Matthew Yglesias

Icelandic Butter

It sounds stupid, but I saw in Whole Foods today that they're now selling Icelandic butter so I thought I would let people know that, in my opinion at least, they have really, really tasty butter in Iceland. It's good stuff. Try some.

More Greatness

He may not be the best quarterback, but it seems that Ryan Fitpatrick, conforming to stereotype, is the smartest quarterback in the NFL:

Until Sunday, Ryan Fitzpatrick's claim to fame was that he is the second player in NFL history to register a perfect score of 50 on the Wonderlic test – the intelligence test administered by NFL teams at the combine before the draft each season. . . .

Not impressed? First, Fitz finished his test in nine minutes, rather than the alotted 12. Second, according to the same report on NFL.com, the average score in the United States (the test is commonly administered to prospective employees in industries of all kinds) is 22. The average chemist scores a 31, the run-of-the-mill custodian registers a 14, and NFL players come in at about 21, on average.

It's worth noting that, contrary to the "dumb jock" stereotype, professional football players are of roughly average intelligence. At any given college the atheletes are going to be less smart than the non-athletes, but compared to the population as a whole there's no difference.

Greatness

I usually stick to basketball here, but it looks like the Colts have a very realistic chance of going undefeated, no? That would really be something. I look forward to torturing the young people of 2047 with grumpy old man talk about how they never saw a really great football team. Of course, Jacksonville, Seattle, and San Diego are all good football teams so they could very well lose. On the other hand, Pittsburg's good too and they certainly got trounced.

D'Antoni

I'm glad to see Mike D'Antoni chosen as an assistant coach for Team USA basketball, but really it seems to me that he ought to be the head coach. For one thing, he's obviously a good coach. More specifically, he's the American with the most experience in coaching international basketball. The lesson everyone seems to have taken away from recent debacles is that the USA needs to start taking this stuff more seriously, and that should probably start with recognizing that the rules are different in international competition and that makes a difference in terms of strategy, what players you want, etc.

On the other hand, I should say that the discredited "Dream Team" model would still be pretty awesome if you could put a bona fide dream team together. Shaq, Duncan, McGrady, Kobe, and Kidd start, I guess, with Garnett, Iverson, and James rounding out your basic eight-man rotation.

The Turnaround

Joe Biden, writes an op-ed on November 26. Later that day, Captain Ed explains that Biden has managed to get "the entire war on terror fundamentally wrong" and demonstrate "why the Democrats have entirely failed to provide any leadership on Iraq and the wider war." Later that after noon, a White House press release declares "Sen. Biden Adopts Key Portions of Administration's Plan for Victory in Iraq." The following day, Ed posts on such topics as alleged Iranian training of Chechen rebels, why Alito's membership in a racist and sexist student group isn't so bad, how the intelligence bureacracy should be organized, Ariel Sharon's political strategy and, indeed, just about everything under the sun except the White House's embrace of a plan Ed thinks is fundamentally wrong.

The Game

I've been remiss in not gloating over Harvard's exciting defeat of Yale last weekend. The reason is that I've been hanging out with all these Texas grads who like to cast aspersions on the Crimson football program. Nevertheless, Ivy League football is endorsed by America's premiere source for white supremacist football commentary:

Think Ivy League. Though the Ivy league is not, strictly speaking, a Division I-A conference (it's Div. I-AA) its schools are so famous that an athlete that plays for one will have the rapt attention of the eastern media. Ivy League schools have to have a student body composed of the smartest students in the country, or risk losing their status as academic powerhouses. Quite simply put that means there are few slots open for non-white students, who on average score hundreds of points lower than their white counterparts on the SATs. Sure the schools can sneak a few affirmative action cases in on the sly but it is nearly impossible for them to find a way to house and educate the type of black "student-athletes" that play football at other universities. . . .

Watch an Ivy League game some time. It's like watching a game from the 1960s. A few black players scattered here and there, but mostly white players, and they're playing those positions forbidden to them at nearly all other schools. Running back, receiver, and corner back/safety. If you want a good education, and some good exposure for a very long-shot at the pros, the Ivy League is not a bad place for a white player to go.

I trust that even Larry Summers won't be going there. See also white supremacist basketball commentary:

Washington, D.C. is the capitol city of the “global revolutionaries” supposedly pushing “democracy” and “diversity” on the world – often at the point of a gun – but the basketball team representing Washington has no diversity. None at all. The curiously named Wizards boast the NBA’s only all-black roster. However, don’t expect any media outcry such as erupted when the Houston Astros won the National League pennant without any blacks; a lack of “diversity” is only bad when it’s blacks who are supposedly under-represented. No whites? That’s a wonderful thing in the anti-white Caste System.

No doubt San Antonio was dying to make that Ginobili-Jeffries trade, but the norotious racist Abe Polin wouldn't go for it.

Statues

A surprise good point from Mark Krikorian:

On the other hand, Krauthammer gets a little carried away with himself in the other direction, writing about how our monuments to foreign liberators demonstrate our devotion to "liberty for its own sake." Well, maybe, but he might also be reading a little too much into it. Sure, a Gandhi statue may not have had any ulterior motive, but isn't it possible that statues to Irish, Ukrainian, or Italian revolutionaries might have just a wee bit to do with ethnic pandering? Not that there's anything wrong with that, and his point isn't entirely without foundation, but a little realism (if I might use that word) isn't a bad thing.

All that said, I think public statuary is an unalloyed good and America could use more of it. My favorite pander statue in DC is the Tomas Masaryk monument near the Czech embassy on Massachusetts and 22nd. Meridian Hill Park near my house, however, goes one better by featuring a memorial to James Buchanan, traditional consensus choice as worst president in American history. After that, a question: Who is the Logan of Logan Circle fame?

A Reprise

Over the holiday weekend I managed to encounter a shockingly large number of cinematically aware people who not only didn't have Me and You and Everyone We Know on their top movies of 2005 list, but didn't even know the film existed. Well, it's real and it's good. Visit the website here. Watch the trailer. It doesn't seem to be showing anywhere at the moment, but Netflix will come to the rescue.

Who Needs Cap Room?

Though obviously intrigued by the possibility of Kevin Garnett becoming a Knick, I have to agree that trading him for cap room would be bizarre and stupid. You acquire cap room in order to acquire players who are better than the ones you have up. Arguably, there simply isn't anyone who's better than KG. Certainly there isn't anyone who's clearly superior. And nobody who's even plausibly in his league is going to be a realistic free agent pickup for Minnesota anyway. On top of that, you have to figure the Minnesota fans would lynch the ownership if they pulled something like that.

Thanksgiving

Being thankfull is a good idea. It's worth noting that for all the world's problems, those of us fortunate enough to be fairly prosperous in early 21st century America probably enjoy the highest standard of living the world has ever known, largely thanks to the efforts of those who've come before us. I'm less thankful for the continuing string of humiliating defeats the Wizards have suffered after an oh-so-promising 5-1 start.

Panda Whoring

Can't say I've ever given one, but a handjob doesn't seem like such an inordinately high price to pay in exchange for a Tai Shan ticket. That's a damn cute baby panda! The question, it seems to me, is what kind of person would be sex-starved enough to give up his panda ticket for a handjob? This isn't 10th grade, people, hold out for something better.

Goat Watch

We haven't had a goat post around here in a while, but the goat craze has hit the LA Times. Goat is good -- try some if you haven't.

Better Fewer, But Better

Ross Douthat writes:

What conservatives and liberals alike need to realize, I think, is that the real debate over the university these days isn't between left and right - between tenured radicals and their conservatives opponents - but between the people at both ends of the political spectrum who care deeply about the humanities, about liberal arts education, and about forcing students to cultivate the life of the mind . . . and the people who are content with the current system, in which, as Oppenheimer puts it, "promiscuous activity is the rule of the day," and students are expected to be well-rounded careerists for whom academic pursuits as just one ingredient, and sometimes a minor one at that, in the "salad bowl of college life."

The thing of it is that if you want college to be geared toward something other than "well-rounded careerists" I think you need to displace college from its centrality to American social and economic life. As long as obtaining a college degree is the price of admission to the middle class, colleges will necessarily be peopled by careerists. That's the trouble. Our vision of what higher education should be like is deeply at odds with our vision of what higher education is for. You can't both say that college should be about seriously cultivating the life of the mind and also that going to college is necessary for all kinds of pursuits (lawyering, bond trading, etc.) that have nothing to do with the life of the mind.

Popper's Hegemony

Charles Krauthammer, bashing Intelligent Design, calls is, "a 'theory' that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable." This seems like a good time to wonder, once again, how it is exactly that Karl Popper's take on this question managed to achieve such a hegemonic status in middlebrow circles. Falsificationism isn't intuitively obvious, was controversial when first proposed, and unless I'm mistaken is generally regarded by philosophers of science as wrong. Certainly, it isn't universally regarded in the field as anything like "the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science." So why do pundits love it so? See this summary of Lakatos' critique:

As Lakatos has pointed out, Popper's theory of demarcation hinges quite fundamentally on the assumption that there are such things as critical tests, which either conclusively falsify a theory, or give it a strong measure of corroboration. Popper himself is fond of citing, as an example of such a critical test, the resolution, by Adams and Leverrier, of the problem which the anomalous orbit of Uranus posed for nineteenth century astronomers. Both men independently came to the conclusion that, assuming Newtonian mechanics to be precisely correct, the observed divergence in the elliptical orbit of Uranus could be explained if the existence of a seventh, as yet unobserved outer planet was posited. Further, they were able, again within the framework of Newtonian mechanics, to calculate the precise position of the ‘new’ planet. Thus when subsequent research by Galle at the Berlin observatory revealed that such a planet (Neptune) did in fact exist, and was situated precisely where Adams and Leverrier had calculated, this was hailed as by all and sundry as a magnificent triumph for Newtonian physics: in Popperian terms, Newton's theory had been subjected to a critical test, and had passed with flying colours. Popper himself refers to this strong corroboration of Newtonian physics as ‘the most startling and convincing success of any human intellectual achievement’. Yet Lakatos flatly denies that there are critical tests, in the Popperian sense, in science, and argues the point convincingly by turning the above example of an alleged critical test on its head. What, he asks, would have happened if Galle had not found the planet Neptune? Would Newtonian physics have been abandoned, or would Newton's theory have been falsified? The answer is clearly not, for Galle's failure could have been attributed to any number of causes other than the falsity of Newtonian physics (e.g. the interference of the earth's atmosphere with the telescope, the existence of an asteroid belt which hides the new planet from the earth, etc). The point here is that the ‘falsification/corroboration’ disjunction offered by Popper is far too logically neat: non-corroboration is not necessarily falsification, and falsification of a high-level scientific theory is never brought about by an isolated observation or set of observations. Such theories are, it is now generally accepted, highly resistant to falsification. They are falsified, if at all, Lakatos argues, not by Popperian critical tests, but rather within the elaborate context of the research programmes associated with them gradually grinding to a halt, with the result that an ever-widening gap opens up between the facts to be explained, and the research programmes themselves. (Lakatos, I. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, passim). Popper's distinction between the logic of falsifiability and its applied methodology does not in the end do full justice to the fact that all high-level theories grow and live despite the existence of anomalies (i.e. events/phenomena which are incompatible with the theories). The existence of such anomalies is not usually taken by the working scientist as an indication that the theory in question is false; on the contrary, he will usually, and necessarily, assume that the auxiliary hypotheses which are associated with the theory can be modified to incorporate, and explain, existing anomalies.

I find that convincing. Which is not to say that Intelligence Design is good science, merely that this is the wrong way to describe the difference.

Jesus Is Magic

Go see it. Very funny. Highly recommended. It's not suitable for your kids, but I would encourage them to head down to their local theater without you, buy tickets for something that's not rated R, and then go sneak in -- they'll love it.

Good Question

Overheard in New York:

Guy #1: Well, to the west is Chelsea, down past 14th Street is the Village, uptown is Harlem, down past Houston is Soho; the Lower East Side is South past the Village.
Guy #2: What's this area called?
Guy #1: I have no idea...

Neither do I. I grew up on 12th and University right around there, but south of the crucial 14th border. Never knew what to call the area to the direct northeast.

Sea Horse Smuggling

They had survived a 19-hour flight from Vietnam in a bag of oxygenated water, stashed in a cooler, before they landed at Los Angeles International Airport.

The seahorses — five males and three females — were each about 5 inches long. And hungry. Authorities confiscated the animals — considered a threatened species that can be traded only under special regulations — and turned them over to SEA Lab in Redondo Beach.

Link. Who knew?

All-Time College

Now here's a funny idea -- Dikembe Mutombo, Patrick Ewing, and Alonzo Mourning all on the floor simultaneously as part of the All-Time Georgetown basketball team. Mourning, on this theory, becomes a small forward. That would be at least funny to watch, though in practice I suspect you'd want to use one of the three as a sixth man.

Widescreen!

Okay. Watching Knicks-Lakers. Why doesn't ESPN-HD broadcast games in widescreen? Their football is widescreen. Their baseball is widescreen. TNT-HD's basketball is widescreen. Comcast-HD's basketball is widescreen. What's the deal?

Suicide Bombing

The Moustache of Understanding remarks:

Suicide bombing is an abomination. It is sick. You cannot build a healthy state from suicide bombers. Imagine what your national museum would look like: "Here's Ahmed - he blew up 52 Muslims at a wedding." "Here's Muhammad - he blew up 25 Shiites at a funeral."

I find this oft-expressed sentiment a bit baffling. Wouldn't the museum just say "Ahmed and Muhammed made the ultimate sacrifice for their country [the ummah, freedom, whatever]." More to the point, the focus on the alleged abominability of suicide bombing seems absolutely backwards. The problem here is the deliberate attacks on civilians. Suicide attacks on soldiers and military facilities are no more morally out of bounds than non-suicide attacks on real military targets. Similarly, non-suicide attacks on civilians are no more morally acceptable than suicide ones.

Wizards-Cavs

That didn't go so well. Times like these you remember that the Wizards didn't actually trade Larry Hughes for Butler and Atkins. We got those dudes for Kwame Brown. We gave up Hughes to save money. Arguably, he was asking to be overpaid somewhat. But as far as I can tell, the money thereby saved wasn't used to acquire any noteworthy assets. We'll have to see how that turns out. As for Arenas, the thing to keep in mind is that 43 plus 18 divided by 2 equals 30.5 -- regression to the mean.

The "Fallacy" Fallacy

"The Ginsburg Fallacy" is a good column, but what Ruth Marcus has identified here isn't a fallacy at all. Misuse of this term is tragically common in modern-day America. Normally, I don't like to get all persnickety about usage stuff, but fallacies are real and important things and it strikes me as important to have a word for them.

Who Pays?

Katha Pollitt, reflecting on Dowd, writes: "Do we know that more women want the man to pay the bill than want to share it or, if that's too mechanical, work out some other arrangement that feels equal?" I'd like to know, too. Contra Dowd, I don't think I know any people in relationships where the man systematically picks up the tab. Alternating seems to be the usual strategy, rather than splitting ("too mechanical," as Pollitt suggests). I think it is pretty common for a man to pay on, say, a first date but to me that's a pretty different kind of thing that, among other things, doesn't carry the implication of financial dependence. "Man pays" in that context is often useful in clarifying an ambiguous "is it a date?" situation.

Of course on top of this, some people make a lot more money than other people do. It seems natural enough that someone in that situation might at least sometimes pay the other person's way for an expensive meal or activity rather than foregoing the opportunity to do nice things out of a sense of equity.

Stars

As a fan of Canadian stuff, indie rock, and Canadian indie rock I'd been remiss in not listening to Stars' most recent album Set Yourself on Fire until last night. Good stuff. Hardly my favorite Canadian indie band (Arcade Fire, Metric, New Pornographers, etc. is tough competition), but very good nonetheless. Speaking of which, the CBC Radio 3 podcasts available for free at the iTunes music store are, in my opinion, indispensible.

Who? Who?

Daniel Gross wonders who would want to buy Knight-Ridder. I certainly don't know. By the same token, however, I find it totally baffling that nobody has hired the K-R national security reporting team of Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel. There are good people working their beats at both Timeses and the Post, but they're the best. Where's the market incentives when you need them.

At any rate, the newspaper business is just bizarre. In essence, you have this series of segmented monopolies. Even in a two-paper town, you often don't see real competition. The Washington Times is just a different sort of thing from The Washington Post. Similarly, The New York Times isn't genuinely competing with the other New York papers. In NYC, The Daily News and The New York Post are an actual example of two different papers, owned by two different companies, offering direct competition for a similar product, but that situation is practically unique. On the internet, the elite papers actually need to compete against one another, but since nobody's really figured out how to make serious money off a newspaper website, that doesn't impact anybody's thinking.

"Great Scorers"

Everybody complains about sportscasters, but one thing about growing up in NYC is you don't appreciate exactly how bad it can get in the smaller markets. Watching Lakers at Grizzlies, for example, one of the dudes was just trying to maintain that Kobe Bryant and Eddie Jones is a matchup of "two great scorers." I mean, look, Jones is a good player, an asset most teams could use. But seriously! Related to the general idiocy, the local NBA commentators are relentlessly partisan, whining about the officiating, etc. It's a pain.

As background, for some Comcast doesn't seem to think my preview week of NBA League Pass is done with. I'm slightly clueless as to what the market for that product is supposed to be. I like watching regular season pro basketball a lot more than the next guy. But between the Wizards games, NBA TV, ESPN, and TNT that's an awful lot of basketball being shown as is.

Elite!

Okay, the Wizards still aren't elite. But a one point game at halftime against the Spurs isn't bad at all. I note that Caron Butler just agreed that the Spurs are "the best team in the league." Obviously, that's true. But players on good teams out to at least pretend to believe that the best team in the league is their team.

UPDATE: May I also say that Comcast SportsNet's love of unorthodox camera angles is extremely annoying.

UPDATE II: More broadcasting complaints. The following is the worst joke ever: "Robert Horry would have to be some kind of alien to wear all his championship rings onone hand." Okay. "Because as a human he wouldn't have enough fingers." Got it the first time! "He's won six championships." If you have to explain it. . . .

Take That, Bitches

Or SuperSonics as the case may be. The Wizards may not be "elite" but they are good. But why does Jared Jeffries start on this team?

Just Saying

Surely there's nothing more annoying than listening to two gay guys talk about how abortion rights aren't really so important. Well, probably plenty of things are more annoying. But I was annoyed.

Miller, Again

This bullshit is really starting to annoy me:

In a statement, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The Times, said: "We are grateful to Judy for her significant personal sacrifice to defend an important journalistic principle," adding, "I respect her decision to retire from The Times and wish her well."

What principle, exactly, was she defending?

The right of journalists to protect their sources? But Libby wasn't a source for any article Miller wrote or was planning on writing. Nor was the fact that Libby had spoken to Miller on the day in question a secret, Libby had already said as much to the prosectors. Miller was protecting not the identity of her "source" but the content of what the source told her. There's no journalistic principle saying reporters shouldn't disclose what their sources tell them. It would be very hard to write articles on the basis of that principle. Reporters are in the business of disclosing what their sources tell them. They're not, ordinarily, in the business of saying who their sources were, if their sources don't want to be identified. But, again, Libby had already identified himself.

There was no principle here. Miller was refusing to testify in order to protect a friend from a perjury charge. That's an understable thing to do. People like to protect their friends. The New York Times by agreeing to assist Miller in her quest and drag the first amendment into it managed to delay the investigation by a year. There's a non-trivial chance the paper, and Miller, thereby got George W. Bush re-elected. Good work.

Does He Know How To Throw A Brick?

Belle Waring raises the uncomfortable issues:

Finally, and I mean this in the nicest way, and I don’t want people to die, but doesn’t this seem like some kind of pussy rioting, frankly? It’s been going on for almost two weeks and only one or two people have died? If American people had been rioting that long the death toll would be in the three digits, for sure. Don’t mess with American pride.

That does seem true. It also raises a question: Last night's Arrested Development alleged that in the UK, "pussy" is a term of endearment -- true or false? The thing about the riots must be related to the fact that there are radically fewer guns floating around in Europe than here in the USA.

Uninformative Movie Reviews

The Squid and the Whale and The War Within are both very good and should be playing at your local indie movie theater. The downside to frequent recent visits to the Landmark E Street Theater is that I keep seeing previews for Jesus is Magic which looks to be the funniest thing ever and keeps not getting released. Very frustrating. Soon, I hope.

D'ya Think?

WaPo:

French officials and local residents have expressed concern that the media images of blazes and rioting could damage tourism in the country, which attracts 75 million visitors a year.

Now why would they think that?

Riot Music

In the real world, of course, rampant rioting is a bad thing. In the world of music, however, "I Predict a Riot" by the Kaiser Chiefs is one of my favorite songs of 2005. "White Riot" by the Clash is, of course, a classic. I'm also partial to "Polaroid Baby" by Bratmobile, "Burn to the fucking ground LA / Whitey's gonna pay, whitey's gonna pay." Other rioting favorites?

Fantasy Basketball

Tyler Cowen discussed fantasy scenarios where the Spurs don't just stomp everyone:

My second fantasy is that Larry Hughes (and not Lamar Odom) is the Scottie Pippen-in-waiting. LeBron James will continue his path to being the next Michael Jordan. Donyell Marshall will hold up and they will trade their stiff and slow center (don't expect me to spell his name) for a dynamic front court player. Offer up your own NBA fantasy in the comments, if you wish...

That hope looks pretty dead tonight. The Spurs are just ridiculously good. It's up to Detroit or Indiana.

Justified True Belief

Nick Kristof in his quasi-blog thingy writes:

Incidentally, when the White House did once raise the issue of my Niger reporting with me, the senior official who complained did not argue that any of this was incorrect. Rather, he noted that Bush's reference in the State of the Union address was to "Africa" rather than to Niger -- and that even if the Niger connection was fraudulent, there were possible linkages to other African countries like Congo that could have made Bush's 16 words technically correct. That was a very flimsy branch, and the official gave up the argument pretty quickly.

It's sort of too bad the White House didn't go with this story, because that would have brought the country close to a major national debate about the Gettier Problem:

You have a justified belief that someone in your office owns a Ford. And as it happens it's true that someone in your office owns a Ford. However, your evidence for your belief all concerns Nogot, who as it turns out owns no Ford. Your belief that someone in the office owns a Ford is true because someone else in the office owns a Ford. Call this guy Haveit. Since all your evidence concerns Nogot and not Haveit, it seems, intuitively, that you don't know that someone in your office owns a Ford. So you don't know, even though you have a justified belief that someone owns a Ford, and, as it turns out, this belief happens to be true.

It's not quite the same, but it's pretty close.

Dowd Again

Apparently, Maureen Dowd had all kinds of facts wrong in her big article. Hat tip to Ezra. Ezra, meanwhile, doesn't say where he found the link, but I somehow doubt he's a regular reader of WomensENews.org -- just saying.

Brendan Haywood

DCist examines issues facing the Wizards:

2)Will Gilbert Arenas share the ball?
Too many times last year Arenas got drawn into one-on-one battles with other top flight players, often with disastrous results for the team. Arenas can score with anyone, but the team will be better off if he shares the ball with Jamison and Butler. How many times have you heard a coach tell you that if you pass the ball, you'll get it back?

"Shoot first point guard should pass more," is probably the oldest piece of conventional wisdom in the book. And I don't especially disagree. I don't think, however, that sharing the ball more with Jamison and Butler (or, before him, Hughes) is really the issue. What they need to do is pass to Brendan Haywood more. Nobody's going to mistake him for an all-star, but he's a competent low post player and most teams' interior defense is not so impressive. When you're running a half-court offense, you might as well make the opposition prove they can contain a 7'0", 268lbs guy in single coverage before resorting to one-on-one plays on the perimeter. Given that Haywood's usually going to be the fourth-best Wizard on the floor, nobody can really afford to double-team him. Some squads have people who can handle him no problem, in which case it all falls on the perimeter guys, but many don't.

For whatever reason, I saw the Wizards resort to this strategy at one point against the Bulls in the playoffs last year and it worked shockingly well. That's my two cents. Note that last year Haywood had the biggest on court / off court spread of anyone on the team. And John Hollinger's thoughts:

Ernie Grunfeld signed Haywood to a five-year, $25 million extension before last season started, and right now that's looking like a whale of a deal for Washington. Jordan finally permitted Haywood to stay on the court for more than a few minutes at a time, and he responded with another strong campaign in the middle. Haywood has always been a high-percentage shooter but he took it another step forward last season, shooting 56.0 percent on a series of short hook shots and dunks. While the Wizards don't call many plays for him in the post, his footwork has improved considerably and Jordan might consider running more plays for him next season (if he can pry the ball away from Arenas and Jamison, that is). Haywood also has developed a more reliable way to get the ball -- he's an excellent offensive rebounder who grabbed 12.2 percent of his teammates' misses.

There you have it.

Anonymous Restaurants

From The New Yorker's profile of Brent Scowcroft:

Rice’s split with her former National Security Council colleagues was made evident at a dinner in early September of 2002, at 1789, a Georgetown restaurant. Scowcroft, Rice, and several people from the first Bush Administration were there. The conversation, turning to the current Administration’s impending plans for Iraq, became heated. Finally, Rice said, irritably, "The world is a messy place, and someone has to clean it up." The remark stunned the other guests. Scowcroft, as he later told friends, was flummoxed by Rice’s "evangelical tone."

But which Georgetown restaurant? You can totally see why Scowcroft's friends need to be kept nameless here, but the restaurant. And yet, you see this sort of thing in narrative journalism all the time. Needlessly withholding details to make the reporting appear more sexily covert.

UPDATE: Of course, 1789 is the name of a restaurant and not the date of the dinner. Apologies.

Where's Nazr?

I skipped the pregame commentary, so maybe this was covered then, but why is Rasho Nesterovic starting for the Spurs? Didn't he lose that job to Nazr Mohammed pretty definitively? I figured this year he'd be playing behind Duncan, Mohammed, Horry, and Oberto in the F/C rotation and not really get on the floor unless someone was injuref.

UPDATE: Also, does Sean Marks really deserve a championship ring? I mean, yes, he was technically on the team, but still. On the other hand, having a player from New Zealand on the roster does boost SA's already impresive international dimension.

Don't Tell MoDo

Via Ezra Klein, it seems men like their pornographic women strong and independent:

Beggan began in 1998 to assemble a database that contained all the photos and text from the 204 Playboy Playmate pictorials that appeared in the magazine between 1985 and 2001. Much of it was distilled from a cache of Playboys he found gathering dust in a Louisville bookstore. (And, of course, in the interest of scholarship, he just had to rescue them from oblivion.)

Beggan and Allison, writing in the latest issue of the Journal of Popular Culture, found a pattern to the way that Playboy's wordsmiths described the women who graced the magazine's centerfold. They were typically strong, career-oriented, aggressive and, in a surprising number of instances, downright "tough." Adjectives suggesting vulnerability, submissiveness or passivity appeared less frequently.

Personally, I only read Playboy for its recommendations of awesome bloggers.