Farewell, Grantland

This past Friday, news came out that ESPN would be shutting down the sports and pop culture website Grantland.com, effectively immediately. The site, with its "free flowing" content that "occasionally touche[d] on mature subjects," was known for its overly long columns. In hind sight, they weren't nearly long enough. Though this announcement Read more [...]

Original Soundtrack

Last weekend I went to the movies, for the first time in a long time, to peep the new drug-trade thriller Sicario, directed by Denis Villeneuve. It was enjoyable for a slew of reasons—the cast, the action-driven plot, and the beautiful desert settings. However, I found myself most intrigued by the film’s soundtrack. (Editors note: I realize Read more [...]

Infobesity: The Future of Sports Analytics

By the start of this upcoming NBA season, up to 20 teams will be employing wearable GPS devices created by the company Catapult, which will track player biometric data in real time. The championship Warriors were one of a number of teams to have used such devices already last season. The device, or variants on the theme, have already been employed Read more [...]

Into the Abyss

More than two years ago, I wrote a blogcat about the SyFy channel. You can read the original here. I gave that article the title the "uncanny valley," after a well-known psychological phenomenon, describing the revulsion people tend to feel when they see something that almost-but-not-quite-perfectly mimics a human being (like creepy animatronics). Read more [...]

Play or Get Played

It is my opinion that The Wire is the greatest show in the history of television. Obviously I have not watched every show ever, so I suppose I can't know for sure, but I have watched and read about my fair share of TV, and I'm certainly not the only one to hold this belief. I just feel that when you combine its exactness, authenticity, humor, drama, Read more [...]

NogFest Analysis: Individual Games

This Blogcat is the third and final chapter in my analysis of NogFest, a Pong tournament hosted by my friend Nog during the last weekend of May this year. If you need to get caught up on Part 1 (which focuses on the merits of shooting vs. serving) or Part 2 (which breaks down tournament-long player performance ), I encourage you to do so. Today's Read more [...]

NogFest Analysis: Player Performance

This Blogcat is a continuation of some posts I've previously written regarding my fraternity's game of Pong: The Brother Pi Breakdown Pong II: Advanced Analytics DKE Pong Rules & Regulations Don't Doobie To bring everyone on the same page: at the end of May, my friend Nog hosted a Pong tournament called NogFest, with 9 different teams Read more [...]

Don’t Doobie

Apologies again to all non-frat readers; these next blogcats are going to concentrate heavily (i.e., entirely) on pong. Also, yes, I’m aware I take this way too seriously. Never played pong before? Or just played a bit, and it’s been awhile? Well, if you want to get scrubbed in on the rules so you can follow what’s going on in my previous, Read more [...]

DKE Pong Rules & Regulations

As I've made painfully clear in a number of this website's columns, my fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, plays Beer Pong. Regulation games are played to 21 points, between 2 teams of 2 players on a ping-pong-sized, wooden, metal-trimmed table using four wooden-block paddles, four plastic cups of beer, a wooden dividing "net," and an orange 3-Star Read more [...]

Zion Bible Institute (Part 2)

If you haven't read Part 1, you can find it here. As mentioned in Part 1, the pictures in these articles are only a small sample of the pictures I took on site. You can view the rest of them here. While walking around the courtyard behind Belton Court, I found an open window. Clearly the egress point for whoever had last been inside the building; Read more [...]