Hiatus

To All, and by "All," I mean the 7 readers who read this site (which is a number small enough, that it wouldn't qualify for the southern plural, "All Y'all."

Just a quick note to tell you that I am extending my hiatus. Things at work couldn't be busier, and there are other life things going on as well. This blog is a bit low on the priority list, so it is the first to suffer.

Anyway, I'm not going away for good, so go sign up at Bloglines, enter my site on your list, and it'll let you know when I've become "active" again.

Much love to you all.

Somebody Made a Stinky

The hiatus has been a little bit longer than I suspected. In case you almost care, I've picked up a interim role as snot-nose cleaner at work until December. It sure was hard to turn down an offer that results in no additional pay, lot's of angry end-users and people who have been trained to panic and throw stuff every time they don't get exactly what they are looking for.

Anyway, I just wanted to pop in to chat about sports, kids and the ethical standards of being an adult.

Indiana University had pretty much the best weekend in major college sports this past weekend. Our football team, who was once only a grade away from actually been the choir team, beat the #15 Iowa Hawkeyes at home 31-28. In the 10 years since I went to school there, we never pulled one upset (although we did come close to beating Ohio State in 1995 no thanks to a 4th quarter fumble). They managed to pull this off just a day after the number one basketball recruit in the nation, Eric Gordon of North Central in Indianapolis, decided to back out of his verbal committment to the University Illinois to become a Hoosier.

Now, if I'm an Illini fan, I'd understandably be pretty bent. After all, there is a gentlemen's agreement between basketball coaches in the Big Ten that when a player verbally commits, it is hands off. Well, Kelvin Sampson is the new kid on the block--he missed the entired 2007 recruiting cycle and needed to convince the state of Indiana that, unlike Mike Davis's tenure and the latter Bobby Knight years, the best talent in Indiana would stay in state. They contacedt Gordon's family, they were interested, and a few months later, Eric Gordon decides what's best for him is to play for Indiana. Illini fans are outraged, claiming maleficence and I think it is ok to criticize Indiana and their coaches for breaking a gentlemen's agreement (although, the first rule in any business transaction is that it ain't over until the ink has dried on the paper, and Illinois coach Bruce Webber should be spanked not fully understanding this).

However, at the end of the day, what we have at the center of this "controversy" is a 17 year-old kid. But, not everyone has the same perspective.

Here is what sports columnist Bill Liesse of the Peoria Journal Star had to say about this 17 year-old kid:

Now that Eric Gordon has decided he wants to wear candystripe pants and play for a coach (Kelvin Sampson) who has as much to do with the NHL as he does the NBA, we thought we'd dedicate this week's (NFL) Lines to that steaming pile of two-guard.

Charming. Liesse has been so aggreived by a kid (who isn't even old enough to vote or buy a lottery ticket), he's been reduced to calling him a steaming pile of shit in print. Internet chatboards and personal blogs admittedly have a very low editorial or ethical standard, but shame on Liesse, a supposed professional, and the Peoria Journal Star editors for printing a scatalogical reference towards a 17 year-old kid that was surely a more fitting description of the lumpy blob that sits between their collective heads.

At the end of the day, I'm not shocked that I see stuff like this in print, or that a grown adult could be reduced to such hostility. On the scale of transgressions, this is about a two on the continuum of misplaced rage when compared to the mother that killed her daughter's cheerleading rival, the father that tackled (read: drilled) a pubescent boy playing his son's team in football, the little league coach who beat up a teenage umpire over a "bad" t-ball call, or pretty much anything Philadelphia sports fans have done in the past 20-years.

As long as humans exist, people like Bill Liesse will keep finding ways to leave a giant shit stain on this earth before they leave. Liesse should appologize, first from the standpoint of being a human being and an adult, and secondly to uphold the supposed standards of his profession.

But, knowing the standards in journalism today, I won't hold my breath. Or maybe I should, because it really smells like caca in here.

Still Here

I'm on a bit of a self-imposed hiatus. Partly because work is very, very crazy right now, and partly because the election is mostly what everyone is talking about right now, and I have nothing interesting to say about it.

If you've sent an email in the last few days, I'll get back later this week as I away for almost the entire weekend. You know, doing the climbing/hiking thing.

Maybe I'll hit you up later this week.

So, this is analysis?

I'm working like a slave at work, so posting is still going to be light, but I simply must point out that I will be responding to this article, but a one Thomas P.M. Barnett that Instapundit linked to this morning. North Korea got nukes, but the castor oil is fed not to the enablers of the tyrannical despots who propped up this disaster but, in what is becoming geopolitical chic lately, to the Bush Administration:

Beijing isn't ready, in large part, because we haven't prepared them well to emerge as a trusted great power ally. This administration keeps hedging its bets, sort of treating China like a military enemy, sort of treating it like a diplomatic ally, sometimes demonizing it and sometimes indulging it. Our "separate lanes" policy of trying to compartmentalize our relationship with China has been a disaster in my opinion, keeping us trapped in an immature strategic relationship with Beijing that makes it harder for us to deal with rogues like Iran and North Korea.

That's been the worst strategic failure of the Bush team: as they wade deeper into this Long War, they keep adding enemies without divesting themselves of old ones that should be left behind--in the Cold War. The upshot is that we're undergunned, not outgunned. We don't face bigger threats (on the contrary, they get smaller in aggregate each year), we just suffer from having too small a team on our side.

I'll respond with a fully developed argument once things ease up here at work, but in in short, it takes a severe lack of maturity and a myopic and egocentric view of history to think that this undesired result has to to do with whether our current Adminstration who, because not enough people "like us" in the world, was was unable to "deal" with the North Koreans.

North Korea's objective of attaining nuclear status was much greater than any diplomatic pressure that could have produced otherwise. This article isn't analysis, it is a verbose way of throwing blame at an easy target without even coming close to solving the problem of living in this 21st Century, where tyrannical despots who, given enough time, can acheive nuclear status without 1st world resources.

Nukes are regime insurance for oppressors.

But, I guess it's just easier to blame Bush.

Fleet Week 2007 - SF

The Colossus did another installment of "Carrier News." He reported that the Nimitz was headed to San Francisco for Fleet Week this weekend.

Well, the old boy seems to have done his homework, as you can see the Nimitz (CVN 68) passing by my window on Saturday morning.

If any of you have ever been to Alcatraz, you can probably grasp the scale of the size of this beast much better.

She's currently anchored in the middle of the Bay, between Oakland and San Francisco.

A Tale of Two Cities

Today, downtown San Francisco was the site of an anti-Bush/anti-war rally, which, evidenced by posters that had been up for a month, was neither spontaneous, nor hastily planned. Well, they got a couple hundred people and "shut down a few roads," and by shut down a few roads," it must be clarified that it wasn't due to volume. It was due to protestors linking hands in intersections not allowing cars to pass.

This picture was taken in Justin Hermann plaza where they all gathered to yell, scream and share tin foil hat making tips. I can tell you that this plaza is much bigger and, when I was out there to take a look, these people probably filled a little less than half of it (including their signs and puppets):

Anyway, today was a bad day to be a protestor. First, it rained (that's the wet stuff on the ground underneath their feet in case you were wondering if they all collectively wet their pants). Second, their shouts were drowned out by the war machine that was buzzing them overhead.

Yep, the Blue Angels are in town! They were practicing overhead like they always do the Thursday and Friday before the show, shaking buildings and drawing more attention and curiousity than our dhimmi friends.

Moral of the story: "World Can't Wait -- Drive Out the Bush Regime" plans an anti-war rally which "hundreds" show up to demonstrate. In the meantime, it is Fleet Week in San Francisco this weekend, and a large portion of the city, along with many others, will make up the hundreds of thousands that will be watching the Blue Angels. Personally, I'll be standing on a roof, drinking beer, eating hotdogs and cheering on the ear-shattering F-18s as they pass overhead.

Oh yeah, and the forecast calls for sun.

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UPDATE: In case you were wondering who's behind "World Can't Wait," the SF Chronicle article that I linked to above says the following:

The World Can't Wait's founders included supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party, but in the past year the list of backers on its Web site has grown to 24,000 names. They include actors Sean Penn, Olympia Dukakis and Mark Ruffalo; writers Studs Terkel and Alice Walker; state Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco; and Bay Area "protest mom" Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Work is spanking my skinny, white butt this week. Posting is going to be really light.

Ian is right, if there were monkeys on this site, they'd be able to take over for me and no one would even know.