Understanding the World Baseball Classic Brackets

For those of you starved for baseball and not excited about Spring Training, there is the World Baseball Classic this year. 16 teams from around the world compete. It is a truly international cast, perhaps more world series than the World Series, however there are strict rules about player participation, especially pitchers, since afterward most of these players must go back to play in their real jobs in the major leagues. The excitement this year seems to be that the Netherlands is doing better than expected. Remembering that the Netherlands includes Antigua and Barbados and recalling all of the talent in baseball from the Caribbean perhaps explains this, though they had to beat the Dominican Republic twice to move to Round Two.

A friend and I were wondering how the games would progress and who would be in or out if they win or lose so I went to the website to figure it out. After many minutes spent deciphering the pool play procedures I realized that a diagram for each round would be the best way to understand it. You are welcome to read the rules to determine it for yourself. I thought the brackets on the website were less than self explanatory, but easier to understand now that Round One is almost completed.

The diagrams below are state diagrams (or directed graphs or maybe tree diagrams) for the World Baseball Classic. The diagram below shows the order of play for each of the Pools A, B, C, D.


Each game is clear with, for example, W2 refering to the team that won game 2 or L4 referring to the team that lost game 4. Two teams from each Pool advance to Round Two, a winner and a runner up.

In Round Two the first two games match a winner from one pool to the runner up from another. Pool A and B from Round One go into Pool 1 for Round Two and Pool C and D from Round One go into Pool 2 for Round Two. Play then follows much the same process as above. Below is the diagram from Round Two.

Two teams advance from each Pool 1 and 2, a winner and a runner up. As displayed in the diagram below, in the semifinal the winner of Pool 1 plays the runner up of Pool 2 and vice versa. The winners of these games go on the the Finals.


The winner of the Finals receives accolades as shown, while the loser gets a hardy hand shake and a good job.

Morbidity of Saints named Richard

In naming little Linus, I chose to give him my names as his middle name, Richard. For Catholics the middle name has the potential to become the child's confirmation name and it should be a saint's name. Technically, so should the first name, but as always tradition and innovation yield some creative tension. Linus is safe both ways in that Linus is a saint's name (and mentioned in the bible) and it is interesting and unique. As Richard is the middle name, I thought that I would investigate a little further the various Saint Richards and Blessed Richards to see whom Linus might use for inspiration in life and especially at his conformation.

The most famous Saint Richard is Richard of Chichester (pictured to the left)a kindly bishop who refused his families wealth for a life of study and the church, has some minor troubles with King Henry III over the supremacy of the Pope over the King, but dies a natural death. The topic of these troubles will be much more trouble for St. Richards later in history.

There are others, one of my favorites is a little known Saint Richard sometimes called King of the Saxons (pictured to the right), who's claim to fame lies primarily in being the father of other saints (father of Willibald, Winebald, and Walpurga). Saint Richard was a pilgrim who died on his journey, the King rumor grew up around him after his death and is unsubstantiated.

What was concerning is that as the list moves towards the reformation one realizes that Richard was a popular English name, and that Henry VIII and Elizabeth I persecutions generated many Catholic English martyrs named Richard during their reigns. The chart below shows that, at least for the lists I could find, being English and Richard and Catholic seemed to guarantee martyr and saintly status after 1500 AD.

Red in the chart above indicates a martyred death. Most deaths were due to being hanged, drawn and quartered. I suppose a theme for a Reformation Saint Richard would be to defend Catholicism against Protestantism and be executed for it. I am pleased that in modern times that the enmity between Richards and English monarchs has lessened some. However, in the 1900's being named Richard and Catholic was especially dangerous during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Of 35 Richards, 28 were martyred. I wonder how that would compare to the entire list of saints. This is a clear case of selection bias as it is very much easier to become an official saint through martyrdom than after a natural death.

Linus will have many bloody stories of Richards defending the faith for his confirmation class.

(information for the St. and Bl. Richards came from Catholic Online Saints R page, the Saints.SQPN saints R page, and eCatholic Hub saints database saints with first name Richard with much reference to Wikipedia)

Crocuses and Snowdrops out before Spring

In flagrant defiance of the calendar, these crocuses and snow drops in the garden have decided to show their blooms even before the first day of Spring.

Yellow Crocus


White snowdrops.


Spring is coming! Prepare yourself.

Guess the voices - Simpsons Guest Star Quiz

Care to test your knowledge of voice guest stars on The Simpsons? Mental Floss has a quiz that does just that. In my opinion they picked some easy ones, but maybe I have watched too much of the Simpsons over the twenty years they have been on (half my life!). The average on the quiz is only 57%.

I got only got one wrong for a score of 93% (that's still an A right?). Howard will get them all correct.

(via Mental Floss, via Neatorama)

Snow makes birds crazy for the birdfeeder

Yesterday's snow brought hoards of hungry black birds to the bird feeder. This mixed group was made up of both grackles and starlings. There were many more than this picture indicates, perched on all of the trees and across the creek. I guess the snow made them a little crazy. rarely have I ever seen more than one bird at the feeder at a time and those were tiny birds. Yesterday had two grackles feeding and birds perched on top.


Even the dark-eyed juncos got into the act. They rarely go to the feeder, preferring to let one of their avian brethren from a different species peck and throw seed from the feeder to the ground where they forage. This time they had to do it themselves. Actually feeding at the feeder is an unusual behavior.

Some charts of the falling Case-Shiller Housing Index

The latest Case-Shiller home price index came out earlier this week. They show decreases in the 20 city composite of 2.5% November 2008 to December, and the most damning statistic is the decline of 26.7% from the housing peak in 2006.

The results are more obvious visually. I think the relevant comparison is from today's prices to the earlier peaks. Here is the full data for all of the cities (click the picture for larger) showing data from 1987 to today. The index is 100 in 2000. The peak is quite obvious and the current fall off even more so.

I took the indices after the peak and looked at the % decrease as a fraction of the peak index, essentially using the peak as the basis. The numbers look even scarier then.

The places in which home values have evaporated the most dramatically are cities in California, cities in Florida, Phoenix and Las Vegas. The California housing bust seems to be a combination of speculation and general California high home values. The other cities appear to reflect a bust in speculation on vacation homes and second homes. Detroit stands out as an example of a city whose housing prices are gutted because the car industry that built the city has fled.

Another way to see what places are down a lot and what places are down a little is to look at a map.
Here the are of the bigger circle is the index at the peak, and the area of the circle inside is the index in December. The more the circles shrink the more the value is lost. I like this view more than the percentages because you can see that, for instance, Detroit has lost a lot but they weren't as high as the cities in California or Florida, so there is more value per house being lost in the California cities than in Detroit.

I suppose that because it was a housing bubble, it eventually had to burst and was built on speculation rather than a sustainable increase in value. The question is how far will it burst.

Jeopardy question - rivers and world capitals

Last night's Jeopardy final question was:

"With 4, more national capitals are located on this river than any other river in the world"

The key to jeopardy is that the questions give more clues to the answer. the first thing the contestants seemed to think of was to pick a long river to answer. That appeared to lead them astray as two picked the Nile, which is incorrect. Rather, if it is four national capitols then it must be in a place in the world that has many nations close together, that they might share a river. That had me thinking of Europe and so I picked the Danube, which was the correct answer.

Since I think I am a big hotshot, and I like to test my intellectual limits , I tried to think of the capitols. I guessed Prague, Bucharest, and Vienna, but I could not think of a fourth. I suppose that is for the best since I only got one, Vienna, correct. The four are: Vienna (Austria), Bratislava (Slovakia), Budapest (Hungary), Belgrade (Serbia). Prague is too far north, and so is Bucharest. That is why today I looked it up so I could learn something.

What capitols are on the Nile? Cairo (Egypt) and the Blue and the White Nile meet at Khartoum in Sudan, but Addis Ababa in Ethopia is not on the Nile. Thanks for playing, though.

Another interesting thought inspired by this question is the number of national capitals that have rivers flowing through them. Since most cities are situated in places which have natural transportation by water like rivers I am sure that most national capitals have a river associated with them. That might be a good Jeopardy category itself. Given the river, name the national capital.

Thames: London
Seine: Paris
Hudson: New York
Liffey: Dublin
Molonglo: Canberra

A new Honest Hypocrite - Welcome Linus!

Three weeks ago (on January 30th), Lynn and I welcomed Linus Richard Koehler into our lives. This new honest hypocrite was highly anticipated and we are so glad to meet him.

Readers are welcome to guess the origin of Linus' name. Is he named for...

A.) A relative
B.) Linus Torvalds, a programmer, the creator of the Linux kernel
C.) Pope Linus, the second Pope of the Catholic Church.
D.) Linus Pauling, a chemist, winner of two Nobel Prizes (chemistry and peace)
E.) Linus Yale, Jr., an American mechanical engineer and founder of the Yale Lock Manufacturing company.
F.) Linus (mythology), any of three sons of Apollo
G.) Linus van Pelt, a character in the comic strip Peanuts
H.) Linus Caldwell, a character from the films Ocean's Eleven, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen, played by Matt Damon

I will give you a hint. I am a chemical engineering and my parents once got this person's autograph for me at a convention where he discussed the merits of Vitamin C. Any one of these august personages would be a good role model for Linus, but for whom is he named?

To keep up to date on Linus' childhood antics you can follow along at Childhood Antics. Childhood Antics will focus on all things Linus, kids and parenting. Did you ever notice that when you get a new car it seems that when you are out driving, everyone else on the road has that car too. I don't think it is more cars, but a change in focus and attention. I suppose it is the same with babies, once you have one you start noticing all of the baby and parenting topics out on the internet that you might not have noticed before. The birth of Cory Doctorow's daughter and Mark Frauenfelder home life posts have seemingly increased the number of Boing Boing posts related to children, I have also noticed an increase in kids stuff at Neatorama. I will keep the kid stuff to Childhood Antics and the science, science fiction, general commentary, and honest hypocrisy to the Honest Hypocrite. Enjoy!

Asymptotically approaching the infinite Oreo Double Stuf

I thought that I was a little crazy when I started taking chocolate Oreo Double Stufs and combined them to make extra filling versions. I constrained myself to making stacks that were still edible (four double stuf fillings between the cookies ends).


I have been outshone by this 36 double stuf (72 regular) cookie tower of Oreo filling capped with some cookies. I did not make it. I hope they ate it after they were done and did not waste the filling. Perhaps the extra cookies could have been crushed for a pie crust.

This cookie represents as close as is reasonable to get to the infinite filling Oreo cookie since I doubt someone would get more than one package of Oreos to build an even bigger tower. (No, that wasn't a challenge.)

First light on a snow day

Today was not really a snow day as I am on vacation. However I tried to get the light shining through the trees because the snow stuck to all of the branches looked very nice.


Even a simple digital camera can do magic if the scene is right.