North by Northwest

We took a long weekend and headed out to Seattle last Thursday. I was very excited, I really fell in love with the Pacific Northwest when I spent the summer of '99 in Portland. This was my first visit to the region since leaving Portland, and while I had been to Seattle before, I only spent about a day there.

We stayed with Michelle's sister and her boyfriend, who live in a house in the Wallingford neighborhood, which is a few miles north of downtown. On a clear day, their front yard affords you with views of the Seattle skyline, the Cascade Mountains, and the Olympic Mountains. There aren't too many clear days in Seattle this time of year, but we managed to catch a glimpse of all three during our visit.

On Friday morning, we all headed up the street from breakfast at a place called Julio's. I ordered huevos rancheros, which I found somewhat uninspired, but nourishing. After breakfast, our hosts went to work and we walked down the street to the Gas Works Park.



The gas works was once used by the city to convert coal into natural gas, but is no longer operational. Instead of tearing down all of the machinery, they decided to preserve some of it and turn the land into a park. It gives the park a really cool post-apocalyptic look. The park is located on the shore of Lake Union and offers some great views of downtown Seattle.

From the gas works, we headed over to Fremont, which is supposedly Seattle's funky, ex-hippie neighborhood. It definitely had that kind of vibe going on, though not as much as I would have expected.

They have their own spaceship in Fremont



They also have a troll under a bridge, which is pretty funky



Fremont is also the self-proclaimed center of the universe, in case you weren't aware

It also features a huge statue of Lenin, which is more than the People's Republic of Cambridge can say. Still, I would have expected a town where you will see multiple VW microbusses on the road every day to have a little bit more substantial and eclectic counterculture haven. I didn't notice a single head shop or Marxist bookstore in our walk around Fremont.

Of course, what Fremont lacked in loony left weirdness, it made up for in hospitality. I made a purchase at Jive Time, a small used record store, and the clerk was without a doubt the least-jaded used record store clerk I have ever come across. He actually seemed happy that I wandered into his store and paid $8 for a used copy of a CD that I just noticed is selling for $23.99 at Amazon.

Up next: A visit to the spa.

The Big Least

How bad is Big East football this year? Consider this quote from Bob Snyder's column in yesterday's Post-Standard:

Of seven I-A teams still winless this season, three - UB, Army, Florida Atlantic - have been the foils for 31 percent of the Big East's I-A victories.

Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

Acerbic Detroit Free Press sports columnist Drew Sharp does not always make very convincing arguments, but his constant criticism of everyone in the Detroit sports scene, especially the underachieving Lions, proves the old adage about a stopped clock; if you keep doing the same thing over and over, you'll eventually look like you know what you're talking about. He called Charles Rogers out for being indifferent, immature, and a colossal waste of time, money, and a number two draft pick in his column today, just hours before the news of Rogers' four game suspension for violating the NFL's substance abuse policy hit the wire. Charles Rogers has made it clear by his actions on and off the field that he wants to challenge Reggie Rogers for the title of the worst player the Lions have ever drafted whose last name is Rogers.

Yay, Big Guy!

I watched the Michigan-Michigan State football game on Saturday more attentively than most I watch most football games, not necessarily for the game itself, but for the commentary. A couple of weeks ago, I learned about the Brent Musburger Drinking Game, and I found it to be hillarious. Michigan-Michigan State was the first Musburger-announced game I watched since learning the rules of the game, so my ears were on high alert for any number of Musburger-isms. While I was disappointed that I never heard him utter the phrase: "Gary, my man" (though I did hear a "Garry, my friend" - not sure if this counts), I loved the way he called the fumble that MSU's defensive tackle Domata Peko returned for a touchdown. Musburger let out a "Go, big guy!" when Peko crossed the 10 yard line with one man to beat and exclaimed "Yay, big guy!" after Peko hurdled the last Michigan defender into the end zone.

I don't know why I'm mentioning this, other than I found it hillarious at the time and still find it quite amusing. Perhaps Musburger is looking for a second career as a cheerleading coach? Yaaaaaaaaaay Big Guy! I think the lesson for all sportscasters, especially the ones who work on TV, is that when you don't have anything useful to say, it's better to just be quiet and let the pictures on screen do the talking.

Growing Family

We are proud to announce our new car, a 2005 Toyota Prius. We took delivery of the 175 inch, 2890 pound bundle of joy on Friday after work. Mother and the as yet unnamed car are resting and doing fine.

Iconoclastic Title

Without a doubt, the coolest title for any religious leader in the world today is that of His Holiness Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. He could be thought of as the Pope of the Eastern Orthodox communion, but that analogy may not be entirely apt. I don't know that he has as much power over the church as the Pope. He's probably more like the Archbishop of Canteburry, in that he is the spiritual leader for a group of closely related religions. I did a little more reseach on the Patriach of Constantinople and learned that his full title is actually His Most Divine All-Holiness the Archbishop of Constantinople New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch. I'd like to see his business cards.

Charlie Don't Surf

If your CD collection has a gaping hole between Manfred Mann and Marilyn Manson, your prayers have been answered. ESP Disk, the seminal 1960s record label that cut to wax many of the first recorded statements of free jazz pioneers, has started reissuing their catalog on CD. I didn't know that ESP Disk got into rock and pop music after the original free jazz movement started to fizzle out in the late 60s, so I was surprised to see a reissue from 1974 by none other than Charles Manson. I already knew that Manson is, like many psychopaths, a failed artist, but I never knew anyone ever released any of his music. All royalties from the purchase of Charlie's album go to the son of one of his victims. No word on when any of the tracks from "Lie" will be available on iTunes.

Giant Squid

It was reported a couple of days ago that a team of Japanese scientists have captured a giant squid for the first time (on video, that is). I've been fascinated by the giant squid ever since I saw the remains of a giant squid tentacle on display at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum as a young boy. The squid that was captured on video was a mere 26 feet long, which is small, at least by giant squid standards.

County Line

I've been listening to an album entitled "Field Recordings from the Cook County Water Table" by Brokeback. It's a cool recording, but that's not why I'm mentioning it. It just dawned on my that the first county that was able to identify, with the exception of the county where I grew up, was Cook County. I'm pretty sure that I learned where Cook Country was located (in Illinois, encompassing all of the city of Chicago and some outlying areas, in case anyone wasn't aware) from an episode of Punky Brewster, but I'm not entirely sure. I seem to remember an episode where Punky had to go to the hospital. Before cutting to a shot of Punky in her hospital bed, they showed some stock footage of a hospital in Chicago that had Cook County somewhere in its name. I don't have any other interesting stories for how I came to learn the names of any other counties. By the time The O.C. began its run, I already knew where Orange County, CA was. Of course, I've never actually watched the show, so it wouldn't have helped me anyway.

US Error Ways

I' m a bit of an armchair aviation analyst, so here's my unsolicited view on the US Airways/America West merger. US Airways is strong on the east coast and almost nonexistent elsewhere. America West is strong in the southwest and almost nonexistent elsewhere. Unfortunately, I think that the new airline is less than the sum of its parts. Neither airline has a significant presense in the center of the country. Without a hub or focus operation somewhere between Pittsburgh and Phoenix, it's going to be hard to cater to business travelers in a large section of the country, except on routes to their hubs in Philadelphia, Charlotte, Las Vegas, and Phoenix (and possibly, Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, and Ft. Lauderdale, current US Airways focus cities).

This leads me to believe that the new airline is going to focus on point-to-point traffic between key markets and their hubs and focus cities on the east coast and in the southwest. Cherry-picking routes that are popular with business and/or leisure travelers is a technique that all of the low-cost carriers have exploited to some extent. While there are probably still some routes that have the potential to make some good money, most of these routes are already covered by Southwest, jetBlue, AirTran, and even the other legacy carriers. This me-too approach is unlikely to pay dividends for US Airways.

In my opinion, US Airways most valuable asset is not their slots at LaGuardia or Reagan National, it's their east coast feeder system. There are numerous small to medium sized towns from Maine to Florida where US is either the only carrier to the dominant carrier. For the most part, these airports do not fit into the low-cost carrier's business models. US Airways can operate in these towns without having to compete airlines like Southwest, who will drive down prices.

Finally, there is the question of what will happen to US Airways international network. The major carriers have been focusing most of their expansion plans on international routes because they have a better chance at making money on them then in the oversaturated domestic market. US Airways hasn't announced any new international flights or destinations, so I would assume that they are planning on maintaining their current routes. Without acquiring any new equipment, their prospects for overseas expansion are very limited, which will prevent them from getting an additional boost from international expansion.

This isn't the first time US Airways has purchased a low-cost carrier based on the west coast. Back in the late 1980s, US Airways, then known as USAir, purchased California-based Pacific Southwest Airlines in the middle of an acquisition binge. Within a few years, they had dismantled almost all of their west coast network. I don't know if this merger is going to work out any better.

Coffee Talk

Remeber back in the late 90s when a lot of people thought that Starbucks and Bill G. were trying to take over the world? Those days are long gone, of course. Old habits die hard, however. Syracuse is not the hippest town on earth, and if you don't believe me, think about this, downtown Syracuse got its first Starbucks coffee shop a couple of months ago. I visited this store yesterday for the first time. I'm not coffee or caffiene addict, but I like to have a cup of coffee a couple times a week. My coffee shop of choice has always been Freedom of Espresso, a local joint right across the street from the new Starbucks. While I have managed to suppress my Starbucks-hating reflex, I never really considered crossing the street. I took the moral high ground by telling myself that I like the coffee at Freedom better, it's cheaper, etc., but really, I had no idea if any of this was true.

Yesterday's visit to Starbucks pretty much confirmed what I already knew. Their coffee tastes good. Of course, I don't think it's too difficult to make a cup of coffee that tastes good. As long as you're make it strong, don't use any stale ingredients, and don't put in any flavored syrups, it's pretty hard to make a bad tasting cup of coffee. My two complaints are the same that I have about every Starbucks I've ever visited; their "small" size is too big and they serve their coffee too hot. Freedom of Espresso's small size is actually small, and the coffee is not so hot that you have to let it cool down for a few minutes before drinking it. Plus it's cheaper.

While I'm on the topic of coffee, I have to say that while I didn't think Kicking and Screaming was that great of a film, it has two redeeming qualities. The first one is the way it used coffee to symbolize of Phil's [ Will Ferrell ] descent into madness. The second was a better than expected acting performance by Mike Ditka. I still wouldn't pay money to see if (I saw it on a flight), but if you do see it, at least you've got coffee and da coach to look forward to.

Take My Wife, Please

One thing that I've always found mildly annoying is the way people refer to members of their family using phrases like: "my wife", "my brother", "my son", etc. in the presense of people who already know the real names of these people. This seems to happen the most in work environments. I once had a boss who always referred to his wife by her name, but always referred to his children chronologically (my oldest, my youngest, etc.) He had more than two kids though, so it often made things kind of clumsy, i.e. "I was at my second-oldest's soccer game last night..." Now that I'm married, I'm trying not to fall into this habit, but it's hard. I've broken this rule at least once on my blog, though I don't know if I everyone who reads this is on a first name basis with my wife (Michelle). So far, I'm one for two today at work.

Hated Music

Paul Flahetry / Chris Corsano Duo
Metropolis Book Shoppe - North Syracuse, NY
Wednesday, September 21st

The sax and drums duo could be considered the string quartet of free jazz. Like the string quartet, the sax and drums duo focuses on the most important instruments in the genre. I'll admit that I am biased in favor of reed instruments, but I think it's fairly obvious that the saxophone is the most important instrument in free jazz. The sax can really tap into a range of sounds, colors, and emotions that can only be topped by the human voice, in my opinion. Free jazz appeals to listeners on such a visceral level that it only makes sense that the saxophone is its sharpest tool.

Flaherty definitely draws his inspiration from the first generation of free jazz saxophonists. He alternated between the alto and tenor horns tonight. He played both with a big sound and a lot of vibrato, but not a lot of resonance. His notes didn't hang around. He played most of the night at full steam, but showed an impressive amount of lyricsm the few times that he explored more placid sonic terrain.

Corsano's drumming was even more aggressive than Flaherty's playing. He too showed his softer side with some really interesting effects, including a lot of bowed cymbals and something similar to the metal "bowls" that I've seen guys like Tatsuya Nakatani use, which brought some eastern influence into some of the music.

While I enjoyed the show, I wouldn't rate it as one of the better concerts I've ever seen. The free improv sax and drums duo is probably one of the more challenging musical contexts you can work in. If the players are not on the same page, it's going to be pretty obvious. To make matters worse, everyone in the audience is going to be comparing your stuff to the classics of the genre while they listen. These guys put on a great show, but the music was a little bit too one-dimensional and the communication between them wasn't always as strong as it could have been.

Honeymoon('s Over) in Vegas

My wife was out in Las Vegas this weekend. She saw a lot of newly married couples, as one would expect. One of couples that she saw was actually two couples, twin sisters who got married at the same time. She didn't find this incredibly shocking, but I can't stop thinking about it. How do you think that they managed to pull it off? I guess it's possible that it was a big coincidence; twin sisters happened to get engaged at about the same time and decided to get married together. I guess that is possible, but it doesn't seem too likely. I wonder how their husbands (who did not appear to be twins) felt about the whole thing. When the first guy proposed, did his girlfriend accept his proposal but tell him that they were going to have to wait for her sister to fall in love and get engaged before they could start planning their wedding? I guess I will never know, but I wish all four of them the best.

The other newlywed story that she told me involved a couple who, while still in their wedding attire, got into a profanity-laced argument in front of a hotel/casino on the strip. Arguments are part of any healthy relationship, of course, but you would hope that a newly married couple could manage to make it at least a couple of days before dropping f-bombs on each other in public.

I would love to see a study of couples who tie the knot in Vegas and see how their divorce rates compare to couples who get married in more traditional venues. My guess is that it would probably be about the same, but who knows.

Taxpayer Pride

All this talk about the estate tax has made me think that maybe what this country needs is a little bit more taxpayer pride. I'm not joking (entirely), so hear me out. For as long as I can remember, we've been listening to politicians tell us how stupid the government is and how taxes are for suckers. I can't help but think that this has something to do with all of the negative sentiment against the estate tax harbored by people who have little to no chance of ever being affected by it. Americans have shown that they overwhelmingly favor some of the trappings of a welfare state, as long as they don't have to pay for it. Who knows where we would stand if we knew the true cost/benefit breakdown? Maybe some taxpayer pride can help us figure that out.

I remember visiting a friend in Washington, DC several years ago. We visited several of the Smithsonian Museums (or should I say, Smithsonians Museum?). As we were leaving the National Air and Space Museum, I made a quip about our tax dollars at work. In this case, I didn't mean it in the usual pejorative sense. I meant this is a great museum and I'm glad that our some of our tax dollars are used to fund it and all visitors can enjoy it free of charge. My friend, who has no conservative leanings whatsoever, didn't pick up the taxpayer pride that I was exuding and accused me of being a Republican or perhaps something even worse. If dyed-in-the-wool liberals can't appreciate taxpayer pride, I don't know who can. Still, there may be hope. P.J. O'Rourke, America's best (only?) conservative satirist had a good idea during a public radio pledge drive a few years back. He suggested that liberal listeners (and what other kind of public radio listeners are there?) look at their pledge as a tax on intelligence. They are obviously more intelligent than other people because they listen to public radio and they obviously love taxes because they are liberals, so its a win-win situation. Politicians love to appeal to our vanity, and while there are a lot of people who will probably never be receptive to a taxpayer pride message, there are plenty of voting demographic du jours (indoor soccer moms?) waiting to be told how to think about any number of issues.

Eventually, taxpayers are going to have to face the facts. Tax dollars aren't just funding the Cadillacs for welfare moms initiative, 24-hour abortion clinics, and other much-derided social programs. They actually fund some things that a majority of Americans support. I'm not expecting any taxpayer pride to show itself until some of these more acceptable and vital uses or tax dollars are put in jeopardy. Our current economic situation makes it very likely that we're going to be faced with a temporary refund adjustment sometime in the not-too-distant future. When that day comes, we'll see how much taxpayer pride we truly have.

Death and Taxes

I read an op-ed piece written by Bill Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins about the proposed repeal of the estate tax. The debate about the estate tax is very interesting. Pro-estate tax people, like Gates Sr., often cite statistics about how most Americans will never accumulate enough wealth to be subjected to the estate tax. This is true, but I think it's missing the point. The point is, should the government be taxing the estates of the wealthy? Should I manage to amass a significant fortune, I don't plan on leaving my heirs with a big pile of cash so they can sit around and do nothing. I think a lot of people share this sentiment, but I don't know if this is something that the government should try and legislate. Besides, the wealthy can always manage to find ways around the tax code and unless the tax rate is raised to 100%, people with large enough fortunes will still be able to leave significant sums of money to their heirs.

Gates Sr.'s claim that the repeal of the estate tax would cripple our nation's charitable sector strikes me as somewhat alarmist. It may be true that some people donate large sums of money to charities to avoid paying estate taxes, but I think the majority of wealthy donors would donate their money even if there was no estate tax. Gates Sr.'s saves his best point for the end. I agree that there are far too many successful people who say "only in America" out of one side of their mouth while bristling at the suggestion of paying taxes to cover the expenses that it takes to make keep our economic engine running. Which brings me to my final point, I hate debates about taxation. We've gotten to the point where candidates can promise to slash taxes and maintain or increase the level of government services with impunity. I'm no fan of excessive taxation, but it does take money to keep this place running smoothly. In the estate tax debate as with all tax debates, I will that there were more people in the government and in society looking at the big picture so we might be able to reach an informed decision.

Student Athlete

Say what you will about Skip Bayless, but he does make some good points in this piece about Bob Stoops' threat to bench star running back Adrian Peterson for violations of the OU student athlete class attendance policy. I don't really agree with Bayless' argument that the academic success of his players should be of no concern to Stoops or any other football coach, but it is nice to hear someone who is not afraid to call major college football what it really is, a farm system for the NFL.

Personally, I commend Stoops for taking a harder line with his players regarding classroom attendance and enforcing it uniformly. Most of the players on even the top college football teams will never play football professionally. Even college football superstars like Peterson don't always pan out once they reach the big leagues. By flaunting the rules that his coach laid down for the team, Peterson is showing NFL teams that he may be lacking in maturity and/or good judgement. Perhaps this disciplinary action or the threat of it will teach him a valuable lesson.

Bayless seems to imply that Stoops is already on shaky ground with the OU faithful and he should be more worried about his job security than his student athletes. Like any other coach at a football mad school, Stoops could get fired for anything from having a losing season to making the wrong decision about a two-point conversion. If OU cans him for taking academics too seriously, it will only reinforce Bayless' argument and make university presidents look even more hypocritical. I think that a lot of schools realize that coaches who actually care about their players are better in the long run, even if that means they will make decisions that sometimes enrage the faithful.

Wirtschaftsblunder

Andrew Sullivan linked to this article about Germany's economic woes from today's Guardian. It's an interesting piece, especially when you contrast it with the cover story from the August 18th issue of the Economist, entitled Germany's Surprising Economy. It's not that the two stories totally contradict each other, the Economist is comparing Germany's current economic situation with where it has been over the past five years, while the Guardian is comparing Germany's post-reunification economic situation with the heyday of the Wirtschaftswunder. Both articles do a good job identifying the challenges that the economies of Western Europe, and to a lesser extent, the US are or will soon be facing. The Guardian piece is summed up nicely by a comment from German journalist Arno Widmann:

...the generation of '68 had begun their political careers hating the bourgeois complacency of the old West Germany; then, just when they realised it was one of the nearest things to a workers' paradise the world has ever seen, it was over.

Radio Days

In case you weren't aware, there is a company like AC Nielson that surveys the radio listening habits of Americans. That company, Arbitron, contacted me about a month ago and asked me if I would be interested in participating in the survey. As it turns out, I happen to be a bigger fan of radio than most people under the age of 87, so I was thrilled. They sent me a log book to keep track of everything I listened to on the radio for a week. My week ended yesterday, and I have to say that keeping track of everything you listen to on the radio is a total pain. Heisenberg noted that you can't observe any physical phenomenon without affecting it in some way, and what's true for quantum physics is true for radio surveys.

The biggest problem is that I, like most people, do most of my radio listening in the car. It's very difficult, not to mention dangerous, to try and write down which radio stations you've been listening to while driving, especially if you frequently change the station. I don't tend to do much signal surfing while driving, but I completely abstained from it this past week since it would've been a bookkeeping nightmare. In a couple of cases, I just turned off the radio since I didn't want to have to bother trying to remember what I was listening to and when I listened to it.

Based on the multiple phone calls I received from Arbitron before and during the survey, I have a feeling that they have trouble getting people to complete the surveys. They kept calling me and asking if I had any questions and if they could count on me to finish my survey and send it back to them in a timely manner.

Artificial Intelligence

Today's Non Sequitur jumps into the intelligent design debate once again. It's Wiley's best and most humorous statement regarding the ID movement to date, in my opinion. For a lot more on the battle between ID and evolution, check out the blog that my good friend MDS publishes.

Muskrat Love

We went up Wellesley Island State Park in the 1000 Islands yesterday. It's a great little state park. We're into hiking, but most NY state parks that we've been to don't have a lot to offer in the way of hikes. Wellesley Island has eight miles of trails, which doesn't seem like too much, but the trails are all very nice. It's good for a day of hiking. It also features a pond with an active beaver community. We saw the dam and a lot of chewed up tree stumps, but didn't run into any beavers. We did come across a muskrat as we were walking around the pond and managed to snap a couple of good photos of him before he ran away.

Roll the Dice

Dice.com, a high-tech job search website has a number of banner ads floating around that use code snippets to look cute and appeal to their target demographic, presumably. I'm willing to grant them some artistic license here, but one of the ads is really abusing the concept, in my opinion.



For those not well-versed in modern programming languages, here's what's happening. The first line basically says if a variable named "salary_sucks" is set to true, execute the code inside of the {}'s. So in this case, if your salary sucks, point your web broswer over to http://www.dice.com and look for a better job. That makes sense. The problem is the else clause. If your salary does not suck, Dice is telling you to suck it up. Why would you need to suck it up if you already have a job that pays well? Perhaps this would make more sense:


if ($salary_sucks) {
  if ($has_the_initiative_to_look_for_a_new_job) {
    // Go to Dice...
  } else {
    suck_it_up();
  }
}

Fire Into Music

Jazz Central - Syracuse, NY
Wednesday, September 7th

I had a chance to check out the Fire Into Music ensemble last night, an all-star lineup consisting of Steve Swell, Jemeel Moondoc, Hamid Drake and William Parker. This was also my first chance to check out the relatively new Jazz Central venue. The place is pretty nice. The room is a lot wider than it is deep, which gives it a strange feel, but puts you right up next to the musicians which is always good. I feel like the best place to listen to beautiful improvised music is in a space that is either just as beautiful or just as improvised as the music itself. Jazz Central is neither, but when it comes to performance spaces, beggars can't be choosers.

I don't know if I've ever been so impressed by a rhythm section as I was at last night's concert. I must admit to some bias here. I'm a huge fan of Drake's work and for my money, he's the best drummer on the scene today. Parker is also very high on my list, so I'm not surprised that these guys blew me away once again. Drake was in especially fine form. He played a solo in the first set that totally blew me away. Part of the reason the rhythm section was so impressive was because the horns were a little bit disappointing. The quartet was really stretching out in the first set and I think that their reach my have exceeded their grasp. Moondoc and Swell were doing some very interesting ensemble playing, but when they soloed, the music just seemed to lose some of its energy. Drake and Parker were doing all kinds of things, changing the rhythms and even jumping into a Caribbean kind of beat for a while underneath the solos.

The band came out in the second set and really sounded a lot more together. I don't know if they just needed to get warmed up or if it was because the material that they played in the second half was a little bit more linear. Once the second set got off the ground, the group started inviting audience members who had participated in a workshop the night before up to the stage. It was pretty neat and if my chops were in better shape, I would've brought my horn along. Of course, the quality and cohesiveness of the ensemble wasn't so great. I would've liked to have heard the quartet play a little bit more in the second set without the extra players. Still, it was really great to see everyone up on stage making music and having a great time. There aren't too many musical acts that invite people from the crowd up on stage to jam with them during a concert. As the evening was coming to an end, Moondoc's cell phone started ringing. Without missing a beat, he answered the call, and shouted "I'm in the middle of a gig! Call me back later!" Most professional musicians would be mortified by the idea of jamming with a bunch of guys from the crowd and answering calls on a cell phone during a concert. These guys loved it, and they made some amazing music in the process.

Don't Call it a Comeback

Reports of Lance Armstrong's retirement from professional cycling appear to have been greatly exaggerated. According to team director Johan Bruyneel, Lance is going to be training with the team this winter and is contemplating riding in next year's Tour de France. Apparently, he's mad as hell about the doping allegations published in L'Equipe and he's not going to take it anymore. I really don't mind if Lance decides to ride the Tour until he drops dead, I just wish pro athletes would stop announcing their retirement amid great fanfare only to renege on their promise a couple months later.

The Ironic Curtain

The Red Wings lost their bid to re-sign one of their top young players, Pavel Datsyuk. Datsyuk has signed with a team in Siberia, presumably because they are able to pay him more than the Wings, whose free-spending ways have been curtailed by the NHL's new salary cap. I hope the irony isn't lost on Datsyuk that he is leaving America to come back to Russia, where teams aren't encumbered by so many economic restrictions. Of course, maybe the real reason is that he decided he would rather live in Siberia than Detroit.

All kidding aside, I'm not trying to trash the NHL salary cap here. It's preventing my favorite team, the Red Wings, from executing their win at all costs strategy, which was better than the Rangers' lose at all costs strategy, but it really hasn't been paying dividends for a number of years. The Wings kept adding overpriced veterans who rarely performed up to their potential, if at all, instead of trying to integrate young talent into their core. I'm sad to see Datsyuk go because he was one of the few young guys they have who has shown flashes of brilliance. The fact that he's going to Russia makes the loss a little easier to stomach and it also makes his salary demands look even more unreasonable. I think Datsyuk is going to be a great player and I hope that the Wings can somehow hold onto him when and if he decides to come back to the NHL.

Alerting the Comics Code Authority

I'm really stuck on this whole comic strip criticism thread. Lately, I've been perplexed by a lesser-known comic strip called 9 Chickweed Lane. I was almost positive that the main storyline in the comic strip over the past few months had centered around Edda's relationship with her gay roommate, Seth. The thing I couldn't understand was how a comic strip could include an openly gay character and even feature his partner (Mark) from time to time without drawing any flack from the usual commentators. The problem is, 9 Chickweed Lane is so oblique that I often can't make sense out of it, so I wasn't sure if I wasn't misreading the whole thing. Over the past month or so, they have really been working this subplot, so there is no longer any doubt about the Seth's sexual orientation.

Of course, there is no need for anyone to be up in arms over this. The comics page, however, has a history of conservatism bordering on idiocy. Consider the outcry when Luann started menstruating. Or when Lawrence in For Better or For Worse came out of the closet. My guess is that the reason there is no outcry today is because 9 Chickweed Lane is not a very well-known comic strip. Also, the way that the relationship between Seth and Mark is portrayed is a bit too nuanced for the people who usually lead these kind of campaigns to pick up on.

Calvinism

The discussion thread on my post about the comics centered around that classic comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. It turned out to be a rather timely discussion. I learned today that Universal Press Syndicate is going to be re-runing classic Calvin & Hobbes comic strips through the end of this year. This article has the scoop, along with some details about the history of the strip and some speculation about what the reclusive Bill Watterson has been up to over the past ten years.

How to Get Rich Without Really Trying

The Syracuse Post-Standard published an interesting story yesterday about the ramifications that the new NHL salary cap is having in its primary feeder league, the AHL. In order to prevent teams from stashing high-priced star players in the minor leagues to avoid going over the salary cap, the NHL has instituted a rule that any AHL player earning more than $75,000 a year must clear re-entry waivers if recalled by his NHL parent team. Should another team claim him, the team that called him up loses the player AND has to pay half of his salary. According to the article, some players are exempt from waivers, but it doesn't explain what qualifies a player for this exemption, other than it typically applies only to younger players.

This rule change has prompted AHL veterans who are used to pulling down six figure paychecks to consider taking a pay cut to get down to the $75K cutoff and presumably, improve their chances of getting called up to the big leagues. I was surprised to learn that players in the AHL made so much money. I thought that the compensation structure for all sporting leagues was you make virtually nothing until you make the big leagues, and then immediately begin making big money. According to this article, the average AHL salary is around $50,000/year. According to this source, the minmum minor league salary for baseball player who has played a day in the majors is $52,600. It seems like the hockey players are getting the better end of the deal here, since I'm guessing that even on a triple-A baseball team, most of the players haven't played a day in the big leagues. These numbers could be way off, but the Post-Standard article made it sound like it's pretty common for AHL veterans, especially those with some NHL experience, to pull down six figures. Disregarding big leaguers doing a rehab stint down on the farm, I can't imagine anyone other than hot prospects (Drew Henson, anyone) making that kind of scratch in triple-A ball.

Things that go Bump in the Night

Just when you thought the level of political discourse in this country couldn't get any lower, along comes a book that tries drag children into the whole red vs. blue debate. Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under My Bed is the story of two brothers, Tommy and Lou, whose dreams of lemonade stand entrepreneurship are quashed by Senators Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. The cover art is absolutely priceless. I'm surprised its taken this long for this book to be published, after all, Daddy's Roommate came out (pun intended) 14 years ago.

The Essence of Blogging

Sticking with the comics theme, Doonesbury has really gotten to the essense of blogging this week. Read the strips from yesterday and today and see for yourself. I've decided to take the high road and not publish a review of the Krispy Kreme donut of the month. I still can't figure out what is so great about Krispy Kreme donuts anyway. I'm not donut conoisseur, but if you ask me, they are no better, and possibly, worse than your average, run-of-the-mill donut.

Comic Strip Live

I started reading newspapers when I was about six years old. At first, the only thing I read were the comics. Nowadays, I read much more of the newspaper, but I still read the comics, unless I happen to be reading one of those papers that is too "sophistcated" to have a comics section. I can't say that I find many of the comics entertaining, but I can't stop reading them, even the ones that I find completely idiotic. Two such comics are Garfield and Blondie. It's a well-known fact that Garfield is not funny. The thing that annoys me about Garfield, besides its continued existence, is the visual laziness of it. Take today's installment for example. The drawing of Garfield never changes in any of the seven panels. Neither the background nor the telephone changes in any of the seven panels as well. The only thing that changes is John's facial expression and hands. I have found that most Garfield comic strips follow a similar pattern. Garfield would be more entertaining if Jim Davis ditched all of the dialog and plot structure and turned the comic into Hocus Focus.

From a visual standpoint, Blondie is much richer than Garfield, but the storyline is just as idiotic. Loyal readers of the comics know that this year is the 75th anniversary of the Dagwood & Blondie comic strip. The comic strip has obviously had to change over the past 75 years to keep pace with the modern world, but the way that it has changed has been somewhat nonsensical. Blondie joined the ranks of liberated women when she opened her own catering company maybe ten years ago. Dagwood goes to work in a carpool (perhaps in response to the oil shocks of the 1970s), but he's still the connsummate 1950s company man with his bow ties and his abusive, tyranical boss. In today's very special 75th anniversary comic, we see Dagwood in full 1950s dad mode sitting on his favorite chair watching TV with his loyal dog. The next panels show his sexpot daughter Cookie dressed up like a porn star answering a phone call from the President, who makes a cameo along with the first lady in the final panel. If we're going to be stuck reading about the exploits of Dagwood & Blondie for another 75 years, I hope they can manage to decide which decade that want to live in and stick with it.

Timmy Can You Hear Me?

The news out of Allen Park is that the Lions have just signed former U of Hawaii QB Timmy Chang. Chang is the most prolific passer in NCAA history, whether he was throwing the ball to his teammates or the opposition. Despite these gaudy statistics, he's currently number five on the Lions depth chart. I don't expect that Chang has a future with the Lions or any other NFL team (though the media is very desirous to see an Asian-American quarterback do well). The only reason I even mention this is because he just seems like the kind of QB that eternally fickle Lions fans would really get behind once Harrington, Garcia, et al get into a tough spot.

Grizzly Adams

Acclaimed German director Werner Herzog has a new documentary entitled Grizzly Man. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm very interested. It's the story of Timothy Treadwell, a man who lived with, studied, and advocated for the grizzly bears of Alaska, until he was mauled to death by one of them. I'm fascinated by all bear species, and I'm especially fascinated by the grizzly. They are very noble animals who have an amazing amount of intelligence and physical strength. While I hope to never encounter a grizzly in the wild, grizzly attacks on humans are quite rare. Treadwell set up an advocacy group called Grizzy People before his death that is continuing his work.

Weekly Radio Address

I have always been sort of fascinated with the idea of the President's weekly radio address. First of all, it's a radio address. When was the last time a breaking story was first reported on radio? Pearl Harbor? Second of all, it happens on Saturday morning, quite possibly the worst time of the week to broadcast anything. I have no idea why the weekly radio address had endured to this day. The ultimate indictment of the weekly radio address is that the few times that I have actually been listening to a radio station that aired the address on a Saturday morning, I've changed the channel. If someone like me, who professes so much interest in the weekly radio address can't stand to listen to it even once, it makes me wonder if anyone williningly listens to the President's weekly radio address. In case you're wondering why I'm talking about the weekly radio address, this week's issue of The Onion has a great send-up of the President's weekly radio address.

Not Ready for Some Football

I have to admin that I feel Steve Rushin's pain. His piece in this week's Sports Illustrated, My Football Failure (registration required), details his shame over his lack of love for the NFL. While I still consider myself a fan of professional football, I find it to be completely overhyped. I liked the NFL better when it was cool to ignore the preseason and players didn't get fined for failing to wear NFL-licensed apparel in public. I'm a much bigger fan of the college game. I like the college game for its imperfections. I think the games are more exciting because the players and coaches are more likely to make a dumb decision than their professional counterparts. Everyone bemoans the lack of a true national championship in college football, but it doesn't really bother me. Division I-A college football is an inherently unfair landscape. I'm happy to watch teams like Oklahoma, USC, Michigan, and nearly every college in the states of Texas and Florida slug it out for the national title while at the same time watching my Purdue Boilermakers fight it out for respectibility in the Big 10 and a win on New Year's Day. So if you see me out on the street on a Sunday afternoon this autumn, it's not because I hate the NFL. I just need to get away from it for a few hours sometimes.

The Goose is Loose

As astute reader MDS pointed out, the reason I went two weeks without updating my blog was because I was busy getting married. As far as I know, everyone who reads this blog knows me personally so they were already aware of this, but perhaps there are some lurkers out there. I will have more to say about this and our lovely honeymoon in the tropical paradise of Maui. Until then, here's a great photo of the aforementioned MDS chasing away some pesky geese so the happy couple could be photographed in peace.

Move On

By request, here is the story of my moving scam. In 2001, I moved from Austin to Boston and I hired a moving company to move my stuff. This was my first mistake, seeing as I didn't really own anything of value. I could have sold or given away all of my possesions and re-purchased them in Boston for less money than it would have cost to move them. My second mistake was failing to due much due dilligence when selecting a moving company. I would up hiring this company called All State Van Lines. The first problem was they failed to show up on the assigned pick-up date. I called their office all day and never got an answer. They finally called me that evening and assured me that they would be there to pick up my stuff the next day. They showed up the next day and picked everything up, but the plot suddenly twisted when the paperwork that I received was from a company called U.S. Movers, not the All State Van Lines company who I had booked the move through. They apparently had subcontracted out the move and failed to tell me.

From there, things kept getting worse. The 10 day estimate they gave me for my move to be completed turned into 32 days. For most of that time, I was constantly trying to get though to someone at U.S. Movers who could tell me where my stuff was and when it would be arriving, usually to no avail. When the movers finally showed up, all of my stuff looked like it had been dropped out of airplane at 20,000 feet. They lost one of my items (a filing cabinet), which I filed a lost item claim for which was never addressed. I wrote complaints to both All State Van Lines and U.S. Movers, neither of which was ever addressed. I should have pursued this matter futher, but I was more upset with myself for entrusting a company to move my earthly possessions without doing proper due dilligence beforehand.

As it turns out U.S. Movers (Brooklyn, NY) is blacklisted on Moving Scam. I can't not recommend this company enough. The blacklist on Moving Scam is quite daunting, but there are some good movers out there. When my then-girlfriend (now wife) relocated to Syracuse from Boston, her company paid for her relocation and we were both very impressed with the moving company who handled the move. The company is Clark & Reid and they are based in Billerica, MA. I think they are a local outfit, but if you ever need to move to or from New England, I would recommend looking into them.

Public Service Announcement

I learned about this website today. I haven't looked into it too much, but it seems reputable and I have no reason to distrust the person who told me about it. Like the creator of this site, I was once the victim of a moving scam. I haven't hired a moving company since then, though I now have way too much stuff to move again on my own, so this website will hopefully help me out the next time I move. I forgot the name of the moving company that scammed me, so I'll have to check my records tonight to see if they are blacklisted on this site.

Why?

The Detroit sports theme du jour keeps on rolling, only this news is as upsetting as my last post was uplifting.

Stevie Wonder

Like a lot of Red Wings fans, I can't really imagine the team without Steve Yzerman. He made his NHL debut two days after my 7th birthday and he's been wearing the same jersey ever since. Fortunately, we have another year to wait before having to ponder the idea of a Red Wings team sans #19. This is great news. I spent the whole NHL lock-out worried that the final on-ice memory of Yzerman's career would be taking a puck to eye socket in game five of the 2004 Detroit-Calgary playoff series.

Baby Elephant Walk

The Asian elephant population of Syracuse went up by one yesterday. I can't remember ever seeing pictures of a newborn elephant before, but they are pretty neat. I've never actually been to the zoo here, but it sounds like a pretty good facility, especially for a smaller city. The baby elephant may look small, but he already weighs in at 345 lbs.

Prime Time

My brother always claimed he was a better athlete than me in high school because I never played a sport where you had to try out for the team. I ran cross country and track, while he played football and basketball. My brother was and still is a better athlete than me, but it's not because he plays more exclusive sports than I do. It's because he's bigger, stronger, faster, and it better shape than me. Skip Bayless essentially rehashes my brother's old argument in this piece about Lance Armstrong.

I'm a big fan of Lance, no doubt, but I do understand Bayless' desire to knock him down a peg or two. What he has done in the Tour has been amazing, but the desire to crown him greatest athlete of all time is somewhat annoying. For my money, Lance isn't even the greatest cyclist of all time, that honor still belongs to Eddy Merckx.

Bayless basically takes the low road and makes all kinds of ridiculous statements like: "cycling doesn't test enough athletic talent or skill" and "Yet Armstrong hasn't had to battle the quality or depth of competition in his sport that baseball, basketball or football greats have risen above in theirs." His column wouldn't have been so bad had he managed to come up with a more convincing best all-around athlete. I have a hard time respecting the arguments of anyone who thinks that Deion Sanders was the greatest all-around athlete in history. Bayless seems to disqualify anyone who excelled at only one sport from contending for the all-time best athlete. To make matters worse, Bayless includes other multi-sport athletes much more worthy than Deion in his list of candidates, yet he still picks Deion. Jim Thorpe (football, baseball, track & field), Jim Brown (football, lacrosse), and Jackie Robinson (baseball, track & field) were all multi-sport athletes who were better at both of their sports than Deion was at either of his, and yet he seems to disqualify them because they only played one of their sports professionally and none of them during the ESPN era.

I don't like to get into discussions about greatest athlete of all time, because it's too difficult to compare different sports and different eras. While its true that riding a bike doesn't take as much hand-eye coordination as socking a 95 mph fastball out of the park, it's also true that racing your bike 2500 miles over 21 days takes more cardiovascular endurance than rounding the bases a couple of times. To say that cycling is less of a sport because it doesn't require some of the skills that ball sports require but failing to criticise ball sports for lacking some the demands that competitive cycling places on its participants is a very unconvincing argument. All in all, I'd have to say I agree with this post from David Irwin.

Hat tip: Dusty Young

Conquistadors

I finally got around to watching the second installment of the Guns, Germs, and Steel PBS miniseries. This episode focused mainly on the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire during the 1500s. I remember learning about how the first Europeans who arrived in the Americas brought over all kinds of diseases that decimated the native populations since they had never been exposed to them and therefore, had no natural immunity. The thing that I never understood was why the Europeans didn't run into the same problems, since presumably the Native Americans had diseases that the Europeans had never been exposed to before. As Diamond points out, the illnesses that have decimated human populations over the centuries, such as the plague, smallpox, measels, and perhaps someday, bird flu, all have jumped from animals to humans. Europeans lived in close proximity to their domestic sheep, pigs, goats, and cattle in addition to eating their meat and, in some cases, drinking their milk. The reason the Europeans didn't get sick was because the Native Americans didn't have any of these killer diseases to pass around since they didn't live in close proximity with domestic animals.

Overall, I felt that this installment left a lot of questions unanswered. Both episodes have stated numerous times that the people of Europe, North Africa, and Central Asia were the beneficiaries of the great advancements made in the fertile crescent. The Europeans, however, were the only ones who managed to parlay this advantage into world domination. This episode really didn't do much to explain why Europeans had so much more success. There is only so much information that can be presented in a three-hour miniseries, but I feel like skipping from the dawn of agriculture to the 16th century was too big of a leap. Fortunately, I just picked up the book, which I presume covers this time period in more detail. The final episode, which covers the European colonization of the African continent, airs tomorrow night at 10 PM EST.

The Red River Shoot-out

In response to the Senate bill that would end commercial flights at Dallas' Love Field (see my previous post), a House Representative from Texas has introduced a bill to stop commercial flights at Tulsa's airport . The Representative, Jeb Hensarling (the linked article claims that he's a state Senator, but when I googled him to find a link to his webpage and it turns out that he's a US representative for a district around Dallas), admits that its a joke. While it is a welcome change to see an elected official with a sense of humor, it would be nice to see more elected officials speaking about against unnecessary interference into the aviation industry, even when such interference benefits them or their constituents.

The Wrong Amendment

If you know anything about the US commercial aviation industry, you're probably familiar with the Wright Amendment, a piece of legislation that effectively prohibits one airline (Southwest) from flying non-stop to any airport beyond the states of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama from Dallas' Love Field. Two Senators, James Inhofe (R-Okla) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) have recently introduced a bill to go one step further and completely close Love Field to commercial airline traffic.

The Wright Amendment was enacted shortly after the airline deregulation act of 1978 as a way to handcuff Southwest Airlines, a low-cost, upstart airline that continues to frighten the legacy air carriers by its ability to actually turn a profit in the airline industry. The Wright Amendment is currently under attack by a competing bill in the Senate, co-sponsored by Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan).

The Wright Amendment and the Inhofe/Harkin bill are designed to one thing and one thing only, protect the interests of American Airlines, the dominant carrier at Dallas/Ft.Worth International Airport. You can make a fairly weak argument that the original intention was to close Love Field after DFW was opened and therefore, it should be closed to commercial traffic and/or severely restricted. The supporters of this nonsense will say things about protecting jobs and the North Texas economy. Dallas/Ft. Worth may be the only place on earth attempting to restrict commercial air service in an attempt to bolster the local economy.

Allowing Congress to decide the winners in the aviation business is a bad idea. That's basically what we had prior to deregulation, and while there seem to be a lot of people who pine for the good old days, deregulation has allowed more people to fly to more places for less money. It's also allowed airlines to charge every passenger on a flight a different price for his ticket, charge $7 for a stale ham sandwich, and make the whole experience of flying slightly less enjoyable than a visit to the DMV. Consumers have voted with the wallets, and they have decided that price is the only thing that matters when flying. Southwest has proven that when a low-cost carrier comes to town, it stimulates demand for flying by allowing people to fly to places that they previously would have driven to or skipped altogether. The Wright Amendment and this new bill are pieces of blatantly anti-competitive legislation that benefit a single corporation and its congressional patrons.

WeakReferences and Dynamic Proxies

As I have said before, I have been hoping to augment my blog's slice-of-life commentary with some technical content specifically related to software development. Here's the first of possibly many more installments. Eamonn McManus has a very interesting post about using dynamic proxies in Java to guard access to weak references. I'm not sure when I or anyone else will need to use this technique, but its a very well-written exploration of these two somewhat esoteric features of the Java platform and as a bonus, it features some good examples of new J2SE 5.0 technologies, such as generics and the java.util.concurrent package.

The High Court

All of this supreme court talk in the news as of late has brought me back to the first supreme court nomination that I can remember. No one ever forgets his first exposure to the supreme court nomination process, and I am no exception. The first nomination that I have any recollection of is the classic Robert Bork nomination. The thing is, I was kinda young back then, so I didn't really understand the whole thing. As it turns out, until very recently, I thought that the reason that Bork didn't get a seat on the court was because he was too conservative AND schmoked schome weed back in the day. In fact, it was Douglas Ginsburg, the judge that Reagan appointed after Bork was bork'd by the Senate, who got taken down by the herb. For years I puzzled over how Bork could be too conservative for mainstream America and a total pothead, but I guess it didn't confound me enough to inspire me to try and set the record straight.

There is an interesting postscript to this story. A couple years back, I saw Douglas Ginsburg speak at my friend's law school commencement at Boston University. It was, without a doubt, the worst graduation speech I've ever heard in my life. It was essentially a lecture from a constitutional law course about court packing. Had I not recently listened to a radio talk show that discussed the same topic, I would have been completely lost. After the speech, he walked off the podium and exited the building through the door behind the stage. The only thing that would've made his exit more humorous would've been if we actually heard his tires squeal as he peeled out of the alley behind the building.

Tour de Difference

The more I think about it, the harder it is for me to believe that so many Americans are into the Tour de France. The whole story of Lance Armstrong is very inspiring and everyone loves a winner, but the more I watch the tour, the more I realize that it is nothing like the American sports leagues we all know and love. Don't get me wrong, I've been a tour fan since before it was cool and I'll continue to be a fan after Lance retires. Still, it's interesting to look at the differences between bicycle racing and more mainstream American sports.

Here are some examples of the strangeness of the tour. First of all, Jan's Journal. Velo News, a US-based magazine that covers competitive cycling, features race diaries that are written by rides who are participating in the race, including one of top challengers in this year's race, Jan Ullrich. Jan's Journal isn't going to win any blog of the year awards, but it's a pretty interesting read. For one, it's full of humility, self-doubt, and in places, it sounds like Ullrich has all but conceded that neither he nor anyone else can beat Lance this year. The idea of an elite American athlete publishing something like this in the middle of his (or her) sport's biggest contest is unthinkable.

Second, the tour is governed by all sorts of weird gentleman's agreements that are never really explained. I suppose baseball also has a large set of unwritten rules, but in all other American sports, anything that is not explicitly prohibited is tacitly allowed. I'm not saying that cyclists are a bunch of choir boys. Cycling has been and probably still is a very dirty sport from a performance-enhancing drug standpoint. One of the more interesting unwritten rules that has come up twice in this year's tour is the rule that you have to earn your jersey. When Dave Zabriske lost his yellow jersey due to a crash with 1.5 km left in the team time trial and when Tom Boonen lost his green jersey after dropping out of the race, the men who inherited their jerseys both refused to wear them at the start of the next day's stage. Could you imagine a wide receiver asking the referee to take six points off of the scoreboard because the defensive back who was covering him twisted his ankle during the play, allowing him to break free for the touchdown?

Another strange thing is how a lot of teams that come to the tour will admit from day one that they have no hope of winning. I'd be surprised if any sportswriter could get the coach of the most beleaguered American professional sports team to admit on record that the championship is out of the question for his team this year. The majority of the teams in the race do not have a team member who could conceivably win the race. The thing that a lot of people might not understand about the tour is that each individual stage of the tour is really a mini-race. A team with a strong sprinter but no overall tour threat might come to the tour and win three individual stages with their top sprinter. This would be considered a successful tour for that team. The closest analogy that I can think of is college football, where the only game that really counts for a school is its rivalry game. Win that, and even if the rest of the season sucked, you can still be proud of your team.

The tour is definitely changing these days, as Magnus Bäckstedt has highlighted in his race diary. Lance Armstrong and his team have really approached the tour from an American sports point-of-view, emphasizing technology, preparation, and a single-minded determination that had never really been part of the tour before. The current generation of American prospects have followed Lance's lead, as have a number of the European cycling teams. Paul Sherwin spent a lot of time during yesterday's broadcast questioning the logic of Team CSC riding Ivan Basso in the Giro d'Italia (cycling second-most prestigious stage race) in May instead of resting him for the tour. Win or lose this year, Lance Armstrong has proven that if you take an elite cyclist and build his career around a single race, you give yourself a huge competitive edge. I am fairly sure that over the next few years, we will see more and more tour specialists emerge, who race for the Tour de France title and nothing else.

We are(n't) the Champions

I saw an ad for Buffalo Bills tickets in the paper today. It appears that one of their marketing gimmicks for this season is a special Celebration of Champions emblem commemorating the 40th anniversary of their 1965 AFL championship team. This emblem contains their modern logo, their original 1960s logo, and the years 1964, 1965, 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993. The Bills won the AFL title in 1964 and 65, so I can understand why they are celebrating that. I can't figure out why they included their four consecutive AFC championship seasons from the early 90s. Sure, they had some great teams back then and came about as close to winning the Superbowl as any team could have without actually winning, but I think it's somewhat insulting to lump the 1990-93 squads in with the 1964-65 championship teams. It's obviously a marketing device to make the team's history look more impressive, but it seems to me that no self-respecting Buffalo Bills fan would be seduced by this lame attempt at championship inflation.

Bumper Snickers

I love bumper stickers and pretty much all other ways of easily communicating your deeply held beliefs to the public at large. My all-time fav was a Nader for Prez. sticker that I spotted on the back of Toyota Land Cruiser (the modern, luxury SUV kind - not the old school off-road vehicle kind) back in 2000. I spotted this gem on the back of a shiny new Volvo station wagon today - "Never have so few, taken from so many, for so long".

On the surface, these both seem ironic. I drive a big, gas-guzzlin' SUV but vote for the Green party, I'm mad as hell about economic inequality but I drive a luxury car. There could be a logical explanation for both them, but Occam's ironic bumpersticker razor tells us that when there are multiple explanations for a bumper sticker, the ironic one is usually correct.

As much as I love ironic bumper stickers, my favorites are the totally absurd kind. I spotted this one on a school bus that had been purchased by a private citizen and converted into his personal party wagon: "Support Your Local Police: Beat Yourself Up".

'Scuse me while I kiss this guy

Both I and a loyal reader of Data Janitor have puzzled over the lyrics to the refrain of a song that has been featured in numerous films and commercials over the years. It took a little e-sleuthing, but I managed to track down the artist and song title via the Boogie Nights original motion picture soundtrack and from there, I was able to get the lyrics. Without further ado, the lyrics for Sister Christian by Night Ranger are: "You're motoring / What's your price for flight / In finding mister right / You'll be all right tonight". Our best guess was "Motoring / What's your price to fight?". We were close, but in many respects, way off.

Home Field Advantage

I watched the first part of Guns, Germs, and Steel last night, a three-part miniseries on PBS based on Jared Diamond's book. I haven't actually read the book, though it's on my to read list. Last night's installment basically presented the question that is at the heart of the book, namely, why are certain societies so much better off than others? Interestingly enough, it started off with the assumption that Americans are much better off than the indigenous hunter/gatherers of Papua New Guinea. I don't dispute that, but most introductory anthropology courses seem to include an essay positing that the development of agriculture was mankind's greatest mistake. I'm a big fan of contrarian arguments, even when I don't agree with them, so I've always been somewhat fascinated by this one. Had we all kept on gathering and hunting, the world would definitely be a lot less crowded and we'd certainly have a much more pristine environment. From a quality of life perspective, it's hard to argue in favor of hunting and gathering. There'd probably be less war, since there would be fewer people competing for more abundant resources and weapons technology wouldn't be too sophisticated. Still, there would be much less opportunity for people to pursue their own interests, since we'd all be too busy hunting and gathering. Ultimately, the problem with this argument is that it makes no economic sense. Gathering and hunting are a much less stable and efficient way to eek out a living than organizing into a society built around agriculture and a division of labor.

The main point that Diamond made in last night's show was that the region of the world where civilizations emerged played a large role in their eventual success or failure. The fertile crescent had several advantages over the rest of the world. It had barley and wheat, which were the most nutritious crops cultivated by prehistoric farmers and also could be kept for a long time. It was also the home of all of our modern-day livestock animals. Ultimately, the fertile crescent proved to be too dry and climatically fragile to become the breadbasket of the world, so the farmers moved to the east and west into modern-day Europe, Turkey, and Central Asia.

The other point that I inferred from last night's show was that the role that adversity plays in the development of human civilizations. The hunter gatherers of the fertile crescent did not develop agriculture until a climatic shift occurred that made the world colder and dryer. This killed off plants and herds of animals that were previously their primary food source. This is an example of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule. Had the climatic shift never occurred, the people of the fertile crescent may have kept on hunting and gathering.

What is a Data Janitor?

If you do a Google search on data janitor, you mostly wind up with links for database and data mining software. If you look carefully, you might find something about a musican by the name of Ken Vandermark. I stole the title of my blog from the title of one of his songs. When I started this blog, I thought I was going to write a lot about music and software, since they are two of my biggest interests in life. That hasn't been the case so far. I thought that maybe if I explain the significance of the name data janitor, it might inspire me.

Anyway, if you're interested in learning more about the song Data Janitor, you can listen to a clip here. In all fairness, it's a pretty lousy clip, the song is seven minutes long and the intro isn't even done before the 59 second clip ends. The Vandermark 5 is definitely my favorite band that is still alive and performing today. For an avant garde jazz unit, they have a tremendous amount of crossover appeal. If you're really into any of the alternative rock subgenres (punk, prog, kraut, etc.), you'll probably be able to find something you like in the Vandermark 5, even if you hate jazz.

Make it an Alice Cooper Night

Rock & Roll's high prince of weirdness, Alice Cooper, has his own syndicated radio show. It's called Nights with Alice Cooper. Check out the website to see if there is a station in your area that carries the show. I've found myself listening to it a few times and it's surprisingly entertaining. It's a classic rock music show that features a higher quality of classic rock than your run-of-the-mill classic rock radio station, IMHO. He works solo, except for when he's interviewing guests. He spends about half of the time between songs talking about the music and maybe an interesting anecdote about the song/musician/etc. that only an industry insider like himself would know. Then he spends the rest of the time making up unlikely stories. For example, when I listened to the show last Wednesday, he played "Couldn't Stand the Weather" by Stevie Ray Vaughn. Before the song he, started talking about Stevie's first television appearance, which was on the public TV show Austin City Limits. Then he made up a story about how his second TV appearance was the time he dressed up as a 70 year old woman and filled in for Angela Landsbury on Murder, She Wrote. If you're the kind of person who enjoys above-average classic rock and absurdist radio humor, you should check out Nights with Alice Cooper.

Tour de Lance

It's July, which means it's time for the Tour de France. Lance Armstrong has done a lot for himself as well as American cycling by wining the past six tours. When he began his reign in 1999, the only televised coverage available in the US was a 30 minute re-cap show each night on ESPN or ESPN2 around 10 or 11 pm. Now we get a live broadcast every morning on OLN which is then rebroadcast about three or four times over the course of the day. Still, the amount of time they devote to covering and praising Lance Armstrong is a bit ridiculous. I don't expect a lot of objectivity from sports journalists, but when Lance-buddy Bob Roll is sitting there wearing his live strong wristband practically declaring Lance the winner of the 2005 tour before it has even started, it's kind of annoying. Of course, were it not for Lance, there would be no OLN coverage, and Bob Roll wouldn't be on TV. It creates an interesting dynamic when the commercial viability of an entire sport rests on the shoulders of a single athlete. It will be interesting to see what happens next year after Lance has retired. There are a number of American riders who have the ability to contend for the Tour de France, but none of them have a story that is anywhere near as compelling to the media and general public as Lance. I don't think we'll go back to the the bad old days of miniscule coverage, but it seems like there will have to be a reduction somewhere. As long as Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin are along for the call, I won't have any complaints.

Blame Canada

Last Friday, as you may know, was Canada Day. Canada Day is the closest thing Canadians have to our Independence Day, so I assumed that they would celebrate Canada Day the same way we celebrate July 4th. This assumption proved to be incorrect on at least one account. On Friday, we headed across the border to meet up with some friends at a Provincial Park on the coast of Lake Erie for a weekend camping trip. Not wanting to bother with the vagaries of transporting alcohol, meat, and produce across the border, we decided to pick up these things once we arrived in Canada. I know for a fact that most American grocery stores are open on July 4th, because I have worked at an American grocery store on July 4th. In fact, I was hired for that job based on a single qualification (after being legally employable in the US, I suppose) - the ability to work on July 4th. In Canada, almost every grocery store was closed all day and the ones that were not were only open through the late afternoon. Almost all of the beer and liquor seems to be sold at state-run stores, which were all closed on Canada Day, of course. On one hand, I think it's nice that a lot of service industry people who usually have to work when the rest of us get to relax get the day off. On the other hand, what kind of country prevents its citizens from purchasing alcohol on its biggest summertime holiday? So if you ever travel to our neighbors to the north on Canada Day with the intention on boozing it up once you arrive, make sure to BYOB.

Nerdy Joke of the Day

If there aren't complex numbers in your equation, it isn't real math.

Surname Determinism in the News

I had an anthropology professor in college who talked about the concept of surname determinism. I was never sure if she actually believed in the idea that your last name has a profound impact on the course of your life. From what I understand, at least in the west, a lot of surnames were derived one's occupation, i.e. Smith, Cooper, and Porter. I don't really believe in the idea of surname determinism, but any time I come across a case of possible surname determinism, I have to chuckle. There have been a couple of cases in the news lately. Most notable is Edgar Ray Killin, who is about to stand trial for the murders of three civil rights workers in the 1960s. Last week's winner, at least for German-speaking people, was Angel Raich, one of the plaintiffs in the supreme count medicinal marijuana cause. Her last name is similar to the German word: rauchen, which means "to smoke". Maybe that's a stretch, but it's the first thing that I thought of when I first heard about her and her case.

Detroit is not an Apocalyptic Hellhole

Tom Walsh's column, from today's Detroit Free Press cities a recent study by a Wayne State professor that states that downtown Detroit isn't as dangerous as most people would have you believe. Considering that most media and suburban eyewitness accounts of downtown Detroit would lead you to believe that it's slightly less dangerous than Baghdad, this doesn't exactly come as a shock. I am a bit skeptical of the study, given that it was commissioned by the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau. Still, it does make some good points. Most notable is that Detroit's miniscule number of downtown residents (5272 according to the study) skews crime data since it is always reported as a ratio of number of crimes to residents. Factoring in the number of daytime commuters who work downtown makes sense, providing they aren't given the same weight as actual residents. The last sentence of the column is a classic, and in case you couldn't figure it out, the inspiration for the title of this entry.

When in Rome

We found some outstanding gelato a couple night ago in Little Italy. That's correct, Syracuse has its own version of NYC's world-famous Little Italy neighborhood. The Biscotti Cafe & Pastry Shop was virtually empty when we arrived around 11 pm last Friday. The fact that it was still open was even more surprising than their selection of flavors and the quality of their product. It's a nice little place, and while I can't personally consume enough Italian pastry and gelato to guarantee the success of the Biscotti Cafe, I will certainly try.

New Wheels

I picked up my new used car today, a 2004 Subaru Outback Sport Wagon. Hopefully, the last car purchase I have to make for a while. This car represents a number a firsts: first automatic transmission, first station wagon, first Japanese car (first non-Ford car, for that matter). Here are some photos of my new ride.

In Case of Rapture, this Plane will be Unmanned

Today's installment of the comic strip Sylvia is quite amusing. It's a riff on the oft-debunked myth that airlines avoid staffing the cockpit of commercial flights with two born-again Christians to avoid the possibility of both of them disappearing should the rapture occur during a flight.

New Math

This is a pretty nice website. If you ever need to look up a mathematical formula or concept that you were once familiar with but have long since forgotten, this website probably has a description of it along with a pretty straightforward explanation and maybe even a nice little diagram.

You are what you drive

I don't really like or agree with this whole blue state/red state dichotomy that the media has been pushing for a while, so while I don't exactly appreciate the premise of this article, I found it somewhat interesting. A lot of it was pretty obvious, Republicans like pickup trucks, Democrats like econoboxes, etc. I think the most interesting finding was how Democratic familes are more likely to drive minivans than Republican families because women tend to have more of a voice in the car buying decision in Democratic households.

Kevin Norton's Bauhaus Quartet

Westcott Community Center - Syracuse, NY
Sunday, April 24th

This was the second time I've had the pleasue of hearing Kevin Norton play at the Westcott, though this was my first time experiencing the Bauhaus quartet. The ensemble he brought last time, Living Language, didn't impress me for some reason that I can't quite remember, but this group was outstanding. For one, they played incredibly well together. This band certainly falls into the category of free jazz, but not for the usual reasons. They definitely showed their free jazz chops on the first and last pieces of their single-set concert, but the rest of the pieces really didn't exhibit the high-energy cacaphony usually associated with free jazz. One my great disappointments of free jazz is the inability a lot of bands have overcoming the rigid separation between solo and ensemble playing. While I'm sure "Ascenion" sounded really crazy when Coltrane recorded it in the 1965, in form, it really isn't much different than a regular jazz tune. You have a "head" of sorts, then each musician takes a solo, then you come back to the head. The Bauhaus quartet really didn't pay much attention to this orthodoxy. That's not to say that there were no solos, there certainly were a number of great solos, but on most pieces, instead of sitting around while the soloist played, the rest of the band continued to contribute to the musical conversation. Solos had less of a defined beginning and ending as well. While improvisation was still at the heart of this music, it was definitely composed and structured. That may sound like planning to be spontaneous, but in music as well as in life, freedom generally needs some boundaries placed around it in order to be used to its fullest extent.

Another thing I really liked about this band was their ability to play quietly. The best tune of the show was a ballad called "Terms". On a lot of their more subdued music, the horn section of Tony Malaby and Dave Ballou played some really nice soundscape-esque lines. This was interesting because it sort of inverted the band, allowing the rhythm section of Norton and bassist John Lindberg to take over the reigns and move the music forward while the horns provided the continuity. Norton was yet another example of my rule that states the skill of a drummer is inversely proportional to the size of his or her drum kit. He had a bass, snare, single tom-tom, two cymbals, and a high-hat, but he got an incredible sound out it. I think this group would've been even more exciting if there was a dedicated drummer, which would've allowed Norton to play the vibes the whole time. His approach to the vibes was not really rooted in jazz, it was more of a contemporary classical/minimalist approach, which made for some really interesting sounds. It's a shame that the group wasn't able to explore that further.

They definitely left me and the rest of the audience wanting more. I picked up a copy of their live CD "Time-Space Modulator". It's hard for a recording to measure up to a great live performance, but as the memory of tonight's music slowly fades, I'm sure the recording will come in handy, until they make their next visit to the Westcott.

Pinpoint

I heard about this cool new travel website today. It's called pinpoint travel and it's brought to you by our good friends at AOL. It aggregates results from a number of different travel sites and shows you the information. If you want to purchase a ticket, you have to go directly to the site where pinpoint found the ticket. Pinpoint facilitates this by providing you with links that will take you to it directly. It has an extremely slick user interface and as far as I can tell, it's pure DHTML.

March Madness

You may not have known that the shot clock was born in Syracuse. This new monument in Armory Square Park celebrates the birth of the 24-second clock. It's kind of a strange thing to memorialize, but I think it's pretty cool. The monument is functional, which is a nice touch (fortunatelly, there's no buzzer). It is surprising that the original clock is sitting around up the road at LeMoyne College. You'd think that the Basketball Hall of Fame would be interested in having it.

Hotel Darfur

If you haven't seen the movie Hotel Rwanda yet, go see it. If you haven't read this USA Today editorial by its star, Don Cheadle, read it.

Dukes of Gotham

I watched the Dukes of Hazzard over the weekend. It was probably the first time I had seen the show since it went off the air. I stumbled upon a DoH marathon on CMT and was somewhat surprised that I still found the show entertaining. I couldn't help but thinking that the show, which I watched on a weekly basis as kid, was very similar to another one of my old favorites, the old Batman TV series.

Let's consider the similarities. Batman and Robin, two impossibly square crime fighters, spent an hour each week fighting against comical and utterly incompetent villains to keep the streets of Gotham City safe. Bo and Luke Duke, two straight arrows, spent an hour each week fighting against the same comically incompetent villain to defend the honor of the Duke family and all law-abiding citizen of Hazzard County. In the Batman TV series, a cliffhanger at the end of the first episode made the viewers wonder if Batman and Robin would still be alive for tomorrow's episode (at the same bat-time, on the same bat-channel). Since the Dukes were only on once a week, the cliffhanger spanned a single commercial break and generally involved the General Lee getting airborne. Automobiles played an important role in both shows, Batman had the Batmobile and Dukes had their beloved General Lee. Both shows also featured a narrator.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, both shows used quite a bit of over-acting, especially for the villain roles. Batman was way more corny and over-the-top, but I think that Boss Hogg and Rosco P. Coltrane would have pretty much felt right at home had they wandered onto the streets of Gotham City. While the roles of the Duke boys weren't played as straight as Batman and Robin, the way that they maintained a congenial relationship with Boss Hogg in light of his never-ending quest to slander them (or worse) was either a page out the Batman and Robin clean-living playbook or a testament to southern hospitality.

Lily

I really like this photo I took a few days ago. I finally got around to reading the manual for my digital camera and managed to take this macro shot of the flowers I gave Michelle for Valentine's day.

Worst Dictator Ever

In case you missed it, America's most hard-hitting news magazine published its annual list of the world's 10 worst dictators this week. You may have missed the article because it was featured in none other than Parade Magazine. You know, that little magazine that probably comes in your Sunday paper sandwiched between 15 lbs of ads. Believe it or not, this is now an annual feature. Dictators of the world, you have been put on alert. America's senior citizens and homemakers will no longer be vacationing in your countries, depriving your regimes of valuable hard currency. Take that, Equatorial Guinea.

While there are no indications that anyone on this year's top 10 list is a tireless champion of human rights and/or transparent governance, the list is kind of strange. For one, Fidel Castro didn't manage to crack the top 10 this year (he did, however, receive a dishonorable mention). China's Hu Jintao, who has been in power for just over two years, came in fourth place, which was actually an improvement over last year's third place finish, but still out in front of notable de facto presidents-for-life, like Muammar Quaddafi (6th), Robert Mugabe (9th), and Turkmenistan's inscrutable Saparmurat Niyazov (8th). I'm not saying that China should be praised for its treatment of its citizens, but for them to finish fourth behind a failed state rife with civil war, the world's most repressive Stalinist regime, and a rural Southeast Asian country ruled by a ruthless military junta seems a little ridiculous.

Maybe journalistic cross-overs like this are the wave of the future. Perhaps local news networks across the country will start airing segments about the foibles of failed state autocrats between car chases and stories about how linoleum may be hazardous to your health. Some people might see this as progress, but I am not so sure. I have a feeling that compressing complicated geopolitical situations into easy to digest top 10 lists and other eye-catching forms of journalism is going to more harm than good. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go finish the "Are you a good dictator in bed?" quiz in this month's issue of Cosmo.