Nike LunarTempo

After only 39 miles, the shoe on the right isn't looking so vertical.

No obvious signs of collapse along the medial edge though.  Hmmm....

Brock Holt - Too Valuable to Start

Baseball is a funny game. On one hand, it seems very simple. Throw ball, hit ball, catch ball.  But part of the allure of the game is how complex the game actually is under that surface.

This came to mind yet again as I read Over the Monster's article What needs to happen for Brock Holt to play full-time for the Red Sox? The main point of the article is that the same thing that makes Holt valuable to the Sox – his above average versatility – will prevent him from being a starter. As Matt Collins writes:

Last season was his coming out party to the league, and he played almost literally everywhere. He logged 327 innings at third, 264-2/3 in right, 101 at short, 74 at second, 57-2/3 in center, 70-1/3 at first and 60 in left. He joined Denny Hocking as the only players since 1914 to play at least eight games at each position besides pitcher and catcher. One would think that would be enough to earn an everyday role somewhere, but on this team, Holt might be too valuable on the bench to have a consistent spot in the lineup.

This seems counter intuitive until you dive into the logic. As Collins details, in every position on the field, the Sox have better options then Holt at each single position, both as a starter and as a backup, but nobody that's a better option for ALL of the positions. (Catcher and Pitcher excluded, of course, but honestly i'd like to see Holt give those a go as well.) Holt's value as a backup extraordinaire outweighs his value at any single position. Bizarre. But at the end of the day, we're lucky to have a player like him - I have no doubt he'll prove his worth many times over the course of the season.

Cross Posted on Thought Ambience

Washington DC Spring Run

Washington DC snow run

Review of David Mitchell's "The Bone Clocks"

David Mitchell is a smart man. He’s written six novels, and like any good postmodernist, all of them have both small and large connections with each other. (More astute readers than I have found them all – check out this Good Reads review for a summary.) Decrypting these puzzling connections both within and between his books, and pondering what they mean, is a lot of the fun of reading Mitchell. And unlike, say, the puzzles of Christopher Nolan’s films, where amazing characterization –being caught in another’s thoughts and voice IS the meaning – Mitchell strives for more. His last book, The Bone Clocks, just leaves me wondering just what exactly that more is.

The hyper connectedness of his novels hints at some kind of vague spirituality, of a (benevolent?) energy making order out of the universe’s chaos. It’s what seemed to be behind the various reincarnations of the characters in Cloud Atlas, for example. But in TBC the connections are revealed to not be the result of a mysteriously divine process, or even the whims of an obscure deity; rather it’s a shadow society of supernatural beings. And, naturally, there’s a good group and an evil group of these characters. Make no doubt about it, by the 3rd quarter of the book, Mitchell has fully embraced fantasy. At first I thought Mitchell might be writing a parody, but no: the TBC is in earnest, writing about astral battles with the same conviction and energy as the “real world.” He even comes up with his own obscure and confusing terminology (Horologists! Anchorites! Psychosoterica!). And while an author like Thomas Pynchon might play with the genre to make it serve his own purposes, creating an ironic detachment while commenting on the meaning of it all, Mitchell makes it the driving force of his story.

I found this approach to be reductive and unsatisfying, taking away the power of what came before. By reducing the hints of a larger pattern to the universe in favor of good vs. evil, it abdicates the field he set up by reframing it midway through the game. And I write this as a fan of fantasy novels, one who believes that, say , Neil Gaiman or Ursula LeGuin have a lot of meaningful things to say about our world. So fantasy is not in and of itself a bad thing. So why does Mitchell’s fantasy not work for me while others do? I suspect it’s because authors like Gaiman and LeGuin present those elements of their stories from the beginning, and so you’re on constant footing throughout.  But when Mitchell, who has written so insightfully and beautifully about the nature of reality and our perceptions of it, introduces fantastic elements into an interconnected world previously without it, – well, I felt let down. Like he belittled what came before it.  (Which is a funny thing to say about a book like Cloud Atlas that did include SciFi and Fantasy elements, but I felt the two books dealt with it differently.)

Now, all of this isn't to say that TBC is not an excellent book. On the contrary, the novel contains the same furiously addictive prose, the excellent characterization, diving into motivation, seamless weaving of historical events and trends into the plot as the best of his work. I was thoroughly entertained. But by the end of the book, the edge was taken away. In the final section, I never was too concerned with Holly and her children, despite the mounting tension and danger – you just KNEW Marinus would appear and save the day. And my ambivalence of TBC stems from my mourning of that mystery. I’m curious to see if he continues the fantasy in his next book, supposedly “set in the same universe” as The Bone Clocks. Because regardless of what I've written above, he’s still one of the best authors writing today. I can’t wait for more.

Cross Posted on Thought Ambience

DC Winter Running - Tidal Basin

Japan Trail Running Pictures

On the last day of 2014, I went running in the mountains of Tanzawa-Oyama Quasi-National Park.  The first bus to Okura arrived at 7:00 AM, just after dawn.   From there, a 4-mile trail ascended 3,800+ feet to the summit of Mt. Tonodake. Next, it was out and back to the higher summit of Mt. Tanzawa.  This stretch of trail provided the most amazing views of the day.  After lunch in the hut at Tonodake, the next destination was Mt. Sannoto to the east.  While the elevation changes along the ridge line were less intense, the trail was filled with shoe sucking mud, broken up by technical rocky sections.  After descending to Yabitsu Pass, there was just enough sunlight left to make the summit of Mt. Oyama, and then down the mountain to the lower shrine of Afuri Jinja.  Strava records the run as being 15.4 miles with 8,356 feet of elevation gain.  Pictures below.