Compelling arguments here and here that the stats we're getting on tsunami aftermath (dead people; cash value of donations) are inappropriate units.
Deaths are worth noting for their own sake of course, but on the relief end people who've already died is either irrelevant or incomplete (depending on when, how, and why they died). The monetary figure is of course highly misleading (see Scott Wickham's references to Microsoft software and aircraft carrier overhead for over- and underinclusion). What really matters, I think, is lives saved by any particular form of aid.
Quantifying that reliably is another story. That said, be skeptical about any numbers you hear there, given how many assumptions you need to make.
UPDATE: Comments back up again. Bogg and I had e-mail streams cross, and so hours after sending me the fix, he went ahead and implemented it himself. The reasons why I owe him at least one meal next time we see each other are almost innumerable.
Noticing the comment spam last night ruined my evening (especially since before I realized the scope of the spam - maybe a dozen per post - I'd been trying manual delete), though I did also catch two real comments that were wiped in the purge.
> Subject: Comment Spam
> Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2005 11:08:04 -0500
>
> Matt -
>
> We got hit with hundreds of comment spams last night. I've closed
> comments on entries older than 5 days, deleted the entries directly
> from the database (DELETE FROM mt_comment WHERE comment_created_on >
> '2005-01-01 00:00:00' so sorry if you lost a real one in the purge) and
> am putting in captcha later today.
>
> Thought you should know.
>
> Thanks!
> Matt
(Someone once said of me, "He types faster than I think.")
So based on what's below, we have 3,435 words in at most 87 minutes. Not bad.
Even if I'd known exactly what I wanted to say that's 39.4 words a minute. Then consider I really wasn't too sure what I'd say. The strange irony is that I'd been pondering January and February earlier today but March onward is stone cold "what pops into my head right now?"
Odd in that March onward was a million times better than the first two months.
Okay, fine, I'll do this one too. Unlike Craig's, my list will be a full-on navel-gaze. Unlike Cooch's, I won't just rehash my own quotes.
Executive summary:
2004 was so good a year for me that if I didn't write anything, you'd know it was because I'd been too busy to reflect. In contrast, most years that yield long introspections from myself are years where I was emotionally drained by the end of December and trying hard to convince myself that the year had been good despite my annual snow-based, darkness-based post-Christmas gloom.
As good as 2004 was, 2005 will be even better (either that, or 2005 will absolutely suck). I say this with complete confidence because of two particular ongoing storylines.
One saga will finally resolve itself in 2005, or at least ought to: you really never know. The other -- well, we passed a few milestones in 2003 and a few more in 2004, but the big milestone won't be until at least 2006 and even after that "happily ever after" isn't just a convenient denoument, it's actually where the most interesting stuff ends up.
January
2004 for me began at a co-hosted party. I thought the party was perfectly cromulent but the hostess didn't. The hostess was also making insanely little at a job she absolutely hated (with good reason); unhappy with her job, unhappy with where she lived, unhappy that she wasn't quite sure what she wanted to do in the near future.
On Tuesday, January 6, this all translated to something that'd make me really unhappy and severely impact the next seven weeks of my life. (Would you have ever guessed seven weeks? I had faith all along that all was not lost, or at least I claim to, although if this was just going to be a temporary thing, you'd think it'd be something like a two-week thing rather than a seven-week thing.)
Anyhow, when I made cryptic blogposts about some major setback in my life, nobody even came close to reading between the lines; that or you were all too polite to say.
Most of January (at least a plurality, aside from sleep and work and question writing) I spent watching the NFL playoffs. In order: Boring game I actually didn't watch (but was thrilled Baltimore would lose); boring game I watched just long enough to be confident Dallas would lose; thrilling overtime game; absolute abomination of a Denver failure to show up (outcome obvious within 15 minutes); thrilling double-overtime game; game New England might have lost in more clement weather; neither defense stood a chance; thrilling overtime game (possibly involving 4th-and-26, my memory's cloudy); blatant mugging of defensive backs by New England receivers in a game singlehandedly responsible for the "we'll finally start enforcing the rules" decision that Bill Simmons and his ilk foolishly mischaracterize as a rules change; surprising offensive letdown; and most thrilling Super Bowl of my life time (in which I managed to be watching the halftime show yet not realize anything amiss had happened, maybe I turned my head or something when the song ended).
Enough football: Towards the end of January I got the good news I'd been waiting months to hear. Shared the news with some close friends and associates, one of whom told me, "What a coincidence! Me too!" Those heady days between the news itself and the "what a coincidence!" were probably the point in 2004 when, compared to now, I'd have been most shocked to hear what happened between then and now.
Despite the good news from the last paragraph, January was pretty obviously my worst month of 2004. January is usually the worst month of one's year, though I wonder if there's any endpoint bias here. If you constantly evaluated your life in August-to-July chunks, would you consistently find that August was the worst month of the period in question?
Oh yeah, the "casino night" office party my roommate's boyfriend took me to when the roommate herself wasn't up for it. Got rip-roaring drunk and made a regrettable phone call or two (no live person, all voicemail).
February
This being an even year, NAQT SCT was in northern California rather than southern. So, no road trip (Stanford doesn't count as a road trip). Read at ACF Regionals a week later, on Valentine's Day proper. Left a non-foolish voicemail message in which I had no idea what to say and possibly made a fool of myself in person (but not much of one). The fantastic person to whom I did give a Valentine, apparently has found happiness with a guy closer to her taste (and certainly closer to her age).
On Sunday, February 29 I helped a friend move and had a nice phone conversation relating to my alleged bafflement over what to wear on my upcoming L.A. trip. (Well, not just alleged: I really was flummoxed. But it was a convenient excuse.)
At work I became a superviser again (in theory I'd overseen some temps where I contracted last summer but in practice I hardly ever interacted with them directly; here of course I would interact directly).
March
The big trip to L.A. Of course, in lieu of fashion advice (or maybe I did get some fashion advice?) I ended up getting the ride to the airport that culminated in my spontaneous like, something like, "No matter what happens, just know that I love you and I always will."
(The only other thing I remember about the conversation on the ride to the airport was that the driver had seen The Passion in a theater and been apoplectic that at all the scenes that most moved the Christians, even as moved as they were they still loudly crunched their popcorn.)
When I got to my hotel in L.A. I had five cell messages. One was from Chad wishing me luck; the other four were about somebody's spontaneous decision to take the Oakland-L.A. flight right after mine and join me there.
So at the TV studio, hours before what I still thought would be my big TV debut, I met the other people in my situation, one of whom was a holdover from the previous week, who warned us all just how good the reigning champion was. He'd set a new record (eight and counting) and he just knew everything. My stomach fell about a foot and I was going to ask her, "Hey... blonde guy from Utah?" But then there he was anyway.
Still, instead of a competitive-juices trip it was a togetherness trip. Not a reconciliation as such; at least, at the time we said all the right things about how it wasn't necessarily, how we'd play it by ear and take one day at a time. But in hindsight....
Julia's parents went on vacation the week of my birthday. Somewhere around that time I decided Alameda would be a nice place to live, certainly a better commute to Emeryville than Concord ever was. Little note to set aside and refer back to in coming months.
Then NAQT ICT prep work consumed my life, not to mention the big end-of-April work deadline.
April
St. Louis was Julia's first quiz tournament, and also easily the best quiz tournament I've ever had any association with. She and Chad and Shelly and I spent some time together. I vaguely remember being in a van (Shelly driving) and picking up various Caltech alumni (I could link to three different blogs here!) who we saw at a street corner.
Then Sunday, the big future-of-NAQT discussion that R. wanted to have but couldn't really because so many people whose input we needed had conflicting flights. Instead we had four NAQT members, two colleagues who found the conversation interesting anyway, and one colleague who found the conversation distinctly not.
Two weeks later, Chattanooga, TRASH, and Julia's first chance to see me as a quiz player. And she and Matt and I rode together between Nashville and Knoxville.
We met our end-of-April work deadline, to much rejoicing.
In between quiz trips there was the Easter Sunday baseball game, after which I got a specious ticky-tack traffic ticket that was subsequently dismissed. Nick and Gina and Matt had me over for Easter dinner and some Trivial Pursuit and way too much fantasy sports (actually Scoresheet) chitchat.
May
Then NAQT HSNCT prep work started to consume my life, as did helping Julia apartment-hunt.
Two Sunday afternoon A's games; no particular weekend trips that I recall. I did join a gym.
June
Houston was mostly good, though there were major facilities issues. Julia and reader Aaron and I all went to see Prisoner of Azkaban on IMAX; my main memory is being dead tired. Had this been Julia's first quiz tournament, it might have been her last, even though it mostly went well. (The stress I showed was unbecoming. Apparently St. Louis had gone so fantastically it wasn't even stressful.)
Wedding season 2004 began with Cindy's nuptials. Delightfuly brief nondenominational ceremony on the rooftop of a downtown San Francisco hotel, with the reception several hours later at a Chinese-family-owned seafood place in the Inner Sunset (many-course meal, chance to see some Harvard computer geek types).
Julia quit her job and moved into her apartment (the two aren't related; they just happened to come around the same time and also become a bit tricky).
One of my roommates also announced she was moving out - not to be with her boyfriend, but to... I'm not sure where she lived or exactly why she moved out, though she'd have more privacy wherever she was.
Summer weekends by this time generally consisted of some combination of baseball games, walks around the lake, and mall trips vaguely related to wedding presents (though the specific wedding presents I remember getting, we bought on-line; was this actually wedding attire?).
If I hadn't told the sys-admin not to worry about my archives when we had the site move, I could have referred back to the blog and told you what Julia and I were getting from Netflix right about now.
July
Julia's best friend got married: Traditional mass in Alameda (very small ceremony and reception, just family and close friends), reception on the 52nd floor of a building in downtown SF, with much mocking by Julia of the whole wedding audience's need to cross the Bay Bridge. Julia was maid of honor in everything but name; the party proper was all family but Julia did a tremendous amount of the logistics.
Even aside from Netflix, if I were a better boyfriend I'd be writing about all the plays we saw together in 2004.
At the Hentzel wedding (Minneapolis/St. Paul), I managed not to tell Julia that "the river" (i.e. The River) that we sort-of-crossed in route to the ceremony (actually on an island pavilion) was in fact the Mississippi River. Fantastic outdoor ceremony, leading directly to the midday reception inside. Picnic later that night with mosquitos and everything. Artificially-arranged quiz practicing that night.
(Somewhat of a bone to pick with the tone of the ensuing Washington Post article: It's one thing for a reporter to ask you to play on quiz questions just so she sees what an impromptu practice looks like, since there's a decent chance you'd have done that anyway. But if the biggest reason you do it is at her request, then her leading off the article itself with how strangely geeky it was for people to do this at a wedding seems not entirely kosher. You can write that we did this because we were really just that geeky, but for full disclosure, let the record show we did this in large part because you want us to. Anyhow - been wanting to get that off my chest for months now.)
At the picnic I beat R's sister's boyfriend at chess and learned that there's an every-other-Wednesday sushi-chess thing somewhere in The Mission. Haven't followed up on that yet. Told Julia some backstory that, no, you don't get to read yourselves.
My best political line of the year, in a situation where the last thing you'd expect is a political line: Julia asked me why I always gave such equivocal lawyerlike answers to simple questions (i.e. I typically say "probably" or "I think so" instead of just "yes"). Spontaneously I told her something like, "So if it turns out I'm wrong, the liberals won't claim I lied to them."
Oh: Between and aside from the weddings, Joe visited me! I thought he was coming up for the summer tournament that happened to be that weekend, but no - the firm where he was a paralegal needed him to hand-deliver paperwork to SF on a Friday, and why not turn it into a visit? Julia marked the occasion by, ironically, going to see her niece and nephew in LA (where Joe came from). He and I went to the Giants game that was our company outing (and that he blogged about) the evening after the tournament (he played, I read). We had a miscellaneous afternoon tooling about San Francisco and dim-summing with Cindy and Justin after they got back from their post-wedding trip (not their honeymoon proper: They went to Tuscany, but waited until September for off-peak reasons). Then he got back to LA before Julia got back from LA, so they met up and watched Anchorman in a theater. Crap: When will I ever watch that DVD? No need for Julia to if she's already seen it, and it's probably not good enough to own. Oh well.
August
At the height of my supervisor role, I had four people under me. The story of one of them moving on probably belongs in the May entry but I didn't feel like elaborating. His moving on was good for everyone. The transition from three people to two was certainly good for the guy who left: If you're a wannabe desktop-support admin, data entry work is something for which you'd be heinously overqualified and underpaid.
My other two associates both went on long vacations in August. (Totally coincidentally, they also both had deaths in the family a couple weeks after their vacations - moment of silence...)
A's games, Giants games (should I be writing about these? - to be a true recap these should be in here, but it'd just bore you and take up my time), frantic writing of short, easy high school questions, and an especially nice trip to Sausalito on a day when the weather was perfect. (If you care: The Joe paragraph in July stems from my remembering that he and I also stopped by Sausalito.)
Most importantly by far, after several weeks of interviews, Julia found the full-time job that she now enjoys. Whenever I was her guest, the routine began of my getting up alarmingly early (by my standards) to take her to BART. Before this, though (and I think also before her job began) was the annual visit where her brother, sister-and-law, niece, and nephew came up to celebrate her brother's birthday and her own birthday, and leave the kids in Alameda and extra week to give the parents a break. I probably spent a bit more time in Concord that week than immediate previous or subsequent weeks.
There was that one great Saturday where Julia, her niece, and I, did brunch, minigolf, Monopoly, and Uno.
September
Baseball's stretch drive. Off and on all month Julia and I would observe that I wasn't spending much time in Concord and that continuing to pay rent there was in some sense inefficient. What actually to do about this was another story.
Anyhow, back to the baseball: Both the Giants and A's came up painfully short just by losing at not-the-right times to the Dodgers and Angels. The Saturday game that eliminated the A's was the day that Saurabh and Frances, Cindy and Justin, (were there really just six of us or am I blanking out on an unattached male?!) Julia and I all did the pregame tailgate thing.
Not that you even remotely need details but this was the day of the second-worst fight Julia and I have ever had. For what it's worth I was entirely wrong (as I also was for the worst fight we ever had, which came up in December but I won't touch in this narrative with a ten-foot pole). Oh, a smattering of details: We were running late to the tailgate party and also had trouble finding it because I miscopied something, and I was freaking out way beyond what the situation called for and so the fight itself was over my overreacting.
Maybe that freakout itself is karmically why the A's lost? Blah.
Also in September, Julia's middle school drama teacher directed an outdoor children's production of the Disney special Holes. Look it up; pretty good story.
Not sure if Joe Egg was already running in September, it might not have begun in October, but Julia was housemanager for it, for a Bay Area drama company whose specialty is that they only perform plays that had never before been performed in the Bay Area.
September was also our first trip to the symphony, at least for the 2004-05 season. I think also the first time the two of us went to the symphony rather than the four of us (with her parents). I love these outings, especially if we go to Max's (diner) afterwards, but of course mainly for the wonderful music. Maybe I should pretend to be making a sacrifice to balance the major sacrifice Julia pretends to make at baseball games?
And Labor Day weekend I sent out a bunch of Requests For Proposal for 2005 quiz site selection; this hung over my head for three more months. Not "took up my time" so much as "hung over my head" (with guilt that I wasn't letting it eat up all my free time).
October
Speaking of Julia and baseball, the playoffs actually managed to get her hooked, and what's really remarkable about this is that the addiction happened before the Red Sox did anything dramatic.
Even so: We'd watch parts of games together (worked great at her parents' house, less so here where the TV her brother gave her gets questionable rabbit-ear reception - the problem is with her apartment location rather than the TV), or when she was at Joe Egg I'd listen to games on the radio, or when I was at the office over the weekend or at Concord or en route I'd find a way to hear Jon Miller and Joe Morgan.
Really, "THE RED SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES" sums up October just fine, though even that gives short shrift to the Sunday-Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday of Boston out of nowhere... well, you know what happened. I was in Berkeley when the 9th inning of Game 4 happened.
Also, Julia and I decided I'd move. (The move became official December 1.)
November
L.A. trip for TRASH Regionals (and another chance for Julia to see her brother, this time with me!).
Kansas City trip for Thanksgiving.
In either November or December (let's say November), Julia's old middle school drama teacher asked her if she'd be interested in directing a children's production of Winnie-the-Pooh. Little did he know that she'd actually been dreaming of directing and wondering how best to pursue it, which upcoming play(s) would be a good chance to assistant-direct.
The trip to Petaluma to see Laughing Wild was also in November.
For weeks now Julia and I have been trading colds; not sure whether this began in November or December. Either way, better off unremembered but still.
Ken's loss aired.
December
An entire week in Chicago for Christmas! (Even when I'm insufferably verbose in a recap - I mean ten times more words than even this one - November and December are where my interest flags because it was just so recent.)
Right before that, we went up to Richmond to see You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown.
While in Chicago, went to the gym day after day after day. That was nice, though bonding with my parents was even nicer. The four of us, to borrow a line from myself from above, though my own parents this time.
Before long I'll be able to write about something the six of us do. (Knock on wood.)
Anyhow, Matt's "Man of the Year" = Ken Jennings. (What, you expected Ben Roethlisberger?)
No more time to write, which just means a Happy New Year.
P.S. Did I mention RED SOX WIN WORLD SERIES yet?
(Also the most disgusting thing I've ever seen on Fark.)
I suppose something called a virginity ceremony could have been a lot worse than this, though since we're in a civilized Western country I was pretty secure it'd be nothing graphic.
Even so, the exact wording is just so wrong as to defy words. When you have sex with someone, or form a life partnership with someone (regardless of whether you think the two things should basically be the same), YOU ARE NOT REPLACING ONE OF YOUR PARTNER's PARENTS! No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's not a father thing, it's not even a deity thing. Your first love is just that, your first love. No blood relative of yours should be filling that role, not even pretend, not even symbolic.
This is so disgusting it makes me want to go out and encourage teenagers to have sex, just as a form of protest. (I'm sure here's the point where an evangelical type will come along and say that the disgust somehow indicts myself, maybe even quote from the Chronicles of Narnia for good measure.)
Full disclosure: Among guys with whom this has ever even come up, I'm the only one I know who's never found Jessica Simpson even remotely attractive to begin with. Not sure why not, but just not.
Today's December 31, so guess which blogging meme I'll steal from Craig?
Yes, that's right, it's time for you to guess (NO CHEATING - if you decide to websearch, either don't even bother to comment or comment only *before* you look 'em up) the lyrics of the first 25 songs that came up on my iPod "Party Shuffle" after I saw the meme myself.
(Note: I didn't count instrumentals (classical/soundtrack) for obvious reasons, and made the editorial judgment to skip over (and "remove from playlist") two album tracks that I'd never listen to on purpose, plus one I really like that's way too obscure and by a band that comes up elsewhere in the list anyway.)
Exactly one performer is repeated on this list, but I like both entries so much I let it stand. Oh, and if you feel strongly about performers: #2 and #4 are covers. The rest are originals as far as I know off-hand. Without further ado...
(I'll go back and mark the ones that've been gotten, with credit to the first correct guess, but you won't see answers until the comments.)
1. "They say I'm plump, but I throw up all the time." (John)
2. "I wasn't looking, but somehow you found me. I tried to hide from your love light." (Maribeth first, cover band still at large if you care)
3. "Albeit they possess the might, nonetheless we have the will. How we will celebrate our victory, we shall invite the whole team out for tea!" (Joshua)
4. "Am I happy or in misery? Whatever it is, that girl put a spell on me." (title by David, cover band still at large if you care)
5. "Now the routine is turning into contention, like a production line going over and over and over." (band by Maribeth, title still at large)
6. "There's no more time, don't think about. The flame will die if you doubt. It's a game of love and hate, to lose it all's a chance we'll take."
7. "The ones you hope to sell will send you straight to hell. As we dismember you, we shall remember you."
8. "Maybe I'll head down south to New Orleans, wouldn't have no taxes 'cause I wouldn't have no means."
9. "I'm standing on the bridge, I'm waiting in the dark, I thought that you'd be here by now." (Maribeth)
10. "She's so sweet when she yanks on my meat. Down on the street you know she can't be beat."
11. "The sweet words you whispered didn't mean a thing, I guess our song is over as began to sing." (Joshua)
12. "I thought that dreams belonged to other men, 'cause each time I got close they'd fall apart again." (Joshua)
13. "Hands me two tickets smiles and whispers good luck. Cuddle up angel, cuddle up my little dove."(Joshua)
14. "Sometimes we need to make our dreams. Things may glow bright at the start."
15. "I gotta know tonight if you're alone tonight. Can't stop this feeling, can't stop this fight."(Joshua)
16. "She wears a coat of color, loved by some, feared by others. She's immortalized in a young man's eyes."
17. "I hear the ticking of the clock. I'm lying here, the room's pitch dark. I wonder where you are tonight, no answer on the telephone." (Joshua)
18. "The sun's so bright it leaves no shadows, only scars carved into the face of it." (I'm surprised this is still at large. Craig will know it once he sees this. -MLB)
19. "If you go away, you know that I will follow, 'cause there's a place inside my heart that tells me 'Hold out.'" (Maribeth)
20. "You know it's gonna make it that much better when we can say goodnight and stay together."(Joshua)
21. "Time's gone by, it seems to me you could've been a better friend to me."
22. "For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world than a lone man singlehandedly facing half a ton of angry pot roast." (Richard)
23. "Call on me and I'll be there for you. I'm a friend who always will be true. And I love you - can you see?"
24. "She's just looking for something new, yeah, I said it once before but it bears repeating." (John)
25. "Now it rains, it seems the sun never shines. And I drive down this lonely lonely road, ooh I got this feeling now I gotta let you go. (ZD)
At least two people commented here after the big comment-spam last night but before Bogg's auto-purge.
ZD got #25 (Slaughter, "Fly To The Angels")
Maribeth got Avril Lavigne's "I'm With You" and "Nobody Does It Better".
If you're neither ZD nor Maribeth and your comment's not here, I apologize for the inconvenience.
Fascinating stuff. (Every time I link to a Marginal Revolution post that should be the link text.)
"I used to think of duels as an inefficient form of signaling, typically with honor at stake. In contrast, this hypothesis may suggest that pre-duel risk generation is set privately at too low a level. The riskier you make things seem with your potential opponent, the more that subsequent would-be duelers will be scared into an agreement.
The hypothesis also suggests why duels have (mostly) vanished, namely because trading and contract technologies have improved (except in ghettos)."
Over $6,000,000.
And contrary to my fear, Amazon isn't taking a cut:
"One hundred percent of your donation will go to the American Red Cross."
In other news... Jeb?!?
Granted his state's been through hurricanes.
WTF?
In addition to sucking, this movie is a fraud. When they had that pretentious meta-narrative, I was under the impression that the elderly guy was really him. Why else would you bother to add that layer?
But no... it says here and here he died 40 years ago.
Given when he was born and when he made it big, maybe I was stupid to ever believe otherwise.
He and Johnny Oates were both supposed to wait until January...
Seeing his comment on a point of law just now reminded me: Earlier this month commenter Hyph learned he passed the Massachusetts bar exam; he's been sworn in and is well on his way to a career in law.
I have yet to congratulate him directly. Passed congratulations along via his wife when I learned, then typed this post just now. Maybe an e-mail to go along with it...
Apparently Andrew Sullivan went on vacation and turned this weblog over, for a week or so, to someone who, like me, used to edit the Salient (Harvard conservative campus paper; at least two occasional commenters here also played big roles while I was there). In that time, this gentleman (four years behind me, I think; also a frequent Wall Street Journal editorial page contributor a couple years back, if I remember right) has managed to say at least two things that severely rankled other pundit-type bloggers.
Most recently, there's the claim that the U.S. botched the World War II endgame (European theater) by being too casualty-averse, where both the troops and their leaders were supposedly inferior fighters as a result of growing up in a democracy rather than a Sparta-like regime. Heated rebuttal here.
Even before that, there was the claim that democracy in Iran (and the rest of the Middle East) would be bad for America because the emerging democracies would have national interests at odds with our own. Heated rebuttal here.
What's funny about these two claims, aside from how noxious I find the original ideas, is that they seem even to contradict each other: If democracy breeds inferior military power, then don't we want our supposed natural enemies to be handicapped that way?
Just goes to show you how deceptively vague a word like "conservative" or a directional label like "right" can be. This gentleman and I edited the same campus paper a few years apart (mind, this was the strain of campus "conservatism" that placed a premium on independent thought -- ironic at the height of ivory tower political correctness that such would be one of the best places to find independent thought -- and anyhow in my era we had a competitor on our right flank that siphoned off the authoritarians and left us quite a bit more libertarian than we might have been), yet we probably disagree on a whole host of issues.
Well before my time, the Salient perhaps best occupied an anti-Soviet niche. Founded not too long after the Dartmouth Review, but over the years made much more [adjective] editorial decisions, didn't generate the kind of controversy the Review did, and so didn't become (or didn't remain) the nationwide conservative darling the Review was (its near-namesake, The National Review, promoted it a lot). Two faculty advisers you may have heard of (those hardy of you who followed a link to this individual post or clicked through to the extended entry): Harvey Mansfield, perhaps best known for his opposition to grade inflation, and Richard Pipes, the senior of the father-son academics profiles here.
Then in 1989 (give or take) there was a campus incident where one guy sexually harassed some other guy at a party, and someone wanted to write about it for the Salient but ended up turning in an article with a strong anti-gay slant that led to extremely contentious writer-editor dealings and eventually to the founding of the other conservative paper.
Long story short, by the time I got there, Communism had failed; all the firebrands were eschewing the "we take no newspaperwide editiorial positions" paper for the one where everyone was by definition anti-abortion, anti-gay, etc.; even the campus political environment was mellow (at least until the 1994 elections: boy did the progressives hate Newt!).
The obvious focus for our campus paper was inward, highlighting some of the absurd things at/about Harvard, issues where I'd like to think common sense knows no ideological boundaries. (One article published on my watch did severely offend the aforementioned senior Pipes, taking quite a Wonkette-ish tone about various topics, everything from pornography to people who urinate on the John Harvard statue; I didn't write it, but I think the author turned her phrases pretty well.)
Then apparently the Clinton impeachment era made all hell break loose again. The last time I saw a Salient, one of the articles - by the same gentleman whose statements on Andrew Sullivan's weblog prompted this whole long post - made passing reference to the fact that Tom DeLay keeps a bullwhip in his office, and cited this as evidence favorable to DeLay.
(Bonus note about the Salient and also the prog-left types across the hall from us: Anyone know whether Ross Douthat and Matthew Yglesias were on campus at the same time? As I've probably mentioned 100 times by now, my own counterpart was Jed Purdy, the anti-irony guy.)
If this triggered such a long digression (and so much navel-gazing), how come I didn't get into political writing? Why shouldn't it be me filling in for Andrew Sullivan? Then again, why shouldn't it be me covering the Red Sox if not running them?
UPDATE: Based on a post on this archive page, Yglesias and Douthat were both still at Harvard in 2001-02. In addition to his Salient work, Douthat apparently wrote for the Crimson (daily campus paper), Yglesias for the Indy (weekly, more magazine-style paper, always my favorite campus paper aside from the one I wrote for; every college should have a daily and a weekly that compete with each other; Crimson tried to complete even more directly with a weekly supplement called 15 Minutes that might or might not still be around.
(Sort of related to the post right below this, but only extremely tenuously.)
Some reader who's gone to law school: Can anyone explain, better than I'd be able to explain it off the top of my head, how and why contract law came to deemphasize a party's subjective intent (focusing instead on an objective manifestation of the intent)?
Not sure why this merited its own Hit & Run post. Unless Montana has really weird laws, the principle seems pretty obvious to me: If a voter chooses two candidates for a race in which you're only allowed to vote for one candidate, then that's not a valid vote period. The court did exactly the right thing.
My slightly more controversial (but only slightly) opinion: Likewise, if you not only vote for one of the on-ballot candidates the normal way but also redundantly add that candidate on the write-in slot, you've spoiled your ballot. Yes, the intent may be obvious, but if you did something that stupid and that plainly invalid... UPDATE: See Richard's comment and my response. If a locality changes its laws in time for the next election, I can buy this one, since there's absolutely positively no ambiguity about the voter intent here.
It's hard to tell what my opinion on hanging chads would be if I'd formulated it in a situation without an axe to grind (admit it: unless you honestly didn't care about Bush vs. Gore, there's a strong chance that your opinion about the Florida 2000 chads was the convenient opinion). Subject to the "you would think that..." objection, I don't like the idea that the jostling and fondling involved in a manual recount can physically alter a ballot and its validity.
(Reminds me of the climactic scene in Caddyshack, where deus ex machina eventually causes the ball to roll in.)
Anyhow, the best solution going forward is not to use anything as stupid as chad displacement for any election more important than baseball All-Stars.
What's too hard for schoolchildren to do? Open their milk cartons, apparently. (See also the Fark commentary and the original article here.)
Been meaning to rant for awhile about this new trend of repackaging and mixing milk in with so many unhealthy things that more than offset the benefits milk gave you in the first place. (Would you like some milk with that sugar?)
You could blame capitalist excess for this, except that milk production is arguably the most socialized element of the U.S. economy. Price distortion all over the place; it even almost became an election issue, though for entirely the wrong reasons.
(I wish Kerry had been right about what he claimed Bush would do. In theory, I suppose you could use the word "hurt" when what you really mean is "stop giving a free ride they don't deserve." In theory.)
Here's a degenerate case of something I have to worry about for a living. I have mixed emotions about the idea that there are people out there whose quality of life was affected by the specific example.
All the disaster relief links somehow made me think of this:
"Clothing is wonderful, but let them go naked for a while, at least the kids," said Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. "Water is necessary, and then generators, and then food, and then clothes."
--USA Today
That one quote is 75% of what you need to know about John Kerry's wife and maybe 30% of what you needed to know about his campaign itself. Not even the bizarre imagery - "let them go naked for a while, at least the kids" - but just the implicit micromanagement.
It's as if she assumed that nobody had ever organized a relief effort before and that her wisdom was essential because she was the first person ever to think of it. (Not to mention that I'm sure the specific volunteers she visited weren't quite a representative sample of the full amount of relief work taking place.)
Democrats won't get the White House back until public faces of their campaigns are people who are either wiser, less presumptuous, or both. (Hmm, as soft as I've been on Hillary lately, remember It Takes A Village?)
Speaking of which, here's what else the Democrats are screwing up in their campaigns.
(As a general rule, without meaning to imply anything about which point of view is more correct or less dangerous to society or any of that: Given a struggle between a point of view that people have to be paid to espouse, and a point of view that people freely volunteer to espouse, the volunteers are likely to be a lot more effective at getting their message across then the people doing something they're paid to do.)
The Amazon.com front page has a prominent link to their one-click earthquake relief donations. (Money goes to the American Red Cross.) You can click directly to the donation page, where as I type this 32,879 people have given over $1.8 million via the link.
The obvious cynical question would be whether Amazon gets any cut. For non-charitable sites it says here Amazon gets 2.9% (scroll to "Does it cost me anything to use the Amazon Honor System?"); for reference, 2.9% of $1.8 million is about $50K. I'd like to think Amazon waived its fees for Red Cross donations though.
Even at that, I think for the convenience of donating on-line, 2.9% is a small price to pay. And again, for all I know Amazon may have waived its fee for Red Cross donations, though I'd be happier if I saw this confirmed somewhere.
I get the sense that most hypothetical questions answer themselves as soon as you nail down enough of the stipulations (or rather, the stipulations force the answer).
This question is no exception. It's (far as I can tell) a not-very-special special case of a general question that might be pretty interesting:
"[W]ould you give up the right to vote in order to secure a more [adjective that suits your own leanings] political environment?"
When the word "environment" is abstract (i.e. we're talking about social mores rather than air and water and trees), the concept of "a more [adjective] environment" is ridiculously nebulous, to the point where I'd be inclined to say no. And yet... the sooner you make it any more specific, the sooner you reach the point where it amounts to, "Would you give up the right to vote in order to secure the electoral outcomes you want anyway?"
Um, gosh yes - since I place close to zero weight in my own voting as an end (rather than a means to an end), of course I'd make that trade-off. If someone told you that your favorite political candidate would win if and only if you didn't vote, and this promise was credibly certain to be kept, the decision would be obvious, no?
For that matter: If even as few as two people credibly said, "If you vote then we won't vote, but if you don't vote then we'll vote for the candidate of your choice," then since 2 > 1, obviously I at least would still take 'em up on it.
Whether there's any way to quantify "a more [adjective] environment" with vote totals is another story, but surely on the margin it's greater than one, right?
(The other issue is that by "environment," your hypothetical-poser may mean something other than electoral calculus or even how politicians do their job: They could mean - could just mean - that the change is in ordinary people's day-to-day behaviors and customs. Then I'd be in trouble, because I although want people to vote party-line Republican in national races at this time, I also want private individuals to be altruistic, self-reliant, and most importantly open-minded. And some other adjectives also, many of which don't obviously dovetail well with a Republican "environment.")
I think a whole lot of the women I know have a guy like this in their lives.
("I had kind of forgotten that, in most of my previous conversations with my friend, things would get horribly philosophical, and depending on the philosophy of the day I became either completely infatuated or completely infuriated with him. This is a good example of the latter circumstance.")
Not sure offhand which I know more of: Women who have a guy like this in their lives, or guys who obviously would be a guy like this to some woman. Well, obviously the former, since if I know the gal then I know the guy. But if you filter by which party am I closer to? then it's tougher. Also, it's not immediately obvious why the people who give this effect are overwhelmingly male and the people who react with infatuation/infuriation are overwhelmingly female. Might just be sample bias.
For all I know at some point I may have been that guy. But really, I'm harmless, I swear. I also have enough of a bullshit detector not to get too "deep" with anyone without at least believing I'm on pretty firm ground. (Anyone who's that philosophical, not to mention that harshly analytic, is at least to some extent putting you on. Call their bluff without mercy.)
I also think life is too short for headgames (aside from the "real" kind, like poker or chess or Monopoly or fantasy sports), and so anyone who's ever thought I was playing mental games could safely assume it was idle rambling and nothing personal.
UPDATE (and gratuitous "this reminds me..."): Have you seen this Malcolm episode? Males obviously don't have a monopoly on mindgames; then again, what good are mindgames when your HAIR looks like that?!?
This is fascinating. Most medical emergencies are situations where the best treatments are pretty well agreed-on. You'd think there'd be a checklist to go through, to make sure heart attack patients get aspirin, elderly get pneumonia vaccines, and so on. But apparently there isn't.
Anyhow, hospitals that made a point of training doctors and nurses to follow standard procedures saw a 40% drop in mortality. Reminds me of when I roomed with someone whose boyfriend was an EMT. Very life-or-death job, but he said it wasn't stressful because the procedures to follow were so tightly defined that going through the list was neither physically nor mentally taxing.
Assigned this to category "QuizBowl" because of a sudden memory of a discussion thread from ten years ago where I vehemently defended this company for writing questions where the answer nearly always turned out to be "the obvious choice" from among the possibilities* that the early clues might make you think of. I strongly argued that anticipation is not only a skill, but directly applicable to real life, that in some situations it really is very important to make the "obvious" diagnosis quickly.
(Better still to have contextual reasons to make a good decision on whether the obvious answer is the right answer, and when it actually wouldn't be, but that's a major theory-of-quiz-bowl digression.)
*- As in different people, different works, different places, or different things, NOT as in figuring out whether the answer will be a person, place, or thing. The pronouns should always make it obvious what TYPE of answer is sought, but from among instances of that type there can be many choices. If the question is implicitly about a Russian composer, will it turn out to be Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Moussorgsky, Shostakovich, or Glinka?
"I believe in the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days."
--Crash Davis, Bull Durham (emphasis added)
1. The TV police will hound you for licensing fees even if you don't actually own a television. (Link via Asymmetrical Information.)
2. (Finally found the link again...) Home invasion burglaries are common, because using enough force to protect yourself will probably result in the local authorities prosecuting you for alleged use of excessive force.
3. Nationalized health care means waiting lists for medical procedures.
The root causes for all three of these problems are arguably the same - at least, the same misguided philosophies and policies. I doubt anyone in America will ever advocate a similar TV licensing scheme (then again, wouldn't put anything past the likes of the National Association of Broadcasters, lobbyists par excellence - this body was one reason why Communications Law courses can be so demoralizing), though there's still very serious support for policies that I claim would lead to either of both of the situations in #2 or #3.
Of all the possible bloggers on my blogroll to stumble across the sex gossip surrounding Mets' pitcher Kris Benson, it had to be ESR...
Usually his posts are not only quite clever but also manage to avoid coming off stereotypically geeky. This time, though, I can't quite put my finger on it but as I was reading his post the voice-that-reads-words-out-loud-inside-my-head morphed into Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.
Just one week, for fun. Most of these guesses will turn out to be wrong.
One thing we do know is that a vast majority of the country will see New Orleans at Carolina as Fox's only game, with NY Jets at St. Louis and Indianapolis at Denver as CBS's doubleheader.
(NYJ-STL over PIT-BUF because the former is meaningful to both teams, the latter to only one; if Big Ben doesn't even play for Pittsburgh then you see how it goes.)
Fox Early Games
New Orleans at Carolina (Buck, Aikman, Collinsworth)
Minnesota at Washington (Stockton, Moose)
San Francisco at New England (Rosen, Maas)
Green Bay at Chicago (Menefee, Green)
Detroit at Tennessee (Pitts, Ryan)
CBS Early Games
NY Jets at St. Louis (Nantz, Simms)
Pittsburgh at Buffalo (Enberg, Dierdorf)
Cincinnati at Philadelphia (Eagle, Wolcots)
Miami at Baltimore (Criqui, Tasker)
Cleveland at Houston (8th String (Bolerjack, Reece?))
Fox Late Games
Atlanta at Seattle (Albert, Baldinger)
Tampa Bay at Arizona (7th string TBA)
CBS Late Games
Indianapolis at Denver (Harlan, Cross)
Kansas City at San Diego (Johnson, Jones)
Jacksonville at Oakland (7th String (Macatee, Beuerlein?))
Fox's three best games are obvious, as is the order of the three. (I can never tell whether team Albert/Baldinger gets better assignments than team Rosen/Maas.) If I'm wrong about anything on the Fox side, it's the Pitts/Ryan game assignment. Not sure which game is less broadcast-compelling between DET-TEN and TB-ARI. The latter will probably go to exactly one affiliate (maybe more if other Gulf Coast towns have their own CBS stations), with supremely anonymous broadcasters, perhaps even an audition for a more permanent role. Then again, the convenient thing would be to give Dan Miller and JC Pearson a game with a team (DET) they've covered before.
Not sure which game CBS would choose to showcase from its obvious doubleheader. On one hand the big hype goes to the best late game (with two teams CBS dearly loves to hype); on the other, one of those teams has nothing to play for and some of you saw how the Eagles burned ABC in that situation last night. Also, hyping the late game seems to be a product of weeks where you have 4-5 regionalized early games and one, maybe two, "4:15 Eastern" kickoffs.
Whichever of NYJ-STL and IND-DEN the top team didn't get, feels more appropriate for Harlan/Cross than Enberg/Dierdorf. Might be a regional thing, or maybe even my relative dislike of the latter team. Again with the announcer-to-team tie-ins, it'd be easy for CBS just to give Steve Tasker yet another Bills game and send Enberg/Dierdorf off to Baltimore. I don't quite see that happening, though. Buffalo's playoff chances are greater than Baltimore's by enough of a factor to give them at least an above-average crew, not to mention even a resting-its-starters Steeler team likely playing better than Miami.
For non-featured late games, although JAX-OAK has slightly more riding on it than KC-SD (in that one might matter to JAX while the other has no playoff implications at all), the Jaguars' playoff hopes are really really remote, and even if things broke their way, this too is a game going to basically one affiliate (I can't even think of a market near JAX big enough to have its own CBS station and near enough to be in Jaguar "territory" - Tallahassee?!). Still can't see CBS sending Beasley Reece to Oakland, just in case this really is a game they need to beam nationwide (wacky playoff outcomes, fantastic finish, etc.).
This press release from three years ago extols the virtues of the NFL's new schedule rotation and lists "past schedule aberrations that no longer will occur under the new formula", including:
Tampa Bay has never played in Buffalo.
Assuming the NFL sticks with its rotation, anyone care to guess when Tampa Bay finally will visit Buffalo? It says here, not until 2009. (That was such an aberration, they decided it could wait another eight years.)
If Brian Westbrook scores a touchdown* for Philadelphia tonight then my teams will have gone 24-up, 24-down on the year, with a 3rd-place finish (of 10), a 5th** (of 12), and an 8th (of 12). Otherwise it's 23-25, with a 4th, a 5th, and an 8th.
(*-or at least N yards rushing and (120-N) yards receiving, where N is evenly divisble by 20; less than that if he scores a 2-point conversion, passes for 50+ yards, kicks a field goal or PAT, or records a tackle, sack, interception, forced fumble, pass defended or blocked kick; more than that if he loses a fumble)
(**- also, barring a 50+ point performance by Stephen Jackson; in theory he could bust 50 points with 260 yards and four touchdowns...)
Big Ben Arrives (formerly known as "LaDainian Mulders")
9-7, including 6-1 down the stretch. Five-way tie for third place in the regular season, 2-0 in the consolation playoffs (again, barring insanity from Stephen Jackson).
MVP: LaDainian Tomlinson (283.5 points, 18.9 per game)
Honorable mention: Rudi Johnson (190.2 points, 12.68 per game); Joe Horn (186.3 points, 13.31 per game); Ben Roethlisberger (only 76.4 points, but 15.28 per game); Buffalo Bills defense (didn't own until Week 14 but scored 22, 26, and 15 for me).
Best single games: Rudi (32.7) and Michael Vick (31.5), both Week 12
Worst single game: Arizona Cardinals defense (-4 vs. Buffalo Week 8, the only week I owned them)
One-game wonders: Chicago Bears defense (13 points Week 6 vs. Washington the only week I owned them), Brandon Lloyd (12.2 points Week 10) in his only start.
Benchwarmers (owned but never started):
LaMont Jordan (8 weeks, still on my roster)
Chris Perry (6 weeks)
Justin Fargas (3 weeks)
Jesse Chatman and Tony Hollings (2 weeks each)
Garrison Hearst and Ike Hillard (1 week each - both Week 1)
Revolving Door #1: QB
Michael Vick 9 starts, Big Ben 5, Steve McNair 2
Revolving Door #2: RB/WR (flex position)
Onterrio Smith 7 starts, Mewelde Moore 4, Tyrone Wheatley 3, played three wide receivers one week, and Tatum Bell Week 16
Revolving Door #3: Team defense
Giants 5 starts, Bengals 3, Bills 3, Jaguars 3, Bears 1, Cardinals 1
Biggest Bust: Santana Moss (runner-up Steve McNair)
My Milkshake
7-9, including 2-6 down the stretch. Three-way tie for 7th place in the regular season, 0-2 in the consolation playoffs.
MVP: Keith Bulluck (140.5 points, 9.37 per game)
Honorable Mention: Marvin Harrison (136 points, 9.07 per game); Julius Peppers (110 points, 7.33 per game, extremely good for a lineman); Michael Pittman (105.85 points, 10.59 per game); Brian Griese (57.20 points, 11.44 per game)
Best single games: Pittman (25.9, Week 9); Harrison (24.35, Week 12); Quentin Griffin (23.85, Week 1)
Worst single game: Carson Palmer (-1.58 Week 3, his only start)
One-game wonders: Josh Brown (14 points, Week 10) and James Farrior (10.5 points, Week 9) in their only starts
Honorable mention: Donald Driver (26.1 points over two starts, after five weeks on my bench and before being traded)
Benchwarmers (owned but never started):
T.J. Duckett (all 16 weeks!)
LaMont Jordan (10 weeks)
Roosevelt Colvin (4 weeks)
Lamar Gordon (3 weeks)
Tyrone Wheatley and Julian Peterson (2 weeks each)
Rashaun Woods (1 week)
Revolving Door #1: Both RB slots
Jamal Lewis and Michael Pittman 10 starts each, Quentin Griffin 5, Chester Taylor 4, Onterrio Smith 2, Emmitt Smith 1
Revolving Door #2: Trades
Driver for E. Smith, then flipped Smith for Griese when the RB injury/bye crunch became a QB injury crunch.
Revolving Door #3: QB
Chad Pennington 7 starts, Brian Griese 5, Byron Leftwich 3, Carson Palmer 1
Biggest Bust: Jamal Lewis (runner-up Santana Moss)
Serrated Edge
8-8 or 7-9, despite starting 0-3. Three-way tie for fourth place in the regular season, lost the semifinal, third-place game still to be determined.
MVP: Terrell Owens (137.5 points, 9.82 per game)
Honorable Mention: Ahman Green (101 points, 8.42 per game); Nate Kaeding (99.5 points, 7.11 per game); Brian Westbrook (averaging 9.88 per game into Week 16)
Best single games:
David Carr and Westbrook (26 points each, Weeks 5 and 13); Owens (24 points, Week 10)
Worst single game: Carr (-4 points, Week 10)
Two-game wonder: Nick Goings, 24 points over two starts
Benchwarmers (owned but never started):
William Green, Dorsey Levens, Aaron Stecker (4 games each)
Stephen Jackson (3 games)
Larry Croom, Najeh Davenport, Byron Leftwich, Tim Rattay (2 games each)
Julius Jones, Lamar Gordon, Leonard Little (1 game each, all Week 1)
Revolving Door #1: second WR
Ashley Lelie (7 starts), Donald Driver (4), Keenan McCardell (2), Nate Burleson (2), Peerless Price (2), Reche Caldwell (1)
Revolving Door #2: QB
David Carr (7 starts), Jake Plummer (5), Steve McNair (3), and Drew Bledsoe Week 16
Biggest Bust: Steve McNair (runner-up Kellen Winslow)
Overall
Most-owned players:
Josh Brown, Nate Burleson, Reche Caldwell, Donald Driver, James Farrior, Lamar Gordon, Quentin Griffin, LaMont Jordan, Nate Kaeding, Byron Leftwich, Ashlie Lelie, Brandon Lloyd, Keenan McCardell, Steve McNair, Santana Moss, Emmitt Smith, Onterrio Smith, Tyrone Wheatley (2 teams each)
Best-represented real teams:
San Diego Chargers (9 - Tomlinson, Kaeding(x2), Caldwell(x2), McCardell (x2), Chatman, Steve Foley)
Denver Broncos (7 - Griffin(x2), Lelie(x2), Plummer, Hearst, Bell)
(Via TBIFOC)
Surprised this policy wasn't already in effect. From what I remember of Houston driving, the most critical highways don't even have shoulders, just concrete walls alarmingly few inches from the side of the outer lanes.
I think the Bay Bridge (the SF-Oakland one, of course, not Florida or wherever else) has a similar policy but don't know for sure.
This is why you should give cheap gifts with great sentimental value rather than spending a lot of money on thoughtless gifts.
Then again, if time is money, then the best possible gift is cheap and has great sentimental value but didn't take forever to think of.
In other news, looks like some people I know will be getting New Year's cards, just because that's how the timing will have worked out. Unless it turns out that Christmas cards proper are just ridiculously discounted right after the 25th.
Mimes?!?
Fraught or not? Over to you, DEK...
(Everyone else, please do follow that second link. The research he did with Hallmark bears is fascinating.)
"Let them fail," Virginia Postrel says of US Airways.
Couldn't agree more.
Couldn't decide whether to take the post below this one in a political direction. It would've gone something like this...
Next time you're at a baseball game on a summer weeknight, look around the park. Unless you're in Boston, San Francisco, or The Bronx, chances are more people died in the tsunami than are at the ballgame. (Or: Go to a sold out basketball game, and depending on the arena size the death toll may actually be 50% higher than the attendance.)
I wonder sometimes how easily people can conceive of numbers like this to the right order of magnitude. (Usually I wonder this when a semi-major celebrity dies and people go crazy even though it's one person. I've neither watched nor surfed enough news in the past 24 hours to get a sense of the comparative coverage of, say, the tidal wave victims vs. Reggie White.)
George F. Will, for all his faults, drops a nice "put this in perspective" statistic now and then. He's used that "Americans spend more on potato chips in one year than on presidential/congressional/etc. elections combined" stat in quite a few columns. I think he's also the one who pointed out that Procter & Gamble spends more on advertising than Major League Baseball spends period.
"Don't you bring me down -- today," Christina crooned to me as I walked my fingers through the "FM2" presets. On the morning of Monday, December 27, Ms. Aguilera's torch song could only mean one thing: The station that had been playing nothing but Christmas carols since the beginning of November, was finally back to its saccharine but harmless middle-of-the-road format. A bumper jingle later, we were treated to "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" (regrettable Doobie Brothers Hall & Oates (brainfart - thanks, Allyson!) cover).
In other radio news, the local country station played a Tim McGraw song into a Garth Brooks song. Over on The Bone, the last strains of an AC/DC song were mixed in with a really whiny, stressed-out female voice. No clue what that was about until I realized that the original song was T.N.T. and suddenly the nature of the parody was obvious.
The "Mozart Block at 9:00" was never so appealing.
So many of you were focused on miracle scenarios for 5-9 going on 7-9 teams, which CAR and NO nipped in the bud today. But... (If you read the post below this you'll already know this, but it's weird enough to single out, and pardon me if any of this is incomprehensible.)
What could be truly ridiculous is a situation where the outcome of Seattle's late game next week doesn't mean a thing to either Seattle or Atlanta (both would be in the playoffs and resting starters, etc.), yet determines which of one of two other teams makes the playoffs.
Say St. Louis wins out (both games at home) and Minnesota wins next week (at Washington but what do the Redskins have to play for?).
Then, Seattle's game would inadvertently help or screw over (St. Louis) vs. (Carolina or New Orleans). Why? Glad you asked.
Mini-standings, for the #4 and #6 spots:
Seattle 8-7
St. Louis 8-8
(Carolina or New Orleans) 8-8
The #4 spot (aka NFC West division title) can only go to Seattle or St. Louis - St. Louis would have head-to-head advantage if they were both 8-8. For the #6 spot there'd be a tie between a pair of 8-8 teams (whoever wins that CAR/NO game, and whoever doesn't win the west). Even though STL has tiebreak over SEA, it turns out that SEA has tiebreak over either of {CAR/NO} while either of {CAR/NO} has tiebreak over STL. And all of this is head-to-head.
(Through relevant games of Sunday, December 26, and barring miraculous fourth-quarter comebacks...)
Shorter, less rigorous version:
In the AFC, 1-4 are Pittsburgh, New England, Indianapolis, and San Diego in that order, regardless of Week 17 results. #5 seed is the Jets' to lose and #6 is the Broncos' to lose, though the Bills are in good position to mess with both spots and seeding given BUF's tiebreaker advantage over NYJ. Baltimore and Jacksonville are alive for the #6 seed but need tons of help.
In the NFC, 1-3 are Philly, Atlanta, and Green Bay in that order, regardless of Week 17 results (or even Week 16 Monday night). Seattle clinches a playoff spot but not necessarily the #4 just yet (though they're in great position for it). #5 is Minnesota's to lose, though they could do so in spectacular fashion (or slip to #6). The other wild card spot likely goes to the winner of Carolina-New Orleans, though St. Louis is in a fine position to ruin things for exactly one of (Seattle, Minnesota, or the CAR/NO winner).
Longer, allegedly completely rigorous version:
AFC Playoff Contenders
Pittsburgh (15-1 or 14-2), clinched #1 seed, head-to-head over NE
New England (14-2 or 13-3), clinched #2 seed, head-to-head over Indy
Indianapolis (13-3 or 12-4), clinched #3 seed, head-to-head over San Diego
San Diego (12-4 or 11-5), clinched #4 seed
NY Jets (11-5 or 10-6),
#5 seed with a win at STL or Buffalo loss vs. PIT
#6 seed if they lose at STL, Buffalo wins vs. PIT, and Denver loses vs. IND
out of the playoffs if they lose at STL, Buffalo wins vs. PIT, and Denver wins vs. IND
(Two-way ties at 10-6: Jets over Denver on common opponents, but Buffalo over Jets on common opponents. If all three of those teams finished at 10-6, then NYJ would be SOL because the tiebreak within the division would be applied before even comparing either AFC East team to Denver. For the NFL's purposes, Buffalo and Denver would have a two-way tie for the #5 seed, then after Denver won that on conference record, Jets would lose the tie to Buffalo for the #6 seed.)
Denver (10-6 or 9-7)
#5 seed with a win vs. IND, Buffalo win vs. PIT, and Jets loss at STL
#6 seed with a win vs. IND and (Bills lose or Jets win)
#6 seed if they lose to IND but (Buffalo, Jacksonville, and Baltimore all also lose)
out of the playoffs if they lose to IND and (any of BUF, JAX, or BAL) win
Buffalo (10-6 or 9-7)
#5 seed with a win vs. PIT, Jets loss at STL, and Denver loss vs. IND
#6 seed with a win vs. PIT and (Jets lose at STL or Denver loses vs. IND)
out of the playoffs if they win vs. PIT but (Jets win and Denver wins)
out of the playoffs if they lose vs. PIT
Baltimore (9-7 or 8-8)
#6 seed with a win at MIA, Denver loss vs. IND, and Buffalo loss vs. PIT
(strength of victory, with or without JAX in the mix)
out of the playoffs otherwise
Jacksonville (9-7 or 8-8)
#6 seed with a win at OAK, Denver loss vs. IND, Buffalo loss vs. PIT, and
Baltimore loss at MIA
(head-to-head sweep over Buffalo and Denver, but inapplicable if Baltimore is in the mix)
out of the playoffs otherwise
NFC Playoff Contenders
Philadelphia (15-1, 14-2, or 13-3), clinched #1 seed
Atlanta (12-4 or 11-5), clinched #2 seed
Green Bay (10-6 or 9-7), clinched #3 seed, common opponents over SEA
Seattle (9-7 or 8-8),
#4 seed with a win vs. ATL or one St. Louis loss (either vs. PHI or vs. NYJ)
#5 seed if they lose to ATL, St. Louis wins out, and Minnesota loses at WAS (head-to-head sweep over Minnesota and (Carolina or New Orleans))
#6 seed if they lose to ATL, St. Louis wins out, and Minnesota wins at WAS
Minnesota (9-7 or 8-8)
#5 seed if they win at WAS
#5 seed if they lose at WAS, St. Louis loses at least once, and NO beats CAR (head-to-head over NO)
#6 seed if they lose at WAS, St. Louis loses at least once, and CAR beats NO (inferior conference record)
out of the playoffs if they lose at WAS and St. Louis wins out (inferior conference record)
St. Louis (8-8 or 7-9 or 6-10)
#4 seed if they win vs. PHI, win vs. NYJ, and Seattle loses vs. ATL (head-to-head over Seattle)
#6 seed if they win out, Seattle wins vs. ATL, and Minnesota loses vs. WAS
out of the playoffs if they lose either game or if (Seattle and Minnesota both win)
(In a two-way tie, the Carolina-New Orleans winner has head-to-head over St. Louis but loses to Seattle on head-to-head. In any three-way tie involving Minnesota, the Vikings' inferior conference record drops it to third.)
Carolina (8-8 or 7-9)
#5 seed if they beat New Orleans, Minnesota loses, and (Seattle wins or St. Louis loses at all)
#6 seed if they beat New Orleans, Minnesota wins, and (Seattle wins or St. Louis loses at all)
#6 seed if they beat New Orleans, Minnesota loses, St. Louis wins out, and Seattle loses
out of the playoffs if Minnesota wins, St. Louis wins out, and Seattle loses
out of the playoffs if they lose to New Orleans
New Orleans (8-8 or 7-9)
#5 seed if they beat Carolina, St. Louis wins out, Seattle wins, and Minnesota loses
#6 seed if they beat Carolina and St. Louis loses at all
#6 seed if they beat Carolina, St. Louis wins out, and (Seattle and Minnesota (both win or both lose))
out of the playoffs if St. Louis wins out, Seattle loses, and Minnesota wins
out of the playoffs if they lose to New Orleans
(Carolina and New Orleans tiebreaks aren't quite the same because in a two-way, Minnesota has head-to-head on New Orleans but Carolina takes Minnesota on conference record.)
Nature setting, season-word, element of surprise...
"Wind screams through the trees
Divine wrath upon the earth
Cause you touched yourself."
--seen among these fake captions
Baltimore loses to Pittsburgh, as expected (at least by me), Big Ben still undefeated, Ravens' playoff hopes dealt a predictable blow.
Jacksonville in the process of being shocked at home by Houston, perhaps ruining a whole bunch of Craig-Throat entries (not mine: final nail in my coffin was Cincy losing vs. Buffalo last week, though now just for pride I need a touchdown-underdog to win outright on the road against a team that beat the Patriots last Monday...) but more importantly turning the AFC playoff race upside down.
Out of nowhere Denver Broncos (big winners last night) are in the driver's seat for that last AFC playoff spot. Even if Buffalo wins both this afternoon (against SF this is likely) and next week (vs. PIT, much less likely), given the tiebreakers Denver would win-and-they're-in against a Colts team that might have nothing to play for (locked into #4 3 seed, Manning's record already set).
Over on the Fox side of the ledger, Detroit and NY Giants are doing their part to keep miracle playoff scenarios alive, though a potential New Orleans win today takes us halfway towards the "nip it in the bud" outcome where NO and CAR are both 7-8 and facing each other, i.e. eliminating all 6-9 teams.
UPDATE: Eli Manning apparently is atrocious. NYG set up perfectly for the field goal attempt after Cincy's go-ahead touchdown, but Manning threw the INT so fast Firefox didn't get the NFL.com update until Kitna was already kneeling. His brother Peyton, on the other hand... damn that's a good offense.
(I have no idea how one would define "modern era" but the disclaimer seemed useful somehow.)
Does anybody track game times these days? That BAL-PIT game seems to be about to end in two hours and 40 minutes; wonder how many gives (if any) have been shorter than that the past few seasons. Think of it this way: Were this a Monday night game, it'd be over before midnight Eastern time.
What have gametimes been for those Monday nighters lately? Seems like 4-hours plus has been common, unless I'm thinking of Red Sox baseball playoff games. Actually I am, but also thinking of Monday night games.
Does anyone complain about the Monday night football games running so late? To hear baseball naysayers, you'd think those late games were the end of the world, yet I never hear it for/about football. All in the marketing...
Late '80s or early '90s there was a Broncos-Chiefs game that ran 3:49 despite not going to overtime.
...and a sample of each formula, I suppose.
Trying to overanalyze today's Dilbert may have brought the headache back (it never truly went away, just receded a bit).
About two weeks ago there was a flurry of right-of-center weblogging about British self-defense laws (or lack thereof) and how absurd it was that when burglars and homeowners were getting into fights, it was the homeowners getting into legal trouble for allegedly escalating too much.
I meant to link to the primary article on this (think it was Dave Kopel on TechCentralStation, not sure) and never did; this is probably the bottom of the barrel on "things I meant to blog and still could on a rainy day."
My head (see below - way below by now - "Migraine") has improved enough that rather than literally finding the link I'll try to sleep again. Suffice to say, one reason I really like strong 2nd amendment protections is that those of us who don't have firearms benefit greatly from the credible threat posed by the small subset who do use firearms for home protection (and therefore make burglarizing an occupied home an untenable option in this country).
Well, shoot. On the one hand I link approvingly to Power Line for its indictment of the AP wire (and finally got around to blogrolling it), but then I hit the main page and see this overreaction.
Would you have ever guessed that there'd be a sociopolitical issue where the antidote to right-of-center overreaction is a sense of perspective from Michelle Malkin of all people? She, Jeff Jarvis, Glenn Reynolds (I think it's safe to assume, given the tone with which he links), and I all agree that taking offense at anything that happens in the U.S. is ridiculous compared to the lack of outrage about literal persecution of Chrstians worldwide (and of course also Jews worldwide, Muslims worldwide... the other day Fark linked to an article handwringing over the descent of some lawless pockets of L.A., citing the low income housing complex where black gangs have driven all the Latins out, and the low income housing complex where Latin gangs have driven all the blacks out; worldwide there's a lot of the religious persecution equivalent of that).
In a comment now many posts below this one, Bogg correctly points out that I should have assailed Associated Press instead of assailing The Daily Show.
His main axe to grind seemed to be pro-Daily Show rather than anti-AP, though his comment was dead-on, especially when AP gives you stuff like this to justify being angry with them.
Still not as bad as CNN all but bribing Saddam to keep its access to pre-liberation Iraq... if you don't know what I'm talking about, speak up. This was already covered on-line pretty extensively last year (can't remember whether I mentioned it myself) but the details are shameful all the same.
"There remains an outside chance that the Colts could edge New England out of a first-round bye."
--Yahoo! Sports NFL front page as of when I type this.
Um, that'd be very outside, Indianapolis being not only a game behind the Patriots but also on the wrong end of the head-to-head tiebreaker. If any team has a good shot at edging NE out of a first-round bye, it's San Diego.
Meanwhile, Bill Simmons gets it. Too lazy to find the URL to link (I read this a day or two ago) but he was dead-on when he mentioned that the Jacksonville-Buffalo game from Week 1 will probably turn out to be a deciding factor for final AFC playoff spot.
This isn't the stat line Chad wanted for his fantasy football championship.
If Brian Griese has a big day tomorrow later today, then I might start hearing grief again about Chad's trading Griese to me. Never mind that had he not made that deal, he'd have started Griese Week 15 and lost his semifinal.
(Much, much shorter version of a post that I typed out but somehow failed to save. Given that I'm the #1 result on this search, maybe it was all too redundant anyway.)
More than one of you cited "Marge vs. The Monorail" as best episode ever, yet I still don't see what's superlative about it. (Though as of four hours ago maybe it was just the violent head pain.)
Within any other season it would be a fine candidate for best episode that season, yet compared to the cream of Season 4... I claim that each of the episodes listed below are superior to "Monorail." Discuss.
"A Streetcar Named Marge"
"New Kid On The Block"
"Mr. Plow"
"Lisa's First Word"
"Selma's Choice" (longtime readers know that this is my choice for Best Episode Ever - and it's the one right after "Monorail")
"I Love Lisa"
"The Front"
"Krusty Gets Kancelled" (on second thought, "Monorail" > Krusty's comeback, vigilante Bette Midler nonwithstanding)
Months ago I was tempted to host an N-episode Simpsons tournament. Thing is, I'm so opinionated myself that instead of letting democracy reign, what I'd really rather do is just randomly put Simpsons episodes into brackets, present the brackets, present my opinions of who should advance and who shouldn't, then let you try to change my mind. Maybe you'd convince me, maybe you wouldn't.
Could I even remotely get away with that and still get strong participation despite my lording the final say over everyone?
As a parlor game, pick the five best episodes you can think of from any season other than Season 4, and see how they compare to the best of Season 4. Then check the writing credits for some of Season 4's best episode and think warmly of the best bits from Conan O'Brien's own show.
Eps that I thought were way earlier than they actually were:
"A Streetcar Named Marge" (Season 4, yet I'd been dead certain this was Season 1)
"The Last Temptation Of Homer" (Season 5, I'd have guessed Season 2)
Eps that I thought were way later than they actually were:
"Homer The Heretic" (Season 4, yet feels like Season 7 or 8; great episode for the first 15 minutes or so - "Please do not offer my god a peanut" - then the ending reminds you of why it's not more highly touted)
"Bart's Inner Child" (Season 5, yet craptacular enough that how can this possibly not be from one of the double-digit seasons?)
If you ever wonder whether you have a migraine headache, you don't have one: You can tell you don't have one from your act of wondering. When you do get a migraine, there's no need to wonder.
3.5 hours and counting. Of that time: Two Simpsons episodes watched on DVD (44 minutes?). One weblog post, plus this one in progress (20 minutes?). Lots of lying awake. Apparently a good bit of being asleep, where what I think of as the headache intensifying would really just be its continued presence being enough to wake me up.
Dreamt of stars (the five-pointed kind, not the astronomical kind) suddenly getting so bright they hurt to look at, and DVD menu items that would do the same.
Excedrin for Migraines isn't workin