“Kicking at this level,” he says more than once, “is all about how you handle pressure. We’re on an island; everyone is watching us. It’s not like some play where only the coaches who can see the film can tell who screwed up. The difference between kickers is, can you do it when the lights are on?”

Three missed kicks in 2 games do not an end of a career make (particularly as the kick in the Pats game was 50+ yards). However, it is odd to see a kicker so reliable become a little less so. It may be that Vinatieri’s back (which has bothered him at points in the past, and prevents him from sitting during games, lest it tighten up) is acting up again, though I have no real insight there, besides what Lewis wrote about.

Vinatieri took the blame for the loss after the game (while Payton Manning blamed the coaches, according to ProFootballTalk.com), but based on what he said in Lewis’ article, this is not surprising.

“If I miss a kick, it’s always my fault. You’re never going to get me to say anything else.”"

The entire article is worth reading (as is anything Lewis writes about sports – he’s the best sportsriter at Bloomberg [a serious achievement] and the fact that he has not been snapped up by ESPN or SI is somewhat shocking, considering ESPN has Chuck Klosterman on the payroll).

Vinatieri had another miss in the game – a special teams tackle on a Darren Sproles return for a touchdown. Though I don’t usually expect kickers to make those hits, I noticed the miss because Lewis highlighted Vinatieri’s tackling gaining him Bill Parcells’ respect.

I don’t think the season is over for Vinatieri or the Colts. Perhaps losing these couple games will give them a rallying point for the rest of the season.

Update: Stephen Dubner at Freakonomics is calling last night’s miss a regression to the mean.

 The Bangalore butler is the latest development in offshore outsourcing.

…according to this NYT article. There are now services available to hire tutors and personal assistants remotely. Looks great if you have a lot of things that can be done for you via the internet, but not so helpful if you need physical tasks done, which I find is the real time waster.

One approach has been to train bands of larger, more ferocious langur monkeys to go after the smaller groups of Rhesus macaques.

In some ways, micro-finance is coming of age, completing a transition from a business funded by NGOs and development banks and subsidies to one that is fully commercial. In turn this change reflects the increasing commercial acceptance of the MFI business model, which centres on very low default rates, the relatively high cost of administering loans and high interest rates.

Though much of this article is interesting (especially how Morgan Stanley, Citibank and others have become involved in the market), the explanation employment within MFIs was new to me. Micro-finance institutions apparently employ many more people than mainstream commercial banks in order to effectively monitor their loans. This drives up the cost, per loan, of running micro-finance institutions, particularly as compared to commercial banks. These higher costs are passed on to borrowers through higher interest rates.

However, “though more expensive than conventional loans [the rates borrowers pay] are generally much lower than rates charged by usurers, effectively the only other source of capital for many borrowers.” So, in the end, MFIs are working, and providing a source of employment as well.

It seems odd to me that the team says 1) that they are keeping prices low to make the team more accessible, and 2)  doubling the supply of available tickets per game would have a minimal impact on the excess demand. If people cannot get tickets anyway (because the few seats that remain beyond season-ticket holders have already been bought ), why bother with the illusion of accessibility? I don’t understand why they wouldn’t hike the per-game (not seasons) price to cash in on this excess demand, particularly if people can’t get a ticket anyway.

If its because they don’t want to be like the Leafs, I totally understand. (Then again, the worry stated by the Canucks of increasing ticket prices is that new fans won’t be able to access the team and become fans, which will hurt when the team becomes less succesful. The Leafs tickets have been famously expensive for as long as I can remember, but they [unfortunately] don’t seem to have any shortage of fans, regardless of past success or lack thereof. Similarly, many NFL teams sellout every game and have high prices for season tickets, but also have waiting lists for said season tickets.)

Final thought: the argument that the team will not have replacement fans if prices are high and the team is bad seems to ignore that they could always lower prices if the team starts to tank again (not that that will ever happen to the Canucks).

(Found on the World Bank PSD Blog.)

What will Thomas Friedman call it?