HOUSING
The median price of a new home plunged in September by the largest amount in more than 35 years, even as the pace of sales rebounded for a second month.
This is only in the US unfortunately.
WHY WE HATE THE ST. LOUIS CARDINALS
The St. Louis Cardinals reached the World Series thanks to the worst hitter in the National League. Yadier Molina, whose .216 batting average was dead last among NL regulars, launched a tie-breaking blast to beat the Mets in Game 7 of the NLCS, joining Bucky Dent and Francisco Cabrera as the unlikeliest of October heroes. How fitting that such a lowly player should lead these Cardinals to victory. With a regular-season record of 83 and 78, St. Louis is the second-worst World Series participant in history. Now, after their 5-0 victory over Detroit in Tuesday night's Game 3, they're two wins away from becoming baseball's weakest World Champion ever.
Americans love an underdog, right? Not this time. On message boards and in the newspapers, the sentiment about the Cards' NLCS victory ranged from eye-rolling disdain to outright disgust. In one chat room I frequent, somebody posted "Tigers in 4" before Molina had finished circling the bases. "Wow, is the National League pathetic that it could produce this team as its representative," cringed blogger Scott Long at the Baseball Toaster. USA Today's World Series handicappers were equally scornful, suggesting that the Tigers' biggest challenge against the Cardinals would be "keeping a straight face."
Improbable championship runs inspire delight in other sports—think March Madness—but not in baseball. That's partly because upsets are so at odds with the game's tradition. In its first 70 or so years, before the advent of divisional play, baseball produced only two real postseason shockers: the New York Giants' sweep of the invincible Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series, and the Chicago White Sox's upending of the 1906 Chicago Cubs, whose .763 winning percentage remains the best of all-time. In nearly every other year, the series paired two pretty evenly matched teams, and since each boasted the best record in its league, none could be characterized as a huge underdog. Flukes simply weren't possible, and a championship won on the field was inherently credible.
Today, the postseason tournament consists of eight teams of varying degrees of quality. Nondescript ballclubs crash the bracket every season, and once inside they're apt to make trouble. At least one of the wild card teams has made the World Series five years running. The Cardinals are a division winner, but their presence in the World Series is still a fluke.
St. Louis' surprising run seems particularly galling now because this era of playoff randomness coincides with the height of baseball's statistical age. While random chance governs the sport from game to game, the opposite is true on a season-long level. The gradual accretion of outcomes—pitch after pitch, at-bat after at-bat, game after game—yields a deep body of evidence about which teams and players are the best. By the end of the season, we know not only who's more valuable, but by how much. And Yadier Molina isn't valuable.
Stat-centric analysis holds such sway over fans and sportswriters that when it clashes with the outcomes on the field, we tend to sneer at the outcomes. Next to the rich trove of data we've acquired throughout the season, a seven-game series seems like a ridiculously crude instrument for determining the best team. The Cardinals' October accomplishments, however stirring, don't seem as believable as those recorded by better teams over the long haul. I'm a huge Cardinals fan, and I still can't convince myself that they're the best team in baseball.
But there's another way to look at this. We could view the Cards as a bunch of guys who made themselves better than their numerical profiles—who surpassed their limitations when it mattered most. That's how we viewed George Mason last spring, when it beat a vastly superior UConn team to make the Final Four. All but the sourest fans embraced those upstarts.
The "underdog" storyline may fly in the face of baseball tradition, and it may violate every principle of sabermetrics. But ballplayers are people, not Strat-O-Matic cards. They have the capacity to make adjustments, and—even if only for a few games—raise their level of play. The results might not be reproducible, nor sustainable over the long haul. But this isn't the long haul. This is October, the month when random chance beats certainty into submission.
Besides, don't we watch sports in the hope of seeing something unexpected? The St. Louis Cardinals may not be the best team in baseball, but if they can overcome their own foibles and beat the Tigers two more times, they will be the most improbable World Champions of all time. If you can't find something to celebrate in that—well, there's always Strat-O-Matic.
THE PHYSICS OF BASEBALL'S MOST POPULAR ILLEGAL PITCHES
Detroit's Kenny Rogers may not have been playing by the rules when he pitched his team to victory in Game 2 of the World Series on Sunday. Television footage showed some goopy black stuff smeared on Rogers' palm as he started the game. (Video footage shows similar stuff on his hand during his previous postseason starts.) Questioned later, Rogers said the stuff was "a big clump of dirt" that he used to get a better grip. How might the goop have given him an edge?
It depends on the goop. To be effective, a hurler has to vary the speed and movement of his pitches. He can do this legally by changing his grip on the ball and the spin he creates when he throws it. A pitcher who's willing to break the rules can create other effects by doctoring the surface of the ball. There are three basic techniques: He can scuff the ball, moisten it, or make it sticky.
To scuff a ball, the pitcher marks one side with whatever's handy. (Some pitchers rub the ball against the ground or grate it on a sharpened belt buckle. Joe Niekro was caught with an emery board and a square of sandpaper stuck to his finger.) The pitcher then has to throw the ball in such a way that the scuffed side stays in one place as the ball travels toward the plate. That creates unusual turbulence and can force it to swerve in one direction. (If the scuffed side spins, its effect on the air gets spread out and won't do much at all.) It's possible that Rogers used the goop on his hand to scuff up or alter the surface of the ball, but engineers who study pitching say it would take a lot of schmutz to get a useful effect. Cheaters who don't scuff can throw the "spitter" instead. By lubricating the ball—with saliva, Vaseline, hair grease, or something else—the pitcher can throw a pitch that slides off his fingers without generating too much backspin. A greased-up pitch behaves kind of like a split-fingered fastball—it drops to the ground faster than a typical pitch. If Rogers had wet, slippery mud or clay on his hand, he might have been moistening up his pitches.
One Cardinals player suspected that Rogers had a sticky substance called pine tar on his hand. What advantage would sticky fingers provide? If a pitcher makes the ball sticky—or if he makes his fingers sticky—he might be able to get a tighter grip and throw the ball with more spin. A fastball with more backspin would stay up longer; a curveball with more spin would have a larger break.
Many people in baseball view doctoring with pine tar as a minor offense, at least compared with throwing scuffed balls and spitters. In 1988, the Dodgers' Jay Howell was ejected from a playoff game against the Mets for having pine tar in his glove. "I don't feel like I did anything wrong," said Howell. "If I'd scuffed, that's different." The Mets' team captain agreed: "I don't think a pitcher using pine tar is cheating … he's just trying to get a better grip. It's ridiculous."
Last year, Rogers' teammate Todd Jones defended the use of pine tar in a column for the Sporting News. "Pine tar is no big deal to players," Jones wrote. "Everybody uses pine tar. … It's almost a basic part of the game. Sandpaper and Vaseline, however, are looked at as cheating." (Jones had a neat explanation for the goop on Rogers' hand: "It could have been chocolate cake.")
Bonus Explainer: Some baseball researchers argue that a sticky ball could actually help the hitters. When a sticky ball makes contact with the top part of the bat, it's less likely to glance off as a foul ball. This allows the hitter to swing under the ball a bit and put backspin on it as he makes contact. The backspin could, in turn, make the ball travel farther off the bat.
BORAT TRICKED ME!
Banning Vegemite:
Australians living in the United States are spooked because of rumors of a ban on Vegemite. Recent media reports from Down Under have claimed that U.S. customs officials have started searching for the spread. The U.S. government denies that the Aussie delicacy will be banned. What's in Vegemite, anyway?
A lot of yeast. Vegemite is a brown, salty paste made of leftover brewers' yeast mixed with vegetables and spices. Australians and New Zealanders often spread it on toast with butter. The taste is strong and bitter, so the spread, which has a consistency similar to margarine, is used very lightly. The rumors about a possible Vegemite ban stem from the spread's high concentration of folate, a water-soluble B vitamin. Folate is a vital nutrient that, among other things, helps form red blood cells and prevents neural tube defects in fetuses. Artificial folate, also known as folic acid, is highly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, though, and only approved for use in a few foods (such as breakfast cereals). But since Vegemite's folate is naturally occurring—brewers' yeast contains several B vitamins—it is not banned in America. (Nutritionists typically use "folate" when referring to the naturally occurring vitamin and "folic acid" for the synthetic version.)
The FDA has approved adding folic acid to select foods as a way to ensure that consumers, particularly pregnant women, get enough of the vitamin. If artificial folate were more prevalent, though, it's possible that people could ingest too much. The recommended daily allowance of folic acid from synthetic foods is 0.4 milligram per day for people older than 19. (For comparison's sake, a "single serving" of Vegemite has 0.1 milligram of folate.) The "tolerable upper limit," or the maximum amount of folic acid a person should eat in a day, is 1 milligram.
Why is the FDA wary of folate? Because little research has been done into the consequences of ingesting large quantities of the stuff. Nutritionists say that the biggest concern is that excessive folate consumption could mask a dangerous vitamin B-12 deficiency, particularly in the elderly. A 2005 study suggested that elderly people who ingested high amounts of folic acid or folate saw their mental capabilities decline more rapidly than seniors who did not take folate or folic acid supplements.
Traveling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said,
Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Cant you hear, cant you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.
Buying bread from a man in brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, do you speak-a my language?
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,
I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Cant you hear, cant you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.
Lying in a den in bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?
And he said,
Oh! do you come from a land down under?
The median price of a new home plunged in September by the largest amount in more than 35 years, even as the pace of sales rebounded for a second month.
This is only in the US unfortunately.
WHY WE HATE THE ST. LOUIS CARDINALS
The St. Louis Cardinals reached the World Series thanks to the worst hitter in the National League. Yadier Molina, whose .216 batting average was dead last among NL regulars, launched a tie-breaking blast to beat the Mets in Game 7 of the NLCS, joining Bucky Dent and Francisco Cabrera as the unlikeliest of October heroes. How fitting that such a lowly player should lead these Cardinals to victory. With a regular-season record of 83 and 78, St. Louis is the second-worst World Series participant in history. Now, after their 5-0 victory over Detroit in Tuesday night's Game 3, they're two wins away from becoming baseball's weakest World Champion ever.
Americans love an underdog, right? Not this time. On message boards and in the newspapers, the sentiment about the Cards' NLCS victory ranged from eye-rolling disdain to outright disgust. In one chat room I frequent, somebody posted "Tigers in 4" before Molina had finished circling the bases. "Wow, is the National League pathetic that it could produce this team as its representative," cringed blogger Scott Long at the Baseball Toaster. USA Today's World Series handicappers were equally scornful, suggesting that the Tigers' biggest challenge against the Cardinals would be "keeping a straight face."
Improbable championship runs inspire delight in other sports—think March Madness—but not in baseball. That's partly because upsets are so at odds with the game's tradition. In its first 70 or so years, before the advent of divisional play, baseball produced only two real postseason shockers: the New York Giants' sweep of the invincible Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series, and the Chicago White Sox's upending of the 1906 Chicago Cubs, whose .763 winning percentage remains the best of all-time. In nearly every other year, the series paired two pretty evenly matched teams, and since each boasted the best record in its league, none could be characterized as a huge underdog. Flukes simply weren't possible, and a championship won on the field was inherently credible.
Today, the postseason tournament consists of eight teams of varying degrees of quality. Nondescript ballclubs crash the bracket every season, and once inside they're apt to make trouble. At least one of the wild card teams has made the World Series five years running. The Cardinals are a division winner, but their presence in the World Series is still a fluke.
St. Louis' surprising run seems particularly galling now because this era of playoff randomness coincides with the height of baseball's statistical age. While random chance governs the sport from game to game, the opposite is true on a season-long level. The gradual accretion of outcomes—pitch after pitch, at-bat after at-bat, game after game—yields a deep body of evidence about which teams and players are the best. By the end of the season, we know not only who's more valuable, but by how much. And Yadier Molina isn't valuable.
Stat-centric analysis holds such sway over fans and sportswriters that when it clashes with the outcomes on the field, we tend to sneer at the outcomes. Next to the rich trove of data we've acquired throughout the season, a seven-game series seems like a ridiculously crude instrument for determining the best team. The Cardinals' October accomplishments, however stirring, don't seem as believable as those recorded by better teams over the long haul. I'm a huge Cardinals fan, and I still can't convince myself that they're the best team in baseball.
But there's another way to look at this. We could view the Cards as a bunch of guys who made themselves better than their numerical profiles—who surpassed their limitations when it mattered most. That's how we viewed George Mason last spring, when it beat a vastly superior UConn team to make the Final Four. All but the sourest fans embraced those upstarts.
The "underdog" storyline may fly in the face of baseball tradition, and it may violate every principle of sabermetrics. But ballplayers are people, not Strat-O-Matic cards. They have the capacity to make adjustments, and—even if only for a few games—raise their level of play. The results might not be reproducible, nor sustainable over the long haul. But this isn't the long haul. This is October, the month when random chance beats certainty into submission.
Besides, don't we watch sports in the hope of seeing something unexpected? The St. Louis Cardinals may not be the best team in baseball, but if they can overcome their own foibles and beat the Tigers two more times, they will be the most improbable World Champions of all time. If you can't find something to celebrate in that—well, there's always Strat-O-Matic.
THE PHYSICS OF BASEBALL'S MOST POPULAR ILLEGAL PITCHES
Detroit's Kenny Rogers may not have been playing by the rules when he pitched his team to victory in Game 2 of the World Series on Sunday. Television footage showed some goopy black stuff smeared on Rogers' palm as he started the game. (Video footage shows similar stuff on his hand during his previous postseason starts.) Questioned later, Rogers said the stuff was "a big clump of dirt" that he used to get a better grip. How might the goop have given him an edge?
It depends on the goop. To be effective, a hurler has to vary the speed and movement of his pitches. He can do this legally by changing his grip on the ball and the spin he creates when he throws it. A pitcher who's willing to break the rules can create other effects by doctoring the surface of the ball. There are three basic techniques: He can scuff the ball, moisten it, or make it sticky.
To scuff a ball, the pitcher marks one side with whatever's handy. (Some pitchers rub the ball against the ground or grate it on a sharpened belt buckle. Joe Niekro was caught with an emery board and a square of sandpaper stuck to his finger.) The pitcher then has to throw the ball in such a way that the scuffed side stays in one place as the ball travels toward the plate. That creates unusual turbulence and can force it to swerve in one direction. (If the scuffed side spins, its effect on the air gets spread out and won't do much at all.) It's possible that Rogers used the goop on his hand to scuff up or alter the surface of the ball, but engineers who study pitching say it would take a lot of schmutz to get a useful effect. Cheaters who don't scuff can throw the "spitter" instead. By lubricating the ball—with saliva, Vaseline, hair grease, or something else—the pitcher can throw a pitch that slides off his fingers without generating too much backspin. A greased-up pitch behaves kind of like a split-fingered fastball—it drops to the ground faster than a typical pitch. If Rogers had wet, slippery mud or clay on his hand, he might have been moistening up his pitches.
One Cardinals player suspected that Rogers had a sticky substance called pine tar on his hand. What advantage would sticky fingers provide? If a pitcher makes the ball sticky—or if he makes his fingers sticky—he might be able to get a tighter grip and throw the ball with more spin. A fastball with more backspin would stay up longer; a curveball with more spin would have a larger break.
Many people in baseball view doctoring with pine tar as a minor offense, at least compared with throwing scuffed balls and spitters. In 1988, the Dodgers' Jay Howell was ejected from a playoff game against the Mets for having pine tar in his glove. "I don't feel like I did anything wrong," said Howell. "If I'd scuffed, that's different." The Mets' team captain agreed: "I don't think a pitcher using pine tar is cheating … he's just trying to get a better grip. It's ridiculous."
Last year, Rogers' teammate Todd Jones defended the use of pine tar in a column for the Sporting News. "Pine tar is no big deal to players," Jones wrote. "Everybody uses pine tar. … It's almost a basic part of the game. Sandpaper and Vaseline, however, are looked at as cheating." (Jones had a neat explanation for the goop on Rogers' hand: "It could have been chocolate cake.")
Bonus Explainer: Some baseball researchers argue that a sticky ball could actually help the hitters. When a sticky ball makes contact with the top part of the bat, it's less likely to glance off as a foul ball. This allows the hitter to swing under the ball a bit and put backspin on it as he makes contact. The backspin could, in turn, make the ball travel farther off the bat.
BORAT TRICKED ME!
Banning Vegemite:
Australians living in the United States are spooked because of rumors of a ban on Vegemite. Recent media reports from Down Under have claimed that U.S. customs officials have started searching for the spread. The U.S. government denies that the Aussie delicacy will be banned. What's in Vegemite, anyway?
A lot of yeast. Vegemite is a brown, salty paste made of leftover brewers' yeast mixed with vegetables and spices. Australians and New Zealanders often spread it on toast with butter. The taste is strong and bitter, so the spread, which has a consistency similar to margarine, is used very lightly. The rumors about a possible Vegemite ban stem from the spread's high concentration of folate, a water-soluble B vitamin. Folate is a vital nutrient that, among other things, helps form red blood cells and prevents neural tube defects in fetuses. Artificial folate, also known as folic acid, is highly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, though, and only approved for use in a few foods (such as breakfast cereals). But since Vegemite's folate is naturally occurring—brewers' yeast contains several B vitamins—it is not banned in America. (Nutritionists typically use "folate" when referring to the naturally occurring vitamin and "folic acid" for the synthetic version.)
The FDA has approved adding folic acid to select foods as a way to ensure that consumers, particularly pregnant women, get enough of the vitamin. If artificial folate were more prevalent, though, it's possible that people could ingest too much. The recommended daily allowance of folic acid from synthetic foods is 0.4 milligram per day for people older than 19. (For comparison's sake, a "single serving" of Vegemite has 0.1 milligram of folate.) The "tolerable upper limit," or the maximum amount of folic acid a person should eat in a day, is 1 milligram.
Why is the FDA wary of folate? Because little research has been done into the consequences of ingesting large quantities of the stuff. Nutritionists say that the biggest concern is that excessive folate consumption could mask a dangerous vitamin B-12 deficiency, particularly in the elderly. A 2005 study suggested that elderly people who ingested high amounts of folic acid or folate saw their mental capabilities decline more rapidly than seniors who did not take folate or folic acid supplements.
Traveling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said,
Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Cant you hear, cant you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.
Buying bread from a man in brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, do you speak-a my language?
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,
I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Cant you hear, cant you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover.
Lying in a den in bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty?
And he said,
Oh! do you come from a land down under?
posted by D @ 8:52 AM
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