Things change, stay the same

Did you know that back in the 19^th century people used to add “-loo” to the end of a word to signify a scandal in the same way they add “-gate” to the end of a word now. E.g. Bountygate would have been Bountyloo back then, Nipplegate would have been Nippleloo and Climategate would have been Climateloo. The "loo" suffix came from Waterloo just like the “-gate” suffix comes from Watergate. What are the chances that the root for both suffixes would be "Water"? I would say very low.

Food Tips

Plum sauce is a good alternative when you want to imbibe some more sugary viscous fluid but you have already chugged the bottle of maple syrup you putatively keep on hand for "pancakes", you fat slob.

Hair Frowns

A Civil War soldier

I love the way big Civil War mustaches contour your mouth to make it look extra frowny, like your Thomas Friedman.

Not a Civil War soldier

Childhood Development Theory

The Correlation

1) There has been a push to stop the use of physical force to discipline children post-WW2. The movement became very mainstream in the late 70s and governments around the world reflected this change in mores by modifying legislation to increasingly circumscribe the corporal punishment of children. Since 1979, 33 countries have fully abolished corporal punishment of children. And in countries like Canada where corporal punishment still isn't strictly illegal, it has been stringently limited.

2) The prevalence of childhood obesity greatly increased between 1980 and 2010. It's no secret. In the US, for example, 5.5% of children were recorded as obese in the 1976-1980 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, only a .5% point increase from the same survey done between 1971-74. But then, the number started climbing and had more than tripled to 16.9% when the survey was in 2007-08, despite roughly leveling off in the new millennium.

In short, the stigma & illegality of physically disciplining children has declined as the waistlines of those same children have expanded.

The Causation

Once society removed a parent's ability to physically discipline her child, alternative methods of asserting control had to fill the void. In addition, there was an increasing emphasis on positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement. High-sugar/high-fat foods like ice cream and candy are some of the most primal pleasures imaginable for a child so they can be used very effectively as positive reinforcement tools, much like biscuits for a dog.

I posit that parents have shifted their approach to control kids through their stomachs. In other words, what I'm suggesting is that once parents couldn't physically control their children they had to achieve their discipline goals by manipulating the trips to Dairy Queen.

The Solution

If my theory has merit then it puts parents in a very difficult position: On the hand, they can hit their kids and cause them to grow up mentally ill. Alternatively, they can refrain from hitting them up and they'll grow up physically ill (i.e. obese). This is a false dilemma, however, because we can bring back "running laps" as a commonplace punishment. It's the best of both worlds: the kids will stay in shape and they won't be psychologically damaged either.

Once society's prejudice against corpulence kicks in the fat kids we raised are despised.

Sidenote: There is a picture of a girl in a playground at the top of the wikipedia page for childhood obesity. It's actually used on several pages related to the concept of "overweight". My worry is that one day, maybe five or ten years in the future when the girl in that photo with the muffintop is in college, she will chance upon it and think, "Oh hey, I had a shirt just like that when I was kid. Weird." Then she'll move on to reading the article and all the bad things about being overweight. The picture will be lurking in her subconscious when she reads a line like, "Obese and overweight people are more likely to die of cancer and also to never marry." At that point, her pernicious brain will make the connection. She'll check the date the photo was added to do the math to confirm it's her in the picture and realize how long she's been the poster girl for obesity.

Sidenote 2: I would love to have access to the raw data from the study described in this article that says  corporal punishment does not increase the risk of childhood obesity because I want to know if the article is leaving out the stronger statement that corporal punishment is inversely related to childhood obesity because the article is focused on the link between neglect and obesity instead.

Ed. note: Thrawn wrote this post while shoveling nachos into his mouth.

America's Foederati

It's a little disconcerting that both presidential candidates in the last American election supported the same policy of giving citizenship to illegal immigrants who serve in the armed forces.*  Do you really want foreigners staffing your military? Are they loyal to the flag? It's generally a bad idea to train and equip someone to kill who doesn't necessarily share your interests, like what happened with the US helping and arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

Indeed, there is a Late-Western-Roman-Empire quality to the policy of bestowing citizenship upon immigrants who will serve in your army, and I don't mean that in a good way. It took a few centuries but Ancient Rome's increasing reliance on recruiting Germanic barbarians as "foederati" to fight its battles lead to those same foederati sacking Rome multiple times including what is generally accepted as the final blow to the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD.

Rewarding those who fight for your country with citizenship is the right thing to do because a) you want to assimilate those to whom you teach modern warfare, not alienate them and cause them to develop their own distinct ethnic identity like the Romans did, and b) what a jerk you would be if you didn't. That said, the policy still makes me uneasy because it comes across as desperate.

And I realize that there is a universe of difference between what is going on with American immigration today and the Romans in the 3rd-5th centuries,^ I just thought it was interesting connection.

*: I don't really understand how an illegal immigrant could find himself (or herself) in the military anyway since you'd figure there would be some background and security checks, but whatever.
^: I wish someone would explain that Ancient Rome and contemporary USA are incommensurable to Ron Paul.

Patting myself on the back

Back in September, just before the Buffalo Bills season started, I used this blog to make record of my bet on the under for the Bills win total this past season, the line having been set at 8 wins with a payout of +120 (or 6/5) on the under. I ended up winning the bet with two games left in the season. It was a 50-17 pasting at the hands of the Seattle Seahawks that clinched it, definitively. Now I'd like to go back over my a priori reasoning to see if I was mostly right or mostly lucky.

Superstition

What I said: "As a general rule, you should never feel good about a Bills season based on their track record of disappointment."
What happened: Yeah, that held true. The Bills added another chapter to their long history of suckitude. A 6-10 season is well within established historical norms at this point.

What else I said: "The second superstitious worry I have is that, in general, teams that go out and spend big money and get people excited, whether on purpose or as an innocent product, tend to fall flat on their faces."
What happened: The Bills fell flat on their face. They can't really complain about bad luck, though, since their point differential is that of a 5.7 win team according to the Pythagorean wins formula. So I was right that the Bills would fall flat on their face but I was wrong that it had something to do with superstition, a.k.a. luck.

Excitement for the season backfires when it becomes a constant talking point that this Bills team was expected to make the playoffs as a wild card. The hype metamorphosizes into a millstone.

 

Additions

What I said: "Mario Williams status as an elite player is undisputed, but it is a little concerning that Houston let him walk."
What happened: Williams finished the season well but started slow and did not justify his gargantuan contract. He got controlled by lowly Wayne Hunter in the first game against the Jets and finished the season with a very good but not elite 46 tackles and 10.5 sacks. Houston's defense looked real good without him.

What else I said: "I guess [Belichick] thought that [Mark] Anderson's 10 sacks had made him overvalued. Given Belichick's track record, I don't like being on the other side of a bet on a personnel decision with him."
What happened: Anderson produced only 1 sack in five games this year, although injuries and bland defensive schemes (more on that later) were big reasons why. You just can't expect a player to play as well in a Dave Wannstedt system as he did when he was coached by Belichick.

What else I said: "first-year cornerbacks almost never have an easy ride. I would feel much better if [Stephon] Gilmore was not being asked to come in as the new #1 CB for the team and could instead ease into the league as the #2." 
What happened: Gilmore was awful week 1 against NYJ when he got burned on a bunch double moves but the whole team sucked that week anyway. He also struggled badly against San Francisco but the whole team sucked that week, too. He got better as the year went along, as you would expect, but his huge responsibilities on pass defense were symptomatic of the Bills lack of depth at cornerback.

What else I said: "Glenn could very well be competent, but I hate having rookies in such key positions."
What happened: Glenn was fine. I was wrong to be worried.

 

Subtractions

What I said: "Roscoe Parrish could break games open
What happened: He did nothing notable returning kicks and punts for the Bucs and McKelvin was much better returning kicks for the Bills. So this one was a false concern.

What else I said: "Demetress Bell had proven himself as a capable starter at the difficult and crucial position of left tackle, something that cannot be said about Glenn.
What happened:

What else I said: "Drayton Florence I could do without but CB depth is valuable in a league that is becoming so pass-friendly."
What happened: Florence did little in Detroit where he spent most of the year being injured, but I was right to be worried about CB depth.

 

DVOA

What I said: "Buffalo finished with a DVOA of -8.2% last year. Anything below 0% is a below-average team so right there you have macro-level statistical evidence that the Bills are a below-average team."
What happened: The team was even worse according to the DVOA metric this year: -12.2%. They went  from 23rd overall last year to 24th overall this year. Numbers like DVOA that are based on a huge sample size (because every play is a datum in the DVOA database) are more likely to be consistent from year to year than, say, fumble luck.

 

Plexiglass Principle

What I said: "The Bills are 6-10, 4-12, and 6-10 over their last 3 seasons. This is not a team that had a sudden drop-off in performance last season which usually foretells a bounce back to some degree."
What happened: The converse of the Plexiglass Principle held true (that a team whose record has been similar the past few years can expect little deviation the next) since the team stayed true to their past record. Another 6-10 season.

 

Turnover Luck

What I said: "The Bills recovered 11 of their 16 fumbles on offense and scooped up 11 of 21 fumbles on defense, for a total of 22 out of 37 fumbles. If they recover only 18 or 19 of those fumbles this year, as should be expected, then those 3 or 4 lost balls could cost them a win or even two." 
What happened: The Bills went from recovering 59.46% of fumbles last year to 30.61% in 2012. I actually got lucky here because they should have recovered more of those fumbles.

 

Fred Jackson

What I said: "I don't think there is a great track record for elite running backs maintaining their elite status when they are 31 years-old (actually closer to 32 now) and coming off a broken leg."
What happened: When Fred Jackson was able to stay healthy he only averaged 3.8 yards per carry, way down from 5.5 YPC last year. Even worse, his yards per catch fell from 11.3 in 2011 to 6.4 in 2012. So I would say that I was right to worry that Jackson could get back to his in-the-MVP-discussion level from early last year.

Strength of Schedule

What I said: "instead of just relying on last year's records to judge the strength of the Bills schedule this year, I look at the average of their over/unders. ... As you can see, Vegas thinks that the Bills opponents are going to be a lot closer to average than their records last year would suggest."
What happened: The bookmakers' over/unders suggested the average Bills opponent would have a 49.4% winning percentage but it ended up 48%. This was higher than the 47.4% that you got from only looking at last years' records, but not by much. So I guess I was somewhat fortunate that the Bills couldn't take advantage of their opponents being weaker than Vegas thought they would be but I was right that they wouldn't be as bad as last year.
The NFC West turned out to be one of the better divisions in football and not the cakewalk we thought it would be (rightfully so, considering its recent history such as sending a 7-9 team to the playoffs as its division rep). The NFC West's emergence certainly affect the Bills record since they went 1-3 against that division and their one win was by their skin of their teeth in overtime against Arizona.
It also hurts Buffalo that they have to play a "home" game in Toronto every year which they have a habit of losing, which is something I'm going to have to remember next time I think about making this bet.

What else I said: "The other thing to keep in mind is that a weak schedule only helps if you can beat up on the weaklings in the league."
What happened: Buffalo lost to St. Louis and Miami (once). It also lost to Tennessee and Indianapolis. The team almost lost to Arizona, pulling the game out in overtime.

Pre-Season

What I said: "in the game that the Bills put the most into during the preseason they got absolutely destroyed. The rest of the preseason was not much better. The team went 0-4."
What happened: The Bills were not very good in the regular season, either. Maybe the pre-season can tell us something about teams from time to time.

Coaching

What I said: "If you think either Chan Gailey or Dave Wannstedt is going to outcoach their counterpart on the other side of the ball then I have to wonder where your confidence in them comes from."
What happened: The coaching sucked so bad that the entire coaching staff got fired. The coaching deficiencies were especially evident on defense. Here is what the Globe & Mail had to say:

"Perhaps the most damning indictment of the Bills’ performance came from no-show defensive end Mario Williams, who repeated over and over that there was a systemic breakdown occurring all game long, that a defensive scheme that required players to split up responsibility on Wilson’s read option play was constantly gummed up. “You can’t have two guys with one responsibility,” he said. It’s not the first time this season that Dave Wannstedt, the Bills defensive co-ordinator, has been revealed to be something less than a genius

Another Wannstedt lowlight was marrying himself to a nickel defense in week 4 against the Patriots when they ran for 262 yards at 6.2 YPC. Plus, don't forget week 1 when Mark Sanchez looked like 2007 Tom Brady against us.

What else I said: "I think Gailey's preference for the pass is the right one in this day and age with the new rules protecting quarterbacks and receivers, but it is not the right approach for this team."
What happened: Fans complained all season about how criminally underused C.J. Spiller was. Because why hand the ball off to the guy who is averaging 6+ YPC.when you can have Ryan Fitzpatrick throw the ball (to the other team), right? Here is what Pats Pulpit had to say about Buffalo's offensive philosophy halfway through the season:

Buffalo is ranked sixth in the league in rushing and second in yard per rushing attempt. The Bills have two feature backs who are capable of breaking off big runs at any point in Fred Jackson and C.J. Spiller. Spiller in particular has been terrific this season, amassing 562 yards on just 78 attempts, a 7.2 average.

So naturally, because they are the Bills, they went into last week's game at Houston and threw the ball two and a half times more than they ran it, 38-16.

And here it the G&M again on the same subject after week 15:

"Fleet-footed Bills running back C.J. Spiller answered quickly for the Bills, scampering in on his own 14-yard run for his seventh touchdown of the year. Spiller had 17 carries for 103 yards, surpassing the 1,000-yard threshold on the season for the first time in his three-year NFL career.

It once again made one wonder where the Bills might be if he had been given more carries this season."

Who knows how much worse it would have been if Fred Jackson hadn't had the decency to be old and brittle?

Wide Receivers

What I said: "Except for Stevie Johnson, they are all replacement level."
What happened: Stevie Johnson had his third 1,000-yard season in a row. The next highest receiver was the tight end with 571 yards. Then C.J. Spiller with 459. Our fourth highest receiver by yardage was Donald Jones who was undrafted out of Youngstown State in 2010 which sounds like the definition of replacement level so I'm going to go ahead and say I was right about this topic. To be fair, though, it's hard to untangle how weak the team's secondary receivers were from the next topic.

QB Play

What I said:  "You can blame [Fitzpatrick's] ribs [for his bad play over the last ten games of the 2011 season] if you want, but I doubt his ribs were injured in his previous seasons when his play was roughly equal in quality to last season as a whole. His career QB rating is 75 and has been within 7 points of that number every season since he started playing significant snaps in 2008."
What happened: Fitzpatrick took advantage of the new rules protecting defenseless receivers/favoring the passing game to set a new career high for QBR: 83.3. I don't think the success of early 2011 is coming back to Fitzpatrick any time soon, though.

What else I said: "By all accounts his throwing motion wasn't fixed by new QB coach David Lee so we can expect the inaccuracy to continue, which is a fundamental flaw in a quarterback."
What happened: His completion percentage actually went down from last year.

Defense

What I said: "The team just spent two drafts trying to build a 3-4 front, but now it is switching back to a 4-3 because it is the only defense Wannstedt knows how to run. The problem is, some of the pieces might not fit as well."
What happened: The defensive fronts were a mess at times and now the team might be switching back to a 3-4 again because they hired a Rex Ryan disciple to coordinate the D. 

What else I said: "I'm worried that Marcell Dareus has blossomed into late first round talent and not top 3 overall talent." 
What happened: I already wrote about this. 

What else I said: "In the passing game, the cornerbacks we have are either young or, in Terrence McGee’s case, compromised by injury."
What happened: Cornerback depth was an issue all year. Ron Brooks, the rookie picked in the fourth round, was anointed the saviour at one point and the Bills made him the one guy on IR they were allowed to bring back onto the active roster because the Bills were so desperate for half-decent CB play. They had to hope they could turn at least one sketchy cornerback into something viable by a) getting Brooks to play above his draft position so quickly; b) getting McKelvin to finally learn the NFL game; c) getting Aaron Williams not to suck; or d) getting McGee to stop tearing his musculature apart ever time he steps onto the football field. 

What else I said: "In short, other than Mario Williams, there is not a lot to get excited about with a defense that was terrible last year and probably still will be. I'm afraid one player can't be great enough to swing things on the defensive side of the ball like a quarterback can on offense. Indeed, a d-lineman doesn't play all the defensive snaps in a game even if he is a star, so his impact is limited to begin with. And are we sure that Mario Williams is that great? Even if he is, is Dave Wannstedt good enough to make this unit even middle of the pack? He wasn't last year and there's not much that makes this year sound more promising."

What happened: Defensive DVOA was 10.6%, which was 27th in the league.

Depth

What I said: "the Bills never suffer significant injuries. Oh wait, no, they always have the exact opposite of that."
What happened: The Bills actually had pretty good injury luck overall so this was more one of those unsubstantiated superstitious concerns but things did fall apart a bit after week 13 when Eric Wood went down again this year. Losing your center usually has an insidious effect on your offense because he is such a key cog and that certainly seemed to be the case for the Bills. CB injuries were also a problem but for the whole season not just the end of it; there was a revolving door at 2nd cornerback and nickel back.

Conclusion

What I said: "There are reasons to believe the Bills will do better this year, especially an improved pass rush and their easier schedule. But I don't think that is enough to improve their record by 2 or 3 games"
What happened:

I'm the Bills fan in the middle watching the season unfold.

Very bad timing

I'm the discussion leader of my local environmental think&feel-tank. This fall we recycled over five thousand used facial tissues we rescued from the dump to have enough paper material for the social justice awareness program we plan each winter. We consulted with native groups in the area to identify what important issue that affects our most marginalized populations we should focus on this year. We set up in a circle in a community park and at the end of our long collaboration (after many of our indigenous members unfortunately had to leave due to other social engagements) it was clear that there was only one issue that we unanimously agreed must be addressed: climate change.

Through more community discourse in our circle the next day at Starbucks, we determined that the problem of people leaving their cars running to warm them up is a catastrophic sword of Damocles hanging over mother Gaia's head right now, but we can all help save her (although I ride my electric scooter everywhere so personally my carbon footprint is already minimzed).

To counteract the human rights issue of excessive car engine use we came up with a powerful slogan that would empower local citizens with knowledge and insight so that they can be the change they want to see in the world: Idle No More. We spent over two hundred person-hours putting that slogan on all our facial tissue signs.

Then Chief Theresa Spense totally screwed us by drinking broth and claiming she was starving herself. That attention-seeking bitch.