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Friday, June 02, 2006
There's a French film coming out called "Banlieu 13" ("District B13" in the US) featuring one of the founders of the previously mentioned "sport" of parkour. Apparently the opening sequence is very parkour.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
With surprisingly few misgivings, yesterday I cancelled our Tivo Season Pass for "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." "The Daily Show" has been there from the moment I got my first Tivo 6 years ago (!), and I watched the show regularly in college for years before then. It was a pretty simple decision: 4 hours of weeknight is a lot of time. Those aren't shows that you can really watch a week or two after they've been recorded; you have to watch them in a couple of days or not at all. We chose not at all. It's just TV, after all. I realized that in any given week, I have time to read, watch TV, and get work done, but not all three. Now that I have "The Economist" coming to my door every week, I have a lot of reading to do. The stack of flooring in the dining room isn't going to install itself, either. TV was the natural thing to cut. Whether this is a precursor to getting rid of DirecTV completely remains to be seen; we certainly won't do it for a few years, and we'll keep the TV for DVDs and such.
Friday, June 09, 2006
The bombing that killed Zarqawi also killed 5 other people. One was a child. The other four could very well have been insurgents as well, but a child? The media have barely mentioned this, which is consistent with how they have barely mentioned civilian deaths in general. There are many issues here, the vast majority I will leave alone. Civilian deaths like these are unavoidable, and massacres like the one alleged to have happened in Haditha are almost inevitable as well. This does not mean that war should be avoided at all cost, but at minimum, they should not be sought out has happened with Iraq. When making the decision to go to war, one should be forthright and acknowledge that many innocents will die. That's (part of) why the pre-emptive war doctrine is so terrible, because it elevates war to a choice rather than something forced upon you. That doesn't even get into figuring out where the conservatives' respect for life went.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Driving along, this other driver cut me off. The first thing that popped into my head was, "Ref, yellow card!" Maybe I should have thrown myself to the ground, clutching my knee and grimacing in agony.
¶ 1296 Posted at 12.38 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me | sports ) Wednesday, June 14, 2006
From the Christian Science Monitor:
Navy Rear-Admiral Harry Harris, the [Guantanamo Bay] base commander, described the suicides as "not an act of desperation but an act of asymmetric warfare against us."Holy crap. How twisted must your world view be to consider someone's suicide an act of war against you? What kind of person must you be for that to make sense? And we trust people like this to make important decisions? You don't need to read the rest of the article; that one quote is ample proof of thoroughly messed up our treatment of these prisoners is.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
I've managed to watch about a half dozen of the games thus far. None have been great, but a few were pretty decent. The Brazil vs. Croatia game was all right. Brazil looked sluggish, but Croatia impressed, even as they lost. They got numerous good chances, but just couldn't go all the way. Yesterday's Spain vs. Ukraine game was good, but was marred by a terrible call by the referee. A Spanish player with the ball in the box stumbled either on his own or due to incidental contact with a Ukrainian defender. It wasn't worth a penalty, especially since the Spaniard got a clean shot off, but the Ukrainian was sent off with a red card. Since it happened in the box, Spain got a penalty kick as well. The goal off that pushed them up to a 3-0 lead, which was out of reach of a 10-man Ukrainian squad. The fourth Spanish goal was a beautiful one, but I can't help but think the game would have gone a lot differently had Ukraine not lost their 11th man, a goal, and their morale in the 46th minute with that bad call. Hopefully, they can pull out victories against Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, because they proved they belong in their tenacious and skillful play. It wasn't a 4-0 game; I think without that bad call, it could have been a 2-1 game. Still a Spanish victory, but not the blowout 4-0 implies. Incidentally, I found the 4th Spanish goal on YouTube. The video quality doesn't do it justice, but the official site is broken. I've been thinking about why soccer isn't popular in the United States. I figure it comes down to three interlocking and reinforcing reasons, none of which have anything to do with the game itself. First off, there's inertia. It sounds like a non-answer, but soccer isn't popular because soccer wasn't popular a while ago. People enjoy sports that people around them enjoy, starting with their parents. Adults today don't watch soccer because their family and friends didn't watch soccer during their formative years. They're less likely to pick up an interest now. Another killer for soccer is that the US loses. Americans don't watch the Olympics, they watch Americans in the Olympics. They watch events with Americans in them, especially events where the Americans are the favorites. Most of the Americans watching the World Cup are that way as well; they only care about the US team. Consider the other major sports. Football is barely played outside the US, so we never see an American team lose. Basketball is the same way, though to a lesser degree. Baseball is played well in numerous countries, but we just pretend they don't exist and call a championship of American and Canadian teams "The World Series." Americans don't like watching soccer because the US team isn't very good. MLS helps in that respect because it's American teams playing other American teams, but MLS just doesn't compare to the Premier League or the Bundesliga, and Americans know it. Americans want to be the best, and when they're not, they lose interest. The other kind of competition is for attention. In the United States, we have well-developed baseball, basketball, football, and hockey play, all at professional and college levels both, American sports fans already have plenty of sports to watch. There's little room for soccer because the space it might occupy in people's interest is already occupied. That has a corollary in how promising athletes get pulled away from soccer. Someone who's good at one sport tends to be good at others. Michael Jordan was a better Chicago Bull than baseball player, but he still was good enough to play minor leagues. Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs was a top swimmer until an accident of fate switched him to basketball. The money and the attention are on sports other than soccer, so good athletes tend to choose those sports. That's not to say that American soccer players are the leftovers from other sports, merely that they have to really like soccer to stick with it. Sure, people will say soccer is boring, but c'mon, have you seen a baseball game? Basketball and football seem kind of repetitive, too. Once you achieve a certain minimum level of interest, it becomes entirely subjective, a reason after the fact. People think soccer is boring because they don't watch it, not the other way around. Of course, in spite of those reasons, I'm a big fan. I readily admit that part of it is elitist snobbery; I'd be far less interested in soccer if everyone else around here was also. Mainly, I like the fluidity, individual skills, and the tension. The first two are easy to understand. The tension is less so. In soccer, anyone could score at any time. It just takes a few seconds. That's true in football and basketball as well. With football (as with baseball), the game is too structured. There's little fluidity because of the start/stop nature of play. As a result, you don't have the same sorts of ebbs and flows. Basketball has that, but each point means so little in the grand scheme that there's little celebration or disappointment for most of the game. Soccer also has uncertainty that magnifies the tension in soccer. In basketball, football, and baseball, scoring is easy enough that you can just tell how the game went by the score. That's not true of soccer. Since scoring is harder, measuring how well a team is doing is slippery. The American games are about scoring, while soccer is about getting chances to score. The former is easier to measure, while the latter is more suspenseful. Just because someone could score at any time doesn't mean they will; usually, they'll fail. But they'll make you hold your breat even so. Even those reasons don't go very far. I'm only interested in soccer for one month out of every four years. There's something special about the World Cup 1 . I like that it seems less commercial (in spite of the blizzard of logos) and more pure than professional play, akin to how many Americans prefer college sports. I like the exoticism of teams from all over the world. It's also how I got started watching soccer, so watching MLS or even the Premier League ($$$) would feel like a step down. Finally, there's the time commitment. I can manage to watch a few dozen games every four years, but I couldn't imagine watching a sport regularly. At least Uma will be 5 next time I make Jessica a World Cup widow.
1
And it's not that there are 32 teams (2^5) and 64 games (2^6), though that doesn't hurt.
Monday, June 19, 2006
In the spring of 2003, Iran made an indirect overture to the United States to discuss everything from nuclear weapons to Israel. The last 3 years make clear what the US response was. Oops. The Washington Post has the story, including some weak "it's not a bug, it's a feature!" spin from Condoleeza Rice.
I've been disappointed in Brazil. They've won their games, but not in the way I expect Brazil to play. Don't get me wrong, both Croatia and Australia have solid teams (even if the latter think they're playing rugby). But this is Brazil. They should have crushed them. They had little flair. Ronaldo was of marginal importance against Australia, and nearly useless against Australia. Ronaldinho wasn't particular helpful either, though part of the credit for that goes to Australia's excellent work in cutting off his options. Brazil scored goals, but had little of the Brazilian style or dominance I expected. That level of play might work against Australia, Croatia, and Japan, but Brazil needs to pick up their game if they expect to defeat teams like Spain, Argentina, the Netherlands, etc. Not only would they be unable to win, I wouldn't want them to win. The teams I've enjoyed most so far are Argentina and Spain. Argentina had a monster game against Serbia-Montenegro, putting 6 balls in the net. Their second goal was beautiful, even better than the fourth Spanish goal against Ukraine that I mentioned before. Sadly, I haven't found any good enough video of it. YouTube's quality is abysmal. The official site, while no longer broken, doesn't show enough of the buildup and wastes time on crowd reactions. You can give it a try (sorry, no direct link). The Argentines were powerful and dominant; I'd say they're now my number one pick, given Brazil's weak play. Spain was also impressive. Their game against Ukraine was solid, as I mentioned before. Yesterday's match against Tunisia turned into a surprising nail-biter. Tunisia scored very early, before the 10th minute, and then clamped down. They had all 11 men in their half most of the time; since Spain couldn't risk sending so many forward, Tunisia was often able to put 2 men on each Spaniard. They shut down the offense, with Spain getting increasingly desperate and the fans looking despondent. In the 71st minute, though, they managed to sneak in a goal, releasing a wave of relief that was almost palpable. This put Tunisia in a bind. They already had one tie against Saudi Arabia, so they needed a win. They had to loosen up their backfield to put men forward, but this created openings that the Spanish were able to exploit to score a second time 5 minutes after the first. There was a third goal late in the game on a penalty kick. The commentators judged it a harsh call by the referee, which I disagreed with; perhaps I am biased because I dislike the game getting physical, and Tunisia's style definitely was that. I don't have any loyalty to Spain the team, but I do enjoy watching them play. It's not just a question of skill, but their constant attack. If you've seen the Netherlands playing with a lead, you've seen how the Orange do possession plays, passing the ball back and forth in safe territory to eat up time. The Spanish do something that is superficially similar, in that they hang back moving the ball around the backfield, but it's fundamentally different. The Dutch are trying to run down the clock. The Spanish are trying the set up a play, moving the ball to make the opposition move, to find holes and place their men, like a predator stalking their play. It seems like they're being lame, but they're really finding their opportunity. These pauses are part of their attack, which, in the two games I've seen, is unrelenting. Spain keeps probing for weaknesses and trying to score, and that makes for a fun game to watch. The most fun game I've seen, though, would be the France v. S. Korea game. The game ended in a 1-1 tie, which should have been a 2-1 France win, but the referee didn't see that the ball was past the line when the Korean goalie bobbled it out. 1-1 sounds like a dull game, but it was anything but. The French came onto the field fired up. They were strong, but they didn't dominate the Koreans, who gave almost as good as they got. The game was a back-and-forth pitched (haha) battle for the whole 90 minutes. It might not have been as superficially spectacular as Argentina's 6-0 victory over Serbia-Montenegro, or Germany's 4-2 against Costa Rica, but it was a higher quality game. The winner of that group will come down to the final game, as there have been 2 ties already. In spite of their excellent play, France may not advance. They must defeat Togo and either have no tie in the Switzerland/Togo game, or score numerous goals to win on goal differential. We shall see. Finally, the boys in red, white, and blue. I thought the United States made a hash of their Italy game. The commentators went on and on about how the US was gritty and brilliant in holding Italy to a tie, but they laid it on so thick it seemed they'd forgotten that the sole goal against Italy was scored by an Italian. I just have not been impressed with the US team. I thought they were better in 2002. Regardless of how they do, they're just not interesting to watch. I have little team loyalty (as evinced by my dropping Brazil and adopting Argentina) because it's the game that matters to me rather than the team. I've felt vaguely and irrationally guilty about my lack of interest in the United States team, I think because I've been conditioned to think that there is something unpatriotic about it. That's ridiculous of course, as mentioning piloting airplanes into skyscrapers and kicking a ball in the same breath makes obvious. The word patriot has been hijacked, but that's an issue for another day. The point is, the US team isn't particularly good, and that fact doesn't really bother me. Incidentally, I thought of another reason that soccer isn't popular in the United States. This one actually has to do with the game itself. Soccer is a sport where judging individual ability is hard. You can easily tell whether someone is a good player in football, basketball, and baseball. Even hockey, while sharing many similarities with soccer, is easier, as there are only 4 players (other than the goalie), so it's easy to tell who is pulling how much weight. It's a lot harder with soccer. Rarely is there a solo goal. Soccer stars don't exist in isolation, as the performance of Côte d'Ivoire and star Didier Drogba demonstrate. Strikers need the midfield to serve up viable shots, and even the best mid-fielders usually fail. Most goals don't seem spectacular in and of themselves; the actual ball-going-in-the-goal part isn't nearly as spectacular as Michael Jordan driving to the hoop or Vince Young running for a touchdown. The skill of being a striker comes in deft touches, with the difference between good and bad measured in mere inches of foot or head position, or just being in the right place at the right time. The skill of a midfielder is in controlling the pace of the game and building a play. That's not something that's readily apparent from watching a game. Even goalie skill is can be hard to judge, as there are often so many players in front of the goal that random factors make things problematic. Goalies are heavily reliant on defenders to stop the opposing offense. The defenders are reliant on the midfielders to prevent the ball from even getting that far back, and they are often called upon to serve in a support role. The number of so-called defenders who score or assist goals is comically high. The point is that soccer is very much a team sport, and since it has so many team members in relatively fluid roles, assessing the contribution of any single player can be difficult. America is a country that loves the diamond in the rough, the standout star. They exist in soccer, of course, but their performance is more obscured and affected by the performance of the rest of their team. Other nations are less fiercely individualistic, so they don't have to adapt as Americans must. Of the remaining first round matches, I'm looking forward to today's already-happened-but-unknown-to-me Ecuador-Germany and Sweden-England matchups. Tomorrow features Portugal-Mexico and Netherlands-Argentina, both of which promise top action. Thursday's games are uninspiring, but I'll watch USA-Ghana out of a misplaced sense of duty, and Brazil-Japan hoping the Seleção can live up to their past glories. Friday closes out the first round with France-Togo and Korea-Switzerland figuring how who joins Togo in taking an early flight home. It also features Spain against Saudi Arabia, which I'll likely watch as well, as I haven't seen Saudi Arabia play yet. I had been hoping to see every team play at least once, but it looks like Poland, Iran, Angola, and Trinidad & Tobago will leave the tournament sight unseen (by me).
Friday, June 23, 2006
A ballot measure in California proposes to tax oil production. As you well know, I think a tax on oil would be a good thing, but I meant on consumption. Taxing production is a stupid idea. California is not a swing producer, so taxing oil production in that state will do nothing except to drive oil producers out of the state. Californians will pay higher prices to have more oil imported from out of state, which will certainly reduce consumption, but would that benefit be enough to make up for the loss to the economy of oil production? The problem is that this tax implies that oil production is the problem. It's not. Consumption is the problem. By its very nature, a tax discourages the activity that incurs it. If California could significantly affect the domestic or global oil supply and thus constraint consumption, this tax might make sense, but they can't. All they can affect is consumption in state. You can import oil from other states and countries, but nobody is going to drive to Nevada or Mexico to buy gas. In the end, California is going to have a well-meaning bill that achieves nothing positive beyond a short-term and relatively small boost to state revenue, while incurring costs to the economy from overhead and driving out businesses. Some demagogues will make political hay, demonizing the oil industry for feeding Californians' oil addiction, and looking like they're taking strong action, even as they avoid facing the hard truth and doing the right thing.
Spoilers of today's matches ahead. Brazil showed a little bit of why they're the top pick against Japan yesterday. Japan did well in the first half, but crumbled in the second. Ronaldo scored 2 of Brazil's 4 goals, but I still think he should be on the bench. I'm sure having Adriano or another Brazilian striker in his stead would have resulted in a similar or greater victory. When he wasn't hanging out in front of the goal to put the cherry on top of the rest of his team's plays, he was muddling around trying to avoid the ball. The goals he scored were good ones, but he wasted several more good chances, and his possession aside from taking shots generally involved giving the ball right back to whoever gave it to him. I won't speculate as to the reason for his limp play, but he's been that way for three games now, so it's time to bench him. Sadly, our new entertainment center doesn't seem to give Tivo quite the ventilation it needs, as it has been locking up frequently. As a result, I didn't record any of today's games. I was pleased to see France managed to push through to the second round; it was pretty dicey for them. I was glad Ukraine beat Tunisia, as they are a strong team; their 4-0 loss to Spain should really have been a 2-0 or 2-1 loss but for a bad call by the referee. Spain didn't need to do anything except show up, but got a win anyway over Saudi Arabia. Finally, I was sad to see South Korea fail to progress, but at least I'll be able to see Switzerland play. I copied the brackets for the remaining rounds of the tournament from the FIFA web site and filled in my (initial) predictions for the remainder of the tournament:
I know I've ragged on Brazil's performance, but I think they'll be able to manage Ghana. Though I like Spain, I think Brazil will have picked up their game enough to beat them. I don't see France winning against Spain; they made it out of the first round, but only barely. I picked the Netherlands over Portugal almost arbitrarily, as I haven't seen Portugal play. I think the Netherlands will be able to squeak by England, but it will be close. Their semifinal against Brazil will also be close, but I see Brazil winning out there, as well. In the other bracket, Germany will be able to power past Sweden, though I wouldn't mind of the Swedes beat them. I both want and expect Argentina to beat them after cruising past Mexico, even with Germany's home field advantage, but that will also be a close match. Italy should get by Australia without much trouble. I haven't seen Switzerland, so my pick of Ukraine is a little arbitrary. Regardless, whoever wins that will lose to Italy, who will then lose to Argentina in the semi-finals. I figure this as the "bracket of life," with either the Argentina/Germany/Mexico/Sweden bracket or Ecuador/England/Netherlands/Portugal serving as the "bracket of death." This puts Germany and Italy in the third-place match, where I give Germany the slight edge. The final will feature the two titans of South American futbol, Argentina and Brazil. I hope and expect this to be a fantastic game, with the final victory going to Argentina. Since I'm already this far out on a limb, I predict a score of 3-2 (and let's say 1-0 in Italy/Germany). So there you have it, a precise prediction of what will not happen over the next two weeks. I'll be back Tuesday with revised predictions.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
World Cup spoilers ahead. I ended up getting 6 of the 8 World Cup matches right, which sounds like a better result than it is. Just blindly picking the teams that won their group to win their round-of-16 matches would have gotten 6 of 8 as well. My weakest call was Netherlands over Portugal, which was of course wrong. My other weak call was Ukraine over Switzerland, which happened to be right. Then there was France vs. Spain, which I knew would be close. France was the better team yesterday and justifiably won, though I was bummed about it. I don't think their rematch of the 1998 World Cup final against Brazil will go quite as well, though. My revised predictions are below, with my erroneous calls in red.
I am increasingly convinced that Germany will beat Argentina, but I still want Argentina to win, so I'm sticking with that call. I feel like the remainder are no brainers. England is just a weak team. The Germany/Argentina match really ought to be a semi-final, but this is the sort of thing that happens. After seeing Mexico against Argentina, I certainly think they deserve to be in the quarter-finals more than Ukraine, Italy, or even England. Again, that's just what happens. Thus far, I think this year's tournament isn't up to the quality of 2002. Maybe it's because I'm not getting as immersive an experience; I haven't seen all 90 (or more) minutes of any game yet. Beyond that, though, there's a degree of predictability to the results. 6 of the 8 quarter-finalists are traditional heavyweights, having won World Cups in the past (only Ukraine and Portugal have not). Further, only Uruguay of the 7 nations that have ever won a World Cup is not in these quarter-finals, and their last win was 56 years ago. England has the next longest drought, at 40 years, but the remaining 5 have all won a World Cup since 1982. Compare that to 2002, which had the USA and Senegal making it to the quarter-finals, and Turkey and South Korea making it all the way to the semis. I wanted the underdogs to have a good shot at it, as I think the sport is too dominated by Europe. Then there's the controversy over the referees. I can easily name 4 games that were corrupted by bad officiating. I don't remember this in 2002 when we had Pier Luigi Collina's iron fist (in the France/Spain game, a commentator wished out loud for Collina's presence). There are still 8 games remaining, so I'll try not to be too down on this tournament. Nevertheless, I'm already looking forward to 2010 in South Africa. They're an additional 2 hours ahead of Germany, which will make the games even more inconvenient, but it'll also likely be easier for me to find the time then (*fingers crossed*). I predict that Russia will qualify and make the second round in South Africa, as Guus Hiddink has signed on to be their coach (assuming he stays through until 2010). The man seems to know how to get teams good, being credited with South Korea's amazing run to the semi-finals in 2002 and Australia's reaching the round-of-16 this time around, losing out to Italy through no fault of their own. That may also give some of the younger teams, like Spain, a chance to more fully develop their talents. If nothing else, it'll be four years of anticipation.
I wonder how common it is for a parent to realize there is no soap in the shower and to use baby wash instead. Not that I know anyone who has done that.
From the ACLU, a (Flash) simulation of ordering a pizza in 2010.
¶ 1307 Posted at 02.45 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues | privacy ) Thursday, June 29, 2006
I understand why people are tired of squabbling about what led to the Iraq War. We're there now, and even if we decided to leave today, withdrawal would be a long and complicated process. Nevertheless, it's important to keep underlying the mistakes that resulted in the invasion for one simple reason: people haven't learned. A majority of Americans now say the war was a mistake, but I don't believe they fully understand how. The mistakes weren't honest, inevitable human error. Rather, they were a result of specific choices made by George W. Bush et al. They chose a course of action and only then determined a rationale. They ignored contradictory evidence and pumped up supporting evidence. They failed to plan for the post-war occupation out of a combination of hubris and an unwillingness to confront the true costs. They advocated an immoral and dangerous doctrine of preemptive action. They fed American fears of terrorism, fostering yet more of the fear that is the aim of terrorism, and then manipulated those fears to achieve their political ends. A majority of Americans and many former war supporters have reached the conclusion that the Iraq War was a mistake. I don't think they have recognized the above choices as the key leadership failures that resulted in the war, however. I am worried that many people are taking superficial, incorrect lessons 1 . Until they recognize the deep flaws in the process that got us there, though, we will make the same mistake again. Almost as bad, or perhaps worse, they may prevent us from military action when it's the right thing to do, such as in Afghanistan in 2001. It's important to understand exactly what got us into this mess, because the fundamental problem is one of process, not of results. If you continue to apply a broken process to the world, you'll continue to make terrible mistakes. Replacing one broken process with another is no better. That's why we need to keep revisiting the key issues.
1
i.e., the Middle East is unfixable, the United States shouldn't deploy its military overseas, war is always the worst option, etc.
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