The International House of Bacon

So, for those of you who aren’t baseball/Red Sox fans, Sox pitcher Jon Lester threw a no-hitter tonight against the Royals. Lester’s story is rather interesting - a touted prospect out of high school who struggled in his first stint in the majors, was diagnosed with cancer, then beat it, winning the clinching game of the World Series six months later. Spent the off-season as one of the main bargaining chips in trade talks, stuck around, and now we’re here. 24 year old cancer survivor has pretty much done two of the greatest things a pitcher can do in his career, and it’s all secondary anyway because of what he’s done in his personal life.

Why this is cool:

1) No-hitters are always cool and fun, but this guy is obviously special in a lot of ways, and this one just feels more special because of the story, a story that every Red Sox fan carried with them in some way.

2) This guy had a good chance of not being on this team, and I was a proponent of trading him for someone. I still am in some ways, but talk about finding a way to shut up the doubters like myself for a little bit.

3) Right now, Ian Kennedy is in the minors, Philip Hughes is on the DL, Kei Igawa is Kei Igawa, and the Yankees are looking toward the return of Carl Pavano in July to stop the bleeding.

I love this game.

Still battling a head cold, still wondering why the Red Sox are so high on Jon Lester…

* High school seniors dumb on basic financial information. On one hand, I probably wouldn’t have known the answers to a lot of those questions ten years ago. On the other, why couldn’t I?

* McCain on pre-emptive war: “I don’t think you can make a blanket statement about preemptive war because obviously it depends on the threat that the United States of America faces.” On the face of it, it’s an obvious, “duh” statement. But then you think about how the “100 years in Iraq” comment has been completely twisted out of context, and I fear for how this comment will play, even though it’s the most realistic foriegn policy statement any current Presidential candidate has made. McCain doesn’t consistently deserve the straight talk moniker, but it’s statements like this that keep that concept alive - brutally honest, an answer even he probably doesn’t like, and one that’s certain to get twisted by his opponents, who are really only interested in straight talk when it fits the percieved narrative.

* Time on the shifting gender gap in colleges in favor of women.

* More corruption via red light cameras. It appears that one locality has seven of its ten red light cameras at intersections where the yellow light is quicker than mandated by law.

* Obama, “Constitutional scholar,” supports the Washington, DC gun ban.

* The Volokh Conspiracy had an interesting post about genocide and international law.

* Thomas Sowell nails it: “Nothing is more fraudulent than calls for a ‘dialogue on race.’ Those who issue such calls are usually quick to cry ‘racism’ at any frank criticism. They are almost invariably seeking a monologue on race, to which others are supposed to listen.”

* Also via Volokh, religious accomodations and business collide. A company is reprimanded by the government of New Mexico for refusing to photograph a same-sex union.

* Power Line reports on Pelosi having the rules changed to allow Congress to table the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. So many snarky comments I could make, but perhaps this playing of politics merely speaks for itself.

* Boy, does Michelle Obama sound familiar or what?

* Finally, a good move in a follow up from yesterday: The woman dismissed from Obama’s delegate camp for referring to children in trees as “monkeys” has been reinstated.

Catching up while wondering who the mystery first pitch is for Red Sox opening day, and whether Obama’s promise to listen to the generals on the ground in Iraq applies to Gen. Petraeus this week.

* Bush fast-tracked the Colombian Free Trade Agreement yesterday. I said it before - for all the negatives of the Bush Presidency, his record on trade, on a whole, is not one of them. It’s especially refreshing when hearing the alternatives from the Democratic side.

* The rumor is that Condoleeza Rice is angling for the vice-presidential nomination on the McCain ticket. Unsolicited advice for McCain - we don’t know a thing about her, so don’t do it.

* Not everything is rainbows and unicorns financially on the left.

* Chances are that, if you have any interest in video games, you’ve already played You Have to Burn the Rope. If not, go and play it - you’re in for a treat.

* Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek on pessimistic bias regarding the economy. I’m generally more optimistic about these things myself, as he is.

* A question - it seems that every single time a politician or Presidential candidate attempts to use a person as an example for their own health care complaints, they’re lying about it. Why is that? We know that some people have it bad, why do they struggle so much to find them?

* Corn is now at $6/bushel. Thanks, ethanol! At least my gas prices are lower! Wait, what?

* In a “naw, really” moment, it appears that the health care requirement in Massachusetts has resulted in a - you guessed it - shortage in available doctors. Remember, this is the same kind of plan favored by Hillary Clinton.

* Obama’s positive ratings are due more to “how he makes voters feel than by specific characteristics they attributed to him.” But, again, I’m a jerk for pointing this out.

* Finally, more nationalization schemes from Hugo Chavez. I worry a lot for Venuzuela, and more because it’s another thing in a long list that the United Nations was designed for and that they’re essentially punting on. No, it’s not Darfur, it’s not Zimbabwe, it’s not Tibet, it’s not Taiwan. But it’s bad, and that no one is willing to step in through the allegedly essential international community is patently ridiculous.

You know you read too many blogs when you’re without internet access from Friday afternoon -> Sunday afternoon, and you have 580 unread posts in your Google Reader. Let’s see if we can’t knock some of them off.

* Did I post this last week? Maybe I did, but it’s worth posting again: this is awesome. A cell phone that doesn’t work via voice.

* Do ankles really exist? Doctors in Texas can’t agree. Ah, licensing squabbles…

* If Jonah Goldberg wrote as intelligently as he did in Liberal Fascism, I’d read him more often. His piece this week on the stark realities of the New Deal is one of those good pieces that will likely get overlooked. There’s no rational reason why it took me until an upper-level college history class to learn that there was even a rational alternative view on the New Deal, let alone the economic facts behind it. If we taught that sort of information in high school, it would do wonders.

* Deval Patrick made a pretty big deal about the casino legislation - one of the few things he’s been up to that I’ve thought was a good idea up to this point. Too bad he was working on his book deal in New York when the bill was being voted on. Way to push those votes, Deval. Good job.

* I learned something new today: Most United States citizens get their water from public works/governments, most United Kingdom citizens get it from private companies. Pretty backwards if you think about it - I never knew it was that widespread here, or that private there.

* Forget those White Sox frauds, read up on how the Red Sox are built for the long haul. Happy opening week!

* I love the “Al Gore riding in on a white stallion and rescuing the Democratic Party during the convention” fantasies. The reality is that he’s not going to run, and the perception is that Gore is even further left than Obama’s is.

* More about where the two Democratic candidates stand v. McCain. It’s still early when we don’t know who the Democrat is, but this is where Obama’s hurting the most following the Wright debacle - he may be able to recover the hard left (if he ever lost them to begin with), but the center is where his bread and butter was supposed to be in terms of viability, and that’s no longer a given. Regardless, a LOT can change in 6 months.

* I don’t watch Fox News. I don’t have any standard feeling as to what they stand for, whether they’re actually conservative or just further right than their cable competition. I did see Outfoxed and found it to be ridiculous. With that said, MoveOn demonstrating against Fox News? Really? Apparently, they think the mainstream media is getting its talking points from Fox, and that’s apparently bad. Isn’t the left also in favor of reinstating the fairness doctrine? How do these two things compute? I’m glad MoveOn’s relevance is continuing to disappear.

* Coming soon: WiiGuyver, where you use your Wiimote to diffuse bombs. This is actually for real - the US military is using rigged Wiimotes to help diffuse land mines. How funny is that?

* This past weekend was “Earth Hour,” where some people, groups, businesses, and even governments turned the lights out for an hour for yet another statement about climate change that only echoed amongst those who care. Google took part, turning their homepage black. The irony? It uses more energy for a monitor to display black than it does to display white. Yeah yeah, “awareness” and all that jazz, but come on.

* Barack Obama says his foriegn policy is a “return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan…” So let me get this straight - Bush 41 made it so we had to spend 12 extra years bombing Iraq while we bent over backwards for the UN, Reagan spent a great deal of time funding contras and other undesirables in an attempt to disrupt various events, and JFK botched the Bay of Pigs so badly that it lead to a missile crisis that left the USSR in better condition defensively than it was when it started two weeks earlier. This is the type of foriegn policy he’s considering “realistic” and wants to return to, while deriding the alleged “naive ways that have caused us so much damage in our reputation around the world?” Barack Obama has said some ridiculous things on the campaign trail so far, but this takes the cake.

That’s enough for today. More tomorrow.

* We’ve started watching The Return of Jezebel James, because my famous girlfriend Parker Posey is in it and we’re not quite over our Gilmore Girls fix. It’s amazing how jarring a laugh track is after not experiencing it in a comedy for a while, and, while Posey’s trying a wee bit too hard to channel Lauren Graham, it’s…well…not horrible. I won’t say it’s great, or even all that good, but it’s a quick 30 minute shot in the arm as something mindless to keep on the DVR when we don’t want to watch an hour of something.

* Another show we’ve been going through is Quarterlife, which spent an evening on NBC before getting cancelled days later. Bravo aired the remaining pieces, which we’re watching - it’s essentially what I expected from Tell Me You Love Me, except that I feel like it’s it’s a better show. It’s a shame NBC didn’t give this one a better shot.

* Also on the DVR as we wait impatently for the shows we like to return (and baseball, and Battlestar) is Tim and Eric Awesome Show, which succeeds in ways that Wonder Showzen didn’t, in my mind. It’s completely bizarre and makes no sense, but, well, I kind of like it that way.

* Michael Cera = awesome. Michael Cera + Edgar Wright = more awesome. Michael Cera + Edgar Wright + a story about a guy who has defeat his girl crush’s seven ex-boyfriends video game-style? = the most awesome. Please let this happen.

* Also, Jason Segal doing a Muppet movie? Really? This is also exciting. Please let this happen.

* DMX, the rapper, apparently didn’t know that Barack Obama was running for President. Or that any black man was. Or that anyone actually has the name “Barack.” Or, we can deduce, that there was even an election happening.

* A crazy episode in Red Sox Nation today as they nearly boycotted their final spring training game and the trip to Japan over a dispute with Major League Baseball over their coaches getting paid a stipend for the trip. I’m with the Sox players on this one, way to stand up for a coaching staff that too often gets shafted by baseball and fans alike.

Non-political in nature.

1) Rock on, Red Sox. I’m a big Francona fan at this point - hell, he’s only 8-0 in the World Series - and I think he’s the best guy to run what is essentially a very difficult team in a very difficult market. This is where Rick chimes in with Francona’s record in Philly or the 2006 All-Injury All-Stars or something, but I don’t care much. 3 trips to the playoffs with 2 World Series trophies is enough for me to want to see him handed a blank check.

2) ABC plans to air the Wizard’s First Rule television series starting this fall. Talk about weird - the rumors of a television something based around Goodkind’s novels have been floating since at least 2005, and Sam Raimi got involved, and this is apparently a go - 22 episodes based on the first book in the series. I’m a little stunned by it, frankly, and I can’t imagine how they plan on translating what’s essentially 100 pages of S&M into a syndicated program (believe it or not, it’s somewhat important to the plot), but hey. I just hope with Raimi involved, it won’t be too cheesy, but fantasy on film can go so wrong so quickly…

3) So I ended up popping for Team Fortress 2 on PC so I could play with extra maps and not be monopolizing the television 24/7 when I need my fix. I have to say, while being able to use the 360 controller with it works wonders, I still suck. I’m usually pretty good on the 360 matches, but I’m just consistently destroyed by people on the PC. It’s crazy. I do need to get my headset to work better, though. The drivers didn’t make the mic pick up sound any easier, but I’ll figure it out.

More later on.

* I have lots of reasons to like Mike Lowell, but this doesn’t hurt, either. A class act through and through, he’s the type of guy you want to root for. I’m so excited for this season.

* My conspiracy theory as to why Obama’s largely masking his platform with inspirational quotes that belong on pictures of kittens? the fact that he’s probably the most liberal candidate to come this close to the Presidency in my lifetime. That doesn’t jive with the center.

* I’m glad that the New York Times was able to take some time out of their busy schedule to go after Obama’s economic hypocrisy. Oh, wait, they didn’t - they were too busy implying McCain’s having an affair with a staffer/lobbyist. Bang-up job there, Grey Lady. Great sourcing, too, really.

* Two movie notes:

a) Not a huge fan of Where the Wild Things Are. I skipped the picture book phase of my learning to read portion of the program, and so I never got to read it when it might have made any sort of lasting impression. With that said, I wasn’t at all interested in the Spike Jonze film interpretation until I read how poorly it’s testing. It seems like he’s either missing the boat and making an adult film, or (my broader suspicion) Warner Bros. forgot that the book isn’t 100% for kids anyway, and there’s no way not to make a book that ends with the monsters yelling “Oh please don’t go–we’ll eat you up–we love you so!” This could end up being absolutely phenominal.

b) A World War Z movie? While I always harbored a desire to film this myself someday, I’m pretty excited by the prospect.

* Via Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, someone’s gonna be getting fired over this one.

* If I only had about $5m in expendable cash….

* Required reading alert: The Impossible Dream of Energy Independence at Reason.

* An interesting story making the rounds is that Lawrence Lessig, lawyer and copyleft pioneer, is considering a run for Congress. I’m not really a big proponent of copyleft/Free Software Foundation positions, and I think that having a person with those points of view in power could seriously undermine our ability to keep innovative technologies and ideas in the United States. With that said, it would be a very interesting campaign, as Lessig could quite possibly become the first true internet candidate in the sense that he’s well-known around tech circles and the types of philosophies he pushes garner quite a bit of enthusiasm. Then again, he could be the next Ron Paul.

* Gov. Lynch makes his case against re-election in November. God, if I didn’t know of Deval Patrick, I’d say that New Hampshire has one of the dumber governors in the nation.

* What does it say about me that I’m seriously considering this for myself?

* This is an interesting wrinkle: If the Supreme Court somehow rules against individual gun rights this spring, it’ll break a compact with Montana. That’s crazy stuff.

* I agree with this.

* Mark Cuban is awesome.

‘Tis all for now.