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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Saturday, March 20, 2004 :::
Guess who picked Alabama over Stanford?
Roll, Tide!
::: posted by Steven at 8:15 PM
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I picked two-seed Gonzaga to win my Kitchen Cabinet bracket, but in Dean's contest, I chose both Gonzaga and ten-seed Nevada. So if Nevada completes the upset it has under way against Gonzaga, that's going to nard me pretty good (so to speak) in the KC bracket, but it'll work out pretty well for me in Dean's thing.
There have been too few upsets this year.
UPDATE: Yes, I had Gonzaga winning the whole thing in my KC entry. Shut up.
::: posted by Steven at 4:57 PM
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They've been saying on the radio that the swallows return to Capistrano each year on March 19. Do they all come exactly that date? If so, how do they keep track of the leap years? At least the year 1900 must have thrown them.
::: posted by dWj at 12:58 PM
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Okay, round 1 is over, and in my tournament contest, Kate Malcolm has 46, Steve has 35, and I have 33. Each of us still has eight teams in the tournament. You can see team values at my web site.
Incidentally, that's not likely to see real time updates this round, as I'm leaving town for the weekend.
::: posted by dWj at 12:41 PM
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Dean, I wasn't foolish enough to pick Kentucky past the third round -- I had them losing to Providence.
No, actually, I just checked -- I did have them beating Providence. I knew I had Providence in that game, anyway.
UPDATE: I must have been looking at the wrong bracket when I wrote this -- in fact, I had Providence over UAB.
::: posted by Steven at 1:06 AM
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A reviewer for Slate calls Eternal Sunshine "the best movie I've seen in a decade."
::: posted by Steven at 1:02 AM
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Friday, March 19, 2004 :::
As we all know, John Kerry voted in favor of going to war in Iraq, but against funding the rebuilding. That's not really inconsistent, I suppose -- you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, but there's no reason you can't break eggs without making an omelet. But he has told us this week that before he voted against making the omelet, he voted for it -- he only voted against making the omelet because it was going to have the wrong kind of cheese, or something.
Well, Rich Lowry has dug up an exchange from Face the Nation:Sen. KERRY: I think we need--I think we need to roll back the top end of the Bush tax cut.
McMANUS: If that amendment does not pass, will you then vote against the $87 billion?
Sen. KERRY: I don't think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to--to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That's irresponsible. What is responsible is for the administration to do this properly now. And I am laying out the way in which the administration could unite the American people, could bring other countries to the table, and I think could give the American people a sense that they're on the right track. There's a way to do this properly. But I don't think anyone in the Congress is going to not give our troops ammunition, not give our troops the ability to be able to defend themselves. We're not going to cut and run and not do the job. As Lowry points out, it's hard not to infer from that exchange that a vote against the bill would be, in Kerry's judgment, "irresponsible". I'd say Kerry has some egg on his face.
::: posted by Steven at 11:27 PM
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I can't be the only person watching Kansas perform this exegesis of UIC and thinking that I shouldn't have picked Kentucky past the third round.
::: posted by dWj at 10:49 PM
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At NRO today, Mike Potemra has a short, positive review of the new film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie that I've thought looks intriguing.
Speaking of science fiction and fantasy, I half-watched (I often work on my laptop with the TV on) the first episode of Fox's new comedy/fantasy Wonderfalls (that's the official site -- if you don't like Flash and/or you have a slow connection, you might prefer IMDB's site) last night, which will regularly be on Fridays (including tonight). I quite enjoyed it. It's about a young woman who starts getting lip -- and instructions -- from inanimate objects, and ends up helping them out through series of improbably coincidences. It's a premise which could be done well or done poorly, and -- based on the pilot episode -- I think this one clicks.
::: posted by Steven at 1:02 PM
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In the Kitchen Cabinet basketball contest yesterday, I did significantly worse than the selection committee (which I consider embarassing). I tried to call fewer upsets than I did last year, but I still called too many (didn't pick Manhattan, though). UTEP came close enough to upsetting Maryland that I don't feel too bad about calling that one.
::: posted by Steven at 11:44 AM
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Tim Blair points out the similarity between the apparent assassination attempt in Taiwan and the JFK assassination, which I think we all thought of. He goes on to comment, "I bet someone named Lee was involved."
::: posted by Steven at 11:41 AM
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Some bracket notes- At one point I had Duke, a 1-seed, in the championship game in my bracket for the Kitchen Cabinet, while I had UConn, a two seed, in the same spot in my pick for a contest that doesn't weight by seed. This seems odd, and I ultimately changed it, but the reason was relatively straightforward: I was picking 3-seed NC State to make it to the Final Four in the KC bracket. The anomaly was created by the rule that one pick a team to win a game that one also picked to play in that game; this simple constraint makes the contest much more complicated. (More so in Kate Malcolm's seed-weighted bracket than in the traditional contests, where the teams one would typically choose for each line will tend to follow the constraint automatically -- though not always. Bonus points for picking a low seed will often make it worth picking the upset in the short term, but if the low seed does win, they are then less likely to progress than a higher seed would be.)
- I didn't know until Sunday night that the traditional region names for the 16-team blocks had been dropped in favor of the names of the cities in which the "regional finals" (do we still call them that?) are played. (Hence the East Rutherford regional, instead of the East.) Presumably they felt the old monikers were inconsistent with the new "pod" system, in which the tournament committee really consists of aliens who only look human. Or rather games are asigned to first round locations without regard to the "regional" in which it's taken place; both may be true. Anyway, I think it's far worse for, say, Denver to host an Atlanta pod than for them to host a South regional pod. If they don't like the traditional region names, call them red, blue, green, and white. (The women, whose first two rounds are at campus sites, continue to use East, West, MidEast, and MidWest.)
::: posted by dWj at 9:32 AM
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"They did not suffer life-threatening injuries. They urge the public to cool down," Chiou said at a news conference. That probably reads differently to a Taiwanese than to an American. "Remain calm", perhaps. If it was said in Chinese, we can blame the translator.
::: posted by dWj at 8:37 AM
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I saw Lily Malcolm's question about a "game reset" before I noticed that CBS was using the term for a statistical game summary. From the words themselves, I supposed the phrase refered to a stoppage in play, but it's even stranger than I had been thinking.Anyhoo, as the NCAA tournament goes on, so does my contest, and while I have the team values on the web, I'm not going to create a page for actual participant results; I'll just announce those here. And at this point Kate has an early lead, with 36 points and all 10 teams still in the tournament; Steve and I lost BYU, and have 22 and 16 respectively. Kate has four teams playing today, and Steve and I have five each. (Steve picked Nevada; Kate picked Manhattan. I picked Nevada to win the first round in my bracket contests — let me know whether my yahoo picks are publicly visible — but was more confident they'd lose to Gonzaga if they beat Michigan State than that they'd beat Michigan State in the first place, so I was looking for what I felt to be safer points elsewhere. Like BYU.)
::: posted by dWj at 8:28 AM
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You've probably seen something about this before checking here, but:Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian has been shot while campaigning, a day before a presidential election, but is not in critical condition, his spokesman said.
Chen had been rushed to hospital in the southern city of Tainan. Vice President Annette Lu was also wounded, but both were conscious and not in critical condition, Chen's chief of staff, Chiou I-jen said. No word -- as far as I've seen -- on a culprit.
::: posted by Steven at 4:14 AM
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A thirty-meter asteroid was discovered Monday night, less than three days before passing very close to the earth (about 3.4 earth diameters, or an eighth of the distance to the moon).
::: posted by Steven at 2:58 AM
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Thursday, March 18, 2004 :::
Princeton leads Texas at halftime, 25-22.The problem I have with this Princeton team is that it has a tendency to find a way to lose after playing well against name programs. They lost close to NIT team Oklahoma, and they lost close to Big 10 bottom-scraper Minnesota; they kept Duke close for 25 or 30 minutes, as I recall. They went up 20-12 in this game, but Texas has closed the gap; I fully expect Princeton will lose, quite possibly by something in the neighborhood of 3 points.
::: posted by dWj at 8:12 PM
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My NCAA contest only drew 3 entries, two of which were my brother and me. The third was sent anonymously from Kitchen Cabinet, and is presumed to be Kate until someone asserts otherwise. A page is keeping track of the values of teams; a page will later be posted tracking participant totals. The pages will both be sorted by score after each round, as I feel like it.Note that all three of us chose North Carolina, Georgia Tech, and Wake Forest. There seems to be consensus that some of the ACC was underappreciated.
::: posted by dWj at 2:35 PM
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In case you're watching us but not the scoreboards, Manhattan leads Florida 50-40 with 11:25 left.
::: posted by dWj at 1:54 PM
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The women's NIT bracket. Iowa State hosts Miami(OH) tomorrow night in the second round.
::: posted by dWj at 1:50 PM
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This is a few days old, but it's important:FRANCE IS JOINING WITH CHINA in an effort to intimidate Taiwan: China and France will hold rare joint naval exercises off the mainland's eastern coast on Tuesday, just four days before Beijing's rival, Taiwan, holds presidential elections. China's official Xinhua news agency made no link between the exercises off Qingdao -- about 780 miles from Taiwan's northernmost point -- and the election. But the show of military strength and solidarity signaled China's desire to isolate the self-governing island before the vote and its first-ever referendum, which Beijing views as a provocative step toward independence.
Seeing as Tuesday was a couple days ago, does anyone have news since the exercises happened?
UPDATE: Yeah, so my brother got to this a few days ago. I actually saw that, but forgot about it by the time I blogged this.
::: posted by Steven at 12:38 PM
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My brother mentioned the Iowa State men; Iowa State's men's and women's basketball teams played a double header last night; both teams are in the NIT. (Tickets were in fact sold as a package.) Before the men won, the women did as well; both move on.
::: posted by dWj at 11:16 AM
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During a round of drinking in Beijing a [Chinese] general bragged to an American diplomat that a number of [North Korean] senior officers have defected to communist China. The general made the rhetorical remark, "Can you imagine what their society must be like if they defect to us?" That's from a new book on one of the most screwed-up -- and one of the most dangerous -- countries on the earth. NRO is running a series of five excerpts this week; that quote is from the first excerpt, "Gulag Nation". That was followed by "Joy Brigades" on Tuesday, "Gang-Run Gulag" on Wednesday, and probably a fourth by the time you read this.
::: posted by Steven at 8:29 AM
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A politician's voting record can be misleading, if used properly by an opponent. Sometimes a legislator will vote against a bill because of a minor feature, or because (s)he doesn't feel it goes far enough, and (s)he is holding out for something better. I believe Bob Dole voted against the Balanced Budget Amendment -- which he supported -- because it was going to lose either way, and he wanted to be able to move to reconsider, which may only be done by someone who voted on the losing side of a question. And it's an unfortunate feature of politics that a vote can have a defense which would be excellent were it not far longer and duller than the sound-bite "Senator Jackson voted against cutting your taxes!"
That said, if you are running for office, and you are increasingly perceived as a flip-flopper, then you should never utter the statement, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it."
Is this clear to everyone?
::: posted by Steven at 1:53 AM
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In NIT (college men's basketball) news, Iowa State won and BU lost. Iowa State plays Florida State next (I don't know when).
Incidentally, I think I saw a BU women's basketball player on the subway today.
::: posted by Steven at 1:43 AM
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The Bush campaign has a news release on its web page with facts and citations backing up their latest ad. All campaigns should do that.
::: posted by Steven at 1:35 AM
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I heard about this on the radio the other day, but I couldn't find mention of it on the Telegraph's website, so I assumed I had been hallucinating.
WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit?
An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in British prisons.
On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn’t have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.
Blunkett’s fight has been described as "outrageous", "morally repugnant" and the "sickest of sick jokes", but his spokesmen in the Home Office say it’s a completely "reasonable course of action" as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison. The government deems the claw-back "Saved Living Expenses".
Paddy Hill was one of the Birmingham Six. He spent 16 years behind bars for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings by the IRA. Hill now lives on a farm with his wife and children near Beith in Scotland. He has been charged £50,000 for living expenses by the Home Office.
It wasn’t until two years ago that Hill was finally awarded £960,000 in compensation. However, during the years since his release, while waiting for the pay-out, the government had given him advances of around £300,000. When his compensation came through, the £300,000 was taken back along with interest on the interim payments charged at 23% – that cost him a further £70,000.
Link from Volokh.
::: posted by Steven at 1:20 AM
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Back when I read novels more regularly, one of my favorite authors was Sci Fi/Fantasy writer Orson Scott Card. He writes about politics on occasion, too, and I usually consider him interesting and thoughtful, if somewhat long-winded, even though I disagree with him on most issues of domestic policy. My roommate has pointed out an essay against gay marriage, which you can read or not. I know I'll read it or not.
::: posted by Steven at 12:54 AM
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The Massachusetts House banned alcohol from the House floor a few years ago, after a late-night budget session which made headlines the next day, not for the content of the budget. Naturally, I opposed this prohibition. Maybe I would have considered it a good idea if I were more impressed with the members when they're sober, but I couldn't really see the harm. Still can't.
If I were going to give a speech in front of the House, I'm sure I'd do better after a drink. Maybe after two, if I were especially nervous about the audience and especially comfortable with the material. And I'd certainly want a drink if I were going to listen to a speech to the House.
::: posted by Steven at 12:40 AM
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Wednesday, March 17, 2004 :::
Britain is going through the annual ritual of its national budget. I mention this only to note that alcoholic beverages are forbidden in the House of Commons, with one exception: the Chancellor of the Exchequer may drink while presenting the budget.
::: posted by Anonymous at 9:37 PM
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It was mentioned on the radio this morning that a woman programmed both her drug dealer and her probation officer into her one-touch dialing. Guess what happened.
::: posted by dWj at 9:51 AM
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Perhaps I should have referred to "Senator Clinton". By "her predecessor" I did mean Moynihan.
::: posted by dWj at 9:35 AM
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Of course, it is better known as St. Patrick's Day, i.e. the day the Irish all celebrate their conversion to Catholicism by going out to get drunk on one of the few calendar days of the year that always falls in Lent.
::: posted by dWj at 8:15 AM
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Today is Evacuation Day in Suffolk County, Massachusetts. That's the county that includes Boston (though not Cambridge). This is by legislative decree -- much of what the legislature does is, at least by analogy, vaguely scatological, so I have my own explanation of what "evacuation" refers to.
Officially, however, Evacuation Day commemorates the day in -- I believe -- 1777, when the British troops were forced to "evacuate" from Boston. Pretty much everyone knows that the real reason the legislature created the holiday is because they weren't quite shameless enough to take Saint Patrick's Day. The notion that they're excited about celebrating the British evacuation of Boston is bull-[expletive deleted], which goes back to my interpretation of "evacuation".
::: posted by Steven at 7:56 AM
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You know, it's great how easy it is these days to register a domain name and set up a web site.
::: posted by Steven at 2:37 AM
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Singer Jessica Simpsonwas introduced to Interior Secretary Gale Norton and gushed: "You've done a nice job decorating the White House."
::: posted by Steven at 2:31 AM
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There's a new poll out on the presidential race. Kerry-hating Democrat Mickey Kaus sums it up:Isn't the synthesized lesson of this poll: Voters are unhappy. The incumbent is vulnerable. But the Democrats have nominated Kerry. Just a stray thought. CBS has a full story, which isn't worth quoting, because it isn't funny and the election is eight months out.
::: posted by Steven at 2:12 AM
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Dean, does "Hillary Clinton's predecessor" mean Pat Moynahan or Barbara Bush? Or George Bush (41)?
::: posted by Steven at 2:02 AM
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Tuesday, March 16, 2004 :::
Looks like Barack Obama will be the Democrat in the race for the Senate seat from Illinois, and Jack Ryan will be the Republican. (I expected both results; I did not expect Obama to run away with it like he's doing.) Much will be made — is being made, has been made — of Obama's skin color, but before anyone turns "black Senator from Illinois" into "Carol Mosely-Braun", I should assure you that while he may be as far left as Hillary Clinton, he is quite possibly as smart as her predecessor. I'll disagree with him, I'll vote fecklessly against him, I'll moan when he votes, but I won't be embarrassed by him.
::: posted by dWj at 11:15 PM
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I wrote the following about two and a half weeks ago, then saved it as a draft. My brother noted it and suggested that even if I didn't feel like finishing and editing, I should post it as-is, which is what I'll do, with this introduction tacked on. I do want to add that I think the "blood-for-oil morons" drowned out not only the good arguments against the Iraq campaign, but also the silent majority of the people who were opposed to the war. In other words, I hope I didn't convey the impression that most of the opponents of the Iraqi venture were blood-for-oil morons.
I shouldn't really be writing this -- I have a lot to do this week, and I'm behind. Let me put it this way: it's 3:40 in the morning, and I really shouldn't be getting to bed. There are more important things than sleep, but I've been moved.
I spent a few minutes away from my precious spreadsheets to read Buckley, and I encountered this, regarding abortion:The 1-day-old child is protected with the full force of the law. The proposition that he is without rights when he is minus 1 day old is nothing more than a social convention conflating various concerns. One is for the mental health of the mother, one for the perceived satisfaction of the mother, another for the national birthrate, and still another for the unspoken hope that we'll have fewer black and Hispanic births. [emphasis added] Well.
I've seen this before, but I don't see it often. And I have to give the pro-life side -- as a whole -- credit, since I rarely hear them assume the worst of their opposition. I rarely catch implications that people who are pro-choice take their position, by and large, because they like the idea of killing babies. I catch a little more in the opposite direction -- implications that pro-lifers are searching for ways to control the women-folk. Or so it seems to me; I consider myself pro-choice with exceptions, rather than pro-life with exceptions, so maybe I take more notice of NARAL overdoing it. Or maybe the pro-choice side around here is more presumptuous, because they're dominant -- maybe if I were in Nebraska, I would see the reverse.
It isn't just Buckley that's setting me off. I've engaged in several discussions of gay marriage in the last week, mostly jumping in when I've felt proponents of either side to be making a weak argument. I don't think I've heard worse arguments about an issue since the lead-in to the Iraq war (which had some good reasons against it, most of which were drowned out by the "blood for oil" morons).
The worse arguments about gay marriage seem to be the slippery-slope arguments. As my entry of 11 hours ago indicated, I don't see a strong mechanism leading from one change in policy toward something else. The argument that gay marriage will lead to polygamy is, I think, insufficiently made; I don't know that it's impossible, but I think there are arguments against polygamy which don't apply to gay marriage. On the other hand, regarding the Federal Marriage Amendment, I was asked the other day, roughly, "if we write an exclusion of gays from marriage into the constitution, then who's next?" My only reaction was: I give up -- who is next? Is there a movement to ban Jews from eating cotton candy which is going to be somehow emboldened?
::: posted by Steven at 12:37 PM
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John Derbyshire calls attention to another reason why it's good to hate the French:China and France will hold rare joint naval exercises off the mainland's eastern coast on Tuesday, just four days before Beijing's rival, Taiwan, holds presidential elections.
::: posted by dWj at 10:47 AM
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Well, I'm sort of in 3 NCAA contests — counting my own — and I've finished rough drafts for each. I'd like to hereby assert that I have no idea what's going to happen in that Duke bracket. I feel moderately comfortable elsewhere.
::: posted by dWj at 10:44 AM
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I awoke at 7, and the radio told me that today's election day. (That must be why all those ads were on TV.) So I think I'll go to work, come home and vote tonight, but I won't be home tonight until close to 9, so that don't work. (Polls close at 7.) So I dropped by the polling place on my way to work. Polls opened at 6, and I was there at 7:20. The poll workers repeated to each other "Republican" with a surprised tone, and I commented to the guy handing me the ballot, "Don't get a lot of those?" "You're the first one." "Well, you can look at the returns tonight and see how I voted," I told him.
::: posted by dWj at 9:38 AM
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Monday, March 15, 2004 :::
Tired of basketball and terrorism? How about coffee, then?I previously noted that the coffee at my new place of business isn't terribly good; the coffee I got at work two months ago was fresh ground, while this is mud. (If you find a pun there, it's your fault for looking for it.) I'd think it was instant if I hadn't seen it being made. Anyway, this was an early morning, and a Monday to boot — though I didn't sleep in past 8 yesterday morning, which helped — but I thought to give it another shot, but sarcastically. If something is bad you might as well make it worse, 'cause that'll show it. Sugar, cream. White instant coffee. But it turns out, in fact, to be better than black instant coffee, at least for a couple fluid ounces. Then they become indistiguishable, as "undrinkable" becomes the sole, overwhelming characteristic.
::: posted by dWj at 9:47 AM
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Am I the only one who thinks that second-round matchup between Princeton and Air Force would be fun to watch? Probably.
::: posted by dWj at 9:47 AM
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For next year, I should really construct a scoring system that can go positive or negative; pick as many as you like and short as many as you like. Or something. For this year, the rules are as they were stated. Winner gets a free tune from iTunes, unless you can talk my brother into keeping it. (We will break any ties based on the order in which your teams are listed; try to list your top picks near the top of your list.)Incidentally, the bracket from the official NCAA site has fine print stating that it's not to be used for "contests, office pools, or other gambling activities." I'm tempted to call them to ask what the line is on whether fully one third of the copies downloaded are not used for such contests.
::: posted by dWj at 9:47 AM
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Sunday, March 14, 2004 :::
I spoke two hours ago with an aunt who's in town, and who went to Iowa State University and is an even bigger fan of the school's sports teams than Steve and I are. It was mentioned that with only four teams from the Big 12 in the NCAA — both Colorado and Missouri were left out — the NIT might decide it didn't want the team that finished eighth. Well, in fact, the NIT took five teams from the Big 12, including Iowa State, which will host Georgia on Wednesday. (This might induce my aunt and her family to cut short their visit to Chicago.)
Iowa is also in; last year the two teams played in the NIT. This year that wouldn't happen until the championship game. I could go for that.
::: posted by dWj at 11:25 PM
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I got me a new toy that allows me to have both of my windows computers running at the same time and to switch a single keyboard, mouse, and monitor between them. My third computer is incompatible with this, unfortunately, and it occurs to me that, as a practical matter, it's that and the newest computer that I'd really like to use at the same time. So this is really a very cool but completely useless toy for me. So of course I'm keeping it.
Oh, but I have a cross-over cable. If I hooked that between the oldest computer ("stonesoup") and the dual-boot ("cookiemonster"), I could switch over to cookiemonster and ssh to stonesoup. But now I'm starting to remind myself of people I fear. I really never wanted to be a computer nerd; I've just kind of fallen into it.
By the way, if anyone wants to suggest a name for my newest computer, feel free. Know that it's a fairly new, low-end Windows XP box and is being used to communicate with the outside world; its internet capabilities probably ought to play a significant role in its naming, as they will in its usage.
::: posted by dWj at 7:42 PM
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The women's bracket is on line.
::: posted by dWj at 6:34 PM
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I'm having trouble imagining anyone winning the NCAA men's tournament right now. UConn's women are a two seed, by the way.
::: posted by dWj at 5:52 PM
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Also, Putin won comfortably in Russia. That was a foregone conclusion, and I'm not sure I would have even wanted any plausible alternative, but I certainly wish it had been closer.
::: posted by dWj at 5:51 PM
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Al Qa'ida wins Spanish Elections
::: posted by Steven at 4:28 PM
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Division III men's basketball is down to its final four; Wisconsin-Stevens Point plays John Carroll and Williams plays Amherst on Friday. (Stevens Point versus Carroll? Those are football schools!)
::: posted by dWj at 9:36 AM
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Colby Cosh is still running with his new "Bertuzzi" programming format. Some writer at the Globe and Mail has suggested that Canadian hockey sportscasting legend Don Cherry -- known in part for some contrarian viewpoints -- needs to be "balanced". Colby responds:It would be amusing indeed if the CBC were required to be "balanced" in this way. We could give equal time after the second period of every Hockey Night in Canada game to someone who doesn't like hockey and is prepared to wax eloquent on its shortcomings. Similarly, we could require that the time given to the Olympics be matched every two years by a long miniseries about the corruption of the IOC, the bizarre origins of the Games in a quasi-fascist health cult, and the illegal training regimens favoured by certain teams, including, at one time, Canadian sprinters. We could have a rule whereby, when CBC radio plays any piece of music whatsoever, someone be given equal time to explain why it stinks, and that when the CBC promotes Canadian artists, a corresponding airspace be turned over to their specific critics, or simply to someone who wants to complain about the general mediocrity of Canadian art. Every late-night CBC movie could be matched by a savage two-hour dissection of its flaws. I'd watch.
Later in the same entry, Colby writes:I wasn't going to respond to Jim Kelley's recent ESPN column, which claims that goonery in hockey is a consequence of the Canadian influence on it. One of my readers responded neatly with two words: "Warren Sapp". I didn't follow the link to Kelley's piece, but it seems a bit odd. Would you think that the biggest difference between American culture and Canadian culture is that Canadians are more aggressive?
Colby concludes by mentioning Wayne Gretzky and Boston Bruin legend Bobby Orr, which reminds me of an anecdote. Apparently, Gretzky was once asked what it was like to be the second greatest hockey player ever. He responded, "you must be from Boston." His assumption was right.
Oh -- speaking of hockey, BU's hockey team managed to upset BC in the first round of the Big East hockey tournament. This is the number eight seed over the number one seed -- BC was ranked number three in the country, while BU was 10-15-9. The two teams had played four previous games this year, with BC winning all four. If that's not enough, the win is magnified by the fact that this was a best of three series that BU won.
::: posted by Steven at 12:48 AM
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