JonathanLast.com

So that's the big announcement. After years of mild frustration with Blogger I've finally moved over to a better platform. You can continue to follow Galley Slaves at JonathanLast.com.

See you there.

PSA

Galley Slaves is going to be closed for a couple days while I work out some changes. By next week there should be some site news. In the meantime, I've shut down comment threads to keep the spam out.

The Bron-Bron Train Derails?

Czabe has some thoughts on LeBron to Miami:

In a span of 27 eyeball glazing minutes on ESPN, LeBron James morphed himself from potentially "The Greatest Player of All Time" into a jezebel Scottie Pippen.

I don't follow the NBA closely enough to know, but the superficial answers would have been (1) Go to NYC for the money or (2) Go to Chicago for the long-term run at championships. I'm not sure what goal Miami satisfies.

The most interesting question is whether or not players are allowed to formally collude in the way in which it seems James, Wade, Bosh, and possibly Paul may have. (The operative word here is "formally," not "collude." Players informally collude all the time.) Owners almost certainly couldn't act this way without running afoul of anti-trust. Legally, I suspect the players are fine--although I'd love to hear a smart lawyer's thoughts on the matter.

From the league's perspective, however, this might not be fine. It will be interesting to see how the owners--and eventually the league office--deal with this affair.

Update: If you want to know the difference between LeBron and Jordan, here's Exhibit 1,422: LeBron says that in a game of one-on-one against Barack Obama, Obama would hold his own. Now obviously, James is just being polite. That's fine.

But the exchange calls to mind this story, from a long-ao profile of Dan Patrick:

After game three of last year's NBA finals, Dan Patrick interviews Michael Jordan. When they finish, Jordan says to Patrick, "Stand up."

"Why?"

"Stand up," Jordan demands, rising.

Patrick stands up.

"How would you guard me?" Jordan asks.

"I wouldn't guard you. I couldn't guard you."

"How would you guard me?"

Patrick plants a forearm on Jordan's back.

"Yeah," Jordan snarls. "There are twenty-eight motherfucking teams that think they can guard me that way."

Patrick says, "Michael, I can't guard you. But I don't think you can guard me." Jordan, gaping and speechless, walks away.

"You should've seen the look on his face," Patrick says now. Ahmad Rashad comes up to Patrick later to say that if Dan wants to go one-on-one with M. J., Jordan's willing. "Just understand," Rashad tells Patrick, "Michael will treat it like it's the seventh game of the finals--you won't even get your shot off."

But I want an iPhone 4 . . .

Paul Krugman: World's Worst Colleague?

He's giving Andrew Sullivan a run for his money with this blog entry today:

But there’s something else in David’s column, which I see a lot: the argument that because a lot of important people believe something, it must make sense:

Moreover, the Demand Siders write as if everybody who disagrees with them is immoral or a moron. But, in fact, many prize-festooned economists do not support another stimulus. Most European leaders and central bankers think it’s time to begin reducing debt, not increasing it — as do many economists at the international economic institutions. Are you sure your theorists are right and theirs are wrong?

Yes, I am. It’s called looking at the evidence.

Because, you see, no one else on the other side has ever even bothered to look at the evidence!


You could fill a small sand bucket with what I know about economics, so I'm not interested in the rightness or wrongness of Krugman's position vis-a-vis demand side economics in the present recessionary environment. What is truly amazing is that he argues not that he's probably right. Or that the evidence supports his case more so than the opposite. He has absolute, God-given certainty as to his total and complete correctness and equal certainty that anyone who differs is a fool or a liar.


Whoa.


Even he was talking about, I don't know, outlawing abortion or invading Iraq, you might think he was a blinkered ideologue.

Soccer and Diversity

Another reason to object to World Cup soccer: Its appalling lack of diversity!

Steve Sailer has a fantastic post about the SWPL-ness of the World Cup:

At the highest levels of global soccer, about 75 percent or more of the top players are white. Soccer in 2010 is like basketball in 1959. . . .

The World Cup is a paradox: it's pretty random but the results always come out about the same: traditional soccer powers get to the finals. . . .

Much of the glamor of the World Cup stems from it being a mostly white sport. Do you think up-and-comers like the South Koreans would be fascinated by the World Cup if it were traditionally dominated by, say, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Bolivia? Would SWPLs in the U.S. love soccer if it were associated in their minds with "Kinshasa" rather than with "Barcelona"?

He also makes an interesting note about the paradox of World Cup soccer: "It's pretty random but the results always come out about the same: traditional soccer powers get to the finals. "


Mind you, at the end of the day, I'm pretty much with Czabe: For all its many, many faults, the World Cup makes for a pretty good time for a casual sports fan.

In Praise of Axis & Allies

I'd give just about anything to sit across the board from Niall Ferguson.