A Hot Goalie Isn’t a Better Goalie – Five Thirty Eight
“But herein lies a great paradox: Despite goaltending’s outsize impact on the outcomes of hockey games, it’s extremely hard to say exactly which goalies are truly good or bad at their jobs.”
What It’s Like to Spend 20 Years Listening to Psychopaths for Science – Wired
“Kiehl is a neuroscientist at the Mind Research Network and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and he’s devoted his career to studying what’s different about the brains of psychopaths — people whose lack of compassion, empathy, and remorse has a tendency to get them into trouble with the law. On the plane, Kiehl had been typing up notes from an interview he’d done with a psychopath in Illinois who’d been convicted of murdering two women and raping and killing a 10-year old girl. The woman sitting next to him thought he was typing out a confession.”
The World’s Most Exclusive Club – Grantland
There’s a great scene in North Dallas Forty, from all the way back in 1979, when the owner of a fictional football team is watching practice with business associates. He worries aloud about his team’s playoff chances, so one of them responds, “Christ, you make more with your manufacturing division in one week than you do on this goddamned football team in the whole year, even if they DO win.” And the owner laughs and says, “That’s true … but my manufacturing division never got the cover of Time magazine.”
The Late Stephen Colbert – the New Yorker
“If Colbert’s interviews—meta-interviews, really—tend to be a little edgier, a little more unpredictable, than either Stewart’s or Letterman’s, one can’t help assuming that it’s because they are conducted by The Character, not the everyday husband and father. What will happen when the interviewer is Stephen Colbert, not “Stephen Colbert”? If an E! Online compilation of Colbert-as-Colbert is any guide, he’ll be charming, intelligent, and amusing. But the hint of lethality, if not altogether gone, is likely to be attenuated. The Character hasn’t had to worry about being likeable, any more than Elmer Fudd did. He’s been free to go places that an actual person can’t. The Character’s very one-dimensionality has given his interviews an interestingly three-dimensional quality.”
How Japan Copied American Culture and Made it Better – Smithsonian
“The American presence in Japan now extends far beyond the fast-food franchises, chain stores and pop-culture offerings that are ubiquitous the world over. A long-standing obsession with things American has led not just to a bigger and better market for blockbuster movies or Budweiser, but also to some very rarefied versions of America to be found in today’s Japan. It has also made the exchange of Americana a two-way street: Earlier this year, Osaka-based Suntory, a Japanese conglomerate best known for its whiskey holdings, announced that it was buying Beam Inc., thus acquiring the iconic American bourbon brands Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark.”
The People Pushing the NHL Into the Advanced Stats Era – Five Thirty Eight
“Schmidt’s data from this season allows us to evaluate individual defensive contributions for the first time, which we couldn’t do with traditional box scores and play-tracking. It’s clear, for example, that the Flyers have generally controlled play when Timonen and Coburn were both on the ice, but it’s hard to tell how much each player contributed on the defensive end.1 We can try to infer individual ability by comparing how two players perform when one is on the ice and the other is not. But the data is complex, confounded by differences in their deployment, who else was playing during those minutes and simple variance.”
Taco Bell Gave Me a Cellphone – Slate
“It all started when I tweeted in praise of Taco Bell earlier this month, which I frequently do and which usually causes me to lose followers. The company had released a branded Vine video in which a waffle pops out of a toaster and magically becomes a Waffle Taco—the syrup-drenched pièce de résistance of the new Taco Bell breakfast menu. It was beautiful; I tweeted that Alfonso Cuarón should eat his heart out. Seconds later, something exhilarating and entirely unprecedented happened. I received acknowledgement from the brand’s Twitter account in the form of a direct message: “Want to be a part of something awesome with Taco Bell?””
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Photo courtesy of Isaac Leedom.
