Does anyone remember the start of Rocky III?
Here, take a look ...
The movie starts with a montage of Rocky winning fight after fight in convincing fashion. He's on top of the world. It's all coming easy for him - too easy. It soon becomes clear to us that he's getting soft. There's a hungry challenger on the horizon who just can't wait to get his shot at Rocky. The challenger's got the "Eye of the Tiger", and Rocky's lost it, and it's clear what's going to happen when the two of them finally meet in the ring.
That's what happened to Obama in that first debate with Romney. After watching him mop the floor with his competition back in 2008, lots of us became convinced he was a great debater - and Obama started to believe it too. What we didn't realize was that much like Rocky at the start of Rocky III, his resounding victories came against a bunch of palookas ( McCain, Hillary, Edwards ( His crappy performance against Cheney in 2004 killed Kerry's momentum ) ). When he found himself up against somebody who actually came to fight, he went down as hard as Rocky did in his first fight with Clubber Lang ( The debate also reminded me of this quote from the first Rocky movie: "He doesn't know it's a damn show! He thinks it's a damn fight!" ).
So, what's next? Well if you're an Obama fan, all you can do is hope this story continues to follow the "Rocky III" script. That means Obama's gotta get the "Eye of the Tiger" back. That means he's got some serious training to do between now and Tuesday. He's got to get into the "gym" and start training with "Apollo". So, who's Obama's "Apollo". Well, in Rocky III, Apollo was a retired, charismatic, egotistical former champ. So, there really only one choice here - Obama's gotta head into the poorest, white-trashiest section of Arkansas and start training with Bill Clinton. He's gotta train where Clinton got his start - in Arkansas' political "gyms", full of young hungry politicians with the "Eye of the Tiger".
Somewhere, I hope that Obama and Clinton are running together on a beach like this ...
Rich
Friday, October 12, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Someone I Should Have Known
A few days ago, I learned via facebook that a very close friend of one of my best friends had died at the age of 46. I didn't know the fellow ( his name was Mark ) at all ( I met him during the weekend of my friend's wedding 21 years ago, but we never crossed paths after that. ), but whenever you hear news like that you can't help but think a little bit about your own mortality and the mortality of the people you love ( BTW, my friend's wife wrote a very touching tribute to Mark. I'll link to that tribute here if my friend's wife indicates that this is OK to do. Otherwise I'll respect the privacy of those who are grieving and won't link to the tribute. Just know that I was very touched by the tribute, and it indirectly led to the post I'm writing now. ). As I was looking through the comments on my friend's facebook post about Mark, I learned that one of my other high school ( and facebook ) friends had gotten news that somebody she had been close to in our high school had just died. The comments didn't mention who had died ( The first two comments I read didn't, but comments that I read a few hours later did ), but based on the comments, I had a pretty good guess ( and ultimately correct guess ) about who the person was. However, I thought it would be kinda rude of me ask my grieving friend about the identity of the deceased just to satisfy my curiosity, so I decided to satisfy my curiosity myself by checking the obituaries on my high school's alumni website.
However, when I checked the obituary section, I didn't find the name I expected to find. Instead, I found a name that got me thinking about a couple of things.
I found that somebody from my own graduating class had died a few month earlier. I'm not going to name this person in the post, but if you know my age and my high school ( which I don't make a secret of on the Internet ) you shouldn't have a hard time finding the name. For rest of this post I'll refer to this person as ECG ( English Class Girl - I think she was in a few of my classes, but I mostly remember her from an English class. ).
I almost hesitate to go further in this post, because what I'm about to write will seem so trivial and insignificant compared to real grieving some of my friends are going through right now. I didn't really know ECG at all, so I'm certainly not experiencing any sad feelings about her death, other than the generic sadness one might feel upon hearing about anyone dying young.
I'm also a bit wary about seeming too self-centered. After after, two of my friends have lost people they cared about, ECG has died tragically ( Her cause of death was never made public, but apparently she had been battling depression for a while, and there is a lot of speculation that she committed suicide ), and I'm about to go off and write about ME.
But hey, when I heard about ECG's death, it certainly made me think about a few things, perhaps things that were mostly about ME, but I can't deny I thought about these things. If I'm a self-centered person because another person's tragic death made me think about ME, hiding the fact that I thought this way doesn't really make me any less self-centered. I like to be an open book in this blog, and I like to share stuff, and the news of ECG's death made me think of a story I've never told anyone before.
There's nothing particularly scandalous or embarrassing about this story, but it's also not particularly exciting, and it never really felt like the right time to tell this story. However, the story is related to ECG, and the news of ECG's death made me think of this story for the first time in many years.
So, if there's ever going to be a right time to tell this story, I guess it's now.
Our story begins during my sophomore year of high school ( I believe it was the second semester ) - or at least I think it was my sophomore year. I think it happened in whatever semester we studied Greek myths in English class ( Stuy folks, help me out here - that was sophomore year - right? ). In any case, I'm sure it either happened during my sophomore year or the first 5 months of junior year, because that was the time I was obsessed with the girl I've always referred to as HSG1 ( High School Girl #1 ) on this blog.
For those who are not familiar with the HSG1 story, HSG1 was the first girl I fell in "real love" with. It's not that I had not pined for other girls in the past - I'd had a crush on the same girl from 4th grade through 8th grade. However, I was attracted to the 4th-to-8th-grade-girl because I thought she was really pretty, and she "developed" a lot earlier than most of the other girls in her peer group. I recognized that the attraction was purely hormonal, as was the attraction I had for another really pretty girl during my first year of high school. With HSG1, the feelings were different. She was undoubtedly pretty, but I had convinced myself that my feeling for her went far beyond mere physical attraction. After all ( I told myself ), I had seen her every morning in my homeroom class during freshmen year, and I had never developed a crush on her ( because I had been focused on a really pretty girl I'd had a few classes with, plus a girl who had sat to the front-right of me in homeroom ( who had legs that I would sometimes think about during my "private time"). ). I didn't start to think of HSG1 in a romantic way until she started to talk to me occasionally at the start of sophomore year ( She had no choice - we were assigned to be lab partners in our Chemistry class. ). So, because I didn't fall for her until I started to get to know her a little ( I should emphasize "little" - I really barely knew her ), I had convinced myself that my feelings for her constituted pure "true love". Heck, I had her up on such a pedestal that I didn't even think of her during my "private time". Whether these feeling were justified or rational really isn't the point. The point is that the feelings were real to me, and they consumed me for 17 months of my teenage years.
I took the time to explain my feeling for HSG1, because only my level of obsession with HSG1 can begin to explain my actions ( or more accurately, lack of action ) in the ECG story.
This story takes place in an English class I had with ECG. Our English teacher had assigned a rather unusual project. She asked all of us to create a personal adds for ourselves. We had to hand in a sheet of loose-leaf paper with a photo of ourselves attached to it, along with a paragraph or two describing ourselves. After collecting all these personal adds from each of her multiple English classes, our English teacher distributed the adds across all her classes, and asked the students to write comments ( anonymously or non-anonymously ) on the personal adds they thought were interesting.
Frankly, I don't know what our English teacher was thinking. Maybe she was testing out an idea that eventually made her millions running a Match.com type site, but I can't imagine running a dating service for teens was part the English department's core curriculum.
In any case, after the personal adds were distributed and commented upon, they were handed back to the people who created them. When I got mine back, I found 2 comments. One comment had really nice flattering things to say about me ( This comment was from a girl in another class who I had never met before. I never bothered to look her up ( for reasons that will be apparent soon ), and I frankly forget what her name was. ) The second comment, written directly under the first said ...
"You've got good taste!"
This comment was written anonymously, but a few minutes later, I found out who wrote it.
Our English class had a teacher's assistant ( TA ) assigned to it. I believe the TA was either a college student or grad student who was training to become a teacher. A few minutes after we got our personal adds back, the TA comes to my desk, points to the "You've good good taste!" comment and whispers in my ear that ECG wrote the comment.
Once again, I don't know what the heck was going on in this English class. Was the TA trying to play cupid? Did the English teacher promise the TA college credit for each hook-up she could facilitate in the class? Like I said before, this was an unusual project.
In any case, I now had some information that could potentially change the course of my high school life. The info was certainly no guarantee that ECG would be willing to go out with me ( She was rather pretty and quite social, so I would have been kinda surprised to find out that she didn't already have a boyfriend at the time. In fact, if she did already have a boyfriend, that would certainly explain why she had decided to make her comment anonymously. ). Still, if I had made some effort to get to know her better, there was certainly some potential there.
So, did I do anything with this new information?
Of course not. My heart belonged to my "true love" HSG1.
Never mind that I wasn't dating her. Never mind that she never showed any romantic interest in me. Never mind that I barely spoke to her. Never mind that she probably already had a boyfriend.
Never mind all that. I was going to remain "faithful" to HSG1 until that one magical day in the future when fate would finally bring us together.
So, I never did anything with the information about ECG. The story really ends on that day in our English class.
But what if it hadn't?
I'm certainly happy about the way my life turned out. I have a wonderful wife and children, and I wouldn't change anything about that. However, I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't a least a little bit curious about how my time in high school could have been different if I had made some different choices.
That's why it felt a little bit - I don't know - odd to find out that ECG had died. I not sure what the right word to describe it is, but I think I may have been lying when I wrote that I just felt a generic sadness when I found out that she had died. Well, maybe the sadness was generic, but I felt something more than just sadness. I don't know what it was - poignancy perhaps?
I just couldn't shake the feeling that ECG was somebody that I should have known. I'm not necessarily saying that I should have ( or could have ) dated her, but I should have gotten to know her - it certainly seemed like a door was opened a bit on that day in English class, but I choose not to walk through it.
As curious as I am about how my high school years could have been different if I had known her, I'm also curious about how her life could have been different if she had known me. Now, it would be extremely delusional and arrogant of me to even suggest that ECG might still be alive today if she had been a friend of mine. I really don't know how she died or why she died, or what drove her over the edge if she really did die of depression-induced suicide. However, I feel I owe a small debt to her that I never properly repaid.
In case it wasn't already extremely obvious, I had very low self-esteem back in high school. I was extremely shy and awkward, and most of the time I hated myself because of it. I didn't have the courage to talk to any girls, girls didn't talk to me, and part of me couldn't imagine why any girl would ever want to go out with me. ECG's comment on my personal add changed that a little bit ( and to a lesser extent the other girl's comment on the personal add ( However, I think ECG's comment seemed more real to me because I found out about it when she was sitting just 15 feet across the classroom from me. )). She made me feel a little bit more self-confident. It may have been a small thing, but every little bit helps. If you are 100% sure that any girl you would ask out would reject you, why would you even try? Why would you torture yourself like that? The road from "shy guy who's afraid to speak to girls" to "married guy" is a long and hard one, and a shy guy needs to slowly build his confidence to move down that road. ECG's comment helped me move down that road a little bit. She made me feel better about myself, and when I found out that she had probably committed suicide, I felt some regret that I never got the chance to make her feel better about herself.
So, I guess that closes the book on my ECG story, and to a larger extent, closes the book on the time I'll spend thinking about her. Sure, I might review this blog post years from now when I'm traveling down memory lane, but after a week or so has passed, it's unlikely that I'll be thinking about ECG again for many years. So while she's still on my mind, I'll just say this ...
Thanks ECG. Wherever you are, I hope you've found peace.
Rich
However, when I checked the obituary section, I didn't find the name I expected to find. Instead, I found a name that got me thinking about a couple of things.
I found that somebody from my own graduating class had died a few month earlier. I'm not going to name this person in the post, but if you know my age and my high school ( which I don't make a secret of on the Internet ) you shouldn't have a hard time finding the name. For rest of this post I'll refer to this person as ECG ( English Class Girl - I think she was in a few of my classes, but I mostly remember her from an English class. ).
I almost hesitate to go further in this post, because what I'm about to write will seem so trivial and insignificant compared to real grieving some of my friends are going through right now. I didn't really know ECG at all, so I'm certainly not experiencing any sad feelings about her death, other than the generic sadness one might feel upon hearing about anyone dying young.
I'm also a bit wary about seeming too self-centered. After after, two of my friends have lost people they cared about, ECG has died tragically ( Her cause of death was never made public, but apparently she had been battling depression for a while, and there is a lot of speculation that she committed suicide ), and I'm about to go off and write about ME.
But hey, when I heard about ECG's death, it certainly made me think about a few things, perhaps things that were mostly about ME, but I can't deny I thought about these things. If I'm a self-centered person because another person's tragic death made me think about ME, hiding the fact that I thought this way doesn't really make me any less self-centered. I like to be an open book in this blog, and I like to share stuff, and the news of ECG's death made me think of a story I've never told anyone before.
There's nothing particularly scandalous or embarrassing about this story, but it's also not particularly exciting, and it never really felt like the right time to tell this story. However, the story is related to ECG, and the news of ECG's death made me think of this story for the first time in many years.
So, if there's ever going to be a right time to tell this story, I guess it's now.
Our story begins during my sophomore year of high school ( I believe it was the second semester ) - or at least I think it was my sophomore year. I think it happened in whatever semester we studied Greek myths in English class ( Stuy folks, help me out here - that was sophomore year - right? ). In any case, I'm sure it either happened during my sophomore year or the first 5 months of junior year, because that was the time I was obsessed with the girl I've always referred to as HSG1 ( High School Girl #1 ) on this blog.
For those who are not familiar with the HSG1 story, HSG1 was the first girl I fell in "real love" with. It's not that I had not pined for other girls in the past - I'd had a crush on the same girl from 4th grade through 8th grade. However, I was attracted to the 4th-to-8th-grade-girl because I thought she was really pretty, and she "developed" a lot earlier than most of the other girls in her peer group. I recognized that the attraction was purely hormonal, as was the attraction I had for another really pretty girl during my first year of high school. With HSG1, the feelings were different. She was undoubtedly pretty, but I had convinced myself that my feeling for her went far beyond mere physical attraction. After all ( I told myself ), I had seen her every morning in my homeroom class during freshmen year, and I had never developed a crush on her ( because I had been focused on a really pretty girl I'd had a few classes with, plus a girl who had sat to the front-right of me in homeroom ( who had legs that I would sometimes think about during my "private time"). ). I didn't start to think of HSG1 in a romantic way until she started to talk to me occasionally at the start of sophomore year ( She had no choice - we were assigned to be lab partners in our Chemistry class. ). So, because I didn't fall for her until I started to get to know her a little ( I should emphasize "little" - I really barely knew her ), I had convinced myself that my feelings for her constituted pure "true love". Heck, I had her up on such a pedestal that I didn't even think of her during my "private time". Whether these feeling were justified or rational really isn't the point. The point is that the feelings were real to me, and they consumed me for 17 months of my teenage years.
I took the time to explain my feeling for HSG1, because only my level of obsession with HSG1 can begin to explain my actions ( or more accurately, lack of action ) in the ECG story.
This story takes place in an English class I had with ECG. Our English teacher had assigned a rather unusual project. She asked all of us to create a personal adds for ourselves. We had to hand in a sheet of loose-leaf paper with a photo of ourselves attached to it, along with a paragraph or two describing ourselves. After collecting all these personal adds from each of her multiple English classes, our English teacher distributed the adds across all her classes, and asked the students to write comments ( anonymously or non-anonymously ) on the personal adds they thought were interesting.
Frankly, I don't know what our English teacher was thinking. Maybe she was testing out an idea that eventually made her millions running a Match.com type site, but I can't imagine running a dating service for teens was part the English department's core curriculum.
In any case, after the personal adds were distributed and commented upon, they were handed back to the people who created them. When I got mine back, I found 2 comments. One comment had really nice flattering things to say about me ( This comment was from a girl in another class who I had never met before. I never bothered to look her up ( for reasons that will be apparent soon ), and I frankly forget what her name was. ) The second comment, written directly under the first said ...
"You've got good taste!"
This comment was written anonymously, but a few minutes later, I found out who wrote it.
Our English class had a teacher's assistant ( TA ) assigned to it. I believe the TA was either a college student or grad student who was training to become a teacher. A few minutes after we got our personal adds back, the TA comes to my desk, points to the "You've good good taste!" comment and whispers in my ear that ECG wrote the comment.
Once again, I don't know what the heck was going on in this English class. Was the TA trying to play cupid? Did the English teacher promise the TA college credit for each hook-up she could facilitate in the class? Like I said before, this was an unusual project.
In any case, I now had some information that could potentially change the course of my high school life. The info was certainly no guarantee that ECG would be willing to go out with me ( She was rather pretty and quite social, so I would have been kinda surprised to find out that she didn't already have a boyfriend at the time. In fact, if she did already have a boyfriend, that would certainly explain why she had decided to make her comment anonymously. ). Still, if I had made some effort to get to know her better, there was certainly some potential there.
So, did I do anything with this new information?
Of course not. My heart belonged to my "true love" HSG1.
Never mind that I wasn't dating her. Never mind that she never showed any romantic interest in me. Never mind that I barely spoke to her. Never mind that she probably already had a boyfriend.
Never mind all that. I was going to remain "faithful" to HSG1 until that one magical day in the future when fate would finally bring us together.
So, I never did anything with the information about ECG. The story really ends on that day in our English class.
But what if it hadn't?
I'm certainly happy about the way my life turned out. I have a wonderful wife and children, and I wouldn't change anything about that. However, I'd be lying if I told you I wasn't a least a little bit curious about how my time in high school could have been different if I had made some different choices.
That's why it felt a little bit - I don't know - odd to find out that ECG had died. I not sure what the right word to describe it is, but I think I may have been lying when I wrote that I just felt a generic sadness when I found out that she had died. Well, maybe the sadness was generic, but I felt something more than just sadness. I don't know what it was - poignancy perhaps?
I just couldn't shake the feeling that ECG was somebody that I should have known. I'm not necessarily saying that I should have ( or could have ) dated her, but I should have gotten to know her - it certainly seemed like a door was opened a bit on that day in English class, but I choose not to walk through it.
As curious as I am about how my high school years could have been different if I had known her, I'm also curious about how her life could have been different if she had known me. Now, it would be extremely delusional and arrogant of me to even suggest that ECG might still be alive today if she had been a friend of mine. I really don't know how she died or why she died, or what drove her over the edge if she really did die of depression-induced suicide. However, I feel I owe a small debt to her that I never properly repaid.
In case it wasn't already extremely obvious, I had very low self-esteem back in high school. I was extremely shy and awkward, and most of the time I hated myself because of it. I didn't have the courage to talk to any girls, girls didn't talk to me, and part of me couldn't imagine why any girl would ever want to go out with me. ECG's comment on my personal add changed that a little bit ( and to a lesser extent the other girl's comment on the personal add ( However, I think ECG's comment seemed more real to me because I found out about it when she was sitting just 15 feet across the classroom from me. )). She made me feel a little bit more self-confident. It may have been a small thing, but every little bit helps. If you are 100% sure that any girl you would ask out would reject you, why would you even try? Why would you torture yourself like that? The road from "shy guy who's afraid to speak to girls" to "married guy" is a long and hard one, and a shy guy needs to slowly build his confidence to move down that road. ECG's comment helped me move down that road a little bit. She made me feel better about myself, and when I found out that she had probably committed suicide, I felt some regret that I never got the chance to make her feel better about herself.
So, I guess that closes the book on my ECG story, and to a larger extent, closes the book on the time I'll spend thinking about her. Sure, I might review this blog post years from now when I'm traveling down memory lane, but after a week or so has passed, it's unlikely that I'll be thinking about ECG again for many years. So while she's still on my mind, I'll just say this ...
Thanks ECG. Wherever you are, I hope you've found peace.
Rich
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Voting Against Democracy
I'm writing this so I can post it on my wife's facebook page. I've noticed that a pretty good percentage of my wife's friends are Romney supporters, and this post is directed at them.
Now, maybe it's not a good idea for me to ruffle any feathers, but if you support Romney in particular or the GOP in general, there's one question I just have to ask ...
How can you support a political party that consistently votes against democracy?
Look, I understand that people can have different political philosophies, and while I completely disagree with with almost all of the Republican Party's ideas about government, I can respect that some people sincerely believe in those ideas. However, I can't respect the GOP's concerted effort to suppress the vote.
Republicans have been suppressing votes for so long in so many blatant ways that I shouldn't even have to justify my claim of voter suppression. Republican voter suppression should be obvious to anyone who's been paying any attention for the last few decades. However, since many GOP supporters will certainly want to defend the GOP against these charges, I'll go ahead and play the role of the prosecutor.
Like any good prosecutor, I'll start by establishing a motive. Why would the GOP want to suppress votes? How would it benefit the GOP to keep voter turnout low? How would it benefit the GOP to make it harder for certain categories of people to vote?
Well, for starters, it's long been accepted by both political parties that people who are not registered to vote are more likely to support Democratic candidates. You can tell both parties believe this because Democrats are always making efforts to increase voter registration while Republicans almost always try to curtail voter registration. If you want to know why both Democrats and Republican's believe this, take a look at this article. It shows that unregistered voters prefer President Obama over Mitt Romney by a margin of 43% to 14%. I'm sure you could find other similar polls online if your searched a bit, but the specific numbers are not important here. What's important is that the GOP believes that increasing voter registration hurts their chances to win elections. Even if polls showed that unregistered voters supported Republicans over Democrats ( which they don't ), the actions of the Republican Party over the last few decades makes it abundantly clear that the GOP believes that unregistered voters are more likely to vote for Democrats. Congressional voting records provide hard evidence of this - evidence I'll reveal later in this post.
It also clearly benefits the Republican Party to restrict the votes of certain categories of voters, and that's where voter ID come in. Now, I know that the common argument in favor of voter ID laws is that they prevent voter fraud, but voter fraud is exceedingly rare ( if you don't trust that link, try one from FOX News ), and voter ID laws make it harder for many low-income people to vote. Now, I know that people can dispute numbers and claim that certain studies are biased, so let's spend a little time looking at this from a common sense perspective. Clearly, voter ID laws can go a long way towards eliminating any voter fraud that currently exists. If voter fraud is a disease, then voter ID is certainly the cure. However, common sense tells us that the GOP isn't really interested in the cure, they are interested in the side effects of that cure.
If the GOP was really interested in curing voter fraud, they would focus on the easiest way to commit voter fraud - absentee voting. Think about it - if you really wanted to commit voter fraud, why would you do it any way other than absentee voting? If you want to commit vote fraud via absentee ballot, all you really need to do is get your hands on the proper forms, forge a signature, and drop the forms in the mail. I'm not saying it's easy to commit voter fraud via absentee ballot, but it's certainly a lot easier and safer to commit voter fraud via absentee ballot than it would be via in-person voting. Let's say you felt like committing voter fraud in-person. You'd have to go to the polling place and claim you were somebody else. Then the polling worker would go ahead and check the list of people in the district so you could sign next to the name you were voting under. What if the person you were trying to impersonate had already voted and signed his or her name? We'll you'd pretty much be busted at that point, and unless you thought of a good excuse real fast, you just might be headed to jail ( OK, you could probably just run away, and those senior-citizen poll workers would never catch you, but if they got a good look at your face ( or your car license plate if you drove to the polling place ) you still might be caught eventually ). My point is that it doesn't make much sense to me that an individual would go through all that potential trouble just to steal one vote. I'm not saying that nobody would ever bother to do it, but if you really wanted to commit voter fraud, why wouldn't you do it using an absentee ballot so you would never have to show your face? Sure, voter fraud via absentee ballot might not work if the person you were trying to impersonate also had voted, but the chances of you getting caught perpetrating absentee voter fraud is practically nil ( Plus, a single person could steal multiple votes via absentee voting, which would be much harder to do via in-person voter fraud ).
So, with all this in mind, you would think the GOP folks who want to cure voter fraud would be focusing heavily on absentee ballots. However, the GOP isn't making any effort to cut down on absentee-voter ballot fraud. The GOP is not interested in changing anything about the absentee ballot procedures, because conventional wisdom has always been that a vote cast via an absentee ballot is more likely to be a GOP vote than a vote cast in-person ( The GOP generally believes this because many members of the military need to vote via absentee ballots, and members of the military have traditionally supported the GOP in greater numbers than the Democratic Party. I spent some time searching for studies that gave the Democrat/Republican breakdown of absentee votes on a national level, but I could only find this study which gives the breakdown for an election in California. Clearly, California elections are generally going to have more votes for Democrats than Republicans, but this study did show that an absentee ballot cast in a California election is more likely to be a vote for Republican candidate than an in-person vote cast in a California election. ).
So, if the GOP really isn't interested in curing voter fraud ( if they sincerely cared about voter fraud they would certainly focus on absentee ballots more than in-person ballots ), why are they pushing this voter ID cure for voter fraud? Well, as I mentioned earlier, they are primarily interested in the side effects of this cure. The side effect is that voter ID laws make it more difficult for certain percentage of people to vote, and people that incur this extra difficulty are disproportionately poor.
For most people, the voter ID laws will have zero impact. Most of us have a driver's license that we could use as a photo ID for voting. However, while most of us take our driver's licenses for granted, the same cannot be said for those living in poverty, particularly those who live in urban areas. If you barely have enough money to buy the basic necessities of life, then it's much less likely that you'll own a car, particularly if you live in an urban area where public transportation is available. If you grow up in a family that doesn't have a car, it's much less likely that you'll get a driver's license. So, it's just common sense that poor urban areas would have a lower percentage of people with driver's licences than other parts of the country. Driver's licences are the most common form of photo ID, so it also follows that poor urban areas would have a lower percentage of people with photo IDs than the rest of the country. If you change the voting laws to require photo ID, then it's clear that this will adversely affect people in poor urban areas more than in the rest of country.
So, what political party do you think people in poor urban areas generally vote for? I'm not even going to bother to link to some statistics - you all know the answer. Poor urban people vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic party, so it would clearly benefit the Republican Party if less poor urban people were eligible to vote. Now, I realize that there are ways that these poor urban registered voters can get photo IDs, but it's not always easy to get an ID, particular if you don't have a car. As this link shows, many voters live more than 10 miles from an office where they can get a photo ID and many of those offices are only open during typical working hours on weekdays. If you can't afford to take a day off from work and don't have a car, it can be difficult to get to these offices to acquire a photo ID. I'm certainly not saying it's impossible to do, but these voter IDs laws will certainly keep a non-trivial amount of registered voters from voting, and those voters will disproportionately be people who support Democratic candidates.
If you have any lingering doubts about the GOP motives behind voter ID laws, check out this quote from Pennsylvania Republican House leader Mike Turzai:
“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done”
Of course, if it's your goal to suppress the votes of likely-Democratic voters, you wouldn't stop with poor urban voters. It would also help a lot to cut down on the number of women voters, because women voters support Democratic candidates in much higher percentages than men ( For example, this link from 9/26/12 cites a poll which shows that Obama is tied with Romney among male voters in Pennsylvania but has a 21 percentage point lead with female voters. ). Thus, I wasn't really surprised that the GOP was supporting measures that would make it harder for married women to vote.
Also, considering that college students vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, it not surprising that Republicans are changing laws in order to make it harder for college students to vote.
Republicans have even used the voter fraud argument to try to take 30,000 "dead" people off the voter rolls in North Carolina. Unfortunately for them, when the election officials followed up on the 30,000 "dead" people they found that these people actually were not dead.
While I think the evidence is strong that Republican-sponsored voter ID laws are instruments of voter suppression, I realize that some people will never be convinced of that. I realize that some people will hold on to the voter fraud argument no matter what anyone says. However, even if you reject the argument that Republicans are supporting voter ID laws in order to suppress the vote, it's hard to ignore the multitude of examples of Republican-sponsored voter suppression which have nothing to do with voter ID or voter fraud.
Some of the best examples of this are Republican led efforts to restrict early voting and reduce extended voting hours. These Republican efforts are literally an attempt to reduce the number of hours that people can vote. Reducing voting hours leads to a reduced number of votes, which is diametrically opposed to the ideals of democracy.
For example, Republicans in Ohio are restricting early voting and extended hours voting. Early voting and extended hours voting were added in Ohio during the years between the 2004 and 2008 elections, primarily because of all the trouble Ohioans had casting their votes on Election Day in 2004 ( Some of you might remember the stories about people in Ohio waiting as long as 10 hours to vote or the helicopter shots of ridiculously long lines outside of polling placing in Democratic-leaning precincts. ). However when Republicans took control of the Ohio state government ( in the elections that followed 2008 ), they started to roll back all of the early voting and extended hours voting. In fact, they even went further than that. They tried to make sure that voting hours would be longer in Republican leaning counties than Democratic leaning counties. Seriously, they did that! I'll let John Stewart give some more details below:
The quote below from this news story should erase any doubts about the motives of the Ohio GOP:
“I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”
It's also worth highlighting that Republican election officials have made a point to eliminate Sunday voting in both Ohio and Florida. Back in 2008, early voting was available in Ohio and Florida on the Sunday before Election Day. Back in 2008 many predominantly African-American congregations went straight from Sunday worship to the polling place in buses provided by the churches. This clearly helped increase African-American turnout in 2008, so it was clearly something the GOP could not allow in 2012. Let's face it, the GOP could not allow the "African-American voter turnout machine" to go unchecked in 2012.
Republican efforts like these are the reason why I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Republicans have been voting against democracy. Every time a Republican-controlled state legislature passes a law to restrict voter participation, our democratic ideals are compromised. If you still have any lingering doubts about this, consider the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. This act, popularly know as the "Motor Voter Act", required that state governments allow people to register to vote when applying for or renewing their driver license or when applying for social services. There's really no good reason why anyone should have opposed this act. The intention of this act was simply to make it more convenient for people to register to vote. The intended result of this act was to increase the number registered voters. The intended result of this act was to increase voter turnout. The intended result of this act was to create a more robust democratic system in the United States. Who could possibly be against such an act?
Guess who?
Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against the Motor Voter Act by a margin of 146 to 21.
Republicans in the Senate voted against the Motor Voter Act by a margin of 37 to 5.
It's also worth noting that 3 of the 5 Republican Senators who voted in favor of the Motor Voter Act eventually left the Republican Party ( Arlen Specter became a Democrat in 2009. Jim Jeffords became an Independent who caucused with the Democrats in 2001. In 2005, David Durenberger announced he was an Independent who no longer supported the Republican Party. ). So, if you only consider Republicans Senators who actually stuck with the GOP, the Republican vote against the Motor Voter act was 37 to 2.
Any way you choose look at it, Republicans voted overwhelmingly against the Motor Voter Act ( Sure, it was 19 years ago, but the pre-"Contract with America" Republican Party of 1993 was far less conservative and partisan that the Republican Party of today. If the same vote were held today, it's highly likely that an even higher percentage of Republicans would vote against an act like the Motor Voter Act. ). Any way you look at it, Republicans overwhelmingly voted against an act designed to increase voter participation. Any way you look at it, Republicans voted against the interests of democracy.
I'm not even going to argue about this anymore. As far as I'm concerned, the case is closed. Numbers like 146-21 and 37-5 don't lie. Republicans want to restrict democracy.
So, that being said, let me go back to my original question. How can anyone in the great democracy of the USA support a political party that votes against democracy?
Well actually, I can kind of understand why people would still vote for the GOP. Let's face it, if you want your vote to count in most elections, you really only have 2 choices. Unless you want to completely throw your vote in the garbage and vote for somebody like Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan, you need to vote for a candidate endorsed by the Republican Party or Democratic Party. If you are sincerely against most of what the Democratic Party stands for, I guess you've got no choice but to vote for Republicans regardless of how distasteful their tactics might be.
However, that doesn't mean Republican voters need to deny what is going on or be quiet about what is going on. I know that there's no time to change anything in the short term, but it would be nice if Republican politicians abandoned their voter suppression tactics in the long term. I don't hold out much hope of this ever happening, but if it is ever going to happen, it would be because Republican voters took action.
What kind of action? Well, you could write some letters to Republican representatives for a start ( particularly on the state level, as most of this voter suppression happens at the state level ). You could let your representatives know that you support early voting and longer voting hours, and that you would support Republican candidates in favor of such pro-democracy policies in the next Republican primaries. Heck, if you had the means and the time, you could support or work on the campaign for such a pro-democracy Republican candidate ( or even be that candidate! ).
OK, I realize I'm now being as ridiculously idealist as a Nader voter, but we've got to start somewhere right? A grass-roots bi-partisan effort to increase voter participation wouldn't be a bad thing, would it? Who's with me?
Now, I'll admit, as a worn-out father of two active boys, I'm far too lazy to do anything but sit on my ass at home and write stuff like this ( but hey, at least it's something! ). But I'm sure there are some energetic people out there that could get a bi-partisan pro-democracy movement going. At the very least, there have got to be people out there that could sit on their ass and write more blog posts on the subject. So, if you agree at all with what I've written in this post, do me a favor and share this blog post with your facebook friends and Twitter followers.
If not, I guess it's going to be a bit awkward when I meet some of you at parties and family gatherings in the future.
Rich
Sunday, August 12, 2012
We are Borg
A few days a ago, I was reading an article in the New York Times which contained the sentence "She was working as a waitress at a cocktail bar when she met him.". Upon reading this, I immediately thought of the old's 80's song which starts with the line "You were working as a waitress at a cocktail bar when I met you", or more accurately ...
"You were working as a waitress at a cocktail bar-ah, when I met you-ooooo"
However, the name of the 80's band was escaping me, so I pulled up Google. By the time I had typed "you were w", Google had auto-completed "you were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when I met you" and there was a link to the Human League video right in front of me.
By now, most of us already take this kind of auto-complete technology for granted, but when you stop to think of it, it's really remarkable that technology has advanced this to level. 30 years or so I ago, I'd always figured I'd see some amazing computer technology by this point in my life, but I never expected technology of this sort. I always kind of figured we'd have real artificial intelligence ( AI ) by now. I thought we would have computers that could think. That hasn't happened, and I now seriously doubt that I'll ever see anything like that in my lifetime. However, while computers haven't given us AI, the Internet and Google's search engine have given us a kind of collective intelligence. The knowledge I have rapid access to extends far beyond my own brain. I may not know everything, but if somebody else knows something, I can know it too after about 30 seconds on Google ( with the obvious exception of really complicated stuff like string theory ). This has fundamentally changed the way I think about knowledge. This has fundamentally changed the way I think about memory. This has fundamentally changed the way I think about thinking. I used to take great pride in my memory, but now I hardly bother to remember anything at all. I know that most of the knowledge I might need is just a few keystrokes away, so I don't really take any time trying to commit stuff to memory ( Sure, I still *do* remember lots of stuff, particular sports statistics, but I don't really *try* to remember anything. ). Instead, I spend more time making sure my Google Chrome bookmarks are organized in a way the makes it easy to pull up valuable links. Of course, even if I can't find a link, it seems that Google can practically read my mind to help me find it again.
I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I think all vaguely Internet literate people these days use the Internet as a kind of extended memory. We've all gotten a little more knowledgeable in this way, thanks to the collective knowledge of everyone else on the Internet. We're gradually starting to develop into more of a global collective mind. Now, I don't think we are really in any danger of losing our individuality, and I don't think we're looking to assimilate anyone, but in a small way, we are Borg.
Rich
P.S. On a lighter note, why don't pole-vaulters just use poles that are about 10 meters long? Over the history of the pole vault, the poles have gotten longer and longer, and vaulters have vaulted higher and higher. So, with that in mind, why wouldn't a vaulter just use a mega-long pole? Seriously, the world record in the pole vault is about 6 meter. If showed up in Rio with a 10 meter pole, why couldn't I win the gold in 2016? OK, I'm sure it's more complicated that that. I'm sure it has something to do with how flexible the poles are and leverage and upper body strength and the transfer of kinetic energy to potential energy. But seriously, why hasn't somebody tried this. I'd *love* to see somebody try this. I'd love it so much that I just send out this tweet to pole vault world record holder Sergey Bubka:
UPDATE: I gave this pole vault stuff a little more thought, and I've realized that this does have almost everything to do with the transfer of kinetic energy to potential energy. In order for the pole vaulter to get over the bar, the center of mass of the pole vaulter needs to be raised from a few feet above the ground to about the height of the bar. This means that the potential energy of the pole vaulter needs to be increased quite a bit, and that energy needs to come from somewhere. Part of that energy comes from the pole vaulter leaping and thrusting the pole into the ground with his/her upper body strength, but most of it comes from the kinetic energy of the pole vaulter attains by running. Basically, in order for a pole vaulter to vault 10 meters rather than 6 meters, the pole vaulter would need to run MUCH faster than he/she would run for a 6 meter vault. With that in mind, I wonder if Usain Bolt could become a pole vault champion with just a few months of training.
"You were working as a waitress at a cocktail bar-ah, when I met you-ooooo"
However, the name of the 80's band was escaping me, so I pulled up Google. By the time I had typed "you were w", Google had auto-completed "you were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when I met you" and there was a link to the Human League video right in front of me.
By now, most of us already take this kind of auto-complete technology for granted, but when you stop to think of it, it's really remarkable that technology has advanced this to level. 30 years or so I ago, I'd always figured I'd see some amazing computer technology by this point in my life, but I never expected technology of this sort. I always kind of figured we'd have real artificial intelligence ( AI ) by now. I thought we would have computers that could think. That hasn't happened, and I now seriously doubt that I'll ever see anything like that in my lifetime. However, while computers haven't given us AI, the Internet and Google's search engine have given us a kind of collective intelligence. The knowledge I have rapid access to extends far beyond my own brain. I may not know everything, but if somebody else knows something, I can know it too after about 30 seconds on Google ( with the obvious exception of really complicated stuff like string theory ). This has fundamentally changed the way I think about knowledge. This has fundamentally changed the way I think about memory. This has fundamentally changed the way I think about thinking. I used to take great pride in my memory, but now I hardly bother to remember anything at all. I know that most of the knowledge I might need is just a few keystrokes away, so I don't really take any time trying to commit stuff to memory ( Sure, I still *do* remember lots of stuff, particular sports statistics, but I don't really *try* to remember anything. ). Instead, I spend more time making sure my Google Chrome bookmarks are organized in a way the makes it easy to pull up valuable links. Of course, even if I can't find a link, it seems that Google can practically read my mind to help me find it again.
I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I think all vaguely Internet literate people these days use the Internet as a kind of extended memory. We've all gotten a little more knowledgeable in this way, thanks to the collective knowledge of everyone else on the Internet. We're gradually starting to develop into more of a global collective mind. Now, I don't think we are really in any danger of losing our individuality, and I don't think we're looking to assimilate anyone, but in a small way, we are Borg.
Rich
P.S. On a lighter note, why don't pole-vaulters just use poles that are about 10 meters long? Over the history of the pole vault, the poles have gotten longer and longer, and vaulters have vaulted higher and higher. So, with that in mind, why wouldn't a vaulter just use a mega-long pole? Seriously, the world record in the pole vault is about 6 meter. If showed up in Rio with a 10 meter pole, why couldn't I win the gold in 2016? OK, I'm sure it's more complicated that that. I'm sure it has something to do with how flexible the poles are and leverage and upper body strength and the transfer of kinetic energy to potential energy. But seriously, why hasn't somebody tried this. I'd *love* to see somebody try this. I'd love it so much that I just send out this tweet to pole vault world record holder Sergey Bubka:
@sergey_bubka Figure you're the best person in the world to ask:.Why can't a pole vaulter just use a 10 meter pole?
— MoLewis57 (@MoLewis57) August 11, 2012
UPDATE: I gave this pole vault stuff a little more thought, and I've realized that this does have almost everything to do with the transfer of kinetic energy to potential energy. In order for the pole vaulter to get over the bar, the center of mass of the pole vaulter needs to be raised from a few feet above the ground to about the height of the bar. This means that the potential energy of the pole vaulter needs to be increased quite a bit, and that energy needs to come from somewhere. Part of that energy comes from the pole vaulter leaping and thrusting the pole into the ground with his/her upper body strength, but most of it comes from the kinetic energy of the pole vaulter attains by running. Basically, in order for a pole vaulter to vault 10 meters rather than 6 meters, the pole vaulter would need to run MUCH faster than he/she would run for a 6 meter vault. With that in mind, I wonder if Usain Bolt could become a pole vault champion with just a few months of training.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
A knife in my back
No, I wasn't betrayed - nobody stabbed me in the back ...
... but I did have a knife in my back today - quite literally.
OK, here come the details ...
I've had a dime sized cyst on my back for about 3 years ( Specifically, between my right shoulder blade and spine, probably about an inch from my spine ). It never gave me any trouble, but about a month ago, it started to hurt and swell. By the time I saw the dermatologist about 4 PM today, the thing was all maroon and kinda looked like half a small plum.
The dermatologist ( who was a dead ringer for Rob Reiner ( the current bald Rob Reiner - not Meathead Rob Reiner )) told me he was going to numb the cyst first, and then squeeze out the contents of the cyst ( OK, perhaps that was TMI, but if ya don't like it, you can stop reading now ). Well, I don't know what your definition is of "numbing" something is, but apparently Dr. Reiner's definition of "numbing" is "inflict ridiculous amounts of pain".
Now, I'm not really blaming Dr. Reiner. I really doubt there was a painless way to do this procedure, but I would have liked a little bit of a warning. The problem with getting a medical procedure done on you back is you have no idea what the doctor is going to do or when the doctor is going to do it.
So, I'm sitting there on this bench/chair type thing, fully expected to feel the pinprick of a needle administering a local anesthetic. Well, I feel the pinprick, followed by a deep piercing pain, followed by about a 1 second of diminished pain. At this point, I figure he must be pulling the needle out. I'm guessing that we'll now wait a few minutes for the anesthetic to take hold, and that the worst was over. How WRONG I was. After the one second of slightly diminished pain, I feel a TREMENDOUS amount of pain - more pain that I've ever felt before. What the hell is he doing? Is he slicing into the cyst with a scalpel? What the hell? Clearly, the anesthetic can't start working after only one second. We're doing this without any real anesthetic? Where the hell is the numbing I was promised? OK Rich, don't be a wimp. You got weekly allergy shots for 10 years starting at the age of 4. You can get through this. Just grit your teeth and clutch your knees hard. It can't get worse than this. CRAP, it just did! Don't scream! Don't scream! Hold it in! Don't be a wimp! Good!, the cuttings is over. OK, you can exhale. Maybe you'll get a few seconds of re - WOAH! What was that? Why is he pressing his thumb into the cyst? For the last few days it hurt a bit when my shirt would brush again the cyst. This pressing with the thumb is not good. It almost makes me miss the cutting pain. I guess he's trying to squeeze the innards of the cyst out of the hole he cut in it. I guess the hole must be on one side of the cyst because he keep running his thumb over the cyst, as if he's trying to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of a tube. OMG! OMFG! Please be done soon! Don't scream! Don't give him any reason to stop. If he stops, he'll just have to start again later. I want to get this over with as soon as possible. Pain ... pain stopping ... exhale .. look over my shoulder, he's getting some kind of bandage ready. It's finally over.
Well, the wasn't fun, but it had to be done. Doc Meathead told me that he thinks he got all the cyst out and that it probably won't come back. I guess all there is to do now it sit around and wait for the throbbing pain in my back to subside. It's times like this when I'm really glad I'm married to a doctor. Redressing the wound is not going to be fun tomorrow morning, but at least my wife knows what she it doing.
Anway, time to go to bed ( Thank goodness I typically never sleep on my back ).
Rich
... but I did have a knife in my back today - quite literally.
OK, here come the details ...
I've had a dime sized cyst on my back for about 3 years ( Specifically, between my right shoulder blade and spine, probably about an inch from my spine ). It never gave me any trouble, but about a month ago, it started to hurt and swell. By the time I saw the dermatologist about 4 PM today, the thing was all maroon and kinda looked like half a small plum.
The dermatologist ( who was a dead ringer for Rob Reiner ( the current bald Rob Reiner - not Meathead Rob Reiner )) told me he was going to numb the cyst first, and then squeeze out the contents of the cyst ( OK, perhaps that was TMI, but if ya don't like it, you can stop reading now ). Well, I don't know what your definition is of "numbing" something is, but apparently Dr. Reiner's definition of "numbing" is "inflict ridiculous amounts of pain".
Now, I'm not really blaming Dr. Reiner. I really doubt there was a painless way to do this procedure, but I would have liked a little bit of a warning. The problem with getting a medical procedure done on you back is you have no idea what the doctor is going to do or when the doctor is going to do it.
So, I'm sitting there on this bench/chair type thing, fully expected to feel the pinprick of a needle administering a local anesthetic. Well, I feel the pinprick, followed by a deep piercing pain, followed by about a 1 second of diminished pain. At this point, I figure he must be pulling the needle out. I'm guessing that we'll now wait a few minutes for the anesthetic to take hold, and that the worst was over. How WRONG I was. After the one second of slightly diminished pain, I feel a TREMENDOUS amount of pain - more pain that I've ever felt before. What the hell is he doing? Is he slicing into the cyst with a scalpel? What the hell? Clearly, the anesthetic can't start working after only one second. We're doing this without any real anesthetic? Where the hell is the numbing I was promised? OK Rich, don't be a wimp. You got weekly allergy shots for 10 years starting at the age of 4. You can get through this. Just grit your teeth and clutch your knees hard. It can't get worse than this. CRAP, it just did! Don't scream! Don't scream! Hold it in! Don't be a wimp! Good!, the cuttings is over. OK, you can exhale. Maybe you'll get a few seconds of re - WOAH! What was that? Why is he pressing his thumb into the cyst? For the last few days it hurt a bit when my shirt would brush again the cyst. This pressing with the thumb is not good. It almost makes me miss the cutting pain. I guess he's trying to squeeze the innards of the cyst out of the hole he cut in it. I guess the hole must be on one side of the cyst because he keep running his thumb over the cyst, as if he's trying to squeeze the last bit of toothpaste out of a tube. OMG! OMFG! Please be done soon! Don't scream! Don't give him any reason to stop. If he stops, he'll just have to start again later. I want to get this over with as soon as possible. Pain ... pain stopping ... exhale .. look over my shoulder, he's getting some kind of bandage ready. It's finally over.
Well, the wasn't fun, but it had to be done. Doc Meathead told me that he thinks he got all the cyst out and that it probably won't come back. I guess all there is to do now it sit around and wait for the throbbing pain in my back to subside. It's times like this when I'm really glad I'm married to a doctor. Redressing the wound is not going to be fun tomorrow morning, but at least my wife knows what she it doing.
Anway, time to go to bed ( Thank goodness I typically never sleep on my back ).
Rich
Sunday, June 3, 2012
It Finally Happened
I'd been doing the same thing for at least 10 years. Each time I watched a Mets game ( and I watch almost every Mets game ), and the Mets pitcher got out of the first inning without surrendering a hit, I'd say the following to my wife ( or my brother, or my son Michael, or whoever else was in the room, and often, just to myself ) ...
"24 outs to go!"
Friday night, June 1st, 2012 was no different. Johan Santana retired the Cardinals 1-2-3 in the top of the first. The no-hitter watch was on again.
It might seem odd that I would regularly start a no-hitter watch after one inning of no-hit ball. It might seem odd, that is, unless you know the history of the Mets and no-hitters.
When Johan Santana strode to the mound on Friday night, the Mets had still never had a no-hitter in their 50-year history. Every other franchise in baseball, except the Padres ( who have not existed as long as the Mets ), have had at least one no-hitter in their history. This includes the Rays ( started in 1998 ), the Diamondbacks ( 2 no-hitters since starting in 1998 ), the Rockies ( started in 1993 ) and the Marlins ( 4 no-hitters since starting in 1993 ). With the exception of the Mets and Padres, no baseball franchise had gone as many as 5000 games into their franchise history without having at least one no-hitter. Going into the Friday night's game, the Mets had gone 8019 games without a no-hitter.
What made this no-hitter drought particularly frustrating and perplexing is that the Mets have always had great pitching. Former Cy Young Award winners like Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine, Bret Saberhagen, and Frank Viola each spent a few years pitching for the Mets. Very good pitchers like Ron Darling, Jerry Koosman, Al Leiter, Jon Matlack, Mike Hampton, Sid Fernandez, Rick Reed, and Bobby Ojeda all helped the Mets win pennants and World Series, but failed to throw no-hitters while with the Mets ( Note: I was at Shea Stadium during a game in which Rick Reed retired the first 19 hitters in a row. He then gave up a walk, hit, and a homer, and the Mets lost the game. ). Most significantly, Mets pitchers Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan ( Hall of Famers ), Dwight Gooden, David Cone, Mike Scott ( Cy Young Award winners ) and Hideo Nomo ( Rookie of the Year Winner ( before joining the Mets )) each pitched no-hitters ( in Ryan's case, a record 7 ) after being traded away from the Mets.
The most recent name added to the list of former Mets with no-hitters was Phil Humber. Humber was the Mets first round draft pick back in 2004. Mets fans had high hopes for Humber, but he never panned out. He was traded away from the Mets before 2008 season started, then bounced around the league a fews years before landing with the Chicago White Sox. This April, he pitched a Perfect Game. When I read the story about his perfect game on ESPN, I noticed that somebody had written the following in the comments section under the story.
"How to pitch a no-hitter:
Step 1: Pitch for the Mets
Step 2: Pitch for any other team."
However, it's worth noting the trade that sent Phil Humber ( and a few other players ) away from the Mets in 2008, brought back ....
Johan Santana.
Back in 2008, Santana was a fine candidate to break the Mets no-hitter drought. He had won the Cy Young award in 2004 and 2006, and was widely considered to be the best pitcher in baseball. He didn't disappoint in 2008, leading the National League in ERA, setting a career high in innings pitched, and using his 95 mph fastball and devastating change-up to strike out 206 batters.
However, 2012 is a long way from 2008. Johan had knee surgery after the 2008 season. His 2009 season was ended by elbow surgery to remove bone chips, and his 2010 ended with surgery to repair a torn anterior capsule in his left shoulder. He didn't pitch at all in the 2011 season, and many wondered if he'd ever pitch again.
To Johan's credit, after a year-and-a-half of hard work, he managed to get himself ready in time for the start of the 2012 season. He even started on Opening Day. However, it was clear that he was a shell of his former self. His fastball was being clocked at about 88 mph ( it might hit 90 mph every once in a while, but certainly no faster than that ), and coming off the arm surgery, you knew that the Mets would rarely let him throw more than 100 pitches in a game in 2012.
Thus, while I would hope for a no-hitter at the start of every Mets game, I didn't really think that Johan was a realistic candidate anymore. My hope rested more with young pitcher Jonathon Niese, and knuckleballer R. A. Dickey. Neise had lost a no hitter in the 7th inning earlier this year, and Dickey had lost one in the 6th a few weeks earlier. Back in 2010, Dickey had pitched a one-hitter in which the only hit was a single by the opposing pitcher in the 6th inning ( The Mets have had 35 one-hitters. I don't know the odds of having that many one-hitters without a single no-hitter, but the odds must be ridiculous. ).
So, I didn't think a Johan no-hitter was really possible, until he threw a complete game shutout on May 26, 2012. In that game he only threw 96 pitches. Surely, if he could pitch a shutout in only 96 pitchers, it was a least possible that he could throw a no-hitter in about 100 pitches or so.
Possible of course, but not likely. Especially not on Friday night. Back on May 26th, Johan was pitching against the last place Padres. On Friday night, he was facing the defending World Champion Cardinals, the best-hitting team in the National League.
In additional to the Cardinals formidable lineup, there was a lot of bad Mets history in the middle of the field for the Cardinals that night. The Cardinals had Adam Wainwright pitching, Yadier Molina catching, and Carlos Beltran playing centerfield. Back in 2006, Carlos Beltran was the Mets best player. They had the best record in the National League, and were playing the Cardinals in National Championship series. The Mets were heavy favorites entering the series, but the series wound up going to a decisive game 7 at Shea Stadium. The game was tied late, but I never really believed the Mets were going to lose until Yadier Molina ( who hit only 6 regular season homers in the regular season ) launched a two-run homer in the top of the 9th inning to give the Cardinals a 3-1 lead. The Mets rallied in the bottom the 9th, and Carlos Beltran found himself batting against Adam Wainwright with the bases loaded and 2 outs in a 3-1 game. As every Mets fan knows, Beltran wound up striking out looking, and things have never been quite the same for the Mets. They blew a 7-game lead with 17 games to play to miss the playoffs in 2007, had a similar collapse in 2008, and then suffered through injury-plagued seasons in 2009, 2010, and 2011, during which Bernie Madoff related financial woes led the team to get rid of most of their best players ( including Beltran last year ).
Before this season, I told Ruth that the Mets would not just be awful this year, but would be "God-awful". I really expected them to lose at least 100 games this year, but something special has been happening under manager Terry Collins this year - something that I've started to call "Collinsanity".
Collinsanity would continue on Friday night.
To be honest, due to Johan's shutout in his previous start, I started think about a potential no-hitter while Johan was pitching to his first batter of the game. When it took him 7 pitches to get the lead-off batter out, I was already worrying that his pitch count was going to be too high to pitch a no-hitter. I was even more worried after it took Johan 41 pitches to get through 2 no-hit innings. 20 pitches an inning just wasn't going to cut it if Johan was going to break the no-hitter curse that night.
Neither team had gotten a hit yet when the Mets came to bat in the bottom of the 4th. The Mets got a hit to lead off the inning and managed to plate 2 runs before the inning was over. I let out a sigh of relief at that point, because one of my recurring nightmares regarding Mets no-hitters ( I don't literally have nightmares about it, but I've thought about it a lot ) is that a Mets pitcher will have a no-hitter through 9 innings, but the Mets will fail to score.
Still, I really didn't like Johan's chances to throw a no-hitter that night. Johan's didn't have particularly great stuff that night, his pitch count was rising rapidly, and it was starting to rain lightly at the ballpark. If there was any kind of rain delay, there was no way the Mets were going to let Johan continue the game after a rain delay. I didn't really hold out any hope that this game would be THE GAME until something happened at the top of the 6th.
Carlos Beltran led off the 6th inning and hit a hard line-drive down the third base line. For a split second, I thought that the no-hit attempt was over, but the ump called it foul. Then I got a look at a replay. The replay showed that the ball had hit the outside part of the foul line. The ball should have been called fair. The Mets had caught a break. After all these years of bad breaks, the Mets had finally caught a break. Perhaps this night would be the night.
My doubts subsided more in the 7th inning. With one out in the 7th, Johan's no-hitter was still alive when Yadier Molina stepped to the plate. He had already broken the hearts of all Mets fans 6 years ago. How cruel would it be if he broke our hearts again? Johan falls behind Molina 3-1, and on the 5th pitch, Molina rips a deep line-drive to left. I don't immediately think the no-hitter is over, but it's going to take a nice defensive play to get this out, and the Mets left fielder this night is Mike Baxter.
Mike Baxter is a 27-year-old who has spent most of his career in the minors. He's got a pretty decent bat, but there is usually only one reason why 27-year olds with decent bats don't get much time in the Major Leagues. Mike Baxter isn't exactly what you'd call a slick fielder.
The line drive flies towards the fence, and Baxter runs awkwardly back and to his left. He desperately throws out his left hand at the last possible second, the ball hits the glove, and he hits the wall HARD. Baxter goes down, and stays down, but holds on the ball. 2 outs! 7 outs to go.
Eventually Baxter gets up and is helped off the field by the trainers. He appears to be in quite a bit of pain. It's later revealed that the collision displaced his right collarbone and fractured rib cage cartilage. He won't be able to play again for about 6 weeks, but I'm sure he thinks it was worth it. Baxter grew up in Queens as a Mets fan. A Mets fan from Queens sacrifices his body making a play to preserve a no-hitter. You couldn't make this stuff up.
Johan gets the last out of the 7th, the rain has long stopped, and now even the most pessimistic Mets fan knows that things are starting to get serious. However, Johan's already thrown 107 pitches. Can he possibly get through the next 2 innings without permanently damaging his arm? Perhaps not, but it doesn't matter at this point. Unless Johan gives up a hit, there is no way he's going to come out of this game.
Johan hasn't had great stuff tonight, and tendons and ligaments just might be fraying in his left elbow and shoulder by now, but heck, with only 6 outs to go, all you really need to do is just throw it over the plate and hope to get lucky. Heck, if you give *me* enough tries ( granted, it might take a few thousand tries ), I even think I could get 6 outs in a row in a major league game. Even if guys are hammering each pitch you throw, there always a chance that they'll hit lines drives right at people. Johan's not pitching great at this point, but all he needs is a little bit of luck. Can the Mets actually get a little bit of luck in a no-hitter attempt?
I turn to my wife and tell her that I won't be upset if Johan loses the no-hitter, unless he gets as far as 2 outs in the 9th. I've been burned too many times by Mets no-hitter attempts. I'm not going to let myself get emotionally invested in this until there's only one out to go.
Johan has a few close calls ( a few bloops, and a few near collisions between Mets fielders ), but the next thing you know, we've gotten to 2 outs in the 9th. By now, Johan has thrown 128 pitches, 3 more than he's ever thrown in a game before. The batter is 2011 World Series MVP David Freese. Johan quickly falls behind 3-0. I decide that I would rather walk Freese than give him a fastball in the strike zone on 3-0. Johan throws a 3-0 fastball in the strike zone, Freeze takes it, and I breathe a sigh of relief. It's about then that I realize that Yadier Molina is waiting on deck. Considering what Molina's done to the Mets in the past, and considering how hard Molina hit the ball his last time up, I really don't want Molina coming up with a no-hitter on the line. Still, I don't want Johan to give Freese an easy pitch to hit in this at-bat. Crap, this is getting hard to watch. I honestly don't remember what kind of pitch Johan threw next, but I do remember that Freese pounded it into the ground toward third base. For a split second I thought it was going to be ground out to end the game, but the ball quickly rolls foul. 3-2. Now we're one strike away. At this point, I'm thinking of just one thing.
A change-up.
"Change-up!"
"Throw him the change-up, Johan!"
Of course, he can't hear me ( heck these games on TV are on about a 7 second delay, so he's probably already thrown the pitch ), but he just HAS to throw his change-up here. The Mets are up 8-0, so they're in no danger of losing the game if Johan walks a few people this inning. You simply cannot give in to the batter in a situation like this with a no-hitter on the line. Molina or no-Molina, he just can't give Freese a pitch to hit here. Johan winds up and lets the pitch fly. A split second before the ball reaches the plate, it's clear to me that he has thrown the change-up and that it's not going to be in the strike zone. It will be ball four unless ...
FREESE SWINGS OVER THE BALL!
STRIKE THREE!!!!!!!
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
June 1, 2012 was a good night.
It's actually been a great weekend overall. The Mets won the next two games 5-0 and 6-1, and now sit at 31-23 one third of the way into the season. They are tied for first place and are on a pace to win 93 games this year.
Collinsanity continues ....
Rich
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Hapapalooza
Keanu Reeves, Tiger Woods, Ann Curry, Olivia Munn, Maggie Q, Dean Cain, Russell Wong, Tommy Chong, Jennifer Tilly, Phoebe Cates, , Kelly Hu, Daniel Henney, Kristen Kruek, Apolo Anton Ohno, The Rock, me!
That's right. I'm hapa baby!
For the those who are not familiar with the term, "hapa" is a Hawaiian term used to describe a person of mixed Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry. The term has moved into the American mainstream in the last decade or so, and can be used to describe people like my half-Taiwanese sons, and apparently me.
How is this possible? Well to be honest, I was as surprised to find this out as most of you probably are. However, if you take a look at the photos of my maternal grandfather below, it's probably fair to say that I should have suspected this a while ago ( BTW, the little fellow in the stylish brown threads in the 3rd and 5th photos is me ).
That's right. I'm hapa baby!
For the those who are not familiar with the term, "hapa" is a Hawaiian term used to describe a person of mixed Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry. The term has moved into the American mainstream in the last decade or so, and can be used to describe people like my half-Taiwanese sons, and apparently me.
How is this possible? Well to be honest, I was as surprised to find this out as most of you probably are. However, if you take a look at the photos of my maternal grandfather below, it's probably fair to say that I should have suspected this a while ago ( BTW, the little fellow in the stylish brown threads in the 3rd and 5th photos is me ).
My Grandfather was supposedly 100% German, but looking at the photos above, it's clear that his skin was a little bit darker than the typical German person. Recently, one my cousins on my Mom's side of the family did a little research and found the birth certificate of my Grandfather's mother. My maternal grandfather's mom was born in Jersey City, and her birth certificate listed her ethnicity as German/Filipino. The birth certificate doesn't say what percentage Filipino she was , but I've got to imagine she was half Filipino. My Aunt Barbara tells me that while all her German grandparents were born in the USA, her German great-grandparents were born in Germany. I think it's highly unlikely that one of my German ancestors found a Filipino spouse in Germany, so I would think that my part-Filipino great-grandmother probably had a 100% German parent an a 100% Filipino parent who met in the USA. The fact that she was born in Jersey City lends more credence to this theory. There is a pretty big Filipino population in Jersey City these days ( BTW, Ruth and I lived in Jersey City from July 2002 until the end of September in 2003. Our obstetrician was Filipino, and she delivered Michael in Jersey City in October of 2003. ), and apparently, the history of Filipino folks in Jersey City goes back to the time when my part-Filipino great-grandmother was born.
So, doing a little bit of math tells me that having a half-Filipino great-grandmother would make me one sixteenth Filipino. So, taking this new information into account, I can now say that I'm ....
half Ukrainian
5/16th German
1/8th Irish
1/16th Filipino
Considering that most Filipinos probably have at least a little bit of Spanish blood as well, I'm practically a one-man United freakin' Nations ( my kids even more so )!
Hmm, so I wonder when Keanu's going to invite me to the secret Hapa people dinner party? Of course, they'd probably stick me at a table with painfully unfunny Filipino hapa Rob Schneider, so perhaps I should just lay low for a while.
Rich
Edit: Clearly, I couldn't list every famous hapa in the world in the list at the start of this post. However, as a huge Mets fan, it's inexcusable that I left out Ron Darling.
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