If mirrorballs are anything, they’re many things masquerading as one thing. And if all goes to plan, this Mirrorball will be no different.
Practically, this Mirrorball is a new name for the Blog formerly known as The 1001.
Spiritually, this Mirrorball is Alex Turner’s wish as my command.
Memetically, this Mirrorball is Moneyball in reverse.
We need models of the past to understand the present, and models of the present to predict the future. Moneyball is the story of sporting decision makers making better decisions after they got religion and let themselves learn from analytical models of their games, models often born far afield in finance and suchlike before being given new life by blogosphere passion projects.
We can have all sorts of fun picking apart sport’s rigour and its glorious randomness. Its competitions and complex collaborations. Its regulations and unwritten rules. Its ingenious and idiotic strategies. And while we’re at it, we can increase our chances of improving the outcomes that matter most.
Auctioning off a month (or three) of naming rights to the Blog earned £1001 for GiveWell’s top charities. That’s the best part of seven years of an infant’s life to you and me, at £150 a pop. That would have been worth me living a lot longer with a given name a lot worse than The 1001. That name, though, for all that I became very attached to it, and despite my best efforts retrofitting its origin story, had the fatal flaw of not telling anybody anything about what the Blog’s about.
The renaming process was art and science. Art: writing down as many sporting terms as one man’s mind can conjure and free associating from there, producing a list more than 230 names long. Science: developing a scoring rubric and assigning points for legibility, territory, tone, thesis, and, of course, layers, producing a top tier of half a dozen. Philosophy: staring at the top tier long enough that name by name each reveals itself to be intolerable, all bar one, and that’s a bingo.
Come for a swift half or two in the new clubhouse (www.mirrorball.blog), stay after hours for the same old yarns about how, if you look at it right, sport really is a matter of life and death.
There’d better be a Mirrorball
Crossposted from Mirrorball, the EA sports blog.
If mirrorballs are anything, they’re many things masquerading as one thing. And if all goes to plan, this Mirrorball will be no different.
Practically, this Mirrorball is a new name for the Blog formerly known as The 1001.
Spiritually, this Mirrorball is Alex Turner’s wish as my command.
Memetically, this Mirrorball is Moneyball in reverse.
We need models of the past to understand the present, and models of the present to predict the future. Moneyball is the story of sporting decision makers making better decisions after they got religion and let themselves learn from analytical models of their games, models often born far afield in finance and suchlike before being given new life by blogosphere passion projects.
According to me, sport actually is the most important of the least important things because it’s itself a model of “real life”. Being right is not enough. Everything’s a tradeoff. Success is a mess.
We can have all sorts of fun picking apart sport’s rigour and its glorious randomness. Its competitions and complex collaborations. Its regulations and unwritten rules. Its ingenious and idiotic strategies. And while we’re at it, we can increase our chances of improving the outcomes that matter most.
Auctioning off a month (or three) of naming rights to the Blog earned £1001 for GiveWell’s top charities. That’s the best part of seven years of an infant’s life to you and me, at £150 a pop. That would have been worth me living a lot longer with a given name a lot worse than The 1001. That name, though, for all that I became very attached to it, and despite my best efforts retrofitting its origin story, had the fatal flaw of not telling anybody anything about what the Blog’s about.
The renaming process was art and science. Art: writing down as many sporting terms as one man’s mind can conjure and free associating from there, producing a list more than 230 names long. Science: developing a scoring rubric and assigning points for legibility, territory, tone, thesis, and, of course, layers, producing a top tier of half a dozen. Philosophy: staring at the top tier long enough that name by name each reveals itself to be intolerable, all bar one, and that’s a bingo.
Come for a swift half or two in the new clubhouse (www.mirrorball.blog), stay after hours for the same old yarns about how, if you look at it right, sport really is a matter of life and death.
And the dancing. Stay for the dancing.
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