The magic number to clinch the Wild Card is two.
• No offensive touchdowns for the Vikings in a home loss to the Bears.
• Chris Simms has emergency surgery to remove his spleen after he ruptured it in Sunday's game. Simms likely ruptured it in the second quarter and played the rest of the game. Gotta love the NFL.
• Monday marks the first NFL game in the Louisiana Superdome since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. While I have no quarrel with the rebuilding of the Superdome, I wouldn't take this as being a sign that things are a-okay in New Orleans. The population of NO, at lastest estimates, is less than half of what it was pre-Katrina. My personal opinion is that the city may never recover completely.
What'll you have?
Catch a load of this in the Twins' Notes today: Bartlett goes from not acceptable on defense to best since Gagne in less than a season.
Holy spin doctoring, Batman. One thing's for certain--Bartlett's quality of play certainly hasn't changed as much as the Twins' public opinion of it has changed.
Summer's officially over - just finished the last Harpoon Summer Bier in th' fridge.
Interesting change in th' right margin of the WGOM. "Next Generation" includes a tip of the cap to BG (as well as a self-reference to this site).
and the Oktoberfests are out. The Hacker-Pschorr is particularly nice.
I also enjoyed the New Belgium Saison. Spicey.
Love the Saison. Had some on the day they debuted it at the brewery, always fun.
damn. I'm jealous, birdsall. I've not yet made it to New Belgium. (or old Belgium, but that's a different matter entirely)
I was in Denver last winter for a conference. A block away from Wynkoop. Sadly, I was only able to go there three times in three days (yummm). In part because one dinner was at the Denver Chop House (which had a fabulous porter).
I've clinched a tie in this weeks "NFL Experts" feature at Seth Speaks. If the Falcons win tomorrow night, I win outright. I'm an "NFL Expert"! Heh.
Chris Collinsworth just asked the folks on NBC's NFL show who had the best QB rating in the NFL right now. After no one guessed correctly, he said it was David Carr, who is playing for the 0-3 Houston Texans. This absolutely set Bob Costas off. "That just goes to show how useless that statistic is!" Costas blathered. "Most people don't even know how to calculate it!"
Really, Bob? You're going to play that way? Is it that QB rating is so useless, or that a quarterback's team won-loss record is a poor way to evaluate a QB's performance?
Also, on half-baked crap alert, a check to espn.com currently lists Grossman as they QB rating lead, but I'm not sure how up-to-date that is.
Do you know how the QB Rating is calculated?
Carr's high rating seems to be a result of his high completion percentage and 4/0 TD/Int ratio, since his passing yards total is nothing special. (Btw, the ESPN board does not include stats from today's games. Today he was 19-29, 208 yds, 2 TD, 1 Int.) So he's been efficient and hasn't made many mistakes. Is he an elite QB in the league now?
Completion percentage and TD/INT, I think, are the two biggies.
Actually, the rating calculation is shown here.
My problem isn't so much that Costas might have a problem considering Carr one of the best QBs in the league--I don't think Collinsworth's suggestion was that Carr is one of the best in the league, but rather to suggest that Carr might not be the problem in Houston. (Collinsworth generally seems like a good analyst to me, so I find it highly unlikely he brought up the issue to point out Carr as an elite QB.) My problem was Costas dismissing a potentially valuable tool for the main reason that most people don't know how to calculate it and that Carr played for a losing team. Rather than giving Costas a second to reflect on the possibility that Carr is better than he thought, it made Costas turn into a raving Joe Morgan-like ignoramus.
So while I really don't know that much about QB rating, I can say this: most people don't know how to calculate fielding independent ERA, but I do know that it tends to give a much better reflection of a pitcher's abilities than his win-loss record. It seems like this is a similar situation--QB rating might not be perfect (just like FIP isn't perfect), but it's almost certainly better than win-loss record. Bob Costas seemed, in my opinion, to basically be engaging in the same line of reasoning that gave Bartolo Colon his bogus Cy Young award last year. (And I don't know the specifics of QB rating off the top of my head, but know that it takes completion pct, TD, and INT into account, which is better than I can say for any other QB rating system that I'm aware of.)
Also, as far as football goes, if you put it to me, I'd say that three weeks into the season, none of the stats matter thanks to SSS.
Joe Morgan-like ignoramus.
Redundant?
That was quite a (non)effort the Royals put up against the Ligers this weekend. Do they go belly up against the Twins as well to make it a fair race or will they be so disgusted with themselves that they show some fightin' spirit.
Also, unless I'm over looking something, all 7 wins by Twins on the road trip by rookies.
So do the Royals go belly up like they did against the Royals
Crain, Silva, and Guerrier got wins on the trip.
Holy spin doctoring, Batman. One thing’s for certain–Bartlett’s quality of play certainly hasn’t changed as much as the Twins’ public opinion of it has changed.
Bartlett has certainly been much better than I remembered from last season. I seem to recall he had some real problems especially with his throws. I confess I don't remember much about his range, but I know he needed to straighten out his throwing problems, which looked mechanical/mental. Judging by what we've seen this year, I think he got it worked out just fine.
Just think, Bartlett really helped put the Twins over the top this season, and remember who the Twins traded away to get him? Brian Buchanan. Great job by Ryan in taking a superfluous player and trading him for someone who is proving to be invaluable several years down the road. Is it safe to say that Bartlett is looking like he'll be much better than San Diego or Minny anticipated? Think the Padres would swap him for Khalil Greene at this point?
And is it possible that if Bartlett were not in the Twins system that Castro would still be starting for the Twins? I'd like to think NO, but this is the org that started Rivas year after year. Of course, Luis had youth and, um, "potential" on his side.
A full season of Castro might have cost the Twins an additional 3-4 games. I could possibly be overestimating the impact, but about four months of great defense and excellent hitting has been a huge lift... glancing at the standings, that is enough to turn a virtual sure thing of getting the wild card into a dogfight with Chicago.
Certainly in 2004, Bartlett was not ready for prime time.
Last year Bartlett had "double pump" syndrome.
While I have no quarrel with the rebuilding of the Superdome...
Sure, but what of rebuilding New Orleans? The city is built below water level, and all experts agree that it could easily get hit again by a devastating hurricane. The federal guv'ment is pumping in hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the levees, provide relief, etc. It seems that the decisions are being made based on emotion, not rationality. (As a disclaimer, Moss has no emotional attachment to NO, so perhaps Moss should shut up.)
emotional attachment is usually a bad criterion for investment. Unless it is other people's money
I am living one of the consequences of federal largesse vis-a-vis building in flood zones. My home housing tract was reclassified by FEMA recently as within a 100-year flood plain, requiring me and many of my neighbors to acquire flood insurance. Even though, by almost any objective standard, the odds of a "catastrophic" flood in my neighborhood are near zero and of a "minor" flood quite small.
But I get to subsidize reconstruction in high-risk areas such as NO and Florida via my flood insurance premiums.
The state of Florida currently is in flood insurance crisis (see the recent Economist special report on global warming), in significant part because of government regulation of flood insurance prices. there is virtually no relationship between premiums and actual risk in many parts of the country. Stooooopid.
For my part, a quick look at historical NO population data makes it look like they haven't had anything this catastrophic in well over 200 years, and this is the first time they've seen a population setback in that period. There's certainly a risk for natural disaster to happen again there, but there's also the risk that an F-5 tornado could rip Minneapolis to shreds, and I'd like to see the government help rebuild Minneapolis if that was the case. There's also the chance that LA, SF, or Seattle could get rocked by a magnitude 8 or 9 earthquake, but those are also places I wouldn't mind seeing rebuilt after natural disaster.
It would certainly be interesting to see a detailed study on natural disaster risks in major cities around the country, but my natural reaction is to think that re-building NO is worth the (admittedly hefty) investment.
True, they haven't had anything this devastating. But it seems that the experts are saying that hurricane frequency and severity is going way up. A major hurricane had been expected for that area in the near- to mid-term. Now, the risk is probably greater (due to increasing frequency and severity) and we also now know the potential consequences.
Moss isn't saying that NO should be abandoned, but maybe the rebuilding should be done with a little planning and consideration of needs, risk, reward, and number of persons actually benefitted. As SBG points out, the population has decreased by 1/2 and may never recover. Instead, it appears as if rebuilding and relief is just another instance of throwing money at a problem to make ourselves feel better.
Methinks there is not nearly the same sort of policy implications of the tornado risk. I mean, all you have to do is ring the city with trailer parks and the downtown is safe.
More seriously, building codes can address much of the risk to life-and-limb of tornadoes, if not much to do with property risk. But with hurricanes and other flooding events, the main mitigation is to not build in low-lying areas near water. Levies and dikes mostly shift the burdens elsewhere.
Now I haven't done a bunch of research on this, but it seems to me the "frequency and severity" of hurricanes was a media-circus generated overextension of scientists saying "as the planet warms, hurricane activity will naturally increase." I agree that there should be a general increase in activity as the planet warms, but I doubt it will be in a Hollywood-esque fashion where a line will be crossed (say, the line called 2005) and all hell will break loose.
But yeah, we should be incredibly smart about any rebuilding going on in and around New Orleans.
Well, wasn't last year the first time they ever ran out of names for tropical storms/hurricanes? They ended up going with alpha, beta or something like that. So the frequency indeed appears to be increasing.
(This is all from memory; Moss didn't do any research.)
How many big hurricanes have you seen this year, Moss?
Now I haven’t done a bunch of research on this, but it seems to me the “frequency and severity†of hurricanes was a media-circus generated overextension of scientists saying “as the planet warms, hurricane activity will naturally increase.†I agree that there should be a general increase in activity as the planet warms, but I doubt it will be in a Hollywood-esque fashion where a line will be crossed (say, the line called 2005) and all hell will break loose.
Agreed. When in doubt, the null hypothesis should be that the media mangled the science beyond recognition. I've even seen a fairly convincing argument in a talk by Steven Chu (Nobel Prize in physics, '97) that it's difficult to say that we're actually witnessing global warming, or just some fluctuations of a randomly driven system that have been on the high side of the mean. Of course, "random fluctuations" won't sell any newspapers, books, or movies, so we all get to run with global warming.
Also, to stave off anyone who thinks I'm ready to shun "clean" energy and burn oil until the skies are gray, I'll elaborate that most anti-global warming initiatives make good sense to me on their own merit, without actually needing a global temperature crisis. So for the most part, when making these sorts of decisions, I don't think it's necessarily that important whether there is global warming or not. But you'll rarely find a clear and balanced view of the science through any media lens.
To bring this back to baseball, though, the high incidence of hurricanes last year could be like David Ortiz in July, 2002 (.380/.462/.772), an indication of big things to come, or it could be like Luis Rivas in July, 2004 (.354/.364/.569), a big random blip that doesn't tell us anything about future performance. We don't really know until we have a good handle on the underlying explanation.
In both cases, small sample sizes are not the answer. Except maybe to show that small sample sizes are not the answer.
One of the first things I ever read about Michael Moore was this paraphrased story. Moore was walking through a park in the northern US and he overheard a couple discussing the weather. They were amazed that it was nearly 60 degrees at the end of February. It was so "awesome" that they could walk outside in light jackets. Moore got in their face and said "No it isn't. This is global warming. We're killing the planet." So fairly early on my opinion of Moore was that he had some skills that could be put to so much better use than pushing his self-defeating arguments.
A horrible telling of the story, yes, but my point is that a warm day in the winter does is not in itself evidence of global warming. A single accelerated hurricane season is not in itself evidence of increased hurricane activity due to global warming. Indeed, several seasons may not even be evidence of global warming.
This is what makes the whole global warming thing so difficult. The amount of data necessary to analyze this stuff is immense, and relatively speaking the timeframe around our data is so small. This is not something I expect the mainstream media to grasp, and once they started calling last hurricane season the sure sign of anything, my bullshit meter immediately started alarming.
(The mainstream media understands this to a degree. I mean, they aren't discussing the decrease in global warming due to the less active hurricane season this year. They even know that'd be stupid. Or it just doesn't create enough fear to be worth their hot breath.)
I guess what I'm saying is that global warming is probably a fact, and something should be done about it. But these isolated incidents are not what makes it a fact and citing them tends to simplify a very complicated issue. An issue that I must admit I understand approximately not at all.
(Another "sidebar." Recently I read a presentation by Michael Crichton. My recollection of the argument is that environmentalists and politicos concerned about the environment need to start communicating the complexity of this issue. Just as those in denial of global warming tend to use simplistic arguments, those who are fanatical about global warming tend to be too simplistic both in discussing the problem and possible solutions. Crichton's discussion of linear versus complex systems is interesting with regard to many parts of my life.)
Complexity does not sell newspapers, nor win votes. Although it apparently can sell pop science books, particularly when the complexity can be described simplistically
I guess what I’m saying is that global warming is probably a fact, and something should be done about it.
Probably is the key word here, I think. While there is plenty of evidence that points to it, when you look at the size of the randomness in the system, and the size of year-to-year fluctuations, it's difficult to say that it's a definite trend with a high level of confidence. (As a caveat, this isn't anything I've put a ton of study into, but really smart people whose opinions I trust believe this.)
Like I said before, I think that most things that "should be done about it" make good sense on their own, so we might as well do them. No harm done there, but I think that global warming is on shakier ground than many believe.
for those interested in these issues, I highly recommend the Economist special section from 2 weeks ago. If you aren't familiar with the magazine, it is a mildly right-of-center british rag, with a thing for free markets, but also with some of the best science news coverage going in the popular press.
their take: the science is becoming increasingly sophisticated; scientists are increasingly convinced that human action has and will continue to contribute to upward pressure on global temperatures; and that the economic analysis and understanding of global warming lags far, far behind.
Which means that the appropriate policy prescriptions are about as clear as mud. The Economist loosely supports modest near-term policy responses, such as policies that encourage energy efficiency gains. for two reasons. Reason one: the uncertainties about the consequences of global warming AND its effects are huge; reason two: the costs of small steps now are modest, and might actually be consistent with economic growth, whereas the costs of BIG steps now are very large, but with very dubious benefits.
anyway. well worth an hour or so of your time to read.
it is a mildly right-of-center british rag, with a thing for free markets, but also with some of the best science news coverage going in the popular press
Agreed. I read back to front, starting with emerging, then G7, then obit., book reviews, and wow science stuff. Good cracker.
Re: global warming - I hear the back and forth on this, but keep going back to th' images of th' shrinking polar caps. No f'in polar bears, or walrus in 15 yrs. Mebbe they were overrated in th' first place...
NBB: science, then lit & obit, then the stuff between the editorials and the US news, then US, then business and survey, then ROW (Rest of World, as my friends in international economics like to say, allowing them to work with two-player models).
some weeks I do not get much beyond the science and tech section.
but the mag. is worth getting just for the picture captions. Like the Onion, but british-er.
If I'm at a state where I have time to commit to the outside world again I may consider reading the economist - from yours and other recommendations. Do you guys subscribe? It's pretty spendy, is it not?
I've been a subscriber since 1986. I think I pay around $90 a year for 51 issues.
As has been alluded to, there are two issues here. One is whether global warming is even taking place. The second is whether, if it is taking place, man is causing it.
Over the history of the earth, there have, of course, been many periods of warming and cooling. There is an extent to which this is a natural phenomenon. Thus, even if it is proved that global warming is taking place, it does not automatically follow that man is causing it. Conversely, just because global warming has taken place in the past, it does not follow that if it happening now, it must be a natural phenomenon.
I must add that it is pleasant to read a discussion of this topic that doesn't degenerate into a political discussion. I'm glad, though not surprised, that the intelligence level around here is high enough not to fall for the extremes on both sides. A lot of that nonsense could give SBG a lesson about being half-baked.
I won't argue whether global warming is man-made (I sure believe it is), but I think we can all agree that man is altering his environment in an unhealthy way.
I'm all for "green", particularly in regards to air quality. Carbon emissions, whether causing global warming or not, are very noticable if your child has asthma, for instance. Thank you for not smoking.
another reason to love Minnesota: Bob Casey's "No Smoking" announcement in the Dome. I always loved that.