Quote of the Day

From a student:

I got a nice solar-powered watch. It died two months after I moved to Rochester.

This Study Was Done By A Woman, It Can't Be Correct

Harvard-bound econ student Emily Sands did a discrimination study for her senior project at Princeton. The NYTimes reports on her methods and results: like resume studies, she found that by sending the same script to a sampling of directors for their ratings, she could show gender bias in the recipients. Directors systematically rated a script with a female name at the top lower than they did when a male name appeared above the same script.

So directors are sexist. But wait: only female directors showed sexism. Male directors rated scripts attributed to men and women equally. Sands attempts to explain this as women directors passing along what they perceive the opinions of the men around them to be.

This leads James Taranto at BOTWT to argue that, to him, 'the study suggests that sex discrimination and the "awareness" thereof are one and the same thing.'

Plausible, perhaps. However, I'd criticize Sands' original interpretation: given that she has evidence that male directors do not discriminate, it would behoove her not to blame men here. Being generally ignorant of the field, I won't suggest an alternative explanation for Sands' data, but I would be interested to hear others' ideas for why women-against-women discrimination exists.

Miracle on Grass

A banged-up U.S. soccer team yesterday defeated Spain, the best team in the world, in the semifinal of the Confederations Cup.

Spain had set an international record with 15 straight victories and tied Brazil’s record unbeaten streak of 35 games from December 1993 to January 1996.

[American Jozy] Altidore scored in the 27th minute and [Clint] Dempsey added a goal in the 74th as the Americans became the first team to defeat Spain since Romania in November 2006.

The U.S. will now play the winner of Brazil v. South Africa in the Confed Cup final - America's first FIFA final ever.

2010, here we come!

Custer's Last Stand

With the puns and government allusions splashing thickly across the Boston sports pages this week (the Red Sox are playing in Washington, DC, for the first time since 1971), Soxaholix has the best lines out there:

"Wow. Is Ellsbury on fiah lately or what?"

"Seriously. Washington hasn't taken such a beating by an Indian since the late 19th Century."

Tonight the Sox will look to continue the torching of Washington at 7:05.

This Was Delicious

Cranberry-apple pie, with raisins. I left out most of the sugar so it tasted more savory than sweet - perfect.

Hat tip to Gukka for the cranberries.

It Worked

Whatever we did to remake the German military into a non-threat after World War II appears to have worked.

The Finisher

Tony Massarotti runs down five possible scenarios for the call-up of future Hall-of-Famer John Smoltz to the Red Sox active roster. None of them is perfect, and the one that makes the most baseball sense (demoting Matsuzaka) would be hard to get past Dice-K himself. Mazz considers a six-man rotation, or a bullpen role for Smoltz, but frowns on both.

But how about a different approach altogether: make Matsuzaka and Smoltz "co-starters". Or to phrase the idea better, give Smoltz the role of "finisher" for Matsuzaka. Dice-K hasn't been getting past the 5th inning. Smoltz is 42 and coming off shoulder surgery: neither one is going to be throwing a lot of complete games. The argument against sending Smoltz to the bullpen is that he'd lack the every-five-games routine of a starter and the slow prep toward each start. But as Matsuzaka's "finisher", he could have that routine. Every five days he'd prepare, knowing he'd be brought in sometime during the game - the 2nd inning would be a good time in most Dice-K starts this year, but the 5th or 6th is what the Sox would hope for.

So Dice-K starts the game. He nibbles and throws 95 pitches through 4 innings, and Tito lifts him before the heart of the opponent's order gets their third look at him. Then Smoltz comes on and throws his 70 or 80 pitches and finishes the game or hands it over to the true bullpen in the 8th or 9th.

Now the bullpen won't be heavily taxed every five games to clean up Dice-K's mess, and both pitchers will be kept active, healthy, and fresh in case an injury occurs somewhere in the rotation, at which point the Sox can go back to a conventional rotation... or call up Clay Buchholz.