The baseball season is still new. Let's say who is who on our favorite team.
Active Roster
Pitchers B/T Ht Wt DOB
19 Josh Beckett R/R 6-5 220 05/15/80
17 Manny Delcarmen R/R 6-2 205 02/16/82
62 Hunter Jones L/L 6-4 235 01/10/84
31 Jon Lester L/L 6-2 190 01/07/84
48 Javier Lopez L/L 6-4 220 07/11/77
63 Justin Masterson R/R 6-6 250 03/22/85
37 Hideki Okajima L/L 6-1 195 12/25/75
58 Jonathan Papelbon R/R 6-4 225 11/23/80
36 Brad Penny R/R 6-4 230 05/24/78
56 Ramon Ramirez R/R 5-11 190 08/31/81
24 Takashi Saito L/R 6-2 215 02/14/70
49 Tim Wakefield R/R 6-2 210 08/02/66
Catchers B/T Ht Wt DOB
16 George Kottaras L/R 6-0 185 05/10/83
33 Jason Varitek S/R 6-2 230 04/11/72
Infielders B/T Ht Wt DOB
22 Nick Green R/R 6-0 180 09/10/78
25 Mike Lowell R/R 6-3 210 02/24/74
15 Dustin Pedroia R/R 5-9 180 08/17/83
51 Gil Velazquez R/R 6-3 190 10/17/79
20 Kevin Youkilis R/R 6-1 220 03/15/79
Outfielders B/T Ht Wt DOB
55 Jeff Bailey R/R 6-2 200 11/19/78
44 Jason Bay R/R 6-2 205 09/20/78
54 Chris Carter L/L 6-0 230 09/16/82
7 J.D. Drew L/R 6-1 200 11/20/75
46 Jacoby Ellsbury L/L 6-1 185 09/11/83
Designated Hitters B/T Ht Wt DOB
34 David Ortiz L/L 6-4 230 11/18/75
24 April 2009
23 April 2009
Ben Stein Watch: Missing the Point
The inaugural edition of the Chris Faille incarnation of BSW will take a look at this.
As you can see via that link, Ben told his reader in late March that Jim Cramer "appeared earlier this month on 'The Daily Show,' where Mr. Stewart yelled and cursed at him, saying he did not let Americans know just how serious the problems were on Wall Street."
Sorry, Ben, I don't know that. I do know that Cramer appeared on The Daily Show, but it am quite certain that to say that the host, Jon Stewart, "yelled and cursed at him," is an inept summary of the proceedings.
There was one lapse into profanity on Stewart's part, when he said "I understand that you are trying to make finance entertaining, but this is not a f***ing game."
The bleeped adjective there was used not to curse at Cramer, but to modify "game," as in "Wall Street fun and games," or to conjure up an image of Nero fiddling while Rome burns, and to express exasperation. My recall is that Stewart was rather affable, although in a somewhat gnomic fashion. Gee, how could we settle this difference in recall? With clips, perhaps?
Anyway, Ben goes on in the above column to explain that Stewart was angry at Cramer for getting predictions long. Stewart was naive about this because, Ben patiently explains, there is nobody who knows how to make reliable predictions.
There, too, Ben misses the point. By a mile. Actually, Stewart was making two good points and neither of them was simply that Cramer got some calls wrong.
Stewart's points were:
1) "Isn't there a problem selling snake oil as if its vitamin tonic?"
2) There's a difference between predicting how markets will come out -- accurately or not -- on the one hand and manipulating them on the other.
He played clips of a video Cramer made for a website called TheStreet.com, in which Cramer seemed to be bragging about having successfully manipulated prices back when he was running a hedge fund.
That's in the second of the three segments in the site to which I've linked you above.
The bottom line, though, for this edition of BSW: did Ben even watch the same show everyone else was watching?
As you can see via that link, Ben told his reader in late March that Jim Cramer "appeared earlier this month on 'The Daily Show,' where Mr. Stewart yelled and cursed at him, saying he did not let Americans know just how serious the problems were on Wall Street."
Sorry, Ben, I don't know that. I do know that Cramer appeared on The Daily Show, but it am quite certain that to say that the host, Jon Stewart, "yelled and cursed at him," is an inept summary of the proceedings.
There was one lapse into profanity on Stewart's part, when he said "I understand that you are trying to make finance entertaining, but this is not a f***ing game."
The bleeped adjective there was used not to curse at Cramer, but to modify "game," as in "Wall Street fun and games," or to conjure up an image of Nero fiddling while Rome burns, and to express exasperation. My recall is that Stewart was rather affable, although in a somewhat gnomic fashion. Gee, how could we settle this difference in recall? With clips, perhaps?
Anyway, Ben goes on in the above column to explain that Stewart was angry at Cramer for getting predictions long. Stewart was naive about this because, Ben patiently explains, there is nobody who knows how to make reliable predictions.
There, too, Ben misses the point. By a mile. Actually, Stewart was making two good points and neither of them was simply that Cramer got some calls wrong.
Stewart's points were:
1) "Isn't there a problem selling snake oil as if its vitamin tonic?"
2) There's a difference between predicting how markets will come out -- accurately or not -- on the one hand and manipulating them on the other.
He played clips of a video Cramer made for a website called TheStreet.com, in which Cramer seemed to be bragging about having successfully manipulated prices back when he was running a hedge fund.
That's in the second of the three segments in the site to which I've linked you above.
The bottom line, though, for this edition of BSW: did Ben even watch the same show everyone else was watching?
19 April 2009
Happy Easter to the Orthodox
Why do the Easters of the Eastern and of the Western Christian traditions differ?
Some years (such as in 2007) they coincide. That year, Easter was April 8, east or West. But that only makes the usual disparity more maddening.
The World Council of Churches takes the matter very seriously. "It has long been recognized that to celebrate this fundamental aspect of the Christian faith on different dates," the WCC Has said, "gives a divided witness and compromises the churches' credibility and effectiveness in bringing the Gospel to the world."
The formula applied in both traditions in the same. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
But for the Orthodox the term "full moon" means the actual astronomical full moon. For the western churches, that of Rome and its offspring alike, the full moon involved is the "ecclesiastical" full moon, based on tables created by the Church.
There is also a difference over the precise meaning of the term "equinox." There is also the relationship of Easter with the Jewish Passover to consider in a full account. It all gets very confusing.
Happy Easter, though, for all who are celebrating today.
Some years (such as in 2007) they coincide. That year, Easter was April 8, east or West. But that only makes the usual disparity more maddening.
The World Council of Churches takes the matter very seriously. "It has long been recognized that to celebrate this fundamental aspect of the Christian faith on different dates," the WCC Has said, "gives a divided witness and compromises the churches' credibility and effectiveness in bringing the Gospel to the world."
The formula applied in both traditions in the same. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
But for the Orthodox the term "full moon" means the actual astronomical full moon. For the western churches, that of Rome and its offspring alike, the full moon involved is the "ecclesiastical" full moon, based on tables created by the Church.
There is also a difference over the precise meaning of the term "equinox." There is also the relationship of Easter with the Jewish Passover to consider in a full account. It all gets very confusing.
Happy Easter, though, for all who are celebrating today.
18 April 2009
Incoherent Strategy
The economic strategy of the Obama team is fundamentally incoherent. Yes, the team hasn't been in place long -- parts of it are not in place even yet. But we know enough already to know that there are real problems with some of its pillars.
I was no fan of the previous administration, you should recall. I don't regret the change. But how much mileage are they supposed to get out of that? I have to call things as I see them.
What does the Obama crowd think the banks are supposed to do with the TARP money, for example? It has re-affirmed the essence of the TARP strategy decreed by the Bushies. But ... what is the point? Should the banks keep their new cash on the balance sheets to build up capital reserves so they will be and remain fundamentall sound? or at least so they'll look sound? Or should they lend it out, thereby emphatically NOT building up reserves and taking further risks?
A key Congressional ally of the administration is Congressman Gary Peters of Michigan. Speaking recently of his expectation that the banks will and SHOULD take a bullet for the protection of the auto industry, he said: “We hope they [the bankers] will understand that what was given to them was not for their benefit, but to get the economy moving again and maintain American jobs.”
Well, that’s the problem. First, what was given them was in the crudest individualistic sense precisely “for their benefit.” The bankers kept their jobs, and thanks to Chris Dodd, who says he was working on behest of the admninistration in this bit of draftsmanship, they also kept their bonuses.
Second, what was given them was also supposed to be for their benefit in a less crude, more institutional, sense too. Those balance sheets. Making the toxic assets (um, legacy assets? or whatever the latest buzzword is?) less toxic.
A separate set of measures, the “stimulus” stuff, is supposed to be doing the separate job of “getting the economy moving again.” Or is it? This administration has no clue.
The interaction of PPIP with the mark-to-market changes gives us another form of the same logical incoherence.
Under a good deal of pressure from the administration and its friends on Capitol Hill, the FASB gave in on mark-to-market, allowing for certain assets to be kept on the bank’s books at higher nominal value than previously. Not unsurprisingly, this has reduced the incentives of the same banks to sell those assets to the public-private hedge funds the administration is trying to create.
Hold them or fold them? You can demand of a card player that he do one or the other. But you can’t coherently demand that he do both at the same time.
I was no fan of the previous administration, you should recall. I don't regret the change. But how much mileage are they supposed to get out of that? I have to call things as I see them.
What does the Obama crowd think the banks are supposed to do with the TARP money, for example? It has re-affirmed the essence of the TARP strategy decreed by the Bushies. But ... what is the point? Should the banks keep their new cash on the balance sheets to build up capital reserves so they will be and remain fundamentall sound? or at least so they'll look sound? Or should they lend it out, thereby emphatically NOT building up reserves and taking further risks?
A key Congressional ally of the administration is Congressman Gary Peters of Michigan. Speaking recently of his expectation that the banks will and SHOULD take a bullet for the protection of the auto industry, he said: “We hope they [the bankers] will understand that what was given to them was not for their benefit, but to get the economy moving again and maintain American jobs.”
Well, that’s the problem. First, what was given them was in the crudest individualistic sense precisely “for their benefit.” The bankers kept their jobs, and thanks to Chris Dodd, who says he was working on behest of the admninistration in this bit of draftsmanship, they also kept their bonuses.
Second, what was given them was also supposed to be for their benefit in a less crude, more institutional, sense too. Those balance sheets. Making the toxic assets (um, legacy assets? or whatever the latest buzzword is?) less toxic.
A separate set of measures, the “stimulus” stuff, is supposed to be doing the separate job of “getting the economy moving again.” Or is it? This administration has no clue.
The interaction of PPIP with the mark-to-market changes gives us another form of the same logical incoherence.
Under a good deal of pressure from the administration and its friends on Capitol Hill, the FASB gave in on mark-to-market, allowing for certain assets to be kept on the bank’s books at higher nominal value than previously. Not unsurprisingly, this has reduced the incentives of the same banks to sell those assets to the public-private hedge funds the administration is trying to create.
Hold them or fold them? You can demand of a card player that he do one or the other. But you can’t coherently demand that he do both at the same time.
17 April 2009
The Pirate Bay founders jailed
A court in Sweden has sentenced four men to a year in jail for copyright infringement.
The men (Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde) were also ordered to pay US$4.5 million in damages. The money is to go to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Brothers, Sony Music, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.
The four convicts are behind a popular file-sharing site: The Pirate Bay. Here's a five-minute YouTube video of the bust, Swedish police raiding the ISP host for the service.
The head of the Internatioonal Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) told the BBC: "There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that."
The case reminds me of the heady days of the 1990s when the mantra "information wants to be free" was on so many lips and copyright laws were seen as vestiges of a passing era. The sad fact is that "information" itself, as an abstraction, has no actual wants, and copyright law, as these four men have discovered, has some relevance left in it.
The men (Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde) were also ordered to pay US$4.5 million in damages. The money is to go to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Brothers, Sony Music, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.
The four convicts are behind a popular file-sharing site: The Pirate Bay. Here's a five-minute YouTube video of the bust, Swedish police raiding the ISP host for the service.
The head of the Internatioonal Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) told the BBC: "There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that."
The case reminds me of the heady days of the 1990s when the mantra "information wants to be free" was on so many lips and copyright laws were seen as vestiges of a passing era. The sad fact is that "information" itself, as an abstraction, has no actual wants, and copyright law, as these four men have discovered, has some relevance left in it.
16 April 2009
The New Ben Stein Watch
Felix Salmon has for a year and a half in his Portfolio blog performed the great public service of keeping track of the spiral of nonsense emanating from the word processor of Ben Stein, the guy who has carved out a niche in life as something between a pundit and a Hollywood extra.
I've followed and learned from Salmon's BSW, and my own readers have, I think received some benefit.
Here's an example of something I wrote on Stein in my other blog, Proxy Partisans, back in November.
The Economics Junkie has also done good work in keeping track of Steinian absurdities.
And here is an example of one of my contributions to this particular genre of literaure within the four corners of Pragmatism Refreshed.
Anyway, the reason for the whole revival is that Salmon has decided to abandon the BSW. Stein's column's are no longer amusingly bad or infuriating to Salmon -- they are "somewhere between boring and incomprehensible."
That's his call to make of course, but the disappearance of BSW strikes me as sad. So I hereby volunteer to "take over the franchise," as Salmon's April 12th entry suggested that some one might. I think of it more as grasping the baton.
For future BSW fixes, come to Pragmatism Refreshed.
This decision leaves us with the question of timing. Stein has his "Everybody's Business" column in he New York Times of course, and Salmon's BSW was conceived mostly as a same-day response to that. He also has an advice column with yahoo, in which he says unhelpful things like this (from his latest): "The economic future has become extremely cloudy, albeit with hints of sun. The government is doing what it can -- this is sometimes helpful, sometimes not. Your primary reliance, however, must be on yourself."
And of course no one can schedule when he'll come out with another pseudo-documentary or eyewash commercial.
My own schedule won't be tied to his in any event. I anticipate this blog's BSW as an every Thursday event. Or most Thursdays (I don't promise fanaticism.) So if that suits you ... we'll meet here next week.
I've followed and learned from Salmon's BSW, and my own readers have, I think received some benefit.
Here's an example of something I wrote on Stein in my other blog, Proxy Partisans, back in November.
The Economics Junkie has also done good work in keeping track of Steinian absurdities.
And here is an example of one of my contributions to this particular genre of literaure within the four corners of Pragmatism Refreshed.
Anyway, the reason for the whole revival is that Salmon has decided to abandon the BSW. Stein's column's are no longer amusingly bad or infuriating to Salmon -- they are "somewhere between boring and incomprehensible."
That's his call to make of course, but the disappearance of BSW strikes me as sad. So I hereby volunteer to "take over the franchise," as Salmon's April 12th entry suggested that some one might. I think of it more as grasping the baton.
For future BSW fixes, come to Pragmatism Refreshed.
This decision leaves us with the question of timing. Stein has his "Everybody's Business" column in he New York Times of course, and Salmon's BSW was conceived mostly as a same-day response to that. He also has an advice column with yahoo, in which he says unhelpful things like this (from his latest): "The economic future has become extremely cloudy, albeit with hints of sun. The government is doing what it can -- this is sometimes helpful, sometimes not. Your primary reliance, however, must be on yourself."
And of course no one can schedule when he'll come out with another pseudo-documentary or eyewash commercial.
My own schedule won't be tied to his in any event. I anticipate this blog's BSW as an every Thursday event. Or most Thursdays (I don't promise fanaticism.) So if that suits you ... we'll meet here next week.
12 April 2009
As with Christmas, so with Easter
I have made it one of the traditions of this blog to quote Milton's verse, from the Nativity Ode, every Christmas Day.
I won't do likewise for Easter, but just this once I will look at this sacred day, through majestic 17th century verse, this time from Milton's
Paradise Regained.
From the title alone (and from the fact that it is a sequel of sorts to Paradise Lost) some one who hadn't read it might guess that the poem Paradise Regained would be set amidst the events of Easter week, when according to Christian faith the possibility of salvation was truly regained for the human species.
But no ... though philosophically that is exactly what Milton's PR is about, that is not the dramatic setting. The events of the poem take place during Jesus' sojourn in the desert, (Luke, chapter 4) with Milton giving us his own distinctive take on the temptations of the devil, and Jesus' majestic "Get thee behind me."
And I think on this week's end of the choir of angels who in Milton's telling appear and praise Jesus after his triumph over Satan's temptations, thus:
For, though that seat of earthly bliss be failed,
A fairer Paradise is founded now
For Adam and his chosen sons, whom thou,
A Saviour, art come down to reinstall;
Where they shall dwell secure, when time shall be,
Of tempter and temptation without fear.
But thou, Infernal Serpent! shalt not long
Rule in the clouds. Like an autumnal star,
Or lightning, thou shalt fall from Heaven, trod down
Under his feet.
PARADISE REGAINED, Book IV, lines 612-621.
I won't do likewise for Easter, but just this once I will look at this sacred day, through majestic 17th century verse, this time from Milton's
Paradise Regained.
From the title alone (and from the fact that it is a sequel of sorts to Paradise Lost) some one who hadn't read it might guess that the poem Paradise Regained would be set amidst the events of Easter week, when according to Christian faith the possibility of salvation was truly regained for the human species.
But no ... though philosophically that is exactly what Milton's PR is about, that is not the dramatic setting. The events of the poem take place during Jesus' sojourn in the desert, (Luke, chapter 4) with Milton giving us his own distinctive take on the temptations of the devil, and Jesus' majestic "Get thee behind me."
And I think on this week's end of the choir of angels who in Milton's telling appear and praise Jesus after his triumph over Satan's temptations, thus:
For, though that seat of earthly bliss be failed,
A fairer Paradise is founded now
For Adam and his chosen sons, whom thou,
A Saviour, art come down to reinstall;
Where they shall dwell secure, when time shall be,
Of tempter and temptation without fear.
But thou, Infernal Serpent! shalt not long
Rule in the clouds. Like an autumnal star,
Or lightning, thou shalt fall from Heaven, trod down
Under his feet.
PARADISE REGAINED, Book IV, lines 612-621.
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