How Fantasy Sports Explains - Hurricane Irene

When Hurricane Irene was heading for New Jersey, where I currently live, it wreaked a lot of havoc on my fantasy football draft, which was very odd since the storm wasn't due to hit until sometime Saturday afternoon, and my draft was scheduled for Friday night. 

Part of the problem was that two of the owners in my league were vacationing in Ocean City, New Jersey and were told that there was a mandatory evacuation on Friday afternoon, and they had to pack up all their stuff and leave town, pronto. They ended up coming over to my house, ended up spending the night, and then headed out first thing in the morning so that they could get home to Connecticut in plenty of time to enjoy a power outage for over a week. 

Meanwhile, we got very lucky and although we lost one tree in the front yard, there was no significant damage, and in fact, we didn't even lose power. In fact, much of the area that was evacuated in South Jersey, because of the fact that the storm had weakened significantly by the time it arrived, ended up being just fine. 

What boggled my mind, though, as I watched the local television coverage as Irene slowly marched across the state of New Jersey, was how unwilling the anchors and meteorologists were to admit that the storm was not in fact going to be the end of life as we knew it, which is how it felt like it was being sold to the public by Governor Christie in an attempt to get people to evacuate in the first place.  

This footage - pretty much at the worst of Irene - was typical of how things were that night... certainly bad, but not nearly as severe as the "if you stay, you will die" tone before the storm arrived.

View more videos at: http://nbcphiladelphia.com.

One reporter for this station had been on the Atlantic City beach all afternoon, and each time the anchors threw to him, they'd say something like, "If you haven't evacuated yet, you need to do so... it is not safe to be in Atlantic City. Now, let's go to our reporter in Atlantic City...you look wet, Justin." And Justin would laugh and say he was and point to the one garbage can that had blown over as proof that the storm was going to be a killer. 

The fact is that we simply can't predict the path of a hurricane with complete accuracy anymore than we can predict how many yards a certain running back will gain when he takes the field this week. While we can get a general sense of the possible outcomes and potential paths that massive storms will travel, it's still only a guess -- just as we may have a sense that Steven Jackson is more likely to gain 100 yards than Ben Tate in any given week. But when Jackson gets hurt after two carries in Week 1, and Tate ends up as Houston's only healthy back halfway through his game, strange things can happen. 

Tate having 116 yards on the ground and Jackson only 56 was certainly not an expected outcome, but after having happened, it still wasn't an outcome completely out of whack with what someone might have predicted, albeit at the extremes.

So, while I am certainly not upset with the decision to evacuate coastal towns where the flooding could have been deadly -- because it certainly could have been that bad -- at some point, it would have been nice for the news to stop being fear-mongers and simply admit that the storm (thankfully) was simply not going to be as bad as it legitimately could have been -- just as at some point, although that point is not after just one week of play -- those who nay-sayed the fantasy value of players like Cam Newton should be willing to eat crow, provided he continues to excel.


I'll close with a video of a bit by Lewis Black, who correctly asserts that Al Roker and his ilk are often wrong -- by enormous proportions. I first saw him do a version of this bit in person in the early 90's, and at the time, he was talking about how if you predict 7 inches of snow and there's 14 inches of snow, nobody gets too upset because at least there was a "shitload of snow" but if you miss by the same amount in the other direction, and it doesn't snow, then there's going to be hell to pay. 

Jokes.com
Lewis Black - The Weather
comedians.comedycentral.com
Lewis Black Comedians Stark Raving Black Videos

He closed the routine (when I saw it) by suggesting that if Roker wanted to impress him, he should predict something interesting -- like actual shitballs falling from the sky! "Get that right and maybe I'll listen to you from now on, but until then, no, I shan't be sure to bring my umbrella on this day."

My experience tells me though, that even if that was Roker's forecast, and it actually took place, a large majority of people would treat such an occurrence just like Cam Newton's Week 1, shrug it off and say,"He got lucky. Let's see him do it again." 

And so it goes...

How Fantasy Sports Explains - The West Memphis Free

When I was growing up in New York, I was a Rangers fan, which was a very difficult inheritance that my father had bestowed upon me. Going to school surrounded by seemingly countless Islanders fans, all reveling in the glory of Bossy and Trottier and He Who Shall Not Be Named (except at the appropriate moment when the rhythmic whistling rains down from the blue seats) as they won Stanley Cup after Stanley Cup after Stanley Cup.

Every year, the playoffs ended in yet another disappointment. Some years, we'd come close to ending the "1940" catcalls once and for all, but most years -- and usually at the hands of the Washington Capitals of all teams -- all we got for our fandom was a swift kick in the nether regions. A championship remained ever out of our reach. We'd have to settle for Ron Duguay's jeans commercial. 

Then came Mark Messier. The guarantee. Stephane Matteau and the call by Howie Rose. 

And finally... victory! Celebration! Ticker tape parades! And then... well, now what?

Once the afterglow had faded, here was a huge void that was suddenly present. I'm reminded of a line from a song in the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "The battle's done, and we (kind of) won, so we sound our victory cheer. Where do we go from here?"

The next season there was lockout, and when things finally got going, the Rangers barely squeaked into the playoffs, and were swept by the Flyers, and I happily gave them a mulligan. The same thing happened the next year when they lost to the Penguins in 5. Because the thrill of  that Stanley Cup victory had been so long in coming and so intense... the "void" that had been filled by that euphoria no longer needed attention.

By 1997, the team wasn't even making the playoffs anymore, and I'd already lost interest. I'd moved on... The story was told. The book put back on the shelf. Nothing more to see here, move it along. 

I think Red Sox fans might have some inkling of what I am talking about here... after all those years of coming so close to a World Series title and just missing out... and then finally the 3-0 comeback against the hated Yankees and that euphoria of finally reaching the top of the mountain. Of course, Boston has been a winning team ever since, so the investment is still paying off and I expect fewer fans have moved on to other pursuits... but I wonder if Cubs fans aren't headed for a similar fate -- should they ever win, that is.

All of which brings me back to the West Memphis 3, and the decade-long efforts of some of their supporters to get them released from prison. In some ways, the Alford Plea might be a good thing for them, since there's still a goal to be reached here -- namely, the clearing of their names.

After all this time of hoping for a victory, once the dust settles and Eddie Vedder has moved on. and the supporters have moved on, and the world has moved on -- Damien, Jessie and Jason may well be left sitting there saying, "Now what?" There's never been any other goal than their freedom. That consumed every waking moment, and likely the sleeping ones, too...

I'm glad Damien is a Red Sox fan. He's still not seen a World Series victory with his own eyes... so let another quest begin. There are still mountains to climb... time to take those first steps.

ROS? More Like SOS.

I've been filling in for my colleague Tristan H. Cockcroft this week on some of his baseball columns as he takes a well-earned week off to rest up for the upcoming -- and indeed we now know it IS upcoming -- NFL season. 

Part of the purpose of these columns (like this one) is to provide a list in which we predict a ranked order of players based on "their expected performance from this point forward, not for statistics that have already been accrued."

Everything's up in the air...

There's an inherent problem with stepping in for someone else in this task. For one, I had no part in shaping last week's list, and as such, I may or may not agree with it as a starting point. So when, in the article, I write about how I think Player X is due for a decline, it may not appear consistent with the fact that I end up raising this same Player X in the rankings by a few spots. 

But, in fact, the two can be completely consistent... if you consider that last week I may have simply had Player X ranked much higher than I did this week, yet even after docking him several spots in my rankings, I may still have him higher than where Tristan did last week. 


That's a difficult concept to express, and I'm not even sure I completely accomplished the goal of doing so here, so I get why people may call out the rankings as not being logically consistent with some of my points... and yet, I assure you, they are.

Wait? What?

But here's the even more confusing thing about these rest-of-season (ROS) predictions... Let's say that last week you agreed with the list that Player Y should be ranked 50th for the ROS. Now this week, after he hits .750 with five homers and 11 RBIs, where do you think he should be ranked?

Counter-intuitively, if we were indeed right last week, and Player Y had a great week, then in the new ROS ranks, he should actually drop in the rankings, shouldn't he? Otherwise, we were wrong last week and had him ranked too low. (So if you didn't complain then, you shouldn't have an issue with a lower rank now. And yet...) 

Regardless of the mathematical truth of the situation, however, once you make a list, people are going to disagree with it. That's the nature of the beast and part of what makes fantasy sports so much fun to play. 

So feel free to offer up your own opinions of who is going to be better than who, and where you think we've gone off the deep end. All I ask is that you try and make sure you're complaining for the right reasons.

The Plot Quickens

Sorry for the lack of new posts this week... Not only did we spend some time up at Bristol, locked in a room with my ESPN fantasy brethren -- or in Stephania's case, sistheren -- ranking all the top fantasy football options for the next year, but we also are in the homestretch of the editing process for the book -- less than 90 days and counting!

Once we've locked down the galleys and can come up for air, we'll be back a bit more regularly... 

Oh, and for those who haven't already figured out the whole Marty the Fishboy thing... he was indeed the kid's show host's sidekick. But why is that important to me? Well... for that, you'll have to wait for the book...

America Is Not Wrong, Dawg!

It wasn't your best for you for me, yo yo yo!

Here's where I am fed up with American Idol...

It's not the constant praise that the judges heap on the incredible lack of talent that takes their stage weekly and forever ruins some otherwise enjoyable songs. 

Nor is it the hypocrisy of their getting so worked up about the "shocking elimination" of Pia that they threaten to commit hari-kiri on the spot, then follow it up by barely registering interest the next week when Paul, who they've been equally complimentary of, gets the boot.

No, what steams me is the finger of blame pointed at the audience: "America, you got it wrong!" "This is who you voted to be in your bottom three, America."

I could care less who wins or loses this show, but I do take umbrage at the lack of "up-front-iness" about the process. Nobody ever gets voted off the show. America never chooses who goes home. That's not how the show's voting process works. 

People call in and cast a vote FOR their favorite contestant. While some people might spread those votes amongst several candidates, the vast majority are simply going to call in and call often for their No. 1 choice to win. 

It is quite possible that, if asked, everyone who voted the week Pia was eliminated thought she was second or third-best overall. They might all have thought that Stefano or Paul or Jacob was the absolute worst. But those guys also each had their own core of fans voting to keep them safe. 

So it really shouldn't be that surprising when someone that everyone watching thinks should finish no worse than fourth or fifth suddenly goes home in ninth because nobody wants them to win the whole thing. In fact, I'd be shocked if we had a season where that didn't happen.

And yes, the reason the process won't change is because the controversial bootings are good for ratings and generating a buzz for the show. I just wish that when they inevitably take place, the show's judges didn't start pointing the finger at viewers, because that starts people thinking there are conspiracies and hidden agendas at work. 

America can't conspire to vote anyone out of this competition. The process won't let them. So, no Ryan, this is not the "bottom three we voted for" but rather, those five singers sitting safely on the couch are the "top five we like best." There is a big difference.

Pray for education, J-Lo

And Then There Were Two...

We're losing another choice today from the hunt for the true identity of Marty the Fishboy. Sadly, for those of you who selected the option -- The lead singer of an indie pop band from Texas -- you are wrong.

Eric Michener is the lead singer of the band, Fishboy, from Denton, Texas. Along with his buddies Sweatpants, Sixlets and Medicine Ball, the group has developed a bit of a cult following. However, no Marty is in sight on the program when this band hits the stage.

Fishboy-A Surprise Return

Fishboy | Myspace Video

When will we know if Marty is actually a kid's show sidekick or if I simply made the whole thing up? Soon, dear readers, soon.

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Time to Winnow Down

Our quest to discover the true identity of Marty the Fishboy takes another step forward today, as we eliminate one more of our multiple choice options... He is NOT a genetically mutated parasite who was born in the aftermath of Chernobyl. That would be this fine fellow:

Run for it, Marty!

This is the Flukeman, a "monster of the week" from a 1994 episode of The X-Files who was created from Russian radioactive sewage and ends up terrorizing the citizens of Newark, New Jersey after taking up residence in the city's sewer system. 

He kind of looks like a combo mummy-worm beast, and in the end, although he is ultimately sliced in two by Fox Mulder, regeneration allows him to live on past the closing credits. However, as a possible answer to our question? That ship has sailed.

The truth is still out there folks... and all will soon be revealed. Stay tuned...

Multiple Choice

Who is Marty the Fishboy? All will be explained soon. But until then, why not take a stab at it? 

Marty the Fishboy is:

• A) A professional tennis player about to break into the Top 10.
• B) A costumed sidekick on a low-budget local-television kid's show.
• C) The lead singer of an indie pop band from Texas.
• D) A genetically mutated parasite who was born in the aftermath of Chernobyl.
• E) You aren't fooling me, AJ -- it's none of the above.

Feel free to scroll down and vote in the survey below if you'd care to put your guess on record. 

All will be eventually be revealed...

Shameless

AJ's no Gary Busey. That's a good thing.

I know, I've been slacking. It's been a few days since my last post. Please forgive me... but I know where to place the blame.

You see, a little over a year ago I wrote this post, looking for a Mysterious Benefactor to help sponsor this blog, so that I could give up the need to actually have to work for a living and to be able to post something pithy here each and every day. 

Suffice it to say, the not-so-anonymous billionaire in question did not come through. (Although, surprisingly, donations of about $1.68 did come in, and for that I am thankful, even if we fell way short of our goal.)

Still, I remain optimistic that someone out there who may have enjoyed reading my musings here and perhaps knows the friend of a friend of a friend of a billionaire, who might want to put in a good word for me.

So once again, the donations button is there on the right, Secret Millionaires of the world... My mother always told me that you don't get anything unless you ask. So, what do you say? 

It will be our little secret... 

In Goal, Bugs Bunny... At Striker, Bugs Bunny...

I coach my 6-year-old's soccer team, and just received the list of names on the "randomly selected roster" of kids who I will attempt to whip into a goal-scoring machine by the end of the Spring.

For some reason though, of the seven players on my team, FOUR of them have the same first name. Seriously? Nobody thought to look at the list before finalizing it? 

Just imagine... "Hey Bruce, sub in. For who? Bruce. No, not Bruce... Bruce. No! Bruce!" What a coaching nightmare! 

Sitting for a Spell

This past weekend I was asked to be a judge in my local area's Tri-County Spelling Bee, a feeder competition to the national Scripps event in Washington, D.C., which gets televised by ESPN and ABC in June.

I shall rule the entire Tri-County area!

Essentially, my job was to crush the souls of these children by informing them that they were to be considered abject failures, and suffer nightmares for the rest of their natural lives simply for not knowing that "caribou" did not end with a "double O."

What fun it was to watch as a nine-year-old girl started weeping uncontrollably upon hearing that her word was "Kabuki" and that she instantly knew she had no idea how to spell it, even if she was told it was "a form of Japanese dance-drama" and was a noun -- as if that would somehow help.

See, we have a dictionary. We must know what we're doing!

How delightful to have parents come up to the judges' table to appeal on behalf of their children that "the menu at the restaurant we go to regularly spells anchovy with an I-E at the end, so it must be right" and other such specious arguments. Hey, my local Chinese restaurant offers up both "oxital soup" and "french fiies" but that doesn't mean your kid moves on, lady.

OK, maybe the whole experience wasn't that bad... after all, look at the smiles on the faces of our top three spellers below...

Congrats to Stephanie Miller for being the last one standing after 34 others had fallen by the wayside. We'll be rooting for her in June and hoping that all those I's continue to come before those E's, except of course, after those troublesome C's.

Comedy Killers

He's got some Adrian Adonis DNA

No, this post isn't about the Oscars, painfully unfunny as much of the scripted schtick was... but rather it's about those people who should not be allowed to use Twitter or Facebook. I call these people the "Comedy Killers" and they need to be stopped.

Recently there was a funny Twitter hashtag producing much laughter: #threewordmovies. At first, most people got the joke and posted things like "Monarch has stutter" and "Iceberg sinks ship" and my personal favorite, "Bella can't act." (Just to make sure you get the joke and we're all on the same page here, those comments refer to, respectively, The King's Speech, Titanic and Twilight.)

Now, not every attempt to add to this list is going to be a winner, and I'm not suggesting that just because you try to be funny and fail that you should not be allowed to try. Heaven knows I've missed the mark from time to time... but people who completely fail to grasp that humor is going on at all? Why? Why do you do it?

I enjoyed reading these Tweets until people started submitting things like The Social Network  and Big Momma's House. In other words, they completely missed the point of the exercise and sucked all the humor out of it by simply listing movies with three word titles. (That sound you hear is me slapping my head.)

I'm sure you've experienced the same phenomenon on Facebook, as well. One of your friends will change their status to something like "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking." You type in a response, "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking." 

Another friend types in "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue." And as you sit there, just waiting for the next person to respond with "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines" -- a Comedy Killer strikes by worriedly asking, "Why? What's wrong? Did something happen? Drinking isn't the answer. I hope everything is OK."

Please, if you're one of these people... CUT IT OUT!  Yours is not a victimless crime.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to accept your friend request...

Fear Not: Watson is NOT Skynet

Yes, Regis. That is my final answer...

After watching Watson, a computer, defeat Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the amount of alarm that I've seen on the internet is mind-boggling. Some people see this as the first step down a path where robots will rule the world and humans will be turned into nothing more than "pets" to their new overlords.  

Certainly, you have to be impressed with the team that created Watson. As someone who got his first computer back when you had to program in BASIC and creating dot-matrix line-art was considered "advanced," it's stunning to see how far we've come... but if anyone is surprised that Watson won, I'm not sure why. 

When I want to perform large amounts of calculations on a table of data, I could do it by hand. I could use a calculator. More practically, I type the numbers into Excel and then create a function so my computer can do it for me. If I then want it to find certain entries that meet certain criteria, it can do that far faster than I could searching line-by-line. 

Watson, come here... I want you.

In essence, that's all Watson is. A vast amount of information has been entered into the machine, and it answers questions about that information -- and given the fact that Ken and Brad were able to buzz in faster than Watson on several occasions, it's clear that Watson isn't all that more efficient than humans at doing this incredibly specific task. 

Certainly, I'm not trying to downplay the marvelous advances in programming that Team Watson have accomplished here, but I'm also not losing any sleep that we're suddenly going to be obsolete. Eventually, the internet -- with access to enough data to make Solomon blush -- may well become self-aware. (Robert J. Sawyer has written a terrific series of novels based on that very premise.) 

I'm not so sure that would mean the end of the world, but hey, if it does -- we've got nobody to blame but ourselves and how we react to that development. After all, there's "no fate but what we make." That doesn't mean controlling our machines, but rather controlling ourselves. 

Homeo-Phobia

As I write this, James Randi is very much alive. He shouldn't be, of course, since he has been taking fatal doses of sleeping pills on a regular basis. Of course, these aren't any ordinary old sleeping pills -- they are homeopathic sleeping pills, and hence, worthless. Yet that hasn't stopped pharmacies around the United States from actually selling these fraudulent products right alongside real medicine.

What do you mean you're not getting sleepy?

It may sound "quaint" to try taking a homeopathic remedy, calling back the nostalgia of "Grandma's chicken soup," but these so-called medicines are dangerous -- not because they can hurt you, but because they don't do anything at all. They are created by diluting any active ingredients to the point where they no longer exist in the mixture, for all intents and purposes. 

Imagine you put a tiny speck of aspirin into a glass of water and stirred it up, then poured that glass into a pitcher of water, then poured that pitcher into your swimming pool and took a sip... according to the proponents of homeopathy, that sip will cure your headache better than actually ingesting an entire pill of aspirin. 

And if you have a serious illness that does need to be treated with drugs, wasting your time with these nonsensical homeopathic "cures" might delay you from getting needed medical attention. As the video below says better than I ever could, homeopathy (as well as other psychic nonsense) is truly a very dangerous thing:

(Feel free to skip ahead after the introductory remarks to 11:44 or so for the Homeopathy rant.)

What a Fool Believes

It's just a jump to the left!

PHONECIA, New York — You may be signing that checkbook with your John Hancock today, but you might be surprised to find that you actually should be using your Higb Glbxixj.

A new alphabet was unveiled recently by linguists at Upstate Tech in New York, with each letter shifted one space on the traditional keyboard, moved thanks to the efforts of the moon’s gravitational pull.

“The ancient civilization that developed our alphabet used stone tablets, which were far heavier than the loose sheets of paper that we use today, and were thusly immune to the forces of the solar system. During the ensuing millenniums, the moon's gravitational pull has made the Earth 'wobble' around its axis, creating a one-letter shift in our language's letter-to-symbol correspondence," said Bob "Viv" Jones, Professor of Fine Arts at UTNY.

Thus our new alphabet reads as follows: LVXSWDFGUHJKNBIOPEARYCQZTM.

The change will take some time to get used to, but will slowly be transitioned into common usage by the summer of 2012, just before the Mayan calendar runs out and all life on Earth ceases to exist.

LH Nlaa contributed to this report.

The More Things Change...

This is the text of a speech given by Robert F. Kennedy on April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated and just two months before he himself was gunned down. Change the words in bold at the start of the second paragraph to "party" and "Democrat and Republican" -- and they ring just as true today in the aftermath of the Arizona shooting. I'm not sure how that makes me feel... How about you?

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives. 

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by his assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies - to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear - only a common desire to retreat from each other - only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Mob Mentality

There's two ways to look at the phenomena of flash mobs. On the one hand, these "drive-by, surprise performance attacks" point out glaring weaknesses in the capability of government to truly protect us from a well-planned terrorist attack.

I mean, if groups of motivated people can secretly organize over the internet to meet in a well-trafficked public location, strike quickly with a choreographed set of actions that escalate quickly, and then disperse into the shadows from whence they came -- and each time the event comes as a "shock" to onlookers that almost always include law enforcement, then imagine what tragedy might occur if the weapon of choice of these flash mobs was actual guns instead of merely "throwing your guns in the air and waving like you just down care."

Even more pathetic is this inept CBS report about late-night street fights in Philadelphia that lumps these playful flash mobs in with people who are simply out to fight… and yet, the lack of ability to stop these "events" could well be a cause for despair…

And yet, I choose to look on the bright side of things. The more often that flash mobs that take place on such a large scale, the more obvious it is that the terrorists who seek to destroy "our way of life" are not nearly as organized or capable of causing havoc to our everyday lives as we have been led to believe. Otherwise, they'd have pulled something off by now -- because clearly, even the Great and Powerful Ryan Seacrest is unable to defend himself from being victimized by these nefarious evildoers. 

Is there no end to the Scope of this terror?

The Balance of Power

"Reading this blog makes you 74 percent smarter."

Of course, I have no proof to back up this claim, but so what? Clearly if enough people say it is true, then it must be true, right? How else can you explain the mountains of cash that Power Balance has made selling their completely useless bracelets? They say their product works. They get famous athletes to say it works. Therefore, it works? 

We're getting the bands back together!

Bold claims, such as saying that a cheap piece of plastic can suddenly improve a person's energy, strength and athletic performance simply by being worn, require significant amounts of proof.  And yet, what is the "proof" that the company, which recently was forced to admit that "there is NO credible scientific evidence that supports our claims"? 

Apparently, it is a video where athletes like Matthew Stafford, who coincidentally injured the shoulder of the arm he wore the bracelet on this season, are going to show you how the bracelet helps them... unfortunately, as you will see, that part of the "testing" doesn't manage to make the final edit... 

So, to review: Our product works. To prove it, we'll test it on famous people. And then not show you the results, but ask you to buy our product and test it yourself. 

Nice scam... but I'll let the actual results speak for themselves:

"This product gets me tremendous results... there is no doubt I feel much better with the product on... (it) is going to get me to the next level." -- Scott Kazmir, two-time resident of the disabled list in 2010, in danger of not making the Angels rotation for 2011.