In a future letter to his young sons, Dan Cooney writes about attending reunions.  Musta been a good one:
http://www.danstwothings.com/attend-reunions/

Tips for getting on a fun boat for beer-can sailboat races

If you think you know what you're doing:

• Try not to act like it: do your job well, and figure out how you can make the team better from whatever position you're put in
• Be patient; your time will come.  If it doesn't, then you're on the wrong boat... or you're not as good as you thought
• Show how smart you are during debrief over beers, not by grabbing the kite sheet out of the trimmer's hands during a set
• Try learning a new position, or all of the positions on the boat.  This can only help the team, and help your sailing career as well.

If you don't know what you're doing:

• First you've got to find a boat.  Sailors like booze.  Go to bars.  Find the preppiest and/or dirtiest people, and ask them if they know any sailors who need crew on (insert local race day-of-week here) nights.  This works best in places near water, and not so well in like, High Desert, CA.
• Once you're on a boat, it's one of those things where you might show up twice as "rail meat" or "moveable ballast", then the third time the captain says, "well Kate, Joe's not here so tonight you're doing Joe's job."  Hilarity ensues... but that's how you learn.
• The actual opportunity to race will come down to...

1. team need: some weeks they might have all the regulars, and the new guy is out of luck
2. reliability: be honest about your availability and don't flake once you commit; no one wants to play soccer or football with only 10 on the field and if you do have to bail last minute, let everyone know, not just your poor messenger/friend
3. enthusiasm: for learning and fun; all types of teams need both, and you might be just the guy to kick the group into gear

• Don't forget this is a team, just like a soccer team, or a brick-laying team or a project team.  The goal is to work together and strive to do the best you can.  Once you start to get better, see first section above.

Sentences I love:

Phil Robertson (Phil Alexander Robertson) created the Duck Commander duck call in 1972 and incorporated the Duck Commander Company in 1973.^[4][5] He played college football at Louisiana Tech University and was offered a contract by the Washington Redskins after his junior year. He turned it down and quit football because it interfered with duck season.

Can't get over that he gave up football for duck season.  I guess he's got a lot fewer concussions now... and a lot more money.  More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Dynasty

An assembly of excellent Tectonic LA architecture

http://archidose.blogspot.com/2013/01/todays-archidose-646.html

Asking the Tough Questions

ESPN, always digging deep, and figuring what people want to know... like what will the results of all 16 Saints' games be:

You know, as opposed to the other 31 teams in the NFL, for whom telling the future is either too difficult, or un-interesting.

Inattentional Deafness

Here's the lead:

One of the most famous experiments in cognitive psychology (pdf) involved a person in a gorilla suit walking through a basketball game between two teams of players, one dressed in white, the other in black. Told to count passes between the players in white, most people who watched a video of this scene completely failed to notice the gorilla.

more at: http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2012/07/introducing-inattentional-deafness.html 

Politics and the Weather

another repost, paraphrasing here:

Political and cultural beliefs have more to do with perceptions of recent temperature than any other factor:

Individualists, who often object to environmental regulations as an infringement on their freedoms, tended to think the temperatures hadn’t gone up in their area, regardless of whether they had. Strong egalitarians, in contrast, tended to believe the temperatures had gone up.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/07/ideology-clouds-how-we-perceive-the-temperatures/

Why Italy (and Greece and Spain) are in debt, not to mention why other westerners have been calling them (us?) lazy for 200 years:

Today, Sicily’s regional government has 1,800 employees — more than the British Cabinet Office — and the island employs 26,000 auxiliary forest rangers; in the vast forestlands of British Columbia, there are fewer than 1,500. 

Out of a population of five million people in Sicily, the state directly or indirectly employs more than 100,000 of them and pays pensions to many more. It changed its pension system eight years after the rest of Italy. (One retired politician recently won a case to keep an annual pension of 480,000 euros, about $584,000.)

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/sicily-fact-of-the-day.html

Olympic Sailing NOT on TV

why have sports that won't be televised at all???  Learn from the America's cup here folks:

Team racing, match racing, catamarans, skiffs, windsurfing, and kiting would be a lot of fun to have on TV.  Everything else is boring to watch, so find a different way to celebrate the sport internationally. That said, good luck to all my friends over in England competing.

Is it just preference?

Krugman may wax nostalgic about a childhood spent in the suburbs where plumbers and middle managers lived side by side. But I doubt that many of his fervent fans would really want to live there. If so, they might try Texas.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-19/how-the-elites-built-america-s-economic-wall.html 

From the department of unintended consequences:

“They also receive free dental and medical services during their imprisonment. “Combined with the relative safety of their work in prison compared to the dangerous work at sea, Australian imprisonment is very desirable.”

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/marginalrevolution/hCQh/~3/XyRhDWuoJFE/immigration-to-australian-jail.html 

is this coming east?

That is all

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