Worthwhile Reading & Viewing

Peter Thiel is interviewed by Tyler Cowen, in a conversation that ranges from why there is stagnation “in the world of atoms and not of bits” to the dangers of conformity to what he looks for when choosing people to why company names matter.

Evaporative cooling of group beliefs.  Why a group’s beliefs tend to become stronger rather than weaker when strong evidence against those beliefs makes its appearance.

More academic insanity:  the language police at the University of Michigan.

Why Sam Sinai became a computer scientist instead of a doctor

A National Archives official, in an e-mail comment that the people were not supposed to see:   “We live in constant fear of upsetting the White House”

Why a pact with Iran throws Arab liberals under the bus  (“liberals” used here in the archaic and largely obsolete sense of “people who believe in liberty”)

Garry Trudeau  (he wrote a cartoon called Doonesbury–is it really still being published?) gives his thoughts on the Charlie Hebdo murders perpetrated in the name of Islam–by accusing the cartoonists of “hate speech” and denouncing “free speech absolutism.”

The secret Republicans of Silicon Valley

Baseball, the stock market, and the dangers of following the herd

Antoine de St-Exupery’s original watercolors  for The Little Prince

NBA Bulls at Bucks Courtside

Recently Dan and I went to Milwaukee to attend a Milwaukee Bucks game against the Chicago Bulls. I decided to splurge for court side seats (the Jack Nicholson type seats) because watching the game is totally different down there. We were right behind the Bulls bench as you can see (there is coach Thibs). I also love this picture because I just happened to snap it as they had entertainment right behind the coach and you can see the guy overhead who jumped off a trampoline and dunks a basketball. Also note the security guy on the right giving me the stink eye.

Watching the game from that low is a completely different experience. No matter what the score is, the game is interesting. The players move very quickly and it is hard to understand the plays as they develop (unlike when you look from overhead or up in the cheap seats where I would normally reside). While sometimes the fouls seem fake other times they take bona-fide hard fouls; when you are six and a half feet tall and jumping way over the rim and you end up getting thrown down on the court on your back, that’s a long way to fall. The way the players shoot is also very interesting – when they do jump shots they are almost eye level with the rim and as they do layups and dunks in warmups it often seems like they are barely jumping at all.

Half the fans at the game were from Chicago. They ought to fold that franchise in Milwaukee or find something else to bring in fans; the upper deck was mostly empty vs. Chicago and you’d have to think this is one of their bigger draw games of the year. But there is no way that I am smart enough to explain sports economics…

Cross posted at LITGM

The Romans of the NFL — the Kraft/Belichick/Brady New England Patriots

First let me take a moment to put on flame-retardant clothing and don heavy boots. There.

Are you a big fan of the New England Patriots?

My goodness … that was a fearsome blast of flame, heat and bile!

Well, they’re back. For their sixth Super Bowl since 2001. Playing in 9 AFC championships in the last 14 years. Winning their division (the AFC East) 12 times. Their coach is now #4 in games won in NFL history (regular and playoff games combined). The quarterback owns virtually every postseason NFL QB record except a deeply-coveted fourth Super Bowl ring. And together, the coach/QB currently lead the NFL regular season wins list with 160 … next closest are Don Shula and Dan Marino at 116. There’s a lot to like or a lot to hate, depending on where you hail from.

The AFL-NFL merger (“the Super Bowl era”) kicked off in 1970, though the game itself began at the end of the 1966 season (January 1967). Modern unrestricted free agency began in the NFL in 1992. So New England’s success in the last 15 years, during a period of intentional parity between NFL teams, has been exceptional and exceptionally contested. Their victories and losses in the Super Bowl have never been greater, or less, than 4 points.

What can explain it?

General consensus is “Satan” … followed closely in the polls by “cheating at every turn and at every opportunity … plus Satan … plus Satan’s Mom’s dog.” Certainly a full-throated, if not fully-verified, hypothesis.

Nerdier fans insist Bill Belichick is actually a Sith Lord and Tom Brady is his pretty-boy protocol droid being drawn to the Dark Side, while owner Robert Kraft relentlessly undermines the NFL from within. And maybe Satan’s got season tickets at Gillette Stadium, as well. Not very plausible, I think, but the blurring of reality and Star Wars for millions has always led to some unusual claims.

Back in late 2011, a young QB named Tim Tebow had an improbable run of late season victories with the Denver Broncos, which included a miraculous overtime playoff win in Denver on January 08, 2012 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. An American journalist at the time, whose name Google can’t find for me, wrote an article about how Tim Tebow’s stellar performance triggered a crisis of confidence in his journalistic/secular heart. Maybe Tim actually did have divine support.

Secular redemption, of a sort, only arrived when poor Tim met the New England Patriots, in New England, the week after the miracle in Mile High. The Broncos lost 45-10. For the journalist, the Age of Reason had returned. Order, natural order, had been restored. And the Patriots proceeded to yet another Super Bowl as part of the Kraft/Belichick/Brady era (which they lost for a second time to the New York Giants).

Paraphrasing the journalist’s article of the time, “the New England Patriots play football like the Romans fought wars. Methodically. Relentlessly. Mercilessly.” And Tim Tebow’s supernatural charisma never quite recovered, despite a stint several years later, ironically, at a New England Patriots spring training camp.

As someone with a long amateur interest in Roman military matters, it seemed an appropriate time … here on the verge of yet another Patriots Super Bowl run … to cast a wider net … beyond cheating … beyond Sith Lords … even beyond ever-busy Satan. In the deranged period before the Big Game, let’s take said journalist’s premise, kick the tires, and take it for a spin until the wheels of analogy fall off.

Compare the Patriots and the Roman war machine using the following criteria:

  • Governance
  • Education and Literacy
  • Situational Awareness
  • Organizational Focus
  • Accountability
  • Mercy
  • Battlefield Focus
  • Persistence
  • Likeability

Read more

“Saddles, Somme and snow: a tale of the toughest cycle race ever”

From an interesting article about the 1919 Tour of the Battlefields bicycle race:

Tormented by hunger and cold, they pedalled on. Either side of the muddy roads the detritus of war was everywhere – twisted tree stumps, fields long since obliterated by shelling, concrete bunkers, mine and shell craters, wrecked gun carriages, clothing, bones. All around, belts of wire, trenches and duckboards zig-zagged in all directions, and hastily-erected crosses littered the landscape. And still the sleet and rain fell. And still the wind blew, unchecked by trees or hedgerows.
 
At 11.10 in the evening, 18 hours and 28 minutes after he set off from Brussels, Charles Deruyter crossed the finish line in Amiens. The man who finished in fifth place arrived at 8.00 the next morning, having spent an uncomfortable night sheltering in a trench somewhere on the Somme battlefield. The last-placed finisher took 36 hours to complete the 323km stage.

The article dryly notes that the race was run just one more time after 1919, and then only as a one-day event, since “the logistical problems of putting on a multi-stage race in a part of Europe that had almost no infrastructure were far greater than anyone had expected.”

Worth a read.

(Via sportsman extraordinaire Dan from Madison.)