Hitchens on Orwell on making proper tea. I agree. Also, there’s nothing wrong with some skim milk in hot tea.
– Rich Rodriguez is not dead… yet. If Rodriguez does go, I think, assuming Harbaugh said no, that RichRod would have been safe if not for the disastrous bowl game. But that happened, and Rich Rod is still likely out. Pete Thamel has a (slightly) premature post mortem on the Michigan program.
– More on risk and variance being the ally of the underdog in sports. Very good link, though see also here and here and here for prior work done on this. The upshot is that big underdogs wants higher variance in outcomes, even if it might reduce their overall expected output — i.e. they need to increase the “fat tails” on their chance of winning, even if they might be more likely to get blown out. The practical application of this in football is tricky, as you both need to shorten the game and increase the variance of your offensive output (i.e. get more aggressive). Due to arbitrary choices in how the game clock works, these two things, to an extent, work against each other. I think the question on defense is much tougher, and I do not think more blitzing is necessarily the answer.
– Gravity and Levity suggests installing “dosimeters” in NFL players’ helmets to measure cumulative blows to the head.