Believe It or Not / I Started to Worry

While listening to my iPod today, I had something of a revelation when it came to a set of lyrics I'd heard at least a million times before.










I was listening to Prince's "Little Red Corvette," which was on the album "1999," officially listed as The Purple One's big breakthrough cross-over hit. The lyrics that caught my attention were these:

Cuz I felt a little ill
When I saw all the pictures
of the jockeys
That were there before me

Now, I've been familiar with all the usual imagery suggested by these lyrics, about riders... on thoroughbreds... maybe a little whip involved... getting bow-legged... It's not Chaucer, put it that way. Or maybe it's like a modern-day Chaucer, who was also quite dirty-minded.

On this day, however, these lyrics made me wonder: what kind of man worries about jockeys stealing his girl away from him?

Someone who is not very tall himself! According to the fan forum and other sources on the Internets, Prince goes about 5'2" tall...

...before heels!! It's the reason why he's always wearing big-heeled boots. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It just makes me chuckle a little, and wonder why I never thought about Prince's height when it came to hearing that song before.

Come On!

I have to laugh when I see some of the advertisements offered up during my usual perusal of what's new on the Internets. Does every single banner ad have to show a picture of some pretty woman, just to get our attention?



These guys want more people to enroll in their school. Does the pretty coed come with the textbooks?












Here's another ad for another online degree-granting program:














What do women doing yoga have to do with a federal stimulus package for homeowner relief?

















Do they really expect me to believe this woman is any older than 22 or 23 years old? C'mon, she never had wrinkles to begin with!

















This woman appears to be handing off the keys to the Used Car of My Dreams. Too bad I can't see the car.











For some advertisers, naturally, it makes all the sense in the world to market the women that may or may not be available for dating.
















There's this example:


Thank goodness I don't need a credit card! I might get the wrong idea. Or it's a cash only transaction.











Here's one that is so close to porn, it might be NSFW:






This ad doesn't even pretend that the women in the ad might possibly be actual members of the dating service:
















What I also love are the specialty dating services:















Which, of course, is bookended by this one:
















I may not have an example, but the Christian online dating services have racy ads, too. I couldn't find an online ad for an Amish dating service, though...



Talk about knowing the target market. These guys were advertising their fantasy football draft kit, which is nothing more than stickers to put on a piece of cardboard. The picture really sells it, though, doesn't it?!

There seems to be no faster way of getting undersexed geeks' attention than through two babes in bikinis.
















And yet, I have to admit, there are advertisers who plod along with non-eye-catching ads like this one:


He's even marketing a dating service!













And then there's always the trustworthy talking lizard selling car insurance:














I had heard long ago that having a pretty girl bring in the customers was called a "come on" in marketing parlance, but doing a quick Google search turned up nothing along those lines. I'm beginning to think it may have had more to do with the old Carnival barkers, whose job it was to hustle people into parting with their hard-earned cash. They always had a pretty lady in skimpy clothing by their side to help close the deal, even if all they were selling tickets for was the freak show.

So, what does it say about society when the default ads being placed all over the Internet are typically for dating services or shady deals? They certainly aren't using a profile of me or my browsing habits. When a person never clicks on a single link, perhaps the ad engines don't really know what will catch a person's eye. It just makes me laugh.

What is This... Kindle I See Before Me?

Because forewarned is forearmed, I'm going to tell the reader right up front that this will most likely be a very long, mostly rambling post related to many issues of disparate natures, but all of which are united by one thing they all have in common: the Amazon Kindle e-reading device. I also would love to turn this into much more of a business case study, standard fare in any MBA program, but the lack of published data available on the number of Kindles sold or just how much of an impact they've had on Amazon's total revenue prevents me from doing so.

Let's start by dwelling on that first piece of information. Despite extensive news coverage of the Kindle, Kindle2, and now the newly announced Kindle DX, Amazon continues to guard sales figures for all Kindles as extremely sensitive information. Why is that? In many cases, public companies don't want to release such data because it might show a weakness in one area of their business. If Amazon were losing money on each Kindle they sold, their shareholders might not approve and send the stock price lower. Because there were significant resources devoted to the research and development of the Kindle, Amazon probably needs to sell a significant number of the e-readers before they recoup their costs. That might be one reason for the secrecy.

Another reason could be that Kindles simply are not selling in the numbers originally projected by the development team at Amazon. To avoid any embarrassment, they may keep the sales numbers secret until the initial projections are met, if ever. At this point, most Kindle buyers most likely fall into the category of "early adopters" of technology, people who are willing to accept the role of public beta testers, living with and perhaps reporting any bugs back to Amazon, simply for the pleasure of being the "first kid on the block" to own the latest tech gear. These were the same types of people who purchased the very first iPods, long before the iPod became the digital music (MP3) player of choice for the masses. The same holds true for those early adopters willing to pay $300 to own the first generation iPhones. If Kindle sales take off like the iPod or iPhone did, then Amazon will feel much better about releasing sales data.

Think about it for just a second: if the Kindle were a huge cultural phenomenon like, oh, say, some crazy blanket with sleeves, it would be selling like hotcakes. News reports say they've sold over 4 million Snuggies already, and those numbers may be way out of date. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and there are Slankets, Snuddles, and how ever many other different versions of the Snuggie already on the market. And at 4 million Snuggies sold, that is still less than 2% of the total population of America! So if Amazon has sold fewer than 1 million Kindles, they simply aren't penetrating the market very quickly.

Based on the assumption that Amazon simply hasn't sold many Kindles yet, the blizzard of news coverage announcing new and improved versions of the e-reader make complete sense. The Kindle was not out for all that long before Amazon rolled out the Kindle2 back in late February. We are just now into the month of May, and Amazon already rushed back to the news to promote the newest Kindle*, the bigger screen Kindle DX. If sales are lagging, why not try to get as much free publicity for the product as possible? WSJ readers tend to be higher income, highly educated readers who are comfortable paying for news content they cannot get elsewhere. In other words, WSJ readers make for a natural market for the Kindle, and the WSJ has been blanketed with Kindle stories recently.

* What's interesting is the official Amazon Kindle website makes no mention of the Kindle2 alongside the feature comparisons of the Kindle and Kindle DX. It could be that the website linked above is specifically for the Kindle2, with no mention being made of the original Kindle. Either way, it seems odd. They have a separate page for the DX model, by the way.

Assuming the sales blitz for the Kindle is on, what would prompt a person to purchase an electronic reader device? What is the one killer application (or, in this case, content) that tips the scales in favor of purchasing another electronic device for a very hefty $359 or $489? Those price points* are not insignificant by any stretch of the imagination. The questions becomes one of simple economics, really. What can motivate large numbers of people to shell out that much money for just the device, knowing that they have to spend more money above and beyond the original purchase price in order to buy content for that device?

* One reason for the easy sales of the Snuggie is it fits a comfortable price point for most people: $20 or less. I hate to say it, but many people consider $20 these days to be "throw-away money." Meaning, if they purchase something for $20 and it breaks right away, they don't seek a refund. It used to be the "throw-away" limit was $5 or so. Not any more.

Think about it: people were willing to spend $300 for iPods, knowing they already had vast libraries of music at home on CDs already. The software needed to rip the songs from CD to a computer hard drive was provided by Apple free of charge (iTunes), so it was easy to justify the cost of the device simply because all the content was "free" -- the CDs were already purchased, or a sunk cost. The same is not true for the Kindle -- no software exists that makes it easy to load the many books people have purchased already onto the Kindle. Amazon in theory could take a person's ordering history and offer to make electronic versions of those books previously purchased through Amazon available for download onto a Kindle. But that still would not help for any books purchased anyplace else. The iPod was CD purchase location agnostic, which was a huge plus.

On the other hand, sales for the merged Sirius XM satellite radio continue to suffer in large part because they charge $200 for a radio capable of receiving the signal (plus more for installation!) on top of the $12 monthly subscription fee necessary to continue receiving the signal. I always maintain that if Sirius XM wants to increase the number of subscribers willing to pay for their service, they need to give away the radios for free.

Perhaps the better question for Amazon would be this one: why buy a Kindle, which might be a very clever little tool that is very good at doing just one thing (reading books, magazines, and newspapers, with a little music on the side), when a person can buy either a netbook or a full-function laptop for the same amount of money or even less? As part of its latest news coverage, Amazon announced content-sharing or delivery agreements they negotiated with major textbook publishers representing 60% of the overall textbook market. Clearly, Amazon thinks providing textbooks to college students will be the killer content needed to drive sales of the Kindle and Kindle DX. That may very well be so, but college students still need a way to write papers, crunch statistics in spreadsheets, and update their Facebook pages at all hours of the day. While many of a college student's daily activities are possible on smart phones, writing a term paper and crunching a spreadsheet full of data really require a computer. Others reached the same conclusion, as well (read the 10 reasons NOT to buy a Kindle).

Amazon, essentially, is asking for students to carry not one but two electronic devices with them wherever they go. It could be that millions of college students will jump at the chance to carry fewer pounds of textbooks with them in their backpacks, and they will gladly purchase their textbooks through Amazon's e-book service. If the textbook prices are significantly reduced, as have the prices on other books offered by Amazon, this strategy could be a winner. My college days are behind me, but I wouldn't necessarily want the hassle of lugging around multiple electronic devices, with multiple power cords, and risk the chance of losing one of them in the student union.

What the Kindle really represents to me is a reach back to Amazon's origins. Those beloved b-school case studies chronicled the rise and fall of Amazon 1.0, for lack of a better term. The quick synopsis goes like this: Amazon, as one of the first true Internet retailers, needed no "bricks and mortar" outlet to sell its wares. In fact, the real lure of selling product through the Internet was that Amazon employees were to never physically touch the products they were selling, which all started with books. Amazon would take an order through the Internet, then match that order with a bricks and mortar store that would ship the product to the buyer. In theory, it worked perfectly, and Amazon never needed to build expensive warehouses full of unsold inventory sitting on very costly real estate. In reality, Amazon found their virtual system could not keep up with demand, and they took huge losses due to angry customers demanding refunds when they could not deliver the products people wanted during the Christmas shopping season of 1995 or 1996. Amazon had to become much more like a traditional retailer, with vast stores of inventory, just to keep up quality standards. Just-in-time inventory, at least in this case, didn't work as advertised.

So, with the Kindle, Amazon really goes back to its roots. They never wanted to touch a physical product with their original model. If the Kindle sells in tremendous numbers and all books start selling as e-books in just bits and bytes, then Amazon could rid themselves of their shipping centers around the country. The Amazon Marketplace could handle orders for things other than books, and the leaders of Amazon would be happy.

At this point, I wanted to also touch on the Kindle's impact (or purported impact) on the future of newspapers. Suffice to say, numerous people are pointing to e-readers like the Kindle and proclaiming the death of news in print. One of my favorite sportswriters, Joe Poz, founded another blog specifically called The Future of Newspapers to chronicle some great ideas, some sad ideas, and some funny ideas about moving towards a paperless society. It's definitely worth a read, especially this post about e-readers like the Kindle. Since I'm also a big Bill James fan, it's worth also linking to his post and quoting his classic line: "... in the modern world it is unnecessary to cut down trees to spread ideas."

I just worry that, if newspapers disappear completely (specifically, the printed word on a piece of paper of a significant size), what will I use to line the floor beneath my two cat litter boxes? That's not a trivial matter, is it? What will people use when housebreaking a new puppy? There's food for thought.

What about Brett... ...Fav-reh?

I know, I know. It has been since forever that I last posted a blog entry here. Believe me, I've been busy. Either work or family has kept me dutifully occupied since my last post back in March.

However, I really could not let this story about Brett Favre pass without comment. The first thing I noticed was that Brett and the Vikings were meeting in former VP Dick Cheney's infamous "undisclosed location." What a riot! Maybe a little waterboarding will be in order. Hey, there's really nothing funny about torture.

What really gets me about this entire Will He or Won't He Retire saga, however, is just how spiteful Brett must be to hold a grudge against really the only team he played for (yes, the Falcons drafted him, then traded him), the team that gave him his big break in the NFL when Don Majkowski went down to injury, the team that paid him umpteen millions of dollars over the course of his career and stood by him even when he threw more picks than TDs. It makes me wonder: when Favre eventually enters the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH, which uniform will he wear? Perhaps the bust of the inductee doesn't include any uniform details, but wouldn't it be incredibly odd to see Favre enshrined in anything other than a Green Bay uniform?!

I know that playing the premier position in the number one spectator sport in America, the number one media market in the world, lends itself to creating a number of prima donnas. And yet, the other QBs in the league tend to not hold the official title of most self-centered players on the field. That distinction usually belongs to the Number One Receiver. Funny how that works, isn't it? WR is a position that totally depends on the play of all the other positions on the field: Offensive Linemen (and often TEs and RBs, too) gotta block, the QB has to deliver the ball at the right spot at the right time, and even the secondary receivers have to distract the defensive secondary to allow one WR to get open. And yet, WRs generate more complaints about "You gotta get me the ball!" than any other position. Ah, but I digress.

When we're talking about Brett Favre, we're talking about the one man who holds ALL the records. Most TDs, most yards, most INTs, and soon to hold the record for most starts in the NFL. Maybe that last record is the one reason why he wants to play one more season. I'm pretty sure he already holds the record for most consecutive starts (call it the Lou Gehrig or Cal Ripken record), but there is one player from the NFL who has more starts than Brett, still. I just read that in SI recently, but I'm too busy to go find the reference now. At any rate, Brett needs to do nothing more to ensure a first-ballot Hall of Fame selection five years from whenever he hangs up the cleats for good.

So, why does he want to come back? Just out of sheer spite against the way his departure from Green Bay was arranged? That appears to be one reason, from what has been reported thus far. Brett probably couldn't understand why the GM and owner in Green Bay didn't wait for him to unretire before last season, although their rationale for moving on certainly seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe he expected to be waited on and treated more like royalty, despite the fact that old, formerly great players get shuffled out the door all the time in today's NFL. It is a young man's game these days.

Many of these great QBs do tend to try to hang on too long in the NFL. The list is long: Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, Troy Aikman, John Elway, Steve Young, Dan Marino, Matt Hasselbeck, Brett Favre. Whether these QBs had their brains scrambled one too many times by concussions or simply held on beyond when their arms could deliver those post pattern strikes to the end zone, they all tried to keep their glory alive longer than most fans could really bear to watch.

Favre most likely thinks he will step into the starting QB position right away with the Vikings and lead them to the Super Bowl, thanks to their stout defense and phenomenal running game. He thinks he doesn't need to mesh with the receiving corps during OTAs and voluntary off-season workout programs. He thinks his 39-year-old legs can help him evade the Green Bay pass rush, among others. Give him one more shot at true glory, right?

What I would love to see more than anything else is for the Vikes to make Favre an offer to back up their starter, Tavaris Jackson. Don't tell him he can come in on day one of training camp (or day 21) and immediately assume the starting role. Treat Favre the same way they treated Randall Cunningham in 1998: sure, we'd love to have you on the roster, since you're an upgrade over Sage Rosenfels. But you're our insurance policy in case Jackson gets hurt. Yes, Cunningham had a monster year teaming with Randy Moss in '98, but that didn't happen until after Brad Johnson got hurt. That's what I would really, really love to see, and what I think Favre deserves after all is said and done. If Favre is willing to tarnish his legacy once more with yet one more team, let him ride the bench.

A Whole Lot of Wonderful

Back during football season last fall, I griped about not being able to watch the college football game I wanted to see. The way the TV deals are structured between the NCAA and the TV broadcasters (mostly ABC and ESPN, both owned by Disney), people in certain parts of the country are able to watch only pre-defined regional coverage. Even if I wanted to watch other football games, I would be unable to do so without paying for a monthly subscription package plus the College GamePlan from DirecTV. Or I could go out to a sports bar and spend a lot more money than I would like. Watching games over the Internet is not an option where I live, since ESPN360 is not brought into our area.

Contrast that limited availability of content, much less customizable content, with the current NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament coverage. I've been watching games on CBS, the primary carrier for the coverage. Not only does CBS have the ability (which they frequently use) to switch between games to keep up with the most compelling action, but they also stream all the games live on the Internet on the website www.NCAA.com. Using a standard cable broadband connection, I can pick and choose my own game from whichever games are being played right at that moment. I am in control! When CBS's over the air coverage focused on Xavier and Wisconsin, I switched over to the Internet to catch the Oklahoma State game against Pitt.

Sure, they show ads during the online coverage, but they are no more or less intrusive than watching the games on regular TV. They seem to be the same ads. The in-studio team of commentators who provide halftime analysis of the games is clearly the "not quite ready for primetime players," to borrow from the early days of SNL. But they aren't bad, and they do provide decent analysis of the in-game matchups.

I'm just thrilled to be able to watch the game I want online, streaming live as it happens. That is simply wonderful!!! If the technology exists to make this happen, then certainly college football games need to be 'unlocked' like this as well.

I read that the epic Ohio State - USC rematch this fall at the 'Shoe in Columbus, OH will be broadcast on ESPN only. Obviously, that does NOT make me happy! To watch what will be one of the best early-season games next fall, I'm going to have to go to a sports bar. You can bet I'll keep an eye on NCAA.com next fall, but I'm not getting my hopes up that they will be streaming football games being carried by other networks.

It's just sad that such a double-standard exists for network coverage of men's basketball and football.

A Bad Hair Day for Lance Armstrong

I saw this news item today on Yahoo! It shows that the French anti-doping agency AFLD is willing to go above and beyond the legal limits imposed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in its pursuit of any evidence showing Lance Armstrong guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Keep in mind the article very clearly states:

Testing of hair samples is allowed under French law, but is not recognized by the World Anti-Doping Agency or cycling's governing body UCI.

International doping controls are based on urine and blood tests.

It also seems the only logical explanation for this action by AFLD is because they suspect Armstrong of using DHEA, "a banned substance that can boost testosterone levels." That is the only PED that can be detected in a hair sample that would not typically show in a blood or urine sample. Otherwise, why conduct a test that isn't sanctioned by either the WADA or the UCI?

I always go back to the fundamental truth that you can never prove a negative. A person can claim that pink and purple polka-dotted rabbits exist in the wild, and no one can prove that person wrong. You cannot prove that something does not exist; only that something does exist. There are many examples of suspected but not yet 'discovered' particles in theoretical physics, of which the Higgs boson is one.

The simple fact that Armstrong has passed, and continues to pass, every single in season, out of season, in competition, random, pre-scheduled, unannounced, and expected drug test does nothing to exonerate him in the eyes of those who believe he's guilty of doping. People might point to an athlete like Marion Jones, who never failed a drug test, but her example should not be used to cast a shadow of suspicion over Armstrong. They are two different individuals, two different athletes in two different sports, unrelated to one another.

Sadly, the suspicion of Armstrong continues to haunt his every move in cycling. It doesn't have to be that way, but the French won't let it go. What now happens if the hair sample tests positive for anything? It's an unsanctioned test. The WADA spokesperson said there is a significant risk of outside contamination for hair samples. A false positive could keep Armstrong out of this year's Tour de France, depending on how quickly his legal team could mount appeals.

The better question would be what impact a false positive would have on Armstrong's stated goal of raising worldwide awareness (and funding) for his cancer fighting foundation through his return to competitive cycling. Armstrong never needed to return to cycling, to expose himself to the repeated and invasive drug testing procedures that strip away any sense of privacy, but he did so anyway. Why would he risk his own reputation and that of the Lance Armstrong Foundation if he were not riding clean?

Just try convincing the French of that.

Trouble From Browns Camp

You may recall that, not very long ago, I was singing the praises of the new General Manager and head coach of my beloved Cleveland Browns. At the time, they were not very active in picking up high-priced free agents, which I maintain is a smart practice.

Well, since the beginning of March, the level of activity originating from Berea has picked up. A LOT!

Given that most of these new hires are guys familiar to Eric Mangini (the new head coach), there could be some method to his madness. He might just be grabbing the guys he knows can help the Browns win in 2009. Mangini might even be smart to let the hot free agents go early to teams willing to overpay for their services, and then pick up the retreads no one else wants for not much money. Since the New York J-E-T-S! JETS! JETS! JETS!!! were 9-7 in 2008, I can't imagine these guys were in high demand. That winning record belies the fact the Jets crumbled down the stretch, losing four of their last five games, after starting 8-3 and leading their Division through week 12.

Having read about some of the other moves being made by Mangini lately, it's hard to imagine he will have any more success coaching the Browns than he had coaching the Jets. His lifetime record as a head coach in the NFL: 23-26 (including one loss in the postseason).

So are the recent player personnel moves an indication that Mangini knows what he's doing, or not? We won't really know if Mangini deserves the nickname Man-Genius or something much less flattering until they start playing the games in September.

The TSA's Full Body Scanner

I am disappointed. Sorely, sorely disappointed.

Today, I had the opportunity to pass through the Tulsa International Airport (three letter ICAO ID: TUL) on my way back to Illinois. Why was I in Tulsa today? I drove with my family this weekend down to Tractor Grandpa and Grandma B's house in Stillwater, OK, then flew back so I could work while they renovate Amy's grandparents' house to get it ready for sale.

Coming back, I knew that the Tulsa Airport was the test bed for the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) new full-body scanners. Why Tulsa, and not someplace else? Good question. The early results from the full-body scanners seem to be decent, with most passengers not minding the intrusiveness of the scan. I'm guessing the TSA wanted to use a smaller airport like Tulsa's for its testing, since installing these scanners is expensive ($170,000 apiece), and they do take slightly longer to scan a person than does a normal metal detector.

It could be the TSA also wanted to pick a fairly conservative region of the country for this initial test. Why would that be important? The imaging technology used in the full-body scanner actually shows just about everything under a person's clothes, including the outline of the body. The TSA has had to defend the new scanner from attacks by privacy-minded groups ever since the announcement that they were going to use this technology. Conducting the first test bed in Tulsa allowed the TSA to introduce people to the scanners in a part of the country where people generally favor security and doing the right thing more so than defending a person's right to privacy over all other concerns.

Having been through the scanner, I have to say I was disappointed. Introducing new technology, a new way of scanning a person for potential hazards to flight, should either simplify or streamline the screening process. If the new scanner was searching for metal objects, then it should be an improvement over the current metal detectors, right? Instead, I actually had to remove more things from my pockets, including anything that would not set off a metal detector, in order to pass through the new full-body scanner. I had to remove my belt, which normally would not set off a metal detector. I still had to remove my shoes to pass through the scanner. On a personal hassle basis, the new scanner was no better, and in some ways worse, than walking through the normal metal detector.

Another way the new scanner is worse than a metal detector is that, with the full-body scanner, it actually forces the person being scanned to stop completely, hold his or her hands above the head, and wait until getting clearance to proceed through the exit. In a normal metal detector, of course, the person continues walking, as long as the detector does not beep while in the middle of the detector. I also thought it strange that I had to hold my hands above my head, which is not something you normally do with a metal detector. I joked that it was like an electronic frisking, which elicited a laugh from the TSA agent (thankfully!).

I also found the current test bed in Tulsa was very selective. Only one or two of the new scanners were installed at the airport, with the majority of travelers passing through lanes that used the traditional metal detectors. I had to choose a lane that processed people through the new full-body scanner in order to see what it was like. The TSA agents manning that lane were almost apologetic about the delay and the hassle involved in passing through the new scanner.

Overall, will these new scanners make air travel safer in America? That's hard to say at this point. The full-body scanners are coming to more airports around America, so more air passengers will get a chance to experience them. Having been through one once, I am disappointed. Before going through the scanner, I half-expected (and really hoped!) that I would not have to remove my shoes or completely empty my pockets, and that was not the case. Personally, I can get through a metal detector with less fuss and in less time, so that will be my preferred option in the future.

Lincoln - Douglas Debate

As many people know (hopefully, the number of people who know is larger than the number of people who don't), 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's birth. When he was a young candidate for the office of U.S. Senator from the state of Illinois, Lincoln engaged in a series of debates against another great orator named Stephen A. Douglas. The seven debates were held during the 1858 campaign, and they primarily focused on the topic of slavery, although they touched on other subjects, as well.

When I was in high school, I belonged to the NFL. Obviously, not the National Football League! The National Forensic League is the body that generally sets the rules and governs the various styles of public speaking contests that make up the format of high school debate. The type of debate known as Lincoln-Douglas Debate posed two speakers, one against the other, to argue for or against a given position. The key difference between Lincoln-Douglas and other forms of team debate is that in Lincoln-Douglas, the speakers offer primarily value-driven arguments, rather than policy-driven arguments. I remember having to take the pro-abortion side in one practice argument, trying to make the value of the mother (whose own life very well could depend on having a successful abortion, in some cases) outweigh the value of the unborn baby. I was unsuccessful.

I bring this up today, because President Obama lifted the Bush 43 ban on federal funding for stem cell research. That made me think about how I would argue either for or against such a move. What is the greatest value proposition we could make in the debate over federal funding on stem cell research?

Most Americans, if you believe the polls, place a higher value on the medical research potential offered by stem cell research. A 2001 poll offered by ABC News found a 60-40 split in Americans, with the majority favoring stem cell research, so the support has been fairly steady throughout the years. What that support for stem cell research effectively means is that most people in America place a higher value on potential future gains in medical treatments for any number of ailments than they place on the embryos that must be destroyed for their cells to be harvested. It's an either-or value proposition.

Do we destroy life before it is born in the hopes that current humans can live their lives better in the future?

I'm not quite sure where I stand on this issue. On the one hand, I see value in helping people lead better lives. If we can find the cures for paralysis, blindness, Parkinson's Syndrome and other neurological disorders, then we should make every attempt possible, right? People live longer and longer these days, and why shouldn't those adults be able to live better?

I'm actually reminded of a similar value proposition I've heard circulated by means of explaining the culture clash between America and China. Say a father, his mother, and his only child are involved in a car crash, and both the mother and the child are hurt badly. He has to decide which person to save, and he can save only one. Does he save his mother, who already lived a full life, with grandchildren? Or does he save his only child? In America, we almost always opt for saving the life of the child. In China, with their greater respect for their elders, the man chooses to save his mother.

In effect, we are making the same type of choice when it comes to stem cell research. Do we value our elders' lives higher than we value our children's lives? We already have medical advances and treatments that offer much longer life expectancy than existed in America 30 years ago. People understand the need to exercise and eat right. Americans nearing retirement today can expect to live almost as many years out of the workforce as they spent toiling in it. That's remarkable!

The real question during the Bush 43 administration was whether the Federal Government would spend its dollars to finance public or private stem cell research. Bush decided he would take a stand, and he forbade the use of taxpayer dollars on the research. Private funding still was available, but many research labs depend on Federal grants and other government funding for their studies. Not very many breakthroughs were reported during the past eight years. That was the value choice that Bush decided to make.

Obama today made the opposite value decision, which is his right. Again, the majority of Americans tend to support his value choice, and our notions of democracy tend to abide by the idea that the majority should rule.

My own value choice? If we're going to commit millions or billions of taxpayer dollars on the research, we'd better get some nifty new medical treatments out of it.

Three Thoughts for a Tuesday

Darn it all, I really should write this on Thursday. The alliteration would be much nicer! ...three thoughts for a Thursday...

I really don't like doing this, but I've had such a hard time finding time to blog over the past few weeks between work at work and work at home, I now feel the need to combine three completely unrelated topics into one post. Here we go, and in no particular order:

1. As a Browns fan, I am quite happy to see that the new GM, George Kokinis, is NOT making very many trades or free-agent pickups in the current player market. Let me repeat: NOT making player personnel moves in the days immediately following when veterans become free agents in the NFL can be a good thing. All too often, teams adopt a "Try to win it all this season" approach, and it only hurts their long-term prospects. The Browns tried that last year, after going 10-6 but missing the playoffs the previous season.

Perhaps the previous GM, Phil Savage, thought he only needed a few key free agent pickups to go far in the playoffs in 2008. He made two key trades, for former GB DL Corey Williams and former DET DL Shaun Rogers, which when combined with the previous trade of a draft pick to move up in 2007 to grab QB Brady Quinn, meant the Brownies had ZERO draft picks in the first four rounds of the 2008 draft. Talk about sacrificing the future for a win-now mentality!

Smart NFL GMs tend to put their money on younger players who later grow into top-notch free agents. The important thing (some would say the most important thing!) is to not overpay for previous performance. Think the Patriots really wanted to pay Matt Cassel over $14M after slapping the franchise tag on him at the end of last year? They might have not gotten enough value in return (a second round draft pick from the Chiefs) for Cassel and soon-to-be 34 year old Mike Vrabel... ...but then again, maybe they did.

2. I was saddened to see that the Rocky Mountain News went under after its last published edition last Friday. While I was a freshman (AKA Doolie, Smack, 4 smoke, etc.) at USAFA, we all had to subscribe to a newspaper in order to have three news stories memorized for the breakfast table. Woe to the 4 smokes who all subscribed to USA Today! I actually subscribed to the C. Springs Gazette-Telegraph as a freshman, and then switched to the RMN as an upperclassman. Not many cadets continued to subscribe to any newspaper after the freshman year, which was just indicative of the broader societal trend towards other sources of news and away from print media. And this was six years before the first GUI-based browser made surfing the Internet practical!

At any rate, I feel sad for the loss of the RMN, which was a great paper for two reasons: it was published in tabloid format (which made it easier to flip through), and they had a terrific comics section! Hardly anyone still reads the comics these days, I've noticed. I went out of my way to place a subscription with Comics.com, which delivers 36 different daily comic strips to my Google Reader account. Who does that?!

Other, much more well-established pundits already covered the loss of the RMN, of course. Joe Posnanski had his own thoughts on its demise, made more poignant by the fact he wanted to work there way back when. I was more shocked to hear that San Francisco might be the first major U.S. city to be completely without a major daily newspaper if a buyer for the Chronicle cannot be found.

On the one hand, I fully understand and support the move away from traditional broadcast print media like newspapers. People can and do get their news from other sources these days, right? All too often, small daily papers like the one in our town become news aggregators for sources like the AP; if I've already read those stories online, then why pay for something I have to deal with and recycle later?

On the other hand, I do wonder just where all these newly unemployed reporters will go. Think about it: without the fine investigative reporters being paid by the SF Chronicle, we wouldn't have the BALCO investigation and what we know of the story on Barry Bonds. How many reporters can the AP really absorb, anyway? And don't we want independent views of local news? There should be a way to make local reporting work outside the printed newspaper, but no one has invented it yet. The invariably poor quality of local newspaper and TV station websites is so darn depressing, they aren't worth mentioning.

3. Am I the last person on Earth without a smart phone? My sister dropped their landline and went strictly CrackBerry and cell phone. I see them everywhere, and it really is amazing to see all the things the different apps on the iPhone can do. We were driving back from The Beef House in Indiana two weekends ago, and the person driving let me check out his iPhone. While driving on the highway, I was able to check out the GPS application, put in the path for our route, and even pulled up live weather reporting (including a live radar picture!) for the local area. It's phenomenal! Even the college student working a minimum-wage job "guarding" the lobby for the building where I work has an iPhone.

And yet, I can't really see paying all that money for the monthly service plan for voice, data, Internet access, text, etc., etc. It has to be over $100 per month once you add in all the service charges and network fees, right? Plus, to get the iPhone, you either have to be happy with AT&T (NOT!), or you have to perform delicate and unsanctioned geek surgery to break it loose from the AT&T network. Not gonna happen.

Maybe we're just old-fashioned. We're contemplating swapping our landline at home (still a traditional, hard-wired landline) and two cell phones for one iPhone. The payments would roughly equal each other, since we do pay about $50 per month for our landline and $50 per month for our portion of the family cell phone plan we share with Amy's family. But then I would be without a cell phone, and we still would buy something like an Xlink BT Bluetooth cell phone gateway in order to transfer the phone calls throughout the house.

I just hate the idea of paying additional monthly service fees above and beyond what we already pay. We don't pay for cable TV service, primarily because I don't want to pay over $100 per month for high-definition TV. We do pay for the cable broadband Internet access -- the $42 we pay per month is well worth the cost to not be stuck on dial-up! We don't have an Xbox 360, primarily because I know I would want to also subscribe to the Xbox Live online community, if for no other reason than to be able to play Grifball! Tell me that doesn't look like fun! But I can't really stomach the thought of another monthly service fee. We pay for Netflix every month, but that subscription provides a great value for the price. We don't pay for a TiVO box, since that would be another monthly subscription fee. I feel like I've reached my limit when it comes to monthly subscription fees.

Even with drawing the line where I do, I know that Henry David Thoreau would be aghast at our daily lives these days. There's something to be said for the thought: "Simplify, simplify, simplify."

The Sad Economics of the NFL

This is a quick hit, primarily because I'm still working (!) on getting a final report out for work. Yes, it's 9:20 pm on a Tuesday. No, I didn't get to watch the Obama speech tonight. Work seems to be all I do these days. Work, work, work, work. Hello, Boys! How're we doing?

I just couldn't let the occasion slip by after several days of wondering will he? Won't he? Will they? Won't they?

Sadly, the Indianapolis Colts decided to cut Marvin Harrison loose today, thereby breaking up The Most Prolific QB-WR Duo Ever. He played for the Colts for 13 seasons, and teamed with Peyton Manning to set all those QB-WR records. But the Colts save themselves $6M in salary cap space by not bringing him back to camp, and by releasing him now, he has a chance to sign with someone else before the April NFL draft.

That's about all the economics you need to know about the NFL, where (as I said before) nothing but the signing bonus is guaranteed money.

The Actor You Love to Hate

The last time I was on a business trip, you'll recall I "discovered" the incessant TV ads for The Amazing Snuggie! Since then, I've seen numerous other blog posts re: The Amazing Snuggie!, and I've even seen one of my friends on Facebook post a picture of her wearing one. Well, the version of The Amazing Snuggie she was wearing, she insisted it was called a Slanket, not a Snuggie. Whatever.

This time, the hotel I'm staying in has HBO, and they actually played a movie about which I was just interested enough to watch. The movie was the 2007 remake of The Heartbreak Kid, starring Ben & Jerry Stiller (sounds like they should be making ice cream), the precocious Malin Akerman, and the still very attractive ex-Tom Brady squeeze Michelle Monaghan. She was great opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), which I briefly mentioned in my blog post on film noirs.

The Heartbreak Kid remake was a decent enough movie, if you consider that the Farrelly Brothers really were recycling two older Hollywood films, not one. The first, naturally, was the 1972 original "Neil Simon's" Heartbreak Kid*, starring Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd. The other film was one of their own, the very entertaining and quite good There's Something About Mary (1998). Mary still is one of my favorite of more recent comedies, and perhaps is the reason why I have a higher Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor** than most of my friends.

* Why don't movie directors, writers, or producers put their names in front of their movies any more these days? Neil Simon and Blake Edwards did it a lot, and who can forget the Albert R. Broccoli 007 films? Seems like a quaint old Hollywood tradition that went by the wayside several decades ago.

** On a somewhat related note, I always talk about reaching the FDA-approved Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) any time I watch a Sam Neill movie. When we went to see Jurassic Park (1993) on an IMAX screen, I must have overdosed several times over on my Sam Neill RDA!

Watching this remake of Heartbreak Kid, I was struck by how similar it was to Mary, and I do wonder whether the Farrelly Brothers are running out of ideas. I was happy to see the movie for free, essentially, in my hotel room*. It was a good movie, but it naturally contains all of those irritating Ben Stillerisms that annoy people so greatly. Like I said, you have to build up your Tolerance Level if you want to enjoy a Ben Stiller movie. It's like alcohol that way, only you really don't want to have to keep ingesting ever higher amounts of Ben Stiller movies in order to achieve the same buzz you once had watching a single episode of "The Ben Stiller Show."**

* Side note: Another movie that is good to catch for "free" -- Fool's Gold (2008) with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson -- just finished playing on HBO tonight.

** Actually, did anyone ever think that show was funny? No, I didn't think so. I just couldn't think of a better analogy.

I won't get into some of the better parts of The Heartbreak Kid, since that's really not why I'm writing this post. [At this point, I always think of Albert Brooks telling Holly Hunter in Broadcast News (1987), "How do you like that? I buried the lead."]

No, the real reason why I wanted to write a post about watching the remake of what is probably an equally cringe-worthy 1972 Neil Simon movie is because the original starred Charles Grodin, The Actor You Love to Hate. See? I told you I buried the lead!

Grodin actually has some decent chops as a comedic thespian. The Grodin humor touchstones for me are two of his newer films, and I'm not talking about Beethoven (1992) or its sequel. He did a very funny buddy movie of a very different sort with Robert DeNiro in Midnight Run (1988). DeNiro was a bounty hunter charged with bringing Grodin's accountant character in, and as he tried to do so, hijinks ensued. That's about all the plot you really need to know on that one.

The other Grodin movie I love to watch any chance I get is Taking Care of Business (1990), which still ranks as the all-time funniest Jim Belushi movie. Sure, Belushi was in The Man With One Red Shoe (1985), but that was a Tom Hanks vehicle. K-9 (1989) was OK, and Mr. Destiny (1990) was the movie that came closest to matching Taking Care of Business, but for my money, I stop and watch Business any chance I get. Even if that means coming across the movie half-way through it, I'll watch the rest of it. I don't do that for other Belushi movies.

There is just something about Grodin's character in Business (and in Midnight Run, for that matter) that can drive a person crazy. He makes the viewer actively start to root against his character, and in both of those movies, bad things happen to Grodin. I sincerely think that's a large part of why I like those two movies. The longer Grodin snivels and whines his way through the performance, the more you want him to suffer. He's a perfect comedic foil for the good guys of DeNiro and Belushi.

I also love that Belushi plays such a die-hard Cubs fan that he sneaks out of his minimum-security prison to attend a Cubs World Series game (I know, it's a complete Hollywood fantasy), catches a home run (shown on the TV broadcast, but not noticed by the prison warden, played by Hector Elizondo), and then he sneaks back in to prison so he can be paroled the next day. You do have to suspend disbelief, but that's all part of the fun! Oh, and there is the very cute Loryn Locklin in a black bikini; how could I not post a pic of that?!

Of course, I am aware that the two actors that brought me to this post, Stiller and Grodin, share some of the same qualities in their acting methods. They both can be really freakin' annoying! They just might be the actors we all love to hate for a given generation. And yet, Stiller continues to get new acting gigs all the time.

I haven't seen Night at the Museum (2006) yet, but I continue to hear good things about Tropic Thunder (2008). That might have to be another Ben Stiller movie I put on my Netflix list.

It's a very good thing I've built up my Ben Stiller Tolerance Factor throughout the years.

End of An Era

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past six months, you probably are aware that most TV broadcast stations will turn off their analog signals tomorrow. Yes, 17 Feb 09 tomorrow. Tuesday. As in, some time after I post this just before midnight tonight.

Now, you might know that the Obama White House worked with the mighty members of Congress to push back the switch from analog to digital transmissions from the previous deadline (17 Feb) to 12 June. That was a nice gesture to those middle-class, working families who couldn't get their hands on a digital converter box.

Never mind that the conversion date for analog-to-digital TV was planned originally for 1997. Or 1998. It was a while ago, alright? I remember the TV guys talking about how much they wanted to switch to digital TV, but everyone agreed that the United States of America just wasn't ready yet. Kinda like how we're not ready to switch to the metric system yet.

Never mind that most people (the vast majority) in America get their TV signals from a cable provider. Sure, some people get their TV from a satellite provider, but they are few in number compared to those people who subscribe to cable. Those of us who receive nothing but an over-the-air signal? We're so far in the minority, our vote really doesn't count compared to the majority. Seriously, I think the over-the-air households are in the single digits, percentage-wise. It's tiny!

Never mind that HDTVs with digital tuners built into the TV (no cable decoder or other set-top box needed!) have been sold probably as long as the TV industry has been talking about switching from analog to digital signals.

Never mind that all Congress really did was push the mandatory switch-over date back a few months. Every single local TV affiliate station I've seen using a scroll along the bottom of the screen has announced their plans to go ahead with the shut-off of their analog signals on 17 Feb. Tomorrow. Tuesday. Hey, they already had plans for that date! They had their guys on the schedule to climb up those transmission towers and take down that analog equipment long before Congress passed its legislation. It'd be too expensive to change horses in mid-stream, so to speak.

Never mind that one of the reasons why Congress felt compelled to take this action (more than just pandering for votes) is because voters all over the country chose to apply for the coupons given away by the Federal government. You know the ones, the coupons that were good for $20 or $30 off the digital converter boxes sold by places like Radio Shack and Best Buy. So the digital converter box was only $40, not $60 or $70. Like the manufacturers didn't factor the Federal coupon into the price found on the box! Yeah, riiiiiiight.

And yet, only about half the Federal coupons passed out to voters have actually been redeemed by shoppers. But the Federal government can't just void the coupons already passed out to one voter in order to re-issue it to another voter. They are simply not that nimble, so they effectively are hamstrung by voters who received the coupons but never redeemed them.

Never mind that consumers have been snapping up those digital converter boxes so quickly, the manufacturers have had a hard time keeping up with demand. Of course, this partly could explain why only half of those Federal coupons have been redeemed by voters.

All I know is, I've had nothing but over-the-air TV since 2005. I've also enjoyed both analog TV and digital HDTV since 2005. I made sure to sign up for two of those Federal coupons, and then used both coupons to purchase two digital converter boxes from Radio Shack for the two analog TVs down in my basement. Everything works great! The converted digital signal on the analog sets looks great, better than any analog signal ever looked on those TVs.

My only problem is that the HD antenna I bought in 2005 (and I don't think there's really anything different from a standard Yagi-Uda antenna* and anything called an HD antenna; as long as you have the digital tuner, and as long as your antenna can receive the normal UHF or VHF signals, then you get the digital signals; I'm pretty sure it works that way) only gets signals from as far away as 35-40 miles, even though it's powered . That works fine for most broadcast stations where I live, but the Fox affiliate is located in Springfield, IL. Which is about 43 miles away. I need a new antenna that can get signals from at least 50-60 miles away.

* OK, so that web source is a little hard to understand. Here's the Wikipedia page for anyone who wants a clearer explanation. See? Wikipedia ain't so bad.

Ah, well. As TV broadcast affiliates turn off their analog transmission equipment tomorrow, it will mark the end of an era. It is quite different from the switch between black-and-white and color TV, I think. Isn't it? People didn't have to run out and buy color TVs to enjoy their favorite shows after the broadcasters started using cameras that could capture the action in color. Sure, you didn't want to be the last family on your block still watching Milton Berle in b-n-w, but not getting the new TV didn't mean the old one was suddenly unusable.

It's the end of an era, I tell you.

Old Movies - Gotta Love 'Em!

Have I mentioned lately how much I adore Netflix? There is more to the story than just the fact that they have a great selection of hard-to-find movies (since they don't have to waste valuable shelf real estate in a commercial property, like a Blockbuster store would), more than the fact there are no late fees, and more than the fact that they now have a "watch it now" online feature that works through my Mac Mini* for truly on-demand viewing.

* I call the Mini the "electronic brain" of our home theater system. It's small, hooked up to the Internet wirelessly via WiFi, and it stores all of our iTunes music, videos, and digital pictures. We use the Sony HDTV as the monitor, and use a wireless keyboard and mouse to control it from the couch/man chair. The Mini's SuperDrive(TM) is our DVD player. Forgive me, but the Mini deserves an emoticon! :-)

No, for the real story behind why I love Netflix so much, I have to go back to 2002, when I was a newbie just starting my MBA program. I mistakenly took an elective course during the summer semester that really was intended for MBA students in their last or second-to-last semesters. The course was on entrepreneurialism, and was taught by an adjunct professor who was the President of Waterside Capital Corporation, a VC firm in Virginia Beach. To get a passing grade in the course, I had to estimate the break-even point in customers/subscribers for the Netflix DVD mailing service, which was in its infancy at the time. I had about two quarters of data to use to try to make any meaningful estimates, and I'm sure my calculations were completely off from reality. Luckily, the prof figured I did enough in the class to pass, and ever since then, I've had a warm fuzzy feeling for Netflix.

Let's go back to the first point I made above, that Netflix has an unparalleled library of old, hard-to-find movies. A little while ago, WSJ ran an obit for Donald Westlake, an author and screenwriter of some regard. Westlake penned detective novels with a certain humorous side to them, often under the pseudonym Richard Stark, and that was why he was lauded by the WSJ.

As they wrote the obit, the Journal did mention several of the movies that were made from the Richard Stark novels. Among them were Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin and The Hot Rock (1972) with Robert Redford. He also did the screenplay for The Grifters (1990), one of my less-favorite John Cusack films (although it was not without merit; if you've seen it, you'll know there's an unforgettable yet very brief scene with Annette Benning), and Payback (1999), the Mel Gibson movie I really wanted to like better than I did. Lucy Liu as dominatrix... Rowr!

I knew that I could find Point Blank and The Hot Rock on the list of available titles through Netflix, and that those titles would be impossible to find at a Blockbuster. Have I mentioned I adore Netflix? What I didn't know, couldn't possibly have known, when I put those two movies on my queue, was how remarkable they both are. Let's look at Point Blank first.

Now, I've seen enough old films to know and understand that Lee Marvin is one of the Top Ten all-time Hollywood tough guys. Scroll down in that list; you'll find him! But watching Marvin perform in Point Blank has to be one of his toughest of tough-guy roles!

At first, I have to admit I was worried that Point Blank would be another weird, creepy, go-nowhere mid- to late-sixties movie. When it started, it had a ton of flashbacks, which normally don't bother me. However, this movie had a similar look and feel for the first 15-20 minutes or so as did the immortally bad Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), the movie that made Roger Ebert be a film critic rather than a writer/director. I was overjoyed that Point Blank got better and better the longer Marvin sought out the man who shot him and took his money.

One thing I noted was that Marvin never carried his gun in a normal manner. He never had a holster for it, never tucked it away in the small of his back, and practically never held it by the grip; rather, he carried it with his hand around the chamber of the gun. Who does that?! You can see what I'm talking about in the movie poster:

The other remarkable thing about Point Blank is just how many famous actors made an appearance. Archie Bunker is in it! John Vernon, who later was immortalized for all-time in the role of Dean Wormer in Animal House (1978), was in it. James Sikking, who is most famous for his work on "Hill Street Blues", played a sharpshooter. Even Kathleen Freeman, who played Sister Mary Stigmata (AKA, the Penguin) in The Blues Brothers (1980), is in it. What a hoot!

So, if you ever want to know just why Lee Marvin was voted as the Number 1 Hollywood Tough Guy of all time, check out Point Blank!

The other Westlake film, The Hot Rock, was also interesting, but for different reasons. I have to say that I like Redford as an actor, but not at the same level of intensity as my regard for Paul Newman. Just the fact that Newman is in a movie is enough to make me like it! That's true even if he makes a small appearance in otherwise clunkers of movies like Message In a Bottle (1999) or Nobody's Fool (1994); Melanie Griffith - UGH! Newman had the special charisma where everything he touched was better simply because he was involved. And those blue eyes!

Ah, but I digress. What I meant to say above is that I haven't seen that many Redford movies that don't have Newman in them. The Hot Rock is one, and we also recently watched The Horse Whisperer (1998). I did mention earlier that Westlake was known for his comedic stylings when it came to crime dramas. The Hot Rock, as it turns out, is meant to be a comedy on par with more famous movies of the era, like The Pink Panther (1963) or, more accurately, The Return of The Pink Panther (1975).

The Hot Rock also has several actors who later went on to star in other vehicles. The movie poster might be hard to make out, but standing on Redford's left is George Segal, who I always associate with the role of Jack Gallo in the TV series "Just Shoot Me!" Ron Liebman, the guy to Redford's right on the poster, has done a ton of work in Hollywood. And the most famous cameo of all was performed by Zero Mostel of The Producers (1968 Mel Brooks original) fame. The actor who caught my eye, though, and who forced me to stop the movie and rewind to make sure it really was him, was Christopher Guest! He played a cop in the precinct house on which our foursome of jewel thieves land a helicopter (What? Did they think the cops wouldn't notice a helicopter landing on the roof?!), and he only had two lines or so, but it marked his first credited performance in a major motion film. How about that?

Something else about The Hot Rock also sent shivers down my spine as we watched it. The film was released in 1972, so they probably filmed it in 1970 or so. As they filmed the helicopter scene (on the way to the precinct house on the west side of Manhattan), they flew right past the World Trade Center (WTC) twin towers in lower Manhattan. The creepy thing is that the towers weren't finished yet! One tower still had construction going on at the top 5-10 stories or so, and the other tower had about a third of the tower yet to go. Just knowing that those two buildings no longer exist, and all the death and destruction that went with them, really freaked me out while watching The Hot Rock.

I did mention that The Hot Rock was meant to be a funny crime caper, and the only thing I'll say about that is our definition of what's funny sure has changed since the late '60s and early '70s. I'm guessing my dad would find it funny, but then again, he always thought "Three's Company" was hysterical (sorry to throw you under the bus like that, Dad). This movie, while funny at times, doesn't have the same zing as Peter Sellers achieved in the old Blake Edwards Pink Panther movies.

If you get the chance, and if you have a subscription with Netflix, definitely check out those two movies. They're worth the time!

The Economic Case FOR Steroids in Baseball

Everyone who is a sports fan could not escape the news over the weekend that Alex Rodriguez, 3B for the NY Yankees, tested positive for two banned substances (both steroids) in 2003, when he was playing SS for the Texas Rangers. His name was one of 104 that appeared on a list of players who tested positive during that season, and the ramifications of all those positive tests was increased and public enforcement of drug tests in MLB the following year. The fact that A-Rod's name was leaked to the public by four anonymous sources and published by Sports Illustrated was not all that shocking; enough allegations had been made against A-Rod throughout the years that he had to defend himself by denying his steroid use in an interview with Katie Couric.

No, the surprising thing for me was that A-Rod almost immediately went on air in another interview, this time with ESPN's Peter Gammons, and admitted he cheated by taking steroids in 2001, 2002, and 2003. Well, he claimed to be off the juice in 2003, but then there's the case of his failed drug tests that year.

Even more surprising for me was the reason why A-Rod said he cheated:

"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt
like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and
perform at a high level every day."

Why did A-Rod feel all the pressure to perform? When he left Seattle and signed the richest contract in the history of Major League Baseball, it was for 10 years and $252 Million to play SS for the Rangers. That's an awful lot of pressure, an awful lot of zeros to justify on a yearly basis. For the first time, a player came right out and admitted what everyone always understood as the underlying reason for taking performance-enhancing drugs (PED): ECONOMICS.

Keep in mind that A-Rod had all the tools necessary to play and be a star at the MLB level. He was not some no-power, good glove middle infielder in the years leading up to 2001. In 2000, A-Rod was one of the last stars left on a Mariners team that previously dealt LHP Randy Johnson and CF Ken Griffey Jr. to other teams. That season, he hit 41 HR, had a .316 BA, and became the only SS to have 100 runs, RBI, and walks in a single season. This is not some player past his prime or struggling in Double A or Triple A to make it to The Show; in 2000, A-Rod was in the prime of his career.

Much the same can be said of Barry Bonds, as well. Bonds, of course, has already been convicted of using PEDs in the eyes of the baseball public, despite his protestations otherwise. Bonds, even before he sought out the services of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), was one of the all-time best outfielders in MLB.

Why on earth would these guys risk their reputations, their long-term health, and their shot at immortality (the MLB Hall of Fame) when all those things were in reach? I think economics has a great deal to do with it.

Baseball, when it comes to player contracts and guaranteed money, is somewhat between the extremes of the NBA and NFL. In the NBA, players have truly guaranteed contracts that will pay them for the life of the contract, even if the player is sitting on the bench. In the NFL, no contract is guaranteed past a given Sunday. I'm fairly well convinced that was why Shawne Merriman tried to tough it out and play on two bad knees in September, even after he was told by several doctors that he needed season-ending knee surgery to save his career. In MLB, player contracts are fairly well guaranteed, but either side can request salary arbitration to either increase or decrease the salary based on the past season's performance.

Baseball is not like some sports, when an athlete might have just one really good shot at winning a gold medal and securing lots of money in endorsement deals. How many track and field stars did we see in Beijing who came up just short of achieving their lifelong dreams? I would argue the economic case for cheating in track and field is far, far greater than it is in baseball or football.

Cycling is another case where the athletes have been doping for decades, but for different reasons. Sure, the leader of a cycling team can make several Millions of dollars while on contract with the team. The domestiques, however, make far less, although I think their salaries are still in the six-figure ranges. This article from WSJ sheds some light on cycling salaries, which typically are closely guarded (subscription req'd). No, the real reason why cyclists abused EPO for so many years, and why they still look for ways to cheat the system today, is because it is such a grueling sport. The attitude has been, "everyone else is doing it; if I want to survive in the peloton, I have to do it, too."

Let's get back to baseball. When all the talk about PEDs in sport revolved around Barry Bonds, I wondered whether it made economic sense for him to sacrifice his long-term health for a few more seasons of muscle. When Bonds left the Pittsburgh Pirates to sign as a free agent with San Francisco, his contract was a then-MLB record $43.75 Million over six years. That's a paltry $7.29 Million per year. When Bonds re-signed in 2002 (during or shortly after the time he is suspected of using PEDs), SF gave him a five-year, $90 Million contract. That's an average of $18 Million per year. In 2005, Bonds earned $22 Million, second only to A-Rod. In 2006, he earned $20 Million, and in 2007, he earned $15.8 Million. That's an awful lot of money that can be used to pay for any type of health issues Bonds might face (if any) as a result of using PEDs. The cost-benefit analysis is pretty straightforward here.

A lot of the MLB players who have been outed for using PEDs, either by Jose Canseco's books or by The Mitchell Report, have said they used PEDs only to help come back from an injury faster. Andy Pettitte was one of the players who took that path. Many of the players suspected of using have only denied the allegations, despite any evidence to the contrary. Roger Clemens and Rafael Palmeiro fall into that camp. Before A-Rod, however, no one admitted that one reason they used PEDs was due to financial or economic concerns.

On a macroeconomic level, the supply and demand of hugely talented baseball players is partly to blame for the high salaries for star players. There is little doubt that Tom Hicks, the owner of the Rangers, overpaid to secure the services of A-Rod in 2001. But the price he was willing to pay was driven up by the perception that A-Rod was the centerpiece of the World Series championship-winning club he wanted to build. Put in microeconomic terms, the marginal utility Hicks expected to receive by employing A-Rod must have far outweighed the opportunity cost of hiring other free agents.

There is little doubt, after listening to A-Rod's confession yesterday, that he felt the pressure of all those expectations to perform. He didn't put it in economic terms, per se, but he did say he felt the "weight of the world" on his shoulders.

Another way of looking at the same issue is to view a player's performance in the year leading up to free agency, often called the "contract year." Almost invariably, the player in a contract year performs far above his statistical averages, all in hopes of landing a bigger contract worth more money at the end of the season. In MLB especially, free agents who just landed a new contract with a new team tend to disappoint during the life of that contract. Kevin Brown and Mike Hampton jump to mind.

What's the alternative, then? Can we ever get back to a time when player salaries did not engender such on-field performance swings? I don't think so, and I don't think we necessarily want to see players earning the pauper wages they once did, way back when. About the only thing that can be done, and what MLB is finally doing, is setting up strict drug enforcement regimens to catch and punish the cheats. The MLB drug testing policy could be much stronger, yes. But at least they now realize how far-reaching PEDs were in baseball, and how damaging to the sport they are.

The Death of Jazz... ...and Baseball, Too?

Over the weekend (if you consider that the weekend starts on Friday; long gone are those college days when youthful exuberance demanded the weekend start on Thursday!), I finished reading Joe Posnanski's excellent book, The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O'Neil's America. Did I mention it is an excellent read? O'Neil had such a zest for living, I'm now sad I never got to meet the man before he passed away. Posnanski was lucky enough to spend a year traveling with O'Neil, and there are wonderful life lessons* learned every step along the way.


* My favorite life lesson? When O'Neil schooled Posnanski with, "Son, in this life, you don't ever walk by a red dress."

One thing stuck with me after reading the book, however. O'Neil often compared baseball to jazz. He also compared living to jazz, but he insisted that the rhythms of baseball most closely matched those of jazz. I do think he was right about that.

What, then, do we make of the premise that jazz is dying, or perhaps that it died with John Coltrane in the late '60s? My wife was watching the Grammys last night, and she mentioned the same thing, that jazz is dead. Perhaps someone on the show said as much, I don't know.* The only part I watched last night was when Neil Diamond took the stage to sing "Sweet Caroline." How he could pull that off without any hint of irony, I have no idea. The only worthwhile part of the show immediately followed his performance, when they paid tribute to those musicians, producers, and even one music photographer who passed away last year, followed by an excellent rendition of "Who Do You Love?" as a tribute to Bo Diddley.

* I can't stand the incredible proliferation of awards shows -- too much self-congratulatory back slapping can't be good for any industry, and it's not like the folks in Hollywood or the music industry really need any more attention. So I boycott all of the award shows, even the Oscars, on general principle.

I thought I would explore the thought that jazz died with Coltrane a bit more, since people still practice and listen to jazz in great numbers. I have friends who are dedicated to the genre, and who still travel great lengths to attend the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. Of course, as soon as I opened their website, I saw a picture announcing the scheduled performance of Jon Bovi. Maybe jazz really is dead, after all.

I also found this very recent article from a musical magazine called The Walrus (with an obvious reference to The Beatles, no? Actually, probably not.), in which the author talks about jazz and how it might slip into the same category as classical music: no composer creates anything fresh and new; performers just put their own interpretation on the classic pieces of the genre. Alexander Gelfand actually makes a convincing argument that many musical genres hit similar walls during the '60s, when new musicians revolted against standard elements of music such as meter, harmony, and tonality in attempts to push the boundaries of music. Nothing new there. People in all walks of life were revolting against the Establishment during that time frame.

Personally, I am ambivalent towards modern jazz for all the same reasons why people describe jazz as dead today. As much as I love swing, big band, bebop, and other earlier forms of jazz, I detest the random, meandering improvisational form that took hold on jazz in the '60s. Too many of the sounds are discordant, and the songs don't seem to go anywhere. Everything is too loose, if you will. How can anyone tell if a truly improvisational effort that goes on for 25 minutes is any good or not?

Very good rock-n-roll, on the other hand, is invariably tight musically. There should be no random notes, and a three-and-a-half minute performance does not allow for any wasted effort.* Think about the signature songs of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and even The Ramones. All of their songs were tight and to the point. I do remember being introduced to a small college band's sound by a fellow traveler on an airplane ride back in 1993. I remember thinking, "Wow. This sound is tight!" That was The Dave Matthews Band, just getting ready to release their first commercially successful album, "Under the Table and Dreaming."

* Obviously, lots of songs played on classic rock stations ("In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida," "Hotel California," and virtually anything by Chicago, Boston, the Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, etc.) do meander and take up unbearable amounts of time. I don't listen to those, either.

Back to the question: what to make of the death of jazz, if jazz is so closely tied to baseball? I would be remiss if I failed to include in this discussion the contributions of Ken Burns, who did two very extensive documentary series, one on Baseball, and one on Jazz. Clearly, O'Neil was not the only one who saw the connection between these two very American pastimes.

This discussion could get way out of hand at this point. The rise of rap and hip hop culture affected the style of play in the NBA, and there is a great intertwining of hip hop attitude in American culture at large (yes, even in the suburbs) these days. I don't want to get into all of that.

Drawing just one parallel to the jazz-baseball pairing, rock-n-roll could be associated with football. The rise of rock music in the early '50s and beyond coincided with the rise in popularity of the NFL and college football, and the NFL tends to get artists for the Super Bowl halftime show from the ranks of rock-n-roll (the early days of using Up With People notwithstanding), so I do think that case is strong. The rise of football also coincided with the rise of television, and there is a lot to be said about changing media and changing tastes, as well.

Baseball has its own issues that have led to declining interest among the American public. The litany goes on and on:

• The players strike of '94 that forced the cancellation of the World Series just about killed the game.
  
• Sadly, it was not until the Steroid Era home run bashers brought people back into the seats in '98 that baseball seemed strong again.
  
• Now, we all wonder how to deal with the statistics from the Steroid Era.
  
• Starting times for playoff games are too late for the next generation of fans to stay up and watch their heroes play the most meaningful games.
• Many of the playoff games that used to air on one of the big four networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox) now are being shown only on cable stations like TNT or TBS.
  
• Kids don't get out and play sandlot games with their friends any more, depriving kids of the pure joy of playing outside the regimented structure of organized baseball leagues.
• A major drawback to organized youth baseball is the constant pressure to win imposed upon the kids by their coaches and parents; it often leads to burnout.
  
• Ticket, parking, and concession prices for a family of four hover close to $200 at most MLB ballparks, making the possibility of regularly taking a family to see a game nigh impossible.
• Actually going to the ballpark is still the best way of seeing the game and taking in all the rhythms, the sounds, and the music of baseball, as O'Neil described it.
• Watching a game on TV still leaves a lot to be desired, since you cannot see the action on the entire field at the same time in any camera view, unlike football and basketball.
• The MLB "salary cap," in which teams spending well above the cap limit pay a relatively small payroll tax, does not have the same effect as does the NFL cap, which significantly levels the playing field for free agents, thereby ensuring competitive balance.
  

There are many, many reasons why Americans do not watch or play baseball in the same numbers as we once did. The rise of football, basketball, and even "extreme sports" have all crowded the sports landscape. The same splintering of TV viewership that accompanied the rise of cable TV (where there is a niche for any viewing pleasure, meaning we never will have 109 million or so people tune in to a single show ever again) has had an impact on how we play and watch sports, as well.

I would also argue that people's tastes have changed since baseball's heyday in the '30s-'50s. People don't really listen to baseball games on the radio any more; who has the time for that? Forget that listening to baseball on the radio is the perfect medium if you cannot make it to the ballpark in person. Even if you can go to the ballpark, you'll still see fans listening to radio broadcasts while watching the game. It's a powerful connection that exists between radio and baseball.

I grew up listening to Cincinnati Reds games on WLW 700 AM with Joe Nuxhall and Marty Brennaman, primarily because the pizza delivery cars we drove only had AM radios in them. There was nothing better than listening to the games while driving to and from the next delivery location on a hot summer night. A very big reason why I've wanted a satellite radio receiver for the longest time was because I would be able to listen to Reds games on the radio once again, no matter where in the U.S. I lived.

What I'm really trying to say here is that the rise and fall of jazz and baseball fandom does seem to be linked. There are perhaps no more American modes of expression and entertainment than baseball and jazz. But the reasons for the overall decline in popularity for those two pastimes are complex and have to be couched in terms of shifting cultural patterns, as well. It's a fascinating topic, and I thank Posnanski and O'Neil for making me think of it.