Smart music

The title is the name of a piece of software for practicing music (which I used for my jazz class at Stanford)  but this post is not about it. According to a new study, smart people listen to Radiohead and dumb people listen to Beyonce. (The "smartness" was based on SAT scores) Well, I don't listen to either. I found both boring. Some people who claimed they are Radiohead fans are actually kinda pretentious. Beyonce looked great when she was younger and had a few catchy songs earlier in her career but that's pretty much it. Well, people listen to System of a Down is also smarter than those listen to Bon Jovi (For the record I listen to some of both) The ridiculous part of the chart though was that Beethoven was rated way high while "classical" as a whole was way low. WTF? My conclusion: smart people diss the chart while dumb people created it.

Retroactive product placement

Just learned this new term from this Rolling Stones magazine article: old music videos were edited to feature "new" products (i.e., brands who signed up after the video came out) For example, a billboard of Grand Marnier liqueur was digitally "inserted" to Darius Tucker's MV of "True Believers" from 2012 (Coincidentally, I saw/heard the song for the first time a few nights ago! He looked familiar and I was wondering if he was the guy from the Hootie and the Blowfish) I guess the songs chosen for retroactive product placement gotta be somewhat successful to begin with. Hopefully the musicians earn a few more $ than getting their songs streamed by Spotify (the streaming service which just lost Taylor Swift's catalog. Taylor said "We're not getting back to together again. I know you were trouble") 

2014 deja vu moments?

I wrote this in 2010 about certain teams and athletes. Then I wrote this in 2012 about the same group. Here is the 2014 version:
1) The University of Texas football team lost to Oklahoma in 2010, 2012 and 2014. Well, this is a rebuilding year under 1st year coach Charlie Strong. In fact, it's unlikely the team will have a .500 season :(
2) The University of Wisconsin lost to Michigan State in 2010 and 2012. They won't play against each other in 2014.
3) Will Power couldn't win the IndyCar championship in spite of a good chance entering the final race in 2010 and 2012 but he finally overcome his last-race-jitter and won it in 2014.
4) US lost to Europe in Ryder Cup in all 3 years. US had a huge lead before the final day and blew it in 2012 but we are not even close in 2014. Looking forward to a new generation of young players picking up the slack.
5) Tiequan Zhang lost his UFC fight in Macau in 2012 and that was the last time he fought. Li Jingliang was another Chinese fighter signed by the UFC and appeared in FOX Fight Night 54 but lost.
6) Last but not least, SF Giants won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014!

Sports highlights: two races in Texas

As a big fan of auto-racing who used to live in Texas, last Sunday was an awesome day: F1 in Austin and NASCAR in Fort Worth. Both were the 3rd last race of the season and the results would have big impact on the championship (It also helped that UT beat Texas Tech the night before) Rosberg won the pole of the F1 race and his car looked unbeatable in the first half of the race but Hamilton was able to catch up lap by lap and eventually passed Rosberg and went on to win his 5th consecutive race and 10th race of the season. Obviously there were many more lead changes at the NASCAR race ~200 miles north on I-35. Both Jeff Gordon (points leader entering the race) and Jimmie Johnson (eliminated from playoff already) had strong cars and Brad Keselowski used strategy to get to the front towards the end of the race. Too bad Brad K turned Jeff Gordon which resulted in a flat tire for the latter during a late restart and ruined Gordon's chance for a good finish (if not a win) So, after 2 races in the Eliminator round, no team has clinched a spot out of the 4 for the final championship race yet (Gordon went from 1st to 4th in point) 4th-8th were really close so all 8 drivers are still in contention! It was announced in the broadcast that the grandstand at Phoenix (next race) was already soldout. In addition, NASCAR got the Monday morning shows talked about them too, not because of on-track but off-track activity though: Brad K once again was in the center of controversy. He was pushed by Kevin Harvick post-race towards Gordon's team and resulted in a brawl.

The next 2 races are gonna be even more exciting!

Sports highlight: the Giants won it all again

Hopefully writing about this topic will become my every-other-year ritual. I posted this two years ago and this four years ago. Once again I am linking to Peter Gammon's writeup for the 2014 victory. Similar to last time, the Giants' great pitching was a key. Madison Bumgarner wrote another chapter in playoff history since 2010: 2 Win (Game 1 and Game 5, a complete game shutout) and 1 Save (Game 7, with 2 day rest and pitched as reliever for 5 innings!) in the World Series. And Tim Lincecum struggled as a starter in the regular season, too bad he was only able to pitch 1 2/3 inning as a reliever in "garbage time" (Giants was behind by 5 runs) and left because of injury in game 2 of the World Series. There were quite a few key hits from unexpected players in 2010, like Cody Ross and Edgar Renteria. In 2012 they have Marco Scutaro and Ryan Theriot. In 2014 they have Travis Ishikawa and Juan Perez. And of course great defensive plays from the rookie Joe Panik and the stud Brandon Crawford helped. I guess more things change, more things stay the same. The management has proven they know how to run the organization the right way. Both Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy will join the hall of fame someday for sure. I gotta admit I have doubts in many of Sabean's decisions during his earlier days as the GM. I felt that he tended to sign over-the-hill/over-priced players like Barry Zito (yeah, everybody could cite this one) Randy Winn, Aaron Rowand, Armando Benitez ...... and hang on to older players for too long, like Ray Durham (see this analysis of the 2008 team and this 2010 breakdown of Sabean's success and failure, before he won the 1st WS) That's why I was so skeptical when the Giants signed Edgar Renteria, Pat Burrell, Aubrey Huff, Andres Torres and Cody Ross. Well, turned out they all helped with winning the 2010 championship, one way or the other. Now I become believing in whoever they signed, like Angel Pagan, Michael Morse and Tim Hudson (the last 2 were the only "big names" signed before the start of the 2014 season) They have certainly contributed a lot to the early season success (team W-L record for the first 60 games) which piled up enough wins to make up for the poor showings later and barely made it in as the last wildcard! Morse even had a few key kits in the playoff! The mid-season signing of Hunter Pence (and Jake Peavy to a certain extent) almost made me forgotten about Carlos Beltran.

I would have enjoyed this year's WS even if the Giants didn't win. Why? Their opponent Kansas City Royals certainly qualify as a Cinderella: one of the least likely team to make it to the WS in years IMO. (Check out this list of unlikely winners) Some pointed out this Giants-Royals matchup as the worst ever. In fact, the TV rating of game 1 was the lowest ever, which is understandable given the small size of the KC TV market (However, Game 7 had pretty good rating.) My friend who dislike baseball cited the low rating to support his argument that baseball is boring. Well, does it really matter? Parity in MLB was actually good to the business overall speaking. It's because more fans are likely to tune into broadcasts of the local team, which are making $$$ for all these regional sports network (this model is different from NFL's) I guess it all comes down to the fact that there are just not enough superstars in the games these days. Some say there are way too many teams (30) to compete for the talent. 

I can't wait for the 2015 Spring training!