60 thoughts on “May 18, 2012: The Highlight of 2012”

  1. I get paid today, the lady friend is out of town for the weekend, and there's a bunch of big games on this weekend, so I'm thinking of placing up to 3 bets this weekend:

    Bayern (1.8:1) over Chelsea in the CL Final
    West Ham (2:1) over Blackpool in the Championship playoff
    Leinster (1.28:1) over Ulster in the Heineken Cup Final

          1. I would put money on Drogba to get a goal in this game, but with out Terry and Ramieres (who has been Chelsea's best player under diMatteo), I don't think they will win.

            1. Don't forget that Bayern lost three key players as well: left-back David Alaba, center-half Holger Badstuber, and mid-fielder Luiz Gustavo. Also Schweinsteiger has a bad ankle.

              I may post a Why Chelsea/Why Bayern Munich will win the CL finale for tomorrow morning. Depends if I get my act together.

              1. The missing players on both sides are huge. I think without Ramieres, Chelsea's midfield will be severely weakened, and Robben will be able to be more effective. And without Terry in the middle, Mario Gomez could cause problems.

                This is the bet I've been considering skipping the most. On paper, I see too many negatives for Chelsea. But with everything they've done to even get to the Final says that I shouldn't be so dismissive.

    2. I thought I was doing this wrong, so I'm glad I double checked. In the Czech system, when it says for example West Ham (2.00), it doesn't mean 2:1, it means multiply your bet by 2 and that's what you get back. So a bet of 100Kc get you 200Kc back, +100Kc. So translated, West Ham (2.00) = West Ham (+100) and != (2:1). So those odds aren't as attractive as I first thought. Hell, 1.28 is actually 128:100, or close to -400.

    3. Did you see the link on soccer match fixing I posted in the CoC yesterday? It was pretty fascinating and basically convinced me to never gamble on soccer unless I have the money to fix the match. This is not an entirely rational stance based solely on that article, but I'm not really a gambling man in the first place.

      1. It sure looked like the Arsenal game was fixed on the final day of the season.

        Fulop was criminal in goal for West Brom.

  2. I'm not even going to pretend to be modest about that one. I'm going to make another batch this weekend.

      1. I think that can be arranged. I am going to tweak it slightly, so it won't be 100% the same. But it will be close and still good.

  3. From Monday's WSJ List of What Pro Athletes Should Never Say or Do:

    25. Stop begging Hermes to make cleats.

  4. I'm hearing that Bono will make $1.5 billion on the Facebook IPO today, more than he has made in his entire music career.

    I think he found what he was looking for.

      1. that is a pretty cool graphic. it got pretty hairy around the turn of the century there.

    2. Here in Seattle the big Facebook IPO story was that the hedge-fund-manager/wannabe-developer looking to bring the NBA/NHL to Seattle stands to earn about as much money in the Facebook IPO as it would take to build a professional basketball/hockey arena.

  5. Here at the UMN, there are financial incentives to ride your bike to work. You get an RFID chip put on your wheel so that they can track whether or not you actually ride, with sensors located throughout highly trafficked locations throughout campus. This is the first year that it is actually fully operational but I was in the testing group for the previous two years. Anyway, there is a pretty good reporting function with the program that allows you to track how many miles you rode, calories burned (31,837), greenhouse gasses avoided (712), etc. This week I crossed the 1000 mile mark of miles I avoided driving in a car (solo) by riding my bike to work instead. That's on a commute that's slightly more than 6 miles one-way and not riding in cold/rainy weather.

    2. Seconding Zack, that is really cool. I look forward to using my car as little as possible while I'm home for the summer. Even trips to my sister and brother-in-law's I want to do by bike (about 45 miles). It's not like I'll have anything better to do.

    1. I just heard about Ford Frick's 10 commandments of umpiring the other day:

      1 Keep your eye on the ball.

      2 Keep all your personalities out of your work. Forget and forgive.

      3 Avoid sarcasm. Don't insist on the last word.

      4 Never charge a player and, above all, no pointing your finger or yelling.

      5 Hear only the things you should hear - be deaf to others.

      6 Keep your temper. A decision made in anger is never sound.

      7 Watch your language.

      8 Take pride in your work at all times. Remember, respect for an umpire is created off the field as well as on.

      9 Review your work. You will find, if you are honest, that 90% of the trouble is traceable to loafing.

      10 No matter what your opinion of another umpire, never make an adverse comment regarding him. To do so is despicable and ungentlemanly.

      Bob Davidson should have to write a report on these before he comes back. I especially like 3-7.

  7. Speaking of beer... Mankato now has a brewery. I was at an event there last night. Their standard beer wasn't anything special, but their dark was good enough. They just have the two.

        1. right up by Hiniker Pond, which the city Fathers wants ban alcohol (good luck with that)

          1. Yup.

            So can I take it you're in the Mankato area? Drop me an e-mail? Handle = mbnovaksju Service = yahoo.

  8. I'm putting this here so that I don't clog up music day.

    AMR, did you ever try to take the hard drive and hook it up as a slave on another PC? They also have relatively cheap IDE/SATA to USB adapters so that you could just hook it up that way to see if there's anything there. I know it was suggested, I just never saw if you'd done it.

    1. Anothing thing I'll note is that I actually rescued my computer using Ubuntu, and I had to do something (which I've unfortunately forgot) in order to access the stuff on my Windows partition. It didn't do it by default. So I'd maybe look into that?

      1. I used to have a computer running Debian, and I know I could never get it to work with reading the other partitions on my hard drive, so you're probably correct in why you think AMR isn't seeing his files.

        AMR, is it a desktop or a laptop? I know you said you didn't feel particularly comfy inside a computer, but if its a laptop it takes about two seconds to remove the HD and there's basically no chance of wrecking anything.

      2. I can't comment specifically on how it is now, but back in ye olden days you had to make sure there was an NTFS driver available and then mount the partitions to copy the data. I believe the NTFS 3g stuff has been merged into the kernel, so you can at least read the drive. I do not recall if Ubuntu automatically mounted it or not. I am pretty sure Fedora doesn't, so Ubuntu may not as well.

      3. In order to get to any files stored under the 'Documents and Settings' area in Windows from the outside (i.e. using the drive as a slave or external) you have to reset the permissions for those user folders and files. There's an article on that in the Windows KB. I'm planning to hook up with AMR tomorrow. We'll pull the drive, stick it into an external USB case I have and use my laptop to see if we can access the files. If we can get to them, we'll copy them over to a new external USB drive he got yesterday.

          1. Oh, you may definitely still be screwed. But there's reason to hope you are not.

        2. What kind of beer do you prefer, Mr. Twayn?
          Sounds like to good reason to break out some of my reserves, just want to know which to chill.

    1. And the Book Blog post about it. Short version: not enough data to determine if it's working. It seems it might be beneficial for some teams but harming others.

      1. Tangotiger (and MGL) can be very excitable. Dewan makes a post claiming that teams are shifting more and is just outraged (at least based on the frequency of all caps in his post) that there isn't more data. I guess I was just pretty happy to learn this little factoid so that I can pay attention to teams that are shifting a lot (or a little), for when they shift and how. Not all statistics have to be about winning and losing--some can be about how the game is played.

        TT also seems pretty gung-ho about using the bunt to thwart the shift, but I guess I don't see that as much of a solution. Maybe for marginal hitters, I guess, but some great lefty hitters often had the shift played against them (thinking Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, etc.) and they just played their game, didn't really worry about the shift, and put up great numbers. Just because the defense was positioned sub-optimally doesn't mean that the hitter's strategy wasn't already optimal.

        1. I would have to agree somewhat with TT. When I see the shift, my first thought is how well it works. The shift is done based on probability of where a hitter hits ground balls, so I want to know the probability of it working versus not working.

          I remember seeing the Blue Jays shift Lawrie into a fourth outfielder against Morneau while against Mauer, teams sometimes move the shortstop closer to second base. I think most would agree that what's being done for Morneau counts as a shift, but what about Mauer? What is a shift? So, I can understand the frustrating about not having the data. Dewan gave us half of the summarized data, which isn't enough for anything but "shifts happen".

          My understanding is that Carlos Pena bunts against the shift somewhat often. For a hitter like him, it seems that it could be useful to keep the defense normal. I doubt Thome could do it regularly though. I suppose if the shift affects you more than just having three fielders on one side, the bunt could be one way to fight back.

          1. Maybe that's your first thought, but it seems a little weird for TT to go all-caps about it. Dewan noted that some teams seem to be shifting a lot more. That point in and of itself is interesting to me and I think it's worth pointing out even without further analysis. If you read the comments on The Blog post, there are also some manager comments admitting that they are being more aggressive about using the shift. So while there are some technical points about how the data are collected, Dewan's conclusion seems reasonable enough. Sure, it invites further questions, but it doesn't exactly seem like Dewan's responsibility to provide that information--it might not even be clear to him that information on the success of the shift is robust enough to make any conclusions. Sometimes not saying anything is the best course of action.

            In terms of strategy from the hitters' perspective, if there's not enough data to show that the shifts are working, what evidence do the hitters have that shows they should change the approach that many of them have been using for years and years? I'm sure there are situations where a strategic bunt could make sense, but I'm also sure there are situations where, say, Joe Maddon would love to reduce a power hitter to at most a bunt single.

  10. I have a very short Gmail address, which I am thankful of. The problem with this is a lot of people seem to think it's their email address. So I always end up with stuff not directed at me in my inbox (some examples: a woman trying to send pictures of their pet goats to her husband, some guy trying to show me what a huge joint he rolled, some tween mailing about how she hated some classmate, etc). This week has brought a new string of these: an Astros fan signed my address up for updates from astros.com. It's depressing enough to get the Twins ones, adding the Astros does not help.

  11. The post trial wrangling in the Amy Senser case has begun:

    However, evidence showed that Senser never struck Phanthavong's vehicle as he put gas in his stalled car on the I-94 exit ramp the night of Aug. 23, and prosecutors neither side contended Senser believed she struck a vehicle. She testified that she believed she struck a pothole or construction cone or barrel.

    "In Ms. Senser's case there was no reason to instruct the jury that Ms. Senser knew she hit a vehicle; this is simply not the offense she was charged with." Nelson wrote. "Further, because there was no evidence that Ms. Senser did hit a vehicle, it would be impossible to establish knowledge for that element as one cannot have actual knowledge of doing something he or she did not do."

    This is a fine point, but I would say that the instruction should have been directed at whether she knew she hit the person because she didn't actually, you know, hit a vehicle.

  12. Span returns tonight. As expected, no Doumit. Will Diamond's success continue with Mauer catching? How will he do without Butera's magic touch to support him?

    Span CF

    Dozier SS

    Mauer C

    Willingham LF

    Morneau 1B

    Plouffe RF

    Casilla 2B

    Carroll 3B

    Diamond P

    1. The dreaded one-catcher lineup! Damn the NL rules for not allowing Butera to be our DH.

    1. The WCF may not get great ratings, either, but it is going to be good. Man, the Thunder are relentless.

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