http://wonderclub.com/magazines/playboy/playboy_magazine_1975.htm
Don’t worry, it’s not what you think. Scroll down to August, under “features”, the 4th one down. Yep, that’s who you think it is. Let’s see now, I was born in March of 1976, so you do the math.
Hey all…
The UFO:Aftermath demo is out today and worth checking out. This is sort of the unofficial sequal to X-COM. I haven’t played it much yet, but some things strike me immediately:
1. the attributes and character development is more detailed than the original X-COM which is great.
2. the combat is pausable real-time instead of turn-based which is okay, I guess, but you don’t get the same sense of urgency and motivation to maximize your efficiency… you spend less time thinking about what you should do and instead just sort of move your guys around… power in numbers here instead of strategy.
3. NO enterable buildings meaning no destructable walls and floors! and no varying levels of elevation! WTF??
This coupled with the fact that no significant gains in user interface have been implemented despite this being 9 years after the original came out might make this game dead in the water.
That is just too bad, but to semi-make up for it is the Silent Storm demo. This is another squad based tactical combat game this time set in WW2. The missions are pre-made instead of random like in X-COM or UFO: Aftermath so it might not have that much replayability, but I could see the UFO: Aftermath missions getting stale really fast. A bonus is that Silent Storm is supposed to come out with a level editor so the fan-made list of missions might make up for the non-randomness. This game is truely turn-based except during non-combat periods and it also features a skill system similar to Diablo 2. Actually, if UFO: Aftermath is an unofficial sequal to X-COM then Silent Storm is the unofficial sequal to Jagged Alliance 2, except that it carries the legacy on quite well. It’s always fun shooting nazis, after all.
UFO:A comes out later this month while Silent Storm comes out Q1 2004. At this point, I’d wait for UFO:A to hit the bargain bin but getting Silent Storm as it is released would be a safe bet.
Hahahah Mark, I’m with you on that one. Did anyone see Maddox’s take on the Honda Element? Maybe you should add the “Aztek” to the most-wanted list, Melhus?
Another fun bit of news: our esteemed National Security Advisor thinks that the David Kay report, if released last spring, would have led the whole world to support the invasion of Iraq. Check our her comments here. An interesting commentary, on the whole. As another masterstroke, she mentions that the Kay report runs 6000 words. It MUST be bad if it’s a whole 6000 words! I mean, government documents are usually no more than 58 words! Saddam MUSTA been up to something if they have to take a whole 12 pages to summarize the combined results of 1500 people looking for several months…
you sure do like fugly cars
so the choice is between a piece of luggage and an 80s Transformer?
I’d love to get a new car, but first I need to get a real job. Here’s my wish list:
1) Scion xB (Toyota). This car is fresh, plus it starts at $14K– which isn’t too nasty.
2) Element (Honda).
Start’s around $16K. Katie’s parents just got one of these (in the color pictured, Sunset Orange). I got a ride in one a week ago, and the interior is huge. That is a precious commodity for a tall dude. As much as I like driving Katie’s Civic, I get a little tired of having my dome rub against the ceiling all the time… I do have one complaing with this car, though. Why put the sun roof in the back over the trunk? The best part of a sun roof is looking up, seeing the sky, and sticking your head/hand up there…
OK, here it is: Schrag, pass the salt. I need to eat my words about the Sox. So maybe they aren’t really losers, and maybe- just maybe, they’ll continue to put it on the Yankees like they did last night. You watching this weekend? Maybe I’ll come down…
PS. What’s the sales tax down there in RI? I gotta do a little shopping this weekend…
I just finished a book called “Moneyball” called Michael Lewis. It’s a book about baseball. It is, in particular, about a small group of people who have begun thinking about the game in a revolutionary new way. These people have been around since the 1970’s, but were not the people who made the decisions … until a few years ago, when a former ballplayer named Billy Beane became the general manager of the Oakland A’s.
Baseball is a game of tradition and has been long dominated by certain ideas about how to win, and about what is valuable in a player. These ideas have been around for so long and are so widely accepted that they have been completely unchallenged for decades. For example, almost every major league scout has an idea about what type of frame constitutes a “major league body” and about what skills are important in defining major league talent. In the mid-1970’s a tiny group of students of the game began using the emerging technology of personal computing to analyze the minutiae of the game: batting averages, on-base percentages, fielding statistics, and all the endless data which is generated by each passing season.
What these people came to realize was that many of the most treasured ideas of the baseball establishment were wrong. Among other things, this small group of enthusiasts realized that the most important thing in a hitter was not defense or baserunning, or even batting average, but the ability to NOT make an out. Because the length of each inning is defined by the timing of the third out, it is paramount that a hitter puts the ball in play or walks as often as possible. All other skills, which are still thought by most baseball insiders to be of roughly equal importance, are far less important than this trait. Armed with this insight, and several related ones, the A’s have gone about scouting talent and assembling a team in a whole new way.
I won’t go more into the nuts and bolts of the statistics involved. I think this part of the book was particularily interesting to me because I’ve often had fragmentary thoughts along the lines of those discussed in this book: if a walk is as good as a hit, why is batting average the most valued statistic? It’s always thrilling for someone who’s interested in numbers to see that the results of some basic statistical analyses can have such a momentous effect on some aspect of everyday life. Lewis does a good job outlining the new ways of thinking without getting bogged down in mathematics. He instead chooses to focus on the consequences of the first implementation of this way of thinking in the Oakland A’s organization. Most obviously, this new way of evaluating talent has led to a phenomenal string of successful seasons for the A’s, who have consistently had one of the lowest payrolls in the major leagues for a decade. Even as richer teams buy the best A’s players, the management of the A’s manages to re-build a team which challenges teams with triple their financial resources.
The thought that good ideas and careful analysis can overwhelm the sheer force of money is a tantalizing one, and it appeals to me for many reasons. It’s a classic David-vs.-Goliath story which has created some of the most riveting drama, both on and off the field, in baseball for the last few years. It also leads to a number of sometimes touching, sometimes hilarious sub-plots in the book. One of these is the fact that the rest of the baseball establishment is beginning to take notice of the new baseball wisdom, making it paramount for Beane and the A’s to use all variety of deception, coercion, and misdirection to stay a step ahead of other organizations who would attempt to copy their way of doing things. Other memorable portions of the book center on the reactions of players when first being asked by the A’s to do things (switch defensive positions) they would never have anticipated with other teams.
Ultimately, the most powerful parts of this story are those which center on the players, regarded as second-tier talent by baseball purists due to some perceived flaw, who have finally had their true value recognized by Beane and the A’s. These players would have had little chance to make a significant impact in baseball just five years ago, because their skills and make-up did not fit baseball’s traditional profiles. One by one, the rise of these players to success in the major leagues are detailed, and these stories are used to illustrate the central ideas of Beane and his number-crunchers. There’s Scott Hatteberg, a journeyman catcher who does not excel in any of baseball’s five traditional tools (hit, hit with power, run, field, and throw), but has an uncanny ability to pick his pitch and control the strike zone. There’s Chad Bradford, a pitcher whose low velocity and unusual delivery had relegated him to minor league ball with another team before the A’s acquired him and turned him into one of the premier relievers in the game.
And, most memorably, there is the tale of Jeremy Brown. Brown is a catcher who graduated college a year ago, and who no other pro team even bothered to scout because of his large frame (5′-8″ and 215 pounds). Upon seeing a trend in Brown’s numbers which indicated that he was an extraordinarily tough out, the A’s draft him in the first round, several hundred players above the expectations of anyone, including Brown himself. True to the A’s expectations, and despite the continual name-calling and taunting of his teammates and the media, Brown begins tearing up the minor leagues almost immediately, eventually proving himself to his teammates and to the writers, who put him among the top three hitters in the entire 2002 draft. The final paragraphs of the book are testament to Lewis’ genius, as he ties the main themes of the book together in as moving a passage as I’ve read this year:
“The fourth pitch is the mistake: the pitcher goes back to his change-up. Jeremy sees his arm coming through slowly again, and this time he knows to wait on it. The change-up arrives waist-high over the middle of the plate. The line drive Jeremy hits screams over the pitcher’s right ear and into the gap in left center field.
As he leaves the batter’s box, Jeremy sees the left and center fielders converging fast. The left fielder, thinking he might make the catch, is running himself out of position to play the ball off the wall. Jeremy knows he hit it hard, and so he knows what’s going to happen next — or imagines he does. The ball is going to hit the wall and ricochet back into the field. The left fielder, having overrun it, will have to turn around and chase after it. Halfway down the first-base line, Jeremy Brown has one thought in his mind: I’m gonna get a triple.
It’s a new thought for him. He isn’t built for triples. He hasn’t hit a triple in years. He thrills to the idea: Jeremy Brown, hitter of triples. A funny thing has happened since he became, by some miracle, the most upwardly mobile hitter in the Oakland A’s minor league system. Surrounded by people who keep telling him he’s capable of almost anything, he’s coming to believe it himself.
He races around first (“I’m haulin’ ass now”) and picks up the left fielder, running with his back to him, but not the ball. He’s running as hard as he’s ever run — and then he’s not. Between first and second base his feet go out from under him and he backflops into the dirt, like Charlie Brown. He notices, first, a shooting pain in his hand: he’s jammed his finger. He picks himself up, to scramble back to the safety of first base, when he sees his teammates in the dugout. The guys are falling all over each other, laughing. Swish. Stanley. Teahen. Kiger. Everybody’s laughing at him again. But their laughter has a different tone; it’s not the sniggering laughter of the people who made fun of his body. It’s something else. He looks out into the gap in left center field. The outfielders are just standing there: they’ve stopped chasing the ball. The ball’s gone. The triple of Jeremy Brown’s imagination, in reality, is a home run.”
It’s great stuff, even for people who don’t follow baseball. In fact, especially for people who don’t follow it. Pick it up if you get a chance.
1. HEAVY ROTATION (more than a few days)
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2. Light Rotation (A day or two)
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3. Recent Heavy Rotation
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Hi guys,
Had a good trip up to Seattle! Mark and Robin live in a real nice area…Hawthorne/NW PDX type. Real convenient with that bike store so close by..haha! Here are a couple of pics that I thought were kinda amusing. So who’s the ‘Tannery Brook Kid’..i’m confused. I’ve been downloading songs from radiohead’s hail to the theif album. mind you i’m a fan but just haven’t had a chance to pick up the cd.
if you guys haven’t seen ‘bowling for columbine’ you should check it out. i thought it was pretty powerful and funny at the same time. i can’t really remember the last time i had a serious discussion about a movie after seeing it.
anyway, i’ll be taking my GREs on the 20th…after that it’s UC Davis or bust..i guess it won’t be the end of the world if i don’t get in. Ben, you think you can call up some buddies back home and pull some strings?…haha..
Okay, i just had to include this pick of mark and i next to the fellowship. i think between the both of us we could take them all out but i guess gandalf might be a handful. mark and i could body slam those hobbits though.
It’s been sweet weather; I’m told there’s some sort of record breaking consecutive sunny days going on right now. The elections for a bunch of offices will take place soon and we got our voter’s ballots but have no idea who to vote for… IKEA really is something amazing. We spent 5.5 hours there when we went and we plan on going again in a week or so since a couple of the things we wanted weren’t in. I’m eating some of their Swedish meatballs right now.
Played the Warlords IV demo (good–coming out soon), the XIII demo (prob better on a console–coming out soon), the Neighbors from Hell demo (quite amusing–out now), the Divine Divinity demo (got good reviews when it came out a while ago, but I think it’s already outdated), and the Lionheart demo (despite using the Fallout rule system, this game is a Diablo clone and not a deep RPG–out now) among others. But basically can’t wait until Half-Life 2 and UFO: Aftermath.
When we got here our friends Geoff and Ann brought everyone who helped out Thai food from an unknown restaurant. We’ve also been to MiYi (the great Australian bite–pasties and such), Hattie’s Hat (since 1904–burgers and such), and the Firehouse Wingmasters (Buffalo wings and burgers–can’t find the Wingmasters part online, just their music info). We went to Pike’s Place with Colin and Diana (they came up Labor Day weekend) and had some Russian peroshkis and fresh mini-donuts. There’s also this amazing grocery store called Central Market; they have like 4 different types of locally made crab cakes in their freezer section, just to give an idea. Surprisingly, however, sushi is better from the Fred Meyer near us than from Central Market; they both have chefs make them right in front of you.
And finally, check out Achie McPhee… We live 3 blocks from their store.
Din din was at American Dream, a pizza place that Erik claimed was the best pizza in Corvallis. We walked past the daVinci Days happenings (a concert in a park by that time) and found a place that offered free sno-cones as a promotional thing. Don was extremely skeptical, but George insisted we cross a couple of streets to check it out. Yes, they were free, no strings attached.
American Dream’s sign from far away looks like the gay/lesbian pink upside-down triangle except it’s yellow. At the time I told G that Jews in Nazi Germany had to wear arm-bands with the triangle and that gays and lesbians reappropriated the symbol, turned it upside-down and colored it pink. I was close. Actually, the Jews wore a Star of David while gays and lesbians had to wear that pink upside-down triangle. So the gay and lesbian community just reclaimed the symbol they were given by the Nazis. Kinda like how blacks reclaimed the word “nigger”.
We passed by a Chinese restaurant on the way to American Dream which G and I really wanted to go to, but we couldn’t since Don couldn’t afford it. So, we arrived at American Dream right around 8:30 which is lucky since they have a late-night special for a 1-topping large pizza and one soda for $10. The sauce, cheese, and pepperoni were good but the crust was tough and bland. Don liked it, but George and I thought it was overall mediocre. Don’s quote: “The pizza is good; just don’t eat the crust.” To which George and I replied: “The pizza *is* the crust!” In hindsight, I think maybe Don thinks of the outer crust as crust while George and I thought of the whole bread part, including the middle with toppings, as the crust. Given G and my definition, you can’t have good pizza without good crust. But G grew up in New York and I live with a pizza gourmand, so our standards are higher. Try, for example, Escape from New York or Pizza Roma.
Anyway, I got the soda that came with the meal, G got water, and Don got a beer, making his share of the meal the highest cost. Admittedly, I felt kind of cheated since I think Don spent as much as we would have if we had gone Chinese. I guess he needs his beer.
We got back to Erik’s place and went to sleep. The place is a duplex, 2 floors of a house that’ve been converted to 2 flats, with an additional small place out in the back yard. The landlords just got the place like 2 months ago and so were still fixing up the back place which is the place they said we could stay in. We were also offered the lawn and Erik’s floor. Since we got back before Erik, we figured his floor wasn’t a good idea since he might wake us up or something when he got back. The house out back was extremely hot and stuffy; only 2 windows opened and it had been a hot day. So we all opted to sleep in the backyard.
Four funny/cool things…
1. Don’s new ride was both a blessing and a curse and it started to manifest itself fully this night. He could’ve stuck it in the garage where Erik keeps some of his bikes, but I guess Don didn’t think it was secure enough since Erik and his landlords don’t lock it. He could’ve stuck it in the house, but again, it wasn’t locked. So instead he bungie corded it to his sleeping bag so that if anyone tried to make off with it, he’d wake up. Later he told us that he had another measure of security which he didn’t tell us about, cuz I guess he was afraid we’d make off with it… ? Anyway, George and I were starting to think Don was a little paranoid.
2. While we were lying there and looking up, we counted many, many satellites. That was cool. I told them about the time in college when my roommate and I were walking very late at night… around 2 AM.. to the pool hall when we saw a very bright shooting start type of thing, only much slower than a shooting star and much faster than a plane. It was maybe an inch long if you hold an inch out an arm’s length and basically going across the Western sky from North to South. Some drugged out hippies nearby were freaking out like it was a missile, but it just didn’t seem right. I found out a few weeks later that it was the space shuttle making an emergency landing!
3. So a few hours pass, and I think all of us are sleeping horribly. I keep waking up and alternating between hot and cold by covering and uncovering myself with my really well insulated sleeping bag. George starts laughing so I look over. Funny thing about George is that he is often woefully unprepared. For this trip, he deliberated didn’t bring a sleeping bag because he thought it would be warm enough outside to just sleep on the ground! Anyway, he got cold since it was kinda windy, so he put on pretty much all of his clothing. He had like 3 T-shirts on regularly and another around his arms. He had 3 pairs of shorts on, one regular, one pulled up to just his knees, and one just around his ankles. To top it off, he had a pair of blue-green plaid boxers around his head! So I started laughing too and told him I was definitely going to take a photo of him in the morning. After about 20 minutes he finally went inside to the house out back, but about 20 minutes after that the wind died down and the rest of the night was actually quite nice.
4. I guess it must have been around 2 or 3 AM… Don and I woke up but didn’t do anything when we heard 2 or 3 guys crash into the backyard from hopping a fence into it and then try to find their way out on the other side, all the while laughing and saying stuff like, “Holy crap, there’s people sleeping here!”
Day 2: 46 miles, 3 hours 20 minutes actual riding, 14 mph average.
We woke up early, around 7 or so. I went inside the little house and took a photo of George! 🙂 We ate breakfast at the same cafe that my brother and I met Brian on his house-bike 3 years ago! Breakfast was with Erik and we chatted about Portland places to live since he and his wife are moving up in August. We then said good-bye and headed to Eugene. We took Peoria Road down and then from Junction City we took River Road. I think this is the exact same way my brother and I did it the first time, so in the end, we followed the same route we did 3 years ago!
The ride down was really nice. At Junction City we called Barbara Gleason, graphic designer for Burley, who would be our hostess for our stay in Eugene. She rode out on River Road to meet us and escort us into town. Actually, another Burley employee, Russell, who was still recovering from a minivan hitting him in February, lived closer to downtown and we were able to crash at his place. He wasn’t home yet when we arrived, but his cat Hunter was home. We freshened up and made plans for Barbara to give us a tour of the city (in her nice A/Ced car). The heat was more oppressive than the previous days; I’m glad we left and finished our riding relatively early compared to our other days. While waiting for Barbara, Russell came back with his girlfriend, Tina, I think. Russell then showed us the cool beaded tapestry that he had/has been working on for the last 4.5 years.
The tour of the city was cool…:) and we saw a lot of Eugene from a butte in the center of town. After our tour, we met up with Dan, Barbara’s husband, who is a prof at U of O, specializing in birds, and went to Tasty Thai. Oh man, I love Thai food and this place was no disappointment. We were very hungry by this time since we had skipped lunch. George ate much rice.
After dinner we just chatted for a while back at their place. Hummingbirds really like Don’s bright red hair! We then went back to Russell’s and crashed. George and Don slept outside since the house’ ventilation wasn’t the greatest; it retained heat pretty well. But I slept inside since I didn’t want mosquitoes bugging me the whole night.
Day 3: 48 miles, about 3 hours 30 minutes, about 14mph ave.
We got up and met Barbara for breakfast. She then went off to work while we just hung out chatting for a couple hours at the market waiting for the big meeting at the Mayor’s Office a few blocks down. At one point we watched people getting newspapers out of one of those metal stand things. It got stuck but then one guy came and tugged on it hard and then left it slightly ajar for other people. We took the opportunity to borrow one which we replaced after we had finished reading the day’s news. 🙂
When the time came, we headed on over to the Mayor’s Office. It’s the corner office in a building housing other city offices including the police department. Even so, Don didn’t feel comfortable locking and leaving the bike out in the courtyard. At one point, I mentioned that it was funny how Don was being very protective of this bike because it cost so much while at the same time George and I were being relatively lax about our bikes even though our bikes weren’t cheap either. Don’s reasoning was that I could afford to get them replaced while he couldn’t. I don’t think that was it, actually. I mean I *could* get them replaced if they were stolen, but it’s not like I want that to happen, and I don’t think I actually would get them replaced since I am not exactly flowing in cash right now. In other words, it would still be a big blow to me if I had my bikes stolen. The difference is that I don’t let fear run my life or hold me back. With proper precaution, I feel that I should be able to do what I want to do. It’s not like I was suggesting we leave the bike unlocked out on the street.
Anyway, we met up with someone at the Mayor’s Office who let us know the mayor wasn’t in quite yet (we were early) and that Don could stick his bike inside the office. We then waited around and met Barbara. Then Diana Bishop showed up with her granddaughter and the whole office swarmed around for the baby. 🙂 Finally Mayor Jim Torrey showed up and we all shook hands and chatted. We got some photos of him handing the proclomation over and we were given some really good chocolate and pins of the city as gifts. It was very nice and low-key. No speeches or anything fancy-schmantzy this time around. Afterwords, Jim left the way he came, just walking down the street! By way of comparison, I think Portland’s mayor, Vera Katz, would have had a police escort or an entourage of some sort as security.
After we said good-bye to everyone we headed off to McMenamin’s on High Street and called Robin who was meeting her mom for lunch in Eugene to come pick us up for Portland. Turns out that she didn’t have lunch with her mom so we all ate at the McMenamin’s.
The car ride home was hot; no A/C in our little Honda Civic. The bike rack worked great! We dropped Don off who presumably returned the Trek the next day… George ended up staying until like Thursday or something; we kept going over to Scott’s to play Gran Turismo 3. Fun. All in all a great bike ride, limited only by my poor athleticism, Don’s poor money resources, and George’s poor packing foresight.
Addendum: In a weird twist of irony, my bike was stolen about a week later… 🙁 Maybe Don has cause to be cautious?
