Via Cafe Hayek, Allen R. Sanderson looks at how soccer is structured to explain why the World is passionate about the game and why the USA doesn't get it. I don't have time to think about how to reply to the article. Let's just say that someone who describes the World Cup final as a "2+ hour ordeal" is not likely to be favorably disposed.\

Throughout the entire 2+ hour ordeal, I kept asking myself: Why would anyone waste good time or money watching this sport? Ignoring for a moment the lack of scoring, the ubiquitous flops that would make an NBA player jealous or incredulous, and "unnatural acts" such as not being able to touch the ball with your hands or arms, I began to apply basic economic principles to the sport, and tried to understand why 6 billion people, including my graduate teaching assistants from Milan, Rio and Barcelona, seem to care passionately and a few hundred million, mainly in the United States, don't.\

I'll boild down his arguments here:

1. USA sports are structured to reward effort. He argues that soccer too often does not reward the better team, and Americans do not like that. So results to the untraied eye appear random or capricious. Certainly, theis past World Cup saw far too many games decided by dives, gamesmanship, and referees. But the appeal to me is seeing an underdog team who gets the lucky breaks and upsets the favored teams. This seems to happen more often in soccer, which is fine by me. Apparently, this is in cosistent with "European sensibilities about equality, risk-taking and economic outcomes." while "there are clearly some Americans who are uncomfortable with competitions that produce winners and losers, and soccer appeals to their egalitarian, risk-averse streak" So, American soccer fans like soccer because we don't want to see winners and losers? What universe does that make sense in?\
2. USA sports are tilted to favor talent and performance. Home field advantage, seeding, and others mechanisms are built into American competitons because US fans want to see the beter teasm win. I guess here he was unaware of how the World Cup was seeded so that the bigger teams don't face each other until the knockout stages. I'd agree with his point in this section that Soccer needs to look at technological (instant-replay) and human (more referees on the field/in the stands) to cut down on the tremendous effect that a dive or single referee can have on the outcome.
3. Americans protect their heads. Not sure how this is a relevant argument, but apparently in the US we like our sports to protect our big, dumb brains.
4. Americans want to use their hands, anything else is unnatural. This argument has been so overused that its not worth addressing. This non-use of hands leads to a more constrained competition. This is flatly untrue, since you can't protect the ball with your hands, this leads to more changes in possesion. The artistry of dribbling and controlling the ball through traffic is what makes players into superstars and national heroes. Oh yes, we should also allow more stoppages for more advertising - three fifteen minute periods. Remind me why I don't watch American Football, Basketball, or Baseball again?\

So I promised not to respond, but then ran into the usual criticism of why Soccer and why American's don't get it. Clearly despite the fact that there are Americans who do get it. The ratings in the USA for the World Cup final were up there with the ratings for the World Series and NBA. Finals. I don't care if you don't like soccer, I'm over trying to convert everyone. Just don't try to unconvert us or convince us that somehow your position is more American or rational.\

So, if you're a leet php coder, you must have installed Smarty since it gives you a three-tier web application and separates your display logic from your business logic. Right? Maybe not. Just using a template system doesn't guarantee any of this, so don't let yourself be deceived in this way.

Before I go further, I'll confess that I don't particularly see the point of adding a templating pseudo-language on top of php, which is from the beginning a templating language. But, I recently started using the Savant templating system on my projects. Am I crazy or hypocritical? No, I installed it because a templating system can help you be disciplined about keeping your view and business logic separate and easily manage and change how your web application looks.\

What did I run into today that triggered this post? I began debugging an application where something in an input form wasn't working correctly. There were 3 different types of data that this form could potentially update, but instead of having one input template for each mode, I found one template with a lot of ifs throughout to handle the different modalities. Obviously, a maintenance nightmare and it adds uneccesary complexity if any one input form is supposed to change independent of the others in the future.\

So, practice safe templating. More about why templates are evil:

• Smarty is on my evil list - good discussion in comments
• Templates Good or Evil?
• Sitepoing Blogs - Savant Template
• See the Savant2 site for why I chose to try it out.\

Jason says that the most interesting announcement from Apple today was the inclusion of a calendar server based on iCal. As Sandy points out in Jason's comments, Apple will also make the code available under the Open Source Apache 2.0 license. While there have been other attempts to make group calendaring for those of us who don't need it or really use it, one that's centered on the iCal format may just work, given its relative ubiquity. There are other calendaring standards being hashed out, like CalDAV, but none in use. The 2-ton gorilla in this space is still Exchange, with its closed, proprietary application that works only with Exchange.

Other open source calendaring options include Scalix server and Zimbra, both provide community editions for free and special connectors for Outlook users. Scalix even works with Evolution, so I've been told, but I haven't installed that yet. We've switched to Scalix at work and all the managers seem happy enough that they can set up meetings directly in people's calendars and don't have to go through the pain of coordinating schedules over email. I guess its the nature of my work that I never saw the productivity gain from a shared scheduling application. A simple calendar is usually good enough for me.

I need to go in and at least put in my telecommuting days in there to remind people that I work from home. On a side note, I've been telecommuting every Wednesday for well on three years now. I understand being surprised when I show up at work in the middle of the week but not the other way around. But, it did give me a chance to make people walk over to my desk when I wasn't there, and that'd usually make Sandy laugh too. Good times ...\

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