Happy belated National Cupcake Day

WASHINGTON, DC - I guess repeatedly sampling cupcakes hither and yon made me so immune to cupcake news that I didn't even manage to notice that yesterday was National Cupcake Day (in the USA).

I need a new food hobby, as I've gained weight this year. Maybe time to move on to fine cheeses.

Black women not making headway with Tiger Woods (or anyone else)

Can't a sister get a break?

SEATTLE, Washington - It was only a matter of time before a commentator would note a certain similarity in the physical appearance of all the women popping up in the Tiger Woods conquest gallery. Eugene Robinson:

Here's my real question, though: What's with the whole Barbie thing?

No offense to anyone who actually looks like Barbie, but it really is striking how much the women who've been linked to Woods resemble one another. I'm talking about the long hair, the specific body type, even the facial features. Mattel could sue for trademark infringement.
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But the world is full of beautiful women of all colors, shapes and sizes -- some with short hair or almond eyes, some with broad noses, some with yellow or brown skin. Woods appears to have bought into an "official" standard of beauty that is so conventional as to be almost oppressive.

Mr Robinson dances around a bit, but we know what your main concern is, sir - none of the women are black.

This reminded me of a comment about Tiger's preference in women that was made back in April of 2002, during the winning call of The Jim Rome Show's Smack-Off for that year. This was after Tiger had bagged Elin but before they were married, and the caller, Jeff in Richmond, made some comments about the relationship and then said "by the way, Tiger... can't a sister get a break?" (clip here)

Let us not single out Tiger for dodging black women - in fact, they're being dodged by American men of all races, at least if this analysis by okcupid.com is representative of the population as a whole. The two matrices below show write-back rates broken down by race; one is for female senders, and the other is for male senders. These are not across the entire population of responses, but only the responses where the sender and the recipient were considered a "match" by okcupid's match algorithm.



I circled the two lines of interest, but I didn't have to as they stick out just by their color-coding - black women are more likely to have their response to an ad ignored, and more likely to write back to someone who initiates contact.

Sounds like, no, a sister can't get a break.

chick gallery from Celebslam

Important piece of equipment for a top golfer - a wife

SEATTLE, Washington - One of the common reactions to the recent Tiger Woods revelations is "why does he even bother getting married?" Athletes who are single, by definition, can do whatever they want with as many women as they want and it's not a scandal. Derek Jeter is often cited in such discussions - he's become a kind of reference point on how to get your groove on worry-free as a famous athlete. Don't get married at all, or get married later in life, don't gum yourself up at the peak of your fame and sexual magnetism. Why did Tiger not take the Jeter route?

This topic came up at Roissy and I made the following comment there:

Another thing to keep in mind, on the “why would Tiger get married?” question… having that “stabilizing influence in your life” wife seems to be part of the culture of professional golf.

Often golf commentators will be blabbing about a golfer’s wife, how she adds balance to his life, Jack Nicklaus talking about how being a family man made him a better golfer, blah blah blah.

And Tiger, so sensitive to the history and marketing of the situation, probably sees having such a wife as necessary.

I think this applies to “individual” sports and not team sports, where you have a team support structure and you can be Derek Jeter and bang hot chicks for 15 years and not be married and not be out of line with the culture of your sport.

Required equipment

Seeing a golfer greet his wife and children when stepping off the 18th green after a big win is almost as common of a ritual as seeing them take off their cap and shake hands with the other players in their group. Most of the top golfers are married; of course you'll find some exceptions, the very young ones (e.g. Anthony Kim) and the ones who are embracing the Jeter/Roissy/Pacino/Clooney playboy ethic (e.g. Adam Scott and perhaps Sergio Garcia).

As I said above, Tiger Woods is especially sensitive to image and tradition, and probably takes it as a given that he must have the Golfer Wife - you can't step off the green after winning the US Open and be greeted by a Vegas cocktail waitress, or attend a banquet at Augusta with a nightclub publicist.

And if recent reports about the reworking of his prenup with his wife are to be believed, he's willing to shell out millions of dollars to maintain the tradition. In addition to modifying the dollar amounts and time horizons associated with a possible separation, there are allegedly clauses about Elin getting millions of dollars placed in her personal bank account right now in exchange for continued Golfer Wife behavior:

But apparently there's also a behavioral component to all this: Elin Woods must "be a dutiful wife in showing up with him at social events and in public as if they were still the perfect couple, and sign a nondisclosure form that will prevent her from ever telling her story."

This is big-money stuff, but I think this general behavior trickles all the way down to the common folk. I see women stay in half-ass, dead end relationships year after year and the only reason I can figure is that they don't want to attend wedding receptions without a date.

Prenup link found at Marginal Revolution

Football Lock of the Week

SEATTLE, Washington -

Record: 4-8

Last pick of the year! West Virginia vs. Rutgers UNDER 44.5

UPDATE: In a poetic finish, this ended 24-21 so I lose by half a point.

Finish 4-9 this year and 31-22-1 (58.5%) over four years.

Science validates old Beavis and Butt-head observation about women

Astute observers of female nature

SEATTLE, Washington -

From an old Beavis and Butt-head episode:

Butt-head: Whoa! This song's about like, some chick doing it with like, some other chick's boyfriend.

Beavis: Yeah! That's pretty harsh.

Butt-head: Yeah. So like, this chick will only do yo if you like, already have a girlfriend...?

Beavis: Yeah, yeah! A lot of chicks are like that. They don't wanna go out with you unless you already have a girlfriend...but like, you can't get a girlfriend because you don't have a girlfriend...so it's like...struss-frating.

Science chimes in:

Men and women in the study were asked to describe their ideal romantic partner and were told they would be computer-matched with a like-minded student. Researchers told half of the participants that the person with whom they were matched was single. They told the other participants that their “match” was currently in a romantic relationship. Participants then answered a series of questions on how interested they would be in pursuing a relationship with their match.

Surprisingly [not so surprisingly - jeff], single women were much more interested in pursuing a relationship with a committed man than with a single man.

Specifically, when researchers described the man as single, 59 percent of single women were interested in pursuing him. However, when they described the exact same man as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent of the women were interested.

Men did not show this preference, and neither did women who were already in a relationship.

Research found at Overcoming Bias. B&B transcript from WikiQuote

Football Lock of the Week

SEATTLE, Washington -

Record: 4-7

This week: Carolina Panthers (+3) @ NY Jets

UPDATE: The descent continues.... Jets win, Jets win... now 4-8. Last pick of season coming next weekend.

The cupcakes of Austin, Texas

SEATTLE, Washington - I've been sampling so many cupcakes lately, I'm running out of things to say, but anyway here's the results of visiting a few shops in Austin.

I had never been to Austin and was expecting a roughly Boise-sized city, but it's bigger - the city itself has about 750K residents, significantly more than Seattle, albeit in a footprint about double the size of Seattle's. I passed through several Seattle-esque livable neighborhoods. I was intrigued, but I'd probably be a whole lot less intrigued in the hot summer - my years in Seattle have made me dislike day-to-day life under air conditioning.

My first cupcake visit was not in a hip neighborhood, but in the outer reaches of Austin's sprawl, at Cupprimo. A small place (with a weird, closet-sized room in the back with a couple chairs and a whiteboard, in case you want to hold a corporate event there) that was presided over by the owner or someone doing a good impersonation of a shop owner. Below are the Elvis cupcake (chocolate, peanut butter, banana) and a mini strawberry cupcake. The Elvis cupcake seems to appear everywhere I go except Seattle. These were probably the 2nd best cupcakes on the trip.


My next stop was Sweetish Hill. This cupcake is barely worth mentioning - this is a full-service bakery with a broad selection of stuff, and the cupcake was a refrigerated, undistinguished brick.


Next up was the Hey Cupcake! trailer on (in?) South Congress. Austin has metal trailers serving all sorts of stuff, from tacos to crepes. They offer a feature called the "whipper snapper", where the cupcake of your choice is injected with whipped cream to order. This is the "Michael Jackson" cake, chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, with the whipped cream:


I think this cupcake had good cake, it had the fundamentals, but there were some issues. One, I guess due to sitting in a metal trailer in Texas, even in November, the cupcake was a bit warmer than you want one to be with cream cheese frosting. Second, while I like the temperature contrast of cool whipped cream, the injection created grave instability with the structure of the cupcake - the top was practically blasted off. Ultimately the whipped cream is a gimmick, unnecessary with an A-list cupcake.

Last on the trip was Sugar Mama's Bakeshop. A small place with an appealing selection. On the dreaded refrigeration issue, they put their cream-cheese-frosted cakes in refrigeration, but not the buttercream ones. I had the lemon (buttercream) cupcake:



Good stuff, in fact I went back here on Monday to fly some of their product back to Seattle, but... CLOSED Mondays.