This guy has it figured out. Great numbers, insightful commentary–great, great name.  Dude is smart.

This is a former baseball stats guy who has moved to politics. And by baseball stats, I mean Baseball Prospectus, the guys who with the help of Lawrence’s own Bill James and Billy Beane (and by help I mean it was all James idea and Beane was the first to implement it.) have completely changed the way people think about baseball, at least those of us who think about baseball.

fivethirtyeight.com

I thought this was an interesting example of the further weakening US economy.

Deadspin reports that many NBA players are returning to Europe. It has long been assumed that the best talent will continue to come to the US based on the NBA being the premiere league in the world. Of course, economics could change that.

Europe has always been a viable option for marginal NBA players, many college stars have had great careers there, and the locals can play some serious ball.  Could this economic downturn be some sort of tipping point which allows some European leagues to close the gap?

Also, high school senior Brandon Jennings, a consensus top five senior in the 2008 class will being playing in Rome next year. There was a new rule put in place by the NBA last year that dictates a player must wait one year after his class graduates before he can enter the NBA draft. Hear we see the market doing what it does. Instead of playing at the University of Arizona, kid heads to Rome. Maybe he can buy some fat glasses and lose them at the bottom of the Lake of the Ozarks.

For fun, check this out.

Two things:

Trev, when it’s time, can you set up a bracket again?

Also, there was discussion of a pool betting on the K-Stop baby’s weight and also date of birth. Does anyone have the expertise to set this up?

Alupa and Himay are betting on the election. Alupa has 50, straight up (even odds), on Red, and Himay has Blue. If anyone wants in on this, please chime in and pony up. There was a great conversation about how any voter fraud, tampering, whatnot that results in a Republican victory still goes to Alupa, and for those of you playing roulette along with us at home, this means that he gets zero and double zero : ) But that’s sort of distracting from the original, very straightforward wager. The original wager, which, in his own words, means for Alupa, if “I win, the country loses.”

Now, of more immediate concern is the side action on the nominations. If you want in on that, the odds and stakes must be negotiated with us on a personal basis (as opposed to the above, which is open and transparent for all takers, but for a limited time only). Currently I have two to one Romney vs Alupa’s McCain or Huck. Nothing going on the Dems yet.  UPDATE: Alupa has Hillary even odds for 20, Himay’s got Obama. This was a difficult one on which to agree…

Any takers on anything at all?

Bored at work? Need a break from tooling around the interwebs? Looking for a little digital battle?

Welcome to the wonderful world of weewar.com. Request and invite. Set up a user name. Do battle and talk trash on complete strangers in an online version of Risk, but you know, cooler. Build forts. Build fighting forces. Takeover bases. All in the name of entertainment. The great part about it is that it’s super strategic and the 16 bit graphics totally downplay any association with wanton violence that happens to be ensuing on screen.

The absolute best thing about it, is that you can set time limits from five minutes to three days per turn, so that even if you’ve got other stuff to do you can still get a few rounds in over the course of an eight hour work day, and your boss will never be the wiser.

Which is nice for those putting in their 40 hours this week.

A word of warning though: This is seriously the most addictive game that i’ve ever played. And coming from someone with as an addictive personality as I’ve got (no comments from the peanut gallery here), that’s saying something.

I give it: ****** on a scale of five.

http://www.archive.org/details/OneGotFa1963

This video is super creepy but if you watch it you’ll learn a valuable lesson about bicycle safety. I would have embedded it, but wordpress is a cruel mistress.

ncaa tournament

mmod

another

and another

one more

Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in.

I understand this is from Godfather 3, and is near blasphemy to quote, but it is so damn appropriate.

Damn you Bill Self, this is a Kansas basketball post.

I have done so well all year, I was at Allen during the ORU debacle and all year I have been wait and see, but the fan in me has taken over. I am rationalizing everything. Kicking the shit out of everyone at home? Check. Winning road games where we don’t play great? Check. Winning when some of our best players don’t excel? Check.

They have me again. I really think we will roll over on Tejas. Everything nationally that has needed to happen has happened. Florida has gone in the tank. UNC, we will get back to that. Wisconsin lost one of their most imp’t players. aTm lost a big game on the road. We are poised to win the reg. season outright and at the very least get to the finals of the tourney. If we do this we get a number one seed. Our top seven are the best in the nation, all the talking heads are starting to talk about us, we are at the top of most everyone’s list.

I wanted to wait and be benign, I did, but everything is falling into place and once again I am sitting here asking “why not us?”

Talked to my Dad tonight and all year I have been the naysayer and I tell him that they have started to give me hope again and he simply tells me that he has seen it coming and he has heard it in my voice the last two weeks. He knew I would fall into line.

/preparing for another heartbreak, this may be an ugly March for me.

That being said, I will have all of the first and second round games on at my house through directv. If you want to come over, you are welcome.

Rock Chalk. Fuck.

For those of you who haven’t been following UNC, I will tell you this. Roy is playing 10 players more than 11.5 minutes a game, including the incompetent Bobby Fraser and Wes Miller. Seriously, Wes fucking Miller, this kid is awful. You know why Roy is playing him? His asst/to ration is 2.8 (so is Fraser’s btw) but he shoot 31% from the field (Fraser shoots 37%). You know what they do well? Hustle, and lead and slap the floor and whatever. He has no discipline, no line-up. Here we are a month from pay-day and the commentators during the game are wondering what the hell he is doing.

Ok, don’t read on. How many timeouts do you think Roy ended the game with? In case you don’t know he gets an extra round of golf for every unused TO. Think about it. Let me give you some context, G-Tech went on a 20-7 run in the first half and a similar run 5 minutes into the second half and Roy called no timeouts.

and the answer? 3. They finished the game with three time-outs. He gets to use those tonight with Wanda when he is about ready to go. You know, hey Wanda TO, we need to slow down. They got out-hustled, out rebounded 34-25. Their guards played awful. They looked clueless in half-court sets. And their big guys got pushed around.

I have seen this fucking movie before, and man does it feel good.