Dorks And Losers

Happy New Year’s Eve.

It’s been really cold lately in Sacra­mento this win­ter sea­son. You can talk about global warm­ing all you want, but the more log­i­cal rea­son is the lack of rain. There’s prob­a­bly a sci­en­tific rea­son behind it (I haven’t had enough cof­fee to fig­ure it out), but has any­one noticed that when it rains the air feels warmer?

I feel stu­pid not giv­ing an expla­na­tion, but with drought hap­pen­ing all over the coun­try, the lack of rain has dereg­u­lated the tem­per­a­tures. So instead of cooler rain, we get cold dryness.

Can some­one help a brother out?
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Here are a cou­ple of base­ball tid­bits. Any­one else notice spring train­ing is really only weeks away?

1. Quote from ESPN’s Michael Knis­ley on his deci­sion to not vote for Andre Daw­son in 2008 Hall of Fame bal­lot­ing. Any mar­ried man can empathize.

““And speak­ing of my wife … I didn’t want to have to play this card, but the time has come: She is opposed to Daw­son as a Hall of Famer, as well. She tells me I shouldn’t vote for him. I for one, do not want to be respon­si­ble for the dis­tur­bance in the cos­mos that surely will occur if I line up against her on this issue.”

2. After the Florida Mar­lins traded their two highest-paid play­ers in Miguel Cabr­era and Don­trelle Willis, that leaves prob­a­bly the team with pos­si­bly an even lower pay­roll than their his­toric $15 mil­lion only a few years ago. The team’s three high­est paid play­ers will prob­a­bly be P Andrew Miller, P Kevin Gregg, and IF Jose Castillo. The sad truths behind that news (other than the incred­i­bly cheap owner) is that Miller’s salary is based on the major league con­tract he signed after he was drafted by the Detroit Tigers and that Gregg is a relief pitcher!

3. John McCain recalls meet­ing his boy­hood idol Ted Williams. Here’s a cool quote:

In Feb­ru­ary 1953, [John] Glenn was in the air when he saw [Ted] Williams land his burn­ing F-9F Pan­ther. It skid­ded along the run­way on its belly and stopped. “I looked over my shoul­der and saw this big, tall fig­ure scram­bling out of that cock­pit,” he wrote. ‘I never saw a guy move that fast in all my life.”

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Any­one notice that the Boston Celtics (26–3) are dom­i­nat­ing the league despite their three top play­ers per­form­ing below their career averages?

• Paul Pierce: 2007 AVG — 21.6 PPG, 5.4 RPG, 4.9 APG; Career AVG — 23.5 PPG, 6.5 RPG, 3.9 APG
• Kevin Gar­nett: 2007 AVG — 18.8 PPG, 10.5 RPG, 3.6 APG; Career AVG — 20.5 PPG, 11.4 RPG, 4.5 APG
• Ray Allen: 2007 AVG — 19.1 PPG, 4.1 RPG, 3.1 APG; Career AVG — 21.4 PPG, 4.6 RPG, 3.9 APG

Other than Pierce’s assists this year, every other sta­tis­ti­cal cat­e­gory is done for the Big 3. Of course there are other things to con­sider for the team’s suc­cess, but it is inter­est­ing to see nonethe­less.
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Quick rant about the wis­dom of the Record­ing Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­ica (RIAA), which I’ll prob­a­bly rant in more detail later.

Depend­ing on who you believe, the Wash­ing­ton Post reprots the RIAA is going after own­ers who have music files ripped from legally bought CDs with its lat­est round of law­suits. And then there was the Engad­get clar­i­fi­ca­tion that has the law­suit really being about ille­gal filesharing.

And all this adds to the repeated and seem­ingly onstant neg­a­tive pub­lic­ity around the RIAA, which leads to ques­tions about the organization’s future.

It’s frus­trat­ing to see a group try to manip­u­late the law for their advan­tage. Do they not under­stand what FAIR USE is? To a point, you can’t blame them for try­ing to inter­pret the con­vo­luted nature of copy­right law.
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Pieces of the world:

1. One-for-all ship­ping boxes. Wal-Mart joins the idiocy club.

2. John McCain for president.

3. Another thing to not do to a baby: pour hot cof­fee onto one. But the father should be the one at fault for try­ing to hold his child in one hand while try­ing to drink cof­fee in the other. Sure the Star­bucks employee should have expressed more cau­tion, but geez.

4. Jail­ing a man for steal­ing a $3 ser­loin steak isn’t uncom­mon. The trav­esty is pun­ish­ing the man when he comes back to pay for it. My ques­tion is ‘why pun­ish the man for steal­ing an item you wouldn’t have known he’d stolen if not for the fact he went back to the store and admit­ted to steal­ing it?’ Zero tol­er­ance pol­icy, my ass.

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