The SoapBoxers

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Daniel Godfrey’s New Pompeii for review purposes.

A quick glance at the book’s synopsis had me hooked.  A company has found a way to bring people from the past forward through time and land them in the present day.  Their biggest challenge so far was to rescue the population of Pompeii moments before it was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius.

Nick Houghton is a historian who is running out of career options.  When he is approached by NovusPart and offered him a position as the company’s historical advisor, he jumps at the chance.

The people from Pompeii weren’t just dropped into modern-day Manhattan, of course.  Dropping them into a world with cars, electricity, and Twitter would be a complete sensory overload.  Instead, NovusPart has created a full-scale replica of Pompeii in a remote part of Asia.  The company has fabricated a decree from the emperor that gives them great control over the city.

As Nick soon discovers, this is not a perfect world.  The Pompeiians know that something is amiss.  Like the fact that Vesuvius is just gone.  And the fact that they never see any visitors from other city.  They’ve been told that there is great chaos in the empire, but come on – literally NOBODY from outside ever visits?  The leaders know that they are dependent on the Johnny-come-lately strangers for their survival, and this causes great concern.  In other words, the natives are growing restless, and it’s up to Nick to help NovusPart figure out how to solve this problem.

Story

I found the concept interesting, and the book had a good pace.  It contained enough detail about historical Pompeii to be enjoyable, but it doesn’t require the reader to be an expert.  I had some basic knowledge of Pompeii,  but some of the details made me stop and think.  I had forgotten that the citizens would have had slaves, and that saving their lives may have simply increased the duration of their suffering.

Characters

Nick is without a doubt the lead character in the book.  However, there are quite a few other characters who have significant roles.  The characters are well-defined, and I found myself with emotional reactions to many of that.  That’s my general test for how well characters are developed – if I have some sort of emotional reaction to a character – positive or negative – the author did a good job developing the character.

New Pompeii’s Verdict

As you can probably tell, I enjoyed New Pompeii.  It’s a nice, easy read, and you’ll learn a few things about history in the process of reading the book.  There are enough plot twists to keep you on your toes.  I gave this a grade of four stars on Goodreads, but would have given 4.5 stars if I had that option.

New Pompeii comes out on June 21, with a sequel planned for 2017.  You can buy it now now from Amazon and other retailers.  If your favorite bookstore doesn’t have it, ask them to order a copy.

I recently decided to buy a tablet.  I’ve thought about it in the past, but recently received a financial award at work and decided to spend a (small) chunk of it on myself and save the rest.

We do already have some tablets in the house:

• A Kindle Fire 1st generation – Fewer and fewer apps have retained support for this device.  It’s 4 1/2 years old and uses a non-standard version of Android.  It no longer works with MLB.TV, which is a problem.  We bought it secondhand, and it was a nice starter tablet, but it’s time to move on.
• The kids each have the low-end  version of the new Kindle Fire.  They have a six inch display (1280 X 800) and 8 GB of storage.  No card slot.  These are OK for reading, Netflix, and MineCraft, but not really suitable for use as a full fledged tablet.
• My wife has an iPad Mini 2.  8 inch display, with a resolution of 2048 X 1536 and 16 GB of storage (no card slot).  If money was no object, this would be a great option.  But money IS an object.  The WiFi-only model starts at $269 and the WiFi+Cellular model is $399.  I’m not spending that much on a tablet for myself.

So, what am I looking for in a tablet?

• First of all, it absolutely must run MLB.TV smoothly.  This is non-negotiable.  I’ll run a lot of other apps, but baseball comes first.
• It must run a stock or nearly stock version of Android 5+.  There are many things I like about Amazon, but I’m not a fan of the way they’ve modified Android on the Kindle Fire.  Also, a stock version likely means the device will retain support longer.  It’s much easier to drop support for an Android variant that has a relatively small user base than to drop it for a stock version that has a much longer base.
• A reputable manufacturer.  There are many manufacturers that I’ve never heard of, and I’m not willing to take the risk.
• 8″ or larger display
• $100-$125 price range

I quickly narrowed down my options to a refurb model of the HP 10 G2 tablet.  It shipped with Android 5.01 and had a 10″ display.  The price for the HP-certified refurb was $114.99.  HP, of course, is a well-established hardware  manufacturer.  It has 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage, with an SD card slot that can handle up to 64 GB cards.

Was in the perfect choice?  Not exactly.  Although I’ve general had good luck with refurbs, it’s not exactly the same as a new.  The resolution is 1280 X 800, a fraction of the iPad’s resolution.  HD content won’t look as nice.

At this point, a friend suggested that I look at the 2013 model of the Google Nexus 7.  As a Google-branded device, by definition it runs a stock version of Android.  Although it’s a 7 inch display, HD content will look nice with the 1920 X 1200 resolution.  It is two years older than the HP, which is a slightly negative in my mind.  However, it as twice as much RAM – 2 GB.

At this point, it’s pretty much a tossup.  I value my friend’s insights, and if I can get the Nexus for the same price, I probably will.

If I want a Nexus 7 in “very good” condition, it’ll cost $170.  A refurb model is $205.  As nice as the Nexus 7 sounds, I’m not going to pay that much.  I buy the HP.

What do I think so far?

• Seems to be well constructed
• It does a great job running MLB.TV
• The relatively low resolution isn’t really an issue.  This isn’t a huge surprise – I’m not a huge videophile
• Battery drains at a rate of 25% per hour while watching baseball, suggesting a four hour battery life for baseball watching

This is the first time I’ve used a stock Android device.  The Kindle OS is pretty similar, and over the past couple of decades, I’ve used pretty much every publicly available OS, so it’s a pretty easy transition  – and when I’m not sure how to do something, I can just ask Google.

Overall, for $115, the HP 10 G2 is a good deal.

Things have been very quiet around here lately, mostly because work had been consuming my life for the year or so.  The good news is that my work hours have now dropped off significantly (to 40ish, down from 65 or 70 recently).  That should give me quite a bit more time to write.

I’m probably be doing quite a few book reviews at first, because I’ll also be reading a lot more than I have recently.

So, no real context in this post.  Just wanting you to know that I’m still alive.

Late late year I (along with several others) was contacted by the publicist for my favorite author, Lawrence Block.  Would I like to receive an Advance Review Copy of his forthcoming book.  Absolutely!  I’d read the book and then write a review soon after.

Life got in the way, as it tends to do.  Winter gave way to spring and then summer, and no review.  By that point, I had forgotten some of the key points of a book I had throughly enjoyed.  So I did the only logical thing – I read the book again.

Over the years, Block has often remarked that fans of Bernie Rhodenbarr are the most, er, persistent in wanting to know when the next Burglar book is coming out.  I try not to harass the man, but I’ll admit that I’m one of the Rabid Rhodenbarr Rooters.  I enjoy many of Block’s series character, but Bernie is far and away my favorite.  The Bernie books are lighthearted, even when the bodies hit the floor.  This book hit the (virtual) shelves in record time, thanks to Block self-publishing the book.

The main characters return in The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons.  Carrying the bulk of the load are Bernie and his expository device best friend, Carolyn.  Policeman Ray plays a supporting role, as usual.  Spoons is a departure from previous books in that Bernie never finds himself under the investigatory glare of Ray.  Ray actually leans on Bernie for his professional advice in an attempt to solve a murder.  At the time, Bernie is actually engaged in a series of thefts for hire, but we don’t have to tell Ray about that.

True to form, Bernie’s love life also takes some twists and turns.  The poor guy never seems to be in a relationship very long, but not for lack of trying.  I’m sure this time he’ll end up in a long-term relationship, right?

A key aspect of any good mystery is that the author is able to hide the solution from the reader until the end, while still playing fair.  That is, the author will leave a trail of crumbs that make it technically possible to piece things together, given the right mindset – but not enough of a trail to make it easy.  Spoons succeeds in this regard.  I was following each independent thread, knowing that they would come together at the end, but unable to piece it together. Then Bernie lays out the facts at the end, and it all makes perfect sense.

Another benefit of a Lawrence Block book is that you will learn something while reading his books.  In the case of Spoons, you learn about U.S. history.  I have a solid base of knowledge of our nation’s history, but I learned quite a lot.  I’m not usually the type to sit down and read a history book, but I do enjoy a spoonful of learning in the midst of a fiction book.

Juneau Lock?  Oh, I think you will.

You can buy the paperback version for $12.90 or the Kindle version for $4.99.  If you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited, you can download it for free.

Keith Law is a baseball writer for ESPN who focuses primarily on prospects (players not yet in the Major Leagues).  He’s also a bit of an anti-Jenny McCarthy, never missing a chance to point out studies that show no link between childhood vaccines and autism. Reading the responses to his tweets is often, um, educational.

Let’s look at some of the points being made.  I am summarizing for the sake of brevity and clarity while retaining the points the original writers were making.  Note that my responses were not made in Keith’s thread, but are only being made in this article.

Tweeter 1:  The MMR vaccine should be broken into three vaccines, as it’s the combination that is the problem.  My first child had the combined vaccine and developed autism.  My second child didn’t have the combined vaccine and developed normally.  Coincidence?

Kosmo: Yep, coincidence.  1 in 68 kids develop autism, so the odds of the second kid developing it were pretty low, unless there are genetic factors (and the basic argument being made is that it’s the vaccine, not the genes).  The odds of the kids not developing autism were 67/68, so hardly a shock that he didn’t. 

Tweeter 2: I’m not saying the vaccine is to blame, but I have three kids and they all have autism.  My wife and I can’t be that unlucky.

Kosmo: This is actually strong evidence that the vaccines are not to blame.  If the sole cause were the vaccines, the cases of autism should be randomly spread across the population.  The odds of all three kids in the same family randomly developing autism would be 1 in 314,432. It’s possible that Tweeter 2 is that 1 in 314,432 case.  More likely, though, is that there’s a grouping within his family because there are genetic factors.  If there are genetic factors, then it would make sense that some families would see many more cases than others, due to basic principles of genetics.  Most likely, Tweeter 2 and/or his wife have strong genetic factors that contribute to autism, whereas Tweeter 1 and his wife have somewhat weaker factors. 

Tweeter 3: You can’t believe the government because they are in bed with Big Pharma.  Vaccines don’t work.

Kosmo: Is this the same government that causes very profitable drugs to be delayed several years while the drug company jumps through FDA hoops to get approval, at the same time that the same drugs can be sold in other countries?

Are insurance companies aware of this illicit relationship?  Are they happily paying for useless drugs?

You might ask why I care.  These aren’t my kids, so why do I care if they contract preventable diseases?  Well, first of all, these are innocent children who are suffering because of the actions of their parents.  It hurts me to see kids suffer in this way. Additionally, these kids can spread the disease to others in the community – such as infants who have not yet been vaccinated.

You may not like everything the government does – I certainly don’t – but the government is not trying to give your kids autism.

300 wins and 3000 hits have long been the benchmarks for a hall of fame player.  Hit well enough, hit high enough in the order, play enough years, and avoid taking a lot of walks, and a hitter can reach 3000 hits without much help from his teammates.  It is a largely team-independent stat.  The player who goes 3-4 in a 8-0 loss is credited with 3 hits in exactly the same way as the player who goes 3-4 in a 4-1 win.

The King on his throne.

Wins, on the other hand, are a completely different beast.  A league average starting pitcher can rack up a lot of wins with a talented team backing him up, whereas an ace on a horrible team can struggle to get wins.

Case in point is Felix Hernandez of the Mariners.  King Felix made his major league debut just before his 20th birthday.  He had racked up 1846 innings in just over 8 full seasons.  His ERA+ of 127 (on a scale where 100 is average and higher is better) is tied with Justin Verlander for 3rd best amond active pitchers, trailing only Clayton Kershaw and Adam Wainright.  He has 39.5 career pitching WAR (Baseball Reference), ranking him 7th among current pitchers.  The 28 year old is the only sub-30 player in the top 12 (26 year old Kershaw is 13th and 29 year old Matt Cain is 14th).

The one black mark of the King’s reign?  Only 113 career wins.  To put this in persepctive, Kyl Lohse – a slighly below league average pitcher – has accumulated 131 wins in 350 more innings pitched (along with just 19.9 pitching WAR).  Hernandez is averaging a pedestrian 13.25 wins per full season.  At his current pace, he’d reach 300 wins during the 2028 season, just shy of his 42th birthday.

One of the most dominant pitchers of our era, racking up a tremenous workload, and putting his team on his back every fifth day, would need to keep up his dominant pace until his early 40s to reach 300 wins.  Put another way, being on a bad team can make reaching 300 wins almost impossible – yet the dominance of such a pitcher should still be should be celebrated.  We need to celebrate King Felix’s dominance and look well beyond the simple stat of wins.

On Wednesday, the Baseball Writers of America (BBWAA) announced the 2014 Hall of Fame class.

The inductees are:

• Greg Maddux – Maddux is the winningest living pitcher, with 355 wins.  He won four straight Cy Young awards, was almost always in the conversation as one of the top five pitchers in any given year, mentored younger players, and was a good guy.  For one reason or another (mostly to “make a point”), sixteen voters left Maddux off their ballot – he received “only” 97.2% of the voter.  There’s even a stat named after him.  A Maddux is a complete game shutout where the pitcher throws fewer than 100 pitches.  Maddux also won eighteen gold gloves – most of any player at any position.
• Tom Glavine – Glavine was also an elite pitcher, albeit a tick below Maddux.  He won 305 games in his career.  He also won two Cy Young awards and was in the top five in Cy Young voting on four other occasions.  He eventually left the Braves to sign with the Mets.  When he became a free agent again, the Braves surrendered type A compensation (giving their first round pick to the rival Mets and allowing the Mets to gain a compensation round pick) for a 42 year old in obvious decline.  Such was the respect Glavine commanded.  (Although, logically, the move made littler sense, and I panned it at the time.  At best, the Braves were going to get a couple of good years out of Glavine.  Most likely, they were going to get mediocre performance.)
• Frank Thomas – During the seven year stretch from 1991 to 1997, Thomas won two MVP awards and finished in the top eight in MVP voting every year.  He had an OPS+ of at least 174 every year (OPS+ is a league and park adjusted stat – 100 is average).  The Big Hurt was the most feared hitter in the game.  You could argue that Griffey was the better all-around player, but Thomas was the best with the bat.  At the age of 30, Thomas’s productivity dropped considerably.  He wouldn’t win any more MVP awards and would finish in the top five “only” twice more.  He would only have two more seasons with an OPS+ above 150.  He was still a well above average hitter, but it was a very noticeable decline.  I had concerns that the dramatic decline might make people forget how dominant he was, but Thomas picked up 83.7% of the vote.

Craig Biggio narrowly missed being elected, falling two votes short.  A couple of things conspired against Biggio.  The first was a handful of writers using their ballots to make statements.  One example of this was Ken Gurnick’s ballot.  He voted only for Jack Morris.  His logic was that he refused to vote for anyone from the steroid era.  He has said he will abstain from future votes.  Interestingly, a chunk of Morris’s career fell within the steroid era.

The second issue was a limit on the number of players a writer can vote for.  There is a strict limit of ten.  This year featured a stacked ballot due to PED-tainted players remaining on the ballot (if clean, they’d have been elected already) and a very good class of new players.  Several writers said that they’d have voted for Biggio if there  were eleven spots.  Why even have the ten player limit?  Why not just have a yes/no for each player on the ballot.  They’d still need 75% of the vote to be elected, but a writer would be making a conscious decision about every player on the ballot.

Jack Morris was in his fifteenth, and final, year on the ballot.  Not only did he not get the final year bump that most players do, he actually received less support.  Again, likely due to crowded ballot and limit of ten players.  Morris has become a lightning rod, with many old school writers insisted he was a true ace, while proponents of advanced stats portray him as a slightly above average pitcher with a good narrative.  I do feel bad for Morris, even though I don’t think he should be in the Hall of Fame.  He has been dragged through the mud during the process, and there’s no need for that.  At the very least, he was a very good pitcher for a long time.

Where do I stand on PED-tainted players?  If a player tested positive or there is substantial evidence that he took PEDs (such as an indictment), I don’t believe he should be in the Hall of Fame.  However, I refuse to paint all the players with a broad brush.  If there are just whispers of use and no formal accusation by a reliable source, I wouldn’t bar that player.  Rafael Palmeiro holds a special spot on my list.  Palmeiro was playing out the string in his career, at an age where he easily could have been retired.  Had he simply retired a year earlier, he’d be in the Hall of Fame.  With 3000+ hits and 500+ homers, he’d have been a lock.  As a result of PEDs, he dropped brlow 5% support this year and will fall off the ballot.

I also give the BBWAA a D- for their web site.  It’s not a great site to begin with – very simply design with poor navigation – but the site crashed immediately following the announcement.  It would be nice if they would hire a web master who was tech savvy enough to realize that you can rent servers and bandwidth to accommodate predictable traffic spikes.

With just a second remaining on Saturday and the game tied at 28, Alabama lined up for a game winning 57 yard field goal.  Make the kick and they are in the SEC title game, just one step away from the National Championship game.  Miss the kick and they just go to overtime, right?  Well, Auburn’s Chris Davis grabbed the missed field goal in the end zone and raced 100+ yards for a touchdown to give Auburn the win.  Alabama’s quest for a third straight national title is almost certainly over.

Ohio State won a squeaker over Michigan, 42-41.  Michigan ran a failed 2 point conversion on the final play, going for the immediate win instead of playing for overtime.  While I understand the emotion of going for it, I rarely think that going to two in this situation is the right move.  Overtime is essentially a coin-flip, with the home team having a slightly better than 50% chance of winning.  Unless your success rate on two point conversions is greater than 50%, kick the PAT and take your chances in overtime.

So, where does this leave us?  Florida State and Ohio State have direct paths to the title game.  If they win on Saturday, they are virtually guaranteed to play for the championship.  If one of them falters and Auburn beats Missouri in the SEC title game, Auburn would earn a berth.  Missouri is #5 in the BCS standings (behing Florida State, Ohio State, Auburn, and Alabama) but would likely vault to #2 if they beat Auburn and one of the top two loses (Alabama is idle, but I believe Mizzou would leapfrog them with a win).  If Ohio State and Florida State both lose, Alabama could slide into the title game through the back door, facing either Auburn or Missouri for the National Championship.

My Iowa State Cyclones had a disappointing year, finishing the season at 3-9.  For one Saturday in November, though, they made the fans proud.  The team stuttered out of the gates and were down 31-7 to West Virginia as the national anthem was finishing up.  Iowa State forced four turnovers in the second half and a 24 point fourth quarter flurry tied the game and pushed the game to overtime.  Iowa State prevailed 52-44 in triple overtime.

The Broncos beat the Chiefs on Sunday, pushing KC’s losing skid to three games following a 9-0 start.  Not to worry, Chiefs fans, KC is still is very good shape to make the playoffs and plays a couple of weak teams down the stretch.  Meanwhile, Peyton Manning’s exit from Indianapolis is working out well for both teams.  Andrew Luck has played well for the Colts (especially for a 24 year old QB) and the ageless Manning has been at the top of his game, no doubt aided by the thin air.  After all, the ball travels 10% further and the receivers have less resistance when running.  It’s surprising that Manning doesn’t throw an 80 yard TD on every play, given these advantages.  I expect opposing coaches to start calling for a humidor.

In baseball news, the A-Rod appeal saga continues.  New York Magazine has a lengthy article about the background of the case, including information on all the money paid to informants.  Millions has been spent  trying to obtain or hide information.

This was the first election where the new voter ID requirement was in place in the state of Texas.  Democrats have claimed that it would suppress voter turnout while Republicans have claimed that it would not.  After election day, CNN featured an article by conservative blogger Bryan Preston claiming that voter turnout was not suppressed.

Preston’s methodology was comparing 2013 voter turnout to the most recent comparable election.  2013 was a off-year featuring proposed consitutional amendments, so Preston used 2011 as the basis for the comparison.  The most voted-upon amendment in 2011 has 690,052 votes, with an average of 672,874 voters for each of the ten amendments.  In 2013, the most popular one garnered 1,144,844 voters, with an average of 1,099,679 across nine proposed amendments.  Preston shows this increase as proof that voter turnout was not suppressed and then gets into demographical breakdowns in an attempt to prove the point more convincingly.  Not only was voter turnout not suppressed, but there was a huge surge!  Case closed, right?

Unfortunately, the entire argument is built upon the foundation of 2011 and 2013 being “comparable” elections.  In a nutshell, that we should expect roughly the same number of voters in those elections.  Let’s look back over a few cycles of these “comparable” constitutional amendment elections.  Let’s look at the amendment that garnered the most voters in each year, since that is the floor for the number of distinct voters.  Let’s trot over to the Texas secretary of state’s site.

• 2013 – 1,144,844
• 2011 – 690,052
• 2009 – 1,055,330
• 2007 – 1,096,410
• 2005 – 2,260,695
• 2003 – 1,470,443

Obviously, Preston is focusing on the wrong problem.  Instead of wondering if voter turnout was suppressed in 2013, he should be focusing on the voter suppression that occurred in 2007, when there was a more than 50% decline from the previous “comparable” election.

Or perhaps these off-year elections, which get very little turnout (the 2013 numbers touted by Preston was an 8% turnout) are driven by other issues, making it impossible to predict one election’s turnout from the previous election.

This is pretty obvious cherry picking from Preston, comparing 2013 results to an extreme statistical outlier.  The demographic breakdown he does is unfortunately worthless, because he’s working with bad data from square one.  You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.

How volatile are these elections, compared to presidential elections?  Let’s look at the past six presidential election totals.

• 2012 – 7,993,851
• 2008 – 8,077,795
• 2004 – 7,410,765
• 2000 – 6,407,637
• 1996 – 5,611,644
• 1992 – 6,154,018

There’s even quite a bit of volatility here (albeit over a timeframe that is twice as long), but the the high water year has just 1.44 times the number of voters of the lowest, compared to the high/low ratio of 3.28 for the constitutional amendment elections.

The key point is that voter suppression is not measured by whether vote total went up or down from a previous election, but by whether vote totals are lower than they would have been if the action that is alleged to suppress had not been in place.  That’s not easy – or perhaps even possible – to measure.  However, that’s no excuse to take a lazy shortcut and pass off the results as being the answer to the more difficult question.

Does the Texas voter ID law suppress voter turnout?  I honestly have no idea.

I’m not writing nearly as much as I have in the past.  That’s because life has been really busy lately, mostly with work (no, I don’t get overtime pay).  I’ll try to write more regularly.

I got an early Christmas present on Wednesday.  My favorite author, Lawrence Block, announced that he has a new book, The Burglar Who Counted The Spoons, due out on Christmas day.  Fifteen minutes later, I received an email from his PR person, asking if I would like an advance review copy.  Do I want a free copy of my favorite author’s new book, two months before it goes on sale?  Absolutely.  The $10 I save is nothing compared to to joy of getting the book early.  This is the third time in a row that I’ve received a free copy of a Block book.  He or his peole have always offered – I’ve never needed to sweet talk anyone.  I’ve reviewed several Block books on this site in the past, and also profiled him.  Sometimes people take notice when you show an appreciation for their work.

My 2nd and 3rd favorites teams are facing off in the World Series.  That’s pretty cool.  I wore my Cardinals Matt Holliday shirt over the weekend and received several compliments.  I don’t actually have any Red Sox apparel.

The Dominican Winter League is also kicking off.  I was attempting to learn some Spanish prior to the start of the season, but that plan flopped due to lack of time (see paragraph 1).  After a couple attempts to stream Licey’s game from their web site, I realized that for whatever reason, it wasn’t working on my iPhone 3GS, despite the fact that it worked on my Mac.  I paid $1.99 to download the Lidom Movil app, and eventually figured out to “Click acqui” to get the live streaming.  By then, I was only able to catch the final inning of the game, which Los Tigres won.  If you’re a baseball junkie, consider following the DWL.  The experience is probably a lot better if you understand more than a dozen words of Spanish, but even with that limitation, it should be fun for me.

I’m fairly active on Twitter these days.  I’m always a bit surprised at the people who seem to take great joy in bashing a well-known person every chance they get.  It seems very weird that someone would follow a person that they don’t even like.  There are a number of baseball announcers that I dislike, but I don’t Twitter-stalk Joe Buck.