The Finger Points Outwards - No. 40: The "Other" Wooden Finger

Turns out there is a band called 'Wooden Finger' that, in an act that was equal parts narcissism and boredom, I found when I typed 'wooden finger' into Google and they came up first. (How rude!)

I had a listen to them over on Myspace. How to describe them? Well their Myspace page describes them as "folk", "indie", "Americana", "shoegaze", "classical/baroque to bluesgrass/folk", and "Southern gothic indie folk". From my cursory listen I would say that last description is the most accurate. It also pretty well describes their band photo:

They also have a logo of a wooden finger! Why haven't I done that yet? Well, probably because they're more serious and passionate about their music than I am about this blog. Still, I may have to look into this ... maybe I can persuade Ms Wheatley and her graphicy-design-magic to come up with something for me.

Anyway, from one finger to another, give Wooden Finger and their 'Southern gothic indie folk' a try.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 5 2012

The big development in this week's rankings is the Sydney Swans jumping from eighth to fifth - yes, even above Collingwood - after comfortably beating Hawthorn on the weekend. They're still a bit away from the top four, but they've closed the gap considerably in the past two weeks.

Meanwhile in the bottom half of the rankings Fremantle has significantly improved their standing so far this season. Could it be that Ross Lyon is one of those coaches who actually has a considerable impact on his team's performance? Possibly, given that St. Kilda - the team he left - has gone backwards so far. Or could it just be that the Dockers have regained a few of their better players? Or maybe it's just natural improvement? Whatever it is I'm feeling less certain about my bet that the Dockers would win less than 11 1/2 games this season.

1 (1) Geelong 35.9 (37.5)
2 (2) Carlton 29.9 (34.4)
3 (4) West Coast 27.7 (28.7)
4 (3) Hawthorn 26.2 (31.1)
5 (8) Sydney 16.2 (11.6)
6 (5) Collingwood 16.0 (20.4)
7 (6) St. Kilda 13.1 (14.7)
8 (7) North Melbourne 8.3 (11.8)
9 (9) Richmond -3.3 (-4.4)
10 (10) Essendon -3.5 (-6.3)
11 (12) Fremantle -7.8 (-9.6)
12 (11) Western Bulldogs -10.6 (-9.4)
13 (13) Brisbane -13.5 (-14.3)
14 (14) Adelaide -15.8 (-15.8)
15 (15) Port Adelaide -34.5 (-33.5)
16 (16) Melbourne -38.3 (-40.4)
17 (17) Gold Coast -49.5 (-52.1)
18 (18) Greater Western Sydney -55.5 (-55.3)

Is Andrew Bogut A Bust?

It kills me to even ask this question – Andrew Bogut seems like a nice bloke and has one of the best Twitter accounts of any athlete. When he first entered the NBA and basically came out and said that he was a far better player than three-time NBA champion Luc Longley – drawing scorn from outraged Aussies in the process – I just nodded my head in agreement. But has he actually lived up to the expectation of being a No.1 draft pick?

According to the NBA Geek website, Andrew Bogut has averaged 0.133 wins per 48 minutes over his career. What on earth does that mean? Well an average NBA player accumulates 0.100 wins per 48 minutes, so according to this metric Bogut has been better than the average player.

I find it easier to think about this if you look at Bogut’s stats compared to the average center. Bogut’s career true shooting percentage is 53.8 per cent, compared to 55.0 per cent for the average center, meaning that Bogut is not as efficient at scoring as the average center. (One comment I heard from a commentator was that watching Bogut shoot free throws right-handed he thought Bogut must be left-handed). However, Bogut is a better-than-average rebounder (13.7 rebounds per 48 minutes compared to 12.9 for the average center) and assist-maker (3.4 compared to 2.3).

But does one expect more from a number one pick than just being ‘better than average’? Bogut has produced 37 wins in his seven-year career. From 1977 to 2006 the average number of wins produced over the first four years of their careers by number one draft picks was 34.6 wins. This suggests Bogut is below average for a number one draft pick. However, this group includes very productive players such as Magic Johnson, Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan, LeBron James and Dwight Howard, who would all bring up the average wins produced. Hence, without doing the detailed calculations, Bogut may well have been better than the ‘median’ number one draft pick.

In summary then Bogut appears to be a better-than-average player who was an OK but not outstanding choice as a number one pick. Whether or not that should be considered as ‘being a bust’ is up to you.

The Avengers Movie Review

Since the age of eight I’ve been borderline-obsessed with Marvel’s comic book series ‘The Avengers’, as can be seen here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here. I’ve always liked the concept even when the stories sucked; a club of heroes kinda hanging out and taking on evil schemers and such. Naturally then I headed down to the first session on the first day of release to see the new Joss Whedon-directed flick – so what’s the verdict?  

Well the first thing to note is that it’s not really that much like ‘The Avengers’ comic book at all. It’s more reminiscent of Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s ‘The Ultimates’, a 2002 series that basically re-imagined the Avengers as a big-budget blockbuster. So like that series Nick Fury is black, Captain America uses a gun, Hawkeye and the Black Widow are black-ops agents, the Hulk is on the team, and the heroes are battling some alien race called the Chitauri. Given that ‘The Ultimates’ was arguably one of the best ‘Avengers’ stories ever though that’s not necessarily a bad move. Having said that there are some typically ‘Avengers’-like traits on show. The heroes don’t get along, the main villain is Thor’s brother Loki (who long-time Avengers fans will know was the very first villain the comic book version of the team faced), and it all ends in a huge battle in the middle of Manhattan, that perennial backdrop for destructive superhero fights.

The best Marvel movies to date – ‘Spider-Man’, ‘X-Men’ and ‘Iron Man’ – have taken the best elements out of the original comic books and tweaked them slightly to create their own modern style. ‘The Avengers’ movie does that to some extent, using the S.H.I.E.L.D. organisation to re-create the clubhouse feel, but also to inject some conspiracy and espionage – those tried and true tropes of modern TV and cinema – into the franchise. Frankly, having the heroes hang around in a mansion being served by a butler probably wasn’t going to cut it in 2012. It also makes the heroes – Captain America excepted, but that ends up being part of his charm – seem more worldly and less like Saturday morning animation figures.

Of the players Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man/Tony Stark is the obvious standout, and his presence helps to give the film some credibility and clout. Mark Ruffalo though is the best of the many Hulks to date, adding some wit and panache to Bruce Banner’s otherwise brooding existence. A scene with Ruffalo and Downey Jr. bonding over S.H.I.E.L.D’s highly-advanced technological toys is one of the movie’s understated highlights. Tom Hiddleston reprises his role from ‘Thor’ as Loki, but goes from regal pest to full-on chaos-bringer, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Still he remains the strongest of the Avengers-related villains to date (although the villain foreshadowed for the sequel after the credits roll gave me a goosebump or two). The other Avengers are all at least serviceable and do have their moments. Chris Evans portrays Cap as a sort of clueless jock who nevertheless knows how to take charge in an emergency, Chris Hemsworth is epically ham-irific as Thor and has a couple of nice interactions, and Scarlett Johansson holds her own alongside her more noticeably ‘super’ teammates. Only Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye kind of gets the short shrift, spending about half the flick as Loki’s mindless automaton.

Which is not to say it’s a complete home run however. For a two-and-a-half-hour long movie remarkably little seems to happen. There is character conflict, but as Ms Wheatley noted it doesn’t go too far beyond the ‘Biff! I’m tougher than you!’ variety. Still Joss Whedon does a decent job of balancing his cast, and I doubt there will be many viewers coming out feeling like they’ve been cheated. Although, now that I think of it, I don’t remember getting to hear the cry of ‘Avengers Assemble!’ at any point.   

Parklife v The Village Green Preservation Society

 

Image: lastfm

One album is the quintessential take on the malaise of modern inner-city British life … from 20 years ago. The other is the quintessential take on the malaise of modern inner-city British life … from 40 years ago … and which longs for a return to a 'simpler' life from 20 years before that. But which album – Blur’s ‘Parklife’ or the Kinks’ ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’ is the most wistful of the wistful, the Albionest of the Albionest? Taking our cue from the form guide on the back of ‘Parklife’, let’s do a side-by-side comparison of each album’s first 15 tracks (Lot 105 on ‘Parklife’ doesn’t count).   

‘Village Green’ comes out strong in the first half of the race, with big guns ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Big Sky’ flanked by steady pace-setters in ‘Picture Book’ and the opening track. But ‘Parklife’ comes home strong, rounding the bend with ‘To The End’, and blazing home with one of the greatest finishers ever, ‘This Is A Low’. ‘Parklife’ gets the win then by a nose and gets the honour of proudly waving the Union Jack at all those Yanks that don’t understand it. (It still lacks a song about a pudgy cat though.)   

AFL Power Rankings: Round 4 2012

Most of the top seven teams took a hit in their ranking points this week. This included sizable drops for the Cats, the Blues, the Pies and the Saints, meaning that Carlton couldn't grab the number one slot.

1 (1) Geelong 37.5 (42.2)
2 (2) Carlton 34.4 (39.7)
3 (3) Hawthorn 31.1 (30.8)
4 (4) West Coast 28.7 (29.3)
5 (5) Collingwood 20.4 (26.5)
6 (6) St. Kilda 14.7 (20.4)
7 (7) North Melbourne 11.8 (13.4)
8 (8) Sydney 11.6 (8.3)
9 (9) Richmond -4.4 (-7.6)
10 (11) Essendon -6.3 (-11.0)
11 (10) Western Bulldogs -9.4 (-8.6)
12 (12) Fremantle -9.6 (-14.2)
13 (14) Brisbane -14.3 (-16.1)
14 (13) Adelaide -15.8 (-15.1)
15 (15) Port Adelaide -33.5 (-37.9)
16 (16) Melbourne -40.4 (-39.6)
17 (17) Gold Coast -52.1 (-49.6)
18 (18) Greater Western Sydney -55.3 (-55.5)

Why the AFL Draft Seems To Work, Or Why There is Hope For Gold Coast and GWS

Recently on the excellent Wages of Wins Journal there have been a few articles explaining how “tanking” for higher draft picks – i.e. losing more games to move up in the draft order - doesn’t work in the NBA. This was proven by showing that NBA teams that are good one season are generally also the good teams the next season, and the season after that, and the season after that. Given that the “tanking” debate seems to rear its head every season in the AFL, I was curious to find out if this finding also applied to the AFL.


To work out the answer I calculated the correlation between a team’s winning percentage in one AFL season with their winning percentage the year before that. The correlation is some figure between -1 and +1; a high positive correlation means that the teams that were good in that season were also the good teams the season before it. I also then calculated the correlations for 2 seasons apart, 3 seasons apart, 4 seasons apart and 5 seasons apart. The results since 1940 are shown in the figure below. (To remove some of the volatility of the series I averaged each series using the corresponding correlations over the past five seasons.)

Unsurprisingly a team’s winning percentage in one season is positively correlated with its winning percentage the previous season – that is, the good teams in a season are likely to be the good teams from last season. Also unsurprisingly the strength of the correlation is reduced as the seasons become further apart, so the good teams in a season have often been the good teams from five seasons ago but the relationship is not as strong as it is for the “one season apart” series.

What is interesting though is that the strength of the correlations has been historically low from about the 1997 season onwards. Indeed, once we get to the mid-2000s there are negative correlations for the 3, 4 and 5 season aparts series, indicating that the good teams in a season were the bad teams from a few seasons ago. If one postulates that teams did not begin to use the draft well until the mid-1990s (it was instituted in 1986) then this could be taken as an indication that the draft has helped bad teams to become good. And if this is the case then that gives hope to Gold Coast and Greater Western Sydney that their high draft picks will pay off for them in a few years.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 3 2012

Is it the year of the Blues? Last week Carlton moved into second spot - this week though they have become firmly entrenched there following their huge win against the Magpies, and are just a few ranking points away from spot number one.

Meanwhile Richmond move up to (gulp) ninth thanks to their comfortable win against Melbourne and unimpressive efforts from the Dogs and the Dons. Their early record may not show it due to a tough early draw, but the Tigers so far are looking distinctly like a "mid-range" team. North Melbourne are other notable movers following their win against the No.1 ranked Cats.

And the Demons are now closing in on Gold Coast/GWS territory. It's not all bad news for these teams though, as I'll show in a post next week teams don't stay stuck in the cellar as long as they used to.

1 (1) Geelong 42.2 (46.2)
2 (2) Carlton 39.7 (33.7)
3 (3) Hawthorn 30.8 (32.2)
4 (5) West Coast 29.3 (29.3)
5 (4) Collingwood 26.5 (31.7)
6 (6) St. Kilda 20.4 (16.6)
7 (8) North Melbourne 13.4 (8.7)
8 (7) Sydney 8.3 (9.4)
9 (11) Richmond -7.6 (-12.2)
10 (9) Western Bulldogs -8.6 (-6.4)
11 (10) Essendon -11.0 (-10.3)
12 (12) Fremantle -14.2 (-15.3)
13 (14) Adelaide -15.1 (-16.2)
14 (13) Brisbane -16.1 (-15.6)
15 (16) Port Adelaide -37.9 (-39.4)
16 (15) Melbourne -39.6 (-36.9)
17 (17) Gold Coast -49.6 (-50.9)
18 (18) Greater Western Sydney -55.5 (-55.0)