Eric The Blue

Twins in April

At the start of the baseball season, the daughter who's a fan asked me how I thought the Twins would do this season.  She's just young enough to regard me as a reliable source of information, at least on some topics. Flattered, I adopted the oracular tone of an ESPN commentator and said something like, "Well, Lydia, this team will score some runs, and the question is whether their pitchers will be able to get the other guys out." They then lost their first game 2-1, and their second by 4-3. After a couple of weeks of a win here, a loss or two there, not a lot of runs scored or allowed, they went into Kansas City for a series in which, in three games, they held the Royals to a total of six runs and lost twice anyway. The win, on get-away day, was 1-0. Things have to change, I thought, or she's going to discount my opinions on a range of sensitive issues. 

They left Kansas City with a record of 5-8. The way I thought things would change, if they changed, is that the hitting would come to life just as the pitching came to earth, and they'd be losing 8-6 instead of 4-2. But in an instance of pessimism proving at least temporarily unwarranted, the run production ticked up (aided by some t-ball caliber fielding by the opposition) while the pitching remained stingy, and the team swept consecutive series at home against the Sox and the Tigers. That made seven wins in a row. The streak came to an end in Tampa Bay yesterday, but they beat the Rays today, and at the end of April the Twins sit atop their division with a record of 12-9. 

Let's dwell cheerfully on their pitching because it might be our last chance. Joe Ryan has been an ace. He's started four games, won three of them, and, in 23 innings pitched, has allowed just 10 hits and three runs. But he's not the only one: five guys have started 19 of the 21 games and the highest ERA in the bunch belongs to Chris Paddack, at 3.68. When in today's game rookie reliever Jhoan Duran entered in the middle innings, the TV flashed the message that he'd struck out 15 of the 35 batters he's faced this year. I cynically mused that that might be right around the league average—everyone strikes out all the time—but you couldn't argue with today's results: two innings, six up and six down, just 21 pitches thrown and three strikeouts. The success has been general. In their 12 wins, the Twins have allowed a total of 24 runs. I attended the public schools but I think that's two per game, give or take. 

Here's more math: if they go 12-9 six more times, they'll be 84-63 with 15 games to play. They aren't going to hit .219 (their current team batting average) all season, so maybe . . . .

[Leans back in chair, dreaming happily, almost falls backward.]

Curious study

 

What is it with the right wing and masks? I don't remember nuts going barefoot into grocery stores, demanding service, and then when told to leave making videos in which they presented themselves as updated Kings and Gandhis. Also, the evident desperation with which they insist that masks don't work, accompanied by the perpetually pumped-up volume, persuades me more than Dr. Fauci ever could that it's probably a good idea to wear a mask in crowded indoor spaces. Here is John Hinderaker, of the wingnut Power Line Blog, recently setting out from shore:

With airports and airplanes now liberated, masks are becoming a rarity. That is a good thing, as there was never any substantial evidence that masks work. This study of 35 European countries during the period from October 1 2020 to March 31, 2021, when the second covid wave passed through that continent, could put the last nail in the mask coffin.

Yes, that was pretty bad back when airports resembled Buchenwald. But I was curious about this study, and not less so when, proceeding through Hinderaker's account of it, I noticed that he never identified the author, nor the name of the journal, nor the methods used, such as how the percentage of mask users in different European countries was determined. He did, however, provide the same hyperlink that I reproduced in the above excerpt. When you click on it, you get taken here, where curiosity can in some measure be satisfied.

The author is Beny Spira. His byline above the article is a hyperlink, and when you click on it you read: "I'm not a medical professional." He is an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. Scanning the section on "Study Design" for an answer to my question about the source for data on mask usage, I read: "Daily data on COVID-19 cases and deaths and on mask usage were obtained for all European countries." Foiled by the passive voice! But there is a footnote in the table containing the actual data that says, "Percent of the population reporting always wearing a mask when leaving home." So it seems the answer to the question

How do you know what percentage of the people wear masks?

is

You just ask them and, after tallying their responses, import the percentages into your data table. 

The article was published in a journal called Cureus. I'd never heard of it, though to be fair there's only three journals pertaining to similar subject matter that I have heard of: The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, and The Journal of the American Medical Association. It's not one of those! When you google the journal's name, the first return is its website and, just below that, the familiar table labeled "People Also Ask." I assume the questions people also ask are a summary of what Google has determined searchers seem to be trying to find out when they type "Cureus" into the search bar, and they include:

Is Cureus a credible journal?

Is Cureus a predatory Journal?

Does Cureus reject?

The answer to the first question is: "According to my experience for that specific journal it's a very credible author oriented/friendly journal." That the journal is indeed "author friendly" is corroborated in the answer to the third question: "The Cureus peer review philosophy is 'peer review not peer reject.' Sometimes a peer reviewer will be a reasonable person who will provide good feedback that actually improves the article." The second question leads me to believe that some "journals" extract large sums from people desperate to publish articles somewhere, anywhere, and that googlers, perhaps aware that Cureus publishes almost anything, are wondering whether they'll have to pay.

Other articles included within the first page of top returns are "Cureus Publications? Worth it or just a waste of time" and "Cureus—Retraction Watch." The journal's own web site displays, at the top of its home page, "publication metrics": the average time to publish an article in Cureus is 37 days, and 41 percent of accepted articles are published for free.

"[T]here was never any substantial evidence that masks work," Hinderaker wrote, before putting forward this Cureus study as final proof that the question has now been settled. 

As of this morning, there had been 137 responses to Hinderaker’s post. I read through them to see whether anyone had raised questions about the, shall we say, rigor of the "study." It was all just the Amen Corner. There is a large market for bullshit. A sampling of the comments:

I won't hold my breath waiting for this [study] to be the lead on national news!

BTW masks are the least of it, what about vaccines? I'm still watching charts and around the world and in California and Los Angeles, and the situation is no better there—data does not confirm that vaccines do anything useful, and there are general trends that suggest they are harmful.

I wore a mask exactly once to cash my $541.00 reward check at Costco. As soon as the money was in my hand, I pulled off my mask, and cancelled my membership.

The mask has its purpose. It covers the mouth and muzzles us. It obscures our faces and thus negates our expressions, our facial structure and ultimately our identity. Donning the mask is an act of announcing our frailty and fear. Unless we are truly twisted, it undermines our sense of self worth. We could go on and on . . . the mask is essentially a tool to subjugate and instill fear. Like the chicken who crosses the road . . . they have their reasons. And those gathered here on this excellent blog have our reasons to reject the mask. We still know how to think. 

The ellipses are in the original of this last long one from Jeanne—nothing has been omitted. Even though 13 people upvoted the comment, it's not her facial structure I'm wondering about. 

Good for the goose, not the gander

The conservative magazine National Review uses its Twitter feed to plug recently published articles. The first tweet above supplies a link to an article criticizing Harvard for withdrawing a speaking invitation from someone with whom National Review agrees. The second tweet supplies a link to a story criticizing Georgetown Law School for failing to withdraw a speaking invitation from someone with whom National Review disagrees. Since these are back-to-back tweets, a few Communists think they demonstrate a degree of almost comical flexibility on the part of National Review, but what these leftists will never comprehend is that the views of National Review editors are recommended by reason while the views of its critics are beyond the pale of civilized discourse and must be suppressed or, if you prefer, cancelled. 

They'd explain it themselves if they weren't working up an editorial on why France needs the electoral college. 

In the coffeeshop

Sitting in Bob's Java Hut, 27th & Lyndale in south Minneapolis, I look out the window and see a tall, slim blonde wearing a very short skirt approaching on the sidewalk. I might be old, but I'm not dead, so I put my head down till I gauge she's close but not yet past, then casually lift my eyes and gaze out the window like a philosopher contemplating The Deep. My estimate is good and it's immediately apparent that she's a he in drag. Still, nice legs. 

Just in case you're reading this in Hayfield and want to know what you're missing. 

If you prefer the Dems, and have people in your life who don't, like me you have probably heard a lot of

But what about _____________?

and the blank is filled with the name of some big city in a blue state that has allegedly gone to hell on account of "Democratic misrule," "wokeism," "liberal pieties," etc., etc. Yes, no place on earth is paradise, and when several hundred thousand people are living in close proximity to one another there is sometimes trouble. Seems odd, though, that this should reflect poorly on the policies pursued by their elected Democratic officials while the agenda of Republicans in, say, Mississippi, is not subjected to similar "analysis." Since there currently are no drag queens on the sidewalk, I just googled "homicide rate by state," which is where I found the above map. The darker the hue,  the higher the rate. The data is from the CDC for 2020—they always publish in the fall the full report for the previous year, so 2020 is the most recent report available. Chicago is a common whipping boy so I thought it was interesting that there's less homicide mortality per 100,000 population in Illinois than in neighboring Missouri or nearby Arkansas. California and New York are in the same range as Wyoming and Kansas. The site is here. For the record, the states with the five highest homicide rates are:

Mississippi
Louisiana
Alabama
Missouri
Arkansas

Next I tried "infant mortality rate by state." The CDC data is here. The map resembles the one for homicide. Here are the five states with the highest rates of infant mortality (infant deaths per 1000 live births):

Mississippi
Louisiana
West Virginia
Arkansas
Alabama

And the five lowest:

New Jersey
New York
Massachusetts
California
Vermont

Next I tried "covid death rates by state." Results here. The five highest:

Mississippi
Arizona
Oklahoma
Alabama
Tennessee

And the five lowest:

Maine
Washington
Utah
Vermont
Hawaii

You can keep playing this game. The five states with the highest per capita incomes are New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, and California. Mississippi is last. It's last in everything, and its closest competition in the per capita income category is provided by a lot of the usual suspects: West Virginia, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Alabama round out the lowest five. 

Well, I'm sure their problems will dissipate once they've banned enough books from the school library!

Local resident does well but dies young

Prince died on this day in 2016. A few weeks ago, footage of him being interviewed during a 1970 Minneapolis schools teacher strike made a social media sensation after it was discovered by a music fan who, in his job for the local CBS affiliate, was alert enough while reviewing old tape to recognize an unnamed interviewee, age 11, who said he was on the teachers' side "because they work, they be working extra hours for us and all that stuff." 

The above picture, of the 1971-72 basketball team at Bryant Junior High in south Minneapolis, has also been widely disseminated on social media. Prince, wearing #3, is kneeling at one end of the front row. Discussions of Prince as a basketball player inevitably quote his junior high coach, Richard Robinson, who said he was an excellent player but couldn't crack the starting lineup because he was undersized and there were so many other talented guys on the team. The Current has, here, "an oral history of Prince's love of basketball" that includes Robinson's reminiscences. He wasn't blowing smoke about having some good athletes on his junior high basketball team. I'm reasonably sure that #20 is Greg Boone, who a few years later was runner-up to Kevin McHale for Minnesota's Mr. Basketball Award. And #21 standing in the back row is Duane Nelson, who was good enough to play college basketball at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee—he was widely regarded during his life (he died in 2011) as Prince's half-brother, though the picture got murky after the musician died without living parents, offspring, or a will, and a probate court started hearing evidence from diverse claimants. I believe the kid wearing #4 and kneeling at the opposite end of the front row from Prince is Russell Gary, who played college football at Nebraska and was later an all-pro defensive back for the New Orleans Saints. Big #31, Calvin Anderson, went to Nebraska with Gary and played in the offensive line for the Cornhuskers. It's kind of humorous to read about Coach Robinson remembering how the wispy Prince, who in his maturity attained the height of 5' 2", repeatedly complained to him about being only the sixth or seventh man with this group. He quit playing basketball after his sophomore year at Minneapolis Central High School. Friends say he had other interests. 

I have a bit of a biographical connection to this photograph. I graduated high school the same year as Prince and his teammates, and I think my junior high basketball team might have played against Bryant in a tournament—it's also possible that they were only in the same tournament and that, though we didn't play them, their Afros made an impression on me. What I know for sure is that, a few years later, several of the kids in this picture were seniors on the basketball team at Central High, which went through the regular season undefeated. They were joined by a junior, Andra Griffin, who, after a college career at the University of Washington, was selected in the fifth round of the 1981 NBA draft by the Seattle Supersonics. I was on the team at Columbia Heights. Our team was pretty good—co-champions of a competitive league—but, to give you some idea, we beat Minnetonka in a close game early in the season, and when Central played Minnetonka in a holiday tournament they slipped past them by the score of 88-48. A 40-point win was not uncommon for them; like I say, Minnetonka was no weakling. Central was in the same region as us, so all season we knew that they stood in the way of us qualifying for the state tournament. We ended up being the #2 seed in the region tournament, and, had it gone according to Hoyle, would have played Central in the championship game. But we lost in the semifinal to North High School, and a couple nights later North, in a huge upset, toppled Central. The two teams had played twice during the regular season and Central had won by 66-54 and 79-65. I don't have a scrapbook; I'm pulling this information from the 1976 Central High yearbook. 

Back to Prince, my fellow class of '76er. Here he is (below) performing "When You Were Mine" at First Avenue on August 3, 1983, by chance my 25th birthday. I was probably playing in a softball game, like an idiot. Information about the show, including the setlist, is here: I guess that night was the first time he ever did "Purple Rain" live. The show was a benefit for the Minnesota Dance Theatre, which sheds some light on the following tidbit from the Wikipedia article on Prince:

While attending Bryant, he was trained in classical ballet at the Minnesota Dance Theatre through the Urban Arts Program of Minneapolis Public Schools. He grew to become an advocate for dancers, and would later use his wealth to save the ailing Joffrey Ballet in Chicago during the 1990s.

If you know "When You Were Mine" from the record "Dirty Mind," it's fun to hear him sing it that evening in his (surprisingly low) natural voice. For the recorded version, he also made some changes to the lyrics, perhaps anticipating the sensibilities of people like Tipper Gore. I've always loved Prince, partly for his music but also because he was a worldwide superstar who never left the city of his birth, Minneapolis. When in 2015 the Minnesota Lynx won the WNBA championship, he had the team over to Paisley Park and played a private concert for them that began in the wee hours of the morning after they had won the final game, which he attended. When his death was announced six years ago, Lindsay Whalen recalled that night, here. Quit the team but always loved basketball!

 

 

Dick Bremer speaks

Twins play-by-play guy Dick Bremer pretty much sticks to baseball, and in particular avoids controversial topics. I therefore pricked up my ears when, during the telecast on Jackie Robinson Day, he said he thought there was something about baseball's color line getting broken that isn't widely recognized. This turned out to be the impression a lot of people have that, once Robinson played for Brooklyn, the barrier was down and Black players began filling roster places on all the big league teams. According to Dick, this view, or assumption, is false. He didn't supply a ton of details—he was calling the game, too—but I just googled "first black player in mlb by team" and got referred to quite a helpful list in this Wikipedia article. No surprise, Dick's right.

Indeed it turns out that the pace of integration was slower than I'd imagined. Robinson played his first game for the Dodgers on April 15, 1947. In July of that season, two other teams, the Cleveland Indians and the St. Louis Browns (now the Orioles), had their first Black player take the field—Larry Doby and Hank Thompson, respectively. In the 1948 season, no new team had its first Black player, though it was Roy Campanella's rookie season with the Dodgers and Satchell Paige pitched for the Indians. The next year, 1949, was Monte Irvin's first year with the New York Giants. No other team had their first Black player that season. In 1950, one new team had their first Black player when Sam Jethroe played in the outfield for the Boston Braves.  The next season only the White Sox joined the list of integrated teams. When the Giants called up Willie Mays in May of '51, he became their fourth Black player—only the Indians, with five, had had more. By this time, Jackie Robinson was a five-year veteran and ten of the sixteen teams had still never had a Black player. When I was born toward the end of the 1958 season, Robinson had been retired for a couple of years and no Black guy had ever played for the home team in Fenway Park. 

So those are the facts justifying Dick's assertion. If he'd wanted to venture a controversial conclusion on Jackie Robinson Day, he might have suggested that, when the topic is race in America, we love to pat ourselves on the back for "the progress we've made" while keeping  hidden how much resistance there has always been to every grudging forward step. 

Kershaw pitches 7 solid innings!

I was in a bar on Wednesday afternoon—and there's gambling at Rick's!—while the Twins were playing the Dodgers. The TV was on, but I was only aware that the Twins were losing and didn't learn till later about the unusual circumstances: Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers' starter, was removed from the game after pitching seven perfect innings and throwing just 80 pitches. I might be one of the three ardent baseball fans who doesn't have an ardent opinion about the wisdom or aptness of this move, but I've enjoyed some of the commentary. It's pointed out, for example, that in a game between the Red Sox and Angels on June 14, 1974, Nolan Ryan, who was 27, threw 235 pitches and then, after three days rest, beat the Yankees on June 18. He pitched for 19 more seasons after that one. I saw this in a social media post but have verified it here and here.

To a young fan, these box scores must seem like relics from pre-history, which, considering that I was a teen, is poignant to contemplate. Ryan's line for the June 14 game was 13 innings pitched, 3 runs allowed on 8 hits with 19 strikeouts, 10 walks, and no decision. His mound opponent, Luis Tiant of the Red Sox, was the hard-luck loser: he went the distance and was credited with 15.1 innings pitched—there was one out in the bottom of the 16th when the Angels scored the winning run. Carl Yastrzemski had tied the game, 3-3, with a 2-run homer off Ryan in the top of the ninth, so no closer to protect the lead and Ryan pitched another 4.2 innings after yielding the tying homer. The 16-inning game was played in 4 hours, 2 minutes—last year, the average MLB game lasted 3 hours, 10 minutes.

In the June 18 game against the Yankees, Ryan was taken out after pitching six scoreless innings. This seems an acknowledgment that his effort a few days earlier might have been a bit of a strain. The Angels won the game, 3-0, in an hour and 55 minutes. Ryan's opponent that day was Dick Tidrow, who pitched a complete game while taking the loss. In consecutive starts, then, Ryan's mound opponent went the distance and got the L. (Last year, there were 24 complete games pitched all season.) Ryan himself, in four days' time, pitched 19 innings, allowed 3 runs (2 on one swing of Yastrzemski's bat), and had 26 strikeouts, a win, and a no decision. 

The thin blue line

There was no doubt that the NYPD was going to get their man. Frank Robert James arrested for shooting 10 people aboard a Brooklyn “N” train on Tuesday. #CopsCountPoliceMatter pic.twitter.com/y6g4Wl7p7K

— Bill Bratton (@CommissBratton) April 13, 2022

Not sure that the congratulatory tone of the above tweet, from former New York police commissioner Bill Bratton, squares very well with the details of the suspect's activity as reported by diverse outlets, including ABC News:

After the mass shooting during Tuesday morning's rush hour, James switched subway trains, from the N to the R, and got off the train at the 25th Street Station around 8:35 a.m., sources said. He then took the B67 bus to Park Slope, where he bought a new mask and entered the 7th Avenue subway station at 9:18 a.m.

James made it into Manhattan and, sometime Tuesday night, checked into the Chelsea International Hostel on West 20th Street, sources said. He emerged sometime Wednesday morning and began wandering the streets of Lower Manhattan, hiding in plain sight, sources said. 

Multiple sightings began at around 10:30 a.m., when he was spotted sitting outside Dimes, a restaurant in Chinatown, sources said. Witnesses took pictures of him sitting, apparently using a Link NYC hub to charge his phone, and posted to social media, tagging police, sources said. 

A few hours later, James was spotted getting lunch at Katz's on the Lower East Side, sources said. 

Just after 1 p.m. Wednesday, James called Crime Stoppers on himself, saying he was in the East Village at a McDonald's at East 6th Street and First Avenue, according to sources. James reportedly said: "I think you're looking for me. I'm seeing my picture all over the news and I'll be around this McDonald's."

By the time police arrived, James had already left the McDonald's. But a good Samaritan spotted James nearby on St. Mark's Place and First Avenue and flagged down police, sources said.

Yes, the NYPD always gets their man! All that's required is that people post to social media pictures of him chilling in Lower Manhattan, tagging the police, and then, when that doesn't get their attention, the suspect himself calls the cops' own tip line to tell them what McDonald's he's at. But they can't get there before he wanders off, so a citizen has to flag them down to indicate what square yard of space he is currently taking up. 

As a meek and usually law-abiding citizen, I have few interactions with cops, but the subway shooter's troubles getting himself arrested reminded me, vaguely, of the last time I exchanged words with one of Minneapolis's finest. My then-wife woke me at around 3 one morning because it sounded like someone was alternately trying to jimmy the lock of our front door and force it open with shoulder butts. Our bedroom was upstairs, directly above the entry, and our outside light was on, but there was a decorative roof over the door so that when I looked down through the bedroom window I could see the guy's shadow but not him. I called 9-1-1 to report that someone was trying to break into my house. They keep you on the line so that you can report any new developments while the cops are en route. Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting: the house was in the middle of south Minneapolis, a block off 35W, a block off Nicollet Avenue, and a block off 46th Street, all major thoroughfares and it was the middle of the night, no traffic. Eventually the guy straggled away. Soon as he emerged from beneath that little roof my concerns evaporated. He was so drunk he could barely walk. He might have thought he was at his own house. As he staggered off, I told the nice 9-1-1 operator to forget it, the guy had given up and I could see he was just a confused drunk. No, no, the police are now only three minutes away, she said. Probably had to settle up with the counter help at the all-night donut shop before swinging into action. Sure enough, a few minutes later a cop was knocking at my door, and when I answered he reported, buttons bursting, that he and his partner had caught the would-be intruder.

Outstanding work! Had he fallen down, or did you have to outrun him?  Wish I remembered what the cop looked like. Maybe it was Derek Chauvin. They always say there's just one or two bad ones.

Socratic method

Just bought a cup of coffee for $2.97. Paid with a five. The young employee entered $10 on the cash register. Realizing her mistake, she summoned a colleague for help. I thought maybe for some inscrutable reason the transaction had to be voided but, no, it was just that she was now confused about how much change I deserved: garbage in, garbage out.

They discussed the problem in my presence. It was fun to mark the Eureka expressions when I suggested they subtract five dollars from whatever the register indicated. Seven-oh-three? Ok, then, two-oh-three, right? (Didn't want them to think I was pulling a fast one.) "You're so smart!" one of them commented. I put a dollar in the tip jar and swaggered off.

You know you're old when you think the young are not going to be able to keep the world going. Somehow, they will. Maybe one of those kids puzzling at the register will be president! The little episode reminds me of the following clip from The Howard Stern Show.

 

 

 

 

 

What sportzy parents need to know

 

If you're a parent and consider yourself a sportzer, you really have to be able to explain to your kids:

1. the infield fly rule; and
2. the NBA play-in tournament.

I've got the infield fly rule down. Pro tip: judgment is aided, and confusion allayed, if you bear in mind that the rule's only purpose is to prevent the team in the field from making a chintzy double play by allowing an infield fly to drop to the ground. So there can't be two outs, and first and second bases must both be occupied (the bases may be loaded). 

I've waited till the last possible moment to study up on the play-in tournament, which begins tonight. The Timberwolves are in one of tonight's games, and I know questions will be asked. Here goes:

There are 30 teams in the NBA, 15 in the Western Conference and 15 in the Eastern Conference. When the long regular season is ended, the top six finishers in each conference advance to the playoffs, and the bottom five are eliminated. The teams that finish in places 7 through 10 of their respective conferences are in Playoff Purgatory. The play-in tournament is for them. 

In the first round of the play-in tournament, the 7th place teams play the 8th place teams, and the 9th place teams play the 10th place teams. The losers of the latter games are eliminated, and the winners of the former games advance to the playoffs. In the second round, the losers of the former games play the winners of the latter games. The losers of that game are eliminated, and the winners advance to the playoffs. That's the whole play-in tournament. Each conference has an 8-team tournament played among the top six plus the two teams, from places 7 through 10, that prevail in this mini-tournament that precedes the real one. 

In a more straightforward arrangement, the top eight teams from each conference would qualify for the playoffs, and the bottom seven would be out. With the play-in tournament, however, the NBA can gin up interest and, of course, revenue. The long regular season doesn't end up counting for much, but, if you've been following me, you see that finishing in 7th or 8th place means you have to win just one play-in game to advance to the "real playoffs," whereas the 9th and 10th place teams need to go 2-0 in the mini-tournament to advance. Also, all games in the play-in tournament are played on the home court of the team with the better record. 

The Timberwolves finished in 7th place of the Western Conference, which is why tonight they are playing the L.A. Clippers, the Western Conference's 8th place team, here in Minneapolis. If the T-wolves win, they're in the playoffs as the West's #7 seed. If they lose, they'll host whoever wins the game between 9th place New Orleans and 10th place San Antonio, and the winner of that game would be in the playoffs as the West's #8 seed. This business of seeding isn't trivial, because in the first round of the playoffs the #1 seed (first place team) plays the #8 seed, the #2 seed (second place team) plays the #7 seed, and so on. The T-wolves really want to win tonight, because they want to avoid having to play first-place Phoenix in the first round of the "real playoffs." I don't think I'm alone in feeling that Phoenix is clearly the best team in the Western Conference, and that the Timberwolves are competitive with every other team that finished above them. 

M. A. Shaaber, Shakespearean

 

Don't know whether I got a bigger charge out of the Twins hitting six homers in yesterday's game or noticing the discrepancy in the name of the Shakespearean scholar in my Pelican paperback for Henry IV Part One—he's M.A. Schaaber on the cover but M.A. Shaaber at the end of the Introduction he penned for the edition he edited. If you're not M.A. Shaaber himself, you probably have to be a geek just to notice, let alone enjoy, the mishap. But I wonder whether the professor was bemused or insulted. Being selected to edit a volume that would be assigned to a million undergraduates, and read by a few hundred, would have merited a new entry on his Curriculum Vitae. And then they go and spell his name wrong on the cover. Even the chairs of Ivy League English Departments are subject to indignities. 

Matthias Adam Shaaber was born at Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1897, and taught at the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater, from 1922 until 1968. After his death in 1979, his widow donated his papers to the university library, whose website supplies the correct spelling of his name: Shaaber. If you're interested in memoranda related to the proceedings of the Shakespeare Society of Philadelphia, or would like to inspect successive drafts of Dr. Shaaber's numerous articles on Renaissance literature, you have to make an appointment with the library's archivist.  For $2.50 in around 1980, you could read what he thought of Shakespeare's greatest comic character, and then check his impression against your own:

But even Hotspur is overshadowed by Falstaff, who is indeed the great triumph of this play. Otherwise a superior battle-piece, it is transfigured by his presence into something unique and transcendent. . . .

Traditionally a comic character is the butt of ridicule, a simpleton, a monomaniac, an imposter who, like that other Falstaff who swaggers through The Merry Wives of Windsor, overreaches himself in the end and is exposed to the derisive laughter of men of better judgment. But the Falstaff of this play, for all the verbal derision hurled at him by the prince and others, which he always parries skillfully enough, is never completely exposed, discomfited, or humiliated by the turn of events; he always manages to earn at least a draw and often something like a triumph. At the end of the play he is even left in dubious possession of the claim of victory over Hotspur. For success like this we have no derision; indeed, at least in fiction, it excites something more like sympathy, and Falstaff carries away our admiration, or at least our astonishment, by his overwhelming effrontery. When we laugh with him we forfeit all chance of sitting in judgment of him. The utter disabling of our normal censoriousness, the assigning to Falstaff of a role that is sympathetic as well as depraved, is indeed a triumph of the comic imagination.

His fondness of "indeed" marks him as a professor but this is good enough to have earned a proper credit on the cover. 

We watch the opener, etc.

This was the view out our front window this morning, which was also the morning of the Twins' home opener:

Temperature inside at game time: 70, temperate enough for her Buxton tee, but he, like the team, didn't do much. Another game tomorrow, and I understand it's going to hit 50 degrees!

She was recently so hepped up for the middle school musical (Beauty and the Beast) that, foreseeing a possible cancellation, maybe on account of Covid or maybe on account of a teacher strike, I worked up in my head a fortifying parental presentation. Happily the live performances occurred, and I didn't tell her, until yesterday, about having seen during High Covid a social media post by the actress Laura Benanti in which she had encouraged kids disappointed by their musical being cancelled to reply to her with a clip of them singing: she wanted to be their audience. I'd tracked the post down and we watched, including the reply that, of the ones I'd seen, seemed the very best. Here it is:

 

I attend Union High School and we are doing Once On This Island. As of now our show is postponed but we don’t know how long. This is a little snipbit of Waiting For Life pic.twitter.com/isdwSj17ho

— Khadija Sankoh (@khadija_sankoh) March 13, 2020

More than 22,000 likes! We googled Khadija, to see how she's doing, not that you can tell how people are doing from their social media posts, and it turns out that she has a YouTube channel. Not all her videos are musical—for example, she has one about how to peel an avocado, but here's another exuberant performance, this time accompanied by family members. "Hope you like it," as her little brother (I assume) says.

 

 

More vaccine legerdemain from Power Line

John Hinderaker, of the Power Line blog, thinks, or says he thinks, that data show whatever protective properties the Covid vaccines may once have conferred are now falling away toward zero. One of his main exhibits relates to the above graph, about which he comments:

In this age range [65 and up], more than 90% are fully vaccinated. Unfortunately, 78% of covid cases, 71% of hospitalizations and around 70% of deaths are also among the vaccinated. So the protection isn't zero—at least not yet—but it is weak. 

It's pretty misleading to talk only in terms of percent of "breakthroughs." Consider a population of 1000 people. If 92% are vaccinated, that makes 920. Suppose that 3 in the population die and that, of those, 2 (or 67%) were fully vaccinated. This scenario matches almost exactly what the graph shows, which is 92% vaccinated and 68% of deaths qualifying as "breakthrough." So, among the fully vaccinated, the death rate is 2-out-of-920 and for the rest it's 1-out-of-80. 

Define "weak," John. I think the graph is intended to encourage the interpretation that Hinderaker gives it—the intent, in other words, is to mislead—but just a wee bit of analysis reveals that the fully vaccinated are almost 6 times less likely to die of Covid: 1-in-460 as opposed to 1-in-80. 

Actually, for a variety of reasons, the above calculation probably understates vaccine effectiveness. For example, those in frail health and under a doctor's care are more likely to get vaccinated. The most vulnerable are therefore over-represented in the fully vaccinated group. Nevertheless, the unvaccinated are many times more likely to die of Covid.

It's instructive to consider why the graph is misleading.  One is encouraged to think the shrinking gap between the vaccinated line and the lines showing percentage of breakthroughs means the vaccines are increasingly ineffective. Hinderaker as much as says that if 90% are vaccinated, and 90% of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are among the vaccinated, then the vaccines would be proven perfectly ineffective. They offer weak protection, he thinks, because the breakthrough percentages are slightly lower than the vaccination percentage. By this logic, however, the vaccines would be proven worthless if everyone were vaccinated, since in that case the lines would all converge and every case, hospitalization, and death would be a breakthrough. Maybe that's what he thinks! It follows from what he's written, though I understand that he made it through law school at Harvard. 

Across the Great Divide

I try to take note when (my) cultural icons die, but I missed the passing, last August, of Nanci Griffith. Today is the second anniversary of John Prine's death, so here she is doing a duet with him:

 

And performing "Across the Great Divide," the Kate Wolf standard that opens with the rhymed couplet: "I've been walking in my sleep/Counting troubles instead of counting sheep":

 

 

National Poetry Month: Eliot's April

John Berryman began an essay on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by observing that the second half of the title tends to undercut the first, since "J. Alfred Prufrock" doesn't sound like a singer of love songs: he'd be too buttoned up, "too well dressed." The effect of the title, however faint, is then bluntly reproduced in the first three lines:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky,
Like a patient etherized upon a table.

The first two lines create an expectation—they sound "poetic," there is a nice rhyme, the scene is picturesque—and this expectation is then smashed by the third line, a fake and brutal simile. 

Berryman doesn't mention that Eliot's other famous poem, "The Waste Land," begins with the same kind of undercutting action. I'm pretty sure that April is National Poetry Month on account of the ebullient opening to The Canterbury Tales, the greatest work of English literature in the Middle Ages:

Whan that April with his showres soote
The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veine in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendered is the flowr;
Whan Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye
That sleepen al thee night with open yë—
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages—
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. . . .

I quote it at length the better to convey the dull thud with which "The Waste Land" opens:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter is like the etherized patient, unable to feel anything, a desirable state in the world according to TS Eliot since, unlike in The Canterbury Tales, you aren't apt to feel anything pleasing anyway. It's fun to think that Eliot, assuming he intended the sense of double take Berryman detected in the phrase "love song of J. Alfred Prufrock," may have been connecting himself to his antihero: WH Auden's first name was Wystan, and who wants to go by that, but Eliot's was Thomas. In an essay he described himself as "classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion"—sounds like a right-winger dressed up in tweeds, not Tom Eliot who was born in St. Louis. My inclination to dislike him is mitigated almost entirely by the suspicion that he was capable of self-mockery and also because he loved Mark Twain and Adventures of Huck Finn, which I once noted, here. 

Spanning the globe

Had the TV on while eating a ham sandwich: pictures of dead civilians lying in the streets of Ukrainian towns, some with hands tied behind their backs, a bullet hole in the head and their tipped over bicycle on its side next to them. Switched over to a basketball game, which seemed to go better with lunch, in time to hear the announcer say that the Nuggets' center, Nikola Jokic, is going to be the first player ever to average at least 25 points, 13 rebounds, and 7 assists in the same season. I'm sure it's true but maybe a little misleading inasmuch as I know, for instance, that Oscar Robertson one season (1961-62) averaged 31 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 11 assists per game. So he didn't average at least 13 rebounds, like Jokic will this year. I see now that the season after that Robertson averaged 28,10, and 10 (points, rebounds, assists). Season after that he averaged 31, 10, and 11. Season after that: 30, 9, and 12. Season after that: 31, 8, and 11. After that, his rebounds average sank. Well, he was just 6-5, and aging.

I don't mean to "run down" Jokic, who needs no special pleading. He's in the top 10 in the NBA this season for points per game (10th), rebounds per game (2nd), assists per game (8th), and field goal percentage (7th). I wonder whether another player has ever finished in the top 10 of those four offensive categories? Seems to me like a less impeachable measurement than the 25-13-7 one. Some people say it's between Jokic and Embiid, of the 76ers, for league MVP. If that's true, Embiid must be really good: I've hardly seen him play. The Nuggets' record is 47-32 and the only people who can name their second best player either have season tickets in Denver or half their net worth invested in a fantasy league.

When Biden said that Putin had to go, it was a gaffe only in the sense of "true statement that it's impolitic to utter aloud."