The Question
Jon Abad asks:
2005-10-11 04:33:22

How do baseball commentators come up with all those wacky statistics so fast?
I was watching the 18 inning Astros v. Braves NLDS game 4 and they would talk about the records that were being broken (which doesn’t seem so hard) and then things like “he’s the seventh player in history to tie a postseason game with a home run with two outs in the ninth”. Now that’s obscure!

The Answer

Two things that sports announcers have access to that mere mortals don’t: A veritable army of elves, and the Never-empty refrigerator. The elves research the statistics, and the announcers survive off of chocolate cake from the Never-empty refrigerator. Lately there has been some talk about the elves being underpaid – you may notice that sports announcers are less and less interesting lately due to the lack of Elven support (it’s a work-slow-down, not a stop, but that still impacts the quality of statistics we receive).

No, I’m kidding.

The real source of all these statistics is a Sports Statistics Bureau. There are several out there, and they provide all sorts of information to announcers. The wacky fact combinations are come up with by the announcer’s support staff (which can be extensive) and delivered for announcers at the appropriate time, after querying the database.

Not terribly exciting, I know. I like the elves story better. But hey, you can’t have everything, I suppose, on a Tuesday morning when your dog just got sick on the carpet and it’s cold enough to freeze your earlobes solid…

The first thing we made with my Cobalt Blue 5Qt 325W 67 point mixing KSM150PS Kitchen Aid Electric Stand Mixer (CB5Q325W67PMKSM150PSKASM for short) was some corn bread.

It was quick and easy and required no rising. Basically, it was just cornmeal, flour, sugar, milk, oil, and egg. Perfectly blended in the CB5Q325W67PMKSM150PSKAESM.

While I’m at it, I should mention that we also made shepherds pie the other day out of a 30min Rachel Ray cookbook. The mashed potato topping led us to bumping up my new appliance to level 10. LEVEL 10. It crushed, mashed, and whipped those potatos like you’d never believe. Someone took a photo of the crust, but I don’t quite remember who. I’ll try to get my hands on it tonight.

mike d’s rockclimbing ratings:
CornBread
Deliciousness: 5.7+
Difficulty: 5.5. JonAbad and I don’t even remember making it. The Kitchen Aid did all the work.

Shepherds Pie
Deliciousness: 5.9- and filling too!
Difficulty: 5.9-

While there were only a few entries into this week’s MSPaint challenge, I think everyone would agree that they are excellent.

The challenge was to draw a ninja fighting an impressionist painter. A bonus point is given to each entry that does not use Monet. Because this was as much an academic challenge as a drawing contest, I’m going to use the opportunity to also talk a little Art History.

Ninja 1!

The Artist titled Ninja 1: Degas vs. Pierre the Ninja.
I believe the text translates to something like:
“I have put you in Bronze, you foolish ninja. You will torment me no longer.”
“French school for stupid ninjas, what was I thinking?”

Edgar Degas was born in 1834 in Paris and is famous for his depictions of movement. Much of his famous work depicts either horses or dancers. What makes this MSPainting unique is that it subtley brings together the ninja and the painter in multiple ways. Not only does the artist have both characters speaking french, but he/she has also made an allusion to one of Degas few bronze sculptures: Little Dancer of Fourteen. Degas started working with sculpture and pastels later in life because his eyesight was failing. At the age of 74 he had to give up art altogether.

Well done Artist number 1!

Ninja 2!

Artist’s Title: Few people know that German impressionist painter Max Liebermann was assassinated by ninjas in 1935.

In addition to providing the correct year of death of Max Liebermann, the artist shows Liebermann drawing pictures of trees. Liebermann, while famous for scenes of people in his early years, spent more time drawing nature and garden scenes as he grew older. This particular painting would have been banned however, because Liebermann was Jewish and the Nazi’s were being dicks by not allowing him to paint. Although it’s not suggested by the artist, I think this ninja might be a Nazi.

Great job artist 2!

Ninja 3!

Simple and effective, Artist 3 makes a reference to Van Gogh’s ear.

Van Gogh suffered through many mental issues. Born in 1853, Vincent Van Gogh did much of his work from his surroundings in France. In late 2004 I had the opportunity to take a Van Gogh tour through southern france to see the locations of inspiration for a number of his paintings. It was fun, but also kind of creepy. Especially seeing the mental institute where he was submitted.

Anyway, the historic story behind the ear is that Van Gogh cut it off himself, went to a brothel, and handed it to a prostitute named Rachel asking her to keep this object carefully. Apparently the REAL story is that it was cut off in an epic battle with a ninja. But how do you tell that to the press? No wonder everyone thought he was nuts.

Excellent and Simple! well done Artist 3!

Ninja 4!

Artist 4′s title: An attacking ninja was caught off guard by Georges Seurat’s pointillism attack

Artist four also brings some hisotry into his/her MSPainting. Seurat was born in france in 1859, and experimented with using contrasting colors and tiny different colored dots in order to give an impression of color and form from a distance. This developed into Pointillism. Perhaps the most well known example of Seurat’s pointillism is his work ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’

Seurat tried to go about his art in a scientfic way. He used color tones and light effects in order to depict different emotions and feelings within his art. It also seems that he developed a way to turn a paintbrush into a brutal pointillism weapon of destruction.

Great job Artist #4!

So there you have it. Use the comments to vote for the ‘most awesome’ and ‘most inane.’

JonAbad has done wonders again. This time he has created a Gallery addition to my website. That’s right, check out the beginning phases of the gallery here.

you’ll notice that the layout looks like a guitar amp. That’s because we’re all about rock here in Connecticut.

Here’s a special thanks to JonAbad for making this site rock a little harder.

Jump Training.

Getting ready for the next Double Dutch 2006 event. My goal was to hit 20 in 30 seconds. I wasn’t quite there. Next time perhaps.

The Question

Jocelyn asks:

This has been bugging me for a bit…
If ice is less dense than water, how come the Earth will flood when the polar ice caps melt? Wouldn’t the water level go down…or stay the same because of their height?

The Answer

Good question. I have a simple answer.

Yes, ice is less dense than water, hence, it floats. One would think that the displacement caused by the floating ice would simply fill when the ice melted. After all, your glass doesn’t overflow when the ice in it melts. (If this were the case, you might get more soda than ice when ordering a large from a fast food drive-through).

However, the bulk of the South Polar Ice Cap is NOT floating – it’s on land (Antarctica). Also, large portions of the North Polar Ice Cap are on land (Greenland, for example). It’s these ice sheets that, when melted, can raise the sea level.

This weekend JonAbad and I made Empanaditas out of the Martha Stewart appetizer Handbook.

Oh so delicious.

empanaditas are essentially little pastries that are baked or fried. The dough is soft and flakey and they can be filled with all sorts of taste sensations from cheese, to jam, to beef. we, of course, went the meat route.

And that meat filling was a champ. it had diced tomatos, cinnamon, sugar, cumin, red pepper flakes, tomato juice, onions, and ginger in it. And it tasted delicious.

the dough was just butter, shortening, flour, salt, and water. There was an alarming amount of shortening and butter in the recipe.

The process was simple enough, and the results were top notch.

After the dough was formed, we cut it into circles and filled with the beef extrodinaire. Jon did a great job folding.

After they were all filled and sealed with some fork action, they were ready for the oven. **Note the speed action of the fork in the photo below. Oh so fast!

Ian was a fan.

The whole process took an hour or so from start to finish. While tasty, they were definintely appetizers. We made them as a meal, and it wasn’t quite filling enough. I suspect they would make a great party starter.

Mike D’s rockclimbing food ratings:

Deliciousness: 5.10a
Difficulty: 5.9-

It’s on.

The challenge: Using only MSPaint (or MAC equivalent) draw a picture of a Ninja fighting an Impressionist painter.

I understand that this might be a tricky topic, but I have faith that with some thought, we can get some inspirational entries. All entries will be due next Thursday January 12th at 9pm Eastern Standard Time.