Living in the Sprawl

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Open Letter to Adam Silver: Make the NBA Schedule Like Baseball

[new post] Open Letter to Adam Silver: Make the @NBA Schedule Like Baseball #halfbakedideas (cc: @kevinwildes)

April 9, 2015

RE: NBA Schedule Proposal

TO: NBA Commissioner Adam Silver

Dear Mr. Silver,

I have a proposal to improve the NBA’s regular season scheduling. It seems that the league’s schedule is becoming more of a talking point among the sport’s talking heads and fans. I am sure you are well aware of the variety of issues and corresponding opinions to those issues, so I won’t rehash those.…

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Guts, Glory, RAM: Replacing the Hard Drive in my Old MacBook

Guts, Glory, RAM: Replacing the Hard Drive in my Old MacBook #codenewbie #marchisformakers

Newly installed hard drive and battery

I opened up my old MacBook and replaced the hard drive last weekend. It was scary. I was nervous, my girlfriend was really nervous, my cat didn’t care.

It was actually very simple. I had come across a Gizmodo article called “Quick and Easy MacBook Repairs That’ll Save You a Small Fortune,”which led me to the site iFixit. iFixit has repair guides for any type…

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No Middle Class In Major League Soccer Could Be A Problem

No Middle Class In Major League Soccer Could Be A Problem #mls #dataviz #rstats #ggplot [new blog]

Major League Soccer players might go on strike soon over the lack of free agency. This has to do with An MLS being a “single entity,” meaning that:

“[I]nvestors… purchased equity in MLS itself rather than any team. MLS did almost everything for its clubs. It assigned players to MLS clubs, protected intellectual property rights and negotiated broadcasting deals.”

However, individual teams are…

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College Of Wooster Basketball Is Atlanta Hawks Good

College Of Wooster Basketball Is Atlanta Hawks Good (cc: @ScotsBasketball @d3hoops #atlhawks)

The College of Wooster’s football is pretty good. Their men’s basketball team, on the other hand, is really good. Like, Atlanta Hawks good.

Since the 2006-07 season, my alma mater has made the NCAA Division III tournament (like the big NCAA tournament, but with amateur players) the last eight years. They’ve made it to the Final Four twice, and they lost in the championship game in 2011.

Year T…

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How Slow Am I

[new post] How Slow Am I: Using available race results to see exactly how speedy I'm not #running #rstats

A few things are certain in life: death, taxes, and finishing in the bottom half of running events. I’m really slow. I love to run, but it takes me a while to get from here to there and back to here. By the time I finish a local road race, the fastest runners have already had a chance to eat some bananas and shower salty kisses on their loved ones.

After taking a running hiatus last winter and…

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Legislative Effectiveness, Part II: The South

Using @thelawmakers data, new post: Legislative Effectiveness, Part II: The South #rstats #polisci #congress

This is a second post about legislative effectiveness. The first post is here.

After looking at the difference in legislative effectiveness between the majority and minority parties using new research from the book The Lawmakers, this is a more in-depth analysis of their data for the region of the country that I live in and call home: the South. (The researchers themselves examine the role of…

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Legislative Effectiveness, Part I: Pelosi vs. Boehner

{new blog} Legislative Effectiveness, Part I: Pelosi vs. Boehner #rstats #polisci (cc: @TheLawmakers @monkeycageblog)

Two political science professors, Craig Volden and Alan Wiseman, have come up with a way to measure the effectiveness of individual House representatives in their new book. They’ve created a “legislative effectiveness score” (LES) that compares each individual member’s legislative productivity during one two-year session relative to other members of that Congressional session. (Each two-year term…

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Map Quest: Nashville Residential Building Permits

Map Quest: #Nashville Residential Building Permits #realestate #rstats #dataviz

Strap on your tool belt, we’re talkin’ ’bout building permits! Specifically, we’re dipping our toes into the building of new homes in Nashville, Tennessee, where we mourn the loss of former resident Swizzle Stick to the Big Apple. Bye, Tay-Tay!

Nashville’s real estate market has been on fire the last few years, and there’s much discussion in the local mediaabout how the rising sales prices and…

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Frank Wren's Firing: Looking At The Braves Through A New (To Me) Metric

Frank Wren's Firing: Looking At The #Braves Through A New (To Me) Metric #rstats (cc: @TalkingChop, @MarchiMax)

While the Major League Baseball playoffs have been amazing so far, the Atlanta Braves’ 2014 season is mercifully over. After a quick start to the season (17-7), they finished three games under .500 and 17 games back from the division leader.

Oh, boy, was Atlanta’s offense terrible. They scored the second fewest runs in the majors and struck out the fourth most. It was painful to watch BJ Upton…

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Oberlin College: Not A Football School

{new blog} Oberlin College: Not A Football School (cc: @lenadunham, @WoosterSports) #diii #wooster #oberlin #ncac

Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, is not a football powerhouse.

Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, is not a football school. It has a football team, the Yeomen, but it seems they will never approach the success of Division III powerhouse Washington & Jefferson College or Yeowoman-in-Chief Lena Dunham.

Which is good for my alma mater, the College of Wooster. COW was beaten up two Saturdays ago by…

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Heath Care Update: Medicaid Enrollment Is Up Where They Want Medicaid

Not surprisingly, Medicaid enrollment is up in states where they want Medicaid. Since open enrollment for expanded Medicaid coverage started last October under Obamacare the Affordable Care Act, th...

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Justified: Was Season Five Any Good? (Apparently)

Raylan Givens. You swaggering, cowboy hat wearing, US federal marshal. Why are you so awesome? Is it the tight jeans? (For a lot of people, yes, it’s the tight jeans.) The anachronistic, aforementioned cowboy hat and boots? The sly grin? The itchy trigger finger?

Timothy Olyphant plays Raylan, a character created by Elmore Leonard, brilliantly on the FX series Justified, which finished up its…

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World Cup 2014: Thumbs Up from Lukas Podolski, Instagram Star

World Cup 2014: Thumbs Up from Lukas Podolski, Instagram Star @Podolski10 #ger #arg #wc

German forward Lukas Podolski in a selfie with Angela Merkel at the 2014 World Cup (Credit: Lukas Podolski’s Instagram account)

I didn’t really know who Lukas Podolski was until some late night social media-ing. I now wish I would have paid more attention to the Polish-born forward because Lukas Podolski is an Instagram star.

I’ve probably watched him play dozens of times for Germany and Arsenal,…

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World Cup 2014: USMNT Roster Jitters

[new post] World Cup 2014: #USMNT Roster Jitters #wc2014 #rstats

The US has finished its warm-up games, and is now as ready as they’ll ever be for their first match against Ghana on June 16. Their schedule is brutal, and coach Jurgen Klinsmann’s roster choices hasn’t eased the worrying. Klinsmann has a history of taking an untested team to great success, but he also has flamed out. (Such is the life of a soccer coach.)

Looking at America’s World Cup rosters (l…

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World Cup 2014: Brazilian Players with One Name

[new post] World Cup 2014: Brazilian Players with One Name #worldcup2014 #selecao

The World Cup is coming! The World Cup is coming!

The tournament opens on June 12, when host nation Brazil plays Croatia in Sao Paulo. I feel likes it’s snuck up on me, even though I’ve been diligently following the US qualifying run for 18 months (The US began qualifying in October 2012). Also, I’ve been having nightmares caused by the Von Trapps’ first round schedule this summer against Germany…

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An Atlanta Hawks Requiem: The Brooklyn Nets Turned Good

An Atlanta Hawks Requiem: The Brooklyn Nets Turned Good #nbaplayoffs #brooklynnets #eventhehawks

I thought I might jinx my Atlanta Hawks with my January post about how awful the Brooklyn Nets were. If I believed in jinxes and the consequences of forgetting to “knock on wood,” I would point to this paragraph:

As it currently stands, Brooklyn is a long shot to make the playoffs. Their odds to make it have fluctuated between 14-30% the last two weeks.The Hawks are near the top of the conference…

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Primary Vs. General Elections: Southern Gubernatorial Elections

[new post] Primary Vs. General Elections: Southern Gubernatorial #Elections using @ForecasterEnten's model #tnpol #gapol

I was really fascinated with Harry Enten’s FiveThirtyEight articlelast month about Hillary Clinton’s 2016 polling numbers (they’re exceptionally high). In it, he dives deeper into the relationship between primary and general election results in presidential elections. According to Enten, “There’s been a strong correlation between the margin of victory in the primaries and the later margin in the…

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