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Unconventional crime prevention tips.

Last Yankee notes

Two more notes on the Yankees–and then I’m done (I think):

1. This New York Times article persuasively argues that A-Rod’s trade to NY and subsequent move to third base explains Jeter’s transformation from a weak fielding shortstop with below average range into a Gold Glove-winning SS with above average range.

“There are two possible explanations for Jeter’s transformation from a poor shortstop to a Gold Glove contender: either he developed more range at 30, an age when most players are beginning to decline, or he benefited greatly from having a Gold Glove-caliber defender at third base, which allowed him to cheat to his left, a weakness highlighted by many scouts.”

2. I agree with this FJM take down of Bill Simmons on the Yankees. The Fire Jore Morgan site has a ridiculous name and premise, but their offbeat baseball writing is some of the most intelligent on the internet. Simmons is fine, but I’d read their site first any time, and I do.

Can we only seek to contain Kim Jong Il?

1. We invade North Korea, they shower Seoul and Tokyo with missiles, kill tens of thousands, devastate cities, and catalyze a dizzying and possibly catastrophic chain of unintended consequences.

2. We tighten the supply line into North Korea from China and South Korea, millions suffer the consequences of even fewer resources, and: (a) the regime fails quickly, who knows what rises in its place, and refugees flood China and South Korea, neither of which desire such an albatross; or (b) the regime doesn’t fail quickly and we’re back to square one, only now Kim Jong Il will have the added incentive to deal arms on the black market to make up for lost revenue/resources, while the people will be much worse off in the short, immediate, and probably long run.

3. We–the U.S., the west, in general, me in particular, China, Japan, South Korea, much of the world–contain Kim Jong Il without cutting him off, hope to dangle enticing incentives to discourage further proliferation and black market trading, acknowledge his real newfound power and give him the superficial respect he wants, and hope that things change slowly and seed the way to greener pastures. The devil is in the incentives, but I don’t know enough (read: anything) about what wants, so I’ll shut up.

I know I’m missing a lot here, but containment worked in the past, and looks like it may be a good solution for such a delicate situation. What am I missing?

On the lives of musical genres

Interesting way to think about musical trends: major musical genres evolve through common stages of life, so says Alex Ross of the New Yorker. He concedes his “very rough analogies” may not survive closer scrutiny. Nonetheless, he explains:

“I speculated about five stages in a cycle: classicism, where the rules are laid out (Mozart, Armstrong, Chuck Berry); romanticism, where the music gets orchestral and ambitious (Wagner, mid-period Ellington, Led Zeppelin), modernism, where a vanguard rejects the sleepy bourgeoisie (Schoenberg, Charlie Parker, Sex Pistols), avant-gardism, where the vanguard leaves the mass audience behind (Boulez, Cecil Taylor, Aphex Twin), and neoclassicism, where conservatives try to turn back time and retrieve a lost order (neo-Romantic composers, Wynton Marsalis, the Strokes).”

Meeting Richard Diebenkorn

This personal essay shares the story of an aspiring young painter’s attempt to emulate Richard Diebenkorn. He eventually got invited to Diebenkorn’s house, and later kicked himself for not taking up an offer to visit his studio.

On fertilizer

“According to a more recent estimate, if synthetic fertilizers suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth, about two billion people would perish.”
-A recent New Yorker

I can’t vouch for the estimate’s source, but that’s a damn large number.

On the Yankees again

I don’t mean to suggest I’m a Yankees fan by defending their performance and their players (A-Rod, see below), but there are two points that should be added to this absurd discussion about what’s wrong with the Bombers: (1) The Yankees are an excellent team that may just as well have won the whole thing, and only need a little tweaking of the pitching staff next year to remain contenders. (2) The Tigers were a very good team this year and did not win by luck.

The Wages of Win blog fleshes out these points and more in a spot-on analysis of the series, showing that people focus too much on the Yankees payroll as a predictor of performance, and argue that the Tigers’ run differential and pitching staff were underappreciated prior to the series.

The authors repeat the oft-forgotten point that the postseason, a five-game series especially, is a huge crapshoot. Most “upsets” probably should not be that upsetting, but they are because people: (a) exagerrate differences in the quality of two very good teams; (b) overemphasize irrelevant distant history (e.g. the Yankees boast 26 WS titles, and possess the necessary aura and poise) and irrelevant recent history (e.g. the Tigers got swept by the lowly Royals to end the season); and (c) people underemphasize the most important history (how did each team fare over the course of 162 games, or even 81 games). On this last point, I’d guess that strong second-half performance is better correlated with playoff success than performance over the whole season, and I have no clue how much, but roughly speaking, I think we can agree that large chunks of a season are the best predictors of future success, and that the playoffs are a crapshoot.

Retrospective: Tyson levels Spinks

Tyson v. Spinks, June 27, 1988
The video displays Iron Mike’s awesome power as he knocks Spinks flat in the first round.

Can men hold the purse?

Hal Varian’s microeconomics textbook includes a cool chapter on behavioral economics in which he discusses several new studies that challenge the homo economicus theory of human behavior.
In one study, two financial economists studied brokerage accounts in 66,465 households and found that those that traded frequently received an 11.3 percent return on investment, while less frequent trading resulted in an 18 percent return.
One of the most important factors that determined how much households traded was gender. Men traded much more–45 percent more–than women due to what psychologists call the self-serving-attribution bias. That is, men are more likely to think their successes are a result of their own skill rather than luck, leading to overconfidence and excessive trading (leading to high transaction costs, and lower returns), while women tend to be more “realistic” about the causes (and whims!) of success.

Too small a sample

A-Rod played poorly, but it was a three game series. And why would Torre drop him to eighth in the order after just two bad games? What an insult.

Rodriguez’s numbers this season: OBP: .392, SLG: .523.

His contract’s average annual salary of $25M leads to justifiably high expectations, but come on, his OPS was higher than Lord Jeter’s. Moreover, his actual salary is $21.5M this year, while Jeter’s was $20.6M.

For the record:

A-Rod career postseason: OBP: .393, SLG: .534 = OPS: .927

Jeter career postseason: OBP: .379, SLG: .463 = OPS: .842

Source: baseball-reference.com