28 September 03
End Of Season
Today was the last game of the regular baseball season. The one game I followed was the Detroit Tigers-Minnesota Twins matchup: the Tigers won, thus avoiding the ignominy of tying the 1962 Mets’ record of losing 120 games in a season. The downside of their sudden winning ways—they just took 3 games out of 4 from the Twins—is the fear that the Twins won’t be up to their forthcoming duty to eliminate the Yankees from the playoffs.
The playoffs look to be quite exciting. All three of the teams we root for—the San Francisco Giants, the Boston Red Sox, and the Oakland A’s—made the playoffs. Alas, at most two of them will make it past the first round since the A’s play the Red Sox right away. Then there’s the Cubbies factor. The Chicago Cubs swept yesterday’s doubleheader with the Pirates to win their division. I was pleased by this event; Pica less so, since this sets up the possibility of a Cubs-Red Sox World Series. Since the Red Sox last won the Series in 1918, and the Cubs in 1908, heartbreak is inevitable. Indeed, some suspect such a series would be a sign the Apocalypse is near.
27 September 03
The World Lost a Great Mind Yesterday
Edward Said died at the age of 67 after living for years with leukemia. He spoke eloquently not only for Palestinians but for justice throughout the world. A scholar at Columbia University for many years, his book Orientalism (1978) is credited with starting the post-colonial studies movement.
Whenever I saw him through my work at Harvard University Press he was debonair, brilliant, a little intimidating, and always intensely thoughtful. The Arab world has just lost its most articulate mouthpiece.
26 September 03
A Vision Of Lucre
Last week Pica attended the Chancellor’s Fall Conference, a day-and-a-half shindig where UC Davis faculty and staff discussed the just released campus strategic plan, a document entitled The UC Davis Vision. This document is filled with platitudes about how the campus will “ensure that [it] maintains and develops high-caliber courses, curricula and academic programs” and will “invest in targeted areas of established and emerging excellence and distinction.” This is the sort of document that university administrators feel the need to produce every few years, and one wishes they would merely dust off the previous edition from the archives in the basement rather than go to great effort to rewrite the thing anew.
Absent from the plan is much discussion of how the university plans to achieve this grand vision in the face of a massive budget crunch, let alone avoid the internecine fighting that accompanies such. There lies however, off in the bucolic northwest corner of Yolo County, a possible solution to the university’s woes. This valley is home to the Cache Creek casino, a fantastically successful enterprise a few years old run by and for the benefit of the Rumsey Band of Wintun Indians. (In California gambling casinos are only allowed under tribal auspices.) Many Cache Creek Valley residents are not very fond of the casino for bringing lots of traffic to their formerly quiet valley, but given tribal sovereignty there is little they can do.
But here an opportunity beckons. What if the Rumsey Band were to partner with the university to move the casino to campus? All parties would benefit. The casino would be in a much more accessible location, being right off the interstate running from the Bay Area to Sacramento. Both the Rumsey Band and the university would share in the profits, and the university would be ensured of a stable and growing funding source. Cache Creek would get their quiet valley back, and there would be many new part-time jobs for the students. (Who wouldn’t rather be a croupier instead of delivering for Woodstock’s Pizza?) Indeed, whole new university programs could spring into existence—what about a hotel administration department? (Cornell has one, why not UC Davis?) And seeing as how the Mondavi Center is built on a Native American gravesite, placing the casino nearby is not that geographically inappropriate.
Looking a few miles and years down the road, there are other prime opportunities for public-private partnerships. There’s a proposal afoot to build a $250 million racetrack and entertainment complex entitled Dixon Downs, to be located about 7 miles down the highway from UCD. Think of the funding that could come the university’s way with a little bit of creative outreach! Plenty of opportunity for the veterinary school at the very least.
Serving the entertainment industry—the new function of the university in the 21st century! Sounds like it would make a good proposal for Governor Arnold.
25 September 03
They’re BAAACK…
Today was the first day of classes at UC Davis. There were thousands (about 30,000, to be concrete) people wandering around these 5,000 acres, many of them a) completely lost b) on bicycles they hadn’t ridden since grade school c) talking on cellphones d) oblivious of the hazards they posed. Sometimes they just fall over for no apparent reason and get up again.
It’s at times like these when Davis and campus are best avoided if possible. Unfortunately it’s not really possible; we both work on campus. Going somewhere for lunch or dinner just got a lot harder. So did getting from A to B.
Our drive to the Coop this evening was a slalom run through kamikaze eighteen-year-olds. We almost entertained driving miles out of our way to get home via the freeway in order to spare ourselves the dangers.
For all this, I’m still happy to see the students back. They’re young and hopeful (at least some of them). They’re our future, even if they’re not sure about this. I just wish they’d learn elementary bicycle safety…
A baseball footnote: the Boston Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles tonight to clinch a spot in the playoffs. I’m ecstatic. Which is very dangerous for a Red Sox fan.
24 September 03
Chance, Statistics, And The Game
One of the compelling aspects of baseball is how the whole enterprise skates on a mirror of luck. At the major league level, differences in talent are slight, and it really takes much of the 162-game season to sort out the pecking order among teams. Perhaps because so much of the game takes place in discrete events—pitch-by-pitch, batter-by-batter, out-by-out—statistics has been a large part of the game. Terms like batting averages, on-base percentages, and earned run averages make up the common idiom.
I recently read Curve Ball, by Jim Albert and Jay Bennett, a book that takes a look at the plethora of statistics in baseball from the point of view of a couple of academic statisticians. It’s an excellent introduction to thinking probabilistically about baseball. Some numbers are meaningful, some are not. Often broadcasters will say things like: “His lifetime batting against Jamie Moyer is 4 out of 11”. Even though this represents a batting average of .364—very high—it is a statistically meaningless ratio since with so few at bats the result is probably due to luck. Other times intuitions lead managers quantitatively astray. Albert and Bennett give the example of Barry Bonds being walked intentionally so often in the 2002 season (a pattern which has persisted in this season). Despite Bonds’ immense home run threat, when one goes through the play-by-play probabilities, it turns out in terms of expected runs that one is better off pitching to Bonds rather than putting him on intentionally in almost all situations.
Baseball is a game where the unlikely turns commonplace, given all things that can occur. How often does a team score 10 runs in a single inning? Not very often, but the Giants did it last night in a game against the Houston Astros.
The Red Sox will be the AL wild card team unless a) they lose all of their final four games of the season and b) the Seattle Mariners sweep the Oakland A’s in their final series this weekend. Let’s hope that unlikely combination doesn’t come to pass.
23 September 03
The Joy of Taking a Shower
The hardest part about having an extremity in a cast, splint, or boot is not being able to get really clean. I’ll spare you the gory details of what that translates into but you can probably imagine. Anyway, from sponge baths where I got water all over the floor to sitting in the shower with my left leg in two tightly tied garbage bags, protruding while I perched on a commode in the shower and got even MORE water all over the floor, I have moved on to the ideal solution: take a shower elsewhere.
The PT’s place is a fully functioning gym complete with three showers, one of which, since it’s new, is handicapped accessible. This means I can hop over, grab the rail, hope I don’t slip, sit on the handy seat, wash merrily between my toes, and hop back out again. I think I’m the only person who ever takes a shower in there. At least now I don’t have to go to the hairdresser to get my hair washed, though I must say I miss the chatter of the three Latina hairdressers who, try all they might, never manage to say more than one sentence in English before lapsing into laments about this child or that relative. The handicapped shower in the PT’s place is very silent and unsociable by comparison. But I just BASKED in it this afternoon.
I’ll have to go get my hair trimmed soon to find out the latest on whose quinceaera party is next, is all.
22 September 03
When Carnosaurs Ruled The Roadways
This weekend I read Keith Bradsher’s recent book High and Mighty: SUVs—The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way. It’s a sordid tale, and not one for those who have low tolerance for accounts of raw greed. A favorite quote:
Who has been buying SUVs since automakers turned them into family vehicles? They tend to be people who are insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors or communities.No, that’s not a cynic talking—that’s the auto industry’s own market researchers and executives.
Bradsher sees little relief from the scourge, and worries about what will happen when the current crop of SUVs starts to age and have mechanical problems, and show up on the used market to be purchased by less capable drivers such as youths and drunks.
Some good SUV links today: Philip Greenspun wonders how SUVs can remain fashionable when only unfashionable people (e.g.. middle-aged suburban parents) drive them. On a geekier note, he also considers Java to be the SUV of programming tools.
Kos meanwhile finds it a bit ironic that Arnold Schwarzenegger is campaigning on a platform of clean air, water, and the environment when he drives a Hummer. Actually, it’s worse than Kos realized: he owns six Hummers, and as Bradsher recounts, Schwarzenegger was the person most responsible for the commercial introduction of the formerly military-only vehicle.
Finally, a look at the SUV of the future, at the classic SUV poseur site.
21 September 03
Waffles and Crosswords
Today was really lazy—gearing up for the week. We used to make pancakes on Sundays, before the Achilles incident. Today we actually took ourselves out to breakfast to Cafe Bernardo, where we had waffles (with pecan butter), spilled tea, and read the paper. We also managed a quick trip next door to Newsbeat, where I was able finally to browse all kinds of magazines I’ve been missing. I feel as though I’m emerging a bit from my cave.
A few weeks ago a friend brought over a book of Sunday crossword puzzles, “slightly easier than the New York Times.” She had suffered an injury herself a few years before and knew it was hard to concentrate on reading for hours at a stretch. I must confess to a new and sort of shameful addiction here. They’re easy enough almost to finish each one, and there are so many blank ones left I don’t feel pressure to finish anyway. Some of them are better than others; there are multiple authors. I’m definitely getting a sense of the personalities of the different authors by now.
20 September 03
One Week To Go
The Giants have 8 or 9 games left (depending on if they have to make up a game with the Mets next Monday), and are trying to stay sharp before they start the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Seattle Mariners are not rolling over like they’re supposed to be, having taken the first two of a three-game series from the A’s at Oakland. Boston lost to Cleveland, which means that the Mariners are now only 1 1/2 games behind Boston in the wild card race: the A’s aren’t doing their job to flatten the Mariners at this juncture! The playoff permutations are still complicated, though not as much so as a couple of weeks ago.
19 September 03
Spiders in the House
There are spiders in the house. There were spiders here before I got injured dancing and carrying on; now that housework is severely limited, there are more spiders.
This is mostly fine by me, because the spiders eat the flies which sometimes get in, and the flies are awful. The spiders are overwhelmingly harvest spiders (“daddy long legs”) and when they don’t find flies to eat or moths or other creatures that appear at regular intervals, they eat each other. This is sometimes disconcerting, but I figure they have to make a living somehow.
There are a few other species of spider that live around the harvests. A wolf spider or two, a jumping spider. We tolerate these fine.
We do not, though, ever tolerate black widows in the house. Yesterday there was one perching over the door. I don’t know how it got in, but I took a well-aimed crutch to it. These spiders have the strongest, stickiest webs; the kind they try to emulate in ghost train rides at the funfair. The web was sticking to my cane, still, this morning.