I don't understand this quote from a Columbia professor about Google Plus

“If you want Google search, they’re going to shove Google Plus at you pretty hard, so the consumer’s forced to take the product they don’t want to get the product they want,” said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies antitrust law and the Internet.

-- The New York Times published this oddly incorrect assertion from Tim Wu in a story about how Google Plus represents... well, might be something slightly different from what Google has always done. I can't imagine either Wu or Claire Cain Miller (the story's author) actually think that's how Google Search works, given that anyone can go to Google.com and, you know, search for stuff. There's got to be context here that went missing along the way.

Post-snow, clear, sunny, in a Southern city

Uptown Charlotte, NC, after two days of snow and sleet. This time, there were snowplows, though various maniacs still tried to gun it over 60 miles per hour on icy interstates.

Barbie is #unapologetic, which is remarkably trollololol

The people running Mattel know that Barbie is a flashpoint. But they also know they can't just admit that the doll represents something insidious about American society. Their solution?

"YOU'RE JUST HATERS."

More or less.

(Image cc-licensed: "Barbie" by Pete Lounsberry)

They said there would be only an inch or two

Happy Tuesday in Charlotte. This is annoying as all get-out.

The Bitcoin bet

NPR's Planet Money has the story of a bet between Felix Salmon and Ben Horowitz on the future of Bitcoin, but this passage from TechCrunch's post on the bet makes my stomach churn.

Salmon believes that Bitcoin’s volatility and rise to prominence makes users think they’ll make more money by sitting on the currency rather than spending it. He brings up the example of the original pair of Alpaca socks bought for bitcoin – that person is probably upset he sold all those bitcoins for some socks. While the original sock purchase is lost in the veil of time, it should be noted that someone paid 10,000 BTC for a pizza in 2009. That pizza would be worth $7,280,000 today.

The Arthur Chu phenomenon, as discussed by a half-Filipino dude and a white dude

"Everything I have done has been done by past champions." -- Arthur Chu to @jaketapper. I really dont get the fuss. http://t.co/6Wn330UWqD
— Dan Amira (@DanAmira) February 5, 2014

@DanAmira completely agree
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 5, 2014

.@jaketapper @DanAmira Don't dance around it: the furor is because of how he looks and stereotypes associated with young Asian men.
— David A. Arnott (@DavidAArnott) February 5, 2014

@DavidAArnott @DanAmira what evidence is there of that?
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 5, 2014

@jaketapper It's the Jeremy Lin thing. Chu is acting in a way contrary to what the genpop expects of an Asian man, and it confounds them.
— David A. Arnott (@DavidAArnott) February 5, 2014

@jaketapper Maybe I'm projecting. There's always that.
— David A. Arnott (@DavidAArnott) February 5, 2014

@DavidAArnott I see no evidence this is racism. That's a very strong charge to level without proof.
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 5, 2014

@jaketapper It isn't a "strong charge" that I see the Chu thing as a continuation of how Asian men are portrayed by American pop culture.
— David A. Arnott (@DavidAArnott) February 5, 2014

More on Ezra Klein's new project -- naysayers continue to emerge

As time goes on, the more I think I soft-pedaled my pessimism about Ezra Klein's new venture with Vox Media. It's not because of Vox, I should say -- I used to write for SB Nation, and that experience gave me tremendous respect for their behind-the-scenes team. It's that Klein, for all his talent, is not a superduperstar, and there just isn't a good track record of new standalone web sites supporting themselves with the kind of ongoing costs Klein is suggesting.

The simple fact is that the numbers won't add up unless the site is a raging success. Jim Bankoff, Vox Media's CEO, understandably wouldn't disclose budget figures to CNN, though he did imply that Vox's costs wouldn't approach eight figures. Even so, it appears I'm not the only one to notice a big problem with the notion of Klein building a new site: Wonkblog's traffic just doesn't warrant it, and Business Insider laid it out by comparing Wonkblog with Engadget, former staffers of which founded Vox's The Verge.

To sum up, there's an underlying misconception here: Klein didn't draw "fuck you" traffic. Perhaps the editorial folks thought that, but the money people understood perfectly well. Hence, Jeff Bezos refusing Klein's request for an investment in a standalone site.

(Image cc-licensed: "The blogger next door" by Matthew Yglesias)

Eggs Benedict in Wilmington, NC

Sweet N Savory Cafe, in Wilmington, NC, has mad Eggs Benedict game. (And the vegetarian breakfast sandwich behind it was excellent, too.) I think I've decided that if you're a breakfast place that doesn't offer poached eggs of some sort, you're doing it wrong.

Throw the best Super Bowl party you can -- Creamy Middles Sports Podcast, Episode 203

It's all about the Super Bowl this week, but we're not talking about the game on the field. Instead, we have recipes and etiquette advice for Super Bowl party hosts and guests.



Download MP3 (17:56)

The Creamy Middles Podcast is a weekly discussion attacking the belly issues of sports -- ideas that go beyond wins and losses. Jay Cowit usually produces it, though David may occasionally step in. Music is either royalty-free, by J. Cowit and the Ruthless Orchestra, or 29 Sunset. Subscribe in iTunes or in another podcatcher with this RSS feed.

The Ambassadors -- Creamy Middles Sports Podcast, Episode 202

The trials and tribulations of Alex Rodriguez aren't just Major League Baseball's problem: this issue has the potential of exploding the very nature of player-owner relations in American professional sports. Plus, rehashing hockey's fighting problem, and foreign policy discussion via Dennis Rodman.



Download MP3 (24:10)

The Creamy Middles Podcast is a weekly discussion attacking the belly issues of sports -- ideas that go beyond wins and losses. Jay Cowit usually produces it, though David may occasionally step in. Music is either royalty-free, by J. Cowit and the Ruthless Orchestra, or 29 Sunset. Subscribe in iTunes or in another podcatcher with this RSS feed.

The sounds

Where I live now, in North Carolina, I can't hear the freeway's drone the way I can outside my parents' home in our city on the west coast.

Mornings, I walk along curved streets and hear a jet engine's dull echo sliding over the county.

Heating systems buzz and clink, as if they're toasting their owners.

A dog yelps from three yards over. The poor bastard's been left out in the cold, and he doesn't care about contemplation, Calvinism, or the blood pulsing through my ears.

Oscar winners, weeks in advance

The trick to correctly predicting Oscar winners this far out is to remember that it's not about how those performances made you feel -- in fact, you don't even need to have seen the films in question to get them right. Rather, it's about figuring out which performances and films Hollywood tastemakers wish to emphasize as representative of what Hollywood is capable of doing.

So... at this early stage... here's the consensus...

Best Picture -- 12 Years A Slave

Best Actor -- Matthew McConaughey

Best Actress -- Cate Blanchett

Best Supporting Actor -- Jared Leto

Best Supporting Actress -- Jennifer Lawrence

Best Director -- Alfonso Cuaron

Best Documentary -- The Act of Killing

Best Visual Effects -- Gravity

And the other categories have yet to settle.

Moral ranking of adult Mad Men characters during seasons 1, 2, and 3, from good to bad

GOOD

Anna

Lane

Carla

Trudy
Mona

Sal

Father Gill

Peggy

Joan
Henry
Suzanne

Paul

Ken
Harry

Bert
Jane

Pete

Duck

Betty

Roger

Don

BAD

Sara Ganim just dropped an avalanche of NCAA-damning tweets

Sara Ganim is perhaps best known as the reporter who broke open and then most-doggedly pursued the Jerry Sandusky story at Penn State University. Now, she does her thing for CNN. This evening, she posted a series of tweets from her reporting on college athlete literacy. Here's a selection of those tweets.

A song of ice and sparks -- Creamy Middles Sports Podcast, Episode 201

With the Los Angeles Sparks suddenly shutting down business operations, Jay and David talk about if anything can be done to support women's involvement in professional sports. Plus: climate change and the NFL.



Download MP3 (25:38)

More Reading

It's not directly sports-related, but NPR aired a summary of a scientific dispute from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s in which a biologist bet an economist over the issue of rapidly growing population. The economist won out, largely because the biologist underestimated humanity's ability to adapt to changing conditions. It says here that if the NFL has more than one truly dangerous cold-weather games in the next couple years, it will adjust its scheduling practices.

Along with the Packers-49ers game this weekend, the other coldest games in the NFL's history include the Ice Bowl:



and the Freezer Bowl:



Here's a rundown of what happened with the Los Angeles Sparks, and what could be next for the franchise. (Disclosure: David works for BizJournals.com, where that story is published.)

Deadspin posted the Andrew Luck nude picture.

The Creamy Middles Podcast is a weekly discussion attacking the belly issues of sports -- ideas that go beyond wins and losses. Jay Cowit usually produces it, though David may occasionally step in. Music is either royalty-free, by J. Cowit and the Ruthless Orchestra, or 29 Sunset. Subscribe in iTunes or in another podcatcher with this RSS feed.