I just took a glance at the main page for SI.com only to find a big splashy spread on some MMA (mixed martial art) fight that was held last night. Out of curiosity I checked out the ESPN main page and, sure enough, big splashy MMA coverage up front. This is what we have come to as a society---back to cage fighting. In the year 2009, human beings cannot find a better way to entertain themselves than to put two roided freaks into a cage and let them beat each other into submission? Seriously? And the “hey, it’s what the people want and we’ll cater to the lowest common denominator if it will make us a buck” media cannot find anything better to put on the front page or on the TV screen? I have mixed emotions about this last part---on the one hand, I have a philosophical problem with publicizing and encouraging fighting but, on the other, I find it incredibly funny that two days before the MLB All Star Game the nation’s foremost sports reporting agencies relegated baseball to a distant third behind cage fighting and NASCAR. This should give you an indication of how far baseball has (deservingly) fallen---the stewards of the game must be proud.
Anyway, I have contemplated this for years now as I watched, somewhat gladly, boxing die a slow death in the public arena. I used to follow boxing, you know. I remember growing up fascinated with the sport (or the sweet science as it used to be called). I was an unabashed fan (who wasn’t?) of Muhammad Ali. I remember speculating, idly and somewhat foolishly, if Teofilo Stevenson would have a chance against Ali if he ever turned pro. I remember prancing around in the living room on summer afternoons, when it was too hot to go play outside, punching the shadows and chanting “I float like a butterfly, I sting like a bee……”. I remember reading about how Larry Holmes would never get the credit for how good a fighter he was, as none of the bigwigs would fight him in his prime. I remember being at once thrilled and nauseated by the sheer savagery of Mike Tyson when he burst upon the scene --- watching the highlights of his KOs were like watching a bad wreck; it turned your stomach but somehow, perversely, you couldn’t not watch it.
Then I grew up. At some point, and I cannot pinpoint exactly when, it occurred to me that we should be better than this. Sure, a lot of sports are physical and some, like football, are even occasionally violent. But boxing (and now the MMA-type crap) differed from other physical sports in a crucial way --- violence is not incidental to the sport--- rather, the object of a fighting sport is to subjugate the opponent by inflicting pain and physical harm. At some point in my maturation this became philosophically unacceptable to me. I think that if we condone this concept (that it is somehow not just OK but even glorious to beat another human being into submission) in even a controlled arena, we end up, to some degree, condoning all physical abuse --- the kind that occurs in domestic violence, for instance, as in all these cases it is the twisted mind of the abuser using physical force to dominate his or her arena.
I think it is time to stop catering to our bloodlust. The only fighting we should be doing is against the urge to fight.
Wow. Talk about luck of the draw. A bunch of guys played their first round at the US Open in mostly miserable conditions between yesterday and this morning--wet, soggy and unpredictable fairways and rough, and greens that were not rolling out as much as normal. Par would have been a great score.
Then the remaining guys tee it off this morning and play much of their first round in relatively ideal conditions---fairways and rough drier, greens still soft and absolutely receptive (heck, people are spinning he back back out of the rough! Normally at a US OPen you can barely spin the ball of the fairways on cement-like greens) and rolling beautifully. Moreover, the tough holes were set up shorter to keep them being impossible in yesterday's weather---in today's weather they are playing as birdie holes. The guys are throwing darts out there apparently---in the elite golfer set the scores are lower by 3-4 shots today.
Worse still for Tiger and others who played first, the 'later' groups of guys get to play a bulk of their second round today too, under ideal scoring conditions. Tomorrow, the weather is supposed to be bad again (and the 'early' guys will have to play round 2 and bulk of round 3 then) so it may be that the early group gets screwed twice. Even if the weather holds up fine tomorrow, it will still be tough because the greens will have dried out much more by tomorrow and they can't just shoot at the pins like the guys are this afternoon today. Scoring will be difficult no matter how you cut it.
Luck of the draw is not unheard of in golf tournaments but this time the circumstances seem to have skewed the fairness more acutely.
All that having been said, Tiger probably has only himself to blame if he's too far behind after today---he was at level par after 14 holes (he played the second half of his round in the more benign conditions of this morning), but dropped 4 strokes over the last 4 holes. Very uncharacteristic of him and it may have lost him a chance at the tournament. If he finished around par he would have been maybe 4-5 shots behind the leaders. Doable, for him --- he could have pulled close by the final round. Now he may be 7-10 shots behind a number of people before he even starts his second round and that is too much to make up. USOpens are not set up for scoring, as we will see---this scoring burst of today is an anomalous result of a perfect storm, if you will, of events. To make up ten shots, you normally need a lot of people to falter pretty badly. But that can happen at US Opens too, I guess.
As of now, it ain't looking good for Ol' Eldrick. The toughest test in golf just got much tougher. But no one grinds like he does and if anyone can still think of winning from this position, he can. Let's see if he can claw his way back into this tournament over the next couple of days.
Since the sports establishment can't stop praising Kobe Bryant as a hungry, strong-willed great champion (or whatever the fuck the adulation-du-jour may be) I thought I should remind people that it is highly likely that Kobe is a goddamn rapist who got away with his crime because he could assemble a multi-million dollar 'defense' (a.k.a. character assault and intimidation) team. It helped, I suppose, that the NBA was struggling in those years and it was in the financial interest of a whole lot of people to sweep this under the rug as fast as possible, cos, you know, it's all about 'protecting your assets' and 'managing your brand' and shit like that.
The intimidation and character-assasination that Kobe's team indulged in was despicable. But then again, Kobe is despicable, so what else would you expect? Besides, the victim's lifestyle or habits, whatever they may have been, does not give anyone a license to sexually assault her. The Kobe line of defense was basically the same old "She was asking for it" mentality that only rapists can favor.
Congrats LAkers and NBA and all the rest of you fawning sports 'journalist' parasites---looks like your star 'product' is the worst kind of stinking despicable criminal who bought his way out of punishment!
A bunch of bloggers are trying to advance the cause of Doctors Without Borders to help the victims of sexual violence in Liberia.
Go to these links --- Isis, CPP --- and others in those messages.
Please read, listen, spread the message, and help.
These atrocities, in Liberia as well as around the world, have got to be stopped. CPP's post also has a bunch of other links that you can use to help.
PS: Many times your employer will match certain charitable donations. Often you won't know that if you don't ask. In smaller companies, partnerships etc, employers will sometimes match donations in special instances, on a case by case basis. Ask, and try to double your efforts if possible in this relatively simple manner.
And then there's this monstrosity: $35 million set aside for at least 10 awards (woo-freacking-hoo!)--award limit 1 million/yr for 3 yrs---basically for 'bridging' the gap from science to market that any company can apply for! There's the token bullshit about 'preference will be given to Cos with fewer than 500 employees' etc etc blah blah. but freaking COME ON! Yeah, a 3-5 person company that kicks ass is really gonna stand a chance against a 250 person, venture funded enterprise that can assign 25 people to the task of writing the 3 million dollar grant based on their stuff. Lemme see, 40% of the score goes to Team and Facilities etc....so the company of BSD from MRU gets spotted a healthy 40% on the score. Besides, a cursory glance at the bullet points shows quite a bit of advanced applied stuff --- not much of immediate-basic translational work is represented. There's nothing wrong with bigger Cos getting money, BTW, except that the ones of that size that show promise have healthy funding streams to begin with. Way to go all repub and see that the rich get richer (not surprising---I bet big biotech pharma dollars lobbied this shit up).
So the biotech "small biz" community gets a whopping $40 million, 0.4% of the ARRA NIH money (oooohh, you are too generous, sire), much of which goes to approx a dozen awards---that good small biotechs cannot compete for in reality .
In return, my guess is that all reasonably competitive RC1s and RC2s from biotech start-ups will get trashed in review---"hey, the business guys get their own set-aside, let them compete there...." I figure it was a lot of lobbying from the business community that got this set-aside---but not to help small business biotechs really, cos there's a few one-year-Phase Is (big fucking deal) and a handful of big ticket awards that even good start-ups cannot realistically compete for. With friends like these, who needs enemies?
DAMMIT, I AM SO FREAKING MAD. We had a pretty competitive proposal in with the general stream, and I was happy to take my chances. In my deluded state, I guess, I was even feeling a bit positive about it. The last thing we needed was a stupid meaningless set-aside that could nevertheless influence reviewers to bag it sayin "Fuck em. They can get some of the small business pie".....
Now, I am almost kicking myself for putting in all that time. Dammit. At least if they'd announced this before I turned in the proposal I'd have had a chance to argue the proposal in this light. Dammit. Dammit. Freaking dammit.
So Manny is the latest to get busted for sticking performance-enhancing needles in his fanny. Big freaking surprise. Then I read that he was busted for taking human chorionic gonadotropin. Manny being tranny? Manny being nanny? granny? I know, it's supposed to be taken by dopers who are cycling off---just couldn't pass up the chance to dish out some pun-ishment.
Seriously though, if you're surprised, you're incredibly naive or stupid. Yeah, sure it was a mistake or an honest prescription that he forgot to run by the team doctors.
The past 25 years or so have seen the greed-fueled supply-side mentality create a culture of billion dollar entitlements and billion dollar lies. We have seen this in American government and American industry. And in American sports. And in the sporting realm, no sport has quite encapsulated this excess, embraced this culture of abusing the public trust and exploiting the public ignorance and apathy---all for incredible monetary gain---quite as well as Major League Baseball.
Reminds me of Terrance Mann telling Ray Kinsella in 'Field of dreams'---"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball......baseball has marked the time."
Well, it sure has, hasn't it?
Of course, Mann went on to say, "This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again."
Now, about that last part........maybe not so much. /
I’d originally planned this for part 3 but here goes….
The story of Lucas Oil Stadium. And stadiums in general.
Like many places in this country, Indianapolis is hurting for money. Funding is hard to come by, whether it is to improve the school system or for shoring up roads, bridges and general infrastructure or for providing unemployment and medical benefits or…...you get the picture. Times are tough everywhere. It is hard to find a extra dollar to put toward the public good.
But we certainly can find dollars for our big league teams.
Here’s a breakdown of the financing of the new Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Colts. Two points before I go further:
(1) The blame game for this mess is a good one. The Colts don't take any responsibility because they didn’t press for a new stadium but the city wanted one for a SuperBowl bid etc. Generally the blame falls at the feet of the elected officials who unsurprisingly sold out the taxpayer. But I don’t care---the point I want to make is that regardless of how it all came to be, this magnitude of ripoff would never happen if not for the people’s infatuation with, and addiction to, big league sports.
(2) Do stick with me till the end of this piece---the story only keeps getting better.
Cost of building Lucas Oil Stadium: $715-720 million
Funds provided by the Colts: $100 million
(Actually, there is some creative accounting here. Some estimate that the Colts may have contributed only ~$40 mil in cash. Apparently approx $45 mil was credited to the Colts as ‘compensation for lease breaking or something like that. The way I understood it, since the city tore up the RCA dome---and moved the Colts to a brand new facility--- the city owes the Colts compensation for breaking the lease on the RCA dome. Yeah, you can’t make up shit like this. Anyway, since I don’t have any documentation handy, let’s just credit the Colts with chipping in a 100 mil. It doesn’t make the entire story any less ridiculous)
Remaining ~ $615 -620 million paid/borne by State of Indiana and City of Indianapolis i.e. the taxpayer.
Estimated annual total football related revenue : ~ $30 mil/year (The Colts get to keep this money).
Revenue from naming rights to the stadium by Lucas Oil: $122 million over 20 years (Colts get to keep this money too)
Annual rent paid to the city by the Colts for Lucas Oil Stadium: $ 0.25 million.
Summary:So the taxpayer shells out $615 million and is guaranteed a return of ~$0.25 million per year. The Colts shell out $100 million and are guaranteed a return of ~$36 million per year.
What was the justification for this wonderful investment by the Indiana taxpayer? Well, you see, the stadium isn’t all there is to the story. We are also updating/expanding/getting a brand new convention center adjacent to the stadium (same set up as was before with the RCA dome and the convention center). The convention center will require another estimated $275 million dollars. So the total cost of the stadium+convention center is close to $1 billion.
But there’s economic benefit to be had! According to the Lucas Oil Stadium website, the new complex is expected to provide about $2.25 billion in economic benefit over the next ten years, and create about 4200 permanent jobs. This is laughable on so many levels---where do I start? Let’s start with the phrase ‘economic benefit’. Notice they don’t even promise revenue, certainly not profit…..economic benefit…a catchall bullshit phrase that politicians can use to show returns that the taxpayer will be hard-pressed to find. Even if it is $2.25 billion in tangible revenue, this works out to (being generous) a 1.25-1.5X return after ten years---who thinks this is a good return for that kind of money?? If I’m not mistaken, historical stock market data predicts that a billion dollars should turn into two billion every eight years if invested conservatively. And let’s look at the job creation---something that you’ll hear a lot about from politicians---4.2 permanent jobs per every million dollars invested? Are you freaking kidding me? If I applied to the state for funding and said that I could turn $1 million into $2.25 million of ‘economic benefit’ after 10 years and create 4 permanent jobs over that period they’d (1) Throw me out of the window (2) Sue me for property damage caused by my being thrown out of the window and (3) Sue me for personal injury caused to the review panel on account of their laughing so hard at my proposal.
But that kinda math is good enough when a sports franchise is involved.
The story gets a bit better: The Capital Improvement Board (CIB; a newspeak-ian moniker if there ever was one) ---the board that runs the stadium and convention center (as well as the Conseco Fieldhouse, home of the Indiana Pacers basketball team) apparently didn’t do their budgets so well. So there is a small shortfall in the monies planned for the upkeep and operations of these stadia---totalling about $47 million! About $30 million of this is for the Colts stadium---so the taxpayers spent $615 million on a new stadium for which they now have to shell out another $30 million in maintenance costs!
That’s pretty rich, isn’t it? But fear not dear reader, we are not quite done yet. There is one last tasty morsel I saved for the end---a superb end to this bountiful repast that we’ve served up. Indeed, before you say “Fuck off, I cannot eat another bite” I hasten to add that this last treat is ‘ a waffferrrre thinnn….’ Enjoy the story of the RCA Dome.
The RCA dome was, amongst other things, the home of the Colts. (The complex also included the Indiana Convention Center--- I don’t know whether the costs I’m about to list cover the ICC but I’ll include the center anyway, even if gratis, in any economic benefit the ICC has brought to the people). It was completed in 1984, and the estimated cost of building it was ~$80 million. Almost half of these costs were covered by donations from the Lilly Foundation and the Krannert Trust; the taxpayer bore about $47 million of the burden. In 1999, the taxpayer bore another $26 million in debt for changes/renovations/upgrades to the complex. So the total burden to the taxpayer was $73 million. Now, the RCA dome and the convention center have hosted a plethora of revenue-generating events. Conventions of every kind, monster truck rallies, NCAA tournaments and Final Fours....basically, over its 24 year life the RCA dome must have generated a ton of revenue. In December 2008, the RCA dome was torn down (demolition cost of about $3.5 million).
