Baseball, Weaponized Chimps, and Al Gore
George W. Bush managed to get on a baseball card with Mickey Mantle and Derek Jeter. Apparently, someone at Topps decided to photoshop the photo for the Jeter card. The card seems to be going for fairly ridiculous prices on ebay at the moment. Topps officials claim they decided to leave it that way because changing it would cause shipment delays. I think they left it that way as a publicity stunt. Discuss.
In other baseball news, Joe Girardi is in some hot water (though he can't exactly be fired twice) over giving Jon Lieber some advice after Girardi's Marlins lit him up for nine earned runs in 4 2/3 innings on July 31 last season. I didn't see mention of it in the stories I read, but I consulted Lieber's gamelog (mlb.com's was not showing, and espn has gamelogs for the last five seasons, so they win) for the season, and saw a few interesting things. While the July 31 outing pushed Liber's ERA over 6.00, he kept it under 3.50 for the rest of the season. Before talking to Girardi, he had faced Florida three times and given up 18 runs (17 earned), with no outing resulting in fewer than four earned runs. Afterwards, he faced Florida twice, and got the win both times. Now, to be fair, he didn't earn it the first time, as he gave up four earned runs (again) in 5 1/3 innings (but with no walks and seven strikeouts), but when your team scores 14 runs, wins tend to fall your way. The second outing was a 7 IP, 2 ER, 0 BB, 6 SO performance. I'm not saying any of this means anything, mind you, but it would seem that there would be more mention of the fact that Lieber faced the Marlins twice mroe and received wins on both occasions, even if the one was not much deserved.
As you may have heard, we're one step closer to The Planet of the Apes. Weaponized chimps killing bush babies, what's not to like about the story? Mark Steyn has his own humorous take on the tale, relating it to the Mesa SWAT team's study of the use of capuchin monkees in intelligence gathering.
There's a new group opposing illegal immigration -- the Mexican wives of illegal immigrants.
Iranian teachers were given a test with questions mocking Mohammed. Hilarious. The questions at the end seem odd, but fairly ho-hum by th standards of our culture; by the same standards, the one in the body of the story is quite funny.
It seems that Al Gore's residence manages to consume over twenty times the amount of electricity consumed by the average American household, and that's despite having natural gas as well. This is in addition to all his private plane trips (an estimated 1 million miles last year). Not exactly Earth-friendly. What's more, his energy use has actually increased since his propaganda film -- er, "documentary" -- came out. Gore and other apologists for his hypocrisy point to his use of energy-saving measures such as flourescent light bulbs (given the way his electrical use has increased, maybe he's actually confused and switching from flourescent to standard light bulbs; this is Gore we're talking about, would that really surprise anyone?), or that he gets most of his electricity from "clean" sources, ignoring that these sources could be used to provide others with non-"dirty" electricity were it not all being hogged by him. They also point to his "carbon-neutral" philosophy, which essentially means that rich people can buy their way out of the system. I am sick of people who set themselves up as champions of the poor, but live more like robber-barons. In other Gore-ish news, I recommend the Planet Gore blog hosted by National Review.
I decided to use an online calculator for individual "carbon footprint" out of curiosity. I came away with a below-average footprint, but the animation it gave me showed me to be some sort of horrible Earth-destroyer who makes flowers wilt, birds fall from the sky, and trees die on a darkened Earth. I suppose I was starving the plant life of the CO2 it needs to survive, thus depriving the bird of the food it needs, and the darkening of the planet -- well, you got me on that one. At any rate, I think the message it was sending is that I need to work on creating more carbon dioxide.
A long list of numbers and what's special about them. Most of these "specialties" will have little interest, or even meaning, to those who are not mathematically inclined.
The EPA has finally decided to update their fuel efficiency ratings to reflect "real life" driving. The new ratings will be used starting with 2008 models, but they provide a calculator for those unable to determine what kind of gas mileage their present car has been achieving. Or, alternately, for those shopping for a car in the interim.
In other baseball news, Joe Girardi is in some hot water (though he can't exactly be fired twice) over giving Jon Lieber some advice after Girardi's Marlins lit him up for nine earned runs in 4 2/3 innings on July 31 last season. I didn't see mention of it in the stories I read, but I consulted Lieber's gamelog (mlb.com's was not showing, and espn has gamelogs for the last five seasons, so they win) for the season, and saw a few interesting things. While the July 31 outing pushed Liber's ERA over 6.00, he kept it under 3.50 for the rest of the season. Before talking to Girardi, he had faced Florida three times and given up 18 runs (17 earned), with no outing resulting in fewer than four earned runs. Afterwards, he faced Florida twice, and got the win both times. Now, to be fair, he didn't earn it the first time, as he gave up four earned runs (again) in 5 1/3 innings (but with no walks and seven strikeouts), but when your team scores 14 runs, wins tend to fall your way. The second outing was a 7 IP, 2 ER, 0 BB, 6 SO performance. I'm not saying any of this means anything, mind you, but it would seem that there would be more mention of the fact that Lieber faced the Marlins twice mroe and received wins on both occasions, even if the one was not much deserved.
As you may have heard, we're one step closer to The Planet of the Apes. Weaponized chimps killing bush babies, what's not to like about the story? Mark Steyn has his own humorous take on the tale, relating it to the Mesa SWAT team's study of the use of capuchin monkees in intelligence gathering.
There's a new group opposing illegal immigration -- the Mexican wives of illegal immigrants.
Iranian teachers were given a test with questions mocking Mohammed. Hilarious. The questions at the end seem odd, but fairly ho-hum by th standards of our culture; by the same standards, the one in the body of the story is quite funny.
It seems that Al Gore's residence manages to consume over twenty times the amount of electricity consumed by the average American household, and that's despite having natural gas as well. This is in addition to all his private plane trips (an estimated 1 million miles last year). Not exactly Earth-friendly. What's more, his energy use has actually increased since his propaganda film -- er, "documentary" -- came out. Gore and other apologists for his hypocrisy point to his use of energy-saving measures such as flourescent light bulbs (given the way his electrical use has increased, maybe he's actually confused and switching from flourescent to standard light bulbs; this is Gore we're talking about, would that really surprise anyone?), or that he gets most of his electricity from "clean" sources, ignoring that these sources could be used to provide others with non-"dirty" electricity were it not all being hogged by him. They also point to his "carbon-neutral" philosophy, which essentially means that rich people can buy their way out of the system. I am sick of people who set themselves up as champions of the poor, but live more like robber-barons. In other Gore-ish news, I recommend the Planet Gore blog hosted by National Review.
I decided to use an online calculator for individual "carbon footprint" out of curiosity. I came away with a below-average footprint, but the animation it gave me showed me to be some sort of horrible Earth-destroyer who makes flowers wilt, birds fall from the sky, and trees die on a darkened Earth. I suppose I was starving the plant life of the CO2 it needs to survive, thus depriving the bird of the food it needs, and the darkening of the planet -- well, you got me on that one. At any rate, I think the message it was sending is that I need to work on creating more carbon dioxide.
A long list of numbers and what's special about them. Most of these "specialties" will have little interest, or even meaning, to those who are not mathematically inclined.
The EPA has finally decided to update their fuel efficiency ratings to reflect "real life" driving. The new ratings will be used starting with 2008 models, but they provide a calculator for those unable to determine what kind of gas mileage their present car has been achieving. Or, alternately, for those shopping for a car in the interim.
Labels: news roundup
posted by DC | 5:19 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home