My wife read an article recently that suggested, probably semi-tongue-in-cheek, that figure skating is not a sport because it is subjectively judged, and the participants wear costumes and perform to music. While I’m not a big fan of subjective judging, I think this unfairly short-changes these athletes. So, out of a great breakfast conversation with some friends, this chart was born (made with gliffy):

Notes:

• While it seems to me that there are some fat professional baseball players, none of those guys can spend all their time on the couch, and most are in great shape, so baseball is a sport.
• Perhaps golf was a game before Tiger came along and raised the bar, and now it’s a sport?
• Not sure about NASCAR or bowling. I know there are physical demands, but can you compete on the elite level without athletic training? If so, game. If not, sport. I’m not making any judgments, I just have no idea personally.

Updated, Alternate: My breakfastmates had proposed a risk clause, which I had taken out for simplicity’s sake, so if you prefer, this version puts it back in. Also, thanks to Alec for the Hemingway clause that also made it in:

Updated, Personal Version: Personally, I like the Hemingway clause but not the risk clause, so this is the version I use:

Everybody is talking about the Esquire feature on Roger Ebert. I haven’t had time to do more than skim a bit, but I’ve printed it out for the bedside. Sure to be excellent.

Update: Ebert’s reaction to the piece.

The discredited 1998 paper linking the MMR vaccine and autism has been retracted by The Lancet. Lead author Andrew Wakefield sounds like a winner on so many levels:

On another occasion, at his own son’s birthday party in 1999, he took blood from children who were there as guests and paid them each £5 for agreeing to this. He was accused by the panel of showing “callous disregard for the distress and pain that you knew, or ought to have known, the children would suffer.”

Update: Why it won’t help.

This is old news, but new to me. The folks behind the OkCupid dating site have a weblog where they analyze all kinds of interesting dating data. We all know that looks matter, but their number crunching is still fascinating.

Update: See also Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back. Heck, just subscribe to the OkTrends weblog and read it all.

This one might be the graphic of the year for me. National Geographic has a brilliant visualization of healthcare spending, life expectancy, and doctor visits per country. Here’s a taste, but you gotta click through to the full version to find the US on there (the red line below should give you some idea):

Sigh!

Update: Here’s Andrew Gelman’s version.

Google’s logo celebrating the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street:

UPDATE 1: Cookie Monster on Thursday:

UPDATE 2: Bert and Ernie on Friday:

If you read rec.sport.disc via Google Groups, which lacks a killfile that you’d get with a dedicated usenet reader, and wish you could see less of Toad, I wrote a little script that hides his posts. You have to use Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension installed. If you are, click (toadless.user.js) to install my script, and it will hide Toad’s posts when you view a thread. Actually, it replaces them with an innocuous little placeholder, like so:

Also, you can pretty easily update it to hide posts from any user that you don’t want to read anymore. To do that, right-click the monkey in the lower-right corner of Firefox, and go to “Manage User Scripts” -> Toadless -> Edit. Scroll down to line 50 and follow the instructions there.

You might want to also check out my RSD spam workaround. Between this and that, RSD is readable to me again.

UPDATE 7/21/09: The script looks a little different from the example above, but the idea remains the same. It now plays nicer with Google’s expand/collapse code, and you can click any hidden post to reveal it, on the off-chance you need/want the context.

The Onion rises to the occasion, as usual: Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress, Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job, and Kobe Bryant Scores 25 In Holy Shit We Elected A Black President, are all gems. Is that last one the first ever Onion piece that is more touching than funny?

Like in '04, Mark Newman's fantastic maps remind us that our country is purple, not red and blue.

Two cartoons: one from Patrick Moberg and the other from Toles.

Reactions From Around the World.

I'm definitely going to print out and read this seven-part saga from Newsweek once all the chapters are posted. An "in-depth look behind the scenes of the campaign, consisting of exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting from the McCain and Obama camps assembled by a special team of reporters who were granted year-long access on the condition that none of their findings appear until after Election Day."

If there's a wet blanket in all this, it's California, with its five million bigots. Discouraging. I think, as a MA resident, I'll drive over there and demand they hand over the "Most Progressive State" championship belt they've held for so long. Great post from Andrew Sullivan. Also, Toles again.

Update #1: Ze Frank's from 52 to 48 with love (about).