Category: Uncategorized

Bisch is begging for a beatdown:

You guys talking about the interception that was called off by instant replay are whack. The tuck rule call was the correct call under the rules at the time (and still). The Steelers’ safety who knocked it out of his own hand with his own knee didn’t show possession as it’s defined in the rulebook.

A) Any discussion of the “infamous” tuck rule play is totally beside the point. The officials did get it wrong then, but not in the way that whiny Raidess fans think. Woodson clearly head-slapped Brady, ergo 15-yard penalty, first down, no controversy.

B) “The league acknowledged Monday that referee Pete Morelli erred when he overturned on replay Polamalu’s interception of a Peyton Manning pass Sunday in the playoff game between Pittsburgh and Indianapolis. Mike Pereira, the league’s vice president of officiating, said in a statement that Morelli should have let the call on the field stand.

By the way, I received this hilarious little rip on the Baseball Savant yesterday from JB: I recall you posting the Baseball Savant’s playoff picks a year ago, when he went 0 for 4 in the divisional round. He’s improving!

Here’s the latest: My winners this weekend are Washington, Carolina, Indianapolis, and New England.

No doubt gamblers everywhere are eager to know who he’s picking in the championship games… so they can safely go the other way. But he’s feeling no pain, not in comparison with the knowledge that his Colts have passed the Vikings and are fast approaching the Bills as the all-time NFL chokers.

Peter King on pass interference:

I think I would like to ask the zebras of this league one question: When will you learn how to call pass interference? It was a disgraceful weekend for PI calls. The 39-yard interference call against Asante Samuel handed the Broncos a 7-3 lead in the second quarter; if anything, obviously, that call should have been on Ashley Lelie. We all saw that. And in the Pittsburgh-Indy game, there was an infamous non-call on rookie corner Marlon Jackson, who interfered with Antwaan Randle El deep in Indy territory. Instead of continuing a drive that could have made the score 21-0 Pittsburgh, the Steelers had to punt, and Indianapolis drove the ball 96 yards to a resuscitating field goal.

So what else is new? They haven’t been calling it properly in the playoffs since at least 1975.

Did I mention that I am still displeased with an even more infamous non-call? Because I am.

The NYT covers the hikokomori phenomenon:

Like Takeshi and Shuichi, Y.S. suffered from a problem known in Japan as hikikomori, which translates as “withdrawal” and refers to a person sequestered in his room for six months or longer with no social life beyond his home. (The word is a noun that describes both the problem and the person suffering from it and is also an adjective, like “alcoholic.”) Some hikikomori do occasionally emerge from their rooms for meals with their parents, late-night runs to convenience stores or, in Takeshi’s case, once-a-month trips to buy CD’s. And though female hikikomori exist and may be undercounted, experts estimate that about 80 percent of the hikikomori are male, some as young as 13 or 14 and some who live in their rooms for 15 years or more.

South Korea and Taiwan have reported a scattering of hikikomori, and isolated cases may have always existed in Japan. But only in the last decade and only in Japan has hikikomori become a social phenomenon. Like anorexia, which has been largely limited to Western cultures, hikikomori is a culturebound syndrome that thrives in one particular country during a particular moment in its history.

Shoot, throw in Spacebunny, my exercise bike and free weights and I’m there. It’s an interesting response to social pressure, which in Japan really is unthinkably tremendous by Western standards. More later.

A friend shared with me an observation that I thought was provocative enough to get you all riled up. He says that when men tell a story about how their day went, it’s usually focused on something good that happened. When women tell a story about their day, it’s usually focused on something negative. BOCTAOE

As a cartoonist, I’m always interested in gross generalities. Does this one ring true to you?

I don’t think there’s any question about this… in general. It’s particularly telling that more than a few of the women in his comments who claim that they aren’t complainers – which is a largely meaningless assertion in that the opinion of one’s mate is rather more significant – often describe themselves as being atypical.

Now, everyone complains, the important question is if you do so more than one’s circumstances might reasonably dictate. I have no problem listening to an individual with a genuine problem talk about it, but overhearing wealthy, indolent women bitching about their lives at the coffee shop makes me want to walk over and snap their chicken-like necks.

But it defies belief to insist, with no evidence, that men and women complain exactly the same amount. I think Scott’s friend is right, in general, because men don’t seem to play the Martyr Game that so many women seem to enjoy so much. Even so, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions of men moaning about their terrible lives every day, bringing everyone around them down.

I imagine that I probably strike readers here as a complainer since I am massively critical of everything from the NFL officiating to the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and yet if I was truly a negative person, I wouldn’t do most of the things I spend my time doing. Of course, I can bitch about undesired spikes or drops in various markets like you wouldn’t believe. But really, Spacebunny’s opinion on this is more relevant than mine.

Here’s the beginning of that ill-conceived novel I mentioned in my column today. It’s just raw, unedited text, so don’t expect polished fiction.

Jeff Jacoby finds increasing solitude:

For the second year in a row, the Census Bureau reports, the population of Massachusetts has shrunk. During the 12 months ending July 1, 2005, the Bay State experienced a net loss of more than 8,600 residents, or 0.1 percent of its population. It was one of only three states to end the year with fewer people than it had at the start — New York and Rhode Island were the others — and the only one to do so for the second year running.

A statistical blip this isn’t. Not counting foreign immigrants, Massachusetts has been losing more people than it attracts every year since 1990, according to MassINC, a Boston-based research institute. The net outflow during the 12 years from 1990 to 2002 — the excess of people leaving Massachusetts over those entering — was 213,000, and the hemorrhaging has only gotten worse since then. MassINC reported in 2003 that one-fourth of Bay State residents would leave if they had the opportunity to do so. Among those who have lived in Massachusetts for less than 10 years, the proportion is even higher.

While this sort of news always puts me in a good mood – proving that not all Americans are complete serfs yet – further reflection isn’t quite so positive. The problem is that people are, by and large, both stupid and short-sighted. Those ex-Massachusettsians are going elsewhere, where a surprisingly large percentage of them will immediately begin complaining that the school levies aren’t high enough, the zoning laws aren’t strict enough… like a dog returning to its vomit, they will begin calling for the building blocks of the very sort of oppressive government they previously tried to escape.

Perhaps states like New Hampshire need to set up a sort of protectorate where former residents of Massachusetts and other like-minded states can be gradually detoxed and slowly introduced to the concept of small-government freedom. Or perhaps they should do it like I understand some of the smaller European countries do, granting residence but no citizenship, thus preventing newcomers from ruining that for which they came.

Dungy is the MAN could work on his timing:

How ’bout dem COLTS!!!!

Detroit bound baby!!!

Try to look at the silver lining… Detroit in February isn’t exactly the nicest place in the world.

UPDATE: That may have been the worst call I’ve seen since the Drew Pearson pass interference non-call. Polamalu clearly intercepted the ball, then fumbled it. I have no dog in this hunt, but I’ll definitely be going against the Colts now. It’s either an incredibly stupid rule of which I’m unaware or a horrendous call.

Women do ruin everything:

A tide of lawsuits by female staff is forcing financial institutions to ban the practice of entertaining clients with a raucous night at a lapdancing club.

This also demonstrates Camille Paglia’s assertion that feminism is primarily concerned with the interests of white, upper-middle class women. I’m sure the hundreds of young women who are going to be the most affected by the disappearance of their clientele will really appreciate being forced to work for a much smaller wage at a retail shop so that a few overpriced women stockbrokers can stop feeling left out by the boys.

I’m neither a smoker nor a denizen of strip clubs, but this sort of thing makes me sick. They’re banning smoking, now they’re after strip clubs too and you can be sure they’ll get back to alchohol again when they see the opportunity. And why should anyone be surprised? When you allow women to have political influence, they immediately start acting like your mother, only on a national scale.

Pretty Lady on the absent virtues of the equalitarian male:

Women, girls, self-described ‘feminists’ all: listen to the voice of experience. Check-paying has nothing to do with equality between the genders, good sex, or feminism. Check-paying is the simplest, most accurate method of ascertaining whether you are on a date with a man, or with a bizarre specimen of animated pond slime. Heed this warning at your extreme peril.

I’m not sure why the Lady’s languid manner amuses me so much, but it works for her. Like – and almost completely unlike – Bane, she has style. Furthermore, she’s right, any woman foolish enough to spend her time with a man who refuses to play the man’s role is asking for heartbreak and trouble, not necessarily in that order.