Random Musings

Congrats to the White Sox for sweeping the Astros in the World Series. Now, is it too much to ask that the Series not be a sweep next year? Houston should have seen this coming - you sign Roger Clemens and his ego, and bad things always happen.

Any chance that Baltimore can land now-marquee free agent 1B Paul Konerko? I believe the answer is no.

Over at Daily Kos, kos himself has been eagerly awaiting what he refers to as Fitzmas. As have I - where are the indictments? Let's get these guys locked up! And throw Dick 'torture is fine by me, as long as the experts at the CIA are in charge' Cheney in there too. Please?!?

Speaking of the CIA, I see tourists walking around D.C. all the time with FBI and CIA hats on. How is that cool? Those agencies have not exactly been known for their competence in recent years. It's like visiting Los Angeles and stocking up on Clippers merchandise - what's the point? OK, I guess I can sort of understand the CIA gear, if the tourist is a big torture fan.

I'm currently reading Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, and while I still have 200+ pages to go, so far I don't see what the big deal is. Perhaps once I finish the book, I'll better understand the rationale - if one can even use that word to describe the call for the murder of a writer due to a work of fiction - behind the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa. But I sincerely doubt it.

A Pleasant Diversion

I found that this....simulator(?) is a surpisingly soothing - if somewhat bizarre - break in the midst of a hectic work day/week/month.

Halloween Is Coming Up!

Of course, that just means that we must all be extra diligent; beware of the bloodthirsty and terrifying....were-taco.

Vampire iPods

Don't get me wrong, I really like my iPod mini, even if it has been rendered somewhat obsolete by the iPod nano. And as most of you are well aware, I've always enjoyed a good Halloween costume. But I must draw the line at paying $40 for a costume for my iPod, no matter how cute it is.

Bill Maher, Always Good for a Laugh

The posts are coming at blinding speed the last few days! Here's Bill Maher, weighing in about Harriet Miers' lack of a husband or kids:

But this sort of barrenness is threatening to the Republican base because they're generally people who hate sex and are bad at it. So they fear that their own population will dwindle because there won't be enough Republicans willing to fuck each other. Harriet Miers isn't using the equipment God gave her for making babies, and that's just wrong. It's like God giving you a beautiful garden and you not strip mining it for coal.

Leo Mazzone, Pitching Genius?

It's been a long-standing question in baseball; during all those years of Atlanta Braves pitching dominance, how much credit did pitching coach Mazzone deserve for all of the Cy Youngs, the 20-game winners, and the top-five staff ERAs almost every season? We may know the answer to that question starting next season. If Leo signs on with his good friend Sam Perlozzo and miraculously turns the putrid Baltimore staff around, then there can no longer be any doubt that he's the real deal.

Yet Another Reason to Flee the Country

Other than the current administration, that is. I'm talking about faster, cheaper internet access in other places around the world. Japan: 16 times faster than DSL, $22/month. France: 10x faster, $38/month (includes 100 channels of digital TV and unlimited telephone service also). This Salon.com article tells the story - I don't usually link to Salon since it's a subscription site that makes you watch an ad to read an article if you're not a subscriber, but check it out if you feel like it. To summarize though, the U.S. falling behind in broadband access, speed and affordability is yet another example of corporations and their lobbyists successfully lobbying to protect and increase profits at the expense of citizens and communities.

Never fear though, Google is here! Maybe. Is free Wi-Fi or broadband access desirable if it means being potentially bombarded with targeted advertising? Well, let's look at broadcast TV and conventional radio - is this use of public bandwidth really serving the public? Have you tuned into FM radio lately? Ugh. Perhaps the Internets are such different beasts, that such a comparison with more traditional uses of bandwidth isn't valid. Free broadband and Wi-Fi could be the impetus for the transformation of the Web into a true on-demand, content-rich, independent media source accessible by everyone. Or it could mean watching more commercials, reading more ads, and deleting more Spam.

On a more personal note, this is Charm City Blogger's 100th post! Cue falling balloons and confetti! I'd like to thank Google, Blogger.com, Mozilla, Tim Berners-Lee, DARPA, and Al Gore for making it all possible.

Neat Map Project

I dig maps (who doesn't?), so I'm stoked about the Common Census web site, which takes user input such as where you live and what locality and big city you closely identify with, and creates a U.S. map based on major cities' spheres of influence. So check out the site and enter your data - the more data points the better.

AND for sports fans, it's got a sports map also that attempts to map out spheres of influence for pro and college sports teams. So far, only the NFL and MLB maps are available, but they both show some unexpected, if somewhat intuitive, results. On the NFL map, check out the Green Bay Packer's area down in Mississippi and northern Louisiana (Brett Favre hails from MS). And on the MLB map, there must be a lot of Chicago-area retirees itn Arizona, because it's evidently Cubs country out there. It's also worth noting that after 2,500 entries for the MLB map, Diamondback fans are non-existent, while the Devil Rays do have actual fans!

What would be really fascinating, was if this project collected data for 10, 20, 50, 100 years. How would the city spheres and sports team 'boundaries' change? Would identification with cities change with the economy/real estate market/job growth/etc.? And would the sports boundaries correlate with winning percentage, as would be expected? I couldn't help but notice the Orioles' area is very small, appropriate for eight straight losing seasons, while the new team on the block, the Nationals, have a huge area that currently stretches into he Carolinas. Would the Mets' area in the late 60s and early 70s have rivaled that of the Yankees? How huge was the Reds' area in the mid 70s, or the Twins in the late 80s? Are associations with metro areas and sports teams more fluid on the coasts, where one would expect that people are more transient than in Central and Mountain states?

Perhaps the coolest thing about this map project is that the founder of the site, some guy originally from "Up-State" New York with a poly-sci degree who now lives in Rio de Janeiro, conceived the idea over a barbecue lunch one day. Does this mean that I should try to do more deep thinking during my lunch breaks?

New 007 Announced

I think that James Bond fans will be quite satisfied with the choice of Daniel Craig to replace Pierce Brosnan as 007. I've only seen him in one film, last year's excellent gangster caper Layer Cake, but I was impressed. I was hoping for Clive Owen to accept the role - he apparently was offered it but turned it down - but Craig is a great choice, IMO. Maybe he'll be able to inject some life into the character; Pierce Brosnan seemed bored as hell during the last few films, like he couldn't wait to get out of the role. Of course, maybe he was just tired of waiting for a nipple to appear.

One Down, One to Go

I think we should all send out a big thank-you to the Chicago White Sox, who spared us another postseason of Red Sox vs. Yankees. I admit, last year's seven-game series was the most exciting playoff series I've ever seen, and it sure didn't hurt that the Yankees lost. But all the hype - the idea that the entire country is riveted by two East Coast teams battling it out, the selling of this as a storied sports rivalry even though historically the Red Sox get their asses handed to them ninety-percent of the time, the deification of Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Curt Schilling by the morons at Fox - is a bit much to bear. Hopefully the Angels can finish off the Yanks this weekend, and we won't have to hear about either A.L. East team anymore this postseason.

Now, how about those White Sox? Looking at the matchup from a mascot perspective, which Jenny likes to do, it's somewhat counter-intuitive to expect the White Sox to vanquish the Red Sox so easily. Throw them in the wash together, and a red sock will usually exert its colorful will on a white sock; that white sock is coming out of the washer as a pink sock, which is definitely not a suitable mascot. Maybe if you washed them on cold, and put them in the dryer right after the final spin cycle, the white sock stands a fighting chance. But probably not.

So here's hoping the White Sox go all the way this year. They've got the pitching, they're an exciting team to watch, and they're a new face in playoffs that have featured the same six to ten teams for the past three or four years. And from a mascot perspective, they're a team that everyone should be able to get behind. What's more populist than a white sock? Go ahead, look in your sock drawer. Any red socks in there? Maybe. But I'm willing to bet that everyone, no matter your age, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, or sports affiliation, has at least one pair of white tube socks. How can southerners get behind the Yankees? But I bet they put on some white socks before they head out to the NASCAR race. How do Native Americans get behind the Braves? It's just another sports team appropriating a racist mascot, and besides they never win it all. The Cardinals? Most people have dogs and cats as pets, birds aren't nearly as popular. I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Go Tube Sox! Make Chicago, and the rest of us, proud.

Army 11.4-Miler!

We thought we were running a ten-mile race yesterday morning, but we ended up running 1.4 bonus miles after security concerns forced the course to be re-routed. Therefore, the race was unofficial and I really can't say what my ten-mile time was (because I'm not sure at which point on the course I completed the ten miles). I ran the 11.4 miles in 1:41:38, so assuming a constant pace, I'd have finished 10 miles in 1:29:23. Up until the last real mile marker that I saw, the 7-mile mark, I had been speeding up over each of those first seven miles, so I'd like to think I would have done even better than 89 minutes. I'm satisfied with those numbers though, especially considering that I got less than 5 hours of sleep the night before, and the buffet-food and cocktails I consumed at Liz & Jarriel's wedding on Saturday night didn't exactly constitute carb-loading. It was a flat, fast course, and I'm curious to know how I would have done with more rest and less booze the night before. I'm honestly not sure whether those factors even came into effect.

My dad finished about ten minutes behind me, and like me, was somewhat faster than his anticipated pace (10 minute-miles, 9-minute miles for me). Go Barry! Not bad for an old man, not bad at all. That 11.4 miles was the longest either of us had ever run, so that was kinda cool. We did both agree that no matter how flat the course or pleasant the weather, at some point during a race of that length, you start to question how much fun you're really having. I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I predict no marathons for either of us for at least the next couple of years.

Other than the added course length, we were quite unimpressed with the race planning and logistics. Not only did race officials not notify runners of the change in course and distance until we reached the finish line, but once we made it to the race staging area after the race, it was chaotic. Food and drink distribution locations were a mystery, so you had to wander around until you found the (long) lines for the food). There were people handing out commerative coins, but unless you ran into one of those people, you wouldn't have gotten a coin. They didn't even have enough trash cans, and the Pentagon parking lot was a mess as a result. Bottom line - I'd have to really think twice before signing up next year, although ten-milers are pretty rare so we'll see. I know that it's an 'Army of One', but that one dude needs to get his act together.