Playing Ketchup

Well, a few days off and much has occured.

Edwards is out of the Democratic race.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1708147,00.html

I guess this saddens me, I guess. It sucks that someone who is obsessed about poverty is out of the race-human misery is probably the root cause of most of our problems. But the decision makes sense-he hasn't won yet, and he really had to by now in order to be a legitimate candidate.

I will probably support Obama in the New Jersey primary now, although I am somewhat frightened of him getting taken down by the Republican hit machine. Clinton carries much the same risk-a large fraction of Americans, I feel, will vote against them for no good reason. But will vote against them nevertheless.

McCain appears to be taking control on the other side

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/29/ST2008012903933.html

He is truly the only Republican that does not scare the pants off of me. He has said some nutty things, too, but I get the feeling somehow that he doesn't really mean it, and he seems to be a man of his word.


Dan Carlin has another brilliant show this week, talking more about elections and terrorism and stuff. He has a great voice, and has one of the more unique perspectives I have ever encountered.

www.dancarlin.com


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/sports/baseball/31vecsey.html?ref=sports


It appears that the Mets have Santana in the bag now. That makes for a tough time for the Phillies, who haven't really upgraded at all so far. But it keeps him out of the AL, and away from the Yankees, who Really Needed Him. So on balance, that's good news for the Red Sox. If, at the end of the day, Boston has to try and beat him twice in the World Series, that's an okay outcome, really.


Can't wait to hear the next "Johnny, Are You Worried Yet?" on Bill Simmons' podcast.

End of an Era

Mike Lieberthal retired.

He stopped hitting in 2003, but he retires now. That sound you heard is Phillies fans saying, "NOW you tell us?"

Who The Hell Are Mike and Juliet?

While waiting at the car repair shop, I was just subjected to something called the "Mike and Juliet Show", which is apparently part of the Fox Disinformation Empire. I would like those brain cells back, please.

This program gives insipid a new depth of meaning. It makes Tyra Banks, who followed, look like Steven Hawking by comparison.

Wow. Nearly tearing their hair out with frustration over the fact that Mexico would dare enforce its own laws, they lament the fact that the Marine accused of killing the pregnant Marine will not be drawn and quartered in the public square.

What a waste of perfectly good electrons. Wow.

Fun Little Game

I may be the last person on Earth to discover this, but I opened up my playlist on
ITunes and discovered that you can sort by running time, as well as by artist and album and title.


I discovered a few interesting things-the shortest "song", at 0:23 is "Her Majesty", a snippet that was on the runout track (the very innermost part of an LP) on The Beatles' Abbey Road. The longest song is the live version of Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused" from "The Song Remains The Same", at 29:18. The longest song that isn't a live version is Metallica's "Mercyful Fate" at 11:12, followed by the studio version of "In My Time of Dying" by Zeppelin, at 11:05.


Another interesting way to read it is to take a representative time, like 3:05, and see what songs pop up. Ironically, Billy Joel's "The Entertainer" is not on there, which is where I got the time of 3:05.


Elton John, "I'm Still Standing"
Kris Kristofferson, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight"
The Overture from "The Phantom of the Opera"
Tom Petty, "Listen to Her Heart"
Paul McCartney, "Live and Let Die" (Live)
Van Morrison, "Brown Eyed Girl"
Jimi Hendrix, "I Was Made To Love Her"
John Lennon, "Imagine"
Bruce Springsteen, "Two Hearts" (Live)
Johnny Cash, "Oney"


The last song is a good one, a guy's final "Fuck You" to his boss. Johnny Cash was a badass guy.

Terminated

January 21, 2008


So it is the Giants and the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Oh, great-another 2 weeks of New York/Boston hype.


I cannot remember a previous NFL season in which so many big favorites-Cowboys, Packers and Colts-dropped out of the playoffs early. It was relatively obvious that the conference championship games were going to be New England-Indianapolis and Dallas-Green Bay. I don’t think you can reasonably argue that there were better teams in either conference than those two.


And yet…2 out of 4 missed the conference title games, and the Packers fell in the conference title game. Hard to figure, but that’s why they play the games.


So can the Giants beat the Patriots? Sure, maybe. Like any team this season, they would need to play nearly perfect ball, and have the Patriots make some mistakes. They can rush the passer, and they have some good cover guys. On offense, they have those big monster backs who are so good at chewing up clock, but I don’t think that will be so much of a factor in the warm weather. Spagnuolo and Coughlin are good coaches, for sure, and they should be able to keep it close, but I think, in the end, the Patriots will be able to force some 3rd and 11s, and Manning won’t be able to pull them out of it every time, and New England will win.


I just finished the third book of the Neil Stephenson 8 book series about medieval history and science. (It is 8 paperbacks that were split into three hardcovers. I bought the first three as individual books, then picked up the last 5 in hardcover at a discount bookseller.) The books I have finished are the first 3, which are included in a hardback version called “Quicksilver”. Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon” was a fantastic read, filled with history, and math, and science, and adventure-great, great, stuff. Everybody who I know who has read it is in high tech, so we can call it “geek lit”, for lack of a better word.


The Quicksilver books, so far, are pretty decent. The parts involving Isaac Newton and Friedrich Liebniz are excellent, but some of the other parts drag a bit for me. But I plan to soldier on. I’m enjoying it enough that I don’t want to turn back now.


I’m also reading book three of the Golden Compass trilogy, which has proven to be excellent, another military history of the Revolutionary War, which may be my third or fourth, the first of a two part life of Napoleon, a book on Stonewall Jackson, and Janna Levin’s “A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines”. At the moment.


My Windows laptop just quit. It was so old, it was running Me, which is, I think, 2 versions ago. It will turn on, but it won’t sign on to the Internet. I was trying to clean it up by deleting some old files and coax a little more speed out of it, and I managed to delete something critical. I fussed with it, but I couldn’t get it to come back to life. Time to sign on to Dell.com and get another one. Goody.


Reason Number 9,411 why the Iraq War was a bad idea: Farmers in Diallyah Province have started growing opium because they could not make enough money to feed their families growing fruits and vegetables. That’s what the world needs, more opium.


The Terminator show is on again tonight. I am really getting hooked on it.

Moss gathers no stones

January 19, 2008


Charlie Pierce just said on “Globe 10.0” that Randy Moss’ personal trouble has “nothing to do” with what he did before. Which is true-his various misbehaviors do not affect his guilt or innocence in the current mess. It is also true that no one knows the truth besides the two of them, and any queries or hypotheses by outsiders are ignorant by definition. Both statements are undeniably true.

But there’s also the fact that people fall into broad categories, too. When I initially heard about OJ Simpson being accused of Nicole’s murder, my initial gut level response was shock. The genial guy from the Naked Gun movies? Really?

It doesn’t shock me that Randy Moss would be accused of this. It’s unfair, and it doesn’t make him guilty, but that’s the way it is-it doesn’t surprise me. He’s displayed a temper before. If you never, ever, get into trouble, then you get the benefit of the doubt. If you do, then you don’t. It’s human nature. It’s not fair, but that’s what it is.

Romney, celebrating his win in Michigan, told his supporters that they told voters “what they needed to hear,”. Gee, wouldn’t it have been nice if you could have told them the truth, instead? Very reflective of a recent Dan Carlin program about vegetables and cake-to wit, we all know we should eat our vegetables, but we keep electing people who promise us cake.


January 20, 2008


I meant to post this last night, but I didn’t. I’ll just add on some more, and then post it tonight. Maybe.


I meant to have a life, too. But I didn’t manage that either.


Romney won Nevada, and Clinton and Obama appear to have tied, more or less. One had more delegates, one had more votes.


Is there any wonder why some people hate politics?


McCain won South Carolina.


I still can’t stomach voting for any Republican, but McCain appears to be their best candidate right now. He’s the only one I can picture as president, and he’s the only Republican who doesn’t terrify me when I think about them winning. He’s still batshit crazy, though, at times. I don’t understand how he forgave Bush for South Carolina 2000, and I don’t understand how he went to Baghdad and minimized the danger while his little stroll was backed up by armored helicopters.


A lot of the magazines and newspapers are coming up with the meme that, as the country turns more towards the economy and away from the war while the surge “succeeds”, it reduces Democrats’ chances of winning. Baloney. First of all, this economy is a millstone around this president’s neck, regardless of whether or not he’s to blame. Reckless spending is no doubt making it worse (as I always say, if you want a balanced budget, just sign one. Keep sending it back to Congress, and tell the public, in every conceivable way, ‘I won’t sign a budget that isn’t balanced’) but I am increasingly coming around to the belief that the economy just happens, and there is very little anyone can do to change it.


Second of all, it is impossible to deny that the surge has created some security benefits in Iraq. However, the following is still true: invading was a disastrously bad idea, once decided upon, it was carried out with astounding incompetence and ignorance by those in charge, and once the disaster became evident to anyone who had two eyes, these same incompetent, evil fools were passionately recalcitrant in changing tactics or admitting error. Once the disaster became clear to even the deadenders, the surge comes along-much, much too late.


The surge has not created a stable Iraq. The surge has not allowed the government to take hold. The surge has not allowed services to improve. Sure, you can pacify any area if you put a tank on every street corner.

The surge has not done what it had to do, namely, allow us to allow the Iraqis to take care of themselves so we can stop pouring money down the rathole. Climbing from the ninth circle of hell to the seventh is progress, yes-but it’s still hell.

Apparently yet another Windows will come out a year from now. I still haven’t gone to Vista yet, and with that happening, there may be no reason to. At my current rate, though, I will be in a new computer by then.

I had a frightening thought driving to work today. In ten years, assuming I am alive, I will not yet be 50, and yet my son, hopefully, will be in college.

And I don’t know how the hell I am going to pay for it.


I just thought of something. Conservatives usually say that they want to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” from federal spending when you start talking about the deficit. I think the reason why I can’t understand them is that, when a conservative talks about cutting “waste” from the federal budget, what they mean is “money going to anyone who isn’t a defense contractor”. That makes a lot more sense.


If ,in fact, we live in Bizarro World and San Diego and New York face off in the Super Bowl, it may pit Philip Rivers against Eli Manning, who were traded, in effect, for one another the year they were drafted(2004). Talk about the ultimate challenge trade.


I had always wondered what happened to Eli Manning. I like Charlie Pierce’s notion that what happened was Manning was finally able, recently, to be Eli-a patient, ball control, don’t lose the game type-instead of being Peyton Junior.


Sending George Bush to the Mideast to promote peace is like sending the Spears family to promote abstinence.


Apparently there was a study going on for incontinence using an SSRI, and when some of the participants committed suicide, the deaths were concealed as a “trade secret”. This, of course, is shameful, and should not occur. But I question the idea that, although the participants were screened for depression, they weren’t depressed. One of the suicides was 19 years old. That is a tragedy.

But aren’t all 19 year olds at some risk for suicide? Aren’t we all at some risk for suicide?

Harvey J. Kaye on Bill Moyers’ Journal, “Republicans are asking the right questions-they just keep coming up with the wrong answers.” He meant that Republicans tend to be more liberty oriented, which I don’t think is true. His book on Tom Paine sounds excellent.

Hang 'Em High

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22689778/


Now this is just plain stupid.

As Charlie Pierce pointed out on this week's "Only A Game", it is monumentally, epochally stupid for any professional media person to use the word "lynch" in connection with any other human being, never mind the most famous athlete, arguably, on planet Earth.

"Lynch" has a very specific meaning. It was a deeply insensitive choice of words.

Sure, there's freedom of speech. But you also have to own the words you use-and you have to own the consequences of that speech. That's life in the big city.

A Rolling Moss Gathers No Allegations

The Patriots' Randy Moss has been hit with allegations that he battered a woman in Florida January 6, during the Patriots' bye week.

According to the Boston Herald,

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/football/patriots/view.bg?articleid=1066961

Moss knew the woman, but claims he did not hit her. She also claims that he has guns and a drug and alcohol problem.

As with the Duke rape case, it is hard to know what to think, and we should reserve judgement until the truth comes out.

Yet somehow, this does not shock anyone who has followed Moss' career. Is it possible for this to be true? Sure. Is it possible that an occasional girlfriend realized that she could shake an innocent man down? Sure.

It's hard to know what to think.

Vytorin Panic

Once again, the popular press goes bananas over a result that doesn't really mean anything.

ENHANCE, a study measuring the effectiveness of simvastatin against ezetimibe/simvastatin found that the older, cheaper drug, simvastatin, did just as well at shrinking plaques on artery walls as the newer, more expensive one.

Of course, the popular press turns this into "VYTORIN DOESNT WORK!" screaming headlines. Which is not what it means.

First of all, all it means is that the plaques aren't getting smaller. That's all. No proof of death by any cause. It is news that Vytorin isn't doing it any BETTER, I guess, because it's expensive, and in principle, it SHOULD. But it isn't.

But the only results that really mean anything are patient centered, death or cardiac event trials. Period.

Sigh.

Roger Dodger

Finally heard the audio from Clemens' 60 Minutes appearance. Both he and McNamee have compelling points to make-Clemens, that he can't prove his own innocence, and McNamee, that he has no reason at all to lie.

I am starting to think that, like so many questions in baseball history, the steroid era is going to become a series of what if questions. What if Clemens was clean? What if Josh Gibson could have played in the majors? What if Ruth came around 12 years earlier?

What if?

All Upset Over Nothin'

Two stunning upsets in professional football today.

First of all, the San Diego Chargers beat defending champion Indianapolis, and then the New York Giants beat the NFC #1 team, Dallas. Both home teams were heavily favored, more talented, and picked by nearly every rational analyst. And they both lost, in narrow fashion, with 4th quarter drives that could have put them back in front falling short.

Goes to show you why they play the games, I suppose.

The Patriots and Packers should beat the Chargers and Giants pretty readily, thus allowing the Patriots to avenge one of their two Super Bowl losses. Exciting wins by deeply undermanned squads, though.

Funny how Dallas has now lost in the playoffs two years in a row, at least partially because they can't manage the most basic act in the sport, the snap from center? Last year, it was the fumbled field goal snap, and this year, it was late snaps from center Andre Gurode that caused penalties and blocking breakdowns.

Now watching Terminator-the new retelling of the movie as a TV series on Fox. It's pretty good. I like the Terminatorverse, so I may end up watching it. Imagine that, me watching a TV show like a normal American.

It seems to take place after the events of Terminator 2, as a sort of interstitial story. The Bad Terminator is pretty unsubtle, shooting up a classroom when he finds out that John is there, and there is a second plotline of the police chasing John and Sarah, along with the good Terminator, who comes back as a teenage cutie pie.

Showdown with Jaguars

Well, the Patriots play the Jaguars tonight. Obviously, they should win, and they are favored by two touchdowns. I think the Jags are better than that, and even with the world against them, Coach Bill and his RoboTeam should be able to get the job done. 24-17 Patriots is my call.

Rice Pudding

So Goose Gossage made the Hall of Fame. An excellent choice, I think-it's pretty inarguable that Gossage was dominant for a very, very long time.

Jim Rice fell short, in his next to last year on the regular ballot. Tom Caron said, on Globe 10.0, said that Rice was "the most feared hitter in baseball for a decade". Well, that's a subjective statement. I want it to be true-I rooted for Jim Rice-but I don't think there is a ten year period where he is the best hitter in baseball.

From 1975-1986 is really Rice's whole career-1974 he only played in 24 games, and from 1987-1989 he was a shadow of himself.

So, from 1975-1986, Rice was:

10th in Runs Created Above Average
27th in Runs Created Above Position (Below Dwight Evans, a teammate and my favorite player)
19th in Isolated Power
3rd in Home Runs (Below DAVE KINGMAN, who is no more a Hall of Famer than I am a turnip)
2nd in Runs
1st in RBI
1st in Total Bases
3rd in Slugging Percentage
33rd in Intentional Walks
28th in Home Runs/100 PA
2nd in Extra Base Hits



Interesting. In most sophisticated stats, he fares poorly. In most conventional stats, he looks great. So why the resistance?

According to most accounts, he was a jerk to the media, but it seems like there should be more than that to keep a guy out of Cooperstown.

Seasons of Wither

January 8, 2008


Listening: Aerosmith, “Seasons of Wither” (Live)


The lead story on NPR’s “Day to Day” today took the wind right out of my sails. It was a story about a father whose son was in Iraq, clearly troubled, and was given inadequate treatment, and wound up killing himself. The Army, naturally, lied about it, not telling the father that they had his suicide note.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17929487

Of course, when it comes to shortcomings in taking care of flesh and blood soldiers, the deadenders in the Republican Party are not nearly as outraged as when they can make symbolic gestures like wearing lapel pins. This is a national tragedy, and an obscenity of the highest order.


I wouldn’t trust these people (the current Administration) with a box turtle, never mind the life of a loved one.


Listening: Metallica, “Sad But True” (Live)


I don’t care what Henry Rollins says, Metallica is the heaviest, most badass band I have ever heard.


I just bought the “Live Sh*t” CDs again, with some Best Buy gift cards from Christmas. I sold them to a used CD store a few years ago, which was stupid. I missed them. I thought I wasn’t going to be angry anymore, I guess. One listen to the “Justice Medley” from that album reminds me how huge they were.


Listening: “Frayed Ends of Sanity”, Metallica


“Never hunger/never prosper/I have fallen prey to failure…”


This year’s holidays have left me with a lingering feeling of failure. Hell, life leaves me with a lingering feeling of failure all the time. I hate getting gifts from people you don’t expect. I know it is about giving, but there’s this unspoken understanding about who you are supposed to give to that I always seem to mess up.


Listening: “I Go To Extremes” (Live), Billy Joel


I hate families, I hate responsibility, I hate deadlines, I just want to be left alone for a very long time.


Is that too much to ask?


I turn more and more into my father every day.


Listening: “Angry Young Man” (Live), Billy Joel


This song used to mean a whole lot to me. Now it’s more like “teenage angst has served me well, now I’m bored and old.”


I should clarify-it's not really family that's the problem. Just all the burdens involved in running one.

Teddy Ballgame

Until today, this blog had 406 posts. Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941.

Just once, I'd like to hear a politician say, "Yes, I changed my mind. I used to believe something, and now I believe something else. You know why? Because when I get new information about something, when I learn something, when I encounter something that contradicts or changes something that I thought was true, then I change my mind. That's what intelligent people do. Given new data or a different perspective, you change your mind. "