I leave Washington University in St. Louis, and the school drops 2 places in this year's arbitrary US News and World Reports Nonsensical Guide to the Top Colleges as Decided by a Crack Team of Frat Boys and Indie Burnouts. Coincidence...I think not.

I read this book a few months back, but the untimely trade of Nomar Garciaparra to the Cubs makes this a relevant review now. Moneyball is the story of Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane and his adoption of statistical methods to evaluate talent. It sounds pretty dry, but the book is well-written and spins tales of Beane's days as a "can't miss" prospect in the Mets system who flamed out like so many prospects do (I even have one of his baseball cards from the late 80's). His experiences as a textbook "5-tool player" whose tools never translated into baseball production, as well as his limited financial reserves as the GM of a small-market team, became his main impetus for revamping the A's scouting department.

The heart of Beane's philosophy is to use objective metrics to measure a player's potential or actual effectiveness rather than subjective scouting reports. In the past (and in the present for most teams), the decisions on which players to draft, sign, or trade for were made almost entirely based on firsthand accounts written by former players. Scouting reports often focus on a players "tools", such as arm strength or foot speed, instead of actual production. But Beane focuses more on statistical measures developed by statisticians Bill James and Paul Depodesta (who now runs the Los Angeles Dodgers) such as OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage), runs created, and win shares.

The first half of the book describes Beane's playing career, his transition to the front office, and the recent history of baseball statistics. This part is interesting, but the real meat of the story is the tale of how he put it all together to rebuild the team both through the draft and through offseason acquisitions after losing first baseman Jason Giambi to the hated New York Yankees. This is also the point where Beane starts to come across as a smug intellectual who thinks he's smarter than everyone else in baseball despite decidedly mixed results.

The biggest issue I have with the book, and with the Beane-is-a-genius mantra spouted by the author throughout the second half, is the chapter on former Red Sox backup catcher Scott Hatteberg. Hatteberg was Beane's handpicked successor to Giambi, even though he a) wasn't a first baseman and b) never had more than 100 hits in a season and was 33 years old. In the chapter, Beane bashes the Sox repeatedly for not playing Hatteberg more and congratulates himself effusely for noticing that Hatteberg has a good eye and stealing him away cheaply from Boston. So what has Scott Hatteberg done since joining the A's? He's had an OPS of .807 in 2002 and an atrocious .725 in 2003. To put this in perspective, a great OPS is around 1.000, and a good OPS for a first baseman is probably between .850 and .900. In other words, there's probably a reason that the Sox played him sparingly, and Red Sox ownership should be the ones congratulating themselves for unloading his contract.

Then there's the treatment of postseason play. Some people (*cough* George Steinbrenner) don't consider a year to be successful unless their team wins the World Series. The A's haven't won any playoff series since 1990. The author, in his continuing effort to glorify Billy Beane to godlike status, glosses over the A's recent postseason choke jobs by quoting Beane as calling the postseason a crapshoot and then never mentioning it again. It may be a crapshoot, but what are the odds of shooting craps four years in a row? If it is indeed luck, you'd think the luck would fall in their favor at least once.

But if you're a baseball fan (or even a Brewers fan), you'll enjoy this book and look at games a little differently, cursing your favorite players when they make an out on the first pitch or get thrown out stealing. Just watch what you wish for if you want your team to espouse the Beane Philosophy. My Red Sox, who have recently adopted the OPS-first mentality, traded notorious first-pitch swinger Nomar Garciaparra for Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz (or as I like to call them, "a bag of balls and some sunflower seeds").

In honor of the Google IPO, I'm giving away Gmail invitations. The first 3 people to contact me can have one. Or I could auction them off on ebay for a dollar.

There's a nice article on Slate today about all the wacky fad diets that are popular right now. Besides the Atkins diet, a Festival favorite, there's also South Beach, Hamptons, Okinawa, North Shore, and East St. Louis, presumably the places you'll be able to go with your trim, svelte figure.

But my personal favorite is the "Makers Diet", which combines carb-slashing with radical cultish religious behavior! Not only do you avoid the usual things like pasta and candy bars, but you get to eat homeostatic organisms that looks like dirt, drink raw goats milk, and practice a funny sort of hand-washing called "Clenzology" (which is possibly the sketchiest thing I've read about on the internet since the blatant pyramid scheme FreeIpods).

The one thing that all the successful fad diets have in common is that they promise to make you lose weight quickly and are easy to follow. The quicker and easier to follow the better. If you want to cash in on the craze and write a fad diet book, you should promise 20 pounds in 3 days with no change in diet whatsoever. People don't care if it's feasible or if it works, they just care that it's easy. "Oh yeah, I'm on the Dr. Chris Hill Festival Miracle Plan," they'll say, pointing to my book on the coffee table as they munch on a Snickers bar.

Whatever happened to inventors? In school we always learned about Eli Whitney inventing the cotton gin, Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone, and Thomas Edison inventing everything else. But who are today's inventors? Dean Kamen invented the useless but still entertaining Segway, but it seems like these days most things are invented by hordes of underpaid researchers at faceless corporations rather than eccentric unemployed guys with crazy hair.

There are a number of possible explanations for this:

1) The power of the faceless corporation
Let's say I go out and invent an automobile engine that can be powered by water. Building a prototype and testing the engine to make sure it doesn't spontaneously burst into flames is prohibitively expensive, so I would have to look to a major automaker for funding. Then there's the other side of the coin: if you invent anything that threatens America's reliance on oil, cigarettes, overpriced CDs, cola drinks, or pop-up internet advertisements, you'll get blindsided by lobbyist groups, legal shenanigans, and smear campaigns. Next thing you know, your clean-air, non-smoking, uncola, pop-up-blocking car that plays MP3 files has been outlawed in all 50 states and you're on the FBI's
list of terrorists.

2) Our lives are too easy
Most of the great inventions (the light bulb, the radio, the cellular phone) served to alleviate some problem in our lives. But what problems (that don't involve terrorists or the Red Sox consistently sucking) do you have that could be solved by a nifty gadget? I could see faster/safer/more efficient transportation, but again this isn't something that could be solved by one guy with crazy hair.

3) Invent America
Every year, a single event turns hundreds of thousands of 4th and 5th graders off from ever wanting to be an unemployed eccentric inventor: Invent America. Along with the Science Fair, this is the other compulsory event that tests how well elementary school children (and their parents) can put together a trifold poster board. But unlike the Science Fair, where you can just stick a plant in the closet and study the effects of no light, food, or water on geraniums
(Hypothesis: they die.), for Invent America you actually have to come up with a unique idea and build a prototype.

The suggestions that teachers give to kids always involve "think about something in your life that could be easier or better and invent something to fix it", but they're ignoring one thing: middle-class kids' lives are the easiest of all. What are they going to invent, an extra hour of cartoons on Saturday morning? A box to hold their Yu-Gi-Ohmygodthisisahorribleshow cards?

When I was in 5th grade, my big contribution to society through Invent America was a Nintendo Cord Keeper, i.e. a cardboard mailing tube that you could stuff your Nintendo controller cord inside when you weren't using them so people don't trip. Nowadays, Nintendo solves the problem by only including one controller with their game systems, forcing you to go to the store and buy a second controller. While there you'll see the wireless controllers that are only 10 to 20 bucks more and buy one of those. Then you'll have mismatched controllers, which any kid knows will lead to accusations of cheating if your friend loses a game to you, so you'll have to buy another cordless controller and throw the included corded controller away. It's a pretty lucrative invention actually.

But by tying a spontaneous thing like inventing to a structured, required thing like "You'll get an F if your invention isn't good enough and then you'll never get into that prestigious middle school" kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it? It's like requiring a high-schooler to read a book for English class. No matter how good the book is, they will end up hating it. This is why English teachers only require high schoolers to read boring books like Scarlet Letter or pointless books like The Great Gatsby. They don't want to turn kids off from reading the real quality literature, like Harry Potter or Cracking the DaVinci Code.

I got an urgent message from my parents yesterday that their Internet Explorer could not follow links anymore, so I took the question to the most knowledgeable computer expert I know, Dr. Google. During my browsing, I went to click on a link and what should spawn directly beneath my mouse right before I click but one of those "Are you sure you want to install software by [insert spyware company here]?" dialog boxes. Unfortunately, the timing was such that my click got registered on the "Yes, of course I want your crappy spyware shit all over my machine, there aren't enough legitimate pop-up ads for me already" button, and it was off to the races.

Four installers immediately popped up in my status bar and every pop-up window in the entire history of the internet immediately spawned on my desktop, resulting in a crash of all legitimately-running programs. "Woohoo! We can finally get through the Google pop-up blocker!," the windows must've thought as they piled up higher and higher. "Your computer is infected with spyware, download this tool to remove it!," they would ironically yell, "and buy Super Viagra!"

After the dust settled and the windows stabilized, I removed all that I could from Add/Remove programs and ran the latest version of Ad-Aware and Spybot. They were able to blow away about 300 rogue registry keys, processes, and files, but were unable to do anything about my newest arch-nemesis: VX2.

VX2 is a particularly nasty little piece of code that comes in a number of variants. From what I've been able to read on the internet before being inundated with pop-ups again, if you try and unregister and remove the offending dll file (twaintec.dll, oh how I hate you Twain-tech Enterprises), it will apparently spawn a copy of itself under a different name. As such, the anti-spyware programs can remove the registry keys and processes that it spawns, but as soon as you reboot your computer they magically appear again.

Ad-aware has a plugin to remove it, but the latest variant has been able to defeat even that. If whoever wasted their time writing VX2 used their powers for good rather than evil, we could probably get rid of viruses, denial of service attacks, and disturbing fanfiction where science fiction characters have homosexual relations with each other in mere days.

After a good 3 hours of running anti-spyware software and mucking around in the registry, I finally defeated VX2. Whoever created this monster is a scourge upon this planet.

-There is a specific age somewhere between 35 and 50 when African-American women go from being skinny with huge breasts and huge asses to being overweight and wearing goofy hats. This change happens apprently overnight, as there are no examples of any in between stage. As the creationists would say, there's no missing link.

-Rap video fans buy one of a certain group of products. These products are: overpriced sneakers, soda, and rap CDs. Although judging by the videos, they also purchase NFL jerseys.

-No single rap artist could possibly get through a song on his own. Music has more credibility, or "cred", if it involves, or "features", as many random rappers as possible, even if these rappers have no name recognition. By this logic, I should have released my EP as "Chris Hill featuring Michael Dixon". I wonder if I could just record Michael's voice as he sings along to one of his CDs in his bedroom and sample it without him being wise to it? Would I still have to pay him royalties? Kind of like Bowfinger with music instead of movies.

Ah, the things I learn while running on a treadmill at the gym...

Eileen came to visit The KC this weekend, and we had a chance to partake in the Will Smith blockbuster I, Robot. As a fan of Asimov's robot short stories and novels, I had very low hopes for this movie. The novels were straight mysteries that lent themselves more to Agatha Christie-esuqe whodunits than shoot-first-and-think-later summer movies.

I was pleased to find that the film, which claimed to be "suggested by the stories of Isaac Asimov", stayed true to his vision while blowing up enough random things to satisfy the average moviegoer. Sure there were some differences -- Susan Calvin (played by Tom Brady's girlfriend) was young and hot rather than an older woman, and Asimov's stories didn't include car chases, demolitions, and hordes of killer robots -- but the heart of the movie was a mystery focused around a logical problem, as it should have been.

Will Smith plays the role he's best suited for once again: Will Smith. But he comes across as Enemy of the State Will Smith rather than Wild Wild West Will Smith, so the movie doesn't suffer because of it. The books are, of course, better, but the movie has a unique story that adds to Asimov's legacy instead of ripping off or cheapening it.

I got a postcard in the mail the other day claiming that there is an "August Primary Election" tomorrow, which is strange since I thought the Missouri Primary already happened. I will go vote anyway though, as there are numerous controversial issues up for grabs like should we allow another casino to get built in the area (no, this is Kansas City not Atlantic City) and should we allow AEG to build an enormo-dome downtown.

The latter issue, however, is not the least bit controversial. Nearly everyone in the city is for it, since AEG is funding the whole thing and will be responsible for any losses or cost overruns incurred (and of course for any profits as well) by the arena. You may be questioning, as I did, why we need a giant arena downtown when we have no sports team to play in the arena. Despite lunatic ramblings by some locals, we are not getting a hockey team considering there probably won't even be a hockey season next year or a basketball team since there's just not an interest in non-Kansas-University basketball here. However, I've been convinced by a number of studies that not having a team there is actually beneficial for booking conventions and big-name, no-talent musical acts since there's no schedule to work around.

So in summary, the stadium is basically free, it will bring big events to the area, and there is a plan to revitalize the downtown around the arena which will bring money to the city and beautify it. So who in the world would be against it?

In a word...David Warner. Well, not David himself, but David's soulless corporate bosses. You see, the only downside to the arena is that part of it is being financed by a $4 increase in taxes on rental cars. David's bosses seem to think that because of this increase, no one will rent cars here anymore and they will cease to exist as a profitable entity because of it. So much so that they've sunk a whopping $450,000 into completely ineffective radio and TV spots fruitlessly urging people (who don't give a flying you-know-what about David's bosses) to vote against the arena even though right now the approval rating for it stands at about 90%.

Besides wasting their money and causing people to start grumbling about a boycott campaign, David's bosses are being incredibly bizarre in their reasoning. Rental cars are, for the most part, a need rather than a want. If I fly into a city and need to get around, my choices are rent a car or rely on public transportation, which does not exist in any reasonably-usable form in KC. If rental car prices increased by $20 a day, maybe I would start travelling less, but you can't even buy a pack of baseball cards for four bucks anymore. It's a drop in the bucket for anyone travelling here on business (and let's face it, no one else is coming here and renting cars. This isn't exactly NYC).

Give it up, David's bosses, and let us have our enormo-dome. Give our fair city the culture of Christina Aguilera's "I Need More Money 4 Piercings" tour, Ashlee Simpson's "FiFtEeN mInUtEs Of FaMe!!!1" tour, and this week's marginal rap group that is popular because someone in the group has been shot at.