Category: Journal

A little disclosure here before I write about Keith Law’s new book, Smart Baseball: I spent several years in the shallow end of the pool of baseball statistical analysis. I worked for one team for a short time, did a little writing for the trade magazines, and a few other odd jobs in the business. I’m wasn’t an insider but I knew a lot of insiders and man, I wish this book had been available back in the day. It was a lot of fun, but man, reading this book, old hedge wizards like myself would be thoroughly out of our depth in today’s game. And honestly? That’s pretty cool Keith Law’s Smart Baseball is simply the best baseball book I’ve read this century. It’s clear, rational, funny, and extremely interesting. There are so many wrong turns Law could have taken here; he could have been pedantic or smug or delved so deeply into the technical aspects of baseball’s information revolution that it would have rendered the book impenetrable. Instead, it’s accessible and informative and a lot of fun to read. If you want to understand the relationship between baseball and baseball statistical analysis, this is the book. Smart Baseball is broken into three sections. The first concerns traditional baseball statistics and how they present a distorted image of value. It’s one thing to say that saves are a terrible stat, but Law presents a compelling case* backed up by just enough data to demonstrate his point. It’s bad enough that awards were (and are) given to the wrong players based on reliance on flawed numbers, but teams were making decisions based on bad data, and these decisions were costing teams money and wins. The middle part of the book is devoted to the current state of the art, the result of the revolution started by Bill James and Pete Palmer and their ilk. The early stat guys, “SABRmatricians,” were the ones who questioned the conventional wisdom of baseball and developed mathematical tools to better measure the value of players and strategies. The impact of their work cannot be understated. By the late nineties, more teams than not were making use of advanced stats. And now? Everyone’s doing it, and unlike the self-taught enthusiasts of the the turn of the century, today’s teams have full analytics departments and proprietary systems for parsing the numbers. The last section covers the baseball equivalent of the singularity: Major League Baseball’s StatCast. The amount of data produced by the in-stadium radar systems, ranging from the relatively simply stuff like “how hard each ball is hit” to near-magical measurements of the spin on a pitch to…who knows? There’s more information in there than anyone really knows what to do with yet. Rather than examining existing data with increasingly finer-toothed combs, StatCast opens up a whole new world of data and there’s an arms race trying to make sense of it. It’s the “making sense of it” that’s the key and makes the whole store so compelling. Anyone can generate statistics; the trick is understanding what they mean and making informed decisions based on that understanding. Law’s book is by far the best explanation of the story of how analysis has changed the game for the better that I’ve ever encountered.  -RK   * Not that this is a terribly difficult case to make when you’re talking about saves…

It’s been quite a week. I can’t remember the last time I pulled an all-nighter for work. I mean that literally; there’s something about staying up all night and going to work the next day that isn’t conducive to remembering things very clearly. I’m a little surprised I’m still chugging along, although “chugging” might be overstating the case at this point. Anyway… I just finished reading Laurie Penny’s Unspeakable Things.  Penny writes best when she’s got some anger behind her eyes and Unspeakable Things finds her in fine, trenchant form. There’s something in the book to make any reader uncomfortable; she covers a broad range of what can be loosely grouped as “abuses of power and how those abuses affect people and especially women, people of color, and the queer community. Don’t mistake it for a book of feminist man-bashing; Penny has no time anything so cheap. That’s not to say that anyone who has benefited from the privileges of their birth is let off the hook. Unspeakable Things doesn’t shy away from turning on the bright interrogation lights and holding up a mirror to people who allow injustice to stand just because it doesn’t hurt them in any personal sense.  Books about now are tough. It’s difficult to write about things that still in the process of becoming history. Knowing how things play out makes it a lot easier to construct a narrative, and once the winners and losers have been sorted out, the passion of the heat of the battle is lost. Writing about now tends to be hyperbolic because it’s writing about a fulcrum and the writer often has a strong interest in the balance swinging one way or the other. There’s some of that in Unspeakable Things, but Penny tempers her righteous anger with deeply personal stories and dry-approaching-gallows humor.  In the end, it’s tale from the front of battles that have not yet been decided. I can understand why some people wouldn’t like it, but it’s not a book that was written to be liked.  -RK P.S. Nicole just put “Under the Sea” on and now it’s thoroughly lodged in my noggin. I think I could use a little sleep, huh?    

Because I’ve been under it. Getting over a cold reminds of those dystopian stories where everything is grey, no one feels any emotions, and everyone walks like a robot. Are those a thing? I could just be imagining it, but anyway, that’s what it feels like. I have no energy to do anything, even to get properly angry. I can’t taste anything, I have no enthusiasm for anything. I’m not even miserable; I just don’t care, or even the energy to care. Now, the good part is that Nicole is a grade A, Olympic-class pamperer-of-the-sick. When I’d get home from work (colds make you almost bad enough to miss work), I’d have a little nest of comfort on the sofa waiting for me. Frozen delightful treats await me in the freezer, multitudinous beverages are in the fridge, and a nice hot bath has been run. It’s not quite enough to make me look forward to getting sick, but as far as silver linings go, it ain’t bad. Sitting inert on the sofa has given me an unfortunate amount of time to binge-stream Seinfeld. I saw “unfortunate” because the show hasn’t aged particularly well in some respects. The laugh track doesn’t do the show any favors, there’s more yelling that there should be, Kramer is more “wacky” than “funny” most of the time, and the idea that papayas are too zany for normal people to eat was dated twenty years ago. Where the show continues to shine is when the four main characters are torturing each other. The glee with which they twist the knife into each other’s backs is a delight, and no one is better at it Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  Watching her grin while she’s making Jerry squirm makes me laugh every time. Her Elaine brings more energy to the show than the rest of the cast combined. I didn’t appreciate what she brought to the table when the show was in its original run.   

I’m sure you’ve seen the “How A Libertarian Tips” image making the rounds on this world wide web, but if not, here ya go:   Let’s get the obvious out of the way here: This statement in no way relieves a server of the obligation to report this money as a tip. The intent may be good, sort of, but the libertarian is inviting the server to just ask for an audit. It turns out there are no simple tax loopholes, regardless of what libertarians might tell you. However, if you were to try this dodge (which I do not recommend), there are a couple of problems with the execution as depicted above. The most obvious one is that writing “Taxation is theft” on the tip line is an invitation to further investigation. If you want to make it look as though you aren’t leaving a tip, it would be smarter to just write “0.00” on the line, or, if you absolutely must embellish the scam, write “bad service” or something that doesn’t make it obvious that you’re trying assist the server in avoiding paying taxes. The second problem is a bit more arcane, but bear with me. I have a lot of experience with IRS reporting with regards to tipping. One of the things that the IRS looks at when trying to determine if a server is under-reporting their tips is the difference between their average tip percentage on credit cards versus their declared average tip percentage for cash. If a server is making 20% tips on credit cards but they’re only declaring 5% for cash, that’s a red flag. Any gap larger than 3 percentage points will get you some raised eyebrows.  Here’s where it gets tricky: The sale is classified not by how the guest paid for the transaction, but by how they tipped. By leaving no tip on a credit card sale, that sale now goes into the “cash” side of the equation. If you insist on trying to pull a fast one on the IRS (and really, please don’t put a server in that position), leave $0.01 as the tip and then the rest as cash. That will lower the server’s overall tip percentage on the credit card side and thus the percentage of declared cash tips that will look suspicious to an auditor. However, let’s end this with a big ol’ bummer: There is no magical “minimum percentage” a server can declare that will keep them on the good side of an IRS audit. The law is that you have to declare 100% of your tips. There’s no loophole. I get that taxes suck, but please don’t be tricked into thinking that calling tips a “gift” will magically get you out of paying them.

Given the current state of affairs at 1600 Pennsylvania, it’s not surprising that there’s a lot of talk about revolution in the air. How can the left rebuild itself from the wreckage of the 2016 election? I’ve heard some good ideas, I’ve heard a few great ones, but I’ve heard one very bad idea over and over: “The revolutions needs to focus on fixing the structure of the economy and not get bogged down by distractions like abortion or bathrooms or BLM.” Any leftist movement worthy of the name includes radical social justice as a top priority from day one. I am appalled by how many people I know who think that these “lesser issues” can wait until the big work is done. If the pitch to women, to people of color, and to the LGBT community is “Help us fix the problems that we think are important first, and then we will take a look at your issues,” why would anyone believe that? If you’re saying that social justice issues are distractions, you have already sent a pretty clear message that you don’t think these concerns are important.  If that’s your idea of a revolution, you can leave me out.  P.S. I read this after writing this post. It’s a description of a Democratic event that ran up against pretty much exactly what I’m talking about: “This is very raw,” said Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, conceding that “after the presidential election, there is still this ongoing debate about identity politics versus economic opportunity.” I don’t agree with the phrasing, and I certainly don’t agree with the idea that the two are, or even can be, mutually exclusive. A system that is economically unjust is going to be socially unjust, and a system that’s socially unjust is going to be economically unjust. We’re adult human beings; we can focus on two things at once. 

Friday was a holiday at my office. I spent the day reading Kafka’s The Trial and assisting an employee I’d never met at a company I didn’t know I supported upgrading software I’d never heard of. Life, it seems, has a dark sense of humor. The Trial is a fascinating book. Kafka is unmatched when it comes to creating a suffocating, paranoid atmosphere. The entire novel feels like being stuck in a crowded room with no ventilation waiting in a line that never moves. First and foremost it’s a critique of bureaucracies in a totalitarian society, but there’s a good deal more going on. Every new character undermines the protagonist’s (and reader’s) understanding of what’s going on. There’s a religious allegory in there as well as no small amount of self-criticism and questioning whether or not the victim is really a victim at all or is rather complicit in his own imprisonment. Which is all to say that it’s a genuinely fascinating piece of literature that’s also a terrific read. It’s not what I would describe as “fun” but c’mon, who’s reading Kafka for laughs? I genuinely do not want to know the answer to that question. 

Since I follow The Onion’s AV Club on Facebook, I see their Q&A feature pop up in my feed on a regular basis. They’re the sort of writing prompts I can’t resist and I’m not going to let the fact that I’m not technically (meaning “in any sense”) in the AV Club prevent me from offering up my answers to their questions.  This is the third one I’ve done. Here’s the first, and here’s the second. There are going to be more, so let that be your warning. What fictional animal’s death affected you the most? There were some good selections in the AV Club’s list, with Futurama’s Seymour Asses at the top of the list. However, I believe that the only way someone wouldn’t chose Pirate the rabbit from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s WE3 would be if they haven’t read the book.  I’ll be honest-I’m tearing up thinking about it right now. All of the animals in the book live in uncanny valley where their personalities are both affecting and deeply disturbing, They’re able to express awareness of their situations and their actions in a way that’s just close enough to believable to get under the reader’s skin. So, when Pirate finds himself in a hopeless situation, he knows it, and he acts in the only possible way that he can to make his demise meaningful. It’s utterly heartbreaking, but it is not in vain. Just a page or so later, Morrison and Quitely give the readers what I believe is the single greatest panel in comic book history. I wont’ say what it is, but I guarantee you’ll know it when you see it…especially if you’ve read The Dark Knight Returns. What’s the worst movie you ever saw in a theater? The writers for the AV Club avoided the films that were never conceived as anything more than schlock, so I’ll do the same. Besides, as someone who saw Robot Jox, Spice World, and Tank Girl on the day they were released, I genuinely enjoy that kind of film. Heck, I even liked Mortal Kombat. So really, the question isn’t what was the “worst” move so much as the “most disappointing” or even “the one you hated the most.”  I have many, many candidates to chose from, but in terms of “falling a mile short of expectations,” it’s hard to top The Blair Witch Project. I saw it in a packed theater at the height of the hype,  but as soon as the film started, the energy just drained out of the room. It wasn’t just me; no one in the theater was buying in to it. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t interesting, and it most definitely wasn’t scary. When it ended and the lights went up, the room was completely silent. Finally, a guy a few rows in front of me blurted out “Well that was kinda stupid.” Everyone burst out laughing. It was, by a wide margin, the most enjoyable part of the film. Who is your favorite “unlikable” character? Pretty much every character on “Arrested Development” was unlikable, and I’m sorely tempted to select Lucille, but in the end, it really has to be GOB, doesn’t it?  His combination of insecurity and confidence, utterly unencumbered by self-awareness may not be completely unique, but Will Arnett played him with such an aggressive brittleness that you almost felt for him. Of course, every time you let your guard down, he’d demonstrate why he would never be the protagonist in any story, even his own.  What song is inextricably linked to a film or TV show for you? Back when I worked in a record store, my manager played The Big Chill soundtrack no less than three times a day, every day. Because of this, I will probably always cringe when I hear any Motown standard. That soundtrack gave us those awful montages of white people in khakis drinking wine and have a suspiciously jolly time drinking blush wine and listening to “Mustang Sally.”  But…man, the opening scene played against the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is kind of spectacular. It’s exactly the sort of match of mood to music that Wes Anderson does so well. The songs’ epic, orchestral embrace of disappointment and settling for “good enough” suits the movie’s themes perfectly. If the rest of the film had been as good as the opening credits, it would be a considered a classic.  Which actor is so good, you’d watch them in anything? No long intro for this one: Hugo Weaving, all day, every day. I genuinely wonder if The Matrix would have worked without Weaving’s incredible Agent Smith. Watching him snarl “Mr. Anderson” gives me the jibblies every time. It could easily have been a nothing role and Weaving made it unforgettable.  I have a little rule of thumb for declaring someone a “great actor:” If they play a key role in three great films, they’re probably great themselves. It’s not a perfect method, but it’s not a bad quick-and-dirty test. Weaving’s work in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and of course, Babe would put him in the club even without The Matrix. He’s always worth watching, even when the movie isn’t.  

I gave in to my inner Anglophile last week and read a couple of British books which otherwise have absolutely nothing in common. The first was A Race of Minds by Simon Horrocks. If it doesn’t exist in cyberpunk-land, you can at least see it from there. It’s a page turner that doesn’t come across as deeply weird until you catch your breath and look back on it. The main character is in a coma for the entire novel, although that limits her participation less than you might imagine. There’s a good deal of messing about with memory so that, not only is the reader not always certain which side a character is on, sometimes the characters themselves aren’t sure of their own place on the board.  At first I struggled a little to keep up with which characters were which. In the tradition of William Gibson, the reader is expected to pick it up as they go, a technique which contributes to sense of breakneck pace. Speaking of pace, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give Mr. Horrocks credit for finding a neat workaround for the “ticking clock” trope. You know the one: An arbitrary deadline which forces the pace when there’s otherwise no reason to get X done within twenty four hours. It can be a bomb (obviously), a ransomer’s deadline, or “this potion only lasts for one hour!” There’s a countdown in A Race of Minds, but handled differently and, I’d say, better. So, I enjoyed A Race of Minds. It is, however, more of an episode than a complete novel. The ending wouldn’t be particularly satisfying if that were The End, but it clearly isn’t. The deeper I got into the book, the more I liked it, so it was a little jarring to land on what amounted to a “tune in next week!” Which, of course, I will be doing. P.S. I haven’t read Volume 0 of Horrocks’ “Kosmos” series and now I’m thinking perhaps I ought to have done so. If you’re interested in reading this book, it’s probably a good idea to go back to the introductory volume, huh? 5000-1 The Leicester City Story is Rob Tanner’s account of Leicester City football club’s miraculous 2015/16 championship season. I was a little surprised to see this book in a local book store, and as such I felt a moral obligation to buy it. I can recite the high points of the Foxes’ year by heart, but Tanner, who write for the Leicester Mercury, somehow turned a story I knew by heart into a riveting tale all over ago.  All of the matches receive a writeup, and there are multiple stories filling in the backgrounds and personalities of the key City players. I’ll admit to a massive, massive bias, but reliving those matches, especially the comebacks, made me grin like a loony. In retrospect, the stories about Claudio Ranieri, City’s manager last year, are bittersweet given his sacking a few months ago. He was, and remains, a very classy man and I’m gutted that he was let go regardless of the fact that it seems to have been a necessary move. If you’re underwhelmed by the quality of writing in American sports, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by Tanner’s work. He’s a fine writer who avoids the cliched hyperbole you see in so many sports-related books. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he has a novel or two in him. This is a better-than-expected recounting of what is arguably the greatest upset in sporting history. If you’re in to that sort of thing, it’s a fine read. If you’re a Leicester City fan, it’s scripture. -RK

I get whipped up into a righteous anger over all of the reports indicating that “We could save the NEA with the money we spend to guard Melania Trump in Trump Tower (possibly true)” or “If the President would cut down on his golf, we could save Meals on Wheels. (likely true).”  There are more examples out there, but you know the kind of report I’m talking about: The ones that demonstrate that many popular federal programs are a drop in the bucket with respect to the federal budget and could easily be funded if we just cut a little here (the military) or there (presidential perks).  While the reports are, in theory, correct from a numbers standpoint, they miss the point. These programs would be cut even if they cost one dollar. This isn’t about saving money; it’s about ending programs that some legislators believe have no business being part of the federal government.  Some of them are libertarian, free-market zealots, some of them have a strict-constructionist view that the federal government should restrict itself to making treaties and defending the shores, and others are in it for, let’s say, less idealistic motives. The bottom line is the same, though: If the government is doing it, then there’s no room for business to make a profit on it.  In 2005, Rick Santorum proposed a bill that would make it illegal for the National Weather Service to offer free weather reports on the principle that they prevented businesses from being able to charge for weather reports.  Here’s the relevant part of the text of the bill: Prohibits the Secretary from providing or assisting other entities in providing a product or service (other than a product or service for the preparation and issuance of severe weather forecasts and warnings as described above) that is or could be provided by the private sector… So, the takeaway here is that cutting funding for social service, education, and the arts this isn’t a war on spending or an attempt to balance the budget, even when they’re advertised as such. It’s an attempt to prevent the government from providing services that could prove lucrative to the private sector.  Everything else is just a smokescreen. -RK

I believe that William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch is most likely a work of genius. It’s exceedingly difficult to be sure, though. At the extremes, revolutionary structure and slapdash organization can look much the same. There may be no better example of this than Naked Lunch, since, by design, it’s meant to be a book you can open to any page and start reading. I took it as a series of thematically linked vignettes, but at a certain point, who really knows?  It’s a shorter book than it looks; the edition I read contained only one hundred and ninety or so pages of text. Its padded out by extensive notes by both the author and the editors of this particular version of the book. It felt a good deal longer. It was probably the most difficulty book I’ve read, surpassing Pynchon by a good distance.  It’s fierce, it’s evocative, and it’s funny as hell if you squint at it. It’s also obtuse, repetitive, and not nearly so shocking as it surely was when it was first released. That’s the danger of being a trailblazer. The efforts of cutting the first path through the forest are seldom appreciated decades later when an interstate now runs directly over the trail you blazed. That doesn’t diminish Naked Lunch, but it certainly changes how the reader experiences the book. Unlike most books, I’d say that reading the material at the end of the volume is essential to Naked Lunch. The sections covering the process which produced the book explain a great deal about the finished product. Burroughs’ unflinching descriptions of his experiences with opiates and their various cures is not only gives you more conventional view of what he went through, it also shows what a clear, concise writer he could be when he chose to do so. It’s a hell of a book, utterly unique in my experience, and not at all the sort of thing you should read on a train surrounded by fellow commuters. I know this from personal experience. Trust me. -RK