Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Close to Home — What it’s like on the street where you live
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Peeved, to be sure
I wonder who's going to pay for flood damage on Sunset and at UCLA due to the water main break. DWP ratepayers I guess.— July 31, 2014 4:17 p.m.
Pendleton "Godfather" gets two years
He might get better medical care in prison than some veterans.— July 30, 2014 6:50 a.m.
NY Times pooh-poohs Comic-Con spending
I think a common problem with all these private-public "partnerships" is that those representing the public side tend to rely too much on the optimistic numbers from the private side. Well, and of course the other side of that problem is that those from the private side tend to wildly exagerate.— July 29, 2014 10:45 p.m.
NY Times pooh-poohs Comic-Con spending
It's a bit of a game of chicken for Comic-Con. They know they will have more space and possibly better rates if they move to Anaheim, LA, or even Vegas. But they also know Comic-Con won't be the same if it moves so they'll be taking a big risk. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Look at what happened when Street-Scene moved from the gaslamp.— July 29, 2014 8:39 a.m.
NY Times pooh-poohs Comic-Con spending
I think it would be great if Comic-Con stays here - but realistically the bay-front and gaslamp hotels are the primary beneficiaries so I think they should pay the majority of expansion costs. I don't think any residents or businesses outside of downtown should have to pay for an expansion however.— July 29, 2014 8:25 a.m.
Padres play dead ball
What I meant (some of the formatting didn't come out right): What I ended up with for correlation coefficients. Note that the only strong correlations are - between market size and payroll - between team record and payroll Mkt size/payroll 0.48 Mkt size/record -0.02 Mkt size / age of stadium -0.12 payroll/record 0.26 payroll/age of stadium -0.08 record / age of stadium -0.07— July 25, 2014 8:40 p.m.
Padres play dead ball
So I was curious how much correlation there really is between stadium age, payroll, market size and record so I kind of geeked out and used Excel to do my own analysis. Here's my semi-psuedoscientific analysis of the effects of market size, payroll, stadium age. Bottom line based on what I found (take this all with a grain of salt as I'm not a statistics expert) - There is a really strong correlation between market size and payroll. Big market teams pay more. - There is a fairly strong correlation between winning percentage and payroll (not a surprise). - There is no statistical correlation between age of stadium and payroll or team record. Details of what I did - I ranked all 30 MLB teams 1-30 for - 2014 season record as of today - market size based on population divided by number of teams - age of stadium (newest to oldest) - payroll as of start of 2014 season Then I used the CORREL function in MS Excel to compute correlation coefficient between pairs of columns. Since I normalized everything in terms of rank 1-30 I think that comparing correlation is a valid way to do this. What I ended up with for correlation coefficients. Note that the only strong correlations are Mkt size/payroll 0.48 Mkt size/record -0.02 Mkt size / age of stadium -0.12 payroll/record 0.26 payroll/age of stadium -0.08 record / age of stadium -0.07 Team name Mkt rank Payroll rank 2014 Record rank Age of stadium rank NYY 1 2 11 4 NYM 2 22 21 3 LAA 3 6 2 26 LAD 4 1 8 28 PHI 5 3 25 7 BOS 6 4 22 30 DET 7 5 3 13 TEX 8 8 30 19 CHC 9 23 27 29 CHS 10 20 19 22 TOR 11 10 14 24 HOU 12 30 28 14 ATL 13 14 9 17 MIA 14 29 20 1 BAL 15 15 7 21 WAS 16 9 5 5 SFG 17 7 6 12 OAK 18 25 1 27 SEA 19 18 13 15 ARZ 20 11 26 16 MIN 21 24 23 2 CLE 22 26 16 20 SD 23 21 24 8 STL 24 13 12 6 COL 25 17 29 18 TB 26 28 18 23 PIT 27 27 10 11 CIN 28 12 17 9 KC 29 19 15 25 MIL 30 16 4 10— July 25, 2014 8:05 p.m.
Padres play dead ball
So XTRA 1360AM just brought back the Loose Cannons with Steve Hartman - Not 10 min into the first show and it's already a big sales pitch for a new Charger Stadium. I'm missing my Dan Patrick replay.— July 21, 2014 2:15 p.m.
Padres play dead ball
I think the present revenue sharing agreements end up incentivizing only the wealthiest teams to spend a lot for a good team. The medium sized and smaller market teams probably figure that financially they will be better off spending the bare minimum to have a legitimate major league roster than actually trying to win. It's not just the revenue - it's the investment value of the team that matters and sports franchises have tended to skyrocket in valuation - even if they tend to perform poorly. The Clippers are a great example.— July 20, 2014 11:19 p.m.
Padres play dead ball
If you're going to be a low-budget team - as the Padres apparently always will be (Prop. C promises notwithstanding) you have to be really smart about how you spend your money. The Oakland A's are the classic example under the leadership of Billy Beane (graduate of Mount Carmel HS in Rancho Penasquitos). As told in the book and movie moneyball Beane has carefully used statistics ("sabermetrics") to focus on the players with the most bang-for-the-buck.— July 19, 2014 9:07 p.m.