Watching the World Cup

This past Saturday, I managed to watch the Argentina-Belgium World Cup match. It was on the TV in the restaurant where I was having dinner. A part of me wonders if what I actually saw was an edited highlight replay, since if it was all ninety minutes, then my meal took an unconscionable amount of time to get to me.

Now I could blather on about the Great Mystery of why soccer has never really hit it big here in the U.S. (Hint: Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, and even the PGA and NASCAR aren’t going anywhere in the foreseeable future), but that’s for another essay at another time. Right now, there’s another mystery that baffles the heck out of me.

Stoppage Time.
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Happy Independence Day!

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve Richard Henry Lee’s resolution declaring independence from Britain for thirteen of the British colonies in North America.

“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great  anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.” (The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784, Harvard University  Press, 1975, 142.)

Generally, only the first part of this passage is quoted. It’s probably only to poke a little harmless fun at John Adams for dropping the ball on the date. We now celebrate the occasion on the date when the formal resolution was first signed and published.

But the rest is the more significant part. Adams, along with the rest of the delegates, were fully aware that the road ahead would be long and dangerous, and not just personally.

The war would drag on for seven long years, with many close calls. If the Continental Army had not been able to escape after losing the Battle of Long Island the next month… If Benedict Arnold hadn’t been able to build a fleet on Lake Champlain to block the British at Valcour Island that fall… If Washington’s surprise attack on Trenton in December, 1776 had failed… If Arnold hadn’t disobeyed orders at Saratoga… If Washington had been killed while doing recon near Brandywine Creek in 1777… If the “Conway Cabal” had succeeded… If the British had defeated the French Expeditionary Force… If Daniel Morgan’s troops had panicked at Cowpens… If the British had managed to escape at Yorktown… If the Newburgh Conspiracy had succeeded…

It would take even longer, but the thirteen new states would eventually fuse into something greater than the sum of their parts. I think we can all agree with Adams that “the End is more than worth all the Means”, and we have no reason to rue that Days Transaction.

You Are Being Watched

A few weeks ago, I discovered that my RF Modulator had given up the ghost. That’s the little box that connects both a DVD player and the antenna to a TV. Seems that the little power indicator LED doesn’t come on anymore. That should give you some idea of how little TV I watch that I have no clue how long it’s been out. At work the next day, I went online to get some prices on a replacement.

Even though that was just a few minutes of searching, and it was several weeks ago, I am still seeing banner ads offering me deals on RF Modulators.
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Movie Review: Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953, France)

With the imminent arrival of summer (if it’s not already here for all intents and purposes), various movie review/ranking and pop culture websites dust off their lists of the “Best Vacation Movies of All Time”. And without fail, almost all of them overlook the one that really does deserve to head the list. Sadly, Les Vacances des Monsieur Hulot (“Mr. Hulot’s Holiday”) suffers from being both a foreign movie and over sixty years old.

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Movie Review: Starcrash (1978, Italy)

The good old Hollywood Bandwagon. A surprisingly successful movie will (or at least would – copyright lawyers are a bit more active these days) frequently spawn legions of imitators. This happened with Jaws back in the late 70’s, and became common enough so that any movie that even so much as vaguely resembled a previous one got stuck with the “knock-off” or “rip-off” label. Sometimes this was deserved, sometimes it wasn’t. With Starcrash, an Italian space opera, it wasn’t. Sure, there’s the opening shot of a long slow pan across a giant spaceship, light saber-like weapons, and there was that one version of the movie poster that looked like a MAD Magazine parody of a Star Wars poster, but that’s about it. Not everything brown tastes like chocolate…

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The NRA vs. The CDC

While strolling through the local library on my lunch break today, I couldn’t help but see the cover story on the New York Daily News. “Killed by the NRA”, it screamed. In their typical sensational tabloid fashion, this referred to the fact that while the Centers for Disease Control spend millions of dollars annually studying how to reduce deaths from things like Lyme disease (22,000 deaths in 2012, CDC budget for prevention programs: $10.6M), they are forbidden by law to spend any significant amount of money studying anything that could even remotely be connected to “gun control”.

Back in 1993, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study led by Arthur Kellerman and funded by the CDC that found a strong link between having a gun in the home and an increased risk of homicide. The NRA, through its lobbyists, screamed bloody murder. They wanted to completely wipe out the division of the CDC that funded the study, but instead wound up having an amendment inserted into a 1997 budget package which stated that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” While it didn’t specifically ban research on gun control, the intent was made very clear when that same budget took the exact amount that the CDC spent on firearm safety research the previous year and earmarked it specifically for brain trauma research.

With the writing on the wall, the CDC has not funded any real gun safety research since then.

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Book Review: Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré s Maps

Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré s Maps: Empires of Time
Peter Galison
W.W. Norton, 2003

Albert Einstein has become the poster boy for scientific genius. His image is on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and posters. Anytime someone wants a visual symbol for genius, they go with his face. The Theory of Relativity is used as a standard representation of a complex scientific theory, and his equation for the equivalence of mass and energy is bandied about by people who have no real idea what it means.

This mythologizing of Einstein has even crept in to the origin story for the Theory of Relativity. The legend has Einstein sitting idly at the Bern Patent Office, daydreaming away. Suddenly his daydreams coalesce into a complete Theory (and his hair instantaneously turns into an unkempt white mess), and the world changes.

While a pleasant image, especially to the many who aren’t conversant in the language of physics, it gives short shrift to the many other scientists who were working on the same problems at the same time.

One of those who came really close was the French physicist and mathematician Henri Poincaré. Continue reading →

On Pitcher’s Wins

You really have to feel for Cubs’ pitcher Jeff Samardzija. He’s been pitching great so far this season, with an ERA (as of this writing) of 1.62 and 51 strikeouts in 61 innings pitched over 9 starts. But thanks to essentially no offensive support and crappy defense behind him, he’s stuck with an 0-4 record.

This, along with a few other unusual situations (e.g. Chris Sale in 2013 (who, by the way, was ROBBED of the All-Star Game MVP that year), Felix Hernandez in 2010), has led a number of fans and writers to argue that the “pitcher’s wins” stat is irrelevant, or at least vastly overrated. First, they argue, it is too dependent on factors outside the pitcher’s control – like run support and defense. Secondly, they note that the assignment of a Win is often arbitrary, as it can depend on the whim of the official scorer. Other stats, such as WHIP (Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched) and ERA+ are far better at showing the quality of a pitcher.

That might be true. But those stats, being derived from odd and occasionally arcane formulae, can have similar problems. If we accept that these new, advanced metrics can accurately describe the “quality” of a pitcher, how does the “old school” stat of Wins compare?

Fortunately, there’s a way to tell. But you have to step away baseball stats for a while, and dive in to the mathematical field of Statistics….

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Thoughts on Eurovision 2014

Well, I went and did it. I watched every single one of the official videos for the entrants, watched the first Semi-Final online a little while after it was broadcast, watched the second Semi-Final live online (at work – don’t tell anyone!), and the Grand Final live online at home.

It didn’t *quite* live up to my exepctations – because from what I’ve read, there was a lot more kitschiness to be expected.

Nonetheless, I was still entertained.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Ginger Snaps (Canada, 2000)

It’s rather odd that among all the many werewolf movies over the decades, there are very, very few that make the connection between lycanthropy and a certain biological situation.

Think about it for a minute. You suddenly find yourself undergoing unwilling changes. Your body alters, and so does your personality. Every month, like clockwork, you lose control of your body and it practically rebels against you and your will. On top of the physical changes, your personality may undergo radical changes.

If this sounds like puberty and menstruation to you, give yourself a cookie.

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