Shortcuts 12/13/12

Home of the free? Little known fact: The United States has the largest prison population in the world. Despite having only a quarter of the population, we put more people in jail than all of China.
We put more people in prison than all other developed nations combined. And most of it is for petty crimes. This is an excellent article in the New York Times about the lunacy of the US penal system. Anecdotes include: a woman serving a life sentence because her boyfriend stored cocaine in her attack.

Similarly, economist Bryan Kaplan rebuts the argument that we need more law enforcement.

Pre-English Irish Law: Fantastic piece that I had never heard of detailing Irish law before the English got involved. It debunks many myths associated with Irish history that are probably faulty because of poor translation of Old Irish text. This describes a highly stratified social structure that enabled a degree of social mobility. Notably, it seems that the Irish kings had relatively little involvement in lawmaking in a very decentralized state. Rather, a group of legal experts called brehons handled legal disputes with a system based on sureties or bonds. I'd be curious of this version of ancient Irish history is consistent with what students are taught in schools today.

Top 10 albums of 2012

Harking back to my music critic days, here are my top 10 albums of 2012.

Compare my list with metacritic or this guy.

1) Jack White, Blunderbuss
It's not even close. This isn't just the best album I heard this year, it's the best album I've heard in many years. I always liked the White Stripes, but I was never that big of a fan. This album is majestic -- far better than anything I've heard from him in the past.

"Freedom at 21" is nominated for the Grammy for best rock song in 2012, but I don't think it's even one of the best three songs on the album. He's evolved from simple guitar and drums into more expansive, nearly orchestral music. Most of these songs feature broad instrumentation, with the piano, rather than the guitar, at the center. But they all still rock. Very hard.

Best Songs: Hip Eponymous Poor Boy, I'm Shakin'


2) Django Django, Django Django
While it's probably unfair to say that Django Django is the Beta Band re-incarnate, the connections between the two bands are clear and joyous. Electronic modulation on top of great riffs and top-notch songwriting. This album is tight, funky, and danceable. 

Best songs: Default, Waveforms

3) David Byrne & St. Vincent: Love this Giant
It's a David Byrne with Tuba. Best David Byrne album since Uh-Oh, and that was 20 years ago.

Best songs: Who, Dinner for Two

4) First Aid Kit: The Lian's Roar

Two Swedish sisters in their early 20s doing classic Americana better than any Americans did it this year. Celestial vocals and harmonies.


Best songs: Emmylou, This Old Routine


5) Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit: Live from Alabama

Best singer-songwriter and guitarist you've never heard of (unless you're a Truckers fan). If there's a better one alive today, I sure don't know who he or she is. 

Best songs: In a Razor Town, TVA

6) Ben Folds Five: The Sound of the Life of the Mind
Middle-age angst? Ben Folds has the market cornered. This album's fun, funny, and melancholy at the same time.

Best songs: Do it Anyway, Draw a Crowd

7) Kid Koala: 12 bit Blues
This album is a genre in itself, Electronic Blues, without feeling experimental. Handsome Boy Modeling School meets Muddy Waters.

Best Songs: 2 bit Blues, 11 bit Blues

8) Alabama Shakes: Boys & Girls
Mid-tempo, catchy rock-soul. Technically solid and the lead singer has an epic voice.

Best songs: Hold On, Heartbreaker


9) Corb Lund: Cabin Fever

Best lyrics for a country singer ever? Certainly some of the most fun.

"Dig Dig Gravedigger, dig Gravedigger dig, work that shovel with vigor gravedigger before rigor mortis sets in big"

Other songs include a discussion of sex on a motorcycle on the autobahn, and his attempts to try to date Goth girls. Not exactly typical country fare.

Best songs: Dig Gravedigger Dig, Bible on the Dash

10) Brandi Carlile: Bear Creek
Played this a few times with company over, and every time, I caught folks who'd never heard of her tapping their foot to "Hard Way Home."


Best songs: Hard Way Home; Save Part of Yourself



Also pretty good: 
Bruce Springsteen: Wrecking Ball; Dr. John: Locked Down; This One's for Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark; Carolina Chocolate Drops: Leaving Eden; Lumineers: Lumineers; Macklemore & Ryan Lewis: The Heist

Shortcuts 11/30/2012

The consequences of believing stupid sh#t: The Republican party has arguably become increasingly anti-science in the last few years. The majority of Republicans are creationist. Perhaps more interestingly, in 2008, the Republican party platform contemplated "addressing climate change responsibly."  In 2012, there was no mention of it whatsoever, reflecting growing denial about anthropogenic global warming in the party.

Republicans are shifting their platform to reflect the ideals held by their base. But there are consequences to an anti-science platform, and one of the most notable is increased alienation among those at the forefront of technology. Nate Silver has a great piece about how this may have contributed to their downfall in the most recent election cycle. 

Speaking of anti-science and its consequences: Some scary news about ice melt in Greenland. Apparently, polar ice caps are melting at three times faster a rate than 20 years ago.

Apparently, Carl Sagan was involved in covert ops: During the cold war, the US had plans to nuke the moon. And the US Air Force put Carl Sagan on the team that planned the operation.

8 loops = creamy: Someone is working on algorithms to help predict whether a recipe will taste good.

Not-so-easy arguments for the left: One popular argument of the left to increase marginal tax rates is that tax rates were much higher in the '50s and '60s, and the US economy still grew much faster then than it does today. This always struck me as a bit simplistic. Most critically, the US population was growing much, much faster then. It's natural that economic growth would also be easier to achieve then. It would also appear that the actual tax rates paid by the wealthiest back then were nowhere near as high as the marginal rates would seem to indicate. Not sure exactly what this means for tax policy, but it's an important point to keep in mind when debating tax policy.

Why marijuana legalization is about a lot more than Cheetos and Goldfish

"That said, federal law still says marijuana is an illegal drug, so don't break out the Cheetos and Goldfish too quickly."

-Gov. John Hickenlooper, after learning that Amendment 64 for the legalization of marijuana had passed in Colorado

I get it. It's funny.

But it reinforces the belief that marijuana legalization is a trivial matter. It's not.

In the last 40 years, according to Fox News, the United States has spent over $1 trillion dollars on the war on drugs.  Every year, almost one in every 300 Americans is arrested for a marijuana violation. About one in every six Americans who is in the federal prison system, is there because of marijuana. Meanwhile, three-quarters of the population opposes prison sentences for marijuana offenses.

There's an enormous disconnect between who we think should be going to prison and who we're sending to prison, and most of it can be blamed on senseless drug laws. 
 
Many prominent economists, including a good chunk of high profile conservative ones, strongly favor legalization, for all sorts of reasons. While there is plenty of conjecture to the contrary, the actual evidence has shown that the relaxation of marijuana laws has an inverse correlation with underage use and traffic fatalities. According to one study:

Traffic fatalities [are] the leading cause of death among Americans ages 5 through 34. The first full year after coming into effect, legalization is associated with an 8 to 11 percent decrease in traffic fatalities. The impact of legalization on traffic fatalities involving alcohol is larger and estimated with more precision than its impact on traffic fatalities that do not involve alcohol.

Draconian enforcement of marijuana is stupid. It's not supported by reason or evidence. It's unpopular.  It has ruined millions of lives. It's hugely detrimental to this country financially. Its prohibition has led to the creation of powerful cartels that terrorize millions on both sides of the border.

So no, this isn't about Cheetos and Goldfish, Gov. Hickenlooper.

It's about creating revenue for schools, rather than depleting state resources on a futile campaign to prevent something that cannot be stopped. It's a collective decision by a sovereign population to stop sending people to jail for something generally considered to be a trivial vice. It's a long overdue recognition that simple marijuana possession is not worth the attention of law enforcement authorities.

This isn't about starting an obsession with marijuana, Mr. Hickenlooper. It's about ending one. 

Story of the Hurricane

I went to see Bob Dylan on Monday. I was at the show just as Hurricane Sandy was emptying its contents onto the East Coast. Dylan played most of his theme-appropriate songs, including "High Water Rising (For Charley Patton)," "Shelter from the Storm," and "The Levee's Gonna Break." Sadly, he did not play "the Hurricane," which is one of my favorite Dylan songs.

This was the third time I had seen Dylan. He was nowhere near as good as the opening act, Mark Knopfler, who seemed as magisterial as ever on guitar and vocals.

Vocally, well, I'm not going to say much about Dylan that hasn't already been said. Kinda sounds like Benicio del Toro in "the Usual  Suspects," if he had spent the night with his throat connected to an air-conditioning vent on full blast.

A few folks commented that he just seemed lazy, and that he just "didn't give a fuck" anymore. I don't think that's true, however. He seems strangely averse to enunciation, for sure, but his performance did not show lack of interest. Most notably, he performed a new (or at least new to me) arrangement of every song he in his set list. It would have been much easier for Dylan to play the version everyone knows and the one he's played countless times before. But he took the time to draw up new arrangements and rehearse them with his band. That's a lot harder than alternative, even if it's less crowd pleasing.

The arrangements were uniformly engaging, from my perspective, although not particularly melodic. Perhaps melody is simply something he doesn't aspire to any longer. Though I suppose melody might just be hard to come by with his limited focal range these days.

Is doping ubiquitous at the highest levels of sport?

I can't answer that question definitively, but my personal belief is that yes, it is.

Few of us were surprised when Lance Armstrong finally received his comeuppance. But I was little confused when the UCI decided to vacate all seven of Lance's victories, rather than give them to the runners-up. Why didn't they give the titles to runners up? Because every one of the runners up for Lance's seven tour titles has been linked to doping as well. So, it's not obvious who, if anyone, was clean during that era. I guess that means that no one deserves the titles. According to the Tour de France, those races simply never happened.

As easy as it is to believe that cheating was common, are we to assume that nobody was clean during that era? I mean, if the 56th-placed rider could somehow prove he was clean and everyone else wasn't, wouldn't he deserve the win?

There's growing evidence of EPO's influence in distance running as well.

These are low-to-mid-tier sports, in terms of both revenue and television audiences. The incentive to take performance enhancing drugs is far greater in football, basketball, and soccer.  But yet there doesn't seem to be a lot of discussion about PEDs in these sports. Why not? A mid-tier cyclist might not clear six figures in the Tour de France, whereas the minimum salary for each of the major professional sports leagues in the United States is close to a half a million dollars. 

To give one example, in the past three years, only two players have received PED-related suspensions in the NBA. Both players, Rashard Lewis and OJ Mayo, are slender wings, not known for their size or strength.

A typical player in the D League without an NBA contract makes less than a school teacher. And the difference between an end-of-the-bench NBA player and someone in the D league is marginal.  None of those players on the wrong side of that dividing line has sought an edge? When we know that weekend warrior distant runners are doing it to collect a few hundred bucks at local road races? Not likely.

The only rational conclusion is that the NBA's testing procedures are either willfully blind or totally ineffective. Either way, I'm sure the truth will come out, eventually. Just as it did with baseball. And just as it did with Lance. Whenever something is everywhere, there's a lot of witnesses. It's only a matter of time when some of them start to speak up.





 




http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2012/10/25/colberts-million-dollar-offer-to-trump/

 http://kottke.org/12/10/the-worst-passwords-of-2012

Five reasons the NFL is almost certainly going to profit from the referee debacle

1) Ratings drive the NFL's profits, and your concerns about the fairness and proper administration of the games are irrelevant

The networks throw money at the professional sports leagues in proportion to how many people watch their games. They will continue to throw billions at the NFL and nothing at the professional lacrosse league because you will watch the former and ignore the latter, regardless of inherent credibility of the respective sports. They don't care if you're watching professional wrestling, the NFL or American Idol. Outside of basic decency standards of the FCC, they'll put anything on TV that you'll watch.

Clueless referees making bad calls that prevent your favorite team from winning a game is annoying, but it ain't illegal.

Which brings us to our second point.

It's entertainment, baby!

2) All this controversy is actually driving interest in the league 

I didn't watch the game last night, but I knew what happened because my twitter and facebook feeds blew up . Bill Simmons had an "emergency mailbag" this morning to address the controversy. That means that the NFL is generating more attention than normal this morning and it didn't have to pay for the advertising time.

All this crap has basically made the games "must-see" TV.  You're probably going to tune in next week to see what horrible decisions they make next.

3) This isn't about the referees' contract, it's about showing the players who is boss

The amount of money at issue in this dispute is a rounding error in terms of profitability for the NFL. The NFL are playing big bully with the players. Things didn't work out as well as the NFL wanted with the collective bargaining agreement last year, so they are using any form of leverage they can to show that they have backbone, and they will get what they want.

4) This might just be a cheaper way for the owners to figure out where they stand on anti-trust issues, without having to lose a full season

I haven't heard anyone throw this theory out there yet, but all the same legal issues that impact the players also impact the referees. Perhaps the owners are hoping that the referees will sue for anti-trust violations. Even if the NFL were to lose such a suit, any loss incurred from anti-trust violations would be a fraction of the cost that they would suffer from a comparable loss from the players' union.

And if they won, they'd then know they could go after the players.

5) If the NFL owners didn't want this, they would have made it go away already

You hear a lot of commentators and pundits talk about NFL commissioner Roger Goddell as if he were a wandering dictator severed from all other entities in the league. That's ridiculous. He's a tool hired by and employed for the sole purpose of administering the league in the interests of the owners. If the owners were as upset as the fans and the players, they would have a closed-door vote and make this go away. Until attendance drops and ratings go down, they probably won't do that.

The only leverage that fans have to make this strike go away is to collectively decide not to watch or attend the games. Something tells me that's not going to happen.

Why isn't the US men's national soccer team very good?

As a function of its size and population, the United States does not have a very good soccer team. Better than India, Indonesia, and China, I suppose, but still not very good.

According to FIFA, the United States has more soccer players than any other country -- 18 million, including 14 million under the age of 18. That means that the United States has more children playing soccer than there are children in Spain. Nonetheless, the United States is only the 33rd-best soccer playing nation, according to FIFA, while Spain is the best.

Spain is doing something to develop its best players into an international soccer-playing juggernaut while the United States isn't.  

Bad arguments about why the United States isn't very good at soccer

1) We didn't grow up playing the game

I'm 34 years old, and I grew up playing the game. If I were a player, I would be nearing retirement age now.

For over 30 years, every suburban neighborhood in the United States has had soccer fields. I lived in Sylacauga, Alabama, in the 1980s, and it had soccer fields. If Sylacauga has soccer fields, lack of soccer fields isn't the issue.

2) Our best athletes don't play soccer

Is Lebron James a better athlete than Lionel Messi? Is Usain Bolt a better runner than Ryan Hall?  These are dumb questions, because their talents are suited for different types of activities.  It's unlikely that the United States equivalent of Lionel Messi isn't developing into a great soccer player because he's working on his jump shot. 

Regardless, lack of athleticism isn't the biggest problem with the US soccer team. The US team is plenty athletic -- it's high-level skill that's lacking.

Here are my pet theories on why the US doesn't perform that well in soccer in international competition:

1) Our soccer fields are too well groomed

This theory isn't mine; it's Johann Cruyff's. Cruyff grew up playing soccer in the streets of Amsterdam, and credited the hard asphalt surfaces for his impeccable ball control and balance later in life. Similarly, when I lived in Spain, the only time I saw a grass soccer field was at the Camp Nou and the Estadi Olympic.  Only the professionals play on grass. Similarly, almost all the best Brazilians grow up playing soccer either on the streets

Ever try to play soccer in a parking lot or in a street?  Either you have precision and control or you have to chase after your ball. American children grow up accustomed to a well-groomed field stopping the ball for them. Children who play on a street need or kicking against a wall develop exquisite control. Those who play on grass don't have to, because the game is played entirely on the ground until they reach their teen years. By then, they're years behind.

2) Americans never play pick up soccer

14 million kids play soccer in the US, but how often do you see kids playing soccer at the park without a parent shuttling them around with cones?  It doesn't happen much. A two-hour practice isn't enough to develop extraordinary skill. You have to spend hundreds of hours honing your craft or it won't happen.

3) We don't have an evolved talent development scheme

Because there isn't a tradition rooted in soccer in this country, we don't have a talent development scheme.  In basketball, the best players get picked up by AAU teams by the time they're 12 years old. Then, they compete against the best players locally and around the country. These players then routinely attend the best high schools with the best coaches, who connect them to the best colleges and then the pros.

In soccer, we don't have as developed a system. Europe has elite youth teams in every major and minor city. The best players work their way through the ranks and get noticed by the best clubs. By the time a kid is 14 or 15 years old, if the kid has elite talent, he probably has elite coaching and access to world-class facilities. The United States has a competitive youth system that has only recently developed a direct pipeline to the local club teams.

I think the United States is starting to get there, but we just aren't there yet. But while the development scheme is improvement, it still only has a fraction of the resources of the equivalent European model.  As long as that is the case, we can probably expect our adult teams to lag behind.

Sabermetrics and Hurling

Warning: even by the standards of this blog, this is a very niche post.

Yesterday, while watching the last five minutes of the All-Ireland Hurling championships, it occurred to me that statistical analysis might be entirely absent from the GAA and Irish sports.  

To set the stage: Kilkenny was awarded a penalty with about three minutes to go in regular time. In hurling, you receive three points for scoring a goal and one point by hitting the ball over the bar and through goal posts.  It was a tie match.  One point was enough to put Kilkenny ahead with two minutes left in normal time and about three minutes of extra time.  In hurling, it's more likely than not that someone will score in five minutes of play. One point isn't much of a lead at all, but three points, with less than five minutes, is an overwhelming advantage.

Rather than go for a goal, the Kilkenny hurler hit the ball over the bar for a single point. It was the smart play, everyone around me said.  

Why?

A simple expected value analysis shows that it was almost certainly not the smart play. 

If you assume that a championship calibre player scores a goal on a penalty 50% of the time, that yields an expected value of 1.5 points every time you shoot for a goal. Plus, if you assume that a goalie might re-direct a shot on goal above bar the 10% of the time, that yields an extra .1 of expected value.  Plus, if a goalie re-directs the shot out of bounds, then the player gets a free, which they would likely convert, say, 90% of the time. That's an extra .09 expected value.

I could have won the game for my team, but I didn't

Add it up, and a player who goes for goal has an expected value of 1.69 for every penalty attempt. If a player who goes for a point converts 99% of the time, the expected value for the conservative route is only .99.

Unless my estimates are radically off, that means that Kilkenny's decision to go for a point was not the smart play, regardless of conventional wisdom.

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I googled sabermetrics and the GAA and I found nothing. There's a company called Avenir Sports that has software that analyzes video for the major county teams, but on their website didn't give any additional details on how they conduct their analyses.

These kinds of analyses are becoming mainstream in North American sports, and they are increasingly common at the international club level for soccer.  Do they exist at all in hurling?

If not, they should.

Driverless Cars and Location Privacy, Part I

One of the coolest developments in technology today is the advanced development of driverless cars. Sounds a touch Marty McFlyish (though it's certainly no flying car), but it's a lot closer to reality than you may realize.  The California legislature has passed a law allowing the cars to be driven on California state freeways.  According to Google, these cars are now significantly safer than their human counterparts.

I'm all for it. But there is one legal issue that would be wonderful to address before the movement goes mainstream.

These cars function by using satellite and network data to navigate roads -- essentially a more complex and developed GPS system. This means they can be tracked. And anything that can be broadly tracked is a handy tool for law enforcement officials to follow individuals whom they suspect might be up to no good. In the non-virtual world, there's a Constitution (specifically, the Fourth Amendment) that safeguards individuals from warrantless searches and seizures. In the virtual world, um, not so clear.

Driverless cars make those two worlds, ahem, collide.

Federal judges, old farts that they tend to be, typically find it challenging to grapple with the workings of the internets and newfangled technology. Cellular network tracking data can reveal a detailed picture of your life. It tells where you are, what you want to know, and what you do. And that can make things easy for police looking for hints on where to find you when you're doing bad stuff.

To give one example, imagine if police requested all the data of bar patrons from 10 pm to 2 am throughout a city, and could then track those patrons' movements home. Driverless cars makes this easy. That sure would be an efficient way of cracking down on DUIs. But so would waiting outside a bar and giving everyone who left a breathalyzer. The latter is illegal. At this stage, it isn't perfectly clear that the former isn't.

The underlying legal question is whether a law enforcement official, by requesting location tracking data, is conducting a "warrantless search" under the Fourth Amendment.

The simple answer is, we don't know yet.  

Estonian 1st Graders to Learn Programming

Stumbled across a link to this article on Geek.com on Slashdot yesterday. Estonians have undertaken an initiative to teach computer programming as an integral part of the curriculum to all school-aged children from ages 6-18. To my knowledge, this is the first such program in the world.

This sounds like an extraordinary and ambitious plan. Theoretically, the thousands of hours of programming experience that Estonians would receive under this plan would give them an enormous professional advantage over other countries' students who seek to work in programming. Estonians might turn out to be the Kenyan Marathoners of programming.

The implementation of such a plan would doubtless be complicated. I can't imagine the pedagogy of computer science to pre-pubescent children is very developed (pun intended?). But that could be said of any novel discipline. That's not a good reason not to do it.

The United States isn't producing many more computer scientists now than we were 25 years ago. It makes sense that other countries would nudge their future working population to cover those gaps.

Paul Ryan and the mystery of the easily disprovable lie

Suffice it to say if you're a candidate for Vice President of the United States, you don't want this associated with your political brand. 

I won't debate whether Paul Ryan knew the difference between a 2:5X marathon and a 4:01 marathon. He did.

I won't debate whether Paul Ryan misled the reporter into believing he had run a pretty darned fast marathon when he was really a mid-packer. He did that, too.

I won't debate whether Republicans lie more or less often than Democrats. I don't care. I don't get all excited watching either party's convention. I don't have cable, and I don't consider myself a Democrat or a Republican.

The only thing that's interesting is why someone under such intense scrutiny would mislead a reporter so easily disprovable. 

Paul Ryan had so little to gain from lying and so much to lose. Democrats criticize Paul Ryan for being disingenuous, stupid, his ill-fitting suits, and the douchey hair. If there is one area of his life, however, where Ryan has been immune from criticism, it's his fitness level.  The guy's in good shape. No one's disputing that.

Yet he got caught in a galactically stupid lie about his fitness.   

It makes no sense, from a rational political perspective. But humans are rarely rational. And how we self-identify even less so. My only guess -- and this is pure speculation -- is that Paul Ryan made up this story a long time ago, as a way to reinforce his reputation as an impressive physical specimen (which he is). Mr. Ryan told it many times to many people, and he had actually come to believe it was true as part of the narrative of who he was. The race was a long time ago, but this narrative had been a part of his life for a while.

The first time you lie about something, it's a conscious act. If this were the first time he had made up this whopper, he would have caught himself, because he's a VP candidate now. But after a while, when you tell a story, you're just representing a narrative version of yourself that you've come to recite many times before. Neither the true nor the gently (or greatly) exaggerated versions of that narrative form part of the conscious mind. And that's why he got into trouble. He just told a story he had told many times before.  

Only problem: he had forgotten it wasn't true.

I Read a Book: Part I - Lying

I recently read Sam Harris' little book called Lying. The premise is simple, but powerful. Don't lie, ever.

The book is more a long, persuasive essay than a philosophical or ethical treatise. Rather than analyze the moral implications of dishonesty, he assesses the impact of dishonesty with an "Instant Karma" perspective. Specifically, when you lie, he considers how it directly affects you and your relationships with those around you.

He directly attacks "white lies" as arrogance. Much like Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men," we assume the target of the lie can't handle the truth. Most people prefer to avoid conflict than to deliver bad news, so we lie for convenience.

Harris gave an example of a friend who asked him to give his opinion of a book he'd been working on for over a year. Harris admits that it was hard to deliver the bad news, but he said that his friend soon abandoned the book to work on other projects, and he has been successful since the initial setback. He would have done his friend no favors by encouraging him to work on a book that had little to no chance of success. Instead, he redirected and redoubled his efforts on more fruitful projects. Now, his friend goes to him first when he wants an opinion, because he knows that if Harris says something is good, he's being sincere.

When you're honest, you tend to have a more open relationship with everyone around you, whether they are a casual or close acquaintance. He gave another example of re-entering the US after he'd been traveling in India and Nepal. The border guard asked if he'd he done drugs when he was abroad, and he answered yes, he'd smoked pot and tried opium. Predictably, the guard searched his bags. But he recalls that he had a long, candid conversation about his experiences on his trip, where the guard opened up to him about some of his own experiences, and that the guard was warm and pleasant throughout the search.

The question of whether to be honest is more complicated when honesty will get you in trouble in real time. If you've been drinking and driving, and a police officer pulls you over and asks if you've been drinking, and you answer honestly, you may go to jail.  But this corollary may provide additional incentive to avoid behaviors that you aren't comfortable discussing honestly with everyone around you.   It's hard to be honest with your spouse if you're unfaithful. That's just one more reason to avoid infidelity.

The book was simplistic, of course. It's easy to think of extreme counter-examples where lying would probably be beneficial in an instant karma sense. But it is also true that I have lied too often in the past for the sake of convenience. After reading this book, it's a habit I'll seek to avoid.

Why Denver dumped the 1976 Winter Olympics

A couple of years ago, Chicago spent in excess of $50 million to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. In their corner: Barack Obama, recently elected president, international superstar and Nobel Laureate. They had the most developed infrastructure of any city in the bidding. But they still couldn't make it happen. Despite all their resources and glad-handing, the OC picked Rio de Janeiro instead.

So why would a city reject the opportunity to host the Olympics? Because, back in the early 1970s, Denver, Colorado, wasn't trying to market itself to the rest of the world. Denver was trying to keep the rest of the world out.  It seems almost inconceivable today, but back then, Colorado's most powerful political forces got elected on an anti-growth platform.  And if your primary focus is anti-growth, you don't want the Olympics coming to town.

In 1970, Denver was awarded the Olympics, outbidding a number of other larger cities, including most recent Winter Games host Vancouver, Canada. Colorado has always rightfully had renown as an epic Winter playground, so it wasn't a huge surprise. What did come as a surprise was the political reaction internally.

Denver has always had a "close-the-door-behind-you" attitude. Colorado is the only state where it is common to advertise, on bumper stickers, that you are a "native." What does native mean, in this context? That your family has been in Colorado for one whole generation!  For most of the world, this would be a ludicrous thing to boast.  The vast majority of people come from the same place that their parents do. But not here. Colorado's population is over 5 million now, according to the 2010 census. But in 1970, it was only a little more than 2 million.  In 1940, it was right around 1 million. Ever since it became a state, Colorado's population has at least doubled every 35 years or so. 

As such, Colorado has always had anti-transplant sentiment. But one man made a career out of it better than any other. And so, in 1972, a hot shot young lawyer and accountant named Dick Lamm started raising a stink about the Olympics.

Not that young or hot shotty anymore

Lamm sparked a movement to turn the main bond issue to fund the 1976 Olympics into a public referendum. In November 1972, he made it happen, and the state’s voters got to choose whether to authorize a $5 million bond issue to help finance the Games.

Colorado, long home to aggressive anti-government and anti-tax movements, wanted nothing to do with it. The voters body-slammed the proposition by 60-40 margin. One week later, Denver officially abdicated its status as host city for the 1976 Olympics.

Dick Lamm later was elected governor of Colorado three times, largely catapulted by the political capital he earned in sending the games to Innsbruck, Austria.  He was famous for trying to kill the construction of C-470 (an essential roadway circumventing the city) and pretty much every other major public works project that was proposed during his tenure.

Shortly after he left office, Colorado finished C-470, embarked on plans to build E-470 (the other half of the circumvention project), began construction on a a massive new airport and a baseball stadium, all while completely refurbishing the main arteries going through Denver.  And Denver's population started skyrocketing once again.

Since then, Denver has tried on multiple occasions to reignite a movement to host the Olympics. They've never made it past the early bidding stages.  And probably never will.

People who’ve got something to say: Paul Graham

Perhaps the best writers are those who can get you to care about something you would normally find boring. That’s what Paul Graham did for me with computers and programming. Not only does he write with experience about entrepreneurship as well or better than anyone I’ve ever read, but he makes the computer programmer, known as a “hacker” in his parlance, seem like a sort of magician with code, capable of solving any problem or inventing a Willy-Wonka-esque array of tools and toys for the public to enjoy.  Despite having almost no background in computers, Graham makes me want to be a hacker, as naïve as that might sound.  

Hacker?

What surprised me most about Graham’s conception of a programmer was his unwavering emphasis on creativity.  My stereotype of creativity revolves around artists, writers, painters, and musicians.  Paul Graham’s book, Hackers and Painters, likens computer programmers to painters.  He views talent for hackers in much the same way as he would an artist – one might judge either based on the ability to take a blank canvass and make something extraordinary that others can appreciate and enjoy.  If you can’t do that, you’re not much of a hacker or a painter. 

Graham’s skill as a writer fits with his vision of programmer.  He thinks good code is parsimonious and efficient, and that’s the way he writes as well. His book and his essays pack considerable information and analysis into terse prose, which makes it easy to learn a lot about starting a business and programming by reading his site.   

Hating What You Do

Hating your job is the antithesis of carpe diem.  Rather than embracing the precious few moments you have in life, you consciously decide to dedicate your one and only existence to working on that which you do not believe.  It’s perhaps the most dangerous and self-destroying habit you can have.  It’s even worse than drug addiction or alcoholism.  An addict at least tries to get the most out of life – it’s just that their method is usually wanting.  Those who hate their jobs know that what they want out of life and what they do every day are in direct contrast.  But they do it anyway.

It’s taking the most precious gift you will ever receive, pissing on it, lighting it on fire, and throwing it out the window. 

I’m not talking about menial labor or less-than-ideal employment.  Everyone would rather be a rock star than a janitor, but there is no shame in doing difficult or unpleasant tasks. I’ve had jobs ranging from Taco Bell to basic labor and janitorial work.  Someone’s gotta take out the trash – and sometimes that someone was me.  Dirty work never made me feel bad about myself.

But being a lawyer certainly did.

A few months ago, I quit my job as a lawyer.  I had hated it for years, but I kept doing it anyway, because the economy sucked, and I was being paid what was, by my standards, a good amount of money. I was a small cog in a large wheel, representing the largest companies on the planet in their attempts to avoid liability for whatever misdeeds or mistakes they may have made in the past. 

I don’t want to overstate how nefarious the law firm I worked for was.  My old law firm probably had more in common with General Electric than with the dastardly law firms you see in movies or TV.  Most of the crap we did was dull and stultifying, performed for the highest bidder.  But it was rarely evil -- just soul-destroyingly boring, and entirely unfulfilling.

But the entire time I was there, I wasn’t doing anyone favors but myself. And by the time I left, even that wasn’t true.

Uncertainty, Imperfection, and Blogging

Well, how did I get here?

Once upon a time, my defining characteristic was my confidence.  I believed, perhaps irrationally so, that I was an extraordinary talent who was destined for great things. Now, I am 34 years old.  My life is excellent -- I don't lack anything that I need. But my life is also mundane.  I live in a modest house, drive a modest car, and rarely do anything that could be considered extraordinary.  Until recently, I practiced law and held a boring job.

But, despite having all the time one could ask for, it would appear that I'm not doing great things -- or even, for that matter, things of middling interest to others.  This is mildly disconcerting.  If I have all the time I want now, and I'm not doing anything interesting, then it doesn't look likely to happen ever. 

This makes me want to blog more.  I don't necessarily aspire to great things any longer. That adolescent hubris is well dead and buried. But I aspire to be active, involved, and engaged.  I think writing and publishing often -- even if it's in a self-indulgent, scarcely read blog, might help to accomplish that goal.

And that's all I have to say about that. For now.

What makes Bill Simmons Bill Simmons?

Bill Simmons owns ESPN.com. Each of his columns generates somewhere in the neighborhood of one and a half million page views. In 2007, he was ranked as the 12th-most influential person in sports. Since that time, he's published a #1 NYT best seller, produced ESPN's award-winning 30 for 30 series, and launched his own satellite web site, Grantland.com, off ESPN.com's main site. His influence has not shrunk since 2007.

I ask myself what's the big deal with Simmons. He's not exceptionally intelligent, by traditional metrics. He overvalues his own experience horribly. He has such a Boston-based bias that he's frequently intolerable, but his bias toward his own experience extends much farther. For example, he recently argued that Anderson Varejao, who is averaging 10 points, 11 rebounds, and fewer than 1 block per game, should be an all star in 2012. Why, despite mediocre statistics, should Varejao be an all star?

"Varejao was never getting Carmelo's starting spot, but he deserves it. And if you don't believe me, you didn't watch the Cavs beat the Clippers without Kyrie Irving on Wednesday night."

This article was published February 10th. Presumably, Mr. Simmons wrote the article on the 8th or the 9th. And on the 7th he watched Varejao play an excellent game while he watched the Cavs beat his new adopted team, the Los Angeles Clippers. Therefore, Varejao should be an all star.

Q.E.D.

Inane, irrational comments like these are common in Bill Simmons's writing. So why is he so popular?

I think the answer is "readable relevant content in volume." And by that, I mean, his writing, his style, and his voice, are eminently engaging and readable. And then there's so much of it. And he gets it out right away. Nobody provides more relevant contemporaneous commentary, on any subject, than Bill Simmons. He chucks out engaging 3000-word columns on hours-old topics with greater frequency and aplomb than anyone. Whether it's Michael Jackson or the lockout or the Super Bowl or the NBA draft, he writes thousands of words and he gets it out there before the traditional columnists write and publish 300.

Bill Simmons produces lot of good content fast. That's it.

100% wrong, 100% of the time

Felix Salmon tweeted a quote from this article today, which included this doozy of a quote:

"100% of the time it is better to rent, rather than own"

Like Felix, I was a skeptic on housing for a long time. I whined non-stop about housing prices between 2005 and 2009. Unlike Felix (I'm assuming), I purchased a house last year. I did it because, over a long enough period of time, I believe it's always better to buy than to rent. The question is how long it will take you to break even on your investment. If you buy during the worst of bubbles, it might take you 150 years to make the purchase worth your while. If you buy when rents are high and house values are low, or when house prices are going up, you can make your money back very quickly. Most of the time, the question is more complicated, and whether it is better to buy or rent depends on supply-demand questions that are very specific to each location, inflation rates, and the opportunity costs associated with alternative investment opportunities.

There are plenty of calculators that allow you to play with the variables, but, over time, paper money will lose value, rents will increase, and a house that is well maintained and in a decent location will be an excellent store of wealth, relative to other investment opportunities for most people.

Words with no content

I'm going to try to start writing again. This is a goal I have had a few times over the past couple of years. The only difference is that now I'm likely to have the time to write to do it, not just now but in the coming months.

I've been disappointed with myself lately about not doing more. I want to write and play music and produce something professionally. But the reality is that I haven't been doing much of anything lately. For the first time in a long time, I feel as if I don't have much to say. But I think that such a conclusion is overly simplistic. We all have stuff to say, and our ability to communicate our ideas in a compelling way is likely commensurate with the amount of time we spend practicing our craft. Sadly, as I haven't been practicing much lately, I doubt I'm very good.