Dev's Digressions

 In September 2022 I was in New York for work and one weekend I paid a visit to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). I am not an art fan, in fact I think the only previous time I was in a gallery was a school tour in Dublin when I was 10. However, museums are a great place to kill a few hours alone in a city so off I went to MoMA armed only with the knowledge that Jackson Pollock seemed to regularly be an answer in the art round of University Challenge. The exhibition started on the fifth floor with work from the mid 1800's and descended in chronological order until you reach contemporary art (works done by living artists) on the first floor. Initially I liked some of what I saw and was indifferent about a lot. One part that stood out to me was how Picasso's abstract cubism style influenced more modern works that focused on shapes and symmetry without depicting an image.  I do not know if my interpretation is correct, but as I descended through the galleries I got the impression t...

Over the past few years I have repeatedly had the "Who is the tennis GOAT?" debate with a friend of mine, Joe. A lifelong tennis fan, Joe preferes Federer while I, a relatively new convert to the sport, have been most impressed by Djokovic. With little tennis experience at my disposal I don't have a lot of evidence to support either player. However, thanks to Jeff Sackmann, who maintains a publicly available tennis database , what I do have is the result of every ATP Tour match since 1968. So here goes my attempt to leave bias at the door and answer this question once and for all with my good friend (better than Joe), statistics.  Stuff we already know Engaging in this debate generally starts with a list of the grand slams each player has won. This isn't enough to make a comparison on relative abilities though because these impressive tallies were racked up across different time periods, against different crops of players and on different surfaces. Nadal's dominan...

I really shouldn’t have had all those vodka and cokes. I usually know my limits but last night it seemed as though there was a voice in my head insisting I continue drinking. Then I noticed the shape next to me and groaned inwardly, maybe it wasn’t my imagination. My head screamed in protest as I carefully turned to see who had accompanied me home last night. That’s when I was blinded by a golden laser that burned straight through my retinas and set my brain on fire. Instinctively I burrowed my chin into my chest and sought shelter beneath the quilt. It was then that I decided a scouting mission was called for. No more rash decisions were to be made until I had some understanding of my surroundings. Raising a protective arm to block the morning sunlight piercing through the gap in the curtains I slowly emerged into reality once again. I blinked a few times as my eyes gradually adjusted to the murky half-light in the room. I took several deep breaths in an attempt to calm my raging he...