Category: Uncategorized

Mailvox: the NFL is not pro wrestling

But it is not pure sport for the pure of heart either:

Didn’t we agree this was pro wrestling two weeks ago?

No. Pro wrestling is actually scripted. They know who is going to win ahead of time. The NFL, on the other hand, relies upon a “thumb on the scale” approach to gently favor its preferred narrative as well as to protect the betting lines and prevent the blowouts.

Football is too unpredictable, and has too many injuries, to successfully script a game, let alone a playoffs or a season. But you can usually know which team is going to get the marginal calls in the playoffs on a week-to-week basis, such as the Saints in 2009, the Chiefs last weekend, and the Vikings this weekend.

The thumb on the scale only matters if the game is very close. For example there is absolutely NO WAY the league wanted Jacksonville to beat Pittsburgh since the narrative all season was set up for Pittsburgh to seek revenge against New England in the AFC Championship. That’s why the league spins multiple narratives, gently supports them all, and hopes one or more of them will play out. They are particularly intent on doing this now in order to try to carve back some of their lost ratings before the Super Bowl.

I expect that the league now favors a Minnesota-New England Super Bowl, as “the first Super Bowl at home” and “the last ride of the GOATs part II”. Also because they don’t want either New England or Jackonville, both of which have excellent defenses, blowing out an Eagles team starting a backup quarterback. (Of course, if Foles can somehow beat two of the top three defenses in the league this year, he will fully merit a Super Bowl ring.) But even if you suspect you might have the official wind at your back for a change, you still have to make the plays and win the games.

By the way, I’d like to point out that Sean Payton choked on the clock management as well. I watched the end of the game again and the Saints had two unnecessary, but intentional clock stoppages once they got into field goal range. And in defense of rookie safety Marcus Williams, I will note that his mistake was NOT intentionally missing the tackle of Stefon Diggs, but rather, misreading the ball and breaking on Diggs too fast and hard.

I can guarantee you that before the play, the defensive backs were reminding each other “no pass interference!” Williams appeared to think the ball was not going to hang as long as it did and broke on Diggs, then altered his path at the last moment when he realized that he was going to get there early. If he hadn’t changed his course, he would have cut out Diggs’s legs before the ball arrived.

Was Williams trying to avoid a pass interference penalty?

“I feel like I was a little early [getting to Diggs], but at that point, I’ve just got to make the tackle when he comes down.”

Williams was right. He was early. His mistake was trying to break up the play rather than letting Diggs catch the ball, then tackling him in-bounds to run out the clock. But then, given that his coaches were misplaying the sidelines on offense, it’s not a surprise that their rookie safety did too.

I liked this quote from Coach Zim quoting the Hitman.

No one thought we were going to be any good. I know you guys didn’t pick us very good going into the year. But we have a bunch of fighters in that locker room, guys that will compete. I said to Harrison Smith yesterday in practice, I said, ‘Are you afraid of these guys?’ He said, ‘I am afraid of everybody. That’s why I play good.’ That’s how our team is.”

Don’t overlook anyone, hit everyone hard, and don’t ever quit. That’s the Viking philosophy and it’s not a bad one for life.

Berkeley riot pedos

Apparently By Any Means Necessary is connected to NAMBLA:

The left-wing activists behind the anti-conservative riots at Berkeley have ties to one of the nation’s most prominent pro-pedophilia organizations.

The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights, and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary — more commonly referred to as By Any Means Necessary or BAMN — is one of the militant leftist groups waging a campaign against conservatives and Trump supporters in Berkeley. The group’s planned aggressive demonstrations against conservative commentator Ann Coulter and the students coming to hear her talk led to the cancellation of Coulter’s speech this week due to safety concerns.

BAMN’s parent organization worked directly with the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) in the years just before it founded BAMN, according to NAMBLA documents reviewed by The Daily Caller. In addition, a member of that parent organization said to have founded BAMN is an admitted member of NAMBLA, which she has described as the victim of a “witch-hunt.”

I suppose we should have known by the Star Trek uniforms. In other Berkeley riot-related news, two of the victims of the rioters filed suit in U.S. District Court last week against The Regents Of The University Of California, the President of the University of California, Janet Napolitano, the City of Berkeley and the City of Berkeley Police Department, as well as several named police officers and their two attackers.

This action seeks to protect and vindicate fundamental rights. It is a civil rights action brought under the Fourteenth Amendment against government actors responsible for creating dangerous conditions and exposing the Plaintiffs to physical harm caused by a violent mob of anarchists at a student-sponsored Milo Yiannopolous event (“Yiannopolous event”) scheduled to take place at the University of California, Berkeley (“UC Berkeley” and “University”) on February 1, 2017. Government actors took affirmative measures in preparation for and in response to the riotous mob that left the Plaintiffs in a situation more dangerous than the one in which they found the Plaintiffs.

Government actors are responsible for creating and exposing the Plaintiffs to the unlawful actions of an angry mob of violent anarchists by directing law enforcement officers to vacate locations in and around Sproul Plaza and the MLK Center at UC Berkeley, agitating the mob by issuing feckless disbursal orders and empty threats of arrest from a vantage point where they could ensure their own safety while leaving Plaintiffs exposed to violent assaults, erecting barricades in such a manner as to enable angry malefactors to surround Plaintiffs and assault them and to deprive Plaintiffs of an exit route, failing to enforce the law and by other affirmative actions. By their failure to intervene or employ reasonable tactical methods to ensure the safety of the Plaintiffs and the public, government actors conducted their official duties with deliberate indifference to the Plaintiffs’ safety, permitting hordes of violent rioters to swarm the university campus in a violent rage. By their failure, government actors are thus responsible for creating and exposing Plaintiffs to known and obvious danger.

This action additionally seeks relief from government actors who failed to exercise their duty of care to plan effectively for the foreseeable harms brought upon the Plaintiffs and from the perpetrators of unlawful assaults.

Kwgwarblurgwokfurbla!

I think that is the exact quote from when we realized Stefon Diggs was going to not only be able to stop the clock in field goal range, but go in to score. Also, I’m pleased to discover that I am, apparently, in excellent cardio-vascular shape.

A few thoughts:

  • It’s good to have the official NFL Narrative on your side for once.
  • The new stadium is already luckier than the previous two.
  • SKOL!
  • What happened to the pass rush in the second half? Also, what happened to the pass blocking?
  • It is better to be lucky than good.
  • The second pass interference call for 34 yards was actually correct, although it could have been called defensive holding instead. The clip they kept showing was just the very end; Crawley actually held Diggs’s jersey for more than five yards to keep Diggs from blowing past him. When Aikman said that Diggs had his hand on Crawley’s hand he was right, but he didn’t realize that Diggs was trying to remove Crawley’s hand from his jersey. Remember, Diggs has the fastest on-field time recorded this season and the Saints were playing a Seahawks clutch-grab-and-pray style in order to stay with the superior Vikings receivers. Note that the Vikings actually declined almost as many penalties committed by the Saints secondary as they accepted.
  • Michael Thomas actually won his battle with Xavier Rhodes. I did not expect that.
  • I love it when Harrison Smith blitzes.
  • Why can’t any head coach except Bill Belichick understand that you have to burn the clock down to less than 20 seconds before you kick the field goal that puts you ahead by one or two points? I was going berserk when Pat Shurmur called a pass on second down, and aghast when he called another one on third down.
  • Case Keenum is a good quarterback. To become a really good one, he has to learn to avoid a) throwing the ball in the field of play when avoiding a sack and b) taking a sack on third down when in field goal range. Those two plays gave up 10 points.
  • Coach Zim is a really good coach. To become a great one, he has to learn not to wilt on the high pressure decisions. Not going for it on 4th and goal from the 2 was the first big mistake. Not calling a run on the first drive after the half was the second big mistake. Not burning the clock before kicking the go-ahead field goal was the third big mistake.
  • The punt getting blocked may have saved the game for the Vikes. With five minutes left, it prevented the Saints from being able to burn the clock while marching down the field. 
  • You HAVE to put away a good team when you have the chance. A good team, particularly one with a good quarterback, is ALWAYS going to come back on you. Even great defenses get tired. I would have felt good about going into the half up 20-0 and receiving to start the second half. I knew 17-0 was not enough, especially when they failed to score on the drive to open the second half.

A tale of two reviews

SuperComicFunTime really did not like QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted #1:

Quantum Mortis: The Actionless Comic
This book is not a good book. It is action-less, motionless, and for the most part, people-less. The book is divided into two chapters. The first chapter is mostly some guy named Tower flying around and talking to his computer until he lands the ship and talks to a green space monkey that spouts gibberish into a translating device.

Then chapter 2 starts and we still don’t have our second character for a few more pages. Tower pops a space Tic Tac and we get a pin-up entrance for Hildreth the civilian space detective.

Then both characters are seemingly attacked by word bubbles until their magic space technology identifies the body as an exiled royal from another planet. We get a nice splash page giving the history of the exiled royal’s family. Then the book ends.

It’s not fun. I didn’t learn anything. I don’t care what happens next. It’s bad. The whole 29 pages should be summarized in a page or two while giving us character development. Don’t spend money on this like I did.

On the other hand, Harry liked it a lot.

Great job craftmanship restored
This is a very well done animation of the book .the quantum mortis series is top notch story telling . I read them as fast as I could. The art while having a distinctly retro feel adds to the story without overwhelming it. Knowing what comes next in no way detracts from enjoying the artist’s perspective of the story because he is staying true to the heart of it. The illustrations of hildy and tower actually bring out the romantic understory without taking away from the plot. It is great to see craftsmanship restored to graphic novels. Very few English ones approach the Japanese masters. Letting the art add to the story instead of being pictures without purpose. Well done.

To put it in perspective, there is another first issue of a comic where virtually nothing happens, although for 40 pages instead of 28. A guy is in a cage. For decades. Nothing happens except for people actually falling asleep – now there is a fitting metaphor, right? There is no action except for an occult ceremony that doesn’t even involve a dead goat or a naked woman until the guy in the cage escapes off-camera, so we still haven’t seen anything happen until one of the guys who took part in the ceremony falls asleep and has a dream. The end.

How absolutely horrible, right? How action-less, motion-less, and literally people-less, as the guy in the cage was not a normal human being. Clearly no one ever bought or read or liked that particular comic, right?  Well, no, because that’s all that happens in the first issue of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, which happens to be one of the most well-regarded comics series ever written.

Now, I wonder if there might be anything we can glean from these two extremely divergent reactions to the same comic. Why does SuperComicFunTime hate QM:AMD so much while Harry likes it so much? Perhaps their reviews of other products unrelated to Quantum Mortis might give us a clue. Here are a pair of five-star reviews for other products they liked. Guess which review was written by whom?

Review of Avengers #219: By Divine Right
This comic is AWESOME! I got it in a box of comics I opened about three weeks ago. OMG! I was so stoked when I saw Jim Shooter was the writer! Janet Van Dyne loses her clothes early on and soon, cosmic hijinks ensue.

Review of A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
I immediately recognized the writer’s talent, the characterizations and plot integrate seamlessly and while the ending is surprising and a little bit disappointing the journey is absolutely worth the time. I can’t remember such good prose, and by a non-native English speaker. 

Different audiences, different tastes. SuperFunComic’s perspective isn’t wrong, it’s just different. I have no doubt that he would be as bored by Murakami as he was by QM-AMD #1. As far as I am concerned, the only relevant question is which market is more interesting to us as a publisher? And since the top-selling comic of 2016 was Big Trouble in Little China/Escape From New York which sold 421,625 units while Murakami’s books sell in the millions, well, I am confident that we are making the right choice.

Divisional Sunday

I have to admit, I did not think the Eagles would pull it together well enough to beat the Falcons. Discuss amongst yourselves. And Skol Vikings!

Hollywood values: the dam cracks

Eliza Dushku accuses Joel Kramer of sexually assaulting her at the age of 12:

Eliza Dushku has accused stunt coordinator Joel Kramer of molesting her when she was 12 years old. Kramer has denied the allegations. Her account, posted early Saturday morning, comes in the wake of the continuing #metoo movement and the launch of the Time’s Up campaign to combat sexual harassment and assault.

In a Facebook post, Dushku wrote that she was assaulted while working with Kramer on the 1994 James Cameron film “True Lies.”  According to her post, Kramer molested her in a Miami hotel room, where he “laid me down on the bed, wrapped me with his gigantic writhing body, and rubbed all over me.” Kramer would have been 36 at the time.

Dushku alleges that he “methodically built my and my parents’ trust, for months grooming me,” and told her parent that he would take her for a swim in the hotel’s pool. Instead, her took her to his hotel room, where he “disappeared in the bathroom and emerged, naked, bearing nothing but a small hand towel held flimsy at his mid-section.”

Kramer told Variety Saturday morning that Dushku’s allegations were “absolutely not true.” According to Kramer, Dushku swam in the hotel pool with him and other members of the stunt crew, including Dushku’s stunt double. Afterwards, he took her to her first ever sushi meal, and then took her home.

Crazy Days and Nights has been hinting at this for a while. Reese Witherspoon has made similar allegations of an attack by a producer when she was underage, although she has not yet named the individual responsible. The Hollywood Values dam hasn’t crumbled yet, but the cracks are spreading.

I observe that Kramer’s suggestion that Dushku is making up the allegations because “she may have had a crush on him” is classic pedophile deflection. As I have personally witnessed in court, pedos frequently resort to the “she came on to me” defense.

Years ago, my friends and I nearly got kicked out of a courtroom when a clean-cut, harmless little defendant who looked like Michael J. Fox, right down to the feathered hair and the brown corduroy sports coat with leather elbow pads, was on the stand and was asked by the judge if he had any mitigating facts to offer for his behavior in what, as far as we understood, was a date rape case. (We were there for a traffic offense and had come in towards the end of the hearing.) The defendant pointed out that he had not been the aggressor, that the alleged victim had come on to him, and that in fact he had been asleep when she jumped into his bed and woke him up by tickling him.

To be honest, we felt that this was a pretty compelling defense until the judge said, “Mr. So-and-so, she was FIVE YEARS OLD!” This was so shocking and unexpected that we all burst out laughing, thereby causing the security guards to give us a stern warning. Needless to say, the “she came on to me” defense was not a success then, and I very much doubt it will be in Mr. Kramer’s case.

State employee screws up, Trump to blame

Americans are so not ready for actual war that involves them actually being attacked, as opposed to an accidental false warning. And remember, no matter who screws up, the God-Emperor is responsible.

Approx. 8.05am: A routine internal test during a shift change was initiated. This was a test that involved the Emergency Alert System, the Wireless Emergency Alert, but no warning sirens.

8.07am: A warning was erroneously triggered statewide by an employee at the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HI-EMA).

8.10am: State Adjutant Maj. Gen. Joe Logan validated with the US Pacific Command that there was no missile launch.

Honolulu Police Department notified of the false alarm by HI-EMA.

8.13am: State Warning Point issues a cancellation of the Civil Danger Warning Message. This would have prevented the initial alert from being rebroadcast to phones that may not have received it yet. For instance, if a phone was not on at 8.07am, it would not receive the alert later on.

8.20am: HI-EMA issues public notification of cancellation via their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

8.24am: Governor Ige retweets HI-EMA’s cancellation notice.

8.30am: Governor posts cancellation notification to his Facebook page.

8.45am: After getting authorization from FEMA Integral Public Alert and Warning System, HI-EMA issued a ‘Civil Emergency Message’ remotely, cancelling the false alert.

The Russians must be laughing so hard that vodka is coming out of their noses. So, this is what the great dumbing down looks like.

Allahpundit explains the two primary conspiracy theory explanations:

Minor: It was a hack but will be played off as an error by emergency warning services.
Major: There was a missile, we shot it down, and now it’s all being played off as a false alarm.

Given that the West Coast is clearly under the threat of imminent attack, I expect Michelle Malkin has already concluded that the only rational response is the immediate internment of all Koreans and Korean-Americans.

Ye cats….

Steve Sailer observes that the civic nationalists really are as dumb as they appear.

They Really Do Believe Emma Lazarus’s Poem Is “The Foundational Principle of Our Country”

Well, you certainly can’t claim that the country doesn’t deserve its fate. Especially the country that was founded in 1883. I don’t think you have to be pig-ignorant to be a civic nationalist, but it observably helps.

Divisional Saturday

Things would appear to be shaping up very nicely for a pro-Vikings narrative for once. Of course, we’ll need a Falcons win to set up for a REVENGE FOR 1998 storyline.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Mailvox: the more things change

Actually, some things never change. A reader shares an apt quote from Livy.

Ancus…raised fresh troops and marched to the Latin town of Politorium, which he took by assault.  The inhabitants he transferred bodily to Rome; former kings had increased the size of Rome by the absorption of conquered peoples; so the policy was not without precedent. The Palatine hill was where the Romans first settled; on one side of it were the Capitol and Citadel, subsequently occupied by the Sabines; and on the other lay the Caelian hill, occupied by the Albans; the Aventine was assigned to the new comers, and they were joined soon after  by others from the captured towns of Tellenae and Ficana….

One result of these enormous additions to the population was an increase in certain criminal activities, the dividing line between right and wrong becoming somewhat blurred.
– Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 1.33

Keep in mind this was more akin to the American importation of the Irish, which had similar consequences.