Jottings from the Granite Studio

Many, if not both, of my regular readers know that I am both a history geek AND a bit of a sports nerd, and one of the biggest events of the year for sports nerds was last night…the NBA draft.  As part of the tradition, ESPN columnist Bill Simmons does an annual ‘running diary‘ which–if [...]

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I know, I know…NCAA pool brackets are like children, never talk about them because either people have some of their own (and so don’t care about yours) or they don’t (and so wouldn’t understand anyway.)
Nevertheless in the interest of holding myself up for public ridicule, here goes:
UNC, Tennessee, Kansas, Georgetown, Memphis, Texas, UCLA, and Duke [...]

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Some notes from Saturday’s Dodgers/Padres game here in Beijing.

Overall, we had a great time. It was a beautiful day for baseball. A little chilly and windy perhaps, but nice sunny skies.

Wukesong Baseball Stadium was not particularly impressive, but suitable for the purpose. It has an obvious “won’t be around in 2009″ feel with temporary [...]

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I flaked on Froog last night. I was completely beat from a day of translating documents and just didn’t have the energy to go out after midnight to watch the FA Cup game between Manchester United and Arsenal. I have a hunch that I’m in for a raft of crap about how my tepid support [...]

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So…the Patriots lost. Proof–if such was necessary–that betting against the I-Ching is just not the best of ideas. Nevertheless, it was an excellent game watched in good company,* and Tim of Texas Tim’s proved a congenial host.
And hey, 18-1 ain’t too shabby. Now, I will go and repeat that line over and over [...]

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So Froog and I finally decided on Texas Tim’s Roadhouse for the Super Bowl. Breakfast, post-game Mexican food buffet and a big screen. The Rickshaw was a good alternate, but we’d rather have one giant screen over lots of little screens. Froog’s friend Tulsa told us that NBC might be filming the crowd at Goose [...]

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The Chinese government and BOCOG desperately need to start listening to all the really smart, well-paid foreign PR firms they’ve hired if they want to avoid continually getting caught with their pants at ankle-height:
To whit:
January 20
The Sunday Times publishes an article claiming that at least 10 workers had been killed in the construction of [...]

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This has nothing to do with Chinese history and everything to do with Boston sports. If you don’t care about the latter, then click here to read historian Ken Pomeranz’s marvelous post on The China Beat about Han Dynasty reformer/usurper Wang Mang.
Bill Belichick cheated. Fine. He ordered a minion to videotape the opposing team’s coaching [...]

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As a native New Englander, I’ve been a Pats fan from way back. Yes, even when they were the “Patsies.” Now that they have become the New York Yankees of the NFL, I’ve come to realize how much fun it is to root for the dark side.
So when I heard from my buddy Froog that [...]

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And so a moment I thought I would never live to see has happened twice this decade…the Red Sox have won the World Series. Unfortunately with my teaching and my research schedule I had to watch most of the games on the Internet rebroadcast…except for game 4, for which Wu Ming spilled the beans over [...]

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