They Play Football at Duke?

A couple of quick-shots as you watch your favorite baseball team fall further and further from contention. (So this is what it feels like, Joe?)

• Today’s post at the Duke Chronicle’s sports blog asks the age old sabermetric question: should you go for it on fourth down?

• The pre-season coaches’ poll is out, and for the first time, Steve Spurrier did not vote for Duke. Allegedly, it’s because he was asked not to do so in order to protect the almighty integrity of the poll. I’ll pause and wait for you to stop laughing.
• The Cutcliffe era started yesterday.

Blog on the Run

It’s a brave new world. In the latest update to the iPhone, the ability was given to third parties to develop their own applications for the device. There are several killer apps, like I mentioned in the comments of the Pandora blog entry. Now: writing WordPress posts mobily. Hi from SC state road 8, aka Easley Highway!

Why to root for…

The Grand National Championships has a reason to root for every one of the 119 Division 1-A football teams. Thanks to Deadspin for the heads-up.

Dr. Delegate

I’ve told most of you about my friend and colleague Paul Richardson, who was elected as a delegate from South Carolina to the Democratic National Convention this year. His blog is now live, so we can follow his journey to Denver.

Final Jeopardy!

Finally, a practical use for blogs: every night’s Final Jeopardy!.

(Thanks to Marilyn for the heads-up.)

Football in April

The blog has been quiet lately… too quiet.

It’s understandable. There are exams to be graded, weddings to be planned, and research papers to be written. I just realized I have seven different papers in various stages of completion (six of them are thankfully nearly done). I’ve been pretty stressed and the EPA is about the nicest, lowest stress research environment I can imagine. All the same, it’s time for distraction. Thus, I present the April football round-up:

First off, offensive lineman Justin Boren — whose right to do as he saw fit I defended not long ago — has indeed decided to transfer from Michigan to “the” Ohio State to play with his brother. I wish him well, but if he’s playing offensive line for this year’s match-up, I think we may see the OSU quarterback sacked a dozen times. A cocaine-fueled Jeff Smoker (who to his great credit has recovered) took that many sacks and still won the second-most-recent “Greatest Michigan-Michigan state game ever”

Poker Is Not Gambling

In part to celebrate my first-ever win in my new poker game last night, netting me sixty smackers, and in part as preparation for my trip to Vegas next month, I present an interview that Freakonomics did with Phil Gordon. The best poker pros know that poker isn’t about gambling as much as it is economic theory.

Garfield… without Garfield

Today’s funny blog of the day: Garfield Minus Garfield. Basically, take a strip of Garfield and remove the cat and everything associated with him. The net effect: it leaves owner Jon babbling crazily to himself. Very zen, and a little scary.

The 2008 SXSW Torrent

For the past few years, the South by Southwest Music and Film Festival has released a (free, legal) BitTorrent of one mp3 from each band performing there. It’s hit-and-miss, mostly miss, but now you can get some help wading through this year’s batch. Paul Ford at The Morning News offers six-word reviews, plus five-star ratings, for each song in the torrent. (Thanks to Marilyn for the heads-up.)

Water Water Everywhere

Think about how much water you think is on Earth. If you were to take it all and form it into a sphere, how big do you think it would be? Now do the same with all the air on Earth.

Dan Phiffer has a picture of what that would look like, courtesy of the Science Photo Library.