Amit and I e-mailed in January about the origins of cricket. We never got anything resolved, but now I'm cleaning up my inbox. This post is useless unless any of you know anything about cricket.

Tuesday, January 27 – Cooper e-mail

what's your super bowl prediction?

Same day – Khandelwal e-mail

i have none. haven't really been following football and i miss the playoffs while i was in india. i did, however, become an expert on cricket.

Same day – Cooper e-mail

is there much cricket at yale? there was a big game going on at penn when i visited rob. the ball kept flying everywhere.

Same day – Khandelwal e-mail

no cricket at yale, but in india it was all over the news since we were kicking the crap out of the aussies.

Wednesday, January 28 – Cooper e-mail

how come cricket caught on in most of the british empire but not here? se asia, australia, africa and all seem to love it, but you could hit most americans with a cricket bat and they still wouldn't pay attention. was it something about the climate or land type here that made it not catch on?

Same day – Khandelwal e-mail

i've wondered this myself. a good starting point would be when cricket was invented. my guess is that it would be in the early 1800's, when we were no longer part of the Empire, and perhaps our disgust with Britain (from war of 1812 perhaps?) kept us from adopting the game, and inventing baseball instead?

Same day – Cooper e-mail

huh — i hadn't thought of it being invented after the revolution.

looks like you're right:

Link

this is good too:

Link

"The relation between cricket and baseball goes back to the 17th Century. The English who migrated to the United States brought along the earliest form of cricket called 'Rounders'. 'Rounders' was played in the cricket mould, with a pair of stumps and two bases. The bowler used to bowl under arm and the Batsman used cricket bats to protect their stumps. However, with the advent of time, more Americans took to the game and it was changed to suit the increasing participation. This is how baseball originated in its earliest form."

the participation aspect is really interesting, especially in connection to the differences in governments and societies. i hadn't thought about it at all. check out this page here, they dive deep into the evolution:

Link

the one thing they say that i don't buy their continuing claim that baseball grew out of cricket — it seems more like they're both children of rounders.

Same day – Khandelwal e-mail

will this become part of your BLOG?

From Interactive Media Associates, usability meets Malcolm Gladwell in "What's Your Web Site's Tipping Point?" The essay's short and the book's well worth reading.

"Tracy Hayden Hemmingway (GJ 92) of Bolingbrook, Ill., wrote The Magic Flower (Trafford Publishing, 2003), a children's book that she started in the fifth grade. She is currently working on a new children's book, I See Juju, Why Can't You?"

And two pages later:

"Benjamin Wilner (KSM 95) of Chicago, an adjunct professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management since 2001, became vice president of Tenant Risk Assessment, a property management advisers company, in December 2003. Jason Akel (C96) of Oakland, Calif., is director of marketing Trymedia Systems in San Francisco, an online game distribution company. He also invented a bathroom gag product called Stench-o-Meter."

"Stoooooop theeeeese annooying messaaages here," reads the subject line of the e-mail.

Hi Deena,If you receiveeeeeed this emaaaaail then whatever spaaaaaam filteeer your using is not working properly.

If your one of those peeople that are siiiiiick and tireeeed of sifting throoough your inbooox looooking for the "gooooooood" emaaails then we have the product for you.

Your time is valuable, so haaving your inbox flooded with junk messaaaaaaages is not only annooooying, but also cooooostly.

The answeeeeeer to all your proooooooblems is here…

[LINK REMOVED]

Your welcome,

Spent a few hours this afternoon on the back porch, reading Salam Pax's blog book, The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi. Pax has ended the blog by now — "hiatus" as he put it, to get out from beneath its growing weight. But the book captures the period of posting that made him famous, the lead-up and early follow-through months of the Iraq war. Whatever your politics or Pentagon inclinations, Pax relates a Baghdadi's human experience better than could outsiders hamstrung by perception and, maybe just as importantly, medium.

I followed the blog only sporadically during the time the book covers, so most of the material was happily new to me. Two passages especially caught my thoughts, for the way daily life broke through in both. Reports of life by the quarter of the hour in Iraq have come in too short supply.

The first was from Pax in November 2002, following his thoughts about a Mideast human rights report:

It seems that the 14 controlled satellite channels project (called the rafidain network) is a total flop. Out of 10.000 decoders only 6.000 were sold and this in a city with around 5Million inhabitants. This needs a little explaining. Installing a satellite TV dish in you house is punishable by 750.000 ID and three months in prison. But 2 months ago the government decided to re-transmit 14 selected channels hand-picked with the assistance of the A.R.T network. The ART channels get the bigger share, national geographic and discovery are also part of the batch and one western music channels which the news papers attack because of the loose morals these channels spread. Lately they have decided to change 'animal planet' to 'paramount comedy channel'. Now we watch Seinfeld and Dharma&greg. But Mr. Channel Zapper hates Jay Leno because at 10pm they change the channel to TCM (they even do the channel surfing for you, do they love us or what?). the service is only available in Baghdad, and is a phenomenal failure (in a call-in radio show the main reasons why people didn't subscribe to the service was that it's outside the range of the average budget, many find the choice of channels not attractive [the ART network isn't exactly the most attractive package] and no news channels)

The second came from "Riverbend," a 23-year-old Baghdad woman working as an engineer. Amid a longer post aout the situation in early March:

We've stocked up on candles (dozens of 'em) but my mother is starting to eye my collection of scented candles anyway. So you can anticipate the scene- hundreds of bombs flying overhead, the deafening sound of planes, blended with murmured prayers, in a semi-dark room smelling faintly of… lavender. And that smell will forever be consecrated in my mind along with the rest of the 'war memories'- candles, duct tape, kerosene lamps and lavender…

Months later, Riverbend began a blog of her own. A post from a few weeks ago began:

Remember your first box of crayons? Probably not. Ok- remember your first box of REAL crayons- you know, not the silly eight colors, but the first real BIG box of crayons with four bewildering rows colors and six different shades of brown that you never needed? Well, can you remember that mysterious color- burnt sienna- that was never brown enough for trees, and never really orange enough for flowers? That was the color of Chalabi's tie yesterday as he gave his phenomenal post-raid interview on Al-Arabia….

Former 3-Green resident Will Beckley has started a blog and already has some great meat on the table. Of interest to CRC alums, IllumiHinman has returned and Will has plenty of pixtures.

Related link:

-3-Green, home of the Surround Shower

I got an e-mail last week from a woman trying to track down, one, Cooper relatives of hers and, two, the Cooper and Sons brewery. After checking the charts, I couldn't find any link to her family line, but I had more luck with the brewery. Coopers, it appears, has been doing a fine business in Australia.

Back in April, you read here about the fate of Tillie, the smiling painted face on the wall of Asbury Park's ancient-but-doomed Palace Amusements building. Since then, the Palace has met the wrecking ball, but photos show Tillie survived as well as hoped.

Transferring musical idolatry a ways south, I was pointed to a Tower Records page this week by Elvisnews.com. EPE has released a trailer of the Comeback Special DVD (and a trailer of Aloha if that era floats your boat). The Comeback trailer didn't hanker much for cuts but instead went for the long ride, a dubious choice. That kind of post-remix salesmanship was disappointing, but the video showed what I hoped to see on the film.

Anyway. I figured those two items were pretty different and needed to be looped together in some way, but fortunately I found the Girls Guide to Elvis had already done the work for me. The book's Web site has transcribed a Bruce Goes to Graceland story.

Because I was a reference librarian in a previous life: For more details on the Memphis gig preceding the trip, consult the 29/04/76 entry in Brucebase's 1976 page. A soundboard recording circulates from the show (see Bruceleg details); the highlight for me is definitely Yum Yum Yum (I Want Some) during Eddie Floyd's guesting Knock on Wood.

The stories from the gig are also worth hearing, especially the Pretty Flamingo intro: "…we didn't know how tough she was until Clarence came riding by in short pants, on his bicycle playing a saxophone with no hands…."

The Chicago Tribune laid the smack down yesterday on those kids who show up for school every day and get rewarded for it. This Tribune publication was of course the same one whose Web site was recently down for half a day.

In other Tribune news, a massive ad banner was running atop its story pages in the past week, reading, "I know the dawn of a new day when I see one."

The banner advertised McGriddles.

More interesting — and I'd wager to say far more effective — in site advertising has been a U.S. Army banner ad in Arabic, aimed at recruiting translators.

A.O. Scott reviewed Garfield: The Movie in Friday's New York Times. His lede was impressive for its honesty in dealing with his readership's shortcomings.

The lede: "If this is the only newspaper you read, then a bit of explanation might be in order. Garfield is a cat who says funny things at his owner's expense, makes fun of a dog named Odie and eats a lot of lasagna. That's right, lasagna. A cat who eats lasagna! Isn't that the craziest thing you've ever heard?"