Coyote Blog

A Brief Cricket Guide For American Baseball Fans

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:41:38 +0000

I am back in the USA, but I am missing my daily dose of cricket each evening. I found watching cricket incredibly relaxing in the evening. Despite common perception, it is not a difficult sport to understand — it just has a vocabulary all its own.

This is actually a pretty big week in British cricket, as the biennial Ashes matches between Australia and England begin on Wednesday. Apparently, Australia has pretty much owned England over the years, with the exception of an exciting victory by England four years ago. The only way I have found to watch it in the US is via a pay internet site associated with Sky TV. Anyone have any better ways?

Cricket for American Baseball Fans

As a public service, here is my quick description of cricket in terms American baseball fans will understand. This will leave out some details and arcana (just as one can easily describe the basics of baseball without mentioning catcher interference or running on a dropped third strike). Commenters are free to get all over me with exaggerated anger for any small mistakes I make. Note that I purposefully am using some American baseball terms for things in order to make the translation easier.

The cricket field is a large oval (of varying sizes) with two wickets or stumps about 66 feet apart in the middle of the field (about 6 feet longer than the distance from an American pitching mound to home plate) (picture). Think of the two stumps as two home plates separated by a single base path. This is a useful way to think of it because herein we get to the part that is most confusing to Americans: At any one time, there are two batsmen, one at each end. And, there are two bowlers (the equivalent of pitchers), again one on each end. If you think of it as two home plates, each with its own batter and pitcher alternating play, you get the idea.

Play progresses in a series of overs, which is 6 balls or pitches in a row. A single bowler will bowl 6 balls, or one over, from his end, and then play reverses and the other bowler at the other end will bowl six balls. This continues until all the batters on the team are out (more in a minute). As in baseball, bowlers get tired and get replaced over time. Much like high school or little league baseball, bowlers are not specialists but are fielders who are rotated in and out of the bowling position from the field. Again, just like American baseball, bowlers can be straight ahead speed specialists or they can be spinners (ie throw a variety of curving balls). Bowlers generally bounce the ball into the batsman (though they don’t have to), as they can then take advantage of funny hops off the uneven playing surface and because the bounce can accentuate the effects of spin. Unlike American pitchers who are fixed to a spot on the mound, cricket bowlers can make long running starts to their bowling.

Since there are two batsmen, whoever is facing the current bowler is the active batter. In addition to the bowlers and the keeper (like an American catcher) there are 9 fielders dispersed 360 degrees around the batter. Only the catcher wears something like an American-style leather glove — all the other fielders are bare-handed.

OK, here is the second thing that befuddles American baseball fans: Batsmen continue to bat and score runs until they are out - even if this takes hours and scores of pitches. There are no ball and strike counts that limit the time batting. If the batter hits a short ground ball to a fielder, a sure out in American baseball, he does not have to run in cricket and therefore cannot get out. And once he hits and gets some runs, he still keeps batting. These are all differences from American baseball.

When the batsman gets a hit, he has a choice to run. If he chooses to run, both he and his partner (remember there are two batsman at a time) run to the opposite stump. Making it safely is one run. If the ball is hit well enough, he may run back and forth for more than one run. If the ball rolls all the way to the “outfield” wall, it is automatically scored as four runs. If the ball clears the “outfield” fence on the fly (the equivalent of an American home run) it is automatically 6 runs.

Note that if the batter runs an even number of bases, he ends up back at the stump where he started and he will be the one to face the bowler on the next pitch. If he scores an odd number of runs, the other batsman will now face the bowler. There is some strategy involved in this, as it gives the batting team some leeway to determine which of its two batters will face the current bowler.

There are a number of arcane ways to get a batter out, but the most common are the following:

Bowled: The ball hits and breaks the wicket. First and foremost, then, a batter is defensive. He needs to make contact with any ball that is headed for the wicket. If any part of the batsman hits the wicket (eg he hits it with his bat or with his leg while running) this is also an out.
Leg before wicket (LBW): If the ball hits the batters leg, and the referee rules the ball would have hit the stump, the batter is out
Run out: When the batter chooses to run (and this is a choice) he can be “thrown out” in baseball parlance if a fielder throws the ball back and hits the stump (or someone tags the stump with the ball) before the runner gets back to the wicket (the equivalent to a force-out in baseball). I have not watched a lot of cricket, but I have never seen anyone run out. Batsmen tend to be pretty conservative in going for runs this way, as a single out is far more devastating than in American baseball so they take fewer chances. Its better to live and bat some more than try to stretch out a single extra run. Particularly since a good batter can score 50 or even 100 runs in a single at-bat (or inning) before getting out.
Caught: If the batter hits the ball in the air and it is caught, the batter is out. There are several fielders typically concentrated just behind the batter as catching the equivalent of an American foul tip backwards (there is no foul territory in cricket) seems a particularly rich source of caught balls.

Batters therefor face a tension. They must guard the wicket at all costs, and the safest way to do so is to hit a lot of ground balls to avoid being caught out. But the batter also needs to score, and so must sometimes take some chances in order to score runs by putting the ball in the air. The best batters seem to be the ones who can hit the ball hard on the ground and consciously seek out gaps in the fielders. The best equivalent in baseball I can think of is batters who are good at hitting the infield gaps on hit and run plays.

An inning is the process of having an entire team bat and be put out once. In a test match, typically over four days, each team might have two innings. There are a number of rules variations that might end innings sooner on time or number of overs.

A note on scoring: When watching TV, they still flash a lot of stats I do not frankly understand. But the most common will be a score after a test match might say England was 292 and 165. This means they had 292 runs in their first innings and 165 in their second. For an inning in progress, the score will look something like this: 164-4. This means that the team batting has so far scored 164 runs and has had four batsmen put out.

There are many other unique terms (I personally like “maiden” as a particularly apt term for a no-run over) but I think this is a good start. There is a lot of arcana in test cricket I don’t yet understand, but none of it stops me from enjoying the games. Enjoy. That is, if one could ever get any cricket on American TV.

Government Apples and Private Oranges

admin — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:40:55 +0000

Bruce McQuain has a really good post debunking the meme that Medicare overhead costs are lower than those of private insurers. You should read the whole post, but the short answer is:

Medicare participants are older and less healthy than those insured privately, so the denominator for their overhead ratio is much higher
Comparing overhead costs per plan participant, Medicare costs are higher than private
The comparison is apples and oranges, because private firms pay account differently than does the government
Lower Medicare overhead has tradeoffs, as it lets fraud through which is not counted as a cost

I can’t add to Bruce’s post, except to say that as someone in the business of trying to privatize government functions, we see the apples and oranges problem all the time. I am constantly having cost discussions with government bodies, and they frequently leave out most of the following when they compute their costs:

Insurance (e.g. liability, property). They say the government is self-insured, but the government does not charge its divisions any cost for this implicit guarantee. I have to pay real money for it.
State / local taxes. Private companies have to collect and pay many state and local sales, excise, and property taxes that the feds do not pay.
Pensions / retirement benefits. The government grants fat pensions and retirement medical benefits to its employees but does not accrue or put any funds away in the present to pay for these. Private companies do (and in fact would go to jail for not doing so).
Capital spending and rent. This varies by entity, but most government bodies do not see full depreciation of the capital assets they are using in their budgets. Ditto for the value of the space they are occupying - they often get valuable space rent and/or depreciation free.
Services from other government divisions. Sometimes transfer prices are charged, and sometimes they are even close to market rates, but most times they are not

The Emergency Room

admin — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:04:46 +0000

We often hear that one of the reasons health care “reform” is necesary in the US is because the uninsured overwhelm emergency rooms. We hear horror stories of overcrowded emergency rooms with long wait times, which would only be better if we had a national health care system like Canada.

A couple of interesting facts:

Average US emergency room wait time: 4.05 hours

Average Canada emergency room wait time: 8.9 to 23 hours

I confess the numbers are not apples-apples, but they are certainly in the ballpark and highly illustrative. Have any commenters seen a direct comparison?

Update: OK, the numbers are more apples-apples than I thought. The US 4 hour number is total time from coming in the door to leaving or getting a bed, the same as the Canadian numbers. The CNN report linked above got their data from here.

Regulation Aids the Large & Established

admin — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:54:28 +0000

I have written many times about how regulation tends to help the large and well established competitors against smaller companies and potential future market entrants. Larger companies have the size to pay compliance costs and the political muscle to sway regulation in their direction and co-opt regulatory bodies. The tobacco settlement, ostensibly aimed at “big tobacco” has done nothing but cement the market leadership of the top brands. This is why you see some large companies jumping on board cap and trade or health care reform — for example, Waxman-Markey contains rules that give a particular advantage to certain GE lighting technologies on which it holds patents.

The CPSIA is another such law, and Overlawyered has been all over the story. Here is what a craft fabricator of handmade dolls (even say your grandma selling at a craft fair) will have to comply with:

…Each batch needs a unique identifying number.

However, if in the course of making the products, you have to break into a separate box of buttons that has a separate batch or lot number itself, even if the product is otherwise identical, this is a separate batch and you need a separate new label for it with its own batch number that you assign. … It is conceivable [if you incorporate variations into the product] every item you produce is its own batch and each needs its own number and label. …

You will need to do “batch control”. You need to create a separate BOM [Bill of Materials] for each batch. You can keep this electronically in a database or spreadsheet. It is my understanding you need to keep these records for three years.

Though it was originally Mattel’s problem with lead from China in toys that caused the CPSIA to get passed (Congress always has to “do something” when a story makes the news) do you think it is Mattel or grandma who will be driven out of the business? In the future, when leftish hippies wail that there are no small manufacturer crafts or locally grown food at their weekend fair, you will know why.

Much more coverage on CPSIA here.

Happy July 4: How Even Those Who Love America Often Miss the Point

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:32:32 +0000

This is a recurring post on Coyote Blog on Memorial Day, but I forgot this year so I will repost it on July 4. Greetings this year from the Mother Country, from which I will be returning soon. And let’s give a big shout-out to the Dutch, who seldom get much love on this point, but the Dutch perhaps even more than the English really pioneered a lot of things that are important to us - e.g. capitalism, a republic, and tolerance.

Every Memorial Day, I am assaulted with various quotes from people thanking the military for fighting and dying for our right to vote. I would bet that a depressing number of people in this country, when asked what their most important freedom was, or what made America great, would answer “the right to vote.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, the right to vote in a representative democracy is fine and has proven a moderately effective (but not perfect) check on creeping statism. A democracy, however, in and of itself can still be tyrannical. After all, Hitler was voted into power in Germany, and without checks, majorities in a democracy would be free to vote away anything it wanted from the minority - their property, their liberty, even their life. Even in the US, majorities vote to curtail the rights of minorities all the time, even when those minorities are not impinging on anyone else. In the US today, 51% of the population have voted to take money and property of the other 49%.

In my mind, there are at least three founding principles of the United States that are far more important than the right to vote:

The Rule of Law. For about 99% of human history, political power has been exercised at the unchecked capricious whim of a few individuals. The great innovation of western countries like the US, and before it England and the Netherlands, has been to subjugate the power of individuals to the rule of law. Criminal justice, adjudication of disputes, contracts, etc. all operate based on a set of laws known to all in advance.

Today the rule of law actually faces a number of threats in this country. One of the most important aspects of the rule of law is that legality (and illegality) can be objectively determined in a repeatable manner from written and well-understood rules. Unfortunately, the massive regulatory and tax code structure in this country have created a set of rules that are subject to change and interpretation constantly at the whim of the regulatory body. Every day, hundreds of people and companies find themselves facing penalties due to an arbitrary interpretation of obscure regulations (examples I have seen personally here).

Sanctity and Protection of Individual Rights. Laws, though, can be changed. In a democracy, with a strong rule of law, we could still legally pass a law that said, say, that no one is allowed to criticize or hurt the feelings of a white person. What prevents such laws from getting passed (except at major universities) is a protection of freedom of speech, or, more broadly, a recognition that individuals have certain rights that no law or vote may take away. These rights are typically outlined in a Constitution, but are not worth the paper they are written on unless a society has the desire and will, not to mention the political processes in place, to protect these rights and make the Constitution real.

Today, even in the US, we do a pretty mixed job of protecting individual rights, strongly protecting some (like free speech) while letting others, such as property rights or freedom of association, slide.

Government is our servant. The central, really very new concept on which this country was founded is that an individual’s rights do not flow from government, but are inherent to man. That government in fact only makes sense to the extent that it is our servant in the defense of our rights, rather than as the vessel from which these rights grudgingly flow.

Statists of all stripes have tried to challenge this assumption over the last 100 years. While their exact details have varied, every statist has tried to create some larger entity to which the individual should be subjugated: the Proletariat, the common good, God, the master race. They all hold in common that the government’s job is to sacrifice one group to another. A common approach among modern statists is to create a myriad of new non-rights to dilute and replace our fundamental rights as individuals. These new non-rights, such as the “right” to health care, a job, education, or even recreation, for god sakes, are meaningless in a free society, as they can’t exist unless one
person is harnessed involuntarily to provide them to another person.
These non-rights are the exact opposite of freedom, and in fact require
enslavement and sacrifice of one group to another.

Don’t believe that this is what statists are working for? The other day I saw this quote from the increasingly insane Lou Dobbs (Did you ever suspect that Lou got pulled into a room a while back by some strange power broker as did Howard Beale in Network?):

Our population explosion not only detracts from our quality of life but
threatens our liberties and freedom as well. As Cornell’s Pimentel puts
it, “Back when we had, say, 100 million people in the U.S., when I
voted, I was one of 100 million people. Today, I am one of 285 million
people, so my vote and impact decreases with the increase in the
population.” Pimentel adds, “So our freedoms also go down the drain.”

What?? In a society with a rule of law protecting individual rights, how does having a diluted vote reduce your freedom? The only way it does, and therefore what must be in the author’s head, is if one looks at government as a statist tug of war, with various parties jockeying for a majority so they can plunder the minority. But in this case, freedom and rule of law are already dead, so what does a dilution of vote matter? He is arguing that dilution of political power reduces freedom — this country was rightly founded on just the opposite notion, that freedom requires a dilution of political power. What he is really upset about is someone is wielding coercive power and its not him.

At the end of the day, our freedoms in this country will only last so long as we as a nation continue to hold to the principle that our rights as individuals are our own, and the government’s job is to protect them, not to ration them. Without this common belief, all the other institutions we have discussed, from voting to the rule of law to the Constitution, can be subverted in time.

So to America’s soldiers, thank you. Thank you for protecting this fragile and historically unique notion that men and women own themselves and their lives.

Update: A corollary to all this is that “self-determination for an ethnically homogeneous group” is not among the key factors above. Which is where Woodrow Wilson went so far wrong. I have said for years we need to start over with the UN and build a new organization for multi-lateral cooperation based on principles of individual rights. Here is the UN by contrast, in a press release by its Human Rights Council honoring Cuba:

Cuba had withstood many tests, and continued to uphold the principles of objectivity, impartiality and independence in pursuance of the realisation of human rights. Cuba was and remained a good example of the respect for human rights, including economic, social and cultural rights. The Universal Periodic Review of Cuba clearly reflected the progress made by Cuba and the Cuban people in the protection and promotion of human rights, and showed the constructive and responsive answer of Cuba to the situation of human rights. Cuba was the victim of an unjust embargo, but despite this obstacle, it was very active in the field of human rights.

Really Bad Bill

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:21:16 +0000

I would like to say that Waxman-Markey (the recently passed house bill to make sure everyone has new clothes just like the Emperor’s) is one of the worst pieces of legislation ever, resulting from one of the worst legislative processes in memory. But I am not sure I can, with recent bills like TARP and the stimulus act to compete with. Nevertheless, it will be bad law if passed, a giant back door step towards creating a European-style corporate state. The folks over at NRO have read some of the bill (though probably not all) and have 50 low-lights. Read it all, it is impossible to excerpt — just one bad provision after another.

Bruce McQuain focuses on the building inspection angle (for the first time the feds are really diving into building codes and inspections, poaching on what typically is state and local turf (just find that in your handy pocket Constitution’s enumerated powers).

And Waxman-Markey is indeed a “green-job creator” of a bill – it creates an entirely new job category – Federal House Inspector. Yes, that’s right, in order to sell your house in the future you must passed a federal housing inspection which will certify your home has the minimal energy rating necessary. And if not, you’ll be required to bring it up to par by replacing appliances (water heaters, air conditioning, etc) or repairing (leaky windows, etc) whatever the inspector finds before you can put it on the market.

Have a candelabra in your dining room? Don’t you dare put any more than a 60 watt bulb in there. You need to also bone up on what you’ll be allowed to do with outdoor lighting, water dispensers, hot tubs and other appliances, not to mention wood burning stoves and water usage.

Oh, and don’t forget the installation and siting of shade trees, for which it appears a new bureaucracy is being created. No kidding, read his post. He has the text from the bill.

Is It OK To Laugh At Your Kid?

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:31:40 +0000

Today I dropped my son off in England for summer school. As background you need to know that he has lived in brand-new-out-of-the-shrinkwrap American suburbs all of his life. So it was funny to me to see the look on his face when he was told at the college that his dorm room elevator was broken and might not be fixed for at least a month. The “WTF?” look was priceless. I could see him thinking that a one hour outage of infrastructure would be something to comment on back home, but a month??

But the really funny part was when the Dean asked him to check his rooming envelope to see his room number, and he realized the implication of the three digit number that started with “7.” As with most teenage boys, he wanted me gone anyway ASAP, and I was happy to leave him to his independence and avoid the trudge up to his room. After I left, he still had a small voyage of discovery as he learns that “floor 7″ in England is actually euqivilent to “floor 8″ in the US.

My Cynical Reaction

admin — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:37:56 +0000

Far be it for me to interpret actions by politicians cynically. There is a lot of analysis about why Sarah Palin resigned. I don’t know anything more than most, but here is what I told a friend way back in December:

Sarah Palin should resign now and go on the speaking / pundit circuit. She is currently in the midst of her 15 minutes of fame and before it passes, she should jump on the opportunity. In particular, there are all kinds of conservative business execs who will fork out $75,000 a pop to have Palin speak at corporate functions, sales conferences, etc. This is not even to mention however much Fox is willing to pay her to be a talking head.

High Speed Rail Update

admin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:10:41 +0000

I took the Eurostar high-speed train from London to Paris and back today. It was cool going from London to Paris in 2 hours, particularly when I am not one of the taxpayers who get socked with the subsidies. A couple of thoughts:

1. The investment for true high speed rail is simply staggering. The dedicated track, the complete elimination of all grade crossings, the fences, the terminal facilities (St Pancras had a beautiful but obviously pricey makeover, for example), the trains — its hard to even imagine the cost, and one quickly becomes convinced high speed rail advocates are either sandbagging the cost or not really talking about true high speed rail.

2. This moring, my son and I were the only passengers in our car! Even on Friday afternoon, the busiest time (everyone is coming back home for the weekend), a third of the seats were empty. I am not sure this thing could make a go of it at 100% capacity but surely it is taking a batch at this utilization.

The $187,500 Government Hit on My Business

admin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:59:52 +0000

I have suspected that this was coming, but I guess I have just buried my head in the sand, knowing that I would be taking a complete screwing and not wishing to contemplate it.

Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn., say their plan would preserve employer-sponsored insurance coverage and create an affordable public option for those who need it….

The bill includes a “pay or play” provision that would require employers to provide adequate coverage for their workers or subsidize a system that will.

“Pay or play” would require companies to pay the government $750 per full-time worker per year ($375 for part-timers) if they don’t offer health coverage, or if they offer “qualified” coverage but pay less than 60% of workers’ premiums. Small businesses that employ fewer than 25 workers would be exempt. (Via Q&O)

I run a recreation business with about 500 part-time, seasonal employees. Most of them work for the equivilent of about 1/4 of a year, or about 500 hours. Almost all are over 70, and already on Medicare and Social Security, so we have no health plan (no way to get a reasonable plan anyway for a bunch of 70 year olds).

Adding up the numbers, this turns into $187,500 bill I would have to pay to the government for not providing health care to people who already mostly have health care. I will pay 1/2 the full time rate despite my employees working far less than 1/2 of the year.

One thing you can be sure of — this may be the final death of my current human resources model. We typically hire more people, working fewer than 40 hours, because retired folks don’t generally want to (or can’t) work a full week. That’s been OK, because 4 people working 10 hours a week has always cost me the same as 1 person working 40 hours. But if I am getting charged $375 per worker whether she/he works 1 hour or 1000, you can bet I am going to hire fewer workers for longer hours. There are probably a myriad of other implicaitons for my business model, I just have not yet thought it through.