Last Red Sox-Yankees Showdown in Yankee Stadium

With the Yankees set to open a new stadium next year, the Red Sox played their last series at Yankee Stadium this week…and they won 2 of 3 The Yankees look pathetic as the regular season winds down (will likely miss playoffs for first time in 14 years), but the Red Sox seem to be kicking it up a notch at just the right time (won 8 of last 11). Anyway, in honor of the last series – the end of an era - here are a couple fun statistical nuggets from the games this week:

●  8/26: A-ROD’S NIGHT TO FORGET
Alex Rodriguez went 0-for-5 with two strikeouts and two double-play ground outs in the Yankees’ loss on Tuesday. It was the first time in A-Rod’s career that he had multiple strikeouts and GDPs in the same game. His total of nine DP ground outs in August already matches the highest total by any player in any month this season, and it’s his highest total in any month of his career. (Update: A-Rod now has 11 double-play ground outs in August – ouch!)

●  8/27: PEDROIA’s SLAM – WILL IT BE THE LAST AT YANKEE STADIUM?
Could it be, with only 14 regular-season games remaining to be played in the current Yankee Stadium, that its final grand-slam homer will belong to Dustin Pedroia, whose eighth-inning blast capped the scoring in Boston’s 11-3 win in the Bronx on Wednesday night? Pedroia’s was the 17th Yankee Stadium grand-slam hit by a Red Sox player (the most by any visiting team), with Ted Williams, who hit three grand-slams in the Bronx, being the only Boston player with more than one. But only once before had a Red Sox second baseman homered with the bases full in the House That Ruth Built; that was Bill Regan, who did it in 1928.

●  8/28: LESTER TAKES A TOUGH NO-DECISION
Jon Lester struck out eight batters and did not issue a walk in 6 2/3 innings on Thursday. Since 2000, only one other Red Sox pitcher registered at least eight strikeouts against the Yankees, while not walking a batter: Pedro Martinez, who whiffed 11 without a base on balls in the Bronx on July 7, 2003.

Source – The Elias Sports Bureau

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The Soup (not necessarily for the soul)

In the 90′s there was a little show on E! called Talk Soup, which in 2004 was ”re-mixed” into a much better show that we now know as The Soup. I can’t get enough of this 1/2 hour weekly show of utter hilarity during which host Joel McHale “reports” on the latest in pop culture news and reality show debauchery.

Instead of your typical news show segments (like Weather, Local News, and Politics),  The Soup’s segments include “Chicks Maaaan,” “Let’s Take some E!,” “Reality Show Clip Time,” and “What the Kids are Watching,” among others.  

I can see how these segments may sound foreign and unfamiliar, if you’ve never seen the show. To help clarify, check out this clip from a couple weeks ago. Joel points out the sudden insertion of a spaghetti-eating cat photo into a segment about binge drinking on the Mike & Juliet Show.

New episodes of The Soup air every Friday at 10pm on E!. If you can’t wait that long, The Soup has its own blog with additional clips.

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Flickr Photo of the Day “Totally Engrossed”

Towards the end of last week our Internet was “down” at the office for a few hours. My hands were tied. I felt crippled and cut off from the world. It was incredibly frustrating not being able to deliver on the list of tasks outlined on the various colored post-its scattered across my desk.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a huge advocate of “disconnecting,” but on a normal day I spend 90% of my time on the computer and at least 50% on the Internet. Without the web, I’m lost.

When I saw this photo from PamelaSu on Flickr I was reminded of my experience (or lack there of) with the Internet last week. I chuckled because sometimes, at the end of a busy day, my hair sticks up (and may even appear green) and my eyes take on an Anime-like appearance from staring at my monitor, just like this little girl.

So, what is in her hand anyways?

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Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kid Rock – A Saturday Night Special

 

We were at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA (formerly Great Woods) on Saturday night to see Lynyrd Skynyrd & Kid Rock on their Rock and Rebels tour.

It was a hot, sunny day - we got there at about 2:30 and tailgated all afternoon. It was the first time in a looong time that the atmosphere felt like the old Great Woods…everyone was mingling together having a great time, and no one got harassed by the event staff. When you put it all together – the sights (flags waving, footballs flying, hundreds of Harleys); the sounds (a blaring mix of southern rock, outlaw country and blues); the smells (charcoal grills and all kinds of funny things) - the general consensus seemed to be: music and whiskey makes us want to get down

Skynyrd opened the show. They still sound great! Kid Rock always puts on an incredibly energetic, entertaining live show. It is absolutely one of those cases where, even if you aren’t really a fan going in, you’d come out of the concert as a Kid Rock fan. And for this show he had a couple surprise guests too: he did a miniset with Rev Run consisting of Run D.M.C.’s It’s Like That and Aerosmith’s Walk this Way; then, Peter Wolf (former J. Geils frontman) came out and they did Centerfold. It was kick-ass!

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Au Bon Pain in the Ass

Normally I stop at Dunkin’ Donuts for my morning coffee. I can’t remember the last time I bought coffee anywhere else, and today, it showed.

I was in Harvard Square with some time to kill and decided to get my morning brew while I waited. Harvard Square is familiar territory – I was pretty sure that there was no DD within walking distance. I spotted Au Bon Pain, which seemed harmless, so I decided to cut my losses and just go there instead of searching for DD. Walking in, I was confident.

Almost immediately confidence gave way to anxiety – I didn’t know the protocol for getting coffee in this joint. Trying to look unfazed, I went to the main counter and ordered a medium coffee. Oops, its self-serve. I was referred to a counter where I could pour my own, so I made my way to the coffee thermoses and picked a cup from the many stacks – oops again…I picked an iced coffee cup instead of a hot coffee cup (apparently they are differentiated by color). I went back to get a hot coffee cup and finally poured the friggin’ coffee.  Home-free…or so I thought.

At this point, I looked around and there was no sugar or milk anywhere in sight. I was totally baffled. I slowly backed away from the coffee area, looking casual, and observed another customer pouring coffee so I could follow his lead. Sure enough, that guy drinks his coffee black and I’m shit out of luck. Feeling stupid, I meandered back to the main counter and asked about the milk and sugar. The woman referred me to yet another counter that is literally hidden from all view when you’re standing at the coffee counter…marvelous. I paid the woman and got the hell out of there. It was 5 minutes I’ll never get back.

I must have, deservedly, been the butt of jokes among the Au Bon Pain staff. You’d think anyone of my generation would be able to buy a cup of coffee at Au Bon Pain without bumbling and stumbling around like an idiot. Oh well, at least the coffee tasted good

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Famous Photos (of the LEGO variety)

I’ve blogged about LEGO before (and I’ll probably blog about the company again). The staying power of the almighty LEGO is stickier than your fingers after eating a huge wad of cotton candy. Given this fact, and that Photo History was one of my favorite courses in college, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to blog about UK photographer Mike Stimpson, when I saw a story about him on Wired.com.

Stimpson has combined his photographic skill with a love for LEGOs to create a number of photographs that mimic the works of classic photographers such as Alfred Eisenstaedt and Charles Ebbets. The quirk? His photos are scenes build from small plastic bricks. Cute? Yes. Buzz-worthy? Definitely.

Below are a few examples of his photos (compared with the originals). Some of these you may recognize To check out more of Mike’s photos, visit his Flickr page.

Original: Charles Ebbets, Lunch on a Skyscraper, Rockefeller Center, NYC, 1932

Original: Joe Rosenthal, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, 1945

Original: Alfred Einsenstaedt, American Soldier in NY Times Square, 1945

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“Red Haze” Clouds the Reality of Pollution in China

Two kinds of haze afflict, with appalling consequences, the people of China:

1) The unmitigated haze of pollution spewed daily by power plants, factories, and automobiles that clouds the atmosphere and is estimated to kill at least 10,000 Chinese per year, and

2) The oppressive “red haze” of communism spewed daily by a government that clouds reality in the eyes of Chinese citizens and the rest of the world by shaping the flow of information and falsifying everything from government statistics to Olympic fireworks displays.

During these Olympics China is using the latter to hide the former.

The satellite image below, taken in June, shows a suffocating haze of pollution shrouding Beijing and the entire area to the south in a uniform shade of brownish gray (skies appear relatively clear to the north and regular clouds appear bright white). This is a typical day in and around Beijing, where residents are often warned to spend as little time as possible outdoors because the atmosphere is a veritable pea soup of toxic gases.

Pollution Haze Over Beijing, June 2008

We already know that China is very concerned about creating a perfect image – or, as it were, a mirage – during these Olympics (e.g., digitally enhanced fireworks, lip syncing singers, and “official” crowds to fill the stands). So it isn’t surprising that as China prepared to host the Olympics, they put “special pollution controls” into effect: Except for taxis and Olympic vehicles, automobiles were banned on alternate days, depending on whether their license plates ended in odd or even numbers. Most construction was banned in Beijing, and factories were shut down in Beijing and the neighboring cities of Tianjin and Tangshan.

These restrictions are expected to last for two months – just long enough to fool the world during the Olympics – and are reducing pollution. Here is an image of Beijing taken on July 21, after the restrictions were put in place. The haze drifting south from Beijing is relatively slight compared to June.

Pollution Haze Over Beijing, July 2008 (click to enlarge)

Bottom Line: China has temporarily reduced the haze of pollution, and in the process, demonstrated to the world that the “red haze” of communism is as thick as ever. I can’t decide which is worse, the fact the government can shut down whole industries and dictate when people can drive, or the fact that pollution will return to deadly levels just as soon as the Olympics are over?

Images from NASA Earth Observatory

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Over 100 Posts for Elicia Buzz!

That’s right, folks. We’ve hit the 100 mark. It has been an interesting 6 months for Dan and I. We’ve laughed and not-quite-cried (but maybe a skirmish here and there) about the blog I hope to keep things up for another 6 months and another 100 posts. To celebrate this wondrous occasion, here are a few stats for your gandering:

• Total Views To-Date – 9,745
• Day with the Most Traffic – July 31, 2008 (355 views)
• Posts with the Most Views –      
  • Christian the Lion = YouTube Star
  • YouTube 2007 Awards
  • A Role Model? Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair
  • Summer Redneck Games
  • Massachuesetts Clean Energy (1 point for Dan)

To ensure the next 100 posts are better than the first, let us know what you think! What have you enjoyed? What would you like to see less of? (To leave a comment, just click on the ‘Comment’ link directly under this post.)

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Flickr Photo of the Day – “Happy”

You can’t NOT smile.

As an adult, it is so easy to overcomplicate things. As a child, spinning in a circle is enough to make you happy.

Never loose your child-like enthusiasm and outlook on life.

Thanks velvia333 for the photo!

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Manny Being Tardy

This is comical. Baseball’s idiot savant strikes again - Dodgers v. Phillies on Monday:

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In China, I Could Be Jailed for Posting This

And you could be jailed for reading it…and we’d all be sharing a cell with George Will and the artists who drew these cartoons.

For only the third time in 72 years (Berlin 1936, Moscow 1980), the games are being hosted by a tyrannical regime, the mind of which was displayed in the opening ceremony featuring thousands of drummers, each face contorted with the same grotesquely frozen grin. It was a tableau of the miniaturization of the individual and the subordination of individuality to the collective. Not since the Nazi’s 1934 Nuremberg rally, which Leni Riefenstahl turned into the film “Triumph of the Will,” has tyranny been so brazenly tarted up as art.” - George Will, 8/12/08

P.S. Did you hear about the little girl, Lin Miaoke, who won the world’s heart when she sang “Ode to the Motherland” during the opening ceremony? Well, it was a fraud. Lin was lip-syncing the song because China’s elite Politburo decided that the girl who was actually singing lacked sufficient beauty to be on stage. Instead, they hid the real singer backstage and put a “flawless” prop on stage to lip sync. The Politburo said it was done “for the national interest.” Never mind the interest of the poor little girl who sings beautifully but is too ugly in her country’s eyes to be seen in public. Disgraceful. 

Cartoon Source: Townhall

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Finally a Turning Point for Oil and the Dollar?

July 14^th – 15^th marked the beginning of a sudden and dramatic reversal of the multi-year upward trend in crude oil prices and the multi-year downward trend in the value of the U.S. dollar. This sea-change points to, potentially, a significantly improved outlook for growth, inflation, and energy costs – but, is this really the long awaited turning point or just another false-top in oil and false-bottom for the dollar?

The value of the U.S. dollar compared to other currencies has been on the decline since 2002, losing about 38% of its value over that period – it bottomed against the Euro on July 14 – 15. The price of crude oil has increased by about 580% since 2002, and on July 14 – 15 was only about 1.5% below its all time high. The result of these steady body blows to our economy, over time, has been increasing inflation and a slow strangulation of economic growth that has brought us to the brink of recession (the mortgage situation hasn’t helped).

But three weeks ago both trends dramatically changed coarse, simultaneously. The figure below shows the price of crude oil on the left axis (data here) and the U.S. dollar index on the right axis (data here) since early June. Click image to enlarge.

Of course, these changes are not coincidental – oil and the dollar are very much linked, primarily because oil is priced in U.S. dollars in markets all around the world (all else equal, if the dollar falls the price of oil rises and vice versa). So, what is driving this? Is the dollar rising because oil is now falling, or is oil falling because the dollar is now rising? A little bit of both?

Its both, but I suspect oil is the key driver here. There are mountains of evidence that demand for oil is easing in response the run up in prices (for example, here), and more generally, economies around the world are slowing (albeit temporarily). At the same time, there are expectations of increased future supply from a wave of new drilling/exploration around the world and talk of offshore drilling in the U.S. (gee, what a novel concept).

On the other hand, there are other factors that could be helping to raise the dollar. The economic slow down in the U.S. has reduced inflation expectations here, which helps the dollar (still high inflation, but not as high). And there is the expectation that the European Central Bank will start cutting their interest rates, which will lower the value of the Euro. But then, even these factors circle back around to oil.

Bottom Line: It is a combination of all these factors – or at least, people’s expectations about them – that has seemingly reversed the course of oil and the dollar. Oil is still quite high and the dollar is still low, but we are going in the right direction now and this is a very good thing. But no one can predict where things will go from here – hopefully this is the real deal.

Addendum: This information also reminds us of the obvious: right now oil makes the world go around. And…More than 80% of the oil left in the world is controlled by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Libya. We need more domestic sources of energy: oil, natural gas, (clean) coal, nuclear, hydro, hydrogen, solar, wind, geothermal – All of ‘em!

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More Blogs to Buzz About

To follow-up on my previous post from a couple weeks ago, I wanted to share with you some MORE blogs that I find enjoyable and hope you will too

Neatorama – A blog about “neat” stuff. I get the newsletter. Posts cover everything from advertising news, architecture, gadgets, travel, and more. There is a wacky twist to all posts, no matter the topic. Here are some PacMan cookies – mmmm.

Indexed – A blog from Jessica Hagy that uses Venn-diagrams and other figures (via index cards) to comment on….life.

Post Secret – This blog is “an ongoing community mail art project in which people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.” The entries are often shocking, depressing, uplifting, and/or odd, but always very interesting. The project became so popular, it was even turned into a book. You can’t view the archives, unfortunately, but the blog is updated with 20 new entries once a week.

Man Babies – Exactly how it sounds…hilarious pictures of men and babies (with their heads switched). You have to scroll through these yourself!

Sorry I Missed Your Party – Along the same lines as the Man Babies blog, this one also features funny photos – photos from “other people’s parties,” to be exact. Some of these are hilarious.

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Curb Your Enthusiasm will have a 7th Season!

I just found out about this - last month Larry David confirmed that there will be a 7th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and it will premier at the beginning of 2009!

It’s the funniest damn show on TV. We don’t get HBO anymore so I didn’t see any of season 6 when it first aired, but I got the Season 6 DVD a couple months ago, and Elicia and I ended up watching the whole thing in one sitting…its the best one yet. The underlying plot line that runs through the whole season is that a family displaced by hurricane Katrina comes to live with Larry and Cheryl. The many exchanges between Larry and Leon, one of the new characters in this family, are freakin’ hilarous! They are also very explicit (you’ve been warned)…this YouTube compilation has the Best of Leon and Larry I dare to you to try and not laugh when Leon says, “I gets mine, Larry. I brings a ruckus to the ladies.”

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Wicked Local Real Estate Info

Newton, MA - According to a report released by the Warren Group, an organization that tracks real estate trends, single-family home sales in Massachusetts in the first half of the year “plummeted” 19.1 percent, the lowest level the state has experienced in 15 years. The report also stated that the median price for single-family homes fell 9.2 percent, from $347,000 to $315,000. Breaking it down further, Middlesex County, which Newton is a part of, has experienced a 19.7 percent drop in sales and a 6.8 percent drop in median home prices.

I dug up some more wicked local real estate info for Middlesex County (might be interesting if you are thinking of wading into the market):

This figure shows the quarterly home price appreciation index for the Newton-Cambridge-Framingham metro area from 1980 through the first quarter of 2008. For each quarter, it shows the percentage change in home prices over the previous four quarters (for example, the very last data point is the percentage change in prices from Q12007 to Q12008). It shows that home prices in this area have been declining since early 2006, but at least the rate of decline is not accelerating (e.g., not getting steeper).

Below is a Trulia “heat map” showing average listing prices for each town in Middlesex County as of July 30. Newton is that fragmented-looking town just to the left of Brookline, and shows average listing prices of 625k and up! Given the typical shape of home price distributions, the average listings are skewed upwards by the handful of highest priced homes. Medianprice ranges would be lower across the board and much, much more indicative of the prices a “typical” home buyer would be dealing with (but current data on median prices isn’t available in the heat maps, so we get average). Anyway, the relationships across towns will still hold whether you look at averages or medians…for example, average/median prices in Northeast Middlesex tend to be lower than average/median prices in Central Middlesex.

Click the thumbnails to see heat maps for Worcester, Essex, and Suffolk county.

         

For more Trulia interactive maps by state or city, by average list price, by median sales price, go here.

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Life is Better Down Where Its Wetter

Life is better down where its wetter, according to Sebastian the crab from The Little Mermaid, a favorite movie from my childhood (and adulthood, for that matter - I can still recite most of the lines!)

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved the ocean and been fascinated by the idea that there is a whole other world below the water’s surface.  To indulge my mermaid fantasies, I invited my two younger sisters to the New England Acquarium with me last Friday. I hadn’t been there in YEARS, so was eager to check it out. We were excited, also, to see the new Sharks & Rays exhibit that has been heavily promoted around the city. They actually had a “touch tank” as part of this exhibit.

We saw penguins, fur seals, octopus, fish of all sorts, jelly fish, sharks, rays, turtles, and eels. We also saw a show at the (fairly) new IMAX theatre. I definitely enjoyed myself (thanks to Andrea and Nicole), but I was not blown away by the experience. I guess I had high expectations for the exhibits, given the price we paid for tickets (not to mention parking!). Then again, I’m sure the cost of running an aquarium and owning property on Boston’s beautiful waterfront is not cheap, by any means.

I’ve heard rumors that the Acquarium is going to be re-built, which I welcome 100%. The building was built in the 60′s and you can definately tell. All-in-all, I had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the pictures didn’t come out too great due to some battery issues and weird lighting, but I did my best. Here are a few (click on the photos to enlarge):

  

   

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