sports

Sports

“developed in 1981”

Standard

From FiveThirtyEight.com’s Building a Bracket Is Hard This Year, But We’ll Help You Play the Odds:

So how were the Cardinals a No. 4 seed?

The answer, almost certainly, is the selection committee’s attachment to Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), which somehow evaluates Louisville as only the 18th-best team in the country. RPI, as I’ve written previously, was “developed in 1981 in the era of the DOS prompt and the Commodore 64.”

The NBA is a truly international league

Standard

Rodman and others in North Korea

The NBA is a truly international league for even despots love NBA basketball

The colorful former NBA star known as “The Worm” elicited widespread condemnation Tuesday when he suggested in an exclusive interview with Chris Cuomo of CNN’s “New Day” that American Kenneth Bae had done something to deserve his 15-year sentence.

On Wednesday, Bae’s family accused Rodman of “playing games” with Bae’s life. Relatives and U.S. officials have insisted Bae committed no crime.

“There is no diplomacy, only games, and at my brother’s expense,” Bae’s sister, Terri Chung, said Wednesday in a prepared statement.

[…]

Instead, she said he made the situation worse in his Tuesday CNN interview by intimating that Bae was guilty.

“Do you understand what he did in this country?” Rodman asked Cuomo. “No, no, no, you tell me, you tell me. Why is he held captive here in this country, why?”

Just let “The Worm” slither away to North Korea forever.

Doc Halladay says good bye

Standard

A heartfelt thanks to Philadelphia

To the City of Philadelphia, and Phillies fans everywhere:

My family and I want to thank you for four amazing years. We have so many great memories of our time with the Phillies, on and off the field, and we will cherish those always. We want to also express our appreciation to my teammates and the wonderful people of the Phillies organization, especially Ruben Amaro and David Montgomery, for all they have done for us. And to the fans, thank you for always making us feel welcome here and for all your incredible support at Citizens Bank Park.

Roy Halladay

#34

via Roy Halladay places ad in Daily News thanking Philadelphia fans | The700Level

estimate: 70% of 15m individual market insured qualify for subsidy

Standard

From Ezra Klein’s WonkBlog:

About 15 million people currently purchase health insurance on their own, using the individual market. And about 70 percent of them — about 10.8 million people — will qualify for the financial help buying coverage under the health-care law, according to a new study out Thursday from Families USA

This is huge. To not have healthcare.gov ready is killing the effectiveness of this law. Really, it’s the part of the law that has been a huge disappointment & stopped a long string of successes with implementation and improved medical care.

 

NFL contractually bound to crappy Surface Tablets

Standard
This is better than Microsoft Surface, worse than an iPad

This is better than Microsoft Surface Tablet

MG Seigler is right:

Microsoft’s partnership with the NFL also makes the Surface the official tablet of the league, and Microsoft hopes that teams will start to use the devices on the sidelines during games. We saw a brief demo of a Surface app called X2 that’s designed to allow team staff to more easily track concussions

Something tells me we’re going to be seeing a lot of devices that look a lot like iPads on the sidelines but so obfuscated that you can’t quite make them out. Sure, they’re Surfaces!

The Bengals on Hard Knocks & many other teams already use iPads. 14 Teams as of last fall. Players phone of choice is iPhone something and I’m sure that 2nd is prob. some super big Samsung Android phone.

If a surface tablet is really being used to track concussions, then these players brains are screwed. I’m serious.

Another note: I had the unfortunate experience of using Windows 8 on a laptop. Quite literally one of the most frustrating counterintuitive messes ever. I never want a Windows 8 machine. Ever.

Conan O’Brien Interviews Statistician Nate Silver

Video

Since Nate Silver has announced his move from the New York Times to Disney aka ESPN and ABC I wanted to post an interview with Silver that wasn’t of the antagonistic “aren’t you lucky” or the self involved media claiming “the real winner of the election was Nate Silver” sort. Conan O’brien did a good job of that when he talked with Silver during his “Serious Jibber Jabber” web series.

Statistician Nate Silver – Serious Jibber-Jabber with Conan O'Brien – CONAN on TBS – YouTube.

Nate Silver and other (even right wing) statisticians/modelers who use sound methodologies and helped those of us who paid attention have some empirical cocoon to avoid the hysteria willingly wrapped around every sound bite, non scandal or spin in long American Presidential election seasons.

Fatal stabbing, stoning and quartering at soccer game.

Standard

mexico bikini models sports basketball
Police say enraged spectators invaded a football field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body after he stabbed a player to death.

Brazilian fans kill, behead referee who killed player – Soccer – SI.com.

More details:

A 20-year-old referee was quartered and beheaded by spectators after he fatally stabbed a player during an amateur match in northeast Brazil. The horrifying and gruesome series of events began when the 31-year-old player, Josenir dos Santos Abreu, got into a physical altercation with referee Otavio Jordao da Silva, who then stabbed Dos Santos with a knife he had on him.

According to the AP, a statement from the state of Maranhao’s public safety department said that the player’s friends and relatives watching the stands charged the pitch, where they stoned the referee to death and then quartered his body. From there, the situation managed to get even more twisted.

“She’s lucky”

Video

“Do you think it was fair, what they got? They did something stupid, but I don’t know. I’m not blaming the girl, but if you’re a 16-year-old and you’re drunk like that, your parents should teach you: Don’t take drinks from other people. She’s 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn’t remember? It could have been much worse. She’s lucky. Obviously, I don’t know, maybe she wasn’t a virgin, but she shouldn’t have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that’s different.”

–Serena Williams on the Steubenville High School Rape Victim

Update: discussion of Serena’s comments on “The View”:

Serena Williams apologized for her comments.