2006/11/29

Yanks Win Igawa Bid

Not Lilly, Igawa


News is filtering out of the MLB that the Yankees won the bid for the right to negotiate with Kei Igawa. The reported figure is US$25million.
The Yankees won the bidding for Japanese pitcher Kei Igawa, ESPN The Magazine's Buster Olney is reporting. The winning bid is expected to be about $25 million. An announcement is expected Tuesday night.

After the bidding closed Monday, the Tigers were informed of the amount of the high bid, but not which team made it, The Associated Press reported. The New York Mets bid about $15 million for Igawa, another baseball official told The AP, on condition of anonymity.

The Yankees will have until midnight at the end of Dec. 28 to work out a contract with the 27-year-old left-hander. Igawa is represented by Arn Tellem, also the agent for Yankees left fielder Hideki Matsui.
If the reports are true, then it suggests the Yankees are looking to get Igawa as their Lefty in waiting rather than Ted Lilly. Igawa is younger and has a track record of being a strike out pitcher. There's some video footage of him in action in late 2006 here. (You also get to see a single by Akinori Iwamura, who is headed to the Devil Rays. The AL East sure is loading up on Japanese talent this off-season.)

Also, here are some comparisons of Igawa and other NPB pitchers.
Again, an indication of the love of the strikeout to the detriment of other evaluation criteria. Nomo and Irabu impress with their Nolan Ryan impressions, but fall well short in every other category. Let's look again at the leaderboard in these categories:

The next chart is a comparison of these players in the seasons when they pitched the majority of their games at age 25, as Matsuzaka is doing now. You'll note that Matsuzaka's stats are in progress, but the ratios will be representative. Also, Nomo's stats are from the previous season, as he was injured in his 25 year old campaign, and opted to retire to "defect" to the US. Again, click to enlarge:

K/9 - Irabu, Igawa, Nomo
K/BB - Uehara, Matsuzaka, Igawa
WHIP - Matsuzaka, Uehara, M. Saito
ERA - Matsuzaka, M. Saito, K. Saito

The recurring names of Matsuzaka and Uehara are joined on this list by the ace of the Hanshin Tigers, Kei Igawa. He is an excellent pitcher who has also requested a posting to the Major Leagues. Like the Giants, Hanshin has declined that request more than once. I suppose I can't blame them. Where are you going to find a guy to replace your ace pitcher? Tough luck for Igawa, who is 27 and watching his best years fade away.
Just looking at that chart, it seems Matsuzaka is outlandishly good, but also Igawa is not a pitcher to be scoffed at. If I were forced to choose between the two pitchers to pitch for my life, I'd pick Matsuzaka on most days but it's hard to argue Matsuzaka is twice as good as Igawa, Igawa is certainly better than Irabu or Nomo ...and Igawa is a lefty, which is a bonus for him going to Yankee stadium. The Igawa vs. Dice-K showdowns will be good to watch.

Key Psycho

It's Done
Yep, it's finally finished.
After all this time, I managed to finish the damn thing.
I didn't think it would take this long, but it did. I would have liked it if people who volunteered their help actually followed through on their promises; as it was, each of those stages fell to me to fix. So this is the first time I have not only written and directed a piece, I've also edited it, done the special effects, the credits, as well as sound postproduction and music. It's daft, but true. What's even more extraordinary is that I did all of the post-production on what is ostensibly my home computer.
Thank you Mr Jobs.

2006/11/27

From The Mailbox

A Bad Plan Is Better Than None At All?
This article came in from Walk-Off HBP.
You sort of wonder about commitments to Iraq when Americans, even if they're only journalists, start saying that maybe Saddam Hussein should be brought back to control Iraq?
At the outset of the war, I had no high hopes for Iraqi democracy, but I paid no attention to the possibility that the Iraqis would end up with a worse government than the one they had. It turns out, however, that there is something more awful than totalitarianism, and that is endless chaos and civil war.

Nobody seems to foresee the possibility of restoring order to Iraq. Here is the basic dilemma: The government is run by Shiites, and the security agencies have been overrun by militias and death squads. The government is strong enough to terrorize the Sunnis into rebellion but not strong enough to crush this rebellion.

Meanwhile, we have admirably directed our efforts into training a professional and nonsectarian Iraqi police force and encouraging reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites. But we haven't succeeded. We may be strong enough to stop large-scale warfare or genocide, but we're not strong enough to stop pervasive chaos.

Hussein, however, has a proven record in that department. It may well be possible to reconstitute the Iraqi army and state bureaucracy we disbanded, and if so, that may be the only force capable of imposing order in Iraq.

Chaos and order each have a powerful self-sustaining logic. When people perceive a lack of order, they act in ways that further the disorder. If a Sunni believes that he is in danger of being killed by Shiites, he will throw his support to Sunni insurgents who he sees as the only force that can protect him. The Sunni insurgents, in turn, will scare Shiites into supporting their own anti-Sunni militias.
Everybody's (well, mine anyway) favorite political scientist Niccolo Machiavelli said that all forms of government have their failings, whether it be Principailities or Republics or Oligarchies. There are good and bad things about each of them. The most important attirbute of good government however is not what form it takes but what fruits it provides. That is to say a stable government that provides stability for its citizens is a superior government to one which cannot secure such stability.
To put it bluntly, a stable Principality is preferable to a weak, chaotic Republic/Democracy, any day of the week.

It seems counter to the present day ideological position of the First World to say so when most of us go around mouthing the benefits of Democracy (and there are many of those). However it seems in this instance of Iraq, we are seeing a scenario whereby a stable dictatorship is looking far more attractive than a chaotic fledgeling democracy. This is no accident, as the works of Machiavelli tell us. While he didn't have all the answers to all the problems, Old Nic-Mac certainly provides with valuable tools to understand the nature of our crisis. The question is, would we be willing to back another strong man dictator in Iraq in order to let ourselves out of this mess?

Before we throw 'The Prince' back at his face, we should keep in mind that Machiavelli himself favored the Republic the most, for he felt that a stable Republic was one which was capable of providing more utility to more of its citizens than any other type of government - but I digress.

The issue comes down to whether we support a strong man in Iraq to put a lid on all this sectarian violence, as Saddam Hussein once managed, or do we commit to our ideological position and wait until the Iraqis learn how to run a democratc state without killing each other? Can we begin to analyse this problem from purely a point of utility? Or do we cite ethics, in which case who's ethical system is actually equipped to deal with this mess?

What will/can our consciences stomach? My guess is not much, and so we'll be committing to the fledgeling Democracy because it makes us feel better about the mess we have made in Iraq, rather than the ugly but effective solution of backing a strong man dictator.

In case you haven't noticed, the carriage of state power is an ugly business.

Weekend News

The Brisbane Test
As the days unfolded, I sat and watched Australia pound England for all the sessions except the last on Sunday. That's 3 and 2/3rds of a day's beatings before England sort of woke up. They sure won't play for anything but a draw this Test match, but it just might be that the English bats have woken up. Other than that, it was a replay of the sort of Test matches from the 1990s.

As England got bowled out for 370 this morning, it felt oddly familiar and made me wonder why I was watching it at all. :)

State Power In Decline
Here's an interesting article.
At the rate the Howard Government is centralising power and over-riding state rights, our state and territory governments are already hopelessly neutered.
Remember when the Northern Territory introduced dying with dignity legislation?

The Prime Minister killed it in cold blood.

The recent High Court decision on the Federal Government's workplace reform legislation was the nail in the coffin for state governments.

Now, the Commonwealth has the power to meddle in virtually any area of policy or regulation it chooses.

Big Ted or Bracksy, what does it ultimately matter?

If John Howard wants state schools to have the same curriculum in Queensland and Victoria, he can have his way.

And, as we've seen, he's very keen to involve himself in our schools, right down to their flagpoles and religious teachings.

One might well ask what sort of preacher would choose to be paid by a government rather than his church, but we already know what sort of politician is willing to play boss to preachers and premiers.

The big issue now, of course, is nuclear energy. John Howard states that his taskforce's evidence provides compelling economic evidence that Australia must pursue a nuclear future. This simply isn't right.

It actually provides compelling evidence that any nuclear power industry would need to be given huge financial advantages by government and would come on stream too slowly to bring the urgently needed reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions.

The allegedly unprejudiced taskforce made no serious examination of sustainable, renewable forms of energy, such as solar and wind.

Instead, it was asked to examine our uranium industry and possibilities for nuclear power. The Federal Government instructed it to do this with our massive uranium deposits kept in mind.

Now, this is not terribly good science. It is akin to asking for a report on capital punishment in light of us having plentiful supplies of good rope.
A wee bit hysterical, but you get the gist.
We had a double brown-out in our area last week and it has screwed with one of our computers. There are signs this summer already that power shortages are looming. So you sort of wonder how this is going to get addressed. After so many years of resisting nuclear power stations, we might suddenly find ourselves inundated with them.

2006/11/24

Life, Death And Sport

Making Credits
I've been working on a simple credit-roll for 'Key Psycho' for what seems like days.
I've tried 'Live Type' which just doesn't like big text blocks crawling. It does all sorts of weird things with the path and lay-out.
I tried 'Rolling Credits' but while the scroll looks nice, the text looks crap.
So now I've settled upon using 'Motion' which is like using a battle axe to carve a toothpick. The only problem is that the 3150 frames takes 2 hours to render, so it's a slow, painful process of making adjustments. Yesterday, as I waited for the renders to complete, I watched a lot of the Ashes Day 1 being played in Brisbane.

Hitting Out Is Fun To Watch


Andrew Denton cleverly observed that sport is for people smart enough to understand the rules and dumb enough to think it's important. Well, there's nothing like a pakced Gabba for Day 1 of the Ashes to illustrate the point. Australia came out swinging and dominated on a flat track.
WITH a cartwheel wave of the bat, a dance for joy and a hug with his Partner in Pomicide Michael Hussey, captain Ricky Ponting celebrated a century that may already have turned the Ashes series irreversibly Australia's way.

Of course, there must be no rush to judgement. This was, after all, only the first day of the first of five Tests. But such was Australia's command and England's incompetence - with the exception of their inspirational and inevitably overworked captain Andrew Flintoff - that the Ashes could be won back and lost before Christmas.

It was an eloquent, highly emotional return to Ashes cricket for Ponting, who barely 14 months ago surrendered the urn with a shake of the head and a terse "That's it, boys". Well, this was now.

If he was feeling the pressure of public disappointment over the loss of the Ashes or of its expectation that they will immediately be won back, he did not show it. The Punter took every trick. He won the toss. He correctly chose to bat in near-perfect conditions. And he clinically plundered the English attack, equalling Steve Waugh's record of 32 Test centuries.

He was strongly supported by Justin Langer and, to a lesser extent, Matthew Hayden, who gave Australia a runaway start on a hot, sunny day at a ground where the home side have not lost a Test since 1988.

Little wonder locals have nicknamed it the Gabbatoir.
And so it was. Ponting hitting is actualy a joy to watch. He looks like he's always got immaculate balance and he moves into position so fast he looks like he has plenty of time to dispatch balls to the boundary. A guy swinging and hitting a ball like that is one of those things in life that you marvel at. I haven't paid close attention to cricket for about 3 years, but yesterday's display was a very rewarding experience.

Overall, it was nice to see a contest billed as being tight this time, turn out to be a bit of a master class demonstration on batting by the Australians. If anything I think Matt Hayden is way past his peak and looked it, while Damien Martyn still seems flakey at times as he got out to a flighted ball from Giles - The irony was that the commentators were saying just how easy he made batting look. Jinxed him! All the same, I'm sure it's hard out there, but come on Damien, over the last decade, I've seen you do that a lot. Langer was streaky and Hussey looked jumpy; but then Hussey always looks jumpy.

As for commentator Michael Slater? My goodness, he still looked like he could play. He was bouncing and dancing on the field as he gave a description of what it was like to come in and open the batting. You could tell he was mentally geared up and ready for it with no place to go play. I just wish Hayden showed a bit of that fire.

Dead At 38
About 5 years ago, my friends Konrad and Penelope made an attempt to matchmake for me. They dragged me out to meet this woman who was "into films and stuff". Her name was Fiona, and she was a bundle of nervous energy with a whacked out sense of humour. We didn't exactly hit it off, but she was a nice enough woman - nothing really came of it, we just laughed and parted ways.

Last night, I ran into Penelope at an event in North Sydney and she told me Fiona had died of cancer, and that Penelope had been there holding her hand when she passed away. Needless to say it freaked me out. It kept me up last night as I pondered the 'what ifs' and the weirdness of life. My life feels a little less full knowing she is gone. Rest in Peace Fiona.

Dead At 81


Robert Altman Passed away this week.
Altman died Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, surrounded by his wife and children.

He had worked with the disease for the last 18 months, including during the making of this year's "A Prairie Home Companion," the director's Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York said in a statement. The death was a surprise, Sandcastle said.
When he received a lifetime achievement Oscar in 2006, Altman revealed he'd had a heart transplant a decade earlier. "I didn't make a big secret out of it, but I thought nobody would hire me again," he said after the ceremony. "You know, there's such a stigma about heart transplants, and there's a lot of us out there."

Altman was set to begin work on "Hands on a Hardbody," a fictionalized version of the documentary about a Texas contest in which people stand around a pickup truck with one hand the vehicle, and whoever lasts the longest wins it. The film would have been vintage Altman.

While he was famous for his outspokenness, which caused him to fall in and out of favor in Hollywood during his nearly six decades in the industry, he was perhaps even better known for his influential method of assembling large casts and weaving in and out of their story lines, using long tracking shots and intentionally having dialogue overlap.

His most recent example of this technique, "A Prairie Home Companion," starred Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, Kevin Kline and Lindsay Lohan.
"I feel as if I've just had the wind knocked out of me and my heart aches," Lohan said Tuesday night in a lengthy e-mail statement. She added, "I learned so much from Altman and he was the closest thing to my father and grandfather that I really do believe I've had in several years."
I have to confess I never liked his technique of overlapped dialogue and his hands-off approach to actors, but the man sure was a giant. Orson Welles once told Peter Bogdanovich that "it only takes one film" to enshrine one's succcess in cinema history. Altman had at least half a dozen films that marked turninig points in American Cinema.

I'm now going to see how my credits have rendered, adjust them, start rendering again and go watch Day 2.

2006/11/22

Aussie Sport

Thorpe Quits


For some time now we had been hearing rumours that Ian Thorpe's heart was no longer in swimming. It's been suspected for some time that he might not be there to win in 2008. Now we find out it's true, he's retiring at the ripe young age of 24.
SUNDAY, November 19, 2006, 2.53pm - the moment the world's greatest swimmer decided he could swim no more. As the hands on his watch reached that time, Ian Thorpe declared to himself that his career was over.

2.53. A time now as significant when speaking of Thorpe as any figures he ever produced in the pool. It wasn't the time after a painful training session, or when he felt the pain of injury or illness, 2.53pm just happened to be the moment when Thorpe - having already made the decision - looked at his watch in need of closure.

After an illustrious career, one painted in gold and littered with accolades, world records and justified claims he was the best swimmer ever, Thorpe announced yesterday that he had retired from a sport which he had dominated since emerging internationally with success at the 1998 world championships in Perth.

According to Thorpe, the decision had been pending for some time. He admitted it was something he considered following the Athens Olympics, and the reason he took a year away from competing was in the hope of revitalising his desire.
And just like that, he's gone. I'm not much a of a swimming fan, but thanks for the memories.

Ashes Countdown
Just over a year after Australia copped it sweet in England, they're trying to win back the sacred little urn. England for all its glory in winning the Ashes last year, aren't looking as sharp.
English Vice-Captain Andrew Strauss thinks the Australians are desperate.
"Before the last series we felt we had something to prove. I don't think we feel that now," Strauss said.
"We go in there with our heads high and know that if we play the sort of cricket we can play, we can cause Australia problems. That's a fantastic level of confidence to have going into the series."

England finds itself in the unfamiliar position of having to defend cricket's most famous prize for the first time in 17 years.

However Strauss, the compact opener who should thrive on what promises to be a barer than usual Gabba pitch, dismissed suggestions the pressure of retaining the Ashes would be too much for his side.

"Australia are desperate to get their hands on the Ashes again," he said. "They have been the No. 1 team in the world. If anything, the pressure is on them to grab them off us.

"We have a hell of a lot of good memories from that last Ashes series to draw from.

"We came across a way of beating Australia in England and we know how to do it. We know we have to play very good cricket to do that. If we do it as well as we did last time, there is no reason why the result will be any different."
God, they sound like the Red Sox. The Aussies are looking a bit like the Yankees, what with their all-veteran squad. The selectors are still persisting with Langer, Hayden, McGrath and Warne. It's such a risk-averse kind of selection I wonder if there will ever be a changing of the guard.
I guess we'll find out tomorrow how effective this bunch of old codgers will be. It reminds me a bit of the English side in 1989, and that's not good.

2006/11/20

Blog Entry Of The Day

I had a pretty out-going weekend; walked around town carrying a tripod and camera to the tune of about 20kms.

I am now working on the finishing touches of 'Key Psycho' That's right after 30months, I'm finally closing in on the deal. The things that are left undone are getting undone. By the 30th of November, I will have this sucker all tied up. It's taken me 3 weeks to do all the music cues, but I'm getting there. I need to re-do the credits, and then do end-credits music, and then final mix the whole thing - I'm into the final stretch of this thing. I'm going to be free!!!!

My advice to everybody out there: Don't ever try and post-produce an entire film on our own. It taxes the mind and spirit.

2006/11/16

There's DNA in 'Neanderthal'

Unravelling A Mystery


Scientists have managed to sequence a partial draft of the genetic code of the Neanderthals. They had 99.5% to almost 99.9% of their coding in common with modern humanity. That's a pretty significant find.
The achievement demonstrates the feasibility of determining the entire genetic makeup of Neanderthals, as well as other extinct species, using DNA from fossils, the researchers said. The draft includes less than 1 percent of the DNA from a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal fossil, but the researchers said they expect to have a complete draft in two years.

An analysis of the partial DNA code shows that Neanderthals separated from the human line about half a million years ago, according to the team of German and American scientists. The team said it found no evidence to support a controversial theory that Neanderthals and ancient humans mated.

But the greatest significance of the announcement, other researchers said, is that it shows that the science of ancient genomics -- once solely the stuff of fiction like "Jurassic Park" -- has arrived. A genetic understanding of the Neanderthals, who made sophisticated tools and buried their dead, could reveal details like the color of their hair and perhaps whether they could speak. And it would allow researchers to identify the final, crucial genetic changes, long after the split with chimpanzees, that set humans apart and allowed their ancestors to prosper while Neanderthals died out.

"It is an amazing thing to be able to reconstruct the genome of an ancient organism," said David Reich , a genetics specialist at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the research. "What they have done is an incredibly important technical achievement."
The research, published jointly by the journals Nature and Science, is also a testament to teamwork and sheer persistence. The scientists painstakingly examined some 70 Neanderthal bones in various collections before finding one -- recovered by paleontologists in a Croatian cave -- without too much contamination and with enough viable DNA.
Read on to find out how they got this DNA data.

Some Yankee Thoughts, The Day After

"What's That You Say? Leave NY?"


Ever since the season ended in tears (and crapped pants), the rumour has been "when will they trade A-Rod?" on a three-day basis. And every time A-Rod or Cashman or Torre has to pop up and say he's staying.
Folks, for the n-th time, he's staying.
“My choice is to play for the New York Yankees,” said Rodriguez, who got in a bit of trouble with poker last year. “My family now is beginning to really get comfortable here — my wife, my daughter. And I love New York. I love the challenges New York brings.”

Rodriguez has a no-trade clause in his contract, and general manager Brian Cashman has said the two-time MVP isn’t going anywhere.

After next year, however, A-Rod can opt out of the record $252 million, 10-year deal he signed with Texas before the 2001 season. He wouldn’t rule out that possibility, but said his desire is to win with the Yankees.

“There’s no question that last year was a very challenging year for me personally,” Rodriguez said, “but I think New York wants to see people go through a tough time and kind of come out of it and fight through it. And one thing is, I never gave in to how difficult the moment got at times.”
And we ought to be happy with that answer.

Mike Mussina Is Back For Two More Years
Moose is actually one of my fave pitchers to watch. I like his style of mixing power and guile. The power has waned greatly in recent years and the guile sometimes fails, but there's a bit of El Duque in him when he flumoxes a side. He can still make good hitting sides look pretty poor. Power pitchers are nice, but I think there's a lot of value in a pitcher with his stats and style. 2 years for $22.5m is a bargain.
In the final season of an $88.5 million, six-year deal, Mussina went 15-7 with a 3.51 ERA in 32 starts this year.

A 16-year veteran, Mussina has a career 239-134 record with a 3.63 ERA and 2,572 strikeouts for the Yankees and Baltimore Orioles. He is a five-time All Star.
Evidently Moose gave the Yanks a 'hometown discount'.

Imagining The 2007 Rotation
Having lost the Matsuzaka bid, it's time to see what is still needed in the rotation. The rotation is now:

Wang
Moose
Randy
'Uncle Meat'/'Dog Breath Variations' a.k.a Carl Pavano
Rasner/Karstens?

That's still the same rotation that they had in 2006 which got spanked in the play-offs. Of these pitchers, I have zero faith in Randy and Pavano to give anything above league average next year. So it seems that the GM talks in Naples Florida this week will yield a Lefty starter.
The first name that pops up is Barry Zito but Barry is going to be very expensive. If we were in the classic Steinbrenner paradigm, he's the guy the Yankee brass would shell out on this winter, but something tells me the Yankees won't go there. The Mets will.
So what's stopping the Yankees from an all-out courtship of Zito? Two reasons: He has a 3-9 record and 5.20 ERA against the Bombers; his ERA against the Red Sox is almost as astronomical at 4.78. Zito has been hit hard enough in the Bronx and at Fenway to make Yankee officials wonder if he still has elite-caliber stuff.

Put it this way: What's the point of investing this heavily if Zito can't be counted on to subdue the Sox? Better, the Yankees whisper, to let Chien-Ming Wang blossom into an 18- to 20-game winner, push Philip Hughes' evolution toward a midsummer debut and hope Mike Mussina (who'll soon sign a two-year, $23 million deal) doesn't decay too rapidly at age 38.

That still leaves the Yankees two starters short. They're waiting on Randy Johnson to hurry up and heal from back surgery, although it's clear he's now a permanent, five-run-per-game starter, healthy or not.
Chances are, the lefty won't be Zito, it's going to be Ted Lilly.

Last 4 years of Zito's ERA+ : 125 105 116 116
Last 4 years of Lilly's ERA+: 98 120 80 109
We're not talking about a significantly worse pitcher than Zito.

Lilly was the pitcher the Yankees gave up in favor of Jeff Weaver. If there's one bad trade the Cashman made, it was for Weaver. Lilly went on to be better than league average 2 out of 4 years and just about league average in 1, and bombed out in 2005 with an ERA+ of 80. Weaver, we know about, and not even his performance in the World Series persuades me otherwise. The Yankees clearly would have been better holding on to Lilly. The only knock on Ted Lilly is that he's slightly injury prone, but in good years, he's good for 31-32 starts. he's not Barry Zito but he's okay-durable.

That leaves figuring out which between Rasner and Karstens. Rasner is 25 and played well at AAA. Karstens is 23 but played less convincingly at AAA. The smart money is on Rasner. I think it's going to look like:

Wang
Moose
Lilly
Rasner
Randy

...on Opening Day. If old man Randy doesn't make it back by opening day, it's going to be Karstens in the 5th spot. Either that, or 'Uncle Meat'.

2006/11/15

US$51.1million


Red Sox Win D-Mat Bid
OMG.
The Red Sox outdid EVERYBODY by plonking down a bid for US$51.1million to negotiate with Daisuke Matsuzaka and Scott Boras. That's a lot of money for a team that allegedly couldn't take on Bobby Abreu's contract at the trade deadline. It seems to me that the Bosox and their fans have no business whining about Yankee payroll now; their owner HAS MONEY. That shite is done, my friends.
Then Seibu announced Tuesday night that the actual figure was $51.1 million. Let's just say the news blew Mark DeRosa's $13 million contract with the Chicago Cubs right out of the water.

For sake of reference, the $51.1 million figure is more than the 2006 opening day payrolls in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Colorado, Tampa Bay and Florida. Alex Rodriguez couldn't be reached for comment, but our guess is that even he thinks it's a lot of money.

Now it's roll-up-your-sleeves time for the Red Sox, who will begin communications with agent Scott Boras and make arrangements to bring Matsuzaka to Boston on a get-acquainted tour. There's no turning back now.

Without a good faith effort to sign Matsuzaka, the Red Sox pretty much torch their efforts to make inroads in the Far East, at a time when the most visionary and innovative franchises have to think about international growth.
Still, the Bosox have 30 days to come up with a contract with Scott Boras. Let's say it's a 5 year $15m/p.a. sort of deal. That would make he outlay $126.1m over 5 years. That's A-Rod money. This could turn out to be the biggest albatross contract out there, no matter how good D-Mat is going to be; heck, look at A-Rod and the hoopla surrounding his contract and crowd expectations.
D-Mat is going to have to ask himself if he really wants to be shackled with that expectation.

UPDATE: What sort of pitching can you buy for $51.1m?
Here's a look.
Sum of the Parts
For $51.1 million you could have a conversation with Daisuke Matsuzaka (right) ... or you could assemble an entire staff of the best pitchers of 2006, including the top five starters in ERA, the top five relievers in holds, and the top closer in saves with $2.274 million left over for the league's best bullpen catcher:
Player Pos. 2006 Salary
Johan Santana, MIN SP $8.75M
Brandon Webb, ARI SP $2.5M
Roy Halladay, TOR SP $12.75M
Roy Oswalt, HOU SP $11M
Chris Carpenter, STL SP $5M
Scot Shields, LAA RP $2.1M
Joel Zumaya, DET RP $327K
Aaron Heilman, NYM RP $359K
Scott Linebrink, SD RP $1.365M
Juan Rincon, MIN RP $900K
Francisco Rodriguez, LAA CL $3.775M
Total salary -- $48.826M
Well, whaddya know? That's a pretty good 11-man staff. What this says is that the Bosox went and bid silly-money. For my Aussie readers.... You can buy the roster of the Australian Cricket team 3 times over with that money.

2006/11/13

Dodgy Calls

It's Not My Fault, They Made Me Do It
Korea used to be a Japanese protectorate. It's not exaactly a pretty part of history, but there you have it. And so some Koreans worked in the Imperial Japanese Army, and lo and behold some of them even got to be B and C class war criminals.

Today, a committee in Korea investigating these cases has decalred that all 83 cases where Koreans fighting for the Imperial Japanese forces who were found to be war criminals should be exonerated for being victims. Indeed, it seems they have all been "cleared of their war crimes". Some of these people might have been working in places like, say, ...Changi. I wonder how the Australian RSL will react to this one.
A South Korean government panel yesterday cleared 83 nationals conscripted by the Japanese military during the World War II of war crimes.
They are part of at least 148 Koreans who were convicted by the allied countries after the war. Most of them were forcefully mobilized and worked as prison guards and in other nonessential jobs. Categorized as B-Class or C-Class war criminals, they were either executed or imprisoned at least five years.

The Truth Commission on Forced Mobilization under the Japanese Imperialism announced yesterday that it recognizes the 83 war criminals as colonial victims. They were selected out of 86 people who had claimed to be victimized by the colonialists.

The commission said it is currently reviewing the other three cases.

It also explained that they had to make an inevitable choice to work in such positions to avoid forced military draft by imperial Japan.

Among 148 Koreans, 23 were executed, and the bereaved families have filed appeals.

The commission has confirmed that the victims were sentenced from one and half years imprisonment to life imprisonment, and most of them had served at least five years in prison.
I'm mightily unimpressed with the logic that somehow if you were a collaborator, you're a victim. I wonder how this logic would fly in say, France or Denmark or Holland. The other thing to note is that if this passes, South Korea is the first country to countenance the 'Nuremburg Defence' of "I was ordered to do it, I had no choice", as being a valid excuse. Now watch the worms crawl out of that can.

Flags of Our Fathers

The Good, The Bad And The Ugliness Of War Mongering


I'm just going to start with simple ideas. What is good about the film is that it debunks long-held beliefs that were the product of wartime propaganda. Not only that, it goes a long way to show the human tragedy of war. It's certainly the best movie to do with war that I've seen since 'Thin Red Line'.

The film is confusing in parts as it flashes back and forth through 3 different time frames, but it's a necessary device to bring into relief the changed cultural circumstances surrounding war. Watching this film, one gets the strong impression that war is indeed created by the abstractions of politicians and generals, but executed in blood by the young. The apparent randomness of the casualties serves as links to tell the story. Sometimes the flashbacks are tedious; other times they leave you wondering about the tangents. I'm not sure it is a successful piece of narrative constrcution but the content more than makes up for its narrative failings. In some ways it is a relief that Eastwood didn't try to tell this story as some neatly book-ended flashback. The frayed ends of the story are left to be re-woven in the minds of the audience and this makes it a more powerful film.

One gets the feeling that both FDR and Harry Truman were pretty awful kinds of opportunists when it came to propagandising; no worse than their oppositions, but definitely playing in the same league. The men who stage the propaganda events in order to raise money through war bonds are portrayed as being just as desperate apparatchiks as their counterparts in the Axes nations. If the violence of war is an ugly business, the effort to raise money for it is even uglier. It's debatable whether these portraits are even fair; I actually don't like either men, so it's nice to see an American director throw rocks at the sacred cows. Especially when it's Clint Eastwood doing the throwin'.
I imagine this film will be a bitter pill to swallow for many Americans.

Iwojima As Propaganda


Consider the fact that the only other significant cinema depiction of Iwojima was 'Sands of Iwojima' starring John Wayne. John Wayne, famously never went to war, so afterwards he spent his energies making war films. That film was 1949. Yet it seems the American military and media have had a lot invested in the events of Iwojima for a long time. For example, "Few Good Men' opens with a shot of the statue depicting the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi. On the Japanese side of the accounts, Iwojima is significant, but nowhere near as important as the events that took place around the Phillippines. They were there because they had to have a forward base and there is not much more to the importance of Iwojima than that.

What is more vexing for both sides is that the value of taking Iwojima has also been disputed through history. In the 'Flags of Our Fathers' film, this is reduced to an armless survivor saying, "That Island saved a lot of lives". Well, that's okay for a movie, but this is what you can find in wikipedia:
Given this bloody sacrifice, the necessity and long-term significance of the island's capture to the outcome of the war was a contentious issue from the beginning, and remains disputed. As early as April 1945 retired Chief of Naval Operations William V. Pratt asked in Newsweek magazine about the "expenditure of manpower to acquire a small, God-forsaken island, useless to the Army as a staging base and useless to the Navy as a fleet base ... [one] wonders if the same sort of airbase could not have been reached by acquiring other strategic localities at lower cost."[4] The Japanese on Iwo Jima had radar with which they notified their comrades at home of incoming B-29s flying from the Marianas. Fighter aircraft based on Iwo Jima sometimes attacked these planes, which were especially vulnerable on their way to Japan because they were heavily laden with bombs and fuel. The island was also used as an air-sea rescue base after its seizure. However, the traditional justification for Iwo Jima's strategic importance to the United States' war effort has been that it provided a landing/re-fueling site for American bombers on missions to and from Japan. As early as March 4, 1945, while fighting was still taking place, the B-29 bomber Dinah Might of the USAAF 9th Bomb Group reported it was low on fuel near the island and requested an emergency landing. Despite enemy fire, the airplane landed on the Allied-controlled section of the island, without incident, and was serviced, refueled and departed. In all, 2,251 B-29 Superfortresses landed on Iwo Jima during the war.
None of these calculations played much if any of a role in the original decision to invade, however, which was almost entirely based on the Army Air Force's belief that the island would be a useful base for long-range fighter escorts. For a number of technical reasons these escorts proved both impractical and unnecessary, and only ten such missions were ever flown from Iwo Jima.[5].
----
As for the importance of the island as a landing and refueling site for bombers, USMC Captain Robert Burrell of the US Naval Academy has suggested that only a small proportion of the 2,251 landings were for genuine emergencies, the great majority being for minor technical checkups, training, or refueling. According to Burrell, "this justification became prominent only after the Marines seized the island and incurred high casualties. The tragic cost of Operation Detachment pressured veterans, journalists, and commanders to fixate on the most visible rationalization for the battle. The sight of the enormous, costly, and technologically sophisticated B-29 landing on the island's small airfield most clearly linked Iwo Jima to the strategic bombing campaign. As the myths about the flag raisings on Mount Suribachi reached legendary proportions, so did the emergency landing theory in order to justify the need to raise that flag."[9]
That's not much fun to read, especially having watched just how brutal and awful a battle it was in the movie. It is entirely conceivable that the entire bloody campaign was not really justified - but for the image of the flag raising it produced. It's one of the few moments in the Pacific War where the Americans could point and say the flesh was sronger than steel. This brings me to this thought:

The Riddle of Steel


One of the more under-rated, yet important films of the 1980s, 'Conan The Barbarian' was built around this peculiar abstract dialectic described as 'The Riddle of Steel'. What it boils down to is that The acquisition of steel makes us stronger, but it also weakens us. So with the development of technology our capacity for destruction increases, but we ourselves are weakened by our acquisition of the very technology.

Opposed to this dynamic is the character Thulsa Doom who tells Conan that flesh is stronger than steel. To demonstrate his point, one of Thulsa's followers commits suicide, almost for the purpose of proving Thulsa Doom's point. Thus, according to Thulsa Doom, only flesh can be stronger than steel, but the flesh must be willing to die. If that doesn't describe the battle of Iwojima (and Okinawa), I don't know what does. Keep that in mind as I discuss this notion.

If a man wields a sword, then it is worth asking the question, is the sword stronger than my flesh? Yes. But If I wielded a sword as well, then the test of strength brings it back to my strength versus his strength. Most wars in history up until the industrial revolution were fought on this parity between steel and flesh. That is to say, there is little separating Achilles and Hector as there is in Guan Yu facing off against Lu Bu. The implements of war are nice, but it is the flesh of these men that are pitted against one another. So a sword with a name is at most equal parts important as the wielder.

The American Civil War was the first war to prove the power of steel over flesh. Technological advances by the time of World War I made any individual feat of strength or courage simply did not matter. At that point, war ceased to be heroic. By the end of World War II, it was simply the case that the power of steel so overwhelmed the flesh, there could be no heroes by traditional notions of heroics. After all, what can a group of brave people do when they simply drop a nuclear bomb on you? How can a man be a hero if all they did was survive a meat-grinder of a campaign? The random chances of war become ever more furious in their randomness as the weapons become more devastating. Imagine the God Einstein didn't belive in. Yes, the one who plays dice. In modern war, the God of War shakes his dice as furiously as any Role-playing Gamer.

Thus, to the modern technological world, the power of steel are self evident. The power of steel dovetails with 'boxing smart'. The notion that war is technological is implicit in the strength of steel. In contrast, the strengths of flesh are simple yet compelling - a willingness to die for a cause throws out rational discussions about tactics, strategy or logistics. The power of flesh then, is the ability to 'box tough' - like fictional characters Rocky and Rambo do. Or Conan the Barbarian himself. It is no surprise then that we find both Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger as huge stars who perpetuate the power of flesh narratives. They succeeded because the world recognised in their fictions the absence of the heroic in our immediate world. Is it any surprise Arnie is a governor of the state of fiction?

Then just who are the people in history who are invested with the power of the flesh? How about the Kamikaze suicide mission pilots? Or the Boxer Rebllion of the 1900s? Or the Vietcong? Or the Palestinian suicide bombers? Whether it is the Kamikaze pilots or the Boxer Rebellion, or even Palestinian suicide bombers, the Western World has trouble dealing with the power of the flesh because the power of the steel makes the wielder weaker. We call those who wield the power of flesh barbaric, because it flies in the face of logic and reason.

However, as the Thulsa Doom dialectic tells us, the man who mows down a row of people with a machine gun is a weaker man than the man who charges the machine gun with, say, a baseball bat. The man who can destroy cities with the push of a button is made weak by that very power. This is evinced by Mikhail Gorbachev's confession to Bono Vox that he never would have pressed that button.
BONO: I just found a really mesmeric man. I asked him about having his finger on all of powers and he said, “You know, all my life I had thought about this and how stupid it was that this” - I think it was called MAD, actually, Mutually Assured Destruction - and he had said, “I knew always that I would never ever use that power.”
The man with the power to destroy the world with a swtich is rendered impotent to do it because the extreme fruits of rationality turned out to be madness.

So where does that leave us today? America won World War II so convincingly by boxing smart that it will no longer box tough. The Bush Doctrine established in the early 1990s tells us that America will only go to war if they have an overhwelming advantage, and that they would seek to win through technological superority. By winning WWII, the USA ceased to be barbaric. It will never be able to fight the barbarians who still believe n the power of the flesh - her opponents are still willing to run suicide missions, while the USA itself is starting to think about pulling out of Iraq.

On the one hand you have a population weakened by its very own technological accomplishments. On the other, you have the barbarians at the gate, fully invested in the power of the flesh.

2006/11/10

D-Mat Bids Go In

How Much Is A No 1 Worth?


News is filtering out of Japan that the posting amount was a lot less than predicted. In other parts I've noticed a comment that 30million is the kind of money a team would speend to run their minor leagues in a year. So even if the Seibu Lions hoped for money in that vicintiy, fiscal common sense for teams would have prevailed, thus the notion of a US$30million would have been a little too much.
日本一の怪物への入札が締め切られた。所沢市内の球団事務所には、午前9時30分の業務開始前から報道陣が集結。50人以上が待ち構えた。球団は冷静に対応。正午前に球団事務所を訪れた太田秀和球団社長は「入札金額は確認しました。了解するかどうかは、組織的な意思決定をするまでは申し上げられません」とコメントを発表するのにとどまった。

 太田社長は金額について「それは勘弁してください」と明言を避けた。球団は入札額の受諾を即答せず、週明けの13日にも臨時の取締役会を開いて最終決定するが、これまで2000~3000万ドル(約24~35億円)と報道されてきた入札額が低く抑えられた可能性もある。西武も20億円以上を見込んでいたが、ニューヨークのニューズデー紙が入札締め切り後に「イチローと同等」の1300万ドル(約15億円)程度ではないか、と報じている。

 それでも、松坂の“価値”が色あせることはない。松坂の契約金額は逆にはね上がることになりそうだ。入札金額が抑えられた分、右腕の契約に充てられることが十分に考えられるからだ。松坂と契約したメジャー屈指の代理人、スコット・ボラス氏は、入札額と契約を含めた松坂の“総額”を7000万ドルと見ている。

 以前、スポーツ報知のインタビューに答えた同氏は「大リーグでは10年で約6000~7000万ドル(約70~82億円)をかけてNO1投手を作ろうとする。そう考えれば、26歳のNO1投手を瞬時に手にできるという状況で、それぐらいの金額になることは理解できる」と話している。最高額を入札したことが濃厚なヤ軍がそれだけの準備をしていれば入札額の1300万ドルを差し引いた5700万ドル(約67億円)を松坂サイドの望む4年契約の年俸に充てることができる。そうなれば松井秀の4年5200万ドル(約62億円)を超えて、いきなり日本人最高年俸に躍り出ることになる。
So all that just says teams didn't want to be held hostage to Seibu's expectations just because Matsuzaka is a No.1 pitcher. The ast paragraph relates how Scott Boras breaks down how much a team might pay for an Ace; in turn it seems the bidding teams would like to pay Seibu as little as possible and Matssuzaka as much as they can.

The way I figure it, the posting price would be equivalent to a buy-out of his final two years under contract to Seibu. because "D-Mat" truly is a Ace in Japan and Seibu needs to replace a good portion of his value through free-agency in Japan, that money would be the ballpark figure for the bidding price. Just as a guess, Ace pitchers in Japan are probably worth about US$6-7million in their free agent market, so Matuszaka's 'price' is actually about 14million max. Everything on top of that is overpaying. So one can easily imagine teams being leery. Imagining a $US30million windfall would have been nice for Seibu, but that seems to have been something in the realm of sweet dreams.

What is really worrying is that Seibu might withdraw Matsuzaka from the post on the grounds that the bid was not enough; though I wonder what wouldd happen then. It would probably bring about the end of the posting system if Matsuzaka failed to cross the Pacific because of the posting system. Seibu are making noises that they want to answer after the 10th.

Meanwhile over in Hanshin Tiger land, there's been a seismic shift with regards to Igawa's availabilty. The Hanshin Tigers were looking to sign Hiroki Kuroda from the Hiroshima Carp but Kuroda ended up re-signing with the Carp, which meant that the candidate to replace Igawa vanished off the market. Now the Hanshin Tigers brass are indicating that Kei Igawa won't get posted.
This means the value of winning the Matuszaka bid just went up. There is no second choice pitcher for posting in Japan.

In Other News
Rummy is gone.
US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned on Wednesday, paying the price for the Democrat surge to power in congress driven by a wave of public anger over the war in Iraq.

President George W Bush announced the veteran power broker's departure, sending shockwaves though Washington, in a move which could possibly pave the way to a major change of US strategy in the strife-torn nation.

"After a series of thoughtful conversations, secretary Rumsfeld and I agreed that the timing is right for new leadership at the Pentagon," Bush said.

He named former CIA chief Bob Gates as Rumsfeld's replacement at the Pentagon, following six tumultuous years with Rumsfeld at the helm.
Aah, you sure can't fool them all the time, Rummy. The world rejoices.

Orcish Behaviour?
Just had to wonder out loud about this stuff going on in NSW:
Yesterday, NSW Premier Iemma held a press conference at 10:45am to announce that he was dismissing Aboriginal Affairs Minister Milton Orkopoulos from the Ministry and as a State Labor MP.

This was the first public announcement of any problem. Later that day, Orkopoulos was arrested and charged with a large number of sex offences of a homosexual nature and involving allegations of pedophilia. Iemma also said he expected him to resign as MP for Swansea.

Orkopoulos says that he will vigorously contest the charges.

As we all know, a person is presumed to be innocent until charges are lawfully proved. This means that Orkopoulos is innocent unless and until he is convicted by a court.

Iemma has behaved badly. As a result, we have the Premier of NSW sending a message to prospective jurors that he (Iemma) is satisfied of the guilt of this man (who protests his innocence) to an extent that justifies immediate dismissal from the Ministry, the Party and the Parliament.
'Orkopoulos', to me reads like a Orcish Person in Greek. So the rest of the allegations tend to read like the sort of thing one expects of orcs.

2006/11/09

Robodog

A Little Spooky
Here's something from the mailbox. Do check out this article.
BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next. BigDog is the size of a large dog or small mule, measuring 1 meter long, 0.7 meters tall and 75 kg weight.

BigDog has an on-board computer that controls locomotion, servos the legs and handles a wide variety of sensors. BigDog’s control system manages the dynamics of its behavior to keep it balanced, steer, navigate, and regulate energetics as conditions vary. Sensors for locomotion include joint position, joint force, ground contact, ground load, a laser gyroscope, and a stereo vision system. Other sensors focus on the internal state of BigDog, monitoring the hydraulic pressure, oil temperature, engine temperature, rpm, battery charge and others.

So far, BigDog has trotted at 3.3 mph, climbed a 35 degree slope and carried a 120 lb load.
A long way yet to a fully combat-ready space robot of Science Fiction, but it's pretty neat all the same. :)

2006/11/07

Water Crisis

Worst Drought In 1000 Years?
Well, here's what they're saying at the water crisis summit.
AUSTRALIA is facing its worst drought in 1000 years, state and federal leaders have been told.

River Murray Water general manager David Dreverman made the dramatic prediction at today's emergency summit on the Murray-Darling basin.

But Prime Minister John Howard, who called the summit, played down the claim, saying it was an off-the-cuff remark made after Mr Dreverman's formal presentation.

"You say worst drought in a thousand years, I don't think anybody really knows that," he said.

Treasurer Peter Costello has previously said that the drought, which has crippled vast tracts of rural land since 2001, could become the worst in Australian history, while Mr Howard has described it as the worst in living memory.

Mr Howard said the summit agreed to draw up contingency plans to secure water supplies during the current drought.

A working group of state and federal public servants will report back by December 15 on the plans to secure water supplies during the 2007-08 water year, which commences on June 1 next year.

"I think it's fair to say that we came out of it with an even more sober assessment, or understanding, of the challenge," Mr Howard said after the meeting with Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, NSW Premier Morris Iemma, South Australian Premier Mike Rann and acting Queensland Premier Anna Bligh.
What a way to start a conversation. Then there's this bit:
Mr Howard said the issue of the Queensland cotton producer Cubbie Station had been discussed, but that it was a diversion.

He said Queensland took 731 gigalitres of water from the system, of which Cubbie accounted for about 25 per cent. In contrast NSW took about 7300 gigalitres.

"You can pretty quickly see that whilst it might be an attractive subject for media focus and debate and interest, the idea that Cubbie Station is the silver bullet is nonsense," he said.

"Whether you do something about Cubbie Station and whether it's a good idea to, in a country as arid as Australia, to have intensive cotton farming is another issue and I don't offer a view on it.

"We are missing the point and getting diverted by thinking that doing something about Cubbie will solve a problem. It won't."

Victorian Premier Steve Bracks said rainfall data based on 100-year averages were no longer applicable and governments needed new data to work from.

He said the commitment to better sharing of data and new research by the CSIRO were the big outcomes of today's water summit in Canberra.
Talk about all the chickens coming home to roost at once. As Paul Sheehan pointed out, it's not a drought: it's Global Warming. You wonder when it's going to sink into the head of John Howard that this country is going crook before his very eyes, on his watch because of his lack of initiative. I'm not blaming John Howard for Global Warming, but I do hold his government responsible for not doing anything significant until last month.
...And Ian Campbell is still a mongo.

2006/11/06

From the Mailbag

If You Didn't Think It Was About Oil, Think Again
This article came in from Pleiades. This bit is of great interest:
Since the devastating setbacks two years ago from the US-sponsored "color revolutions" in Georgia and then Ukraine, Russia has begun to play its strategic cards extremely carefully, from nuclear reactors in Iran to military sales to Venezuela and other Latin American states, to strategic market cooperation deals in natural gas with Algeria.

At the same time, the Bush administration has dug itself deeper into a geopolitical morass, through a foreign policy agenda which has reckless disregard for its allies as well as its foes. That reckless policy has been associated with former Halliburton chief executive officer and now vice president, Dick Cheney, more than any other figure in Washington.

The "Cheney presidency", which is what historians will no doubt dub the George W Bush years, has been based on a clear strategy. It has often been misunderstood by critics who had overly focussed on its most visible component, namely, Iraq, the Middle East and the strident war-hawks around the vice president and his old crony, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The "Cheney strategy" has been a US foreign policy based on securing direct global energy control, control by the Big Four US or US-tied private oil giants - ChevronTexaco or ExxonMobil, BP or Royal Dutch Shell. Above all, it has aimed at control of all the world's major oil regions, along with the major natural gas fields. That control has moved in tandem with a growing bid by the US for total military primacy over the one potential threat to its global ambitions - Russia. Cheney is perhaps the ideal person to weave the US military and energy policies together into a coherent strategy of dominance. During the early 1990s under father Bush, Cheney was also secretary of defense.

The Cheney-Bush administration has been dominated by a coalition of interests between Big Oil and the top industries of the American military-industrial complex. These private corporate interests exercise their power through control of the government policy of the US. An aggressive militaristic agenda has been essential to it. It is epitomized by Cheney's former company, Halliburton Inc, at one and the same time the world's largest energy and geophysical services company, and the world's largest constructor of military bases.

To comprehend the policy it's important to look at how Cheney, as Halliburton chief, viewed the problem of future oil supply on the eve of his becoming vice president. "Where the Prize Ultimately Lies", Cheney's 1999 London speech, was a full year before the US elections which made him the most powerful vice president in history. In it, Cheney gave a revealing speech before his oil industry peers at the London Institute of Petroleum. In a global review of the outlook for Big Oil, Cheney made the following comment:
By some estimates there will be an average of 2% annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a 3% natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about 90% of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies. Even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.

It is true that technology, privatization and the opening up of a number of countries have created many new opportunities in areas around the world for various oil companies, but looking back to the early 1990s, expectations were that significant amounts of the world's new resources would come from such areas as the former Soviet Union and from China. Of course that didn't turn out quite as expected. Instead it turned out to be the deep water successes that yielded the bonanza of the 1990s.
The Cheney remarks are worth a careful reading. He posits a conservative rise in global demand for oil by the end of the present decade, ie in about four years. He estimates the world will need to find an added 50 million barrels of daily output. Total daily oil production at present hovers around the level of some 83 million barrels oil equivalent. This means that to avert catastrophic shortages and the resultant devastating impact on global economic growth, by Cheney's 1999 estimate, the world must find new oil production equal to more than 50% of the 1999 daily global output, and that by about 2010. That is the equivalent of five new oil regions equal to today's Saudi Arabian size. That is a whopping amount of new oil.
Uhh-huh. And we don't see it happening. So we find that is, that there is a deep and abiding interest in controlling oil. Call it the smoking gun of motive and not having an alibi.

So Long, Mother Of All Jokes
Which brings me to the news of the day, Saddam is going to the gallows.


Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging today for his role in the killing of 148 Shiite Muslims in the northern Iraqi village of Dujail following an attempt on his life there in 1982.

``Long live the people, down with the traitors,'' Hussein, 69, shouted as the verdict was read out. ``God is great. You are the servants of the occupiers. Long live Iraq.'' Dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, he held a copy of the Koran in his left hand. ``Don't push me, boy,'' he barked at a court guard as the judge ordered him to be led out.

Hussein was convicted of crimes against humanity including premeditated murder, torture and forced deportation. Chief Judge Raouf Rasheed Abdul-Rahman read out the sentence at midday in the Baghdad courthouse of the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court. Footage was aired by major international television networks.

``Justice has been handed out to him,'' Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said at a press conference. ``This is a response to the call of thousands of sons and sisters of those executed by Saddam.'' Hussein's rule is ``an era of the past, like the era of Mussolini and Hitler. The new Iraqi will be without mass graves, military coups and repression,'' said al-Maliki, a Shiite who leads a predominantly Shiite government.

`Major Achievement'

President George W. Bush said Hussein's conviction was a ``major achievement'' for the country's elected government and brought a measure of justice for Hussein's victims.

``Saddam Hussein's trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of the law,'' Bush said at the airport outside Waco, Texas, before departing for a series of campaign appearances for Republican congressional candidates.
I wonder when people will start to realise that the idea of trying the vanquished is making us look very hypocritical. I can't believe I'm saying this but I have pity for Saddam Hussein now.

Borat Watch


In Kazakhstan, they finally got the joke. The accidental publicity is good for the country.
"Borat could have been created only by someone who knows nothing about Kazakhstan and has never been there," Mr Idrissov wrote after seeing the film.

"I doubt whether Borat could survive if his creator knew the reality of modern Kazakhstan."

But he did concede that the film had "resulted in the kind of media attention of which previously I could only dream".

"In a sense he has placed Kazakhstan on the map - no mean achievement since, even though it is the size of Western Europe, most people in the English-speaking world have difficulty in spelling its name and have only a vague idea of where it is."

The Kazakh government has objected to Borat but has invited Cohen to the country to see it for himself.
Well, you know, that might just spoil the joke.
These people being Americans, don't get the joke.
“It’s completely inaccurate,” said Susan Saxon, administrative executive director of the Providence-based Kazakh Aul of the U.S. Association for American & Kazakh Families. “It’s a beautiful country with wonderful people. They don’t drink horse urine and the women are beautiful.”
Or maybe it's simply because these people are from Boston.

2006/11/03

Just Guessing

Daisuke Matsuzaka Sweepstakes Part 2


I'm off to Canberra for a couple of nights while the posting bids go in for Matsuzaka, and I thought, just who might be in the Yankee rotation next year... I'm assuming the Yankees get their man. My guess is that they start the year like this:

1. Daisuke Matsuzaka
2. Chien-Ming Wang
3. Mike Mussina
4. Randy Johnson
5. Darrell Rasner

Jaret Wright? Err. Pass on that option.
Carl Pavano? Who knows what he's capable of doing. After 2 years, I'm in the habit of not even thinking he'll contribute anything. If he has a great April-May, I think he's trade bait.
Jeff Karstens will probably end up in the bullpen.
With any luck we'll see Phillip Hughes later in the year. Chances are, he'll replace Randy.
So by August I think it might look like this:

1. Daisuke Matsuzaka
2. Chien-Ming Wang
3. Phillip Hughes
4. Mike Mussina
5. Darrell Rasner

Just looking at all the right-handers, I think that ideally speaking the Yankees grab Lefty Kei Igawa as well as Matsuzaka to make Randy completely redundant, but that might be too bold.

UPDATE:
So far, the Mariners, Angels, Tigers have declined to post, and have made announcements to the effect they won't be joining the rush. The Mets will post, but indications are they're higher on signing Barry Zito. The Rangers and Bosox are still in it, but news reportsd from Bosston indicate even the Red Sox are not sounding like they want to go toe-to-toe with the Yankees. Cubs and Orioles on the other hand sound like they're still interested.

Lesser heralded but no-less interesting Kei Igawa will likely be posted on the 7th by the Hanshin (not Detroit) Tigers.

2006/11/02

Rocks Thrown Back

My Favorite Show Goes Down

Try this for double-speak:
"We're not axing the show but we're not going to commission it next year."
We're not aborting the baby, but we're not having it either...? Which is it?
The people who make the show are miffed, and rightfully so.
Co-hosts Wil Anderson, Dave Hughes and Corinne Grant were informed by their manager about a month ago that, after a five-year run and more than 200 episodes, the November 29 show would be the last. No real reason was given.

"They were basically saying they just wanted to move on," Dave Hughes said yesterday. "I can't say much at the moment. We're obviously really disappointed at the decision, especially when we felt the show had momentum … it's interesting timing, I'll say that much."

---
Anderson defended the show against accusations of anti-Government bias. "That's the thing about satire, you always attack those in power," he said. "Honestly, if (former Opposition leader) Mark Latham had won the election, how much time do you think we'd have done on the Liberals? It would be The Mental Mark Hour. 'Tune in this week and see what Mad Mark's been up to!' "

Anderson once called communications minister Richard Alston a "right-wing pig-rooter" and said their critics' blindness to the nature of satire is the "flaw at the heart of their argument". "You've got to attack the powerful. That's the point: they're powerful, why do they care?"

Co-host Grant said the ABC "copped a lot of flak" from its critics, with constant pressure from the Government. But she laughed off a suggestion by NSW Liberal Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells that Grant represents the trade union's peak body. "I'm not the face of the ACTU — that's hilarious," she said. "You MC one fricking rally and you're Kim Jong-il."
ABC management is denying it's a political move, yet the talk of the town is that it's in the name of 'balance'. Screw Balance! Gimme more laughs.
Anderson and his cohorts, Corinne Grant and Dave Hughes, have been rude about everyone over the years since August 2001 but, in the past couple of months, they have become increasingly hard on the Government, almost as if they knew the end was nigh, as it is indeed on November 29. Here's a selection of their invective:

"What did Bush give Howard instead of intelligence? Carpet burns."

"How can Costello increase his popularity? Release the tape of Bronwyn Bishop turkey-slapping him."

"What was the highlight of the Queen's visit? On-call buttock-licking from David Flint."

False newspaper headlines included: "Howard To Fund School Chaplains: But where will he find clergymen interested in kids?"; "Howard Vows To Stay In Iraq: Well, not me personally, I don't want to get shot"; "Strict New Bias Rules For ABC: says simpering right-wing Howard lapdog"; "Howard Urges Muslims To Treat Women As Equals: you know, like he does with homosexuals."
As if things could not get any worse, Anderson launched a stinging attack on the ABC general manager, Mark Scott, when he announced the ABC's new policy on bias two weeks ago.

There's every chance the best of The Glass House will go to television's version of the afterlife, the DVD box set. The ABC's head of arts and entertainment, Courtney Gibson, said that, with other new comedy shows in development, the corporation could not afford to produce too much laughter. She promised The Chaser would stay.
The show will be sorely missed by me and my gal. Seriously, what are we gonna watch now?
The fact of the matter as the ABC insists is that not enough people were watching this show.
DIRECTOR of ABC television Kim Dalton insists it's just an "unfortunate coincidence" that the satirical show The Glass House was dumped in the middle of the political storm about alleged bias at the national broadcaster.
The comedy series is the second program targeted by ABC management since tough anti-bias editorial policies were imposed last month.

Media Watch, which has also been accused of bias, is not being axed but it will have a new executive producer and a new focus next year.

The stars of The Glass House did nothing to dampen accusations of bias yesterday. Wil Anderson featured in a celebrity debate at an ALP fundraiser in Sydney last night, while co-host Dave Hughes said the Howard Government needed scrutiny.

"The guys who make the decisions are the guys that need to be looked at, and that's what we did," he said.

"We look at the Opposition as well, but they don't make any decisions, so it's not as much fun to make fun of them."

John Howard denied he played any role in dumping the show, and said it had been "axed by a decision of the ABC -- I haven't asked it be axed".

"I don't watch it -- occasionally I will flick it on but not very often," the Prime Minister said. "I do not tell the ABC what programs it should run. I respect the independence of the ABC.

"From time to time, if the ABC treats a news item in an unbalanced fashion I will say so, and I will say that in relation to other programs as well."

But the ABC's reasons for cancelling The Glass House failed to satisfy Labor. Opposition communications spokesman Stephen Conroy said it was another victory for Mr Howard's culture warriors.
Yeah... right. Nobody is buying it.
The people figure that it's a patent attempt by the government to muzzle dissent. Nobody likes a wit except another wit. Clearly the Federal Government is witless save for that special kind, fuckwits.

2006/11/01

Today's guff

This Makes Me Feel Old


I remember when these guys were the self-styled Atomic Punks. Even subtracting the massive social negative that I was introduced to this band's music by Sandy V a.k.a. the headbanging Sassan-I-hit-you-with-my-spoon-V, in the school ground; these guys rocked. Eddie to my generation of guitarists was what Jimi was to the previous generation. Shred 'rooled' - not that I ever mastered that style.
Now they're up for nomination to the Rock Hall of Fame.
To be eligible, artists must have issued a first single or album at least 25 years prior to nomination.

Van Halen and R.E.M. came from opposite sides of the 1980s rock 'n' roll spectrum. Led by cartoonish frontman David Lee Roth and fleet-fingered guitarist Eddie Van Halen, the California quartet was a hard rock favorite with songs like "Jump" and "Hot for Teacher." R.E.M., meanwhile, was the quintessential indie rock band until breaking through to mass success in the early 1990s.
I don't know what's worse; that time should fly so fast, or that they're lumped in the same paragraph with the extremely lame REM. I mean, if it's the kind of Hall that would consider REM, do they want to be inducted into that?

Take THAT Johnny!
Here's interesting news on polls conducted in Australia regarding climate change.
The Newspoll found 79 per cent of Australians want the government to sign the Kyoto Protocol and commit to targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Seventy-one per cent of Coalition voters said the same thing.

A massive 91 per cent want a shift from reliance on coal-fired power to focus instead on renewable energy sources. Ninety per cent of Coalition voters agreed.

Four out of five Australians, and 77 per cent of Coalition voters, agree that polluting industries should pay levies on greenhouse gas emissions.
Times are a changing when your supporters turn like this. John Howard is trying to fight the perception that he sat pat on global warming by announcing packages.
Climate change leapt to the top of the political agenda yesterday after the release of an alarming report by a former World Bank economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, warning of global economic depression should the problem not be dealt with within 10 years.

As the Prime Minister warned his back bench not to be "mesmerised" by the report, the Opposition Leader, Kim Beazley, accused the Government of not being fair dinkum.

"We need decisive national leadership," Mr Beazley said.

"We do not need this Johnny-come-lately to the climate debate. He has failed our children and our grandchildren." The Opposition Leader has long advocated signing the Kyoto Protocol, which sets greenhouse gas emission targets, as well as spending on developing renewable energy and clean coal technology.

Mr Howard said ratifying the protocol - which does not include the major polluters China, India and the US - would hurt Australian industry and cause job losses for no measurable reduction of global emissions.

He said Australia was keen to establish a "new Kyoto" and participate in an international carbon trading system if all countries agreed to do so.

"If everybody is in I'm prepared to lead Australia in," he said. "I say no to the old failed Kyoto because it did not include the world's major emitters."
Is it just me or does he sound like a lame duck?
Meanwhile, it seems Al Gore has found a new place to plonk his soap box.
Earlier this week Gore was appointed an international consultant on climate change in the United Kingdom.

The announcement came timed to the release of a new report from British economic adviser Sir Nicholas Stern warning of devastating economic and social disruptions for the global community — on the scale of the Great Depression and the two world wars — if world leaders don't take aggressive, immediate action on climate change initiatives.

That is exactly the point Gore has been trying to make here in the United States for years. His film, "An Inconvenient Truth," makes that point. He has criticized the Bush administration for not signing the Kyoto treaty and not pushing global warming to the top of the agenda.

In this morning's press briefing, White House press secretary Tony Snow repudiated the claim that President Bush wasn't serious about climate change initiatives.

"He's talked about ethanol. He's talked about nuclear. He's talked about biodiesel," Snow said. "And he's talked about the importance of being aggressive in … innovating our way out of it."

But British Prime Minister Tony Blair's mounting displeasure with countries like the United States, China and India was evident in his remarks Monday. He described the Stern report as the most important account on the future published during his time in office.

"Unless we act now, not sometime distant, but now, these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible," Blair said. "There is nothing more serious, more urgent, more demanding of leadership, here of course, but most important, in the global community."
Yep. Days of our lives.

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