A Style of Golf Course

Why So Serious?: A New Yorker History of the Classical Concert
So there's this game Spore (via MetaFilter) - and even though it has launched the awful concept of "Sporn" - I'll let you google that one yourself -it is being used to teach evolution in some biology class circles. So... yeah.
Two interesting and foul-mouthed comics: If You See Something and Alien Loves Predator
30 Large Hadron Collider pics
Twin Peaks is now available online. For free.
An Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning (Really good tutorial if you've ever heard me rant about how certain medical tests are actually detrimental to public health)
Manufactroversy
Lego Album Covers (Primarily Beatles)
The Guinea Pig Olympics
If you insist on being political, at least support your local left-field instrumentalist:

Even though los osos pequeños are seemingly on their way out - again - let's not forget the good times.
And in more somber news... THIS is a commencement speech. (And yes, the musing is still en route).
Cool video of a real live Nautilus

Warning: The following video contains a bit of topless sunbather nudity, but it ALSO contains all three minutes of french kangaroo ska you need to see in your life. Seriously, check this, it will reset you (even if it is a little but, um, jackassish):

I continue to foist Dinosaur Comics upon you!
Watch this video:

And now check this link.
A real "art" video (thanks Christastrophe)
Are Mark Reynolds' strike-outs an issue? (Great little sabermetric article)
SOPHIE CAN WALK
Quincy ain't no punk (thanks again Chris? - can't remember where I got this one) (but really, check it; exquisite painful awesomeness)
Andy Summers of The Police discusses his effects (ah, yes, but do they...

Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove
Best Science Images of 2008
Mugshot of the Year!!!
And finally, Bill Simmons somehow claims that none of this was Manny's fault.

That's it for the links... but since Manny et al are about to send the Northsiders packing, I would like to point out that this is not Manny's fault, either. Back in 2003, with the Cubs up in Game 6 and within 6 outs of the World Series, my friend Ian called me. "Can you believe it?" he asked. "Thanks for jinxing it," I replied. Someone did the Bartman, and after another horrible game 7, the curse of the phone call was complete. The Cubs were not headed to the world series, not fulfilling a million dreams, once again.

So flash forward to 2008... I check my messages last Wednesday, and I hear, "Nyet, we were just excited to call and tell you the Cubs are winn... oh, wait. Wait. L.A. just hit a grand slam. And now the Cubs are... losing. Oh, no. Oh no."

PEOPLE: Do NOT call me while the Cubs are in the playoffs. Don't call me to check how I'm doing, to confirm when we are having that important meeting, to ask whether our kidneys could be a match, AND ESPECIALLY to say "hey, the Cubs are winning." This ALWAYS ends badly.

And it just ended badly- Broxton just K'd Alfie to complete the series sweep. So the media may blame Alfonso Soriano or Lou Piniella or whomever, but I know who's really to blame. And it's not Sue (though she did make the costumes). It's the iPMM. This one's on her.

The Cubs will shine in 2109,
Nyet

Any of Four Medium-Sized Wild Cats

Yeah, here we go again:

A jpg Map of Springfield!!!
The Limitations of fMRI (Meghan take notice!)
Freakishly Real Human CGI
Saved by the Bell Quote of the Day (kinda kaput, but definitely worth a hilarious read)
Interesting Way of Viewing Box Office Takes
Colorful Lakes
AH, Food Pron
Primo National Geographic Pics
Funny Because It's True
When I said kill the ref...
Seeing In Four Dimensions
A couple of samples from the ever brilliant LP Cover Lover:

ANd now, some solid comedy:

Together Again!
Dawkins reads his e-mail
Pants!
Ferraris of the Insect World
Remember that storm from a while back?:

Color is Relative
Flowers for Algernon, Blogstyle
50 Greatest Art Videos
Barackin' me with Science!!!
10 Most Fascinating Savants in the World

Um, when Talking Heads / Devo meets Ska meets Christian Rock, you get: a song stuck in your head:

And yeah, we're not going to top that.

Big ol' Bucket o' Suck

So, it turns out when you don't play softball for six years, you tend to revert muscle-memory-wise back to your pre-softball, baseball hitting ways, and your idiotic self, though it sees the looping ball arcing and coming to the plate at 32 mph, is all tuned up for a 90 mph fastball and despite telling yourself to wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait, you swing early again and again and again and again anyways, and you strike out three times* and feebly ground out** the last time and you generally let everybody down and you feel like a big ol' chump and you wanna die.***,****, *****

* - of course, this was one of those start with a 1-1 count, a foul ball with 2 strikes means your out leagues, so a miss, a foul tip, and four consecutive misses added up to those three Ks.

** - though let's be honest, you did actually beat that out and the ump all but admitted he called you out because he wanted to go home and it was 16-1 at the time.

*** - not really, but I felt the need to end this like a Morrissey rant, because I am human and I need to be loved, just like everyone else does.

**** - and the team lost both games by a gob of runs, so it wasn't like you were the single-handed downfall or anything; still, those first two Ks came with runners on and two outs in tight game, so if clutch existed, you certainly were not very that.

***** - and then you remember hey, my presentation actually went really well this morning, and I did play out of my head at Ultimate a scant 25 hours ago, so all is not lost. And the battle / that we're in / rages on / 'til the end.

Weeks 4-5-6

The problem with trying to get my school on and blog at the same time is that the former generally prevents the latter. For shame. Here's a quick, bullet style account of the weeks that have passed us by:

• We hosted Beck's Tufts classmates Beth and Shelly for a few days while they attended a conference in Scottsdale. Crazy-timing as we were in the move-out-of-condo phase, but fun to have guests in the casa. Spackle and Dubsy appreciated the extra attention accordingly.
• Speaking of out-of-towners, I grabbed a quick drink with superstar of Rice Cloud Nine Ultimate and all-time awesome guy Mike Konopka - he was in town doing some collaborative work with some of the Biodesign folks at ASU. We presciently bemoaned the Cubs playoff chances and generally caught up on goings on, frisbee-related and otherwise. Mike, nay Ragdoll, is still as awesome of a dude as ever.
• That same night, D&C and the Beck & I caught Vampire Weekend in concert down at the Marquee in Tempe (Xtina, strangely, did not order an 8 dollar long island, nor did she attempt to find Dan in the bathroom). I've gotta hand it to those NYC boys and their Afro-pop stylings - despite essentially playing their album on shuffle and only doing a 45 minute set, they do have quite the little songwriting showcase repertoire in them. Kudos, and their tunes are still running through my head. For example: who gives a @#$% about an Oxford Comma? Beck, Dan, Christina*,* and I do.
• I would be remiss if I did not mention that Danimal played his first of two awesome e-mail subjects that week, this one being "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Doc Martens." Even my loser in-laws will probably catch that reference.
• Did I mention WE MOVED last week? Into a house? A human style, take ownership of the land abode? I can't even begin to do this topic justice just yet. Phineas agrees: A separate post.
• Law, Science and Technology Topics covered in the last three weeks:
  
• Science, Values & Politics in Risk Assessment (Case Study: Nuclear Risk)
  
• Congress's Role in Risk Assessment (CS: Global Warming)
• Social / Economic Risk Assessment (CS: Second Life and Virtual World Law)
• Technology Assessment (CS: Nanotechnology)
• Digital Copyright Law
• Patent Law (Case Study: Gene Ownership)
  
• Various Books Read in the last three weeks
  
• Segerstrale's Defenders of the Truth
• Francis's Why Men Won't Ask For Directions
• Carmen's Politics in the Laboratory: The Constitution of the Human Genome
• Bowker and Star's Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences
• Kohler's All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and Biodiversity, 1850-1950
• A veritable slew of other articles
• In addition to the typical WEfnuking, I played in a scrimmage of local Phoenix club level players against the current PHX Club team, the aptly named Sprawl. I HAD A FRIGGIN' BLAST! So much fun. Unfortunately, we won - not exactly great for Sprawl morale if they get beat by a thrown-together team - but man oh man was it fun to play high level disc on a Sunday morning.
• I'm working on a book review with a former student of Jason's named Maggie - we have had a couple of very productive meetings and things are rolling along nicely.
• I wrote an abstract for my law paper. See below*.
  
• And we moved. Many rolls of tape and bubble wrap were involved. Lots o' boxes. Lots o' sweaty scrounging of condos in Scottsdale. But now we are here, and thus far it is good. Among other thing: we are much closer to D&C, facilitating casual dinners / movies. Most excellent.
  

That's about it off the top of my head. Of course, other salient points are that the Cubs are in the process of blowing the playoffs, I have my first Scottsdale softball game tonight, and I actually did a presentation on that horrendous All Creatures book mentioned above which went pretty fantastically well**. So... yeah. Okay, back to work - I'll hit y'all on the flip side.

* - Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, despite general acceptance within the traditional institutional scientific community, remains a highly controversial topic in the United States of America. In the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21^st century, opponents of evolution have put forth quasi-scientific theological theories such as Creation Science and Intelligent Design as alternatives. They have attempted to insert these alternative theories into standard public education curricula or, failing that, have employed other means to discredit evolutionary theory. Consequently, much of the legal debate regarding evolution has focused on the First Amendment Constitutionality of teaching religiously-motivated theories in a public school setting and whether those theories are in fact religious or are true scientific alternatives. In this essay, I contend that there is a fundamental incongruence between the argument taking place in the courts and the argument within culture. While the First Amendment Establishment Clause is largely intended to disallow state-sanctioned religion, that is not the contested issue between the cultural pro- and anti-evolution ideologies. The culturally-motivated issues between the two camps invoke a wealth of values and narratives that are not accounted for by that narrow conception of the problem. Further, I argue that this disconnection between the legal and cultural debates encourages overly technical and indirect approaches to the conflict. Such "underhanded" tactics ultimately debase the discourse and distract from the underlying issues which could be addressed more directly for societal benefit.

** - To protect the names of the not-so-innocent, I'm just going to assert that this presentation went "fantastically well." I will leave to the reader's imagination the extent to which this two person presentation was actually written and presented by one person. What the reader may not imagine is the identity of that one person writer/presenter, who was me I.

The Royal WEfnuk: Week IV

Big time game last - WEfnuk was matched up with "Wii Huck," a team featuring a dude named Nick who goes by the name of "Tricky" who would easily be on the starting line of any kind of Phoenix area all-stars squad. Sick fast guy with great ups, great throws, great reads, tough D, you name it; the prototypical great Ultimate player (up to an including the wearing of a skirt). Playing him is always, ahem, difficult - my 2007 Fall League Team Taco Technique lost to his team in the semis, and it was largely because he ran all over the field like a luncatic. So Wii Huck was going to be a challenge on the basis of him alone; throw in a few great women players (Maggie and Kathi and ???) and we had our hands full. Plus, Genevieve and Josiah were both out of town, and the Alex/Alex combo were on the DL. Tricky, indeed.

Have no fear: we pulled to them first and traded blows the first half, going tit for tat (0-1, 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-3, 3-3, 4-3, 4-4, 5-4, 5-5, 6-5, 6-6, 7-6, 7-7) until we took half 8-7. Hella tight, intense game: our ho-stack O was running very nicely, and Tricky repeatedly hit their ladies deep for big gains. To be honest, we were collectively a little lax on D and did not do a whole lot with a few hucks that were more or less up for grabs; to be improved upon. It should be noted that this was also one of the cleanest games of Ultimate I have ever played: just one pick call in the first half and one uncontested foul call in the second. Astounding! And beyond that, it was "clean" in terms of very few turnovers. That was undoubtedly help by the complete absence of wind, but hey, good Ultimate is good Ultimate, right?

We came out in the second half and just ran away with it - big Ds from some of our players, and a generally unstoppable deep game just became too much for the Wii folk. The final count ended up 15-9, and we got great contributions from across the board. Overall, just a fun, fun game to be a part of. The desired effect was what we got.

And I'll go ahead and eschew the normal overbearing humility: I played great last night. 5 thrown, 5 caught, 1 turnover, 1 monstrous D for a fat +10 in fantasy points on the night. Hoo-ah! That brings your completely unbiased narrator to 22/9/7/10 on the season (for +34 in fantasy, or a +8.5 per game). Thanks HASHEM we track these things in such detail. At least a little of last night's performance came with Tricky guarding me, and while he admittedly has a tendency to poach and play CF in these league games, I capitalized big time. Let's hear it for self-aggrandizement!!!!

So, a good game, pushing us to 3-1 on the season, good for second place in the Thursday night division. Next week we host a crossover game against Black Mamba, a team featuring stalwarts Big Nate, Russ and Eric "the Cisco Kid." They are 4-0 currently in the Tuesday League, so this battle will be epic for showdown reasons AND epic for Nyet on Nate reasons. Stay tuned.

Get busy livin'

What if we told you that you had five minutes to live? Or one hour to live? Would it not be the five busiest minutes or the one busiest hour you had ever lived? So many people to call. So much to say. So much not yet done. Dreams, projects, contemplation of one's place in the cosmos~prayer. What if we told you that you had one week or one month or six months? Does the same not apply? Wouldn't that be the busiest week, month or six months of your whole life? What if we told you we could guarantee you were going to die? (But not when.) How would you live the rest of your life then? As the master writer Stephen King put it, "Get busy livin' or get busy dying."

Being for the Benefit of My Loser In-Laws