Whitehouse Gatecrashers

Part of me thinks that this is awesome, and another part of me thinks that it's really fucking scary.

(Tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Diaz.)

Pirates pitcher interning for the Department of Agriculture

Now here's a really neat story. Pirates pitcher Ross Ohlendorf is an intern this winter at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Back in the day, Major League Baseball players used to work in the winter because they needed the money, but obviously that hasn't been true for a long time. Ohlendorf is doing this out of interest. I approve!

Quote of the Day

This quote actually comes from a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to post it, so I'll mention it now. This was the reaction of one of my colleagues in the Mathematical Institute upon seeing a picture of me as a young child: "It would almost be easier to believe that you were hatched from an egg."

I think that that about says it all. (I took this as a compliment, by the way.)

The Muppets do "Bohemian Rhapsody"

Here is a cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" by the Muppets. Awesome! Simply awesome!

(Tip of the cap to Dave Relyea.)

My Sister's Visit

My sister Tammy visited me from Thursday afternoon until early this morning. (She left on the 6:30 am bus. I am still reeling from the pain of getting up at 6am today.)

Here is my picture album from her visit.

Our itinerary for Tammy's visit was as follows:

Thursday: Chilling, a bit of crashing for Tammy (and a brief foray to a seminar for me), and dinner and dessert with two of my best friends. Anyway, Tammy got to celebrate her birthday with my friends this year, but I'm sure she'll be having something with her buds back in LA.

Friday: Blenheim Palace, as recommended by one of my friends. Then we got back, had dinner, and went to see "A Serious Man" (which had its moments but was kind of disappointing... the IMDB ratings are shockingly high).

Saturday: London, including an awesome performance of "We Will Rock You" (the musical based on the music of Queen) and some cluster fucks in multiple tube stations. [I suppose that there are a couple of different ways to interpret my phrasing here.] We then had dinner back in Oxford.

Sunday: We took a day trip to Wales. The Brits seem to think that this was crazy. (Going between Oxford and Wales is comparable to going between LA and San Diego, so this seems perfectly reasonable to me.) Cardiff Castle was awesome! And I picked up a stuffed griffon along the way.

Monday: Today we toured Oxford. (I also had a brief foray to give my lecture.)

Albert Pujols wins National League Most Valuable Player Award

Albert Pujols won the 2009 National League Most Valuable Player Award in unanimous fashion, as he was named 1st on all 32 ballots. This is Pujols' third MVP trophy, and this was the first unanimous selection since 2002. The baseball scribes and I agreed on all 8 major award selections this year. I think it's been quite a while since that happened, and I'm not sure that it's ever happened before.

Joe Mauer wins American League Most Valuable Player Award

Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins has won the American League Most Valuable Player Award in a landslide victory, as he garnered 27 of 28 first-place votes. (Some idiot voted for Miguel Cabrera.) Mauer's victory was a foregone conclusion, and the writers and I now agree on 7/7 major award recipients for the 2009 baseball season. (Given that Albert Pujols will almost certainly win the NL MVP tomorrow, I suspect we'll go 8/8 this year.)

Picture of the Day

This particular demotivational poster is probably the best one I have ever seen. Awesome! I approve!

(Tip of the cap to Jing Xu.)

"Buzzwords"

Some comic strips tell you just about everything you need to know about science---such as this one from Ph.D. Comics about buzzwords.

(Tip of the cap to Ravi Montenegro.)

Tim Lincecum wins National League Cy Young Award

In what I view as a surprising outcome, Tim Lincecum has won the National League Cy Young Award, becoming the first repeat winner since Randy Johnson won from 1999-2002. The reason I call this a "shock" is that the scribes actually got this award right as well. That's now 6/6! Lincecum was the best pitcher in the National League this year, but I thought it was close to certain that the sportswriters would go with Adam Wainwright because of the shiny object known as wins. The Cy Young race this year was actually one of the closest in the history of the award:

Lincecum received 11 first-place votes, 12 seconds and nine thirds for 100 points in balloting released Thursday by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter was next with 94 points and teammate Adam Wainwright finished third with 90 despite getting the most first-place votes with 12.

What seems to have happened is that Wainwright and Carpenter split a bunch of votes, allowing the most deserving player (Lincecum) to win. (Lincecum's 15 wins gave him the fewest number of wins ever for a Cy Young Award winner in a season that wasn't shortened by a work stoppage, so it's great that the scribes were looking at how he actually pitched instead of blindly focusing on things that are tied so closely to the run support of his teammates.) I approve!

Awesome Sponsorship Comments on Baseball-reference.com

Here is a blog post on Baseball Junk Drawer that details one person's top 10 sponsorship comments on baseball-reference.com. For those of you who don't know, baseball-reference.com is an awesome website full of statistics that is maintained by (former) mathematics professor Sean Forman. (I met Sean and spoke in one of his sessions on math and sports at one of the Joint Mathematics Meetings.) One can sponsor a page and leave a comment, and as you can see from the link above, some of them are pretty damn funny. My favorite one is the one about Len Koenecke even though it's in extremely poor taste. I can't help it---it just appeals to my sense of humor so much despite that.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Mike Scioscia and Jim Tracy win Manager of the Year Awards

Jim Tracy of the Colorado Rockies and Mike Scioscia of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (aka, The The Angels Angels of Anaheim) have, respectively, won the National League and American League Manager of the Year awards. I agree with both of these decisions as well---especially the one for Tracy, which was a no-brainer---so thus far I agree 5/5 with the scribes. I suspect that the National League Cy Young Award, which is announced tomorrow, will break this streak.

Power Laws in Chess Openings

I haven't looked closely enough at the paper to judge whether or not these are actual power laws, but the blurb on the American Physical Society website caught my eye, so I browsed through the paper at lightning speed and want to mention it here. (Note that I don't think that Physical Review Letters is necessarily the appropriate journal for such research, but anyway the situation it what it is.) The paper is called Zipf’s Law in the Popularity Distribution of Chess Openings.

Authors: Bernd Blasius and Ralf T\"{o}njes

Abstract: We perform a quantitative analysis of extensive chess databases and show that the frequencies of opening moves are distributed according to a power law with an exponent that increases linearly with the game depth, whereas the pooled distribution of all opening weights follows Zipf’s law with universal exponent. We propose a simple stochastic process that is able to capture the observed playing statistics and show that the Zipf law arises from the self-similar nature of the game tree of chess. Thus, in the case of hierarchical fragmentation the scaling is truly universal and independent of a particular generating mechanism. Our findings are of relevance in general processes with composite decisions.


Naturally, I have taken the obvious step and nominated this paper for an Ig Nobel Prize.

Zack Greinke wins American League Cy Young Award

Holy shit, the scribes have gotten it right again, as Zack Greinke of the Kansas City Royals has been named the American League Cy Young Award winner. He was clearly the most dominant pitcher in the American League this year, but sportswriters tend to worship at the alter of wins and Grienke's 16-8 record was worse than that of other pitchers in the league. (Basically, it's not his fault that the Royals can't hit.) Let's see if they can keep this up...

"Caltech Girl"

In case you never heard "Caltech Girl" (lyrics by Ben Williamson and Bret Victor; parody of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl") performed, here is a video of it on YouTube. Some of you might even recognize the lead singer, who once told me that they had to stop performing that alumni events because some people evidently found it offensive.

The site also includes a link to another video performance of "Caltech Girl", but I didn't watch that one.

AIP/APS Publication Social Network

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has a new social networking service (called "uniPHY", which is a really stupid name) that includes some nice visualizations of one's collaboration network (and related objects) in AIP and American Physical Society journals. One can also do other social networking type stuff, but I was basically curious just about the visualizations and some simple statistics. (Granted, this ignores all of the publications I have in other venues, but I still wanted to check it out.)

Chris Coghlan and Andrew Bailey win Rookie of the Year awards

I am absolutely shocked: the sportswriters actually picked the correct people for both of baseball's Rookie of the Year awards. (Of course, "right" = the people I felt should win.)

The writing seemed to be on the wall for yet another flub, but the scribes thankfully voted for Florida outfielder Chris Coghlan in the National League and Oakland reliever Andrew Bailey in the American League. The writers certainly made Sparky Anderson proud today.

Answer Fail

Students can sometimes write the best answers to questions. For example, this one (reported by the Fail Blog) isn't as awesome as the mathematical ones I've seen ("There's an elephant in the way!"), but it's pretty damn funny nonetheless. I wonder if the student wrote the answer with a Uni-ball pen?

(Tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Diaz.)

Another Piece of my Childhood is Gone

OK, so this apparently happened in November 2007, but I only just found out. Namely, Tony Silver (Beverly High class of 1979), the owner of the Beverly Hills Baseball Card Shop died in November 2007. (I read about this in the obituaries in the 2009 Beverly Hills High Alumni Highlights.) As a child, I went to that store regularly, and even after I left home, I would still go there on occasion during breaks from school when I was back home. I didn't know the guy well or anything, but I feel bummed out after reading this because of the fact that feels like a significant piece of my childhood just left. (OK, admittedly my feelings are rather selfish in nature in this case.) Although I moved quite far away, this is a 'people in your neighborhood' sort of thing.

I have actually been in the mood to open some packs of baseball cards for quite a while. I do have a number of unopened packs in my parents' house, but one of the things I'd like really like to do when I am home this winter is to head over to the Beverly Hills Baseball Card Shop and buy some baseball cards---this includes some new ones, but I think I'd like to splurge a bit and buy some packs from the 70s or earlier.

Hug a Jew Day

Apparently, today is Hug a Jew Day.

I think that I count even though that is my background without being my belief. :) [This is like the whole superfrosh thing. It's just a matter of when it's convenient and when it isn't.]

I'll let you know how many hugs I get today.