Fact of the day

From The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception at Boston.com

The Marxist-Rozellian Dream

The Shepherd Express' Frank Clines and Art Kumbalek bring forth solid arguments about why baseball does not need a salary cap.

Artie: In the old days everything depended on signing and developing your own players, and guess what? The bigger markets had an edge in money then, too. But with free agency there's a flow of players into the open market, and a team that spends wisely can make big changes.

Frank: The key is "wisely.” The Yankees spent a ton on guys who didn't produce championships: Randy Johnson, Kevin Brown, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, Jason Giambi.

Artie: Their payroll was more than double the Brewers' last year, but the Crew made the playoffs and the Yankees watched. I say no salary cap. Let teams sink or swim by shrewd management.

Frank: How do the Twins keep getting to the playoffs? How did Tampa Bay suddenly make the World Series in '08? How do the Marlins rebuild every few years?

Artie: And Florida's on the rise again, with young talent.

It's nice to see some common-sense arguments be made in the aftermath of the Yankees World Series where it seemed everyone agreed that the Yankees are guaranteed champs for the next decade and baseball will be irrelevant without a salary cap. Jonah Keri did a good round-up of why that is false and that it is more than possible that some of the several older players will regress next year and the Yankees take a step back -

The Yankees face another regression-related situation. They had an old roster in 2009. Two of the top three starters, five of the nine starting batters as well as the Hall of Fame closer were 33 or older.

It is possible that 35-year-old Hideki Matsui’s knee problems are behind him and that 28-homer seasons will remain the norm. It is conceivable that Johnny Damon’s tying a career high for homers at 35 (he turned 36 on Nov. 5) means we should expect a big power threat for the next half-decade. It is imaginable that Andy Pettitte, a 15-year veteran who has flirted with retirement in recent years and has nearly 3,000 regular-season innings under his belt, will keep winning games well into his late 30s and beyond.

But it is not likely. Few players are more likely to see a regression in their numbers than those getting well into their 30s who have suddenly had a big bounce-back season. The Yankees caught lightning in a bottle with Matsui, Damon and Pettitte, who are free agents, as well as incumbent 30-somethings like Jorge Posada. Even (gasp) Mariano Rivera cannot fight Father Time forever.

It's nice that the Shepherd Express gives some space every week to Clines and Kumbalek to talk sports since the Journal-Sentinel is too frequently pretty awful. Today, Michael Hunt (no link, J-S charges you to read his stuff online) jumps around from one weird argument to another in his 800 words. Under the headline, "NFL looking a lot like baseball", Hunt ledes off with this -

Like Karl Marx's vision for a classless society, Pete Rozelle's plan for NFL parity has been shattered. Expose both to the light of real-world conditions, and they wither.

Apparently riffing off the idea that the NFL is going to get rid of their salary cap after this collective bargaining agreement ends, Hunt believes that Rozelle's "favored "on any given Sunday" maxim no longer applies in a general sense" (he mentions Tampa Bay beating Green Bay, but calls it a "random occasion"). He thinks that -

What we're seeing now is a preview of how the NFL could emerge without a salary cap, especially in the NFC: a couple of ruling elites, a vast wasteland of have-nots and a sparse middle class.

That Minnesota and New Orleans are presently sharing the mountaintop is illusory. Both are financially strapped...Point is, like in baseball, only the select few appear capable of winning it all anymore

Well, forget that if he had read The Shepherd Express Hunt would know that baseball has had the most diversity in champions over the past decade, but how does any of Hunt's statements connect at all? The NFL, under a salary cap, allows financially strapped teams rise up to the top of the league, but, because they succeed with a salary cap, that success doesn't count? No, I'm guessing Hunt feels that football is totally uninteresting unless every single NFL team finishes the season 8-8, and the salary cap has failed unless it achieves that vision of a Marxist-athletic society. I don't know which is more ridiculous for Hunt to believe, but it doesn't really matter because Hunt drops this line of argument in the 6th paragraph to question whether the Packers have the ability in the next 5 games to make the leap from the shrinking middle-class to one of the elite teams because, "If so, the Packers will rattle the NFC's gated community without security being called." Michael Hunt apparently believes that the potential upward class mobility of the Green Bay Packers is evidence of NFL class stagnation. He also apparently believes that the Vikings and the Saints are evidence of a ruling elite that is inevitable without a salary cap, like in baseball, but the Vikings and Saints aren't really ruling elites because they could only be ruling elites in a system where there is a salary cap, and that somehow indicts the salary cap system as it hasn't created the Marxist-Rozellian dream of a classless NFL society.

Following this tortured logic I think it would be probable to assume the J-S hires the best area writers to cover sports in order to charge customers for their product, while The (Free) Shepherd Express is doomed to the vast wasteland of have-nots, pitifully begging for a salary cap in order to attract the best talent. Or maybe, as Clines, Kumbalek, and Keri might argue - money does not guarantee success, money may make success easier, but the world is filled, from sports to journalism, with examples of the failures of big pockets.

The Real World: Washington D.C.

I gotta thank Kole for introducing me to Mark Todd, a republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin. The guy is painful to listen to, stammering around about being comfortable talking to billionaires as well as "street people", but just as confusing in print -

Maintaining our religious freedom is extremely important. The phrase “separation of church and state” has misled many and does not give an accurate interpretation of what the First Amendment says. The prohibition of established religion has the purpose of preventing government-sponsored coercion of religious conscience. The First Amendment does not forbid all influence of religion on the public and the political system. Using authoritarian government power to force views that contradict religious conscience on issues such as abortion, abortifacient devices and drugs, and homosexuality is unacceptable.

The closest I can come to unraveling this messis, "Religious freedom is extremely important so the only valid government power is that which asserts the correct religious conscience which everyone is free to be forced to agree with." Eh?

But, hey, get this - while climbing out of the incomprehensible Escherian castle that is Mark Todd's brain, I find out that Sean Duffy of Real World: Boston is running against David Obey in Wisconsin's 7th district. He's inviting you to "Roll With Duffy" here, which I first interpreted as Duffy's attempt to be down with the young generation or maybe some allusion to 9/11 calls of "Let's Roll" but then realized that it is a reference to Duffy's log-rolling success in the lumberjack games. Either way, I'm just happy knowing that appearing on The Real World won't destroy someone's potential political career so CT and the Miz can run together on their Real World/Road Rules Challenge achievements.



At over six feet, weighing in at approximately 230 pounds, CT's one of the best players in the game. But when he's been boozing, all bets are off -- and this drunken lug has a history of hitting the bottle and looking for an excuse to throw the first punch.

For the more modest golfers

I think I'm in the majority of men golfers in that, after having 2 or 3 or 8 beers on the course, I'm cool with peeing just about anywhere because it's all just nature, man. But, courtesy of The A.V. Club's Gift Guide, comes a (real) product for the dude who thinks even picking out a nice tree is one step too many -

Golf is supposedly a gentleman’s sport requiring the utmost precision and focus in carefully lining up each shot, but even the best among us is capable of succumbing to our basest needs and having to take a leak between holes. That’s where the Uroclub swoops in to solve a problem that hadn’t even occurred to most of us. Designed by Florida urologist Floyd Seskin, the Uroclub is essentially a portable urinal that looks like a 7-iron and can be discreetly tucked away into your golfing bag. Made of a “non-porous material,” the dishwasher-safe Uroclub is leak-free and also comes with a handy towel so “it appears you are just checking out your club” when in fact, you’re pissing into it. Only you and Uroclub know the truth!

Sounds good! Only downside is the possibility of getting it mixed-up with my golf club-shaped flask of vodka I keep in my bag.

Also, You've Got Mail was on the Style channel all night.

Chick flicks on planes

I enjoy many chick flicks - I have a hard time changing the channel when You've Got Mail is on (which it always is) and allowed When Harry Met Sally persuade me to believe, for a brief moment, that Billy Crystal doesn't always make me want to rip my eyeballs out of my skull - but James Parker goes further and argues that the world would be a better place if everyone was forced to watch What Women Want and Something's Gotta Give, preferably on a plane, preferably a little drunk -

Here the moviegoer sticks sourly and soberly in his or her demographic bracket, and the films of writer-directors Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers are dismissed as “chick flicks.” But would the world be a better place if everyone who queued up this summer to see Inglourious Basterds had been treated instead to a surprise screening of Ephron’s Julie & Julia? After the initial bloodletting, I think it probably would.

Alright, alright, I saw Julie & Julia and it was absolutely fantabulous so I don't really chafe at Parker's suggestion, but his article does highlight a pretty disheartening fact - What Women Want made $374 million worldwide making it one of the most successful movies directed by a woman. Ughhhh...

Parker has nothing poor to say about the movie so as an antidote here is a recent synopsis from a recent Cracked.com article -

According the lady-thoughts of this movie, most women are either:

A. Mindless, shallow shells of nothingness; their empty skulls filled with sleepyheaded flies lolling around musing banalities such as whether or not they left the coffee pot on, or

B. Obsessed, either positively or negatively, with Mel Gibson. His butt, his sorry attitude, his crotch. All Mel, all the time. It's like a Jewish nightmare inside the heads of the women in this movie. The only way our leading lady distinguishes herself is by managing not to immediately fall for the guy who coined the phrase "Sugar Tits." Of course, when she finds out that he's been reading her mind without letting on that he was literally reading her mind, she melts like warm, implausible butter.

Marisa Tomei is real cute in the movie, though.

Fastly Food

Maira Kalman writes some of my favorite things for the New York Times. Her new piece is about food consumption -



My favorite is about her visit to Monticello.

Worst List Ever

The Hollywood Reporter makes a list of the top ten tv series of the decade -

10. Modern Family
9. Lost
8. 24
7. 30 Rock
6. Mad Men
5. Damages
4. The Shield
3. Curb Your Enthusiasm
2. The West Wing
1. The Sopranos

MODERN FAMILY makes it on this list after 12 episodes and no Arrested Development or The Wire?? Totally ridic. And as much as I love The West Wing, it debuted in 1999 and it was only really great the first four seasons so you're basically awarding the show for two seasons in this decade.

And Deadwood!

Collecting texts

Creepy stuff. From Mother Jones -

13:37:59 PLEASE CALL WIFE ON CELL OR ANYWAY YOU CAN.
13:38:50 IM GLAD YOUR SAFE. I LOVE YOU. CALL ME IF YOU CAN GET THROUGH. 9087885429 SUNSHINE
13:38:56 Russ, I am going to work from home, honestly I can not concentrate here, news, radio, hope you understand
13:38:56 Mike, The Center has been asked to evacuate
13:38:57 Pizza has been ordered if you haven't had lunch yet. Come by fish bowl. sd
13:38:57 YOUR SISTER CALLING TO CHECK TO SEE IF YOU ARE OK.

Where did all these messages come from? Wikileaks says: "While we are obligated by to protect our sources, it is clear that the information comes from an organization which has been intercepting and archiving national US telecommunications since prior to 9/11."

Being the glass half-full type, I am pretty pumped there is a job out there that will pay me to read other people's text messages.

Jimmy Fallon is funny?

I don't think so, but this made me chuckle -

Your New York Mets

I laughed at this.

Jonah Keri-

Matt Wieters is a supremely talented catcher who had a solid if unspectacular rookie season. Still, his performance was clearly the best by any rookie this year, a nearly 2-win performance according to FanGraphs. So when Topps released its All-Rookie Team today (h/t Baseball Think Factory), you had to figure that Wieters would get the call behind the plate.

Nope. Topps scoured the major league landscape, evaluated all rookie performances, and finally found their man.

Omir Santos.

Oshkosh, really?

Businessweek lists Oshkosh as the best place to raise kids in Wisconsin with West Allis being the best place to raise kids in Milwaukee. Of course, Businessweek decided to run the picture of best place to live in Wisconsin with this -



Which is a picture of Milwaukee.

Journal-Sentinel's write-up -

BusinessWeek likes Oshkosh's mall, new hospital, indoor hockey and soccer rink, and the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

West Allis and Eau Claire were picked as runners-up in Wisconsin.

"Things like our parks system, our high-quality schools and amenities like our farmers market allow our residents to enjoy a high quality of life," West Allis Mayor Dan Devine said. "Our location lets us have every benefit of a major city, yet we can keep our small-town feel."

I'd be curious to see how Appleton fared on this list because I prefer it immensely compared to Eau Claire and Oshkosh. Kole has a lot of work to do if Appleton wants to compete with Eau Claire and Oshkosh like make sure you have no choice but to drink your beverage out of a plastic cup at restaurants and turn nice Appleton fields into dumping grounds for trash and traffic jams for yearly festivals about planes and country singers.

Newspapers

I don't know how many people routinely get into arguments about whether the decline of the newspaper is a good or bad thing, but for people who suspect that the failure of newspapers will lead to a net-positive, this article provides some compelling arguments to steal and claim as your own -

Now, a newspaper partisan might argue that reporters’ gatekeeper role was a good thing because, in essence, the reporter had a better understanding of what the reader needed than the reader himself did. I think this is not only paternalistic, but it also misunderstands the role of the front page in local politics. The reason putting something on the front page of the local newspaper could affect the political debate wasn’t that it mobilized otherwise-disengaged citizens. If you put a water board story on the front page, most ordinary citizens are just going to flip to the sports page. Rather, the reason getting on the front page mattered was mostly because before the Internet, there were a lot of people who were interested, but who—thanks to the limitations of the newspaper format—might not otherwise have seen this particular story.

It used to be pretty difficult for insiders to keep track of the issues they card about. Before search engines and RSS feeds, it took a lot of work to comb through newspapers looking for every story relating to a particular subject. This is why large organizations subscribed (and still do) to expensive newspaper-clipping services. The Internet has made life radically easier for the politically active. If I want to know what’s going on in a particular issue I care about—software patents or eminent domain reform, say—I can directly subscribe to RSS feeds related to those subjects. I can set up a Google News alert for my favorite topic, my favorite (or least favorite) politician, or the name of my home town. So the Internet is having two effects that are really opposite sides of a single coin: it’s making it easier for interested citizens to follow the issues they care about, and it’s making it easier for uninterested citizens to ignore the issues they don’t care about. Given that non-engaged citizens have always been little more than deadweight in the political process, I consider this a good thing.

Safe by Todd Haynes

I had to watch this movie for my Contemporary Political Theory course. I thought it started off pretty slow, but it works towards building a creepiness that pays off at the end. Reminded me of a low-key David Lynch type film. It was #12 in The A.V. Club's list of movies too painful to watch twice, so there are only a couple of other films to beat if you were in the mood for that type of thing...

A sort-of horror movie in which the monster is the entire world, Todd Haynes' Safe follows a rich, empty housewife (played masterfully by Julianne Moore) into the depths of "environmental illness"—a malady that real-world doctors still can't agree on. Is it all in her head, which is half-vacant and in need of something to worry about when all basic needs are met? Or is she just sensitive to low levels of toxic chemicals that most people simply don't notice? The film doesn't offer an clear answer—instead, it follows Moore through incredibly uncomfortable anxieties and unpeggable illnesses. She ends up at a wellness retreat, which at first seems to offer some hope, but she's soon sucked even deeper into the discomfort of her own mind. It's pure bleakness.

ESPN Deal

Via KLaw, Amazon is selling yearly subscriptions to ESPN the Magazine for $5 this week and it should include making ESPN Insider available. Pretty sweet deal.

Iconic Photos

I really like this blog but sometimes I run into a photo that has the potential to ruin my entire day.

Facebook Blackmail

GQ does a longish article on the scandal at Eisenhower High School near Milwaukee. A senior boy posed as a girl on facebook to get boy students to take naked pictures and sending them to him. He then blackmailed these students by saying he'd release the naked photos if they didn't have sex with him. And some of the boys did.

The article expands on the reaction by the school, the town, and the students that I hadn't read before in the newspaper articles -

Then he got a text from Tony, who talked him into meeting at the public library.

It was going to be okay, Tony said. If they did this, Kayla would delete the pictures.

X went to the library, and he and Tony went into the men's room and into a stall. Tony got down on his knees. X looked down and saw that Tony was holding a camera. What the fuck?

It's okay, Tony told him. Kayla just has to see proof.

For a couple of days, X thought he was in the clear. Finally, it was over. He'd learned his lesson. Now please let him move on.

Then he got another text. This one from Tony. Bad news. He messed up. He deleted those pictures from the library by mistake. Kayla still needed proof. She wanted them to do it again.

He deleted them? That dumbshit! X thought his head was going to explode. He wanted to tell him off, but he couldn't risk it. So X agreed. He would meet Tony a few days later, before school started, in the downstairs boys' bathroom at Ike.

They did it again, and Tony took another picture. They were finished. He texted Kayla, told her he'd met her conditions—and even let Tony take the pictures to prove it. This was the end. He was done.

Then Kayla got scarier. She texted back that that picture was not good enough. Oral was not good enough. She wanted to see more. She wanted Tony to put it inside him, and if he didn't let that happen, she was going to send the pictures to all his friends.

Now X was more trapped than ever. It was getting worse. Fast. This was so far out there he felt totally lost.

So a few days later, he let Tony come over to his house, and they went to his bedroom, and Tony took a picture of them doing that, too. But even that didn't make it stop. Kayla said they had to do it again—so he let Tony come into his bedroom to do it again.

Then Tony asked X to take naked pictures of his brother—and that pushed X to a line he would not cross. He turned around and did the only thing he'd never done with Kayla, or with Tony.

Finally, he refused.*

Reaction from the town/school -

Everyone wondered, How could these boys let this happen?

At the courthouse, a middle-aged secretary in the clerk's office said, "When I was in high school, boys like Tony Stancl got the crap beaten out of them. Why didn't they beat the crap out of him?"

Another secretary said, "Maybe he was a cool kid."

The first secretary raised her eyebrows and touched her heavy gray turtleneck. "I saw his picture," she responded, "and he does not look cool to me."
...

Local leaders used the language of predatory terror to describe the case. The D.A. called Stancl's scheme "sinister" and "malicious." A respected columnist at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel suggested that true justice would come when Tony was turned over to the ultimate sex predators, prison rapists: "Has Stancl pondered the possibility his cellmates will have some schemes of their own to spring on him?"

...

After agonizing over whether to talk about the case to GQ, one school employee finally justified the decision by saying, "This may ruin my career, but if I can help save just one more kid from getting ass-raped, it will be worth it."

Inside the superintendant's office in Ike's boxy 1969 brick building, two deep lines furrowed on the bridge of Kreutzer's nose when he scrunched his forehead. He asked, "Is this the Columbine of texting?"

What happened is awful and Tony Stancl is a fucking predator, but, c'mon school employee, ass-raping? They gonna put up fliers, "Only you can stop ass-raping"? Don't let the next ass-raping Columbine 9/11 occur, report any suspicious ass-raping activities. These kids were obviously victims of rampant political correctness to have never been given the proper information about ass-raping. Back when I was in high school we beat up the suspected fag ass-rapers and let the jocks violate our buttocks -

Ecstatic Viewing

Shoals at Free Darko describes what it was like for me to watch Jennings last Saturday -

My sense is that, for the most part, sports become easier to invest one's self in the more you know about them, and vice-versa. The trick is that this class of athlete short-circuits this relationship. They don't transcend the burden of understanding, they tear down the very parameters by which understanding is so strictly tied into spectatorship. Call it ecstatic viewing, performance without description, or the belief that some moments in sports can cause sports to fall away and just sit there in front of you, beaming, as if their power were inherent, their expressiveness final, and their ends, inevitable, if not irrelevant.

Yep. That game - that performance by Jennings - reintroduced me to basketball. It made me forget why I grew to dislike the NBA. And now I'm hooked with this team, just hoping for another performance that reaches that level again (And shit if Monday almost did it).

They talk the Bucks again on today's Free Darko podcast here.

Brewer Award Winner

Joe Posnanski gives Manny Parra his Les Sweetland Award, or the Anti-Cy Young Award -

That poor Brewers pitching staff. Whatever bug hit one hit all of them. Jeff Suppan went 7-12 with a 5.29 ERA. Braden Looper won 14 games with a 5.22 ERA. David Bush had a 6.38 ERA. Tough times.

Manny Parra, though, had the toughest year of the bunch. Parra was probably best known coming into this year as the guy who got into that shoving match with Prince Fielder in 2008. He pitched pretty well in 2008 — but struggled mightily in 2009 though he did become the first pitcher since 1938 to win more than 10 games with an ERA higher than 6.25. He went 11-11 with a 6.36 ERA.

One thing I found interesting — and this is obviously just a small sample size thing but still I like it — is that Parra was 7-6 with a 5.97 ERA on four-days rest but 2-3 with a 10.52 on five-days rest. Maybe he’s the kind of guy who pitches better with the less rest you give him. Maybe if you pitched him on three-days rest he’d go 8-5 with a 4.74 ERA and go 7-1 with a 2.23 ERA on two-days rest. I just wish teams would try stuff.

He almost gave the AL Anti-Cy Young to Luke Hochevar, which would have lent a nice symmetry to the award since I'm sure there are many Royals fans who still expect good seasons from Hochevar. I have not given up hope on Parra, and expect that once Parra finally gets diagnosed for social anxiety disorder and gets on some meds that his career will turn around.

Female Comedian

So Maria Bamford is doing Target commercials now and reminded me that I wanted to hear her new comedy album, "Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome", and I grabbed it and it is great. She's hilarious and cute as a button and totally insane -

I was gonna chop people into chunks, have sex with the chunks, and put the chunks on Cobb salad and feed it to my parents

and this

I was unable to sleep at night for fear of being a rapist or a murderer or a genocider, and would have constant anxious thoughts of doing those things—to friends, family, babies, kitties, etc.—and it was especially powerful the more taboo or inappropriate the situation.” Like, say, shitting on the altar while yelling “I am a Promise Keeper!” in a church.

You can download the album here. Her album, How to WIN!, is also fantastic and worth listening to.

Manufacturing weather

Dude, China is creating snowstorms -

Chinese scientists artificially induced the second major snowstorm to wreak havoc in Beijing this season, state media said, reigniting debate over the practice of tinkering with Mother Nature.

After the earliest snow to hit the capital in 22 years fell on November 1, the capital was again shrouded in white Tuesday with more snow expected in the coming three days, the National Meteorological Centre said.

The China Daily, citing an unnamed official, said the Beijing Weather Modification Office had artificially induced both storms by seeding clouds with chemicals, a practice that can increase precipitation by up to 20 percent.

55

I went to my first Bucks game in years on Saturday night. Picked up scalped tickets for less than half price for $10 a piece and went and just grabbed some random seats in the 2nd deck cause the stadium was half-empty and no one cared where you sat up there. I was telling Kole before the game I was convinced Jennings would lay an egg considering my luck at Brewers games this year and my general cynicism about the Bucks. But goddamnit if that wasn't the finest athletic performance I've ever seen. 55(!) points for Jennings. 29 in the 3rd quarter when the only shot he missed was the last one he took. Got to see Charlie Bell knock in a half-court shot to end the 3rd. Bogut continues to look like an NBA player. Like Kole said, the only disappointment was seeing Bango miss his somersault dunk at half. I'd say nobody saw this coming from Jennings, but EA Sports was on top of it from the start -



That is exactly what happened! This is the most realistic videogame I've ever seen!

Gonna go out to the bar tonight to catch tonight's game on NBA TV. Haven't ever felt the need to do that for the Bucks.

Doc Ellis and the LSD No-No

Fantastic animated video about the no-hitter Doc Ellis threw when he was trippin' balls on LSD -



I'd get MLB Network if they promised to play this game daily over the off-season.

Update: And just like that, here is a petition to get the MLB Network to air the game. This needs to happen.

I want to see this

Others

Jim Henson

was certifiable.



I bet in 30 years we'll look back at Jimmy Fallon playing beer pong with a similar amount of nightmarish horror.

More cool movie posters

Here.

Carl's Jr

I haven't been this persuaded by an advertisement since Wendy's decided to call their bacon cheeseburger the "Baconator".



That burger was forged from the devil's soul and charred on the grill from hell. Something awful awaits Carl's Jr employees in the after-life.

Roland Emmerich

The director of Independence Day and 2012 has a weird house -

A diorama depicts John F. Kennedy's assassination.

A guest bedroom features a headboard made from the wing of an airplane.

I find it strange that a guy nutty enough to keep a picture of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad next to his guest bed makes movies where aliens, the weather, and Godzilla are the villains.

Before Gomez

There was Bowden, Lind, and Snider. As NBC Sports reports, Brewers were talking to the Red Sox and the Blue Jays before settling on Carlos Gomez. The Red Sox were willing to trade Michael Bowden, but the Brewers wanted either Buchholz or Daniel Bard. There's also this from Ron Gardenhire -

He irritates people. Sometimes me. We've been trying to get him to calm down and get him to control the situations, and sometimes the situation controls him. There are times when you're like, "Go-Go, you have to see what we're trying to do here." We just had a 25-pitch inning from our pitcher, and he goes up and falls down swinging on the first pitch.

Gomez will have plenty to talk about with Corey Hart in the dugout.

New Hood Internet Mix

You can download here.

Tracklist -

The Mixtape Volume Four:
1. Intro
2. David Banner vs Fujiya & Miyagi - Get Like Pterodactyls
3. The Beastie Boys vs Matt And Kim - Good Ol' Fashion Rump Shaker
4. Kanye West vs Cage & Aviary - Touch The Television
5. Lil Wayne (feat. Babyface) vs Royksopp - Comfortable Up Here
6. Passion Pit vs Juvenile - Back That Sleepyhead Up
7. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince vs Daft Punk - Summer Circuit
8. Public Enemy vs HEALTH vs Nosaj Thing - Bring The Tabloid Sores
9. AZ (feat. Ghostface) vs The Golden Filter - Solid Gold From New York
10. Modest Mouse vs Kanye West - Floating Paranoia
11. Clipse vs Yuksek - Kinda Like A Big Break
12. Weezer vs Glass Candy - Buddy Holly's Imagination
13. Bangers & Cash vs Bag Raiders - Bang Raiders
14. Amanda Blank vs VEGA - No Reasons To Like You Better
15. Michael Jackson vs Ratatat - Billie "Wildcat" Jean
16. Kid Sister (feat. Pitbull) vs Phonat - Free Control Ocho
17. Twista (feat. Erika Shevon) vs Boys Noize - Wetter And Jeffer
18. Flo Rida (feat. Ke$ha) vs MSTRKRFT - 1000 Times Right Round
19. R. Kelly (feat. Keri Hilson) vs Sally Shapiro - Number One Christmas
20. Drake vs The Rapture - Best Jealous Lover I Ever Had
21. Bon Iver vs Friendly Fires vs Aeroplane - Lump Sum Of Paris
22. Jeremih vs Handsome Furs - Birthday Furs
23. Yung LA vs Solid Gold - Who Ain't I Gonna Run To?
24. Major Lazer (feat. Santigold) vs Dirty Projectors - Hold The Stillness
25. Dead Prez vs Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks Of Hip Hop
26. Soulja Boy vs Joe Jackson - Swaggin' Out
27. OJ Da Juiceman (feat. Gucci Mane) vs Discovery - Make The Loop Aye
28. Glasses Malone vs Chromatics - A Moment To Remember Haterz
29. Paper Route Gangstaz vs Animal Collective - Animals Collecting Money
30. B-Hamp vs Little Boots - Ricky Bobby Boots
31. Ghostface Killah vs Beirut - Save Me Concubine
32. Keri Hilson vs The Glitch Mob/TVOTR - Red Dress Turnin Me On
33. Dorrough vs Bibio - Fire Ant Paint Job
34. Outro

I enjoy it

Brewers Prospects

Fangraphs does a round-up of Brewers prospects over the last year using this criteria -

Prospect ranking season is here. Top 10 lists will be arriving shortly and in preparation for that, we present an intro series looking at some of the players who deserve mentioning but probably will not be appearing on their teams’ Top 10 lists. The series is back for a second year.

They have some nice things to say about DiFelice and Josh Butler. They talk about Lorenzo Cain's struggles, too. So far it looks like Cleveland made the right move grabbing Brantley instead of Cain, granted it wasn't that difficult a choice to make.

Fangraphs also has a post up showing how underrated Mike Cameron truly is by comparing him to Jason Bay -

With the season over and the clock ticking towards the beginning of free agency, you’re going to see a lot of rankings of the available players. I would imagine that every single one of them will have Jason Bay slotted in as the #2 position player on the market, behind only Matt Holliday. And there’s every reason to expect Bay to pick up the second biggest check of any free agent position player this winter.

However, there’s another right-handing hitting outfielder on the market that is a better player than Bay and yet will still demand a fraction of the price. That player? The chronically underrated Mike Cameron.

Did you know that, since 2002 (the first year we calculate WAR for), Mike Cameron has been worth +29.6 wins, or about the same as David Ortiz, Aramis Ramirez, and Jim Thome? Or that Cameron has posted a WAR of +4.0 or higher in three of the last four seasons? Yet, due to a slew of factors that include accumulating a large portion of value on defense, spending most of his career in extreme pitchers parks, and posting a low average with a lot of strikeouts, Cameron has never gotten the recognition he deserves.

If we get a top quality starter with the money we save on Cameron then I'll understand grabbing the cheap Gomez, but the Brewers are definitely taking a hit by not keeping Cameron, and it's disappointing that I think not many people are going to recognize it.

John Lackey, Milwaukee Brewer?

Buster Olney thinks it is a possibility. His article requires ESPN Insider, which I no longer have, so I can't see his reasoning but here's Craig Calcaterra explaining it -

There are no perfect fits, but Olney likes Lackey in Milwaukee of all places. It actually makes sense though given their needs and the fact that they did offer CC Sabathia a lot of money last year. I suppose there's a chance that that was a phony offer and that they'd never be willing to pay $100 million for a pitcher, but at the very least it shows some guts on Doug Melvin's part, and guts come right after money when it comes to the things a team needs to land a big fish like Lackey.

If the money saved by dropping Cameron goes towards Lackey (instead of Wolf or Pineiro) I would definitely change my opinion of the trade. I doubt Milwaukee will be able to compete for Lackey, though, given the lack of good pitchers in the free agent market.

Also, if anyone has ESPN Insider and wants to let me free-ride on their account you'd make me a very happy person.

So frustrating

God, how do the Packers lose to a winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers team led by a rookie QB who has never started a game before and score 37 points and it makes me want to scream! but I'm trying to let it go and not let it get me down because there are always birds and TREES AND FLOWERS!!! And the Japanese always inventing sweet robotic ways to do things like locking up your bike.

Dogs != SUV's

In case you were wreckt with guilt. I feel much better.

Coal and kids

Disturbing story about the effects of coal ash on a Dominican Republic town -

Maximiliano Calcaño is 2 and was born with no arms.

``When I was pregnant, I was dizzy, vomiting and could barely walk,'' said Maximiliano's mother, Anajai Calcaño, 20. ``My tooth cracked and fell out. Then my baby was born like that, without arms. Nothing like that had ever happened here before.''

By ``before,'' Calcaño means before a U.S. power company's coal ash arrived at a nearby port, sitting there for more than two years.

... A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

The case highlights the debate over coal ash, an unregulated byproduct of coal energy, which when processed and recycled is used in everything from cement to the foundation for golf courses. Popular Mechanics magazine this month calls a concrete made from coal ash one of the ``10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009.''

Free Darko BJ

Guys from Free Darko talk to Matt Yglesias and then later about Brandon Jennings.

Ugh

And, like that, Hardy is traded to the Twins for Carlos Gomez. I don't like this at all. Manderfeld should be pretty excited about this upgrade for the Twins at SS. I could maybe understand this if Hardy always hit as poorly as he did this season, but this is an all-star SS two years ago, who hit 26 and 24 hrs in 2007 and 2008, respectively with lines like this -

2007 - .277/.323/.463
2008 - .283/.343/.478

Carlos Gomez could be Hardy's equivalent defensively, but he is an absolute zero at the plate with a career OBP under .300(!). He's young so he might get better, but he's most definitely worse than Mike Cameron.

Cameron - .250/.340/.448
Gomez - .246/.292/.346

Fangraphs -

Assuming some bounce back, Hardy should project as something like a +3 win player for 2010, making him a significant value at a salary that should come in around $5 million or so. He’s easily worth twice that, and if his offense returns, he could be worth $15 to $20 million to the Twins in each of the next two years.

To acquire Hardy, the Twins gave up Gomez, an outstanding defender in his own right. Milwaukee apparently wanted a premium defender to replace Mike Cameron in center field, but they’re taking a pretty big hit offensively in the swap. Gomez strikes out too often to make the slap hitting gig work, and his inability to bunt himself on base in 2009 caused his average to sink to unacceptable levels.

Even with his elite range in the outfield, Gomez is going to have to improve offensively in order to be worth a starting job. With infields taking away the bunt, he’s going to have to get himself on base in other ways, because it’s nearly impossible to justify starting an outfielder with a .286 career wOBA when you’re trying to make the playoffs.

Doug Melvin -

"J.J. has been a steady performer for the Brewers," Melvin said in a statement. "His professionalism and popularity with our fans and his teammates made this difficult, but he has been given the opportunity to go to a great organization to play and perform at the high level he is capable of playing."

Highly regarded prospect Alcides Escobar is expected to be the Brewers' starting shortstop next season.

Gomez hit .229 with three home runs and 28 RBIs in 2009. He played in 137 games, often as a defensive replacement.

The deal is potentially bad news for center fielder Mike Cameron in Milwaukee. Cameron, eligible to file for free agency, made $10 million this season. With Gomez in the picture, the Brewers may not be willing to match that going forward.

"Carlos brings to our club great speed, athleticism and energy at a position that we needed to fill," Melvin said. "His defense will serve as a key component to us improving our pitching."

I know Melvin had to say that Gomez's defense will improve the pitching, but Cameron was one of the better CF last year so I can't see how much of an improvement it could be. Let's pray that Kendall is gone next year because no winning team could survive with multiple black holes in it.

NBC Sports -

Minnesota has long been rumored to have interest in Hardy and the fact that his demotion to Triple-A pushed free agency back another season no doubt appealed to the budget-conscious Twins. Gomez fell behind Denard Span and Delmon Young in the Twins' outfield pecking order, rarely playing down the stretch, and has made little progress offensively since coming over from the Mets in the Johan Santana trade.

Milwaukee picks up a speedy, Gold Glove-caliber center fielder with tons of physical tools who still has plenty of time to develop further offensively. Minnesota gets a relatively young shortstop who's under team control through 2011 and prior to struggling this season batted .277/.323/.463 with 26 homers in 2007 and .283/.343/.478 with 24 homers in 2008. Some trades just make sense and this is one of them.

Rob Neyer -

And yes, Gomez does play fantastic defense, even better than Cameron. (I ranked Gomez fourth on my Fielding Bible ballot, and he might have been higher if he'd played more.)

But what a zero, offensively! Yes, he's just now turning 24. But however young, you'd like to see a bit of progress, right? Gomez's seasonal OBPs: .288, .296, .287. That looks like a guy who just doesn't get it, at all. Sure, he did much better while still just a baby in both Double- and Triple-A, but those seasons are starting to seem like a long time ago.

Still, the Brewers need a center fielder and Gomez is cheap (particularly compared to Cameron). Between the money they won't be spending on Cameron and the money they won't be spending on Hardy, the Brewers have gained a fair degree of payroll flexibility, which is the lifeblood of every financially challenged general manager.

Tom Haudricourt -

The Brewers will lose considerable pop in center with the exodus of Cameron. He hit 25 homers with 70 RBI in 2008 after signing a free-agent deal, and socked 24 homers with 70 RBI this year. Cameron also played Gold Glove-caliber defense in center but was strikeout prone, with 142 Ks in ’08 and 156 this year while compiling a .342 on-base percentage.

Cameron is a Class B free agent. To get a supplemental draft pick in exchange for him signing with another club, the Brewers would have to offer him salary arbitration. Because the signing club doesn’t forfeit a pick, he might sign before that deadline, however, giving the Brewers the draft pick.

Gomez is strikeout prone too, having 142 k's in 2008, and 72 last year with less playing time and putting up a lower OBP than in 2008.

Anyone got any other reactions so far? I'll see what Melvin does with the money saved before hating on this deal too much, but if it means that he's going after Joel Pineiro or some other buy-high veteran I'm gonna be upset.

Protect those copyrights

Don't want other people to steal our work.

Time Killer

Anyone bored and looking to kill time could download this "Coal For Kids" coloring book. I'm no propagandist, but what is gained by this -

Additionally, FOC ladies auxiliary members have visited children in West Virginia hospitals to give them a “special present“: Mr. Coal, “a small, black Labrador stuffed puppy meant to bring a smile to kids’ faces during hospital stays.” (Coal pollution kills 24,000 Americans each year.)

Last year, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), another industry front group, also tried to make coal seem warm and fuzzy by creating the “coal carolers” — illustrated lumps of coal singing Christmas carols whose altered lyrics praised coal power. After widespread scorn, ACCCE took down the carolers. Find out more on what coal is really doing to Appalachia at Appalachian Voices.

Do adults with fond memories of hospital visits by Mr. Coal turn into big coal industry investors? It reminds me of the cartoon Joe Posnanski saw in Tampa Bay that warns kids of the evils of statistics with the villainous character Dr. Stat.

It seems that Dr. Stat — and I’m quoting from the cartoon now — wants to “use his knowledge of useless statistics to destroy the game.”

Yes, I’m completely serious here — I saw the thing twice. This Dr. Stat them appears on the Superfriends monitor, and he asks them who was the highest paid umpire in 1888. The Rays, of course, don’t know, and they make it clear to him that it is a stupid and pointless question. Dr. Stat then says, “Wrong answer,” and he says as punishment he will point his stat ray direction at Tropicana Field in order to make it impossible for people to enjoy the games.

The stuff of nightmares.

Hardy is good at defense

Fangraphs is ranking the top 5 defensive players during the past 3 years and so far they've done the bottom 3, which look like this -

5. Ryan Zimmerman
4. Omar Vizquel

And then JJ Hardy -

Hardy’s inclusion should not be too much of a surprise. Unlike the previous two profiles, Hardy does not have much in the ways of peaks or valleys in UZR. Instead, he is rather consistent with UZRs always in the level a tad more elevated than simply ‘above average’.

If you wanna get lost in the weeds, you can read up about how UZR is measured here. In short, it takes into account range, arm, double plays, and errors and the numbers are how many 'runs' above or below average he is.

I watched a bunch of Brewers' games with Jared this year and he hates JJ Hardy - thinks he's awful in the field as well as at the plate. I can understand the reaction because Hardy has a way of moving that makes it look like he's never truly going his hardest, but I was also aware that you don't have to be a Brewers' apologist to think Hardy was actually a very capable defender. This is important because his bat completely disappeared and his trade value needs to come from somewhere. Maybe he can get sent to Philly because he looks exactly like Mac from It's Always Sunny -



Also, Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder both rank near the bottom of the league in defense over the past 3 seasons, hopefully Braun is only there because of his experiment at 3rd base, but he looks lost out in left often enough to make me hope he gets better.

The Berlin Wall

Sponsored by MTV. You can't make this stuff up -

The show, which was free to 10,000 ticket holders who snapped up the tickets online last week in just three hours, drew some controversy because of the barrier surrounding the gig.

Both Berliners and tourists alike saw the irony in building a wall around a concert dedicated to the wall that already has come down.

"It's completely ridiculous that they are blocking the view," said Louis-Pierre Boily, 23, who came to Berlin even though he failed to get U2 tickets. "I thought it's a free show, but MTV probably wants people to watch it on TV to get their ratings up."

Boily, from Quebec City, was among several hundred people who gathered earlier in the day against the new fence, which was draped with a white tarp that blocked the view of the stage from the street. Some fans already were trying to tear down the tarp before the concert.

This is fantastic -



ochocinco is taking notes, mental notes cuz paper just ain't ballin'

Stuff I don't like reading

Thought that hearing admitted luddite John McCain unveil plans to destroy the internet would be the most aggravating thing to read, but then there's this, which is even worse.

I like how the government and corporations are trying to rein in the internet and turn people into criminals in order to prevent people from stealing Shakira's album or streaming episodes of CSI on non-approved sites.

Here's more on it -

A large number of organizations and people have written President Obama asking that he end the secrecy of the negotiation. It is doubtful this will happen unless newspapers write about the issue (aren't they big advocates of the right to know?), members of Congress weigh in, or if the critics of the secret negotiation can mobilize public opinion.

There is a lot at stake. Civil rights, privacy, rules for injunctions and damages against businesses and individuals, chilling of speech, the first sale doctrine, the global movement of medicines and other commodities, etc, will all be impacted by this ridiculously secret negotiation.

The ex-pat life

Without Stopping by Paul Bowles gives an account of living the ex-pat life in the 1930s that makes me jealous. He seems to be able to hop-scotch around France, Germany, Morocco, and Algiers without describing any way of making money besides being given it from friends' parents -

The problem thus was to get hold of money quickly. This was solved during a visit of Harry's parents to New York, when I had to meet them and explain the situation to them. They did not react at all well to me; I could see that they considered me an objectionable character and one likely to wield a destructive influence over their son.

Apparently, back in the day before the internet or phones, you kept correspondence with people through letters(?) and then these people, no matter how well-known, would invite you into their life -

Soon Gertrude Stein appeared, looking just as she did in her photographs, except that the expression of her face was rather more pleasant. "What is it? Who are you?" she said. I told her and heard for the first time her wonderfully hearty laugh. She opened the door so that I could go in. Then Alice Toklas came downstairs, and we sat in the big studio hung with Picassos. "I was sure from your letters that you were an elderly gentleman, at least seventy-five," Gertrude Stein told me. "A highly eccentric elderly gentleman," added Alice Toklas. "We were certain of it." They asked me to dinner for the following night to meet Bernard Fay.

...

Aaron [Copland] told me I was not working hard enough. This was not surprising, since I wasted so much time moving around Berlin trying to see people. I decided, for instance, that I had to know Naum Gabo, the constructivist sculptor, and spent a whole day in his studio out at Potsdam...Another day I followed up a series of introductions which finally led me to the office of Walter Gropius, the architect, who looked like any businessman sitting at his desk, and who must have been mystified by my desire to talk with him, particularly since I had nothing at all to say...I leaped at the opportunity because Bad Pyrmont was not far from Hanover, and in Hannover lived Kurt Schwitters, whom among all Germans I wanted most to meet...I have no idea of how I worded the wire I sent to Schwitters, but I recall my feeling of triumph when I...read his answering telegram inviting me to Hannover.

And who knew that back in the day even famous directors treated their homes like a college dorm?

Another day Thoma took me around to the rue Vignon to visit Jean Cocteau. A maid let us into an antechamber one of whose walls was a huge blackboard with scrawls and doodles on it. This was where friends left messages when Cocteau was not in.

I'm enjoying the book now as it's turned into a fantasy description of what living in Europe would be like when you're young and rich, although Bowles seems like kind of a prick, but since its pointed out to him quite often I don't mind. As in -

It did not take me long to understand that while I undoubtedly had her personal sympathy, I existed primarily for Gertrude Stein as a sociological exhibit; for her I was the first example of my kind...After a week or so, Gertrude Stein pronounced her verdict: I was the most spoiled, insensitive, and self-indulgent young man she had ever seen, and my colossal complacency in rejecting all values appalled her. But she said it beaming with pleasure, so that I did not take it as adverse criticism. "If you were typical, it would be the end of our civilization," she told me. "You're a manufactured savage."

Christian health care

The LA Times reports that -

Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.

The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry and the late Edward M. Kennedy, both of Massachusetts, home to the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist.

The measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments -- which substitute for or supplement medical treatments -- on the same footing as clinical medicine. While not mentioning the church by name, it would prohibit discrimination against "religious and spiritual healthcare."

It would have a minor effect on the overall cost of the bill -- Christian Science is a small church, and the prayer treatments can cost as little as $20 a day. But it has nevertheless stirred an intense controversy over the constitutional separation of church and state, and the possibility that other churches might seek reimbursements for so-called spiritual healing.

LGM and Kevin Drum cite all the reasons this is an awful, dumb idea. I just wanted to post that picture and wonder how government health insurance exchanges could cover the cost of something that is so not health insurance -

"We'll talk to them about their relationship to God," he said. "We'll talk to them about citations or biblical passages they might study. We refer to it as treatment. It's an affirmation of their relationship with God, and the understanding that comes from their prayer, of their relationship with God."

During the day, Davis may see multiple patients and pray for them at different moments. He charges them $20 to $40 for the day, saying, "I think that it would be considered modest by any standard."

I'm thinking of starting a business that will create music mixes for patients to listen to prior to and during surgeries. And then suggest movies and books to keep patient's spirits up during recovery. Can insurance cover that? But, of course, substituting prayer for medicine has actual consequences -

Dale and Leilani Neumann of Weston, Wis., are facing charges of second-degree reckless homicide after their child, Madeline Kara Neumann, died on Easter after slipping into a coma. The death, likely preventable with insulin, has renewed calls for Wisconsin and dozens of other states to strike laws that protect parents who choose prayer alone in lieu of medical treatment.

...

In another recent case, a 15-month-old child in Oregon died in March from a form of pneumonia and a blood infection after her parents opted to try to heal her with prayer. Oregon law provides no defense for parents charged with causing the death of a child through neglect or maltreatment, and the couple has been charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminal mistreatment.

...

The Christian Science church doesn't provide guidance on whether members may seek medical care, says Mr. Davis, the church spokesman. He says the church does not bar members from getting medical care, nor does it advise members when they should do so.

Church founder Mary Baker Eddy believed it was "fear that creates the image of disease and its consequent manifestation in the body." Spiritual practitioners, who are trained by the church to heal through prayer, get patients to think differently about their relationship with God, says Mr. Davis, who also is a spiritual practitioner. "It's an affirmation [of truth]," Mr. Davis says. "It's that understanding that restores harmony."

...

But three years later, Minnesota's Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion. The court dismissed second-degree-manslaughter charges against Christian Scientists William and Kathleen McKown. Her son, Ian Lundman, died at age 11 of diabetic ketoacidosis, or severe, untreated diabetes. The justices ruled that the government couldn't allow someone to "depend upon" Christian Science healing methods "then attempt to prosecute them for exercising that right."

...

Church lobbyists are now asking that the state allow insurance plans to reimburse prayer practitioners, who can charge $20 to $50 for a day's worth of prayer, says Wanda Jane Warmack, the church's legislative manager.

Looks like they're succeeding.

Eating dog

Dogs have come under attack in 2 recent op-ed articles. Jonathan Safran Foer in the WSJ asks why don't we eat dogs and Jonah Goldberg, in his normal nonsense way, pivots off an idea in a new book entitled, "Time to Eat the Dog?: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living", to make the claim that environmentalists want to take away your dogs and that we shouldn't worry about climate change because it is politically impossible and we'll just reflect sunlight back to space when it gets bad. Not joking. There are some interesting thoughts in both, though I wouldn't wish anyone to actually read the Jonah Goldberg article. The Safran Foer article is genuinely interesting. Here's JSF -

Of course, something having been done just about everywhere is no kind of justification for doing it now. But unlike all farmed meat, which requires the creation and maintenance of animals, dogs are practically begging to be eaten. Three to four million dogs and cats are euthanized annually. The simple disposal of these euthanized dogs is an enormous ecological and economic problem. But eating those strays, those runaways, those not-quite-cute-enough-to-take and not-quite-well-behaved-enough-to-keep dogs would be killing a flock of birds with one stone and eating it, too.

In a sense it's what we're doing already. Rendering—the conversion of animal protein unfit for human consumption into food for livestock and pets—allows processing plants to transform useless dead dogs into productive members of the food chain. In America, millions of dogs and cats euthanized in animal shelters every year become the food for our food. So let's just eliminate this inefficient and bizarre middle step.

...

Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity. Responding to factory farming calls for a capacity to care that dwells beyond information. We know what we see on undercover videos of factory farms and slaughterhouses is wrong. (There are those who will defend a system that allows for occasional animal cruelty, but no one defends the cruelty, itself.) And despite it being entirely reasonable, the case for eating dogs is likely repulsive to just about every reader of this paper. The instinct comes before our reason, and is more important.

I think that I could eat dog. At least try it. I drink milk that comes from a cow's tit, which when I think about I find rather disgusting, but not disgusting to the point that I'll stop drinking milk. Compared to that, dog meat seems like a rather clean and rational thing to do. I don't think I'd feel any moral repulsiveness if I came across "Doberman" in a meat freezer (although it'd be highly amusing in a macabre way if you could memorialize dogs on their food label, like under the price it'd say "Daisy, Yellow Lab, Occasionally drank beer left in her dog dish by owners, Walked semi-occasionally, Displayed symptoms of mental deficiencies, Was a good dog, Defrost before grilling", you could collect dog meat price stickers like baseball cards). There is a sense of revulsion, though, that I have when I think about what a dog slaughterhouse would exist as, which is strange because I just accept that millions of dogs are already put to death yearly. I never thought that they used the body for animal feed; I guess I just assumed they put all the euthanized dogs into dog caskets and buried them in dog graves or cremated the dogs and put the dogs into little dog urns. Anyway, after watching The Cove I feel like a slight hypocrite being a carnivore and then making distinctions between what animals are morally acceptable to kill and which aren't - so I should be a vegetarian but I'm, y'know, lazy...

And here's Jonah Goldberg -

The government cannot have my dog.

Don't tell that to the authors of the new book, "Time to Eat the Dog?: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living." The authors calculate that dog owning is much worse than SUV driving for the planet. So when you see a car heading to the dog park with some very happy labs drooling out the window, you should think "climate criminals."

Meanwhile, in less surprising news, cats (long known as the handmaidens of Satan) have roughly the ecological paw print of a Volkswagen Golf.

Ditch the SUV, walk the dog.

And a nice dog story to end -

Not long before his death, Harry and I headed out for a walk that proved eventful. He was nearly 13, old for a big dog. Walks were no longer the slap-happy Iditarods of his youth, frenzies of purposeless pulling in which we would cast madly off in all directions, fighting for command. Nor were they the exuberant archaeological expeditions of his middle years, when every other tree or hydrant or blade of grass held tantalizing secrets about his neighbors. In his old age, Harry had transformed his walk into a simple process of elimination—a dutiful, utilitarian, head-down trudge. When finished, he would shuffle home to his ratty old bed, which graced our living room because Harry could no longer ascend the stairs. On these walks, Harry seemed oblivious to his surroundings, absorbed in the arduous responsibility of placing foot before foot before foot before foot. But this time, on the edge of a small urban park, he stopped to watch something. A man was throwing a Frisbee to his dog. The dog, about Harry’s size, was tracking the flight expertly, as Harry had once done, anticipating hooks and slices by watching the pitch and roll and yaw of the disc, as Harry had done, then catching it with a joyful, punctuating leap, as Harry had once done, too.

Harry sat. For 10 minutes, he watched the fling and catch, fling and catch, his face contented, his eyes alight, his tail a-twitch. Our walk home was almost…jaunty.

Successful rival leagues

The conversation is limited to the Negro Leagues and the ABA, right? Unless someone wants to make the case for the XFL... Keith Law talks about the ABA here.

I found this story particularly interesting -

The NCAA, always looking for ways to limit student-athletes’ rights, had a “Four-Year Rule” that prohibited college players from leaving for pro careers until they had played four seasons for their schools. The ABA decided to challenge that rule, and the Denver Rockets signed a University of Detroit sophomore named Spencer Haywood to a three-year deal worth $450,000 (with most of the money deferred). They chose Haywood because he was dominating his college competition, but also because they could argue that he was a “hardship case” and needed to earn money to support his mother and nine siblings.

After a year of lawsuits, a judge ruled that the “Four-Year Rule” had no basis in law—similar to this February’s ruling by an Ohio trial judge that the NCAA’s by-law prohibiting players from using agents was invalid. Haywood was able to suit up for the Rockets, winning the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards before jumping ship and signing with the NBA’s Seattle Sonics for more money.

It's borderline criminal (and sometimes straight-up criminal) how the NCAA and the professional leagues team-up to exploit student-athletes. Things like not compensating athletes for using their likeness in videogames should be stopped and revenue shared among the athletes -

O'Bannon's suit seems like a solid one to me: It's obscene that the NCAA doesn't have to share any of the estimated $4 billion it makes in licensing agreements with the former athletes whose talents provide the basis for those agreements. To take just one example, here's a screenshot from EA Sports' NCAA Basketball '09 game that shows two avatars who are obviously UNC's Ty Lawson and Duke's Greg Paulus; but these guys don't see any money from the videogame (and, while Lawson should be okay financially, I think Paulus is going to need the cash.)

The requirement that basketball players be one year out of high school before being eligible for the draft is awful as well, and just another reason that I'm a fan of Brandon Jennings. Maybe it's that I grew up playing tennis where if you aren't a pro by the time you're 18 you've probably hit your ceiling, but I can't help but chafe at the idea of a league dictating requirements that athletes must fulfill before they are able to capitalize on their talent for themselves, instead reduced to offering cheap labor to the NCAA for which it benefits greatly. So Brandon Jennings couldn't play at Arizona because he didn't meet the minimum score for the SAT - playing in Europe was probably the smarter, more beneficial choice anyway, and it's only a matter of time before other people realize it too.

Lake Michigan Surf

The Journal-Sentinel has a story up about two brothers who make hollow wood surfboards that work particularly well for the surf season on Lake Michigan near Sheboygan that runs from September to May.

After some research, they discovered that the hollow wood surfboard was invented by water sports legend Tom Blake, who was born in Milwaukee in 1902. The Wisconsin tie appealed to them, and since they were working construction jobs they had access to scrap lumber.

So in 2007 they began a process of trial and error to build three surfboards. Each board took about 120 hours, a time they have since cut in half.

...

While wooden boards are significantly heavier than the typical surfboard, Kaftanski said the weight is an advantage for Great Lakes surfing where momentum is needed. Wood boards also are more durable, and Kaftanski said they are more environmentally friendly.

I had no idea there was a surfing 'season' on Lake Michigan; I thought I heard it was only possible a couple times a year when the weather cooperates just perfectly. I imagine surfing during the winter would be quite a trip, and sounds like something I could convince John Beck to do sometime. Of course, I'd have to learn how to surf first.

Redd, Alexander, Yount

Michael Redd is out at least 2 weeks. $35 million dollars will buy a lot of suits so at least he'll look sharp sitting at the end of the bench. At least it will guarantee a lot more emphasis placed on Brandon Jennings and Hakim Warrick whose mistakes are more interesting to watch than the rest of the team.

Joe Alexander is gonna be the highest drafted player to have his rookie option declined. Who would have thought the 8th leading scorer at basketball powerhouse West Virginia would have trouble in the NBA? Reminds me of the Gladwell/Simmons article from awhile ago that argues that NBA general managers over-think themselves into bad teams.

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.

Now would I be as good as GM as Jerry West or Joe Dumars? Of course not. But just by sitting on my hands, and being scared of looking like a fool, and taking only the safest, most conservative steps, and drafting only solid players that everybody agrees are a can't miss, I could make the Knicks a vastly better team than they are today -- as could any reasonably cautious and uninformed fan....

That's Thomas in a nutshell: He knows so much about basketball that he believes that he knows more than anyone else about the potential of previously undistinguished players. He thinks he can see into the true basketball soul of Jerome James. The truth is, of course, that James doesn't have a basketball soul.

By the way, while we're on this topic, let's play a real world application of this. Let's say I'm so dumb about basketball that all I know is that the best college programs in the country are Duke and UConn, and so as a GM my rule is only draft and/or trade for the first and second team players, in any given year, from those two schools. So I fire all my scouts. I disband my front office, and basically say that I cede my basketball judgment to Jim Calhoun and Mike K. What's my team? It's some combination of Elton Brand, Emeka Okafor, Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, Shane Battier, Mike Dunleavy, Rip Hamilton, Corey Maggette, Jay Williams, Caron Butler, Donyell Marshall and Grant Hill -- which is a really wonderful team. Now, of course, in the real world I couldn't get all those people, because lots of them were really high draft picks. But let's say I got Brand in a trade, after Chicago soured on him, and I was lucky enough to be in the lottery for Okafor. Maggette was a 13; Hamilton and Deng were 7s; and Butler was a 10 -- so at least some of them are doable, particularly since in off-years for Duke and UConn I can trade down and stockpile picks. Battier I wine and dine in the free agent market, because who wants to be stuck in Memphis? Ditto for Gordon, who, it seems, Chicago is thinking of moving anyway. Is that the best team in the league? No. It is better than the Knicks? Absolutely. The point is that clinging to a very simple rule of thumb here -- that doesn't require knowing much about basketball -- can leave you looking pretty smart.

I probably shouldn't have any strong opinion on this because I've only been following the Bucks for the past, uh, week, but I remember being slightly perplexed when I heard the Bucks picked Alexander, especially considering 'name' players (i.e. players that I had heard of before the NCAA tournament) like Brook Lopez, Roy Hibbert, Brandon Rush, and Marreese Speights were still available. Obviously, I have the benefit of hindsight, but considering the Bucks wasted a lottery pick the prior year on Yi Jianlian I don't think it is unfair to assume the Bucks suffer from what Gladwell was describing.

Finally, Robin Yount may have used a corked bat. I'm curious if anyone will care. I don't, but then I don't even really care about steroids/HGH so whatever.

Book reading, Jeff Dunham

I can't stand to look at that ad so I'm going to post this up to knock it down.

I have to read Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang for class. Gotta have it finished by next Tuesday. According to the blurb on the book it is a "classic gem of destructive mayhem and outrageous civil disobedience - the novel that sparked the environmental activism movement!" Since the 5 people that I know that read this blog are dirty hippies you might be interested in reading it too and we can talk about it like intellectual people and then I'll steal your written thoughts about it and pass them off as my own. My class has a discussion board up for what we read and I'll post the funny things my classmates think and we can make fun of them together. Here's an example of what they offer from earlier this semester -

Alicia makes a really good point here. There are lots of women (wives/girlfriends/etc.) that compare themselves to actresses in porn videos to the detriment of their sex lives. At the same time, I wonder if the increased availability of porn nowadays has had a beneficial effect on individuals sexual relationships.

One of the biggest causes of domestic and sexualabuse within relationships seems to stem from men's lack of understanding about the needs and desires of women. If you view sex as just a means to achieve orgasm, you end up treating women as just a means to an end, rather than a person with her own sexual needs. This is incredibly dehumanizing. It's from this mentality that leads some people to rape and otherwise sexually assault.

But with the mainstreaming of porn, it has led to a more education discussion (even subconsciously) of what men, and especially women, want within the confines sex. It's common knowledge now that women have just as much sexual desire as men and have as many or more orgasms as well. Women aren't an empty vessel to be taken advantage of, quite the opposite in fact. The purpose of sex is about, as Alicia says, being in a mutally pleasing relationship.

(all spelling errors and awkward constructions are his)

I can't tell if that is something that genuinely doesn't make sense or just doesn't make sense to me because I'm actually familiar with pornography. Regardless, I find it hilarious. Here's an article in Salon talking about porn, too.

There's something cold and sad and deeply unerotic about being in the throes of it with somebody and thinking, "I saw this in 'Weapons of Ass Destruction 4.'" As a friend said recently, "Just because it looks good doesn't mean it is. Then I wind up feeling inadequate because I'm not enjoying it." Soon after, another friend mentioned a man she'd been dating, whose erotic repertoire included withdrawing his member at key moments to thump it on her. After puzzling over it with friends, she finally figured out: It's a porn move. Listen, if you're a professional showing off his stuff for the camera, that sort of thing almost makes sense. Out of context, however, it's another situation entirely. You know what description you never want a woman you've slept with to apply to your sexual technique? "Baffling."

I'm also finally getting around to reading Without Stopping by Paul Bowles after Kole gave it to me over a year ago. For most memoirs and biographies I end up preferring the portions of the book devoted to the subject's adolescence, before they do whatever they did to warrant memoirs and biographies to be published about them, but I'm not feeling that right now with Bowles. It has to do with the fact that I have no idea who is so I have no idea why he is so amused with myself and why I should be amused as well (probably what people are thinking about me right now, but this is for the greater good, I'm bumping that uncomfortable ad down the page). Anyway, Bowles' wikipedia page informed me of what he did and I suspect I'd be more interested in his later years regardless of my familiarity with him.

*I really don't find Jeff Dunham funny, the news that his sitcom received the highest ratings of any premiere on Comedy Central was distressing, and even his appearance on 30 Rock last week made me shudder a bit. That being said, this NYTimes article about him was a good read. I find ventriloquism to be just sorta weird (and creepy) and the article is as much about the ventriloquism community as it is about Jeff Dunham. Ventriloquist acts always strike me as just versions of this clip from Freaks And Geeks when Neal can only confront his dad's affair by doing a comedy routine with his new dummy. Ventriloquists wanting to be able to say the things they sometimes feel without having to associate/take responsibility for saying it, or y'know, I can't remember where I heard it, but take off the stupid puppet and start losing friends like the rest of us. It's like you're watching someone mentally lose it on stage like they're compartmentalizing themselves -

Already, during one of the convention’s featured performances — while Dunham and Murdick sat unassumingly in the last row, near the door — the ventriloquist onstage did a bit in which his dummy harangued him for envying Dunham: Dunham’s screaming arena crowds, Dunham’s expensive cars, Dunham’s hot girlfriend. “I’m not jealous; I’ve got my own style,” the vent told his dummy, but a little too vulnerably. Few people laughed; it felt as if something unsettlingly psychotherapeutic was being hashed out.

Other stuff from the article -

Peanut, a hyperactive purple Muppetish dummy, kicked off his portion of the show just by saying different words for breasts — “bodacious ta-tas” got the biggest laugh — and closed with a bit about ordering Chinese food, done in a preposterous Fu Manchu accent. By the encore, when Dunham brought out his redneck character to do a routine from his first DVD, all 7,000 people in the arena were ecstatically chanting the dummy’s punch lines together — a choir of thrown voices. (Dunham: “Do you have a drinking problem?” Everyone: “No! I’ve pretty much got it figured out!”) Then, when it was over — after Dunham fired some balled-up Jeff Dunham T-shirts into the upper decks with the kind of air-powered bazooka you see during N.B.A. halftimes — he literally ran out the arena’s back door and onto his bus, where he went back to work on the Umpire....

...Everyone read to himself. Dunham didn’t like one of Peanut’s first jokes, about how another reality-TV star, Kim Kardashian, would pass gas on a baby if it meant getting some publicity. “We’ve got to get away from the poop jokes,” he said.

McCall spoke up: “It’s not really a poop joke.” He was making a sincere, semantic point, but not too assertively. Dunham didn’t answer directly; he told a long story about an audition he did in the 90s. Eventually he said: “Just come up with something different about Kim Kardashian, that’s all. Something about her butt or her boobs.”...

...He spent a great deal of time safeguarding the integrity of his characters — “Peanut’s not going to ask her to freakin’ marry him right away! He just met her!” — and also swatting away jokes that felt too scatological or easy. “Again?” he said at one point, hitting a joke about pornography in another sketch. The scripts had too many porn jokes in them. Also condom jokes. For a time, Dunham just sat there, picking lint off his laptop — not in a passive-aggressive way; he just couldn’t hide his discouragement. “This show’s gotta have some art to it,” he said.

He was trying to train the writers to see what he sees: a kind of mindlessness that’s not totally idiotic. But they couldn’t yet, and maybe understandably: there are porn and poop jokes all over Dunham’s DVDs....

...Dunham does concede that he’s extra-sensitive to one of his largest constituencies: the conservative “country crowd.” “That’s why I don’t pick on basic Christian-values stuff,” he told me. “Well, I also don’t like to, because that’s the way I was brought up.” He then stopped himself short and said: “Oh, boy. I’m walking into something here.”

Dunham started to explain — as if realizing it for the first time — that this would appear to make the jokes he does about Islam with Achmed “hypocritical.” But he quickly unburdened himself of the idea. “I try to make the majority of my audience laugh,” he said. “That’s my audience. They’ll laugh at the dead terrorist.”

In fact, the jokes that get some of the wildest, loudest reactions aren’t really even jokes, just statements. Like when one puppet shouts that all Mexicans should learn English, or when Dunham wishes Walter “Happy Holidays” and Walter responds: “I’ve been wanting to say this for a couple of years now: Screw you, it’s ‘Merry Christmas’!” And the crowd doesn’t laugh; it riotously applauds. Dunham describes them as moments of “catharsis,” when the dummy says something “everyone wants to laugh about, or that you snicker at with one or two friends, but that you could never say out loud.”...

Like nearly everyone I met at the ConVENTion, Wade tried to convince me that Dunham — both by inspiring other vents and as an ambassador to pop and youth cultures — was leading a renaissance for the art, a return to mainstream prominence in America and maybe even coolness. Ventriloquism is finally transcending its stereotypes, Wade told me. “Jeff’s helping us all take that step forward, opening up these new vistas,” he said, adding: “I don’t even use a boy puppet in my show now. I’ve got a bird. I’ve got a talking horse.”

And here's Thomas Pynchon's introduction to 1984 -

It is the boy's smile, in any case, that we return to, direct and radiant, proceeding out of an unhesitating faith that the world, at the end of the day, is good and that human decency, like parental love, can always be taken for granted - a faith so honourable that we can almost imagine Orwell, and perhaps even ourselves, for a moment anyway, swearing to do whatever must be done to keep it from ever being betrayed.

Yikes

Creepiest ad I've ever seen -



Sociological Images