soapbox

A recent Pew study reports that “churchgoers are significantly more likely to support torture”, but apparently they only asked “white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated” so insert your own GOP-bashing comment here.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed. White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it.

I just wish the article had a little comment somewhere saying “not all people of faith are vindictive and intolerant” with a link to the peace churches. Don’t even have to mention Quakers by name, I’m not greedy.

Via Deadspin – Apparently something funny is going on at the WWL.  Follow the instructions here.

I’m not quite sure that I understand the reasoning for Apple deciding to move the tabs in Safari 4 up from the “normal” position to the top bar. I really wish that they’d followed Chrome’s lead of having each tab be a separate (and therefore separately-killable) process, but instead it just looks weird.

However, it does seem a bit faster as promised, and with the color change I don’t mind the tab location nearly as much. I still don’t like the occasional click-confusion where sometimes my mouse isn’t sure whether I’m clicking on a particular tab or clicking on the application window as a whole, but so it goes. Anyway, this link describes a super-easy, less than 5 minute process for re-coloring that active tab, and I’d put it in the “recommended” pile.

I wasn’t fortunate enough to ever get to watch Niekro, and was pretty young when Candiotti was still pitching, so the only knuckleballers that I’ve watched with any kind of critical eye have been Charlie Hough and Tim Wakefield. I remember being transfixed when (I think it was) Fox debuted their super-slow-mo camera showing Hough’s knuckler as it dodged and darted, and so with Wake coming just a few outs short of a no-no a couple days ago, I decided to delve into PitchF/X and see what I could do.

Turns out that process was a lot easier than expected, thanks to Dan Brooks. I still want to write my own PFX tool, but for this post I’ll get started with his stuff.

What’s amazing about Wake is that when he’s on, he’s able to control this ball that essentially travels 50 feet and then is a study in random walks. Let’s start with perhaps the most basic of PitchF/X charts, showing the strike zone superimposed on each pitch’s location (marked as a ball, strike, or put in play (X):

So, this wasn’t a case of Ron Kulpa getting fooled into calling strikes; Wake seemed to have pretty good control of the thing.

Anyway, now let’s look at one of my favorite charts, showing the horizontal and vertical movement of Wake’s pitches:

What’s so fancy about that? Well, nothing, it looks like a random mess of splatter-paint, but that’s exactly the point! For comparison, here’s what Houston’s Mike Hampton did that same night, with a more conventional arsenal:

… where here you can see each type of pitch and how it moves – the four-seam fastball (FF) stays up relative to the two-seamer (FT), his big-breaking curve is rather distinct from his slider, and note that one reason for his success on Tuesday night was that his change-up had movement very similar to the two-seamer.

So with that comparison, you see why I love the blind-man-with-a-paintball-gun result of Wake’s Break Chart. Up, Down, Left, Right, it was moving all over… and big kudos to our rookie backstop Kottaras for handling both the weight of the moment and the bite of the knuckler.

I feel like I lost an uncle today, or maybe a good friend. Harry Kalas, voice of the Phillies and NFL films, passed away today, and it’s just not fair.

It’s almost impossible to think of Harry without also thinking of his long-time friend and broadcast partner, Richie Ashburn. The two of them worked together for 27 years (Ashburn passed in 1997), and were a pair unlike any other – they were close friends and were able to play off each other perfectly, knowing what the other was thinking and either filling in perfectly or getting out of the way as needed. Listening to Harry and Whitey broadcast a game was like being invited over to their house, as a couple of buddies described the game and did it well… each summer night weaving the story of the game with intelligence, humor, and a clear passion for the sport.

For details or clarification on the subject, I refer you to Nick, but it seems as though Utah has finally picked up on the idea that it might be a good idea to allow a person to just walk into a bar and order a beer. Up until a couple weeks ago, in order to enter a bar you had to be a member (or have somebody sponsor you)… or rather, all bars were required to be private clubs, and if you wanted to enter then you had to pay a membership fee or know a member. You probably have to be straight to be served, but all in good time, let’s not be hasty… there are still a bunch of other weird rules.

If you think you know baseball, or especially if you DON’T, then read on.

Fantasy sports have exploded from a nerd-haven to a multi-billion dollar industry in the past few years, and so now every schmoe wants to talk your ear off about how great his fantasy team is.

But, anybody can pick good players; the really tough part is picking the worst players – and thus I point you to the 2009 version of Huckabay’s Annual Call to Keep Immobility Next to Godliness: Maximus Aggregatus Stiffisimus Sensire (HACKING MASS).

In addition to the intellectual stimulation of trying to figure out how exactly to put together the worst possible lineup, you have the excitement of winning a mint-condition, signed, framed photo reproduction of Commissioner of Major League Baseball Bud Selig*!!! Oh, and a $399 cash prize.

* The BP disclaimer: Photo and signature may be a “preprinted” reproduction, whatever that means, and in case we have trouble running down the photo we’ll sub in an item of similar value.