Left is the New Right

I've been thinking about this for a long time, but now that I have to take the subway to and from work every day it's become just too much. New Yorkers are weird, and apparently left is the new right.

Scenario: I'm walking down the street and spot a Duane Reade (basically Walgreens for New Yorkers). It has two door next to each other. I reach for the one on the right. After all, people in America tend to drive on the right, are right handed, and think that the political left is bad. But as I walk through the door I collide with someone exiting. After an apology and some sidestepping, I turn around and see that the left door is actually the one marked Enter and the one I just walked through Exit. Maybe it has to do with the proximity to the checkout area, you say? Well, you'd be wrong - the checkout is right next to the Enter door. That's weird.

But it's everywhere in New York. Every Duane Reade with two doors is set up like this. Sometimes it makes sense because of the position of the checkout area, sometimes it doesn't. I walked into a Staples (I'll do some advertising here while I'm writing) and it was the same thing. It's confusing, and I keep bumping into people because of it.

The worst part is that it is starting to come into play in other parts of New York. Thankfully, drivers still drive on the right. And large swarms of people stay to the right. But the flow of things is consistently opposite what it should be. Case in point: every day I want through the underground tunnel connecting the 42nd Street subway station with the Times Square subway station. It's narrow and it's hot, but it gets the job done. The stream of foot traffic sticks works just like a road in that the flow stays to the right. But the faster lane isn't in the middle (the left), it's all the way against the wall to the right. It bothers me. It shouldn't, but it does. Every day for 10 minutes I have to go through this primitive traffic design, and with all the body odor floating around and no airflow it just drives me nuts.

So if you live in New York and do things on the right side, from eating to driving, be cool and be the first to start doing it on the left side. It's the hip thing to do. Bikes are already going against traffic everywhere in Manhattan. See what you can come up with!

The Smartphone has Taken Over

You already knew that, but now the rest of the world knows, too!

While scrolling through Google News today I came across an interesting article. I thought it couldn't be true. Surely dumbphones weren't more popular than smart phones just a year ago! But that's the case. I guess it comes with living as an upper-middle class white kid that has always been around academic institutions and all those young trendsetters, but I really thought that smartphones had been beating out dumbphones for some time now. Well, now it's official. No longer is a phone about just talking and texting, it's about playing games and surfing the web and taking notes. The smartphone is one of the greatest inventions ever, and it looks like it's here to stay.

Competitive Baseball Nerd

I've spent enough time thinking and reading about baseball in my life to write a book. Several books. Or an almanac. When people say things like "student of the game," it usually only means the athlete is capable of having conversations about their sport. It's not a particular honor to be called a student of the game, but I'm going to call myself that. I'm a student of the game in a much more literal sense.

I study baseball. I study the crap out of it. And I'm very competitive, like I'm fighting for medical school. If someone knows something I don't, I have to know it. I have to know how they know about it. And then the next time that thing, whatever it may be, comes up, I'll know about it. And I'll know it better than the person that showed me.

But like any other competitive person, it's not just other people that drive me. It's myself. I need to have the advantage before someone comes up to talk to me. I need to know exactly what the linear weights behind wRC+ mean. I need to know why they're linear and not some other, non-linear model. I need to know why I would choose to use FIP, xFIP, or SIERA over other forms of pitching evaluation. I compete with myself - I need to know more than I do. I suppose that's what could constitute an addiction or obsession, but I'm pretty happy with what I've learned so far. And happiness is good, so I'll stick with it.