We’re watching SportsCenter when a picture of Jerry Kill, coach of the Minnesota Golden Gophers football team, comes on the screen, accompanied by the unfortunate news that Kill suffered a seizure following the team’s 21-13 loss to Northwestern. “He’s still alive?” my son asks. “He didn’t die?” “He had a seizure,” I say. “So he’s still alive, right?” “Yeah.” “In that case, I’m going to go ahead and say that he looks like a gopher.” Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Pug Walker
Aside
Joshua Kerievsky: Stop Using Story Points
Lodi
We stopped for gas in Lodi a couple of days ago on the way back from Berkeley and I can’t get the damn song out of my head . . . If I only had a dollar for every song I’ve sung For every tiiiime I had to plaaaay while people sat there drunk . . . Read more →
Card Stunts
We’re in Berkeley for Parents Weekend, watching Cal and UCLA battle it out on the gridiron. One of the halftime highlights at Cal football games is card stunts. I know, welcome to the 1920s, right? Everyone held up their cards, which were either blue or gold. The cards on the opposite side of the stadium from us spelled out “Memorial Stadium” but we couldn’t see what our own cards spelled. “I hope they say ‘UCLA Sucks,’” I said to my wife standing next to me, but unfortunately loud enough for a nearby husband-and-wife team of Bruin fans to hear me. “Did you really just say that?” the woman asked. “We’re helping.” Meaning that they were holding up their cards to support the card stunt and didn’t deserve to be insulted. When you venture into enemy territory, you have to expect some derision. Read more →
Cal 43, UCLA 17
We’re up here in Berkeley for Parents Weekend. I was saying since we arrived that this looks like a winnable game for Cal and couldn’t find one person — student or parent — to agree with me. Cal was 1-4, UCLA was 4-1. Cal fans are conditioned for disappointment. I’m a USC guy and USC fans were the same way in the pre-Pete Carroll era. Fans showed up for games not to cheer on the team but to bemoan another disappointing performance. This is a nice wakeup call for the Bruins. Despite their record and ranking coming into the game, they’re not very good. Read more →
The Real Obama
What we saw last night was the real Obama–a bright but incurious and inexperienced man who four years ago was promoted well beyond his level of competency. The Obama that guys like [Chris] Matthews and [Andrew] Sullivan expected instead was a character in a fairy tale–a fairy tale written by guys like Matthews and Sullivan. — James Taranto Read more →
Western Motel in Pink
Have a Nice Day
. . . and the dance ends, the joke is forgotten; and strength vanishes, and youth is past. — Kierkegaard Read more →
Overheard
Self-Reliance: Another Idea That Never Caught On
One of the TVs at the gym this morning was tuned to a political panel discussion . . . someone named Roland Martin, a black man with an enormous forehead, said that voters are asking themselves which candidate will help them have a better life. Yes — that’s the 47 Percent. Someone once said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” It’s a shame that never caught on. Read more →
Never be afraid to tell the world who you are. — Anonymous
Pug with Glockenspiel
The (Limited) Importance of Success
I don’t have a problem with someone using their talents to become successful, I just don’t think the highest calling is success. Things like freedom and the expansion of knowledge are beyond success, beyond the personal. Personal success is not wrong, but it is limited in importance, and once you have enough of it it is a shame to keep striving for that, instead of for truth, beauty, or justice. — Richard Stallman Read more →
Replacement Refs Are Just What the Sport Needs
I hope the NFL keeps replacement refs around forever. I hope they bring in a new batch of them every season. I hope they bring in replacement refs for the replacement refs. Why do people think the “real” refs are actually good? Was last night’s Seattle-Green Bay game really worse than the “Tuck Rule”? Was it worse than 2006 when the “real” refs cost the Seahawks the Super Bowl? Sports fans are the biggest cretins on the planet. When their team wins, they gloat, usually in the first person: We won! We beat those guys! There are no bigger mental and emotional retards than people who refer to sports teams in the first person. It’s an inability to separate fantasy from reality. (Imagine a Roger Federer fan screaming, “I just won Wimbledon!” When ther team loses, they blame it on one of two things: 1) Bad coaching; 2) Bad officiating.… Read more →
Tips for Effective Visualizations
I’m taking a Social Network Analysis class on Coursera . . . The first week’s lecture included advice from Edward Tufte on visualization and graphic design. I thought I’d already posted this a couple of years ago after attending a Tufte course, but after further review, I see that I haven’t, so here it is. The success of a visualization is based on deep knowledge and care about the substance, and the quality, relevance, and integrity of the content. Tufte: Five Principles in the Theory of Graphic Design Above all else show the data. Maximize the data-ink ratio, within reason. Erase non-data ink, within reason. Erase redundant data-ink. Revise and edit. Read more →
The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. — Theodore Rubin
Randy Newman: “I’m Dreaming”
Randy Newman has a new song and video out — “I’m Dreaming” — about a voter who casts his ballot solely based on skin color. I listened to it . . . it’s great, like every other Newman song I can think of, but didn’t this train leave the station in 2008? We already have a black president. (Yes, his mother was white, but “mixed-race” doesn’t get you 12 percent of the electorate.) Will some people not vote for Obama because he’s black? Yes. Will some people only vote for Obama because he’s black? Yes. As Geraldine Ferraro said in 2008, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.” Naturally, she was denounced as a racist by the… Read more →
The Lives of Julia and Paul
David Henderson says — accurately, I think — that Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks can be paraphrased as “People who are dependent on government will vote for the candidate who credibly (to them, at least) promises to keep the programs that have created that dependence.” Do you think President Obama disagrees with that? He doesn’t. If you think he does, please see The Life of Julia on the president’s web site. It lays out a “typical” woman’s cradle-to-grave dependence on government assistance and describes how Obama will keep those programs going while Mitt Romney won’t. The most insulting thing about it is that as you read about Obama funding this and Obama funding that, it sounds like he’s doing it all out of his own goddamn pocket. What a prince! There’s no acknowledgement that Obama is taking from some and giving to others, and that all of Julia’s “free” stuff… Read more →