The Loop and The Lou

The Pujols Legacy

2011-12-08T19:31:00.006-05:00

It's the end of an era. In a bit of news announced today and anticipated by some for years, and by many for days, Albert Pujols has accepted a deal from the Anaheim Angels worth $250 million over 10 years. News of this deal and Albert's decision has left a lot of people with a variety of feelings, thoughts and reactions.

Comparisons are flying around. ARod, Stan Musial and LeBron James are just a few. Whatever the case may be, it is a little confusing to know what motivated Albert throughout this process. For many years, Albert has professed to want to be a Cardinal for life and had also said that it's not all about the money. Was he just playing the game, or was he playing us? It's not impossible to believe that someone's opinions or attitudes might change over 11 years, but a hallmark of Albert had been his consistency and his words matching his actions, both on and off the field.

Another facet to this seemingly complex story is Pujols' agent, Dan Lozano. By one report, Lozano is a total sleezeball, even in the world of agents, were sleeze is a currency. Was Pujols led down a path by the guy who was professionally trying to show him the money? Lozano's wisdom, without the sleeze attribute, has also been called into question by the deal he previously brought Pujols through -- a deal that made little sense from Pujols' perspective, locking him up through his prime at a severe discount to then try to make a deal in his early 30s.

Publicly, Pujols was an enigma in STL. In many ways you couldn't ask for a better franchise player: A family man and Christian, and a man who made efforts for certain charities he championed. On the flipside, Pujols seemed to only show up to the press after games where he was a hero, and seemed to disappear when he was less than stellar. He was also notorious for being critical of the press and not signing autographs for kids. As time wore on, many fans started noticing what they claimed were attitude changes on the field, including arguing with umpires on borderline pitches, not hustling to first and ignoring coaching staff. Maybe these are just the things that people notice in star players, or maybe Pujols didn't like or want the total package of what it means to be a star player in today's game.

From the perspective of the Cardinals brass -- the men who have to run the business side of this game -- it is hard to find fault. The offer on the table from the Cards that Pujols turned down was already a risky proposition that could have over-extended the entire franchise for years. However, I think many thought that the deal was warranted for Albert even though that kind of deal would probably never be offered to attract a free agent. It begs the question then, was there more to this deal for the Cardinals than just money? Was there some benefit from our perspective of keeping Albert a Cardinal for life? For many fans and for this writer, absolutely. There was nothing I wanted more than to give Pujols the chance for being immortalized next to Stan the Man and for in many ways elevating the entire game itself, still smarting from steroids and other problems. For plenty of other fans, though, no way. The deal was too big, and many are glad to see him go. In any case now, it is confusing. Will the Cardinals retire his number? If he enters the HOF, will he wear a halo or a bird? These are questions that most fans didn't want to have to ask.

There is also the question of his age. Albert is 32 in January, so a 10 year deal brings him through his 41st year. This is assuming he is actually 31 now. Many, many people highly doubt this, and with good reason. There is no birth certificate, and there is an unfortunate pattern of some Latino players lying about their age (or even names). If Albert really turns 34 this January, how much could he have left in the tank? His body type is also not the kind that typically ages well, as so many 20+ year players are skinny most of their career, not stocky or fat.

Either way, the first 11 years of Albert's career speak for themselves -- incredible. And he was loved in St. Louis despite all of his short comings. If it is difficult to compare players from different generations, it is impossible to compare the economics of the game now to those of, let's say, Musial's generation. Pujols walks in rarified air so far and is already considered an elite, all-time player. And although the game is a business, it is not only a business. Many are saying how hard it would be to turn down $50+ million, and that would certainly be true for your first 50. But if it is not about the money, and you already have $250+ million for your family, your children and your great-grandchildren, and you play for a team that has given you two rings with a history and tradition that is junior only to the Yankees and that has arguably the best, most loyal fans in baseball, then what is it really about? The darn humidity?

Let us hope the best for dear Albert, at least they wear red in Anaheim. I hope he breaks every record. But if the game is a business, then I have already given him everything he has earned. I will not bad-mouth or boo the man upon his return, but I will not stand to cheer him either. It's not in my contract.

Ron Paul

2011-08-17T14:41:00.002-04:00

This is as funny as it is sad. Part of the reason I stay at all in tune with national politics is because I believe that if we can promote honest discussion on important issues, especially in the media, we will have a chance at reforming Washington.

All this tells me though is that the MSM pretty much comes from the same big business sources and that FOXNews is not really a "conservative" news channel, unless all the major networks are conservative in that they viciously protect the status quo at all costs. Honesty in important topics?

Let Jon Stewart say it funny:

I watched most of an episode of the O'Reilly factor show last night for the first time in a long time. I wasn't mad, I just got really bored. What a boring show. A bunch of people arguing over politicians and not one informative let alone intelligent thing is ever said. I couldn't keep watching and eventually had to watch Ryan Dempster pitch for the Cubs. That's how bad it got.

You've Lost that Lovin Ceiling

2011-07-28T22:47:00.006-04:00

One of the biggest things in the news these days is the hubbub the U.S. politicians are making over the debt ceiling. It's absurd. There's not much I can say about it, but I suppose people are talking about it and maybe might want to talk about it around here, which is fine.

The Republicans are hypocrates and the Democrats are Democrats. Both want to take your money and flush it down the Potomac. Actually, they want to pocket it and re-invest it in the greater D.C. area. Did you know that the majority of the top 10 richest counties are right outside Washington D.C. (the others are all right outside of Wall St.'s backyard).

Money continues to pour into our nation's capital, despite the fact that no elected official would send their kids to any of the local public schools, and we are supposed to concern ourselves with a debt ceiling?

There are some reports that the credit rating of the U.S. federal government will be downgraded regardless. There are reports that if we don't raise the ceiling a disaster beyond imagination will occur. There are reports that foreigners are buying up American homes. There are reports that Republicans are fiscal conservatives. Sorry, now is no time for jokes.

I have been thinking for awhile about writing a post about large numbers and trying to break down the scale of the deficits and debts and budgets to try to make them understandable. If there's enough interest, maybe.

Otherwise, does anyone think Obama, Reid or Boehner has the best interest of the American people at heart? This is why I, a patriot and life long Republican voter, have not voted in a federal election since I voted for Bush the second time. What difference does it make?

But I still read a lot and stay informed. I thought this was an interesting interview, and that this was a very informative article.

Debate on...

Hump Day Wednesday

2011-07-27T21:50:00.006-04:00

In spite of being a "computer guy", I've never given much thought to hackers. I always thought that they were both glamorized in movies but over looked in real security matters (like when Congress gets hacked and the IP addresses are always from China).

But this group seems to wield a good bit of power. LulzSec. Never heard of them before, but the story is pretty interesting. Gotta admit it's probably a lot more exciting than whatever their day jobs are.

I've always been a big fan of looking for more thorough ways to utilize the energy that I think of as just laying around. Gravity is a big one for me, wind, and now I guess sun. This guy designed a machine that does some pretty cool stuff just with sun power, and that's not just what you think of as "solar power" but also the amplified, direct light of the sun.

Forgive me for linking to a NYT article (I believe they're just a step slower than the average paper, or else they would be up on phone hacking charges now too). But this was an interesting observation and something I've been thinking about in general. Are we making childhood too safe for our children to turn into decent human beings? Not sure this article is making any grand claims like that, but it does make some good points.

OK, and so these videos are cool. The skydiving from plane to plane is sort of wild and hair-brained. But the flying squirrel suits this couple dons create some pretty beautiful situations.

Every time a 26-year-old girl in America quotes 'The Bachelorette', a 13-year-old girl in China graduates from college.
--from Twitter, @NotKennyRogers

News Nits

2011-06-21T22:12:00.004-04:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

Greetings, Dear Reader. News Nits is back from our stint on the DL and is currently in our basement ditching a tornado warning. Reminds me of the folks in Joplin, MO, who were lucky if they were able to ditch the storm, as many of them were not so lucky.

Check out the following videos of a group of bystanders in a gas station who got through the storm in a walk in fridge. An incredible testament to just how scary it must have been. Then check out the second video to see just how dangerous it really was and how they all might have died had they remained in the store. Thus, we are in the basement, which is not too bad since the wireless router is still working.

In other news, when a storm does come to town, it is always good advice to find shelter. However, you may want to stand while in that shelter. Turns out, sitting is bad for the body, regardless of exercise rates and other factors. Even NPR agrees, and this is bad news for those of us who have desk jobs and work in front of a computer or on a phone all day.

Did you hear about the rumor about the emails Sarah Palin didn't send? Well, in a rather brilliant move, Alaska released all of the emails that Sarah Palin sent as Governor of the state (after legal teams screened them all). The brilliance of the move comes in the form that they released all the email by paper -- 6 boxes totalling nearly 25,000 pages. And reporters lined up to get their share. Poses an interesting problem, though, how would one actually go about reading through all these emails and finding any juicy tidbits left by Palin's warpath to stardom? An information processing problem indeed. Who knows, maybe this will allow Mrs. Palin to claim she has created more jobs than her GOP opponents if she runs for President.

To round out the nits as our power just went out... there is a rising anti-intellecutalism in the Geek community. Sounds sort of contradictory, right? But think how many successful Geeks bypassed the academic path... and Geeks are always right, right?

High power magnets can thin your blood in seconds, which is cool since TLATL has a strict no drug policy. The drones are here, which is not cool, because they are here to stay. Pretty interesting look into the seedy underbelly of the military-industrial complex. Who will police the drones? I dunno, the Coast Guard?

Please enjoy and comment away a slow morning or afternoon, as we strive to enrich our readers. I need to go find a flash light.

Decision Time

2011-05-01T21:41:00.005-04:00

This isn't exactly The Loop vs. The Lou, but it is Missouri vs. Illinois. And not on the basketball court.

In downstate Illinois, you have Cairo, IL. Wedged in between the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, this town of 3,000 is the southernmost town in Illinois. And now it is being threatened by rising water levels. In 1937 it was the Ohio. This time it's the Mississippi. The solution that the army corps of engineers has come up with is to blow-up a levee and flood over 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland (and 100 homes). This blogs respective newspapers are on top of the story. Chicago Tribune explains the situation here. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch here. Please keep in mind that these links may change as the story develops.

If the state borders didn't go by rivers there is no way Cairo would be in Illinois. Judging from Google Maps, the distance from the Mississippi and Ohio at Cairo is less than 2 miles and appears to be narrower to the north of it. This little piece of land could easily be Kentucky or Missouri. And if it were Missouri, the Supreme Court might not have to step in.

So what's the right move here? Save a 3,000 person town which has been evacuated? Or blow up a levee and destroy 130,000 acres of farmland but only 100 homes? Should Missouri land suffer to save an Illinois town?

No Description Necessary

2011-04-05T12:19:00.006-04:00

Bad Idea Jeans

2011-03-08T19:24:00.003-05:00

This is not a post about American foreign policy, but it is a post about bad ideas. Or, more accurately, it's a post about ideas that do sound great on paper but in practice end up revealing some je ne sais quoi that was just not in mente following the Eureka moment -- or even upon critical review of the idea by a group of peers.

This is not a slam on the inventive spirit or the people who came up with and produced these ideas. This is like a 20 game loser in baseball, it's a backhanded compliment. I know I've been suckered by both of the inventions pictured, so I have little qualms with paying back a little through mention.

By contrast, here is a great idea, every time -- playing music with your kids.

So what say you? What are some of the worst, good ideas you can find?

TLATL Tale

2011-03-03T20:24:00.003-05:00

Check out these shanastas:

A sign in Soulard, MO may find itself at the heart of a Supreme Court decision. Freedom of Speech, as ruled by the Supreme Court recently, apparently is more important than decency or common sense as it was recently ruled (8-1) that a bunch of people from a "Christian Church" could "protest" a soldier's funeral by alerting the mourning family members that "God hates fags" and other relevant, constructive stuff like this. I wonder how they'll side when business, not a devastated, private family, has a stake in "free speech". I could see how anyone could start a business, but I can't see how anyone can just start a "Christian Church".

One of the main reasons we invaded Iraq was an informant source named "Curveball". Well, it turns out he was a liar as well. There was a great video about this on CNN, but they have since taken it down, since the 24 hour news cycle has expired. Here's a related link anyway. Again, I'm not into whining or pining, but let's not forget the past. As Stephen Colbert says, "There's an old saying about those who forget history. I don't remember it, but it's good."

This link seems innocuous enough but indicates a couple of indirect, really important points: 1) Despite the misty eyed proclamations of Obama worshippers, GITMO is still alive and functioning, and 2) Despite some concern earlier, apparently the CIA now believes that Osama is still alive.

I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
- Mitch Hedberg

As of February 17th, Belgium has not had a government in 249 days, which they believe is some sort of record. It's sort of a reality check for us, as our governments -- state and federal -- face shutdowns behind claims that this would lead to disasters beyond our imaginations. But let's settle down a bit and realize that maybe we don't need our governments as much as they need us. How do the Belgians do it? Looooooots of syrup and beer.

St. Louis is again the most crime-ridden city in the nation. Where's Nelly when you need him? However, I heard today on the radio that Chicago was the fifth most miserable city to live in. [don't know how to link to radio]

A product of the evil corporation IBM, code-named "Watson", has defeated the equally evil Mormon Ken Jennings in a contest of Jeopardy that not even Alec Trebec, the evil Canadian, could ruin. Actually, none of them is evil, or comes from evil (though I wouldn't vote for a Canadian Mormon), and Watson represents a pretty incredible feat in a constrained problem in the field of computer science called Natural Language Processing. Deep Blue. Watson. If IBM can develop a machine that can hit a curve ball, I'll be worried.

Uh, you know how AT&T's phone network stinks? Isn't it awesome that Verizon now supports Apple products? Well, it appears that Verizon may have dropped approximately 10,000 emergency calls in one night in one area. Hmmmmm, makes me wonder how that network will handle the flood of users converting away from ATT, especially in big, dense cities.

Sometimes, famous guys get a bad rep. But aren't there those kinds of guys where you still think, Man, it would be fun to hang out and have a beer with that guy at least. Hank Steinbrenner is not one of those guys. In general, I don't want to transform baseball into a sea of equality like the NFL, and I'm not happy with teams like the Royals who pocket their welfare checks and are in the black by opening day rather than competing, but when the Yanks are spending more in luxury tax and revenue sharing than most teams in baseball spend on payroll, something is wrong there. And like I said, Hank doesn't exactly seem like a guy who's in any way decent to hang out with.

Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to come back soon, try not to be overwhelmed with all the choices out there on the web.

Time To Get The Led Out

2011-02-21T23:43:00.004-05:00

This Friday and Saturday, Celebration Day returns to the Pageant for two nights of Led Zeppelin. The band (most of whose members also comprise the Pink Floyd tribute band El Monstero) sells out the venue for two nights of LZ cathexis.

If you have ever had a period in your life where you dug Led Zeppelin, catching this show at some point is a must. This isn't just another tribute act. This band puts everything into the show, playing for over 3 hours straight each night. They do their best to recreate a real Zeppelin show, too: double-necked Gibson guitars, an acoustic set in the middle of the show at the front of the stage, the violin bow during Dazed and Confused, the rest of the band leaves the stage while the drummer does his best Bonham during "Moby Dick", and Jimmy even plays a theremin solo during Whole Lotta Love (who the heck has a theremin just laying around?).

I was a geek enough that last year I actually noted the setlist:

Celebration Day
Heartbreaker
Black Dog
Rock 'n Roll
Trampled Under Foot
Thank You
Immigrant Song
The Lemon Song
Tangerine
No Quarter
Dancing Days
The Ocean
Dazed and Confused
Since I Been Lovin' You
Moby Dick
Going To California
That's The Way
The Battle Of Evermore
The Song Remains the Same
Over The Hills And Far Away
All of my Love
In The Light
The Rain Song
Whole Lotta Love ->
Bring It On Home ->
Whole Lotta Love ->
How Many More Times ->
Whole Lotta Love

Encore:
Kashmir
Stairway To Heaven

A Day In Pictures

2011-02-16T21:57:00.000-05:00

Dawson is devastated.

Dwight is delirious.

Doogie is distraught.

Dennis is distressed.

Dana is disheartened.

And McCain is mad.

Why?

They're all Cardinal fans, of course. The Cards and Pujols failed to reach agreement before Camp Pujols' deadline. This all but ensures Albert Pujols will be wearing the uniform of another team in 2012. Yes, the Cards will have the opportunity to compete with other teams when Pujols becomes a free agent after the 2011 season. But the failure to reach an agreement now indicates that the Cards are not willing to spend the money (estimated to be in the neighborhood of 10 years / $300 million) that at least one team will pitch him in November. It's hard to blame the Cards for not wanting to spend that kind of dough, but I'd always had a boyish dream that Pujols would retire as one of the greatest to ever play the game, and as a career Cardinal.

Oh well.

I suppose not everyone feels this is bad news.

I heart Egypt!

2011-02-15T18:46:00.003-05:00

The American people demand information about Egypt, so why not let them eat cake?

The brief discussion, started in another post, has flooded over the banks of the Nile and is now threatening Cairo. As we at TLATL constantly meet the needs of our Dear Reader, we stand ready to provide. It is always hard to speak broadly, for example of the "media". Exceptions abound. It may be even harder to speak usefully of events in foreign cultures. For as much as Egypt is a neighbor in this global village, it is perhaps more important to point out that Americans seem more enamored with our interest in Egypt than in the actual country or people of Egypt. Whatever questions have been raised, they are usually with the devilish smirk of how to frame our position, our involvement. Buyer beware.

The Ben Bernanke

2011-02-09T18:49:00.004-05:00

In a coincidence of events today, I came across the issue of "Quantitative Easing." This fancy term was a hot topic for awhile, but now apparently plays second fiddle to the chaos in Egypt. Is anyone following what is going on in Egypt? I personally find it rather uninteresting, and as the name of this blog references two fine cities in the great Midwest, I find it more interesting to talk about stuff that affects us more directly.

The mainstream media is a constant dismay for me. I know, I know, that's now an overused and cliched term, but upon finding this article on the NYT website, not only was I saddened by the level of reporting on a really important topic, I was further dismayed to view the home page and find it listed in the second row, behind Egyptanistan. I revisited the NYT Home page just moments ago to reference it, however it is not a static link. Now the reference to Bernanke is totally gone (as is the Egypt story) and there's just a picture of a shirtless doofus politician from NY.

A good friend of mine is a highly accomplished and respected journalist, and he has mentioned to me in conversation how he is not happy with the attacks on "mainstream media" and that bloggers are not professional journalists. This is true, and the attacks are indeed sad. But when videos like the one below contain more information (and are more entertaining) than a NYT reporter can scrap together, I am not surprised to see the Super Bowl ad for TheDaily.com, the first tablet-oriented, virtual news"paper" I know of. Happy viewing, dear Reader.

Exit Michael Steele... Enter Reince Priebus

2011-01-17T23:26:00.002-05:00

Here he is ladies and gentlemen!

OK... haha... but really - it's not that far a stretch:

And the secret word of the day? 'Blood libel' of course!!

Post

2011-01-01T11:26:00.000-05:00

State of the Nation

2010-12-29T18:09:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone.

As we approach a new year, I thought it might be worthwhile to post some thoughts that have been churning around in my head regarding the state of our nation. I'm afraid this post is going to pose a number of questions and not a lot of answers. But nonetheless I wanted to at least put these thoughts out here to see what others think.

I've been thinking of this post for a while, but was prompted to actually do it today after listening to the NY Times Front Page podcast, and hearing that "retail spending rose 5.5 percent in the 50 days before Christmas." This seemed to fit with what I saw in the past couple months - malls and retail outlets were packed with shoppers. But the story doesn't add up to me. Isn't the unemployment rate still almost 10 percent? How is it that people can afford to spend as much as they did in the same period of 2005?

The Times article quotes Craig R. Johnson, president of the consulting firm Customer Growth Partners saying "In the face of 10 percent unemployment and persistent housing woes, the American consumer has single-handedly picked himself off the mat, brushed his troubles off and strapped the U.S. economy on his back." Let's see, unemployment still high, housing prices still low... maybe if we spend more that will fix it? The economy is slow, let's extend a lot of credit to people who don't really understand (or don't want to understand) the risk of credit card debt? It worked in 2005, maybe it will work again? Am I the only one who finds it strange that this man is applauding the American Consumer for what I can only see as the same pattern of reckless lifestyle that helped get us into this mess?

So that got me to wondering exactly how much money Americans are saving. A couple months ago I listened to the episode "Is America Ready for a 'No-Lose Lottery'?" on Freakonomics Radio. The episode presents an idea worthy of its own discussion - can a lottery be used to encourage people to save? But the story used to setup the episode was what stuck with me. In a survey last year, 2100 Americans were asked if they could come up with $2,000 cash in thirty days. 46% of Americans said they could not. The survey consisted of people from all income brackets, and the result I found most alarming was that of people making between $100,000 and $150,000 a year, 25% responded that they could not come up with $2,000 in thirty days. Now, the sample size is a bit small. So I won't dwell on this too long. But still.

OK, so back to how much Americans are saving. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysts, as of November 2010, Americans are saving about 5.3% of their disposable income. If you look back through the years in that link, you'll see that this is about as good as it has been for the past decade, about the same as the 90's, worse than the 80's, much worse than the 70's and worse than the 60's.
So Americans are saving a smaller portion of their disposable income than they saved in the past.

Is that a bad thing? Taken at face value, one would say yes. But there are other factors to consider. Perhaps Americans don't need to save as much because they're getting more for their dollar. Compared to the rise in inflation, healthcare and education costs are increasing much more rapidly. So, I'd say no, we're not getting more for our money, and yes, the decrease in percentage of disposable income saved is a bad thing.

Why is it such a bad thing? Because all Ponzi schemes eventually collapse. Social Security will, too, and probably before the readers of this blog retire. (OK, there is a lot of debate over when/if Social Security will dry up, but I'll contend that if your retirement plans depend upon collecting Social Security checks, that is a risky plan at best). We all know the story. The magical age at which one qualifies for Social Security is not rising fast enough to keep up with the rising cost of living and average life span. But here's something you may not have known that is pretty frightening: The money that funds Social Security is not sitting in a trust somewhere, safely invested and earning modest interest. The money in the fund is invested in government treasuries. In other words, the the money in the Social Security trust fund has been lent to the government. No kidding. And the kicker? The debt the government owes to the Social Security trust fund is NOT counted in the national deficit. So tack on another $2.4 trillion to the current national deficit. Check out the episode "In Search Of The Social Security Trust Funds" from the excellent Planet Money podcast series on NPR for more info.

All this leads me back to my original complaint: Americans are spending the money they should be saving. If you agree that this is a problem, how is that fixed? Previously in this post I linked to an article co-authored by Peter Tufano, who was also partly responsible for the "$2,000 in 30 days" survey. Tufano suggests that perhaps people should be educated about compound interest and credit card debt, rather than educated about retirement savings. Seems like a good idea to me. I'm all for education on both topics. There is also the option of legislation to "protect consumers against predatory lenders". My knee-jerk reaction is usually to not involve the government and/or that people should be wary enough to know what they're getting into, but I think I'm in favor of this idea, too.

So what say all of you? Do you agree/disagree with what I've said? Like to argue points or add more? Have ideas for a fix or just need to vent a little like I did? I am eager to hear thoughts on this.

Happy New Year.

Hack and Sack

2010-12-01T22:58:00.000-05:00

You may have heard recently that a computer worm infiltrated and seriously debilitated two Iranian nuclear facilities. I'll admit that when I first heard about this, my reaction was one of awe. The more details that come out, though, the more it becomes clear (yet again) that the real battlefields are in a virtual world; that the largest military in the world can't necessarily keep a nation from being brought to its knees.

When word first spread of the worm, the popular belief was that the creators of the worm - the "Stuxnet worm" - were those most likely to be harmed by the production of those facilities, the Israelis. This theory was based on a word found in the worm ("Myrtus"), which may have been an intentional reference to a biblical figure who saved Israelis from the Persians. Couple this with the wide smiles sported by Israeli officials when asked about Stuxnet, and the theory didn't seem that wild. "Oh, those Jews and Persians. They'll never get along, will they?"

I actually had my own conspiracy theory. It wasn't the Israelis. It was the U.S., or the Chinese, or the Russians, and they were merely practicing on the Iranians for a bigger target.

As the worm has been studied, some new information has emerged. Check out this FoxNews article for the details (if you read one linked article in this post, read that one). I don't know about you, but that article blew me away. (By the way, yet another blow to Microsoft's security credibility. And was anyone else surprised to see a nation using Windows as the OS to control their nuclear facility?).

Now, as coordinated and precise as the attack was, I suppose it actually shouldn't be that surprising. I think it's generally understood that governments, militaries and even large corporations have divisions whose sole purpose is to poke holes in the defense of their opposition and infiltrate or destroy. Wikileaks recently let it out that it was the Chinese government that hacked Google in early 2009. There are reports of China and Russia hacking into U.S. electrical grids. Heck, in 2002 the U.S. tried to sell the Chinese a bug-ridden plane for the Chinese President. We even have our own cyber-intelligence division here at TLATL, but it mostly consists of Coovo calling up the authors of our rival blog The Lou and The Loop and pretending to be their mom and asking if they remember her maiden name because she forgot it again.

If our governments and national infrastructure aren't safe, neither are the big banks. So my question to everyone is, how scared should we be? Is it pointless to be paranoid about things out of our control, or are there any, even small, steps we can take to protect ourselves? Friend of TLATL Joel once wrote to me "Paranoia will destroy ya." True, but stories like these still make me feel a little helpless.

Hope that cheered everyone up! And if you get any calls from your mom asking for her maiden name, just tell her it's "passw0rd".

Tea Time?

2010-10-25T23:05:00.002-04:00

How about these Brits? I can't pretend to have deep knowledge about the UK budget or politics, but I find it refreshing to see a nation tightening their belts for the good of future generations. Across the Channel, though, more than a million people went on strike in protest of Sarkozy's bid to raise retirement age from 60 to 62.

What do you all make of this? We face the same problems here, but do we have the nerve to tackle them? If nothing else, it will be interesting to see how the UK handles its spending cuts in the next 5 years.

Making Your Own Fun

2010-09-29T22:03:00.000-04:00

.....And We're Back!

Google just came out with Google Instant, and it's awesome. I use Google multiple times a day. If Google Instant saves you 2-5 seconds for each search, it probably saves me 30-60 seconds a day. Which is.... not a lot. But I can't help it - there is something so satisfying about seeing the results for your search appear before you even finish typing in your search criteria.

Another search engine feature that has been out for quite some time but also brings me happiness is type-ahead search.

How do you enter search criteria? Do you enter keywords, or just ask a question? For years, I was a keyword searcher. If I wanted info on a topic, I used 2-3 related words in my search. Seeing suggested results in type-ahead search showed me that a lot of people just type their questions into the search box.

For some cheap amusement, type the beginning of a question into Google to see what the most popular endings are to that question. Try "why is my" or "what would happen if" or "how many times can a". Or just start with "why" or "how". Keep adding words and see where it goes.

And just to be fair... I'm pretty sure the George Bush search results are part of some incredibly stupid fight between his detractors and supporters. I recall hearing something about how some group of people were trying to game search results so that if you typed George Bush into a search engine, the first type-ahead response would be "an idiot". His supporters must have come to his cyber-aid and tried to game the system the other way.

Gaming search results for George Bush
Gaming search results for George Bush is funny
Gaming search results for George Bush is a sign you should get a job

I promise to try to be better about posting, if you promise to try to be better about listening.

Hasta pronto,
el rollo

News Nits

2010-07-13T21:23:00.009-04:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

Have you missed us? News Nits has missed you, Dear Reader. What a world we live in, where datetimestamps string together and turn blips into blurbs into twitters into conversations and a month goes by. Going through a month without News Nits is like going through the winter without corn. We apologize, professionally and amateurly, since we don't get paid but we wish we did.

Enough. So many nits to cover. Can you believe this? Ford the auto company is introducing its first Electronic Vehicle to the U.S. (I... like...) Big but, it's not a cute little hybrid like many of the foreign companies have tried to introduce, it's a delivery vehicle. Huh? You mean Ford is trying to do something more than put iPod connections in their vehicles and hire Mike Rowe? Dare I say it? Is Ford leading the way in auto innovation? Well maybe not yet, as it seems Hybrid vehicles are still a luxury item for people who can afford to be cool Green.

Prepare to be totally freaked out, or should I say geeked out. DARPA (the Pentagon's Educational Grant-funding wing) has announced it is partnering with Ridge Global to map the "underground". This includes like sewers and stuff where creepy crawly terrorists like to hide. Next, they plan to map the scowls of Donald Rumsfeld. (We're not the only media still living in the Bush era.)

Anyone else sick of Twitter? How weird is it to constantly talk about yourself? But if it's the only way you can actually find your friends, here's a neat little meta-program that combines all your so-called friends onto one site. It actually could be sort of useful in a situation like SXSW.

Have you been paying attention to how bad our economy is and how great China is doing? Yeah, they own virtually all our debt, which means our citizens' hard work over the next 30 years will be making the government of China rich. Who's your daddy now? I've got nothing against the people of China, I just don't want to work for them. Especially if they still use sticky rice to hold their buildings together. And if you've voted for Gore, Bush, McCain or Obama, then you have supported the policies that have gotten us here. Stinks, don't it? Before you get scared off of some foreign trade policy that might help our country, don't run from "protectionism" as a possible alternative to "free trade" or "offshoring" or "globalism." (This is just awesome.)

Apple, an American company, has been getting some complaints about the reception on the iPhone 4. In fact, Apple seems to make lots of slightly unusual design decisions. That, however, has not seemed to affect sales in a negative fashion. Nor has it stopped them from partnering with mega-companies in fairly cool ways.

Here's some cool stuff on the oldest trees on the planet. Also, since universities became all about big business, you may now take classes on UFO studies. Philadelphia remains the class of the U.S. in fans, and it's not just football or basketball anymore.

President Obama, Friend of the People, softened his stance on off-shore drilling just months before the BP Gulf oil disaster and a couple years after his no-nonsense opposition to it during his 2008 acting role as candidate. He has also decided to take a page from the Bush-Rumsfeld era and is reviving our "nuclear" missile program in ways that made Bush look dumb. Yes We Can! And while many people across our land realize it might only make sense to enter into a voluntary foreclosure by simply halting payment on their mortgages, data is coming back suggesting that the government's intrusion into the real estate market has not only not worked but has slowed down recovery by filling the streets with economic uncertainty. Steve Wynn agrees:

Back to the streets, it is now illegal in three states to record cops doing their jobs. How many old science fiction movies does this validate? Speaking of science fiction, Lou Reed played an entire concert arranged for dogs. What is New Jersey growing in their gardens? Twinkies? If you're looking to attract a new alternative to America's Soccer Moms, it appears that Cougars can't get enough of Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men.

Verizon is claiming they just pushed 1 Gbps through two PCs on their network as well as 10 Gbps through their heavily vested FIOS optics system. Rumors are that Apple will open their iPhone this coming January to other networks. Prepare to be rocked. A bunch of kids discovered a new cave on the surface of Mars. You think your commute is tough?

As the economy continues to cough up blood, the Republicans picked an unusual time to prove their deep philosophical points about welfare and debt. They, however, continue to be effective at pointing out how stupid they are, economically and politically. Around the world, Google struggles with operations in China as China now leapfrogs the U.S. not just as a polluter but as a consumer of energy. Keep your eyes out for headlines regarding cyber terrorism. The Axis of Evil could become a long list soon.

And finally, if you feel like you'd want to help out the editors of The Loop and The Lou but find raw cash tacky, consider a gift that keeps on giving. We broke the story on the problems of running in fancy running shoes, so we'd like to at least get some credit for our media savy once in awhile.

Happy Trails, dear Readers.

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. -- Alex de Tocqueville

[Editor's addition: This is the link mentioned in the comments.]

The Big Short

2010-06-03T00:29:00.000-04:00

I recently finished Michael Lewis' "The Big Short" and wanted to pass on the recommendation to you all. Probably the best book I've read in the last 2-3 years.

I know many a reader of this blog has read Lewis' "Moneyball", or perhaps his book "The Blind Side" on which the movie was based. One of Lewis' greatest talents is his ability to break down complicated subjects into simple, compelling stories. You didn't have to be a baseball geek to understand "Moneyball", a mortgage-bond expert to enjoy "Liar's Poker", or a Sandra Bullock fan to love "The Blind Side" (I actually haven't read/seen the last one, but have only heard good things).

The Big Short covers not only how and why the sub-prime mortgage market tanked (and took everthing else down with it), but how three separate, small-time investment shops saw it coming, and bet BIG against it. This is about as close as any book about the sub-prime mortgage market can be to being a page-turner. The further I got into it, the harder I found to put it down.

It's an entertaining read, requires little prerequisite expertise of Wall Street and bond markets, and on top of all that, it's pretty educational.

Has anyone else read this book, or have another book they want to recommend?

"DISCRIMINATION"

2010-05-21T19:45:00.003-04:00

Discrimination is a word that has taken on a super-charged meaning. At some point in time, it used to indicate a certain sort of sophistication: She has a discriminating taste in music, it's too bad about her taste in men.

Now, it almost always has racial or oppressive connotations, and it carries the same sort of guilty charge that "rape" does.

The good news is that at least in the United States, we still have the free speech to talk about these things. Not every Western nation does. Germany for years outlawed any debate or vocal skepticism over specific claims against the Holocaust. Canada outlaws "hate" speech, where you can't even say anything that might be contrued as hateful -- it's a crime, even if there's no action associated with it. By contrast in America, the KKK can optain a permit to hold a rally and as long as it is peaceful and doesn't incite violence, it will unfold and happen unhindered. I don't mean to single out a white supremecist group, there are plenty of minority-based hate-filled groups too, who all may say whatever they want.

Here is a different example of discrimination. Apple has a policy of not selling iPads to customers with cash. Their purpose is to monitor how many each person buys (via credit card) so that the units can't be smuggled to Europe before their release date there. This story might bother some people to never buy Apple again. Or it might have been staged. Or it might just be too bad. That's up to you to figure out for yourself.

But in a nation dominated by a technically free but mostly homogenous mainstream media and academic institutions, complexity and debate over racial issues is not effectively tolerated, even if they involve other issues as well. Here is an example of a video debate between Rand Paul -- the recent GOP primary winner in KY -- and Rachel Maddow. It's an interesting clip. I had written off Rachel Maddow long ago as a female version of Keith Oberman, but she at least showed some restraint here as she continually bumped her head against the limits of her narrow understanding of what was being talked about. She is definitely going above and beyond what most talk show hosts are capable of, but she finally just ends by shaking her head in disappointment that someone else could possibly allow for a different view or a different solution to an agreed upon problem.

So what do you think? Is Rand Paul a racist because he doesn't exactly support the federal government dictating the terms of business for private companies, even if that discrimination is on racist terms? How would Ms. Maddow vote on a bill (not to mention a 45 year old law that is not really up for debate) that she agreed with 90% but disagreed with 10%?

Bananas about Bananas

2010-05-16T21:59:00.001-04:00

I'm not much of a cook. I do appreciate a really well-prepared meal, but when I prepare my own meals I usually opt for something that requires minimal preparation. (As I write this, I realize that I'm setting up this post to be something like "The Boring Meals of a Bad Cook". I'm sure we'll get a ton of hits off this one.)

What I really want to talk about today is bananas. I have two very simple meals that can be made much better by adding bananas. The first was apparently The King's favorite meal, and the second is the title of a Jack Johnson tune.

We all grew up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Some of us even make them for our kids now. But do any of you out there eat PB&J anymore? I don't. I don't think it would be bad, but why eat PB&J when you could eat PB&B? Get yourself a piece of some kind of good, hearty, grainy type bread. Slather a bunch of CRUNCHY peanut butter on one piece. Lay some banana circles on top of that. Pour yourself a big glass of milk. You now have an incredibly delicious lunch. And filling, too. This isn't the kind of thing you want to eat everyday (and I don't recommend the 2 tbsp of butter in Elvis' recipe either). But when you need to make something fast, it really hits the spot.

Anyone else out there like to cook pancakes for themselves or their family? That's one of my favorite weekend morning activities. Now, I don't do anything fancy here. We have a big bag of pancake mix, and I mix that with the appropriate amount of milk (I prefer mixing with milk over water). Pour your pancake on the griddle and start cutting very thing banana slices on top of the pancake. When you make banana pancakes, it's best to pour only one pancake at a time on the griddle, because you want the bananas to sink into the batter as much as possible, and if another pancake has already been cooking while you bananafied the first one, the bananas won't sink as far into that pancake as desirable. I do recommend giving each banana slice a slight nudge down into the batter after you've placed it on the pancake. When you flip the pancake, the bananas will fry a little, and that enhances the banana flavor a little; much like how toasting bread enhances certain flavors in bread that you don't taste when it's not toasted. I recommend a little bit of butter on your banana pancakes, but no syrup. All syrup does is mask the great banana pancake flavor.

So those are my two simple banana recipes that I recommend you all try. Anyone else out there have any banana dishes they want to share? Or just easy-to-prepare but delicious dishes? Let's hear 'em.

Tough As Balloons

2010-05-12T19:51:00.000-04:00

I keep having this vision of a commercial for a really tough pickup truck. Only in the commercial, instead of dropping yards of top soil into the bed of the truck, they drop multi-colored party balloons.

Instead of making quick turns through thick mud with no spinning tires, they'll show someone slowly yielding to a hybrid in merging traffic.

Instead of showing the truck towing another truck with yet another truck in its bed, they'll show two trucks towing this truck. All while the driver sleeps.

I'm just saying, I think that would make a great ad.

Adult Videos

2010-04-29T20:24:00.005-04:00

I've always found it strange that pornographic films are often euhponised as "Adult Films" or "Adult Videos". Don't worry, I'm not here to judge anyone or second guess the natural instincts of men when thrown through a perversion, I just find it strange that "adult" can reference both maturity and immaturity.

In any case, welcome to Adult Videos here at TLATL. Sometimes (often), I get sick of reading and it's nice to be able to watch and listen. In fact I often find myself challenging people who seem to live in books or who hold the act of reading even above the act of living itself. Why aren't videos a good way to learn?

First off, to get your juices going, here is a video of a freely elected Congressman from the 4th district of Georgia, expressing his concern that some military decision to shift troops around might run the risk of capsizing the island of Guam.

Fear not, dear Viewer, we are not all equally paying a share of this man's $174,000 salary. Some are paying more of it than others.

Hilarity and insanity aside, far more "normal" Congressmen say slightly less dumb but far more harmful things all the time, and we vote for them too. But not every person in Congress is saying dumb things. Some are saying truly interesting things that not everyone agrees with and that certainly not every Congressman will go for, in spite of its possible necessity or even moral righteousness. Congressman Ron Paul dishes out some harshes through an Elmer Fudd facade to make sure that our folks on Capitol Hill don't get too congratulatory for their job well done. This little ditty was given in support of a bill that temporarily suspends the automatic annual payraises given to our friends (like our friend, Rep Hank Johnson, above) in Congress. You'd think not giving yourself a raise would be a slam dunk, feel good in Congress, if for nothing else the political symbolism.

Dude, quit harshing my mellow.

Finally, make some popcorn. Here comes a real Adult Video. This woman's name is Elizabeth Warren. You may have heard of her already, she's an Obama darling. She is currently the Czar of something in our country (the Congressional Oversight Panel) and is a very smart cookie. Rolling Stone did a decent number on her a couple weeks ago. This video is of her presentation some time ago at Berkely about the statistics describing the disappearance of the middle class. It's a long Adult Video, nearly an hour. I recommend skipping to minute 6, unless you like introductions and fluff. Sorry for the pun.

Three things strike me from this video. 1) It's a very interesting story, though it appears to be a story of symptoms rather than causes. 2) She appeals to her audience at the end to justify her work by linking it to the plight of poverty in our country, as if the disappearance of the middle class wasn't an alarming enough thing to arouse the elite academics in the room. 3) Would regulations, even well-guided ones, really prevent stuff like this from happening again? As she points out in her RS interview, and as I certainly believe, the only way anything will carry any weight is to sever the tie between Private Risks and Public Insurance.

Happy watching, dear Viewers.

Money, Ball

2010-04-18T13:02:00.011-04:00

With the nation still dry-heaving its way through this economic hangover, nothing palliates the soul like the beginning of baseball season. We've already seen a 20 inning game and the first no hitter of the season. Even the Astros have finally won a game. Good times, good times.

If you're not lucky enough to be at the game in your town, I'm lining up some reading and listening, dear Reader, for your spring leisure. These articles are loosely related to each other. First is the news that the government is coming after Goldman Sachs. This gives me a glimmer of hope. However, we'll see if it goes anywhere for a couple reasons: a) most of the high ranking gov't financial officials are from Goldman Sachs, and b) with all the shenanigans that clearly happened, how much of it was actually and more importantly, provably illegal? (sort of begs the question if regulation would even work?) Not sure of the implication of this being a civil vs. a criminal type thing.

This next link was forwarded to me the other day by a friend about a hedge fund that was very active in the creation of the financial mess, though again, it's questionable if they did anything illegal. The first 40 minutes of this mp3 are very interesting. Although it may unfairly imply that Magnetar was the main culprit or main agent that caused this whole thing, it at least explains very clearly how some of the worst aspects of it happened. Though, don't forget that none of this could have happened without the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates far too low or without the implicit backing that the Fed and Treasury have given to Wall Street in the event of past and future failures. In other words, the implication is that if we had regulated Magnetar, we could have prevented this, however, the very people we would supposedly trust to regulate Wall Street not only failed to regulate it or themselves but financially encouraged these types of behavior. But a very well done and informative show.

Finally, and this one may be harder to swallow, but it is some commentary by William Deresiewicz about the disadvantages of an elite education. The reason I offer this for consideration is related to the tight link between the Ivy League and our government financial institutions (e.g., Goldman Sachs and the Federal Researve). Do we not give passes to too many people simply because they are "smart" and went to a top school? Perhaps we would change our perspective if we considered that Harvard may be producing more crooks every year than Harlem.

But back to baseball. At a recent game in Milwaukee, I was dismayed to find the triangle nacho chip had infiltrated Miller Park as well. Is nothing sacred? A couple nice reads about the Boys of Summer. First, is an interesting ranking of the organizations of baseball. Boston and St. Louis top the list, and I'll let you find out for yourselves who is at the bottom. Then, a nice little blog about the latest, greatest pitching prospect in the game, Stephen Strasburg, last year's number one draft pick. This also calls to mind that even if you can't get to a Major League ballpark, there is plenty of good baseball in the minors and independent leagues. In fact, in some ways, they offer a much better baseball experience.

So whether you're more interested in the ivy at Cambridge or the walls of Wrigley, take heart! Spring is taking us into summer, one pitch at a time.

[April 22, Editor's Addition: Here's a link for those interested to a speech given by the same William Deresiewicz about Solitude and Leadership.]

March- The Greatest Tease

2010-03-15T21:03:00.003-04:00

As someone who nearly totally despises Winter and totally loves Spring, March is a difficult time of transition for me. Every year, without fail, I begin to think that Spring in all its glory should be here on March 1. I start pulling out shorts and sandles. I start thinking about going to the pool. I literally start going out to the garden and looking for flowers to bloom. I am 35 years old and I know that March 1 does not bring Spring with it. Yet, I get fooled every year.

I have been thinking about an analogy for what March is like for me and I have found it. For those of you who have ever driven from St. Louis to Denver on Highway 70, you will know what I am talking about. March is Colorado.

When you are driving West on Highway 70 and your destination is Denver, all you can think about from the start of trip is seeing the Rocky Mountains. Your mind can focus on nothing else- Rocky Mountains. I have made the drive at least five times and everytime I watch the mile markers count down as I cross Kansas, knowing that Colorado and the Rockies are only 200 or 150 or 50 or 10 miles away. Every time, my sense of anticipation begins to build that Colorado is just a mile away. Then it arrives- the border and I cross into Colorado and look around and see.... nothing. Nothing at all except the same crap I have been staring at for the approximately 6000 miles it takes to cross Kansas. Eastern Colorado has to be one of the most disappointing places on earth. Flat nothingness- much worse than Kansas and the thing that makes it much worse is that at least in Kansas, you didn't kid yourself that you were close to your destination.

March treats me the same way. I go to bed at night on Feb. 28 thinking, "Thank God that tomorrow is March 1. Spring will be here tommorow." Then, in general, I wake up to a day with a high of 33 degrees and I realize that I have been fooled again. Now March is not all bad by any means, just like Colorado is not all bad. As soon as you hit the Rockies, Colorado is the most beautiful and majestic of states. March is the same. Later March is often glorious and exactly what I have been expecting it to be.

Once I started to think about it more, I realized that the analogy worked well for Kansas as well. Kansas, of course, is February. Gray, dreary, monotonous and it seems to go on forever.

I tried to see if I could come up with any other state/month combos and I only came up with one more. Nevada is December. When you think of either one of those, they are both pretty non-descript places/months dominated completely by one location/date of great celebration and decadence. Feel free to toss in any further month/state combos that you can think of.

News Nits

2010-03-06T11:31:00.009-05:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

Like a bobsled through your brain, news nits comes back with a bumper crop of new years nits. Lots of little happenings in the news these days, from business to politics to technology to women owning giant rodents as pets (doesn't this charming couple, more than a little, look like each other too?). So let's push off, jump in and see if we can count the curves.

In an alarming move, Google has announced they're leaving China. This strikes me as more than just a little odd. Google does anything they want to, and they tend to do it well. What does this say about them? More, what does this say about conditions in China? We know Chinese companies are competing well here (everything we buy is Made In China), but are we competing there?

Well, maybe we can keep inventing stuff for the Chinese to build for us. A professor at North Carolina State University has invented a kind of metal foam that can compress up to 80% of its original size and retain its structural integrity and bounce back.

The Middle East is still a big bag of doorknobs. How would you like to be Israel? Hamas is now floating bombs up to Israeli shores. Of course, this unusual tactic and attack is in response to Mossad "allegedly" killing one of Hamas's top dogs while he was on a trip to Dubai. Dubai police have identified 26 suspects in the poisoning, there's a lot of footage of this on TV, Mossad agents walking around the hotel, dressed in tennis gear and other normal looking clothes. Anyone else find it odd, that Israel is so effective at fighting wars on terror? They send 26 after a guy, we send 100,000? Another thing to ponder is that Israel is surrounded on all sides by people who hate them, and they have never had an airplane hijacked. Before we start doing naked scans in airports of each other, maybe we should ask if there are other ways?

News Nits loves new forms of transportation, when it's economically and technologically feasible. There's a proposal on the table for a 220 mph train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. California seems like an ideal place to build a high speed train, the ultimate trip should run 2 hours and 40 minutes. If they could figure out a way to provide continuous wi fi access, that would change the nature of much of west coast travel. Oddly, a similar measure has been proposed between Madison and Milwaukee, WI. Somehow, that doesn't seem like the right fit, but who knows. It would be cooler and maybe more fitting for WI to build a giant log flume or water slide between the two cities that are only an hour away by car anyway.

I keep waiting for Microsoft to use their considerable fortune and market share to buy the time it will take to redesign their OS from the BIOS up. But they don't. They seem to continually just try to remarket and reposition without any willingness to rebuild. The results of kludging your products ahead can end up with unpredictable results. Window 7 is apparently not only draining batteries but permanently altering their ability to function. I do not even have a theoretical explanation for this (and I am usually willing to hazard a guess about anything!).

Here comes the economics geek in me. In case you are crazy enough to try to follow the economic tax swindles perpetrated by our elected leaders, then this video might be for you. Looks like the "TARP pay backs" we've been hearing about aren't quite the whole truth:

If you've been getting into some of the raw economics behind the thinking of most modern economists (like Paul Krugman), then you've probably heard of John Maynard Keynes and probably never heard of FA Hayek. This video is a fairly clever and funny recap of an historical debate that came to pass between these two rival economists, with two very different ideas about proper ways to think of large economies. Keynes justifies government management of the economy through fiscal and monetary policies on the justification "in the end, we're all dead," meaning, let's get paid today, screw tomorrow. Hayek bases his theories on personal behavior and safe guarding free markets and risk vs. reward. Odder still is that if you choose to major in Economics in college, you still probably won't hear anything about Hayek and the Austrian School of economics. Why? Because Keynes won the day. He was a charming, flamboyant bisexual who out-witted Hayek, the nerdy one, at every turn. And the path of economic history has been set ever since (we're seeing some of the results). Well, here's the vid:

Wall Street is having buyer's remorse. After buying off Obama and teh Democrats, they want their Republicans back! This should be a true sign that the GOP has learned nothing from their recent demise. Is the Boy Scouts on the decline? We sure hope not. I just don't think that Xtreme Skateboarding has really been an adequate substitute for what the Boy Scouts teach.

Is anyone else getting dizzy following the Global Warming-->Global Climate Change-->Global Cooling "debate" going on? What a circus. Where's Bob Richards when you need him? [Editor's Note: News Nits searched high and low for a picture of Bob Richards and came up blank. Any help out there?] Speaking of weather, Sun's demise has finally come in the form of Oracle buying them out. Not many people ever worked on Sun Stations before, but I have and thought they were great machines. The never really evolved, but at least they weren't shoddy. Nevertheless, they have paid out gobs of money to their execs for failing. Still can't figure out how that makes sense.

For those with iPhones, check out these top-10 apps. Some are pretty funny, pretty novel, etc. Speaking of iPhones, rumors are saying the new iPhone 4G is coming out in June, maybe May. That might be my time to upgrade from 5 year old flip phone to the future! But man are these things expensive (along with the plans you need to make them useful). Netflix is considering streaming their service directly to the iPhone (and iPad), which is starting to make me reconsider the expense of cable, which I don't really watch anyway. Bad movies are better than bad TV. As for screen quality, apparently Apple has it right with their LCD beating out the new OLED screens appearing on many Android phones.

The U.S. Military just help to validate a process of Green Power, Inc, that turns trash into fuel. I guess there was some concern this was nothing more than a fancy facade over a simple incinerator, but it seems to be a legitimate technology. Cool.

Roundup: The FBI is getting involved in a case where school administrators spied on students using the little cameras built into the school-issued laptops. Thing is, the kids were at home. Nasty. Here's a concept car/thing/trike that Honda has built, and it just makes me wonder... why? And finally, air travellers at JFK airport in NYC learned a whole new meaning to the bring your kid to work day concept.

Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. -- Alan Turing

Van-Coovo 2010

2010-02-27T18:35:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone. Due to my former blogging partners meetings with investors, I have been asked to fill in for the time being.

The Vancouver Olympics are winding up. I wanted to pass this along last week at the beginning of the Games but I, like a true TLATL shareholder, am just getting around to it now. Partially inspired by today's events. The USA won their first Gold Medal in Four-man Bobsleigh in over 62 Years.

Most of you have probably read this before, but I have had the occasion to forward it a few times of late and thought I would share my trip down memory lane with you, the entire galaxy. It was by far the most complimented of the e-mails I sent out 8 years ago and is kind of relevant to these games, for both tragic and historic reasons.

This e-mail was sent January 2, 2002 from the soon to be Olympic Village in Salt Lake City, where I was working at the time:

Yesterday, as the ball dropped here in Utah (on a 2-hour tape delay), someone echoed the popular sentiment, "Man, I can't believe it is 2002!" I was like, "It's not 2002, If it was 2002 that would mean the Winter Olympics were like less than a mon----OH CRAP!" Yeah if you haven't picked up the notion from the first couple e-mails things are busy and that is what leads me to work to type you this e-mail hear on New Years Day while my scheduling system attempts to schedule the volunteers. Technology rules.

The subject number may seem a little odd two you. Well, let me add two more to the mix. 0, 200. Making any more sense. Probably, if you've spoken with me since Saturday, December 29. You see that was the day when my Olympic dream came true and burst at the same time.

0 is for how many limbs I lost in getting to accomplish my dream, but 200 is how many dollars it cost me.

52.30 was how many seconds it took to accomplish the dream, and 81 MPH is how fast I was going when it was accomplished.

That's right contestants, I went down the bobsled track, or bobsleigh track. For clarification, Bobsleigh is the event and bobsled is the device used. Details I know, but what details they are.

I know $200 is a lot of money to spend for 52 seconds of fun, but the price is high for a couple reasons. One is that there are only two places in the US that have bobsled tracks (Lake Placid and Salt Lake) and only 16 in the entire world. The opportunity to do this extreme sport is very rare. Secondly, is that they do it at night and have fully operational scoreboards, equipment and staff to assist you. The bobsleds are specially designed to hold non-experienced Bobsledders. The brake has been moved from the back to the front and ropes line the inside of the bobsled for us to hold onto. In short, $200 was well worth it.

We arrived at 7:00pm and went directly to Men's Start house at the very top of the hill. I had no idea how steep a track was. I am no altitude expert, but I would say it was at least a 400 ft. drop in altitude from start to finish. We were able to drive all the way up to the top of the track which spectators won't be able to get near during the games. From there we checked in, signed our waivers, and received our pins and lanyards that identified us as participants in the ride-a-long program. We then had a brief introduction of staff and the format for the evening. We did a "draw" to determine who would go down on what sled. I was on sled number three. We then watched a video detailing our instructions for when we got in the the sled. There was some repetition but the information was very specific and thorough. One of the things that they told us is that we would be traveling at a peak speed of 80-82 MPH. The Gold medal winning team in Nagano reached a peak speed of 76 MPH. This track was built for speed. It also helps that its elevation is one of the highest in the world.

Now it was time to venture out to the start house and send the first sled on its way. We were divided up into groups of three for the draw so I was paired with two dudes from San Diego (I went with a friend form the Village but we were split up do to the numbers game). We got fitted into helmets as the first sled was being pushed from the start gate. No, we did not get to push and jump in though I would not have been opposed to it. In case your wondering I needed a XXL helmet. We only had two sleds and two drivers so when one went down, it was brought up by the sled truck then positioned in the starting gate. They assigned us where to sit and I was given the fourth seat. In that seat you sit higher than any of the four but you also get whipped around more, but I was yet to realize that. We sit in the sled and wait for an all-clear from the track. Once that is given, three of the staff gently shove us down the track and we are on our way.

You know how in car commercials they tell you how this car can go from 0-60 in 5.2 seconds. I'd like to know how fast we we went from like 10-70, because before I knew it we were cruising. They told us to try and count all 15 turns. Come on. Now way was that possible. Really before you know it, it was over and it basically put every roller coaster I've ever ridden to shame. We received a card with our time and top speed, along with a Polaroid of the sled and crew. We then got to go to some of the turns and watch other sleds go down. Surprisingly, the railing for spectators to watch are right up against the track leaving you like two feet from the actual ice on the track. And when that sled rumbles by you it was almost as intense as the ride itself.

That was it. My dream has come true, to ride an Olympic bobsled. However, I also realized that bobsledding, is indeed a sport and any faint fantasies I might have had a pursuing this sport are now history. I mean really you push a sled and jump in. These drivers though were built like brickhouses and you need to be to control a sled going that fast. I think most of the ride-a-long dates are booked but this will continue next year and most likely for years to come. So if you're out here, got some spare change and an interest, call Utah Olympic Park and you will be able to take the ride of your life.

Happy New Year.

Tim

The pictures of me, my riding mates and our sled, but they are on my old computer which is boxed up in my storage closet. A real blogger would get that puppy out, extract those jpg's and do this right. I, am not a real blogger anymore.

This link has information on rides should you you find this something that you want to do.

Happy sledding!

Brrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzz

2010-02-12T10:28:00.000-05:00

It's cold out there, folks. Not just in The Loop or The Lou. I saw one of TLATL's readers buzz about the temperature in his city...

(Inevitable tangent - do you like Google Buzz? I've stated before that I've intentionally avoided the "social" scene. It may be that I'm missing out on all the fun, but for whatever reason I just don't like my name and info all over the place. But, I understand the draw.

The funny thing is that as a result of the buzz launch, all my friends started following my Shared Items on Google Reader, which is what I've been trying to get everyone to do for years!

But I digress... )

It's so cold that the Mississippi River froze! No kidding. A good friend of mine sent me the link to some great pictures of a frozen Mississippi. I bet you could catch some great driftwood if you were to ice fish on our muddy rio.

And speaking of ice fishing, has anyone ever gone ice fishing? I'm not much for fishing myself, so I can't imagine ice fishing would be much better. But that's just me.

You Smell That?

2010-01-29T22:04:00.001-05:00

File this under: IIIIIIIII knew it!!

Have you ever had your wife/girlfriend/mother/sister/daughter/another female in the human race complain of a scent, and you have no idea what they're talking about? It's a little embarrassing to admit, I suppose, but I have. Many times.

Sometimes it's a complaint that I smell. Sometimes it's someone else. Or something else. Heck if I know - I can't smell it.

But 60-Second Science has attempted to explain this olfactory oddity: Women smell better than men. That's probably true in many ways, but I find it comforting to know that there's a scientific explanation for my inability to know that I stink.

So to the few women who read this blog, it's not just that we don't care we stink, it's that we don't know we stink, either.

And for the men who read this blog, if there's any doubt in your mind as to whether or not you stink, you probably do.

And if you found the 60-Second Science story amusing, subscribe to their daily podcast! It's quick and informative. I've been enjoying it for a couple years now.

Happy New Year from TLATL

2010-01-11T23:30:00.006-05:00

As usual, our punctuality is impeccable. Happy 2010 everyone! By the way, do you say "twenty-ten", "two-thousand ten" or something else? I like twenty-ten myself.

While our title pays homage to two great mid-Western cities from which a lot of our writers and readers hail, our content rarely covers news from our namesake cities. So I thought it would be nice to kick off the year with a review some news coming out of The Lou.

About a month ago, Highway 40 re-opened after a two-year long closing (the first year it was closed from I-170 to Kingshighway, the second year from Ballas to I-170). Although massive traffic delays and economic catastrophes for businesses were predicted by some, the project went about as smoothly as could be expected. I have to admit that I was pretty surprised when a large-scale government infrastructure project actually finished slightly ahead of schedule. From The Lou's KSDK:

MoDOT leaders are calling the project, which involved demolishing and completely rebuilding a 10 mile stretch of Highway 40, a huge success. It was finished three weeks ahead of schedule and $11 million under budget. It is the largest single construction contract in MoDOT's history and cost more than a half-billion dollars.

Dude, MoDOT is making AfghanistanDOT look like a bunch of chumps.

How do you know if someone isn't from the Lou? They refer to the highway as I-64, not Highway 40. They're like, "Yeah, so I was heading down I-64..." and you think to yourself, "I-64? Oh, man. Did he really tell me he's from Indianapolis? 'Cause I just pegged him for Parkway Central. Aw, snap."

Anyway, take a spin on the new central corridor and I'm sure you'll appreciate the job they did. In all seriousness, it's a great improvement.

And while you're out on the roads, check out the billboards. You may see some advertisements for a smoke-free Ballwin or Kirkwood coming near you.

I've long been disappointed in my state for not being as progressive as our eastern neighbors and others, but it appears that the barriers to smoke free public buildings are slowly coming down... or should I say, drifting away. The argument that making Ballwin, for example, smoke-free will cause patrons to flee to neighboring towns, negatively impacting Ballwin restaurants/bars and thus Ballwin tax dollars just doesn't hold water with me. There are enough people nowadays that will actually drive the extra mile (or miles) to a smoke-free establishment.

That said, there will undoubtedly be some bars that will go under if the neighboring towns don't also follow suit. Hopefully the trend continues quickly, or their patrons are loyal enough to smoke outside.

Speaking of outside... it's cold!! Remember that incredibly mild summer we had? Well, we're paying for it now, as predicted by the Farmer's Almanac.

And lastly, a former Cardinals first baseman made the news recently from his home in Southern California: Gregg Jeffries is coaching high school baseball!!

I'm sure everyone is aware of Mark McGwire (finally) admitting to steroid use. The announcement was necessary and long overdue. We've covered McGwire and the era before, and I don't think McGwire's announcement changes the opinion I posited in that post. It's good for baseball that he took this step, and I hope his tenure as the Cards' hitting coach is long and successful. I haven't seen his interviews yet, but read some transcripts. I think McGwire is a good man, and I think he's genuinely remorseful for what he did, but he did seem to be using injuries to excuse his actions just a little... Oh well, it's just a game.

I do recommend you check out Bernie Miklasz's interview with McGwire. Bernie has now been the lead sports writer in St. Louis for 20 years, and I think St. Louis sports fans are lucky to have him here.

God bless everyone in 2010!

You Make The Call (Or Fold (Or Raise)) II

2009-12-08T23:21:00.001-05:00

Here's a somewhat similar situation to the last You Make The Call post. Still pretty early in a No-Limit Hold'em Tourney at Phil's (blinds are 20/40), I find myself in mid-position with 7h 8h. Sean, one to my right, limped in and I followed behind him. Action folded around to the blinds, SB calls and BB checks.

Flop is 8d Th 3c. Everyone checks to me, and I make it $100 to go. Both blinds fold, and Sean calls.

Turn is 8s (sweet). Sean checks, I bet $300. Sean calls. Hmmm..... two check-calls.

River is Td, the worst card that could have come. The board is now 8d Th 3c 8s Td. Sean bets $300. I have about $2,300 left, and Sean has about $2,000 left.

So the question is, do you call, fold or raise?

Nigerian Princes Have Emigrated To England!

2009-12-08T21:31:00.000-05:00

Do you get a lot of spam? On one of my old email addresses that I still have to use, I do. Just got this email, and it made me chuckle. Instead of the normal splash of images and exclamation points to get my attention, this note contained no images and was written in courier font, as you might expect a government note would be. The good news is, it will only cost me $98 to get an ATM card worth $1.5 million! I plan to use my money to get our nation back to a budget surplus.

UNITED STATES POSTAL INSPECTION SERVICE,
PO BOX 555, NEW YORK NY 10116-0555
EMAIL: upsinspector@in.com

This is to notify you that we have intercepted your parcel from DHL COURIER SERVICE is making the delivery and we have stopped the delivery process for some

security reasons stated below:

1. Our scanning system has detected that your parcel contains a confirmable ATM CARD to the tune of $1,500,000.00 USD.

2. Such ATM CARD coming from African /Europe/Asia is been verified by the POSTAL INSPECTION SERVICE which we have directed our inspection team to proceed

with the verification to ascertain the authenticity of the ATM CARD and now after all the verification on the Parcel/ATM CARD, having contacted the issuing

institution who made it known to our office that the ATM CARD is a Genuine one and Not ILLEGALLY ACQUIRED. We have also forwarded the Serial Number of the

ATM CARD to the U.S, Treasury Department and they confirmed that the CARD is Authentic and ready to be cashed at any ATM MACHINES.

Also for the Delivery of the Parcel to continue, you are in obligation to obtain from England, a Duly Sworn Affidavit from British High Court which will back

up the Origin of Fund. This is in line with the Anti-Terrorist Campaign which the USA Government has embarked on recently to protect our Territory from

future attacks. You should therefore contact the sender of the ATM CARD or the DHL Courier Agent in LOndon,England to get the Sworn Affidavit for you while

we wait to receive from you the Affidavit File Number to enable us forward your ATM CARD to your address.

Below is his contact information. Note that the cost of the Affidavit is $98 and do not hesitate to remit the amount to him.

Name: David Martins
Email address: dmartins2000@bellsouth.net
Tel: +44 704 570 5374

We shall then forward the ATM CARD to you and you will be sure of a genuine ATM CARD that is coming to you. We are doing this for your interest considering

the rate which fraudulent and stolen checks/ATM CARD are been sent to our innocent citizen that most times put them in problem. Always send your

correspondence to our secure email: upsinspector@in.com

Your urgent action on this notice will be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Walter Moore
Chief Postal Inspector

Meet the Natives

2009-12-02T00:11:00.004-05:00

I don't watch a lot of TV, but when I do, I usually resort to the same old shows since not much on is worth the time it takes to watch. I wonder how many more channels we would need to get some decent shows. Some of the shows I turn on when there is nothing on are Dirty Jobs, Criminal Minds, Numb3rs and Fringe. Yeah, sorta nerdy, sorry. But I found a new show tonight that was severely entertaining and in many ways heartwarming and educational: Meet the Natives.

I am fascinated by tribal cultures and have been known to begin nonsensical rants with, "well, if we all lived back in tribal times...". But I find a lot of documentaries boring. Some of the shows where guys, usually British for some reason, insert themselves into a tribe for a spell can be pretty interesting but often feel stretched out and sometimes staged. This show center around five ambassadors from a small culture from the pacific island Tanna. They have an odd system of beliefs and connections with the West, specifically with Prince Philip and a WWII guy who went by (I'm guessing) the nome de guerre Tom Navy.

These guys ditch their traditional nambas for clothes that will keep them warm in the U.S., and they travel to five locations to spread their message of peace and happiness: Montana, New York City, Peoria, IL, Orange County, CA, and Ft.Stewart GA/Washington D.C. And their message comes through. They are quick to point out with a refreshingly simple honesty many of the things they see in our lives that are the same, that are great and that they do not like. It is both an interesting and fun show, although I admit it brought to mind various newsletters from a simpler day, when some brave ambassadors from the University of Dayton spread their own messages of peace, brotherly love and jock-strap nambas.

Audit the Fed

2009-11-28T12:23:00.004-05:00

As anyone who follows politics realizes quickly, some things stay the same, some things change. I've been shocked that this Audit the Fed bill, pushed by Rep. Ron Paul, has gotten as far as it has. First off, who cares about monetary policy? Second, with super corrupt politicans running both parties, who'd a thunk that they would support the audit of an organization that so many of them, just months ago, said should run the unsupervised distribution of trillions of taxpayer dollars. Ahhhh yes, the voters are mad. I guess that still makes a difference in this day and age. Voters getting mad has changed, politicians doing anything to keep their jobs has not.

I encourage you to watch this whole video, it's not super long, just over 13 minutes. Take the time to understand how confused some of these experts are on the difference between auditing an organization and controlling it (would they object to a corporation getting audited as the same thing as relinquishing control of it?). Look how mad the opening Republican is. I also especially like the ending of it, where the healthcare bill slips into conversation, as does Clute, TX.

Illusory superiority

2009-11-23T21:12:00.010-05:00

I am a decent cook. Actually, I am an above average cook. I don't do it a ton- my wife (God bless her) does much more than me. But when I actually do head into the kitchen to make something, it usually turns out to be pretty good.

At least that is what I have for a long time believed about myself.

Then Sept. 23 rolled around and that entire thought was blown to pieces.

Before I finish the above story, I need to delve into something called "illusory superiority." This is a bias that exists in each one of our minds that makes us either overestimate what we see as desirable qualities in ourselves or underestimate the degree of what we see as negative qualities. This defense mechanism creates a belief in our mind that we are better at those things we wish we were good at than we really are. A classic example of this was a study done by a researcher named Swenson in 1981 that surveyed Swedish and American drivers about their driving ability. What they found was pretty impressive- nearly all (93%) of the American drivers thought that they were in the top 50% of drivers with regards to driving skill and safety. Swedish drivers were not quite as generous but still thought they were better than they probably were (69% placed themselves in the top 50%). With regards to safety as an individual measurement, 88% of the US group and 77% of the Swedish group put themselves in the top 50%.

This effect of illusory superiority has been demonstrated time and again and brings us to a very uncomfortable conclusion- none of us are as good as we think we are in nearly every aspect of our lives. For instance, I have been involved in 4 car accidents as a driver, three in which the car I was driving was totalled (one of the contributors to this blog and one of its frequent readers might remember one of these events). Yet, despite this, I would not only say that I am in the top 50% of safe drivers out there, but I would also probably say that I am in the top 10% of safe drivers on the road.

This brings me back to the story of Sept. 23. As I mentioned above, I have always thought of myself as an above average cook. On Sept. 23, my wife's birthday, I decided to make her a cake. A german chocolate cake to be exact. I had visions of this cake turning out perfectly and me winning years of "Good husband points" as a result. But the truth of the matter was not quite so pretty. The cake, to put it mildly, sucked. I forgot to put icing between the two layers of the cake so it literally started to fall apart about 10 minutes after I iced it. To make matters worse, this was not a cake made from scratch. This was actually a box cake and it practically made itself, or would have if I knew what in the world I was doing. In the end, it looked like a bear had eaten a bag of shredded coconut and then crapped on a cake platter. Here are two pictures- see for yourself.

My wife was great about this. I actually acumulated all the necessary karma points but she did email the above picture to all of her friends. I would have, too, if I were her.

So this above experience has caused me to try to take an accurate assessment of my life. I am trying to get outside of the illusory superiority that exists in my brain and see if I can identify where I really stand on certain skills. Below is a list of aspects of life that people often think that they are better than they really might be. After much reflection, the first ranking is what I now think is an accurate assessment of where I truly stand on these skills. The rankings in parentheses are actually where I used to believe I stood (100% being the best in the world, 0% being the worst).

Athletics: 40%- this is difficult. I think that I am a top 20% runner but yet I am a bottom 20% basketball/football player. Since most people's idea of sports is weighted towards team sports rather than things like running, I give myself a less then 50% vote- (80%)
Sense of humor/wit: 80%- (70%)
Driving: 95%- (40%)
My skill at my profession: 90%- (75%)
Looks: 50%- (50%)
Poker playing ability: 25%- (25%)
Photography: 80%- (50%)

Please feel free to comment on your own assessment of yourself or your assessment of my assessment of myself.

Going Rouge

2009-11-21T11:39:00.010-05:00

Ahhhh, Sarah Palin is back in the news. Or maybe she never left. What an odd phenomenon she represents in both the U.S. and in "conservative" circles. With her new book coming out, some are rushing to the stores to snatch their copy of "Going Rogue". Actually, more than some, she already enjoys one of the highest nonfiction opening days in history, selling over 300,000 copies (just under Bill Clinton's first day, but surpassing Hillary's).

Mrs. Palin is a surprisingly complex woman. She is a walking composite wedge issue -- you can find something to like or hate in her, depending on what's important to you. This makes her both divisive and perhaps less important ultimately than her attention warrants. Let's hit upon some issues she seems to represent as well as some of the traits she embodies that have so many people talking about her.

She's pretty.

I think it's tough to deny that Sarah Palin is a pretty woman. Many liberals might gag at this because they are overwhelmed by her other attributes, but they would probably have no trouble saying Tina Fey is pretty. Mrs. Palin is attractive enough (but not too attractive) to invite the admiration of other women. In men, she might stir a chivalrous reaction. Beauty is one of the first things we notice about people, and we spend an inordinate amount of time looking at our politicians on TV. So it's hard to throw out looks as unimportant, especially when so many female politicians trend in the other direction.

She's a full time employee, full time mom.

This is one of the most important draws in my mind for Mrs. Palin. The women of Generation X have been the first generation in America raised on the bad medicine that they can have it all. Actually, depending on who you are and where you're from, many women have been taught to put their careers first and hold off on family. But one way or the other, millions of working women, working moms and soccer moms across the nation struggle to find this balance in their own lives just to survive. Mrs. Palin has five children, a grandchild from her single daughter, a decent if unremarkable husband and was the governor of Alaska. Talk about a full plate -- a plate full of modern day apple pie successes and problems. It's not so much that other women look to her as "she's done it", but they look to her as "she struggles just like me."

She's a simpleton.

I mean this with all due respect. There's nothing wrong with keeping it simple on a personal level. But in many ways, when I hear Mrs. Palin talk, I am instantly reminded of Dan Quayle. In fact, the parallels are numerous: Vice-president material, concerns about ability or gravitas, good looking, etc. [For full disclosure, I have an autographed copy of Dan Quayle's "Standing Firm" that my dear mom stood in line to get signed and gave to me as a present. Dan Quayle and I share our alma mater and are both better than average golfers. His book was as difficult to read as you might imagine.]

This is where the MSM really lurched at Mrs. Palin. Recall the inappropriate Charles Gibson interview, where he cornered Mrs. Palin about the "Bush doctrine." I had never heard of the Bush doctrine either, and I follow these things fairly closely. In fact, I doubt Mr. Bush accomplished enough as president to establish any doctrine of note -- I've never heard anyone else speak of the "Bush doctrine." Well, watching Mrs. Palin squirm was a telling moment for both "sides". One group thought this proved she was an idiot, the other group thought it proved the MSM is rigged and she could hold her cool under pressure. In either case, this childish tactic could have backfired on Mr. Gibson as his ratings continued to drop and he was eventually forced to announce his "retirement" this September.

There are numerous other stories and quotes that one group interepreted one way and another group the other way. What Mrs. Palin may lack in worldly experience she seems to make up for in honesty and common sense -- two qualities dearly lacking in D.C. However, common sense can only go so far especially when the office of President of the United States is concerned.

Guns, Abortion, Christianity

This decently clever photoshopped picture to the left sums up a lot of images that people like or hate to have about Sarah Palin. On guns, she's a hunter, and all winter long her family lives off harvested meat. On abortion, she has five children, one has autism, and her single daughter has a child. She has not only made it verbally clear, but walks the walk that abortion is not an acceptable part of her life. She is an unabashed Christian, although her apparent membership in a Seventh-Day Adventist Church is as controversial as it is reassuring to traditional Christians.

By contrast in the previous election, our current president made fun of small town folks -- explaining them away practically as aliens to a more important crowd in San Francisco -- for bitterly clinging to guns and religion. He had also said that he would advise his own daughter to abort his own grandchild if the situation should ever occur that she might be saddled with an unexpected baby. Quite a contrast indeed. This political gap on hot-button issues of our time immediately made Palin a star and enemy to many.

Who else is the GOP gonna turn to?

This is perhaps the saddest truth about the situation. John McCain was a straight talk express trainwreck of a candidate. His independence streak ended up not emerging from strong, unshakable principles, where the rest of the world zig-zagged around him as he remained constant as the northern star. No, his "maverick" ways were the result of a superficial political expediency, going which ever way he could to make a name for himself and appear bi-partisan. By the end of the day, he was clearly more aligned with Joe Lieberman than conservatives like Ron Paul. He knew he was losing and needed a boost. In swings the dea ex machina Palin.

And now that the GOP has been thoroughly destroyed and humiliated for its sins of the recent past, there is a vacuum of power and direction in the party. Things are so bad for the brand that characters ranging from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to Mitt Romney and Mike "Shucks" Huckabee to Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty, and yes, even to Sarah Palin are being thrown around as the "future" of the party. The GOP is so clueless even now as to why it lost so badly while it helped destroy our country that it is further exaggerating its own limited imagination, as its website is trying to make the party look home to diversity and multiculturalism. (This from a group so lacking in free speech concerns that they wouldn't let Ron Paul on the stage in some debates!) I know there are and have been plenty of black Republicans, but let's not let reality get completely distorted. African-Americans as a group continue to be political sheep, and they baaaa towards the Democrat side, not the Republican. The GOP will get nowhere chasing race.

Meanwhile, "conservatives" are rising up all over the country in reaction to the liberal landslide in what appears to be independent thought and outrage. As the GOP tries to take advantage of this, they continue to betray the truth of their own allegiance to big power, not to the people. Here is a very recent speech by John Boehner, arguably the most powerful GOP left in office, as he completely confuses the Constitution with the Declaration of Inedependence (imagine the uproar if Nancy Pelosi had made the same mistake? Ahh, the conservative movement has far to go in honesty and alertness)

[I deeply apologize for asking the reader to watch Rick Sanchez, who is absolutely awful.]

She's a real person.

This may seem like an empty or sarcastic comment, but I saved it for last as I believe it ultimately is Mrs. Palin's greatest charm and attraction (and her greatest real public attribute). It is also perhaps her most unspoken aspect and one that Americans need to be willing to talk about in regard to whom we elect as leaders. We know where Mrs. Palin comes from. We know where she grew up. She has a regional accent. She doesn't come from privilege. She is as typical as most girls are in this country. Contrast that with politicians like George Bush and Al Gore, who claim to be from states they're not really from; who were raised by political families and groomed purposefully albeit poorly to become something they were incapable of becoming, and yet were forced upon us anyway.

Compare that to our current president, who was born in Hawaii, had his father abandon his family, spent a good chunk of his childhood in Indonesia with a step father, lived in Kansas for awhile, travelled the world on someone else's dime, was finally baptised for the establishment by Harvard, is torn between two religious identities, two racial cultures and is more a child of the world than a child of the United States. Despite (or because of) the idiotic birthers movement, very few people openly questioned the importance of the background of our president. Or perhaps because his background was so hard to define, we could barely even talk about it -- a lot of simplistic lies really hampered discussion. Now along comes a person like Sarah Palin. And she is attacked by many for precisely the things we should be seeking in leaders: some kind of normalcy.

The Other White Meat

2009-11-16T22:08:00.000-05:00

If you're in the Lou this Friday night and looking for some rock n roll, head down to Vito's. Known for their ability to make people dance and at times inspire riots, Pork has been a local favorite since the mid-90's.

Although their relationship with their fans has often been described as lustful (their really love their fans), tensions in the last 6 years have actually kept the band offstage. While never officially breaking up, the band hasn't played a show since January 3, 2003. The reason for the disharmony? An intra-band dispute over writing credits for their songs. But fortunately for the St. Louis music scene, the band has come to a consensus that the majority of their songs were probably written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

So if you're a fan of The Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan, or any other band, come on down to Vito's and check out Pork, who will take the stage about 10:30. And... I'll be sitting in with them on bass, trying to do my best Bill Wyman impression (or at least my best Mike Callahan impression).

Hope to see you there!

News Nits

2009-11-16T20:10:00.008-05:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

President Obama is lighting the place up for better or worse. The "unintended consequences" of representing our president in the fashion (depicted on the right) by Chinese artist Liu Bolin perhaps outweigh his actual sentiment, which is completely lost on Occidental cultures. However, the phrase "unintended consequences" probably will end up best representing President Obama's legacy, as the gigantic federal programs he has continued from the Bush era and greatly expanded in his own way will leave a huge footprint on the backs of the American middle class. News Nits credits our president with his first good move of reversing the missile shield slated for the Czech Republic and Poland. Although some experts have critiziced him for his lack of tact in an area that demands diplomacy and delicacy, it is at least the right move strategically. Otherwise, it is business as usual in the nation's capital. [N.B. News Nits knows that the missile shield reversal was old news, but we are constantly trying to find positive things about the current administration and are willing to be redundant when faced with a vacuum.]

The internet is freaking out. First off, speaking of freaking out, Hillary Clinton, our Secretary of State, revealed her complete lack of composure and tact (despite her obvious intelligence) by insulting the people we are both bombing and fighting for. This now seems to be a pattern with Mrs. Clinton, who earler freaked out immaturely as she was horrified that someone might ask a question about her husband, the former president.

Now back to something much more interesting, the internet, er, freaking out. A district judge has ruled that email is not protected by the fourth amendment, which restricts the government from conducting unlawful search and seizures of property. Although we at News Nits are constantly hawking over any government infringements of civil liberties for you, dear reader, it is tough to disagree with this ruling. Email resides on a third-party server and is their property, not yours. We shudder to think of the implications, though, that companies like Google and Facebook literally own so many parts of us. It does beg the question that there might be a business opportunity here though... email that functions more like letters or phone calls than like, well, email.

Also, internet addresses are set to change from their Latin base only to accepting other character bases, like Chinese or Arabic. I smell opportunity again. Facebook has won a lawsuit against super-spammer Wallace to the tune of $711 million. And in a weird move yesterday, Mark Cuban announced a plan he has to kill Google. (News Nits wishes he would focus his brilliance on the Mavericks.)

Time for the News Nits wrap up. Wired remembers the death of Leon Theremin with a nifty little piece about him and an almost touching video of him playing his bizarre instrument. Here are six really cool(?) things you can do with electricity. As the energy/oil/military/foreign policy/gas prices/climate change debate heats up[sic], it's perhaps more interesting to focus on some of the simpler aspects of reality, like that currently, about 10% of the energy in the U.S. comes from recycled nuclear warheads, many of which come from the old USSR. And in an ongoing thread here at News Nits that examines the effects of sports technology designed to increase the safety of athletes while possibly actually causing harm (re: expensive running shoes...), the WSJ writes about a link between football helmets and concussions. Talk about unintended consequences.

If anyone can figure out what the Frank is going on with Iran, News Nits wants to know. When Russians aren't busy selling us their fissional material, they're selling chopped up humans to kebab houses. And the Post Office announced it lost $3.8 billion last year. If you work for the USPS don't worry about layoffs, a bunch of jobs are about to open up in the government healthcare sector. Finally, we think this picture is funny and would be appreciated very much by contributor Roller.

You know how Congress is. They'll vote for anything if the thing they vote for will turn around and vote for them. Politics ain't nothing but reciprocity. -- Will Rogers

Phil Ivey

2009-11-08T23:59:00.002-05:00

As I type this post, the final table of the World Series Of Poker Main Event is underway. You've probably seen commercials on ESPN, you're probably familiar with the poker boom, how to play No Limit Texas Hold 'Em, and you have probably at least seen the gentlemen to the right's face a few times. The final table of the Main Event will air on ESPN on Tuesday night, and Phil Ivey will be one of 9 players who beat a field of over 6,000 entrants and made the final table. Beating a field of 6,000 is an incredible accomplishment for all players at the final table, but it caps off a pretty remarkable 15 year run for one Phil Ivey.

For those of you who don't know who Phil Ivey is, at the age of 18 he introduced himself to a table of 7-Card Stud regulars at a casino in Atlantic City as Jerome. On his 21st birthday he came in and reintroduced himself as Phil. Fast-forward 12 years, and he's widely considered the best poker player in the world. He plays (and wins) in the highest stakes you (he) can find, both online and live. Aside from making millions of dollars a year in poker, Ivey is also a part-owner of FullTiltPoker. (Cha-ching).

Money, talent and compulsion to gamble makes for a pretty insane life... one that I can't help but gawk at from time to time. Ivey has been asked by Tiger Woods how he handles the pressure of making million-dollar decisions. He's teased Michael Jordan, asking him why he's "nitting" it up, when Jordan "only" bets $10 grand a hand when they play BlackJack. You remember the last play of the first half of last year's Super Bowl? Ivey had the Cardinals in the first half. That play cost him $800,000 (he said he was watching the game with his mom, too, so he couldn't exactly express his true feelings at the time).

Before the beginning of the 2008 WSOP, a confident Phil Ivey laid a lot of people pretty favorable odds that he would win a bracelet in one of the tournament's 50+ events. He found many takers. Time passed, and no bracelets. More bets made. No bracelets. Big bets on NBA playoff games. No bracelets. The picture to the right sums up Phil Ivey's 2008 WSOP (Phil wasn't upset because he's a big Jazz fan).

Before the beginning of the 2009 WSOP, a confident Phil Ivey laid a lot of people even odds that he would win a bracelet in one of the tournament's 50+ events. Again, he found takers. It didn't take long before Phil won one (his 6th overall), and minutes later he was offering anyone who wanted double-or-nothing. He found takers, and won another bracelet soon after. He offered more action, but by that point no one was bold enough to bet against him.

The WSOP ends each year at the end of July with the Main Event. Ivey showed up for the Day 1 of the event coming straight from a 36-hour session at Bobby's Room. (Barry Greenstein, half-jokingly, said that unless Phil wins the $8.5 million first place prize, playing the tournament might have actually cost Ivey money. The games in Bobby's Room were pretty juicy, with pots over $1 million a few times a day.) Eight days later, play broke when Jordan Smith was eliminated in 10th place. Immediately thereafter, just like many of the seven days prior, Ivey was overheard on his mic whispering to a member of his crew, "Lock me up a seat at Bobby's."

Tournament promoters and sponsors finally got what they'd been wishing for: one of the most well-known and respected pros at the Final Table with a complete amateur like Darvin Moon, the lumberjack from Maryland. The perfect balance of a champ to pull for and a "hey, if this guy can do it..." Joe Average. Ivey only has about 30 big blinds going into the Final Table, good for 7th in chips. He'll need a little luck in the beginning to keep from being chased down by the blinds and antes, but if he does manage to chip up, look out (Las Vegas odds makers aren't too worried, laying the man 7th in chips 7:2 odds to win the whole thing).

Anyone else out there completely bedazzled by all this? Anyone else tuning in on Tuesday night to hopefully watch Ivey pull down his 8th bracelet?

Risking Death for Reproduction

2009-10-29T19:55:00.004-05:00

Have you ever noticed how many worms die on your driveway/sidewalk/curb/street? If not, the photo to the right and its informative caption should give you a frame of reference.

After a good rain, my driveway is like a virtual worm cemetery. My guess is that accidental suicide, not the hungry Robin, is the leading cause of death to Annelids everywhere.

So why do worms come up from their burrows when it rains? Is it because they will drown in their water-soaked homes? That sounds logical, but it's actually not the case. The truth is that worms don't have room to mate underground, and like its ancestors the armadillo and raccoon, must come above ground to procreate. But as many a sidewalk knows, coming up for a quick roll in the grass is a risky endeavor for these creatures. So they wait until Mother Nature sets the mood, so to speak, to keep their species alive. The only problem being that they often can't find their way back home!

I feel bad for the worms. After a moment of pleasure, they are probably too delirious to know where they're going. All of a sudden they're not on dirt anymore and just not smart enough to find their way back. Perhaps enough of the geographically-challenged members of the species will die off, and worms as a species will evolve to know how to get back to organic ground (or never leave it).

And that will make for some well-fed Robins.

And if they continue to evolve, well, we can only hope that Michael Gross is still around!

Ending the charade

2009-10-25T19:13:00.003-05:00

At this point in time, to call myself a contributor to this blog, would be like calling the University of Illinois Football team the favorites for the national championship. A few weeks or months ago, I don't know which, I tried to revive my blogability by giving new life to our Law & Order series. Not only did it send our few loyal readers back into print media, it virtually crippled ratings for the new season of L&O . . . so the research hasn't come totally back on that one yet, but the hate e-mail I got from the sole member of the Elizabeth Olivet fan club sounded pretty convincing.

The effort on my part was specifically designed to draw myself back into the blogosphere. Get blogolicious ideas floating around in my head. Get back that blogging feeling, whooooa that blogging feeeeeling. I knew no one was going to respond, but I thought maybe it would rid my brain of the only other idea I had for a post, which, fortunately for you, is the subject of this one.

I'm done. I am officially resigning my position as the Loop blogger. The only idea I've had for a blog post in the last six months was one about how I really have no desire to post anymore. While it is true that the blog has drifted in a direction that doesn't really fit my style, I can only blame myself for going into blog hibernation for 6 months at a time.

Marty, Austin or Jim (all aliases) would be more than suitable replacements for me, though only one is a true Loop native. By virtue of their commenting in the past year, they have all demonstrated that they would be a much better asset to the blog than I.

This isn't to say that I am done writing or blogging. I'm quite sure I can't delete myself from this blog and I doubt Roller is going to do it for me. Perhaps in six months to a year, we can revisit my participation on an internship level. In the meantime, my writing needs to focus on other areas. In particular, getting hired at a great company and scoring chicks. Preferably ones that have not have corrective surgery.

I can only end this by saying that this is as good as I've felt about a post in a long time. I just feel bad it had to be about me not posting anymore. Good luck everyone.

News Nits

2009-10-17T14:50:00.009-04:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

Whoah is we at News Nits. We have not been as on top of our game as we normally are. We apologize profusely and will do anything we can to get our readership back. Both of them. We are also excited by the addition of another contributor and hope he builds upon his debut piece. However, we will continue to count him among our readers so as not to alarm our advertisers.

It's been awhile, so News Nits is prepared to go on a tear, or a buddha shaped pear. In fact, we're going to go retrograde on your brain, reaching back for old material from before the last news nits only to switch and zoom ahead to the current time. We can not guarantee your lack of confusion. Brace yourself Neo, News Nits does not strive for coherence.

While Congress continues to expand into more corners of our lives, they cannot seem to protect what they should protect, as Chinese hackers have hacked in again to our (very expensive) Joint Strike Fighter program. For the runners among us, it appears that running shoes might be bad for your body. Run barefoot or in sandals! And while running, listen to Vatican radio. Who said religion and science are incompatible, the Vatican is building the largest solar panel field in Europe just north of Rome. Let's see Dan Brown try to undermine that.

Last April, the CFO of Freddie Mac, David Kellerman committed suicide. Let us never forget the cesspool of government corruption and regulation that has consumed more men than poor Mr. Kellerman, if it really was a suicide. If we still counted unemployment the way we did before the Clinton administration, it would be above 20%.

Recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, our president, has still failed to close Guantanamo Bay prison. Little Yemen won't even take back their own citizens. Remember when this was hailed as some sort of accomplishment? Looks like no one wants all these innocent saints. In fact, our peace loving president is reopening military trials. Perhaps he will hire Dick Cheney as a consultant. As more and more time goes by, Mr. Obama is appearing to be more and more like Mr. Bush. It is the height of arrogance or sophomoric intelligence to think that if we simply replace the regulators, things will work better.

With the swine flu starting to go around the U.S., let's take a moment to put it in context with the 10 worst epidemics in history. A man has successfully become the first U.S. patient to undergo a double hand transplant. For those of you with chilluns, do you really need the baby monitors? You're messing up my Wi-Fi, man! And if you ever get in some medical trouble, just twitter your friends, and they'll hit 911 if you can't.

In a painfully simple conversation, Rep. Steven Cohen makes a fool out of the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller. Watch for yourself, and continue to think about the differences between behavior and laws, and families and the federal government.

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
- H. H. Williams

Maybe our politicians could learn something from Mr. Williams. News Nits wonders in all honesty, WTF? What would Eric Holder think (WWEHT?). Global Climate change theories remain a work in progress, to say the least.

So let's wrap this issue up with just a few more nits. A Russian billionaire has installed an anti-picture-taking laser on his ridiculously awesome yacht. And if you haven't read about how the Netflix challenge was finally won, it's worth the read. The method that created the solution is perhaps more interesting than the solution itself. And finally, even the head of the worldbank is cautioning against giving the Federal Reserve more power (more power that Bernanke insists is necessary for our safety). If things are bad now, it's going to really hurt if the world begins to reject the U.S. dollar as the vehicle currency.

And with that thought, we return to the present moment. Have a good weekend, dear reader.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
-- G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

Trying something new

2009-09-26T23:28:00.008-04:00

I was recently talking to Roller and he told me that at some point, he hoped that a lot of people would someday contribute to this blog. Now, I have no intention of being a regular contributor and at first I didn't think much about his comment. As you may or may not know, I haven't always been the first person to adopt new technologies- in fact, I am sure I was the last person who has ever posted, commented or even read this blog to have a cell phone. But now, I am trying to turn over a new leaf. At this point, I am 75% sure that these computers thingies are going to stay around, at least for the near future. In addition, since they got this internet thing on computers now, I imagine this is going to appeal to a lot of people, including all the kids out there with their new do-dads and whats-it-nots. If you haven't checked out this "web" that stretches "worldwide" you should try it right now.

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 12% of Americans create or contribute to their own online journal or blog. So if I actually submit this entry to Roller and he decides to publish it on the blog, do you see what this means? I have, for the first time in my life, become an early adapter of new technology. I will be in the elite group of bloggers, looking forever down on the 88% of those of you who have either never blogged or got into this technology after I did. That's right- AFTER I DID. I haven't felt this superior since I signed up a long time ago for a Facebook account before most people did (and then proceeded to never check my account again).

I really am making an attempt to become technologically inclined and this January an event happened in my life that forever changed me- my wife got me an iphone for Christmas. I know that people say possessions aren't everything and that they cannot make you happy. I am hear to tell you that those people are a) full of crap and b) have never owned an iphone. My iphone is the greatest toy I have ever received. I am particularly fond of the app store which I explore on a regular basis looking for new apps to download. While you can find just about anything on the app store, I have listed a few apps that I hope to God will be available for download in the near future and that I am waiting anxiously for.

Personal weather app: I know what you are thinking- "Aren't there like 10000 apps that are out there for updating you on the weather?" and, of course, the answer is yes. But this is a "personal" weather app. What it does is create a high pressure system directly around you which ensures that at all times, there are only sunny skies above you with humidity that never exceeds 30%. If you are willing to pay a little extra you can get the Frenemie add-on that allows you to create a low pressure system around anyone that you have friended on Facebook but secretly cannot stand. This will ensure rainclouds around that person at all time, no matter what the local weather is supposed to be.

Love app: as we all know, Google acquired the rights to the emotion that we call love in 2007. Since that time they have been working with the folks at Apple and have created an app that actually takes care of all the messiness (which girls like to call "romance") of that thing that we call love. This app actually sends a signal to your brain that let's you know things that no guy is supposed to know. For instance, this app will update you on such important nuggets as "If you place 1500 candles in this poorly ventilated space in the second story of your house, the carbon monoxide that is released will be assessed by your wife/girlfriend/girl-you-just-met-at-the-bar's brain as romantic and you will increase your chance of intercourse by 40%." Please try to tell me that you wouldn't pay $1.99 for this.

Diaper changer app: here is a conversation that I have actually had with my son more than once (and I'm not kidding about this)- "My god, you weigh 20 lbs. How the hell could you have just placed a 6 lbs load in your pants? Have you been packing yourself like a musket just waiting for a moment until your mom left the house?" Once you download this app, this conversation will never happen again- this app will take care of all those number two's for you. Of note, this app is not necessary for parents to download until a child turns 4-6 months old and solid foods are introduced. As we all know, this is the age in which your little angel begins to make what I like to call "man poops". It is amazing how much you can love something and yet so despise something that comes out of their body.

Babysitter app: for some reason, the department of family services in St. Louis says to me that I cannot just leave my son at home with a whistle in his crib while I go out to a bar to have a beer. For some reason, the cops that have come to my house and ticketed me for this issue don't accept "this is bulls**t" as an explanation. Once I download this app, the man will no longer be able to interfere with my god-given right to get a beer at a bar while leaving my child at home without adult supervision.

I have been following this blog and I have seen how the dynamics of the comments section works so I can anticipate some of the possible comments that may arise. As a result, I would like to post my responses to these upcoming comments here to save time:
1) Response to G: If you truly want to have an open discussion about this issue, you are going to have to bring some debatable points to the table. You cannot just state that the iphone is the spawn of Satan without providing a shred of evidence. I am going to have to know exactly how Lucifer gave birth to an iphone before we will be able discuss this issue like two grown adults. Thus, either support your statement or retract it. While you are retracting, I am also going to have to have you retract statements 2,3,5,7,13 and 15 that you made as well. Statements 4, 6, 8 and 9 were totally incomprehensible so no need to retract those. Please do not retract the nude picture of Farrah Fawcett- your argument was quite convincing and I would like to hear more of it.

2) Response to Ryan: You elitist bastard. Also, I am not so sure that it is accurate to say that a cabal of computer programmers have acted in concert with the federal reserve to use the iphone to infringe on our personal freedoms in the way that you outline. Still, here is a link to a website that contains information about people doing good things for society that Sarah Palin would label as "dangerous to America."

Finally, in keeping with tradition, I will close with a loaded question that I will present for all to comment on- would you prefer to hang out in a closed room with one of Sarah Palin's death panels that wants to kill your grandmother or a room full of adorable puppies?

30 Years of Law & Order: Part VI.I Update

2009-09-18T10:31:00.001-04:00

Now that TLATL's readership is soaring at an unprecedented rate, it is time to rekindle the series on our favorite courtroom drama, Law & Order. We've taken quite a hiatus. Since our last installment, there have been many changes. Junior Detective Nina Cassidy left the two-seven after only one year and was replaced by Det. Cyprus Lupo. Then the unthinkable, Detective Green leaves. Cyprus Lupo moves to senior detective while Kevin Bernard takes his old position of junior detective. Bernard is no stranger to the 27th precinct as he was the Internal affairs detective who investigated a shooting involving Green. The new Executive ADA is Michael Cutter. A young no-nonsense go-getter, that reminds us all of a certain young DA whose brass was a little too shiny for his saxophone. That's right, I'm talking about Robinett.

Of course I'm talking about Jizzack McCizzoy. He assumed the role of District Attorney. TLATL has made some changes of our own. We've added a member to our blogging crew. Ryan has gone from lead commenter to kick-ass contributor.

So we had to ask ourselves, how do we finish this series without starting from the top? To fix this, Roller and I took our TLATL residuals and went to Vegas. We spent six days and seven nights pouring over not only all of our previous posts but also the newer episodes of this epic drama which will air its 20th season this fall (for those keeping score at home, that's a photo of roller reassuring Coovo that there's always next year). We came up with the following:

The subject of our final post and the final position of the show is the Asst. ADA, currently held by Connie Rubirosa. She dates back far enough (2006) that she would have been considered even before the changes.

None of the new characters, I mean crime fighters, while frigging awesome, had any affect on our takes in the previous posts. I thought for a second that Lupo's performance might cancel out Green's performance giving my nod to Junior Detective nod to Logan, but I think it was just too much of Roller's single-malt scotch.

For this last post, our comrade in arms, Ryan, will give his take through the comments as he was so adept at doing for the previous 6 posts. But, when we pick our L&O Dream Team, which might be before New Year's Day, Ryan will cast a vote right along side Roller and me.

To get you back in the mood we present a special bonus: The Shrink.

There have been two profilers that have assessed the mental capacity for the district attorney's office. First is Dr. Elizabeth Olivet. Practicing for the DA's office from 1991-1997, and then again in 2002 and again in '06, '07, '08 and '09, Olivet has received favorable comparisons to both Brett Favre and Michael Myers. She recently testified for the defense in a case that Cutter was trying. McCoy warned her that the gloves would come off. Cutter reveals that she had been romantically involved with a patient, a Detective, while treating him. Ouch. I turned the channel before the verdict. Olivet fun fact: She is one of five characters to appear in all 4 Law and Order series (Criminal Intent, SVU, Trial by Jury). They don't count the short lived Law & Order: Conviction, Law & Order: UK, or Law & Order: Evidence Schmevidence. The others: Ed Green, Arthur Branch, Elizabeth Rodgers (the Medical Examiner) and our man Lenny Briscoe.

In between Olivet's stints is Dr. Emil Skoda. While Olivet seems to be more caring and compassionate, Skoda just tells it like its is. "The guys a classic case of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He knew it was wrong. You going to finish that brownie?" Skoda is a psychiatrist whereas Olivet is a clinical psycologist. Skoda misses out on the L&O grand slam by having never appeared in Trial by Jury, however Olivet never appeared in a prison "group hug" scene.

Coovo's take: Have been and always will be a Skoda guy. Olivet is a good at what she does but Skoda doesn't read through the prisoner's b.s. Pardon my French abbreviation. I always kind of liked when they brought in the shrink and liked it better when they would piss off McCoy by disagreeing with him. Which would seemingly put me in the corner of Olivet. Not quite. BBS: Bring Back Skoda!!

Roller's take: This is an interesting choice. I've always been a fan of J.K. Simmons; I think he's an excellent character actor, with the range of comedy to creepy. I never liked the Skoda character too much, but I think Simmons delivers the role exceptionally. Kind of like Casino, where I loathe Sharon Stone's character, but I think her acting was surprisingly top-notch. I don't have any complaints about Olivet, but I think the way the role was written and delivered was, in retrospect at least, somewhat typical. I'll give the nod to Skoda.

We hope you enjoyed the return of L&O, and as always, we'd like to hear your takes as well!

Law & Order

2009-09-16T13:54:00.003-04:00

TLATL's own Roller and Coovo devoted quite a series of posts to, well, quite a series on TV. It appears that they aren't the only two devotees to the great show of Law & Order. A comic I saw on Comedy Central (who did an overall pretty funny show) had some stuff to say about TLATL's favorite guilty pleasure:

Jokes.com

John Mulaney - Jerry Orbach

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John Mulaney - Law & Order

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The Audacity of Change

2009-08-27T20:03:00.003-04:00

Recently at TLATL a spirited debate over the radical healthcare reform proposed by the Obama administration and opposed weakly by the properly neutered GOP was had in our comments section of News Nits. As with many good parties, sometimes the welcome particpants get a little too drunk, stay a little too late and end up in the kitchen unwilling to go home or go to bed, so it was shut down.

In any event, the debate was complex and interesting, ranging from exploring if healthcare insurance should be considered a "right" to wondering if a program run by the federal government would even be effective at all.

In more recent posts, a video of an incompetent high up in Goldman Sachs whose job it is to oversee/investigate/audit the disbursement of public funds raised little discussion. But the same people who have poorly run the bailout fund would be running the new healthcare system in our country, which would quickly subsume 100 million Americans. So is that OK? As long as our appointed, endorsed economists are from the Ivy League and win Nobel Prizes? As long as they write for the NYT like Paul Krugman? As long as (the GOP insists) the new giant government program is bi-partisan? As long as the guy we voted for is in office? How quickly, it seems, promises are reversed and award-winning models crumble.

President Obama, for example, has maintained or even increased every single bad Bush administration policy of importance. Our aggressive foreign policy continues to expand. Although the smoke screen has been laid by closing Guantanamo (the order was signed, but it has not been executed because it's logistically maybe impossible) and by Eric Holder investigating the Bush-era behavior of the CIA (an investigation that will go nowhere), Obama has just reinstated the policy of "rendition", which essentially outsources torture. Also, Ben Bernanke (a Bush appointee) has received the full backing of Obama. No change is good change. I thought the Bush family had broken promises. This should destroy all hopes for us honest voters that meaningful change to the power establishment can be brought about by smooth talking, globalist lawyers.

This video is the best concise summary I have come across concerning not just the bailouts but the inpenetrable core of our country's financial system. And Ron Paul wants to audit the Fed, he must be crazy... Crazy like a pear!

The Most Underrated Fruit

2009-08-17T16:52:00.003-04:00

It's not the prettiest, it's not the most "passionate", it's doesn't have the most anti-oxidants, but it is the most underrated. By the power vested in me, I declare The Pear, to be #1 on Roller's List of the 100 Most Underrated Fruits.

I suggest you all go out and buy a few pears and see what you've been missing.

A word on timing: Pears that are still pretty hard to the touch can be purchased, but keep them in a bag for a day or too. When a pear feels slightly soft, they are perfect for consumption. Too soft, and they are just that - too soft and mushy.

If anyone would like to offer their own most underrated fruit list, or dispute my claim, please add your comments below, and I'll tell you why you're wrong.

America's Best and Brightest

2009-08-13T12:28:00.004-04:00

The point here, is that no matter how "smart" or "qualified" the people in place are, large sums of taxpayer money can simply disappear from oversight. Not to mention, Goldman Sachs has reported record profits. On this day, retail sales have been reported to drop again, and unemployment has gone up yet again.

Remember when we were told that if we did not bail out these giant financial institutions, then the whole world would fall apart? (this was the most concrete argument I heard during that whole time period) Well, normal people are still getting screwed, the stimulus isn't working, and the bailout worked great -- for the financial industry and banking cartel that is at the inpenetrable center of our governmental power.

And yet powerful Democrats still block Ron Paul's bill to allow Congress to audit the Federal Reserve? And Ben Bernanke's claims that he wants to expand the powers of the Fed are met with serious consideration?

It's time to start a new political party based on private people not government power. These Capitalist bankers have done such a horrible job with our country, that now people are seriously considering a Socialist alternative. We have been lied to that these are our only choices.

News Nits

2009-07-23T23:45:00.008-04:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

It's been awhile for news nits. And we apologize to our reader. Fact is, it looks like 95% of blogs have been abandoned by their owners. Is there a blog pound? Will blogs get put to sleep? Will large companies or Jesuit schools declare eminant domain over, uh, your old domains? We will blog about ongoing developments, irony noted.

Cool picture above is of a new cloud type that has been turning up around the world more frequently since 2005. These new clouds are being called "asperatus" which is going to totally make the weather channel more fun to watch.

A lot of people have died as well. In a short amount of time, Ed McMahon, Farrah Faucett, Michael Jackson, and Billy Mays all died. Only Ed McMahon was old. Farrah meant more to a previous generation, when she was super hot. Out of all these people, I felt the most sorry for Billy Mays, dead at 50. Billy Mays was the fringe product schill who turned OxiClean into a household name with a legitimate national market share. Quite a story, and through the loud pitch and funny gimmicks, you got a sense that he was a real guy just trying to make it -- refreshing honestly somehow poking through a thin but entertaining shtick. MJ was very controversial and had long ago become more myth than man, if he was ever much of a man to begin with. Anyway, behind the media images and hype of these real people, may they each rest in peace.

Fast forward nits: A 14 year old boy in Germany was walking to school and got hit by a meteorite (the size of a pea) on his hand and lived to talk about it. Unfortunately, he only spoke in German, so I couldn't understand a word. Our brave soldiers fighting our politician's wars in Afghanistan may be in this longer than they or we would have thought. According to Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Christian Cabaniss, "we're going to seize the population from the Taliban and never let them go". Hang in there guys, we'll get some real leaders in office as soon as possible. (More on that at the bottom.)

Monkeys who ate 30% fewer calories but maintained the same high levels of nutrition lived longer and way better lives. This wasn't about obesity, this was about low calorie, high nutrition diets. It's been showing up in the literature for awhile now in mice and such (and in my own experiments on my fish, Bill) but the findings in monkeys are getting us closer to our own selves.

Ben Bernanke, our nation's favorite superfreak, says he wants the Federal Reserve (a private bank run by unelected officials) to expand its role and become "supercop". Mr. Benanke sites the recent awesome jobs his little cartel has done controlling the money supply and the effects that has had on the current economy. He also sited his boy Geitner's job in doling out trillions in taxpayer money to all their old buds from Goldman Sachs. In this picture, he shows you how he will squish your little brains as you relax in the pulsing, gooey matrix and lounge on cheap patio furniture while eating bags of funions.

At least some people are getting the joke. Russ Carnahan (D - MO) runs chin first into a crowd of good old, "show me" Missourians, who just will... not.... buy this farce of a centralized, socialist style takeover of healthcare being championed by Comrade Obama (especially precious are the looks on the women's faces who sit aside their wise leader as they are shocked that anyone would question his authority, benevolence, and supreme knowledge):

"In America, we have a two-party system. There is the stupid party. And there is the evil party. I am proud to be a member of the stupid party. Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. This is called bipartisanship.” -- Sam Francis

A Call for Class

2009-07-10T13:57:00.005-04:00

I bring to you today a tragedy I have just recently learned about. A young man named Willard Bryant Payne was recently found dead in St. Louis Forest Park. Please read a touching tribute to this man's life written by Bill McClellan in the St. Louis Post Dispatch online. I never knew or met Mr. Payne, a SLUH alum, but my brother was acquainted with him, and others in my brother's circle knew him well. They described him as "a good guy." They were shocked to learn of his death, and as they emailed each other about it, they were even more shocked to read the way his death was treated by the Riverfront Times.

I ask you, to my own dismay, to please click on the following link and read the way Chad Garrison -- a professional journalist -- wrote about Mr. Payne's death. The sarcasm and complete lack of respect, class or even basic professional prudence disgust me as much as it outraged my brother's friends who knew Bryant well.

I would ask each of you reading this, then, to make the smallest effort with a few clicks of a mouse and a few strokes on the keyboard to not only protect the honor of Mr. Payne's life but to uphold the honor we all share as being part of a class. This is not just about where you went to high school. This is about anyone who has ever belonged to a group of friends, family, or classmates whose combined honor and virtue becomes greater than that of any separate individual; so that, in turn, such honor and mutual respect is shared by all of her members.

Please take a moment to forward this post on not just to other SLUH classmates and other friends of Mr. Payne, but to other people in St. Louis who demand basic respect for their own from, at the very least, the professional media funded by businesses we own, work for and support as customers.

Then, please click here to write a brief note to the editors of the RFT requesting that Chad Garrison make a full public apology for his outrageous behavior as well as a private apology to the Payne family.

Finally, take a moment to say a prayer for Willard Bryant Payne and his family. May he rest in peace.

Read My Mind

2009-07-10T12:21:00.003-04:00

A long time ago, on a blog not-so-far away, I promised a post on Google Reader. Like everything on this blog, it just takes a while.

Google Reader is a one of many "feed readers" that are available for free. If you are unaware of the term, a feed reader is an application that allows a user to aggregate all the "feeds" to which they subscribe in one handy place. "Feeds" are just syndication of content. You've probably seen the icon on the right on various websites (including this one). It means that this site syndicates its content, and when there is new content available it will publish that content to its subscribers. This saves the subscriber from having to always go check the site for new content, and allows the publisher yet another way to get its content out to subscribers.

Is this the most exciting post ever, so far, or what? OK, so why this is cool...

The most basic reason to use Google Reader or any feed reader is that it allows you to go to one place to read all the content you normally read. Instead having to remember to go to xtreme-knitting, Angie's Romance Reviews, Curling News, The Antarctic Sun, 99 Sense, (and many more) every day, I just open Google Reader, and the latest content from each of those is right there for me to read.

Google Reader advertises itself as "the inbox of the web" you basically have all your feeds in a column on the left, and the content from each of these feeds is displayed in the center of the window. Content is either displayed as the title of the artical only, or the full article itself (I prefer the latter). You can scroll through the content pane, perusing all the latest content from your numerous feeds, sifting through until you find something you like. You can also apply labels to your feeds, and filter the content pane on those labels.

That's the jist of how feed readers work, but Google Reader has a number of other features besides syndication aggregation. For each piece of content you have the option to:

E-mail a link to the article to someone.
"Star" the content. (I think of this as bookmarking it, making it easier to find later)
Apply new labels to that content (sometimes if I want to read something but don't have the time, I label that particular item with my "Reading List" label. Then later I can filter by "Reading List" and see what I have to catch up on.
"Share" the content. Anything you "Share" will be published into a feed of all the items you have shared. And anyone else can subscribe to that. What is incredibly cool about this feature is that I can subscribe to your shared items, and then I can comment on your items, and anyone else can read that, and a discussion can happen. This "social" feature makes it so simple to see what your friends are interested in, and discuss. And of course, the only things that are published are those that you explicitly mark "Share".

Hopefully now you can see the benefits of Google Reader. It allows you to read and manage the content you want more efficiently, and at the same time share and discuss with your friends! For more animated demonstrations of Google Reader, check out the videos below. I hope you all try it out, and please let me know your thoughts!

You Make The Call! (Or Fold)

2009-06-29T20:04:00.004-04:00

Played an interesting hand of poker I thought I'd relay to everyone.

Post-tourney cash game, .50/$1 blinds. I start the hand with somewhere around $55-60. Chris has a little more than me in front of him, but he's stuck on the night. Al has maybe around $30 in front of him.

I'm the big blind. Al raises to $3 from Under the Gun (player to the left of the big blind). Action folds around to Chris, in the small blind, who calls. I look down at 7h-Th (7 hearts - 10 hearts). Calling is a little loose, but it's getting late and in the later hours we all have a little more gamble in us, Al, Chris and myself included. So I make the call. There is now $9 in the pot.

Flop comes Tc-Ts-2c. Jackpot. Chris checks. I check, expecting Al, the pre-flop raiser, will continuation bet. He doesn't.

This is where it gets interesting. Turn is a Qs, putting 2 flush draws on board. Chris bets $2. I pause for a second, and make it $7. Al thinks for a while, and just calls. Chris then raises to $14. Now there is $39 in the pot, and with the call from Al and re-raise from Chris I have to consider that I don't have the best hand.

I have three options here, fold, call or raise. With 2 flush draws on board, having to only call $7 into a pot of $39, and a very strong hand, folding isn't really an option. I glance over at Al and I can see he's holding the rest of his chips (maybe $20) in between his thumb and index finger. He's thinking of pushing. If I shove, I'll be raising a pot of $46 about $45, giving about 2-1 odds to Chris and about 3-1 to Al (as he only has $20 to call with). It's probably a play that would chase Chris and MAYBE Al off a flush draw.

Instead, I elect to just call the $7 to see what Al does, and if he pushes, to see what Chris does after that. If he pushes and Chris calls, I'll have a tough decision. Al makes a tough fold (based on his cursing under his breath). The pot is now $46.

The river is a red 3. Chris takes a few seconds, looks at his chips, and announces all in. Chris has me covered, so I'd be calling all of my $45 to win $91.

I'll post the end of the hand in the comments section in a couple days. But first, I thought it might be fun to give everyone (or at least just Ryan and Coovo) a chance to say what you'd do. I would like to hear it!

Twittermania

2009-06-24T20:39:00.006-04:00

A couple years ago, I started hearing all the tech podcasters talking about the newest fad, Twitter. Described as "micro-blogging", well you know what Twitter is. A way to syndicate a quick thought or your location to people who are interested stalking you.

Twitter grew, and grew, and with the rise in popularity came numerous outages in the service (I suppose it's hard to afford the infrastructure for ever-increasing volume when the company doesn't really have a way of generating money). But it just got more popular.

The tech podcasters had a good prediction, though. Once a celebrity (Britney was the oft-cited example) figured out how easily they could easily leverage the app as a way to reach their fan base, Twitter would explode.

And it has. Britney was perhaps one of the first, biggest stars to join (although it's believed that it's her PR people actually "tweeting"... probably because of the lack of grammar and spelling mistakes). Ashton Kutcher got in early. It was one of the many Web 2.0 tools employed effectively by the Obama campaign. Shaq started using it to give away tickets before games. Of course, the adoption of Twitter as a marketing platform by celebrities hasn't come without it's flops and moments of humor.

Then a few months ago I saw Jimmy Fallon using Twitter as a way to let fans send questions for his guests on his show. A month later I saw SportsCenter posting athletes' tweets. Pokerroad has teamed with Twitter to provide up to the minute updates during the WSOP. It's no longer a geek buzzword, it's everywhere now.

And there have been numerous rumors of tech giants in talks to buy Twitter - even though Twitter still has no way of making money!

I personally have no problem if people like to use Twitter to stay in touch with friends, follow people of interest, etc. To each his own. I think my attitude towards it kind of falls in line with this Conan bit, though:

But then, just when I feel somewhat justified for believing Twitter is a little silly, it becomes one of the only methods for getting on-the-scene news out to the world from the riots in Iran. The credibility of Twitter-based news can always be questioned, but it may be the best metaphor for the shift in "breaking news" journalism. The average citizen with a camera phone and Twitter now dictate the stories for journalists to run down.

And it's no different at TLATL. Instead of Coovo telling me what to write, me telling Ryan what to write, and Ryan telling Coovo what to write, we will be following the crowd. And what better way to dive right in than to head to Iran, meld in with the crowd, and work as undercover journalists. And you can follow it all on our Twitter feed! Hope to hear from you all soon.

Yikes!

2009-06-11T12:33:00.005-04:00

A friend of TLATL recently went on a float trip. In the morning he put on his shoes (barefoot) and even took a couple steps before he felt something fuzzy and found this guy inside. <<>>

Around The Horn

2009-05-16T13:38:00.007-04:00

"All the Hits the Nits Missed."

Hello Sports Racers, it's time for another edition of Around The Horn, or as Coovo likes to call it, "Roller's News Nits Nockoff".

South Korean scientists have cloned dogs. That glow red in the dark. No kidding. When I first heard of this, it reminded me of a trick we computer geeks use to spin our defects as "features".

User: Why was there an "H" appended to all the information I entered?

Geek: Uh, that's our new "Info+H" feature. Do you like it?

User: Can I fix it by rebooting?

The scientist have inserted "fluorescent genes" into the dogs (this is actually similar to another computer science pattern known as Dependency Injection). The success of this experiment suggests that scientists could inject other types of genes. Said South Korean scientist Jin Fong-du, "Having proven that we can inject genes into a living animal, we can now expand our research to include injecting other types of genes. By 2011, we could have dogs that glow blue, or possibly purple." OK, I made that quote up. Pretty cool, though.

Religious fanatics have denounced the testing, noting that if you spell "glowing dog" backwards, you get "god gniwolg". It's hard to argue with that.

This isn't the most recent of news, but has been on my plate for a while. A little over a month ago, AT&T network lines were vandalized in the San Franscisco Bay area. In two separate locations, someone opened a manhole, climbed down 10 feet and cut some network cables. For most of the next day, there were outages to cell phone, internet, land line and even 911 Emergency access.

Conspiracy theorists were quick to paint this as a terrorist rehearsal for a major nation-wide coordinated attack. But I don't think that adds up, as terrorists most likely would have blown themselves up to sever the network cables.

Lending even less credence to the terrorist theory is the fact that the AT&T's contract with the Communications Workers of America expired about 5 days prior to the "attack". Union leadership downplayed the notion that a union member could have been involved. Right. Because everyone knows which manhole covers lead to AT&T's network cables, and which lead to secret Craigslist parties.

Maybe AT&T should follow Texas' lead in equipment protection. Texas fire ants can inflict up to $1 billion a year in damages to electrical equipment (and those are non-arsen related numbers). The solution? As described in a recent US News article, introduce a South American phorid fly that somehow lays eggs inside the ant. Then when a maggot hatches from an egg it eats the ant's brain. The ant still wanders around for a couple weeks like a zombie, before its head falls off and the fly pops out and goes after another ant.

Awesome! Until next time...

You want a post?

2009-05-08T08:37:00.007-04:00

I'm your Huckleberry.

Manny. Big news. The primary use for the drug he used is to help increase ovulation. Manny being trans-Manny. I'm not sure I feel caught up on what happened though. I'm watching Mike and Mike in the morning and so far they've only interviewed, Peter Gammons, Jayson Stark, Bob Ryan and Buster Olney. If only I knew what Jose Canseco was thinking. Oh wait, they played audio clips from him too. Remember when Canseco said no one wanted Manny because he was on that list that A-Rod was on? Please stop giving this guy credibility. PLEASE!

There's a few other television related items that are "grinding my gears" so to speak. When I went to espn.com to link the above story, I was met with a video commercial for what is now my least favorite jingle. It was never my favorite, but when I hear "Five. . . Five dollar . . ." I cringe. I love to eat them, but I don't want to hear anyone sing that song ever again. Give me Jared and John Cena arm wrestling.

I fell asleep with the TV on the other night. In my daze, I heard " Oh, it's a double-pisted chesty!" I sat straight up, grabbed my Louisville slugger and beat my TV to a pulp.

Lastly, since I don't have digital cable, DirectTV or Tivo, I still channel flip. VH1 has seemingly cornered the market on sleazy dating shows. There newest is The Cougar. I didn't link it but I'm sure you can find it if you want. Memo to anyone who is considering going on any of theses shows, male or female: You are a dirty human. (p.s. sorry that third chick is only half in the picture).

Country Music Marathon

2009-05-01T13:33:00.008-04:00

Late last year, friend of TLATL Matt D. asked me if I wanted to run a marathon with him. I'd always wanted to do one, and I figured it would be great to train with someone else. So we started training at the beginning of February with our sites on the Country Music Marathon in Nashville, TN.

The training regimen is pretty strait forward: run 4-6 miles 3-4 times during the week, and then do one long run on the weekend. The first long run should be about however long you can run at the time, and then add a mile or two onto that each week. Your last long run should be two weeks before the marathon, and should be about 22-23 miles.

Matt and I did as many long runs together as we could, but it became apparent as we got to the 18 and 20 mile runs that he was running at a faster pace. I didn't want to slow him down, and I actually did better running solo anyway, because I wasn't trying to keep his pace. So we decided to run the marathon separately.

We arrived at the race together and split up into our respective "corrals". Each runner is assigned a corral based on their projected finish time, and each corral is released 2 minutes after the previous corral. The idea, of course, is that runners spend as little time passing other runners because the faster runners are ahead of them and the slower runners are behind them. In crowded races that makes a big difference. Just like the previous two half-marathons I'd run, though, there were plenty of "walkers" and people who were obviously not going to finish in their corral's projected time. It's pretty frustrating having to make your way around them. But enough complaining...

My assigned corral was 13, based on a 4:20:00 projected finish (just under 10 minutes / mile). Unfortunately my start was delayed by a... biological issue... coupled with some poor execution by the event planners. Probably not something everyone wants to read about, but in retrospect it was kind of comical. I ended up leaving with corral 18... and off I went on my first marathon.

I have a running playlist in my iPod, but didn't feel like getting to that right away. I'd also enjoyed listening to podcasts/audiobooks on my long runs, as they helped me maintain a consistent pace. But I felt like music... and felt like Gomez' "Bring It On".

I hit the first water stand around 2 miles in and chugged two Cytomax's (some athletic drink that must have paid more money than Gatorade to sponsor the event). The high for the day was going to be 87... way higher than anything in which I'd trained, and generally really hot for a marathon. I decided before the race I'd get at least 2 cups of Cytomax or water at each of the 20 water stands throughout the race.

I also passed the first of 27 bands playing along the marathon route. Pretty cool...

In the commotion of passing people in the first crowded few miles, I didn't actually see a timer at any mile markers until mile 5. I checked my iPod as I crossed the starting line and noticed I was starting 35 minutes late. Some quick math I realized I had done the first 5 miles in 40 minutes. Whoops. I felt great, but that was way too fast for my projected time. I was able to catch the mile markers in the next five miles, and was going about 10 minutes / mile... and felt great.

Next album... Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy" (skipped No Quarter). Around mile 11 the half-marathoners peel away and head for their finish line. It was nice to get some space!

I completed the first half of the marathon in 2:05. A little faster than I probably should have, and I was starting to feel the effects of the heat a little. I put on a podcast in hopes that I could slow my pace a little. The first half of the marathon was pretty hilly, but fortunately the second half wouldn't be too bad.

My gut was starting to churn some more, and as frustrating as it was, it was becoming evident that I wouldn't be able to hold it off the whole race. By mile 18 my biological issues were calling again and I had to duck into a Johnny on the Spot for about 8 minutes (I kept track on my iPod and figured I would be justified in subtracting this from my finish time). Back on the course and feeling a little rejuvenated, I turn to "Paul's Boutique". Haven't listened to that album in a while... it's still great ("Drive By Eggings - plaguing L.A.! - 'Yo, they just got my little cousin, ese!'").

Around mile 20 I'm pretty tired, but I know I only have a 10 K to go. Saw a great sign "UR Feet Hurt Cuz You Kick Ass" on the sidelines. The many people cheering at all phases of the race is great...

My longest training run was a little over 22 miles and as was the case with each long run, I never felt too bad until I eclipsed the distance of the previous run. Then you really start to ache. It's not your lungs at all, like in a short race. Basically everything from your hips on down is just sore, and if you try to push it a little harder your legs yell at you.

Mile 24... Pain, but the end is so close! Lots of people walking at this point, which is actually helpful, as it's a psychological lift to pass them.

Halfway through mile 25 I start "Working Man" by Plants and Animals to carry me in. It's a great running song.

At mile 26 I see Matt and his wife Lisa (who snapped the photo) and their friends. Time to pick it up and cruise on into the finish. Lots of cheering fans on both sides, a fun experience to finish!

After the race I ate a huge meal, took a nap and then went to an old friend's for dinner that night. They asked me if I would ever run another one, and at that point I didn't think so. Up to the race I was planning on it being a "one and done", as most doctors will tell you that being a distance runner is horrible for your body. But by the next day I had the itch to do it again. I can't imagine that I'll do another soon, as it takes too much time away from my family to do these too often. I may or may not ever do another one, but I at least hope to maintain my fitness level - over the course of training I dropped 17 lbs. that I definitely didn't need!

And of course, a special thanks to my wife, who supported me throughout the training and never complained once!

Oh, yeah, I finished in 4:46:44 (that's before subtracting my "break"). A lot slower than I was hoping for, but I'm happy to have completed it. Matt finished in 3:55:48, his best time in the 3 marathons he's run!

Here are the winners (surprise, they're Kenyans!). Just before this picture was taken, the M.C. said "How can you be a Kenyan and NOT win a marathon?"

News Nits

2009-04-16T19:34:00.006-04:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
- Richard Feynman

News Nits tries to update all the news that isn't bled to death in the mainstream media. However, sometimes the news is too interesting to deny its coverage. How 'bout them pirates? The activity off the coast of Somalia has been on the uptick, with modern pirates having been paid off to the tune of $150 million this year alone. They have apparently not killed anyone, but as we've come to see, they mean business and the stakes are high. News Nits wonders if they go bankrupt, are they too big to fail? Oh, Jack Sparrow, why can't all pirates be like you?

Lots has been going on in the news. In no particular order...Former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was apparently clean of illegal wrongdoing (no word on if what Senators do is "ethical"). The judge is now launching an investigation into the ethics of the prosecuter's office. Pretty nasty when politics enters the courtroom. Sounds like a case of Law & Order, but no body.

American business dude, Charles Simonyi, went to space for the second time, hung out in the space station, probably ate a few burrittos, called it science and got back safely. Either way, cool for him. He's now $35 million lighter, so to speak, and I guess the Russians are the only ones honest enough to just open their program up to high bidders.

Although our Presidential Face has signaled for light at the end of the tunnel, wholesale inventories dropped by their largest amount in 17 years. That's a sign that businesses are still ramping down. Expect more layoffs. Expect lower earnings. Boooooo. News Nits wishes it could blame the Commies for this economy, but it's the Capitalists' fault this time.

For all the "conservatives" out there, be careful what you wish for. All the power expanded and usurped by the Bush administration under the Patriot Act has now switched hands. In a weird move, the Obama administration is lumping veterans, anti-abortion activists, and third party candidates all into the same, vast right-wing wastebasket to target for criminalization. In my own dear Missouri, the Missouri Information Analysis Center has issued official warnings to the state patrol identifying the new generation of terrorists in our country:

The report warned law enforcement agencies to watch for suspicious individuals who may have bumper stickers for third-party political candidates such as Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin.

It further warned law enforcement to watch out for individuals with "radical" ideologies based on Christian views, such as opposing illegal immigration, abortion and federal taxes.

Does this woman look like someone whose judgement you trust? In related news, a 25-year old man, Steve Bierfeldt, was detained for half an hour in a windowless room and interrogated at Lambert Airport for daring to get onto a plane with $4700 in cash. News Nits know our currency continues to be worth less and less, but apparently it is now also contraband. It won't be long until the next Janet Reno is knocking on, or down, your door.

Back to the cool parts of the world. An Australian cattle dog named Sophie Tucker was knocked off of the sailboat her masters were on off the coast of Australia. She swam 5 nautical miles to a deserted island, where she lived on baby goats for 4 months. She became somewhat wild and was difficult to subdue when rangers discovered her. However, her owners say it took no time for her to readjust to the comfy life. That's just Sophie being Sophie.

Even the sun is in a slump. The sun's cycle of sunspots has hit new lows, 100 year lows, and could provide interesting data going forward. One of the main theories to explain global warming is the increase in sunspots over the past 100 years has warmed the oceans, which have then burped more CO2 into the atmosphere. Yeah, planetary warmth leads CO2, not the other way around: stay tuned, nerds.

In more fun science, there's a tiny plant that feeds on poop and could help solve some very big problems in our world, if the corn lobby doesn't get in its way. It's a classic "poop-win-win" scenario.

News Nits has gone under deep cover to find out that the CIA has fired its contractors running the infamous "secret prisons". This could only mean one thing, though, a new black market for secret SECRET prisons.

Back to science, the edge of space has been found, and it's surprisingly not in North Dakota. But if you are ever fishing in North Dakota, or anywhere else, and you get a fish hook stuck in you, here is how to remove it. This is only useful if you are dumb enough to fish without dynamite. No cure has been found for getting dynamite stuck in you. We think the secret SECRET prisons are working on it though.

In some bummer news, the Shriners have announced they need to close a bunch of their hospitals due to a downturn in contributions and a drop in endowment. The Shriners, in addition to entertaining untold thousands with goofy hats and tiny vehicles, have done a lot of good for a lot of people, so it is sad to see this happen. They are apparently not big enough or corrupt enough to be bailed out.

And finally, comrade Roller dished out a serious examination of alternative media sources in a previous post. Steven Levy of Wired apparently read the column and wrote up some of his own experiences as well. There's just no replacing big screens and high quality I guess. But don't throw away your internet connection just yet. The LoopAndTheLou continues to serve our loyal readers!

If only we could turn a buck or two on this site, we might even be able to help out those Shriners.

One time, this guy handed me a picture of him, he said,"Here's a picture of me when I was younger." Every picture of you is when you were younger. "Here's a picture of me when I'm older." "You son-of-a-bitch! How'd you pull that off? Lemme see that camera!" - Mitch Hedberg

[Disclaimer: News Nits apologizes in advance for posting such a large picture of Janet Napolitano.]

An Opening Day Manifesto (sort of)

2009-04-06T20:01:00.013-04:00

Even though it was snowing here in Champaign-Urbana, (my Loop cohorts got 3-5 inches) there was something in the air today that let you know that today was different than last Monday. Ok wisecracks, yes, there was snow. However, there was a some kind of sensation that made you know there was baseball yesterday. It was in Philadelphia, where the defending champion Phillies dropped a game to the Braves, 4-1. Derek Lowe picthed 8 scoreless innings, which is awesome, because he's on my fantasy team.

As I always, I begin this baseball season wondering if the Cubs can do it. If you don't know what it means, pull up your favorite search engine and type in Cubs and World Series.

My excitement is tempered by last years postseason flop, even though the pundits are calling for the Cubs to claim the Central division for a third straight year. Other things have changed too. For the first time in 8 years, I'm don't live in Chicago for Opening Day. Champaign-Urbana is a hybrid of Cubs and Cardinal fans with some White Sox fans sprinkled in. Much to my dismay, no Kerry Wood on the Cubs for the first time in 11 years.

I also begin this season with one less person on my roster of Cub fans. My Nana, known to the government as Rosemary Dowling Boyle, passed away last June. When I lived in St. Louis, there wasn't a Chicago Tribune pre-season special section that wasn't shipped to me by her. As she got older and lost a lot of her mobility, she found comfort and enjopyment just sitting and watching the Cubs. She learned more about baseball after the age of 75 then I think a lot of people learn their whole lives. She would be soooo upset if she found out it was a day game and she missed it. Here are some of the great baseball Nanaisms from over the years.

She always impersonated Carlos Zambrano's point to the sky whenever she saw it on TV. And in the last game she attended, which Zambrano started.
"Oh hi Tim, are you watching the game?" "They played this afternoon Nana, you're watching a replay of the game." "I was wondering why it was so light! Well, don't tell me who wins . . ."
My brother overhearing Nana explaining what an RBI was to her Filipino caretaker. Marty has never been so proud.
"You know I actually saw Wood smile the other day . . ."
"Oh! Look at coach! " Usually when Pinella had a nasty snarl on his face.
Her trying to say Fukudome.

The Cubs have become very fashionable over the last couple years. And at times, it's irksome to go to a game and see people with Cubs beads and Prior shirts who don't know that Prior is gone, but the Cubs are so entrenched in my family roots, I can't tear myself away from them. I am watching them play the Astros right now and I can't believe I am rooting for Milton Bradley! But he's a Cub.

I know many of our loyal readers, despite your probable allegiances to the team from the Lou, have similar stories and similar feelings. Feel free to share them in the comments. I'm not going to read them, but I love when people comment on my posts. Its the only thing that gives me self-worth since they canceled Coach.

While I don't think the spike in bunting sales will bring back the economy, baseball being back is good for this country, but not good for my tendencies in putting off homework. Play Ball!

A Conservative Manifesto

2009-04-01T19:08:00.007-04:00

"If Western man in the future should recover his analytical ability, our times will be known as the age in which trivia replaced culture and bureaucracy replaced life." – Clyde N. Wilson

It has discouraged me to see how unable or unwilling people in our country are to find constructive change. Instead, public brands are swapped with shallow victories being claimed by either side; the lesser of two evils being still evil.

Then it occurred to me that maybe it's because there's a real shortage of ideas and leadership, afterall, listening to the news and the political parties speak is worse than listening to the bleating of sheep. At least sheep give wool. Maybe the genuine efforts for change have simply not been said outloud enough times to introduce them to people as real possibilities. Maybe it is time to remove the trivia and bureacracy from our lives and push for the substance of culture and a vivid life.

I present to you a common sense, conservative manifesto. This is free for debate, but it is not open to the criticism of being too radical or impossible, those being hollow charges since everything proposed here, at one time, has existed in some form.

Taxation

Taxation should never be a consideration in anyone's life. The fact that it not only weighs on our time and minds every April 15th; the fact that business people actually make otherwise pure business decisions on its consdideration; the fact that politicians are constantly manipulating we the people with the minutia of it all lead to the conclusion that it is a big, huge mess that no politician has ever dealt with. The GOP offers tax cuts, pitting the middle class against the working poor. The Democrats raise taxes on the rich to transfer it to the non-working poor, pitting the poor against the rich and the middle class against eveyone. This absurd policy in combination is designed to keep the average taxpayer dizzy and voting along simplistic lines.

So let me start the proposed tax code off along some simple guiding principles. Every citizen should be taxed in some way – no one is above or below paying their share. Taxes should be simple and easy to pay – there is no comfort or advantage to the people in complexity. The goal is to have every person pay their taxes for the year in what would be a 15 minute ordeal on a form the size of a postcard. The current tax code is over 16,000 pages, and if you order a copy from the guvment, it comes in 20 volumes and costs $974. I see no reason the code can't be simpified to the front and back of single sheet of paper.

The first stab: A flat tax of 15% on the combined income from wages/tips, dividends, interest, and capital gains. If I left anything out, I didn't mean to. All income, including SS, combined into one pot minus 15%. No deductions, no loopholes, no rebates. The rich currently hide their great wealth in trust bundles and other such paid-for loopholes. Many poor currently don't pay taxes (rather receive paychecks from the guvment) and develop bad attitudes that deepen the nasty cycle of poverty and helplessness. This would also apply to all corporate taxes which are currently at record highs in our country.

The 15% reflects a replacement rate as calculated by several economists (who actually estimated the number in the lower teens, but I'm making it simple). Critics who multiply 15% by the stated income of citizens in some year and claim it wouldn't be enough are not doing an accurate estimation. The rich always hide income from high tax rates, thus income declared would go up (this has been proven over and over again).

People who cry for the poor and say they should pay no taxes are free to subsidize any charity they want with their own money and get involved with social work if that is their calling. But our country is in desperate need of a citizen identity, and this is a great way for the poor of our country to take pride and sign up! It will also draw a firm line in the sand between honest citizens and illegal aliens.

National Economics

National Economics is tricky to even talk about because we have been lied to for so long, and our words now have slid around so much that even an honest debate is confusing rather than enlightening. We have been tricked into thinking that the off-shoring of jobs is a good thing since we can now buy cheap crap at Wal-Mart. We have been tricked into thinking that whatever is good for Wall Street or global bankers, must be good for the country since instead of a loan costing 7% interest, it costs 5.5%. We have been tricked into thinking that an invented and construed "Economy" based on 70% consumption is truly creating wealth for anyone but the owners of the companies who have off-shored jobs and pocketed the profits rather than passing on the savings. We have been tricked into thinking that the Consumer Price Index controlled and manipulated by bankers reflects inflation, rather than the actual money supply in our economy. And we have been tricked into thinking we can grow economically through increased debt in order to make our current debt seem smaller - yet this borrowed growth is from buying stuff, not from making good investments.

All of these tricks have worked to the benefit of the tricksters and the harm of the average American. The silence of the middle class bought through inordinately large gains in the stock market for our retirement funds has been shattered when false gain after false gain has been burst like a bubble. The manufacturing base of our country has been auctioned off, and the profits pocketed by the few. The dollar has been debased and weakened to fund this mania and, as a result, our wages and savings have gone down.

First step: dissolve the federal reserve and give Congress direct audit over the money supply of the Treasury. The current federal reserve is actually the third instance of a national bank in our history, the other two having been destroyed by the people for their greed and dishonesty. It can happen again. Interest rates can be controlled by the free market of local and regional bankers, it doesn't need to be "established" by a central authority. We at least have all seen the harm Alan Greenspan has caused that would not have been so easy to do by spreading out risk assessments to all bankers. Not all bankers are foolish, especially if they know they hold their own loans and know there will be no bailouts for them if they go bust.

Return to the gold standard or some hard asset standard. People think this is arcane or foolish, but it had governed our country well until 1971. Read about the Bretton-Woods agreement on your own time. Look at graphs of the value of gold and the dollar and oil since 1971. Gold or precious metals make an ideal backing of currency. They do not prevent inflation by their own virtue, but they give us an honest way to make measurements. Imagine in contrast, if the federal reserve changed the size of a 12-inch foot whenever it wanted to, how that would throw so much uncertainty into the builders across our nation. This is the problem that is most fundamental to the recovery of our currency, or else all other efforts will only have temporary effects and then fail.

Undo all bailouts. Reduce spending at the national level by at least $1 trillion. This would return us to those poor, horrible days of 2006, when we only spent $2.6 trillion. Remember how poor we all were back then, when the government spent so little? It is shocking that so many honest men still think the government has, at any point in history, ever helped spend our way into prosperity – that it controls the economy. What slaves we've become!

The argument over earmarks is silly. If our national budget in 2008 were scaled down to $30,000 (a number we can all understand), earmarks would be $16. A much more prominant part of our budget would be spending on military adventures and security, to the tune of $1 trillion, or in our scaled version, $10,000 – roughly 1/3 of our expenditures. That is insane and needs to be reduced sharply.

Honor all promises for Social Security, yet tourniquet it. We have an outstanding promise of $40-50 TRILLION (4x-5x our current national debt) in benefits that our leaders have ignored. This is a broken system which we need to give people a way out of. Enable people entering the workforce to opt-out. I would gladly do this now, surrendering even what I have already paid in, if it meant I would pay no more and not receive any either.

National Sovereignty and Border Control

Since we have already stated all citizens will pay taxes, then all non-citizens must go. That's right, deport all 12-20 million illegal aliens in this country. This would not only reduce the amount of financial burden on our country but would eliminate huge state costs that are rarely added up and totalled. It would also have the benefit of creating 12-20 million jobs overnight. These jobs are preferable to the jobs the government is claiming to create out of thin air, because these jobs are in demand by industry and are sustainable.

The many troops we have out patrolling the borders of other nations could come home and in relative peace and at a fraction of the cost could patrol our own borders to fill out the remainder of their tours. The situation along the Mexican border is getting really violent, although we'll deal with the causes of that next. But let's also not forget all the terrorists who committed 9/11 came through our friendly northern neighbor's borders.

An additional aspect of national sovereignty is to acknowledge that we have an economic border as well. Those people who wish to conduct business across our borders should pay the cost of opening such breaches of physical and economic security. A simple 1% import tax on all goods and services should do the trick and hopefully reinforce the true cost of shipping jobs overseas (which always depends on shipping cheap products back to our large consumption markets). It is not that no jobs should ever be shipped overseas, but we should not overtly encourage this behavior nor subsidize the profitability of it.

A final point about national economics. Nations rich in a diversity of natural resources do not rely upon imports to survive. Nations like Saudi Arabia need imports, so their approach might be different. But technically speaking, we should need to import nothing of basic importance, just luxury items from other cultures. We are capable of producing and supplying all of our own needs in our own free markets. The drive for profits that destroys these markets within is an unpatriotic one. All discussions on "free market" economics are thrown out the window when it comes to international trade; especially, when we do not even allow free markets within our own borders.

Wars on Concepts and Inanimate Objects

We must stop fighting wars on concepts and inanimate objects, like terrorism and drugs or guns. These wars can never be won. They are indeed targeting very big problems to the people of our country, just not problems that should be fought by the military. The war on drugs diverts billions of dollars away from security or paying down the debt and increases the strain on our borders (which costs us more money in border control). The violence it causes within our country is undeniable and rips apart communities even moreso in supply nations throughout Central and northern South America. Yet, the benefits of the war on drugs is not clear at all. Making puritans feel better about themselves or relieving parents of talking to their children about reality do not count.

At least let's start with decriminalizing marijuana. From what I understand, Amsterdam – where pot and other drugs are extremely tolerated – has a lower abuse rate than the U.S. So where is the benefit on that front? We are also missing out on a huge form of tax revenue as well as stomping all over civil liberties with this silly war started by Nixon. Drug addiction, a horrible problem, is mostly a medical one and should be treated as such. The U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This does not speak well of a rich, free society; no, this is the same way communist Russia behaved. It is also an unnecessary drain on our taxes. Half of these people in jail are non-violent drug offenders. This policy has especially decimated minority communities to no good end, turning future fathers, business, and commumity leaders into drug-selling criminals.

The War on Terror is no different. The language about it is exactly the same as the language from the War on Drugs. This is not about ignoring the real threats to our people – quite the opposite. This is about not flying off the handle and committing our brave soldiers to doing things the military shouldn't do. The military shouldn't be in charge of building hospitals and schools and other nation-buiding nonsense. The military shouldn't ask our brave soldiers to be sitting duck targets for cowardly terrorists. The military should be in charge of killing as many enemies as possible, blowing up all their assets and coming home job well done.

These unending conflicts are so harmful to our people. Return to the Christian Just War theory, which says at the very least, we should not attack someone who has not attacked us first or who is not very clearly about to (and able to) attack us. The follies in the Middle East, Vietnam, and Korea have all departed from this theory and have all sacrificed the lives of far too many brave and honorable men while squandering our globally deserved good will as a righteous nation. As Eisenhower told JFK when he assumed the presidency, "America is carrying far more than her share of the free world defense." This remains far more caricatured today.

Judges and Governance

We need to return to the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was originally written to constrain the federal government from becoming overbearing against the people. Now, it has been switched around to enable the federal government to constrain our rights! The concept of true liberty is almost dead in our country. Being free is so much more than just being able to go to the mall with a new credit card. Our inner cities are filled with economic slaves living in a rotten culture. Our suburbs are filled with the silence and contentment of paid people. We are more afraid to hurt people's feelings than we are to stand for truth and be critical of falsehoods when we see them.

Our federal government is in a shambles now and has been for at least my whole life. The President is either a hero or scapegoat, but a false idol to all. The Congress stands for almost nothing, as these elected representatives become soft and corrupt after just a few months in D.C. To fill that mushy gap, our judges have been legislating from the benches, interepreting laws based on the effects they have on people, the popularity of the laws, and how they, themselves, feel about politics. Such judges need to be replaced, from the top down, with judges who only seek to square any current rulings with the standard laws of the past.

Presidents need to stop signing into law every piece of dishonest legislation that comes in front of them, which today is almost every single bill. If only a man could be more concerned with his country than his own perceived legacy. Keeping Congress greased and the people dull is a horrible way to waste a legacy. We should only elect honest people to the Congress and Senate. Term limits have not worked, and they have not gotten us off the hook.

***

Our country used to be a free republic, where people could live as they pleased within their own communities. Taxes were not so high so as to make living off of one's own private land impossible. The economics were not so skewed and dishonest so as to make having more than two children nearly impossible. The morality of the people on average was high enough to consider all of us free men without the need for a nanny state.

This republic has been bought and sold like a slave in the name of progress. We are now left with its ruin and the prospects of a crumbling empire. Unless these fundamental problems in our government are dealt with, we will have to settle for more brand-switching and lying manipulation. We will have to have fewer children who will inherit less, financially, morally, and culturally. The founders of our country would not recognize the state of affairs if they could see us now. They would assume their country has been destroyed and a different one stole their name and existed in its place.

We must look to the past to see what has worked, so that we might look to a more enduring future. May God bless us all in these efforts.

News Nits

2009-03-24T19:29:00.008-04:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

It's been awhile for News Nits. If you have been following the news at all, then it's clear there are too many nits to pick since our last installment. So, let's keep this just to the main news items that might be slightly downplayed in our press.

It's been an exciting month with our long time friend, China. China is much bigger than us in people and much smarter than us in their patience. Why strike an enemy when they are strong? Well, things are starting to cook between us, and the U.S. has never been weaker than she is now.

For years, China has been buying up U.S. reserves and treasury bills. They are not alone, but they are doing it on an incredibly grand scale. Our currency and our T-bills are the foundation of our entire economy. As long as China plays by the rules of the international bankers, there should be no problems. But what if China says "screw the white devils" and starts to sell off all their U.S. reserves? This has been referred to as China's "nuclear option". Playing into this trap by borrowing more and more while exporting less and less while also importing more and more from China has been how the past several U.S. presidents have bought their way out of recessions. It's been a hot potato time bomb, and our current president is accelerating the process.

As our economy really started tanking and the new face in the White House did not magically improve the economy, some funny things started happening in close succession. This is important. First, some Chinese Navy ships started bumping butts with an unarmed U.S. Naval vessel in international waters. Keep in mind, China has 20-30 million surplus males in their 20s-30s who have no hope of getting married or becoming family men. These "bare branches" are mostly being absorbed into the military.

Then, a few days later, China's Premier, Wen Jiabao announced that he is concerned with the health of the U.S. economy and our ability to honor our nearly $2 trillion committment to the health of the Chinese economy. (That's right, every time we borrow more money to "stimulate" the U.S. economy, we are really stimulating the Chinese economy!)

Finally, just today, China has announced that it is time to remove the U.S. currency as the standard currency (or "vehicle currency") of the world. This is sort of like if a huge part of the U.S. suddenly rejected Mastercard, but we're Mastercard. This is not good. Putin has been beating the drums in the background as well and is no doubt joining China in this effort.

"I just want to remind you that, just a year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasised the US economy's fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects... Today, investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist. In just twelve months, they have posted losses exceeding the profits they made in the last 25 years. This example alone reflects the real situation better than any criticism." -- Vladmir Putin, at the Davos meeting in Switzerland, 2009

If you don't think our system is broken, then you are not following the news. News Nits will not cover the AIG bonus scandal because it is so ridiculous, it is not worth reprinting. The bailout is ridiculous; the bonuses are ridiculous; the posturing of outrage by politicians is ridiculous; the half-assed attempt to tax the bonuses back is ridiculous; the coercion of getting bonuses back from 9 of the top 10 bonus "earners" is ridiculous. How these crooks get paid so much money and then get subsidized by our government (supposedly, sworn to represent the people, not some people) to run a company and a large part of the country into the ground when they should at least be going broke like the rest of us if not going to jail is beyond News Nits.

In other news, can you trust your doctor? In an interesting commentary, a recent article in Newsweek explains "Why Doctors Hate Science." Ms. Begley explains that local cultures dictate practice moreso than scientific standards.
Along these lines is a rapid increase in exposure to radiation that Americans have experienced from an increase in scans since 1980. It remains unclear how much local medical practice is affected by profits, patient ignornance, or inertia from old standards.

What happens when there are no more nukes to knock out of the sky with lasers? Easy, turn the lasers on mosquitos. What? Yup. Throw away that old bug zapper, using the same basic technology that was used for the missile shield, this laser kills mosquitos one by one from a hundred feet away.

Deborah Solomon conducted an interesting, albeit brief, interview with Zambia native Dambisa Moyo, who explains why massive foreign aid from the U.S. government causes far more problems than it solves. If you don't read his interview, be clear, he is not knocking active charities who are proactively helping real people solve problems, and connecting your bankbooks with them. He is knocking the phoniness of celebrities who care and the incredible harm that large governments do when dishing out "charity" through "proper channels."

I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it. -- Mitch Hedberg

I Browse

2009-03-17T21:50:00.001-04:00

If you were viewing this blog in the mid 1990's you would most likely be trying to escape from your roommate shouting along with his 2-Pac cd, while he glares intensely at your Alicia Silverstone poster. All you wanna do is read about Law & Order on this futuristic "blog" thing. You can read about one line at a time as your Netscape Navigator browser and 14.4 baud modem slowly render the page.

If you were viewing this blog in the late 1990's you would most likely be trying to escape from your roommate who, every time you looked at him would yell "Waaaaazzzzzzzuuuuuuppp!!!" at you while he pumped "Who Let The Dogs Out!?!" on repeat. Unfortunately, your 56 K modem was still pretty slow, and Internet Explorer 4 crashed pretty frequently. And who were these crackpots talking about a black president, anyway?

Fortunately, the days of a single dominant browser are over. There is competition aplenty, and you can choose from several different applications to get your internet on.

Let's start with what is still the king. Internet Explorer comes pre-installed on Windows Operating Systems, and because a lot of users don't know that there are other options, it is still the most commonly used browser. In it's glory days, IE 6 was used in over 90% of all browser traffic, and did more than its part to spread viruses and trojans around the world. I'm sure IE 6 was a hacker's favorite browser.

IE 7 was introduced in the last 2 years, its selling point that it was more secure than v6 and offered multiple tabs per browser window, an obvious response to the popularity of that feature that Firefox had been providing for a while. IE 8 is still in beta testing, but boasts even better security than v7 and performance that is at least in the same conversation as high performing browsers.

The next most popular browser, and my favorite, is Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is fast, has a number of shortcuts, and best of all it's extendable. Firefox allows for a number of custom build add-ons to its browser, providing even greater functionality. My favorites:

Ad Block Plus: Too many ads on the page you're trying to read? Are the slowing down the rendering of the page? Ad Block Plus will detect ads and stop them from rendering.
Cooliris: This is an incredible cool way to search for images. I can't really describe it; you'll just have to check it out for yourself. But take the tour - it's great (especially with two-finger-scroll).
Foxmarks: Do you have more than one computer? Doesn't it get annoying managing different sets of bookmarks on each one? Foxmarks takes care of that for you by synching all your bookmarks. Just install Foxmarks on each computer you use, and it does the rest. Very useful.
Fire.fm: Puts a small bar at the top of the browser that lets you listen to your last.fm stations while you surf.

These are just a few; there are countless to choose from. I do want to note that these are applications that are written by Joe Developer. So there are security risks. I generally stick to the add-ons that are very highly rated and used by tens or even hundreds of thousands of people.

If you own a Mac, you have Safari installed on your machine. Safari is a good browser. Secure, fast, and along with the Mac itself, it's slowly penetrating the market.

Opera is an interesting story. Strait out of Norway, the Opera browser has been around for over a decade. It is another good, fast browser. It has a small number of die-hard users, but has never gained traction in the mass market.

Lastly, there is Google Chrome. Only recently released, it boasts that it is the fastest browser yet. Speed, in all of these cases, is not determined by your connection speed (which for the most part is out of the browser's control), but the speed by which the content returned is rendered. As sites get more and more complex/fancy, the speed of a browser is actually pretty noticeable. If you want to test this, use different browsers to load a site like ESPN, which is a pretty busy site. A drawback to chrome (for the time being) is that it only runs on Windows. No Mac or Linux version yet, but they are in the works. Sign up here, if you want to be notified when it's available.

There are new beta versions of the browsers all the time, and with each new release comes the claim that "this browser is now the fastest." It's hard to keep up with all of it. From the news that I browse, I would venture that IE is the slowest and Chrome is the fastest. In fact, I saw an article today about a new beta version of Chrome that is 25% faster than the current release. That's fast.

While I use Firefox as my primary browser, I do use Opera and Safari for certain circumstances, such as maintaining multiple logins (if I want to log into a different Google id, for example, I do it in a different browser so I don't have to log out of my normal id in Firefox). Browsing privately is another reason to use multiple browsers. You can configure most browsers to disable cookies, javascript, plug-ins, etc. if you want to browse somewhere but want to make sure your identity is protected. Having a separate browser that is always configured like this is handy so you don't have to modify the settings of your normal browser.

I just learned that Chrome is supporting add-ons. Once they get a Mac version, it will be hard not to switch if the performance is still there...

Anyway, I hope you guys find this to be as exciting as Carlos Zambrano did when I sent him a rough draft for review. I'd be interested to know what browsers you use, what your experiences have been, and if you find info like this helpful.

And faithful reader Marty only uses browsers while in their Beta version, so he should be able to field any questions anyone has about those.

Oh yeah, and Happy St. Pat's to all my Irish friends!

Cutting Cables and Breaking Dishes

2009-03-04T23:31:00.005-05:00

Each month, I shell out $65 to Direct TV. I don't get HD, and I don't even get the movie channels anymore. There are some programs to which I am pretty devoted, but for the most part I don't care about 98% of what's on TV.

I am going to make it my mission to find a way to get the content I really want without going through satellite or cable, for less than either would charge. Here are my basic requirements:

Must be able to watch:

Cardinals Baseball
LOST
30 Rock
The Office
Whatever the kids watch

Would be nice to watch:

ESPN
HBO content (not every show, but being able to watch content a la carte)

I know there are various ways that I can get all of this content. Some of it for free, some of it not for free. LOST, The Office and 30 Rock should be available in HD over-the-air. Most of the kids stuff we can probably get at the library. Cardinals Baseball may be a little tougher. I may have to buy it from mlb.tv, download it to the computer and watch it on our TV. Oh, and whatever the setup, I'll need to have something serving the purpose of a DVR. And to be able to watch it in the bedroom, basement, or living room would be ideal, although we may have to compromise on that.

I'm going to take a look at Hulu, Roku, YouTube, iTunes (and AppleTV), NetFlix, Amazon Unbox, etc. I may have to cobble this together somewhat, but if I can make a dent in that $65 / month, perhaps I can justify getting a nice HD TV.

Blogging this project gives me a chance to share it with you all, and hopefully learn some tips from you guys if you have already looked into these options. Anyone have anything to start off?

Around The Horn

2009-03-02T22:22:00.014-05:00

"All the hits the Nits missed."

In science news, the magazine ScienceNews recently printed an article about the successful teleportation of matter. A qubit was transferred between two atoms. It is my believe that a qubit is something that is so small that you've never heard of it before. We still have a ways to go before we can beam Coovo around the universe, but it's a start.

"But what would be the point of beaming Coovo around the universe?" you ask with a condescending tone, "Earth is the only inhabitable planet anyway!"

Not so fast. At a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in The Loop, astronomer Alan Boss recently posited that there is one earth-like planet for every solar system in the galaxy. There are about 10¹¹ solar systems in our galaxy (the good ole' Milky Way), and 10¹¹ galaxies in the universe. That's a lot of Earths.

How does he know this? He doesn't, of course. But the NASA's Kepler Mission launches on March 5, with the sole purpose to count the number of earth like planets in the Cygnus constellation. Now from my extensive research (the 90 seconds I spent reviewing the wikipedia entry) the Cygnus constellation has 6 known stars with planets. So I don't see exactly how this shows us that there is an earth in each of the 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 solar systems out there... but perhaps I just need to do more reading on the Kepler Mission. I'll admit this isn't the most thorough research ever blogged.

I wonder how many other earths invented baseball...

It's March, and the players are back on the field. While there are many players out there with numbers like 86 and 72, it's still baseball. Youngsters get a chance to turn some heads. Veterans prove they have a little left in the tank. And everybody else gets to warm it up.

In the next month, the Cards have to find a second basemen, figure out who will man the hot corner until Glaus returns, find a reliever or relievers to close games, and probably most importantly, see if Chris Carpenter is really healthy.

I'm reading Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" right now. It's a good, easy read that I recommend to all of you. The perfect book to read before bed.

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Fight

2009-02-26T16:11:00.012-05:00

Give me a break, please. I'm getting tired of this. I can't believe people are buying this. I'd rather buy a Snuggie than buy any of this. I know the patterns. When people go through economic downturns, they fill up the churches. We want to believe -- especially when the things we've believed in the past seem to crumble before our eyes. But whoever took this picture of Obama with the halo -- fittingly the outline of a federal governmental seal meant to symbolize a cherubic glow from God -- should have their poetic license revoked.

The information coming out is staggeringly complex. Honestly, I have no idea what is going on specifically, other than we are taking this one in the neck and worshipping the people doing it to us. I read that Obama's presidential address met with a 92% positive feedback rating. Whatever that means, I'm not sure, but it is warm and fuzzy. I certainly didn't watch it. I've realized within the past couple years that there is no benefit to listening to politicians speak, at least not the kind of politicians we insist on electing. I did come across about 5 minutes of Bobby Jindal's retort before turning it off. Bobby Jindal is the Great Red Hope of the GOP, which has been reduced to its dysfunctional skeleton. Mr. Jindal is a smart man from all reports, but he is clearly not a good speaker. His speech was almost impossible to watch.

That being said, he made some good points criticising, on principle, this huge governmental approach to our crisis. The backlash was immediate and incredibly childish. The media is so mentally challenged in our country and is so focused on the cult of personality, that it argues on what I would consider a playground level. Read the criticism posted of Jindal. It's absurd, comparing his demeanor (which, as was pointed out, wasn't great - but that's not a substantial criticism) to Kenneth the Page on 30 Rock. Funny, yes. Legitimate reporting from the "fourth branch" of government during the toughest economic times of our lives, no.

The article is so wacky, it makes a big "oh no he di-in't" playground point out of the fact some Republicans are criticising Jindal (who was right-on to criticize Republicans in the first place). They site David Brooks as a "conservative". David Brooks a conservative! That's like calling Hillary Clinton a conservative. Brooks is heavily invested in the status quo and the current neocon elite, Rockefeller Republicans, as is the Clinton family and a bunch of other politicians who flip coins to find out what they believe by what is popular. David Brooks a conservative! They then roll through some comments from FOX News, the most status-quo, GOP supporting mainstream group of all, with not a conservative among them. Being blindly pro-war in order to "spread Democracy" throughout the world at gunpoint because you are afraid of being called non-patriotic is the opposite of being a conservative.

Then they quote some lady named Penni Pier, a communications specialist who is not an economist saying, "It sounded like the same old rhetoric — we had tax cuts the last eight years, and look where it got us." Hmmm, really Penni? We're here because of tax cuts? But this isn't about Ms. Pier, this statement is about how our media is functioning at a playground, gossip level and our public is eating it up. Spoonfeed us more! As a wise man noted, "Our nation is in love with words." And President Obama and the "transparent" media are delivering lots of words.

Here are some examples. Peter Orszag, the head of the White House budget office, said we must spend all this money "quickly and wisely." I guess these days, when you contradict yourself in the same phrase, let alone the same article, people don't even notice.

Here are some other contradictions. Based on a speech by an ivy league clone of Alan Greenspan, the most powerful man in the unelected universe not named Geithner, Ben Bernanke assured us that he has no idea what is going on. What should we expect? Unlike many people's opinion that we are here becase of the Bush tax cuts, it is true we are here in a large part because of Greenspan's rate cuts. I do not blame Greenspan, afterall, there is a limit to one man's prescience. He would have avoided this mess if he could have possibly seen it coming. But he couldn't and didn't. And we still hand over all this power to the same people. Guess what, they can't see what's coming either, thus all the contradictions.

Here is how the press interpreted Bernanke's remarks. One article says that Bernanke says the recovery could begin this year. Another article, motivated by the exact same remarks had a quite different headline.

I don't blame the media for not having a clue about macroeconomics -- these guys obviously don't have a clue either, and it's their job. For those who are protecting their own money rather than playing around with the taxpayers', they are saying something different. "The underlying fundamentals just aren't there to support anything that's sustainable right now," Hughes said. "We haven't seen the capitulation that you'd want to see before you'd get thoroughly enthused." Hughes is Rick Hughes, a finance guy who was quoted at the bottom of the same article advertising Bernanke's remarks. More reports keep coming out that house sales are dropping at incredible rates now that this decline is hitting parts of the country that were slow to be hit. The DJIA is getting dangerously close to 7000.

Here's an example of how the Stimulus Package is not just an inefficient way to get us back on track, but that it is actually getting in the way of recovery. “Given so much stimulus package discussion in January, some would-be buyers simply sat out for clarity and certainty on the nature of housing stimulus,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, said in a statement. Hmmmmm.

Here's an example of why it's more important to shrink the government than to spend a bunch of money on "investments" that federal bureaucrats think are important. Talk about a bridge to nowhere. But if it involves combating climate change or terrorism, it is worth raising taxes and increasing deficits over.

The only clear thing is that the answer that President Obama and other Democrats (as well as the Repulican clique who got us here) have is to borrow money from our children to continue to give more to the people who recklessly got us here in the first place, giving us record (as in, not-even-close, Barry Bonds records) deficits in nominal terms, and not since WWII records in percentage of GDP terms. Fighting a world war would make sense as a reason to have large deficits. Today, we're chasing goat herders and ghosts around Afghanistan (which Obama sees as a good thing, and wants to increase), arguing over war with Iran and Pakistan, and still trying to prove that we made the right decision in Iraq by making them do what we say.

Maybe Bobby Jindal had a point. Maybe Republicans really don't have a leg to stand on, and the only way they can survive is to be less Republican and more conservative. I'll believe that when I see it, when guys like McCain aren't around anymore, and guys like David Brooks aren't confused as "conservatives". Maybe the government really is not what made our country great, maybe it truly is the people. And maybe that's why our greatness is slipping as the government grows to mammoth, empire proportions, both here and abroad.

[Disclaimer: The above cartoon is not in any way intended to be racist against any gray people, people who think they might be gray, people who believe in gray marriage or people who have at any point in history been compared to elephants. We apologize anyway.]

News Nits

2009-02-18T19:22:00.008-05:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

Tired of having boring parties? Why not try the newest rage: flavor-tripping. This drug-free trip revolves around a fruit called "miracle fruit" which you eat upon arrival. Your tongue is then coated with a substance that causes foods to taste completely differently. Sour lemons taste like sweet lemonade. Cheese tastes like frosting, and vinegar tastes like apple juice. Sounds like a cheap thrill to me and in these budget-tight times, cheap thrills are at a premium. If you would like something a little less healthy and a little more comfort food oriented, try the new bacon explosion. From first hand experience, I can say the bacon explosion is worth the effort.

[Editor's Note: Based on reader feedback, I've been asked to share my experiences with the bacon explosion. Here is a "taste": One, two, three. It tasted even better than I had hoped.]

In other news, some wackier than others, a woman in Los Angeles has been revealed to have a "super-memory". She can remember in vivid detail almost every single day of her life. Blessing or curse? In two signs the Muslim world is making progress, the coaches and managers of a co-ed soccer game in Iran were severely punished for a brutal mixing of the sexes. That is perhaps the lighter side of some news happening in our own U.S. of A. A man in Buffallo, NY has been charged with second-degree murder for beheading his ex-wife. Ironically, this former husband/wife team started a TV station with the mission of softening the image of Muslims in the media. Oops. And just down the road in Stamford, Conn, an otherwise friendly chimpanzee went on a rampage, severely injuring a woman before local cops were able to kill him.

Also from around the world, two nuclear subs accidentally "bumped" each other in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Brings scary new meaning to, "It's a small world afterall." In our small world, the United States of Africa have just elected Muammar Gaddafi as head King. Remember this guy? He issued a letter saying he is coming as "the king of the traditional kings of Africa." Maybe he will find better hope for the African AIDS crisis than garlic? This dude makes Rick James look collected.

A few more nits, the peace-loving Israelis seem to have a secret weapon that they are using against the Palistinians, who have grenades and numbers. And in a cool piece of science that might indicate solar panels and windmills are out-dated before they are even widespread, our home energy problems might just be a bucket of water away.

News nits doesn't like to leave our readers high and dry (or wet). So in an effort to round out the sometimes overwhelming news, we present video evidence of an innocent kid on drugs. Who said the dentist office was no fun?

I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed.
- Frank Deford

A-ROiD?

2009-02-08T22:10:00.005-05:00

Sports Illustrated recently ran a story claiming Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003.

I don't know Alex Rodriguez, but from the interviews I read and stories I heard, I didn't think too much of him as a person. And yet, I always admired him as a player because I thought he was clean. Bonds passing Ruth's and Aaron's numbers bothered me, but I always figured it wouldn't matter too much because A-ROD would eventually pass Bonds.

My belief that A-ROD was clean was based on the fact that over his career, he never displayed the abnormal bulk/growth that you saw in Bonds, McGwire and Sosa. That simple layman's test is apparently not valid. According to the SI article, Primobolan, the drug for which Rodriguex is accused of testing positive, "improves strength and maintains lean muscle with minimal bulk development, according to steroid experts, and has relatively few side effects."

TLATL has covered steroids in baseball here, here and here. Aside from TARP and L&O, it's probably our most blogged topic. This is a pretty big story to me, but maybe you all had already priced in the notion that anyone who's anyone in baseball in the last 10 years is a user.

We'll probably never see indisputable proof, so my first question is, do you believe SI's story? If so, are you upset? Disappointed? Indifferent? Does it change your perspective on other players?

Around the Horn

2009-02-06T23:05:00.005-05:00

"All the Hits the Nits Missed."

There is a conference each year whose tagline is "ideas worth spreading". I think about every blog claims this tagline, too, but not every blog gets the likes of Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and Bill Madlock as guest speakers. I suggest browsing the previously linked site, there's some cool stuff there.

Like ole Billy Gates releasing a bunch of mosquitos on the audience as part of his attempt to raise awareness about malaria, claiming, "Not only poor people should experience this."

Microsoft has been the cool thing to bash for years now, and Bill Gates hasn't ducked much of that, either. But truth be told, I think Bill Gates is a hero. He worked hard, got rich, and now he's using his wealth to make the world a better place. Places like Africa...

Where Nigerian police have arrested a goat, and have charged it with armed robbery. The claim is that the goat was a human when he committed the crime, but then morphed into a goat using some kind of black magic after committing the crime to avoid capture. You're avoiding capture, so you turn into a goat. Not a bird. Not a T-Rex. Not a mosquito. A goat.

Just in case you're unaware, Nigeria is Africa's most populous nation, by far. At 135 million people, they have 50 million more people/goats than runner-up Ethiopia.

And in election news, Iraq recently completed nationwide elections. The early results suggested that current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's party or allied parties were victorious throughout most of the country. While there's a ways to go, Iraq has come quite a ways from its 2005 elections.

U-N-I-T-Y

2009-02-01T14:15:00.010-05:00

We are moving from surface to substance in a short amount of time. President Obama, using eerily similar language to former president Bush, urged the Stimulus Package to go through congress as fast as possible. Let's see if this first major act of legislation unifies the country the way Obama-believers have advertised.

"We won the election. We wrote the bill." - Nancy Pelosi

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." - Rahm Emanuel (aka Karl Rove)

In a vote that nearly went right along party lines, it is clear that Obama's intention for a new era that transcends red and blue politics is nothing more than lip service. In fact, President Obama appears to be a classic mega-Democrat who can't wait to spend as much of your money as possible. All of this while we as a country are at record debt levels. In fact, the legislation is so out of whack with common sense fiscal concern, that it did not receive one Republican vote, while losing 11 Democrats as well. This might be a good time to point out that although about 70 million people voted for Obama, over 60 million voted against him.

Since the bill is still split in both houses, the exact numbers are not yet known. But what started out being advertised as a stimulus package to create essential jobs by reinvesting in infrastructure and transportation has been porked into a giant buffet of Democratic pet social spending projects. In fact, only about 12% of the approx $900 Billion of your money is going to infrastructure and transportation.

A huge chunk, $252 billion worth, is just flat out income-transfer from rich to poor. That might make people feel kinder about themselves, by taking from one group and giving to another, but it will do nothing for our economy. It would be more fun and probably more efficient to just drop that money randomly out of helicopters as little bags of cash. But this bill can be sliced and diced any which way you want, and still some people will believe the government has the power to "get us out" of this recession - a recession caused by lack of saving, mal-investment, hyper consumption and failed government regulations. There is a longer-term picture here, which the WSJ points out:

The larger fiscal issue here is whether this spending bonanza will become part of the annual "budget baseline" that Congress uses as the new floor when calculating how much to increase spending the following year, and into the future. Democrats insist that it will not... The likelihood is that this allegedly emergency spending will become a permanent addition to federal outlays -- increasing pressure for tax increases in the bargain.

Obama promised to go through the budget "line by line" and eliminate programs that don't work. I am waiting with baited breath for this to happen.

It is understandable that the frustration this country felt under the Bush administration has flip-flopped into support for the Obama administration. People want to feel better about their federal government. So, it is no surprise that Obama's initial approval ratings are almost exactly the inverse of the outgoing president's. We've gone from scapegoat to idol.

When friends of mine write stuff like, "Did anyone else see Obama's speech? Awesome. So exciting to have a President speaking idealistically in terms I can relate to and believe make sense. Makes patriotism seem cool again like when I was in kindergarten...," I understand and appreciate the sentiment. But after the speeches have been rendered, the hangovers endured and the Obama babies have been born, will our country be better off in reality?

And don't get me wrong, Obama's deceit on overcoming old barriers is nothing new, Republicans have done it too (perhaps less convincingly). Actually, any time I hear the phrase "bi-partisan legislation", I run for cover knowing something awful is about to happen. But the blind optimism of so many Obama worshippers is discomforting. It's one thing if you really like big government programs. That's fine, that's your opinion and your business. But I think it is more likely that a bunch of common sense moderates are about to soon discover they're at a party with a bunch of people they didn't know as well as they thought they did, and they'd rather just go home and tend to their families.

Up next, in another move of hope and reform, Obama is pushing through FOCA - the Freedom of Choice Act. This little piece of legislation, although a slight gray area as to how it will be interpereted, is without a doubt the most heavy-handed, anti-moderate, anti-middle ground piece of abortion legislation to ever descend from our centralized, ever-growing-in-power federal government. This bill has the potential to not just over-rule the natural and constitutionally-stated power of the states to make their own laws, but it could get down to the level of over-ruling individual physicians' discretion. It has the potential to close down every Catholic hospital in the country.

The federal government has a clear responsibility over the federal budget (deficit and debt), the national border and the use of our military. So far, nothing has changed in these areas, showing that the intelligence that attracted so many to Obama may not be enough. What may be needed is a clear understanding of our founding principles and the discipline to uphold them.

"Don't go chasing waterfalls
Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to
I know that you're gonna have it your way or nothing at all
But I think you're moving too fast" - TLC, Waterfalls

Time to Man Up?

2009-01-30T21:27:00.007-05:00

"I speak with Manny every three days and he tells me, `Man, no one wants to sign me,' Pujols said Thursday during a news conference. "I'm not an agent or general manager, but I can't understand how Manny has not signed.''

There are a few reasons that no team has reached a deal with free agent Manny Ramirez:

The Economy. Across the board, teams are spending less. Aside from the cream of the crop, players that would have received 3, 4 or 5 year deals in previous off-seasons are getting 1 or 2 year deals. Some, like Manny, are still waiting.
Manny will be 37 next year. Signing him to the minimum 4-year deal that his agent, Scott Boras, is demanding potentially limits his suitors to those in the Junior Circuit, where they are cursed with the impurity of the Designated Hitter.
Attitude. He's flaky. He's selfish. He plays when he wants to play. It's no secret that Manny pretty much faked injuries midway through the season, forcing Boston to trade him, which voided the 2 remaining option years on his contract and allowed he and Boras to seek a new multi-year deal.

There's a few reasons the Cardinals themselves shouldn't sign Manny:

No Room. The Cardinals already have a glut of Outfielders. Super-prospect CF Colby Rasmus joins an already crowded group of Rick Ankiel, Ryan Ludwick, Skip Schumaker and Chris Duncan.
Bigger Needs. Even if the Cards could make some room in the OF via trades, most would argue that starting pitching and relief pitching are better holes to fill than another bat in the lineup.
$$$$. At the beginning of the off-season, the Dodgers didn't bite on Boras' demands for a 5 or even 6 year deal. They offered 2 years, $45 million. Apparently Boras has yet to even dignify that with a response. Pujols posits that Manny may give the Cards a home team discount. I don't buy it. If the Cards were to show interest in Manny, Boras would most certainly use that as leverage to get offers from the Dodgers (or as rumored, the Giants) raised. If there's one thing we've learned about Scott Boras, he doesn't give discounts.

There's a couple reasons the Cards should sign Manny.

Manny Still Rakes. He's probably one of the top 3 hitters in the last 12 years, and even at 36, after he was traded to the Dodgers he put up a .396/.489/.743 line in 222 PA. He has a career line of .314/.411/.593 (for comparison's sake, the 29(?) year old Pujols' career line is .334/.425/.624 ....... yeah... he's still really good..... ).
This is the first time that I can remember Pujols suggesting the Cards go after a specific player. I've often wondered how the Cards' purse strings may affect their ability to sign the slugger when he becomes a FA before the 2012 season. Will he become frustrated if Cardinal ownership is content to spend just enough to keep the fans coming but not enough to be a real contender? I'm not suggesting that the musings of a superstar should dictate team policy; I just think it would be a shame for Pujols to sour on the team when it's pretty obvious that Cardinal ownership could afford to expand payroll.

So really, the question isn't do you think the Cards should the Cardinals sign Manny Ramirez, it's how much should the Cards spend on Manny? I'm not asking because I think they should; rather I want to know what you think Manny is worth to the Cards? You're the GM, what do you think?

News Nits

2009-01-25T20:08:00.011-05:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

Barack Hussein Obama, the icon, became Mr. President this passed week, officially, at noon on Tuesday, January 20th. That little technicality became worth noting after the oath of office turned into a dropped fly ball between two highly paid outfielders. Although strictly speaking unnecessary, the oath was administered again later that night "out of an abundance of caution."

[Editor's note: In celebration of our nation getting a new President, my girlfriend and I enjoyed an "Obama Roll" tonight at our favorite sushi restaurant in Minneapolis: Wasabi. We passed on the "Inauguration Roll", feeling it might come out slightly messy.]

In a final act as President, George W. Bush commuted the sentence of two border patrol guards -- Ignacio Ramos and Jorge Compean -- who were convicted of shooting a Mexican drug dealer in the trasero, as he fled a van load of weed across the Rio Grande, and then covering up the shooting. Mr. Bush did not pardon the gentlemen, as he reasoned they were convicted in a fair court but did commute their sentence (they already served 2 years time) agreeing it was too harsh.

[Editor's note: Our nation is facing trillion dollar deficits for years to come, and yet we are still so concerned about van loads of weed. Why not decriminalize it like alcohol, regulate it like alcohol, tax it like alcohol, wipe the "War on Drugs" off our books and turn it into a financial positive?]

In less political news, real estate is not the only industry with depressed prices. The printed news press is getting destroyed. In a move that smacks of desperation rather than strategy, the New York Times just handed over a large amount of its stock for a reported $250 million cash infusion from the second richest man in the world, Carlos Slim. Mr. Slim, not a Mexican hip-hop artist, made his fortune in telecom and was briefly the richest man in the world. It is nice to see the free market at work, although it makes me question the legitimacy of the American press when it might soon be controlled by a super rich Mexican.

From around the world, more news is coming in concerning the Congressional computer hacking invasion of 2006. Apparently the ladies and gentlemen who run our Congress do not hire high quality computer guys. Instead, they argue over the importance of invading Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan, by the way, has the world's largest standing army. But maybe they should spend a little more time protecting our nation's secrets from the only legitimate threat to the U.S. in the world right now: China.

From around the solar system, our pals at NASA found a huge chunk of subsurface pure water on Mars. This huge chunk is roughly 100 times the size of the great lakes. Tickets anyone? We'll be water skiing on Mars in no time. Which is good, because 650 global climate change scientists declared in December that the 12,000 year warming period we've been in is over and we are heading into a 100,000 year ice age, as would be consistent with the 450,000 year ice core samples known to science. Maybe we should start working on a Kyoto version for the U.N. to enforce on Mars.

"Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen." -- P.J. O'Rourke

Obama-nation

2009-01-22T18:28:00.006-05:00

History has been made in the United States. The 44th President of the United States of America has been sworn in and has handed a categorical victory to many of those people in our country who may still feel marginalized by things out of their control, like their skin color.

In fact, race and perception go hand and hand to many. The country is indeed in the first few days of a superficial makeover. As many of our citizens sober up and recover from the inaugural hangover, they will awake to find indeed, Barack Obama has wasted no time proving how serious he is about reform. Or is he serious about unifying the country? Can those be done at the same time?

At least the press is keeping a level head. As I watched the swearing in of the new President with about 50 other people on a large screen TV in the business school, I wondered how his utter butchering of the oath of office would be treated by the press. The audience I was with gave it a good-natured laugh. Ah, that's Barack being Barack!

However, I made a bet with myself that John Stewart wouldn't show it or mention it on The Daily Show that night -- what is supposed to be a comic review of news. I was right, but was completely out done by his judgment that it was funny to pick on Dick Cheney for being in a wheelchair, not once but twice. Although no one would mistake John Stewart for anything but a mildly funny schmuck, he does carry some sway in that a huge percentage of people in my demographic literally get their news from his jestering.

Is it unfair to imagine how a similar verbal gaffe from former President Bush would have been handled? Ah, whatever. Everyone is glad to see him go, although there were several comments in Mr. Obama's speech aimed directly at the former president. The classiness of those remarks has been called into question by some as being rare and inappropriate.

Some more about race and media. John Stewart also showed a video clip of a black preacher, Reverend Lowery, saying a "prayer" which turned into more of a scat: "...We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man,..." Stewart conveniently edited out the finale of that rap, "...and when white will embrace what is right." Wait a minute, I thought we had put those racial divides behind us? Is this really change or just a power shift? Obama was shown chuckling. Hmmm.

Let's not forget where Obama comes from. (Actually, that's not entirely clear either since his birth certificate from Hawaii has never been released or verified.) But, his political origins are in Chicago, the cesspool of big city, machine politics. As Joe Biden's wife let slip on Oprah, there are some powerful forces behind the Obama complex who are making sure to keep the radical on a short leash. Obama the Powerful, Obama the Benevolent might just be, Obama the Same-Old-Same-Old. We're all grateful he's not Bush, but what is he? I mean, the idealism that people speak of is certainly believed by the believers, but he's as much a product of a Karl Rove as Bush was. Dick Cheney endorsed his cabinet picks, which makes you wonder if Obama is truly the radical reformer his campaign advertised, because that would make Cheney as equally radical. Hmmmm. Business as usual? Well, not on the surface at least. Guantanamo is closing down. Talk about putting up new wallpaper, the prisoners won't be released, they just won't be held in Guantanamo. Reform.

But back to machine politics. Although Obama's campaign had a lot of grassroots elements to it, never before was there more big money behind a candidate than this election. Obama spent $7.39 per vote, John McCain $5.78 in the most extravagant election of all time. Methinks that $1 billion could have been better spent, but that's the idealist in me.

I found it remarkable that ~60 million people still voted for John McCain. It made me ask the question, how much of a uniter could Barack Obama be if so many people voted against him? How big was his victory anyway? Well, his victory, although decisive, was hardly a landslide. Here's a picture of the country by state for the 2008 election -- hardly a uniting of America. Here's a picture of a landslide election. Does the press call Reagan a "uniter"? In fact, George H.W. Bush gathered more electoral votes than Obama.

Well, those are just stats. There is clearly a different feeling in the air about this President. After eight years of suffering through the George W. Bush years, the nation is ready for something -- anything -- different. We've got that now in Barack Hussein Obama. It remains to be seen if he can tackle our biggest problems effectively, or if he becomes largely ineffectual like Clinton, or if he does a lot of damage like Bush. Time, and not the media, will tell.

He is part Irish, you know . . .

2009-01-20T12:03:00.003-05:00

Had I seen this picture 2 years ago, I would have quit my job and campaigned for this guy.

Full story is here at ChicagoTribune.com. But in short, he met the Lawn Rangers, a lawn mowing drill team, and held up this plunger, which they use as batons.

They will be part of "Mow-bama's" Inauguration parade today.

God Bless America.

News Nits

2009-01-16T13:53:00.010-05:00

"All the news that's fit to reprint."

Lots has been going on in the news this week. A plane crashed into the Hudson river, but all 150 people on board were rescued. A rare nit of bad news turned good. I wonder if anyone used their flotation devices? I thought those things were just a joke. Talk about a bailout, the captain of the plane is already being hailed as a hero. Quite an incredible story.

Where are you right now? I can tell you where I am. I am inside. Just after lunch, here in the Twin Cities, it's finally gotten up to -3. It was -18 when I got into school this morning. These are not wind chill readings, these are temperatures. It has been like this all week, and it's insane. Even the DJ's at MPR's the Current are getting more sarcastic and snarky than normal. My administrative assistant who grew up in Fargo assured me that it's no big deal, -20 is when you start to worry about frostbite in under 10 minutes. Hmmm. Tell Canada they can have their air back. I need to go get some more coffee, be right back, or as the kids these days IM, "brb"...

Speaking of coffee, it appears that moderate amounts of coffee are good for your brizzain. This is excellent news, as I was planning on continuing drinking coffee even if that Canadian swimsuit chick begged me not to. Perhaps if she is really nice, I will not drink more than 3 cups a day. If a hallucination convinces you to stop doing the stuff that's causing you to hallucinate, is that like a paradox? Sounds like Marty McFly and Doc need to explain this to me. But until they do, here are some other good articles about foods you should be eating and ways you can protect your heart
(physically, not emotionally). Also, this device will not only improve your posture, but it will make you look more Swedish.

No matter how many pretty speeches O'Bama gives or how big the stimulus packages talk gets, the economy is still a real thing, and it has bitten off a huge chunk of poisonous food that it is now trying to digest and purge from its system anyway possible. Except no one wants to take the hit in that process. Circuit City is liquidating itself, sorry if that sounds disgusting. The financial sector is also taking additional hits as Bank of America and Citigroup stick their chubby little hands out for more money after posting bigger losses. I'm trying not to inject my personal comment here other than for entertainment's sake, but why do these guys deserve a bailout, but not Circuit City or Detroit? Or you and me?

If things get too bad in the economy, we can always sell whatever we've got left, put on our favorite jumpsuit and move here. Just zoom out one click at a time to get a good sense for where it is. I'm sure they've got DSL there, so your subscription and dependence on The Loop and the Lou would not be interrupted.

But News Nits wouldn't leave you high and dry like that before the weekend. So here's a rare reco from TLATL, if you haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire, go on and treat the lady to a really entertaining movie and story. (Don't worry, it's in English.)

"I don't have an English accent because this is what English sounds like when spoken properly." -- James Carr

[Update: Heard about this new Windows Worm -- known as Conficker, Downaddup, or Kido -- over the weekend and it's now popping up in my RSS feeds. Practice safe computing, America!]