The Acerbic Alchemist

Going over to the Dark Side...

2005-03-17T21:24:00.000-06:00

So,Richard and I are joining forces to make Pearly Gates the Angels blog to spend your weekend at (Disclaimer: This statement only true insofar as we have a chance to post on the weekend and people actually are interested in spending their precious weekend hours reading a blog about the only sports team currently in a fight with its city about its name). This means a couple of things: 1) The Acerbic Alchemist will be updated less, possibly even eliminated (I haven't decided, and it may still be appropriate to post some things there) 2) The Pearly Gates will be updated more often, hopefully...but now with two voices...although there are very few instances where they actually disagree over anything 3) You don't have to click on as many links to get your Angels information (or spoonfed conservative agenda or whatever else we post) 4) I will now be blogging on a more fine-tuned template and will have more readers a day than 20 (these things make me happy) and 5) I will now be posting with my real name, which makes some sense since Richard posts with his).

More MVP

2005-03-17T00:20:00.000-06:00

As I said in this post, MVP Baseball 2005 still lists the Angels as the Anaheim Angels. A new twist on that that I discovered today is in their intro when EA has video of some star saying "It's in the game", they actually have a fan...a hot chick wearing wings, a halo and an Angels shirt standing in front of Anaheim Stadium saying "Go Anaheim Angels!" or something along those lines. I am happy that EA supports Anaheim in its fight.

Name change update

2005-03-16T19:19:00.000-06:00

Rob reports on an LA Times article detailing the latest in the Angels name change saga. It seems that the Angels now have to come up with a good reason why they changed their name, otherwise it goes back to Anaheim until a full on trial can occur.

I have been thinking lately about how Anaheim could attempt to use the Major League Baseball Anti-Trust exemption to possibly have Congress force the Angels to change their name back. I am not saying Congress should, will, or even actually has the power to do such a thing, but I think it is in the realm of possibility. Let's say that Anaheim loses the full on trial. Well, Congress is intimately involved with the workings of the MLB (as demonstrated a couple of years ago when they considered contraction and this year with the steroids thing). They are not intimately involved with the workings of other sports leagues and I am pretty sure this is due to the MLB Anti-Trust exemption. Well, considering all of the congressmen from Orange County probably want the team to stay Anaheim (or something else identifying them with OC and not LA) and all of the congressmen from LA probably want the team to be Anaheim (the city of LA is not happy about the name change...by city, I mean the politicians), they could easily co-author some bill forcing the name back to Anaheim. My guess is that they could say something along the lines that because there is no possibility for a competing baseball team in Anaheim and that the city of Anaheim obviously wanted to be associated with the baseball team, then as long as the Angels are in Anaheim and that language is in the lease contract, they should remain the Anaheim Angels. I may be wrong as to how far the Anti-Trust exmption goes, but it seems pretty clear to me that it means Congress can mess around with your business as much as it wants.

Dance with Them that Brung Ya

2005-03-15T00:43:00.001-06:00

Richard has his bracket up (in a nifty picture format). Here is mine (in a not so nifty format):

Midwest (Chicago):
Round 1:
1 Illinois over 16 Fair.-Dickinson
9 Nevada over 8 Texas
5 Alabama over 12 UW-Milwaukee
4 Boston College over 13 Pennsylvania
11 UAB over 6 LSU
3 Arizona over 14 Utah St.
7 So. Illinois over 10 St. Mary's
2 Oklahoma St. over 15 SE Louisiana
Round 2:
1 Illinois over 9 Nevada
5 Alabama over 4 Boston College
11 UAB over 3 Arizona
2 Oklahoma St. over 7 So. Illinois
Sweet 16:
1 Illinois over 5 Alabama
2 Oklahoma St. over 11 UAB
Elite 8:
1 Illinois over 2 Oklahoma St.

West (Albequerque):
Round 1:
1 Washington over 16 Montana
8 Pacific over 9 Pittsburgh
5 Georgia Tech over 12 George Washington
4 Louisville over 13 LA-Lafayette
6 Texas Tech over 11 UCLA
3 Gonzaga over 14 Winthrop
10 Creighton over 7 West Virginia
2 Wake Forest over 15 Chattanooga
Round 2:
8 Pacific over 1 Washington
4 Louisville over 5 Georgia Tech
3 Gonzaga over 6 Texas Tech
10 Creighton over 2 Wake Forest
Sweet 16:
8 Pacific over 4 Louisville
3 Gonzaga over 10 Creighton
Elite 8:
3 Gonzaga over 8 Pacific

East (Syracuse):
16b Alabama A&M over 16a Oakland
Round 1:
1 North Carolina over 16 Alabama A&M
9 Iowa St. over 8 Minnesota
12 New Mexico over 5 Villanova
4 Florida over 13 Ohio
6 Wisconsin over 11 Northern Iowa
3 Kansas over 14 Bucknell
7 Charlotte over 10 N. Carolina St.
2 Connecticut over 15 Central Florida
Round 2:
1 North Carolina over 9 Iowa St.
12 New Mexico over 4 Florida
6 Wisconsin over 3 Kansas
2 Connecticut over 7 Charlotte
Sweet 16:
1 North Carolina over 12 New Mexico
2 Connecticut over 6 Wisconsin
Elite 8:
1 North Carolina over 2 Connecticut

South (Austin):
Round 1:
1 Duke over 16 Delaware St.
9 Mississippi St. over 8 Stanford
12 Old Dominion over 5 Michigan St.
4 Syracuse over 13 Vermont
6 Utah over 11 UTEP
3 Oklahoma over 14 Niagara
10 Iowa over 7 Cincinnati
2 Kentucky over 15 E. Kentucky
Round 2:
1 Duke over 9 Mississippi St.
4 Syracuse over 12 Old Dominion
6 Utah over 3 Oklahoma
2 Kentucky over 10 Iowa
Sweet 16:
4 Syracuse over 1 Duke
2 Kentucky over 6 Utah
Elite 8:
2 Kentucky over 4 Syracuse

Final 4:
Illinois over Gonzaga
Kentucky over North Carolina
Championshp Game:
Illinois over Kentucky

Protest of the protest of the protest

2005-03-14T18:27:00.000-06:00

If you haven't seen images of the recent anti-Syria protest in Lebanon, it's quite amazing. There are reports that 1.5 million people were on the streets, out of a total population of 3.5 million. This was likely at least partially in response to the Hezbollah pro-Syria protest held last week, which tempered some people's beliefs that Lebanon really wanted Syria gone. I think it is pretty evident that pithy little things like Hezbollah sponsored protests are not going to stop the Lebanese. They want democracy and they want it now.

MVP

2005-03-14T02:20:00.000-06:00

I bought MVP Baseball 2005 for the Gamecube on an impulse today. Especially impulsive since I still need to finish Knights of the Old Republic 2 and Metroid Prime 2. However, it WAS just $20 and staring longingly at me, so I bought it. Anyways, I am happy to report that the Angels are still listed as Anaheim. Also, they have fine tuned a lot of the small things in the game (although I haven't played it enough yet to notice a whole lot). They have added new pitching and hitting minigames, both of which are great. The hitting rewards you for hitting for distance, direction, and on the ground or in the air...which can really help train you for game situations. The pitching game is sortof a Collapse type of game where you use pitches to hit colored squares...the type of pitch is the color. If you hit a square with the wrong color switch it does nothing, while hitting it with the right color eliminates all of the same colored blocks touching it. An owner mode has also been created (similar to the Madden owner mode) where you get to build your own stadium and run your team in an economic fashion. The fielding is also better because they added a new type in addition to the original Manual (now called MVP, where you have to move players as soon as the ball is hit), Automatic (where it does everything), Assisted (where it moves the player until the ball is caught, then it is yours), and the new Manual (where it moves the player towards the ball until you are ready to take over). I like this new Manual way better than the old one because my previous baseball games all had that as the default.

I thing that I dislike about these games is the fact that certain players never get their likenesses or names in the game. This is mostly due to the 1994 strike, where replacement players were almost used and were subsequently blackballed by the Player's Union. This is the 2nd worst thing the Player's Union has done over the last ten years (the first being the stonewalling of steroid testing, which has only hurt them). These guys who were replacement players were young and just wanted to play baseball. Because of this, most of them had a rough time actually making the majors despite being pretty good and they still don't get to have their names or likenesses on any official merchandise. If the Union wants to help its image (and it REALLY needs it right now), it would allow these guys back in.

Gerrymandering

2005-03-13T20:29:00.000-06:00

This is the type of issue that makes me glad Ahnold is governor of California. It seems that the legislature still thinks they can fight against his issues, but what they don't seem to realize is that when the people of California voted him into office, they were saying "Do whatever it takes to fix the state." Certainly Gray Davis was not the only reason for the state's budget and energy issues, but he never even tried to reign the legislature in and take a stand. Ahnold was elected specifically to do that. Gerrymandering is something that needs to be stopped everywhere. Right now, in California, the people don't choose who represents them, the incumbents choose the people they wish to represent. Districts need to be laid out in logical ways...as in by city lines, geographical lines, and/or economic lines. If the legislature is again not willing to compromise with Ahnold, he will put an issue on the ballot that is much worse than the compromise could be. When they finally realize that he will be successful EVERY SINGLE time, the legislature might finally be able to get something done right.

Death Penalty

2005-03-11T22:04:00.000-06:00

This is the reason capital punishment is still needed. I have nothing else to say other than I hope that this man gets caught soon and is put down quickly.

The Lake Show

2005-03-11T00:01:00.000-06:00

I watched part of a Laker game for only the second (maybe third) time this year. Some quick notes: I hate alternate uniforms, it took me about a full minute of game time to figure out which team was which (the Lakers normal uniforms are some of the most distinguishable in the league); I don't recognize the Laker team anymore; and Kobe still has the ability to dominate a game. As far as the last one goes, it wasn't his 36 points that did it, it was his ability to draw double teams and pass the ball out for the open three (and the fact that he was willing to do that). I started watching when it was 77-70 Dallas and watched most of the rest of the game. The Lakers then went on a tear and ended up winning 100-95. Kobe apparently had 12 points in the quarter, but more important was his three assists in the first 3 minutes of the quarter (his only three in the game), all of which were on 3-pointers. Their 4th quarter showing tells me that the team has a lot of promise...they aren't going to do much this year (it was going to be a throw away year anyways), but they do have a foundation set up for the next few years and should be seriously competitive by next year or the year after.

Angels notes

2005-03-09T20:09:00.000-06:00

Dallas is out 2-4 weeks. This poses a problem as the Angels really wanted to get him ready for the big leagues before the actual season started. This especially hurts with Kendry Morales taking so long to get into camp (which eliminates their ability to evaluate which level he should join). However, Rob Quinlan should be ready to fill in ably at 3rd, and Casey Kotchman is making his bat heard trying to make the team (a difficult task considering he has the coach's favorite player in his position).
Also, I wanted to talk about the Jered Weaver fiasco. I have to give credit to the team, they have impressed me with their resolve not to be taken in by Scott Boras' demands. With that said, it was only about $2 million over about 5 years that was the difference which does not seem like much. This brings me back to my age old rant about how the MLB draft works. The idea that any player can set up their own signing bonus undermines the purpose of the worst team picking first. The players are not supposed to pick their team, but they are perfectly capable of that right now. All they have to do is sign with Scott Boras and say they want an $8 million contract, and more than half the teams won't even bother. I don't fault Boras for this in particular (although he is one of the truly vile men associated with baseball), but rather the MLB's draft policies. Selig wants to increase competitive balance with things like luxury taxes, but he does not seem to see this as a problem where small market revenue teams cannot compete for players like Weaver. The Angels were willing to give Weaver the highest paycheck in the draft, despite him being drafted twelfth, because they considered him the best player, but Boras and Weaver wanted more. If current trends continue, Weaver will re-enter the draft and get some other team to draft him. He should not be allowed back in the draft. If you don't sign with the team you are drafted by, you should not play in that league, period.
Finally, spring training is overrated. At least, for looking at scores. There is nothing better than knowing that baseball will be back in a month (especially since football is over, hockey never began, and my basketball team sucks this year). But as far as reading anything into a result happens too much (this happens with football preseason way more). The important thing is whether or not the individual players on your team are performing well and to evaluate prospects. As such, I will never care about the preseason (hell, I barely care about the regular season of basketball and hockey).

The Walk of Game

2005-03-09T19:45:00.000-06:00

Several video game designers and characters were entered into the Walk of Game recently. These include Nolan Bushnell, designer of Pong (the first major hit video game) and Shigeru Miyamoto, who has made the Mario games, the Donkey Kong games, the Zelda games, and many more, as designers and Link, Mario, and Sonic as game characters. It also lists Halo as the first video game inducted, and I don't really understand why. I have heard it is a good game, but it certainly is not something that should be the first recognized video game out of ALL the video games ever made.

Stupid Design vs. Evilution?

2005-03-07T22:45:00.000-06:00

So, for the last couple of weeks it seems like everyone is talking about Intelligent Design vs. Evolution (ok, mainly NRO Corner and Right-Thinking from the Left Coast (links at right)). I figured I would put my two cents in...

For starters, to make an informed decision, you need to know what they both are. Intelligent Design is basically Creationism in stating that some living things are so complex they could not have come about naturally (kind of like the Babelfish in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which, ironically, proved there is no God). The Theory of Evolution is the only current scientific theory explaining the origins of species, and uses natural selection of characteristics to explain how life has become complicated.

Now, my belief as a chemist with some biochemistry background is strongly in favor of evolution. However, I do understand it is a Theory right now and not a Law, which means that there are still holes and gaps that are currently unexplainable. Intelligent Design, however, is not a scientific theory, there is no way to test whether it is correct or not, but that does not mean that it is not necessarily true. I am writing about this not because I want to bash Intelligent Design (so many do), but because the arguments people use in its favor are always so terrible.

The main thing followers of ID say is that random chance could not lead to such complicated things as the human eye. This is absolute crap. The theory of evolution can explain the development of the eye perfectly. Think about the first bacteria, single cell organisms swimming in water. They would have obviously developed a way to detect heat, as that would make it easier to find appropriate nutrients and energy. Soon, a few of them evolve to take advantage of light as an energy source (think about chloroplasts as an example for that), which means they can now detect photons, which pushes them into a day/night cycle, as well as seasonal behavior (such as migrations). When you make it to a multi-cellular organism, it is still very useful to be able to tell day/night and seasonal cycles, so that photon collection ability would certainly stick around. Next, there would be some mutation that allows the organism to detect light coming in from different places, which would give something spatial resolution. This is especially important on land where it is much easier to run into things (and where there are more random immobile objects to differentiate) if you aren't looking. Suddenly, sight becomes extremely useful as it can help you find food, shelter, water, etc. Soon, predators develop eyes with overlapping fields of vision, which allow them to triangulate objects and make it much easier to catch prey, since you know how far away it is. Also, the photonic receptors begin differentiating wavelengths so that instead of just seeing light as on or off, it can be red, green, blue, etc. Suddenly, you have something that resembles the human eye.

Why is this possible with evolution? It's something that IDers forget about: natural selection. Natural selection allows for millions of mutations to occur every generation...the vast majority are not viable and so are never born or die shortly after birth. If an organism with a mutation can survive to reproduction age, that mutation will last to the next generation. If a mutation makes an organism better than the others, it will eventually breed out those without the good mutation. This explains the high rate of sickle cell anemia in Africans. Having a single mutation for that gene (one good, one bad) protects you against malaria, which is prevalent in Africa. Having two mutations (both bad genes) gives you sickle cell anemia, and commonly will cause the person to die before reproduction age (of course, modern medicine changes that). Being red/green colorblind was the standard eyesight a LONG time ago, but now it is a minor mutation. Why? When people developed a better ability to differentiate colors, they became better, and therefore survived more often and reproduced more, such that those with red/green colorblindness were practically bred out of existence. This mutation originally came about when the gene that allows the eye to see one of the colors (I forget which one, lets say red) was duplicated. All of a sudden, the duplicate gene had no real function and could be mutated without reducing the viability of an organism, which meant that any mutation could stick. Eventually that gene mutated enough and in such a way that it provided the ability to see green wavelengths of light.

Their argument is that the eye is like a watch in its complicatedness, and a watch could not be created from nature. But they forget that there has been a natural selection and an evolution of clocks. From the first sundials to the current atomic clocks, new watch technologies have utilized previous knowledge to improve on the design of the previous time pieces. Nature never needed a watch, it uses its own timepieces, such as the rotation and revolution of Earth, and so it never had to design a complicated clock. Clocks were a path that nature ignored because of a lack of need.

My whole point here is that if IDers want to make an argument against evolution, they go about it in the worst way. They attack evolution in its strength...the adaptibility of simple things into complex things as a need arises. If they actually wanted to make a serious argument, they would talk about the one thing that evolution cannot explain: the origin of life. In ID, it is easy, they just say that life was created. In evolution, however, it is essentially impossible. Even if life was somehow created some 3.5 billion years ago by random chance, it still cannot be explained by evolution because current evolutionary theory essentially requires life to come from some other form of life. My mind boggles why IDers try to use the human eye and do not try to bring up the origin of life.

The Angels

2005-03-06T20:47:00.000-06:00

Well, spring training games have started and there are already some analyses of the first game a couple of days ago. Personally, I have always felt that spring training winning and losing is a crock, and so all I ever check out is to see if my teams main players are at least looking decent and to find out who else is trying to make the team. Some of the bloggers have even been reporting on some players' minor or nagging injuries...its like, so what...they just started, everyone is gonna be sore for a bit.

This brings me to my real point. I use Yahoo as my homepage (I have SBC/Yahoo DSL and so I figured I would use their personalization features). One of the things you can do is select what teams you want scores displayed for...so I chose all of the AL West teams (good to know what the competition is doing). Well, it will not display Angels scores. Why? Because Yahoo now recognizes the Angels as the LA Angels (not the LA Angels of Anaheim), and the place to select them says the Anaheim Angels. Of course, since they played Oakland today, they are in a score, but their name doesnt show up at all. It just says vs. Oakland. Absolutely pathetic Yahoo. First you don't even display use their whole hideous name (which might actually help Anaheim's case) and now I can't even see the team on my personalized scoreboard.

Moss won't grow on a rolling stone

2005-03-06T00:15:00.000-06:00

So, the Randy Moss trade became official in the middle of this week, so it is as good a time as any to talk about it. I would like to start with this caveat: Randy Moss is and has been the most dangerous wide receiver in the NFL since he entered the league. When he was a rookie, I kept hearing sports writers use lots of poetic praise to describe how good he was, and all I could think of was, "There is no way he is that good." Of course, when I finally saw him in the middle of the season, I realized that he was better than everything anyone had said. With that, it should always be a great occasion when your team picks up one of the all-time great players and a guy who can change the way the other team plays just by being on the field. Not to mention that he is a great fit on the team because his speed matches the ability of their QB to throw a deep ball.

With all that said, this was a horrible move. Randy Moss is a terrible cancer added to a team that has an overabundance of speedy receivers, the only real position of strength on a bad team. It's one thing to add to a position of strength when your team is good...it is quite another to do it when your team has so many holes. And it isn't just that they got stronger at WR while remaining the same at other positions, it is that they got significantly worse at defense by trading away their one really good young defensive player (MLB Napoleon Harris) and they traded away the number 7 pick in the draft, which could have been used to pick up a good defensive player. I know Al Davis loves fast receivers and guys with problems, and that is fine...but he needs to realize that they need to have at least a mediocre defense and running game in order to compete.

Why change from Anaheim to LA?

2005-03-02T18:16:00.000-06:00

This has been debated all over the place and the reason that Moreno gives for changing to LA is basically a greater marketshare, and a more well-known city name. Well, here are some reasons why Orange County should be more well known: some of the most famous athletes in the world are from Orange County, including Tiger Woods (Cypress), ESPN's fan voted Hottest Female Athlete of the Year Amanda Beard (Irvine), former single season home run champ and man who almost single-handedly rescued baseball Mark McGwire (Newport Beach), 2003 No. 1 NFL draft pick Carson Palmer (Santa Margarita High, don't know which city he was from), Carolina Panthers RB DeShaun Foster (Tustin), one of the best tight ends in NFL history Tony Gonzalez (Huntington Beach), current No. 1 ranked women's tennis player Lindsay Davenport (Newport Beach), sociopath and former NBA-er Dennis Rodman (Newport Beach), Texas Rangers catcher Gerald Laird (Los Amigos), San Diego Padres OF? Phil Nevin (CSUF and El Dorado HS), and Oakland A's CF Mark Kotsay (CSUF) among many many others. As far as other cultural things go, there are the bands The Offspring and No Doubt, Actors Kevin Costner (CSUF), Jon Lovitz (UCI), and John Wayne (who the airport is named after), former president Richard Nixon, and TV and movie media American Choppers, The OC, Arrested Development, Locke (Tustin) from the show Lost, the movie Orange County, the virgin Connie Swail from the movie Dragnet (Santa Ana?), and I think it was even in The Big Lebowski, not to mention video game companies Blizzard (Irvine) and Interplay (Irvine), one of which is one of the best computer game creators ever and the other of which is now basically dead. Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm are both relatively famous theme parks, and Huntigton Beach and Newport Beach are two of the most famous beach cities in the world.

My point to all of this is that, unlike what Arte Moreno thinks, Anaheim (and Orange County, which everyone in the county understands to be basically the same) is not an unknown market. The problem is that no one has tried to put all of this together. With Moreno's advertising expertise, I really felt he was the one who could do it. Moreno is right to go after a larger market than Anaheim, which only has 300,000 people, but what he doesn't seem to understand is that that market is Orange County, which is 3 million people strong and, in fact, would be one of the larger markets in the league. I understand his desire to go after the larger, 16 million person market, but I think he is misguided. As has been said many times on these blogs, it is not the name, so much as the winning. The Angels have certainly been a better team than the Dodgers over the past couple of years, but to move the fan base from the die hards into a well-known, larger one, you need to win for around 10 years...and by win, I mean compete for the playoffs every year, make them at least half of the time, and win the WS once or twice. The Angels have not yet shown the ability for sustained competitiveness, and that is why they aren't getting the media contracts Moreno wants. Adding LA to the name will NOT help him get those contracts, pisses some people off, doesn't make anyone particularly happy, and puts him on thin ice if the team does perform poorly. If he wanted to change the team name to LA he could have waited a couple of more years to see if winning could get him those contracts he desired, and if it didn't I would probably have no beef with the change. As it is, he hasn't even given the Anaheim name a chance.

The Mighty Ducks of Henry Samueli

2005-03-02T18:02:00.000-06:00

By now, most of you have likely hear that the Anaheim Mighty Ducks (or Mighty Ducks of Anaheim as they were more often called at first)have been sold to Broadcom co-founder, philanthropist and multi-millionaire (or billionaire, I always forget, he is relatively close to the cut off, I think). The team sold for something like $50-$60 million, which is probably undervaluing the value of the franchise, if only because of the current NHL lockout that is ongoing. It is very possible that this was a bad investment (the NHL could very well be dead), but Samueli still has plenty of money to spare and will likely try to give the Ducks a chance to win, unlike what Disney did. Samueli, just a couple of years ago, donated $20 million to the UC-Irvine School of Engineering, getting it named after him, and $30 million to the UCLA School of Engineering, presumably getting it named after him. He donated more to UCLA because he was actually an alumnus of that school, and he donated at all to Irvine because he lives in Orange County. Samueli has also stated that he will not change the name from Anaheim, but will consider a team name change if the fans desire it. This would likely consist only of removing the "Mighty" from their name, keeping together a great group of names that go together: the Ducks and the Arrowhead Pond (best corporate sponsorship stadium name ever). Any other teams that play there can also keep this theme, as the Bullfrogs (from roller hockey) and the Pirhanas (from arena football) did. Let's hope that if and when the NHL returns, that Samueli can make a difference in the team and the league.

Ok, so I lied...

2005-02-28T22:47:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately, I did not get to much posting this weekend as I promised (and you can probably tell from the lack of actual posts over the weekend). It was busier than I thought it would be, and so I decided to wait until I eliminated my business...so, without further adieu, I will get to two things right now.

Well done, Lebanon. If you hadn't heard, they protested in their capital today (about 25,000 strong in a country where protests are outlawed) and were able to force the Syrian backed prime minister to step down. If you don;t know the history of the country, they had a civil war some years ago and Syria sent its military over to settle the country and take over completely. All governments from then on were controlled by Assad (don't remember his first name), the ruler of Syria. The previous prime minister had a falling out with the Syrian government and so resigned his post. Just a couple of weeks ago, a 400 pound or so bomb was used to blow up his motorcade. Theories abound as to who did it, with the most likely choice being Syria, although many say that Syria is not that dumb. Why aren't they? They have ruled by the threat of and the use of force for many years (that's what tyrants do)...why would they change that now? The reason it backfired is not that the force was actually used, but that the people now believe they can make a difference in protesting against such actions much as the Iraqi people did at the end of January. This is a domino effect. As each tyrannical regime decides to assert its power, the people of those countries will rise up and force the tyrant from power. These people are learning that the only way fear can work to keep them in line is if they are afraid. And they are learning they are not afraid. Let's hope this stuff continues and that Lebanon gets out from under Syria's boot, Egypt has free elections, and Iran and Syria make moves towards democracy.
I went to a talk today put on by our campus' Federalist Society. The speaker was Mike S. Adams, who is a columnist for Townhall.com and a professor at UNC-Wilmington. Adams was humorous and I thank him for giving the talk. His talk was essentially about 1st amendment rights at public universities. What brings this up is that a lot of universities have speech codes, which basically are along the lines of: speech offensive to any race, gender, ethnicity, creed, blah, blah, blah shall not be allowed. The main issue with this is that 99% of all speech could be considered offensive to someone, which means it would limit all speech. However, these kind of codes are often only applied to one side, calling any speech that isn't politically correct "offensive." He also discussed many anecdotes, including how he first gaine national fame. This happened when a student of his (a Marxist) e-mailed him (and several other people) an e-mail she wrote 4 days after 9/11 about how it was all our fault what happened. She also requested that everyone she sent the e-mail to to send it to everyone they knew. Adams e-mailed her back that the 1st amendment protects her right to say these things, just as it has with every idiotic, bigoted thing for the past 200 years. Adams was then told she was threatening to sue for libel and that the university wanted to investigate the matter by looking at all the e-mail he had sent out that week. He refused and told the university that he would initiate public relations nuclear warfare if they persisted. Of course, they persisted, he initiated his public relations nuclear warfare, became famous, appeared on Hannity and Colmes where BOTH agreed with him, became a columnist for Townhall, wrote a book, and is a major advocate for 1st amendment rights at public universities. He also discussed (albeit more briefly) the uselessness of tenure, the bigotry inherit in ethnic studies, and the problem with mandatory student fees paying for talks. Thanks again, Mike Adams.

The New Domino Effect

2005-02-26T13:07:00.000-06:00

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has changed the election laws in Egypt so that others can run against him in an election. Now, this could just be a ploy (to root out the opposition or to make it appear like he is adding democratic reforms), but this move certainly came because of what happened in Iraq recently. People in other countries (namely Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt) are starting to protest in favor of elections. I am sure Iran has had its share as well, but it is much harder to get information out of that country. Let's hope this slide towards democracy continues.

I passed!

2005-02-25T17:34:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I presented my research proposal (technically "Demonstration of Research Competence") and defended it and passed! Expect more blogarama starting this weekend. Things on the agenda: Angels News, the Randy Moss Trade, some comment about intelligent design vs. evolution, an extended article (maybe a series) on rights, and whatever else I can think of.

Suicide?

2005-02-21T22:46:00.000-06:00

Hunter S. Thompson died today. You may remember him for writing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or being an ESPN.com Page 2 staff writer. Personally, I could care less about Thompson...I thought he was a terrible writer (or at least his Page 2 writing was terrible) and I never had any desire to read any of his books or watch Fear and Loathing. What I don't understand is why ESPN.com has reported all day that Thompson "fatally shot himself" (which I suppose is true). Now, I can understand this terminology if it is unknown whether or not he committed suicide or if it was an accident. As soon as it is confirmed, though, shouldn't you either say he "committed suicide" or "accidentally shot himself." It's like when Fox News calls suicide bombers "homicide bombers." Calling them "bombers" implies the homicide part. The special part about them is that they are committing suicide at the same time. I understand ESPN.com wants to put Thompson in the kindest light it can, but it does no one any good to say something like this that could skew an opinion about his death. "Fatally shooting himself" may make more people look at his death as a sad accident, while "committing suicide" may cause people to look at his death in a more non-chalant manner (why should people be sad he killed himself).

Four

2005-02-17T18:31:00.000-06:00

Currently operating on more cups of coffee than hours of sleep over the last 36 hours...I just have to make it to 9 PM tomorrow evening.

Blogiatus

2005-02-11T21:35:00.000-06:00

This seems like a bad time to go on a temporary hiatus as I have gotten multiples of my normal page views the past couple of days thanks to Richard and an ESPN.com Angels thread for linking to my translation post. What is odd about this is that the other time I was given a big jump in readership was when I was in California, without a good internet connection. This time, however, it has more to do with school, and so I will still be able to post...just not as readily. I should be back and better than ever in March, likely with some new insights on the Angels and whatever else piques my interest. However, I want to go out on a post of something bizarre that occurred today.

I haven't written on this topic yet, because I actually wanted to wait until there was definitive evidence one way or another. Eason Jordan, an executive at CNN (the same guy who ignored the terrors of the Hussein regime in order to keep a CNN office in Baghdad), has just resigned from CNN to keep the news station from being "unfairly tarnished." If you want the full story go to TKS on NRO, who has posted extensively on the topic over the past couple of weeks (and been quite a bit fairer to Mr. Jordan than a lot of bloggers). First a summary of the reason for this: at an off-the-record news-type-function-thingy Jordan made the claim that the US military had targeted journalists in Iraq. When other panelists were flabbergasted, Jordan backtracked on his statements a bit. This all came out when someone named Rony Abovitz reported the whole thing and made the claim that there was cheering when he said this and that people came up to Jordan later to thank him for speaking the truth. The questions regarding this: What exactly did Jordan say? Did Jordan have any evidence? How far did Jordan backtrack? Was Jordan just trying to make a bold statement against the military? Was Jordan abusing his prestige as an executive at CNN to promote an agenda?

Unfortunately, these questions have not been the story. Instead, a lot of bloggers have focused on him slandering our troops (we don't realy know if he did, we can only suspect it) and Big Media has largely ignored this story (how is it not news when a major network executive claims that our troops are killing reporters...if true it would be the biggest story since Watergate). In the end, there were several people whose accounts coincided with Abovitz' and they were asking for the videotape to be released (which did not have to be and still hasn't). Only two accounts (Jordan and one other) sided the other way and they were not asking for the release of the tape. Finally, today, Jordan resigned. This is an absolute shock. Unlike with the Rather case where bloggers put Big Media into motion to investigate, this was almost entirely completed by bloggers. Now, a lot of people are going to be celebrating that the bloggers took on Big Media by themselves this time and won. Did they really, though? Many may see this as the bloggers tarnishing this man's record, trying to "get him." The fact that the tape still isn't being released just means that Jordan's comments will never be officially reported and he will likely find a new job somewhere else when everyone forgets why he resigned.

This is not to say that blogging has not won something by this. They have proven that mass, parallel editing and checking can be more effective than Big Media's system, which is more prone to one or a small group's ideological whims. For an example of this, just check out Wikipedia, which is one of the best online resources out there. It often has false or editorialized information (largely in controversial topics) because of the lack of a true central editor, but the people that post there police it themsleves. False information is often removed in minutes, and so just by refreshing a page something that once seemed wrong may be correct again. This massively parrallel editing system is what the web seems best suited for at this time (excluding porn, of course). Oh, and Wikipedia already has an updated article on Eason Jordan up, complete with resignation.

Oh, That's Why He Sucked...

2005-02-08T22:15:00.000-06:00

ESPN.com reports that Eagles QB Donovan McNabb was extremely ill during the Super Bowl. Eagles C Hank Fraley said that McNabb was exhausted at the end and almost puking. Looking back at the Super Bowl in this new light, it can be easy to see. McNabb did not appear his normal hyperactive self, he made very poor ball decisions, he did not run at all, and he could not easily call plays. Freddie Mitchell said that he helped out on a playcall when McNabb could not get it out. To me, this is a huge coaching blunder. I know McNabb is your best bet, but at the end of the game when they should have been running a no huddle offense (and famously didn't), they should have had someone else calling out the plays. Since Freddie Mitchell helped out before and knows how to throw a ball, he certainly could have done it. It would have at least given the team a fighting chance. This is where having a versatile player such as Antawn Randle-El or Kordell Stewart (note: Kordell Stewart should not be allowed to throw more than three passes in any one game...and those should be surprises) is useful...where they can at least be a QB decoy for some plays. Freddie Mitchell can be one of those (he was at one point at UCLA). I am sure the Patriots defense could tell there was something wrong with McNabb by the second half, and probably changed the way they played the Eagles accordingly. If they at least used some sort of a decoy, it could have kept the Patriots honest. Now, I am not saying the Eagles would have won with a healthy McNabb (or even if Andy Reid had changed his game plan to account for the illness), but they could have improved their chances.

Found in Translation

2005-02-08T17:42:00.000-06:00

A couple of days ago Richard posted a Korean Angels cartoon that he found from another site which found it from a Korean site. The link to the Korean site can be found here. A commenter in Rob's post about the Dodgers cartoon had that one translated here, which Richard then photoshopped and posted here. These are hilarious with or without translations and I have a Korean co-worker who was willing to translate for me (unfortunately, she does not know baseball that well, so she had a tough time with some of it, but I have gotten the gist of it). I will also leave it to Richard to photshop it if he wants.

Title: 2004 Season Quick Team Summary 2. Anaheim Angels

1st Panel: 2004 Season AL 92 W 70L (Win Pct 3rd)
Team BA .282 (1st) Team SB 143 (1st) Batting K's 942 (1st, minimum)
Team ERA 4.28 (4th) K/9 7.20 (1st) Errors 90 (1st, minimum)
Team is good, but players always injured

2nd panel: #27 Vladimir Guerrero RF Best Player
Vlad says: BA .337 (3rd), HR 39 (4th), RBI 126 (4th), Hits 206 (3rd), OPS .989 (3rd), SB 15 (24th), 612 AB (10th) 2004 AL MVP
Vlad says (in black): Howl! (ed: apparently they consider him to be a monster in that he is really good)
His legend continues!!

3rd Panel: #21 Bartolo Colon P 18-12 ERA 5.01 SO 158
If he's full, he doesn't work...
Scioscia says: This is time for a big win!!
Colon says: I want to sleep for 5 more minutes, then I will go play.

4th Panel: #9 Chone Figgins Utl AVG .296 RBI 60 SB 34
Any Position is OK!
Scioscia says: I hope you play well!!
Figgins says: I don't want to be the Rally Monkey anymore!
(ed: I guess they equate Figgins with the Rally Monkey, which is fair)

5th Panel: #57 Francisco Rodriguez P 4-1 ERA 1.82 WHIP 1.00 SV 12 HLD 27 SO 123 K/9 13.18
Three-Strike Outs K-Rod!!
K-Rod: Be careful, my nickname is similar to F-Rod.
Felix (Rodriguez): I was here before you!!!!

6th Panel: # 39 Robb Quinlan 3B AVG .344 HR 5 RBI 23
Ichiro's pace...
Ichiro: TATATA (like a bat hitting a ball multiple times, quickly)
Quinlan: I try to follow him, but it didn't work. (the yellow text is some sort of pain indicator)

7th Panel: #16 Garrett Anderson CF AVG .301 HR 14 RBI 75
Good player, but unrecognizable!! (ed: maybe "not recognized as good")
GA: Hi guys, I hit the HR, but you are celebrating without me...

8th panel: #6 Jose Guillen LF AVG .294 HR 27 RBI 104
Good player has a misunderstanding...
Guillen thinks: I pissed him off, but he is not going to punish me, because I am good.
The bat-wielder is Scioscia, and the sound is: BWANG!

The Belichick Dynasty?

2005-02-06T23:32:00.000-06:00

Now that the Patriots have won three of the last four Super Bowls, everyone is calling them a new dynasty. Certainly they are the best team over the last few years (and especially over the last two years when they have gone a combined 34-4). However, I consider a sports dynasty to cover more than just four years. Usually dynasties start with a team making the place for a couple of years, then winning the Super Bowl a few times, then making the playoffs for a few years before finally petering out. For instance, the Packers in the 1960s, the Steelers in the 1970s, the 49ers in the 1980s, and the Cowboys in the 1990s were all dynasties. These Patriots have only made the 3 of the last four years and not the couple of years before then. My general feeling is that if they win a Super Bowl within the next 5 years (plus making the playoffs a few more times), then I will consider them a dynasty. As it stands, they are certainly the best team in the game today and one of the best of all time. They have great coaches, team players, and a team that just wins. Their first Super Bowl win was practically by accident (they were very lucky and then played the game of their lives in the Super Bowl) and the next year they had some growing pains. Since then, though, they have been virtually unstoppable. Truly the dominant team in sports right now.

And then...The Great Communicator was born...

2005-02-06T11:02:00.000-06:00

Ninety Four years ago today, Ronald Reagan was born. He was certainly one the five greatest presidents in history and he may eventually be remembered in President's Day with Lincoln and Washington. Of course, back when I was in elementary school, we had Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays off separately. If that was still the case when Reagan gets honored, there would have been three three-day weekends in a row.

Iraq's Real Revolutionaries

2005-02-04T18:55:00.000-06:00

Best of the Web Today (second item) (and a few other places I have seen) have mentioned how some Iraqi terrorists were killed in a village by Iraqi civilians. The Iraqis in that village had been threatened by some terrorists not to vote. The Iraqis went ahead and did it anyways. When the terrorists returned to make good on their threat, they found something else: newly empowered civilians willing to fight back. The civilians killed 5 of the eight terrorists in the process. This is the next turning point for the Iraqis. On Sunday they exercised their new freedom for the first time by voting. On Thursday (or at least that's what it looks like, not perfectly clear), they decided to protect their freedom. This should lead to several other groups being beaten back (now the citizenry knows they can) and help Iraq achieve their goal of a fully self-sustained democracy. This is actually what I feel an attack on America would be like if ever invaded by a foreign military. The reason why three of the 9/11 planes were successful is that we were always told that if we don't do anything, nothing bad will happen to us. Now we know that that is a lie, and no one can ever hijack a plane again (bomb one, sure, but hijack, no) because we would stop them. Same thing with attacking our country, I do not think the citizens of America would cave in to pressures of "surrender or die." That's a French attitude! And now the Iraqis have proven they don't want to be French.

State of the Red States

2005-02-02T21:23:00.000-06:00

I watched most of Bush's speech tonight, and I will leave deep analysis to others. It had its moments of blah, and stopping for applause more than once a minute is way too much, but it was a very strong, stirring speech. The best parts were definitely Bush's tributes to the Iraqi woman who voted in the recent election and to the soldier who died in the attack on Fallujah. And no matter what else you think of the president (I for one dislike several of his policies), the man has a lot of chutzpah...especially in calling Egypt and Saudi Arabia to task to begin democratic reforms and in threatening the use of force strongly against Syria and Iran.

Terrorists Capture a "Real American Hero"

2005-02-01T20:58:00.000-06:00

Richard (and many many many other blogs) have reported how the mainstream media was duped once again. A picture of an apparent US soldier was shown on a jihadist website saying they would behead him if certain demands were not met. As far as I could tell, several hours after Richard initially posted the story CNN and MSNBC still had their stories up, although they did say that it was not confirmed that a soldier had been captured. Well, it turns out this soldier was actually a GI Joe. Coupled with their lack of a major presence in the elections on Sunday, I would have to say that they are seriously floundering. Go Joe!

The End of the Innocence

2005-02-01T20:31:00.000-06:00

What is the deal with people saying the ending of The Sixth Sense now? First the movie 50 First Dates did it and now Scrubs. I remember when the movie first came out, people would not say the ending no matter what (it was that good). A radio show was even asking people if they would be willing to say it over the air, and they had a very hard time finding anyone to do that. Now, the movie is being relegated to Citizen Kane, Planet of the Apes, and Soylent Green status as a movie with a great twist ending that everyone knows about. The difference is that I grew up knowing the end of those, whereas with The Sixth Sense is something I experienced. Five years does not feel like a long enough time before an ending like that should be a completely known pop culture icon (maybe as jokes like "I'll tell you the ending to The Sixth Sense" but not actually saying what it is). Absolutely flabbergasting.

The Really Angry Left

2005-01-31T01:13:00.000-06:00

I found a website the other day called Urban Archipelago. In this website, these people who are angry with the election decide that it isn't a red state vs. blue state thing, but a red county vs. blue county. Which essentially means the urban areas vs. the suburban and rural areas. Most of what they say is complete and utter crap, and if I wanted to, I could basically take them to task line by line, but it isn't worth my time and would end up a really long article (for starters, their article is really long). I do have two points to make, though.

And when you look for ways to revive your failing towns and dying rural counties, don't even think about tourism. Who wants to go to small-town America now? You people scare us. We'll island-hop from now on, thank you, spending our time and our money in blue cities. If an urbanite is dying to have a country experience, rural Vermont is lovely. Maple syrup, rolling hills, fly-fishing--everything you could want. Country bumpkins in red rural areas who depend on tourists from urban areas but vote Republican can forget our money.

This passage (other than being incredibly insulting, which everything in this is) says that they want the urbanites to ignore the Republican counties when it comes to tourism, etc. This means they will not buy anything from people out in the country. They think that this will hurt the people out country more than it will hurt them. Well, that may be so, but did they ever think where they would get their food from in that case? Because it sure appears like the urbanites would eventually starve to death implementing this economic policy.

Unlike the people who flee from cities in search of a life free from disagreement and dark skin, we are for contentiousness, discourse, and the heightened understanding of life that grows from having to accommodate opposing viewpoints. We're for opposition. And just to be clear: The non-urban argument, the red state position, isn't oppositional, it's negational--they are in active denial of the existence of other places, other people, other ideas.

Now, these people are saying that urbanites are particularly tolerant (may or may not be true)...their whole article is based on their intolerance of Republicans. How can you say that you are "for opposition" and then when you lose, say that the other side "isn't oppositional, it's negational." That is a prime example of hypocrisy right there. This doesn't even mention the fact that these guys are dead wrong, the "non-urban argument" does look towards other places , people, and ideas for advice and help...the difference is that if it is not helpful the non-urbanites are willing to still use their original ideas and plans (with some modifications), while the urbanites just keep making ideas or plans that won't ever get finished.

I shouldn't even waste my time with this, but I felt I should point out some things that are really wrong with these people.

Congratulations, Iraq!

2005-01-30T13:06:00.000-06:00

Iraq just had an extremely successful election. Reports say between 60% and 80% voted and about 8 million people in total (Iraq is a country of about 25 million, with 14 millionish eligible). These are all people that have decided to govern themselves rather than have terrorists run their lives. No matter what else, liberating Iraq has been worth it. The racists who said that democracy in the Middle East was impossible have been proven wrong. There were a few moments of violence (Fox News said 40 people died in 9 attacks), but it is nothing compared to what the terrorists had claimed would happen (something like 400 suicide bombings).

There is a long road ahead, but Iraq has made one giant leap towards true freedom.

Democracy in Babylonia

2005-01-28T18:02:00.000-06:00

Good luck to the Iraqis in having a safe and successful election this weekend. It will be wonderful to have them join the free world.

Fried or Steamed?

2005-01-26T22:58:00.000-06:00

Congratulations to Condoleeza Rice, who was confirmed by the Senate in an 85-13 vote as the next Secretary of State. She is well-qualified and is the first black women to hold such a high position (I think 5th in line to succeed the President). The 13 that voted against were 12 Democrats including John Kerry, Barbara Boxer, and Evan Bayh...who may be positioning themselves for the 2008 presidential election...and "Republican"-turned-Independent Jim Jeffords.

Train Crash in Glendale

2005-01-26T18:16:00.000-06:00

Most of you have probably heard of this. So far 10 people are dead, and about 200 are injured. The crash was between Dodger Stadium and Griffith Park and near where my former roommate Gary lives.

The crash was caused by some moronic bastard who decided he wanted to commit suicide by driving his car onto the tracks and allowing himself to get hit by a train. The fucking asshole then decided to get OUT of the car because he no longer wanted to commit suicide. I am glad that the PD is charging this complete idiot with homicide, although I hope he doesn't get the death penalty...that would be what the imbecile wants. I say that we should give him several hundred consecutive life sentences, then stick him in a Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. Then this scum will really know how bad life can be.

Misc.-ing Points

2005-01-24T20:57:00.000-06:00

This was listed in Friday's Best of the Web Today about 3/4 down the page, where it is titled Zero Tolerance Watch. It is about a 12-year old girl who was asked to remove a red, white, and blue beaded necklace by her school because the colors are gang-related. Now, I don't know if the girl has any right to sue (the article only says the school told her to take the necklace off, not that they suspended her or took it from her), but this is ridiculous. The girl's uncle is in Iraq and she is showing her support and patriotism. Maybe gangs are a problem at that school and maybe not, but I don't know how limiting the colors you wear would stop gang activity. Not to mention, they said that blue and red were banned because separate gangs use them as their colors. First of all, who gave the gangs the rights to keep people from wearing certain colors (in a way the school is helping show that the color represents the gang) and second of all the girl was wearing both colors, which just happen to be those of America's flag.
I am sure many of you have heard that Abu Musad al-Zarqawi has released a tape (well, supposedly it was him) in which he declares democracy to be incompatible with religion in general and Islam in particular (because of the election of demigods, among other things). Well, if this doesn't convince people that radical fundamentalist Islam is incompatible with Western democracies, I don't know what will. Yes, democracy is inherently secular, but it also respects religion and is the most tolerant form of government. People like al-Zarqawi are incompatible with the way we live. They only want religious dictatorships where everyone bows down to them. We must fight them because otherwise they will keep fighting us with no threat of retaliation.
I have a minor theory about why January 30th (or at least a date that week) may have been chosen for the Iraqi election. The Super Bowl is on February 6th this year, and if it occurred the same day as that, America would be extremely focused on that and not pay so much attention to the election. On the other hand, if things go terribly wrong, then by the time the Super Bowl starts, no one will really care much about the football game. Also, yesterday held the AFC and NFC championship games which are watched by a large number of people and holding the Iraqi election then could end up linking the Super Bowl to the election. I do not know why they chose a Sunday in particular (maybe it is a day off for them, but not a Sabbath?) but it seems reasonable that they could have chosen this date because they wanted America to witness the election with no distraction and then if something bad happened, we would have a week to recover before we had a sublimating Super Bowl. Also, W. likes football and he probably wants to be fully apprised of the Iraqi election as it happens.
Oh, and Barbara Boxer is a bitch as Richard would say.

The TV! The TV!

2005-01-24T01:32:00.000-06:00

I bought a new 23" TV last week for our computer room from Best Buy for $65. You really can't pass up a deal like that. This week, in order to make it functional, I bought a cable splitter, a male-to-male connector (from wall to splitter) and a 50' long coaxial cable. All of that was needed because we only have one cable jack, and that is in the living room. This cost around $50 at Radio Shack. Radio Shack made a HEFTY profit on me today, that's for sure. But now I have cable TV in two rooms and it cost less than the secondary TV normally would.

RIP Johnny Carson

2005-01-24T01:30:00.000-06:00

I never watched The Tonight Show when he hosted it (too young), or even much now (don't really care about late night talk shows), but I do know that Johnny Carson was one of the great entertainers. It is a sad day when funny men die.

Championship Sunday

2005-01-23T23:10:00.000-06:00

Falcons-Eagles: The Eagles dominated from the outset. McNabb played a great game, hitting his receivers when he needed to and scrambling well when he had to. The Eagles also ran some great misdirection plays, including one where they had the running back sweep right, with McNabb lateralling it that direction, while the WR on the right came around behind the line to the left in front of the RB, catching the lateral before it got to him. Westbrook took the game over in the second half to really push the Falcons' back to the wall. Finally, the Eagles defensive game plan was well-designed and well played out. Their goal was to keep Vick from running much and all of their pass rushers stayed in their lanes and anytime a new lane opened, someone stepped in to fill it up. This caused Vick to start to run a lot, only to have to stop quickly and throw the ball when he didn't want to. The Eagles certainly proved they deserve a Super Bowl berth, now the question is whether or not Terrell Owens will be available to them.
Patriots-Steelers: This game was a little more tightly played most of the time, except that the Steelers turned the ball over several times, which led to a lot of Patriot scores. The Patriots were determined to force Ben Roethlisberger beat them, and they did a pretty good job of keeping Bettis and Duce Staley in check (Big Ben had some of their best runs on QB draws). Big Ben also showed the rookie in himself, as he did last week, when he overthrew his receivers several times, leading to a few interceptions. He did play reasonably well once he started keeping his passes down and he will be a great QB soon (I wouldn't be surprised to see many Vick-Roethlisberger Super Bowls over the next decade). The pivotal play seemed to come in the first quarter when the Steelers were facing a 4th and 1 in Patriots territory. It was too far to kick a FG and too short to get a reasonable punt off, so they went for it. The Patriots stuffed the line terribly (I felt that the Steelers should almost just run a play action fake, deep throw to the end zone since the Patriots probably have the best goalline defense in the league), and forced a Bettis fumble. The fumble didn't really matter as the Pats recovered around where they stuffed the Steelers anyways. The next play was a 62 yard bomb to put the Pats up 10-0. Tom Brady is now 8-0 in playoff games and 48-14 in the regular season. Brady and the Patriots have become the new team to never bet against (replacing Favre and the Packers...Vick and the Falcons are getting there).

Angels Notes

2005-01-22T20:31:00.000-06:00

It's been awhile since I talked about them, and I figured they have had enough events in the last couple of weeks for a decent post.

I have already written about the Angels stupid name change. Since then, Anaheim has failed twice in getting preliminary injunctions against the name change. This only means that Moreno can keep his name change while the real trial goes on. LA has joined the fight on Anaheim's side, their reasoning being that they don't want the Angels benefitting from the LA name if the city isn't getting taxes from them. The only way I can see this as something successful for Moreno (in a business sense) is to change the name back to Anaheim on his own, a la New Coke to Coca Cola Classic in the 80s (which would show him to be a publicity hound). Anaheim's case is probably not that good, in that the contract language is very vague (Disney hadn't wanted to get stuck with "Anaheim Angels" as the team name, apparently, but was willing to keep Anaheim in the name). However, if news services like ESPN or Yahoo Sports (as Richard shows) only refers to them as the Los Angeles Angels, rather than the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, then Anaheim might have a case based on the spirit of the law. I, for one, will call them the Anaheim Angels for as long as they play in the city. I did the same with the Big A when it was called Edison International Field of Anaheim, which was jsut a stupid sponsorship. If anyone was going to put the bucks up for the stadium, it should have at least been a company whose name starts with an "A" so that people would still affectionately call it the "Big A" instead of in spite of the name.
The Angels avoided arbitration with Jeff DaVanon, Jarrod Washburn, Scot Shields, and Jose Molina by signing them to 1 year contracts worth a combined $9.1 million. I think this is Washburn's last year where the team completely controls him, and so depending on the situation they may trade him (a decent and relatively cheap starter as a deadline trade) or let him walk after this year (and have Jered Weaver come up in his place, sign someone, trade for someone, or have a prospect actually come up big). Rob even reports that talks with Weaver are getting serious. I think that Weaver wants to play for the Angels, who are local and look like they should be an above average team for a number of years. If he does sign with them, it is very possible he could be with the major league team by this or next season. This alone makes Washburn pretty near to expendable in the near future.
Richard has also been doing payroll updates for the team for 2005 as new signings come in, as well as scouting reports on the 40 man roster plus some others that are interesting.

Inauguration Day

2005-01-21T01:08:00.000-06:00

I just got finished watching Bush's inauguration speech. I have to say it was pretty good. He sort of summarized why we are in Iraq pretty well, looked towards the future, and tied what we are doing around the world with what we need to do at home. I really like his idea of an "ownership society" where the government helps facilitates ownership of property, but does not force it on you or redistribute yours for other's gains. I do not know if it will work like he makes it sound, but it sounds promising.

Buzzed

2005-01-20T01:18:00.000-06:00

I am really late in noticing this (I have been slow to learn all the howsits and whatnows of blogging and looking at site counters, etc.), but Jeff Jarvis linked to me awhile ago. Makes me feel sorta special. It's near the bottom of that article.

Iraq, you raq, we all raq for Iraq

2005-01-19T20:30:00.000-06:00

I was planning on writing something about this soon anyways, but this post and its comment thread (mainly the comment thread)have made me decide to speed the process up. One of the questions posed in the thread is basically: why did we go to war and were these reasons valid? These are the reasons I had for supporting the war (and they are all reasons I had at the time the war started...not reasons in hindsight), in no particular order:

First, 9/11 changed everything. Before then, we were content to go about our business however we best saw fit. Our country made some mistakes over the years, but in general on foreign affairs has been historically benign. We are the first superpower in world history not to just take over and/or destroy utterly its enemies...we change them for the better. Regardless, everything wrong in the world was our fault because we were the only ones that had the capability to fix it. Because no one really threatened us, we would do things very lackadaisically. We would enter wars in which we did not care about winning, only not letting the other side win. Because of 9/11, we had to shift our philosophy. We can no longer fight wars in which don't care about winning. We have to eliminate threats before they have the ability to eliminate us. We have to win the battle so completely that there will be no chance of losing...in other words, win it so that they other side can no longer compete.
Next, the issue of who was at fault for 9/11. Obviously, Iraq did not directly participate in the attacks and I haven't seen anything where the Bush administration actually said they did (but that is another story). So, we took out the al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban which had been supporting them. That mission was essentially complete, with just loose ends left (major loose ends, sure, but nothing that we weren't already dealing with to the best of our abilities). This meant we were ready to move on in the Bush Doctrine, which says "you are either with us or with the terrorists." Saddam Hussein had praised the 9/11 attacks and had given money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Also, Hussein flaunted UN sanctions and constantly kicked inspectors. He obviously was on the side of the terrorists. This is the type of country that the Bush Doctrine was designed to stop.
Geographically, it made the most sense. The countries in the "axis of evil" were named as North Korea, Iran, and Iraq...namely, the three countries we would try to deal with next. If you want, you can throw in countries like Syria, some of the African nations, etc, but that doesn't matter. North Korea would be difficult to attack because of the demilitarized zone, a very large army, and possible nukes (no two countries that have nukes have ever gone to war)...the possible consequences of going to war with North Korea provide huge incentive for diplomacy. As far as Iran goes, they would be difficult to enter with ground troops because they have a large water border, plus borders with Afghanistan (where it was already difficult to get masses of troops into), Pakistan (which would not likely let us put a staging area there), Turkey (which also would not likely let us put a staging area there), and Iraq (which definitely would not allow us to enter). This left Iraq, which borders Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, each of which are countries that we have bases in...at least one of us would surely let us move into Iraq (especially Kuwait).
Iraq had WMDs. Every intelligence agency knew this. Intelligence also showed that Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons (he had tried once before, until the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor). It is not that I am worried that Hussein would use them on America (although he would if he thought he could get away with it), but that he would give them to terrorists to use on America. Bush said "We cannot wait until there is an imminent threat." Why? Because then, it would already be too late. Better to get Iraq when they have limited WMDs than when they have developed more advanced ones.
Iraq is a country that can be easily rebuilt. Iraq is a fairly modern country...especially in the Arab world and only the terrible dictatorship was holding them from joining the truly modern world. They have the funds and infrastructure to pay for a lot of their own rebuilding and this includes their oil, which can help them get back on their feet quickly.
Iraq is fairly secular. With three major groups (the Sunnis, the Shiites, and the Kurds) it is likely that if they build a country successfully it won't fall into a theocracy like Iran did in the late 1970s.
Taking down Saddam puts pressure on the entire Middle East. All of a sudden, we have a major force in the Middle East, prepared to fight. Countries like Syria and Iran which are definitely not allies, don't want to turn into the next Iraq. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is no longer the only major Middle East country that we can get oil from, thereby reducing their hold on our economy. It also allows us to move troops out of Saudi Arabia, which is at best a partial ally and put them in a country that wants and/or needs their help. This also puts pressure on the Palestinians and shows them that we won't be sympathetic to support of terrorism, much less the act itself.
Iraq is a proven enemy, that the American public knows is evil. People may not see it in the Iranians because there really hasn't been a whole lot of press about them (especially in the 1990s). Saddam is easily comparable to horrible dictators like Stalin and Hitler. Why? He kills his own people, for political and ethnic reasons. He tortures people, he has women raped, etc. Yes, there are a number of dictators like this in the world...the question isn't "Why didn't we go after another dictator?" it is "Where do we start?" And the US has decided to start with Saddam.
We needed to see and show the world how well our military could do in a real war. In the Persian Gulf War, we only used the Air Force for most of it. Our technology is 10 years more advanced, our soldiers are more technically and technologically competent, our vehicles are better, our bombing more precise, etc. We needed to know how these things worked, where problems were, how to strategize in this new war. We now have a bunch of veterans who know how to fight in urban areas, how to spot enemies in civilian clothes better, how to avoid civilians better. We don't know where our next front will be, and it may not be a place of our choosing. Better that our soldiers and their commanders have experience in the types of combat and situations they may find themselves in. I would like to conclude that the war itself was one of the most successful campaigns in history, with less than 1,000 Americans dead. Even when the Germans ripped through France in 6 weeks in 1940, they lost 27,000 men and had another 100,000 wounded. America took control of Iraq in 3 weeks with 1/100th the casualties.
If we are successful in creating a democracy in Iraq, it could lead to further democracies. This is the old "domino theory" held by many military strategists during the cold war. It was applied more to the idea that if a country became communist, its neighbors were more likely to. This theory was both right and wrong. Right in the sense that that did happen (communist Russia led to communist China and these led to Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia becoming communist), but wrong in how...it wasn't really the countries themselves that were turning, but military operations funded by the two larger communist countries. Also, after the Vietnam War, no countries of real significance fell to communism and since then, Russia has pulled out of it and China has opened up economically. However, the new democracy domino theory has started to have its first successes: Afghanistan had its first elections ever, Iraq is going to have its first free elections in decades, Saudi Arabia is going to have limited elections, and other Arabian countries are considering elections. The more democracies there are, the fewer terrorists that can exist.
We control the battlefield, not the terrorists. One of the most important parts of war strategy is that you always want to have the ability to choose the battlefield: where, when, and with what. If you can do this, you will always have an advantage in location, timing, and weapons. This makes a battle infinitely easier to strategize for. If your enemy gets to choose the battlefield, you never know where it will end up. After 9/11, it became evident that the enemy wanted to bring the battle to America itself. We can't defend the whole country, it would be impossible to guard every inch of border, so this would be a losing proposition as we would become reactionary. If we moved the battlefield somewhere else...gave the terrorists a new target, then we don't have to worry about our own lives as much. Iraq gave us this opportunity.
Our military is all volunteer, the people in the World Trade Center were civilians. The people in our military volunteered for it, knowing that if a war broke out that it would be their duty to protect us. I could definitely understand being strongly against a war if people were getting drafted for a war and did not wish to fight...but this is an all volunteer army. These people know what they are doing when they sign up, they know they are possibly going to be placed in dangerous situations. Terrorists do not attack soldiers often (too much threat of fighting back). What they try to do is attack civilians. I would rather have my military off in a far away land occupying the terrorists thoughts than reacting when something happens here.

This is probably not a complete list, but it is fairly comprehensive I think (maybe a bit too much?). The bottom line is that I did not agree with most of these positions before 9/11, but I feel that that particular event has forced us into taking action. We cannot just be content with how things are in the world, we need to go on the offensive and change it. Iraq is just the second step in that goal.

It must have been love

2005-01-19T18:55:00.000-06:00

...but it's over now.

No reason for this post other than it has been in my head all day (I thought I would get it in all your heads).

EA taking over sports gaming, one day at a time

2005-01-18T01:19:00.000-06:00

Last month EA (proud owners of the Madden franchise of football games, among various things for other sports) was able to obtain an exclusive deal with the NFL for team names (and I assume player names, although that is handled by the NFLPA, so maybe not that) for five years. This effectively destroys any hope for other video game maker to make a successful football game (mainly Sony's 989 sports NFL Gameday series and Sega's ESPN series...which had sold new at $20, instead of the normal $50). In an effort to further corner the football market, EA bought the exclusive rights to the Arena Football League as well...which means all that is left is the Canadian Football League and maybe the Lingerie Bowl League (or whatever it is called...I am sure someone will jump on that). Now, EA has bought exclusive rights to the ESPN brand for 15 years. That means Sega can't call their next game ESPN NFL 2006 (or any of their other sports with ESPN, for that matter). One interesting tidbit about this is that Sega had complained about ESPN using Madden football for demonstrations on one of their football programs instead of the game that was branded with ESPN (Madden works for ABC, which is owned by Disney, which also owns ESPN).

NFL Divisional Playoffs

2005-01-16T23:15:00.000-06:00

Jets-Steelers: I only saw the last quarter or so of this game (right after the Jets intercepted the ball and returned it for a touchdown to make it 17-10 Jets). Let me just say that it felt inevitable that the Steelers would win. The running game was just too good and the team had no give in them. The Jets, on the other hand became completely deflated on their first missed FG (from 47 yards, hit the crossbar). The Jets got new life when Roethlisberger showed the rookie in himself (one of the few times all year) and threw the ball two feet over his receiver...for an interception. The Pittsburgh defense gave up one first down, but then held well to try to force at least a partially difficult FG...which was a 43 yarder, wide right as time expired. The Pittsburgh defense then shut the Jets down in OT, and their running game powered them forward for an easy 33 yard FG.
Rams-Falcons: This game showed how much different the Falcons and the Rams are in ability and coaching. The Rams couldn't stop any big plays, couldn't tackle, and couldn't stop the run. That is pretty much all you need to know to realize how one-sided this game was.
Vikings-Eagles: The Vikings (as has happened in a lot of their games over the last few years) just did not show up. The Eagles pushed them around like little kids. The Vikings even botched a fake FG (which they should not have tried) when Randy Moss walked off the field before the snap. Also, with about 10 minutes left in the game, down (24-7...three scores at least), 4th and 2 at their own 28, Minnesota did not go for it. This was a symbol that they were not willing to take the chances they needed to in order to win (especially when you have a huge QB that runs one of the best QB draws in the game).
Colts-Patriots: The experts took a very bizarre stance on this game to me. For some reason, most people picked the Colts, based on Manning's record season and their big win list week. Well, it seems they forgot that Manning hasn't won at Foxboro, and I think only beaten the Patriots when Belichek coached once. Not to mention, Manning still can't win the big games on the road (he has made strides the last two years, though). The focus was on the fact that the Patriots had a secondary that really isn't even made up of 2nd teamers...more like 3rd teamers and guys off the street. What people tend to forget is that they went 14-2 with those guys for about half the season...and the Patriots have a legitimate running threat now (as opposed to last year). Not to mention that their QB was 6-0 in the postseason and 48-14 in the regular season. The Patriots defense completely dominated the Colts today and their offense played well enough to win, coming on very strong in the second half. Let me just say this here and now (and it is something I have believed since about game 3 of the 2002 season): Tom Brady is the best quarterback in football today. The experts were wrong again, always putting too much weight into stats and not enough into the psychology of the team (I think this matters more in football than other sports).

'Roids

2005-01-13T01:03:00.000-06:00

The MLB now has stricter steroid testing. This is great news for baseball, as they finally are get taking action on something that they have been criticisized for years. At the very least it will reduce the perception of cheating and will make people trust records again. Good job, baseball!

Mo' better bloggin'

2005-01-12T20:18:00.000-06:00

Richard reports there is a new Angels blog, Halo Herald, run by a guy named Rich. Welcome to the 'verse, Rich.

Stat Geeks

2005-01-11T22:27:00.000-06:00

This post is more for those that read this blog for the baseball stuff (as far as I know, it is still the majority of people). Most of you know that I am not much of a stat geek (at least not compared to the other Angels bloggers), but I do appreciate the effort to learn more through the stats than was known. I was first introduced to the SABRmetric school of thought through Rob Neyer, who, I quickly learned, is full of a lot of crap. This turned me way off of the new stats that a lot of people have been using in order to quantify a player's value (the quickest and oldest example being OPS). My friend Gary, is a one of those stat geeks and he introduced me to a site called Baseball Primer (which is now Baseball Think Factory).

Occasionally checking the news on this site gave me a new insight into the stat geek world and led me to respect them a whole lot more (and showed me how much more of a putz Rob Neyer is than I had initially believed). However, I felt and still think that there are other factors that are not very quantifiable that can have a major effect on every single play. In other words, I think that a lot of sports is psychological and certain players will have the talent and the stats, but they will never be the ones to win the championships. Alex Rodriguez, for instance, has the potential to be considered one of the best players of all time: he has great offensive statistics, he is a great defensive player at one of the more important defensive positions, and he has a very clean personality. The problem is that he can't seem to win anything important, the Mariners and Rangers did better the year after he left their teams, and the Yankees did worse the year he joined them. Now, this might all be considered coincidence or luck, but maybe his locker room personality is such that he doesn't make people on his team go, "We have Alex Rodriguez, he won't let us lose this game" which is something that you could say of someone like Derek Jeter (as much as the SABR community and I don't like him, his teammates believe in him).

Anyways, around the time I stumbled across Baseball Primer, I also found a site called Football Outsiders which is essentially Primer for football. They are trying to use new theories and stats to analyze a player's worth...including offensive and defensive lines. What intrigued me most is that when I was looking at some of their explanations is that they were using an integer situation based on down and distance, and they have even tried to factor in game situation and strength of team faced. I don't know if they still do this because I don't go there that much, but doing things by integers intrigued me a lot.

So, now to the point. I put every AL players' offensive stats from the last three years (2002-2004) into an Excel spreadsheet and decided to weight them according to my own system. Since this is my initial foray into the whole stat business, I just decided to put whole number weights onto each stat and maybe figure out some more appropriate weighting later (possibly using others' suggestions for how to weight various things). Since the stat community typically sees runs and RBIs as an element of others' ability to knock you in or get on base, I decided not to include those. For everything else I did it like this: 1 point for every single, walk, sacrifice hit, sacrifice fly, and steal; an extra point for an intentional walk; 2 points for a double; 3 points for a triple; 5 points for a home run; -1 for a strikeout or caught stealing; -2 for grounding into double plays; and 0 for any other out. I have reasons for choosing many of these numbers, but I know that walks, sacrifice hits, and sacrifice flies should be worth less than a hit (although, more than an out). I then divided the sum by the number of plate appearances to get an average/PA. I don't know what this average should be called (maybe something analogous to Runs Created) or even if anyone thinks this is worth anything.

Some things that I found were just basic confirmations of a player's worth (Vlad led the league last year in the sum total and average by about 10% in each category over the next best player). Other things I found were interesting, such as the Angels leading the league in 2002 in both sum total and average, the Red Sox doing so in 2003, and the Yankees did so last year. What was most interesting about these was that the Red Sox team was 14% better in sum total than the '04 Yankees (the next best team over this period) and 11% better by average. I knew that Sox team had a good offense, but damn! And lest you think 2003 was a particularly good offensive year. the Yankees were second best that year and the Red Sox were 16% and 14% better. So, now I am officially a stat geek and if anyone wants copies of these spreadsheets, just let me know and I will send them your way.

Rather Later

2005-01-10T19:29:00.000-06:00

The CBS report over the Memogate story came out today and CBS has fired four people related to the story, including the producer that pushed it for 5 years, Mary Mapes. Dan Rather had no serious repercussions (unless you believe that CBS pushed him into retiring from the anchor spot because of this...which may or may not be true). I give CBS credit for putting this story out on a Monday rather than late on a Friday, as was suspected by many people. They took a long time (it was supposed to be "weeks, not months"), but it appears that it is fairly comprehensive. They found that serious mistakes were made, but feel that it was do to a zeal for the truth, rather than partisan bias (that also may or may not be true). They do make the claim that there is no evidence there is a bias, but also there is no real evidence against bias (in other words, they don't know anything about possible bias). Basically, it sounds like this report was certainly comprehensive in research but led to few conclusions that would seriously harm CBS or force them to completely retool their news desk. All of this is hearsay and speculation, as I have not read the report myself (and don't plan to), so take it all with a grain of salt.

RIP Brett Favre

2005-01-10T17:37:00.000-06:00

The Packers this weekend dealt with the deaths of their two Super Bowl stars from the mid 1990s on Sunday, the great Reggie White in the real sense and the extraordinary Brett Favre in the football sense. I don't mind that Favre threw a ton of interceptions (or that he has played terribly in playoff games in four straight years) because his teams have fallen behind a lot early and he has had to keep gunning it for his team to have a chance. Since he has no longer been at his peak, that means more interceptions (he still thinks he can make some throws that he no longer can). What really bothers me is the play he made at the end of the first half: 3rd and 6 at the Minnesota 8, 29 seconds in the half, 2 timeouts remaining (I don't remember if this is true, just what I can see from the play-by-play is that they had only used 1), 24-10 Minnesota winning, the crowd ready to burst if the Packers can pull within one score before the half in a game they were losing 17-0. Favre rolls back, doesn't find anyone in the end zone, starts running right towards the end zone, and when he gets to the 4 yard line there are about 3 or 4 Vikings 3-4 yards from him, he flips the ball into the end zone to an open receiver for a TD. Since he was 4 yards across the line of scrimmage, this is a 5 yard penalty, with a loss of down forcing a FG attempt which is missed. To me, it looked like Favre gave up on the play. He had to know that at the least, if he dove forward, he could get a first down and give his team a couple more chances for a TD...and this is the type of play Favre has relished in the past, diving right through opposing players. Instead, he gave up. No matter how many throws he throws for interceptions, I will always remember this as his worst play ever and the moment Brett Favre, Johnny Unitas level quarterback, became Brett Favre, Vinny Testaverde level quarterback. This also helped to shift the momentum solidly back in Minnesota's favor, effectively ending the Packers' season.

As far as the whole weekend goes, I only watched parts of the Saturday games (including the ends), the first and some of the second half of the Indy-Denver game, and all of the Minnesota-Green Bay game. Out of 8 teams playing, only 1 team was not terrible, and that was Indianapolis. This was some of the ugliest football I have seen in a long time. The Rams continued to show their propensity for mistakes; the Seahawks for dropping passes (how do you drop the game-tying pass on 4th down when it is in your hands?); the Jets played about as good as they can and were lucky to face a Schottenheimer coached team; the Chargers were awful and got lucky that a former Raider made a typical boneheaded penalty; the Broncos were terrible and unadaptable midgame on defense (a hint: if your defense isn't working, change it); the Colts played great, but can they beat two teams with great defenses on the road in a row?; the Packers were horrible and should have lost by 30 points; and the Vikings were terrible because they should have won by 30 points, but played badly enough that the game almost went to the wire.

Gilligan again

2005-01-09T01:17:00.000-06:00

In this post I talked about The Real Gilligan's Island, and how my sister worked for one of the millionaires (and my aunt does, as well). Well, the show ended the day I flew into California and Glen Stearns (said millionaire) won the $250,000 and the car.

Note to Jason at Deeptronics (or JonCloud, whoever you are), sorry I missed your comment before (I only really check the Haloscan ones that you can get to if you hit the comments button)...Glen Stearns owns the company Stearns now (he had a bunch of different companies with varying names that he changed all to Stearns (fill in the blank) because of the publicity he was going to get from the show). You can see the name on one of the buildings next to the 55 or 405 freeway (I forget which) in the Santa Ana to Irvine region...I think it's the 405.

Glen held a party at his $15 million house which was originally built for former Angel Chuck Finley and Tawny Kitaen...but they never moved in because they had a fight where she stepped on his foot with a stilleto heel...while he was driving. They divorced shortly after that. Anyways, Glen's party was for over 200 people and he donated his winnings (plus an additional $250,000) to a charity he established. Most of the cast was there, even ones that didn't like him (neither movie star was there and apparently Rachel Hunter hates his guts). So here is my near run in with a C-list celebrity: Glen rented my aunt's extra car from her so that Mary Ann Kate could have it to drive around town until the show ended (and the winner could be revealed and those people could get on with their lives). Well, I drove that same car while I was in SoCal.

Oh, and to finish the stuff about Glen...my sister was his daughter's roommate for about 4 months or so (this was about 6-7 years ago), when they drove to Arizona together (in Glen's daughters car) to meet some of Glen's daughters' friends. Glen's daugther got in an argument with someone there and then just left...without my sister...stranding her in Arizona. Well, suffice it to say (or whatever that phrase is) my sister is not friends with Glen's daughter and they were not roommates after that. That's my exciting tale (it probably seems like a three hour tour).

Some things I forgot

2005-01-09T01:01:00.000-06:00

While I was down in the Golden State, it rained for most of my stay. Including New Year's Eve and the day after New Year's. However, since something always wants to make Southern California look fantastic in the winter to those holed up like I am in a frozen tundra state, there was no rain on New Year's Day (allowing the Rose parade to go on without a hitch). That means millions of people across the nation saw California as a winter paradise for about the 50th year in a row.
There was a lot of controversy about the BCS this year...as there has been every year. I felt this year's was actually overblown (yes, I would also prefer a playoff system, but for now we have to argue the merits of the BCS on what it is supposed to do). The BCS is supposed to choose the top two teams in the nation so that they will battle it out in a "national championship" game. In previous years, they have been ripped apart because people have felt that 1 team not selected was superior to 1 or both teams in the actual game. This was the case a few years ago when Colorado destroyed Nebraska in a game, then went on to blow out Texas (I think) in its conference championship game (Nebraska's loss kept them out of that game). The problem here was that Colorado was a superior team (although with 2 losses to Nebraska's 1) and won its conference, while Nebraska placed 2nd in its division of the Conference. In other words, one team playing in the "national championship" game was the 2nd or 3rd best team in its conference. Last year, there was a similar situation where LSU and USC had 1 loss each and the Oklahoma lost its conference championship game. USC was ranked number 1 by both human polls, but did not make the title game. The problem here was that Oklahoma was 2nd best in its conference, and yet was in the national championship game. Colorado lost its bowl game (and therefore any argument it had for a claim on the championship), while USC blew out its opponent last year. Meanwhile, Nebraska and Oklahoma both got their butts kicked. USC was able to take the high road and claim national championship, while the AP voters agreed (why punish the number 1 team when they blew out the number 4 team?). Despite people making claims that this year was the same, people are wrong. Auburn may be the best team in the nation, but they did not get robbed of a shot at the national champioship game. USC and Oklahoma started the year as the top 2 teams and both won all of their games (most in convincing fashion). What happened this year was that there were too many undefeated teams to select from and there had to be a way to weed out one of them (actually 3 since Utah and BYU both went undeafeated as well, but they never stood a chance of making it). Auburn won its bowl game and had a chance to stake its claim. However, USC whupped Oklahoma so convincingly that virtually no one argued against them as the true national champions. So, now let's either go back to the original bowl system or let's move it to a playoff.
I played a board type game called Heroscape with a friend who had bought three of them (for the terrain). Basically it has hex based terrain so that you can quickly and easily make large random maps for what amounts to a turn-based strategy game. The figures that you get with it are fairly eclectic (the story is that the greatest warriors of all time are dueling in Valhalla to see who is the greatest) and so you get dragons, vikings, orcs, samurai, WW2 soldiers, robots, etc. Each hero or squad (heros are single units, squads have something like 1-5 units) have varying life, movement range, attack range, attack strength, defensive strength, and special abilities. The special abilities are really what make the game good...because the momentum can shift superfast with a little luck and the right special ability. These special abilities range from things like cloning a yourself to essentially resurrect a dead squad member, to having a counterattack, to having a grappling hook which allows you to climb any height of terrain with no movement penalty, to being able to attack or move twice in one turn. The attack dice are red and have a 50% chance of success (6-sided, 3 sides have skulls...which are successes) and the defense dice are blue with a 33% chance of success (6-sided, 2 sides have shields...which are successes). In order to kill a unit, you have to roll more attack successes than defense successes. Squad members have a single life point (only one more attack than defense), while heroes have between 1 and 5 life. Each unit also has a certain number of points they cost ranging from about 50 to 150, and you usually have about 250 points to buy units with. We were playing a 2 on 2 game and my teammate and I were being destroyed for a long while. However, we were finally able to get lucky a few times, the momentum shifted and we won. It was very nerve racking the whole time especially since as the dice roll you always see a lot of skulls and/or shields before they settle so you always think "oh yeah, good roll!" Anyways, I think I didn't describe the rolling thing that well, but you will have to trust me on that. I would get the game but it costs $40 and I don't have enough people around me that would play it enough to make that purchase worth it.

What happened over the break

2005-01-06T22:20:00.000-06:00

Now that I have some time, I will pop in some brief (hopefully) observations on what has happened in the world over the last couple of weeks.

The big thing that happened is the tsunami. With over 150,000 people dead, this is one of the biggest natural disasters in world history. Of course this means that there is a lot of blame going around (including the US, the Jews, the Indians, God smiting immoral people, Mother Earth smiting polluters, etc.). Also, the US was being ripped on for not giving enough to aid those countries (of which I don't believe it is really our governments job to do that, but I understand the need to) while we stepped up $500 million (last I heard, figure could be way off) out of about $2.2 billion in worldwide aid. Good luck to the affected countries in recovering and rebuilding.
I have thought more about the cutting of Eckstein to pick up Cabrera and I agree with it less and less. This was not a terrible move and something like this last season would have been deemed brilliant (the Angels had been reportedly going after Miguel Tejada and Kaz Matsui). However, the team cut its soul out while picking up a slightly better player at over twice the cost. Also, I had been arguing that several of the Angels' pick ups this offseason were good for the flexibility they allowed the Angels over the next couple of years (giving them an opportunity to win now and not have to face any serious rebuilding years while bringing their young talent along). Eckstein was going to be gone or relegated to a $1 million/year salary as a utility infielder within two years...especially with the Angels' talented prospects there. This contract sticks them with an expensive player for four years...holding those prospects back is waiting resources, which means they need to seriously think about trading a couple now just so that they can get something valuable they can actually use. This move was the antithesis of the flexibility doctrine it had appeared the Angels were following.
In other Angels news, they officially changed their name to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. This is one of the stupidest major sports team names of all time. Moreno's marketing experts may tell him that havingf LA in the title will boost his chances of getting big TV contracts, but I guarantee to you that if the team isn't selling out their stadium or getting the ratings, they will never get their contract. And that will happen because the people of Orange County hate being associated with LA (even the people in the northern parts of LA County hate being associated with LA). Yes, we deal with it for TV purposes and if we are telling people where Orange County is (although this is slowly becoming obsolete with the movie Orange County, the TV show The OC and the Angels having won a championship there). What Moreno really should do is keep the Anaheim name and do his best to promote Anaheim, including helping the city get an NFL team and an NBA team if necessary (the Clippers have flirted with the idea for a LONG time...but I think it would be terrible to put such a crappy franchise in a new location...better to get an expansion team). All of these teams would have Anaheim as part of the name and people would definitely see at as different than LA...hell, it would have one more football team than LA. What Moreno has done now is forced his team to be successful next year...because if it isn't, Orange Countians won't come back (especially with the team cutting fan favorite Eckstein) anytime soon. Of course, if the city of Anaheim is successful in its lawsuit (and by God I hope it is), then it won't matter except that the fans will still be pissed at Moreno for a short time (not likely enough to actually boycott the games). Right now, though, the Angels have taken the place as the laughingstock of sport surpassing the BCS (saved by USC walloping Oklahoma), Kobe Bryant (who will come and go often in this place over the next year), Indiana-Detroit basketball (who had an event free contest on Christmas), steroid use in baseball (which will be back at the forefront in spring training), and the NHL lockout (which no one cared about anyways).
I saw a few movies over the break (some new, some not quite as new). A quick run down: Meet the Fockers- kinda meh...way more raunchy than the first one; Blade: Trinity- excellent action flick...different style from the first two movies; Ocean's 12- an OK movie, somewhat similar to the first; Signs- this was a lot better than I had heard it was (of course, I liked Unbreakable when most people didn't), I definitiely want to see The Village now; and Seabiscuit- I had no real desire to see this movie when it came out, but my aunt (whose place I stayed at) has all those movie channels with the not so old movies and it was on...very good movie, and I loved the scenery shots from Santa Anita Park (one of the things I miss most about California is that I don't get to see mountains as a backdrop).
I was able to eat all the food I miss. This includes Carl's Jr. (Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger, the best burger in the world), Jack in the Box (Tacos, Egg Rolls, and Croissants...quite the wide variety and all good), Black Angus (you would think in a state with a lot of cows they would have more steakhouses, but alas I have only found Outback and a mediocre place called Timber Lodge here), Don Jose's (it's been a long time since I had good Mexican food), and Wing's (good Chinese is also tough to find here).
Since it snowed so much last night and I had no food here (having been gone 2 weeks and all), my girlfriend and I had to go grocery shopping and in so doing were forced to practically dig the car out from under a foot of snow. It was kind of fun, and I learned some things about how to do it. I also learned that it will be useful to get snowboots now that I have a car, as before I walked plowed and/or shoveled paths...with a car, you must often tromp through the snow to get to it. Finally, this was my first time driving with snow on the ground...definitely interesting (no chains here, it would ruin the roads and they plow pretty well anyways), and very slippery.

Back in the Saddle Again!

2005-01-06T01:24:00.000-06:00

I am back in Madison (snowing pretty good here)...with wonderful high speed internet. I'll post more after I wake up.

Going to California

2004-12-20T23:30:00.000-06:00

Well, I am flying home for the holidays tomorrow and I will be without constant internet so this may be my last posting for two weeks. Update: If anyone wants to meet up with me that I haven't already talked to just e-mail me or call my cell (if you have said number) and we will see what we can do. End Update With that, I will leave you with the amusing and crazy story of my trip back to Wisconsin last year in January:

We got to the airport at 11:30 AM for a 2:15 PM flight because we had a tip that it could take awhile to get in (this was during one of the Orange Alerts for Southern California airports). Then, we find out the flight is delayed because Chicago is windy and they are taking more time for landings. So, we leave Orange County around 4:30 PM and get to Chicago at 10:30 PM Central Time. Well, our flight from Chicago to Madison was supposed to leave at 9:15 PM, but it got delayed so much it was canceled. So, we got a discount at a hotel (the airline wouldn't comp it because the FAA shut flights down, not the airline itself). We didn't get to our room until after midnight, which gives us a whole 6 hours (sleep at 1:30, wake up at 7:30)

We get the 10:20 AM flight to Madison and our luggage is going on the 8 AM flight. Then, we get on the plane and have to wait 20 minutes extra while they fill up the fuel more than they need to (it had had enough in it, but they wanted to top it off, I guess...it's only a 25 minute flight). When we are in the air there is a fuel leak or something and so we land in Milwaukee at about 11:15 AM (which is about the same distance from Chicago that Madison is, but the flight path takes us over Lake Michigan making Milwaukee closer). They tell us they will bus us to Madison and the bus will be at the airport in 20 minutes. Well, the bus made it at 12:15 AM. Then the driver decides the bus isn't running right (or something) while on the on ramp to a freeway. So, he goes in reverse to get to the offramp right next to it (they had asphalt connecting them). We go back to the airport, get on another bus and drive the 60 miles to Madison.

We make it to the airport at about 1:45 PM, where our luggage is no longer waiting for us. They have it behind the ticket counter wall (seems like a good place). Well, they only have one person getting bags for people there and all of his time is taken up by one guy. This guy is complaining that kerosene spilled onto his bag (a valid complaint). The problem was that the guy gave him two options 1) they could keep the bag and clean it there and have it ready in a couple of hours or 2) they could give him a voucher to have it cleaned himself. Well, he didn't like option 1 because he had to be in a meeting in an hour and he needed his bag and he didn't like option 2 because he was leaving right afterwards and he wanted his bag cleaned now. Well, his complaining was obviously not going to miraculously change physics to allow the airline to clean the bag on this guy's timeframe, so we were really peeved at this point (25 hours of travel time does that to you). Finally, we get our bags after about 25 minutes of waiting there and get a taxi and head home. We got home around 3 PM, which means it took us 26 hours or so to go from point A to point B. Let's hope this year is better.

Jones-ing Orlando?

2004-12-20T23:09:00.000-06:00

The Angels made another move today: signing SS Orlando Cabrera of the Boston Red Sox to a 4 year contract worth $32 million. Richard is not happy. This move is absolutely stunning. I feel like I was hit by Donovan Darius. The reason is not picking up Cabrera, which has been rumored, but that they also released David Eckstein. Eckstein was a Scioscia guy...he loved him the kid. Eckstein was also a fan favorite...the great underdog. He rarely made a mistake and he had the top fielding percentage in the league this year at SS and he did not make mistakes on offense, either. He just does not have the talent to remain a top five SS without basically killing his body. This worked wonders in 2001 and 2002, but he wore down in 2003 and 2004. I don't know salary rules, so I don't know if the Angels have to pick up his contract for next year (he had less than 5 years in the majors, which means year-to-year contracts, but I don't know if they are guaranteed). Cabrera is a great SS defensively and average to above average offensively...he will certainly improve both sides of the ball (especially if he plays like he did in the playoffs). He also showed the Red Sox that stats don't tell the whole story as the team changed immediately after they got rid of Nomah and picked up Cabrera (there were other factors as well). Cabrera is a guy that I think plays the game the right way and will be wonderful to watch, but what does this mean for the future? One of the issues is that the Angels have a ton of great prospects coming up for the infield. Either some of them have to be traded or someone like Kennedy (once he is back from injury) or Figgins need to be traded. Well, Figgins is too good and versatile to trade, so that leaves AK. I suppose that in a year or two, Figgins can move to CF (I can't see them keeping DaVanon more than 2 more years) and then 2nd base will open up for Alberto Callaspo or Erick Aybar or anyone else that might be ready for the Bigs. I think Richard's main ssue here is that this money could have been spent on Beltran and was instead spent on Cabrera and Finley. I remain cautiously optimistic (remember the 2001 Angels won 75 games, basically only added two guys to their rotation, and ended up winning 99 games in 2002).

Frozen Tundra

2004-12-19T14:35:00.000-06:00

So, it was 0 degrees Fahrenheit when I woke up today (-15 degrees with wind chill). I had my one and only Final today at 10 AM...why there are Finals on a Sunday, I have no idea. My bones are still cold despite being back in doors for an hour and a half.

Misc.-ing Points

2004-12-17T21:32:00.000-06:00

The Angels have lost Matt Clement. Well, they never had him in the first place, but now he is going to the Red Sox. Richard is understandably upset, although there are still options to be had. And they don't need another starting pitcher for next year. I suspect he is more upset that the apparent savings made from not signing Carlos Beltran are not being spent now. Well, I think that even if a pitcher is not signed, the Angels may be in way better position to pick someone up next year. As far as I can tell (not up-to-date contracts), next year's free agent class could include Tim Hudson, Randy Johnson, Ray Durham, and Jason Schmidt, for example. I think the team is in good shape right now (not great, but good) and they are planning for the future as much as they are for next year.
In basketball news, the New Jersey Nets decided to become a true New York team (they have long languished because they have New Jersey in their name). They have accomplished this feat by way overpaying for the wuss that is Vince Carter. They traded three solid players plus two number one draft picks for the right to watch Vince shoot 20 footers all day because he is too afraid to drive the lane for fear of fouling. This sounds like a pretty classic New York style move to me. The Knicks and Mets have operated this way for a long time, the Yankees have over the last few years (and in the 15 or so years before Torre became coach and they decided to pick up solid chemistry guys instead of overpriced wusses). May the Nets gain the attendence that comes with such prestige (not to mention the New York media always calling them favorites to win a title and then ripping them for failing to live up to the task).
Washington, D.C. decided to stick it to the MLB by requiring any new stadium that is built to be at least half privately financed. Now, I think this is great business sense (why should taxpayers foot the bill for every new stadium and arena that is built?) and some of the nicest stadiums have been those privately funded. All of the major sports leagues seem to think that privately funded is bad, when it is actually way better. The refurbishments on Anaheim Stadium were about $100 million in cost, with the city *only* contributing $30 million. It looks absolutely fantastic now, and with the re-opened outfield wall (the stadium was closed all around when the Rams played there), it even has a great view. The MLB has the idea that if a stadium is not publicly funded in D.C., that they won't be able to stick a team there in the long term. I understand the point about them having to sell the team to someone at some point, but this should not be considered a death knell for the process.
On another note, I thought it was terrible to try and move the team to D.C. in the first place. There is a reason that two teams have moved out of that area in the last 50 years. Baseball should have moved a team to a city that wanted baseball (like Portland). The NFL tried doing something like this with LA a couple of years ago, where they had Houston and LA trying for an expansion team, but LA didn't really care. They gave LA every chance in the world to come up with even a remote plan for a team that would work, but in the end they had to choose Houston (isn't it better anyways to have a city that wants to be in the league? LA is quite content with watching a ton of NFL games on TV rather than getting some blacked out each week).
My last point on this (then I'll get onto other things) is that this brings up the idea of contraction again. Well, they can't do it until at least 2006 (agreement with the Players' Union), and the union will never agree to it anyways (too many roster spots lost). First of all, they would have to contract two teams (to make it even...baseball cannot easily afford to have uneven numbers like other sports). Second of all, it wouldn't accomplish much. They already have 3 divisions per league, which creates a good excuse for the Wild Card (which I doubt they want to give up at this point). If they contracted two teams, there would be 4 divisions with 5 teams and 2 with 4. For good balance they should either contract 6 teams or add 6 more (for divisions of 4 or 6 teams, they could have divisions of 5 teams but they are loathe to have each league with an uneven number...a solution on that later), or add 2 more and go to 4 divisions per league with 4 teams each, like the NFL. Obviously adding or subtracting 6 teams is not possible over a short period of time, so the next option is to add 2 more. Well, this would give every division winner a playoff spot and leave wild cards out of the mix. Unless, of course you choose 2 or four teams to be wild cards. The first system is like the NFL, where two teams would have byes in the first round. The second system would have no byes, but would give half the teams in baseball playoff spots...which takes away one of baseball's great reasons for watching in September...the difficulty of making the playoffs (no one cares about the NBA or NHL before the playoffs). This also presents the problems of an extra playoff round, which if you watched any this year, you noticed that they are now pushing so late into the year that the cold is seriously affecting games (that shouldn't happen in baseball...only football). What I would like as a system is to keep the current 30 teams, balance the leagues (3 divsions of 5 teams each league) and to compensate for the uneven teams, have 2 interleague series' a week. MLB could do a huge promotion with this and they could even still have their normal large scale interleague play time in June. I am no real fan of interleague play, but this might make it more interesting to me.

Blogger Civil War

2004-12-15T19:57:00.000-06:00

Now that blogs have become a huge front in the media and political war...it looks like some are starting to attack each other (I don't consider normal differences of opinion to be attacking). Best of the Web Today (second item) reports on what might be the first true blogger attack on another blogger. They report that Juan Cole has attacked Iraq the Model for being 'out of the mainstream of Iraqi opinion. He implies that the Fadhil brothers are essentially being funded by Republicans (possibly the president and/or his cronies). Cole also says that blogger Riverbend, who is very anti-American as part of the mainstream of Iraqi opinion. Blogger Jeff Jarvis weighs in by calling Cole "pond scum."

Why is this particularly heinous? Until now, bloggers (for the most part), have attacked opinions and facts...something that is going to happen when people disagree. Cole, however, brings up something else. He questions the very motives of the Fadhil brothers by saying that they are paid off by right wing operatives. He may be correct in stating that they are "far out of the mainstream" and I don't think anyone would care if he did (people call out people they disagree with that all the time). Who is more correct about the situation in Iraq, Iraq the Model or Riverbend? My guess is that it is somewhere in between but on the Iraq the Model side. The real issue is that Cole has now accused someone may be paid off to write certain things...which is the antithesis of blogging (although I would not be surprised if some are). All this really does is bring up that Cole could be paid off himself for his blogging. Also, Best of the Web brings up a great point, "...Cole is far out of the mainstream of American opinion, as evidenced by the result of last month's election." Let's hope this is just a blip on the blogging scene and doesn't lead to rampant accusations of being paid off partisan hacks (before only the mainstream media called bloggers that...therefore it wasn't a civil war). Let's end this Blogger Civil War before it starts.

It's a Byrd, it's a Moseley, no...it's Esteban Yan!

2004-12-14T20:18:00.000-06:00

Well, if you have been reading Pearly Gates, Chronicles of the Lads, or 6-4-2 you have probably heard all of the Angels news. It comes down to the Angels signing mediocre-to-good reliever Esteban Yan, trading terrible starter/great reliever Ramon Ortiz for hot pitching prospect Dustin Moseley, signing mediocre-to-good starting pitcher Paul Byrd, and designating Alfredo "I-can't-hit-run-the-bases-or-field-a-pickle-to-save-my-life" Amezaga for assignment. Yan was signed for 2 years at $2.5 million, which I think is decent (ie not terrible). Yan has the ability to be anywhere from a decent long reliever for mop up innings to a good set up man. The Angels are only putting about $1 million a year in him and it is only two years so it is pretty low risk. Ortiz was traded mainly because the Angels wanted another starter, he wasn't it, and he just spent a lot of last season complaining about not being the starter. It looks like they actually picked up a good prospect by trading him and in a need position (they have a ton of good starting pitching prospects but they always get hurt or learn to suck). I am actually pleased with the Paul Byrd signing, as I mentioned him in the list here of possible pitchers. Byrd has pitched pretty well his last two seasons, although he missed all of 2003 when he had Tommy John surgery. Pitchers, a lot of times, can become better pitchers after Tommy John surgery, and Byrd has a good opportunity here. The contract is only for one season and he will make $5 million, which is maybe above his market price, but well below what Matt Clement will get. The only reason I can see to pick up Byrd, though is if the Angels feel they no longer can get Clement or they feel like they have a good shot at picking up Randy Johnson. If they do pick up Clement, they will likely trade away Jarrod Washburn, but for what position, I don't know (maybe some prospects?). If they pick up Randy Johnson, Washburn would probably be involved in that trade in some form. If they don't pick up Clement, their rotation would be Kelvim Escobar, Bartolo Colon, Washburn, John Lackey, Byrd. This would definitely be better than last year's rotation. The final thing would be Amezaga being DFA'd, which is fantastic news. This guy was terrible the last couple of years. Also, check out Richard's salaries updates to see the amount the Angels are looking to spend next year based on the current signed players.

Parity in the NFL

2004-12-12T23:25:00.000-06:00

All season various NFL commentators have discussed how the NFL has had way more parity this year. Their explanation for this is the number of NFC teams still in the playoff hunt despite losing records. However, this season has had the least parity than any in recent years (that I can tell anyways. In the NFC, there is a 12-1 team, a 10-3 team, an 8-5 team, two 7-6 teams, two 6-7 teams, six 5-8 teams, two 4-9 teams, and a 2-11 team. This is a combined record of 96-112. This is not parity...it is domination by the AFC. The NFC only has three teams with a winning record against the AFC: Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Atlanta (granted some of this could change due to several games left to be played). Also, Philadelphia's complete dominance against their conference (10-0 and their only game against the NFC that was within a TD was tonight's 17-14 win over the Redskins; by contrast, they are 2-1 against the AFC, with one win on an overtime field goal against the Cleveland Browns and the other 15-10 over the Baltimore Ravens) has hurt the other teams' records (makes it so that every team they played has a guaranteed loss or two). The key to a paritized (is that a word?) league is that any team can beat any other team on any given Sunday. Well, this year has been the antithesis of that. The Eagles' and Patriots' only losses came to teh Pittsburgh Steelers (the only other 12-1 team). Pittsburgh's only loss came to the Baltimore Ravens in Week 2 before they switched to their stud rookie QB. The Jets only have 4 losses and all have been to good teams: The Patriots, a surging Bills team, the Ravens in overtime, and the Steelers. The Chargers have three losses...to the Jets, Broncos (before the Broncos did their annual "oh yeah, we suck" routine), and Falcons (who might just be the most inconsistent good team this year). Also, since the Packers and Panthers have figured out they are good...they have only lost one game between them...the Packers to the aforementioned Eagles team. Basically, as the Sports Guy on ESPN said...the NFL is a class system right now. There is no parity about this. There are a lot of mediocre teams, sure, but there a number of teams that are way better than everyone else and another group just underneath them that are way better than everyone below them. Columnists need to stop using the "parity" buzzword. It's just annoying.

Another option bites the dust

2004-12-11T21:52:00.000-06:00

Carl Pavano is going to the Yankees. The contract is worth $39 million over 4 years, which is right around what I felt he was going to get. The Angels wanted to pursue him, but I think it was evident early on he wanted to stay on the East Coast and then he decided to skip out on meeting with them just before the Winter Meetings. What's left for starting pitchers? The top ones are Matt Clement, Derek Lowe, Odalis Perez, Eric Milton (is he signed yet?), Kevin Millwood, and maybe someone like Paul Byrd. Each of these guys have their various issues, but a 3 year deal on any one of them could be a solid pick up. I don't know how many of those guys the Angels are actively pursuing (and I hope they aren't with some of them) but they will likely try to pick one of them up and/or add Randy Johnson or Tim Hudson in a trade.

Carlos Beltran? Is that spelled S-T-E-V-E F-I-N-L-E-Y?

2004-12-11T01:44:00.000-06:00

So, the Angels have signed 39 year old CF Steve Finley to a two year deal worth $14 million and a team option for a third year worth $7 million. I am always a cautiously optimistic sports fan (I never think my team is done until it is officially over, or they really suck). As such, I don't think this is that terrible. The Angels blogosphere is already on top of this, with Richard absolutely livid and Chronicles unhappy. These are SABRmetrics guys, which depend heavily on stats for value (I am of the belief that the stats only tell part of the story and that they haven't come up with a good statistical model to truly gauge value of players, while they always take them as gospel), and in that sense, certainly Finley is a downgrade from Jose Guillen (who was never going to come back anyways) and the case could be made that Finley is the worst CF defensively on the team (the other guys to compare to him would be Anderson (who has arthritis), Erstad (who will not likely play CF for the Angels for the remainder of his contract (through 2006)), Figgins (who will be playing 2B or SS for most of the season with Kennedy out) and Jeff DaVanon (who has never proven himself as an everyday everyday player, although that could be because he hasn't been given the chance). This is absolutely a controversial contract, but it seems obvious now that the Angels weren't willing to give into Scott Boras or the man he was selling to them. It appears that Boras wanted at the very minimal of minimums (ie, wouldn't even think about an offer below) 7 years and $15 million. That is a huge investment into any one player, not just in the money, but in the number of years, even if that player is a 5-tooler (average, power, speed, defense, and arm or something like that) and just entering his prime. I can only think of three recent contracts of 7 years or more right now and all ended in disaster for the team that signed the guy (Kevin Brown with the Dodgers, Alex Rodriguez with the Rangers, and Jason Giambi with the Yankees)...there may be more and I would appreciate enlightenment on the subject. The Angels decided that Beltran was not the answer...not at the asking price anyways...this is the first major indication to me that Moreno has officially decided to operate on some kind of a budget, and I think that can help him in the future (of course, as fans we want him to spend now).

As for Finley, I think it is an interesting pickup at the very least, although I also think they may have jumped the gun a little bit. They weren't necessarily out of the Beltran sweepstakes (reports were that he wanted to play for Anaheim) and there were other reports that Juan Pierre of the Marlins may have been on the trading block, who could have transitioned the team from a power one (that fizzled out last year due to injuries of three of their sluggers) to a speed team. Also, if the Angels were (or are) serious about getting a SS (like Orlando Cabrera) then that would push Figgins to CF in the current set up (more on this later). Back to Finley, though, he just hit a career high in home runs last year, and his OPS (a SABRjockey favorite) was decent, but not great. In his last 8 years or so (I forget exactly how many) he has only had two seasons with below an .800 OPS...and both those years he went to the World Series (in 1998 with the Padres and in 2001 with the Diamondbacks). So, the way I see it is that he will either have a good bat or the Angels will be back in the World Series. Also, this is only a two year contract...it is highly unlikely they will pick up that third year. I see this as a way to bridge the next two years in the outfield...they have no major prospects for those positions. And the only guys in the organization that can play a decent OF are now Anderson, Vlad, Finley, Figgins, DaVanon, Juan Rivera, Erstad, and Salmon. Well, Figgins is needed to play middle infield right now, Erstad is going to stay at first, and Rivera is a corner outfielder who is new and an unknown quantity at this point. Finley is not likely to start at CF in 2006 and could even just end up the DH (or LF) in 2005. He could end up at LF because Anderson's arthritis may continue to hinder him in the field which will force him to DH. While Kennedy is injured, the Angels don't have many options to put in CF, but when he is back, that could push Figgins to CF and Finley to DH. Another good thing about Finley is that he is a great guy (the Angels have long tried building a fan base with good characters and I would rather lose the World Series than have the cokeheads of the 86 Mets on my team), he lives close, and Los Angelinos already remember him fondly (for his pennant clinching grand slam against the Giants). Maybe this is part of Moreno's plan to expand his market.

Onto what I think this means for the future: 1) One or more of DaVanon, Eckstein, Rivera, Izturis, and Kotchman are gone. The Angels essentially have superdepth in the infield (McPherson, Quinlan, and Figgins at 3rd; Izturis, Eckstein, Kennedy (once he is back), and Figgins at the two middle infield spots; and Erstad and Kotchman at 1st). This isn't even including Kendry Morales here, who can play corner infield and outfield, although may be two years away. With Finley in CF (or Figgins or DaVanon) for the next two years, Erstad is stuck at first through 2006 (when his contract expires), which could be too long to keep blocking Kotchman. Rivera seems to be the extra guy on the team and will be wasting away value sitting on the bench (why not trade him when he has value?). Eckstein and Izturis are the guys the Angels would most likely trade out of their middle infield guys. 2) The Angels will pick up a top notch starting pitcher. Now, there are obviously varying degrees here, but I think that the Angels will trade for Randy Johnson or Tim Hudson (the GMs of the A's and Angels both said they are willing to trade in the division). This could also mean picking up Pavano or Clement, without a trade. 3) The Angels will pick up a SS or another starting pitcher. If the Angels pick up a SS, I guarantee a trade for a starting pitcher. They have a huge amount of hot, young virgin prospect infield talent in the minors (some of which is ready to take the majors in the next two years) and they need to deal that excess resource for a good starting pitcher (a rare resource for them). Adding a top SS for 4 years would severely stunt the growth of some of these nubile minor leaguers and then they become worthless. If they don't pick up a SS, I expect them to pick up a second starting pitcher or perhaps two relievers. Their rotation right now is Washburn, Lackey, Colon, and Escobar and rumors have it that Washburn could be traded.

All in all, this is not the best free agent signing ever, but it should be solid, have at least mildly positive consequences, and leaves the team with a lot of flexibility over the coming couple of years.

Glaus Half Full

2004-12-09T10:55:00.000-06:00

The Arizona Diamondbacks have signed Troy Glaus. Looks like the contract is 4 years, $45 million. This is a risky move for them, but if Glaus remains healthy, he will be worth it. Good luck to both.

The Christmastime Deserter

2004-12-08T23:57:00.000-06:00

I was going to write something about the guy who refused to go on deployment to the Persian Gulf with his ship, but Citizen Smash does it way better than I would. My thoughts mirror his, but I would like to add (or emphasize) that this is a guy who walked out on his contract with the Navy. He joined voluntarily and knew that if there was a war, he would have likely have to serve in that war. Because he is not going, the Navy is forced to send someone else, someone with more courage, someone who is more honorable. This guy should (and will) be punished severely and will be dishonorably discharged when his time is up. Now, I don't mind people protesting being drafted or protesting deployments when they have finished their service, but while you are in the service you go where you are told. I do not respect people who were draft dodgers during the Vietnam War, but I do respect the people like Muhammed Ali, who was willing to serve his prison time in order to note fight in the war (granted, I don't think we should have a draft, but when we do, it is irresponsible, cowardly and wrong to flee the country). This guys faces punishment more severe than Ali did, and I will have a little respect for him for taking the punishment if that's what he does...but he still broke his word, a legal contract, his responsibilities, and abandoned his brothers...and that I can never respect.

"A Day That Will Live in Infamy"

2004-12-07T23:09:00.000-06:00

Happy (or whatever the appropriate word there is, I don't think happy works) Pearl Harbor Day.

Virginia Slim

2004-12-07T22:36:00.000-06:00

Newsweek magazine has an online story this week that has the subheadline "Most Americans believe the virgin birth is literally true, a NEWSWEEK poll finds." The way they say this makes it seem derisive and that those people are ignorant (maybe it is another of those things they media does to show that the people that voted for Bush are stupid like that hoax state-IQ thing). To me, this is a pretty "DUH!" statement. America is a pretty solidly Christian country. Not all of these Christians necessarily go to church or even consider them a part of a specific denomination, but they are Christian. The virgin birth of Jesus Christ is pretty integral to the whole believeing him to be God and/or the son of God (it wouldn't be that special of a birth otherwise). The Christian religion's (and I am including basically all the denominatons I know...there may be some that are different) basic belief system is predicated on the fact that Jesus is the Savior and either God Himself or the son of God. Newsweek's headline might as well have been "Most Americans are Christian."

Crazy Legs

2004-12-06T23:34:00.000-06:00

I wasn't going to post on football until tomorrow, but the end of tonight's game (in combination with the other games I saw this weekend) requires me to:

The first game I saw was the USC-UCLA game. I actually only saw the last 10 mintes of the first half and the last two minutes of the game, but that was enough crazy right there. When I turned the game on, it was 10-0 USC and they were punting. Then UCLA had a 96 yard punt return for a TD. USC punted again on their next possession, but it was blocked. UCLA started with the ball inside the USC 20, but could not move and went for the field goal. That was missed wide. USC took over, and instantly had an 80 yard TD run by Reggie Bush. Also, in the second quarter, Bush had the ball stripped from him, which would have been returned for a TD by UCLA, but the play was blown dead before the fumble (bad call). With just over 2 minutes left in the game, UCLA was down 29-17 and had a 4th and 2 at the four, where they threw in a TD pass. USC then started running out the clock and Bush broke for a 30 yard run, where he smartly just dropped t the ground to keep the clock rolling. Bush then fumbled when the game was basically in the bag and UCLA recovered. Finally, USC intercepted the pass on the next play to end the game.
The next game I saw was Titans-Colts in Indy. This had the craziest 1st quarter of all time. Titans Coach Jeff Fisher pulled off one of the gutsiest riskiest coaching jobs in sports history. His team was without its best player (QB Steve McNair) and he knew his young defense would not be able to completely stop the Peyton Manning led Colts offense. He decided that he wanted to play from ahead for as long as possible. So, with the Colts leading 3-0 early in the first, the Titans went for the big play and succeeded with a TD. They then pulled off an onside kick and recovered the ball, leading to a FG. Waht's more surprising than 1 onside kick? How about 2 in a row? Well, they tried but the ball went out of bounds so they had to re-kick. This was a fake onside, but deep kick. The Colts quickly scored their own TD making it 10-10. The Titans came out firing again and scored another quick TD (Drew Bennett's 2nd of the 1st quarter). What is more surprising than 2 onside kicks? That's right...three onside kicks in the 1st quarter! The Titans recovered again (making them an offical 2-2). Unfortunately for them, the firing mode bit them in the ass here as they threw an interception. The Colts, not to be one-upped by the Titans, scored in about a minute, making it 17-17 with a minute and a half left in the 1st quarter. Well, the Titans decided they wanted to keep playing fast and scored on the final play of the quarter, another pass to Bennett. It was 24-17 after one quarter!!!! This is where the Colts realized the way to beat the Titans...slow the game down. They ran a 6 minute drive, killed the Titans' momentum and scored a TD. The Titans drove right back down the field, but were stopped and had to go for the FG. Well, that was blocked and the only players running after the ball were Colts, so they scored another TD. At this point it was 31-24 Colts, they had the momentum, they were at home, and they had the better team...the game was over. Jeff Fisher's gamble did not pay off, but it was one of the more brilliant strategic game plans I have seen. The idea was to stay ahead and not let the Indy offense have the ball. It backfired because high risk plans are prone to break down quickly when mistakes show up. There was the interception and the field goal block, not to mention the Titans' defense was dead tired after just one quarter plus one drive. Kudos to Jeff Fisher for thinking outside the box.
The third game I saw was the Green Bay-Philly game. Now, I don't think Philly is as good as or Green Bay is as bad as that game showed, but this was an amazingly one sided game. Green Bay is supposed to be the 2nd best team in the NFC...and if there is that kind of disparity in the NFC, then the Eagles are going to be having fun in Jacksonville.
The last game I saw this weekend was tonight's game. I actually only saw the last 8 minutes of the game, but that in itself was pretty amazing. In this game, Seattle took a 14-3 lead into the second quarter, were down 19-14 after 2, and were down 29-14 at one point. Seattle got a FG before the 4th quarter, and the crazy was on. Vinny Testaverde (the interception king) was picked off, leading to a Seattle TD and huge momentum shift. I came in with Seattle down 29-24 and holding the ball. Jerry Rice made a fantastic catch up the middle for 33 yards, and the Seahawks quickly scored after that. They added a 2 point conversion to push their lead to 32-29. Vinny was intercepted again, this time with 4:30 left in the game. Seattle was trying to run the clock out and had a 4th and 1 on the Dallas 30. Shaun Alexander broke past the line, and ran it in for the TD. The Cowboys got the ball back with under three minutes left and slowly marched down the field. After the 2 minute warning, Vinny was running around like a chicken with his head cut off, lobbed a ball to the back of the end zone where Keyshawn Johnson won a jump ball. He came down foot in bounds, elbow out of bounds, foot in bounds. The ref called him in and the replay booth didn't challenge the call (although they should have). The Cowboys then won the onside kick and decided to just run the ball down the field (they could, they had 2 timeouts and plenty of time). This worked as they made it inside the 20 with under a minute left, and then ran the ball in on the next play. Now it was 43-39 Cowboys. Seattle still had 30 seconds left and a shot to win the game. First play was a 28 yard pass to Rice across the middle of the field, and they were able to spike the ball with 7 seconds, enough fro a good Hail Mary. Hasselbeck launched it in the air, where a Cowboy batted it down, onto another guy, where the ball bounced back up, into Bobby Engram's facemask and then fell to the ground.

What was with this weekend?!?!? It was great!

Roid Rage

2004-12-06T21:57:00.000-06:00

So, I have been busy this week, hence the lack of updates. The biggest sports news is obviously the baseball steroids thing. Rob is all over it with the "who cares?" point of view. First of all, I would like to say that this Jason Giambi and Barry Bonds did not feel like a big deal to me. This is the same story that broke last year...just with confirmation from the players themselves. However, I do think steroid use in baseball is a big deal. The major reason it is a big deal is that, whether or not it actually helps, it is cheating. If you are taking a test and look at your neighbor's paper...it is cheating whether they have the right answers or not...and even if you don't use it. You are trying to gain an unfair advantage. There is a lot of argument as to whether it helps or not, which I am willing to say it might not, but even if it helps a little bit, it can turn singles into doubles and doubles and long outs into home runs. No, it doesn't help Barry Bonds with his amazing hand-eye co-ordination or his ability to know his own strike zone so well, but if it helps him hit more home runs (and more hits), then it has a lot to do with his record breaking intentional walks and regular walks. People pitch around him so much because he is that much more deadly with he bat. If he was just hitting 1 home run in every 14 at bats, pitchers could deal with that and pitch to him a decent amount, decreasing his walks and walks-to-strikeouts ratio back to a more normal level. It is very possible that he just became super locked in all of a sudden and I am willing to buy that argument, but steroids may have helped, he used them, and you can't take the perception away that they must have helped. I do not think asterisks could be placed on any records that anyone had before there was steroid testing. At the time, they were essentially legal within the game (there was no testing to keep them from being used and it would be stupid to have 30 asterisks in the record book.

Another reason that this is a big deal is that steroids are illegal. These men could be arrested in another venue if they were using these things. Maybe they shouldn't be illegal, but that is another discussion. Why should these men be able to get away with illegal activity just because they are in a sport? I know they do a lot of times, but it still is wrong. Furthermore, these guys are supposed to be role models, and if they are saying that they will do anything it takes...no matter the morality or legality of that action, then they are terrible role models. How many kids who are fans of Bonds and Giambi have to deal with the loss of a role model? It has to be similar to what a lot of people went through with the Kobe fiasco last year. Rob also asks what authority the government has to regulate baseball on this (Senator McCain spoke out forcefully). Well, since baseball has an antitrust exemption, the government can regulate them pretty much as much as they want to. I think that McCain was actually trying to scare the MLB into having strict self-regulation. The union has been against steroid testing for awhile now (right to privacy, etc.), but this has just hurt the players more now. If they had instituted a steroid testing policy...even a mild one (minor suspensions, weak testing) then people would feel like baseball is at least attempting to curb cheating. The NFL is a good example of this where David Boston of the Miami Dolphins quietly got a 4 game suspension for testing positive for steroids. No one has talked about this ruining the integrity of the game because he was caught and punished. The players union better hope that they come up with a regulatory scheme before the government decides to make their own, because I guarantee that will be way worse.

Finally (well, not the last point to make, but the last I will), steroids are dangerous. They cause all sorts of health problems. Loading up on hormones (for a non-medical reason) is not good for your body. With testosterone, your body decides to stop making it (since you are getting it from elsewhere) and you end up having to keep taking it just to survive. This is somewhat similar to the effect that cocaine can have, where it basically overstimulates your nerves to the extent that they don't produce their own dopamine. That means you have to keep taking a drug to keep your dopamine levels up (that's why it is so addictive). Ken Caminiti had this happen to him and he had never ending troubles because of his drug use (including steroids). One message we need to send to these guys is that it is not ok to fuck their bodies up for our entertainment (football players and boxers fuck their bodies up in other ways, but we do have protections in those sports to reduce that). Let's just put it this way...steroids do nasty things to your body and we should not be encouraging people that are role models for our children to use them.

Need a sports score...

2004-12-05T01:22:00.000-06:00

Does anyone know if Esperanza High beat Long Beach Poly today in the CIF-SS Division I Football Semi-final match? High school sports apparently don't merit newsworthy updates on the internet. I can find out in the morning, so it's not that big of a deal, but it would be nice to know now.

UPDATE: Thanks to Joe, who found out for me. Unfortunately, my Aztecs lost (not unexpected going against the no. 2 team in the state).

Paradise Lost

2004-12-01T23:22:00.000-06:00

So, Lost continues to have about 3 major surprises per episode (with any number of minor ones). One of the major ones this week was pretty obvious, as they took the whole episode to set it up. One of the other shocks is that the pregnant chick's baby is going to be the anti-Christ, or something like that. Honestly...a psychic told her! Oh...and the cool hunter guy is from Tustin.

Angels Angels Angels

2004-12-01T22:57:00.000-06:00

The Angels have reportedly signed 21 year old Cuban defector Kendry Morales, contingent on him making it into the country. The deal is for 6 years, with no monetary terms given, although I would guess around $6 million total. Richard, Rob, and Chronicles are all over this story. I have to agree with Chronicles...my first thought was that Casey Kotchman is now completely free to be traded. Morales is probably about 2 years from being truly ready for the majors, which is how long Erstad is under contract for. Kotchman is ready now (or very soon) and will be blocked by Erstad if he never makes it back to CF (which will happen if the Angels pick up Beltran). From what I have heard, Morales has played 1B and all the OF positions, although not well. His time in the minors could be used to get him good at one position. I think this deal significantly increases the odds for the Angels to trade for Randy Johnson, especially with the Yankees supposedly dropping out. If this happens, it creates a bigger need for Erstad to stay at first (it would be him and/or Quinlan), which means picking up a CF is more important...Carlos Beltran anyone? This move and the Guillen trade really seem like moves to position themselves before they have one weekend where they pick up RJ and Beltran. There is also some speculation as to what will happen with Jared Weaver, with the amount of money spent on Morales here. I don't think it will seriously affect things, as I feel he will sign, probably in the $6-$8 million range. Weaver himself has said he really wants to just get signed so he can play for the Angels (he is a hometown boy), this may just be added pressure on Scott Boras.

UPDATE: The OC Register claims the deal is worth around $9 million total. They also say this could hurt their ability to sign Weaver because of the team's own budget. Finally, they say that this could put Erstad or Dallas McPherson on the trading block, which I don't really see.

A Three Hour Tour...

2004-11-30T21:47:00.000-06:00

I just watched some of that Real Gilligan's Island show. It's not because it's a reality show (I am pretty much uninterested in those) and it's not because this concept particularly intrigues me (it doesn't). Mostly I did it because my sister knows one of the people on the show. He was the owner of the company she worked for until June (she got a better job offer), which does make him the Millionaire (or rather, one of two). Basically, they set up two crews that live in the same general area and have challenges to knock one of each spot off of the island. The Millionaire my sister knows is Glen Stearns, the guy worth $500 million (not the one with $3 million). His wife is Mindy Stearns, who I think does entertainment news on KTLA 5. The only other notable cast members are the Movie Stars: Nicole Eggert (of Baywatch and Charles in Charge fame) and Rachel Hunter (who I had heard of before but not seen in anything). Glen, Mindy, and Rachel are all on the same team and won the first challenge, which allowed their Professor to be the one kept.

Foosball

2004-11-28T23:11:00.000-06:00

Man, that was a good day of football. To summarize:

The morning games I saw were Philly-NY Giants and Jacksonville-Minnesota. The Philly game was never that close and they should have really just switched to another game in the last 5 minutes (it's not like either of those teams have local ties, anyways) like New Orleans-Atlanta, Washington-Pitt, or Tampa Bay-Carolina, all of which were close to the end. On the CBS side of things, the ga,e could have easily switched to SD-KC (woohoo for San Diego pulling it out) or Cincinnati-Cleveland (106 points scored and close near the end). I did get to see the end of the SD-KC game, including their game winning FG, so that was good.
The afternoon game I saw, Baltimore-New England, was pretty good for a half and quickly became a blowout. They could have shown Miami-SF (although both teams were 1-9 at the time and I don't really want to see that kind of a game) or NY Jets-Arizona (which I also don't care much about). I didn't mind being stuck on a blowout here because it was raining like crazy, and those are always fun games to watch.
The Sunday Night game (which I normally don't watch much of) was spectacular. It was played in a huge snow flurry, and pitted the beloved Raiders against the hated Denver Broncos (in Denver). Most of the first half was a lot of rushing and short passes and the game being scoreless. Then Denver put up a FG, got the ball back with over 2 minutes left, and scored a TD on a long bomb. The Raiders came back and quickly marched downfield, getting a great TD pass to Jerry Porter over Champ Bailey. The second half was basically a lot of deep passes, and the Raiders had a 13-10 lead (had a PAT blocked) entering the 4th quarter. Denver then got a quick TD, then intercepted a deflected pass for a TD, making it 24-13. The Raiders charged downfield, then Kerry Collins threw an interception. Raiders got the ball back soon enough, and charged right back down field where Ronald Curry made a SWEET catch, behind him, extended all the way in the air, at the back of the end zone. They missed the 2 point conversion, making it 24-19. They stopped the Broncos once again, got the ball back with one timeout and 3 and a half minutes and drove VERY quickly downfield, where Collins found Porter in the end zone for the third time, this time on 4th and goal. They missed another 2 pointer, making it 25-24. The Broncos then got the ball back with about 2 minutes left and three timeouts and drove down the field themselves. They made it to the Raiders 25 yard line where they were stopped and had to go for a 42 yard field goal. The announcers were calling for the Raiders to use their last timeout when the guy is kicking in a snow storm and you would need the timeout if he makes it (it's not like the game was ending with the kick). Langston Walker then jumped up and swatted the ball out of the air, game over. As much as I love games in the rain, games in snow are way better and always end up as classics (the Snow Bowl, the Indianapolis-Denver game a couple years ago).
Of playing in the rain and snow: I can't believe more people haven't caught onto this, but it seemed like both Denver and the Raiders did right before the second half. When in the snow you NEED to pass the ball. Defense is inherently reactionary, it can easily react when it knows where the ball is and where it is going (making rushing difficult), but when there is a pass, the DBs don't know where the route is going and so will naturally be a split second behind. If you have a decent QB, he can hit the receivers at those spots. The only need to rush is to keep the linebackers playing honest. I don't think the snow should severely affect how you blitz...it is very difficult to get the QB in the snow (he is more manueverable, since he starts from a stopped position), and you need to be able to keep him honest occasionally. Of course, this still means you should not blitz all the time, cuz that will also kill you. As for rain, people always seem to think that running is the way to go in the rain, but I think there is the same issue as there is with snow. The difference here is that the middle of the field because a swamp, and so rushing to the outside is infinitely better in the late game than rushing to the middle. I think rushing is more important in these cases than it is in snow games, but the key element is still the passing game.

Misc.-ing Points

2004-11-27T17:37:00.000-06:00

First snow of the season today. It wasn't cold enough to stick (it melted upon hitting the ground), but it was snow. Let's just say that I like Southern California better than Wisconsin a lot more this time of year.
My girlfriend and I saw The Incredibles last night, and it was just that. Pixar is the best movie maker in the world at this point. Disney is going to seriously regret the end of their agreement to distribute Pixar's films. Let's just say, I don't think that Toy Story 3 will be comparable to the first two.
I had a nice small Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday with a bunch of area UC Irvine grads, namely Me, my girlfriend, my former roommate, his girlfriend, and another friend of ours. Other than my former roommate's girlfriend (who is a law student in Chicago), we are all Chemistry grad students in Madison.
Let's hope that this Ukraine thing ends well. I am happy that the US is supporting the opposition here, I hope there ends up no need for violence, that it ends with the cases of fraud being investigated and dealt with, and that Russia does not try to rebuild its empire starting with the Ukraine.
I just looked and saw that Nebraska went 5-6 this year, and missed a bowl game for the first time in 35 years. I hope Bill Callahan has many more of those years coming to him for what he did to the Raiders last year.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

2004-11-25T01:41:00.000-06:00

And enjoy your Turkey!

Half Life 2

2004-11-24T01:58:00.000-06:00

I beat Half Life 2 on easy on Saturday night. I basically let it take over my downtime from Tuesday through Saturday as I wanted to finish it as fast as possible. Great story, I love the Half Life method of figuring things out as you go and still not really fully learning at the end. The pacing is well done, never quite giving you a good time to stop (makes it like Civilization 2 in that respect). I was disappointed that the special weapon (pheromones, which make antlions fight with you) was only for a couple areas. The final weapon is spectacular, although it made the final level REALLY easy. I had a great time playing it, although the lack of a multiplayer game in the style of Half-Life 2 (it comes with Counter-Strike) hurts it in many ways, especially since you could have a lot of fun just playing with the gravity gun in a multiplayer game (think football or something along those lines).

Brett Favre

2004-11-22T21:31:00.000-06:00

I love Brett Favre just as much as the next guy, but the Sunday Night Football commentators are ridiculous. They have many problems, but this is just ridiculous. When talking about his career stats, they posted his line (~48,000 yards, 360 TDs, 210 Int) and they said "Wow, that's a lot of yards and touchdowns, this just proves he is one of the best all-time. Interceptions don't matter." If you say that, then you have to say that Vinny Testaverde is one of the greatest QBs of all time despite his 260/250 TD/Int ratio, and I just don't think that is possible. Also, when showing a replay of a Brett Favre interception, Joe Theismann said something along the lines of, "This was just a perfect pass to the receiver." No, it wasn't...it was a perfect pass to the defender, and if he wasn't there, the receiver would have had to make a great diving catch to reach the ball.

Basketbrawl

2004-11-22T17:35:00.000-06:00

I would like to make a few followup points about Friday night's game now that the punishments have been handed down. Also, the Kerry Spot has two great posts about the situation here and here.

First off, were the suspensions of the right length? I have heard a lot of people say that they are either too harsh or about right, but few people have said they are not long enough. I think this thinking is wrong and that Ron Artest should be gone from the NBA. He did something absolutely despicable and has had major anger control issues in the past. His nickname could be "Flagrant Foul" and he has tossed TVs when upset. With him, I think it was just a matter of time before he went berserk. The NBA needs to see this and say, "We do not need Ron Artest in our league and we do not want to associate with such villains." Stephen Jackson should face about a year suspension, because he was going up there as a family type thing...I can sort of understand that, but Jackson really took it to the next level...I would even be willing to support a lifetime ban on him. Jackson, in fact, may be more to blame for the whole thing, he was the one that kept the initial pushing and shoving going about 10 seconds longer than it normally would have and he charged into the stands more eagerly than Artest. As for Jermaine O'Neal, it appeared he was not able to make it into the stands, but then socked a guy on the court...25 games is probably about right for him. Ben Wallace's shove of Artest that started it all would probably be a 2-3 game suspension in a vacuum, but he got 6, which I think is fair.
Their were many players that kept their cool extremely well. I can't tell who it was exactly, but Eddie Gill (I think) of the Pacers went up into the stands and was trying to pull Stephen Jackson away from the fan he was beating the crap out of. This man is my hero, and he deserves some sort of recognition for his efforts. Also, there was a guy (I think with the media) that was balding and had a pink shirt on that was doing his best to keep Jamaal Tinsley and the O'Neal from hopping into the stands. I never thought I would say this, but Rasheed Wallace (Mr. Technical Foul) was a paragon of sanity. In the initial pushing and shoving match, he was trying to hold back both teams from each other. Also, I have to credit Ron Artest during the initial pushing and shoving for laying down on the scorer's table trying to calm down, when someone tossed a beer at him. There were undoubtely more people who were equally courageous (or more so) but I could not see distinctly from the footage...they all deserve our praise.
Then, there are the fans. They must be punished in some way, or else they will try to do this to every visiting team in order to get star players suspended more. My idea is to not allow any of those directly involved with the physical confrontations (ie the instigators of events) to attend any other NBA game for life. The NBA can say something similar to what they should say about Artest, "We respect and value our fans and we understand they are our customers, but we would rather make less money and turn these people away than allow them to watch another game in one of our arenas." The fans that dumped beer on Pacers as they went to the locker room could be suspended for the season. Tickets could be refunded this time, but in the future the NBA could require behavior contracts to buy tickets which would allow them to suspend people from attending their games for a length of time deemed appropriate by the NBA if said fan becomes unruly. As for serving beer at the games, yes that contributed to the problem, but people have had beer at games for half a century and it has not escalated like this before...the problem is not the beer, but the fans. If you punish them harshly enough the first time, the next group that is thinking of doing this might hesitate.
Finally, I support the right of the fans to press charges against the players that hit them. Normally, I am against bringing stuff that happens in a sporting event to the police, but that is usually because it is players vs. players. The moment that the players brought it to the fans, the NBA lost its complete jurisidictional rights (I believe) and the police have every right to investigate.

Detroit Fight City

2004-11-20T01:05:00.000-06:00

Richard the gist of this already. Basically, in the Indianapolis Pacers-Detroit Pistons basketball game, Ron "I am crazier than Carl Everett and Milton Bradley...combined" Artest committed a sorta hard foul on Ben "'Fro Monster" Wallace. Wallace then shoved Artest pretty hard, which broght the two teams to the sidelines engaged in one of those classic shoving matches that football games get every once in awhile. Then, some fans threw some beer at Artest, who is a guy that has thrown TVs when pissed off. Well, not one to do the least amount of damage to another human being in the immediate area, Artest jumped a couple rows into the stands and started beating a fan up. Stephen Jackson, illustrious teammate of Artest, joined him u there and picked his own guy to beat up. Eventually, both players were pulled away from their punching dummies and brought back to the court. Well, Artest obviously felt that Jackson had been doing equal harm to people, and so Artest found a fan that was on the court and socked him in the jaw. There may have been more, but that is all I was able to see on ESPN Motion. Most insane thing that has ever happened in a game that I can recall.

As far as punishment goes, I think Artest and Jackson should not be allowed to play in the NBA again (I felt the same way after Latrell Sprewell choked his coach some years ago). I also think those fans that were involved in instigating the violence (throwing things at players) should be charged with some sort of misdemeanor or something and not be allowed to attend any major sports venue again (this would have to be a mutual agreement between all the major leagues). Finally, Ben Wallace should get a few games suspension.

Jose can you see...

2004-11-19T20:37:00.001-06:00

Jose Guillen is going to Washington. Other Angel blogs have the news here, here, here, and here. Most feelings seem to be that this is a reasonable deal, especially considering Guillen wasn't coming back, thereby devaluing his trade value. What we lost is a great player in his prime, who finally put all of his skills together, but still has mental issues and can be a clubhouse cancer. What they gained is $3 million in salary cap room, a young outfielder that did well platooning last year for Les Expos, and a SS prospect that is the brother of Cesar Izturis. Now, Juan Rivera (said outfielder) may end up great, but is more of a corner outfielder, which means he is likely to platoon at 4th OF/DH. I think that what this more likely leads to is using him in a trade for Randy Johnson (or using DaVanon in that trade, although Rivera would be a bigger quantity). Macier Izturis is a slick fielding SS who is projected to make the Bigs next year and challenge Eckstein for the starting spot. He could also be used in a trade for someone like the Big Unit, as grabbing him actually could bottleneck the Angels at middle infield in a year or so. They already have Eckstein, Figgins, Kennedy, plus prospects Alberto Callaspo and Erick Aybar. I see all of this as positioning themselves for some big trade. It may not be Rivera or Izturis, but the traded players will likely have become expendable due to their appearance on the team. One other benefit to this trade is taht idiotic New York magazines will stop posting rumors that the Angels will trade Guillen to the Mets for Mike Piazza. Also, Sean (third link up there) also reports that the Angels have about $78 million in contracts for next year and I am going to assume that their goal is to be around $100 million. That means they could pick up the Big Unit (say $10 million of his contract) and go after someone like Beltran (assume about $14 million), maybe get two relievers for a combined $4 million, and be at about $110 million. Salmon's $9 million a year contract expires after 2005 so that could just be considered an operating loss (like Kevin Appier's was this year), so they would be at actual expenses of $106, but only really spending $95 million.

Misc.-ing Points

2004-11-19T01:59:00.000-06:00

Ok, I have been slow to update the past couple of days, but, well, Half-Life 2 beckons. The graphics are absolutely fantastic. The faces look great (the first time I have actually been impressed with video game faces in a LONG time). The physics engine is phenomenal...especially once you get the gravity gun. Oh, and the one hideous part of the Half Life graphics (the water) has been fixed...and is some of the best water I have seen. Now on to the issues of the day:

Troy Percival signed with the Detroit Tigers today, for 2 years at $6 million per year. It is obvious that the Tigers are trying hard to get back to respectability. As for Percy, this is good for him, as he got a two year deal which may be why he didn't go back to the Angels (there is no way they would have gone for two years), but he also did so at a paycut (which was expected). I wanted the Angels to sign him for 1 year at $5 million, but I knew that was highly unlikely, so I am ok with this. As it is, the Tigers didn't make a terrible deal, as Percy may have 2 years in him and $6 million for a good closer is not bad. Whether or not Percy lasts two years or remains a good closer will be discovered with time. Good luck, Percy, we already miss ya.
There is a big stink about this Monday Night Football intro flap. If you hadn't heard, it featured the ugly blonde chick (she's got a nice body, but god what a hideous maw) wearing only a towel in the locker room with Eagles WR Terrell Owens. The blonde chick tries convincing TO to stay in the locker room with her while she drops her towel. Well, this was in bad taste, since MNF is an unrated program and kids watch it. Parents are expecting a football game, not ugly, slutty women trying to pick up a guy. Now, it's not THAT big of a deal, I mean TV shows do worse all the time, but what matters is that it was done at an unexpected time. ABC got a bunch of complaints and apologized and the NFL is angry and apologized (they keep getting their asses kicked by sleazy networks) and TO even apologized (I never thought I would ever see that happen). For some reason ESPN.com doesn't think it is that big of a deal, although I bet a lot of these guys don't have children yet...the fact is that it should have never been there in the first place. Personally, I never saw the intro thing (I hate those and make sure never to watch them) and I probably wouldn't even be writing about it except that Tony Dungy, coach of the Indianapolis Colts called it racist. Basically he is wondering why they are putting a black man in this commercial (as opposed to the coaches, who are both white and fat), especially with the Kobe thing. Look, Mr. Dungy, the Cowboys suck so they aren't interesting this year. The Eagles are good, so if I am doing a promo, it is with one of them. Now, fans don't really care much about the coaches, so they are out. Who are the two guys on the Eagles that get the publicity? Donovan McNabb (their black QB) and TO (one of their black WRs). TO practically begs for controversy and publicity, so he is obviously the one to use. Now go back to losing in the first round of the playoffs.
There is also a big controversy about this Marine who shot a wounded terrorist and killed him. People think that because the terrorist was wounded and unarmed that the Marine could tell that at the time. And to put this in context, this Marine had just been hurt and watched a friend die the previous day because of a terrorist that played dead and attacked them. This is not about revenge or hatred of Iraqis or Muslims or anything else...this is about self-preservation. People talk about the Geneva Conventions and how they don't allow this stuff to happen, therefore he should be a war criminal. etc. Well, the Geneva Conventions only apply to soldiers in uniform. Anyone who is fighting for their cause non-uniformed is a terrorist and not protected. The reason for this rule is to protect both civilians and soldiers. Think about it, if soldiers have to worry about which members of the population are fighting against them, they will be killing more civilians (even when it is on accident). Soldiers are supposed to shoot first if there is ever a threat on them, because self preservation is the first rule. Also, we warned the people of Fallujah that we were going to engage in door-to-door warfare and allowed them to evacuate. In my opinion, anyone left there must be considered a terrorist until proven otherwise. And every terrorist must be considered a threat until he has his hands in the air and is patted down or he can't put his hands up because he is dead.

The Iraq War: Firsthand

2004-11-18T08:05:00.000-06:00

Kathryn Lopez of NRO received this e-mail from a soldier today:

Greetings K-LO!!! I served in the Sunni Triangle from July '03 untill April '04 with the Army Guard. I always knew the media was biased in the past, but it really slaps you in the face when you witness it firsthand. Let's get this straight: 1)Saddam was evil. 2)Iraqis lived in fear and with constant torture under Saddam. 3)Millions of Iraqis are incredibly grateful to the U.S. for removing Saddam. 4)Now those millions are working their butts off, and risking their lives to build a decent, modern society. These are all widely documented facts that I personally know to be true from my own experience. And yet, since I've gotten home, I am really shocked at how many people are completely unaware of these things. (maybe it's because I live in a blue state; MN) It disgusts me how many people honestly seem to think Saddam wasn't a big deal, or that we are killing more Iraqis then Saddam ever did. Many assume that since I was "Backdoor Drafted" through the Guard that I would not be proud of my service or the things we are accomplishing. How wrong they are. Actually meeting, and working with Iraqis convinces me more then anything else that they honestly are just normal human beings who have the capacity for peaceful governance, and prosperous industry like anyone else. Iraqi families DO deeply grieve for the million-plus that were murdered, tortured, or raped under Saddam's rule. It is wrong that our media so callously ignores that grief. There is such a huge contrast between
actually being among a people,many of whom are missing limbs,or are covered in whip lashes, and yet have such a look of renewed hope and passion as they line up to volunteer to work for the coalition, compared to the medias' portrayal of Iraqis as bitter, and angry with Americans for upsetting their "security under Saddam". The contrast can literally make you sick. It has been my belief since I've returned home that the media really is our true adversary in Iraq. I'll support that statement: everyone admits that the terrorists in Iraq are not a serious military force, and that they simply don't have the strength to incur even a single military defeat on our forces. The only way they can win is through a political victory. They can win political victories by either forcing Iraq into sectarian civil war (which looks more unlikely with each passing day), or by the media's constant drumbeat of defeatism, and pessimism convincing a large enough portion of the U.S. that we are failing, forcing a premature evacuation. It is clear to me that the media's influence was by far the bigger of the two threats. However, I'm elated that our recent election has proven that the media has failed to persuade a majority of Americans into defeatism. This gives me true hope for the future, both in Iraq, and in America. Now, regardless of the fact that my friends and family seem to think I've been brainwashed by the military, and am secretly a paid employee of Haliburton, I can be happy about the direction our country is headed in, and proud of my service in Iraq. (By the way, I love the fact that they think I was "brainwashed", so much so that I carry a card in my wallet that proclaims me an Official Member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!!) Well, thanks for everything you guys are doing, and keep up the good work! You keep writing it, I'll keep reading it!!!

Quarter-Life

2004-11-17T02:20:00.000-06:00

I just played a little bit of Half-Life 2 (for free with my ATI Radeon card). So far it has all the tension of the first game, but I am not very far yet, so that verdict is not finished. The faces and people movements are astounding. Also, I ahve to say that when without a weapon in an FPS...you feel really vulnerable. Finally, the whole Steam idea is pretty neat (I had the game loaded on my computer before I could play it) and it should hurt piracy (good and bad) and improve developer's abilities to distribute software (meaning more money for them, meaning more creative freedom). If you don't know what Steam is, it is basically a program you can download from Valve, which allows you to download their games. When playing the game, it will periodically check Valve's servers to see if you are still connected, and if you aren't it drops you. These check ups (in Half Life and Half Life 2, anyways) occur between regions of the game. When you enter a new region, there is a "Loading" sign, which basically pauses the game while you load the new area (if you have played Everquest...you should be VERY familiar with this). When I palyed Half Life on Steam a couple months ago, the loading process was very fast. Also, I read in a review that the loading process for HL 2 was very fast. I think it may just be the sheer numbers of people playing it right now, but it certainly is not very fast. So far, so good, though.

Colin-oscopy

2004-11-16T17:57:00.000-06:00

Secretary of State Colin Powell resigned Monday, along with the Secretaries of Agriculture, Energy, and Education. Powell's resignation does not come as much of a shock to me (I don't know much about those other guys) because it has been somewhat obvious that he and Bush differ greatly on their positions. But while they may have disagreed a lot (which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing), Powell has followed Bush's line fairly well. Once Bush makes a decision, Powell has done a fairly good job of following through on it. The bigger issue really comes from the State Department employees, who have derided and undermined Bush at almost every opportunity. Bush has nominated National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice to the position, and she could be just the thing the State Department needs. This may be an attempt by Bush to rectify mistakes he has made in the past (Powell may not have been his best choice to run the State Department how he wanted it run, especially once 9/11 occurred). Rice should bring more of an edge to the Department, which will hopefully will help it operate better.

Vlad is MVP!

2004-11-16T17:41:00.000-06:00

Everyone else on the Angels blogroll has these already (I am too lazy to link to them right now, but all are at right...under Sports: Pearly Gates, Chronicles of the Lads, and 6-4-2, if you can't figure it out from there...well, you shouldn't be online). Vlad is the AL MVP. This is no surprise to most people, I think, as Vlad was spectacular the last month of the season, and especially the last week where he put the team on his back and produced enough for him, a suspended Jose Guillen and an arthritic Garret Anderson. There were four guys all year (David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, and Gary Sheffield being the others) who were the consensus it's-one-of-these-guys picks, and by September, none of them had particularly stood out. They all had similar stats, played for good teams (with the three besides Vlad already basically having clinched the playoffs). And then, with the Angels 3 games down with just over a week to go, Vlad became a monster. He single handedly destroyed the A's and Rangers pulling the Angels kicking and screaming to the playoffs. If MVP voting were done after the playoffs, David Ortiz would have won hands down, and if voting were done with a week before the season ended, Manny or Shef would have won a tight race. As it is, some of the other bloggers think Vlad won by too much...I think that he did not win by enough...what he did is the definition of the MVP award...not the best player, but the man who helps his team the most (which is also often one of the best players). And for the record, I do think Barry Bonds should have won the NL MVP award by more than he did, too...he is so much better than anyone else that he HAS to be the MVP no matter how his team does.
The Angels have picked up the option for Bengie Molina (approx. $3 million next year) and declined the one for Ramon Ortiz (approx. $5.5 million). I agree with both of these moves, as this allows the Angels to keep a pretty good catcher (although declining) for fairly cheap (meaning they don't have to use a lot of money to fill a hole when the filler might not be better) and the Angels can go to arbitration with Ortiz and try to pick him up for less. My gut feeling with Ortiz is that he only wants to come back if he is a starting pitcher, and if the Angels pick up a starting pitcher, Ortiz is gone. If the Angels don't they can use him as a stopgap number 5 pitcher until something better comes along. Also, the Angels may be able to trade him if some really good deal comes along (maybe Ortiz and Guillen plus junk to some team for a great player).

Why Europe doesn't matter

2004-11-15T01:36:00.000-06:00

I was channel surfing Saturday night, when I came across a guy talking about his book on C-SPAN. The guy was Adrian Wooldridge, a Brit, talking about "The Right Nation" refering to America. A lot of his talk centered on the recent election and how and why America differs from European nations. One interesting stat was that 97% of Americans are proud to be American, while less than 50% of the British are proud to be British (and that is typical of European countries). (Note: I don't remember if it was under 50%, it may have been 70%ish, but under 50% seems like what I saw). Another one is that America produces 30% of the world's GDP and 40% of the world's technological developments. This is with just 5% of the world's people. That means we are overproducing the average person by 6 times and making more scientific discoveries than the average person by 8 times. I think that the EU is still ahead of America in total GDP, but that is largely because they have about 2/3 more people than America. I think that one of the major factors in this is because Americans want to better themselves, they want to make progress, they want their children to be better off, and they want to make the world a better place. Europeans don't care about progress, they care about their own lives, not of their children or others, and they don't really care about bettering themselves. Is this cultural? I am sure it is part of it, but it also must be in part capitalism vs socialism. I mean, when your economic system rewards ambition and work, you will tend to do those things to be better off yourself. This also leads to you wanting future generations to be better. In socialism, the biggest economic benefit (largest reward to cost ration) would be to do nothing and let the government take care of you. You no longer care about future generations, because you want minimal costs to yourself. In this rough analysis, I think it is obvious that capitalism is actually the more unselfish economic system (by working to help yourself you end up helping others).

Los Los Angeles Angeles

2004-11-13T10:52:00.000-06:00

For some reason Moreno is still exploring a switch to the LA Angels. Fans are still upset. Anaheim is still seeking legal action. And LA is now protesting the potential name change. What the hell does it take for Moreno to realize that the longer he explores this option, the more likely he will alienate people? And for a show of faith to people, he should put "Anaheim" back onto the road uniforms.

Angels News

2004-11-11T20:45:00.000-06:00

It's been awhile since I did anything with the Angels in it so some stuff has collected. Richard, Chronicles, and Rob have kept up pretty well on the Angels news, so I will summarize it briefly. The Troys, Glaus and Percival, aren't returning, Curtis Pride has signed a minor league contract with the team, and rumors abound with the Angels trading away Guillen, for Randy Johnson, Mike Piazza, Vernon Wells, Torii Hunter, Juan Pierre, a lefty reliever, and signing Nomar Garciaparra, Carlos Beltran, Pedro Martinez and/or various other free agents.

The Angels still appear to have a hole at middle infield, center field and/or DH. Piazza could only fill one of those roles (and not likely well, especially for his cost), so one could only pray the team won't be stupid enough to pick him up. There isn't necessarily a hole in the middle infield, Eckstein, Figgins and Kennedy (when/if he makes it back next year) are more than adequate. Center field is the same way, as Erstad, DaVanon and Figgins could fill in there more than adequately. And first base (if Erstad moves to CF) could be filled by Quinlan or Kotchman. If a free agent is picked up, it should only be Orlando Cabrera or Edgar Renteria (for a reasonable price) or Beltran if it isn't the obscene contract Boras wants. If there is a trade, any of Wells, Hunter or Pierre could be fantastic in CF and Pierre and Figgins are former roommates, which could help his transition (and give the Angels the fastest top of the order in the league). As far as pitchers go, the only one that should be gotten with a higher salary than $10 million a year would be the Big Unit in a trade, but only if the trade isn't too costly (no giving up a bunch of prospects). The Angels probably need an extra reliever or two now that Percy is gone and it seems that Donnelly and Gregg may be slipping (I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now, though) and a frontline starter more than anything as their in house solutions for 3B, 1B, middle infield, and CF are better than what a number of teams have at any of those spots.

The other big news is that Selig, wonderful commissioner that he is, approved the name change to the Los Angeles Angels (or in Spanish, Los Los Angeles Angeles), although, neither he, nor Arte Moreno have the authority to enforce the name change as it is part of the team's lease agreement with the city that Anaheim remains the name. This is a huge mistake for Moreno to even attempt because people from Orange County see themselves as separate and distinct from LA. Yes, it is a suburb of LA, but it has completely different politics, pace of life, and people. The people from Orange County HATE being associated with LA. If you don't know that pick up today's edition of The Orange County Register, wherein many letters are published expressing extreme dissatisfaction with Moreno for this. As in, they won't go to games anymore. As in, Moreno's team would have lower attendance than this year (which broke franchise records). As in, the team will be like the Royals within a few years.

One more down

2004-11-10T22:45:00.000-06:00

Yasser Arafat is dead. Normally I am respecteful of the recently deceased, but this man has done nothing that should be respected. He advocated terrorism, suicide bombings, and horded away billions of dollars for himself while claiming to be a man of his people. Have fun in hell!

Anniversaries Abound!

2004-11-10T17:38:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, the 9th, was the 15th anniversary of the Berlin Wall being knocked down. I was 8 at the time and remember feeling some sort of positive emotion, but I didn't know fully what it represented. As a matter of fact, I doubt few people knew that it was the beginning of the fall of the Soviet Union. My mother's birthday also falls on the 9th, but I will spare her by not saying how old she is (she really isn't very old, though).
Today is the 229th birthday of the Marines. They are celebrating by destroying the rebels in Fallujah, good way to do it in my book. Semper Fi.
Tomorrow is Veteran's Day, formerly known as Armistice Day, which was the day that the Great War ended on in 1918. Let's remember all of these days as important dates in history that have furthered the cause of freedom everywhere.

Shakeup in the cabinet

2004-11-09T22:59:00.000-06:00

Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Commerce Don Evans are the first major changes for W.'s second term, as both men have put in for their resignations. This begs the question as to who will replace them and who else won't be back for a second term. I think that Bush should put Rudy Giuliani into some high profile position, either Attorney General, Secretary of State (if that opens up) or Ambassador to the UN. Giuliani is well respected by both parties and by most Americans and would not fail to do right in those positions. Giuliani was also a key piece in helping Bush get re-elected and it is very reasonable to see him running for president in 4 years. This would allow Giuliani to make his case to be a Republican leader on a national scene. My other thought for Ambassador to the UN would be Zell Miller, who would completely change the makeup of the UN and probably get France to surrender to us. I don't know what we would do with France, maybe give her back to the Germans, but we would have her.

Fallujah

2004-11-08T23:30:00.000-06:00

I am sure everyone has heard about our current operations in Fallujah. I say it's about time, and Godspeed to those soldiers involved.

The Young and the Restless

2004-11-08T19:15:00.000-06:00

With the Raiders season essentially over despite last night's win (they would have to run the table...that ain't happenin'), I figure it is time to talk about some of these great young QBs that are out there. I think it is important to give a guy about 2 years full time starting duties to really be able to read if he is going to make it in the NFL before dumping him (or even before saying he is the next best QB).

The established QBs: Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Daunte Culpepper, and Donovan McNabb. These guys are going to all compete for the MVP for the next few years. Each of them has their problems. Manning still can't win the big games (reminds me of Dan Marino). Brady isn't incredibly talented, but he knows how to win (I think he is the best QB in the game). Culpepper typically has fumbling problems and will make big mistakes (he is coming along well this year). McNabb has been inconsistent, but that could have been hindered by the lack of decent wide receivers. All four of these guys are currently showing why they are the top QBs, each with a passer rating above 90.

The guys on the brink: Chad Pennington, Michael Vick, and Aaron Brooks. These guys have basically shown they have what it takes and basically just need a little more experience. Pennington has been very consistent, but he was hurt most of last year and, to me, just needs to finish out the year as good as he has been (of course, now he is out for 2-4 weeks, could show him as fragile). Michael Vick needs no explanation, but he has also been hurt and is VERY inconsistent. Aaron Brooks has built his entire career on being incosistent, but has the talent to be in the Culpepper/McNabb/Vick group (this year has been no different and he could be in this group for a long time).

The guys learning on the job: Drew Brees, David Carr, Byron Leftwich, Joey Harrington, and Kyle Boller. Drew Brees is doing his best to move into the next group up this year (playing absolutely fantastic). David Carr has been slowly building his resume, and he seems to finally be getting it (he has had the added bonus of playing with no pressure and for an expansion team). Leftwich has been solid and already knows how to do something that Manning hasn't learned...win the big games. Joey Harrington might just follow in the footsteps of Matt Hasselbeck...a lot of promise, but a late bloomer. Kyle Boller I am clueless about, but my guess is he will be a good backup for a few years and then be a solid veteran QB that hasn't taken a lot of hits.

The first years: Ben Roethlisberger and Carson Palmer. These two guys have taken opposite paths, Big Ben a starter early in his rookie season and Palmer sitting out a season before becoming a starter. I think both paths are good for these guys. Big Ben obviously has the makeup and it helps him a lot that he has a great O-line, good RBs, and good WRs. Palmer doesn't have those so much, but learned a lot in a year sitting on the bench. These guys should be very solid.

These 14 guys, plus Patrick Ramsey, Eli Manning, and Phillip Rivers should be able to give 17 teams franchise QBs for a lot of years. Just to expand on some of these guys: When the Chargers traded what became Vick for LaDanian Tomlinson and Drew Brees, a lot of people thought it was idiotic, especially over the last year with Brees struggling. I always thought it was a good trade for the Chargers as they picked up a great running back and always felt Brees would be a solid QB (not to mention they had been hurt bad by the Ryan Leaf fiasco). The stupid thing the Chargers did was to give up on Brees before they gave him a real chance. They are paying for it now as they are locked up with Rivers for a lot of time and money, and it turns out that Brees can win now (and is a free agent). I also felt that Big Ben and Byron Leftwich were the best QBs in their respective draft classes and most people didn't seem to think so. These were great college players in pro-type offenses (unlike Nebraska's option offense) and they know how to win. I also feel that the Raiders should start Marquis Tuiososopo the rest of the year (see if he is ready for the big time) and if he doesn't pan out, they should make a run at Brees to save their high draft pick for something else.

Curses? Foiled Again!

2004-11-08T17:51:00.000-06:00

So, I had a nice post that I had typed out and hit publish on yesterday...and it was eaten by the server. Ironically, it had the same title as this post.

I was basically talking about how the Red Sox broke their Curse finally, and what other good curses are still out there. ESPN's Page 2 had an article on this and listed their 50 greatest remaining curses. However, I think they missed the whole cursed city curses. Boston was not a cursed city (Celtics were very good for a long time), but Chicago, Cleveland and Philadelphia have been. Chicago, other than the Bull's championship run (which also gave us the Curse of Michael Jordan on the Portland Trailblazers) and the George Halas era Bears (meaning their entire existence until around the Super Bowl era), has barely seen a championship. Cleveland has had legendary collapses in the Browns and Cavs (also hit by the Curse of Michael Jordan...will LeBron pull them out?), as well as a pretty bad Indians team for a long time. Philadelphia has been a four sport town for a long time, and only has 9 championships (only 1 in 120 or so years of baseball). So, those of you that are upset about the end Curse of the Bambino (including me)...there are still plenty of stronger ones to enjoy.

Star Wars

2004-11-06T22:39:00.000-06:00

I downlaoded the Star Wars: Episode 3 trailer today. It is pretty sweet.

Final Election Analyses

2004-11-06T01:33:00.000-06:00

So, Bush has unofficially won 286-252 (not yet certified, and electors could always do crazy things). He won the popular vote by roughly 3.5 million votes, had a record 59.5 million votes cast for him (largely due to record turnout). He was the first president to win with a majority of the popular vote since his pop in 1988. And finally, the House and Senate Republicans gained 4 seats each. This is an opportunity for the Republicans to get stuff done and to show the country (and the world) that their way is better. If they fail in that aspect, they could end up the way of the Jimmy Carter administration and the peacenik Democrats. If they succeed, they will pull the country to the right and be the party in power for a good long time.
How did Bush win with so many people (Big Media, Angry Lefters, Michael Moore, Osama bin Laden, etc) hating him? Well, there are likely several factors: Republican "Get out the Vote" program, the War on Terror, the War in Iraq, marriage amendments, the rising economy, and many others. How did he win so much more popular vote, while only gaining two states and losing 1? Well, he made popular vote gains in every state except two (California and Washington, which were the only two with lower turnout) and gained in percentage in every state except 5 (Idaho, Vermont, North Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming). These were largely due to increased turnout and the lack of a "strong" third party candidate. All 7 of these states were essentially decided a long time ago, so it's not like these states had a particularly large impact. His vote margin only decreased in 11 states, 6 of which could be considered close races (Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oregon, and Wisconsin). Nevada barely changed, New Hampshire flipped sides (but only changed by about 15,000 votes or 1.5%), Wisconsin changed by about 6000 votes, Minnesota and Oregon were relatively close in 2000 and were still close in 2004, but not as close, and Ohio tightened (largely because of a harder hit economy). In 2000, there were 5 states within 1% (Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin) with Bush only winning Florida. In 2004, there were only two of these races (Iowa and Wisconsin). Florida, Oregon, and Wisconsin went more for the party that won them in 2000, while Bush won in New Mexico and Iowa this time.
Did the marriage amendment actually help Bush? In the popular vote totals, certainly, but he lost states it passed in overwhelmingly (Michigan and Oregon) and eight of the nine other states it was on ballots for (Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah) were already pretty strongly for Bush. The 11th state, however, was Ohio, in which the amendment may have been one of the factors there that kept Bush ahead of Kerry. Other than that, I am not that convinced it really helped (maybe it made Michigan and Oregon closer than they would have been).
Finally, now that the election is over and Repulicans have strong control of the Senate, Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania is the senior GOP in the Senate Judiciary committee, and is in line to become chairman of it. He made some comments after the election that could be interpreted as he won't allow any nominee to make it to the committee if they are pro-life (I am WAY simplifying here). This would essentially mean a litmus test that throws out Catholics as candidates, which Bush has repeatedly said he does not want. This is also a guy that, when faced with stiff opposition in the Republican primary, Bush threw huge support his way (criticisized by a lot of people in the GOP) and essentially helped Spector retain his seat. Spector then did essentially nothing to help Bush in Pennsylvania. He is at the end of a very thin rope and now is likely to not be selected as chariman of the committee. NRO Corner has led a grassroots charge to let Republican leadership know what they think about Spector getting this job.

Basketball

2004-11-04T01:07:00.000-06:00

Somehow, in the midst of the election blitz, the baseball playoffs, football season starting, and hockey in a lockout the NBA has started back up. Opening day was yesterday...really odd considering they knew there would be a BIG election going on. They could have pushed this seasonup or down 1 day just so they could sound relevant (football and baseball opening days are huge, partially because there is nothing else important going on). Anyways, I don't realy follow basketball very strongly until about Febuary (football is over) and then it is with only mild interest until the playoffs. This year, the Lakers are gonna suck (maybe make the playoffs), but not much else) so I probably won't care about basketball in April (since baseball will be starting again). By the way, the Redskins rule is over, but there is a lesser known Lakers rule. Every time the Lakers have made the NBA finals in an election year, the Republican has won. That is 1952, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004. A Republican also won in 1956 when the Detroit Pistons made the Finals (they may have been Fort Wayne at the time, I forget what year they changed). The Pistons also made the Finals in 1988 and 2004.

Things I learned just this week: 1) The NBA realigned. I vaguely remember hearing about this somewhere before, but I thought it was just team shifts...it is actually changed to three divisions per conference now. 2) There is a Charlotte expansion team. Didn't they just have an expansion team 15 years ago? And, oh yeah, that team moved to New Orleans. 3) How many teams in the NBA keep the five guys the same for more than three years at a time? The Lakers only have 6 from last year, with two on the injured reserve. From 1998-2003 they had kept the core of Shaq, Kobe, Fisher, Fox, and Horry together, with Shaw being on the team for about three years in there as well. Now they only have Kobe. Kobe and a bunch of scrubs. Well, they could surely be exciting...not likely any good, though. 4) Who will win? No idea...I haven't paid this little attention to an NBA offseason in a LONG time. Probably a combination of the Olympic basketball team sucking, the Angels making a run at the playoffs, and the Lakers purposely trying to get worse. 5) With the Raiders already taking a dump on the season (number one draft pick, here we come!) and the Lakers likely going to by February, the Angels better do SOMETHING exciting this offseason so that I don't completely forget about sports. That almost happened to me in about 1998-2000.

Election Night Notes

2004-11-03T02:25:00.000-06:00

First observation: assuming no real legal issues, Bush has basically won. CNN has the tally as Bush 249-Kerry 242. Ohio is firmly Bush (20 EVs), Nevada (5 EVs), New Mexico (5 EVs), and Iowa (7 EVs) are all trending to Bush (I would even say he has all four states). Wisconsin (10 EVs) is trending Kerry. If all of this stands (for now) and I think it will, that makes it Bush 286-Kerry 252. This would leave Ohio as a potentially close state that could swing the election by itself, but Bush is up 144,000 votes with about 200,000 provisional ballots (not all of which are likely legal) and some number of absentee ballots (which are likely to favor Bush pretty strongly). If it ends in a tie (Bush carries ONLY Ohio out of those states, or he carries Nevada, New Mexico and Wisconsin), Bush-Cheney will win because the GOP retained strong control of the House and Senate.
As things stand for the popular vote, Bush is up by about 4 million (55-51), with a decent amount of California uncounted). Bush will likely finish 3 million votes ahead, which will be 2-3% (about 51%-48.5% is my guess). This should end any ideas that Bush "stole" an election.
One major victory no one is talking about: NO TERRORIST ATTACKS! As of right now, we can assume bin Laden was just trying to pathetically affect the election with a videtape. This could still change in the next few days or weeks, but I think his long reach has been shortened a lot over the past three years.
Why does anyone pay attention to early exit polls? They trended strongly Kerry (way more so than anyone was expecting), but there is no way they can be a random sample. You are picking multiple people in the same district (lack of independence) and you are picking only people that could make the polls in the morning (lack of randomness). This is a TERRIBLE way to poll things. These polls should be either completely ignored, or only stated with VERY strong caveats.