Keith.truong

After the arrests of several senior FIFA leaders and widespread evidence of graft, bribery and general corruption at the highest levels of the global soccer conglomerate, FIFA’s selection of Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup has come under renewed criticism. The indictments allege that vote-buying occurred in past World Cup host selections, and there have been other allegations that millions of dollars were paid to rig the vote for Qatar in 2010.

And when you look at all the World Cup hosts since 1978, it’s clear that Qatar is in many ways an outlier.

Compared with other World Cup hosts, Qatar is at the extremes on almost every metric I looked at. The data wasn’t perfect — two of the data sets I used weren’t measured annually when it would have been ideal if they were (the United Nations Development Program’s carbon-emissions reading and Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index). Also, the Press Freedom Index did not exist before 2002, so I used the 2002 mark for the World Cups that came before that year. It’s an estimation, but because that measurement is less susceptible to annual change, I felt safe in using it. And one last thing while we’re here: The Elo and GDP numbers for Russia and Qatar aren’t projections but are the most recent data available.

Qatar was definitely not selected for its temperate weather in June, the typical time for the FIFA tournament. There has historically been some variation here — Argentina’s average June temperature is in the low 50s (it being in the Southern Hemisphere and all), and Mexico’s is in the mid-70s. But Qatar’s average June temperature is in the 90s.

Perhaps Qatar is a real soccer up-and-comer, then? Not quite! I pulled the Elo rating of each men’s national team on the first game they played the year they hosted the cup¹² to get the gist of how good the teams were on the world stage. Qatar has the second-lowest score ever.¹³

And it’s not like Qatar holds a bulk of the world’s population, either. Typically the country that gets the cup has somewhere around 1 percent to 5 percent of the world’s population, but not Qatar. With a projected population of 2.24 million in 2022, it’ll have a whopping 0.03 percent of the global population within its borders in a few years, not counting the spectators. What’s more, that population mostly comprises people who weren’t born in Qatar — as of 2013, according to the U.N., 1.6 million of the country’s 2.2 million people were international migrants.

Although Qatar will be a global hub for sports journalists in several years, FIFA apparently did not select the country to highlight its illustrious human-rights record. Qatar has extreme restrictions on press freedoms that put it in league with Russia (the 2018 host) and Brazil (the 2014 one). They have a very high score on the Press Freedom Index, where a low score indicates a great deal of freedom.

It’s also not for the nation’s climate record, either, as it’s by far the highest polluter — measured in metric tons of carbon emitted per capita. And that’s on a list that includes America. That was our category to lose!

But Qatar does have one metric by which it is off-the-charts outstanding: gross domestic product per capita. Namely, it’s a small country that makes a whole lot of money. In the chart, we’re looking at the ratio of GDP per capita the year each nation hosted the cup to the United States’ GDP per capita that year, to keep it apples to apples.

None of this proves vote-rigging, obviously. But when a country lacks many of the competitive advantages of other countries’ bids, some extra scrutiny is probably worthwhile.

Sing, sing a song, make it simple

Austin is the live music capital of the world, after all, and that title applies to the city’s karaoke bars, too. It’s where anyone can take the leap from spectator to singer (sometimes with the aid of a little liquid courage, too, if necessary).

Austin has plenty of karaoke choices, from the imaginatively-themed private rooms at The Highball, solid dive bar crooning at Ego’s Lounge, to BYOB tunes at Austin Karaoke. This update adds the eclectic College Roadhouse, sushi and sake bombs at DK Sushi, and Indian Roller’s indie/punk rock array to the mix.

For other fun-filled drinking and eating-adjacent activities, there are Austin's best live music and food spots, dog-friendly bars and restaurants, and brewery tours.

All of the karaoke bars listed below appear in an unranked order. If your favorite karaoke haunt is missing from the list below, let Eater know on the tipline, in the comments, or over on the forum.

Hovertext: Things you learn drawing comics - you can't do the Devil's Tuning Fork in color.

Err, so what’s more awkward? Watching a gorilla walk upright or an Asiatic bear? You be the judge in this next video, proudly brought to you by awkward feelings and WTF.

Wildlife vet Liz had some insider information about why some bears might walk like this. She said it might be because this bear was rescued from a bear bile farm, where he was kept in a tiny cage. Because of these circumstances he’s a lot smaller than a regular bear size. ‘With his smaller and malnourished body, it is easier for him to stand on his hind leg because his spine can support his light body weight. Standing up and waiting for food slowly became a habit which he does on a daily basis now’.

A sad explanation, but it’s good this little bear has been saved and will hopefully go on to become healthy once again.

The post Asiatic bear walks upright, makes us all feel beary uncomfortable appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Who doesn’t love a good Mentos ad? That catchy tune, those cheesy smug smiles – it’s all very early 90s and you can’t help but love them. So when someone posts a Mentos parody on YouTube, we all take notice… especially when Jean Claude Van Damme is involved!

His 1988 movie Bloodsport has the perfect scene for a Mentos ad – the one where he’s being chased down on the streets of Hong Kong in his yellow blazer (who could forget that yellow blazer?). Climbing over boats, running through a busy market, and then finally seeing the bad guys fall into the river as Van Damme finds himself a rickshaw – it’s all classic Mentos ad.

The post Van Damme’s ‘Bloodsport’ turned into a 30-second Mentos ad parody appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

The first visit that I ever made to a hop farm was, in many ways, life-changing.  The smells, the sights and the culture were absolutely intoxicating.  Jaw to the ground I walked amongst rows and rows of hops, pulling almost ripe hop cones from their bines to smell, rub and experience them in every way that I possibly could.  Up until this point I had only seen them in the form that they arrive to most of our breweries, in pellets or dried whole flowers.  I’d seen pictures and even watched videos of the hop harvest in full swing but there is quite literally nothing that will compare to actually being there.  I spent the next 3 days with my hands covered in hop resin.

After that first hop harvest I returned to Austin completely on fire for hops.  I’ve always tended towards hop forward beers but something in my head had shifted.  Something that I couldn’t really put my finger on at the time but since that experience almost 3 years ago I realize now that the shift in my mind-set was a new appreciation for hops that I had never had before.  An appreciation that instilled in me a sense of responsibility to hop growers.  The work that goes into growing these plants is incredible and without actually visiting with the very people who put their heart and soul into the cultivation of hops it’s nearly impossible to truly appreciate what they do.

Growing up in west-ish Texas in a small town that was reliant mostly on agriculture I’ve always appreciated the hard work that goes into farming but until this point I’ve never had a crop so near and dear to my heart.  And to this day my love of hops has only grown more intense to the point that I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night wondering what a certain process change or blend of different varieties might contribute to a finished beer.  Obsession is defined as “an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person’s mind”.  Am I obsessed with hops? The short answer is yes.  The longer answer is Hell Yes!

As brewers we have experimentation rooted in our bloodstream.  Some of us more than others but deep inside of everyone who makes beer for a living is the desire to try something new.  To potentially find a new process or ingredient that hasn’t been tried or found before or even take an age old process and improve upon it.  Taking flavors that we’ve experienced somewhere outside of beer and re-creating that in our world of zymurgy to create something wonderful.  For some brewers the experimentation comes with malt or other brewing grains.  For some it comes in the form of yeast, both wild and cultured.  And still others prefer adjuncts or other non-traditional ingredients like fruit, herbs or spices to feed their experimental desires.  For me though, it’s hops.  Plain and simple I love the wonderful world of hoppy beer.  And I’m not talking about the pallet-wrecking bitterness derived from, what I believe to be, irresponsible hop usage.  I’m talking about flavor, aroma and texture. The holy trinity of this humulus culture.

Hop usage is not an afterthought for me.  It’s not something that I like to do because it’s what everyone else is doing.  And it’s sure as hell not something that I prefer to do because IRI scan data says that’s what everyone is buying.  Plain and simple, I love the complexity in a well thought out and well executed hop forward beer.  The pure joy that comes from seeing multiple hop varieties dance in tandem to create a flavor that otherwise would never have been derived motivates me like nothing else.  When the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.  That Aristotle was onto something!

I remember sitting through a talk at the Craft Brewers Conference in 2012 and learning that of all the hops that are grown in the US, craft brewers currently use around 60% of them but only make up for roughly 10% of the beer sold in the US.   Stated simply, we are incredibly inefficient in the way that we use hops as compared to the major brewers in the country who focus on adjunct lagers.  And that trend doesn’t seem to be slowing anytime soon.

So where am I going with these ramblings you ask?  The Dispensary Series, that’s where.

We recently received label approval for a series of 6 beers that we’ll begin releasing over the coming months.  The Dispensary series is made up of the following 6 aggressively dry-hopped beers;

Dispensary Pilsner

Dispensary Red Ale

Dispensary Pale Ale

Dispensary India Pale Ale

Dispensary Imperial India Pale Ale

Dispensary Porter

Our intent with this series is to deliver 6 offerings to you that have been aggressively and unconventionally hopped to deliver flavors, aromas and textures completely unique to anything we’ve done before.  Some of you may find these beers to be too much.  Others may find these beers to be, well, just ok.  But we are quite certain that those of you that we are really trying to reach with this series will find these beers to be truly mind-boggling.  We’ve been experimenting with some interesting, very unconventional hopping processes as well as some new varieties and blends of varieties that have us giddy with excitement!

We’ve been selling our Greenhouse IPA series for a year and half now and will continue forward in the same fashion that we have been by changing the dry-hopping blends and varieties for each new release.  But what we intend to do with the Dispensary series is to take this concept, add some additional tricks that we’ve got up our sleeves and utilize the different components from 6 different base malt bills to deliver a hop experience like nothing we’ve ever done before.  And only offer it in keg form for sale by the pint at your favorite purveyor of fine craft beer.  We’ll be launching the Dispensary Series with a multitude of events around town and we’ll have a whole line of merchandise for sale that carries the Dispensary branding (to be unveiled very soon).  Stay up to date with our Twitter and Facebook feeds for all the details.

The Dispensary Series, An Ode to Humulus Culture!

The post An Ode to Humulus Culture appeared first on Hops & Grain.

Not going to look too far into the symbolism of ...

If you haven't caught up on Adult Swim's Rick and Morty, you should do that right away. It's one of the funniest, weirdest shows on TV right now - and is essentially Doctor Who, if the Doctor were drunk and embittered at all times. If that's not enough to get you onboard, I'm not sure what is.

But no matter if you've seen it or not, editing together sequences from Rick and Morty to make it look like Rick were rapping Eminem's ridiculously-wordy song Rap God is no small feat - and it apparently took Youtuber Benjamin Roberts about 100 hours to splice it all together.

The most impressive part? Rick manages to get through the whole thing without burping.

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Or1WvX88lng?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Although, as anyone watching Rick and Morty should know, there must exist an alternate universe where Rick IS the original artist behind Rap God. Since, ya know, there are alternate universes for everything.

...

Always order fries.

While burgers are the shining star this week, french fries aren’t to be ignored. The greasy side comes in all forms: shoestring to wedges, long to short, crispy to soft. These fries work well with or without burgers. In Austin, there’s Jack Allen’s spicy version, the sugary sweet fried potatoes at Workhorse Bar, Justine’s shoestring fries, and more. Is your favorite fry missing below? Hit the tipline or comment below.

It’s Jack Gilmore’s third restaurant.

The Westlake location of Jack Allen’s Kitchen is now officially open for lunch, dinner, and Sunday brunch on Loop 360. The third restaurant is helmed by chef Jack Gilmore. The farm-focused kitchen will serve the same sort of Texan comfort food fare, with some additional new items to the menu and cocktail list. It's also the home of Jack Allen's first wood burning oven. Dinner tonight features fried quail legs, stewed red chile pork shoulder, and a strawberry rhubarb cobbler.

The space, designed by Mann & Mann Architects, includes canning jar chandeliers, plenty of reclaimed wood, and other vintage details. Outside, there is a patio with both a fireplace and television screen. 360 is open from Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m.-11 p.m.. Sunday brunch is served from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

The new restaurant took over the former Trento space last spring. The restaurant opened for dinner service only last week.

If Death Cab For Cutie's 17-year career has focused on a single overarching theme, it's the process of growing up and fumbling for connection.

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New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady may be the best quarterback to ever play the game. However, at the age of 37, Brady has reportedly been thinking of what he would like to do when he eventually hangs up his cleats. Chief among his interests? Acting. Per the Boston Herald: A source told Star magazine:

Article found on: Next Impulse Sports

Ping pong is a much more demanding sport than you'd gather from watching your uncle playing in the den against your other uncle - it requires lightning-fast reflexes, total control of how you hit the ball, and enough finesse to stay in control.

Also, some sweet spin-moves don't hurt:

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Johnnie Walker Red Label recently collaborated with British cobbler Oliver Sweeney to make leather brogues that conceal miniature whiskey bottles. At first glance, they appear just like any elegant Oxford-style shoes, but flip them over and you’ll quickly see that inside their stacked heels are spaces big enough to fit mini liquor bottles. The idea is more discreet than a hip flask and but still manages to complement every dapper gentleman’s outfit.

Each pair took two days to create and Oliver Sweeney will only be making 130 of these babies. You can purchase the product here for roughly around $463.

The post Johnnie Walker just made these brogues that conceal mini bottles of their whiskey appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

In a wonderfully geeky move, NASA has been releasing some vintage-inspired scifi travel posters from the fictitious Exoplanet Travel Bureau for newfound planets such as Kepler-16b (which, as they note, orbits a pair of stars like Tatooine in Star Wars), HD 40307g (dubbed a ‘Super Earth’ for its gravitational pull) and Kepler-186f (the Earth-size planet with red wavelength rays that got a lot of attention for its capacity to support life). It’s too cruel not to be able to take a space shuttle ride to these planets right now.

The post NASA gets us ready for space travel to newfound alien planets appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Need something to brighten your day? Your week? Your month? Even your year? Seals will be there for you! These photos of seals rolling on the floor laughing will make everything better. Because how could a bunch of ROFL seals possibly make you sad? That’s right. They can’t.

My favourite has to be the last one on the list. Funniest seal of them all!

The post These photos of seals laughing will make your day appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

UPDATE: Revolt TV has video of all three Kintsugi songs Death Cab played last night. Watch below.

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The NFL playoffs begin Saturday, and if recent reports are any indication, this season could mark the end of the 12-team postseason era. In March, the league will vote on whether to expand its tournament field to 14 teams for the 2015 season — after which the floodgates may open for further expansion in subsequent seasons.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. The NFL playoffs are a TV ratings bonanza, and it doesn’t seem as though our appetite for football is waning (despite a trying year off the field). Plus, teams such as the Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills and Houston Texans — all of which missed the playoffs this season despite winning records — make a case for creating more playoff spots. (And the 7-8-1 Carolina Panthers hosting a home playoff game makes the case for re-seeding the field.)

But which expanded format is best? As I’ve done in the past, I’ll take the perspective that the best format is the one that sees the most deserving team win the most often, using a Monte Carlo simulation to test playoff fields of various sizes.

More specifically, I generated random preseason Elo ratings for every team (based on the historical distribution of real-life preseason Elo ratings) and simulated the real-life 2014 regular season schedule 1,000 times — an exercise similar to that performed by Doug Drinen in this classic post at the Pro-Football-Reference.com blog. For each of those simulations, I tracked the regular season standings, seeding the teams within each conference using simulated point differential as the tiebreaker.

The preseason ratings represent the starting talent levels for every team, but they can go up or down depending on the simulated game outcomes, in accordance with the Elo formula. For instance, a team assigned an initial Elo below the league-average mark of 1500 could tear off an improbably great regular season and finish above 1700. That would be used as the team’s strength rating going into the postseason.

For potential expanded fields of 14, 16, 20, and 32 teams, I tracked how often the most talented preseason and end-of-regular-season Elo team won the Super Bowl, as well as the average preseason and pre-playoff Elo ratings (and rankings) of the simulated Super Bowl champs. For comparison, I also ran this test for contracted fields of 2, 4, and 8 teams, as well as the current 12-team setup.

Here’s a little more to help decipher that chart. When the playoffs contained just 2 teams, the average simulated Super Bowl winner had an Elo of 1565.3 before the season, which gave it an average ranking of 9.2 among the NFL’s 32 teams. Also, 12.8 percent of those Super Bowl winners were ranked No. 1 in the preseason. After the regular season was simulated, those teams averaged an Elo rating of 1690.1, with an average ranking of 2.5 within the league, and they led the league in post-regular season Elo 44.7 percent of the time. Finally, following the Super Bowl the average winner from our two-team-playoff universe had an Elo rating of 1711.6.

Comparing those categories across all formats, the irony is that a BCS-style two-team playoff produces the most talented champion from the perspective of both preseason and end-of-regular-season Elo ratings. But since that’s clearly neither realistic nor desirable, it appears the 14-team bracket is the superior option. On average, it yields the most talented team of any expanded format, and enables that team to win the Super Bowl with quite a bit more frequency — perhaps due to first-round byes only being given to the top seed in each conference.

Interestingly, a 14-team bracket also yields the best average post-Super Bowl rating for the champ among any format tested, expanded or not. (Granting that the current 12-team setup sees the better regular-season team win more often.) Based on this research, then, a 14-team playoff seems to strike the best balance between letting teams settle things on the field and putting the most deserving teams in a position to succeed.

The first blockbuster trade of the 2014-15 NBA season came late Thursday, when the Boston Celtics finally shipped Rajon Rondo, their perpetually on-the-trading-block star, to the Dallas Mavericks for a handful of players, picks and a trade exception.

Others have broken down the pros and cons of the trade, but the deal also serves to spark discussion about Rondo himself, one of the most polarizing players in the league. In early November, when Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry profiled the enigmatic point guard, he touched on the conundrum advanced stats face in measuring his performance. “Rondo’s value is difficult to quantify, in part because he doesn’t fit into our established taxonomy of NBA superstars,” Goldsberry wrote. “He amplifies the goodness around him, but he can’t create it.”

The statistical arc of Rondo’s career bears this out. According to metrics ranging from Player Efficiency Rating (PER) to Win Shares and Statistical Plus/Minus (SPM), Rondo’s best seasons came in 2009 and 2010, when he was surrounded by three future Hall of Famers in Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. In Goldsberry’s terms, Rondo amplified their goodness — or at least, he helped organize it — and his numbers received a sizable boost as well. In 2009, he ranked as the NBA’s 14th-best player by Win Shares and its 12th-best by Value Over Replacement Player.

But since Rondo tore his ACL midway through the 2012-13 season and the Celtics broke up their “Big Three” for good, Rondo’s output has taken a nosedive. Stats such as a .461 true shooting percentage (TS%) might have been excused while returning from injury a year ago, but Rondo has continued to shoot the ball poorly (.422 TS%), turn it over frequently (on nearly 26 percent of his possessions) and score infrequently (he’s averaging 9.4 points per 36 minutes) this season. Abysmal numbers like those would typically warrant a benching, not a win-now return in a blockbuster trade.

Then again, Rondo has never been a typical player. Along with the bad shooting and nonexistent scoring, he also provides his team with one of the game’s most prolific passers, its best rebounding point guard, a highly skilled thief and an elite defender. In other words, there’s precious little middle ground with Rondo; pick an area of the game, and he’s either one of the best or one of the worst in it.

So, how do we weigh the positives of Rondo’s game against the negatives? The popular single-number metrics are all over the place. PER thinks he’s average so far this season; Win Shares per 48 minutes considers him substantially below average. Naturally, Wins Produced likes him for his rebounding prowess (and doesn’t care about his microscopic scoring output), while Box Plus/Minus (an SPM variant) pegs him as above-average but completely because of defense (he’s quite negative offensively). Box Plus/Minus jibes with what ESPN’s Real Plus/Minus (RPM) lists for Rondo this season, but last year RPM considered him good offensively and bad defensively (go figure).

Dallas owner Mark Cuban has always had the Mavericks at the forefront of analytics among NBA teams, so it’s possible he’s found his own way to cut through the fog and divine Rondo’s true worth. But for the rest of us, the debate over Rondo is one of how best to measure a unique player. Advanced as they are, our best statistical formulas are trained on trends that emerge over the entire sample of NBA players. Rondo might just be the extreme case that causes our math to break down.

They're rolling out a happy hour, too.

Cultishly loved sandwich shop Noble Sandwich Co. has teased carb and charcuterie-loving Austinites with dinner service for a long time. Now, they're finally ready to make it official. Both locations of the shop will open for dinner service starting Monday, January 12, just in time to destroy New Year's resolutions.

According to a press release, the dinner menu will feature sandwiches as well as "casual dinner options" like a seared catfish with cornbread and a venison burger. In addition to dinner, the shops will also offer a happy hour with rotating specials from 2:00 - 5:00 p.m., and they will scale back breakfast to weekends only. Don't think that dinner hours mean night owls can finally get a duck pastrami fix, however: new hours will be Monday - Thursday 10:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. and Friday - Sunday 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Sometimes, it’s the failures that are the best.

Can't beat that.

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Surprise: it's fairly easy.

For the first time in many years, Blizzard announced a new franchise today: meet Overwatch, a team-based multiplayer shooter with Pixar-like graphics that will enter beta next year.

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The restaurant will open for weekend dim sum lunch only to start.

Popular Chinese restaurant T & S Seafood shuttered in May, with a promise to reopen in a new location. Chowhounders rumored the restaurant was headed to the Chinatown Center, and the development's leasing agents confirm New Fortune will open then November 15. The restaurant will initially open for weekend lunch service only, which will feature, yes, dim sum. Catering is also available, and hours might be expanded next year.

UPDATE: The giveaway is now over

Austin City Limits will be taping a performance by Foo Fighters on Friday, November 7th, at 8 pm at ACL Live at The Moody Theater (310 W. 2nd Street, Willie Nelson Blvd). This event will also feature a preview screening of the Austin episode of the HBO show Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways.

We will be giving away a limited number of space available passes to this taping. Enter your name and email address on the below form by 9 am on Thursday, November 6th. Winners will be chosen at random and a photo ID will be required to pickup tickets. Winners will be notified by email. Passes are not transferable and cannot be sold. Standing may be required.

No photography, recording or cell phone use in the studio.

T-Pain was and is entertaining—and T-Pain was and is important—not just because he built a career a decade ago by making fun, light songs about drinking and/or having sex with women, but because of how he did it. He utilized and popularized Auto-Tune, and in doing so transformed both rap and R&B, paving the way for plenty of singers who couldn't actually sing and rappers who couldn't actually rap. And Kanye.

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