Or, I didn't steal this from George Carlin, honest! These are all my own thoughts. Can I help it if great minds think alike?
(1) Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Obviously, the egg. Something that was not quite a chicken laid an egg that hatched a chicken, or so evolution suggests.
(2) What's more important, great hitting or great pitching? Harry Caray and Steve Stone used to argue about this all the time on WGN-TV broadcasts of Cubs' games. I forget which of them took which side, but for my money, the answer is simple: great hitting. To win a game, you have to score at least once. While there are ways to score without getting a hit, all you can do with great pitching is to keep the other guy from scoring. In that case, if everyone plays to his/her best, you'd wind up w/ a 0-0 tie. Great pitching cannot give you a win; it can only keep you from losing. Great hitting is they way to go.
(3) I wonder why all the fundamentalists out there who refuse modern medical treatments have stopped to consider that the treatments they are refusing may well be the miracles God promised them in the first place. Where is it written in stone that the only things that can be miracles are totally out-of-the-blue and off-the-wall? Why can't miracles be things God's wisdom has inspired mankind to develop?
(4) [A bit of an Andy Rooneyish observation for varied flavor.--Ed.] Don't you just hate getting a fortune cookie that contains advice instead of a fortune? When did that change, anyway? Probably had something to do with oversensitivity to "political correctness," I'd guess. I about fell out of my chair last night when I got a fortune cookie that had a real fortune in it: "You will soon find someone sympathetic to your cause."
I have no idea which cause is meant; I am just thrilled that it's a fortune and not some wimpy "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" advice for a change.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Saturday, August 06, 2005
The "Lady" Doth Protest Too Much, Methinks
Do you remember Katherine Harris? She's the erstwhile Florida Secretary of State (who threw the 2000 FL election results to her boss's brother, Dubya) and currently a Congresswoman who is now running for a US Senate seat from the Sunshine State.
Maybe a visual will help: she's the one who was all over the TV news in November, 2000, wearing positively garish makeup much too heavily applied. She looked like a cartoon. Or a strumpet. My mother thought she was a "forty-plus" something trying--unsuccessfully--to look like a college-age sylph. I can agree with that.
Well, she doesn't like that image of herself, poor thing. Judging from the black and white news photo accompanying the AP article in yesterday's paper, however, nothing has changed. Her lipstick is way, way too dark in color value, and even in black and white, her blush is visible.
But she claims that the newspapers "colorized her photograph[s]" and that she does not actually wear her makeup in the gaudy way "the Democrats" have lampooned. [How does one "colorize" a black and white photograph that way, I wonder?--Ed.]
She apparently never saw any rebroadcasts of her live TV appearances in 2000. If she had, she'd realize she couldn't use the "they colorized my photograph[s]" excuse. Her makeup was way too obvious, and way too heavy . . . while in contrast, absolutely everyone else on screen looked entirely normal. So my TV color wasn't out of adjustment, either.
Who is she trying to fool? Is she that clueless? Or is she angling for the "poor me, I'm so put upon" sympathy vote? I find it impossible to believe that anyone with even 1/2 a brain will take her seriously, but then again, P.T. Barnum was right: no one ever went broke underestimating the taste [read that "sense"--Ed.] of the American public.
Robert Burns must be laughing his ghostly head off over this! ("Oh would the power some giftie gie us, to see ourseles as ithers see us.")
Maybe a visual will help: she's the one who was all over the TV news in November, 2000, wearing positively garish makeup much too heavily applied. She looked like a cartoon. Or a strumpet. My mother thought she was a "forty-plus" something trying--unsuccessfully--to look like a college-age sylph. I can agree with that.
Well, she doesn't like that image of herself, poor thing. Judging from the black and white news photo accompanying the AP article in yesterday's paper, however, nothing has changed. Her lipstick is way, way too dark in color value, and even in black and white, her blush is visible.
But she claims that the newspapers "colorized her photograph[s]" and that she does not actually wear her makeup in the gaudy way "the Democrats" have lampooned. [How does one "colorize" a black and white photograph that way, I wonder?--Ed.]
She apparently never saw any rebroadcasts of her live TV appearances in 2000. If she had, she'd realize she couldn't use the "they colorized my photograph[s]" excuse. Her makeup was way too obvious, and way too heavy . . . while in contrast, absolutely everyone else on screen looked entirely normal. So my TV color wasn't out of adjustment, either.
Who is she trying to fool? Is she that clueless? Or is she angling for the "poor me, I'm so put upon" sympathy vote? I find it impossible to believe that anyone with even 1/2 a brain will take her seriously, but then again, P.T. Barnum was right: no one ever went broke underestimating the taste [read that "sense"--Ed.] of the American public.
Robert Burns must be laughing his ghostly head off over this! ("Oh would the power some giftie gie us, to see ourseles as ithers see us.")
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Happy Cows No Longer Come From California
OK--let me begin by saying I was half asleep when I heard what I think I heard on NPR this morning. So, what I am about to say may be merely the product of my fevered imagination. Nevertheless, . . .
Some group of scientists has tested the amount of pollution (methane, mostly) produced by cows in California, and determined that cows pollute more than cars now do.
As a result, the state is going to implement pollution-control requirements. Expensive pollution-control requirements. And the dairy farmers are most emphatically not happy about it. It may cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, each, to comply.
A lobbying group for the dairy farmers has started lawsuits challenging both the measurement methods and the results in the hopes that the proposed requirements will not be forced on them.
Several Central Valley dairy farmers are threatening to take their cows and the jobs their farms provide and leave the state.
If this isn't "real California cheese," I don't know what is!
Some group of scientists has tested the amount of pollution (methane, mostly) produced by cows in California, and determined that cows pollute more than cars now do.
As a result, the state is going to implement pollution-control requirements. Expensive pollution-control requirements. And the dairy farmers are most emphatically not happy about it. It may cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, each, to comply.
A lobbying group for the dairy farmers has started lawsuits challenging both the measurement methods and the results in the hopes that the proposed requirements will not be forced on them.
Several Central Valley dairy farmers are threatening to take their cows and the jobs their farms provide and leave the state.
If this isn't "real California cheese," I don't know what is!
The Bad News Bears Have Nothing On R. Palmeiro
I have been following the steroid-use controversy concerning Rafael Palmeiro with trepidation. Let me say first that when Rafael came up w/ the Cubs, I thought he was going to be a really good ballplayer, and I never did understand why the Cubs traded him.
My respect for him dwindled when he started hawking Viagra a few years ago.
My respect regrew once he quit doing that and when I realized the record-breaking hitting achievements he'd posted in the interim.
I was entirely stunned to learn of his suspension for steroid use. After all, back in March during the Congressional hearings on steroid use in baseball, he was adamant that he was not a user, despite what Jose Canseco wrote in his book. [I now hear echoes of "I did not have sex with that woman."--Ed.] At the time, I was not the only one to think that Palmeiro's stature increased to the same degree that Mark McGwire's decreased when contrasting Palmeiro's statements with McGwire's evasive testimony.
I was willing to give Palmeiro the benefit of the doubt about his testing positive: perhaps it was due to a minor ingredient in an over-the-counter concoction he'd taken. I knew he had nothing to gain and tons to lose (especially at this late stage of his career) by taking steroids and getting caught . . . and then I learned that the steroid in his system was stanozolol, the same steroid that felled Olympic and world-champion sprinter Ben Johnson. It is not something that just shows up in trace amounts in anything OTC.
The very next day, a Seattle Mariners pitcher (whose name escapes me at the moment) was also suspended for testing positive. He offered the same increasingly-lame-sounding explanation: "I have no idea how the steroids got into my system."
Right. And all unicorns will be destroyed if the guy doesn't share his Emerald nuts with his little girl.
All the facts must be revealed and evaluated in each and every case before we simply choose to ignore the accomplishments of the current major leaguers. Every little relevation, however, especially about someone so high profile due to his on-field exploits, chips away a bit more at my resolve to hear all the evidence before making up my mind.
Palmeiro eventually may still be elected to the Hall of Fame, but certainly not on the first ballot. Maybe not on the first five or ten ballots. Of course, if even more bad news comes out about his steroid use, he may have demolished his chances to be enshrined at all. We can but wait and see.
Contrast the weekend induction of Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandburg into the Hall. Boggs's tribute to his mentor, his father, was incredibly moving. Sandburg's speech, focusing on how he approached everything he did to show his respect for the game, was genuinely inspiring. (I know the already-inducted HOF members liked Sandburg's speech a lot. They were nodding in agreement all the way through it.) Boggs was only the 41st player to be voted in on his very first eligibility; Sandburg should have been voted in on his first appearance on the ballot. Nevertheless, they both embody what baseball can produce when those who play the game play it right.
This week's suspensions cannot sully or tarnish the weekend's ceremonies, but they sure do muck up the game today.
My respect for him dwindled when he started hawking Viagra a few years ago.
My respect regrew once he quit doing that and when I realized the record-breaking hitting achievements he'd posted in the interim.
I was entirely stunned to learn of his suspension for steroid use. After all, back in March during the Congressional hearings on steroid use in baseball, he was adamant that he was not a user, despite what Jose Canseco wrote in his book. [I now hear echoes of "I did not have sex with that woman."--Ed.] At the time, I was not the only one to think that Palmeiro's stature increased to the same degree that Mark McGwire's decreased when contrasting Palmeiro's statements with McGwire's evasive testimony.
I was willing to give Palmeiro the benefit of the doubt about his testing positive: perhaps it was due to a minor ingredient in an over-the-counter concoction he'd taken. I knew he had nothing to gain and tons to lose (especially at this late stage of his career) by taking steroids and getting caught . . . and then I learned that the steroid in his system was stanozolol, the same steroid that felled Olympic and world-champion sprinter Ben Johnson. It is not something that just shows up in trace amounts in anything OTC.
The very next day, a Seattle Mariners pitcher (whose name escapes me at the moment) was also suspended for testing positive. He offered the same increasingly-lame-sounding explanation: "I have no idea how the steroids got into my system."
Right. And all unicorns will be destroyed if the guy doesn't share his Emerald nuts with his little girl.
All the facts must be revealed and evaluated in each and every case before we simply choose to ignore the accomplishments of the current major leaguers. Every little relevation, however, especially about someone so high profile due to his on-field exploits, chips away a bit more at my resolve to hear all the evidence before making up my mind.
Palmeiro eventually may still be elected to the Hall of Fame, but certainly not on the first ballot. Maybe not on the first five or ten ballots. Of course, if even more bad news comes out about his steroid use, he may have demolished his chances to be enshrined at all. We can but wait and see.
Contrast the weekend induction of Wade Boggs and Ryne Sandburg into the Hall. Boggs's tribute to his mentor, his father, was incredibly moving. Sandburg's speech, focusing on how he approached everything he did to show his respect for the game, was genuinely inspiring. (I know the already-inducted HOF members liked Sandburg's speech a lot. They were nodding in agreement all the way through it.) Boggs was only the 41st player to be voted in on his very first eligibility; Sandburg should have been voted in on his first appearance on the ballot. Nevertheless, they both embody what baseball can produce when those who play the game play it right.
This week's suspensions cannot sully or tarnish the weekend's ceremonies, but they sure do muck up the game today.
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