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05 Jun 00:48

Dan Henninger’s Grand Slam

by Steven Hayward
(Steven Hayward)

One of the most-read unsigned editorials ever to appear in the Wall Street Journal editorial page was way back in 1993, entitled “No Guardrails.” It is rare that an unsigned editorial at a daily paper has much of a half-life, but “No Guardrails” was one those that you clipped out and kept handy, and which people talked about for years after. Dan Henninger, nowadays the Journal‘s regular Thursday columnist, was the author of the editorial, and it is worth sampling some of its content just now:

In our time, the United States suffers every day of the week because there are now so many marginalized people among us who don’t understand the rules, who don’t think that rules of personal or civil conduct apply to them, who have no notion of self-control.

As the saying goes, there was a time. And indeed there really was a time in the United States when life seemed more settled, when emotions, both private and public, didn’t seem to run so continuously at breakneck speed, splattering one ungodly tragedy after another across the evening news. How did this happen to the United States? How, in T.S. Eliot’s phrase, did so many become undone?

We think it is possible to identify the date when the U.S., or more precisely when many people within it, began to tip off the emotional tracks. A lot of people won’t like this date, because it makes their political culture culpable for what has happened. The date is August 1968, when the Democratic National Convention found itself sharing Chicago with the street fighters of the anti-Vietnam War movement.

The real blame here does not lie with the mobs who fought bloody battles with the hysterical Chicago police. The larger responsibility falls on the intellectuals—university professors, politicians and journalistic commentators—who said then that the acts committed by the protesters were justified or explainable. That was the beginning. America had a new culture for political action and for personal living.

Dan often talked about “No Guardrails” as the single most notable thing he’d ever written, but I think he equals it in his column today, “America’s New Nihilism.” If you don’t have a subscription to the Journal, here are some highlights:

This is not 1968. It’s worse.

The late 1960s were the heyday of modern American liberalism, which was then an ideology of hope. A bipartisan Congress passed landmark civil-rights legislation in 1964 and 1965. The precipitating event of the urban riots in 1968 was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. New York, Trenton, Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Kansas City, and Washington were on fire. Arguably back then, despite passage of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs, not enough time had passed for liberal policies to ameliorate conditions in the inner cities. . .

A primary claim made repeatedly this week is that the U.S., which means the American people, are guilty of perpetual “systemic racism.”

It is evident from the coverage that most of the demonstrators were born after 1990. By then, the Great Society programs had been in place for 25 years, and now it is 55 years. Annual budget appropriations totaling multiple trillions of dollars on Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, public housing, rent subsidies and federal aid to public schools have produced . . . what?

Since the 1960s, essentially little has changed in the neighborhoods at the center of those long-ago urban riots. By current telling, they are about as poor, as crime-ridden, as under-educated and in poor health as they were when LBJ said he would change them. That means five decades of stasis and stagnation in America’s most marginalized places, virtually all of it under Democratic—now “progressive”—political control.

The failure of the liberal model is by now so embarrassing that the current owners of that model have created an alternative universe of explanations, such as blaming it on American settlers in the early 17th century or the nonexistence of “justice.”

This is worse than 1968, because the political system is now engaged in a systemic act of forgetting. Let’s forget that this policy failure has happened or why. Let’s forget, for instance, that the people living in New York’s public housing are overrun with rats, unlit hallways and no heat in the winter. Let’s forget that many blacks have indeed been left behind—by a well-documented migration since 1990 of black Americans out of northern cities and Los Angeles into the South, where they have gone in search of economic opportunity. Let’s forget, despite a massive per annum outlay on Medicaid—some $593 billion in 2018—that black Americans still have a higher incidence of chronic disease.

Simply performing a cut-and-paste on 50 years of U.S. political history is an act of nihilism. Pummeled by activists and the media with constant accusations of “systemic racism,” as this week, and despite what many thought were 50 years of good-faith efforts on racial conciliation, people go numb, concluding that the solution being offered now is, literally, no solution.

As the saying goes, you should read the whole thing. (I’d post the whole article here if I could, but the Journal frowns on that.) All I can add is: Dan Henninger for President.

29 May 21:05

Chicken Tagine With Pistachios, Dried Figs, and Chickpeas

by Daniel Gritzer

This slow-cooked chicken and chickpea tagine gets its flavor not from lots and lots of deep browning, but instead a gentle touch, a few key spices, and the natural, flavorful juices of the meat and vegetables. Read More
29 Apr 00:28

Why Successful Run Plays Work

by Vincent Verhei
Why Successful Run Plays Work Vincent Verhei 27 Apr 2020, 12:16pm
New York Jets RB Bilal Powell

Guest column by Caio Brighenti

"Running backs don't matter." If you've read any analytics article about running in the NFL, odds are you've heard that phrase. But, if you watched the 2020 playoffs, then you saw firsthand how Derrick Henry against the Patriots and Raheem Mostert against the Packers proved that a quality run offense can win big games. So, what makes for a good run game?

I explored this question in my submission for this year's NFL Big Data Bowl student subcompetition. Instead of tackling the strategic question of whether it's worth it to run at all, I decided to investigate what separates runs that work from those that don't.

To start, let's look at two plays that were nearly identical from the runner's perspective, but that had vastly different results. In both plays below, the runner received the ball 4 yards behind the line of scrimmage, approximately one second after the handoff, and was moving towards the left end. However, Bilal Powell gained 12 yards, while Wendell Smallwood lost 4.

So, what happened? Why did the defense stop Smallwood almost immediately while Powell escaped for a first down? It's not always easy to tell from the film, so we can turn to the bird's-eye view offered by the dots. In these plots, the runner is shown as the white dot.

 

Here, it becomes clear where these two plays differed: Smallwood had two defenders moving into the space he intended to run towards, while Powell was fortunate to have wide open space ahead of him.

While looking at the dots visually gives us the information we needed, this approach isn't at all quantitative and doesn't provide any measurable way to describe either play. To quantify what's happening in both plays, we can borrow a concept from soccer analytics: pitch control, or field control for those offended by the word pitch.

The math behind field control can get complicated, but the concept is straightforward. If we assume that each player on the field controls some area around them based on where they are and where they're moving to, and we can find a way to calculate this, then we can arrive at each team's overall field control by calculating each player's control and adding it up across the entire team. Then, if we take the difference between the offensive and defensive control, we find which team has ownership over each point on the field.

With this concept of field control, we can get a measurable understanding of what made the two example plays different. In this plot, the yellow and purple areas represent areas of offensive and defensive control, respectively. Blueish-green areas represent neutral space, where neither team has an advantage.

 

While Powell has plenty of neutral or offensive-controlled space between him and the first-down marker, in the case of Smallwood the dark blue defensive control wraps around him, cutting off his path.

It's clear in these two examples that quantifying field control is a good approach for identifying differences between plays that work and those that don't, but if we're interested in making conclusions about running in general then looking at just two plays isn't enough. Instead, I calculated field control in a standard area around the line of scrimmage for all 23,000 plays available in this year's Big Data Bowl dataset.

Once I had field control calculated for each play in the dataset, I grouped runs based on the runner's direction of motion and looked at what the average field control looked like for each type of run. The interpretation for these plots is the same as before -- yellow represents offensive control, and purple defensive control.

Initially, these plots aren't particularly interesting. In all three groups, the defense has greater control to the right of the line of scrimmage, and the offense to the left of the line of scrimmage. But, if we instead look at the difference between successful and unsuccessful plays, the results are far more interesting. In this case, I define successful plays as those gaining more than 1 yard.

Note that the interpretation here is slightly different -- yellow represents areas where successful plays have greater offensive control than unsuccessful plays, and the opposite for purple.

Finally, we can answer the question we set out to address: what separates runs that work from those that don't? In these plots, it's obvious the biggest difference between successful and unsuccessful runs is control over specific spots on the line of scrimmage. The exact position of this spot also varies through each group, demonstrating a relationship between the runner's initial direction and where this gap should be.

Interestingly, successful plays actually have less control over the space past the line of scrimmage than unsuccessful plays. This suggests that the amount of space the offense can control is finite -- instead of aiming to control more space overall, teams might want to instead focus all resources in producing a single gap at the line of scrimmage.

In short, this application of tracking data confirms what the analytics has long suggested about the run game: the space created by the offensive line is what makes for consistently good runs. Derrick Henry wouldn't have gotten any more yards than Wendell Smallwood did, and I probably could've gotten the first down with the amount of space Bilal Powell had.

This isn't to say that running backs are irrelevant. In the words of Josh Hermsmeyer, running backs are just all good -- they're a solved problem.

Caio Brighenti is an undergraduate in his final year at Colgate University and a finalist in this year's NFL Big Data Bowl. You can follow him and his football analytics work at @CaioBrighenti on Twitter.

1 Colors

by Salur // Apr 27, 2020 - 1:11pm

I have nothing particularly insightful to say about the article (other than I think it's an interesting/useful idea on how to quantify control).

But as someone's who's (mildly) colorblind, I specifically wanted to thank you for using yellow/purple as the ends of your spectrum, instead of something like green/red (or green/orange, which I have seen and is even worse for me personally). I recall reading in an article that I can't find now that something very similar to the spectrum used here is ideal for covering multiple types of colorblindness, and it's certainly helpful for me.

6 Really glad to hear the…

by CaioBrighenti // Apr 27, 2020 - 2:46pm

In reply to Colors by Salur

Really glad to hear the color scheme worked well for you. Early on this project used each team's primary color to signify their control and white as a midpoint and I got the feedback that it would be nearly illegible to people with colorblindness. Clearly the feedback paid off!

10 Your color scheme reminds me…

by theslothook // Apr 27, 2020 - 2:57pm

In reply to Really glad to hear the… by CaioBrighenti

Agreed, I liked the plots very much. 

38 selecting colormaps

by karl // Apr 28, 2020 - 9:54am

In reply to Really glad to hear the… by CaioBrighenti

You made the right choice in using a perceptually uniform, colorblind friendly colormap. But, you can go one step further for creating clearer figures.

When you have a scale that has a natural midpoint, for instance around 0.5 in your field control plots and 0 in your difference plots, with interesting features at the extreme values, color theory suggests you instead use a diverging colormap. The python library, seaborn, has a decent explanation on these as a starting point. This type of colormap will allow you to quickly see where neither team has an advantage and where one team has more control of the other.

29 Yes, thank you from another…

by Eddo // Apr 28, 2020 - 5:20am

In reply to Colors by Salur

Yes, thank you from another colorblind person!

2 I think it also helps when…

by mehllageman56 // Apr 27, 2020 - 2:07pm

I think it also helps when you block the guys in front of you (didn't happen against the Saints, the Falcons practically blocked themselves other than the guy who fell over himself trying to get to Powell.)

However, a different running back might fail to get the 12 yards Powell got by being decisive.  Leveon Bell could have stutter stepped himself into a 2 yard gain.

3 Interestingly, successful…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 27, 2020 - 2:29pm

Interestingly, successful plays actually have less control over the space past the line of scrimmage than unsuccessful plays. This suggests that the amount of space the offense can control is finite -- instead of aiming to control more space overall, teams might want to instead focus all resources in producing a single gap at the line of scrimmage.

This may be an artifact of your definition of success -- 1 yard runs can be completely accounted for by initial line blocking, those are basically sneak plays.

If you defined success as positive DVOA, you may arrive at very different numbers. Otherwise you are selecting for Leroy Hoard:

Hoard reportedly once said to his coach, "Coach, if you need one yard, I'll get you three yards. If you need five yards, I'll get you three yards."

 

 

 

5 You're 100% right that the…

by CaioBrighenti // Apr 27, 2020 - 2:44pm

In reply to Interestingly, successful… by Aaron Brooks G…

You're 100% right that the definition of "success" here (or anywhere) is subjective. From a game strategy perspective, positive DVOA or EPA is definitely a better measure of success. My objective here though was just to get at what's happening on the field, irrespective of context. 

Maybe it's more accurately phrased as what makes for a run that goes for a gain as opposed to what makes for successful runs. Knowing how to set your runner up for success isn't necessarily the same as knowing when to run the ball.

7 Exactly. On the oppposite…

by Will Allen // Apr 27, 2020 - 2:53pm

In reply to Interestingly, successful… by Aaron Brooks G…

Exactly. On the oppposite end of the spectrum is Adrian Peterson from 2012; 2097 yards, 6 yards a carry, and 1019 yards after contact. I don't think I fully appreciated that season as it was happening. The blocking was mediocre, and The Ponderous One had a overall poor group of receivers, so opposing defenses didn't really have to devote much scheming to stop the pass. The Vikings defensive backfield was atrocious. Yet Peterson dragged that roster to 10 wins. Whenever anybody says you should never give a rb big money, I think I mostly agree, even with rbs who pile up yards. But I also say never say never. Barry Sanders would be worth every penny today as well. Same with Tomlinson.

 

9 But would Peterson be worth…

by theslothook // Apr 27, 2020 - 2:56pm

In reply to Exactly. On the oppposite… by Will Allen

But would Peterson be worth every penny? Don't get me wrong, as a runner, he's probably the best I've seen since I've followed the league. But he was a poor receiver and an even worse pass blocker. And while his 2012 season was the stuff of legends, there's no way he'd be able to rescue an offense by himself every year the way. 

If he wanted big skill position money, I'd seriously be mean and franchise tag him twice and let him walk. The NFL and its union have basically given a big finger to the running back position. 

12 His ability to turn any…

by Will Allen // Apr 27, 2020 - 3:10pm

In reply to But would Peterson be worth… by theslothook

His ability to turn any handoff into a touchdown, from any spot on the field, really made his runs much,much, less distinguishable from pass plays, than can be said of all but a very rbs. Even among HOF rbs, that explosiveness, and how it makes defenses one dimensional, is very unusual. Oh, if only Favre had gone full A-hole in 2008, and forced his release, instead of accepting a trade to the Jets. That o-line was significantly better than the 2009 group, and Peterson was an acceptable blocker when he was protecting Favre.

Among the young guys today, I really don't see any who are as valuable as a Peterson, Sanders, or Tomlinson. Barkley has a chance to be.

31 Hard to put those guys in the same bucket

by ishalev // Apr 28, 2020 - 9:26am

In reply to His ability to turn any… by Will Allen

In today's game, CMac seems to be the closest comp to Tomlinson and he's plenty valuable. There are no Sanders or Peterson type backs, but there's very little about the numbers that suggests that one-dimensional runners can change the game or win Superbowls, not today, and not back in the 90s. 

32 I think Emmitt Smith is…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 28, 2020 - 9:30am

In reply to Hard to put those guys in the same bucket by ishalev

I think Emmitt Smith is badly over-rated, but those Cowboys teams did better without Aikman than they did without Smith. Elway doesn't get his rings without Davis.

43 Replacing Nick Chubb with a…

by herewegobrowni… // Apr 28, 2020 - 8:43pm

In reply to His ability to turn any… by Will Allen

Replacing Nick Chubb with a replacement-level back would cost 2-3 wins each of the past 2 years, I think.

4 Was anybody doubting that…

by Will Allen // Apr 27, 2020 - 2:35pm

Was anybody doubting that superior blocking is the most reliable path to good results from running the ball?

8 The following questions come…

by theslothook // Apr 27, 2020 - 2:53pm

In reply to Was anybody doubting that… by Will Allen

The following questions come to mind from your statement:

1) if you are right, then how much extra value does a good running back bring in today's NFL?

2) If you are right, then how easy is it to find a full team of good blockers? 

3) Even if you are right, just how much value is running the ball going to give when passing seems more effective and potentially easier to build?

 

Btw, its why I believe the QB has outsized importance in today's nfl. How much consistent production can you get when you are talent poor?

 

 

 

13 A merely good, or even very…

by Will Allen // Apr 27, 2020 - 3:19pm

In reply to The following questions come… by theslothook

A merely good, or even very good rb, doesn't bring that much added value. But getting 5 blockers together without a single one being below average is a considerable task. Yes, given you can reliably expect the league to continually tweak the rules to make passing easier, leaning towards building a passing attack likely makes more sense.

However, one must always have enough of a contrarian ability to take advantage of market inefficiencies.

14 My 2 cents

by Joseph // Apr 27, 2020 - 4:08pm

In reply to The following questions come… by theslothook

1--Extra value from a good RB=understanding PASS-blocking schemes, ball protection, ability to break tackles (either by strength or shiftiness), and the immeasurable "heart"--that guy who is always fighting for the extra yard, refusing to go down, etc. And probably in this order.

2--I think the key is obtaining a team full of serviceable blockers. It's wonderful to have that DAL line of a few years ago, but that's hard to do. However, I think it is relatively easy to have 5-6 average-type blockers. The problem is that you need 5-6, versus 1-2. I think every team ought to try to draft at least 1 O-lineman every year, and at least one 1st to 3rd rounder every 3-4 years. 

3--Running the ball has value, just less than passing overall. However, as a regular here at FO, you know that there are situations where running the ball more effective than passing. And you have to have somewhat of a balance, at least in the earlier parts of a game and in certain situations. So, while drafting a RB high is not wise in general, there are some that were obviously worth it. If your team happens to obtain one, great! But I think we all agree that many RB's are equally good at getting the yards that the blocking provides, and not much else. And that these guys are fairly easy to find, and relatively cheap to employ. 

17 I disagree with point number…

by theslothook // Apr 27, 2020 - 4:23pm

In reply to My 2 cents by Joseph

I disagree with point number 2. How many teams have 5 serviceable offensive linemen? Its far fewer than you might think and even then, I don't think 5 competent run blockers gets you anywhere interesting, 

18 There's usually some…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 27, 2020 - 4:45pm

In reply to I disagree with point number… by theslothook

There's usually some correlation between competent pass blocking and competent run blocking.

Put it this way -- it's an unusual year when none of the top-4 best rushing offenses make the conference championships.

28 Over the past five years,…

by Eddo // Apr 28, 2020 - 5:20am

In reply to There's usually some… by Aaron Brooks G…

[deleted by author]

42 Serviceable

by Joseph // Apr 28, 2020 - 2:20pm

In reply to I disagree with point number… by theslothook

Serviceable for me means: reasonably competent, not a penalty machine, not injury-prone. In other words, a guy that is kind of "meh"--not bad enough to get benched/replaced, but not good enough to necessarily warrant a pricey extension. Can a team get 5 of those guys? I mean, your team's best lineman can get injured in training camp and miss the whole year--but it's not as if the coach/GM can prepare for that. But the coach/GM can have a draft-pick/minimum salary vet for depth. 

IMO, an O-line should have 1 guy that is Pro-Bowl quality (since at least 16 make it, that's 1/2 per team for original selections--not counting alternates), another guy that has been/could become that good, and then the other 3 can be a mix of average veterans/young developing players. That's why I think a team should draft one every year.

Interesting exercise--pick two random teams. Look at their 5 best O-linemen. If you picked the best of the two at each position--you should in theory have 2 from each team, and the 5th spot being a tie. For this exercise, you would have 3 versus 2 (no ties). But if team A has 4, and team B has 1--then team B either has a problem or team A has a really great O-line.

15 I don't agree that superior…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 27, 2020 - 4:15pm

In reply to Was anybody doubting that… by Will Allen

I don't agree that superior blocking defines rushing success -- or that RBs are actually fungible.

Trent Richardson and Barry Sanders still existed. You can have success with no competent blocking, and failure with it.

19 I don't agree with that,…

by Will Allen // Apr 27, 2020 - 5:26pm

In reply to I don't agree that superior… by Aaron Brooks G…

I don't agree with that, either.

20 You don’t agree Richardson…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 27, 2020 - 7:11pm

In reply to I don't agree with that,… by Will Allen

You don’t agree Richardson and Sanders existed?

21 Pretty he agrees that…

by theslothook // Apr 27, 2020 - 7:18pm

In reply to You don’t agree Richardson… by Aaron Brooks G…

Pretty he agrees that Richardson and Sanders existed and with your larger point. 

22 I also don't agree with the…

by Will Allen // Apr 27, 2020 - 9:41pm

In reply to You don’t agree Richardson… by Aaron Brooks G…

I also don't agree with the proposition you said you didn't agree with.

33 Ahh, a scholar of taste and…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 28, 2020 - 9:31am

In reply to I also don't agree with the… by Will Allen

Ahh, a scholar of taste and distinction!

23 You can disagree, but the…

by nlitwinetz // Apr 27, 2020 - 10:08pm

In reply to I don't agree that superior… by Aaron Brooks G…

You can disagree, but the numbers are pretty clear. The beauty of the Big Data Bowl is that it lets you separate the "who" (players/team) from the "what" (what's taking place on the field). What played out in the data is that the position/speed/acceleration/etc. of the players on the field was MUCH more important than who was actually running the ball...so much so that the best submissions didn't even look at who the RB was.

There is an interesting posting at the link below that compares players expected vs actual yards for 2017 and 2018. There was only a single significant outlier who was consistently good/bad both years...and that was Aaron Jones. Paying a guy like Zeke $15M a year makes no sense when someone like Isaiah Crowell would have gained 21 more inches per play (given the same blocking) for $12M less per year.

https://twitter.com/903124S/status/1200453012084252672

 

27 Does it help to know who the…

by Dan // Apr 28, 2020 - 3:57am

In reply to You can disagree, but the… by nlitwinetz

Does it help to know who the linebacker is that's trying to plug the hole at the point of attack? Is Demario Davis worth paying?

34 Numbers are only correct in aggregate

by ishalev // Apr 28, 2020 - 9:31am

In reply to You can disagree, but the… by nlitwinetz

Anyone who watched Le'veon Bell and Bilal Powell last year saw that Powell was the better rusher behind that porous O-line, even though we have a career worth of data for both players saying the opposite is normally true. The argument about RBs is not that they don't matter, or that they are interchangeable, or that they are all equally useful. The argument is that except at the extreme margins, you CAN assemble a group of affordable RBs who give you a lot more cap efficiency. It's not an argument that anyone can run for 1400 yards. 

35 I wonder if style matters. A…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 28, 2020 - 9:36am

In reply to Numbers are only correct in aggregate by ishalev

I wonder if style matters. A guy who blindly Leroy Jenkins forward behind a bad line will likely have more luck than a patient runner, because patience turns up nothing good under those circumstances.

If you put a QB behind a giant sack of wet crap throwing to a bunch of blind double-amputee, you'd probably have more luck with a Ryan Fitzpatrickgeraldsimmons than a Tom Brady, because precision and timing matter little in those circumstances versus damning the torpedoes and unleashing a dragon.

The trick is, it's hard to separate QBs from their lines or their teams, because they never change them.

46 Totally agree that Bell's…

by mehllageman56 // May 01, 2020 - 1:00pm

In reply to I wonder if style matters. A… by Aaron Brooks G…

Totally agree that Bell's running style doesn't work for the offensive line he runs behind.  Even with this year's improvements, it's possible Powell will be the better choice.

37 You can disagree, but the…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 28, 2020 - 9:47am

In reply to You can disagree, but the… by nlitwinetz

You can disagree, but the numbers are pretty clear. The beauty of the Big Data Bowl is that it lets you separate the "who" (players/team) from the "what" (what's taking place on the field). What played out in the data is that the position/speed/acceleration/etc. of the players on the field was MUCH more important than who was actually running the ball...so much so that the best submissions didn't even look at who the RB was.

1. How you define your conditions has a lot to do with what results you find. This happens a lot in modeling.

2. "What played out in the data is that the position/speed/acceleration/etc. of the players on the field was MUCH more important than who was actually running the ball..." is an interesting finding. Especially that speed and acceleration do correlate to player identity. But it's not the sole factor, otherwise the best rusher would always be a Raider.

Then there is the Trent Richardson factor. Speed Score loved Richardson. His athletic numbers were stellar. He could not read a block to save his life. Speed and acceleration matter when a player can use that for something productive.

 

30 Ipd

by Raiderjoe // Apr 28, 2020 - 6:41am

In reply to I don't agree that superior… by Aaron Brooks G…

Disagree here. Myt h that Sanders had incompetent blocling

36 Lomas Brown was good. The…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 28, 2020 - 9:38am

In reply to Ipd by Raiderjoe

Lomas Brown was good. The rest were JAGs who could barely put competent rushers to 1000 yards before or after.

11 Plays chosen

by Joseph // Apr 27, 2020 - 3:07pm

One nitpick I have--not of your analysis, but the 2 plays chosen:

Against the Saints, it's 3rd & 6 with 21 seconds left in the half, and the Eagles need at least 50 yards to get in FG range. The Saints have no TO's left, and the Eagles only have one. So, the Eagles just want a running play to take the clock to the half, and go regroup, since they are losing by 17. It wouldn't surprise me if they were scheduled to receive the 2nd half kickoff. Also, the way their linemen are set up, they are trying to sell a pass play. This allows both Saints D-linemen an easy entrance into the backfield. Also, the double-team by the center and left guard is poor.

On the other play, it's literally the first play of the game. There is no special situation, nor any reason why either team might be guessing/planning a certain play type. To me, the initial personnel (2 TE & 2 WR, 1 RB) suggests either a run, or a play-action pass--especially considering the tight alignment of the WR & TE's on the left. Obviously, the Jets block this play better, and the Falcons have a poor run fit by their LB's. 

However, I agree with your conclusion--devoting more personnel to opening a hole probably makes any running play more successful, at least by your definition. We've all seen goal-line plays where the RB gets a sliver of a hole and knifes through just enough to have the ball break the plane..

16 Philly was actually kicking…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 27, 2020 - 4:20pm

In reply to Plays chosen by Joseph

Philly was actually kicking off to open the 2nd. Not that it mattered.
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/201811180nor.htm

One difference, too, is that NO had the 3rd best rushing defense in 2018. Atlanta had the 20th worst in 2017.

 

41 Picking nits

by John Walt // Apr 28, 2020 - 1:38pm

In reply to Philly was actually kicking… by Aaron Brooks G…

But isn't the 20th worst, the 12th best?

24 field control

by zenbitz // Apr 28, 2020 - 1:32am

field control is averaged over the whole length of the play?  I wonder if there a way to truncate the series after a certain amount of spacetime. I think the runs into the secondary are mostly going to be noise (they are obviously *value* but high variance and pretty rare.

40 It's actually not averaged…

by CaioBrighenti // Apr 28, 2020 - 1:30pm

In reply to field control by zenbitz

It's actually not averaged over the whole play. For the Big Data Bowl dataset, we only had access to a single frame of data right at the moment of the handoff. This is obviously a limitation and one way this work could be improved with better data. Tracking field control over the course of the play as opposed to assuming things will remain as they are in that moment would make for a more nuanced analysis.

25 This is why analytic people underappreciate the RB

by Pen // Apr 28, 2020 - 3:09am

They don't get the whole picture.  So basically all this article is saying is RB's get more yards if the OL opens up a good hole for them.  Well, welcome to football, that's always been how the running game works.

But they miss on several things and it would behoove them to study those areas to get a better understanding.

One of three things will happen:  The OL will open up a hole or the DL will disrupt the play. or it's a muddled draw.

If the OL wins, what is the difference per RB?  How much is that difference worth?

If the DL wins, what is the difference per RB?  How much is that difference worth?

If neither side wins, what is the difference per RB?  How much is that difference worth?

Then there are other data to be gotten.  What is each teams OL win rate?  DL win rate?  Not in yards but in did they open the hole or did the defense disrupt it?  How does each RB fare above average with or without the hole?  If you look at all that and you still find no difference I'd be amazed not all the great RB's had great  olines with high win rates.  Chicago was a crap team for most of Sweetness' career, for example.

I think you'll start to see RB's separating themselves if you study those factors.

26 Interesting post & paper…

by Dan // Apr 28, 2020 - 3:52am

Interesting post & paper.

What if you ran your model with a parameter, let's call it w, which is an angle defined relative to the RB's direction of motion at the time of the handoff. w represents how wide of an angle the RB can choose to attack.

In one limit, with w=0, the RB can only continue straight ahead in the direction that he is going at the handoff. So the model would just look at field control along that vector.

In the other limit, with w unboundedly large, the RB can go in any direction. So the model would look at field control along whatever path the offense has the most field control.

(If I'm understanding it correctly, these two extreme cases are what your paper looks at, with the labels "expected" for w=0 "ideal" for w=infinity.)

Intermediate values of w give you something like the Madden vision cone, a portion of the field that the RB can attack. It would look like a triangle coming out from the RB and opening up towards the line of scrimmage, with the assumption that the RB is free to go anywhere within the triangle but cannot go outside the triangle. So the model would look at field control along whatever path within that triangle has the most offensive field control. So it's like the paper's "ideal" analysis, but confined to a portion of the field.

Then instead of running one model with terms for both the expected and ideal paths, you can run the model for each value of w (I'm imagining it with only the terms for the "ideal" path within that angle, getting rid of the "expected" terms). Then see which value of w gives the best fit model.

That's one idea; there are probably other ideas in this space.

39 I would be fascinated to see…

by Aaron Brooks G… // Apr 28, 2020 - 10:24am

In reply to Interesting post & paper… by Dan

I would be fascinated to see an analysis of expected w broken out back-by-back.

44 Great analysis

by Willsy // Apr 29, 2020 - 11:06pm

As much as I a) understand the whole you run when you win ethos and b) agree with the efficiency of passing over running.

However this article shows how much more complex and no well understood this issue is. 

I remember the old Bengals line that had Munoz and they literally drove the Oilers back about 7 miles in a game back in the day. My point here is that like Derrick Henry you can run a ball down a teams throat. That said it is hard to do. My prior is that we still haven't worked out the true value of the O line. Its like the forwards in rugby and especially the back row. If you are continually going forward and winning 50/50 ball then how much does that contribute to scoring a try versus what the backs deliver. The backs simply have to catch and pass if the forwards are controlling the gain line and keeping the defensive line on their heels.

An O line is the same. It may seem axiomatic that a line that keeps a QB clean and pass blocks well makes a difference. But if you are tearing up the pass game and can run block well, then, as the newer analysis says, you only need a replacement level RB. But that makes the point that we still don't fully understand the cumulative effect of the O line. 

Great analysis as always and it helps progress the body of thought on this subject. Luckily I am not colour blind.

 

45 Interesting look at the data…

by ChrisS // Apr 30, 2020 - 2:09pm

Interesting look at the data. Would it be possible to isolate individual O-Line members and use their field control as a stat to measure O-line ability?

47 Ray Rice and Barry Sanders

by alan frankel // May 03, 2020 - 9:26pm

Ray Rice and Barry Sanders are two running backs that fly directly in the face of this theory.

While it is true in these 2 plays that the number of defenders in the space mattered. There are plenty plays where backs avoid players in the backfield, or gain more yards after contact or make more defenders miss in the open.

 I chose these two backs because they both have unique qualities

Ray Rice was one of the best backs Ive ever seen at creating positive yardage on potentially negative plays, and Barry sanders had the unique ability to completely reverse field and outrun Safties once past the first level.

I find it hard to believe that Billal Powell would've gotten to the line of scrimmage in instances where Rice would have. I also find it difficult to believe that there were not runs where Rice got tackled after the line of scrimmage where Sanders would have scored. (Rice was historically frustrating at not finishing long runs for TD's)

 

As much as people want to rip running backs, I have personally seen certain Alpha traits that separate backs from their peers that are not offensive line related. Believing them all to be the same to me is just asinine and this isn't even talking about a back like Thurman Thomas who also provided receiving value.

 

I look forward to your response to this comment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBhn1wMyzV4 Also as a fun exercise, tell me how many of these runs you would've expected Billal Powell to have the same result as Barry. (Btw I've owned Billal on my fantasy teams for several years so I'm not a Powell hater) Check out play #45 or #36 as a specific example where Barry provides clear Alpha value compared to Powell. 

49 If you think Ray Rice was…

by Noah Arkadia // May 05, 2020 - 3:43pm

In reply to Ray Rice and Barry Sanders by alan frankel

If you think Ray Rice was good at getting something out of nothing, you would have LOVED to see Walter Peyton. One of my favorite players of all time.

In fact, it's disappointing that whenever the subject of great RBs comes up here, the examples are always Barry Sanders, Emmitt Smith, Adrian Peterson, even Terrel Davis. To me, Peyton is clearly and easily the goat RB. He was superb at everything.

48 Potential way to "value" running backs

by brian30tw // May 05, 2020 - 10:08am

It seems like most people are interested in how this analysis relates to running back value, so here's an idea on that front.

With the analysis already performed, for each run play, you have these different measures of field control (which I think we can take as a proxy for the characteristics and quality of blocking in front of the running back at the point of handoff). I don't think it would be too hard to treat these metrics as "inputs" into a model that tries to predict the outcome of each run play (e.g. number of yards gained, DVOA gained, etc.).

With that model, you can compare actual outcomes from each running play to predicted outcomes, and assign a residual/excess value generated by the back on each play. The idea is, controlling for the blocking in front, how many yards above expectation was the running back responsible for?

10 Apr 18:18

Meet Alex Berenson

by Scott Johnson
(Scott Johnson)

FOX News has posted Adam Shaw’s profile of Alex Berenson under the headline “Meet the former NYT reporter who is challenging the coronavirus narrative.” It is an excellent profile that covers the key points Berenson had made in the public health panic leading to the shutdowns that are devastating our economy.

Why is Berenson more or less a lone wolf tormenting his former colleagues in the mainstream media? Despite their heroic self-image, they are pathetic pack animals and Berenson has developed his own form of herd immunity.

Shaw mentions Berenson’s contrarian anti-pot book. He doesn’t get around to Berenson’s second career as an award-winning novelist. That also sets him apart from the pack.

Shaw writes: “Now [Berenson has] turned to challenging the narratives on the response to the coronavirus. What Berenson is promoting isn’t coronavirus denialism, or conspiracy theories about plots to curb liberties. Instead what Berenson is claiming is simple: the models guiding the response were wrong and that it is becoming clearer by the day.”

In the current crisis Berenson has made his mark on Twitter. His Twitter feed is here. This is a good one.

Here is an exchange with anti-Trump Washington Post numbnuts Phil Bump.

08 Apr 02:11

15 Umami-Packed Ingredients to Upgrade Your Pantry

by The Serious Eats Team

This essential flavor is one we can't live without. Read More
04 Apr 23:27

How We Lost the War on Poverty

by John McClaughry

Great Society: A New History, by Amity Shlaes, HarperCollins, 429 pages, $32.50

With John F. Kennedy's election to the presidency in 1960, Amity Shlaes recounts, Americans developed a growing urge for a "big change that blasted like a space rocket." By 1972, when the smoke from that rocket had somewhat cleared, they had acquainted themselves with the New Frontier, the Vietnam War, the moon landing, two landmark civil rights acts, Medicare, Medicaid, the New Federalism, the "urban disorders" of Watts and Detroit, and the severing of the last feeble tie between the dollar and gold. But it was President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty that gave the era the appellation of "the Great Society."

In Great Society: A New History, Shlaes describes the actors, events, and outcomes of those years. The book is a fast-moving and entertaining read, rich in interesting details and extraordinary in the author's marshalling of the history. Shlaes, an experienced journalist, has a gift for leading the reader through subjects that initially seem only marginally related, tying them together in the service of her narrative.

As one who lived through that era, most of it in Washington, I appreciate how Shlaes has shone her reportorial light into many fascinating corners and upon a marvelous and frequently flawed cast of characters. Besides Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, this cast includes poverty czar Sargent Shriver, his brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy, presidential wordsmith Richard Goodwin, United Auto Workers leader Walter Reuther, Fed Chairman Arthur Burns, radical activists Tom Hayden and Michael Harrington, California Gov. Ronald Reagan, Michigan Gov. George Romney, black power leader Nathan Wright Jr., and future senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. (I had encounters with all of them except Shriver.)

The overarching theme of the Great Society was a massive social project announced by Johnson in a 20-minute address at the University of Michigan on May 22, 1964. He told the graduates that "far from crushing the individual, government at its best liberates him from the enslaving forces of his environment." His administration, Johnson said, had assembled "the best thought and the broadest knowledge to find answers to society's problems." Those answers would be implemented by a "fighting and aggressive" federal government dedicated to winning a war against poverty and against the "loneliness, estrangement, and isolation" that were its consequences.

"The men around Johnson," Shlaes observes, "felt the weight of this faith in them, and strove hard. Viet Nam would be sorted out. There would be a Great Society. Poverty would be cured. Blacks of the South would win full citizenship. The Great Society would succeed." There would be plans! Many plans! Measurements! Results! The federal government, led by a powerful and determined president advised by the best social scientists, would become the driving force for social change, as opposed to merely backfilling the shortcomings of capitalism.

And how did all this work out? Poorly, says Shlaes.

Shlaes' most compelling example contrasts a monumental public housing project in St. Louis called Pruitt-Igoe with an adjacent neighborhood development project called the Bicentennial Civic Improvement Corporation.

Pruitt-Igoe was a stark and stupendous complex of 33 high-rise apartment buildings for the poor, designed by rising architectural star Minoru Yamasaki. Begun in 1955, it was the delight of the urban planners of the '50s. But by the mid-'60s, it had become a decaying, dangerous, increasingly abandoned, and crime-ridden concrete wreck. Interpretations of Pruitt-Igoe's descent vary, but all agree that high-rise rental housing for the poor (or at least the nonelderly poor) turned out to be a very bad idea. Feeble attempts at rehabilitating parts of the project foundered. After resisting the embarrassment for years, the feds threw in the towel in 1972. The demolition was finished in 1976. Half of the site now hosts industrial warehouses; the other half became an unplanned urban forest, later bulldozed for commercial redevelopment.

By contrast, there was the Bicentennial project, literally in the shadow of a Pruitt-Igoe high-rise, inspired by Father Joseph Shocklee of St. Bridget's parish. Working with people of the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood organization, Shocklee put together a team involving the gas company, the Pulaski Savings Bank, a few private donors, and a small-scale minority contractor. Starting in the mid-1960s, Bicentennial bought up vacant brick town houses for $600, found and counseled prospective homeowners, contracted for the rehab, and financed the sale with unsubsidized market-rate mortgages from Pulaski. Existing homeowners cooperated to help the new homeowners improve their education and job skills, find employment, and improve their new properties.

As Bicentennial scored successes with 80 new homeowning families, the appeal of home ownership for the working poor blossomed. Under the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Section 235 mortgage insurance program, passed in 1968, mortgage brokers rushed to enroll low-income homebuyers. They offered nominal down payments, 40-year terms, and 1 percent financing. But the program relied on new construction, not the more troublesome rehab, and it favored large contractors to achieve the government's grandiose production goals (6 million housing units for low- and moderate-income families over 10 years).

The contractors had to pay FHA-mandated above-market Davis-Bacon wages to their unionized (and largely white) workforces. There was little time or inclination to prepare inexperienced homebuyers for ownership or to bring them into a supportive neighborhood organization. The result: brand new suburban-style split-level houses, purchase price $23,000—unaffordable even with the extreme subsidy terms. When a confused and fitfully employed buyer couldn't pay, the lender foreclosed, the FHA took the hit, and the buyer often departed with all the copper plumbing for resale. (This aftermath is not in the book.)

Shlaes is particularly insightful in describing the tribulations and failures of the Community Action Program (CAP), managed by the free-standing Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). CAP, a radical departure in the history of federal programs, squeaked through the Democratic Senate on a 46–44 vote. The proposition was this: Uncle Sam would directly fund local organizations in poverty-impacted areas to plan, develop, and coordinate the many facets of Johnson's War on Poverty.

America's mayors did not like this one bit. Accustomed to managing federal funds for urban programs, the mayors regarded the activist groups—composed more often than not of minority citizens resentful of City Hall for its neglect, disrespect, and even oppression—as budding revolutionaries. This, they believed, was not just an affront to the mayors but also a federally funded recipe for revolution.

CAP also required "maximum feasible participation of the residents of the areas and the members of the groups." But participation in what? Making plans? Assenting to the plans of others? Hiring and firing? Dealing with City Hall? Coordinating multifarious other programs and organizations? As Moynihan pithily summarized: "The government did not know what it was doing."

The dream of mass participation wound up dissolving. Fifty years later, it would be a challenging task indeed to find a local CAP agency imbued with anything resembling the revolutionary themes of the 1960s.

Shlaes offers a fascinating, detail-rich re-enactment of President Richard Nixon's Camp David economic summit of August 15, 1971, which she describes as "one of the most impressive [collections of minds] in the history of economic policy." The impetus was a deteriorating international economic situation brought on by the excesses and misfortunes of the Great Society era: the costly and unwinnable Vietnam War, the interminable and conflict-ridden War on Poverty, the unrepaired wreckage from urban riots, a housing finance fiasco that eerily foreshadowed that of 2007, and the forced abandonment of any tangible link of the dollar to gold.

Nixon's Camp David summit produced at least a grudging acceptance of breaking the gold link, imposing wage and price controls, and enacting the first general tariff (10 percent) since Herbert Hoover's day. That all turned out badly. Shlaes, quoting Arnold Weber, notes that "almost everyone associated with the sweeping interventions…has recanted or admitted error."

 And that brings Shlaes to her trenchant conclusion. Quoting the economist Friedrich Hayek, she concludes that grand governmental schemes to broadly reorder society are doomed to fail. Public planners do not have adequate information from the grassroots, and they cannot collect information from a nonexistent price system. The Great Society program deserves to go down in U.S. history as a baneful example of a far-ranging, high-sounding, politically motivated experiment that turned out to be largely futile in achieving its hopes, proposed and carried out by theoreticians and planners who (to borrow from Moynihan) simply did not know what they were doing. With the notable exceptions of the civil rights bills, this was a sorry legislative era that festers in the memory of many people still living.

And what of Bicentennial? The former Pruitt-Igoe tenants had discovered a superior alternative to government housing aid, Shlaes writes. "With his small [private sector] housing program, Father Shocklee had shown that 'the poor' were more like the middle class than people supposed. They gained from something only when they had a chance to own it."

23 May 23:55

Cumin Nature: All About the Spice That Goes With (Nearly) Everything

by The Serious Eats Team

Cumin is one of the most versatile spices, and it is an integral part of dishes from cuisines all over the world. Read More
23 Apr 01:14

The Best Knives to Have in Your Kitchen

by Ariel Kanter

Being a good cook depends on having a good set of knives—which usually doesn't mean buying your knives in sets. Here's a rundown of the best knives we've found in each essential category: chef's knife, santoku, paring knife, serrated bread knife, and carving or slicing knife. Read More
21 Nov 16:32

9 Cranberry Sauce Recipes to Help You Kick the Can

by Rabi Abonour

The best cranberry sauce recipes for Thanksgiving, from a simple and basic sauce to red wine–spiked, jalapeño-lime, and pomegranate variations. Read More
28 Jun 00:46

Pizza Ebraica

Rome's Jewish quarter isn't perfumed by the aromas of savory pizza dough. Rather, caramelizing sugars, just-burnt nuts, raisins, and candied citrus waft along the cobblestone. Italians call this creation pizza ebraica, which means "Jewish pizza," even though it's a bar cookie. (Technically, the literal translation is "Hebraic pizza.")

Today, only one kosher bakery specializing in pizza ebraica remains in the former Jewish ghetto. The family-owned Pasticceria il Boccione has been in operation for nearly two centuries. The owners suspect that Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition brought the dish to Rome via Sicily, which was then-ruled by the Spanish. At the time, pizza simply meant "pie," which doesn't specify a sweet or savory leaning.

Jewish people living in Rome today still flock to this bakery for the lumpy, burnt bricks that encapsulate a taste of the past. But these crunchy, salty sweets aren't just for descendants of the Israelites: Pope Benedict XVI called pizza ebraica his favorite dessert.

18 Jun 23:46

Biltong

The thought of biltong might bring a tear of joy to the eye of a South African ex-patriot. The thick cured and dried strips of beef, kudu, springbok, impala, turkey, or ostrich are a country specialty.

Every South African butcher makes a version of this jerky-style snack. Many locals also make a homemade rendition using a makeshift contraption—usually a box with a lightbulb and a fan. Traditionally, the shop or home-butcher will cure their fresh game with coriander seeds, brown sugar, salt, black pepper, and vinegar. Depending on the chef's whim, they may also add hints of curry, chili pepper, cloves, ginger, mango powder, and other sweet spices that reflect the Malay influence on South African cuisine.

Not only is biltong delicious alone, it serves as a versatile ingredient. Cooks grate shreds into sauces, baked goods, and dips for a pop of spicy complexity. Butchers also add the savory meat to boerewors, another one of South Africa's beloved butcher shop products. For those who can't get enough of the gamey taste, area snack companies even sell biltong-flavored potato chips.

13 Jun 00:17

At NYCHA, Spectacular Failure -- Or Is It Spectacular Success?

by Francis Menton

Anyone who pays even a little attention to the bureaucratic/socialist business model quickly figures it out:  the fundamental problem is that the people who run the system view "success" not in achieving their stated mission, but rather in growing their own staffs and budgets.  And the way to grow your staff and budget is to reveal that the problem you are tasked with addressing is worse than anyone ever thought, and only more money can cure it.  In other words, the way to "success" is through failure, and the more spectacular the failure, the better.

Last July, I highlighted a particularly notable example of this phenomenon in the New York subway and commuter rail system, in a post titled "In Government, Failure Is The Way To Get Yourself More Money."   The system had just suffered a disastrous series of derailments and other major delays -- things that should have been completely avoided through normal, ordinary maintenance.  Facing a political firestorm, the Governor demanded immediate fixes; and the bureaucracy responded as you would expect they would:  We can do it for an immediate cash infusion of an extra $800+ million!  And, why wasn't the previous multi-billion dollar annual budget sufficient to do the job?

The genius of this is that, in the crisis of the moment, with derailments and delays constantly in the news, nobody stops to ask why the vast sums of money they were already getting were not sufficient to maintain the system.  Is the current budget being used effectively?  This question is just too crude to be asked in the middle of such a crisis.  Certainly, the politicians are unanimous in their view that this is not the time to start blaming the inefficiency of the unionized work force, but rather is an opportunity to hit up the taxpayers.

Today the functionaries at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are in the process of being shown up as rank amateurs at this game by their compadres at another New York bureaucracy, the New York City Housing Authority.  NYCHA has been in the news for a couple of years now for a series of failures, one after the other:  a scandal of failure to inspect for and remedy lead paint, as required by law; another scandal of something close to half the residents going without heat and/or hot water for some part of last winter due to inadequate maintenance; pervasive reports of mold and vermin infestations; a backlog of what was said to be $17 billion -- and then suddenly became $25 billion -- in capital projects needing to be done.  See extensive Manhattan Contrarian coverage, for example, here.

Eventually, NYCHA became such an obvious target that of course some U.S. Attorney would not be able to resist the temptation to pile on for some easy headlines.  And thus yesterday, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York filed a 75 page Complaint detailing an endless litany of NYCHA failures, and demanding relief including immediately fixing the problems and also the appointment of a "monitor" to oversee the repairs.  In this short blog post, I can only give you a small taste of the endless tales of the infliction of suffering upon the helpless tenants by the heartless bureaucrats:

Lead is toxic, and there is no safe level of exposure; in children, lead can have devastating effects. The most common cause of lead poisoning in children is exposure to deteriorated lead paint. NYCHA knows that there is lead paint within apartment units in roughly thirty percent of its developments, but has failed—and continues to fail—to protect its residents from that paint when it peels and crumbles. NYCHA has for years failed to follow key HUD lead paint safety regulations including, among other things, by failing to find and remediate peeling lead paint in its developments and failing to ensure that NYCHA’s workers use lead-safe work practices to avoid disturbing lead paint that might injure residents. Since at least 2011, NYCHA senior managers have known that NYCHA was violating HUD lead paint requirements. . . .

Beyond lead paint, HUD regulations also require NYCHA to provide “decent, safe, and sanitary” housing. This “decent, safe, and sanitary” regulation requires not only that NYCHA comply with lead paint safety rules but also that it provide an environment free of mold and pest infestations and with adequate heat and functional elevators. Every year, NYCHA certifies that it is in fact complying with HUD’s regulations, and HUD has paid NYCHA billions of dollars to operate in compliance with them.  To enable HUD to determine whether public housing meets this basic standard, HUD created an inspection regime—the Public Housing Assessment System—to allow HUD to determine whether a housing agency is providing decent, safe, and sanitary housing. NYCHA has undermined HUD’s inspections by disguising the true condition of its properties. This deception included turning off water to developments to prevent HUD inspectors from observing leaks; posting “danger” signs to keep inspectors away from troubled areas; and temporarily hiding improperly stored hazardous materials. NYCHA management even included a document with suggestions for deceiving inspectors in NYCHA’s official training materials. This cover-up “how-to” guide was only removed in Summer 2017, after this Office called its existence to the attention of NYCHA’s outside lawyers.    

Really, it's shocking.  But don't worry -- help is on the way!  Simultaneous with the filing of this Complaint, New York City entered into a Consent Decree with the feds, settling the case.  You will never guess what is the key provision of the Consent Decree.  Yes, it is an extra $4 billion for NYCHA, to come from the New York City taxpayers to reward NYCHA for its failures.  (Go to Exhibit A at the end of the Consent Decree to find a list of the funding commitments.)

OK, they don't say that the money is to "reward NYCHA for its failures."  What they say is that the money is for "remediation" and to fix the identified problems.  Sure.  Given that NYCHA is already on record as saying that it has a backlog of needed capital work of some $25 billion, you can be sure that this $4 billion will disappear more or less immediately, to be followed promptly by another similar gambit to hit up the taxpayers for the next multiple billion.  By the way, $25 billion is about $150,000 for each and every family that lives in a NYCHA building -- plenty of money to buy each such family outright a perfectly nice house in a low-cost market like Utica or Cleveland.

In the articles in the press this morning, the big debate has been over whether the bulk of the blame for this situation belongs to current Mayor de Blasio, or whether his predecessor Bloomberg deserves much or all of it.  I won't try to resolve that issue.  I'm sure that there is plenty of blame to go around.  Perhaps a Mayor and Housing Authority Commissioner who actually focused on NYCHA maintenance issues and rode herd on the bureaucracy could have done a better job than these guys.  But really, the real problem goes much deeper:  it is beyond the potential of a politically-supervised bureaucracy to avoid the overpowering incentive to underperform as a way to get more funding for the bureaucracy.

Consider just one aspect of the NYCHA situation.  This issue has been reported in the past, but of course escapes notice at a time like now when the "crisis" seems to call for more funding.  The issue is the ridiculous work rules that NYCHA has agreed to with its workforce.  As one example, NYCHA has somehow agreed with its plumbers' union that all shifts run 8 AM to 4:30 PM, Monday to Friday; and all work outside those hours is compensated at overtime rates.  Now, what idiot ever agreed to that?  Everyone knows that plumbing problems occur at all hours of the day and night, and when the water is gushing down, the problem must be fixed immediately.  As a result, the NYCHA plumbers rack up truly preposterous amounts of overtime pay.  From the New York Post, March 17, 2018:

As Politico reported last week embattled city Housing Authority chief Shola Olatoye has been trying to win more labor flexibility, albeit with no backup from City Hall.  Soon after taking over in 2014, she sought common-sense changes to work rules that have maintenance staff and other skilled workers on the job exclusively from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday. But the Teamsters vetoed her plan for staggered shifts.  One result is the agency’s huge overtime bill, which (for example) leaves its plumbers as some of the very highest-paid city employees — five of the top 10 OT earners these last two years. The 2016 overtime king was NYCHA plumber Vincenzo Giurbino, who took home an added $228,000 atop his $141,152 base salary.

So now that this ridiculous overtime rule has been agreed to, it just can't be changed.  After all, the Governor and Mayor need the support of these guys for their re-elections.  I guess Mr. Giurbino can expect a nice bump up from his previous $370,000 annual pay when the new $4 billion starts flowing.

Can anybody figure out that this model can't work for the long term?  In New York, progressive groupthink prevents any application of critical thinking to the situation.  In this morning's Post, Manhattan Institute Vice President Howard Husock advocates that New York City should get out of the housing business.  But he has been advocating for that for quite a while -- along with myself, and very few others.  At the moment, there is no political momentum whatsoever in that direction.       

 

 

 

06 Jun 16:37

7 Freezer Meals for the Summer — Recipes from The Kitchn

by Sheela Fiorenzo

The freezer is a year-round workhorse — we love it in the winter for stashing away containers of soup, and we love it in the summer for making it a whole lot easier to get a meal on the table when we seem to be too busy spending time on the beach or on the patio to fuss.

Spend a little time prepping these seven recipes and your summer will be set.

READ MORE »

05 Jun 15:57

Udderly Art Pasture in Calgary, Alberta

Cow along Stephen Avenue in downtown Calgary, 2007.

Calgary has long been known for its Wild West-style way of life. The city's history of cattle ranchers, cowboys, and rodeos, not to mention being one of the largest beef producers in Canada, earned it the nickname "cowtown." The cow statues, however, would come much later.

At the turn of the millennium, in 2000, a charitable art organization undertook a large and smile-inducing urban installation, peppering downtown Calgary with life-size, colorfully decorated cow statues. Dubbed "Udderly Art," the project was a nod to Calgary's past, and sparked endless amusement and curiosity among visitors to the downtown area.

Made from molded fiberglass, the bovine statues are four-and-a-half feet tall and seven feet long, and weigh almost 100 pounds. They were originally produced in plain white, then sold to businesses and individuals for $5,000 per cow who personalized the cows, working with artists to paint them with unique designs and vibrant colors. For a time, there were 125 of these artful cows displayed around the city center, almost one on every corner. 

Later, the quirky statues were sold at auction where they raised more than $1.2 million for Canadian and U.S. charities. And while most of the colorful cows are owned by private buyers today, 17 of them—with names like “Chew-Choo” and “Midnight Cowgirl”—can be seen at the Udderly Art Legacy Pasture near the Centennial Parkade.

18 Apr 17:49

15 Under $15: Great Bites in NYC That Won't Break the Bank

by Ed Levine

Fifteen of our favorite cheap eats in New York City, from good ol’ American sliders to a richly savory Chinese noodle soup to one revelatory Mexican torta, and so much more. Read More
04 Apr 18:26

17 Chicken Breast Recipes for Busy Weeknights — Recipes from The Kitchn

by Sheela Prakash

Chicken breast is a solid staple on the weeknight dinner table, and for good reason: It's quick to prepare and endlessly adaptable. These 17 recipes prove this point. They suit whatever your mood — whether you're craving soup, stir-fry, salad, or pizza — and come together without fuss in a flash.

READ MORE »

15 Mar 22:24

You Don’t Even Need a Costco Membership to Get Kirkland Signature Products Delivered to Your Door — Shopping

by Lisa Freedman

Did you know that it is possible to shop for Costco's private-label brand, Kirkland Signature, without a Costco membership? The brand is a cult favorite (including Kitchn staffers!), so you're definitely going to want to know these three things:

  • You can shop on Costco's website without being a member. You won't get the membership rate but you'll be able to shop Kirkland Signature items and other products, as well.
  • You can find a lot of Kirkland Signature products on Amazon. Because, it's Amazon and of course you can.
  • You can also order Costco items on Instacart if the grocery delivery service is available in your area.

Is one option cheaper than the other? We compared prices to find out!

READ MORE »

13 Mar 17:15

This Sheet Pan Garlic-Parmesan Chicken Is Calling Your Name — Delicious Links

by Lauren Kodiak

The sheet pan meal is a weeknight wonder. Your protein, veggie, and starch can all cook in harmony on one sheet pan, which means less hands-on cooking work for you and fewer dishes to clean up after. It really doesn't get any better than that!

This sheet pan meal features crispy garlic-Parmesan chicken, asparagus, and baby potatoes for a perfect late-winter/early-spring dinner.

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27 Feb 17:45

Churchill in five minutes

by Scott Johnson
(Scott Johnson)

PragerU enlisted the services of the prominent historian Andrew Roberts to give its short course on “Winston Churchill: The man who saved the free world” (video below). It’s a good title and Roberts knows what he is talking about. He is the author of The Storm of War: A New History of World War II and the forthcoming biography Churchill: Walking with Destiny (also a good title, drawn from the concluding paragraph of The Gathering Storm).

The linked PragerU page includes a set of additional points, citations, and sources. The comments posted at YouTube include nitpicking about the video’s maps. The comments miss the point. This is the point: “The point about Churchill in 1940 is not that he stopped the German invasion, but that he stopped the British government making peace.” Sometimes you have to give war a chance.

I learned of the video via Roberts’s Twitter feed. It seems to be a box office hit in its own right.

Here is the concluding paragraph of The Gathering Storm, giving us Churchill’s thoughts on the evening of May 10, 1940: “During the last crowded days of the political crisis, my pulse had not quickened at any moment. I took it all as it came. But I cannot conceal from the reader of this truthful account that as I went to bed at about 3 A. M., I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. Eleven years in the political wilderness had freed me from ordinary party antagonisms. My warnings over the last six years had been so numerous, so detailed, and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me. I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it. I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams.”

04 Feb 00:33

Consumer group running Super Bowl ad against the Humane Society of the United States

by Jazz Shaw

This is a sad, but important story, and there’s no better time to bring it up since the big game is tomorrow. A consumer interest group named the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) has bought some Super Bowl advertising time to run an ad asking people not to donate money to the Humane Society of the United States. Instead, they are urging people who care about animal welfare and rescuing lost and abused pets to donate directly to their local animal shelters, not the national organization. (Oklahoma Farm Report)

The nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), which runs the watchdog www.HumaneWatch.org, notes that this is just the latest example of waste and abuse at the Humane Society of the United States. “For years HSUS has fundraised on the backs of cats and dogs to pay for exorbitant executive salaries, legions of lawyers, and parking $50 million into offshore accounts,” said CCF Managing Director Will Coggin. “It’s clear that HSUS is humane in name only. It does not value its female staff, its donors, or the animals it uses as window dressing.”

In light of these new developments, CCF will run an informational ad during the Super Bowl asking Americans to give to their local shelter. Local humane societies are not affiliated with HSUS despite the similarity in names. You can see the ad in the video box below:

Here’s the advertisement, which you can look for during the Super Bowl if you happen to be watching.

The details being revealed by the CCF are heartbreaking, particularly to me, though apparently people have known about this for a while now. I suppose I just didn’t want to believe it and turned a blind eye. It’s true that the HSUS has gotten into trouble recently with their own #MeToo allegations, as Karen reported already. But these other issues are very troubling and have supposedly been going on for a quite a while.

The first thing to know is that Humane Society of the United States is not directly affiliated with the local Humane Society shelters you probably see near where you live. Those shelters are run independently by local groups and subsist almost entirely on charitable contributions from their communities. You may have thought (as I did) that if you send money in to the address you see on those HSUS television advertisements that it’s going to help the animals in the shelters. Sadly, as CCF points out, less than one percent of their donations go out to local shelters. And that’s not the only problem being identified. From the CCF press release:

  • HSUS runs deceptive advertising full of homeless cats and dogs yet does not run any shelters and gives only 1% of the money it raises to local pet shelters, while spending millions on executive salaries and pension plans.
  • HSUS paid $11 million in 2014 to settle a racketeering lawsuit after the organization was caught paying a witness who lied under oath (Pacelle personally signed a check in this scheme).
  • In 2014 the Oklahoma Attorney General issued a public “consumer alert” about HSUS fundraising. Charity Navigator gives HSUS a low 2 star (out of 5) rating.
  • According to their tax returns HSUS has $50 million of donor money sitting in offshore accounts.

This is simply terrible. I really wasn’t aware of this situation, even though I spent years volunteering at a Humane Society shelter (that’s actually where I met my wife, who was also volunteering) and have adopted many pets from them over the years. I was already aware of the awful record that PETA has and the fact that they don’t actually rescue any appreciable number of animals with the massive amounts of money they raise, but I somehow felt that the Humane Society was a far better organization. But if this national organization is withholding 99% of their donations from the actual animal shelters, that’s not a good use of funds for anyone who wants to directly save dogs and cats.

With Charity Navigator giving them a pathetic two-star rating (which is even worse than PETA’s), there are obviously better ways to directly help animals. The suggestion in the CCF ad is a good one. Donating money locally puts the help closer to the animals in need. Better yet, go down and help them clean the shelter, drop off some food, cat litter or even old, used blankets for the dogs and cats to sleep on. And, of course, the biggest gift you can give is to make room in your home and your heart for one of the lost animals stranded at the shelter and looking for a forever home.

The post Consumer group running Super Bowl ad against the Humane Society of the United States appeared first on Hot Air.

15 Jan 18:54

Ten Years As Human Toast

by tonyheller

Ten years ago, the world’s leading climate expert announced that we are toast.

The Argus-Press – Google News Archive Search

Meanwhile, Austin and San Antonio, Texas are under a winter storm warning.

And the US is experiencing one of the coldest years on record.

10-Day Temperature Outlook for the Conterminous U.S.

Dr. Hansen also believes Lower Manhattan will be underwater no later than this year.

Stormy weather – Global warming – Salon.com

21 Dec 20:38

Pentagon – Climate Change To Destroy Civilization By 2020

by tonyheller

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us | Environment | The Guardian

21 Dec 20:31

US Navy : Arctic To Be Ice-Free By 2013

by tonyheller
13 Dec 22:52

There's No Such Thing as a Free Ride

by A. Barton Hinkle

It might seem ironic that Virginia, which threatens merchants with punishment if they charge "unconscionable" prices during an emergency, recently hit motorists with tolls as high as $40 for a one-way trip on I-66. But the subsequent freakout over the tolls was misplaced. They did just what they were supposed to do. And that holds a lesson for the state's lawmakers.

If you missed the backstory, it's fairly simple: Recently the state's Department of Transportation adopted a new system of congestion pricing for I-66 inside the Beltway in Northern Virginia. During rush hour, all of the lanes in the primary direction of travel are tolled. What's more, the tolls are dynamic and real-time: They go up as traffic congestion increases and down when it recedes. In other words, as demand for the road rises, so does the price to use it. Econ 101.

When the tolls initially debuted, they quickly shot up to $40—a high price to pay to travel just 10 miles. A parade of outrage ensued. And state legislators who represent Northern Virginia bravely jumped in front of it, sending a letter to Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne demanding that he "immediately suspend toll operations."

If that were all to the story, they would have a good case. But it isn't.

First, the tolls apply only to solo drivers, not car-poolers. That's because the tolls aim to reduce congestion, not to raise revenue. The goal is to keep traffic flowing rapidly and—as Layne put it in his response to lawmakers—to move "more people not just more vehicles."

Second, drivers who don't like paying the rush-hour tolls on I-66 don't have to. They can choose another route. In fact, before the implementation of the express lane system, solo drivers were required to: They were not allowed to use I-66 during rush hour at all (except for drivers of hybrids). So motorists are complaining about getting a new option because they have to pay for it. The horror.

Granted, other routes have their own downsides, such as stoplights. One motorist interviewed by The Washington Post told the paper "that she could take Route 50 but finds the traffic lights discouraging." Well, sure. But also: Welcome to a world of finite resources.

In a finite world, everything must be rationed. And the two principal ways to ration things are (a) prices or (b) lines. If you don't like standing for hours in line at Disney World, you can pay extra to use a shorter line. Don't want to pay extra? Wait longer.

But commuters in Northern Virginia such as the one the Post interviewed have the luxury of a Door No. 3: "She plans to give Metro, and a $16 round trip including parking, a try," the newspaper reported.

As word of the sky-high tolls spread, many other drivers also found alternate routes. Mirabile dictu, the average rate of travel on I-66 increased from 37 mph to 54 mph, and the tolls fell. Soon the peak toll had fallen to $14.50. Note the adjective: That's the peak toll, not the average.

The $40 toll that sparked so much outrage also was a peak toll. How many people actually paid it? A grand total of 39.

The state's approach here makes perfect sense. Prices are signals, and rising prices tell (solo) motorists: "You are hogging too much of a scarce resource. Get off the road so more people can use it." When the solo drivers comply, there's more road left for other users and traffic flows more smoothly.

Virginia clearly understands this dynamic when it comes to lane miles. So why doesn't it apply similar logic in other situations?

Whenever a hurricane, snowstorm, or similar event strikes, officials send out warnings to let merchants know the state's Post-Disaster Anti-Price Gouging Act is in effect, and they must not charge prices the state deems too high. In some cases it has forced merchants to issue refunds.

But high prices work just the same in stores as they do on the roads. They send a signal to people who are buying gasoline, bread, milk, and batteries that they should not try to hoard such staples. Not only that, high prices do an extremely efficient job of preventing hoarding. That leaves more of the scarce resources for others.

Sometimes, of course, people will have a strong reason for wanting a particular resource. If you have an important job interview and don't want to be late, it's well worth paying $20 to drive solo on I-66—or paying $10 for a gallon of gasoline to get you there. But most of us don't have such exigent circumstances most of the time. So high prices encourage us to leave more of the resource for those who truly need it.

Now that the Commonwealth of Virginia is applying that principle on the roads, perhaps it should let the state's merchants apply it as well.

This column originally appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

13 Dec 17:46

Memo to Supreme Court: Grant Cert in the Weyerhaeuser Case!

by John Hinderaker
(John Hinderaker)

The government we live under does not resemble the one that is described in the Constitution. The principal reason for this is the power of federal regulatory agencies, which has grown explosively and is virtually unrestrained by Congress, the courts or even the president, who nominally controls the executive branch. The extra-constitutional administrative state now represents a grave threat to our liberties. The Supreme Court has an opportunity to begin the long process of restoring democratic, constitutional government in a case called Weyerhaeuser Company v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service, et al.

The facts of the Weyerhaeuser case are almost impossible to believe if you haven’t been following the federal government’s regulatory overreach. The Fish and Wildlife Service has designated an area in Louisiana (“Unit 1”) consisting of 1,544 acres as “critical habitat” for the dusky gopher frog even though not a single dusky gopher frog lives in Unit 1. Not only that, it is not possible for a dusky gopher frog to live in Unit 1!

As of 1965, there were only 100 dusky gopher frogs known to exist in the wild, none in Louisiana. It is not hard to understand why: the species has complicated habitat requirements, including small, isolated “ephemeral ponds” located in open canopy forest, for breeding; open canopy forest upland from such ephemeral ponds as non-breeding habitat; and open canopy uplands connecting the two, allowing the frogs passage. Oh, one more thing: this intermediate territory must not only have an open canopy, it must include “abundant native herbaceous species” of ground cover produced by frequent fires. The Fish and Wildlife Service has admitted that Unit 1 does not contain the features necessary to be habitable by dusky gopher frogs–which is consistent, of course, with the fact that none live there.

The land we are talking about is private property, owned by, among others, Weyerhaeuser Company. It is suitable for development; in fact, St. Tammany Parish, where Unit 1 is located, is the fastest-growing parish in Louisiana. The parish has filed a brief as an amicus which would almost be funny if the circumstances were not so outrageous:

The “critical habitat” designation removes said property from being developed and as such usurps the authority of the Parish as authorized by the State of Louisiana to manage growth….Management of the proposed habitat to sustain the frogs would ultimately require that the existing forest be destroyed and the establishment of a longleaf pine forest, which would require in turn that this forest be maintained by the periodic burning of the property in order to stimulate the growth of new planted longleaf trees, which is essential to converting the existing ponds back into “ephemeral” ponds for frogs to even have a chance to survive at the said property. This maintenance procedure along the abutting Louisiana Highway 36 corridor, which is a critical east-west transportation route, will create serious public safety concerns both for local and interstate commerce traffic as well as resultant health hazards from the thick smoke clouds for the nearby community of Hickory.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is required by law to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the economic impact of the “critical habitat” designation. Even though it wildly underestimated the economic impact, Fish and Wildlife found up to $34 million in costs, and no economic benefits. No matter. It proceeded with the designation anyway.

How does such an outrageous regulation come about? Here, as is often the case, it is the result of the corrupt “sue and settle” tactic. Environmental advocacy organizations sue agencies like Fish and Wildlife, asking the court to compel the agency to, in this case, designate the land in question as critical habitat. The agency is only too happy to comply–the lawsuit is fundamentally collusive–and the court has little alternative but to rubber-stamp the parties’ settlement. “Sue and settle” is an area where reform is desperately needed.

A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Fish and Wildlife’s designation of uninhabitable, privately-owned land as “critical habitat” for the dusky gopher frog. Judge Priscilla Owen, dissenting from that opinion, wrote:

There is a gap in the reasoning of the majority opinion that cannot be bridged. The area at issue is not presently “essential for the conservation of the [endangered] species” because it plays no part in the conservation of that species. Its biological and physical characteristics will not support a dusky gopher frog population. There is no evidence of a reasonable probability (or any probability for that matter) that it will become “essential” to the conservation of the species because there is no evidence that the substantial alterations and maintenance necessary to transform the area into habitat suitable for the endangered species will, or are likely to, occur.

Judge Owen concluded that the panel’s decision “re-writes the Endangered Species Act.”

Weyerhaueser petitioned for review by the full 5th Circuit court. Its petition was rejected, with six judges dissenting. Weyerhaeuser has now petitioned for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The dusky frog case is so outrageous that one might assume that it is unique. Unfortunately, it isn’t. in 2014, the Fish and Wildlife Service designated 35% of all the privately-owned land in San Juan County, Utah, as “critical habitat” for the Gunnison sage-grouse, even though, according to the County’s brief, the sage grouse does not and cannot live on most, or all, of that land. In 2014, the Washington Post wrote that proposals to conserve the sage grouse “could cost up to 31,000 jobs, up to $5.6 billion in annual economic activity and more than $262 million in lost state and local revenue every year….”

It is vitally important that the Supreme Court begin the process of reining in the out of control federal bureaucracy. The Weyerhaeuser case is a good place to start. The Supreme Court should grant certiorari, and should reverse the 5th Circuit’s decision. This is how the Petitioners characterize the issue that is ultimately at stake–correctly, I think:

The core question is simple: Does the Endangered Species Act give the Federal Government, at its choosing, virtually unrestrained control over any and all land (public or private) throughout the United States?

Cases like this one are also a reminder of how fortunate we are that Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, and how important it is that the Senate confirm his judicial nominees with dispatch. The alliance between the left-wing federal bureaucracy and left-wing federal judges is the greatest threat to our liberties that we face.

13 Dec 01:29

Recipe: Gougères with Fig Jam — Recipes from The Kitchn

by Leah Koenig

Fried jelly doughnuts, called sufganiyot, are a common Hanukkah treat in Israel, and are increasingly popular in the United States. But while homemade doughnuts filled with strawberry or raspberry jam are delicious as a once-in-a-while treat, they make the house smell like fried food and leave a pesky amount of cooking oil behind to dispose of.

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07 Dec 08:44

Shock poll: Luke Skywalker is more popular than Han Solo?

by Allahpundit

What is wrong with this country? When did our judgment go so horribly awry?

We made “The Walking Dead” a ratings juggernaut, we nominated Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump for president, now this. We deserve whatever Kim Jong Un has planned for us. Via Morning Consult:

Princess Leia at the top? Okay. She’s an unqualified heroine and it’s impossible not to like Carrie Fisher. Even if there’s a sympathy vote here due to her untimely passing, it’s defensible. Chewbacca and R2? I can see that. They’re guileless creatures, half-pet, half-sidekick, on the side of right every time they’re onscreen. Disliking them is like disliking E.T. Yoda? Yoda is Yoda. But Luke “Mary Sue” Skywalker, pimply messiah, over swashbuckling space pirate Han Solo? The guy who went on to star as Indiana Jones versus the guy who went on to star in “Corvette Summer”?

All I can figure is that, at a moment when we’ve put an unpopular alpha male in charge of the nuclear arsenal, we as a people are now overcorrecting by preferring a bland beta to Harrison Ford in his most iconic role. How else to explain why Han Solo doesn’t score 100 percent?

I don’t understand Obi-Wan being knocked back a few points behind Yoda either unless some of the dumber casual Star Wars fans out there couldn’t place him when his name was mentioned. That’s hard to believe given his stature in the original movie but I can sort of vaguely understand mixing up Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon and Mace Windu and the other Jedi elders whereas no one forgets who the little green puppet is. Same goes for Jabba the Hutt otherwise inexplicably finishing ahead of a much more badass character in Boba Fett. If you’re a casual fan, you might not remember him immediately by name. Everyone remembers the big Weinstein-esque blob who had Leia chained up in a bikini, though.

As for the dashing Lando Calrissian finishing more than 10 points behind stammering robo-wuss C-3PO, all I can say is: Racism, straight up. Don’t give me any flak about how Lando double-crossed our heroes, either. He came through when it mattered in “Return of the Jedi.” Racism.

Oh, and Jar Jar Binks finishing ahead of Wedge Antilles, minor character though he is, is a crime for which our entire civilization should be punished. And perhaps we will be. The coming inescapable cultural ubiquity of the Porgs feels like God’s judgment on a fallen society.

The post Shock poll: Luke Skywalker is more popular than Han Solo? appeared first on Hot Air.

01 Dec 19:37

Bojack Horseman

by Brian Doherty

Bojack Horseman, Netflix's cartoon about a washed-up sitcom star who happens to be a horse, has drawn critical acclaim for its masterful mix of animated humor and emotionally harrowing takes on depression and personal failure.

The fourth season, which dropped in September, delivers more gutpunching tearjerkers: an adopted kid seeking her mother, a son dealing with a mother he despises suffering from dementia, and the agonies of miscarriage, infertility, and troubled partnerships.

In a year with painfully weird real-life politics, this season's extended B story involves a goofily well-meaning but ignorant and easily manipulated canine TV star, Mr. Peanutbutter, running for governor of California against a seasoned, policy-smart, and dignified woodchuck.

While doubtless conceptualized before Trump won, the show winningly avoids heavy-handed callbacks to our lived political reality and depicts electoral politics as a realm of near-pure maddening absurdity, where voter allegiance shifts for silly reasons and to ridiculous effect. (An episode on fracking leads to a group of celebrities eating Zach Braff. An episode on gun control leads to a statewide weapons ban—painted, alas, as a trouble-free good idea.)

Our pasts, our minds, our families, and our ambitions are serious stuff, the show tells us; attempts to win our support with dumb promises are best seen as an absurd joke.

11 Oct 23:59

Is It OK to Put Leftovers in the Fridge While Still Warm? — Food Safety

by Geraldine Campbell

If you're wondering about the right way to put leftovers in the fridge, you're not alone. This may well be one of the great kitchen debates! Some insist that leftovers need to be kept out of the fridge until they reach room temperature, while others see no problem putting them in the fridge while they're still a bit warm (and maybe this is even the better way).

So, who's right? Is one method safer than the other, or does it even matter?

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03 Oct 17:58

5 Freezer Marinades for Chicken or Pork — Quick and Easy Weeknight Dinners

by Sheela Prakash

While marinades are brilliant at turning cuts of meat that can often dry out when cooked into flavorful, moist meals, it's easy to forget to plan ahead and get that meat into a marinade well before you're ready to cook it. Enter: the freezer marinade, when you bring that meat home from the grocery store toss it in a marinade first and freeze it right in it. It will absorb the marinade whenever you decide to thaw it, and then all you have to do is bake, sauté, or grill it. This is a weeknight dinner game-changer.

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