Recomended Reading (Part I: Non-Fiction)

I buy many more books than I read. More accurately, I buy many more books than I finish reading. Here are some off-the-beaten-path suggestions that held my attention to the end and have found a permanent place in my library:

E=mc2: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis and Simon Singh :: a narrative that links the people, places and politics of 21st century physics

Watching Baseball Smarter: A Professional Fan's Guide for Beginners, Semi-experts, and Deeply Serious Geeks by Zack Hample :: an easy to read guide that will help anyone enjoy baseball more fully regardless of your current understanding of the game

13 Things that Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time (Vintage) by Michael Brooks :: a detailed yet succinct examination of things that the best minds in the world still don't understand

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson :: who couldn't use this? Bill Bryson is a humorist but this is an extremely well-researched examination of questions that we all have about why the world is the way it is

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink :: a thoughtful thesis on the rising value of creativity and intuition

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner :: like seeing a circus clown in church, Nobel-laureate Steven Levvitt exports his professional talent as an economist into an unconventional setting - daily life

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer :: it turns out that every decision we make is a product of our intuitive, subconscious mind and our conscious "thinking" is really just a rationalization of the decision. Leher makes behavioral psychology both fascinating and accessible to those of us without time to get a PhD

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis :: on the surface a book about baseball but underneath it's an examination of business, psychology and the politics of institutions

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler :: this book will make you a better parent, manager, teacher, leader and person

Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary by Marcus J. Borg :: a profoundly original and ultimately sensible articulation of who Jesus was and what it means to be a Christian

How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer :: another selection that sounds as if it belongs in the sports genre but pushes well beyond the boundaries of sports

The MLS Cartogram

This is a Rorschach test. What do you see? To some, it may look like a random distribution of different colored squares. It is actually a cartogram - a map in which another variable is substituted for land area, in this case population. It shows MSAs in the US and Canada with a population over 1M. New York is the large red square in the northeast. Los Angeles is the large red square in the far southwest. Miami is in white in the southeast corner. Chicago, Dallas and Houston are the three red squares in the middle. Portland, Seattle and Vancouver are the three red squares in the northwest.

Each red squares is an MSA with a Major League Soccer franchise. If you look closely at the map, you may notice that there are several large markets like Detroit, Montreal, Atlanta and Miami without franchises. As a matter of fact, there is an entire region - south of DC and east of Houston - that has no franchise at all. You may also notice several unusually small markets like Columbus, Kansas City and Salt Lake that have teams.

Does this distribution pattern make sense? A franchise model is only loosely planned, especially when there is no physical product to distribute. It evolves based on where both franchisees and the owner of the brand are interested in locating a franchise. A purely rational process would put franchises in cities with the greatest potential return on both the franchisee and owner's investment. However, there is lots to consider: how many soccer fans are there in the city? how likely are they to spend on tickets and merchandise? what is the competitive environment (will the team compete with football, baseball or any other local sports and entertainment)?

The large markets like NYC, LA, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and Houston are big enough to support multiple professional sports teams. Those unusually small markets like Columbus and Salt Lake City do not have significant competition from baseball, professional football or other summer/fall sports that would compete with soccer (yes, the Buckeyes are like religion in Ohio but Columbus has a significant enough soccer population to offset the Buckeye effect). Kansas City is a curious market for MLS since it must compete with both the Chiefs and the Royals. But what about those mid-size markets without teams like Detroit, Montreal, Minneapolis, Phoenix and the entire southeast? SEC Football may explain why the southeast doesn't have an MLS franchise but Atlanta and Miami are the seventh and eighth largest MSAs in the US. So if Kansas City - with the Chiefs and Royals - and Columbus - with its Big 10 Buckeyes - can support MLS franchises, why couldn't Atlanta or Miami?

The four markets the MLS has either entered or announced upcoming entry are Seattle, Philadelphia, Portland and Vancouver. Seattle and Philly both have football and baseball teams but are large enough markets to support a soccer franchise. Portland and Vancouver look more like SLC and Columbus - small but without any competition from baseball and football. Also, both Vancouver and Portland have teams currently playing in the USL that are moving up to MLS. Philly did not have an existing team but built a new stadium as part of their pitch.

So, where would you put the next franchise? If the two (implicit) strategies are (i) large markets and (ii) small, less competitive markets with existing teams, then the most likely choices are (i) Miami or Atlanta and (ii) Charlotte, Montreal, Raleigh, San Antonio or Austin.

The Organic Fallacy

The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals by Blake Hurst in The American, reminded me of a friend I've known for almost 25 years. She's a physician that specializes in alternative medicine. On more than one occasion she's scolded me for serving my family (gasp) non-organic foods. She is convinced that genetically altered foods, synthetic fertilizers and herbicides are slowly polluting our bodies. It's not clear if this is really true. To be sure, some chemicals - like DDT - have contributed to significant ecological and human damage in the past. But there is science supporting both sides of the argument. For example, worldwide life expectancy has more than doubled and the population has increased by 4 times since 1900 in part because of advances in genetically altered foods, synthetic fertilizers and herbicides.

This leads to the real question: would the world be better without industrial agriculture? The answer is: clearly no. The Nobel Laureate and father of the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug, estimates that there is only enough natural nitrogen available on earth to feed 4 billion people (fertilizer is basically nitrogen and it turns out that nitrogen is the most scarce resource for farming). That means that almost 40% of the global population would not be alive today without synthetic sources of nitrogen (i.e. - synthetic fertilizers). Moreover, Hurst, who is a real farmer, argues convincingly that organic farming is more expensive and more harmful to the environment.

We embrace advances in technology in almost every other industry but "expect farmers to use 1930s techniques to raise food." Advanced technology in food production has allowed more people to live and those people to live longer. Insisting on organic foods is asking farmers to produce less at a higher cost, do more damage to the environment, under serve demand and drive worldwide food prices beyond the reach of a third of the world population (clearly the poorest will bear the burden). If we demand more organic foods, farmers will certainly supply them. But should we?