The Most Hated Baseball Team

The New York Yankees?  Nope, sorry.  According to an algorithm used by Neilsen Company, the Cleveland Indians are the most hated team in baseball, with the Red Sox next.  The Bronx Bombers are fifth.

 Last Monday the Yankees went to the White House where they were met and congratulated by President Obama, who got a few partisan jabs in about his being a Chicago White Sox fan.

Yankees Captain Derek Jeter, who knows a thing or two about grace under fire, quipped, "He'd better be careful with that. There are a lot of Yankees fans who vote."

Cape Wind Approved

At a press conference today in Boston, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced approval of the long-disputed and litigated Cape Wind project on  Nantucket Sound off Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.  Kudos to the Obama administration for making energy independence the priority it needs to be.  And thanks to Deval Patrick who supported Cape Wind while others in political office in Massachusetts did not.

This is the first major U.S. wind farm to be approved, over the objections of "environmentalists" like the Kennedys and Kerrys who didn't want their waterfront home views affected.

Read more about Cape Wind and environmental hypocrisy from a previous post, A Mighty Wind.

Jaroslav Halak

With my beloved New York Rangers playing April golf, I'm cheering again for the Montreal Canadiens, the New York Yankees of ice hockey.  Tonight's 4-1 victory over hockey's best 2010 regular season team, the Washington Capitals, had me swinging a white towel with the Montreal faithful.  Outshot 54-22, the Canadiens' Game Six win means the series goes to a deciding Game Seven at the Capitals' Verizon Center on Wednesday.  The series difference - Montreal goalie Jaroslav Halak.  Not bad for an 1 - 8 Eastern Conference match up.

Seeing 10-Cup winner "Le Gros Bill" Jean Beliveau in the stands took me back to the last time I was at the legendary Montreal Forum on May 21, 1979 when the Canadiens defeated the New York Rangers to win their 24th of 26 league-leading Stanley Cups, one fewer world championships than the New York Yankees.  I ran into Beliveau in the stands, as well as Montreal native and boyhood Rangers idol Rod Gilbert, both of whom had retired but were still smitten with Cup fever.

 

Aller le Club de hockey Canadien!

Currency Fluctuations

Placebos

In an article titled Mind Over Meds in The New York Times, David Carlat, a psychiatrist, describes himself as a "psychopharmacologist" who specializes in "medication rather than psychotherapy."

"I realized, uncomfortably, that somehow, over the course of the decade following my residency, my way of thinking about patients had veered away from psychological curiosity. Instead, I had come to focus on symptoms, as if they were objective medical findings, much the way internists view blood-pressure readings or potassium levels. Psychiatry, for me and many of my colleagues, had become a process of corralling patients’ symptoms into labels and finding a drug to match.

"A result is that psychiatry has been transformed from a profession in which we talk to people and help them understand their problems into one in which we diagnose disorders and medicate them."

Carlat goes on to document the efficacy of SSRI drugs like Prozac and Paxil versus placebos in the treatment of depression.

"Research studies have shown that therapy is just as effective as medications for many conditions, and that medications themselves often work through the power of placebo. In one study, for example, researchers did a meta-analysis of studies submitted by drug companies to the F.D.A. on seven new antidepressants, involving more than 19,000 patients. It turned out that antidepressants are, indeed, effective, because on average patients taking the pills showed a 40 percent drop in depression scores. But placebo was also a powerful antidepressant, causing a 30 percent drop in depression scores. This meant that about three-quarters of the apparent response to antidepressants pills is actually due to the placebo effect."

See previous posts Head Games and DSM IV about the complicity of the American Psychiatric Association, Big Pharma and medical insurers and how they conspire to treat symptoms directly with quick diagnoses and pills instead of understanding patients and trying to resolve the underlying root causes.

Earth Day

Earth Day turned 40 last week.  Happy birthday to all you tree huggers.

Gonorrhea Lectim

There's a fungus amongus. According to Reuters:

"A potentially deadly strain of fungus is spreading among animals and people in the northwestern United States and the Canadian province of British Columbia, researchers reported on Thursday.

"The airborne fungus, called Cryptococcus gattii, usually only infects transplant and AIDS patients and people with otherwise compromised immune systems, but the new strain is genetically different, the researchers said. 'This novel fungus is worrisome because it appears to be a threat to otherwise healthy people,' said Edmond Byrnes of Duke University in North Carolina, who led the study.

"The new strain appears to be unusually deadly, with a mortality rate of about 25 percent among the 21 U.S. cases analyzed, they said."

Meanwhile, a clever Wall Street Journal reader posted this comment in response to the paper's editorial On Presidential Rhetoric:

"The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of an old disease. The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim. It's pronounced "Gonna re-elect 'em," and it is a terrible obamanation.

"The disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior. Many victims contracted it in 2008...but now most people, after having been infected for the past 1-2 years, are starting to realize how destructive this sickness is.

"It's sad because Gonorrhea Lectim is easily cured with a new drug just coming on the market called Votemout. You take the first dose in 2010 and the second dose in 2012 and simply don't engage in such behavior again; otherwise, it could become permanent and eventually wipe out all life as we know it.

Several states are already on top of this, like Virginia and New Jersey, and apparently now Massachusetts, with many more seeing the writing on the wall."

The Dark, Dark Hours

GE Theater presents Ronald Reagan and James Dean. You crazy, Dad?

Gone Fishing

Heading to the Vineyard tomorrow to open the house and get in a little spring fishing.

For you fishermen out there, here's a way to keep your skills up all year - the Potty Fisher, available online from the U.K.  As the songs goes, "There will always be an England."

 "This hilarious toilet game is an ideal fishing gift for birthdays, Christmas and Father's Day!  Try and catch four fish in the bowl of water with the provided fishing rod as you sit astride your toilet.  Who knows how long you may be in there?  With this Potty Fishing toilet game there is no need to rush things.  Sit back, relax and enjoy a spot of fishing whilst you finish your business.  The Toilet Fishing Set includes 4 fish, a perspex bowl, fishing rod and 'Do Not Disturb' sign!  Treat an avid fisherman to Potty Fishing, pack him a few sandwiches and a flask of tea and watch him trudge up the stairs for an hour of quiet time."

4-20 Encore

4-20

This is a big f'ing deal

Gordon Crovitz laments the incivility of reader comments on online news sites. While I share his disappointment, to expect otherwise is simply unrealistic.  Incivility is pervasive. Our political leaders behave with unbridled ego and verbally tar and feather opponents with gusto. It's become blood sport. And the pundits in newspapers and on TV and talk radio get paid to take the low road. So why should their customers be held to a higher standard?

Here are some excerpts from Crovitz's Wall Street Journal article, Is Internet Civility an Oxymoron?

"For those of us tempted to hope that new technology might improve human nature, the Web has proved a disappointment. The latest online reality: comment sections so uncivilized and uninformative that it's clear the free flow of anonymous comments has become way too much of a good thing.

"Part of the problem is that people who conceal their names seem to feel free to say things they never would if their identities were known. There are obvious cases—dissidents living in authoritarian countries—where anonymity is needed. But as Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote recently, message boards dominated by anonymous comments often become 'havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.'

"The Web is a great liberator, giving millions of people the ability to offer opinions with the ease once reserved for, say, newspaper columnists. The downside is that comment overload and anonymity create more noise than wisdom. Since it's now clear human nature hasn't improved with the transition to digital media, we should cheer efforts to make it as easy for readers to decide which commenters to trust as it has become to post the comments."

Check out The Washington Post's dot.comments blog by Doug Feaver. He actually blogs about the paper's commenters and what they have to say. It's one way to reward and encourage people to play nice in the sandbox.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton, the man whose wife launched a thousand ships by coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" while he had sex in the Oval office with an intern and then lied about it to a grand jury, is once again wagging his finger at the nation, telling us in a New York Times op-ed,  What We Learned in Oklahoma City, to "assume responsibility for our words and actions." I know he means well, but really.

"We are again dealing with difficulties in a contentious, partisan time. We are more connected than ever before, more able to spread our ideas and beliefs, our anger and fears. As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged."

Echo chamber? How about glass house?

The New York Times smartly turned off the reader comments option on Clinton's editorial.

Blood Red Skies

The ash plume from the volcanic eruption in Eyjafjallajokull Iceland has closed airports across Europe. It also has atmospheric scientists, climatologists and even art critics aflutter about the longer term implications of the ash's impact.

Simon Winchester, author of “Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded,”  writes in The New York Times that the 1883 earthquake in what is now Indonesia led to paintings like Edvard Munch's The Scream and the discovery of the jet stream.

"Krakatoa’s dust left the world not just a remarkable legacy of unforgettable art but also spurred a vital discovery in atmospheric science.

"The skies in the fall of 1883 became weirdly changed. The moon turned blue, or sometimes green. Firefighters in New York and elsewhere thought they saw distant fires, caused by clouds of boiling dust. The vivid ash-tinged sunsets, and the post-sunset horizon rainbows of purple and passion fruit and salmon-red, were said to be the most memorable.

"Painters in particular did their best to capture what they saw. An obscure Londoner named William Ascroft, astonished by the nightly light show along the Thames, turned out a watercolor every 10 minutes, night after night, working like a human camera. More than 500 Krakatoa paintings survive him. “Blood afterglow,” he jotted down on one canvas, noting the magic done by refractive crystals of dust; “Amber afterglow,” on another.

Grander artists, like Frederic Church of the Hudson River School, were spurred to action too. In December, four months after the Javanese blast, Church hurried up from Olana, his Moorish castle near Poughkeepsie, to Lake Ontario, and one perfect evening caught the vivid crepuscular purples over the ice on Chaumont Bay, knowing full well — as science already did — that it was a volcano 10,000 miles away that had painted the sky for him.

"And one even more famous painting speaks of Krakatoa as well: recent research suggests that Edvard Munch a decade later painted “The Scream” while remembering a night in Oslo that had been much affected by the volcanic dust. Indeed, the climatic records show that the swirling orange skies behind the terror-stricken face match perfectly those recorded that winter in southern Norway.

"It was more than art that resulted from Krakatoa’s outpourings of trillions of tons of fine siliceous ash. It left a lasting effect on science as well.  The heavier dust from Krakatoa slowly fell to earth, coating ships and cities thousands of miles away. But the micron-sized particles from the volcano’s mouth did not fall back at all. Instead, they were carried ever upward, and ended up floating around the world for years, on streams of globe-girdling winds that were not then even known to exist.

"Weather-watchers, carefully noting just when certain skies in certain cities were inflamed and colored by the passing high-altitude dust clouds, produced a map showing just how these wind currents moved around the world. The first name they used for the phenomenon was the “equatorial smoke stream.” Today it is, of course, the jet stream — a discovery that remains perhaps the most important legacy of Krakatoa."

Turn Off

I trust these have been removed from the Vatican's souvenir shop.

Church & State

Interesting data . . . especially given the degree to which evangelicals have been maligned.

According to  Mark Chaves, professor of Sociology, Religion and Divinity at Duke University:

 "Notwithstanding extensive media coverage of political mobilization within conservative churches, conservative white Protestant churches do not stand out in their level of political activity. Catholic and black Protestant churches, overall, are more politically active than either liberal or conservative white Protestants. About three-quarters of Catholics and black Protestants attend churches that engaged in at least one of these eight political activities, compared to about half of white Protestants, either conservative or liberal (Synagogues’ political activity rates, by the way, are as high as the Catholic and black Protestant rates).

"And, although political activity of some sort is common in American churches, religious traditions have different political styles. Distributing voter guides is the most common way that white conservative Protestant churches do politics. These churches distribute voter guides at about the same rate as Catholic and black Protestant churches do, but they are much more likely to distribute voter guides produced by Religious Right organizations. Two-thirds of the white conservative Protestant churches that distributed voter guides used guides from those sources, compared to only 1 in 5 mainline churches, 1 in 10 Catholic Churches, and 1 in 20 black churches. We tend to think of voter guides as a political tool of conservative Protestants, but mainline Protestants, black Protestants, and Catholics all have their own versions of voter guides.

"Beyond voter guides, black churches are much more likely than white churches to engage in electoral politics by having a candidate or elected government official speak at the church, or by participating in voter registration drives. And Catholic churches are much more likely than Protestant churches to engage in the direct action and pressure group politics of marching, demonstrating, and lobbying elected officials."

Yankees Class

I know, I'm partial.  But there's a certain majesty to the New York Yankees and today's matinee home opener was resplendent.  Bernie Williams was just the ninth former Yankee in history to throw the first pitch at a home opener, the Yankees christened their first return to their new stadium as world champions with the giving of the World Series rings, and to have former teammate and 2009 World Series MVP Hideki Matsui there in Angel red made it all the more unforgettable.

As reported in The New York Times, captain Derek Jeter had this to say about Matsui:

"He is totally fluent in English,” Jeter told the reporters. “He knows everything you guys are saying,” which could be true. Matsui has been known to drop one-liners in English to American reporters he knows.  Asked what he remembered most about Matsui, Jeter said: “When he broke his wrist, he apologized to his teammates. Never saw that before.”

And, befitting the winningest team in baseball, team manager Joe Girardi upped his jersey number from 27 to 28!

Really most sincerely dead

 

Meinhardt Raabe, dead at 94.  Raabe was one of the Munchkins in 1939's The Wizard of Oz.  He played the coroner who pronounced the Wicked of the West dead with the sing-song line, "As coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, and she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead."

Raabe was one of 124 Munchkins and one of nine who had a speaking role.

Class Act

Saw Alejandro Escovedo at the Tarrytown Music Hall the other night.  It was an acoustic set, accompanied by the amazingly talented David Pulkingham on guitar.  He opened with Always a Friend from 2008's Real Animal.  Later he sang Sister Lost Soul, which he dedicated to Alex Chilton, Stephen Bruton and Malcolm McClaren.  Escovedo played a number of songs including Anchor and Down in the Bowery from his next album, Street Songs of Love, due out on June 29.

Between songs, Escovedo said his son Diego is 17 and playing in a punk rock band in NYC.  He said he asked him what he thought of his father's music and his answer was "it's old music."  Escovedo asked "you mean like great, classic music?"  "No," his son replied, "like old music for old people."

The encore was Faith, also from the new album, for which Escovedo and Pulkingham were joined by Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople.  This YouTube video of Escovedo and Pulkingham dueting on Juarez-Rosalie was shot a couple of years ago but captures the moment well.

Confession

Tiger, what were you thinking?

Nike's new B&W commercial with a remorseful-looking and mute Tiger Woods looking into the camera while his late father Earl Woods' voiceover asks "what were you thinking?" is being called a brilliant, strategic marketing masterstroke, pun intended.  On the eve of the Masters Tournament in Augusta, Nike has bet big on one its biggest celebrity athletes.

But is it credible?  What has Tiger learned?  That it's a real drag to get caught having affairs with dozens of women, including strippers and porn stars, and it will cost you dearly as a husband, father, friend, professional golfer and paid endorser of products and services?  Did he learn to hire savvy consultants like Ari Fleischer, George W Bush's former press secretary, to rehabilitate his image and business opportunities?  I think allowing Nike to use his late father's voice says it all.

Newsflash:  At yesterday's practice run at Augusta, Tiger's bodyguards accosted a female fan watching from the edge of the green.

"Bodyguards shielding Tiger Woods confronted a golf fan and accused her of being his porn star mistress, The Sun reported Wednesday.

"Guards accompanying Woods on his comeback a The Masters Golf Tournament were given photos of at least a dozen girls with links to the shamed star.

"One mistook the attractive fan for X-rated actress and striptease dancer Joslyn James on Tuesday and approached her asking, "Excuse me, ma'am -- are you the stripper?

"The fan was left speechless until the guard realized his gaffe and apologized."

Moments later Tiger was seen sexting from the green.  Hole in one coming up.

Virtual Ice Cream

Wow, Ben & Jerry's virtual ice cream.  What will they think of next?

Happy Easter

Presidential Ambition

What motivates our President's ambition?  Why does Obama behave and lead the way he does, bowing there and ignoring public opinion here?  Shelby Steele has a pretty good idea.  Like Obama, he has a black father and a white mother.  Here are some excerpts from his WSJ op-ed, Barack the Good.

"Suppose you were the first black president of the United States and, therefore, also the first black head-of-state in the entire history of Western Civilization. You represent a human first, something entirely new under the sun. There aren't even any myths that speak directly to your circumstance, no allegorical tales of ancient black kings who ruled over white kingdoms.

"If anything, you may literally experience yourself as a myth in the making. After all, you embody a heretofore unimaginable transcendence over the old human plagues of tribalism, hatred and ignorance. Standing on ground that no man has stood on before, wouldn't it be understandable if you felt pressured by the grandiosity of your circumstance? Isn't there a special—and impossible—burden on "the first" to do something that lives up to his historical originality?

"A historic figure making history, this is emerging as an over-arching theme—if not obsession—in the Obama presidency. In Iowa, a day after signing health care into law, he put himself into competition with history. If history shapes men, "We still have the power to shape history." But this adds up to one thing: He is likely to be the most liberal president in American history. And, oddly, he may be a more effective liberal precisely because his liberalism is something he uses more than he believes in. As the far left constantly reminds us, he is not really a true believer. Rather liberalism is his ticket to grandiosity and to historical significance.

"Of the two great societal goals—freedom and "the good"—freedom requires a conservatism, a discipline of principles over the good, limited government, and so on. No way to grandiosity here. But today's liberalism is focused on "the good" more than on freedom. And ideas of "the good" are often a license to transgress democratic principles in order to reach social justice or to achieve more equality or to lessen suffering. The great political advantage of modern liberalism is its offer of license on the one hand and moral innocence—if not superiority—on the other. Liberalism lets you force people to buy health insurance and feel morally superior as you do it. Power and innocence at the same time.

"Mr. Obama's success has always been ephemeral because it was based on an illusion: that if we Americans could transcend race enough to elect a black president, we could transcend all manner of human banalities and be on our way to human perfectibility. A black president would put us in a higher human territory. And yet the poor man we elected to play out this fantasy is now torturing us with his need to reflect our grandiosity back to us."

Progressivism

Jon Stewart channels Glenn Beck.  Very funny. 

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