Booksthatmakeyoudumb
Got this from Terrence. Behold, the “Booksthatmakeyoudumb”!
Someone went on Facebook, collected the ten most frequent “favourite books” at each college, then got the average SAT/ACT score for students at that college, and plotted the average SAT of the book, as it were, it on a graph.
The results. Note the vertical axis means nothing.
This is awesome.
“It could be anything, even a boat! And you know how much I’ve wanted one of those…”
This is the location of our wedding (date set, too: July 24th).
Getting married on a boat will be nice. We got a good deal on it, and we’re holding the ceremony and the reception on it, so it drastically cuts down driving time for people as well as all the crap that happens when you have multiple locations to deal with.
For people who live in Cleveland: We’ll be holding a reception in Cleveland after the wedding, probably the first week of August on a Friday, so you don’t have to feel pressured to come out to Seattle to attend the ceremony. My family will receive invitations for both while my friends and others that I want to come to the reception in Cleveland will receive a separate invitation for that. So, if you’re in Cleveland and consider yourself my friend (I should be so lucky), please email me at kyle dot boddy at gmail dot com with your address for an invitation! Thanks!
Coaching High School Baseball
It’s official (pending paperwork): I’ll be the Assistant Coach of the Roosevelt HS JVC Baseball team! Coach Nelsen will be the head coach; it’s also his first year coaching baseball, but had a successful football season with his freshmen kids who seem to like him very much. Tryouts start on the 24th of February, and games start 2-3 weeks after that, so we have a lot to get done in a short period of time, especially because we have a huge turnout of freshmen this year. Everyone at the various athletic meetings is excited about this crop of athletic freshmen who have already contributed at the football level (8-1 record, best in 10 years) and wrestling level (beating local rival Ballard and getting many invites to regionals for the kids).
Having coached many of the kids previously, this should give me a leg up on scouting and analyzing the kids for promotion to JV and for cuts. My biggest concern is arm strength and endurance; getting a solid rotation from these kids with such little time to prepare (much less fix mechanical flaws) will be difficult. We’ll probably have to go with split-starters on less rest to start the season so we can reduce the load any one pitcher experiences over a single game.
My role in the organization isn’t clear yet, but Nelsen is probably a better “team”-oriented coach than me, so I envision the possibility of him working with infield drills and other team concepts while I work individually (or in small groups) with hitters and pitchers, including video analysis.
Exciting stuff! I can’t wait to get started.
I am getting married.
I am now formally engaged to my girlfriend!
We are getting married in late July.
That’s about it!
Brace for Impact.
HONG KONG, China (CNN) – Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 8 percent in early afternoon trading Tuesday as global markets tumbled on fears that a U.S. economic slowdown will lead to a global recession.
Tokyo investors are worried about how a possible U.S. recession could hurt exporters’ profits. Japan’s Nikkei index plunged below 13,000 for the first time in more than two years, down 4.5% in afternoon trading.
South Korea’s Korea Composite Stock Price Index fell 90.03 points, or 5.4 percent, to 1,592.63.
Australia’s benchmark S&P index was down 6 percent.
The Singapore stock exchange was down 4.5 percent, and Taiwan’s benchmark Taiex was down 6.6%.
Trading was halted in Indian markets Tuesday as shares plunged on opening, with the benchmark index falling 9.5 percent. Shares in India’s Sensex fell nearly 11 percent — a four-month low — on Monday.
Europe’s main three indices, the FT-100 in London, the CAC 40 in Paris and the DAX in Frankfurt fell between 5 and 7 percent on Monday.
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Is it beginning already? My money is on a short-term correction, with more middling from the Fed. The real shit hasn’t yet hit the fan.
But it will.
Election 2008, my views:
I’ll keep this short and simple. The candidate I would most likely support is Ron Paul, that is to say, if I was going to vote. Which I probably won’t, because anyone who passed third grade math could tell you it makes no difference whether or not you vote. Blah blah only voters get to complain, etc etc, yeah I said that shit when I was a deluded idiot Green Party wannabe in 8th grade.
Maybe I’ll vote to make myself happy, but that is endorsing a facade of an election system that we have as well, even if I am voting for the only man that actually understand economics on the ballot. And really, that’s what it comes down to: All of these idiots on the Democratic ticket couldn’t pass an introductory economics course, and almost all of the idiots on the Republican ticket are only slightly better economically and usually way worse socially.
So, there you have it. Everyone sucks. Buy gold (Buff and I have been telling people this since 2001; I hope some of you actually listened). The economy sucks, and there are obvious reasons why. End steel tariffs and let Japanese and European automakers crush the American union-led inefficient companies. Stop bailing out airlines; fucking Southwest turns a huge profit. Stop intervening in shit that doesn’t matter, and if you can’t, stop lying about it and just say you are invading countries to steal their oil (not that this is necessarily happening now). At least be honest about it.
Oh well. The economy is in a recession now (M3 figures have it as sunk, which is probably why the government stopped publishing M3 variables awhile ago), despite what GDP will tell you, since they manipulate that shit to make it look like there is less than 2% inflation. 2% inflation my ballsack, nice try Bernanke.
Thus ends my quarterly “politics suck and so do people who actually follow it” post.
EDIT: And by the way, I hate to say I told you so.
About me - finally made!
I decided to finally make the About Me page active on my weblog, so you can see the short writeup I have about myself there. I plan on taking more pictures as the weather gets better so I can hopefully start an album page as well.
A few things, general update.
Breaking it down into sections…
Baseball
Today I worked out with Jacob and his friend Jensen (who is raw but has plus power at the plate - my god can he launch it) at Strike-Zone, where we hit off a tee, took some soft toss, and threw some full-speed live batting practice. I threw using the new Marshall mechanics I learned, and I noticed the following things:
- Regular velocity with serious ability to improve. Torso/hip separation is easy to maintain using these mechanics, and I need to introduce better shoulder tilt to throw from a high arm slot and get the ball downhill.
- More movement on my pitches, especially the gyroball. I can readily throw two breaking balls (slider, gyroball) using the mechanics, and when I raise my arm slot, the movement should be even more pronounced.
- I can throw two fastballs from this arm slot - what’s termed a “Maxline” fastball (maximum speed, think four-seam) and a “Torque” fastball (less speed, more cutting action, think two-seam). My Maxline fastball is way easier to control, but I think that I could effectively throw a Torque fastball if I worked on it. I will be focusing mainly on Maxline, Slider, Gyroball, though.
I’m not sure if these mechanics will fly in the PSSBL or the other amateur leagues I play in; they are MLB-legal but very strange looking to someone who has never seen a Marshall pitcher before. Throwing from the stretch might be difficult, too. Then again, I haven’t decided if I want these to be my regular mechanics; I may just incorporate the arm slot and pitches into a tradtional leg kick delivery if possible.
Work
We’re moving stuff out of the office and I’ll be on my own in a few days, which is a lot of stuff to do. The side business I’m running is going pretty well, which is a nice boost in the bank account.
That’s about it for now!
Book Recommendation: The Real Price of Everything
The Real Price of Everything, by Michael Lewis:
For all of you heathens out there (see also: people who are not anarcho-capitalists and/or libertarians), this textbook is a must at a very low price of $29.99 at your local bookstore, or $23.48 on Amazon.com. The book includes the following excellent texts on economics:
1776: The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
1798: An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus
1817: Principles of Political Economy and Taxation by David Ricardo
1899: The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions by Thorstein Veblen
1936: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes
Okay, so The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money is not exactly a favorite of mine, but it is an important textbook as it relates to American economic history. At the very least, it will help the layperson understand why the New Deal was such a ridiculous idea and why many economists think that FDR was the worst thing to happen to the United States in the 20th century (Keynes is a close second).
So, I say to you all, go buy this and read all the texts contained within.
Baseball Training
I started working out at a training facility in Woodinville (25 minutes north) called the American Baseball Institute. The pitching coach’s name is Neiman Nix, a Mike Marshall-type instructor. For those of you who are unaware of Marshall’s teachings, he is a controversial ex-MLB player (Cy Young - 1974) turned pitching coach who has come up with a new type of delivery that he says will eliminate all arm-based injuries in pitchers. To achieve this goal, his pitchers train with 10-20 lb. wrist weights on their arms while going through various exercises, and throw 6-10 lb. iron balls as a form of overload training.
Marshall’s message is good, but is often lost by the messenger. He claims that his motion is the only way to throw a baseball, and everything he does is right and does not need to be refined. Neiman is a bit more relaxed; he teaches his students a traditional delivery to showcase to scouts who would otherwise be unhappy with the unorthodox delivery of Dr. Marshall.
After a day of training (and a day of observation) with Neiman and his partner, I am convinced that the work they do will help pitchers become more athletic, develop better velocity, and add new quality pitches to their arsenal. The pronation curve and pronation slider are two excellent breaking balls that I already love to throw.
Hopefully in the near future I will be able to get video of the training process and the pitchers I work out with. There is a Canadian lefty who is maxing out at 95 mph with an excellent slider, and an American righty who throws low-90’s with a plus-plus sinker/slider combo.