Michelle Wie want you to go away

After two shots (not good ones, by the way), Michelle withdrew from another tournament. This is after shooting 82 the day before.

Please, please get out of the sports news. Thanks.

More Dumb-Ass Statements Re: our Legal System

"Everyone deserves a fair trial".

Actually .... that couldn't be more wrong. People who are guilty of a crime under the criteria of the law don't deserve a fair trial. They deserve to be immediately consigned to a non cruel/unusual punishment for the harm they've committed.

Unfortunately, we don't have a magic eight ball that tells us who the guilty are. So, we have to resort to trials. The correct expression should be: "We cannot tell who is guilty, so we will give everyone a fair trial in an effort to ensure that the unjustly accused will not be falsely imprisoned".

Hope that clears things up for you. About 99% of the people who receive "fair" trials don't deserve one at all, cuz' they're guilty as hell.

Doctors allow their "ethics" to interfere with patient treatment

From MSN.com:

"Lori Boyer watched Martin Gish, M.D., jot some final notes into her chart, she thought of something the rape counselor had mentioned earlier."I'll need the morning-after pill," she told him. Dr. Gish looked up. He was a trim, middle-aged man with graying hair and, Boyer thought, an aloof manner. "No," Boyer says he replied abruptly. "I can't do that." He turned back to his writing.

Whether you're asking about birth control, STDs or infertility, these discussions can be tinged with self-consciousness, even embarrassment. Now imagine those same conversations, but supercharged by the anxiety that your doctor might respond with moral condemnation — and actually refuse your requests. That's exactly what's happening in medical offices and hospitals around the country. . . "

I had no idea this was such a wide-spread problem.

Ethically, a Doctor should be required to present legal/approved medical procedures and medications to patients as options for their symptoms and complaints, particularly when specifically asked about those options. Even if the doctor feels that he cannot provide that procedure/medication, the option should be presented and explained, and the physician should be forced to immediately refer the patient to a non-objecting doctor if desired by the patient.

AFI Reworks "100 Best Movies" list...results are O.K.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19350080/

Some real turkeys were finally taken off the list, including Dances with Wolves and Dr. Zhivago (films should have to have an ending before they can be eligible for "best of" lists). Close Encounters of the Third Kind was also given the boot. It was surprising to see Vertigo leap up about forty spots, while Chaplin's City Lights (what?) jumped up about ninety.

Hard to believe Dances with Wolves beat out Goodfellas for best picture? Raging Bull is now at number four, and that lost to Ordinary People? Really. Fellowship of the Ring is at 50...which is well deserved. It was far superior to its two sequels. The Academy probably realized it screwed up halfway through Return of the King, but by then they had no choice but to belatedly reward everyone (except Ian McKellan, who got jobbed) with Oscars.

Sixth Sense, Forrest Gump *vomit*, and Saving Private Ryan also joined the list. I'd say only SPR deserved to be there.

Forrest Gump: This Sacred Cow needs to be Slaughtered

I have a few teensy issues with Forrest Gump.

Its picaresque structure is lazy and panders to an audience that desires a cutesy, uplifting moment delivered every ten to twelve minutes. Its thematic content is not only intellectually insulting, but is openly hostile to non-conformist attitudes, self-discovery, and the questioning of conservative authority structures. It also spuriously and vapidly links rebellious youthful behavior with dying of a horrible disease and/or being abused a child.

I remember being mildly amused by the movie, then quietly annoyed, then openly hostile. Even more annoying than watching Forrest Gump is unsuccessfully trying to convince people that it is a bad movie.

Forrest Gump was completely undeserving of the Best Picture Oscar. In fact, IMHO Gump is the second most undeserving best picture winner of all time (Ms. Miniver over Casablanca still is the all-time champ). Several movies were far better that year. Shawshank was superior, and the winner should have been Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction's failure to win best picture, and to a lesser extent Jackson's Best Actor loss to Tom Hanks, was the moment in which I realized that the Academy Awards are complete garbage. This was further reinforced by Titanic and Beautiful Mind winning over L.A. Confidential and LOTR:FOTR, respectively, a few years later.

Fantastic Four 2: Yet more Fantastic! And Silver!

I loved the heck out of the first F4 movie, Dr. Doom origin changes and all. The second one is more of the same; unapologetic popcorn fare. Johnny "Call me John, Johnny skews a little young" Storm is still the best part of the movie, Ms. Alba is still better when she keeps her mouth shut, and superpowers are really cool.

I was really glad they recast Galactus as a mystical energy cloud rather than as a gigantic purple humanoid with an enormous phallic helmet. I'm going to let my thoughts percolate on it for a while, but for what it's meant to be, thumbs up!

Smoking: Worst Goddamned Habit Ever

Smoking has become a hot-button issue as bans slowly creep across the landscape. I cynical enough to believe that the government cares about this because smoking is so goddamned expensive on a public health level; workers get sick, the workers' compensation system gets swamped, and the complaints must be endless. I'd prefer smoking be banned everywhere except private residences, and that health care be denied for smoke related illness contracted due to tobacco use (tough to enforce, but put it on the books).

Do people actually believe they have a right to smoke? Smoking in public or quasi-public (privately owned bars) facilities is a legitimate area of public concern. Second smoke affects a broad spectrum of public interests; employee rights/safety, nuisance law, environmental law (trash and smoke), safety issues, etc. There are no "smoking rights" that I'm aware of, nor should there be.

I am stunned that people believe that the proper employee response to an unsafe work environment is "to quit". That is nonsensical, eighteen century bullshit that I hoped we had discarded by the late 1930s. On a personal level, I find smoking to be a vile, nasty habit that I equate with continously farting in my general direction while simultaneously ejecting radioactive waste onto my skin and clothes. If you are going to smoke, the proper etiquette would be to ask every person who could possibly inhale your noxious effulgences if they object.

Idiocracy

Considering my last post, I coincidentally watched Mike Judge's Idiocracy last night. Judge is the creator of such luminous creative enterprises as Beavis and Butthead and Office Space.

I loved it. Now, much of the humor is absurdist and rather low-key, so I could definitely see someone watching the movie and not chuckling more than once or twice. What's really radical, however, is the movie's portrayal of the phenomenom of dysgenics (the idea that with the absence of natural selection on humans, the least fit are outbreeding the most fit).

Idiocracy presents a world in which morons have overrun the earth while the intelligent have bred themselves out of existence. Entertainment, advertising, and puerile appeals to the lowest common denominator are common place. The opening two minutes, in which an intelligent couple prudently and responsibly plan to have children when they can afford them, is offset with a Jerry Springer-esque couple who are breeding willy-nilly with abandon. I wanted to applaud.

The main character, who has an IQ of 100, is propelled five hundred years into the future due to a failed army experiment, and finds himself to be the smartest man on earth. Robots/machines left by prior generations essentially run the machinery of the world, while the humans are so stupid they believe that a gatorade style sports drink should be used to water plants.

Reality television, scatological humor, and the devolution of society are all lampooned brilliantly. The studio apparently was horrified by the final film, probably due more to the satirical presentation of franchises such as Starbucks, Costco, and Carls, Jr. than to its controversial underlying (and sadly true) message: idiots are outbreeding geniuses.

Overpopulation

It's the elephant in the room that no one wants to discuss, and for good reason. Addressing the problem of overpopulation cuts across just about every taboo in first world society: eugenics, religion, birth control, individual freedoms, inherent rights, etc.

I will posit this, however; we will be unable to address any of the major issues facing the world (starvation, lack of potable water, wars, habitat loss, greenhouse warming, etc.) if world population growth does not level off.

Waitress

Just saw this movie yesterday. Had some issues with it, but on the whole found it to be a sweet, somewhat uplifting comedy. Here's some random thoughts:

1)There is not a single positive male character in the movie. Not. One.
2)There was insufficient build-up to Fillian and Russell's romance. I didn't see why the characters liked each other, so it seemed false throughout.
3)Not every waitress in a diner looks like Felicity and can cook THE BEST PIES IN THE WORLD. Realism=shattered.
4)Keri Russell is a waitress in a small town. She grows increasingly pregnant. But, her make-up and hair are always perfect, and her face doesn't gain an ounce of weight. Realism=shattered and ground into bits.
5)Andy Griffith was great, and lampooned his image nicely.


I felt horrible when I looked the movie up on-line and saw that the writer/director/actress (she played Dawn) responsible for Waitress had been strangled by her neighbor, a 19 year old illegal immigrant, who she had confronted over noise in his apartment. He was afraid she would make good on her threat to call the police, and tried to make it look like a suicide by hanging. What an awful, awful story.

Does Capital Punishment Deter Would-be Murderers?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070611/ap_on_re_us/death_penalty_deterrence

Apparently, recent studies (led by an individual against the death penalty) say "yes". They estimate that each executed criminal prevents about eighteen murders.

Wow. I am, frankly, stunned that empirical date supports this conclusion. Frankly, I figured that murderers fell into two categories: Killers who are too stupid to intelligently weigh their actions, and Killers who believe they can get away with it, and aren't going to be deterred by punishments they believe themselves unlikely to receive.

I used to be very strongly pro-death penalty, but in recent years have changed my position radicially. I no longer believe that the death penalty can be fairly and rationally imposed under the current judicial framework. I would bet all of my worldly possession that the federal/state(s) government(s) has executed an individual for a crime they did not commit within the last fifty years.

If we want to keep the death penalty, I would propose the following:

1. The killer must be an adult.

Only adults should be eligible. If we want to arbitrarily set the age of adulthood at eighteen, then we should live with the decision made by our elected officials. If you aren't old enough to vote, you aren't old enough to be executed.

2. Raise the standard of proof.

For life in prison without possibility of parole, I think that "beyond a reasonable doubt" is just fine. If you are unfairly convicted, you have a chance of fresh evidence resulting in your release. This happens on occasion. If you've been executed, you're out of luck. If someone is to be subject to the death penalty, I propose that the standard should be "guilty to a knowable certainty". Basically, a juror/judge has to be as sure that someone is guilty as you are of the sun rising tomorrow before the accused is eligible for the death penalty.

3. Stop executing the mentally incompetent.

It is shameful and embarassing that we execute the mentally ill. If there is a question as to whether someone is competent or not, see Rule "2", above (only in the narrow context of whether or not they should be eligible for the death penalty).


I'm sure I could think of a few more problems, but that seems like a good start. To be quite frank, I don't think the U.S. justice system is capable of applying the death penalty in a fair and equitable manner, so I'd rather see it scrapped altogether (which won't happen).

The NBA is Unwatchable: Part Two

There was a five day lay-off between the end of the Detroit/Cleveland Conference Finals and the start of the Finals.

Five. Days.

That is absolutely, unforgiveably, asinine. But, at least the Finals are full-steam ahead at this point, right? Right?

Well, it seems that we needed a full two days off before game 2. Even though the teams aren't traveling between games. Even though the play-offs feel as though they've been going on for two and a half months.

For the love of God, shorten the season to fifty games, have a bunch of play-in games for the bottom ten teams or so, and get the NBA season down to a manageable length.

Matt Capps Available to Pitch this Weekend

I won't bother linking, as any of you who monitor my site regularly (do my ears detect the sound of crickets chirping?) need this info STAT:

Capps's ruling on his appeal won't be out till next week, meaning that he will be avail. to pitch for this weekend series against the Yankees. Glorious day!

**also, Hafner (in yahoo or five game eligibility leagues) can now add a "1B" next to that useless "Util" designation. I'd say this ranges from a 1-10% value bump, depending upon your league set-up and your current roster.

My Team

There's something to be said for posting your team's lineup for all the world to see. Well, here goes:

C: Jason Varitek (Pudge didn't work out)
1B: David Ortiz
2B: Brandon Phillips
3B: Aramis Ramirez (Youkilis is filling in at the moment)
SS: Troy Glaus (sneaky eligibility)
CI: Carlos Pena
MI: Orlando Cabrera (pleasant surprise)
LF: Nick Swisher (on his way out the door)
RF: Shane Victorino
CF: Xavier Nady (soon to be Torii Hunter)
OF: Lance Berkman
OF: Delmon Young
Bench: Ty "Swiss Army Knife" Wigginton
Bench: Xavier Nady/Aramis Ramirez (due to injury)
DL: Dave Roberts
DL: Mike Piazza

SP: Oliver Perez
SP: Randy Wolf (not looking so good at the moment)
SP: Felix Hernandez (I hate you)
SP: AJ Burnett (Underappreciated strikeout monger)
SP: Jason Jennings (my fifth pitcher slot has been a weekly disaster)
RP: Bobby Jenks
RP: Brian Fuentes
RP: Jeremy Accardo (pending trade for T. Hunter)
RP: Matt Capps
Bench: Octavio Dotel
DL: Eddie Guardado

There she is.

The King and I (are just about through)

What is up with Felix Hernandez? After three dominating starts, he mysteriously hurts his elbow, misses a month, and now he flat-out sucks. He is killing my whip. Ugh. I'm guessing he's hiding an injury, and that I should have sold high. I almost packaged him up with Lance Berkman for Johan Santana. Wish I'd pulled the trigger on that one.

Yet another reliever screws me on his way out the door. I trade Jeremy Accardo and Nick Swisher for Torii Hunter (need the stolen bases, don't think Swisher is going to hit .290+ this year) and what does Accardo do? He implodes. Great. I'm about .6 runs behind my closet compatriot in ERA in my most significant pay league.

*Blargh*

Amanda Beard to Pose Nude In Playboy

Good for her. So many sports are marginalized in favor of the "big three"....which is quickly becoming the "big two" as the NBA slowly dies, Olympic athletes should cash in when and if they can. I didn't mind when Kurt Angle decided to join the pro-wrestling circuit. He'd served his country for years, worked tirelessy at a sport that is ignored 99% of the time, and deserved to earn a living.

As for what kind of message it sends to young girls, it probably sends an accurate one: if you are good looking, athletic, and even moderately famous, men will want to see you naked. And will pay for it.

More on our Public Schools

Here's a bunch of "bullet point" thoughts on our public school system:

I personally don't like throwing money at a problem in the hopes it will go away. Not every child is going to succeed in school, not every taxpayer has children attending public school, and not everyone likes to be held hostage and forced to tithe to a system that is non-responsive, bloated, and apparently utterly incompetent. Competition makes entities better, and the public school system is hostile and opposed to fostering any type of competition.

The value of a service is the amount that people are willing to pay for it on the open market. Private school teachers, by and large, make LESS than public school teachers with no where near the benefits package. This makes me think the teacher's union/government bureaucrats are paying MORE than the market would typically bear. Many teachers do work hard, but they have lifetime tenure after a few years, great retirement packages, and work 180 days out of the year. Additionally, they are basically immune from being fired for performance reasons.

It is fairly well established that individuals who go into education/teaching tend to be less qualified than those who go into other fields. The median and mean GRE scores of those who receive education PHDS or Masters Degrees are LOWER than they are for every other single area of study. That's right, the graduate area of study for education attracts those with the lowest test scores. This is an enormous problem. Teaching additionally appeals to those who value security over performance and incentives for success; that is not the way to attract result-oriented individuals.

Centralization causes more ills than it cures in the context of individual schools, teachers, and school boards. The reason why liberals love centralization is that they can make sure that everyone, everywhere, is being taught exactly what they want them to be taught. We can see from private schooling and home-schooling that people are rejecting this norm, and we are on the brink of a taxation crisis as people continue to insist on vouchers and tax-rollbacks so that they can avoid a school system they see as non-responsive and bloated.

How arrogant is it to presume that everyone has to go to college to be worthwhile, or that being a white collar professional is better than being a mechanic (frankly, being a mechanic seems like a more certain career path at this point). Make kids learn the basics up to their first year or two of high school, then let them take three shop classes if that's what they want. Who are we to say that being a plumber or an electrician is inferior, and you should be forced to take four years of Political Science? We turn-off an entire subsection of the school populace to education in general with this attitude.

We ignore our brightest and best. Not enough people graduating or performing well on the federal tests? The answer is to rework the grading, change the criteria, or dumb down the curriculum. School should be hard, not easy, and grade inflation is an enormous problem. Why are people so "up and arms" about standardized tests? Because they do a damn good job of actually determining who is learned and talented, there's no way to jiggle the grades or "make things come out right". With all the talk about the SAT/GRE/LSAT being culturally biased, you don't hear a lot of complaining from those minority groups who consistently outperform "whites". Asians and Jews outperform everyone else by a large margin. Why the Asian community has not reacted more vehemently to the constant anti-Asian discrimination here in California I will never understand. The UC Regents, in particular, has fostered policies that place Asians at such a disadvantage for undergraduate, medical, and law schools that are insane.

The top 10% of students would outperform the bottom 10% regardless of how much money was spent in an attempt to achieve parity.For those who want to abolish standardized testing, you can put the day of reckoning off, if you want, but eventually people will actually have to produce results and be compared to others within the same field/profession. At that point, pretending that everyone is equally capable simply becomes a farce.

I think the biggest factor in whether a kid is going to do well at school is how intelligent he is. Unfortunately, there's not a lot we can do to increase a person's innate scholastic aptitude (although a whole bunch of factors can decrease it). That being said, why is our school system here in California entirely geared towards preparing kids for college? Not everyone is scholastically inclined, and frankly, a large percentage of the population will not be suited to a traditional four year college courseload no matter what environment they are raised in or what kind of schooling is provided. Why have we abandoned vocational/trade coursework? Why do we label kids as failures and essentially force them to come to school, feel inadequate, and become disciplinary problems? If by age 16 you have displayed no aptitude for the classical areas of learning, but you know how to overhaul a V8 engine, rewire an office network, or re-tile a bathroom, why not recognize that there are a ton of worthwhile/lucrative professions that do not require you to place the French Empire under Napoleon into the sociological/historical context of the "Total War" paradigm.

After 19 years of public schooling I have come to the conclusion that I will do whatever I can to avoid having my children attend the type of public schools I attended in Los Angeles.

Standardized testing is the best way to compare the individual aptitudes of various people. Are they perfect? No, but the exceptions are the vast minority. I think that many people just do not like the results, so they assume that something must be wrong with the test. Study after study has shown that the most reliable way to measure intelligence and scholastic aptitude is with standardized testing. Conversely, grades have been shown to be far less accurate a measure of ability

The dirty secret of vouchers is that the public education establishment opposes them not because it would reduce the funding per student (it actually increases it), but that the wide-scale implementation of the system would require sizeable lay-offs of Union teachers and bureaucrats.

Star Wars Prequels: What Might Have Been

I swear I will keep this brief:

1)Anakin should have been an adult, or at least a teenager, from the get-go.
2)Anakin should have been a hot-shot pilot or rogue type character. Making him a whiny ass may help Lucas identify with him, but it doesn't make a lot of sense.
3)The Jedi should have been in decline, or basically gone, from the galaxy by the time Episode One rolls around. Anakin should have entered training late in the hopes that he would help bring them back, but instead Amidala is killed during the war when he fails to act on his dark impulses (for example, blowing up a ship with civilians on it) and he falls to the dark side.
4)No Jar-Jar, kiddie jokes, etc.
5)The Clone Wars should have already been going on for years by the time Episode One started: and the entire Jango Fett clone idea should have been dropped.
6)The art direction and fighting styles should have matched the Original Trilogy.

There you go. How maddening is it that Battlestar Galactica, on a television show budget, get achieve more riveting and impressive space battles than the Star Wars prequels.

Our Copyright Laws=Utterly Broken

Copyright laws have essentially been hijacked by large corporations and Congress (with the silent approval of the Supreme Court). I think that the ridiculously long extensions for copyright protections (as opposed to the much more reasonable patent limitations) are driving a lot of the desire for illegal copying. Essentially Congress has granted billion dollar subsidies to the holders of valuable intellectual properties at the expense of the public domain, and therefore all of us.

The fact that the original incarnations of Disney characters, music from the 50's and 60's, and novels from the 1930's are not yet in the public domain is ludicrous. What I find hysterical is that Congress has repeatedly extended copyright protection for DECEASED creators. How, exactly, does that encourage creative works among the living?

Underlying the entire problem is the systematic gutting of the Public Domain by a misguided, lobbyist-loving Congress. People feel justified in downloading songs, but I imagine they can't put their finger on why. They just feel that "something is wrong", and that they are getting "ripped off". Well, to a certain extent I think we all are. I posit that the absurd copyright lengths we have in the U.S. are basically a form of corporate welfare. What's the limit on patents? Seven years? Copyrights extend over a hundred years, and even worse, many titles have received retroactive extensions and even been retroactively yanked from the public domain!

It is absolutely absurd that fifty year old songs are still copyrighted, particularly when the originators were long since deceased when the copyright terms were extended. It's not as though retroactively extending protections for dead musicians encourages their corpses to make more music. All we've done is provide a billion dollar windfall to the media conglomerates that buy up song rights for pennies. By locking up these rights in perpetutity, music clearing houses have little to no incentive to make what money they can, as quickly as they can, due to the time-constraints imposed by the eventual expiration of the copyright.

When a system is this screwed up, I'm not surprised that people give up, reject the entire framework, and download what they want. Imagine if we had a similar system for patents. People would invent something, and then sit on it for the next 100 years. Why bother trying to exploit it yourself, when you know you have your entire lifetime to gouge anybody else that wants to use your product? And if you decide to develop something yourself, and it's a piece of crap, who cares? Nobody will be able to make a better version for the indefinite future.

The logical fallacy of retroactive extensions has no good answer: how does expanding or extending I.P. protection for deceased individuals encourage them to produce more works (which is the Constitutional/legal reason for copyright protection in the first place)? Typically, the people who own copyrights, and fight to have the terms extended, aren't the creators of the work.

Jack Vance

After a several year hiatus in which I didn't read much Sci-Fi (previously my favorite genre), I've been giving it another go-around. I started with Alfred Bester's "The Stars My Destination" and "The Demolished Man" (which were both great), and lately I've been reading some of Jack Vance's work. I decided to read Vance, oddly enough, due to the recommendation of George R.R. Martin (who is effusive with praise). I checked out a compendium of short stories and was mildly impressed. I recently read the "Demon Prince" cycle. Fantastic series. The plotting is ridiculously elegant, these were the most creatively imagined sci-fi worlds I can recall, and the main character's quest for revenge is absolutely engrossing. They're also the finest detective novels I've read recently (a serious Blade-Runner vibe abounds). I highly, highly recommend reading these books. In fact, other than A Song of Ice and Fire and the Hobbit, I cannot imagine any other novels that I would be more intrigued to see brought to the silver screen.

I have reached a point now where I am continuously reading 100 to 200 pages of sci-fi/fantasy novels, then throwing them away and searching for the next Jack Vance work. I keep finding that he has already written entire, masterful books on random notions that I have had about what the next few decades will bring....and he wrote them decades ago. I've been tearing through his work at a steady clip, and haven't been disappointed yet. For example, I just wrapped up Blue World, which is somewhat of a cross between Moby Dick and The Old Man and the Sea. It's a masterpiece, and more metaphorical and symbolic than most of Vance's works. On one hand it can be read as a straight-forward adventure story about the descendants of shipwrecked starfarers attempting to defeat an aquatic monster. However, it can simultaneously be read as an indictment of religion, orthodox thinking, and institutionalized bureaucracies as being stultifying narcotics that sap human free-will and advancement. It is amazingly and deliciously subversive.

Fantasy Novels Finally Getting their Due

As a big dork, both literally and figuratively, (does this come as a surprise?), I have enjoyed sci-fi/fantasy novels just about forever. With the Potter books, the Narnia books, LOTR, and a few other fantasy series having been adopted with resounding success, we are beginning to see slew of other works being greenlit for production.

We now have Terry Brooks's Shannara series, and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire cycle, in pre-production. Martin's series is possibly the best fantasy ever written, and the fact that HBO is bringing it to the screen makes this even more fantastic, but the Shannara series is not one of my first choices for an adaptation. A lot of what you like as a kid doesn't really hold up well a few years down the road, and the Shannara series is a good example. Great stuff when I was in elementary school, not so great now. Elfstones of Shannara, Faerie Tale, and Druid of Shannara (wacko post-apocalyptic city...WTF?) are the only Brooks novels I would even consider revisiting.

Here are some other fantasy series that have aged poorly:

David Eddings' Belgariad/Mallorean
Anne McCaffrey's Pern series
Everything by Raymond Feist.

John Edwards Espouses Mandatory Government Service

Not a military draft, but mandatory service for everyone. I keep flashing back to Starship Troopers (an underrated flick, by the way), "Service guarantees citizenship!".

This is all over the news, so I won't bother providing a link. In general, I think this is an atrocious idea, and one that a wealthy attorney who gets $400.00 haircut shouldn't be proposing with a straight face.

Other than the relatively minor affirmative duties such as filing a tax return, filling out a census, or serving on a jury, the government shouldn't be in the business of compelling you to work for them.

Lance Berkman

I hate you, fat Elvis.

I should have known about the "even numbered" rule in regards to Lance. Much like Star Trek movies (except for Nemesis, which is even worse than Lance's Slugging Percentage), you only want Berkman in even numbered years. His stellar .240ish batting average and six home runs (which is about a third of what undrafted free agent JJ Hardy has) isn't doing much for my team. In fact, he is the lowest ranked hitter on my 25 man roster, behind such luminaries as Shane Victorino, Carlos Pena, and Xavier Nady.

This better turn around quickly.

Great Frackin' Show

In the DVD and (or so I hear....) bittorrenting era, I see no reason to watch pilots or the first season of shows. If they are successful, I typically Netflix or purchase the DVD sets, and if they aren't, I haven't wasted my time. In the last five years I've watched the pilots of maybe two or three shows.

This can be a double edged sword. I tend to miss out on shows that are cancelled after one season, for example "Freaks and Geeks", as I assume the storyline will have been aborted early and/or the show wasn't very good.

On the other hand, when I do finally get around to watching a hit, I can tear through the episodes with feverish intensity. Such is the case with Battlestar Galactica. I am watching at about a two episodes a day clip (which is somewhat unhealthy...I find myself wondering who at my office might be a Cylon), and I can't get enough.

For those who hate sci-fi, this feels more like a WWII era production than a futuristic one. The settings are somewhat low-tech, and the Cylons are often metaphorically portrayed as fascists, communists, or terrorists, depending upon any given plot-line. Other than the Shield, it's been the best television I've watched this decade.

Not to be missed.

Epic Manager Meltdown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGZUKHtW7vg

No description needed. The grenade toss is incredible.

Knocked-Up

First excellent movie I've seen in theatres this year. Not to be missed. I just added Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks to my netflix queue ahead of must-sees such as The Flash (complete series) and Babylon 5, just to let you know how much of a fan I now am of Judd Apatow.

The commercials didn't do this movie justice. It isn't a slapstick comedy, it's a "slice of life"-edy. If there is any downside to this movie, at all, it's that Katharine Heigl apparently has a phobia of having sex topless. Weird.

Gary Sheffield: Cultural Relativist

Gary Sheffield has an interesting take on the reduced number of African Americans in baseball today.

"I called it years ago. What I called is that you're going to see more black faces, but there ain't no English going to be coming out. … [It's about] being able to tell [Latin players] what to do -- being able to control them," he told the magazine. "Where I'm from, you can't control us. You might get a guy to do it that way for a while because he wants to benefit, but in the end, he is going to go back to being who he is. And that's a person that you're going to talk to with respect, you're going to talk to like a man."

To recap, the presumably white management wants players who will do as they're told and who don't want to be "treated like men", latin players don't stand up for themselves and are easily controlled, and black players will not be told what to do and demand respect. Nice job, Gary. You've managed to play into the stereotypes of three racial groups in the space of a few paragraphs!

I wonder if Sheffield is even aware of how negatively he's portraying African Americans. I'd guess "no".

On Atheists, Odin, and Zeus

I read an interesting quote by a prominent atheist yesterday (it may have been Richard Dawkins, I'm trying to find it again as we speak).

It went something to the effect of: "As a Christian, imagine how you feel about Zeus and Odin. We atheists feel the same way about Jesus. We are simply expanding our logical disbelief to one more God than you".

Interesting way of putting it.

Michelle Wie

Is her fifteen minutes up yet? It's bad enough Nike annointed her with hundreds of millions of dollars (and promote her under eighteen physique in an utterly creepy fashion), but we were then force-fed coverage of her participation in men's tournaments. Wie has done a pretty good job pissing off LPGA and PGA players alike. I guess that's what happens when fourteen year olds out-draw and out-earn superior players.

Wie's biggest problem, however, may be that she just can't seem to stop cheating. A few years back, she had to withdraw from a tournament after taking an illegal drop that left her ball closer to the hole. That's a head-scratchingly difficult rule to break. It's pretty basic: Don't drop your ball in such a manner that it is closer to the hole. Most golfers give themselves some room to err. Instead of fourth place, she managed to get herself kicked out of her first professionally entered tournament.

Strangely enough, that was the second high profile accuasation of cheating against Wie! Although the first incident didn't result in a DQ, it may have been egregious. Wie allowed a spectator to kick her ball back toward the green without replacing the ball (If a spectator intentionally affects the path of the ball, you have to place it back where the spectator touched it). On that occasion, the network television broadcasting the event refused to replay the kick. That strange decision by the network led to charges of complicity and favortism.

Now, we have her odd withdrawal from the Ginn Tribute (will they all drink to Bombay Sapphire at the nineteenth?). On pace for a high eighties score, she withdrew with an "injury" with two holes to go. Why is this suspicious? For one, Wie's camp has been largely silent about the specific diagnosis, even though she supposedly missed about two months worth of tournaments with a wrist ailment. Some golfers have openly questioned the veracity of her claims. I think everyone with a lick of interest in the subject has concluded that her withdrawal from the Ginn wasn't genuine.

LPGA rules officials engaged Wie in a discussion shortly before her withdrawal. Scuttlebutt indicates that the "88" rule was mentioned. This obscure rule reads as follows: a non-LPGA member who shoots a score of 88 (or higher) is forced to withdraw and is subsequently banned from LPGA co-sponsored events for the remainder of the calendar year". One of Wie's playing partners Alena Sharp said, "She wasn't holding her wrist. I think she just had a bad day. If it was her wrist, why wait until the last two holes?" Both Sharp and Wie's other playing partner, Janice Moody, questioned the actions of Wie's father, B.J., who appeared to give Wie advice during play. That's against the rules and would result in a two-stroke penalty for each transgression.

It seems pretty clear that Wie received illegal advice from her father (who is quickly matching Nicole/Ashlee Simpsons' and Venus/Serena Williams' respective fathers stride for stride in creepiness), didn't take the two stroke penalty, then faked an injury and withdrew from the tournament to avoid taking an eighty-eighty.

That's four allegations of cheating, two of which have essentially been proven (the illegal drop and the taking of advice from her father), in the last few years. Wie has become a circus sideshow. In golf, once you're labelled a cheater, it sticks with you forever. Just ask Vijay Singh.

An article on Wie's second cheating episode: http://edition.cnn.com/2005/SPORT/10/17/golf.wie.reut/
Most recent allegations referenced in Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Wie