Technology in Sports
September 1, 2011
I couldn’t resist sharing this article about how technology is affecting the way baseball is played.
Here’s a key passage:
“I think this is truly the second great renaissance in baseball,” says Joe Maddon, a visionary kind of guy whose embrace of technology, info and outside-the-box thinking has made him, for all intents and purposes, the Steve Jobs of managers.
The first great renaissance, Maddon says, arrived with Branch Rickey in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, back when Rickey was pioneering the use of (gasp) farm systems and (shudder) statistics.
And the second great renaissance? That’s been taking place, almost imperceptibly, over the last decade — but to a greater degree, just over the last year or two or three. . . . Think about it:
. . .
• All of a sudden, while you were busy doing your laundry or drafting your fantasy team or something, the world was quietly being invaded by an army of sabermetric wizards, capable of computing Justin Verlander‘s road FIP against sub-.500 teams in games in which he throws more than 20 percent curveballs — and actually understanding the significance of that.
ESPN and Sports-related Information
August 23, 2011
Lest anyone think that the tagline for this blog (“How to Stay Afloat in a Sea of Data”) applies only to business/government analytics, I’d like to share a recent sports article by Matt Mitchell (KVUE reporter – Austin) that addresses how sports-related information is created, digested, and broadcasted by ESPN today. A certain nautical feeling can overcome any observer ingesting a series of (often misleading) ESPN statistics but Mitchell makes a more general point about the influence the organization’s influence, in light of the its recent investment in the Longhorn Network, which will be dedicated to University of Texas sports:
The problem with all of this is the very real threat of sports hegemony when ESPN wields enough influence to alter the very sports it broadcasts by driving the national conversation.
ESPN’s distorting influence on sports stories came into sharp focus for me when the network raised LeBron James’ “Decision” about where to play basketball to unprecedented prominence before preceding to pillory him on a regular basis.
In Guy LeBord’s The Society of the Spectacle, the author observes that “modern industrial society . . . is based on the spectacle in the most fundamental way.” The trajectory in ESPN’s development validates that hypothesis in one particular sphere of society.
International Excel Champion: 15 years old
August 5, 2011
Economic and Environmental Sustainability
June 11, 2011
A cool clip about bamboo packaging at Dell (Disclosure: currently working there).
In honor of today’s shuttle launch: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/10/father-and-son-film-outer-space-do-it-yourself-style.php
Any other creative ideas for employing handheld devices?
A Fun Stats Site for NFL Fans
February 9, 2011
Cute Video on Cloud Computing (from a ten-year old’s perspective)
December 14, 2010
Sense and Sensibility
July 3, 2010
From Discover Magazine’s blog (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan’s “Daily Dish“):
When you pick up an object, you might think that you are manipulating it, but in a sense, it is also manipulating you. Through a series of six psychological experiments, Joshua Ackerman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has shown that the properties that we feel through touch – texture, hardness, weight – can all influence the way we think.
Weight is linked to importance, so that people carrying heavy objects deem interview candidates as more serious and social problems as more pressing. Texture is linked to difficulty and harshness. Touching rough sandpaper makes social interactions seem more adversarial, while smooth wood makes them seem friendlier. Finally, hardness is associated with rigidity and stability. When sitting on a hard chair, negotiators take tougher stances but if they sit on a soft one instead, they become more flexible.
Blogging as Flirting
March 29, 2010
A friend of mine was recently working out his nerves about starting a blog: “I’m not sure that I’ll have the time.” I suggested that blogging is like flirting: “It needn’t take very long and should be fun. As long as you give your readers a chance to learn more about whatever you’re writing about, you’re more than justified in writing a short, breezy post.”
Rick Burnes, Inbound Marketing Manager at Hubspot, highlighted this aspect of blogging recently, though in a somewhat different vein, in a recent webcast. He explained that blogs should occasionally offer “chocolate cake” posts; posts that are not too focused and that share a moment of diversion with our readers. Enjoy!
