The Art Neuro Weblog

Talkin' Moneyball
The famed General Manager of the Oakland Athletics is interviewed by a lowly blogger.

Here's Part 1
Here's Part 2
Part 3 will presumably be up sometime soon. :)

Blez: This may be a loaded question, but has George Steinbrenner gone completely mad? $200 million dollars? When you look at the Red Sox and the Yankees, they seem to be the only two teams that can play on that level in the American League. They're in a different stratosphere because of their inflated budgets. Is there a problem in baseball with that?

BB: It seems like I have that question or some derivative of that question every year. First of all, you can never criticize because they've been a very successful franchise and they're spending what they have available to them. Good for them. At some point, situations like that create opportunities for clubs like ours. It might sound crazy, but they, teams like us are still playing with 25 men on the roster. Sometimes they need to move very good players off their roster and it creates very good opportunities for us. This isn't a high profile situation, but because of that, we were able to get a great pitcher who was very effective for us last season, Chris Hammond, and he cost us 15 cents on the dollar. An opportunity was created because of the situation in New York. I don't view it as frustrating as many fans do, I view it as something that will create an opportunity somewhere along the line if you look for it. Instead of looking at it as an excuse and complaining about it, I look for the opportunities it creates for us.

So says the man who plays 'moneyball'. The man is legit. It makes for fantastic reading.
Even for a Yankee fan, his perspective is inspiring. I dare say, the A's are my other favourite team.

A Growing Trend
Some days ago, we related that there was a robbery of a sex shop in Italy. Now we find this from Reuters:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Police were on the search on Friday for a thief who made off with three "male appendages" from a Vancouver-area sex-toy store and may now be looking for batteries.

A clerk discovered the man stuffing the fake body parts into his clothes and asked "if he was going to need batteries for these three objects," the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said in a news release.

"The male calmly stated 'no' and then panicked and fled, running out of the store with the three objects, minus batteries," the police statement said.

The Porn Store Bandits are on the loose.
Yep, it's a growing trend.

- Art Neuro