Dragon Lady

I think she was a teacher at my junior high school.

[photo taken a couple of weeks ago in Ms. Eclectic's garden]

Kosher Suits?Shatnez

MA sent me this link, which is pretty interesting/funny/revealing:

It is a little-known fact that according to Jewish law, even your clothes have to be “kosher.” I don’t know why it’s little-known. Unlike kashrut, the laws of shatnez aren’t hinted at or requiring of Talmudical gymnastics. It’s written right there in your Bible: “You shall not wear shatnez, wool and linen together” (Deut. 22:11). There’s no reasoning given for this. It seems to be one of those laws that prohibits unlike kinds from being used together. You know, like using a ram and a cow to plow, or wearing one black sock and one blue sock, or mixing the Hellman’s with the Miracle Whip…I could go on ad nauseum.

That’s only about a tenth of the posting — you will probably enjoy the whole thing.

Kosher Suits?Shatnez

MA sent me this link, which is pretty interesting/funny/revealing:

It is a little-known fact that according to Jewish law, even your clothes have to be “kosher.” I don’t know why it’s little-known. Unlike kashrut, the laws of shatnez aren’t hinted at or requiring of Talmudical gymnastics. It’s written right there in your Bible: “You shall not wear shatnez, wool and linen together” (Deut. 22:11). There’s no reasoning given for this. It seems to be one of those laws that prohibits unlike kinds from being used together. You know, like using a ram and a cow to plow, or wearing one black sock and one blue sock, or mixing the Hellman’s with the Miracle Whip…I could go on ad nauseum.

That’s only about a tenth of the posting — you will probably enjoy the whole thing.

Kosher Suits?Shatnez

MA sent me this link, which is pretty interesting/funny/revealing:

It is a little-known fact that according to Jewish law, even your clothes have to be “kosher.” I don’t know why it’s little-known. Unlike kashrut, the laws of shatnez aren’t hinted at or requiring of Talmudical gymnastics. It’s written right there in your Bible: “You shall not wear shatnez, wool and linen together” (Deut. 22:11). There’s no reasoning given for this. It seems to be one of those laws that prohibits unlike kinds from being used together. You know, like using a ram and a cow to plow, or wearing one black sock and one blue sock, or mixing the Hellman’s with the Miracle Whip…I could go on ad nauseum.

That’s only about a tenth of the posting — you will probably enjoy the whole thing.

Choke Cherries

At least that is what we used to call these things when we were kids.

The New Anti-Semitism

Victor Davis Hanson nails it in this Op-Ed in the Baltimore Sun [h/t to JJ]. Here are some choice excerpts, but I strongly recommend your reading the whole piece. It captures better than anything else I have read recently why I am so concerned about anti-Semitism.

A recent … type of anti-Jewish odium … is a strange mixture of violent hatred by radical Islamists and what amounts to more or less indifference to it by Westerners. [emphasis added]



Those who randomly shoot Jews for being Jews – whether at a Jewish center in Seattle or at synagogues in Istanbul – are in large part Muslim zealots. Most in the West explain away the violence. They chalk it up to anger over the endless tit-for-tat in the Middle East. Yet, privately, they know that we do not see violent Jews shooting Muslims in the United States or Europe. …



The state-run, and thus government-authorized, newspapers of the Middle East slander Jews in barbaric fashion. Mein Kampf (translated, of course, as Jihadi) sells briskly in the region [EE: as do the lies in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]. Hamas and Hezbollah militias on parade emulate the style of brownshirts. In response, much of the Western public snoozes [emphasis added]. Many Westerners are far more worried over whether a Danish cartoonist has caricatured Islam, or whether the pope has been rude to Muslims when quoting from an obscure, 600-year-old Byzantine dialogue. …



We see the unfortunate results in frequent anti-Israeli demonstrations on campuses that conflate Israel with Nazis, while the media have published fraudulent pictures and slanted events in southern Lebanon.



The renewed hatred of Jews in the Middle East – and the indifference to it in the West – is a sort of “post-anti-Semitism.” Islamic zealots supply the old venomous hatred, while affluent and timid Westerners provide the new necessary indifference – if punctuated by the occasional off-the-cuff “amen” in the manner of a Louis Farrakhan or Mel Gibson outburst.



The danger of this post-anti-Semitism is not just that Jews are shot in Europe and the United States – or that a drunken celebrity or demagogue mouths off. Instead, ever so insidiously, radical Islam’s hatred of Jews is becoming normalized.

Let me just add to the above that the current anti-Semitism in the West is more than just indifference. It is fear. It is fear of being harmed by Muslim radical terrorists. It is fear of being accused of being an anti-Muslim racist. It is fear not only of being politically incorrect but of simply being accused of being politically incorrect.



And in addition to the indifference recognized by Hanson, these fears help draw otherwise kind and decent people away from recognizing and rejecting anti-Semitism.

The New Anti-Semitism

Victor Davis Hanson nails it in this Op-Ed in the Baltimore Sun [h/t to JJ]. Here are some choice excerpts, but I strongly recommend your reading the whole piece. It captures better than anything else I have read recently why I am so concerned about anti-Semitism.

A recent … type of anti-Jewish odium … is a strange mixture of violent hatred by radical Islamists and what amounts to more or less indifference to it by Westerners. [emphasis added]



Those who randomly shoot Jews for being Jews – whether at a Jewish center in Seattle or at synagogues in Istanbul – are in large part Muslim zealots. Most in the West explain away the violence. They chalk it up to anger over the endless tit-for-tat in the Middle East. Yet, privately, they know that we do not see violent Jews shooting Muslims in the United States or Europe. …



The state-run, and thus government-authorized, newspapers of the Middle East slander Jews in barbaric fashion. Mein Kampf (translated, of course, as Jihadi) sells briskly in the region [EE: as do the lies in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]. Hamas and Hezbollah militias on parade emulate the style of brownshirts. In response, much of the Western public snoozes [emphasis added]. Many Westerners are far more worried over whether a Danish cartoonist has caricatured Islam, or whether the pope has been rude to Muslims when quoting from an obscure, 600-year-old Byzantine dialogue. …



We see the unfortunate results in frequent anti-Israeli demonstrations on campuses that conflate Israel with Nazis, while the media have published fraudulent pictures and slanted events in southern Lebanon.



The renewed hatred of Jews in the Middle East – and the indifference to it in the West – is a sort of “post-anti-Semitism.” Islamic zealots supply the old venomous hatred, while affluent and timid Westerners provide the new necessary indifference – if punctuated by the occasional off-the-cuff “amen” in the manner of a Louis Farrakhan or Mel Gibson outburst.



The danger of this post-anti-Semitism is not just that Jews are shot in Europe and the United States – or that a drunken celebrity or demagogue mouths off. Instead, ever so insidiously, radical Islam’s hatred of Jews is becoming normalized.

Let me just add to the above that the current anti-Semitism in the West is more than just indifference. It is fear. It is fear of being harmed by Muslim radical terrorists. It is fear of being accused of being an anti-Muslim racist. It is fear not only of being politically incorrect but of simply being accused of being politically incorrect.



And in addition to the indifference recognized by Hanson, these fears help draw otherwise kind and decent people away from recognizing and rejecting anti-Semitism.

I Am NOT a Lush!

It is homecoming weekend at The University of Western Ontario. Many students will paint their faces purple and many students will drink too much of a horrible concoction made from grape Kool-Aid and vodka. The homecoming parade will take over the main streets of London, and various neighbourhoods will shudder in preparation for loud but generally peaceful student parties long into the night.



On a tangent to these events, yesterday I was going over my VISA bill for the past month. This is the truth: the two largest charges on it were at the local LCBO [Liquor Control Monopoly of Ontario].



Here is part of the explanation. Scotch sampling:







Ms. Eclectic prefers single malt, non-smoky scotches like Glenlivet; I prefer the peatier ones.

I Am NOT a Lush!

It is homecoming weekend at The University of Western Ontario. Many students will paint their faces purple and many students will drink too much of a horrible concoction made from grape Kool-Aid and vodka. The homecoming parade will take over the main streets of London, and various neighbourhoods will shudder in preparation for loud but generally peaceful student parties long into the night.



On a tangent to these events, yesterday I was going over my VISA bill for the past month. This is the truth: the two largest charges on it were at the local LCBO [Liquor Control Monopoly of Ontario].



Here is part of the explanation. Scotch sampling:







Ms. Eclectic prefers single malt, non-smoky scotches like Glenlivet; I prefer the peatier ones.

Moneyball and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis

David Berri has a fascinating posting at The Sports Economist about a recently published paper by Skip Sauer and John Hakes. Many, many people in the sports establishment have had a difficult time wrapping their heads around the importance of on-base percentage and slugging percentage, but at least most general managers understand their importance these days. And, of course, as more people learn the importance of OBP and SLG (especially OBP), it no longer remains undervalued. Markets do, over time, tend toward efficient allocation of resources; discovery values last only so long … until others discover them, too.



I posted a rather lengthy comment to David’s piece there. Here it is, slightly edited, for those who don’t read comments:

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the old internet newsgroup rec.sport.baseball was full of people talking about the importance of using OBP and SLG (instead of the triple crown stats) to assess the marginal physical product of batters in baseball. It was tonnes of fun.



Many of those same folks have progressed to interesting careers in sports and sports management; one example can be seen in Baseball Prospectus” and many other publications and websites that directly emerged from the work people were doing back then and talking about on the internet; others from that same era are now, finally, doing background work for many major league teams. But back then, MANY of us wondered why on earth some smart GM didn’t hire a few of these folks and use the information they were producing. Billy Beane clearly found some discovery value. He (and Skip’s work) showed that the efficient markets hypothesis is correct in the long-run, but the adjustment sure isn’t instantaneous.



Meanwhile, several posters back then noted that Branch Rickey at an early stage in his career thought that using (Hits + BB)/(AB + BB) was a pretty good measure of batting effectiveness.



Given that Rickey knew this, and given that we rec.sport.baseball regulars knew that OBP was important, David Berri’s question becomes even more interesting: why did it take so long for the importance of OBP to even approach getting into mainstream usage? I honestly don’t think it has made it yet; too many announcers and baseball folks still say “Moneyball” with a bit of a sneer in their voices.



As one of those early proponents of using OBP and SLG, when I did play-by-play for the AA London Tigers in the early 90s, I refused to mention RBIs, and I consistently and constantly explained to the various co-announcers that I worked with (and the listeners) why OBP and SLG were so important. Then in the mid-90s, when I did play-by-play for the independent league London Werewolves, I actually had it written into my [puny] contract that the screen stats for each player had to include OBP and SLG and not RBIs.



Some of the people I worked with have gone on to work with MLB teams. They certainly understood the importance OBP before Moneyball was published. I think they even regretted its publication, just a little bit, because it gave away some of their secrets.

I highly recommend that you read David’s piece. Also check out the comments before mine — they have some interesting observations about Steve Levitt, that’s for sure.