Yesterday's Stars Of Tomorrow Today . . .

So here's someone I haven't thought about since probably 1991:

After being selected No. 1 overall by the Yankees in the 1991 MLB draft, Taylor was expected to take the Bronx by storm.

A shoulder injury suffered in a bar fight derailed the left-hander's pitching career and, despite a then-record $1.55 million signing bonus, he never made the majors.

On Thursday, Taylor was arrested on drug charges in Carteret County, N.C.

There's a thrill in knowing about "tomorrow's stars today" and before Royce Clayton, I think the first person I thought to pay attention to might have been Brien Taylor. This was back when I started to conceive of baseball as I would, say, a record collection. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't go down that route. I would have probably wasted a lot of time on stuff like fantasy baseball or something.

That's not to say that a little part of me feels like I want to know about the stars of tomorrow. It's a latent impulse in everyone, but probably mostly male collector scum types. I continue to indulge this impulse: I'm still waiting to see what happens with Dellin Betances — if we position him right, he could do for the Lower East Side what Jeremy Lin did for, I don't know, the continent of Asia, I guess. Speaking of Linsanity, even the president has a bit of collector scum in him:

[Bill Simmons]: So you're catching up, obviously, on the fact that you had been surpassed as the most famous person who was a Harvard graduate.

Obama: Jeremy is —

BS: Jeremy Lin.

Obama: — doing good. And I knew about Jeremy before you did, or everybody else did, because Arne Duncan, my Secretary of Education, was captain of the Harvard team. And so way back when, Arne and I were playing and he said, I'm telling you, we've got this terrific guard named Jeremy Lin at Harvard. And then one of my best friends, his son is a freshman at Harvard, and so when he went for a recruiting trip he saw Lin in action. So I've been on the Jeremy Lin bandwagon for a while.

BS: Are you taking credit for "Linsanity"? It kind of feels like you are a little bit.

Obama: I can't take credit for it, but I'm just saying I was there early.

It's an intoxicating feeling, knowing something most others don't. And it's even better in baseball, because so few players in the minor leagues make it to the majors, so knowing about tomorrow's stars today is an especially satisfying feeling.

Which is to say, I remember thinking something along the lines of, "Oh, I should remember Brien Taylor because he's probably going to be awesome." That was of course the last time I thought about Brien Taylor. I could never be Tim Kurkjian, much, much less Will Leitch.

Here's a selection of Taylor stories from the New York Times archives:

• In 1991 Taylor became the highest-paid player in the history of the amateur draft ("New to Yanks, New to City, Old Hand in Cutting a Deal")
• In 1993 Taylor dislocated his shoulder during a bar fight ("Yanks' Taylor Has Dislocated Left Shoulder")
• In 1994 he struggled to come back after surgery ("Brien Taylor Goes From Being Yanks' Future to Invisible Phenom")
• In one and one-third inning of intrasquad play during spring training before the 1996 season, Taylor threw 47 picthes, 28 of those for balls ("Taylor Struggles To Recover Control")
• By 1997, Taylor's one-time 100-mph fastball was only around 90, peaking at 93 ("Hardscrabble Dream: Road Winds Slowly for Brien Taylor")
• In 1999 he was given a minor league contract with the Seattle Mariners after the Yankees had to let him go ("A Flicker of Hope For Brien Taylor")
• By June 1999 Brien Taylor had been cut by the Mariners ("Ex-Yankee Signee Brien Taylor Is Cut")

And then now he may go to jail for dealing cocaine.

The Other Day I Thought That I Might Actually Cut Myself Off From Google

So I was going through my Google Reader the other day when I came across this Electronic Frontier Foundation link with instructions for how to remove your Google search history before Google's new privacy policy took effect on March 1. They said that with the right opting out, you could reserve the right to have your search history "anonymized," which sounds sort of Orwellian! I was a little taken aback: I didn't realize how much information Google was amassing in one place.

I'd thought about What Google Knows About Me in the past, but it was just in terms of which goofy stuff I'd, uh, Googled and what that might look like to some random Google employee perusing my search history. Which is to say, I figured no one really cared all that much about what I'd been Googling. I never assumed they could be as devious as, say, Facebook. I wondered, Do I need to rethink how much I trusted Google?

So I got on to my Gmail and emailed a group of friends who like to discuss stuff, and who generously indulge my half-baked theories and dumb queries. The thing I like about having a discussion like this over Gmail is that Gmail makes the back and forth of the discussion very intuitive, and combining all these emails in a single "conversation" means that my inbox isn't clogged up.

Frank, who is probably the web savviest of us, asked me how much I care about what Google knows about my web surfing; he wasn't sure he cared, but suggested that I visit Google's Dashboard to see what they have on me.

I wanted to be clear — as long as they "do no harm" or "be cool" or "don't be evil" or whatever they like to say, then I was OK with them targeting ads at the top of my email. That said, there was something about this new policy that made me a little nervous.

Maybe I started to notice that something was up when I had to use different browsers to open up different Google products I had signed up for — it was either do that or I would have to "log out" of my regular browser — not just my email but my actual browser! — which was a little annoying. But it wasn't such a big deal because Google Chrome isn't that bad to use. It's pretty intuitive as well, and the layout is pretty clean.

Of course, now that's all pretty normal, and being logged in to a browser is just the natural course of business, but something always bothered me about having to stay logged in. I don't know, maybe I want to reserve the right to look up sketchy shit. Maybe the SOPA/PIPA stuff made me think about what browsers necessarily know.

While I was waiting for my friends to respond to my latest hyperventilating argument, I clicked on another article in my Google Reader that took me to the New York Daily News website. Before I could go on, a little box popped up and asked me if I was going to watch the Oscars. Huh? I clicked yes, because I thought I would, and because I was pretty sure Jen wouldn't want to watch the NBA All-Star Game. I finished the article and clicked on another link: Another box popped up asking me if I was trying to cut back on candies. Wha? So I "learned more" and got this:

Why am I being asked this question?

Your opinions matter. Answering a quick question here gives you near instant access to the premium content you want without having to pull out your wallet or sign in. Our survey providers gain insight into what people think, and this website earns money when you provide answers.

The website you are visiting uses this Google service to allow access to its paid or premium content. Google displays questions that are written and provided by survey creators. Your anonymous answer is sent to Google and will be aggregated with other answers to the same question. All responses to questions will include an anonymous DoubleClick cookie ID (click here for information about the DoubleClick cookie). When the survey is complete, Google will share anonymous, aggregated answers with the survey creator who provided the question.

It's all part of a new product Google is experimenting with to help make market research faster, more accurate, and more affordable. If you're interested in running questions of your own, contact Google about becoming a trial partner.
For more information see the Google Privacy Policy.

I closed the browser — being careful to stay logged in, of course — and pre-emptively wrote my friends, "Wait! What is going on here? It's going too fast for me and even though I feel like a smart enough guy I can't figure out what the end game is here!!!!"

Which is of course part of the scariness of it — it's fine to assume that Google sees what stuff you search for because that makes sense. What is scary is not understanding how small, seemingly inconsequential behaviors get bundled into a mosaic of "you."

Frank agreed that it looked a little strange, but added that while Google AdSense was revolutionary in the way it tailored ads against a page's content, that was only useful to a point. As an example, I'm sure you've seen Google ads for, say, John McCain on a political blog whose readership was unlikely to support John McCain. The next step, he explained, is to target ads not based on what you're reading, but what it knows about you as a person, which is why Facebook ads are so successful. Then he passed along the link about Google's glasses.

In the end I think I got Frank to admit that he was increasingly worried about his reliance on Google — why I press these debates to the ends I press them, I'm not entirely sure. He added that he certainly hadn't made any leap to cut himself off of them completely.

I always think fondly of the time I spend with folks like Frank. I was trying to remember when we last saw Frank so I checked my Google Calendar — the interface is really fast and Jen puts all our engagements in there. So I realized that it's been since the summer since we've seen him. Too long.

So I started to think about it — I've had a pretty good year with Adsense, and it might be fun to take a trip out west to see Frank and everyone else that we're friendly with. I'll have to ask Jen what she thinks.

In the meantime, our friend Chris jumped in and asked Frank what cutting oneself off from Google would look like. Frank explained that the first step would be to ditch all of your Google accounts and be logged out of Google when conducting web searches. But then he said something that blew my mind: You can still be tracked because most websites use Google Analytics so Google can still build a profile around you, based on the browser you use, the operating system you use, your screen resolution, etc. He suggested we test ourselves and see:

Your browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 2,062,786 tested so far.

Currently, we estimate that your browser has a fingerprint that conveys at least 20.98 bits of identifying information.

Which is to say, based on factors such as the ones Frank mentioned above plus stuff like my time zone and which plugins and fonts I have installed, my computer fingerprint is unique — unique! — out of the 2 million they've already tested. And you think you can just "log out" of Gmail to look up hair replacement therapies. Pfft.

Interesting stuff — and I didn't realize that they could build so much information from Google Analytics — which is a very useful application, by the way — and quite beside the point because I'm pretty sure I remember having to install Analytics code in our site in order to work better with Adsense.

(Just out of curiosity, I Googled "Adsense alternatives" and the comments on at least one post that was ranked either toward or at the top of the rankings seemed to universally agree that no other ad network pays as much as Adsense . . .)

After all that back and forth I decided to relax a little by looking at some funny YouTube videos Goober sent to me on Gmail — which reminded me that I needed to update the house expenses spreadsheet on Google Docs so Goober could pay us back.

And sometime shortly thereafter I think I fell asleep still looking at my iTouch. I found it next to me in the morning.

And If Someone Wrote A Story About A Rooftop Sign Decrying Halal Cart Vendors Who Get Asinine Summonses From The NYPD And Then Are Posthumously Baptized By Mormons, My Head Might Actually Explode

There are several candidates for the most infuriating story of the day.

There was the piece about city officials bending over backwards to approve a new "iconic" sign for JetBlue in Long Island City's Queens Plaza. Basically, JetBlue wants to build a 40-foot sign on the top of a building it's leasing. They want to do this because there are two similar signs in Long Island City, both vestiges of the area's industrial past, when people thought nothing of putting ugly-ass signs on the tops of buildings. The context here is that New York had to lobby hard to keep JetBlue from leaving for Florida. So basically now you have city officials selling ad space.

What, not infuriating enough? OK, how about the Business Improvement District head that called out sidewalk food vendors for being "terrible citizens"? Sure, not so strange, until you see the accompanying photo of a halal cart in the article and a report that the BID apparently objects to "odd smells." You hear the same language from landlords looking to discriminate against tenants from cultures that make "pungent" food. The solution, according to the BID, is to embrace more foodie-friendly food trucks that make less smelly food. This is what gentrification looks like: A neighborhood gets a Business Improvement District that forces businesses to contribute money ostensibly to clean up a neighborhood until it gets too powerful and starts to dictate who or what happens in the neighborhood. Maybe you feel good about more hipster food trucks. I do — I love hipster tacos, hipster mayonnaise and hipster small-batch bourbon — overpriced artisanal products make me feel better about my small, shitty existence — but at some point you have to step back and ask the simple question Who the fuck do these people think they are?

What, you don't care about a dumb little food cart? OK, fine — maybe it is a bit of faux outrage. How about this: First we heard stories about poor saps in the Bronx and places that we don't really spend a lot of time in who were not just given tickets but actually arrested for putting their feet on subway seats. And that's shocking (even worthy of a pre-emptive revenge fantasy), but then this first person account makes the whole practice look totally fucking insane. There's a literary quality to the back and forth, but what might be the most infuriating thing are the comments underneath that seem to blame the victim for being entitled to think that the cops shouldn't be handing out idiotic quota-filling tickets. The message seems to be Don't think you're too good to get harassed by the police. There's something seriously wrong with the NYPD. And sure, maybe you should be more upset when cops shoot unarmed civilians or surveil whole communities based on their religion (in other jurisdictions, no less) but there's something that's so blatantly and stupidly wrong about this that it almost rises to its own level of idiocy. You may not be an 18-year-old kid in the Bronx or a Muslim in Newark, but nearly everyone takes the subway. And you probably put your feet on the seat once. The mayor or city council either needs to let some fucking common sense prevail and fix this or the commissioner needs to go.

Easy collars don't make you that upset? OK, then here goes: Mormons have posthumously baptized Daniel Pearl in 2011, who was forced to admit "My father's Jewish, my mother's Jewish, I'm Jewish" before someone who was quite possibly Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself beheaded him. The idea that he should be Mormon in some weird quasi-Freemason white-tiled heaven of some sort is frankly one of the most offensive things I've ever heard. Daniel Pearl's head was sawed off not because he thought Joseph Smith dug up zinc tablets sent down from god that were transported by boat to Palmyra, New York from Israel (or whatever they think). Daniel Pearl's head was sawed off because he was a Jew.

I thought I learned once why Mormons do this. My recollection was that it was sort of like cooking the books — an easy way for missionaries to build their up numbers. (I vaguely remember asking the guide at the temple on 67th Street — before it opened and they allowed non-Mormons to tour the building — about this and I think that's what she said.) But, really, I totally don't give a fuck why the Church of Latter Day Saints does this — it's so offensive and horrible that it should never, ever happen again.

The church was already shamed for doing this for Holocaust victims and I thought I heard they stopped. The article says that officials admitted that it was wrong to have baptized Pearl, but the fact that it happened at all is just astonishing. It's sort of like, Dude, this is supposed to make people think Mormons aren't totally bizarre? You're not helping . . .

And there you have four stories that may raise your blood pressure just a little bit.