There was an article a while back about how to defend yourself against burglary in England, where apparently you are not legally permitted to use force to defend your property. Jim Treacher has a fine take.

Of course, I’m 99% certain that source article is satire, as well.

Check out this NPR teaser:

All Things Considered, December 7, 2004 ·
In his new novel about a global-warming information conspiracy, Michael Crichton gives us a 600-page “page-burner” bolstered by footnotes, charts and graphs. Reviewer Alan Cheuse reviews State of Fear.

Sure, sure, it’s supposed to be just sooooo clever and suuuuch a hoot, changing ‘page-turner’ to ‘page-burner,’ but let’s not get into the habit of speaking casually about burning books that we politically disagree with.

That would be anti-intellectual.

HT: Language Log, where Dr. Nunberg seems to think it was an honest mistake. But then why the quotation marks?

I redesigned my homepage the other day, and noticed there haven’t been any hits to it since. So I egosurfed, that’s googling my own name to see what’s being said about me on the triple-dub, and found that google’s listing for my home page no longer exists. Fixed that. Traffic’ll be rollin’ in now, baby! That’s not the reason I’m posting however. Instead, it’s this: IMDB Thread for Liam Moran. Holy cow! Apparently I’m a famous hollywood electrician, with movie credits going back to my freshman year of high school. That, or there’s another person out there using my name. I’ll get to the bottom of this, I swear I will.

Hope to see you in the World Series.

Edgar Renteria took Boston’s offer for $40 million four years with option for fifth. No word on a no-trade clause.

Not meant as sour grapes, but I wonder if the decision had anything to do with Union pressure to take the big money, as The STL Cards speculated might happen. (No internal links)

Four papers down, one to go.

I kinda liked this last one, I tried to give a pragmatic explanation for why sports announcers use sentence inversion, as in sentences like this: “Camping out in left field, and booting it, is Manny Ramirez.” The sentence is inverted because the stuff on either side of the tensed verb is swapped. That was a pretty fun paper to write.

The next one is going to be tough, and is due at 5 tomorrow (I guess).

Better get to sleep, and hopefully have some productive dreaming.

I’ve been getting a fair amount of google hits looking for the Enis Furley Foundation, which can be found at the link before. I’m getting the hits because I mentioned it here. It’s Scott Rolen’s charity. The webpage is under construction, and there’s not much information there. Here’s the idea behind the foundation, from my own recollection: Very sick kids could have their lives really brightened by getting a visit from a famous baseball player like Scott Rolen or one of his friends. I imagine it is pretty unsatisfying for the players to go visit a sick kid for a few minutes and with a whole bunch of media around. So he bought some property, on which he’s building a camp where the kids and their families (and pets, the foundation is named after one of Scott’s dogs) can go and spend some time together, and get to meet their heroes without any media around and for a more extended amount of time, I gather. Real nice idea. The camp is named after his other dog, I believe. I don’t know where the camp is, and even if I did know, I wouldn’t say… that would sorta ruin the whole idea behind it.

I’ve been looking all over the place for baseball news. In desperation, I even checked out El Tiempo’s sports coverage. It’s a Colombian newspaper and thought someone might have talked to Edgar down there and had word on what he’s thinking. No dice. The best coverage I’ve found has come from Joe Strauss, who covered the winter meetings for the Post-Dispatch.

No news, and I’m taking that to mean that Renteria’s going to let Jocketty’s deadline pass, and the Cards will be backing out of the Renteria race.

One of the highlights of my scouring the Earth for Cardinals news is that I ran across Random Redbird Reasoning, a Cardinals blog that’s still active at this point in the offseason. Good stuff. I have to agree with his analysis of Renteria at this point. Even though his numbers were supposedly depressed during the regular season by contract uncertainty (he frequently expressed frustration that the Cards hadn’t made any overtures during the season), his 2004 production was down. If he leaves for the piles of cash that most certainly await him, good for him–we’ll get on with finding a shortstop to fill the big hole he’ll leave behind.

Found RRR via Baseball News Blog.

This story by Joe Strauss (who’s done a fine job digging up stories in Anaheim), gives me some hope (but not all that much) that Renteria will be a Cardinal again next year and will sign for a below-market price. I don’t think he’d get along all that well with those idiots in Boston, and he’s too quiet and private a fellow to endear the Boston fans. And Detroit’s got a pretty lousy baseball program.

We’ll know by tomorrow. Jocketty will give Orlando Cabrera an offer if he doesn’t hear back from Renteria’s agent today.

Yep. Pedro Martinez signed with the Mets for four years and FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS. While Pedro made the Cards look really, really bad in the World Series, I don’t think he’s got many good years left in him, and was worried that the Cards would spend bucks better spent elsewhere on him, or the Red Sox (still my favorite AL team, in spite of their rich man’s swagger) would do the same.

Judging by the fantastic investments the Mets have made over the past few years, my impressions of Pedro’s future success are vindicated. No further investigation is necessary.

Update: Couldn’t help but make a half-hearted further investigation. Mets fan Bill McCabe is understandably overcome with joy at the prospect of spending 14 million a year (his report says the deal is $56 Mil) on “a ticking time bomb in the form of a partially torn labrum.”

I’m not relating the two topics in the title of this post, just addressing them individually in a format that indicates I’m too lazy to wait for two publishing cycles.

First off! The local mass transit district, CU MTD, has recently upgraded their buses to include GPS systems (as described in this article). I don’t ordinarily ride the buses, because I prefer to walk–but tonight when I left work it was very cold and windy. I didn’t feel like walking home in that crap. Instead, I grabbed a stack of papers that need reading and hopped on a bus to my favorite watering hole. Long story short, I ate dinner, drank beer, and worked on a paper.

When I left the bar, the bus that took me to my crib was empty, aside from myself and the driver of course. I noted there was a LED screen at the front of the bus. I’d noticed it on the way out to said watering hole, but didn’t study it very closely. It’s one of those displays that scrolls a message across. This one gave the passengers (me) an exact reading of the next intersection to be reached. Amazing! It worked pretty good too. If a message was halfway across the screen for the last block, it would disappear and the new intersection would begin. In addition to the equipment described in the article linked above, the system must use some sort of compass. GPS can’t tell you which direction you are facing (to my knowledge), just where you are. But the system would customize its location description for direction. So when we turned from Coler onto Fairview, it stopped giving intersection names in the form (coler & XXX) and started giving them in terms of (Fairview & XXX). So it’s sensitive to which street you’re on, putting that first in the description. That’s probably done with a magnetic parameter. Or else the bus has to keep track of how many degrees the wheels turn. A magnetic compass would be easier and more reliable. Especially when it starts getting icy.

So pretty cool.

Football: I watched some of the Titans/Chiefs MNF game. What a crappy bunch of teams. They make the Lambs look good. (Seriously, they’re not that bad.) I didn’t get into football this year, and doubt I will. Baseball was too good, and college basketball is looking very good for my school. I barely miss hockey even. So anyways, I haven’t followed football much, but I’ll make a few general purpose observations about football that were brought up in the game tonight.

First is the whole concept of the running game. My old friend Hansonelli hates it when the back runs up the gut. Hates it. His reasoning? Why run at the biggest defenders? Run around them! I disagree, since first of all, your biggest blockers are the guys up the middle, and secondly, what’s the point of running left or right fifteen yards to run up three yards, when you could just run up three yards. (And maybe more if your biggest blockers makes someone look bad.) All of football is the running game. If your line and backs can get 2.5 yards, guaranteed, every down–you have an unstoppable offense. Assuming no offensive penalties, of course.

The last is the whole red-zone offense thing. The Titans picked up a slick big play early on to put them at first and goal. The first play out of the huddle? This goofy Faux-Marino pass play through the heart of the defense. I hate that crap. By Marino-pass play, of course, I mean the dart throws that fly even with shoulder height. The non-parabolic flight pass. These guys think they can toss these pansy-assed versions of a needle-threading pass through a modern defense and hit a receiver right at the goal line. They’re wrong. If you’re gonna pass in the red zone, you’re going to have to exploit the red zone defense, and throwing the ball into its teeth isn’t the right way of doing that.

They ran the next two downs and scored a touchdown. Football’s so hard! Boo-Hoo!

Yeah, I shouldn’t have had those last two beers. I was riding the bus.

And two to go…

The weekend was frustratingly unproductive. Just couldn’t concentrate properly, so now I’m behind schedule. Still 2 down, 3 to go. I expect big things for today, and plan to have them as the next one is due at 5.

Finals week. Only three days left.

I can pull this off.

As if you haven’t been waiting for it since the first time you ate at a Chinese restaurant with one of those placemats that explains the workings of the Chinese calendar, 2005 is the Year of the Cock.

And according to that article, we’re not the only ones giggling about it.

HT: IMAO

Wow, is all I can say. The numbers for Matt Morris’ one-year contract extension with the Cardinals were released. His base salary: $2.5 million. That’s a ten million dollar pay cut from last season, although his salary last season was inflated because he’d been willing to defer salary his entire career with St. Louis so Walt could go out and fill holes late in the seasons. What a guy! His contract includes up to $7 million in incentives, and I won’t be surprised if he earns all of it. Matt was, after all, the only Cardinal starter to pitch a complete game last season. I said a few days ago that resigning Morris was a very smart move, and at the time I was assuming an arbitration salary of around $10 million. He is, I believe, among the best in the crop of free agent starters that would have been available this offseason. And we signed him for two and a half million. What a guy!

Also in today’s STL Post-Dispatch, a story about the current state of negotiations with Renteria. He wants 4 years at 40 million, we’re offering 4 years at 32 million.

Update: $40 Million? Congratulations Boston. You rich bastards.

Another Update: Still no official word on Renteria, but Joe Strauss of the Post-Dispatch has a comprehensive column on the Cardinals’ options.

Anyone who can guess where the title of this post comes from gets a prize.

I was very impressed by a USA Today column last night, William R. Mattox Jr’s Daughter Dearth. It’s about Red China’s one-child-only policy of demographic control, and how parents are aborting female babies. I’ll have to check out that book he mentions over the winter break.

Still at two-down, three to go. I expect to have two more knocked out over the weekend.

[Update: I took the system down for now. I can put it back up fairly easily. If anyone missed out, just send me an email and something will be arranged.]

My Boxscore Reader project was officially a success. Got the grade back today. I’m leaving it up until tomorrow night, and running certain services that will hopefully keep the router from renewing its IP address.

For those who didn’t get a chance to try it out.

As a refresher, you paste URLs for ESPN.com boxscores into the form and click “submit.” Then an mp3 file will download that recaps a game summary. If windows media player is your default mp3 player, it probably won’t work. It works delightfully with Real Player.

I mentioned some good games to try a few days ago, here they are again:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=241009119

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=240518115

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=240728117

I’m still interested in feedback, it’s very likely I’ll build a version 3.0 once I get my head above water. By email or leave a comment below.

If it runs very slowly, that probably means several people are querying it at the same time.

I’m off to watch Illinois vs. Georgetown.

Update: Illinois won handily. We got killed in the paint early. Georgetown had a plan to get a small lead and eat away at the clock. An Illinois run killed those plans. They played well, and Georgetown has an amazing Freshman class.

I tweaked the boxscore reader so it doesn’t read save information in the even of a complete game or no-hitter. Easy fix. But it took me a while to decide where, in the algorithm, to add the constraint. I chose the natural place, in the data extraction phase.

The 5, 6, -, and \ keys on my brand-new laptop aren’t working. This pisses me off to no end. I’ve babied the thing, and still it breaks apart.

Good thing I bought the three year unlimited warranty. Bad thing I need the damned machine to work for a few more days so I can finish my work before the semester completely ends on Wednesday. It’ll be very irritating if I have to lose it for a while so a couple of teenagers can tear it apart at Best Buy. Maybe I can frighten them into just handing over the part and letting me do the repairs myself.

Rick Ankiel is tearing it up in Winterball, you might have heard mentioned in Cardinals-related articles. You want me to quantify “tearing it up?” OK! Last I heard, Ankiel had 18k/3bb in 13 IP. Here’s his current line:

Rick Ankiel

1-1 2.66ERA 4G 4GS 1CG 1SHO 20.1IP
24H! 8R 6ER 1HR 4HB! 3BB!! 25SO!!! 2WP .289Opp-Avg

Not bad! A 25:3 strikeout to walk ratio is quantifiably tearing it up.

Woody was a relatively unknown pitcher we picked up from San Diego after the trade deadline a few years ago, and he became one of the most popular players in the Cardinals organization with his brilliance on the mound. Now, he’s returning to the Padres, and will hopefully get a hero’s welcome.

The Padres visit St. Louis for four games May 5th-9th. I’ll be doing my best to be in Busch Stadium for the game he’ll pitch, and be on my feet for the standing ovation he’ll no doubt get when he takes the field in the bottom of the first.

Just got this question from a colleague:

good morning, Liam,

what do you think about the following two sentences?

He later became fully familiarized with the lab equipment.

He later became fully familiar with the lab equipment.

is there any lexical difference? which word will you use? how

will you modify the sentence if the meaning is not clear to

you?

My (probably wrong) response:

I’d use this one:

He later became fully familiarized with the lab equipment.

Just off the cuff, I’d say that familiarity is a +/- property that isn’t readily adverbially modified by ‘fully’ (you’re either familiar or not), and familiarization is a gradient property that is more naturally modified by things like ‘fully’.

Consider this:

I am 80% familiar with John’s habits.

I am 80% familiarized with John’s habits.

My intuitions appear to differ with the majority’s. A google search for “fully familiar with” yields 34,500 hits; “fully familiarized with” yields 235 hits.

“Become fully familiar with” : 899 hits

“Become fully familiarized with” : 34 hits

I should stick to thinking about air conditioning.