Codswallop!

Is the Globe "Warming"?

Once again, a conspiracy of scientists is trying to force their 'science' upon us to change our Christian way of life. This time they are openly led by former Vice President Al Gore, whose slanderous film An Inconvenient Truth spews scientific gobbledygook at audiences brainwashed by years of education and critical thinking. After most showings, filmgoers attend drug and sex-fuelled 'abortion parties', at which young pregnant women obtain ritualistic, taxpayer-funded abortions only days before their due dates.

As one small example of the damage education has long inflicted upon our society, consider the ordinary circle. The Bible tells us that the ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter is 3, a nice, Godly number. But did you learn how to draw such a circle in public school? Can you even draw one now, if you try your best? More likely you will produce a circle with the ratio 'pi' (Greek for 'Hail Satan'), which consists of a chaotic sequence of digits: 3.1415926536... and so on. In fact, the number '666' appear in pi no fewer than an infinite number of times, starting with the 2440th decimal place! Today our innocent, baptized children draw their devil circles under the unholy supervision of unionized teachers; tomorrow, they engage in sexual orgies in gym class.

Is this "global warming" hysteria any different? Is it even based on any genuine, observed trends? A typical graph of global warming is found at Wikipedia , and reproduced at left. Now, Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia so hedonistic and vile that it contains an entry on 'Pornography', cannot be trusted, but let us assume for the moment that the graph is accurate. It really does look like the Earth is warming. Until you look at the vertical axis label and realize that the graph encompasses little more than a degree! Not a red-blooded, American degree Fahrenheit, mind you; but a sneaky, Communist degree Celsius, as scientists betray their liberal bias by using the so-called "metric system". Alas, such 'zooming-in' on graphs of data, while unethical, is ubiquitous in the scientific community. By displaying the same data in a more reasonable manner, using an absolute temperature scale and a logarithmic vertical axis as in the second graph, 'global warming' is revealed to be a farce.

Scientists insist, nonetheless, that this miniscule increase is significant, despite the fact that no one has ever died because the local temperature rose from 70 to 75 degrees during an afternoon. To forestall further warming, they demand massive government programs, like 'alternative' energy research, just as other liberals demand recognition of 'alternative' lifestyles, like marriage between people who are gay or of differing ethnicity. If for some reason we do wish to cool the earth down, the solution is simple and without cost. Research has shown that the reflection of visible light by the Holy Spirit is nearly 100%; we only need to pray that the Lord reflect more incident sunlight away from the Earth. The basic mechanism is diagrammed at left. Of course, you won't read about this in any fancy scientific 'journals'; in fact, most scientists dismiss this 'Intelligent Cooling' solution out of hand, without so much as a glance at conclusions published by the finest climatologists at Bob Jones University.

So don’t worry your devout little heads over this ‘global warming’ nonsense. Even if it were occuring, what’s the worst that could happen? Penguins experience nice weather, for a change? Those leftist ‘coasties’ get their ankles wet? A few igloos melt? And if the oceanic plankton levels drop rapidly like ‘you know who’ warn, well, we don’t eat plankton, do we? In a few years, the scientists will give up on this, just as they did on all their other phony environmental crises. Remember the ‘hole in the ozone layer’, ‘acid rain’, or that perpetually disappearing ‘Amazon Rainforest’? Of course you don’t. We ignored those problems until the scientists finally shut up about them. We can do the same this time too!

Cuptrocity!

And we're off to the Round of 16!  Screw that kiddie pool play nonsense, now every game is some team's last.  When faced with the prospect of four years of obsessing over missed opportunities, teams are going to get fired up, take chances, do something that's, I dunno, worth watching.  Soccer at its best!  Am I right?  Wrong.

But the second half and extra-time were turgid with neither side looking likely to score and it was left to penalties to resolve the issue with Switzerland's goal still unbreached in 390 minutes of World Cup action.

Those aren't my words; that's ESPN's description of Ukraine's 0-0 defeat of Switzerland.  I've used a lot of unflattering adjectives in describing soccer, but turgid is a new one.  The word dire also makes an early appearance.  And yes, you read that score right, Ukraine won by a score of 0-0.  If ever a sport were to figure out how to award victory without a single freaking point, it would have to be soccer.

How did this happen, you ask?  After 120 minutes of turgid, dire play, attending fans threatened to riot if another minute of their lives were wasted due to this wretched match.  So the referees huddled up and announced that the match would be settled with a penalty shootout.  I'm kidding, of course.  This wasn't the best idea a crew of beleaguered refs could produce on the spot; no, this is what FIFA mandates if no one bothers to win in overtime.  Players take turns individually kicking a ball toward the goal.  Whoever kicks the most wins!  Instead of playing on come what may, the way all real sports do in the postseason, soccer uses a minor element of the game to settle things.  And if you think I'm wrong, if you think that kicking the ball toward the goal is a major part of the sport, then you've watched even less soccer than I have.

On a personal note, when I sat through 14 nailbiting innings during Game 3 of the 2005 World Series at an ESPN Zone in Denver, if the umpires had announced that a home run derby would settle the game, I would have flipped out.  Downtown Denver would be a smoking hole in the ground.  Moreso than it is now, I mean.  I would have sat there for another 14 innings if necessary, no matter how many beers and fries it took to get to a real conclusion.  Because that's how real sports settle things. 

But I know that soccer fans would slit their wrists before it came to that, so I'll compromise.  Just come up with something else.  How about the first team to build a human pyramid with all their players wins?  No using your hands, though.  This is soccer!  And you have to wear your cleats.  How could hilarity not ensue?  Whoever can bounce the ball on their head the longest?  Whichever team has the hottest fans?  Perhaps determined by the time-honored method of the wet T-shirt competition?  You could even pull the goalposts off to the side, and let the teams run into opposing territory while holding the ball!  Perhaps you could stop play after getting tackled, but get a limited number of chances, perhaps called downs.  Hell, I'll even settle for hitting the ball with a big club until it rolls into a hole in the ground.  But no freaking shootouts.

Oh well, I give up.  As did Switzerland, who now faces a long, dreary journey all the way back to, er, Switzerland, losing by a make-believe-point margin of 3-0.  In other elimination news, England pounds Ecuador 1-0 on a penalty kick by David Beckham, of whom I have actually heard.  This is excellent news, because every day England stays in the Cup is a day in which hooligans may well riot in the streets of Germany, which is the one thing that truly impresses me about this sporting event.  As a quick aside, the German-Polish fight last week was apparently scheduled in advance by hooligans from each side.  Who would have expected such a merger of ruthless brutality and clockwork efficiency?  From the Polish, I mean?

Moving on, Italy beats the Aussies 1-0, on another penalty kick.  If you're counting so far, 3 games, zero goals in the regular flow of play.  It's like if free throws counted for 100 points each, or a holding call led to an automatic touchdown.  The penalty kick took place in the 90th minute, during that fun interval in which the referee stops the game if and when he needs to take a leak.  But the best penalty, listed in the match summary, was to Gianluca Zambrotta of Italy for 'time wasting'.  How is such a call determined?  Is there some manner of meandering ineffectively about the field of play that does not waste time?  Could I get called right now, for writing this instead of Section IV.B-2?  Am I in danger of being booted from this Cup?  Could an 'excessive Italicization' call be next?

Portugal beats the Netherlands by the margin of, naturally, 1-0, Argentina beats Mexico 2-1, and Germany blows out Sweden 2-0.  Lots of excitement and all that stuff, but this post has gone on way too long for me to find something to mock in the match summaries.  But the mockery shall not cease.  I predict at least one game next round with a cumulative score below zero. 

And Now For Something Completely Different...

Everyone loves seeing pictures of other people's families, so, momentarily setting aside baseball, soccer, religion, politics, and other assorted targets of mockery, here are my nieces and nephews together up north a few weekends ago.  The only pictures of them all together had bad lighting, so I tried my best, despite being phototarded, to screw around with the brightness and contrast.

And while taking pictures of various lab stuff for the thesis that, again, no one will ever look at, I took one of a great warning sign on the door of another lab in the same building, which is as good an example of physics humor as any.

Maybe the Scientologists Aren't Any Wackier Than Other Religions, After All

I do not know Los Angeles Times staff writer Louis Sahagun, but I cannot help but feel sorry for the man. Perhaps he's just the new guy, or perhaps he's being punished for having Xeroxed his genitals at the last office party, but Sahagun was assigned to write a long article about the rise of apocalyptic religious groups, particularly in the U.S., Iran, and Israel. The article is hilarious, albeit in a depressing and somewhat horrifying manner, and it's amusing to watch Sahagun struggle valiantly to avoid mocking the people he interviews and writes about.

Defying the old school "sit around and wait for God to get off his lazy Sunday-slackin' ass" mentality, these groups take a more proactive approach, seeking to actively fulfill the preconditions for the return of their favorite religious figures. For example, a group of evangelical pastors met recently in Inglewood to discuss ways to use the Internet to make every person on the planet aware of Jesus' teachings, which will bring about the Second Coming. President Ahmadinejad of Iran, on the other hand, spent millions as the mayor of Tehran on city beautification projects to welcome the return of the Mahdi, a 9th century Shiite prophet.

They've got nothing on Mississippi cattle rancher Clyde Lott, who is trying to nudge the Messiah along by raising a completely red heifer for sacrifice. Even three white or black hairs is enough to render the heifer unworthy of this prophecy. If that were not difficult enough, you just know once he does raise one those Satan-worshipin' PETA bastards are going to be all over his ranch trying to stop the sacrifice.

At least there aren't too many people who believe in this load of, er, beliefs, right? Wrong!

Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.

It didn't. According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway.

Well, I'll certainly sleep better at night now! But those pesky Persians, always a thorn in our righteous behinds, aren't given up that easily:

An opposing vision, invoked by Ahmadinejad in an address before the United Nations last year, suggests that the Imam Mahdi, a 9th century figure, will soon emerge from a well to conquer the world and convert everyone to Islam...At the appropriate time, according to Shiite tradition, the Mahdi will reappear and, along with Jesus, lead Muslims in a struggle to rid the world of corruption and establish justice.

Will emerge from a well? I, for one, am not going to follow some guy just because he climbs out of some well, even if it is a very clean, perfectly respectable well. Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends have emerged from wells. I have nothing against 'wellies', per se. I just wouldn't, you know, follow them into apocalyptic battle. But that's just me.

And notice that last bit about Jesus fighting with the Muslims.  As a sports fan, I know a free agent bidding war when I see one.  So whom is Jesus going to sign with?  Sure, the conventional wisdom says the Christians; they have slightly greater numbers and money to burn, and have been at the top of the heap for a long time.  They're the Yankees of world relgions, and the Yankees usually get their guy.  But the Muslims are younger and have made surprising gains in recent years.  Their aggressive, no-holds-barred style of play is a bit off-putting to some, though no worse than the Christians in their younger days.  But they certainly seem to want it more, and Jesus might deem them a budding champion that He can really be an impact prophet with; and let's face it, He's not getting any younger.  I could see this going either way, frankly.

There's lots more.  Oh well, at least people like this have no political influence.

Cuplimination!

In a development that could only be described as dramatic and devastating, were we talking about a sport other than soccer, the U.S. was knocked out of the World Cup by Ghana in a humiliating 2-1 blowout.  Soccer hooligans rioted throughout major U.S. cities in response, and the first name 'Landon', shared by failed U.S. striker Landon Donovan, has edged ahead of 'Percival' and 'Eustace' as the names most likely to get the crap kicked out of you in grade school.  To quell the unrest, President Bush announced that the citizenship of all U.S. teammembers will be revoked under the terms of the 28th Amendment, passed in the wave of World Cup euphoria that swept the nation in 2002.  Bush will also be required, under the terms of a friendly pre-match wager, to fellate Ghanian President John Kufuor. 

Both Ghanian goals came on penalty kicks, which raises the question of just what on earth the purpose of defense in soccer is.  90% of goals in the World Cup, by my estimation, have been defense-deflected goals or goals on kicks awarded for defensive penalties.  Next Cup, why not just send the U.S. National Bowling Team instead?  What, are we going to win fewer games?  At least they won't get in the way of opposing players.  Teams will actually have to score in the course of regular play, leading to fatigue and possibly opening some late scoring opportunities for the U.S.  Plus, the only justification for not using your hands in a sport is to open them up for holding such things as beer and cigarettes, and I for one believe our best bowlers are up to that challenge.

To add insult to injury, Italy shut out the Czechs 2-0, which would have allowed the U.S. to advance if our team had only beaten Ghana, which our team did not do, as our team completely sucks and did not defeat any other team.  In retrospect, perhaps we should have tempered our optimism after the pre-Cup U.S. 1-0 loss in a scrimmage against the Nepalese Special Olympics team.  Anyways, Ghana and Italy will move on to the Round of 16 to join several other nations that, at the very least, we have the satisfaction of knowing we could probably blow up, that being something we're generally better at.  If I sound frustrated, it's only because I'm thinking about all the crushed hopes, the broken dreams, and most importantly, the lost ridicule to which I would have subjected our team.  Sigh.

Stiff upper lip, and all that.  Moving on, Brazil defeats Japan 4-1 to knock Japan out of the Cup on two goals by much maligned former star Ronaldo, who has been described as 'fat' by everyone from Brazilian President Luiz da Silva to countless soccer pundits, none of whom have apparently been to Milwaukee.  Australia makes the next round for the first time ever with a 2-2 tie (surprise!) against Croatia in a match described once again as 'pulsating'.  Someone needs to buy these writers a thesaurus, and smack them upside the head with it a few times.  Real sporting events are neither 'pulsating' nor 'scintillating', and I am continually amazed that a sport that provokes such a commendable level of fan violence nevertheless inspires such namby-pamby commentary.

Now that we're moving on to the Round of 16 (single elimination, right?  Please?), the pace should get fast and furious, or at least marginally less lethargic.  I can't wait!

Uh Oh, That Latino's Getting All Uppity Again!

Saint Oswaldo Jose Guillen Barrios has landed in hot water yet again, after a brief 20 minute emergence over the weekend. Last week he was denounced by angry, dirty, peacenik hippies for defending his players (incisive, balanced analysis here). This week he let it be known, in characteristically blunt fashion, that hack Chicago Sun-Times journalist Jay Mariotti bats from the wrong side of the plate. This has led baseball pundits and journalists, many of whom likely bat from Mariotti's side of the plate as well, to call for Ozzie's suspension or outright dismissal.

Of course, live by the politically correct sword, die by the politically correct sword. Major League Baseball will have to think long and hard before suspending the only Latino manager to win the World Series for offending some thin-skinned Anglo. For his part, Ozzie explains that, in Venezuela, his slur refers to a person's cowardice, not his sexual orientation. I have no idea whether this is true, but it is certainly not out of character for Ozzie to use English words in an imprecise manner. Mariotti himself admits his cowardice, saying that he is too frightened of Ozzie to ever step foot in the White Sox clubhouse again, because he has been "the subject of physical threats while there over the past few years". Now, I do not wish to disparage The Great One, but a quick glance at Ozzie's career statistics confirms that standing in front of Ozzie even while he swings a baseball bat is hardly hazardous to one's health. He's not exactly someone to pee yourself scared over. Perhaps Mariotti should find a wise, diminutive Japanese handyman to learn some basic self defense techniques from before those big, mean Ozzie Kai teenagers attack.

Ozzie also deigns to defend himself against the accusations of homophobia:

Guillen also told Couch that he has gay friends, attends WNBA games, went to a Madonna concert and plans to go to the Gay Games in Chicago.

Well, there you go! Case closed! Do you know any homophobes who would attend a Madonna concert or a WNBA game? The audiences for these events must be 50 percent gay! And at least 30 percent for the Gay Games.

Personally, I think it's high time that Mariotti apologize for slandering the greatest, and most Venezuelan, manager in baseball history. And for that puddle he left the last time he visited the White Sox clubhouse. That wasn't cool.

F#@kdammit!

Some helpful advice for everyone with a thesis, or a job, or whatever.  If you complete a large part of a project, and you are aware that you will eventually, perhaps years down the road, have to document this, make sure you back up all your work.  If you do not; if you, say, write everything to a CD, no worries.  Just make sure you put that CD in a jewel case.  But if you don't, if you don't spend the 30 seconds necessary to find a case, at least make sure you don't just toss that CD on the desk to be covered in about 70 strata of paper, books, and whatnot.

Because if you do, and if, heaven forfend, that CD has developed a bunch of scratches for some goddamn reason, then you would be screwed.  If that CD, for example, contained the schematics to all the circuitry you designed and built, and you need to print out those schematics for your thesis, then you would have to reverse engineer your own circuits, the understanding of which may well have been stored in those low-lying neurons that drowned in the Great Tequila Tsunami of September '05.  A painless two hour job could be turned into a two day job containing all the fun of asphyxiation, but without its rapid progress.

Not, of course, that anyone will look at these schematics.  In the history of theses, no one has ever so much as glanced at a circuit schematic.  Were archaeologists of the year 3000 to attempt to piece together the society of early 21st Century Western civilization, and were they to discover nothing more to go on than my thesis, they would still pass right by the dozen pages of schematics.  And yet here I am, staring at a circuit board trying to figure out what the hell it does, when I already figured out what the hell it did a long time ago.

The best part is going to be explaining tomorrow to my advisor what I've accomplished in the last few days.  Will the disgust be unspoken, conveyed with a shake of the head, or bluntly stated?  I can't wait to find out!

Cuptastrophe!

The U.S. team draws against Italy 1-1, likely ending the team's dream of getting booted during the next round.  The match featured the ejections of an Italian and two American players, the last of whom finally snapped, yelled "to hell with this!", and just picked up the damn ball and ran for the goal.  The U.S. nearly managed to take the lead when DaMarcus Beasley scored a goal in the 70th minute, but it was called back after referee Jorge Larrionda determined the team was arrayed in an illegal 'attempt to score' formation.

Betraying the media's detachment from reality, the AP article linked above laughably refers to this pathetic performance as a "milestone in the history of U.S. soccer."  On the same note, team captain Claudio Reyna said following this match, "We have a super chance now."  The only way this can be topped is if a teammate says, "It's not about winning or losing or tying, it's about having a super fun time playing a super fun game against a super fun team."  Honestly, with the exception of elementary school kickball I have never witnessed this kind of indifferent attitude toward winning.  I suppose it's hard for the team to get too worked up when it's only four short years until the next Cup.

The U.S. still, inexplicably, retains a chance to advance if it defeats Ghana and Italy defeats the Czechs.  At the rate at which World Cup games are played, this should be determined sometime by Christmas.  Still, I would rather the U.S. had just lost the match versus Italy and been finished.  There's some smidgen of honor in defeat, at least.  There's none whatsoever in a draw.  A tie game is like a gallon of milk that's been in the fridge for a month, or a John Tesh concert, or that fat nameless Baldwin brother who shows up in nothing but crap.  It's distasteful and best forgotten.

On to other games, as earlier mentioned Ghana defeated the favored Czechs 2-0, who had been ranked 2nd in the world, possibly by the same system used for the BCS rankings.  Portugal beat down Iran 2-0 in a controversial match, in which the Iranian coach called for the 'utter destruction' of the Portuguese team and heatedly denied reports that his players possessed any illegal cleats.  Finally, Argentina completely demolished Serbia & Montenegro 6-0, in a match described as scintillating.  Personally, I would love to see American sports events described in the same manner as all these World Cup games.  Just imagine walking into a sports bar on Sundays during football season:

"Hey, I'll take an MGD, what's the score?  How's the game going?"

"The Raiders are up 7-0.  The game's been absolutely scintillating!"

"Umm, I'm going to sit way over there.  Stay away from me."

I'm sure some other games happened too, but who cares, really. 

What Part of 'Rookie' Do You Not Understand?

Chicago White Sox rookie Sean Tracey is on a well-deserved trip back to the minor leagues after disobeying manager Ozzie Guillen.  Following two plunks of oft-maligned White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski by the soulless Texas Rangers in consecutive at bats, Ozzie made the right decision, as he always has without exception, to protect his players and retaliate.  He ordered Tracey to start off the seventh inning by hitting Rangers slugger Hank Blalock with a pitch, in time-honored baseball tradition.  Tracey chose instead to follow in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., noted baseball failures, and induced a groundout after three pitches.  Ozzie promptly pulled Tracey and ripped him a new asshole in the dugout, and Tracey was demoted to the minors the next day.

Perhaps Tracey was only a victim of the environment in which he was raised.  For more than a century, order on the baseball diamond has been maintained by managers occasionally ordering pitchers to bean a batter in such situations.  Umpires knew this was going on, but as long as no one was throwing for a hitter's head, it was permitted.  In the last few decades, however, umpires have increased their enforcement of the rule against this, and players are more often ejected and even suspended.  This is in keeping with the general trend in American society.  Hoping and pleading for authorities to solve your problems and protect you is socialistic and police-statish.  Very 20th century.  Baseball is a 19th century sport, reflecting a time when conflicts were resolved without police or judges.  A time when you took matters into your own hands to defend your own.  A time before Americans turned into a bunch of whining pansies, like Tracey.

A great story about this involves the Dodgers and Giants.  In 1965, in the middle of yet another bitter pennant race between the two teams, the great Sandy Koufax was ordered by manager Walt Alston to hit the great pitcher Juan Marichal, who was at the plate.  Koufax, of course, could put a baseball in a coffee cup a hundred yards away, so the message would be clear; but Koufax refused (note to Tracey: if you pitch like Sandy Koufax, you can write your own unwritten rules too).  So Dodgers catcher Johnny Roseboro, after pitches to Marichal, threw the ball back to the mound by whizzing it just past Marichal's ear.  Or so the story goes; the next part of the story, though, is agreed upon by all.  Juan Marichal finally cracked and hit Roseboro in the head with his bat.  Marichal was suspended, very likely costing the Giants the pennant, as the Dodgers narrowly won, and won the World Series.

The lesson, of course, is clear.  By not beaning a batter, you as the pitcher could be responsible for your teammate getting cracked in the head with a baseball bat.  Good riddance, Tracey.

I Can't Wait to Read Michiko Kakutani's Review of This!

I stopped by the UCLA bookstore briefly today on the way to a meeting and noticed that, unlike the big chains, the campus bookstore features on its most prominent table new highbrow literature, with Nobel and Pultizer Prize winning authors like Philip Roth, Jose Saramago, and John Updike.  I walked around this table and cursed it for being in my way, and went straight for the table targeted at readers of my literary sophistication, which is easily identified by its large plexiglass sneeze guard.

Sure enough, I struck gold with The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead.  Although I didn't plan on buying anything and don't have the time to read it, you just cannot pass up a book like this.  Or rather, you do so at your own peril.  Book review coming as soon as I finish the thesis, or just break down and read it, whichever comes first (can't wait to see the Vegas odds on that outcome...)