Of course one of them is about how the National Parks are racist because sacred minorities visit them proportionally less than the majority population.

On a visit to one of the major parks I was struck by the fact I heard more visitors speaking German than I saw black people.

The minor league baseball team Nashville Sounds could be highly profitable if they were merely a second division team like Leicester City in English soccer. Instead, they are a farm team of the Milwaukee Braves. Milwaukee appears to be about 25% smaller in metro population than Nashville at present.

In football New Orleans gets an NFL team but not 2X larger metros San Antonio or Portland. That said, you can’t imagine a more football crazy place than New Orleans. Have family there and on an Autumn Saturday a lotta people walking around town with LSU jerseys, and on Sunday they’re wearing Saints jerseys. And the reason New Orleans got a team when they did is pressure from powerful representative Hale Boggs and senator Russell Long.

While very different people with different health issues, Jerry Garcia, Bob Marley and Walton all had lifelong pot smoking habits. All died relatively young of cancers. Marijuana advocates always celebrate it as wonderful and natural, but any delivery system that involves introducing smoke to your lungs is bad for you and exposes you to carcinogens.

I suspect it is more harmful than many are now leading us to believe. But as a counter there is Willie Nelson. 91 and still lighting up. Keith Richards, etc.

put him at #2 on the What Might Have Been list, between #1 Bobby Orr and #3 Mickey Mantle.

I was a hockey fan way back and got see Orr play just once and very glad I have the memory. He totally controlled the game. The movie Friends of Eddie Coyle has some footage of him playing.

Mantle may deserve # 3 on the list but his hard living played a part in his not being better than he was.

I saw both Ted Williams and Shohei Ohtani play, and Ted Williams was the better hitter

Though Ohtani bests Williams at pitching. But not this year.

Remember that. West said after he wished they then had 3 point shots like the ABA.

Not in video but seem to remember Jerry Lucas of Knicks falling to floor in disbelief after.

The type of cancer was unspecified with the first reports of his death and then the NBA said it was colon cancer. Interesting in that he was vegetarian for at least part of his life and it’s meat eaters that are said to be more susceptible to colon cancer.

Ex football players are who you usually think of as the ones to suffer post career with mechanical injuries but saw a documentary catching up with his 1977 championship team and the guys (not all huge guys) were comparing the hip and knee replacements they all had. One had had replacements on all four. Walton had terrible foot and then later back problems. Said at one time post career to be suicidal due to the back pain.

In most pics I saw of him he was smoking. But made it to 86.

The Rams wide receiver Jack Snow, was a three sport star in football, basketball, and baseball in high school, who could have gone on to be a pro baseball player. He chose pro football.

His son, JT Snow was also a three sport star in football, basketball, and baseball in high school and could have gone pro in either football or baseball. His father advised him to choose baseball, as less chances of serious physical injuries ensured a longer playing career, and a retirement nursing less serious physical injuries.

JT took his father’s advice, started his long baseball career with the NY Yankees.

Fair number of guys had opportunities to go either baseball or football. Good athletes often good at multiple sports.

John Elway drafted by Yankees and threatened to play baseball instead of signing with Balt Colts. Patrick Mahones. Tom Brady was a late baseball draft, even later than his football draft. Russell Wilson played minor league baseball. Kyle Murray was a high baseball draft.

Bo Jackson played both. Tampa Bay Bucs had him visit them before he finished his Auburn baseball career and he said that Tampa Bay had assured him they had cleared with the NCAA it would not affect the remainder of his college baseball eligibility. When NCAA ruled against him Bo mad at Tampa Bay said he would not sign with them so he started in baseball only till Oakland Raiders later drafted him. Michael Jordan had bb hopes and became a minor leaguer. Imagine LeBron as a tight end or defensive lineman or back.

If my son had equally good chances at both I’d push towards baseball.

As a right winger it’s easier to take passes if you’re a right hand shot, and it’s easier for a left winger to take passes if you’re a left hand shot. But a right winger with a left hand shot has a better shooting angle towards goal as you’re shooting from closer to the center. Also true for a left winger with a right hand shot.

Remember in my hockey watching days in the 70’s the Soviets often had wingers with off hand shots. There were true differences in the Soviet game compared to the Canadian game back then. Soviets also took many fewer shots a game than Canadians since they would concentrate on more passing to take only better percentage shots. I saw the Soviet team embarrass the Rangers with their passing. Shortly after the Soviets played the Flyers and the Soviets left the ice due to the Flyers’ rough play.

Radar Love is the greatest driving song ever.

Or Golden Earring, with the “radio playing some forgotten song;

Read recently about a study with Golden Retrievers and how selective breeding for current desired appearances have resulted in reduced lifespans. Sure similar with other breeds.

A poor choice for most, definitely. My son lived in Western CO where there are lots of border collies since they are used as herders. And he and his wife have one from a shelter but they do tons of hiking, xx skiing, etc so it works out. But a border collie would be a poor choice for Steve or for me. I got cranky just now taking my doodle for his morning walk in 20 deg.

Border collies are a poor choice for people who don’t have the ability or desire to offer them lots of opportunities to do what they were bred to do – spend lots of time outside running around and/or following their owner’s instructions or herding. Along with high intelligence comes a restless nature that can only really be satiated by making sure they have lots and lots of work to do and without an owner that can provide that you end up with an unhappy and destructive dog. Most people would prefer a lower-energy and less demanding breed that is happy to get a walk or two a day and spends the rest of the time napping.

Not just the NBA. NHL used to have territorial drafting rights. So the original 6 teams had rights to young players growing up near them. Would you rather have had rights to the young hockey players growing up near NY or Chicago or those near Toronto or Montreal? Particularly back then, when hockey was a minor participatory sport in most of the US. A big reason Montreal and Toronto won most Stanley Cups into the late 60’s. And that Montreal had the great French Canadian players of the era. Gordie Howe led Detroit Red Wings did do well in the early 50’s.

In fact, the NBA had a rule that assigned players to NBA franchises where they’d played in high school or college. That’s how Philadelphia wound up with Philadelphian Wilt Chamberlain, perhaps the all-time top NBA prospect.

The NW coastal Indians were perhaps the luckiest aboriginal people on earth. They lived near rivers with incredible salmon runs. Every year MILLIONS of salmon would appear. The waters would just be swarming with them. ( Unfortunately, there were no bagel or cream cheese runs.) There were large animals like deer, elk and mountain goats in the forests and mountains. They hunted large sea mammals like seals and sea lions and even whales in the ocean. This left them with a lot of time to do other things like carve enormous totem poles.

Apparently, Lewis and Clark noted that the only well fed looking Indians they found on their Expedition were the NW coastal ones who had it easy food wise.

Remember the postponed concert was promoting The Who By Numbers album. Slip Kid, Squeezebox, etc. For the right to get tickets you had to send in postcards to some By Numbers address and hope to be chosen. Better system than trying to go through Ticketron. Think seats all cost the same. Won one awesome pair – 7th row center -and also another pair I sold to friends.

That was the only time I saw The Who other than about 10-12 years ago doing Quadrophenia with just Pete and Roger left. Read at that time the concert contract riders had clauses that Pete and Roger do no joint promotion, do not ride together to the venue, stay separately, etc. They just showed up and played. Don’t know if it stayed that way. Who is in my personal top 3 or 4 of all time.

Have been a number of times when a player has gone down for some reason and the band is forced to call out to the audience for someone competent and knowledgeable enough to sub in. Remember some time for Metallica.

Moon was a legendary drinker who shocked even other heavy drinkers. Someone, maybe Oliver Reed or Roger Daltrey, was on Howard Stern, described going to Moon’s home where he had a pub setup and him drinking others under the table.

Had tickets to a 1976 Who concert in NY that was postponed a night with an explanation Moon was down with the flu. Nobody believed that. He died a couple of years later with an explanation of sleeping pills OD.

Watched one of their halftime specials during super bowl in early 90’s. One of the Gay playing characters is asked about, I think, Mike Ditka in a skit, and wasn’t he a Tight End? Character said “he WAS”!

Couldn’t do that now.

I’m guessing tourists from Japan would be a bigger payoff than local Japanese-Americans, but the Dodger front office probably has calculated that question.

I think the payoff would mostly depend whether Ohtani excites non-Japanese Asian-Americans as the Asian superstar and makes the Dodgers the national favorite of the 20 million Asian Americans. That’s not a trivial market.

The Seattle Mariners did well with Ichiro bringing tourist fans from japan to seattle. Not sure what Ohtani did bringing them to see the Angels. Dodgers already draw close to 4M people a year so prob already sell out lots and not much more to add in attendance, though they can raise ticket prices. Prob lots of opportunities to sell tourist packages to japanese with visits to Dodgers stadium and Hollywood and Nat’l Parks. Prob done before with the Angels but Dodgers prob a bigger name even in Japan so maybe they do better. And don’t know how tv rights to MLB baseball work in Japan but now more interest to monetize.

Skeptical that non Japanese Asians will be int’d and care about the change from the Angels to Dodgers, or that there will be a wave of interest in American Asian Americans now moving to follow Dodgers.

OT but as an Easterner I first went to a game at Dodger Stadium about 9 years ago and really struck how Dodger Stadium is enduring and still unique and charming. It was built just prior to the many charmless cookie cutter facilities built in the 60’s for both baseball and football in NY, Phil, Pitt, STL, Cinn, etc – all thankfully since knocked down.

As I recall reading somewhere, downhill skiing and sex are at least in the top 5 for calorie-intensive activities.

They’re in my top 5 fav activities irregardless of being calorie intensive.

Next you’re going to tell us Paul Revere and The Raiders weren’t Cherokee….

And that the Indian guy in the Village People wasn’t really. Hint, he wasn’t

Trump invested political capital reaching out to Indian Americans, including taking a trip to India mostly to look good in their eyes. A growing group, many professional class with incomes above average, many entrepeneurs, and not automatically beholden to the Dems. Made sense they might be receptive to him. But all this was for nought once half Indian Kamala named the Dem VP nominee. Not that she seems to honor that side of her much.

Recall in bouton’s book he wondered how much better Mickey mantle would’ve recovered from injuries and had a better career if he wasn’t out drinking so much.

Recall from somewhere else players and ex players were asked about their most memorable moment at Yankee stadium and to give details and mantle related something about the time he received a bj in or behind the bullpen or some other spot. And then he gave details.

We’re probably not far behind UK. State of NY banning natural gas in most new buildings. For very little if any benefit. Virtue signaling.

CA already has had warnings at times not to charge EV’s on hot summer days. How will their grid manage in the future when new gas cars are banned and they won’t build nuclear? Switzerland has plans to restrict EV’s in winter. They must use a lot of electric heat

Edwards also said that like KKK’r David Duke he was a wizard under the sheets.

Many politicians are corrupt and most politicians are colorless. Politicians from IL, MD, LA, NJ have often been corrupt. 4 out of the last governors in IL, Mandel and Agnew in MD, etc. My impression of people in Louisiana (I have family there) is they’re willing to put up with some corruption as long as the politicians are not dull. A bumper sticker I once saw there said, “Louisiana, third world and proud of it”.

Legendary baseball executive Branch Rickey. “Luck is the residue of design”. A reason some organizations are more “lucky” than others.

@Achmed E. Newman
I have respect for John F. Kennedy’s Profile in Courage. It’s not something you could imagine being written by any US President since Ronald Reagan.

As far as I know, Ted Sorensen was never President.

Maybe Ted wrote it. But JFK deserves credit for being skeptical of the military after Bay of Pigs and not going along with them to bomb Cuba during the missile crisis. And think JFK was also skeptical enough of military he would’ve pulled the plug on Vietnam when it was safe politically to do so after the 1964 election.

Granted it’s far better than our local custom of naming everything after corporations; but at least some crook got paid a lot of $$$ for the privilege.

I’m with you on that. I’m not a Yankees fan but I salute them for not taking the big $$ to call it JP Morgan Yankees Stadium.

Not denigrating 99 and it doesn’t change what you addressed about Gretzky and comparisons to his contemporaries, but looking at goals scored recall that Gretzky played in a more free wheeling era than now when goalies were generally not as skilled (and shorter) and their equipment was smaller, etc and overall scoring was higher. NHL stats has average goals per game mostly in the mid to upper 7’s in the 80’s during Gretzky’s dominate years. Some years averaged 8 goals per game.

Ovechkin has mostly played in an era when goals were harder to come by. Average generally in the 5’s per game. Increases the impressiveness of what he has been able to accomplish.

When I saw the headline I thought this was going to be about Bill Lee, the baseball pitcher. Wacky, Space Cadet pitcher for the Red Sox in the 70’s. AKA The Spaceman.

Maybe diff now but profit was whatever they wanted it to be. Often supposedly no profit even on big box office hits. Once accountants got finishing putting so much towards overhead etc you might be surprised to see no profit.

James Garner and prob others sued over this. Actors moved to taking their share of the Gross and not Net in an effort not to get screwed.

Those places with shrinking black pops may have have shrinking black pops but they’re all very liberal and something like SF’s plan for $5M reparations (will see what actually gets implemented) is to be expected. Want to be paying your share of that?

Something on Netflix about him and London in the 60’s and Caine made the point that despite being tall and a capable actor who could speak with a posh accent it took an American director to cast him in the posh role in Zulu, and that a Brit director couldn’t have seen beyond him as a Cockney and would not have done that.

I don’t think there’s much indication that any of the Kennedy men were smarter than a randomly selected local bourgeois, e.g that women who just filled your prescription at Walgreen’s or the lawyer who handled your real estate closing. They differed in character and personality. Ted had a drinking problem, the other two did not. JFK had an appalling case of satyriasis, the other two did not. Ted was a serial adulterer, Bobby stuck to his wife. JFK had demonstrated physical courage, the other two did not. Ted was (per Richard Nixon) very much at home working a room; his brothers were not. Bobby resembled a serious Catholic, as did Sergeant Shriver. The rest of the men in the family, no. It’s also easy to imagine Bobby as his own man earning a living practicing law, albeit not a lawyer who could afford Hickory Hill and 11 children. The other two, no. They all had a sense of entitlement and treated other people as minions whose job it was to do their bidding, clean up after them, and facilitate their crimes, but it was expressed in different ways in each case. And they all excelled at public speaking.

Bobby and Ethel had lots of kids together but if you believe the story Bobby and John were both with Marilyn!

Partially agree. They came from a rich powerful family and with no doubt a sense of entitlement and benefited greatly from Dad’s money and power. Never went along with the Liberal’s mythic image of John, but think he’s a good bit smarter than that woman at Walgreen’s, or Joe Biden. And think the country would be better off if our Dem President now was Kennedy and not Biden. But maybe these times mean any Dem we are going to get is a Biden – or worse.

Ted Kennedy had someone take a test for him at Harvard. Not the brightest Kennedy. Pls no jokes about his sister who had a lobotomy.

John and Robert smarter. (Yeah, I know Profiles was ghostwritten). Also tougher. And John skeptical of Generals and their optimistic projections after Bay of Pigs. Think John would’ve been smart and tough enough to have pulled the plug on Vietnam after his re-election in 1964 and saved us those lost years.

Elton sang. Bernie Taupin wrote most of his big hits.

When Rory and the Hurricanes were performing in Hamburg, they were often part of the same set as the Beatles. Ringo liked the Beatles music better and sometimes liked to hang out with the Beatles. Pete Best didn’t hang out with his band mates. When Pete was not available to play, Ringo would occasionally fill in for him. The other Beatles realized that not only was Ringo a much better drummer but that they enjoyed his company much more</blockquote

Purported that when he was asked who was a better drummer John said “Pete was a better drummer, Ringo was a better Beatle”.

Branford Marsalis, not Wynton. The latter being a jazz purist who frowned on his brother’s dalliances with rock musicians.

Stand corrected. Whichever Marsalis it was was good!

Was taken to a Dead show in the early 90’s. They had Wynton Marsalis on the stage with them. Noticed that except for stadium vendors and the like he might’ve had the only black face in the arena.

Bruce shows also had almost no crossover appeal. Clarence pretty much up there by himself.

Too bad Jerry couldn’t shake the heroin and unhealthy habits; 53 is way too young.

Would’ve been nice if he could have shaken those habits. But Jerry was Jerry. If Jerry had had the health habits of say Bob Weir (still looking great and doing hard workouts) Jerry would’ve been a completely different person and not the same person he was musically.

OJ Simpson lived in SF till he went off to USC. Think he qualifies under the plan. Despite his conviction for I think robbery and kidnapping in Las Vegas. Goes without saying the conviction was evidence of a racist system, that would not leave the poor guy alone after trying unsuccessfully to convict him previously for murder.

But wondering, the Goldman family successfully sued OJ civilly for wrongful death of their son but think OJ managed to evade making any payments due to his income being from his NFL pension and his home being in FL all being protected. If OJ collects will money go to Goldmans?

This is by far not the last you will hear about reparations. Talking to a friend years ago and warned him this was coming. Inmates now in charge of the asylum. They come up with the idea of a $5M plan now which will make it easier to actually eventually enact a $500K plan later.

The hopefuls in the DR are the ones getting low cost stuff from their agents who may be getting them OTC in the DR.

Players who make it to the US will often have better channels. But not room temperature IQ A Rod, who bought them from his cousin who later served time. And A Rod was from the US and you’d think he be able to be more careful. A Rod had paid the cousin $1M to keep quiet. That’s not a crime?
Somehow A Rod lands on his feet, despite all. Served a one year suspension for steroids. The Yanks took him back after he opted out of his contract and wanted back with them. He claimed for a bit that problems were anti latin bias. But he has ESPN baseball and Shark Tank gigs.

Unlike Biden, Kennedy himself knew firsthand the dangers and horrors of war.
Unlike Biden, Kennedy was deeply concerned about the impact on future generations of Americans any decisions he would make.
Unlike Biden, Kennedy was a reader (if not a writer . . .) of history, very aware of the dangers of human omniscience, arrogance and certainty.
Unlike Biden, Kennedy sought a negotiated way out.
Unlike Biden, Kennedy did not want to increase the risk of nuclear war with Russia.
Unlike Biden, Kennedy was unwilling to yield to the many hawks in his administration. (“The brass have one advantage – if this goes south, none of us will be around to tell them they were wrong.”)
Unlike Biden, Kennedy was a smart and personally courageous man.

Agree. Our loss to have Biden and not Kennedy.

Bay of Pigs soured Kennedy on the Intelligence community and he developed a healthy skepticism of the military leadership from the missile crisis. I used to think it was just Liberal love for Kennedy when they would say he would’ve pulled us out of Vietnam sooner, but have read enough like The Best And The Brightest to believe Kennedy was smart enough and assured enough and skeptical enough that he would’ve begun withdrawing after his re-election in 1964, instead of massively expanding like LBJ did. Eisenhower would also have been smart enough and been skeptical enough of his generals to have done similar to Kennedy on Cuban missile, and to have pulled the plug on Vietnam.

Very pleasant drive. Merritt much nicer for cars than the I95 alternative when you are driving near the coast before it turns north towards Hartford.

The Titania Mcgrath ironic twitter site is hilarious with a section quoting someone where doing something in particular is racist, and then also quoting someone else where not doing that thing is also racist.

When Robert Moses was building his parkways New York City had only a small number of brown people. The people Moses was hoping to keep away were NYC’s working class Irish, Italians and Jews.
Likewise the Cross Bronx expressway was rammed through a neighborhood of White ethnics. Blacks and Puerto Rican’s moved in after the neighborhood was destroyed and housing prices declined. The subsequent violence brought about by the newer more diverse residents caused the remaining Whites to flee.

Agree with the second point about mostly white ethnic displacement from the Bronx at the time of building the CBE.

But have always heard that Parkways were built low to allow NYC White ethnics (there were few WASPS) to drive to Jones Beach in their cars while not allowing buses from say Harlem to access them.

Think there were later highways built through Brooklyn (BQE?) that displaced more Blacks. There are housing projects near Far Rockaway (Edgemere, Arverne) that were built for these people according to a history of Rockaway documentary.

Even their public colleges have become more competitive. U’s of both Texas and Florida both now highly rated and tougher to get into now for both out of state and in state. Read about U of F alums just assuming their kids could go to U of F but with tougher standards some of these kids are have to step down to FSU or others. To a lesser extent, Alabama draws from not just within Alabama now and is a tougher admit. Carry over from having a consistently excellent football team bringing a lot of notoriety to the school and raising the school generally. Coach Saban is the highest paid public employee of the state of AL, but money very well spent.

Fed and local governments (at least where I am in an inner suburb of NYMetro) actively encourage non single family housing like the cookie cutter 6 or so story bldgs I see going up everywhere, especially where walkable to commuter rail. I told my kids that single family homes will be less attainable over time and they should acquire them. They have, though both live in areas less expensive than where they grew up. Many young will not ever be able to afford the single family housing they grew up in without relocating to less expensive areas. Downward mobility

I always wondered if Jimmy Carter voted in the 1944 election. (Yes, he was old enough.) I wonder if his library would have a clue. His biographer couldn’t tell me.

Don’t know who Carter voted for but Reagan was a Democrat when he was young so he probably voted for Roosevelt in the 30’s and 40’s.

In my family some of the liberal members would probably not attend a wedding there on principle. Too bad, they’d gain some useful nuance if they did. I’ve been reading the Nixon chapter in Kissinger’s new book lately so it was an interesting time to visit the library a couple of weeks ago.

I wouldn’t plan a trip around them but if you’re into history and having just gone to Nixon’s and having been to JFK’s, I think they are worth a visits if you are near them.

“Free range” goes beyond “cage free” and requires that the chickens have access to the outdoors. And “pasture -raised” means that they actually have to be out in a field.

And they’re priced accordingly. I buy pastured at Trader Joe’s and they are much more expensive than the others. Are they better? If chickens are actually eating grass in the pasture as they’re developed to do, and not chicken feed, that’s prob better. Wondered about what they actually eat in the winter in the north when there isn’t grass. I do feel less guilty when I buy pastured.

And when you go out to your local diner or Waffle Hut or Denny’s, you are of course getting the cheapest, caged eggs, except not now in CA. Or others places which have also added restrictions.

Anyway, the mountain regions in those areas tend to have fewer blacks, and blacks are a big reason for American fatness.

Do not think that’s the main reason. While easy to blame on stereotypically heavy black women think this is mostly not a black/white thing. Visited Disneyworld with my kids years ago and actually remarked to someone then about how many obese families were walking around and was told that’s because Louisiana schools were off that week and that’s what you get with Louisiana families. Black and white. Interestingly, I now have family in both Louisiana and Colorado (none of whom are obese) but you def see obesity differences when you visit each. And there are not many blacks in less obese CO, but obesity prevalent in both black and white when I visit LA. Think differences in attitude towards physical activity and less interest/sophistication in eating well are main causes.

My Colorado and Utah relatives are not private jet rich but they are the type to be doing active outdoors stuff and are not obese. So think it’s a combination of activity and lifestyle. And maybe age is younger in these areas. Wondering if there were black white diffs when looking at the high obesity south but figured obesity probably high in both groups. And obesity also high in rural white predominant areas like West Virginia, northern Maine.

Overall a poor picture. And getting worse. Present day Colorado is least obese now but has much higher obesity rates than it had 20 or 30 yrs ago.

Nytimes had a Nate Cohn column yesterday about how gun control restrictions poll better than people actually vote

Not unusual for variations in per capita income within a country. Mississippi still poorer than CT even with postwar air conditioning and power and movement of some northern industry to escape unions. Northern Italy much wealthier than Southern Italy, Southern England (particularly London area) wealthier than Northern England. Eastern Germany poorer then Western Germany – but in this case much due to Eastern Germany still catching up from Communist days pre 1989, even with large transfers of money to the East to level them up and with the one to one exchange of East German marks for Deutschmarks.

ACLU abandoned their free speech absolutism under trump when they were inundated with contributions and they realized it was much more lucrative to be just another left wing anti trump organization. No longer free speech on politics, race, gender, etc.

There was a time I could respect the ACLU even as I often didn’t agree with it. No longer

Chinatown makes my top 5 favorite movies list and The Big Goodbye was very good. Reaffirmed what I had heard of Dunaway being wacko and Nicholson being great. Read elsewhere of Nicolson showing up every day for the movie knowing his lines and everyone else’s (don’t know if that is often the case). Comes up in the book that this may have been the last movie Nicholson was willing to do without a percentage of the box office.

The Russian troops in Ukraine have been stealing washing machines to take home to their mamas and girlfriends in Buryatia or wherever, which indicates that a washing machine is an aspirational purchase for them.

Nothing new. In WWII advancing Russian troops unscrewed light bulbs to bring home. Not that they had sockets to screw them into.

And the trend is bad as Americans (also Europeans, prob Asians) are getting fatter all the time. Which we are now supposed to accept as normal. In America the least obese state (CO) is now fatter than the most obese state (MS) was only about 30 yrs ago. The Libertarian in me couldn’t agree with what Mayor Bloomberg wanted to do in NYC with banning super size sugary drinks like Big Gulp but I understand the intent.

Just checked the table. Average American woman 180 lbs? Damn. No wonder they need big new sizes.

Maybe generally so but not always. I’m in the east and most Italian families I knew here came from Sicily or from Naples or further south. But I’ve also know about 5 different families in the east with the last name Ferrara so they came from the north. And Joe Dimaggio’s family moved from Sicily to San Francisco.

Once heard Joe in person sing Mustang Sally and Joe was pretty good on that.

Pics of Bonds before and after steroids are striking. Bonds was apparently clean before McGwire/Sosa (who were not clean) home run race. Bonds got upset at their accomplishments and adulation and started taking drugs like them and surpassed them.

Bond was a legit first round future hall of famer before he took steroids and would’ve been in now without drugs. Clemens and some others also.

For a wide receiver Rice was not particularly fast.

Sprinters often have well developed upper bodies. Not the wasted look of champion marathon runners.

I assume champion sprinters are using illegal substances. Either they’re caught and dq’d, known but maybe not easy to make the case against, or somehow there is a work around. I remember reading about Carl Lewis and people knowing about him in 1988.

needs to deal with.

Bob Dole during his run for president muttered that if an alien came down from Mars all anyone would care about would be its position on abortion.

Abortion and Prop 2 have been thought about as some of the few single issues that affected voters. Wonder if Prop 1 and government restriction of free speech will rise to that level.

Won’t reversing Roe versus Wade merely free the states to outlaw, legalize, or regulate abortion as they please?

If so, it’s just taking the federal government out of the loop.

I’m not a lawyer, but think mostly yes. But that is not what pro abortion people want. Liberal states free to maintain their status quo. Conservative states would be free to enact strict statewide limits on abortion (could be different state by state and would still have some limits as required by SCOTUS decisions, such as the 15 week limit in MS).

I’m one of the relatively few people with a middling kind of position on abortion. Would not make my top ten list of issues the country

A place like Idaho that has a population of roughly 1.8 million people would only need a tiny portion of libs immigrating from places like California which has almost 25 times the population, and it would be California with frostbite.

The Economist had a graph and charts within the last year at the end of an issue’s Stats section showing just how few liberal Californians were needed to move to a number of small population presently red voting states such as Alaska and Wyoming to move the Senate and Governor positions to the Blue side. And tip the Electoral votes from red to blue. It really wasn’t that many. From the Economist this was a hint.

Wonder if Soros is considering appealing to good liberals to take one for the team and move to a small, cold. less appealing to them state with Soros subsidising their costs.

I had this discussion with a family member after Trump won and she said what they (liberals) needed was more of these people in these states. I told her what they needed was politicians with views more appealing to the voters in these states.

US Olympics has a facility in CO for altitude training though it is not 8,000’.

Years ago a top marathoner was Mexican and he was from or at least trained at high altitude.

And Jim Ryun was the best miler in the world at the time but with the 68 Olympics in high altitude Mexico City he lost to Kip Keino in the 1500M. Ryun was later a Rep member of congress.

Despite the name, jewison was Protestant.

Present day blacks never heard of Schwerner and Goodman, don’t care about Jewish participation in the civil rights movement and (see Farrakhan and womens’ marches and BLM) regard Jews as the enemy despite liberal secular Jews still looking back longingly to the days of solidarity.

But at least in the case of Twitter, does top-flight programming matter that much? The basic program framework was already written a long time ago, and was never that complicated.

I’m not a techie but suspect you are right. That moving forward Twitter will thrive or not based more on business decisions/relationships/regulation, etc., than on technical breakthroughs.

Once and for all; Pedophilia ends at 12AM in the child’s 13th birthday. The day before the child’s 13th birthday it’s pedophilia. On the child’s 13th birthday it becomes various crimes of minor molestation.

An adult guy can go to prison for statutory rape of a girl over 13 but less than the age of consent in whatever state. That’s not treating like a minor molestation. Can also work the other way. Tabloids love stories of women teachers with minor boys and some of these teachers have gone to prison.

Some kind of doodle, which is a standard poodle crossed with a another breed. Cockapoo mentioned above was one of the first of those breeds and one of the smaller breeds if that’s what you need. Original labradoodles and then goldendoodles were not smallish, but you can get those in now smaller sizes if that is what is needed.

My son who is outdoors a lot hiking and camping and lives in an area where you can get border collies mixies at shelters and he considered one, but even he decided it was just too much unless you are living on large space and can have them outdoors all the time.

Moscow agreed to Ukraine’s borders 30 years ago.

And Ukraine agreed to be neutral.

Did Ukraine and the other ex SSR’s (Baltics, Georgia, etc.) agree to neutrality at the time they left the USSR? Not saying they didn’t but I didn’t know they had.

A Finland like neutral Ukraine without NATO pretensions would’ve made sense. Maybe would’ve been enough to keep Russia at bay. But Russia also did not take kindly to Ukraine looking to the EU instead of being willing to be in Russia’s trading bloc, so even abandoning thoughts of NATO years ago may not have led us to a different place than they are now.

A suburb of Boston.

Actually it’s a part of Boston. And doesn’t look like a leafy green suburb.

Ironically, the one area where Russian soft power may have been effective in recent years is in subsidizing German greens to campaign against nuclear power so Germany was more dependent on Russian gas.

Yes. Also disinformation claims in the UK and US against fracking. Whatever they could do to decrease western availability of their national energy and therefore reliance on Russian energy.

Sensing you may be on to something. It was funny before looking at pics of the towering New Zealand ex man weightlifter but this one is generating more controversy and not just because it’s in the US. Lia is winning, except when throwing races to not look overly dominant, and the sense of fair play is being violated. Even among some of the woke Ivy Leaguers who would have been all good and warm and fuzzy about this before.

This feels like a turning point in World War T

Even if he gets Eastern Ukraine his ruble will be in the trash for years. That means cheap oil and natural gas for Europe which will strengthen their economies.

The oil and natural gas will be paid for in dollars, or maybe Euros or Yuan. Europe won’t pay any less for their Russian oil/gas if the ruble loses value since Europe won’t be paying in Rubles.

or the alleged Hispanic work ethic

From my time running a contracting business and looking up who at who is working on roofs or doing landscaping work, etc. my impression is the Hispanic work ethic is not just alleged. In a future time if Latinx ever becomes the required term we can expect that work ethic to no longer apply.

Don’t know anything specific about their trust. But the kind of people who go to work for the trusts established by wealthy families tend to be liberal do gooders and pursue the policies you would expect

Thanks.

Yeah, Henry came up with the model T. But maybe more important, he came up with the innovations to build it cheaply enough that it could become the revolutionary market force it became. They say that before he went off the rails that he was much more interested in improving the manufacturing process than he was in improving the car.

The Edsel story is sad. He was apparently competent and well liked. There was a quote in The Reckoning (forget who said it) of someone speaking to Henry and referring to Edsel, something like. “Henry, I don’t envy a thing of yours except your boy”.

Henry II never came up with anything like the Model T and it’s manufacturing, but he still comes off well in the book, at least in the beginning of his tenure when the company future was in doubt. He knew what he did not know and was willing to bring in The Whiz Kids and some guys from GM. Halberstam describes
him as being very astute in knowing when someone was trying to put something over him. Henry II was not a “car guy”, nor was McNamara. Later, Iacocca was, even if doesn’t deserve quite the overwhelming credit he is given for the Mustang.

Riggs had first beaten another women’s player before the King match. Forget who.

Riggs is thought to have bet big on King to beat him. Could he have beaten her if he tried to??

Ford was a great businessman and mechanic but highly self-taught and lacking in formal education.

Halberstam’s The Reckoning is good on this. The early Ford was a great businessman and mechanic but he refused for a long time to implement changes to the Model T (what he viewed as his market were people who were not interested in luxuries and advancements) and was surpassed by GM. Ford may have gone out of business without WWII and B24 contracts, and after the war Robert McNamara and The Whiz Kids who brought needed operational and fiscal accounting. Though McNamara was the opposite of a “car guy” and had no feel for cars as things and might as well be making widgets.

Outside of Ontario, Canada’s a pretty healthily “national conservative” kind of place. There aren’t any substantial cultural boundaries between the US and Anglo-Canada.

Ready to be corrected by any Canadians on site here but my impression is once you get west of Ontario the provinces are more politically/culturally in tune with the US states below them than they are with the establishment in Eastern Canada. But with hockey.

Farming, mining and drilling provinces of Manitoba, Saskatachewan, Alberta seem like N. Dakota, Montana, ID, WY and relatively conservative. BC like WA state with coastal cities Vancouver and Seattle which are liberal, but then more conservative inland.

Elena Kagan is probably the last famous middle class white person to be born and raised in Manhattan. Her little section of the UWS was one of the last to choose between overclass and ghetto (it went overclass, with some public housing ghetto pockets.)

Think that’s generally correct. Every now and then you read about middle class old people who have been living in rent controlled Manhattan apartments forever and paying much below market rents but they’re too old to be bringing up kids. Not much middle class around any more.

The Manhattan of Bonfire of The Vanities was already pretty much bifurcated like that into wealthy and poor. Now would be more so. Wonder what Tom Wolfe would make of that and of all the craziness of woke social justice, trans, etc. Wish he was still around to bring his unique brand of commentary to the world.

Not as long as The Times ones and stylistically different, but The Economist also has good obits.

I don’t know why more people don’t zip around in LA in choppers.

Kobe Bryant.

March is Women’s History month so she can’t let up now. If she’s a Lesbian then June will be her Pride month. Maybe we can keep adding histories to every month so she is busy and tired all year.

On the plus side, with a nuclear war all the people killed won’t be around any longer and the world loses their carbon footprint. Greta might approve of this.

Difficult for an American to understand which made it a joke in the Ted Lasso show (American who goes to England to coach a football (their description) team).

Question: How many countries y’all got in this country?

Answer: Four

Army General Milley not looking like he would pass a fitness test. OTOH Marine Generals always look taut.

Will we have quotas for fat generals in the military?

Obesity is strongly correlated with severe covid (yeah – it exists), not to mention high levels of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.

Normalizing obesity is stupid. Whatever woke anti fatists might say.

The BMI map of Europe is scary. Colorado usually comes in as the state with the lowest obesity rates. Yet, Colorado now has a higher BMI rate than Mississippi (they or West Virginia usually have the worst current obesity level) had about 1990. So the trend here is also pretty bad.

Bill Maher (occasionally a voice of reason) has spoken of this problem several times. Another reason the woke don’t like him.

Think it has changed some but I used to think it crazy that Germans and Europeans in general were scared to death of GMO yet they smoked like crazy. Was last in Germany about 12 years ago and even saw presumably health conscious people smoking in a vegetarian restaurant. This was long past the time you could smoke just about any public place in the US, but if there were places you could smoke in the US the last place you would’ve expected it would’ve been in a vegetarian restaurant.

The Germans have always been more into the “natural purity” green type stuff than Americans. For example, no GMO corn or soy is allowed in the EU.

True. And presumably a net financial loss, though Russia benefits from the war tensions in higher prices for their exported oil and their gas exported through non Norm Stream 2 means, unless those are presently on locked in long term contracts. And loss of Nord Stream 2 revenue and sanctions is a financial price Putin is apparently willing to bear.

Germany today announced that Nord Stream 2 is being suspended. That’s $11 billion of Russia’s money and $3 billion/yr of future revenue that has just been flushed down the toilet so that Russia could occupy a crappy swath of Soviet Rust Belt Ukraine. Of course Russia will pretend that hey, it’s no big deal, that didn’t hurt a bit. What are they going to say?

Remember Gladwell made a convincing case for this looking at mostly Canadian players in the NHL who were statistically likely to have been born earlier in the year (think Canada used a Jan 1st cut off date at each level) and to have been on average a few months older and probably a little larger and probably a little more skilled overall than others in their Pee Wee and other leagues going on up as they got older. And if they were a little more skilled at each level they probably get to play a little more than the other kids at each level and so their skills improved and their being better was perpetuated.

Think he also found a European country or country which used a cutoff date other than Jan 1st and found that there was still reason to believe that the kids born soon after this cutoff date were also more likely to make the NHL than kids born closer to the next cutoff date and their being a few months older than other kids they played with.

The effect may be more pronounced in hockey than most sports given the organization needed to actually play at kid’s levels other than pond hockey, if it is around you (rink time, leagues, etc.). You can get a lot of basketball time in showing up a local court with just a ball and without the need for organized leagues.

So there may be a statistical link but it is not going to account for everything. Auston Mathews was a first overall NHL pick who grew up in AZ and presumably played only organized hockey and was born in Sept.

I can’t comment on The Clash, but I was a huge Springsteen fan and can’t imagine anyone more impressive live than Bruce and the E Street Band in their prime. In fact I remember thinking well, I never saw the Beatles but I saw this!

But I’d be stunned if much of his music lasts and it certainly won’t have the impact of the Beatles. In fact we can say that thread has played out, and it hasn’t.

They are different entities but agree that as much as I am a Bruce fan that his overall work won’t have the impact of The Beatles (despite Bruce’s breadth of work and longevity). Though I would take Thunder Road over any other song from anyone. As impressive as much of his songwriting/music has been you really needed to have seen Bruce in person – which made him very different from The Beatles – which was a studio band except for early days and the impossible to hear due to screaming girls Beatlemania days.

IMO the time for that Bruce/E street in their prime days was the Darkness tour of 1978. Impossible to convey to someone who did not experience this (especially in the early part of the tour when they still played a few thousand seat venues and not arenas) the excitement of these marathon shows.

Kudos to Bruce for still going on and making music even if I don’t find the modern stuff as compelling. Also kudos for him being upfront about his struggles with depression. That someone as accomplished and revered can still experience that probably brings hope to others experiencing the same.