Worthless Cardboard?

Is anyone else out there from my generation sitting on a big pile of early 1980's baseball cards? News flash...they're worthless. At least I have the memories of bike rides over to the shop next to Bill the Butcher's barber shop to haggle over the price of Rickey Henderson rookie cards. And the thrill of finding a rare Don Mattingly Donruss rookie peeking out of a cello pack that I bought at Value City in Vineland, NJ.

The Joys of Carpentry

Though I wear a lot of hats at work, I guess you can call me a research scientist. But the higher you get in the research system, the more you oversee people, set direction, and deal with burocracy, and the less you actually get to do research with your own hands. But while I can't complain about the pay, and I very much like what I do, there are a lot of days when I wish I could do some of that research myself again. Going out and collecting specimens in the field on a nice day (or even a bad day) is always fun. And planning and running experiments is also fulfilling, particularly when you get good results. In short, I guess its satisfying to create and compete something with your own hands. Well, to me at least.

And its doubly satisfying when that thing is something you can see, feel, or touch, and something that will last for a while. Which is why I'm having fun rebuilding my deck. Now I'm no carpenter, but I'm relatively handy, and I guess I'm competent with power tools. Like any project this size, there will be bumps in the road--last night I had a bear of time getting joist hangers where I wanted them, and I have a bunch of bloody knuckles--but the end will be worth it. I think that there's something therapeutic to things like carpentry.

I think it also harkens back to simpler times, without the rat race that many of are sucked into. There are plenty of times I'll drive through a small town up here in Vermont or New York, and I'll think that it would be nice to work in town and run something like the diner, or hardware store, or stationer. I know its unrealistic, and that shops like that are having a hard time making ends meet, but to me sometimes it looks like a joy.

Maybe the images of 50's-style Americana have just been burned into my head too many times, and I've bought in. But I don't see much of that Americana today--the towns where everyone knows you and would go out of their way to help you. Perhaps I'm finding some of that in making my deck, and, for now at least, its been gratifying.

The Hall of Fame and the 90s

This article

does a good job highlighting some of the problems that Hall of Fame voters are going to have in the future. In short, how do you compare the numbers of players who used steroids with the numbers of players who did not? This is especially complicated given that no one knows who used and who didn't. There is a great deal of hope that the Mitchell Report will straighten things out some, but I'm less confidant of that than the writers quoted in the article.

Let's assume that one argues that the top twenty all-time players at each position should be in the running for the Hall of Fame. Players in a sense compete with other players from their own era and with players from other eras to get in. What concerns me is that there will be a player who posts slightly better numbers with the help of steroids than a player who does not use steroids and that the secret steroid user will get in over the more deserving non-steroid user. (For an example, think of Mark McGwire v. Frank Thomas. Or, better and more slanderously, a certain Astro 1B v. Thomas.)

Anyway, I made an inclusive list of players from the 90s who are possible contenders for the Hall (some will have to post a few more good years to make it, but it's fun to guess). Let me know if I missed anyone and who you would vote for:

C: Piazza, Ivan Rodriguez, Posada
1B: McGwire, Bagwell, Frank Thomas, Palmeiro, McGriff, Delgado, Thome, Helton, Giambi
2B: Biggio, Alomar, Kent
3B: Chipper Jones, Matt Williams, E. Martinez, Ventura
SS: Ripken, ARod, Jeter, Tejada, Larkin, Garciaparra
LF: Bonds, Henderson, Manny Ramirez, Raines, Albert Belle
CF: Griffey, Jr., Bernie Williams, Lofton, Andruw Jones
RF: Gwynn, Sosa, Sheffield, Ichiro, Canseco, Larry Walker, Vlad Guerrero, Juan Gonzalez
SP: Clemens, Maddux, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Glavine, Mussina, Schilling, Smoltz, Kevin Brown, Cone, Pettitte
RP: Rivera, Hoffman, Billy Wagner

The Judger-In-Chief

Much has been said over the past six or seven years about George W. Bush and his own personal style--his manner of speaking, his manner of acting, his approach to others. The image that the Republican Party--and perhaps Bush himself--likes to portray the most is that of the plain-talking, cut-through-the-BS, look-you-straight-in-the-eye, old school leader. Over that same period of time, a number of others have tried to figure out if that persona is indeed true, and whether its a good or a bad thing.

What I'd like to focus for a few paragraphs is one aspect of Bush's personna--his ability to accurately judge people. Bush was famously quoted as saying about Russian President Putin, "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul." Bush was very positive about his relationship with Putin at the time, saying he was a good man worthy of leading Russia. Last week's prickly press conference exchange with Putin, where Putin said, right next to Bush, that Russia certainly didn't want an Iraq-style democracy, had to sting Bush. (Not to mention Putin's pushing Russia back towards dictatorship.)

During the same trip to St. Petersburg, Bush seemed to take is warm relationship with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, a bit too far. With cameras and a number of other world leaders in a conference room, Bush came up behind Merkel to give her a surprise neck rub. Her startled expression was caught for the world to see, though it hasn't gotten all that much press attention.

While many have questioned what would have been the press reaction if Clinton had made such an advance, what bothers me more is Bush's judgement. He must have thought that Merkel would have wanted or appreciated such contact, otherwise he wouldn't have done what he did. He clearly had read his relationship with her wrong--the same way he appears to have read his relationship with Putin wrong.

There are other examples where Bush's judgement of individuals seems a bit suspect. Hiring criminals in David Safavian and Claude Allen. Nominating Bernard Kerik. Being close friends with Ken Lay. My mother still says "Show me your friends and I'll tell you who you are." By this measure, Bush comes up lacking.

I haven't even gotten into the judgement of situations--I'm willing to give a bit of a pass there, since many people are involved in the evaluation and response to a situation, even though the buck still stops with the President.

But he was indeed elected President, and will be President for two more years. But it makes me increasingly uncomfortable--and my comfort level wasn't real high to begin with--as we look to him to accurately judge individuals and situations in a world that seems to be growing messier and messier by the minute.

At the sound of the flush, please leave a message.

This past March I returned to work in an office after having spent the past two years enjoying the lifestyle of the independent consultant, which is to say getting up when I pleased and working at my desk in my boxers (on a good day, anyway). Ah, good times.

Anyway, in the months that I have been back "working for the man," I have been fascinated and repulsed by something I have observed on an almost daily basis: guys make, receive, and continue cell phone conversations through the entire course of doing their business in the men's room. I'm no stickler for etiquette, believe me, but there is something utterly mortifying about that. At the very least, I have a clear mental list of people whose cell phones I will never ask to borrow.

Call me old fashioned, but I am of the view that the cell phone's place in the men's room is as a means to play Yahtzee or Bubblet. Am I part of some prudish minority on this one? Mind you, the people in my building are not surgeons or magnates. These are not split-second, life-or-death decisions these people are discussing, so urgency isn't the issue. Well, not as far as the cell phone conversations go, anyway.

Jeter v. ARod

This is a topic that PBryon and I were just talking about. So I figured that it could be hashed out here.

As anyone who follows baseball or who lives in the New York area knows, Alex Rodriguez is having a rough time with NY fans and the media this year. There an obvious reason for this. ARod is not quite playing up to his superstar standards this year. Some negative reaction is not unexpected, but what is unexpected is the high level of vilification that he has received in the press and the intense booing he has received from Yankee fans. ARod was the MVP last year and, by consensus, is still clearly one of the 10 best players in the game. Why isn't ARod being cut some slack?

To get a grasp on this question, I think that ARod can be compared with another great Yankee: Derek Jeter. Derek Jeter never gets booed and never gets attacked in the press despite the fact that Jeter has had some slumps and some disappointing seasons in his career. Jeter seems to have an aura that surrounds him -- an aura that ARod, clearly a superior player, lacks. Why?

I think that it has something to do with their personalities. Jeter and ARod have essentially the same personalities in front of the media -- both give bland, inoffensive, and uninteresting answers to the press's questions. The difference is on the field. Jeter seems to express a natural exuberance on the field whereas ARod seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Jeter seems authentic whereas ARod seems pre-programmed. In a way, ARod's approach is the more thoughtful approach. ARod has had much exposure to a therapeutic culture in which his wife (a holder of a Master's degree in psychology)is involved; he speaks to a motivational counselor daily. In a way, this makes ARod's success all the more impressive. A linkage between "thinking too much" and "choking" in athletics is well-established.

Here Goes...

So this group of college buddies started with some of the earliest mass-market PCs, when we all got one when we entered college. By the time we left college, the incoming freshmen were lucky enough to get machines with hard drives. We were still stuck with 5.25 inch floppies.

But for us, it was the beginnings of using these computers to talk to each other, and in the intervening 15-20 years, as we've moved from dorm rooms to apartments to houses; from hollering down the hall to postal mail to calls on the phone to e-mail to the internet; from North Jersey to all over the country (and world), we've always thought our group conversations were highly entertaining, saying that others would get a kick out of them. Here comes the opportunity to test that hypothesis.

What do we like to talk about? Anything and everything. I surmise that there will be posts about politics, music, television, art, sports, relationships--whatever crosses our minds on that particular day. But odds are, there will be some talk about Derek Jeter. Or, in our lingo, Jetter. Don't be surprised to see him pop up in lots of posts.

Like anything new, this will evolve. But if we keep this up, and you keep up reading it, you'll start to figure out our lingo, our idiosyncracies, and our individual and collective senses of humor.

How many of us will actively take part in this blog? I can't say. We all have responsibilites, so posting may go in fits and spurts. We've got a group of 15 of us who've been given the green light to post whatever they want. We'll see where it goes from there.

Why so many? So we can be lazy and still have this blog be somewhat current. And because the net of interested parties from 15 of us is bound to be larger than from any one individual, hopefully giving us some more readership--and the feedback that goes with it.

So here we go, jumping into this blog thing. Hopefully, it'll be a fun pasttime.