians. Meanwhile, Jackie Bradley Jr., now the team's starting left fielder, was at home eagerly awaiting his 8th birthday. So yeah, it was a long time ago.
At any rate, my little bit of sleuthing with respect to the Sox' lineup led me to check out some other teams' lineups, to see what kinds of trends I might uncover. While this type of stuff might fall under the category of "Things That Interest Me and Only Me", so be it. I'll share it here anyway, just in case you care.
This year's Red Sox, with an average age right around 28.5 years old (remember, this is of the Opening Day starting lineup, not the whole roster), clocks in as the 8th-youngest lineup out of the 30 major league teams. The five youngest Opening Day lineups belonged to the Royals (27.1 years), Astros (27.5), Mariners (27.6), Nationals (27.7), and Indians (28.0), while the five oldest lineups belonged to the Yankees (31.6 years), Phillies (31.2), Rangers (30.7), Blue Jays (30.4), and Tigers (30.3).
The banged-up Yankees blow pretty much everyone else out of the water in terms of age, thanks in large part to the oldest outfield in baseball—at 34.5 years old, only the Cubs (33.5) come anywhere close. While the Yankees are currently fielding a cobbled-together lineup of rookies and retreads, things wouldn't be much different for them even if they were perfectly healthy. Substituting Jeter, A-Rod, Teixeira, and Granderson for Nunez, Nix, Youkilis, and Wells actually increases the team's average age all the way up to 33.2 years old, a figure that would make them the oldest team in baseball by a margin of more than two years. No matter how you slice it, these guys are old.
All told, the average age of an Opening Day starter this year is 29 years, 39 days, yielding an average birthdate of February 23, 1984. The average birthdate for a Yankee, meanwhile, would be September 14, 1981, and for a Royal, March 11, 1986. In other words, I'd be older than average in any one of these lineups, and that's just a little bit depressing.
By position, Designated Hitters (like these guys), Right Fielders (like these guys), and First Basemen (like these guys) are the oldest on average, whereas Center Fielders (like these guys) and Shortstops (like these guys) are the youngest. There are 41 Opening Day starters who were born in the 1970s, 9 born in the 1990s, and about the same number who are younger than 25 (35 of them) as those who are 35 or older (37 of them). There were no Opening Day starters this year who were 40 or older, though Todd Helton and Ichiro came pretty darn close.
Age not doing it for you? You want to know about these guys' names? Fine, I can do that, too. As far as last names, we had 4 Cabreras, 3 Gonzalezes, and 15 other surnames shared by 2 players (also a Barmes and a Barnes, a Beltran and a Beltre, a Brantley and a Brantly, a Braun and a Brown, and a Gomes and a Gomez).
There were 10 guys named Chris, 7 guys named Justin, 7 Matts and a Matthew, 6 guys named Carlos and one named Carl. We had 5 Michaels, 2 Miguels, and 4 Mikes; 5 Joses and 5 Joshes; 5 Jasons and 2 Jaysons; 5 Brandons and a Brendan. We had 4 AJs, a BJ, a CC, a JJ, a JP, and a guy named RA. And finally, in my personal favorite, there were 3 Johns, 2 Jons, a Juan, a Jonathan, a Jonathon, a Johnny, a Jonny, and a Jhonny. Just spell it however you want, guys, it doesn't make it any more unique.
We also had 7 names that showed up as both a first name and a last name—those would be Desmond, Francisco, Gordon, Jay, Martin, Nelson, and Ryan. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your perspective), none of those gentlemen owned the unique distinction of having the same first and last name. I'm holding out hope for a Desmond Desmond somewhere in the near future, and I'm sure there's somebody out there who will oblige.
Do names and ages have anything at all to do with the overall success of a team? Who knows? The favorites out in Vegas this year include one of the youngest teams (Nationals) and some of the oldest teams (Tigers, Blue Jays), with a lot of muddled confusion in between. Let's just hold this one for later, and revisit it all in October. Sound good?
As a Red Sox fan, this year has a bit of a different feel for me, as the Sox purged half their roster last August and have now fully embraced a youth movement for the first time in years. As I mentioned on Twitter on Monday, the Sox' Opening Day lineup this year was their youngest on average since 1998, when Pedro Martinez made his Boston debut, Nomar Garciaparra was a 24-year-old MVP-caliber shortstop, and Manny Ramirez was a young slugger for the defending AL champion Cleveland Indians. Meanwhile, Jackie Bradley Jr., now the team's starting left fielder, was at home eagerly awaiting his 8th birthday. So yeah, it was a long time ago.
At any rate, my little bit of sleuthing with respect to the Sox' lineup led me to check out some other teams' lineups, to see what kinds of trends I might uncover. While this type of stuff might fall under the category of "Things That Interest Me and Only Me", so be it. I'll share it here anyway, just in case you care.
This year's Red Sox, with an average age right around 28.5 years old (remember, this is of the Opening Day starting lineup, not the whole roster), clocks in as the 8th-youngest lineup out of the 30 major league teams. The five youngest Opening Day lineups belonged to the Royals (27.1 years), Astros (27.5), Mariners (27.6), Nationals (27.7), and Indians (28.0), while the five oldest lineups belonged to the Yankees (31.6 years), Phillies (31.2), Rangers (30.7), Blue Jays (30.4), and Tigers (30.3).
The banged-up Yankees blow pretty much everyone else out of the water in terms of age, thanks in large part to the oldest outfield in baseball—at 34.5 years old, only the Cubs (33.5) come anywhere close. While the Yankees are currently fielding a cobbled-together lineup of rookies and retreads, things wouldn't be much different for them even if they were perfectly healthy. Substituting Jeter, A-Rod, Teixeira, and Granderson for Nunez, Nix, Youkilis, and Wells actually increases the team's average age all the way up to 33.2 years old, a figure that would make them the oldest team in baseball by a margin of more than two years. No matter how you slice it, these guys are old.
All told, the average age of an Opening Day starter this year is 29 years, 39 days, yielding an average birthdate of February 23, 1984. The average birthdate for a Yankee, meanwhile, would be September 14, 1981, and for a Royal, March 11, 1986. In other words, I'd be older than average in any one of these lineups, and that's just a little bit depressing.
By position, Designated Hitters (like these guys), Right Fielders (like these guys), and First Basemen (like these guys) are the oldest on average, whereas Center Fielders (like these guys) and Shortstops (like these guys) are the youngest. There are 41 Opening Day starters who were born in the 1970s, 9 born in the 1990s, and about the same number who are younger than 25 (35 of them) as those who are 35 or older (37 of them). There were no Opening Day starters this year who were 40 or older, though Todd Helton and Ichiro came pretty darn close.
Age not doing it for you? You want to know about these guys' names? Fine, I can do that, too. As far as last names, we had 4 Cabreras, 3 Gonzalezes, and 15 other surnames shared by 2 players (also a Barmes and a Barnes, a Beltran and a Beltre, a Brantley and a Brantly, a Braun and a Brown, and a Gomes and a Gomez).
There were 10 guys named Chris, 7 guys named Justin, 7 Matts and a Matthew, 6 guys named Carlos and one named Carl. We had 5 Michaels, 2 Miguels, and 4 Mikes; 5 Joses and 5 Joshes; 5 Jasons and 2 Jaysons; 5 Brandons and a Brendan. We had 4 AJs, a BJ, a CC, a JJ, a JP, and a guy named RA. And finally, in my personal favorite, there were 3 Johns, 2 Jons, a Juan, a Jonathan, a Jonathon, a Johnny, a Jonny, and a Jhonny. Just spell it however you want, guys, it doesn't make it any more unique.
We also had 7 names that showed up as both a first name and a last name—those would be Desmond, Francisco, Gordon, Jay, Martin, Nelson, and Ryan. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your perspective), none of those gentlemen owned the unique distinction of having the same first and last name. I'm holding out hope for a Desmond Desmond somewhere in the near future, and I'm sure there's somebody out there who will oblige.
Do names and ages have anything at all to do with the overall success of a team? Who knows? The favorites out in Vegas this year include one of the youngest teams (Nationals) and some of the oldest teams (Tigers, Blue Jays), with a lot of muddled confusion in between. Let's just hold this one for later, and revisit it all in October. Sound good?
Monday, March 25, 2013
Sergio Garcia is a weird dude
This post will be one of those "quick-hitters" that I mentioned in my welcome-back post earlier today. Just thought I'd put that out there in advance, in case you were wondering (I should also mention that "Clip of the Week" and "Quote of the Week" are being done away with, at least in their traditional formats—if I come across a clip or a quotation that's share-worthy, I'll share it immediately without further comment, rather than waiting for the prescribed time. Okay, good talk.)
Either way, we need to talk about this shot, played yesterday down at Arnold Palmer's tournament at Bay Hill (which Tiger won, which puts him back as the world #1, and all credit goes to Lindsey Vonn, because why not). Sergio Garcia, everybody:
The shot itself is obviously impressive enough, and I give Sergio huge credit for even trying it. But it's the context of the shot that makes it most noteworthy in my eyes. Because after playing this shot, Sergio badly chunked his next shot, made a double-bogey on the hole, and then walked off the course and withdrew from the tournament 2 holes later, with only 6 holes left to play. He cited nagging injury problems, injuries that were apparently exacerbated by the (odd) decision to climb a tree and play the shot this way rather than just taking an unplayable lie. Weird dude, man. Weird dude.
But also, as a long-time golfer and fan of the game, I have to wonder: why was he allowed to climb on top of a golf cart in order to get up into the tree? If you follow the game at all, you'll know that golf is full of all sorts of obscure, bizarre, and outdated rules that generally continue to pretend that golf is being played in the 19th century where electricity and television don't exist, and that there's nothing but a man and a golf course out there, relying on his own honor and that of his playing partners.
If you don't believe me, ask Craig Stadler or Dustin Johnson or this guy or really any of the guys on this brutal list. Or just go back and read this post or this post, some of the first work that I ever produced for this blog. Golf rules are nutso. Period, end of story.
And so, if Craig Stadler can be DQ'd from a tournament for kneeling on a towel, and if golfers can be routinely disqualified for signing scorecards that have the wrong numbers on them, even though TV cameras (and ShotTracker representatives) have followed their every move, to the inch, and therefore everyone in the world knows exactly what everyone's score is... then why is Sergio allowed to receive "assistance" from a golf cart that just happens to be sitting there? Isn't that an unnatural advantage? If he can use the cart to stand on, then why can't he use it to ride around the course from shot to shot (pipe down, Casey Martin)? Why can't we give a guy a ladder or a rake or a scuba suit to help him play his next shot? It's weird, no?
Golf rules baffle me. So does Sergio Garcia. But this shot was still awesome, no matter how you cut it.
Either way, we need to talk about this shot, played yesterday down at Arnold Palmer's tournament at Bay Hill (which Tiger won, which puts him back as the world #1, and all credit goes to Lindsey Vonn, because why not). Sergio Garcia, everybody:
The shot itself is obviously impressive enough, and I give Sergio huge credit for even trying it. But it's the context of the shot that makes it most noteworthy in my eyes. Because after playing this shot, Sergio badly chunked his next shot, made a double-bogey on the hole, and then walked off the course and withdrew from the tournament 2 holes later, with only 6 holes left to play. He cited nagging injury problems, injuries that were apparently exacerbated by the (odd) decision to climb a tree and play the shot this way rather than just taking an unplayable lie. Weird dude, man. Weird dude.
But also, as a long-time golfer and fan of the game, I have to wonder: why was he allowed to climb on top of a golf cart in order to get up into the tree? If you follow the game at all, you'll know that golf is full of all sorts of obscure, bizarre, and outdated rules that generally continue to pretend that golf is being played in the 19th century where electricity and television don't exist, and that there's nothing but a man and a golf course out there, relying on his own honor and that of his playing partners.
If you don't believe me, ask Craig Stadler or Dustin Johnson or this guy or really any of the guys on this brutal list. Or just go back and read this post or this post, some of the first work that I ever produced for this blog. Golf rules are nutso. Period, end of story.
And so, if Craig Stadler can be DQ'd from a tournament for kneeling on a towel, and if golfers can be routinely disqualified for signing scorecards that have the wrong numbers on them, even though TV cameras (and ShotTracker representatives) have followed their every move, to the inch, and therefore everyone in the world knows exactly what everyone's score is... then why is Sergio allowed to receive "assistance" from a golf cart that just happens to be sitting there? Isn't that an unnatural advantage? If he can use the cart to stand on, then why can't he use it to ride around the course from shot to shot (pipe down, Casey Martin)? Why can't we give a guy a ladder or a rake or a scuba suit to help him play his next shot? It's weird, no?
Golf rules baffle me. So does Sergio Garcia. But this shot was still awesome, no matter how you cut it.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Quote of the Week (Outsourcing edition)
My efforts to slowly work down my backlog of drafts in the queue continues with your Quote of the Week. Yes, this article is a few weeks old, but that doesn't make it any more awesome. Kudos to this guy, slow claps all around.
This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"A security audit of a US critical infrastructure company last year revealed that its star developer had outsourced his own job to a Chinese subcontractor and was spending all his work time playing around on the internet. The firm's telecommunications supplier Verizon was called in after the company set up a basic VPN system with two-factor authentication so staff could work at home. The VPN traffic logs showed a regular series of logins to the company's main server from Shenyang, China, using the credentials of the firm's top programmer, 'Bob'...
After getting permission to study Bob's computer habits, Verizon investigators found that he had hired a software consultancy in Shenyang to do his programming work for him, and had FedExed them his two-factor authentication token so they could log into his account. He was paying them a fifth of his six-figure salary to do the work and spent the rest of his time on other activities."
- Iain Thompson, The Register
That is awesome. I can't exactly blame the company for letting Bob go, especially since he exposed the fact that he was apparently being overpaid by a factor of five. But if a company can outsource a job to China, why can't the employee do it himself? That's the kind of creativity this country needs! Bravo, Bob.
[The Register]
This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"A security audit of a US critical infrastructure company last year revealed that its star developer had outsourced his own job to a Chinese subcontractor and was spending all his work time playing around on the internet. The firm's telecommunications supplier Verizon was called in after the company set up a basic VPN system with two-factor authentication so staff could work at home. The VPN traffic logs showed a regular series of logins to the company's main server from Shenyang, China, using the credentials of the firm's top programmer, 'Bob'...
After getting permission to study Bob's computer habits, Verizon investigators found that he had hired a software consultancy in Shenyang to do his programming work for him, and had FedExed them his two-factor authentication token so they could log into his account. He was paying them a fifth of his six-figure salary to do the work and spent the rest of his time on other activities."
- Iain Thompson, The Register
That is awesome. I can't exactly blame the company for letting Bob go, especially since he exposed the fact that he was apparently being overpaid by a factor of five. But if a company can outsource a job to China, why can't the employee do it himself? That's the kind of creativity this country needs! Bravo, Bob.
[The Register]
Friday, February 1, 2013
Clip of the Week
I've got 4 or 5 posts that I'm hoping to publish today, but realistically I'll be happy with 2 or 3. We'll start with your Clip of the Week, because that's always good times.
There were a couple of oldie-but-goodie clips that popped back onto my radar this week, and they definitely gave the new clips a run for their money. There was this compilation of the top 10 luckiest golf shots (stick around for #1, it's a doozy), and also this strange collection of Japanese ballplayers doing the bat-flip after home runs, which is apparently a thing over there. Oddly mesmerizing.
But I'm still going to go with the new stuff this week. We had this awesome save by the Dallas Stars' Kari Lehtonen (yes, hockey is back, but I'm sure you already knew that), and also Jimmy Fallon and Brian Williams slow-jamming the debt ceiling (which was excellent).
But none of these clips held a candle to the awesomest little puppy in the world, a pitbull named Bandit. Little guy just wants to get in some treadmill work, help a brother out, right? I'm sure we can all relate to this pup's uphill battle. Keep up the good work, Bandit, you're this week's Clip of the Week.
There were a couple of oldie-but-goodie clips that popped back onto my radar this week, and they definitely gave the new clips a run for their money. There was this compilation of the top 10 luckiest golf shots (stick around for #1, it's a doozy), and also this strange collection of Japanese ballplayers doing the bat-flip after home runs, which is apparently a thing over there. Oddly mesmerizing.
But I'm still going to go with the new stuff this week. We had this awesome save by the Dallas Stars' Kari Lehtonen (yes, hockey is back, but I'm sure you already knew that), and also Jimmy Fallon and Brian Williams slow-jamming the debt ceiling (which was excellent).
But none of these clips held a candle to the awesomest little puppy in the world, a pitbull named Bandit. Little guy just wants to get in some treadmill work, help a brother out, right? I'm sure we can all relate to this pup's uphill battle. Keep up the good work, Bandit, you're this week's Clip of the Week.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Quote of the Week (Czech edition)
A few weeks back, I wrote a post about how I was still proud to be an American, because the beer is cheap and plentiful. That is still a glorious fact. Nevertheless, I am at least considering the alternative of moving to Prague, where the median income may be lower, but the beer prices are too. Diving right in...
This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"At a typical local pub, a pint—500 milliliters, actually, in this metric-measuring country—costs about $1. A similar portion of water, juice or soda generally costs twice as much. Offering free tap water as at U.S. eateries is extremely rare. At U Zelenku, a neighborhood institution for more than a century, for instance, a pint of the cheapest beer goes for 99 cents. The same size of soda water is $1.30. At the fancier Kolkovna restaurant in touristy Old Town, a pint is $2.50, while mineral water is $2.29, for a bottle less than half the size."
- Sean Carney; Wall Street Journal
This dynamic isn't exactly new to me, as I experienced a similar economic curiosity in my trip to Italy a couple of years ago—the house wine carafes (vino della casa) sold for prices around €3.50 (about $5) for a half-liter. That's not quite cheaper than water, but it was certainly in the same ballpark as the soft drinks at many restaurants. Wine for lunch, it is, then...
Of course, there's always a risk to looking only at the price of one product and trying to determine anything meaningful about the overall state of the economy. Beer prices alone are meaningless, for example, without also knowing what typical food prices might be—it could be that in Prague, general business practice is to slash the prices of booze, and to attempt to make the money on the food instead (as I've previously argued, the opposite seems to be the case in many U.S. restaurants). Or there may be dozens of other factors at play, all of which help drive down the cost of beer in restaurants.
Either way, who wants to go on a Czech pub crawl with me? First pilsner is on me.
[Wall Street Journal]
(h/t Tyler Cowen)
This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"At a typical local pub, a pint—500 milliliters, actually, in this metric-measuring country—costs about $1. A similar portion of water, juice or soda generally costs twice as much. Offering free tap water as at U.S. eateries is extremely rare. At U Zelenku, a neighborhood institution for more than a century, for instance, a pint of the cheapest beer goes for 99 cents. The same size of soda water is $1.30. At the fancier Kolkovna restaurant in touristy Old Town, a pint is $2.50, while mineral water is $2.29, for a bottle less than half the size."
- Sean Carney; Wall Street Journal
This dynamic isn't exactly new to me, as I experienced a similar economic curiosity in my trip to Italy a couple of years ago—the house wine carafes (vino della casa) sold for prices around €3.50 (about $5) for a half-liter. That's not quite cheaper than water, but it was certainly in the same ballpark as the soft drinks at many restaurants. Wine for lunch, it is, then...
Of course, there's always a risk to looking only at the price of one product and trying to determine anything meaningful about the overall state of the economy. Beer prices alone are meaningless, for example, without also knowing what typical food prices might be—it could be that in Prague, general business practice is to slash the prices of booze, and to attempt to make the money on the food instead (as I've previously argued, the opposite seems to be the case in many U.S. restaurants). Or there may be dozens of other factors at play, all of which help drive down the cost of beer in restaurants.
Either way, who wants to go on a Czech pub crawl with me? First pilsner is on me.
[Wall Street Journal]
(h/t Tyler Cowen)
Friday, January 25, 2013
Clip of the Week
Let's sneak the Clip of the Week in here before the weekend, then hopefully I'll have some more good stuff coming your way next week.
There's not all that much to share this week, but what we do have here is pure gold. It's also all from the world of sports. First, let's welcome back the NHL (the what? Hockey? Never heard of it...) with this video of a couple of Edmonton Oiler rookies doing something that is way more difficult than they make it look.
Next up, baseball lost a couple of legends this past week, when a pair of Hall of Famers—Stan Musial and Earl Weaver—died mere hours apart. No, this may not have been quite as dramatic as July 4, 1826, but it's about as close as it gets in baseball land. I always felt a certain strange kinship with Weaver, in large part because he was one of only a few sports figures with whom I shared a birthday (Magic Johnson was another, Tim Tebow copied me a few years later). He was also a bitter, foul-mouthed old man with a beautifully sarcastic wit (and a code of ethics), and so... yeah. We had some things in common.
I wish there were more Earl Weavers around, is what I'm really trying to say. So if you're into managers cursing up a storm, enjoy some of Weaver's best hits, here and here. Be warned that these clips are both extremely unsafe for work environments, so proceed with caution. Unless you're a major league manager, in which case, carry on. My apologies to Stan the Man—he, too, was a baseball legend, but this clip just isn't nearly as entertaining as Weaver's best. Sorry, man. Better luck next time.
But ultimately, none of those is your Clip of the Week. Instead, courtesy of the Red Cowboy comes this clip from the HGTV show "Million Dollar Rooms". It's the backyard of legendary golf coach Dave Pelz, and it's sick. If you're a golf fan, you'll recognize some familiar sights back there. It's like a golf version of Las Vegas, in one man's backyard. Crazy.
There's not all that much to share this week, but what we do have here is pure gold. It's also all from the world of sports. First, let's welcome back the NHL (the what? Hockey? Never heard of it...) with this video of a couple of Edmonton Oiler rookies doing something that is way more difficult than they make it look.
Next up, baseball lost a couple of legends this past week, when a pair of Hall of Famers—Stan Musial and Earl Weaver—died mere hours apart. No, this may not have been quite as dramatic as July 4, 1826, but it's about as close as it gets in baseball land. I always felt a certain strange kinship with Weaver, in large part because he was one of only a few sports figures with whom I shared a birthday (Magic Johnson was another, Tim Tebow copied me a few years later). He was also a bitter, foul-mouthed old man with a beautifully sarcastic wit (and a code of ethics), and so... yeah. We had some things in common.
I wish there were more Earl Weavers around, is what I'm really trying to say. So if you're into managers cursing up a storm, enjoy some of Weaver's best hits, here and here. Be warned that these clips are both extremely unsafe for work environments, so proceed with caution. Unless you're a major league manager, in which case, carry on. My apologies to Stan the Man—he, too, was a baseball legend, but this clip just isn't nearly as entertaining as Weaver's best. Sorry, man. Better luck next time.
But ultimately, none of those is your Clip of the Week. Instead, courtesy of the Red Cowboy comes this clip from the HGTV show "Million Dollar Rooms". It's the backyard of legendary golf coach Dave Pelz, and it's sick. If you're a golf fan, you'll recognize some familiar sights back there. It's like a golf version of Las Vegas, in one man's backyard. Crazy.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
More nerd humor
I'm working on a few posts for later today (and later this week), but until I've got those ready to roll, I thought I'd share some more excellent nerd humor that I've come across lately. First, from the always brilliant nerds over at XKCD:
And second, from imgur, courtesy of my man Killagroove:
Yup, it's a big Wednesday around here. More coming your way later today... I think.
And second, from imgur, courtesy of my man Killagroove:
Yup, it's a big Wednesday around here. More coming your way later today... I think.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Weather trends
Last week, Barry Ritholtz's Big Picture blog published a guest post from Climate Central's Andrew Freedman, which shared some fairly astonishing data about the year in weather. I'll post Freedman's eye-popping charts here along with some of his analysis, which mostly speaks for itself. Take it for what it's worth...
[Climate Central]
(h/t Big Picture)
"The 1°F difference from 1998 is an unusually large margin, considering that annual temperature records are typically broken by just tenths of a degree Fahrenheit. In fact, the entire range between the coldest year on record, which occurred in 1917, and the previous record warm year of 1998 was just 4.2°F."...
"During the summer, nearly 100 million people experienced 10 or more days with temperatures greater than 100°F, which is about one-third of the nation’s population, NOAA reported.
With 34,008 daily high temperature records set or tied the year compared to just 6,664 daily record lows — a ratio of about five high temperature records for every one low temperature record — 2012 was no ordinary weather year in the U.S. It wasn’t just the high temperatures that set records, though. Overnight low temperatures were also extremely warm, and in a few cases the overnight low was so warm that it set a high temperature record, a rare feat."...
"According to data from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, there were 356 all-time high temperature records set or tied across the entire U.S. in 2012, compared to four all-time low temperature records. All of the all-time record lows occurred in Hawaii."
So, yeah. Climate change, no climate change, who really knows, right? But if you're interested in seeing more about this topic, this video gives some more context.
[Climate Central]
(h/t Big Picture)
Friday, January 11, 2013
Inflation since 1800
Presented without comment, I came across a chart showing inflation in America since 1800 (thanks, Tim Iacono), and I thought it was worth sharing, given all the talk I do about the Fed. The red line shows the cumulative effect of annual inflation, while the blue bars behind it show the actual annual rates. Do with it what you will.
[Tim Iacono]
[Tim Iacono]
Clip of the Week
Okay, Clip of the Week time, let's get right to it.
First, an update on a past Clip of the Week. About a month ago, I shared the Mine Kafon video with you all, which I thought was incredibly cool. Now, the Mine Kafon project is on Kickstarter, looking to get funding to make the thing a reality (by the way, more than 10% of films at Sundance this year were funded on Kickstarter, which is just crazy... Kickstarter is doing big things). They've already more than met their £100,000 goal with 5 days still remaining, but you can always donate some more to the cause, and get some cool perks for your trouble.
Plugs aside, we had some decent clips this week, coming at you from all sorts of weird places. One of those weird places is Sugarbush Resort in Vermont, where a moose got loose and chased around some skiers, while some other skiers (okay, boarders) stood around and gawked at it. Another of those weird places is a music studio populated by weird humanoid robots playing Motorhead. Number 5 is alive!!
We also had Alabama QB A.J. McCarron, not exactly responding well to the news that his girlfriend had become a Twitter celebrity during the national championship game, and that she was now being followed by LeBron James. Finally, some fun with word images, passed along by Barry Ritholtz. That one probably deserves more of an explanation than that, but just watch it, okay?
But the weirdest place of all was the PDC World Darts Championship in England, where one guy put on a ridiculous performance in a game of "501". The fact that his opponent was apparently drunk and/or blind is somewhat irrelevant, because that is some awesome darts work by my man (too bad he lost in the finals). At any rate, Michael van Gerwen is your Clip of the Week this week, because bar games are awesome.
First, an update on a past Clip of the Week. About a month ago, I shared the Mine Kafon video with you all, which I thought was incredibly cool. Now, the Mine Kafon project is on Kickstarter, looking to get funding to make the thing a reality (by the way, more than 10% of films at Sundance this year were funded on Kickstarter, which is just crazy... Kickstarter is doing big things). They've already more than met their £100,000 goal with 5 days still remaining, but you can always donate some more to the cause, and get some cool perks for your trouble.
Plugs aside, we had some decent clips this week, coming at you from all sorts of weird places. One of those weird places is Sugarbush Resort in Vermont, where a moose got loose and chased around some skiers, while some other skiers (okay, boarders) stood around and gawked at it. Another of those weird places is a music studio populated by weird humanoid robots playing Motorhead. Number 5 is alive!!
We also had Alabama QB A.J. McCarron, not exactly responding well to the news that his girlfriend had become a Twitter celebrity during the national championship game, and that she was now being followed by LeBron James. Finally, some fun with word images, passed along by Barry Ritholtz. That one probably deserves more of an explanation than that, but just watch it, okay?
But the weirdest place of all was the PDC World Darts Championship in England, where one guy put on a ridiculous performance in a game of "501". The fact that his opponent was apparently drunk and/or blind is somewhat irrelevant, because that is some awesome darts work by my man (too bad he lost in the finals). At any rate, Michael van Gerwen is your Clip of the Week this week, because bar games are awesome.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
An update on prohibition
A couple of days after Christmas, I published the one and only post that I intend to write about the tragedy in Newtown (and the surge in support for gun-control laws in its wake). You may have missed it if you were still out celebrating the holidays, so I'll summarize some of my points here.
In the post, I shared some of my skepticism with respect to the efficacy of bans on (or prohibition of) behaviors that many people find dangerous or distasteful. I wrote,
Somewhat predictably, the plan backfired a bit, as resourceful Packer fans did what resourceful Packer fans do—they got loaded before they even entered the stadium, and many of them double-fisted drinks once they got there. A total of 21 fans ended up getting arrested on the premises, and I'd guess that a few more got arrested for drinking and driving on their way home.
While it's hard to know exactly how things would have gone without the attempted alcohol ban, the principle of the matter is still clear—if you ban something for which people have an intense desire, they will find a way to get around the ban, legally or not. In the case of gun control, gun sales have soared to record levels around the country in anticipation of new legislation. Even if the government does pass new laws, will it really be able to put that cat back in the bag and confiscate the weapons that were purchased ahead of time? Is there any reason to believe that a ban on any type of gun would be any more successful or productive than the long-standing ban on marijuana?
I continue to raise this issue because I refuse to believe that simply banning guns or certain types of guns will eradicate the mass murders that we've seen at schools and elsewhere in recent years. To actually tackle serious and complex issues, we need to attack the roots of the problem, not merely to take away the tools or "symbols" of those issues. We can get rid of all the guns we want, but there will still be people in this country (and the world) who are disillusioned, angry, or mentally unstable, and who want to do great harm to other people.
Until we try to figure out why these people exist—and what we can do as a society to temper their anger or mental illness—our gun control laws will be a sideshow at best, just like the alcohol bans at Harvard, Yale, and Lambeau Field. If you want to get rid of a behavior, you don't do it by getting rid of the tools. You do it by getting rid of the underlying mentality, and that's a much harder (and much more essential) task. And in the greatest country in the world, I'm sure we won't shy away from those difficult tasks, right?
In the post, I shared some of my skepticism with respect to the efficacy of bans on (or prohibition of) behaviors that many people find dangerous or distasteful. I wrote,
The last thing we need is to institute a counterproductive law that ironically makes our problem worse, not better. History has shown that when people have an intense desire to possess or to do something, they typically will find a way. People and corporations are incredibly resourceful when they need to be, which of course is why we now have corn in our Coca-Cola.That's a viewpoint that I'd shared here on previous occasions, most notably in the wake of the tragedy at the Harvard-Yale game in New Haven in 2011. In that case, I wrote about the trend toward banning kegs at tailgates, and the at-best-uneven success that they'd had. As I wrote then,
Harvard first banned kegs at its tailgates in 2000, while I was a student there. The primary argument that I remember at the time—when keg bans were very much in vogue at Boston-area colleges—was that kegs were a "symbol of binge drinking", and that eliminating them would temper binge drinking. I called bullshit then, and I'm calling bullshit now. If you want a real "symbol of binge drinking", I'll show you a 9-dollar handle of bottom-shelf vodka. Popov was always a favorite; Aristocrat was a winner, too.
The irony of kegs—an irony lost on most administrators—is that while they may indeed have looked like a symbol of binge drinking, they were in fact the administration's best friend. Beer, with its high water content and low alcohol content, is in fact the alcoholic beverage least likely to directly result in alcohol poisoning. The administration should have been doing all they could to encourage the drinking of beer, and to discourage the drinking of cheap wine and rot-gut liquor.
Unsurprisingly to those who knew better, the keg ban was a disaster. In the first year of the keg ban (2002), alcohol poisoning cases skyrocketed, leading to calls from student newspapers to reverse the ban entirely for the next home Game. Some accommodations were indeed made, but not enough to turn back the clock entirely. From what I have learned and witnessed at recent Games in Cambridge, less drinking is happening on-site, and now much more drinking is happening off-site, away from the watchful eyes of Harvard and Boston Police.I bring up the Harvard/Yale case because just this weekend, a similar mistake was made up in Green Bay during the Packers' Wild Card Playoff game against the Vikings. Concerned about the potential for binge drinking with an 8pm (7pm Central) kickoff time, the team decided to cut off all alcohol sales after halftime, hoping to control fan behavior.
Somewhat predictably, the plan backfired a bit, as resourceful Packer fans did what resourceful Packer fans do—they got loaded before they even entered the stadium, and many of them double-fisted drinks once they got there. A total of 21 fans ended up getting arrested on the premises, and I'd guess that a few more got arrested for drinking and driving on their way home.
While it's hard to know exactly how things would have gone without the attempted alcohol ban, the principle of the matter is still clear—if you ban something for which people have an intense desire, they will find a way to get around the ban, legally or not. In the case of gun control, gun sales have soared to record levels around the country in anticipation of new legislation. Even if the government does pass new laws, will it really be able to put that cat back in the bag and confiscate the weapons that were purchased ahead of time? Is there any reason to believe that a ban on any type of gun would be any more successful or productive than the long-standing ban on marijuana?
I continue to raise this issue because I refuse to believe that simply banning guns or certain types of guns will eradicate the mass murders that we've seen at schools and elsewhere in recent years. To actually tackle serious and complex issues, we need to attack the roots of the problem, not merely to take away the tools or "symbols" of those issues. We can get rid of all the guns we want, but there will still be people in this country (and the world) who are disillusioned, angry, or mentally unstable, and who want to do great harm to other people.
Until we try to figure out why these people exist—and what we can do as a society to temper their anger or mental illness—our gun control laws will be a sideshow at best, just like the alcohol bans at Harvard, Yale, and Lambeau Field. If you want to get rid of a behavior, you don't do it by getting rid of the tools. You do it by getting rid of the underlying mentality, and that's a much harder (and much more essential) task. And in the greatest country in the world, I'm sure we won't shy away from those difficult tasks, right?
Quote of the Week
We had two very serious contenders for Quote of the Week this week, and both of them are going to get a little bit of love here. The first one comes from Brazil, where a cat was caught trying to wriggle through prison gates while carrying a cell phone, drills, an earphone, batteries, and a phone charger. When discussing the case, prison guards shared that it was tough to get the cat to sell out his accomplices, because he wasn't talking. Shocking. Note to self: teach cat how to commit petty crimes.
But this week's winner comes from the great state of California, where a man is seemingly determined to prove that corporations are not, in fact, people (contrary to the beliefs of a certain electoral runner-up). From NBC News, it's your Quote of the Week.
This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"When Jonathan Frieman of San Rafael, Calif., was pulled over for driving alone in the carpool lane, he argued to the officer that, actually, he did have a passenger. He waved his corporation papers at the officer, saying that corporations are people under California law... Frieman doesn't actually support this notion. For more than 10 years, Frieman says he had been trying to get pulled over to get ticketed and to take his argument to court—to challenge a judge to determine that corporations and people are not the same."
- NBC News
At the heart of the issue is the Supreme Court's controversial 2010 decision in the "Citizens United" case, which essentially brought the issue of corporate personhood into the public eye and made it a hot-button political issue. It's still unclear exactly where the concept of corporation-as-person begins and ends, and this latest incident is clearly part of the process of drawing out those lines in the sand.
Unfortunately (and somewhat unsurprisingly), it doesn't look like Mr. Frieman's case is going anywhere. A judge has already ruled against him, and although an appeal is planned, it's unlikely to gain any traction. Nevertheless, kudos to the man for coming up with a creative way to draw attention to an issue that likely won't be going away any time soon. As far as Quotes of the Week go, this one is among my favorites.
[NBC News]
But this week's winner comes from the great state of California, where a man is seemingly determined to prove that corporations are not, in fact, people (contrary to the beliefs of a certain electoral runner-up). From NBC News, it's your Quote of the Week.
This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"When Jonathan Frieman of San Rafael, Calif., was pulled over for driving alone in the carpool lane, he argued to the officer that, actually, he did have a passenger. He waved his corporation papers at the officer, saying that corporations are people under California law... Frieman doesn't actually support this notion. For more than 10 years, Frieman says he had been trying to get pulled over to get ticketed and to take his argument to court—to challenge a judge to determine that corporations and people are not the same."
- NBC News
At the heart of the issue is the Supreme Court's controversial 2010 decision in the "Citizens United" case, which essentially brought the issue of corporate personhood into the public eye and made it a hot-button political issue. It's still unclear exactly where the concept of corporation-as-person begins and ends, and this latest incident is clearly part of the process of drawing out those lines in the sand.
Unfortunately (and somewhat unsurprisingly), it doesn't look like Mr. Frieman's case is going anywhere. A judge has already ruled against him, and although an appeal is planned, it's unlikely to gain any traction. Nevertheless, kudos to the man for coming up with a creative way to draw attention to an issue that likely won't be going away any time soon. As far as Quotes of the Week go, this one is among my favorites.
[NBC News]
Friday, January 4, 2013
On government policies gone bad
In a post earlier today, I talked about unintended consequences and provided a link to this post from last year, in which I discussed the ramifications of "when regulatory bodies go wild". Unfortunately, John Cochrane (the self-dubbed "Grumpy Economist") shared a few similar examples from his own backyard of Chicago, showing that this regulatory madness is spreading, not abating. He writes,
Well said, John. The fact of the matter is that most politicians don't have a clue about what it actually takes to promote economic growth, even while they recognize that it's the absolute only way out of our current budgetary morass, given those same politicians' utter unwillingness to do anything meaningful to address it.
As I've written here before, if we really want sustainable economic growth, then we need to be incentivizing innovation and entrepreneurship, not stifling it with overly onerous regulations that turn a simple task like starting a food truck business into a Sisyphean struggle. But, of course, we seem to be consistently doing the opposite, just about everywhere we look.
We pass regulations on top of regulations from coast to coast, and we issue overly broad patents that protect the large companies at the expense of the small and innovative start-ups. We pass bizarre "taxpayer relief" bills without reading them, rubber-stamping a plethora of corporate kickbacks and subsidies in the process when nobody's looking. And we require that ever more trivial jobs require credentials and continuing education, increasing the cost of pursuing just about any career path we may choose (I'll have more on that topic next week).
Absolutely none of these government policies does anything but slow economic growth and the pace of innovation, and they must all therefore be considered counter-productive with respect to American prosperity. As Mr. Cochrane so eloquently wrote, if we can't get a food truck to start up in Chicago without violating some arcane city code, how can anybody ever do anything of any value in this country without breaking the law? I wonder.
[Grumpy Economist]
If you travel from California or New York to Chicago, especially the beautiful but food-deserted campus of the University of Chicago, you will notice a striking absence: food trucks, which serve a bewlidering variety of tasty treats in other cities.
Finally, last summer, our City council passed an ordinance allowing food trucks to cook food, along with a bewildering variety of restaurant-protecting restrictions, such as that they may not operate within 200 feet of a restaurant, they can't park for more than two hours, they must carry an on board GPS to verify position, and so on.
Today, the Chicago Tribune reports on the success of this program:
Of the 109 entrepreneurs who have applied for the Mobile Food Preparer licenses that allow onboard cooking, none has met the city's requirements...
The process of getting a license is just too daunting, according to Rodriguez and Fuentes, who cite bad experiences with city bureaucracy, steep additional costs and the need to retrofit equipment among the reasons.
"I think many food truck owners are hesitant to even pursue cooking onboard because of their haunting experience with working with the city," Rodriguez wrote in an email.
(Kudos to Rodriguez for having the courage to write on the record, and good luck with her next application.)
....Chicago's code includes rules on ventilation and gas line equipment that "are meetable but extremely cumbersome and can raise the price of outfitting a truck by $10,000 to $20,000."...
...the additional ventilation equipment (with intake and exhaust fans similar to those in brick-and-mortar kitchens) also raises the height of trucks to 13 feet, making certain Chicago underpasses impassable.
Aaron Crumbaugh, who operates the Wagyu Wagon ... said he is outfitting several trucks for franchisees in other cities whose processes for licensing are clear-cut. "But here they don't know exactly what they want," he said. "Every time a truck comes in (health officials) say 'You need this' but then when you come back they say 'No you need that' and then the next time they find something else."
The Tribune did a much more balanced job of including quotes from city employees defending themselves. I'm a blog so I don't have to be balanced. The numbers speak for themselves. Zero.Yeah. Cochrane also shares a story from the Hyde Park Herald that discusses the ridiculous red tape that is currently preventing a South Side movie theater from opening on time. As Cochrane concludes, "Chicago, like the US, is broke. It says it wants more businesses. Until actual businesses try to open. Really, if we can't get food trucks and movie theater regulations to work, how do Dodd Frank and the EPA have a hope?"
Well said, John. The fact of the matter is that most politicians don't have a clue about what it actually takes to promote economic growth, even while they recognize that it's the absolute only way out of our current budgetary morass, given those same politicians' utter unwillingness to do anything meaningful to address it.
As I've written here before, if we really want sustainable economic growth, then we need to be incentivizing innovation and entrepreneurship, not stifling it with overly onerous regulations that turn a simple task like starting a food truck business into a Sisyphean struggle. But, of course, we seem to be consistently doing the opposite, just about everywhere we look.
We pass regulations on top of regulations from coast to coast, and we issue overly broad patents that protect the large companies at the expense of the small and innovative start-ups. We pass bizarre "taxpayer relief" bills without reading them, rubber-stamping a plethora of corporate kickbacks and subsidies in the process when nobody's looking. And we require that ever more trivial jobs require credentials and continuing education, increasing the cost of pursuing just about any career path we may choose (I'll have more on that topic next week).
Absolutely none of these government policies does anything but slow economic growth and the pace of innovation, and they must all therefore be considered counter-productive with respect to American prosperity. As Mr. Cochrane so eloquently wrote, if we can't get a food truck to start up in Chicago without violating some arcane city code, how can anybody ever do anything of any value in this country without breaking the law? I wonder.
[Grumpy Economist]
The NCAA and unintended consequences
Earlier today, my attention was drawn to a tweet from John Infante, a former NCAA compliance officer who writes the Bylaw Blog for Athnet. I've written a fair amount about the NCAA and its relationship with "student-athletes" before, so I thought this latest tidbit was worth sharing. In an article teased in his own tweet, Infante writes:
In general, I think this principle is a clear step in the right direction, as it restores some rights to student-athletes who, through no fault of their own, are left in a situation that is dramatically different from the one they entered (like a coach leaving for the NFL, or dying, or a program being put on probation for violations that occurred before the player arrived, etc.). It also hypothetically provides these student-athletes with an incentive to actually go to class, which is definitely a positive for everyone involved.
However, as usual, it wouldn't be a policy if there weren't some unintended consequences to consider. In this case, I see a great problem with setting a GPA threshold that doesn't (and can't) vary based on the quality of the institution. Are we to pretend that a 2.6 GPA is as easily attainable at Stanford or Notre Dame as it is at San Jose State or Arizona? Since we know that it isn't, doesn't this proposal effectively penalize those students who choose to go to schools with rigorous academics? And by extension, isn't it also penalizing those schools for not watering down their academic programs to benefit the student-athletes? If so, is that really what we want our NCAA policies to be doing?
As I wrote in a Twitter response to this news, encouraging schools to downgrade the rigor of their academic programs is a poor long-term strategy. Unfortunately, that's arguably what this policy would do, simply because of the incentives that it creates for student-athletes when they are considering schools. If an athlete with a 2.6 GPA has more rights than an athlete without one, then every kid should do everything in his power to make sure that he can attain a 2.6 GPA.
In an ideal world, that would mean that the athletes in question would all buckle down and work harder in school, and we'd end up with a world full of student-athletes with sparkling collegiate transcripts. But over here in the real world, all it does is encourage the kids to go to schools where they can get a 2.6 just by showing up, thereby immediately receiving more rights as an athlete.
Is that really what we want? Do we actually want to steer athletes away from the top academic schools, simply because they're likely to have more rights at the lower-tier ones? I don't think so, and I hardly think that's the idea at the core of this proposal. But unintended consequences are consequences nonetheless, and they require careful consideration by policy-makers at all levels of governance.
This winter, we have seen several top-rated schools play in meaningful football games—from Northwestern gaining its first bowl win since 1949 to Stanford winning the Rose Bowl for the first time in 40 years to Notre Dame playing for the national title for the first time in what seems like forever. Hell, even Vanderbilt won itself a bowl game, in a bowl season where most SEC teams can't seem to get out of their own way.
Against all odds, teams are finding a way to excel both in athletics and in academics, and yet the NCAA wants to pass a rule that would take us in the opposite direction, even if unintentionally. That would be a terrible shame, and I encourage the NCAA to reconsider this proposal, which has good intentions but potentially dire consequences.
[Athnet]
In the wake of last summer’s highly publicized transfer battles (Ed. Note: like these), the news that the NCAA was looking at changing the transfer rules was refreshing. What appeared to be an inconsistent standard for waivers along with student-athletes needed permission to contact other schools lead to a popular backlash against the NCAA’s transfer regulations, a sentiment that was echoed by NCAA President Mark Emmert...
There is no formal proposal yet, but the Leadership Council published a set of principles for updated transfer rules that make it easy to see what those specific rules might be.One of those principles is the topic of this post (and of Infante's tweet), the principle regarding a GPA contingency:
AM RT: NCAA considering transfer model that would allow all athletes with a 2.6 GPA to play immediately: athleticscholarships.net/2013/01/03/new…
— John Infante (@John_Infante) January 4, 2013
In general, I think this principle is a clear step in the right direction, as it restores some rights to student-athletes who, through no fault of their own, are left in a situation that is dramatically different from the one they entered (like a coach leaving for the NFL, or dying, or a program being put on probation for violations that occurred before the player arrived, etc.). It also hypothetically provides these student-athletes with an incentive to actually go to class, which is definitely a positive for everyone involved.
However, as usual, it wouldn't be a policy if there weren't some unintended consequences to consider. In this case, I see a great problem with setting a GPA threshold that doesn't (and can't) vary based on the quality of the institution. Are we to pretend that a 2.6 GPA is as easily attainable at Stanford or Notre Dame as it is at San Jose State or Arizona? Since we know that it isn't, doesn't this proposal effectively penalize those students who choose to go to schools with rigorous academics? And by extension, isn't it also penalizing those schools for not watering down their academic programs to benefit the student-athletes? If so, is that really what we want our NCAA policies to be doing?
As I wrote in a Twitter response to this news, encouraging schools to downgrade the rigor of their academic programs is a poor long-term strategy. Unfortunately, that's arguably what this policy would do, simply because of the incentives that it creates for student-athletes when they are considering schools. If an athlete with a 2.6 GPA has more rights than an athlete without one, then every kid should do everything in his power to make sure that he can attain a 2.6 GPA.
In an ideal world, that would mean that the athletes in question would all buckle down and work harder in school, and we'd end up with a world full of student-athletes with sparkling collegiate transcripts. But over here in the real world, all it does is encourage the kids to go to schools where they can get a 2.6 just by showing up, thereby immediately receiving more rights as an athlete.
Is that really what we want? Do we actually want to steer athletes away from the top academic schools, simply because they're likely to have more rights at the lower-tier ones? I don't think so, and I hardly think that's the idea at the core of this proposal. But unintended consequences are consequences nonetheless, and they require careful consideration by policy-makers at all levels of governance.
This winter, we have seen several top-rated schools play in meaningful football games—from Northwestern gaining its first bowl win since 1949 to Stanford winning the Rose Bowl for the first time in 40 years to Notre Dame playing for the national title for the first time in what seems like forever. Hell, even Vanderbilt won itself a bowl game, in a bowl season where most SEC teams can't seem to get out of their own way.
Against all odds, teams are finding a way to excel both in athletics and in academics, and yet the NCAA wants to pass a rule that would take us in the opposite direction, even if unintentionally. That would be a terrible shame, and I encourage the NCAA to reconsider this proposal, which has good intentions but potentially dire consequences.
[Athnet]
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
The oldest man in history
In case you missed it last week (as I did), the world now has a new oldest man in recorded history. The record for oldest person, however, is still a long ways off.
But for today, I'll mostly leave those lessons alone, just to marvel at what it means to be 115 years old. This guy was born in 1897 (the same year as Amelia Earhart, William Faulkner, Elijah Muhammad, and Joseph Goebbels), two weeks after William McKinley was inaugurated as President of the United States. He's six months older than the oldest underground subway in North America (Boston), and ten years older than Katharine Hepburn and Orville Redenbacher.
He was 21 when World War I ended, 44 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and a spry 94 when Al Gore invented the internet. If you think things are different now than when you were growing up, try being Jiroemon for a couple of days—he remembers when the airplane was invented. I only remember when it was actually enjoyable to fly in one.
[Bloomberg]
Jiroemon Kimura, a 115-year-old Japanese man born when Queen Victoria still reigned over the British Empire, became the oldest man in recorded history today, Guinness World Records said.
Kimura, of Kyotango, western Japan, was born April 19, 1897, in the 30th year of the Meiji era, according to London-based Guinness. That makes him 115 years and 253 days as of today, breaking the longevity record for men held by Christian Mortensen of California, who died in 1998 at the age of 115 years and 252 days. The oldest woman in recorded history, Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, died in 1997 at the age of 122.Of course, it wouldn't be my blog if I didn't also try to throw some sort of a lesson into this post, so here it is, from the same article:
Kimura is among 22 Japanese people on a list of the world’s 64 oldest people compiled by the Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group, highlighting the challenges facing Japan as its population ages. A combination of the world’s highest life expectancy, the world’s second-largest public debt and a below- replacement birthrate is straining the nation’s pension system, prompting the government to curb payouts, raise contributions and delay the age of eligibility.And yes, in case you were wondering, we in the United States should be paying attention to Japan's lessons, as I've enumerated here before.
But for today, I'll mostly leave those lessons alone, just to marvel at what it means to be 115 years old. This guy was born in 1897 (the same year as Amelia Earhart, William Faulkner, Elijah Muhammad, and Joseph Goebbels), two weeks after William McKinley was inaugurated as President of the United States. He's six months older than the oldest underground subway in North America (Boston), and ten years older than Katharine Hepburn and Orville Redenbacher.
He was 21 when World War I ended, 44 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and a spry 94 when Al Gore invented the internet. If you think things are different now than when you were growing up, try being Jiroemon for a couple of days—he remembers when the airplane was invented. I only remember when it was actually enjoyable to fly in one.
[Bloomberg]
Monday, December 31, 2012
The problem with "most likely" outcomes (an NFL playoffs discussion)
On the final Sunday of the NFL regular season (yesterday, for those who weren't paying attention), there's always a number of moving parts as we try to figure out who is going to make the playoffs and who isn't (and also, who is going to be seeded where). Figuring it out is often a challenge, which is why it's nice to have a handy guide at your disposal to help you through the morass.
Luckily, our friends over at Deadspin were nice enough to provide just that, which was an immeasurable help to me as I sat around and rooted for the Patriots and made myself fatter (thanks to Sam Adams and some homemade lasagna). A Patriots win and a Texans loss meant that my Patriots earned themselves the #2 seed and a first-round bye, which was interestingly contrary to what Deadspin had told me to expect. To wit:
Yes, it's true, in each individual game, it's "most likely" that the favorite will win—that's what being a favorite means. Therefore, when you start stringing together potential scenarios, the "most likely combination of outcomes" is, indeed, the combination in which all of the favorites win their games. But that doesn't necessarily make it the "most likely scenario"—there's a subtle but very important difference. Bear with me for a second here, because I'm about to get nerdy.
Let's start from the top here, considering a three-game sample. Let's say that each of the three top seeds coming into yesterday (Texans, Broncos, Patriots) had a 60% chance of winning their game (in the grand scheme of things in the NFL, that's a pretty high probability). To determine the likelihood of ALL THREE of them winning their games, which Deadspin said was the "most likely scenario", we just need to multiply the probabilities. In this case, 60% x 60% x 60% = 21.6% , so the likelihood of all the favorites winning was a little less than 1 in 4 odds.
There are 8 possible groupings of winners in this scenario (Texans/Broncos/Patriots would be one, Colts/Broncos/Patriots would be another, Texans/Chiefs/Dolphins a third, etc, etc, etc), and of those 8 possible groupings, the one where the favorites all win is indeed, as we said, the "most likely combination of outcomes". Here's a super-nerdy chart that shows that point, using the 60% probabilities that I used above.
When you look at it this way, you start to see that the "most likely scenario" isn't that all three teams will win, but that one of the other seven scenarios will occur (in fact, the "at least one upset" scenario is more than three times as likely here, with probability 78.4%).
Sure, any one of those individual outcomes is less likely than the individual outcome of "no upsets", but the reality of the matter is quite different. When we start to group the possible outcomes, we see things with a little bit more clarity. I think that a more realistic way of presenting the available data is the following:
Of course, in advance, we can't possibly know which game was likely to produce the upset, but it's almost beside the point. What we can know is that the more times we flip a coin, no matter how lopsided toward "heads" the coin may be, the more likely it becomes that it will eventually come up "tails".
Ultimately, the more independent variables (games) you start linking together, the more likely it is that your "most likely outcome" involves an upset (or a couple of upsets) somewhere along the way. In a sense, this is a similar statistical problem to the birthday problem, which I discussed here once before.
So, why does all of this matter? I'll make this part quick. Let's say you're the Broncos. You're sitting at home this week as the #1 seed, on your bye, trying to decide which team to prepare for (remember, the NFL re-seeds after the first round) while the Wild Card Weekend games are being played. With two games being played—Texans hosting Bengals, Ravens hosting Colts—there are four possible scenarios: (1) Texans and Ravens win, (2) Texans and Colts win, (3) Bengals and Ravens win, (4) Bengals and Colts win.
Assuming once again that the favorite has a 60% chance of winning, we get the following probabilities:
But no, look again. Even though the "Bengals/Ravens" and "Bengals/Colts" scenarios are individually less likely than the "no upsets" scenario, they combine to be more likely. Because we've given the Bengals a 40% chance of winning their game, and because the Broncos will play the Bengals no matter what if they do indeed win, the Bengals are in fact the Broncos' most likely opponent. Sure, it's only by a small amount, but it's still relevant from a preparation standpoint—Denver should spend at least as much time watching Bengals film as Ravens film, if not more.
Any time we use statistics, we need to be careful with what we're really saying when we communicate our findings or beliefs. In the case of the Deadspin piece, the analysis in question wasn't wrong, it was simply imprecise (and possibly incomplete). When we as readers read that something is the "most likely" scenario, we're almost certainly hoping for something better than a 21.6% probability. Personally, I greatly prefer the much higher 43.2% probability that I ascribed to the "exactly one upset" scenario—I especially prefer it as a Patriots fan, whose team benefited greatly from the way things turned out on the field yesterday.
Good statistics (and good math, and good science, and good writing) requires that we be precise with our methods and our communication of our methods. If we're imprecise, we end up saying things that we don't really mean or that just aren't true.
[Deadspin]
Luckily, our friends over at Deadspin were nice enough to provide just that, which was an immeasurable help to me as I sat around and rooted for the Patriots and made myself fatter (thanks to Sam Adams and some homemade lasagna). A Patriots win and a Texans loss meant that my Patriots earned themselves the #2 seed and a first-round bye, which was interestingly contrary to what Deadspin had told me to expect. To wit:
The most likely scenario [in the AFC] is that every team which has something at stake wins—they're almost invariably playing teams that don't—and thus the playoff order is exactly what you see above [Texans, Broncos, Patriots].That line, when I first read it at 2pm or so, stuck with me as I watched the afternoon's games. What does "most likely scenario" really mean? It turns out that the way that we define our terms has an important impact on the way that we understand and respond to the world before us. That's what I'm about to explain.
Yes, it's true, in each individual game, it's "most likely" that the favorite will win—that's what being a favorite means. Therefore, when you start stringing together potential scenarios, the "most likely combination of outcomes" is, indeed, the combination in which all of the favorites win their games. But that doesn't necessarily make it the "most likely scenario"—there's a subtle but very important difference. Bear with me for a second here, because I'm about to get nerdy.
Let's start from the top here, considering a three-game sample. Let's say that each of the three top seeds coming into yesterday (Texans, Broncos, Patriots) had a 60% chance of winning their game (in the grand scheme of things in the NFL, that's a pretty high probability). To determine the likelihood of ALL THREE of them winning their games, which Deadspin said was the "most likely scenario", we just need to multiply the probabilities. In this case, 60% x 60% x 60% = 21.6% , so the likelihood of all the favorites winning was a little less than 1 in 4 odds.
There are 8 possible groupings of winners in this scenario (Texans/Broncos/Patriots would be one, Colts/Broncos/Patriots would be another, Texans/Chiefs/Dolphins a third, etc, etc, etc), and of those 8 possible groupings, the one where the favorites all win is indeed, as we said, the "most likely combination of outcomes". Here's a super-nerdy chart that shows that point, using the 60% probabilities that I used above.
When you look at it this way, you start to see that the "most likely scenario" isn't that all three teams will win, but that one of the other seven scenarios will occur (in fact, the "at least one upset" scenario is more than three times as likely here, with probability 78.4%).
Sure, any one of those individual outcomes is less likely than the individual outcome of "no upsets", but the reality of the matter is quite different. When we start to group the possible outcomes, we see things with a little bit more clarity. I think that a more realistic way of presenting the available data is the following:
Probability of exactly one upset: 43.2%
Probability of exactly two upsets: 28.8%
Probability of zero upsets: 21.6%
Probability of three upsets: 6.4%When you group the scenarios this way, you can see that all three teams doing what they're "supposed" to do is, in fact, far from the "most likely scenario" (NOTE: in order for it to become the "most likely scenario" the way I define it, the probability of each favorite winning would have to be more than 75%, as opposed to the 60% that I am using; I find 75% to be way too high for any NFL game). The statistics say that we should probably expect at least one upset, and that "exactly one upset" is the most likely scenario—which, unsurprisingly, is exactly what we ended up with.
Of course, in advance, we can't possibly know which game was likely to produce the upset, but it's almost beside the point. What we can know is that the more times we flip a coin, no matter how lopsided toward "heads" the coin may be, the more likely it becomes that it will eventually come up "tails".
Ultimately, the more independent variables (games) you start linking together, the more likely it is that your "most likely outcome" involves an upset (or a couple of upsets) somewhere along the way. In a sense, this is a similar statistical problem to the birthday problem, which I discussed here once before.
So, why does all of this matter? I'll make this part quick. Let's say you're the Broncos. You're sitting at home this week as the #1 seed, on your bye, trying to decide which team to prepare for (remember, the NFL re-seeds after the first round) while the Wild Card Weekend games are being played. With two games being played—Texans hosting Bengals, Ravens hosting Colts—there are four possible scenarios: (1) Texans and Ravens win, (2) Texans and Colts win, (3) Bengals and Ravens win, (4) Bengals and Colts win.
Assuming once again that the favorite has a 60% chance of winning, we get the following probabilities:
Texans/Ravens (Broncos play Ravens): 36%
Texans/Colts (Broncos play Colts): 24%
Bengals/Ravens (Broncos play Bengals): 24%
Bengals/Colts (Broncos play Bengals): 16%So, using the same logic we used before, the most likely individual scenario is that both favorites (the Texans and Ravens) win their games, and so the Broncos should be preparing to play the Ravens next week... right?
But no, look again. Even though the "Bengals/Ravens" and "Bengals/Colts" scenarios are individually less likely than the "no upsets" scenario, they combine to be more likely. Because we've given the Bengals a 40% chance of winning their game, and because the Broncos will play the Bengals no matter what if they do indeed win, the Bengals are in fact the Broncos' most likely opponent. Sure, it's only by a small amount, but it's still relevant from a preparation standpoint—Denver should spend at least as much time watching Bengals film as Ravens film, if not more.
Any time we use statistics, we need to be careful with what we're really saying when we communicate our findings or beliefs. In the case of the Deadspin piece, the analysis in question wasn't wrong, it was simply imprecise (and possibly incomplete). When we as readers read that something is the "most likely" scenario, we're almost certainly hoping for something better than a 21.6% probability. Personally, I greatly prefer the much higher 43.2% probability that I ascribed to the "exactly one upset" scenario—I especially prefer it as a Patriots fan, whose team benefited greatly from the way things turned out on the field yesterday.
Good statistics (and good math, and good science, and good writing) requires that we be precise with our methods and our communication of our methods. If we're imprecise, we end up saying things that we don't really mean or that just aren't true.
[Deadspin]
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