A Boyd's Eye View

Believe It or Not / I Started to Worry

2009-06-02T20:34:00.003-05:00

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!

2009-05-20T20:47:00.022-05:00

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?

2009-05-07T20:56:00.003-05:00

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?

2009-05-05T22:35:00.003-05:00

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

2009-03-22T17:31:00.003-05:00

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

2009-03-19T20:07:00.003-05:00

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

2009-03-18T17:40:00.004-05:00

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

2009-03-15T21:48:00.002-05:00

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

2009-03-09T21:46:00.004-05:00

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

2009-03-03T21:16:00.007-06:00

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

2009-02-24T21:20:00.004-06:00

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

2009-02-17T20:16:00.008-06:00

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

2009-02-16T23:22:00.003-06:00

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!

2009-02-13T15:02:00.010-06:00

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

2009-02-10T21:31:00.004-06:00

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?

2009-02-09T10:07:00.022-06:00

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.

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me

2009-02-07T14:47:00.006-06:00

Actually, I have one more economics-themed post that I wanted to include on the last one about inverted yield curves, but just didn't seem to fit there. This might actually have less to do with economics than it does politics. You decide. But I promise: discussions of which obscure old movies I've been watching from NetFlix are coming soon to this space. Get up for it!

At this point, I wanted to bring up quotes from the op-ed piece President Barack Obama penned for the Washington Post on Thursday. The full article is here (free registration may be required). Obama, naturally, was defending his administration's "Stimulus Package", which people have critiqued as nothing more than a pork-laden spending bill. Obama sounded a clarion call for action, trying to get some amount of bipartisan support from the GOP side of Congress, but here is what he said:

By now, it's clear to everyone that we have inherited an economic crisis as deep and dire as any since the days of the Great Depression. Millions of jobs that Americans relied on just a year ago are gone; millions more of the nest eggs families worked so hard to build have vanished. People everywhere are worried about what tomorrow will bring.

What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives -- action that's swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis.

Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

Now, I don't want to get too historical on you, but I fear Obama could slide down the slippery slope of sounding too much like Jimmy Carter did in the late '70s.

At this point, I would love to link to a YouTube clip showing the scene from an early episode of The Simpsons, when the townsfolk of Springfield were expecting the unveiling of a statue dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. Instead, when the drape was lifted, the statue was of Jimmy Carter (with the tagline "Malaise Forever" -- classic!), which of course created a town riot. Sadly, that clip doesn't exist on YouTube, but I can provide the actual Carter "Crisis of Confidence" speech from 15 July 1979, archived by the University of Virginia. Side note: who knew that when Bill Clinton used the line "I feel your pain," he was practically quoting Carter?

Economic recessions have everything to do with crises of confidence, of course. If consumers have no faith their jobs are secure, their buying patterns change radically. That is one reason why Hyundai's offer to buy back a new car purchased this year if the buyer loses his or her job is so revolutionary. As almost every other car manufacturer saw huge hits on new car sales, Hyundai's sales actually increased 14%. Consumer confidence levels are so critical to the economy, a dedicated organization exists to track them.

Consumer confidence was one factor why the economic crisis described in Tom Clancy's 1994 novel Debt of Honor was so realistic. Clancy understood that for a foreign entity to wreak havoc on the U.S. economy, all they had to do is sow distrust and fear of our economic institutions (like the financial firms on Wall Street) among the American people. The resulting crisis of confidence brought the American economy low, setting up the rest of the novel. Sorry, I don't want to play spoiler for anyone who has not read it yet.

FDR understood how important consumer confidence was during his first Inaugural address, in 1933, when he famously declared, "...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The U.S. was already in the midst of the Great Depression, and only by dispelling the negative cloud of uncertainty and fear could FDR lead the country towards economic recovery.

Getting back to Obama and Carter, President Obama will get his stimulus package approved eventually. There was word on the news today that Congress either already approved or appears ready to compromise on a reduced spending bill, one that totals a mere $780B price tag to future generations.

I just think that if Obama wants to help the U.S. recover from this recession in a timely manner, he will skip the doom and gloom speechifying. For heaven's sake, don't mention the possibility of 5 million jobs going away! He needs to leave the fearmongering to the MSM. They do a great job of that.

On Inverted Yield Curves and Recessions - Yay!

2009-02-06T11:08:00.023-06:00

OK, this will be one more economics-related post, and then we can shift back to discussing more important topics, like old movies I've watched lately. Hey, they don't call economics the dismal science for nothing!

I've been thinking lately that all is right in the world of economics, or at the very least, I think that's a true statement. It would be interesting to get a reading from an actual economist on this. See, there is a very accurate predictor for the U.S. economy entering a recession: the inverted yield curve. According to whoever* wrote the entry on Wikipedia, an inverted yield curve accurately predicted worsening economic situations two to six quarters into the future five out of six times since 1970.

* Whoever or whomever? Whomever probably sounds right to more ears, but since the preposition in question does not indicate a person to whom or on whom an action was performed, I think whoever is correct. We're talking about the person who wrote the page, or the person who performed the action. Whoever.

A normal yield curve, in which the long-term rates are higher (and usually significantly more so) than short-term rates, appears below:

You can see that long-term yields (on the 30-year and 10-year Treasuries, for example) are significantly higher than those for the short-term Treasuries.

An inverted yield curve is exactly what it sounds like. Short-term bond rates spike to higher levels than long-term rates; Wikipedia indicates this is partly due to expectations that inflation will be low during a time of recession in the economy. The graphic below shows what happened mostly in 2006 and 2007 between the 2-year Treasury and 10-year Treasury rates:

You can see that the 2-year notes had significantly higher yields than did the 10-year notes, in some cases approaching 200% of the yield on the longer-term bonds.

Why is an inverted yield curve so bad, you ask? In normal situations, people require a higher expected payout (in the case of bonds, a higher interest rate) for tying up their money for longer periods of time. Keep in mind that with bonds, price and yield always move inversely to each other: when prices on bonds go up, the yield automatically goes down, and vice versa. What drives the price of a bond up? The same as anything else: demand. In the case of an inverted yield curve, no one wants to purchase the short-term bonds, driving the price down and the yield up.

A lot of what happens in the relationship between long-term and short-term yields also has to do with investors' expectations, as mentioned before, and with what types of Treasuries are being offered for sale (usually at Treasury auctions). Between 2001 and 2006, the Treasury Department didn't auction 30-year notes at all. The longest term bond a person could buy from the Federal government was just 10 years, and that was partly what led to the inverted yield curve.

Another factor that led to the inverted yield curve was the Federal Reserve aggressively raising interest rates* in 2004-06 when worries of inflation gripped the new Fed Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke. I have to laugh at this article from February 2006, when Bernanke said "the inverted yield curve would not bring recession this time." Think he would like a mulligan on that one? How quickly did they reverse course and lower rates, trying to avoid the pending recession? (WSJ article, registration may be required) Here's a graphic from that article showing the target overnight rates since 2000:

* I really shouldn't fall into this same trap that all the news media does when discussing the Federal overnight lending rate, or target Fed rate. The Federal Reserve does not directly set what interest rate Federal Reserve banks use to lend to each other. Rather, the Fed does change how much cash a Federal Reserve bank needs to keep on hand at any one time, which then has an influence on what interest rate they use when lending to other banks. That's why it's called a target interest rate, not a definitively set or effective interest rate.

One reason why economists pay attention to the yield curve and any oddities thereof is because recessions typically cannot be forecast with any certainty. The official definition of a recession is a minimum of two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Because everything is backwards-looking, by definition, the economy has to already be in a recession for at least six months before you know it. An inversion of the yield curve is one of a very few economic indicators that can predict trends in the future, rather than waiting and looking back at the data.

So, back to my original point, where I said that everything was right in the world of economics these days. At first, it appeared that the inverted yield curve of 2006 was not going to forecast a recession in the U.S. economy. 2007 was still a fairly happy year for consumers and investors alike. The crap didn't really hit the fan until 2008, when Wall Street melted down after home values fell off the cliff and banks had to start writing off their bad loans. Was that still within the typical two- to six-quarter window mentioned above? I think the recession probably hit within that window, despite the yield curve returning to normal, so all must be right in the world.

Sad to say.

Elvis (the Horse) Has Left the Building

2009-02-04T15:05:00.006-06:00

Yahoo! today carried an AP news article about President Obama imposing new caps on executive pay for any financial firm yet to receive part of the $700B Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), better known as the first of many federal bailout programs. TARP specifically targeted the financial services sector of the economy, and caused much of the Wall Street vs. Main Street hand-wringing when it was proposed and approved last fall.

Since the approval of using federal funds to bail out huge mistakes on bad bets by investment bankers, hedge funds, and virtually any bank dealing in securitized subprime mortgage loans, many commentators rightly pointed out that C-level executives of those same firms were still clearing huge amounts of money in annual bonuses. The AP article pegged the bonus figure at $18B last year alone.

Those of us living on Main Street had every right to be angry at the payment of these huge bonuses, since we're familiar with the model of rewarding good performance with a bonus. If one of us made the bad bets and mistakes the leaders of these financial institutions made, we'd be fired, not enticed to stay with a handsome year-end bonus. Gregg Easterbrook even railed against the 2008 bonuses in several of his most recent Tuesday Morning Quarterback (TMQ) columns on ESPN's Page 2.

So, this action by Obama, stepping into a leadership void left by the collective members of the U.S. Congress, is a good thing, right? Right?!

I think the key paragraph to note is this one:

The pay cap would apply to institutions that negotiate agreements with the Treasury Department for "exceptional assistance" in the future. The restriction would not apply to such firms as American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Citigroup Inc., that already have received such help.

Sadly, the analogy that applies here is closing the barn door after the horse is already gone. The article does not mention just how much of the taxpayers' $700B remains unclaimed at this point, but I dare say not many banks will line up to take the bailout funding after today.

While this was a nice gesture by Obama, I don't think it will have a great impact on the TARP program (brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department), on other federally-funded bailouts of the auto industry, on the upcoming "stimulus" package (really just a pork-laden spending bill by Congress; it's now up to $900B in additional spending not offset in any way by cuts elsewhere or higher taxes -- the shame!), or on other federal legislation.

He does get to look like he's providing leadership and make headlines, though. For whatever that's worth.

One thing I had to note, though: the POTUS makes an annual salary of $400,000. Plus such benefits as a $50K expense account, a $100K nontaxable travel account, and $19K just for entertaining or entertainment. Does he pay taxes on all the income other than the travel account?

I also had to laugh at the past salaries of U.S. Presidents table found on Wikipedia, under the Salary section of the page. I can appreciate they want to state what the equivalent "Salary in 2008 Dollars" is for the salaries established so many years ago. But there is an error in the math here. If you're talking about what something costs, adjusted for inflation, then something that cost $400K in 2001 would cost $471K in 2008 terms (using just the numbers on the Wikipedia page).

However, since the salary of the President has remained the same since 2001, the equivalent purchasing power of $400K is actually less than what it was in 2001, not more. The official Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) own inflation calculator seems to provide the same type of analysis as what is found on the Wikipedia page. If the salary of the President were adjusted to account for rises in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) every year, then Obama would be earning $479K in 2009. But he's only making $400K. Put it this way, if you reverse the numbers in the BLS calculator, Obama's $400K salary in 2008 could purchase only the equivalent of $333,482 of 2001 goods.

That's still more than the vast majority of us living on Main Street earn, so I don't feel sorry for his diminished purchasing power. I just wish Obama could bring real change to Washington. It hasn't happened yet.

The Current Financial Crisis

2009-02-03T16:51:00.006-06:00

It was last week that I stumbled across this article and analysis from Michael Lewis, the famous author of books such as Liar's Poker, Moneyball, Coach, and The Blind Side. I have read all (or a significant portion; in the case of Coach, it was about a 20-page excerpt from the NY Times Magazine, their Sunday paper insert) of those books, and Lewis has to be one of my favorite writers these days. Lest one think Lewis solely writes about sports, he also authored Next in 2001, The New New Thing in 2000, and Trail Fever (AKA Losers) in 1997.

Lewis' most recent book, Panic, just hit the shelves in late 2008, which means he didn't waste any time turning around a new manuscript after publishing The Real Price of Everything in January of 2008. It makes me wonder just a little how well each book is researched and written, although if his previous works are any indication, I will probably enjoy delving into his more serious economic tomes.

Getting back to the original article, which was published in the December 2008 issue of the magazine Conde Nast Portfolio, I was impressed with how Lewis tied everything related to the collapse of Wall Street in 2008 back to one event. One event that happened way back in the early 1980s. According to Lewis, Wall Street was destined to collapse ever since John Gutfreund sold the trading partnership of Salomon Brothers to the Phibro Corporation, thereby divorcing the element of risk from the persons making the trades.

Now, I clearly understand that Lewis had insider experience working for Gutfreund at Salomon Brothers in the '80s. It was his experience pushing complex options and derivatives on the trading floor that formed the basis of his first book and cemented his status as a writer. Naturally, his experience formed a prism through which he seeks to explain later events. And there could very well be an awful lot of truth in that one simple premise: once risk was transferred to shareholders, Wall Street was freed to take ever-increasing (and ever-more-idiotic) gambles with vast sums of money.

However, I'd like to think it was just a little more complex than that. Historians are well aware that significant events often transpire through unexpected coincidences, producing unforeseen results. Never rule out dumb luck when it comes to making history.

The thing that always amazes me is just how fluid history really is. Events we were so completely sure of when our high school textbook declared, "This is how it happened!" often merit further review and differing opinions. Even without going nutso on the concept of Political Correctness, there are no shortage of revisionists who challenge and deny the most basic factual understandings. For as many people who saw airplanes crash into the World Trade Center twin towers on 9/11/2001, there are an almost equal number of people who believe the U.S. government or Israel was responsible. Perhaps more than equal. Scary thought.

Regarding the current economic and financial crisis we seem to find ourselves in, I have to think that there were other circumstances, other events that contributed to the crisis. The entire mess can't all be tied back just to taking Salomon Brothers public, can it?

Despite all the talk of how hard it is to find and raise capital, my own perspective is that there was too much capital sloshing around the system ever since the mid-'90s. So much money was flowing through the system, the hedge fund managers, the financiers, and the investment bankers all felt compelled to take ever larger risks with their clients' money to find a "suitable" return on the investment. Even here in east-central Illinois, I knew of at least three or four Venture Capital firms, all looking for the next Mosaic (Netscape) Internet technology firm to spring from UIUC.

Speaking of the hedge fund managers, more and more people NOT worth millions of dollars felt compelled to get into these investment clubs, hoping to find a decent rate of return while hedging their bets. Sadly, the mathematical models based on quantitative statistical analysis favored by hedge fund managers all seemed to follow the same patterns, so very little hedging was actually accomplished. Certainly, no one had a broad, general market melt-down built into the statistical models.

I often wondered what would happen if (or when) the Baby Boomers decided they would pull their retirement savings out of stocks and move it into more conservative investments. If the constant inflows of new money helped to drive stock prices up, thereby driving Price to Earnings (P/E) Ratios higher during the '90s and mid-'00s (a simple result of supply being outpaced by demand), then the reverse would be true if outflows exceeded inflows on all those 401(k) and IRA mutual funds, right?

At any rate, I think this financial crisis is probably larger than any one factor, any one explanation. Exploring the byzantine world of financial derivatives, including Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), is enough to make any one's head spin, including Lewis and Gutfreund. If those guys couldn't understand how all that money was being invested, what hope do any of the rest of us have? We might as well be giving our money to the Bernie Madoffs of the world.

And yet, perhaps Lewis is right. Perhaps, in this case, the principle of Occam's Razor applies. All of these other issues could be just compounding factors based upon Lewis' rather simple premise. It's certainly food for thought.

Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri...

2009-01-28T11:31:00.005-06:00

I must not be very intelligent when it comes to matters of foreign diplomacy. Perhaps I should request a crash course in negotiating sensitive matters of national and international security from one of my good friends, who currently works for the U.S. State Department. Or is it the U.S. Department of State: Diplomacy in Action! as their website says?

See, I tend to think that if a person or a country is going to negotiate in good faith using bargaining chips, then those chips should already be on the table before the negotiating session begins. I may very well be wrong about that. Like I said, I'm not an expert.

I did see this article on Yahoo! news this morning, in which the Russians claim to make a wonderful conciliatory gesture towards a more cooperative and peaceful approach with the new Obama Administration. Look at us! We promise we won't deploy nuclear-tipped missiles on the Polish border because George W. Bush is no longer in office! Especially since Obama has not ruled out the possibility of continuing Bush's plans for a missile defense shield in Europe (he only promised to consider the policy on its merits before deciding what to do), Russia's move seems to be fairly magnanimous.

However, check out when Moscow originally announced the deployment of their Iskander missiles: it was 5 Nov 08, the day after Obama was elected President. So, this whole announcement of a new era of cooperation, of extending an olive branch to the Obama Administration, is really just a ruse designed to make the Russians look good. They created the faux crisis a day after our Presidential election for the sole purpose of being able to use that bargaining chip now.

That must be how international diplomacy is really conducted.

Clear and plain and coming through fine... I'm coming through fine, too, eh?... Good, then... well, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine... Good... Well, it's good that you're fine and... and I'm fine... I agree with you, it's great to be fine... a-ha-ha-ha-ha...

Please Don't Let Me be Misunderstood

2009-01-26T15:05:00.005-06:00

I really try to avoid creating multiple posts in one day, primarily because I'm worried that I won't have enough to write about on other days. However, I just saw this video clip from what appears to be a Republican response to Slate and just had to respond:

Now, I'm no political guru, but what Mark McKinnon says about President Bush not revealing his lighter side to the national media runs counter to everything we've been taught to believe about the press. I'm not talking about the presumed bias against anything Republican here; Fox News and Rush Limbaugh fill that void. No, it is this direct quote from McKinnon:

It’s really hard, and it’s increasingly hard with the proliferation of media, to provide that kind of exposure and transparency that we’d like to. To get kind of behind the curtain and show the human side.

Wait, you're trying to make the claim that the reason why no one ever saw the softer side of Bush 43 is because of the proliferation of media? That there are too many sources from which we voters can get to know a candidate?

I don't think I've ever heard anything more patently false* than that. I know that these political insiders, spin doctors, and apparatchiks have their own agendas any time they open their mouths. Michael J. Fox had a wonderful TV show for a long time based on that one premise. But there should be a line drawn between simple spin or image control and outright falsehoods.

* Well, maybe that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan because they were looking for a warm water port, but that's beside the point.

Case in point: The current (and soon to be former) Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is currently undergoing impeachment hearings in the Illinois state Senate. He decided to boycott the proceedings, claiming a denial of his due process, and instead is waging the public perception war for his image by making personal appearances on 20/20, Good Morning America, and whatnot. That's his right, and certainly lots of people who have screwed up royally decided to take a similar path. Why admit any wrongdoing, when you can shed a few tears in front of Barbara Walters and get a few sympathetic people on your side? It's as American as apple pie, these days.

However, that doesn't mean we have to like it or accept it. Falsehoods are falsehoods, no matter how they are spun. Getting back to the original comment, doesn't McKinnon think there was a single TV show host who would have loved to bring Bush 43 on the set and present him in a favorable light? His statement is that not a single event like that was possible for the eight years of the Bush administration, and that is impossible to believe. Were the shots of Bush relaxing on his Crawford, TX ranch not enough to humanize the man? What about the stills of Bush riding his mountain bike?

No, the real culprit here is not the fact that too many media choices exist to showcase a candidate's sense of humor. For too long, politics have revolved around the ability to show candidates in more open settings. Think of Bill Clinton appearing on MTV to field the infamous "Boxers or briefs?" question, or of him appearing on The Tonight Show to play the sax for Jay Leno. The real danger is that those fluff pieces can drown out more serious discussions on policy stances or political agendas.

Ask yourself this question: what was the alternative before these media avenues existed? Political machines like Tammany Hall used to pick our candidates for us, didn't they? Behind closed doors in smoke-filled rooms, they did. Would we really want to head back to that style of process?

No, the real culprits for not knowing enough about a candidate are those spin meisters like McKinnon himself. As access to the candidates improved with radio and television this past century, those candidates best able to work with the new technologies benefited the most. Think of JFK in the first televised debate with Richard Nixon. Anyone listening to that debate thought Nixon won; those watching on TV had a vastly different impression. Heck, think of those candidates (including Obama) now blogging and using the Internet to spur grassroots organizations and fund-raising machines.

But as access has increased, so has the worry (again, on the part of the spin meisters like McKinnon) that their candidate will say or do something stupid while a camera or like device is recording. The only alternative? To severely restrict access to a candidate and heavily script every appearance, every utterance, to make sure the candidate remains on topic and on message, lest any words that could be used in a negative campaign ad be caught on tape.

The same is true in sports, as well. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, at one point of their lives, were happy, confident young men who delighted in telling their own story to the press. As they realized the power (and lucrative nature!) of marketing themselves, they clammed up to the point of only saying the most droll of sound bites. It's also why Jordan never took up a side for a politician, using the old line that "Republicans buy shoes, too."

So, the problem is not that there are too many media outlets "...to provide that kind of exposure and transparency that we’d like to." The problem is that the candidates' or President's handlers won't allow him (or her) to speak for him- or herself while on the campaign trail or while in office. Just give credit where credit is due. You can't blame mass media for every ill in society, as tempting as that might be.

25 Things

2009-01-26T10:08:00.006-06:00

There is a chain-mail type of note being passed around Facebook these days. No, not this type of chain mail... ...this type of chain mail, or chain letter. It asks anyone who has "been tagged" by another writer to then create a new note with 25 random things about themselves. It's similar to the old e-mails that people used to send with "personal interview" types of questions (you know the ones: "Paper or plastic? Boxers or briefs? Vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry? Etc., etc.), but is unique in that it is completely open-ended. People can, and do, write about any and all things that might describe themselves. Which does create a window into a person's thinking, character, and personality, after all.

The full set of instructions that accompanies the note is here:

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

My own wife was the person who tagged me on Facebook, and I'm still debating just how to answer her note. On one hand, I don't want to go overboard and list anything that anyone might find offensive. There's still a great deal of internal editing that happens, since you know that your friends on Facebook (which, in my case, also includes my current Pastor) are reading. No one wants to leave the proverbial turd in the punch bowl.

But then that means people are writing just the vanilla things about themselves that are socially acceptable for mass consumption. Maybe I do have artistic roots after all (thanks, Dad!), because I say, "Where's the fun in that?!" If you can't push the boundaries*, then why do it? In a completely open-ended personality quiz, don't you want to provide information that people don't already know about you? To provoke some thought about what it means to be alive these days? I think so.

* This is completely off-topic, but I wanted to throw this out there: Comedians live on that edge of social acceptability, and I think it's fascinating to see what happens as they get older. Eddie Murphy? No longer funny. Mel Brooks? No longer funny. Steve Martin? No longer funny. Robin Williams? No longer funny. If you think Chris Rock will still be funny in another 20-30 years, think again. Why is that premise universally true? When comedians are young, they are willing to take risks in unexpected ways. They often go for the shock value of a funny comment, and it's all about pushing the boundaries. In order to be truly funny, that's what it's all about. See "All in the Family" and Blazing Saddles (1974) for just two examples. As the comedian gets older, he or she is less willing to take those same risks, which is all part of our natural tendencies as humans to become more conservative or set in our ways as we get older. I'm not talking about conservative in a political sense; just that those mind-sets that formed our adult ways of thinking become more and more established until the person cannot think of changing to a new line of thinking. See Archie Bunker, above.

There are other ways of treating this "25 notes" thing, of course. You could strictly play it for laughs, being as ironic or sarcastic as you wish. I'm sure there are plenty of people on Facebook already doing so. You could try to be deep with your thoughts, striving to impress people with just how smart* you really are. You could approach this list using the "things I believe" framework popularized by Bull Durham (1988). Hell, you could probably rip off 25 notes derived purely from popular song lyrics or movie lines that you felt still described your personality in some way. I haven't seen anyone do that yet, and it would be fun to try that approach. Don't give the references away, and just see how many people pick up on the joke. Hmmm...

* To which I always think of Homer Simpson, in the episode where he gets into Springfield College, burning his high school GED certificate while singing, "I am so smart! S-M-R-T!!"

OK, now that I've gotten all of that out of the way, here are my 25 things:

I always overthink things too much. (Well, duh! What was your first clue?)
I always, always, always wanted to be a better athlete than I am. Still do. I fantasize that I could join the PGA Tour if I had the time and money to devote to training full-time. In reality, it ain't gonna happen. I just don't have the physical skills necessary, even just playing golf.
Even having said that, I still think I could have been a great race car driver, if given the chance early enough in life to hone those skills. In racing, the car does an awful lot of the work. It still takes great strength, hand-eye coordination, a seat-of-the-pants feel for what the car is doing, and lots and lots of practice on the driver's part, plus one other thing I discovered I have while racing go-karts in Thailand and Germany: the top drivers can control their emotions while running in traffic, which allows them to focus just on their own line in and out of the turns. I can do that. And yet, as fast as I was in the go-karts, there was always someone just a wee bit faster.
I feel like I missed my calling in life. I was tempted to put "sometimes" at the end of that sentence, but left it off.
When I was young (middle school-age), the first thought I had of what profession I would pursue when I was older was that of author/writer.
Then I fell in love with flying, and pursued that instead. Despite becoming airsick in planes smaller than commercial airliners. Despite all the travails I endured while a cadet at USAFA. Despite the Air Force drastically cutting back on its estimates for just how many pilots they needed at the time. It's probably amazing just how long I banged my head against that door after it was closed to me.
I annoy my wife any time we watch football together. My natural tendency, honed from years of watching football games with my family and with the guys in the Squadron Activity Room (SAR) at USAFA, is to talk to the TV non-stop during the games. About 95% of the time, the same words come out of my mouth about 1-2 seconds before they come out of the announcers' mouths. She no longer watches football with me.
The same typically applies when it comes to watching movies with my brother: we talk to the screen almost non-stop. The robots of "MST3K" are our heroes! I never had more fun in a single movie than when Bentley and I went to see Troy (2004) together. Fortunately, the theater was pretty well empty that night, or we would have been booted.
Did I mention I'm a geek? I never wore the nerd label very well, but I am more than happy to call myself "King of the Geeks" for some reason.
I always fret about work. I dislike work for work's sake, so I'm always looking for shortcuts when it comes to getting something done. I sometimes call myself lazy for that very reason.
I don't like my current career, but it pays the bills and gives me something to do. But because I'm in work that I don't like, I try to spend as little time doing it as possible. See note 10, above.
We've been told that we should love what we do for a living. One retired UIUC professor said he never spent less than 60 hours a week doing his work. Did he ever see his children as they were growing up? And if everyone does just what they love, then who would be the janitors in society? Actually, I adore the comic "Frazz" because it's about an elementary school janitor who has time to train for triathlons. Sure, he doesn't make much money, but he's happy interacting with the kids. Hmmm...
In college, I received similar guidance from my first calculus professor at THE Ohio State University. I went in for some extra help, since I was completely lost on logarithmic functions. His only advice was to do more homework. If I don't know what I'm doing, what's the point of doing more work wrongly? I withdrew from that class before I got an F.
Not to think too highly of myself, but I tended to get good grades in high school, which made me think I'm reasonably smart. High school physics, algebra, trigonometry, chemistry, biology -- all of those were fine and I did well in those classes. When I got to college, the freshman-level versions of those same topics completely kicked my ass. That's why I was a history major for my undergrad degree.
Just try getting a job with "Russian History" on your resume.
Oh, and in my senior-level history capstone course, when we read our essays out loud in front of the entire class, mine were about the worst. There were clearly much smarter people than I am who later went on to grad school in history. On Rhodes scholarships and the like. Pretty humbling stuff.
Did I mention I feel lost in my mid-life career path? There might be things I like about the work I do, but I have the feeling I'm on this path only because I can read and write. Literally. Oh, sure, I got my foot in the door with IT Systems Integration Management because I had an active security clearance at the time. I've learned quite a bit about IT systems and Project Management over time, even earning my PMP credential this past year. But sometimes I feel just completely lost. I'm trying to learn the relevant parts of the software development life cycle (SDLC) right now.
If I'm having a mid-life crisis, it started when I was 27. Where's my red convertible and hot blonde?
I do have to give props to my wife, who was gracious enough to say yes when I asked. Yes, the famous Winston Churchill quote "My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me" applies to me, too. I think it applies to darn near every man aware enough to realize it.
I didn't get married until I was about to turn 32. We didn't have children until I was 35. I never, ever realized what I was missing by not having children in my life. Sure, I loved being an uncle, but it's completely different. As frustrating as kids can be at times (and no one can make my kids cry faster than I can, to my eternal shame), they are such an incredible blessing to have in my life.
I secretly think that if I were separated from my kids for any reason, I might not be able to continue living. Hey, that would make a pretty good Post Secret postcard.
I really wish I were a better creative writer. There is this post from a computer scientist that just blows me away. I wish I had that kind of talent, but I'm just too literal. My brain doesn't work in more creative ways. I also use way too many words to describe anything, current post included.
I've never been a good story teller, but love to listen to those who are. Garrison Keillor comes to mind.
I should have at least one item related to gaming, shouldn't I? All my life, ever since the first Atari 2600, I've always loved finding ways to play games on computers and console boxes. Inevitably, I would spend way too much time playing a game, and then have to feel sick to my stomach that I couldn't devote the time needed to my schoolwork to get a better grade. That's still true today, but I'm desperately curbing my desire to buy a Wii and play games with my kids nonstop.
What else? Jesus saves; all others roll 4d6 for damage. If you don't get that reference, I'm not gonna explain it to you.

Now that I have these things written here, I'm tempted to pick up the list and transfer it over to Facebook. Larry Tesler is my hero! How many times have you heard those words? Not enough.

Russian Help on Afghanistan

2009-01-23T12:53:00.004-06:00

No, the headline above is not a non-sequitur, as much as it may seem like one. It springs from this article I just read on Yahoo!'s news aggregation service.

Now, there are many ways of reading this fairly short news article from Reuters. On the surface, it appears like the incoming Obama administration is already fostering hope in renewed or strengthened relations with the international community. That could be one way of looking at it, since the U.S., NATO, and Russia had a bit of a falling-out after Russia's war with Georgia last summer. Perhaps Big Bad Vlad Putin and Russian President Dmitry* Medvedev felt like they could mend relations with the new Obama administration better than they could with the outgoing Bush administration.**

* I still can never think of a Russian President/Soviet Premier named Dmitry without thinking, of course, of Stanley Kubrik's all-time classic Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Dmitri Kissoff... ha! Still makes me laugh! There are not many Peter Sellers roles that even begin to approach the hilarity of the three he had in this one movie.

** This, despite Bush's famous quote about meeting with Putin and seeing into his soul.

Another way of looking at the news is that Russia, perhaps, sees another opportunity to exert its influence in a region it has long coveted (unless coveted is too strong a word) during a time of leadership transition in the U.S. government. Russia's offer to "help" us in Afghanistan comes hard on the heels of Tuesday's Inauguration, you have to admit. This honestly could be Obama's first foreign-policy test, but it is too early to tell the true intent of the Russians here.

I loved this quote taken directly from the Reuters article:

"Let us hope the new U.S. administration will be more successful in the Afghan settlement than its predecessor," Medvedev told a news conference after talks with Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

Or did he mean, "...more successful than WE were in suppressing the Islamic Mujahideen resistance during our decade-long entanglement in Afghanistan"?!! Which raises a great deal of questions all on its own.

I was old enough to remember the nightly news covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan when I was a child. I clearly remember President Jimmy Carter boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in retalliation for the invasion, which then was repaid in kind by the Eastern Bloc countries boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, CA.

One thing I was never fully clear on, and I don't think the nightly news programs* ever answered on their own, was WHY the Soviets felt compelled to invade Afghanistan in the first place. It was pretty clear why the U.S. responded the way it did, and the movie they made starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts on Charlie Wilson's War (2007) provided a nice historical perspective, even if it wasn't 100% true. On this topic, the Wikipedia page provides some information related to the events leading up to the Soviet invasion, but it should not be trusted as a source for a deeper understanding of the Soviet rationale.

* The one we probably watched over any others at the time was Dan Rather on the CBS Nightly News, and oh, how long ago does that seem now! Who watches the evening news any more these days?

So, before I go off to the library in search of more scholarly tomes on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I thought I would post the question here: does anyone know which book(s) are the best one(s) on this topic? Wikipedia actually does a decent job of listing source material for the footnotes, all of which are found at the bottom of the page linked above. I could sift through those footnotes to find books on the topic, I suppose. Even then, you always want to be reading the right books, right?

All I know is this: the rationale for the Soviet invasion I remember as being provided at the time, that the Soviets were looking to secure a warm-water port outside their Black Sea fleet, is completely bogus.

Lie to Me - A Deceiver Remake?

2009-01-21T12:08:00.003-06:00

Tonight marks the debut of a new show on Fox, "Lie to Me." At least, tonight, 21 Jan 09, Fox plans to show the pilot for a TV series called "Lie to Me", but IMDB is silent on whether they've filmed any episodes beyond the pilot. Fox's own website for new shows is strangely muted in how much detail it provides for "Lie to Me". However, the previews for this new show have been all over Fox's broadcasts, so I saw several during the NFL games last Sunday.

What I find most interesting about the new show is how similar the role for Tim Roth appears to another of his roles, that of James Walter Wayland in Deceiver (1997). For those readers unfamiliar with that movie, it came not long after Roth's star turns in such Quentin Tarantino films as Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), and Four Rooms (1995). That stretch capped an impressive run of roles for Roth that started with his playing of Gildenstern in that retelling of the classic Shakespeare story Hamlet, but from the point of view of the hired assassins, Rosencrantz & Gildenstern Are Dead (1990).

That movie was simply brilliant, and done by the same writer and director who later won Oscar for Shakespeare in Love (1998), Tom Stoppard. The fact that Shakespeare in Love was a retelling of the classic story of Romeo & Juliet from a different perspective totally gave it away as a Stoppard work. It was a nice movie, but totally didn't deserve Best Picture over Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan that year.

At any rate, Roth in Deceiver plays a wealthy alcoholic who may or may not have murdered a prostitute in the park. He was the last person who saw her alive, and so the Detectives investigating the murder naturally focus their attention on Wayland. Without spoiling the ending for anyone who has not yet seen the movie, let's just say that many of the same elements shown in the previews for "Lie to Me" are also demonstrated after the Detectives hook Wayland up to a lie detector machine. Chris Penn, another veteran of some of those same Tarantino movies, and Michael Rooker did great turns as the two Detectives in the movie.

I'll probably tune in to the pilot episode tonight, just to see Roth's performance in the new show. I'll be interested to see just how similar the new role is to his past role in Deceiver. Roth seems to be an actor with an affinity for such edgy roles, so I anticipate "Lie to Me" will be good, as long as the writing works for the hour-long show.

Best of Luck to the New POTUS

2009-01-20T16:03:00.005-06:00

I think he'll need it in the immediate future! Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States (POTUS) today, and plenty of people have already served up their commentary on what his election means for our nation.

I did take the time to watch a live feed of Obama's speech during work today (Shhh! Don't tell my boss), along with several of my coworkers. Perhaps it was just too frigid for the attendees on the vast expanses of the Mall, most of whom had been standing around for hours in the cold, to warm up and applaud at appropriate times during Obama's speech. There seemed to be several instances where he deliberately paused, expecting a reaction from the crowd, only to be met with silence or simply muted clapping. Throughout the speech, there were no real roars of approval except, perhaps, when Obama pledged to get troops out of Iraq in so many words.

What is interesting is this comparison of today's speech to W's last Inaugural speech from 2005, courtesy of James Taranto's "Best of the Web" column in today's WSJ:

First, Obama's speech from today:

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus--and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West--know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

Here is George W. Bush, four years ago today:

From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

This is not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary. Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities. And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.

The two speeches were not that dissimilar, and gave credence to the same founding principles that are what make America great. In my own humble opinion, Obama's speech was not hugely historic -- definitely not up to the standard set by JFK -- but it served as a reminder that Obama has plenty of challenges facing his administration.

Many people have also commented that words are cheap and that actions, not words, will carry the day. Actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes. It will continue to be very interesting to see just how Obama will govern from the White House, now that he is the POTUS. I continue to have hope in the future, but let's see where the next few months and years take us as a nation.

Most telling will be what the U.S. response is after the next time terrorists attack our interests, be it an attack on U.S. Navy ships like the USS Cole, train bombings like in London or Madrid, or something else equally henious. It's probably not a question of if, but more like when something like that happens, how will Obama respond? Time will tell.

Who'd a Thunk It?

2009-01-19T16:38:00.007-06:00

Any NFL fan by now already knows that this year's Super Bowl appears to favor the AFC just a teeny, tiny bit. When Arizona, the unlikeliest of Super Bowl contestants we've seen in a long while, takes on Pittsburgh at Raymond James Stadium in the city of Tampa, FL on 1 February, most people will expect a massacre. As the old saying goes, you sell tickets with offense (Arizona), but win championships with defense (the Steelers).

Ah, but there is a reason why they still play the game. In a single-elimination tournament like the NFL playoffs, any team can have a good day and upset any other team, as we saw last year with the NY Giants beating the supposedly unbeatable NE Patriots. It was one of the mighty Football Outsiders (Aaron Schatz), writing a column for the venerable Worldwide Leader in Sports, who declared the G-men "...one of the worst teams to reach the Super Bowl" last January. I wonder if he'll do a follow-up article on the Cardinals this year?

After all, the Cardinals had one of the lowest win-loss records (9-7) of the teams that made the playoffs, were miserable playing in the Eastern time zone until they upset Carolina at home two Sundays ago, and really didn't start playing even respectable defense until the playoffs. They lost to perhaps the best team to not make the playoffs, those pesky Patriots, 47-7 in a laffer* in week 16 of the regular season. No one predicted Arizona, the number four seed, would be in the NFC Championship game, much less in the Super Bowl, when the playoffs started three weeks ago.

* Should that be written "laugher"? Because that doesn't look right either.

And yet, here they are. In the Super Bowl. With at least a shot at beating the Super Bowl champions from the 2005 season, a team that still has many of the same players, meaning they have veteran leadership that knows how to handle the media intensity leading up to the Big Event.

Franchises making their first-ever appearance in the Super Bowl have not done well throughout the history of the event, winning just six times against 17 losses. Only once did two Super Bowl virgins meet, and that was the 1982 matchup of the 49ers and the Bengals ('82 was when the Super Bowl was played, at the end of the '81 NFL season).

The sportscasters covering yesterday's playoff game mentioned a little bit of Super Bowl trivia: according to them (and this was an unsanctioned trivia question, so no graphics appeared to support it), only four franchises have never made it to the Super Bowl, now that Arizona has made it to the Big Event. They ticked off the Detroit Lions, the NO Saints, the Cleveland Browns, and the Houston Texans. However, I think they missed a fifth franchise, the Jacksonvile Jaguars. As near as I can tell, those are the only franchises in the modern NFL that have never competed in the Super Bowl.

I also learned today that the Super Bowl shares some history with such events as the Las Vegas Marathon, the Montreux Jazz Festival, the Consumer Electronics Show, the Smithsonian Kite Festival, and the Tour de Bretagne Cycliste in cycling. What do they all have in common? They were all started in 1967.

Just a little trivia for your Monday reading pleasure.

Work-Life Balance is a Myth - Confirmed!

2009-01-16T15:49:00.003-06:00

This entry from the WSJ's excellent Blog, The Juggle, proves it! Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo!, says so, and provided amplifying details in an interview she did with people at More magazine.

The sad thing is, Carol and More magazine focused solely on the work-life balance issues as experienced by women in the workplace. That's probably a result of More magazine's core audience, which I assume to be working women over the age of 40. I know I've never heard of it before today.

Not enough people either give credit to or think about the working men who experience the same types of work-life balance issues that I wrote about previously. Maybe our society still expects (or practically insists) its fathers be absentee Dads, slaves to the workplace in order to provide a solid home for our families. If a father requests consideration when it comes to work day hours, flexible leave schedules, or the use of the Family Leave Medical Act (FMLA), you can be sure that guy will get put on the "Daddy Track" at work, soon to be left behind promotion-wise by his peers.

It's a crying shame.

Lyrical Dissonance

2009-01-13T09:02:00.003-06:00

Have you ever heard a song that sounds very upbeat, with a catchy melody, but when you pay attention to the words, it turns out to be a very sad or depressing song? That came to mind yesterday when, in a furtive attempt to cheer people up during the cold, depressing winter weather we're experiencing, the song leader at my Rotary club selected "You Are My Sunshine" as the song of the day.

If you aren't familiar with the lyrics, here is the main chorus:

You are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy
When skies are gray;
You'll never know, dear,
How much I love you.
Please don't take my sunshine away.

Most people are already familiar with that refrain. How many are familiar with the next verse, which goes like this:

The other nite, dear,
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms.
When I awoke, dear,
I was mistaken
And I hung my head and cried.

And then there are other verses, which normally don't get included in the song. These were available online, and I assume some versions of the song include them:

I'll always love you
And make you happy
If you will only say the same
But if you leave me
To love another
You'll regret it all some day;

Chorus

You told me once, dear
You really loved me
And no one else could come between
But now you've left me
And love another
You have shattered all my dreams;

Chorus

Real cheery stuff, isn't it? At the time, I knew there was a musical term that described such a juxtaposition of upbeat music and downbeat lyrics, but I couldn't think of it. Today, I googled for the following search terms: "music term lyrics song don't match upbeat sad." In return, this website came back as the sixth hit for that search. So, not only do I now know that the correct terminology is lyrical dissonance, but I also have many, many examples of such lyrical dissonance provided by listeners around the Web.

I'll have to include the lyrics or a reference to "You Are My Sunshine," since that song has not made the list yet. There are some excellent examples of lyrical dissonance provided at that website, including many songs I wouldn't normally think of, but which make perfect sense after someone else suggests them.

However, in addition to the omission of "Sunshine," people left out perhaps the master of all songwriters when it comes to lyrical dissonance. I'm talking about none other than Declan Patrick McManus, AKA Elvis Costello. Almost every song he's written and/or sung, be it with his band The Attractions or in his solo career, has had some measure of lyrical dissonance. From early work such as "Alison" and "Radio, Radio" to later hits such as "Veronica" and "Every Day I Write the Book," Costello's songs often strike upbeat, cheery melodies... ...but the lyrics couldn't be darker.

Costello also covered "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" in excellent fashion, with an upbeat tempo. He also did a cover of Burt Bacharach's "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" for the Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me soundtrack, another example of what sounds like a beautiful little love song, but whose lyrics make it certain he'll never open up his heart to another.

I've been very impressed with this phenomenon every time I listen to an Elvis Costello song, but I wasn't motivated to learn the musical term behind it until yesterday's singing of "You Are My Sunshine." Funny how that works.

Random Thoughts for a Monday Morning

2009-01-12T10:11:00.006-06:00

Thus far, I've resisted the temptation to run through a semi-organized list of random thoughts that flicker through my consciousness, attempting to keep each post centered on an easily discernable topic. Once I've progressed down this list, you'll see why.

Over the weekend, I watched the original The Italian Job (1969) with Michael Caine in the lead role. I have seen the Marky Mark remake from 2003, but from what I remember, the similarities between the two movies begin and end with the bad/good guys using Minis to escape after a heist in Italy.
The ending from the original Italian Job is one of the greatest WTF? moments in movie history, apparently. It's a good thing I didn't see the movie until very recently, because Caine only revealed in late 2008 the meaning behind the sudden end credits.
The movie does have a good soundtrack, courtesy of Quincy Jones. And the "Self-Preservation Society" tune towards the end is very catchy, if a complete non-sequitur in the movie.
The original has to be considered a comedy, and that the writers and actors played every scene for laughs, or else it doesn't make any sense. And, boy, have our opinions of what is or isn't funny changed since the late Sixties!
The original Italian Job received a G - General Audiences rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and I know that the ratings system has changed over the years, but wow! When women were prancing about in their underwear, I couldn't believe it! G -- it's not just for Disney any more!
My wife and I have been watching a TON of period costume dramas lately, including such fare as The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), Becoming Jane (2007), Lady Jane (the 1986 movie with Helena Bonham Carter and Cary Elwes), A Room With a View (1985), and the latest, Tess of the D'Urbervilles (2008), a Masterpiece Contemporary production from England. As kids, we used to groan and leave the room whenever our parents would turn on Masterpiece Theater on PBS. My tastes must be changing.
Oh, and whether the mores of the time were captured in historical fiction like The Other Boleyn Girl, or just reflected by the fiction of the time like Tess, aren't we all better off now that women are no longer treated as Chattel? It's a bit scary to think that we are not that far removed from the time when a woman had no say in her marriage, when daughters were treated as pawns to be used to advance a family's social standing, and when a woman who was raped was blamed for losing her womanly "virtue."
Going along with the movies mentioned above, we also saw The Magdalene Sisters (2002), in which young women in 1960s Ireland were subjected to dehumanizing cruelty if the Catholic nuns considered them to be "fallen women." Not that far removed at all, are we?
And despite the fact that women received the unfettered right to vote (the 19th Amendment, in 1920) long before African-Americans did (the 24th Amendment, in 1962, which combined with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated the last blockages imposed after the passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870), isn't it interesting that the 1960s and '70s shared the upheaval of both the Civil Rights movement and the sexual revolution?
In many parts of the world, girls are still prevented from receiving an education. They are instead sold into sexual slavery in places like Thailand, and their wages get sent back to provide a living for their family. Several not-for-profits exist to prevent or stop this human trafficking; the one I like, because it was founded by two USAFA grads, is the Somaly Mam Foundation.
Think about it, and get involved.
Boy, the statistic of home field advantage enjoyed during the Divisional playoff round (where home teams were winning 76% of the time) was turned upside-down this weekend, wasn't it?! Exactly upside-down: home teams were 1-3 this weekend.
Who would have predicted Arizona (the number four seed, the lowest ranked Division winner, 9-7 on the season by virtue of going 6-0 within their Division, 0-5 playing in the Eastern time zone during the regular season) would be hosting the NFC Championship game next weekend? I thought Carolina was the closest thing to a cold, hard, lead pipe lock (with all due apologies to Mike & Mike in the Mornings) left in the NFL playoffs.
Hey, that's why they play the games.
So, we're left with a formerly 9-6-1 Philly team that advanced into the playoffs by virtue of that one tie with Cincinnati (and at the time, all the talking heads described it as a loss for the Eagles, since it was against the cover-your-eyes-awful Bungles) going up against a Cardinals team that previously hadn't won a playoff game since the Truman administration. No, no one saw that coming.
It's also interesting to note that Joe Flacco became the first rookie QB in NFL history to win two playoff games. Ever.
Now that the Giants have been knocked off, at home, by the Eagles, the Super Bowl favorite has to shift to the Steelers **shudder** who at least proved they still know how to win at home after a bye week.
Think the NFL head office and the NBC ad execs are shaking at the prospects of a Pittsburgh or Baltimore vs. Arizona or Philly Super Bowl? Nah, this is the Super Bowl we're talking about, not the World Series or NBA finals. The ratings are contestant-proof.
In cycling news, Lance Armstrong is getting ready to compete for the first time in the Tour Down Under (20-25 Jan 09). He says he is back in competitive cycling again just to help raise awareness for his cancer-fighting foundation, but it will be interesting to see what happens once his famously competitive juices start flowing again.
Sorry, I probably shouldn't put Lance Armstrong and "competitive juices" so closely together in one paragraph. I would venture that no single athlete has been more suspected of using performance-enhancing drugs while simultaneously passing every single drug screening test administered to him in all his years of competition. The man has successfully passed over what? 175? 200? drug tests without a single positive or false positive. There's something to be said for that. You still cannot prove a negative.
Now that Armstrong has been reunited with Johann Bruyneel, the team manager for all of Lance's Tour de France-winning teams, it will be interesting to see what they do together. For one thing, Bruyneel's current team, Astana, was blocked from racing in leTour in 2008 due to doping suspicions surrounding the team. Will they even be allowed to race in France this year?
One more thing on Armstrong: he is an expectant father! Again! And the news story says this baby was conceived naturally. Hmmm... apparently we can still refer to Lance as "ol' one nut Armstrong."
I've always wondered if perhaps Armstrong receives injections for the medical purposes of replacing lost testosterone, but never have seen any mention of anything at all along those lines. Does a man who has lost a testicle for whatever reason have hormonal imbalances in his body? WebMD appears to be mostly silent on this topic.
My wife and I also had a "The Big Bang Theory" (CBS sitcom) marathon on Friday and Saturday. That shows just how exciting married life with children can be, I guess. We had to get the DVDs from Netflix, since the show normally is on during the time we are busy with the 3B routine with the kids. Oh, and CBS doesn't make full episodes of its shows available on its website, unlike ABC and NBC. I wonder why not?
Being able to watch the majority of a full season of a sitcom in just two nights is pretty cool, though. It provides more continuity, and certainly more instant gratification, than waiting for a show to come on once a week. We loved it!
Oh, and "The Big Bang Theory" is a fun show! I'm a geek, I admit.
After one episode, when two Chinese kids were shown in their room with the lights flickering (the lights were being controlled remotely by the nerds in the show; you have to have seen it), I just HAD to go online and find out what comic or superhero logo one of the kids was wearing. It was a red shirt, with a red spike in the middle of a yellow circle with two squared-off "wings" on either side. How on earth can a person search for a nameless logo online? My first guess was a Flash Gordon logo from the mid-'80s movie of the same name. Bzzzzt! Incorrect answer. I googled for the words "big bang theory red yellow logo t-shirt" and came up with this as the second hit.
Ain't the Internet great?!
Like I said, I'm a geek. But "The Greatest American Hero" was way ahead of its time. I have to think its variation of post-modern ironic humor would go over much better these days.
I did have a dream last night where I was on the Moon, and discovered a race of big, rock people, much like what was featured in Galaxy Quest (1999). Yeah, I'm a geek. I remember thinking, "Why hasn't anyone discovered this before?" and coming to the conclusion that there are vast swaths of territory on the Moon we haven't explored. There's a thought for you.

That's it! That's the list. That will do it for this Monday.

Another College Football Season Finished, but Not Without Controversy

2009-01-09T13:04:00.006-06:00

I'm sure that anyone with an interest in college football probably took the time to watch last night's BCS National Title Championship Game Sponsored by FedEx between Florida and Oklahoma University. It was perhaps not a pretty game, owing to the layoff between conference championship games and the last game of the BCS bowl season. Still, the game was interesting for many different reasons.

The first example is that last night's game pitted the past two Heisman Trophy (the award that annually goes to the player voters deem to be the best overall player in all of college football) winners, Tim Tebow of Florida (the 2007 Heisman winner) and Sam Bradford of OU (the 2008 Heisman winner). There have been many players who won the Heisman as underclassmen, certainly. I would venture that last night's game was the first to have two Heisman winners opposing each other* in a game with national title implications on the line.

* When Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush were playing Texas in the BCS Title game after the 2005 season (Leinart being the 2004 Heisman winner, and Bush being the 2005 Heisman winner), they were on the same side of the ball.

The announcers also made a comment that I took to be a real, "Well, duh!" statement during the game. They made sure to point out how Bradford was also named to the AP First Team All-American roster.* If a person has been voted as the best all-around player in all of college football, why wouldn't he be named to the First Team All-American squad?

* Tebow, by the way, was only named to the Third Team All-American list, with UT QB Colt McCoy being named to the Second Team list. Forget that he was the 2007 Heisman winner, and that he outplayed Bradford by a large margin in the BCS Title game itself.

Which then got me to thinking about whether there had been times in the past where the Heisman Trophy winner has not been voted First Team All-American. I know that the voters for each award are different, but as I started to do some research on the topic, I was blown away just at the sheer number of All-American lists put out every year. I'm not even going to touch on all the other awards out there in big-time college football, such as the Bronco Nagurski (awarded annually to the best defender), Chuck Bednarik (ditto), Dick Butkus (best LB), Outland Trophy (best lineman), Doak Walker (best RB), Lou Groza (best K), Ray Guy (best P), etc. etc.

In terms of All-American rosters alone, there are 12 different entities that annually select a team of All-American players, to wit: the Associated Press, the Football Writers Association of America, the American Football Coaches Association, the Walter Camp Foundation, the Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Pro Football Weekly, ESPN, CBS Sports, College Football News, Rivals.com, and Scout.com. Whew! I'm tired from typing all of that! Trying to choose just one All-American team to compare against the list of Heisman Trophy winners, I wanted to go with just the best known of all rosters, the annual AP list of All-Americans.

While it was easy to pull up a comprehensive list of Heisman Trophy winners from the www.heisman.com website, I had a much harder time finding resources on the Internet for the history of AP All-American teams. Finding historical records for AP All-Americans might be one of those traditional trek-to-the-library-and-pore-over-microfiche tasks. Normally, putting more search terms into a Google search helps to limit the results somewhat. When I googled for "first team ap all-american history", I received 102,000 hits. When I added the word "records" to the search string, that narrowed down the list somewhat, but only to 74,800 hits. Unfortunately, whenever a writer pens a story about someone from his or her school being named to the AP All-American team, he almost always includes the word "history" or "records" in the story itself. The end result was I couldn't find historical records of AP All-American teams, not even on the AP's own website.

Which brought me back to using the ol' standby, Wikipedia. I actually really like and generally trust the information I find available on Wikipedia, even though I know it is ripe for abuse by people who push a singular point of view. On balance (or should I say "by and large," in honor of Wall-E [2008]?), I feel the people behind Wikipedia do a very good job of moderating revisions to the point where it is no less accurate than any other encyclopedia out there. It's a reference, and any information on it should be treated like it's coming from any other reference: Trust but verify.

Sadly, on the Wikipedia page for College Football All-American Teams, they have data basically covering the modern Internet plus a few scattered years in history (1998-2008, plus 1970, 1931, 1925, and 1910). For comparison's sake with the list of Heisman winners, only those years since 1935 are relevant. Here are the Heisman winners for the years on which we do have AP All-American roster data:

1970 - Jim Plunkett, QB, Stanford
1998 - Ricky Williams, RB, Texas
1999 - Ron Dayne, RB, Wisconsin
2000 - Chris Weinke, QB, Florida State
2001 - Eric Crouch, QB, Nebraska
2002 - Carson Palmer, QB, USC
2003 - Jason White, QB, Oklahoma
2004 - Matt Leinart, QB, USC
2005 - Reggie Bush, RB, USC
2006 - Troy Smith, QB, Ohio State
2007 - Tim Tebow, QB, Florida
2008 - Sam Bradford, QB, OU

That's it, that's the list! Going through all the current years (1998-2008), it certainly appears that every single Heisman Trophy winner was named to the AP First Team All-American roster. In 2000, only AP named Chris Weinke to its list of All-Americans; all the other rating entities chose Josh Heupel, QB, OU over Weinke, which is interesting in and of itself.

Going back to 1970 reveals something different, however. Jim Plunkett, voted as the best player in all of college football that year, was named only to the AP Second Team of All-Americans. None other than Joe Theisman, QB, Notre Dame beat out Plunkett for First Team honors. Which meant the AP voters didn't think Plunkett was the best QB in college football, much less the best overall player that year. As Spock would say, "Fascinating!"

All of this gets right back to what's wrong with Big Time College Football and the BCS, naturally! Too many opinions are thrown around, and you know what they say about people's rear ends and opinions. Voters chose to elevate undefeated Utah up to the #2 spot in the final AP poll of the season, and 16 of those voters selected Utah as the #1 team in the country.

Utah head coach Kyle Whittingham even broke ranks on the USA Today coaches' poll, voting his own team #1 even though coaches are typically bound to vote for the winner of the BCS National Title Championship Game. As of yet, there is no word whether Whittingham will be disciplined for his action by the American Football Coaches Association, but the better question may be why only 61 coaches vote in the USA Today coaches' poll when there are 120 universities playing Division 1-A football?

In my own humble opinion, no one who is a fan of college football would lose interest in early- or mid-season games if the NCAA were to switch to a playoff system. No one would talk around the water cooler any less, and sportswriters still would provide their opinions at the same rate if we had a true champion in college football. Last time I checked, everyone LOVES March Madness, with the only gripes coming just after the Selection Show. People still love to debate who got dissed and/or who should be in the NCAA Tournament, and in that format, 65 teams earn the right to play for a national title in mens' college basketball. At least the outcome of the season is decided on the court, with every team having a chance to win. In Big Time (Division 1-A, or Bowl Subdivision) College Football, everything is subject to opinion. This year, many of the voters never saw Utah play a game until they destroyed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl.

I think I'll go back to supporting my second alma mater, the College of William & Mary, who plays big time (albeit Division 1-AA, or Championship Subdivision) football. When they made the playoffs in 2004, it was terribly exciting going to the playoff game between the Tribe and James Madison, the eventual champ. Even as a grad student, I thoroughly enjoyed the playoff atmosphere. The Division 1-A guys could learn from that.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

2009-01-07T20:39:00.004-06:00

No, not the babes like Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue babes. I'm talking about babes as in the old Art Linklater franchise (later adopted by many other funnymen, like Bill Cosby) "Kids Say the Darndest Things."

In the past two days, my three-year-old son has come up with some real doozies. I apologize if anyone reading this blog also read my Facebook posts over the past several days, since I also posted these stories there.

The first funny tidbit came when I was herding the kids upstairs yesterday evening for their "3B routine": bath, books, and bedtime. Matthew and I were negotiating over which toy he could carry upstairs, and I remarked that "I am not an unreasonable person." Matthew looked at me and said, "You're not a person. You're a Daddy."

The other tidbit he came up with yesterday actually happened on my wife's watch. She had the kiddos outside for a walk in the afternoon, before it got too dark or too cold outside. The Moon was up already, so she and Matthew were looking up at the Moon. Matthew came up with the idea of asking, "If that's the Moon, where is the Earth?" My wife replied, "You're standing on it." To which Matthew thought for a second, then said, "No, Mommy. That's the sidewalk."

The last little tidbit came from dinner tonight, and I was having flashbacks to either The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) or Reservoir Dogs (1992), whichever one the dear reader happens to be familiar with. For dinner, my very lovely wife fixed spiral sliced ham, collard greens, and cheese grits. Yummy! Matthew for some strange reason started referring to the cheese grits as Mr. White, the collards as Mr. Green, and the ham as Mr. Pink. ("Why do I gotta be Mr. Pink?") Trust me, he's never seen either movie, but it was funny nonetheless. He only wanted to eat Mr. Pink tonight.

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: 3D Football!

2009-01-05T20:03:00.004-06:00

Chances are, many people not reading this blog live somewhat near a movie theater belonging to the Carmike Cinemas chain. They aren't as widespread as the AMC movie theaters, but still cover quite a bit of the country. If you do, and if you want a really big, widescreen 3D view of the BCS National Title Championship Game between Oklahoma and Florida on Thursday evening, you're in luck!

People who follow the NFL probably took notice last month when the NFL demonstrated its 3D streaming of a live game between the miserable Oakland Raiders and the struggling San Diego Chargers in early December. At the time, the NFL was showing its proof-of-concept to only three movie theaters around the country to a very select few NFL high-up muckety muck types. The three theaters were in LA, Boston and NYC, and the invites were pretty exclusive. I know I didn't get one.

I do find it interesting that the NFL's proof-of-concept was clearly a trial version of the technology, with the associated burps and glitches expected of such not-yet-beta technology. And yet, Carmike is pressing forward with its live 3D broadcast of the BCS Championship Game to regular folks on over 1,300 screens across the country. It will be interesting to see if they have any of the same technical glitches that plagued the NFL broadcast at first, and if that sours people on the viewing experience.

Even more interesting will be whether enough regular people will shell out the Andrew Jacksons required to get in the door to make the event profitable for Carmike Cinemas. That price ($20 per ticket) is too rich for my blood, especially when I get the game for free over-the-air to my HDTV. It could be that Carmike is willing to take a loss on this early proof-of-concept nationwide to stoke the demand that would later prove much more profitable in the long run. Being first to market on a nationwide scale is nothing to sneeze at. Apparently, the NBA is also experimenting with 3D live broadcasts to movie theaters as a way of expanding its diminishing fan base.

All of which goes back to how movie theater chains are trying to reinvent themselves and deliver the types of content that will draw people back into their seats. People undoubtedly have seen the ads for live streamed performances from the (NY) Met(ropolitan Opera), which have been shown in movie theaters for the past year or so. Again, I'm not much of a fan of opera, but I find it fascinating that both movie theater chains and the Met think they could draw in more fans through the use of live streaming of previously very exclusive performances.

The main problem for movie theaters across the country, of course, is the rise of home theater and high definition TV setups in people's homes. The move from analog to digital high definition TV, while good for the TV manufacturers, has coincided with steep drop-offs in movie theater ticket sales by volume; rising movie ticket prices continue to mask the decline in tickets sold per showing. Ah, but who wants to really put up with people talking, texting, or otherwise being rude in the movie theater, with overpriced popcorn and other snack foods, in order to watch the latest mass-market tripe from Hollywood? It's far better, and more enjoyable, to stay at home and watch a slightly older movie on DVD in high definition with my own popcorn.

To completely bastardize the quote from Bull Durham (1988), if I've got a quadrophonic Blaupunkt, I don't need a curveball!

The Wacky, Wooly, Wildcard Weekend

2009-01-04T21:19:00.006-06:00

What to make of the NFL Wildcard games this weekend? None of the favored teams everyone predicted to win actually won. Not that I pay much, if any, attention to the betting lines, mind you. I also didn't watch the talking heads on ESPN to see what they thought and which teams they predicted as this weekend's winners. I'm talking about my own estimations of the NFL teams playing this weekend, which regularly is one of the most unpredictable weekends of the NFL season.

In the AFC games, yesterday saw an 8-8 San Diego team taking on the 12-4 Indy Colts. Sure, both teams had been on a winning streak lately (the Chargers won their last four games just to make the playoffs, and the Colts won nine in a row after a shaky start to their season), but very few people expected San Diego to win, even playing at home. LaDanian Tomlinson, their star RB, was hurt and sidelined for the majority of the game. Norv Turner, the coach, has not proved his mettle in previous playoff games. For all the promise of Philip Rivers, he simply cannot compare to Peyton Manning at QB. Manning proved this year that he can will his team to win, despite the declining skills of his favorite WR, Marvin Harrison, and the inability of the Colt's offensive line to open holes for the Colts runners.

And yet, the Chargers proved victorious, winning in OT behind the superb running of their diminuitive RB, Darren Sproles. At times, the ability of the 5'6" Sproles to hide behind his blockers and shoot through the smallest of gaps in the Colts defense evoked the running of 5'7" Jaquizz Rodgers of Oregon State, when he shredded the USC defense in September.

In the other AFC game, a surprising 11-5 Baltimore team, playing with a rookie QB and a rookie head coach, soundly defeated an even more surprising 11-5 Miami team. Miami, of course, went from 1-15 just a year ago to winning their Division this year, despite strong performances by New England, NY Jets, and a fast start by the Buffalo Bills. The Ravens do have an incredible defense, and perhaps they found a way to bottle up the Wildcat offense run by Miami this year. Despite the similar records, Baltimore was the wildcard team, forced to win on the road in Miami to advance. This must have been another upset, as home teams usually get 7 points just for the home field advantage.

Over in the NFC, everyone had written off the Arizona Cardinals as DOA in the playoffs. At 9-7, they won a very weak NFC West Division despite being 2-3 in their last five games. They looked terrible on the road, going 3-5 on the season, yet they were 6-0 within their own Division. And yet, playing at home against an 11-5 Atlanta Falcons team that had been on a three-game winning streak, the Cardinals won fairly easily. They never seemed to be really threatened in their 30-24 victory, despite Atlanta's superior running game.

In the other NFC game today between the Eagles and Vikings, the Eagles at 9-6-1 once again used their crushing, ball-hawking (and TD-scoring!) defense to win 26-14 on the road. The Vikings were 10-6 going into this game, although they had to win their final game of the season in order to clinch a playoff spot and their Division. At one point, when the Vikings' QB, Tavaris Jackson, had one completion for his previous 11 attempts, it certainly seemed as though the Vikes' coach should have switched for another QB. Perhaps Gus Frerotte was still hurt, and perhaps the Vikes really had no better option than Jackson.

What we saw this weekend were mirrors in both Conferences: one home team (Division winner) with a weaker record beat a wildcard team with a stronger record, and one wildcard team beat the home team when the records were the same or very similar. The upsets, both at home and on the road, came when the presumably weaker NFC and AFC West Division-winners actually pulled out strong games against the favored wildcard teams, and when the other wildcard teams pulled off their upsets against Division winners.

Not being able to predict which teams were going to win this weekend causes much consternation for fantasy football players like me. Many of the playoff FFB-variety games involve picking one lineup of players for the entirety of the playoffs, so any time a player's real team loses, it knocks another person out of your fantasy lineup. Or, if you're like me, the Colts' loss knocked three players out of my lineup. In the NFL.com Playoff Challenge game I'm in currently, I do get a maximum of eight lineup changes I can make before the Super Bowl to remain competitive, but having to make six changes after the wildcard weekend (I also had several Falcons and Dolphins on my squad) pretty much dooms me to also-run status.

That remains the beauty of the NFL today, however. Parity means that virtually any team can beat any other team on any given Sunday. A team can rise from 1-15 to Division champ status in one season, even if that team can't win its playoff game. The Cardinals can actually win a playoff game for the first time in a generation. Anything seems possible at this point.

However, after the unpredictability of the wildcard weekend, the Division winners tend to assert themselves in the remaining games. Statistically speaking, wildcard matchups are the equivalent of a coin flip, with home teams winning only about 50% of the time. However, in the next round of the playoffs, home teams win about 70% of the time or better.* Arizona has to travel to Carolina, and the Eagles will travel to play the Giants. Expect the home teams to win both of those contests. Baltimore will travel to Tennessee, and San Diego has to play the Steelers in Pittsburgh, so both home teams have to be favored in those games, too. You can bet that my fantasy lineup will be modified to reflect the strengths of the Giants and the Titans, teams who have the best chance of making it to the Super Bowl. I really thought the Colts could perform a similar feat as the G-men did last year, winning the Super Bowl via the wildcard route, but they fell flat against San Diego.

* Update: TMQ on ESPN posted the win-loss record of home teams in the Divisional playoff round. It's 55-17 for home teams since the current playoff format was adopted in 1990, good for a 76.4% winning percentage, which is about as sure a thing as you can get in the NFL these days.

It's honestly hard to say which teams will make it all the way to the Super Bowl. Each team has its own weaknesses and strengths, and predicting which team will win it all is anyone's guess. Again, that's the beauty of the NFL playoffs. That's why they play the games, so the winner can be decided on the field.

Win or go home, as they say.

A Letter to Roger Goodell

2009-01-01T13:31:00.005-06:00

Dear Roger,

I saw this news item just yesterday, so I missed the original announcement from the NFL. Apparently, people in your office are disappointed in the lackluster TV ratings for the NFL Pro Bowl, which is played annually in Hawaii the week after the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl, of course, regularly pulls some of the highest ratings in the United States (90+ million people watched last year's tilt between the NY Giants and the NE Patriots in the US alone), plus perhaps the largest worldwide audience for a live event. National news media covers the Super Bowl in great detail, and the ads for the Super Bowl are projected to sell for $3 Million for a 30-second spot this year.

So, it is understandable that staffers are concerned about the general disdain for the Pro Bowl. No one pays much attention to the game, and certainly no one much cares who plays in the game after the public votes for its favorite players and the sportswriters have had their turn discussing who should have been named to the NFC and AFC Pro Bowl teams. Every year, deserving players get overlooked for other players with higher marquee factor, and that will never change.

Ah, but how do you address the fact that no one wants to watch a meaningless all-star game that happens after the season finishes with the biggest one-day spectacle in all of sports?! MLB has similar issues with its all-star game, except baseball plays its game in the middle of its season. Bud Selig, your counterpart, decided he could spice things up a bit by giving home-field advantage in the World Series to the League that wins the "Summer Classic" every year. And every year since that decision, the American League has won the all-star game. Putting home field advantage at stake has not noticeably improved the ratings for the MLB all-star game, and it has only marginally affected the outcome of the World Series.

Given that the NFL will never move its Pro Bowl to the middle of the NFL season, what was your alternative? I have to say, moving the Pro Bowl to that Sunday in between the AFC and NFC Championship games and Super Sunday is a terrible idea. Why? Two words: Robert Freaking Edwards the Third.

Please forgive me if you are unaware of Mr. Edwards. He didn't play long in the NFL, although he had a very good rookie season playing for the Patriots in 1998. That year, he played in 16 games, started 15 games, ran the ball 291 times, rushed for 1,115 yds and nine TDs, and added another 35 catches for 331 YDs and three TDs. He was a monster in fantasy football terms, although I had another rookie on my fantasy team that year, Fred Taylor of the Jacksonville Jaguars. For comparison, Mr. Taylor played in 15 games, started 12 of them (after a season-ending injury to James Stewart), ran the ball 264 times, rushed for 1,223 YDs and 14 TDs, and added 44 catches for 421 YDs and three TDs. Until 2008, you would be hard-pressed to find another pair of rookie RBs who had such a big (Ginormous!) impact on the game of pro football.

Mr. Goodell, you might be asking yourself why this is relevant to your decision to play the Pro Bowl on the Sunday leading up to the Super Bowl. Let me give you another set of numbers for illustration. After their rookie seasons, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Edwards had vastly divergent NFL careers. Mr. Taylor, or "Fragile Fred" as he is known in fantasy circles, has had an up-and-down career, always productive when he's on the field, but hardly able to remain on it for a full season. He played 10 games in 1999, 13 in 2000, two games in 2001, two full seasons in 2002-3, 14 games in 2004, 11 in 2005, 15 games each in 2006-7, and 13 games in 2008. Still, he has 11,271 career rushing YDs, 62 career TDs, a very strong 4.6 YDs per carry average, 2,361 career receiving YDs, and eight career receiving TDs. Those might not be Hall of Fame numbers, but how many young men are able to play 11 seasons in the NFL, period?

Mr. Edwards certainly did not. After his sterling rookie season, Mr. Edwards played only one more abbreviated season, for the Miami Dolphins in 2002. He ended his career with only 311 attempts, 1,222 career rushing YDs, 10 career rushing TDs, a 3.9 YDs per carry average, 457 career receiving YDs, and only four receiving TDs.

So, the question remains: how or why was "Fragile Fred" able to remain in the NFL for so much longer than Robert Edwards III? After that 1998 season, Mr. Edwards was named to the Pro Bowl while Mr. Taylor was not*. Back in the day, the Pro Bowlers used to play several events in addition to the Pro Bowl game itself. One of those events was a sand football game for the rookie all-stars, and it was two-hand touch, I think. Great fun, right? It was fun for all involved until Mr. Edwards fell and twisted his knee during that sand football game. He was never the same since.

* Taylor was named to the AFC Pro Bowl squad after the 2007 season, so he does have the same number of Pro Bowl appearances as does Edwards.

I ask you, Mr. Goodell, this simple question: what will the NFL do, either in 2010 or whenever it happens, the first time a player from one of the two Super Bowl contestants gets injured during the meaningless Pro Bowl game? You cannot deny that such a possibility exists, and you cannot deny that such an injury would alter the competitive balance of the most important game of the NFL season. Would Super Bowl-bound teams place playing restrictions on their marquee players named to the Pro Bowl, further limiting the value of that all-star game? Would any team really accept the distraction from their game plan preparations in the week leading up to the Super Bowl, even if no one gets hurt? Would you place all the players in protective bubble-wrap uniforms to prevent injuries?

These are questions that you, Mr. Goodell, need to answer satisfactorily before the 2010 Pro Bowl and Super Bowl. I know you are disappointed that regular fans like myself consider the Pro Bowl to be meaningless. I'm sorry, but it is. It doesn't matter in the standings, and it only serves as a nice benefit for those players lucky enough to be named to the squads. A free trip to Hawaii is always a nice benefit, and now the NFL players won't even get that benefit.

Way to go, Mr. Goodell. May I call you Roger? You need to rethink this policy, Roger. Your office won't be able to survive the public outcry or insurance maelstrom should a star QB from a Super Bowl team get hurt in a meaningless game. Pro football is a violent sport. I'm sure you've noticed. It's only a matter of time before disaster strikes, and you need to have a darn good idea of how you plan to respond before it does.

Sincerely,
A Fan

Happy New Years!

2008-12-31T23:59:00.003-06:00

Silly me, I tuned in to the network coverage of Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve show at 11:55 p.m., expecting to see the ball drop in Times Square.

I forgot that they do all that rockin' New Years coverage leading up to Midnight in the Eastern time zone, not Central. Oops! You would have thought I'd have learned my lesson by watching the TV coverage of New Years during the transition from 1999 to 2000, as we all waited to see if the power would go out on the East coast first. Except I happened to be watching that year in Columbus, OH, which is on Eastern time.

Oh well. Instead of Dick Clark or even Ryan Seacrest, they had some total boy band a$$ clowns up on stage some place in LA, and no one in the crowd looked like they were over 23. New Years must be a young person holiday.

Even if my wife and I could get a babysitter for long enough to allow us to attend a New Year's party, we always know that the kiddos will be awake at 6:45 a.m., so we simply can't afford to stay up that late any more. My current circumstance notwithstanding, mind you.

Have a happy New Year! I can't believe we're nearing the end of another decade already. 2009! *** John Cusack Movie Reference Alert! *** "TEN YEARS, MAN! TEN YEARS!"

A Quick Review of Film Noir

2008-12-30T08:58:00.007-06:00

I've been chewing on this in my mind* for a little while, ever since renting and watching the movie Brick (2005) in mid-November. Brick was the debut film from Rian Johnson, or at least was the first full-length feature movie he finished after completing a short called Evil Demon Golfball from Hell!!! (1996) in film school. You can see that it took Rian the better part of a decade to find a producer or distribution company to support his debut film, which speaks more to the glut of new movies produced annually by Hollywood than it does to his talent.

* Initially, I thought I would create a top five list of my favorite film noir movies. Then, I thought stopping at just five would be silly; why not fill out a full top ten list? Then, I worried that any top ten list would by necessity unfairly exclude some great noirs out there. Plus, I have to admit I haven't seen that many of the classic film noirs, so any list I pulled together would be incomplete. So I scrapped that idea.

Brick, simply put, is nothing short of brilliant! As I watched it for the first time, I could tell instantly that it was a debut film. There's something about watching a really good movie that often marks it as a director's first movie. I can't even artfully describe those indicators; perhaps it is the movie's outstanding dialog; perhaps it is the cinematography that borrows shots from classic movies and great directors; perhaps it is simply a gut feel that says the director poured his or her heart and soul into the film. A parallel exists in the world of novels: the debut novel from an author often surpasses any subsequent work, no matter how excellent the following books may be.

Ah, so what makes the movie Brick so excellent? Here is where I wanted to compare it to other film noirs I love. Brick contains all the essential ingredients for a film noir: in the cast of characters, it has the intrepid detective (our hero!), the informant, the cops/authority figure, the femme fatale, the equally brainy antagonist, and the antagonist's muscle; it has the snappy, quick-witted dialog derived from the works of Dashiell Hammett*; it has the requisite dark settings and interesting interplay between light and shadows; and it has the twisting, turning plot that includes a mystery our hero must unravel. It does have the intrepid detective getting beat up by the muscle, a characteristic of most but not all film noirs. It does have the long reveal at the end of the movie, where our hero exposes the true criminal mastermind behind the plot.

* By the way, I know that many people give Wikipedia a hard time, and no encyclopedia should be used as the only reference for source material. No less a reknowned blogger than Curt Schilling advocates all bloggers refrain from using Wikipedia links in posts. To which I say, find other quick-to-grab reference material on the Web that is any more trustworthy than Wikipedia, and I'll use it.

As I thought more about Brick and other film noirs, I knew that I've been a fan of film noir for a very long time. Brick is similar to another noir that was the debut feature from my favorite film makers, Joel and Ethan Coen, the Coen Brothers: Blood Simple (1984). Like Blood Simple, Brick can be rapid-paced at times, while also being maddeningly slow-paced at other times. I was always very impressed with how the Coen Brothers allowed the storyline to develop in Blood Simple, and how the characters in the story never knew fully quite what was going on, not completely.

That characteristic set up the final line of Blood Simple by M. Emmet Walsh (who played a PI, yet wasn't the intrepid detective of the story), and also played a huge role in another film noir by the Coens, Miller's Crossing (1990). Brick probably borrows more from Miller's Crossing than Johnson would like to admit. Much of the dialog is very similar ("dangle," for please excuse us), the interplay of suspicion and distrust between the antagonist and the muscle is the same, and the intrepid detective gets a little lucky when facing his accusers and imminent death. If anything, the hero in Brick solves the riddle quicker than does Gabriel Byrne's Tom Reagan character in Miller's Crossing; Reagan ends the movie by being better lucky than good.

Brick even borrows heavily from Blade Runner (1982) which, although it is a sci fi movie first and foremost, is also a film noir in the best definition. I remember the very first time I saw Blade Runner, and how impressed I was that the hero got the snot kicked out of him in every single fight*, no matter the opponent. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's (the teen kid from "3rd Rock from the Sun", who looks surprisingly like a young Heath Ledger in this movie) Brendan also gets beat up by the muscle in most scenes, even though he has an early victory against the stud football player, Brad Bramish. I can't prove it, but I also swear that Johnson used the same music in Brick for a scene between Brendan and Laura, the femme fatale, as Ridley Scott used during a scene in Deckard's apartment with his femme fatale played by Sean Young. It's a lilting little jazz number, and it sounds like the same song in both movies.

* That might seem funny, but think about it: how often did John Wayne get physically beat up in his movies? How often did Clint Eastwood? Sylvester Stallone? OK, bad example; Rocky (1976) was all about getting beat up. But given that most Hollywood heros can fight off hordes of goons without a scratch, and that the Stormtroopers in Star Wars (1977) couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, the simple fact that Deckard in Blade Runner had his butt handed to him by the replicants was significant, even if replicants had super-human strength.

Johnson also borrowed heavily from the classic film noirs, and specifically mentioned Hammett in his discussion of deleted scenes on the DVD. He wanted his dialog to be witty and snappy, like the works of Hammett, who gave us Sam Spade and Nick and Nora, the heroes of the Thin Man franchise. What's funny is that I recently read The Thin Man the novel, after which we watched The Thin Man (1934) the movie, all because of the movie that started the successful rebirth of Robert Downey Jr. as an actor. No, not Iron Man (2008). While that was a great movie, and while Downey Jr. was an inspired choice for Tony Stark, the movie that resurrected his career was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005). What a great film that was! The actors specifically referenced the great pulp fiction novels that served as the basis of film noir without actually giving credit to Hammett, but the reference was clear.

In terms of the classics, Johnson borrowed heavily from Orson Welles' seminal movies, using low shots looking upward at the actors for dramatic effect (borrowed from Citizen Kane [1941]) and the general look and feel of Touch of Evil (1958).

Given that Johnson borrowed heavily from other film noirs for Brick, what makes Brick stand out on its own? Why did it win eight awards from such notable film festivals as Sundance and the Independent Spirit Awards? The answer is that Johnson set all of these classic film noir staples mentioned above in a high school setting! The premise is brilliant, and it's hard to believe no one thought of it before. All of the main characters save for the cop/authority figure Assistant Vice Principal (played by none other than Richard Roundtree, the original Shaft!) are high schoolers, although they certainly aren't shown attending classes. Notes are passed between lockers. Who eats lunch with whom and where plays a significant role in the plot. All the usual teenage drama and histrionics that go along with high school heighten the danger and suspense of the plot line. Brendan has to navigate the treacherous waters of band geeks, drama queens, dopers, jocks, and brains, all while being an outsider and loner. It's brilliant!

As a coworker of mine told me after I let him borrow the DVD, he and his wife were smiling all the way through the movie. It's a very simple concept, setting a film noir in high school, but executed to perfection with this movie. What's old is new again. There are sequences of dialog between characters that could only happen with high schoolers.

Oh, and for all the drama and intrigue that goes along with film noir, there is also room for levity. I laughed my butt off when the high schoolers faced off over the kitchen table while the quite clueless suburban mom served up country-style orange juice in the same country-style juice glasses my grandmother had at her farm! Simply brilliant.

Given that the box office numbers listed on IMDB are quite low for Brick, it is clear that not many people have seen this movie. I "discovered" it when I rented The Constant Gardener (2005), another film from Focus Features that had the trailer for Brick on the disc. Ever since we saw Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation (2003) from Focus Features, they have been one of my favorite movie distributors. Up soon on my Netflix list will be another Bill Murray film by Focus, Broken Flowers (2005). Here's hoping it is as good as the rest.

If you get the chance to rent or watch Brick, take it. It is well worth the time.

Phony NFLShop.com Ad

2008-12-27T16:32:00.004-06:00

So, I have to call B.S. on the ad below from the NFLShop.com guys. I know they need to move product during the busiest shopping season of the year, but c'mon! There isn't a single American household with three adult males in it where each of the three guys supports a different NFL team. And from such different regions of the country, too! It's just not believable to have a Browns fan, an Eagles fan, and a Chargers fan all under the same roof. It just doesn't happen.

People these days might move all across the country after college to take jobs in strange cities, but you can't tell me that someone who was raised on the Eagles would suddenly become a Niners fan if he landed in San Francisco for work. It just doesn't happen. That's what the NFL Ticket on DirecTV is for, so people who find themselves geographically removed from their teams can still root, root, root for the home team on Sundays.

A very good friend of mine from Ohio State lived in the Baltimore area for a very long time post-graduation. Did she ever cop out and buy Ravens* or Redskins season tickets? Not on your life! She was from the Cleveland area, so she was a Browns fan tried and true. She had Browns season tickets, flew up for the games she and her hubby could make, and sold the other tickets to other fans. That's how I was able to take my wife to see a Browns game in the new stadium in 2002.

* Despite the fact that the Baltimore Ravens happen to be the Browns v1.0, when the Devil Incarnate (Art Model) moved the team after the 1995 season, that team became the embodiment of evil and the antithesis of all that Cleveland Browns fans hold dear. The Baltimore fans were done wrong by Robert Irsay, so I can't really begrudge the fans their Super Bowl victory in 2000, even though THAT SUPER BOWL SHOULD RIGHTLY BELONG TO CLEVELAND!!!

All of which brings up some interesting issues of how people decide to support a given team to begin with. For most people, which NFL team to support* tends to be either handed down from parents or a byproduct of geography. I just recently watched the British version of the movie Fever Pitch (1997), in which the young lad becomes an Arsenal fan because football (soccer to us Yanks) was about the only way he could bond with his absentee dad, who just happened to take him to an Arsenal game for his first match. Very interesting movie, that.

* Since this in a NFLShop.com ad, I'm going to skip any discussion of which college football team people support, which usually is tied to familial traditions or alma maters.

My own NFL fandom was an interesting mix of family and geography. My parents and siblings were all born in Ohio, but we moved around a lot when I was a child. Right around the time I was becoming a fan of pro football, we lived in eastern South Dakota. From there, the natural order of things would have been to support the Minnesota Vikings, as they were the closest to us geographically. They also had some very good teams there in the 1970s, so it might have been a natural fit to support the "local" team. However, we were raised on Ohio teams all.

That meant we supported Ohio State at the collegiate level, the Big Red Machine for Major League Baseball (MLB), and the Cleveland Browns in pro football. To a lesser extent, we paid attention to what the Bengals were doing in Cincinnati, but we never much supported the Indians in Cleveland. Ah, but watching the Kardiac Kids in Cleveland during the late '70s -- Brian Sipe at QB, Ozzie Newsome at TE, Mike and Greg Pruitt at RB, Sam Rutigliano as the coach, Don Cockroft kicking -- yes, I even remember clearly that "12 Days of Christmas" song parody that promised a Rutigliano Super Bowl. That sealed the deal for me, and I've been a Browns fan ever since!*

* Being a student of history, I naturally dug into the Browns team history, and love how fantastic it is! Jim Brown remains the best pure runner ever in the NFL, but I'd stack Marion Motley right up there with him. Lou Groza, Otto Graham, Paul Warfield, and too many others to list all played for the Browns, who also won eight NFL championships before the Super Bowl era. Not too shabby!

The following years of hope and heartbreak throughout the '80s with Bernie Kosar, Kevin Mack, Earnest Byner, Webster Slaughter, Marty Schottenheimer, The Drive and The Fumble, did nothing except reinforce my fandom. I'll never forget the Hated One, Elway, and what the Denver Donkeys* did to my team. Although, given Denver's record in Super Bowls during that time, perhaps it was fine that the Browns never had to be embarrassed by whichever NFC team was in the Super Bowl those years.

* Years later, when I was going to college in Colorado, I took personal pleasure in the Broncos' troubles in the early '90s, when it seemed as if Elway would join the ranks of the most prolific QBs never to have won a Super Bowl. I remember the joke circulating at the time: "Did you hear that Elway can't get into his house? Someone painted an end zone in his front yard!" Ah, but I digress.

I'm actually facing an interesting dilemma with my own children, although they are both too young yet to decide which team they will support into adulthood. I always had my birth in Ohio (plus the fact that we never took a vacation anywhere but Ohio to see family; every Christmas break, every summer break from school, we were heading to Ohio on that interminable 16 hour drive!) to cement my fan roots in the Buckeye State. However, my two children were both born here in east-central Illinois. My wife is from Oklahoma, so I get no support from her side of the family, who are perhaps Dallas Cowboys fans if they support any NFL team. **shudder** They really aren't NFL fans, so maybe I can twist my kids into supporting the Browns yet.

However, from here, people can be an interesting mix of fans. We have plenty of Bears fans, to be sure. We also have plenty of St. Louis Rams fans, probably all the more so since the Rams were the "Greatest Show on Turf" there in the late '90s-early '00s. And now that Peyton Manning finally got the Big Game Monkey off his back, and against the Bears no less, there are plenty of Indy Colts fans in this area, too. On TV, the local games usually consist of those three teams before they show nationwide coverage. Given that Chicago, St. Louis, and Indianapolis are all just about equidistant from our city, I can definitely see getting single-game tickets to see each of those teams play in person.

So, at some point, I will need to let go and allow my kids to decide on their own which team(s) they want to support. If they want to be pro football fans at all, that is. Every once in a while, Matthew will say that he doesn't want to watch football on Sundays. And I'm OK with that. Any time he wants to play with his toys in our play room downstairs, I go with him and play with him. But eventually, those games most likely will transition to tossing the pigskin around the back yard. I'll just be happy to throw the skinny post to him streaking past his uncles and grandfather when the time comes.

Merry Christmas to All!

2008-12-25T22:32:00.002-06:00

Last night, after putting the little tykes to bed, we did what families have always done through the ages... put together all those hard to assemble Christmas gifts that "Santa" brought to the house while the kids were sleeping! Fortunately, not many batteries were required this year.

My wife's father has been extremely busy in his woodworking shop out back of their house in Stillwater, OK. He built a play kitchen for the Festival of Trees auction in November, yet still had time to build a new Thomas the Tank Engine train table, a baby doll high chair, and a baby doll rocking cradle this year. Amy got the kids an art easel, so I had to assemble that last night. Thankfully, we already bought the first bicycle in September, so I didn't have to assemble one of those last night.

While putting those things together last night, we had the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946) on in the background. We've all seen that movie a million gazillion times, but it always brings a smile to my lips every year. I loved it when a friend of mine described it once as "Hard Core Yuletide," because that is a perfect description. Many people, of course, also know it as "Capra-corn," and that label also fits.

Several things about the movie struck me for the first time last night, however. And isn't it funny how you can be completely familiar with a movie, yet still see something new every time you see it?

The first thing that struck me (and keep in mind that we spent the majority of the evening watching A Muppets Christmas Carol (1992), rather than put up with the interminable commercial breaks on NBC, so we came in towards the end of the movie, when George was being counseled by Clarence the angel; if I'm going to sit through the entire Wonderful Life movie, I'm gonna do it by watching my own copy on DVD) was that Pottersville certainly seemed like a lot more fun town than Bedford Falls. Doesn't it seem that way? Pool halls, bars, dancing, girls... it's like Vegas without the gambling! Sure, people were miserable living in Potter's housing projects, but they had fun going out at night!

The second thing, and this is more of a reach, is that perhaps, just perhaps, the American male preference for the Girl Next Door over the Blonde Bombshell was first captured here, in Wonderful Life. Think about it: Ginger or Mary Ann? Veronica or Betty? People have been asking those questions for ages, but here you see Violet versus Mary, Gloria Grahame versus the truly classy Donna Reed. Which would you rather have as your wife? As your girlfriend, even? Which one is going to stand by you and not cheat on you with your brother or best friend? It's gotta be the Girl Next Door, in my book. Which also made for an interesting movie starring Elisha Cuthbert in 2004, but that's beside the point.

I just think it's funny that something new always presents itself on the upteenth time watching a movie. For the very first time, I noticed which book Clarence signed to George at the very end of the movie to let him know that Clarence did, indeed, win his wings by helping George not commit suicide. What was it, you ask? None other than Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. That doesn't even make the trivia section on IMDB, so there's no telling if that book had special meaning for Frank Capra or anyone else associated with the movie.

Well, beyond the movies and the toys, we did have a wonderful Christmas this year. It was the very first time my wife and I hosted Christmas in our own house, and it worked out great! Our son turned over a new leaf today, or at the very least was on his best behavior this afternoon. He was very nice to everyone, hugged his little sister without being told to do so, and wished everyone a Merry Christmas on his own, without any prodding. He wasn't whiny, didn't fight a lot, and played with his new toys without getting upset or too possessive about any of them. Well, other than the new remote control Cat bulldozer from Grandpa. He really likes that one. But for a three-year-old, he did great today!

My wife's dream for peace on Earth, or at least peace in the household, was granted today. For that, I am extremely grateful! Here's hoping that everyone else experienced similar joys and peace today, and that everyone got what they needed during this holiday season. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Victorious FFB Season

2008-12-23T09:53:00.005-06:00

So, if you'll permit me to brag just a little bit, I wanted to wrap up this fantasy football (FFB) season with the announcement that I won my league on NFL.com this year. Now, I know full well that Joe Posnanski said in one of his blog posts in September that the relationship holds: "My fantasy team = interesting; your fantasy team = boring." That rationale was exactly why I decided against making my blog just be about FFB, to hopefully broaden the appeal somewhat. I probably should include more articles here about FFB strategy both before* and during the season, and perhaps I will do so next season.

* I had designs on a very illuminating article about tactics to use while drafting in a live draft when most of the other team owners are going the auto-pick route, but couldn't get it written in time to be relevant.

For now, I just want to provide the summary of my performance, and remember: I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last week! My team was named the Salarymen, and I used the band's logo up top for my icon. I could have used any number of photos available of actual salarymen in Japan for my logo, but the black and white logo looked best in the small format on the NFL.com website.

I ended the season with a 12-4 record (6-0 in my own Division), finishing with a six-game winning streak, meaning I was only 6-4 after ten games. I led the league with 1513 points scored, and the nearest competitor (the team I beat in the championship game) was 108 points back, even though I only led the league in scoring once during the regular season. I had the best record, best breakdown schedule against other teams, and most points scored, which meant I dominated the power rankings at the end of the season.

I did all this despite the fact I didn't have any top scorer on my team. To wit: I had the #4 (Jay Cutler) and #10 (Chad Pennington) QBs; the #7 (Maurice Jones-Drew), #10 (Chris Johnson), #18 (Pierre Thomas) and #38 (Joseph Addai) RBs; #8 (Randy Moss), #10 (Terrell Owens), #15 (Kevin Walter), #28 (Jerrico Cotchery) and #72 (Kevin Curtis) WRs; the #6 (Owen Daniels) TE; the #3 (John Carney) K; and the #4 (Eagles) Team Defense.

Of those players, the only ones I drafted and kept throughout the entire season were Cutler, MJD, Moss, Owens, Cotchery, and the Eagles. Yes, I do like to turn over my roster when needed. It never hurts to troll the waiver wire and make changes when a better player becomes available. Chris Johnson, obviously, was a huge find for me and I got very lucky there. I traded Willie Parker for Addai early in the season, but that was a wash for both teams involved in that trade. Mid-way through the season, I was ready to trade Moss, but no one wanted him at that time. Go figure!

The guys at NFL.com always provide a Coach Rating, which is simply a measure of how efficient a coach is when deciding who to start and who to sit during games. They take the highest scoring collection of players for a team based on the starter rules and actual points scored, and then compare your game points scored against that hypothetical maximum number of points possible in a given week. The result is delivered as a percentage and expressed as a Coach Rating. My rating for the season was a whopping 82%, good for only 8th in my 12-team league.

Another way of looking at coaching efficiency is to compare the player utilization statistics using the team scoring statistics available on the NFL.com website. For example, Cutler scored a grand total of 295 fantasy points this year, but I had him active in my starting lineup for only 237 of those 295 points. For Moss, I captured all 154 of his points, and likewise for T.O., I captured all of his 146 points scored for the season. Start your studs, as they say. For Chris Johnson, I played him for 127 of his 192 points scored; for MJD, I played him for 119 of his 195 points scored; and for Earnest Graham, I played him for 75 of his 93 points scored before losing him to Inactive Reserve (IR). I also kept the Eagles active throughout the entire season, capturing all 222 of their points scored.

In many regards, it's still better to be lucky than good. In the final, I won the game 116-87, despite the fact that my opponent had Donovan McNabb, Michael Turner and Brian Westbrook (#2 and #6 RBs, respectively), Mark Clayton, Larry Fitzgerald (#1 WR), and Antonio Gates (#4 TE, and had a big game on Sunday). The tables easily could have been turned if the Eagles had played a better game on offense against the Redskins. My opponent in the championship game also had a Coach Rating of 90%, which put him second in the league for the entire season.

So, now that college football season is over, and now that FFB season is over, it becomes time to settle back into that Barcalounger, and watch a few Bowl games and the NFL playoffs as a true fan again. When I say "few Bowl games," I mean FEW. I'll probably only really watch one or two of the big games on New Year's Day, including the Rose Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl. I will watch the BCS National Championship Game, just to see which team I despise wins. Is it possible for both OU and Florida to lose?! I can dream, can't I?

And then, of course, the NFL playoffs are absolutely riveting football, 95 percent of the time. Every once in a while, you have one wild card team that lays a complete egg in the first round (I'm thinking Miami against the Broncos a while back, but can't pull up the actual game score... who do you think I am, the Worldwide Leader in Sports?!), but usually, every single game is exciting because all the coaches and players understand one simple principle rules all:

WIN OR GO HOME.

'Nuff said.

The Amazing Snuggie!

2008-12-16T21:33:00.007-06:00

So, travel has long been a way to experience new foods, new cultures, you name it. Going back to the days of Marco Polo and long before him, travelers and merchants have sought out exotic new lands, new peoples, and new products to purchase.

So it really is no surprise that traveling to another part of the U.S. still remains an effective way of seeing new things or new products. Having come to Montgomery, AL this week, I discovered for myself one of the most amazing, exotic new products ever. I saw, for the first time, commercials on TV for the Amazing Snuggie!

Yes, it's called the Snuggie, and here's the website. Yes, it's one of those "As Seen on TV" brands. I can't grab a picture very easily, so you'll have to click through the link to watch the commercial, which auto-runs on the website. That itself is annoying enough, and then I get the ads on any of the different cable channels here in the hotel.

I just can't imagine anyone thinking this is a good idea for a product, much less buying one. Maybe, if you swore you would never, ever be caught dead in a Snuggie by neighbors or friends, it might make a little bit of sense. I just can't stomach the images of the actors warming themselves in front of the fireplace, playing backgammon, watching the kids play soccer, or roasting marshmallows over the fire together as a family. It's ridiculous! Don't forget that the Amazing Snuggie is open in the back, so sitting on metal bleachers would still get cold. It's lamealicious!

Paint the Whole End Zone!

2008-12-15T20:33:00.007-06:00

A quick post tonight: I just saw this (pic below) while watching the Brownies play the Iggles tonight on ESPN. (For those of you who read my previous posts on my antenna-only digital TV at home, I'm on the road, in a Holiday Inn Express tonight, so I actually get to watch the MNF game this week.) The pic is a mostly-empty shot of the newish Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, which is the football-only stadium that replaced the old Veterans Stadium.

So, the picture makes me really wonder why they didn't use a couple other gallons of paint to finish the job in the end zones. Could it really cost them that much to make the end zones a uniform dark green, with the logo on top? As far as I know, this is the Field Turf stuff that plays like grass (only better!), so if you paint it once, it should be good for the whole season.

Maybe that's just it, exactly. If they also use this field for high school or college games, then perhaps they only replace those middle sections of the end zones to make it Eagle-neutral. I think they still play the Army-Navy game here, despite losing Veterans Stadium.

Oh, and the INT return for a TD by Asante Samuel for the Philly Team Defense pretty much assures I win my fantasy football game this week, so I'll make my league's championship game next week. I had the best regular-season record (10-4), best breakdown rating (beating other good teams in my league), and most points scored, so I owned the power rankings at the end of the regular season last Tuesday. But you never know how things will go from week to week, and the playoffs are single elimination, so I'm happy I'm not getting knocked out in the first round.

And hey, I might not be a FFB savant, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express!

I Went to the Wrong School...

2008-12-14T15:41:00.010-06:00

...or at the wrong time, methinks. I saw this fine example of truly dedicated participatory journalism (I'll bet George Plimpton was sad he didn't get a chance to do this!) on Friday, but didn't have the chance to write up a post on it until now. Sam Alipour definitely took one for the team when he volunteered for that assignment. What the Undie Run at UCLA (and check out the pic of the students getting ready for their run below) has to do with the "Worldwide Leader in Sports," or sports of any kind, I have no idea. But it is a fun click-through, so it serves its purpose.

At Ohio State, they have a tradition of jumping in Mirror Lake on the night before the Michigan football game, which is always the last game of the season, so it happens in late November. Given that the OSU students are mixing water and cold air, I think the UCLA students have the better idea. A picture of the OSU students getting ready to brave the frigid water is below.

What's funny is that I did attend Ohio State (sorry, THE Ohio State University) for one year immediately following high school. Honestly, I have no recollection of students doing their dive into Mirror Lake. Either my friends and/or sister (who was a junior while I was a freshman) didn't clue me in on the tradition, or it is more recent in nature, like the UCLA Undie Run.

Actually, the Wikipedia entry for OSU Buckeye Football says that the tradition of jumping in before the Michigan game is more recent, as of 1990.* I missed it by a single year! Aaarrrgh!!

* You have to scroll down to the section on "Buckeye Football Traditions" and look for those associated with Michigan Week.

Which is not all that different from the morphing of the UCLA tradition from a simple Midnight Scream during finals week into its current form of college-age coeds running around in their underwear. Heck, at the Big Blue Womb (AKA The Zoo, AKA the Fishbowl, AKA Sister Mary Francis' Small Colorado Technical School for Wayward Boys and Girls), we had a long-standing tradition of performing a Midnight Scream during all finals weeks. Everyone would get their loudest stereos out, blast the most obnoxious audio they could find, and scream at the top of their lungs just to let off a little steam during finals. And then we'd go into Mitchell Hall for "scooby snacks", which were a complete lifesaver during finals!!!

I kinda doubt that cadets at USAFA morphed their Midnight Scream tradition into something more risque, mostly because it does get cold in Colorado in December. Oh, and there's a grand total of, what? About 12% of the entire student body is female? And many of the women who are there, you probably don't want to see in their undies. Which is completely unfair to those women, but true nonetheless.

So, any kind of underwear run or jump in the reflecting pool found in the Air Gardens (pic below) would be a total sausage fest, and not many guys at the Zoo will go for that. I'd be surprised to hear any different.

When is Enough Work Enough?

2008-12-12T11:03:00.005-06:00

I don't normally want to delve into more personal issues here, for obvious privacy concerns. However, my life lately has been something of a wreck, work-life balance-wise, and if this forum allows me to vent a bit, so be it.

From my previous post on the myth of work-life balance, readers can guess where I stand on how important work is. If you actually have a job you love, then I suppose the long hours you devote to it don't seem like work to you. For the rest of us, work is merely something we do so we can get paid, so we can feed our family, so we can have clothes on our back, and so we can have a roof over our heads. In that situation, the fewer hours we spend at work, the better.

And yet, in today's day and age of high speed Internet at home, mobile computing devices like BlackBerries and iPhones, and telecommuting for regular office hours, employer expectations have changed to the point that employees are expected to be accessible and ready for work practically 24/7. Many employers will schedule away meetings on a Monday, so that the inevitable travel hours don't take the employee away during the regular work week. The same is true of an increasing number of industry conferences, which are scheduled for weekends just so the attendess do not miss regular work days. Is compensatory time off ever given to these employees? Not on your life!

Some offices, perhaps, are still good about enforcing the standard 8-5 office hours regimen, and if an employee is hourly, then of course they get monitored closely to make sure they cannot charge overtime, barring an emergency at work. But being a salaried, non-union employee in middle management means I'm expected to work my tail off much more than regular line employees. I'm getting paid more than they are, so in general terms, I'm OK with that. To a point.

Where things crossed the line for me was when I found out my mother had cancer about a month ago. Given my natural state of worrying about things I can't control, that was a doozy for me. But I did the British stiff upper lip thing, kept quiet about my own personal concerns, and continued working my tail off at work. I put on the group calendar my request for personal time off for this week, so I could be there for my Mom when she went in for surgery to remove the cancer.

Prior to this week, I spent one weekend in early November driving back and forth from my home to hers in Dayton, OH, just to be there and provide some emotional support as she went through the roller coaster of emotions that is natural with a cancer diagnosis. We were also all there at Mom's house for Thanksgiving, and that was a really good time spent together with family. She was generally in good spirits, and it gave us the chance to discuss events leading up to her surgery.

In the last week or two, I reminded everyone I work with once again about my request for personal time off, and I also started telling everyone, including my direct boss, why I needed to take three days off in the middle of a week to be there in Dayton. People were generally supportive, and certainly I'm not the only person who has had a close loved one experience a survivorship battle with cancer. I had close friends suggest giving the book The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch, to my mother, and she really enjoyed reading such an inspirational tale. (Side note: there is also a website dedicated to The Last Lecture, as well as YouTube videos of the same. Take the time to read the book, watch the lecture, or peruse the website. You'll be happy you did!)

I give you those details so I can then give you these details, and hopefully to not sound like I'm whining.

On Monday, when I once again asserted that I was going to be out of the office for three days this week, my boss* acted like there was nothing more important than getting a report finalized for the customer along with preparing a cost build-up for future work with the same customer. Oh, and that I was the only person who could perform such tasks, and that I needed to be here to make sure they got done even if I delegated them to others. I spent over 10 hours in the office on Monday, staying as long as possible to get as much of the work-breakdown structure (WBS) tasks put together before leaving for Dayton on Tuesday.

* This is the same boss who lately has made me feel guilty for taking an hour away from the office for lunch or to go work out at the gym, all very normal stuff. Just because he feels like food is optional does not mean I can be happy going without lunch every day.

On Tuesday, after driving the four hours over to Dayton, I was inundated with phone calls demanding why the WBS was not finished yet. After seeing my mom for about an hour that evening (and leading up to surgery, I knew that was the best time to see her for the next 36 hours or so) , I then proceeded to get wrapped into a two hour conference call using my personal cell phone minutes. After that finished at 1 a.m., I then worked another four hours on the WBS spreadsheet and associated Word document in which we listed all of the assumptions we used* to build the cost estimates in the WBS.

* Which, oh by the way, we now decided we will NOT provide to the customer in a Word document, instead listing those out in a PowerPoint briefing.

Yes, that's right. I didn't get to bed until after 5 a.m., with Mom's surgery just a couple of hours away. It turns out my step-father also didn't get much sleep that night, just three hours compared to my hour and a half. But it was for very different reasons. On Wednesday morning, the two of us were walking zombies in the waiting room, but we kept each other awake and simply waited for word on how the surgery was progressing.

The good news is that the surgery went well, and they hopefully got it all out of her body. Pathology results next week will tell us whether or not the Oncologist needs to prescribe further treatment regimens of either chemo or radiation, but we're very hopeful they won't need to take that step. Mom looked very tired on Wednesday evening, but that was to be expected. On Thursday morning, she looked much more like her usual self after sleeping and having a liquid breakfast. Her OB/GYN doctor came to see Mom on Thursday, even though that is usually that doctor's day off, which was very nice of her to do. They allowed Mom to have a regular lunch that day, and even allowed her to go home on Thursday evening. All of that was wonderful news! Mom very much wanted to recuperate at home, so she got her wish.

Well, after packing up the car and getting ready to head back from Dayton yesterday, I had another phone call from my boss asking why the WBS assumptions weren't fully documented yet. Fortunately, others in the office really stepped up and did a great deal of the work this week in my absence. When I came in to the office this morning, I found that we were actually in very good shape, with just a few minor modifications needed to finalize everything. After I made those modifications, we had a teleconference with the CEO, who said everything looked good and gave his blessing to proceed with the WBS as written.

But not once did I ever get even the slightest hint of concern for my Mom's well-being from my boss. When he called me yesterday afternoon, the question was not, "How is she doing," rather, his first question was "Enjoying your vacation?!"

Please shoot me if I ever get to the point where getting the mission done trumps all other concerns of my employees. Just because the boss might be a workaholic doesn't mean all the employees have to be, as well.

It just seems that way.

Back to What's Wrong With the BCS

2008-12-07T20:45:00.009-06:00

Blow up the BCS already!!!

I'm getting really tired of bad bowl game matchups, tired of blowouts in big games, and really tired of not letting the players decide on the field of play who really is the best team in the "Football Bowl Subdivision" (what everyone still knows as Division I-A college football).

In case you're curious, here are the official rules straight from the BCS Football website on FOX Sports on MSN (whew! Sounds like many of these multi-sponsor bowl game names!):

Bowl Championship Series
Automatic Qualification, At-Large Eligibility and Selection Procedures, 2007-2010 Games
Automatic Qualification
1. The top two teams in the final BCS Standings shall play in the National Championship Game.
2. The champions of the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern conferences will have automatic berths in one of the participating bowls after the 2008 through 2013 regular seasons.
3. The champion of Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt Conference or the Western Athletic Conference will earn an automatic berth in a BCS bowl game if either:
A. Such team is ranked in the top 12 of the final BCS Standings, or,
B. Such team is ranked in the top 16 of the final BCS Standings and its ranking in the final BCS Standings is higher than that of a champion of a conference that has an annual automatic berth in one of the BCS bowls.
No more than one such team from Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt Conference, and the Western Athletic Conference shall earn an automatic berth in any year. (Note: a second team may be eligible for at-large eligibility as noted below.) If two or more teams from those conferences satisfy the provisions for an automatic berth, then the team with the highest finish in the final BCS Standings will receive the automatic berth, and the remaining team or teams will be considered for at-large selection if it meets the criteria.
4. Notre Dame will have an automatic berth if it is in the top eight of the final BCS Standings.
5. If any of the 10 slots remain open after application of provisions 1 through 4, and an at-large team from a conference with an annual automatic berth for its champion is ranked No. 3 in the final BCS Standings, that team will become an automatic qualifier, provided that no at-large team from the same conference qualifies for the national championship game.
6. If any of the 10 slots remain open after application of provisions 1 through 5, and if no team qualifies under paragraph No. 5 and an at-large team from a conference with an annual automatic berth for its champion is ranked No. 4 in the final BCS Standings, that team will become an automatic qualifier provided that no at-large team from the same conference qualifies for the national championship game.

OK, so we're dealing with five bowl games pitting the top ten teams according to the last BCS rankings at the end of the season against one another, right? To borrow a line from Lee Corso, Not so fast, my friend!

This year, rule #1 is fairly easy to implement. #1 Oklahoma* (Big 12 champion, 12-1 record) faces off against #2 Florida (SEC champ, 12-1). Unlike in years past, this should be a good matchup between two very deserving teams. No quibbles here. Let's look at some of the other four BCS bowl games, however.

* For clarity's sake, all rankings are pulled from the final BCS rankings as of today, 7 Dec.

Now we're down to eight spots to fill from the mix of automatic berth qualifiers and teams deserving of at-large bids. Le "Granddaddy of them all"(TM), the Rose Bowl gets #5 USC (Pac 10 champ, 11-1) against #8 Penn State (Big 10 champ, 11-1), and that has two benefits: 1) It should be an entertaining game between two very good teams; and 2) It preserves the Big 10-Pac 10 matchup everyone likes to see. At least, that is the preferred matchup since 1947.

Now just six spots remain in three other BCS bowls. Let's swing over to the Sugar Bowl first, just for giggles. Meeting at the Super Dome this year are #6 Utah (Mountain West champ, 12-0) and #4 Alabama (SEC number two, 12-1). Wait, so that means we're already burning one at-large bid for a conference number two. Given that Alabama held the number one ranking for so long, and is still ranked so highly after losing to Florida in the SEC Championship, that's probably OK. This should be a good game, although I haven't seen much of either team this year. Alabama has a strong defense, and I couldn't begin to tell you anything at all about Utah other than they are undefeated. Urban Meyer isn't still coaching there, right?

Four spots remain; who's gonna get 'em?! Again, for giggles, let's go to the Orange Bowl. For some reason, the BCS commissioners decided to award automatic BCS berths to the winners of the Big Least and ACC conferences. The ACC has some traditionally decent football schools in there, including the Florida version of Miami, Georgia Tech, Clemson, Florida State, and Boston College. Virginia Tech rose to prominence behind Beamerball and Michael Vick, and Ralph Friedgen did some good work at Maryland, but the rest of the schools are more basketball schools like UNC, Wake Forest, NC State, and Duke. The Big Least has been something of a football wasteland ever since they lost their more powerful schools to the ACC. They had to pick up Cincinnati and Southern Florida just to keep the conference going, so we're basically talking about Pitt, Rutgers, WV, and Louisville. Syracuse is a basketball school that hasn't been good in football since Jim Brown played there. Regardless, two other automatic bids go out for this game, and it should be a real winner. #12 Cincinnati (Big East champ, 11-2) looks much better in this matchup against a #19 Virginia Tech (ACC champ, 9-4) team that played its way into the automatic BCS berth by beating a better BC squad in the ACC Championship game. Again, this game should be a real winner... NOT!

Now that we've let in two teams that finished outside the top ten in the last BCS rankings, that means two teams from the top ten have to get screwed somehow. It's simple math.

And that takes us down to the last BCS bowl game, the Fiesta Bowl. Fortunately, we didn't have to worry about Notre Dame taking up a BCS spot via rule #4, although by some miracle, they did finish 6-6 and bowl eligible this season. They're playing in the Hawaii Bowl on 24 Dec, so Merry Christmas, ND fans. We did see the successful application of rule #3, in which the MWC champ, Utah, gets to play in a BCS game. That also invokes the last paragraph of rule #3, stating that no more than one team from one of the "lesser" conferences shall obtain an automatic berth. So, now that we've satisfied all the automatic berths, we go to the at-large berths.

This year, we actually see the successful application of rule #5 (and aren't you happy all the rules are right where you can see them?!). The University of Texas ended up #3 in the final poll, and since OU won the Big 12's automatic berth (not an at-large bid), the Longhorns suddenly find themselves in an automatic berth. Confused yet? We also see the successful application of rule #6, since Alabama finished #4 in the final poll, yet Florida qualified as the automatic berthee from the SEC Conference. But wait, we did see UT qualify under rule #5. At this point, I think all bets are off, and the BCS gurus can basically pick whomever they want.

The teams we're left with are #7 Texas Tech (Big 12 number three, 11-1), #9 Boise State (Western Athletic Conference champ, 12-0), #10 Ohio State (Big 10 number two, 10-2), and #11 TCU (MWC number two, 10-2). They already allowed two Big 12 teams into the BCS club, and the rules stipulate that no more than two teams from a BCS conference can take up spots in the BCS bowls. Sorry, Texas Tech, you had a great season and even knocked off the number one team in the land at home, but you're out!

They already allowed in one "lesser" conference champion in Utah into the BCS club, so what are the odds that Boise State would get an at-large invite? Even though Boise State proved two years ago they could play with the big boys (during one of the most thrilling Fiesta Bowls ever!!!) when they shocked OU in overtime through a little razzle-dazzle, what are the odds of getting another shot at a big-time football factory like Texas? Maybe the BCS gods were a little scared that Boise State might pull off another upset against a Big 12 school on a neutral field. That just might upset the whole BCS apple cart. Shock me once, shame on you; shock me twice, shame on me...

Oh, and sorry, TCU, but no one is about to pass out an at-large BCS berth to the number two team from the MWC. It just ain't gonna happen.

So, this year's Fiesta Bowl matches #3 Texas (Big 12 number two, 11-1) against #10 Ohio State (Big 10 number two, 10-2). Yes, OSU fans do like to travel to the desert in January. Yes, Ohio State has had good success at the site of the Fiesta Bowl. Yes, OSU is a football factory competing head-to-head with the football factory from Texas. OSU and Texas even played that very memorable home-and-home series several years ago, when Vince Young parlayed an early-season victory over Ohio State into a national title run. So there are numerous reasons why the BCS gods wanted to match those two schools against one another in Tempe, AZ.

And yet, I can't help but think that Boise State got screwed. Where will they be playing their bowl game this year? The 23 December San Diego Poinsettia Bowl, and against none other than TCU. So much for finishing the year ranked in the top ten overall, ahead of Ohio State. No good deed goes unpunished. Meanwhile, many other more prestigious bowls like the Outback, Gator, Cotton, and Capitol One Bowls filled their slates with the third- and fourth-best teams from the traditional power conferences. Why not match Boise State with Texas Tech in the Cotton Bowl? They were the next two highest ranked teams, and they had Texas Tech fans to pack the place even if folks from Boise decided not to fly down (which is highly unlikely).

This type of thing happens every year, and generates no small amount of controversy. I, for one, was really hoping Missouri could pull off the upset in the Big 12 Championship game. That would have meant a 10-3 Missouri team (if they had won) taking up the Big 12's automatic berth, while Texas probably would have played for the national title -- without winning their own Division, much less their own Conference! That has happened several times in the past, and it seems the Big 12 is always the culprit.

Blow up the BCS already!!!

Wow. What a Name!

2008-12-06T20:57:00.003-06:00

So, I was heading in to my office yesterday when I saw the following bus parked out front of our building:

I don't have a camera phone, so I actually pulled that photo from the GoLamers website. Apparently, these guys run a very successful charter bus line in Wisconsin and Florida, and they apparently were transporting some university's volleyball team for a match against the Fighting Illini this weekend.

All I can really say is that they must have the MOST... UNFORTUNATE... SURNAME... EVER!!!

C'mon, when you have to make a claim like this:

We at Lamers are committed to offering the newest and most meticulously maintained vehicles, as well as the most experienced and responsive staff. Traditionally, thousands of travelers rely on Lamers to make their trips a pleasure ... you can, too!

It can't be good, am I right?

Would you really want to walk off a bus labeled "Lamers" in bright red letters on the side? And would you really want to take the Lamers 2009 tour? Get in on the thirtieth anniversary tour in 2009! In Roman numerals, that becomes the XXX-rated tour! I've never been a big fan of any guided bus tour, so perhaps I'm prejudiced.

Best Blog List

2008-12-05T12:27:00.008-06:00

I'll bet no one expected a follow-on post to my last one! It's like getting two, two, two posts in one! I would link to a Flying Circus video on the Spanish Inquisition for the first reference, and a gum ad* vid for the second, but I don't want this to go on forever.

* That was a gum ad, wasn't it? Now everybody uses that catch-phrase ("...it's two, two, two __ in one!") for other purposes.

So, after taking a hiatus from blogging (and unplugging from e-mail and the Internet in general) over the Thanksgiving break, I came back to discover that one of my oldest* friends gave me a Superior Scribbler Award. Awww, thanks! His blog is called "beyond assumptions," which I think is terrific. All too often, people stop with what they assume to be true, without examining events, situations, or press releases (or fill in your own blank) for deeper meanings. True, without mistaken assumptions, we wouldn't have Jack Tripper moments, but it was some gu y who said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

* Please note I did not say eldest.

Now, I do have a sneaking suspicion that this award was created (and very recently, too!) with the intention of giving props to little-known and obscure bloggers toiling away in anonymity. You know, people just like me. Why? Just to make me (us) feel better about the time we spend on these posts. Lord knows we're not getting paid for this.*

* There was a very funny multiple-strip segment recently drawn by Doonesbury's Gary Trudeau when his intrepid reporter of integrity, Rick Redfern, was downsized from his newspaper job. What was Rick's only alternative? Joining the ranks of the 35+ million strong blogosphere, where about 97% of the people do it for free, with no expectation of actually being paid for their words.

What is the Superior Scribbler Award, you ask? The rules are below, and they spring from the original post from "The Scholastic Scribe" on 18 Oct 08. Like I said, it's recent. Oh, and I'm #426 on the Mr. Linky List, if you're checking.

Here are the rules as I understand them:

* Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.

* Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.

* Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to this Post, which explains The Award.

* Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!

* Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

So, I'll play along and try to be nice. It can be hard to do sometimes. Once you let the cat of cynicism out of the bag, he can be hard to pop back in! Hmm... "cat of cynicism." I like that! Maybe I'll trademark it. It's already copyrighted by appearing here. Yowza! Gotta love those Internet IP rights rules.

Since I'm limited to just a top five list, I've been wracking my brain for blogs that would truly fit my top five. I'd love to include my Dad's blog, but it's so far out there, I never visit it. I figure it's enough to have his blog near the top of my links list on the right side of my blog. It's a similar story with my sister's blog; I link to it, but I'm not going to list it in my top five. My brother's site is also linked, but his website is less of a blog than it is a merchandising site with bloggy characteristics on the news feed.

I also thought of all the websites I've visited in the past that would more qualify as blogs, but which I no longer visit or have been taken down. I thought Drew Curtis' FARK website was hilarious for a time, until I realized that it was just a news aggregator with snarky comments. The PhotoShop contests are way cool, but you can get in trouble with NSFW links.

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I regularly followed the LT Smash website. He was an Army Intel Reservist (I think!) who was supporting the troops marching on Baghdad, and his insight into OIF was very enlightening, even for those of us who are prior military. After rotating back to the U.S., he changed the blog to be Citizen Smash, and now I think that's been taken down.

I would have loved to follow Bat Girl for two reasons: 1) she had undying love for the Twins, and any baseball fan who is that dedicated and knows her stuff is worthy of admiration. 2) she regularly did baseball game scene recreations with LEGOs, which were pure genius! Alas, she took her blog down several years ago.

I never really got into "Faith and Fear in Flushing", a NY Mets blog from two guys who wrote The Daily Fix column (later converted into a blog) for the WSJ Online, mostly because I'm not a Mets fan. I always liked the name, though. It sounds like a sly reference to Hunter S. Thompson, and I'd love to know the etymology behind naming a town Flushing.

I also never got into "Deadspin", which might be heresy for sports fans who want a different opinion than what is being offered up by the MSM, which in the case of sports, means ESPN. I did see H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger tear into Will Leitch via YouTube (since I don't get HBO, so could not have seen the Bob Costas Show), and that was revelatory. That diatribe was also the source of my comment tucked away within my profile paragraph on the right side of this blog.

Having said all of that, and because it would smack too much of nepotism or paybacks to name Steve's "beyond assumptions" blog in my top five, here are my top five. Currently. They're always open to change in the next week, month, or year. Keep in mind that several of my top five are written by professionals, which again probably goes against the intent of this Superior Scribbler Award. What do I know? It's not my award idea, so I'll pass it along to whomever I feel is most worthy.

Joe Posnanski is a professional sports writer currently working for the KC Star and Sports Illustrated. His wonderful blog is writing he does on the side, so he probably doesn't get paid for it any more than the rest of us do. I discovered Joe's writing because The Daily Fix kept linking to his Star columns, which were terrific. When I discovered his blog, I was hook, line, and sinker. Only then did I find out he's originally from Cleveland, OH! So he definitely makes the list. I need to pick up his book about Buck O'Neil, and can't wait for his upcoming book on the Big Red Machine circa 1975.
The Fantasy Football Librarian is a blog I discovered when I googled for "fantasy football draft prep kits" one day. I'm happy I did! Sara mostly posts links to other FFB content like start/sit lists on other sites, but hers is a very good news aggregator for FFB-ophiles. She also is willing to answer crazy e-mails from me, so that's a plus.
I hate to say it, but there are excellent blogs being written on a regular basis at WSJ Online. Again, I'm giving more kudos to people actually being paid to write their blogs, but gosh darn it, they do it so well! Two I'd like to highlight from the Journal are "The Juggle", which is all about highlighting topics on the struggle to find work-life balance, and "The Daily Fix", which highlights the best sportswriting on the web every week day. Sorry, I just couldn't avoid listing those two in one space. I am sad that so many of the personal finance columnists I enjoyed reading so much on a weekly basis seemed to depart the WSJ shortly after Rupert Murdoch's News Corp took over, but perhaps the timing was just coincidence. The Juggle and The Daily Fix remain solid blogs, but I do miss "Buzzwatch", which kept track of what was hot on the Internet, Internet memes, and related information age currency.
I almost didn't want to include this one, since I am restricted to just five top blogs. Anne doesn't update her "The Agile Mind" blog very often, but when she does, it's great stuff, especially because it is often relevant for my work in the Federal Government technology arena. I could have listed several others in this space that are also relevant to my work, such as GovExec's NextGov "Tech Insider" blog, or "The Danger Room" from WIRED magazine. Wait, have I busted the top five limit? Sue me.
OK, last one. I just discovered this blog, so perhaps it is too early to be listing Jonathan Turley as a top five favorite. However, I used to check out the WSJ Online's Law Blog for many of the same reasons why I like Turley's blog. He tends to focus on crazy happenstances in legal cases, which sometimes smacks of News of the Weird. All too often, however, the cases Turley highlights are sad examples of authority figures overstepping their bounds in employment or termination decisions. Yes, I did link to that post just so I could link to the photos of the teacher's bikini pics. Seriously! Why do you think I found Turley's blog in the first place?! Sheesh!
Exception: If you disqualify the Turley blog as too new, then I would throw in a blog written by a woman with whom I went to B-school. Eliza hadn't been writing much in times past, but now she's on the bandwagon along with the rest of us. She doesn't get many comments, so perhaps this little nod will bump up site traffic for her. One can hope!

So there you have it. My top five list actually comes out closer to a top ten. It probably should be a top ten list, because then I could throw in other blogs I've visited in the past but not so much now. That would include "A Million Shades of Gray" (which I like the content, but she hardly ever updates it!), "Life Family et al" (which has been taken down, apparently), "Recovering Straight Girl" (which is kinda fun, but what does it have to do with me?), the "McCain Blogette" (which hasn't been updated since John McCain's concession speech, for obvious reasons), Mike Florio's "ProFootballTalk" Rumor Mill (which really has some of the best NFL scoops on the Internet, veracity be damned), "Because I Said So" (Dawn is the mom of Ebay Pokemon card pack fame, and has been called the "Erma Bombeck of Our Generation" -- how do you fight that? But I've had too much trouble subscribing to her feed via google reader, so I quit trying), and a group blog called "The Sports Economist" (which I still want to get on their author list, but haven't found the time to write anything worthy of their attention).

I'm not even including some of the more spurious pseudo-blogs out there, usually done more for humor's sake, like "The Cold Hard Football Facts", "The Borowitz Report", "The Sports Pickle", and "Drivl.com". Have I provided enough links to keep you busy today? Enjoy!

Worst Blog List

2008-12-04T09:07:00.000-06:00

I think we can all be thankful that our 35 million+ blogs are too small to attract the attention of MSM powerhouses like MSN.com, who came up with this list of the lamest blogs. They basically ripped on lame advertising or marketing attempts (Jack in the Box, Pepsi, Wal*Mart, etc.) disguised as blogs, and I'm OK with that. MSN also ripped (pseudo-) celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Rosie O'Donnell and Paris Hilton for their blogs, and I'm OK with that, too.

The one blog I thought was unfairly singled out was Dave Walker's Dullest Blog in the World. The premise of that blog was pretty clever, I thought. If something is intentionally lame, that makes it un-lame, right? It's like if you make fun of yourself, then no one else can. Call it the Louie Anderson corollary. The one drawback is that Dave lost interest in providing further updates back in 2006, so MSN really shouldn't be picking this as one of the current lamest blogs.

I also greatly appreciated the below comic strip from Stephan Patsis, who writes and draws "Pearls Before Swine,"* one of my favorite comics these days. Don't we all feel like Pig sometimes?

* You might be familiar with the expression, which dates back to the Bible. Patsis regularly uses his comic to rip the old, staid standbys of the comics page, like Blondie, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible, and Family Circus; when Blondie did its huge anniversary/birthday party using characters from other comic strips (and the other cartoonists drew their characters as getting ready for the party in the days leading up to the event), Patsis drew Rat and Pig as the uninvited party crashers. Surely there's another expression about biting hands that feed... ah, but I digress.

Several Things Bugging Me Recently

2008-12-03T12:42:00.001-06:00

Wow, what a great headline, no? I'll never be an editor, that's for sure! Like, totally! And can we ever get enough Valley Girl speak? I still cringe when I hear current American teens using the word "like" as a preposition, a noun, a verb, and as every fifth word in their sentences. It's cringe-worthy! Cringealicious! The Cringeinator!*

* OK, so that last one went one too far. Sue me.

Several things have been gnawing at me lately, so I thought I would combine them into a single post rather than spreading them out over several days.

The first is that I was troubled by how many people threw around the "Drinking the Kool Aid" metaphor in mid-November. I'm fully cognizant of the fact that 18 Nov 2008 was the thirty-year anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre (wait, can we call it a massacre if the Dr. Jones followers willingly drank the cyanide-laced Kool Aid?). I'm also fully aware that people have used that term to describe any groupthink, especially when it becomes rather obsessive. However, I saw people using that term in all manner of diverse methods around the time of the 30th anniversary, and it bothered me. Given that over 900 people lost their lives that day, we should be more circumspect in our words and their usage thereof. Maybe popular culture has moved on to the point where people casually disregard other human life unless it personally impacts us as individuals. Heaven forbid! I do see people joining causes to stop the exploitation and trafficking of school-age boys and girls in Third World countries, so perhaps there is still hope.

The 30th anniversary of Jonestown was, of course, followed by the news of the terrorist attack in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India. That dominated the news for the entire Thanksgiving weekend, which we sometimes have to remind ourselves is a uniquely American tradition.* When I heard the details of the attack, and that only 10 terrorists were responsible for a well-planned, well-coordinated, series of precision attacks meant to sow the greatest discord and achieve the greatest publicity world-wide, I was very troubled. Al-Qaeda, for all of its skill in training suicide bombers in organized camps pre-9/11, never had that level of sophistication in its attacks. Yes, they did an incredible job convincing 19 radical Muslims to take pilot training in advance of the 9/11 flying-airliners-as-weapons attacks, but their bombings always seemed a bit cruder than what happened in Mumbai.

* Try finding turkey, cranberry sauce, or pumpkin pie being served on 24 November outside the U.S. You might be surprised!

Now, some people might quibble with the previous paragraph. The terrorist group apparently responsible for the Mumbai attacks was officially named as Lashkar-e-Taiba, and it does have links to al-Qaeda. The group supposedly denied responsibility, which is strange for a terrorist organization; typically, they want their name associated with an attack, especially a highly successful (in their eyes) one.

What really bothered me about the attack was how coordinated it was, and how effective the ten attackers were against some top anti-terror Indian police and military units. It does show how small unit tactics and special operations-style training matters. Sadly, those tactics were used against innocent civilians this time. I fear that the effectiveness proven during this attack will be seized by other terrorists, who will undoubtedly try to copy the training and tactics. Heaven forbid, indeed!

And then I saw that lifestyle guru Deepak Chopra was making comments on CNN and other media outlets recently, blaming the U.S. for the attacks in Mumbai. (That's a WSJ link; subscription req'd) Needless to say, that bothered me! Even though the CNN interviewer interrupted Chopra and forced him to somewhat backtrack from his inflammatory remarks, there is no doubt that many people believe the same way Chopra does. Forget that the U.S. in October tried to warn the Indian government of an impending attack from the sea on Mumbai, which is found in the link from AFP provided two paragraphs above. This simplistic idea that Islamic terrorists strike against all nations simply because of U.S. foreign policies since WWII (inevitably and inexorably tied in with our support of Israel, naturally) is, well, just that: too simplistic.

Let's not forget about the Holy Crusades fought throughout the 10th-15th centuries, shall we? Let's not forget that Muslims, Jews, and then Christians have been having our little "family feud" ever since Abraham first fathered Ishmael with his hand-maiden, Hagar. Since Ishmael was the first-born, Muslims always considered that God's covenant was established with him, making theirs the one true religion. In our Old Testament Bibles, we are taught that God established his covenant with Issac, Abraham's son by his true wife, Sarah. From Judaism sprang Christianity, so we're all in this mess together, it seems.

Let me discuss one final issue bugging me recently, and I'll close. Tied up in all this mess of Presidential transition activities is the hope of many that policies enacted by the Bush 43 administration, especially the Patriot Act, will be repealed or fall by the wayside under Obama 44. I read this very strong op-ed piece from the WSJ discussing the need to move Intelligence past the 1970s. In the article, L. Gordon Crovitz focuses more on the usefulness or applicability of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, and rightfully so. He also touches on just how technology has advanced to the point of making FISA obsolete. The Mumbai attackers used Blackberries to communicate! They didn't even need to rely upon radios, which are almost always line-of-sight and short range, problems that bedevil our first responders even beyond the fact that the radios often aren't compatible between the police and fire departments. Perhaps the Indian first responders' first action should have been to shut down Internet access where the attacks took place. Maybe that will be standard operating procedure in the future.

Without giving away the farm, I can say that the Intel community has struggled for some time to remain relevant in terms of data collection. On one hand, we can collect staggering amounts of data, most of which ends up "on the floor" without ever being processed, simply because we don't have enough analysts to listen or look for what's really important. On the other hand, all Intel agencies struggle to obtain that highly relevant data from suspected terrorist groups who wisely avoid using technologies that we compromised long ago. Why is Osama bin Laden still at large? He relies more on couriers and messengers from his inner circle to distribute his edicts, and we have no way of intercepting those or of infiltrating his group.

Which led the first Bush 43 administration, dominated by the neo-conservatives, to suggest we build the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, later renamed as Terrorism Info Awareness after privacy-minded individuals raised serious objections to the DARPA-funded program. Perhaps people in America have forgotten about TIA, but the Brits have not. Recently, my wife and I watched the thoroughly engrossing Masterpiece Contemporary miniseries titled The Last Enemy (2008) on our local PBS station. If you get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it. I obviously understand the makers of that miniseries overly dramatized the reach and capabilities of the Intel agencies in Britain in order to make their point about TIA-style information mining programs run amok. It's the same whenever Hollywood puts out a movie with the National Security Agency (NSA, or "No Such Agency") as the bad guys (think Enemy of the State (1998) with Gene Hackman and Will Smith).

But as Crovitz said very eloquently, we do need to balance the need to discover terrorists with the right to privacy expected by average U.S. citizens. Which gets into all its own arguments pro and con, and this could go on ad infinitum. I've gotta cut it off here. Whew! That's what's been on my mind recently.

Having a Tyler Durden Moment

2008-12-03T10:50:00.000-06:00

Is this subversive? Is it appropriate? Is it art, as my dad would say?

What if it accurately captures how we feel? What do we say to that? And I'm thinking I really have to read the book by Chuck Palahniuk.

I always liked the name Chuck. My grandfather was a Charlie, and my sister used that name for her oldest boy. But I always liked when people changed it to Chuck, a la Peppermint Patty. Maybe I would feel differently if it were my name.

The Problem With the BCS

2008-11-17T16:06:00.000-06:00

It is readily apparent that there is simply too much money sloshing around the current Bowl Championship Series system (formerly known as Division I-A AKA big-time football) to get anything to change in favor of a playoff system. We've all heard the arguments for and against a college football playoff system, which basically boil down to this:

For: Let the players decide who really is the best team on the field.
Against: A bunch of really specious arguments, none of which make any sense whatsoever.

I don't even want to get into the reasons why the arguments against a Div I-A playoff don't make any sense; they just don't. For those who say you can't take these players away from their studies for that long, who are you trying to kid? Many football factory schools don't make their star players attend classes anyway, and if the athletes in Division III (none of whom have a hope of playing at the NFL level) can have a playoff system, then why can't we have one at the Div I-A level?

There was a brilliant proposal last year on Yahoo! Sports, and I don't remember who wrote it, but it basically said this: put the top eight teams according to their rankings at the end of the season into a playoff system. (Sure, you'll get griping from the number 9- and 10-ranked schools, but that's better than the current system.) It would take three rounds -- three weekends -- to decide the champion, which is not much different from today's bowl game schedule. For the first two rounds, let the higher-ranked team play at home. That means additional home ticket sales, additional revenue for the school, and the fans don't have to travel ungodly amounts to see and support their team. Plus, wouldn't you just love to see a warm-weather team like LSU, USC, or Florida go north to play in Ohio Stadium or Happy Valley in December? It would remove a lot of the advantage those teams enjoy in warm-weather venues, that's for sure. For the final game, call it whatever name you want, and play it wherever you want, but then the fans only have to travel once for the actual championship game.

Now, a lot of the fans and sportwriters that defend the current system blather on about lots of different quality-of-life arguments related to Div I-A football. To wit: every week is important, even those September games (forget that very few non-conference games mean a darn thing as the football factories schedule Div I-AA patsies for easy victories, Appalachian State over Michigan notwithstanding); with 38 bowl games, you have 38 teams that finish on a high note (and only about two or three of those bowls mean anything -- hell, keep playing all the Armed Forces Emerald Nuts Poinsettia Aloha California Raisin Humanitarian Bowls you want); tradition, tradition, tradition (also forget that the traditional bowl pairings have really only been around since the 1920s or later [in the case of the "Grandaddy of Them All"(R) Rose Bowl, the Big 10 and Pac 10 have sent their conference champs to meet there only since 1947] -- in the entire course of human history, that's a speck of time); speculating on bowl matchups and who is in versus who is left out of the current system makes for great debate (for sportswriters and talking heads on Saturdays); etc. etc., blah blah blah.

Here's my problem with that. Can anyone follow what this writer is talking about relative to Oregon State and the BCS? Never mind for one instant that for Oregon State to crash the BCS system, they have to finish in the top 16 to win an at-large bid and they currently sit at 21 in the BCS rankings. I just get extremely tired with all the speculating about potential matchups and bowl pairings. Nothing is simple like: "Win or go home." A person can hurt his or her brain trying to keep up with all the possibilities.

Maybe the sportswriters want it that way, just to keep their jobs interesting. The bowl commissioners, who have no ties to the NCAA or college football other than being able to raise enough money to keep their bowl game afloat from year to year (seriously, check out how many commissioners from the Rose Bowl actually do anything at all related to college football), definitely don't want to upset their apple carts. Any playoff system would have to find a way of keeping those people happy, which would take a ton of money. They have a vested interest in keeping the current system alive and well, thank you very much.

I did like Barack Obama's response on MNF, when Chris "Ethel Merman" Berman asked him what he would change about sports, if he could change one thing as President of the United States (POTUS). John McCain delivered a very serious, thoughtful answer about stopping the spread of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sports. Obama went with a fan's response, in favor of a Div I-A playoff in football. Now that he is President, he still can't make that happen, but it is nice to dream.

What Price Sexual Abuse?

2008-11-12T22:20:00.000-06:00

There was a criminal case that flew through the courts here recently. It involved a pretty disgusting man named Jon White, and I think I can use his name legally since he is now serving a 60 year jail term after being convicted on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual battery. He was a second-grade teacher at Thomas Paine Elementary school, and the girls he abused were 7- and 8-years old.

Yeah. Pretty darn sick.

Well, of those 10 counts, only eight were related to felony actions here in Champaign County. The other two came from when White was an elementary school teacher in McLean County, which is the next county over. The sicko was fired from that job in McLean for viewing pornography on a school computer and having inappropriate communication with a fifth grader, and yet he able to obtain a letter of recommendation from the principal who presumably fired him.

When the sexual assaults became known here in Champaign County, White's recent past in McLean County became grist for the inevitable lawsuits that followed. The issue of whether or not he was guilty was never in question, apparently. He pled guilty to lesser charges in order to avoid a jury trial, which thankfully also spared the Jane Doe victims from having to testify. Several civil lawsuits against White from victims' families are pending, I think.

The real issue became the fact that the families filed numerous Jane Doe lawsuits against the Urbana School District that hired White, alleging malfeasance in the hiring process. The families claimed that whoever was in charge of hiring for Urbana schools decided to go ahead on White, even though they knew the reasons for his firing from the McLean County schools.

There must have been some logic in that argument. The local paper just reported that the first of those lawsuits was just settled for $300,000 and that there be no public admission of liability on behalf of the Urbana School District. So, the hiring manager was not liable for the actions of the person who was hired, but they're going to pay $300K for the family's pain and suffering. And now, the bar has been set for all the other Jane Does who were abused by this sicko.

Is $300K really what that deep-seated emotional scarring is worth for a little girl who has to live with that the rest of her life?

A Message to You Rudy

2008-11-11T21:04:00.000-06:00

For some reason, I just want to post this awesome video from The Specials, one of the best ska bands ever!

There are actually two memories that I always connect to The Specials and ska.

The first is from when I was a junior in high school, and our English teacher asked everyone in the class to name different types of music, just to see how many we could put up on the blackboard. All the usual suspects came flying out, from rock, rap, reggae, country, western ("We got both kinds, Country and Western!"), folk, etc. etc., which also included all the various flavors of rock 'n' roll: rockabilly, classic rock, big hair rock, heavy metal, speed metal, death metal, etc.

As the class generally wound down from everyone trying to out-do each other with the different types of rock, I offered up one word: Ska! You would have thought I was speaking in a different tongue by the reaction from the rest of the class. People laughed at me, saying ska wasn't even a word, much less a type of music. To which, at the time, I could only lamely say that it was the combination of rock, jazz and reggae. When they laughed even more, all I could offer up was that The Police sang ska. That shut them up a little, since most kids at the time idolized Sting and The Police.

"Stop your messin' around..."

My second memory is of seeing The Specials play live in Las Vegas back in 1998, the last time I visited there. I was actually in Vegas for Red Flag; every so often, they let the Herk guys come in and fly a few missions, just to give the fighter pukes the opportunity to "shoot" slow-moving targets. (Very slow-moving!) The week before The Specials came to town, I scalped my way into the sold-out concert by the Brian Setzer Orchestra at the Hard Rock casino. This was at the height of the swing revival, and those tickets were hard to come by! People were all dressed up in Zoot Suits and poodle skirts, and it was a rocking good time to see people try to swing dance when the floor was that crowded! The only bad thing about the BSO show was that some of the people crowding the floor were really there just to be seen at the "popular" event. They weren't fans of the music as much as they were trend-spotting and trying to be hip.

Well, as much fun as I had seeing the Brian Setzer Orchestra play live, it was nothing compared to seeing The Specials play live! I'm sure they no longer had their entire complement of original band members by then. The tickets were much easier to buy, and in fact the crowd was probably half that of the BSO show. But everyone who was there to see The Specials play was truly a die-hard ska fan, and I remember taking a break from dancing just to see several hundred heads all bobbing in time to the music in unison! That was an awesome sight! We had so much more fun at The Specials' show.

"Better think of your future... else you'll wind up in jail..."

The Perfect Eclipse Analogy/Metaphor/Simile

2008-11-10T14:51:00.000-06:00

Alas, too late for my last post about the Mitsubishi Eclipse did I realize what would make the perfect analogy/metaphor/simile for the Eclipse. Now, I'm smart enough to realize that these three words are similar in usage, but are in reality quite different in meaning. The following definitions are from Dictionary dot com, but I really thank my sister, who graduated from Ohio State with an English degree and who nailed the differences cold.

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a·nal·o·gy

Pronunciation Key
n. pl. a·nal·o·gies

1. Similarity in some respects between things that are otherwise dissimilar.
2. A comparison based on such similarity. See Synonyms at likeness.

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met·a·phor

Pronunciation Key
n.

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in "a sea of troubles" or "All the world's a stage" (Shakespeare).

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sim·i·le

Pronunciation Key
n. A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as, as in "How like the winter hath my absence been" or "So are you to my thoughts as food to life" (Shakespeare).

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So, to use a simile, the sexy rounded rear end and otherwise humdrum front end of the Mitsubishi Eclipse is like the sexy rounded rear end and otherwise humdrum front of Stacy Keibler. I think it makes for a perfect analogy, and it also gives me the opportunity to post pictures of Keibler here:

Now, I admit she has a very pretty face, but what really sells calendars and pictures of Keibler is her fantastic rear end. She has no chest to speak of, although she probably isn't as flat as Debra Messing is. I also thought she was terrific on ABC's Dancing With the Stars, and was sad when she was voted off the show. That was the season won by Drew Lachey, with a close runner-up performance by Jerry Rice. When they interviewed her on the way out the door, I couldn't believe how nice and complimentary she was to her competitors, the judges, and to everyone involved with the show. I was impressed that anyone that smoking hot could be so nice! Since then, I've seen that everyone being voted off the show is just as nice and complimentary, so perhaps all the celebrites are under very strict orders to be gracious as they depart.

Anyway, I thought of that comparison and just had to include it here.

New and Old Mitsubishi Eclipses

2008-11-09T10:25:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, while driving to see my family in Dayton, OH, I kept playing "Interstate Tag" with a 2008 Mitsubishi Eclipse. We kept swapping spots on the highway, as the other driver and I would drive at different speeds at different times. I had my cruise control on, so I blame the other driver! I readily admit I'm no car designer, nor do I have any expertise in industrial design. However, I still feel eminently qualified to discuss my observations as a consumer and potential new car buyer.

What I saw was this: the rear end of the 2008 Eclipse looks an awful lot like an Audi Twin Turbo, or TT. Both are somewhat smallish two-door sports cars, with rounded tail sections that look very similar. Here's a picture of the two rear ends side-by-side:

The car I saw on the highway had to be a 2008 model of the Eclipse, because Mitsubishi revamped its design for the front of the car to more closely match the front end of the Audi TT. Here is a picture of the front end of a 2008 Eclipse, which has no character whatsoever:

The front pictured above is completely nondescript, with rounded features and nothing to create any excitement. There's no character, no edges, and the curves for the headlights and fenders didn't even match the curves found on the rear of the car. Here is a picture of the revamped front end of the 2009 Eclipse, side-by-side with the 2009 TT, and the similarity is unmistakable:

So the good news is that the engineers at Mitsubishi realized their previous models of the Eclipse needed to be re-worked. The car I saw on the highway looked really good only from behind. The car did have the wing on the back, which was fine, and I liked the placement of the taillights and the overall framing of the rear end. I just couldn't get out of my head how similar the rear end was to the Audi TT's rear end.

But then I saw the side and front end of the Eclipse, and couldn't believe how lousy they were, especially compared to the TT. It was just a blah rounded front end, with nothing remarkable to recommend it. The two ends of the car simply did not coexist well at all. So at least the engineers at Mitsubishi realized they had to do something to improve the Eclipse's looks, and they could do worse than copying the front proboscis style of Audi. I'm still not completely sold on the new front end of the Eclipse, but it is better than it was before.

It's most interesting that Mitsubishi now copies the European style after collaborating on the Eclipse throughout the '90s with American automakers. Who can forget that the Eclipse and the Eagle Talon were pretty much the same car throughout the '90s? Pictoral evidence is on the left, but when a consumer bought one car, he or she basically bought whichever version of the car he preferred. The performance of those cars was good, if not great. I do remember a good friend of mine who owned either a Talon or an Eclipse, and he posted the second fastest time on a slalom course for amateurs during a weekend racing event. The Eclipse/Talon was not the fastest car in straight-line speed, but they certainly had good suspension and could corner well.

The bottom line is that I was intrigued by the Eclipse when I saw it from behind. The first thought that went through my head was that it could be a fun alternative to the TT, with much the same style but at a far lower price. The Audi TT starts around $32K invoice, while the Eclipse starts around $19K invoice, so the difference on price is remarkable. When I saw the sides and front end of the Eclipse, I couldn't believe how awful they were, and how they didn't match what I saw from the rear of the car. Seeing the change in the front end of the 2009 Eclipse online means I would reconsider that car, but only if I were really in the market for a new smallish sports car.

It's still fun to think about, however.

Hollywood's Fascination with Assassins

2008-11-07T08:08:00.001-06:00

I watched the movie Smokin' Aces (2006) the other night, and it got me started thinking about all the assassin movies that Hollywood has released recently. It's not just Hollywood, either. The European and Asian filmmakers have a long history of making films about hit men, so let's not forget about that. It could be that part of this uptick in assassin movies has something to do with American popular culture being influenced more and more by Japanese and Chinese culture.

When I did a quick keyword search on just the word assassin on IMDB, the Internet Movie Database (best resource ever!), it returned 445 hits. Some of those line items were empty, which is very curious, but they were missing other key films I consider as assassin movies, such as La Femme Nikita (1990), the Whole Nine Yards (2000), and The Boondock Saints (1999). A keyword search for the terms professional and assassin yielded just 12 hits. Obviously, IMDB doesn't index its movie resources all that effectively, and perhaps they rely on user inputs, which can be notoriously faulty.

Here's a very incomplete listing of recent films on assassins or professional hit men (and women!) that filtered through my consciousness as I thought about this topic:

In Bruges (2008)
Pineapple Express (2008); a comedy, yes, but includes hit men
Wanted (2008)
Bangkok Dangerous (2008)
Hitman (2007); based on videogame
No Country for Old Men (2007)
You Kill Me (2007)
Smokin' Aces (2006)
The Matador (2005)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)
Collateral (2004)
Usher (2004); comedy about a hit man turned movie theater attendant
Kill Bill, vols 1 and 2 (2003-04)
the Bourne trilogy about the amnesiatic hit man (2002-07)
Assassination Tango (2002)
The Road to Perdition (2002)
The Whole Nine Yards (2000)
The Boondock Saints (1999)
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996); Geena Davis takes a turn as a female Bourne
Assassins (1995)
The Professional (1994)
Pulp Fiction (1994)
In the Line of Fire (1993)
Unforgiven (1992)
La Femme Nikita (1990)
The Eiger Sanction (1975)

I would even lump the first Terminator (1984) movie into this list, because yes, Arnold's time-traveling cyborg was sent back to assassinate Sarah Connor. Again, this is a very incomplete list, but there are some important points to keep in mind about these movies.

First and foremost, in the majority of these films, Hollywood shows the hit man in a favorable light and/or makes the assassin the hero/anti-hero. I'm sure Hollywood types love to romanticize the idea of the hit man; it must also generate some edgy tension in terms of making the audience care about a person they really should hate very much -- an assassin who takes a precious human life for nothing more than money. It also doesn't get much easier for a writer to show the classic man vs. man or man vs. self conflicts than by using an assassin, does it? Some of the greatest heroes in Hollywood, like Al Pacino's Michael Corleone in the first Godfather (1972) movie, took turns as killers. Who can forget the line, "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli"?

Not too many of the movies listed above actually make the assassin be the bad guy or antagonist in the storyline. Clint Eastwood's In the Line of Fire does, as Clint's Secret Service agent tries to keep John Malkovich from assassinating the President. It's hard to tell when Hollywood and other movie producers really started making the anti-hero be the protagonist (obviously, I never went to film school), but La Femme Nikita, The Professional, and Pulp Fiction took that idea and ran with it.

La Femme Nikita always struck me as being a landmark film for several reasons. First, the idea that the French government would take a female punker and turn her into a professional killer was intriguing. The relationship between Nikita and her handler was very complex, and made for a strong storyline. I omitted the Bridget Fonda remake, Point of No Return (1993), from the list above because it was awful in comparison to the original. The writer and director of Nikita, Luc Besson, also wrote and directed The Professional, also called Leon in foreign markets.

Something about The Professional always struck me as being a little bit off. At the end of the movie, no matter how much Besson wanted me to care sincerely about what happened to Jean Reno's character, I just couldn't muster that sadness. After all, Leon was a killer, and a very good one at that. Gary Oldman was definitely the bad guy in the movie, so Leon was supposed to be the father figure for Natalie Portman and so much more. Maybe my own American sensibilities couldn't fathom the purported romance between Leon and the 12 year old Mathilda, or maybe I just didn't want to get that, as objectionable as it is. I've read that European audiences were much more open to that idea, which might change the whole character of the movie. At any rate, I was never sold 100% on The Professional.

The next movie that really portrayed assassins in a favorable light was Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. I'll never forget the review I read at the time that pointed out the relationship between the two assassins played by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. That relationship was grounded in the dialogue between the two, and Tarantino has always been known for his dialogue.* The assassins played a significant part in the movie, to be sure. But the movie was not just about the two hit men, and there was a little redemption at the end for Samuel L. Jackson's character, which made it easier to stomach. It's probably the best movie I've seen that is not already in my DVD collection at home.

* Forget all the obvious examples from Tarantino movies, such as the opening of Reservoir Dogs (1992), or any lines from True Romance (1993), which he wrote. Those are classics, yes. But for me, the all-time Tarantino quote came from an otherwise forgettable movie called Sleep with Me (1994). If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. I'm not going to cut and paste the whole thing here, but you can read it yourself at IMDB here. If you haven't seen the movie, it's not worth your time to watch it just for the Tarantino performance.

I absolutely loved Grosse Pointe Blank with John Cusack precisely because the killer was so conflicted about his role in society. He continually says that "It's not me" when talking about him fulfilling a contract to kill someone. It's not personal, although the intended victim might not feel the same way. The movie works on so many levels because it does incorporate so much psychology into the storyline, and not just in the scenes with Cusack and Alan Arkin's Dr. Oatman character. When the hit man realizes he can truly never go home again (it's been converted to a Ultimart!), it is a classic scene. It also touches on the entire conflict of whether we allow our jobs or our professional lives to dictate how we are seen in society, of defining who we are as a person. It works on so many levels, not least of which because anyone who has returned for a high school reunion can totally relate.

Given all the examples listed above, I have to say that the "assassin as good guy" plot device is getting a bit tired. In Bruges was artfully done, and the acting was top-notch. The idea that a hit man could be completely conflicted about his career choice, and made even more so because of an unintended victim during a hit on a Catholic priest, was more realistic. In the movie I just watched, Smokin' Aces, one of the German hit men used a dead man's lips (played by Ben Affleck, and how on earth did he keep from laughing while someone else was manipulating his lips and eyelids?!) to request absolution from his victim. It boggles the mind, and was perhaps the deepest part of the movie.

I couldn't help but think that I would have really liked Smokin' Aces much more about 10-15 years ago. I'm sure I've matured in the intervening time, because the overly stylized violence just made me cringe. It was very juvenile in nature, and even though the cast did a very good job with the story, I wouldn't watch it again. That's been true for some of the Guy Ritchie movies, like Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). I remember seeing that movie in the theater and being impressed with how the characters' stories all came together. It was entertaining at the time. Later, when watching the movie with my sister and a few others, it seemed to be violence just for the sake of violence, and perhaps I've outgrown that.

At any rate, Hollywood continues to pump out movies about assassins. Given that Tom Cruise's Collateral was well received, and that the Coen Brothers won Oscar gold for No Country for Old Men, I expect that trend to continue. At least until people quit going to see these movies.