I've moved on

To Wordpress. My new blog is called Found Connections.

[this is a sample post for KnowBrainers.]

It's a classic sports trivia question: Name the sport in which the defense controls the ball.

The answer, of course, is baseball. But it's not the only answer--don't forget baseball's many relatives! It has ancestors (cricket and rounders), children (kickball and softball), and even foreign cousins (like the Finnish game pesapallo).

But it's baseball, not any of these other games, that is known as America's national pastime. Baseball is the game that has caused writers to wax poetic and that has driven statisticians wild. It is also the game that has given and continues to give us national celebrities, like this home run king, this legendary figure, and this great humanitarian.

Still, baseball is an old sport. Unlike basketball, baseball hasn't had any major rule changes in the last few decades; it is a sport of the past. Baseball doesn't get as many viewers per game as football does. And as Slate magazine points out, these days intellectuals are writing about soccer, not baseball. That leads into today's question:

Should baseball still be considered America's national sport? If so, why? If not, what sport would be a better choice?

[not sure whether I would put this question in the blog or just link to the question on KnowBrainers (which I haven't written, but would have if the blog was up and running).]

Edinburgh

A few photos from Edinburgh, which you can also view in an album here. I'm trying to ease back into updating this particular blog, so more in-depth descriptions of the trip and what else I've been up to may have to wait. Sorry!

Edinburgh is a medium-sized city, and four days was enough time, I think, to become pretty familiar with the major daytime attractions. It's not only surrounded by mountains (which, millions of years ago, were much higher), but built on hills. Parkland is plentiful both in and around the city:


That's Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park (which is next to the Pollock Halls).


The Salisbury Crags, also in Holyrood.


This is either from the Edinbugh Castle parking lot or the top of Caldon Hill, I forget.

So here are the people I met the last couple of days:


A sleepy Carmen. She looks strikingly similar to my friend Jolie - I suppose after you've met enough people everyone you meet looks close enough to someone you already know.


Tomi Swick, the man providing background music to everyone on the hostel ground floor.


Mrs. Jessie Whitwell zones out.

I did not, unfortunately, take any photos of Ron Lopata, who finished up that foursome. But you can go to that link and look if you so desire.

More photos at the facebook album linked above, including: more Caldon Hill photos and the gravestones of Adam Smith and Greyfriars Bobby.

sport in the UK

Sport here is as big as it is in the US, obviously. But it takes some time to get adjusted to new national sports. Obviously football (soccer) is huge here and we're right in the midst of the FA Cup. The other big sport right now is rugby; the Six Nations tournament just kicked off last weekend - England crushed the defending champion Wales 49-13, while Scotland upset France (which many had picked to win the whole thing) 20-16.

Both of these sports are pretty easy for me to follow, but I haven't yet grasped many of the more technical aspects of either, as I haven't done my research yet. Being intimately familiar with a sport requires you to understand every nook and cranny of the rules, as well as the teams and the business side of the sport. Right now it's rugby that I need to bone up on, as I haven't fully figured out when a ball is ruled dead.

ITV actually does carry American sports on occasion. It ran the Super Bowl last night (though instead of the American commercials that are as much a draw as the game, we were treated to the same two Coors and Reebok commercials and a smattering of British adverts that we'd all seen before), and I've even seen an NBA game (very late at night).

As I wrote in WSN last year, what the popular European sports have in common is constant motion - rugby for dummies is essentially football that never stops play (minus the forward pass). This necessitates that all players be well-rounded skill-wise, to a certain degree. It also explains - to my mind - why basketball is so popular on the continent but other American sports are not. Note that basketball is not popular here - though Dennis Rodman played a few games for a British Basketball League team and got some publicity (he was also on Celebrity Big Brother until recently).

But Britain is also crazy about less fluid sports. I'm not sure cricket is really all that popular, but snooker is surprisingly popular, and gets a television audience second only to football. I arrived just in time to watch John Higgins defeat Ronnie O'Sullivan in the final of the Masters (which is the UK championship). Snooker, so far, is the only sport I've taken the time to really learn; unfortunately I grasped the subtleties of it just in time for snooker to drop off the air (I'm sure it'll be back on once it's time for the world championship.

Football hooliganism is apparently not the problem it used to be, and stadium operators have pulled all kinds of measures to try and tone it down, from cutting sales of alcohol, to having police escort away fans from the stadium only after home fans have left (this is much more of an issue in international matches). Spectators are required to stay in seats (as opposed to gathering in terraces where they can lead the section in cheers, etc.), and glass bottles are prohibited though there are now problems with people throwing coins and even (in the Mediterranean leagues, it seems) FLARES onto the field. It'll be interesting to see what happens when I go and see Fulham take on West Brom this weekend.

a few comments on the media

From Monday's Guardian:

I am not a qualified doctor, never having had the Latin, but I have reached the age when a man needs to pay particular attention to his prostate and, having read somewhere that masturbation and cherry tomatoes can confer immense benefits in that area, I decided to give them a whirl. Not simultaneously, obviously. Those tomato seeds can make a heck of a mess on your jim-jams.

That's the beginning of sport columnist Martin Kelner's most recent article, which is really more about food than any sort of sport.

Since I arrived about a week ago, I have regularly perused both the Guardian and the Sun, which are roughly equivalent to the New York Times and the New York Post, respectively (the Sun, as you probably know, has some obvious parallels to the Post that I'll go into later). What immediately sticks out, at least in British sport journalism, is that there is none of the pretense of objectivity which is still largely demanded in American sports journalism.

Attitudes towards sex are also much more relaxed, as seen in the column cited above and (of course) in the topless women which grace the Sun every day on page 3. The Guardian also prints comics that would never make it past the editorial boards at the New York Times; I was shocked and gratified to learn that the Guardian (or G2, a section which appears within, to be more exact) prints one of my favorite webcomics, the Perry Bible Fellowship.

Reading the Sun gives one an entirely new understanding of the New York Post; the papers are very similar in their pun-filled headlines, shock-laden stories, concern with celebrity, and conservative politics (the two are also both owned by News Corporation). The Sun does not have the stable of conservative opinion writers that the Post does, but liberally sprinkles terms like "evil," "devil girl," and "pussy prat" in its news copy (referring to gang members in the first two instances and MP and former Big Brother contestant George Galloway in the last). When I think of the Post in terms of the Sun, it suddenly stops being so mystifying and so journalistically wrong - rather, I realize that it views its journalistic mission very differently than most American papers do.

The British sandwich culture

One thing that I have immensely enjoyed in British culture is the multitude of sandwiches which are available. As you all likely know, the sandwich is a British invention. There is a great variety of sandwiches in the States and I would be hard-pressed to say that the British range of sandwiches is greater than the American. However, there are a number of British sandwiches which do not exist in America. Already I have had sandwiches of salmon, prawn and mayonnaise, pork sausage and brown sauce (gravy), egg salad and bacon, and cucumber and cream cheese. If possible, I'd next like to try chicken and sweet corn. These sandwiches are readily available from grocery stores, the ubiquitous Pret a Manger chain cafes, and some other places. The variety of bread seems to be not as great as it is in America (in most grocery stores you can only buy white, wheat, or naan), but the range of fillings is impressive. I'm likely to become familiar with sandwiches as eating out is quite expensive here.

There's a lot going on in the White House, that's for sure. I won't go over the withdrawal of the Miers nomination or the indictment of Mr. Libby. It just seems to me that after Bob Taft, Tom DeLay and Judy Miller, after paying members of the media to push education policy and producing "news segments," everything the Bush administration has pulled and gotten away with has finally caught up with them.

There was once a time, not very long ago, that the Bush administration was defined by its values. Support and opposition to the GOP was cast in moral terms. You liked or hated those in power because of their opposition to reproductive rights, support of unilateral action, and willingness to mix church and state.

Now, however, corruption and political machinations have leapt out of the basement. DeLay would have been forgiven, I think. Taft was just some novice governor. But the leak, though it was seemingly nothing but politics as usual for this administration, is the last straw.

The runup to the 2006 elections are going to be very interesting.