Restaurant recommendation
So we used to eat at the Hot Pot City on University every so often (it was even a tradition, for a while, to eat there after a Simbase draft), so I was a little disappointed when it went under. Then a new Japanese restaurant, Tanaka, sprang up there, and I decided that I wanted to try it to see if it was a worthy successor to HPC. When we took everyone out to dinner who had helped us to move (and thank you, everyone!), I thought this would be as good a time as any to try it.
Anyway, to say that the atmosphere inside was a little different from the old Hot Pot City would be a minor understatement -- Juliana even wondered if we were dressed well enough -- but we were all very pleasantly surprised by the quality and quantity of the food (the latter often being difficult to get at a Japanese restaurant without paying a lot of money!) And despite all of that, the prices were less than I would have expected.
Plus, it's very near our new place. This is good.
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
An accumulation of random things from the past couple of weeks
1) Where does the thing where a person looks at his face in a mirror after surgery, laughs maniacally, and then smashes the mirror come from? I've seen it parodied a million times, but I have no idea what the source is.
2) For some reason, there's been a number of articles on Wal-Mart lately. One of them had a comment at the end (I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment) which said something like, "We all want someone else to buy the more expensive goods." And this is really what it all comes down to, isn't it? It's one big Prisoner's Dilemma. If everyone were willing to pay a little bit more for goods, then the economy would probably be in better shape overall, since stores would be able to afford things like keeping production in America, but each individual customer feels that they're better off buying at Wal-Mart (true), and so we end up in the Nash equilibrium.
3) I know I've commented on this before, but I find this really puzzling. The suffix -let is normally a diminutive (eaglet, wavelet, etc.) But when used to apply to professions, it usually means not only young, but also female. I can call Britney Spears a pop starlet, but I certainly can't call Justin Timberlake a starlet. I can call Kate Bosworth a movie starlet, but not Hayden Christensen. Yet an eaglet doesn't have to be female...
4) You know that your monitor emits radio-frequency emissions, right? (This is actually, theoretically at least, a potential security concern -- it's not inconceivable that someone could read what's on your monitor with a sufficiently sensitive radio receiver.) Well, this program can use those emissions to transmit music by putting the appropriate patterns on your monitor.
1) Where does the thing where a person looks at his face in a mirror after surgery, laughs maniacally, and then smashes the mirror come from? I've seen it parodied a million times, but I have no idea what the source is.
2) For some reason, there's been a number of articles on Wal-Mart lately. One of them had a comment at the end (I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment) which said something like, "We all want someone else to buy the more expensive goods." And this is really what it all comes down to, isn't it? It's one big Prisoner's Dilemma. If everyone were willing to pay a little bit more for goods, then the economy would probably be in better shape overall, since stores would be able to afford things like keeping production in America, but each individual customer feels that they're better off buying at Wal-Mart (true), and so we end up in the Nash equilibrium.
3) I know I've commented on this before, but I find this really puzzling. The suffix -let is normally a diminutive (eaglet, wavelet, etc.) But when used to apply to professions, it usually means not only young, but also female. I can call Britney Spears a pop starlet, but I certainly can't call Justin Timberlake a starlet. I can call Kate Bosworth a movie starlet, but not Hayden Christensen. Yet an eaglet doesn't have to be female...
4) You know that your monitor emits radio-frequency emissions, right? (This is actually, theoretically at least, a potential security concern -- it's not inconceivable that someone could read what's on your monitor with a sufficiently sensitive radio receiver.) Well, this program can use those emissions to transmit music by putting the appropriate patterns on your monitor.
Public service announcement
All right, if you're wondering why the lack of updates lately, it's at least partially because I've been busy moving. And it'll still probably be another week before I get broadband (whine!) so I'll probably be intermittent at best.
Thank you for your patience,
The Management
All right, if you're wondering why the lack of updates lately, it's at least partially because I've been busy moving. And it'll still probably be another week before I get broadband (whine!) so I'll probably be intermittent at best.
Thank you for your patience,
The Management
Thursday, November 13, 2003
The things I have to deal with at work
Mostly I'm just writing this out for my own benefit, so I can see its awfulness with my own eyes.
In order to run the main hybrid test program I use here at work, I
1) run a Perl script, which nicely generates the arguments and passes them to...
2) a shell script, whose main purpose is to call...
3) another shell script (written in tcsh), which checks that everything is in order and then calls...
4) a C program with an embedded Tcl interpreter, whose first action is to call...
5) a Tcl script, which again checks that everything is in order and then calls....
6) a C routine within (4) to run the main testing program.
Just to confuse things more, (2) and (5) are actually the same file, with some cleverly-written half-commented shell at the beginning so that it'll go to (3) when called as a shell script and (6) when invoked as a Tcl script.
Needless to say, if I had my druthers, I'd rip out 90% of this labyrinth. Sadly, I don't...at least for now.
Mostly I'm just writing this out for my own benefit, so I can see its awfulness with my own eyes.
In order to run the main hybrid test program I use here at work, I
1) run a Perl script, which nicely generates the arguments and passes them to...
2) a shell script, whose main purpose is to call...
3) another shell script (written in tcsh), which checks that everything is in order and then calls...
4) a C program with an embedded Tcl interpreter, whose first action is to call...
5) a Tcl script, which again checks that everything is in order and then calls....
6) a C routine within (4) to run the main testing program.
Just to confuse things more, (2) and (5) are actually the same file, with some cleverly-written half-commented shell at the beginning so that it'll go to (3) when called as a shell script and (6) when invoked as a Tcl script.
Needless to say, if I had my druthers, I'd rip out 90% of this labyrinth. Sadly, I don't...at least for now.
Monday, November 10, 2003
Literary game #2
This question seems surprisingly hard: What book titles can you think of which are also complete sentences?
So far I can come up with two: Atlas Shrugged and No One Writes to the Colonel. You'd think that with all of the literature out there, I'd be able to come up with more, but it's just that they're all noun phrases (or, in a few cases, prepositional phrases, like Around the World in 80 Days).
This question seems surprisingly hard: What book titles can you think of which are also complete sentences?
So far I can come up with two: Atlas Shrugged and No One Writes to the Colonel. You'd think that with all of the literature out there, I'd be able to come up with more, but it's just that they're all noun phrases (or, in a few cases, prepositional phrases, like Around the World in 80 Days).
Literary game #1
Here's a question I've been turning over in my mind for a little while: What words sound like they should mean the opposite of what they actually do mean?
"Temerity" is the big one here. It always seems to me that it should mean "timidity", rather than the opposite. The other one is "truculent", which I feel should mean something more like "obsequious".
Here's a question I've been turning over in my mind for a little while: What words sound like they should mean the opposite of what they actually do mean?
"Temerity" is the big one here. It always seems to me that it should mean "timidity", rather than the opposite. The other one is "truculent", which I feel should mean something more like "obsequious".
Blah
So I had another quizbowl tournament this weekend, the combined TRASH regionals/Technophobia at Caltech. Overall it was a good experience, and I certainly can't complain about our performance, but it was a lot of quizbowl -- we ended up playing well past 1 on Friday night, and then twelve more rounds on Saturday.
I think every time I have to drive back from LA, I enjoy it a little less. And given that I didn't exactly love the drive the first time around, I wouldn't complain too loudly if we never went to any more tournaments down in the southern part of the state. Of course, this time was bad just because I was so tired and it was rainy, which made driving just that little bit more difficult. In better circumstances, I probably wouldn't have minded too much.
So I had another quizbowl tournament this weekend, the combined TRASH regionals/Technophobia at Caltech. Overall it was a good experience, and I certainly can't complain about our performance, but it was a lot of quizbowl -- we ended up playing well past 1 on Friday night, and then twelve more rounds on Saturday.
I think every time I have to drive back from LA, I enjoy it a little less. And given that I didn't exactly love the drive the first time around, I wouldn't complain too loudly if we never went to any more tournaments down in the southern part of the state. Of course, this time was bad just because I was so tired and it was rainy, which made driving just that little bit more difficult. In better circumstances, I probably wouldn't have minded too much.
Thursday, November 06, 2003
My 2 cents on the Confederate flag uproar
Not much to say that hasn't been said elsewhere, but to me, this tells me two things:
1) The other Democrats are desperate to blunt Dean's momentum. The way that they've seized onto this issue, it looks like they're desperate for an angle with which they can gain an edge (to ruthlessly mix metaphors).
2) Fundamentally, Dean is right, even if he didn't exactly express himself in the best way possible. However, I can't see the Democratic party reversing its losses in the South in the near future without a major sea change.
Not much to say that hasn't been said elsewhere, but to me, this tells me two things:
1) The other Democrats are desperate to blunt Dean's momentum. The way that they've seized onto this issue, it looks like they're desperate for an angle with which they can gain an edge (to ruthlessly mix metaphors).
2) Fundamentally, Dean is right, even if he didn't exactly express himself in the best way possible. However, I can't see the Democratic party reversing its losses in the South in the near future without a major sea change.
Two political links of the day
First, the most distinctive ballot measure you're likely to see (not counting San Francisco's Proposition BB of about ten years back, which is a close contender): this measure in Bolinas.
Second, apparently the Democratic party switched from winner-take-all primaries to proportional representation. Yes, really. This should make for an interesting convention. Read about it in CalPundit.
First, the most distinctive ballot measure you're likely to see (not counting San Francisco's Proposition BB of about ten years back, which is a close contender): this measure in Bolinas.
Second, apparently the Democratic party switched from winner-take-all primaries to proportional representation. Yes, really. This should make for an interesting convention. Read about it in CalPundit.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
Political question of the day
There's no shortage of actors who have become Republican politicians. There are the obvious examples (Schwarzenegger, Reagan), and I'm sure without too much difficulty you could find a bunch more minor people (Fred Thompson, Sonny Bono, Fred Grandy, etc.). However, when Juliana and I were searching on this question the other day, we were able to find one actor who became a Democratic politician: Ben Jones, who played "Cooter" on the Dukes of Hazzard. He served two terms in the House (winning his first term after the incumbent was indicted for perjury), and made a few more unsuccessful House runs. As far as profile goes (both as an actor and as a politician), it's considerably lower than the Republican side of the ledger. And according to this article, he's only the third ever, after Helen Gahagan Douglas (who was a theater actress) and Shiela Kuehl, a California State Senator with a rather undistinguished acting career. Hardly an impressive slate.
To me, at least, while some of the reasons are obvious, it seems surprising that the disparity would be that large. Anyway, this post was inspired by seeing this article.
There's no shortage of actors who have become Republican politicians. There are the obvious examples (Schwarzenegger, Reagan), and I'm sure without too much difficulty you could find a bunch more minor people (Fred Thompson, Sonny Bono, Fred Grandy, etc.). However, when Juliana and I were searching on this question the other day, we were able to find one actor who became a Democratic politician: Ben Jones, who played "Cooter" on the Dukes of Hazzard. He served two terms in the House (winning his first term after the incumbent was indicted for perjury), and made a few more unsuccessful House runs. As far as profile goes (both as an actor and as a politician), it's considerably lower than the Republican side of the ledger. And according to this article, he's only the third ever, after Helen Gahagan Douglas (who was a theater actress) and Shiela Kuehl, a California State Senator with a rather undistinguished acting career. Hardly an impressive slate.
To me, at least, while some of the reasons are obvious, it seems surprising that the disparity would be that large. Anyway, this post was inspired by seeing this article.
Technical note, concluded
Okay, I think I've fixed the issue with the comments. Let me know if there appear to be any problems.
For those interested in the details: At some point when I wasn't looking, probably when Blogger changed their engine, they moved from 8-digit post ID numbers, which are reasonable, to 18-digit post ID numbers, which strike me, personally, as just a little bit of overkill, but what do I know? Anyway, in the past, the post ID numbers were passed to the comment script as numbers, and everything was fine. But now, passing an 18-digit number as a number gets it truncated. So I changed things to pass their numbers as strings, and it should work happily.
Okay, I think I've fixed the issue with the comments. Let me know if there appear to be any problems.
For those interested in the details: At some point when I wasn't looking, probably when Blogger changed their engine, they moved from 8-digit post ID numbers, which are reasonable, to 18-digit post ID numbers, which strike me, personally, as just a little bit of overkill, but what do I know? Anyway, in the past, the post ID numbers were passed to the comment script as numbers, and everything was fine. But now, passing an 18-digit number as a number gets it truncated. So I changed things to pass their numbers as strings, and it should work happily.
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Interesting legal issue of the day
So, I'm not an expert on copyright law, but I have read enough to have heard of Feist v. Rural Telephone (though I don't think I would be able to remember the name offhand). To make a long story short, a white pages publisher used information from a rival company's directory; the other company sued for copyright infringement, but the Court ruled that the information in the white pages, being factual, was not entitled to copyright protection, and the presentation, being merely alphabetical, was not sufficiently original to warrant protection either.
Now, it appears possible that these actions might be made illegal. I'm actually of a very mixed opinion about this. I suppose the sticking point is that after a company has put all this work in to create a database of information, it doesn't seem fair to me (for lack of a better term) for another company to be able to take it and make money from it. It's the last point which is key, at least in my own personal ethical system. (It's also why, of the two bills mentioned in the article, I would vastly prefer the spirit of the Bliley version; I obviously benefit from having directory information available online for free.)
I learned of this initially when reading about baseball-reference.com. b-r is simply the best baseball reference site there is, and I frequently use it and am very glad to have it as a free resource. (I believe it's also the only website I've outright donated money to -- this was well before their sponsorship system, and though there was an offer to use old donations towards sponsorship, I didn't really want to bother.) b-r gets a large (though declining, these days) percentage of its information from Sean Lahman's baseball database, which is also free. But what I didn't know is that, apparently, much of the original information in the Lahman database was extracted from a CD-ROM version of Total Baseball, which is not a free product. And, oddly, though I know that this process was (and is, for now) perfectly legal, it still makes me feel a little uneasy. I know it doesn't make sense.
So, I'm not an expert on copyright law, but I have read enough to have heard of Feist v. Rural Telephone (though I don't think I would be able to remember the name offhand). To make a long story short, a white pages publisher used information from a rival company's directory; the other company sued for copyright infringement, but the Court ruled that the information in the white pages, being factual, was not entitled to copyright protection, and the presentation, being merely alphabetical, was not sufficiently original to warrant protection either.
Now, it appears possible that these actions might be made illegal. I'm actually of a very mixed opinion about this. I suppose the sticking point is that after a company has put all this work in to create a database of information, it doesn't seem fair to me (for lack of a better term) for another company to be able to take it and make money from it. It's the last point which is key, at least in my own personal ethical system. (It's also why, of the two bills mentioned in the article, I would vastly prefer the spirit of the Bliley version; I obviously benefit from having directory information available online for free.)
I learned of this initially when reading about baseball-reference.com. b-r is simply the best baseball reference site there is, and I frequently use it and am very glad to have it as a free resource. (I believe it's also the only website I've outright donated money to -- this was well before their sponsorship system, and though there was an offer to use old donations towards sponsorship, I didn't really want to bother.) b-r gets a large (though declining, these days) percentage of its information from Sean Lahman's baseball database, which is also free. But what I didn't know is that, apparently, much of the original information in the Lahman database was extracted from a CD-ROM version of Total Baseball, which is not a free product. And, oddly, though I know that this process was (and is, for now) perfectly legal, it still makes me feel a little uneasy. I know it doesn't make sense.
On a more pessimistic note
Despite my ill-founded optimism below, I have to admit that now is not the best of times to be a Bay Area sports fan. Not counting the minor teams (which actually have done quite well, with the Earthquakes and CyberRays both bringing home a title in 2001, and the Sabercats winning in 2002), none of the area teams has won a title since the Niners won the Super Bowl in '94 (well, technically the Super Bowl itself was '95, but it was for the '94 season), and none seem particularly well-positioned to in the future. I don't need to tell anyone here how close the Giants came in 2002, but they probably can't win with their current personnel (especially given the age of a lot of the team) and they don't seem to have the money (and definitely don't seem to have the minor-league talent) to replace them, with Magowan looking to cut payroll. The A's are probably going to stay in contention for a few years, but it'll require a steady stream of shrewd dealings and good minor-league developments just to keep them treading water, given their financial constraints; it's hard to see them getting noticeably better in the near future, so essentially they'll need a healthy dose of playoff luck to get a title, and they haven't exactly been showing that in spades. The 49ers are in a similar situation: while it looks that the team they'll have is going to be at least competitive, I can't see it getting measurably better in the near future, and I can see it getting a lot worse if they fail to retain a lot of their current players. York's performance as an owner has not exactly inspired confidence so far, either. The Raiders, like the Giants, came close in 2002 (though the '03 Super Bowl was much less close than the '02 World Series), but they also were looking at a very short window of opportunity, and judging by their performance and injury record this year, it looks like it's already closed. The Warriors, though I might be optimistic about their relative performance, are not going to contend for a title any time in the foreseeable future. And finally, the Sharks, which were a trendy pick for a Stanley Cup winner a year ago despite never even reaching the conference finals, instead sunk straight to the basement, traded away all of their talent, and saw the one player who looked like he might be a franchise cornerstone (Nabokov) instead revert to mediocrity. Since they're also cursed with penny-pinching ownership, the outlook here is not so good.
Well, at least I have all these past memories to console me...of course, they only apply to the Niners anyway.
Despite my ill-founded optimism below, I have to admit that now is not the best of times to be a Bay Area sports fan. Not counting the minor teams (which actually have done quite well, with the Earthquakes and CyberRays both bringing home a title in 2001, and the Sabercats winning in 2002), none of the area teams has won a title since the Niners won the Super Bowl in '94 (well, technically the Super Bowl itself was '95, but it was for the '94 season), and none seem particularly well-positioned to in the future. I don't need to tell anyone here how close the Giants came in 2002, but they probably can't win with their current personnel (especially given the age of a lot of the team) and they don't seem to have the money (and definitely don't seem to have the minor-league talent) to replace them, with Magowan looking to cut payroll. The A's are probably going to stay in contention for a few years, but it'll require a steady stream of shrewd dealings and good minor-league developments just to keep them treading water, given their financial constraints; it's hard to see them getting noticeably better in the near future, so essentially they'll need a healthy dose of playoff luck to get a title, and they haven't exactly been showing that in spades. The 49ers are in a similar situation: while it looks that the team they'll have is going to be at least competitive, I can't see it getting measurably better in the near future, and I can see it getting a lot worse if they fail to retain a lot of their current players. York's performance as an owner has not exactly inspired confidence so far, either. The Raiders, like the Giants, came close in 2002 (though the '03 Super Bowl was much less close than the '02 World Series), but they also were looking at a very short window of opportunity, and judging by their performance and injury record this year, it looks like it's already closed. The Warriors, though I might be optimistic about their relative performance, are not going to contend for a title any time in the foreseeable future. And finally, the Sharks, which were a trendy pick for a Stanley Cup winner a year ago despite never even reaching the conference finals, instead sunk straight to the basement, traded away all of their talent, and saw the one player who looked like he might be a franchise cornerstone (Nabokov) instead revert to mediocrity. Since they're also cursed with penny-pinching ownership, the outlook here is not so good.
Well, at least I have all these past memories to console me...of course, they only apply to the Niners anyway.
Minor annoyances at work
There are two things which happen at work which annoy me disproportionately:
1) People taking the elevator for one floor. I always take the elevator in the mornings from the basement to the sixth floor, and in the evenings I make the reverse trip. I'm always astounded by the number of people who will hop on the elevator to go up or down just one floor. I frequently have to go down to the 5th floor, and I always use the stairs. What's the point of taking the elevator?
2) People who don't run for the bus. If the bus is sitting there, and you're late (I can understand not making an effort if you know the bus isn't going to leave yet), then it's more than a little inconsiderate to nonchalantly stroll to the bus and expect everyone to wait for you. Show some hustle!
Yes, I know that not everyone at the Lab is in as good physical condition as me (not to say that I'm in great condition, but at least I'm young and healthy). But these are perpetrated by all sorts of people.
There are two things which happen at work which annoy me disproportionately:
1) People taking the elevator for one floor. I always take the elevator in the mornings from the basement to the sixth floor, and in the evenings I make the reverse trip. I'm always astounded by the number of people who will hop on the elevator to go up or down just one floor. I frequently have to go down to the 5th floor, and I always use the stairs. What's the point of taking the elevator?
2) People who don't run for the bus. If the bus is sitting there, and you're late (I can understand not making an effort if you know the bus isn't going to leave yet), then it's more than a little inconsiderate to nonchalantly stroll to the bus and expect everyone to wait for you. Show some hustle!
Yes, I know that not everyone at the Lab is in as good physical condition as me (not to say that I'm in great condition, but at least I'm young and healthy). But these are perpetrated by all sorts of people.
Monday, November 03, 2003
I know I'm a fool to type this...
...but I'm actually moderately optimistic about the Warriors. Oh, don't get me wrong; I'm hardly expecting them to make the playoffs, but I think they could actually be decent this year. Starting the season with two of their top players hurt and another suspended, they managed to pull out a victory over a decent team and hung in against two of the best teams in the league. And that's all I need for unsupported early-season optimism!
...but I'm actually moderately optimistic about the Warriors. Oh, don't get me wrong; I'm hardly expecting them to make the playoffs, but I think they could actually be decent this year. Starting the season with two of their top players hurt and another suspended, they managed to pull out a victory over a decent team and hung in against two of the best teams in the league. And that's all I need for unsupported early-season optimism!
Lyrics quiz!
This is a very amusing variant on the old lyrics quiz (it's fill-in-the-blank, rather than just name-the-song). The comments in the scoring were also good. Overall, though, my score was pathetic (32). See if you can do better!
This is a very amusing variant on the old lyrics quiz (it's fill-in-the-blank, rather than just name-the-song). The comments in the scoring were also good. Overall, though, my score was pathetic (32). See if you can do better!
Saturday, November 01, 2003
How I spent my Saturday
So today was the first major quizbowl tournament of the fall that I actually participated in (unlike WIT, two weekends ago, where I merely staffed). Now, the Berkeley team has been thriving lately; overall, we fielded five teams, each with a full complement of 4 team members. This was good! Of course, this also meant that we thus comprised 5/8 of the teams and 20/29 of the people, so a lot of the matches were intra-Berkeley matches. Still, it's a good way for the newbies to get tournament experience.
We figured if we concentrated all of the good players, then the newbie teams would just spend all of their time getting whomped; given that this tournament was 14 rounds and, total, took over 7 hours, this is not exactly a fun way to spend your day. So, instead, we spread the strength around -- with the exception of the Bastard Team, which had the two people not currently enrolled (Juliana and Ray), Nick, and David Farris (who just decided to play at the last minute). This had the very beneficial effect of making the overall field very even -- no team had fewer than 3 losses, and only one team (with 2 wins) had fewer than 5 wins. So, I certainly hope much fun was had by all.
Overall, my team was 5-9. That looks worse than it is, I think; we had three rounds which were decided on the last tossup, and we lost them all. I definitely was very streaky; there were some rounds where I did excellently, and there are some rounds (and some particular buzzes within those rounds) where I did poorly. The newbies on my team also acquitted themselves well, so that was definitely a good sign, especially since at Technophobia (next weekend) we are tossing them onto teams by themselves, since we figure it'll have to happen sooner or later and it'll be as good a tournament as any to start with.
Anyway, after a marathon like that, I think I could use some sleep.
So today was the first major quizbowl tournament of the fall that I actually participated in (unlike WIT, two weekends ago, where I merely staffed). Now, the Berkeley team has been thriving lately; overall, we fielded five teams, each with a full complement of 4 team members. This was good! Of course, this also meant that we thus comprised 5/8 of the teams and 20/29 of the people, so a lot of the matches were intra-Berkeley matches. Still, it's a good way for the newbies to get tournament experience.
We figured if we concentrated all of the good players, then the newbie teams would just spend all of their time getting whomped; given that this tournament was 14 rounds and, total, took over 7 hours, this is not exactly a fun way to spend your day. So, instead, we spread the strength around -- with the exception of the Bastard Team, which had the two people not currently enrolled (Juliana and Ray), Nick, and David Farris (who just decided to play at the last minute). This had the very beneficial effect of making the overall field very even -- no team had fewer than 3 losses, and only one team (with 2 wins) had fewer than 5 wins. So, I certainly hope much fun was had by all.
Overall, my team was 5-9. That looks worse than it is, I think; we had three rounds which were decided on the last tossup, and we lost them all. I definitely was very streaky; there were some rounds where I did excellently, and there are some rounds (and some particular buzzes within those rounds) where I did poorly. The newbies on my team also acquitted themselves well, so that was definitely a good sign, especially since at Technophobia (next weekend) we are tossing them onto teams by themselves, since we figure it'll have to happen sooner or later and it'll be as good a tournament as any to start with.
Anyway, after a marathon like that, I think I could use some sleep.
Friday, October 31, 2003
Sports observation of the day
The economics of sports just keep getting weirder and weirder.
Basketball, with its odd soft salary cap, still leads the league in bizarre transactions for financial reasons. For example, this past offseason, the Atlanta Hawks participated in a trade in which they traded away someone who had scored more than 20 points per game for them that year (namely, Glenn Robinson), in order to obtain a player who was on the injured list with injuries that were likely to prevent him from ever playing again and had announced that he was retiring (Terrell Brandon), solely for the purpose of obtaining salary-cap space. (To be fair, the Hawks also did move up a bit in draft picks, but that part is unlikely to matter. All of the quotes from Atlanta officials indicated that they were interested primarily in obtaining the cap room.)
I believe at one point (though I don't remember enough details to find it via Google) that the Clippers, owned by notorious cheapskate Donald Sterling, once obtained some players in a trade which they then promptly waived, just in order to meet the salary floor. But I could be misremembering on that.
Now, baseball, despite not having any official salary caps and floors, has been seeing more and more economically-driven transactions of late. The Rockies, for example, practically gave away Mike Hampton just to be rid of his contract (hey, the faint voice in my mind is telling me that I already wrote something about this), but at least they got something in return. In general, teams trading away good players with overinflated contracts have gotten less back then if they had a reasonable contract, and bad players with big contracts are essentially of negative value in trade discussions, but it's not the case that a good player with an overinflated contract has actually been a negative.
Until now, that is. The Red Sox placed Manny Ramirez on irrevocable waivers on Wednesday, meaning that anyone willing to pick up the 5 years and $101.5 million left on his contract could have him without sending anything back to the Red Sox in return -- and no one was interested. Now, no one doubts that Ramirez is one of the top hitters in the league; he's been in the top 10 in MVP voting for five years running, and this year is extremely likely to be a sixth; it's just that no one wanted to pay that much money. Is that weird?
Well...maybe not as weird as it might seem at first glance. You see, at the end of 2000, Manny Ramirez was a free agent. Thus, when the Sox signed him, they were, pretty much by definition, the team that had the highest valuation of what his services were worth. So, given that Ramirez hasn't improved substantially over the past three seasons (not to say that he's been a disappointment, either; his production has pretty much been in line with reasonable expectations), it stands to reason that the Sox' valuation would still be higher than anyone else's; that is, that no one else would want to have him for the price that the Sox were paying him.
There's been a lot written about how free agency creates a "Winner's Curse", in that the team that signs a player in free agency is always the team that overestimates the player's value by the greatest amount, so I won't bother rehashing that, but I wonder if people realize that this is essentially the same thing, just three years later.
The economics of sports just keep getting weirder and weirder.
Basketball, with its odd soft salary cap, still leads the league in bizarre transactions for financial reasons. For example, this past offseason, the Atlanta Hawks participated in a trade in which they traded away someone who had scored more than 20 points per game for them that year (namely, Glenn Robinson), in order to obtain a player who was on the injured list with injuries that were likely to prevent him from ever playing again and had announced that he was retiring (Terrell Brandon), solely for the purpose of obtaining salary-cap space. (To be fair, the Hawks also did move up a bit in draft picks, but that part is unlikely to matter. All of the quotes from Atlanta officials indicated that they were interested primarily in obtaining the cap room.)
I believe at one point (though I don't remember enough details to find it via Google) that the Clippers, owned by notorious cheapskate Donald Sterling, once obtained some players in a trade which they then promptly waived, just in order to meet the salary floor. But I could be misremembering on that.
Now, baseball, despite not having any official salary caps and floors, has been seeing more and more economically-driven transactions of late. The Rockies, for example, practically gave away Mike Hampton just to be rid of his contract (hey, the faint voice in my mind is telling me that I already wrote something about this), but at least they got something in return. In general, teams trading away good players with overinflated contracts have gotten less back then if they had a reasonable contract, and bad players with big contracts are essentially of negative value in trade discussions, but it's not the case that a good player with an overinflated contract has actually been a negative.
Until now, that is. The Red Sox placed Manny Ramirez on irrevocable waivers on Wednesday, meaning that anyone willing to pick up the 5 years and $101.5 million left on his contract could have him without sending anything back to the Red Sox in return -- and no one was interested. Now, no one doubts that Ramirez is one of the top hitters in the league; he's been in the top 10 in MVP voting for five years running, and this year is extremely likely to be a sixth; it's just that no one wanted to pay that much money. Is that weird?
Well...maybe not as weird as it might seem at first glance. You see, at the end of 2000, Manny Ramirez was a free agent. Thus, when the Sox signed him, they were, pretty much by definition, the team that had the highest valuation of what his services were worth. So, given that Ramirez hasn't improved substantially over the past three seasons (not to say that he's been a disappointment, either; his production has pretty much been in line with reasonable expectations), it stands to reason that the Sox' valuation would still be higher than anyone else's; that is, that no one else would want to have him for the price that the Sox were paying him.
There's been a lot written about how free agency creates a "Winner's Curse", in that the team that signs a player in free agency is always the team that overestimates the player's value by the greatest amount, so I won't bother rehashing that, but I wonder if people realize that this is essentially the same thing, just three years later.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)