Some favorite blog posts

I am letting my lunch settle prior to driving to McNaughton to get a loop (ok, easy hiking, but I can do that once in a while).
Yeah, I like “da Bears”, but it is too pretty to stay inside; the weather will be bad soon enough.

Football: On Notre Dame’s woes and the upcoming game against Michigan.

The Irish lost 31-10 here Saturday night, which had less to do with Penn State looking like a good team than Notre Dame being an almost incomprehensibly awful one.

A true top-25 team would have beaten Notre Dame 222-0. Penn State was, for most of the game, lousy – turnovers, bad play calling, terrible execution. Notre Dame was just worse.

The 110,078 white-clad fans here whooped it up plenty. And they should. Hey, it’s still fun beating the Irish, even if they couldn’t rush a fraternity. But the fact this was a 17-10 game deep in the third quarter before an understandably worn-out Notre Dame defense faded fast doesn’t bode well for the season. Of course, Penn State is in the sagging Big Ten.

In this one, the Lions had the luxury of playing with no sense of urgency. Notre Dame’s offense isn’t so much weak as just nonexistent. It’s like boxing a man with no arms – even if you have trouble swatting flies, you like your chances eventually. [...]

Notre Dame scored 10 points. One was an interception return for a touchdown. The other was when Tom Zbikowski returned a punt to the Penn State 7. When he stepped out of bounds so close to the end zone you could see his frustration because deep down he knew there was no way, no how Notre Dame could score a touchdown, even sitting first and goal.

And they didn’t, kicking on fourth and 5.

The Irish offense hasn’t scored a touchdown all season. You’d call that its most embarrassing shutout except that Notre Dame didn’t manage a single net yard rushing in this game.

And you’d call that the Irish offense’s worst stat, but it actually is an improvement over last week, when Notre Dame rushed for minus-8 yards against Georgia Tech. [...]

Two of the biggest names of all time (if not the biggest) meet next week in what for decades has been a great rivalry with national implications. Instead we’ll find out who’s better, Michigan’s collapsing program or Notre Dame’s down in the dumps one?

In ESPN’s “Bottom 10″ rankings last week the Wolverines and Irish were labeled the fifth- and 10th-worst teams.

It turns out they were overrated.

Oh my. I can’t say that I disagree, though I can say that I’ve seen an offense with a new quarterback look terrible, only to become powerful when that quarterback got experience.

Way back in the early 1980’s, I saw John Elway play his second pro game ever against the then Baltimore Colts. Elway was HORRIBLE. Needless to say, he didn’t stay that way; he just had to learn and take his lumps.

On other matters:

Peoria Pundit weighs in on the Democratic chances of winning in Il-18 (Ray LaHood’s old seat). He interviews Bill Edley on the telephone.

[...]When people vote their prejudices, they are going to get their pockets picked,” Edley said. That’s how politicians operate. Thirty years of this kind of Ronald-Reagan, unfair, laissez-fare, economics has not worked for the majority of the people.”

Because of this, working families must cope with stagnant wages and a lack of health insurance if their employer doesn’t provide it, he said.

“Where would we be today if we hadn’t approved Medicare back in 1965?” Edley asked. “That was supposed to be a down payment for a similar system for everybody.”

Instead, the nation had to pay for fighting the war in Vietnam and then pushed any thought of universal health care aside.

“[What we have now] is unsustainable. But there are very strong interest groups — the insurance companies and some medical groups — who oppose any kind of universal health care.”

When Edley first won election in the very Republican 95th District, his opponent had emerged the victor of a hard-fought primary campaign during which there were lingering resentments among voters that worked to his advantage. He was able to devote his energies toward raising campaign funds and building contacts within the party and with voters.

“The only way to win this is if you sneak up on them … in a ‘Rocky Balboa’ sort of way.”

Right now, there are three people seeking the GOP nomination: State Rep. Aaron Schock, former city council member John Morris and Heartland Partnership CEO Jim McConoughey. Edley believes that the GOP primary would have with even more hurt feelings among party members had Darin LaHood, son of incumbent Ray LaHood, decided to seek that nomination instead of run for Peoria County state’s attorney.

I mentioned to Edley that there seems to be a lot of people who consider Schock the eventual nominee (which is NOT my opinion, by the way).

“He’s 26 years old. He’s a young man in a hurry and they tend to make mistakes. When you go to Congress, you want a higher level of judgment and experience.”

Edley insists he would be happy to remain out of the race is there’s another credible Democratic candidate. He says he would have backed Peoria Judge Richard Grawey had he decided to run. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t consider Dick Versace viable.

“I don’t know too much about him” Edley says. “As Ray LaHood knows, representing 20 rural counties … this is a grueling district. You can easily put 50-70,000 miles on your car just driving that. I don’t think a guy like Versace really understands that.” [...]

Good book on war and what it does to soldiers Rude Clerk links to a review of the book The War I Always Wanted by Brandon Friedman.

Later an experienced Friedman writes

I had always wanted to fight. But I never wanted any part of something like this. I was a professional soldier. I wanted to believe in my work. Instead, I was watching as politician no military experience hijacked the Army. I was a public servant, not a lackey. Lying on my cot, I came to the point that many people reach in a situation where they stop what they’re doing and say, “Wait a second. This is bullshit. This isn’t right.” Two guys in our battalion were dead, two families ruined. And try as I might, I couldn’t figure out what the purpose of that was.

During the time after the attack we moped. I had always thought that when a soldier from my unit died in combat it would come with a sense of inevitability-a sense that kind of thing was supposed to happen. Being an infantryman, I thought it would be not only normal, but also easy to deal with. I had seen too many fucking movies.

Friedman’s book continues to haunt me. Nearly all of us see too many movies. I can’t relate to a romantic notion of war, but I do know plenty of women who have what could be called an addiction to romance novels and movies. They seem to think that life has shortchanged them somehow because their own lives don’t reflect the media in which they immerse themselves.

Bad Customer Service? I’ve talked about this before; it is a sign of the times. When people go by the price alone, it simply doesn’t pay to provide good customer service. Smirking Chimp weighs in:

People who spend endless hours on the phone with companies like Sprint are well aware that they’re receiving terrible customer service. Unless they have a business background themselves, however, they probably don’t realize how often bad service is part of a company’s business model. Too often, corporations look at the cost of providing a quality customer experience and make the conscious decision to save money instead. They do it because they know that the public doesn’t understand its choices – or doesn’t have any.

Take my experience with Sprint this week. I had to call their customer service department three times over a 48-hour period to correct problems of their making. (Two calls involved a problem with their website and email system, and the third involved a company billing error.) My wait times for these calls were eleven minutes, thirteen minutes, and thirty-six minutes, respectively.

That doesn’t count the time spent actually resolving the problems. One service rep even insisted I wait on the phone with her for several minutes after we were done. She said there was a “rule” I had to remain on the line while their computer updates its records. [...]

This is where government can actually foster competition and free enterprise, rather than stifle it. When near-oligopolic conditions exist, new entrants aren’t able to come in and offer a better product – in this case, a phone carrier with decent customer service. Today’s giants give generously to both political parties to ensure there’s no real change.

That’s why I like to make the distinction between politics that’s “pro-business” and politics that’s “pro-big-business.” Today, Washington is dominated by the latter. By flouting market laws that demand decent service, however, companies like Sprint are increasing the risk of a political backlash.

[...]

Part of the seminar included – inevitably – training in how to “think outside the box.” They offered several examples of what they considered impressive out-of-the-box thinking. One was the telephone company that added heavy weights to the handsets in their phone booths, so that customers would grow uncomfortable and end their calls quickly – without ever consciously realizing why. The result was that this utility’s customers were getting less for their 25 cents than they had before.

Brilliant! said our trainers.

Another example given was Gillette. By now, Gillette is famous for selling its razors at a low price, but charging exorbitantly for the cartridges. (Hewlett-Packard does the same thing with its printers.) Brilliant! said the trainers.

Evolution: the wingnuts have won a victory of sorts; some people are afraid to even mention the term in a class or in a paper, even when it is appropriate to do so.

Here is a snippet from Millard Fillmore’s reproduction of Scott Laynon’s article:

These exotic and invasive species are just the beginning as global travel and our increasingly global economy redistribute the biological diversity of the planet. News of the arrival of VHSv was disturbing enough, but my scientist’s ear also tuned into something else as I listened to a radio report about this new threat. I was intrigued to hear that the Wisconsin DNR hopes that native fish will “develop” resistance to this virus. What exactly does that mean? Are officials hoping that individual fish will become resistant as they age? No, what they hope is that the fish population evolves resistance over time as natural selection acts on the variation in individual susceptibility to this virus.

Rather than using the accurate word evolution the report used the imprecise word develop because of a condition, rampant in the United States, that I call EAS (evolution avoidance syndrome). EAS may in some cases be attributed to a lack of scientific literacy but more likely is linked to a fear of controversy—and the attendant hope that if we don’t use the word evolution, we won’t have to acknowledge that evolution, and knowledge of evolution, is critically important to modern society. EAS is but one symptom of an anti-intellectualism that seems to be spreading in American culture.

Speaking of scientific illiteracy, check out this funny post from Scientia Natura. It has to do with lizard reproduction and the role of the male.

Illinois Valley Striders Half Marathon

This post will be a post about the race only; I’ll save my social/political posts for the next one.

I worked the Illinois Valley Striders Half Marthon today. The race took place in the hilly Springdale Cemetery at the foot of Glen Oak Park.

Some random thoughts and observations:

Here is a rouges gallery taken before the race. Jim Henkins, Larry Jeffries, Jim McEntyre and Steve Foster. Steve has had a rough 10 months; he is fighting inoperable pancreatic cancer (diagnosed last November). Chemotherapy has kept the tumor from growing any more than it had, but it is still large enough to cause physical pain.

To think that a year ago, he was doing these. Larry and Jim are triathletes; Jim has an Ironman distance triathlon coming up next weekend hence he was doing the relay.

Bob Corbett and Fran Garcia before the race.

Paul Kelley (ultramarathon runner) around mile 1.

One of the faster runners (second or third place) about half way into it.

One of the faster women runners.

A pack moves past the tombstones.

These ladies are happy because they have only 1.2 miles to go and are heading downhill.

This is the hill that they are running down; this is a relay runner (two person teams) heading down that hill.

I have a few more photos here; some aren’t that good.

New Computer

We got a new computer yesterday and I spent the afternoon trying to get stuff in order. Of course there were plug-ins to load, software to set up, and of course I forgot to refresh my modem when I attached it to the new machine.

And, for a while, this browser wouldn’t connect to photobucket; it turns out that I had to restart the computer. It was something about the browser using a bad IP number to access photobucket on the first try.

A few minutes later this morning, I am going to go out to help with the Illinois Valley Striders Half Marathon and perhaps get a few photos and then a few miles on my own.

Football I saw much of the Notre Dame-Penn State game. Notre Dame’s defense and special teams kept them in it for 3 quarters, but then the defense wore down as the offense did absolutely nothing. Ah, the growing pains of a young quarterback against a good defense, right? Yes, that was most of it, but the running game should have been better. Penn State won 31-10, and was clearly the much better team.

I did see the end of the Wake Forrest-Nebraska shoot-out. Here is what I liked: when Nebraska was protecting their 20-17 lead in the last couple of minutes, they didn’t go into that stupid prevent defense; instead they kept heavy pressure on the quarterback and even blitzed.

Other notes: Ty Willingham’s Washington Huskie team stated 2-0 with a big win over Syracuse last weekend and a strong win against Boise State this weekend. I’ll bet that he feels good about that! Texas rallied from a 10-0 third quarter deficit to beat TCU 34-10.

As far as Michigan: they got blown out at home 39-7. But they play Notre Dame next weekend; SOMEONE will have to win that game! Who would have thought that a Michigan-Notre Dame match up would feature not only two 0-2 teams, but teams which have been outscored 73-39 and 64-13?

But it happens. Hey, it isn’t as if I’ve been excelling at sports this year!