Update: Or here if you prefer your monochrome reversed and less slangy.
September 9, 2008
September 8, 2008
Chasing Rabbits: U. S. Open
Our recent move has reunited us with our TV for the first time in a couple of years so I got to watch a little U. S. Open this weekend for the first time in quite a while. Saw some pretty good matches and was glad to see Federer back in good form but disappointed that there wasn't another epic rematch with Nadal in the finals, a la Wimbledon since I missed that one. A couple of thoughts:
3. They also streamed tonight's final online. Again, kudos on utilizing the technology - sports like tennis and golf in particular have nothing to lose and lots to gain from going online as often as possible and I hope we see more of it.
1. Nadal looked really tired during his match with Murray and it struck me that tennis seems to be one of the few sports where consistent success puts the top players at a distinct disadvantage. Unlike team sports you play matches only if you keep winning, obviously the more matches you play the better chance you have of winning and the greater your earnings, etc., but there is no set number of matches that everyone has to play. Thus, it seems that come the end of the season the physical wear and tear on the bodies of the top players can be much greater than that of the lower or mid range players by simple virtue of number of matches played. Obviously there is a correlation between greater physical ability and success so maybe it's a moot point, maybe you are a little more tired than the 131'st ranked player in the world you are playing in round one but your greater skill makes up for it (but it could account for at least part of why it isn't unheard of for that kind of upset to happen) however here are the year to date stats (matches won/lossed) on the last four men standing in this year's Open (who also happen to be the current top four players in the world, in c, a, d, b order):
d. Novak Djokovic - 49/12
Nadal played in 78 matches this year! What was he thinking - it's no wonder he ran out of steam against Murray - who played 40 fewer matches this year(!) and looked incredibly fresh the entire match against Nadal. I would wager that he drops at least two or three tournaments next year so that he is fresher for the U. S. Open. Are there other sports that have similar "handicaps" on consistent winning?
2. I really like the instant replay/challenge system. Like I said, we haven't had a TV for a while so this is the first tournament that I've seen since it was instituted in 2006. It's a great use of technology, has a very small footprint on the flow of the game (time players would have used arguing with officials is now used to actually reviewing them, and much quicker at that) and can really make a difference. There could have been a great case in point tonight during the Federer/Murray final when at a crucial point in the second set (I forget which game) Murray had two break point opportunities and Federer hit one long that would have given Murray the game and possibly put him in position for serving for the set, suddenly it's one set a piece and you're playing the best two out of three for the championship - the psychological lift alone might have been enough to keep Murray around a bit longer, although he was clearly outclassed tonight, as he fell apart mentally pretty early in the third set and it was over - however, Murray didn't challenge the shot. Chalk it up to inexperience, his first grand slam final, or maybe was just so into the game he didn't even see how close it came - it could have made a big difference.
During one of the matches this weekend one of the commentators mentioned that next year the women's tour will be allowing coaches to consult with players once per set - coaching of any sort, even from the stands, has long been against the rules in both the men's and women's game so it's a big shift. I'm not sure it will make much of a difference but someone like Murray, fairly inexperienced on the big stage, might have benefitted from a little calm down pep-talk midway through the second set. However, I do think it might be interesting if they gave coaches the ability to challenge one call per set, again something that would have benefitted someone like Murray tonight.
The U. S. Open has a great page up showing all kinds of data on the player challenges. Here's a tournament overview for singles play:
Men challenged almost twice as much as women and averaged more than two more challenges per match, but they also play a best 3 out of 5 as opposed to the women's best 2 out of 3 - it would be interesting to see averages per set maybe. Here's how the last four men's players break down - challenges/# overturned (won)/percentage:
d. Novak Djokovic - 10/3/30%
In addition to the data summary the U. S. Open site also has a page with links to video for every point that was challenged during singles tournament play. Kudos to the U. S. Open for a good use of technology all around.
3. They also streamed tonight's final online. Again, kudos on utilizing the technology - sports like tennis and golf in particular have nothing to lose and lots to gain from going online as often as possible and I hope we see more of it.
When It Hurts So Bad, Why's It Feel So Good?
One of the many things that has gotten set aside in the last few weeks amidst the business of moving to a new state and city was a post on Adrian Wood's piece in the Financial Times entitled, How Donors Should Cap Aid in Africa. Here's the gist:
Ministers from developed and developing countries are gathered this week in Accra, Ghana’s capital, for the latest high-level forum on aid effectiveness. Learning from past successes and failures, reformers are pressing for more ownership by developing countries of aid relationships, more predictability of aid flows and less fragment ation of aid delivery. This agenda is important. If implemented, these reforms would give the taxpayers of rich countries better value for money and increase the benefits of aid to people in poor ones. Aid cannot on its own cause development, but if properly delivered and well used it can be enormously beneficial.
However, one can have too much of a good thing. Some developing countries, most of them in Africa, have had high levels of aid dependence – in excess of 10 per cent of gross domestic product, or half of government spending – for decades. It is questionable whether this has been helpful.
There are various reasons to be concerned about high aid dependence, but the most worrying is the undermining of good governance by distortion of political accountability. Governments that are highly dependent on aid pay too much attention to donors and too little to their citizens. This might not matter if the interests of citizens and donors were identical. But all donors have some non-developmental motives and, even when they seek to promote development, they have their own priorities. The result is confused and shifting policies, volatile aid and spending and, as a result, slower growth.
I therefore propose that donors collectively set an upper limit on the amount of aid they give to any developing country. This limit should be 50 per cent of the amount of tax revenue that the aid-receiving government raises from its own citizens, by non-coercive means and excluding revenue from oil and minerals.
This would keep the governments of non-mineral countries dependent for revenue mainly on their citizens, and thus give them incentives to pay attention mainly to what citizens want, not donors. It would also encourage governments to raise more taxes from their citizens, since every extra dollar of tax raised would attract a matching increase of 50 cents of aid.
Thankfully, the folks at the Center for Global Development blog are keeping an eye on things and they have been following an apparently on-going email conversation concerning Wood's idea amongst a group of leading development minds and are posting excerpts along the way as well as offering their own good commentary - worth keeping an eye on. I especially appreciated this sentence and wish I heard it more often and from more directions:
PS - Title inspiration.
"What's needed is an approach to aid that helps, indeed forces donors, to shift accountability of recipient governments away from donors and back to citizens -- allowing for the feedback governments need from their own taxpayers."
September 7, 2008
September 6, 2008
The Economics of Beer: Still Recession Proof?
There are a few guilty pleasure blogs that I follow, and one of them is A Good Beer Blog who points to this interesting piece in the Washington Post - Cold Comfort in Hard Times:
More than 16 million barrels of domestic beer were sold in the United States in July, and annual sales through that month are up 1.4 percent, the largest increase since 1990, when the economy was headed toward a recession, according to the Beer Institute. (Yes, such a thing exists. It's a trade group.)
The uptick is significant for a mature industry with roughly $50 billion in annual sales, particularly as consumers reduce spending on other discretionary purchases, such as venti lattes and designer jeans. Trade groups for the liquor and wine industries report consumption of those beverages has also increased. But beer is America's most popular alcoholic beverage, claiming more than half the market, and the go-to drink during these times of economic distress.
"The beer industry and the alcohol industry seem to be fairly recession-resistant," said Nick Lake, vice president of beverage and alcohol at the Nielsen Co., a market research firm. "Why would you want to cut out beer? You don't want to punish yourself just because the economy's bad."
More interesting stuff follows but this was my favorite bit of reasoning:
"You can stay home and entertain and have a high-quality beer for a fraction of the price of going out with your friends," said Ben Sibley, manager of the company's store in Chantilly.
That's why Trevor Langrehr keeps a keg at home. Each keg usually lasts a few months, and his buddies can enjoy a fresh, ice cold beer when they visit his new house in Fredericktown, Va. He even converted an old fridge into a "kegerator."
On a recent afternoon, he returned an empty barrel of Dominion Lager to the Total Wine & More in Chantilly and picked out a keg of Sam Adams Oktoberfest for $149.99. His beer-buying habits haven't changed, though he cut his monthly gasoline bill from $500 to $250 by getting a Volkswagen that runs on diesel. If the economy got really bad, he knows he would have to cut back.
"I'd certainly chose food over beer," he said. "But I hope that never happens."
Links
1. Girl power at school, but not at the office. My wife actually noticed the opposite of this when moving from a west coast working environment to a southern academic setting.
2. With the conflict between Russia and Georgia, two nations with McDonald's outlets have finally gone to war with each other. I've always heard it referred to as the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention and of course Wikipedia has a roundup of other previous conflicts that may have already disproved the theory. (via Chris Blattman)
3. This is a clever idea but other than the morlocks who is this detached from what's going on above ground?
4. How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity - interesting read from the Harvard Business Review, here are their three operating principles, applicable I think to a number of sectors:
1. Everyone must have the freedom to communicate with anyone.
2. It must be safe for everyone to offer ideas.
3. We must stay close to innovations happening in the academic community.
5. Another guilty pleasure blog.
6. This is old but I had never seen it before:
Food chemists have shown that making a pizza crust with whole wheat flour and cooking it longer releases more antioxidants. These chronic disease-fighting compounds increased by 82 percent when baked at a higher temperature, by 60 percent when baked twice as long and doubled when the dough was left to rise an extra day.
7. What Saddleback's Pastor Really Thinks About Politics - I've been trying to give this piece in the WSJ its own post for over a week now and just haven't found the time, so I'm giving it up and burying it in the links, but you should really read it. It's the best thing I've read to date on what the Evangelical political landscape actually looks like as we approach November:
'Overhyped." That's how the Rev. Rick Warren describes the notion that the evangelical vote is "up for grabs" in this election. But what about the significance of the evangelical left, I asked the pastor of Saddleback Church after his forum with the presidential candidates last weekend. "This big," he says, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.
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