Vox Popoli

John Podhoretz writes on NRO:

Here’s my very short take on the matter, after decades as a baseball fanatic. Anybody who cares one whit about this sport any longer is a sap — a lovable sap, a sentimental sap, maybe. But a sap. Look at the facts. The records of the last decade were all drug-induced. The man who was supposedly the greatest player in the history of the game is now mysteriously injured forever — probably because he can’t get out of bed in terror of that grand jury indictment coming down the pike that will accuse him straightforwardly of being a cheater. And not even a pleasant cheater either. Meanwhile, now that nobody’s taking the drugs any longer the league rankings and ratings have gone totally screwy, and basically, the biggest star in the majors is a 75 year-old loudmouth and one-time convicted felon who paid in excess of $200 million for a team that can barely tie its shoelaces without whining and kvetching and losing. Yeeech. Baseball stinks. So let A-Rod play for the Dominican Republic. At least in Latin American countries, the sport still means something. Here, it means … skyboxes.

Even thirty years ago, boxing was one of the three dominant sports, with the heavyweight champ being one of the two or three most famous people on earth. Now boxing is less popular than poker on television. Baseball is going that way too — not for any of those old-timey reasons, like it’s slow or good athletes are going into basketball or people like the violence of football. It’s going south because a sport that seemed nearly impossible to fix turns out to have been fixed one person at a time, and that kind of corruption eats away at the essence of what it means to be a fan.

NFL football is, without a doubt, the greatest sport in the world. I am a little concerned about FIFA soccer, as while the international competitions are as stirring as ever, the falsely-named Champions League – are there really three Premiership champions? – has significantly reduced the importance of league championships while forcing the top teams to play far too many games.

The football season, with all its inherent violence, is meant to be an endurance contest. A season of the beautiful game should not be.

… is simply awesome. After a life free of cavities, the dentist warned me last year that I had developed some decay on a few teeth in back. I spent a little over an hour watching Caddyshack on the ceiling TV while the dental team drilled away, and thanks to the topical Novocaine or whatever it was, the only problem was trying not to crack up while Ty Webb was stabbing Lacy Underall with the acupuncture needle.

(By the way, Lacy was really, really hot in a poor man’s Morgan Fairchild way. What happened to her? She was much prettier than any of the Brat Pack girls, and it’s not like any of them could act, either.)

The other great thing is that the fillings are white and you can’t see them even if you are looking for them, so there’s none of that mouth full of black holes thing going on. The bad news, however, is that the dentist decided that since it went so well, we might as well take care of three teeth that were borderline last time this afternoon.

Once more into the breach, dear friends….

Thus spake the Virgin Queen:

In fact, of all the popular writers I’m currently reading I would have to say that only Neal Stephenson routinely comes up with plots that are original and engaging and surprising

Which wouldn’t hurt a bit, were it not combined with this recent post:

I absolve myself of all responsibility for my lack of posting lately, as it is entirely Vox’s fault. I’ve been reading The War in Heaven at breakneck speed in between lab duties and I will be posting a book review soon.

On second thought, it probably doesn’t apply to me at all, considering that “popular” is not an adjective often applied to me wearing my writer’s hat. But in any case, I have no problem admitting that Neal Stephenson is a much more interesting and accomplished novelist than I am.

Dan Brown, on the other hand, has merely sold more books….

A team of Senate and House Democrats today are planning to introduce legislation today aimed at significantly increasing size of the U.S. Army.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services (SASC) airland subcommittee, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), a SASC member, and Reps. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), both members of the House Armed Services committee, are pressing for the passage of the United States Army Relief Act.

The legislation seeks to raise the cap of the Army’s end strength, said an aide to Tauscher.

We’ll know she’s going for broke when she announces her immigration reform policy….

The Original Cyberpunk points us to what Strange Horizons sees all too often:

Person is (metaphorically) at point A, wants to be at point B. Looks at point B, says “I want to be at point B.” Walks to point B, encountering no meaningful obstacles or difficulties. The end. (A.k.a. the linear plot.)

Creative person is having trouble creating.
– Writer has writer’s block.
– Painter can’t seem to paint anything good.
– Sculptor can’t seem to sculpt anything good.
– Creative person’s work is reviled by critics who don’t understand how brilliant it is.
– Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive.

Visitor to alien planet ignores information about local rules, inadvertantly violates them, is punished.
– New diplomat arrives on alien planet, ignores anthropologist’s attempts to explain local rules, is punished.

Weird things happen, but it turns out they’re not real.
– In the end, it turns out it was all a dream.
– In the end, it turns out it was all in virtual reality.
– In the end, it turns out the protagonist is insane.
– In the end, it turns out the protagonist is writing a novel and the events we’ve seen are part of the novel.

And then, there’s this homage to Joel Rosenberg: A group of real-world humans who like roleplaying find themselves transported to D&D world. Considering that both he and Guy Gavriel Kay have covered that one, best you leave it alone.

Regardless of whether it was suicide bombers, (as is now being reported), or timed military explosives, (as previous reports had it), the London attacks would seem to underline the lack of wisdom inherent in allowing 1.6 million people whose loyalties lie elsewhere to immigrate.

Patrick Buchanan is controversial, but his Death of the West is proving to be more and more prescient, especially as it regards a Europe that has appears to have chosen to commit suicide by immigration instead of a lingering death by demographics or a rebirth by Christian revival.

The increasing hatred for Christians demonstrated by the Democratic party and the academic elite combined with the Republican party’s preference for open borders shows that the latter is also unlikely to be embraced by the U.S. government as a solution to the problem.

It is a culture of death indeed, both in individual and societal terms.

When Kenny Weiner first heard the commercial on WEEI-AM (850), he thought it was a spoof. The spot features three male co-workers who find out their friend Darren has been stuck with kid duty and can’t make their weekend trip to Las Vegas.

”Will somebody tell him to wake up already,” one of them says. ”That kid looks nothing like him.”

The ad is for 1-800-DNA-TEST, an at-home paternity kit sold by a company called Orchid Cellmark. The doubting father simply swabs the inside of his cheek, and the child’s, and sends them to a lab for analysis. Two weeks later, his fatherhood will no longer be up for debate.

”For a guy with an MBA,” one of the men in the commercial says of Darren, ”he’s sure failing economics 101.”

The ad didn’t last long on WEEI. After a handful of complaints, programming and operations director Jason Wolfe pulled the spot last Monday. ”I just didn’t feel that the way that they chose to produce the commercial was appropriate,” he said.

Several bloggers have also taken issue with the provocative ad, which is part of a radio campaign launched a month ago in several markets. The ad was scheduled to start running on WBCN-FM (104.1) on Friday, according to Orchid Cellmark….

The proliferation of these tests is worrisome to Nina Selvaggio, president of the National Organization for Women’s Massachusetts chapter. Not because she thinks they shouldn’t be available, she says, but because ”it’s perpetuating a culture that says there’s a way to get out of being responsible.” With the number of so-called ”deadbeat dads” out there who aren’t paying child support, she says, why not put the focus on preventative measures, such as birth control.

I’ll bet Nina is worried about this. Because a very good way out of being held responsible is to not be responsible in the first place. Considering that we live in a world where there are seminars devoted to teaching women how to fake evidence of an abusive relationship, the idea that a man should have the ability to verify the paternity of his children is hardly outrageous.

In this case, one really has to wonder where the objection could possibly be if one does not have something to hide, since there is no possible violation of the woman’s privacy. Impressive cowardliness on the part of the program director, too. One wonders how he thinks the service might have been more appropriately produced, given the subject at hand.

Now, I suspect there’s a lot of men who would find it impossible to disown a child they loved and had reared as their own. I know I would. But that decision must belong to the purported father, not to the state and certainly not to the mother.

From WND:

According to Williams, former CIA Director George Tenet informed President Bush one month after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that at least two suitcase nukes had reached al-Qaida operatives in the U.S.

“Each suitcase weighed between 50 and 80 kilograms (approximately 110 to 176 pounds) and contained enough fissionable plutonium and uranium to produce an explosive yield in excess of two kilotons,” wrote Williams. “One suitcase bore the serial number 9999 and the Russian manufacturing date of 1988. The design of the weapons, Tenet told the president, is simple. The plutonium and uranium are kept in separate compartments that are linked to a triggering mechanism that can be activated by a clock or a call from the cell phone.”

According to the author, the news sent Bush “through the roof,” prompting him to order his national security team to give nuclear terrorism priority over every other threat to America.

However, it is worth noting that Bush failed to translate this policy into securing the U.S.-Mexico border through which the nuclear weapons and al-Qaida operatives are believed to have passed with the help of the MS-13 smugglers. He did, however, order the building of underground bunkers away from major metropolitan areas for use by federal government managers following an attack.

I suppose closing the southern border would have been too extreme a step, since that would involve admitting an additional dereliction of duty in defending the country. I hope this isn’t true, but the idea that someone would wait to make one really big bang instead of a series of smaller ones does fit the profile of the 9/11, Madrid and London attacks.

Sports Illustrated’s cover jinx is actually an example of Elliott Waves in action, although not a particularly good one. By the time something comes to the mainstream’s attention, it’s run is largely done. That’s why the cover articles on sizzling real estate are a matter of more than a little concern to the investment professionals; as usual, if you take things at face value, you’ll fail to understand the more significant elements.

UPDATE: A similar example from NRO:

On Saturday, July 9, 2005, the President signed the following bill into law: S. 714, the “Junk Fax Prevention Act of 2005,” relating to unsolicited advertisements via telephone facsimile machines.

KJL: There are still fax machines?

From the Orlando Sentinel:

“I see a Democratic Party afraid to say they’re Democrats, who voted for the war in Iraq and voted for tax cuts for the wealthy,” said Glenn Anderson of Orlando. “Why should I remain a Democrat?”

It was a tough question. But Nelson and Obama tried to answer it.

“The Democrats at times have lost their way,” conceded Obama. “We are trying to decide what our core values are. The criterion for judging the party isn’t whether it’s to the left or right, “but are we true to our core values,” he said.

Nobody defined core values.

Imagine that….