Unexpected Value

Imagine you are picking rookies for the rookies vs. sophomore game at the all-star game.  You need to pick 4 bigs.

Do you:

1) pick the rookie who is leading all rookies in rebounding, both on per-game and per-minute numbers?
2) pick the rookie who is leading THE ENTIRE LEAGUE in offensive rebounding, both on per-game and per-minute numbers?

Or do you just randomly throw fucking darts at a dart board to pick 4 bigs?

Kevin Love is not only the best rebounding rookie, he is 6th in the entire league in rebounds per 48 minutes.

In other words, one of the top ten rebounders in the league is not good enough to play for the rookies in the rookies vs. sophomore game, according to whatever twatwits make these choices.

REALLY?

Now that Basketball season has started it's easier for me to find stuff to write about, so yay!

I used to coach basketball.  One of the first things I discovered is that if you ever end up saying something like "I'm not some rookie coach.  I won a national title as a top assistant coach to Gary Williams," then you are, in fact, probably as stupid as some rookie coach.

So, hats off to Gary Williams for winning a title fighting an uphill battle versus all the terrible advice Jimmy Pastos was handing out, is all I have to say.  Apparently Pastos thinks that stopping Stephen Curry is more important than winning vs. Davidson.  My favorite bit was how Pastos complained that the real problem was that Loyala only scored 48 points, while the AP reporter is astute enough to point out:

Plus, Brett Harvey, Loyola's top scorer coming into the game, didn't score as he spent most the game standing next to Curry in the corner.

I mean, really?

Hat tip to Truehoop.

Well.  At least they are playing along with project subsize me:

Abstract:     
We estimate the impacts of Wal-Mart and warehouse club retailers on height-adjusted body weight and overweight and obesity status, finding robust evidence that non-grocery selling Wal-Marts reduce weight while grocery-selling Wal-Marts and warehouse clubs either reduce weight or have no effect. The effects appear strongest for women, minorities, urban residents, and the poor. We then examine the effects of these retailers on exercise, food and alcohol consumption, smoking, and eating out at restaurants in order to explain the results for weight. Most notably, the evidence suggests that all three types of stores increase consumption of fruits and vegetables while reducing consumption of foods high in fat. This is consistent with the thesis that Wal-Mart increases real incomes through its policy of "Every Day Low Prices," making healthy food more affordable, as opposed to the thesis that cheap food prices make us eat more.

In all seriousness, WalMart does some pretty abhorent things,  but the company isn't all evil.  Sam Walton would have been disgusted at the human resources practices that have gotten the company in trouble in the last decade.  But in shaking their fists at big corporations, people tend to forget that they have pretty big benefits.  The fact that WalMart makes a ton of stuff affordable to people with lower incomes is NOT trivial.

Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.

That's the scale today.  I think I am getting lucky and weighing myself at the low peaks of the volatility in weight.  Good for motivation!

I know it's all just in my head, but I feel spritelier when playing basketball.

People at work obviously hate me.  This is our kitchen table.

I weighed myself this morning.  A smart person would have weighed himself before day 1.  I'll spare you the full-body pics because weight-watchers porn is icky.

I'm about 30 pounds overweight.

Ok, I'm about 40 pounds over what the BMI will tell you is ideal for a 6 foot male.  But, seriously, screw that.  I'd be happy at 188 lbs, and the BMI has all sorts of problems with it.  I know that "Big boned" is an excuse, but I also know that even when I did weigh 185, I had broad shoulders and I looked skinny.

The main problem for the last year or two has just been my attitude towards food.  It's all classic, straight-out-of-the-textbooks addictive behavior.  I eat more shitty food "in secret", i.e. when my wife isn't around to complain about it (as an aside, I don't respond well to her complaints about my eating habits, and the fact that she happens to be completely right doesn't seem to matter much.  I doubt this is just the irritability that is also classic behavior in a junkie, but rather my own irrational hatred of when people point out that I am being stupid).  I feel guilty about certain meals.  I get sugar lows.

I keep making half-hearted attempts to start eating better (I won't call it dieting), but there are several problems with my previous attempts:

1.  They have been undocumented and unpublic, so I have no fear of failure/embarrassment/etc to keep me 'honest'
2. number 1) is also a common part of addictive personality behavior patterns, in that it is indicative of a failure to admit that there's something wrong
3. my goals have always been just "to lose weight"

Hopefully this attempt will go more smoothly, because this time:

• I intend to document it on the blog.  If I don't, you will all just have one more little bit of proof that I am full of shit.
• Documenting this is proof that 2) is not a problem here.
  
• My goal isn't (just, anyway) to lose weight.  I want to be less worried about my health (I'm old enough to start worrying about my heart, etc).  I want my back to hurt less.  I want to be able to jump again -- these days when I play ball, I go up for layups and usually end up having to heave the ball high and far because I am about a foot further away from the hoop than my brain expects me to be, and it isn't just from getting old.  I want to be free of headaches.  I want to sleep better.  I want to not breathe as hard while running up and down the court.  I want to not feel guilty after eating.  I want to have more energy.  I want the elastic bands at the top of my underwear to stay straight instead of being bent in half by the flab in my belly.  Wow, just typing all these makes me feel more motivated.

So, today I started Project Subsize Me.  Sort of the opposite of Supersize Me as I won't be eating much at Micky Ds.  My food goals include:

• No refined sugar. I mean this in a zen way.  I'm not going to boycott stuff that has sugar because that is 80% of the supermarket.  I mean no products whose main ingredient is refined sugar.  Starburst, chocolate, ice cream, etc.
• No fried foods.  Chips, Fries, fried fish, etc, etc.
• No white bread (includes pizza which is basically a lotta white bread)
  
• No donuts, cake, etc, made from white bread, even if they aren't already disqualified because of the whole sugar thing

and

• More chicken, lamp, fish, and less beef.  In fact, as little beef as possible although giving up steak entirely is probably wishful thinking.
• Getting a bit of fruit for breakfast in the morning
• Drinking more water and less soda (probabably the hardest part of this list as I'm addicted to diet pepsi)
• cooking more, eating out less
  

Today actually started pretty MEH because I missed breakfast, but this is certainly better than getting a donut for breakfast.  At lunch I had some spicy chicken w/ salad from a nearby terriyaki joint.  I didn't get the sugary terriyaki sauce and I didn't get the (icky, btw) sweet dressing they usually put on the salad.  At least it wasn't a fried meal or a fatty Quizno's sandwich.

More updates to come.  If I slack off, I suck.

And for futher inspiration, see another ballers attempt to increase his vertical.

The accusation that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, would pick an inexperienced running mate, is absurd.

But then again, this is what her supporters have to say:

I realize, of course, that she's totally unqualified to be President at this point in time. If McCain were to die in February 2009, I hope Palin would have the good sense to appoint someone who is more ready to be President to be her Vice President, on the understanding that she would then resign and be appointed Vice President by her successor. (Lest anyone say that this is an absurd, unconstitutional or undemocratic scenario, recognize that this is pretty much what would happen in a Parliamentary system where, if the head of government dies, a successor is chosen by the party.) Palin is absolutely not ready to be President now, but that is a problem that is very easily dealt with if she is and the governing party want to do so.

Wait, this is your endorsement? In the words of John Stewart, "You're fucking kidding me, right?"

Tom Powers (hat tip to Truehoop) says

As midnight approached, it was announced that Wolves vice president Kevin McHale still was working on 'a deal' and wouldn't be able to make an appearance in the pressroom for some time. We all groaned. His deals usually suck. No one put it past him to trade Mayo in the middle of the night. As it turned out, we were right. His deal sucked. He traded Mayo in the middle of the night. There is no hope for this franchise.

For the background, the Timberwolves drafted O.J. Mayo, a player who scores a lot but kind of sucks (you all know by now that scoring lots isn't as important as scoring efficiently, right?  And that scoring a lot very inefficiently is even worse than not scoring at all?  Right?), with the third pick of the draft, then traded him, Antoine Walker (another guy who scores a lot very inefficiently), Marko Jaric (the most overpaid player in the league), and Greg Buckner (who?) for Mike Miller (a guy who scores a lot very efficiently....HMMMMM....), Kevin Love (a guy who scored very efficiently in college, and grabbed a ton of boards...HMMMMM....), and some other dudes with big contracts that cancel out Jaric and Buckner's bad contracts.

And Tom thinks this sucks.  Well, Tom, you are an idiot.  This isn't really knews to any twin cities sports fans; the man has let his blind hatred of Kevin McHale (who, in all fairness, has made some doozies in terms of stupid moves) color every article he ever writes about the Wolves for years now.  But this deal is good.  No, wait, this deal is AWESOME.  This deal is moneyball-like goodness.

The wolves just replaced two guys with negative win scores, a rookie who's WAY overrated, and an overpaid journeyman who's a little sub-par with probably the best small forward in the west (yes, I said that, and yes, I know Lamar Odom plays small forward) who's only 28 years old, and a rookie who will get paid less (yay, pay scale!), rebound more, score more efficiently, defend tougher, and knows how to win.  In fact, short of drafting Kevin Garnett, this is by far the best deal McHale or any other Wolves exec has ever done.

And I want to get some predictions on this blog here because I am SO going to enjoy pointing back to this blog post in 2-3 years:

1. OJ Mayo is going to score a lot of points in the league, and convince a lot of guys that he is a star player.  But like Carmelo Anthony, Jamal Crawford, and other innefficient scorers with bad assists-turnover ratios and poor rebound rates, his teams won't win as long as he's the focal point.
2. The Timberwolves will not only win more than they did last year, they will win substantially more than the Grizzlies.
3. Kevin Love is going to be one of those players who does not score a ton of points, but for some really strange reason guys like Tom Powers will never quite figure out, his teams will compete well anyway.
4. Timberwolves fans are going to freaking LOVE Mike Miller.

Seriously, Tom, you pick for "potential".  I'll pick the guy who scored 16 pts on 50% shooting (43%, yeah, that's right, FORTYTHREE PERCENT from beyond the ard) while grabbing 7 boards (as a small forward!) and dishing out 3.4 assists (as a small forward!).  Potential can kiss my ass.

Wow.  He's getting so stupid that he's endanger of defying a different law of economics, namely that People Aren't THAT Stupid.

Witness, from Bloomberg, via hat tip to Greg Mankiw:

[Senator McCain] has shown increasing disdain for any economist who questions his policy prescriptions. Earlier this month, he lashed out at critics of his proposal for a summer gas-tax holiday.

"You know the economists?'' McCain said June 12 at Federal Hall, near the New York Stock Exchange. "They're the same ones that didn't predict this housing crisis we're in. They're the same ones that didn't predict the dot-com meltdown. They're the same ones that didn't predict the inflation that's staring us in the face today.''

Where to start.  So much stupidity.  Make him stop.

OK, first.  If you say shit like "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should" all the time, then maybe you should either a) shut the hell up about economics or b) check your facts really hard before you go spouting bullshit about the subject.

Second, and this is a little related to the first point about being able to check your facts if you don't STFU, As it happens, John's statement is simply false.  There are several very prominent economists that did indeed predict the housing crisis we're in, among them Dean Baker, who is, understandably, endlessly frustrated by all the idiots in the press and politics who keep saying that no one could have seen this coming, and Paul Krugman, whose predictions were not as dire as Dean's but definitely forbode some bad times for homeowners.  Furthermore, there were a ton of economists, hell, there were a ton of journalists, who saw the dot-com meltdown coming.  I mean, they didn't know exactly when, but they sure as hell knew that companies with negative net income were not worth $5 billion valuations.

And last, as Greg points out, let's be clear, John, that there is no magical other group of people who predicted all these things perfectly.  But nice straw man attempt.

Oh, yeah, and WTF at the Bloomberg article NOT POINTING ANY OF THIS OUT AS BULLSHIT.  It ends with the above quote as if this were some nugget of maverick wisdom.  Seriously, when are the press going to do their jobs and ask the man some hard questions.  On second thought, how about some questions that any competent college grad could answer?