The AP is reporting that Jan Ullrich, the one time winner and five time runner-up in the Tour de France, has been suspended by his team on the basis of "very concrete information" regarding a growing doping scandal coming out of Spain. The Tour has already asked two Spanish teams to withdraw from the race, and Ullrich was among 56 cyclists named in a Spanish probe as having contact with a doctor charged in connection with the alleged doping. Aside from Ullrich the top names include American Tyler Hamilton (currently serving a two-year suspension for testing positive for blood doping at the Spanish Vuelta in September 2004), Italian Ivan Basso, and Spaniards Francisco Mancebo and Roberto Heras. This is an inauspicious prelude to cycling's biggest event, the Tour de France, which is scheduled to start on Saturday.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 30 June 2006 at 9:29 AM

Warren Buffett, in an interview with Carol Loomis of Fortune Magazine, sums up why the super-rich don't need to keep their wealth into perpetuity. The unstated corollary is that if the rich won't give their wealth away on their own, the government ought to do it for them.

But I would argue that when your kids have all the advantages anyway, in terms of how they grow up and the opportunities they have for education, including what they learn at home - I would say it's neither right nor rational to be flooding them with money.

In effect, they've had a gigantic head-start in a society that aspires to be a meritocracy. Dynastic mega-wealth would further tilt the playing field that we ought to be trying instead to level.

Buffett has been quoted in the past as saying "a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing." This should be the mantra of all of us who support the estate tax.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 29 June 2006 at 11:26 AM

Is it fair to consider WinFS -- MS's promised new SQL-based filesystem -- vaporware? First it was promised as an integral part of Windows Vista. Then, as part of the start-over-from-scratch Vista redesign, it was stripped out of Vista and plans were floated to offer it as a standalone product. Now the word out of Redmond is that WinFS will not be offered as a standalone product, but only as part of the SQL Server and ADO.NET products. Which means that the vast majority of us will never be running WinFS on our desktops. I guess NTFS and FAT32 are going to be around for a while longer.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 27 June 2006 at 9:55 PM

I'm not a big fan of the new stltoday.com design. It isn't bad, I guess. But it is really boring. And yes, it's wider. But that width wasn't used to make things easier to parse. It isn't any easier to read the top headlines, for example. They're still relying too much on bulleted lists of bold text. It all runs together and doesn't make for a very easy read. Everywhere on the site I see a lot of missed opportunities to increase the vertical spacing a bit and greatly improve the site's design. Let me give you an example. The two images below were taken from stltoday.com and nytimes.com. They're both simple lists of headline text linked to stories.

stltoday.com


nytimes.com

Which one do you find easier to read?

I don't go to stltoday with the intention of reading every line of text. I want to scan things quickly, click a link or two and move on. Instead, I try to scan things quickly, fail, and leave without reading anything. A few breaks or some line spacing would go a long way to increasing the readability of the site.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 14 June 2006 at 9:16 AM

My sources tell me that the crew at stltoday.com will be rolling a redesign out tomorrow morning. Their stated goals include better use of screen real estate; a more interactive, Flash-based "Top Stories" feature; and a more muted color scheme. Certainly, the first and third items are rather important. Especially that last one. Stltoday.com has always tended toward the crayola areas of the color spectrum. And not the jumbo-sized, sharpener built into the box crayola crayon colors. More like the basic 8. And that has made the site look a bit garish. Hopefully the new scheme improves things. (Although, to be honest, its hard to imagine a scenario where they don't. The current site is pretty damn ugly.)

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 13 June 2006 at 8:32 AM

A lot has been said about the timeline of events after the military had confirmed the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Apparently was killed in what was the early evening here in the US, but news of his death wasn't released until the early morning hours, around 3:00 am EDT. Truthfully, I don't know why there is any confusion over this. Anyone who has seen the photographs of the military's press conference knows why there was a delay: it takes time to make prints and have them framed. Examples are below:

I think a few hours turn-around is pretty good, actually. When I take prints in to get them framed it usually takes a couple of weeks. Admittedly, this looks like a rather poor framing job. But with that kind of turnaround, I don't think they can complain. I am a bit surprised that the military chose to make printouts rather than just use a digital projector. It's very old-school of them. Also, I wonder, what do they do with those framed photos now? How do you know you're pretty low on the Pentagon pecking order? Your office comes decorated with pictures of the deceased Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 9 June 2006 at 8:28 AM

I saw Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in Forest Park this evening. This was a Shakespeare Festival St. Louis production. We got to Forest Park pretty early and had pretty good seats. Easily twice as close as I was last year. The show was pretty good, although I thought last year's production of The Tempest was better. Per the director's notes, this was an intentionally traditional performance. And while I don't have a significant issue with that decision, I think Julius Caesar needs a little extra punch, especially in the second act. Speaking of the second act, it isn't just that the play itself loses a bit of it's edge after Caesar dies. The cast seemed to have some difficulties with their lines in the second half.

And now, some grainy footage of Caesar's death. Trust me when I tell you that the show was much better in person than this clip would lead you to believe.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 7 June 2006 at 11:51 PM

Jason Isringhausen blew another save last night. That's his fourth blown save this year, which equals his total for all of last year. I've been down on Jason all year, but his supporters keep telling me that I shouldn't look at individual performance but should instead look at his statistics to get a feel for how he's doing. He is tied for second in the majors with 18 saves, after all. So let's do that. Let's take a closer look at Jason Isringhausen's statistics.

Total saves alone are not a particularly useful statistic because of the varying number of save opportunities each closer in the major has had. Save opportunities vary from team to team and, because they exist before a closer is brought into a game, are not correlated to a closer's performance. However, we can account for that pretty easily simply by factoring out save opportunities and analyzing the percentage of save opportunities that are converted to saves.

The following table gives the statistics for every major league pitcher with at least ten save opportunities. There are two rank columns, one for the classic statistics of total number of saves and one for the percentage of save opportunities converted to saves, as well as a few other useful numbers.

Player	Team	SV	SVO	SV%	Rank(SV)	Rank(SV%)
J Isringhausen	STL	18	22	82%	2	14
J Papelbon	BOS	20	20	100%	1	1
D Turnbow	MIL	16	20	80%	4	17
T Gordon	PHI	18	19	95%	2	4
T Jones	DET	16	18	89%	4	12
B Lidge	HOU	14	17	82%	7	14
J Valverde	ARI	14	17	82%	7	14
B Jenks	CWS	15	16	94%	6	5
D Baez	LAD	9	15	60%	19	23
C Ray	BAL	14	14	100%	7	1
F Rodriguez	LAA	13	14	93%	10	6
B Ryan	TOR	13	14	93%	10	6
B Wagner	NYM	11	14	79%	13	18
D Weathers	CIN	9	14	64%	19	22
A Burgos	KC	7	12	58%	24	24
C Cordero	WSH	10	12	83%	16	13
R Dempster	CHC	9	12	75%	19	19
B Fuentes	COL	11	12	92%	13	8
T Hoffman	SD	12	12	100%	12	1
C Reitsma	ATL	8	12	67%	23	21
M Rivera	NYY	11	12	92%	13	8
H Street	OAK	9	12	75%	19	19
A Otsuka	TEX	10	11	91%	16	10
T Walker	TB	10	11	91%	16	10
F Cordero	TEX	3	10	30%	25	25

As you can see, while Jason Isringhausen looks to be an elite closer in terms of his save total this year, he is a middle of the pack guy at best in terms of the percentage of save opportunities converted this year. In fact, it looks more and more like Jason Isringhausen's statistically successful year, as his supporters call it, is a by-product more of the save opportunities he's had than the saves he's completed.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 6 June 2006 at 8:39 AM

Twenty-five years ago today scientists announced that they had identified a new virus that had infected five homosexual men. That virus was HIV, and those five men were the first documented AIDS patients. This anniversary is getting a lot of attention, but not at the White House. As Mixed Signals points out

this past Saturday, in the midst of all the AIDS coverage, the president could have spoken of AIDS in his weekly radio address. But he didn't. Instead, he told the nation why he thinks gay marriages should be illegal in the United States.

Mixed Signals goes on to call that address "badly timed." That is certainly one perspective. My take is that it was deliberately timed. Bush is using the AIDS coverage -- which for historical accuracy must address the disease's initial spreading through the gay community -- to inflame his base. State ballot initiatives on gay marriage helped carry Bush's re-election effort, and he's hoping to further leverage that issue in the upcoming midterm elections. This morning Cokie Roberts told NPR listeners that the midterm elections are all about getting the two party's bases to the polls. If you accept this premise -- and I think it is about half right: local issues can also motivate people to vote in midterms -- then Bush's tactic of hammering away at gay marriage makes political sense. At a time when there is likely to be a good deal of gay-friendly media coverage, Bush wants to remind the Republican base that there is still work to be done. Marriage must be protected. Only Republicans can protect it. Republicans must be elected. I'm sure Bush would tell you that this has nothing to do with homophobia. It's pro-marriage, not anti-gay. There's no bias here. That's why gay marriage is such a perfect issues for the Republicans. It lets them cater to their base's bias, while giving them plausible deniability of the bias. Like I said, Bush's tactic of hammering away at gay marriage makes political sense. It's just morally repugnant.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 5 June 2006 at 10:57 AM

A deer wanders into the St. Louis Galleria shopping mall. Crabtree & Evelyn employees corner the deer until Department of Conservation officials arrive. Now, I'm pretty familiar with the Galleria (I live a couple blocks away from it) and it's in a fairly urban area. Where did the deer come from?

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 4 June 2006 at 11:55 AM

Apartment Tour.

Alright, let's see if there's any interest in some video content. Playing the clip below will take you on a quick tour of my apartment in all of its messy glory.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 1 June 2006 at 10:10 PM