Writings on Subjects

Rating some Kook/Conspiracy shows I saw on TV

2013-05-14T19:13:00.002-04:00

My good computer is broken. It was so awesome....it was really useful for entertainment. Like, it was fast enough to do more than one thing at once, you know? I used to get so many windows going on that thing, I'd play like 3 different SNES games at the same time, while watching some Hey Vern! It's Ernest! on another window, chat on Skype on another window, and read an online book in the bottom right part of the screen...all simultaneously. Now that's an entertainment device. Wow, a good computer is the king of entertainment devices. A good computer is like the Henny Youngman of entertainment devices...versatile.

My computer has been broken for almost a week, and I've been watching T.V. Shows in the meantime.

Having to watch T.V. Shows this last week, I've come to realize that T.V. sucks, man. How can I look at one thing for a half of one full hour? It's hard. I should be watching one of these shows on a small window on the bottom left of my screen while I do 25 other things. Watching T.V. Shows full-screen and without side dishes is soooooo hard.

I noticed there's a lot of kook shows on the air right now. What you'd used to only find on Art Bell's Coast to Coast radio show is now pretty mainstream. I like crazy folks, it's not that I ever believe what they say, but it's usually very entertaining and (very rarely) edifying to listen to the opinions they wish to present.

Alright, so here's my take on two kooky shows that I saw.

First though, I want to present some kook 101 terminology beforehand so it's not always in parenthesis after the statement (which is out of place and dumb looking). The following are terms I use to refer to certain kooks:

Class A: Person who says the most insane nonsense for the sole reason of drawing attention to themselves and gaining money from the strange things they say/write. This person DOES NOT believe anything they say, they do it simply for the exposure, fame, and profit.

Class AA: Person who claims to be an investigative journalist who is exposing strange things. They, like single-A, DO NOT believe what they say and the "investigations" are a farce. Good examples of these are big foot trackers, ghost hunters, conspiracy investigators (exposers of the "truth" so to speak).

Class B: Person who says the most insane nonsense...but truly and honestly believes what they are saying.

Class BB: Person who is legitimately and certifiably delusional and/or totally fucking kooked-out crazy. These people are hopefully in institutions and not allowed in public due to them being a violent danger to themselves or others.

Alright, so with that terminology out of the way...let's begin the pending review.

Jesse Ventura - Conspiracy Theory

I didn't know what to make of "The Body" after I found out he went full-blown into the conspiracy investigation field. He's from a pretty legit background...he's an ex-marine, ex-governor, and of course ex-pro wrestler. He's been in the political field and actually knows a thing or two about it, so it's interesting to hear his views on certain matters.

Jesse is a witty and interesting guy. I always listen to the Stern show when Jesse comes on it but only recently saw his Conspiracy show. Jesse seems to want to come across as an investigative journalist, but does he pull it off or does he devolve into a total Class AA kook?

First of all, the word "Conspiracy" itself is a bad way to go. Real investigative journalists avoid this word and don't use it. When they investigate something they will refer to it as a "fraud", a "scam", or a really big organized scam as "collusion." The word "Conspiracy" is a really loaded word...as soon as you say it to someone they start to think about martians, voo doos, and bigfoots.

The music, camera effects, and overall direction of the show tends to try and milk that word for all its worth. You almost half expect a bigfoot to be hiding behind some corridor or tree when he walks by it. He was in that movie "Predator" and that's what I think the director is going for with this show. The music and camera angles make you think a predator monster is gonna jump out and maul Jesse at any given time.

Despite the obvious sensationalism of the show, he retains his wit and still comes off as being intelligent and interesting. He even flashes signs of skepticism in some cases, reminding the viewer that he hasn't gone off the deep end (right at moments where you think he might have). When faced with asinine and extremely silly conspiracies he's not afraid to go full skeptic on someone. My favorite instance being when he calls out that dope David Icke for being a total Class A kook, he even straight out asks him how many books he's sold due to the crap he says.

It's odd in this genre of programming to flash skepticism on the audience because you might lose viewers. His target audience is not the type to want to hear him tell them that there's no aliens in area 51 or lizard men running society like David Icke tells them. Don't worry though, Jesse does enough to placate to his target audience to make up for the occasional bursts of rationality. The most annoying thing he does to placate to his target demographic is invite that Alex Jones on the show all the time.

Jones is a hybrid of Class A and Class AA (with a splash of Class B). I think he displays some interesting critiques of government and society at times but it is lost between tirade after tirade of inane yelling and invective. The thing that I dislike most about him is his fans, they think that listening to him or reading prison planet/info wars makes them know-it-alls. He's kind of like the Insane Clown Posse, that band is kind of interesting but when you see the legions of fans behind them (juggaloes) you are instantly turned off to ICP due to the immense retardation of their fans. Same for Jones, his legions of retarded fans make him unbearable.

Oh man. You thought the comparison of Alex Jones to Insane Clown Posse was a bit of a stretch? Well, what do you think of that above video then? Honestly, his shtick is so un-entertaining, I mean he's either yelling like a fool or acting like a clown (sometimes even literally), there's times where you think he's actually a genuine Class-B kook.

All in all, I think Jesse is above the morass when it comes to Class-AA "investigators" and I think he's a really smart and interesting fellow but ultimately his sensationalized presentation and usage of Alex Jones makes this show a lot less palatable. Obviously to make money he needs to placate to a certain target market, I understand that, but just for me personally this show is pretty bad.

Weird or What?

Another show I happened upon this week whilst my good computer was broken was William Shatner's "Weird or What?" program.

Shatner presents some phenomena that invokes wonder and then proceeds to try and figure out what the heck caused this. Where have I seen this premise before? Hmmm....It seems similar in nature to Charles Fort's excellent 1919 text...The Book of the Damned.

Charles Fort's book written in 1919 is very good read because it has a very strange formula to it. Fort basically states a strange phenomena that he collected from a newspaper/other source and then proceeds to basically try and rationalize what happened to cause the phenomena. It's strange in the sense that he at some point (not always off the bat and not always right at the end) will always present the most rational, logical, and simple explanation. Yet he wraps the logical explanation around paragraphs and paragraphs of imaginative theories, utter nonsense, philosophy, views on life, and a myriad of questions.

I have a bunch of quotes of his to show his writing style but I'm gonna try and emulate his style instead (just for fun). The following is me trying to write in the style of one Charles Hoy Fort....

In American Science Journal v.1 pp26-29, a man in Hartford, Ct. was struck in the head by a golden cicada roach which he states fell from alarming heights onto his head whilst he was cleaning his rag wheel.

Golden cicadas are not a known native species of Connecticut, making this particular datum highly intriguing. Was the man a collector of foreign insect specimena? Surely not, do not jest. He stated to the inquirer that he loathes bugs of all sorts.

Could a dimensional portal to lands unknown be the culprit to this conundrum? How could a foreign bug have landed on his head had it not been from at not least countries unknown if not from worlds unknown? How do we know that when roaches die they do not pass through some temporary vortex into the atmosphere to disintegrate their worldly tissues? Would it be commendable to recommend to the esteemed investigator of this phenomena that the cicada may have been an insect who existed millions of years in the past?

Seemingly some may think the species came upon ships trading goods from the orient yet how would that explain the bug's inter-dimensional time traveling?

Perhaps the investigator failed to figure that a wind tunnel formed above the farmer's property whilst he was cleaning his rag wheel and that wind tunnel just happened to have caught a cicada who was blown away in a terrible hurricane who's origin may or may not have been the Mei Goren Sino kingdom of modern China?

Here today gone the next. Wind is a funny thing is it not? Blowing around all sorts of dusts of life and golden bugs. Wind is a very transient affair I must say. Whipping up vicious storms in all corners of the world over. Blowing everything around from humans and trees just like dust and bugs or even golden cicadas.

Ok, that was my best Charles Fort impression. Now back to my original point, if you'll notice...the most logical explanation is mentioned, that the bug likely came to Connecticut via a cargo vessel from the orient, yet that simple (and BORING) explanation is buried under a myriad of highly imaginative suppositions and some fun philosophy is thrown in at the end.

Fort says in the Book of the Damned that the simplest and right answer is quite boring, and all the imaginative things that collective human minds have come up with, even though wrong, should be recorded into history for what I'd assume is for entertainment purposes. Fort calls theses imaginative yet erroneous thoughts, the "Ghosts of the Mind," and refers to Ghost of The Mind datum as something worth collecting. Hey, some people collect stamps, some people collect shoes, some people collect baseball cards....and then there's guys like Fort who collect erroneous datum (or Ghosts of the Mind).

Fort once stated,

"I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written." -Charles Fort

That's where the real entertainment value is. Art Bell (the host of Coast to Coast) understood this too, Art let his guests express the most asinine and ludicrous explanations and theories on his radio program...yet he never ever actually said he believed what they were saying. Art would have the kookiest dudes on to talk about aliens, lizards, and 5th dimensions...but he never ever said implicitly that he agreed with any of the guests opinions. He just liked having some Ghosts of the Mind statements travel over the airwaves to people's ears, I guess.

Anyway, that was a long Fortean interlude was it not? Back to Shatner's show...

The Weird or What? program always gives you the most logical and sound answer to the phenomena but they wrap it around a myriad of questions (asked in Shatner's iconic voice) and slap on some highly imaginative anecdotal theories.

For instance I saw an episode where the phenomena was sunspot activity and they interviewed a NASA scientist who explained the most rational reason as to why sunspot activity has decreased in recent years...but they also let some whacko express his opinion that (if I remember correctly) alien spacecrafts were crashing at right-angles into the sun and through some kooked-out silliness these marooned vessels were disrupting sunspot activity...

...Yeah. All the while Shatner is asking questions like "could it be aliens?" in perfect feigned Fortean foolishness.

I like this show because the producers/writers/director/host seem to have the Fort Formula down to a tee and really get it. It is the most intelligent, entertaining, and least sensational way to present high weirdness by teevee.

Conclusion

In honor of the late Roger Ebert, I'm gonna give the shows thumbs.

A regrettable thumbs down to Jesse Ventura's Conspiracy Theory. Mostly due to his association with Alex Jones (who has minimal to zero entertainment value).

A thumbs up to Weird or What? for presenting the Fort Formula so well, and big ups and props to the Shat for asking the Fortean questions in the proper ham style (great casting).

End Note: That Henny Youngman joke in the opener paragraph is not really current or topical by any means. He was a stand-up who also played violin so when I was thinking of what to compare a multi-tasking entertainment device to...I naturally thought of Henny Youngman but I'm not sure if it was the right way to go in retrospect. Maybe a more current multi-talented fellow that should have been used as the comparison may have been someone along the lines of a Dolph Lundgren maybe.

Maybe I should go back and change the Henny Youngman joke to Dolf Lungren. Naw, eff it...you people have internet so you can look up Henny Youngman....no big deal.

The Global Mystery: Who is Baba Jukwa...and will he/she spell the end of Robert Mugabe's 27 year rule of Zimbabwe?

2013-05-13T19:59:00.000-04:00

Twenty seven years as head of state is a long time. In fact, it is too long. Zimbabwe needs free democratic elections without a doubt.

Robert Mugabe may have been a hero in the 1980s but at some point the need to stay in power has corrupted his mind.

In a country where speaking against the ruling party is totally illegal and incredibly dangerous...one mysterious Facebook account is turning some heads in the southeast African nation for the critical opinions expressed.

Account: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Baba-Jukwa/232224626922797

The account is registered to a "Baba Jukwa" and he claims to be a "concerned father" and member of Mugabe's political party. He seems to be using social networking as a means to fill the public in on the corrupt inner-workings of Mugabe's Zanu dictatorship political party.

His account has 60,000+ likes and has 17,000 facebook users currently talking about him/her. It doesn't sound like much but according to this article only 15% of Zimbabweans have internet...so although those figures seem low, it's actually pretty significant numbers.

You have to understand that being critical of the Zanu party is basically illegal and that what this person is doing on facebook is extremely dangerous. If the user's identity is discovered he/she is as good as dead.

Many countries with dictatorship-style governments heavily censor the internet, so it will be interesting to see what they do with this facbook account and how this plays out.

One thing that's fascinating about the internet is that not only are those statements in Baba's account being broadcast to Zimbabwe but also to the entire global community. The user may be on a suicide mission...but he/should know that many people the world over respect him/her for speaking their mind in a very oppressive society.

Will it end the dictatorship of Mugabe and bring free democracy to Zimbabwe? It's unlikely but it is very interesting...and it's something that most of us cannot relate to or even fathom. Most of us can't understand that for speaking your mind in some areas of the world....you can die....but it's true.

Fund for three victims in the Cleveland kidnapping.

2013-05-10T21:16:00.000-04:00

There's a fund set up to donate money to the 3 victims in Cleveland (Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight, and Gina DeJesus).

http://www.clevelandfoundation.org/about/cleveland-courage-fund/

Early reports suggest it's gotten to over $30,000 in just one day...pretty good.

If the internet rallied to donate $700,000 to that Karen Klein lady just for being called fat on a school bus...I think the internet can generate some good money for these young women.

If being called fat nets you $700,000....then to place a monetary value on the horrors these 3 young women went through in Cleveland....(using the Karen Klein pledge drive as a model)...these 3 women should receive about....

....I'd say 100 trillion dollars.

I donated to the Cleveland Courage Fund...and I think everyone should. The rest of these women's lives should be full of happiness, freedom, and good will. If anyone deserves to be happy it is them.

"If the scales of life are weighted down with cruelty, The other side must be lifted up with love..." -Mr. Wrong

On a Related Note:

From 2004: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/05/amanda_berry_is_dead_psychic_t.html

On the Montel Williams show in 2004, "psychic" Syliva Browne told Amanda Berry's mother that...

"She's dead, honey....I see a garbage bin and a jacket with DNA."

The Grief Vampire

Friends of Berry's mother said she was so heartbroken after this that she gave up on life and died soon after. You can't blame her death on Browne but you have to admit that Browne is an awful woman.

I saw someone on the JREF's facebook's page refer to Sylvia Browne as a "grief vampire" and that is the best couplet of words I've ever seen to describe this woman. She profits off of grief stricken victim's families and this is not an honorable occupation in any way.

Meanwhile on the Grief Vampire's facebook page she's defending her actions and has about 5,000 likes for her retarded defense statement. Really? Five thousand people can still like her after this? This is getting ridiculous.

I can't seem to access her page right now, either I've been banhammered from it or she deleted her page. Hopefully it is the latter.

Seriously folks, there is NO SUCH THING as psychics. Get real...and stop giving your money to Grief Vampires. If you have extra money to throw around maybe you should give it to the victim's fund for the those 3 young women.

The link to the fund is up top but here it is again: http://www.clevelandfoundation.org/about/cleveland-courage-fund/

Those girls (Berry, DeJesus, Knight) deserve it, they really do.

As for Sylvia Browne? JUST SAY NO....to Grief Vampires.

What Soured Relations between the United Nations and Canada?

2013-05-03T17:16:00.000-04:00

Canada had a security council seat at the U.N. from 1946 until 2010. They lost it and will not get it back for a long time.

It seems now that the International Civil Aviation Organization which has been in Montreal since 1947 is likely to be lost as well.

Why has Canada's global reputation soured so much with the rest of the world?

1. Canada went on a retarded and abusive lecturing tour at the start of the European economic recession that left a bad taste in people's mouths. The Prime Minister of Canada telling everyone to shape up and be more Canadian made everyone in the room roll their eyes.

2. Canada has openly stated that they expect "results" from the U.N. even in charitable causes. Canada pulled out of the African Drought Convention.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/03/27/un-droughts-deserts-convention-canada.html

Canada is the ONLY country on earth who is not a part of this convention. The reasons given were that Canada wants "results" from the U.N. if they are going to be a part of it.

3. Canada has made it known that CIDA is no longer an "aid" organizations (as if it ever was)...and is now solely an organizations to promote natural resource extraction in third world countries. Sort of like an arm for companies like Iamgold Corp., First Quantum and and other Canadian companies.

Canada has aggressively told the U.N., Paris Club, and IMF to act in their favor concerning resource ownership in countries like Congo and Mali to help their mining companies in those regions.

Basically now, when a Canadian official speaks at the U.N. it's only to their own reporters. No one likes Canada anymore.

Who cares you ask? Most Canadians take the attitude that the U.N. is useless and corrupt and they are happy that Canada acted like asses and made everyone hate them. But, then something like this comes around where the U.N. is pulling the International Civil Aviation Organization out of Canada and we start to think twice.

That's a decent sized organization and means a lot of employment, commerce, and foreign businessmen in the city. Losing it is not healthy for commerce.

I heard a Canadian foreign minister on Erin Rand's radio show today and I must say it was the stupidest thing I've heard in a while.

When Rand has politicians on he is very critical and asks tough questions. In an interview he did with Jean-François Lisée for example a few weeks ago...he was very abrasive and hard. Today though, when he interviewed the Canadian foreign affairs minister (Baird) he tossed him softball questions and didn't ask anything difficult. It literally is the Canadian federal government's fault that the U.N. and much of the world have done a complete 180 on their opinion of Canada...yet Erin just tossed softballs at him like a kitten.

I'm starting to think Rand is only hard on french people like Jean-François Lisée because their french...with english politicians he acts like a littly puppy.

Anyways, It just bothers me that little redneck piles of fat dung....guys like Baird....act as a representative of all Canadians to the world. If anyone around the world is reading...believe me...the average Canadian is not a retarded idiot like that guy who does speeches at the UN is.

A small Retraction of a Statement in Regards to Neuro-Science....

2013-04-07T18:47:00.002-04:00

I wrote two articles on the brain.

1. http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2011/06/thinking-about-my-brain.html

2. http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2012/10/a-critique-of-three-canadian-neuro.html

These are just opinions and not scientific at all. I do still believe most of what I wrote (especially the stuff about lobotomies and testing on monkeys)...but...one thing I said in those articles is wrong. I have to make a sweeping retraction.

In the article "Thinkin' 'bout my Brain" I said that the general mapping of the brain could be different for everyone. I have to retract this claim.

The reason I thought that certain things were assigned to a certain part of my brain (that seemed different than the maps presented by neuro-science) was due to my suspicion that a case of post-concussion syndrome was causing the problems I was suffering.

I felt like the bottom right section of my brain was "off" and the troubled hearing in my right ear and headaches were due to that section being damaged. This was not the case.

Whoever drew this is a good person..

The other day I was eating a big big hamburger at some restaurant in Laval. The burger was real big and I started to notice that I haven't been able to open my jaw properly in many years. I forced my jaw open and it must have hit the breaking point of the damaged area because I was in a lot of pain for the next week or so. I read something on the net about re-positioning a dislocated jaw and tried it out. I feel so good right now. The problems I thought were due to brain shit were actually just from some dumb jaw shit. For real.

What I thought was a brain problem was actually just a jaw problem. I was very wrong about some of my opinions on my brain.

I still believe most of what I wrote in those two articles but the fact that I thought the general mapping of the brain could be vastly different from person to person is not correct. It was regular old jaw trouble that was causing my symptoms, that's all.

Stephen Chow is a Pretty Good Movie Maker, Wow.

2013-04-06T04:53:00.000-04:00

Chow, S.

I never really did a movie review in this blog but I want to write about Stephen Chow because I think he's a really good film maker.

Yeah, I like Stephen Chow's movies. Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle, God of Cookery, amongst others. I think he's a talented guy. Other people seem to agree with me. In fact, Comedy Legend Bill Murray once called Kung Fu Hustle the greatest comedy ever created by stating that:

"...Kung Fu Hustle, which is the supreme achievement of the modern age in terms of comedy." -Bill Murray (source)

Getting an endorsement from William "Bill" Murray for creating the "supreme achievement of the modern age in terms of comedy" is a decent bench mark.

I haven't heard of anything new from Chow in a while, I think he made an alien CG movie but it looked like it was aimed at a young audience. The latest thing from him was a trailer for an adaptation he did for Journey to the West, which is a classical Chinese literature piece from history.

From the trailer it looks like it doesn't have much at all to do with the story I'm familiar with, in fact it looks pretty odd.

History of Journey to the West

Journey to the West is credited to Wu Cheng'en in the year 1592. He composed the basic text we read today but there's a little more to it than that.

The story was based on supposed actual events of a Chinese scholar traveling to India and returning with Buddhist Scriptures to teach the people back home (around the year 600) . Over the years from 600 to 1592 the story changed dramatically. At some point along the way someone found it was too boring and added in a Monkey King (based heavily off the Hindu Deity known as Hanuman), a Pig, and a Swamp Monster to spice the story up a bit. By the time Wu Cheng'en "wrote it" in 1592 it had already taken on mythical proportions.

Like many other historical Chinese classics, I believe the ruling government of the era got their hands on it and edited it heavily. If you've read Outlaws of the Marsh (another old classic), for example, the alterations to the text almost come right off the page to you, they are so obvious. You can tell where the ruling government of the era edited in-or-out parts to promote the Emperor and other authority figures. In Journey to the West there is a totally unnecessary and out of place chapter where the Tang Emperor becomes a central figure for a brief time. It is truly out of place and really sticks out like a sore thumb when you read it.

It would be accurate to say that the story was written by many people (over the course of almost 1000 years beginning in 600), including government officials who threw in pro-authority parts. Wu Cheng'en should be called the compiler of the text, I'd say. I think what he actually did was extend the text by a few dozen chapters (it gets very repetitive at times). I have the suspicion the Wu Cheng'en may have been selling this book in the 16th century as a peridiocal/serial magazine of sorts...where in order to make more money off of it he had to keep adding repetitive demon-catching chapters to it (plus each chapter ends with a "stay tuned next time" sort of "same bat time! same bat channel!" type of hook).

The text basically goes in this format:

Chapters 1-30: Setting up the characters.
Chapters 30-99: Them journeying west as you'd expect. Yeah, 70 chapters of that.
Chapters 99-100: They finally make it and it ends.

Anyway, from the time after 1592, we've invented different forms of media. A Chinese opera of Journey to the West would come next (still being performed today), and eventually TV shows, movies, and video games would come about in the modern era.

Some of the adaptations of this text in the modern era have been awful. There's been dozens of movies from China, and not many of them, if any, are good. Japan made a TV show which was pretty bad in the 1970s ..except for the theme song which was really really funk-tastic and catchy (as shown here by Godiego). The video game adaptions are the worst because they always make the Monkey King into a pretty boy (like this example from a game called "Soul Calibur V). All the games seem to present him as a pretty boy, this is the stupidest thing they do, because the Monkey King was a filthy demon-monkey not an androgynous faggo.

Sun "Monkey King" Wukong WAS NOT PRETTY. He was a fucking demon ape who got drunk all day on earth, then got bored of that shit, went up to heaven and robbed and broke all their stuff. He didn't take shit from nobody. He even urinated on Buddha himself, that takes balls. He by know means of any stretch was an emo pretty-boy like in most adaptions of him we see lately.

As for the adaptions of the monk character (Xuan Zang) who is sent to get the scriptures, they are always as equally horrible. The only thing they have to go on is that he's "pure of heart" and that seems to translate to people interpreting the text as him being really boring and depthless as a character. Some adaptions even casted a female to be the monk because he's such a wimp.

The only good modern take on this text so far is the one which strays the most from the old formula. Many might know that Dragon Ball from Akira Toriyama is an adaption of this text as well and is probably the only good one.

Chow's Version

Chow's version is really good. Even though from the trailer it looks awful, it 100% is not awful at all. Why?

First of all, Chow focuses on the best part of the book, Chapters 1-30. He takes out all stupid references to the Tang Empire and pointless authority figures (which were never supposed to be in the text anyway). He doesn't even bother getting into the journeying part. He adds in godzilla-like monsters, computer graphics, interesting new original characters, a deep love story, some musical scenes, loads of comedy, borrows some Dragon Ball Z elements, gets some hot asian chicks in there, and best of all....HE MAKES THE DEMONS AS UGLY AS FUCK.

Sha Wujing (as intended)

Yes, Sha Wujing is a giant fish monster like he should be, Zhu Bajie is a filthy disgusting pig demon, and our favorite Monkey King is a fucking asshole like he's supposed to be....and he's as ugly as a mother fucker to boot.

And his Monk? Xuan Zang? He's pure but modernized. He's not a pointless wimp, he's just a nice shy guy but he's at least human. He's the only interesting Xuan Zang ever.

Conclusion

After watching the trailer it looked like Chow's adaption of Journey to the West would be one of the worst takes on the book. It's not the case at all. His Xuan Zang is the BEST Xuan Zang, his Sha Wujin is the BEST Sha Wujin, his Zhu Bajie is the BEST Zhu Bajie, and his Sun Wukong...is the BEST.

Finally someone did it right. He took a lot of creative liberties but you have to with material that is over 1,400 years old.

END NOTE: What actually got me thinking about this book of late was a picture I saw on the North Korean government's hacked twitter account.

Whoever did it put Dennis Rodman's best pal's head on Zhu Bajie (the hideous pig demon). Pretty cute. It got me thinking about Journey to the West.

Wait...I don't want to end on that stupid picture. So here's one of Sun Wukong in a boxing ring (I can't find the source for this though).

If anyone is ever gonna make a good video game adaption of Journey to the West they should call whoever drew this picture and let him/her design the character models for it. This is what a modernized "cooler" Wukong should look like if that's what they want....NOT AN EMO PRETTY BOY.

The Wukongs models they come up with for the games they make these days do not look like they can fly up to heaven and beat the living fuck out all the assholes up there. This Wukong? He looks like he could.

(EDIT: it states "East Monkey" on the bottom of the picture. I thought that was a title but it seems to be from this art site account: http://eastmonkey.deviantart.com/, seems the picture is from that source. His name appears to be Liu Dongzi...his Wukong pics are retarded-ass good.)

With a little bit of Monkey Maaaaagic we'll see fiiiiiiireworks at niiiiiiiiiiight!

On Larry Walker (of the Montreal Expos)

2013-03-20T18:02:00.001-04:00

Spring is here, and Warren Cromartie is on the radio and t.v. talkin' Expos so now I'm all happy today. I find I'm writing a lot about baseball again in the last little while (WBC, steroids, etc.). Baseball is something I like and it's nice and positive to write about it. I'm gonna try and write about more positive things (science, sports) in the future and try and stay away from politics. You get too negative when you get dragged into the drudges of the political world.

Larry Walker

I was listening to an interview on Mitch Melnick's TSN 690 radio program today and he was talkin' to Cro. The Cro was mentioning that his Montreal Baseball Project is well into Phase II as he is launching an economic forum/feasibility study, and he also mentioned that next year marks the 20th anniversary of the 1994 Montreal Expos team. Many know the history of that and really believe the disbanding of that squadron was the first step in the death of the Expos.

To mark the anniversary of the 1994 Expos, Montreal Baseball Project is re-uniting the team for some sort of festivity here in the city. He mentioned Pedro, Moises, Grip, Felipe, and others are gonna be part of it. I hope others show up too (I hope John Wetteland comes). Mitch asked him about Larry Walker and neither thought he would come. Cro proceeded to say that if anyone is in touch with Larry to call [him] homie, and let him know they want him there for the reunion.

Mitch mentioned that relations with Walker and Montreal are somewhat sour and I want to try and explain why that is.

Rabbit Ears

Warren mentioned that "players have rabbit ears" and I want to to try and elaborate on what he was saying.

Remember that episode of the Simpson's where Homer gets benched for Darryl Strawberry and Bart sits behind him in the rightfield stands and heckles the Straw until he sheds a single tear? That's rabbit ears.

In fact, Bart (or whichever writer wrote that bit) did not invent the "Dar-ryl" chant...fans at Fenway did (as evidenced by this video care of MLB.com):

Your browser does not support iframes.
Dar-ryyyyyyl, Dar-ryyyyyyyl.

Okay. Now, before moving on to how this relates to Larry Walker, I want to first talk about another Expos outfielder.

In the mid 1980s, the owners of each Major League club colluded to agree to not sign any free agents in order to drive their salaries down. Expos outfielder Andre Dawson left the Expos and signed a blank cheque with the Cubs. The fans had no way of knowing about the collusion that was going on, and when Dawson came to play against the Expos with the Cubs in 1987...the Expos fans booed him. The fans should have been booing the owners for colluding but with the information they had, they could only believe that Dawson jumped ship and thus they booed him under false pretenses.

Now, the same would occur in 1995...to one Larry Kenneth Robert Walker. After 1994, Claude Brochu dismantled the Expos following the cancelled season. Walker, Grissom, Wetteland, and others were traded or released. Larry Walker was let go and signed on with the Colorado Rockies. We now know that Walker wanted to take much less money to remain in Montreal but was still let go by the team in order to cut salaries. To the fans however, who had already been shafted out of a playoff berth for the first time in over a decade, were already understandably bitter and were very unfriendly to Larry when he came to Olympic Stadium to play against the Expos as a Rockie in the 1995 season. They booed the heck out of him, heckled him every at bat, and the fans in the right field bleachers gave him the Dar-yyyyl treatment something fierce.

So when Cro mentioned that "players have rabbit ears" that's what he was talking about. The fans gave Walker the Dar-yyyl treatment but who could blame them? Just like in 1987 when they booed Dawson, the fans had no idea of the back office politics going on which led to those players leaving the club. All they knew in '95 was that they just had their World Series contender team dismantled and were as bitter as hell. Once again the jeers were undeserved by the outfielder yet it is easy to see why the fans did it. How were they to know otherwise?

My sources for these two events are: I was present at the Walker "Dar-yyyl" game and very clearly remember the length and intensity of the jeers directed at Walker. While my source for the 1987 Dawson boos comes from a very reliable Expos historian (Wayne).

So,

The Walker and Montreal sourness is from a big misunderstanding by the fans, that's all. The 1995 season started on an incredibly sour note here and I don't think anyone can blame the fans for being pessimistic and quite angry that season.

It would be cool if Larry attends the Montreal Baseball Project's 1994 team reunion next summer.

You Only Have 3 Days Left to......

2013-03-18T00:18:00.000-04:00

....Burn your body until your blood coagulates and becomes gold bio-plasmic liquid light.

Yeah. March 20, 2013 is the DROP DEAD date to do that.

Wiley Brooks

Crazy Mother Fucker

About a year or so ago I wrote about a dude named Wiley Brooks (here). Wiley promotes a religion he created called Breatharianism.

The basic tenet of Breatharianism is to not eat nor drink...but learn to live off of breathing as the sole method of sustaining the mind and body.

Anyone who reads a lot of kook writing knows that all kooks fall into 2 basic categories. On the one hand, you have the ones who say the craziest shit to convince dumb people to give them money, and the other group are people who are genuinely insane and out of their respective minds.

Wiley is 100% a kook who says the craziest shit to get people to give him money....and oh man...this guy says the craziest shit.

Wiley has been running this shtick for a pretty long time now, (as evidenced by this Tom Snyder interview): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rybFmE2qtaw

I got to thinking about Wiley again for two reasons. For one, March 20, 2013 is approaching and Wiley prophesized that this is the date you must set fire to your body in order to heat your blood in order to remove the iron particles and coagulate it into a paste of golden bio-plasmic liquid light.

Also, Wiley claims to have been Saint Francis of Assisi in a past life...and yesterday the new Pope chose the name Saint Francis of Assisi. It made me think that Wiley would be writing kooky nonsense again and he surely did not disappoint...

Wiley is back writing and it's....it's.....fantastically insane. This is a statement from his site:

"LONG LIVE THE NEW POPE
POPE FRANCIS I
FIRST POPE OF THE NEW WORLD.

I AM THE LORD, THY GOD AND CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE" -Brooks, W.

Wiley is now claiming to be the "Creator of the Universe" and he's recommending his followers do some amazingly stupid things.

He's actually telling people to light themselves on fire before the due date of March 20, 2013. I hope that no one takes this seriously, I really really do.

"Before you can withstand the amount of heat (fire) generated by this Ascension initiation process your blood stream must have already been converted to a type of gold bio-plasmic liquid light. Therefore replacing the iron that is normally found in the blood. A body that still contains blood cells with iron will not be able to survive the heat (wall of fire) that protects the entrances, portals, vortices and stargates into the 5th Dimensional Worlds.

THE DROP DEAD DATE FOR THIS PROCESS TO BE COMPLETED IS: MARCH 20, 2013" - Brooks, W.

If you thought telling people to stop eating and drinking was dangerous, what do think about him telling people to light themselves on fire? Oh boy...

If Anyone is Taking this Seriously

I know people who join cults and organized religions are pretty stupid and all...but if anyone out there is seriously considering burning themselves in order to train their blood to withstand a "wall of fire" that separates the 3rd dimension from the 5th dimension.....please....back the fuck up and re-examine the situation. Honestly, this is hilarious and everything, but it is really dumb for Wiley to tell people to do something like this.

This new aspect to Breathanarianism is so fucked up that I think Wiley has become my favorite kook of all time. Move over Gene Ray, I have a new All-Time Favorite Kook. Wiley is numero uno in the bat shittery department from now on.

On A Serious Note Though...

I'm being 100% honest now, if any of you reading this are in a cult or organized religion of any sort, please, don't listen to your spiritual leader if they tell you to harm yourself or others. As hilarious as Wiley's new writings are there is a possibility that someone will cause harm to themselves because of this bullshit. Don't believe me? Maybe you should browse that great site "What's the Harm" in your spare time one day.

"What's the Harm" categorizes news stories of people who harmed themselves or others due to beliefs in cults and organized religions. Believe me, there's people dumb enough to try this, I'm not joking.

Link: http://whatstheharm.net/

The Past, Present, and Future.......of Corn.

2013-03-12T13:23:00.001-04:00

I eat a lot of vegetables, some are over rated and some are under rated. In this essay I am going to write about my favorite vegetable.

My favorite vegetable (if you haven't guessed yet) is corn! So without further ado, let's talk about corn.

Past

The history of corn is an interesting one to say the least.

Maize or Maïs has been around since pre-historic times. Farmers in the Western Hemisphere were planting and harvesting it since around 2000 B.C.E. (well before Columbus "discovered" America of course).

Teosinte: The father of Corn.

It seems to have come from a naturally occurring weed named Teosinte, farmers most likely noticed a mutant version of Teosinte grass one afternoon and thought it was cool and brought it home with them. The strange growths on the plant's extremities were larger and stranger looking than on the normal teosinte. The farmers must have planted the seeds of the mutant strain of Teosinte and were surprised to find that it could re-create itself. Some of the new plants from the mutated teosinte developed even larger vegetables growing at its extremities.

Next, through a process of selective breeding...the farmers chose the seeds from the plant which produced the largest and most colorful (yellow) vegetables at its extremities. They sewed the seeds of only the most mutated teosinte grass plants until they further mutated into what we know now as maize or corn.

The ingenuity of farmers in what we now call South and Central America is how we originally created corn. Farmers from this region also discovered potatoes, tomatoes, and other vegetables through selective bio-engineering. After Europeans "discovered the new world" (I don't understand how anyone can say that with a straight face anymore) these vegetables started being brought back and grown in Europe too.

The original use of corn/maize was to eat. Corn is pretty tasty, I like eating it. The farmers who first created corn would grind it up with a mortar and pestle into a viscous paste...like a porridge or a thick soup. Personally, I like to cook it and cream it too because your body doesn't always digest raw corn and it tends to come out whole grain in your movements.

Present

We now produce a lot of corn as a global nation. The world produces 200,000,000 metric tonnes of corn per year. A metric tonne is 1000 kilograms or roughly 2,205 pounds. Wow, I want to write the number of pounds of corn produced by humans yearly...let's see...carry the zero...and....

441,000,000,000 pounds

We humans produce 441 billion pounds of corn every year. That's a lot. The leading country in corn production is the USA which produces about 350,000 metric tonnes per year.

Right now, in the present, we do not produce much corn for human consumption. According to Iowa Corn Dot Org only about 10% of the corn of today is used to eat. The breakdown is roughly as so...

40% for feed
30% for fuel
20% for corn syrup
10% for raw corn, cornmeal and grits

Feed is corn used to feed livestock animals (cows, chickens, pigs). Fuel is corn used to make bio ethanol fuel to power automobiles and other fuel burning combustion devices. Corn syrup is a high fructose syrup used as a food additive. The final 10% is raw human consumption.

This is the case globally as well. We are mainly creating corn to feed livestock, make ethanol fuels and to produce high fructose corn syrup (mainly used to make cola drinks bottled by Pepsi or Coca Cola).

This is interesting of course, but it is also troubling as well. Why isn't the percentage of corn used to power vehicles higher? Why is feed and corn syrup so high? The answer seems to point to poor eating habits and much of the blame appears to be on fast food restaurants.

Many humans around the globe sustain themselves on a diet of corn-fed meat products (burgers) and high fructose corn syrup (cola). Using Macdonald's figures as an example, they serve roughly 70 million customers per day around the world. Assuming, most of those served, purchased a corn-fed livestock sandwich and a 24 ounce cup of high-fructose corn syrup...let's just take a nice round number like 50 million per day...

50 million (corn-fed livestock sandwiches) * 365 (days per annum) = 18,250,000,000 burgers

(0.71 litres * 50 million) * 365 (days per annum) = 12,957,500,000 litres

Every single year, people eat about 18.25 billion burgers and drink 12.96 billion litres of cola from MacDernDern's. Remember, this is only one fast food chain...you'd have to add up Burger King and all the others to get the full picture.

You big Fat Fuck...

What I'm getting at is the world's fast food addiction is not only an unhealthy diet but it's seriously cutting into the corn reserve. It seems if we even cut down on our global intake of pop/soda/cola we would free up a huge amount of corn reserves for the creation of ethanol fuels.

I'm trying to find the amount of Coca Cola and Pepsi consumed around the globe per year...the figures vary but an estimate of 200 billion litres per year is probably not far off. Humans drink two hundred fucking billion litres of corn syrup every year. That's fucked up.

If we even just cut down on our corn syrup consumption we could free up an insane amount of corn production for ethanol fuel.

Future

What is the future of my favorite vegetable? I'm glad you asked, because it seems there's an untapped potential for corn that we haven't been taking advantage of.

Corn Resin (PLA)

I was writing about bio-plastics the other month or so....(here)

I was surprised that we have been making corn starch into plastics since 1958 thanks to Robert P. Baer and other scientists who experimented with Amylomaize. Yes, corn starch can be used to make plastic polymers and plastic resin. Cool eh?

If you follow science, you've probably heard of the new 3D printers that everyone's talking about. Some are predicting that 3D printing will revolutionize the way we produce and manufacture plastic parts.

Basically, a computer scans an object and records all the metrics assigned to said object (length, width, height, weight, angles, contours, depth, etc.) and uses that info to shoot globs of resin to slowly but surely create an exact double of that object. Neat-o, eh?.

Where does corn fit in to this? One of the types of resin ammunition loaded into these 3D printers of the future is something called Polyactic Acid. It's great stuff, great stuff. It is a bio-plastic which is created from corn starch (or tapioca or surghum). Science types refer to it as "PLA" and it can be loaded into 3D printers to print the objects of the future.

So....can we theoretically scan any object and make a corn resin double out of it? Maybe not now, but who knows what the future holds.

Wow....corn is so cool sometimes.

Conclusion

That is why corn is my favorite vegetable. I like a lot of vegetables like potatoes and others....but corn is different. I RESPECT corn.

Hey corn....RESPECT, bro. Keep on being your bad self.

Keep up the good work...corn.

Why the Americans don't Win the World Baseball Classic

2013-02-27T18:07:00.000-05:00

I don't watch much baseball since my team moved (Expos), but I tend to watch the World Baseball Classic still. The WBC increases the flavor a bit by putting players on to national teams and playing a tournament to decide the real champion of the world.

Japan has won both times. In fact, the USA does not even have a silver or a bronze medal even.

The first WBC:

GOLD: Japan
Silver: Cuba
Bronze: South Korea

The second WBC:

GOLD: Japan
Silver: South Korea
Bronze: Venezuela

Not even a bronze? How can this be? The first thing to look at is the quality of players going to play for the US team. An easy answer to this question is that no big name players are participating. That doesn't seem to be the case. In fact let's add up the salaries for the starting lineup of this year's USA team to get and idea of the caliber of players participating.

Teixeira, M - 22.5 million
Phillips, B. - 12 million
Rollins, J. - 11 million
Wright, D. - 15 million
Braun, R. - 6 million
Jones, A. - 8.5 million
Victorino, S. 13 million
Vogelson, R. 6.5 million

So that totals 94.5 million bucks for their starting nine this time around. You can't argue that they are not sending prime players to this tournament because they are sending 100 million dollars worth of players to this tournament.

Hmmmmm. So they send prime players....and still lose? Why is that?

I have a theory and I will try now to present it.

Are Homeruns Over Rated?

According to this data: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/hitting/hihr6.shtml,

Homeruns have risen exponentially since 1901. They were around 500 per year at the turn of the 20th century and have increased to over 5000 at the turn of the 21st century.

The question is....is hitting homeruns the most important thing? Is the best asset a team has their power? I don't think so.

Here's a really good example...who won the World Series of Major League Baseball last season? The San Francisco Giants. Now, out of the 30 MLB teams which place did they finish in team homeruns? 30th. Yes, dead last. Did only hitting 103 homeruns all year hurt or hinder them? Obviously not, they won the championship.

When did baseball go overboard on estimating the importance of homeruns? It could have just been a marketing thing.

Chicks dig the longball. It was a successful marketing campaign. Personally, I hated this commercial because it featured three players I personally despised (McGwire, Maddux, Glavine...blech). It's true though, homeruns did bring people back to the park after the strike ('94) and lockout ('95) soured relations with the fans. They took measures to increase the amount of homeruns being hit (tighter balls, steroids, lower mounds, mile-high stadium, etc.).

It's not just the fans that want homerun hitters though. The managers want these types of players too. I think it has to do with statements made by Earl Weaver...that were unfortunately taken horribly out of context.

In Earl's historical classic, "Weaver on Strategy: The Classic Work on the Art of Managing (孫子兵法)," Weaver states that the key to winning games is to rely on the "three run homerun" and he emphasized drawing walks and getting homeruns. (i.e. you have your 1 and 2 hitters guys with high OBP and your #3 hitter someone who can hit homeruns).

Now, this is a good idea, BUT, I believe that managers down the line took this advice TOO FAR. Next thing you know every team is stocked with homerun hitters...and they sacrifice every other skill in order to stock their teams with power hitters. Yet, Earl Weaver was only referring to a small section of the lineup. If we look at Earl's lineups he did indeed have good power hitters but he never sacrificed other skills just to get a power hitter into the lineup.

Case and point: Mark Belanger

The year Weaver's Orioles won the World Series in 1970, Belanger hit .218 with 1 homerun. His OPS was .562. That's horrendous, but he was the starting shortstop for them and with good reason, he was a gold glove defensive shortstop. Weaver praised the "three run homer" and the "big innings" over small ball...but he never sacrificed defense in exchange for it. Belanger even got some key hits in the playoffs in 1970, picking up 5 runs and 2 RBIs.

Belanger is not going to help you get very many "big innings" but he will make 243 put-outs, get 552 assisted put-outs, and only make 13 errors while doing that (like he did in 1974).

Defensive stats are important too. If you played a player who hit 10 more homeruns than Belanger but only made 200 put-outs, and 500 assists, while making 25 errors...do you know what that means? That means 107 opposing players got on base when they shouldn't have...that means your pitchers with a 3.50 ERA suddenly become pitchers with a 4.50 ERA. It's a big deal! Defensive stats are a very big deal.

Weaver never took this guy out of the lineup. In 1974, the year Belanger made 243 putouts and threw out 552 runners whilst only making 13 errors...Weaver had two infield prospects on the bench, thirdbasman Enos Cabel and power hitting prospect Doug DeCinces. You didn't see Weaver pushing Belanger out of his spot to get one of these rookies to take over. Why? Because Cabel was 6 foot 5 with hands of stone and DeCinces (though becoming a 30 homerun hitter for the Orioles) could not hack it at shortstop. It wasn't until Cal Ripken Jr. came that the Orioles found a player who could handle the position and hit (though Ripken was over-rated defensively).

Managers obsessed with getting power hitters into the lineup because of what they read in Weaver's ancient stratagems should take note of the Belanger Factor. These present day managers have 100% interpreted his divine texts WRONGLY (as such). They have misinterpreted the late Weaver's scriptures!

Fundamentals

Is this a God Damn?

What is the explanation as to why a fucking god damned team like the fucking god damned 2012 San Francisco Giants can win a fucking god damn World Series trophy without even having one longball hitting cock sucker like Terry Crowley on it? Easy...

Fundamentals.

And you know what? Every other country on earth knows that. Man, I read once that Ichiro Suzuki's dad pulled him out of high school so Ichiro could practice baseball 19 hours a day. That's fucking crazy, but that kid learned the tricks of the trade, that's for sure. Ichiro can do almost everything, he's a good fielder, good hitter, good baserunner, good bunter, has a good arm, and other qualities. He doesn't hit homers, but he's still a great player.

Honestly, I don't understand why Ichiro never added plate patience and walks to his game. That's what seperates him from the likes of Henderson, Raines, (and to a lesser extent Lofton). He could hit .350 but still only have a .380 OBP, which is odd. Anyway, this paragraph is neither here nor there. I just want to keep that picture of Terry Crowley in an Expos uniform in this article but I want to add a pic of Ichiro too...so I need to flesh out some text/words so it's not just two pictures right-god-damn-fucking-next-to-each-other. So yeah, Ichiro would be elite Henderson/Raines class if he learned to draw a walk (.365 career OBP? Not greatest of all time caliber).

I can see yer hair turnin' grey....

Seriously, though. Ichiro is a good example of the Japanese offensive template. It's all slap hitting, running, making the plays, and getting the job done. Offense isn't even the main aspect of Japanese style of baseball though...pitching and defense is of higher value and importance than offense.

Ichiro was the first position player to excel at the major league level, but there were many Japanese pitchers (Hideo Nomo, etc.) who were stars way before Ichiro was. Pitching is paramount to hitting over there, and with very good reason.

Your pitchers and defense have to make 27 outs per game. Meanwhile, your homerun hitters only have about 4 chances per game to hit a homerun and even a 40 homerun hitter only hits a homer every 4 games (162/40). Are you really going to place utmost importance on a player who adds a homerun every 4 games...or should you worry more about the 27 outs you have to make every single game? What about the 3 (out of 4) games where your star homerun hitter doesn't hit one out? Then what?

Most games are won with pitching, and sound defensive fundamentals....not longballs.

Conclusion

Will the Americans win this year's WBC? I don't know....but I think their love for longballs acts as a major hinderance to their overall chances though.

I understand that homeruns bring people to the park, but that doesn't explain why present-day managers are obsessed with homeruns too. Basically, word to the wise, when you read divine tomes from master tacticians of the past such as Weaver on Strategy you should not jump to conclusions. You must take all the verses into account whilst making your final-most interpretations of them and formulating your respective opinions on the subject matter.

MASTER TACTICIAN

Unfathomable Anabolic Cheating in the 100th Degree

2013-02-24T09:59:00.000-05:00

Observing humans swing bats in the effort to hit leather balls effectively and having swung a few bats myself with the intention of launching leather spheres great distances, I have to agree with the notion that the Art of Hittin' is a skill more than a display of strength.

I see arguments on the internet that due to Hittin' being more of an art than a display of strength that players who used steroids should be allowed in the Hall of Fame. This is taking that argument to an extreme and that statement is not correct. To say that steroids do not improve the performance of a player is not correct by any stretch of that argument.

Mechanics of Hittin'

These are the skills a human needs in order to employ the Art of Hittin' effectively:

1. Hand-eye coordination
2. Bat Speed
3. Strength

The following factors are what determines how far the ball will go:

1. Location on bat the ball makes contact with ("sweet-zone" preferably)
2. Speed of swing (how fast the human swung the bat)
3. Weight of the bat (all results show that heavier is not better)

With math, the factors can be synthesized to find the ideal conditions for hitting (relative to the hitting style of the individual player).

Weight of the bat can be thrown out as being important. The velocity of a batted ball will be increased off of a heavier bat, yet the loss of bat speed seems to be too high a price to pay in return. Every test from articles online seems to show that getting the bat to be lighter is to the advantage of the hitter. That's why "corked" bats have come under scrutiny over the years, it's considered cheating to make a bat super light but it's not considered cheating to use a 60+ ounce bat. Lighter is better, 100%. Being a muscular dude on steroids does not help you at all because swinging heavier bats is not very important overall.

Hand-eye coordination and the location the ball makes contact with on the bat go hand-in-hand. The hitter wants the ball to hit the "sweet-zone" of the barrel for optimum contact. This has nothing to do with muscles and strength but has everything to do with vision and coordination of the self.

So far it's looking like steroids wouldn't help a hitter at all, like people seem to be saying, but let's move on to bat-speed.

Bat Speed

Bat Speed is how fast the individual gets the bat through the box. This is really where physics comes into play. As mentioned above, getting a nice light bat to zip through the box lightning fast at an incoming pitch is where you generate the real velocity.

There's a lot of research online but I'm going to be mostly using this source for bat-speed physics: http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/bats/batw8.html (to avoid citing like a million sources every five seconds)

Players in the majors these days are clocking bat speeds of over 100 miles per hour. Once a player has the fundamentals of hittin' under his belt (hand-eye, judging the strike zone, patience, etc.) it all boils down to bat speed. Players with fast swings can wait a split-second longer to judge whether it's a pitch they want to hit and when they apply the fast swing unto the ball at the sweet-zone ...the velocity of the ball will be determined mainly by the speed of the swing.

This is where your physique comes into play. Bat Speed is generated by a well-grounded and powerful lower body. You ever see Jeff Bagwell for instance? He kinda looked like he was taking a dump while sitting on a toilet while he batted. He was just focusing the power of his body into his legs to build up a tremendous center of gravity into his oncoming swing. Look at his hands in the clip I linked to ("taking a dump") they are mobile and loose, his hands and arms are meant to swiftly get through the box, all the power is generated from his legs, feet, and stomach.

That being said, do players with muscular builds focused on their lower half, generate faster swings? Yes. The question being brought up here is, would steroids increase bat speed? Yes!

From twigs to tree trunks. Thanks steroids!

Most people take steroids to get big arms and flex for chicks. We're used to associating steroids with big arms, and since people know that arms don't play a major role in a players swing, they conclude that steroids don't aid a hitter. You can't rush to conclusions though. Look at Barry Bonds' legs...they almost doubled in mass in 15 years. It's not his arms you should be thinking about...it's his legs!

More leg and lower body mass will generate faster swings. That's a proven fact, steroids without a doubt effects the physical aspects of a human's lower body.

Wait There's More

Humans have a natural cycle. They are born, they grow into adults, they hit their prime-time peaks, then they wither and die. That's life, bro.

In baseball, most players lose their shit at some point, all humans do. When you hit your mid-thirties you naturally lose your physical stature. Your hair starts to turn grey, your body starts feeling like lead, you have trouble getting out of bed after a long day's work. That's normal.

Well, unless you are on steroids. You can counter the effects of aging by juicing yourself up with artificial hormone tonics and anabolic elixirs. Let's look at Bonds' career stats now...

Remember I told you that ALL players decline in ability when they hit their mid-thirties? I guess Barry didn't feel like declining like a regular human. Barry instead felt like pumping so many chemicals into his body to bring him into overdrive and turn his decline years into....oh come on. If anyone on earth believes that chemicals didn't enhance this person's level of play, they are nuts. Who hits their prime-time peak at 36-37-38-39? No one.

Bonds was already a Hall of Famer thanks to his natural peak (when he still looked human at the ages of 27 to 32). When he pumped himself full of hazardous chemicals to get a second prime-peak when he should have been declining is absurd, those stats from 2000 to 2004 are absurd.

Are They really even Bad for You though?

The only thing possible to argue now in favor of steroids is an argument such as...

"So what if they made themselves into over-sized hitting machines. Steroids aren't even that bad for you. Good for them for taking them, I think they are good role models for every aspiring athlete who wants to win at all costs."

I don't agree with that at all. All drugs which alter the physiological balances of your body must be used with caution. Drugs can save lives and cure many ailments, but they are not danger-free...and they are by no means things you should use recreationally or to alter your body.

Here are some side-effects associated with steroid abuse:

1. Horrible acne
2. Reduced sperm production
3. Raisin balls/Raisin dick (your testicles or weiner start to look like dried up raisins)
4. Man breasts (altered hormone levels throw everything out of whack)
5. High blood pressure (your heart goes into overdrive to deal with your body)
6. Liver damage (like any other chemical that goes into your body, the liver has to clean it up)
7. Enlarged prostates (even in teenagers which no one ever thought they'd see)
8. Chicks can start looking and talking like dudes (again hormones go out of whack)
9. Aggression (roid rage, again due to hormones being out of whack)
10. Stunted growth in kids (let your body have it's growth cycle, don't interfere with it)

I was debating whether I wanted to hot-link people to Chyna's sex-tape rather than an interview with her. I chose not to because it's not polite to do. That woman's clit is a DICK! No joke. Her clit has taken all that testosterone and grown into an actual dick.

If you argue that it was a good idea for these guys to take steroids for the good of the game, you're not on the right path. Baseball players were my role models as kids and I feel that they probably play a similar role today. What kind of message is it to send kids that steroids are ok?

I don't know how many kids are messing with steroids, but honestly, you'd much rather have your kids messing with weed and beer than you would want them messing with these chems. Steroids will alter their normal growth patterns, throw their hormones out of whack, and cause a myriad of issues with teens.

Conclusion

I do not believe that anyone confirmed to be a steroid abuser should be in the baseball Hall of Fame.

If you think that steroids does not enhance a hitter's performance...you are incorrect. Steroids enhance a hitter's performance and postpone the natural cycle of aging.

If you think that steroids are good for you and think anyone who wants to should use them, then I do not agree with you at all. There's too many risks involved, and it sends a terrible message to young people. It really is not a good idea for young people (or anyone) to abuse these chemicals.

Steroids is not a miracle drug that makes you all-powerful and immortal...steroid abuse will ultimately catch up to you. The overdrive your putting on your heart to keep up with your roided-up physique will take a good 20 years off of your life. The overall mass of the body and heart problems are correlated. It's a curse more than a blessing to be a huge hunk of meat...your heart will not be able to sustain your body into the ages of 50, 60, and over.

The most important and vital tools in the human body are the brain and the heart...not the biceps and the cavs.

'Roids

Plastic, Plastic, Plastic

2013-02-08T16:36:00.000-05:00

I got one word for you, plastics. There's a great future in plastics.

In fact one might say that there is no future without Plastic! Plastic! Plastic!

Mult-Colored Plastics

Me? I like plastic, it's great. There's just one thing I don't like about plastic. It is too often used as a argument to prove that we need crude oil to live a modern life and that we even need to go die for crude oil.

So, In this article we shall be lookin' at alternative methods to create plastics without relying on crude oil. Okay, let's go...

Bio-Mass

Bio-mass is what many hope is the replacement for crude oil, not only for fuel but also to create the plastics of the future.

Article from 2006: http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/chem/2007-0621-201429/NWS-E-2006-3.pdf

Article from 2009: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090616144533.htm

Article from 2011: http://www.fujixerox.com.au/company/media/articles/679

Article from 2012: https://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6070/835.abstract

Article from 2012: http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2012/apr/plastics-biomass-043012.html

Article from 1958: https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/aj/abstracts/50/10/AJ0500100598?access=0&view=pdf

Alrighty so, "olefins" or "alkenes" or "napthas" seems to be what we need to make this darned plastic. These can be created through modifying crude oil and gas products but that is not the only way to get them.

From the articles above, we know as early as 1958 someone was making plastic out of biomass (he was using cornstarch).

Knowing this, I am not sure that the "we need oil for everything we use" rhetoric you hear all the time is a very convincing argument. It seems we make the things we need for modern life out of fossil fuels not out of necessity but out of greed. Doing everything we do with fossil fuels is very profitable for a select group of people. That seems to be the only reason we don't implement the alternative methods.

Oil companies make a lot of money by keeping society addicted to their product. Alternative ways of operating society will cause great damage to their profits. It's not hard to figure out why we are dependent on oil, they've literally set it up that way. It makes for a fancy and aesthetic rhetoric, where defenders can always claim,

"If you don't like oil then don't use plastic or any other [insert good(s)/service(s) here]! You bum!"

It's a good argument and all, but it won't work on people who follow science. People who follow science understand that as a society we have the methods to create alternative fuels and synthetic products but implementing them is almost impossible. The oil lobby in America alone is unreal, I predict it's much higher but this site might give you an idea. Meanwhile the country I live in is very open about this, Canada is honest about being an oil company it doesn't even pretend to be a country anymore.

Conclusion

Reliance on fossil fuels that has been enforced on society has stagnated scientific research for more than a century now. Everyday some brilliant scientists are discovering new more efficient, effective, cleaner ways to operate yet the new methods/products are not implemented into society for the sole reason of keeping monetary profits high for the beneficiaries of the archaic and obsolete methods/products.

Art Appreciation...the Art of Appreciatin' Art.

2013-02-02T03:43:00.000-05:00

When I made the index page, I noticed that I mostly write about nonsense, politics, and baseball. The only article I ever wrote about the arts was this one.

So, how 'bout we appreciate some art for a change? In this appreciation we shall be examining two pieces from varying eras and attempt to appreciate them.

Defeat (aka "five across da lips!")
Artist: Augie Pagan (site)

Defeat (aka "five across the lips")

Aunt Esther has been defeated. What is defeat? It is much more than just losing. Defeat means you tried your hardest, gave it your all....but came up short.

Many viewers of Pagan's "Defeat" seem to identify Fred as the protagonist of the piece, yet this is not the case. The protagonist of the piece is Esther and you are supposed to identify with her as such.

You may have even looked at it yourself and said aloud or in your mind,

"Oh Ya! Fred finally got that old hag! Ka-Bam!"

If you said or thought that, then I must regrettably inform you that it is an inaccurate assessment and you are appreciating this art badly. Why? Take note of the expressions of the onlookers one by one (from left to right), their emotions are as follows...

Julio's Goat: Apprehension
Julio: Shock
Lamont: Horror
Rollo: Amazement
Grady: Horror

Julio's Shock and Rollo's Amazement are obviously just the tip of the iceberg. Even Julio's Goat, who is an animal with less cognitive ability than a human is obviously distraught over this situation. The real proof, however, lies in the eyes of Lamont and Grady.

Lamont and Grady were the closest to the combatants out of all the onlookers...and they are visibly Horrified by what has just transpired. Within their eyes we see the true story. Go ahead and try it...gaze first into Grady's eyes and then quickly follow by gazing into Lamont's eyes...

Did you see the story told by their eyes? No? Ok, I will help you out then...

Esther had demanded one day that Fred give a large donation to her home for troubled youth. Fred, angered by the query, outright refused. This caused Esther to refer to Fred as a "beedy-eyed heathen" and then a "fished-face turkey-eyed fool." Fred not one to take criticism well, retorted by calling Esther "ugly" and let her know that she "smelled bad". They continued to argue for several minutes until Lamont (of sound mind) interjected to provide a voice of reason to calm the situation down.

Lamont suggested they "kill two birds with one stone - so to speak" by raising money for the youth center and taking their aggressions out at the same time. He suggested they do this in the form of a charity boxing match. He suggested that they just take a few light fun punches at each other and sell tickets at 5 bucks a pop. Though reluctant at first, both parites (Fred and Esther) agreed.

Lamont planned the match out, kayfabe style, and instructed Esther to phantom-punch Fred in the 5th round. He instructed Fred to drop like a sack of potatoes when hit by the feigned attack.

When the fifth round approached, Fred forgot his cue and didn't fall when the phantom punch was deployed. Esther was angered by his forgetfulness and showed her anger by referring to Fred as a "Web-toed, bat-winged, donkey-faced suckah!" much to Fred's dismay. Fred didn't mind being called many things, yet being referred to as a "suckah" was one thing he did not like to be called, he thus let Esther know that it was indeed "on now."

Fred told Esther that he found her hair style to be off-putting and her breath to not be as pleasant as one would like. The kayfabe quickly wore off, and the first real attack with malice came at the hands of Esther who swung her purse with such ferocity that it solidly connected with Fred's right temple.

Esther wanted to knock that fished-eyed heathen to the ground for telling her that her hair style was off putting, and she fought him like a woman possessed. Even as the rounds progressed and she was showing signs of fatigue, she refused to give up and kept fighting with all her efforts.

From this point, you can probably fill in the rest of the story.

What emotion does Esther's eyes portray? Defeat.

The Annunciation of the Proton Streams
Artist: Argeoth Vindalew

Many Christian artists of the late 16th century wished to bring bible verses to life. Thousands of works were produced yet the above piece is rarely appreciated. This work by Vindalew is a verse of the bible brought to life through art. No longer was it just words on paper, but thanks to art, the verse was now a living and breathing entity. The verse the piece is based on is Romans 1:4:33,

And Jesus Christ our Lord was shown to be the Son of God when God powerfully raised him from the dead by means of the Holy Spirit. Through Christ, God has given us the privilege and authority to tell Gentiles everywhere what God has done for them, so that they will believe and obey him, bringing glory to his name.

Our Lord proclaimed that all non-believers shall perish. The townsfolk asked which among them would be saved, and Jesus proclaimed that none were without sin and ALL MUST DIE. Jesus told unto the Gentiles that Jesus the Traveler and Jesus the Destructor has finally arrived on earth and informed the Gentiles to choose the form of their destructor. The Demon God began sucking the life out of the townsfolk to rob them of their blood.

Unable to accept assured mutual arbitrary demise, four noble Gentiles confronted the demon sent from hell and saved mankind by unleashing 400 metric tons of nuclear proton pressure unto the demon.

Upon promptly sealing him in a portable containment unit of striped black and yellow metal...the noble Gentiles told unto the townsfolk that they..."Loved [this] Town!!!!!"

Cue the Music!!!! -(Romans 1:4:33)

Wow, this guy Romans was a pretty good writer, no wonder the artist wanted to bring this verse to life. Ghosts, Gods, Demons, Death, and those four noble saviors? Dang, Romans sure knew how to tell a good story.

I gotta re-read the bible, I love a good old fashioned yarn about death and suffering and shit like that.

Art depicting the 4 Nobles who busted the demon have continued throughout history, I will now leave you with some choice pieces, in hopes that you are left edified by them.

Here we find the Ancient Mariner and his harpooned shark returning to the land of the living...thankfully the Heroic Egon was there to bust it.

Many are familiar with this iconic work from the Aldini period. This one is particularly edifying.

And so, thus concludes another look at artistic creations throughout the eras. I hope you did some appreciation and enjoyed an art or two.

We appreciated two pieces. The former, a painting which brought out words from art...and the latter which brought out art from words.

Heino's Final Form...Is it Finally Upon Us?

2013-01-30T19:17:00.000-05:00

Too much serious stuff of late. I'm gonna knock out a fluff piece now. I think I am gonna write another article about Heino.

A couple of Dutch-moons ago (which is around 15 months or so), I wrote a piece about Schlagermann Extradinaire...Heino.

Right Here: http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2011/10/secret-of-re-invention-as-exampled-by.html

In that article we looked at Heino's many transmogrifications and Heino-Volutions throughout the 20th and 21st century. In the conclusion, I pondered if Heino was going to stay retired for good or if he had one or two transformations left in him.

Recent news articles, tweets, and Facebook updates...lead me to believe that Heino may indeed be in his lair, focusing his music power, and attempting his reach his final form.

For instance, this article from German Heavy Metal news site "Metal Hammer" is reporting that Heino is attempting to fuse his Schlager style with Metal to create a hybrid musical genre known as "Schlager-Metal." The article goes on to say that Heino will cover Rammstein songs using his new Schlager-Metal technique.

You're probably familiar with Rammstein without even knowing it. You know when you're at a strip club and there's a chick who's trying to look all domineering and intense with her stage dance? Chances are she's doing that shtick to Du Hast by Rammstein...I'd say that's the case 95% of the time.

Anyway, Heino's official Facebook Page is claiming the same thing. It has even posted a picture of Heino's new logo and a picture of Heino preforming hardcore songs with an unknown band. The following three photos are from Heino's official Facebook so it's not a joke.

An artist's view of Heino's Final Form

Heino's official new biker gang banner.


Preforming in a small club in Bremen.

From the last picture, we know that this is not a stunt. Heino is starting from ground-up to reach his next musical echelon. He's preforming in small clubs to hone his skills before he reveals his true form and what his Schlager-Metal will sound like. He's honing, cultivating, and refining his musical technique.

What is Heino's current Music Power? In the last article I made a guess-timate but...honestly I don't know. We can't measure it properly because he's been out of the lime-light for so long.

Some music scientists are estimating him at higher levels than he was during his preivous Rap incarnation...but what are they even going on exactly? Do they know something we don't? Some witnesses claim seeing Heino engaging in heavy music-training in a remote Black Forest locale with Thomas Dolby and M.C. Pow-Wow-Wow. Could there be any truth to those rumors?

Personally, I think music and Heino have a strange relationship together. I don't think Heino chose to evolve at all this time. I actually think that Heino goes deep into hiding to get away from music...yet music keeps finding him. The forces of nature keep Music and Heino bound for life in an inter-change of action and reaction. No matter how hard Heino tries to flee from music...it keeps finding him and forces him to Heino-Volve again, again, and again.

For the above reason, I don't think Heino has been practicing as much as music scientists are claiming he has. I think he is resisting the flux in the genre change....yet he knows it is futile in the end and is finally letting it take hold.

With all that considered, is it possible that Schlager-Metal will be bad? This writer thinks so. I think there's a possibility that Heino's new musical transmogrification may result in a failure. Will Schlager-Metal be more of a mutant than an offspring? Will it be a music genre gone horribly awry, with seven arms and eight heads? It is possible.

In fact, in prior eras, hadrcore and more edgey acts used to openly poke fun at Heino's style. For example, here we see the punk rock-and-roll group "Toten Hosens" (Dead Pants), famous for their songs about pushing whales and welcoming Alex, dressing up as an army of Heinoes (not as a tribute but to make fun of Heino):

In this writer's opinion...it's possible they shunned Heino because they were scared that if one day Heino was to become a hardcore act himself...that they would be unable to compete with his record sales. Were the Dead Pants poking fun...or simply taking an offsenive stance to try and keep Heino away from the hardcore genre? An obvious question to pose now would be, why is Heino still famous...yet the Dead Pants are not? Could it be that some icons last the test of the times, while others simply fade away?

In the end, the only question one has left to ask at this point in the Heino-Volution cycle is....

....Are You Ready For the Heino?

EDIT (FEB 06/13)

After hearing the album. I am going to say with 100% honesty (no sarcasm, no nothing)...it's good. Four chunes in particular (5, 7, 10, 13) are good. I'm not even joking, it's actually really good. It's not "metal" by like any metal head's standards, it's just a little harder, but it works. I'm 100% serious.

He even re-tries rapping to some extent and he pulls that off too. After laughing at Heino for many years, I'm taken back, he just shut me up. It's like a new person.

Sustainable Long-term Plans for Mali

2013-01-23T19:12:00.000-05:00

I've been looking into Mali geographically, economically, and politically lately. I started to think, what's the point of just finding problems without making an attempt to figure out how to solve them?

I'm not an expert or anything, I just mainly write for fun, but if someone reads it and finds it interesting to them, then that's nice.

Ok, here goes...

In this essay we shall be lookin' at the following aspects of problems in Mali. I think I'm going to just not deal with the Islam Mafia stuff...that has enough articles about it anyhow. Islamic Mafia groups in the region could take up the whole article itself and make it really boring. Anyway, let's look at:

A) Mali is almost 100% Landlocked

B) Agiculture needs revamping

C) Water Filtration Improvement

E) Hydro Power

F) The Closing of Areva's highly exploitive and inefficient (both economically and ecologically) Uranium mines.

Landlocked Hindrance
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Mali)

Right now, Mali is landlocked and its situation is not the same as being a landlocked state in a highly developed economic area. When you are landlocked in Africa...you truly are. The hindrances are far greater.

Mali's only access through river to a port is by Koulikoro river down to Abidjan in the country of Cote d'Ivore. If there is some sort of trouble in that country or relations sour they are rendered 100% landlocked.

Mali has rails and roads but the only access to a port through that means seems to be the port in Senegal. If cooperation between Mali and Senegal were to ever sour or breakdown, Mali would lose that option as well.

Natinonal borders in Africa are not very practical. People should know that borders in Africa were all drawn up by colonial powers following World War I, and if I may say, I think they were either divided up haphazardly or purposely badly in order to hinder Africa. European colonization into Africa in the 1800's prior to the borders being drawn was very brutal and its legacy still lives on today.

This is a good article which sums that up from a website called "Freak-o-nomics" which includes a .pdf of the paper that they reference: http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/12/01/the-violent-legacy-of-africas-arbitrary-borders/

Personally, I do not always see the benefit of being a "nation" and especially since these "nations" were divided up in highly questionable circumstances by Europe after World War I, I don't see why Africa should make a big deal about these borders. It would be highly beneficial for Mali, Cote d'Ivore, Senegal, and the rest of West Africa to form one co-operative union.

Actually, forget Mali, Senegal and West Africa working together as one nation...possibly even a Pan-African Union would bring about optimum circumstances.

Agriculture

As of now, 90% of Mali's residents are farmers. They grow subsistence crops and export crops. When there is no rain...Mali suffers droughts and extreme famines.

The answer to this problem is to irrigate the farmlands from the Niger River, which is on on-going but highly necessary process. Information released from le Office de Niger (the agency in charge of the irrigation of Mali farmlands and the building of canals) is reporting progress. Having a fully functioning irrigation system is the only answer for droughts which often cripple the country.

Right now Mali's main export crop is cotton but I've read an interesting suggestion the other day on what Mali's future cash crop should be. The next cash crop in Mali...should be Hybrid Sorghum.

Hybrid Sorghum: http://www.agra.org/AGRA/en/what-we-do/hybrid-sorghum-now-reaching-farmers-in-mali/

Sorghums

What should they do with Hybrid Sorghum? According to this article I read on "eco-rex" they should farm sweet sorghum to manufacture Ethanol Fuel. Why? Because it is 100% the optimum place to do so.

Brazil for example, the world's largest exporter of ethanol fuel, is NOT the prime place to do mass ethanol production. The mass deforestation of Brazil and the Amazon rainforests to make the land suitable for mass agriculture is a large cost in exchange for ethanol. Is the rain forest and its carbon capturing capabilities (after factoring albedo effect which would doubtfully off-set it) worth trading away for ethanol? Personally, I don't think so...I think Brazil is better off with the rain forest.

Mali on the other hand...is already a veritable desert with no trees and certainly no rain forests. It's the perfect place to begin the mass planting of Sweet Sorghum and the manufacturing of bio-fuels and bio-diesels.

Mali will have fuel to power its automobiles and the vast excess bio-fuel would be exported for profit.

Not bad.

Water Filtration

Here's an article from Christopher Vaught from 2004 on water filtration in Kayes, Mali :

http://cee.eng.usf.edu/peacecorps/5%20-%20Resources/Theses/Water/2003Vaught.pdf

Vaught concludes in his research that,

"The people of Kayes are struggling to afford the water they need to live. The local operators barely have the expertise and resources to manage their water treatment plant. Yet the people of Kayes are succeeding at providing one of the best water supplies in the country of Mali. People coming from around the country enjoy the luxury of tap water after spending many hours of every day for many years pulling water from a well. The people of Kayes are most limited by their lack of financial resources. Major upgrades to the water treatment plant must come from outside sources. This leaves the local people without control over their own water. As the general population is struggling just to pay for the water they do have available, an upgrade is out of their realm of possibilities. In the hottest city in Africa people regard water simply and cherish it." - Vaught, C.

Second only to irrigation, water filtration plants are the top priorioty task for development in Mali. They need a sustainable source of food and water before you can even talk about anything else.

What about Uranium mines, you ask? Uranium is NOT a priority above food and water.

The Need to Close Areva's Operations in Mali and surrounding regions

France's Areva Corp's uranium mines are not a benefit to anyone. They really aren't. Mali isn't getting anything by working for $1 an hour as slaves to keep a shit power source like nuke energy going.

The future really doesn't have a place for the highly dangerous power source anyway. You could try and argue that money and economy will prevail over all, and that greed for energy profits will win out....but you'd be on the losing side of that argument. Have you seen Areva's stock and net profit recently?

Areva posted a 2.4 billion dollar net loss in 2011, and no one's predicting a positive 2012. It seems since the latest nuclear meltdown in Japan...nuke power just isn't that hip to anyone anymore. One earthquake and bam...radiation everywhere. A lot of nations are not touching nuke power any longer.

Nuclear energy is not looking as hip as it did when the oil companies first bought/stole the patents for it from the American taxpayers all those years ago.

Hydro Plants

Kainji hydro

So, to segway out of nuclear power and into a cooler one. Can the Niger river basin support hydro-electric plants to give Mali sustainable and clean power generation? According to some info I've read, yes. In fact there's already hydro-electric production in the Sahel region so why not make more?

There's nothing wrong with low-polluting and highly-efficient power generation.

(http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P093806/niger-basin-water-resources-development-sustainable-ecosystems-management-project?lang=en)

Conclusion

Top Priority Tasks:
-Irrigation of the Sahel Region and Niger River.
-Water Filtration plants (the upraging of the existing ones and buidling new ones in towns with none)

Second Priority Tasks:
-Extended co-operation with West African regions and access to import/export from ports.
-Highway network to facilitate goods from to-and-from ports

Third Priority Tasks:
-Closing of the highly exploitive and inefficient uranium mines run by France's Areva Corp.
-The increase of hydro power generated from the Niger River Basin
-The implementation of Surghum manufacturing to produce Mali's new #1 export that the future craves...Bio-Ethanol fuels.

(Okay, so I know something like this isn't very practical considering the Islamist and European thug groups battling for dominance there....but if saner non-mafia type people were running the world I think that would be a pretty good template for the future of Mali....but then again...what do I know?)

What's Going on in Mali?

2013-01-17T16:59:00.000-05:00

I don't know very much about Mali, all I can do is read various things about it on the internet. From what I gather this is the situation (but, again, I'm not an expert and I've never been there even).

The various articles I've read on the situation range in opinions but three main constants that appear in most articles are the following tenets:

1) Famine
2) Islamist Groups
3) French military

Famine

In an inland landlocked desert region, it's not surprising that famines can occur. When a drought hits...it hits hard.

So, we know off the bat that this is a very desperate situation. Starvation is real and is happening there. Hungry people do what they can to get food. Fact is, it is a very desperate situation over there.

Islamist Groups

Historically, Islam spread its mentally suppressive claws from the Ottoman Empire into North Africa (Egypt) and even got lower into the belief systems of other Northern Africans regions such as Algeria and Mali.

Islam and similar religions (Christianity and Jewish) were built on keeping people as dumb as possible. They were built on stopping people from asking questions and about believing what you are told to believe.

When dealing with a religion as dumb as Islam, believers are not allowed to question "god" or even say his name or draw him. Can you imagine if they did openly think about their religion instead of forcing themselves to believe in it?

Take a section from Quran say about...the Buraq. The "Buraq" was a human-faced donkey who flew Mohammed around town and even to heaven. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buraq)

If any rational person heard that story, about some dude flying to heaven on a human-faced donkey...they'd think it was fucked up and stupid, but not Muslims. Why? Because they don't question things like that...they just believe it as fact without even having two rational thoughts about it.

The Islamist groups in Mali, according to this article in the Guardian, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jan/15/mali-music-ban-islamists-crushing), are even trying to ban music. That's a little much, even by whacky Muslim standards.

France

France has uranium mines in the region (and I think British Petro has some oil field there too), so it is in their concern now that there's something going on in Mali. They may pretend it's a "humanitarian" thing that they are sending troops but they don't care about the famine...they care about Areva Corp's uranium mines.

(see: Areva)

There's opinions on the net that the impact and danger of the Islamist groups is being exaggerated so France can justify their troop presence. Personally, I think the Islamist threat is very real, but the French troops will do nothing about the famine or real problems in Mali...they only want to halt the advance of the repressive Islamists to secure their uranium mines interest.

The minimum wage in Mali is a staggering $1 per hour. Areva makes a lot of profit off the people in Mali with their uranium mines (which obviously is not running at international safety standards either and is causing a great deal of ecological damage).

Conclusion

Basically, there's 3 real problems in Mali:

1) Lack of food due to the drought
2) A mentally suppressive wave of Islam spreading like a bad flu
3) France and Areva taking advantage of a desperate situation for their own monetary benefit.

Those are the three problems that need to be solved it seems.

Speculations (and/or) Prognostications on Phase II of Montreal Baseball Project

2013-01-08T03:49:00.000-05:00

This time of year (hall of fame votin' time) always makes me start thinking about Expos again. There's only one legend left for the Hall of Fame now but I still wait for the vote every year. I hope Rock makes it in soon.

Some time ago, I wrote about the Warren Cromartie led Montreal Baseball Project and on the righteous effort to revive the Montreal Expos baseball team:

(http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2012/04/after-34-years-serious-heart-attack.html)

Re-reading it now, I said some dumb things. I really thought that the possibility of getting another Major League team here was slim and was talking in that article about maybe a Can-Am team or something. I think it was the fact that when baseball left Montreal the minority shareholders sued the league and I'm sure that must have left some bad blood between the city and the league.

However, now that Loria has gutted the Miami Marlins and screwed Miami taxpayers out of about 500 million bucks...people may be looking at the Montreal situation differently. Maybe people are now wondering, "hey, did Loria screw over Montreal too?"

Even that Taiwan news channel that takes popular news stories and turns them into computer animations jumped on the Loria hate-train,

I think the whole baseball world is now starting to understand why the minority Expos shareholders sued the league in a RICO suit. It's because this guy Loria is a real art-dealin' trickster something fierce, I tell you.

I think now that Montreal can get a Major League team back and no one says it better than Cromartie himself on his blog at www.warrrencromartie.com,

"And, by no means am I trying to be a hero. I’m just trying to do the right thing. I know for a fact that Montreal is not an independent league town, and that it’s not a minor league town, either. Montreal is a Major League town. Montreal has a population close to 4 million people." -Cro

He goes on to elegantly state that,

"And so, as someone who played for the Expos and played in the city of Montreal, who was proud to play for the Expos and who loves the city as much as I do, I’ve taken the bull by the horns and (rather than man up I’ve) Expo’d up: I’ve decided to try and do something about bringing baseball back to the city of Montreal." -Cro

Yes, the Cro has "Expo'd up" and everyone knows when someone Expo's Up...serious business is afoot! I can't help but think of a superman type scenario where in order to indeed "Expo Up" you'd need to run into an empty telephone booth, rip open your business shirt to reveal the Expos uniform waiting underneath, and then fly through the air at top speed of 100-200 miles per hour.

In another article, he claims that Montreal is a "five-tool" city for the following reasons:

"1. History
Montreal has a very long and rich baseball history. The Royals played their first season in the Eastern League in 1897. In 1939, the Royals became the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm club and it’s here that Jackie Robinson played the 1946 season one year before breaking the color barrier in the Major Leagues. The city embraced Robinson in the only year he was here, and after he helped the Royals win the Junior World Series, fans stormed the field to carry him on their shoulders. You can go to the corner of Delorimier Avenue and Ontario Street East, and stand in the place where old Delormier Stadium stood, in the place where some of baseball’s elite, like Don Drysdale, Roberto Clemente, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Tommy Lasorda, and Sparky Anderson, made their marks as very young men. It was only fitting then, that in 1969, Montreal was awarded the first ever Major League franchise outside the United States. So many great players wore Expos’ uniforms over the years; Hall of Famers Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, and possible future Hall of Famers Tim Raines, Pedro Martinez, and Vladimir Guerrero are just the tip of the iceberg. And, as I well know and am so proud of, in 1981, the Montreal Expos were the first non-U.S. team to make it to the postseason.

2. Population

Montreal is a big city with a very large population. According to a Conference Board of Canada report prepared in 2011, one of the “market pillars” needed to support a Major League Baseball team is a population of at least 2.5 million people. Montreal has almost 4 million people.

3. Passionate fan base

Montreal is known the world over for its multitude of festivals that are so well-attended each and every year. The Montreal Canadiens are an enormous success in terms of attendance, as are the Canadian Football League’s Alouettes, and the Impact, who have graduated this year to Major League Soccer. Montrealers are passionate about their teams and their events and I know they miss baseball dearly.

4. Corporate presence

By the same Conference Board report, we know that Montreal is home to 98 of Canada’s 800 biggest companies. Only Toronto and Calgary have more. And, with the Canadian dollar at or near par with the U.S. dollar – something that was far from the case throughout the history of the Expos – we are definitely living in a new and brighter era.

5. Me

Hey, Montreal’s got Warren Cromartie! A passionate former Expo who wants dearly to bring the team back to Montreal and put things right. Okay, I admit, Warren Cromartie alone cannot bring back Major League baseball to Montreal. Warren Cromartie alone cannot build a stadium fit for the new Expos. But Warren Cromarite, together with the fans and business interests, is going to try his damndest to do it!

I am loving this journey."

-Warren Cromartie, from www.warrencromartie.com

The key tool I will be focusing on in this article's prognostications/speculations is the 4th tool, that of corporate presence and thus the possible future shareholders of a revived Expos team.

The Best Possible Scenarios

1. Power Corp.

This is sort of a pipe-dream, this company has never invested in local sports franchises and I doubt it ever will. It's kind of the greedy stereotyped conglomerate you'd see as the villain in movies.

Though, if they were in fact the owners (an 100% unlikely a scenario mind you) the Expos would have some pretty deep pockets. Power Corp. generates about 1 billion dollars a year in transparent on-shore reported net profits (wow). The average MLB team payroll is about 80 million bucks...which would cut into only 8% of their yearly earnings to field a competitive baseball team in their home city.

Obviously these guys would be in it for the profit and not the civic pride of winning a World Series, so let's crunch some more numbers here to arrive at some tangible profits,

According to Forbes magazine, the yearly revenue generated by a major league baseball franchise is in between 148 million (Marlins) and 439 million (Yankees).

Our Olympic Stadium is fully payed for now, meaning the main operating expense is the player payroll, which is on average about 80 million. So, if it's done successfully and the team is competitive and profitable...they can make good money on this venture.

2. Québecor Media

This would be a far more likely scenario. Just like Rogers (the media conglomerate who owns the Jays), Québcor is a media conglomerate based in Montreal.

Since it also owns Sun Media which is a nationwide tabloid network and publication, it would have nationwide visibility for the team.

One of the things that really cut into the Expos profits was giving up the national broadcasting rights. The only data I have on hand (print, no link) is from 1982, when they were getting about 5 million in local broadcast revenues and about 2 million in national revenues. I guess at some point they thought they didn't need to keep the national rights and let the Jays have them. Which was not smart, because broadcasting revenues in baseball skyrocketed exponentially over the last 30 years and that 2 million they gave up on is worth a whole lot more to Rogers now.

Airing Expos games nationwide on Sun could create unwanted competition and maybe some sort of agreement between Rogers and Québecor on baseball airing rights. It could be in their best interests to work out a deal where Sportsnet would broadcast both Jays and Expos games (SP-1 for Jays, SP-2 for Expos) and create a nationwide two-team fever/buzz generating system.

Sun is a tabloid that thrives on scandals and sensationalism. I wonder if their ability to fan flames and create fervor amongst readers/viewers could translate into optimum buzz generation for a sports franchise.

3. Molson

Beer. Man do they make money at parks on the beers. I go to Alouettes games sometimes and drink like 12 beers and they cost like 9 bucks each. That's $108 right there.

This would also mean that the Expos and Canadiens would be under the same banner and could merge marketing strategies (winter and summer would then be all around beer sellin' season for Molson) and they would not be in direct competition when the two teams overlap schedules (only briefly during the end of hockey season and maybe at the start).

I read in Bill Veeck's book that he made so much more money off of concessions than he did off tickets any day of the week (even Sunday). That's why he made so many free night gimmicks and give-a-ways. He'd give tickets away for free just to fill the stadium (anyone remember $5 night at the Big O near the end times? You'd get 20-30K on that night and they'd all buy concessions).

There's 60K seats in the Big O, and what I could suggest for a Molson operated franchise is to make the ENTIRE upper deck FREE. Free as night, free as day, and free as AIR. You'd pay good money to sit in the 30,000 good field level seats, but the tickets for the other shitty nose-bleed upper-decker 30,000 seats would be handed out at the door for FREE! We'd call it the Les Expo Super Fan Club Zone and it would have cheerleaders and a beer vendor at every section. Better yet...the cheerleaders would SELL THE BEER! I buy beer when I don't even want it all the time just because the waitress is hot.

Say even 5,000 free loaders show up to hang out in the upper deck, if only half of them even bought beer at like 7 bucks a unit, and a fourth of them bought many beers (i.e. 4). You're talking a supplemental per game income of $48,000 which over 81 games would equate to just about 4 million dollars to add to your gate and regular concession revenues.

Could a Les Expos Super Fan Club Zone evolve into the summer pre-party hot spot for young people? If it's done right then I wouldn't see why it couldn't. If it does you could get even 20,000 beer drinking freeloaders per game, which would bring in a prognosticated $192,000 per game...and supplement 16 million dollars of income per season. Yes, 16 million dollars on giving away FREE TICKETS if it is done correctly and the hottest of chicks are found to hawk the beers.

To contrast the party zone, another area of the field (third base side facing the bullpen) will be quartered off as the Extreme Family Values Zone where kids under 6 and little babies can accompany their parents for free (at a maximum of 3 child units per family).

Yes, the key to a Molson run Expos team would be to take advantage of the space in the Big O to get maximum people in the stadium to purchase maximum concessions.

The Pen-Ultimate...(wait...no) The Super-Ultimate Case Scenario

The share-holder percentages of my prognosticated Golden-Super-Ultimate Case Scenario would be the following:

Power Corp: 33.333333334%

Québecor: 33.3333333334%

Molson: 33.3333333334%

Within this tri-forced tri-umvirate lies the ultimate balance in Expos shareholding ownership. Each point of the Expos-World-Series-Profit-Generating-Dynasty-Making Tri-Umvirate will take a key role in the on going and sustainable success of the franchise.

1. Power Corp. will cover the payroll and player salaries.

2. Québecor would need to create a nationwide tabloid saturated buzz-generating Believer Fever which would subsequently be caught by human after human in successive turn. The ad campaigns must generate extreme hype, and the resulting media-saturated Expos fever should spread province-to-province, state-to-state, and country-to-country like WILD FIRE.

3. Molson must transform the Upper Deck Nose Bleeds into a veritable party central. This would be easier with a downtown park where the post-game exiting fans could file out and go straight to St. Catherines or St. Laurent, but at present state in any case the metro ride from Pie-IX to downtown will probably be pretty intense. Molson must do this by maximizing their beer vending and beer advertising capabilities and bring them to new levels. All kinds of gimmicks! Stuff like special guest celebrity beer vendors even.

and finally...

4. Warren Cromartie should be given the honorific title of President of the Expos and be the iconic face of the New Generation Expos.

oh and...

5. Gary Carter should be posthumously honored as Guardian Deity of the Expos, and a statue should be put in center field of him looking down on the field to protect the Expos from misfortune of all kinds.

Conclusion

You can call me crazy, you can call me a dreamer, you can call me weird, you can call me dumb, you can call me Ray, or you can even call me Jay, but one thing you can never say about me is that my prognostications are fundamentally unsound...

....because my prognostications are usually fundamentally sound.

(Edit: APRIL 9 of 2013): This article gets some decent hits still (but a lot of spam-bot advertisement comments). For any new hits to this article I'd like to spruce it up a bit....so here's some Cro-bama posters for all you readers (unless you're spam bots then nevermind):

On Some Super Cool BOINC Stats and on the Optimization of BOINC

2012-12-27T03:10:00.000-05:00

BOINC is just a synthetic super computer. It basically (figuratively, not literally) takes everyone's home personal computers around the globe and combines them together to create a veritable Voltron of Science. It doesn't cause slow down to your computer either, it just uses spare CPU resources when they are available. The three most popular programs on BOINC, I believe, are World Community Grid, Rosetta@Home, and Seti@Home.

I'm just going to focus on the two most popular for the sake of simplicity (in making my argument following the presentation of the cool cool statistics).

Ok, so now here are the basic stats of BOINC's current computational power levels:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What does the scouter say about BOINC's power level !?

Total BOINC processing power (average recorded as of Dec. 14, 2012): 7.3 petaFLOPS

Total processing power of Seti@home (average as of Nov. 12, 2012): 597 teraFLOPS

Total processing power of World Community Grid (average as of Dec. 6, 2012): 501 teraFLOPS

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alright, what's a "FLOP" you may ask? It stands for "floating point operations per second" and it is a measure of computational speed, or a power level if you will. A "peta" is a flop to the 15th power (meaning fifteen zeros after the number) and a "tera" flop has only 12 zeros after the number. So, a "petaflop" is 7300000000000000 floating point operations per second. Pretty snazzy eh, all them flopsy-mopsies?

The synthetic Voltron super computer is currently running at 7.3 petaflops, and it is running about a dozen programs on it. Programs like Seti@Home, Rosetta@Home, MilkyWay@Home, World Community Grid, and others.

The two most popular programs that home users are setting their BOINC up to are Seti and WCG.

That's the basics.

Optimizing BOINC

Okay, now I'll get into my opinions on optimizing BOINC which are as follows,

(A) Get More People On BOINC
(B) Make Faster Processors
(C) Stop Giving a Fuck about Greasy-Ass Aliens that you're Never gonna Find

Firstly, (A) there are currently 2.5 million users who have connected their personal computers to the BOINC network. That's not half bad.

Yet, it is estimated that the total number of personal computers in human households is nearing the 2 billion mark (likely by 2014). So, that means only about 0.125 % of global humans are contributing to BOINC presently.

If BOINC is generating a pretty decent 7.3 petaFLOPS off of 0.125% of the total computers in households around the world then what would it run at on 100%? It still has 99.875% of its theoretical potential at this juncture. That's really interesting, it's not even running at 1% of its capabilities.

Yes! Yes! I Feel like 5.84 exaFLOPS!

Theoretically, with 2 billion household computers Voltroned-up to the grid...it could run at 5.84 exaFLOPS (which is one level higher than a petaFLOP). Cool.

Nextly, (B) is sort of obvious. If new processor chips are designed to speed up computers...then obviously it would compound the compounds of each unit and increase the floppage.

It's (C) that's the one I think is the least obvious and most controversial method of optimzing BOINC....

Stop Giving a Care about those Silly old Aliens

Out of the 2.5 million or so users that are hooked up to BOINC, more than half are running Seti@Home. About 1.3 million boinc users run seti.

What is seti? Researchers send out high frequency radio signal into the darkest coldest regions of outer space...and hope aliens hear them and respond.

The ones on Seti are likely the most hardcore geeks too with the fastest home computers, and they are using up 597 teraFLOPS of BOINC's current power level to try and find some greasy-ass dirty aliens in outer space. Yeah, I dunno 'bout this.

When I first got BOINC I looked at the @homes they had, and back then it was mostly space stuff. I chose Milkyway@home which is trying to map out the known universe. I never gave one iota of interest to Seti@home. I thought it was dumb. I know that statement will make a lot of geeks very mad, but it's true.

When I first heard about IBM's World Community Grid and how it uses BOINC flops to conduct research on diseases, clean energy, plant proteins, and other more down to earth things...I immediately downloaded it and left just a few resources for milkyway@home and gave most of my computer's idle resources to World Community Grid.

No. Let's not...

Down to earth research is far more interesting sounding and beneficial. Using global computational power to search for aliens is a huge waste and I think everyone pretty much knows that.

Jodie Foster isn't gonna find some alien signal from shooting out radio waves, a Vulcan isn't gonna come down to earth and teach us how to make spaceships, or anything like that. That's just in movies guys, not real life.

Getting the 1.3 million Seti@Home users to switch onto a less pointless program (go to MilkyWay even if you want to stay in an outer space one), is another great way to optimize BOINC. I truly believe that Seti is a big waste, sorry....but it's true.

Forget stupid aliens...

END NOTE: If you are interested in BOINC, you might want to find out what sort of power your geographic area runs off of. I've been reading lately (thanks to a heads up from a friend of mine) that keeping computers idle in an area where the grid runs off of coal (or other fossil fuels) is highly inefficient and highly undesirable. Coal is the most pollutant form of energy production and since some BOINC programs are even about pollution reduction and clean energy research...it would be ironic to run BOINC off of energy from burning coal.

Places like South Africa, Poland, China (though the Three Gorges Dam is a GREAT start to help them get off of coal), Kazahkstan, India, Japan, Germany, Russia, both Koreas, Australia, parts of the United States (Texas and Ohio are almost all coal powered, whilst Vermont and Rhode Island are coal free), and parts of Canada (Alberta is all coal for instance, while many others are coal free).

It's possible that a globally interlinked, highly efficient, up-time/down-time fluctuation-calibrated, minimal polluting hydro-electric power grid would be desirable for the optimal optimization of the BOINC network.

While one half of the world is awake, the uptime is calibrated to their hemisphere, while the other side sleeps the downtimed lesser-load would be optimal time used for computations and calculations benefiting science and humanity (and vice-versa while the other half of the world goes to sleep at the end of their day). Thus exercising the utmost efficient use of energy in order to balance both the rat-race-to-and-fro world and the calculations/research necessary to the advancement of science and the livingry of humanity.

Canadian Bill C-45 Breakdown Summary

2012-12-24T12:57:00.000-05:00

The government always tries to slam through crazy 500 page bills right before Christmas break because they know it's the easiest time to get them passed because no one wants to go into Christmas break thinking about work and, in the case that the bill fails to pass, no Canadian citizen wants to have to go and vote in an election on Christmas.

They dubbed this 457 page whopper of a bill the "Job and Growth Act" (because, hey, who doesn't just love jerbs and growth?), and sold it as a bill that will be "tough on crime."

This bill is written as if it is to ammend the Criminal Code to make it more "tough on crime," but one must wonder why it is being pushed through by the Finance Minister and why it is nicknamed the "Jobs and Growth Bill."

They didn't exactly tell the public that in that 457 pages of legal-speil sheister-ridden gobbledeguk were ammendments which alter the constitution on matters such as Native Treaty Rights, Fisheries, Employment Insurance, Oil and Gas Operations, and a slew of other totally unrelated matters. So, if you're watching the news lately, and see a lot of Canadian First Nations folks in the street...it's because they are really really fucking angry about this effronterous sheister-ass bill.

The Bill (.PDF): http://www2.macleans.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/C-45-Jobs-and-Growth-Act-2012.pdf

Tough on crime....and lakes?

Mixed into the LAWCAP's lawyer-lingo is countless changes that really have no place in a bill pertaining to the the Criminal Code.

For example, they have a huge section listing which waterways/lakes/rivers/oceans are now navigatable by the "crown" (buried near the end on page 424).

One of the things that is making the First Nations angry, is that they know that these lakes and rivers are not going to be used for fishing by the government, they are going to be used to dump tailings and chemicals into them.

I thought it would be fun to throw the word "pipeline" into the edit-find function on the PDF file to see how many times they changed acts regulating that industry and...

It's not a "work" it's....uh..something different!

Gee, now who would have thought that something benefitting oil companies would have been snuck into a 457 page filibuster bill?

I'm not an expert in LAWCAP sheister-spiel, but I think the above ammendment states something along the lines that the term "work" is used in the "Oil and Gas Operations Act", and this ammendment will make a pipeline not considered a "work" thus it will be exempt from regulations in the "Oil and Gas act" due to semantic sheister-speil reasons.

That's just two examples, I don't want to waste my life reading this stupidity any longer, it's Christmas and shit, and just like the morons in the opposition parties who let this bill pass...I don't want to read the entire 457 pages of asshole-garbage either.

There's a cool movement afoot called the Idle No More movement of First Nations People, and I hope it garners support but....personally, I think the average WASP Canadian is far too racist to support or care about things like this.

Please, if you are interested, read the bill, these examples are just two of possibly thousands of depraved LAWCAP maneuvers in it.

Honestly, I think Jim Flaherty should resign, and I think a law should be made that a 457 (200+) page bill should be given months to peruse and not filibustered through at Christmas time, and that a clarity act should be installed to eliminate the wording of deceptive bills and stop the erroneous nick-naming of said bills.

Good and (more importantly) FREE Video Games on the Old Internet...

2012-12-23T02:44:00.000-05:00

I'm a cheap man. I am a cheap-ass fucking guy. I love playing video games, but I don't like spending my geldt on that shit. The last game I spent money on was Suikoden III which wikipedia tells me was released in 2002, so I haven't spent money on video games in a full 10 years now.

That's why when there's free video games to be had, I'm all over them like a crazy man. Free is my favorite four letter word. I think what I like best about free games is that I don't have to pay for them. The following are the best free games I've played on in the last while...

Mega Man versus Street Fighter

Mega Man is fun. For his 25th anniversary Capcom made a new-old-school style Mega Man where he fights Street Fighter guys.

If you play it please do it in the following boss order (it will help you win the day): Dhalsim -> Blanka -> Rose -> Rolento -> Urien (he's hard but his stage music is nice and catchy though) -> Ryu -> Chun-Li -> C. Viper. There's more levels after this but I haven't beat them yet, I died at Vega just now and got angry, started swearing like a little child, and switched to writing this blog thing.

Mega Man

Rating: 7/10

Play it: http://www.capcom-unity.com/mega_man/
(the website might be slow because millions of geeks are probably getting this free shit right now)

Abobo's Big Adventure

Abobo was the big tough guy (and sub-boss/jabroni-boss/green-boss) in the Double Dragon games. Here he finally gets the spotlight in his own game where he has to save his son (aptly named Abo-boy).

If you're a fan of the old NES then this game will feel like home for you. Abobo makes his way through Double Dragon, Zelda, freakin' Balloon Fight, that wrestling game with the lizard man from Brazil, Mega Man, Super Mario, Contra, Kung Fu, Punch Out, and...Urban Champion (yeah Urban Champion).

Abobo is not presented as an anti-hero though, Abobo is a hero-hero. He saves his son and...well, I don't want to spoil it...but the ending is very touching in an emotional and free way.

This game was a collaboration from I-Mock, Pesto Force, and Pox Box. I-Mock would have had another game listed in this entry, a game they made where Ivan Drago battled his way to the top (fighting dinosaurs, thugs, Rocky (in a wheel Chair)...and you could play as Apollo Creed who had a crescent energy wave super move...it was soo coool). The Drago game was ordered to be removed from the site by whoever owns the rights to the Rocky films, which sucks because that was a really well made game (and a very very FREE game to boot). I forget what it was called and all mention of it seems to have been removed from I-Mock's site.

I love you so much Abobo, I wish we could be friends in real life...

Rating: 9.5/10

Play it: http://www.abobosbigadventure.com/

I Wanna Be the Guy

This game is about a kid who wants to be the guy. It's really hard, personally I've never made it to the end and don't really want to. It's too gimmicky. You can save your progress at almost every intreval which makes it easy, but I got tired of trying to make my way around all the traps, gave up and never went back to it. I didn't really want to be the guy, I guess. It's too gimmicky I think. I get the joke that it's funny to die in ways you didn't think you could die, but the novelty kind of wears off eventually and it just becomes boring.

I remember there was this weird-ass cat game (mostly white everywhere) that I think did the weird-ways-to-die-in-a-platformer gimmick first but I can't remember the name of that game now. Oh wait, nevermind, I searched for "cat mario" in googles and found the game, it does indeed set the tone for this gimmick indeed. (Cat Mario video: Here). Now I'm not saying "Cat Mario" or whatever it's called is better than I Wanna Be the Guy, I'm just saying the funny-ways-to-die gimmick wasn't anything particularly new.

Mike Tyson

Rating: 6.9/10

Play it: http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/

Dikembe Mutumbo's 4 1/2 weeks to Save the World

This is an ad campaign for Old Spice but it is still nice and free though. I'm not sure this is gonna get anyone to buy Old Spice products but it's a pretty decent game. When it first came out I thought it was gonna be the coolest shit but it didn't really live up to its potential.

When I first heard that Dikembe Mutumbo was providing the voice of Dikembe Mutumbo, I thought this game was going to be amazing. It wasn't exactly what I expected it to be but it's still good none-the-less. The levels are as follows: Battle Toads (The one where you go down), Donkey Kong Country, Mega Man (?), and Ikaruga. The Ikaruga one is by far the best one, it has Dikembe flying through space and shooting lazors at shitty internet memes (or "may-mays" as Dikembe pronounces it).

Now, Is he finger wagging the opposing player or the crowd in the selection screen?

Rating: 6.4/10

Play it (I think it's still up): http://www.oldspicesavestheworld.com/

Hacked Mario Games that Are too Hard for me to Beat

I take my Mario games serious. I can beat Mario 1 in about 5.5 minutes, Mario 2 in a little over 11 minutes, and Mario World in about 11 minutes. I have it down to a formula and a tee, and even tried doing it with my eyes closed with somewhat success.

4:58 !? You cracked the big 5 !?!?!

I even at one point thought I was the best at it. Until I heard about Twin Galaxies and Speed Demons Archive (reputable institutions who keep track of gaming feats of strength and records).

Turns out some guy named Andrew "The Greek Mystique" Gardikis beats these games many seconds faster than I can. Last year, The Greek Mystique even cracked the 5 minute mark in Mario 1 and beat it in 4:58. He's amazing, the way he handles the birds in 6-2 in Mario 2 for example is un-fucking-canny.

He's so good at Mario right now that he's akin to the Greek god Icarus who upon gaining his wings flew too close to the sun. No mortal man should crack the 5 minute mark in Mario 1 , Gardikis is truly flying too close to the sun at this point. You're playing with fire Gardikis! With fire!!!!

Truth be told, those games are really easy. People have made hacked versions of Mario games in recent years to increase the difficulty (Mario X, Super Talking Time Brothers, and countless INSANE Japanese ones). I like these games because they are nice and free. Here's two videos of examples to finish this article...

Wow I haven't seen this first video in a few years but looks like it's up to 25 million views now:

Hit da bloopa and inta da hole!

Kaizo Mario is really hard. I can't play it on a keyboard because you have to short hop (half press the jump button) too much, I'd have to buy a USB SNES controller to beat this and that means it wouldn't be free enough for me to play it.

Wait, one sec, hold up (edit)...

I mentioned I-Mock's Ivan Drago game that was removed by MGM pictures as being worthy of being known as both a "good and "free" game. Seems like you can still play that great game on Newgrounds though!

Ivan Drago Justice Enforcer !!!

On Tim Raines and the Hall of Fame (again)

2012-12-16T07:44:00.001-05:00

Last year prior to the Hall of Fame voting period, I wrote a piece about Rock Raines:

http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2011/12/baseball-hall-of-fame-is-incomplete.html

I just want to add another statistical analysis to that piece for the upcoming vote this year. I want to take the interesting statistics from the Montreal Expos 1985 season. In that year, the leadoff man (the "run scorer") of the '85 Expos, Timmy Raines put up these stats:

Should-be Hall of Famer Tim Raines

AVG: .320
OBP: .405
SLG: .475
R: 115
2B: 30
3B: 13
HR: 11
SB: 70
CS: 9

Okay, so those are Raines' impressive stats. Now let's state the "RBI Guys" stats of that year. Meaning, the 3-4-5 slot power hitters who are supposed to drive in runs.

Hubie Brooks: .269, 13 HR, 100 RBI (in 605 at bats)

Hawk Dawson: .255, 23 HR, 91 RBI (in 529 at bats)

Eli Wallach: .260, 22 HR, 81 RBI (in 569 at bats)

Now, those are not those players best years that's for sure. The most interesting stat out of these is Hubanoid Brook's 100 runs batted in while only hitting .269 and hitting 13 homers. How did he manage to crack 100 ribbies while hitting quite below average? Because of Raines.

Raines was on base 40.5% of the time he got to bat this season (hence the .405 OBP). Since he hit leadoff and further in the game after the pitcher he usually had the bases open for him (this also as mentioned in the last article as the reason why his own RBI stats are low due to hitting in this position). Raines not only reached base 40% of the time, but stole 70 bases (only caught 9 times), hit 30 two-baggers, 13 triples, and homered himself home 11 times. So, not only was Raines making it safely on to the bases 40% of the time, but he was in scoring position by his own means many (or most) of those times. He'd draw a walk and steal himself into scoring position (even steal second and third sometimes), or he'd hit a double or a triple and be in scoring position too. Basically, Raines was the easiest guy, due to his speed, for an RBI guy to drive home. In some cases they just had to ground out or hit a fly ball to the outfield and Raines would score from third or tag up from third with his speed to score a run. Yes, sometimes Hubie, Hawk, and Eli only had to make an out to drive Raines in and get credited with an RBI. That's how Hubie could have had a 100 RBI season while hitting only .260 and hitting only 13 homers, he was often making outs and getting RBIs out of it thanks to Rock.

Let's say Hubie, Hawk, and Eli were hitting their best that year, how many runs would Raines have theoretically scored if they were? I assume Raines was left stranded at second or third an unusual amount of times in this season. If these three were hitting at their best documented levels, it's not farfetched to say that Raines could have had 130, 140, or even 150 runs scored that season.

With the heart of the lineup putting up off seasons, he still managed to score 115 times in the 1985 season, which is amazing, really.

Years ago, sabrematrician Billy James thought up a cool stat called Win Shares, which tries to isolate the team's overall success to the actions made by individual players during that season. Here are the win share ranks for the 1985 Montreal Expos:

1. Tim Raines 36
2. Vance Law 24
3. Tim Wallach 23
4. Andre Dawson 16
5. Bryn Smith 16
6. Hubie Brooks 15
7. Tim Burke: 13
8. Jeff Reardon 13
9. Joe Hesketh 11
10. Gully, Webster, Danny Driessen 9

Despite Hubie's 100 RBIs (which is a stat hall of fame voters would fall in love over), Hubie only has 15 win shares. As was shown above, due to Raines' speed, Brooks was getting RBIs on outs and that factors in to the win share formula and is representable in the data. Meanwhile Rock is credited with 36 win shares a full 12 more the second place Vance Law. So, yeah, I dunno any other way to say it. My father coined a good term once, where when a hockey goalie wins a game for his team despite his team being outplayed by the other team. He used to say, "that goalie is standing and his head to win it!" and I think that's the term that would apply to Tim Raines' 1985 season with the Expos. He was literally standing on his head to get them victories.

(note: I am as surprised as you are that Vance Law was second in win shares in '85. Could be from Vance's magic underwears he and those other mormon guys wear)

And to close this article out, for good measure here is the historical Montreal Expos all time win shares:

1 Raines, Tim ,,,,, 268
2 Carter, Gary ,,,,, 239
3 Dawson, Andre ,,,,, 216
4 Tim Wallach ,,,,, 211
5 Rogers, Steve ,,,,, 182
6 Guerrero, Vladimir ,,,,, 166
7 Vidro, Jose ,,,,, 119
8 Martinez, Dennis ,,,,, 111
9 Bailey, Bob ,,,,, 110
10 Cromartie, Warren ,,,,, 106
11 Grissom, Marquis ,,,,, 103
,,, Walker, Larry ,,,,, 103
13 Fairly, Ron ,,,,, 94
14 Parrish, Larry ,,,,, 92
,,, Staub, Rusty ,,,,, 92
16 White, Rondell ,,,,, 91
17 Galarraga, Andres ,,,,, 90
18 Alou, Moises ,,,,, 89
,,, Cabrera, Orlando ,,,,, 89
20 Smith, Bryn ,,,,, 83
21 Lansing, Mike ,,,,, 82
22 Burke, Tim ,,,,, 79
,,, Valentine, Ellis ,,,,, 79
24 Speier, Chris ,,,,, 76
25 Vazquez, Javier ,,,,, 76
26 Deshields, Delino ,,,,, 74
27 Brooks, Hubie ,,,,, 73
28 Renko, Steve ,,,,, 72
29 Reardon, Jeff ,,,,, 71
30 Rojas, Mel ,,,,, 69
31 Hunt, Ron ,,,,, 67
32 Fassero, Jeff ,,,,, 65
,,, Martinez, Pedro ,,,,, 65
34 Gullickson, Bill ,,,,, 63
35 Jorgensen, Mike ,,,,, 62
,,, Singleton, Ken ,,,,, 62
37 Fryman, Woodie ,,,,, 61
,,, Webster, Mitch ,,,,, 61
39 Cordero, Wil ,,,,, 59
40 Marshall, Mike ,,,,, 58
,,, Wilkerson, Brad ,,,,, 58
42 Urbina, Ugueth ,,,,, 57
43 Schatzeder, Dan ,,,,, 56
44 Owen, Spike ,,,,, 53
45 Stoneman, Bill ,,,,, 52
46 Sanderson, Scott ,,,,, 51
47 Fitzgerald, Mike ,,,,, 50
48 Perez, Tony ,,,,, 49
49 Law, Vance ,,,,, 48
50 Lea, Charlie ,,,,, 47
51 Fletcher, Darrin ,,,,, 45
,,, Wetteland, John ,,,,, 45
53 Hermanson, Dustin ,,,,, 44
,,, McGaffigan, Andy ,,,,, 44
55 Foley, Tom ,,,,, 43
,,, Foli, Tim ,,,,, 43
,,, Grudzielanek, Mark ,,,,, 43
,,, Segui, David ,,,,, 43
59 Walker, Tom ,,,,, 42
60 Hernandez, Livan ,,,,, 41
,,, Martinez, Dave ,,,,, 41
,,, Schneider, Brian ,,,,, 41
63 Hill, Ken ,,,,, 40
,,, Oliver, Al ,,,,, 40
65 Santangelo, F.P. ,,,,, 37
66 Torrez, Mike ,,,,, 36
67 Berry, Sean ,,,,, 35
,,, Cash, Dave ,,,,, 35
,,, Rodriguez, Henry ,,,,, 35
70 Barrett, Michael ,,,,, 34
,,, Ohka, Tomo ,,,,, 34
,,, Scott, Rodney ,,,,, 34
73 Morton, Carl ,,,,, 33
,,, Murray, Dale ,,,,, 33
,,, Palmer, David ,,,,, 33
,,, Perez, Pascual ,,,,, 33
77 Armas, Tony ,,,,, 32
,,, Jones, Mack ,,,,, 32
79 Andrews, Shane ,,,,, 31
80 Foote, Barry ,,,,, 30
,,, White, Jerry ,,,,, 30
82 Nabholz, Chris ,,,,, 29
,,, Perez, Carlos ,,,,, 29
84 Stevens, Lee ,,,,, 28
85 Hesketh, Joe ,,,,, 27
,,, Sosa, Elias ,,,,, 27
,,, Taylor, Chuck ,,,,, 27
,,, Telford, Anthony ,,,,, 27
,,, Widger, Chris ,,,,, 27
,,, Youmans, Floyd ,,,,, 27
91 Calderon, Ivan ,,,,, 26
92 Day, Boots ,,,,, 25
93 Lee, Bill ,,,,, 25
94 Chavez, Endy ,,,,, 24
,,, Mangual, Pepe ,,,,, 24
96 Henry, Butch ,,,,, 23
,,, Stanhouse, Don ,,,,, 23
,,, Woods, Ron ,,,,, 23
99 Bateman, John ,,,,, 22
,,, Francona, Terry ,,,,, 22
,,, Fullmer, Brad ,,,,, 22
,,, Kline, Steve ,,,,, 22
,,, McAnally, Ernie ,,,,, 22
,,, Stewart, Scott ,,,,, 22

Yes, Raines was responsible for more Expos victories than any other player in Expos history according to Billy James' formula. It's nice to see Cro up there at number 10 too.

If Carter and Dawson are Hall of Famers, then Tim Raines is 100% worthy to be in with them. Because, hey, Raines was better than both of them. It's becoming a December tradition for me to write about Raines and the Hall of Fame, I hope this December traditional doesn't go on for 10 years...I hope he gets in soon.

Young Humans and the Art of Coping

2012-12-14T16:51:00.000-05:00

Coping means (as stated by the Wikipedia) "constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing" or "exceeding the resources of the person."

Coping is how you take all your troubles and worries, and deal with 'em. That's coping.

Every month there's a new story somewhere about some troubled asshole coward loser who can't cope with life and goes and kills people or themselves (or both). We then all collectively wonder how some fucked up maniac could do such a thing, and we wonder how we can prevent it in the future from happening again.

In terms of preventive measures, some point at measures like outlawing guns, some point to censoring violent video games. Those topics are well covered, but the one I think that is most important, in my opinion, to stop this from happening again is to teach kids the art of coping.

Whenever I see a story where some maniac like that loser in Connecticut has lost it and went on a shooting rampage, I have to wonder what could have possibly made this kid go over the edge. These kids aren't living in a famine-ridden third world country with no way out. They are always regular healthy looking rich enough kids, what was possibly so bad about their lives that they had to lose their fragile minds?

Whenever there are reasons provided behind the stories in all cases the reasons are absurd. Sometimes a kid shoots up his school over being unpopular, or because someone called him a name, or some pointless thing. People are going on shooting sprees for the smallest of first world problems.

There's stories about kids killing themselves because their parents took their X-box away, or a story about a kid who killed himself because he lost his Iphone, or a story about a lady killing herself because some Australians made a joke about the queen of England. People are killing themselves over the silliest of issues.

To me, it all seems to boil down to the ability to cope.

How to do Coping

This is all you have to do to cope, when problems arise, this is how you should mentally respond to them:

When someone calls you a mean name: "Who cares?"

When someone makes fun of you: "Who cares?"

When you lose your Iphone: "Who cares? Fuck that I-Phone. Steve Jobs was a shitstain anyway. What does that billionaire need my money for?"

When your parents take away your x-box: "Fuck X-Box. Bill Gates is a shitstain anyway. What does that billionaire need my money for?"

When someone pokes fun at Royals: "Hahaha, good one!"

There, that is how you cope. That's it. When these problems arise, you don't need to start terminating lives (either yourself or others)...you just need to cope a bit, that's all.

I Love Coping

I've been a mellow person my whole life, and the trick is hardcore coping. I actually personally don't care about anything...AND IT'S GREAT!

If you want my secrets to coping, well, I'll give them to you. Because it seems so many young people can't cope with even pointlessly meaningless problems. If you are a young human and you are reading this, please listen to these following three videos...they may save your life. They are mantras to play in your brain when worries take over.

Firstly, when I was six (young age) my parents showed me the movie Meatballs and it was real funny. There's a part in Meatballs where Mr. Bill Murray teaches young campers how to cope with shit:

The Mantra of "It Just Doesn't Matter" stuck in my young brain forever. "It" really doesn't matter at all. Whatever "It" is that is bothering you...Bill is right...it does not even matter. Are you worried about something? Some stupid thing? Well guess what....It Just Doesn't Matter, bro/sis. This is some of the truest shit anyone ever said, and I'm not even exaggerating...it really is. This shit is TRUE.

Nextly, when I became a greasy teenager-style human, I found some coping potential in this song sung by crooner Robert Wright,

Forget Your Life is pretty true too. What is it that you are worried about? It's Nothing. It not only just doesn't matter at all... but it's actually Nothing. Your worries and troubles are Nothing. It's similar to Just Doesn't Matter but thinking your troubles are Nothing is an even stronger dose of mental cognitive coping.

Finally here's the greateast song I ever heard, it is called "I Don't Care,"

Oh man, this song is so true it's not even funny...and there's only like 10 words in the song so it's really easy to turn into a Mantra that can play in your brain endlessly (I might even be playing this song 24 hours a day subconscoiously in the back of my brain for all I know). It's so simple man...but it's SO TRUE.

Lyrics by Joey Ramone:

I don't care
I don't care
I don't care
About this world
I don't care
About that girl
I don't care
I don't care
I don't care
About these words
I don't care

Conclusion

So, in closing, please youth...don't lose your shit over pointless fucking things anymore. When life is getting you down just cope a bit. Life is easy, it really is...there's never a point to buy guns and go do that sort of thing. Life is a pretty sweet fruit...when you don't care about shit.

Are People Readin' This?

2012-12-08T05:02:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, the stats and google analytic data make me think people are actually readin' this garbage.

People search for "oil sands pros and cons" and hit this. They never comment, so I assume it is not interesting enough data to peruse fully. Do they just hit it and quit? I dunno. Maybe not, because the "behavior" tab in the google analytics says some folks even spend over 40 minutes reading the horrible garbage in this "blog".

For the old Human Record, I've written twice (or 2.5 if you count the feigned kookery one) on this subject:

First Thing on Oil Sands: http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2011/05/canadian-election-super-power-rankings.html

Second Thing on Oil Sands: http://writtting-d.blogspot.ca/2012/02/pros-and-cons-of-canadas-crude-oil.html

Are those google stats true? Are people hitting "oil sands pros and cons" and spending 40+ minutes reading about the crap I write? Can that possibly be true? Is there something to be gained from my fragmented and bad opinions?

When I re-read what I wrote in those two Oil Sands articles, I felt bad for calling Pierre Elliot Trudeau a "jabroni" and other bad names.

So, in the obtuse case (probably 1,000,000,000 to 1) that the people who I think are actually reading what I write (i.e. people with vested interest in which applies to the oil sands) are actually reading this, there's only one more tidbit of information I'd like to add to the "oil sands" debate and it's one that has always stuck out like a thorn in my side when saw it I thought about it.

It's from a page in Buckminster Fuller's book, Critical Path, in which he mentions both Pierre Elliot Trudeau and Energy. I'd like to bring up this piece of information because it is actually interesting and makes me feel bad for calling Trudeau a "jabroni",

"In the early years of Trudeau's premiereship of Canada, when he was about to make his first visit to Russia, I gave him my world energy network plan, which he presented to Brezhnev, who turned it over to his experts. On his return to Canada, Trudeau reported to me that the experts had come back to Brezhnev with: 'feasible...desirable.' "

- Buck Fuller, Critical Path, (Intro:p.xxxi)

Was Trudeau's vision of a National Energy Program something bigger? Something not corrupt? Something even inspired by Buck Fuller?

Arris Dome, circa 1967

Buck Fuller laid out an Ultra-High-Voltage Dymaxion Sky-Ocean World Map which showed how easy it would be to connect the ENTIRE WORLD to a hydro-electric power grid. (mainly running across Sea-People costal junctures and a few inland nations). The whole world could efficiently be connected together on one highly efficient and low-polluting power grid.

(Note: Buck Fuller's main connection to Montreal/Quebec/Canada is the pretty cool biosphere or dymaxion-involuted-cross-cut-non-flat-plane-series-of-right-angles Bioshpere which is really cool looking)

When you look at the troubles of energy in Canada and the world, and at the danger of reliance on fossil fuels, was the National Energy Program really a scam or was it an earnest attempt to get people to work together? I don't know, all I know is that paragraph from Crtitical Path is pretty interesting.

Maybe P.E. Trudeau wasn't a big-time Jabroni after all (possibly just a small-time jabroni).

Edge-Joo-Mah-Cay-Shun

2012-11-06T03:56:00.000-05:00

I wrote an article on a kooky guy named N.D. Sickels once (here). I found the old man's writing to be very honest (though pretty crazy). Due to it's quaintness and honesty, his book written in 1919 called "The Universal Panacea" has remained relevant to modern kook researchers.

Another equally quaint and honest manuscript by a bored old man, back in 1990, which has remained relevant for many years now is the one by Ernest "Free" Mann. He shares many things in common with Sickels (utopian, honesty, quaint) but Mann is less crazy than Sickels (yet he's also a far more boring writer than Sickels). Mann was an old retired guy with a lot of time on his hands, who sat down and wrote his thoughts on life and then offered it free of charge as a newsletter through the mail (this was pre-internet of course).

Mann's Manuscript, Free I Got: http://mountholly-lamano.com/freeigot.htm

It's very long and you'll notice right off the bat, it's very utopian and unrealistic. In fact, respected kook researcher Ivan Stang assesses Mann's manuscript in his work High Weirdness by Mail as follows,

Definitely the most idealistic, and arguably the most naive set of pamphlets in our Archives. The author's plan for total world utopia involves, simply, everyone working for nothing; all competition would be abolished. Work without pay - is that too much to ask? It's a pathetic halfway measure, though. We'd still be working. Otherwise, it might be a great idea...on some other planet, using some other race besides humans. [The price of the newsletter is] Free, of course.

-Stang, I. "High Weirdness by Mail", p.159

Ernest Mann tried to push a platform called the "Priceless Economic System" (or PES) in his newsletter and manuscript. This platform involved everyone doing what they felt like doing and work was done by people offering certain skills they had into a "skill pool" which would be shared by everyone.

I like to read these types of things because I like to synthesize many many different opinions on subjects before I develop my own opinion on them. Kook writings are great because you have a good chance of finding a view point that you haven't seen before, which may refine your opinion a bit more. Even if you conclude that everything they said in the article was wrong/bad/crazy at least you've hit another opinion vein. Even disproving an opinion on a subject is still refining your own opinion, it's not lost time.

The other great thing about kook writings, is the rare time, when something they said turns out to probably be right. In a manuscript this long, where probably a few thousand opinions have been released, it's rare that not one of them would be right.

Education

The following are excerpts from "Free I Got" and other writings in Ernie's "Little Free Mann Press,"

Have you ever wanted to learn something new? Like a new trade or profession? Then looked into the cost and time it would take to go to college? One can learn at the library through books, but most books are so vague that one must get more books to understand the first book. This way they make more money from books and classes.

When I bought my computer in about 1987, I also bought "Microsoft Word" one of the best word processor software packages. The 3" thick manuals that explained how to use the word processor, sometimes had such vague explanations that it was nearly impossible for a beginner to understand. Of course they had classes one could buy. Microsoft also sold a book that they wrote, explaining their manuals. No! They didn't include that book with the software! How do you suppose the Microsoft owner (Gates) got to be a billionaire in his thirties. Not by helping people, but by charging all the traffic would bear! This is just one of the tricks that people must play to get ahead in the Profit/Wage Economics Game. It is not bad people, just a bad Game.

I didn't buy their "extra" book and I didn't take their classes. The self teaching was really fun. It felt so good to re-discover the thrill of learning. There was agony too, but the thrills out-weighed them, so I succeeded.

What I'm trying to get at is, -- now we have a great new technology with computers for self-teaching. There is self-teaching software already, but the good stuff is very expensive.

When we start using the Priceless Economic System, my guess is that children and adults will prefer to learn at their own speeds and will mostly do it with computers at home. I bet it won't be too long before we have networks within our homes. Like each family member will have his/her own keyboard and monitor in their room and the power unit and printer will be in a central location in the home. I suppose the more affluent families already have this. We won't even have to go to the library to get the software. We already have modems that can copy the software from the library over the phone in minutes on to our own hard disks or floppy disks to keep in our home libraries. This sharing wouldn't cost the libraries anything. But you can see how the Profit/Wage Economic System (PWES) would object. (pronounced, pee wee's)

The only thing that is keeping this from happening is the PWES. Think of the Profit land speculators and industrialists make selling land and construction materials to the government to build school and college buildings, to fill them with furniture and fixtures, to sell them heat, air conditioning and light and to supply them with maintenance items. Think of the Profit the publishing industry makes on all the books. Student housing, clothing and busing industries get in on the bonanza too.

Even now, without the use of computers, parents who home-school their children, side-step the above expenses and some do it in less than two hours per day. Their children are able to pass the same tests as the kids who must spend their whole day in school plus have 2 hours of home-work. Tell me, which looks like the most sensible route to Progress?

-Ernest "Free" Mann, Free I Got, (1990)

For 1990, this is pretty good reasoning. Fast forward 22 years to 2012 and it looks like his prediction came true.

Is the university system a big scam? I think I agree with Ernest on this one. Are people now a days starting to learn at their own pace on the internet? Yeah.

I can't tell you how many times I've searched for how to do something and then learned how to do it from a video on the internet. A video that I watched for free, one that someone uploaded to the net simply to teach someone else how to do something. It seems people all over the world are putting up videos, writing manuals, and instructions on how to learn new things for free.

Wait a sec...

Is this the "skill pool" he was predicting? Was he right about that too? Why is everyone teaching everyone else how to do things for free?

Here's an example of the millions of "How-To" videos on the net right now:

The Precious KHAAAAN! Learning System

Okay, maybe how to tie a tie is not the coolest example of the learnable skills in the vast and deep skill pool of the internet.

This website, which probably everyone knows by now, Khaaaaan! Academy Dot Org (or http://www.khanacademy.org/) is a better example. Khan Academy is basically a High School diploma for anyone who wants one. Heck, it's even a college diploma for anyone who wants one. Who am I kidding, it's a university degree for anyone who wants one. Well, not really...you can't put Khan leaves on a resume so no one's going to believe you're smart even though you are.

It was started by a nice guy named Sal Khan who worked as a hedge fund analyst in the Profit/Wage Economic System (sorry, I'm still stuck in Ernie Mann viewpoint shock after re-reading Free I Got) who got sick of the bullshit, ditched the PeeWees, and started contributing merit to the Priceless Economic System.

Why did Khan ditch the world of sheisters and scammers, to devote his life to free education?

Khan

According to him,

"With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an unlimited amount of people for all time. I can't imagine a better use of my time."

-Sal Kahn

Time

That word, "time", comes up about a hundred thousand times in Ernest Mann's manuscript. As an old man putting his thoughts to paper, Ernie must have had time on the brain. Maybe as he was aging and starting to understand his time was in its waning years...maybe he started thinking about what actual contributions and merits he made to human history during his time being part of it,

"Knowing I'm 63 years old and counting. Even though I'm trying for 165 years, time is still precious. Realizing I have only "X" number of years left and starting right now to use them (this moments) for my own pleasure and happiness. "

-Ernest Mann

Similar to Khan, Ernest Mann was successful in the business world. He worked in the real estate business in Minnesota before getting sick of the rat race and dropping out of it at the age of 42.

In retrospect, maybe his ideas weren't as crazy as once was thought. Is scamming and squeezing more money from someone else for someone else really the best use of your time? Money which is just a human construct that doesn't even really exist? Probably not.

Are sites like Khan Academy proof that Mann's idea of a universal "Skill Pool" or his "Priceless Economic System" may actually hold some water? Possibly, at least it's interesting to think about anyway.

Conclusion

Sometimes observing subjects from a different perspective is fun. You can form your own conclusions on matters and maybe even alter your belief systems slightly.

"Since then [Mann] has had the time and space to observe economics from a different perspective and has had 21 years to travel to many countries; read, observe, discuss, think, evaluate and form his own conclusions about the economic situation, politics, religion, life and individual freedom. Now his belief systems are far different than they were when he was busily engaged in trying to keep his bills paid."

-Free I Got

Why Hasn't John Wetteland ever Wrote a Book?

2012-10-26T05:46:00.000-04:00

I've been a fairly large fan of the game of baseball since I was little, and I've gathered a lot of information on the sport over the years.

I've also been a fairly large fan of kooks over the years, and have gathered a large amount of information on that subject as well

Sometimes it's nice when both topics collide and synthesize together, then I can read one book or article and gather information on both baseball and human kookery at the same time.

The Story of Baseball

I look at baseball as just one long story. One long history. The weird thing about it is that the records, annals, statistics, and data recorded on this story are probably more immense and accurate than any other historical collection on earth, which makes it a pretty accurate story (unlike the rest of history subjects). It's an interesting collection of data dating back to the 18th century and this story has a total of 17,786 characters in it, which is a lot to keep track of.

Guan Yuncheng

One of the first stories I encountered which had an abundance of characters (more so than I was used to) was Luo Guanzhong's Three Kingdoms story which was written in the 14th century. It's still popular to this day, many may be familiar with John Woo's Red Cliffs film which is based on this work, or the dozens of video games based off it by Koei. Most Chinese historians will agree that the names recorded in this novel have stood the test of time (Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Sun Jian, Guan Yuncheng, Zhang Fei, etc.).

Guanzhong's story had 978 characters in its 4 volumes...and I must say, it seemed excessive at the time. Yet, compared to the Story of Baseball, 978 doesn't seem like many characters at all. The Story of Baseball has roughly 18 times more characters involved in it than Three Kingdoms.

Each and every one of these characters has a backstory. Each and every player who has been involved in the game was an individual human person with their own unique contribution to the story. Thousands of them have died now and are just memories but at least some facet of their contribution to the Story of Baseball will stand the test of time.

Burt Lancaster

For example, many of you have probably seen the film Field of Dreams (starring James Earl Jones and Kevin Costner). In this film Jones and Costner attempt to track down a man by the name of Archibald "Moonlight" Graham (portrayed by Burt Lancaster) who played only one game in his entire major league career and didn't even get to bat. Jones and Costner want to bring him to their field of dreams and give him a chance to step up to plate.

Archibald "Moonlight" Graham was indeed a real man, who in real life, did indeed make it into one game in 1922 for the New York Giants when he was sent in to replace George Brown in right field for one inning. Like the movie suggests, he did indeed go on to be a doctor after his brief stint as a contributor to the Story of Baseball.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight_Graham)

Graham is just one of the 17,786 characters involved, and though he just stood in right field and did nothing for 5 minutes, his name has stood the test of time.

Books

Pitcher Jim Bouton and his 1969 book Ball Four seems to be the likely culprit that lead to a domino effect of every ex-player writing his memoirs and sending it off to the printing press. After players set the ball in motion, soon after it was coaches (Lasorda), then umpires (Luciano), and anyone even briefly associated with baseball wanted to contribute their opinions and memories of their time being associated with it.

Now we don't just have stats, records, dates, and other stuffy facts but we have opinions, thoughts, regrets, observations, and other empirical data. We basically have a big Talmud of baseball writings containing everyone's associated personal interpretation of it. It's kind of interesting, I guess.

I've read some bad books, ok ones, good ones, and some really really good ones over the years. For instance Dick Allen's "Crash" is very good, Dock Ellis' book "Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball" is great, Bill Lee's "The Wrong Stuff" is top notch, Warren Cromartie's "Slugging it Out in Japan" is very interesting, Curt Flood's "The Way It Is" also is very interesting. Oh and No Big Deal by Bird Fidrych is real good too.

I think what makes a book written by an old baseball player good is when they are a bit eccentric and fun. I was thinking about which guys should write books before they die (in order to contribute their opinions to the Baseball Talmud). I'm sure Darrell Evans probably has some funky shit to say, seeing as he has claimed some fucked up stuff over the years. Evans hit over 40 homeruns in two seasons, once in 1973 and again 13 years later in 1985. What rejuvenated his swing to make him belt 40 homers again at the age of 38? According to him, aliens came down to earth and shared with him, and his wife, the secrets of life. I can see him having some interesting things to write about.

It's a boring dimension...

Then there's Darren Daulton, who claims to have seen the 5th Dimension of space-time while lining a ball down the third base line back in 1993, and who claimed to have traveled to the 4th Dimension on several occasions, has just put out a book. It's called If They Only Knew, and I don't think I want to read it because I think his kookiness is just a shtick to sell the book. I don't think he is a genuine kook at all and I'm sure he's just in it for the money. Darren Daulton is a bozo. Besides, everyone knows the 5th Dimension is just a bunch of boring old intersecting fucking tesseracts anyway.

What About John Wetteland?

This guy was a good pitcher.

You know, honestly, one dude who should just sit down one day and knock out a book or two is that guy John Wetteland.

I saw John Wetteland pitch for the Expos at Olympic Stadium when I was a ten year old kid. He used to come out of the bullpen and walk over to the mound while Wild Thing played in the background. He'd come into the game to shut it the fuck down and preserve the lead that the other players took eight innings to create and hold. The man threw 100+ mile an hour fastballs, sliders, and curveballs. His arm was a highly potent and highly efficient strikeout tool.

I watched him again as a thirteen year old kid on T.V., when he joined Tim Raines on the 1996 Yankees and was the MVP in the World Series that year.

Any data or backstory on Wetteland is kind of odd. Any article written about him, or any interview with him, is equally odd. I don't mean it in a bad way though, I mean it, like in way like, that this guy probably thinks about a lot of stuff, you know?

He's absolutely right in what he says around 3:20 in that video. I mean, John could just tell a kid what he did, but maybe if said kid stepped off the mound and stated "chicken salad sandwich" then the advice wouldn't work out for him. It sounds strange at first but John is trying to explain the chaos theory and the effect that tiny minute micro-cosmic actions can lead to a chain of reactive effects that can alter outcomes of future situations...

Chaos Theory:

"Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general.^[1] This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.^[2] In other words, the deterministic nature of these systems does not make them predictable.^[3]^[4] This behavior is known as deterministic chaos, or simply chaos."

(From Wikipedia)

He seems pretty honest and down to earth in his interviews. In any interview, John seems to be able to get off topic and onto some pretty cool tangents. Here's an excerpt from an interview by Baseball Prospectus where he gets to talking about not believing all information you hear,

"Even in science. Just because somebody has PhD next to his name, I don’t just sit there and nod my head. That’s one of the things I hate, and one of the things that really disappoints me about us as a society. We seem to be so spoon fed. “Spoon feed me the information and I’ll nod my head and go on about my day”—disseminate it without even thinking about it. The Big Bang Theory. How come particles exceed the speed of light in the amount of time that they do? Now, you have to take half, because it comes from a single point; it can’t go one end to the other. It’s relative, so you take half. But it still exceeds the speed of light. We all know that. There’s a convenient explanation, but it doesn’t tell me anything.

I want to know, you know. Even the questions I know that I’ll never answer. That’s why I love Michio Kaku. He has this book that I read about things we thought that we would never do, like go to the moon, fly in an airplane, and yet we did, mostly over the last 100 years. What’s in store for the next 50 years that isn’t a part of our reality now? I mean, who would have thought 20 years ago that ion engines are something we’d be using now? And that’s really cool to think about, because we need alternate sources of fuel. You can’t do solids if we’re going to do any real traveling up there. The problem is that you have one hydrogen atom per 10 square feet of outer space. So there are all kinds of things. Garrett Olson and I were just talking about that. We spent about three innings, me, him, and Brian Sweeney.

-John Karl Wetteland

I think the question asked by the reporter was about the difficulty of changing from a starter to a reliever early in his career, but I don't think it mattered what the question was, because either way, J.K. Wetteland was going to unload a narrative of human mental restlessness that was cooking up in his noodle all day. I know, 100%, that this is not a shtick. He's just an honest guy who thinks about the future. Wetteland is just contemplating the inherent roadblocks associated with light-speed space travel. Oh, like you haven't?

Here's John responding to question about the homerun Edgar Martinez hit off of him back in 1995,

"That was a watershed moment for me," he said of Martinez's grand slam. "I detested failure and all of 1996, I pitched with the memory of my failure in '95. From then on I understood how to process certain things because I kind of went through the fire. You get refined. I'm the kind of guy who likes to kick my own rear end."

"I remember this was before [John] Elway won his Super Bowls and I was thinking, 'Am I going to be another Elway and be great in the regular season, but just can't get it done in the postseason?' " Wetteland asked himself. "So I decided in '96, that I don't care if I throw the ball 30 feet up the screen, I'm just going to let it go."

- J.K. Wetteland (source)

Such poetic language. Why doesn't he just sit down and write a few books? What does he have to lose? They'd probably sell millions of copies. Might as well keep going with some more quotes while we're at it,

"I was always a little different, I'd go to the library, read up on tepees, build one in the front yard and sleep there." (source)

"I’m the black sheep. Everyone else is doctors or presidents of marketing for big companies and all this stuff and I’m just a baseball player." (source)

"There’s so much more going on in this world. Sports is not an escape for me. OK? And I think therein lies the difference. For many people it is. It’s the Roman Colosseum all over again. And that’s OK. It’s awesome. It’s healthy, cathartic. It’s not that for me. It’s something I need to execute. There’s a whole different perspective I have and that’s why maybe I can’t enjoy it the same way. I only watch baseball to learn from it, not to enjoy it." (source)

"I understand sequencing and all that sort of stuff..." (source)

"It’s the small things that count, the tiny tiny things.Wade Boggs ate chicken at the same time every day. Do you think that eating chicken really made him a 330 plus hitter? It’s the fact he did it always at a particular time and after that he was “Everything’s OK.” For me it was getting to the park and doing all the crosswords. That was my transition from my home life. Now I exercised my brain at something that was neither here nor there. Now I could get into my work..." (source)

This next quote needs a bit of setup first. John liked to write quatrains and couplets of poetry on the lockers at Dodger Stadium as a 22 year old rookie. This is a sample of some of J.K. Wetteland's early free-style writing,

          INVISIBLE COWS CONTROL MY DESTINY.
          COSMIC WARLORDS MAINTAIN MY SOUL.
          THE ROOM SMELLS OF BURNT PLAID.
          I AM SERVING DOUGHNUTS ON ANOTHER PLANET. (source)

Conclusion

If there's one of the 17,786 characters in the Story of Baseball who needs to contribute a full length book to the repository (or reliquary) of data which compromises the Baseball Talmud...it looks like its John Wetteland. I guarantee anything he writes is going to pretty interesting.

A Suggested title for the book..."John Wetteland in the Chaotic Cosmic Universe of Baseball"

Wiiiiiiild Thing!