Entry 33: Olio

Time for a grab bag.

************************************************************************

I heard Ed Asner doing a radio interview the other day and it turns out that he is a “9/11-truther” (aka conspiracy nut). He went so far as to imply that the US government somehow intentionally collapsed the twin towers after the planes crashed into them. From the linked article:

“No high-rise has ever gone down by fire,” Asner explains. “Those buildings fell at the rate of gravity in ten seconds, flat.”

This whole thing is absurd to me (and no doubt many others). I’m sure the Bush regime has some secrets concerning 9/11, but I have trouble believing they were nefarious to this degree (just inept and misguided). Plus, the thing about many conspiracy theorists is that they use unexplained phenomena as “proof” of their theories. As in, “nobody can adequately explain why the buildings fell so fast, therefore it’s a government conspiracy.” The huge problem with this argument is that it ignores the fact that stuff happens all the time that not even the most qualified experts among us can explain or predict. I mean, it’s not like we have a huge test bed of cases of commercial jets careening into skyscrapers at top speeds. Given such a chaotic system, who could possibly predict the outcomes with any precision and confidence? What’s the more believable explanation, that the crashes somewhat unexpectedly caused the buildings to very quickly collapse, or that the US government orchestrated the entire thing and brought the buildings down in some covert manner? I don’t think I’m being naïve by going with the former.

******************************************************************************

S and I went to the beach again this weekend, one in Newcastle this time. (There was a lot of junior high tail running around, I’ll tell you that much.) I got burned on a strip of my arm where I must have failed to spread on sun block. One underrated thing about having a wife is that you have somebody to rub sun block on your back. I used to hate it when I’d go to the beach with my jackass friends back in the day, and they would never put any on for me. “Look man, if I could apply it myself I would. I can’t reach my back. I’m just asking you to slather a little lotion on back, not perform fellatio on me. It’s not that big a deal.” They’d never go for it. All I ever wanted was to not get burned. Curse this pale complexion.

Anyway, they had a shark warning at the beach today which was a bit unnerving, but it didn’t seem that serious. If it was serious, they need to work on their siren, because it sound like somebody was blowing into a kazoo. It certainly wasn’t very alarming. Everybody cleared the water for about 15 minutes, and then they said it was OK, again.

I took a little dip myself. It was nice. I tried to body surf on the waves, but mostly just ended up getting water up my nose. I’m thinking about getting a body board. I’ve done that a few times, and it’s pretty fun. The only problem is that I only saw kids doing it, no adults. I’m worried that I’d be mocked by the real surfers.

*****************************************************************************

So, the engagement of Prince William is big news here. Before this story broke, I swear to you, I didn’t even really know that there was a Prince William. Maybe the name would have rung a bell, I’m not sure. Anyway, I couldn’t care less about all this. I consider it my patriotic duty as an American to ignore all things related to the British Crown – 1776 baby, 1776.

******************************************************************************

Two shocking stories have rocked the sports world recently. The first is that Cam Newton, a big-time college football player might have solicited money from a university (gasp!). The second is that Tony Parker, a big-time basketball player might have been unfaithful to his wife (double gasp!) actress Eva Longoria. Really, Eva should have done the unfaithful math: Mega-bucks athlete plus Frenchman equals a bunch of stories in which the words “I didn't mean to hurt anybody” and “hopefully it will amicable” are going to appear.

****************************************************************************

So this new airport scanner has become a hot topic. My take on it is I don't really mind if they use them. Who cares if somebody sees some sort of distorted x-ray image of you for a few seconds? The only worry I have is that when I go through it the female screeners will become so enamored that it will actually be harmful to their performance on the job.

Seriously though, what's the big deal? I'm not convinced that it will really make us so much safer, but if it does great. The drawbacks seem pretty minimal to me. If it makes security lines go faster, then I'm totally on board.

I love the argument that instead of this we should racially profile to increase security. Really? That's the answer. I don't think the terrorists are stupid. If we started racially profiling, I don't think it would be too hard for the evil-doers to find a white dude or chick (American Taliban, Jihad Jane) to dress up like a dignified businessperson and have them do their bidding. I mean, c'mon. It's not like if we started racially profiling we'd be finding bombs under turbans and stuff like that. Profiling just seems like a ridiculously easy measure to sidestep.

******************************************************************************

I’ve really been getting into mixed martial arts these days. It’s a very compelling sport. I love the show the Ultimate Fighter (it’s like the Project Runway of mixed martial arts), and I watched UFC 123 this afternoon.

I have a few suggestions for making the sport more interesting though. First off, the scoring needs to be changed. As it is there are 3 rounds (or 5 rounds for a championship fight) and each round is basically scored as a win, loss, or tie for the fighters. There are two problems with this. First, a fighter can barely win two rounds, and then get dominated in the other round and still win the fight. This is what happened today between Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Lyoto “The Dragon” Machida. There was basically no action in the first two rounds, nobody really landed anything serious, and then Machida completely dominated the third round nearly knocking Jackson out. But the judges awarded the first two rounds to Jackson, so he won the fight despite the fact that, on the whole, he got his ass kicked and basically inflicted no damage on his opponent (which he graciously admitted after the fight).

Second, a fighter can convincingly win the first two rounds and then just “run-away” the third round, winning the fight, but boring all the spectators. This is what Maiquel Falcao did in his win over Gerald Harris.

Both of these issues would be relatively easy to fix. First, simply score each round in a less binary fashion – make all rounds out of 10 and give 1 for a really poor performance, 5 for an average performance, and 10 for a great performance. So, the scoring for Jackson/Machida could have been 4-3 Jackson, 4-3 Jackson, and then 7-3 Machida, giving Machida the victory 13-11, which would have been way fairer. Second, declare fights a no-contest if fighters don’t engage throughout the fight, or at the very least give fighters a “no-round” on their record if they just stall for a round. If you get too many no-rounds then you can’t fight for a year or you get a dock in pay or something like that. It’s not fair to the audience to buy a ticket to watch a guy run around the ring for the last 5 minutes.