While Brian Cashman Napped

“I’ve been old-school. There’s been an understanding for years that the amateur market in Japan has really been off limits. We’ve not scouted Tazawa because we haven’t scouted the amateur market. I couldn’t tell you how good he is.”—Yankees GM Brian Cashman, discussing why his team didn’t scout or pursue RHP Junichi Tazawa, who is reportedly headed to the Red Sox.

Or, while Cashman was dozing genuine baseball professionals plucked some promising baseball talent from an unconventional yet obvious source. Sloth and/or ignorance posing as virtue is even less attractive than Cashman's creepy visage.

I bet before too long Cashman and the remnents of the Evil Empire will learn just how good the new Japanese kid is. I'm willing to wager that Tazawa will have more wins per dollar spent than Carl Pavano ($10 million per win) and Kevin Brown (a bargain at $3, 928,571.50 per win) combined. Those two along with Randy Johnson (attended high school with Mel Ott) were some old school signings, how'd they work out?

Rogue Waves

Imagine you're out at sea in a super tanker or stout cruise ship in heavy seas. Thirty foot swells come and go and other than praying to the porcelain idol from time to time you and your ship are no worse for wear. Then, ahead of you the sea rears up in a massive wall of water over a hundred and twenty feet tall - a rogue wave. What's worse, the trough before the wave accelerates your craft into it and lowers your bow so that all 120 feet of wave - creating over 100 tons of pressure per square meter, come crushing down on you like a fat man's sweet tooth on a crispy creme donut.

For years mariners have told of such waves- the ones lucky enough to survive them. In the past several years there have been a handful high profile losses to such waves which has piqued the curiosity of the scientific community.

The North Sea, off the coast of Norway, was angry that day, my friends. Hurricane-strong winds were blowing and twelve meter waves crashed on the Draupner oil rig. The rig’s workers were not worried, because the rig was designed to withstand hurricanes. At roughly 3 p.m. that afternoon, the order was given that all personnel must enter the rig’s structure- no one volunteered to stay outside and watch the ocean.
For this reason, no one saw the monstrous wave that hit the Draupner oil rig at 3:20 pm. The wave did not harm the rig itself (the platform was high above the water), but was recorded by a special laser-based wave-height detector. The rig’s engineers were shocked when they went over the detector's logs. The wave was almost 20 meters high. It was practically impossible- this kind of wave should only occur once every ten thousand years. Yet the laser detector was accurate to within an inch and worked
flawlessly. The wave’s existence was undeniable.

In 1899, a new lighthouse was built on a remote group of islands off the coast of Scotland, some 20 miles from the mainland. Three light house keepers were stationed at the lighthouse, and cared for the structure.
A year after the light house was erected, a supply ship came to the islands- as it did every week- to replenish the keepers' food supply. The ship's crew found the light house was empty. Its three keepers had vanished almost without a trace. Upon examining the scene, the ship's crew found that coats had been left behind, and a chair had fallen in the kitchen. These were considered as clues that hinted to a sudden catastrophe.
An examination of the lighthouse itself revealed damage to a metal box some thirty meters above the water's surface, a railing that was bent beyond repair, and a huge rock that was somehow moved from its place.
The official examiner speculated that a giant wave had hit the lighthouse- but since it was considered impossible that a wave this size might exist, alternative theories were invented to explain the men's sudden disappearance. Some speculated a fight had broken out between the keepers, others suggested murder, suicide, abduction by foreign agents, and even abduction by aliens- everything was possible.

Satellites using radar have spotted these gigantic rogue waves which occur much more frequently then anyone had imagined. The question remains what causes them?

Some distinct local weather patterns can cause inordinate swells along the coast of South Africa and in the deep water off of Norway, but what causes these waves in the open oceans? No one really knows for certain, but it appears that the monster waves siphon energy off the waves immediately adjacent to them, again why one wave does it and another does not is unclear.

Tina Fey's Scar

I don't think too much of Tina Fey's comedy, she's not quite Elayne Boosler bad but that's only because she's kinda of hot in that naughty librarian sort of way and no where near as annoying.
A few years ago, like everybody else, I noticed the scar on her face and wondered what the hell had happened to her - again like everybody else. Being the suspicious son of a cop, I assumed that she was slashed by some yahoo and it turns out I was right:

Tina Fey’s husband Jeff Richmond talks about Fey’s scar in the new Vanity Fair. Tina Fey’s scar has never been explained until now.Richmond tells the
publication of the event at age 5 that resulted in Fey’s facial scar: “It was
in, like, the front yard of her house, and some body just came up, and she just thought somebody marked her with a pen”

Jesus. What sort of freak show does that to a five year old girl or anybody else for that matter? I hope they caught the sick bastard and fed him to hamsters.

Smart Penguin

That's one smart bird. Being a mammal, I would have had to resist the urge to elbow the little bastard back into the water so our Orca cousins could eat him. That'd be cool, particularly if the Orca would somehow acknowledge the solid, say by a head toss or a flipper wave with a vocalization.

"I Do Not Like To Hear Good News"

Mary Katherine Ham does Dr. Suess:

AIDS Crises Overblown?

Yeah but it's just so tragically trendy and all the cool kids have got it and those poor skinny foreigners and and and ....

Roger England of Health Systems Workshop, a think tank based in the Caribbean island of Grenada, goes further. He argues that UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the fight against the disease, has outlived its purpose and should be disbanded.
"The global HIV industry is too big and out of control. We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake, ... too many relatively well paid HIV staff in affected countries, and too many rock stars with AIDS support as a fashion accessory," he wrote in the British Medical Journal in May.

and this

England argues that closing UNAIDS would free up its $200 million annual budget for other health problems such as pneumonia, which kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

Time to short red ribbon and go long on some other colors for a change.

Big Three Automakers

The CEOs of the big three automakers flew private jets to Washington D.C. to beg for bailout money. There, in that one tone deaf ostentation is everything you need to know about why they are failing. If the Detroit Poobahs can't tell how this will look to the American taxpayer, how do they hope to compete against Honda, Toyota, Acura and Lexus?

My first new car was a 1989 Acura Integra it had everything, and more, that a 24 year old would want. It was as if Honda asked a bunch of twenty somethings what they wanted in a car and created it for them, only better. I looked at the Ford Escort too which was much cheaper but no where near as good. What decided the deal for the Acura was that it's re-sale value dwarfed that of the Ford so at the end of the day the cost to own was actually less and it was a far superior car by any standard.

Take a look at the 10 cars that damaged General Motors reputation. My question, how did you narrow it down to only ten? Vega , Chevette, Citation, Cimarron, Saturns, Aztecs, Olds Diesels, Cadillac V-8-6-4, Hummers and the EV1. I remember my dad was all excited about the Cimarron after he had read some article praising GM for making a nimble car that could compete with Europe's best. Somehow by the time he got to the show room in his 1976 Bavaria the GM world beater turned out to be just a gaudy Cavalier. While a Cavalier was par for the course for Chevy, putting $72 worth of chrome on it, calling it a Caddy and charging thousands more is consumer ass rape of the first degree.

I have owed one American made car in the last twenty years, a 1995 Ford Taurus. When it wasn't leaking something or in need of a tranny rebuild, I kind of liked it. Not that it was a good car or anything or that it handled, braked or accelerated well, I just liked it's big marshmallowy seats and big car feel. If it had been dependable I'd still might like it despite it's 1950's feel, but it was not.

Don't get me wrong, I don't wish the big three ill, but to bail out a non-hacker does not bode well for our economy. They should for bankruptcy so they can renegotiate their onerous labor and health care costs and re-emerge as a competitive entity. Then they should learn how to make decent cars.

So Hitler Had TWO Testicles

News to me. Ron Rosenbaum at Slate takes on those who mythologize Hitler's sexuality in an attempt to explain his actions, it's an interesting read. My two cents; Hitler was only one man and one man no matter how perverse or powerful can only do so much on his own. Hitler bears the responsibility for leading the Third Reich but Germany and the German people bear the responsibility for electing him and acting out their collective, macabre ambitions.
As for Hitler's sexuality, I couldn't care less. If he were a sexless freak or an oversexed stoat what would that tell us about him? I guarantee you there are more extreme people at either end of the spectrum living within a mile of you and not one of them has any plan to invade Poland or enact any final solutions. Chances are that if we knew everything there was to know about the inner workings of Hitler's mind we'd be shocked not at the pathology, but at the banality of it all. I guess it's reassuring to think that Hitler and men like him are superhuman monsters. The scary truth is that he's not so unusual, what was unusual is that he was elected to lead a powerful nation like Germany and the German people followed him. If you are searching for lessons from history, that's a good place to start.

Sunday Mass, priests, and passion

I have been feeling this way about Sunday Mass for about 5 years or so (language alert); I've always liked Tommy Tiernan:

The Voter and the Two Voices

The Voter and the Two Voices

El D's reference to GK Chesterton reminded me of this piece GKC wrote about the two party system of democracy; I thought it poignant, especially when one considers our two poor choices during the last federal election. My unpoignant abridged version:

".... To follow the process in practice we may put it thus. [One party] wants
to do something to Mr. Asquith. I have no notion what it is. Let us say
(for the sake of argument) that they want to paint him green.... Then the party in opposition would adopt another policy, not a policy of leaving Mr. Asquith alone (which would be considered dangerously revolutionary), but some alternative course of action, as, for instance, painting him red. Then both sides would fling themselves on the people, they would both cry that the appeal was now to the Caesar of Democracy....There would be fights in the street perhaps, and abundance of ribbons, flags, and badges, of the two colours. One crowd would sing, "Keep the Red Flag Flying," and the other, "The Wearing of the Green." But when the last effort had been made and the last moment come, when two crowds were waiting in the dark outside the public building to hear the declaration of the poll, then both sides alike would say that it was now for democracy to do exactly what it chose. England herself, lifting her head in awful loneliness and liberty, must speak and pronounce judgment. Yet this might not be exactly true. England herself, lifting her head in awful loneliness and liberty, might really wish Mr. Asquith to be pale blue. The democracy of England in the abstract, if it had been allowed to make up a policy for itself, might have desired him to be black with pink spots. It might even have liked him as he is now. But a huge apparatus of wealth, power, and printed matter has made it practically impossible for them to bring home these other proposals, even if they would really prefer them. No candidates will stand in the spotted interest; for candidates commonly have to produce money either from their own pockets or the pasty's; and in such circles spots are not worn. No man in the social position of a Cabinet Minister, perhaps, will commit himself to the pale-blue theory of Mr. Asquith; therefore it cannot be a Government measure, therefore it cannot pass.... So that the situation comes to this: The democracy has a right to answer questions, but it has no right to ask them. It is still the political aristocracy that asks the questions. And we shall not be unreasonably cynical if we suppose that the political aristocracy will always be rather careful what questions it asks.... For the powerful class will choose two courses of action, both of them safe for itself, and then give the democracy the gratification of taking one course or the other."

Red Neck Olympic Event

I surprised that there are others who play this game too.

My Thanksgiving Wish For You

I hope you enjoy a big fat feast among family and friends. And I hope you realize that everyday we enjoy a lifestyle here in The Greatest Republic The World Has Ever Known that kings 100-200 years ago would envy.

I wish you, and I for that matter, could spend six months living like most people in the world have ever lived so that we could clearly see that we are the exception in human history. We are, by and large, free from the fear of war, free of disease, free of hunger. All the knowledge in the world exists at our fingertips all we need is the curiosity to discover it.

And I thought the PC movement oppressive at UConn, during the 80's

The students at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada (Canada, surprised?), are rescinding their support (actually, their promotion & support of the major fundraiser "Shinerama" which raises $1 Million yearly for Cystic Fibrosis) because CF is a disease “recently [actually, mistakenly - CM] revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men....”

The Brave New World is upon us.

Apparently after a hugely negative reaction from normal Canadians and others abroad, the students have (within 24 hours) backed down.

Oh The Humanity!

Here is the whole episode.

Dude! WTF Is Up With That Doo?

Meet Peter Orszag President Elect Obama's new Director of Office of Management and Budget, I'm not sure what he calls his fuzzy little friend. He's not a bad looking man, it's a shame he opened himself to childish ridicule with such a poor rug. To Whit:
The Top Ten Wise Ass Remarks About Peter Orszag's Piss Poor Rug

1. Do you feed it Quadrotriticale? I hear they like it.
2. Sy Sperling called, apparently there's been a recall.
3. Mr. Orszag, good news and bad news. First your Chaetophobia has mysteriously disappeared, unfortunately your Ancraophobia will probably get much, much worse.
4. I don't care if it came with a matching merkin.
5. I've always said there is nothing worse than a man with a comb over. I stand corrected.
6. Did Howard Cosell die?
7. I bet your not married, if you are I bet your wife is blind or very, very vindictive and insecure.
8. Is it Purim today or something?
9. America supports the "Troops" numbnuts, the TROOPS!
10. Are you, by chance, a Vampire? No? Then WTF are you thinking?

Unintended Consequences

At the risk of stirring up yet another hornets nest, here's an interesting article on the unintended consequences of changing social institutions by Megan McArdle, in which she quotes the inimitable G. K. Chesterton:

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

Read the whole thing, it's well worth your time.
Hat Tip: Kim du Toit

"To Destroy You Is No Loss"

Teeda Butt Mam was fifteen years old when the Khmer Rouge came to power in her native Cambodia. This is her story. The title comes from a slogan of the Khmer regime: "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss."

excerpt 2,  excerpt 3,  excerpt 4
excerpt 5,  excerpt 6,  excerpt 7

This audio book is currently out of print. If you enjoy this audio book please send $5 to the publisher:

East/West Bridge Publishing House
P.O. Box 211412
Auke Bay, Alaska 99821-1412 U.S.A.

www.HowObamaGotElected.com

Olive Oil in Connecticut

Connecticut is the first state in the union to impose strict quality standards for olive oil:

Connecticut's regulations, which took effect Nov. 5, adopt a "standard of identity" for olive oil sold in the state that mirrors the standards developed by International Olive Oil Council. The regulations define virgin olive oil as "those oils obtained from the fruit of the olive tree solely by mechanical or other physical means ... which have not undergone any treatment other than washing, decanting, centrifuging and filtration."

That's fine as far as regulations go, it's better than the pencil dicks in the legislature futzing around with more pointless gun control legislation.
I have one pet peeve involving olive oil - oddly enough. When you're eating a restaurant fine, chain or otherwise and the wait staff informs you that extra virgin olive oil on the table is there so you can dip your bread into it. Sometimes they'll say something really irksome and perky like "We call it Italian butter!" Often it's some pasty suburban kid whose idea of ethnic food is French Fries who until recently didn't know EVOO from a very young Shelley Duvall. I know it's news to them, but I came into the place with both shoes tied and on the correct feet, don't you think they ought to give me the benefit of the doubt?

My God, We've Become A Nation of Pussies

Oh the humanity!