Star Wars Advertising Idea

“Anni, honey, I have wonderful news….news that’s going to change our lives forever…”
“What…what is it, Padmé? What could it be?”
“…I just saved a load of money on our car insurance by switching to Geico!”

Math pun

I know you are, but what is i?

Albums and associations

To me, “Give Up” from The Postal Service sounds like winter. The synth is thin, but it’s pleasant. It creates an atmosphere that’s muted like a cold and quiet snow-covered field. I especially like the opening of “Such Great Heights.” It’s snowfall.

Maybe I’m wrong, though, and the album is just like many others I have: it’s tied to my memories. “Give Up” gave me comfort as I stayed up all night during the winter writing papers, as “A Rush of Blood to the Head” and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers remind me of falling asleep while doing ridiculously long Pre-Calc assignments. Dispatch and Lauryn Hill are summer as the Postal Service is winter. Collective Soul reminds me of rides in the car with Danny, one of my best friends. “Zen Arcade” is all about sitting in a damp tent with rain pouring down outside. “Abbey Road” took me through my first breakup. Each song suited my feelings perfectly, so much that it’s difficult for me to listen to it sometimes. “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” reminds me of the girls with whom I was in love my senior year. It didn’t come together, and I yearned for them for a long time after, but I wasn’t upset; I was still very happy with my life. I smiled and forgot the whole thing…until I feel like listening to the album again, and it all comes back to me. “In a Little While” and “Wild Honey” are the best songs on the album.

These sorts of associations are obviously not what the musicians had in mind when they recorded the music – “Abbey Road” was a breakup album but not a breakup album – but everyone has stories like mine. The artist may not have taken you where you wanted to go, but you still went somewhere, and isn’t that the purpose? One song can produce a hundred different emotions, a million different memories. It lives forever but can tie us to a single moment better than any scrapbook. That’s music. It’s magic. I can’t comprehend it.

The marginal utility of utility players

A utility player is a guy who can go 0-for-4 from four different positions.

A misunderstood basketball statistic gets some love

My whole life, I’ve been reading basketball box scores and wondering what a “Team Rebound” is. I could decipher all the other abbreviations, like . This week, thanks to the constantly-updating NBA.com scoreboards, my question has finally been answered. For completely accurate scorekeeping, every missed shot must have an accompanying rebound. So, any shot which does not go into the basket or another player’s hands, whether it is a buzzer-beater, a ball that bounces out of bounds, or the front end of two free throws, becomes a team rebound for the team who gets the ball next. For example, if I take a shot, and it bounces off the rim and over the backboard, the other team gets the ball and receives credit for a team rebound. The stat itself is trivial: it’s not an accomplishment at all! You get a team rebound -because- you didn’t do anything! Without it, however, statisticians would go crazy at the end of games wondering if they’d correctly tracked every shot, if they’d missed anything. “Are you SURE that two of Reggie’s shots went out of bounds? What if we forgot something?”

Team Rebound, the big stats like Points and Assists might kick you around or worse, pity you for your apparent uselessness, but you can have a sandwich with me any time. You keep all the numbers balanced so the mathematicians won’t lose their minds. Thanks to you, everything that happens can be recounted. You’re one of the blue-collar guys who doesn’t get on TV but who makes the world go. God bless you.

The Yankees are sinking under their own weight

Most people think the Yankees’ poor start is a fluke. I don’t think so. This could be the year they don’t make the playoffs. The offense is still great (though not the best in baseball), but the pitching is terrible. Of the starting five, Randy Johnson is excellent but injured; Carl Pavano is pretty good; Mike Mussina is on the decline, and Kevin Brown and Jaret Wright are train wrecks. I don’t know how those two are making eight million dollars each. The bullpen isn’t what it used to be. The Red Sox have broken Mariano Rivera’s mystique. No one else in the bullpen scares me, either. They’re all thirty-something and on the downside.

Usually, Steinbrenner and Cashman would address these issues by poaching stars from poor teams, but it looks like they’ve run out of prospects to trade, and the high salaries are starting to weigh them down. (They couldn’t afford to sign the players they wanted this summer, which is very unlike them.) My team, the Orioles, also has questionable pitching, but our hurlers are young and hungry, at least, and they’ll learn on the job. Our offense is better than New York’s, as well. I feel great about our chances. At the very least, the pennant race will be fun this year; New York and Boston won’t be beating everyone up all the time.

What strikes me about the Yankees is how many people left their former homes, where they were much needed and beloved, because they wanted to thought they had to be in New York to win – Randy Johnson, Mike Mussina, and Alex Rodriguez, for example. The teams they left are now better than the team for which they play. Major League Baseball doesn’t give the trophy to the team with the most celebrities; the team has to earn it. Karl Malone and Gary Payton took pay cuts to play in win a championship with the L. A. Lakers, and that didn’t work out, either. I’m glad it didn’t. I have much more respect for Reggie Miller, who elected to stay in a small market and to create his own legacy. He’d rather lose on their own merits than win on someone else’s. I don’t care that Reggie hasn’t won any rings. It doesn’t diminish all the incredible things he has done. He made my childhood twice as good, and I’ll never forget that.

This is a “Rocky” style post

I have a sheet of paper taped to my wall. Written on it are three work-related facts of which I often need to remind myself.

1. Short Term Comfort VS Long Term Consequences. If I never relax, I’ll be too burned out to work. If I relax too much, I’ll burn out from working so hard to make deadlines. Also, some things may never get done, and I’ll regret it. Exercising, for example, may be uncomfortable, but if I don’t do it, there will be weighty penalties.
2. Toughness > Skill. That’s why the Patriots splatter the Colts every year. Persistence and confidence are necessary in the face of adversity. So is a short memory. I must remember why I erred, but I can’t let it drag me down. Tomorrow is a new day.
3. The Way is Under The Mountains. If the method I’m using to solve a problem is especially complex and difficult, either there’s an easier way to do it, or I’ve done something wrong. This is especially relevant to math and science.

With these in mind, I continue to study for my math final.