Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

This is what happens when you take a much longer nap that you expect (and dream that you have already woken up).

Let’s start with Baldilocks who finds that one can’t escape liberalism even at a TED conference:

…notice the language the guy is using here. He’s speaking to one political party, one political tradition, about another political tradition or two. The entering argument is that everyone at TED, each of those well-off fancy schmancy hoi polloi types, is assumed to be of one political persuasion.

Well of course they do, you don’t think that there are any of the central Massachusetts rednecks there.

Damian Thompson has two beauties at his place. The first focusing on priests unclear about the job description:

The Church must turn back to prayer and place God, and not itself, at the centre of this prayer. At the same time it should re-emphasise that suffering and pain are not best papered over with folksy communal singing and hand-shaking any more than they are by narcotics or recreational sex.

Indeed. And there’s the further danger, of course, that exposure to Celebration Hymnal folksy communal singing might drive sensitive souls to narcotics to erase those shocking memories of elderly groovers…

Shades of the Curt Jester there, his second concerns SMP (stand media procedure) of trying to smear the Pope and the informed nature of the commentary.

And then there is this gem:

The Pope is pretty unassailable. He is not elected…

Ruth, it long ago became clear to me that you do not know nearly enough about the Catholic Church to comment on it authoritatively. But surely even you have heard of something called a conclave.

Ah, nothing like those layers of fact checkers that the media employs.

At David Pinto’s Baseball musings we see a really interesting article on the all time doubles record that has stood for nearly a century (The great Tris Speaker with 793):

Whoever is going to break the record needs to be close through age 34. Albert Pujols currently has 387 doubles through age 29, so he has to hit 200 more doubles over the next five seasons to really have a shot at the record. With his current average of 45 doubles a year, he should be able to break the record. If he averages 35 a year over the next five seasons, however, I doubt he’ll get there, because he’ll only decline more after that.

There is an experience curve to home runs that someone compensates for the decline phase of power hitters. Since home runs are purely about the swing, better pitch recognition and perfection of the swing with experience can keep totals high as other skills decline. Doubles, however, are also about speed, and experience can’t help there much. Maybe a batter will recognize a mistake by an outfielder and stretch a single into a double, but the pure speed doubles go out the door.

Speaker is one of the great players who has been forgotten these days. He doesn’t deserve to be.

Finally at American Freedom Barbara Espinsoa continues her series of “Jukebox John McCain” in her words “Changing his tune on every issue”. Today’s topic Military issues:

1. McCain recently claimed that he was the “greatest critic” of Rumsfeld’s failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”
2. McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions, concluding, on multiple occasions, that a Korea-like presence is both a good and a bad idea.

Barbara’s site was trying to re-direct me, might be an embedded ad or script gone wrong. I dropped her an e-mail about it, if it starts to happen to you just click on the “Stop” (red x) button once the site comes up. She is all over the race in Arizona.

Update: E-mailed Barbara there was an issue with a gadget, it’s now fixed.

Well that will do for now, we’ll have more on Monday.