[y66]

Good story by Elizabeth Weil at NYT: Why He Kayaked Across The Atlantic At Age 70 (For The Third Time)

[y66]

Meet Vaclav Smil, the man who has quietly shaped how the world thinks about energy by Paul Voosen at Science.

[Winstonm]

Any reasonable group - with the second amendment and gun rights as their reason to exist - would be rational and reasonable when it comes to frank talks about how to prevent criminals and other high-risk individuals from obtaining guns. With their continued attacks against teenage survivors of a shooting massacre, it is obvious that the NRA administration has no interest in protecting gun rights rather their sole reason to exist is to promote libertarian market-based ideology.

[Al_U_Card]

 Winstonm, on 2018-March-26, 08:55, said:

Any reasonable group - with the second amendment and gun rights as their reason to exist - would be rational and reasonable when it comes to frank talks about how to prevent criminals and other high-risk individuals from obtaining guns. With their continued attacks against teenage survivors of a shooting massacre, it is obvious that the NRA administration has no interest in protecting gun rights rather their sole reason to exist is to promote libertarian market-based ideology.

So, you are not a member and working to change them from the inside? ROFL

[Winstonm]

From Yahoo:

Quote

On Thursday, Laura Ingraham suddenly apologized for insulting and ridiculing school-shooting survivor David Hogg — but only after she began losing advertisers for her Fox News show and under the threat of losing more. The previous day, Ingraham felt not a twinge of decency when she tweeted an insult about Hogg getting rejections from a number of colleges, sneering that he was whining about it. In response, Hogg called for an advertiser boycott of The Ingraham Angle. By late afternoon, Nestle, Hulu, Wayfair, Johnson & Johnson, Expedia, and TripAdvisor, and others had yanked ads from her show.

Laura Ingraham could not act quickly enough to recant her previous contempt for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student and had the gall to dress her groveling in the cloak of religion. “On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland,” she said, and invited Hogg to appear on her show.

The quote is not entirely accurate. What Ingraham actual said was, "On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Shi#, I'm losing advertisers faster than the Titanic took on water, I apologize to my advertisers for being a complete network right-wing propaganda twit. To the Parkland kids, fu#@ off."

[Winstonm]

Well, Amen! brothers and sisters.

Quote

Former President George W. Bush’s longtime spiritual advisor, Rev. Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, the pastor of a Houston megachurch, has been indicted on federal charges of defrauding mostly elderly and vulnerable investors out of more than $1 million.

[y66]

From Tyler Cowen's review of The Away Game: The Epic Search for Soccer’s Next Superstars at Marginal Revolution:

Quote

I found this book by Sebastian Abbot very stimulating, though I wished for a more social-scientific treatment. The focus is on Africa, here is one bit on the more conceptual side:

But focusing on a young player’s technique still tells a scout relatively little about whether the kid will reach the top level, even when the observations are paired with physical measures of speed and agility. A study published in 2016 looked at the results from a battery of five tests conducted by the German soccer federation on over 20,000 of the top Under-12 players in the country. The tests measured speed, agility, dribbling, passing, and shooting. The researchers assessed the utility of the tests in determining how high the kids would progress once they reached the Under-16 to Under-19 level. The study found that players who scored in the 99th percentile or higher in the tests still only had a 6 percent chance of making the youth national team.

So what else might you look to?:

They assessed the game intelligence of players by freezing match footage at different moments and asking players to predict what would happen next or what decision a player on the field should make. Elite players were faster and more accurate in their ability to scan the field, pick up cues from an opponent’s position, and recognize, recall, and predict patterns of play.

And:

Researchers have found that the key ingredient is not how much formal practice or how many official games players had as kids, but how much pickup soccer they played in informal settings like the street or schoolyard.

The implications for economics study and speed chess are obvious. Finally:

Researchers found that athletes have a 25 percent larger attention window than nonathletes.

From Nicolas van de Walle's review at Foreign Affairs:

Quote

In 2007, Qatar, in an effort to build up its national soccer team, began a project to identify the most talented young soccer players in Africa and bring them to Doha for training. The effort was led by a Barcelona-based talent scout whose claim to fame was that he had discovered perhaps the most famous soccer player of the current era, the Argentine forward Lionel Messi. Abbot’s book follows the fortunes of three young African players who participated in the Qatari program and for whom soccer represented a ticket out of poverty. In the end, none of the three made it: it turns out that it is hard to predict who will be the next Messi, particularly in countries where it is easy to forge a birth certificate and convince a scout that a 12-year-old is actually 16. African recruits have become stars on many of the world’s top professional teams, but a far more common trajectory for them involves shameless exploitation by a motley assortment of fixers, coaches, scouts, and other intermediaries who all hope to profit off the players. Abbot’s book is an excellent introduction to this shady world.

[Winstonm]

Odd that a group of high school students have become the Herecles to the far right Hydra. Those who are hardliners will never change their minds, so that smaller base will always remain; but to win national elections, the right needs independents and people who are not so radicalized.

The prisoner's dilemma the right finds itself in is that it must condemn a bunch of high school kid victims of a mass shooting and lose their middle-of-the-road support or not condemn those kids and lose their base - when the rational outcome would be to hold principled and constructive discussions about genuine solutions.

Now, if we could only get those kids to cut off the other heads...

[Aberlour10]

WOW; One of Warsaw's main streets has just been named after Donald J. Trump. Who would have thought it....

[Winstonm]

New details at Daily Beast about the Prince Seychelles meeting.

Tick-tock, tick-tock...

[jjbrr]

Barmar, I apparently can't chat with anyone on BBO. Bug or feature?

[Winstonm]

Careful what you watch. Big brother could be behind the curtain.

[y66]

Fun story by Karen Crouse at NYT: Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson Warm Up Together, and to Each Other

This is going to be a fun tournament.

[y66]

From Dan Kilbridge at Golfweek:

Quote

“To see him back out playing is incredible,” Mickelson said. “We all feel that. I texted him a while ago when he was playing at Valspar that it felt like it was a different time continuum, because I found myself pulling so hard for him. It was unusual. And I find that I want him to play well, and I’m excited to see him play so well.”

He was even more excited Tuesday because they dusted Couples and Pieters, at one point playing a five-hole stretch 7 under thanks to two eagles from Woods. And they put on a show for the thousands of spectators hoping to catch just a glimpse of the star-studded group in packed quarters. One of the day’s loudest cheers came after the tee shot at 16, when the group took part in a pre-Masters tradition. With the three right-handed players lined up to Mickelson’s right, they swung simultaneously for a shotgun skip across the pond.

One hole prior, the foursome walked and talked together down the fairway at the par-5 15th. Only Mickelson’s distinctive banter was audible outside the ropes.

Woods carried them to victory on that hole by outdriving everyone else and hitting a near-perfect approach to the downhill, landing strip green protected by water. He made the eagle putt, something he hasn’t done in competition through five starts this season. He also made eagle at the par-5 13th hole.

All four par-5s at Augusta are reachable for Woods if he can find the fairway, though No. 8 would require a particularly well-struck drive. He was able to outdrive 24-year-old Justin Thomas during their Monday practice round and is averaging 304.2 yards off the tee this season, something he continues to insist is a complete mystery.

“I’ll be honest with you, it is crazy,” Woods said. “The swing numbers are up. I’m north of 120 (miles per hour). That’s what the shocking thing is. I didn’t think I would ever reach north of 120, and I’m cruising at 120. So that part is very exciting, because I know that if I can maintain this, I can play out here for a very long time.”

[Winstonm]

Gaslight of the Day

“Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think,'” reads one part of the script that Sinclair executives forced its 170 station news anchors to read on air.

[y66]

Tiger hit some good shots today, especially his approach shots into 14 (perfect), 17 and 18 (near perfect) and his tee shots on 16 and 18. His putting was solid, especially on 12 to save bogey and on 16 for a very pretty deuce. You could almost see the old feeling coming back after that shot into 16 like the feeling Hemingway describes coming back to Nick Adams in "The Big Two-Hearted River" when "a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting."

One over for the day. Not bad for Thursday. I suspect he will try to work on the shape of his tee shots for 13 and 15 which he will need to improve if he wants to score well on the back nine.

It was fun to watch Tommy Fleetwood play so well after a slow start.

[Winstonm]

 y66, on 2018-April-05, 14:04, said:

Tiger hit some good shots today, especially his approach shots into 14 (perfect), 17 and 18 (near perfect) and his tee shots on 16 and 18. His putting was solid, especially on 12 to save bogey and on 16 for a very pretty deuce. You could almost see the old feeling coming back after that shot into 16 like the feeling Hemingway describes coming back to Nick Adams in "The Big Two-Hearted River" when "a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting."

One over for the day. Not bad for Thursday. I suspect he will try to work on the shape of his tee shots for 13 and 15 which he will need to improve if he wants to score well on the back nine.

It was fun to watch Tommy Fleetwood play so well after a slow start.

As it has been said and proven often, The Masters doesn't really start until the back nine on Sunday.

[Cyberyeti]

 Winstonm, on 2018-April-05, 17:00, said:

As it has been said and proven often, The Masters doesn't really start until the back nine on Sunday.

But it can end before it really started, ask Sergio

[Winstonm]

 Cyberyeti, on 2018-April-06, 08:34, said:

But it can end before it really started, ask Sergio

Yes, one must play on Sunday in order to win. Ouch!

[Al_U_Card]

 y66, on 2018-April-03, 22:35, said:

From Dan Kilbridge at Golfweek:

In Rome for a week WITHOUT internet.... undergoing Masters withdrawl..... Hope to be home today in time to carch the replay tonight. We used to have pools and all kinds of bets....at work, playing Augusta, a bucket list item never to be fulfilled....sigh.