Realm of the Wombat

Approximately. That’s about the amount of time it’s going to take for me to recover from this season. I will be paying only cursory attention to the playoffs, except to curse whenever the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Cubs, Phillies, or Indians win.

I’m going to anticipate some questions here.

“What happened [to the Mets]?”

Most of the Mets pitchers rely on good defense behind them. In the last couple weeks, that defense was not as crisp, which led to extra outs for the opposition. Furthermore, the pitching staff was patched together from the beginning of the season. The bullpen was heavily used throughout the season, and ultimately the overwork cost them runs at the worst time. On the offensive side, Jose Reyes stopped hitting, Paul Lo Duca couldn’t match last year’s performance, and the mix of players in right field was average at best. No matter how good David Wright and Carlos Beltran were, they couldn’t make up for all of the other outs in the lineup.

“So are you going to root for the Cubs now?!”

No. The Cubs are a trendy thing to do, and if there’s anything I revolt against, it’s the trendy. Let me add that they won 85 games in one of the worst divisions I can remember. Applying the St. Louis theory of prediction, they will win the World Series.

“Are you going to root for the Red Sox against the Yankees?”

I will root for Curt Schilling to break his arm throwing a pitch, which will miraculously send the ball into Derek Jeter’s face. The Red Sox are just as evil as the Yankees, and their fans deserve another 80+ years of disappointment.

“Is there anyone you don’t hate in the playoffs?”

San Diego is pretty innocuous. I would find it hilarious if Michael Barrett, formerly of the Cubs, does something good against his former team. Unfortunately, Milton Bradley got hurt, and he was probably my favorite player on a playoff bound team.

[UPDATE]
Since the Rockies beat the Padres in their one-game playoff on Monday, the Padres are out, and the Rockies are in. As such, they take the crown of “Least Offensive Team in the Playoffs.” Most of their players are home grown, and they exist far enough away from me that their fans can’t annoy me.
[/UPDATE]

“But won’t you watch the games just because you’re a baseball fan?”

These games will be broadcast on Fox, who finds it their mission to make baseball unwatchable. The only way they could make it worse would be to hire Joe Morgan as a special correspondent.

“Who should be the NL MVP this year?”

Thanks to the team’s late season collapse, he won’t get the award, but here’s David Wright’s line for the year:
.325 AVG / .417 OBP / .548 SLG / 153 OPS+ / 34 SB at 87% success
Remember that the Mets play half their games in Shea, which has a run environment 96% of the league average (compare to Citizens Bank Park at 109%). So that’s my biased pick. But I won’t feel much better if Wright wins it, and I doubt he’ll feel much better about the season either.

People have been telling me I need cable. When I ask why, I get two responses:

1) The Daily Show and Colbert Report
2) ESPN

With regards to point 1, Comedy Central puts the entire episodes of Stewart and Colbert online in clip format, so you don’t even have to watch commercials.

With regards to point 2, what exactly am I missing without ESPN? Sportscenter and Baseball Tonight are unwatchable. ESPN shows very few actual sporting events these days, and people employed to describe the action are unbearable. Joe Morgan, the network’s top baseball analyst, has inspired an entire website devoted to pointing out how little he knows about baseball. ESPN does show a good number of college football games, but you might hear something like this in a game in overtime. Is that really worth the $50 per month?

New York     83 67 .553 -
Philadelphia 82 69 .543 1.5

For those of you who like graphical representations, see the Hardball Times.

Of course, the Tigers and Cardinals backed into the playoffs last year and ended up playing each other in the World Series, so who knows.

Even before moving here, I learned that Chicago has a very poor reputation when it comes to recycling. The program for recycling household items is to put your recyclables in a designated blue bag, and then throw it away with the rest of the trash. The blue bags are supposed to be separated from the rest of the waste and sent to recycling centers. Not surprisingly, many of the blue bags never make it out of the trash and get sent to the landfill. However, some districts (including ours) recently replaced the blue bag program with the blue cart program. We now have a separate blue trash container along side our regular trash cans in the alley. Items in the blue carts will be collected by trucks separately from the trash. Score one for common sense.

The city is also trying to make progress in collecting recyclables in public spaces, e.g. the lakefront parks. They have put out blue carts similar to the ones for residential collection. Lots of them. In fact, there are more recycling containers than regular trash containers. In a perfect world, this might be the correct course of action. But at this point, it’s a mistake. Chicagoans are so recycling ignorant that they will use the closest trash-can looking thing for recyclables and non-recyclables alike. I’m sure that when these things get filled up, the sanitation department will see the amount of non-recyclables inside and send all of the contents to the landfill. Instead of placing the blue carts so haphazardly, they should be placed right next to a regular trash can. Then, when someone goes to throw something away, they’ll see the two options and hopefully dispose of the item in the correct container. I’m glad the city is making an effort to push recycling, but right now it’s mostly show over substance.

I firmly believe in a culture of fear. So when you get done taking your shoes off and throwing your shampoo away at the airport to protect yourself from terrorists, here are some things for you to worry about.

5) Zombie Outbreak
4) Babies
3) Robot Criminals
2) Science
1) Fred Rogers

This morning I was on pace for my best time riding down to work, conservatively estimated at 1:15, an 8 minute improvement from last week. Then I realized, for the second time in three rides, my front tire was flat. If I thought seeing this Berkeley car on my first ride was a sign that cycling to work was divinely appreciated, I’m not sure what to make of these mechanical failures.

This post is an example of a ‘jeremiad.’

Shown below is a vote set up to decide what carpeting should be installed in the student center. Maybe the Iraqis should take notes here. First decide on floor coverings, and then work on government officials.

I recently consumed a Nestle Crunch bar and found the message above inside the wrapper. As you may or may not know, I like winning things, so this made me happy. But see all that fine print there? What that says is that to get a coupon for a free Crunch bar, I have to send in the wrapper for “verification.” Apparently, some group of counterfeiters has decided to focus on candy bar contests instead of dollar bills or something. So in order to get a free Crunch bar, value approximately 60 cents, I have to spend 39 cents on a stamp and wait 6 to 8 weeks for processing. Is it safe to say that the terrorists have won?

I later noticed that the contest was over before I opened the wrapper in the first place.

I’m not sure how the maker’s of the Rubik’s Cube expect the general public to solve their puzzle, because they don’t believe you plebeians can even understand large numbers. According to the Wikipedia entry:

A Normal (3×3×3) Rubik’s Cube can have (8! × 3⁸⁻¹) × (12! × 2¹²⁻¹)/2 = 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 different positions (permutations), or about 4.3 × 10¹⁹, forty-three quintillion, but the puzzle is advertised as having only “billions” of positions, due to the general incomprehensibility of such a large number to laymen.

Continuing what Odie and I started yesterday by email…

#1: In ‘N Out Burger
#2: Burritos
#3: Oakland Athletics
#4: Smoke free bars
#5: Public transit running on time
#6: Amoeba Music
#7: Copious food options close to work
#8: The temperature on February 3: 68 F
#9: 3 hours to Tahoe
#10: Mass at Newman
#11: The Box
#12: Calzones from Trader Joe’s
#13: The Bay Trail
#14: Crazy art at Albany Waterfront Park
#15: Eucalyptus grove
#16: Happy Happy Guy
#17: KQED
#18: Columns with frits
#19: Recycling
#20: 2 hours to Monterrey
#21: The Golden Gate
#22: No salt on my car
#23: Pet Food Express
#24: Saturday Mets games starting at 10 am
#25: Berkeley cars

This has been a banner day for songs stuck in my head. First it was Ricky Martin. Then the theme song from “Charles in Charge,” followed by the Macarena. Finally, the Spice Girls. If there’s an area of research that I want funded in this country, it’s to find the part of the brain responsible for having a song stuck in it, and develop a procedure which disables it without harming the rest of the brain. Now that’s something we should spend our tax dollars on. Seriously, I wonder how much productivity is lost by people distracting others by singing or humming these horribly catchy songs.

I went to Berkeley this past week to file my thesis. I made my final corrections, collected my signatures, and headed off to the graduate division.

I was so happy, I think I was skipping across campus.

But when I met with the person in charge, it became clear that there was a problem with the title page.

I got my name wrong.

It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. I included my middle name, which was not on file with the registrar. This left me with two options: (1) reprint the title pages and collect a new round of signatures or (2) change my name with the registrar. I probably could have pulled off option 1 with some quick feet, but with the end of the semester fast approaching, I really didn’t want to take the chance. Thankfully, my new Illinois license has my full middle name, so the second option became viable. The registrar was able to do this, but the system didn’t update in time for me to file the thesis myself. Good thing I have some mighty trustworthy labmates to sort this out on Monday.

And then I’ll be a doctor.