The news that Ivan Reitman was named to Arnold’s transition team is only significant insofar as Reitman’s an old friend of David Cronenberg’s. I’m going to be very disappointed if we don’t start seeing biocybernetic devices propagating throughout California.
Author: Bryant
Ted Sarandis spent a while this afternoon explaining how good the Yankees starting pitching was, and how the Red Sox shouldn’t get too optimistic. Talked to a couple of Yankees fans. Went on about how the Sox were missing two starters, as if Mirabelli hasn’t caught for Wakefield all year long — and Wakefield was 2-0 in Yankee Stadium this year.
Gotta love Boston sports media. Or ignore them, which seems to be working for the Red Sox. Onward, brave cowboys.
If I were part of any sort of political movement in California, I would pay close attention to this map. I would not waste time complaining about how foolish people were. I would figure out why the map looks like that, and take advantage of the reasons.
Talking about how it’s time to stop holding back counts as complaining, by the by.
Since I think this piece may make the rounds, some deflating is in order.
John Lott purports to have proven that the media is biased in favor of black quarterbacks. He claims that his research means that Rush Limbaugh was right. However, his research (whether or not it’s sound) is completely irrelevant when judging what Limbaugh had to say about Donovan McNabb. Limbaugh made a very specific claim about one quarterback in particular. Straw man fallacy.
Above and beyond that, his research is kind of shaky. Problem one: he only considered newspaper data. Justification? “[T]his is measurable and it is not clear why newspapers would be so different from the rest of the media.” That’s assuming the conclusion. Good research tests assumptions like that.
Problem two: the data on which he bases his report is flawed.
“We also collected data by week for each of the first four weeks of the season on a host of other factors that help explain the rate at which a player is praised: the quarterback’s rating for each game; whether his team won; the points scored for and against the team; ESPN’s weekly rank for the quarterback’s team and the opponent; and whether it was a Monday night game. In addition, I accounted for average differences in media coverage both in the quarterback’s city and the opponent’s city as well as differences across weeks of the season.”
Points scored against a team generally aren’t seen as the quarterback’s fault. A better metric would be the points scored off a QB turnover. Why is it important that it’s a Monday night game? Why are all these elements weighted equally? Are they weighted equally? Lott’s not saying.
It’s document time in the ongoing White Wolf v. Sony saga. First off, here’s Mike Tinney’s deposition as described here. At no extra charge, we’ll include Andrew Zaffron’s declaration. It covers more or less the same ground as did Mike Tinney, with a little additional commentary. Paragraph 8 is amusing.
Moving on to new material, we have declarations from Len Wiseman and Kevin Grevioux, two of the three guys who wrote the screenplay. (And of course Wiseman directed it.) Both note explicitly that “I had never heard of any of the Plaintiffs’ works before early in 2003, after the movie Underworld had been shot.”
I should grab Danny McBride’s declaration — he’s the other screenwriter — and I will at some point, but I don’t expect it to much differ. Thanks to Chris S. for hosting these PDFs.
Couple of things you may have missed in the excitement of the recall:
Condoleezza Rice is now in charge of Iraq. The State Department couldn’t get it done, and the Pentagon couldn’t get it done, so it’s the White House’s turn. Somewhat surprisingly, nobody told Rumsfeld.
Judge Brinkema decided that since Zacarias Moussaoui can’t introduce the evidence that might exonerate him, prosecutors can’t introduce evidence that might convict him. The government considered putting Moussaoui before a military tribunal, but perhaps realized that it might look as though military tribunals and the enemy combatant label were just terms of convenience. It kind of bothers me that the government is blowing the case against an admitted Al Qaeda operative — get the damned evidence out there and let’s see what’s what already.
Oh, and Arnold won. Cross your fingers that he lets Warren Buffet run the California economy. I don’t think that’ll happen, but honestly? It might just barely be worth the rest of it if someone as financially savvy as Buffet is getting California out of its budget problems.
Hudson’s now admitting that he was in an “altercation” Friday night at Q. He says it was just a little shoving match, but the number of people who’ve said there was a fight is getting up there.
On a beautiful fall night in Boston, we grabbed the last table at the Cask and Flagon and watched the game. It went just about exactly like this.
Just a little more on the Hudson story before I hit the bars for tonight’s game:
ESPN picked up the story. No additional info, though.
However, a guy named Andrew just called into the Ted Nation show on WEEI, and claimed to have been present. He said that a Red Sox fan picked the fight with Hudson, and that Hudson was a complete gentleman up till that happened — signing autographs, and so on. “Zito tried to calm Hudson down.” He said someone (wasn’t clear, but I guess the club bouncers) kicked the Red Sox fan out and got Hudson off into another room to calm him down.
So there you go.
Today’s Monday Mashup concept was contributed by Eric McErlain, who runs the excellent Off Wing Opinion. He suggested Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend some time ago, but I put off using it for a while because I thought it was a little close to Body Snatchers. But time has passed and here we are.
If you haven’t read I Am Legend, allow me to strongly recommend it. It’s the story of the last man on earth, beseiged by a horde of vampires. He defends himself, despite the fact that he has nothing to live for. In the end, he realizes that to the new society of vampires, he’s the legendary monster. My brief summary doesn’t do it justice, but it’s a start.
Mash!