The State of Sports Reporting

Overheard on Sportscenter just now (severely paraphrased):

Buster Olney: The last two days, scientists and medical professionals have testified about the lack of evidence for HGH improving performance in athletes.

Steve Phillips: That can't be the case. The proof that HGH improves performance is the fact that athletes use it. If it didn't, then they wouldn't be using it. Also, HGH improves eyesight, so these older guys are able to see the ball better.

Bob Levy: Really this all boils down to the fact that HGH speeds up the healing process. The body has a natural healing process, and athletes shouldn't be doing things that interfere with that.

Join us next week, when we discuss how bleeding cures cancer, because otherwise why would people have done it, and why ice has been banned from MLB locker rooms. Also, we'll learn how orange skittles improve your hearing.

Seriously - we have congress testimony from medical experts, and we here at ESPN are deferring to this pair of BS spewing morons for analysis? Entry 32726 on why mass epistemology is pointless exercise.

For the record, there is no standard, scientific-type evidence that HGH improves performance, strength, or eyesight. The logical fallacy of "they do it therefore it must work" is obvious. And hmmmm, it certainly seems that injecting a bolus of cortisone into one's joints (or reconstructing someone's elbow) also falls in the "interfering with the natural healing process" category. Quick, somebody suspend Curt Schilling!

I am in need, I am in pain

I am in... love?*

(Dum dum dum dum dum (this is what a Mike Myers-y bassline looks like in text form) dum dum dum dum)

(Blow out candle).

Welcome to late night post-Ultimate delirious Nyet, where Axe Murderers and Indigo Girls dance like 6th grade go-togetherers. Pleasant.

Ultimate was a blast tonight - except for the hour and fifteen minute car ride down there. But once things got going, we played two games with about two operating subs (for the men). Because of both a lack of handlers and a lack of people in shape enough to run for four hours straight, I played a lot and played very, very hard. I am pretty beat, probably in the vicinity of the five game Saturday from a couple of weekends ago.

In the plus column: won the first game with a comeback. In both games - lots of good throws and D's, layouts and sky catches. One turnover. I was on, which is nice. I also had to play mid instead of handler for a lot of the day. Nice. Feeling re: self and Ultimate and 30 year old body, nice.

In the negative column - stupidly lost the second game. We've got a very mixed team without a lot of speed. So this will be "rebuilding" or whatever, but hopefully we can have fun and get some of the rooks to stop making some of the silly mistakes (lofty throws, mainly, we actually have a lot of people who are fine with throws/catches, just get a little excited from time to time. It should be cool to chill them out and watch them get better). Very bad - one of those aforementioned lofty throws went up, I chased it down, and a woman from the other team came in hard to try and get the d but ended up undercutting me a bit. I tried to slam on the brakes quite a bit, but as you can imagine, she lost the m1v1 = m2v2 game. Weird situation - I felt bad that I had drilled her, but it was definitely one of those plays where had it been a guy, I would have been in "WTF?" mode. Undercuts are dangerous; whenever they happen on people going for dunks in basketball, people get understandably upset. I'm running upfield looking at a disc behind me, she is coming in at me and the disc and can see everything in front of her. I fully recognize that this is a hat league game and I have to watch out, but I also feel compelled to point out that she essentially caused the collision. So I feel bad that it happened, sorry that it happened, but I don't feel very responsible for it, if that makes sense. Some of her teammates gave me crap, which I pretty much just accepted without mouthing off - that's an impossible debate to win. But some of my teammates jumped in and pointed out the fouly nature of her play, so hopefully this will get chalked up as merely unfortunate. I'll conclude by pointing out that I SLOWED DOWN, which always seems to be the factor that people forget.

Anyhoo, that was crappy. I came over to the sideline after the point to apologize to her and ask her how she was doing, and she was not polite in the slightest. As wiser men have said, F' it, let's go bowling.

Still, an overall fun night. The illustrious Laurie, a friend of Tuftsbud Josh's is on my team, and it's always cool to play with her; also, Tyler from the Taco team this fall was there. So good times, though I am reasonably confident that tomorrow morning aka 6 hours from now will be sub-awesome. So good night, nyetversers, hope your legs ain't as stiff as mine.

* Actually, I am in love, because Beck rules. I got stuck in ridicu-traffic on 101, so I had to divert west and try to wind my way down to the fields and got lost. I used my phone-a-wife (twice!) and she got me there. Phew. She rules.

Being For the Benefit of Mr. Toe

Okay, at least some sort of intro in response to Aaron's "what do you believe" question. Pretty hastily written - it's a musing - so forgive me if I didn't go into full on expository academic mode; it's more of an effort to get the nuts and bolts out there of why I find belief as a concept problematic.

Off to work and ultimate tonight, double header with my Tuesday night hat team. Details forthcoming...

South Mountain, Take Two:

Before all of that, note that I have made a non-liar out of myself, and I have posted reviews to three things in the past few days. WAHOO. You can check them here, here and here.

The Beck and I made a pseudo-weekend of it. After a long Saturday, we lacked the energy to pursue our original goal, indoor rock-climbing - to be pursued at a later date - so we vegged out and caught the remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I don't really think a Saturday night, commercial laced viewing warrants a review, but my general take was that Johnny Depp did a good take on a different version of Willy Wonka, I still prefer Gene Wilder (duh), and the rest of the movie - the kids, primarily - were a lame rehash of the original. By far the coolest aspect of the movie was the now-hipper Oompa loompas, who brought an eclectic mix to the Oompa Loompa musical ouevre while still maintaining those bizarre slave-race overtones. So you can't beat the original, but at least some of the reinventions clicked.

We got off to late start Sunday but eventually drove ourselves down to South Mountain for a beautiful hike. 75 degrees, sunny, just gorgeous. We took Wrigley the dog with us, who turns out to be part goat (though perhaps not as part goat as, um, this). She had a great time even though she got a little sore by the hike's end. Here's a sampling of the hike; check out the full set (note the sunny pictures) for more.

Or, alternatively, I could just post every picture. Sheesh, I need an editor.

So, a great hike, and then Beck and I parted ways as I drove over to Mesa for some Sunday pickup. I hadn't played in a little while, so the ol' lungs were a little rusty. But I had a fantastic time and even made some crazy layout catches taboot. Huzzah! Spring league "starts" this week (I drove all the way down to Tempe last Tuesday to discover that the games had been canceled, blah!), so it's good to get a dose of confidence. Good times!

I came home to an exhausted Beck and Wrigley. We ate some burritos, watched the Grammy's for a little bit and then just chilled and read. Long, good Sunday. ANd now back to the working week.

So do you click these, or what?

Comment please - here are several weeks worth of links, pilfered from the Sports Guy, Neatorama, Metafilter, etc. per usual:

(Of course, before that I would like to retell a joke I've used five times today. So Obama has a new campaign slogan designed to get the all-important cat vote out:

'Yes We Can Has."

Laugh, damn you, laugh!It's funnier if you've seen this piece of celeb-fueled propaganda, which is actually well done, though I must admit it kinda accentuates the "rhetoric" aspect of the Obama campaign)

365 Classic TV intros
Ridiculous Red Sox salaries (including their perks!)
The answer to the fat goalie theory
Interested in basketball. Learn the ins and outs!
Put some "HGH" - or even better, "PZQ" - in your scrabble game
"Box Office Poison" - some "stupid funny" Norm MacDonald on Conan
Speaking of Norms... it's every single one.
Self-deprecating humor from Stevie Wonder
Legendary Michael Jordan - Charles Barkley game
Eddie Murphy on Mike Tyson. Picture it as "Donkey" delivering the comedy and it becomes much funnier.
Easily the creepiest sit-com episode ever. I'm still terrified. And yes, I saw this at Day Care.
Don't yell help help - it's the inside out bear bunch.
Solid beast v. machine clip. Ridiculous dose of cute here. More cute here.
Semi-NSFW gallery of a guy who makes photo-real art using only a blue bic pen.
Computer poetry.
Anti-Pacman. Seriously, this is a cool concept. Maybe not as cool as this, though.
The farce of authenticity, chapter 1459283. And chapter 2876324.
Attack of the cool gimmicky short film. Or a cool special effect. Or informative dark humor.

Separate post - get your education on. A serious list of links to all kinds of basic science principles. Here is another set of videos on mechanical physics.

Schwank origami.
What's a sleeveface?
An argument re: steroids and baseball. Not sure I buy its central premise, but check fo' yo'self.
Incredible Shark pictures. Of the not-Owen Nolan variety.
Get ur lern on, 2: Free podcasts from all kinds of universities.
A new but old comic called buttercup festival.

Separate - I thought this was awesome. And the end-product by the winner is some fantastic music. Currently rocking it, actually.

Steve Martin on comedy. (You though tit would be dry-cleaning?). Seriously, this is great.
This is a great piece on a human sports star.
"Sucks to your Gladwell." A rebuttal to the Tipping Point.
The other day the weather forecast in my browser said "Vincent." Oop, I mean it said "starry night."
TED. I haven't searched this much, but it looks like a cool lecture series. And HERE is an awesome one. Octopus!
Ladies and gents - if "Next" was bad, this is badder.
The Blog of FAIL. HI-larious.
A straightforward explanation of airline delays.

Offset 'cause it's sweet - this is a binaural recording of a haircut. Note: you must use headphones for the full effect. Great.

Offset, ditto - I present you the highlights of "Sadgasm" from the best Simpsons episode in recent memory. "Marvin Cobain" will be my band name, if "The Single Syllable Plural Nouns" isn't already taken:

Funny dino cartoon. Cool video. The latest korean dance craze. Russian Food Art.Bored yet?
I can has first person perspective.
1-31-07: Never Forget. and here it is, DECONSTRUCTED.
Interviews with Murikami.
Performance Art: Improv Everywhere does Grand Central Station.
Brown Tape Art: is cool.
"Womyn" is a word. So is "obviate." As in, "Man has been obviated."
Take a wild guess which Beatles song they've BEAMED TO OUTER SPACE.
The final wave of a now-extinct frog.
Why is Jay Leno popular?
This isn't really that funny, but it is.
Another pair of cool concept games.
Cutting edge Creationism Research. Or is it "Blunt Edge, Hammer of Ignorance Research."
Scrolling world stats for your daily dose of insignificance.

Unbelievably cool Arcade Fire video. Almost done here.

Figure out for whom to vote.
Some of you are all related.
Bacon scarf.
The end of physics. Whew. After that, I need a funny t-shirt.
Beautiful bug photo. More photography as art.
These require a special sense of humor.
Six word stories, like: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. (That's by Hemingway, btw).
Who arrests a polar bear? Honestly?
Ignore the french subtitles, see the funny video.
Muppets for president. Meh, but who doesn't love the Muppets theme song?

I had a textversation with Danimal the other day and we were both referencing Matt Damon without knowing what the other was talking about. Here's why (funny video with NSFW language within). It's probably old at this point, but having seen Matt Damon's Conjoined Twin movie this weekend, I gotta give props to that dude.

And finally, the best way to teach kids about resonant frequency is... now in color!!!

Click those links dammit!

Minor Adjustments

Phew. Just got back from a little rehaul on the old nyetjones.org site. So little that you won't even notice it. All I really did was change the rating scheme (at least on the reference pages, if not within the reviews themselves) so that everything is multiples of five - i.e., MASH is no longer a "68," it's a "70." This makes it a lot easier for me to think through the relative ratings (I effectively changed it to a 20 point scale), plus it garners cheers from Shavano Creek because we can finally equate MASH with Knocked Up. Thank goodness.

More importantly, I got tired of staring at the electronic pile of reviews that I have yet to do, so i quickly reviewed everything I've seen / read in the past 8 months in this little ditty:

8 months!

So that's that. I also am hereby publicly promising to get back on my review bandwagon, because I know that's what the people want. The now greatly shortened pile includes Murikami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and the excellent movie we saw on Saturday night, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I am getting on those pronto. Wahoo!

As for the weekend, Beck and I slugged our way through and suffered tremendously Sunday night. Oh, those poor Pats. I have no problem with the upset or all the glee that comes with the "18-1" chants; clearly the giants played very well and their defense gave the Pats O-Line et al much more than they could take. More than anything it's just disappointing to see such a lackluster performance - again, all credit to the Giants, but having by far the worst game of the year in the super bowl just makes the whole event disappointing. (And it all would have been okay were it not for one of the most amazing helmet pinning catches, um, ever).

So minus that tragic Sunday occurrence, Beck and I made a good weekend of it. We caught up on Lost on Friday, and Beck renewed her hatred for the "show where nothing happens." And yet she likes Seinfeld. Woah. I worked all day Saturday and unfortunately could not connect with tufts-bud Jesse - you may remember him as the wedding air guitar legend - who was in town for the superbowl. Sorry, homes. Beck and I were supposed to go to a Chinese New Year party but lacked the energy / motivation, and wound up going to watch the aforementioned French flick instead. Drove around Scottsdale and got to see all the beautiful people humming it up in their hammers or various other elongated cars. We hit a mexican restaurant where I paid a stupid amount of money to eat a fried tortilla with cheese, which I can make at home for about 120th of the cost. D'oh.

On Sunday morning we looked at the rain and wind and coldness outside and said, "hey, let's go hiking!" Kidding, kidding - it was pretty cold and a little wet, but we did a nice easy jaunt around South Mountain park and got some nice, cloudy views of our smog-smothered town:

So not the most beautiful setting, but a haunting one that provided some nice pics regardless. We next contemplated the face that it was Superbowl Sunday which means time to eat - we headed over to Chompie's, a New York style deli around the corner from our house. Beck was feeling Druish, so she ordered some unpictured scrambled matzah & eggs, and I was feeling heart-attacky so I order a Monte Infarct:

Sooooo bad. That reflection off the plate is due to the flavor. Those plates are actually black. Scary.

Replete with calorific goodness, Beck and I headed to the grocery store to buy our super snacks. Given the choice of two Fry's within walking distance of our house, we chose the lesser of the two, and boy are we glad we did!

Oh, we wish we were. Were. WERE.

Then the game, and... well, this guy captured our feeling:

Tragic. An episode of HOUSE, and off to bed. Sad. Nothing too crazy from the next two days, other than my driving all the way down to Tempe last night only to find our game had been canceled due to rain the day before. BARF! PIZZA THE HUT!! Annoying. I made up for it by scoring 360 points at Scrabble instead.

Okay, so those reviews will come, AND I will make more of an effort to write on the site proper. Ideas, Thoughts. Essays. RANTS!!!!

Things that need to be invented, part I

Doesn't it seem like all radio stations should simply have a link so that one can buy whatever song they just played?

Obvious, nu?

They should have their website constantly updating what track it was they just played. This would be nice in and of itself, right? (Some stations do this, already.)

But then the playlist should link to i-Tunes, Napster, or directly to the four major record lables, Sony-BMG, EMI, Universal and Warner and for a standard fee one could purchase the track one just heard on the radio.

Record companies would sell a lot of music on impulse buys. Radio stations could get a tiny cut of each transaction and they would have something else to show their own advertisers about listeners and their spending habits, besides specious Arbitron ratings.