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Looking Backwards at Sailing

For a seminar, I had to do an assignment where I looked back at architecture from the year 2020, so I'm going to take the same approach with sailboat racing, looking back from 2025 in response to Tillerman's latest group writing project - Sailing in the Second Space Age:

Sailing has taken two divergent paths over the past 15 years.  The America's cup, and other high end races have become increasingly exclusive.  The carbon "sails" have so many adjustable scales, which can tweak the flow across them, it practically requires a liquid dynamics physicist to be on board.  While this reeks of exclusivity, it's built a lot of excitement for the sport.

On the other end of the spectrum, roto-molded hulls have lowered weights and costs for entry-level boats like the miniOpen, based on the original Bic Open.  This hull is so light that my 12-year-old can carry it on his own.  Like the Laser, there are three different sail sizes, which makes it an affordable class for growing 6-15-year-olds.  Another advantages of these hollow shell boats is that they can be launched and sailed through beach waves without needing to bail.  Gotta love that the self-draining cockpit took over 50 years to make it from the Laser to Opti -- or rather it's long overdue replacement.

The combination of a more exciting top end, and a cheaper entry-level, has really grown the sport.  The proliferation of community boating centers like CBI in Boston has also helped.  It's a great time for sailing, although mostly this has been an incremental adjustment.  Moths, the America's Cup and Ocean Racing are really more flying than sailing, but how many of you have grade schoolers who you want to hand the tiller to a machine moving over 60 miles an hour?  I'm quite happy with Sailing's stubbornness.

Silly Viedo For Class

Steven Tyler's a Letch, and I Like It

Steven Tyler was in the TV booth at the Sox game just now, promoting his upcoming tour and date at Fenway.  He had some pretty funny comments, confirming all of the sexual promiscuity stereotypes about rock stars. 

Remy: What happens when you forget the words Stephen?
Tyler:   I just scat until they come back to me (beeb boop, boob boob.)  You know, with the audience, you never know what's going to happen out there.  Sometimes with those kids, their shirts come off, and it's hard to pay attention to the words and what you're singing.

Remy: You guys played right up the road last year on the 4th of July.  How was that?
Tyler: Oh that was a great experience.  Being down the road here, and on the 4th.  The fireworks went of twice that night if you know what I mean.

Just amazing.  I think guys sometimes hate hearing songs like Hot Blooded, but we're also a little admirous, and of course jealous. 

Joe Morgan Quotes on Opening Night

I'm going to blog all of the dumb quotes on MLB's Opening Night from Joe Morgan.  Followed by a comment from me:

5:15: "Ortiz had a good season. He just didn't have the walkoffs and late-inning heroics that he had become known for."  -Really?  What about hitting below the Mendoza line for the first two months of the season.  Isn't that what the issue was?

5:20: "I don't know if people realize... this is Koufax and Marichal.  These are two of the best pitchers of their era."  -Close, but no cigar.  Sabathia might be, but Beckett isn't a surefire hall of famer.

5:29: "What is it 280 down the line?"  -Come on.  Jon just said 302 feet.  Do you need him to correct you again?  Apparently.

5:30: "Do they call it Pesky's pole?" -Joh says "They do, that's why I called it that."

5:55: Jon: "Curtis Granderson hitting that first home run in his first at bat of the season."
         Joe: "That's better than starting 0 for ten before you get your first hit."
         -No Comment

Just so you know, 551 consecutive sellouts.  Last non-sellout was May 1 2003.

7:20: Jon: "What was your preferred nickname?"
         Joe: "The Sweet pea."
         -What I like about this, is that it's THE sweet pea

7:22: Orel: "One of the worst things you can tell a pitcher is to 'stay back.'  Well, 'stay back' is fine, but stay back with rhythm and motion."

I think it's worth mentioning that this is a great game.

8:47: Orel: "A-Rod, leading off the next inning, would have loved to have had the chance to tie it up.  but now that they've allowed that run, he'll just have to get on base."  -That's right Orel, he'd rather it be a one-run than a two-run game.

Homophobia in the Law

The Attorney General of Virginia is asking for unprecedented repeal of anti-discrimination laws:

Ken Cuccinelli II has urged the state's public colleges and universities to rescind policies that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, arguing in a letter sent to each school that their boards of visitors had no legal authority to adopt such statements.

In his most aggressive initiative on conservative social issues since taking office in January, Cuccinelli (R) wrote in the letter sent Thursday that only the General Assembly can extend legal protections to gay state employees, students and others -- a move the legislature has repeatedly declined to take as recently as this week.

This is a horrific request and all I can think of when I see intentional discrimination like this is slavery.  A couple hundred years ago, people all over this country thought that slavery was morally legitimate, and half the country seceded in order to maintain laws which would keep the practice in place.  At the time, it was more of an monetary need than anything else, as the entire economy of the southern half of the country was dependent on a steady supply of extremely cheap labor.

This however, is an entirely moral issue.  Just as you'd be very hard pressed to find very many people in this country today who would support a return to legalized slavery, I hope you'll find the same about sexual discrimination in 100 years.  I think it's pathetic that we might have to wait that long to at least outlaw this form of bigotry.

The Stark Plan

I agree wholeheartedly with Jayson Stark on both his points here.  Participating in the Olympics would be bad for Major League Baseball, and the WBC should be held at a different time.  Play all the preliminary games a little later in spring training than you otherwise would, and then hold the semi-final games and the Finals over all-star week.  It'd be a big Baseball fest with an international home run derby, the futures game, and most importantly, the big time WBC games.  (I don't even think you need what would be a watered down all-star game.  Just announce the chosen players and let interleague play decide the home team for the World Series).

And one more change I would make, whether or not you changed the timing of the thing.  When choosing WBC rosters, make the provisional rosters larger, and tiered.  Each country chooses 3 players for each position, and brings only the first guy on the depth chart.  The teams also grab a couple of utility guys, the same way a normal MLB squad would.  Derek Jeter won't have to worry about missing valuable ST time sitting on team-USA's bench.  And if there are a rash of injuries, a utility player won't have to start a semi-final game out of position at 1B, you just call up the next starter, who has been hitting everyday in the Cactus or Grapefruit league.

Sports Coverage

Was just reading an article that finished with the following stats, that really amaze me about the interest level in Boston versus the rest of the country in Baseball.  Go Sox.

	ARTICLES	GALLERIES	VIDEO	COVERS
AL East Division	7781	190	26	0
MLB	19179	368	1000	598
Boston Red Sox	2881	86	1000	31
Seattle Mariners	562	9	1000	9
AL West Division	3879	67	16	0

Celebrating a Win

It's been a while since I've had time to write, but this got me going.  I'm upset, but I'm also conflicted.  Aren't we supposed to celebrate excellence.  If we strive for it, put everything we've got into it, and achieve it, aren't we allowed to let loose, to acknowledge our accomplishment and to reap the reward of indulgence that we have neglected in order to reach our goals?  The Canadian Ladies Hockey team thought so, but the AP disagreed, and I don't understand the concern.  On the other hand, I also felt a little troubled by the photos and stories.  Why do I believe in and agree with what they did on a rational level, and still have a pit of doubt in my stomach when I read about it?

Worst. Boat. For Learning. Sailing. Ever!

Over at Proper Course, they're having a competition for the worst sailing innovation ever.  I'd like to humbly submit the Optimist dinghy, which is too small for anyone but midgets and young kids, and too complex for all but expert sailors.  Indeed, while this boat is used the world over for young sailors, it has a myriad of issues from a unique and overly complex sail to easy sinkability.  Why no one has created a simpler, better version is beyond me.

The problems with the Opti begin with it's flotation design.  The airbags are not integral to the boat and must be checked regularly for inflation or they can slip out.  Also, they don't keep water from filling the boat when it capsizes, resulting in lots and lots of bailing or pumping.  The centerboard and rudder are also problematic, as the rudder is too large, encouraging sculling, and the centerboard has a tendency to catch the boom or bridle during gybes, when raised for downwind sailing.

However, it is the sail and spars which are truly problematic, beginning with their attachment to the boat.  The mast sits in a cup after passing through partners, and if not tied down, will wreck the partners in a capsize recovery.  This tie-down is one of at least three lines on the sail which is referred to a "preventer".  Indeed, each optimist sail has about 20 control lines: vang, outhaul, tie-down, sheet, luff preventer, snotter (sprit control), bridle and who knows how many sail ties.  There are strict rules governing most of these lines, including the tightness of the sail ties, and the lengths of the bridle, preventer and others.  Also, having three spars create a sail with 4 corners and 4 sides.  If you have a hard time teaching people to remember clue and leech, try getting 10 year-olds to recall which corners are named head and peak and that there's also a side called the head.

This leads me to the most confusing thing about the Optimist, that there is no luff tensioner.  In light breeze, the luff preventer keeps scallops in the sail by lifting the boom at the gooseneck, but in breeze, the vang (which has no purchase system and is so close to the mast that it provides little leverage) is responsible for tightening both the leech and the luff.  In the end, it is sprit (and snotter) tension which is most important for depowering the sail, but even then, you do so by slacking it, effectively decreasing the wind angle of the trailing chunk of cloth.  This is counter-intuitive for most instructors, let alone tiny sailors, who have been told daily to put all their might each day into tensioning their snotters to reduce those ugly head-to-clue wrinkles.

The Opti's principal advantages are that it's easily transportable (lightweight with short spars) the right size for one sailor, and has a flat (less dangerous) bow.  But even these can also be considered disadvantages.  The flat bow means the boat plows under waves constantly, and goes slow, meaning kids quickly get bored with the boat.  It only comfortably fits one kid, and isn't comfortable for anyone weighing more than 120 lbs.  Furthermore, the lightest boats are exceedingly fragile.

One boat which nearly succeeded in solving the opti's problems was a the rotomolded Open Bic.  It's light, cheap, self-bailing and simple.  The main problems here are a pointy bow (the better to do damage with) and a large sail.  They've partially addressed the latter with an optional 3.8 square meter sail, but it's not catching on yet.  (Disclaimer disclaimer:  I have no connections or connections to connections of Bic or the Open Bic but I did once own a Bic pen.)

MLB Defensive Metrics

Most advanced defensive metrics for baseball have involved dividing the field into zones (see image at right)

However, this creates an arbitrary distinction between which balls are "peers" (within the same zone) of others.  Colin Wyers at Baseball Prospectus suggests a system where the angle from -45 - 45 is used to measure which position takes on responsibility for a ball, but this can really only be used for ground balls.

Still, I posit that even with the new camera tracking system for every play which is being installed around the league, that this is the foundation for the best ground ball measurement system in baseball.  The only additions which should be made are the speed of the ball and the general defensive positioning so that accurate expected outcomes can be calculated.

For air-outs (fly balls and liners) the new system should be able to determine two things that will give us perfect feedback on defensive prowess.  First, it will determine the distance from the nearest fielders where the ball landed or was caught, and second, it will determine the amount of time in the air.  For all but a few liners that go "through" an infielder, or carom from one player to another, this should allow accurate expected versus actual metrics to be calculated.

The new iSlate

Oh wait, that's what it should have been called.  I was wrong with just about every prediction, and that makes me sad; not because I don't like being wrong, but because the new tablet is underwhelming at best.  Starting with the keynote itself, I only really enjoyed the part where Jobs tried to squeeze the product between laptops and smart phones.  I disagree with him that very many things will be better on the iPad than on a laptop.  Reading books is about the only one, along with an incredibly long battery life.  And even here, it's not better than the Kindle.

There are so many things that the iPad fails to do, including multi-tasking, readability in sunlight, Adobe Flash on the internet, and.. uh.. oh yeah, video conferencing or taking pictures (there's no effing camera).  iPad cannot run any of the iLife apps, like Garage Band, iDVD, etc.  The screen doesn't have proximity sensors (like many drawing tablets) nor does it provide non-visual feedback to typing or other touch screen actions.  Lastly, the bezel around the screen is huge, making the device very large for the screen size.

There are a couple things that I expect the iPad to change over the next couple of years.  Textbooks, especially those with color photos and graphs could be much more legible on the iPad.  And over time, the iPad could make updated and interactive textbooks far more powerful than their paper brethren.  Print subscriptions also promise to be a great way to get the NYTimes or Sports Illustrated on the go.  Gaming will also presumably be good, although a touch-feel screen would make it even better.

I hope that apple will aggressively update and improve the iPad, as they have with their other hardware.  I'd like to see that Pixel Qi screen, as well as one with physical touch feedback and proximity sensors.  A camera or two would be great, as would touch "buttons" along the bezel or on the case itself.

Predictions for Steve Job's announcements tomorrow.

What follows is complete speculation:
I expect Mac to announce the much rumored "iSlate" tablet tomorrow.  It'll have an amazing, battery-saving, color e-paper 10.1 inch Pixel Qi touch screen, and front camera for video conferencing. But the key is how it will fit into the existing Apple portable lineup. The tablet will run a much more windowed version of the iPhone OS, and will have access to some cloud-based iLife apps and of course 3rd party apps through the app store.  It'll also be the preferred product for reading books, and handling magazine and news subscriptions, or for video-conferencing or streaming TV and movies over Wi-Fi.  The touch screen may not be dynamic (a la the BB Storm) -- that and proximity sensitivity will come in a 2011 update when technology allows.  Price-wise, it'll start at over $1,000, but that will come down after the first couple of months (or with a 3G subscription). Also, there is a 7.5-inch version due out this summer.  Once the tablet settles in, it's life expectancy will be 2-3 years, slightly more than the iPhone.

However, to create product differentiation (and because of dissatisfaction over Arrandale's graphics integration), they'll also announce the desktop-replacement MacBook Extreme, which would draw from the Quad-Core Mobile Clarksfield Intel i7's. This is a large 18-inch notebook which go's along with new 14- and 16-inch MBPros powered by recently released Arrandale dual core chips. They'll also announce additional sizes of the new LED screens, and add a more powerful processor to the Mac Pro lineup.  We may also get a Beatles on iTunes announcement, and cloud-based iLife should come either tomorrow or later this year.  I'd suggest that rummored iPhone announcements (including a new OS, a summer hardware update, and expansion of carriers) are scheduled for March or April, soon after my predicted tablet launch date.

On Bailouts

I realize I'm like a year and a half late with this, and I think the idea I'm presenting is stolen from someone else -- probably someone who had evidence to back it up -- but I still can't help writing about this.

If the money given to bail out big banks last year, had instead been given to the people who owed the banks money, it would have solved more issues.  Whether it's moral or not or whether it might encourage bad economic behavior at a lower level in the future is still up for debate, but there's little doubt in my mind that that money could have been used to both minimize foreclosures (i.e. homelessness), and in turn to keep the big banks chugging along.


One argument could be made that the money was a bargaining chip for bank regulation, but honestly, did the regulation do much? and even if it did, the government has the right to regulate things, that's what we elect them for.


Just think, if we had instead bailed out all the people whose first homes under x feet per person were being foreclosed upon, wouldn't that simply be subsidization of affordable housing, of which there's a chronic shortage in this country anyway?  No it wouldn't be fair to those who had worked hard to afford their homes, but neither was bailing out millionaires who pay executives huge sums to make dumb decisions.  And I'd suggest that this kind of bailout is less likely to modify future spending behavior than the bank bailout that we did see, based purely on the expectations of rationalism in consumers vs. corporations.

Furthermore, a bailout of many foreclosures might have staved off the economic and real-estate tailspin that the economy is in now.  Perhaps it could have cushioned the blow for homeless shelters, tax revenues, those attempting to sell their houses, and other businesses (architecture) that rely on real-estate development, ownership and value maintenance.

Crazy Costs for America's Cup

Probably don't bother reading this article, but there are two points to take away.  First: somehow they've come up with a laser that can measure wind speed and direction 1km away, either along the ground/water or into the air.  Second: this is one small purchase that the BMW/Oracle America's cup team made, and it cost them nearly $150k.

the device:

Wallet Protection

Want to have you're wallet returned if you lose it?  Keep a baby picture in it.

Silly Cat

Coakley Loses

Martha once came to my house, and it was clear she didn't know why she was there, and didn't think it was a big enough deal to be wasting her time.  I still would have voted for her in this election due to the national implications, but I didn't have a vote, and in some ways, I'm glad Brown won, because it taught her a lesson.

Now, Democrats still hold a sizable majority in both houses, and can still push smaller legislation through.  They may even be able to convince Brown, a fairly liberal Republican, to back some of their policies, as he knows he'll be up for re-election in 2012, and may well run against one of the younger Kennedy kids, twins Matt and Joe III, born in 1980.   Joe is at Harvard Law, and although there are probably some skeletons in his closet, G. W. Bush has shown that you can push through those if you're willing to face them.

As for what will happen at the midterm elections this Fall, I can't really say, but I'd bet that the Dem's lose more of their majorities, and they'll probably wish they had worked on economics-based reforms rather than (much needed) health care for two years.  I can see even John Kerry's seat being a real race in Massachusetts if he takes the votes for granted.

Greater Awareness/Emotional Impact of Hatian Crisis?

I was talking the other day with some friends, and we were trying to decide why the coverage and emotional impact of the quake in Haiti seemed so much greater than that of the Tsunami which devastated Indonesia in 2005 or even Katrina.  Was it that our own current economic recession was allowing greater empathy?  Was the disaster somehow more real because of the constant threat of earthquake in CA?  Or did the proximity of the disaster allow us to be more involved in sending aid, getting news, and knowing people with friends or relatives affected?  Did Katrina, and the suffering there due to slow reactions and sparse media coverage kick us into action this time around?

In addition to all these likelihoods, we realized that the nature of an earthquake leaves more survivors in need of rescue than almost any other disaster.  The waters from a hurricane or tsunami recede (although not so much with Katrina), taking much of the wreckage and many bodies with them, but an earthquake (like a bombing) creates rubble, disorganization and chaos where "orderly" streets and buildings once stood.  There is just more need for timely rescue, even days after the disaster, and more evidence of the power of the disaster, both in terms of destroyed buildings and human loss.

Marginal Revolution and the Washington Post have also commented on the graphic nature of the Haitian disaster portrayal, which likely breeds both sympathy and a subconscious level of superiority.  I do applaud the realistic portrayal though, and wish it would be repeated in places like Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

Implications of a Multi-hull America's Cup

When I originally heard that the competitors in this winter's America's Cup would be a tri-maran and a catamaran, I didn't realize how many changes this would necessitate.  Things like larger home bases (made possible because only two teams are competing) and slower turns due to the multi-hulls made sense.

But get this; the race course is a full 50 times bigger.  It's 450 square miles rather than nine.  This is going to have huge implications for spectators, both at the site, and on video.  Aerial coverage will be much more important, and speeds will be much higher, making for a more exciting race.  On the racing side, Alinghi has bought a couple of tiny little planes to measure wind speed at heights above those reached by traditional wind boats, which also can't cover as much ground.

Man, 50 times bigger, which assumably means 10-50 times faster.  It's going to be a totally different kind of sailing than we're used to.

Nearly Impossible Ballet

I like Flash Mobs