A comprehensive preview for one of the most underrated events in golf. Also, the event itself starts in about 5 minutes.
Month: February 2013
Categories
Alec Baldwin is Still Classy
> The “30 Rock’’ star grabbed the reporter, Tara Palmeri, by her arm and told her, “I want you to choke to death,” Palmeri told police, for whom she played an audiotape of the conversation.
Nice guy.
As you can imagine, there a ton of factors coming together to raise prices. Of course, the lack of investment in America’s possible oil resources is one of those factors.
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Dustin Pedroia Now on Twitter
I hope [Over the Monster](http://www.overthemonster.com/2013/2/19/4003686/boston-red-sox-dustin-pedroia-on-twitter-life-now-officially-worth-living) is right and that it is really him. This tweet has my hopes up:
> Goodnight I’m on the twitter if u ain’t hustlin ur getting hustled . My teammates will show me tomm how to use this thing . Out
Fingers crossed.
Speaking of mobile photography tips, Michel Lopp gives some excellent advice for those looking to take their Instagram photos to another level.
Pay particular attention to Tip #4.
Categories
Gaming Girls Photoshoot
Molly McIsaac and friends get together for a geeky photoshoot about girls and gaming. Anyone who knows Ms. McIsaac knows she is about as you can get from the [fake geek girls](http://www.themarysue.com/fake-geek-girls-pulp-cover/) that were chastised by certain parts of the internet a fews months ago.[^fn1]
[^fn1]: Of course, I would argue that there is no such thing as “fake geek girls” in the first place. I will point you to John Siracusa’s now defunct podcast [Hypercritical](http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/96) for more discussion about that.
Really interesting stuff. I always figured there was as source for a lot of these memes, and now Professor Jacobson has found it. He adds an excellent observation near the end of his post:
> There is nothing like Upworthy or BuzzFeed on the right. The closest we have come is Twitchy, Michelle Malkin’s brilliant website.
> Are you surprised that Obama won the youth vote even though his policies are a complete disaster for the young?
> We are losing the fight to the lowest of low information voters, who are pushed toward a liberal agenda by very smart and talented people who understand the power of social media in a way we don’t.
Winning this fight is going to take a lot more than simply rebranding the message at the national level. It is going to take embracing the way that people communicate in this day and age. Frankly, I think that is one of the few places where the Republican Party is actually behind.
Michael has mixed results during his initial tests of Manton’s [new site-specific search](http://searchpath.io/). I like *Searchpath* conceptually, but I am not quite ready to [switch over from my Sphider](http://search.johnkiv.us) installation.[^fn1] That said, if I did not already have my [Sphider](http://www.sphider.eu) installation running, I would probably have used Searchpath for my site’s search functionality.
[^fn1]: If anything, I think Searchpath’s launch has motivated me to better integrate my search into the rest of my site.
I have had my Time Machine backups going to an external drive hooked up to my Airport Extreme for as long as I can remember. This used to cause me all sorts of problems, but I very rarely have issues now. Part of that might be due to using a more defined backup schedule with [TimeMachineEditor](http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/),[^fn1] and part of that is probably improvements in newer version of Mac OS X. Still, next time I do get one of those
“*Time Machine completed a verification of your backups. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you”* errors, I am going to give [Garth Gillespie’s trick](http://www.garth.org/archives/2011,08,27,169,fix-time-machine-sparsebundle-nas-based-backup-errors.html) a shot.
[^fn1]: I backup overnight instead of continually through the day. Obviously this means that I have a bigger gap in between backups than the people who backup every twenty minutes.
Categories
Cosplay of the “New” Harley Quinn
I still am not a fan of the “new” Harley Quinn, in either personality or look, but this cosplay by *WhiteLemon* is as good as you can do with the new look.
Pat Forde on a rule change I had not heard about:
> The NCAA forced the issue this week by recommending a rule that will eject anyone who is flagged for targeting a defenseless player.
> “The tool we have is playing time,” said Rogers Redding, secretary-editor of the NCAA football rules committee and national coordinator of officials. “The committee said we’ve got to get this play out of the game.”
> It is a bold move by the committee because it will invite backlash – not now, but in the fall. The first time a star player gets the boot for a helmet-to-helmet hit, everyone will lose their minds.
Exactly. Imagine an elite defense end or cornerback getting thrown out of the national title game for a helmet-to-helmet hit and the outrage that would cause. This is going to be extremely interesting to follow.
> I wonder if Musk’s overreactions to negative press will discourage future Tesla reviews. He accused the New York Times of pretty nasty things, and Tesla fans are going after them hard. (Some of what he wrote might even be legally actionable, although the Times probably wouldn’t pursue it.)
> The Times will be fine, but what if Musk’s target was a smaller publication without as strong of a reputation? What if it was TIME? The Columbus Dispatch? Car and Driver? Motor Trend? His inflammatory, defamatory post would have been… a malicious hit piece, potentially devastating to their reputation.
Maybe the Times will be fine, but can’t we still hope that more people start to view the Times and other traditional media entities as people who find facts to fit the story they want to write[^fn1]?
[^fn1]: I am not arguing here that new media outlets do not do the same thing, just that people’s reverence for the allegedly unbiased media days of old is misplaced.
> You know, CNN has played video of this. I don’t know how many times they have played this over and over and over again. They’re actually asking if this is the new Watergate, if this is the end of Rubio’s career. I have to admit, folks, I didn’t know he drank water. You ever seen a politician do that in public? You don’t see it. You don’t see ’em eat in public. You don’t see ’em drink water, particularly between sentences. Now, I’ve seen football players drink Gatorade and whatever the hell else is down there on the sideline between plays, but drinking water during a speech, dry mouth during a speech? If I wasn’t so strong I’d take the day off to deal with the emotional wreck that this has made me. But I’m hanging tough.
Rush is simply the best at what he does.
Categories
Hot in Fever – The Tesla Testdrive
Currently hot in my [Fever](http://feedafever.com) instance – **The Tesla Testdrive**
The basics are:
1. The [New York Times had a scathing review of the Tesla Model S](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev-highway.html?ref=automobiles&_r=1&).
2. Telsa CEO Elon Muskc [responded with a blog post crushing the author of the Times piece and giving data to back up his conclusions](http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive).
3. Other media outlets, such as the Atlantic, [have come to the Times’ defense](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/elon-musks-data-doesnt-back-his-claims-new-york-times-fakery/62149/).
4. John Broader, author of the original Times piece, [also responded to Musk](http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/that-tesla-data-what-it-says-and-what-it-doesnt/).
Personally, if I am betting on whether the New York Times or Tesla is the one manipulating facts, I putting my money on the Times being the fact manipulator every time.
Links related to this:
* [Endgaget](http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/14/new-york-times-editor-responds-to-tesla-model-s-data-logs-accusations/)
* [Ars Technica](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/02/tesla-new-york-times-trade-shots-over-coverage/)
* [The Next Web](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/02/14/elon-musk-publishes-charts-and-maps-to-back-up-his-claim-that-the-new-york-times-lied-in-its-tesla-review/)
> To start with, the reason Gov. Pat McCrory and North Carolina lawmakers were faced with two difficult decisions about Obamacare is that it was a poorly conceived, sloppily written piece of legislation. Cobbled together from ill-fitting pieces in an attempt to please both the Center and Left of the Democratic Party, and to bribe certain members of Congress to vote for a measure their constituents did not favor, the bill contains contradictions, ambiguities, legal problems, and a huge transfer of policymaking authority from elected representatives (be they in Congress or state legislatures) to federal regulators.
Well said, Mr. Hood. Well said[^fn1].
[^fn1]: This paragraph does not cover the detail he goes into regarding why rejecting Obamacare is right for North Carolina. I encourage you to read the whole thing.
Categories
The Blade Runner Murder
This story is so strange and depressing. Pistorius was such an inspiration at the Olympics, but now, I am not sure what to think[^fn1]. My sympathies to Reeva Steenkamp’s family.
[^fn1]: [For example, the Prosecutors are now claiming premeditated murder.](http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2013/02/15/prosecutors-announce-will-pursue-premeditated-murder-charge-against-blade/) I think it is far too early to figure out what really happened, though.
Dan Way, writing at the *Carolina Journal*:
> Buoyed by Gov. Pat McCrory’s announcement that he does not support expanding Medicaid rolls or creating a state-run health insurance exchange, a state House committee voted Tuesday over Democrats’ objections in favor of Senate Bill 4, legislation that rejects those same provisions of Obamacare.
> …
> In his statement today, McCrory said an administrative review on the Medicaid issues that included discussions with the White House, other governors, health care providers, and legislative leaders concluded it is “abundantly clear that North Carolina is not ready to expand the Medicaid system, and that we should utilize a federal exchange.”
> Recent Medicaid audits show North Carolina Medicaid “is broken and not ready to expand without great risk to the taxpayers and to the delivery of existing services to those in need,” McCrory said.
It looks like this process is in the home stretch. Now it is time to see if they can cross the finish line.
T.H. responding to the arguments for Hairston over Strickland:
>
UNC’s defense is considerably worse when P.J. Hairston is on the floor.
>
The first point has been internalized by everyone, and there’s no shortage of people suggesting how the starting lineup should change to solve that problem. But the second point is going overlooked; I don’t think people grasp the defensive differences. In ACC play before the Miami game, UNC’s defensive efficiency was 89.4 with Hairston on the bench, and 117.8 when he’s on the floor. Now that might be overstating things, as +/- type statistics can be pretty noisy, but the coaches see the team much more in practice. If Hairston had the defensive chops, he’d be playing more than 19.2 minutes a game.
I disagree with the point T.H. is trying to make, though I give him credit for acknowledging that his use of +/- statistics to bolster his argument is particularly flimsy. Since Carolina has been getting run out of the gym with their alleged “best” defensive team starting, I think it is worth giving Hairston a chance to prove himself as a competent defenders. We have seen the ceiling for Carolina this year with Strickland starting, now it is time to see if they can raise that ceiling with Hairston in the starting rotation.
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Carolina on the NCAA Tournament Bubble
Andrew Jones is not particularly optimistic about Carolina’s NCAA Tournament changes:
> This season, however, UNC is neither on probation nor banged up, and it may not make the NCAA Tournament. At 16-7 overall (6-4 in the ACC), UNC appears on course for a lower seed to The Big Dance. But the schedule ahead has enough rough spots, and since Carolina’s resume is very un-Carolina-like, it could lead to some teeth-gnashing by Tar Heels fans come Selection Sunday.
He does, however, make a recommendation on how to change things:
> Williams is a legend because he almost always makes the right decisions for his team, it stands to reason now is the time to make another gutsy call. Playing Hairston ahead of Strickland would increase UNC’s chances of making the NCAA Tournament and strengthen the program for next season.
As a long-time member of the Hairston over Strickland camp, I agree with Mr. Jones.