Blue on blue:

The Gators had just sealed a win over East Carolina with a fumble recovery, and Alex McCalister saw the end zone ahead of him. But his teammate, Jarrad Davis, realized that scoring another TD was unnecessary. Perhaps if McCalister had continued running, he would’ve tripped and fumbled and ECU would’ve recovered it and run another play and scored a touchdown.

But if he went to the ground, the game would end. (Of course, Davis probably ran a higher risk of causing a fumble by trying to tackle his teammate than just letting him run, but, whatever.) So Davis tackled McAlister, and Florida kneeled out the game for a 31-24 win.

Even with the context, I think that was a bad move. McCalister had a clear path and while a fumble was possible, it was more likely to occur with a tackle (even a friendly fire tackle) than otherwise.

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In Canadian football, this is apparently a thing:

I’d be interested to know what the counterarguments on this are.

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Welp. God is Mormon. I'm as surprised as you are.

— Ryan Noonan (@noonanville) September 5, 2015

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No video (for obvious reasons), but there was a play in Southern Tech’s game where a kick returner ill-advisedly left the endzone to run it back. All across Colosse and the country, Packer fans said “Noooooooooo!!!!” which was followed by relief that he got to the 20, followed by “Goooooooooo!!!!” as he ran it from endzone to endzone to tie the game.

In the post-game interview, the coach said that it was an amazing effort, an amazing run, and that he has talked to the player and has been assured that it will never, ever happen again.

Kevin Kelley made waves with his “never punt” philosophy. Now he’s got another one: explosive plays!:

Well, the Washington Post recently ran a story on Kelley’s next innovative idea that is going to buck conventional coaching, and give defensive coordinators nightmares. After using an ESPN database to study college football history, Kelley found a new trend emerge last season where teams that recorded more explosive plays of 20 yards or more won 81% of games.

Kelley also found that on typical plays where two players touched the ball (QB and RB or WR), those 20 yard plays came at about a 10% clip, but when at least three players touched the ball (on a lateral or trick play of some sort), the percentage for an explosive play almost doubled to about 20%.

This could be huge! But the statistics don’t necessarily tell us much. At best, the cause/effect is dubious.

Southern Tech had a season in the recent past where it struggled mightily. Someone did some number-crunching and decided that what the Packers really needed to do was run the ball more. In games where the offense ran the ball 60% or more of the time, they won! Less running, they lost. QED!

Except that the causality was reversed. The higher run-rate was indicative of trying to kill the clock after we’ve taken a lead. The high passing rate was the product of a team struggling to catch up against a running clock.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the same were true of explosive plays. Teams with explosive plays win precisely because they’re the team that can effectively run explosive plays against the other team. Explosive plays are difficult and are more likely to require an asymmetry of talent.

Not unlike “Half Time Stats.”

When you’re watching a game, the announcers will often say something like “When Southern Tech is up by two touchdowns or more, they win 84% of the time…” which sounds impressive. It means Southern Tech can hold leads. Yay if you’re Sotech! Except that a fourteen point lead at half-time is more often than not going to be indicative of a talent asymmetry or just better play. Chances are a team ahead by that much at half time won’t just win because they can spot 14 points, but also because the way that the game has been going indicates that they are the better team. They’ll probably win the second half, too, for that reason alone.

PBS ran an article on dissenters on the Dr Seuss Question:

Amid the adoration is a small but vocal group of parents who take issue with the author’s use of nonsensical language.

There’s Jennifer Graham, who once took to The National Review as a frustrated mom.

“I always thought the point of reading to children was to teach them about language,” she writes. “How does Dr. Seuss help? Heck, he knew so few words that he had to make most of his up.”

She writes about losing it while reading Seuss to a group of children: “‘I DON’T KNOW WHAT A TRUFFULA TREE IS!’ I shriek. ‘I don’t know what any of this stuff is!’”

There’s Amy Mascott, a state-certified reading specialist in Maryland, who wrote a blog post two years ago that began with a confession: “I don’t love Dr. Seuss. I don’t, and I haven’t, and I won’t. So there. I said it.”

And there’s this commenter from a online Goodreads discussion. “Is Dr. Seuss good for kids? He makes up words. Then when my kids start making up words I have to be the bad guy and shoot them down.”

Our child development specialist frowned down on Dr Seuss. Less so for the fantastical language and more for the lack of literal illustration. The cows do not look like cows, and Sneeches don’t look like anything. It was her perspective that time spent learning what a Gox is would be better learning what an ox is, with a picture of an ox. She wasn’t 100% against Seuss, though that might have been more of a practical concession (“These people won’t listen to me if I am too adamant”) than an ideological one.

I’ve found myself undisturbed, which for those who know me isn’t surprising. I am actually quite impressed with my daughter’s ability to pick up on abstract imagery, to see a cartoon cow that doesn’t look like a cow, but successfully associate it with an actual cow. She is genuinely better at identifying the Play-Do outlines. She calls something a pig and I look at it and hey yeah that actually is a pig I had thought it was a dog.

Alan Jacobs takes issue with parents complaining about how bad children’s books are, wondering if our parents ever complained about the books they had to read to us.

Well, they didn’t complain to me or anything. And I wouldn’t dream of complaining to Lain. It is indeed one of those parental tasks to be taken with a smile. That doesn’t mean, of course, that we can’t vent on the Internet. At least a little bit. And that’s probably one of the differences. Used to be you just vented to other parents.

I enjoy reading to Lain within limits. Lain, however, does not always recognize limits. She is particularly aggressive with Clancy, who is more indulging. Since she isn’t around all day, she doesn’t quite need to set the boundaries that I do.

Lain’s library was mostly procured over eBay. You can get large sets of books for really reasonable prices. Some of them are not in the best condition, but that’s okay because if the book falls apart, you can make an informed decision about whether or not to pay full price for it. Sometimes you’re kind of glad it’s gone. Other times, though, you know it’s worth paying $10-20 for because you know that both parent and child will enjoy it. That’s worth a lot.

Some of the books are really bad, and Lain’s tastes are a bit spotty. The worst books are the educational ones. Intended for somewhat older kids. There’s one called You Will Go To the Moon, which is vaguely technical (explaining how a space station would simulate gravity) and boring. Also, given that she will not in fact go to the moon, a cruel lie. There’s another one about whale migration that I am not a big fan of, though it taught her the word “whale.”

I find myself wondering if Dr Seuss just ruined the industry. He was so prolific, and so good, and his works mostly so timeless, that I wonder if he rendered obsolete any book written since. More likely, it’s related to the fact that writers probably like to consider themselves above writing children’s books. It’s probably considered less impressive to say at a dinner party that you write children’s books than loftier stuff aimed at mature audiences. (I also think this is why comic books have “matured” over the years, or at least a contributing component.

It seems to be a pretty tight market, in the overall. The free ebook options, which for some reason I expected to be many, are actually quite rare (though Gecko on the Wall is great, and Danielle Bruckert‘s other books tend to be fun). And Kindle is so hit-and-miss with independent authors, and children’s books themselves especially so, that I haven’t really dived in as much as I otherwise might.

This is really, really important. Evidently, there is a rip in our time-space continuum that has been identified by the Berenst#in Bears.

Here’s the thing. These books play such a huge role in the collective memories of so many people, all of whom clearly and distinctly remember “BerenstEin”, that I am not the first to propose the notion that somehow, at some time in the last 10 years or so, reality has been tampered with and history has been retroactively changed. The bears really were called the “BerenstEin Bears” when we were growing up, but now reality has been altered such that the name of the bears has been changed post hoc.

In 1992 they were “stEin” in 1992, but in 2012 they were “stAin” in 1992.

Some explanations have been proposed. One person suggested a change due to time travel, similar to “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury. It’s an interesting theory, and I admire it for its simplicity, but it is flawed. Time travel doesn’t actually work that way, and if someone had “stepped on a butterfly”, it would not impact the future because they had already stepped on the butterfly before they left for the past; history has to be consistent.

I would like to make a modest proposal: We are all living in our own parallel universe.

When my wife pronounced them Berenstain Bears, I thought it was analogous to how she pronounces the president’s name “Oh’bamm’ah” rather than “Oh’bomb’ah”). So imagine my surprise when I notice the spelling.

Which is doubly problematic. That means that not only am I from a timeline alternate to the current one, but my wife is from this timeline. It’s almost enough to make me question our basic compatibility.

Would you feel safer flying with the hiring and training of additional TSA officers/agents’/whatever they have to call themselves to feel important’, or would you rather they hire & train more air traffic controllers?

PS I object to the TSA as a whole as security theater, but for the most part, all of my interactions with TSA personnel has been professional, even if the rules they enforce are stupid, and even if they occasionally drink their own kool-aid (I don’t argue with them, I have a plane to catch).

PPS I suspect the reason ATC is hurting for people such that it has to use grinding schedules is because the training is tough, the work stressful, and the pay is high enough (median $122K/year) that management is not keen to staff centers fully if they can avoid it.  Add in that politically, TSA is something of a jobs program for the unskilled.  Still, for every 2-3 Blue shirts, we could have another ATC on the job.  Imaginary terrorist plots rank much lower to me than very real collisions.

I am going to start a weekly update feature, posted most weeks on Friday or Saturday, that will include general topics of stuff that is going on. This week will mostly be talking about television, though they may not be as unified in the future.

New television arrives today! I’m pretty jazzed, though feeling sad and a little bit guilty that about the functional television in the basement. I mean, that TV is… fine. But I do a lot of my television interaction through a computer, and that’s increasingly difficult with that old machine attached to it, and on a CRT display.

We’re going to be getting DirecTV soon, and so it’s one of those “do it now or make things really complicated down the line” things.

So I’m getting a new TV for the living room and moving the one there downstairs. The Vizio I currently have was a great value, but has certain blind spots. One of which is that it has bad SD display from cable/satellite. Which, if we’re getting cable/satellite, kind of matters.

A frustrating thing is that new TVs don’t have VGA inputs, and VGA is what I use to attach the computer. The media PC does have a DisplayPort, which can convert into HDMI. So I got the applicable cable and was, alas, disappointed by the results. The video looks okay, but the Windows interface looks less than stellar. I am hoping that this is a Vizio problem, and that the new Samsung will look better. The Vizio has the VGA outlet, and so I can continue to use them for that TV.

Another alternative is that I got a bad cable. Cables matter a lot for such things. While I didn’t skimp, I also apparently did not get a 4K HDMI. Now, the TV and computer are 1080, but it’s possible that you might want to overshoot on something like this?

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Speaking of which, I discovered PBSKids.org, which is pretty great with kids’ videos. It also has some Lain favorites, like a Curious George cartoon and Cat in the Hat cartoon. I have mixed feelings about the latter as it has Cat and Fish as friends (or sort) and Cat and kids (and fish) going on adventures together just doesn’t seem right to me.

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I’m presently working my way through Arrow and Flash, though that’s been stalled somewhat. Enjoying it greatly, though the melodrama of Arrow is sometimes grating.

I’m audioreading Isaac Asimov, which I’m enjoying. Though Matt Yglesias recently kickstarted a conversation about the French Reign of Terror, which turned me on to a bunch of podcasts I want to listen to. I wish that had happened before I jumped back in to Asimov.

Last week I listened to the TV show Revenge, to its conclusion. It was a worthy enough conclusion on a silly show. SPOILER: I’m struck that I cannot remember a case where a protagonist that I didn’t entirely expect to get a happy ending got a happy ending that by any objective assessment she completely did not deserve.

So my daughter has taken a bit to an Android game her pop likes to play

She has not memorized that particular level. She may have played it before, but this was something like the seventh consecutive level that she had solved. She was on a roll. Some of the ones she conquered were more difficult than this one. The biggest issue she has on some levels is simply coordination. On other levels, she doesn’t always understand that you can’t always go the quickest route (because you’ll be cutting off other sets), but she’s starting to self-correct on that with increasing frequency.

The goal, obviously enough, is to connect all of the dots to the dot of the same color. The other requirement is that all of the squares be filled. At the upper levels where it’s 11×11 or 14×14, that can be the really challenging part. At the lower levels, like this one at 5×5, it almost happens automatically. Whenever it doesn’t, though, Lain gets pretty confused because she thinks she has solved the game. She hands it to me and I tap the button to move it to the next level.

In addition to being able to solve a level, it was a big deal for her to be able to know where to click on the “You solved this level, do you want to move on to the next one?” button. This was a big deal for daddy, as it meant that I could give her the game and unless she got frustrated with it, she could keep herself entertained for a bit without my interventioned. Excepting when she would run into a frustrating level, or she didn’t fill all the squares.

Am I still in the United States? Am I still in 2015?

Notably, Blockbuster has been in the news lately as people have been reminded that they had the opportunity to buy Netflix for a song, but declined to do so. Not sure why thats been making the rounds now, as its been known since 2013.

Im biased of course, since I put Blockbuster in the same list as of Very Terrible Corporations, but its worth noting that if they had purchased Netflix, then Netflix might not have become Netflix as we know it. The same business acumen that lead them to take a pass on Netflix could have prevented Blockbuster from so fully embracing the whole “streaming” thing.

I was a member of Blockbusters mail service for about two days several years ago. It seemed like they were better than Netflix, but that turned out to only be because they hid from prospective buyers their anemic selection. They had an entry for every movie you can imagine, only to find out that most of the ones I wanted were “unavailable.”

Another interesting thing witnessed in Alaska. They have no compunction about having this car in the car rental lot:

If that isn’t an advertisement, I don’t know what is. Well done.

[Ed note, my apostrophe isnt working]

So this is pretty great:

It reminds me of some of the theories surrounding teleportation I bat around in my head. The only way I can imagine teleportation working is essentially a cut-and-paste job, in which case it seems likely to me that you are cloning yourself and killing yourself every time you use one. If we’re going with supernatural technology, it seems to me like portals are safer.

This video seems to be getting attention from cat people, but it’s the guitar at the end that just kills me.

It’s just like “OH! OUCH! Oh, and of course the guitar just has to join in…