2009 MLB Awards : AL MVP

This really boils down to Mauer vs. Teixeira, right?  Mauer has the superior averages and Teixeira the superior totals.  My initial feeling is that it should go to Mauer, though he admittedly is coming up a little short for the Twins during the stretch run.

1. First look their situational hitting: Teixeira vs. Mauer (scroll to bottom); Mauer has superior averages in all situations (except, interestingly, when leading off the inning, and Teixeira comes close to Mauer's numbers when no one is on base) and simply doesn't get as high a percentage of at-bats with runners on to drive in as many runs as Teixeira.
   
   
2. Also look at the pre/post All-star splits.  Teixeira was merely human in the first half, and had a great second half -- so great, in fact, that his second half numbers are almost as good as the numbers Mauer averaged all season.
   
   
3. Finally, Yankee fan Phil gives his blessing to Mauer getting the MVP.  So there you have it.

The Groves of Academe (McCarthy, Mary) 1952

This reads like the Jungle for mid-20th century American liberal arts colleges.  This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing.  I needed to quit about halfway through because there's an awful lot of telling rather than showing, and the plot was inching forward too slowly for me.

[DNF 9/28/9]  

2009 MLB Awards : AL Cy Young

This should go to Greinke, but I'm afraid it'll go to Sabathia if he gets to 20 wins.  Unfortunately, the difference in their win totals is an artifact of run support (second to last column).  Sabathia gets 7.84, which is 10th most in the AL among pitchers with at least 140IP, as of this morning. Greinke gets a measly 4.71, which is 36th, or worst, in the AL among pitchers with at least 140IP.


I tried to come up with reasons to resign myself to Sabathia winning the award, and thought "hey, he's pitched great since the All-Star break, and while Greinke was amazing in April/May, he hasn't been as hot since."  Well... actually, Greinke's stats before and after the break are each at least as good as Sabathia's post all-star stats.


Sabathia's numbers:





ERA
W
L
G
GS
CG
IP
H
R
ER
HR
BB
SO
AVG




Pre All-Star
3.86
8
6
19
19
2
128.1
110
58
55
11
38
95
0.232




Post All-Star
2.36
11
1
14
14
0
99
79
29
26
7
24
99
0.22






Greinke's numbers:





ERA
W
L
G
GS
CG
IP
H
R
ER
HR
BB
SO
AVG




Pre All-Star
2.12
10
5
18
18
5
127.1
116
38
30
4
21
129
0.245




Post All-Star
2.02
5
3
13
13
1
89
66
21
20
7
26
100
0.202






Let's hope the voters get this one right.

2009 MLB Awards : NL MVP

Would you like a first baseman with Gold Glove-caliber defense, BA/OBP/SLG at .300/.400/.600, and more walks than strikeouts?  That describes Albert Pujols, who should win his third MVP award this year, but it could also be Adrian Gonzalez, if he didn't play half his games in the worst hitter's park in the league.


Look at his home/away splits (as of the morning of 7/22); it's ridiculous.  He could use significant improvement against lefties, but for $3M/year, he's an MLB bargain.

By Breakdown	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	HBP	SO	SB	CS	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
vs. Left	204	23	46	9	2	10	35	27	3	50	1	0	.225	.323	.436	.759
vs. Right	313	59	95	17	0	29	57	78	2	52	0	1	.304	.442	.636	1.078
Home	246	30	59	12	2	12	35	64	2	53	0	0	.240	.399	.451	.850
Away	271	52	82	14	0	27	57	41	3	49	1	1	.303	.396	.653	1.049

All The Pretty Horses (McCarthy, Cormac) 1992

I didn't care much for the overall plot, but it's not so much the story as how McCarthy tells it.  He generally does a wonderful job of showing us what we need in order to get to know John Grady Cole through his words and actions, rather than spilling the beans and telling us.  All in all there are three brilliant passages.  I was reading the Vintage International paperback edition from June 1993:

1. The part beginning "The hacendado had bought the horse through an agent...", which tells the story of how Antonio traveled to America to bring the stallion back to Mexico.  When Antonio turns out his pockets to deliver over the horse's papers, I laughed out at the full list of objects he hands to the hacendado.  This reads like a writer's workshop assignment to tell a story in a single paragraph that turned out outstandingly well. (pages 125-126)
   
   
2. The billiards game with the hacendado, particularly near the end where the hacendado misses a shot and then complains that "the French [meaning here the thinking that comes of obtaining a modern continental education] have come into my house to mutilate my billiard game.  No evil is beyond them." The use of "mutilate" to describe the defects in his billiard game also made me laugh out loud.  (pages 143-144)
   
   
3. Just about everything after John Grady Cole returns to Texas, but most especially the courtroom scene (pages 286-298).

My favorite parts were all comic (though the scene following the courtroom at the judge's house is both touching and sums up the character of John Grady Cole and his experiences in the book), and I'm not sure if I'm simply biased towards the comic scenes or McCarthy is simply gifted at writing them.  I think it's a happy confluence of McCarthy's minimal writing style and the level of understatement necessary to make these particular scenes "work" and be really, really funny.


[finished reading 9/21/09]

The Vampire Tapestry (Charnas, Suzy McKee) 1980

This has the best disclaimer I can remember reading: "All characters in this book are fictitious.  Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental -- barring a brief appearance by the author's mother-in-law, with the gracious permission of the same."  The novel itself is structured as a stitching together of five related stories to make the whole "Vampire Tapestry", with Charnas's Nebula-winning novella "the Unicorn Tapestry" as the center story, and Professor Weyland starring throughout.  "The Unicorn Tapestry" is the strongest story in the book, but I have to admit that my favorite character (after Weyland) is Katje de Groot, who is introduced in the first story and then never seen again.  I was first sad and then very sad (because the second story is the weakest of all) and then finally resigned (once I began to enjoy "the Unicorn Tapestry" and then "A Musical Interlude") that Katje wasn't going to reappear, because Charnas is too good a storyteller to bring her back when it doesn't make sense to do so.  The ending leaves wide open the possibility for more stories about Weyland, and fast-forwarding to today would be perfect; dare we hope for a sequel?

[reading completed  9/13/9]

Trash on the Lawn Day

Right around the same time I was working on my reducing landfill project, the Burlington Sustainability Action Team (BSAT) was sorting through the trash at City Hall to see how much trash that currently goes into the landfill could be diverted elsewhere.  The Burlington Free Press also reported on the project, and it's rather shocking how this article manages to miss any mention of the BSAT.


I do have a beef with the 7days blog entry, which writes: "Since Burlington City Hall doesn't have a composting program, it would have been impossible for employees to have separated out their compost."  There is nothing stopping employees from bringing a compost bucket, collecting the day's compostables, and setting up a rotation for whose turn it is to take the bucket to the compost project at the end of the day.  At the very least, collect the coffee grounds and any gardeners among the employees should be happy to have them.

Reducing Landfill

Connor now has a bed for his mattress and the box spring was superfluous.  We listed it on freecycle, but got no bites.  It looked like the box spring was headed for the trash dump (we haul our trash to the city drop-off because the drop is about a mile from Finn's school, and it costs about $10-15 less per month than contracting to have it hauled.  more on that another day), and because the trash drop-off charges $0.13 per pound, I was a little grumbly at the thought of paying $4 to dispose of our box spring (I'm wild-assed guessing that the box spring weighs ~30lbs). 

But then I realized, hey, most of the weight in here is untreated wood and metal!  The metal can be dumped for free at the city drop-off in the scrap metal bin, and the untreated wood can be dumped for free at the McNeil generating plant (and I'll be driving by McNeil in order to dump off yard waste at the city compost project soon, anyways).  Woo-hee!  Well... it took almost 20 minutes to disassemble it, which means I "paid myself" roughly $12/hour to do the job.  Not exactly my going rate, but sometimes you just gotta do the "right thing".

Here it is in its component parts.  The random stuff that I had to pay to dump appeared to be <2lbs at the city drop-off:

Velomobile Envy

Last week was the Human Powered Vehicle (HPV) Bikefest in Burlington, and because it was in City Hall Park next to the farmer's market, we managed to get to the Bike Expo on Saturday and see some velomobiles up close, and they are coooool, especially the Go-One.

Unfortunately, while a velomobile might have made a lot of sense for me 10 years ago, especially while I was living in Evanston and commuting in to Chicago, it's a harder sell now that I have two kids and am telecommuting.  Most of my biking is to take Finn to school, and so what I really need is a "family" velomobile, and the multiperson velomobiles I've seen are not really ready for family use in VT.   Oh, I could probably hook up the trailer to the velomobile, but doesn't that defeat the cool factor?  :-)  And... it doesn't help when the Go-One costs $8000+.  They have a lot of great ideas for how to ameliorate that cost, but they don't really apply to our situation.

So... the kids will be out of college when I'm 57, so maybe I can look forward to settling my veloenvy then... but actually, maybe Connor would be interested in a velomobile as a car** alternative when he's 15 -- neither he nor his friends will have driver's licenses, and a velomobile will be almost as fast around town.  And maybe in 10 years the cost of a good all-weather velomobile will have come down to $2000.

** A Vespa might be another acceptable around-town car alternative.  We'll see.

Project Icarus

I've been trying to think of something intelligent to say about this project, but am failing.  Project Icarus and the resulting video is just too cool for words. 

Take that, Camden, NJ!

Burlington, VT was named the best place to raise a family in the U.S. by "Children's Health Magazine", thus reaffirming Sarah's research back in 2001... though one can help think that the list is suspect if Fargo is #3.  Maybe they've destroyed all the wood chippers.




My favorite part is how the Free Press says the magazine was looking for "the kind of place where a child can slip on her rubber boots, grab her colorful umbrella, and play on the quiet, tree-lined street outside her home without worry."  This is, in fact, precisely how we like to spend rainy days (colorful umbrella not pictured).

Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)

Everybody knows that Strathairn's performance as Edward R. Murrow is the number one reason to see this movie.  Yup, he's great, but it also helps that he has a compelling character and great lines.  This performance is (almost) as much a testament to Clooney (who co-wrote, co-starred with Strathairn in many scenes, and directed) as it is to Strathairn himself.  So props to George Clooney, who proved he can direct and act in the same movie and not let his acting get in the way of his directing, or vice versa.


Also, Frank Langella!  He is the number two reason to see this movie, and stands toe-to-toe with Strathairn and they come away as equals.  Everyone else feels like a submissive member of the pack of which Murrow is the alpha dog.  


By contrast, just what is the purpose of the Robert Downey / Patricia Clarkson subplot?  Are we supposed to see how CBS is guilty of oppression by not allowing employees to be married?  Are we supposed to see how CBS might have a stupid policy but the people who work there are enlightened enough to ignore the stupid policy?  Are we supposed to simply be happy that "troubled but talented" Downey is getting work?  It adds very little beyond enough time to the movie so that it cracks 90 minutes.  

Veronica Mars (2004-2007)

We finished all three seasons.  The show is definitely worth having a look at, though the series doesn't really "end" in the sense that they laid a lot of groundwork for season 4 during season 3 and decided not to try to finish all the story arcs when it seemed like season 3 might be the last.  Seasons 2 and 3 are decidedly weaker than season 1, if only because it's "more of the same", though Veronica's romantic life becomes stale in seasons 2 and 3 (see spoilers below).  Still, I'm a little sad there wasn't a season 4.  A lot of plot goes by per show because the scenes are so short and the pacing is fast.  Bang, bang, bang.


== spoilers ==

My biggest concern about seasons 2 and 3 is the spoiling of Logan and Veronica's relationship.  They built up a lot of credit on how well this played out in season 1, then squandered it all in season 2, and by and during season 3 I didn't really care any more.  This is not good.  

I'm also really disappointed that the Aaron Echolls murder never seems to be investigated.  That's a serious problem.

Also of concern, Wallace gets the shaft a bit in seasons 2 and 3, screen-time-wise, as they develop other characters.  In season 2, they essentially remove him from the series to Chicago for a few episodes, and Mac gets a little more development (this is not entirely a bad thing, since she's an interesting character).  The real problem is Piznarski in season 3, who steals "good guy" time from Wallace and "potential boyfriend" time from Logan.  

Veronica does several brain-dead things:

• Every so often, she jumps to early (erroneous) conclusions in order to create drama.  It's forgivable for the writers to do this, but annoying.
• Less forgivable of the writers, at the end of season 1, Veronica doesn't stay in a public place with the tapes, but instead drives home alone in her car.  At the very least, Aaron shouldn't be hiding in the back seat of her freakin' car!
• Least forgivable is that at the end of season 2, Veronica doesn't seem to realize that Mac is perfectly safe as long as Cassidy thinks he's in the clear.  Mac and Veronica were only in danger because she *texts* that Cassidy is a killer, like that's a secure way to communicate!  We know that Veronica knows better, and shouldn't overreact like this.

Random fun stuff:

• Logan, meet Logan.  Matt Czuchry, who plays "no-good rich boyfriend" Logan Huntzberger to Rory on Gilmore Girls, has a guest spot in "Charlie Don't Surf" in season 3 and spends a fair amount of screen time with Logan Echolls, the "no-good rich boyfriend" on Veronica Mars.  Personally, I think Lorelei should be happy with the Logan her daughter was dating.
• A great Rocky Horror reference comes in "Ahoy, Mateys!" in season 2, when Veronica and Mac are looking for the pirate radio station, and find it in Vice-Principal Clemmons' basement (being run by his son, Vincent).  In general, the cultural references are very good; unfortunately, they seem aimed at people in their 30's, which may not be the age demographic the station was hoping to hit with this show.

Lavinia (Le Guin, Ursula) 2008

In Lavinia, Le Guin does for a minor character in Vergil's Aeneid what Jean Rhys does for a minor character in Bronte's Jane Eyre: give her a life beyond the quick sketch written by the original author, while also providing an alternative viewpoint on the "main" story.


Very roughly, the first third of the novel describes Lavinia's life prior to her entrance in the Aeneid, the middle third recounts events of the Aeneid from her point of view (though this is really more like a fourth or fifth of the book rather than a full third), and the latter third shows her life after the Aeneid.  Most of the novel is a perfectly fine if unexceptional semi-historical fiction, and I was put in mind of Renault's books on Alexander the Great, though Le Guin is a far more accomplished author.  The novel really shines during Lavinia's encounters with a shadow of Vergil: these are beautifully written musings on the connections between the living and the (not-quite) dead, reality and fiction and vision, and across boundaries of time and place.

[reading completed 9/7/9]

Audiosurf album "review" : The Queen is Dead

You don't need me to tell you that this is a great album; see the links to the reviews from the Wikipedia page for The Queen is Dead.  It's also tons of fun to ride on Audiosurf; "Never Had No One Ever" was the only unsatisfying ride.

1. The Queen Is Dead -- Time 6:24 -- Traffic 144
   It's all downhill after that short climb at the beginning, but the ride is fairly smooth, the traffic isn't too bad, and there are several mini-slowdowns, so it's not too harsh a run for those of us who were alive when the album was originally released.
   
   
   
   
2. Frankly, Mr. Shankly -- Time 2:19 -- Traffic 176
   Uphill followed by a bumpy stretch that goes slightly downhill. I have to admit that I didn't notice the bumps as much as in other songs, perhaps because Morrissey's voice smooths the bumps a bit, and none of them are sharp stops that can trip you up (we'll get to plenty of those with Prince and They Might Be Giants).  I played this one a few times because it's short, and I didn't finish clean at first... I wasn't paying attention to the end of the song coming up and was left with a couple reds.
   
   
   
   
3. I Know It's Over -- Time 5:49 -- Traffic 130.
   Gradual uphill (with mini-downhill run) to a sharp peak followed by downhill run.  There's little enough traffic that you still have the reaction time to pick up blocks while your soul is gently torn into little strips and tossed in the air like so much confetti.
   
   
   
   
4. Never Had No One Ever -- Time 3:37 -- Traffic 133.
   Weeeeird.  When I first played this, it was a bumpy downhill ride for the first 2/3, then bumpy and roughly level.  When I re-ripped the album because tracks 9 and 10 weren't playing correctly, the pattern changed.  That's file corruption for you!  This is the only song on the album that I don't really like.  The lyrics are comparatively boring and repetitive, and it serves only the purpose of being a cracker to clear the palate before you're hit with Cemetry Gates.
   
   
   
   
5. Cemetry Gates -- Time 2:41 -- Traffic 242.
   A downhill run that's tough to play Pointman on.  I've read that as traffic goes > 200, Pusher beats Pointman, and my very limited experience seems to bear that out; however, I enjoy playing Pointman much more than Pusher, so I'm sticking with the Point.  I love this song.
   
   
   
   
6. Bigmouth Strikes Again -- Time 3:14 -- Traffic 318
   Downhill, super-high traffic, this run is absolutely terrifying on Pointman.  I spent a lot more time than usual riding in the shoulder, waiting for little breaks in the blocks to swoop in and drop blocks.  I think I see how the Pusher player works on runs like this: you sit in the middle and simply move blocks to one side or the other, or let them fall in the center.
   
   
   
   
7. The Boy with the Thorn in His Side -- Time 3:17 -- Traffic 252
   Another downhill run, but after "Bigmouth", this one doesn't feel too scary.
   
   
   
   
8. Vicar in a Tutu -- Time 2:22 -- Traffic 256
   Ack.  Another downhill run, and for some reason this one feels more brutal than the Boy with the Thorn in His Side. Part of it is that the end is still a steep downhill, rather than a slight uphill as in the previous three songs, so there's little time to catch an extra block and finish clean as you hit the end.
   
   
   
   
9. There is a Light that Never Goes Out -- Time 4:03 -- Traffic 216
   Another downhill run, but not as directly downhill, with a little less traffic overall and petering out nicely at the end so you can recover from any blockages you might have incurred earlier in the run.  Unfortunately, no chance at the high score, or even the top three.  Those are really impressive rides.
   
   
   
   
10. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others -- Time 3:14 -- Traffic 244
    The album finishes with one last mostly downhill run.  It's less steep than The Queen is Dead, with most of the elevation change occurring before you're halfway through the song, but there's a lot more traffic.
    
    
    
    

Embers (Márai, Sándor) 1942

[reading completed 8/27/9]

This version of Embers is the 2001 translation by Carol Brown Janeway. As always, perhaps something is lost in the translation of language, time, and culture. I can't help but feel that this would make a great one-act, one-room play if you pared down the General's monologues. As is, they're a bit overblown and overlong. The sections that are the General's internalized memories of the past can largely be cut wholesale.

Dragonhaven (McKinley, Robin) 2007

I never thought I'd simply give up on a McKinley book, but 99 pages in to Dragonhaven, that's what I'm doing.  There are few authors with McKinley's ability to construct beautiful and simple sentences.  There are many, many authors who can try to write in the voice of a teenager.  McKinley's talents are wasted here, even more than in Chalice or Sunshine...  Yianni eventually convinced me I was wrong about Sunshine, but at least the plot of Sunshine should be interesting.  In Dragonhaven, the drama is caused by the existence of a law that makes it illegal to rescue and rehabilitate an endangered species (and by page 99, we've spent far too much time agonizing over it rather than advancing the plot, in foreshadowing of the same problems in Chalice).  This stretches my suspension of disbelief past the breaking point.  Maybe there already exists a similar law somewhere.  Maybe my children will enjoy it when they're preteens and want to discuss it with me.  Until then, this goes back on the shelf.

Barefoot in the Park (1967)

The script is by Neil Simon, so this should be at least decent, right?  It starts off slowly, but once we get to the apartment, the story starts to pick up (I'm guessing because this is where the play actually starts).  Everything is going along well until Mildred Natwick leaves the apartment with Charles Boyer and falls down the front stoop.  Then Redford and Fonda, back in the apartment, go into histrionics and the last 35 minutes of film are nearly unwatchable.  


Not recommended.

The Einstein Intersection (Delany, Samuel R.) 1967

[reading completed 8/25/9]

Delany is really hit-or-miss for me. I absolutely enjoyed the Neveryon books and Babel-17, but couldn't get more than 100 pages into Dhalgren and only finished the Einstein Intersection because it was so short. As always with Delany, there are good thoughts in here; I simply don't care for how he's set them down on paper. One particularly interesting bit is about the titular "Einstein Intersection" (though note that, according to Gaiman's introduction the original title was A Fabulous, Formless Darkness), where the effects of the theories of Goedel finally "catch up with" the effects of the theories of Einstein, and humanity enters a near-godlike state, and eventually leaves this universe for some other one. Sounds a bit like the technological singularity popularized by Vinge, though without any overt reference to, or need for, intelligent machines.

Another reason to love VT

Spending ARRA money on projects, not signs: http://blog.tomevslin.com/2009/08/where-are-the-signs.html

Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming (Zelazny, Roger and Sheckley, Robert) 1991

Frankly, Mr. Sheckley, this novel I've read

It pains my brain and it corrodes my soul

Oh, I didn't realise that you wrote fantasy

I didn't realise you wrote such bloody awful fantasy, Mr. Sheckley

Frankly, Mr. Sheckley, since you asked

This book's a juvenile piece of crap

I do not mean to be so rude

Still, I must speak frankly, Mr. Sheckly

Oh, refund my money!

Actually, Mr. Sheckley neither asked nor likely would care about my opinion if he were alive. Still, there's bubblegum for the brain and then there's rotgut for the brain. The Amber series is mostly bubblegum with a few interesting bits; this is pure rotgut. Then again, 19 years ago I kind of liked The Mask of Loki, so maybe I would have kind of liked this one, too.