ESPN the Magazine has a nice article about how Scott Rolen is a serious bad-ass when it comes to breaking up double plays. And we’ve got him signed for a long time.

Not only did Illinois hang on against Iowa, but Kansas lost to Villanova last night! At home! To Villanova!

Gosh!

Correction: As C-Bot points out in the comments, the game was at Villanova, and the game had been played earlier on Saturday. My excuse: I’m not used to yahoo recaps, and assumed they followed the convention of putting the home team last in the line. Still pretty amazing that Villanova won by such a margin.

Last night, my girl and I celebrated our anniversary with a pedestrian date: dinner and a movie. Nothing like our first date (which I uncharacteristically mentioned on this public space–should have learned that lesson–but all worked out, obviously). The movie was the Aviator, which was so bad that we walked out before the movie was over. It was long and without entertainment value. I recommend against seeing the piece of shit (ironically, Leo’s best acting since “Gilbert’s Grapes”). The script was lousy, and the audience laughed uncomfortably at the beginning and became perplexed towards the end as lame jokes kept coming. Fortunately, Million Dollar Baby comes out here next weekend. Clint can’t go wrong (except for the sex scene in “Blood Work.” Cringe.

Pete n’ Megan are supposed to come up and visit today. We intend to catch the Illinois v. SLU game and hit several watering holes. Overnight we were hit with a blizzard. Not a blizzard in the heavy snowfall sense, but in the high winds with lots of fluffy snow. Interstate I-57 was shut down between Olympian Drive (next exit north of I-74) and I-72 due to white-outs. Driving around on Mattis Avenue I saw several whiteouts here in town, where visibility was cut to about 30 yards. When I was at the grocery store, the gentleman behind me told me that his daughter wasn’t allowed to leave her job at a local hospital because there was a fifteen car pile-up on I-74 with serious injuries. I can’t confirm that, since the local media tends to take their online news service not very seriously. The snowfall looks to have let up considerably, but the snow on the ground continues to blow and drift dangerously at times.

Update (Minutes Later): Talked to Pete, they’re leaving now. The snow’s stopped, sun’s shining. All should be well.

Update (Next day): News Gazette has an article of the troubles caused. No large pileups, but a FedEx tractor trailer did overturn on I-57.

Bush rocks out. I imagine that’ll be photoshopped beatifully on Fark before the day ends.

The Volkswagen Suicide Bomber Commercial. Offensive? Not to me.

(Both those links from Michelle Malkin)

Mark Tupper’s Wrapup after last night’s Illinois-Iowa game. The game was outstanding. I watched at Esquire. Iowa defended extremely well, keeping our shooting at a crazy-low 33 percent. They made over half their free throws, and we turned the ball over almost 20 times. It got a bit scary down the stretch, but it turned out in the best way possible–the game went to overtime. Illinois had been wearing down the Iowa starters all night. Their arms were getting tired. Luther Head pretty much carried the offense; Jack Ingram played well. Rich McBride stepped up big-time with some surprisingly physical defense, and played a whole lot of minutes as Deron Williams had foul trouble. (And only took five shots!) Iowa’s a truly impressive team, very tough in the paint, and since they took us to OT, it won’t be surprising if they rise in the rankings from 24; since Illinois won, we shouldn’t drop from Number 1. As a caller on “Penny for your Thoughts” this morning said, number one teams find a way to win even on nights when they’re shooting like crap, and their opponents are lights-out.

Big Ten Wonk has the definitive post on last night’s game though. Damn, that guy rights goode.

Jeff posted for the fourth or fifth time in the month of January. It’s a link to a game his grandma sent him. I suspect she was getting sick of his lazy ass not providing any new content. The lazy bastard. Dance, monkey!

A bold inaugural speech from the Prez, which I didn’t see or hear, since I was already at work:

All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.

Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country.

I imagine our friends Lech and Vaclav will appreciate it.

VDH offers his praise and some circumspect counsel in a rare post at the Corner.

In my lifetime, I’ll visit a free Cuba. Watch a baseball game. Catch some fish.

Yesterday was the first day of the new semester at the U of I. The preceding week is usually pretty busy for me, since all the new courses need to have their materials ready and webpages put together by the time classes start. This one wasn’t too bad, and I used the spare time to finally clean up my office. About a year ago, maybe longer, the room I work in was cut in half–a wall erected to split it in two. So all the crap I use had to be squished into half the space. It’s looking remarkably good now. A co-worker of mine joked that I’ve got enough floorspace now to have a dance party. Not so much a joke as office banter, I guess.

My schedule isn’t fully decided yet. I’m definitely taking two classes with a visiting professor to the department. One is “Foundations of Intensional Semantics” and the other is “Computational Semantics.” Both are looking to be very good for me; so far I’ve hit the ground running. In CompSem, we’re using PROLOG as the programming language, but we were encouraged to try out Haskell for the exercises as well. It’s a nifty looking language, so I intend to give it a whirl. As of Tuesday, I was the only student formally registered in FIS; although I expect that to grow as there were at least four other grad students in the room and three faculty members.

I’m registered in another class that I’m not sure whether to drop or not. It’s “Field Methods,” a class required for graduation. The basic idea is to learn the skills that you’d need to figure the grammar (syntactic, phonological, etc.) for an unfamiliar language–a critical skill for anyone who calls himself a linguist. I’m pretty sure it used to be a two semester course, but they dropped it down to one. The language this semester is Berber, a North African language that I’m totally unfamiliar with. It would be a lot of fun to take the class, and naturally to pick up a bit of another language. I fear I don’t have time, what with all the extra projects that I need to get done this semester.

I think I might be watching my first episode of American Idol tonight. First off, tonight’s show will be from St. Louis, so I might see some of the kids from high school, all growed-up. One of the contestants will be Ozzie Smith‘s son, presumably Ozzie Jr. since I don’t imagine Dustin’s quite old enough yet. But some friends of mine say he goes by Nico (not sure about the spelling) Smith, and sings karaoke at a bar they like to hang out at, they say extremely well. So I’ll check that out.

And you check out that Ozzie Smith link. There’s a great video in there, the “Superstar Shortstops, Part I.” I’d link directly to it, but ESPN hides their multimedia URLs pretty darned well. It’s got the Jack Buck, “Go Crazy, Folks!” call; plenty of bad-assed plays at short; and a few backflips tossed in for the kids.

Update: Ha! Got it!

and not revenge. Jury votes for death. I applaud their decision.

Woody Williams was honored last night with the Kile award, given to the player (by the players) who most exemplifies DK’s qualities as an honorable man, father, and teammate. His fantastic run with the Cardinals ended in the offseason, when we declined to offer him a contract for the coming season, and he signed with the San Diego Padres.

Of first degree murder. The sentencing portion of the trial is taking place now.

Update: A more detailed article here. The prosecution presented their sentencing case late into the evening last night, and the defense will present today.

Some things appear on the internet that thirst for irony as intensely as fish need water. Take these for example. Things like that don’t make any sense without a thickly layered blanket of irony.

Another example:

The Last True Patriot in Washington…. is Paul Byrd? He’s the last True Klanner in Washington, or at least the last holding an elected office. Cheap shot, maybe, since he’s renounced the Klan and presumably has concluded that they are no longer needed after all.

Here’s a quotation from the “True Patriot” post, attributed to Byrd: “One man’s pork is another man’s job. Pork has been a good investment in West Virginia.” Sweet beautiful socialism allows one to describe coercive theft by the government to allow one man’s vote-buying spree as “investment” without a touch of irony. Or you could say that patriotism is stealing from all of your countrymen to provide government jobs to the unemployed ones who might vote for you next time around.

But as for me: I know a patriot, he is a friend of mine. Senator Byrd is no patriot.

The stlcardinals.com website has up [heavy NP-shift] a story about the new steroid-testing policy agreed to by the players and owners for Major League Baseball. The Sidebar in the story gives a good breakdown of the new changes, which look good. The article itself is mostly quotations from Ray King, who’s my girlfriend’s and my favorite Cardinal pitcher. He’s the Card’s player representative, and was recently promoted to the executive board of the player’s association.

King pitched like a champion last season, but my favorite Ray King moment came late in the season. I don’t remember which game it was, but here’s what happened: Mike Matheny got on base, but was pulled for a pinch-runner. Ray King was sent up to bunt. The bunt was fielded to second, where the pinch-runner was out; King showed some hustle down the line and was safe at first. La Russa declined to send in someone to run for King, and the next batter hit well to send Sweet Baby Ray off to the races. He went first to third like a bear after a menstruating hiker. [That should attract comments like... And I'm sure there're some Cubs jokes there.] For such a big man, he was running very fast, and made the turn at second downright gracefully. I’d give a dollar to hear what Oquendo told him when he made it safe to third. Unfortunately, he didn’t score. I don’t remember what happened, I was too busy jumping around in glee at having seen Ray King go first to third so impressively.

My family is going through a painful time. Say a prayer for a helpless girl who fought as hard as she could; and hope that the jury votes to put down that cur who killed her.

Proof that St. Louis is going to pot without me:

Exhibit A: The Ku Klux Klan adopted a mile on I-55 in South County. (HT: Haws). I believe hateful and stupid speech is constitutionally protected, also that the people making the speech are responsible for protecting themeselves from the conseqences of their hateful or stupid speech. I’d keep a sack of oranges handy in the backseat to wing at any yahoos out there picking up trash on that stetch of road. Frankly, all you need to do is litter the crap out of that area (and bean the Klanners with your oranges), complain to MoDOT that it’s a mess and the adoption should be revoked for failing to meet their agreement, then adopt it yourself and clean up your mess. You’d be a hero to all mankind.

Exhibit B: Smoking is banned in public places within Ballwin city limits (starting Jan. 6, 2002). (HT: Jeff, who’s too angst-ridden to comment on it himself.) Although I’m planning on giving up the nasty habit, I don’t like seeing ordinances like this go through. This will probably end up helping out corporate restaurants and bars around there, since the smokers will feel more welcome at stores outside Ballwin and non-smokers will sit in blissful, nanny-state heaven in the Ballwin stores. It may hurt small businesses badly. There is some data that shows that laws like this don’t spell disaster for the restaurant industry, even small businesses; but a locally owned bar in this part of town is absolutely dependent on their regular customers and many may very well go belly up. Oh well, they have a year to overturn the 5-3 vote. Here’s a map for readers in the West County/St. Louis area to look at to see whether their favorite local watering holes will be effected.

Mentioned Soxaholix in the post below, and in today’s comic the characters discuss sabermetrics, thus giving me an excuse to offer some final words on it now that Moneyball has sunk in fully.

There’s a popular anecdote of a drunk who lost his keys somewhere in the street, and he spends a few hours looking around for them. Another guy walks up and asks what he’s doing.

“Dropped my keys. Just looking around for ‘em.”

“Where’d you drop them?”

“Over there, I think. By the car.”

“Then why are you looking for them here by the streetlamp?”

“It’s the only place bright enough to see anything.”

Sabermetrics is parasitic on traditional scouting and statistics collection. The data sabermetricians work with are hits and walks and outs. The informative metrics they come up with are thus compromised. A good example is DIPS, or Defense Independent Pitching Statistic, which is calculated by factoring out the defense behind a pitcher and measuring only things that he has complete control over: walks, Ks, and HRs. Fielding defense is treated as a crapshoot in this view of baseball, primarily since there isn’t a useful set of data to do calculations with for defensive play. Any measures of fielding ability are highly suspect then, like RF and ZF. (Although I’m not a sabermetrician, and have never run any experiments to see how usefully predictive those measures are–someone else may have and found them to be useful measurements.)

There is an exception. Moneyball mentions a group called AVM (I think that was their acronym… the Linguistics mnemonic I remembered is attribute-value-matrix, but I don’t see any web presence from them.) AVM recorded all baseball games they could as precisely as they could. They sliced up the playing surface into a matrix, and measured where balls landed and how fast, at what angle, and so on. Like I said, I haven’t heard much about it except what’s mentioned in Moneyball. It sounds like an awfully expensive project to accurately measure all this information, and so could be a bogeyman.

Anyways, sabermetric analysis is an undeniably useful way of forecasting success in baseball, but isn’t a viable alternative to scouting. They bear much the complementary relationship to one another as blogs do to mainstream media. Blogs are largely parasitic on the MSM for information, just like sabermetricians are parasitic on scouts for information. Although some blogs (particularly the milblogs) are well ahead of the curve in collecting primary (and more trustworthy) information, just like the AVM group did. Eventually, I imagine things will converge: scouts and sabermetricians will be indistinguishable; (good) blogs will report their own information.

No, I haven’t pulled a Renteria and turned away from my beloved Redbirds after their unpleasant defeat at the hands of the Red Sox, but I did rent the Soxaholix-recommended flick, Napolean Dynamite last night and was happily impressed. I laughed out loud through most of the movie, which is quite a feat. By comparison, I watched the crappy Anchorman movie a short while back and laughed but once, when some gal in the office says, “It smells like Bigfoot’s dick!” That movie was pathetic.

But Napolean Dynamite was hilarious, and full of detail. I’m hoping to watch it again tonight, and watch the features before it’s due back at the video store. In short, I recommend it highly, and guarantee laughs.

Update: Xristos seconds that ND is one funny movie.

Arthur Chrenkoff posted his eighth installment of Good News from Afghanistan, where there is good news a-plenty.

Discovery Channel had a special on last night about the Tsunami. It’s depiction of the rapid response was in line with this post’s theme, “Don’t mention the navy.” The only military personell they showed were some UN fellows in Blue Berets. No Marines hitting the shores in amphibious vehicles or Navy helicopter pilots landing in isolated regions to deliver aid. Dare not speak well of the men who do great things! And definitely read this post, about having had enough of the anti-military/anti-US hatred all over the place out there that leads to the press ignoring the military’s role in saving lives throughout the Indian Ocean’s rim. [Update--Glenn Reynolds has a column on the same topic, using the same articles, plus another good-un.]

Enough digression. As I was watching this program, I got to thinking about what might be the consequences of such a tidal wave striking Antarctica. I don’t know much about Antarctican geography, not enough to know whether the coastal regions would be susceptible to dramatic damage (ice-shelves and what-not). Today, I saw a headline on Drudge that made me think something bad might come of it: Collision of two collosal icebergs imminent. Although interesting, this story is unrelated. An iceberg the size of Long Island is about to ram into the Drygalski Ice Tongue in McMurdo sound, just South of New Zealand and well to the East of the danger zone. That map linked in the last sentence does show two relatively small ice shelves on the Indian Ocean face of Antarctica, the Shackleton and the Amery.

Just an FYI.

Got a link to this at work:

So far, the high score in my department is a 95.

So Hansenelli calls up Jeff today with horrible news: his website, A Quarter Life Crisis, had been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. Crisis indeed. Apparently, his blog had been found and mocked harshly by a front page article in the WSJ’s Personal Journal section. Something or other about him living in his parents’ basement and being angst-ridden. The article is from the January 6th edition, and since the WSJ is, notoriously, a pay subscription-only news service, the story was unavailable to me online (and is no longer stacked up at the gas station.

Never fear, Google caching saves the day! (It’s a good column, too–about twittish kids my age who haven’t quite “gotten it” yet.)

And fortunately, Hansenelli was mistaken and the story hadn’t mentioned Jeff… Should’ve known–he’s hardly “angst-ridden.”