Saturday Morning Rambling, Page 1 -- April 9, 2022

Global warming; Golfers are wearing ski gloves and stocking caps at 10:20 a.m. ET in Augusta, GA, in April.

Happy Saturday morning. Way too much stuff going on. Impossible to keep up.

I haven't been following the mainstream news at all, so I really have no idea what's going on. Yes, I know the headlines, but I'm not aware of any good analysis. Most of the good analysis (singular, plural, whatever), I suppose, come from sites that require a subscription, but worse, come from sites that are not trustworthy. About the best one do, I suppose, is check in on as many headlines from as many sites as possible, try to form one's one worldview (myth) of what's going on and then look for corroborating theses.

The big stories, one big conundrum.

Ukraine: what's Putin's end game? 

I guess what bothers me most about Putin's War is that there is no western world leader like Churchill, Truman, Roosevelt, Reagan, the other Roosevelt, Lincoln, Washington who can take on Putin. We have Boris, Macron, Biden and I can't even name the guy in charge of Germany, much less Japan. Because we have Truman we will have a never-ending war. 

There's should be a lot of soul-searching after this war is over, but I doubt we will see it. We'll be watching the Kardashians.

China: I don't know if I linked the source, and if I didn't it will be pure serendipity if I find it again, but apparently a huge part of China is locked down due to relatively few cases of Covid, and apparently no deaths (or very few deaths) are being attributed to the virus. 

Tell me if I'm wrong, but it appears Shanghai is ground zero for the lock downs. If so, the map of China might help explain what is going. 

The Masters: wow, they did a good job with televising the golf tournament. I thought it would be all about Tiger. It wasn't. Completely fair and balanced. About the only individual who made the cut who was never televised was Patrick Reed. I think there's a story there. I happened to see Brandel Chamblee once, and just for two seconds before I switched to a different streaming site. And even that two seconds was too long. Some observations:

• Tiger: first day was incredible on so many levels. Second day: wow, he looked exhausted. But he made the cut.
• Did not make the cut: it is absolutely amazing who won't be playing this weekend. First on that list: Jordan Spieth.
  
• Tiger Woods hasn't played competitively in almost two years due to medical issues, and yet he made the cut, and these did not: Zach Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Brooks Koepka, Xander Schauffele, Bryson DeChambeau, Vijay Singh, Justin Rose. 
• I don't like lifetime exemptions for any player who has won in the past. Exhibit A: Fred Couples, Bernhard Langer, Padraig Harrington. It's an invitational tournament; they may want to tweak their rules. I don't want this to turn into a "champions tour." 
• We know why Phil Mickelson wasn't there, but where was Ernie Els? 

Will Smith: speaking of Phil Mickelson, I see Will Smith has been banned from "the Oscars" for ten years. 

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High School Soccer

MaxPreps: covers every high school sports team in the country. Think about that. Every high school sports team in the country. And incredibly easy to navigate. Example: in just a few keystrokes I was able to find the stats on our middle granddaughter, a sophomore in high school, playing on the varsity girls' soccer team. Here they are: https://www.maxpreps.com/athlete/olivia-nevin/e9DqTgakFkqtYJ_3W6bpRg/default.htm. 

Key:

• the green bars: Olivia's stats
• the blue bars: national average

Stats for Olivia:

• GP: games played -- most recent five games played; most likely coming from the current Texas championship playoff games
• Pts: in soccer, each player / team earns points based on points scored, as well as attempts; in this category, the national average appears to be 9 points; Olivia was awarded 17 points;
• Goals: self explanatory; the number of goals she made in the last five games; she made seven; national average was four points;
• Assists: again, self explanatory; national average was slightly more than 3; Olivia had 3 assists;
• G/G: goals per game. Olivia at 1.4 was about 3x the national average;
• A/G: assist per game: at 0.6, Olivia was about double the national average.
  

Again, she's only a sophomore. Just prior to the tournament she was sidelined much of the time due to an injury. In the first couple of games in the tournament, she played limited minutes due to recovering from than injury and the coach not playing her to allow her to rest / recover. In the first tournament game for example, she played just ten minutes of the 80-minute game. Some games run longer. In a later game, she played just the first half.