Best religious commentary I've read in awhile. (Rebutting another piece of commentary.)
The sacrifice of the Lamb of God is extraordinary precisely because the Lamb of God is actually the Lion of Judah. A lamb that dies on the sacrificial altar is no more than one in a string of pointless sacrifices; the lamb has no choice in the matter. What is central to the Narnia stories, and to Christian theology, is that the lion, which could rend the sacrificiants limb from limb, instead deliberately eschews violence and lays himself down to be killed. The lion-as-lamb simultaneously acts to end the violent power that is lion-ness, and the passivity that is lamb-ness. It is an endlessly rich act, which Gopnik would have us replace with the martyrdom of the cow at the slaughterhouse gate.
"[U]ltimately this is about whether management gets to screw workers"
--Atrios, about a recent strike (given the generic sentiment involved, does it really even matter which strike?)
Megan McCardle's response is where I saw that quote just now. Like her, I have no dog in the specific writers-versus-studios dispute. I'm just floored by how many people think of "workers" and "management" as two monolithic entities separated by an uncrossable chasm.
(Full disclosure: I'm an "exempt employee" (i.e. management (or "i.e. not paid for overtime")) in what basically amounts to the computer entertainment industry, where organized labor is all but nonexistent.)
I didn't realize he was the Dallas Cowboys' offensive coordinator until seeing his name mentioned on Football Outsiders. Here's more you may or may not have known. I distinctly remember that 1994 Thanksgiving game. That was the day I spent with the classmate who'd invited me to dinner with her church group.
It was a group infamous in the Boston area for high-pressure tactics. I didn't realize that she was a member of this group until I saw the group's name on a paperweight somewhere in the apartment where we'd all gathered. From that point on priority #1 was to make a graceful, safe exit at the end of the day.
It worked (the tactics weren't that high-pressure: there was never a "you're free to leave at any time" moment, nor any spiked punch or such), but not before we got to watch this chess movie and the first 15 minutes of this inexcusable Robin Williams vehicle. (Maybe the rest of the group watched the rest of the movie. Maybe "this movie sucks" was my excuse to skedaddle, in addition to being vehemently true.)
Cheating Offsets: I can only assume this is brilliant satire.
E-mail subject line from Houston Chronicle Subscriber Services: "Get your collectible HANNAH MONTANA Poster in THIS Sunday's Chronicle!"
The message body is an HTML graphic that I assume doesn't tell you anything you didn't infer already.
Is anyone else being haunted by Brad Delp from beyond the grave? Does Dennis DeYoung wish he'd thought of composing a song that namechecks Styx's greatest hits?
What if, in the fall of '94, somebody found a Kurt Cobain song built on nostalgia? ("Well we smelled like teen spirit and we came as we were...")
On the other hand I hadn't thought of "You Know You're Right" (the one where the chorus goes "HEY-aaEY-aaEY-aaEY-AY...") in years. Maybe that was almost as bad.
Still, "I grew up in the '60s. 1967 was the summer of love" is lyric gold: It sounds like a senior citizen being interviewed for a documentary, only set to music.
Did Bill Simmons write this column just to win a bet?
"Easterbrook's gone bitshat-crazy; nobody will ever top that."
"O RLY?"
Stories like this outrage me, but in the exact opposite direction of the intended outrage.
We're supposed to feel sorry for someone who was fired after 30 years of working at Taco Bell. (Italics below are blatant straw men that you should feel free to pick apart.)
Where is the reward for her 30 years of service?
Silly me, I thought it was the 30 years of paychecks.
But her 30 years of loyalty is an asset!
Is it? What possible use does a fast food chain have for N years of an employee's loyalty (where N > 5 or so)? If the idea is that she's accrued 30 years of being-good-at-what-she-does skills, then the two failed performance reviews that triggered her firing suggest otherwise.
But they made her cry! "I bawled for three days after I got fired."
I often choose my fast food based on whether the corporation in question makes its employees cry. It's right up there with food quality, price, and whether the franchise in question is on the side of the street where I happen to be driving.
(Flippancy aside, I really couldn't tell you when I had my last fast food joint meal. I didn't even remember to eat my free Tuesday World Series taco.)
This article about Halo 3 is edifying up to a point. But whoever submitted it to Fark (under the particular headline that ran) has terrible reasoning skills.
It's not the "suicide" part of suicide bombing that makes the tactic "illegitimate." I'm surprised it took so long for a Fark commenter to make that point. (Scroll to "walked into a cafe in Second Life.")
Is Shaquille O'Neal 0-4 with that monstrosity of a beard (as seen on ESPN's front page) or is that thing older than it looks?
Have we really reached the point where people heap scorn and ridicule on the governor of Georgia simply because he prays for rain? I find it deliciously ironic to see non-religious people acting even less rationally than religious people.
(Speaking of politics and the phrase "delicious irony," Chad sent me a link to the Presidential Candidate Selector quiz promoted on the Volokh Conspiracy. Apparently I should vote for Ron Paul -- yet I'm well aware that most of his recent popularity comes from single-issue voters for an issue on which I disagree with him.)
Interesting contrast between a recent Michael Yon photo in Iraq and an infamous Saigon photo.
Oaklandathletics.com wants me to vote for Bill King for the Ford C. Frick award. I can't really see what difference it makes to King in the afterlife whether he wins it or not. Either way, I assume he's in a happy place these days.
Spoilers (if you're not already familiar with Johnny Cash's life story)...
It was worth watching. We didn't need to have it for two months but better late than never.
"Where were you?"
"I hear angels!"
"I wish it had been you instead of your brother."
--
"I love you."
"But we only went out for one month and you're in the Air Force now."
"Marry me anyway."
--
"Shouldn't you sell things instead of playing music?"
"You can have the audition but don't play any gospel."
--
"You sing well."
"These are my wife and kids."
"I have kids too."
--
"Don't be so lazy when you get home, and don't talk to me about your tour, and [nag nag nag etc.]"
--
"Hello again!"
"How are your kids? Mine are doing well but the marriage didn't work out."
"Sing this song with me."
"But my ex-husband and I sang this song together!"
[kiss] [leaves stage] [next day]
"You're all drunk! I'm leaving the tour."
[at some point in the future they wind up in bed but regret it]
--
"Stay away from my kids!"
--
[wife #1 leaves, lots of pill popping ensues]
--
"Thank you for coming to my new house in North Carolina for Thanksgiving!"
"Son you're still worthless."
[storms out]
"June go take care of him."
--
"I'm going to give a concert at Folsom Prison."
"I disapprove but everyone watching knows you'll get your way."
--
"Marry me."
"For the thousandth time no. And stop asking."
--
"Marry me."
"But we're on stage! Just keep singing."
"Marry me."
[awkward pause]
"Marry me."
"Oh all right."
[All her misgivings about marrying him wash away as they live happily ever after, but we don't actually see that part.]
From the first six posts to this thread:
"Why would the Astros do this? Wasn't someone willing to give them something better for Lidge?"
"This is interesting. I thought Bourn was worth a lot more than that."
I just sent my wife a link to the news about baseball GMs voting for instant replay. That left stuck in my head the glorious sound a pinball machine makes when you hit the replay threshold (or succeed at the 10% chance of a freebie, on those machine gracious enough to include that option).
It's been so long since I played pinball. Even the concept of "extra ball" is fond memories.
Drivers licenses for illegals actually isn't an issue that concerns me much (if you're running for federal office, the decisions of a state governor aren't always relevant) but I have to agree with Mickey that how she reacts to things doesn't bode well for what kind of president she'd be.
(The catch-22 is that so much of what she's doing wrong is a stereotypically female way to do things wrong. Note the full meaning of "stereotypically": She's not doing what actual women would necessarily do, just what caricatures of women would do. Playing the gender card is, ironically, an example of that difference. Some people assume victim status more than others: compare to Elizabeth Dole, Olympia Snowe, even Pelosi.)
"Notre Dame created a monster when it fired Tyrone Willingham after three years. Charlie Weis is paying the price."
--lead to a Gene Wojciechowski column on ESPN.com. That's the text shown on the front page (rest of the column is probably here)
Compare to Tim Keown's note just yesterday (boldface in original):
"Rarely does a sentence explain so many things on so many levels with so few words: A wire service story in the aftermath of Notre Dame's loss to Navy included the following sentence -- 'Weis, whose contract runs through 2015, said Sunday he's not worried.'"
If you trust Wikipedia then the "price" "paid" by Weis for Notre Dame's firing of Tyrone Willingham is negative two million dollars per year.
This satire is so dead-on that I hung my head in shame.
But after that I read the latest convergences, with the "Don't ever be the first to stop applauding!" anecdote.
THANK GOODNESS we live in the country we live in. (My point is no more, and no less, than that.)
In any case, the latest from Dan Liebert is refreshingly apolitical.
It's not immediately clear the last movie I watched (off the top of my head, last theater trip was the more recent of The Simpsons and HP5; last Netflix rental was Sophie's Choice(?)).
We've been working our way through the entire Get Smart series, with Family Guy thrown in there as change of pace (both the latest DVD set and random earlier episodes).
This list that The Onion AV Club includes two of my most despised movie-watching experiences ever. I'd completely forgotten my seething resentment towards both of the movies in question. (Only one of the two was from a book I'd read; you might be able to find the other in the archives of this blog.)
Oh, I've also seen The Human Stain (with no strong opinion of it) and Breakfast at Tiffany's (liked Audrey Hepburn, tolerated the rest). The other 16 I haven't seen and probably won't.
(Despite the nice ring the title has to it, I just mean "things that are sort of like fantasy football but not really," contexts where you're basically predicting what will happen.)
In Barker's Cut-Throat league I will have gotten the entire NFC South out of the way in just weeks 9 and 10. Not on purpose: It just worked out that way. Not that you care, but for the first nine weeks I'd mostly followed a plan set back in August, with only minor changes (things like not picking against Tampa Bay so much after all). This felt like about the right point to throw the rest of the plan out the window and optimize from scratch for the 14 teams I had left and their weakest remaining home opponents.
And in Yahoo! Salary Cap Football (is it ironic that the fantasy football scheme that best rewards thinking like a capitalist is the one in which you don't have exclusive "ownership" of a player within a league? - maybe not if you contrast market competition with monopolies), ladies and gentlemen it's Adrian Peterson and Lee Evans, bringing me to within 5 points of 7th place (of 10). Welcome to the big-time and back from the dead, respectively.
"If you say you're Italian but you don't know Lucio Battisti then you're not really Italian, you're from Jersey."
--my office roommate, who was born & raised in Verona (yes, he's a gentleman)
Balla Linda (compare to The Grass Roots cover)
Un'avventura (compare to Wilson Pickett's version)
Legend has it Battisti lost his guitar before this live TV performance and had to buy a cheap guitar at a train station.
As alluded to a week ago, every Tuesday my department gets some music appreciation going (unless the meeting is preempted, or unless it's my turn to present and the opening guitar part of Britney Fox's "Long Way to Love" augurs a descent to hair metal).
Is, inexplicably, buried within a football column.
(Start at "Housing Problems Genuine, Sense of Crisis Phony:" and continue eight paragraphs.)
(Tuesday Morning Quarterback, that is.)
Sign of the times: TMQ just changed the "AP" entry in his AutoCorrect from Advanced Placement to Adrian Peterson.
Even though this will sound wrong for anyone who didn't already know Peterson's nickname, shouldn't it be AD (for "All Day")?
But aren't you glad he got that final carry?
Not really, why? If anything this is one more unsettling data point about players of team sports pursuing individual records for their own sake.
The past two Sundays, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Brett Favre have become the only quarterbacks in NFL history to defeat 31 other teams.
In Easterbrook's favor he expresses this one correctly, unlike the San Francisco Chronicle, which incorrectly stated (in a headline) that Favre had beaten every NFL team. (I went to the article excitedly, thinking perhaps he'd happened to beat the Packers while still in Atlanta, but no such luck.)
Stretching back to last season, Pittsburgh is on a 10-3 run.
I remember the day the Coliseum scoreboard bothered to spend pixels telling fans that some player (Scott Hatteberg if I remember right, but the detail isn't relevant) had batted .250 over his previous seven games. These are the sports statistic counterpart to how The Onion revels in "Least Essential" albums.
Marshawn Lynch had rushed on six consecutive snaps, and the Cincinnati defense was fixated on him. Lynch took a pitch right, accompanied by pulling tackle Langston Walker, and flipped a touchdown pass to tight end Robert Royal.
I'd actually e-mailed Chad a cut-and-paste of the plays from that drive, specifically to express how highly I approved.
Endlessly I bellow at my middle school football kids, "Never stop moving on defense!"
Americans spend a incredible amount time on football. Try not to think too hard about that.
Compared to us the cosmos is inexpressibly old; compared to itself, the universe glistens with dew. Creation might continue for hundreds of billions of years -- or forever.
Sure, why not? Seriously! What order of magnitude would you intuitively think of as the shelf life of the universe? Now that you've thought of it, why couldn't it be (say) a thousand orders of magnitude higher?
Put more football on television! Show it on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, when viewers can actually watch.
For the target audience in question, of course he's actually right. On a larger scale, though... see my note about Americans and football two items up.
Finally. (If they're even smart enough to go through with it.)
Coach of old unbeaten team casts aspersions on legitimacy of new unbeaten team.
On the other hand, one of the few more egregious wastes of time than talking about "asterisks" is caring enough about them to take offense.
Minor adjustments have resulted from Monday's Steelers-Ravens game. Paul's comment is pretty convincing but I don't feel the need to change that part of the poll, at least not in haste.
UPDATE: Minnesota's record (finally) fixed. This is exactly why one should use a time-saving device (say, a spreadsheet that would auto-update teams' records, previous week's ranks, and next week's opponents) instead of cutting, pasting, typing, etc.
I really want to agree with Brian's critique of the Vikings (I had them in the late 20s when mainstream sources had them in the mid teens) but the funny thing is, they've outscored their opponents. Compare to e.g. the Broncos.
Better yet, compare the Minnesota team itself to Baltimore. The Ravens have had a big reputation going back to when they neutralized Peyton Manning last January (and would have won a playoff game if they had ANY offense that day). They're still two slots ahead of the Vikings in this poll itself, but what exactly do they do better than Minnesota does? Adrian Peterson at this point is clearly better than Willis McGahee; right now the Vikings' defense is better, and while either Kyle Boller or circa-2007 Steve McNair is still probably better than Tavaris Jackson, is it that huge a difference?
32. St. Louis (0-8) (Last week: 32) Bye. (Week 10: at New Orleans)
31. Miami (0-8) (Last week: 31) Bye. (Week 10: vs. Buffalo)
30. San Francisco (2-6) (Last week: 30) Even when it was a one-point game the outcome seemed clear. (Week 10: at Seattle)
29. NY Jets (1-8) (Last week: 29) Bad home loss trumps bad road loss. (Week 10: bye)
28. Atlanta (2-6) (Last week: 28) Ugly, ugly game. (Week 10: at Carolina)
27. Oakland (2-6) (Last week: 26) That concludes our run of abysmal teams. (Week 10: vs. Chicago)
26. Cincinnati (2-6) (Last week: 25) By far the worst non-abysmal team in the NFL. (Week 10: at Baltimore)
25. Houston (4-5) (Last week: 27) The worst is over, I think. More upside than downside from here, especially as soon as Andre Johnson comes back. (Week 10: bye)
24. Carolina (4-4) (Last week: 21) Without their top QB and barely a pulse (1 of 2) (Week 10: vs. Atlanta)
23. Arizona (3-5) (Last week: 19) Without their top QB and barely a pulse (2 of 2) (Week 10: vs. Detroit)
22. Philadelphia (3-5) (Last week: 16) Fork in them? (1 of 2) (Week 10: at Washington)
21. Denver (3-5) (Last week: 15) Fork in them? (2 of 2) (Week 10: at Kansas City)
20. Buffalo (4-4) (Last week: 24) Their four losses: Routed at Pittsburgh and at New England; Monday night collapse vs. Dallas; and that buzzer-beating field goal in the same game where they had a player paralyzed. As of right this instant, there's a pretty bright line between the top 20 and the other 12. (Week 10: at Miami)
19. Kansas City (4-4) (Last week: 18) When the Bears beat them in Week 2, did you think these teams would end up in consecutive slots? (Week 10: vs. Denver)
18. Chicago (3-5) (Last week: 17) Bye. (Week 10: at Oakland)
17. Minnesota (3-5) (4-4)(Last week: 23) They say they key to championships is to run the ball and stop the run. This might be one of the worst teams imaginable that still accomplishes those two specific things so well. "Hi, my name is Adrian Peterson. I'll be very, very good for awhile." (Week 10: at Green Bay)
16. Seattle (4-4) (Last week: 12) What a flawed team. Still the likely NFC West champ, in a division where 7-9 might even be enough. (Week 10: vs. San Francisco)
15. Baltimore (4-4) (Last week: 11) TBA. (Week 10: vs. Cincinnati)
14. Cleveland (5-3) (Last week: 22) Need defense, and will have to step up on the road in the second half. Big rematch coming up. (Week 10: at Pittsburgh)
13. Washington (5-3) (Last week: 14) The two worst teams in the AFC East both took them to overtime. Admittedly they did win them both. (Week 10: vs. Philadelphia)
12. New Orleans (4-4) (Last week: 20) Momentum is sweet, and likely to continue. (Week 10: vs. St. Louis)
11. Tampa Bay (5-4) (Last week: 13) Righted the ship a bit. (Week 10: bye)
10. Jacksonville (5-3) (Last week: 9) I didn't expect the defense to be the problem. (Week 10: at Tennessee)
9. San Diego (4-4) (Last week: 6) Adrian Peterson outrushed LaDainian Tomlinson by 256. Of course you saw that coming. (Week 10: vs. Indianapolis)
8. Detroit (6-2) (Last week: 10) Now that was a dismantling. Eight seems impossibly high, especially given how crushing both losses were, yet no other team has a better claim to this spot. (Week 10: at Arizona)
7. Tennessee (6-2) (Last week: 8) Made it look easy. (Week 10: vs. Jacksonville)
6. NY Giants (6-2) (Last week: 7) Bye. (Week 10: vs. Dallas)
5. Pittsburgh (6-2) (Last week: 5) Boomer Esiason (on the radio coverage) is preemptively angry that ESPN et al might ask whether Ben should have still been in the game in the third quarter. (Week 10: vs. Cleveland)
4. Green Bay (7-1) (Last week: 4) Thanksgiving should be fun. (Week 10: vs. Minnesota)
3. Indianapolis (7-1) (Last week: 2) Better luck net time. (Week 10: at San Diego)
2. Dallas (7-1) (Last week: 3) It's not the Colts' loss so much as the Cowboys' own convincing win. (Week 10: at NY Giants)
1. New England (9-0) (Last week: 1) Well then. (Week 10: bye)
Your mission, should you choose the time-suck, is to find at least one sexually explicit image on Wikipedia. The one I saw just now has clearly visible nipples. (If I told you it was someone related to a historical figure, that would probably give away who it was.)
If forced to choose between an eternity of "Fergalicious" and an eternity of "The Sweet Escape": I'd go with "Fergalicious." Nothing in the former would drive me to homicide the way the repeat hook in the latter threatens to.
Greg Mankiw has your talking points right here.
This is problematic. (On the other hand, unbelievably many commenters made the same ridiculous reading comprehension error. In fairness the article was unacceptably confusing on the point in question. Whoever wrote that copy should be fired on the spot.)
If the real estate company's claim is true then her odds of getting the house are essentially zero; on the other hand, especially in light of all the newspaper publicity, if ever there was a case for negligent infliction of emotional distress...
Chuck Tanner will try to help restore Pirates discipline.
I'm sure it's possible that lack of discipline cost them a game or two last year, maybe a handful this decade. Meanwhile lack of talent cost them 15-20 games this year and well over 100 this decade.
If I put my wife in the batters box and asked her to hit home runs, I'm sure her failure to do so would reflect some sort of character flaw.
Incidentally, I agree completely with most of the commenters about what a travesty it is that people still sing "God Bless America" in the middle of a ballgame.
Oh, while we're simultaneously having a fit of libertarian pique and thinking about things Dwight thinks about, rarely are their more truthful words written than:
"You can feel the collapse of [the Johnstown] economy coming. If the primary impetus for what stabilizes the district is one man's patronage, the aftershocks will devastate."
See also military base closures, and the poor deluded people who argued against them for pure local-economy reasons that had nothing to do with national defense.
