Friday, August 09, 2002

posted by kirkaracha to Baseball August 9 11:33 AM. Which political party does your favorite baseball team support? opensecrets.org tracks the political contributions of Major League Baseball teams. [a cross-pollination from MetaFilter] [SportsFilter] Kind of interesting - though less impressive than it seems when you look at the top two clubs. The Baltimore Orioles gave over half a million dollars to Democrats, and the Cincinnati Reds gave almost half a million dollars to the Republicans. Of course, the Orioles are owned by Peter Angelos, a filthy rich trial lawyer (he made something like half a billion dollars representing the state of Maryland in the tobacco lawsuits) and the Reds are owned by Carl Lindner, who also owns a major insurance firm. Hmm. Suddenly, it all makes sense...

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posted by ewagoner August 9 10:45 AM | 4 comments. The Illustrated History of the Roman Empire claims to be the leading on-line resource for Roman history, with over 70mb of content. They have many short essays and lots of graphics and interactive maps. The UI could be better (especially for the maps), but it's a good time sink just the same. [MetaFilter] I haven't had a chance to browse this enough yet, but it looks amazing. I'm always looking for more stuff to waste my time at work looking at. =)

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posted by djfiander August 9 11:51 AM | 5 comments. Charton Heston has symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's But he plans to continue to hold the position of NRA President, at least until the dementia means he can no long aim effectively. [MetaFilter] Best one-liner response I've seen yet.
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Yay, and argh. I just went and filled out an application for that new apartment I've been looking at. It's pretty certain that I'll be getting it - this is good. Yeah, I'll have to deal with all the moving crap, but that can be handled. I'm going to be living some place interesting and new. woohoo! The argh - I then brought my car to the mechanic to get the wheels realigned - it was rattling when I hit high speeds. Guess what - I need four new tires and a bunch of other new stuff in the axel/wheel area (I don't quite get what all of the stuff is, but hey, that's why they do it, not me). Price tag - $700+, and I don't get the car back until midday Monday at the earliest. F'n great...just when I was beginning to feel like things were coming together. Ah well - I'll find the extra money I need somewhere. I just need to relax. =)

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OK, so sports pundits are beginning to debate the end-of-season awards...the Cy Youngs are pretty clearly going to be awarded to pitchers for the Diamondbacks and the Red Sox - don't ask me which of Schilling/Johnson, or Pedro/Lowe, 'cos I have no idea. AL MVP is still a wide open field - as much as Yankee fans want to pimp their boy Soriano, I have a hard time seeing it. I think we'll have to wait and see how the playoff races go. In the NL...well, there's the fun. I hate Barry Bonds. I find this whole 'don't throw Barry any strikes' thing to be ridiculous. Sure, Barry's on a lot of steroids and can kill the ball, and he's got a great eye, but if pitchers just had the balls to throw to him more often, he wouldn't be having anywhere near as amazing a statisical season. .564 on-base percentage? Come ON. It's a joke. That said, anyone who honestly thinks there's anyone in the NL besides Barry with a logical claim for the MVP is nuts. The only way that's even possible is if you throw Barry's season out. Yet somehow, Phil Rogers at ESPN.com argues that John Smoltz is the best candidate. What?!? Yes, John Smoltz. Y'see, he's got a LOT of saves this year. True, every other stat besides his 40 saves is mediocre - 3.94 era, which is LOUSY for a closer, being the most notable. Now, I personally believe that for a closer to win the MVP, he's got to have a Dennis Eckersley in '92 season - 51 saves, 93 strikeouts in 80 innings pitched,  7-1 record, 1.91 era...in other words, far superior in everything but saves to Smoltz this year. Hell, if you want to go with a closer in the NL, take a look at Eric Gagne - 37 saves so far, 75 strikeouts in 56 innings pitched,  .178 batting average against, 8 walks all year, and an era of 2.08. Also, take a look at the rest of Smoltz' pen - it's far and away the best bullpen in baseball. Smoltz may actually be the WORST regular reliever on the team. There are *6* other relievers with 30+ innings on the Braves with better eras than Smoltz. While there are some quality relievers on the Dodgers besides Gagne, 44 year old Jesse Orosco is their second best. And he's only thrown 21 innings. With the Braves, you can count on the whole bullpen to protect leads. With the Dodgers, well, there's basically Gagne. He's having a far superior season to Smoltz. Oh yeah - and the difference in saves? Smoltz has had 44 save opportunities - he's blown 4 of them. Gagne's been in 39 save opportunities, and only blown 2. Gah. That just irritates me. Gagne really is about as close to having an Eckersley season as anyone in the last 10 years not named Trevor Hoffman or Mariano Rivera. But since Smoltz was a big star as a started, a bigger deal is made out of him. There might be some anti-Canadian bias here, too. =)

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House G.O.P. Leader Warns Against Iraq Attack [New York Times: International News] Right - we know the military higher-ups don't like the idea of attacking Iraq. Saudi Arabia just threw a shitfit about it. Western Europe is NOT happy with the idea. The only allies we really have are the Israelis. And that's going to really help in the fight for Arab hearts and minds. Now, Dick Armey is pointing out that this is a stupid idea. Dick Armey has actually been relatively impressive this term. He's retiring after this election, so he can just be a principled loonie. His vehement opposition to the TIPS program got him on my Christmas card list. Actually, I should do that - put together a Christmas card list for politicians who've done things that made me feel a little better about the world in the previous year. Feingold gets on it for more reasons than I can count, McCain, Meehan, and Shays for campaign finance...yeah, I've got to do that. Right - must sleep. I'm going to go read my happy new Boondocks collection and then try to sleep.

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US military 'readies for Iraq action' [BBC World] see above...
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An observation: two Salon blogs have been Slashdotted so far - David Harris' Science News regarding a story he found debunking the eight glasses of water a day myth (I heard the researcher on this project on NPR this morning. I giggled.) and Plan B -- a blognovel, 'cos it's a blognovel. The first, or something. I dunno - it's interesting stuff. I just find it pretty interesting that we (speaking of course of the Salon blog community, thereby allowing me to get some reflected glory of these more accomplished and interesting bloggers) have managed to get two Slashdot stories in the approx. three weeks that Salon blogs have been public. I think that's cool - and a good sign. And now I'm going to go find something interesting enough so as to get ME Slashdotted. =)

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North Korea Adding a Pinch of Capitalism to Its Economy [New York Times: International News] Well, they needed SOMETHING to eat. I'm a bad, bad person.
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I have a confession to make: I desperately want to be a writer. Problem is, I'm not coherent enough over a long period of time to actually get anything decent written. Whenever I try to write a story, it either comes out as a pathetic rehash of a Neal Stephenson novel - for some reason, I always end up aping Stephenson. I don't get it. It's not like I don't read anyone else. Hell, I haven't read any Stephenson in 6 months. But whenever I try to write fiction, it comes out all Stephenson. Argh. Though I do sometimes flounder in an attempt to do a coming of age type story based around a desire to rewrite my junior year in college to have me end up with the right girl, rather than the one I *did* end up with. You can imagine how good THAT turns out. Anyway. Since I started this blog, I've had less of the feelings of insecurity, or whatever you want to call them. Artist's envy? I've always wanted to be someone who could create art, but I have no musical talent to speak of, I'm a horrible dancer, I don't act well, I have no visual aesthetic to speak of, and my writing problems are documented. The best I can do is rant - I've always looked up to Voltaire in admiration, based on what I've read about the salons in Enlightenment France and Voltaire's role at them. I haven't yet really hit my stride with blogging, I don't think, but I'm closer here than I've been in anything else. I can babble here, I can rant here. When something just needs to get dropped - bam, the entry ends. I like this. Screw journalism - blogging is art.

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