The next chapter begins
Posted on November 1, 2007 by voxday
I got a phone call informing me that my father was arrested a few hours ago. He has a way of landing on his feet, though, so I won't be terribly surprised when more High Weirdness ensues.
I really don't wish to discuss the matter, at least not until he is cleared of everything, but given how many of you here wish him well, I thought you deserved to know.
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A cheer too far
The white supremacists in the Washington Redskins organization have really gone too far! As if it's not reprehensible enough that the organization would portray the noble, peace-loving Native Americans of the Potomac Basin as warlike savages, but as this incriminating photo Sports Illustrated proves, from they are now dressing their cheerleaders as Pocahontas!
Why don't they just have Joe Gibbs pretend to "scalp" a big fat white guy before the game the next time they host Philadelphia?
This is an intentional slap in the face of decency, equal rights and human dignity! Hurrah for Bill Belichick, who is apparently the only man brave and color-blind enough to show his well-deserved disgust for the evil, racist ethnocentrism of the Washington Redskins. Daniel Snyder and his front office Nazis should be fined by the league and forced to undergo cultural awareness classes until they change the name to something less contemptuous of humanity, like maybe the Cowboys. Or Vikings.
I'm starting to hate him
I simply cannot understand the first thing about Brad Childress and his coaching decisions. From ProFootballTalk:
On Monday, former NFL quarterback Jeff George made it known that he'd like to play for the Vikings. On Wednesday, coach Brad Childress responded.
"Probably maybe go to a fantasy camp or something like that," Childress said.
Asked whether George is on the downside of his playing career, Childress said, "Downside would probably be — I think — kind."
Ouch. We didn't know an NFL coach could be so snarky….
George is 38. Vinny Testaverde is 43. George has far less wear and tear than most other quarterbacks his age, because he really hasn't played all that much. And he likely still has a rocket of an arm.
But even bringing George in for a look-see would be a tacit admission by Childress that his current quarterbacks suck. The fact that Childress is the only one who apparently can't see this means that, in due time, it will be kind to say that Childress is on the downside of his coaching career.
What is wrong with the guy? His quarterbacks haven't even been mediocre, they have sucked prodigiously by every single measure of quarterbacking performance known to Man! Entire quarters go by without a completed pass! The wide receivers are possibly the worst in the NFL and he didn't even attempt to bring in any of the premier free agents or WRs available for trade – Randy Moss was never coming back but we surely could use Wes Welker or even Chris Chambers right about now.
I've never hated a Vikings coach. Tice was an buffoon, but we knew that when he started. Green was gutless when it counted, but he was all right. Les Steckel was in over his head, but at least he tried hard. Childress appears to want to make the fans hate him; I'm not quite there yet but I can understand why many Vikings fans already are.
On a related note, here's a nice article at the Star Tribune using Childress as an example of why promoting lifelong administrators to executive positions is doomed to failure.
It may not be news
This is merely proof that no one watches Hannity and Colmes; Gennifer Flowers announced Hillary's Wellesleyan sexual preferences on the air nearly ten years ago:
So I was down in DC this past weekend and happened to run into a well-connected media person, who told me flatly, unequivocally that "everyone knows" The LA Times was sitting on a story, all wrapped up and ready to go about what is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate. "Everyone knows" meaning everyone in the DC mainstream media political reporting world. "Sitting on it" because the paper couldn't decide the complex ethics of whether and when to run it. The way I heard it they'd had it for a while but don't know what to do. The person who told me )not an LAT person) knows I write and didn't say "don't write about this".
Some people think this might be about John Edwards having an affair with one of his video producers, and I suppose that's possible too. The only thing we can be pretty confident of is that it involves one of the three leading Democrats, otherwise the LA Times wouldn't be sitting on it.
For gamers only
While I very much like the core idea underlying Wikipedia, in practice the open encyclopedia has been rendered increasingly useless by the self-appointed bureaucrats who have taken it upon themselves to play thought police there. After having uniformly negative run-ins with the page squatters there, I quit bothering to even try contributing to it. One need merely peruse the history of any even slightly controversial article there to see the way in which even the most basic errors of fact are defended unto the heat death of the universe; despite its commendable usefulness the open concept is ultimately limited to mediocrity by its ideological egalitarianism and structural tendency to reward the bureaucratically minded.
The new Citizendium, on the other hand, created by Wikipedia's founder Larry Sanger, offers a more reasonable open but non-egalitarian solution and one that I believe has greater long-term potential, by recruiting recognized experts in their fields to make the judgment calls when they are needed. Being such an expert myself, I have been asked to be the first Games editor there, so if any gamers here are interested in contributing game-related articles in their particular areas of interest or cleaning up some of the better Wikipedia game-related articles, please let me know. I already have two volunteers from the game industry proper and my intention is for the Citizendium's Game section to surpass Wikipedia's within three years. Given the way in which Wikipedia frantically scrubs all of the interesting trivia and Easter eggs from its articles versus my decision to fully embrace such things, I expect it may happen even quicker than that.
You may recall that it is said that it is the winners who write history… speaking of which, if you haven't seen LEEROY JENKINS in action, well, it's pretty funny.