My blog has moved.
I wanted to let people know I’ve decided to move my blog over to Posterous. You can find it here.
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Switching My Blog
And The Boys… - Angus & Julia Stone (3:10)
This is the first song that came in when I logged into thesixtyone.com. I really just wanted to test sharing it. But I’ll tell you what this song is pretty decent. Also, if you haven’t been to thesixtyone.com you should give it a look. Very cool and simple design.
With Italy not making the next round of the world cup are we seeing the effect of the increased shortage of young people in Europe trickle through to sports? The talent pool is getting smaller?
I don’t think that’s what we are seeing. Many of the other European teams have great young players on them. For example Germany is led by Ozil, Mueller and Podolski. The first two are under 20 and Podolski isn’t too far over. I think what we are really seeing is that soccer is a young persons game. Italy came into this tournament with a team that was just four years older than the one that won the last World Cup. Which just isn’t ever going to be good enough, especially when your team was kind of old to start.
Or maybe we’re just seeing that Italy is struggling to develop new dependable talent, which I’m sure that low birth rate isn’t helping.
Team USA - college vs team academies? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704853404575322981351454858.html?KEYWORDS=The+Old+College+Try
This has been one of the big questions about US Soccer for awhile now. I think that article brings up some good points and questions. But what is really interesting is they said that in England if you aren’t starting by 22, you should quit. Because of the way development occurs in other countries players are better at younger ages. I think the majority of the top 10 players in the world are all under 24.
In countries with professional youth systems, players are more freely allowed to play up at higher levels (age means nothing, only your ability) so that they can continue there development at a very quick rate. Like the example of Rooney, he was just good enough at 16 to play in the EPL and that forced him to become better and develop faster. If your not training with players who are better than you, it’s far more difficult to improve.
I understand that it’s a cool statistic that so many of the US players went to college, but why then is the best hope for the future of the team 19 year old Josie Altidore, whose dramatically improved over the last two years he’s been playing in Europe.
And if soccer’s not your thing, try thinking about putting the NBA and AAU basketball in place of the European youth development ideas. Maybe Lebron James would be even better if we let him play 10 minutes a game when he was 16.
I don’t know what it was, but I really enjoyed this karaoke performance of Midnight Train to Georgia on episode 9 of this season of House. Maybe the combination of Chase singing lead, the backup moves from Foreman and House, and of course it being an awesome song made it just to good. Enjoy!
Interesting article about a South Carolina Democratic Primary for Senate. This sums up the article:
Greene’s fairy-tale mystery victory is one of the most joyfully refreshing developments in modern politics, because it subversively suggests that everything we think we know about campaigns, elections, and democracy itself might be completely wrong. The voters may ignore almost everything we have been conditioned to consider important metrics in modern campaigning. Greene managed a runaway victory without television or radio advertising, a website, voter contact lists, any identified campaign staff, any yard signs, any bumper stickers, any get-out-the-vote operations — hell, as far as anyone can tell, Greene has no discernable positions or platform! He’s got . . . a name, and a check for the filing fee.
And as you can tell it’s fairly humorously written. This paragraph is probably my favorite bit:
Jensen observed, “When we polled the South Carolina Senate race two weeks before the primary Rawl had only 4 percent favorable name recognition with Democrats in the state. We could make up just about any name and ask their favorability on a poll and get 4 percent, so that more or less amounts to zero name recognition. In a contest where both candidates have no name recognition somebody’s going to win and people’s votes are going to be based on pretty random, nonintellectual judgments.”
World Cup - are Americans showing more interest in world soccer? Is US football still King?
I think more Americans are showing an interest in soccer, and at least the World Cup. But it is still one of those sports that many don’t understand and can’t see how a 1-0 game can still be a great game to watch. We’ll see what interest is like after the US vs. England game on Saturday. Especially if the US wins.
And yes, US football is still King. It’s been the King over all American professional sports since they got a national TV contract. I can’t even think of what would have to happen for US football to lose that.
I always say that without physics, there’s no drama. Because there are rules. I think scientists don’t always understand that in a science fiction context the rules may not be the rules of our world, but there are still rules.
– Sean Carrol from this Wired article about LostAbout Me
I'm an engineer, that means I solve problems. Not problems like what is beauty, because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy.
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