Bravo for Boasting

Good for him. It's about time someone did some boasting.

Him is Matt Kemp, an outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The boasting is his prediction that he will, this year, become the first person ever to hit 50 home runs and get 50 stolen bases in the same season.

That's quite a boast, which is, I say, good for him.

If he does it, he will surpass A-Rod, who has come closest (42 HR, 46 SB in 1998). But, in my mind, Kemp (who hit 39 homers had 40 SBs in 2011) will far surpass most of the rest of the baseball fraternity, simply by stating his goal and not couching it in some sort of vague language that is all too often the butt of jokes in sporting newsrooms: "We just take it one game at a time," "We still have a lot of work to do," "I'm just happy to be part of a team," etc.

The common mythical wisdom is that one player's boasts will end up plastered all over the other team's players' lockers, providing motivation to show up the boaster by beating his team soundly and thoroughly. And although I will admit that that can and does happen, I am of the firm belief that it is not at all the prime mover anymore that it used to be. 

Today's professional athletes are, well, professional. They want to get bigger and better contracts, so they are motivated to go out every day and excel, no matter who the opponents are and no matter what those opponents have said beforehand.

It is certainly the case that some players get pumped up more for certain games and certain rivalries; but even in those instances, an entire team doesn't perform at a monumentally high level, no matter what kind of messages are posted on their lockers. Especially in a team sport, it is extremely for the entire team to perform at a very high level for an entire contest, let alone an entire week or month or season. It just doesn't happen, even in the shortest of professional seasons.

If Matt Kemp wants to tell the world that he's going to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases, then by all means let's allow him to do that. If he does it, that's great, he's in the record books. If he doesn't do it, then that's fine as well because he will be proved, for this season again at least, the great-but-not-superhuman player that he is.

This sports fan, at least, won't be chastising him for making such a bold prediction. It's a welcome change from the traditional drivel that gets uttered all too often these days still.

Rejected: Hoop Dreams Dashed by Waiting Too Long to Shoot

For the record, I'm not a basketball player. I dabbled in it a bit when I was younger, but I certainly didn't play it in college or as a professional. But I am a fan, having watched more than my fair share of basketball over the years, and I think this guy is on to something.

This guy is a physics researcher at a certain Midwestern university. This guy has recently published a paper detailing the results of a crunch-the-numbers study he did focusing on NBA players and the shots that they take at the end of the game. Specifically, this guy wanted to know if the players were waiting long enough or too long or not long enough before taking that final shot, with the game on the line. (Obviously, we're talking about game-winners here, not a 10-point lead.)

It's a balancing act, of course, between the need to take or defend the lead and the need to keep the other team from getting the ball. If your team has the ball and is ahead, then you probably want to hold the ball as long as you can, to defend the lead. The NBA and college games have a shot clock, though, so the Four Corners offense is not an option. Still, you want to take some time off the clock, so the opposing team doesn't have forever and a day to set up a dynamite play that will result in the winning shot.

It's a more straightforward proposition when your team is behind in the scoring: Your team has to score or they lose. That tends to up the ante a bit, but the tendency is still there to dawdle, as it were, running time off the clock to ensure that if it's not literally the last shot, it's the last effective shot.

But such play has a price, and it is this: The more the time remaining wanes, the more intensity the defensive team shows and the more pressure is on the team with the ball, even if they have the lead. With the game on the line, players on defense pick up their tired arms, pick up the speed of their footfalls, and elevate their minds and bodies in a surge of victory-fueled adrenaline. Thus, as the final buzzer gets closer, it actually gets harder for the team with the ball. Nearly every basketball arena has at least two massive play clocks now, so the players all know how much time is left in the game. 

Little time remaining leaves little room for error, exacerbating an already growing squeeze by the suddenly energized defensive team; as such, it can actually be harder for the team with the ball to get a decent shot off because they've little or no time for Plan B. 

It's all well and good to draw up the perfect play and execute it to perfection, but the ball still has to go in the hoop (if you're behind). Somebody still has to make a shot. The less time the team has, the harder the shot is to hit because the player will subconsciously put pressure on himself or herself, and that's even more of an obstacle. And if you miss, you have to get the rebound, reset, and go through it all again — or else you get a wild shot off the rebound and you're still stuck with too little time.

It would be far better, in this writer's opinion, for the team with the intention of scoring to make sure that they get one or two good looks and actually make the basket, ensuring the lead, rather than trying to run out the clock, and then end up running out of time for anything but a desperation shot. After all, once you have the lead, the other team still has to score in order to tie or go ahead. Then, the pressure is on them.

It's a bit more straightforward if you have the lead and the ball, since you can run the clock all the way down without scoring at all, although again the preference should always beto score, since that increases the lead, in some cases putting it out of reach.

Anyway, back to this guy. So he crunched a lot of numbers and adapted a lot of formulas and produced a lot of graphs and made a lot of words and numbers out of the hypothesis that there is indeed a "waited too long" threshold. His calculations convinced him that NBA players who wait too long cost their teams an average of 4.5 points a game. And in some cases, those 4.5 points are the difference between a win and a loss.

Basketball features no such 4.5-point shot, of course, so you have to remember that that figure is the result of a lot of number-crunching and that other results were 1 point, 2 points, 8 points, etc. It's an average, the result of statistical analysis, but it points to a trend, which is that players are holding on to the ball a bit too long and, in some cases, their (in)actions are costing their teams wins.

If you want to read the whole thing, it's here. 

I'm going with my gut: shoot the ball already, and play good defense. It's the only way to score.

Legos Go Clean, Green

Eco-friendly Legos? Why not?

They're called Earth Blocks, and they're made of such usual suspects as tree bark and cedar dust and more exotic materials like green tea and — wait for it — coffee beans.

Yes, these new-age toys are made from natural materials, with the slight exception of the tiny bit of polyprolene used to keep all the bits together. You won't find a wide variety of colors, as in traditional Lego pieces, because these Earth Blocks are the same color as their elements. A bonus is that they smell a bit like what they're made of — so the coffee beans will be a special treat for those who are never too far from needing a caffeine fix.

You'll have to careful to keep these Earth Blocks away from liquids, like water or spilled juice and the like. That's one element that might make them not the perfect toy for the very young. 

And the shapes are a bit limited, given today's propensity for multi-shape building blocks, although those of us who grew up with nothing but the traditional shapes will feel right at home.

All in all, an eco-friend's dream come true for sustainable toys. As with other such options, however, you'll pay a bit more: $27 for 50 blocks. That's a lesson of a different kind for the young ones.

Small Spanish Village Wins $950 Million Lotto

Computers were made for such things: What are the odds of an entire village winning the same lottery prize?

Yet that's exactly what happened in Sodeto, Spain, where the residents entered the annual nationwide lottery and won. The prize for "El Gordo" was $950 million, and the distribution, after the government took its chunk, ended up being the equivalent of $130,000 for each winning ticket bought by residents of the planned community in the northern part of the country. Some people bought a handful of tickets and so got more money than their neighbors did, but all seem to be taking the good fortune in stride.

Sodeto, which has been around only since 1950, has an agricultural focus and is not exactly where you would expect to find a whole lot of commercial activity going on. But that is what is happening, as word spreads of the village's winnings.

The population is only a couple hundred these days, but you wouldn't know it by glancing around town. Salesmen and bankers have descended on the town, offering deals surely being described as "historic" and "too good to pass up."

The one disappointing result, if it could be called that, is that one member of the community didn't buy a ticket that day. Not to be outdone, the one non-winning man promptly sold some land to a neighbor who was among the winners. He wasn't too upset about not winning the money, apparently.

Creepy, Crawly Adaptability: Spider Webs Get Tough and Tougher

When I was much younger, I was afraid of spiders. I suppose that's true of many kids. Some spiders, after all, can kill you. 

It wasn't so much the logical fear that got me, though. No, I was afraid of a movie spider. My brother took great delight in reminding me just how terrifying that giant spider in that B-movie really was. (I think it was a tarantula. I think the movie might have been titled Tarantula.)

To me, the fact that that giant spiders was getting the better of humans for the better part of a two-hour movie was enough to convince me that spiders were smarter than people. (Remember, I'm much younger in this scenario.) All these years later, I remember the movie (vaguely) but don't dwell on the fear (much).

Now comes word that the stuff that spiders spin is itself smart. Imagine the horrors that could descend on the imaginations of a generations of youngsters!

We already know that, irritatingly, spider webs can withstand the kind of gale-force winds and heavy rain that bring down trees and power lines. The strands of the web can come together as one, protecting the spider in its element.

A study in Nature magazine asserts that the silk that makes up a spider's web is extremely adaptable, even under the most extraordinary of circumstances. Throw a rock through a big web (as we kids used to do) and you succeed in ripping apart some of the web, but the remaining strands stretch and then re-form, stronger than ever (again with the nightmare scenario!). Further, the scientists found that removing up to one-tenth of the threads at a spread of locations around an established spider web resulted in the web's ability to carry even more weight (up to 10 percent) than before.

By the way, no arachnids were harmed in the completion of this study. The scientists used computer models and unpopulated natural webs.

The idea is a simple one, really, and it also, assert the scientists behind the study, can have crossover implications for the construction of manmade materials. (Imagine something made out of steel that would work the way a spider web works — giving under certain pressure but able overall to sustain what would otherwise be a crushing blow).

This could be quite exciting, really, for the various construction industries, if the people doing the theorizing and the testing can get past their spider-induced fears. About the only way I could do it would be to substitute Spider-Man for spider in the paperwork. At least that would let me sleep at night.