Pop Culture

Excellent Analysis of the Super Bowl

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This is the best football analysis that I’ve ever read. I guess that’s one  of the advantages of the supremacy geek culture, now even sports analysis has some statistical sophistication!

If you think that tells you that the Ravens1 elevated their game when they needed to, I can’t agree. What it really tells us is that we know way less about teams than we really think we know. Every recent piece of information we had about the Ravens heading into the postseason suggested that they were a floundering team limping in by virtue of a successful start to the season, some lucky bounces, opposing injuries, and strong performance in close games. Baltimore started 6-1 in games decided by a touchdown or less, with its only loss to Philadelphia, of all teams, before losing their final three such contests. We had a clear curve for Baltimore’s true level of play, and it was trending further and further downward. And yet, from that point forward, everything we thought we knew about the Ravens was wrong. For every power rankings article you read in November and every set of odds you saw in December, nobody had any idea that the Ravens were capable of putting together a four-game stretch this good. Was “play like the best team in football” really a switch they were waiting to turn on during the playoffs? Or were they capable of this all along and just hadn’t yet exhibited this level of play?

The one disagreement I had is with the analysis of momentum. Bill Barnwell thinks that there’s no reason to believe that the lights-out at the Super Bowl could plausibly have changed the momentum of the game.

Why was the blackout supposed to offer the 49ers momentum, anyway? Because it stopped Baltimore in their tracks for a half-hour after they had been dominating the game? If that really made a difference, why wouldn’t halftime have accomplished that?

I thought about that while I was watching the game, and I think the difference is that the halftime is expected. In terms of really getting your mind clear, that’s not going to do it. The random 34-minute lights-out would have been much better at creating a real and genuine break in the mental state of the players. Other than that: great analysis!

Friday Music: Mumford and Sons

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlxZVp0aLW0

I snagged Babel, Mumford and Sons‘ most recent album, from a friend. He wanted to manage expectations. “It’s the same as their last album. Like… exactly the same.” I could tell by his tone of voice that this was supposed to be a bad thing, but it actually sounded great to me. Like, fantastic. Ever since I had heard The Cave on the radio in Michigan, drove home, and went directly to Google to find out who sang that incredible song, Sigh No More has been one of my very favorite albums. 

Mumford Sons - Babel Artwork medium-652x652I have to say, however, that I have an unsteady relationship with anything popular. As a general rule, I prefer to do whatever everyone else isn’t doing. If I think I know where the crowd is headed, I turn around 180 degrees and start walking. And, lest you think that I consider this tragically heroic or some such tripe, I will add that the inevitable and quick result of this course of action is to find myself quite alone and quite sad about it.

So why do I do it? I have no idea, but I sometimes think that behavior explains pretty much my entire life starting with high school.

Surrounded by a lot of really smart, educated kids who were naturally overwhelmingly secular, I remained devout. But where most of the folks in that category would go for Catholicism or evangelical traditions, I was Mormon. Mormons have a fraught relationship with intellectuals these days, so naturally I veered off in precisely that direction. Which meant I found myself surrounded by progressive, social liberal types and therefore ended up a right-of-center social conservative.

I’m not for the current regime, but I am against the revolution. I’m not pro-establishment, but I am antidisestablishmentarian (not technically, but you get the idea). 

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Awesome Posters of Awesome Quotes

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The other day I was randomly seized by a desire to find a poster featuring Phillip K. Dick, one of my most favoritest writers and possibly the most brilliant mind in all of science fiction. After a quick Google search, I found this:

Better still, i turns out that there’s a whole Etsy store with original illustrations for Poe, Tolstoy, Dickens, Vonnegut, and more. Now I don’t want just one. I want a whole collection.

Check ’em out.

Lutheran Insults: You are a bungling magpie, croaking loudly!

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Perhaps you did not realize this fact, but there is a hole in your life where an authentic Lutheran insult-generator should be. Now that you have this link, the void is filled. And now that the void is filled, you will realize how  much you have always wanted to be able to tell someone who cuts you off in traffic:

Get out in the name of a thousand devils, and break your neck before you are out of the city!

Or perhaps to the neighbors whose dogs leave surprises in your yard:

You are spiritual scarecrows and monk calves!

For best use, I suggest employing the random insult generator. If, however, you are a glutton for genuine 16th century insults of great piety, you can peruse the complete listing. Keep in mind that the kind of gluttony would reveal that you are “hellish scum”.

I wonder if there’s an app for this…

Photographer Fights Ableism with Exhibit: “Impaired Perceptions”

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Photograph Brian Steel was born with fiber-type disproportion (a form of muscular dystrophy). The condition leaves him extremely weak, unable to lift or carry objects weighing more than 5 pounds, and with breathing difficulties. Despite this, Brian lives an independent life, and he grew tired of how others would judge him without getting to know what he wasn’t–and was–capable of doing for himself.

Brian Steel

In a CNN article that has 8 images and an interview, Brian explained his motivation to photograph himself and others with disabilities:

Some of the people I photographed and interviewed for this project appeared to be perfectly able-bodied but actually have impairments that limited them physically. They are misperceived in a manner that is almost opposite to my experience. They talked about how judged they often felt because people could not understand why they weren’t doing certain things that required more physical effort.

On the other hand, I met people who had experiences where people felt compelled to help them because they were in a wheelchair, but those individuals are fully capable and have accomplished more than a lot of their able-bodied peers.

My point is not to say that one group is better than the other but rather that you simply can’t know what someone is capable of without getting to know them.

I think this is a good message, but whenever I read articles like this I think of another one. At a time when 90% or more of unborn human beings with a diagnosis f Down syndrome are aborted, I’m afraid our society is in denial of the fact that we, individually and as communities, need these people in our lives. While some with disabilities may depend on us for physical and medical support, we rely on them to remind us of what it means to be human. It’s not about what we have–whether it’s health, comfort, friends or family–but it’s about out struggle to attain those things for ourselves and others.