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.

The Summer of George*

Brian's "Summer of George"

After my first year (read: two semesters) of living in the real world, I still hadn’t sold the house I’d lived in while in grad school. So, to save money on rent, I moved back in with my parents for June and July. My biggest fear going into this arrangement, other than a loss of a great deal of privacy and independence, was the prospect of being unconscionably bored.

So far, it seems I needn’t have worried. Within two days, my father came down with what he estimates to be his fifteenth or sixteenth kidney stone. Less than a week later, a young woman driving an SUV rammed into my family’s office building. Shortly after, I came down with my first kidney stone. (Oddly, and forebodingly, my dad’s first was when he was twenty-nine.)

I’ve also been helping out with the family business, making bi-weekly trips to the county courthouse, driving by potential investment properties, and hours and hours of computer research. And let’s not forget what I actually get paid for: I’ve written most of the labs for my fall semester classes.

Ignore Always

I just sent off an e-mail containing the elegant construction “Oh no [pronoun] di’n't!” and was stopped by the spell checker. Now, I can only imagine the cringing you are doing reading that dead, beaten horse of a catch phrase, but when I was presented with the options of “Ignore,” “Ignore All,” or “Add” I had to think for a moment. After all, I’m pretty sure that “di’n't” is the clearest way of expressing the non-word I intended, so in the future I might want my spell-checker to recognize it. On the other hand, it’s absolutely not a word so I really can’t see adding it. Therefore, I suggest a feature for those of us with grammatical neuroses — “Ignore Always.” That way, we don’t have to validate a word in any way when the spell checker runs. Of course, not using such words is unthinkable…

Anyways, the news is reporting that

Carolina “Classic”

There are some things about North Carolina almost everyone knows, such as tobacco, basketball, and NASCAR. Then there are things that you only learn if you live here for a while; e.g. coleslaw is a condiment.

That’s right, any self-respecting North Carolinian restaurant serves a tiny cup of coleslaw on the side with every sandwich (and many other orders) so that you can put it on your sandwich if you care to. It actually works quite well because the cole slaw here is the best I’ve ever had: unlike its Midwestern brethren it contains only a bit of mayonnaise, and unlike the local barbecue it’s light on the vinegar.

Coleslaw features prominently in Carolina-style burgers, which also have chili, chopped onion, and mustard. Even Wendy’s has a fast-food version that is sold regionally. Apparently there is some sort of difference between coleslaw and “slaw,” but either way I find them to be delicious.

Another, more interesting North Carolina “quirk” has to do with how I’ve used quotation marks in these last two sentences.

1776

I was just going through my forgotten and nearly dead post drafts and found this doozy. Since many of us went and sat through the amazing-looking, albeit fascist 300 together, I figure many of you might also enjoy Robot Chicken’s 300-inspired take on the American revolution:

I especially enjoy the crossing of the Delaware. Robot Chicken really captures the movie for me — I remember longing for the sophistication of Starship Troopers.

And while on the topic of the founding fathers, I can’t help but find HBO’s John Adams to be completely unnecessary. I don’t really think it’s any fault of it’s own (except maybe for casting overused Paul Giamatti) but I can’t help but giggle at the oh-so-serious looking promos that popped up seemingly everywhere a few weeks ago. I don’t know if it’s possible to have year-long movie-watching moods, but I feel like I wouldn’t be in the mood for something like this until at least next year…

A Post by John About Baseball

I meant to do this yesterday, when it would have been more believable, but here I am on a regular old day writing about baseball. In case you missed it, non-linear dynamics guru Steven Strogatz and graduate student Samuel Arbesman had a paper in the New York Times on using a game simulator to simulate every at bat for all of baseball 10,000 times. They then used this artificial data set to look for trends, including a really cool distribution of hitting streak records (the real record of 56 games is held by Joe DiMaggio). Apparently DiMaggio’s record — according to Wikipedia, “the top American sports feat of all time” — was actually to be expected. In the 10,000 samples the median record was 53 games.

Al Jaffee in the Times

The New York Times has a great article on Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee today. Jaffee has been responsible for Fold-In’s, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions (my personal favorite as a kid), and other Mad features for the past 53 years. The article describes his upcoming Indiana Jones-themed Fold-In: “What frightening ancient relic will be the focus of much attention and fanfare this summer?” If you don’t think that’s a set up for a certain former P.O.W. who doesn’t think that techniques he believes to be torture should be illegal, then you should check out the picture that runs with the story.

The best part of the article is a slide show of past Fold-In’s that gives some excellent examples. I haven’t read Mad in years, but I am very happy to see him still actively involved. I was also a little surprised that they got away with that “human growth injections” gag…

The Return of the Joe

Fellow Duke physics graduate Joe has now started blogging from his current residence in icy Arizona. Check out Handbasket Travel Ventures for the latest and greatest. Also, check out this picture of Jesus riding a dinosaur that I found when I looked under “j” in the My Pictures folder. I’m sure that it’s featured prominently at the Creationist museum:

The Importance of Rebounds

The struggling Big Ten Network may need to consider giving Kevin Borseth, the Michigan women’s basketball coach, his own show. After Michigan blew an 18 point lead against Wisconsin, Borseth melted down in the post-game press conference. By the end he’s actually coming to terms with things, but in this case getting there is far more than half the fun. Assuming he can keep up this intensity the Big Ten Network could have quite the show on their hands…

ESPN has a nice piece arguing that this clip shouldn’t define Borseth, but it’s still a must watch.

;)

It seems like we live in an age where it is more important for text to be copyright protected than grammatically correct. The New York Times, however, has a pretty funny article celebrating the proper usage of a semi-colon in a sign placed in subway cars. The article contains a tidbit about David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam serial killer who was, according to one columnist, “the only murderer he ever encountered who could wield a semicolon just as well as a revolver.”

The article also has a great quote from Kurt Vonnegut:

“When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life. Old age is more like a semicolon.”