Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Amendments

The proposal to ban flag burning in the Constitution failed. Now Congress should set its sights on something more useful: a Constitutional amendment banning stupid Constitutional amendments.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Larry Brown is Out

The New York Knicks are a disaster. What will make this firing even worse is that coming off a historic worst season, the team will almost certainly have a better record next year, which they will of course, then attribute to the new coach, Isiah Thomas.

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Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Misc Baseball Comments

Item #1
I haven't been reading Bill Simmons a lot lately, but he had a decent column today about the Mets / Dodgers game on Tuesday that featured the reunion of Nomar, Pedro and Derek Lowe.

Item #2
Jason Grimsley admitted to using human growth hormone. Was it working? His career ERA is 4.88! Up until now, Jason Grimsley was best known for stealing Albert Belle's corked bat.

Item #3
Greg Nettles had some comments about Barry Bonds passing Babe Ruth on the all-time home run list. He pointed out how Barry Bonds cheated. Nettles is one to talk (see #9 on this list). Someone GAVE him a bat full of superballs? Come on!
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Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Pearl Jam: Life Wasted Music Video

Just trying out that handy YouTube embed feature again.

This is Pearl Jam's first music video in years, since the animated video to Do the Evolution. Artist Fernando Apodaca was involved in this process. I've also seen a video for World Wide Suicide out there, but for some reason that one isn't considered official?




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Sink


This is the photo of a sink in a restaurant bathroom I was in recently. Isn't it strange? The water comes through the clear tube and drips down the large center hole. Then the water goes into a drain under those rocks. How unnecessary!


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Pearl Jam at Continental Airlines Arena, East Rutherford, NJ - 6/1/06

My second Pearl Jam concert of the year was a great one. It's the last concert I'll go to for a while. The last few months, I got to see U2 at MSG in November, then Pearl Jam at Irving Plaza in May.

Overall, I've been to 8 Pearl Jam concerts now. In 1998 in Boston at Great Woods, then 2000 for 2 shows at Jones Beach, 2003 at Nassau Coliseum and 2 shows at MSG, Irving Plaza and now the Meadowlands.

We had fan club tickets for this one. Section 110, almost directly off stage right.

It was a very solid show, although there were a few odd miscues. The sound on vocals and Stone Gossard's guitar went out in the middle of the song "Alone" causing the band to pause, the stagehands to come out, and then the band resumed. Eddie Vedder jumped in the air at the end of "Alive" and landed funny, falling to the ground. He limped off stage and returned for a second encore with a bit of a limp. Eddie mixed up the words to "Once" as well.

I think we could see Susan Sarandon off on stage left with her son. Eddie looked over there a few times. It's possible that the Olsens were there too.

It was a great show. Surprisingly they had laser lights for the first song, "Severed Hand." I think that was the most lighting effects I've ever seen at a Pearl Jam show. They played 7 songs off the new album, 5 songs off Ten (their first album) and 5 off Vs (their second). The set was 30 songs in all, about 2 hrs & 15 mins.

The concert was well received in the press, with positive reviews from the Post, Newsday and a Jersey paper I don't recognize.

A funny thing at the concert - Eddie Vedder mentions the "last time the band was here" they got booed playing the song Bushleaguer. Not quite - they got booed at Nassau Collesium (I was there) in April, 2003. Apparently the band was flustered by this and cut their set short (see 4/30/03 concert here).

Back on 7/9/03 at MSG, Eddie Vedder read a bunch of signs in the crowd, including one that read, "Play Leash, you pussies!" (Leash is a rarely performed song). Eddie said at the time, "There's fuckin' children here, you know? You fuckin' cocksucker motherfuckin' asshole prick!"

This time, he mentioned that sign and said, "You know, I think it shows we're a resiliant type of band. You boo us, call us pussies and yet we still come back every fuckin' time." They then played Leash!! Pretty awesome. At the end of the song, Eddie said, "Pussies no more!"

What a great way to play to the crowd.

A great show all around. I wish I could have gone again on 6/3.

You can get download this concert (and previous PJ concerts) for $9.99. I just downloaded my copy and it sounds pretty good, although there were a few drum solos where the mix is a little heavy on the guitars, making it hard to hear the drums.

Setlist:
Severed Hand, Corduroy, World Wide Suicide, Do The Evolution, Marker In The Sand, Given To Fly, Dissident, Even Flow, Army Reserve, Immortality, Green Disease, Not For You/(Modern Girl), Alone, Jeremy, Why Go, Life Wasted, Rearviewmirror
Encore 1: Wasted Reprise, Man Of The Hour, Come Back, Footsteps, Once, Alive
Encore 2: Last Exit, Comatose, Leatherman, Glorified G, Leash, Baba O'Riley, Indifference


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Google Spreadsheets

Who knows if it'll be any good, but Google will be testing a new web-based spreadsheet. You will be able to download the sheets to your computer and edit them, and also invite other users to sign in and work on the web saved sheets. Apparently they will also be looking to do the same for word processing.

I don't know if this idea will work, after all, there are a ton of different functions one can use in Excel, and it's not clear if many of them will be available on the web-based spreadsheet. But one thing is clear to me, and that is that Google is really on the forefront of innovation. Yahoo! and Microsoft seem to be lagging behind in their web services. GMail forced the competing web-based email services to offer more space and Google Maps forced Yahoo and Microsoft to update their maps programs. Then the Google Desktop software allows you to search documents on your PC better than anything included with Windows, and has little Gadgets that are essentially duplicates of the Yahoo Widgets.

The innovation at Google is pretty cool. They're coming up with new ways to do "old" things (like Calendar) or new things altogether. Google Spreadsheets is just another example.
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Monday, June 05, 2006

2,000 Pounds!

Pat Robertson leg presses 1000 pounds in the video, but 2000 pounds in the photo.

The New York Times reports that Robertson is 76 years old and the world record for leg press is 1335 pounds. It's probably just liberal bias.


UPDATE (6/7/06):

Here's the video of him lifting 1,000 pounds.


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Chrebet Retires

Wayne Chrebet retired officially from the New York Jets the other day, and he must have been one of the most popular Jets ever.

The story is pretty well known but here it goes again: a 5'10", WR with small size from Hofstra University walks on to the New York Jets training camp and eventually makes it to the team and has a pretty major role over 11 years.

The New York Jets website has a nice video interview with Chrebet on the front page and they did a nice news article with a ton of quotes from teammates, coaches and opposing coaches (including Edwards, Parcells, Belichick, Crennel, Mangini, Coughlin). Pennington, Coles and Martin also had nice things to say, with Martin's quote getting picked up in the AP story:

“He inspired me every day. I loved the way he played and how he never backed down from anything. He was an incredible teammate. He was a warrior; and I always felt you’d have to kill him to get the upper hand on him. If every player in the NFL had as much heart and desire as he had, football would be illegal.”

In general, I don't find much emotion in sports stories but this one I think is particularly touching. What a great career, and just a beloved player. I wonder if his #80 will ever get retired, a rarity in football since you need just about every number you can get.

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Baseball

There's a lot of talk that the Boston / Yankees series this week will be for first place, but a lot of people are forgetting that Toronto has a great opportunity here. If the Yanks and Sox split, and Toronto takes a few from the Orioles, then they might be able to sneak into first. Toronto! See what a little money can do?

The Yankees have played Boston a lot recently. 4 series in the last 6 weeks?

The Yankee line up is looking a lot like spring training. Cairo, Phillips, Thompson, Cabrera, except now if I want to pay to see them it will cost more than $10.

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Spoon!

The Tick Animated TV series is going to finally hit DVD! No, this isn't the silly live version with Putty from Seinfeld as the Tick, it's the original Fox Kids series that can now be found on Toon Disney channel at 4am. I think the reason for the delay on this DVD set is related to legal problems that came about after Disney acquired this programming from the purchase of FOX Family(along with Power Rangers and some other shows). It's about time for this classic to reach DVD.

I watched one the other day featuring the Tick's super-hero class with the student, Sarcastro, a sarcastic super hero who looks like Castro.


Tick: "everyone passes, except for Sarcastro....who passes with flying colors!"
Sarcastro: "really?"
Tick: "No"


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Stop Twisting the Bible

Without weighing in either way on gay marriage, I'd like to point out that CNN.com's top story today was about how the President was going to lobby for a Constitutional Ammendment banning gay marriage.

CNN.com then posted this photo along with the link to the story:



Being curious about this, I was curious what the Bible really said. After all, Jesus was never one to speak in equation format.

Here's what I got from www.biblegateway.com which supposedly has an online searchable King James Bible. From what I can tell, he's not talking about gays anywhere here! It sounds more like Jesus is talking about divorce. Shame on CNN and the AP as well for using this sign. I'm sure we can look through the Bible and justify about anything if we take things out of context.

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Matthew 19

1And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these sayings, he departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judaea beyond Jordan;

2And great multitudes followed him; and he healed them there.

3The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

4And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,

5And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

6Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

7They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?

8He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

9And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

10His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry.

11But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given.

12For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
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I would like to recommend that those who use the Bible instead refer to verse 19 of the very same chapter:

19 ‘Honor your father and your mother,’[h] and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”[i]

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