My addition of an Amazon tip jar to the sidebar is purely coincidental to the Fund a New Computer for Atrios Drive. Just in case anyone’s wondering.
Today, I’m going to ruin someone’s life!
One fact of life that constantly amazes is how small-minded people end up in law enforcement, security, and other professions that vest them with authority that they really don’t deserve. I’m sure we’ve all run into the cop who has nothing better to do than pull people over for a rolling stop at a rural intersection late at night when there are no other cars about, security guards who think it’s their duty to interfere with shoppers at the mall, and so on.
What scares me now is that these kinds of people, who end up in these professions out of some latent need to wield power over other people, are now ending up in Homeland Security, where they can take their frustrations in life out on “all them foreigners”.
(Link via Scott at The Gamer’s Nook.)
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Ch-ch-ch-changes
I’ve finally made some extensive updates to the stuff in the sidebar: a few blogs have been added to the permanent blogroll (Other Journeys), new ones are under the rotating collection (The Common Room), new permanent links are up for other sites (Other Shores), and finally I added links to my reviews appearing on GMR and my one review at DAM (Writings Elsewhere). With all that, plus my handy “Google Search” function, I can’t imagine why everyone doesn’t just set Byzantium’s Shores as their homepage.
Or something like that.
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Score One for the next generation!!
Wow.
Apparently a number of Movable Type blogs were attacked over the weekend by some kind of bot that filled their comments sections with links to porn. This is, of course, one of those “beyond the pale” things…but I really have to admit that as someone who’s still using Blogger and BlogSpot and YACCS, all free services with the occasional hiccups in service that come with being free, I find the whole thing just a tiny bit funny. As long as it’s quashed and doesn’t start happening again.
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Yet More Lazy Linkage
Stealing stuff from MeFi is always fun, so….
:: Think you know your rock album covers? Well, take the test. They give the cover art, stripped of identifying marks and words. (MeFi Link)
:: A discussion thread about Mormonism, the way other Christian denominations view it, the way Mormons view themselves, and more. There’s even a link, embedded in the discussion, to a picture of the Mormon’s sacred undergarments, if you’ve ever been curious about what they look like. (If you’ve ever seen a movie set in the American West in which a woman appears in her undergarments, you’ve pretty much got it.) The discussion thread here is contentious, as any religion discussion might be expected, but at the same time it’s not quite as contentious as I’d expected.
Mormons, in my experience, tend to be genuinely mystified by the degree to which others dislike their religion. To me, it’s a combination of three factors. First, the whole idea that there is an entire section of Jesus’s life that no one knew about until 170 years ago or so is bound to upset people. Then, of course, there’s the whole polygamy thing. Finally there is the vague air of secrecy that the Mormons seem to perpetuate, what with temples that the non-Mormon can’t enter, stuff like the sacred undergarments, and so on. (That last factor also seems to apply, in my mind, to explaining some of the historical antipathy faced by Catholics.)
:: Quotes from science-fiction writers on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political ascendancy. I think some of these folks are a bit too dismissive, really. (But then, I don’t think the California voters were dismissive enough, so it’s pretty much of a wash.)
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Oooooh, destroyin’ stuff!
Via Lynn Sislo — who seems to find way more cool stuff than any one person has a right to find! — I happened upon Things That Should Be Destroyed. Some of these things have apparently already been destroyed, at least metaphorically — the “Pepsi Girl” seems to have finally disappeared — but some, like Pat Robertson, are still around (and advocating the nuclear destruction of the United States Department of State, strangely enough). And I agree totally about neckties, which are the single most stupid and useless article of clothing currently in existence.
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You’re punting on first down? Tampa Bay doesn’t even do that!
The Buffalo Bills, the nation’s most important sports franchise, got buried yesterday by the nation’s most dispensible sports franchise, the New York Jets. The final score was a lopsided 30-3. The Bills scored a field goal on their first drive, and they never threatened to score again. They couldn’t run the ball. They could barely throw the ball. They certainly couldn’t protect their quarterback, who fell beneath the weight of various defensive linemen or linebackers seven times.
The Bills are now the proud owners of a 3-3 record, which isn’t a disastrous mark to have but too many holes have been exposed in their team. My original prediction was for the Bills to win their division and go to the playoffs; I now believe that a record of 9-7 is more likely. That might be good enough to squeeze into the playoffs, if they are incredibly lucky, but I very much doubt it.
(Irrelevant stats: Each of the Bills’ three losses so far this year has come to a team coming off a bye week, and two of those losses were to teams looking to win their first game of the year.)
I’ve never been a football fan to demand the head of the coach every time the team loses, but I’m now wondering if Gregg Williams simply isn’t cut out to be an NFL head coach. I had thought, before the season started, that he was still on the upside of a learning curve, but so far this season I just don’t see any “learning” going on. The same mistakes keep getting made, the same questionable decisions, the same lack of discipline on the team. This is a team that miscommunicates, especially on offense. This is a team whose offensive line last year plowed the road for a 1400-yard season by the starting running back, but who this year can’t block at all for the exact same running back and, to add insult to injury, can’t protect Drew Bledsoe one bit better than they did last year. This is a team with a good defense that is expected to play every game as if it’s the 2000 Ravens defense, which they simply can’t do.
What gets me, sports fans, is that the Bills keep getting shown by their opponents what they need to be doing, and they keep refusing to learn the lesson. Three weeks ago, when the Dolphins beat the Bills, they ran Ricky Williams 41 times. That’s more than twice the number of times the Bills ran the ball yesterday. In only three of the Bills’ games have they rushed the ball more than their opponent, and in only three of those games did they even rush the ball more than twenty times. The Bills simply aren’t concentrating on running the ball, at all.
A common excuse for the Bills not running is that they’re falling behind too often, so they have to throw, but I don’t buy that. I remember watching a game the Steelers played five or six years ago, when Jerome Bettis was at the top of his form and in which the Steelers through turnovers and other goofs fell behind 21-0 in the first quarter. In that game, though, Steelers coach Bill Cowher kept his wits about him and kept pounding the ball in there. He based his offense on running the ball, his coaches drilled run-blocking into the line, and it paid off. That’s why the Steelers almost always make the playoffs. Watching the Bills, though, I get the feeling that they run the ball once, and if they don’t pick up nine yards, they abandon the run for the next eight plays.
Yesterday’s game was the only time the Bills have lost by more than ten points, and it’s the only time they’ve faced that ten point deficit before the fourth quarter, so I don’t buy the idea that they have to throw to get back into it. A good coach makes adjustments; a good coach notices that Drew Bledsoe simply isn’t comfortable with the flock of young receivers and journeymen they’ve surrounded him with this year, and game-plans accordingly. The pigheaded offensive scheming by Gregg Williams and by coordinator Kevin Gilbride has me wondering each week if I’m watching a Mike Martz-coached Rams game: “I don’t care if they have nine DBs and only two linemen on the field, we’re throwing the ball!” Ugh.
A word about Drew Bledsoe, since I suspect fans are going to start piling up on him. The Bills knew what they were getting when they got him: a guy with a terrific arm who relies on rhythm and protection, who’s a good leader but can’t single-handedly will a team back from the brink. I’ve never bought the bit that Bledsoe “can’t win the big one”, any more than I ever bought the idea that Jim Kelly couldn’t win the big one. A lot of Bills fans are baffled at the way Bledsoe is playing after losing Peerless Price, but it’s not just Price. After watching Bledsoe twice a year when he was with the Patriots, and now watching him with the Bills, I think it’s not Peerless Price whom he misses, but Larry Centers.
Larry Centers is an odd guy: he’s a running back by position, but his real value is as a receiver. He has more receptions than any running back in history, and more than just about all receivers, too, except for the really elite ones. He may be a Hall of Famer, on the basis of his receiving numbers. He’s with New England now, but he played for the Bills the previous two years. Last year he had 43 receptions, and he was the main “safety valve” in the passing game, the guy who gets open for short yardage when the deeper receivers are both covered. Bledsoe has no such safety-valve player this year. None of the tight ends the Bills have now has emerged as such a threat, and the Bills’ current fullback (Sam Gash) is more noted for his run-blocking than his receiving (which means, given the Bills’ lack of intent towards the running game, that Gash’s position and talents are doubly wasted. Why do I think this is a big deal? Because I remember how Bledsoe used to kill the Bills, every year when he was a Patriot, by constantly dumping passes off to tight end Ben Coates. Bledsoe-to-Coates was the combo that made Bledsoe a Buffalo-killer, and it really helped him last year. This year, he has no such outlet, so he has to stand in there while the pocket collapses, praying that one of his young and inexperienced receivers manages to get open or that Eric Moulds — who sat out yesterday with a groin pull — somehow saves the day by beating his inevitable double-team.
Oh, well, I could go on, but I won’t. Maybe the Bills can get it together, but I’m not optimistic right now. What bothers me is that this is really the first time the Bills’ results haven’t matched up with my expectations based on the team’s talent. I tend to be pretty realistic about the team, which is why I’m a frustrated fan now. This team is better on paper than they are on the field. Gregg Williams had better figure out how to even that deficit, or he’ll be looking for a job next season.
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Site Recommendation
Susan Stepney, who is apparently a computer science professor in England, also has a nice website with a lot of capsule reviews of SF-stuff, if such interests thee (and other stuff, besides, but I went there for the SF).
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Rush to Judgement (politics here)
Newsweek on Rush Limbaugh and Addiction.
Since the Rush Limbaugh-addiction story broke, I’ve been somewhat torn on how to feel about it. In all honesty, I must admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude in the whole thing. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. I’ve never been particularly tolerant of those whose professed morality is as limited as Limbaugh’s, and it’s rarely surprising when their own frailties are exposed. I saw this kind of nonsense during the 1990s, when conservatives of all stripes would rail against Bill Clinton’s infidelities when their own personal lives were hardly the picture of faith-and-chastity; I saw with Bill Bennett, who is perhaps the one person in America who has made more of a cottage industry from moralizing than Rush Limbaugh. The pattern is pretty familiar now, right down to the headache-inducing parsings following the outing: “My affairs were youthful indiscretions (committed when I was 40).” “You’ll notice that I never talked about gambling, and at least I didn’t bet the house we live in.” “He got hooked accidentally, not like those people who look to get high.”
Do I feel much sympathy for Mr. Limbaugh? I do not, I’m sorry to say. I’ve tried, because I view addiction as much more of a medical problem than a moral one, and I think that if our society takes the reverse tack, society’s wrong. But this is a guy who has been very vocal in his years on the radio in favor of “Just say no” and “Addiction’s a choice, not an illness” and “Send them up the river”. So if he broke laws I disagree with in order to get his fix, well…I still believe the laws are unjust, but it somehow seems fitting that a guy who has spent so much time advocating those laws now faces them. It’s awfully hard to take the moralists seriously when their lofty pronunciations of “This is how everyone should live” so often turn out to be “Everyone else should live this way, except me”.
Some liberals are hoping for some kind of conversion here, a kind of “atheist on the deathbed” moment in which Mr. Limbaugh will realize that he’s been wrong about drugs and addiction and that maybe treatment should be the way to go instead of punishing them all, but I rather doubt it. Sure, when he gets back to the radio maybe he’ll pay some lip service to it all, but I expect him to simply bring the topic up a lot less. But Gary Bauer, one of the most visible conservatives out there, said this in the Newsweek story:
From a moral standpoint, there’s a difference between people who go out and seek a high and get addicted and the millions of Americans dealing with pain who inadvertently get addicted.
No change here that I can see: “It’s not Rush’s fault that he got addicted. His addiction’s not a matter of choice. His addiction is just bad fortune.” The subtext, of course, is that Rush is a rich white guy who happened to get addicted, as opposed to all the poor folks who choose to do so. Well, I’m sorry, I really am. But Rush is still a rich white guy, and he’ll easily be able to get himself cleaned up and move on. If it turns out that he really did break laws to keep his habit going, I’ll bet any time he ends up doing is in a minimum-security facility. Again, I’m torn: Do I hope that Rush Limbaugh is treated in the way that I think the vast majority of addicts should be treated, or do I hope that Rush Limbaugh is treated in the way that Rush Limbaugh has long maintained that the vast majority of addicts should be treated? Tough question, that. And to return to Mr. Bauer’s statement, I don’t know if there’s really a moral difference between a rich person’s painkiller habit and a poor person’s crack habit, and in a way, I don’t really care. As Stephen King once wrote, in reference to his own addictions, “We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter.”