I know that the baseball gods like to torment Cubs and Red Sox fans in a manner uncomfortably similar to the way a cat toys with a mouse just before she kills it, but tormenting both sets of fans in the same season? Wow…talk about divine cruelty.
Submissions R Us.
When in doubt, redesign!
Oliver Willis has redesigned his blog, which now has a more “newspaper”-like appearance. He also has obviously heeded my wise advice about permalinks in the interests of clarity and good judgment. I’m always glad to help!
(Actually, I’m not sure Oliver even knows my blog exists. I’m not that big of an egotist.)
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Is it REALLY made of pigskin?
NFL week four thoughts.
:: Geez, two crappy games in a row for the Bills. Ugh, yuck, foulness incarnate! (But if they had to lose at home, at least it was to a team that I like. If it had been, say, the Cowboys, I’d be vomiting in seven different colors.)
So what’s wrong with the Bills? The running game’s complete absence is the main answer. Starting running back Travis Henry sat out after getting hurt last week, but even in the first two games the running game didn’t produce. I’m really confused as to why the running game is so nonexistent. It’s the same offensive line as last year, plus they added Sam Gash, who is one of the best lead blockers in the business. And yet, the Bills thus far in 2003 cannot run the ball. I don’t know if it’s a matter of impatience, and they just need to keep pounding it until it opens, or what. But what does worry me is that each game with anemic rushing, even if they win, will make the Bills that much more likely to press last year’s first-round draft pick Willis McGahee into service as soon as he’s eligible to play and the doctors say his leg won’t fall off.
Actually, I’m wondering if part of the problem isn’t the offensive line after all — a pretty big part, as a matter of fact. The Bills used to fall into this trap in the mid and late 1990s: they would start off the season completely unable to generate much offense, the line would get blamed, but as the year went on they’d get better, they’d have a few big games late in the year, and everyone would figure that the o-line was fine and nothing needed fixing in the offseason. And then the next year, the same pattern would emerge. I wonder if the Bills weren’t overimpressed with the line’s performance last year, and thus did nothing to improve it again in the offseason. Just a thought, but you tend to win (or lose) with the performance of your big guys up front, on both sides of the ball, and Buffalo’s thus far hasn’t been terribly good.
Also, there’s the lack of a consistent number two receiver, although Bobby Shaw seems to be showing signs of life there. Josh Reed was supposed to be that guy, but he’s simply not getting open. This really isn’t all that surprising; NFL receivers tend to take several years to develop. Peerless Price blossomed last year, and that was his fourth year in the NFL; prior to that, he was generally viewed as an underachiever. Eric Moulds didn’t come of age until his third year, and in fact, prior to the 1998 NFL season (when Moulds finally broke out with Doug Flutie at quarterback), the Buffalo News actually labeled Moulds as a rare “bust” for the Bills’ drafting team.
And it really killed that at the one time when the Bills desperately needed their defense to stand strong and force the Eagles to go three-and-out, they instead gave up that long touchdown run that sealed the game for Philly. In general, the defense had its share of decent plays yesterday, but they didn’t create any turnovers and their tackling was pretty suspect. There were a number of plays yesterday in which an Eagles ball-carrier or receiver would have been stopped had the Bills’ defender wrapped him up as opposed to relying on the “big hit” to knock him down.
So, the Bills are 2-2 right now, when I figured they’d be 3-1. Not a disaster, but they’ve got bigger holes than I thought. And if Gregg Williams wants to keep his job, he needs to get those holes filled, pronto.
:: We’re roughly one-quarter of the way through the NFL season, and right now my preseason predictions seem…well, they’re not in good shape. Of all the teams I predicted to win divisions, only one — Pittsburgh — even has a share of first place. It’s a long season, though, and things will probably shake up a bit. I can only hope, anyway.
:: OK, isn’t that amazing-looking guy who threw all those touchdown passes for the Vikings yesterday the same guy who once injured himself by headbutting a wall in a touchdown celebration? Am I missing something?!
:: Now it’s starting to feel like football season, when it starts to get dark during the late games. This is when I start to get interested in games other than the Bills. I even watched a bit of Kansas City/Baltimore yesterday. Ah, football….
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Woo-hoo!
Search Engine Follies
Some funky stuff noticed lately on the referrals:
:: I am currently Number Seven on Anti-President Bush journals on Google. Now, “Anti-Bush” is a pretty good summation of my political stance, but that’s far from my focus here. My blogroll’s loaded with folks a lot more interesting in that regard.
:: Yes, I am a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. But no, I do not know the answer to this. Nor, quite frankly, do I care. (McClatchy is the Pirates’ owner.)
:: Apropos of my recent posting antics, someone arrived here the other day via this search. I’m sorry I can’t provide what’s being sought here, but if you want to see a blogger flailing, well, this is the place for you!
:: Just as an experiment: I’ve been curious as to how long it takes Google to find pages and put them in its database. So, I’m going to stick a weird phrase here and see how long it takes Byzantium’s Shores to show up in Google’s search results for that phrase. And the weird phrase is…”Armadilloes love vanilla frosting”. Start your clocks, now! (Yes, I’m bored.)
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Root Causes
I don’t know if SDB has changed his brand of coffee or something, but he’s been even more interesting than usual lately. I found his article on farm subsidies fascinating, not just for why they are in general poor policy but for how they hinder the “War on Terror”.
A lot of folks on the right get annoyed at the mention of “root causes”, and not entirely without reason; examination of root causes tends, to some on the far left, to involve a lot of hand-wringing about what shits we Americans are, complete with rhetorical flourishes like “Bush = Hitler” placards that really do, at times, seem to imply the idea that we had 9-11-01 coming and that it was some kind of cosmic return of the chickens to their roost.
I think that it’s important to look into “root causes” like these, not so that we can be “humbled” or “learn why they hate us” and leave it at that, but out of the realization that maybe, just maybe, there are things we’ve done that have led certain other cultures to embrace terrorism. This strikes me as at least as important to the ultimate goal of defeating terrorism as the short-term military operations such as Afghanistan.
And besides, if we stopped propping up Archer Daniels Midland, maybe we could return to Coke flavored with sugar. (A lot of old-time Coke fanatics insist that the beverage tastes different since the switch to corn syrup as the sweetener.)
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Buffalo’s Evolution, continued
In my post last week about Ten things I love and hate about Buffalo, I mentioned Buffalo’s glorious architecture under “Things I Love”, but lamented the lack of striking modern architecture under “Things I Hate”. That may be changing, though, with the unveiling two days ago of the design for a new courthouse in downtown Buffalo. Here’s what it looks like:
This building, once funding is secured, will be erected on a corner of Niagara Square, the central square in downtown Buffalo that is the hub of the city’s radial street pattern. (That’s the obelisk visible in the distance.) The building to the right, not seen in full, is Buffalo City Hall, which is the city’s most visually-striking building, not only for its architecture but for its positioning: the building is very prominently located, and is “front and center” in any view of the city skyline from the west.
The new courthouse will rise to roughly the “shoulder” of City Hall, so as not to overshadow the city’s most distinctive landmark. Of course, buildings don’t tend to look the same in reality as they do in artist’s renderings, but it would be nice if Buffalo had a beautiful building that didn’t date from before the FDR Administration.
(For a good example, you can see the HSBC Center, Buffalo’s tallest building, here. Snore.
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GGK News
Lurking around the message boards at Bright Weavings, the official site for author Guy Gavriel Kay (whose books, if you haven’t read them, are awaiting you with increasing levels of haughty impatience), I learned that Kay’s Canadian publisher already has a blurb on the web about his new novel, The Last Light of the Sun, which is coming out next spring. The blurb can be read here, for you folks who like to click links. For those of more impatient character, well, I quote it in full right now.
Over 250,000 books sold! In his eagerly awaited new novel, Guy Gavriel Kay turns his gaze to the northlands, brilliantly evoking the Viking, Anglo-Saxon and Celtic cultures of a turbulent age.
There is nothing soft or silken about the north. The lives of men and women are as challenging as the climate and lands in which they dwell. For generations, the Erlings of Vinmark have taken their dragon-prowed ships across the seas, raiding the lands of the Cyngael and Anglcyn peoples, leaving fire and death behind. But times change, even in the north, and in a tale woven with consummate artistry, people of all three cultures find the threads of their lives unexpectedly brought together…
Bern Thorkellson, punished for his father’s sins, commits an act of vengeance and desperation that brings him face-to-face, across the sea, with a past he’s been trying to leave behind.
In the Anglcyn lands of King Aeldred, the shrewd king, battling inner demons all the while, shores up his defenses with alliances and diplomacy-and with swords and arrows-while his exceptional, unpredictable sons and daughters pursue their own desires when battle comes and darkness falls in the woods.
And in the valleys and shrouded hills of the Cyngael, whose voices carry music even as they feud and raid amongst each other, violence and love become deeply interwoven when the dragon ships come and Alun ab Owyn, chasing an enemy in the night, glimpses strange lights gleaming above forest pools.
Making brilliant use of saga, song and chronicle, Kay brings to life an unforgettable world balanced on the knife-edge of change in The Last Light of the Sun.
Well, that certainly sounds compelling, even setting that first clause, which sounds like a cross between selling books and selling Quarter-Pounders. The blurb doesn’t make any mention as to this being the opening book in any kind of series or multi-volume work, so I have to assume it’s a stand-alone.
Who knows, maybe by then I’ll have a job and thus be able to buy the damn thing.
UPDATE: It’s confirmed that the book is a stand-alone.
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And, duh, the answer to last week’s Puzzler.
Well, yesterday morning I listened to CarTalk and thus learned the answer to the baseball puzzler that was vexing me the other day. It turns out that I was somewhat on the right track, but I overthought things a bit. The puzzle question, basically is this:
A guy goes into a bar and notes that a baseball game is on TV. He asks the bartender what the game’s status is, and the bartender says, “Bottom of the fifth, no score, nobody on, two outs.” Then the batter hits a grounder sharply down the first-base line, which the first-baseman cleanly fields – – and then hurls across the field to third base. The third-baseman catches the relay, steps on the bag, the ump signals “Out!”, and the inning ends. How is this possible?
Well, the answer (look away, if you’re still working it out) is that the guy was not watching the game directly on the TV, but rather in the mirror behind the bar. So it’s backwards. Oy.
My own answer, though, was clearly overthought. I assumed that he wasn’t watching any game at all, but rather the movie The Pride of the Yankees, in which Gary Cooper plays Lou Gehrig. A bit of lore about that film is that Gehrig, in real life, hit lefty, but Cooper simply couldn’t hit lefty without looking horrible. So the filmmakers made him a reverse-image New York Yankees uniform, and in the baseball scenes, shot everything “reversed” so that all they had to do was flip the film-image to make it look right. (Yeah, that’s a pretty foggy explanation.) So anyway, I was on the right track with the backwards image, but I did a bit too much thinking. Oh well.