Parity Violation

So, I went to buy Gatorade the other day and saw the new “endurance formula” Gatorade. Suddenly, I didn’t know which one to buy. What’s wrong with normal Gatorade that I might need this endurance formula? Is it better? Which activities require endurance and which don’t? What’s the trade off, why not always drink the endurance formula?

You see, these are not questions a maker of sports drinks should want its customers asking and yet here I am doing it. Gatorade risks diluting its brand, raising questions about what it means to be Gatorade. I wonder how this will all pan out. You’d think they’d have done market research.

Similarly, General Mills has a special “whole grain” variety of all their cereals. Or do they? Some I think have always been whole grain (like Cheerios), others now have two varieties – one whole grain and one normal (Like Cocoa Puffs). This is another example of brand dilution, though not as good of one. But suddenly everything has two varieties and maybe I’ll just buy another brand so I don’t have to wonder which one I want.

This is my language profile or something, courtesy of a test I first heard about at Anne’s blog.

Oh, how I long for the day that there’s some alternative to the Catholic League. I may have to form my own group. What a tired, reactionary bunch these people are. These are the sorts of folks that got Nothing Sacred taken off of ABC, that see anti-Catholicism behind every bad bowl of soup they get. Anyway, in particular I’m tired of hearing the Catholic League president, William Donahue, who today offered this gem (from a Newsday article) on Cardinal Ratzinger’s election as Pope Benedict XVI.

“The new pope, like his predecessor, understands the grave danger that awaits a society wherein each individual makes up his own morality,” he said. “It may not sell in the U.S., but it is nonetheless true that a society that refuses to acknowledge that morality is a social attribute, not an individual one, is bound to culturally implode. The Catholic League is delighted. Those who are not need to do some real soul searching.” [emphasis added]

You know everything was fine there until that last sentence. Who does Donahue think he is anyway? I don’t need to do any soul searching. The Church is much more than just any one pope, and should I be less than thrilled does not entail any need to search for my soul. I really don’t care to listen to William Donahue, or the Catholic League for that matter.

Anyway, I myself am rather dissappointed in the election of Ratzinger. I was hoping for a more collegial pope, not someone who is has a history of being dictatorial. But in this I find solace in quote from Ratzinger himself who is quoted in a National Catholic Reporter story.

[Ratzinger] was asked on Bavarian television in 1997 if the Holy Spirit is responsible for who gets elected pope, and this was his response:

“I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope. … I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.”

Then the clincher: “There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit would obviously not have picked.”

Here’s a profile of the new Pope Benedict XVI.

Oh but I do. I watch TV. Probably more than I should. The thing is, I occasionally hear people say that don’t like TV, or don’t watch it. They almost seem proud of this, as if they are somehow better off without TV, as a rule. This makes no sense to me. The medium is utterly irrelevant to the quality of the content. Saying I don’t like TV is like saying I don’t like books, or Magazines and newspapers are not for me. It’s pretty silly.

And yet, because there is so much bad television programming these people who deride it somehow achieve respectability where as presumably these same anti-television types would scoff at people who don’t read. All communication mediums, from the movies to television to the written word have some excellent content and some horribly bad content. The trick is finding the quality stuff, be it at the cinema, at the library, or on the television. But to ignore any one medium is equivalent to ignoring any of the others. This is rather limiting, in my view.

It is. Deal with it. I’m talking to all you editors out there who keep telling us it’s plural and to say the data are wonderful or whatever. Give us a break, please! The word data is used for a singular mass entity. Like the word information.

From American Heritage via Dictionary.com, two examples:

Sixty percent of the Usage Panel accepts the use of data with a singular verb and pronoun in the sentence “Once the data is in, we can begin to analyze it.” A still larger number, 77 percent, accepts the sentence “We have very little data on the efficacy of such programs”, where the quantifier very little, which is not used with similar plural nouns such as facts and results, implies that data here is indeed singular.

I offer my own examples, most people would say We don’t have as much data on that topic, notice the use of much which is what you’d use when saying much information, singular. You would not say much facts, you would say many facts but who says I took many data today. No one. The tyranny of editors at scientific journals must come to an end! Scientists of the world, unite!

I got clobbered. Domination was the word Dave used, I apparently owe him two beers. The good news is Bary Zito pitched a decent game. The bad news is Brandon Arroyo did not. I also seem to be lacking in the RBI department. It seems like every one of the eight homers by team hit were solo shots. I know both of Pujols’ homers were solo.

I lost 8-4, the only categories I won were ERA, AVG, SB, and saves. It was a tough week, especially for my offense. I’m considering conceding the strikeout category and going for ERA/WHIP with some closers/relievers with good stuff. My starters will be just there for innings more than anything, and hopefully will pitch well. I don’t think I can compete K-wise with many teams, even with strikeout prone relievers like Lidge and Wagner.

<pAnyway, it’s a long season so I expect the team to have good weeks and bad ones. Not much one can do.

So, my team did quite well. Technically, this week’s contest is not over, but there’s only like one player active at the moment that can effect the outcome, and I don’t think it’ll have any effect. I sit in first place at the moment.

To explain, I’m playing in a Fantasy Baseball league on Yahoo!. It was my friend Dave’s idea; he and I go way back to Lake Jackson Intermediate School. He wanted to commish his own league, and try to get people to join in… that got us to maybe five players. So, we ended up leaving and joining up with this other league. It’s head-to-head so every week my team of players competes against another team in twelves statistical categories. When I have a better team stat than my opponent that’s a “win,” when I don’t, that’s a loss.

This week just ending, I should finish 9-2-1. The tie is in complete games which is a pretty stupid category since hardly any pitchers throw complete games anymore. I am winning in runs, RBIs, stolen bases, average, OPS, Wins, Saves, ERA, and WHIP. WHIP is walks/hits per inning pitch. OPS is on-base-average + slugging percentage.

I feel pretty good about the team, though this week probably won’t be typical. My ERA would be around 2 if it wasn’t for one Bary Zito. I’m not likely to ever win in strikeouts, since I don’t have than many starting pitchers. I’m losing in homers, but Edmunds and Pujols didn’t have great weeks. Still, I don’t expect much as far as HRs. I feel good about runs, SBs, AVG, saves, ERA, and WHIP. Ks, Wins, homers will be tough – AVG and OPS will probably be a week to week thing.

I’m amused that I got so many wins (6 all totaled), with a bunch of closers on my team. A bunch of closers on bad teams I should say – Baez on Tampa Bay, Cordero on Washington. They both got me two wins this week, who would have guessed? All my saves came from Brad Lidge (3). Wagner threw 2 scoreless innings but neither in a save situation.

With Zito stinking it up (0-2, 11.51 ERA, 3 K, WHIP 2.04) and my strikeout total non-competitive, I picked up Boston Pitcher Brandon Arroyo as free agent, upon reading a tip sheet at SI.com. I dropped Cabrera, this shortstop on … I forget which team; I wasn’t getting him in my lineup much anyway. If Zito really collapses, I may have to cut him but two awful starts is probalby not enough just yet. It is tempting to bench him for a start; I certainly drafted him too high.

Anyway, this week I take on Dave’s team… which he says he should rename DL’s DL since he has five players on the disabled list, including Bonds and Alou. He has a bunch of “old men” as he likes to say, but they still sizzled the ball this week batting .330 with an OPS of .902 led by Carlos Guillen (.455, 1.020), Jeff Kent (.455, 1.270), and Vinny Castilla (.376, 1.000). They may be old but they can hit. If I had played his team this week the only offensive category I would have won would be stolen bases.

Anyway, long post – I’m sure I’ll grow more bored about fantasy baseball as the season wears on.

So today four Astros tickets landed in my lap. A friend of Erin’s had a client who coludn’t use these sweet Row 13, Section 126 tickets. I think that’s how it worked out. Anyway, I got the call about the tickets at 1PM – and the game had just started. So, I had to mobilize forces at a spur of the moment to get out there.

Fortunately, Hao, Colleen, and Katie answered the call. We hit the road around 1:45 and had to swing buy a house kind of near downtown to grab the tickets that were under the doormat. Colleen hoppe out the car and grabbed them. They came with a Lot C parking pass, which was handy.

So the seats were great, 13 rows from the dugout is pretty sweet – but in addition when we arrived in the bottom of the 5th with the game tied 2-2 the Astros got cranking with the Bats. Everett walked, Biggio reached on a fielder’s choice (almost hit into a double play) and then Bagwell unloaded a homerun into the left field stands. Next up Morgan Ensburg, who after falling behind 0-2, drilled the next pitch into the right field bullpen. The Astros never looked back. Oswalt was sharp, Spring pitched a good 8th, and Brad Lidge came in in the 9th to get his third save in as many chances. Nice homestand, Astros!

Well, the Astros open up the 2005 season at home tonight against the Cardinals. Boo Cardinals! If the Astros could have gotten a darn hit in the late innings of Game 6 it would have been the Astros losing to the Red Sox in the World Series last year. I really thought Berkman woud slap a double after Bagwell tied the game up in the 9th last year in Game 6. Oh well.

Anyway, this year of course Carlos Beltran left us for the big bucks in New York. And we lost Jeff Kent too. The Astros are relying on some young talent to really come up big – but we do have pretty good starting pitching, assuming Backe gets his act together after a rough spring and Pettite stays healthy. I’m cautiously optimistic as always; I’m thinking maybe another wild card berth. We will need to pull the trigger on some kind of trade though, at some point, if we really want to compete in the playoffs.

Alas, I don’t have a ticket for tonight’s game so I’m probably not going unless something dramatic happens in the next few hours. I could try and scalp one, I suppose. I tried to buy opening day tickets online when they first went on sale but the stupid ticketmaster site gave me the message “You have 60 seconds to buy these tickets” and the darn page wasn’t going to finish loading in 60 seconds. Not everyone has a cable modem, Ticketmaster. Anyway, so I couldn’t buy tickets and just gave up on the whole matter.

So after much googling I discovered how to clean off the unpleasant discoloration of my iBook G4’s palmrests. A white eraser. Like my magic rub probably would have worked, but I wasn’t able to find it. Anyway, I borrowed a white eraser from another grad student and it worked like a charm. Although, the process produces a great deal of eraser dust, so make sure that doesn’t get into the keyboard or inside the computer in any way.