Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Thursday, February 12, 2004
 
A Voice of Authority

The Meatriarchy Guy, who's Canadian (not that there's anything wrong with that), has some ideas about how to improve hockey:
    1 Eliminate the two line pass offside. This really is the only change you have to make.
    2 On a penalty kill the short-handed team can no longer ice the puck.
    3 A player has to serve the full two minute penalty even if his team is scored upon.
    4 Move the nets back to their original location (they are talking about doing this)
    5 Impose a weight tax on teams so that they pay extra if they draft big dumb slow players - the Leafs gave up a perfectly good defensemen Jason Smith and tried to turn oversized Chris McAllister into an NHL player. The only thing he had going for him was size - a trait that NHL GM's are over enamored with and in the end he failed miserably. Bring in a weight tax.
Some good ideas, but let's not forget the prospect of enlarging the ice surface.

Fast skaters and skill players can go around the hookers, and hockey team owners get to hold up their cities for even newer arenas. Win-win! Unless you're a Canadian city and the Americans are about to get serious about the dollar's exchange rate again, bit who cares about the Canadians, eh? What do they know about NHL hockey?

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:43 PM
 
Research Assignment

Does anyone know anyone who enjoyed the Super Bowl halftime show? I need to know, because Bob Rybarcyzk is looking for one single person who liked the show:
    You find me a soul on this earth who will publicly admit to liking any part of that halftime show, and I will run through West County Mall wearing a tutu and asking passers-by to please call me Nancy.
Anything to get "Nancy" and her tutu off the streets of Casinoport, Missouri. "She" will catch cold in this harsh, pseudo-winter weather we're having.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:34 PM
 
New Competition

Based on this post at A Small Victory, wherein commenter JW says:
    I think the memes are ways for unknown bloggers to get their name [sic] out.
I am an unknown blogger; I need to get my name out. I need a meme!

JW also says:
    You, Michele, seem to be among the creme de la creme and not need such tawdry devices.
and I am inspired! I need a meme to get my name out. What about a competition? Call it the

La Creme de la Meme

competition, wherein everyone submits a meme repeated throughout the blogosphere, and people or the judges select the best and....

Sounds like a lot of work, though. Never mind, I don't need to get my name out if it takes effort. You guys can use it, though, as you like. Just credit JW me when you do.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:08 PM
 
Sometimes Recognizing a Slippery Slope Helps Stop the Sliding

I share the Chicago Tribune's Steve Chapman's sentiments regarding the FCC's investigation of Janet Jackson's teat (registration required):
    Freedom includes the freedom to be offensive, but in other media, we'd much rather make our own choices than let the government choose for us. The only TV Michael Powell should have the power to regulate is the one in his living room.
I'll let him expand his powers to the televisions in his family room, kitchen, bedroom, and children's bedrooms. I am a compassionate libertarian.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:54 PM
 
Forget Steinberg

To arms, bloggers! We have a new Sun Times columnists to pillory!

Forget Neil Steinberg, who got into trouble for equating the POW/MIA flag with the Vietnam War (he apologized). Richard Roper earns today's call to arms when he calls Brett Favre white trash.

This cannot stand!

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:49 PM
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
 
Elevating the Level of Discourse

Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, I suffered through this article on the imbalance of political viewpoints in academia today. And I had to suffer through this:
    "We try to hire the best, smartest people available," Brandon said of his philosophy hires. "If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire.

    "Mill's analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican party in our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia. Players in the NBA tend to be taller than average. There is a good reason for this. Members of academia tend to be a bit smarter than average. There is a good reason for this too."

    Burness also noted that the humanities may be particularly oriented toward Democratic minds. "If you were to look at most business schools, you might find more people that were Republican than Democratic," he said. "If you look at the humanities in general, there's a great deal of creativity that goes on. In a sense it's innovation, and a perfectly logical criticism of the current society, in one form or another, that plays itself out in some of these disciplines. It doesn't surprise me that you might find people in humanities are more liberal than conservative."     [Emphasis mine, and I wanted to embolden the whole thing because each word made me madder.]
Although my collegiate preparations should have cultured me to craft a proper response to this assertion, perhaps something as simple as a quip to deflate the head of the pompos squad here, dancing up and down and chanting his ignorance, instead my baser, city-bred id bursts forth with a hearty, and sincere:

Fock you!

I am sorry, gentle reader, if you were reading this blog with your children; you should probably browse from work where it's safe.

This Robert focking Brandon is the chair of the philosophy department, so that should indicate how focking out of touch he is from real life. No, I forget, friends, not many of you managed to slough through a degree's worth of philosophy, so you don't understand. Within the humanities, philosophy and literature especially, it's not just that the academics are isolated from real life, but they're further isolated from dealing with real issues. Academics working in chemistry and sciences and whatnot are researching real things; philosophy professors research other academics. Let Brandon chortle about his probable misrepresentation of Mill (sue me, I haven't read much utilitarian schmaltz). Mill's been dead a long time, and his views of stupid people are irrelevant except to offer Brandon a cloak in which to hide his own fockedness.

But another academic at Duke suffers infinite monkey moment, wherein even a random collection of letters and syllables coalesces into a rational thought:
    Burness added that the course imbalance Kitchens described was also not surprising. He argued that, because gender and race are lively forms of scholarly inquiry today, it is natural that a number of courses should treat these subjects.
To put it succinctly, Those who can, do, and those who cannot get TAs to teach their courses so they can write Marxist feminist inquiries into how television altered and enforced the hegemony of bourgeois taste in the post World War II period as filtered through relevant ads in House Beautiful and seminary Marxist/feminist tracts of the past.

Unfortunately, unlike other useful dreams of snakes eating their tails, this one doesn't yield a loud enough Eureka! moment. Of course, academics tend to procreate; the ideas and viewpoints emphasized in college as worthy of study will be studied, and the next wave of untenured journeymen humanities professors will write and research the same crap as their mentors.

Meanwhile, conservative students with a broad and almost classical education will go out into the real world and make something of themselves.

In the midst of all my succeeding, though, sometimes I still get pissed.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:57 PM
 
Helping a Fellow Out

Kim du Toit's upset that his endorsement's not on Wonkette's site.

To help soothe du Toit's wounded pride, I've added his endorsement of me and the Noggle Library to the sidebar to your left.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:10 PM
Monday, February 09, 2004
 
Blackfive Tries Too Hard

Matt Blackfive's got a really well documented entry about how George Bush is not responsible for the loss of 2.21 gigamillion jobs. I don't know who he's writing it for, though. People who will vote for Bush understand the limited effect the presidency and the entire government have on the grand economy (which is too much as it is, but not much overall). Some people who won't vote for Bush mutter that those who lost jobs were all whistleblowers almost capable of exposing the vast Haliburton-Texas Rangers conspiracy.

So Matty's wasting his time if he thinks he's going to convince anyone with facts and reason. As a matter of fact, much as dogs only hear part of what is said to them, Bush opponents will only hear a certain portion of what Matt writes.

When Matt says:
    Jobs lost in the first 8 months January 20th to September 11th is pegged at 1.2 million. How much of this is actually attributable to President Bush is the question. In April of 2001, the U.S. lost 423, 000 jobs. Can someone tell me exactly which policy was responsible for this?

    Jobs were lost due to the teror attacks of September 11th (obvious ones like travel and lodging industry, aerospace, transportation). Boeing cut 30,000 jobs. New York City alone lost over 80,000 jobs due to the attack in the year after 9/11 . 22,000 jobs were in the vicinity of the World Trade Center. 800,000 jobs were lost in November and December of 2001.

    The fact is that a lot of jobs were lost over the last few years for many reasons; however, it will be tough for Democrats to accurately pin them on the Bush Administration and not a world-wide recession, the dot-bomb bust, corporate corruption (Enron, World-Com) and 9/11.

    Now, what about recovery?

    The biggest indicator of an economic turn around, IMHO, is my place of employment. We were directed by our (very conservative) board to cut 20% across the company on October 1, 2001. I lead the IT Department. It didn’t matter if one department had a greater need or not, everyone had to cut 20%. This was a defensive reaction to September 11th. No one knew what would happen to the economy (which was already weak), and, when there is economic uncertainty, jobs get cut through various means - for example, hiring freezes and position consolidations. Also, think about your own spending after September 11th. Did you change your vacations, savings, will, retirement plan because of September 11th? I did. I put more into savings and spread it out among different banks. When you spend less money, less items are bought. When less items are bought, supply goes up and productivity goes down. When productivity goes down, jobs get cut.
They hear:
    Jobs lost blah blah blah blah blah is actually attributable to President Bush blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ?

    Jobs were lost blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah 800,000 jobs were lost blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

    blah blah blah blah blah     a lot of jobs were lost blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah accurately pin them on the Bush Administration and blah blah blah blah blah corporate corruption (Enron, World-Com) blah.

    blah     what blah recovery?

    blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah     cut 20% across the company on October 1, 2001. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah the economy blah blah weak, blah blah blah blah blah economic uncertainty, jobs get cut blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah jobs get cut.
Nice try, Matt, but you're scolding deaf puppies on this one.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:51 PM
Sunday, February 08, 2004
 
Unfair and Imbalanced

Number 1 headline on this Sunday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Dangerous Cargo on Our Roads, Rails. Of course, if you were expecting a good, balanced view of the sometimes dangerous but necessary transporation of hazardous materials, you should wait for the story in the Atlantic Monthly.

How's the Post-Dispatch do? Well, let's see what we have. Lead:
    PALMYRA, Mo. - First came the early morning rap on the door. Then came the coughing, the burning eyes.

    In the frantic moments that followed a May 17, 2003, hydrochloric acid spill on nearby U.S. Highway 61, Shorti Garner and her husband, Steve, woke their children and piled them into the family camper to flee their home.

    "My kids - in blankets and all - I scooped them up," Shorti Garner said.
A nice play-on-the-emotions anecdote. Anecdotes! Who can deny that it's a frightening situation? I live within a mile of the confluence of two Interstate highways and have train tracks. (Well, I am not a naturalist, but I assume a train left them. They're two big for cat tracks.) I am right in the danger zone for a spill, but I don't worry about it. Why? Because every year four hundred people die from these sorts of accidents. That's not a high number, considering all the stuff travelling about. I would expect more hit and run deaths than deaths from hydrochloric acid exposure from these things leaking.

But that's not the Post-Dispatch's point. Now, they don't delve into issues such as alternate means of transportation, such as dogsleds, homing pigeons, or anything that would be safer. They also don't explain why dangerous chemicals are transported this way, that these chemicals are used to make things people want to buy.

No, I guess the only thing the Post-Dispatch wants to do is panic its stupid readers (whether it thinks its readers are stupid, or whether the people who read it and panic are stupid, I leave to history to decide) and blame the cause of the panic on big greedy corporations who behave irresponsibly at the expense of the little man. Unlike Pulitzer Publishing.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:34 PM
 
Conspoonmer's Report Best Buy

Conspoonmer Reports labeled the PlayStation 2 game Karaoke Revolution a Best Buy (much better than its prequels The Karaoke and Karaoke Reloaded), so Heather and I got it last night.

We didn't have the headset controller, so we bought a kit with a headset in it; unfortunately this proved to be product that fit into the back of the PLayStation to make it into a DVD Karaoke machine, not the USB headset that lets you interact with the game. Oops. Well, it came with a karaoke DVD of its own, so we could attempt to sing along with Avril Levain's latest hits, or we could buy a USB headset. So we went out. And spent another thirty bucks.

Well, instead of lamenting our stupidity and or returning the karaoke kit, I think we'll have to have a karaoke party.

However, don't compete against Heather in Karaoke Revolutions. I think the designers probably expected normal people to take more than one run through every song to win the game. But Heather has never been normal.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:07 PM
 
No Exposition

While watching Two Mules for Sister Sara on Friday night, I noted to my beautiful wife, who ordered the movie on NetFlix and asked me to watch with her (because of my vast love for her, I tolerate chick flicks like this one), that the movie offered no expository information. No scrolling text to explain why Juáristas were or what the hell the French were doing in Mexico in the 1860s. Astounding.

I'm not sure whether that's because:
  • Educational standards in 1970 meant that viewers knew that much about Mexican history.

  • Western fans might be expected to know enough history to have picked that up.

  • Who cares why? It's Clint Eastwood!
Interesting things to speculate on. I knew. If you're interested, check out the Wikipedia entry for Benito Juárez and click around.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:28 AM
 
The Black Corridor by Michael Moorcock (1969)

I paid a dollar for this book at Hooked on Books in Springfield, Missouri. It was on the rack of cheap books that they keep outside the store because they don't care if someone loots them. That's the kind of book I bought for a dollar.

The book takes place aboard a space ship containing survivors from Earth's social breakdown, en route to a planet around Barnard's Star. All but one are in suspension for the trip, leaving a single person to wander the ship for the five year trip, checking on automatic instruments and going mad with guilt for the sins he committed while stealing the ship. And others.

Much of the book is told in flashback, flashbacks to an Ehrlichian future imagined by those whacky Brits in the period between world wars. The remainder of it represents a descent into paranoia and a climactic delirium that almost tells the untold story, but allows the user to concoct his own meaning if he cares to. Okay, I did a little the night I finished the book, but that's it.

It's a light read and I spent only a couple of nights on it. It helped that many of the 184 pages featured concrete poetry, drawing words on the page with other letter much like ASCII art. At least it got that part of the future right.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:08 AM
 
Book Review: All the Trouble in the World by P. J. O'Rourke (1994)

Book Review: All the Trouble in the World by P. J. O'Rourke (1994)

This book examines some of the worst problems that the world thought it faced in the 1990s: Overpopulation, famine, ethnic hatred, plague, poverty, and such; for each chapter, P. J. O'Rourke goes beyond the statistics proffered by the movements and think tanks to examine the roots of the issues in the fertile beds in which they grow. As you can expect, he presents his usual irreverent viewpoint in smirky prose. For example, the chapters bear these titles:
  1. Fashionable Worries If Meat Is Murder, Are Eggs Rape?
  2. Overpopulation Just Enough of Me, Way Too Much of You
  3. Famine All Guns, No Butter
  4. Environment The Outdoors and How It Got There
  5. Ecology We're All Going to Die
  6. Saving the Earth We're All Going to Die Anyway
  7. Multiculturalism Going from Bad to Diverse
  8. Plague Sick of It All
  9. Economic Justice The Hell with Everything, Let's Get Rich
Within each of the chapters, O'Rourke visits a symptomatic location that exemplifies the problem. For "Overpopulation", he ventures to Bangladesh and learns why so many people want to live there (it's the most fertile soil on the planet) and muses about how overcrowded man really is by comparing population densities of other locations (such as if the entire population of the planet in 1995 would scrunch together with the population density of Manhattan, we could all fit inside a region the size of the former Yugoslavia. Bangladesh has the same population density as the suburban city of Fremont, California, so O'Rourke delves into why the country seems so overcrowded and Fremont seems so American. Therein lies the rub; American government and society are open and dynamic, whereas Bangladesh's government is not. They have a Ministry of Jute, designed to promote jute, the leading agricultural export of Bangladesh. You know, jute--the key ingredient in burlap, which was a very popular packing material a hundred years ago.

O'Rourke gets behind the pamphlets and examines not only causes, but the factors that lead to the continuation of problems as well as some amusing extrapolations: You want to embrace diversity? They have in the Balkans. Of course, that's not the tribalism that comes from diversity, it's the tribalism that comes from private ownership of guns, undoubtedly.

When O'Rourke's on, he's amusing to read, biting, and obviously arguing from a wealth of background. When he's not, he's simply presenting a travelogue of places he's traveled and drank. Still, this book is more of the former, which is what I expected from the title.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:35 AM
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."