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In addition to the James Frey thing, we’ve got people digging into the identity of the secretive writer JT LeRoy (a denial). And True Hoop’s Henry Abbott is trying to figure out who William Wesley is…a powerful NBA figure who came out of nowhere and appears to not have a job or any direct influence on anyone or anything but goes to fights with Michael Jordan and has LeBron James on speed dial.
Over the holidays, Meg and I went up to Vermont skiing. I skied quite a bit when I was in middle/high school (on the small hills of northwestern WI and east central MN), but I’d only strapped on the boards a couple times since graduating from college. Meg’s family has skied at Mad River Glen for years, so that’s where we went. After three straight days of hitting the slopes, my back got a little wonky, so on the 4th day I brought the camera along to document a run down the mountain:
There are a few photos of Waitsfield (the town closest to Mad River) and the surrouding area at the beginning of the set, but most are from the mountain, including some of the best winter views I’ve ever witnessed. The snow covering the trees, the fog at the top of the hill…it looked almost magical. At one point, I was alone on the mountain with my camera, engulfed in fog, no one within 200 yards. With no wind and all the snow & fog muffling the sound, when I stopped breathing, I couldn’t hear anything at all.
In an era when players are so much bigger, stronger, faster, and richer than the rest of us, it’s getting harder for fans to really connect with pro sports teams.
The Unnatural Natural. “It was supposed to be a simple story about a mysterious senior-softball phenom whose legend was growing in America’s heartland. Of course, nothing is simple.”
Wow, Johnny Damon goes from the Red Sox to the Yankees. It’s looking like that Boston championship was a one-shot deal.
Great profile by Michael Lewis of Mike Leach, Texas Tech’s football coach. Leach “believes that both failure and success slow players down, unless they will themselves not to slow down.” ‘When they fail, they become frustrated. When they have success, they want to become the thinking-man’s football team.’” Must-read article if you’re even a casual football fan. Here’s another article on Leach from the SJ Merc.
Update: Steven Levitt and the Freakonomist commenters weigh in on Lewis’ article. (thx, michael)
There’s a new indoor skiing area in Dubai the size of 3 football (soccer) fields. Photos here and official site here. Dubai is the new Las Vegas.
A business book on teamwork called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (excerpt) has gained a following among pro football coaches and players.
Sports Illustrated’s photo gallery of the top 10 point guards of all time.
Is it possible to use thin slicing (as detailed in Gladwell’s Blink) to make better bets about the outcome of NBA basketball games? The most important factors would appear to be FG%, turnover rate, offensive rebounding rate, and free throw attempts. (via truehoop)
Quick overview of increased use of statistics in pro basketball, i.e. the moneyballing of the NBA. More NBA stats madness at 82games.com.
Today was a maintenance day around kottke.org. Some long-overdue backups, upgrading the OS and some applications, cleaning up the desktop, getting rid of some unneeded files on the web server, trimming my newsreader subscriptions, going through my spam, the kind of stuff that gets put off because it just doesn’t sound that fun and you can get by without doing it over the short term. I really don’t mind it so much…there’s a certain satisfaction you get in completing such tasks. The crossing off of todo items from a list, bringing structure to a messy situation, tidying up.
A friend of mine (who I can’t link to because he got cross with me the last time I did) has a theory that most modern sports are about tidying up. Put the ball in the goal, all the balls in the pockets, clear the tennis court of any balls, etc.:
Explaining to [an acquaintance] why I like watching snooker on tv so much (she doesn’t: it’s slow and boring), I realised that snooker is rarely tense, and it’s not enjoyable to watch at all: it’s extremely satisfying, relaxing almost. Snooker is a game where you have to make a big mess at the beginning with the break, and then you’re never going to get them all neat like that again, so it becomes a process of cleaning the balls away into the pockets very very carefully. First you put away the red, then the black, then the red, and, oh, I did that one wrong, so now I have to do the pink, and the red again…
Lots of video games are like that as well. Pac-Man, Katamari Damacy, Dig Dug, Quake, Space Invaders. Chores too, of course. Two chores I find extremely satisfying are bagging groceries and (especially) mowing the lawn. Getting all those different types of products — with their various shapes, sizes, weights, levels of fragility, temperatures — quickly into the least possible number of bags…quite pleasurable. Reminds me a little of Tetris. And mowing the lawn…making all the grass the same height, surrounding the remaining uncut lawn with concentric rectangles of freshly mowed grass. Despite the gigantic blisters I got on both my thumbs last time I cut the grass, I finished with a euphoric giddyness (perhaps akin to a runner’s high) that was simultaneously calming.
In the WSJ, Jason Fry writes about his experiences in starting a weblog about the Mets. If you’re a new blogger, this is a good look at how your first few months might go. “The downside of being a blog writer? Being a blog administrator.”
Star Trek’s Sulu, George Takei, comes out. First Swoopes and now this…the self esteem of young, gay, basketball-playing Trekkies must be skyrocketing. (I keed, but seriously, pro sports and sci-fi geeks could benefit from more confident & successful gay role models for young people who’re feeling less than confident with their sexuality.)
Watching the World Series last week, Meg wondered, “why White/Red Sox and not Socks?” I knew that if we waited long enough, the Internet would come up with the answer. Bonus: the NY Yankees were once known as the Porchclimbers. Those rascals!
Instead of state or federal boundries, the CommonCensus map is constructed by asking people what “cultural” part of the country they think they live in (centered around cities). A pretty cool idea but they’ve just gotten started and need more data, so cast your vote. (They’re doing sports maps too…)
The T’Wolves are all about Wally Szczerbiak this year. I’m not a Wally fan…I think he’s selfish like Kobe and not nearly so good. The Wolves should be more concerned with Garnett…he was not in peak form last year.
What do you do when you have a 9-to-5 job and you need to prepare for an upcoming climb by spending weeks at high altitudes? You put your office desk into an altitude chamber.
By watching tapes of old baseball games, a New York illustrator has discovered the secret of great pitchers. “Witte’s scientific theory, the specifics of which he refuses to divulge, has something to do with how successful pitchers keep their gloves elevated at the start of their windups, let their back shoulders drop, and lift their front legs high.”
College football and network theory meet at last. In a recent paper, a pair of researchers have devised a ranking system based on network theory (with teams that didn’t directly play each other, the theory determines who’s the better team based on games played versus a mutual foe) that is more accurate than the current polling system used to choose a college football national champion. (via cd)
NYC’s Bryant Park is getting an ice skating rink this winter. Admission is free. I can’t imagine how long that line is going to be to get in.
New York City, redemption, and the 2005 New York Yankees. “Jason [Giambi] was redeemed, and his legend is assured now as the star who wanted more, who lost everything to greed and arrogance, and who recovered his glory, which is now vastly more appealing for the fact that it’s tarnished. It’s a real New York kind of story.”
Tim Gasparak captured JJ Thomas catching same air over the streets of San Francisco on a snowboard. SF recently played host to extreme skiers and snowboarders flying down Fillmore Street on several tons of trucked-in snow. Tim’s got more photos of the event on Flickr.
I had more than a few of the cards in this worthless baseball card collection. Ah, commons.
The Onion: Tiger Woods Signs $15 Million Deal To Endorse Alex Rodriguez. “Now that beloved, recognizable superstar Tiger Woods is the new face of Alex Rodriguez, we hope to see some [endorsement] offers start rolling in.”
Todd Radom designs sports logos, including ones for the Super Bowl, Fenway Park’s 90th anniversary, and the new Cleveland Browns. Read about his design for the Washington Nationals logo in Fast Company.
Dressed to the Nines is an interactive look at the design of baseball uniforms. “Whether we are looking at someone in a uniform or we are trying it on ourselves, it is the feeling of the fabric, the design on the cap and jersey, the colors, cut, and history of the outfit, that all lend meaning to our relationship with the game.”
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