The Southpaw

Huckabee’s Night

2007-11-29T20:20:00.000-05:00

If you want to see why Mike Huckabee is a credible bet to win the Republican Presidential nomination and possibly become the next president of the United States, watch last night’s Republican debate.

As I watched it early on it became clear he was winning and he never lost ground the entire debate. He is a very smooth, very calming, very charismatic speaker. He probably has the best “style” of anyone running, Republican or Democrat. Plenty of the candidates are good speakers, such as Giuliani, Edwards and Obama, to name a few, but none of them seem as impressive as Huckabee was last night. I read the reactions of a couple of Republican websites this morning and the consensus was, even among those who disliked his positions, that Hucakbee won the debate.

I also thought Huckabee’s answers to the question were very good, at least from what I imagine a middle-road Conservative viewpoint. However, it appears that many hard-line Conservatives don’t like Huckabee because of 1) his record on taxes and 2) his position on immigration. For number two, this issue was raised in last night’s debate and I thought Huckabee’s position was very reasonable, as Governor of Arkansas Huckabee voted for a program that allowed college scholarships to the children of illegal aliens if they were outstanding students (must have an A average or something), had no criminal convictions, were free of drugs and alcohol and were in the process of becoming legal citizens. His rationale was that he did not want to punish children for their parents’ crimes and that he wanted to work on a program that would encourage the legalization of educated immigrants. However, and admittedly I don’t know if there’s further cause for this claim, a lot of Republicans believe that demonstrates Huckabee is “soft on immigration.” He also gets hammered because although he voted to cut taxes over 90 times as Governor of Arkansas, he voted to raise taxes 21 times. Thus, he is a not fiscally conservative enough.

Many Conservatives seem to view him as not conservative enough for them, primarily because of these two issues. However, even those who dislike Hucakbee seem more and more comfortable, and confident, with the idea of a Hucakbee/Mike Steele ticket. Mike Steele, for those who may not remember, is the African-American former Lieutenant-General of Maryland, who lost a 2006 bid for a Senate seat. I’m not quite sure why he’s Hucakbee’s dream running mate, but I’ve seen this permeation mentioned a few times, so there must be some reasoning behind it.

Granted, Hucakbee could be the Howard Dean of 2008 (and Howard Dean became the Howard Dean of 2004 with significant help from CNN), but he’s looking more and more impressive to me. If you don’t believe me, watch some of last night’s debate and see for yourself.

England Miss Euro 2008

2007-11-21T20:49:00.000-05:00

England lost to Croatia this evening 3-2 in a very exciting soccer game and will now miss the European Championships for the first time since 1984. This sucks. I cheer for England right behind Canada in most things and in soccer, unlike Canada, they actually have a chance to do something at major competitions. This especially sucks as it would have been a lot of fun to be in England during the Euro Championships and to have seen the atmosphere.

Now, if you want analysis on the match or team, there is no shortage of places to find it online. The short of it is that McClaren will be fired and, in short, England badly missed Terry, Rooney and Owen; they had no formulated plan as a team; Lampard and Gerrard just cannot play together and they sorely lack a world-class goalkeeper (Carson has potential, but he’s not an international starter right now).

What you’re not going to read a lot of online (or at least I’m hardly hearing any of in the post-match reports and analysis) is credit to Croatia, which they absolutely deserve. Croatia’s in my list of second favourite soccer teams and has been since the days of Davor Suker. They’re right there behind Nigeria, who is my all-time #2 favourite (behind #1a Canada and #1b England), along with a couple of other nations. And, after watching them play today, I’m cheering for them at Euro. They’re a very good team, with excellent ball control, a very dangerous offence and they’re not weak defensively either. It takes a very good team to go into Wembley and score 3 goals against England. It takes a very motivated team to go into Wembley in an absolutely meaningless game and score 3 goals against England. I have to give Croatia a lot of credit for taking the game seriously and playing like it was a regular competition, especially when it was tied 2-2 in the last 20 minutes. Croatia is a very good team and they deserve a ton of credit for beating England tonight, no matter how uninspired England was.

And with that I’ll leave the last word to Croatia’s coach:

"I read in your papers that no Croatian player would start on your team," Croatia coach Slaven Bilic said to the English reporters. "I mean, seriously, wake up."

Debate Time Clock

2007-11-18T12:16:00.000-05:00

Here's a handy tool from Chris Dodd's website that keeps track of how much time each candidate had to speak at Thursday's Democratic debate.

Notice how the most awesome candidate got just over five and a half minutes, while Obama got over 18 and Hillary got just under 16. Richardson got more than you'd expect, but I suspect that was because this debate was in Nevada, which is next to his home state. I doubt he does that well usually. Edwards got a bit less time than I expected, but I would suspect he's usually at #3, just a bit behind Obama and Clinton.

If you didn't watch the debate, I'll let you know that Kucinich did pretty well in the time he was given and had perhaps the line of the debate when Wolf asked him about the Patriot Act and mentioned that he was the only candidate who voted against it and Kucinich replied, "That's because I read it." Biden did the best of any candidate, but he's also not a contender at this point.

Also, I’ll briefly mention how CNN’s post-debate master narrative seemed to have been decided before the debate (even if their general impression – which is that HRC righted herself as the comfortable frontrunner – may not be incorrect) due to the composition of their post-debate panel and their minimization of any second-tier candidates; their gauging audience reactions as valid representations of national feeling when over 50% of Nevadan Dems support Clinton and their refusal to tackle the couple of issues Hillary was weak on.

Gay News Update

2007-11-10T18:51:00.000-05:00

First, here’s a story that managed to slip under the radar, relatively speaking. Cambodia’s Prime Minister has disowned his daughter for being gay.

Cambodia's prime minister said Tuesday he was severing ties with his adopted daughter, who is a lesbian, but appealed to people not to discriminate against gay people.

"My adopted daughter now has a wife. I'm quite disappointed," Hun Sen said.

Sen disowned his daughter, the only one of his six children who is not his biological offspring because of her homosexuality. He has filed a civil suit to stop her from claiming any part of his inheritance and she has been completely removed from his life. However, Sen, in the speech in which her announced that his daughter was no longer a member of his people, also appealed to Cambodians and other parents of gays specifically not to discriminate against homosexuals.

Priceless. That’s quite the example to set. Please don’t discriminate against your gay children, but I’m just going sever ties emotionally and financially with my gay child.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands has promised to pressure developing countries to legalize homosexuality, as in half of the 36 countries it gives regular aid to homosexuality is illegal with punishments ranging from prison sentences to death.

A government survey showed homosexuality is illegal in 18 out of the 36 countries the Netherlands gives regular aid to, Development Minister Bert Koenders said in a statement, with punishment ranging from prison sentences to the death penalty.

"The Netherlands will promote as much equal treatment of homosexuals as possible. We will not avoid awkward discussions about this," he said in a letter to parliament.

Koenders has asked Dutch ambassadors in developing countries to push for gay rights unless local human rights organizations object on grounds it would be counter-productive.

Meanwhile, a fuss is developing in North Carolina, where Senate candidate Jim Neal, who was expected to run unopposed for the Democratic candidacy has suddenly found himself with two candidates running against him, less than two weeks after he revealed he’s gay.

As the Raleigh-Durham Independent Weekly reports:

However, the way the Democratic Party establishment has dissed the 51-year-old Chapel Hill investment banker's candidacy since he announced his intentions to run four weeks ago has made him into a cause for many progressives and gay-rights activists.

…

Spaulding points specifically to the national Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and its chair, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who for unknown reasons wouldn't return Neal's phone calls.

"The cause," Neal said, "is that I'm not Washington's choice. I'm not Chuck Schumer's choice."

Neal, in the past a top fundraiser for Democrats like John Kerry, had expected to support Congressman Brad Miller of Raleigh for the seat now held by Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole. But when Miller bowed out of the race in July, and no other Democrat stepped forward, Neal decided he would. Within a few days of Neal's announcement, two other prospects courted by Schumer, state Sen. Kay Hagan of Greensboro and state Rep. Grier Martin of Raleigh, declined the race as well, seemingly leaving it to Neal.

But then, answering a question, Neal revealed that, "yes, indeed," he is gay. Two weeks later, Hagan said she'd changed her mind and would run for Dole's seat. Many top Democrats had urged her to reconsider, Hagan said, including ex-Gov. Jim Hunt, who was working closely with Schumer.

Hagan is not the only one who has come out of the woodwork to challenge Neal. Now, I’m not opposed to a primary in the Senate race. In fact, it’s a good thing for democracy and it’s also beneficial to force the candidates to debate the issues with each other and hopefully, the best candidate to unseat Elizabeth Dole, who is a weak Senator and is vulnerable, will emerge.

The fact there will be a primary isn’t the problem. The fact that after Neal, who was running unopposed, revealed his homosexuality he was apparently blackballed by Schumer and found himself with competitors is a problem. Neal is a new candidate, never having run for elected office before, but he has an impressive resume, as he’s an articulate investment banker with a long-standing commitment to the Democratic Party and has been a top fundraiser for them before. He has been out of the closet for nearly two decades and has an ex-wife and two children, 22 and 20.

The fact Hagan suddenly “reevaluated” her priorities within two weeks of Neal confirming to voters that yes, he was gay as some of them may have heard, seems suspicious. Dole’s seat is one that is winnable for the party and it’s very possible that concerns over whether a gay man could win in North Carolina factored into the DSCC putting pressure on Hagan, a previously-elected official, to run against Neal. That’s the way it seems to me, as something doesn’t smell right in North Carolina. If the DSCC, Schumer and any other party officials pressured Hagan and other candidates to run against Neal solely because he is gay, shame on them. You can’t be the party that favours gay rights and courts the gay vote if you put up roadblocks in front of gays trying to run for office.

Also, a recent study by sociologist Eric Anderson has been creating some interesting headlines, such as this one, “UK Researcher: One Third of US High School Football Players Have Had Sex With Men.”

It’s nowhere near that simplistic, but the findings are still interesting. Anderson interviewed 47 high school football players who went on to be college cheerleaders after failing to make their university football teams. Nineteen admitted to having same-sex contact, that ranged from kissing to oral sex to sexual intercourse and included instances of male-male-women threesomes and male-male sex.

Dr. Anderson claimed that his study shows a declining stigma surrounding homosexuality, leading to greater honesty from the men he polled.

Wrote Anderson in the study, which is titled Being Masculine Is Not About Whom You Sleep With: Heterosexual Athletes Contesting Masculinity and the One-Time Rule of Homosexuality, "The evidence supports my assertion that homophobia is on the rapid decline among male team sport athletes in North America at all levels of play."

Anderson, who now teaches at the University of Bath, is notably for being the first openly gay high school athletics coach in the United States. He argues that men no longer fear that they will lose their heterosexual identity if they engaged in sexual encounters with men once or on a few occasions. He basically argues the one-drop rule no longer applies. In many people’s mind, if a male has sex with a man once then he’s gay. One same-sex encounter could mark you as a closeted fag for years, even if you had a stable heterosexual relationship. However, Anderson argues sporadic same-sex encounters are beginning to be seen the same way many cultures view prison sex, in that it “doesn’t count” in one’s societally-constructed sexual identity.

This standard of behaviour applied far less stringently to women, who could flirt with other women, kiss them and even engage in female-female sex without losing their heterosexual identity. If you were 25 and met a female who said she fooled around with a few girls at college you’d likely dismiss it as college experimentation. If you met a man who had fooled around with men you’d be a lot more prone to thinking he’s a messed-up closet case (and to be fair there are probably quite a few men who are messed-up closet cases).

While I don’t think the same standard applies yet to both sexes, I do agree with Anderson in that we are likely seeing some shift in behaviour that has made same-sex encounters more acceptable for men. It is still taboo in many crowds and I don’t doubt that within every group there are still likely to be a number of guys who would recoil if somebody admitted a same-sex incident. But there are likely a number who would not automatically mark the person as a guy and that’s progress.

Lastly, some great gay humour from The Onion.

Why I Love Keith Olbermann

2007-11-08T20:01:00.000-05:00

This commentary on waterboarding, introducing me to the case of Daniel Levin, is a perfect example of why I love Keith Olbermann.

And he’s a member of SABR, as well.

(P.S. I do think Olbermann’s slightly too dismissive of the possibility of torture yielding accurate information, but he’s entirely right in that there is no guarantee that it will and torture instead will very likely yield whatever “information” the prisoner believes his interrogators want to hear.

The further problem with torture is it that not only is it morally reprehensible, but it’s impossible to have a true ticking bomb scenario in real life. I could see a strong argument for the necessity of torture in that instance, but there is never going to be an incident where you have a prisoner who can reveal time-sensitive information that will save thousands or millions or lives and which can’t be gathered by any other method and which you know will be entirely accurate when he reveals it.

All of those criteria would likely have to be met for me to consider agreeing that torture might be ethical, and I probably would agree it would be in that specific scenario, but it will never happen. Olbermann is perhaps slightly over the top in his attacks on Bush, but not by much at all.)

Conspiracy Theorist Idiots and David Cronenberg’s New Gem

2007-11-06T09:18:00.000-05:00

I’ve decided to stop talking about the speeches I keep going to (well, actually the pace has slowed down since the slight novelty wore off) because I’m either boring my readers or making them jealous, neither of which is my intent. However, I’ll just close by mentioning that I saw Richard Dearlove, who was the Head of MI6 from 1999-2004 speak at LSE last Wednesday.

Now, I’m no fan of everything that secret service agencies do and I highly doubt that everything they do is above ground. For example, Sir Dearlove refused to answer a question about whether MI6 planted fake news stories at times, which is exactly how I expected him to answer that person’s question, but that attitude leads you to conclude that the agency is, at least occasionally, not above bending rules and norms for the pursuit of certain goals. At times perhaps the ends justify the means, but I’m not a fan of giving sweeping powers to these agencies.

Regardless, the question and answer session for the speech was an embarrassment. The audience was filled with a number of people who were, in essence, 9/11 conspiracy theorists. They kept quiet during his speech on the relationship between the media and MI6, but as soon as the Q&A session opened up, they began to monopolize the questions. You knew things were bad when two of the first three questions were about the “Scholars for 9/11 Truth” campaign and about rogue Mossad agents in Pennsylvania. Things went downhill from there as the protesters soon resorted to heckling Sir Dearlove and there were at least another 5 or so similar questions, which don’t count more “legitimate” questions, such as the planting of fake news stories or his refusal to comment on active operations.

I have a bit of conspiracy blood in me. I don’t know if I believe there was a “conspiracy” to cover up events in the case of the Robert F. Kennedy shooting, but I also don’t believe the accepted version of events, either. I believe there was a second gun present and that the investigation has never properly been solved, although I don’t go so far as to believe there was Cuban involvement or anything. Nevertheless, I don’t have the fucking time of day for 9/11 conspiracy theorists. I don’t have anything else to say other than the idea that 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush White House is ludicrous. Others implied the 7/7 Bombers were MI6 agents, another theory that is nothing but an insult to common sense. To have this speech interrupted by this fringe element and the subsequent refusal to remove the conspiracy theorists, especially once they began verbally heckling Sir Dearlove’s replies to other questions, was embarrassing. I later read in the student paper that he stormed out of the reception afterwards after being continuously harassed by extremists there. I don’t blame him at all.

On the weekend I saw Eastern Promises, which is a film I highly recommend. I’m not quite sure how I’d compare it to A History of Violence, but it has several good performances, including fantastic ones by Vincent Cassel and especially Viggo Mortensen. Mortensen should get an Oscar nomination in my books. The film is about a midwife, played by Naomi Watts, who tries to find the family of a dead prostitute who died during childbirth in her ward and who finds herself mixed up in the Russian mob. Watts is good in her role, but her performance gets lost next to those of the Russian mobsters. Cronenberg’s a great director and he makes the film get under your skin as you watch not the mob as an entity, but rather the individuals who operate within it, with both their cruelty and kindness and several other internal contradictions. The much-talked about knife fight scene lives up to its hype and the film stays with you after you watch it.

After the film I went to read a couple of reviews and Ebert’s and AO Scott of the New York Times were two that I really agreed with. Perhaps foolishly I decided to browse the comments section of the New York Times review, where I had to wade through 1-star reviews that said it was disgusting to watch “Viggo have sex with a minor” and that complained about the gratuitous violence and the clichéd nature of the film. Those comments if nothing else, reminded me of how hard it is to find an intelligent discussion forum on the internet as, sooner or later, almost everything gets overrun with idiots. Luckily, there’s a few baseball sites which are still very good forums and where you can not only debate the Edgar Renteria trade and the free agency prospects of Alex Rodriguez, but also rank the Saturday Night Live Weekend Update anchors (if your list doesn’t begin with Norm MacDonald and Dennis Miller it’s wrong).

709

2007-11-05T15:29:00.000-05:00

I am not unique. This is bullshit.

Pigs and Bums

2007-11-01T09:19:00.000-05:00

I submit two interesting and potentially amusing anecdotes for your pleasure.

1) A couple of nights ago in one of the dorm rooms two of my floormates, both American and drunk, and I were having a conversation. One of them had a pack of Wine Gums that he had bought and at one point started complaining how English Wine Gums aren’t as good as Gummy Bears or Gummy Worms or any similarly gummy-flavoured American candy. That led to a comparison of English vs. American candy and a discussion of our favourite candies.

So, naturally, I mentioned one of my all-time favourites, the Martingrove staple, Juiced-Up Power Pigs. Which, of course, no had ever heard of. I tried to explain it to them and they had no idea what I was talking about. Another lost cause I assumed, and went on my way.

The very next day I was shopping in Marks & Spencer’s and I went to the checkout line with some juice. I’ve shopped in this store before, but this was the longest queue I’ve had to wait in. As I was shuffling along past the shelf full of candies and other impulse-buy items, I saw some candies in plastic packaging. As I passed Licorice All-Sorts, various Gummy treats and some mints, what should I see?

Percy Pigs.

Which upon closer examination, are EXACTLY the same as Juiced-Up Power Pigs down the reddish ears that offset the rest of the pig’s pink head. I didn’t have enough cash to purchase both the Pigs and the juice and I didn’t want to put the Pigs on credit card, so I had to wait to buy them. I had a seminar presentation today, so I wasn’t able to get back to the store since, but Wednesday afternoon I returned to Marks and Spencer’s, purchased the pigs and tasted what will hopefully be the first of many, Juiced-Up Power Pigs.

It was delicious.

2) So, I was walking home on Sunday night and I took a cut down a side street. As I was walking along the street, a homeless dude approached me. Well, he might not have been a bum as he didn’t appear obviously homeless and he fed me a yarn about his car, but I’m going to assume he was a homeless person of some kind. So, anyway he asked for 1.80 pounds, as his car had been clamped and he needed a bus to get home to get to his other car, yada yada yada.

I decided I’d give him some money, but I didn’t want to give him two pounds, so I gave him the only other change I had, which was my fifty pence piece. He was quasi-grateful and I continued on my way.

Suddenly, I heard him calling after me. I turned around and he was gesturing towards me. I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but I tend to be trusting of those I meet randomly on the street, so I turned around and went back to him. He held out his hand and said, “Look. These are the old 50p pieces. They don’t accept them anymore.” I asked him if he was sure about this and he said he was and gave the coin back to me and walked away.

So there you go, a bum rejected my attempt to give him money. I haven’t been that humiliated since I brought a picnic basket and blanket to Covent Garden.

P.S. I didn’t actually do that, but I ran into someone who thought the area was a literal garden and I thought it was worth sharing.

3) Does anyone know where I can find torrents for this season’s original Law & Order and not SVU or CI? As much as I enjoy Chris Merloni and Mariska Hargitay (and Richard Belzer, Ice-T and BD Wong), I need some Sam Waterston and pure, classic, Law & Order cases.

Stupid Music

2007-10-27T13:14:00.000-05:00

Today my friend got a text that Wilco had cancelled their upcoming show in London on November 5, which we had bought tickets to. We’ll get a refund, but it’s still shitty news. Sky Blue Sky was my least favourite Wilco album since A.M. (opinion subject to change after relistening to those two, but I am sure it wasn’t as good as anything between Being There and A Ghost Is Born). Now, the show was expensive, but I had already come to grips with the cost because it was a general admission show and I have only seen Wilco in a non-seated venue once and that was back in 2003. I was getting ready to rock it up close, although it would have been hard to top my third-row standing spot from that magical night in 2003. Anyhow, since I had already counted the funds as spent, it’s a huge disappointment to see the show cancelled.

Also, I’ve already referenced London’s great music scene, but the problem is everybody else knows about the great scene, too. Bands that already have performed or that are performing that I’ve not been able to see because they sold out include The Decemberists, Arcade Fire (3 shows), Okkervil River (2 shows) and the Delays. Which all sucks.

Finally, Genarlow Wilson Freed

2007-10-26T20:14:00.000-05:00

Finally, the Georgia Supreme Court has corrected a grave miscarriage of justice and freed Genarlow Wilson. Wilson spent two years in jail and was sentenced to ten for having consensual oral sex with a fifteen-year-old girl when he was 17. Wilson, an honour student and football standout, was sentenced to ten years in jail despite the fact the girl repeatedly insisted the oral sex was consensual, because she was below the legal age of consent. In a bizarre pecularity, if Wilson and the girl had engaged in sexual intercourse, it would have been treated as a misdemeanor and not a felony, but oral sex was left out of the statute. Instead, Wilson was sentenced under a felony law after he refused a plea bargain offer that would have sentenced him to five years in jail with the possibility of parole, because Wilson believed he was right and because a plea bargain would have required him to register as a sex offender and would have prohibited him from living at home again, as he had an eight-year-old sister.

The Georgia Legislature changed the law after publicity began to generate around Wilson's case, but they refused to apply it retroactively and specified that fact in the bill. Finally, Georgia has corrected this miscarriage of justice and hopefully Wilson will be able to resume a relatively normal life. There have been several good summaries of the case in the media, but here are two brief NY Times editorials on the case, both demanding Wilson's freedom. Here is the Times on the Georgia Supreme Court freeing Wilson.

Update of London Activities

2007-10-26T18:36:00.000-05:00

The past few days have seen me attend another couple of speeches. Last Wednesday I attended a talk by Tarja Halonen, President of Finland since 2000, on the welfare state during globalization. The talk wasn’t particularly interesting, but I didn’t have high hopes. Talks by extremely high-ranking government officials are, more often than not I think, filled with generalities and platitudes, simply because what he or she says is vetted by so many people. I hoped this may be an exception, but it wasn’t. However, that wasn’t really why I went. I went so I could say I’ve seen Halonen talk and say that I’ve seen an active head of state give a lecture, which is both true. I’ve seen former Canadian PMs give speeches, but I believe this is the first world leader I’ve ever seen in person and yes, she does look a bit like Conan O’Brian.

The next day Paul Collier, an economist at Oxford was giving a speech on development and although I originally intended to go, I wavered on the issue because I was tired and he wasn’t a “name” like Halonen. However, then I looked up the reviews his book The Bottom Billion got on Amazon and decided to go. It was well worth it and content-wise was the best public lecture I’ve been to while at LSE. Collier’s an alright speaker – he’s nothing special, but he won’t put you to sleep either. The content on the other hand was very interesting, as Collier argues that development efforts have had a very beneficial effect on about three-quarters of the world’s population, but has left the bottom billion even worse off than they were thirty years ago. Collier gave us a preview of his book as he rushed through some of the reasons why this is the case and what some of his policy prescriptions to solve this problem are. It was very interesting stuff and I saw one of my professors leave the talk with a copy of his book under his arm, obviously bought at the little stand set outside the lecture theatre. The book is something I’ve put on my “to read” list, but I may hope it comes out in paperback and saves me buying the hardcover.

On Saturday I watched the Rugby World Cup final at a local bar. It was a pretty cool experience, even if England played rather poorly and there wasn’t a try scored the entire match. Well, actually England scored a try, but the referee didn’t allow it based on video review. I don’t know what angle they had in the review booth, because from every angle shown on TV it looked like the player touched the ball down over the line before his foot went out of bounds. Nevertheless, that was the only time England looked close to scoring a try and South Africa deserved to win the match. One thing I don’t understand is why England rugby has adopted “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” as it’s unofficial theme song. The patrons in the bar burst spontaneously into song at several points throughout the match and I was assured this was happening wherever people were watching the game. I’m not sure why English rugby is associated with a slave song with the message that no matter how badly things go on Earth, we can always look forward to Heaven. Weird.

On Sunday I did something that I and only I would do (of the people you know). Sunday was Game 7 of the ALCS (i.e. the deciding game in the semi-finals of the baseball playoffs), so I was determined to watch it. Luckily, a couple of guys on my floor are Americans and are baseball fans and we gathered in one room to watch it on a laptop at 1 AM. By 2 AM, one of the other guys had left for bed and the guy whose room it was clearly wanted to go to sleep, so I took my cue and left. Rather than return to my own room with my sporadic internet connection, I went to our computer lab in the basement with its 20th century computers and proceeded to watch the game until 4:30 in the morning online, in the dingy basement, by myself. It was well worth it, even if the dreaded Red Sox won. The game was exciting up through the seventh inning when Joel Skinner made the biggest blunder by a basecoach I think I have ever seen in my life. His decision was so bad that the runner stopped, looked back at the play and immediately did a double-take towards the coach, incredulous at the decision. I’ve never seen a runner look back towards the coach so immediately and with such disbelief on his face before. The Indians lost the game badly and likely would have lost anyway, but if Cleveland had scored a run or more there (or if the umpire hadn’t missed a call in the fifth inning that cost Cleveland at least one run) the complexion of the game would have been changed.

Commuting Sucks

2007-10-24T17:18:00.000-05:00

Here’s an interesting article from The New Yorker on the rise of commuter culture. It’s mostly filled with human interest stories, but what’s fascinating is the lengths some people with go to commute to what seem to be fairly average jobs. I can understand a lengthy commute for a dream job or one with great advancement opportunities, but to commute six and a half hours a day for a job as a legal secretary when you’re in your 50’s is something I can’t fathom.

Americans have an average daily commute of fifty-one minutes, which isn’t that bad. However, one in six Americans commutes more than an hour and a half per day and there are 3.5 million “extreme commuters,” who travel more than ninety minutes a day, a number which has doubled since 1990. As I said, this would obviously change with a dream employment opportunity, but I couldn’t imagine commuting more than an hour per day regularly. I could put up with that commute (or not make it at all) for a shorter work week, but to do that every day seems like a waste. I guess the problem is that people are given employment opportunities which may not be their dream jobs, but seem so superior to other options that they’d rather be safe and take (or stay with) the job than try to find a relatively similar opportunity closer to home.

The article suggests that this may not necessarily be the right choice, as two Swiss economists at the University of Zurich have concluded that you’d need to make 40% in salary and perks in order to be as happy with a one hour daily commute as a worker with a minimal or no commute.

Anyhow, with the knowledge than an extreme commute may await me in the future, I better make the most of my ten-to-fifteen minute walk to campus. I live in a shittier residence, but it’s one of the three residences that are within a fifteen minute walk of campus. I haven’t been inside all of the other residences, but I’m pretty sure I’m happier here than I would be with a somewhat larger room and kitchen and a thirty minute walk during the cold English winters.

It’s pretty irrelevant anyway, as I’m holding out hope for the instantaneous teleporter to be invented in the next decade. Or a transmogrifier, just because that’d be pretty awesome.

The Life and Death of Rod Beck

2007-10-16T16:25:00.000-05:00

Here’s a rare article from ESPN.com worth reading, on former relief pitcher Rod Beck, who died earlier this year of a drug overdose at 38. Beck was a beloved relief pitcher, mainly for the San Francisco Giants, who was in the early 90’s for his wild image, which he cultivated with a long mullet and Fu Manchu moustache. Beck was nearly universally loved by fans, teammates and opponents and was always touted as one of the good guys in the sport. For example, he was actively involved in an AIDS charity in the early 1990’s, which was the era when the disease was still, at least in the public’s eyes, solely a disease that affected gay men.

In a development that perhaps personified Beck, while playing in the minor leagues in 2003 for the Iowa Cubs, Beck lived out of a trailer that he parked right beside the ballpark. After ballgames he would go back to his trailer and there was an open invitation for fans to come by and drink beers with him into the evening. Nobody was refused and Beck genuinely interacted with the fans on a day-to-day basis, which is almost unheard of in professional sports, especially by a 3-time All-Star. Here's an article, also by ESPN.com, on Beck's life in the minors, written in 2003. It's another good read and, if nothing else, at least you can take a very small amount of comfort in the fact Beck enjoyed himself so much at the time. In a time when professional athletes are very removed from any real interaction with the public, Beck was a shining exception and, if the articles have any basis in truth, one of the most genuine guys in professional sport.

Unfortunately, Beck also developed a drug habit, which cost him his family and his life. Despite two interventions by his family and close friends and visits from ex-teammates, Beck couldn’t shake his cocaine habit. His wife, still in love with him, left him and he became a shadow of the devoted father he had previously been to his two daughters. The story of Beck’s life and death is one of the best human interest stories I’ve read in a while, particularly from a mainstream sports media site often devoted to reducing everything to 30-second highlight packages.

Two Weeks in London, Pt. II

2007-10-16T09:08:00.000-05:00

It has been a few days since I updated you about my first few days in London, so now I’ll finish with what’s happened over the second half of those two weeks, which have actually become three weeks because of internet issues and my own laziness. After recounting the first few days in extreme detail, I’ll now just hit upon the interesting events and spare you all the narrative of days where I woke up late and did next to nothing.

Saturday (Sept 29): I went to the British Museum with Katharine. What’s great about the British Museum, and I believe British museums in general, is that entry is free. So there is no pressure to see every exhibit in the one day and it allows you to see the Museum at a good pace. We spent maybe two and a half hours at the British Museum and saw perhaps two wings of the first floor and part of an exhibit on the second floor. The Museum has a great collection and we only saw an exhibit on cultural representations of life and death and most of their stuff from Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. There’s some fantastic stuff there, but we didn’t even touch anything else from Africa or anything from Asia or old Europe. We did manage to see the Rosetta Stone, but the temporary exhibit on the Terracotta Warriors is sold out for the next six weeks or so, so we’ll have to return at some point later and pay the exhibit fee to see them. They’re at the Museum until the spring, so I have lots of time to find a convenient date. I’m sure I’ll be back to the Museum at least a couple more times while I’m here.

Tuesday (Oct 2): This was the welcome day at the LSE. Yes, it’s THE LSE and not just LSE. I think Howard Davies will send a team after you if you leave the “the” out. Anyway, this was a pretty routine hour and a half introduction to grad school at the LSE. We were told repeatedly to be proud of our accomplishments; about how international the school is; about the strong reputation of the school both academically and in an extra-curricular sense; about how we should make the most of our time at the LSE, in London and in Europe by joining teams, societies, going places, traveling, etc; and also, that we would have a formidable workload and would have to spend a great deal of time on our studies. With those somewhat contradictory messages we were sent on our way.

In the evening I returned to campus to watch Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, debate a geography professor from the LSE over global warming. Lomborg gained a cult following after the publication of his first book, in which he argues that global warming is real, but vastly overhyped; that market solutions are possible for many of the problems and that other problems are much more important. I’ve not read the book and his argument is obviously far more nuanced, but he’s basically very skeptical of much of the “common wisdom” of the environmentalist movement. He’s become so famous he was quoted as one of two detractors of Al Gore in many major media releases following Gore being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and he is very controversial, as many in the hardcore environmental movement despise him.

Speaking of Gore, it was interesting to watch the right-wing go apeshit over the fact he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Some people speak of Bush Derangement Syndrome, where leftists will blame every and all evil on President Bush and I think we'll see a similar reaction from the right should Hillary Clinton win the Presidency, but there's a good case to be made that a section of the far right has a case of Gore Derangement Syndrome. The Wall Street Journal, devoted an editorial to a list of people who deserved the Nobel Peace Prize more and refused to even mention Gore's name, while The National Review Online suggested Gore share the prize with Osama bin Laden, who "has implicitly endorsed Gore's stance." But don't forget, when one anonymous poster out of hundreds uploads a random video to MoveOn.org comparing Bush to Hitler, it's the subject of week-long debate in the mainstream media.

Lomborg “won” the debate over Dr. Simon Dietz, but he was also given about double the amount of time to speak since he was obviously the main attraction. He wasn’t incredibly convincing and much of his talk covered the bare essentials of his argument that I’m somewhat already familiar with, but it was still interesting to listen to. Dr. Dietz attacked Lomborg on two fronts, as he accused him of manipulating data, which seems to be a common criticism of Lomborg, and also argued the worst-case scenarios of environmental disaster are so severe that we can’t afford to play Lomborg’s game of looking at the average effects according to various modeling scenarios. He wasn’t a great speaker and given only half the time of Lomborg, he wasn’t able to construct more than a bare-bones argument against Lomborg’s case.

The Q&A session was far more interesting, as all but one of the six questioners were critical of Lomborg. He was accused on misrepresenting data on polar bears to downplay the effects of environmental degradation on animal extinction. Another questioner asked him a very technical question about the modeling scenarios he used, to which he basically had to respond that he didn’t know. He was asked another question about data and modeling, which I don’t really remember, to which Lomborg mentioned two scientists whose methods he had quoted, to which the questioner shouted, “How do you respond to the fact that both scientists have disavowed your work?” The Q&A session demonstrated to sort of anger people have towards Lomborg and the message he conveys. I don’t know enough about the topic to really comment on it, but that lecture reinforced the general impression I have of Lomborg, which is that I agree with some, but not all, of what he’s saying and that he seems to have some factual problems with his argument, which has made it very easy for the anti-Lomborg crowd to paint him as a sloppy or even disingenuous intellectual.

Thursday (Oct 4): A ton of great bands come to London, obviously. If any band does Europe, they’ll do a show in London. If any band does England, they’ll do a show or two in London. Unfortunately, there are so many people in London that a bunch of them are bound to have good taste in music. The Decemberists played London on October 2nd and it was sold out. The Arcade Fire play three gigs in London in November and they are all sold out. And so on.

However, one band that London hasn’t caught onto yet is the New Pornographers, so I was able to go to see them live at Koko on that Thursday night. One interesting thing about London concerts, or at least it was true with this concert, was that they’ll place a schedule on the front door to let ticket-holders know exactly when each band will take the stage. Anyhow, a guy from my floor and I went and we arrived early, to be sure we would be able to buy tickets at the door. We stood through two mediocre openers – one was a guy with a guitar playing slowcore, for which I definitely wasn’t in the mood, and the other was a non-descript rock band that was okay to listen to for half an hour but immediately forgettable – before the New Pornographers took the stage.

Playing without Neko Case, as per usual when touring, and with Dan Bejar’s songs taking a backseat, it was very much the AC Newman show. Karhryn Calder, who assumed a more prominent part on Challengers than she had on any previous New Pornographers record sung Neko’s parts as usual, and although you can’t tell she’s not Neko, she sounds similar. If I had closed my eyes when listening to “Challengers”, I doubt I would have been able to tell the difference.

Anyhow, the New Pornographers played a great set. Although Challengers has really grown on me as an album, it is missing the bouncy energy or some of their earlier releases and contains a few of their more forgettable tunes. When touring in support of a new album some bands will play that album in its entirety and will mix in maybe four of their well-known songs and call it a day. Not the New Pornographers. They played seven songs from Challengers, six of their best tracks of Twin Cinema, as well as three each of Mass Romantic and Electric Version. There was not a single throwaway track the entire night. They played as many of their old hits as they could, from “My Slow Descent into Alcoholism” to “Testament to Youth in Verse” to “Sing Me Spanish Techno.” I have no idea if this is typical of the New Pornographers, but if I had been in charge I probably would have made one or two substitutions on the tracks from “Challengers” and otherwise left it exactly as it was. Overall, a very good show.

Friday (Oct 5): I did the tourist thing at Trafalgar Square and Picadilly Circus. Not too much to report other than I walked around them, took a bunch of pictures, soaked in the environment and appreciate a day without rain. I then returned via Charing Cross Road, which has a ton of bookstores, both new and used, along the street. I spent a while browsing them and intend to return, but the fact I was able to restrain myself from making any purchases was a good thing considering next weekend. I also walked around Leicester Square, which is one of the happening places for teens and young adults in London. There are four or five theatres in the square, along with several nice restaurants, a couple of clubs and what looks to be a casino. I'm not sure why, but similar stores in London seemed to be grouped together. There's a ton of bookstores on Charing Cross Rd., lots of theatres throughout Leicester Square; most of the cell phone stores are located on the same block on Oxford Street and so on. It makes it handy to compare prices, if you know what you're looking for.

Monday (Oct 8): Classes started this week, which I'm sure caused all of you suffering through the Canadian school year to exclaim "Finally." During the first week of classes students are encouraged to shop around and attend lectures for as many courses as they like. Seminars don't being until week 2 or 3 and few classes are capped, so while the system seems to lead to some headaches for some administrators and professors, it's quite handy from the student's point-of-view. I have one mandatory course and two electives, along with my Master's paper, and I attended about six or seven different lectures this week, before settling on my two courses, The mandatory course is an international political theory course, which promises to be loads of fun.

Tuesday (Oct 9): Today I saw Lord David Owen give a speech about hubris in world leaders, with particular reference to Tony Blair and George Bush. Lord Owen was the British Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, the founder of the Social Democrat Party in England and he played a large role in the peace negotiations during the Bosnian War (he is the Owen of the Vance-Owen peace plans). I'd have preferred to hear him talk about the former Yugoslavia, but you can't win them all.

Thursday (Oct 11): Another day, another talk. As there's no homework right now - correction, no homework I'm choosing to do - I figure there's no better way to spend my time than listening to intellectuals give mildly interesting talks. Today it was Paul Kennedy, professor of history at Yale University and a visiting scholar at the LSE, talking about UN reform. Kennedy recently wrote The Parliament of Man, but is probably best known for his seminal work, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. Kennedy is a historian, so he took a historian's approach to the topic and spoke about why the UN is structured the way it is and why that in itself makes change, particularly to the structure of the Security Council, nearly impossible. Given that Kennedy has done consulting work for the UN I was hoping he might tackle various reform plans that have been put forward, but he basically said that any reform is going to be nearly impossible. As is sometimes the case with these talks, the anecdotes, which often surface during answers to audience questions, were some of the most interesting points of the speech. Particularly humourous was Kennedy's tale of being trailed through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Virginia by the Pakistani and Mexican Ambassadors to the UN.

Saturday (Oct 13): Today Mike Coe (Ryan’s housemate in Kingston and a good friend of mine at Queen’s) came to visit from Cambridge. He only came for the day as he had to get back to Cambridge for some rowing on Sunday morning, but we spent basically the whole day walking around London and catching up. We just went around a lot of the touristy sites, but it was more about just experiencing London and catching up than doing anything in particular. It was quite a good day and he’s already got some great stories from Cambridge. I hope to get the chance to visit him up there before too long.

Sunday (Oct 14): Today I went to a used book fair that was held in a hotel about twenty minutes up the road. It was actually quite a good fair, with a lot of stores that carried specialty books, out-of-print books and first editions. There were about forty vendors there, at least, all with stands of dozens of books and brochures about their actual stores. The crowd was fairly old; I was easily one of the youngest people browsing the books and I wouldn’t be surprised if, for the good hour I spent there, I was the youngest person in the room. Several of the vendors were in their mid-twenties, but about three-quarters of the customers, not surprisingly, must have been over fifty.

There were countless interesting books there. There were tons of first editions of everything from Winnie the Pooh to Ernest Hemingway to Dashiell Hammett. Many of the books were distinctly British, but you could tell there were some really hard-to-find items and I heard two different customers talking to vendors and saying, “Well, I need to go to a cash machine, but I’ll be back.” There was also a lot of autographed books for sale, including a signed first edition of P.D. James’s Children of Men (which I mention, because I considered buying it). Also, never before have I seen so many leather-bound books for sale. About a quarter of the stands must have stocked predominantly leather-bound books from thirty or forty years ago. I didn’t have that much cash on hand when I went, but I did manage to spend it all, buying an Ian McEwan, Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, two other fiction books, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Brian Urquhart’s biography on Dag Hammarskjold. Except for the Urquhart, which is a hardcover and harder to find, I got the other 5 books for just over 6 pounds, which made it a fine day. I was even able to tolerate the fact that my internet has continued to suck for the last two weeks, with no signs of getting better.

Two Weeks in London, Part I

2007-10-10T16:51:00.000-05:00

I did originally write this last Friday, but one of the downsides of my move to London has been that I’ve had to deal with a rather sporadically working internet connection in my room, because of a faulty port or something. Hopefully it will be fixed soon and while London’s been great in many ways, this has been a royal pain in the ass.

So, as many of you (the four of you, that is) know, I moved to London, England two weeks ago for my one-year Master’s degree. Seeing as I’m sure everyone naturally will ask me dozens of questions about England and so forth, I’ve decided I will intermittently update this blog with my stories. I prefer to write about other things that aren’t me, but if I don’t do this I’ll spend half my evenings retyping the same stories for several different people. This way I can save myself time and readers then can pepper me with more individual and specific questions later.

With this entry, I’ll detail what I did during my first week in England. I flew out of Canada on Friday, September 21st and landed early in the morning on Saturday. I met my Dad at the airport. One of the reasons I chose to leave on Friday and not some time in the following week was that it allowed me to meet my Dad in London. He was in Frankfurt on business all week and instead of flying home he just flew into London on Friday night and met me there. After that we departed on the tube for my residence, which was a hassle as we were carrying three suitcases and two reasonably large bags between us and I am somewhat injured. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to check into my room until 2 pm, so we had to store our bags and then find something to amuse ourselves for 5 hours.

We wandered over to campus and spend about half an hour and saw the whole campus (more on that in another post) and then we wandered the streets a bit and had a long lunch at the pub, which was nice after airplane food and a morning stroll. Not surprisingly, between 12:00 and 12:15 the pub went from being deserted to having about 35 people in it, all drinking beer early on a Saturday afternoon. We got back to the residence hall and got my stuff up to the room, but by this point jetlag was beginning to hit, as I hadn’t slept on the plane. I was exhausted and in no mood to unpack. I was fine when on my feet, but once I was in the same room as a bed, I had to sit down and then I was toast. After we (read: my Dad, because I was too damn tired) unpacked some of my clothes that needed to be hung up, like my suit jacket and good pants, we decided that we should leave the rest of the unpacking for another day.

So, we threw overnight stuff into a bag and took off for the train station and took a train to Norwich, where my dad is from. We arrived there around 6 and my Aunt and Uncle greeted us at the train station. My Dad’s sister is one of the nicest women I know; she’s absolutely wonderful and her husband of about four years is great, as well. She must have put our family up for four day to a week about fifteen times in the last twenty-odd years, always without complaint and with a giant smile on her face. She always remembered all of our favourite English foods and was absolutely fantastic towards us kids. You never got the sense she was even remotely bothered by our presence, which is saying something, as I’m sure there were a few times me and my siblings acted like twerps. Anyhow, I really like them. We had a nice stew with them on Saturday evening and my Aunt, Uncle and Dad spent the whole evening talking.

Sunday was a lot of fun, too. In the early afternoon my Uncle arrived with his three sons (they’re something like 17, 14 and 13 or 18, 15 and 14 or something). In the middle of the afternoon my Dad’s other brother arrived, along with his wife, although their 19-year-old son stayed home. My Aunt’s 33-year-old daughter also came by in the middle of the afternoon, as did my Aunt’s neighbours and their three children. It was nice to do a big family meal like that, even if I spent half of the time with the kids, especially because it’s something we never get to do in Canada. I think my Dad enjoyed it a lot too, as it’s probably been 18 months or so since he’s seen any of the family. Later in the evening, after both of my Uncles had left my Aunt’s 30-year-old son arrived, which completed the evening. The entire family was really supportive and gave me cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses and my Aunt extended an open invitation for me to come over any time I wanted, for as long as I wanted. It’s quite comforting to know you have that safety net there and I do intend to spend another weekend in Norwich at some point.

We arrived back in London midday on the Monday and spent the next day and a half unpacking, buying some essentials for my room and doing a bit of exploring around London. My Dad never spent any real time in London when he lived in England and we’ve only stayed there once, for about three days, during our repeated visits to England, so even though he’s roughly familiar with the geography of the city, a lot of it is relatively new to him, as well. We went to see St. Paul’s Cathedral on Tuesday and I assume my Dad has seen it before, but if he has it was likely 30 or 35 years ago or something, as we didn’t stop there during our one trip to London in 2004 or so. We weren’t able to go inside because of some special service and then during the walk back to my residence it started to rain, hard, and we got caught in it. Typical England for you.

We tried to go see the Arsenal vs. Newcastle football match on Tuesday night, but it was sold out and instead we went to see Spamalot, which is the means this year I’ve seen musicals on Broadway and in London’s West End, despite not seeing a musical in the previous five years or so. Spamalot’s lead was an actor from All Creatures Great and Small who my Dad was familiar with and who he had no idea did theatre, but the rest of the cast was no-names who had done other theatre shows in London. Spamalot was well done; you have to like Monty Python humour to enjoy it, but if you do it’ll give you a lot of laughs. There are a couple groan moments and a few jokes that fall flat, but most of it is consistently funny and it certainly keeps you entertained for two hours. It’s based roughly on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but blends in a number of parodies of Broadway theatre. The story is very loosely held together, but you’re laughing hard enough that by the time it registers, you’ve already disregarded it. It’s nothing incredible you’ll remember in a decade, but it’s a good night at the theatre.

After my Dad left Wednesday morning, things started to get weird. Really weird. I knew one person coming to LSE, a friend of mine from Queen’s named Katharine. So on Wednesday she arrived and had to room temporarily in my residence until the weekend, so she came and found me (so much for the front desk protecting my privacy) and I helped me her move into her temporary room and then I took her for a tour of the campus. After I was made to feel useful by showing her around the campus we met up with her friend, Katee, who is also doing her Master’s at LSE and who also a Queen’s graduate from Hamilton. I knew Katee to have seen her around a couple of times, but we never really talked. So then Katharine and I showed Katee around campus and then we went to go buy cell phones. Although the people on my floor are great, it’s a nice feeling to have someone around who you know from before and have some common basis with.

After peppering the salesman with fifty questions, including the same question about accepting international calls fifteen times, we all bought the exact same phone, because we’re cool that way. Katee knew someone else coming to LSE from Queen’s, so we met up with her in the evening, and she is also from Hamilton. Then we joined a few guys from my floor, another temporary resident in our building and a guy he knew for dinner, The temporary resident and the other random guy were – wait for it – both Queen’s graduates and one was from Hamilton. So yes, you read that right. My first evening in London was spent with nine other students, of whom five were Queen’s graduates, of whom four were from Hamilton. I never thought I’d feel like a minority because I wasn’t from Hamilton.

What’s also strange is that of these Queen’s people, one was a Politics student and one was a Politics/History student and I knew the girl to have seen her around, but had never spoke to her, and I had no recollection the guy existed at all, despite the fact both were in my program for four years at Queen’s.

In addition to all of those people, I’ve met two other Queen’s people here in the last week, meaning there are at least eight of us from K-Town here, including me. One of the guys I met ths last week is this cool guy from the Boston area. I met him in the caf first year when one of us said something about baseball to the other and we had like a five-minute conversation. Since then we’ll randomly cross each other about twice a year at Queen’s and we’d stop, exchange greetings, talk about baseball for a minute or two and keep going. So, one night last week I’m walking home with a guy from my floor in Covent Garden and I hear “Hey you” and I turn and it’s that guy and we reminisce. I’m not sure we even know each other’s name, but it’s still pretty cool. It’s also cool because I was the you in a “Hey you,” which almost never happens.

Thursday and Friday were pretty slow days. I spent most of one day sleeping, because that week I moved over it was really cold and I came down with a chill. The other day I just did some shopping for a few more necessities for my room. Both evenings I went out drinking with some guys from my floor and some of the Queen’s kids. The guys from my floor are a good group, one guy is from Chicago and doing IR, another’s from Holland and doing Human Rights, a third is from Southern Illinois and doing Philosophy and Public Policy and a fourth is from LA and doing Urban Planning. The latter two share my “flat”, along with a guy from Greece who hadn’t moved it at this point. Basically, the “flats” are just three individual rooms off the main hallway, which looks like any shitty residence hallway built in the 70’s, and then every fourth door is a key-operated one that leads to a mini-hallway, off of which are a tiny shower, a tiny bathroom, a tiny kitchen and the fourth bedroom. It’s not terrible, but it’s far worse than the arrangement I had in first year at Queen’s – where I also got pretty lucky, so maybe this is payback – but the location is good and the price seems reasonable, so I can’t complain too much. I just hate sharing a bathroom and having a tiny shower. At least the water pressure is good.

So that’s the play-by-play of my first week in London. I’ll try to come up with some more interesting stories for you later, but really the amount of Queen’s people here is something strange. I’ve come to the conclusion I have seven stalkers.

Washington State’s 2nd Coolest Man

2007-09-07T16:46:00.001-05:00

This guy rocks.

Bias or Self-Centered

2007-08-31T12:01:00.000-05:00

This story reports on a recent study in Harvard’s Du Bois Review that concludes, “White Americans suffer from a glaring ignorance about what it means to live as a black American.” However, I’m not so sure about the conclusions.

One question dealt with reparations and the article reports:

The researchers asked participants to imagine that their great, great grandfather, a wealthy shipping magnate, had been kidnapped about 150 years ago. The kidnappers demanded and received a large ransom that bankrupted the shipping magnate. That ransom was used to start a successful company that still survives today and is worth $100 million. Participants were asked whether they would be willing to be a part of a large suit against the present-day company that could net them each about $5,000.

In this scenario, 61 percent agreed to have their names listed on the lawsuit. The researchers noted that this is about the percentage of blacks today who support reparations for slave descendants.

“When white Americans find it within themselves to say ‘I must be compensated for a past injustice done to me’ but the same logic evaporates when the injustice concerns black Americans, they are staring straight at bias,” Banaji said.

I’m not so sure about this. I’m sure some people underestimate the effect of slavery on Black Americans, but I think the results can also largely be explained by the fact people are selfish. You’re offering them a hypothetical $5,000 as a result of a past injustice (which also directly led to the formation of a multi-million dollar company – while slavery led to similar wealth for Whites at the expense of Blacks, the direct connections are never so clear), so it makes sense most of them will take it. Now, you’re concluding they’re hypocritical when they oppose paying money to others for something that their ancestors did?

Most people view reparations as a direct tax or lump-sum payment to Blacks from Whites or at least from tax money, most of which will have come from whites. Not as a lawsuit against one specific company which was conclusively formed from the profits of an incident highly comparable to slavery. I don’t see how you can conclude Whites are hypocritical based on this. How many Blacks support reparations for Native Americans? This survey result is pretty easily explainable through natural human selfishness, which transcends races.

Survey Says…

2007-08-21T11:21:00.000-05:00

Here’s a fun little survey that measures how you feel about 25 of the most important issues in the upcoming American political election and how you prioritize them and then matches it up with political candidates. It’s obviously not an exact science, but it seems like it does a pretty decent job for a simple toy, as it allows you to disregard issues you don’t care about or feel are unimportant to the election and also assigns significant weight to your “key” issues. I wouldn’t encourage that this take the place of reading about the candidates’ positions and deciding who best matches your thoughts before voting (or stating repeatedly who you would vote for in the case of Canadians), but it can certainly help you contextualize your vote, think differently about certain candidates or even narrow down on the few issues that seem to separate the politicians with whom you have the most agreement.

So now the question I’m sure you’re all dying to know the answer to. Which candidate should I vote for according to this poll?

Actually, it’s the same candidate that over 57% of the over 128,862 respondents should vote for. For those who know my politics, even roughly, it’s probably no surprise that the candidate I matched up the best with was Dennis Kucinich.

“Wait a minute. I thought you said that over 57% of the respondents matched up the best with you winner,” is what you’re probably thinking right now. And yes, that’s true.

As the poll’s results page says:

You would probably be interested to know that Kucinich has been the first choice of 74840 people (out of 129444). That wasn't my intention or expectation when making this site, but it is certainly interesting.

At the last time a graph was generated - when Kucinich had 69,700 first-place finishes - the second place finisher, Mike Gravel, had 8,771 first-place results. In fact, Kucinich has more than twice as many first-place finishes as the next 6 candidates do (Gravel, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Clinton, Hunter, Giuliani).

Even if you use a top 3 results system (3 points for 1st place, 2 for 2nd place and 1 for 3rd place) Kucinich still wins comfortably with 256,214 points, compared to Gravel’s 154,467. Barak Obama comes in 3rd with 59,024, which isn’t even a quarter of Kucinich’s total. Clinton trails Obama and then after her come the first two Republicans: Paul and Romney.

I can come out with reasons why an internet poll would be disproportionately liberal and favour Democratic candidates, but I can’t think of any reason it would swing so heavily in Kucinich’s favour. Perhaps it was linked on several pro-Kucinich message boards, but that’s not where I found it. Perhaps he pays staff to do nothing but fill out the survey, change their IP addresses and then fill it out again, but as a “fringe” candidate I imagine he’s short-staffed and can’t afford to do that.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the media’s characterization of Kucinich as a “fringe” candidate is a self-fulfilling prophecy. He’s not got the name-recognition of Clinton or the sudden rise to fame of Obama, but there’s no reason why he should be less of a public figure than Dodd, Richardson or Biden. The media defines him as a “fringe” candidate from the beginning because he’s not a “name” and because they define his views as “non-mainstream,” and this is all exacerbated by his physical appearance. As I’ve said before and this survey has hinted, perhaps his views are much closer to the mainstream than people either realize or care to admit. I’m not denying his viewpoint on NAFTA or the Department of Peace isn’t unique among Democratic candidates and I’m aware this poll excludes economic matters, but on many of the other issues which Americans define as being most important, such as what to do about Iraq, healthcare, abortion rights, same-sex marriage and immigration, his views seem to coincide with the majority of Democratic voters. Kucinich’s electability and how he’d fare vs. various Republicans are separate matters, but there seems to be little reason that he shouldn’t be right alongside Clinton, Obama and Edwards, at least based on his policy positions.

The Israel Factor

2007-08-17T11:09:00.000-05:00

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has been running a feature called the Israel Factor for about a year where it ranks the various US presidential candidates according to how friendly they are towards Israel. Every month a panel of eight experts from across the political spectrum answers a few questions and then ranks each of the candidates out of 10. My issue with this exercise isn't that Israelis are assuming that Americans care about how Israelis feel about American politics. Given the relationship between the two countries it is only natural that Israel has a vested interest in the American election. Furthermore, the feature has additional relevance for the 100,000 American voters living in Israel. While I would hope they base their votes on a number of issues, I'm sure the vast majority base it almost entirely on the candidates’ policies towards Israel. This is only natural given the environment in which they live.

My issue is that "friendly towards Israel" is basically narrowly defined as being in favour of Israel's unambiguous and unconditional right to military action. Despite explanations for how they balance their panel and questions it is clear that the poll is basically a referendum on who unilaterally supports Israel's right to defend itself from perceived threats and who wants to limit it or place conditions on it. One only needs to read through the surveys, or even just look at the final rankings, to see how that plays out. This narrow definition of "friendly towards Israel" is what I take issue with. That’s one way to define the term, but others might consider committing more effort and resources to diplomatic talks between key actors in the Middle East; limiting Israeli defence tactics in an effort to avoid further angering Palestinian factions; further engaging the political wing on Hamas due to its popular support among the electorate; trying to improve the socioeconomic standing of Arabs in Israel or any number of different scenarios that one feels might eventually lead to peace in the Middle East as being policies that are “friendly towards Israel.”

Those who are Israel's strongest supporters, among some of the more notable names, include Rudy Giuliani (the clearly favoured candidate), Mike Bloomberg, Hillary Clinton and Fred Thompson. Those faring less well, but still with strong support for Israel, include Mitt Romney, John Edwards, Barak Obama and, the winner of the big second place finish in the otherwise meaningless Iowa Republican straw poll, Mike Huckabee.

My only question, not asked in jest, is where's Dennis Kucinich and where would he rank?

Quick Hits, Pt. II

2007-08-15T22:08:00.000-05:00

I have a couple of full-length posts planned, but haven’t found the time to write them. Hopefully I will soon before they lose their relevance.

• An Australian sheep farmer fell for a new variation of the internet Nigerian banking scam and it doesn’t reflect well on him.

Des Gregor, 56, has arrived back in Adelaide after being held hostage in the African nation of Mali for 12 days.
…
Mr Gregor, a sheep farmer, set off to Mali on what he hoped would be an exotic adventure, during which he would not only meet his African bride but pocket a huge dowry in gold.

The target of his affections was a woman purportedly called Natacha, a Liberian refugee in her twenties whom he had met and fallen in love with over the internet.

Seriously. Not only did he expect to meet a woman in her twenties who would agree to marry him (which I guess isn’t that unrealistic in the age of mail order brides), but the kicker is that he was supposed to collect an $86,000 dowry on top of that. What a jackpot. A presumably attractive wife 30 years younger than him and $86,000 for the chore of marrying her. Some people can be incredibly naïve, but you think something about the scenario would have raised red flags in his head or caused him to implement some precautions.

This immediately strikes me as one of those Catch-22 crimes. The plan is flawed in that anyone dumb enough to fall for the setup is unlikely to have the necessary money to pay the ransom. The man is a farmer (not a profession known for its wealth, although they often live better than you may think), who is old enough that his parents are likely dead and who is clearly not married and thus has no source of income beyond his own. The ideal target, as in the one most likely to fall for the plot, is the non-ideal victim, as he has nothing to lose by going to the authorities. Gullible and naive? Yes. Rich and desperate to avoid embarassment? No.

• There’s apparently been a spate of idiocy across Oceania.

A couple in New Zealand is planning to call their newborn son Superman after officials rejected their original choice of 4Real.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton have been frustrated by rules in New Zealand banning names that begin with a number.

Mum and Dad decided to call their son 4Real after seeing an ultrasound image of him. It was then they realised that their baby was "for real".

I’m not a huge fan of the unique names craze, but it doesn’t bug me that much unless the names are ridiculous. This is one of those cases. Seriously, what the fuck are they thinking? If there’s ever been a bigger sign that a couple is unfit to be the guardians of their child within the first couple of days of his life, I’d like to read about it.

Also, here’s an article from the Wall Street Journal on how naming one’s child is seen by many as a way to “brand” the child and make him or her unique, which in my view isn’t always a good thing.

"Names have become a matter of fashion and taste," says Harvard sociologist Stanley Lieberson.

Not everyone is happy about this development. Albert Mehrabian, a professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA and author of "The Baby Name Report Card," has conducted surveys of how people react to different names. He found that more common names elicited positive reactions, while unusual names typically brought negative responses. To him, giving children names that stand out may ultimately be no different than sending them to school with their hair dyed blue. "Yes, you can have someone stand out by being bizarre, but that doesn't mean it's going to be good," he says.

...
Karen Markovics, 36, who works for the planning department in Orange County, N.C., spent months reading baby books and scouring Web sites before settling on Nicole Josephine. But now, four years later, Mrs. Markovics says she wishes she'd chosen something less trendy -- and has even considered legally changing her daughter's name to Josephine Marie. "I'm having namer's remorse," she says.

That amused me. In article that told of babies named Nevaeh (heaven spelled backwards, for those who don’t know the story), Evander, Jackson, Sheridan, Beckett and Zayden (none of which are among the terrible choices I’ve heard of here or there), apparently Nicole is too radical. Nicole is too trendy, despite the fact it’s been among the top 50 names in the US constantly for the last three decades.

Unfortunately, I think this paragraph summarizes far too many people’s approach to naming a baby:

Lisa and Jon Stone of Lynnwood, Wash., turned to a name consultant because they didn't want their son to be "one of five Ashtons in the class," says Mrs. Stone, 36, a graphic designer. For Mr. Stone, 37, a production director for a nonprofit arts organization, the challenge was to find a "cool" name that would help his son stand out. "An unusual name gets people's attention when you're searching for a job or you're one in a field of many," he says.

Or you’re the idiot called “4Real” who never gets taken seriously at any moment in his life.

• I got another good literal laugh out loud moment at lunchtime at work thanks to a baseball message board I lurk at once or twice a day. The posters were discussing an article discussing whether it made more sense for the Oakland A's to sign Barry Bonds or stay with Jack Cust. Most posters, and myself, agree that Bonds is the better player, but the difference between him and Cust won't be worth the difference in their salaries. However, we are also in agreement that it is not an either/or scenario and that the A's could sign both of them, playing one in LF and one at DH.

Anyhow, someone was pointing out advantages to Bonds and said that he's an attendance draw, as sold out crowds have been following him around for the entire summer. He concluded his post by asking, "Have sold out crowds been following Jack Cust around since May?"

Poster #2: No, but the A's are third in road attendance in the American League behind the Yankees and Red Sox.

Poster #3: I never knew the A's were so popular.

Poster #4: Fonzie certainly seemed to like them.

Absolutely golden.

Quick Hits

2007-07-27T00:30:00.000-05:00

Here’s some random material from the past couple of days on the internet.

• Bush hits new low of 25% in approval ratings. Yet Republicans still are at least 50-50 to win the next election. Go figure.

• Has there ever been a worse rookie card of a Hall of Famer than this one? I’m sure he wishes kids weren’t clamouring for years to collect cards showing pictures of his ass. Topps owes him an apology gift basket or something.

• Of course, Topps has owed John Block a gift basket for about 35 years.

• Boise State star running back Ian Johnson, an African-American, is facing death threats, as is his fiancée Chrissy Popadics, who is white, because of their relationship. Johnson is everything that is right about American collegiate athletics (and there’s a lot wrong): an inner-city kid who earned a scholarship to university through hard work and athletic accomplishment. One of a rare number of collegiate athletes on pace to complete his degree (compare that to Heisman winner Matt Leinart taking one class, ballroom dancing, in his final year), Johnson works a summer job to provide for his family and says all the right things about school, family and a possible future in the NFL. But some dickheads can’t stand the thought that he is in love with a white woman. Assholes.

• Oh yeah, and if you haven’t seen Johnson’s post-Fiesta Bowl interview on ESPN, go watch it now. Never mind that the Fiesta Bowl was the best football I’ve ever seen in my life. The post-game interview contains one of the biggest moments of interview douchebaggery that I’ve ever seen. Fucking Chris Myers.

Mike Coolbaugh, 1972-2007

2007-07-24T15:07:00.000-05:00

On Sunday night, in an event which some speculate will lead to some major changes for baseball, but will most likely lead to a couple of minor modifications and then perhaps be forgotten more quickly than it should, Mike Coolbaugh, 35, was killed by a batted ball. Coolbaugh, a former big leaguer for the Milwaukee Brewers and St Louis Cardinals, was coaching first base for the Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies, the Tulsa Drillers, when backup catcher Tino Sanchez rocketed a foul ball down the first base line. Coolbaugh was unable to get out of the way of the ball in time and it struck him in the head. He was tended to on the field by the medical staff from both teams and the in-stadium doctor, but he never regained consciousness and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

Coolbaugh was drafted in 1990 in the 16th round by the Toronto Blue Jays. He played his first two years of professional baseball in St. Catherines, then the Jays low-A affiliate. He played for the Jays for 5 years and then bounced around through other teams systems, putting together a couple of very fine seasons in 1997 and 2000. In 2001 Coolbaugh signed with Milwaukee and played for their Triple-A affiliate in Indianapolis. After 1,215 games in the minors (my count has about 1,152, but I’ll defer to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) on July 15, 2001, Coolbaugh was finally promoted to the big leagues after demonstrating a level of perseverance most draftees never show. Coolbaugh played in 39 games for the Brewers in 2001 and 5 more for the Cardinals in 2002, but that was the only taste of major league action he ever got. Coolbaugh played minor league baseball through the end of 2006, which included two more very good seasons in 2004 and 2005, totaling 1,632 minor league games and 5,860 minor league at-bats. He retired at the end of 2006 and only joined Tulsa as a hitting and first base coach on July 3, after the previous coach resigned mid-season.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a couple of nice articles on Coolbaugh, which make it clear how much he simply enjoyed playing baseball and how happy he was when he finally got his chance in the majors. From the first article:

Geoff Jenkins and Ben Sheets, the only two players on the Milwaukee Brewers' current roster who played for the team in 2001, remembered how excited Mike Coolbaugh was to get to the major leagues that July after spending 12 years in the minor leagues.

"There was a lot of perseverance in him," recalled Jenkins. "I remember how proud we were for him that he finally made it."
…

Coolbaugh was so excited about finally getting his chance to play in the majors for the Brewers that he reported to the ballpark at 7 a.m. for a day game on July 16. He played 39 games with Milwaukee that season, batting .200 with two homers and seven RBI.

The article also touches on something else that’s apparent about Coolbaugh, which is how devoted he was to his family and his two, soon-to-be three, young children, who are now left without a father.

Coolbaugh played only five more games in the majors in 2002 for St. Louis. He returned to the minors and continued playing until retiring after the 2006 season. He had recently taken the job as coach for Tulsa at the urging of his sons, Joseph, 5, and Jacob, 3.

Coolbaugh also is survived by wife Amanda, expecting their third child in October.

"We were going to be done with it, but his kids wanted to see him (coach)," Amanda Coolbaugh said. "You couldn't have asked for a better father. He just paid attention to the boys, put them in clubs and sports . . . volunteered time on their teams."

And here’s an excerpt from a Journal-Sentinel article from the day Coolbaugh was promoted to the majors. h

It was barely 8 o'clock Sunday morning when Mike Coolbaugh tried on his Milwaukee Brewers uniform for the first time.

When you've been waiting 12 years to make it to the big leagues, it's never too early to suit up.

"I wasn't sure what time to be here so I got here about 7 a.m.," Coolbaugh said. "The security guy drove me around in a golf cart and gave me a tour of the place. I had a good time."

One hardly could blame Coolbaugh for trying to soak it all in during his first day as a major-league baseball player. The 29-year-old infielder never actually gave up on his dream of making it, but after a dozen years go by it's only natural to have doubts.

"A lot of guys would have quit and gone on to something else," Brewers manager Davey Lopes said. "This is a guy who really battled."

Coolbaugh was preparing for batting practice when Indianapolis manager Wendell Kim walked up and told him to pack his stuff and head for Milwaukee. "I couldn't breath for, like, five minutes," he said. "I asked, 'Are you serious?' I couldn't believe it."

The only frustration Coolbaugh experienced on his big day was trying to contact his parents, who were visiting relatives in upstate New York. They didn't have their cell phones activated, so the excited Coolbaugh was forced to leave messages.

"My parents still don't know," he said. "But my wife (Amanda) was visiting her sister in Chicago, so she's coming here."

Coolbaugh isn't exactly sure where he ranks among those who have played the most games in the minors before getting that first big-league assignment.

"I'm sure I'm in the top 10," he said confidently.

And from MLB.com:

"What a hard worker," said Brewers hitting coach Jim Skaalen, who was Milwaukee's roving hitting coach in 2001 and got to know Coolbaugh. Skaalen managed Coolbaugh's brother, Scott, in the Rangers' Minor League system.

"I always admired Mike's work ethic and that he was always a consistently upbeat guy," Skaalen said. "He was labeled one of those 'Four-A' players but he was never bitter about it. Some of those up and down players have a lot of bitterness, but it was nothing but positive energy every day from him. It brought a tear to my eye when I saw the news this morning."

Coolbaugh's death is also relatively unique in couple of aspects. Not because three young children are left fatherless, because unfortunately that happens dozens of times a day across North America. It is unique because it's the first death on a major league baseball field in decades. And it's also an example of how the deaths of people in certain occupations affect their friends and coworkers far differently than others. Although Coolbaugh was a new coach for the Drillers, he still fits this example due to his 16-year minor league career, and Josh Hancock, the St. Louis Cardinals pitcher who died earlier this year in a drunk driving accident, is another good illustration of how the deaths of professional athletes differ from those in many other jobs. Not all jobs, but it's certainly very different from going to work in a cubicle in an office environment, no matter how much you may socialize on coffee breaks or while lining up to use the only photocopier not malfunctioning.

I think it's difficult for the layperson to appreciate the camaraderie in professional sports, which is perhaps strongest of all in baseball because of the length of the season and the number of games. When soldiers speak of losing a member of their platoon, they often say how the deceased was like "a brother" to them and how the army is a "family." For a long time I didn't really get what they were saying, until I realized the strength of the bond that is formed between men who spend 6-12 months of the year together, fighting an enemy in a foreign country. I can't really appreciate what that bond feels like, but now I understand why they called the army their family and their fellow soldiers their brothers.

Professional sports are a lot like that, I think. Not to the same degree as the army at all, as the bond there is strengthened by trusting your life to your fellow soldiers doing their jobs and following their orders, but it's inevitable that spending long amounts of time together with a limited group of individuals is going to make many of them very close to one another. Baseball players show up for spring training in mid-February and play through the end of September. Through the end of October if there team is in the playoffs. That's 8, sometimes 9, months a year where players get maybe 3 days off a month (more in February and March, but young players who are fighting to make the roster don't get many days off and veterans who don't play as many games still have to show up for workouts and training almost every day). The other 27-28 days they spend about 8-10 hours at the ballpark, often showing up at about 2 pm for an evening game and leaving around 11. And what do they do? They workout together. Pitchers jog with pitchers. Outfielders field fly balls with outfielders. Infielders practice double plays with other infielders. Catchers scout opposing hitters together. They hit batting practice in groups of 4-5, which they keep for the entire year. They lift weights together, jog together, and stretch together. They sit around in the clubhouse while the other team hits BP together.

During the game, starting pitchers not starting that evening sit together on the bench, charting opposing hitters and shooting the shit. Bench players sit together. The 6 or 7 guys in the bullpen sit in the bullpen every game. Baseball's not end-to-end action like some sports and there's a lot of time for bench players to discuss anything under the sun. After the game, if the team is on the road, players often go out, to eat or drink or do something else. Again, these are group activities. If it's 11:15 on a Wednesday night in Baltimore and you need something to eat after a game, are you going to do it by yourself or grab 3 buddies? During homestands, if the player has a wife and children, they will often come to stay with them during the summer months, particularly when the kids are off school. However, young and single players spend even more time together, as they often share a large condo or a house and spend the majority of off-time together, as well.

This account may not hold true for every MLB athlete (and athlete in general), because I'm sure there are some who are not very social and others who prefer other things to going out most evenings, but I think this account is fairly true for most MLBers and one can't deny that during a full week of games MLB players probably spend about 70 hours together with the same 30 or so guys at the ballpark and an additional maybe 10 to 35 hours with a small group of them during off-time from March through the end of September. This is more than hockey players, basketball players or football players. It's not quite analogous, but imagine taking an 8 month road trip with 30 other guys. Some you might not like very much and others you may be indifferent towards, but you're bound to become very close a number of them. Sure there'll be times when you grow sick of even your best buddies, but over the length of the season there will be some incredibly strong friendships that grow out of that. This strong bond is why deaths of active professional athletes devastate not only their family, but their friends and their entire team.

And, here’s a nice article on four ex-Expos who came back to Ottawa for a charity softball game and gave some Expos fans a lifetime highlight.

McCain Loses More Staff

2007-07-12T12:57:00.000-05:00

If Senator McCain's campaign wasn't struggling before with the loss of two key strategists, the departure of two of his most important Iowa staff members surely confirms it is.

Two veteran Republican strategists are abandoning John McCain's campaign in Iowa, dealing another blow to his struggling presidential bid.

Ed Failor Jr., said Thursday that he and Karen Slifka plan to notify McCain by letter. Both are GOP operatives with deep ties in Iowa, which holds the first-in-the-nation caucuses, and national politics.

"As much as I like Senator McCain, it's not a team I'm willing to stay involved with any longer," Failor said.

The race to be the Republican nominee is now a three-way battle between
Giuliani, Thompson and Romney.

Waiting for Wendy

2007-07-10T12:09:00.000-05:00

Just when you thought they were all done, we have another sex scandal from the Republican Party.

Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, whose telephone number was disclosed by the so-called "D.C. Madam" accused of running a prostitution ring, says he is sorry for a "serious sin" and that he has already made peace with his wife.

"This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible," Vitter said Monday in a printed statement. "Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there — with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way."

Of course, Bill Clinton committed an unpardonable sin that caused impeachment hearings and endless media scrutiny. And let’s not even get started on how the Republicans try to police and restrict the lives of gays.

But in Vitter’s case everything’s okay, because God’s granted him forgiveness and we should respect his wishes to keep the matter private. I can only hope the Republicans respect the wishes of the next Democrat involved in a similar story. I also hope God’s similarly quick to grant forgiveness to others who “sin,” but I’m not holding my breath.

Later the story goes on to provide us with some titillating background information:

Vitter and his wife, Wendy, live in Metairie, La., with their four children. In 2000, Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News Service she could not be as forgiving as Livingston's wife or Hillary Clinton.

"I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary," she said. "If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

Well, I’m just going to grab a bag of popcorn and sit back and wait for the ensuing story on CNN. This should be fun.

Also, if you haven’t heard, McCain’s top two aides Campaign Manager Terry Nelson and Chief Strategist John Weaver resigned today, dealing his stalled campaign what is almost certainly its deathblow.

Chatty Cathy No More

2007-07-07T21:29:00.000-05:00

It has long been conventional cultural wisdom that women talk more than men. Men clam up, while women natter endlessly. And I certainly know a few females who seem to find any sort of prolonged silence uncomfortable. Although, I know a couple of guys like that, as well. Often frustrating.

A recent study by the University of Arizona revealed that this wisdom appears to be another cultural myth with little grounding in reality.

Sure, maybe guys talk more about cars and sports and the new iPhone, and women talk about their feelings, but at the end of the day, each sex uses an average 16,000 words a day, say researchers who studied the conversational habits of 396 men and women for six years.

"I was a little surprised there wasn't any gender influence, because this stereotype of women talking more is such a powerful, popular idea," said Richard Slatcher, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Texas and one of the authors of the study. "But we were able to directly test the notion, and it's totally unfounded."

…..

The new study used audio clips from university students who agreed to be recorded for several days sometime between 1998 and 2004. The recording equipment amounted to mini-recorders and lapel microphones designed for studies that require listening to natural language use. The devices would turn on automatically for 30 seconds every 12.5 minutes, and the subjects could not control -- and did not know -- when the equipment was turned on or off.

Researchers then transcribed the snippets of conversation, counted the words used and extrapolated from that number to get an idea of how many words each person used in a day.

There are some potential drawbacks to the study, namely that because it used only university students, it might not apply perfectly to men and women of all age groups and education levels. But Mehl said if there were important biological differences between men and women's verbosity, they would have registered at least somewhat in the study.

As it was, women spoke on average about 546 more words each day than men, but that number was found to be not statistically significant.

Based on the study results, some stereotypes about conversational habits seemed to hold true, Mehl said. Researchers didn't actually count the types of words people used, but he said men tended to talk more about sports and technology and women about their feelings.

The study’s use of solely college students could potentially lead to different results than one using members of the general population would, but it does seem like a strong gender difference would have resulted in a bigger discrepancy between the sexes. And the study’s methodology does improve upon the previous attempts to measure conversation tendencies.

Now, the BBC is a great source for online news. However, a follow-up article on this study demonstrates the worst of the British media and the BBC’s efforts. The BBC decided to consult some females to find out what the missing 546 words might be and it includes words like body image, empowering, feminism, airbrushing and Afghanistan.

I’m happy to see the results of a study end misleading gender-based assumptions about behaviour. Breaking down gender norms and craeating relative fluidity between both genders and behaviour is something I fully support, although I recognize that society will likely continue to have differences between the behaviour of the two genders and some difference is perhaps a good thing in itself. What’s not so good is how the BBC works to reconstruct those gender norms in an article related to that very study. Men can’t be feminists? Men don’t have body image issues? Men don’t talk about Afghanistan?

And what about uniquely male vocabulary? How does the BBC address that? Or is cockblocking a phenomenon that both sexes now speak about?

LiveBlogging....Canada v. Austria

2007-07-05T18:33:00.000-05:00

Pre-game Show: Craig Forrest announces that there have been three changes to the starting lineup, including Tosaint Ricketts replacing Andrea Lombardo. Good move by Dale Mitchell. I can only assume he's a longtime reader. Forrest also spoke of the lack of pace Canada showed last game and Jaime Peters was highlighted as being important to today's match. I agree. Get Peters the ball and good things will happen.

One of Austria's players, Thomas Hinum, has his listed club as bet.at.home.com. What the hell? I hope one day I'm not attending a Premier League match between Sony and Fly Emirates. Austria has 4 Thomases on their roster. The Czechs also have 4 Tomases. Among the other 20 teams there is one Tomasz, which puts it on equal footing with Clifford, Dennis, Blessing and Bob Gift (that is his first name).

Other changes for Canada: Keegan Ayre in for Christian Nunez and Stephen Lumley in for Nana Attakora-Gyan.

00:00: The Austrian goalie has already touched the ball 30 seconds in. I don't think the Chilean goalie had to field a ball from play for about the first 20 minutes or so.

00:02: The crowd looks awful. The stadium looks maybe 1/3 full. They jut showed a shot of one of the corner stands and it's practically empty. So much for home field advantage.

00:03: Canada has just given the ball away in midfield. I could copy that sentence and paste it about 60 times this game if I wanted.

Canada's wall blocked a free shot. Their defence doesn't look terrible. It played Chile alright and Attakora-Gyan, who looked the most exposed, is out of the lineup.

00:05: Jaime Peters just played the ball forward for Lumley, who was running up the right side. Lumley seems like he'll be willing to press forward much more than Canada's defenders did against Chile.

00:09: Canada's got a free kick deep in Austrian territory. Edgar and Marcus Haber are forward. This is the type of opportunity Canada needs to capitalize on. Good offensive work by Lumley to win the kick.

Ayre blasts it over the crease and it bounces out harmlessly. Wonderful.

00:12: Edgar puts a long ball on Jackson's feet and he gets some space between him and his marker and feeds a ball into the crease, which just bounces out of the reach of Ricketts. Promising stuff, nonetheless.

00:16: What's the big deal with Edmonton? I always hear about it as being Canada's best soccer venue and city, which was maybe true before National Stadium was built. But, the crowd is tiny and silent today and it was sold out and very lively against Chile. Looking ahead, if Canada finishes first or second in their group their quarterfinal match will also be in Edmonton. Tell me that's not intentional. I don't understand it. If they finish third and get through, it will be in Burnaby or Montreal.

00:17: Haber makes a fine sliding tackle to stop a breakaway. It wasn't incredibly difficult, but he timed it well (as he needed to) and cleared the ball before the Austrian forward was able to get in alone on Begovic.

00:21: Begovic rolls the ball forward to O'Connor to start a Canadian drive. Sweet, Mitchell does read my blog....

00:22: Canada has given the ball and scoring opportunities away three straight times due to a poor first touch by forwards. Three times, two of them by Ricketts, a decent pass by the midfield or another forward to a forward was wasted when the second forward let the ball bounce of his feet and into the possession of an Austrian defender.

00:24: Lumley is out for Michael D'Agostino. Lumley seemed to being playing well, so I suspect it's related to his head injury he suffered a few minutes earlier. I wonder how they'd know so quickly that he couldn't continue for good, despite the fact he never went off the pitch, but I can't see another reason to sub him out. Good to see a soccer player suffer a knock, stay down for about 20 seconds and get up and continue to play, despite the fact the injury would eventually force him from the game.

Yeah, 'despite the fact' twice. This is edit-free. It's ....*cue music*....liveblogging.

00:31: Begovic makes a diving, but routine, save off a shot by Erwin Hoffer, Austria's best player. Canada still doesn't have a shot on net.

00:36: Austria's had possession in Canada's end for about 8 of the last 10 minutes. Canada doesn't look in trouble defensively. They don't look like they're about to concede a goal, but they certainly don't look like they're about to score.

00:37: A beautiful through ball to Morgenthaler results in a partial breakaway along the wing of the Canadian box. A sliding D'Agostino managed to block the shot and it bounces harmlessly off the outside of the post.

00:45: A ball to Peters and he races about half the pitch and manages to produce a corner. They need Peters to do more of that, because he's dangerous when he gets going.

Nigel Helm on O'Connor's shot that goes about ten feet over the goal. "O'Connor goes for goal..and he'll wish he hadn't bothered." British soccer announcers have few equals in the world of sports broadcasting.

And as half time approaches, it's been a dull half. Less frequent updates are coming, because there's really very little to blog about. At this rate I can see a scoreless goal or a 1-0 win by either team as a result of a mistake by the other team or a lucky break.

Thoughts on the U20 World Cup, Part I

2007-07-04T22:52:00.000-05:00

Here are my thoughts so far from watching parts of the first six days of matches from the U20 soccer tournament. First, I'll talk about the Canada vs. Chile game and then I'll move on to include short notes on other teams I've seen play.

In their match against Chile, Canada was thoroughly, thoroughly outplayed. It wasn't a 'possession is almost even, they scored a good goal, got a lucky break and scored a third when Canada was pressing to tie it up' game. It was a 'they thoroughly dominated and deserved to win 3-0' game. While Chile's first goal was a bit lucky (a defender stopped a cross-crease pass with a stretched boot, but he was unable to keep his balance and fell, so the ball sat there as a Chilean pounced on it and blasted in past a helpless Begovic), the possession was probably about 70-30 in Chile's favour and Canada didn't manage a shot until the second half. It was a pathetic effort, in many ways.

First, the good news. Canada isn't that bad. Rag on Canadian soccer all you want, the U20 team isn't that bad. It qualified for the 2003 and 2005 U20 World Cups (and likely more, but going back any further is a bit pointless) and made the quarterfinals of the 2003 tournament, losing to Brazil. Canadian youth soccer has made strides (it'd be a whole lot better with Jonathan de Guzman, but that's another story) and while its not at the level of Argentina, Brazil and other world class powers, we're not minnows, either. I think it was a combination of a good Chilean team and a poor performance by Canada, which was exacerbated by the nerves of their opening match in the U20 World Cup on home soil. For example, David Edgar couldn't complete straight passes to his midfielders and he has played in the Premiership. That can't be the normal standard of most of the players on this team.

Chile was also the toughest team in this group. I have no idea how they only finished fourth in South American qualifying if they regularly play like that. Basically every player on the pitch was very technically skilled. All of them, even the defenders, were skilled dribblers who seemed equally adept at using both feet. Their passes were fast and crisp and if three Canadian players had two of them boxed near the sideline of the pitch, within fifteen seconds suddenly the two Chileans would be going down the line with only one Canadian defending and two running to catch up. And, worryingly for Canada, they did all of this without Alexis Sanchez, who is their best player. He was suspended, but is supposed to be one of the players to watch in this tournament. Nevertheless, Mathias Vidangossy made up for his absence. This Villareal youth was clearly the best player on the pitch. Chilean players dove (and Canadians never did, as far as I recall – although that may be a product of them almost never having the ball) and they showboated (towards the end a couple of the guys made dribbling plays that were clearly not going to go anywhere and not designed to make any forward progress, but were simply to show off what they could do), but there might be a bright future for soccer in Chile. That makes me feel good as Chile is my second favourite South American soccer nation, behind only Paraguay.

Now, onto the bad news for Canada. They didn't look very good. Up front, they started with Andrea Lombardo and Simeon Jackson at forward, but the latter basically played as a midfielder, so practically speaking it was only Lombardo as a forward. Their offensive plan for the whole first half seemed to be get the ball to Lombardo, which was clearly not working ten minutes into the game, yet they continued to try it for the next thirty-five and early into the second half, as well. Despite having several inches on all of Chile's defenders, I don't recall once (maybe it happened once or twice, but on the vast majority it did not) where Lombardo outjumped them for goal kicks or balls played into the center of the pitch. The defenders would simply jump up behind him, get height on him and head the ball to a teammate. A few times midfielders tried to play the ball down the wing for Lombardo to run onto, but he was nearly always beaten there by quicker Chilean defenders. Furthermore, the rare times he did get the ball at his feet, he seemed lost. That was likely a function of having no one else up front, but he looked clumsy and always had the ball taken away by the nearest defender. Not once did he cleanly beat a defender with a dribble. He looked ineffective, at best, and inept, at worst. Maybe his style of play is better suited to another type of team, but personally I'd seriously think about not starting him tomorrow.

Begovic played as well as could be expected in net. He had no chance on two of the goals and couldn't have done much on the third. However, his insistance on grand goal kicks should have been addressed by the coach halfway through the half. Canada was playing into the wind the first half, so his goal kicks would get caught in the wind and come down around the center line, every single time. When you add in the fact Lombardo was being consistently outjumped for the ball, 90% of the time he got the ball (no exaggeration), it would wind up with Chile taking possession of the ball at center pitch about 15 seconds later. This went on for the entire first half. Only in the second half, and only once then, did Begovic decide that it might be a good idea to occasionally roll or kick a pass to defenders and try to develop a play that way. I'm not sure about Dale Mitchell's game plan and coaching ability, considering the fact that this strategy and Lombardo's complete ineffectiveness continued into the second half, when me, my dad and my brother all independently arrive at the same conclusion about 15 to 20 minutes into the match.

For some reason, it wasn't until the middle of the second half when Canada began trying to feed balls forward to Jaime Peters, the speedy forward from Ipswich Town. Peters is quick and skilled and was able to get around a Chilean defender a couple of times, but unfortunately help usually arrived and stopped Peters before a real chance developed. Also looking impressive was Alex Elliott, who came on to replace Lombardo up front. He shows signs of life and managed one strong shot on net, albeit one that was straight at Chile's keeper. I'd definitely start him next game, if not in place of Lombardo in place of the other forward. Canada certainly needs more presence up front. They need two forwards playing forward, not one playing midfield and they need to use Peters more on the wing, as he is one of their most dangerous threats.

Perhaps most troubling was the fact Canada lacked any presence in midfield. There was no midfield general. Nobody to direct play or start an attack. Nobody to create rushes, make crosses or be a focal starting point for the offence. Peters only came to life in the second half and seems best deployed as an offensive threat. Captain Will Johnson was invisible for the match and I can hardly recall Christian Nunez touching the ball until the last ten minutes. This could be what haunts the team against Austria and Congo, because I don't foresee good results if they play another game of defend and feed Lombardo.

Canada is also behind the 8-ball in that their goal deficit is at -3. If they hope to finish with a mediocre point total and get through on goal difference they might be disappointed. Before the tournament I thought a realistic goal was a quarterfinal berth. It still might be, but Canada will face a tougher opponent in the second round if they finish 3^rd in the group. At the very least they need to finish second. And at the very very least, they need to get through to the second round. If the United Arab Emirates could in 2005 and Canada can’t, that’s just embarrassing.

In summary, my solutions for the next game:

1. Use Peters more.

2. Start Elliott at forward, probably instead of Simeon Jackson. But don’t be afraid to take Lombardo out if he’s ineffective. And use Peters more.

3. Have Johnson or Nunez take control of the midfield.

4. Stop having Begovic kick it blindly into a clump of players.

5. Try to get more corners and crosses. Lombardo does have a height advantage and Edgar and Marcus Haber are both also quite tall.

And now for thoughts on some of the other teams...

North Korea

They looked physically fit and played better than I expected against the Czechs. Their players all looked at least of average height and weight. They don’t look malnourished...

What? Too soon?

Uruguay

They dominated possession against Jordan, but failed to score as often as they should have. Weakest goaltending I’ve seen in the tournament.

Czech Republic

Some players have this “stylish” Euro Mohawk haircut with the hawk dyed blonde. Very skilled players, but like other Eastern European teams they don’t seem to play together as well as they should. Should have beaten North Korea, but slumped towards the end of the match. Weren’t the sum of their parts. However, they’ve set themselves up well for qualification in the second round as a win against Panama will get them through and a tie should.

USA

I was beginning to think Freddy Adu was a product of American hype as I heard much more of him when he was a 14-year-old child prodigy than I have since he started playing in the MLS or internationals. However, Adu dominated the USA’s match against Poland, scoring a hat trick. The game wasn’t on TV, but from the highlights I saw Adu was fantastic. This is the Freddy Adu, still only 16, that attracted worldwide recognition at 13.

Jordan

Not nearly as overmatched as I thought they’d be. Qualified with a huge upset over China in the Asian qualifying tournament, but held their own against Zambia and Uruguay. Uruguay had the majority of possession and Jordan hit the post, the crossbar and had one partial breakaway in the dying minutes. They were the better team in the second half and overall were far better against Uruguay than Canada was against Chile. A couple of players, I think Adnan Hasan and Abdallah Salim, have quite a lot of pace. Their coach, Jan Poulsen, coached Denmark to their shocking victory in the European Championship in 1992.

Scotland

Their central defender, Scott Cuthbert of Celtic, made a brutal error that led to Japan’s first goal in the opening match. Another defender, Andrew Cave-Brown, is on the Norwich City youth team and shall start playing on the first team soon.

Nigeria

Typical Nigerian soccer. Exciting. Skilled. Undisciplined. They’re looking stronger defensively than some other Nigerian teams I’ve seen, but don’t work as well as a team as they should. The offensive passing is weak, but the players are able to do quite well one-on-one and they always look like they’re on the verge of creating something. Hard to tell for sure, but goalkeeping looks mediocre at best. Has Nigeria ever produced a great goalie? They’re currently beating Scotland at the half. If they hold on for the win they’ll finish first or second in Group F. They’re all but assured a spot in the second round even with a tie, but a win would ensure that the earliest Nigeria would play in Toronto is the semi-finals. If they make it that far, I’m going to do my best to be there.

John Helm

Fantastic British commentator. Great to listen to, as usual. I could listen to this man announce soccer forever.

George Steinbrenner Has Dementia

2007-07-04T12:40:00.000-05:00

Anybody who follows baseball closely knows that George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees and one of the most influential and powerful men in baseball for the last twenty-five to thirty-five years, isn’t the man he used to be. He was no longer a mainstay at Yankees games and their recent stretch of futility, at least in terms of winning a World Series, wouldn’t have been tolerated by the old George. There would have been a mass of firings or trades, but instead he just issued statements through his publicist that the organization was committed to winning. I, and most people I think, assumed that it was simply a part of the aging process and that Steinbrenner was tiring of the public spotlight as he aged and mellowed a bit in the wake of a 2003 fainting spell.

However, MSNBC’s Mike Celizic reports that its likely that Steinbrenner has dementia, or something resembling that diagnosis.

The body is there, but the mind is fading. He isn’t going to drop the axe on anyone because he can’t. He’s not going to rip anyone because he can’t remember their names.

I’ve been saying for several years that he’s not the same man he once was. I never used the word “dementia” because I didn’t know what the reason was. I only knew what I heard privately from people, and that was that the Boss had lost his
fastball.

…..

“While many in the media continue to suggest The Boss is still a lurking and fearsome presence, there has been little-to-no-evidence the last two years to believe Steinbrenner has the capacity to run the Yanks in the same manner in which he
had run the team since the 1970s.

All reasonable signs indicate that his dementia . . . is now so profound that he is being carefully hidden from public view, appearing only in occasional, circumspect quotes issued by his longtime personal public relations man, Howard Rubenstein.”

ESPN also has an article up which touches on Steinbrenner’s aging and the future of the Yankees. Steinbrenner’s expected successor was originally going to be his son-in-law Steve Swindal. Since Swindal is in the middle of divorcing Steinbrenner’s daughter (both daughters are considered “brilliant” but neither is considered a possible future owner, as Steinbrenner is a chauvinist) he has been let go from his job with the Yankees and obviously has no future there. Steinbrenner’s sons, Hank and Hal, ran the family’s thoroughbred racing farm and hotel chain, respectively, but both are taking larger roles with the Yankees, with one, perhaps Hal, expected to take over for George when he dies.

I have three points to make.

1. How bad could this marriage have been that this guy blew his opportunity to run the New York Yankees? I hate the Yankees, but c’mon. It’s the biggest sports franchise in North America. I don’t care what your wife makes you or how much of a bitch she is. Deal with it and put a damn smile on your face and spent 18 hours a day at the “office.” Seriously, you’re running the most successful and richest franchise in baseball history. People have stayed in bad marriages for a lot less. Seriously, how the hell could you have thrown that away?

2. If I ever up with dementia or serious Alzheimer’s or a debilitating brain injury or anything similar, don’t let me live. Put me out of my (and your) misery. I can’t imagine living in a state where you can’t carry on simple conversations or recognize your own family or function in any meaningful way. Whenever I write a will, this will be one of the first points: permission to smother me in my sleep if I get any serious condition affecting my ability to intellectually function. Alternatively, buy a 9mm and a pack of bullets and deduct it from my assets and you can even keep the gun and unused bullets when you’re finished.

3. The ESPN article is worth clicking on even if you have no interest in the story, because there’s a funny photo of Hal Steinbrenner in the article. It’s the third photo. On a message board one guy posted, “What the hell is up with that photo of Hal Steinbrenner?” The next guy replied, “Hal Steinbrenner is watching you masturbate.” I laughed out loud.

Why I’m Never Getting Fat

2007-07-03T22:53:00.000-05:00

Among the multitude of reasons that I intend to never get fat is the fact that losing weight is both difficult and does not result always in the physical appearance you would like.

The Hijacking of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 191

2007-07-03T22:49:00.000-05:00

I was only about 12 when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 191 was hijacked on November 23, 1996, so I have no memory of the event. However, I stumbled across accounts of it while browsing the internet today and it’s an interesting hijacking case. Three Ethiopians in their twenties hijacked the plane, but it doesn’t sound like a planned attack as the three were armed with an axe, a fire extinguisher and a device they claimed was a bomb, but which turned out to be an alcohol bottle. It’s unclear if these were all taken from aboard the plane, but I don’t see how one could have gotten onto a plane with an axe or fire extinguisher, so it’s very possibly they just decided to hijack the plane with whatever was handy.

They claimed to have escaped from prison and didn’t speak English, only communicated in Amharic, a language native to Ethiopia. They beat up the copilot and removed him from the cockpit and ordered the pilot to fly to Australia. The scheduled route of the plane was to stop in several African cities and the plane did not have enough fuel to reach Australia. The pilot tried to explain that, but was ordered to fly to Australia anyway.

He flew along the east coast of Africa, hoping to be near land when it came time to make an emergency landing. However, the hijackers spotted land and figured out he was not following their orders and ordered him to fly over the ocean. The pilot then decided to try to make it to the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean. He reached the Comoros and began circling them, but the hijackers again ordered him to get over the water, despite the fact the fuel gauge was below empty. The hijackers became insistent that he go to Australia and began physically confronting the pilot. Unable to make an emergency landing and still fighting the hijackers, the pilot crashed the plane into the water just north of Grande Comoro Island attempting to ditch it in shallow waters.

Only fifty-two of the 175 passengers and crew survived, but it might have been zero if not for the pilot’s quick thinking. The pilot, Leul Abate, received an award from the Flight Safety Institute for his actions and, when last contacted, was still flying for Ethiopian Airlines. What’s perhaps most interesting is that a vacationing couple caught the plane hitting the water on film, which you can see and download in this CNN article. For information about the crash on Wikipedia, click here.

Gladwell: Knowledge can be Dangerous

2007-06-28T11:55:00.000-05:00

To avoid immediately being stricken with a case of blogger's remorse, I'll push onwards. Someone linked this exchange between Bill Simmons (an ESPN writer and Boston sports fan) and Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point. It would be better if so much of their exchange wasn't focused on basketball, which is a sport I care very little about, but it's interesting to hear Gladwell's thoughts on sports and psychology.

Gladwell doesn't make any earth-shattering points, but he's very good at using specific examples to explain common-sense concepts. For example, at one points he talks about Isaiah Thomas being a terrible basketball GM and shows why a lot of knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing.

Here's the real question. If I was GM of the Knicks, would I be doing a better job of managing the team than Thomas? I believe, somewhat immodestly, that the answer is yes. And I say this even though it is abundantly clear that Thomas knows several thousand times more about basketball than I do. I've never picked up a basketball. I couldn't diagram a play to save my life. I would put my level of basketball knowledge, among hard core fans, in the 25th percentile.

So why do I think I would be better? There's a famous experiment done by a wonderful psychologist at Columbia University named Dan Goldstein. He goes to a class of American college students and asks them which city they think is bigger -- San Antonio or San Diego. The students are divided. Then he goes to an equivalent class of German college students and asks the same question. This time the class votes overwhelmingly for San Diego. The right answer? San Diego. So the Germans are smarter, at least on this question, than the American kids. But that's not because they know more about American geography. It's because they know less. They've never heard of San Antonio. But they've heard of San Diego and using only that rule of thumb, they figure San Diego must be bigger. The American students know way more. They know all about San Antonio. They know it's in Texas and that Texas is booming. They know it has a pro basketball team, so it must be a pretty big market. Some of them may have been in San Antonio and taken forever to drive from one side of town to another -- and that, and a thousand other stray facts about Texas and San Antonio, have the effect of muddling their judgment and preventing them from getting the right answer.

I'd be the equivalent of the German student. I know nothing about basketball, so I'd make only the safest, most obvious decisions. I'd read John Hollinger and Chad Ford and I'd print out your mid-season NBA roundup and post it on my blackboard. I'd look at the box scores every morning, and watch Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith on TNT. Would I have made the disastrous Marbury trade? Of course not. I'd wonder why Jerry Colangelo -- who I know is a lot smarter than I am -- was so willing to part with him.

Would I have traded for Curry? Are you kidding? All I know is that Chicago is scared of his attitude and his health, and Paxson knows way more about basketball -- and about Eddy Curry -- than I do. Trade for Jalen Rose? No way. One of the few simple facts that basketball dummies like me know is that players in their early thirties are pretty much over the hill. And Jerome James? Please. I have no idea how to evaluate a player's potential. But I'd look up his stastistics on NBA.com and see that's he's been pretty dreadful his whole career, and then I'd tell his agent to take a hike.

I'm Back...Hopefully

2007-06-28T11:47:00.000-05:00

Okay folks. It's time to return to blogging. I have no illusions this will be permanent, but I've decided I've got the time in the summer to give it another shot and I've read enough things that are pissing me off or seem interesting enough to link to that I'll resume and hopefully won't quit three days and ten entries later.

Canada Hits High Note, Promptly Exits WBC

2006-03-09T23:04:00.000-05:00

A day after shocking the baseball world by beating the United States 8-6 at the World Baseball Classic the Canadian national team will not make the second round after a loss to Mexico. Despite all finishing with 2-1 records, the Canada will come third behind the US and Mexico on the tiebreak rules and the players will return to spring training.

I believe the tournament, despite its apparent flaws, is a success and should be embraced by baseball fans. It will never become the World Cup of Soccer, or even equivalent to the cricket World Cup. However, it can become an event embraced by baseball fans and players. It already has achieved that status in many parts of the world, particularly Latin America. Anybody who thinks the competition is a joke needs to only look at a game between two Latin American teams and look at the passion on the faces of the fans. In fact, all players are playing with passion they rarely, if ever, exhibit. Canadian Matt Stairs let out an uncharacteristic fist-pump after a key hit against South Africa; he said he could usually control his emotion on the baseball diamond, but just during that game.

Canada’s defeat of the USA is the biggest win in the history of the country in international baseball, a stretch that goes back over 40 years. It’s incredibly disappointing to follow that up with a poor performance against Mexico and to not make the next round. However, to be realistic we were never serious title contenders, although I’d have been curious to see how we fared against South Korea and Japan (and the US) in the next round. While making the second round would have been nice, in the end the victory against the US might be a more memorable achievement down the round.

In tribute to the Canadian team, here is a heartwarming (to me, at least) article about the team’s intramural hockey game before the competition. While the article emphasises the camaraderie involved, don’t forget that this was also a contact game and apparently most players left the pitch with bruises.

I’m going to quote the article in full below, in case it ever gets taken off the site’s archives and I need something to remember this team by.

DUNEDIN, Fla. -- Unlike the other Team Canada, this Team Canada can score goals.

Their work day done in Florida, Canada's entry into the World Baseball Classic did what a lot of Canadians would do to unwind on a warm muggy day:

They headed to the in-line hockey rink behind the Bobby Mattick Training Facility for a game of road hockey: shirts and skins on an Olympic-sized piece of pavement with regulation boards.

Instead of Gatorade, they drank Molson Golden on the bench between shifts. Ryan Radmanovich's Shirts swept the best-of-three series by identical 5-3 scores over Justin Morneau's Skins.

"Before we start, we have a no 'Bertuzzi-ing' rule," Radmanovich announced. Then, outfielder Adam Stern led the 21 participants in the customary singing of O Canada. Some of the notes were on key.

As the anthem reached its end Chris Begg wheeled and led the Shirts on a tour around the rink -- like they do at the Air Canada Centre.

"I'm a 15-second shift guy," said Matt Stairs returning to the bench after scoring.

During the games a couple of youngsters asked players to autograph a baseball. One youngster was asked if he knew what hockey team the players were with and he shook his head no.

There were giggles, guffaws and zingers.

"Hey Morneau," infielder Matt Rogelstad yelled at Morneau, a goalie in his hockey days, "we're going to go with Jim Baba (Baseball Canada director) in the second game, you looked weak to the glove side."

"Look, Paul Quantrill does NOT run like he's 89 years old," yelled a teammate as Quantrill busted in off the wing.

A number of Canadians were rightly accused of cherry picking by the opposition.

"It's the new NHL -- free-wheeling," Stubby Clapp shot back at a detractor.

Reliever Chris Reitsma, with the Skins, had No. 99 in black marker on his back.

When Radmanovich scored the winner -- first team to five wins -- on Clapp in the second game, the Shirts stormed the court and hugged.

The losers? They tossed their hockey sticks, purchased at the Sports Authority by Pete Laforest and Morneau, on the pavement in mock anger like six-year-olds.

Coach Tim Leiper then presented the homemade Stanley Cup (11 beer cars wrapped in aluminum foil with a silver sugar dish on top) to Stairs, who sipped beer from the cup.

The teams shook hands with right-hander Steve Green saying: "Good luck in the next round guys."

Outfielder Sebastien Boucher then announced the three stars in both official languages as picked by the Hockey Afternoon in Dunedin crew:

The third star: lefty Adam Loewen, of the Skins, who ran out and circled as they do Saturday nights on TV.

Second star: Stern, of the Shirts. He did an in-game TV interview proclaiming how "hard they'd worked to get to this point," how "they would not sit on a 3-1 lead," and how much respect "they had for the opposition."

And the "premier etoile" the goalie, pitching coach Dennis Boucher of the Shirts, once again continuing Quebec dominance in goal.

There were as many disputes as any street hockey game, but no one had to yell "CAR!" Since the replay cameras were not working, a disputed goal was settled with Loewen taking a penalty shot. Boucher stopped him cold.

"In all my years with the Jays I have never seen this many guys getting along and having this much fun," said former Jays trainer Tommy Craig. "Do you think this type of camaraderie could put this team over the top?"

The answers will begin to come tomorrow when Team Canada starts its three-games-in-three-days routine: Loewen pitches against South Africa; Eric Bedard faces Team USA and Jeff Francis, who did not play hockey, faces Mexico.

Fortunately for the free-spirited Canadians the worst injury to report was a red welt on the chest of Morneau, the Skins goalie.

Now, this band of ex-hockey players will get back to baseball.

I Remember Math

2006-03-02T21:27:00.000-05:00

Why this is noteworthy, I don't know

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

A Contract to Throw a Party For

2006-01-18T20:21:00.000-05:00

Hey folks, before I begin this entry, I thought I’d explain the lack of an entry in a month. I got out of the habit of blogging around the end of term with essays and exams and that mood kept hold of me over Christmas. I’m not really feeling it right now, so since this is a small venture that has likely a handful of readers I feel I can take time off whenever I want, for as often as I want. So, that’s what I did. I probably will continue to do that, as I’m not in a blogging mood really, but maybe this entry will spark me back to life.

Anyhow, a lot of US soldiers are dying in Iraq. The merits of this war have been debated countless times and I won’t rehash them for you. However, I will play a game of “Follow the Bouncing Money.”

First, the money gets awarded to DHB Industries Inc. It comes from the US government in the form of a defence contract to provide body armour to the US troops in Iraq. To quote the press release:

DHB Industries Inc. (AMEX: DHB), which principally operates in the field of body armor, announced today that its subsidiary, Point Blank Body Armor has received a new delivery order for $30.1 million from the United States Army for its Interceptor™ OTV (Outer Tactical Vests) System.

Commenting on today's announcement, General (Ret.) Larry R. Ellis, DHB's President, said, "We are pleased the U.S. Army continues to see the effectiveness and the value that our advanced body armor provides in this challenging marketplace. We look forward to working with the U.S. Army to bring new and innovative products to our deployed soldiers. Our goal is to be the preeminent supplier of body armor for the military and law enforcement communities worldwide."

Secondly, the money goes to David Brooks, the CEO of DHB Industries.

2004 was a banner year for CEOs and a dismal year for workers, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, Executive Excess 2005: Defense Contractors Get More Bucks for the Bang.

The ratio of average CEO pay (now $11.8 million) to worker pay (now $27,460) spiked up from 301-to-1 in 2003 to 431-to-1 in 2004.

If the minimum wage had risen as fast as CEO pay since 1990, the lowest paid workers in the US would be earning $23.03 an hour today, not $5.15 an hour.

The report found that CEOs are individually profiting from the Iraq War, with huge average raises at the biggest defense contractors.

At the 34 publicly traded US corporations among the 2004 top 100 defense contractors with 10% or more of their revenues from defense contracts – companies such as United Technologies, Textron, and General Dynamics – average CEO pay increased 200% from 2001 to 2004, versus 7% for all CEOs.

For example, David H. Brooks, CEO of bulletproof vest maker DHB Industries, earned $70 million in 2004, 13,349% more than his 2001 compensation of $525,000. Brooks also sold company stock worth about $186 million last year, spooking investors who drove DHB’s share price from more than $22 to as low as $6.50. In May 2005, the US Marines recalled more than 5,000 DHB armored vests after questions were raised about their effectiveness. By that time, Brooks had pocketed over $250 million in war windfalls.

Since September 11, the ratio between median pay for defense CEOs and pay for military generals has nearly doubled to 23-to-1, up from 12-to-1 just three years earlier. The pay ratio between defense CEOs and army privates soared to 160-to-1, up from just 89-to-1 in 2001.

So David Brooks gets $70 million a year; a rise of 13,349%. Just let those numbers sink in. A 13,349% rise from a $525,000 annual salary. He also sold $186 million worth of stock. So Brooks gets exclusive contracts from the US government and suddenly becomes a multi-millionaire making astronomically more than he did a few years ago.

So what does Mr. Brooks do with the money? Throw a party for his kid, is the correct answer. I had heard about this extravangza before, but I had never realized it was for David Brooks’ kid. Anyhow, the details follow.

History will forever record Elizabeth Brooks' bat mitzvah as "Mitzvahpalooza."

For his daughter's coming-of-age celebration last weekend, multimillionaire Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks booked two floors of the Rainbow Room, hauled in concert-ready equipment, built a stage, installed special carpeting, outfitted the space with Jumbotrons and arranged command performances by everyone from 50 Cent to Tom Petty to Aerosmith.

I hear it was garish display of rock 'n' roll idol worship for which the famously irascible CEO of DHB Industries, a Westbury-based manufacturer of bulletproof vests, sent his company jet to retrieve Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry from their Saturday gig in Pittsburgh.

I'm also told that in honor of Aerosmith (and the $2 million fee I hear he paid for their appearance), the 50-year-old Brooks changed from a black-leather, metal-studded suit - accessorized with biker-chic necklace chains and diamonds from Chrome Hearts jewelers - into a hot-pink suede version of the same lovely outfit.

The party cost an estimated $10 million, including the price of corporate jets to ferry the performers to and from. Also on the bill were The Eagles' Don Henley and Joe Walsh performing with Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks; DJ AM (Nicole Richie's fiance); rap diva Ciara and, sadly perhaps (except that he received an estimated $250,000 for the job), Kenny G blowing on his soprano sax as more than 300 guests strolled and chatted into their pre-dinner cocktails.

"Hey, that guy looks like Kenny G," a disbelieving grownup was overheard remarking - though the 150 kids in attendance seemed more impressed by their $1,000 gift bags, complete with digital cameras and the latest video iPod.

While I guess it’s his right to spend his money on whatever he wants, if that isn’t symbolic of the excesses that plague modern Western societies then I don’t know what is. However, the soldiers on the ground in Iraq could tell you more about the problems surrounding the US government’s defence contracts than I could. Actually, some of them can’t.

A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.

The ceramic plates in vests now worn by the majority of troops in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines' shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach.

Thirty-one of the deadly wounds struck the chest or back so close to the plates that simply enlarging the existing shields "would have had the potential to alter the fatal outcome," according to the study, which was obtained by The New York Times.

For the first time, the study by the military's medical examiner shows the cost in lives from inadequate armor, even as the Pentagon continues to publicly defend its protection of the troops.

….

"Our preliminary research suggests that as many as 42 percent of the Marine casualties who died from isolated torso injuries could have been prevented with improved protection in the areas surrounding the plated areas of the vest," the study concludes. An additional 23 percent might have been saved with side plates that extend below the arms, while 15 percent more could have benefited from shoulder plates, the report says.

In all, 526 marines have been killed in combat in Iraq. A total of 1,706 American troops have died in combat there. The findings and other research by military pathologists suggests that an analysis of all combat deaths in Iraq, including those of Army troops, would show that 300 or more lives might have been saved with improved body armor.

Someone should tell Mr. Brooks that improving his company’s body armour may be a better use of money than his daughter’s bar mitzvah. What an asshole.

Tucker Carlson

2005-12-20T09:56:00.000-05:00

Carlson’s continued his trend of being a bow-tied wearing idiot spouting mostly nothing but right-wing claptrap. I really enjoyed when Jon Stewart tore into him on Crossfire, especially in light of comments like these:

Last week, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson, a well-known conservative pundit, let loose with a string of anti-Canada rants.

"Anybody with any ambition at all, or intelligence, has left Canada and is now living in New York," he said.

"Canada is a sweet country. It is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving and sort of pat him on the head. You know, he's nice but you don't take him seriously. That's Canada." Carlson also said it's pointless to tell Canada to stop criticizing the United States.

"It only eggs them on. Canada is essentially a stalker, stalking the United States, right? Canada has little pictures of us in its bedroom, right?"

"It's unrequited love between Canada and the United States. We, meanwhile, don't even know Canada's name. We pay no attention at all," he said.

It’s certainly not funny, which is what he was aiming for. I just don’t know whether that’s offensive or plain stupid. When you put something like that it matters little whether his bigger point is accurate.

P.S. I hate Tucker Carlson.

How Many Have You Read?

2005-12-05T05:30:00.000-05:00

How many of the American Library Association’s most challenged books have you read? Click here to read the list. It does have a ton of books for kids; but those books are the ones that tend to be challenged.

I’ve read #1, 5, 7, 13, 16, 22, 27, 29, 32, 33, 37, 41, 49, 51, 55, 56, 62, 70, 77, 83, 84, 88, 96 and 99. That’s 24, by my count. Not bad, but I really should read some more challenged books. If you’ve noticed, I didn’t include Slaughterhouse-Five, despite the fact I’m a big Vonnegut fan. I have both it and Brave New World on my bookshelf, waiting to be read. Once I get through both of those I’ll have read over ¼ of the list.

Man, those Alvin Schwarz stories were pretty freaky. The drawings were so ghoulish. I’m convinced I got multiple nightmares from them, but the books were a perfect first venture into the horror genre. I actually raised those books in conversation a few days ago (although I had no idea who wrote them) and the people I was speaking to had no idea what I was speaking about. It was sad.

Also, congrats to Judy Blume for writing candidly about teenage sex from a girl’s perspective over 30 years ago and still occupying the #5 spot on the list. Although her stories don’t age particularly well, her books still should be part of any girl’s reading during adolescence. Sadly, I don’t think I ever read Forever, but I know I read Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret and Blubber, as well as all the Fudge books, which weren’t on the list.

Harper’s GST Plan

2005-12-02T17:50:00.000-05:00

How idiotic does your plan have to be if you’re a right-winger who is being attacked by the Fraser Institute? Well, Stephen Harper’s new economic plan to cut GST has provoked just that.

"From an economic point of view, it wouldn't be my first choice," Bill Robson, senior vice-president of the CD Howe Institute, told CBC Newsworld on Thursday.

"If you want tax cuts that are going to promote work, going to promote saving, help us invest more and raise living standards in the future, the GST is not the tax you would go after."

Robson said it

…

Earlier in the day, Harper announced he would lower the seven per cent goods and services tax by one percentage point immediately and by another point within five years if he becomes prime minister after the Jan. 23 vote.

Jason Clemens, an economist with the Fraser Institute, said he also opposes reducing the GST.

Jim Davies, who teaches economics at the University of Western Ontario in London, also said he would prefer income tax cuts.

"Most serious work done by economists who specialize in public finance indicates that the GST is a more efficient tax source than the income tax," Davies told the Canadian Press. "If the income tax cut is designed properly, it can provide similar benefit to lower-income taxpayers."

"Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid," he said.

I can’t remember the last time I heard the Fraser Institute criticise a Conservative. The election means there is some chance that Stephen Harper could become the next Canadian Prime Minister, which is an incredibly frightening notion. However, stories like this raise my hopes he’ll screw up the campaign over the month. Then again, I’m sure a number of people will see GST cuts and will automatically associate it with more money in their pocket and will blindly vote for Harper.

The notion of tax cuts for the sake of tax cuts, which is what these are, is objectionable at a time when Canada faces huge demands on its health care system, rising pension costs, cuts to education funding and some severe shortcomings in its social programs. Paul Martin, Jean Chrétien and the Liberals did a fine job of balancing the books of Canada and getting the country in a good fiscal position. Harper’s tax cuts will undo all of that or will result in decreased spending on social policies which will severely harm parts of Canada’s welfare state. This is a terrible move by Harper (realistically; I’m well aware it may be a fine move to win votes) and I’m glad to see the Fraser Institute call him on it.

Numbers Game: 60,000,000 to 3

2005-11-24T22:03:00.000-05:00

Here are a few random thoughts and facts that I have decided to distract myself with instead of writing one of my three essays due in the next week.

- Everyone thinks they could save the government a bunch of money if they got into office and eliminated bureaucracy and corruption. Both things exist in government and I have no doubt that a bit of it here and there could be eliminated. However, the amount would be inconsequential. Any platform which thinks they can drastically alter the budget based on these two planks is flat-out lying, unless they provide a detailed plan of exactly what they’ll eliminate and how this will not harm that department’s overall operations. Then again, when you read that the US spent $60 million on Ken Starr’s investigation of President Clinton, you begin to wonder. By the way, only $723,000 was spent investigating and indicting Tom DeLay.

- Next time someone tells you that the Iraqi War is going well, just quote them the statistic that 42% of Iraqis think it is justified to kill American troops. That’s basically half the nation. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but I still love seeing the Dick Cheney clip where he says, “I honestly think we’ll be greeted as liberators.”

- Not only do 43 million Americans not have healthcare insurance, but medical costs are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States, with over 500,000 people a year going bankrupt from medical bills. I think the situation as it exists right now in is the US is unethical and I do not support adopting any sort of US-style system in Canada. That does not mean that the system completely without benefits, though, as it does have some advantages.

- Canada ranks among the top three leaders in aid (it didn’t specify, but I assume in total terms) in only three countries in the world: Turkey, Cameroon and Gabon. I know we are likely dealing with absolute figures, but it’s still surprising that it’s only three nations of over 100 that receive aid. This is further evidence of fundamental problems with Canadian aid, in my opinion.

- In looking nostalgically at Canada’s heyday of diplomacy in the 1950’s we’re going to consult The Economist. In 1953 it wrote, “If it permissible to generalize about the diplomatic service of any country, it is probably true to say that the representatives of Canada exercise an influence and enjoy a prestige out of all reasonable proportion to the size of their country or the power they wield…But, when all of this is said, a more important reason lies in the personal quality of the men themselves.” Furthermore, in 1967 The Economist wrote, “The community of nations has learned it needs an active Canada: as an intermediary in Commonwealth disputes, and in wider ones that range ex-imperial powers against former dependencies.”

Chris Klein is a Jerk

2005-11-18T19:21:00.000-05:00

Is any celebrity more of a jerk than Chris Klein? This interview from Elle magazine (courtesy of MSN) would be great satire if it was done in jest, but I don’t think Klein is that smart. Nevertheless, it’s still funny.

Whether through overcompensation or overconfidence, Klein, who dated Holmes for five years, spews some doltish doozies during the sit-down, beginning with whether there's a favorite meal he prepares to win over his dates.

"I don't need food to impress, man," boasts the cocky American Pie C-lister. "It's a flash of a smile and a nice conversation. And at the end of the day, she's cooking the food."

Chris, 26, a self-described "alpha heterosexual" who only dates "8 to 10's," also reveals how displeased he is if a woman he's seeing gains a few pounds.

"I'm not tolerant of that at all," declares the actor, who says he has no problem telling his swollen squeeze to shape up.

"When a woman isn't feeling good about herself and you combine that with her period, eventually she'll ask you if you like her body," he pontificates. "You have to say no."

Klein then rejects the interviewer's suggestion that "they're just looking for you to say, 'You look beautiful to me, honey.'" "If they do, it's placating," he scoffs. "I don't placate."

Given this attitude, it's not surprising when he admits the "worst thing" a woman ever said to him was, "You're a [expletive that rhymes with 'brass pole']."

As he recalls, "The time it really hurt was when a stranger said it. I was just trying to tell this chick to get lost. I try to treat all women with respect whether they're pretty or ugly. I want to be nice and be like, 'Wow, thanks for the attention. But get out of my face.'"

A few other gentlemanly gems from the chat include Chris describing wooing a woman as a "predator-prey situation" and admitting he stays "very closed off until a woman deserves to know me completely."

Asked if this approach makes it tough for potential partners to unravel the enigma that is Chris Klein, he sneers, "Hey, man, I'm not here to hold hands and babysit. She's got to come to the table with something."

Bad Evening Explained in Detail

2005-11-15T00:22:00.000-05:00

Okay, since I’ve had a couple of requests for the story of Friday night, I’ll divulge. Me and my buddy got dragged to a club and neither of us are really club people. I tried to explain this to the group at large, but they insisted we come. Against our better judgement we acquiesced and both basically stood there as everyone danced to the deafening music. I can handle bars or clubs with a drinking area, but this one had neither of those and we were both pretty fed up within 15 minutes.

I said we should stick around for nearly an hour because they insisted we come, so we did. But we got fed up pretty quickly and left as soon as I felt it was okay. We decided to go eat, so we went to a shwarma place a few blocks away. We ordered our meal and enjoyed it, having good conversation as any pair of friends would do. It was 2 AM and a few drunken people came in and ordered and left.

As my friend finished his meal (I was still eating) a group of four drunken guys walked in. They all looked to be in their early twenties (could have been late teens) and were big guys; they weren’t football-lineman broad, but they definitely had that sort of build.

The first guy walks by our table and says, “Hey, are you two gay?” Seeing he’s drunk and wanting to avoid trouble, neither of us responds.

As the first guy walks up to the counter a second guy detours to our table and says, “Yeah, do you like guys?” Neither of us responds and he stops at our table. He says something else to the same effect, and again we just sit there, figuring he’ll move on.

Keep in mind at this point we’ve not said anything to them or to each other since they’ve come in the door. However, this drunken lout picks up the napkin dispenser and tosses it at my friend’s head. In disbelief Jason says, “Are you joking me?”

The guy then takes Jason’s plate and bats that at him. Without hesitation he then picks up the table and tips it onto Jason, all the while yelling at us, “You wanna take it outside? You wanna take it outside?”

One of the two drunken guys who hasn’t accosted us then begins pushing his friend away, telling him to smarten up or something up. His friend is yelling that we were calling him gay and that he had to take care of us.

Meanwhile, the two cooks at the restaurant make their way from behind the counter towards our table to break up this potential fight. As it as a Lebanese restaurant we assue both of the guys are Lebanese, and their complexion would support that assumption. As the first one passes the customer side of the customer counter the first drunken guy (who walked up there after first yelling at us) grabs his skullcap off the guy’s head.

He then begins to shake it in the air tauntingly as the cook turns around. As he does the drunken guy stops and says, “Oh wait, that was offensive.” (So the shaking was offensive, but not the grabbing it off his head in the first place. Or the rest of their behaviour in the restaurant.) He then proceeds to sit down on the table nearest the counter. In his drunken state he doesn’t realise it has a leg in the middle, but no middle support; thus, as he sits down he sends the table flipping over and he kind of stumbles, but manages to avoid falling flat on his back, which would have been hilarious.

The second sober friend escorts this guy outside as the first sober one has literally pushed the other drunken guy outside, who is still yelling at Jason and I. The restaurateur makes sure they leave the store, but they hover on the sidewalk. They seem to leave, but a minute or two later the second drunk (the homophobe) burst into the store and begins spluttering some apology to the Lebanese cooks saying, “You make great food. You don’t deserve this.” One of the sober guys comes to get him and drags him outside, as the first drunk (the racist) is still literally being pushed away from the restaurant by the other sober friend.

Now, in the end, neither Jason nor I was hurt and things weren’t too bad. We were both verbally attacked for enjoying a meal together as friends, which is something I’ve done hundreds of times with countless male friends in my life, but neither of us was hurt.

However, these guys were clearly looking for a fight and if their sober friends had had a bit more to drink at the last place, maybe they wouldn’t have stopped a fight. Also, if they were unwilling or slower to respond things could have got ugly fast. These guys were all considerably bigger and stronger than Jason and I and we would have been beaten up pretty fast. Furthermore, we can both be smartasses if the mood strikes us, and we can also egg each other on. If either of us had resisted the urge to bite our tongue and had snapped a comeback at then, which we found out later that we were each close to doing, then maybe the soberer friends wouldn’t have stopped the pair of complete drunks (and maybe would have joined in) and we could easily have wound up pretty badly hurt very quickly.

Bad Evening

2005-11-12T03:07:00.000-05:00

Well, I had a terrible evening. Firstly, I learned that Arrested Development is apparently going to bite the bullet after this season. From AP:

It looks like curtains, too, for Fox's comedy "Arrested Development," which never translated its Emmy Award and critical raves into a broader popularity.

Fox didn't announce the end of the show, but said it wouldn't order a full season's worth of 22 episodes. Barring a miraculous turnaround, that usually means a series is kaput.

Despite Emmys, guest stars and critical acclaim, the ratings are even lower this season than last and I know Fox was hesitant to order a third season, so I’m not optimistic of any surprising change of events. I do not get how people not only don’t watch the show, but how others watch it and don’t like. Maybe it’s an acquired sense of humour, but everyone in my house loves it and so do a ton of people I know.

I am dead tired (I’ve been up for 21 hours following 3 hours of sleep) so I won't go into the full details, but I came extremely close today to being beaten up by violent drunken racist homophobes. It was kind of frightening how quickly things escalated (and then luckily calmed down because of the two sober guys in the group pushing the others outside) and how one wrong move could have landed the two of us in the hospital. Events like this remind me how much I hate a significant number of university students and of how little faith I have in a lot of humanity. We’re all okay, but considering how we did literally nothing and got things thrown at us, it makes you wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been able to stop myself from making a smartass remark.

Inviting Outside Criticism

2005-11-07T00:49:00.000-05:00

This is one of the best ideas I’ve heard for a newspaper in a while. Apparently, the L.A. Times has started a new feature where once a week a member of the public can publish a column criticising the Times’ coverage of some issue. As someone who has a lot of beefs with various newspapers and their coverage of issues, I think it’s a great idea. Furthermore, it’s a great idea in general to allow someone to have a platform in which they can go against the accepted ideology the newspaper has.

It’s a somewhat-limited platform, for sure, and it’s not going to solve the “problem” to give someone one column a year in which to offer an alternate opinion. Nevertheless, it allows the public the chance to get involved with the newspaper, to have a real avenue to respond to what the newspaper is saying (something letters to the editor don’t provide in a satisfactory sense) and it encourages dialogue, which is hardly ever a bad thing.

Of course, I stumbled across this in a column relating to baseball, but it’s still worth the read. I’ll post some highlights, and keep in mind both Plaschke and Simers cover sports for the Times, the former specifically covers the L.A. Dodgers.

As every long-suffering sports fan in this town knows all too well, "the Los Angeles media" is unfortunately synonymous with the Sports section of the paper you are holding. Especially its two loud-mouthed, value-subtracting columnists, Plaschke and T.J. Simers.

The two have had it in for DePodesta since his first day on the job. Plaschke greeted the new GM by calling him a "computer nerd," "webmaster," "General Manager.com," "Bill Gates," a "kid who relies on equations" and "speaks in megabytes" … and that was just in his first column. Simers immediately declared that the "Dodgers Come Up Short on New General Manager," and he has spent the time since vacillating between "Google Boy" and "Computer Boy" for a nickname. (The Times' Sports section, apparently, is still produced via typewriter and carrier pigeon.)

Taunts and strong opinions come with the territory — they're columnists, after all! — but in their zeal to discredit DePodesta and the management philosophy he represents, Plaschke and Co. forgot a fundamental journalistic duty: to have some idea about what they're talking about.

….

Plaschke also snorted: "To fill shoes once worn by Branch Rickey and Al Campanis, should McCourt really have hired a 31-year-old who had never been to Dodger Stadium?"

Rickey became a manager (which back in 1913 meant general manager as well) … at age 31! Brian Cashman, the New York Yankees GM with three World Series rings and eight consecutive playoff appearances, took over the job at age … 30! Theo Epstein, also 31, just stepped down as Boston GM after three consecutive playoff appearances and a World Series victory of his own.

….

The worst part isn't that the columnists' complaints about DePodesta are wrong, it's that they're often right. (Or at least, that I agree with them.) The young GM was painfully lacking in people-management skills and made a bunch of questionable moves. But if Southern Californians want an intelligent discussion of these issues, one where the truth matters more than either clumsy insults about "spreadsheets" or smooching Tommy Lasorda's behind, they know where to go: the Web. Maybe that's why Plaschke hates the Internet so much: People there are doing his job, only better.

If you’re curious, here is a link to a previous column criticising the newspaper’s coverage of public schools and here is one criticising how the Times portrayed the Cindy Sheehan story.

In discussing the article afterwards, Welch said this piece was the most heavily-aimed at particular columnists of the 10 or so columns in the series the Times has published. Welch is a fine writer and one of the smartest Dodger fans on the internet and it’s great to see him deservedly trashing one of the most idiotic writers in the field, Bill Plaschke. I wonder if Plaschke will acknowledge what was written in any of his upcoming columns. I highly doubt it.

However, I do hope other newspapers follow the lead of the Times and institute this as a regular feature. It’s not a solution to the many of the problems with print journalism these days, but it’s a start.

Only in Windsor

2005-10-30T23:18:00.000-05:00

An article in Thursday’s Toronto Star caught my eye, but with a busy weekend I only got around to blogging about it today. It’s pretty scary to think this guy could have been teaching for so long, but I must admit some portions of the article made me laugh quite hard. Registration is required to read the article, so I will post it here.

From praising Osama bin Laden and calling the Holocaust an "exaggeration" to telling students he'd like to have sex with their mothers, a former Windsor-area high school teacher is accused of having broken just about every taboo of civil conduct — in class or out.

William Fabel is alleged to have dished out insults equally: Girls ("I'm a leg man; I have cameras hidden under all the girls' desks!"); boys ("How many of you guys would sleep with these girls for a million dollars?"); gays ("There's no room in the world for them"); Catholics ("That nun isn't getting any"); fellow teachers ("Go check them out at the strip club going down the pole"); the school principal ("If you want to laugh, picture the principal naked!"); and blacks ("Watch your back; I have a n----- friend who could fight anybody.").

In what is being called one of the more "outrageous" cases to come before the Ontario College of Teachers in the eight years it has overseen the province's teachers, Fabel is facing a disciplinary tribunal for charges of professional misconduct and incompetence three years after he was fired by the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board for a reported breach of the Safe Schools Act, which outlines acceptable conduct for teachers as well as students.

….

Fabel declined to comment, even to confirm he is in his early 40s or that he no longer teaches, even though he remains a certified teacher "in good standing" with the College of Teachers until the tribunal rules on his case.

But the type of racist, sexist and sexual comments of which the one-time history teacher is accused contradicts everything society expects of teachers, says college spokeswoman Lois Browne.

…

A cluster of former colleagues who had come to Toronto to testify expressed frustration at another delay in a case that has dragged on for three years.

Fabel taught history, geography and sociology at St. Anne High School in Tecumseh, near Windsor, from 1997 to 2002, with the bulk of the complaints near the end of his tenure.

Browne said about one-quarter of formal complaints against teachers that are filed with the college end up in disciplinary hearings, which are adjudicated by three educators.

The article’s sidebar is where it gets quite funny on occasion.

Among the complaints cited in documents presented yesterday at the hearing:

· After the Columbine shooting, he entered the class pretending to be a gunman, causing students to cower under their desks.

· To the mother of two students at the start of a parent-teacher interview, he asked: "Who do you want to talk about first? Dumb or Dumber?"

· He told one student his mother was a "M.I.L.F." — meaning a "mother I'd like to f---."

· To a female Grade 10 student, Fabel said: "I was looking at Playboy magazine and saw someone who looked just like you."

· He spoke about his own sexual activities and offered tips to male students on "how to get into girls' pants."

· He mimicked an Italian accent and said Italians are fat and hairy and can only pursue careers in cement.

· He referred to a student as "a retard from the sticks."

As someone who makes a fair amount of politically incorrect comments at times, there’s a difference between talking to a few friends and making statements in a position of authority. It’s pretty obvious, in my mind anyway, when I’m joking and when I’m making an actual argument that I believe in. Furthermore, there’s a difference between making a statement that goes against the accepted truths and being deliberately hurtful and offensive or offering gross inaccuracies concerning the Holocaust. In conclusion, I have no idea how it took 5 years to fire this guy and then another 2 to bring him to the tribunal. And I’d have been seriously scarred if any of my teachers had called my mom a MILF.

Finally, to prove I’m an equal-opportunity blogger, I will provide this site’s readership with the alternative for those who were missing something when sitting through yesterday’s pictures of baseball wives.

First of all, check out this poll, which ranks soccer’s hottest players. Look who is at #19, who incidentally beats out Michael Owen. Incidentally, this is currently the second hit on Google for “hot soccer players”, so I’m not cherry-picking either. I don’t want to say I’m always right…but I win again.

Secondly, here’s a very nice picture of a shirtless Pat Burrell, who plays outfield for the Philadelphia Phillies.

Thirdly, here is a pic of Brady Anderson, former Orioles outfielder. There’s a funny story that involves a fantasy draft a bunch of friends and I had for a baseball league in high school. When we were drafting one of us, not me, drafted Brady Anderson. I mentioned the fact that Brady Anderson was an icon in the gay community, for shots like the one linked above. Anyone, a friend of mine (we’ll call him RMD) immediately said to the guy who drafted Anderson, “I’ll trade you Cliff Floyd for Brady Anderson!” I still get a kick out of that story.

Finally, although Joe Mauer might give him a run for his money when he becomes more widely-known, Javy Lopez is still, by many people’s judgement, the hottest catcher in baseball.

Mr. Sulu Comes Out

2005-10-29T23:52:00.000-05:00

I never watched Star Trek as a child, or as an adult, so I don’t really know George Takei beyond his voice work on The Simpsons. I must have seen about 12 minutes of Star Trek in my life and that’s enough for me to live on; I won’t be rushing to watch it anytime soon.

Anyhow, George Takei has recently disclosed that he is a homosexual. Although he’s been a practicing homosexual for years and has been in an 18-year relationship, only now does Takei feel comfortable enough to disclose his status to society at large. Let me congratulate Takei for finally reaching a stage where he can accept his sexual orientation and feels comfortable with that becoming a public part of his identity.

I can’t take credit for spotting this, but it’s interesting to note that when coming out Takei said:

"It's not really coming out, which suggests opening a door and stepping through. It's more like a long, long walk through what began as a narrow corridor that starts to widen."

Christ George, can you keep your pants on for two minutes? “Narrow corridor that begins to widen” after a “long, long” walk? I’m getting images of Takei that I never wanted after reading that phrase.

Baseball Players' Wives

2005-10-29T23:17:00.000-05:00

I would title this “Part One”, but I am unable to ensure that this will be a multi-part feature. I certainly intend it to be. While unfair, if there is something professional sports players get judged on by geeky internet fans aside from their skill, it is how attractive their wives or girlfriends are. It’s territory that comes naturally to men and it’s fun to go around saying that Sidney Ponson’s girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend) has big tits (or so I’ve heard) or that I’d rather score with Mrs. Geoff Blum than Mrs. Henry Blanco (no idea if that’s true, as I couldn’t find pictures of either, but I imagine it is).

So while I don’t condone judging people on their looks alone, here are some pictures of a few wives and feel free to do exactly that. If interested, rank them in the comments section and maybe I’ll combine the two responses into one “definitive ranking system.” Maybe I’ll turn this into a hot wives tournament.

Cindy Conine: Even if you’re a mediocre corner-outfielder/first baseman on the wrong side of 30 you can still find a nice-looking lady. I would have some “nice-looking blonde,” but it’s basically implied with professional wives. Jeff signed a card for me once, so I know there’s a nice guy under his ornery demeanour.

Patty Biggio: I’ve got nothing but admiration for Craig Biggio. He’s an underrated player who will get into the Hall-of-Fame if there’s any justice in the baseball world and, quickly speaking, I would say he’s one of the top 10 second baseman of all-time. He finally made the World Series this year after spending 18 seasons with the Houston Astros. He always plays the game hard and he’s been one of my favourite ballplayers for years. The pic quality is a bit shoddy, but this is the first time Biggio may lose out to Conine in a contest of any kind.

Michelle Damon and Juliana Ramirez: Johnny, who appears to model his appearance after Jesus, scored an average-looking blonde, but I’m not that impressed. It’s a side-shot, but you think he could have found someone better who digs the hairy body, long locks and impish smile. She’s allright, but she doesn’t stand out. It’s a common refrain amongst baseball fans, which was actually coined by Manny Ramirez himself, that when Manny screws up it’s just “Manny being Manny.” A terrific hitter who sometimes plays with his head in the clouds, Manny certainly had his head on straight when he found Juliana. Here’s a second picture of her, and all I can say is that this little baby has the right idea.

Melissa Lima: What better way to end this than on a classic? When Jose Lima sung the National Anthem at Dodgers Stadium in 2004, with his wife Melissa Lima by his side, he seized to become the pitcher who coined the phrase “Lima Time” to summarise when he had success and he seized to be remember primarily for being one of the flukiest 20-game winners of the past half-century. Instead, he became the man with the wife. If you’re a man who prefers a certain female attribute you’ll love her and even if you aren’t, you have to remark that she’s a rare specimen. Here’s a second picture.

Comment away.

AJC Cartoon on Iraq

2005-10-29T00:56:00.000-05:00

This cartoon which appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is apparently causing a minor-controversy in the Southern US, as people debate its merits and point. Over six hundred comments seems incredibly rare for a cartoon, and I’m sure it’s generated more mail/e-mails to the paper itself. Whether or not you agree with him, Mike Lukovich certainly got his point across publicly and has become the only newspaper editorial cartoonist I know by name in the States.

As for what I think personally, I can’t really say. It’s a simplification of a complex situation, but that’s inevitable in any political cartoon. I’d rather spend the next 20 minutes doing other things rather than trying to synthesise my thoughts on Iraq. Nevertheless, if you download the PDF file you can gain an appreciation for the effort Lukovich put into it, compared to what he normally does. Whether or not he meant it, I can’t help drawing comparisons to the war when I look at the haphazard atmosphere of the cartoon.

Bill Watterson’s Privacy

2005-10-27T23:53:00.000-05:00

Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, is a recluse. That’s been evident since he quit drawing Calvin and Hobbes in 1995, after 10 highly-successful years, when it was still as funny as it was the day he started. Watterson wrote briefly about his desire for privacy in the 10^th anniversary book. The book also revealed Watterson’s strong-will natured, evident in his artistic integrity, such as his refusal to license the characters of Calvin and Hobbes for any merchandise.

However, it wasn’t until I stumbled across this article that I realised how private a man he is.

CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio - Maybe someday, officials will put up a statue marking this quaint village as the birthplace of "Calvin and Hobbes"

…

His parents will say only that he's happy, but they won't say where he lives, and the cartoonist could not be reached for an interview.

His former editor, Lee Salem, also remains mum, saying only that as a painter Watterson started with watercolors and has evolved to oils.

"He's in a financial position where he doesn't need to meet the deadlines anymore," Salem says.

Watterson's parents respect — but have no explanation for — their son's extremely private nature. It doesn't run in the family. Kathryn is a former village councilwoman and Jim is seeking his fourth council term this fall. Their other son, Tom, is a high school teacher in Austin, Texas.

Bill Watterson, 47, hasn't made a public appearance since he delivered the commencement speech in 1990 at his alma mater, Kenyon College. But he recently welcomed some written questions from fans to promote the Oct. 4 release of the three-volume "The Complete Calvin and Hobbes," which contains every one of the 3,160 strips printed during its 10-year run.

Among his revelations:

• He reads newspaper comics, but doesn't consider this their golden age.

• He's never attended any church.

• He's currently interested in art from the 1600s.

Salem, who edited thousands of "Calvin and Hobbes" strips at Universal Press Syndicate, says that Watterson is private and media shy, not a recluse. Salem didn't want to see the strip end, but understood Watterson's decision.

"He came to a point where he thought he had no more to give to the characters," Salem says.

"Calvin and Hobbes" appeared in more than 2,400 newspapers during its run, one of the few strips to reach an audience that large.

Its success was rooted in the freshness of Calvin — an imaginative 6-year-old who has the immaturity of a child and the psychological complexity of a 40-year-old. As for Hobbes, the device of Calvin viewing him as alive and everybody else seeing him as a stuffed animal was simply brilliant, Salem says.

Their all-encompassing bond of friendship — being able to share joy and have fun together, yet get angry and frustrated with one another — was another reason for the strip's success.

…

But Universal liked "Calvin and Hobbes" and launched its run Nov. 18, 1985, in 35 newspapers. Calvin caught Hobbes in a tiger trap with a tuna sandwich in the first strip. He spent the next 10 years driving his parents crazy, annoying his crush, Susie Derkins, and playing make-believe as his alter egos Spaceman Spiff and Stupendous Man.

Many of the best moments, though, were time spent alone with his pal, Hobbes.

"The end of summer is always hard on me, trying to cram in all the goofing off I've been meaning to do," Calvin tells Hobbes in an Aug. 24, 1987 strip, the two sitting beneath a tree.

Watterson ended the strip on Dec. 31, 1995, with a statement: "I believe I've done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises."

The last strip shows Calvin and Hobbes sledding off after a new fallen snow. "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy ... let's go exploring!" Calvin says in the final two panels.

Fans cried out in letters for Watterson to change his mind. Some, like Watterson's parents, say the funny pages haven't been the same since.

The last sentence of that article rings especially true. The funny pages haven’t been the same since Calvin and Hobbes and I doubt I will ever enjoy a comic as much as I did that one. Part of it is probably rooted in the fact I grew up with the strip (well, over the last two and three years) and the appeal that comics possess for children, as opposed to adults.

However, I have no doubt I could read the books in twenty years and still get a great laugh from them, which is something few strips can provide. None can provide it with the consistency and hilarity of Calvin and Hobbes. In fact, over the last 10 minutes I’ve firmly decided that at some point in my life I will own The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. It will not be out-of-place on my bookshelf, at all.

Jake Gyllenhaal on Film

2005-10-22T23:35:00.000-05:00

Jake Gyllenhaal is going to become part of the A+-list (i.e. the top of the A-list) very soon. I don’t think he’s there yet, but he’s close. His leading role in Donnie Darko turned him from a nobody into a somebody and I’ve heard good things about The Good Girl, which I never saw. Over the past couple of years his role in the big-budget The Day After Tomorrow combined with his romance with Kirsten Dunst has turned him into one of the hottest young actors around.

However, this year Jake is in three movies, Proof, Brokeback Mountain and Jarhead. Proof, about the daughter of a brilliant mathematician who falls in love with one of her mentally disturbed father’s ex-students, got mediocre reviews from critics, but has got positive reviews from audiences who have seen the movie. I’ll likely see it on video sometime, as it does have some interesting elements to it.

On a side note, Jake is also currently filming Zodiac, a movie based on the still-unsolved Zodiac murders of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in San Francisco. His random murders terrorised the city before abruptly coming to a halt and the identity of the killer has never been determined. The Zodiac Killer murdered 8 people, but he claimed to have killed as many as 17 (off-hand I think that was his highest claim) and some believed he could have killed as many as 50. As a true-crime buff I’m quite excited to see a story about the Zodiac, always one of my favourite cases (I referenced it when spoiling my ballot in a grade 6 class election – yes, I am a peculiar individual), on the big screen. And, the bonus that it will include Jake Glyenhaal (along with Mark Ruffalo, Gary Oldman and Chloe Sevigny – all good people) erases any doubt I had about seeing the movie.

Returning to the original post, I’m particularly excited to see Jake’s other two movies. I quite enjoy Sam Mendes as a director and feel confident he can adapt an ex-soldier’s memoirs about his time in Kuwait during the Gulf War into a compelling movie. Can Gyllenhaal accurately portray the complexity of wartime and its effects on an individual? We can only wait to find out, but I’m predicting positive, but not earth-shattering, reviews for the film. The gem of the three could be Brokeback Mountain, which I’m quite excited for. I don’t know if two hot young actors in the prime of their careers have ever played a pair of a lovers in a mainstream movie before and though it’s not nearly as much of a taboo as it would have been 20 years ago, I must commend Jake and Heath Ledger on accepting the role. Based on the Annie Proulx short story I think that this movie can capture the loneliness of closeted homosexuality forty years ago, particularly in Midwestern America. It’s about not only the taboo of gay sex, but also about the pain of hiding one’s true sexual feelings and romantic attachments behind a veil of secrecy. It will be interesting to see if Gyllenhaal, Ledger and director Ang Lee can make this movie feel authentic, but if they can I think it may well ring true as one of the most honest love stories on film of the past year.

And, if you’re already a Gyllenhaal fan and think I was late to the party, think again. If anything, I am the leader of this train. I was speaking highly of him like two or three years ago. Ask Sophie, if you doubt me.

The New Yorker and Baseball Cartoons, 1943-1945

2005-10-22T23:03:00.000-05:00

Here is a study of baseball cartoons in the New Yorker from 1943-1945. This will give us some insight into how frequently the New Yorker deals with baseball and it will also allow us to determine if New Yorker cartoons are ever funny. Thanks to Hayford Peirce, whose work I am partially borrowing. And yes, I do have very random blog topics.

In 1943, out of 777 cartoons, there were absolutely 0 concerning baseball. There were a number of boxing cartoons, but fewer cartoons about other sports than in the past few years.

In 1944, out of 829 cartoons, there were 6 about baseball and a number of boxing cartoons:

#105. February 12th. Museum scene. Lots of small boys looking at an abstract, apparently female nude sculpture that also might be interpreted as an arm and hand holding a ball. Flustered lady looking at a guide book says: "No. 33. The - er - Baseball Player."

I don’t get it. He doesn’t really look like a baseball player, but he could be sort of seen as one in the right light. I guess it’s about how you will come up with any excuse to avoid showing small children nudity. But it’s not funny.

#256. Catcher standing behind batter at plate and saying to ump: "I can't crouch down. That's why I'm still in baseball."

A catcher doesn’t stand, he crouches. I guess this is a wartime joke that baseball catchers are no longer able to bend down, because if they could bend down, they’d be fighting in the war. Kinda amusing, maybe makes you smile.

#382. A Pacific island village. 8 GIs are clustered around a thatched-roof hut listening to a large radio set. One native to another: "I'm rooting for the St. Louis Browns. I understand they have never won a pennant."

It’s funny. The Browns never win and the joke is that even people living on remote islands know about this. Imagine a similarly themed joke about the Clippers or Bengals or someone’s objectionable odour.

#429. White-smocked peanut vendor in stands with 5-Cents sign on his cap to potential customer: "Be right back. I'm up next."

Another war joke. The joke is that ushers are doubling as players. I prefer the counter-intuitive joke of #256. Mildly amusing

#502. Ump and a cluster of players looking into (apparently) crowded double-deck stands. "We've only got eight. Anybody here ever play second base?"

See above. I think this maybe the worst of the three similarly-themed joke.

#558. Batter to ump signalling a strike. "I beg to differ."

I do not get it. Is it funny because he’s polite and not cursing? Is this some joke concerning phrasing of the 1940’s? I’d be pretty amused if I saw a real-life example of a player saying, “I beg to differ” in an argument, but in a cartoon it doesn’t work.

In 1945, out of 792 cartoons, 4 concerned baseball:

#290. One elderly coach to another as they look at a dugout full of apparently older players: "Pop! Pop! Everybody's Pop! What this team needs is a complete new set of nicknames."

A commentary on the lack of uniqueness of nicknames in general, particularly among this set of aged players. This could be a mediocre In the Bleachers and nobody would be the wiser.

#379. An imposing wall with "Eingang" and an arrow on it, as well as an imposing swastika on top of the wall, apparently the exterior of a large stadium in Germany. A uniformed soldier with a baseball glove on one hand is peering over the top of the wall and pointing down to an elderly pedestrian at a baseball lying at the foot of the wall.

Soldiers are playing baseball. We get it. Can you blame them? I can’t.

#384. Three GIs lying in grass beside a German bunker listening to a radio. One solider is making entries on an inning by inning scoreboard on the wall of the bunker. "Dodgers" is the name of one of the teams.

Is this a joke on dodging bombs and shrapnel? Why is Dodgers so significant here? Otherwise I’d assume it’s just a simple, bad joke about GIs listening to baseball in the middle of war.

#399. Grandparents (?) in store with a 3- or 4-year old boy. The matronly lady is holding a baseball bat as if ready to swing it.

Not funny. I do not get it. Help me.

So, in conclusion, New Yorker cartoons deserve their reputation as not-that-funny and often inexplicable.

Onion Sports

2005-10-15T01:49:00.000-05:00

If you’re a sports fan in any sense of the word, it’s certainly worth checking out the new sports section over at The Onion. I’ve not been too impressed with the satirical newspaper recently. I’m not sure if the novelty’s worn off or if it’s just a sub-par set of editors and writers, but the magic that characterised a few years ago seems to have vanished. While it’s still funny from time to time, there are more misses than hits and it’s becoming increasingly rarer to stumble across a gem article, which you’d find almost every week a while ago.

As I said, maybe I’m being harsh on them and it’s more a function of the fact that the paper is no longer new, but I certainly think there is lots of room for improvement. Nevertheless, one thing I must praise the current set of writers/editors for is the new sports section. Sports seemed like a logical area for The Onion to expand into. It’s popular, it’s got a lot of great material that lends itself to satire well and it’s something that a bunch of men in their twenties would presumably know a lot about and be able to relate to. In the few sports articles over the past couple of years The Onion always hit the mark and recently they decided to add it as a permanent feature.

There have been some great articles over the past few weeks, but I think the best concerns twelve-fingered relief pitcher Antonio Alfonseca entitled, “Antonio Alfonseca Once Again Leads Major-Relievers in Fingers.”

MIAMI—Florida Marlins pitcher Antonio Alfonseca dominated the MLB in appendages for the ninth straight year, finishing the 2005 season with a league-leading 12 fingers. Alfonseca, who made his debut with the Marlins in 1997 and wasted no time making this particular statistical category his own, led the NL for almost the entire season, only falling into a close second during an unusual two-week period in mid-August. Alfonseca's performance will trigger a $1 million bonus, as the Marlins signed him to an incentive-laden, oft-criticized, finger-enumeration-based contract. "Antonio has been through a lot this season, including some elbow problems and a trip to the DL," manager Jack McKeon said. "But in the end, he just went out there and had a lot of fingers." There was once again a tie for second place behind Alfonseca, with 214 pitchers amassing 10 fingers each, followed by Bob Wickman, who finished last with 9.7.

The two-week period in August and 9.7 fingers of Wickman are random funny Onion lines in the article, particularly when one begins speculating how Wickman lost 1/3^rd of a finger. My guess is the rotund reliever ate it. The whole article is a nice commentary on what some would call baseball’s overtly statistical concerns. However, the best line is McKeon’s fake quote. If you’ve ever listened to a manger’s post-game press conference you’ll know that the newspaper got the parody dead-on.

The Pitfalls of Engagement

2005-10-14T20:24:00.000-05:00

Apparently there’s a big controversy down in Minnesota because members of the Minnesota Vikings, the NFL team, had a sex party on a cruise ship. They have been accused of having public sex on the ship, harassing the female waitresses and urinating on public property.

There was an article on the accusations recently in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which included perhaps the funniest string of sentences I’ve read in while. The article includes a quote from running back Mewelde Moore, in which he discusses whether or not he was on the boat. Moore is quoted as saying:

"Sex? What are you talking about? That's crazy. ... Look, I'm engaged. So none of that. That will put me in trouble."

Tom Cheek, 1939-2005

2005-10-09T22:34:00.000-05:00

Anything I write in memory of this man would come out sounding inarticulate and would not be anything near the tribute he deserves. So, I'm simply noting his passing with a great deal of sadness and many happy memories. I also wish he had been elected to Cooperstown in the summer. While he would have received the news with typical humility, it would have been a well-deserved end to his baseball career and a fitting reflection upon his talent in the broadcast booth, as well as his incredibly caring and friendly nature.

He was the Voice of the Blue Jays and he will always be remembered.

Upheaval in African Soccer

2005-10-08T18:55:00.000-05:00

Today was an unprecedented day in African soccer as four nations qualified for the World Cup that have never done so before. Tunisia qualified for the last place from Africa, and they have made it to the World Cup before, first in 1978 and also in 1998 and 2002. They have never made it past the first round, although they did Mexico in the 1978 tournament.

The four new nations to qualify are Angola, Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Togo. On one hand, it’s always exciting and the five new teams in this year’s World Cup, at current count, give it the most new nations since the 1982 World Cup also had five. If another team joins the four African nations and Ukraine in the competition, this year’s tournament will have the most new teams since the 10 of the 1934 World Cup, which was also a large product of travel arrangements. The last few spots always tend to produce some new teams, and I think we’ll end up with probably six new teams in Germany, possibly seven, with Bahrain, Uzbekistan and Guatemala among the possible contenders.

So, on one hand I’m quite happy to see this new blood in the World Cup. However, when new teams enter the tournament it means that old teams did not qualify. Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions, the darlings of the 1990 World Cup when they became the first African nation to make the quarterfinals, where they lost in Extra Time to England came second in African Qualifying Group Three, finishing behind Cote D’Ivoire. Cameroon won the African Nations Cup in 2000 and 2002 and it is a shame in many ways that they are not at the tournament.

Senegal, who shocked France in the opening game of World Cup 2002 and became the second African nation to make the quarterfinals, was stunned by Togo in Group One, as Togo beat the Republic of Congo 3-2 to finish 2 points ahead of Senegal. This means that Papa Bouba Diop, Mamadou Diallo and El Hadji Diop will all miss the World Cup.

I was personally saddened the most by the news out of Group Four. Nigeria routed Zimbabwe 5-1, but as Angola defeated Rwanda 1-0 they won the group. Both Nigeria and Angola had the same number of points, but Angola did better in head-to-head competition and thus qualified for the tournament. The Super Eagles are my favourite national football team for which I owe no ancestral loyalty. I think they play some of the most exciting football on the planet and they do possess some of the most skilled individual players. It’s a joy to watch a Nigeria game, especially after sitting through a dreadful Italian affair, and I always make it a point to watch all of their games live. I know I make it a point to watch as much of the World Cup as I can, but I especially watch out for Nigerian football. No Nigeria means no Taribo West, no Celestine Babayaro, no Sunday Oliseh, no Aiyegbeni Yakubu, no Jay-Jay Okocha and no Obafemi Martins. Martins is apparently one of the most talented teenage players on the globe, and I was quite looking forward to seeing him in action. While I will hopefully see him in 2010, by that time many mainstays of the last few Nigerian teams will have retired, including Okocha.

For Nigeria’s failure to qualify and for the fact that I will never see some of these fine men in Nigerian green again, I shed a tear.

BNL Concert

2005-10-07T12:15:00.000-05:00

I know they're not everyone's cup of tea, but anyone interested in a BNL concert on Friday, November 25th at Massey Hall? I think I've found a guy here to go with, but I figured I'd give a shout out before buying tickets later this weekend. They're a great live show.

If you're interested, let me know ASAP.

How Not to Conduct Yourself in a Politics Tutorial

2005-09-30T23:31:00.000-05:00

If you have an interest in maintaining a respectable reputation, in appearing pleasant towards the opposite sex, being remembered for your intellectual contributions to a group and not potentially black-balling yourself from many social situations you should probably not follow the example I set today in my politics tutorial. It was the first one of the year and it’s for a course I dislike, but neither point excuses my behaviour, although it may help to explain it.

Before I begin, it sometimes seems like I need a delay between my brain and my mouth. I don’t have the worst case of foot-in-mouth disease, but I’ve been known to say things that land me in hot water or otherwise strange situations. I wouldn’t want a delay, as that seems like a horrible way to live, but on certain occasions it seems like it’d be advisable. I think in this case I equalled some of my other more memorable Kingston moments. The most comparable is probably last year when I had a 20-second (or so) discussion with MP Peter Milliken about whether a video playing was of heterosexual foreplay or lesbian foreplay, and this was after pointing out the video to him, which I assume people had been avoiding as a topic of conversation for a reason.

Anyway, so it was our first tutorial and I was sitting beside a couple of friends. Our TA came in and introduced himself and gave us a few details about the course and his role. It was all very basic stuff, until it came to the icebreaker he proposed. While a few of my tutorials/small classes don’t have icebreakers, most do – although they tend to be of the “go round and introduce yourself to everyone” variety. However, he said we were playing “2 Truths and a Lie” which I hadn’t played in forever.

I could blame it on the fact I haven’t played in ages, or on the fact I was picked to go “early” – to be quite honest, about middle of the class – but, I think the most pressing reason is the fact I wanted to play the game well, and not cop out like people who said shit like, “I have 12 pairs of jeans,” “I am an only child,” “My favourite show is the O.C.” Those were all real lines used in my tutorial and they were all boring. (Actually, one of one girl’s truths was that she had 24 siblings. I found that pretty amazing. That’s a shitload of people to buy presents for on Christmas and birthdays, but I guess you get a lot back, too.)

The game was played and I tried to follow along, while also racking my brain for good ideas for my turn. I didn’t really succeed, so when my turn I began with a standard and then thought up two more on the fly.

I have attended more than fifty-five Blue Jays games in a year…in person.

Once, when we were little, my brother and I were playing “Cops and Robbers” and I phoned 9-1-1 and got a police cruiser to show up at our house.

I’ve had two hernias.

So, the person across from me was supposed to guess which one was the lie. She guessed wrong, so I had to tell her that, “I never got a police car to show up at our house….my brother made the call.” That got a series of laughs, but they paled in terms of the reaction that came about half a minute earlier.

She guessed #3, so I had to tell her, “Incorrect…I’ve had two hernias.”

Now, I don’t know if everyone knows what a hernia is, or if there is a lot of confusion out there about it. In my defence, I’m going to claim that I saw a few confused looks on people’s faces. So I decided to utter the words for which I’ll always be remembered in that tutorial and to those people and to all their friends and associates and which will make me the subject of whispering in next week’s classes.

“Yep. Both testicles.”

Of Metric in Kingston

2005-09-25T01:12:00.000-05:00

I have no real use for Homecoming weekend, but it arrived this weekend, like it does every year, to massive hype and excitement amongst Queen’s students. To cut right to the chase, this year the student government at Queen’s booked a free concert on campus in an attempt to try and cut down, however slightly, the number of intoxicated students roaming the streets. I wasn’t planning to go, but when I heard the lineup of Stripper’s Union, Metric and Billy Talent I jumped at the chance and got my ticket.

Stripper’s Union is a solo project by Rob Baker of The Tragically Hip and I arrived about halfway through their set. What I heard didn’t seem to be bad, nor was it anything special. One or two songs were catchy and it was pleasant enough to listen to, but a few of the songs faded into background noise as I walked around trying to find a good place to stand to listen to Metric.

After twenty (I’m guessing twenty, it seemed like about forty) minutes between sets Metric came out to cheers, most of the polite-sort as Billy Talent fans had clearly begun to pack the parking lot. Metric began to play, starting off with a song from their new album. I haven’t downloaded it, so I can’t name most of the songs. After this song they jumped right into ”Succexy” and the show was off and rocking.

At this point the guy with the big head right in front of me turned to someone to my left and said, “You know, I only came for Stripper’s Union anyway.” Thankfully, he’d leave within a couple of songs, although some girls took his place, so I couldn’t move up. I’ve seen Metric once before, but this show occurred the day after their four straight sold-out shows in Toronto and Emily Haines lost her voice about halfway through the show, unfortunately. That show didn’t compare to this one, even if she crowd-surfed partway through and I got to touch her leg.

This show was awesome. They played about half new stuff and half old, including “Combat Baby”, “The List”, “Dead Disco” and “Hustle Rose.” The new stuff they played was quite good and I’m looking forward to hearing it in its entirety. Apparently, this was the premiere performance for one of their songs – I believe it was “Poster of a Girl.” Haines deemed it, “Okay.” Josh Winstead took about four pictures during the show, some of Haines, some of the audience.

The band really rocked and put on a great show, in my opinion. Like always, Josh and James Shaw played their instruments full of emotion (it was really tough to see Joules on the drums from where I stood) and they both held your attention in their own right. However, as always, the star of the show was Emily. Her stage presence is mesmerising. Whether she’s gyrating her legs to the music, head-banging or just dancing around on stage, it’s almost impossible to look away from her. To use the obvious pun, it’s simply “succexy.” The only other musicians I’ve seen live that are comparable are Steven Page, and to a lesser degree Ed Robertson, of the Barenaked Ladies.

So, I was disheartened when Metric left, but since I was pretty close to the stage I decided to wait around for Billy Talent. Forty minutes later, they came on stage, at which point I was pushed in the back by about half-a-dozen drunken frat boys who were barging their way to the front. I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything else, but still, I figured since I was near the sides I could avoid the worst of it. Fifteen minutes later I had taken an elbow in the head, been forced to mosh against my will and had begun to realise that I don’t even like Billy Talent.

I knew I wouldn’t, but I figured it’d be worth sticking around now that I’m there. It wasn’t.

So I wandered around the outskirts of the parking lot, preparing to go home, but slowly taking a tour around before I left, hoping I’d run into someone I know or come up with a good idea of what to do besides go home. As I was walking around, I passed by the merchandising table and did a double-take. There, standing by the table, was Emily Haines talking to another member of Metric. I’m pretty sure it was Joules, but at the time I wasn’t sure if it was him, James (I had doubt as to whether I had the names right) or some random person.

I stood around, nervously debating what to do for about ten minutes. I wanted to approach them, but I didn’t know what to say and I wasn’t sure if they would prefer to be left in peace. During that ten minutes I saw that two girls approached them, but that was it. Not many people were nearby and those that were had no idea who they were standing amongst. Afraid they would leave, I finally bit the bullet and walked over, still unsure of what I was going to say.

I stood patiently near them as Emily finished saying something and looked over. I said nervously, “Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to say that you played a great set. I’m really looking forward to the next album.”

She replied, “Thanks,” but didn’t say much else.

I wasn’t sure whether that was a cue to leave or not, so I continued, “I saw you guys last time you played were here – at the Elixir…”

I was about to say, “When you lost your voice,” but Emily smiled and motioned to her throat, saying the same thing. She said something to the effect of that she was going to thank all the fans who put up with her that night and who came back to see them again, but then she decided against it.

I wished I could have come up with something charming or funny to say – I’d have even settled for articulate. Instead, I soon said, “Well, it was understandable after those four shows in Toronto. Don’t worry, this more than made up for it. It was fantastic.”

She smiled and was about to say something, but then some girls appeared and thrust out objects for her to sign. She kind-of smiled sideways at me and began to sign her autograph. I had nothing for Emily to sign and these girls were talking to her, so I was unsure of what to do. Should I stay and try to resume a conversation after they left? Should I hang around and play it by ear? Or was this my cue to leave?

I assume the third, as I didn’t want to appear stalkery and I assumed Emily didn’t want to have mindless conversations with ardent fans all night long. So I left, happy that I met her but sad that I wasn’t able to say something real or intelligent in our brief 30-second conversation.

So, for those of you keeping track, Metric have played Kingston twice while I’ve been her. The first time I touched Emily on the leg and the second time I spoke to her. As this seems to be a pattern, I will conclude these are certainly not two random occurrences. Apparently, Metric are coming to Kingston in January. How can this incident be topped? I’m not sure, but I’m already looking forward to it.

Analysing Marmaduke

2005-09-24T11:12:00.000-05:00

One day when I’ve not got much to do I’ll write a nice piece fully explaining the genius that was Calvin and Hobbes. With all due respect to Far Side, Get Fuzzy, Dilbert and Sherman’s Lagoon none of them can touch Calvin and Hobbes as the best comic ever created. I own basically every book Mr. Watterson has published, and you can reread Calvin and Hobbes and still find it funny, years after you first discovered it. In fact, I get a lot more jokes in the strip seven years down the road. I seriously doubt I’ll ever read a strip as good as Calvin again.

Nowadays one could generously describe the comic pages as mediocre. Some appear to be just ongoing soap operas, others consit of middle-aged wives complaining about their suburban lives and there are always a couple Biazzaro-type comics, but they aren’t really funny, either. The only things really worth reading are Get Fuzzy, Sherman’s Lagoon and Zits, but none of them are consistently funny (or gut-wrenchingly) enough to be daily fixtures. Also, it’s rarely worth wading through the rest of the crap to get to those strips. As I’m not a 50-year old single Christian woman I’ve not found Family Circus to ever be funny and I never will.

However, one strip has always puzzled me, and that’s Marmaduke. With the strip’s main character being a dog and since the joke has to be told in a single captioned frame, I’ve always wondered how much potential for jokes existed.

So, this past week, I decided to investigate. Here are links to the comics from the past five days:

Monday, September 19^th

Tuesday, September 20^th

Wednesday, September 21th

Thursday, September 22^nd

Friday, September 23^rd

If you’ve read all the comics, you can clearly see they all contain the same joke, even if the punchline is different. The joke of every Marmaduke comic is that Marmaduke is trying to act like a human, when clearly he’s a canine.

For example, look at Wednesday’s cartoon. The car has clearly stalled and the man has to push it to get it going again, so who has assumed the wheel to steer the car once it starts? It’s crazy old Marmaduke. He’s trying to drive a car, when clearly, as a dog, he doesn’t have a driver’s licence, the knowledge about how to drive and probably even the necessary physical coordination. There may be a second joke in this strip about the fact Marmaduke can’t escape his canine nature as he sticks his head out the window, even when driving. However, the main joke is definitely Marmaduke acting like a human.

Thursday’s comic is much the same. The lady Marmaduke lives with, I don’t know her name, apologies for having interrupted a “board meeting” of the dogs round the backyard table. Silly Marmaduke doesn’t realise that dogs don’t have important issues to discuss, nor can they talk, so a board meeting is unnecessary. Marmaduke is trying to emulate humans again, much to the amusement of the reader.

I began to wonder if every Marmaduke comic had this one joke, or if there were a small series of jokes, of which this one is just the dominate one. I looked at last weekend’s comics:

Saturday, September 17^th

Sunday, September 18^th

To begin with Saturday’s strip, the problem here is that we don’t know precisely how Marmaduke injured his tail at the retirement home. I’m not even sure who he was supposed to have been visiting at the home. I can think of two possibilities concerning Marmaduke’s injuries. One, he was at the retirement home and tried to copy the elderly people there and sat on a rocking chair, only to injure his tail in the course of his rocking. The alternate is that he was hanging around some individuals in a rocking chair, one of whom rocked back and crushed his tail.

I would dismiss the first scenario off the bat, except for the fact that Marmaduke has clearly accomplished many things dogs aren’t usually capable of, including moving a refrigerator, driving a car and arranging a board meeting of dogs. The second scenario just doesn’t seem that funny. An old person injuring a dog, inadvertently or not, isn’t something particularly amusing. That doesn’t seem to the base for a very good joke. Perhaps it’s a commentary on the failure of the elderly to examine their surroundings and notice a nearby dog before they began rocking – but that joke seems to be based, again, on someone’s lack of respect for animals, which is hardly something Marmaduke’s creator would endorse. Therefore, I have to conclude Marmaduke sat on a rocking chair, accidentally injured his own tail and we have a sixth case of Marmaduke trying to act like a human.

Sunday’s strip is particularly interesting. Marmaduke is bugged by kittens and retreats to his doghouse, only to notice the master of the house is walking by, obviously on his way to perform some chore. Marmaduke gets up, carries the kittens to the doghouse and gets them out of the way before the man begins to mow the lawn.

The joke here appears to be based on Marmaduke’s parental nature, as despite the fact that he grown tired of the kittens and has tried to escape their presence, he returns to rescue them from possible danger, just like any parent would do. The man seems to unaware the kittens are about before he begins mowing the lawn, as he never checks the yard, and thus the potential danger is high. Marmaduke saves the situation by acting responsibly, like a human. Despite the fact he is in a subordinate role in the house Marmaduke acts responsibily and aids those who run the house, who are unaware of the situation they narrowly avoided.

So, in conclusion, there are at least two distinct Marmaduke jokes. The most common is Marmaduke trying to act like a human, but there are also strips where the joke is that Marmaduke is acting like a human and aiding the people he lives with. At some point later I aim to examine more Marmaduke and see what other jokes I can discover in this strip.

Sphincters

2005-09-11T14:26:00.000-05:00

A quote in this article on the K.C. Royals on Rob Neyer’s website, got a bunch of baseball fans into an interesting discussion. Rob writes,

Because Lubanski, like most Royals “prospects,” doesn’t know the strike zone from his anal sphincter. In 126 games, Lubanski drew 38 walks and struck out 131 times. Last year in the Midwest League, he struck out 106 times in 128 games . . . and that was without the power he’s shown this season. The draft pick used on Lubanski was wasted, nearly as badly as the one used on Colt Griffin.

So that got a few people asking whether the phrase “anal sphincter” was really necessary, or would it simply be enough to say “sphincter” by itself? Does someone have other sphincters?

The answer is yes, we do. People could think of at least five other non-anal sphincters in the human body. Humans have a sphincter between their esophagus and stomach (cardial sphincter), a urethral sphincter, a sphincter in the iris of the eye (sphincter pupillae), a sphincter between their stomach and the duodenum (the first part of the small intestine; called the pyloric sphincter) and one from the common bile duct into the duodenum (Sphincter of Oddi).

So, when referencing sphincters in conversation, be sure to say “anal sphincter” to avoid it be confused with someone’s pyloric sphincter or the Sphincter of Oddi.

Faster By Five Days to St. Bernard

2005-09-10T22:54:00.000-05:00

This bit of news from New Orleans seemed worth passing on. Everyone knows the response to the hurricane has been slow, by all levels of government, but to be beaten to a New Orleans suburb by five days is more than a bit ridiculous. And props to the Canadian team for knowing a suitable parish to operate in, rather than flying to an area of New Orleans that FEMA and the U.S. army was focusing on.

A Canadian search-and-rescue team reached a flooded New Orleans suburb to help save trapped residents five days before the U.S. military, a Louisiana state senator said on Wednesday.

The Canadians beat both the Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. disaster response department, to St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans, where flood waters are still 8 feet (2.4 metres) deep in places, Sen. Walter Boasso said.

"Fabulous, fabulous guys," Boasso said. "They started rolling with us and got in boats to save people."

"We've got Canadian flags flying everywhere."

The stricken parish of 68,000 people was largely ignored by U.S. authorities who scrambled to get aid to New Orleans, a few miles (km) away. Boasso said residents of the outlying parishes had to mount their own rescue and relief efforts when Hurricane Katrina roared ashore on Aug. 29.

The U.S. government response to the disaster has been widely criticized. Politicians and editorial writers have called for the resignation of top Bush administration officials.

Boasso said U.S. authorities began airdropping relief supplies to St. Bernard last Wednesday, the same day the Canadian rescue team of about 50 members arrived from Vancouver, nearly 2,200 miles (3,540 km) away.

"They chartered a plane and flew down," he said.

Two FEMA officials reached the parish on Sunday and the U.S. Army arrived on Monday, he said.

"Why does it take them seven days to get the Army in?" Boasso asked.

He speculated that the smaller parishes suffered because the focus was on New Orleans, the famous home of jazz and Mardi Gras.

As for the Canadians, Boasso gave thanks for their quick work.

"They were so glad to be here," he said. "They're still here. They are actually going door-to-door looking in the attics" for people to rescue, he said.

Brown Demoted

2005-09-10T14:44:00.000-05:00

Yesterday Michael Brown was relieved of his command of onsite relief efforts yesterday and it’s about time. Anyone without an ideological bias could see that he was had done an incredibly poor job both before and after the hurricane and Bush’s quote, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” might become more infamous than many of his Bushisms in the years to come.

I'm not saying the fault lies entirely with federal officials, because the local and state handling of the relief efforts have also had some problems from what I can tell. However, the federal response has been quite poor, from diverting funds to New Orleans in 2004 to help fund the Iraq war to their inability to grasp how disasterous this hurricane was going to be, and Brown's performance is one of the most glaring examples. Brown is one of the incompetent government officials I’ve seen in recent years and Brendan Loy has a fine post about Brown’s incompetence, which is well worth the read.

A couple highlights:

In response to this quote,

"Saturday and Sunday, we thought it was a typical hurricane situation -- not to say it wasn't going to be bad, but that the water would drain away fairly quickly," Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Mike Brown said today. "Then the levees broke and (we had) this lawlessness. That almost stopped our efforts." ...

"Katrina was much larger than we expected," he said.

Loy writes,

No one -- NO ONE -- who knows anything about New Orleans's geography and topography and levee system would ever have thought for a single moment on Saturday and Sunday that Katrina, if it followed the predicted path, was going to be a "typical hurricane situation." Jesus Christ!! For how many years now has this article been out there?!? And this one? And many more like them? Did Michael Brown never read them? Was he not familiar with the science? Was FEMA's director unaware of what has been acknowledged for many years as the #1 most serious natural disaster threat in all of America?!? (Or, more immediately, did he not read the National Weather Service's statement on Sunday morning which predicted that Katrina would cause "human suffering incredible by modern standards"?)

….

And "larger than expected"?!? Katrina WEAKENED at the last minute, its western eyewall virtually collapsed, and it turned AWAY from New Orleans, moving 40 miles east of the city instead of moving directly overhead! It was substantially smaller, weaker and less bad than expected!!!

And on FEMA’s incompetence, he has something to say, including this:

[T]he warnings about New Orleans's vulnerability to post-hurricane flooding repeatedly circulated at the upper levels of the new [Homeland Security] bureaucracy, which had absorbed the old lead agency for disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among its two dozen fiefdoms. "Beyond terrorism, this was the one event I was most concerned with always," said Joe M. Allbaugh, the former Bush campaign manager who served as his first FEMA head.

But several current and former senior officials charged that those worries were never accorded top priority -- either by FEMA's management or their superiors in DHS. Even when officials held a practice run, as they did in an exercise dubbed "Hurricane Pam" last year, they did not test for the worst-case scenario, rehearsing only what they would do if a Category 3 storm hit New Orleans, not the Category 4 power of Katrina. And after Pam, the planned follow-up study was never completed, according to a FEMA official involved.

Also, apparently Cheney visited a relief center in Austin, Texas today, so he’s not completely AWOL. However, this is the first I’ve heard or seen of him since the hurricane, which is still a long time for him to have vanished.

I Don’t Want to Go to Tom DeLay’s Birthday Party and Other Thoughts on New Orleans

2005-09-10T14:06:00.000-05:00

1. I Don’t Want to Go to Tom DeLay’s Birthday Party

If this is his idea of fun, I’d hate to see what activities he plans for his birthday party.

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to Reliant Park this morning offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter.

While on the tour with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.

Yes, I understand maybe he is trying to put a positive spin on it for some youngsters, but that comment in that situation seems pretty inappropriate to me, especially from a representative from a government that has been widely criticised for an inadequate response to Katrina.

I can’t imagine being in that situation and losing my house, my entire life’s possessions, the city I live in and basically almost everything I have on earth but my family and friends. However, I think in such a situation I’d want sympathy, rather than some phony and inadequate effort to cheer me up. How about a pledge to help the survivors rebuild their life? Or to help the city of New Orleans rebuild itself? That seems like something that would be much more appropriate.

2. What’s on Bush’s Mind at This Time is Highly Questionable

However, the former residents of New Orleans need not fear. Bush will rebuild their city, or at least one house in it.

Or was it that odd moment when he promised to rebuild Mississippi Senator Trent Lott's house--a gesture that must have sounded astonishingly tone-deaf to the homeless black citizens still trapped in the postapocalyptic water world of New Orleans. "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house--he's lost his entire house," cracked Bush, "there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

3. Some Katrina Photos Are Worth Looking At

This photo is haunting.

4. Where the Hell is Dick Cheney?

Shouldn’t the Vice-President be involved in the recovery efforts for one of the worst natural disasters to hit a country in its entire history? Apparently not as his website doesn’t even mention Hurricane Katrina.

Rehnquist Dead

2005-09-03T22:45:00.000-05:00

Breaking news: Chief Justice William Rehnquist has died. Rehnquist had been ill with thyroid cancer and apparently his health declined dramatically in the last few days. He died earlier this evening at his home, ending a 33-year career on the Supreme Court, where he had been Chief Justice since 1986. Rehnquist’s career on the Supreme Court lasted so long he actually voted on Roe v. Wade, which he opposed. Rehnquist was one of the court’s conservatives, voting against a recount in Bush v. Gore, acting as the court’s sole dissenter in Bob Jones University v. the United States, voting with the majority opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick and joining his usual pals, Scalia and Thomas, in dissenting in Lawrence v. Texas.

My prediction, partially because I like to be right (even if it takes a while) is that J. Michael Luttig becomes the second new potential Supreme Court justice of the year, but that Clarence Thomas becomes the USA’s first African-American Chief Justice.

Trip Tidbits

2005-08-30T20:19:00.000-05:00

I was on holiday the last three weeks, which is why this hasn't been updated in a little while. Sadly, I return to university shortly and I will be quite busy, especially during first term, and that will also mean this little blog won't be updated as often as it was during the summer. I'll still try to pop in now and again, but the problem is once I start I have trouble stopping, and I don't have the time/desire to do it every day. I also might be able to squeeze in a couple of entries before I leave.

Nevertheless, here are a few short points, mostly vacation-related, to tide people over.

- While in England I encountered what is probably the best slogan for a food product ever. The product Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes has the slogan, “It’s ludicrously tasty.” That is the only time I can recall in my life where a slogan and the slogan alone has made me purchase a product. And you know what? It is very tasty, but ludicrously tasty might be an overstatement.

- England has some great other food, as well. Just to name a few: Coco Pops, Jaffa Cakes, Milky Buttons and Prawn Cocktail flavoured chips. These foods might no be quite as tasty if I had access to them everyday, but I find them all delectable when I often go 12 months between samples. However, like most places it seems, fast food is worse in England, as McDonalds and Subway didn’t taste as good as they did in Canada. Also, I had what maybe the worst eat-out meal of my life in a restaurant in the Lake District.

- Also, Pepsi Max is available in abundance over there, but it is impossible to find in Canada. Why is that? It tastes identical to regular Pepsi (well, much closer than Diet Pepsi does) and it’s sugar-free. I’m not really conscious of that usually, but my dentist’s recent bitch-fest was still fresh in my mind, so I did notice it. Also, smoothies are also found much more often in England than they are here.

- We went to one Premiership match and saw a 2-2 tie between Aston Villa and Bolton. Four goals in the first twelve minutes is pretty impressive, even if the match lagged somewhat after that. Jay Jay Okocha was only used as a substitute, which I found very odd. My dad went to a second game and saw a 3-2 game, so he got 9 goals in 2 soccer games, which is quite good.

- We also saw a fair amount of the Ashes series cricket on television. A very knowledgeable friend of mine called the second and third test matches of the series amongst the top five international cricket games of all time. We didn’t see the second, but we saw the third while in England. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a baptism by fire on my end, as I could understand the match was exciting and tense and extraordinary, but I certainly don’t think I appreciated in the same way my dad or my uncles did. If you’re curious, he says the other two matches that definitely belong on the list are the 1960 Australia vs. West Indies match and the incredible Original Ashes test of 1882, which is number one. If you’re curious, this guy is a baseball buddy and a very smart guy.

- If you want an indication of how dull the vacation could be at parts, and also of how much driving around was involved, I completed twelve books over the 17-day trip. While they weren’t particularly difficult reads, there was a mixture of fiction and non-fiction and only one of them belonged to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series.

- I don’t think I’m prudish by any means, but I can’t say I quite approve of the culture surrounding English teenagers. Put another way, it’s another reason I’m glad my parents moved to Canada and if I have kids, I intend to raise them here. Unless I’m too far removed from my teenage years and I have forgotten what we were like, English teens are much more sexual and rebellious than North American youth. I know their teen pregnancy rates are much higher, but you can sense the sexualisation of their “tweens” as you walk around and frankly, thinking about it in connection to my little sister made me a little uncomfortable. It’s not like completely removed from here, but it’s definitely worse. There was an article in one of the papers that I read early in the trip that said, and I’m quoting from memory so I might be mistaken but I doubt it, that said that half of English kids between the ages of 11 and 15 had been drunk before. When I was 14 I was concerned with the Jays continuing mediocrity, with video games, with school, with getting to second base, with seeing movies and with improving my skating, not with getting drunk and having sex. However, I think that exercise only proves why I should never be used as the barometer of what normal people do.

- I was very surprised at how all the papers continued to defend the English police force and the officers involved in the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting despite the overwhelming evidence that they acted recklessly and inappropriately and shot an innocent man. Article after article defended their conduct and expressed sympathy for Menezes, but said that his death was a tragedy that was the mistake of a good system. People who campaigned for the police to be held responsible were labeled as radicals and seemingly irrelevant news about their roles in anti-Iraq war groups were often brought up and they were portrayed as radical leftists intent on furthering their own fame. Maybe this attitude isn’t prominent in all papers, but it was in both the Daily Mail and the Telegraph and the Times also defended the police officers, but didn’t go as far in discrediting those involved on behalf of Menezes.

- On the plus side I only have three days remaining at work. On the downside, if the last two days are any indication, these days will pass incredibly slowly. However, I will take that downside any day of the week. I had a horrible day there today, and I don’t want to relive it so there is no retelling, at this point anyway.

- I just realised that, at most, I will attend five more Blue Jays games this year. I knew the baseball season was slowly coming to a close, but this illustrates how little of it is left (yes, 30+ games is little). While the Jays recent slump has been disappointing, I certainly don't want them to stop playing. I also have to be happy with the season in its entirety. The next month will be very interesting, as there are some good pennant races going on, and the Yankees are in serious danger of missing the playoffs for the first time in years.

- This article is probably only hilarious if you follow baseball, but I think it is one of the most accurate and complete list of analogies I’ve ever seen. Besides referring to the Boston Red Sox as beloved by all, anyway.

Jon Stewart Drops the Ball

2005-07-26T22:43:00.000-05:00

Jon Stewart is one of my favourite men on television. He’s very smart, he’s incredibly funny and he’s very relevant. He’s turned the Daily Show from a smarmy-celebrity-mocking show hosted by Craig Kilborn into one of the must-watch shows on television. Stewart has accomplished the near unthinkable in turning a comedy program into one of the most informative news shows on television.

His coverage of the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election was more informative than that of any other major US network, as he would often show us in two clips what their entire afternoon of programming had consisted of, and his team would often shed incredible light on the real issues through their comedic pieces. Furthermore, Stewart accomplishes the near-impossible in having consistently good interviews, whether they are lighter pieces with celebrities or heavier ones with academics and politicians.

However, if there’s one noticeable weakness to Jon Stewart, it’s that he tends to drop the ball when the pressure is on. He had Colin Powell on his program and gave him a pass on the weapons of mass destruction controversy and his interview with John Kerry was met with widespread, and deserved, criticism.

Last night Jon Stewart had Rick Santorum on the program, and in my mind Stewart let Santorum walk right over him. Santorum is a legislative extremist, a demagogue and a raging homophobe. He’s one of my least favourite politicians in the US, and stands for an incredible amount of things I disagree with. He was on the show promoting his book It Takes a Family: Conservatism and Common Good.

Stewart, who likes to point and ridicule talking points to no end, and I love him for that, has rarely seemed so unable to rebut an interviewee’s talking points. Santorum is exactly the sort-of person that Stewart usually rips into in an interview, but last night he was instead genially agreeing to disagree with the man.

Stewart: Can you confuse virtue with heterosexuality? Because I live in New York City. I'm literally - we're in a sea of homosexuality here. (Santorum giggles) It is - and also evangelism and Jewish and Muslim — it's New York. There's 8 million people. You've got more of everything. My experience has been virtue is unrelated to sexuality. APPLAUSE. And by the way on the other side of that...unrelated to religion. I think that's why the argument and concern in that vein is so confusing.

Santorum: I would say that certainly people who are homosexuals can be virtuous and very often are. The problem is that when you talk about the institution of marriage as the foundation and building block of society which I say the family is, and the marriage is the glue that holds the family together. We need to do things to make sure that that institution stays stable for the benefit of children.

Stewart: Children are best raised in male/female is what you're...

Santorum: Yeah, one man one woman.

Stewart: One man, one woman, good job...

Santorum: Absolutely...I mean I talked about all those aspects of society...

Stewart: But if you don't have the ideal? Cause you know they say you go to war with the army that you have...

Santorum: But government should be for the ideal that doesn't mean that a single mom can't and in most cases will raise great children. That [doesn't] mean that other forms can't and won't raise good children. What government should be for is what's best because a lot's at stake - the future of our country. And so we should have a system that builds around what's best, and that's the traditional, what I call natural family. It's not to say that other people are bad.

Stewart: Isn't even the natural family evolving? All the way up until the 60's and 70's there were those head of household laws that a family could decide to move but it was basically the man who had final say, you know, and before that marriage was more a property arrangement. You know, love marriage only came in the 1700's and moved on from there. Is it possible that, through an examination or as we go along, or is this just a basic difference of opinion about what the nature of sexuality is and what the nature of virtue is?

Santorum: No I think it's the nature of what's best for society. From four thousand years of history we've decided and determined that marriage was so important, having a mother and father who had children who were together for the purpose of children. Remember, the reason societies elevate marriage to a special status is not because they want to affirm the relationship between two adults. That's important. A love relationship is important.

Stewart: But isn't that more a religious paradigm than..

Santorum: No, no. Again, what's society's purpose in marriage? Society's purpose - the reasons civilizations have held up marriage is because they want to establish and support and secure the relationship that is in the best interest of the future of the society, which is, a man and a woman having children and providing the stability for those children to be raised in the future.

Stewart: Wouldn't you say though and with that same thing and I completely agree, although I always thought the purpose of marriage was a bachelor party but that's beside the point. (laughter) But wouldn't you say that society has an interest in understanding that the homosexual community also wants to form those same bonds and raise children and wouldn't a monogamous, good-hearted, virtuous homosexual couple be in society's best interest raising a child rather than a heterosexual couple with adultery, with alcohol issues, with other things, and by the way, I don't even need to make that sound as though a gay couple can only raise a child given failures in other couples.

Santorum: You're matching up best case vs worst case.

Stewart: I'm talking best case because...

Santorum: If it's best case best case, the best case everywhere is one man, one woman, their child, raising that child.

Stewart: Can you legislate an ideal? [next words inaudible]

Santorum: We have to. We owe it to children. Children need a mom and a dad. There are differences between mothers and fathers. And young girls and young boys need both.

Stewart: I would, okay. (pause - laughter)

Stewart: Ultimately you get to this point where it's this crazy stopping point where literally we can't get any further. I don't think you're a bad dude. I don't think I'm a bad dude. But I don't think I can convince you of the idea that I think it's doing society a disservice to dismiss the potential of all these really...

Santorum: I don't think it's dismissing the potential. I think we should honor every person in America - that every person has worth and dignity. There's a difference though, when it comes to changing the laws of the country, that could harm children.

That partial transcript was thanks to Andy and you can download the segment in its entirety by clicking here. Stewart handled himself okay in the interview, it’s not like it was a complete disaster, but still, this is exactly the sort of person Stewart should be going after like the mainstream media never does.

Why didn’t Stewart ask Santorum what he meant when he said homosexuals “can be virtuous people,” when he accused homosexuality of leading down a path towards incest and bestiality a couple of years ago in an interview with AP? How can Santorum possibly call someone virtuous if they are committing acts that lead to incest and bigamy? Why didn’t Stewart ask Rick what these “differences” between “mothers and fathers are” such that children need both of them? Why didn’t Stewart challenge this quote from Santorum, “elevate marriage to a special status is not because they want to affirm the relationship between two adults,” because that’s exactly what I first think of when I think of a marriage, and I think you can make a very strong argument that that is the purpose of a marriage. Why didn’t Stewart ask Santorum how this quote “And so we should have a system that builds around what's best, and that's the traditional, what I call natural…” with a different ending phrase (say, family structure, colour divisions), is any different from the ones used to justify patriarchies or segregation? Why didn’t Stewart ask Santorum why his book leaves no place for women in society, but barefoot and pregnant? Finally, why didn’t he suggest that Santorum’s views aren’t different, they are intolerant?

For what it’s worth, Stewart apparently devoured that idiot Bernie Goldberg last week. I wish I had seen that. And he’s still 100 times better than most news shows.

Ten Things I Now Know

2005-07-25T21:11:00.000-05:00

They say you learn something new every day. Well, I could recall ten things I learned this week, so I decided to pass them along. This puts me three above the curve, and now I’m passing them onto you, so you can take the rest of the week off.

1. Which universities are Ivy League

I always thought I knew this, but then I recently made a remark about UPenn being an Ivy League school. The person I was talking with asked me if I knew the Ivy League schools and I couldn’t get the last couple. So, in case you are wondering, the answer is Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown and the University of Pennsylvania.

2. My approximate odds of developing vision loss

In Canada the odds are one in nine of developing permanent vision loss by age 65 and one in four by age 75. That is from the October 14, 2004 Globe & Mail, which I had lying in my room for some reason.

3. How astronauts poop in space

Watch the video here .

4. Where to find the transcript of Jon Stewart on Crossfire

We all know it, we all love it. It’s a classic bit of TV history. And it can be read, in its entirety, right here.

5. The funniest line ever uttered about Team America: World Police

I recently stumbled across this gem from comedic genius and free-speech victim Bill Maher. "Will people please stop talking to me about Team America? If I was interested in wooden sex with strings attached I'd have gotten married."

6. The date of the birth of the world’s first test-tube baby

Louise Brown was the world’s first baby born through in-vitro fertilisation, which is such a common method of conception that it now accounts for about 1% of the births in the United States. Louise was born at 11:47 PM on July 25^th, 1978, hence the connection, in Oldham, England, under the supervision of Dr. Robert Edwards and Dr. Patrick Steptoe.

7. Who India’s first female police officer was.

India’s first female police officer was Kiran Bedi, who joined the Indian Police Service in 1972. She was born in 1949, and after getting her MA in political science she worked as a university lecturer for two years before joining the Indian Police Service. She served on the force for a number of years, and completed both her LLB and PhD while on the force. Eventually she worked her way up to Inspector General of Prisons, where she instituted several reforms included introducing detoxification programs. Currently she works as a police advisor to the UN peacekeeping department.

8. Who Disneyland’s first guest was

When Disneyland opened on July 18, 1955 the first paid admission was college student Dave MacPherson, now a 72 year-old retired journalist living in Monticello, Utah. MacPherson received a lifetime pass for four to Disneyland and all other Disney parks that opened, a prize that was not announced beforehand. MacPherson decided to attend on the spur-of-the-moment, after watching television coverage the previous day when the park was opened to the media and special guests. He drove his motorcycle up to Anaheim and got in line at 1 AM, which is remarkably late considering the massive lines that now accompany major events. As the crowd swelled to around 6,000 MacPherson held his place, and when the doors opened he became the first paying customer Disneyland ever had. He then promptly went to the washroom and left the park without riding anything or
even buying a souvenir. Unfortunately it seems the heat may have got to MacPherson, as he had his own camera with him but didn't take any photos. Years later he recounted, "Why didn't I shoot pictures. I even forgot to ask Walt Disney for an autograph. I must have been balmy."

9. How many people kill themselves in China, on average, a day

685.

10. What 70 year-old men can do

This weekend the San Francisco Giants played the Florida Marlins, which marked the first time in professional sports history that two teams with managers in their seventies opposed one another. Felipe Alou, the Giants skipper and ex-Expos manager, is 70, while Jack McKeon, the cigar-smoking manager who guided Florida to the 2003 World Series is 74. This is a pretty good accomplishment, if you think about it. I just hope to be alive at 70, and these men are competing with the pressures of managing a professional sports team and the rigours of a 162 game schedule.

World Stupidity Awards

2005-07-23T20:01:00.000-05:00

This sounds like an event worth attending. It is part of the Just for Laughs comedy festival and it’s hosted by one of the funniest and angriest men around, Lewis Black. And it involves my sworn mortal enemy, Ann Coulter. Oh, how I’ve hated her for years and years.

The World Stupidity Awards will be given out Friday in Montreal at the Just for Laughs comedy festival. Here are the nominees:

Stupidest Man of the Year: U.S. Senator John Kerry; Former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma; columnist Ann Coulter; NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and Players Association director Bob Goodenow (shared); U.S. President George W. Bush

Dumbest Moment of the Year: Ashlee Simpson on SNL; Basketball fight featuring Ron Artest; Prince Harry showing up to party in Nazi suit; Tom Cruise on Oprah; Russell Crowe throwing a phone at somebody's head.

Stupidest Statement of the Year: "Can you handle my truth?" - Britney Spears; "Go (expletive) yourself." - U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney; "Nooooooooooooo" - Darth Vader, in Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith; "They never stop thinking of ways of harming America, and neither do we." - U.S. President George W. Bush; "That's hot." - Paris Hilton.

Stupidest Movie of the Year: Elektra; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Alexander; Alien vs Predator; The Pacifier

Stupidest Woman of the Year: Paris Hilton; Ashlee Simpson; Brangelina; The Runaway Bride; Paula Abdul

Stupidest Trend of the Year: Religious Fundamentalism of all kinds; War; Crystal Meth; Seeing the Virgin Mary in toast, hamburgers etc...; Climate Change

Stupidest TV Show of the Year: Britney Spears, Chaotic; Surreal Life; The Simple Life; The Beauty and the Geek; Dr. Phil

Dumbest Government of the Year: Iran; United States of America; Canada; North Korea; The United Nations

Stupidity Award for Reckless Endangerment of the Planet: Kim Jong Il, Dictator of North Korea; U.S. President George W. Bush; The Vatican; The Government of Iran; Paris Hilton

Media Outlet Which Has Best Furthered Ignorance: Fox News; CBS News; CNN; Al-Jazeera; Newsweek

Stupidest Award Show of The Year: The Oscars; The Grammys; The Daytime Emmy Awards; The Golden Globes; The World Stupidity Awards

Roberts

2005-07-19T22:57:00.000-05:00

Well, Bush went away from the expected names on the short list and instead nominated Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to the US Supreme Court. I think, from Bush’s point of view, this is an astute pick. He is picking someone with less name recognition that some of the usual suspects (such as Alito, Wilkinson, Luttig and Owen) and henceforth, someone the Democrats likely have not spent significant amounts of time preparing for. Roberts could well turn out to be as Conservative as some of the other well-known names, but Bush is avoiding the “controversial” choices in this scenario. Furthermore, he is also appointing a young jurist who promises to be on the bench (if he makes it through Congress) for a long time.

Rather than tell you what I think of Roberts, I’ll direct you to some links which should shed some light on him. I’m sure by now we all know that he once said, “Roe is wrongly decided and should be overruled,” but at his 2003 confirmation hearing said, “"Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. ... There is nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent.”

What else can we find out about the man? Here are some tidbits.

Here is Roberts’s questionnaire from his Senate confirmation.

Here is a record of his campaign contributions to Bush.

Here is a report from the People For the American Way on Roberts.

Finally, here is a report from the Alliance for Justice on Judge Roberts.

That’s a ton of reading on the guy, which I don’t even the time to summarise on and comment like I usually would.

I will leave you with a quote, however.

"The president is a man of his word," said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group. "He promised to nominate someone along the lines of a Scalia or a Thomas, and that is exactly what he has done."

The Hot Student

2005-07-15T18:29:00.000-05:00

This tidbit comes from BSM (Boston Sports Media), which is the best website out there for covering the Boston sports journalism scene that I’ve encountered. Anyhow, I’ll let David Scott take over.

Scott’s Shots has learned that former Boston Herald sports columnist, Michael Gee, is, according to Boston University director of media relations, Colin Riley, “no longer teaching this term” at BU, a result of Gee’s somewhat suggestive observations regarding a female student.

Those words – made on a public message board – apparently cost Gee his second job in two months. (He took part in the recent Herald buyout offer.)

On July 5, Gee, according to his own post at www.sportsjournalists.com, had begun a stint as fill-in instructor for a summer communications/journalism course at BU.

Here is what Gee wrote at sj.com on that day: “Today was my first day teaching course 308/722 at the Boston University Dept. of Jounralis (sic). There are six students, most of whom are probably smarter than me, but they DON'T READ THE PAPER!!! Not the Globe, Times, Herald or Wall Street Journal. I can shame them into reading, I guess, but why are they taking the course if they don't like to read

But I digress. Now here's the nub of my issue. Of my six students, one (the smartest, wouldn't you know it?) is incredibly hot. If you've ever been to Israel, she's got the sloe eyes and bitchin' bod of the true Sabra. It was all I could do to remember the other five students. I sense danger, Will Robinson.”

[….]

(For those wondering, sportsjournalists.com, in a nutshell, is a place where sports desk editors, as well as sportswriters and others, vent over how crummy this paper or that columnist is. It’s also a networking spot to get info on the latest openings and movement at papers across the country. Like most message boards, it serves a purpose and then serves the fellowship of the miserable even more. Point is – it’s well-read within the biz. Many posters use aliases, but Gee, who has been registered at the site since Sept. 4, 2004, uses his own, full name. Earlier this summer, Gee had even posted his resume in hopes of attracting work (See: Shots, June 17, 2005.)

[….]

What on earth was Gee thinking, when he made these inappropriate comments? Further, what editor would hire a guy who publicly admits to drooling over his student? Even more perplexing was Gee’s response after at least one SJ poster gave this friendly advice: “Congrats on the gig and the proximity to a hottie, but be careful. Not with her, but with this site. She or your bosses could Google your name and the university at any point and find this thread.”

Even that lucid warning didn’t seem to have an effect on Gee’s libido or his proud postings: “Dear Folks: I suppose I should be flattered that many of you think this gorgeous woman who's half my age would consider having sex with me. Which, if I have any news instincts, she won't. My problem is losing my focus when I meet her to-die-for eyes.”

First of all, in case you are wondering, “sloe eyes” are “slanted dark eyes.” I didn’t know before this, either. To be fair, it does sound sexy.

Secondly, how dumb does this guy have to be to post about his attraction towards a student of his on a website frequented by those in the sports journalism community? This is obviously something that isn’t going to sit well with BU’s administration, especially when he admits “losing focus” when he looks at her and “sensing danger” about his teaching situation.

As long as you have people in power, they are going to be attracted to people in subordinate positions. However, it’s one thing to keep those feelings to yourself or share them with some close colleagues over a few beers. It’s an entirely different thing to post them on the internet in a place where they are bound to be seen by people in the same industry as yours. So, kids, if you are attracted to subordinates later in life, do not post in on the internet on a public domain.

Now, all of this raises the interesting question of how long is it going to be until ramifications over internet posting become commonplace in political campaigns? It seems likely to me that the internet will be to early 21^st century politics like marijuana and similar “scandals” were to 80’s and 90’s politics. I suspect we’ll see several wannabe-members of Congress have their campaigns detrimentally affected by someone dragging up something they posted on the internet years ago. It’ll be like Jeff Gannon, except this time it will be that a Republican posted a blog entry that abortion is ethically okay.

I wish I was important enough to worry about what I posted here.

Beat the Gayness Away

2005-07-14T21:26:00.000-05:00

If you missed this Onion article from a couple weeks ago, it’s well worth the read. It’s The Onion at its best.

SCOTTSDALE, AZ—Citing "something vaguely effeminate" about his eight-month-old son Michael, first-time father Joe Oebrick, 32, reported Tuesday that he suspects the infant may be a homosexual.

[….]

Among the many "small signs" that suggest that his son may be gay, Oebrick cited a home video in which the toddler crawls across the living-room carpet of the family's suburban Scottsdale home, wiggling his hips from side to side.

"I don't think it's normal for a baby to move like that," said Oebrick, wincing as the infant paused and flapped an arm in the air. "Don't you think that's a little strange?"

According to Oebrick, Michael has an excessive fondness for bright colors and "things that sparkle."

"Sequins, glitter, feathers," said the recent father, listing some of the things that Michael likes. "And he really likes flowers."

According to Oebrick, Michael is fussy during meals and picky about his clothes. When he hurts himself, he "cries like a baby." Additionally, the toddler has a "very strong attraction" to a stuffed lion with a rainbow-striped mane, an apparent preference for bottle-feeding over breastfeeding, and an evident love for bouncing up and down in his jumper device "like some guy at a club."

[…]

Oebrick said he doubts that strangers can even tell that Michael is a boy when they first meet him, but he acknowledged that this is not his biggest concern. According to the recent father, his most urgent concern is the confused baby's constant need to suck on a pacifier.

"That can't be right. Can it?" Oebrick said.

Oebrick said he first began to worry about Michael's sexual orientation when the boy was two months old.

"He would giggle constantly," Oebrick said. "And he had a very weak handshake."

Oebrick recalled the first time he saw his newborn child smile.

"Obviously, I was thrilled," Oebrick said. "But the thing is, he kept on smiling. He'd smile through breakfast, he'd smile in his car seat, he'd smile at strangers. It was excessive. It was around then I started to think, 'What if Michael can't help himself?'"

According to Oebrick, there were several months during which the infant's head would wobble if it wasn't supported by an adult.

"He was always swinging his head around," Oebrick said. "Our pediatrician told me it was normal, but it seemed pretty... well, gay."

Oebrick's worries were renewed last month during a Memorial Day cookout, when Michael "seemed too interested in my buddies," staring at them for long intervals.

"My friend Ben was bouncing Michael on his knee, and he was giggling and drooling like crazy," Oebrick said. "That didn't bother me so much, but when Ben put him down, Michael started crawling after every other guy at the party, giggling and grabbing at their pants legs like crazy."

"It was like he was the belle of the ball," Oebrick said. "When Rob played peek-a-boo with him, he got so excited he actually wet his pants."

Hilarious.

Unfortunately, the story also tragically mirrors recent events in Tampa.

A 21 year old Tampa man is charged with murder after his 3-year old son was pummeled into unconsciousness and then died.

Ronnie Paris Jr. went on trial for his own life this week in a Tampa courtroom. The toddler's mother, Nysheerah Paris, testified that her husband thought the boy might be gay and would force him to box.

Nysheerah Paris told the court that Paris would make the boy fight with him, slapping the child in the head until he cried or wet himself. She said that on one occasion Paris slammed the child against a wall because he was vomiting.

The court was told there had been a history of abuse by Paris. Prosecutor Jalal Harb said that in 2002, the Florida Department of Children & Families placed the child in protective custody after he had been admitted to the hospital several times for vomiting.

He was returned to his parents Dec. 14. A month later he went into a coma and was rushed to hospital. Six days later he was removed from life support and died. An autopsy showed there was swelling on both sides of his brain.

"He was trying to teach him how to fight,'' Nysheerah Paris' sister, Shanita Powell told the court. "He was concerned that the child might be gay.''

Owen Wilson Likes Derrieres

2005-07-14T16:51:00.000-05:00

I can’t help, but like Owen Wilson. He’s a lovable goof in stupid-but-also-somewhat-funny comedies like Meet the Parents, Zoolander (overrated, but still) and Starsky and Hutch. He’s made some bad movie choices, such as I Spy or Behind Enemy Lines.

Regardless, he’d be praiseworthy enough for his acting in the four Wes Anderson films, as well as his writing credit in the first three of them. That elevates him to near-God in my mind.

However, the New York Post has discovered Mr. Wilson also likes a little ass. From Page Six:

It takes more than a cheeky blind item in PAGE SIX to aggravate Owen Wilson. We recently ran a "Just asking" about a "blond stud nicknamed the 'Butterscotch Stallion' " who brought a woman back to his hotel room and "proceeded to lick her buttocks for over two hours."

Readers familiar with Wilson's 'Butterscotch Stallion' moniker correctly guessed his identity, but the easygoing actor was hardly embarrassed. "It's like, 'Who cares?' " Wilson told Rolling Stone when asked about the item. "I play it as it lays. OK, so I may not be the greatest lover in the world. Well, let's make that angle work. There's lots of different paths to the waterfall. You don't have to be Don Juan. And wasn't it Gloria Steinem who said that women have to be responsible for their own orgasms? Well, I take her at her word. I'll do my best, OK, but at a certain point you've got to, like, you know . . ."

Do you know what the hell’s he talking about? I sure don’t.

Work Sucks, I Know

2005-07-12T17:00:00.000-05:00

Apparently, I’m being a better-than-average employee.

U.S. workers say they squander over two hours a day at the workplace, with surfing the Web, socializing with co-workers and simply "spacing out" among the top time-wasting activities, according to a survey released on Monday.

Most U.S. companies assume about an hour of wasted time, but workers admit to actually frittering away more than twice as much time at a cost of $759 billion in annual paid salary that results in no apparent productivity, an online survey conducted by America Online and Salary.com showed.

Wasted time did not include the standard lunch hour.

[…]

Men and women wasted an equal amount of time at work, but older workers were significantly more attentive than younger workers, the survey showed. Workers over 55 years old wasted an average of just 30 minutes a day, according to the survey.

Goddamn.

And I only get half an hour for lunch.

Playing Doctor

2005-07-11T15:22:00.000-05:00

You'd think with potentially millions of dollars professional athletes would be quite careful when it comes to taking care of their body.

However, apparently that's not always the case.

On Monday, [potentially injured Oakland A's outfielder Eric] Byrnes drove from his home in Half Moon Bay to Oakland for X-rays on his shoulder. The medical assistant asked him if he wanted to see them. He said yes, then after a few moments of trying to decipher them, said, "OK, what am I looking at?"

The assistant didn't know and the doctor wasn't in the office, but Byrnes explained Tuesday, "I drove an hour, I wanted to see what was going on."

He had an inspiration and requested an X-ray of his healthy left shoulder for comparison's sake. When he held up the X-rays, the shoulders looked the same.

"So I cleared myself," Byrnes said.

All those years of medical school that people go through in order to gain the knowledge necessary to become a practicing doctor? Nah, that's not really necessary.