In case reality isn't bleak enough, you can read about the Endor Holocaust, in which the Ewok race was destroyed along with Endor's ecosystem, following the end of Return of the Jedi, as an inevitable result of the destruction of the second Death Star in close orbit. But if you thought Trekkies had no lives, Star Wars fans include Endor Holocaust Deniers.

Baseball fans focus on championships, but the best way to judge a team's management is by its economic efficiency: how well did it turn payroll into wins? Prompted by the announcement that Joe Girardi won the NL Manager of the Year award for the Florida Marlins, who finished with a losing record but had by far the lowest payroll and an almost all-rookie lineup, I've graphed some data. Here is a chart showing number of wins in the 2006 regular season against opening day payroll:

In general more payroll does mean more wins. You can see a few outliers - the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Cubs, and the Marlins in particular. Teams above the line are overpaying for wins; below the line, getting a bargain.

But to get to the real meat, you need serious analysis. Baseball Prospetus modifies the wins and payroll down to account for the "Marginal" concept - the idea that there is an effectively unlimited pool of low-quality talent at minimum cost (where minimum = $327,000/season). Now you can really see which teams made the most and least of their money:

All data is from Baseball Prospectus.

Girardi, by the way, was rewarded for his efforts (note, though, that the actual credit should be shared between Girardi, the general manager who actually negotiates contracts and makes trades, and the Marlins scouts who selected the rookies) with a big "you're fired" sandwich. Moral of the story: results matter less than sucking up to the boss.

If a female dog is spayed before her first heat cycle, her risk of developing breast cancer is only 0.05%. If she is spayed after having only one heat cycle, her risk of breast cancer jumps to 8%. If she is spayed after her second heat cycle, that risk becomes 26% [...] Spaying a dog after her third heat cycle may reduce the risk of mammary carcinoma (breast cancer) but not appreciably. [...] Ogilvie, Moore. Managing the Veterinary Cancer Patient: a practice manual. 1995 (source)

Adnan Khashoggi is connected to every shocking event that has occurred since 1960, usually by no more than one or two degrees. A partial list would include Iran-Contra, Wedtech, BCCI, the Marcos Philippine kleptocracy, the Synfuels fiasco, and the discovery of buried mustard gas in the pricy Spring Valley neighborhood of Washington, D.C. To these we must now add the tragic events of Sept. 11.

As always, Chatterbox emphasizes that Khashoggi's proximity to these events does not demonstrate criminality on his part. But it does illustrate Khashoggi's "Where's Waldo?"-like ubiquity in the noir environment where shocking events tend to take place. Khashoggi is what the journalist Malcolm Gladwell has termed a "connector," that is, a person who stands at the intersection of many social networks. —Slate, 14 Nov 2001

The latest:

In a recent sitdown, celeb interviewer Daphne Barak asks Adnan Khashoggi point-blank, "Was Heather Mills paid for sex -- or wasn't she?" Khashoggi answers "Who cares?" and reaches out to Barak for a high-five. He later says, "How does she know names, places, if she wasn't one of the girls?" referring to the fact Mills has admitted meeting him at one of his events. —NY Post by way of Salon

Here are a few pictures of my new home office in Seattle:

the productivity pod, and

the view out the window.