On May 31, 1966, my grandfather, for whom I am named, died at the age of 55. I was born three months before his death, so while I never got to know him, he at least got to meet me. He'd been diagnosed with leukemia a couple of years before his death, and by the time I came along this man who had been a firefighter and who had played semipro football and baseball was barely strong enough to hold a baby in his arms for more than a few minutes at a time. There's one picture that I know of that shows him holding me - I think it's from my baptism - which is in a framed collage of photos that my folks gave me on my 30th birthday.
Recent discussion on my RoundTable mailing list has gotten me thinking about my heritage and how I identify myself. As this coincides with the anniversary of the death of Charles Kuffner Senior, I'm feeling the need to write some of this down. Ethnically, I'm half Italian, three-eighths Irish, and one-eighth German, but in truth I have no idea what that really means. All of my grandparents were born in the US, and all of my great-grandparents (many of whom were also born here) were dead long before I arrived. I have no real contact with my ethnicity - I may as well be Swedish or Greek or South African.
There are a few parts of my background and personal history that are identifiable as "Irish" or "Italian", mostly the latter and mostly having to do with food, not that there's anything wrong with that. My mother and grandmother were and are excellent cooks, and I grew up on homemade tomato sauce, which any fan of The Sopranos knows is properly called "gravy". Some of my grandmother's recipes have thankfully been preserved, and Tiffany (also an excellent cook) has made a great effort to use them. We've partly revived a Christmas Eve tradition of a big fish and pasta dinner that my grandmother used to host, and last year Tiffany made a traditional Easter bread from one of the old recipes. I have to say, if you can only save one part of your heritage, keep the cuisine.
I think what I miss most, if you can miss something you never really experienced, is knowing the generations that preceded me. There are still a few people left from my grandparents' time, and I knew some of those who have died, but even there I'm talking about people born and raised in the US and spoke English. I've heard tales of my mother's Italian-speaking grandparents, my father's shy and reticent German grandfather and his brash and somewhat obnoxious Irish grandfather, but these people are historical artifacts to me. I may as well be reading about them in a textbook. I get jealous of Tiffany sometimes, as all eight of her great-grandparents were alive when she was born.
So is it a good thing or a bad thing that I'm so thoroughly assimilated into America and its culture and so thoroughly divested of my "roots"? I think on balance I'm better off. Lord knows there are plenty of parts of most people's histories that are better off left behind - ancient grudges, enemies, scores to even, and so on. And it's not like I'm ashamed in any way of my Americannness. I guess I just feel like there's a piece of my puzzle that's gone forever and I'll never really know how it would have affected the picture of who I am. I fear that some day when I try to tell my future children about who they are and where they come from I won't be able to tell them the full story and that as a result I will somehow have failed them.
I am, as someone once said, what I am. I'm an American of various extractions, raised in New York and living in Texas, who prefers to look forward but never forgets to look back from time to time. I'm an intellectual liberal problem-solving sports-loving more extroverted than introverted homeowning sax-playing one-woman-man laid back kind of guy who finds therapy in writing about this sort of thing. I can live with that.
I seem to be referring to Max Power quite a bit recently, but that's because he's been doing such a bang-up job of dissecting Prof. Volohk's defenses of Intelligent Design. I think I can give him an assist with this latest entry:
It's a language issue: when I say "intelligent design", I'm discussing the intelligent design movement, which makes actual contentions that are demonstrably false, including the contention that ID is scientific. With that definition, there's nothing incorrect with saying that "intelligent design proponents are wrong." Eugene would surely agree with that (he states his agreement with the premises in his posts, and the conclusion naturally follows), just as I would agree with Eugene's narrower (but ultimately trivial) point that the hypothesis "An omniscient being created both humanity and all of the evidence pointing towards evolution and away from intelligent design" cannot ultimately be said to be "wrong" or anything worse than "not helpful."
The word you're looking for, Max, is falsifiable, as in Prof. Volohk's contention about an omniscient being is not falsifiable.
Falsificationism was the great contribution to the philosophy of science by Karl Popper. It clearly lays out what makes a theory scientific and what does not. The crucial aspect is falsifiability, which is to say that a truly scientific theory must be refutable by some means. If there is no way to prove that a hypothesis is false, it cannot be scientific.
This page is full of good introductory information. Here are some conclusions Popper drew about scientific theories:
1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory - if we look for confirmations.2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory - an event which would have refuted the theory.
3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")
7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers - for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")
One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.
It's clear that by these criteria, Intelligent Design utterly fails to be a scientific theory because there is no test which can be devised that would refute the hypothesis that an omniscient being is responsible for the creation of the universe and all the evidence that points towards evolution. It's no more falsifiable than the statement that invisible winged squirrels are what alter the path of curveballs, and as such it's no more scientific.
Please note that I am not claiming that there's anything wrong with believing that an all-powerful God created the heavens and the earth. The ironic thing is that evolution has nothing to say about how life was created, nor does it contradict a belief in God having a hand in evolution. All I'm saying is that religion and science are different things that use different methods to answer questions. Intelligent Design is religion masquerading as science. It is not science, and it has no place being taught as science.
Ken Layne, Max Power, Tim Blair, and VodkaPundit have lined up to praise Mark Steyn for his smackdown on the United Nations Global Environmental Outlook. Steyn turns his usual witty phrase in mocking this latest doomsday report, which like most others before it seems willing to extrapolate growth and usage trends without allowing for the possibility of technological advancement.
I think it would be wise, though, for the triumphalists to keep in mind that Steyn's was a political piece rather than a critical examination by an expert in the field. For example, when Steyn writes
[I]n 2002, with enough oil for a century and a half, the planet awash in cut-price minerals, and less global famine, starvation and malnutrition than ever before, the end of the world has had to be rescheduled.
he doesn't exactly cite any sources to back up his claims. This being the Internet, and this being a day off for me, I thought we could take a closer look at some of this. In particular, let's look at the claims about oil.
Here are a few words from an industry leader about the future of oil exploration and production:
Oil is the world's largest source of energy, supplying nearly half of total primary energy demand. Three-quarters of world oil reserves are in OPEC countries and of these, two-thirds are in just four countries: Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It might be expected that priority would be given to producing Middle East oil, given its abundance and the fact that it is relatively cheap to produce. However, as a result of economic, political and strategic considerations, the search for oil has extended into remote parts of the earth, both onshore and, increasingly, offshore.Exploring for and producing oil offshore is both difficult and expensive. Oil companies will continue to seek technical innovations needed to make such activities cost-effective. Improved geological and seismic data have led to more accurate estimates of oil reserves. In some cases, reservoirs have been reassessed and reserves upgraded in the light of prevailing economics. On the production side, improved drilling techniques and the use of lighter materials on platforms have cut costs considerably, sometimes by as much as a third.
Oil supply can be augmented by unconventional sources such as oil shale and tar sands. There are major oil shale deposits in the Western United States, Australia and Morocco, and tar sands occur in Canada, Venezuela and Madagascar. Such sources are more expensive to produce than conventional oil and therefore tend to be uneconomic to develop in times of low oil prices.
So much for oil supply. But what about oil demand in the future? Demand in developed countries is likely to show little growth, due to energy conservation measures and moves towards greater energy efficiency and alternative energy sources. Well-insulated homes require less heating, modern car engines use gasoline more efficiently. Demand in the developing countries, on the other hand, is likely to increase, owing to greater industrialization and population growth, especially in urban areas. As people become more affluent, there are more cars on the road and demand for oil - still the main transport fuel - therefore increases.
In the early 1970s, there were concerns that the world's oil might be running out. This view has now changed and it is believed that with today's technology there is enough oil to last well into the next century. Public debate is now focused on the environment and the term 'sustainable development' has become increasingly familiar. People want a higher standard of living, but not at the expense of permanent damage to the environment. The use of all fossil fuels, including oil, will depend not only on technical, political and economic decisions but, increasingly, on environmental considerations.
"It is believed that with today's technology there is enough oil to last well into the next century" is not quite as strong as Steyn's assertion, which implied that all that oil has been found and merely awaits extraction. Most of the oil that Shell is talking about has yet to be found, though we have a pretty good idea of where it's likely to be and how much will probably be there.
The more pressing question is how expensive will it be to actually find and extract it? As noted, half the world's known reserves live in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, a thought that should give pause to cheerleading. Many oil companies are turning offshore for new discoveries, but again as noted, that's harder and more expensive. There may be plenty of oil out there, but what happens if it only becomes economic to extract it at $50 a barrel? There's a difference between the total supply of oil and the total supply of cheap oil. That difference may turn out to be minor, but it's too soon to dismiss it.
Indeed, some in the oil patch think the supply of cheap oil will peak in the next ten years or so. This is a controversial position, but it's not Greenpeace that's pushing it. Again, all I'm saying here is that Steyn is behaving a bit like Pollyanna. Responding to silly doomsaying with silly blue-skying is, well, silly.
Even in places that are now friendly (or at least friendlier) to us and which have a fair amount of oil, there's much to be done before it can be reliably transported to us. This article about oil production in Russia gives a good overview. Russian oil will eventually help us lessen our dependence on OPEC, but we'll have to reduce our rate of consumption if we ever want to get that monkey fully off our backs.
Steyn himself fails to make note of the consequences of his free market prescriptions:
Thirty years after the first doom-mongering eco-confab in Stockholm, it should be obvious even to the UN frequent-flyer crowd. Markets aren't the problem, but the solution to the problem. The best way to clean up the neighbourhood is to make people wealthier. To do that, you need free markets, democracy, the rule of law and public accountability. None of those things exist in the Middle East, which is the real reason they'll be taking communal showers once a month in 2032.Since 1970, when the great northern forest was being felled to print Paul Ehrlich best-sellers, the U.S. economy has swollen by 150%; automobile traffic has increased by 143%; and energy consumption has grown 45%.
So if free-market democracy comes to the Middle East and raises everyone's standard of living - and don't get me wrong here, this is a highly desireable thing - we can expect the rate of consumption of oil, among other things, to greatly increase. What effect will that have on the rate of depletion of the reserves? The Shell report seems to take this into account when discussing how much oil there is left, but let's face it: The rate of economic growth and natural resource consumption resulting from third-world countries transitioning to free-market democracy is pretty darned unpredictable. We just don't know.
Finally, while the free market is good for many things, it's not a panacea:
[Also since 1970], air pollutants have declined by 29%, toxic emissions by 48.5%, sulphur dioxide levels by 65.3%, and airborne lead by 97.3%.
Call me crazy, Mark, but I think the Clean Air Act may have had something to do with that. Go read Steven den Beste's discussion of spoiling the commons for the reason why government has a vital role to play.
I have no intention to monger fear on this issue. Among the many things I don't worry about when I crawl into bed at night is whether we'll run out of oil in my lifetime. That doesn't mean there's nothing to think about, however. Mark Steyn would be wise to give it a little more thought.
(If you want to give it a little more thought, go back to the beginning of this Shell article and read their excellent overview on the history and technology of exploration and production.)
A somber tribute to our fallen brothers and sisters at Ground Zero, as the cleanup work finishes up.
We will never forget. May your families and friends find solace, and may we never have cause for this kind of ceremony again.
Two incredibly stupid columns by sportswriters about the prospect of a baseball strike. The first, by Kansas City writer Jason Whitlock, is probably better fodder for a hardcore libertarian than a squishy liberal like me, but I think even Ralph Nader would get a good horse laugh at howlers like this:
Critics of the owners say that if the game is in such bad financial shape, "Why don't the owners exercise some financial discipline?"It's a legit question. But if you think about it, it's not all that hard to understand.
You ever needed to lose weight? Has the doctor ever looked at your cholesterol level and told you to cut out the six-egg, five-cheese omelet you enjoy each morning? Has a doctor ever taken out a restraining order forbidding you to come within 100 yards of Hayes Hamburgers after midnight?
OK, let's say you've never needed to lose weight. Have you ever tried to get out of a painful, destructive relationship with someone you're really attracted to? Has one last sleepover ever turned into 10 more months of dysfunction and an unwanted pregnancy?
You feel me?
Just because the owners lack the discipline to correct the problem doesn't mean that there's no problem.
Good Lord, man, we're talking about men who've made gazillions of dollars in other businesses. They did so by being smart, savvy, ruthless, and financially disciplined. How do you think the Board of Directors at MegaCorp would react if the CEO came to them and said "Look, I know we really need to control our costs, but I just can't seem to stop blowing millions on high-risk, low-yield ventures. Could you maybe see about getting some laws passed to make what I'm doing illegal?"
The owners' lack of discipline, which is really a lack of hiring the right general managers and letting them do the job as it is anything else, is the problem. The day that owners and their GMs realize that there are far better and cheaper alternatives to throwing ten million bucks at stiffs like Derek Bell is the day that baseball's financial problems (as cried about by Beelzebud and his cronies) disappear. Any business that needs to be rescued from its inability to hire the right people and make smart financial decisions is one that deserves to fail.
Whitlock finishes up by firmly supporting the owners' calls for a hard salary cap, "legitimate" revenue sharing, and an end to guaranteed contracts:
If the owners take the proper, hardcore negotiating position and my sportswriting colleagues properly explain what's at stake, I believe baseball fans will side with the owners, and there will be little fan hostility.
Well, if you're going to write about these issues without having the faintest clue about the facts behind them, then yeah, you could probably swing a bunch of gullible fans to your side. Perhaps if you actually did some research, like maybe reading The Baseball Prospectus once in awhile, you might learn a thing or two about baseball's finances. Why, just today, there's a great article about how the Angels, a team that got $9.5 million revenue-sharing dollars for being in the small market of Los Angeles, could redo its books to conform to Selig standards and really rake in the dough. And over on an obscure site called ESPN, there's this article which shows just how solvent most clubs really are.
Research, buddy. All the kids are doing it these days. Try it sometime and see.
A different kind of ignorance is displayed by St. Petersburg's Gary Shelton:
Look around. It is May, and how many teams have a realistic chance to win the World Series? Three? Four? How many teams have a chance to win next year's World Series? And the next? About the same number? And so it goes.Now look at the NFL. How many teams have a chance to win the 2005 Super Bowl? Pretty much everyone except the Bengals.
That, more than anything, is what is wrong with baseball.
Joe Sheehan neatly demolished that argument in March:
The 16-game schedule, and 12-team playoffs, enhance the perception of competitive balance in the NFL.
An MLB team that is 60-80 after 87.5% of the schedule is completed is playing the kids and looking towards next year. An NFL team that is 6-8 after 87.5% of the schedule is completed is often a two-game winning streak from the wild card.This is perhaps the biggest factor in the way the two sports are perceived. People think of the NFL as having great races in which everyone has a chance, but there's simply a limit as to how much separation you can create in 15 weeks. If MLB played a 16-game season, you'd not only have tremendous races, but a lot more turnover. Add in six playoff spots per league, which lowers the bar for success, and you have a huge pileup between 9-7 and 7-9 that looks like a "great race," but is actually just a function of structure.
I can’t emphasize this enough: NFL competitive balance is as much perception as it is reality. Expecting MLB, with 162 games and one wild-card spot, to shape itself to meet the perception of another league is a bad idea
Another thing to keep in mind is that NFL teams get a lighter schedule, as well as higher draft picks, for finishing with losing records. They call it parity, and a lot of people call it boring. But hey, they have a salary cap, so they must be doing something right.
Shelton goes on to display his ignorance of baseball:
Those who do care, however, always seem to have the same question when they ask about the Rays. It's a question asked with pained eyes and a pleading voice."Is there any hope?"
Sure, if you want to be the Minnesota Twins.
Sure, if you want to be the Oakland A's.
Sure, if you want to trade in fifth place for, say, a nice little season where you finish third.
But if you're talking about winning the World Series? About leveling the playing field with the Yankees? About reaching the World Series? No, there isn't a lot of hope.
What, exactly, are you saying here, Gary? Last I checked, the A's were in the playoffs the last two years, and were it not for Terence Long losing a fly ball in the sun, would have battled the small-market Mariners for the 2001 pennant. The Twins were in first place most of the year last year and are in first place now. They have at least as good a chance of winning the AL Central as the White Sox, another "small market" team even if they are from Chicago. And the lesson of the 1987 Twins and 1997 Marlins is certainly that once you're in the playoffs, anything can happen.
The Rays are the same as the Royals, who are the same as the Tigers, who are the same as the Padres, who are the same as the Pirates, who are the same as the rest of baseball's great unwashed. None of them has a chance. Either.
Anyone who thinks that a well-run organization like the Padres, which is maybe a year away from being a serious force in the NL West, is the same as the Devil Rays and the Royals, two of the worst-run franchises in the league, is smoking crack. Even the Pirates are starting to head in the right direction, now that they've dumped Cam Bonifay. Don't be shocked if the 2003 Pirates pull a surprise like the 2001 Twins did.
People seem to have grown weary of it. Attendance is down 5 percent. Remember those spanking new ballparks that were supposed to be the place to be? People aren't going there, either. Pittsburgh built a new park, and its attendance is down 33 percent, according to Street and Smith's Sports Business Journal. In Milwaukee, where another new park opened last year, attendance is down 27 percent. It's down 25 percent with the Rangers and their star-studded lineup, for goodness' sakes.
Attendance is down in these cities because the teams have not been successful. Fans like winners. The novelty of a new stadium wears off if the team inhabiting it sucks. Surely a Devil Rays fan can grok that.
Oh, and the Rangers' "star-studded lineup" includes legit All-Star A-Rod, the 38-year-old (albeit still productive) Rafael Palmeiro, the rehabbing Juan Gonzalez, career scrub Todd Greene filling in for the aging Ivan Rodriguez, overacheiving 33-year-old Herb Perry, and four guys with season and career OPS in the .700 range. In Hollywood terms, that's star-studded the way a Love Boat reunion movie is.
I can't believe these guys actually get paid for this. Look, if you want to get more mad at the players for striking than the owners for their perfidy and cluelessness, go right ahead. The players are more visible, and Lord knows plenty of them deserve our scorn. But for the love of Bart Giamatti, please understand the issues before you spout nonsense about finances and attendance and whatnot. Don't make me have to mock you, too.
You know we're living in strange times when George Will comes out against arming pilots.
So says Charles Dodgson about the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Yahoo! tells us of an "Afghan warlord with links to Iran and Pakistan's powerful spy agency" who's calling for (wait for it) a "holy war" against the US. That's a nice, cheery thought, isn't it?
Let's be clear about something. If Afghanistan falls back into lawlessness and becomes once again a haven for Islamofascist thugs bent on our destruction, then all of the praise and good will that President Bush has received since the initial military intervention there is hereby cancelled. This will be a monumental failure if it happens, and this time there will be no one to blame but the man in charge.
I see a lot of vehicles with bumper stickers on them that say "This time FINISH THE JOB". If we haven't, and if more Americans die because we haven't, I for one will want to know why.
Max Power is full of good stuff today about the intellectual dishonesty and outright ignorance surrounding intelligent design. See here, here, and here for Max's devastating critiques.
It's important to note, as Max does, that the so-called debate over intelligent design is not about science but about a political agenda. Proponents of ID like Phillip E. Johnson opposed evolution for a long time before Michael Behe first published his book about "irreducible complexity" in 1996. ID is just the latest stick they've grabbed onto in their attempt to beat back evolution.
In response to my earnest plea, Greg Hlatky gives an excellent overview of the dispute between rival Jack Russell Terrier orgainizations. Thanks, Greg!
Joe Sheehan writes about the first time he got a foul ball in 26 years of attending professional baseball games. I've gotten two, one in 1997 at a minor league game in Bend, Orgeon, and one last year at a Nippon Professional Baseball League game in Tokyo. Actually, it's more accurate to say that Tiffany got that ball. And as long as I'm stickling for accuracy, I should note that she didn't exactly catch it. Read it for yourself and see.
My 53-year-old cousin Patrick Kuffner just celebrated his first Mass as a newly-ordained priest. The Staten Island Advance has a short story here about how at the age of 50, after a 20-year career as a teacher and principal, he decided to enter the seminary.
When I was a wee lad at Sacred Heart Elementary School in the early 70s, my grandmother as well as Cousin Pat taught there. Nana wound up as my second-grade teacher, which is the sort of thing that could be bad but was actually a very good experience. Pat taught science in the upper grades. I transferred to a public middle school which had what are now called "gifted and talented" programs before I got the chance to have a second family member as my teacher.
The picture below was originally in the story but apparently got lost in the archive. No matter, I saved a copy. Congrats, Father Pat!
Eric Alterman, another Professional Journalist Type with sucky permalinkage, asks the following:
There is a Media Conspiracy, Eric, but it's not a liberal one. It's a sportswriter one, led by the likes of Rick Reilly at Sports Illustrated. Bonds is not the most sociable player in the league. One could reasonably describe him as surly, or a jerk if one was not feeling charitable. This has led to sportswriters denigrating Bonds' acheivements, overplaying his mediocre postseason stats, calling him "selfish", and otherwise slurring one of the game's alltime greats.
Why don’t people like [Barry Bonds]? Is it race? Is it the fault of some liberal media conspiracy I haven’t even heard of? I don’t get it. Bonds is about to become the only player ever to hit 500 homers and steal 500 bases. Guess who the only guy ever to reach 400 of each is? Whoa, trick question. It’s Bonds. He’s nearly 40 percent better by this crucial measurement than his closest competitors.
Just what is the problem, people? Where’s the excitement?
‘Splain, please.
It's odd, because sportswriters generally love to equate on-field accomplishments with character, which is why so-so players with reputations for being good in the clubhouse are frequently lauded even when they're a clearcut waste of a roster slot. Barry Bonds may well be a jerk - I have no way of knowing for sure - but it takes a lot more than that to diminish what he has done in his career.
An interesting question to ask would be how many scribes who denigrate Bonds for being churlish also champion the causes of Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson, two players who admitted to committing grievous crimes against the game? It's hard to keep up with all the double standards sometimes.
Anyway, there is no good explanation beyond this. Hopefully, some day when Bonds is in the inner circle at Cooperstown, all this pettyness will be long forgotten. In the meantime, tune it out and enjoy watching him play. You won't see the likes of him again any time soon.
MEL of Ishbadiddle tells me in the comments to my earlier post that there are now two Staten Island bloggers on the NYC Bloggers map. I've also been invited to add myself as an expatriate if I choose, and I may just. Thanks, MEL!
From Dane Carlson comes this article on Israeli security tactics and methods. The 9/11 attacks have led to closer ties between American and Israeli businesses and law enforcement.
Israeli security experts don't much care for our airport screening system either:
Israeli specialists have a low regard for American security searches. They say they tend to cause unnecessary discomfort for travelers, while being prone to missing potential assailants. "The United States does not have a security system, it has a system for bothering people," [security consultant Shlomo] Dror says."The difference between the Israeli and American systems is that we are looking for the terrorist, while the Americans look for the weapons," he adds.
[...]
But Dror adds that Israeli methods, even if fully adopted, will not stop all attacks. "There is no 100 percent in security. If you want 100 percent security on flights, every passenger has to take all his clothes off, have his suitcase checked, and be handcuffed and tied to his seat. For sure this can never be. The idea is to enable people to continue their lives while making an attack less possible."
Now where have I heard that idea about flying naked before?
File13 strikes again, with his Clarence Carter tribute to Pervez Musharraf. Please be sure to finish your beverage before reading. You have been warned.
What really makes this funny for me is that I used to know this nerdy little guy who was fond of karaokeing this song in the persona of Bill Clinton. That's what I visualized while reading this piece. Nerdy little guy impersonating Bill Clinton singing about Pervez Musharraf stoking it. Put that in your hookah and smoke it.
An advertisement for a "New Cell Phone Stun Gun!" All I can say is if you're gonna use that thing while driving your SUV, please be sure you don't press the wrong button. The freeways around here are hazardous enough, thanks.
Business columnist Scott Burns writes that for the first time since 1976, the percentage of working mothers with infant children declined. He gives some interesting data and raises some good questions about effect this may have if it is indeed a trend. Check it out.
Pigs and Fishes points me to the NYC Bloggers site, where they have a cool subway map that shows how many bloggers live in each borough. Naturally, Staten Island, my point of origin, has no bloggers in it. We Staten Islanders were always more into the spoken and gesticulated word rather than the written word, I guess. Hell, even if I wanted to add myself to their map, you wouldn't be able to tell where I really lived because they used an SIRT map, and my home turf of West Brighton is not near an SIRT stop. Here's a NYC neighborhood map, from which you can click on either area 1 or 2 on the Staten Island piece to see where West Brighton is. Were I still there and if I wanted to identify myself as a NYC blogger, that's where you'd have found me.
The Fat Guy is calling for all civic-minded baseball fans to give Commissioner Beelzebud the cyber-finger by voting Montreal and Minnesota players onto the 2002 All Star Team. I think this is a fine idea, so consider this post to be an endorsement.
There is some historical precedent for this kind of gerrymandering - in 1957, fans of the Cincinnati Reds stuffed the ballot box and voted all eight Reds regulars onto the National League squad. The bad news is that this so incensed Commissioner Ford Frick (of Roger Maris asterisk fame) that he took All Star Game voting away from the fans. Fans didn't get to vote again until 1970. But hey, real protest involves risk, right? So go forth and do your duty.
UPDATE: Even respectable mainstreamers like The Baseball Prospectus and ESPN's Rob Neyer have mentioned this movement. Both pointed to this link, which has apparently gotten a fair amount of publicity. Get on board now while you still can.
Today's weird search referral: "Kick his nutbag reduce tears". I don't even want to know.
I can't believe I'm staring at the prospect of Lakers-Celtics in the NBA Finals. David Stern must be getting all verklempt at the thought. All I can say is that even if I have to relive that decade-long nightmare in the Finals, I'll be able to cope because this year's playoffs have been bloody fantastic. If anyone tells you the NBA is boring, they haven't been paying attention.
Congrats to Ain't No Bad Dude Brian Linse on his new eponymous domain, which gives me the chance to dust off fifty-cent words like "eponymous". Update your bookmarks, folks. I'll be off Blogspot eventually, I promise.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the NBA's alltime leading scorer, is the head coach of the Oklahoma Storm of the US Basketball League. He took that job because no NBA coaching opportunities were available to him, and he wanted to prove his ability. It's a long ladder to climb, but I wouldn't doubt him.
Victor Morales renounces Democrats, according to this story:
Victor Morales, who lost the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, said he will not run for office again as a Democrat."At this point in time, I am independent," Morales said, citing what he called lousy treatment by established members of the Democratic Party.
"I wouldn't run as a Democrat again," Morales told the San Antonio Express-News for a story posted on the paper's Web site Friday.
I'm sorry that Victor thinks he was treated poorly by the Democrats. The state party certainly didn't roll out the red carpet for him. They believed that for all his populist appeal, Morales was never going to be an electable candidate, so they never supported him.
Thinking about Victor Morales and his three failed attempts to win office via Democratic nominations led me to ponder what the role and responsibility of the major parties is. The Democrats, especially now that they are the minority party in Texas, are in the business of finding candidates they think can be elected. Given that Texas isn't and probably never will be a state with a lot of liberal/populist types in it, that means candidates who are pro-business, pro-death penalty, anti-gun control, and generally anti-tax. That includes former Governor Ann Richards, still a darling of the old-style liberals around here, who never once granted clemency in a capital case during her time in Austin. You can represent certain districts as an unreconstructed liberal (Congressional District 18, home of Sheila Jackson Lee, comes to mind), but you'd have a better chance of opening a strip club inside the Alamo than winning a statewide ballot. Orthodoxy to the national party line is the kiss of death.
So what's a liberal to do? I am and have always been a proponent of the half-a-loaf theory. I'll take my chances with Ron Kirk, even though I know Kirk will do things that will make my teeth grind - for example, he's on record saying he'd have supported Bush's tax cut, an admission that nearly cost him my vote in the runoff. But Kirk has a chance to win, and he'll still represent my views better than John Cornyn will. For that he gets my support. Victor Morales may have been an enticing candidate for Senate in 1996 - of course, next to Phil Gramm a potted plant would have been enticing, but that's beside the point - and he may well be closer to my views than Ron Kirk, but he wasn't going to win. I'd rather have a chance at something than no chance at everything. It's as simple as that.
Thus, while I'm sorry to see Morales go and I wish him well, the fact is that he was never going to be anything more than a novelty. I'm not going to mourn the loss of progressive liberalism in the Texas Democratis Party because it was always an illusion anyway. I'm going to work to get people who at least understand my point of view elected, and go from there. I will not apologize for that.
Calling Greg Hlatky - there's a lawsuit between rival Jack Terrier organizations over who's the better custodian of the breed. As the owner of a purebred mutt, I have to say I don't get it. Anyone got some words of wisdom here?
Here's an article my dad needs to read: A scientist at North Dakota State University is working on ways to reduce bean-induced flatulence. And they say there's no good news nowadays.
Dalal Salamah, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, was in Houston on Friday to issue a plea for aid as well as understanding for fellow Palestinians."There is a need to talk about our situation," Salamah said in an interview.
"Through the media, people are able to see the attacks and the damage, but the daily life -- how people manage their daily lives. I want to paint a real picture of how they manage to live," Salamah said.
Yes, let's do take a look at it.
As she spoke Friday, the Israeli army was surrounding the Palestinian city of Ramallah with barbed wire, blocking what was a way to leave and enter Ramallah without passing checkpoints.The move, according to international aid officials, is the first step in an Israeli plan to encircle all eight major cities of the West Bank, and their outlying villages, including Salamah's home, Nablus.
"There is no semblance of normal life in the camps and villages now," said Salamah.
"In Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, each city and refugee camp is separated from the others. Sixteen cities, totally separated from one another," Salamah said.
"Some people who tried walking (from one village to another) to get milk and bread for their kids died," she said. "They are suffering because they have finished their water, their own wells are empty."
"No laborers may now go into Israel, or between Nablus, Jerusalem, or the other villages," Salamah said. "They must stay in their villages.
Yeah, you unleash a few suicide bombers on someone and all of a sudden they get all security conscious. Imagine that.
"The students in the schools cannot get to the university. Ambulances may come to sick people, but they are forbidden from taking people in the ambulances, they must leave them there," she said.
You don't suppose the fact that ambulances have been used as cover and transportation for Palestinian gunmen has anything to do with that, do you?
Salamah said she wants to talk about those things, as well as "the difference between the national struggle (against Israeli occupation) and terrorism.""We condemn terrorism," she said, adding that suicide bombings carried out in Israel "are acts of young people and some political parties."
"It is condemned by me and by the Palestinian Authority. But how can we explain to the younger generation, they are not allowed to bomb themselves in Israel while the Israeli forces attack Palestinian villages and camps?"
We all know how those denunciations of terrorism by Arafat and the PA have done so much to curtail the suicide bombings. Perhaps if the bombers weren't lauded as martyrs and if their families weren't given thousands of dollars as a reward, that might help. Perhaps you could try explaining to the younger generation that the attacks are the result of the suicide bombs, that might help. Perhaps if your leadership weren't committed to the total destruction of the state of Israel, that might help. I'm just saying.
I won't have sympathy for your cause until such time as whoever is actually in charge there genuinely punishes those who aid and abet the suicide bombers. Put someone in charge who actively works to promote peace and stop violence, and then we can talk.
The 116-year-old Pearl Brewery in San Antonio has been closed for a year, and despite its prime location just north of downtown on the San Antonio River, no one has stepped up to buy the property.
Trinity University, my alma mater, is just north of the brewery on US 281. We'd drive past it every time we went downtown. What made the Pearl Brewery distinctive was the enormous Pearl Beer can that stood atop one of the buildings. There was a campus-wide scavenger hunt once in which that beer can was the biggest prize, but not too surprisingly no one bagged it. It wasn't exactly the sort of thing you could strap to the roof of your car, after all.
I'm sad to see this piece of my past fade away. San Antonio has grown and developed quite a bit since I was there in the mid-80s. 281 between Trinity and Loop 410 was once basically empty. There was a big abandoned rock quarry just east of the freeway, bordering the ritzy Alamo Heights and Olmos Park neighborhoods. (San Antonio must have been quite the rock quarry city in its day, since the Trinity campus is built on another one.) It's now a strip center. Every time I go back I'm amazed at how many things are there now that weren't then.
I do hope someone does something decent with the Pearl property. The Riverwalk, built mostly on Henry Cisneros' watch, has been quite the boon for San Antonio, so even with the large price tag attached I don't think this will go unused forever. There's money to be made there, and someone's going to figure out how make it.
A Beaumont man has been freed from jail after spending over four years in the clink on a contempt charge.
State District Judge Zeke Zbranek had refused to release [Odis] Briggs to visit his ailing wife or attend her funeral after she died March 29, 1999.Zbranek said Briggs "held the keys" to his freedom -- and state appellate courts agreed -- if he would turn over financial records to show what happened to the $120,000 he admits swindling from 18 black families in Chambers County.
Briggs' attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, David George, said he had not found anyone else in Texas held on a civil contempt charge longer than Briggs.
Defendant Briggs is also black, which led to an aborted intervention by Jesse Jackson:
In 1999, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and a representative of his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition interceded on "humanitarian" grounds to have Briggs released to see his sick wife, but were turned down by the courts. PUSH attorney Leonard Mungo called Zbranek an "instrument of Satan" and an example of a "national trend to incarcerate African-Americans unjustly."However, members of the swindled families wrote Jackson that he was fighting for the wrong side.
Edna Jensen, 92, who walks with a cane, praised Zbranek for "doing the right thing" to stop these families from being swindled twice -- from their oil royalties and by Briggs. Mungo later offered to assist the families with their claims if they would allow Briggs to be released, but they refused.
That's the thing about being an activist: It always helps to be on the right side of the issue.
Max Power also points me to Dawn Olsen's weblog, where she is currently running a poll on "the hottest, sexiest, Male blogger in the blogosphere." (For some odd reason, I'm not in her list of choices. Must be an oversight.) So I have to ask - Where's the poll to determine the hottest, sexiest Female blogger in the blogosphere?
If there's actual interest in this, I'm willing to host the poll. (In the name of Science, of course. Any hits it may generate is merely of academic interest.) Send me nominations via comments or my email address and I'll put something up. As with TAPped and their call for the best liberal blogs, feel free to nominate as many as you wish, including yourself.
Crisis over! is the headline of this Slate piece, in which Tim Noah continues his fine dissecting of all the dire-yet-vague terrorism warnings that came out right after the revelations that Team Bush had quite a few facts at its hand regarding al Qaeda and possible attacks before 9/11. Here's the thing that was never fully explained to me: If it was a bad idea for Team Bush to inform the public about vague, unconfirmed reports of possible terrorist activity before 9/11, why is it OK for them to do so now?
Little Green Footballs notes that the Saudi PR campaign has been an abject failure. Way back on May 2, I wrote that "this misguided effort on the Saudis' part would backfire on them". So every once in awhile I do get a prediction right.
Steve at Happy Fun Pundit discovers how he got on a Republican fundraising mailing list. It's pretty funny, so check it out. Via Virginia Postrel.
Max Power writes about a case in Australia where a tobacco company was held liable to a plaintiff because "the company had destroyed decades-old documents". Says Max:
Document destruction when there's an outstanding subpoena calling for the documents is one thing, and clearly illegal; document destruction when there's outstanding litigation that will likely call for the documents is another, though generally agreed to be illegal when done with nefarious intent, and at issue in the Andersen case now. But here the court held that British American Tobacco's destruction of documents with no litigation pending was illegal and sanctionable, because it was done in anticipation of future litigation against unknown parties that had yet to be filed!The problem here is that this proves too much. All document destruction policies are in place, in part, to limit the expense of future litigation. If your company saves forty-year old documents, someday someone will sue you and want to look through those forty-year-old documents for evidence, and you'll need to hire lawyers and paralegals and copying services to manage all that potential evidence at a cost that, if I had to guess, works out to about a buck a page. Most companies automatically delete e-mails for just such a reason. (I'm a litigator in my day job. I've sat in a warehouse and looked at forty-year old documents. I've also spent days of my life leafing through executives' ancient personal e-mails because they were stored with their business e-mails.)
Meanwhile, BAT's "discovery abuse" was sanctioned by prohibiting them from introducing contrary evidence in defense of their case, and they naturally lost the one-sided trial, as the plaintiff pointed to the evidence destruction as the evidence of wrongdoing.
I've been called on to help our legal department in a couple of litigations where they were required to turn over large volumes of email as part of discovery. One case required us to restore the mailboxes of five executives from each backup tape over a period of several months. Once that was done, I was called in to search through each days' restored mailboxes for various keywords.
At the time, my company did not have a backup tape retention policy for email. We do now - each tape is kept for 30 days, then recycled. This is one reason why. You may think this is weaselly of us, but for an enterprise as large as ours, even if we never had to worry about getting sued, the sheer volume of tapes make storage an expensive nightmare. We already have a large building whose sole purpose is storing backup tapes. We have another vast room in our operations area that stores backup tapes for mainframe systems. It's on a smaller scale than the giant warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but you get the same overwhelmed feeling when you walk in and see all of the old tapes.
More recently, I was asked to help one of our lawyers determine what backup tapes we had for various individuals from the 1996-1997 time frame. None of these people were on Exchange (our current mail platform) as yet, so I spent a few hours verifying that we hadn't bothered to keep any PROFS or GroupWise backup tapes. And why should we? We're talking backup tapes for email platforms that we no longer use, which in the case of PROFS lived on an operating system (VM) that we no longer use. What possible use could we have for them?
This is an incredibly stupid decision by the Australian court, and I sincerely hope it is not used successfully in America.
Matt Yglesias has been discussing a brouhaha at Harvard concerning a student who will be speaking at the commencement ceremony on "American Jihad" which "will challenge seniors to apply the concept of the jihad to their lives after graduation". (See here, here, and here for details.)
The first post generated a number of comments with suggestions of how right-thinking students might express their disapproval of this speaker and his ideas. I certainly agree with expressing disapproval, but I strongly disagree with any tactic that attempts to silence or shout down this speaker. There are several reasons for this.
For one thing, silencing a speaker based on content is an extremely dangerous precedent to set. Sooner or later, someone is going to use that precedent to harass or repel a speaker whose views you don't dislike, and if you supported the original effort, you have no grounds for complaint. Either you're for freedom of expression or you're not, and once you join the wrong team there's no turning back.
Second, any concerted effort to stop or heckle this speaker will just make a free-speech martyr out of him. (I wish there were another word I could use here, but there isn't.) Once that happens, even if you succeed in suppressing him, he will gain credibility and will be able to crow about The Truth That Harvard Didn't Want You To Hear! There's nothing more tiresome or persistent than someone who can play the victim card.
Really, the right thing to do is to let him speak. Surely by now we all know that you cannot truly suppress a bad idea. Let him show himself for what he is so people can make up their own minds.
This doesn't mean you can't express your contempt. You are required to do so, but you must do so in a way that doesn't concede any moral high ground. The first and foremost thing is to remember the words of Penn Jillette: "The cure for bad speech isn't no speech, it's more speech." Matt has been doing that by contesting and exposing the egregious things the speaker has said in the past, and others should follow his lead. Do your best to make sure that everyone goes into this ceremony knowing who this person is and why you should doubt his goodwill. He can still play the victim card by claiming he's being mercilessly beaten up by radical Zionists or whatever, but he'll have as much credibility as David Horowitz did on his I've-been-censored Worldwide Media Tour.
And you can express your contempt at the ceremony itself by pointedly not listening. The suggestion I gave in Matt's comments is to encourage people to bring a paperback book with them, which they can haul out and start reading when he speaks. The right to express oneself does not include the right to an audience, podium, and microphone. Every one of us has the right to not pay attention, and making a display of that right gets your point across without leaving you open to the charge of harassment.
(Steven den Beste makes the same basic point in a slightly different context here. As with everything he writes, it's well worth your time to read.)
Lastly, though this may sound obvious, do not react when he's done speaking. Don't boo, and don't applaud out of some sense of politeness. Your own silence is an effective weapon. Use it.
My congratulations to Glenn Kinen, Alex Rubalcava and all other bloggers and non-bloggers who are graduating this spring. May you survive your commencement no matter who the speakers are.
From the Newsmakers section of today's Chron, quoted because the link won't last past today:
Sports columnist firedThe New York Post fired sports columnist Wallace Matthews Wednesday after he took his "killed" column critical of the newspaper and another Post columnist and put it on the message board of the Web site sportsjournalists.com. Matthews wrote that the paper had "no integrity," and accused gossip columnist Neal Travis of "deplorable journalism" for writing without evidence that an unnamed New York Mets star was gay. Before Tuesday's game with Philadelphia, reacting to rumors, Mets star catcher Mike Piazza told a press conference he was a heterosexual. In a statement, the Post said Matthews was fired for "derogatory comments and insubordination."
If you were in Houston in 1994 when the Rockets won their first NBA championship, you might recall Wallace Matthews as the guy who wrote a column calling Houston a "hellhole". Needless to say, that sound you now hear is my heart breaking for him. Hey, maybe we can set him up on a blind date with Katherine Mieszkowski!
As for the rumors surrounding Mike Piazza's sexuality, as a woman on a mailing list I'm on said regarding the picture that accompanied this article: "Can you imagine the editor saying 'Hey--find the most stereotypically flaming pose of Piazza that you can!'"
Public Nuisance and Unqualified Offerings have some useful things to say about unconnected dots. There's plenty of responsibility to go around, but the more I read the less impressed I am by Team Bush's response, and I wasn't all that enamored with it to begin with.
On a strictly political note, couple this with Enron (you remember Enron, don't you, Mickey?) and I wonder how log it will be before Bush's approval numbers start to take a dive. Anyone wanna speculate?
I was going to warn Larry not to use the words "schmautopsy schmotos" anywhere near the words "Chandra Levy", but it looks like I'm too late. Well, Larry, at least you know your friends aren't trying to horn in on your hit parade. I look forward to the updated blog traffic graph.
Business is brisk at the Linda Lay upscale resale shop, according to Chron society columnist Shelby Hodge.
THERE were no fancy invitations and no "open for business" signs at 1302 W. Gray. But customers started arriving on Friday and before Linda Lay was ready. Jus' Stuff, the resale shop celebrated in the cartoon strip Doonesbury all of last week, was up and running. And merchandise flew out of the store.It was one bit of good karma on the less-than-glowing horizon for Lay, wife of former Enron CEO Ken Lay.
By Saturday, a standing-room-only crowd had gathered in the former pet-store location making parking a challenge and a few neighbors jittery. So many items were sold over the weekend that Jus' Stuff ran out of its signature zebra-print tissue wrap and the supply of business cards was all but depleted.
I'll bet parking was a challenge. West Gray is a four-lane street where you usually can't park. Jus' Stuff is near a bunch of itty bitty side streets with duplexes that don't have real driveways. And the sidewalks aren't the best, either. It'd be interesting to see some boldface types maneuver around the potholes and tree roots in their Manolo Blahniks.
I should note that Tiffany dropped by Jus' Stuff on Friday to satisfy her curiosity about the place. It wasn't crowded then, and Linda Lay's mother was there helping out. I'm trying to talk Tiffany into writing up her impressions of the place, so check back for more.
Someone alert Mickey Kaus, Enron's back on the front page and about to get nasty.
The White House said it has been gathering and reviewing documents, e-mails and entry records of visitors and interviewing people with relevant information, and it plans to send material to the committee Wednesday.Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer, traveling with Bush to Germany on Air Force One, said the subpoenas were unnecessary in light of those plans.
[...]
"The White House has cooperated with Senator [Joe] Lieberman, [chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, which issued the subpoenas]" Fleischer told reporters. He said the White House's own review showed "no instance in which Enron approached anyone in the executive office of the president for financial help before they filed for bankruptcy."
And we all know how open and forthcoming Team Bush has been about its workings, so I'm sure Ari Fleischer's word that they've all been good little boys and girls should be enough for anyone. How exactly is it that Fleischer's head doesn't explode when he talks?
By the way, I first called Kaus' declaration that Enron was dead as a scandal premature back on April 9. When will he admit he's wrong? Maybe I'll send him some email and see if he responds.
The remains of Chandra Levy have been found in a park in northwestern Washington, DC. One of the ways that some people used to measure how much America was "back" from 9/11 was a return to interest in and gossip about the disappearance of Chandra Levy and what if any role deposed Congressman Gary Condit had in her disappearance. Now that her body has actually been found, I hope that people will remember that whatever tawdriness and scandal may have been associated with this case, the only thing that mattered was that a vibrant young woman had vanished from the face of the earth, leaving behind family and friends who would have to endure a grotesque intrusion on their grief. Maybe now they'll be able to find some solace.
Rest in peace, Chandra.
Today I spent the better part of the morning downtown doing battle with a piece of software. (I think I won, but the French and Russian judges are still quibbling over the score.) The building I visited is one I've been to several times before. At first, you just told the security guard in the lobby where you were going, then hopped on the elevator. The elveator would drop you in a closed hallway, so once you got to your floor, you needed someone to come and get you because the doors were locked. Of course, sometimes you'd get lucky and follow someone who had a badge in, just like you would at a gated apartment complex.
The last time I was there was not long after 9/11. Things had changed to a near-Defcon1 level of security. You had to sign in with the security guards, show photo ID, and leave something valuable (I left my driver's license) as assurance of who you were. And of course you had to be let into whatever floor you were visiting.
Today I walked right past the guards and discovered that the doors in the elevator hallway were no longer locked. I could have walked in, helped myself to some office supplies, and gotten away without anyone knowing who I was or even that I'd been there. Which makes me wonder - Are we over the anxiety from 9/11, even as Team Bush has suddenly decided they must tell us about every possible future terrorist threat, or is this just the result of some bean-counter deciding that all that extra security was having a too-big effect on the bottom line?
File13 gave his perspective on Bud Selig's latest whining, and wonders what baseball nuts like The Fat Guy and I think. The Fat Guy has his say here, so I guess it's now my turn.
First, I generally disagree with TFG when he says "a pox on both houses", meaning players as well as owners, should the labor talks lead to another strike. People often rant and rave about millionaire baseball players, but no one ever seems to get exercised about multimillionaire owners. It's hard to overstate the dirty, dishonest, and underhanded tricks that the owners have used, especially since Beelzebud Selig first infested the Commissioner's Office, and I can't help but think that anyone rationally looking at this should see it for what it is, namely an attempt by oligopolists to artificially control their costs. The Baseball Prospectus has been all over this, from Joe Sheehan's recent observation that
Baseball salaries have this magic ability to turn raging free-market conservatives into autocrats with the snap of a finger. Frothing Republicans who lusted after Jack Kemp's "enterprise zone" concepts are often appalled that Jason Giambi is able to make $120 million on the same free market that they defend so vigorously in other segments of society. The owners work very hard to keep their financial information quiet, but are quick to publicize how much money the latest free agent is raking in.
to Doug Pappas' eye-opening expose on the widespread bookkeeping fraud that the owners have perpetrated, which earned him a hysterical phone call from Bud himself.
In short, I'm in complete agreement with Christine Quinones' rule of thumb: "[T]he players aren't always right; the owners are always wrong; if the players agree with the owners, count your silverware." I certainly won't be happy with the players if they strike, but I'll sympathize with them a lot more than I will the owners.
I'd like to take a closer look at the notion of "competitive balance", which is one of the Budsters catchphrases when he's talking about payrolls. In Bud's World, only free spending teams make the playoffs; in his mind, most teams enter the season with no "faith and hope" of playing in October. The idea that he wants to impart is that unlike the Good Old Days before zillionaire free agency, everyone had a decent shot at winning.
The problem, of course, is that this idea is, like most things Bud says, completely divorced from reality. Let's take a quick look at the era 1921-1964, which roughly corresponds to what is considered baseball's "golden age". In that 44-year period, how many pennants did each team win? For the American League:
Team Pennants Longest stretch between pennants
New York 29 Three seasons
Detroit 6 22 seasons (1946-1967)
Philadelphia/KC 3 40 seasons (1932-1971)
Washington 2 39 seasons (1926-1964, as the Twins)
Cleveland 1 42 seasons (1955-1996)
Boston 1 27 seasons (1919-1945)
St. Louis/Balt 1 43 seasons (1901-1943)
Chicago 1 39 seasons (1920-1958)
Not a whole lot of hope and faith in there for most teams. Remember that this was the era of the reserve clause, when a player was bound to his team until they traded or released him. There were no big salaries, no unequal income from media or luxury boxes, and no reason to be a consistent loser other than incompetent management. But Bud doesn't want you to think about that, he wants you to get caught up in a mist of baby boomer nostalgia so that you'll characterize the players as greedy and the owners as beleaguered.
The Yankees' longest stretch without a pennant after 1921, by the way, is 14 seasons, from 1982 to 1995. Coincidentally, that's right in the middle of the free agent period. The Yankees spent a ton of money on all kinds of free agents during that time - Dave Collins, Steve Kemp, Ed Whitson, Danny Tartabull, John Montefusco - and pretty much sucked most of the time. At some point, they figured out that developing players (Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettite, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Alphonso Soriano, to name a few) and paying to keep them was the secret.
The Senior Circuit for the same time frame looks like this:
Team Pennants Longest stretch between pennants
St. Louis 12 17 seasons (1947-1963)
New York/SF 9 13 seasons (1938-1950)
Brooklyn/LA 9 20 seasons (1921-1940)
Chicago 5 56 seasons (1946-2001)
Cincinnati 3 20 seasons (1941-1960)
Boston/Milwaukee 3 33 seasons (1915-1947)
Pittsburgh 3 32 seasons (1928-1959)
Philadelphia 1 49 seasons (1901-1949)
Here there were three dominant teams, with the Cubs having a good run from 1929 through 1945. The bad teams - Chicago after 1945 and the other four underneath them - were really bad. As Rob Neyer noted awhile ago, the Phillies may have been the worst-run franchise in history. But again, each team had roughly the same salary expenses. Well-run teams that cared about winning did so, and poorly run teams that didn't care usually didn't.
There's no difference today. Whatever a team's resources are, teams that use them wisely generally do well. Teams that actually invest in their product can go from hopeless to dominant, as Seattle and Atlanta have done.
Even truly low-income teams like Minnesota can compete if they're smart. Part of being smart is recognizing when a big spender is willing to pay top dollar for players who have hit their peak. A few years ago there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when the Twins were forced to trade All Star second baseman Chuck Knoblauch to the big bad Yankees for a passel of minor leaguers. Knoblauch had one good, two decent, and one mediocre season for the Yankees, never acheiving the heights he had as a Twin. He's now an outfielder in Kansas City, struggling to stay over the Mendoza Line. As for the Twins, two of the players they got were Cristian Guzman, their All Star-caliber shortstop, and Eric Milton, their reliable lefty starter. Trades can be tricky things, even when one team is apparently over a barrel.
The bottom line is simple. Good management and a well-defined plan is the key to success in baseball, just as it is anywhere else. Bud and the owners are just trying to sheild themselves from that truth at the players' expense. Don't you believe it.
I don't know about you, but now that Michael Kinsley is no longer the editor of Slate, I hope he spends more time writing satire. He's clearly shown that he's very good at it.
Mac Thomason complains about being trapped by the new KausFiles, where the redirection to Slate renders his back button ineffective. The secret is speed, Mac - Hit the back button twice in rapid succession, as if you were double-clicking, and you should be able to get back to where you started. Annoying, but the best you can do.
Another fascinating magazine that we get is the Souther Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, a nice bit of light reading about hatred and extremism. This article goes into ties between neo-Nazi and Islamofascist organizations. Many people have written about some commentary by David Duke appearing in the Arab News recently. According to this article, it's not the first time Duke has addressed an Islamic audience:
While they wouldn't want bin Laden, or anyone of non-European descent, living next door, leaders of the hard-core racist movement in the United States have seized upon the Sept. 11 attacks as an opportunity to expand their strategic alliance with Islamic radicals under the pretext of supporting Palestinian rights. After hijacked airplanes demolished the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, a number of Muslim newspapers published a flurry of articles by American white supremacists ranting against Israel and the Jews. Anti-Zionist commentary by neo-Nazi David Duke appeared on the front page of the Oman Times, for instance, and on an extremist Web site based in Pakistan (www.tanzeen.com). Another opinion piece by Duke ran in Muslims, a New York-based English-language weekly, which also featured a lengthy critique of U.S. foreign policy by William Pierce, head of the rabidly racist National Alliance. In the wake of Sept. 11, several American neo-Nazi web sites also started to offer links to Islamic Web sites.
Read the whole thing, including the bizarre connection between white supremacists such as George Lincoln Rockwell and Tom Metzger and the Nation of Islam. And if anyone with more free time and intestinal fortitude than I wants to try to track down any of the other things David Duke had to say after 9/11, I'd be interested in seeing it.
Speaking of the Technology Review, it's just loaded with great stuff this month. Here's an article that argues that human cloning, like all other advances in reproductive technology, is inevitable. I have to say that I think author Daniel Kevles has a touching faith in the legal system when he says
Once reproductive cloning is made physically safe for the fetus, its enthusiasts may find an ally in U.S. law. The U.S. Congress, of course, could decide to ban human cloning for any purpose, claiming the power to do so because it can regulate interstate commerce, and a cloning clinic would be open to women from anywhere in the country. But such a law could well run afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, which, by upholding the right of a woman to choose an abortion, arguably implies that the state cannot interfere with how she chooses to reproduce.
Personally, I'd be more concerned that with a couple of Bush-picked Scalia-type judicial activists, the Court is more likely to use an anti-cloning law to overturn Roe v. Wade than it is to use Roe v. Wade to overturn an anti-cloning law.
This Simson Garfinkel column argues that defending national borders could be a model for fighting spam. The monthly Trailing Edge feature gives an overview of the electric guitar. Wanna guess when it was invented? Try 1923.
Finally, for the second time, the magazine lists 100 innovators whose work will change the world. As in 1999, all 100 are under 35. As one who can only see 35 in the rear-view mirror, it's a moderately uncomfortable reminder of an old Tom Lehrer quote: "It's a sobering thought to realize that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."
We had a great time at the Schlitterbahn. It's amazing what a stress-free weekend, plus a full day of activity, will do for your ability to sleep.
Even though I'm now squarely behind the commentary curve, it felt good to spend a few days not thinking in terms of how I'd blog this or that. I'm nowhere near burnout, but a little recharging never hurt anyone.
The big topic everyone's talking about, of course, is What Did Bush Know and What Could He Have Done About It. I find myself struggling with this question - I agree with Bush bashers as well as defenders. There's plenty of blame here, and it's neither productive nor useful to spend all one's time pointing fingers.
Of course, blind allegiance to the boss isn't going to help either. The buck has to stop somewhere, and if Team Bush is going to focus their efforts on hunting down some low-level functionaries to take a bullet for the Big Guy, well, at some point one has to wonder just what the President is responsible for. I think Josh Marshall got it exactly right when he suggested that Bush say
Look, in hindsight, there are connections maybe we should have made. Communications should have been better between various intelligence and law enforcement agencies. But hindsight is 20/20 and these things were not as clear then as they are now. Our people did the best they knew how. But I'm the Commander-in-Chief. And I'm responsible. The buck stops here. Let's move ahead now and make whatever improvements we can.
Failures happen. The bigger the disaster, the more you owe it to everyone who was or could be affected by it to figure out why it happened and what could be done to help prevent it in the future. MIT's Technology Review, a fascinating mix of all forms of technology and innovation, has in its current issue an article about 10 massive technology failures, ranging from the ill-fated 1628 Swedish warship Vasa, which sank on its maiden voyage, to the recent Concorde disaster. In each case, whether the fault was pure human weakness or "perfect storm" conditions, we learned from them, and as a result we're all less likely to die in various horrible circumstances.
I don't blame Bush for 9/11. But if his resistance to finding out the full truth about it leads to another such incident, I will hold him solely responsible. There's nothing that Rummy or Condi or Cheney or Ari can say now that will carry any weight with me if it has to be said a second time.
On a busy ass-kicker of a day, when you're still exhausted but euphoric from a trip to the Schlitterbahn, there are no words which are sweeter or more uplifting than the following: "The staff meeting this afternoon has been cancelled."
Of course, that means I have no excuse for putting off the other drudgery that has piled up on me today. But I'll take my small victories where I can.
We're off to the Schlitterbahn, the world's greatest water park, for the weekend, so I probably won't have anything more to say until Sunday night or Monday. I've got a few things brewing, such as a followup on Joe Katzman's piece about the anti-Semitic incident at SFSU, which Meryl Yourish has publicized, but for now all I want to do is relax, ride a few slides, and recharge my batteries. Have a great weekend!
Using Gummi Bears, PhotoShop, and ingenuity, a Japanese cryptographer was able to create fake fingerprints that fooled fingerprint recognition systems 80% of the time. Guess maybe I'll keep paying cash at Kroger for awhile longer.
Thanks to Michael for pointing this out.
A new breakthrough in video technology at MIT can realistically alter video images to make it appear that someone is saying something else. Read it and worry.
Craig Biggerstaff at Page Fault Interrupt is hanging up his keyboard, citing that old bugaboo of Real Life. I salute your efforts, Craig, and hope that someday you may be able to blog again. Please feel free to drop in a comment any time, and enjoy your retirement.
UPDATE: He's back, albeit irregularly. Blogging is certainly a temptress, isn't it?
Back when KausFiles was still its own site and had actual archives, Mickey Kaus snickered that Democrats' glee about using Enron to bash Republicans was overdone and premature. Take a look at the top story from today's Chron and tell me if you still think this is a nonstarter. I should note that this was the top headline in the print edition; for some reason it's not on the front page of the online version.
John Wayne Bobbit has been dropped from "Celebrity Boxing 2" because he was arrested for assaulting his wife. Man, if "Celebrity Boxing 2" doesn't want to be tainted by your association, you're really on the outs. All I can say is that if there is a God, this will be the last time any of us reads the words "John Wayne Bobbit" anywhere other than the obituaries.
My dad, who spent 14 years as a judge in New York City, sent me the following feedback on my post about Houston's proposed anti-panhandling ordinance:
I think that stats will verify that most [homeless people] are substance abusers or mentally ill persons with addictions (MICA). Spending large sums of money at the end process, arrest, jail, etc. is not an answer. Maybe we should allocate more and more money earlier and earlier. For example, in the schools where we could have certified intervention people addressing substance abuse as soon as there is any evidence of abuse.I learned from bitter, but repeated experience in reading sentence reports from Probation officers that the substance abuse began with the defendant as early as 10 years old. These reports would show beer drinking, marijuana smoking, cocaine and then anything that would give them a high to the point that they were hopelessly addicted by their early 20's. Repeated jail did little to rehab these folks or teach them any recovery skills. Time tested AA on the other hand, if the addicted person was caught early, gave them a better chance of recovering.
The unfortunate thing about all of this is that politicians don't get votes for realistic approaches to addiction, but garner votes by being "tough on crime".
Sad but true; however my experience, personally and professionally, is that if you aggressively attack the problem sooner rather than later, you get a better bang for your buck.
Woo hoo! I've reached 10,000 hits, in a bit more than three months. That may be chump change to some bloggers, but I'm pretty happy about it.
Number 10,000 was a Roadrunner-NYC user, according to my referral log and Sam Spade's reverse DNS lookup. If that may have been you, at around 8:15 PM CDT tonight, please drop me a line.
My friends did their best to help out. Larry, who is approaching 10,000 hits as well, was number 9999, and he sent me a screen shot to prove it. Either Ginger or Michael came in at 10,002. Thanks, guys!
And thanks to everyone out there who's stopped by, especially those who visit regularly. When I started I figured I was just doing this for my own exercise and amusement. Once I discovered there were people who actually made a habit of reading, it was a huge thrill. It was also a bit daunting. I feel a responsibility to my audience, and I hope I've held up my end of the bargain. I really appreciate the time you've taken, the feedback you've given, and the faith that you have in me.
On to 20,000!
In case you hadn't noticed, Ted Barlow is back, and he's full of renewed vigor. You had us worried for awhile there, Ted. We may never know the meaning of croatan, but at least it doesn't appear to have meant "So long and thanks for all the fish."
On the down side, it looks like Duncan Fitzgerald is either on hiatus or experiencing hosting problems. Duncan was one of the first bloggers whom I didn't know personally who linked to me, so I'll be quite sad if he's retired. Duncan? If you're out there, please let me know what's up.
From Greg Hlatky comes this article about Patch Adams and the "Dialogue for Democracy" which took place at the University of Pittsburgh.
Patch, the subject of an incredibly sappy feel-good movie, is apparently a bit confused about current events:
"I am literally comparing Bush and his cronies to Hitler," Adams said, "only Hitler had a smaller vision."
Umm, Patch? Do the words Godwin's Law mean anything to you? I am now literally comparing you to a mouth-breathing idiot who has no idea what genuine evil is.
Patch also doesn't understand basic economics:
"[I] don't understand why a ball bouncer makes more than a schoolteacher," Adams said.
Well, that would be because someone is willing to pay those ball-bouncers lots of money. Feel free to distribute some of those millions you got for selling your life story to Hollywood to all the teachers you like if you want to make a difference here.
Finally, Patch and cohort Dr. Helen Caldicott, a "vehement opponent of nuclear weapons", seem to be unable to grasp the difference between ends and means:
"I think there are a majority of people who want love, peace and cooperation," said Caldicott. "But we find it hard to reach out to each other."
We all want love, peace, and cooperation, dimwit. That includes the Taliban and the Committee for the Suppression of Vice and Promotion of Virtue. They would be (or would have been, in the case of the late and unlamented Taliban) very happy to have us all live in peace and harmony with their vision of how the world should be. Where we differ is in how we think we can best acheive these ends. All the happy talk in the world does squat to change this fact.
Which leads me to the second part of my subject. What we've seen here is another application of what I'm calling the Folk Song Army Fallacy. Basically, the FSAF is what happens when an advocate confuses the ends for the means to those ends. Someone who is "for peace" or "against crime" has committed the FSAF if he or she:
- Loudly and constantly touts his or her commitment to the ends (i.e., "promoting peace", "getting tough on crime", etc).
- Demonizes those who do not stand firmly with them, and
- Has no clearly articulated plan for acheiving their desired end, or has a clearly articulated plan without having any idea of the costs and consequences of that plan.
The beauty of the FSAF, of course, is that you can always be on the right side of an issue. Who doesn't want peace? Or less crime? Or an end to poverty and injustice? Even better, you can accuse your opponents of not being in favor of these wonderful things. With the FSAF, you can't go wrong.
Peaceniks are commonly afflicted with the FSAF. As the Jo Walton quote that Patrick has on his page indicates, "peace" is not the same as "not fighting", but the distinction is lost on those who'd rather chant than think. It's my belief that the more simplistic and sound-bite-like an advocacy group is, the more likely that they have a bad case of FSAF. Once you know the symptoms of this syndrome, it's pretty easy to recognize it in its sufferers. It's also pretty depressingly common.
Naturally, you didn't have to come here to read a barrel shot of this particular fish. You've probably already read Lileks' screed. Lileks is a great writer and all that, but does he make metaphorical use of Tom Lehrer songs like I do? (Don't tell me if he does; it'd just depress me.)
Shoppers can now pay for groceries at some area Kroger stores with a new point-of-sale system that uses fingerprints to associate a customer with an account. This came out of a since-abandoned pilot program in Texas to use fingerprint identification to cut down on food stamp fraud. The state got Kroger on board as a participant in the pilot program, and they have continued with it.
Larry wants to know what I think about this story about a proposed City Council ordinance to prohibit "Dumpster diving", "aggressive panhandling", and sleeping on city sidewalks during daytime hours.
I wish I had a good answer to this. My read of the Chron story says this is not simply an attempt to try to force homeless people to go elsewhere, but I'm not sure what it really is all about. The main qualm I have with this kind of ordinance is what do you do with the offenders? According to the article, police "must first warn offenders and inform them about where they can get help". Well, what happens when the offenders don't want to get help, or are too disoriented to understand what's being asked of them? Do we lock them up? That'll get them off the streets. Not for long, of course, and it won't do anything to prevent them from reoffending - who knows, maybe city lockup is preferable to a homeless shelter to some of these guys - so it's hard to see how this will have any long-term effect.
You may think that they short-term effect of putting bums in the drunk tank for a day or two is enough to make this law worthwhile, but is that more efficient than getting them into a shelter? Do we have any idea how much extra this is going to cost us in police power, jail space, and court time? I'm not saying this can't be worth the effort, just that we ought to have some idea of the impact before we codify it.
I'd like to hear more before I decide what I think. It has the feel to me of asking street cops to act like social services agents. I think if we want someone to perform that function, we ought to have people whose job it is to do that function out there doing it. However, that's just a first impression. I'm not quite ready to call it what I really think just yet.
Rob at Get Donkey! has some good thoughts on this. I like what he says about the motivation behind the law. Go check it out.
Chron readers fire back at Bill Coulter for his obnoxious editorial in yesterday's paper. Note to Stanley Kurtz: The letter writers were all a heck of lot nicer than Coulter was. (I am resisting the urge to add "Nyah nyah nyah".)
The first writer pointed out the delicious irony of Coulter's swaggering piece appearing on the same page as an editorial about the failure to be considerate to others. Indeed.
Now Reliant Energy has admitted that they, too, used controversial Enron trading tactics in California last year during that state's electricity crisis. They claim it wasn't very much, but their stock price got pummeled anyway.
This will surely give California Gov. Gray Davis even more to crow about.
I've waded into a debate about Iraq, Gore Vidal, Ralph Nader, and other stuff in the comments on this Matt Welch post. Please tell me if you think I'm off base.
UPDATE: Be sure to read the responses from Patrick and Matt himself that follow mine. This guy definitely bit off more than he could chew.
Would you believe bomb-sniffing bees? No, really, it sounds cool. Go check it out.
(Link via Little Green Footballs.)
Josh Trevino responds to my post about the moral responsibility to speak out against extremism. I had disagreed with Josh's assertion that the failure of Europe's leftist leaders to unequivocally condemn the murder of Pim Fortuyn is equivalent to the failure of American liberals to condemn the likes of EarthFirst!, PETA, and Al Sharpton. My point was that Al Gore (whom Josh singled out) and EarthFirst! are too dissimilar to be lumped together for these purposes. Says Josh:
I used EarthFirst! as lazy shorthand for "destructive environmentalists." Charles is justified in challenging the parallel, but I think it holds -- especially given my intent in writing it. They share language and analyses to a startling degree. As Al Gore says in "Earth in the Balance":
....our activities are now beginning to have fundamental, systemic effects upon the entire life-support system of the planet - upsetting the world's climate, poisoning the oceans, destroying the ozone layer which protects us from excessive ultraviolet radiation, changing the CO2 ratio in the atmosphere, and spreading acid rain, radioactive fallout, pesticides and industrial contamination throughout the biosphere.
Sorry, that wasn't Al Gore at all, but EarthFirst's (EarthFirst!'s?) website. But if you've read Gore's book -- or even representative samples of it -- you know that the vocabulary and the logic are strikingly similar. Charles says that they "agree in a broad sense that something ought to be done to protect the environment, but the paths diverge pretty sharply from there." But that's not quite true. They agree in more than just a broad sense -- they agree on specific problems, and specific causes. Their paths don't really diverge significantly until it comes to remedies.
I would argue that having one's reasonable rhetoric coopted by a dangerous crank does not make you a dangerous crank as well. It's not unreasonable to say that once this has happened that you must disassociate yourself with the cranks, however, lest people confuse your silence for tacit approval. I'm rather of two minds on the subject. On the one hand, at some point I think you really do have to say something. The danger of being associated with extremists is real, and it's devastating to one's moral authority. If the extremists gain any credibility by your lack of denunciation, that's far worse.
On the other hand, I agree with Ginger Stampley when she says
I have minimum standards for considering an opinion on [matters] worth bothering to argue with.
I like to think that I put forth reasoned and rational arguments that most people will think are worth their time to consider. They may well not agree, but I hope no one has grounds for calling me a nut. So why should I waste time arguing with ideologues and zealots who have no firm grasp on reality and contribute nothing to the general debate? Can't anyone tell from what I have already said - and not said - that I plainly disagree with people like that?
I'm more than a bit uncomfortable advancing that line of thought for the obvious historical reasons - evil triumphing because good men did nothing, that sort of thing. In a way, though, this is my point. We all have a responsibility to speak out for good and against evil. I may happen to be incrementally closer to the nutball in question on the ideological panorama, but that doesn't shift the burden. There is good reason to castigate those who have failed to do their part, but this often feels to me like scoring points, especially when prompted like a tragedy such as Fortuyn's murder. That wasn't Josh's intent here, but others (*cough* *cough* Andrew Sullivan *cough* *cough*) have had no shame in doing so. All this does is to distract from the main point - that evil is, y'know, a Bad Thing - and bog us down in arguments over who has and hasn't done the most to denounce it.
Having reread what I've written, it appears that I don't disagree all that much with Josh, and on the larger point I don't. I still won't go along with his categorization of the American left including centrists like Al Gore and wackos like EarthFirst! for the reasons I previously stated, and I still bristle at attempts to score rhetorical victories, especially in situations like this, but we would all do well to remind ourselves why we're different - I'll be so bold as to say better - than the extremists. If anyone actually needs reminding, we've not been doing enough.
Stanley Kurtz goes on yet another tired whine about misunderstood conservatives and liberal media bias:
The belief in conservative bigotry is more than a misunderstanding. It is liberalism's indispensable drug - the opium of the elites. Are there some bigoted conservatives? Sure. But conservative bias can't hold a candle to the thunderous bigotry of the Left toward conservatives.
All I can say is there goes a man who has never read The Free Republic, or for that matter, the op-ed pages in the Houston Chronicle. Here's a charming example from today, in which Chron editorial board member Bill Coulter starts off by calling liberals "pantywaists" and goes downhill from there.
Earth to Stanley: You notice liberal bigotry against conservatives because you're looking for it. The fact that you live in an area that has more liberals than conservatives doesn't help, either. I'm sure that when you're around like-minded individuals that all of you would never consider saying or writing anything about liberals which may be unfair or overly generalized.
Can we please put a halt to this kind of crying victim for awhile? In addition to being supremely annoying - regardless of who's whining about whom - it always serves to distract from arguments rather than to address them. One of the comments I received for this post about how the NRA helps to foster the image of being a bunch of angry white men said that "the media picks up every stupid remark that the NRA makes" while ignoring the same from gun-control groups. Well, maybe that's true and maybe it's not - I'm sure as heck not going to take one person's word for it - but so what? That has nothing to do with my point that the NRA could vastly improve its image and blunt its opponents' criticism by taking advantage of its diversity and replacing their angry, stupid-remark-prone, right-wing white male spokesperson. All that this comment does is to try to shift our attention away from what we're talking about.
And for the record, Stanley, this liberal would read a lot more conservative opinion if so dang much of it weren't composed of liberal-bashing. (Yes, I know, this means I look for it, too. I really need to do something about this masochistic tendency.) You keep telling me you've got something worthwhile to say. Please get around to saying it already, OK? In the meantime, here's a quick-reference guide for you: Targeting an individual is criticism. Targeting an entire group based on the behavior of a few individuals is bigotry. Doing so in the context of decrying that group's bigotry is pathetic.
In which I am invited to order Viagra online in order to "BE A SUPERSTUND!" I sure can see how that email marketing thing is so gosh-darned effective, yessirreebob.
Well, it's been a week, and the Chron has not published any letters complaining about the editorial written by a former death-row inmate who was exonerated by DNA evidence. Which makes me wonder: How many more incorrect predictions do I have to make before I can be considered a Real Pundit?
Sometime over the weekend I got added to a massive CC list on a moronic chain letter that's currently making the rounds at work. It's one of those brain-dead notes that claims you'll get paid by Microsoft/AOL/Disney/the Illuminati for forwarding it to "everyone you know". Bill Gates himself wrote an essay debunking this stoopid thing four years ago, which should give you some idea of just how big a mouth-breather you have to be to actually forward this to everyone in your corporate address book. Not to mention the fact that forwarding chain letters is expressly forbidden in the employees' handbook. Oopsie, here comes the Evil HR Director to whack you with a cluestick!
Of course, what makes these chain letter outbreaks even more special is the cadre of deep thinkers who hit Reply-to-All and demand, in BOLDFACE ALL CAPS, to be removed from this mailing list. As of this writing, I have received one reply-to-all debunking the note, twenty-nine (count 'em) indignant take-me-off responses, three people attempting to recall their indignant take-me-off responses, eight people explaining why you shouldn't hit reply-to-all, another person agreeing with those people, and to top it off, a note from customer services (an outsourcer in this case) telling us that they're aware of it and are looking into it. The fact that this last note came from an anonymous CS worker more than five hours after the original flood of notes began is of great comfort to us all, I'm sure.
Days like this I think that maybe some employees really are worth more to the company dead than alive.
Singer and Psychic Friends Network spokeswoman Dionne Warwick was arrested at Miami International Airport when baggage screeners found 11 suspected marijuana cigarettes in her lipstick case.
Do I really have to finish the joke here, people?
(Naturally, Larry beat me to it on this all-important story. That's what I get for taking Sunday off.)
Another op-ed in today's Chron is this plea for forgiveness for priests accused of sexual misconduct:
The pastor of my parish has been removed because of a recent allegation that 35 years ago he committed an act of sexual misconduct involving a teen-ager.In fact, I don't believe the allegation, but it seemed important to ask myself: What if the allegation were true? Would I still support the Rev. Kenneth Nee, who served Our Lady of Fatima parish in Manorhaven, N.Y., and be upset about his removal from his position, the parish and our lives?
[...]
The risk of recidivism is a strong argument for removing from ministry priests who have been guilty of sexual abuse. But it is a strong argument only in those cases where there is a risk of repeat offense. The mere fact that someone committed an act does not mean there is risk he will do it again. I am not talking about pedophilia, which clearly presents an ongoing risk. In cases, however, that involve newly made accusations of a single act that occurred 20 or 30 years ago, there seems no risk of repeat offense. The fact that the priests in question have effectively ministered their parishes in the intervening years without any further allegations of wrongdoing testifies to that. The absence of repeated offenses testifies to the fact that some acts of sexual abuse against minors are the product of a moment of sin and not pathology.
So, if not fear of recidivism, what is the argument for removing from ministry a priest who many years ago committed a single act, as heinous as the act may have been?
The author, a law professor and mother of a 9-year-old daughter, wants to know why one as-yet-unproven accusation of abuse from many years ago justifies the removal of a priest who has otherwise served his parish well. She invokes the Catholic message of redemption heavily:
So, if not fear of recidivism, what is the argument for removing from ministry a priest who many years ago committed a single act, as heinous as the act may have been?Is it that we expect priests to be sinless? [...] Can a church built on a belief in Christ deny the possibility of redemption and refuse to forgive?
[...]
Some may dispute this phrasing of the issue, arguing that we are not talking about whether to forgive, but simply whether to allow the priest to continue his ministry. That distinction is lost on me. If we forgive, if we accept the possibility of redemption, what is served by removing the priest?
Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but the scandal currently embroiling the Church is not just about the actual abuse. It's about the long-term conspiracy to silence accusers and shelter abusers. It's about silent payoffs and palming predators off on unsuspecting parishioners miles away. It's about the fundamental breach of responsibility on the part of the Church hierarchy.
So my short answer to this author would be: How do you know that this is the only allegation? How would your opinion change if an actual investigation led to other charges? How many alleged victims would have to turn up before you'd be willing to put the interests of criminal justice ahead of the interests of redemption and forgiveness?
Let's assume for a moment that the accusation is true, and that there are no other incidents. I'm not sure how the justice system should be served in this case. Perhaps 35 years of otherwise spotless service is sufficient to balance the scales, but who gets to make that call? The unaffected parishioners? The pope? Call me a hang 'em high conservative, but just maybe we ought to consult the local District Attorney first. In the meantime, without any further information than the author's faith in her priest, I can't say that removing him from duty until the question of his guilt is resolved is too much to ask.
After all, redemption and forgiveness were never meant as get-out-of-jail-free cards. The accused priest may be paying back his debt to God, but it seems to me that unless the victim is willing to forgive and forget - which apparently isn't the case - then some rendering unto Caesar needs to take place. Removal from duty is simply part of that. The sad thing is that when you think about it, this change in Church policy is just another way for the hierarchy to protect itself. Had they put less emphasis on their own self-preservation in the first place, this particular priest might still be able to do his job right now.
I admit that with all the publicity surrounding the Church and its troubles these days that some pathetic attention-seekers may come out of the woodwork and make false accusations about abuse. If that's the case here, then indeed this author's parish will be hurt by losing the services of their priest. That's a shame, but honestly I can't see how the Church could or should handle things differently. Leaving him in place while the charges are investigated has a much greater possible hurt if it's the wrong thing to do.
Unfortunately, there's no wiggle room here. Zero-tolerance policies are often as stupid as they are inflexible, but let's face it: The Church had no choice. I sympathize with those who may be adversely affected by this, but let's not forget how it came to be this way.
Just a reminder from today's Chron that Christianity has had a rather prominent historical role in anti-Semitism.
Kathy Kinsley makes an attempt to "calm some fears on both sides" of the gun-control issue. I think her proposal needs a bit more work, but it's a reasoned and reasonable place to start talking. What I really like about this is that she recognizes that resolution of a given problem is impossible until 1) each side recognizes that the other has legitimate issues that must be addressed, and 2) each side trusts that the other has also completed Step 1.
I have no illusions of Charlton Heston and Sarah Brady sitting down for a cordial chat, but you really do have to start somewhere, and if more people were willing to do what Kathy has done, maybe some day we can actually get somewhere on this.
Another sign the GOP is taking the Democratic "Dream Team" ticket seriously: President Bush is getting involved. He's started taking pot shots at Ron Kirk and Tony Sanchez, and is scheduled to speak in Houston during the Texas Democratic Convention, presumably to draw press coverage away from that event.
Not a word about the Lt. Governor race, though. Given that the real power in the state lies in this office, I find that a bit curious. Of course, Governor is the high-profile job, so from a PR viewpoint the GOP really doesn't want to lose that office, but in terms of day-to-day activity, Lite Gov is where it's at.
Apparently, in 1999, the Texas Legislature passed a law making COLIs legal in the state. Problem is, that wasn't what the bill was meant to do.
And with the [Sen. Florence] Shapiro [R, Plano] bill, a company automatically has an "insurable interest" when an employee gives his consent to the coverage. The rule took effect Jan. 1, 2000, on new or renewing insurance policies.But that's not what the House sponsor, Rep. Brian McCall, R-Plano, intended the bill to do, said his aide, who asked not to be identified. McCall had no intention of making corporate-owned life insurance legal if it wasn't already legal, the aide insisted.
The aide said McCall was concerned that a company could take out a policy on an employee's life without his knowledge.
The bill was a way to empower employees, the aide said, adding McCall wanted to avoid the situation in other states that permit employers to take out the insurance without employees' consent.
McCall, currently a candidate for the speaker of the House, is an insurance and investment consultant. Until he sold his insurance agencies, he was the president and CEO of McCall Insurance Agency and A.M. Scott Agency in Plano.
Rep. Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, vice chairman of the House Committee on Insurance, said he had no idea Shapiro's bill would allow companies to buy policies on the lives of their low-level employees.
Eiland said he thought the bill would expand the definition of who's a "key man" to include top-level employees below the rank of CEO. For example, a law firm might like to insure a partner who brings in a lot of business because the firm could stand to lose if the partner died, said Eiland.
But janitors and laborers?
"No one envisioned it would be used in this manner," he said, adding that he can't imagine McCall envisioned it either.
Another concern: The law doesn't specify what level of consent is required, said Ana Smith-Daley, Texas Department of Insurance's deputy commissioner of life and health. And nothing in the law prevents a company from requiring an employee or applicant to consent to the insurance as a condition of employment.
I'm not going to revisit the question of whether COLIs are a good thing or not. Go read More than Zero (here and here) for what COLIs are supposed to be about. I just want to mention that it's a tad bit unsettling to see laws get enacted without anyone really knowing what effect they're going to have.
Ours is a Legislature that meets every other year for a limited period of time. Many members of the state House have full-time jobs outside of politics. There's a lot to be said for this, but the main downside is that a whole lot of laws get passed without proper scrutiny or debate. It usually happens at the end of sessions, when many votes are taken all at once to beat the clock, but it can apparently happen any time.
It will be interesting to see if the Lege manages to pass the bill they thought they were passing this time around. I wonder if Sen. Shapiro, who wasn't reached for comment on this article, is as upset about all this as everyone else. It could be entertaining if this is what she had intended all along.
From today's Chron:
Harris County Civil Court at Law Judge Gary Michael Block ordered the owner of a telemarketing company to leave his name and home telephone number on his company's recorded messages so that frustrated recipients can return the favor and call him at home with their complaints.Block ordered Lone Star Utility Savers Inc., which does business as Home Improvements of Texas and Kingdom Builders, to stop making recorded telephone solicitations without the specific consent of the recipient.
Joe Shields sued the company and its owner, Donald Stafford Borden, along with several other telemarketers, claiming that they violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
Block ordered the company to pay Shields $5,000. Shields' attorney, Kenneth Kaye of League City, said Shields has already won nearly $100,000 in judgments and settlements with other telemarketers.
Way to go, Joe!
A new study says that having sons shortened the life span of Finnish mothers by about 34 weeks per son. Daughters nurtured to adulthood helped prolong mothers' lives.
OK, Mom. I promise. I'll take my vitamins, I won't read in the dark, and I'll always bring a sweater with me. Does that help?
Today's literally cool science news:
The coldest place in Houston isn't the Galleria ice rink, it's physicist Randall Hulet's lab.The temperature inside a small tube there isn't absolute zero -- at minus 459 Fahrenheit, the lowest possible temperature -- but at one-billionth of a degree above it, it's as cold as any place in the universe.
The physics and astronomy professor and his Rice University colleagues have cooled atoms to sub-freezing temperatures to study a phenomenon theorists first thought possible decades ago: that matter, like light, could take the form of both a particle and a wave.
In his latest experiment, the results of which were published Thursday in the journal Nature, Hulet created a tiny bundle of matter that, in wave form, can be transported a short distance.
It's not a Star Trek transporter -- the collection of 10,000 atoms he transported is a far cry from the trillions in a human body -- but the matter sent a fraction of an inch in the lab traveled back and forth in tube as a coherent wave.
"This has never happened in the universe," Hulet said. "It's something that can only be found in a laboratory."
I love news stories that have to use Star Trek for context.
More than 80% of lawyers who responded to a survey favor ending partisan judicial elections. Those who voted for change were moderately in favor of merit appointments followed by retention elections over simple nonpartisan elections. I'm indifferent as to which alternative is better, but you don't have to watch too many TV ads for judges to think that anything has to be better than what we're doing now.
Neither party is too exercised about this poll:
"The survey is moderately interesting, but historically Texans have wanted partisan elections in courts," said Court Koenning, new executive director of the Republican Party of Harris County."It seems like a Democratic attempt to take the judiciary back," he said.
County Democratic Chair Sue Schechter, a lawyer who participated in the survey, questioned whether it accurately reflects lawyers' sentiments, given the low response rate. She said she's open to considering alternatives to the present system, but doesn't believe most voters are familiar with the merit option.
Changing the system would be politically difficult.
"Whoever is in power at the time is usually against changing the judicial selection," Schechter said.
Schecter's assertion about the party in power is certainly true. I just believe that a judge elected on a brand name - which is what a party is in this context - is a judge that's been elected for a bad reason. There's no way to fully avoid cronyism and coattails, but I believe minimizing those things is the right thing to do.
A European-style traffic circle will be installed at an intersection not too far from Stately Kuff Manor. The area has been undergoing some revitalization and already has some decent places to eat and drink nearby. Washington Avenue, the street in question, has a fair amount of character to it, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they make of this.
The other day while at the hardware store, I heard The Girl from Ipanema, the song that defined the bossa nova sound. It's a classic, made famous by legendary sax player Stan Getz, but it was the fact that it is the canonical bossa nova song that got me to thinking.
It's often hard to pin down a style of music, at least to anything more general than "rock", "jazz", "country", and so on. One place where you can get a certain amount of specificness is in songs that are closely identified with a kind of dance. So I started thinking about what other songs can be called canonical for a given dance style.
If you're old enough to remember the Billy Crystal years on Saturday Night Live, you've probably heard Hernando's Hideaway, which may be the definitive tango song, though a good case could be made for Jalousie
as well. Hearing a tango leads me to the cha cha, as they have a very similar beat. I don't know of a song that is obviously "it" for the cha cha, but the song that really defines it for me is Brave Combo's version of O Holy Night (believe it or not).
Brave Combo, which also has a cha cha version of the Rolling Stones song (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, is probably the band I think of first when I think of the polka, since they call themselves a "nuclear polka" band and won a Grammy for their Polkas for a Gloomy Planet album. Songs like In Heaven, There Is No Beer and of course The Beer Barrel Polka would be the first ones to come to my mind (and say what you want about the polka, any musical genre that's this focused on beer is all right in my book).
Despite its accordion-and-lederhosen stereotype, the polka is actually a pretty versatile style of music and dance. It's a popular style of folk dance, for instance. I always think of John Ryan's Polka, which (to the best of my failing memory) was featured in the movie Titanic. It's not on the soundtrack, at least not by that name - the closest match is something called An Irish Party in Third Class - Gaelic Storm. Of course, it's common to combine two or more jigs/reels/polkas/whatnot into medleys, so who knows. In any event, the ubiquitous polka also shows up in country/western music - if you ever take a class in C&W dance, the first two styles you'll learn are the two-step and the polka, which have very similar footwork. Just about any up-tempo country song is likely to be a polka. My choice for the definitive country polka song is Lyle Lovett's That's Right (You're Not From Texas).
I suppose I lied somewhat in saying that any fast country tune is probably a polka, since that gives short shrift to western swing. The
aforementioned Hot Club of Cowtown and Asleep at the Wheel are the western swing artists I know best. I'd pick Wheel's cover of the Glenn Miller song Chattanooga Choo Choo as the standard for the sound, but I'm on less solid ground here.
Finally, I can't talk at such length about music and dance styles without mentioning that I think Glenn Miller's In the Mood is not only the greatest swing dance song ever written, it's one of the best songs ever. One of the many benefits of learning to play the saxophone in school is getting exposed to Miller's music. The recent swing dance fad has peaked somewhat, but the music will never go out of style.
By the way, in case you didn't know, the Girl from Ipanema is a real person.
Saw a great performance last night at the local live music pub The Mucky Duck by Eddie from Ohio, a Virginia-based folk/rock group. They were recommended to me by an old high school buddy who lies them so much he drove round-trip from Austin on a Thursday to hear them - and they're playing in Austin on Saturday (which he's also attending). That's a pretty good recommendation in my book, and it was on the mark - EfO rocked the house with tight music, interesting (and often hilarious) lyrics, and excellent stage presence. There's really nothing that compares to hearing great live music at a small venue. It's a great antidote to the overmarketed hype that infests our airwaves today.
One aspect of EfO that really impressed me is that they allow their fans to record their performances. My friend had sent a message to their mailing list on Wednesday asking about the particulars. He got a response an hour later from their soundman, who offered to help him plug his recorder into their board as well as the use of an AC adapter.
Now, EfO is the kind of band that doesn't get much radio airplay. They are on an independent record label. They also have a squadron of loyal fans (their mailing list has 20,000 names on it) who spread the gospel by word of mouth, and they've sold 100,000 CDs to date. They made a point several during the show times to thank their fans for encouraging them to come to Texas in the first place, and for bringing new people out to hear them. Do you think that their willingness to let fans record their concerts might have something to do with the fans' loyalty and the band's success? Hey, RIAA, I bet these guys don't fear Napster.
(By the way, if you do a Yahoo! search on "riaa", the first link listed is this one. Take that, Hilary Rosen!)
Take my advice. Go find a pub in your area that features live music and try it a few times. There's a big world out there that you'll never know about if all you ever listen to is Hot Hits and Classic Rock. We're going to see four more shows at the Duck this month, including the fabulous Austin Lounge Lizards on Saturday, Guy Forsyth on Tuesday, and later on Western Swing band par excellence Hot Club of Cowtown and the Asylum Street Spankers. It's gonna be a great month.
Kathy Kinsley points to this summary of how Luke Helder was caught, compiled by Mary Wehmeier.
Yesterday about 5 PM Pacific Time, Luke J. Helder, AKA Mailbomb Boy was arrested after he tried to outrun the Nevada Highway Patrol for over 50 miles on I-80. The car chase exceeded over 100 mph at times . Federal authorities were tipped off by his father after a letter he received according to court documents filed Wednesday. Obviously Dad wasn't thrilled at the letter he got from Luke.The hand-written letter, Helder told investigators, referred to death and dying and contained several anti-government comments. After receiving the letter at his home in Pine Island, Minn., Cameron Helder talked by phone with his son's roommate in Menomonie. The roommate, James Divine, and two friends searched Luke Helder's bedroom and found clues under the bed that suggested Helder might be involved in the bombings. They found a bag with nails, paper clips, a funnel and two plastic bottles labeled shotgun or gun powder, according to the court papers.
All I can say is that if you can read the word "Menomonie" without immediately humming "do doo de do do", well, you're a better person than I am.
TAPped is taking nominations for "the best liberal blogs (and blog-equivalents) out there", which they may incorporate into a site redesign. At the very least, they'll do a post with links to the nominees. Take a moment and send them the liberal blogs you like best.
The Donk gives an amusing report about the state of free speech at Safeco Field, where the ban on wearing "Yankees Suck" T-shirts by rabid Mariners fans has been lifted. This reminds me of New York Rangers fans, who would (and for all I know, still do) at random points during games chant "Potvin Sucks" in honor of hated NY Islanders' defenseman Denis Potvin. Didn't matter who the opponent was, all of a sudden you'd hear "Potvin Sucks!" ring out from the cheap seats. The fans felt strongly about this and so by God they were going to let you know about it. I always liked that about them.
I'm a lifelong Yankees' fan, so I can't exactly endorse the sentiment, but I am glad to see that this sort of New York initiative has reached the formerly-mellow West Coast. I feel that my parents, who moved from New York to Portland in 1999, are somehow partly responsible for this, even though they're crazier about the Yankees than I am. Good work, Mom and Dad! Too bad the same sentiment hasn't spread to bagel making out West yet. Give it time.
Today when I checked my mailbox, I found a note from a high school classmate who had stumbled across this piece I'd written about an encounter with Frank McCourt last year. She had also taken Creative Writing with Mr. McCourt at Stuyvesant and wrote to thank me for bringing back some fond memories for her.
You don't need a tip jar to get rewards for writing. I'm a happy man.
Joshua Trevino has some harsh words regarding the assassination of Pim Fortuyn and those who would equivocate about it:
It's not terrifically surprising that Pim Fortuyn's assassin is a radical leftist. I've long maintained that the hard left is the greatest threat to social order in the West, and this only drives the lesson home. From near-insurrections in Seattle, Prague, Washington, Genoa, and Sweden; to pipe bombs in the Midwest; to the killing of Italian technocrats; to the FARC; to race riots in Cleveland and Crown Heights; to apologists for Islamic terrorism -- it is today's left that aids, abets, and/or apologizes for most of the violence in and against the Western world. (Notable non-leftist standouts are the Rockwell/Raimondo crowd of libertarians; but unlike the left, they've never actually killed anyone.)The strange thing is that the left seems not to notice. Its rhetoric, after all, is the rhetoric of justice -- sometimes even of peace. And all manner of self-deception is employed to keep it that way[.]
[...]
By this light, Fortuyn brought his murder upon himself, by preaching "hate." That he did nothing of the sort is irrelevant. Cause must be tailored for the effect to be palatable. One may easily argue that Roger Boyes is an idiot -- he goes on to assert that JFK, shot by a committed Marxist, was a victim of the right. But that misses the point, which is that almost nothing -- not civil disturbance, not a massacre in Manhattan, not a slaughter at a Seder, not decades of Soviet barbarism, nor the cold-blooded shooting of Pim Fortuyn -- nothing will convince the hard core of the left that its goals, which necessitate its methods, lead inevitably to woe.
Not that all leftists are murderers. They're not. But just as neo-Confederates have a duty to root out the racists in their ranks; just as the right has a duty to weed out its paranoiacs and violent element; so too does the left have a duty to disavow and disassociate itself from its loathesome extremists.
But for the most part, they don't. In Europe, the FARC and Hezbollah remain off the official lists of terrorist organizations, and EU money demonstrably funds Arafat's terror. Here in the US, the Democratic party does not shun Al Sharpton; pacifists see no problem marching alongside Palestinian terror-apologists; and Tom Daschle and Al Gore do not repudiate the extremists of EarthFirst! or PETA -- after all, they're a reliable voting bloc, even if they block common-sense measures.
The main problem that I have with this analysis is that it commits the same sin described in the Reason magazine article that Joshua cites:
[T]he process of straining political events through the standard journalistic narrative templates - especially the right-vs.-left narrative -- can simplify a story so greatly that it emerges as a different story, perhaps even the wrong story.
Any definition of "leftist" or "the left" that includes both Al Gore and EarthFirst! is overly broad to the point of meaninglessness. Both of them agree in a broad sense that something ought to be done to protect the environment, but the paths diverge pretty sharply from there - Al Gore would like to raise fuel-efficiency standards on SUVs, while EarthFirst! would happily firebomb the plants that make SUVs.
More to the point that Joshua is trying to make, Al Gore and EarthFirst! have no use for each other. If any members of EarthFirst! bothered to go to the polls in 2000, I'll bet a sizeable chunk of my income that they voted for Ralph Nader. These people hate Al Gore with a passion because they consider him a sellout, the kind of person that Phil Ochs had in mind when he wrote Love Me I'm A Liberal.
In other words, there's no commonality between them. Joshua is arguing, as I myself have, that words of condemnation mean more coming from ideological soulmates than from political enemies. I agree with the theory, but I disagree with this particular application of it. My quarrel is that the examples he cites are, for the most part, examples of enemies. They're being cited as soulmates because they're all enemies from Joshua's perspective, but on the spectrum of "leftist" opinion, Al Gore and Tom Daschle are to PETA and EarthFirst! as right is to left.
This is not to say that those who equivocated about Pim Fortuyn's death, whether out of dislike of his politics or an actual sense of commonality with the whackjob who killed him, have any excuse for doing so. Regardless of whether you agree more with Fortuyn's ideals or those of Volkert van der Graaf, if you don't hold the basic premise that killing people because you disagree with them is absolutely wrong, then I hold you in the same contempt that Joshua does.
But what I want to know is, how much must one have in common with a malefactor in order to have a moral responsibility to speak out against him? I say that Al Gore is sufficiently far removed from EarthFirst! that he has no more need to condemn them than George W. Bush does, but if the Sierra Club were to express admiration for their violent tactics then common decency would require Gore to denounce them. It's wrong to extend the legitimate criticism of European lefists for their failure to decry this crime to a more general critique of the much broader and less cohesive American left. There's no parallel here.
Matt Welch points me to this interview with Walt Frazier. Frazier, nicknamed Clyde, was as famous for his cool and excellent play on the court as he was for his stylish demeanor off court. My mom had a big crush on Clyde when I was growing up. You know how some married people will say that they'd never leave their spouses, but if they ever did it would be for one particular person? Walt Frazier was that particular person for my mom. Lynda Carter was the equivalent person for my dad. They had pretty good taste, if you ask me.
That bastion of quality family programming known as Fox is putting a twist on The Bachelor with its latest reality show I Want A Husband: Alaska in which five single women from the Lower 48 head up north in search of a stud. It starts May 23, so get your TiVo ready.
Meanwhile, Fox's The Girl Next Door: The Search for a Playboy Centerfold has drawn the ire of Concerned Women for America.
It's men victimizing women for the sake of money and ratings," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America. CWA is one of seven groups, including the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family, that protested the show in a letter to Rupert Murdoch, chairman of Fox's parent News Corp.[...]
LaRue said she was concerned the special would encourage men to treat women as sex objects and send a dangerous message to girls.
"It communicates to 12- and 13-year-old girls that this is what you have to do to be attractive to men," she said.
In case you're curious, CWA thinks women shouldn't work outside the home, that condoms are "virtually useless" in protecting against sexually transmitted diseases, and that homosexuality is evil. Which is to say that they know a thing or two about sending dangerous messages to girls.
Seattle Slew, the last living Triple Crown winner, died Tuesday morning in his stall. Affirmed, the most recent Triple Crown winner in 1978, died last January.
Looks like I'll get my 10,000th visitor some time next week. I'd greatly appreciate it if whoever sees the counter hit 10,000 would be so kind as to mail me a screen shot. Thanks.
Today's weird Google referral is "Girls gone wild passwords footage". Yes, come to Off the Kuff to see crazy college coeds logging on to their network accounts. How far will they go to get their passwords reset? We've got the goods!
More Than Zero responds to my previous post about COLIs. We were arguing about different things, which he makes clear. There's some good stuff in the comments as well, so check it out.
One thing I mentioned in the comments that I'd like to reiterate here is that I did a poor job of saying what I intended to say in that last post. When I said
Further, most employees make zero direct difference to a company's bottom line.
what I intended to mean was that the sudden loss of most employees wouldn't affect a company's bottom line. The meaning was clear to me, since I was talking about companies collecting large life insurance payouts, but unless you had direct access to my synaptic processes you might well have missed that particular nuance. Obviously, as MTZ rightly points out, all employees have some kind of effect on a company's bottom line, usually a positive one for companies that manage to stay in business. I apologize for the confusion. I sentence myself to a week of reading George Will without snorting or guffawing.
From Salon comes this story about a "family entertainment portal" called Flowgo and how a pop-up ad that ran on Flowgo's server installed a nasty piece of spyware on many user's computers.
The ad, purchased by a Los Angeles Internet marketing firm named IntelliTech Web Solutions, was designed to automatically redirect visitors away from Flowgo (no mouse click required) and to dump them at a booby-trapped site called KoolKatalog.Once at KoolKatalog, visitors were invited to feed an e-mail address into a digital slot machine created in the Shockwave animation format. Solve the puzzle faster than anyone else, and KoolKatalog would send you a swell prize!
In the nanosecond it took most people to recognize the obvious junk mail trap, the real damage was already nearly done. According to virus experts, code in the pages at KoolKatalog exploited a known flaw in an old version of the Java engine of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to covertly download the first of 10 files onto visitors' computers
The thing that caught my eye about this was that Flowgo is one of the domains we've blocked from sending SMTP mail into our company because they were identified as a spammer. I suspect that someone complained about mail they had probably signed up for (though they may not have realized what they were doing) rather than genuinely unsolicited mail, but in any event we were seeing several hundred messages from them per day for awhile there. We don't see much anymore; maybe they took all the undeliverable messages as a hint. In any event, while Flowgo was certainly wronged here, I'm not going to weep for them. I will, however, take this opportunity to make sure my antivirus software is up to date...
I've taken conservatives to task several times in this space for whining about liberal media bias. One of the reasons why this is such a hot-button issue for me is that here in Houston you have to go out of your way to come across liberal media in the first place. If all you do around here is read the Houston Chronicle and listen to AM talk radio, one thing you won't get is an overexposure to "liberal orthodoxy", whatever that may be.
Here's an example from today's Chron. Perhaps this will help illuminate why the notion of liberal media bias is so laughable to me.
The Page One headline reads Bush's budget promise goes bust. It's pretty obvious from the get-go that blame for this broken promise will fall everywhere except at President Bush's feet.
President Bush's campaign promise to control government spending grows more elusive, with the nation's wartime budget about to mushroom and election-year politics promising huge new programs, particularly for the elderly.Added to the mix are an enormous farm subsidy plan finalized by the House last week and to be cleared by the Senate this week; billions of dollars in child care funding Democrats want to add when Congress updates the nation's welfare laws later this year; an expensive drug subsidy both parties say they'll give senior citizens this year, and the inestimable cost of protecting the nation from another terrorist attack.
The bottom line for Bush, as diligent as his administration tries to be about clamping down on spending not related to the war on terrorism, will be a discretionary spending budget reaching $740 billion.
In other words, despite President Bush's heroic efforts, that nasty Congress will force him to spend more money than he wants to. But still, like the adult in charge that he is, he's in there fighting:
To try to contain nondefense expenditures, the Bush administration last week set the tone on two fronts for this year's budget battles.First, it floated plans to rescind spending on programs such as student loan consolidation subsidies to help cover Bush's $27.1 billion emergency budget request for the war on terrorism and homeland security. Then the White House used a veto threat to try to stop lawmakers from adding their own spending priorities to the emergency measure.
What they don't mention, of course, is that the student loan consolidation subsidies amount to $5.2 billion, which as you may note is considerably less than $27.1 billion. There's no futher mention of any veto threat in this story, so what in particular the President threatened is unknown to the reader.
One place the President isn't threatening a veto is that enormous farm subsidy plan mentioned in the second paragraph. That bill, which has been roundly panned by pretty much everyone, will be signed into law by President Bush once it passes the Senate. It will add $73 billion to federal spending over ten years. That's a lot of student loans.
Naturally, this being the Chron, Bill Clinton must have something to do with whatever it is that's bad:
The added spending is expected to push the federal deficit for this year to more than $100 billion. The new spending continues an upward swing that began in the second half of the Clinton administration, while both the House and Senate were controlled by Republicans."We're very concerned that we don't continue the trend that was started under Clinton," said Neil Bradley, director of the Republican Study Committee, representing a group of 70 fiscally conservative GOP House members.
He and many other conservatives blame the federal government's bad spending habits on Clinton. However, even GOP aides acknowledge that lawmakers from both parties took advantage of the surpluses created by strong economic growth in the late 1990s.
If only Bill Clinton hadn't set such a bad example, then the congressional Republicans would have remembered that they once called themselves the party of fiscal responsibility and not gone on the wild spending orgies that are now so bothersome for President Bush.
Now that the word "deficit" has been mentioned, you might wonder what the effect Bush tax may have. Well, it's all explained here in Paragraph 26. Don't blink or you might miss it:
But all that extra spending -- combined with revenue losses both from increased unemployment, continued lower than expected corporate revenues and major tax cuts Bush ushered through Congress last year and again this year as part of an economic stimulus package -- promises to produce hundreds of billions of dollars in deficits.
See, the problem is SPENDING. Cutting revenue is merely an ancillary effect.
So the next time you complain about that nasty liberal press, log on to Houston's Daily Information Source (formerly known as Houston's Leading Information Source; scroll down to the last section to see what I mean) and give yourself the antidote.
Missed this last week - the Conroe production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas will be staged after all. Chalk up another triumph for Art.
Christina Quinones, the "chief snugglebunny to Mr. Pigs and Fishes", has started a weblog. She has this interesting post about Colin Powell, his whereabouts on 9/11, and how it ties to the recent failed coup in Venezuela. Check it out.
That Guardian reporter who did a hatchet job on Alabama is now in Mississippi, according to Mac Thomason and Lee Ann at Spinsters.com. All I can say is God help us if he ever comes to Texas. Molly Ivins once wrote about how, for a visit from Queen Elizabeth, we should acknowledge our true selves and greet her with the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, the Kilgore Rangerettes, the entire Texas Legislature, and so on. Of course, she meant that fondly. I suspect Mr. Engel would fail to see the humor.
Should Mr. Engel set his sights on our home state, I'll suggest that Lyle Lovett sing a slightly modified version of his song for him:
"That's right, you're not from Texas
And it's fine with us if you stay that way"
Electrolite has moved to a new home. Congrats on getting that settled, Patrick.
Today's op-ed pages in the Chron includes this piece by a former death row inmate who was recently freed by DNA evidence. Regardless of where you stand on the death penalty - I'm more for it than against it - it's worth reading.
BTW, I predict that at least one crayon-wielding yahoo will send a letter to the Chron accusing them of having some kind of liberal-soft-on-crime bias for printing this. If said yahoo is a member of a so-called "victims' rights" group like Justice for All, I will be very non-surprised.
On an odd side note, the GIF they use for their runoff endorsements link is (modulo the text) the same image I've seen in various get-rich-quick spams. Very weird.
The 23rd Congressional District in Texas, pitting the only Republican Hispanic representative from Texas against his first real challenger, is profiled here. State Rep. Henry Cuellar is looking to unseat U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla as part of the national Democratic strategy to retake control of the House. Cuellar is from Laredo, the same hometown as Tony Sanchez, and is clearly hoping that a big turnout for Sanchez will help carry him into office. Have I mentioned before that turnout is going to be the key to all these state races? Yes, I believe I have.
Bonilla's District 23 is geographically the second-largest congressional district in the United States, outsized only by an Alaskan seat. The district includes 625 miles of U.S.-Mexico border and sprawls from Laredo at the south end, north to pick up a portion of Bexar County and San Antonio, then west for a slice of El Paso County.The population is diverse and dispersed, spanning from needy colonias and border towns to salt-of-the-earth West Texas farms and ranches, to flush and mainly Anglo suburban enclaves in northwest Bexar County, Bonilla's home turf.
Laredo's Webb County is one of two population anchors of the district with about 193,000 people. The other is northwest San Antonio and Bexar County with about 173,000 people. But because Webb turnout in general elections historically has hovered around 20 percent, the high-vote Bexar portion has dominated the district.
In the last nonpresidential election, Cuellar's home base produced only about 20,000 votes; Bonilla's home base, 38,000.
"Historically, the Anglo precincts in Bexar have had very high turnout, while the poor border precincts have done terribly," said University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray. "But you've got to throw out those recent election histories."
By the way, be sure to click on the district map in the story. They're not kidding when they say this district is huge. Of course, it's huge because, like the universe itself, it's mostly empty. You really don't know the meaning of the word "desolate" until you've driven I-10 through West Texas.
This column by Rob Neyer explores the long and mostly sorry history of the Philadelphia Phillies. If you think incompetent ownership is a recent phenomenon, you won't after you've read Neyer's overview.
And as long as we're on hot-button topics, let me get this longstanding gripe off my chest. Every now and then, I see a woman make the claim that "if men could get pregnant then abortion would be a sacrament". Any woman who truly believes that the sides of the abortion argument break down neatly along gender lines has never spent any time as a clinic defender. The ability that some people have to not see reality never ceases to amaze me.
I've been following the dustup about anti-gay remarks at the recent NRA convention with some interest. Ted Barlow has been on InstaPunditWatch throughout (see here, here, and here for full coverage) and documents how Reynolds eventually said the right things about this.
In his latest installment, Reynolds quotes at length from a note he got from David Rostcheck of The Pink Pistols. Rostcheck and Reynolds speak at length about the NRA's image problem. Both of them lay blame on the media (Rostcheck identifies it as more of an "editor problem" than a "reporter problem") for the fairly widespread perception that the NRA is, as CastleBravo on The Firing Line put it "a bunch of paranoid future spree killers, redneck Bambi-blasters and neo-Nazis".
To be fair, Rostcheck, Reynolds, and CastleBravo all recognize that the NRA itself contributes to this image, in no small part by having speakers who, as CastleBravo says, "at best can't keep their foot out of their mouth and at worst has an anti-gay bias and doesn't have the sense to keep it to themselves". None of them, though, really put the finger on what I believe is the leading contributor to this problem and its obvious cure: The NRA's most visible spokespeople are a bunch of angry white men.
Think about it. Who do you think of when you think of the NRA? Well, there's Wayne LaPierre, who at this same convention compared the founder of a gun-control group to Osama bin Laden and whose infamous "jack-booted thugs" remark caused Bush Sr. to tear up his NRA membership card. There's Charlton Heston. There's...well, I have no idea who else. And that's my point.
I believe Rostcheck and Reynolds when they say that the NRA is a largely diverse and welcoming organization. So why don't they act like a smart organization and take advantage of that diversity? I've heard of the Second Amendment Sisters. Thanks to Reynolds and Rostcheck, I've now heard of The Pink Pistols. I forget who pointed me to Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. That's three gun rights advocacy groups whose members would otherwise be associated with the Democratic/pro-gun-control side of things. I'm sure a bit of Googling would find more. Why the NRA doesn't give these folks a more prominent role in making its public statements is a mystery to me. I'm sorry, but if the public at large thinks that gun owners are mostly right-wing white men, the NRA has no one to blame but itself.
If I were an NRA member, I'd wonder why my organization hasn't taken the easy step to blunt my opponents' rhetoric by finding a nice unassuming soccer mom to replace Wayne LaPierre as its public face. Anti-abortion groups figured this out years ago - most of their spoksepeople are women for this very reason. Really, what are they afraid of - being accused of tokenism? A Maureen Dowd column which tries to make a case for that is an irony even a non-gun lover like me would relish.
It's a no-brainer. I fail to understand why they haven't thought of it.
The downside of living in the same town as other good bloggers is getting beaten to the punch. Ginger mostly sums up my feelings about the editorials today by George Will and Clay Robison. It's fair game for John Cornyn to play the control-of-the-Senate card in his race against Ron Kirk, but if that's the most compelling reason he can supply I think he's going to fail. And it goes without saying that a candidate for Lieutenant Governor who runs against Tom Daschle is a candidate in deep need of a self identity.
These races are going to come down to voter turnout. Both sides know it, and I think the GOP is scared of it. Stay tuned.
Lady Bird Johnson is resting comortably after suffering a stroke on Friday. We're all rooting for your recovery.
Houston District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal has sent a letter to Harris County Attorney Michael Fleming saying "it will be difficult to prosecute" people who are ticketed for speeding if they demand a jury trial.
Under Texas law, motorists who exceed posted limits are assumed to be driving in an unsafe, imprudent manner. But they actually are ticketed for driving in an unsafe manner, not because they went over a speed limit.The law thus opens the door to the argument that a motorist who exceeds the speed limit was nonetheless driving in a safe manner, Rosenthal said.
"I believe that it would be difficult to convince a jury that a speed in excess of 55 is unreasonable, given the historical fact a speed of 70 was considered by the Texas Transportation Commission to be reasonable and prudent a few short weeks ago," Rosenthal wrote.
Pretty interesting. I must admit, I hadn't thought of it. One of Houston's dirtier secrets is that you can fight a speeding ticket and win. Some years ago, the speed limit on a section of service road for Loop 610 raised its speed limit from 35 to 40 after a string of motorists successfully challenged tickets on the grounds that a study of actual use had never been performed to determine what a proper limit should be. This section of the service road runs through the city of Bellaire, which is a notorious speed trap. The state eventually did a study, and when they discovered that the average speed on that stretch of road was 44 MPH, the limit was raised.
Of course, some people simply hire the right lawyer when they can't or don't want to take Defensive Driving. I know several people who have used David Sprecher's services to get tickets dismissed. There's nothing like being the top expert in an obscure but lucrative profession.
The ultimate effect here may be the retraction of the lower speed limit, whose implementation Attorney Stafford worked to prevent in the first place:
Stafford is trying to persuade the commission to substitute another measure for the lowered speed limit, such as tighter controls on industrial pollution.He said he will present the TNRCC with a highway safety expert's findings that a 55-mph speed limit creates dangers because motorists drive at vastly different speeds.
Stafford said the signals coming from the TNRCC are that it will restore the old speed limit.
"I think the commission will vote 'yes,' " he said. "I remain optimistic."
I can already see the letters to the editor decrying the waste of putting the 55 MPH signs up only to take them down again in short order. Nothing like a well thought out plan.
Hey, Moira Breen is back! She's got a new URL (so update those links) and she's gone Moveable Typing. And she's got lil ol' me as her Blog of the Day, as if you needed extra incentive to pay her a visit. Welcome back, Moira! Go on and take a look, I'll still be here when you get back.
Fritz Schranck writes about taxation terminology, and points to this article at More Than Zero about "dead peasant" insurance, also known as Corporate Owned Life Insurance, or COLIs. He talks about their tax benefits for corporations, then tackles the "insurable interest" question.
State laws often require an "insurable interest" in the individual covered by the policy. I can't just look through the comments on this site and buy life insurance on the commenters. Likewise, a corporation can't just buy life insurance on anybody's life. Since the corporation has an interest in its employees well-being, the law has allowed companies to insure employees. In fact, banks often require that key employees have substantial life insurance (with the bank as loss payee) as part of a loan agreement.First of all, companies need their employees alive, for obvious reasons. In fact, the law governing "insurable interest" actually recognizes that interest in allowing these transactions. Second, companies benefit from "COLI" or "BOLI" regardless of how fast or slow their employees die. The scope of a company's COLI program makes almost no difference to the company's interest in the employees well-being.
I dispute the notion that an employer has an insurable interest in all its employees. For one thing, as this Chron story says, COLIs continue to cover ex-employees. How can Three Initial Corporation have an insurable interest in someone who's left for greener pastures?
Further, most employees make zero direct difference to a company's bottom line. According to the now-archived Chron article I initially referenced, Wal-Mart had COLIs on employees who worked in the distribution center and the automotive center. Camelot Music had COLIs on part-time minimum wage workers. There's no way that the departure of these employees, whether from the company or from this vale of tears, had any effect on its day-to-day operations, let alone its stock price.
I don't have any problem accepting that companies have an insurable interest in top executives, inventers, critical people like that. But ordinary wage slaves? C'mon.
MTZ has one more nit to pick:
Finally, if this is so outrageous, why don't we mind that the government has a stake in rich people dying? In that case the state's interest is crystal clear - the faster rich folks die, the more government benefits through the estate tax. The government suffers no identifiable loss to offset, unlike those who must make due without an income producer.
It's a valid point. I think the main difference is that we've always known about the estate tax, and besides, very few of us are affected by it. COLIs have been a well-kept secret. I think that offends people nearly as much as the idea that some executive will prosper from Joe Sixpack's untimely demise. I can't help but feel that the companies themselves realize that there's something squirrely about COLIs, which is why their "revelation" comes as a bit of a shock to us.
BTW, to answer MTZ's question about why these stories suddenly started appearing, I daresay it's because of the lawsuit over COLIs in Texas, where state law requires insurable interest. I know it's hard to believe that Texas is more proletariat-friendly than Oregon on any issue, but there you go.
I've added Meryl Yourish and TAPped from The American Prospect to the blog links. Don't know how I hadn't discovered Yourish before, but after reading her Stan Lee problem solver, I'm glad I did. I may have to apply that in a team meeting some day.
Hey, Welch. May 1 has come and gone. When are you gonna put a new banner on your main page?
So my question is: What should be the word for Instalanche sloppy seconds? Any suggestions?
And just in case I'm worried that the traffic wave is over, I'm now in the top 10 of at least three different Google searches for variations on "Alex Michel". The hits just keep on coming.
I'm posting this CNN story because I want to see how many Google hits I can get for saying "remote controlled rats".
I mean that as a compliment. From a news item forwarded to my inbox:
Perth prostitutes were reeling from exhaustion following an influx of United States sailors stressed from a stint in a war zone, a well-known madam said today.Mary-Anne Kenworthy said she was forced to close the doors of her famous Langtrees brothel for only the third time ever yesterday because her prostitutes were so worn out they could no longer provide a quality service.
When she realised the sex workers just couldn't cope any more she closed Langtrees doors for a day rather than risk the brothel's reputation.
"We're the biggest and the best, I'd rather take nothing than offer a poor service," Ms Kenworthy said.
Who says people don't take pride in their work these days?
Virginia Postrel, who has a snappy new self portrait up (note to Max Power: Your demand has been met), points to this Happy Fun Pundit post which lauds the cable networks for turning down the Saudi advertising money. While I appreciate anyone who can work "ululate" into his writing, I must respectfully disagree with this sentiment. I think this misguided effort on the Saudis' part would backfire on them. I think that Americans would recognize the lies and that there would be a backlash that would greatly embarrass the House of Saud. Turning them down lets them paint themselves as aggreived victims: Those oppressive American broadcasters, too afraid to let the people hear the truth about Our Friends the Saudis, blah blah blah.
Well, hey, as Penn Jillette says, the cure for bad speech isn't no speech, it's more speech. I say bring it on. Let's get all of America talking about Saudi Arabia. Let's talk about those 15 of Saudi's finest who pioneered new aviation techniques on September 11. Let's talk about their love of poetry. Let's talk about their fundraising efforts on behalf of the families of suicide bombers. The cable networks who refused the Saudis' money have done them a favor by not forcing all of us to think and talk about these and many similar charming little quirks of the Saudi personality. And, as Virginia rightly notes, they can take that $10 million which was earmarked for our economy and spend it instead on things like more Wahabi schools. I'm not seeing the upside here.
The beauty of America is that as a free and open society, we can directly counter this kind of propaganda. We don't need to be shielded from it. I'm sorry that we won't get the chance to demonstrate that to these warm, close friends of ours.
(Obligatory joke-ruining warning: Whitehouse.com is a pr0n site. Don't go there if you're at work or near kiddies.)
And as long as we're critiquing satire, I feel compelled to point out this error from the latest bit you've cited:
Laura and I were honored that the Prince came to our humble Texas home. Over the years, the Saudi royal family has played gracious host to the Bush family on dozens and dozens of occasions while we negotiated private and fabulously lucrative oil deals, so it really was a pleasure to finally return the hospitality. Of course, I was sad to be unable to entertain the Prince with the wonderful after-dinner beheadings I know he and King Fahd enjoy so much, but I did assure him that on his next visit, we would go down to the prison and electrocute a mongoloid or two. He seemed to like that.
Silly rabbit. We use lethal injection here in Texas. Not only is it more effective, it's environmentally friendly!
Matthew Yglesias points to the scoop on the Alex Michel email. The New York Post's Page six got a confession from Jonathan Locker, one of the two conspirators:
When we reached Locker yesterday, he confessed to making up the exchange."It was a complete hoax," Locker said, "and I feel really bad about it." Sahrbeck has e-mailed Michel an apology.
Glenn Kinen and Alex Rubalcava, who blogged it first, also point to this story.
I'm not surprised. I was doing a bit of detective work on this myself, but I can see that the route I was taking might have led me to an incorrect answer. When Rubalcava mailed me the full email chain, I took note of the domain from which Michel's email supposedly originated. When I visited that site, I discovered that it allows guest signups. I figured that Sahrbeck and Locker probably created an address for Michel via the guest singup. This would have enabled them to write those messages from Michel themselves. What's clever about that is even if a noseybody such as I had gotten my hands on the originals, their headers would have looked perfectly normal.
So, my investigative idea was to contact the site administrators to see if that address was a guest address and if so, when it was created. From the Post article, it's clear that the address was real. I haven't heard back from the admins yet (I'm going to send a followup note and withdraw my request - no need to make them do unnecessary work), but if I had they'd have told me that the account was bona fide. Another beautiful theory slain by an ugly fact.
Turns out the hoaxers weren't that clever. They simply made up the replies from Michel and started the forwarding chain, so header analysis would likely have caught them if the Old Media hadn't sweated a confession out of them first. Well, good on you, Page Six. I've seen enough of these hoaxes in my capacity as tech support and email admin that I'm happy to see an offender get caught. They were looking for publicity, and they got it. Enjoy the fallout, fellas.
Today's Wacky Google Search From The Referral Log: "Debbie Does Dallas Real Audio". I think we may have found an untapped market.
Alex Rubalcava responds to my objections regarding the provocative email purportedly from Alex Michel of the ABC reality show The Bachelor. He also forwarded me the email he himself had received.
I still can't say for sure that the mail wasn't faked. I'd have to see the original mail from either Sahrbeck or Locker, and even then they could have set up a fake address to send the mail to. Still, the mail Rubalcava forwarded me differed from most multiply-forwarded email hoaxes in that it was a complete chain back to the originator. Often, the contents have been cut and pasted into some other message, then forwarded around. Rubalcava says Sahrbeck and Locker's contact info checks out, which is another point generally in its favor. Usually, the original hoaxer is unknown and untraceable. Of course, some people do it for the publicity. We'll get a better feel for that when and if this hits the Old Media's radar screen.
So, while I still have my reservations, I admit that there is a decent case to be made for authenticity. If I can find a little spare time, I may get out my houndstooth cap and do a little digging myself. Stay tuned.
Matthew Yglesias and Glenn Kinen both point to this report by Alex Rubalcava about Alex Michel, the focal point of ABC's reality show The Bachelor. Rubalcava prints a series of "unconfirmed emails" in which Michel claims that he was pressured by ABC to pick underdog Amanda over Trista.
The emails started with a note from a member of the Harvard group Fly to Michel, a Harvard alum who was also in Fly. The current Fly member sent Michel's reply to friends of his but failed to remove Michel's address, so one of those people sent this note to Michel:
From: Locker, Jonathan Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 8:39 AM To: 'alex.michel@REMOVED Subject: The BachelorAlex, Jeffrey Sahrbeck was giving out your email address so I figured I would shoot you an email telling you how disappointed I was with your decision. Do you like fat girls or something? Amanda is nasty-- she is packing extra lbs all over the place. Trista is smoking hot AND she is a Heat dancer. Anyway, I lost a lot of faith in both you and the ABC network.
Regards, Jon
Michel replied as follows:
From: Michel Alex
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 12:42 PM
To: Locker, Jonathan
Subject: RE: The BachelorJon,
Please do not email me anymore and tell Jeff that if I ever meet him, I will kick his ass for giving my address to all of his high school friends. Anyway, there is no doubt that Amanda is much fatter than Trista, but the producers made me pick the underdog. Don't worry, I bagged Trista.
Alex
I don't buy this for three reasons:
- It's ridiculously easy to forge email. The other two emails Rubalcava provides show the same time and date as these two - the first mail to Alex has the same time and date as the second, and the first reply from Alex has the same time and date as the second. Rubalcava offers no explanation for that, saying that's how they appeared in the mail as it was forwarded to him.
I'm not worried about the synchronicity here as I am about the possibility that Rubalcava or the person who sent him these notes is faking the whole thing. I know a thing or two about SMTP mail protocols and email headers, and I know people who know a whole lot more about them than I do. Until I can see the full headers and show them to some pros I trust, I will remain skeptical about this. It's just too easy to be a joker.
For reference on how to read email headers and determine what is real and what may be forged, see the following links:
Pobox: How to Read Email Headers
Pobox: Examples of Forged Headers
StopSpam: Reading Email Headers
Email Protocols: SMTP, MIME, POP & IMAP - If Alex Michel is pissed enough to kick Jeff's ass for passing his email address on to people Alex doesn't know without his permission to do so, then why in the world is Alex insulting his bride-to-be and bragging that he "bagged" Trista to this total stranger? Is he that stupid and/or indiscreet? You'd think the networks might have learned something about background checks after the whole Rick Rockwell/Darva Conger thing. If it turns out this is genuine, I'd say that Alex's marriage to Amanda will make the Rockwell/Conger union look like Ward and June Cleaver.
- Any man who thinks that a 5'10" woman who weighs 130 pounds is "fat" is not living on Planet Earth.
That last one isn't really a valid objection to the possibility that all this is the truth, but it needed to be said anyway.
I don't mean to be harsh to Alex Rubalcava, who may have stumbled on a nifty little scandal here. I just don't believe this is anywhere near sufficient proof. Really, the people who have to come forward with the proof are Jeff Sahrbeck and Jonathan Locker. Forwarding Alex Michel's replies erases their original headers as far as the new recipient is concerned. Only those two, who purportedly have the originals, can prove that they're the real thing.
By the way, it may sound like an insulting question, but do we know for sure that "Jeffrey Sahrbeck, Harvard Fly 1999" is a real person? Don't scoff, many legends from multiply-forwarded emails have fallen because no evidence that the principals involved exist could be found. Go take a look through the Urban Legends Reference Page for plenty of examples.
For what it's worth, InstaPundit seems to accept Rubalcava's claim without question. Max Power doesn't. War Liberal is undecided but skeptical. Protein Wisdom is undecided but not as skeptical. I had no idea I was this far behind the commentary curve. The curse of a day job, I guess.
Rob at Get Donkey! points me to this article by Kristin Tillotson, who had the unfortunate experience of appearing on The O'Reilly Factor as the designated punching bag. Tillotson wrote a column defending the controversial book Harmful to Minors by Judith Levine and the University of Minnesota's decision to publish it. Her experience was not very pleasant:
Kristine Kotta, O'Reilly's producer, sees my column online and calls to ask if I will represent the pro side, as no one from the University of Minnesota has consented to do so, with the con position to be filled by Minnesota House majority leader Tim Pawlenty (R-Eagan), who has spoken out against the book. I'm apprehensive, knowing what a pit bull O'Reilly can be with anyone to his left, but decide to go for it.[...]
IN THE HOT SEAT: I knew the deck was stacked heavily against me going in, with Pawlenty on my right and O'Reilly in my face (figuratively, that is; all I could see during the taping was a camera lens). I knew of the risk that no matter what I was able to say, some viewers would think I was pro-pedophilia. What I didn't know was that they would seat Pawlenty and me so close together we were practically in each other's laps, or how difficult it would be to get a word in edgewise without seeming as rude as O'Reilly, who gave Pawlenty -- with whom he was in complete agreement -- the first and last word.At one point, O'Reilly said it wasn't necessary to read the whole book, that you don't have to read all of "Mein Kampf" to get its gist, either. The only response I was allowed was nonverbal, so I rolled my eyes. What I wish I could have said was, "Not only is that analogy absurd, you stole it [from Judith Reisner, a Dr. Laura crony]."
O'Reilly is fond of saying "the spin stops here."
Not exactly: During this segment, O'Reilly twice hammered me with a passage from Levine's book that said, "We relish our erotic attraction to children." Two problems: a) Levine didn't write those words; she was citing another author, and b) if you read the entire paragraph, you get a much different meaning: " 'We relish our erotic attraction to children,' says Kincaid (witness the child beauty pageants in which JonBenet Ramsey was entered). But we also find that attraction abhorrent (witness the public shock and disgust at JonBenet's 'sexualization' in those pageants)."
Tillotson also got the type of feedback one would expect from a shock-radio audience - email calling her "pathetic", "scumbag", and "Commie pinko".
I've never watched The O'Reilly Factor, so I can't say if this was typical or an aberration. What I've read of Bill O'Reilly makes me think he's just another egotistical windbag, but that doesn't mean his show has no value. I do wonder sometimes if anyone's ever thought of putting on a political/social issues show that's actually about discussing issues in a rational manner. It'd probably get McLaughlined and O'Reillyed to death in the ratings - or worse, consigned to 7 AM on Sundays - but I'd still like to see it. Who knows, maybe we'd learn something.
(OK, I've probably just described Meet the Press, but I fear I'm really talking about The Firing Line, which went the way of the dinosaur three years ago. If the time for such shows really has passed, we're all the poorer for it.)
On a side note, Tillotson is a coworker of James Lileks. Perhaps he'll notice the headline of this article and inform the appropriate people that the term InstaPundit has already been taken.
Chronicle readers give a thumbs-down to Linda Lay's upscale resale shop idea. Two of them also criticize Houston's Leading Information Source for giving Linda Lay free publicity on Page 1. It's gonna be a fun summer, I can just tell.
You may have heard of Texas Automotive Export, an auto parts shop in Dripping Springs that sent a fax to an Israeli customer saying they will not do business with Israeli citizens and suggesting that they "restrain their military" and "stop your oppression of the Palestinian people". Diane at Letter from Gotham recently suggested that all New Yorkers boycott Dripping Springs in return. Well, fear not, Diane, the boycott is over, as negative publicity and the threat of a lawsuit has caused TAE's owner John Harris to retract his words. That global village thing can be a two-edged sword, John. Better luck next time.